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lancthon's education, the important station he filled and the celebrity he obtained at Tubingen, and particularly his removal thence to the scene of his future labours. He was selected by Providence for great purposes, and qualified by a suitable process for the part he was destined to act. His literary fame and his vast acquirements were not only of essential service, but were particularly needed at that precise period when they were ready for public use. Short-sighted indeed or criminally blind must he be, who does not perceive the same superintendence here as in the guidance of Joseph to Egypt, or David to the camp of Saul. If the Reformation claimed the steady efforts of true courage and inextinguishable zeal, be it remembered also, that it no less required a proportion of nice discernment, and literary skill;-if a superstition which invested a mortal with the prerogative of infallibility were to be attacked and levelled with the dust, the ignorance which, with its characteristic blindness, supported that superstition, was at the same to be dethroned and demolished; --if old abuses were to be removed, and a new order of things to be introduced and sytematized, it was desirable to find not only vigour and zeal to clear away the rubbish of error, but elegance of taste to clothe unwelcome novelties with attractive beauty;-in a word, if existing eircumstances called for a MARTIN LUTHER, they also demanded a PHILIP MELANCTHON!

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General Observations-Revival and purification of the Peripatetic Philosophy by Melancthon-His early labours at Wittemberg, and his increasing influence throughout Germany-Extracts from his Oration "de Corrigendis Adolescentiae Studiis.”

AFTER long ages of depression, and almost of total extinction, philosophy, literature, and theology at length revived. It was impossible that any of these should prosper during a period in which the human mind was burdened by innumerable superstitions, gigantic in magnitude and ferocious in character. The mental faculties were unable to expand or even to stir beneath the oppressive weight; and century after century rolled on, scarcely presenting any thing worthy of the historian to record or the moralist to admire. But the sixteenth century marked a new era in the calender of time, by affording some facilities to the circulation of thought and the comparatively free exercise of public opinion. In proportion as it became pos

sible to express sentiments and to announce discoveries in science or religion, without instantly incurring the charge of heresy and being inevitably consigned to perpetual imprisonment or death, knowledge increased and truth lifted up her drooping head. (u) It is true, the imperfections which usually characterize first discoveries were in this instance apparent, but the clouds of prejudice and the mists of ignorance gradually melted away; objects which were blended together became distinctly perceived, and this "morning light" of scientific and religious discovery "shone more and more unto the perfect day." (x)

To trace the almost infinitely diversified causes, remote and proximate, of this mighty

(u) This consideration must be restricted to those countries or places where a degree of successful resistance had been opposed to papal domination, such as Germany and Switzerland; for, as we shall afterwards see, light was very far from being generally diffused; and even at that period Copernicus, an eminent astronomer, and native of Thorn, in Prussia, was confined to a prison by Pope Urban VIII. for daring to maintain the solar system, and the annual and diurnal motions of the earth. The celebrated Florentine Galileo, also, was twice summoned before the Inquisition, and twice sent to grace the cells of a prison for heretically maintaining the truth of the Copernican system. Copernicus was born Jan. 10, 1472, and expired in the seventieth year of his age, May 24, 1543. Galileo was born in 1564, and died at Arcetti, near Florence, in January 1642.

(r) PROV, iv. 18.

change would be an interesting, though perhaps a very difficult undertaking. It would be necessary to shew not only the effects produced by the various great events that have occured in the moral world upon the general state and character of the particular nations whence they originated, and where they particularly influenced, or upon human character in general in the age in which they occurred; but also the manner in which they resulted from the previous state of mankind and affected succeeding times, as well as the intimate connection and reciprocal influence subsisting between them or resulting from their operation.

A writer of very considerable merit (y) remarks, that "A man who, without knowing the nature of the course of a river, should arrive on its banks, seeing it here gliding through an extensive plain, there confined within narrow vallies, in another place foaming beneath the precipice of a cataract; this man would take the first turning where it might be concealed by a projection for the origin of the river; ascending higher, a new turn, the cataract, will occasion the same illusion; at length he reaches its source, he takes the 'mountain from which it issues for the first cause of the river: but he will soon think that the sides of the mountains would be

(y) VILLERS on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation by Luther, p. 7.

exhausted by so continual a torrent; he will see clouds collected, the rains, without which the dried mountain could not supply a spring. Then the clouds become the first cause; but it was the winds which brought these here, by passing over vast seas; but it was the sun who attracted the clouds from the sea; but whence arises this power of the sun? Behold him then soon entangled in the researches of speculative physics, by seeking a cause, an absolute foundation, from which he may finally deduce the explanation of so many phenomena.

Thus the historian who inquires what was the cause which led to the reduction of the authority of the popes, to the terrible thirty years' war, to the humiliation of the house of Austria, the establishment of a powerful opposition in the heart of the empire, the foundation of Holland as a free state, and so of other occurrences, will at first see the origin of all these events in the Reformation; and will attribute them absolutely to its influence. But urging his inquiries further, he discovers that this Reformation itself is evidently only a necessary result of other circumstances which precede it; an event of the sixteenth century, with which the fifteenth, to use the expression of Leibnitz, was pregnant; at most the cataract of the river."

But it will be necessary to wave these con

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