the calm was to end. There was to be added his roaring, like as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, against the usurping enemy; and so the fiery conflict' to commence between these two mighty antagonist principles and powers, between Christ and Antichrist. The infamous Tetzel precipitated the conflict. Approaching in prosecution of his commission to the near neighbourhood of Wittenberg, (it was some eight or nine years after Luther's removal thither from Erfurt,) he there proclaimed, as elsewhere, the Papal Bulls of grace and indulgence; in other words set forth the Pope as the heaven-sent dispenser of mercy, the Sun of Righteousness, and source of all divine light, grace, and salvation. Then was the spirit of the reformer kindled within him.

2

His Lord's honour was assailed, his Lord's little flock troubled by the impostor. Little thinking of the effect they were to produce, he published his celebrated 95 Theses against Indulgences; affixing them, according to the custom of the times, to the door of the chief church at Wittenberg, and offering to maintain them against all impugners. The truths most prominently asserted in them were the Pope's utter insufficiency to confer forgiveness of sin or salvation,-Christ's all-sufficiency, and the true spiritual penitent's participation, by God's free gift, and independent altogether of Papal indulgence or absolution, not merely in the blessing of forgiveness, but in all the riches of Christ. There were added other declarations, also very notable, as to the Gospel of the glory and grace of God, not the merits of saints," being the true and precious treasure of the Church;"-a denunciation of the avarice and soul-deceivings of the priestly traffickers in indulgences;-and a closing exhortation to Christians to follow CHRIST as their chief, even through crosses and tribulation, thereby at length to attain to his

1 See p. 42 suprà.

2 The Elector of Saxony, at the request of Staupitz, had interdicted Tetzel from entering his territories on the Indulgence-selling commission. Hence he was unable to approach Wittenberg nearer than Jüterbock, the last town of the Archbishop of Magdeburg, his patron, and about four miles distant. Merle D'Aub. Ib. 253.

heavenly kingdom.'-Bold indeed were the words thus published; and the effect such, that the evening of their publication (All-Hallow-e'en, Oct. 31) has been remembered ever afterwards, and is ever memorable, as the epoch of the Reformation. With a rapidity, power, and effect unparalleled, unexpected, unintended, even as if it had been the voice of one mightier than Luther speaking through him,- and so Luther himself felt it,"

1 Thus in the following sentences, as given by Merle, i. 263, &c :

1. "Lorsque Jesus Christ dit, Repentez vous, il veut que toute la vie de ses fidèles soit une continuelle repentance.

2. Cette parole ne peut être entendue du sacrement de la penitence, ainsi qu'il est administré par le prêtre.

5. Le Pape ne peut (ni ne veut) remettre aucune autre peine que celle qu'il a imposée.

6. Le Pape ne peut remettre aucune condamnation, mais seulement declarer et confirmer la remission que Dieu lui même en a faite à moins qu'il ne fasse dans les cas que lui appartiennent: (i. e. of ecclesiastical censures.) S'il fait autrement la condamnation reste entièrement la même.

8. Les lois de la penitence ecclesiastique ne regardent nullement les morts. 32. Ceux qui s'imaginent être sûrs de leur salut par les indulgences iront au diable avec ceux qui le leur enseignent.

32. Esperer être sauvé par les indulgences est une esperance de mensonge et de néant, quand même le commissaire d'indulgences, et (que dis je?) le pape luimême, voudroit pour l'assurer mettre son âme en gage.

36. Chaque vrai Chretien, mort ou vivant, a part de tous les biens de Christ, par le don de Dieu, et sans lettre d'indulgence.

62. Le veritable et précieux trésor de l'eglise est le saint Evangile de la gloire et de la grâce de Dieu.

79. Dire que la croix ornée des armes du Pape est aussi puissante que la croix de Christ est un blaspheme.

94. Il faut exhorter les Chretiens s'appliquer à suivre Christ, leur chef, à travers les croix, la mort, et l'enfer :

95. Car il vaut mieux qu'ils entrent par beaucoup de tribulations dans le royaume des cieux, que d'acquerir une securité charnelle par les consolations d'une fausse paix."

The reader will observe the saving clause for the Pope in Prop. 5, "ni ne veut." Others occur elsewhere. So Prop. 50: "Si le Pape connaissait les exactions des predicateurs d'indulgences, il aimerait mieux que la metropole de St. Pierre fût brulée, que de la voir edifiée avec la peau, la chair, et les os de ses brebis." As yet Luther knew not the Pope.

2 After the 2nd Diet of Nuremberg 1524, Luther wrote to Spalatine: "I wish our simple Princes and Bishops would at length open their eyes; and see that the present revolution in religion is not brought about by Luther, but by the omnipotence of Christ himself." Milner p. 824.-And so again to Erasmus; "What am I? what but, as the wolf said to the nightingale, A voice and nothing else." Vox et prætereà nihil. Mich. i. 56. Indeed his sense of his having been but the mouth of a Higher One than himself in the matter appeared continually. So a correspondent of Melancthon writes of Luther; "Three hours of each day he spends in prayer. Once I happened to hear him. It is entirely, he said, thine own concern. We by thy Providence have been compelled to take a part." Again, after his burning the Pope's Bull; "Christus ista cœpit; ipse perficiet : " &c. Merle, ii. 141. Similarly Zuingle. "To whom are we indebted as the cause of all this new light and new doctrine? To God, or to Luther? Ask Luther

-the voice echoed through continental Christendom, and through insular England also. It was felt by both friends and foes to be a mortal shock, not merely against indulgences, but against the whole system of penances, self-mortification, will-worship, and every means of justification from sin, devised by superstition, ignorance, or priestly cunning, and accumulated in the continued apostacy of above ten centuries;-a mortal shock too, though Luther as yet knew it not, against the Papal supremacy in Christendom. For there had been implanted in men's minds, both on the main-land and the island, a view of Christ's glory, rights, and headship in the Church, which, notwithstanding the support of the Papacy by most of the powers of this world, was not to be obliterated. The result was soon seen both in the one, and in certain countries of the other, (including some of the Swiss Cantons, as I must now add, brought under the independent but contemporary guidance of Zwingle and other Reformers to the recognition very similarly both of Christ' as well as afterwards of Antichrist,) I say the result was there seen in the national erection of the Gospel standard, the overthrow of the Papal dominion, and the establishment of churches pure and reformed, that acknowledged Christ alone as in spiritual things their Master. Adopting the symbols of the Apocalyptic vision, we may say that the fixing of his right foot on the sea, and his left on the main-land, was thus fulfilled, in sequence to the uttering of his voice as when a lion roareth. Nor did He quit the ground, or remove the marked stamp of his interference, till the political overthrow had been accomplished, both in the one locality and the other, of a part of the mystic Ba

himself. I know that he will answer that the work is of God."-Luther was absolutely troubled in conscience, when he saw an effect so much beyond what he had intended, produced by his Theses. See Merle, i. 283; also my next Chapter. Thus the voice as of a lion roaring is ascribed to the Angel: what Luther and the Reformers did afterwards with full consciousness is attributed to their representative St. John.-Compare Matt. x. 20; "It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." Also 2 Peter i. 21; Holy men spake, úñо Пvevμatos åyiov pepoμevor " borne out of themselves, and beyond their own intentions, as it were, in what they said. 1 See p. 99 Note 1 suprà.

bylon in short until, as stated in the conclusion of this vision, a tenth part of the city had fallen, and there had been slain in it names of men seven chiliads; 991 a pledge of its ultimate overthrow, and of the establishment on its ruins of Christ's universal kingdom. But in this last observation I anticipate.

§2.-DISCOVERY OF ANTICHRIST THE USUrper.

"And when He had cried, the seven thunders uttered their own voices. And when the seven thunders uttered their own voices I was about to write. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not!" Apoc. x. 3, 4.

We have traced the first great step in the Reformation, as prefigured in the opening verses of the vision under consideration. It remains to trace the next, as prefigured in the two verses that follow, and which stand prefixed to the present Section.

In order to this, however, there will be needed in the first instance, a very careful sifting of the prophetic enunciation that developes it.-What mean the seven thunders ?-This is the question that meets us at the outset of our enquiry. The careful attention needed to solve it will appear the more strikingly from the perplexity that it has occasioned to commentators, and the evident unsatisfactoriness of all their solutions. Many, because of the charge to St. John, "Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not, have passed it over as a point never to be revealed, and therefore presumptuous to enquire into.3 But if such

1 My reason for so translating will appear in chap. ix. infrà.

2 ελάλησαν αι έπτα βρονται τας ἑαυτῶν φωνας. The readings both of the aἱ and of the Tas aνTwv are undoubted.

3 So Mede (see the next note); also Bishop Newton, Woodhouse, Lowman. Hales passes it over, probably on the same account, in silence. In reference to earlier commentators, I may just notice that both Primasius and Ambrosius

be the meaning, wherefore the description of his hearing and being about to write them, here given, and its handing down in the Apocalyptic Book, as if for the benefit of the church, and as a part of the inspired prophecy? -Others have supposed it a pre-intimation of the septenary division of the seventh Trumpet;' a supposed preintimation altogether unmeaning, as well as out of place. -Three commentators only, of those I am acquainted with, interpret the thunders as significative of actual events; viz. Vitringa, who explains them of the seven Crusades;2 Daubuz, who makes them the echo of laws, affirmatory of the protestant doctrines of seven kingdoms that embraced the Reformation; and Keith, whose explanation refers them to the seven continental wars, characterized by the roar of "the modern artillery," which intervened, he says, to fill up the period between the Reformation as begun by Luther, and the sounding of the seventh Trumpet at the French Revolution. These solutions carry their own refutation with them. Vitringa's is quite out of place, as referring to events long preceding the Reformation. And as to those of Mr. Daubuz and Mr. Keith, without entering into

Ansbertus explain the seven thunders of Gospel-preaching, such as the seven-fold Spirit of God might indite; though terribly puzzled, as well they might be on any such hypothesis, to explain the prohibition, Write it not! "Valde nodosissima, atque ad solvendum perplexa nobis quæstio," is what Ansbertus calls it. -A curious quotation from Origen occurs in Eusebius, (Ec. Hist. vi. 25,) on the same subject. In his list of the canonical writers of the sacred Scriptures, on coming to St. John, he thus briefly and enigmatically notices the passage under consideration ; Εγραψε δε και την Αποκαλυψιν κελευθείς σιωπησαι και μη γράψαι τας των έπτα βροντων φωνας.

1 So first Mede; at the same time that he intimates the vanity of inquiring into what God has chosen to make secret, as stated in the note preceding. "Vox tonitrui quid? Si Bath Kol, erunt septem Tonitrua oracula totidem quibus septimæ Tubæ intervallum quasi periodis quibusdam distinguetur; sed ignorandæ omnino rei, nec nisi suis temporibus percipiendæ. Quod innuit Joanni, voces tonitruum scripturo, cælitùs facta prohibitio, Obsigna quæ locuta sunt septem tonitrua, et nè ea scribas. Frustra igitur nos inquirendo erimus quæ Deus occulta esse voluit, et suis temporibus reservanda.”

After Mede, Mr. Cuninghame and Mr. Bickersteth have offered explanations substantially similar; supposing the Thunders to be emblems or warnings of the seven Vials of the seventh Trumpet. And so too Mr. Faber; S.C. i. 264-270. ? It is to be remembered that Vitringa does not explain the vision of the covenant-Angel's descent, or the little book opened in his hand, of the Reformation; so that his interpretation does not involve that chronological inconsistency with itself.