LUTHER AND CROMWELL. CHAPTER I. LUTHER. THE human race has always been subjected to violent shocks, from the commencement of its history until now. Revolution has seemed indispensable to progress, and every step forward which the world has taken, has caused a tremor like the first pulsations of an earthquake. We turn from "REVOLUTIONS" with a shudder, for the violence and bloodshed that accompany them are revolting to our feelings; but we forget that, constituted as governments and society are, they are necessary. A higher wisdom, guided by a truer sympathy than ours, has said, "I come not to send peace, but a sword; to set a man at variance against his father," &c. The world is full of oppressive systems, whose adherents will not yield without a fierce struggle, and the iron framework of which will not crumble except to heavy blows. Nearly, if not quite all the moral struggles of the race have at length come to a physical adjustment; for the party weakest in the justice of its cause has generally been the strongest in external force. Hence, when overthrown with argument, it has resorted to the sword. Then comes martyrdom; but with increase of strength to the persecuted, and the co-operators of rulers, resistance has followed, ending in long wars and wasting battles. Thus did the Reformation under Luther-begun in silence and in weakness-end in revolutions, violence, and war. There seems sometimes a vast disparity between causes and the results they accomplish. We behold a poor monk, haggard and wan, praying alone in his cell, with tears and groans; we look again, and he is shaking thrones, and principalities, and powers. Today he is sweeping the convent, and engrossed in the occupations of a menial; to-morrow, confronting kings and awing princes, by the majesty of his bearing. And yet no visible power has passed into his hands; he is a single, solitary man, with nothing to sustain him but truth, and leaning on no arm but that of the invisible God! But we are to look for the cause of the Reformation out of Luther. That great movement was not a sudden impulse; the war that swept over Europe was born in a deeper sea than Luther's bosom. Although Rome seemed secure, and her power supreme, the heavens had been for a long time giving indications of an approaching tempest. The world was expecting some great change, and this expectancy grew out of its need. The church had no spirituality, and was With its observ worse than dead-it was corrupt. ances, and ceremonies, and indulgences, it could not reach the heart and wants of man. The human soul, slowly awaking from its long slumbers, called pleadingly for that Christianity which the Son of God had established. But it could not be found in the church. The doctrines of grace and justification by faith were scoffed at as ridiculous, and salvation by works was loudly proclaimed, thus bringing back a religion of mere ceremonies-Judaism, under another form, which the world had shaken off at the appearance of Christ. Added to this, the Romish Church was the den of every vice. The capital and palace of the Pontiff exhibited scenes of debauchery, drunkenness, and irreligion, that made them a byword in the mouths of the people. The same immorality characterized the priesthood every where. It finally became a custom to pay a tax for keeping a mistress; and one bishop declared that eleven thousand priests came to him in one year to pay this tax. The climax to all these absurdities and immoralties was the sale of indulgences, not carried on at Rome, but over the continent, by which a few groats would buy pardon for any crime, even for incest. Thus, under its own corruptions, was the immense fabric of papacy tottering to its fall. Kings and princes were also in a state of preparation for a change; they began to question the right of the Pope to the vast power he wielded, and which they had so often suffered under; while the burghers and more wealthy citizens, especially of the free cities of Ger |