ther stepped out as
protagonist in the great struggle of his time; and Freethought is not
so barren in great names that it need envy Brother Martin his righteous
applause. Indeed, it seems to me that Freethinkers are in a position to
esteem Luther more justly than Christians. Seeing what was his task,
and how it demanded a stormy, impetuous nature, we can thank Luther for
accomplishing it, while recognising his great defects, his faults of
temper and the narrowness of his views; defects, I would add, which it
were unnecessary to dwell on if Protestants did not magnify them
into virtues, or if they did not illustrate the inherent vices of
Christianity itself.

Strong for his life-task, Luther was weak in other respects. Like Dr.
Johnson, there were strange depths in his character, but none in his
intellect. He emitted many flashes of genius in writing and talking, but
they all came from the heart, and chiefly from the domestic affections.
He broke away from the Papacy, but he only abandoned Catholicism so far
as it conflicted with the most obvious morality. He retained all its
capital superstitions. Mr. Froude puts the case very mildly when he says
that "Erasmus knew many things which it would have been well for Luther
to have known." Erasmus would not have called Copernicus "an old fool,"
or have answered him by appealing to Joshua. Erasmus would not have seen
a special providence in the most trifling accidents. Erasmus would not
have allowed devils to worry him. Above all, Erasmus would not have
pursued those who were heretics to _his_ doctrine with all the animosity
of a Papal bigot. Such differences induced Mr. Matthew Arnold to call
Luther a Philistine of genius; just as they led Goethe to say that
Luther threw back the intellectual progress of mankind for centuries.
Another poet, Shelley, seems to me to have hit the precise truth in his
"Ode to Liberty":

Luther caught thy wakening glance:
Like lightning from his leaden lance
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay.

Shelley's epithet is perfect. Luther's lance was big and potent.
It wrought terrible havoc among the enemy. But it was _leaden_. It
overthrew, but it did not transfix.

This is not the place to relate how Luther played the Pope in his own
way; how he persecuted the Zwinglians because they went farther than
himself on the subject of the real presence; how he barked at the Swiss