Luther, the new apostle, published that book full of life in which he demanded, with all the earnestness of his soul, a resurrection of the Church. Saturday, May 22, 1518, on the eve of Pentecost, he sent his book to his diocesan, the bishop of Brandenburg, writing to him:

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'Right reverend father in God! Some time ago, when a new and unheard-of doctrine touching apostolic indulgences began to be bruited in these parts, both the learned and the ignorant were alike stirred up, and several persons, some of them known to me, others unknown by sight, solicited me to publish orally, or by writing, what I thought of that novelty, I will not say of the impudence, of that doctrine. I kept myself at that time silent and retired: but at last things came to such a pass, that the pope's holiness was compromised.

"What was I to do? I thought it became me neither to approve nor to condemn these doctrines, but to institute a discussion on so important a point till the Church should have decided.

"No one having answered the challenge I offered to all, and my theses having been considered not as matter for discussion, but as propositions laid down absolutely, I find myself compelled to publish an explanation thereof. Deign, therefore, to receive these trifles which I present to you, most clement bishop. And in order that every one may see I do not act presumptuously, I supplicate your reverence to take pen and ink, and to blot out, or even to cast into the fire, all that may be displeasing to you. I know that Jesus Christ has no need of my labour and my services, and that he will be well able without me to announce glad tidings to his Church. Not that the bulls and menaces of my enemies alarm me; quite the contrary if they were not so impudent and shameless no one would hear speak of me, I should shrink into a corner, and study there for myself alone. If this affair is not God's, neither certainly will it be mine nor any man's, but a thing of nought. Be the honour and glory to Him to whom alone they belong!'

"Luther was still filled with respect for the head of the Church; he gave Leo credit for justice and a sincere love of truth, and therefore proposed to write to him also. Eight days afterwards, on Trinity Sunday, May 30, 1518, he wrote him a letter, of which the following are some frag

ments:

"To the most blessed father, Leo X., sovereign bishop, the brother Martin Luther, Augustinian, wishes eternal salvation!

"I learn, most holy father, that ill rumours are abroad respecting me, and that my name is brought into bad odour before your holiness: they call me heretic, apostate, traitor, and a thousand other opprobrious names. What I behold astonishes me, what I hear alarms me: but the sole foundation of my tranquillity remains, a pure and peaceful conscience. Deign to hear me, O most holy father; me who am but a child and know nothing.'

"Luther relates the origin of the whole affair and goes on thus:

"Nothing was to be heard in all the taverns but complaints of the avarice of the priests, and attacks against the power of the keys and the sovereign bishop: all Germany is witness to this. At hearing these things my zeal was moved for the glory of Christ, as it seems to me; or if an

other explanation must be given, my young and quick blood boiled in my veins.

"I warned some of the princes of the Church, but one mocked me, another turned a deaf ear to my representations: the terror of your name seemed to chain them all. Then I published my disputation. "And such, most holy father, such is the incendiary deed which they has set the entire world in flames.

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"Now what must I do? I cannot retract, and I see that this publication draws down an inconceivable hatred upon me from all quarters. I am not fond of appearing in the midst of the world: for I am without knowledge, without wit, and much too little for such great things, especially in this illustrious age, in which Cicero himself, if he lived, would be obliged to hide in an obscure corner.

"But in order to appease my enemies, and to satisfy the solicitations of many, behold, here I publish my thoughts. I publish them, holy father, in order to be the more in safety under the shadow of your wings. All those who shall desire it will thus be able to know with what simplicity of heart I have asked the ecclesiastical authority to instruct me, and what respect I have testified for the power of the keys. If I had not comported myself becomingly in the matter, it would have been impossible that his most serene lordship, Frederick, duke and elector of Saxony, who is brightly pre-eminent amongst the friends of apostolic and Christian truth, should ever have endured in his university of Wittemberg a man so dangerous as they pretend that I am.

666 For these reasons, most holy father, I fall at the feet of your holiness, and submit myself thereto, with all that I have, and all that I am. Ruin my cause or adopt it; pronounce me right or pronounce me wrong; take my life or restore it me, as it shall please you: I shall recognise your voice as the voice of Jesus Christ, who presides and speaks through you. If I have deserved death I do not object to die: the earth is the Lord's and all that therein is praised be his name throughout all eternity! Amen. May He preserve you everlastingly! Amen.

:

"Dated this day of the Holy Trinity, in the year 1518.

'Brother MARTIN LUTHER, Augustinian.' "What humility, and what truth in this fear of Luther's, or, rather, in this avowal of his, that perhaps his young and quick blood had boiled up too fast! Here we behold the sincere man, who, not presuming in himself, apprehends the influence of his passions even in those very actions of his that seem most conformable to the Word of God. There is a wide difference between this language and that of the proud fanatic. We see in Luther the desire that actuated him to gain over Leo to the cause of truth, to prevent all rupture, and to make that reformation, of which he proclaimed the necessity, proceed from the highest eminence in the Church. Assuredly he is not to be charged with having destroyed that unity in the West, the loss of which all parties have since regretted: he sacrificed everything to maintain it, everything except the truth. It was his antagonists, and not he, who, refusing to admit the plentitude and the sufficiency of the salvation effected by Jesus Christ, rent the garment of the Lord at the foot of the cross.

"After having written this letter, Luther, on the same day, addressed his friend Staupitz, vicar-general of his order. It was through him he wished to have his letter and his resolutions conveyed to Leo.

"I entreat you,' said he, indulgently' to accept the trifles I send you, and to cause them to be conveyed to the excellent pope, Leo X. Not that I wish thereby to draw you into the danger in which I stand; I wish to encounter this peril alone. Jesus Christ will see whether what I have said proceeds from him or from me- - Jesus Christ, without whose will the pope's tongue cannot move, nor the hearts of kings resolve on anything.

"As for those who threaten me, I have nothing to reply to them except Reuchlin's saying, The poor man has nothing to fear, for he has nothing to lose. I have neither goods nor money, and I ask for none; if I formerly possessed some honour and some fair fame, he who began to snatch them from me is completing his work. There remains to me but this wretched body, weakened by so many trials; let them kill it by force or cunning to the glory of God. They will thus, perhaps, abridge an hour or two of my time. It is enough for me that I have a precious Redeemer, a mighty High Priest, Jesus Christ, my Lord: I will praise Him as long as I have a breath of life; if any one will not praise Him with me, what matters it to me?'

"These words enable us to read distinctly the heart of Luther.

"Whilst he was thus looking with confidence to Rome, Rome had already conceived projects of vengeance against him. On the 3rd of April, the cardinal Raphaël di Rovere had written to the elector Frederick, in the pope's name, that some suspicions were entertained as to his faith, and that he must beware of protecting Luther. 'Cardinal Raphaël,' said the latter,' would feel great pleasure in seeing me burned by duke Frederick.' Thus Rome was beginning to furbish up her arms against Luther: and her first blow aimed at him was through the mind of his protector. Could she succeed in depriving the Wittemberg monk of that shelter under which he reposed, he would afterwards become an easy prey to her arts.

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"The German sovereigns clung eagerly to their reputation as Christian princes; the least suspicion of heresy filled them with alarm; and this was a temper which the court of Rome had skilfully turned to account. Frederick, moreover, had always been warmly attached to the religion of his fathers. Raphaël's letter made a lively impression upon him. it was a principle of the Elector's to do nothing hastily. He knew that truth was not always on the side of the strongest; the affairs between the empire and Rome had taught him to distrust the interested views of the latter court; and he had become convinced that, to be a Christian prince, it was not necessary to be the pope's slave.

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"He was not one of those profane spirits,' says Melancthon, 'who would have all changes stifled the moment their beginning is seen. derick submitted himself to God: he carefully read such writings as appeared, and did not suffer the destruction of what he judged to be true.' He had the power to do so. Master in his own states, he enjoyed in the empire a consideration, at least as great as that entertained for the emperor himself.

"It is probable that Luther learned something of this letter of cardinal Raphaël's, which reached the Elector on the 7th of July. Perhaps it was the prospect of excommunication which this missive seemed to hold out, which prompted him to ascend the pulpit in Wittemberg on the 15th of the same month, and pronounce a discourse on that subject, which produced a profound impression. He therein drew a distinction between inward and outward excommunication, the former excluding from communion with God, the latter only from communion with the Church. 'No one,' he said, can reconcile the fallen soul with God, save only the Eternal no one can separate a man from communion with God, save that man himself by his own sins. Happy is he who dies in an unjust excommunication! Whilst he endures a severe chastisement from the hands of men for righteousness' sake, he receives from the hand of God the crown of everlasting bliss.'. . .

"Some approved highly of this bold language, others were incensed by it to a still higher degree.

"But already Luther had ceased to stand alone; and though his faith needed no other support than that of God, a phalanx that defended him against his enemies had formed around him. The German people had heard the voice of the reformer: from his discourses and his publications issued lightnings that awoke and enlightened his contemporaries. The energy of his faith fell in a fiery rain upon torpid hearts, and the abundant life which God had put into that extraordinary soul, communicated itself to the dead body of the Church. Christendom, motionless for so many ages, became animated with religious enthusiasm: the devotion of the people to the superstitions of Rome was day by day diminishing; still fewer and fewer hands offered money for pardon, while, at the same time, Luther's fame was constantly and steadily on the increase. People turned towards him, and saluted him with love and with respect, as the intrepid defender of truth and liberty. All, no doubt, did not discover the depth of the doctrines he defended: for many it was enough to know, that the new doctor set his face against the pope, and that the empire of the priests and the monks was tottering at the breath of his powerful words. Luther's attack was, for them, like one of those mountain beacons that announce to an entire nation that the moment is come to burst their chains. The reformer was not yet aware what himself had done, when, already, all tha was generous amongst his fellow-countrymen had hailed him by acclamation as their leader. But, to a great number, the apparition of Luther was much more than this. God's Word, which he wielded with so much vigour, pierced into their souls like a two-edged sword: in many hearts was kindled an ardent desire to obtain assurance of pardon and of eternal life; and never, since the first ages, had the Church known such a hungering and thirsting after righteousness. If the words of Peter the Hermit and of Bernard had acted on the people of the middle ages, to induce them to take up a perishable cross, Luther's words impelled the men of his age to embrace the true cross, the cross which saves. The scaffolding with which the Church was loaded had, till then, obscured everything; forms had supplanted life but the mighty voice given to this man, spread a breath of life over the soul of Christendom. At the first onset Luther's writings had

captivated believers and unbelievers alike; the latter, because the positive doctrines to be afterwards established, were not yet fully developed in them; the former, because these doctrines existed in the germ in that living faith therein so energetically expressed. Accordingly, the influence of these writings was immense: in an instant they filled all Germany and the world. Everywhere the deep conviction prevailed, that men beheld, not the commencing establishment of a sect, but the new birth of the Church and of society. Those who were then born of the Spirit of God ranged themselves round him who was its organ. Christendom became divided into two camps: the one fought with the Spirit against forms, the other with forms against the Spirit. Forms had on their side, it is true, all appearances of strength and greatness; on the side of the Spirit was weakness and littleness. But forms without spirit are but a lifeless body, which the first breath may overthrow, and whose seeming strength does but provoke hostility and hasten its fall. Thus the simple word of truth had created for Luther a mighty army."

Before concluding, we may mention that having glanced at some parts of the other translation of D'Aubigné's history, the third volume for example, and which is chiefly taken up with the Reformation in France from 1500 to 1526, we discover a very strong Protestant zeal in the author, and which might naturally be expected from the "President of the Theological School of Geneva, and Member of the Société Evangélique." He appears to have drawn many of his statements and anecdotes from French libraries and other storehouses of curious documents which have seldom been ransacked. But we must also state that he attributes considerably more to what he believes to be orthodox influences and reforming piety than we think is consistent with facts, with probability, or with a perfectly fair regard to antecedent and concomitant circumstances. We speak in these very general terms; and just as we reasonably do in characterizing the persecutions and martyrdoms-the hatreds and the miseries, which the volume in question describes and records. What a picture does it give of what churches and sects profess to be Christianity, when we read of the bloodshed and the desolation that followed or accompanied mere differences of opinion upon points of faith!-it might be, and sometimes was, about mere outward observances! We shall not sentimentalize further on this melancholy theme; but close our paper with a short extract that seems to contain a novel and untenable view :

"Painting was, of all the arts, the least affected by the Reformation. This, nevertheless, was renovated, and, as it were, hallowed by that universal movement which was then communicated to all the powers of man. The great master of that age, Lucas Cranich, settled at Wittemberg, and became the painter of the Reformation. We have seen how he represented the points of contrast between Christ and Antichrist (the Pope),