success; the pursuit became general. The Bri- | armies. He was, during the whole time, within tish cavalry were covering the retreat; but, ac- range of the enemy's shot. I cannot forbear recording to the evidence of Major Simons, nothing lating a singular event detailed to me by Charles could restrain the ardor of the colonel. He pur- Magill, Esq., late of Winchester, Virginia, who sued them twenty-two miles, within a short dis-was aid-de-camp to Greene during this engagetance of Cornwallis' camp, at Fisher's creek, ment. A captain was under arrest for cowardice. where the British under Tarleton retreated. Some- As the enemy displayed their columns, and formtime after this affair, the British colonel observed ed their line, the unfortunate man, after protesting in company, that he should be pleased to see Mr. his innocence of the charge, desired the major to Washington, of whom he had heard so much; to gallop to the general, and ask a suspension only which a lady very significantly replied, that he during the action, that he might retrieve his chamight have been gratified had he only looked be-racter. It was soon done, and he was placed at the hind him at the Cowpens! head of his company. On the first fire he fled from In this action, of the enemy there were one his station, and sheltered himself behind an apple hundred, including ten officers, killed; twenty-tree. Magill invoked him in the strongest terms three officers and five hundred privates were taken. to reflect on his conduct and situation, and urged Their artillery, 800 muskets, two standards, thir-him to resume his command. At the first step he ty-five baggage wagons, and one hundred horses fell took from behind the tree, a ball from the enemy into our hands; while our loss was only seventy, laid him dead at the feet of his friend. It was his of whom twelve were killed. Everheart informs opinion that the captain was born a coward; but me, that while the dragoons were making the that he would have been in less danger at his comcharges described by Major Simons, he could mand, than in the situation he had assumed. As hear them distinctly cry out as their watchword, Everheart did not participate in the battle of Guil"Buford's play," referring to the odious massacre ford; I shall notice only a few of its particulars, perpetrated on the detachment commanded by that connected with the part which his colonel performofficer, as before detailed. Yet for all this, al-ed on that occasion. At the most important crithough the innocent blood of their companions, sis, Washington charged the British guards with shed contrary to the laws of civilized warfare, yet tremendous fury, and perceiving an officer at remained unavenged; and the very persons who some distance surrounded by aids-de-camp, whom did the foul deed, were now in the open field of he supposed to be Cornwallis, he rushed on with honorable combat, or held as prisoners fairly van- the hope of making him prisoner, but was prequished; no instance occurred on the part of our vented by accident. His cap fell on the ground, troops in which the dreadful precedent was follow- and, as he dismounted to recover it, the officer ed. Washington now returning from the chase, leading the column was shot through the body, with joy embraced his wounded friend, and sent and rendered incapable of managing his horse. him, under the care of two dragoons, three miles The animal wheeled round with his rider and galdistant from the Cowpens, where his wounds were loped off the field. The cavalry followed, supposdressed by Dr. Pindall, formerly of Hagerstown, ing that this movement had been ordered. But Maryland, then surgeon of the regiment. He re- for this circumstance, it is highly probable that mained at this position until the last of February, the amiable and accomplished Cornwallis would and then set out for Catawba river. Passing have been spared the pain of surrendering his through Salem, he arrived at Guilford Court whole army shortly afterwards at York, in VirHouse immediately before the battle fought there, ginia. Greene, it is true, retreated-but only after March 15, 1781. Here it is expedient to explain such an obstinate contest as induced Charles Fox, a part of the affidavit of Major Simons, where it is in the House of Commons, to tell the ministry, said that the subject of this memoir had retired with bis usual sarcasm, that such another victory from the army. That officer, not being at Guil-would destroy the British army. The official acford, did not of course see Everheart there; and counts estimate our loss in killed, wounded and no doubt thinking that his wounds were so very missing, at fourteen commissioned officers, and severe as to compel him to retire from service, and three hundred and twelve non-commissioned offinot hearing any thing to the contrary, he took for cers and privates of the continental line. In the granted that it was the fact. At this place, the militia, there were four captains and seventeen interview between the colonel and sergeant was privates killed; and besides General Stephens, truly joyous. He apprised Washington that his there were one major, three captains, eight subaldebility would prevent his participating in the terns, and sixty privates wounded. The loss of coming conflict, and he was requested by that offi- the British was five hundred and thirty-two men ; cer merely to take charge of the baggage wagons. among them several officers of distinguished taYet such was his love of battle, that he took his lents. Cornwallis retired to Ramsay's mills, and station on a hill where he could distinctly see Greene set out in pursuit of him. The sergeant every movement, and hear every shock of both remained for several weeks in the vicinity of the court house, that he might have the benefit of the professional skill of Dr. Wallis, in the healing of his wounds. During the summer, being once more ready for service, he was, by the order of Greene, employed in collecting horses in North Carolina, for the use of the army; and on the 18th of October, 1781, was present at the capitulation of the British army at Yorktown. Here his acquaintance with Lafayette commenced, which to the satisfaction of both parties, was renewed at Baltimore in 1825, when the patriot revisited our shores. He now returned to his county; but in November following, at the request of Col. Baylor, who had been exchanged, and restored to the command of his regiment, he repaired to Petersburg. With him he remained through the succeeding summer, and, in the fall of 1782, was honorably discharged, and once more returned to his lovely valley. With him, "the sword was converted into the plough-share." Embarking in agricultural pursuits, the sternness of the warrior was now subdued. Having married, and become the father of several children, his time was chiefly employed in providing for their wants by honest industry and toil. After some years, he became a preacher in the respectable denomination of christians called Methodists. Even here, as I am informed, "the ruling passion" would at times follow him; and when in the pulpit was a soldier still. He would sometimes introduce his discour ses by informing his hearers, that, in his youth, he drew his sword in behalf of his country, but now in behalf of his Saviour! Washington frequently wrote to Everheart, offering to make him wealthy if he would emigrate to Carolina, but he declined his solicitations. When the troops of the United States were stationed at Harper's ferry, in 1799, his colonel, then holding a distinguished rank in that corps, passed through Middletown, and inquired for his old and faithful friend, desiring that he would pass the next day with him in Frederick. A large collection of citizens assembled to witness the interview. On approaching, they rushed into each other's arms, kissed and gave vent to their feelings in tears of joy. This was the last time they ever met. Everheart tells me, that on this occasion they walked together over those fields, where, in 1780, the regiment was disciplined for service; and that the feelings and scenes of those days were again revived; that he was urged by his chief to remove to Carolina, where wealth, case and happiness awaited him. It was in vain. The colonel wrung the hand which had saved his life at Cowpens, and disappeared forever. Admired and beloved by all, this venerable man yet retains uncommon vigor and elasticity of body and unbroken health. Florid in countenance, erect in gait, with every mark of military deportment; possessing great decision of character, and a name unsullied by a single stain; he is the de The present disposition of minds, together with general circumstances, is not the most favorable to a full appreciation of Luther's character and times. There is but little, if any community of feelings and doctrines between the nineteenth and the sixteenth centu ries. Questions of a purely dogmatic nature are no longer invested with the sovereign importance which they once possessed. Proverbially fierce as the spirit of religious controversy may be; we seldom admit, in our theological wrangles, the fanatical acerbity, which quailed not before the imminent danger of the Turk, encamped at the gates of Vienna, and which stood undaunted by the cruel extravagances of the followers of John of Leyden, and the awakened passions of the peasants of Muntzer, ravaging the plains of Germany. To curb the ambitious cupidity of popes, and check the temporal aggressions of the church;-to reduce the excessive number of its ministers and the exorbitant increase of its wealth;-to shake off the yoke of spiritual despotism, and conquer the rights of conscience, in behalf of man; are no longer exclusive objects of attainment with the apostles of reform in our day. The various revolutions through which Europe has passed within the last three hundred years, have assumed the task of mainly redressing the grievances which induced the reformation. Its pretensions, inasmuch as our country is concerned, are realized. As an instrument of revolution, it has no provisional mission period, the tendency of which is to throw off the rubto perform :—it can exercise no salutary influence on a bish of worn-out principles, collected by ages of fraud, on the natural and political rights of mankind; and the crowning development of which must be the sure, though gradual, reconstruction of the social fabric out of new elements of sociability. This reference, therefore, to the great schism of the sixteenth century, is intended to show Luther rather as an individual than as a reformer;-rather as the living representative of new ideas, than the assailer of mere church corruptions. Indeed we do not think that Luther appears to the best advantage as the reformer of abuses. illusion, to imagine him bound to an unwavering faith in his work, or sustained by an enlightened conscience in his principles and aim. His memoirs exhibit him reforming himself at each step which he took. Humble and subdued, at first, in the presence of Rome's au It were a strange, though an habitual thority-then kindling into a spirit of disputatious | merry evening-an evening of poetry and song-with pride-insolent even to brutality and vulgar beyond several of his friends; he entered, in the dead of night, measure-ignorant of the definite bearing of the dis- the cloisters of the Augustine monks at Erfurth. Plaucussion which he had started-alarmed at the very tus and Virgil,* were the only companions that he enthusiasm with which his first theses were received- brought along. With his life of seclusion began a life shrinking before the consequences of the principles of sadness, of anguish and of doubts :-then arose that that he had laid down in his polemics, and driven, by fearful conflict between daring thoughts and checked some irresistible fatality, from negation to negation; propensities, which assailed him throughout his existwe find him denying the pope the power of indulgen- ence. There is a wide difference between the spices, denying the merits of good works, denying the ritual trials of the German reformer and those of the institution of the papacy, denying the church as a visi- eremites, saints and doctors of the primitive church. ble body, denying the prayers for the dead, denying Temptation never reached the faith of the latter; it the freedom of will and the indissolubility of the mar- assailed the flesh merely, which neither fastings nor riage bond. He successively revolutionized not only the macerations, vigils nor prayers, could entirely subdue: discipline of the church, and its religious and dogmatic while, in Luther, we find, at once, the temptings of the authority, but also the received opinions of mankind spirit and the flesh-the rebellion of the intellect and the concerning morals, the family state, and political society war of the senses-hot passions and racking doubtsitself. Breathing in turn the most sublime eloquence, Satan rushing on his soul, and, according to his own and in turn sinking into the most abject foolery; de- quaint expression, "beating it with his fists." Many nouncing the temporal powers, and then bending in and bitter were the nights, as he relates himself, which ignominious subserviency to their views; Luther could he spent in monastic solitude; wrestling with the spirit at times command the language of protection and of evil, and clinging in prayerful watches to the foot of mercy in behalf of the wretched peasantry, who had the cross. reared the standard of rebellion in the name of his reformation; at others, mark them out for the cruel butcheries of the inexorable barons, and solicit their arm to the work of carnage and torture. "The peasantry," he writes, "deserve no mercy-no toleration; but the indignation of the vilest of men. They are under the ban of God and of the empire. It is lawful to kill them like mad dogs!" He was truly of that stern race of Saxons, whom Karl the Great could not bring under the christian law, until converted by fire and sword. A dark and fatal predestination of trials and conflicts harbingered Luther's birth. He was born in blood. Jahn Luther, his father, having accidentally killed a man, who tended his flock, was compelled to fly. His wife, who had followed him in spite of her critical situation, gave birth to Martin on reaching the town of Eisleben. His father's cognizance-for the mechanics and even the serfs of those days, in imitation of the nobility, bore armorial devices-has a miner's sledge. With this sledge the son was destined to dint the papal tiara and shiver the pastoral staff of the catholic hierarchy: the same instrument, which, in the course of time, passing through the hands of Cromwell, Robespierre and Napoleon, hammered regal crowns and regal baubles into fragments. The mind-sick and restless monk resolved to carry his doubts to the very centre of faith; and, in the hope of certainty and peace, to lay down his agony before St. Peter's chair. He left, therefore, his cell at Erfurth to visit the Vatican; but, like one of the greatest living geniuses of the age, he returned, from the capital of the christian world, to curse the vanity of his pilgrimage and the obstinacy of the pope.t In the year 1517, after his return from Italy, Luther began his attacks against the church of Rome; and published and maintained his propositions against the doctrine of indulgences. The records of the revolutions of the mind do not furnish a more striking instance of total disproportion between effect and cause, than do the annals of the great reformation of the sixteenth century in its origin and its development. Singular indeed as it may appear, we may, without straining probabilities, trace up the most important schism in the church of Christ, since the heresies of Arianism, to motives of personal interest and baffled lucre.‡ No event in history has proven, more forcibly than the reformation, how the tendencies of a period may overmaster the spirit of man, even when that man is *The choice of these two authors is measurably characteristic of Luther's disposition. Virgil's melancholy tenderness harmonises with Luther's keen sensibilities-ever an adjunct of true genius; while the somewhat coarse and vulgar style of Plautus' comedies assimilates with the unaccountable tendency to ribaldry, which marks many of the compositions of the reformer. Lamennais, the democratic priest, and powerful editor of the Avenir. Admonished by Gregory the XVI, of the "libertine tendencies" of his editorial labors, he repaired to Rome to explain his views of political and religious freedom; and they were answered by the memorable encyclic letter of the month and bishops to stem the torrent of innovations sweeping over of August, 1832, urging all patriarchs, primates, archbishops Early indications of talent, given by Luther, induced in his mother, who though grossly illiterate, seems to have been a woman of high energies, a desire to see him trained up as a scholar. How far her laudable, maternal ambition was realized, the after life of the reformer abundantly proves. The courses of his youth, however, were wild and unruly:-it required the voice of thunder to call young Luther away from the proverbial excesses of a German student's life. Like St. Paul, on the road to Damascus, he was solemnly warned by the voice of God. In the year 1505, Luther, whilst walking with a bosom friend, saw him struck into a heap of cinders by the lightning of heaIt is not intended, neither is this the place, to renew the ven. He shrieked a vow to St Anne; and that vow interminable disputes of Staupitz and Tetzel; but those who are acquainted with the history of the sixteenth century, will was to take orders, if spared. On the seventeenth of find a clue to the allusion, in the contest of the Augustinians July of the same year, therefore, after having spent al and Dominicans in the monopoly of the indulgences. christendom. one of confessed and commanding genius. We have | bread and wine are not transubstantiated into the body mentioned Luther's alarm at the enthusiasm which and blood of Christ. After Urban the VI, no pope hailed the appearance of his propositions through Ger- should be acknowledged; but we should live according many; and adverted to his controversial propensities, to our own conscience, and after the manner of the his waverings, his contradictions and his doubts. The Greeks. It is repugnant to the gospel that churchmen latter are so peculiarly characteristic of his course, that should hold personal property. All mendicant monks he may be said to have rather followed than directed are heretics. The people have a right to correct their the onward march of intellectual freedom. Of the re-rulers when they fall into error. Whoever enters a form of abuses, as far as it went, Luther cannot fairly convent is less fitted for the observance of God's comclaim the exclusive merit:-it had, for three centuries mandments. Those who establish monasteries are at least, been a question of internal church discipline sinners; and those who live in them are devils. The the object of the meditations and censures of the most election of the pope by the cardinals is a device of illustrious and venerated of its members of St. Bernard, Satan. Belief in the sovereignty of the church of Gerson, Pietro, Alliaco, among other champions of the Rome, is not necessary to the salvation of souls. hierarchy. Three famous councils-those of Pisa, Con- Besides these theological propositions, closely assimi. stance and Basil-had begun the reform, which was lating with Luther's, it may not be irrelevant to quote repelled by the church as soon as attempted to be en- a few philosophic dicta, which will more fully characforced by violence. Inasmuch as dogmas were con- terise Wycleff's theories. He maintained that the idea cerned, the different heresies of the sectarians, Peter of all things is in God from all eternity; and, therefore, de Bruys, Berengarius, Abeilard, Roscelyn, Arnoldo that all things occurring in the course of time are eterdi Brescia, Savonarola,* Wycleff, John Huss and Je-nal. According to his doctrines, everything in God is rome of Praga-had amply smoothed the way for God. Hence this, for the fourteenth century, bold propoLuther, and stripped his task of much of its arduous-sition, which is not far removed from the pantheism of ness. In 1546, the very year of his death, he witnessed Spinosa and Schelling-every creature is God. He the achievement of the great revolution, attempted by also laid down the thesis, that God can annihilate nothose whom we have mentioned, and brought to a suc- thing; and that all things happen through an invincible cessful close by his agency. All who had preceded necessity; a broad confession of fatalism, which may him in this perilous career, had either been satisfied be put in juxtaposition with Luther's tenets on the with the fame of the schoolmen, or had perished by freedom of man, which the reformer completely suborfire and steel. In matters depending on opinion merely, │dinated to divine grace. opinion is all powerful:-John Huss and Jerome of Praga, were burned, at the council of Constance, for the defence of a majority of the propositions, which a hundred years afterwards convulsed Europe through Luther's lips, and cut off one half of its dominions from the spiritual authority of the pope. The Henricians, the Waldenses, the Petrobrusians and the Hussites form one unbroken chain of innovators, whose exertions and life-blood prepared the triumph of the reformation under political influences. Wycleff's heresies had barely gone beyond the threshold of the schools; and it was not until the year 1415, sometime after his death, that they passed the precincts of the university and were summoned before the council held at Constance. His works were amerced, instead of his body; his books and bones were publicly burned, and his memory ritually damned. John Huss, though not half as daring as Wycleff, was certainly more unfortunate. The despotism of the popes and the derelictions of the clergy--the protracted schism of the It cannot be proven from the scriptures, says Wy-church and total depravation of the ecclesiastic body, cleff, who wrote in the course of the fourteenth century, that Christ has instituted the rites of the mass. The * After the mercantile aristocracy of Florence had opened their career of oppression, and the conflict begun between the corrupt ambition of immoderate wealth and the laborious pride of the democracy; there suddenly rose a champion, who was at once a priest--a tribune--and a martyr. While Machia. velli was reducing the doctrines of despotism into systematic and ingenious forms; Savonarola, the poor Dominican Monk, terrorised the soul of the Medici; and, from the pulpits, and in the streets and thoroughfares of Florence, preached, not only the reform of abuses and fear of God; but also the love of freedom and the equality of human rights. With a boldly democratic hand he inscribed, over the judgment seat of the great council, the following republican stanza, in direct opposition to a contemplated treaty with the banished Medici. Carlo Coechi, for a mere attempt to induce a departure from the poetical monitions of this religious tribune, was doomed to the block: "Se questo popolar consiglio, e certo loudly called for the reform of so many and scandalous abuses. The very council, before which Huss appeared, deposed three popes, who had mutually excommunicated each other; and one of whom, John XXIII, if not belied by history, was steeped in execrable crimes. Huss was condemned, and burnt alive, in violation of the safe conduct granted him by king Sigismund, who was present at the council. This breach of plighted faith, is one of the most remarkable in the annals of the world; because committed after mature reflection and by a pious senate of prelates, doctors and priests. Universal christendom was made a partici pant, through its representatives, in this felon deed; and never did a more solemn conclave taint their souls with an act of more solemn perfidy. Swayed by a perversion of principle and a lust of cruelty which have no parallel in the blood-written pages of fanaticism, they remorsely gave to a horrid death, one who had been entrapped by the lying promises of their safe conduct. A few independent minds and honest hearts did blame the execution of Huss; but the council issued an ordinance to allay the seruples of the weaklings and muzzle the officiousness of the censors. The text of the rescript, by which the council absolves themselves and the emperor, is a curi- It must, at first, seem extraordinary that the remisous monument of the political and religious morality | sion of sin could have been bought at the price of gold. of the times. But a theory had been started to explain and justify the filled up with the excess of merits, gathered among the faithful, through christendom. The dispensation of its contents was entrusted to the pope, who distributed them in the shape of indulgences. This doctrine, maintained by the very ingenious and powerful logic of St. Thomas and St. Buonaventura, was inwoven in the bull which Clement the Sixth promulgated for the jubi lee of the fourteenth century. The indulgences were drafts on this sinking fund of good works:-redeemable in heaven, and discounted on earth for ready cash; they formed no inconsiderable portion of the revenue of the church. This system, by which, he said, the last became the first; while, by the true treasure of the gospel, the first became the last; Luther vigorously assailed in his opening thesis. Harping upon the same antithesis, he adds "the treasury of the scriptures is the The period which followed the sessions of the coun-practice. The scholastic doctors, assuming that the cil of Constance, brought no change in the disposition penances and merits of one individual might be transof minds. The clergy did not amend, and the' popes | ferred to another, admitted the existence of a treasury, continued to be ambitious princes, stained with as glaring vices as the earthly rulers, their cotemporaries. The accession of Alexander the Sixth to the pontifical throne-his sacrilegious loves with his daughter, Lucrezia, in whose incestuous affections and favors he was rivalled by his sons, the duke of Gandia and Cæsar Borgia-his course of murders, exactions and simony-were not in any degree likely to bring men back to respect and cherish the ancient and hallowed catholicism of the Roman church. And in those days, the German peasantry, among whom the reformation was destined to enlist so many proselytes, indulged in this significant proverb: Je näher Rom, je böser der Christ; the nearer to Rome, the worse the christian. Luther's doctrines, therefore, found a loud and long echo in minds thus prepared; and yet these were, at first, but mild remonstrances against the sale of indul-net with which the apostles fished for men of wealth; gences. Urged, as much by the solicitations of Staupitz as by the promptings of his vanity, he deemed himself bound to controvert propositions and denounce a While opposing the theological principle and the actraffic, which seemed to him to be unchristian and tual sale of indulgences, Luther had no foresight of scandalous; and, whatever danger was pointed out to the effect which he was about to produce both on others him in the attempt, he determined to publish the pro-and on himself. He was astonished-even alarmed, at gramme of a thesis, subdivided into various proposi- his success. But when it became necessary to maintions, in which he condemned the practice of indulgen-tain the conflict which he had solicited-when he began ces. Such is the origin of a theological wrangle, which to judge what he had, at first, merely believed-when induced a revolution, at once fatal to papal authority and friendly to intellectual freedom. but the treasury of indulgences is the net with which we fish for the wealth of men." his mind, partially shaking off its misgivings, proceeded from daring to daring, to investigate pontifical power and church government;-he then embraced the full extent of the work of reform, and clearly defined the aim which he intended to reach. The conflict grew Viewing the question as one of a purely historical character, it may not be inappropriate to trace the rise of this singular traffic. The practice seems to have originated under Urbanus the Second, who, in the ele-out of the gratification of scholastic vanity, and ended venth century, granted a plenary indulgence, or remis- in the subversion of tradition and authority. But he sion of sins, to such as should engage in the wars of the soon found himself launched on a sea of varying opiholy land. This example, followed by many of the nions, where he needed the guidings of a compass. popes, was also practised by Leo the Tenth, who had That was found in the scriptures-a compass less unexhausted the resources of the church, by a gorgeous erring than he had at first imagined; for a book, writliberality extended to kinsmen, courtiers, men of let-ten by human hands--sufficient as may be the divine ters and artists. In the year 1516, he published inspiration under which it was composed--is ever liathroughout christendom, an indulgence to such as would ble to human interpretation. And this, the more likely, contribute moneys. Its benefits were extended to the when a portion of that book, the old testament, was dead; whose spirits were delivered from the bonds of drawn out in an ancient and lost language, with an impurgatory, in consideration of the soul-tax paid in their perfect system of orthography, in which the vowels are behalf :-to this was added leave to use eggs and milk far from being accurately marked. From the moment on days of abstinence-to choose one's own confessor- that the reformer declared that he constantly appealed and other such spiritual facilities. Leo, having promul- to the scriptures as a rule of faith, and rejected the gated his bull of indulgence, disposed of a portion of its sanction of tradition, the interpretations of the fathers, proceeds before they were actually received. To dif- and the decisions of the councils of the church; from ferent persons he assigned the revenue of different that moment, the essentials of christian belief were provinces; reserving that of the most lucrative ones brought in discrimine; it became necessary for Luther for the use of the apostolic chamber. In this division, to supply the proofs of his argument, and consequently he conferred all that was to accrue from Saxony, and to publish a German translation of the Bible itself. But the part of Germany extending thence to the sea, to other innovators had, long before him, sought, by like his sister Madelena, the wife of Cibo-a spurious son of translations, means of disseminating their peculiar docInnocent the Eighth, who, in favor of this marriage, trines. Gerson, the chancellor of the university of elevated Leo to the cardinalate, at the early age of four- Paris, that tremendous engine of mental despotism in teen, and, by this act of spiritual despotism, gave the the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Gerson, who was "Medici family access to the high dignities and temporal the master spirit of the council of Constance, censuring, honors of the church. in his treatise against communion under both species, |