subordination of all secular juris diction to his authority, he published these with a commentary, pointing out the impiety of such tenets, and their evident tendency to subvert all civil government.

Forty-one propositions, extracted of the pope's power, as well as the out of Luther's works, were therein condemned as heretical, scandadalous, and offensive to pious ears; all persons were forbidden to read his writings, upon pain of excommunication: such as had any of them in their custody were commanded to commit them to the flames; he himself, if he did not within sixty days publicly recant his errors, and burn his books, was pronounced an obstinate heretic, excommunicated, and delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh; and all secular princes were required, under pain of incurring the same censure, to seize his person, that he might be punished as his crimes deserved.

On the accession of Charles V to the empire, Luther found himself in a very dangerous situation. Charles, in order to secure the pope's friendship, had determined to treat him with great severity. His eagerness to gain this point rendered him not averse to gratify the papal legates in Germany, who insisted, that, without any delay, or formal deliberation, the diet then sitting at Worms ought to condemn a man whom the pope had already excommunicated as an incorrigible heretic. Such an abrupt manner of proceeding, however, being deemed unprecedent

Luther was not in the least disconcerted by this sentence, which he had for some time expected. He renewed his appeal to his ge-ed and unjust by the members of neral council; declared the pope the diet, they made a point of to be that antichrist or man of sin Luther's appearing in person, and whose appearance is foretold in declaring whether he adhered or the New Testament; declaimed not to those opinions which had against his tyranny with greater drawn upon him the censures of vehemence than ever; and at last, the church. Not only the empeby way of retaliation, having as-ror, but all the princes through sembled all the professors and stu- whose territories he had to pass, dents in the university of Wittem-granted him a safe-conduct; and

berg, with great pomp, and in the presence of a vast multitude of spectators, he cast the volumes of the canon law, together with the bull of excommunication, into the flames. The manner in which this action was justified gave still more offence than the action itself. Having collected from the canon law some of the most extravagant propositions with regard to the plenitude and omnipotence

Charles wrote to him at the same time, requiring his immediate attendance on the diet, and renewing his promises of protection from any injury or violence. Luther did not hesitate one moment about yielding obedience; and set out for Worms, attended by the herald who had brought the emperor's letter and safe-conduct. While on his journey, many of his friends, whom the fate of Huss, under similar circumstances, and notwithstanding the same security of an imperial safe-conduct, filled with solicitude, advised and intreated him not to rush wantonly in the midst of danger. But Luther, superior to such terrors, silenced them with this reply: "I am lawfully called," said he, "to appear in that city; and thither I will go in the name of the Lord, though as many devils as there are tiles on the houses were there combined against me."

of this pestilent heresy, who was now in their power, to deliver the church at once from such an evil. But the members of the diet refusing to expose the German integrity to fresh reproach by a second violation of public faith, and Charles being no less unwilling to bring a stain upon the beginning of his administration by such an ignominious action, Luther was permitted to depart in safety. A few days after he left the city, a severe edict was published in the emperor's name, and by authority of the diet, depriving him, as an obstinate and excommunicated criminal, of all the privileges which he enjoyed as a subject of the empire; forbidding any prince to harbour or protect him; and requiring all to seize his person as soon as the term specified in his protection should be expired.

The reception which he met with at Worms was such as might have been reckoned a full reward of all his labours, if vanity and the love of applause had been the principles by which he was influenced. Greater crowds assembled to behold him than had appeared at the emperor's public entry; his apartments were daily filled with princes and personages of the highest rank; and he was treated with an homage more sincere, as well as more flattering, than any which pre-eminence in birth or condition can command. At his appearance before the diet he behaved with great decency and with equal firmness. He readily acknowledged an excess of acrimony and vehemence in his controversial writings; but refused to retract his opinions, unless he were convinced of their falsehood, or to consent to their being tried by any other rule than the word of God. When neither threats nor intreaties could prevail on him to depart from this resolution, some of the ecclesiastics proposed to imitate ing all his attendants, to Wortthe example of the council of Con- burg, a strong castle, not far disstance, and, by punishing the author "tant,. There the elector ordered

But this rigorous decree had no considerable effect; the execution of it being prevented partly by the multiplicity of occupations which the commotions in Spain, together with the wars in Italy and the Low Countries, created to the emperor ; and partly by a prudent precaution employed by the elector of Saxony, Luther's faithful patron. As Luther, on his return from Worms, was passing near Altenstrain, in Thuringia, a number of horsemen, in masks, rushed suddenly out of a wood, where the elector had appointed them to lie in wait for him, and, surrounding his company, carried him, after dismissquite changed the doctrine and discipline of the church at Wittemberg; all which, though not against Luther's sentiments, was yet blamed by him, as being rashly and unseasonably done. Lutheranism was still confined to Germany; it was not got to France": and Henry VIII of England made the most rigorous acts to hinder it from invading his realm. Nay, he did something more; to shew his zeal for religion and the holy see, and perhaps his skill in theological learning, he wrote a trea

him to be supplied with every thing necessary or agrecable; but the place of his retreat was carefully concealed, until the fury of the present storm against him began to abate, upon a change in the political system of Europe. In this solitude, where he remained nine months, and which he frequently called his Patmos, after the name of that island to which the apostle John was banished, he exerted his usual vigour and industry in defence of his doctrines, or in confutation of his adversaries; publishing several treatises, tise Of the Seven Sacraments, awhich revived the spirit of his fol- gainst Luther's book Of the Caplowers, astonished to a great de- tivity of Babylon, which he pregree, and disheartened at the sented to Leo X, in October, 1521. sudden disappearance of their The pope received it very favourleader. ably, and was so well pleased with

kingship, but answered him with great sharpness, treating both his person and performance in the most contemptuous manner. Henry complained of Luther's rude

Luther, weary at length of his the king of England, that he comretirement, appeared publicly a- plimented him with the title of gain at Wittemberg, upon the Defender of the Faith. Luther, 6th of March, 1522. He ap-however, paid no regard to his peared, indeed, without the elector's leave; but immediately wrote him a letter to prevent his taking it ill. The edict of Charles V, severe as it was, had given little or no check to Luther's doctrine; usage of him to the princes of for the emperor was no sooner | Saxony: and Fisher, bishop of gone into Flanders, than his edict Rochester, replied to his answer, was neglected and despised, and in behalf of Henry's treatise; but the doctrine seemed to spread even faster than before. Carolostadius, in Luther's absence, had pushed things on faster than his leader, and had attempted to abolish the use of mass, to remove images out of the churches, to set aside auricular confession, invocation of saints, the abstaining from meats; had allowed the monks to leave the monasteries, to neglect their wows, and to marry; in short, had

neither the king's complaint, nor the bishop's reply, were attended with any visible effects.

Luther, though he had put a stop to the violent proceedings of Carolostadius, now made open war with the pope and bishops; and, that he might make the people despise their authority as much as possible, he wrote one book against the pope's bull, and another against the order falsely called and so religious a nation could be seduced by a wretched apostate friar; that nothing, however, could be more pernicious to Christendom; and that, therefore, he exhorts them to use their utmost endeavours to make Luther, and the authors of these tumults, return to their duty; or, if they refuse, and continue obstinate, to proceed against them according to the laws of the empire, and the severity of the last edict.

the Order of Bishops. The same year, 1522, he wrote a letter, dated July the 29th, to the assembly of the states of Bohemia; in which he assured them that he was labouring to establish their doctrine in Germany, and exhorted them not to return to the communion of the church of Rome; and he published also this year a translation of the New Testament in the German tongue, which was afterwards corrected by himself and Melancthon. This translation having been printed several times, and being in every body's hands, Ferdinand, archduke of Austria, the emperor's brother, made a very severe edict, to hinder the farther publication of it; and forbad all the subjects of his imperial majesty to have any copies of it, or of Luther's other books. Some other princes followed his example; and Luther was so angry at it, that he wrote a treatise Of the Secular Power, in which he accuses them of tyranny and impiety. The diet of the empire was held at Nuremberg, at the end of the year, to which Hadrian VI sent his brief, dated November the 25th; for Leo ✗ died upon the 2d of December, 1521, and Hadrian had been elected pope upon the 9th of January following. In his brief, among other things, he observes to the diet how he had heard, with grief, that Martin Luther, after the sentence of Leo X, which was ordered to be executed by the edict of Worms, continued to teach the same errors, and daily to publish books full of heresies; that it ap-8, and his exhortations here were, peared strange to him that so large it seems, followed with effect;

The resolution of this diet was published in the form of an edict, upon the 6th of March, 1523; but it had no effect in checking the Lutherans, who still went on in the same triumphant manner. This year Luther wrote a great many pieces; among the rest, one upon the dignity and office of the supreme magistrate; which Frederic, elector of Saxony, is said to have been highly pleased with. He sent, about the same time, a writing in the German language to the Waldenses, or Pickards, in Bohemia and Moravia, who had applied to him "about worshipping the body of Christ in the eucharist." He wrote, also, another book, which he dedicated to the senate and people of Prague, "about the institution of ministers of the church." He drew up a form of saying mass. He wrote a piece, entitled, An example of popish doctrine and divinity; which Dupin calls a satire against nuns, and those who profess a monastic life. He wrote also against the vows of virginity, in his preface to his commentary on Cor. i, for, soon after, nine nuns, among | Hadrian. Clement VII's legate whom was Catherine de Bore, represented to the diet of Nu

remberg the necessity of enforcing the execution of the edict of Worms, which had been strangely neglected by the princes of the empire; but, notwithstanding the legate's solicitations, which were very pressing, the decrees of that diet were thought so ineffectual, that they were condemned at Rome, and rejected by the emperor.

eloped from the nunnery at Nimptschen, and were brought, by the assistance of Leonard Coppen, a burgess of Torgau, to Wittemberg. Whatever offence this proceeding might give to the Papists, it was highly extolled by Luther; who, in a book written in the German language, compares the deliverance of these nuns from the slavery of a monastic life to that of the souls which Jesus Christ has delivered by his death. This year Luther had occasion to canonize two of his followers, who, as Melchior Adam relates, were burnt at Brussels, in the beginning of July, and were the first who suffered martyrdom for his doctrine. He wrote also a consolatory epistle to three noble la-vised the Augsburg confession of

dies at Misnia, who were banished from the duke of Saxony's court at Friburg, for reading his books.

In October, 1524, Luther flung off the monastic habit; which, though not premeditated and designed, was yet a very proper preparative to a step he took the year after: we mean his marriage with Catherine de Bore.

His marriage, however, did not retard his activity and diligence in the work of reformation. He re

faith, and apology for the Protestants, when the Protestant religion was first established on a firm basis. See PROTESTANTS and REFORMATION.

After this, Luther had little else to do than to sit down and contemplate the mighty work he had finished; for that a single monk should be able to give the church so rude a shock, that there

In the beginning of the year 1524, Clement VII sent a legate into Germany to the diet which was to be held at Nuremberg. Hadrian VI died in October, 1523, and was succeeded by Clement upon the 19th of November. A little before his death, he canon-needed but such another entirely ized Benno, who was bishop of to ovethrow it, may very well

Meissen, in the time of Gregory VII, and one of the most zealous defenders of the holy see. Luther, imagining that this was done directly to oppose him, drew up a piece with this title, Against the new idol and old devil set up at Meissen, in which he treats the memory of Gregory with great freedom, and does not spare even

seem a mighty work. He did, indeed, little else; for the remainder of his life was spent in exhorting princes, states, and universities, to confirm the reformation which had been brought about through him; and publishing from time to time such writings as might encourage, direct, and aid them in doing it. The