and the fear of death. The truth is, that, in this great and good man, a soft and yielding temper was joined with the most inviolable fidelity, and the most invincible attachment to the truth."1 of Luther's. I take this opportunity of introducing one A Letter more specimen of Luther's correspondence at the period of the diet, though it has no relation to the points discussed in this article. It is addressed to Spalatinus at Augsburg. "That the kings, the princes, and the people where you are should rage, and rave against the Lord's Christ, I think a happy omen-much better than if they used flatteries and caresses. It follows: He that sitteth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn. But, when our prince laughs, I see not why we should weep. For he laughs not for his own sake but for our's; that we too, in the exercise of faith, may laugh at the vain counsels of these men. So much need is there of faith to support the cause of faith-But he that began this work certainly did it without our counsel or assistance. He also hath protected it hitherto, and hath directed it above our conceptions: he it is who also will carry on and perfect it, beyond our expectations of this I have no doubt. I know and am sure that he, in whom I believe, is able to do above all that we ask or think. Yet Philip (Melancthon) expects and wishes him to act within the limit of his plans, that he may be permitted to glory. Certainly,' (he 1 Mosheim, iii. 357, 358. is ready to say,) so it ought to have been done so I would have done!' I Philip, forsooth-But enough of this. Be you, my friend, strong in the Lord; and exhort Philip, in my name, not to aspire at God's place. Let him resist that innate ambition of divinity, which was infused by the devil in paradise: for it does not become us. It thrust Adam and Eve out of Eden, and it disturbs us, and destroys our peace." 2 III. LUTHER'S INTERCOURSE WITH THE DEVIL- (Page 231.) It is in his work on private masses (noticed in the page referred to,) that Luther gives the account, of which such an extraordinary use has been made by many of his more bigoted adversaries. Even Bossuet refers to it repeatedly, and is not ashamed to make the following statement of it in the first part of his History of Variations, book iv. § 17. "At this time Luther set forth his book against private mass, where that famous conference is to be found which he formerly had with the angel of darkness, and where, forced by his reasons, he abolishes, like an impious wretch, that mass, which, if we may believe him, he had said for so many years with so much devotion. Wonderful is it to see 1 Ne fiat Deus. He means by taking the charge and care of things upon himself; thinking they must go wrong if they did not go according to his wishes. 2 Melch. Ad. in Luth. how seriously and graphically he describes his awaking, as in a surprise, in the dead of night; the manifest apparition of the devil to dispute with him; the terror he was seized with.... the cogent arguments of the demon, who leaves no respite to the mind; the sound of his thundering voice; his oppressive ways of arguing, when he makes both question and answer to be perceived at once..... By the way, he informs us that the devil frequently attacked him in this manner; and, to judge of the other attacks by this, it is to be believed that he had learned many other things from him, besides the condemnation of the mass.... I mean not to enlarge on so trite a subject: I am satisfied with having observed that God, for the confusion, or rather the conversion of the church's enemies, hath permitted Luther to fall into so great a blindness as to own, I do not say, that he was tormented by the devil, (which might be common to him with many saints ;) but what is peculiar to him, that he was converted by his agency, and that the spirit of falsehood had been his tutor in one of the principal points of his reformation.-In vain," the bishop adds, "do they here pretend, that the devil disputed against Luther, only to cast him. into despair by convincing him of his crime; for the dispute had not that tendency. When Luther appears convinced, and to have nothing more to answer, the devil presses no further on, and Luther rests satisfied that he had learned a truth of which he was before ignorant. If this be true, how horrible to have been tutored by such a master! If Luther fancied it, what illusions, what black thoughts harboured in his mind! If he invented it, how dismal a story was this to glory in!" Remarks. A certain eminent person, on having a very extravagant proposition stated to him, as the result of a long chain of recondite reasoning, exclaimed, 'There is nonsense in it somewhere, I venture to pronounce it.' So, on reading such a statement as this, we need not hesitate to pronounce, There is falsehood in it somewhere -the falsehood either of misapprehension or of misrepresentation. And, what is little to the advantage of the Bishop of Meaux's reputation, that falsehood appears to have been publicly exposed, in a distinct dissertation of the learned Seckendorf a few years before the "Histoire des Variations" appeared.-Even previously to examination we might ask, Was it credible that Luther, after having in every way asserted, for sixteen years, that he had derived his doctrine from the scriptures and from God, should now gratuitously, and without any motive for it, avow that he received a principal point of that doctrine, namely, that in the mass no propitiatory sacrifice was offered to God-from a black inspiration, and the immediate suggestion of the devil? Can any one believe this ?-Then what is the authority for the story? Cochlæus, the contemporary and virulent enemy of Luther, gives a very different version of it: not that Luther had learned from the devil that the mass was no sacrifice, but that that evil agent had suggested to him arguments to prove, that for fifteen years together he had committed idolatry in celebrating mass. After the time of Cochlæus, it would seem, an obscure abbot had first given the present turn to it, and from him it has been retailed by a succession of popish writers down to the abbot of Cordemoi (whom Seckendorf answered,) and Bossuet. Maimbourg was perhaps ashamed of it, for he passes it over in profound silence, even when noticing the work of Luther from which it was professedly derived. case. After all, however, it is a simple question of Facts of the fact: Does Luther make such a statement in the book referred to? And the proper answer and explanation appear to be contained in the following observations. 1. Luther wrote his work in German. The version referred to by these writers (Luth. Oper. edit. Witt. vii. 226 &c.) is by Justus Jonas, and is rather an abstract, than a complete copy, as appears by frequent chasms supplied by an &c. 2. In the very introduction of the story (p. 228.) a material omission occurs. Luther says, "Satan commenced a disputation within my heart." Jonas, in abstracting, leaves out the words within my heart, with a parenthesis which follows them, and soon after another long sentence; all of which, says Seckendorf, demonstrate that Luther spoke of no visible appearance of Satan, but of a temptation carried on by means of his own thoughts. So much for the "manifest apparition" of the devil to him. 3. As to the drift of the "conference," the bishop does not at all help his cause by attempting to obviate the answer which had been given to his statement; it only shews that he was aware of it, but would not allow it its due weight: for from the whole sequel of the passage in question it appears, that the conflict, which Luther "so graphically describes," was with a temptation to despair, drawn from the impieties of which he had been guilty, in the unchristian and idolatrous services that he had performed during many years as a monk. "You know that for fifteen years together you celebrated private masses: what then if such masses were a horri |