George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[75] It was the knell of the departing dominion of an

Chap. II.}

alien prince over the conscience of the peoples. But it was more than the termination of a strife of seven centuries between pope and emperor. The truth spoken by Luther assigned to the pope his true place, as an unconsecrated, fallible, peccant mortal, holding only an office instituted by his erring fellowmortals, and having no functions and no powers except what erring mortals can bestow. To discard the pope, and keep bishops and priests with superhuman authority derived from ordination, would have been only substituting one supernatural caste for another. Luther struck superstition at the root. The popes stripped lordship over conscience from the emperor; and Luther stripped it from pope, prelates, and priests. His teaching was the rending of the veil which divides the past civilization from the future, a vindication for all mankind of the rights of reason. The idea of justification by faith alone was censured as fatalism, while in truth it is the strongest possible summons to self-activity. The principle can never be surrendered so long as the connection between man and eternal truth shall endure. Well, therefore, did Leibnitz say of Luther: ‘This is he who, in later times, taught the human race hope and free thought.’¹

The medieval church had been, in some sort, the protector of the people. Luther declared reason to be the ‘well-spring of law,’² the rule for reforming national codes. Further; he demanded that truth should be spread by appeals to reason alone. ‘If ’