also pursued his conquests in Romagna, carried the cities of Modena and Reggio by assault, and thought of seizing on Ferrara, the capital of the States of Alphonso of Este. This last effort failed; a plot which he formed to assassinate the duke, met with no better success; he then had recourse to spiritual thunders, and fulminated a terrible sentence of anathema against Alphonso, placed his states under interdict, and ordered his generals to recruit new troops, to retake the offensive and crush the enemy.

"The war already embraced upper Italy. On one side Charles V., aided by the English and the pope, was laying claim to the duchy of Milan, as a fief of the empire, as well as the county of Burgundy, which he pretended had been fraudulently united to France by Louis XI.; on the other side Francis I., aided by the Swiss and the Venetians, was demanding the restitution of Spanish Navarre, and threatening to make good his pretensions on Naples. But the French, inferior in numbers to their enemies, suffered several checks, and were constrained to abandon most of the cities they had recently conquered, and retire to Milan.

"This news caused such joy to Leo X., say several chroniclers of the times, that the blood flowed back on his heart and suffocated him. According to another version, the holy Father died of poison; historians do not designate the author of the crime, but merely say Charles V. knew how to turn this event to his advantage. Still the blow was so sudden that they could not administer the Viaticum to the holy Father. He died on the first of December, 1521, aged fortyfour years, after having occupied the holy see eight years, eight months, and twenty days."

These historical facts in reference to the sale of indulgences and the career of Leo X. are so intimately connected with that of Martin Luther that they could not properly be omitted.

The greatest differences exist as to the characters imputed to Luther and his fellow Reformers; their followers and admirers laud them to the skies and make them out to be

saints of the highest type, while their opponents of the parent Church make them out to be miserable miscreants and criminals unworthy the respect or esteem of men. The truth is probably to be found, where it often is, between the two extremes. The brief sketch already given is from Protestant sources, and appended will be given some comments from the other side, to wit, M. J. Spalding, D.D., archbishop of Baltimore, in his "History of the Protestant Reformation." He represents Luther to have been mainly a worthy individual so long as he remained in the Catholic Church, but that he became a depraved man when he left it. He, however, speaks of his boyhood days in the following words: "Luther seems to have been a very naughty boy; for while at school at Mansfield, his master flogged him fifteen times in one day" (p. 73). After narrating his commendable career up to the time of the Reformation, he thus continues: "Such was Luther before he began the Reformation in 1517. How changed, alas! was he after this period-heu! quantum mutatus ab illo ! He is no longer the humble monk, the scrupulous priest, the fervent Christian, that he was before! Amidst the storm which he excited, he gradually suffered shipwreck of almost every virtue and became reckless and depraved; the mere creature of impulse, the child of pride, the victim of violent and degrading passions. For him, at least, the Reformation was a down-hill business; and according to D'Aubigné's test, this was its general tendency. His own deterioration and the work of the Reformation were both gradual, and they went hand in hand. He did not at first seem to aim at any change in doctrines and institutions of the Catholic Church; this thought was developed afterwards. In the thirty-eighth, sixty-seventh, and seventy-first of his ninetyfive theses published against Tetzel on the first of November, 1517, he expressly maintained the authority of the pope and the Catholic doctrine on indulgences. He professed only to aim at the correction of abuses. It is a mooted question whether jealousy of the Dominican order, which had been entrusted with the preaching of indulgences, to the exclusion

of his own rival order of the Augustinians, influenced him in his first attack on Tetzel" (p. 77).

On May 30, 1518, Luther wrote a letter to Pope Leo X., of which the following is the concluding passage:

"Therefore, most holy Father, I throw myself at the feet of your holiness, and submit myself to you with all that I have and all that I am. Destroy my cause or espouse it; pronounce cither for or against me; take my life or restore it as you please; I will receive your voice as that of Christ himself, who presides and speaks through you. If I have deserved death I refuse not to die; the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; may he be praised forever and ever. May he maintain you to all eternity! Amen."

The sequel tested the sincerity of his protestation. But even just near the very time he was penning this very letter he preached from the pulpit at Wittenburg against the power of the pope to fulminate excommunication and he was engaged in circulating inflammatory tracts breathing the same spirit.

To show the falseness of the man's heart it may be stated that in February, 1519, he wrote a letter to Spalatin, in which he said: "Let me whisper in your ear; I do not know whether the pope is Antichrist, or only his apostle," and-soforth; and yet in a month after that time, March 3, 1519, he wrote these words of reverence and submission to Pope Leo X :

“Most_holy Father, I declare in the presence of God, and of all the world, I have never sought, nor will I ever seek, to weaken by force or artifice the power of the Roman Church, or of your holiness. I confess that there is nothing in heaven or earth that should be preferred above that Church, save only Jesus Christ the Lord of all."

In commenting upon this exhibition of duplicity, the archbishop writes thus (p. 82): "The same man who wrote this impugned the primacy of the pope the very same year in the discussion with Dr. Eck at Leipsic. Was he could he be sincere in all this? But, further, when on the third of October, 1520, he became acquainted with the bull of Leo X., by which his doctrines were condemned, he wrote these remarkable words: 'I will treat it as a forgery, though I believe it to be genuine.' .. In his famous harangue against

Carlstadt and the image breakers, delivered from the pulpit of the church of All Saints at Wittenburg, he plainly said that if his recreant disciples would not take his advice, he would not hesitate to retract everything he had either taught or written, and leave them, and added emphatically, This I tell you once for all."" As an evidence of the motives that actuated him, a clause from his abridged confession of faith is given. It reads: "I abolished the elevation of the host to spite the pope, and I had retained it so long to spite Carlstadt."

In speaking of the passions of Luther, the archbishop (p. 87) writes thus: "His passions were violent, and he seems to have made little effort to govern them. His violence, in fact, often drove him to the very verge of insanity. His cherished disciple, Melancthon, deplored his furious outbursts of temper: 'I tremble when I think of the passions of Luther: they yield not in violence to the passions of Hercules.' The weak and timid disciple had reason to tremble, for he testifies that Luther occasionally inflicted on him personal chastisement."

On page 91 the archbishop gives this paragraph: "Luther's standard of morality was about as high as that of his good breeding. St. Paul tells us that 'a Christian's conversation is in heaven.' Luther's, on the contrary, was not only earthly, but often immoral and revolting in the extreme. He discussed, in all their most disgusting details, subjects which St. Paul would not have so much as named among Christians." His famous "Table Talk" is full of such specimens of the new gospel decency. Wine and women, the pope and the devil, are the principal subjects of which the reformer liked to treat, when alone with his intimate friends, in private and unreserved conversation. For fifteen years-from 1525 to 1540-he usually passed the evenings at the Black Eagle tavern of Wittenburg, where he met and conversed, over the ale-jug, with his bosom friends, Melancthon, Amsdorf, Aurifaber, Justus Jonas, Lange, Link, and Stauptz. His . disciples carefully collected and published these conversations

of their beloved master' as so many precious oracles from heaven, delivered by the mouth of the new apostle."

The archbishop gives these extracts from Luther's "Table Talk" which doubtless are more shocking to him than to the ordinary Liberals of this age: "May the name of the pope be damned; may his reign be abolished; may his will be restrained! If I thought God did not hear my prayer I would address the Devil." Again: "I owe more to my dear Catherine and to Philip than to God himself." Finally: "God has made many mistakes. I would have given him good advice had I assisted at the creation. I would have made the sun shine incessantly; the day would have been without end." And thus continues the archbishop: "It is not a little remarkable that from the date of his conference with the devil, Luther's moral career was constantly downward; until at last he reached the lowest grade of infamy, and became utterly steeped in vice" (p. 93, 94).

On page 120, the archbishop speaks as follows as to Luther's motives in originating his opposition to the Church: "The reformation of abuses in the matter of indulgences was but a pretext; the real motives of Luther and his partisans were very different, as the result proved. The pope, through his legates, had done everything that could have been reasonably asked for the removal of the evils complained of. If the court of Rome was guilty of any fault, it was of excessive leniency, to Luther, and of too great a spirit of conciliation towards his partisans." In the same connection a quotation is made from D'Aubigné the ardent Protestant historian:

"In fact Rome was brought into the necessity of stern severity. The gauntlet was thrown down, the combat must be to the death. It was not the abuses of the Pontiff's authority that Luther had attacked. At his bidding the pope was required to descend meekly from his throne, and become again a simple pastor or bishop on the banks of the Tiber."

The following extracts from Luther's own writings, and the writings of his co-reformers and contemporaries will assist in