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Show Tbe martin Cutber of Reality. (Catholic Standard aud Times.) At last the world is in possession of a life-like portrait of Martin Luther. Down to this time the arch-apostate was represented by two pictures the one describing' him as a heroic, gifted, saint-like champion of truth and freedom; the other as a turbulent, contentious, coarse sensualist. Xow we have at last got hold of the reality the very man as he walked and spoke is somewhat -an accident. The Rev. Heinrich Dcnifle, O. P., one of the greatest, great-est, if not the very greatest, of European scholars, was some years ago commissioned by the German government to make an archaeological study of the Lutherean epoch and draw up a report, not for religious re-ligious or controversial purposes, but purely historical. his-torical. He executed his commission so well that the government suppressed some portions of the report, so startling Mere the disclosures disclos-ures of Luther's real character and motives mo-tives made in it. Father Dcnifle hadwcvcrything in his favor when engaged on the work, lie, was sub-archivist sub-archivist to the yatican, and knew where the best manuscript materials stored in all the museums were to be found. While engaged at his great task it was the good ferrftine of Profcvov Ficker to come up with a long-lost work of Luther's, his "Commentary "Com-mentary on Romans." The. Rev. Reginald Walsh, O. P., Maynooth, writing in the "Irish Ecclesiastical Ecclesiasti-cal Record," graphically summarizes the effect of this discovery and the uses to which Father Deuiflc put it. By means of the Commentary, he declares: "It is now possible to describe more exactly than heretofore in what the heresiarch's system consisted, con-sisted, why it was invented and how it began. All the other writings group themselves round it, and are easily judged of when it is understood. The result left on an unprejudiced reader's mind is that Luther's is one of the vilest characters of-which there is record in the pages of history. A revelation revela-tion of such deceitfulness and such infamy has rarely been made. So shocking arc some of Luther's favorite expressions, and so filthy is the abuse he pours out on the holiest objects, that one person has had to skip several pages in Dcniflc's work. But another section amply repaid perusal. It was that in which the author exposes Luther's ignorance of the fathers and his interpolation of passages ostensibly osten-sibly taken from their writings," Several passages from his work are quoted by Father Dcnifle. in order to exhibit ihe deliberate falsification of St. August iuo's teachings of which Luther was guilty. It is impossible to overrate the magnitude of this expobure. When we cousidcr that it was on the strength of these falsifications accepted by many at a time when scholarship was at a low ebb that. Luther built up his own system of "justification by .faith alone," re cm easily comprehend com-prehend the consternation v.hich Father "Dcniflc's . , discoveries have produced throughout all Proicst-antdom. Proicst-antdom. His work, therefore, may b? described a the most momentous one given to the world since the days of the apostles. It is epoch-making; it is the opening cannon-shot of a new, revolution. . We may wonder now, even taking into account the low state of learning in Europe in Luther's q.v, how he' could escape detection, but even great ; scholars can he imposed on by audacious frauds. -As Father Walsh points out: ... |