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When it was urged against that doctrine, that it is a mathematical impossibility for the same corporeal substance to be in a thousand different places at one and the same time, the great reformer resisted the objection as an infringement of the divine sovereignty: “God is above mathematics,” he exclaimed: “I reject reason, common-sense, carnal arguments, and mathematical proofs.” There is no doubt but the orthodox divines of the present day will be disposed to smile at this specimen of Luther’s pious zeal for the sovereignty of God; and although they may not be willing to admit that God is above all reason and common-sense, yet will they be inclined to think that, in some respects, Luther was a little below them.
Yet in the face of this conclusion, which so clearly and so irresistibly follows from Luther’s position, he asserts the freedom of the divine will, as if he were perfectly unconscious of the self-contradiction in which he is involved. “It now then follows,” says he, “that free-will is plainly a divine term, and can be applicable to none but the Divine Majesty only.” ... He even says, If free-will “be ascribed unto men, it is not more properly ascribed, than the divinity of God himself would be ascribed unto them; which would be the greatest of all sacrilege.
The Church, beginning at last to recover from the effects of Luther’s schism, was once more in a position to re-assert its ancient authority over Catholic Christendom, and in Torquato Tasso it found an able trumpeter to call together the scattered forces of the Faithful, and to reunite them in a holy war.
It is already known that, at the beginning of Luther’s rebellion against the Roman church, Charles resolved to avail himself of the terror which the name of that celebrated reformer inspired in the hearts of Roman Catholics, in order to intimidate the court of Rome and humiliate its pride.
The visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence, speaking louder and louder and looking ironically at his host. But he did not succeed in finishing; Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the table and flung it at the orator. “Ah, mais c’est bête enfin,” cried the latter, jumping up from the sofa and shaking the drops of tea off himself. “He remembers Luther’s inkstand!
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