by their means upon the intelligence of his generation. Had it failed, he might possibly have spared himself the pains and peril of any further enterprise, and either subsided under the smiles of his diocesan into a complacent churchman, or, at most, introduced some salutary changes into the system of theological education. But it succeeded; and the certainty thus acquired, that his principles were shared by multitudes who were only waiting for a commanding voice to rouse and direct them, gave him courage and confidence to persist. Besides, so many other lesser instruments were set in action by this first impulse, as to implicate him in all its consequences, and to make it morally impossible for him, constituted too as he was, to withdraw from the field.

He preached about the same time two sermons on the subject of indulgences and penitence. Herein he maintained that, following the scholastic division of the sacrament of penance under the three heads of contrition, confession and satisfaction, it was only the last of these which was touched by the indulgence; that even this satisfaction comprehended prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which were improperly superseded by the indulgence; that it did not however appear from Scripture that satisfactions, according to their usual sense, were required by God; that his inflictions were for the correction, not for the punishment, of his creatures; that He alone could dispense with chastisements imposed by Himself alone; and that, even if there were such satisfactions, it was more worthy of a Christian to perform them as salutary pains, than to receive indulgences for them; that these indulgences were founded on the supposition, that the penance which could not be performed during life was to be completed in purgatory, unless remitted by a dispensation of the pope;-a false foundation-for, if Divine inflictions were meant, these could only be re

mitted through the gratuitous grace of God, who required no more than the conversion of the heart-if canonical inflictions, the church could impose none after death, because it was impossible to perform them; that after all it was not certain, nor capable of any proof, that indulgences did withdraw souls from purgatory; nor to himself indeed was it credible. From this it followed that the surest method of assisting the souls of the departed was to pray for them, and to perform works of piety.

As the theses, or subjects for academical disputation, were published in Latin, for the consideration of the ecclesiastical classes and the more learned among the laity, so the sermons were delivered in German for the instruction of the great body of the people. United, they formed an appeal to the entire German nation, and to the more enlightened in every nation: at the same time, they confirmed and illustrated each other; and from them we may learn, with tolerable accuracy, what was the extent of Luther's views, and what the original ground on which he took his stand.

Many writers, reflecting on the multitude and magnitude of the vices which then stained the church, on the audacity of its usurpations, the keenness of its rapacity, the boundlessness of its pretensions, the impudence of many of its superstitions, and, above all, the grand forgery, on which the fabric of papal authority was almost entirely constructed, have been astonished that the insurrection should at last have broken out on a matter comparatively so unimportant as the abuse of indulgences. Even Roman Catholic historians, without being so sensible of the enormity of the other scandals, sometimes affect to despise, as wholly insignificant, the subject of the first disputes.

To a Papist indeed of those days-to one educated in

the scarcely disputed principles of Rome, and nestling in the bosom of her corruptions, this might well seem so; since there were many other abuses far more essential to the dignity of the see, and even more valuable to the apostolical chancery, than this. But to an earnest and ardent Christian; to a man who believed his Bible; who believed that his own eternal welfare, and that of all men, depended on their actions and convictions upon earth; and who was impressed besides with the necessity of inward purity and vital faith as the means of salvation;-to such a Christian, standing in a situation of which the duties required him not only to improve himself on this essential matter, but also to communicate his information to others; animated too by a strong sense of duty and an enlarged philanthropy-in short, to Luther -that was no insignificant evil which corrupted the morals of the faithful, which misled their piety, and seduced them, as he thought, from the hope of life into the paths of everlasting perdition.

That a sceptre should have been transferred from one hand to another by the authority of the popes, may not have moved his indignation. That they should have disposed, by a breath of their lips or a stroke of their pen, of half the world, may have seemed to him matter of no essential consequence. With still less consideration may he have regarded the questions of Annates and Reservations and Expectative Graces, and all the sordid expedients for the sale of the patronage of the church. Even the vices of individual popes and the scandals of the court of Rome he may have viewed as accidental visitations fraught with no general danger to the great interests of mankind. But when he saw a system deliberately established and officially upheld, of which it was the necessary result to seduce the souls of Christians, as he believed, to certain destruction, he deemed this no

trifling evil, no unimportant abuse, but the most terrible, the most fatal, the most loudly crying for instant extirpation, of any that beset the church. It was with the heart of a believer, bleeding for his ignorant brethren deluded to their damnation, that he took up this question. And the more deeply he entered into it, the more confirmed he became in his fundamental doctrine, and his resolution to uproot a practice so fatally subversive of it.

Had the hierarchy at once interfered to place the subject of indulgences on the principles proposed by Luther, or, at any rate, to repress the extravagance of the preachers, he might have rested for a while contented with his triumph; and at least the actual controversy would have terminated there. But he was not yet an object of fear; and the defenders of established evils seldom concede anything except to fear. The prelates were silent. Tetzel was allowed, without any reproof, without any warning, to take his course. It was sure to be violent; and as surely, in an age no longer unenlightened, in the midst of a people awakened or awakening, it was injurious to his own cause. He erected a scaffold in a public market-place in the suburbs of Francfort. He clamoured against Luther. Arrayed in his inquisitorial habiliments, he denounced him as a heretic deserving the penal fire; and then, in the impotence of his wrath, he consigned the theses and sermons to those flames, to which he would far more gladly have livered the body of the offender.

Still even Tetzel perceived that this act was not a confutation of the heresy. Accordingly he published reply to the sermons; and it was couched in language so rude, that he may probably have been himself its com* In this he maintained-" That works were poser.

* It was entitled "Vorlegung gemacht von Bruder Johann Tetzel,

required meet for repentance: that sufficient satisfaction was likewise required, since God, notwithstanding the contrition of Adam, sent His own Son as a satisfaction for his offence that Christ remitted the sins of Mary Magdalen without satisfaction, only because he held the keys of perfection, and knew the depth of her inward sorrow; but that the keys committed to the priests were only ministerial, so that these had no choice but to impose outward works for satisfaction: that the burden of those works might be removed by the pope through the power delegated by Christ to Peter and his successors, on certain conditions; and with the works the punishment to which the Divine justice had sentenced the sinner: that, in like manner, the pope could remit to those who had not sufficiently atoned for their sins in this life the punishments due to them in purgatory: that those who obtained indulgences to that end were in a state of true contrition; and that contrition, be it as great as it might, was of no avail without satisfaction: that, in cases of extreme necessity, alms might be given, and were even of some value towards the merit unto salvation; but that indulgences were the works of charity, which were most valuable as a satisfaction in the place of punishment."

Some reply to the theses being likewise necessary, Tetzel, distrusting his own sufficiency, prevailed upon a distinguished doctor in the university of Francfort, Conrad Wimpina, to undertake the work. Two dissertations were presently produced, the larger containing an hundred and six propositions, the other fifty; the one relating to the doctrine of indulgences, the other to the

&c... wider einen vermessen Sermon von 20 irrigen Artiklen Päpistlichen Ablatz und Gnade belangende allen Christlen-glaubigen Menschen zu wissen."