No one can be informed of the amount of labor performed by Luther, without astonishment. While preaching several times each week, and often every day, conducting a very extensive and important correspondence with the reformers all over Europe, he was one of the most prolific writers of any age, and rendered his name immortal by translating the Bible into the German language. This latter work alone one would deem sufficient to have engrossed the most industrious energies for a lifetime. His admirable hymns are still sung in all the churches; and the tune of “Old Hundred,” which he composed, will last while time endures. In the performance of such labors, he lived until he was sixty-three years of age. Just before he died, he wrote to a friend in the following pathetic strain:—
“Aged, worn out, weary, spiritless, and now blind of one eye, I long for a little rest and quietness. Yet I have as much to do, in writing and preaching and acting, as if I had never written or preached or acted. I am weary of the world, and the world is weary of me. The parting will be easy, like that of the guest leaving the inn. I pray only that God will be gracious to me in my last hour, and I shall quit the world without reluctance.”
A few days after writing the above, Martin Luther died, at Eisleben,—on the 18th of February, 1546. He was buried in the Castle Church at Wittenberg.
John Wickliffe is often called “the morning star” of the Reformation. He was born in Yorkshire, England, about theyear 1324. In his earliest years he developed unusual mental endowments, and graduated at Queen’s College, Oxford, with high honors. At the age of thirty-two he published a treatise upon “The Last Age of the Church,” in which he ventured to assail some of the assumptions of the pope, and severely to attack the encroachments of the mendicant friars. In 1372, Wickliffe, having received the title of D.D., delivered lectures on theology at Oxford with great applause. At that time a controversy was beginning to arise between the pope and Edward III., King of England. Edward, sustained by his parliament, refused to submit to the vassalage which the pope had exacted of his predecessors. Wickliffe with his pen very successfully defended the position taken by the king. He thus secured the favor of his monarch, but exasperated the pope, Gregory XI. Wickliffe was accused of heresy. The pope issued a bull, and nineteen articles of alleged false doctrine were drawn up against him. Gregory issued three bulls addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, ordering the seizure and imprisonment of Wickliffe.
In the mean time, Edward III. had died; but the British court and the populace of London rallied so enthusiastically around Wickliffe, that no judgment could be taken against him. Soon after this, Gregory XI. died; and all proceedings against the English reformer were dropped. But the zeal of Wickliffe was thoroughly aroused; and, encouraged by the powerful support he received from the British court and from the people, he assailed with increasing freedom the exorbitant pretensions of the court of Rome. Speaking of his labors, McIntosh says,—
“The new opinions on religion which now arose mingled with the general spirit of Christianity in promoting the progress of emancipation, and had their share in the few disorders which accompanied it. Wickliffe, the celebrated reformer, had become one of the most famous doctors of the English Church. His lettered education rendered him no stranger to the severity with which Dante and Chaucer had lashed the vices of the clergy without sparing the corruptions of the Roman seeitself. His theological learning and mystical piety led him to reprobate the whole system of wealth and worldliness, by which a blind bounty had destroyed the apostolical simplicity and primitive humility of the Christian religion.”
This eminent man, who in the end of the fourteenth century commenced the assault upon the corruptions of the court of Rome, died of a paralytic stroke on the 31st December, 1384. His doctrine and his spirit survived him, and paved the way for the final and entire separation of the Church of England from that of Rome. The exasperation which his writings created in the bosoms of the advocates of the Papacy may be inferred from the fact, that in the year 1425, forty-one years after his death, the Council of Constance pronounced his writings heretical, and ordered his bones to be taken up and burned; which sentence was executed.
John Knox, who was the most distinguished of the advocates of the Reformation in Scotland, was born of an ancient family, at Gifford, East Lothian, in 1505. In early youth he took the degree of master of arts at St. Andrew’s, and entered upon the study of theology. He soon became weary of studying the dogmas taught in the Catholic schools, and eagerly sought light in the plainer precepts of a more common-sense and practical philosophy. Thus instructed, he abandoned all thoughts of officiating in the Church of Rome, whose pageants and encroachments, both secular and ecclesiastical, disgusted him. Some of the doctrines of the reformers had already penetrated Scotland. Two of the lords who had embraced these principles employed him as tutor to their sons. Here he preached, not only to his pupils, but to others, who were drawn in ever-increasing numbers by his fervid eloquence.
The Catholic Church was still an immense power in Scotland; and Cardinal Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrew’s, commenced proceedings against Knox, which compelled him to take shelter in the Castle of St. Andrew’s. Here, under powerful protection, he continued boldly to preach the principles of the Reformation, notwithstanding the hostility of the Papalpriesthood. In July, 1547, the Castle of St. Andrew’s capitulated to the French, with whom Scotland was then at war. Knox was taken captive, and was carried with the garrison to France, where he remained a prisoner on board the galleys for nearly two years. Upon being released, he returned to London, where he recommenced preaching as an itinerant, with vehement eloquence which gave him thronged audiences wherever he went.
Upon the accession of Mary, a fanatic Catholic, to the throne of England, the most sanguinary laws were revived against the reformers. Knox fled to Geneva, and was soon invited to become the minister to a colony of English refugees at Frankfort. Notwithstanding the persecution by Mary, the advocates of the reformed religion, both in England and Scotland, rapidly increased, so that in 1555 Knox ventured to revisit his native land, and preached with increasing energy and boldness. His fearlessness won for him the admiration of his friends, and the execration of his foes. Knox being at one time absent on a visit to Geneva, the Papal bishops condemned him to death as a heretic, and burned him in effigy at the stake at Edinburgh. Knox drew up an energetic remonstrance against this condemnation of a man absent and unheard, and published a pamphlet, written in his most furious style of eloquence, entitled, “The First Blast of a Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women.” This violent pamphlet was aimed at Bloody Mary, Queen of England, and Mary of Lorraine, widow of James V., Queen-Regent of Scotland.