numerous Anabaptists in Strassburg, and for many difficulties encountered by Bucer in his attempts to create a reformed church within which all could agree to worship. Moreover, from the last quarter of the 15th century, the thought that there was a German nationality had been growing. The creation of this wider patriotism was due to innumerable causes, economic and other, but it was undoubtedly fostered by many of the Humanists. It was this new impulse that fanned the flame against the Papal Curia, that hailed the beginnings of the Lutheran movement as a patriotic revolt of Germany against Italy, and that incited the burghers of Strassburg to nail Luther's Ninety-five Theses on the door of every church and parsonage in the city.

The town was in the throes of the beginnings of a movement for reformation. Matthew Zell, a 'people's priest,' had begun preaching the 'gospel' to crowded audiences in the Minster. Wolfgang Capito (Köpfel), recently appointed to the provostship of the collegiate church of St Thomas, was known to be sympathetic, although he had not plainly declared himself. He had difficulties with his canons. Caspar Hedio (Heid) had just been called to be a 'people's priest,' and his eloquent addresses were moving his audiences deeply. The higher clergy and perhaps the majority of the town council were still opposed to sweeping ecclesiastical changes, but the mass of the people were being roused to favour the Reformation. Bucer's arrival, and his open declaration of his marriage, created both interest and alarm. Had he not been the son of a burgher, his position might have been dangerous. At first he lectured privately in Matthew Zell's house; but he was soon permitted to deliver lectures on the New Testament in the Minster which drew great audiences. In December the town council made him a salaried lecturer; in March, 1524, the 'gild' of the gardeners selected him as priest of their chapel of St Aurelia; he was recognised as one of the seven priests in Strassburg who represented the Reformation. Wolfgang Capito at last declared himself; Jacob Sturm had grown powerful in the town council; the two, with Bucer, were recognised as the leaders of the reforming party, which from this time gained more

and more power in the city, until Strassburg became a bulwark of the Reformation in South Germany and a centre from which it spread.

Bucer's work in Strassburg and in Germany cannot be fairly understood without some mention of Sturm, who was his life-long and powerful ally. Jacob Sturm, 'the glory of the German Patriciate,' as he was called, was a member of a 'patrician' Strassburg family which, since the middle of the 14th century, had furnished an almost uninterrupted series of distinguished members to its town council. He had been carefully educated both in theology and jurisprudence, and had besides studied the classics. Called in 1522 to draft a scheme for the reorganisation of the University of Heidelberg, he made two professorships in Scholastic Theology give place to chairs for the expounding the Old and New Testament. This sufficiently defines his position. From 1525 to 1552 he ruled Strassburg, and, if some of the Princes be excepted, he was the most influential layman among the leaders of the reformation movement. In one respect he was far in advance of his time. He believed in freedom of conscience in a very thorough way. A favourite phrase of his was: Within the realm of faith there ought to be no lordship of Pope or of Emperor.' His application of the principle in actual statesmanship was that, apart from a few fundamental principles, it was better to agree to differ upon doctrines than to quarrel and separate on their account. whole public life was spent in an endeavour to promote the cause of evangelical union. He and Bucer worked together for peace; and his influence on the character of the theologian can scarcely be over-estimated.

His

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From the first, Bucer occupied a peculiar position in Strassburg, and his work was different from that of his colleagues. He had no gift of eloquence. He could not move the multitude in sermons or popular addresses. His influence lay among thoughtful, educated men. great learning, combined with his ability to see both sides in most disputed questions, made his controversial writings valuable and effective. They continually appear on lists of prohibited books issued by ecclesiastical authorities and by governments which were trying to crush the reformation movement. They were

prohibited in England so early as 1529; and, in spite of the prohibition, were read in Oxford, Cambridge and London. Bucer had also great power of organisation; but his organising work in Strassburg itself was hindered by the presence and power of an unusually large number of Anabaptists and Mystics, and the toleration extended to them by the town council. Michael Sattler, and other Swiss Anabaptists, banished from their native land, found refuge in Strassburg, whose town council had pronounced for liberty of conscience. Caspar Schwenkfeld, the curious mystic, made Strassburg his head-quarters; Melchior Hoffmann organised there his enthusiastic body of Melchiorites. The Mystics thought that all ecclesiastical organisation, curbing individual spontaneity, was a sin; the one opinion common to all the numberless sects of Anabaptists was their protest against a state church supported and in any way controlled by civil authorities. The presence in the city of numberless French and even Italian refugees, flying from persecution, would have made the task of organising a common church life difficult; the power and numbers of Anabaptists and Mystics made it impossible.

Bucer was more successful in his endeavours to establish a good educational organisation for the town. What might be called a school-board was established, consisting of four members of the town council and two of the pastors. They were empowered by the council to see that the whole town was properly provided with schools; they were to appoint and, if need be, dismiss teachers and to pay them suitable salaries; and they were to supervise the routine of lessons, the school-books used, and the teaching. It was their duty to visit every school once a month. They were to report to the town council. A High School was founded in 1538, and an institution, which afterwards grew to be the University, in 1544. Bucer himself wrote the catechism which supplied religious instruction.

But, if Bucer was never completely successful in his attempts to bring all evangelical Christians in Strassburg within one ecclesiastical organisation, his services as an organiser were in request all over South Germany and in Hesse; and his advice was sought in Switzerland, Flanders, France, and even in England. The progress of

the reformation movement soon brought its leaders face to face with a number of important and difficult practical questions. The common thought and fact was that the Reformation was established when the civil rulers of a kingdom, principality or free city, declared that they had abandoned religious obedience to Rome; and this declaration could take various forms. The usual way within the German Empire was to prohibit the performance of Mass in the medieval meaning of the word. This done, difficulties of a practical kind at once presented themselves, three of which called for immediate solution. What were to be the relations between the civil rulers and the new Protestant pastorate? From what revenues were the pastoral and educational agencies, newly called into being, to be supported? How could Christian worship be regulated liturgically in such a way that the devotional spirit would not suffer in the substitution of the Protestant principle of the priesthood of all believers for the medieval thought of the mediatorial priesthood of the clergy?

The first difficulty was practically the most important, and had to be settled at once, if only in a rough imperfect way. Nor could any general principle be applied in the attempt, except that the supremacy of civil over ecclesiastical jurisdiction had to be assumed. But that assumption did not settle everything. Even Henry VIII of England never dreamt that he possessed the right to ordain a priest. Further, no one method of settlement sufficed. Germany was divided into hundreds of civil authorities which claimed absolute rule; and their relation to the new religious condition of things had to be worked out separately. Perhaps in most cases matters settled themselves without reference to external mediation; but in very many some one was called in to advise the magistracy and the new pastorate, and no one so frequently as Martin Bucer, whether as arbiter or as adviser. The ecclesiastical ordinances of more than a score of South and Middle German towns were drafted by him; and the correspondence between him and Philip of Hesse shows that Bucer's advice was sought and followed in all the Landgrave's ecclesiastical legislation.

The second problem was at first settled with comparative ease. The money needed for the new pastorates

and educational establishments came from the old medieval foundations; the old funds being diverted to the new uses, while life-interests were preserved. Each civil authority, whether princely or civic, acted in the way that seemed best, without any arranged uniformity of action. But after the decision of the Diet of Speyer (1529), that no ecclesiastical revenues were to be diverted from their medieval uses, and after the restoration of the Reichskammersgericht at Augsburg in 1530, the Protestants had to come to some common understanding with each other, and lay down principles which could be pleaded publicly in justification of their application of old ecclesiastical revenues to Protestant uses. The matter was widely and seriously discussed, and never failed to be debated at meetings of the Schmalkald League. Perhaps no one contributed more to the settlement of this very important practical question than did Bucer. The Protestant states did not adopt all his ideas, but the Free Cities did; and the pleas prepared for the Reichskammersgericht generally followed his main line of argument -that the Protestant civil authorities were applying those revenues to the purposes for which they had been originally intended.

The hardest and perhaps the most thankless task of Bucer began in 1530, when he endeavoured to bring together the two divisions into which Protestantism was separating, owing to the disputes between Luther and Zwingli about the doctrine of the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Supper. The two theologians were very dissimilar, and many things besides differences in theology made it hard for the one to understand the other; but the doctrinal differences were the ostensible ground of separation, and it was these that Bucer had to overcome. In most English accounts of his labours he is at one time called a moderate Zwinglian, at another a favourer of the Lutheran doctrine. The truth is that Bucer had a theory of his own, from which he never wavered, and which did really mediate between the theories of Luther and Zwingli; and it was this that made him so largely successful in the end.

Both Luther and Zwingli found in the medieval doctrine of the Last Supper an error which they believed most harmful to the spiritual life. It asserted, they