sistencies as evidences that Luther was a mere trimmer and

consciously insincere. Far from it. His frank, warm, German temperament was farthest possible removed from the serpent-like sinuosities of the Jesuit. Loyola and Luther stand at everlasting antipodes. It was timidity that led Luther to halt before he had fairly cleared the port of Catholicism. He saw before him a wild, tossing sea of incip. ient and, as he supposed, fatal revolution, threatening the orderly world with a rising flood of anarchy. He saw the Reformation itself rapidly breaking up into contrary and contending tides of opinion. He feared that the bonds of religious, and even of civil, obligation would part, and leave the world a dismantled wreck. After the Peasant War particularly there is in him a manifest disposition to re-establish authority, and to soothe the perturbed times by a return to the old customs, as far as his conscience would allow. Here was his fatal mistake. He who could trust God to carry on the Reformation could not trust him to preserve the fruits thereof. At the most critical juncture of his times Luther's faith failed him. He did not sufficiently credit the piety and intelligence of his dissenting brethren. He did not fully realize the power of the Word, the Holy Ghost, and the mysterious providence of God. He was frightened by the sparks from God's anvil, where a new age was being beaten into shape at a white heat. The dust from God's threshing-floor blinded him. Nothing is more apparent to us than Luther's sincerity in seeking to build into the new temple of Truth the broken fragments of St. Peter's; but the walls were the weaker for it; and future ages had to take them down again to the very foundation. Honestly believing that God's Ark was toppling, he sought to stay it with human hands. He was not smitten, like Uzzah, but Lutheranism was. The Reformation, to be sure, continued to move forward; but it moved under other auspices, and mainly in other lands. Like Lot's wife, Lutheranism, fleeing from Rome, paused to look back, and was changed into an immovable pillar-a landmark, indeed,

upon the fields of history, but no longer capable of heroic and fruitful action.

In his essay upon Ranke's History of the Popes Macaulay sums the final history of German Lutheranism in a few words. "At first," he says, "the chances seemed to be decidedly in favor of Protestantism; but the victory remained with the Church of Rome. On every point she was successful. If we overleap another half-century we find her victorious and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Nor has Protestantism, in the course of two hundred years, been able to reconquer any portion of what it then lost." Carlyle says: "In Luther's own country Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair; not a religion or faith; but rather, now, a theological jangling of argument, the proper seat of it not the heart; the essence of it skeptical contention, which, indeed, has jangled more and more down to Voltaireism, itself."

It is true. Germany has, in the main, either gone back to Roman Catholicism or into mysticism and stark atheism. Like Jonah's gourd, German Lutheranism was smitten and withered in a day.

In searching for the causes leading to such results the road is tolerably plain. It was not Romish persecution; for in the long conflict of arms that followed Luther's death the power of the sword finally remained with the Protestants. Neither was it because of any unfavorable traits in the German character; for from the time that Cæsar first made them known to the world the Germans have been a brave, frank, warm-blooded, and, withal, devout race; and, in the course of history, no people under the heavens have shown a greater capacity for an intelligent and heroic apprehension of true religion.

Macaulay attributes the success of the counter revolution under Loyola to the unity and zeal of Jesuitism, as opposed to the wrangling, mutual persecutions, and want of missionary energy among the Protestants. But these weak

nesses of Protestantism must have been, in their turn, due to some adequate cause. In our opinion, that cause is to be found in the fatal defects inherent in the Lutheran theology. When Luther put his Church under the supervision of the secular powers he smothered the missionary spirit in her breast. No state Church can be, or ever has been, a missionary Church. Her field is bounded by the government under whose patronage she lives. Not only so; a state Church is the easy slope to skepticism. A Church that takes its spirit from irreligious or indifferent governmental magnates, instead of from Christ, the true and only proper head of the Church, soon comes to reflect only the mind of the princes who patronize and control her; and thus an official religion becomes the nurse of skepticism, or, at best, of apathy and neglect.

On the other hand, Luther's retention of so much that was Romish left the bridge standing behind him; and multitudes have found it easy to cross back to the old communion. Luther's theology was at bottom a compromise; and, like all compromises, could only have an ephemeral existence.

Pliny, we believe, it is who tells of a bird that desired Jupiter to give it one web foot and one foot with talons, so that it might both swim in the water and perch on trees. The request was granted, when, lo! the unhappy fowl discovered that it could do neither efficiently. So Lutheranism was neither able to appropriate the divine wisdom of the Scriptures nor the purely human wisdom of organized Jesuitism, and has now fallen into a state of comparative dissuetude.

Luther as a negative theologian was mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Luther as a positive theologian was something worse than a failure-he cumbered and still cumbers the ground.

ARTICLE VIII.

BAPTISTS AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.

THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS, 1500-1643.

BY HENRY C. VEDder.

"IT belonged to the members of a calumniated and despised sect, few in number and poor in circumstances, to bring forth to public view, in their simplicity and omnipotence, those immortal principles which are now recognized as of divine authority and universal obligation. Other writers of more distinguished name succeeded, and robbed them of their honor; but their title is so good, and the amount of service they performed on behalf of the common interests of humanity is so incalculable, that an impartial posterity must assign to them their due meed of praise. That such is the testimony of history with regard to the Baptists of England, and their struggle for liberty of conscience, is conceded by many learned and candid historians. of different communions. † But recently men, neither learned nor candid, have not scrupled to deny that this praise is well bestowed; and others, learned but not candid, have devoted themselves to the ungrateful task of vilifying the men to whom the cause of religious liberty owes so large a debt. It has been vehemently affirmed that Baptists, so far from being pioneers in this cause, were no whit in advance of the Presbyterians and Independents in de

*Price, "History of Non-conformity," I, 522.

† See Stoughton's "Ecclesiastical History of England," II, 232: "The Baptists were foremost in the advocacy of religious freedom, and perhaps to one of them, Leonard Busher, citizen of London, belongs the honor of presenting, in this country, the first distinct and broad plea for liberty of conscience." See, also, Lecky's "History of Rationalism," Chapter iv.

manding soul-liberty; that a part of them avowed persecuting principles and attempted to carry them into practice; that, in fact, the Presbyterians were the only advocates of a genuine toleration in England.* It will be the object of this paper to compare these conflicting statements with the facts of history, as attested by documents of unquestionable authenticity and by the writings of the opponents of the Baptists.

The assertion that Baptists have never persecuted, but have been the consistent advocates of entire freedom of conscience from the beginning, would perhaps have been contradicted with less heat if more pains had been taken to weigh its meaning. It was no doubt convenient, for purposes of controversy, to assume that it had a meaning which the words will not bear. It is not pretended that there has never been a Baptist false to the principles avowed by himself and his brethren. I maintain that no case has ever been produced of a persecutor who held substantially the views of Christian truth now professed by Baptists; but if such a case could be produced, it would not disprove the assertion that Baptists have never persecuted. Until it can be established that some body of Baptists avowed persecuting principles, and attempted to execute them, the assertion will stand uncontradicted. Then, too, the word "persecution" seems to need definition. By it is not meant the expression of mere opinions, in however violent terms, nor the application of ecclesiastical discipline,† but the punish

The writer fears that this may be taken by the readers of the REVIEW as a clumsy attempt on his part to perpetrate a joke at their expense, so he adds two brief quotations from articles by Professor Charles A. Briggs, of the Union Theological Seminary, in the Presbyterian Review: "If the Baptists or Quakers, or any other of the sects, had come into power, they would have been no less intolerant and persecuting than the others." (IV, 663.) "They [the Westminster divines] were not a whit behind the Independents and Baptists in forbearance and charity. . . . The one sought peace, charity, and the unity of Christ's Church. The other sought sectarian strife, division of Churches and families, and toleration in the exercise of all kinds of intolerance." (Ibid., p. 863.)

A Presbyterian journal of high standing declares that Baptists still