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l. Luther Worship 2. Luther Hatred 3. Luther Blemishes 4. Luther's Task 5. The Popes in Luther's Time 6. Luther's Birth and Parentage 7. Luther's Great Mistake 8. Luther's Failure as a Monk 9. Professor Luther, D. D. 10. Luther's "Discovery" of the Bible 11. Rome and the Bible 12. Luther's Visit at Rome 13. Pastor Luther 14. The Case of Luther's Friend Myconius 15. Luther's Faith without Works 16. The Fatalist Luther 17. Luther a Teacher of Lawlessness 18. Luther Repudiates the Ten Commandments 19. Luther's Invisible Church 20. Luther on the God-given Supremacy of the Pope 21. Luther the Translator of the Bible 22. Luther a Preacher of Violence against the Hierarchy 23. Luther, Anarchist and Despot All in One 24. Luther the Destroyer of Liberty of Conscience 25. "The Adam and Eve of the New Gospel of Concubinage" 26. Luther an Advocate of Polygamy 27. Luther Announces His Death 28. Luther's View of His Slanderers

Catholic writers profess themselves shocked by the unblushing veneration which Luther receives from Protestants. Such epithets as "hero of the Reformation," "angel with the everlasting Gospel flying through the midst of heaven," "restorer of the Christian faith," grate on Catholic nerves. Luther's sayings are cited with approval by all sorts of men. Men feel that their cause is greatly strengthened by having Luther on their side. Luther's name is a name to conjure with. Hardly a great man has lived in the last four hundred years but has gone on record as an admirer of Luther. Rome, accordingly, cries out that Luther is become the uncanonized saint of Protestantism, yea, the deified expounder of the evangelical faith.

The Roman Church is accustomed to speak of her Supreme Pontiff, the Holy Father, the Vicegerent of Christ, His Infallible Holiness, in terms that lift a human being to heights of adoration unknown among Protestants. For centuries the tendency in the Roman Church to make of the Pope "a god on earth" has been felt and expressed in Christendom.

This Church wants to preach to Protestants about the sin of man-worship! Verily, here we have the parable of the mote and the beam in a twentieth century edition. Catholic teachers would be the last ones, we imagine, whom scrupulous Christians would choose for instructing them regarding the sin of idolatry and the means to avoid it.

No Protestant regards Luther as Catholics regard Mary, not even Patrick. Luther has taught them too well for that. Unwittingly the Catholics themselves have immortalized Luther by naming the Evangelical Church after Luther. Luther declined the honor. "I beg," he said, "not to have my name mentioned, and to call people not Lutheran, but Christian. What is Luther? The doctrine is not mine, nor have I been crucified for any one. . . . The papists deserve to have a party-name, for they are not content with the doctrine and name of Christ; they want to be popish also. Well, let them be called popish, for the Pope is their master. I am not, and I do not want to be, anybody's master."

It is likely that the frequent laudatory mention of Luther's name, especially in connection with the present anniversary of the Reformation, is taken as a challenge by Catholics. If it is that, it is so by the choice of Catholics. It is impossible to speak of a great man without referring to the conflicts that made him great. "He makes no friend," says Tennyson, "who never made a foe." "The man who has no enemies," says Donn Piatt, "has no following." Opposition is one of the accepted marks of greatness. The opposition which great men aroused during their lifetime lives after them, and crops out again on a given occasion. This is deplorable, but it is the ordinary course. Moreover, it is possible that in a season of great joy like that which the Quadricentenary of the Reformation has ushered in orators and writers may fail to put a due check on their enthusiasm and may overstate a fact. Such things happen even among Catholics, we believe, But they will be negligible quantities in the present celebration. The proper corrective for them will be provided by Protestants themselves. The vast majority of those who have embraced the spiritual leadership of Luther in matters pertaining to Christian doctrine and morals will prove again that they are in no danger of inaugurating man-worship. The spirit of Luther is too much alive in them for that. They will, with the Marquis of Brandenburg, declare: "If I be asked whether with heart and lip I confess that faith which God has restored to us by Luther as His instrument, I have no scruple, nor have I a disposition to shrink from the name Lutheran. Thus understood, I am, and shall to my dying hour remain, a Lutheran." They will ever be able to distinguish between the man Luther, prone to error and sin like any other mortal, and the Luther who fought the battle of the Lord and had a mission of everlasting import to the Church and the world. They have shown on numerous occasions that they can be friends of Luther, and yet criticize him or dissent from him. If they had not, there would be no Protestants whom Catholics can quote as "opponents" of Luther. On the other hand, if any one undertakes to enlighten the public with a view of Luther, Protestants will insist that his estimate comport with the facts in the case, and that the name of a great man who deserves well of posterity be not traduced. Why, even the Catholic von Schlegel thinks Luther has not been half esteemed as he ought to be.

Catholic writers have found so much to censure in the character and writings of Luther that one is amazed, after reading them, how Luther ever could become regarded as a great and good man. Criminal blindness must have held the eyes, not only of Luther's associates, but of his entire age, yea, of men for centuries after, if they failed to see Luther's constitutional baseness. Quite recently a Catholic writer has told the world in one chapter of his book that "the apostate monk of Wittenberg" was possessed of "a violent, despotic, and uncontrolled nature," that he was "depraved in manners and in speech." He speaks of Luther's "ungovernable transports, riotous proceedings, angry conflicts, and intemperate controversies," of Luther's "contempt of all the accepted forms of human right and all authority, human and divine," of "his unscrupulous mendacity," "his perverse principles," "his wild pronouncements." He calls Luther "a lawless one," "one of the most intolerant of men," "a revolutionist, not a reformer." He says that Luther "attempted reformation and ended in deformation." He charges Luther with having written and preached "not for, but against good works," with having assumed rights to himself in the matter of liberty of conscience which "he unhesitatingly and imperiously denied to all who differed from him," with having "rent asunder the unity of the Church," with having "disgraced the Church by a notoriously wicked and scandalous life," with having "declared it to be the right of every man to interpret the Bible to his own individual conception," with "one day proclaiming the binding force of the Ten Commandments and the next declaring they were not obligatory on Christian observance," with having "reviled and hated and cursed the Church of his fathers."

These opprobrious remarks are only a part of the vileness of which the writer has delivered himself in his first chapter. His whole book bristles with assertions of Luther's inveterate badness. This coarse and crooked Luther, we are told, is the real Luther, the genuine article. The Luther of history is only a Protestant fiction. Protestants like Prof. Seeberg of Berlin, and others, who have criticized Luther, are introduced as witnesses for the Catholic allegation that Luther was a thoroughly bad man. We should like to ascertain the feelings of these Protestants when they are informed what use has been made of their remarks about Luther. Some of them may yet let the world know what they think of the attempt to make them the squires of such knights errant as Denifle and Grisar.

Luther has done one thing which Rome will never pardon: he dared to attack the supreme authority of the Pope. He made men see the ignominious bondage in which cunning priests had ensnared them, and by restoring them to the liberty with which Christ had made them free Luther caused the papacy an irreparable loss. The papal system of teaching and government was so thoroughly exposed by Luther, and has since been so completely disavowed by a great part of professing Christians that Rome cannot practise its old frauds any longer. Men have become extremely wary of Rome. That is what hurts. The Catholic writer to whom we referred sums up the situation thus: Since Luther "all Protestant mankind descending by ordinary generation have come into the world with a mentality biased, perverted, and prejudiced." That is Rome's way of looking at the matter. The truth is: the world is forewarned, hence forearmed against the pleas of Rome. It pays only an indifferent attention to vilifications of Luther that come from that quarter, because it expects no encomiums and only scant justice for Luther from Rome. But it is the business of the teachers of Protestant principles in religion, particularly of the church historians of Protestantism, to take notice of the campaign of slander that is launched against Luther by Catholic writers at convenient intervals. It is not a task to delight the soul, rather to try the patience, of Christians. For in the study of the causes for these calumnies against a great man of history, and of the possible means for their removal, one is forced invariably to the conclusion that there is but one cause, and that is hatred. What can poor mortal man do to break down such a cause? It does not yield to logic and historical facts, because it is in its very nature unreasoning and unreasonable.

Still, for the hour that God sends to all the Sauls that roam the earth breathing threatening and slaughter, the counter arguments should be ready. No slander against Luther has ever gone unanswered. As the charges against Luther have become stereotyped, so the rejoinder cannot hope to bring forward any new facts. But it seems necessary that each generation in the Church Militant be put through the old drills, and learn its fruitful lessons of spiritual adversity. Thus even these polemical exchanges between Catholics and Protestants become blessings in disguise. But they do not affect Luther. The sublime figure of the courageous confessor of Christ that has stood towering in the annals of the Christian Church for four hundred years stands unshaken, silent, and grand, despite the froth that is dashed against its base and the lightning from angry clouds that strikes its top. "Surely, the wrath of man shall praise thee."

When Luther is charged with immoral conduct, and the specific facts together with the documentary evidence are not submitted along with the charge, little can be done in the way of rebuttal. One can only guess at the grounds on which the charge is based. For instance, when Luther is said to have disgraced the Church by a notoriously wicked and scandalous life, the reason is most likely because he married although he was a monk sworn to remain single. Moreover, he married a noble lady who was a nun, also sworn to celibacy. According to the inscrutable ethics of Rome this is concubinage, although the Scripture plainly declares that a minister of the Church should be the husband of one wife, 1 Tim. 3, 2, and no vows can annul the ordinance and commandment of God: "It is not good that man should be alone." Gen. 2, 18. Comp. 1 Cor. 7, 2, and Augsburg Confession, Art. 27.

When Luther is said to have taught Nietzsche's insanity about the "Superhuman" before Nietzsche, to have put the Ten Commandments out of commission for Christians, and to have preached against good works, the reasons most likely are these: Luther taught salvation in accordance with Rom. 3, 25: "We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law." Luther taught that a person is not saved by his own works, and if he performs good works with that end in view, he shames his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth , and he falls under the curse of God for placing his own merits alongside of the merit of the Redeemer's sacrifice. In no other connection has Luther spoken against good works. He has rather taught men how to become fruitful in well-doing by the sanctifying grace of God and according to the inspiring example of the matchless Jesus. Concerning the Law, Luther preached 1 Tim. 1, 9: "The Law is not made for a righteous man," that is, Christians do the works of the Law, not for the Law's sake, but for the sake of Christ, whom they love and whose mind is in them. They must not be driven like slaves to obey God, but their very faith prompts them to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world . But Luther always held that the rule for good works is laid down in the holy Law of God, and only in that; also that the Law must be applied to Christians, in as far as they still live in, the flesh, and are not become altogether spiritual. Luther's public activity as a preacher began with a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, and this effort to expound the divine norm of righteousness was repeated several times during Luther's life. Luther's expositions of the Decalog are among the finest that the world possesses. Moreover, Luther wrote the Small Catechism. Hand any Catholic who talks about Luther having abolished the Ten Commandments this little book. That is a sufficient refutation. What Luther teaches in this book he has given his life to reduce to practise in himself and others. He says in a sermon on Easter Monday, 1530: "When rising in the morning, I pray with my children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and some Psalm. I do this because I want to make myself cling to these truths. I shall not suffer my faith to become mildewed with the imagination that I am above these things ." His sermon on the First Sunday in Advent in the same year he begins thus: "Dear friends, I am now an old Doctor, still I find every day that I must recite with the children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, and I have always derived a great benefit and blessing from this practise."

Luther is charged with mendacity, that is, he is said to have lied. The reasons that will be given for this charge, when called for, will probably be these: Luther at various times in his life gave three different years as the year of his birth, three different years as the year when he made his journey to Rome, and advised somebody in 1512 to become a monk when he had already commenced to denounce the monastic life: It is true that Luther did all these things, but it is also true that Luther believed himself right in each of his statements. He was simply mistaken. Other people have misstated the year of their birth without being branded liars on that account. Sometimes even a professor forgets things, and Luther was a professor. What Luther has said about the rigor of his monastic life is perfectly true, but it was no reason why in 1512 he should counsel men to become monks. He had not yet come to the full knowledge of the wrong principles underlying that mode of life. To adduce such inaccuracies as evidence of prevarication is itself an insincere act and puts the claimant by right in the Ananias Club.

Luther is said to have been a glutton and a drunkard. "Let us examine the facts. What is the evidence? Luther's obesity and his gout. Is that evidence? Not in any court. It would be evidence if both conditions were caused, and caused only, by gluttony and tippling. But this notoriously is not the case. Obesity may be due to disease. A man may even eat little and wax stout if what he eats turns into adipose rather than into muscular tissue. As for gout, it is the result of uric acid diathesis. Now uric acid diathesis may be, and very often is, caused by high living, but often, too, it is due to quite different causes. Just as in the case of Bright's disease. I do not deny that Luther drank freely both beer and wine. So did everybody else. People drank beer as we do coffee. . . . Moreover, in the sixteenth century alcoholic beverages were prescribed for the maladies from which Luther suffered much--kidneys and nervous trouble. We now know that in such cases alcohol proves a very poison; but this Luther could not know. But intemperate . . . in his use of strong drink Luther was not. Neither was he a glutton. Before he married, he ate very irregularly, and often completely forgot his meals. When he could not get meat and wine, he contented himself with bread and water. . . . Melanchthon tells us that Luther loved the coarse food as he did the coarse speech of the peasantry, and even of that food ate little, so little that Melanchthon marveled how Luther could maintain strength upon such a diet.--It is further a noteworthy fact that, when we read the sermons of the day, we find nobody who so frequently and so earnestly attacks the prevailing vice of drunkenness as does Luther. Now, whatever Luther may or may not have been, hypocrite he was not. Had he himself been intemperate, he would not have preached against it in such a manner. Furthermore, Luther was under constant espionage. His every move was noted. People knew how many patches there were on his undergarments. Think you, think you for a moment, that the Wittenbergians would have listened meekly to Luther's repeated assaults upon the wide-spread sin of intemperance, had they known him for a confirmed tippler? It is too absurd.--But the best evidence for the defense comes from a mute witness--Luther's industry. He wrote more than four hundred books, brochures, sermons, and so forth, filling more than one hundred volumes of the Erlangen edition. There are extant more than three thousand of his letters, which represent only a small proportion of all that he wrote. Thus we know, for example, that one evening in 1544 Luther wrote ten letters, of which only two have been preserved. He was, furthermore, in frequent conference with leaders in both Church and State. He preached on Sundays and lectured on week-days. Now, a man may, it is true, perform a considerable amount of manual labor even after overeating and overdrinking, but every physician will admit the correctness of my assertion, it is a physiological impossibility that a man could habitually overindulge in food or liquor, or both, and still get over the enormous amount of intellectual work that Luther performed day to day"

Most shameless have been the charges of lewdness and immorality against Luther. His relation to Frau Cotta has been represented as impure. Think of it, a boy of sixteen to eighteen thus related to an honorable housewife! Illegitimate children have been foisted upon him. A humorous remark about his intention to marry and being unable to choose between several eligible parties has been twisted into an immoral meaning. The fact that he gave shelter overnight to a number of escaped nuns, when he was already a married man, has been meaningly referred to. Boehmer has exhaustively gone into these charges, examining without flinching every asserted fact cited in evidence of Luther's moral corruptness, and has shown the purity of Luther as being above reproach. Not one of the sexual vagaries imputed to Luther rests on a basis of fact.

One blemish in the character of Luther that is often cited with condemnation even by Protestants deserves to be examined separately. It is Luther's violence in controversy, his coarse language, his angry moods. All will agree that violence and coarse speech must not be countenanced in Christians, least of all in teachers of Christianity. In the writings of Luther there occur terms, phrases, passages that sound repulsive. The strongest admirer of Luther will have moments when he wishes certain things could have been said differently. Luther's language cannot be repeated in our times. Some who have tried to do that in all sincerity have found to their dismay that they were wholly misunderstood. What Jove may do any ox may not do, says an old Latin proverb.

Shall we, then, admit Luther's fault and proceed to apologize for him and find plausible reasons for extenuating his indiscretions in speech and his temperamental faults? We shall do neither. We shall let this "foul-mouthed," coarse Luther stand before the bar of public opinion just as he is. His way cannot be our way, but ultimately none of us will be his final judges. The character of the duties which Luther was sent to perform must be his justification.

It is true, indeed, that the manners of the age of Luther were generally rough. Even in polite society language was freely used that would make us gasp. Coarse terms evidently were not felt to be such. In their polemical writings the learned men of the age seem to exhaust a zoological park in their frantic search for striking epithets to hurl at their opponent. It was an age of strong feeling and sturdy diction. It is also true that Luther was a man of the people. With a sort of homely pride he used to declare: "I am a peasant's son; all my forbears were peasants." But all this does not sufficiently explain Luther's "coarseness."

Most people that criticize Luther for his strong speech have read little else of Luther. They are not aware that in the, great mass of his writings there is but a small proportion of matter that would nowadays be declared objectionable. Luther speaks through many pages, yea, through whole books, with perfect calmness. It is interesting to observe how he develops a thought, illustrates a point by an episode from history or from every-day life, urges a lesson with a lively exhortation. He is pleasant, gentle, serious, compassionate, artlessly eloquent, and, withal, perfectly pure in all he says. When Luther becomes "coarse," there is a reason. One must have read much in Luther, one should have read all of Luther, and his "billingsgate" will assume a different meaning. If there is madness in his reckless speech, there is method in it. One must try and understand Luther's objective and purpose.

Luther had a very coarse subject to deal with, and Luther believed that a spade is best called a spade. Luther never struck at wickedness with the straw of a fine circumlocution. He believed that he had the right, yea, the duty, to call coarse things by coarse names; for the Bible does the same. Luther has called the gentlemen at the Pope's court in his day some very descriptive names. He did not merely insinuate that the cardinals of his day were no angels, but said outright what they were. He did not feebly question the holiness of His Holiness, but he called some of the Popes monsters of iniquity and reprobates. We shall show anon that in that age there lived men who spoke of the same matters as Luther, who told tales and used expressions that would render their writings unmailable to-day.

The great men of any age are products of that age. Man is as much the creature of circumstances as circumstances are the creatures of men-- Disraeli to the contrary notwithstanding. While men may create situations, they may also be made to fit into a situation. Men have become great for this very reason that they understand the spirit of their age and were able to respond to its call. Back of both men and circumstances, however, stands sovereign Providence, shaping our ends, rough-hew them how we will.

No character-study is just that fails to take into consideration the force of circumstances under which the subject of the study has acted at a given moment in his life. In the case of Luther there is a more than ordinary necessity for adopting this equitable method; for Luther has declared hundreds of times that his stirring utterances and incisive deeds were not the result of long premeditation, or the sudden outbursts of uncontrolled passion,--though neither he nor we would have any interest in denying that he could be angry and did become angry,--but the answer to crying needs of the times. This answer was on many a signal occasion wrung from Luther after much wrestling with God in prayer. He was moved to action by the heroism of that faith which had been kindled in him. He acted in harmony with the particular issue with which he was called upon to deal. Deep compassion at the sight of his suffering fellow-men put strong language on his lips. Between the pleading of friends and the storming of enemies he had no choice but to act as he did. Luther often seems unconscious of the greatness of his acts: he speaks of them as "his poor way of doing things," and invites others to improve what he has attempted. We fear that many in our day fail to see the greatness of the achievement while they stricture the manner of achieving it.

Few men have so utterly lived for a cause, in a cause, and with a cause as Luther. It is the heart of an entire people that cries out through Luther; it is the soul of outraged Christianity that moans in anguish, and speaks with the majesty of righteous anger through Luther. An age of unparalleled ferment that had begun long before Luther has reached its culminating point, and lifts up its strident voice of long-restrained expostulation through Luther. Remove the conditions under which Luther had to live and labor, and the Luther whom men bless or curse becomes an impossibility.

The "imperious spirit" and "violent measures" charged against Luther a careful reader of history will rather find on the side of Luther's opponents. They plainly relied on the power of Rome to crush Luther by brute force. What respect could a plain, honest man like Luther conceive for men like Cajetanus, Eck, and Hoogstraten, who were first sent by the Vatican to negotiate his surrender? For publishing simple Bible-truth the cardinal at Augsburg roared and bellowed at him, "Recant! Recant!" Even at this early stage of the affair matters assumed such an ominous aspect that Luther's friends urged him to quietly leave the city. They did not trust the amicable gentleman from the polished circle of the Pope's immediate counselors. At Leipzig, Eck had been driven into the corner by Luther's unanswerable arguments from Scripture; then he turned to abuse and called Luther a Bohemian and a Hussite, and finally left the hall with the air of a victor to celebrate his achievement in the taverns and brothels of the city, where he found his customary delights learned from his masters at Rome. Can any language of contempt in which Luther afterwards spoke of this doughty champion of Rome be too strong? Among the attendants at the Leipzig Debate was Hoogstraten. This gentleman followed the elevating profession of torturing and burning heretics in Germany,--the territory especially assigned to him. It looked as if he had come to Leipzig to follow up Eck's verbal thunder with the inquisitorial lightning, and make of Luther actually another Hus. When he found that he would not have an opportunity for plying his hideous trade this time, he ventured into territory where he was a stranger: he attempted a theological argument with Luther. He asserted that by denying the primacy of the Pope, Luther had contradicted the Scriptures and defied the Council of Nice, and must be suppressed. Luther called him an unsophisticated ass and a bloodthirsty enemy of the truth. Certainly, that does not sound nice, but such things happen, as a rule, when fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

What was the papal bull of excommunication against Luther, with its list of most opprobrious terms, but an unwarranted provocation of Luther, who had a right to expect different treatment from the foremost teacher of Christianity to whom he had entrusted his just grievance as a dutiful son of the Church? Thus we might go on for pages citing instances of reckless attack upon Luther, often by most unworthy persons, that drew from Luther a reply such as his assailants deserved.

Nobody should make Luther any better than he makes himself. Still, the question is pertinent whether violent polemics can ever be engaged in by Christians with a good conscience. Luther has asserted that, while he hurled his terrible denunciations against the adversaries of the truth, his heart was disposed to friendship and peace with them. Is a state of mind like this altogether inconceivable, viz., that a person can curse another for a certain act and at the same time love him? We think not. In his day this boisterous, turbulent Luther was understood, trusted, and loved by the people. After the publication of the Theses against Tetzel "the hearts of men in all parts of the land turned toward him, and his heart turned toward them. For the religious principles underlying the theses they cared little, for the arguments sustaining them still less. They saw only that here was a man, muzzled by none of the prudential considerations closing the mouths of many in high places, who dared to speak his mind plainly and emphatically, and was able to speak it intelligently and with effect upon a great and growing evil deplored by multitudes. It is such a man the people love and such a man they trust."

McGiffert has the right perception of the Luther of 1517-1519 when he describes him as "the awakening reformer," thus: "He had the true reformer's conscience--the sense of responsibility for others as well as for himself, and the true reformer's vision of the better things that ought to be. He was never a mere faultfinder, but he was endowed with the gifts of imagination and sympathy, leading him to feel himself a part of every situation he was placed in, and with the irrepressible impulse to action driving him to take upon himself the burden of it. In any crowd of bystanders he would have been first to go to the rescue where need was, and quickest to see the need not obvious to all. The aloofness of the mere observer was not his; he was too completely one with all he saw to stand apart and let it go its way alone. Fearful and distrustful of himself he long was, but his timidity was only the natural shrinking before new and untried duties of a soul that saw more clearly and felt more keenly than most. The imperative demands inevitably made upon him by every situation led him instinctively to dread putting himself where he could not help responding to the call of unfamiliar tasks; but once there, the summons was irresistible, and he threw himself into the new responsibilities with a forgetfulness of self possible only to him who has denied its claims, and with a fearlessness possible only to him who has conquered fear. He might interpret his confidence as trust in God, won by the path of a complete contempt of his own powers; but however understood, it gave him an independence and a disregard of consequences which made his conscience and his vision effective for reform."

McGiffert suggests a comparison of Luther with, let us say, Erasmus. Had he been a humanist, he would have laughed the whole thing to scorn as an exploded superstition beneath the contempt of an intelligent man; had he been a scholastic theologian, he would have sat in his study and drawn fine distinctions to justify the traffic without bothering himself about its influence upon the lives of the vulgar populace. But he was neither humanist nor schoolman. He had a conscience which made indifference impossible, and a simplicity and directness of vision which compelled him to brush aside all equivocation and go straight to the heart of things. With it all he was at once a devout and believing son of the Church, and a practical preacher profoundly concerned for the spiritual and moral welfare of the common people." Had Luther considered his personal interests as Erasmus did, he would not have become the Luther that we know. Erasmus in his day was regarded as the wisest of men; Luther in his own view, like Paul, frequently had to make a fool of himself in order to achieve his purpose. For instance, when he wrote against the dullards at the University of Louvain, against the sacrilegious coterie at Rome that was running the Church and the world pretty much as they pleased, or against the brutal "Hans Wurst" . Erasmus and his school of gentle reformers always counseled a slackening of the pace and the use of the soft pedal. Where is Erasmus to-day in the world's valuation? Even Rome, in whose bosom he nestled, and who fondled him for a season, has cast him aside as worthless. Luther lives yet, to the delight not only of Coleridge, but of millions of the world's best men, who, with the British divine, regard him this very hour as "a purifying and preserving spirit to Christianity at large."

Luther was conscious of the difference in the method of warfare between himself and his colaborer Melanchthon. He says: "I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and altogether warlike. I am born to fight against innumerable monsters and devils. I must remove stumps and stones, cut away thistles and thorns, and clear wild forests; but Master Philip comes along softly and gently, sowing and watering with joy, according to the gifts which God has abundantly bestowed upon him,"

Dr. Tholuck, writing on "Luther's rashness," says: "What would have become of the Church if the Lord's servants and prophets had at all times done nothing else than spread salves upon sores and walk softly?" He introduces Luther in his own defense: "On one occasion, when asked by the Marquis Joachim I why he wrote against the princes, he returned the beautiful answer: 'When God intends to fertilize the ground, He must needs send first of all a good thunderstorm, and afterwards slow and gentle rain, and thus make it thoroughly productive.' Elsewhere he says: 'A willow-branch may be cut with a knife and bent with a finger, but for a great and gnarled oak we must use an ax and a wedge'; and again: 'If my teeth had been less sharp, the Pope would have been more voracious.' 'Of what use is salt,' he exclaims in another passage, 'if it do not bite the tongue? or the blade of a sword unless it be sharp enough to cut? Does not the prophet say, "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and keepeth back his sword from blood"?'"

One reflection suggests itself in this connection that goes far to exonerate Luther: the language which the Bible employs against heretics and ungodly men. It calls them dogs, Ps. 22, 20; 59, 6; Is. 56, 10; Matt. 7, 6; Phil. 3, 2; Rev. 22, 15; swine, Matt. 7, 6; boars and wild beasts, Ps. 80, 13; dromedaries and asses, Jer. 2, 23f.; bullocks, Jer. 31, 18; bellowing bulls, Jer. 50, 11; viper's brood, Matt. 3, 7; foxes, Cant. 2, 5; Luke 13, 32; serpents, Matt. 23, 33; sons of Belial, 1 Sam. 2, 12; children of the devil, Acts 13, 10; Satan's synagog, Rev. 2, 9. As regards its language, the Bible, too, agrees with the conditions of the times in which it was written. When God, to express His righteous anger, addresses the ungodly in such terms of utter contempt, He teaches us how to regard them and, on occasion, to speak of them. This "coarse" Luther is not more vehement and repulsive in his speech than the holy Word of God.

We remarked before that we would not apologize for Luther's rashness and coarse speech. Luther's acts are self-vindicating; they will approve themselves to the discriminating judgment of every reader of history. We can appreciate this sentiment of McGiffert : "As well apologize for the fury of the wind as for the vehemence of Martin Luther." The Psalmist calls upon the forces of nature: "Praise the Lord, fire, and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind fulfilling His word." God has a mission that our philosophy does not fathom for the mad hurry and destruction of the whirlwind. How silly it would be to criticize a cyclone because it is not a zephyr! We can imagine a scene like this: The battle of Gettysburg is in progress and a gentle lady is permitted to see it from a distance by a grim, warlike guide, and the following conversation ensues:

"Why, they are shooting at each other! Did you see that naughty man stab the pretty soldier right through his uniform?"

"Yes, madam, that is what he is there for."

"But is it not horrid?"

"Yes, madam, it is perfectly horrid. It is hell."

"But what are they doing this beastly work for?"

"Madam, they are fighting for a principle that is to keep this country a united republic."

"Can anything be more horrid?--I mean, not the principle, but this awful butchery."

"Yes, madam, there is something more horrid than that."

"What is it?"

"If there would be no one to fight for that principle."

War is never a pleasant affair. When men are forced to fight for what is dearer to them than life, they will strike hard and deep. It is silly to expect a soldier to walk up to his enemy with a fly brush and shoo him away, or to stop and consider what posterity would probably regard as the least objectionable way for dispatching an enemy. Luther was called to be a warrior; he had to use warriors' methods. Any general in a bloody campaign can be criticized for violence with as much reason as is shown by some critics of Luther.

Speaking of this series of Popes, the historian Gieseler says: "The succession of Popes which now follows proves the degeneracy of the cardinals as to all discipline and sense of shame: they were distinguished for nothing but undisguised meanness and wickedness; they were reprobates."

Ranke, on the authority of Alegretti, relates of Pope Sixtus IV: "The Colonna family, opponents of the Pope's nephew Riario, was persecuted by him with the most savage ferocity. He seized on their domain of Marino, and causing the prothonotary Colonna to be attacked in his own house, took him prisoner, and put him to death. The mother of Colonna came to St. Celso, in Banchi, where the corpse lay, and lifting the severed head by its hair, she exclaimed: 'Behold the head of my son. Such is the truth of the Pope. He promised that my son should be set at liberty if Marino were delivered into his hands. He is possessed of Marino, and, behold, we have my son--but dead. Thus does the Pope keep his word.'"

Octo Nocens genuit pueros totidemque puellas, Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem,

that is,

Nocens begat eight boys and an equal number of maidens; Rightly, then, Rome will be able to call this gentleman father.

"He carried on two wars with Ferdinand, king of Naples, until the year 1492, and brought forward Renatus, duke of Lorraine, as pretender to his crown. True, he proceeded, as his predecessors had done, to encourage princes and people to undertake expeditions against the Turks; but when Dschem, the brother and rival of the Turkish Sultan Bajazet, was delivered over to him at the head of an army against the Turks, he chose rather to detain him in prison on consideration of an annual tribute from the Turkish Sultan." The story how the Pope got possession of the Turkish prince and refused 200,000 ducats ransom for him because he had received an offer of 600,000 from another party, reads like a story of professional brigandage.

Holy things, religious privileges, had become merchandise with which the Popes trafficked. The chronicler Burchardus relates: "In those days the following couplet was sung in nearly the whole Christian world:

"Vendit Alexander claves, Altaria, Christum, Emerat ista prius, vendere juste potest."

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