moral feeling had yet arisen, which in its strength and intensity was to become Puritanism. His projects were undoubtedly mistaken and out of place. Germany was then wholly unfitted for Puritanism, and never, in fact, has had any sympathy with it. Its higher minds, like Luther himself, were already beyond it in the breadth and tenderness of sentiment, and the richness and diversity of natural feeling which animated them. The ignorant mind again was far below it in the rudeness and lawlessness of its moral desires. Carlstadt, therefore, as the sequel sufficiently showed, could bring nothing but social disorder to Germany and disgrace to the Reformation; and Luther knew this with his clear, upright, and comprehensive appreciation of the national temper. After he fairly saw, therefore, that the danger was real, he made up his mind to quit his shelter in the Wartburg, come what might, and resume the direction of affairs at his old post.

He re-entered Wittenberg on the 7th of March 1522. In the course of his journey thither, he tarried a night at Jena, and a very interesting account has been preserved of his interview with two students on their way to Wittenberg to see him. The little parlour in the Black Bear, with the reformer in his knightly disguise -red mantle, trunk hose, doublet, and riding-whip— seated at table, his right hand resting on the pommel of his sword, while his eye was directed intently to a book which turned out to be the Hebrew Psalter; the respectful demeanour of the students before the supposed knight, and their gradually opening familiarity as he offered them seats at the table and a glass of beer; their communication to him of their intention to

proceed to Wittenberg to see Martin Luther, and his pleasant fence with them on the subject; the entry of two merchants, and the free opinion which they express of Luther; the landlord's hints and the disclosure-all present a vivid sketch of the frank manly bearing, genuine heartiness, and humorous kindly ease of the great Augustine, that is worth a hundred descriptions.

*

He mounted the pulpit on the first Sunday after his return, and delivered his opinion on the principles which should guide them in the great religious changes through which they were passing the reality of sin and salvation-the necessity of faith and love; these were the main things to be concerned about, and not mere novelties or changes for their own sake. "All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient. Some things must be, others might or might not be. Faith must be. But in such things as might or might not be, regard must be paid to the profit of others."+ On Monday he again preached, particularly on the subject of the Mass. "It was bad and detestable, especially as it had claimed to be a sacrifice, and to stand between the people and God. His wish was that all private masses throughout the world were abolished, and only the common evangelical mass celebrated. But love must reign in the matter. No one must draw or tear another away by the hair, but leave God to do His own work, for the plain reason that no man has in his hand the hearts of others, and no man can make his words pass deeper than the ear. The word of God must be freely preached, and this word must be left to work in the heart. Then, and not till then, should the work * WORSLEY'S Life, vol. i. pp. 341-345. + Ibid., p. 355.

of abolition begin."* In a similar spirit he handled the monastic life and the subject of images, the sacrament in both kinds, and confession. Earnestness of principle, moderation in practice, was the key-note of all this remarkable series of sermons, listened to by crowded audiences day after day. Carlstadt and his associates were awed for the time; such images as had not been destroyed were replaced; the Latin service continued to be used, with the omission of the words which designated it a sacrifice; and peace was restored. Luther himself earnestly desired further changes, and especially that the communion service should be in the German tongue, but he would not yield as yet to Carlstadt's principle of this being essential. "This is carrying the thing too far," he said; "always new laws— always laying down this as a necessity, and that as a sin." Thus the strictly Puritanical spirit was wholly alien to him; he would have nothing of it.

We cannot trace the changing relations which henceforth ensued between Luther and Carlstadt, now in fierce opposition, and now in comparative harmony, the latter ever and again returning to Wittenberg to shelter himself behind the good-nature and the really tolerant temper of the reformer. The seeds of fanaticism, which he and the Zwickau preachers had sown, soon began to ripen, and to assume a serious expression. The people, ignorant, oppressed, and unhappy, caught the free doctrines of the new preachers, translated them into the most crude and practical application to their own circumstances, and then proceeded by force of arms to carry them out and assert their rights. The * WORSLEY'S Life, vol. i. p. 356. +MICHELET'S Life, p. 137.

*

armed peasantry, with Munzer at their head, hold a definite relation to the Zwickau fanaticism and Carlstadt; and yet there were distinct features of a purely political kind in the peasant insurrection, which it would take a long time to unravel. Nothing strikes one more remarkably in reading over the articles of complaint with which they began their movement, than the singularly moderate and sober spirit which characterises them. They move our sympathy now, and they moved Luther's sympathy at the time, notwithstanding all his strong feelings of the duty of submission and of the horrors of insurrection. He is nowhere greater, indeed, than at this great crisis in the history of the Reformation, in the manner in which he threw himself between the opposing parties, and, on the one hand, set before the nobles and princes of Germany the unchristian cruelty of many of their actions; and, on the other hand, warned the peasantry of the disgrace and disaster that would attend the armed assertion of their rights. No part of Luther's conduct was less understood or appreciated at the time. In England, by such men as Sir Thomas More, he was identified with the disorders against which he was struggling so nobly, and which, save for him, might have been tenfold more perilous to the national interests of Germany.

Words of higher wisdom than those by which he sought to restrain the approaching violence it is impossible to conceive. Addressing, in the first instance, the princes and nobles, he warns them that it was their long oppression and exactions that had roused the

* MICHELET'S Life, p. 161-165.

G

peasantry beyond endurance.

"It is quite clear that we have no one upon earth to thank for all this disorder and insurrection but you yourselves. . . In your capacity, as secular authorities, you manifest yourselves the executioners and spoilers of the poor. You sacrifice everything and everybody to your monstrous luxury, to your outrageous pride; and you have continued to do this until the people neither can nor will endure you any longer. . . . . It is you, it is your crimes that God is about to punish. If the peasants, who are now attacking you, are not the ministers of his will, others, coming after them, will be so. You may beat them, but you will be none the less vanquished. You may crush them to the earth, but God will raise up others in their place. It is his pleasure to strike you, and he will strike you. You fill up the measure of your iniquities by imputing this calamity to the gospel and to my doctrine. Go on with your calumnies: you will ere long discover their injustice. You refuse to learn from me what is the gospel, what my doctrine; there are others at your door who will teach you what both the one and the other are, in a way very different from mine, if you mend not speedily the error of your ways. Have I not at all times earnestly, zealously, employed myself in recommending to the people obedience to authority, to your authority, even tyrannous as it has been-intolerable as it has been? Who has combated sedition more energetically than I have always done? It is for this that the prophets of murder hate me as bitterly as they do you. You persecuted my gospel by all the means in your power, yet all the while that gospel