, whereby the
wretched sinner would be physically tormented forever, unless he escaped
by a propitiation of the Deity,--the common form of which was penance,
deeds of supererogation, donations to the Church, self-expiation, works
of fear and penitence, which commended themselves to the piety of the
age; and this piety Luther now believed to be unenlightened, not the
kind enjoined by Christ or Paul.

So, to instruct his students and the people as to the true ground of
justification, which he had worked out from the study of the Bible and
Saint Augustine amid the agonies of a tormented conscience, Luther
prepared his theses,--those celebrated ninety-five propositions, which
he affixed to the gates of the church of Wittenberg, and which excited
a great sensation throughout Northern Germany, reaching even the eyes of
the Pope himself, who did not comprehend their tendency, but was struck
with their power. "This Doctor Luther," said he, "is a man of fine
genius." The students of the university, and the people generally, were
kindled as if by Pentecostal fires. The new invention of printing
scattered those theses everywhere, far and near; they reached the humble
hamlet as well as the palaces of bishops and princes. They excited
immediate and immense enthusiasm: there was freshness in them,
originality, and great ideas. We cannot wonder at the enthusiasm which
those religious ideas excited nearly four hundred years ago when we
reflect that they were not cant words then, not worn-out platitudes, not
dead dogmas, but full of life and exciting interest,--even as were the
watchwords of Rousseau--"Liberty, Fraternity, Equality"--to Frenchmen,
on the outbreak of their political revolution. And as those
watchwords--abstractly true--roused the dormant energies of the French
to a terrible conflict against feudalism and royalty, so those theses of
Luther kindled Germany into a living flame. And why? Because they
presented more cheerful and comforting grounds of justification than had
been preached for one thousand years,--faith rather than penance; for
works hinged on penance. The underlying principle of those propositions
was _grace_,--divine grace to save the world,--the principle of Paul and
Saint Augustine; therefore not new, but forgotten; a mighty comfort to
miserable people, mocked and cheated and robbed by a venal and a
gluttonous clergy. Even Taine admits that this doctrine of grace is the
foundation stone of Protestantism as i