the exercise of them. It has severed the bonds which united
them to religion, which sanctified them, and secured for them a place in
the veneration of the people. The Protestant worship tends to disenchant
the material imagination; it makes fine churches and statues and
paintings unnecessary; it renders them unpopular, and takes from them
one of their most active springs.

The peasants' war was soon succeeded by the spoliation of the
monasteries; "an invasion of the most sacred of all rights, more
important, in certain respects, than liberty itself--property." From
that time not a day passed without Luther preaching up the robbery of
the religious houses. To excite the greed of the princes whom he wished
to secure to his views, he loved to direct their attention to the
treasures which the abbeys, cloisters, sacristies, and sanctuaries
contained. "Take them," he said; "all these are your own--all belong to
you." Luther was convinced that to the value of the golden remonstrances
which shone on the Catholic altars he was indebted for more than one
conversion. In a moment of humor he said: "The gentry and princes are
the best Lutherans; they willingly accept both monasteries and chapters,
and appropriate their treasures."

The Landgrave of Hesse, to obtain authority for giving his arm to two
lawful wives, took care to make the wealth of the monasteries glitter in
the eyes of the Church of Wittenberg, so that as the price of their
permission he was willing to give it to the Saxon ministers. The plunder
of church property, preached by Luther, will be the eternal condemnation
of the Protestants. Though Naboth's vineyard may serve as a bait or
reward for apostasy, it cannot justify crime.

A laureate of the Institute of France has discovered grounds for
palliating this blow to property. He congratulates the princes who
embraced the Reformation for having, by means of the ecclesiastical
property, filled their coffers, paid their debts, applied the
confiscated wealth to useful establishments, clubs, universities,
hospitals, orphanages, retreats, and rewards for the old servants of the
state. But Luther himself took care, on more than one occasion, to
denounce the avarice of the princes who, when once masters of the
monastic property, employed its revenues for the support of mistresses
and packs of hounds. We remember the eloquent complaints which he
uttered in his old age against these carnal men, who left the Protestant
clerg