1850.] Luther's Views on Endless Punishment.

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It is very remarkable, that while Luther speaks disparagingly of Universalism, and obviously would be regarded as a believer in endless punishment, he still held this latter doctrine on grounds of mere faith. He thought the Scriptures taught it, and therefore believed it. He did not pretend to understand it; he offered no reasons, he seems to have had none to offer for its truth. On the contrary, he plainly shows that he saw clearly, and felt deeply, the repulsive and abhorrent character of the doctrine he professed. He writhed under it; his soul revolted from it; but there it was, resting like the nightmare on his breast, and he could not shake it off. It was in vain that the Bible held forth other and more grateful truths. In vain did the prophet declare, that "God would not keep anger forever," and the apostle, that "he would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." These great truths must be frittered away to mean little or nothing, for otherwise would the doctrines of foreknowledge and election, (which he had learned from Augustine rather than Paul,) be denied and of no value. So, to save a venerable misconception, which the Augustine monk had learned in his cloister, he sacrificed a sublime truth of the inspired word. But Luther unfortunately labored under the same difficulty which all believers in endless punishment must, of necessity, meet and yield to. Justice and mercy, under every phase of that shocking theory, are utterly and forever at war with each other, and if God will be just he must sacrifice not only his infinite benevolence, but untold millions of his intelligent offspring. It seems never to occur to the advocates of this revolting dogma, that, if necessity requires it, one might as well clip something from the claims of a justice whose only end is to destroy, as to give up entirely the most benign attribute of the Divinity. The truth is, there exists no such contra, diction between the justice and mercy of God as this theory supposes; and, singular as the fact may seem, and boastful as the assertion may be regarded, it is still a fact, that Universalists are, at this moment, the only people in Christendom, who consistently believe that God is at once infinitely good and just, and that, while he loves all his moral offspring, he rewards every man according to his works. The confessions of Luther, in this letter, are worthy of

serious consideration. Were not the judgements of which he speaks the judgements of God, he would himself regard them, so he tells us,-as instances of malice, arbitrary power and injustice! Nay, farther, to make one's self believe that God is good and just in them, is, in Luther's opinion, the highest achievement of faith. It is like persuading one's self that black is white, and hatred is love. It is not wonderful that the devil should lay hold of such a fair opportunity to throw a stumbling-block in the way of the poor Christian. It hardly needs the aid of this illnatured spirit to accomplish this work. Who that has a heart ever believed this doctrine without finding it at once a stumbling-block and a curse to him, offending every feeling of humanity within him, and shrouding the very throne of God in gloom? At this moment, and the same has been always more or less true, the doctrine of endless punishment is the fruitful source of more infidelity in Christendom than any five other causes that can be named. Wherever this doctrine is thoroughly preached, there springs up a rank growth of unbelief and positive infidelity.

Yet

Luther saw this and endeavored to avoid it. He would have the doctrine handled delicately and with much care. Persons and places and times were to be well considered before one opened his lips on this fearful subject. Many people could not bear it; it was too "strong wine" for most heads. It killed babes in Christ outright. the old Reformer thought it might be administered as a useful medicine, probably as a tonic in the form of bitters only, to certain Christians. But they must be of full age, and large growth, before they could bear it without the greatest danger.

I can but remark the singular revolution which has taken place during the past three centuries in the use of this theological medicine. Luther certainly regarded it as no panacea, and prescribed it sparingly as a skilful physician would calomel or arsenic. To the young, he forbade it altogether. The old, alone, who had grown strong by the habitual use of wholesome food, could safely receive it, and even then, it was to be administered with great caution. Now, this "strong wine," or rather, distilled poison, has grown to be the very milk of the gospel, on which children in Christ are nourished from the first. And it is

observed, that as they grow older, they generally manifest an increasing aversion to it, and, not unfrequently, eschew it altogether at last. Luther would not have the doctrine of endless punishment ever broached to young Christians. Our modern teachers imagine they cannot convict a sinner without this doctrine, and quite as little can they build them up in the true faith without insisting upon it on all occasions, public and private. So great a change have three centuries wrought.

I hardly need observe, that while Luther seems decidedly to favor the doctrine of endless punishment, it is very obvious that his views were mild, in comparison with those of Calvin and his school, in subsequent times. He acknowledged the power of God to convict the sinner, in or after death, and thus save him through faith. That he would do it he could not prove, but consoled himself with the thought that in this case God does what he does; he either gives faith or gives it not.

But I will detain the reader no longer. The opinions of such a man as Martin Luther on any subject connected with religion deserve consideration, and I shall be gratified if this translation of one of his letters shall lead some of our German scholars to a thorough study of his voluminous writings, and an elaborate unfolding of his views on a subject so important as that of endless torments.

T. J. S.

ART. XXVII.

The Cathari or Albigenses.

Histoire et Doctrine de la Secte des Cathares ou Albigeois. Par C. Schmidt, Professeur à la Faculté de Théologie et au Séminaire Protestant de Strasbourg. Paris, J. Cherbuliez &c. Genève &c. 1849. -History and Doctrine of the Sect of Cathari or Albigenses. By C. Schmidt, &c. 2 vols. 8 vo.

THE four or five centuries that preceded the era of the Reformation were ages of turbulent activity, and of rapid change in the political and social condition of Europe. Yet when we look back to those times, so stirring in these

respects, we are apt to fancy that the human soul was in quiet slumber with respect to every thing which belongs to religion. The common impression is that the Roman Catholic Church held an undisputed sway over the conscience of the West, and that her authority, in spiritual matters at least, was rested in, by the mass of the people, with implicit faith. Nothing could be further from the fact. Through the long period of faint but growing dawn, from the year 1000 to the year 1500, the religious elements were in perpetual commotion, sometimes exploding, always struggling, often blindly and perversely indeed, but still tending on the whole towards a better state of things. To show this, we need not dwell on the movement that was signalized rather than begun by Wickliffe, in England, about 1370, nor on the kindred movement of the Hussites in Bohemia nearly fifty years afterwards,-events that were seen and felt at the time to be but the outbreak of an imprisoned force which was everywhere working in the mind of Europe; we need not refer to the much earlier appearance of the Waldenses or Vaudois; we may pass over the great papal schisms that shook altar as well as thrones; and we may omit all notice of the many strifes that raged within the Church, and of the many attempts that were made to reform it in its "head and members." The rise and prevalence of the sects called by the general name of Cathari, and by other names of a local or special kind, will furnish a more striking proof how partial and infirm was the hold which Catholicism had on the mass of the people, even in that golden age of orthodoxy. The history of these heretics has been but little known, and the part which they bore is but little appreciated.

We had occasion many years ago to inquire into their affairs. It was easy to perceive, especially in Catholic writers, abundant traces both of the alarm which the Church had felt during their progress, and of the hatred she long retained of them after they were exterminated. But with our scanty means we found it difficult to gain a clear idea of their character, and of their movement, as a whole. It was like looking at a distant landscape through rifts in an intervening sea of fog. While we saw them held up in the most odious lights, we met with admissions which seemed to throw much doubt on several of the

charges. It was commonly alleged that a part of their sacred rites consisted in the practice of unnatural vices and crimes, the standing accusation against heretics from the times of the ancient Gnostics downwards; yet it was acknowledged that the apparent sanctity of their lives drew multitudes away from the Catholic communion, and this for the space of two centuries. Besides the Gnostic principle which they doubtless held of two Creators, good and bad, and the consequent doctrine that all matter is necessarily evil, we found heresies of a more noticeable kind ascribed to them, such as the denial of future judgement and retribution, and the belief that there is neither hell nor purgatory except in the present life. By some they were absurdly accused of holding that the human soul utterly perishes at death, and, at the same time of maintaining that it passes by transmigration into other bodies; and some again seemed to charge them with teaching that all souls will be saved. All however agreed in this fact, that they claimed to be the only true church of Jesus Christ, and that they denounced the Catholic Church, with her clergy, sacraments, institutions, and pompous rites, inveighing with great vehemence against her authority as well as against her pride, cruelty, and scandalous vices.1 The impression we received from the imperfect notices which came under our eye, was, that the influence they left behind them never died wholly out from the central countries of Europe, but continued to work in the minds of the common people, down to the time of the Reformation, when it reappeared in modified forms among several of the lower sects which were called forth by that event.

In the work named at the head of this article, we have at length met with an account of them that appears to be complete, we mean so far as their doctrine, manners, and history can now be ascertained from the writings of their opponents; for it is to their opponents only that the historian of the present day must look for his materials, not a scrap of their own having survived. M. Schmidt, however, seems to have sifted the whole mass of testimony that is

1 See, besides Fleury, G. Prateoli Marcossii Elench. Alphabet. Hæreticorum, Artt. Albigenses, Albanenses, &c. Berti Breviarium Hist. Eccl. Cent. xi.-xiv. capp. iii. Notitia. Eccl. Pars Tertia, Cent. xii.-xiv. Bossuet's Variations of the Protestants, Book x1., &c.