the same side existed in Denmark, but it was crushed by the deposition of Canute, so called Bishop of Gottenburg, in 1614. All these gains, however, were more than counterbalanced by the decline of the Reformed interest in France, after the capture of La Rochelle in 1628; and in England, consequent on the accession of Laud.

To understand the schisms which tore the Lutherans almost to pieces, we must go back. Towards the end of 1545, the excesses of their founder had reached a point which, even to Luther's warmest admirers, seemed almost intolerable. Blessed is the 'man,' wrote he, on the 25th of January, 1546, 'that hath not 'walked in the counsel of the Sacramentaries, nor stood in the 'way of the Zuinglians, nor sat in the chair of them of Zurich.' Those who are not acquainted with the last writings of this unhappy man will do well to attend to the following extract:-

'My little Paul, my little Pope, my little ass, gently, gently!-You are treading on ice: you will break a leg;-you will spoil your beauty, and every one will say, What devil is this Pope? Hollo! The little Popeling is spoilt. . . . An ass knows that it is an ass; a stone knows that it is a stone; and these asses of popelings know not that they are asses. ... If I were master of the empire, I would do up the pope and his cardinals into one packet, and pitch them into the Adriatic; that bath would cure them, I will lay ;-and JESUS CHRIST will be my backer.'

It must, therefore, have been with no small feeling of relief that all respectable Lutherans heard of the death of their chief, after a long agony, on the night of the 16th to the 17th of February, 1546, and that they installed Melanchthon in the vacant throne. Far more inclined than his master to what would afterwards have been called a liberal comprehension,' the new chief was gradually drawn more and more to the side of the Zuinglian reformation. For two years, however, he enjoyed an uninterrupted sovereignty; but on the publication of the Interim,' in 1548, that controversy broke out which shook the Lutheran body to its foundations. Maurice, Elector of Saxony, consulted the divines of Wittenberg and Leipsic on the possibility of complying with the new edict. Melanchthon replied, in the name of all, that in matters of an indifferent nature, obedience was due to the imperial decrees. Hence the Indifferentist or Adiaphoristic controversy. Flaccius Illyricus, with the doctors of Jena and Saxe Weimar, attacked, in the bitterest language, Melanchthon and all the Philippists; and to strengthen their theological position, caused such of their opponents as were within their power to be thrown into prison. To Melanchthon, who died in 1560, succeeded in the government of the Moderate Lutherans, or Saxon party, his son-in-law Peucer, who took another step towards Zuinglianism. The University of Wittenberg published in 1559 the principal works of Melanchthon,

under the title of the Misnian body of doctrine. In 1566, the Elector forbade all his subjects under severe penalties to attack anything contained in it, and condemned in the strongest language, as a pest to the Church, the opinions of the Illyricians, or rigid Lutherans. Encouraged by these proceedings, Peucer and his companions published, in 1571, the celebrated work called Stereoma, in which they openly contradicted Luther's doctrine regarding Consubstantiation, and the Person of our Lord. The whole Lutheran body raised an outcry against this production; and the Elector, frightened by the clamour, convened an assembly of doctors, at Dresden, and commanded them to approve a form of agreement then drawn up, in which the ubiquity of our Lord's Body was expressly denied. Such as demurred to setting their names to this document were imprisoned or banished. All this time the Elector intended to be a rigid Lutheran, and being profoundly ignorant of theology, thought that he was only carrying out the teaching of his master. When his eyes were opened, he convoked, at Torgau, another assembly of doctors, who drew up a form of Concord (Concordien Formel), designed as a means of restoring harmony among Lutherans, and as a protest against the heresies of the Reformed. This made the matter ten times worse than before. Although the Elector took care that the Formulary should be adopted in Saxony, it was rejected by the Lutherans of Sleswig, Holstein, Brunswick, Liegnitz, Pomerania, Hesse, Silesia, and others; Frederick II. of Denmark, as soon as he had read it, threw it into the fire. And even in Saxony it found violent opponents, notwithstanding all the Court influence and threats exerted in its favour. Finally, however, patience and perseverance pre vailed; and at the present day this formulary is added by most Lutheran communions to the Confession of Augsburg, and to the Articles of Smalcald.

On the death of the Elector Augustus and the succession of Christian I. the followers of Peucer and Melanchthon resumed their endeavours. Crellius, the prime minister of that prince, a secret Calvinist, especially exerted himself in the cause. But he had better have remained quiet: Christian I. died; and his minister was executed for his attempt to introduce a new reformation. Let the reader now remember the continual boast which prejudiced writers make about liberality, and hatred of persecution, and agreeing to differ-and then compare them with the banishments, the executions, and the tortures which Illyricians inflicted on Philippists, Zuinglians on both, and Anabaptists on all. It is really wonderful that men like Milner,who, if they had ever opened one of the books which they

pretend to quote, must have been acquainted with these things,could have had the brazen effrontery to speak of the German Reformation as introducing peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Take, for example, these instances; which indeed are almost too shocking to relate, and which far surpass all that the most frantic Protestants have ever feigned or dreamt of the Inquisition. We ought really to apologise for obtruding such horrors upon our readers; but, as party historians have, for the most part, so carefully concealed them, it may not be amiss to drag one or two out to light. In the principality of Anspach, which then probably did not contain more than a hundred thousand souls, between 1575 and 1603, more than 1441 persons were put to the torture, and 474 executed, either by the gallows, the wheel, or the stake. Henry, Duke of Brunswick, burnt so many of his subjects for religious offences, and especially for sorcery, that the neighbourhood of Wolfenbüttel is recorded to have resembled a forest, from the number of stakes erected. At Brunswick, in 1603, a captain, by name Brabant, was excommunicated by the Lutheran preachers. Knowing the fate that was likely to await him, he endeavoured to make his escape, but happening to fall, broke his leg and was taken. He was put to the torture three times, his broken leg included. Finally, his fingers being cut off, his chest was, to use the expression of a contemporary historian, gently broken with a mallet,' his heart was cut out, and his body divided into five pieces. On Michaelmas-day, the preachers, in every church of the town, defended and applauded this barbarity; and, on the 9th of the following December, a public thanksgiving was ordained in recognition of the mercy of God manifested in it. The Lutheran inquisitors were in the habit of ordering in wine and dessert, while the tortures were going on; and more than one instance is recorded in which, while the sufferer, in the midst of his agony, was shrieking out for a cup of water, and adjuring his tormentors by the Wounds of our Lord not to deny it him, the judges, seated at the end of the rack, were pledging one another in good Rhenish wine, and making themselves merry with the

If any one wishes to inquire at length into these terrible proceedings, and to satisfy himself that the very genius of the German Reformation was to be cruel, he has only to read the 'Historia Ecclesiastica et Heretica' of Godfrey Arnold, himself a Lutheran, especially part ii. chap. 17. There he will find the most barbarous punishments to have been of every-day occurrence in the Lutheran states of Germany; nothing, for example, more common than to find a woman sentenced to have her breasts cut off, and then to be drowned, or burnt, or buried alive. No English review could possibly admit, even under the decent veil of a learned language, and in a note, half the atrocities legally perpetrated during that execrable period of German history.

cries of the tortured man. At the execution of Grumbach and the Chancellor Bruck, which took place at Gotha in 1567, and which, in the details of its cruelty (here quite unrepeatable), far surpassed that which we have just mentioned, a zealous Lutheran was so much edified by the procedure, that he bought the scaffold, dripping with blood, and converted it into the floor of his usual sitting-room. These are but two or three instances, out of many thousands; and so much for Protestant humanity.

It is not wonderful that men should have risen up who were determined to spend and to be spent in putting a stop to such horrors, and in bringing about a union, first, between the Lutherans and the Zuinglians; and then, if it were possible, between both and the Roman Church. Their endeavours, fruitless as they were, are neither uninteresting nor uninstructive; and to them we propose to devote the following paper. Out of the number who laboured in the same cause, two will deserve our more especial attention, John Dury, and George Calixtus. The life of the former has never yet been written at length, and we must do as well as we can, from an examination into his own pamphlets, most of them very scarce, and into those local histories of the Lutheran communion which relate his exploits. The biography of Calixtus has been more than once compiled. A very full and accurate account is to be found in the Cimbria Literata' of John Moller (vol. iii. pp.121-210). A still more complete and able life is that which stands at the head of this article, and of which the first volume only has as yet appeared. Dr. Henke does not confine himself to the subject of his biography alone; he gives a sketch of the general state and condition of the Protestant and Reformed communions during the period of which he writes; and devotes a very interesting book to the foundation and progress of the University of Helmstädt, of which Calixtus was the most famous son, and which, at a later period, distinguished itself by its celebrated resolution in favour of the Roman Church. But, first, it will be expedient that we should point out the outward circumstances which seemed to render a reconciliation between Rome and the Lutherans not at all improbable. To do this, we must consider in what state Lutheranism found itself on the death of its first teacher. Such a consideration ought to be more especially interesting to us, on account of the remarkable contrast which the annals of that communion present to the history of our own Church. Every step made by the former has been in a downward direction; every step taken by the latter has been, through God's goodness, a return to better things.

It pleased an English prelate, some time since, writing on

what he called pictorial Crucifixes, to praise the great simplicity of the Protestant communion on the continent. Let us see in what that simplicity consists. Following Dr. Daniel, in the very able work which stands fourth in our list, we will give a glance at the rites and ceremonies which the Lutheran retained from the older religion, and will begin with the fabrics of its churches. Every one who has travelled in Germany knows to what a remarkable extent Lutheran resemble Roman Catholic churches. No general order was ever issued for the removal of the altars; -and in many states, as generally throughout Saxony, all remain. It is more common, however, to find either one, as with us, or two. Where there are two, the high altar, used only on the greatest festivals, retains its ancient position; the inferior altar stands at the entrance to the choir. S. Sebaldus at Nüremberg is thus described by a recent traveller:

'The most remarkable thing is the Catholic aspect still preserved by its Lutheran holders. The choir retains its double stalls, its altar, vested in purple, and with four candlesticks, the exquisite rood, with S. Mary and S. John, and the bronze shrine of S. Sebaldus. The whole church is studded with altars, still vested, and adorned with lights; and near the empty tabernacle, a lamp still burns continually. I chanced to reach Nuremberg on the feast of S. Sebaldus. The church was crowded, every altar lighted, and the shrine and altars garlanded with flowers. It was a very singular exhibition of Protestantism.'1

As is well known, the crucifix and the images of saints have always been retained; and where wanting, supplied. So Luther himself expressly ordered. It is true that, among these images, those of Luther, Melanchthon, John Huss, and Jerome of Prague, are often to be seen; and, in Denmark, it is not unusual that a pastor and his wife, who have distinguished themselves by any benefaction to the parish, should be commemorated in a similar way on the rood screen. So universal is the use of images, that Thiersch, in his work called, 'Vorlesungen über Catholicismus und Protestantismus,' has an eloquent passage in which he endeavours to prove that Lutheranism has been, no less than the Roman Church, the parent of art. Although in Germany the ancient vestments have long since become obsolete, they are retained, as is well known, in Denmark, and, to a still greater degree, in Sweden and Norway. Add to which, that the altar is everywhere the central point of devotion; that reading-desks and their adjuncts are utterly unknown; and that, whether during prayers, or at the so-called

1 Webb's Continental Ecclesiology, p. 106.

2 Works, (which we always quote from the edition of Walch,) vol. v. p. 1574, and vol. xx. p. 212.

3 Vol. ii. p. 315.