It was inevitable that, among the many
utterances with which we were treated in the year 1883, many should
be very foolish, and not a few mischievous and erroneous. Itinerant
Windbags are rarely scrupulous about their facts, and the allusive
style flavoured with stinging invective is far more telling than any
historical narrative, however picturesque and eloquent it may be.
Luther the Monk will always be a more attractive subject in the
lecture hall than Luther the Theologian, and an audience prepared to
be harrowed and shocked will greedily listen to broad hints about
_abominations_-the word is a very favourite one--which the
author could disclose, but mercifully withholds in pity for the
shuddering hearts of a too sensitive assembly. The consequence was
that an altogether disproportionate amount of declamation was wasted
up and down the country by gentlemen on the stump, in girding at
monks and nuns, their vices and crimes, till some men's minds were
not a little exercised, and some, horrified by what they were told,
asked in their perplexity, "Can these things be?" The present writer
knows nothing of the condition of the German Religious Houses in the
fifteenth or the sixteenth century, and not as much as he would wish
to learn of the condition of the English houses during the same
period, but he has been painfully convinced that the peripatetic
orators are about as qualified to lecture upon the subject as he is
to lecture on astronomy.
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