extremity to which he had been forcing matters, and from that day his bearing was less haughty and his language less threatening to the Protestants.

Luther, apart in his Castle of Coburg, was full of courage and joy. He was kept informed of the progress of affairs at Augsburg, and of the alternate fears and hopes that agitated his friends. Like the traveller in the Alps, who sees the clouds at his feet and hears the thunder rolling far beneath him, while around him is eternal sunshine, the Reformer, his feet planted on the mountain of God's power, looked down upon the clouds that hung so heavily above his friends in Augsburg, and heard far beneath the mutterings of imperial wrath; but neither could the one darken the sunshine of his peace, nor the other shake his confidence in that throne to which, in faith and prayer, his eyes were continually uplifted. His letters at this time show a singular elevation of faith, and a corresponding assurance of victory. To take an instance, "I beheld," says he, writing to his friends, "thick clouds hanging above us like a vast sea; I could neither perceive ground on which they reposed, nor cords by which they were suspended; and yet they did not fall upon us, but saluted us rapidly and passed away." Emperors and armies, and all the array of earthly power, what are they? black vapours, which seem charged with tempest and destruction, but, just as they are about to burst, they are driven away by the breath of the Almighty, as clouds are driven before the wind. But fully to realise this we must mount to Luther's elevation. We must stand where we have the cloud beneath, not above us.

Meanwhile in the Diet promises had been tried and failed; threats had been tried and failed; negotiations were again opened, and now the cause had wellnigh been wrecked. Luther lived above the cloud, but unhappily Melancthon, who had to sustain the chief part in the negotiations, lived beneath it, and, not seeing the cords that held it up, and imagining that it was about to fall, was on the point of surrendering the whole cause to Rome. During the slow incubation of the Refutation, seven men were chosen (13th August) on each side, to meet in conference and essay the work of conciliation. They made rapid progress up to a certain point; but the moment they touched the essentials of either faith, they were conclusively stopped. The expedient was tried of reducing the commission to three on each side, in the hope that with fewer members there would be fewer dif

1 Sleidan, bk. vii., p. 132. Pallavicino, lib. iii., cap. 4,

p. 195.

ferences. The chief on the Protestant side was Melancthon, of whom Pallavicino says that "he had a disposition not perverse, although perverted, and was by nature as desirous of peace as Luther was of contention." Well did Melancthon merit this compliment from the pen of the Catholic historian. For the sake of peace he all but sacrificed himself, his colleagues, and the work on which he had spent so many years of labour and prayer. His concessions to the Romanists in the Commission were extraordinary indeed. He was willing to agree with them in matters of ceremony, rites, and feasts. In other and more important points, such as the mass, and justification by faith, findings were come to in which both sides acquiesced, being capable of a double interpretation. The Papists saw that they had only to bide their time to be able to put their own construction on these articles, when all would be right. As regarded the marriage of priests, communion in both kinds, and some similar matters, the Romanists agreed to allow these till the meeting of the next General Council. Touching the government of the Church, Melancthon, and his colleagues in the Commission, were willing to submit to the restored jurisdiction of the bishops, and to acknowledge the Pope as Head of the Church, by human right. There was not much behind to surrender; a concord on this basis would have been the burial of the Reformation. Melancthon, in fact, was building unconsciously a sepulchre in which to entomb it. The lay Christians in Augsburg felt as if they were witnessing its obsequies.3 Consternation and grief took possession of the Swiss Protestants. "They are preparing their return to Rome," said Zwingle. Luther was startled and confounded. He read the proposed concessions, took his pen, and wrote forthwith to Augsburg as follows:

"I learn that you have begun a marvellous work, namely, to reconcile Luther and the Pope; but the Pope will not be reconciled, and Luther begs to be excused. And if in despite of them you succeed in this affair, then, after your example, I will bring together Christ and Belial.”4

This, one would think, should have torn the 2 Pallavicino, lib. iii., cap. 4, p. 195.

3 Pallavicino says that Melancthon "had fallen into hatred and reproach with his own party" (in odio ed in biasimo de' suoi), and Sleidan informs us that when chosen one of the Committee of Three it was on the condition that he should make no more concessions (Pallavicino, p. 196; Sleidan, p. 132). Pallavicino (lib. iii., cap. 4, p. 135) gives a letter of Melancthon's addressed to Campeggio, which is all but an unqualified submission to Rome. Its genuineness has been questioned, but D'Aubigné sees no reason to doubt it. 4 Luth. Opp., iv., pp. 144–151.

bandage from the eyes of Melancthon, and revealed to him the abyss towards which he was advancing. He was not to be counselled even by Luther. His patience was fretted, his temper soured, he began to brow-beat his colleagues, and was about to consummate his work of conciliation as he termed it, but in reality of surrender, when deliverance came from another quarter.

Smitten with madness in their turn the Romanists drew back when on the very point of grasping the victory. The matters in dispute between the two parties had been reduced to three points nominally, really to one-Does man merit by his good works? The Protestants maintained the negative, and the Papists the affirmative, on this point. The first briefly sums up the Protestant theology; the last is the corner-stone of the Roman faith. Neither party would yield, and the conferences were broken off. Thus Rome lost the victory, which would in the end have fallen to her, had she made peace on the basis of Melancthon's concessions. Her pride saved the German Reformation.

It now remained only for the emperor to draw

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up the Recess of the Diet. The edict was promulgated on the 22nd September, and was to the following effect:-That the Protestant princes should be allowed till the 15th April next to reconcile themselves to the Pope and to the rest of Christendom, and that meanwhile they should permit in their dominions no innovations in religion, no circulation of Protestant books, and no attempts at proselytism, and that they should assist the emperor in reducing the Anabaptists and Zwinglians. This edict Charles would have enforced at once with the sword, but the spirit displayed by the Protestant princes, the attitude assumed by the Turk, and the state of the emperor's relations with the other sovereigns of Europe put war out. of his power; and the consequence was that the monarch who three months before had made his entry into Augsburg with so much pomp, and in so high hopes of making all things and parties bend to his will, retired from it full of mortification and chagrin, disappointed in all his plans, and obliged to conceal his discomfiture under a show of moderation and leniency.

BEFORE the curtain rises on a new development of the great drama, let us pause, and cast a glance back on the track over which we have passed. The few moments we may spend in this retrospect will amply repay us by disclosing, more clearly perhaps than we saw them while we were narrating them, the successive and ascending stages of the movement. It may well amaze us to think how short our journey has been, measured by the time it has occupied; yet how long it is, measured by the progress which has been made. It was but yesterday that the monk's hammer awakened the echoes of the streets of Wittemberg, and now it

1 Pallavicino, lib. iii., cap. 4, p. 197.

seems as if centuries had rolled away since that day, and brought with them the new world in which we find ourselves. On ordinary occasions, many years, it may be ages, must pass before an idea can establish for itself a universal dominion in the minds of men. Hardly has Luther uttered his great idea when, like the light, it breaks out on the right hand and on the left, and shines from one end of heaven even unte the other.

How notable, too, the circumstance that our journey has been a continually progressive one! Steps backward there have been none. The

2 Pallavicino, lib. iii., cap. 4. Sleidan, bk. vii., n. 135.

and the 25th June, 1530, when the Augsburg Confession was read in presence of the emperor, how surprising the gains when we come to reckon them up! Electoral Saxony is Reformed, and its sovereign is seen marching in the van of the Reforming princes. Hesse is evangelised, and its magnanimous landgrave has placed himself by the side of the elector as his companion in arms in the great battle of Protestantism.

In Franconia, Silesia, East Friesland, Prussia, Brunswick, Luneburg, and Anhalt the light is spreading. The Gospel has been welcomed in the free towns of Nuremberg, Ulm, Augsburg, Strasburg, Lubeck, Bremen, Hamburg, and many others, bringing with it a second morning to the arts, the commerce, and the liberties of these influential communities. Every day princes, counts, and free cities press forward to enroll themselves in the Protestant host and serve under the Protestant banner; and in many cases where the ruler remains on the side of Rome, a not inconsiderable portion of his subjects have forsaken the old faith and embraced the Reformation.

Wider still does the light spread. It breaks out on all sides. The skies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary have brightened anew, and already in these countries have been laid the foundations of a powerful Protestant Church, destined, alas! to sink all too soon under the gathering tempests of persecution. In Denmark and Sweden the Reformation is marching on to its establishment. The Protestant standard has been planted on the shores of Zurich, and the neighbouring cantons are rallying round it. The Alps brighten from one hour to another, and the radiance with which they glow is reflected on the plains of Northern Italy. In France, at the court of Francis I., and in the Sorbonne, so jealous of its fame for orthodoxy, there are men who are not ashamed to confess that they have bowed to the authority of the Gospel, and consecrated their lives to its service. In Eng land the Lollard movement, which appeared to have gone to sleep with the ashes of its martyrs, is awakening from slumber, and girding itself for a second career more glorious than the first. In Scotland the light of the new day is gladdening the eyes, and its breath stirring the souls of men. Luther's tracts and Tyndale's New Testaments have entered that country.1 In 1528 the die is cast, and Scotland is secured for the Reformation; for now Patrick Hamilton is burned at the stake at

1 See Scottish Reformation, by Peter Lorimer, D.D., Professor of Theology, English Presbyterian College, London. Lond., 1860.

St. Andrew's, and his martyr-pile becomes the funeral torch of the Papacy in that country. So wide is the sphere which thirteen short years have sufficed to fill with the light of Protestantism.

Nor must we omit to note that in the midst or the German nation, like a pillar of light, now stands the German Bible. The eye that sees this Light rejoices in it; the ear that hears this Voice blesses it. In the presence of this Divine teacher, human authority, which had so long held the understanding in chains, is overthrown, and the German people, escaping from the worst of all bondage, enter on possession of the first and highest of all liberty, the liberty of conscience.

Further, in Saxony and Hesse there is now an organised Church. The ground, cleared of monasteries, convents, indulgence-boxes, and other noxious growths of mediævalism, begins to be covered with congregations, and planted with schools. Pastors preach the Gospel, for whom salaries have been provided; and an ecclesiastical board administers Church discipline and exercises a general supervision over the clergy. Protestantism, no longer a system of abstract doctrines, has now found an instrumentality through which to elevate the lives of men and reform the constitutions of society. Germany, from the wilderness it was a few years ago, is becoming a garden. Luther luxuriates over the rich verdure that begins to clothe Saxony. His pen has left us a fascinating description of it, and his words have all the warm colouring of the sacred idyll from which indeed his imagery would appear to be borrowed: "I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded." 2 "It gives me great and singular pleasure," says the Reformer, writing to the elector, 22nd May, 1530, "when I see that boys and girls can now understand and speak better concerning God and Christ, than formerly could have been done by the colleges, monasteries, and schools of the Papacy, or than they can do even yet. There is thus planted in your highness's dominions a very pleasant Paradise, to which there is nothing similar in the whole world. It is as if God should say, 'Most beloved Prince John, I commend these children to thee, as my most precious treasure; they are my celestial Paradise of pleasant plants. Be thou a father to them. I place them under thy protection and rule, and honour thee by making thee the president and patron of this heavenly garden.'

Nor can we fail to mark, in fine, how entire and

2 Song of Solomon vi. 11.