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to Leo X., in which, while he affectionately describes the Pope personally as a lamb in the midst of wolves, and like Daniel in the den of lions . . . . that none but Iscariots were fit for such a glory," and that, in a word, "to be a Christian, was not to be a Roman;" he urged his abdication of the polluted pontificate, adding: 'Seeing that in my endeavours to succour the see of Rome, I have been losing both my cares and labours, I said to it, Farewell, Rome! Let him that is unjust, be unjust still let him that is filthy, be filthy still." But the Bull that anathematized him, so far as its bitter malignity could extend, from all human sympathy and intercourse, social, religious, or political, was already at the doors of Luther's residence. It summoned him to appear at Rome within two months to take his trial for heresy, the sentence for which was ordinarily pronounced in the crackling tones of the martyr's faggots. He, and all that thought with him, were cut off from all rights, natural or acquired, declared guilty of high treason, incapable of any legal act, of property, freedom, or worship, and infamous alike in life and death and burial. Yes, in burial: but Luther's feeling was like an old English worthy's, recorded by Fuller, who, when the Jesuits in Spain, having every exhausted argument, to induce him to turn Papist, plied him with the last threat of refusing him burial, replied, "Not bury me? then I'll stink."

His books were to be burnt, and it was a crime to publish, to preach, or even read his works. This was the furious version of Christian liberty which Rome returned in exchange for Luther's pamphlet. This was, and is, the canonical idea of toleration which would be republished in every state in Europe, from the stereotyped edition in the Vatican, if they dared to attempt it.

Like

We are more indebted to the fears, than to the feelings, of Rome, for our religious liberty. The Pope lets us alone-but why? Shakespeare's apothecary, "his poverty, and not his will, consents!" This is the English of those Encyclical letters, which present so turbulent a contrast to the epistles of a Paul, that but for the anachronism, we could imagine them an intercepted correspondence of Annas and Caiaphas, with our old acquaintance, Judas Iscariot.

Ah, Luther, if you had not burned such an homicidal Bull, history would .have cast your own memory into the fire.

The great Emperor Charles V. and the Pope,

like Herod and Pontius Pilate, in an analo gous predicament, acted in concert: nor is the Reformer insensible to the danger which threatens himself, and what he held far more dearly-his sacred cause. He looks upwardhis soul collects its energies at the footstool of the heavenly throne, like the fabled eye of the eagle gathering strength from her gaze at the sun. "Not a leaf falls from a tree without the will of our Father," said he; "how much less can we? It is a small matter to die for the Word; for that Word, which became in carnate for our sakes, died Himself first." At other times, he could not repress his scorn at the manœuvres of Eckius, his old polemical antagonist, who had conveyed the Bull from Rome. "I know nothing about Eck," said he, 'but that he has arrived with a long beard, a long Bull, and a long purse." "It does not meet me," said he, "with a single reason. Already I feel more free at heart; for now, at length, I know the Pope is Antichrist, and that his seat is that of Satan himself."

Up to this period, Luther was most reluc tant to break communion with the Pontiff. He was no Iconoclast even in doctrine, and would have preserved the sweet images of peace and Catholic unity had it been possible. But mere images, and awfully idolatrous ones, had they become "Eyes had they, but they saw not" the evils perpetrated under their sanction

-“ears had they, but they heard not" the distant murmuring of the thunderbolt ready to burst upon their abominations-"hands had they, but they handled not," except the rough handling of every Reformer that would have healed their abuses. Hearts, indeed, they had not; and this is the only solution of the unfeeling brutality with which personal piety, truth, Scripture, freedom, reformation, and evangelical hope, were sacrificed by hecatombs at their insatiable shrines.

But Christendom was to be healed by her very wounds; it was the surgery of the Church -the scalping-knife cutting off the corruption which would not yield to the milder influence of medicine. Luther did not break with Rome until Rome broke with Luther, and exiled him with medieval ignominy from her obsti nate pale. But the Bull was a monstrous anachronism. The world was too old to be frightened any more by a Papal bugbear. Luther had printed his translation of the Scriptures, and the Bull was too weak for the Bible. Revelation had revealed the iniquities of Rome, as well as its own sacred contents.

Like the miracles of Moses, it had demonstrated alike the hand of the true God, and the legerdemain of the Egyptian priesthood.

His

All Germany was now in suspense, her eyes fixed upon Wittemberg to see what the Great Doctor was next to do. Would he continue firm? Luther answered, on November 4th, 1520, by a terrible manifesto, entitled "Against the Bull of Antichrist," the echo of whose thunderbolt has lingered among the hills of Germany these three hundred years. enemies within the University, as well as without, were secretly planning his expulsion from Wittemberg. The Emperer declared he would protect the old religion; and auto-da-fés, to consume the arch-heretic's writings, were attended by princes and counsellors of State. Luther now took the decisive step which originated the word "Protestant," which was to appeal from the Pope to a general council, an act which was itself treason against the pontifical prerogative.

On the 17th of November, a notary and five witnesses, among whom, singularly enough, was one named Cruciger (the bearer of the cross), met in Luther's monastery, and drew up the famous protestation, wherein he calls upon "the emperor, the electors, princes, counts, barons, knights, gentlemen, counsellors, cities, and boroughs of the whole German nation, to adhere to his protestation, and join him in resisting the antichristian conduct of the Pope, for the glory of God, and the defence of the Church and Christian doctrine."

They who gave in their adherence to this famous protestation received the name of "Protestants," -a name which we are not ashamed of yet, a name involving the whole question of civil and religious liberty.

Luther's "writing of divorce," as D'Aubigné calls it, wound up with the solemn and heroic peroration,

"But should any one despise this my prayer, and continue to obey that impious man, the Pope, rather than God, I, by these presents, wash my hands of the responsibility thereof, having faithfully warned their consciences, and I leave them to the supreme judgment of God, together with the Pope and all his adherents."

When we consider the fearful power of the Vatican at the moment it was thus magnanimously defied-a power that enacted throughout Christendom, by means of its legions of agents, a blasphemous parody upon the Omnipotence and Omnipresence of Deity itself, whose incommunicable honours it dogmatically

usurped,-when we couple with this fact, the lonely isolation of the Reformer, at once an tagonizing against himself the mightiest civil Potentate that had occupied the Imperial throne of Germany since the days of Charlemagne, and the ablest spiritual Pontiff since the papacy of Hildebrand,-history presents no parallel to such an attitude of holy daring, except His "who in all things had the preeminence," who rebuked the assumption of a Pro-consul of Pagan Rome with the memorable words, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above." There is something like it in the reply of St. Paul, who, with all Luther's reverence for the hierarchy of his Church, when his judge commanded him to be illegally smitten, retorted the denunciation: God shall smite thee, thou whited wall!"

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Had Luther faltered here, the Reformation might have failed: but his protest now swiftly flew, like the Gospel of the mighty angel in the Apocalypse, among every "nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people;' " and nearly every court in Christendom was served with a copy, with all the formal solemnities due to so momentous a document.

This first act of Protestantism appears to be a grand climacteric of audacity that left nothing bolder to be done; but Luther had a still bolder step in reserve. He resolved to outpope the Pope. If the Pontiff excommunicate Luther, Luther excommunicates the Pontiff; if there had been a bonfire for his books, there should be a bonfire for the Pope's. It assumed the form of a public duel (where, however, nearly all the seconds were on the side of his antagonist) between the lordly son of the Medicis, and the lowly son of the Mansfeld miner. Both entered the lists resolved to give and take no quarter, and, in the shock of a conflict which then shook the earth, and yet once again shall shake all nations," it was thrust for thrust; and not a blow was dealt on one side, which was not returned with greater effect on the other. The Pope advanced like Goliath, confident in his hosts, and in the brute strength of temporal sword and spear; Luther, like David, with a single sling and a stone, chipped, as it were, off the Rock of Ages: and the result was the overthrow of Romanism, and the decapitation of Papal supremacy in the German empire.

On December 10th, 1520, the walls of the University of Wittemberg bore a public notice, inviting the attendance of the professors and

students, at nine o'clock on the morrow-morning. They were to assemble at the East-gate, the emblematic quarter of the resurrection, as if from the ashes of the fire to be kindled there, were to rise the sacred phoenix of a regenerated Christianity. A large concourse, both of the doctors and students, gathered themselves together, scarcely knowing by what secret magnetism the intrepid monk had attracted them to himself, and exercised over their minds the irresistible influence of a mighty moral gravitation. Many of them were, doubtless, trembling on the brink of the Rubicon, which they, at least, had not yet transgressed, and, perhaps, were loath to take the final irrevocable step. The centripetal force of habit, education, tradition, prejudice, and numbers, that inclined them to the apostolic see, was counteracted by the centrifugal influence of truth and righteousness that drew them to the side of the Reformer. Still the mass of them, perhaps, like Israel on Mount Carmel, were "halting between two opinions," till, alike in a spiritual and material sense, they realised "a God that answered by fire." It was a crisis where the hesitation seemed sacred to the parting infirmity of human nature, but the decision hallowed by the triumph of Divine grace.

They were not held long in suspense. Presently Luther appeared, habited, perhaps for the last time, in his Augustinian cowl; as if he had put on the Papal livery to give greater emphasis to the act by which he abandoned its service for ever! The lofty eye of the Reformer was seen scanning the learned host, in the midst of which he strode like the officers of the Hebrews on the eve of battle, saying, "What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart." "He wished to rid himself of some old papers; and fire, thought he, is made for that!" He found himself involuntarily at the head of a mighty movement, and led them in procession, like a column of the Church militant, to the solemn tournament. A dense mass of enthusiastic thousands hailed their approach with those thunders of applause the dread artillery of the million-which shakes the thrones of despots, and strikes a paralysis into their guilty souls.

This, it will be remembered, is the scene of Duval's historical picture-a picture, the grandeur of whose design and execution seems a poetical efflux of the essential greatness

of the event which inspired it. The great classical events of Protestant chronology only want such paintings to give them that glory and distinction in the arts which they already possess in history and theology. Luther and his cohort reach the spot. On his right, a little in the rear of the Reformer, the pensive spirit of Melancthon occupies that position in the picture, which his own humility assigns him in history, his beautiful wife leaning fondly on that arm that itself leant meekly on the arm of God. Near them follows Luther's noble pupil, Count Albert, learning in this last parabolic act of his illustrious tutor a lesson worth all he had learned before. The bluff Ulric Von Hutten smiles a laugh that is obviously on the point of exploding, at a scan. dalised friar indignantly dragging away from the impious scene a reluctant dame, whose sympathies are clearly left behind her in the scuffle. A pile of combustibles was already reared upon the ground, and one of the oldest Masters of Arts, the snows on whose venerable brow, like an Arctic crater, had not quenched nor even cooled the natural fire within the bosom where God had kindled it, advanced beyond the rim of the crowd, and, setting fire to the heap, stood watching the process of ignition with the yearning of a Parsee. The work of the righteous incendiary broke forth into a blaze, and, just as the flames rose furiously, licking their ruddy tongues like beasts of prey hungering for their meal, Luther was seen approaching, and throwing into the roaring jaws of the element, Gratian's Abridgment of the Canon Law," the "Decre tals," the "Clementines," and the "Extrava. gantes of the Popes." He stood watching the progress of their consumption, in a silence so deep and awe-stricken, that, as if zealous in His business" who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flaming fire," the very crackling of the fagots was audible in the ears of the multitude, and seemed to ignite a burning echo in their hearts.

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Winter though it was, the ancient sun smiled down gaily upon their new Christmas bonfire, as if he recognized in its comparatively feeble glare the dawning of a higher and holier lustre than his own, when the Day. spring from on high should revisit benighted Christendom, and proclaim within the dimness of minster aisle and cloister cell, "Let there be light!"

When the voluminous mass of Papal for geries and tyrannies had been consumed, and

the breeze, like a breathing of the wind that bloweth where it listeth," was already scattering their ashes on the heads of the people, as if in symbol of their repentance of having so long yielded to the sin and superstition thus renounced, Luther laid his manly hand upon the pope's Bull-a hand that trembled, not with fear, but with the natural emotion inseparable from such a solemn crisis, and, holding it aloft, like the ancient wave-sheaf before the altar of burnt incense, in the sight of God and man, he cried, Because ye have troubled the body of the Lord, therefore let eternal fire trouble you," and cast it, as the Apostle shook off the viper" at Melita, into the fire.

The superhuman grandeur of that act burst the pent-up stillness of the vast multitude-it broke its way through to the popular heart, and there arose from earth to heaven such a wild delirous shout, as seemed to fling its echo beyond the skies! The free spirit of Germany revelled in the luxurious magnanimity of the great fact: and when the Reformer quietly moved back towards the city, the electric spark ran its jubilant shock through every bosom; and doctors, professors, students, soldiers, populace, women, and children, accompanied Luther into Wittemberg, shouting, laughing, singing, praying, crying, clapping their hands, dancing their feet, tossing their heads, and lifting up their hearts in one grand hallelujah chorus, shouting "Glory to God and the Bible!" and "Long life to Luther, the Liberator of their German fatherland!"

Luther's after-life presents a continuous struggle to maintain the antagonistic position he had so courageously assumed, and to spread the doctrines of the Word of God-the only rule of faith to be recognized as binding upon the Caristian conscience. In April, 1521, he presented himself at the Diet of Worms before the emperor and a vast assemblage of the princes and prelates of Germany. He there made an elaborate and eloquent defence of the course which he had pursued, and the books which he had published. So powerful was this address, that privately the Elector of Saxony expressed his approbation and astonishment. But Rome has never been disposed to listen to reason or argument. And Eckius, before Luther had well concluded, cried out in much heat and passion, "That he had not answered to the point; that he was not called upon to give an account of his doctrines; that these had been already condemned in former councils, whose decisions were not now to be questioned; that he

was required to say simply and clearly whether he would or would not retract his opinions." "My answer," said Luther, instantly, "shall be direct and plain. I cannot think myself bound to believe either the Pope or his councils; for it is very clear, not only that they have often erred, but often contradicted themselves; therefore, unless I am convinced by Scripture or clear reasons, my belief is so confirmed by the Scriptural passages I have produced, and my conscience so determined to abide by the Word of God. that I neither can nor will retract anything; for it is neither safe nor innocent to act against a man's conscience." Luther then pronounced these words in the German language: Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen."

Of course the issue of the Diet of Worms was an edict of excommunication, which was drawn up with all possible rancour and malice by the Papal legate, Alexander. Luther was condemned as "a notorious heretic," and "all persous were forbidden, under the penalty of high treason, to receive, maintain, or protect him." But German sympathy with the Reformer was already strongly evoked: and in spite of Papal effort the Reformer was allowed twenty-one days to return home, during which time the public faith was pledged for his safety. He left Worms, in fact, a conqueror. But it was so manifest that his enemies were determined upon his destruction, that the Elector of Saxony, with much secrecy, and by means of a little friendly force, conveyed him to the castle of Wartburg.*

In this "Patmos," as he called it, Luther remained ten months, and then returned to Wittemberg. Here he published a reply to Henry VIII., who had written a book against him on the seven sacraments. He also printed a translation of the New Testament, which greatly alarmed the Romanists, and severe

* Wartburg Castle was the asylum of Luther from May 4, 1521, to March 6, 1522. It crowns one of a noble chain of hills in Saxe-Weimar, as shown in the engraving (page 490). An hour's walk up the steep ascent brings the visitor to the summit, whence a glorious panorama opens to the view. A sea of rocks and wooded hills in every variety of form undulates around; whilst nearly a thousand feet below, Eisenach is faintly discerned, appearing as a pretty little model of a German town-the whole forming as lovely a scene as is to be witnessed in Thuringia. Luther, besides completing a large portion of his translation of the Bible in this asylum, wrote several treatises against auricular confession, monastic vows, clerical celibacy, and prayers for the dead, against the Sorbonne of Paris, which had condemned his works, and which he had exposed to public ridicule. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar, at great expense, recently restored the principal part of the castle to the same state it was in in the fifteenth century.