"HONOURABLE, DEAR, AND DEVOTED LUTHER,— Ourself and the States of the Holy Roman Empire, assembled at Worms, having resolved to demand an explanation from you on the subject of your doctrines and your books, we forward you a safe-conduct, to ensure your personal immunity from danger. We would have you immediately set forth on your journey hither, so that within twenty days of the receipt of our mandate, you may appear before us and the States. You have neither violence nor snares to fear. Relying upon our Imperial word, we expect your obedience to our earnest wishes.

"CHARLES."*

"I will leave you, Reverend Father, until tomorrow, when, I trust, you will be prepared to answer the Emperor," said Count Caspar, as Doctor Martin read and re-read the Imperial rescript, and was deliberating whether or no he should entrust himself to the Herald's guidance.

"Be it so, my lord," answered Luther. "I gratefully accept your offer; not that I need time to help me to decide; nevertheless, I would meet my friends in council. To-morrow, let it please your lordship; and at what time?"

"At mid-day, shall it be, Reverend Father?" "At mid-day, my lord."

VOL. II.

*Note 13.

N

CHAPTER XVI.

As the object of this narrative is not so much to give a consecutive history as to reach by leaps, not unnatural we hope, distant positions in the lives of the chief actors upon the scene, we would now place ourselves beside the great Reformer, shortly before he entered Worms. Some few remarks, however, we would premise. On that morrow to which the close of our last chapter referred, Martin Luther consented to accompany the Herald, though he had, in conference with his friends, met with the most urgent entreaties and remonstrances against his obeying the Imperial summons, they quoting the sad instance of the martyr Huss in support of their distrust in Imperial safeconducts; and though the Herald himself admitted the step to be full of peril, seeing that, in the teeth of the Emperor's words of kindness and promises of impartiality, he had allowed the writings of the accused to be condemned and burned before his eyes.

It was on this very morrow, and when this last ominous fact came to the ears of Luther, and while Count Caspar was expecting every moment that such

news would shake the resolution of even so courageous a man as Martin Luther, that the latter uttered the memorable words, and to the Count himself-“ I will repair thither" (to Worms), "though I should find there as many devils as there are tiles upon the housetops."

A careful study of his journey from Wittemberg to the outskirts of Worms would give a fairer idea of the indomitable courage and (through God's grace) the ever self-replenishing faith of Martin Luther, than could any observation of his conduct in the immediate crises of his life. Many a tame and fainting spirit will show courage when there is no alternative save that of daring or of death. But when the probabilities of safety are on the side of cowardice, and when the judgment of the prudent, and the tears of the affectionate, advocate such cowardice (veiling it under other and less offensive names); it is then that moral heroism especially magnifies itself, in refusing to succumb to either the calculations of selfishness, or the insinuating influences of respect and love.

Such tests of his courage, of his confidence in God, of his high consciousness of duty, Luther was called to undergo during this ominous journey.

We will mention some few of the incidents whence we may learn the discouragements against which he had to battle, and the impulses to spiritual bravery and perseverance that he met with on his route.

As he drew near Erfurt-that scene of the trials of his boyhood, of his vows monastic, of his collegiate

triumphs-John Crotus, the Rector of the University, Eobanus, professor of rhetoric, and Justus Jonas, accompanied by nearly forty horsemen, met him to give him welcome. This for a moment cheered him, though he was physically very ill, and his native melancholy was beginning to hover over him with the dark shadow of its wings. The affectionate escort led him up to the gate of that very convent, every cell, nay every stone of which spoke to him of the past-spoke to him of woes endured and overcome, of fairest promises of literary ease and honour which he had thrown aside. He heard their voices, and when the aged Prior, John Lange, and Bartholomew Arnoldi Usingen, presented themselves at the porch to meet him and to re-embrace him in the arms of ancient brotherhood, the peace, the security, the facilities for the acquisition of learned lore, presented such a contrast to the strifes and dangers and cares of his present condition, that a deep and unmanning sigh escaped him.

That sigh only lasted for a moment. The instinct of his renewed soul instantly apprized him of his moral danger, and a merciful incident was made the means of helping him to throw off the first taste of the narcotic.

"See, my father," he exclaimed to John Crotus, as he pointed to a small wooden cross upon a grave— "see, my father, he reposes there, while I" and he turned his gaze to heaven.

With such feelings did he enter his old convent.

But nothing could retain him within its walls. No

warm friendly greetings, no reverential admiration, no sympathetic hope, could make him linger in the refectory, dear as it was in its associations.

He must fly back to that grave. He sat upon it in the uttermost abstraction from earth, communing with the dead. What was all earth to him? The brand of an anathema was upon his forehead! "Am I," he cried, "an object of scorn and of avoidance among the spirits of the just made perfect ?'”

It was the grave of one of the young brother monks, who in earlier days had been a large sharer in his studies, and prayers, and affections..

Worn down with pains of body, which seized him while at Eisenach, and which threatened to arrest his journey altogether; distracted by numerous entreaties to forego his purpose by friends, among whom were even Bucer and the Elector Frederick's secretary Spalatin; besought to return home by no less an one than Glapion, the Emperor's own confessor, who warned him that if he entered Worms he would be burned: notwithstanding all, he still "stedfastly set his face" to go unto the city of the Diet.

When near Nuremberg, and while contending against these temptations, he received a letter from a pious priest, exhorting him to persevere for the glory of God. That letter enclosed a portrait of Savonarola, the martyr for liberty and for the faith. The great monk of Wittemberg pressed the portrait to his heart, kissed it, and, as if in inspired communion with the glorified