of good cheer, you shall not die! Though God can never want sufficient occasion against us, yet he willeth not the death of a sinner: he hath pleasure in his life, not in his death. He hath pardoned the greatest of sinners: never assuredly will he cast you from his presence, or suffer you to die overwhelmed with sin and grief. Give not way to your sadness, nor become your own destroyer; but trust in God, who is able to kill and to make alive!"-While Luther thus addressed him, Melancthon began a little to revive. Henceforward he gradually improved in health, and was eventually restored. "I should have died," he himself afterward said,* "but for Luther's visit to me.”

In a will which he a short time before composed under symptoms of this attack of illness coming on, and with the presentiment of death on his mind, he thus speaks of Luther. "I return my thanks to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, first because from him I received the knowledge of the gospel, and next because of his singular kindness shown to me on a thousand occasions; and I desire my family to regard him as a father. Having found him to be endowed with a distinguished and heroic genius, with many great virtues, and with eminent piety and learning, I have always honoured and loved him, and thought his friendship worthy of the most assiduous cultivation." “Such friendships as I here record," he beautifully adds, "I am persuaded are not to be extinguished by death, but will soon be renewed in heaven, where they will be enjoyed to much greater advantage, and yield unspeakably higher delight."

1

CHAPTER XXII.

Progress of the Reformation-Germany-Denmark and Sweden-France-Austria-Italy-Luther's WritingsAgricola and Antinomianism.

IMPORTANT instances have recently occurred of the progress of the reformation; others present themselves to our notice. Eckius and Cochlæus, in their correspondence with Cardinal Contarini, bear striking testimony to the extensive and firm establishment which the new system had obtained in Germany. The former dolefully complains, "That all homage was withdrawn from the saints; that the miserable souls in purgatory had no longer any prayers offered for them; that the sacred rites of the mass were discontinued; that images were insulted and broken; that the treasures of the church were alienated, the pope and the priesthood held in contempt, and Rome taken for the Babylonish harlot; that celibacy was at an end, and monastic vows were violated." He reproaches the blindness and inertness of those who had not extinguished the conflagration while it was a mere spark-which was the case when he disputed with Carolstadt and Luther at Leipzig. Even the German prelates, he says, now laughed at the wide-spread mischief, and secretly hoped to be delivered by its means from the exactions and impositions which they had suffered from the court of Rome.-Cochlæus, writing from Breslaw about the same time, says, "Our prelates in Germany, whether through cowardice or despair, sit still, and suffer everywhere the curtailment of their revenues. The Lutherans, on the contrary, spare neither care, nor labour, nor expense, but devise every means of establishing their sect. They ordain superintendents, a new species of bishops, to whom they give the power of ordaining priests and deacons in their respective districts. They diligently train their youth in the schools in devotion to their own doctrine, and in abhorrence of the papists; and, that they may acquire confidence in preaching to the people, they exercise them in

declamations taken from the postils* of Luther. They assign handsome incomes, drawn from the abolition of the private masses, to their ministers and to schoolmasters; so that it will be extremely difficult to eradicate from the minds of men the pestilent evil which has been implanted at school, and cherished in public assemblies, and by the reading of books at home. To God, however, all things are possible !" The discerning reader will receive these accounts with great satisfaction, perceiving nothing in them but what bears honourable testimony to the diligence, the piety, and the discretion of the Protestants.

The reformation of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, with the connivance of the Archbishop of Mentz and Magdeburg, has been before noticed. The proceedings at Halle in the duchy of Magdeburg are more particularly recorded. Superstition had been there carried even beyond the ordinary limits, and the accumulation of pretended relics was immense. The writer of an account of Halle states that there were collected in the churches forty-two entire bodies of saints; and portions of others to the amount of eight thou sand one hundred and thirty-three. The following are a few specimens of the relics. A portion of the earth out of which Adam was created; fragments of Noah's ark, of the bodies of the patriarchs and prophets, and of the Virgin Mary's clothing at the time of the miraculous conception; the body of one of the infants slain by Herod, and those of seventeen out of the eleven thousand virgins whom the ignorance of the times (mistaking the name Undecimilla for undecim millia) had constituted the companions of S. Ursula. Once in the year a public exhibition was made of all these relics, and to those who then "devoutly contemplated them, offering at the same time prayers to God, and giving money to the collegiate church," indulgences were granted extending to many thousands and millions "of years and days." The very indefinite and nullifying clause, however, was added, that those persons should have the benefit of these indulgences "who were found worthy to enjoy it!"As early as the year 1523, the head of a monastery, named Nicholas Demuth, encouraged the introduction of evangelical truth at Halle: and in 1527 George Winckler

* Expositions of the gospel and epistles.

† See p. 98.

boldly preached it, though he paid the forfeit of his life for so doing. The inhabitants subsequently importuned the archbishop, "on their knees," to allow them the liberty of hearing the Word of God; but without success. At length, in 1541, they took the liberty of themselves inviting Justus Jonas from Wittemberg; who became their superintendent. His labours were successful, and the Protestant faith ob tained a permanent settlement at Halle.

About the same time the reformation was publicly estab lished in the cities of Ratisbon and Hildesheim. In each place opposition was made by the bishop and clergy, but they were unable to withstand the tide of public opinion.

But the palatinate of Bavaria was a still more important accession to the Protestant cause. It was at this time under the government of Otho Henry, a younger member of the Bavarian family; who afterward succeeded to the electorate, which is connected with the palatinate of the Rhine. This prince had for some years favoured the Protestant principles, but he seems to have waited for that more general reformation of the church which he and many others had hoped might be effected by a council. Seeing, however, less and less prospect of so desirable an event, he now avowed himself, and, with the advice of his chaplain, Michael Diller, formerly an Augustinian monk, and of Osiander from Nuremberg, introduced the reformation throughout his territories.

Events at this time occurred also in the bishopric of Naumberg, in Thuringia, which tended to confirm and perfect the reformation in that diocess: and, after some disputes, Amsdorf, a friend of Luther's, was advanced to the bishopric, on the nomination of the Elector of Saxony, to the exclusion of Julius Pflug, who had been hastily and irregularly elected by the chapter. Amsdorf was a man of family, and had now been for eighteen years superintendent of Magdeburg.

The elector in this instance was disposed to outstrip the zeal of his divines. He proposed to appoint a bishop deprived of all the civil authority which his predecessors had exercised, and to suppress the canons and cathedral clergy altogether. Luther and others, however, dissuaded him from such measures, pointing out several things of an external nature which were best administered where such

officers existed; and also the inconveniences which had arisen from destroying the connexion of superior families with the church, and thus removing the stimulus afforded to the cultivation of learning among persons of rank.

The Protestants at this period had much confidence in the King of Denmark; but some distrust, it appears, had grown up among them of the King of Sweden. The same illustrious prince, Gustavus Vasa, who had in so vigorous and decisive a manner introduced the reformation into Sweden nearly twenty years before,* still reigned over that country; and Luther on this occasion undertook to write to him, exhorting him to constancy in the true doctrine, and to good understanding with the Elector of Saxony and the other Protestant confederates. Gustavus replied to Luther in terms of respect and affection. The fact, he said, had been, that his advances had met with apparent neglect, and he thought it not therefore becoming his dignity to repeat them. It would be very acceptable to him, however, if through Luther's means any arrangement could be made between him and the confederate princes, conducive to the honour of God, the maintenance of divine truth in his dominions, and the best interests of his family and successors. In consequence a correspondence was opened, in the course of which Gustavus wrote to the elector and the landgrave in the pious strain of which the following extract furnishes a specimen. "Nothing," he says, "could be more to his heart's desire than that, through the Divine illumination, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, the preaching of the pure and saving Word of God should become universal, and be crowned with the greatest success: that he himself, as a Christian prince, and a member of the catholic church, had taken earnest care to promote this object in his kingdom; and he doubted not but God would protect his work against all adversaries: as, however, both force and fraud were to be apprehended, he conceived it to be just, pious, and Christian to enter into alliance for the defence of their religion; and therefore, at the instance of his brother and neighbour Christiern King of Denmark, he professed himself ready to treat with the German princes upon that subject.' It is gratifying to trace such marks of ingenuous piety and zeal for religion in

*Vol. i. 202-206.