ful, and the work of faith. It is the Reform which saved the Reformation in troublous times, and the Reform shall save it yet in our days.

It is true that it saved it at the price of its blood. Whilst the Lutheran church numbers scarcely any martyrs, ours are counted by thousands, and their faithfulness filled the best Lutherans with respect and admiration, such Lutherans as the sympathizing Spener and Zinzendorf. In Switzerland, Scotland, England, and especially in Belgium and · France, the Inquisition, the daggers and the scaffolds of Popery have covered with corpses the soil of the Bible. The Reform witnessed it, but it bowed not its head. It saw its children joyfully shed their blood trusting in Jesus Christ, and it continued its onward march.

A circular, written in the name of a priest, who calls himself Count of Lausanne, and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, (although since the beginning of this century there has existed no Holy Empire,) has dared to say recently in that city: "Always, and every where, since the time of the Apostles, the church, (of Rome,) its pontiffs and its priests have been persecuted. The holy pontiffs and priests of Jesus Christ, laboring, from the origin of Christianity, for the conversion and sanctification of souls, have never employed other means than those which the Gospel, conscience, and reason approve.

This is really too much, and a sigh escapes us. What! you dare hold such language in this city, in the midst of a people formed, so to speak, from the fragments that escaped from your wheels, your racks, and your knives! We are accustomed to the effrontery of Rome, but we never had such a sample of it.

Men of no memory! to whom belongs the bloody application of these words, Constrain them to enter? By whose commands were shed those torrents of blood of the Waldenses, and the Albigenses, which inundated the middle ages?

' Circular of the Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva, of 17th May, 1844.

Who, if not your Pope, on the night of the 24th August, 1572, amid nuptial festivals, caused the venerable Coligny, on his knees, and sixty thousand Reformed, to be cruelly butchered? Who ordered all the bells in Rome to be rung in merry peals, and the cannon of the Castle of St. Angelo to resound, and medals to be struck? Who, in 1685, razed to the ground more than sixteen hundred churches in France, slaughtered thousands and thousands of Protestants and forced others to flee? In our days, who forbids, in nearly all Romish countries, the preaching of the Gospel? Who compels the poor inhabitants of Zillerthal to leave their father-land? Who makes laws in Austria against conversion to Protestantism? Who condemned to prison that Maurette who struggled here last winter with the priests, charged with having merely read your circular from the pulpit? Who, two months since, in a village near our frontier, within three miles of this place, caused a poor peasant to be arrested, thrown into a dungeon, and condemned to the galleys, for having committed no other crime than that of reading his Bible? Who, not in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but only a few weeks since, condemned to death Maria Joaquina for having refused to worship the Virgin, and to believe the doctrine of transubstantiation? And you speak of Rome as a persecuted church! And you assert that it has never employed other means than the voice of conscience and of persuasion! . . . Men of no memory! . . . Come, come! cute, you are consistent with yourselves. to be, and is, in fact, a dogma of yours. you that opprobrium, no one will rob you of that glory. . . Your church is a church of murderers; our church is a church of martyrs.

when you persePersecution ought No one will envy

VI. We shall select but one more characteristic among all those which yet remain. It is a consequence of that characteristic on which we have just remarked. It is the difference which exists between these two communions, both as to liberty of the church and liberty of the state.

Whatever his enemies may say to the contrary, Luther was an humble and submissive monk; and however great may have been the power which he acquired by his language, he ever remained within the bounds of the most perfect obedience to his emperor and his prince. And even in 1530, Luther, who in 1522 had written a book entitled, "Against the State, falsely called spiritual, of the Pope and the Bishops," appeared, as did Melancthon also, entirely ready to acknowledge the authority of all bishops, provided those bishops would acknowledge the authority of the Gospel. Luther's Reformation was essentially monarchical in its relations to the state, and hierarchical in its relations to the church. The people are never brought forward in it otherwise than as modestly receiving that which is given them by the higher authorities. It is true that Luther at last made. quite a proper distinction between the two swords of the church and the state; but after him, and even in his day, the Lutheran princes, invested with the territorial episcopacy, absorbed all liberties, and all ecclesiastical independence.

Is it necessary to observe that Lutheranism possesses peculiar excellence in this respect? The vehicle which bore the human mind, was in the sixteenth century at the top of a steep declivity. The Reform boldly seated itself on the coachman's box; with one hand it seized the reins, and with the other it used the whip; and away went the coach. What was necessary to prevent a terrible catastrophe at the foot of the mountain? To use a vulgar comparison the wheel-lock must be used; that lock was Lutheranism. By this means the progress is rapid, though safe; and if it is true that the dreaded danger has been realized, it is because both Lutheranism and the Reform have lost their essential characteristics, and their intrinsic excellence, during the past century; it is that the wheel-lock has been taken off, and the driver thrown to the ground.

In this, therefore, consists a new difference between the Reform and Lutheranism; and it was not unaptly that Bossuet said in presence of the court of Louis XIV: The Calvinists are bolder than the Lutherans,

The Reform, in its very origin, was essentially democratic. Switzerland, where the Reform is developed, is an assembly of small nations in which the people are the sovereign. There the reformation comes from the people; and when the councils are opposed to it, (as for instance at Basle,) the people make it prevail. The political rights and liberties, which were trodden underfoot by the Papacy, and which Lutheranism gave up without reluctance, are zealously claimed by the Reform. They advance with it, and are established wherever it goes. The reformation of the Free Cities of Germany, now Lutheran, was the most striking act of their unfettered will; but in making this supreme effort they lost their energy and their freedom, and from that time they fell under the influence of their formidable neighbors.

But the Reform, on the contrary, wherever it goes, makes sacred the ancient liberties and bears new ones with it. Why is it that the fate of Geneva, a free imperial city, is at present very different from that of Augsburg, Nuremberg, and many other towns, which were once as free and independent as it is? History will answer. In 1559, when Geneva was in dread of a siege, Calvin himself helped on the work of raising another rampart. To the same spirit which animated Calvin, Geneva owes her capability of maintaining her independence against formidable enemies, for three centuries. Every where is this distinction between Lutheranism and the Reform apparent. In our own days, for instance, when, on the fall of Charles X. in 1830, the Christians of France and some other countries rejoiced, and the Christians of Germany were astounded and scandalized, perhaps the simple reason of this was that the former were Reformed and the latter Lutherans.

This has long furnished the Roman Catholics with a favorite subject for reproachful language toward the Reform. Well, be it so. Only let us remember the continual commotions of Popish countries, of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Ireland, France, and (but three days since) the battle of Trient, (Valais.) Let us remember the anxiety, the uneasiness, and

the sad groans of the Lutheran states of Germany. Let us remember the mighty and fruitful liberties which are peaceably enjoyed by the Reformed countries at this time; by Scotland, Holland, England, America, and by some Swiss cantons. And if, in America, the quiet city of William Penn, once the city of Brotherly Love, is now defiled by bloody riots, whence is it? We do not say that the Protestants have been in no wise wrong. On the contrary, we grant that in this case probably the salt hath lost its savor. But it is perfectly evident that the disaster which has occurred in Philadelphia is an act by which Popery and Ireland signalize their invasion there.

As it regards political freedom, Popery is in a state of revolution, Lutheranism in a state of fermentation, and the Reform in a state of possession.

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Let no one say, There are democratic sympathies in the Reform; it is therefore not suitable for monarchies. This would be a singular anachronism; it would be reasoning the style of the age of Louis XIV. Do not the greatest minds of the day acknowledge that democracy, under one form or another, is a future state toward which all nations tend? Now, if the Reform, as Mr. De Tocqueville himself asserts, possesses the light and the strength necessary to lead and moderate democracy, is it not essential to the future interests of all states? To reject it now, would be to send off the seamen, to chase away the pilot, to throw overboard the compass and to break the rudder, at the very moment when the ship is about to set sail and go forth into the open sea. "Let us reform the morals of democracy by religion," says De Tocqueville. The Reform is the golden bit, powerful, yet easy, which a Divine hand has prepared for the mouth of liberty. True pacific democracy is the Reform. You will find it nowhere else.

But, if the Reformed church gives freedom to the state, it is because it possesses freedom itself. In the Reform, the government of the church does not proceed from certain individuals whose functions place them above all the rest, but from