in liis presence—doubtless believing that bis morals were as rotten as their own.
Among other things they related, laughing and priding themselves upon it, how, when saying mass at the altar, instead of the sacramental words which were to transform the elements into the body and blood of Christ, they pronounced over the bread and wine these words:
Panis es, et panis manehis; vinum es, et vinum manehis—Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain; wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain.
" Then," said they with a leer, " we elevate the pyx and all the people worship."'^"
Ulric Yon Hiltteu, a famous knight and pamphleteer of that age, in a caustic satire entitled, Boman Trinity," says pungently,
" There are three things which we commonly bring away fi'om Rome : a bad conscience, a vitiated stomach, and an empty purse.
There are three things which Home does not believe in : the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and hell.
There are three things which Eome trades in : the grace of Christ, the dignities of the church, and women."
Luther's eyes were not immediately opened to these things, for he makes this record of himself:
"While at Bome I too was such a fooHsli saint as to run to every church, nook, and corner, believing all their ridiculous stories and detestable falsehoods."
He adds with grim humor, "I likewise said a mass or two at Bome, being at the time very sorry that my parents were not dead, as I would
THE LIFE AND TIMES have liked, by means of my masses and other precious works, to liave delivered tliem from purgatory."
Seckendorf relates that Luther, during the earlier days of his tarry at Eome, wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by a recent decretal to all who should ascend upon their knees the steps of what
" Pilate's Staircase," which was said to have been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Kome, determined to creep to its summit.
But while toilsomely engaged in the accomj)lishment of this meritorious work, he heard a voice thundering from the bottom of his heart those words of Paul which twice before, at Erfurth and at Bologna, had sounded in his ears, " Tlie just shall live by faith."
Pausing in amazement, he rose to his feet, and hastily descending those steps up which he had just been so toilsomely dragging his body, he rushed from the scene, shuddering and ashamed at the depth into which superstition had plunged him.*
Luther had expected to confirm his wavering faith in the holy city ; but the consolation to be gotten by a soul like his, beset with doubt, was small indeed in this mediaeval Golgotha.
He expected to find there earnest piety and sober living ; he found only folly with the cap and bells.
He looked for the evidences of Christian life and example ; he beheld the dissolute morals of an age blacker than the pagan.
The home of the pontifls, he thought he should see model order and abounding* faith, * Seckendorf s Hist, of Liithernnisin, p. charity, and love; lie met robbery and riot in the streets, and beheld open scoffers, profligates, and warriors smeared with gore, dressed in the most gorgeous insignia of the chiirch of the simple Nazarene, and ministering nnblushingly, with all the levity of pagan augurs, at the highest altars of the He expected to find at the doors of the Vatican the perfect refutation of his doubting queries ; he saw written over the whole front of the pontifical palace, Dante's motto of the Inferno
"All hope abandon, ye tvJio enter here.''
Shocked beyond measure by what he heard and saw, Luther wrote home, "It is incredible what sins and atrocities are committed in Home.
They must be seen and heard to be believed; so that it is usual to say, ' If there be a hell, Home is built above it ; it is an abyss from whence all sins proceed.' "*
It had then become a vulgar proverb, that " he who goes to Rome for the first time looks out for a knave ; the second time he finds him
; and the third, he brings him away with him ;" " but now," affirms a curious manuscript addressed to the Christian nobles of Germany, after reciting this proverb—" but now people are become so clever, that they make these three journeys in one."
Machiavelh, who lived contemporaneously with Luther, and who was residing at Florence whear the Saxon monk passed through that city on his route to Eome, makes this remark
" The strongest symptom of the approaching ruin of Christianity is, that * Luther's L. Opp- (W.) XXII., 2376.
THE LIFE AND TIMES tlio nearer people approach tlie capital of Christendom, the less Christian spirit is found in them.
The scandalous examples and the crimes of the court of Rome are the cause why Italy has lost every principle of piety and all rehgious feehng.
"We Italians are indebted principally to the church and the priests for having become impious and immoral."* From what he had himself seen and heard, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Luther carried back with him into Germany the condemnation of Italy and the Boman church.
" In truth," says Michelc^t, "for a mind intent upon the moral view of Christianity, there needed a rare effort of philosophy, a historical enthusiasm hardly to be expected in those days, to discover religion in that world of art, of jurisprudence, of politics, which constituted Italy."t
Infinitely disgusted by the orgies of the Eoman caj^ital, Luther hastily quitted it after a fortnight's tarry, returning to his duties at Wittemberg dispirited, wrapped in thought, and silent as a man in a deep dream.
The grand result of this Eomau tour was, that it emancipated him from many monkish prejudices, fatally shook his faith in the immaculateness of the pontifical see, drove him to lean more firmly than ever upon the Scriptures for suj^port, and thus helped largel}^ to prepare him for that dread conflict with the merciless and impious hierarchy of Eome which was shortly to be inaugurated.
* Machiavelli's Dissertation on the First Dec. of Livy. t MicheK^t's Life of Luther, pp.
It may not be amiss to turn aside at this point from our direct narrative, for the purpose of devoting a chapter to the consideration of what is termed the " revival of learning," always considered by historians to have had an important influence upon the initiatory phases of the Reformation.
That night of ignorance which had spread like a paU over Europe upon the conquest of Eome by the barbarous legions of Attila, and the consequent extinguishment of the last lingering ray of Eoman learning and civility, continued to deepen during the Middle Ages, enlightened only by the twinkling stars of priestly intelligence which shone from a few isolated monasteries, and was ojily broken a few scores of years previous to the Eeformation, by the rising sun of knowledge which then began to redden and broaden upon the intellectual horizon.
It is a remarkable and pregnant fact, sufficiently significant to the thoughtful student, that it was during this period of the most servile, abject ignorance, that the Roman see reached the acme of its omnipotence, hurling its mailed crusaders, gathered from the remotest corners of Christendom, "and melted into the hottest enthusiasm by the eloquence of Roman monks, against the Saracenic conquerors of the holy sepulchre
; enthroning and deposing kings by the simple promulgation of a papal bull ; THE LIFE AND TIMES dictating unquestioned the policy of Europe, and swaying an undisputed sceptre over both the spiritual and the temporal worlds.
But the intellect of man has a natural tendency to expand, to investigate, to satisfy itseK in regard to the rationale of established systems.
This tendency first manifested itself in In that land where the human mind had sunk to the basest depths of bigotry and superstition, it was just that it should make amends to intelligence by first beginning to soar.
Melancholy as the 'condition of Europe continued to be through the fifteenth century, the interests of learning had been grandly advanced by ; both of them men of immense capacity, and enthusiastic in the defence of truth and liberty.
Petrarch early laid the foundations of a noble literature in Theu' writings prove how they yearned after knowledge, how high a value they placed on every ray of light which shone upon them from the past, and how they rejoiced when tlie truths which had taken shape in their solitary dreamings were discovered, demonstrated, and deposited in the records of antiquity.
Dante placed the mightiest popes in his " Inferno ;" Petrarch called with bold perseverance for the return of the church to its primitive condition.
" At the beginning of the fifteenth century, John of Ravenna taught the Latin literature v.itli great renown at Padua and Florence; and Chrysoloras interpreted the masterpieces of Greece at Florence and at Pavia.
" While learning was thus issuing from the prisons in which it had been held caj)tive in EurojDe, the East imparted fresh light to the West.
The standard of Mahomet planted on the walls of Constantinople in 1453, had driven its learned men into exile.
They had carried the learning of Greece with them into The torch of the ancients rekindled the minds that had been for ages quenched in darkness."*
These teachers soon communicated to the impressible Itahans their own enthusiasm for Grecian art and literature.
At the same time the patriotism of Italy was aroused, and multitudes of learned men arose who aspired to restore the noble works of their earHer countrymen of the da^'s of the empire and the reiDubhc to their pristine honor.
" It was necessary that the task of reviving learning should devolve upon men like these; that the value of what had passed into oblivion should be made manifest by men who had much of what was precious to oifer fi*om the treasure-house of their own intellects.
Had the zeal of the mere scholar been employed, the dry bones of the past might have been dug up, the skeleton shown complete, but men would never have been won to gaze upon the cold and fleshless forms thus summoned from the tomb."t
* D'Aubigne's Hist, of the Eef., Vol. t Stebbing's Hist, of the Eef., Vol. I, p.
But the fertile and original minds of sucli thinkers as Dante and Petrarch gave instant life and beauty to the creations which they recovered from the past.
They made the treasures they brought forth bewitchingly attractive to the mind and eye of the meanest of men, and consequently they were instrumental in creating a general thirst forknowledge, which in its turn ere long produced a change in the mental habits of mankind.
Thus it was that Europe grew to be, so to speak, twenty-one years of age—reached its legal majority.
The credulous simplicity of its mental infancy and ignorance began to be replaced by the spirit of inquiry.
Men's eyes partially opened ; and they began to demand a reason for the steps taken by the papacy, that long venerated guide under whose direction they had walked in passive, unquestioning silence when their eyes were closed.
" But we must be careful," says an acute historian, "not to attribute to the cultivation of classical literature too important a place among the efficient causes of the Beformation.
Its chief value consisted in the models which it afforded for the arrangement of thought; and in those beautiful forms of expression which arose from the same delicate perception of the fit and the graceful, as the noble productions of the sculptor and the architect.
In these respects it offered a rich reward to the careful student; he learned thereby to exj)ress his opinions with truer force ; the mirror he held up reflected the images of things a\ ith greater vividness, and he was taught bv what methods the finest minds had communicated to each other as much of wisdom as unassisted reason could acquire.
" These advantages would be rejected by no one who paid due attention to the cultivation of his intellect; and the good thereby produced was sufficient to fill the hearts of enlightened men with the liveliest admii-ation for revived literature."*
Learning then was not the cause of the Reformation, it was simply the vehicle upon which God appointed it to ride to its triumph
; it was the engine of which the reformers made use to spread their truths.
This fact the most superficial resort to history will affirm.
It has been well said by an elegant historian, that " the paganism of the j^oets, as it reappeared in Italy, rather confirmed the paganism of the heart.
The scepticism of the followers of Aristotle, and the contempt for every thing that did not appertain to philology, took possession of many hterary men, and engendered an incredulity which, even while affecting submission to the church, attacked the most important truths of rehgion."
One of the scholastic manuscripts of that day assures us that a philosopher named Peter Pom23onatius publicl}' inculcated at Bologna and Padua the doctrine, that the immortality of the soul and the idea of a Providence were mere philosophical problems.!
* Stcbbing's Hist, of the Keformation, Yol.