on in this world in reference to the most momentous
interests? What other guide has a man but his reason? And you would
prevent this very reason from being enlightened by the Gospel! You would
obscure reason itself by your traditions, O ye blind leaders of the
blind! O ye legal and technical men, obscuring the light of truth! O ye
miserable Pharisees, ye bigots, ye selfish priests, tenacious of your
power, your inventions, your traditions,--will ye withhold the free
redemption, God's greatest boon, salvation by the blood of Christ,
offered to all the world? Yea, will you suffer the people to perish,
soul and body, because you fear that, instructed by God himself, they
will rebel against your accursed despotism? Have you considered what a
mighty crime you thus commit against God, against man? Ye rule by an
infernal appeal to the superstitious fears of men; but how shall ye
yourselves, for such crimes, escape the damnation of that hell into
which you would push your victims unless they obey _you_?

"No, I say, let the Scriptures be put into the hands of everybody; let
every one interpret them for himself, according to the light he has; let
there be private judgment; let spiritual liberty be revived, as in
Apostolic days. Then only will the people be emancipated from the Middle
Ages, and arise in their power and majesty, and obey the voice of
enlightened conscience, and be true to their convictions, and practise
the virtues which Christianity commands, and obey God rather than man,
and defy all sorts of persecution and martyrdom, having a serene faith
in those blessed promises which the Gospel unfolds. Then will the
people become great, after the conflicts of generations, and put under
their feet the mockeries and lies and despotisms which grind them
to despair."

Thus was born the third great idea of the Reformation, out of Luther's
brain, a logical sequence from the first idea,--_the right of private
judgment_, religious liberty, call it what you will; a great inspiration
which in after times was destined to march triumphantly over
battlefields, and give dignity and power to the people, and lead to the
reception of great truths obscured by priests for one thousand years;
the motive of an irresistible popular progress, planting England with
Puritans, and Scotland with heroes, and France with martyrs, and North
America with colonists; yea, kindling a fervid religious life; creating
such men as Knox and Latimer and Taylor