LUTHER.

(His timely interference.)

We cannot sufficiently admire that a simple monk should be able to give Popery so rude a shock. How many states and nations did he induce, in a little

time, to separate from the Romish communion? This was represented very happily, though in somewhat a burlesque manner on a piece of tapestry. Read this passage, taken from a letter of Costar. “The last time the king was at Chalons, a very rich piece of tapestry was hung in his chamber, which came from the late queen of Navarre; in which were represented Luther and Calvin, who gave the Pope a clyster, which put the good man into such commotion, that he was seen in another place evacuating abundance of kingdoms and sovereignties, Denmark, Sweden, the duchy of Saxony, &c.” Wickliff, John Huss, and several others had attempted the same thing, but did not succeed. This was, you will say, because they were not favoured with a concurrence of circumstances: they had no less merit nor abilities than Luther; but they undertook the cure of the disease before the crisis; and, as we may say, in the increase of the moon. Luther on the contrary, attacked it at a critical time, when it was arrived to the highest pitch; when it was impossible it should grow worse; and therefore, according to the course of nature, must either cease or diminish; for when things are arrived to the highest point of their ascension, they commonly begin to decline. He sowed in the full moon when the wane was just drawing on; he had the same good fortune as those remedies have which are employed last, and which carry away the glory of the cure, because applied when the distemper has discharged its malignity. You may if you please, add, that the concurrence of Francis I and Charles V was fatal in this affair. I answer, that notwithstanding all this, there must have been eminent gifts in Luther to produce such a revolution as he has done. Here is an excellent thought of father Paul: Fra. Paolo, Hist. du Concile de Trente, liv. i. pag. 4. ⁷² “If there were any thing in the setting up of this novelty that gave scandal as I shall relate it, yet it is well known that Leo’s predecessors made many like concessions, and from less honest motives, and had carried their avarice and extortions farther; but frequently good opportunities of doing great things are lost for want of knowing them, or knowing how to make use of them. Besides that, we must wait the time that God has appointed to punish the faults and corruptions of men; and all this concurred under Leo’s pontificate, of whom we speak at present.” It must be acknowledged that several circumstances concurred to favour Luther; learning flourished among the laity, whilst churchmen would not renounce their barbarism, and persecuted the learned and scandalized all the world by an unbridled lust. It was said with reason, that Erasmus by his railleries prepared the way for Luther; he was his St John Baptist, his forerunner. Simon Fontaine complains, that occasionally Erasmus did more mischief than Luther, because Luther did only open the door wider, after Erasmus had picked the lock, and half opened it.

(His doctrine regarding continence.)

Bossuet observes that in a sermon which Luther preached at Wittemberg for the reformation of marriage, he was not ashamed to speak these infamous and scandalous words: “If they are so obstinate,” he speaks of wives,“it is fit their husbands should tell them, if you will not another will; if the mistress will not come, let the maid be called: however, the husband ought first to bring his wife before the church and admonish her two or three times, after that divorce her, and take Esther instead of Vashti.” The bishop of Meaux also expresses himself thus in another place: “Luther explained himself against monastic vows in a terrible manner, so far as to say of that of continence, (stop your ears, chaste souls) that it was as impossible for a man to keep it, as to

divest himself of his sex. Ep. ad Wolf. Tom. vii. fol. 505, &c. ⁷³ It would put modesty out of countenance, should I repeat the words he uses in several places upon this subject, and show how he explains the impossibility of continence; I cannot imagine how he can reconcile this to that life which he said he had led without reproach, all the time of his celibacy till he was forty-five years old.” He is accused of having preached, that it is lucky if five maids and as many men be found in a whole city, who have preserved their chastity to twenty years of age, and that this would exceed the purity of the apostolic ages, and the ages of the martyrs; and that a man who lives without a wife, as much transcends the powers of nature, as if he lived without eating. These are things which we must not attempt to justify; they are excesses and first notions which Luther doubtless retracted before his death. What can be said more satirical against the laws canonical and civil, which force nobody to marry, and which prohibit marrying any more than one wife? These principles of Luther are inconsistent with monogamy; I doubt not but these sallies of his zeal against monastic vows, gave grounds to the accusation that was formed against him. George duke of Saxony complained, that so many adulteries had never been known, as since Luther’s teaching that a woman who conceived not by her husband, might apply to another man, and that if she happened to be pregnant, her husband was to take care of the child; whilst a husband whose wife was barren, might use the same privilege. This prince charged this on Luther himself, in a letter he wrote to him in the year 1526. “Quando tam numerosa perpetrata sunt adulteria quam postea quam tu scribere non dubitasti: si mulier è viro suo concipere nequeat, ut ad alium se transférât à quo possit fœcundari, et maritus prolem inde natum alere teneatur: itidemque vir faciat.” This was carrying the point higher than Lycurgus.

(His original Writings.)

Prince Rodolphus Augustus, duke of Brunswick, who has joined the love of letters to all other qualities worthy his illustrious family, was not satisfied with the magnificent library of Wolfenbuttle, he set up another private one, which he stored with a very great number of scarce books. Here we find all the writings that Luther published from the year 1517 to his death: including the editions which he published and corrected himself, and which are preferable to the original manuscripts, because in revising the proofs he corrected many things that had escaped him. It is a much safer way to have recourse to these editions, than to those in which all his works have been reduced into a body, for they who collected them took the liberty to mend and change what they thought fit; and this is doubtless the reason, why the citations from Luther, upon which any controversy arises, are so hard to be verified; we can hardly have any recourse now, except to the volumes in folio published since his death. The complete editions of all his works have caused the particular editions of his tracts to be neglected, and hereby almost all the copies of these particular editions are lost, which is a misfortune. The prince I speak of, employed a professor of Helmstadt to publish an account of his library; see the book intituled, “Antiqua Literarum monumenta, autographa Lutheri aliorumque celebrium virorum ab an. 1517, usque ad annum 1546 reformationis ætatem et historiam egregie illustrantia, &c.”; the first volume of which was printed at Brunswick in 1690, and the second in 1691. The overseers even of public libraries, which are the best endowed, sometimes use a blamable economy; they part with the particular tracts when they have once all the works of an author reduced into a

body, and thus it comes to pass, that there is no verifying from these great libraries, whether an author who has cited passages from the first editions, which differ from the latter, hath acted sincerely.

(Reply of Charles V.)

Charles V would not suffer Luther’s tomb to be demolished, and forbad the attempting any thing of that nature upon pain of death; the Spaniards earnestly solicited him to pull it down, and even desired his bones should be dug up and burnt; but the emperor very wisely answered, “I have nothing farther to do with Luther, he has henceforth another judge whose jurisdiction it is not lawful for me to usurp: know that I make war not with the dead, but with the living who still make war against me.”

(Opposition to Luther.)

Erasmus observed seven great faults in the measures taken against Luther. The first consisted in their suffering a quarrel to arise about the gatherings among the mendicant friars, and allowing the theses of indulgences to be discussed before the people in sermons; the second, in their opposing to Luther only some mendicant friars, who were no more than declaimers and organs of slander; the third, that they did not impose silence on the preachers of both parties, and chuse out prudent, learned, and peaceable persons, who might have instructed the people without any contention, and inclined them to peace and the love of the gospel; the fourth, that they would abate nothing on either side; the fifth, that cruelty was exercised against the Lutherans, at the instigation of some mendicant friars; the sixth, that the bishops of Germany, who were military men for the most part, did not do their duty; the seventh, that they did not take care to appease the wrath of God by public prayers, and by a conversion truly penitent

and sincere. The catalogue of faults of the Romish party might perhaps be enlarged; but that we leave to the speculative, and content ourselves with saying, that most of those specified by Erasmus, could not well be avoided, considering the posture of affairs the church was then in; hence it may be concluded that Luther’s design was brought forth in a favorable juncture of time. The prudence of the court of Rome played its part well enough, but it could not prevent the marring the affair in several instances, by a defect in its instruments; and I am certain that numbers of Protestants are convinced that their party maintained itself by the false measures of the opposite side, as much as by the goodness of its cause. On the other hand, a great many fancy that there were several faults committed on the part of the reformation, and that these were incidents favourable to popery. Thus great quarrels are generally fed and fomented; each party makes false steps which reciprocally serve to balance and support the other.

Art. Luther.