II. BOOK mind, on account of these emissions. By them he only repeated the circulated precedents of the last century and an half, and for the more creditable purpose, worthy of his family name, of completing a magnificent temple for the admiration of posterity, in the finest style of human art. His name, his character, and his object were alike distinguished; and no man had less reason to anticipate the consequences which followed. of The attack of Wickliffe on them in England," and grave doctors in Germany," and of poets and troubadours elsewhere," had not destroyed their credit.23 If they were still popular, they would be profitable, and safe from their popularity. If they 20 The 41st article of those opinions of Wickliffe which were condemned by the council of Constance, was, that Fatuum est credere indulgentiis Papæ.' Browne, Fasc. 294. In other articles he declared thepapales indulgentias vel absolutiones a pena et a culpa,' to be 'novitates' and 'phantasmata.' ib. 275. After him, others in England decried them. Foxe, 591. 21 In 1479, Dr. De Wesalia, of Worms, admitted on his examination, that he had written a treatise against them, and that he believed the treasure of the merits of the saints could not be distributed by the pope to others, for the satisfaction of their 'poenarum debitarum;' but he did not think that, because they were not remissiones a jure,' he had therefore called them 'piæ fraudes fidelium.' See his Exam. in Browne, p. 330. Weselus, who died in 1490, had written, and Savanorola, burnt in 1499, had declaimed in vain against indulgences. See their opinions in Foxe, 670 and 672. 22 The troubadour, Pons de la Garde, sneered at the church for offering at a paltry rate the pardon for every crime.' See Hist. Mid. Ages, v. 5. p. 161. Chaucer's satirical picture of a Pardonnere, or a person travelling about to sell 'pardons come from Rome all hot,' may be seen in that work, p. 160; and also the criminations of Wickliffe on the Franciscans, for granting indulgences like the popes on their own super merits, p. 165. 23 They were still so coveted, and therefore so profitable, that Card. Bembo mentions that those which Alex. VI. granted to the Venetians, to raise money upon against the Turks, produced 790 pounds of gold in the territory of Venice; (Bembo, Hist. Venet.) a sum which, if bullion were then of ten times the comparative value of the present day, would amount to half a million of our sovereigns. were treated with contempt, they would be unproductive, and be recalled. No other results could have been in the contemplation of any one, at the hour when they received the fiat of the pontiff, and the counter-signet of his grand penitentiary. Two coincidences were wanted for any fatal disturbance, which had never effectually united on such a subject; a man bold enough to dare the flames to which he would be consigned, like Huss and Savanorola, for preaching or writing against papal privileges, and an adequate protector of earthly power to save him from this catastrophe. No prince or people had hitherto supported the assailants of the popedom or its doctrines, who had not been ultimately overwhelmed, or made to suffer grievously for such liberal conduct.24 But there is something, however variously we name it, which governs the world independently of man, and which all ages and nations have felt to do so. Even Lucretius, amid his sturdy denial of a providence, could not avoid remarking a mysterious force, unaccountable to himself, but perceptibly operative, which alters and overturns human affairs 24 Before the war on the Bohemians, a papal crusade had been effected against the humble population of the Stadingences in the northwestern district of Germany, which I will state in the words of the old Chronicler :- 1234, Gregory IX. preached a crusade against these; living on the confines of Frisia and Saxony, surrounded with inaccessible marshes and rivers, who, for their disobedience and excesses and subtraction of tithes, had been excommunicated by the apostolic see many years before, but had remained contemptores of the ecclesiastical citations. Often fighting with the bishops, counts and other nobles near them, they had been frequently victorious and rarely conquered. But the arms of the crusaders at last overcame them; above 2,000 were killed. The rest fled into Friesland, and thus their confederation against the church ceased.' Chron. Hirsaug. p. 181. СНАР. IV. BOOK II. 26 and tramples down dignity and power.25 We may call it fate, destiny, necessity, or any other distinguishing term, as our taste may prefer; but when we find it acting by intelligent means of its own selection, to grand and beneficent ends, beyond the usual course of things, the philosophical mind will give it a designation more consonant to the resulting phenomena.* On the present occasion, the two individuals who were wanted to produce that revolution in religion, which human welfare demanded, were found to be co-existing in Saxony, in the year 1517, in the persons of Frederic, its elector, and of Martin Luther, one of the teachers in his new university. These individuals, without either premeditation or foresight of the consequences they were to produce, were led successively to those actions and situations, which made them the authors of the greatest concussion that human society has received, between the abruption of the Roman empire and the late French revolution.27 25 Usque adeo res humanas VIS ABdita quædam 26 It is mankind's continual inference from their experience, that an agency superior to earthly nature overrules human affairs, which made astrology so long popular in antient and modern times; which still gives to fortune tellers their credit, and spreads the notion of compelling fate so much in Germany, among those who will not believe the simple and wiser system of a Divine Providence in its true form and name. It is Schiller's just remark, that from the beginning of the religious war in Germany, to the peace of Munster, nothing great or remarkable happened in the world of Europe, in which the Reformation had not the principal share. All the important events which took place during this period are connected with the Reformation, if they did not originate from it, and every country, whether great or small, has felt its influence.' Hist. Thirty Years War, v. 1. Introd. Son of respectable but not noble parents,28 Luther was carefully educated," and began to study for the legal profession. At this period, he was adverse to the reforming opinions which had preceded him,30 and had no intention of a religious life, but was destined by his father to an opulent marriage," when a flash of lightning killing, immediately as it fell, his companion who was walking at his side in the fields of Leipsic, his nervous system, always tremulous and exciteable,33 was shaken; and from his consternation at the catastrophe, he resolved to become a monk. His parent, enraged at the determination, peremptorily resisted it; but Luther, deaf 32 34 He was born 10 Nov. 1483, at Isleben, in Saxony, of parentes plebeios. Cochl. Vita Luth. P. 1. "He was at school one year at Magdeburg, and four with a gratiosum preceptorem at Eisenach, and thence went to Erfurd, where he received the degree of Master in his twentieth year. ib. He declared that while he was at Erfurd he had found in the convent library the Sermons of Huss, but shut the book with indignation, as the name of this reformer was then so abominated, that he thought the sky would fall upon his head if he should speak favorably of them. See Mid. Ages, 5. p. 200. He so reminded his father Destinabas me vincire honesto et opulento conjugio.' Luth. Op. v. 2. p. 477. " Cochl. Vita, p. 2. 6 Melancthon said of him, When he has been thinking on the Divine wrath, and on some striking examples of punishment, Luther has suddenly become so shaken by terror as to become almost lifeless. I have seen him, after disputing on some doctrine, run in consternation to the next apartment and lay down on the bed, and utter repeatedly, intermingling it with his prayer, He has concluded all to be under sin, that he may have mercy upon all.' Seckend. p. 41. When Luther resolved in 1521 to throw off his Monastic profession, he wrote a treatise to justify his abnegation, which he dedicated to his father. In this he states, You were unwilling, from your paternal affection you feared my weakness, as I was only entering my twentysecond year; because you had learnt from many instances that this kind of life fell but unhappily on some. Your indignation was for some time implacable against me. When, at last you conversed with me about it, I told you I was called by Heaven in its terrors, for I did not become a monk either from choice and desire, (non lubens et cupiens) much less for the sake of my belly, but, surrounded with the terror and agony of the sudden death, I formed a compelled and necessary vow.' ib. 478. CHAP. IV. BOOK II. 46 While he was thus exchanging the scholastic for scriptural theology, and silently forming his mind to feel strongly and to reason powerfully on the latter, the new issue of the papal indulgences was resolved on. The European mind had been so long habituated to a commutation of penance for money, that the papal chancery had a regular system of taxation for its relaxations, remissions, permissions, and dispensations; 47 and it was for each individual to decide for himself whether he preferred purgatory, penance, or property. The common indulgences were, as we have remarked, diminutions of enjoined penance; but the plenary ones of Leo were to convey the soul from its deathbed into heaven, without the previous detention and discipline of that intermediate region, which the papal teachers, for their own purposes, have elaborately 48 that dread from which fearful men, thinking only of their own unworthiness, fled from Him in whom alone they should put their trust. When the duke, at dinner, asked a noble lady how she liked his preacher, she told him that if she heard another sermon of that kind, she should die with a more tranquil mind. Fabricius, v. 2. 46 Luther wrote cheerily to Langius, 'Our theology and St. Austin's go on prosperously and reign in our university, while Aristotle descends by little and little, declining to a ruin that will be everlasting.' Seck. 45. The 47 The fullest account which I have seen of these is in the Taxe de la Chancelerie du Pape, printed with the privilege of the Pope and French king, at Paris in 1520, at Lyons in 1564, and at London in 1701. They are called Taxa Cameræ. My edition is the latter one. original Latin text is given with a French translation and a French commentary. The Latin seems to have been originally an official table for the public information, before the Lutheran criticisms had made such things discreditable. 48 The synod of Nantz ordered the priests so to moderate their enjoined penance that their penitents might neither be overwhelmed by the immensity of its weight, nor, from an undue relaxation of it, be most cruelly left to the fire of purgatory.' Martene Thes. v. 4. p. 955. The other alternative, not expressed, was the casier self-deliverance by the purchase of indulgences. |