DURING the course of the eleven hundred and thirty years which elapsed between the synod at Milan, wherein Jovinian was condemned, and the Diet of Worms, from which the Lutheran Reformation may be said to take its date, the supporters of the dominant superstition had, on very many occasions, sat in judgment upon its impugners. Hardly had any one generation passed away, in that period of time, without seeing similar protests, dealt with in a similar manner.

But at length, the upholders of the folly, fraud, blasphemy, and tyranny of the (so called) church, had, by the course of events, come to stand in a new position, and were called upon to do their wonted office under circumstances demanding more intelligence, as well as more moral force than any of them seem to have possessed; and, in fact, requiring a wisdom which, as it dwells only in the bosoms of the good, must not be looked for in the champions of the papacy.

Very imperfectly, if at all, did any of the high and mighty personages assembled in the townhall at Worms, to hear and condemn the monk of Wittenberg, apprehend the peculiarity, and therefore the real danger of the position they were occupying. VOL. II.-2

Alarmed and perplexed in finding that the church's old machinery of perfidy and cruelty could not now be worked as heretofore, and that their victim, though actually in their net, was not unlikely to escape their hands, they looked on every side to discover the cause of so unexpected a failure, and yet did not discern the reason; for they "understood not the signs of the times."

Nor does it appear that even Luther himself, or his most intelligent friends, discerned the advantages of the position in which he, and the truth, were then placed. A cloud rested upon the hall in which the Diet sat;-a veil was upon the hearts of all; and we ought religiously to acknowledge that divine interposition, which, by shedding this obscurity upon all, prevented those measures from being adopted, that must have crushed the Reformation at its birth. Had the agents of the papacy known, what they learned too late, Luther would never have left Worms; and had Luther himself then been master of the hour, clearly perceiving the strength of his ground, it may be questioned whether his personal discretion could have so far controlled the honest impetuosity of his temper, as to prevent his betraying the secret