ent suppression of the
Protestants. Luther's doctrines had taken too deep hold upon their
subjects to render it safe to join in a war of extermination against
them.

The Zwinglians also coalesced with the Lutherans in presenting a
united front against the threatened bloody coercion. The Smalcald
League, moreover, had grown to be a power which even the emperor could
not despise. He therefore resolved to come to terms with the
Protestant members of his empire, and a peace--at least a truce--was
concluded at Nuremberg, which left things as they were to wait until a
general council should settle the questions in dispute.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] "The Reformation of Luther kindled up the minds of men afresh,
leading to new habits of thought and awakening in individuals energies
before unknown to themselves. The religious controversies of this
period changed society, as well as religion, and to a considerable
extent, where they did not change the religion of the state, they
changed man himself in his modes of thought, his consciousness of his
own powers, and his desire of intellectual attainment. The spirit of
commercial and foreign adventure on the one hand and, on the other the
assertion and maintenance of religious liberty, having their source in
the Reformation, and this love of religious liberty drawing after it
or bringing along with it, as it always does, an ardent devotion to
the principle of civil liberty also, were the powerful influences
under which character was formed and men trained for the great work of
introducing English civilization, English law, and, what is more than
all, Anglo-Saxon blood, into the wilderness of North America."--Daniel
Webster, _Works_, vol. i. p. 94.

LUTHER'S LATER YEARS.

Luther lived nearly fifteen years after this grand crowning of his
testimony, diligently laboring for Christ and his country. The most
brilliant part of his career was over, but his labors still were great
and important. Indeed, his whole life was intensely laborious. He was
a busier man than the First Napoleon. His publications, as reckoned up
by Seckendorf, amount to eleven hundred and thirty-seven. Large and
small together, they number seven hundred and fifteen volumes--one for
every two weeks that he lived after issuing the first. Even in the
last six weeks of his life he issued thirty-one publications--more
than five per week. If he had had no other cares and duties but to
occupy himself with his pen, this woul