supposed to have lasted many hundred years, and opened the eyes of thousands, to make them see errors, which otherwise they never would have dreamt of. A wonderful instrument of such a mercy! This, finally, made nuns and friars sally out of their solitary cells, and listen to a more charming summons, than the melancholy sound of their mattin-bell.For their great apostle took care to convince them of the impossibility of living single, by words as well as example.

SECTION IV.

Luther declares that God revealed the things he taught His doctrine of free will, and his rules relating to marriage.

Let us hear Luther's admirable and new doctrine. Tom. 7, fol. 274. "I was the first to whom God vouchsafed to reveal the things which have been preached to you; and certain I am, that you have the pure word of God.” Now, if Martin Luther was the first, to whom God vouchsafed to reveal the things which he preached, it follows that the apostles never preached, nor knew his doctrine; which makes me think his works will never pass for canonical scripture, or the revealed word of God, though we have his own word for it. But what follows is a very extraordinary piece, and will certainly very much edify the reader.

He

"I, Martin Luther, by the grace of God ecclesiastes at Wittemburg, to the Popish bishops grace and peace. This title I now assume with the utmost contempt of you and Satan; that you may not plead ignorance. And should I style myself an evangelist by the grace of God, I could sooner prove my claim to this title, than any of you to that of bishop. For I am certain that Christ himself calls me so, and looks upon me as an ecclesiastes. is the master of my doctrine. Neither doubt I, but in the great day of accounts he will be my witness, that this doctrine is not mine, but the doctrine of God, of the spirit of the Lord, and of the pure and sincere gospel. So that should you kill me, ye blood suckers, yet you will never extinguish either me or my name, or my doctrine, unless Christ be not living. Since now I am certain that I teach the word of God, it is not fit I should want a title for the recommending of this word, and work of the ministry, to which I am called by God; which I have not received of men, nor by men, but by the gift of God, and the revelation of Jesus Christ-And now I declare beforehand, that for the time to come, I will not honour you so far, as to condescend to submit myself or my doctrine to your judgment, or to that of an angel from heaven;" Tom. 2, fol. 305. 2.Here we have a piece of insolence and arrogance never to be paralleled, nay, even to a degree of phrensy and madness.

We see here a miserable wretch flying in the face of superiors, trampling upon authority,

and even assuming to himself that infallibility, which he would not allow to the church of Christ. But God, who resists the proud, confounded his arrogance, by permitting him to fall not only into the most impious absurdities in point of doctrine, but even scandalous irregularities in practice. For, though it cost him nothing to mimic sometimes the style of a Paul, he could never attain the strength of a Paul to resist the buffets of Satan. His marriage, doubly sacrilegious, by engaging a person consecrated to God in the same crime, betrayed a weakness of so scandalous a nature, as not only gave great offence to his friend Melancthon (1. 4. Epist. 24.) and the sober part of his new reformed church, but will be an everlasting mark of dishonour to the reformation, and a convincing proof that the hand of God had no part in it. For, if the tree may be known by its fruit, and the man by his works, we may justly conclude, that the world, the flesh and the devil, were far more prevalent in this pretended reformer, than the spirit of God. Was it by divine inspiration that he lived at open defiance of all ecclesiastical authority? Was it by divine inspiration that he broke vows, threw off his religious habit, and with it all the religious state, to which he had consecrated himself for life? Finally, was it by the impulse of the Holy Ghost, that he indulged himself in wantonness, when he should have been singing the divine office, as the rule of his order required of him? I know not whether these be proper marks of an apostolical

spirit and a man called by Christ to the work of the ministry; but I am sure they are marks of a very fresh date, and wholly unknown to antiquity. For we read, indeed, of the apostles, who were married before their vocation to the apostleship, that they left their wives to follow Christ; and many other apostolical men have done the same after their example. But it is to Luther's Reformation alone we owe those excellent patterns of persons breaking through the most sacred engagements of holy orders and religious vows, to become fathers of children not altogether in a spiritual way; and very different from that of the apostle of the Gentiles, who begot the Corinthians, and many other spiritual children in Jesus Christ, through the gospel, 1 Cor. iv. 15.

It seems, however, that Martin Luther found it, if not more edifying, at least more comfortable to join the state of matrimony with his apostolical labours, and call Kate Boren to his assistance in the ministry. For I question not but her good example brought in a plentiful harvest of female converts; and as to Luther's practice it was but a natural consequence to his doctrine. For to what end did he preach down celibacy and vows of chastity, if he had intended to keep them? He was not ignorant that the marriage of priests was forbid by the established laws of the Church, and breaking vows by the laws of God. But flesh and blood prevailed, and it was these he had the confidence to boast of. The charms of liberty, and a female companion gave him wonderful lights

into matters of religion, and made him discov er errors unseen before. Without these ex traordinary helps to quicken his zeal, and spur him on to undertake the glorious work of the Reformation, he might have continued a private monk, until death; and as utter a stranger to all Popish errors, as when he first made his solemn vows.

Luther has taken care to inform us of the true state of his soul the year before he set up his separate communion. "Out of thy own mouth I judge thee, thou wicked servant," Luke xix. 22. For in the preface to his first tome, p. 6, he tells us how his soul was at that time affected towards God. "I was mighty desirous," says he, "to understand Paul in his epistle to the Romans. But was hitherto deterred, not by any faint-heartedness, but by one single expression in the first chapter, viz. therein is the righteousness of God revealed. For I hated that word, the righteousness of God: because I had been taught to understand it of that formal and active righteousness, by which God is righteous, and punishes sinners, and the unrighteous. Now knowing myself, though I lived a monk of an irreproachable life, to be in the sight of God a sinner, and of a most unquiet conscience, not having any hopes to appease him with my own satisfaction, I did not love, nay, I hated this righteous God, who punishes sinners, and with heavy muttering, if not with silent blasphemy, I was angry with God, and said, as if it were not enough for miserable sinners, who were lost to all eternity