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[SEPT. other minds. It was only more extensive tempt, as so many do, to reconcile inconand less gradual. Gradual such a change sistencies and harmonize counter-declaramust ever be, from the limited capacities tions. He frankly acknowledged the falliof our nature, and its law of gradual de- bility of his nature-his early errors and velopment. It would be not less absurd to imperfect views. To every taunt of havsuppose, that when he first protested ing receded from any position, he boldly against Indulgences he foresaw the results said, in effect-' I thought so once; I was of that contest, than it would be to suppose wrong. I think so no more. I appeal that Cromwell anticipated his Protectorate from Luther in ignorance, to Luther wellat the time of the battle of Newbury; or informed.' This was the case in relation that Napoleon had already predestined him- to the memorable letter to which we have self to more than half the thrones of Eu- just referred—' I am truly grieved,' says he, rope when he entered on his Italian cam- that I did make such serious submissions; paigns. As with them, so with Luther in but, in truth, I then held respecting Popes his more hallowed enterprise-the horizon and Councils just what is vulgarly taught continually widened as he climbed the hill. us. . . . But as I grew in knowledge, I Nor was it, as the confessions of Luther grew in courage; and in truth they were abundantly prove, without severe struggles, at infinite pains to undeceive me, by an and momentary vacillations of purpose, that egregious display of their ignorance and flahe pursued his arduous way. This is es- gitiousness.' pecially seen in that wavering letter to the One of the most striking facts which apPope, written at the suggestion of Miltitz, pear in the correspondence of Luther, is the in which, in language which more than indication it affords of very early disconapproached servility and adulation, he de- tent with the prevailing system of theolprecated the anger of Leo, and declared ogy, and the actual condition of the church. that nothing was further from his purpose It is evident that he was predestined to be than to question the authority, or separate a great reformer; that the germ of the Refrom the communion of Rome. We do not formation existed in his bosom long before mean to affirm that Luther intended to de- the dispute with Tetzel; and that, if the ceive his enemies; such a course was fo- dispute respecting Indulgences had not led reign from his whole nature, and opposed to its development, something else would. to his ordinary conduct. Yet it is certain Even before Tetzel's drum' was heard in that before this period he had intimated the neighborhood of Wittemberg, he speaks his increasing doubts whether the Pope was with absolute loathing of the scholastic not Antichrist, and his convictions that the subtleties; expresses his conviction of the war with Rome was but just commenced. necessity of returning to a Scriptural theWe cannot defend the servility of the let- ology; loudly contends for that doctrine of ter at all; and can only defend its honesty justification by faith which he afterwards on the supposition that it was written in made the lever of the Reformation; and one of those moments of vacillation to which expresses an abhorrence of Aristotle, which we have adverted; with the wish, inspir- might more justly have been transferred to ed by his recent conferences with the Nun- those dreaming commentators who had abcio, that the controversy might be amicably surdly exalted a heathen philosopher into an set at rest, and with his mind almost exclu- oracle of the Christian church. Most of sively bent on whatever promised such an these passages will be found in the two Hisissue. Marvellously rapid as was the rev- tories so often referred to. olution in his mind compared with what might be expected, it was by repeated exorcisms, and terrible convulsions of spirit, that the legion of demons was expelled. The current did not flow all one way; it was the flux and reflux of a strong tide.

The very honesty of purpose and love of truth by which he was unquestionably actuated, prevented at all events any artificial obstacles to his progress. He did not at

*Dr. Waddington has given an exceedingly fair and impartial statement on this subject.

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It has often been matter of surprise that the great contest of the Reformation should have turned upon so comparatively trivial a controversy as that which respected the Indulgences-a point which was soon after absolutely forgotten. But it is not the first time that a skirmish of outposts has led to a general engagement. It may be added, that insignificant as that one point may at first sight appear, it was most natural that the contest should begin there. And though the tide of battle rolled away from it, partly because even the hardihood of Rome

of the merits of great saints for the transgressions of great sinners, or the remission of the pains of purgatory, might, for aught we can see, be as reasonably affected by pounds, shillings, and pence, as by walking twenty miles with pebbles in one's shoes.

The system of Indulgences, thereforein the grosser form in which such men as Tetzel proclaimed it was but the dark aphelion of the eccentric orbit in which the Church of Christ had wandered and from that point it naturally began to retrace its path to the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.'

could scarcely dare to defend such a post, and partly because the Reformers ceased to think of it in those more comprehensive corruptions which formed the object of their general assault, (in which, indeed, this particular abuse, with many others like it, originated,) it was not only the most natural point at which the conflict should begin, but it was most improbable that it should not begin there. Habituated as men's minds were to the corruptions of the church, steeped in superstition from their very childhood, it could only be by some revolting paradox that they could possibly be roused to think, examine, and remonstrate. It may be said, perhaps, that the system. The whole enormous expansion of the Pa- of Indulgences had been proclaimed under pal power had been but one long experi- one modification or another for more than ment on the patience and credulity of man- a century and a half before Tetzel appearkind. Each successive imposition was, it ed, without producing any remarkable reis true, worse than that which had preced- action. We answer, first, that they had ed it; but when once it had fastened itself seldom or never been proclaimed in so disupon men's minds, and they had grown fa- gusting and offensive a form, or with such miliar with it, there was no further chance consummate impudence, as by Tetzel; and of awakening them from their apathy. secondly, that the reception given even to Something further was needed, and a still the more cautious and limited exhibitions more prodigious corruption must minister of the system, proves the truth of what we the hope of reformation. Now Indul- have been asserting; for it was always on gences, as proclaimed in the gross system of this, as the most obvious and most revoltTetzel, and of other spiritual quacks like ing corruption, that the early reformers and him, was at once the ultimate and consist- satirists of the church most bitterly fastenent limit of that huckstering in merits,' ed. The moral instincts of such men, into which almost all the other corruptions of deed, were not so vitiated as to render the church had been more plausibly sub- them insensible to the vices and the profligaservient; and formed just that startling ex-cies of the ecclesiastical system generally; aggeration of familiar abuses which was necessary to awaken men's minds to reconsideration. The notion of selling pardons for sins, wholesale and retail-of collecting into one great treasury the superfluous merits of the saints, and of doling them out by the pennyweight at prices fixed in the compound ratio of the necessities and means of the purchaser,—was a notion which, however monstrous, however calculated to awaken the drowsy consciences of mankind, was in harmony with the specious nonsense of works of supererogation, and the doctrine of penance. It was simply the substitution of the more valuable medium of solid coin for mechanical rites of devotion, tiresome pilgrimages, and acts of austerity; of golden chalices or silver candlesticks for scourges and horse-hair shirts; and provided it implied the same amount of self-denial, what did it matter? The former plan was undeniably more profitable to Holy Church, and as to the penitent, few in our day but will admit that either plan was likely to be equally efficacious. The substitution

but the idea of bartering the justice and mercy of God himself for gold, naturally seemed the quintessence of every other corruption. What, indeed, could rouse mankind, if the spectacle of the ghostly peddler openly trafficking in his parchment wares of pardon for the past, and indulgence for the future-haggling over the price of an insult to God, or a wrong to man-letting out crime to hire, and selling the glories of heaven as a cheap pennyworth-did not fill them with abhorrence and indignation? The contempt with which Chaucer's Pilgrims listened to the impudent offer of the pardoner, well shows the feelings which such outrages on all common sense, and every moral instinct, could not fail to excite.

So gross was this abuse that even the most bigoted Papists-Eck, for example— were compelled to denounce it; nor were there any more caustic satirists of it than some of themselves. Witness the witty comedy of Thomas Heywood, who, though a Catholic, hated the mendicant friars as

heartily as any of his Protestant contempo- with Mr. Hallam, the very frequent recurraries. But no satire, however extrava- rence of exaggerated expressions, to which gant, could be a caricature of the follies the critic gives the name of Antinomian and knavery of this class of men. One of paradoxes. We do not think, however, the wittiest sarcasms of the play is but a that even here Mr. Hallam has quite done translation of Tetzel's impudent assertion, the Reformer justice. He candidly admits that no sooner did the money chink in the indeed that Luther' could not mean to give box, than the souls for which it was offered any encouragement to a licentious disreflew up into heaven.' gard of moral virtue;' though,' he adds, in the technical language of his theology, he might deny its proper obligation.' More truly, in our judgment, has Jortin, whose doctrinal moderation is well known, represented the matter in his Life of Erasmus. 'Luther's favorite doctrine was justification by faith alone; but we must do And, we doubt not, that that most humo-him the justice to observe that he perpeturous chapter in the ancient and popular ally inculcated the necessity of good satire of Howleglass, in which that worthy works. According to him a man is justifienacts the part of a Franciscan friar, is little more than a literal version of the tricks of that class, of whom, knave as he was, he was but an insufficient representative.*

With small cost and without any pain,
These pardons bring them to heaven plain;
Give me but a penny or two-pence,
And, as soon as the soul departeth hence,
In half-an-hour, or three-quarters at most,
The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.'

ed only by faith; but he cannot be justified without works, and where those works are not to be found, there is assuredly no true faith.'. And Melancthon, in a passage But though it was natural that the strug cited by Mr. Hallam himself, declares,' De gle of the Reformation should commence his omnibus,' (after enumerating with other with Indulgences, it was impossible that it doctrines the necessity of good works,) 'scio should end there. Luther soon quitted the re ipsa Lutherum sentire eadem, sed inerunarrow ground and the mean antagonist of diti quædam ejus qoptixorɛga dicta, cum his first conflicts; and asserted against that whole system of spiritual barter and merit- amant.' Dr. Waddington truly remarks quo pertineant, nimium mongering, of which Tetzel's doctrine was that not even the strongest passages in Lubut an extreme type, his counter principle ther's treatise, De Libertate Christiana, of the perfect gratuitousness of salvation

non videant

of justification by faith alone. On his prove that the author would deny the nemode of exhibiting this great doctrine, we cessity of good works except as a means of justification-as a ground, in fact, of sayshall now offer a very few remarks. ing to the Divine Being, You must re

With that pregnant brevity with which he knew so well how to express himself, he showed his sense of the importance of this doctrine, and its commanding position in the evangelical system, by describing it

as Articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiæ. He might more truly have called it so, had he always duly guarded the statement of it; and while repudiating the doctrine, under whatsoever modification, that the tribunal of heaven can be challenged, or its rewards achieved in virtue of deeds, of which every good man is himself the first to acknowledge the manifold imperfections-much less by fantastical devices of human invention, destitute of all moral qualities-he had uniformly connected his doctrine in expression, as he did in fact, with its just practical consequences. This, however, he did not do; and we are constrained to lament,

The same story is also found, with certain variations, in Friar Gerund and other fictions of the like class.

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ward me for I am entitled to it.' In

proof of this, Dr. Waddington cites the passage Non liberi pro fidem Christi ab operibus, sed ab opinionibus operum, i. e. a stulta præsumptione justificationis per opera quæsitæ. Fides enim conscientias nostras redimit, rectificat, et servat, qua cognoscimus justitam esse non in operibus, licet opera abesse neque possint neque de beant.

sense in which Luther would deny the neEvery thing obviously depends on the cessity of good works.' It is by no means true, we apprehend, that he would have denied, that while no man can challenge the free gift of salvation (Scripture itself calls it) as the 'wages' of good works, good works form the only real evidence and the necessary result of the possession of that 'faith which justifies.' With relation to

* Introduction to the Literature of Europe. Vol. i. p. 416.

Such a candid construction of Luther's

real views, seems to us the more necessary, precisely because, as Mr. Hallam justly says, he is so full of unlimited propositions.' It is ever the characteristic of oratorical genius to express the truths it feels with an energy which borders on paradox. Anxious to penetrate and exclusively occupy the minds of others with their own views and sentiments, such as possess it are not solicitous to state propositions with the due limitations. It may be further remarked, that Luther's abhorrence of prevailing errors naturally increased this tendency; action and re-action, as usual, were equal; the liberated pendulum passed, as was to be expected, to the centre of its

the influence of the system he advocated, | adoxes,' as almost any declarations of Luand the system he opposed, on practical ther could be. morality, he would have said that the principal difference was not that the former dispensed with it, but that it appealed mainly to totally different principles of our nature for its production; to the cheerful impulses of gratitude and hope, rather than to the 'spirit of bondage' and the depressing influence of fear. And both philosophy and fact may convince us that they are certainly not the least powerful impulses of the two. But whatever Luther's early paradoxes on this subject-of which we are by no means the apologists, and regret that there should have been so much cause for censure -his later writings afford ample proof that he had corrected them. When Agricola had adopted and justified them in their unlimited form, and pushed them to their arc of oscillation. This we believe to be theoretic results, with a recklessness which perhaps first roused Luther to take alarm at their danger, the Reformer instantly assailed, refuted, and condemned him, and succeeded in compelling the rash theologian to retract. Several deeply interesting documents on this subject occur in the Correspondence, which fully show that the faith which Luther made the basis of his theology was that of which the only appropriate evidence is goodness, and which necessarily creates it.

one principal reason of the many really objectionable statements of Luther on this subject. Our veneration for the great Reformer, and the influence which even the errors of such a writer as Mr. Hallam is apt to exercise, must be our apology for the freedom of the preceding strictures. The work containing the observations upon which we have felt ourselves constrained thus to remark, is one for which all intelligent inquirers must always be largely its author's debtors, both for instruction and rational delight.

Mr. Hallam admits that passages inconsistent with the extreme views he attributes On the whole, few names have such to the Reformer may be adduced from his claims on the gratitude of mankind as that writings; but affirms, that in treating of of Luther. Even Rome owes him thanks; an author so full of unlimited propositions, for whatever ameliorations have taken place no positive proof as to his tenets can be re- in her system have been owing far more to futed by the production of inconsistent pas him than to herself. If there are any two sages.' But the question is, whether these facts which history establishes, it is the desinconsistent passages ought not to, modify perate condition of the Church at the time those which establish the supposed posi- Luther appeared, and the vanity of all tive proof? If we are to pause at the un- hopes of a self-sought and voluntary reforqualified reception of the one class of pro- mation. On the former we need not dwell positions we may well pause also before-for none now deny it; it appears not onthe like reception of the other. If two ly on every page of contemporary history, statements in a writer much given to un- but in all the forms-especially the more limited propositions,' appear inconsistent, popular-of medieval literature. Never we should endeavor to make the one limit the other; and even if they are absolutely irreconcilable, we are hardly justified in taking either as the exclusive exponent of the writer's views, without the adjustment Of the second great fact-the hopelessarising from a collation of passages. There ness of any effective internal reform-hisare propositions of Scripture itself which tory leaves us in as little doubt. The heart may be and which have been, as much wrested to the support of' Antinomian par

* Vol. v.

was a remark more just than that of Mr. Hallam, that the greater part of the literature of the middle ages may be considered as artillery leveled against the clergy.

itself was the chief seat of disease; reformation must have commenced where corruption was most inveterate: nor, until certain great principles should be reclaimed,

With small cost and without any pain,
These pardons bring them to heaven plain;
Give me but a penny or two-pence,
And, as soon as the soul departeth hence,
In half-an-hour, or three-quarters at most,
The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.'

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heartily as any of his Protestant contempo- with Mr. Hallam, the very frequent recurraries. But no satire, however extrava- rence of exaggerated expressions, to which gant, could be a caricature of the follies the critic gives the name of Antinomian and knavery of this class of men. One of paradoxes. We do not think, however, the wittiest sarcasms of the play is but a that even here Mr. Hallam has quite done translation of Tetzel's impudent assertion, the Reformer justice. He candidly admits that no sooner did the money chink in the indeed that Luther' could not mean to give box, than the souls for which it was offered any encouragement to a licentious disreflew into heaven.' up gard of moral virtue;' though,' he adds, in the technical language of his theology, he might deny its proper obligation." More truly, in our judgment, has Jortin, whose doctrinal moderation is well known, represented the matter in his Life of Erasmus. 'Luther's favorite doctrine was jusAnd, we doubt not, that that most humo-him the justice to observe that he perpetutification by faith alone; but we must do rous chapter in the ancient and popular ally inculcated the necessity of good satire of Howleglass, in which that worthy works. According to him a man is justifienacts the part of a Franciscan friar, is little ed only by faith; but he cannot be justifimore than a literal version of the tricks of ed without works, and where those works that class, of whom, knave as he was, he are not to be found, there is assuredly no was but an insufficient representative.* true faith.'. And Melancthon, in a passage cited by Mr. Hallam himself, declares,' De his omnibus,' (after enumerating with other doctrines the necessity of good works,)' scio diti quædam ejus qoptixorɛga dicta, cum re ipsa Lutherum sentire eadem, sed inerunon videant quo pertineant, nimium

But though it was natural that the strug gle of the Reformation should commence with Indulgences, it was impossible that it should end there. Luther soon quitted the narrow ground and the mean antagonist of his first conflicts; and asserted against that whole system of spiritual barter and meritmongering, of which Tetzel's doctrine was but an extreme type, his counter principle of the perfect gratuitousness of salvationof justification by faith alone.' On his mode of exhibiting this great doctrine, we shall now offer a very few remarks.

With that pregnant brevity with which he knew so well how to express himself, he showed his sense of the importance of this doctrine, and its commanding position in the evangelical system, by describing it as Articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesia. He might more truly have called it so, had he always duly guarded the statement of it; and while repudiating the doctrine, under whatsoever modification, that the tribunal of heaven can be challenged, or its rewards achieved in virtue of deeds, of which every good man is himself the first to acknowledge the manifold imperfections-much less by fantastical devices of human invention, destitute of all moral qualities—he had uniformly connected his doctrine in expression, as he did in fact, with its just practical consequences. This, however, he did not do; and we are constrained to lament,

The same story is also found, with certain variations, in Friar Gerund and other fictions of the like class.

amant.'

that not even the strongest passages in LuDr. Waddington truly remarks ther's treatise, De Libertate Christiana, prove that the author would deny the necessity of good works except as a means of justification-as a ground, in fact, of saying to the Divine Being, 'You must reward me for I am entitled to it.' In

proof of this, Dr. Waddington cites the operibus, sed ab opinionibus operum, i. e. a passage 'Non liberi pro fidem Christi ab stulta præsumptione justificationis per opera quæsitæ. Fides enim conscientias nosnoscimus justitam esse non in operibus, tras redimit, rectificat, et servat, qua cog

licet

opera abesse neque possint neque de

beant.'

sense in which Luther would deny the neEvery thing obviously depends on the cessity of good works.' It is by no means true, we apprehend, that he would have dethe free gift of salvation (Scripture itself nied, that while no man can challenge calls it) as the 'wages' of good works, good works form the only real evidence and the faith which justifies.' With relation to necessary result of the possession of that

* Introduction to the Literature of Europe. Vol. i. p. 416.

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