and, instead of yielding any ground to the legate, wrote the celebrated letter or memorial to the pope in which occurs the following words: "Let no one, most holy father, imagine that I will sing a palinode unless he wishes to arouse a still greater tempest. I will admit of no restraint in interpreting the word of God." Noble sentiment! It is a blessing to us that Luther ever uttered it, and that with firmness he adhered to it. Had he wavered, it would have destroyed the confidence of men in his positions, and thrown back, no one can tell how far, the infant Reformation. His writings had already been scattered and translated through the greater part of Europe; and what a stroke to true religion it would have been, could it have been said by Romanists that their author no longer acknowledged their truth!

In the mean time the pope published a bull in favor of indulgences, on which Luther published a memorial appealing from the pope to a general council, an act of great impiety toward the holy father; at least so considered by the latter. On the 15th day of June, 1520, and after receiving the memorial just referred to, the pope published a second bull, in which he set forth some of the pernicious, poisonous, and scandalous doctrines of Luther. Among them is the following: "To say that burning heretics is contrary to the will of the Holy Ghost." This was one of Luther's assertions, one of Luther's doctrines. But the most holy father, and head of the most holy Catholic Church, insists that any such statement is curtailing his liberty and stinting his privileges, and that it is a pernicious, poisonous, and scandalous heresy. It would be outrageous to cut him off from burning his Bible-reading subjects.

The bull goes on to say that Luther shall be ex

communicated, unless in sixty days he forward a recantation to Rome, or else, as it is literally expressed, "which would be far more agreeable to us, that he, come to Rome in person." As to the last clause no

one could doubt the truth of that. It would be far more agreeable to the heart of the tender and compassionate father to see Luther in Rome, so that he might at leisure, through his inquisitors, burn, torture, and tear his flesh, and leave his body to wear out in some filthy dungeon until he could make him believe in the virtue of indulgences.

But Luther had more good sense than to go to Rome, or to send any recantation within the sixty days allotted to him. On the contrary, he publicly burned the pope's bull amid a vast assemblage of people at Wittemburg, renounced the authority of the pope, exhorted the princes of Europe to shake off the oppressive yoke, and offered thanks to God that he was selected as the advocate of true religion, and a friend to the liberties of mankind.

He also published a document, in which he says he has no desire to be absolved from the censures leveled

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against him. Farewell," he concludes, "farewell, O Rome, thou thrice-accursed abomination! Thou art filled with so much impiety and foolishness as are unworthy even to be refuted!"

At last, on the 6th day of January, 1521, sentence of final excommunication was thundered against Luther, in which he is declared a heretic, a son of perdition, and an eternal outcast, expelled the communion of the faithful, and delivered over to Satan. This is an important day for the German Reformation.

The manner in which the pope's bull of excommunication was received shows what progress the doctrines

of the Bible had made. A century before it would have shaken the foundations of the whole kingdom; now it was read and spoken of in Germany with contempt. Such success had God given his faithful witnesses.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEASANT WAR THE JESUITS.

THE year 1521 is a year to be remembered in the history of the Reformation. It is the year in which Luther renounces Rome; the year in which Rome afterward renounces him; the year of the well known Diet of Worms, in which he is condemned by that body; the year of the breaking out of the celebrated peasant war; and the year in which Ignatius de Loyola, founder and first general of the order of Jesuits, is wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, and resolves to devote himself to works of piety.

To these two latter events we will briefly turn our attention. As in France in the time of the French Revolution, the superstitions of Romanism had driven men to infidelity, so in Germany and the neighboring countries, as Luther sounded the trumpet of the Gospel, and men began to feel they were free to think,' it was not to be expected that nations unable generally to read, and trained in the absurdities of Rome, would be able to go just so far and no further. It came to pass that while Luther and those who had sufficient light from the word of God knew when to stop, a great many others went from one extreme to the other. Under the leadership of Munzer, Stubner, etc., multitudes of peasants and others assembled,

and held that among Christians, properly instructed, the office of magistrate was unnecessary; that the distinctions occasioned by birth, rank, or wealth, should be abolished; that all Christians, throwing their possessions into one stock, should live together as one family, and that polygamy was to be allowed. Pretending to have received visions and revelations from heaven, they rapidly propagated their doctrines. Luther and the other Reformers raised their voices loudly against them, and the peasants perceiving this undertook to spread their opinions by force of arms. Munzer put himself at the head of a numerous army and declared war against all laws, governments, and magistrates, saying that Christ himself has now to take the reins of government into his hands. They were defeated by the Elector of Saxony, and Munzer put to death. Again in 1533 a large party of them settled at Munster, and made themselves masters of the city, but were ultimately defeated.

There is no doubt that such fanaticism retarded the progress of the Reformation. Reasonable men saw that their tenets were absurd, and yet associated them with the tenets of Luther, when in fact they were only the reaction of the mind long bent in one way, and long in ignorance and spiritual chains.

We turn to Ignatius. His influence and that of his followers upon the early Reformation was not so great as it has since been upon the progress of true religion in Roman Catholic countries. The rise of the Jesuits was not rapid enough at first to accomplish a great deal. Charles V. did not encourage them; the universities of France resisted their introduction into the country, and when in 1540 the pope authorized their institution their disciples were said to be but ten. In the year 1608 their number amounted

to ten thousand five hundred and eighty-one. Before the close of the sixteenth century they had obtained the chief direction of the education of youth in every Roman Catholic country in Europe, and had become the confessors of almost all their monarchs. In spite. of their vow of poverty their wealth increased with their power, and they soon rivaled in the extent and value of their possessions the most opulent monastic fraternities. And wherever they went the minds of men became more and more enslaved. The pernicious doctrine of constant and absolute submission to the authority of their superiors without examination, left no recourse to the Bible, or to any other standard. And as they increased they ingrafted this essential tenet of Romanism upon the mind wherever the rising light of the Reformation had broken it off. And if they went as missionaries to foreign lands, as they did everywhere, it was not the Gospel they taught, but submission to Rome and their order. It was not a renunciation of heathen idolatry which they inculcated upon their ignorant converts, but an incorporation of idol worship into religion under the name of Christianity. It was not a forsaking of sin which they preached, but a regulation of it under priestly direction. Entering a country with all the apparent humility of true Christians, they commenced their labors among the people; and as their power and influence increased, their humility was laid aside, and an absolute sway over heart, mind, and conscience aimed at or established. And such also was their system in education. There have been learned men and polished writers among the Jesuits, we admit, but their education has always been partial and one-sided; and wherever they have the instruction of young persons confided to them it is the same thing. They teach the