there produced its best fruits, we will here give a sketch of its commencement, and a slight account of the early life of the man who was the great agent in emancipating the human mind.
Among the mighty plans of pope Julius II. was one for erecting at Rome a magnificent temple in honour of the apostle from whom the popes pretend to derive their authority. When Leo X., of the tasteful family of the Medici, ascended the papal throne in the thirty-seventh year of his age, his ambition excited him to continue and complete this noble edifice. But his generosity and extravagance had nearly drained the papal treasury, and, being perfectly ignorant of and careless about religion, he without any scruple had recourse to the old practice of selling indulgences. The archbishop of Mentz was the person selected for managing the holy traffic in Germany; and this prelate chose as his principal agent a Dominican friar named Tetzel, who filled the office of inquisitor, a man of scandalous life, ignorant, and matchlessly impudent. Tetzel, who had been already similarly employed, selected suitable assistants from among the brethren of his own order; and soon, from press and pulpit, streamed forth currents of declamation on the pains of purgatory and the sovereign power of indulgences, for the remission of sins, past, present and to come, however deep might be their dye. The simple, good-hearted Germans gladly purchased the remission of their own sins, and those of their deceased kindred, now languishing in purgatory. The per-centage allowed to Tetzel and his brethren was therefore considerable, and the tavern and the brothel we are assured shared largely in their gains. His ill-fortune at length led Tetzel to the neighbourhood of the newly founded university of Wittemberg, in Saxony; and here Providence had prepared an overthrow, not merely for indulgences, but for the whole system on which the papacy had been erected. The professor of theology at this time at Wittemberg was Dr. Martin Luther. This extraordinary man was born