These satisfactory data appear to have been faithfully employed, and a work has been constructed which we may safely commend both for the spirit which pervades it and for its execution.

The Table Talk of Luther, of which Mr. Bohn has published a cheap edition, must be received with considerable qualification, and can scarcely become the source of history. Yet, as a whole, and without building any theory on particular portions, it must be considered as giving much that is true respecting the general character of him whose flying words are recorded. The following extracts are chiefly made in reference to what we have ventured to advance as to some of Luther's mental peculiarities.

Luther's Intolerance.

DCLXXI.

"Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth. He made several attempts to draw me into his snares, and I should have been in danger, but that God lent me special aid. In 1525, he sent one of his doctors, with 200 Hungarian ducats, as a present to my wife; but I refused to accept them, and enjoined my wife to meddle not in these matters. He is a very Caiphas.

"Qui Satanam non odit, amet tua carmina Erasme,
Atque idem jungat furias et mulgeat orcum.'"

DCLLXII.

"Erasmus is very pitiful with his prefaces, though he tries to smooth them over; he appears to see no difference between Jesus Christ our Saviour, and the wise pagan legislator Solon. He sneers at St. Paul and St. John; and ventures to say, that the Epistle to the Romans, whatever it might have been at a former period, is not applicable to the present state of things. Shame upon thee, accursed wretch! 'Tis a mere Momus, making his mows and mocks at everything and everybody, at God and man, at Papist and Protestant, but all the while using such shuffling and double-meaning terms, that no one can lay hold of him to any effectual purpose. Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse upon Erasmus.'

DCCCI.

"I wish from my heart Zuinglius could be saved, but I fear the contrary; for Christ has said, that those who deny him shall be damned. God's judgment is sure and certain, and we may safely pronounce it against all the ungodly, unless God reserve unto himself a peculiar privilege and dispensation. Even so, David from his heart wished that his son Absalom might be saved, when he said: 'Absalom my son, Absalom my son," yet he certainly believed that he was damned, and bewailed him,

not only in that he died corporally, but was also lost everlastingly; for he knew that he died in rebellion, in incest, and that he had hunted his father out of the kingdom."

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Luther's Self-Confidence.

XXXV.

Bullinger said to me, he was earnest against the sectaries, as contemner's of God's word, and also against those who dwelt too much on the literal word, who, he said, sinned against God and his almighty power, as the Jews did in naming the ark, God. But he who holds a mean between both, apprehends the right use of the word and the sacraments. To which I answered: By this error, you separate the word from the spirit; those who preach and teach the word, from God who works it, the ministers who baptize, from God who commands baptism. You hold that the Holy Ghost is given and works without the word, which word, you say, is an eternal sign and mark to find the spirit that already possesses the heart; so that, according to you, if the word find not the spirit, but an ungodly person, then it is not God's word; thus defining and fixing the word, not according to God, who speaks it, but according as people entertain and receive it. You grant that to be God's word, which purifies and brings peace and life; but when it works not in the ungodly, it is not God's word. You teach that the outward word is as an object or picture, signifying and representing something; you measure its use only according to the matter, as a human creature speaks for himself; you will not grant that God's word is an instrument through which the Holy Ghost works and accomplishes his work, and prepares a beginning to righteousness or justification.

"A true Christian must hold for certain that the Word which is delivered and preached to the wicked, the dissemblers, and the ungodly, is as much God's Word as that which is preached to godly, upright Christians, and that the true Christian Church is among sinners, where good and bad are mingled together. And that the Word, whether it produce fruit or no, is, nevertheless, God's strength, which saves all that believe therein. Clearly, it will also judge the ungodly (John c. v.), otherwise, these might plead a good excuse before God, that they ought not to be condemned, since they had not had God's word, and consequently could not have received it. But I teach that the preacher's words, absolutions, and sacraments, are not his words or works, but God's, cleansing, absolving, binding, etc.; we are but the instruments or assistants, by whom God works. You say, it is the man that preaches, reproves, absolves, comforts, etc., though it is God that cleanses the hearts and forgives; I say, God himself preaches, threatens, reproves, affrights, comforts, absolves, administers the sacraments, etc. As our Saviour Christ says: "Whoso heareth you, heareth me; and what ye loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven," etc. And again: "It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you."

but

"I am sure and certain, when I go up to the pulpit to preach or read, that it is not my word I speak, but that my tongue is the pen of a

ready writer, as the Psalmist has it. God speaks in the prophets and men of God, as St. Peter in his epistle says: "The holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Therefore we must not separate or part God and man, according to our natural reason and understanding. In like manner, every hearer must say I hear not St. Paul, St. Peter, or a man speak, but God himself.

"If I were addicted to God's Word at all times alike, and always had such love and desire thereunto as sometimes I have, then should I account myself the most blessed man on earth. But the loving apostle, St. Paul, failed also herein, as he complains, with sighs, saying: "I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind.” Should the Word be false, because it bears not always fruit? The search after the Word has been, from the beginning of the world, the source of great danger; few people can hit it, unless God, through his Holy Spirit, teach it them in their hearts.'

"Bullinger, having attentively listened to this discourse, knelt down, and uttered these words, 'O, happy hour that brought me to hear this man of God, the chosen vessel of the Lord, declaring his truth! I abjure and utterly renounce my former errors, thus beaten down by God's infallible Word.' He then arose and threw his arms around Luther's neck, both shedding joyful tears."

Luther's Pugnacity.

СССХІХ.

"I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart."

CCCXX.

"Dr. Justus Jonas asked me if the thoughts and words of the prophet Jeremiah were Christianlike, when he cursed the day of his birth. I said: We must now and then wake up our Lord God with such words. Jeremiah had cause to murmur in this way. Did not our Saviour Christ say: 'O faithless and perverse generation. How long shall I be with you, and suffer you.' Moses also took God in hand, where he said: Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them ? '

Luther's Superstition.

DLXXIV.

"The greatest punishment God can inflict on the wicked, is when the Church, to chastise them, delivers them over to Satan, who, with God's permission, kills them, or makes them undergo great calamities. Many devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly places, ready to hurt and prejudice people; some are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightnings, and thunderings, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds. When these things happen, then the philoso

phers and physicians say, it is natural, ascribing it to the planets, and shewing I know not what reasons for such misfortunes and plagues as

ensue.

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August 25, 1538, the conversation fell upon witches who spoil milk, eggs, and butter in farm-yards. Dr. Luther said: 'I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them. We read in the old law, that the priests threw the first stone at such malefactors. 'Tis said this stolen butter turns rancid, and falls to the ground when any one goes to eat it. He who attempts to counteract and chastise these witches, is himself corporeally plagued and tormented by their master, the devil. Sundry schoolmasters and ministers have often experienced this. Our ordinary sins offend and anger God. What, then, must be his wrath against witchcraft, which we may justly designate high treason against divine majesty, a revolt against the infinite power of God. The jurisconsults who have so learnedly and pertinently treated of rebellion, affirm that the subject who rebels against his sovereign, is worthy of death. Does not witchcraft, then, merit death, which is a revolt of the creature against the Creator, a denial to God of the authority it accords to the demon?'"

DLXXXII.

"Dr. Luther discoursed at length concerning witchcraft and charms. He said, that his mother had had to undergo infinite annoyance from one of her neighbours, who was a witch, and whom she was fain to conciliate with all sorts of attentions; for this witch could throw a charm upon children, which made them cry themselves to death. A pastor having punished her for some knavery, she cast a spell upon him by means of some earth upon which he had walked, and which she bewitched. The poor man hereupon fell sick of a malady which no remedy could remove, and shortly after died."

DLXXXIV.

"When I was young, some one told me this story: Satan had, in vain, set all his craft and subtlety at work to separate a married pair that lived together in perfect harmony and love. At last, having concealed a razor under each of their pillows, he visited the husband, disguised as an old woman, and told him that his wife had formed the project of killing him ; he next told the same thing to the wife. The husband, finding the razor under his wife's pillow, became furious with anger at her supposed wickedness, and cut her throat. So powerful is Satan in his malice."

DXCVI.

That he hath the power He is so skilled, that he tree; he has more boxes

"The apostle gives this title to the devil: of death." And Christ calls him a murderer. is able to cause death even with the leaf of a and pots full of poisons, wherewith he destroys men, than all the apothecaries in the world have of healing medicine; if one poison will not dispatch, another will. In a word, the power of the devil is greater than we can imagine; 'tis only God's finger can resist him."

DXCVIII.

Some he

"Satan plagues and torments people all manner of ways. affrights in their sleep, with heavy dreams and visions, so that the whole body sweats in anguish of heart. Some he leads, sleeping, out of their beds and chambers up into high dangerous places, so that if, by the loving angels who are about them, they were not preserved, he would throw them down, and cause their death. The superstitious Papists say, that these sleep-walkers are persons who have never been baptized; or, if they have been, that the priest was drunk when he administered the sacrament.”

Luther's Opinions of the Holy Scriptures.

XXVII.

"Saint John the Evangelist speaks majestically, yet with very plain and simple words; as where he says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.'

"See how he describes God the Creator, and also his creatures, in plain, clear language, as with a sunbeam. If one of our philosophers or high learned men had described them, what wonderful swelling and hightrotting words would he have paraded, de ente et essentia, so that no man could have understood what he meant. "Tis a great lesson, how mighty divine truth is, which presses through, though she be hemmed in ever so closely; the more she is read, the more she moves and takes possession of the heart."