NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 159 



On the coming in of the Reformation the great structure of 

 belief in the literal and historical correctness of every statement 

 in the Scriptures, in the profound allegorical meanings of the sim- 

 plest texts, and even in the divine origin of the vowel punctuation, 

 towered more loftily and grew more rapidly than ever before. The 

 reformers, having cast off the authority of the Pope and of the 

 universal Church, fell back all the more upon the infallibility of 

 the sacred books. The attitude of Luther toward this great sub- 

 ject was characteristic. As a rule he adhered tenaciously to the 

 literal interpretation of the Scriptures; his argument against 

 Copernicus is a fair example of his reasoning in this respect ; but, 

 with the strong good sense which characterized him, he from time 

 to time broke away from the received belief. Thus, he took the 

 liberty of understanding certain passages in the Old Testament in 

 a different sense from that given them by the New Testament, 

 and declared St. Paul's allegorical use of the story of Sarah and 

 Hagar " too unsound to stand the test." He also emphatically de- 

 nied that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by St. Paul, and 

 he did this in the exercise of a critical judgment upon internal 

 evidence. His utterance as to the Epistle of St. James became 

 famous. He announced to the Church : " I do not esteem this an 

 apostolic epistle ; I will not have it in my Bible among the canon- 

 ical books," and he summed up his opinion in his well-known 

 allusion to it as " an epistle of straw." 



Emboldened by him, the gentle spirit of Melanchthon, while 

 usually taking the Bible very literally, at times revolted ; but this 

 was not due to any want of loyalty to the old method of interpre- 

 tation : whenever the wildest and most absurd system of exegesis 

 seemed necessary to support any part of the reformed doctrine, 

 Luther and Melanchthon unflinchingly developed it. Both of 

 them held firmly to the old dictum of Hugo of St. Victor, which, 

 as we have seen, was virtually that one must first accept the doc- 

 trine, and then find scriptural warrant for it. Very striking 

 examples of this were afforded in the interpretation by Luther 

 and Melanchthon of certain alleged marvels of their time, and one 

 out of several of these may be taken as typical of their methods. 



In 1523 Luther and Melanchthon jointly published a work 

 under the title Der Papstesel, interpreting the significance of a 

 strange, ass-like monster which, according to a popular story, had 

 been found floating in the Tiber some time before. This book was 

 illustrated by startling pictures, and both text and pictures were 

 devoted to proving that this monster was " a sign from God," in- 

 dicating the doom of the papacy. This treatise by the two great 

 founders of German Protestantism pointed out that the ass's head 

 signified the Pope himself, " for," said they, " as well as an ass's 

 head is suited to a human body, so well is the Pope suited to be 



