1847.] His Treatment of Mystics. 115 flung the ink-bottle at his head. And, like the mark of Rizzio's blood on the floor of Holyrood House, so is the mark of Luther's fractured ink-bottle still shown, on the wall of his chamber in the castle of Wartburg, to the curious traveller who visits that interesting place. Such weaknesses of the Reformer stand in striking contrast with his general boldness of character and soundness of judgment. But the combination of superstitious weakness and great intellectual strength has been by no means singular in times past. Bacon, philosopher as he was, had a firm faith in witchcraft. The Reformer and the Philosopher were the greatest men of their respective ages; but the popular superstitions which they imbibed with their mother's milk, and to which their wondering childhood had listened with eager ears and trembling delight, took a deeper root in their nature than did the commonly received theological and philosophical doctrines which became the study of their more mature years. Luther's mental vision was vigorous and distinct, and his aim practical. He glanced through sophism, subtlety, and pretence. Hence his victories over Rome and her doctors, which still inspired him with confidence and courage. He had no desire to ascend into the clouds, but always strove to secure solid ground beneath his feet, and was well contented to remain there. He had scarcely patience with the mysticism of some of his contemporaries. His mode of treating one of them throws a ray of light upon his character which we may introduce here. One Marcus, a mystic, sought an interview with him. How "After talking a long time," says Luther, "about the talent that must not be hid, and about purification, weariness, expectation, I asked him who understood his language. He answered, that he preached only before believing and able disciples. do you know that they are able?' I asked. I have only to look at them,' he replied, 'to see their talent.' 'What talent, now, my friend, do you see in me?' 'You are still,' he answered, 'in the first stage of mobility; but a time will come when you will be inthe first stage of immobility, like myself.' On this, I adduced to him several texts of Scripture, and we parted. Shortly after he wrote me a very friendly letter, full of exhortations; to which my sole answer was, 'Adieu, dear Marcus.'" It is quite evident that Master Marcus and Doctor Luther were in very different latitudes of thought. Nowhere, we think, throughout Luther's career, did he show more tact and judgment than in his interference in the matter of the insurgent peasants. The masses of the people, debased and ground down by long feudal tyranny, when they saw the spell of authority broken in things spiritual, were not slow to carry the spirit of revolt into things temporal. Luther and his associates had humbled priestcraft, and declared themselves independent of the power that tyrannized over them. But noblecraft required to be humbled likewise. So thought the oppressed and ill-treated peasants of Western Germany. The priest ruled the soul, but the noble ruled the body, and that too with a rod of iron. Until his despotism was levelled to the dust, the indignant peasants looked upon the Reformation as incomplete. They moved in thousands, with all the enthusiasm and desperation of men aroused to a sense of their wrongs. Partial revolts had been made prior to the Reformation, but never had matters assumed so serious an aspect as at this time. Luther was charged as the primary author of these calamities. But no man grieved for them more. The Thuringian peasants were under the leadership of Munzer, a rash and sanguinary man, who paid the penalty of his violence by the forfeit of his life. The Suabian peasants were more moderately advised, and their address and twelve articles of grievance remain a remarkable monument of their innate sense of right, and proper temper in asserting it. Luther undertook the office of arbiter between them and the nobles. This was a delicate task, and not without some danger. But he executed it judiciously and well. In his address in reply to the articles of the peasants, he employs neither evasion nor circum locution in letting the nobles know their faults and oppressions. He is alive to the wrongs of the peasants, and sympathizes with them. He exhorts them to " He exhorts them to "prosecute their enterprise conscientiously and justly." He dissuades them from violence, as being contrary to Gospel law. He shows both parties that neither is "maintaining a Christian cause,' the nobles being guilty of oppression and injustice, and the peasants threatening vengeance for their own wrongs. He recommends them to select delegates to arrange the matter in dispute, in order that fighting, with its sins and horrors, may be averted. We cannot overlook the inconsistency of Luther in his conduct in relation to the polygamy of the Landgrave of Hesse. But we are not desirous of enlarging on it at pres ent. We are far from insisting on perfection of character for 1847.] His Work as a Reformer. 117 the great Reformer. His excellences were many, but he was not without his faults. In social and domestic life he was open, cheerful, generous, and kind. It is interesting to compare Luther at the domestic hearth, with his family and friends, with Luther at Leipsic or Worms, in the arena of disputation or before the tribunal of judgment. His faith in God was vivid and powerful, and his trust constant. His trials in life were many and various, but he held on his way faithfully, and in his day and generation did his work manfully and well. In closing this notice of the career and character of Martin Luther suggested by the book before us, it may not be out of place to offer a remark on the essential basis of the Reformation. What, let us ask, was the fundamental principle of this great Reformation, of which Luther was so powerful an instrument? It was the authority of Scripture alone, with the involved right of private judgment. We perceive this in the replies he constantly gave to the demands made on him to submit and retract. Whether before the individual legate, or before an august assembly of princes, prelates, and nobles, his answer was, "Unless I am convinced from Holy Scriptures, I will not retract." The right of the individual mind to inquire for itself, and the sufficiency of the written word as a rule of faith and practice, these, we say, were the fundamental points of the Reformation. This view of the matter leads us to regard the work of the great Reformer in a correct light. His name and memory are to be venerated; not, however, because he was the rectifier of religious doctrine, but because he was the asserter of human rights. Luther retained doctrines as unsound and erroneous as some which he discarded. Consubstantiation, as far as it is intelligible, is as absurd as transubstantiation. He had not a sufficiently cool temper for a sound theologian. He rejected the Epistle of James because he could not make it harmonize with his interpretation of St. Paul, and stigmatized it as worthless. Justification by faith alone was a favorite doctrine with him. When he assailed the indulgences, he was led to assert this doctrine in opposition to the Papal dogma of superfluous merit, upon which the theory of indulgences was based. From this circumstance it acquired, we think, an undue ascendency in his mind. Melancthon, his intimate friend and fellow-laborer, did not agree with him in his views concerning justification by faith alone. It seems surprising that persons should be found to speak of any peculiar doctrine of the Reformation; since no historical fact is more clearly ascertained, than that there was a diversity of opinion among the Reformers of the sixteenth century. Look at Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Zwingle, Socinus; who requires to be told that among these there was diversity of opinion? But they all agreed in renouncing Church authority, and accepting the Holy Scriptures as their standard, and asserted the right of the individual mind to think and judge for itself in matters of religion. The plain truth is, that Luther and the first Reformers, by asserting this principle and standing on it as they did, laid the basis of the Reformation. And to whatever extent they availed themselves of it, and acted upon it in clearing away errors and abuses, to that extent they commenced and carried on the work of reformation. At best, however, the labors of Luther and his associates can be regarded only as a comThe accumulated errors of fifteen centuries mencement. could not be swept away at once. The work of religious reform has still to be carried on. The simple form of Christianity is yet sadly marred by human additions; and the obligation remains upon us all to do our part in restoring it to its primitive purity and loveliness. J. C. THE author of the work before us seems to consider the political class of whom he treats as an almost neglected topic, until a very recent day. Our own experience leaves us not without a fellow-feeling of the difficulties attending such a research. It is scarcely half a dozen years since that, having engaged to render some account of a portion only -though a very select and respectable one of this obnoxious body, we were met at the threshold by the want of some work speaking of them otherwise than in the most cursory or casual manner. Of this sort are the references by Hutchin * The American Loyalists, or Biographical Sketches of the Adherents to the British Crown in the War of the Revolution; alphabetically arranged, with a Preliminary Historical Essay. By LORENZO SABINE. Boston: Little & Brown. 1847. 8vo. pp. 720. 1847.] Difficulties of the Subject. 119 son, in the latter half of the third volume of his History, to the members of our Massachusetts Assembly who were well affected to the crown; notices so slight and meagre as poorly to satisfy, if they even stimulated, curiosity. Within the brief period, however, just named, have appeared the Journal and Letters of Curwen, a Salem " absentee" (1842), the Life of Peter Van Schaack, of New York (1842), a person of much higher weight of talent and character and a much valued friend of Mr. Jay, and Colonel Simcoe's "Operations of the Queen's Rangers" (1844), a partisan corps made up entirely of Southern loyalists. But earlier than all, be it remembered, were (so far as they went, that customary qualifying phrase) certain sketches of graduates of Harvard of anti-revolutionary principles at the opening of the Revolution. These nameless memorials took refuge under the covers of the American Quarterly Register, a work whose cessation (we should be rather glad to say suspension) many of us yet mourn; and have not come, we are constrained to infer, under Mr. Sabine's notice, though, on the other hand, not a few things in his volume, both facts and dates, puzzle us a little in thus believing. That the class of men in question have not before this been a subject of distinct, separate consideration, amply as the period of the Revolution has been illustrated in our day, is no less matter of wonder than of regret. The delay, too, has been seriously prejudicial to our getting, with the desired precision, points of personal history. One generation at least, if not more, now in every case intervenes between the actors and their biographers. It will be readily seen how greatly it adds to this embarrassment, when those of whom one is in quest have died in a foreign land, and left not a vestige of themselves behind. This is the first form of the twofold difficulty which attends inquiries touching the American Loyalists. The several Hutchinsons and Olivers have become names only of the memory, which may be said also of Richard Lechmere, of Auchmuty, of William Browne of Salem, of Jonathan Sewall, of James Putnam, father and son. No pulse hereabouts now beats with the blood of the lordly Vassals of Cambridge, Boston, and Quincy. Commodore Loring of Jamaica Plain, one of the commissioners of excise, Colonel Murray of Rutland, whose rotundity made him a butt as the Falstaff of his day, and Colonel Royall of Medford (except that he still lives in his bounty to Cam |