vices of the laity, without dreading their recriminations. Yet a reform in manners is impossible, unless you first get rid of those swarms of pious idlers who feed at the expense of the industrious citizen, and unless you abolish those superstitious ceremonies and absurd dogmas, equally calculated to shock the understanding of reasonable men, and to alarm the piety of religious ones."

The Cardinal of Sion was a man of talents, who had raised himself from obscurity into high political influence with the court of Rome. The strength of his understanding made him feel that his remonstrant was in the right, and he promised to lay the statement before the Pope. But the Cardinal was more a politician than a priest, and he shrunk from offering so obnoxious a topic to the stately and luxurious selfishness of Leo X. The son of the Medici had more engrossing objects than the purification of the church, to aggrandize his family; strengthen himself as a monarch by foreign alliances; distinguish his name as that of the great Mecenas of the age; adorn his city by noble monuments of the arts, and in St Peter's build a temple worthy of the pride of a religion which claimed the supremacy of mankind.

But the period had arrived when profound study, continued interchange of opinion with the leading philosophers and divines of his country, and holy convictions, matured during many years, had fitted Zuingle for the solemn and public commencement of his work of immortality.

For this perilous effort, which required the heroism of the age of the martyrs, the great Reformer chose a prominent occasion. The history of the Convent of Ginsiedlen was a striking compound of the wild legend and fantastic miracle of the dark ages. In the ninth century, a monk of noble family, probably disturbed by some memory of the furious excesses of the time, determined to hide himself from human eyes, in the most lonely depths of Switzerland. The spot which he chose was even then called " The Gloomy Forest." Here he built a chapel and a hermitage, and after a solitude of twenty-six years, closed his career under the daggers of a banditti. A miracle sanctified his death. Two crows, his only associates in the wil

derness, flew on the track of the murderers, screaming round them, until, in the market-place of Zurich, the popular suspicion was fixed on the robbers, and the crime was finally confessed and avenged.

Pious curiosity was now attracted to the forest; wealth followed curiosity, and a monastery rose on the foundation of the hermitage. A further miracle attested the good-will of the "Virgin," to whom, and to the "Martyrs of the Theban legion," the establishment was dedicated. The Bishop of Constance, with some of the neigh bouring prelates, had arrived to consecrate the convent, when, in the night before the ceremony, the bishop heard superhuman voices chanting hymns in the church. His pious scruples started at the guilt of adding superfluous consecration to that shrine which had been already declared holy by celestial homage; and he next day refused to perform his function. He was, however, entreated so perseveringly, that he was on the point of mingling the human office with the divine, and he approached the altar. But a mysterious oracle pronounced in the ears of the terrified prelate, and the wondering people, " Cessa, cessa, frater; divinitus capella consecrata est"-" Forbear, brother; the chapel is divinely consecrated." The rebuked bishop shrunk before the supreme sanctification, and the multitude returned home, only to bring the fruits of sanctity that monkism loves, to the altar thus conspicuously hallowed. The robber-nobility and princes of the tenth century, who had many an act of blood to atone, washed away their crimes by giving a portion of their pillage to the convent of Ginsiedlen. In the spirit of a time which always combined temporal ambition with spiritual influence, the Abbot of this opulent establishment soon disdained the humble rank of a pastor, and demanded to be a sovereign. Through what intrigues the dignity was obtained, we cannot now inquire; but under Rodolf of Hapsburg, the founder of the Austrian monarchy, the Abbot of Ginsiedlen took his place among the princes of the " Holy Roman Empire." Where opulence and rank were fully obtained, sanctity could not be far. An image of the Virgin was discovered accordingly, more genuine than all the past, more

wonder-working and more productive to the sacred treasury. The glory of this wooden Empress of the Heavens, healer of diseases, and extractor of money, beamed with undiminished radiance for nearly half the duration of Rome, and even in the sixth century from her rising in the eyes of the faithful, her splendours had scarcely approached their setting.

Once every seven years the conse cration of the chapel was solemnized with great pomp. The event itself had been fixed in the Papal history by a bull of Leo the Eighth, and the details had been preserved for posterity in a volume entitled, "De Secretis Secretorum." It was there stated to have been performed "according to the Romish ritual in such cases made and provided; the Saviour himself officiating, attended in this ceremony by the necessary number of angels, evan gelists, martyrs, and fathers." To give farther evidence of which fact, "our Saviour concluded the ceremony by striking the fingers of his right hand into a stone at the chapel door." The marks were worshipped, kissed, and prayed to by thousands of pilgrims, down even to the year 1802, when the stone fell, and the holy marks never recovered the disaster.

On the festival of this "Consecration of the Angels," Zuingle ascended the pulpit. The concourse was immense from the whole range of Switzerland, and every ear was turned to catch the panegyric of the "Mighty Mother" and the "Host of glory" that had descended to pour the oil of holiness on that selected spot of the world. But a mightier strength, that was to break the power of the idol, was there. With the sincerity and the zeal of a new apostle to the Gentiles, Zuingle thundered on them.

"Blind are ye," exclaimed he, "in seeking thus to please the God of Earth and Heaven. Believe not that the Eternal, He whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain, dwells especially here. Whatever region of the world you may inhabit, there He is beside you, He surrounds you, He grants your prayers, if they deserve to be granted. It is not by useless vows, by long pilgrimages, by offerings to senseless images, that you can obtain the favour of God-that you can resist temptation-repress guilty desires-shun injustice-relieve

the unfortunate or console the afflicted. Those alone are the works that please the Lord.

Alas, alas! I know our own crime. It is we, the ministers of the altarwe who ought to be the salt of the earth, who have plunged the ignorant and credulous multitude into error. To accumulate treasures for our avarice, we raised vain and worthless practices to the rank of good works, until the people neglect the laws of God, and only think of offering compensation for their crimes instead of renouncing them. What is their language? Let us indulge our desireslet us enrich ourselves with the plunder of our neighbour-let us not fear to stain our hands with blood and murder. When all is done, we shall find easy expiation in the favour of the Church.

"Madmen! Can they think to obtain remission of their lies, their impurities, their adulteries, their murders, their treacheries, by a Litany to the Queen of Heaven? Is she to be the protectress of all evil-doers? Be deceived no longer, people of error! The God of Justice disdains to be moved by words which, in the very utterance, the heart disowns. The Eternal Sovereign of Truth and Mercy for gives no man his trespasses, who does not forgive the trespasser against himself. You worship the saints. Did those sons of God, at whose feet you fling yourselves, enter into heaven by relying on the merits of others? No

It was by walking in the path of the law of God, by fulfilling the will of the Most High, by facing death rather than deny their Lord and Saviour!

"What is the honour that you ought to pay those saints? Imitate the holiness of their lives-walk in their footsteps-suffer yourselves to be turned aside by neither seduction nor terrors.

"But in the day of trouble put your trust in none but God, who created the heaven and earth with a word.

"At the coming of death, invoke no name but that of Christ Jesus, who bought you with his blood, and who is the ONE and ONLY MEDIATOR between God and man!"

This discourse struck at all the pillars of Popery at once. Absolution for money-pilgrimages-the worship

of the Virgin-and the intercession of the saints. It was listened to in min gled astonishment, wrath, and admiration. Its effect upon the multitude was to inflame in some instances the jealousy which no prudence of the pastor could have stifled; of the monks, some were indignant, yet inany heard in it only the doctrines that had been the subject of long meditation among themselves. In some instances, the conviction was immediate and complete, and pilgrims who had brought offerings to the shrine, now refused to join in what they had learned to be an act of impiety, and took their offerings home. The great majority were awakened to a sense of their condition, and, from that hour, were prepared to abjure the crimes and superstitions of Rome. But, like the light that fell on St Paul in his journey, the fullest illumination descended on the preacher himself. Others heard and acknowledged the voice of Heaven; but it was to the preacher that the words of God came with living power. From that day forth, he was no longer the same man. His energy, intrepidity, and defiance of the common obstacles of Christianity, in the popular prejudices and the tyranny of the Popedom, raised him to the highest rank of the champions of the gospel.

The mind of this great man, deeply imbued with Scriptural knowledge by his ten years' residence in his pastorship of Glaris, and farther matured by his three years' enjoyment of the literature and association of the intelligent members of Ginsiedlen, was now prepared for the sterner duties of a leader of the Reformation. Through the advice of Myconius, a Greek professor in the school of Zurich, whom he had known in the convent, Zuingle was chosen preacher in the Cathedral of Zurich, Dec. 4, 1518; a memorable period, one year from the commencement of Luther's preaching at Wit tenberg.

In his new office the preacher lost no time in giving evidence of his vigour. It had been the custom to restrict the Scriptural teaching to the Dominical lessons, portions of the text marked out for the Sundays and saints' days. Zuingle declared that he would take the whole of the sacred volume and explain it in succession, that the entire Scriptures might be made familiar to the people. He over-ruled the objections that were made to this for

midable innovation on the practices of the Romanists; and on the 1st of Ja nuary, 1519, the first day of his 35th year, he commenced his course of Scripture lectures. From various mo tives, he was attended by a multitude of all ranks, and exercised the func tions of a teacher of the truth with the boldness of a sacred servant, accountable to but one Master. In his course of exhortations, he struck at the prevalent crimes of all classes; the partiality of the magistrates, the vio lence, licentiousness, and intempe rance of the lower ranks, and the national guilt of ambitiously espousing the cause of sovereigns for aggrandise ment, and the old and peculiar crime of selling the services of their armies to strangers.

He was fiercely threatened for this exposure; but his fortitude never relaxed, and he persisted in the plain and direct reprobation of every practice obnoxious to Scripture. He was described alternately as a furious partisan and as a furious fanatic, as the prey of a mad enthusiasm, and the accomplice of dangerous designs against the state. But his sincerity, guided by his prudence, gained the day, and all men, distinguished for honour and intelligence, were soon ranged on the side of the hallowed and intrepid teacher of the truth.

A striking instance now occurred to give him a still stronger hold on the affections of his country.

Leo the Tenth, in his eagerness to build St Peter's as a monument of his reign, had exhausted the Papal trea sury, and demanded that it should be filled up from the purses of the faithful. He sent friars on missions to sell the forgiveness of sins. Those demands had been frequently made before, on occasions of the failure of the Roman exchequer, and they had in general excited great opposition among the bishops and local clergy. The Franciscan Bernardine Samson, the missionary to Switzerland, had thus come on an unpopular message, and his own conduct, though personally adroit, was too strongly marked with the character of the Popish modes of raising money, not to increase the unpopularity. He published a scale of absolutions for the poor and the rich, six sous being the cheap purchase of a soul of the former, while a crown was the price of the higher worth, or deeper depravity, of the latter. A no

bleman of Bern is recorded to have made a single sweeping bargain of the divine grace for himself, his ancestors, and his vassals. The friar, by the authority of Leo, an authority claimed to this hour, and to the same extent, which no conviction of its blas phemy can reclaim, and no improvement of the general mind can induce to withdraw an iota of its usurpations and follies, publicly declared that the power of the Pope had no limit in either heaven or earth-that at his disposal was the blood of Christ and the martyrs that he had a heavenly right to remit both sin and the penance for sin-and that the sinner would be the heir of Divine grace, the " moment his money rattled in the missionary's box." He proceeded granting absolution alike to individuals and states, pardoning sins alike past, present, and to come, and selling bulls authorizing their fortunate purchasers, if harassed by a too strict confessor, to choose an easier one, who should release them from vows, absolve them from the obligation of oaths, and extinguish the guilt of perjury. The habitual effrontery of those tax-gatherers of the Pope, rose into a ludicrous contempt for appearances. On a crowd of the common people pressing round the seller of the peace of heaven, he was heard to cry out in the open streets, "Let the rich come first, who are able to buy the pardon of their sins. When they have been settled with, then the poor may come."

Zuingle declared, in the face of the Papal vengeance, that this traffic was a crime; and he succeeded in prevail ing on his fellow-citizens to repel the Franciscan. He did more, he successfully appealed against him to the Deputies of the Thirteen Cantons, which happened to be then assembled at Zurich. The final result was, that the Franciscan was driven out of Switzerland.

The history of the Reformation derives its value to us, not more from its noble display of principle and character, than from its instruction in the mode by which religion is to be best recovered in a degenerate age. The study of the Scriptures was the light that led the Reformers to knowledge; and the knowledge of the Scriptures was the great instrument by which they laboured to break the Popish fetters from the public mind. We find

all the preachers devoting their whole strength to the making known the inspired word, and that alone. The Reformer of Zurich, a man acquainted with a vast range of the literature of his day, yet brought into the pulpit only the elucidations of the Bible. On my arrival at Zurich," says he, "I began to explain the Gospel according to St Matthew. My next labour was the Acts of the Apostles, in order to shew how the Gospel had been diffused. I then proceeded to St Paul's first Epistle to Timothy, which may be said to contain the rule of life to a Christian, to clear up the errors introduced into the doctrine of faith. I then interpreted the Epistle to the Galatians, which was followed by the two Epistles of St Peter, to prove to the detractors of St Paul, that the same spirit had animated both Apostles. I then commenced the Epistle to the Hebrews, as making known, in its full extent, the benefits of the mission of Christ. In all my discourses, I avoided indirect modes of speech, artful turns, and captious arguments. It was only by the most simple reasonings that, in thus following the teaching of our Lord Christ, I attempted to open every man's eyes to his own disease."

Zuingle had been hitherto merely a private preacher of the truth; he was now to come in direct collision with ecclesiastical power. His preaching had begun to produce its natural effects, more permanent, because less clamorous, and more formidable to Popery, because wrought in the hearts rather than borne on the lips of the people. About the year 1522, it was observed with sudden suspicion by the priests, that some of their flocks had given up the practice of fasting in Lent, and, which was the unpardonable crime, without the usual dispensation. A heresy which struck at the power of the Church in this most tender of all its feelings, must be extinguished root and branch; the whip of persecution was instantly brandished; the culprits were summoned before the magistrates, and were cast into prison. The Swiss Reformer now came forward to defend his principles. In a writing on the "observation of Lent," he laid down the unquestionable doctrines, that with God mercy is better than sacrifice, that Christianity has abolished all distinction of holy and un

holy food, and that the true fast is that from sin. He shewed that Scrip ture and common sense alike left every one at liberty to fast or not as he found it desirable to his pursuits, his health, or his Christian edification. After throwing into merited contempt the idea that one food is more acceptable to God than another, or that the soul is the holier for the stomach's receiving a fish rather than an egg, he founds the rule on the necessities and circumstances of society. "Let the opulent fast if they will; it may form a suitable interruption to their life of habitual indulgence. But the workmen in your manufactories, the labourers in your fields, find in the hardships and privations of their cases enough to mortify the flesh. The Romish regulations for those fasts, were unknown to the majority of those very Fathers by whom they are said to be founded. They are still unknown to large bodies of Christianity throughout the world. The true purpose for which they were adopted, and for which they are sus tained, is, by the payment for dispensations, to raise a large revenue for the See of Rome."

The controversial war was now de clared. Hugh of Landenberg, the Bishop of Constance, published a rescript to his clergy, exhorting them to adhere with increased fidelity to the "Mother Church." His letter, addressed to the Council of Zurich at the same period, peculiarly desired that they would not suffer the ancient rites to be infringed. The Council, already awakened to the truth, answered this letter by a request that the chief pastors of the diocese should have a conference to examine into the causes of the dissension. But Landenberg knew too well the peril of disturbing absolute absurdities; and declined the examination. He next wrote to the Chapter of the Cathedral, en whom the preacher was of course dependent, complaining of "certain innovators, who, stimulated by the madness of pride, pretended to reform the Church." The Bishop's language was in the form which the wrath of Rome uses to this hour. "Receive not as a remedy this detestable poison, perdition for salvation. Reject opinions, which are condemned by the heads of Christendom. Allow them not to be preached among you, nor discussed, publicly nor privately." VOL. XXIV.

Zuingle had not been yet named, but he was conscious that the blow was meant for him; and he demanded leave of his Chapter to state the grounds of his opinion. The princi ple of the paper, with which he refuted the charge of heresy, was, that "the Scriptures alone are the great authority to Christians.”

"The word of God," says this holy and high-minded man, in one of those passages, whose truth is superior to all eloquence," has no need of human sanction. The Fathers of the Church did no more than reject the spurious Gospels, the work of feigned or unknown writers. Neither do we desire more than to purify religion of whatever is foreign to it,-to deliver it from the captivity in which it is held by its enemies,-to dig again those fountains of living water, which those enemies have filled up.

"In defence of human tradition, you say that the writings of the first disciples of our Lord do not contain all that is necessary to salvation. You quote the text- I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,' (John, xiv. 12.) But here our Lord speaks to the Apostles, and not to Aquinas, Scotus, Bartholus, or Baldus, whom you elevate to the rank of supreme legislators. When Jesus says, immediately after, 'Howbeit, when the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth'-it is still the Apostles whom he is addressing, and not men who should be called rather disciples of Aristotle than of Christ.

"If those famous doctors have added to Scripture doctrine that was deficient, it must then be acknowledged, that our ancestors possessed it imperfect,-that the Apostles transmitted it to us imperfect, and that Jesus Christ the Son of God taught it to us imperfect.

"What blasphemy! Yet do not they who make human traditions equal or superior to the law of God, or pretend that they are necessary to salvation, really say this? If men cannot be saved without certain decrees of councils, neither the Apostles nor the early Christians, who were ignorant of those decrees, can be saved!

"Observe to what those doctrines drive you. You defend your ceremonies, as if they were essential to re ligion. Yet religion exercised a much

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