young student had been at the university two years, he was looking over the books in the library one day, when he came across a volume that arrests his attention. He has seen nothing like it to this moment. He reads the title. It is a Bible; a rare book, unknown in those days; he is overcome with wonder at finding more in the volume than those fragments of the Gospels and Epistles made familiar to him in his breviary. Elsewhere this author has told us in his history that Luther's father rose from humble circumstances to be a man of means, and frequently invited clergy and schoolmasters to his table. Whatever the influence, he tells us that the boy's mind having taken a grave and attentive cast, the father determined to send him to school, where he was undoubtedly taught the Catechism, Commandments, Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Canticles. He was sent to the Latin school of Mansfield, next to Magdeburg, then to Isenach, and finally to the University of Erfurt, where he found the Bible. Luther became an Augustinian friar in 1505 and was ordained to the priesthood the following year. In 1508 he was appointed lecturer of philosophy at the newly-founded school of Wittenberg. In 1509 he took his B. D., and in 1512 began to preach the Word of God, from which time he bent his energies to overthrow scholasticism, by attacking the theory of penances and superabundant merits. In this he was simply follow

ing in the steps of many schoolmen before him. He still continued to have the deepest reverence for the Church and her institutions as the depository of Divine authority. It is indeed very strange that Luther, a professed philosopher, familiar with the writings of Occham, Scot, Bonaventura, and Thomas Aquinas, should not have heard of the Bible. There had been a printing-press set up in the town of Erfurt before Luther was born. In 1497 Le Long gives an account of editions of the whole Bible printed at Strassburg, Cologne, Venice, Paris, and Nuremberg. The Bible had been printed at Naples, Florence, Placenza, and Venice where eleven complete editions had been finished alone. Maitland in his history of the Dark Ages says: "It would be within the bounds of truth to assert, that the press had issued fifty different editions of the whole Latin Bible, to say nothing of Psalters and New Testaments, (twenty alone belonging to Germany), before Luther was born. A printing press had also been set up at Rome, and the printers had the assurance to memorialize his holiness the Pope, praying that he would help them off with a few copies.

CHAPTER III.

THE GERMAN REVOLT.

To return once more to our argument of cause and effect, we must remember that mysticism was the rival of scholasticism throughout the stormy period of the Middle Ages. The love of the marvelous came from the East through Dionysius who had embraced the tenets of Theosophy. It was Johannes Scotus Erigena who first applied cold and exact logic to religion in the ninth century and the monks and clerks who were discomforted because they failed in analyzing or expressing the mysteries of Divine truth, turned to the extreme of contemplation which they believed would lead to perfect holiness and spiritual knowledge. There were many efforts made throughout the Middle Ages to reconcile these contending elements of the heart and brain. The principles of mysticism foster the self-deifying tendency, which ultimately discovers the soul to be of one substance with God. Mysticism degrades reason and destroys morality. It found its way into Germany in the fourteenth century and through the cloistral labors of her more industrious students developed a highly 26

organized religious theosophy. The only parallel to medieval mysticism is to be found in modern Methodism and other sects who advocate a sensible instantaneous conversion. Mysticism reveals the innate desire for apprehending God, but as this faculty is a gift, it therein fails to propagate and perpetuate itself. It has no genealogy. Mysticism taught that religion was intensely personal and individual, bringing the soul face to face with God, without any intermediary which accords with the subjective principle of Protestantism. Such were Tauler and Thomas à

Kempis, who were thoughtful, conscientious men, peering through the darkness for the light, striving to realize the truth. They had caught the spirit of the Renaissance and boldly preached reformation of life and manners. Previous to reformation there was a larger amount of truth with the mystics than any other party in the Church, but for lack of earthly wisdom which enables men to maintain an even balance, they degenerated and split off into sects, many of which held pantheistic and millennarian theories. Such were the Cathari, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Dancers, the Quietists, the Erastians, Socinians, and Bethlehemites who tried to realize under ascetic conditions some fixed standard of social purity. In their mistaken zeal, these sects and heretics left the Church, because of her alleged slowness in keeping pace with the Renaissance spirit

of independent inquiry, that was sweeping over Italy and the West.

The Waldenses or poor men of the valleys, started an independent movement, upon the principle of selfishness, in trying to realize a social ideal adapted to the wants and ambitions of the local peasantry. They seceded from all restraints of authority, translated the Scriptures into their native patois, and, like the Albigenses, their contemporaries, simply believed in a priesthood of all believers. They appealed to the Third Lateran Council, 1179 A. D., for liberty to expound the Scriptures. The concession could not be granted to such artless, unlettered rustics. John Wiclif, of England, embraced their socialistic theories, and attacked the Church on much the same lines. In the fourteenth century the classical learning of the East was making rapid strides in Italy, and its spirit was fast taking hold of the Church's thought and action. Lorenzo Valla (1440), the humanist, was the first critic to point out the weaknesses of the Latin Vulgate. For this he was censured, and the Roman Church moved to suppress individual criticism, lest the destructive influence should penetrate the mass, who were then unqualified to judge in matters of such deep concern. To Rudolph Agricola belongs the credit of planting the Greek and Hebrew learning in German soil, and the beginning of the fifteenth century witnessed the introduction of university life,