It is evident that Bancroft has studied the Reformation, not simply in its outward political aspect, but so as to understand the different shades of theological belief that influenced the minds of the great reformers. His parallel between Luther and Calvin is a fine specimen of composition, noted for its vigorous English, clear, discriminating judgments, and polished style: “Both Luther and Calvin brought the individual immediate relation with God; but Calvin, under a more stern and militant form of doctrine, lifted the individual above pope and prelate, and priest and presbyter, above Catholic church and national church and general synod, above indulgencies, remissions and absolutions from fellow-mortals, and brought him into immediate dependence on God, whose eternal, irreversible choice is made by himself alone, not arbitrarily, but according to his own highest wisdom and justice. Luther spared the altar, and hesitated to deny totally the real presence; Calvin, with superior dialectics, accepted as a commemoration and a seal the rite which the Catholics revered as a sacrifice. Luther favored magnificence in public worship, as an aid to devotion; Calvin, the guide of republics, avoided in their churches all appeals to the senses as a peril to pure religion. Luther condemned the Roman Church for its immorality; Calvin for its idolatry. Luther exposed the folly of superstition, ridiculed the hair shirt and the scourge, the purchased indulgence, and dearly bought, worthless masses for the dead; Calvin shrunk from their criminality with impatient horror. Luther permitted the cross and the taper, pictures and images, as things of indifference; Calvin demanded a spiritual worship in its utmost purity. Luther left the organization of the church to princes and governments; Calvin reformed doctrine, ritual, and practice; and, by establishing ruling elders in each church, and an elective synod, he secured to his policy a representative character, which combined authority with popular rights. Both Luther and Calvin insisted that, for each one, there is and can be no other priest than himself; and, as a consequence, both agreed in the purity of the clergy.”[J] While the rhetoric of Bancroft is not faultless, it certainly deserves a place in our classic English. In the discussion of grave historical and philosophical questions, his stateliness of expression and his dignity of style challenge our admiration. His descriptions are very fine, and suggest a mind keenly alive to the beautiful and the poetical; but they do not reveal that spontaneity so characteristic of Irving, nor that indefinable symmetry so noticeable in Hawthorne. If his style is sometimes declamatory, I think it is generally in a connection such that the cultivated taste will pronounce it admissible.