the Christians who follow the opinions of Martin Luther, one of the principal reformers of the church in the sixteenth century.

This sect took its rise from the distaste taken at the indulgences which were granted in 1517, by pope Leo X. to those who contributed towards finishing St. Peter's church at Rome. John Stupitz, vicar-general of the Augustines in Germany, was the first who took occasion to declare against these abuses, for which purpose he made use of Martin Luther, the most learned of all the Augustines. Luther was a native of Eisleben, in the county of Mansfield in Saxony, and taught divinity at the university of Würtemberg; he mounted the pulpit, and declaimed vehemently against the abuse of indulgences, and even fixed ninety-five propositions upon the church-doors of Würtemberg, in order to their being considered and examined in a public conference: against these John Tetzel, a Dominican, published a hundred and six positions at Frankfort upon the Oder; and by virtue of his office of inquisitor, ordered those of Luther to be burnt; when his adherents, to revenge the affront, publicly burnt at Würtemberg those of Tetzel. Thus war was declared between the Dominicans and Augustines, and soon after between the Roman catholic and the Lutheran party. In 1520, Luther sent his book De Liberate Chriftianae, to the pope; in which he grounds justification upon faith alone, without the assistance of good works; and asserts, that Christian liberty refuses us from the bondage of human traditions, and particularly the slavery of papal impositions; and afterwards, in a remonstrance written in high Dutch, he proceeded to deny the authority of the church of Rome. He was the same year excommunicated by the pope; upon which Luther causing a large fire to be made without the walls of Würtemberg, threw the pope's bull into it with his own hands, together with the decrets, extravagants, and clementines; and this example was followed by his disciples in other towns. The next year the emperor Charles V. ordered his books to be burnt, and put him under the ban of the empire as a heretic and schismatic; and about this time king Henry VIII. of England wrote against him in defence of the seven sacraments, to which Luther wrote a reply.

The elector of Saxony, who had for some time kept him concealed in his castle of Websurg, now gave him leave to reform the churches of Würtemberg as he thought fit; when this reformer proposed, that the bishops, abbots, and monks, should be expelled; that all the lands and revenues of the bishoprics, abbeys, and monasteries, should escheat to the respective princes; and that all the convents of mendicant friars should be turned into public schools and hospitals: this year, Luther had the satisfaction to see a league contracted between Gustavus king of Sweden, and Frederick king of Denmark, who both agreed to establish Lutheranism in their dominions: and now Luther's persuasion, which from the Upper Saxony had spread into the northern provinces, began to be perfectly settled in the duchies of Lunenburg, Brunswick, Mecklenburgh, and Pomerania, and in the archbishoprics of Magdeburgh and Bremen; in the towns of Hamburgh, Wilmar, Rostock, and along the Baltic as far as Livonia and Prussia. Luther maintained the doctrine of consubstantiation; and at a general council at Ratibon for reconciling both parties, the divines could agree to no more than five or six articles concerning justification, free-will, original sin, baptism, good works, and episcopacy.