he was waited upon by the mayor of that place. During their conversation the doctor drew forth from his traveling sack a leather box, which, he remarked, contained a commission from the queen to lash the heretics of Ireland. The hostess observing this speech, was very much troubled, for she had Protestant friends living in Dublin, and was herself favorable to that religion; so she watched her chance, and while the doctor was escorting the mayor down stairs, she took the commission out of the box and placed in its stead a pack of cards wrapped up in a sheet of paper. The doctor returned to his room and replaced his box, never suspecting that its contents had been changed. On his arrival at Dublin he called on the deputy, Lord Fitz Walter, and after informing him of his business, delivered to him the leather box. His lordship commanded it to be opened, when lo! instead of a commission from Mary to lash the heretics, there appeared a pack of cards with the knave of clubs uppermost. This wonderfully disconcerted the astonished doctor, who declared that he had received a commission, but knew not what had become of it. The deputy jestingly replied, "Let us have another commission, and we will shuffle the cards in the

meanwhile." The doctor returned to the queen's.' court, received another commission, and had proceeded on his way back as far as the port from whence he was to take passage again for Dublin. Here he found a vessel waiting for a favorable wind. Before she sailed, however, he received the intelligence that the queen had died; and thus the design of torturing the Protestants of Ireland was frustrated.

When Queen Elizabeth, who succeeded the cruel Mary, had heard the account of this transaction, she was so well pleased with the daring act of the hostess at Chester, Elizabeth Edmonds, that she bestowed upon her a handsome pension for life. (See Hibernia Anglicana, vol. ii.)

But papacy was by no means the only enemy which the reformers had to contend with. Fanaticism, among some of those who pretended to be true friends of the reformation, assumed on several occasions a most alarming appear

ance.

A man named Nicolas Storch, a weaver, who lived at the village of Zwickau, pretended to have received a visitation from the angel Gabriel, who, he declared, revealed to him many mysteries. Among other things he professed to have received a spirit of prophecy. About the

same time a senior student of Wittemberg, named Stubner, professed to receive, directly from God, the gift of interpretation. He immediately joined Storch, and soon afterward several others were added to their number.

This new set of prophets and apostles, for such they called themselves, now set out upon their mission to perfect the reformation, as they said, and as they went they preached, saying: "Woe, woe! a Church under human governors, corrupted like the bishops, cannot be the Church of Christ. The ungodly rulers of Christendom will soon be cast down. In five, six, or seven years, a time of universal desolation will come upon the earth. The Turk will get possession of Germany; the clergy, not even excepting those who have married, will be slain. The ungodly sinners shall all be destroyed; and when the earth shall have been purified by blood, supreme power shall be given to Storch, to install the saints in the government of the earth. Then shall there be one faith and one baptism! The day of the Lord draweth nigh, and the end of all things is at hand. Woe! woe! woe!" "What is the use," continued they, "of such close application to the Bible? Nothing is heard of but the Bible. Can the

Bible preach to us? Can it suffice for our in struction? If God had intended to instruct us by a book, would he not have given us a Bible direct from heaven? It is only the Spirit that can enlighten! God himself speaks to us, and shows us what to do and say." After preaching, they gave an invitation for all who desired to receive true baptism, to come forward; for "infant baptism," said they, "is of no avail whatever."

Such preaching had no small effect on the minds of the people, as we may readily imagine, especially as it came from the mouths of professed prophets. And its effects were not wholly confined to the more ignorant and selfish classes of mankind, for we find that some among the learned and pious were deluded by the new doctrine.

Carlostadt, a Professor in the University at Wittemberg, was tossed to and fro, and carried about by the pestilential wind. "It has become necessary," said he, "that we should exterminate all ungodly practices around us;" but such rash steps as he took proved ineffectual for the work. He even went so far as to suggest the propriety of suppressing all the laws of the German empire, and substituting in their place

the law of Moses. He now began to speak of learning as a most contemptible thing, and advised the students to abandon their studies and resume their former occupations, because it was incumbent upon man to eat bread in the sweat of his face. And what was the use of studying, when Storch, an illiterate weaver, was now far ahead of the most learned doctors? The excitement ran so high in favor of this new doctrine that the school was well nigh broken up. The result of the matter convinced Carlostadt that he had acted inconsiderately and unwisely; and he changed his course so far as again to become a teacher of those sciences against which, for a while, he had so bitterly inveighed.

Had all the partisans of this fanatical order been even as considerate as Carlostadt-who, however, never received the doctrine in totoit would perhaps have died away without producing any great harm; but such was not the case. It ended in horror and dismay. Nothing short of swords and muskets proved effectual in opening the eyes of those deluded fanatics, who ran into such mad excess of outrages, that they had to be taken in hand by the civil authorities.

A man named Thomas Münzer was the or ganizer of this new order of prophets into a