this great basis of union was laid, it is obvious also that many of the qualities enumerated would adapt them to each other, rather than the contrary. Each was suited to supply somewhat that the other wanted, or to moderate somewhat in which he was prone to exceed. Each accordingly felt how much he owed to the other, both personally and in the great work which they were jointly carrying on: and hence their attachment was affectionate and uninterrupted.1 Both I am willing here to adopt, perhaps with a little reserve in some clauses, the sentences of a modern biographer of Melancthon. "The profound learning and cultivated taste of the one, the vigorous zeal, independent spirit, and dauntless heroism of the other, alike conduced to dissipate the delusions of the age. adopted the same general views; and each was equally solicitous of removing that veil of Egyptian darkness that overspread the face of the world: yet they were constitutionally different....Truth would undoubtedly have suffered, had the one been less energetic and daring, or the other less moderate and cultivated....If the reformation claimed the steady efforts of true courage and inextinguishable zeal, be it remembered also, that it no less required a proportion of nice discernment, elegant taste, and literary skill: if a superstition, which invested a mortal with the prerogative of infallibility, were to be attacked 1 See Melancthon's acknowledgement of his obligations to Luther, in his will, above, pp. 298, 299. Of Luther's reciprocal regard and obligations we may admit Maimbourg's testimony" Luther, in return, loved him so tenderly, and esteemed him so highly, that by him alone would he suffer himself to be admonished and moderated under excessive irritation."-Ubi supra. A. D. 1546. IX. Further qualities wauch dis and levelled with the dust, the ignorance, which, with its characteristic blindness, supported that superstition, was at the same time to be dethroned and demolished: if old abuses were to be removed, and a new order of things to be introduced and systematized, it was desirable to find not only a nervous arm, but a polished mind, at once to clear away the rubbish of error, and clothe unwelcome novelties with attractive beauty: in a word, if existing circumstances called for a MARTIN LUTHER, they also demanded a PHILIP MELANCTHON." 1 But some of the leading excellencies which distinguished the great father of the reformatinguished tion, and which especially endear him to the truly Christian mind, are wholly passed over in the review which has hitherto been made of his character. We will not affirm quite so much as this of the sterling and uncompromising honesty, which is one of the features that most stands out from the canvass in his genuine portrait: yet even this has not been presented with the prominence that belongs to it. Can any one read over the history of Luther which is now before him, the detail of his actual sayings and doings, without feeling that, if ever honesty and integrity were embodied, it was in his person? He avowed nothing but what he conscientiously believed: he kept back nothing which conscience dictated to be avowed. Can any man of common fairness doubt this? For myself I must confess, that I never read of the man in whom I felt compelled to place a more unreserved reliance, both for the truth of all his declarations and the uprightness of all his intentions. 1 Cox's Life of Melancthon. 501 A. D. 1546. practical. And then, not only was his belief of all he taught most sincere, it was also most thoroughly practical and influential. He himself daily His faith lived upon that bread of life which he broke to others. The doctrines which he preached to mankind were the support of all his own hopes, the spring of all his comforts, the source of his peace of mind, of his strength for service or for suffering in the cause of God, the principles which evermore governed and animated himraised him above the fear of man, and the love of the world, and carried him, with a heroic elevation of soul, through a series of labours and dangers, never perhaps surpassed since the days of the apostle Paul. In the genuine doctrines of the gospel, and especially in that of our being "justified freely, by God's grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus," and this inestimable benefit appropriated only by a living faith, and not by our own works or deservings, he found that which could alone relieve his own conscience from an anxiety amounting, at times, even to anguish,1 and for want of which he saw the whole Christian world around him groaning under a system of delusion, imposition, and bondage the most intolerable and ruinous: and what he had thus found to be the relief and salvation of his own soul, he could not but proclaim to others also: "Neither counted he his life dear unto himself, so that he might finish his course with joy, and the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." Never, probably, did there exist the man who could more truly say with S. Paul," God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our 1 See above, p. 37, and Milner, iv. 323, 418, 419. (293, 398, 399.) CHAP. His spi Lord Jesus Christ, by whom (or by which) the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." And this assuredly, in all its parts, is the state of mind which is especially wanting to us, to give more effect to our ministrationsto draw down a larger measure of the divine blessing upon them. May He, with whom is "the residue of the Spirit," indeed raise up among us-shall I say a new race of such "men of God," by whom he will indeed revive his church wherever it is decayed, reform it wherever it is corrupted, unite it wherever it is divided, and extend in wherever it is not yet planted; that "the wilderness and the solitary place may be glad for them, and the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose !" In short, the great charm of Luther's characrituality. ter, and that from which the other excellencies, admired in him even by those for whom this may have less attraction, derived their origin or their support, was his spirituality. His whole heart and soul were in religion; not in the barren notion of its truths, or in its mere exterior observances, but in the communion with God by which it is produced and cherished; in the love of God and of man, in the " righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost," in the penitence, the faith, the devotion, the deadness to the world, the heavenly mindedness, in which it consists; and in all the practical fruits of righteousness and usefulness which it brings forth. The reader will not forget his correspondence at the period, especially, of the diet of Augsburg, or the account of those retired devotions, by which his Christian heroism was sustained, given by Vitus Theodorius, his companion at Coburg. He will recal to mind, perhaps, the manner in which he has heard Luther speak of his daily exercising himself on the common truths of the catechism: and he will not be displeased to receive the further testimony borne to his devotional spirit, in the oration before referred to, which Melancthon pronounced at his funeral. "Often have I myself gone to him unawares, and found him dissolved in tears and prayers for the whole church of Christ. He commonly devoted a portion of every day to the solemn recitation of some of the Psalms of David, with which he mingled his own supplications, with sighs and tears and often has he declared, that he could not help feeling a sort of indignation at those who, through sloth, or under the pretence of other occupations, hurried over devotional exercises, or contented themselves with mere ejaculatory prayer. On this account, he said, divine wisdom has prescribed some formularies to us, that our minds may be inflamed with devotional feeling in reading them-to which, in his opinion, reading aloud very much conduced. When therefore a variety of great and important deliberations respecting public dangers have been pending, we have witnessed his prodigious vigour of mind, his fearless and unshaken courage. Faith was his sheet anchor, and, by the help of God, he was resolved never to be driven from it." 2 And in this place I think I cannot do better than transcribe, also, the noble application which bishop Atterbury has made to him of a sublime passage of S. Paul's writings. It is in his defence of Luther's discontinuing the observance of the "canonical hours," or that daily 1 Compare his observations on this subject in his commentary on Joel, quoted Seck. iii. 666 (5). See the Oration at length, Seck. iii. 648-650. A. D. 1546. |