As power, especially when absolute, is seldom exercised for a long time, or to any considerable extent, without corrupting its possessor; it would have been wondrous strange, if the Roman pontiff, holding the keys of heaven and hell, had not had, in common with his species, some portion of man's infirmity. We may, therefore, without attributing to the "supreme head of the church," extraordinary corruption, assume it as proved that, after the lapse of more than eight centuries, the court and religion of Rome required reformation.

Among those who sought to effect an object so dear to the Christian world, Martin Luther, before referred to, the son of an obscure miner, known generally as the Monk of Wittemburg, stood preeminent. He was a man of great learning in his day, deeply versed in the Scriptures, apparently sincere, exemplary in his morals, devout and earnest in his discourse; deeply imbued with the knowledge of human nature, and possessing an energy of purpose seldom equalled and never surpassed. Having composed a number of religious tracts, he was called upon to recant, and refusing to do so was excommunicated, placed under the ban of the empire, and his death by assassination, or otherwise, made legal by imperial and pontifical authority. His books, too, were ordered to be collected and burnt.

On the 12th of May, 1521, Cardinal Wolsey, the Roman legate and Chancellor of England, repaired in solemn procession to St. Paul's in London; assuming the pomp of royalty, seating himself in a chair of gold, and displaying his utmost state. A priest of lofty stature, bearing a silver pillar surmounted by a cross, walked before the stately ecclesiastic, holding in his hand the archiepiscopal crosier of York; behind, a nobleman of exalted rank at his side, bearing his cardinal's hat, and the nobility and prelates of England, with the embassadors of the pope and the emperor in his train. These were followed by a number of mules, bearing chests overhung with rich and brilliant stuffs, carrying to the pile the writings of the poor excommunicated Monk of Wittemburg. On reaching the church, the haughty prelate deposited his cardinal's hat on the altar. The aged and venerable Bishop of Rochester`preached a discourse against heresy ; and the attendants drawing near, carrying in their arms the writings of Luther, they were devoutly consumed in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators. The puissant King of England, a prince descended from the houses of York and Lancaster, in whom the red and white roses were united, rose up also in his might, and put forth a book entitled, a Defence of the Seven Sacraments, against Martin Luther, by the most invincible King of England and of France, Lord of Ireland, Henry VIII. of that name," in which he calls Luther an "infernal wolf," "a venomous serpent," "a limb of the devil," and crushes at once the poor mendicant to the earth beneath the weight of his royal anger; writing as it were with his sceptre, promising among other things, to receive into his bosom the poisoned darts of his assailants, and exhorting all the servants of Jesus Christ, whatever be their age, sex, or rank, to

rise up against the common enemy of Christendom; "so that, should he show himself obstinate in malice, the hand of the executioner may silence him, and thus for once at least, he may be useful to the world by the terrible example of his death." This theological treatise of the king was received with a profusion of adulation-the public set no bounds to its praises. "It is," said some of his courtiers, "the most learned work that ever the sun saw. "He is a Constantine, a Charlemagne," said others; "nay, more, he is a second Solomon." The book, as a literary work, considering the author and the age in which he wrote it, must be conceded was neither badly written nor destitute of merit. It soon reached the Continent, and filled the whole Christian world with joy. Luther, hearing of it, and of the applause with which it was received, observed: "I hear much commendation of a little treatise by the King of England." He afterward read it with "a smile mingled with disdain, impatience, and indignation." When he came to where the king affects "pity and contempt for the reformer," Luther's indignation boiled over; and, being somewhat irritable, and but little given to courtesy or forbearance, he resolved, against the opinion of his friends, to write an answer, "and to show those wild beasts, who were running at him every day with their horns, how terrible he could be." In his answer he says: Living I will be an enemy of the popery, and burnt I will be its ruin. Go, thou swine of St. Thomas-do what you will; ever you will find Luther like a bear upon the road, and like a lion upon your path; he will fall upon you from all sides, and give you no rest, until he shall have ground your iron brains and pulverized your brazen foreheads. The King of Heaven is on my side, therefore I fear nothing, though a thousand such churches as that of which this Henry is defender, should rise up against me. Do then what ye list: popes, bishops, priests, monks, friars, devils, death, sin, and all that is not Jesus Christ, or in Jesus Christ, must fall and perish before the power of this gospel which I, Martin Luther, have preached.” Thus spoke an unfriended monk in the sixteenth century; and his predictions, notwithstanding the efforts of popes and prelates, emperors and kings, to all appearance were about to be verified; when a rival to the Monk of Wittemburg appeared on the stage, whose enthusiasm surpassed even that of the reformer, who breathed into the papal system new energy, and gave it an impulse hitherto unknown. His disciples planted the cross in the State of Illinois, and entwined the lilies of France among its branches.

When Francis I. threw down the gauntlet, under pretence of reëstablishing in their patrimony the children of John Albert, King of Navarre, he commenced without intending it, a war for life. Having sent a wellappointed army thither, to invade one of its provinces, his general, Lesparre, marched triumphantly to the very gates of Pampeluna, almost without resistance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet extinct in the Peninsula; the wars with the Saracens, just terminated, had kept alive in the Castilian youth that enthusiasm and simple valor, of which Amadis

de Gaul was the ideal exhibition. Among the garrison of Pampeluna there was a young man by the name of Don Inigo Lopez de Ricalde, the youngest of a family of thirteen. Bred in the court of Ferdinand the Catholic, elegant in his person and accomplished in his manners, expert in the use of sword and lance, and distinguished for his manly vigor, he sighed for renown. The glittering dangers of the tournament, and the impassioned struggles of opposing factions, had hitherto engrossed his thoughts; and devotion to St. Peter, as to his lady love, had absorbed his very soul.

The governor of Navarre, apprised of the force which threatened to overwhelm him, departed hastily from Pampeluna to obtain succor of Spain, and left to Ricalde, and a few nobles, the charge of its defence. The latter resolved on retiring, but Ricalde entreated them to stand firm, and resist. Thwarted in his attempts, and overruled by his seniors in rank and age, he reproached them with cowardice, and throwing himself into the citadel, he resolved on defending it to the last extremity.

When the French (received in Pampeluna with open arms) demanded its keys, Ricalde indignantly exclaimed: "Let us endure everything rather than surrender." A discharge from the French artillery fol lowed, and soon thereafter an attempt to storm it. The exhortations of Ricalde inspired the Spanish soldiers with new courage, and placing himself at their head, he drove back the assailants. Taking his stand on the ramparts and flaming with rage, he brandished his sword, and felled to the earth all that opposed him. A shot from the French artillery striking the wall just where he stood, shivered a stone from the ramparts which wounded him severely in the right leg; and the ball, rebounding from the shock, broke his left. Ricalde fell senseless, and the garrison surrendered. The French advanced, and admiring the courage of their youthful adversary, and respecting his bravery, they bore him in a litter to the castle of Loyola ;--from thence, he afterward derived his name. Our readers need not be told, that the gallant knight of Pampeluna and Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the society of Jesuits, are one.

In this lordly mansion, eight years subsequent to the birth of Luther, Ricalde had been born, and one of the most illustrious families in Spain claimed him as their son.

A painful operation became necessary, during which he clenched his hands, but uttered no complaints. Driven by necessity to a repose he could ill endure, his ardent imagination sought for adventure. The books of chivalry he had been accustomed to devour, being temporally absent, the lives of the saints, and more especially the life of Christ, during the progress of a lingering cure, became his companions. Their perusal excited his ardent temperament, and inspired his ambitious soul with a desire of imitating their godlike exploits. The stormy life of tournaments and battles which had occupied his youth, to the exclusion of everything besides, at once lost its charms, and a career of brighter glory seemed apparently advancing. The humble labors of the saints,

and their heroic patience, were at once exalted above all that chivalry ever knew. Stretched upon his couch, and writhing under a fever occasioned by his wounds, he indulged himself in conflicting emotions. The world he was planning to renounce, and that life of holy mortification which he contemplated, both appeared before him: one soliciting by its pleasures, the other by its severities; and fearful was the struggle in his conscience between the opposing worlds. "What," thought he, "if I were to act like St. Francis, or St. Dominic ?" From this moment his resolution was taken. Rising from his bed, he invited his companions to a splendid feast, and without divulging his design, set out unattended for the lonely cells of the Benedictine monks, in the rocks of the mountains of Montserat. Impelled solely by a wish to become "knight of the Virgin Mary," and to be renowned for mortifications, and works after the manner of saints, he confessed himself for three successive days-gave away his costly armor to a mendicant-clothed himself in sackcloth, and girded himself with a rope. Then, calling to mind the armed vigil of Amadis de Gaul, he suspended his sword at the shrine of the Virgin, passed the night in watching in his new and strange attire-and sometimes on his knees, and then standing, but ever absorbed in prayer, and with his pilgrim's staff in hand, went through all the devout practices of which the illustrious and renowned knight, Amadis, had set the example. Thus remarks the Jesuit Maffei, the biographer of Loyola : "While Satan was stirring up Martin Luther to rebellion against all laws, human and divine; and while that heretic stood up at Worms, declaring impious war against the apostolic see, Christ, by his heavenly providence, called forth this new champion; and binding him by after vows and obedience to the Roman pontiff, opposed himself to the licentious fury of heretical perversity.

From thence, ere recovered from his wounds, by a circuitous route he journeyed on foot to the convent of Mauresa, begging his bread from door to door; there spent seven hours each day on his knees, thrice flagellating himself, and at midnight rose and prayed. He there also allowed his hair and nails to grow, until the young and brilliant knight of Pampeluna was transformed into the tall, lank, pale, and unpretending monk of Mauresa.

The time had now arrived when the ideas of religion, which hitherto had been to him little more than a form of chivalric devotion, were about to assume an importance and a power, of which, till then, he had been unconscious. Suddenly, the joy he had experienced, left him. He resorted to prayer for aid, but obtained no rest for his soul. He shuddered, as he asked, whether God would desert him after the sacrifices he had made? Gloomy terrors disturbed him; he shed bitter and repentant tears, and sought in vain for that peace which, apparently, he had lost for ever. He wandered about, melancholy and dejected; "his conscience accusing him of heaping sin upon sin, until at last, becoming a prey to overwhelming terrors, he filled the cloisters with the sound of his sighs."

At this crisis, strange thoughts found access to his heart. Obtaining no relief in the ordinances of the church, as others had done before, he began to doubt their efficacy-but instead of seeking consolation at the foot of the cross, he thought of plunging once more into the vanities of the age. His soul panted for that world he had renounced; but his vows staring him in the face, he "recoiled from the scene, awe-struck with horror."

The biographers of Luther and Loyola, have attempted to draw comparisons between the Monk of Mauresa, and the Monk of Wittemburg. In many respects, their condition was at one time the same: both were sensible of their sins-both sought peace with God, and desired the assurance of it in their hearts. It has been contended, that had another Staupitz, as in the case of Luther with the Bible in his hand, presented himself then at the convent, Loyola might have been the Luther of the Peninsula. Luther and Loyola were at this time brothers, and instead of founding two opposing spiritual empires, which for three centuries warred against each other, had they been thrown together, "they might perhaps have rushed into each other's embraces, and mingled their tears and their prayers." In that event, too, the scalping-knife might have gleamed less frequently in our forests; and the savage war-whoop, and the cries of women and children, less frequently been mingled.

From this time forward, Luther and Loyola took opposite directions. Loyola deluded himself with the belief, that his inward compunctions were not from God, but were suggestions of the devil; and he resolved to think no longer of his sins, but to obliterate them, if possible, from his memory. Luther looked to Christ-Loyola to himself. It was not long before visionary attestations confirmed Loyola's conviction. His resolutions had been to him in place of God's grace, and he had suffered the imagination of his own heart to take the place of God's holy word. Hence, we see him afterward a dupe to all the illusions of the prince of darkness.

On his way to church, he once followed, lost in thought, the course of the Llobrigat, and stopping for a moment, he seated himself on its bank, fixed his eyes on the river, which rolled rapidly by him, became lost to surrounding objects, and fell into an ecstacy. Things were revealed to his sight, such as ordinary men comprehend only after much reading and reflection. He rose from his seat, stood on the river's bank, and seemed to himself a converted man-then threw himself on his knees before a crucifix, erected near by, and resolved to devote himself to that cause whose mysteries were thus revealed to his soul. Henceforward his visions were more frequent, during which his tears flowed, and his bosom heaved with emotion. These frequent apparitions overcome, at last, and dissipated all his doubts; and visionary delusions became at once the ruling principle of his life, and the guide of his confidence. Hence the difference between Loyola and the reformers.

On leaving the convent, he repaired to Jerusalem as a pilgrim to its