Luther had not been long in his retirement before he was called from it by the intemperate zeal of one of his disciples, Carlostadt, who, with some others, fired with iconoclastic indignation against the use of images in the churches, began to excite considerable tumults in Saxony, by throwing down and breaking the images, and despoiling the sacred pictures which adorned the church of Wittemberg. From these acts of sacrilege and fanatical intemperance, Carlostadt encouraged the people to every kind of violence, even to mutiny and sedition.* Luther, who had no very inveterate dislike to the use of images as helps to devotion, the only use, in fact, for which the Church had ever designed them, opposed the fury of these reformed Goths and Vandals with his usual fortitude and courage. "But, perhaps," says Dr. Maclaine,† "the true reason of Luther's displeasure at the proceedings of Carlostadt, was, that he could not bear to see know, that this holy man of God employed any portion of his time in such profane pastimes as hunting, they would be led to withhold many of those panegyrics with which they honour the memory of the Reformer; but, fortunately, most of those who would despise Martin Luther on this ground, are not likely to know, or to believe, that so good a man did ever commit so great a sin as that of hunting; and hence all parties, churchmen and dissenters, may consistently continue to fall out about who shall have him as their peculiar apostle. * Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. iv. p. 59. + Note [] Mosh. Eccles. Hist. iv. p. 59. another crowned with the glory of executing a plan which he had laid; and that he was ambitious of appearing the principal, if not the only conductor, of this great work. This is not a mere conjecture. Luther himself has not taken the least pains to conceal this instance of his ambition; and it appears evidently in several of his letters." From this period, the Reformation may properly be said to have taken effectual root. The limits of the present work will not allow me to trace its progress with minuteness, through the various countries in which it now began to spread. We may, however, observe, that the new doctrines "diffused themselves with the ra > pidity of an inundation.”* Besides Frederic, elector of Saxony, already mentioned, John Frederic, his successor, and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, became Luther's disciples. Within the space of four years, these doctrines spread from Hungary and Bohemia to France and England. Gustavus Ericus, king of Sweden, and Christiern III., king of Denmark, declared in favour of Lutheranism; and, by degrees, it spread into Brandenburgh, Pomerania, Mecklenburgh, Holstein, &c. Poland adopted, to a considerable extent, the religious opinions of Socinus; *Sig. Pastorini's General History of the Christian Church, P. 204. and though the Catholic religion has been since made the established creed, the Poles seem never to have had a great relish for the Roman faith.* As early as the year 1528, four Cantons of Switzerland embraced the reformed creed of Zuinglius; but these cantons afterwards coalescing with Geneva, again changed their opinions for those of Calvin. The dogmas of this last named reformer were received in many parts of Germany; and were propagated with a zeal not very creditable to the honour, or even the Christianity of their founder. Munzer,† deserting from Luther, spread the opinions of the anabaptists in Suabia, and other provinces of Germany and the Low Countries. Calvinism was propagated in Scotland, by the furious zeal of John Knox; while the faith of Luther was * Vide Robinson's Ecclesiastical Researches, p. 554, et seq. + When Munzer assumed the title and functions of fa pastor, Luther demanded who had given him commission to preach. "Should he answer, 'God,' let him prove it," said Luther, "by a manifest miracle: for when God intends to alter any thing in the ordinary form of mission, it is by such signs that he declares himself." Sleiden, lib. v. ed. 1555, 69. It was singular that this thought never occurred to Luther himself, when he began to oppose the ordinary forms of mission in the Catholic Church. But the founders of all sects and churches have ever talked in this strain, when they have themselves got, as they suppose, a good and fair footing. It is then "stand by thyself: for I am holier than thou."—"The Temple of the Lord are we!" fostered, in England, by the lust and avarice of Henry VIII., till it came to be publicly received and conscientiously believed by some succeeding monarchs!!. f. These various classes of reformed Churches again split into that multiplicity of inferior sects and parties, which the doctrine of the right of private judgment in matters of faith is so eminently calculated to promote, and which has been the means of producing one of the most interest❤ ing works against Protestants ever published ;* which, however, was answered by another equally curious production in defence of protestantismit oddly one, -mab feeqata api ber *ཐཱ་་»f. <¥at%b This rapid view of the rise of the reformed churches shall be concluded by the estimate which Mr. Gibbont has made of the real value of the Reformation, Speaking of the early Reformers, this singular historian says: A philosopher who calculates the degree of their merit, and the value of their reformation, will prudently ask from what, articles of faith, above or against our reason, they have enfran -"Bossuet's History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches. M. J. Basnage's History of the Reformed Churches. chised the Christians; for such enfranchisement is, doubtless, a benefit, so far as it may be compatible with truth and piety. After a fair discussion we shall rather be surprised by the timidity, than scandalized by the freedom, of our first Reformers. With the Jews, they adopted the belief and defence of all the Hebrew scriptures, with all their prodigies, from the garden of Eden to the visions of the prophet Daniel; and they were bound, like the Catholics, to justify against the Jews the abolition of a divine law. In the great mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation, the Reformers were severely orthodox: they freely adopted the theology of the four, or the first six councils; and with the Athanasian creed, they pronounced the eternal damnation of all who did not believe the Catholic faith. Transubstantiation, the invisible change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument and pleasantry; but instead of consulting the evidence of their senses, of their sight, their feeling, and their taste, the first Protestants were entangled in their own scruples, and awed by the words of Jesus in the institu * The opinions and proceedings of the Reformers are exposed in the second part of the general history of Mosheim: but the balance, which he has held with so clear an eye, and so steady an hand, begins to incline in favour of his Lutheran brethren. |