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mental nosology. From his answers to the | favour from the objects of the Divine displea. interrogatories which attended his trial, it may sure. We believe this epitome of the Luther be inferred that he was perfectly sane. His an doctrine to be inaccurate, and, but for the mind had been bewildered, partly by a de- greatness of the names by which it is sancpraved imagination and ungoverned appetites, tioned, we should have ventured to add, superand partly by his encounter with questions too ficial. In hazarding a different translation of large for his capacity, and with detached sen- Luther's meaning into the language of the tences from Holy Writ, of which he perceived world we live in, we do but oppose one asserneither the obvious sense nor the more sublime tion to another, leaving the whole weight of intimations. The memory of this guilty, pre-authority on the unfavourable side. The apsumptuous and unhappy man, is rescued from oblivion by the audacity of his enterprise, and still more by the influence it exerted in arresting the progress of the Reformation.

The reproach, however unmerited, fell heavily on Luther. It is the common fate of all who dare to become leaders in the war against abuses, whether in religious or political society, to be confounded with the baser sort of innovators, who at once hate their persons, and exaggerate and caricature the principles on which they have acted. For this penalty of rendering eminent services to the world every wise man is prepared, and every brave man endures it firmly, in the belief that a day is coming when his fame will be no longer oppressed by this unworthy association. Luther's faith in the ultimate deliverance of his good name from the obloquy cast on it by the madness of the Anabaptists, has but imperfectly been justified by the event. Long after his name belonged to the brightest page of human history, it found in Bossuet an antagonist as inveterate as Tetzel, more learned than Cajetan, and surpassing Erasmus himself in eloquence and ingenuity. Later still has arisen, in the person of Mr. Hallam, a censor, whose religious opinions, unquestionable integrity, boundless knowledge, and admirable genius, give a fearful weight to his unfavourable judgment of the Father of the Reformation. Neither of these great writers, indeed, countenance the vulgar calumny which would identify the principles of Martin Luther with those of John of Leyden, although both of them arraign him in nearly the same terms, as having adopted and taught the antinomian doctrines, of which the Anabaptists exhibited the practical results.

The course we are shaping having brought us within reach of the whirlpools of this interminable controversy, roaring in endless circles over a dark and bottomless abyss, we cannot altogether yield to that natural impulse which would pass them by in cautious silence and with averted eyes. The Labarum of Luther was a banner inscribed with the legend "Justification by Faith"-the compendium, the essence, the Alpha and the Omega of his distinctive creed. Of the many, received or possible interpretations of this enigmatical symbol, that which Bossuet and Mr. Hallam regard as most accordant with the views of the great standard-bearer himself, may be stated in the following terms:-If a man be firmly assured that his sins have been remitted by God, in the exercise of a mercy gratuitous and unmerited as it respects the offender himself, but accorded as the merited reward of the great propitiation, that man stands within the line which, even in this life, separates the objects of the Divine

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peal ultimately lies to those whose studies have rendered them familiar with the reformer's writings, and especially with his 'Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians," which he was wont affectionately to call his Catherine de Bora. It must be conceded that they abound in expressions which, detached from the mass, would more than justify the censure of the historian of the "Literature of the Middle Ages." But no writer would be less fairly judged than Luther by isolated passages. Too impetuous to pause for exact discrimination, too long entangled in scholastic learning to have ever entirely recovered the natural relish for plain common sense, and compelled habitually to move in that turbid polemical region which pure and unrefracted light never visits, Luther, it must be confessed, is intelligible only to the impartial and laborious, and might also be supposed to have courted the reproaches which he least deserves. Stripped of the technicalities of divinity and of the schools, his Articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiæ may, perhaps, with no material error be thus explained.

Define the word "conviction" as a deliberate assent to the truth of any statement, and the word "persuasion" as the habitual reference to any such truth (real or supposed) as a rule of conduct; and it follows, that we are persuaded of many things of which we are not convinced: which is credulity or superstition. Thus, Cicero was persuaded of the sanctity of the mysteries which he celebrated as one of the College of Augurs. But the author of the Treatise De Natura Deorum had certainly no corresponding convictions. We are convinced of much of which we are not persuaded, which, in theological language, is a "dead faith." The Marquis of Worcester deliberately assented to the truth, that the expansive force of steam could be applied to propel a vessel through the water; but wanting the necessary "persuasion," he left to others the praise of the discovery. Again, there are many propositions of which we are at once convinced and persuaded, and this in the Lutheran style is a "living or saving faith." In this sense Columbus believed the true configuration of the earth, and launched his caravels to make known the two hemispheres to each other. It is by the aid of successful experiment engendering confidence; of habit producing facility; and of earnest thoughts quickening the imagination and kindling desire, that our opinions thus ripen into motives, and our theoretical convictions into active persuasion. It is, therefore, nothing else than a contradiction in terms to speak of Christian faith separable from moral virtue! The practicar results of that as of any other motive, wil'

vary directly as the intensity of the impulse, and inversely as the number and force of the impediments; but a motive which produces no motion, is the same thing as an attraction which does not draw, or as a propensity which does not incline. Far different as was the style in which Luther enounced his doctrine, the careful study of his writings will, we think, convince any dispassionate man that such was his real meaning. The faith of which he wrote was not a mere opinion, or a mere emotion. It was a mental energy, of slow but stately growth, of which an intellectual assent was the basis; high and holy tendencies the lofty superstructure; and a virtuous life the inevitable use and destination. In his own emphatic words:-"We do not say the sun ought to shine, a good tree ought to produce good fruit, seven and three ought to make ten. The sun shines by its own proper nature, without being bidden to do so; in the same manner the good tree yields its good fruit; seven and three have made ten from everlasting-it is needless to require them to do so hereafter."

If any credit is due to his great antagonist, Luther's doctrine of "Justification" is not entitled to the praise or censure of novelty. Bossuet resents this claim as injurious to the Church of Rome, and as founded on an extravagant misrepresentation of her real doctrines. To ascribe to the great and wise men of whom she justly boasts, or indeed to attribute to any one of sound mind, the dogma or the dream which would deliberately transfer the ideas of the market to the relations between man and his Creator, is nothing better than an ignorant and uncharitable bigotry. To maintain that, till Luther dispelled the illusion, the Christian world regarded the good actions of this life as investing even him who performs them best, with a right to demand from his Maker an eternity of uninterrupted and perfect bliss, is just as rational as to claim for him the detection of the universal error which had assigned to the animal man a place among the quadrupeds. There is in every human mind a certain portion of indestructible common sense. Small as this may be in most of us, it is yet enough to rescue us all, at least when sane and sober, from the stupidity of thinking not only that the relations of creditor and debtor can really subsist between ourselves and Him who made us, but that a return of such inestimable value can be due from Him for such ephemeral and imperfect services as ours. People may talk foolishly on these matters; but no one seriously believes this. Luther slew no such monster, for there were none such to be slain. The error which he refuted was far more subtle and refined than this, and is copiously explained by Hooker, to whose splendid sermon on the subject it is a "good work" to refer any to whom it is unknown.

The celebrated thesis of "Justification by Faith," if really an Antinomian doctrine, was peculiar to Luther and to his followers only in so far as he extricated it from a mass of superstitions by which it had been obscured, and assigned to it the prominence in his system to which it was justly entitled. But if his indig

nation had been roused against those who had darkened this great truth, they by whom it was made an apology for lewdness and rapine were the objects of his scorn and abhorrence. His attack on the Anabaptists is conceived in terms so vigorous and so whimsical, that it is difficult to resist the temptation to exhibit some extracts. But who would needlessly disturb the mould beneath which lies interred and forgotten a mass of disgusting folly, which in a remote age exhaled a moral pestilence? Resolving all the sinister phenomena of life, by assuming the direct interference of the devil and his angels in the affairs of men, Luther thought that this influence had been most unskilfully employed at Munster. It was a coup manque on the part of the great enemy of mankind. It showed that Satan was but a bungler at his art. The evil one had been betrayed into this gross mistake that the world might be on their guard against the more astute artifices to which he was about to resort:

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"These new theologians did not," he said, "explain themselves very clearly.” Having hot soup in his mouth, the devil was obliged to content himself with mumbling out mum, mum, wishing doubtless to say something worse." "The spirit which would deceive the world must not begin by yielding to the fascinations of woman, by grasping the emblers and honours of royalty, still less by cutting people's throats. This is too broad; rapacity and oppression can deceive no one, The real deceit will be practised by him who shall dress himself in mean apparel, assume a lamentable countenance, hang down his head, refuse money, abstain from meat, fly from woman as so much poison, disclaim all temporal authority, and reject all honours as damnable; and who then, creeping softly towards the throne, the sceptre, and the keys, shall pick them up and possess himself of them by stealth. Such is the man who would succeed, who would deceive the angels, and the very elect. This would indeed be a splendid devil, with a plumage more gorgeous than the peacock or the pheasant. But thus impudently to seize the crown, to take not merely one wife, but as many as caprice or appetite suggests-oh! it is the conduct of a mere schoolboy devil, of a devil at his A B C; or rather, it is the true Satan-Satan, the learned and the crafty, but fettered by the hands of God, with chains so heavy that he cannot move. It is to warn us, it is to teach us to fear his chastisements, before the field is thrown open to a more subtle devil, who will assail us no longer with the A B C, but with the real, the difficult text. If this mere deviling at his letters can do such things, what will he not do when he comes to act as a reasonable, knowing, skilful, lawyer-like, theological devil?"

These various contests produced in the mind cf Luther the effects which painful experience invariably yields, when the search for truth, prompted by the love of truth, has been long and earnestly maintained. Advancing years brought with them an increase of candour, moderation, and charity. He had lived to see his principles strike their roots deeply through a large part of the Christian world, and be

to all the other sacred books, as containing more of the language of Christ himself. As he felt, so he taught. He practised the most simple and elementary style of preaching "If," he said, "in my sermons I thought of Melancthon and other doctors, I should do no good; but I speak with perfect plainness for the ignorant, and that satisfies every body. Such Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as I have, I reserve for the learned." "Nothing is more agreeable or useful for a common audience than to preach on the duties and examples of Scripture. Sermons on grace and justification fall coldly on their ears." He taught that good and true theology consisted in the practice, the habit, and the life of the Christian gracesChrist being the foundation. "Such, however," he says, "is not our theology now-a-days. We have substituted for it a rational and speculative theology. This was not the case with David. He acknowledged his sins, and said, Miserere mei, Domine!"

anticipated, with perhaps too sanguine hopes, | same spirit, he preferred the gospel of St. John their universal triumph. His unshaken reliance in them was attested by his dying breath. But he had also lived to witness the defection of some of his allies, and the guilt and folly of others. Prolonged inquiry had disclosed to him many difficulties which had been overlooked in the first ardour of the dispute, and he had become painfully convinced that the establishment of truth is an enterprise incomparably more arduous than the overthrow of error. His constitutional melancholy deepened into a more habitual sadness-his impetuosity gave way to a more serene and pensive temper and as the tide of life ebbed with still increasing swiftness, he was chiefly engaged in meditating on those cardinal and undisputed truths on which the weary mind may securely repose, and the troubled heart be still. The maturer thoughts of age could not, however, quell the rude vigour and fearless confidence, which had borne him through his early contests. With little remaining fondness or patience for abstruse speculations, he was challenged to debate one of the more subtle points of theology. His answer cannot be too deeply pondered by polemics at large. "Should we not," he said, "get on better in this discussion with the assistance of a jug or two of beer?" The offended disputant retired,— "the devil," observed Luther, "being a haughty spirit, who can bear any thing better than being laughed at." This growing contempt for unprofitable questions was indicated by a corresponding decline in Luther's original estimate of the importance of some of the minor topics in debate with the Church of Rome. He was willing to consign to silence the question of the veneration due to the saints. He suspended his judgment respecting prayers for the dead. He was ready to acquiesce in the practice of auricular confession, for the solace of those who regarded it as an essential religious observance. He advised Spalatin to do whatever he thought best respecting the elevation of the host, deprecating only any positive rule on the subject. He held the established ceremonies to be useful, from the impression they left on gross and uncultivated minds. He was tolerant of images in the churches, and censured the whole race of image-breakers with his accustomed vehemence. Even the use of the vernacular tongue in public worship, he considered as a convenient custom, not an indispensable rule. Carlostadt had insisted upon it as essential. “Oh, this is an incorrigible spirit," replied the more tolerant reformer; " for ever and for ever positive obligations and sins!"

But while his Catholic spirit thus raised him above the exaggerated estimate of those external things which chiefly attracted the hostility of narrower minds, his sense of the value of those great truths in which he judged the essence of religion to consist, was acquiring increased intensity and depth. In common with Montaigne and Richard Baxter, (names hardly to be associated on any other ground,) he considered the Lord's prayer as surpassing every other devotional exercise. "It is my prayer," said Luther; "there is nothing like it." In the

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Luther's power of composition is, indeed, held very cheap by a judge so competent as Mr. Hallam; nor is it easy to commend his elaborate style. It was compared by himself to the earthquake and the wind which preceded the still small voice addressed to the prophet in the wilderness; and is so turbulent, copious, and dogmatical, as to suggest the supposition that it was dictated to a class of submissive pupils, under the influence of extreme excitement. Obscure, redundant, and tautologous as these writings appear, they are still redeemed from neglect, not only by the mighty name of their author, but by that all-pervading vitality and downright earnestness which atone for the neglect of all the mere artifices of style; and by that profound familiarity with the sacred oracles, which far more than compensates for the absence of the speculative wisdom which is drawn from lower sources. But the reformer's lighter and more occasional works not unfrequently breathe the very soul of eloquence. His language in these, ranges between colloquial homeliness and the highest dignity,now condensed into vivid figures, and then diffused into copious amplification,-exhibiting the successive phases of his ardent, melancholy, playful, and heroic character in such rapid succession, and with such perfect harmony, as to resemble the harp of Dryden's Timotheus, alternately touched and swept by the hand of the master-a performance so bold and so varied, as to scare the critic from the discharge of his office. The address, for example, to the Swabian insurgents and nobles, if not executed with the skill, is at least conceived in the spirit of a great orator. The universal testimony of all the most competent judges, attests the excellence of his translation of the Bible, and assigns to him, in the literature of his country, a station corresponding to that of the great men to whom James committed the corresponding office in our own.

Bayle has left to the friends of Luther no duty to perform in the defence of his moral character, but that of appealing to the unanswerable reply which his Dictionary contains to the charges preferred against the reformer

by his enemies. One unhappy exception is to be made. It is impossible to read without pain the names of Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer, amongst the subscribers to the address to the landgrave of Hesse, on the subject of his intended polygamy. Those great but fallible men remind his highness of the distinction between universal laws and such as admit of dispensation in particular cases. They cannot publicly sanction polygamy. But his highness is of a peculiar constitution, and is exhorted seriously to examine all the considerations laid before him; yet, if he is absolutely resolved to marry a second time, it is their opinion that he should do so as secretly as possible! Fearful is the energy with which the "Eagle of Meaux" pounces on this fatal error,-tearing to pieces the flimsy pretexts alleged in defence of such an evasion of the Christian code. The charge admits of no defence. To the inference drawn from it against the reformer's doctrine, every Protestant has a conclusive answer. Whether in faith or practice, he acknowledges no infallible Head but one.

life, as the free but unconscious agents of the Divine Will, is the higher design with which he writes, to trace the mysterious inter ention of Providence in reforming the errors and abuses of the Christian Church is his immediate end; and to exalt the name of Luther, his labour of love. These purposes, as far as they are attainable, are effectually attained. M. D'Aubigne is a Protestant of the original stamp, and a biographer of the old fashion;not a calm, candid, discriminating weiger and measurer of a great man's parts, but a warmhearted champion of his glory, and a resolute apologist even for his errors;-ready to do battle in his cause with all who shall impugn or derogate from his fame. His book is conceived in the spirit, and executed with all the vigour, of Dr. M'Crie's "Life of Knox." He has all our lamented countryman's sincerity, all his deep research, more skill in composition, and a greater mastery of subordinate details; along with the same inestimable faculty of carrying on his story from one stage to another, with an interest which never subsides, and a But we have wandered far and wide from vivacity which knows no intermission. If he our proper subject. Where, all this while, is displays no familiarity with the moral sciences, the story of Luther's education, of his visit to he is no mean proficient in that art which Rome, of the sale of indulgences, of the de- reaches to perfection only in the drama or the nunciations of Tetzel, of the controversy with romance. This is not the talent of inventing, Eccius, the Diets of Worms and Augsburg, the but the gift of discerning, incidents which imcitations before Cajetan and Charles, the papal part life and animation to narrative. For M. excommunication, and the appeal to a general D'Aubigne is a writer of scrupulous veracity. council? These, and many other of the most He is at least an honest guide, though his premomentous incidents of the reformer's life, are possessions may be too strong to render him recorded in M. D'Aubigne's work, from which worthy of implicit confidence. They are such, our attention has been diverted by matters of however, as to make him the uncompromising less account, but perhaps a little less familiar. and devoted advocate of those cardinal tenets It would be unpardonable to dismiss such a on which Luther erected the edifice of the Rework, with a merely ceremonious notice. The formation. To the one great article on which absolute merit of this life of Martin Luther is the reformer assailed the papacy, the eye of the great, but the comparative value far greater. biographer is directed with scarcely less inIn the English language, it has no competitor; tentness. To this every other truth is viewed and though Melancthon himself was the bio- as subordinate and secondary; and although, grapher of his friend, we believe that no foreign on this favourite point of doctrine M. D'Autongue contains so complete and impressive a bigne's meaning is too often obscured by denarrative of these events. It is true that M. claration, yet must he be hailed by every D'Aubigne neither deserves nor claims a place genuine friend of the Reformation, as having amongst those historians, usually distinguished raised a powerful voice in favour of one of as philosophical. He does not aspire to illus- those fundamental truths which, so long as trate the principles which determine or per- they are faithfully taught and diligently ob vade the character, the policy, or the institutions served, will continue to form the great bul of mankind. He arms himself with no dis-warks of Christendom against the overweening passionate skepticism, and scarcely affects to estimate, and the despotic use, of human autho. be impartial. To tell his tale copiously and rity, in opposition to the authority of the reclearly, is the one object of his literary ambi- vealed will of God. tion. To exhibit the actors on the scene of

LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1839.]

THIS publication reminds us of an oversight | Such, from his tenth to his sixteenth year in omitting to notice the collection of the works of Richard Baxter, edited in the year 1830, by Mr. Orme. It was, in legal phrase, a demand for judgment, in the appeal of the great nonconformist to the ultimate tribunal of posterity, from the censures of his own age, on himself and his writings. We think that the decision was substantially right, and that, on the whole, it must be affirmed. Right it was, beyond all doubt, in so far as it assigned to him an elevated rank amongst those, who, taking the spiritual improvement of mankind for their province, have found there at once the motive and the reward for labours beneath which, unless sustained by that holy impulse, the utmost powers of our frail nature must have prematurely fainted.

were the teachers of the most voluminous theological writer in the English language Of that period of his life, the only incidents which can now be ascertained are that his love of apples was inordinate, and that on the subject of robbing orchards, he held, in practice at least, the doctrines handed down amongst schoolboys by an unbroken tradition. Almost as barren is the only extant record of the three remaining years of his pupilage. They were spent at the endowed school at Wroxeter, which he quitted at the age of nineteen, destitute of all mathematical and physical scienceignorant of Hebrew-a mere smatterer in Greek, and possessed of as much Latin as enabled him in after life to use it with reckless facility. Yet a mind so prolific, and which About the time when the high-born guests yielded such early fruits, could not advance to of Whitehall were celebrating the nuptial manhood without much well-dressed culture. revels of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, The Bible which lay on his father's table, and the visiters of low degree were defraying formed the whole of the good man's library, the cost by the purchase of titles and monopo- and would have been ill-exchanged for the lies, there was living at the pleasant village treasures of the Vatican. He had been no of Eton Constantine, between Wrekin Hill stranger to the cares, nor indeed to the disorand the Severn, a substantial yeoman, incu- ders of life; and, as his strength declined, it rious alike about the politics of the empire was his delight to inculcate on his inquisitive and the wants of the exchequer. Yet was he boy the lessons which inspired wisdom teaches not without his vexations. On the green be- most persuasively, when illustrated by dear fore his door, a Maypole, hung with garlands, bought_experience, and enforced by parental allured the retiring congregation to dance out love. For the mental infirmities of the son no the Sunday afternoon to the sound of fife and better discipline could have been found. A tabret, while he, intent on the study of the pyrrhonist of nature's making, his threescore sacred volume, was greeted with no better years and ten might have been exhausted in a names than puritan, precisian, and hypocrite. fruitless struggle to adjudicate between antaIf he bent his steps to the parish church, vene- gonist theories, if his mind had not thus been rable as it was, and picturesque, in contempt subjugated to the supreme authority of Holy of all styles and orders of architecture, his Writ, by an influence coeval with the first case was not much mended. The aged and dawn of reason, and associated indissolubly purblind incumbent executed his weekly task with his earliest and most enduring affections. with the aid of strange associates. One of It is neither the wise nor the good by whom them laid aside the flail, and another the thim- the patrimony of opinion is most lightly reble, to mount the reading-desk. To these suc-garded. Such is the condition of our exist ceeded "the excellentest stage-player in all the country, and a good gamester, and a good fellow." This worthy having received holy orders, forged the like for a neighbour's son, who, on the strength of that title officiated in the pulpit and at the altar. Next in this goodly list came an attorney's clerk, who had "tippled himself in so great poverty," that he had no other way to live but by assuming the pastoral care of the flock at Eton Constantine. Time out of mind, the curate had been ex officio the depositary of the secular, as well as of the sacred literature of the parish; and to these learned persons our yeoman was therefore fain to commit the education of his only son and namesake, Richard Baxter.

The Practical Works of Richard Baxter, with a Preface, giving some Account of the Author, and of this edition of his Practical Works; and an Essay on his Genius, Works, and Times. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1838.

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ence, that beyond the precincts of abstract
science, we must take much for granted, if
we would make any advance in knowledge,
or live to any useful end. Our hereditary pre-
possessions must not only precede our acquired
judgments, but must conduct us to them.
begin by questioning every thing, is to end by
answering nothing; and a premature revolt
from human authority is but an incipient re-
bellion against conscience, reason, and truth.
Launched into the ocean of speculative in-
quiry, without the anchorage of parental instruc-
tion and filial reverence, Baxter would have
been drawn by his constitutional tendencies
into that skeptical philosophy, through the
long annals of which no single name is to be
found to which the gratitude of mankind has
been yielded, or is justly due. He had much
in common with the most eminent doctors of
that school-the animal frame characterized

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