[14] "With this noble protest was laid the keystone of the Reformation. The pontifical hierarchy shook to its centre, and the great cause of truth and regenerate religion spread with electric speed. The marble tomb of ignorance and error gave way, as it were, of a sudden; a thousand glorious events and magnificent discoveries thronged upon each other with pressing haste to behold and congratulate the mighty birth, the new creation, of which they were the harbingers, when, with a steady and triumphant step, the peerless form of human intellect rose erect, and, throwing off from its freshening limbs the death-shade and the grave-clothes by which it was enshrouded, ascended to the glorious resurrection of that noontide lustre which irradiates the horizon of our own day, rejoicing like a giant to run his race."—John Mason Good's Book of Nature, p. 321.
[15] Chevalier Bunsen says; "It is Luther's genius applied to the Bible which has preserved the only unity which is, in our days, remaining to the German nation—that of language, literature, and thought. There is no similar instance in the known history of the world of a single man achieving such a work."
[16] The death of Adrian VI., on the 14th of September, 1523, was a subject of general rejoicing in Rome. There was a crown of flowers hung to the door of his physician, with a card appended which read, "To the savior of his country."
[17] "The Reformation of Luther kindled up the minds of men afresh, leading to new habits of thought and awakening in individuals energies before unknown to themselves. The religious controversies of this period changed society, as well as religion, and to a considerable extent, where they did not change the religion of the state, they changed man himself in his modes of thought, his consciousness of his own powers, and his desire of intellectual attainment. The spirit of commercial and foreign adventure on the one hand and, on the other the assertion and maintenance of religious liberty, having their source in the Reformation, and this love of religious liberty drawing after it or bringing along with it, as it always does, an ardent devotion to the principle of civil liberty also, were the powerful influences under which character was formed and men trained for the great work of introducing English civilization, English law, and, what is more than all, Anglo-Saxon blood, into the wilderness of North America."—Daniel Webster, Works, vol. i. p. 94.
[18] "Never before was the human mind more prolific." "Luther holds a high and glorious place in German literature." "In his manuscripts we nowhere discover the traces of fatigue or irritation, no embarrassment or erasures, no ill-applied epithet or unmanageable expression; and by the correctness of his writing we might imagine he was the copyist rather than the writer of the work."—So says Audin, his Roman Catholic biographer.
Hallam's flippant and disparaging remarks on Luther, contained in his Introduction to the Literature of Europe, are simply outrageous, "stupid and senseless paragraphs," evidencing a presumption on the part of their author which deserves intensest rebuke. "Hallam knows nothing about Luther; he himself confesses his inability to read him in his native German; and this alone renders him incapable of judging intelligently respecting his merits as a writer; and, knowing nothing, it would have been honorable in him to say nothing, at least to say nothing disparagingly. And, by the way, it seems to us that writing a history of European literature without a knowledge of German is much like writing a history of metals without knowing anything of iron and steel.... Luther's language became, through his writings, and has ever since remained, the language of literature and general intercourse among educated men, and is that which is now understood universally to be meant when the German is spoken of. His translation of the Bible is still as much the standard of purity for that language as Homer is for the Greek."—Dr. Calvin E. Stowe.
[19] "Nothing can be more edifying than the scene presented by the last days of Luther, of which we have the most authentic and detailed accounts. When dying he collected his last strength and offered up the following prayer: 'Heavenly Father, eternal, merciful God, thou hast revealed to me thy dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Him I have taught, him I have confessed, him I love as my Saviour and Redeemer, whom the wicked persecute, dishonor, and reprove. Take my poor soul up to thee!'
"Then two of his friends put to him the solemn question: 'Reverend Father, do you die in Christ and in the doctrine you have constantly preached?' He answered by an audible and joyful 'Yes;' and, repeating the verse, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,' he expired peacefully, without a struggle."—Encyc. Britannica.
[20] Mattähus Ratzenberger, in a passage of his biography preserved in the Bibliotheca Ducalis Gothana, says: "Lutherus had also this custom: as soon as he had eaten the evening meal with his table companions he would fetch out of his little writing-room his partes and hold a musicam with those of them who had a mind for music. Greatly was he delighted when a good composition of the old master fitted the responses or hymnos de tempore anni, and especially did he enjoy the cantu Gregoriana and chorale. But if at times he perceived in a new song that it was incorrectly copied he set it again upon the lines (that is, he brought the parts together and rectified it in continenti). Right gladly did he join in the singing when hymnus or responsorium de tempore had been set by the Musicus to a Cantum Gregorianum, as we have said, and his young sons, Martinus and Paulus, had also after table to sing the responsoria de tempore, as at Christmas, Verbum caro factum est, In principio erat verbum; at Easter, Christus resurgens ex mortuis, Vita sanctorum, Victimæ paschali laudes, etc. In these responsoria he always sang along with his sons, and in cantu figurali he sang the alto."
The alto which Luther sang must not be confounded with the alto part of to-day. Here it means the cantus firmus, the melody around which the old composers wove their contrapuntal ornamentation.