IT requires a more practised pen than mine to even faintly sketch the progress of heresy during the past three centuries, but I trust to give the reader an idea of its rapid growth and wide extension during the period in which, aided by the printing press, heresy has made the majority of its converts amongst the mass of the people. In earlier times heretics were not only few, but they talked to the few, and wrote to the few, in the language of the few. It is only during the last hundred years that the greatest men have sought to make heresy “vulgar;” that is, to make it common. One of our leading scientific men, about fifteen years ago, admitted that he had been reproved by some of his more orthodox friends, for not confining to the Latin language such of his geological opinions as were supposed to be most dangerous to the Hebrew records. The starting-point of the real era of popular heresy may be placed at the early part of the sixteenth century, when the memories of Huss and Ziska (who had really inoculated the mass with some spirit of heretical resistance a century before) aided Luther in resisting Rome. Martin Luther, born at Eisleben in Saxony, in 1483, was one of the heretics who sought popular endorsement for his heresy, and who following the example of the Ulrich [Zwingli], of Zurich, preached to the people in rough plain words. While others were limited to Latin, he rang out in plain German his opposition to Tetzel and his protectors. Martin Luther is spoken of by orthodox Protestants as if he were a saint without blemish in his faith. Yet in justification of my ranking him amongst the heretics of the sixteenth century, it will be sufficient to mention that he regarded “the books of the Kings as more worthy of credit than the books of the Chronicles,” that he wrote as follows:—”The book of Esdras I toss into the Elbe.” “I am so an enemy to the book of Esther I would it did not exist.” “Job spake not therefore as it stands written in his book.” “It, is a sheer _argumentum fabulæ_.” “The book of the Proverbs of Solomon has been pieced together by others.” Of Ecclesiastes “there is too much of broken matter in it; it has neither boots nor spurs, but rides only in socks.” “Isaiah hath borrowed his whole art and knowledge from David.” “The history of Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible.” “The Epistle to the Hebrews is not by St. Paul, nor indeed by any Apostle.” “The Epistle of James I account the writing of no Apostle,” and it “is truly an Epistle of straw.” The Epistle of Jude “allegeth sayings or stories which have no place in Scripture.” “Of Revelation I can discover no trace that it is established by the Holy Spirit.” If Martin Luther were alive to-day, the Established Church of England, which pretends to revere him, would prosecute him in the English Ecclesiastical Courts if he ventured to repeat the foregoing phrases from her pulpits. What would Christian