words which were spoken and written
fifteen hundred years before him, and he fell in some case into what
his opponent Eckius called "Black-letter style."

Under these restraints his method was formed. If he had a question to
solve, he collected all the passages in Scripture which appeared to him
to contain an answer; he examined each passage to understand their
mutual bearing, and thus arrived at his conclusions. By this mode of
proceeding, he brought the Scriptures within the compass of an ordinary
understanding; for example, in the year 1522, he undertook, out of the
Holy Scriptures, to place marriage on a new moral foundation; he
severely criticised the eighteen reasons given by ecclesiastical law,
forbidding and dissolving marriages, and condemned the unworthy
favouring of the rich in preference to the poor.

It was this same system which made him so pertinacious in his
transactions with the Reformers in the year 1529, when he wrote on the
table before him: "This _is_ my body;" and looked gloomily on the tears
and outstretched hands of Zwinglius. Never had that formidable man
shown more powerful convictions, convictions won in vehement wrestling
with his doubts and the devil. It may be considered by some as an
imperfect system; but there was a genial strength in it, that made his
own view more available to the cultivation and heart-cravings of his
time, than even he himself anticipated.

Besides these great trials, the proscribed monk at the Wartburg was
exposed to smaller temptations: he had long, by almost superhuman
spiritual activity, overcome, what great self-distrust led him to
consider as merely sensual inclinations; still nature stirred
powerfully in him, and he many times begged of his dear Melancthon to
pray for him concerning this.

It happened providentially, that just at this time at Wittenberg the
restless spirit of Karlstadt took up the subject of the marriage of
priests, in a pamphlet in which he decided that vows of celibacy were
not binding upon priests and monks. The Wittenbergers were in general
agreed on this question, especially Melancthon, who was perfectly
unbiassed, as he himself had never entered into holy orders, and had
been married two years.

Thus a web of thoughts and moral problems was cast from the outer world
upon Luther's soul, the threads of which enclosed the whole of his
later life. Whatever joy of heart and earthly happiness was vouchsafed
to him henceforth, rested on the