The following, then, is the account of Melancthon's recovery, as related by Seckendorf from so respectable an authority.

"Luther arrived, and found Philip about to give up the Ghost. His eyes were set *, his understanding was almost gone, his speech had failed, and also his hearing, his face had fallen, he knew no one, and had ceased to take either solids or liquids. At this spectacle Luther is filled with the utmost consternation, and turning to his fellow-travellers, says, 'Blessed Lord, how has the devil spoiled me this instrument!' Then, turning away towards the window, he called most devoutly upon God."

His German "parrhesia," as Seckendorf calls it (i.e. his free, confident, and unreserved petition), which he despairs of giving in Latin, will hardly bear a close translation into English. The sense is, that he besought God, in mercy to him, to forbear: that he struck work †, in order to urge upon Him in supplication, with all the promises of hearing prayer that he could repeat out of Scripture, that he must hear and answer the prayer now offered, if ever he would have the petitioner trust his promises again on other occasions. (Here, probably, Luther had in mind Augustine's address to the Lord, which was also followed by a miraculous answer to prayer, as we have seen in the

"I venture to give this as what appears to me the most probable rendering of the expression, "Fracti erant oculi; " (in Roos, " Die Augen waren ihm gleich gebrochen." Reformations-Geschichte, vol. ii. p. 471, ed. Tübigen, 1782: a German phrase, when the patient is at the point of death). The breaking of the eyes seems to mean, that the muscles which move the eyeballs, lose, on the approach of death, the power of fixing the view on any object; the consequence of which is, that the two lines of sight no longer converge, as when we look at any thing in health, but break, or become parallel, so that the eyes of the dying person seem to be fixed or set, as if he were gazing on vacancy.

There is, I believe, a different account of Luther's words, which would make their purport to be, that he cast before the Lord a whole load of his gracious promises.

second chapter. "Lord, what prayers of thine own children wilt thou ever grant, if thou grant not these?")

"Glasse proceeds: after this, taking the hand of Philip, and well knowing what was the anxiety of his heart and conscience, he said, Be of good courage, Philip, thou shalt not die. Though God wanteth not reason to slay thee, yet he willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he may be converted and live. He takes pleasure in life, and not in death. Inasmuch as God has called and taken back to his favour the greatest sinners that ever lived on earth, namely, Adam and Eve, much less, Philip, will he cast off thee, or suffer thee to perish in thy sin and sorrow. Wherefore give not place to the spirit of grief, nor become the slayer of thyself; but trust in the Lord, who is able to kill, and to make alive. While he thus utters these things, Philip begins as it were to revive and to breathe, and, gradually recovering his strength, is at last restored to health*," &c.

* "Adveniens Lutherus Philippum jam animam acturum comperit. Fracti erant oculi, intellectus pene amissus, lingua defecerat et auditus, vultus conciderat, neminem agnoscebat, cibo et potu abstinebat. Hunc ob aspectum summe Lutherus conterretur, et ad comites iteneris conversus ait, Bone Deus, ut nobis diabolus hoc organon dehonestavit! (wie hat mir der Teufel das organon geschändet). Ad fenestras porro vulto averso devotissime Deum invocabat, (Allda, sagte Lutherus, muste mir unser Gott verhalten, den ich warff ihm den sack für die thür, und riebe ihm die ohren mit alle promissionibus exaudiendarum precum, die ich aus der heiligen schrift zu erzelen wuste, dass er mich müste erhören, wo ich anderst seinen verheissungen trauen solte. Parrhesia hoc vix exprimi Latine potest. Sensus est: Se cum Deo magna cum confidentia egisse, omnesque ei objecisse et veluti inculcasse, quæ ex Scripturis allegari poterant, promissiones de audiendis precibus, itaque cogebatur (ait) me exaudire si fiduciam meam in promissiones suas conservare vellet. Pergit Glassius: Post hæc manum Philippi prehendens, (bene autem cognita ipsi cordis et conscientiæ ejus solicitudo erat), Bono animo esto, Philippe, ait, non morieris. Quamvis occidendi causa Deo non desit, tamen non vult mortem peccatoris, sed ut convertatur et vivat: delectatur vita et non morte. Quia Deus maximos peccatores, qui unquam in terris vixerunt, Adam scilicet et Evam, in gratiam suam vocavit et recepit, multo minus te, Philippe, vult abjicere vel permittere, ut in peccato et moerore tuo pereas. Quare spiritui tristitiæ locum ne dato, nec tui ipsius fias homicida, sed confide Domino, qui mortificare et vivificare potest. Hæc dum ita proloquitur, reviviscere quasi et spiritum ducere Philippus incipit, paulatimque viribus resumptis, tandem sanitati restituitur, &c." Lib. iii. § LXXXIII. 11.

The effect of the words of Luther on a man who was already in a dying state, who had on him the visible signs of death, and whose hearing, as well as his sight and power of knowing those about him, was gone, is not to be accounted for on any natural principles: and accordingly let us listen to the opinion given by the two parties principally concerned; namely, Melancthon and Luther themselves. Melancthon, writing to Burcard Mithobius, says,

"I should have been a dead man, had I not been recalled from death itself by the coming of Luther *.” And Luther's language is to the same effect. To Joh. Lange he writes,

Philip is very well after such an illness, for it was greater than I had supposed. I found him dead; but, by an evident miracle of God, he lives +:"

and, to a friend resident in his family, referring to his attendance at the diet,

"Toil and labour have been lost, and money spent to no purpose: nevertheless, though I have succeeded in nothing else, yet have I fetched back Philip out of hell; and I intend to bring him, now rescued from the grave, home again with joy, if God will, and with his grace, Amen."

Since then it is clear, not only that Luther both recognised and believed the doctrine of demoniacal possession, and acted on this belief; not

*"Fuissem extinctus, nisi adventu Lutheri ex media morte revocatus sum."-Lib. III. § LXXXIII. 11.

"Philippus satis pro tanta ægritudine valet : major enim fuit, quam putassem. Mortuum eum invenimus: miraculo Dei manifesto vivit."Briefe, 5ter Theil. pp. 297, 298.

"Ist muhe und arbeit verloren und unkost vergeblich; doch, wo wir nichts mehr ausgericht, so haben wir doch M. Philipps wieder aus der Helle geholet und wieder aus dem grabe frolich heimbringen wollen, ob Gott will und mit seiner gnaden, Amen."-p. 299.

only that he uttered predictions, that the things which he predicted came to pass, and that he regarded himself as uttering them in the Spirit; not only that he viewed the prayers of the church as efficacious for the healing of the sick, and experienced their efficacy; but also, that he himself, in repeated instances, wrought works of healing for the recovery of others; we may bear, for the future, to hear a few clauses from his works, in which, writing with a view to particular objects of caution or controversy, he seems to speak in depreciating terms of miracles, without being blindly hurried to the general conclusion, that he "expected them not*."

Having so often referred, in the course of the preceding remarks on Luther, to the authority of Seckendorf, I am here induced to add a portion of the account of this excellent writer, given by the Rev. J. Scott in his continuation of Milner's Church History.

"He has been pronounced not only a great statesman, but one of the brightest ornaments of the republic of letters.' He was also a man of the strictest uprightness and piety; and, having applied himself much to the study of divinity and ecclesiastical history, when he retired from public life in the year 1682, he was solicited by the Duke of Saxony to write the history of the Reformation, at least as far as related to that country. On his assenting to the proposal, the archives and the libraries of most of the German princes were opened to him, and learned men were ready to tender him their assistance. His great work is entitled 'Commentarius Historicus et Apologeticus de Lutheranismo,' &c. The particular form which it assumed was owing to the popular but fallacious History of Lutheranism,' then recently published in the French language by Maimbourg the Jesuit; which Seckendorf translates into Latin, and then examines from section to section, detecting its errors and misrepresentations, and amply supplying its deficiencies from the rich stores of original papers which were open to him. This excellent work comprises the period of Luther's public life, from the year 1517 to 1546. The author would have carried it further, had not age and infirmities forbidden the attempt. It is attended especially with the four following advantages: 1. It presents the Papal as well as the Protestant accounts, in the very words of a leading advocate of the party: 2. It details to us the sentiments and proceedings of the Protestant princes and divines from the original documents, in great part previously inaccessible to the public: 3. It furnishes us with a review of all Luther's successive writings, and with copious extracts from the most material of

The last to be examined of Mr. Noel's witnesses from the Reformers is MUSCULUS.

"Musculus.-Divino itaque consilio factum est ut non miracula, sed Evangelii prædicatio duraret in orbe alioqui si in miraculis esset Electorum fides, male nobiscum ageretur ante quorum tempora miracula....jam diu cessarunt. Usus eorum erat ut doctrina apostolorum confirmaretur."-(Musculus on John vi. 69.)*

That is, taking the words as Mr. Noel here gives them,

"It came to pass, therefore, by the Divine purpose, that not miracles, but the preaching of the Gospel, continued in the world. Otherwise, if the faith of the elect were in miracles, it would go hard with us, before whose times miracles....have long since ceased. Their use was, that the doctrine of the Apostles might be confirmed."

Never

This is certainly a very strong testimony against the belief of Musculus in any miracles. theless, as a drowning man will catch at a straw, one cannot help feeling a slight disposition to ask the question, especially as Musculus here speaks of miracles sent for the confirmation of the Gospel, whether he really means that all miracles had ceased; or whether he may not be speaking with a particular reference to those miracles which accompanied the preaching of the Gospel at first: and further, in our drowning struggles, (for the quotation, as it stands above, evidently gives us the worst of it), we catch not only at straws, but even

them: 4. It gives us Seckendorf's OWN EXCELLENT JUDGMENT upon every transaction."-Preface, pp. xii. xiii. Second Edition. 1826.

The reader, however, will readily perceive, that no author can be said to have given a full and correct representation either of Seckendorf's character, or of Luther's, who neglects to record the miraculous experience of the latter, and the unfeigned and evident belief with which the former details it.

* Remarks, p. 18, note.