to whether he acknowledged the books before him as his writings; and, secondly, as to whether he would retract and recall them. To the first question he replied in the affirmative; in answer to the second, he demanded a day's delay to consider and frame an answer. Many thought he was at length frightened, and would temporise; but on the following day they were abundantly undeceived. All signs of timidity and hesitation had then vanished; he had had time to meditate an adequate reply, and in a speech of two hours, first in German and then in Latin, he expressed his determination to abide by what he had written, and called upon the Emperor and the States to take into consideration the evil condition of the Church, lest God should visit the Empire and German nation with His judgments. Being pressed for a direct answer, yea or nay, whether he would retract, he answered finally in the memorable words "Unless I be convinced by Scripture and reason, I neither can nor dare retract anything; for my conscience is a captive to God's word, and it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I take my stand: I can do no otherwise. So help me God. Amen."

The picture is barely half sketched; many strokes half humorous, half sublime, with a touching quaintness stamping them upon the memory, would be required to complete it. Sympathy with his position, and with his grand and simple daring, expressed itself in numerous incidents. The old warrior Freundsberg, the most gallant and renowned soldier of his day, greeted him as he entered the imperial presence. "My good monk, you are going a path such as I and our captains, in our

But if you are

hardest fight, have never trodden. sure of your cause, go on in God's name: fear not; He will not leave you." On his return to his hotel, Eric, the aged Duke of Brunswick, sent him a silver can of Einbech beer, in token of his admiration and sympathy; and the weary monk, parched with thirst, raised it to his lips, and took a long draught, saying, as he set it down, "As Duke Eric has remembered me this day, so may our Lord Christ remember him in his last struggle." Again Philip, the young Landgrave of Hesse, is seen riding into the courtyard of the inn, leaping from his horse, and as he rushed into Luther's room, greeting him with the words, "My dear Doctor, how do matters go with you?" "My gracious lord, with God's help all will go well," was the reply. They tell me," the Landgrave added, "that you teach that, if a woman be married to an old man, it is lawful for her to quit him for a husband that is younger.' "No, no! Your highness must not say so." Well, Doctor, if your cause is just, may God aid you ;" and seizing the reformer's hand, he shook it warmly, and disappeared as abruptly as he had come.

Luther tarried some days in Worms, and various attempts were made to bring him to a more submissive frame of mind, but all without success. Questioned at length as to whether any remedy remained for the unhappy dissensions which had sprung up, "I know not of any," he replied, "except the advice of Gamaliel: 'If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.' Let the Emperor and the States write to the Pope that they are fully assured that, if the doctrines

so much decried are not of God, they will perish by a natural death within two or three years." Strong in the confidence of the truth he taught, he fearlessly appealed to the future. He was at once courageous and humble courageous in the face of man, and humble before God-the true spirit in which alone the world can ever be reformed.

He received instructions to depart from Worms and return home on the 25th of April. On the following day he set out. He appears himself to have been in high spirits, excited and braced by the conflict in which he had been engaged. A letter which he wrote from Frankfort to his friend Luke Cranach, gives a lively impression of his cheerfulness in the caricature which it presents of the proceedings of the Diet.* "My service, dear Gossip Luke. I supposed that his imperial majesty would have assembled some fifteen doctors or so, and have overcome the monk by argument: but no, nothing of the sort. 'Are the books yours ?'-'Yes.' 'Will you revoke or not?'-'No.' 'Get you gone then.' O blind Germans, what children we are, to let the Roman apes scoff at and befool us in this way. Give my gossip, your dear wife, my greeting; and I trust she will keep well till I have the pleasure of seeing her again. For a short time we must be silent and endure. A little time, and ye shall not see me; and again a little time, and ye shall see me. I hope it will prove so with us." These last expressions, as well as others still more explicit in the letter, show that he was cognisant of the design of his friends to seize and conceal him in some place of safety for a while; but how the design was to be carried out, or * LUTHER'S Briefe. De Wetle, vol. i. p. 588.

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where he was to be placed, seems to have been but indistinctly communicated to him. He has himself narrated the circumstances of his seizure. As he left Eisenach, where he had preached and solaced himself for a single day in the company of his relatives, and was passing a narrow defile near the fortress of Altenstein, two armed horsemen, with armed attendants, rushed upon him and his friends. The waggoner was thrown to the ground. His brother, James Luther, who was of the party, fled and escaped, and Amsdorf was held fast while Luther was hurried away, mounted upon a horse; and after various turnings, with the view of eluding all pursuit, he was safely lodged in the old castle of the Wartburg. The affair was made to assume the appearance of violence for obvious reasons, but in reality Amsdorf was conscious of the intentions of Luther's friends, and he and the waggoner of course were quietly permitted to pursue their way after the horsemen had departed with their prisoner.

Luther's residence in the Wartburg forms a quiet and green resting-place in his life, while it serves to mark the two great divisions into which it falls. From the fair heights of the Wartburg and the pleasant repose of his stay there, we look back with him upon a period of advancing struggle now completed, and forward upon a period scarcely less one of struggle, though of a far less consistent character. Hitherto all the interest of the movement is concentrated in his single figure. It is the monk at Erfurt, and then the preacher at Wittenberg, and then the reformer at Worms, that engage our view. In all these different aspects we see

the progress of a great spiritual conflict, waged almost by a solitary arm against surrounding corruptions. There is scarcely a companion figure to distract our attention. The purely religious impulse communicated by Staupitz is beheld strengthening into the earnest activity of the opponent of indulgences, and finally expanding into a clear and firm logical conviction directed against the whole hierarchical system which sought to extinguish it. The flame, kindled at the light of Scripture quietly read in the convent library, gradually burns into zeal, and at length blazes into triumphant defiance in the face of Pope and Emperor. From this point of advance Luther now looked at once backwards and forwards, and felt that he had done enough. Never was man less of an iconoclast. He fought for certain great religious principles as he apprehended them, but he had little or no wish to destroy existing institutions. Monkery, indeed, in all its shapes, had become hateful to him, and he resolved to attack it still more definitely than he had done; but the old Catholic worship and system, so far as it was national and not obviously Roman, he had no intention of subverting. To such feelings we must trace in great part the marked change in his subsequent career. The principle of revolt had exhausted itself in him with his great stand at Worms, and his naturally conservative convictions began to reassert themselves. We find, accordingly, that his life on from this point presents a far more complex and inconsistent picture than that which we have been contemplating. While many whom the spirit of the times had affected were disposed to go forward in the path on which he had entered, others had already before this begun to turn