ng coat. "Thus Satan rages against the souls
that I seek to save." Luther had reason for protecting himself and his
friends from Satan. He had rejected all the authority of the Church;
now he stood terribly alone; nothing was left to him but his last
resort--the Scriptures. The ancient Church had represented
Christianity in continual development. The faith had been kept in a
fluid state by a living tradition which ran parallel with the
Scriptures, by the Councils, by the Papal decrees; and they had
adapted themselves, like a facile stream, to the sharp corners of
national character, to the urgent needs of each age. It is true that
this noble idea of a perpetually living organism had not been
preserved in its original purity. The best part of its life had
vanished; empty cocoons were being preserved. The old democratic
church had been transformed into the irresponsible sovereignty of a
few, had been stained with all the vices of an unconscientious
aristocracy, and was already in striking opposition to reason and
popular feeling. What Luther, however, could put in its place--the
word of the Scriptures--although it gave freedom from a hopeless mass
of soulless excrescences, threatened on the other hand new dangers.

What was the Bible? Between the earliest and latest writings of the
sacred book lay perhaps two thousand years. Even the New Testament was
not written by Christ himself, not even entirely by those who had
received the sacred doctrine from his lips. It was compiled after his
death. Portions of it might have been transmitted inexactly.
Everything was written in a foreign tongue, which it was difficult for
the Germans to understand. Even the keenest penetration was in danger
of interpreting falsely unless the grace of God enlightened the
interpreter as it had the apostles. The ancient Church had settled the
matter summarily; in it the sacrament of holy orders gave such
enlightenment. Indeed, the Holy Father even laid claim to divine
authority to decide arbitrarily what should be right, even when his
will was contrary to the Scriptures. The reformer had nothing but his
feeble human knowledge, and prayer.

The first unavoidable step was that he must use his reason, for a
certain critical treatment even of the Holy Bible was necessary. Nor
did Luther fail to see that the books of the New Testament were of
varying worth. It is well known that he did not highly esteem the
Apocalypse, and that the Epistle of James was