1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 125 takes the two leaders of the Renaissance and the Reformation respectively in order to illustrate the march of its progress. The book is not a history of their times, but its chapters follow the well-marked periods into which that epoch is divided. The author assumes a knowledge of the events and the turning-points, and so obtains for himself free range for comment and amplification. There is no doubt about his information ; but his rather discursive method is occasionally distracting, if generally interesting. It is thus not a book for the uninitiated : and it demands, on the part of the reader, besides some familiarity with the period, powers of concentration and co-ordination which cannot always safely be assumed. There is a large apparatus of bibliography and reference ; but these do not disturb the reading of the text. The author begins with ' the mature thought of Erasmus ' (ch. i) down to the time when as a man of fifty he was ' the intellectual king of Europe Then follows (ch. ii) a sketch of ' the early thought of Luther ' when as a young ' monk ' (which should be ' friar ') of thirty-three he challenged the reigning system of indulgences in 1517. The third chapter deals with 1517-21, when a ' rift ' begins to appear between Erasmus and Luther which afterwards developed into mutual distaste. Chapters iv and v are concerned with Luther's excommunication in 1521 ; his effort to re-establish, for the benefit of the radicals at Wittenberg in 1522, some shreds of authority in place of the authority of the pope which he had destroyed. We then return to the growing rift, with comments in ch. vi, on ' the attitude of Erasmus ' to the treatises of 1520 and the events of 1521. The ' controversy on free-will ', described in ch. vii, rendered the breach irreparable. Luther's abandonment of the people and adhesion to the princes in the Peasants' War is the subject of ch. viii, the direct result of this being rightly held by the author to have been the substi- tution of civil for ecclesiastical authority, and of a spirit of intolerance for his former habit of toleration. Chapter ix follows in the wake of the reform of the church on the principle of territorialism or Cuius regio, eius religio : begun at Spires in 1526 and finally accepted at Augsburg 1555, though for Lutherans only, not for reformed within the empire. Then ch. x- deals with the opening, all too late for reconciliation between papist and protestant, of movements for a council : which, curiously enough, coincide with the decade between the death of Erasmus in 1536 and of Luther in 1546. A final chapter ' On Church and State ' gives an opportunity for summaries : and there is an elaborate appendix on 1 The conception of progress in Classical and Renaissance writers '. 'In the sixteenth century, few even of its most eminent thinkers entertained the idea.' The book is full of illustrations of the main thesis, and these are drawn from an extensive reading. The author delights in contrasts. He points out how for the success of toleration, two types of mind are wanted : the meditative, to make for order ; and the destructive, to secure move- ment. These he finds, the one in Erasmus, the other in Luther ; and there is a long-drawn-out but interesting comparison between those two great and gross but typical Germans, Luther and Bismarck. Dr. Murray is decisive and yet sound in marking characteristics of movements, and fixing
