MARTIN LUTHER.
WILL^M COLLINS, GLASGOW.

HISTORY
OF
THE REFORMATION
IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY

J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNÉ, D.D.

J'appelle accessoire, l'estat des affaires de ceste vie caduque et transitoire. J'appelle principal, le gouvernement spirituel auquel reluit souverainement la providence de Dieu.—Theodore De Beze.
By accessory I mean the state of affairs in this fading and transitory life. By principal I mean the spiritual government in which the providence of God is sovereignly displayed.

A NEW TRANSLATION:
(CONTAINING THE AUTHOR'S LAST IMPROVEMENTS,)
BY HENRY BEVERIDGE, ESQ. ADVOCATE.
VOLUME FIRST.
GLASGOW:
PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM COLLINS.
LONDON: R. GROOMBRIDGE AND SONS.
1845.
GLASGOW:
WILLIAM COLLINS AND CO.,
PRINTERS.

TRANSLATOR'S ADVERTISEMENT.

D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation is so well known and so highly appreciated as to make it not only unnecessary, but almost presumptuous, for a mere Translator to say any thing in commendation of it. The public feeling unquestionably is, that of the works which have recently appeared, it is one of the most talented, interesting, important, and seasonable. The mere lapse of time, aided by the active misrepresentations of the Romish party, had begun to make an impression in some degree unfavourable to the principles of the Reformation. This admirable work has again placed these principles in their true light. By its vivid display of what Rome was and did, it has impressively reminded us of what she still is, and is prepared to do. Her great boast is, that she has never changed. If so, she longs to return to her former course, and will return to it the first moment that circumstances enable her to do so. Being thus warned, our duty is plain. We must prepare for the combat; and of all preparations, none promises to be more effectual than that of thoroughly embuing the public mind with the facts so graphically delineated, and the principles so luminously and forcibly expounded in this work of D'Aubigné.

But, it may be asked, Has not this purpose been effected already, or at least may it not be effected without the instrumentality of a new translation?

To this question the Translator answers, First, The form of the present translation and the price at which it is published place the work within the reach of thousands to whom it might otherwise be a sealed book. Second, While this Translation is the cheapest in existence, it is also the only one which can, in strict truth, be regarded as genuine. The edition from which this translation is made was published in 1842. The date would have been of little consequence if the work had continued the same; but the fact is, that the edition of 1842 is not a reprint, but a complete revision of the one which preceded it. Numerous passages of considerable length and great importance have been introduced, while others which had, on a careful examination, been deemed redundant or inaccurate, have been expunged. Surely, after all the pains which the distinguished author has expended on the improvement of his work, it is scarcely doing justice either to him or to the English reader to leave his improvements unknown. In another respect the present Translation exclusively contains what is conceived to be a very decided improvement. All the Notes, the meaning of which is not given in the Text, have been literally translated. It seemed somewhat absurd while translating French for the benefit of the English reader, to be at the same time presenting him with a large number of passages of untranslated Latin.

While the work has been printed in a form to which the most fastidious cannot object, it has been issued at a price which makes it accessible to all. The result, it is hoped, will be, that D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation will obtain a circulation somewhat adequate to its merits, and by its introduction into every family become what it well deserves to be—a household book.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE TO THE LAST EDITION.

My purpose is not to write the history of a party, but that of one of the greatest revolutions which has taken place among men—the history of a mighty impulse which was given to the world three centuries ago, and the influence of which is still, in our day, every where perceived. The history of the Reformation is different from the history of Protestantism. In the former, every thing bears testimony to a revival of human nature, to a transformation, social and religious, emanating from God. In the latter are too often seen a remarkable degeneracy from primitive principles, party intrigue, a sectarian spirit, and the impress of petty private feelings. The history of Protestantism might interest none but Protestants; the history of the Reformation is for all Christians, or rather all men.

The historian has a choice in the field in which he is to labour. He may describe the great events which change the face of a people, or the face of the world; or he may narrate the calm and progressive course, whether of a nation, the Church, or mankind, which usually follows great social changes. Both fields of history are highly important; but the preference, in point of interest, seems due to those epochs which, under the name of Revolutions, introduce a nation or society at large to a new era and a new life.

Such a transformation I have attempted to describe with very humble powers, hoping that the beauty of the subject will compensate for my want of ability. In styling it a Revolution, I give it a name which in our day is in discredit with many, who almost confound it with revolt. This is a mistake. A revolution is a change which takes place in the world's affairs. It is something new evolved (revolvo) from the bosom of humanity; and, indeed, before the end of the last century, the term was oftener used in a good than a bad sense. They spoke of "a happy," a "marvellous" revolution. The Reformation being a re-establishment of the principles of primitive Christianity, is the opposite of a revolt. For that which behoved to revive it was a regenerating—for that which must always subsist, a conservative movement. Christianity and the Reformation, while establishing the grand principle that all souls are equal in the sight of God, and overthrowing the usurpations of a haughty priesthood, which presumed to place itself between the Creator and his creature, lay it down as a fundamental principle of social order, that all power is of God, and cry aloud to all, "Love your brethren, fear God, honour the king."

The Reformation differs essentially from the revolutions of antiquity, and from the greater part of those of modern times. In these, political changes are in question, and the object is to establish or overthrow the ascendancy of one, or it may be of many. The love of truth, of holiness, and eternity, was the simple, yet powerful, spring by which our Reformation was effected. It marks a step which human nature has taken in advance. In fact, if man, instead of pursuing only material, temporal, earthly interests, proposes to himself a higher aim, aspiring to immaterial and immortal blessings, he advances and makes progress. The Reformation is one of the brightest days of this glorious advance. It is a pledge that the new struggle, which is now being decided, will terminate in favour of truth, with a triumph still more pure, spiritual, and splendid.

Christianity and the Reformation are the two greatest revolutions on record. Unlike the different political movements of which we read, they took place not in one nation merely, but in several nations, and their effects must be felt to the end of the world.

Christianity and the Reformation are the same revolution, effected at different times, and under different circumstances. They vary in secondary features, but are identical in their primary and principal lineaments. The one is a repetition of the other. The one ended the old, the other began the new world; the middle ages lie between. The one gave birth to the other, and if, in some respects, the daughter bears marks of inferiority, she on the other hand has her own peculiar properties.

One of these is the rapidity of her action. The great revolutions which have issued in the fall of a monarchy, and the change of a whole political system, or which have thrown the human mind on a new course of development, were slowly and gradually prepared. The old power had long been undermined, and its principal buttresses had one after another disappeared. It was so on the introduction of Christianity. But the Reformation is seen, at the first glance, to present a different aspect. The Church of Rome appears, under Leo X, in all its power and glory. A monk speaks, and over the half of Europe this power and glory crumble away, thus reminding us of the words in which the Son of God announces his second advent: "As the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matth., xxiv, 27.)

This rapidity is inexplicable to those who see, in this great event, only a reform, and regard it as simply an act of criticism, which consisted in making a choice among doctrines, discarding some, retaining others, and arranging those retained, so as to form them into a new system.

How could a whole nation, how could several nations, have so quickly performed an operation so laborious? How could this critical examination have kindled that fire of enthusiasm which is essential to great, and, above all, to rapid revolutions? The Reformation, as its history will show, was altogether different. It was a new effusion of the life which Christianity brought into the world. It was the triumph of the greatest of doctrines, that which animates those who embrace it with the purest and strongest enthusiasm—the doctrine of faith, the doctrine of grace. Had the Reformation been what many Catholics and many Protestants in our day imagine,—had it been that negative system of negative reason, which childishly rejects whatever displeases it, and loses sight of the great ideas and great truths of Christianity, it had never passed the narrow limits of an academy, a cloister, or a cell. It had nothing in common with what is generally understood by Protestantism. Far from being a worn-out, emaciated body, it rose up like a man of might and fire.

Two considerations explain the rapidity and the extent of this revolution. The one must be sought in God, the other among men. The impulse was given by a mighty and invisible hand, and the change effected was a Divine work. This is the conclusion at which an impartial and attentive observer, who stops not at the surface, necessarily arrives. But the historian's task is not finished; for God works by second causes. A variety of circumstances, many of them unperceived, gradually prepared men for the great transformation of the sixteenth century, and, accordingly, the human mind was ripe when the hour of its emancipation pealed.

The task of the historian is to combine these two great elements in the picture which he presents, and this has been attempted in the present history. We shall be easily understood, when we come to trace the second causes which contributed to the Reformation, but some perhaps will not understand us so well, and will even be tempted to tax us with superstition, when we attribute the accomplishment of the work to God. The idea, however, is particularly dear to us. This history, as indicated by the inscription on its title-page, places in front and over its head the simple and prolific principle, God in History. But this principle being generally neglected, and sometimes disputed, it seems necessary to expound our views with regard to it, and thereby justify the method which we have seen it proper to adopt.

History cannot, in our day, be that lifeless series of events which the greater part of previous historians deemed it sufficient to enumerate. It is now understood that in history as in man are two elements, matter and spirit. Our great historians, unable to satisfy themselves with a detail of facts, constituting only a barren chronicle, have sought for a principle of life to animate the materials of past ages.

Some have borrowed this principle from art, aiming at vivid, faithful, and graphic description, and endeavouring to make their narrative live with the life of the events themselves.

Others have applied to philosophy for the spirit which should give fruit to their labours. To facts they have united speculative views, instructive lessons, political and philosophical truths, enlivening their narrative by the language which they have made it speak, and the ideas which it has enabled them to suggest.

Both methods doubtless are good, and should be employed within certain limits. But there is another source to which, above all others, it is necessary to apply for the spirit and life of the past—I mean Religion. History should be made to live with its own proper life. God is this life. God must be acknowledged—God proclaimed—in history. The history of the world should purport to be annals of the government of the Supreme King.

I have descended into the field to which the narratives of our historians invited me, and there seen the actions of men and of states in energetic development and violent collision: of the clang of arms, I have heard more than I can tell; but no where have I been shown the majestic form of the Judge who sits umpire of the combat.

And yet in all the movements of nations, there is a living principle which emanates from God. God is present on the vast stage on which the generations of men successively appear. True! He is there a God invisible; but if the profane multitude pass carelessly by, because He is concealed, profound intellects, spirits which feel a longing for the principle of their existence, seek him with so much the more earnestness, and are not satisfied until they are prostrated before Him. And their enquiries are magnificently rewarded. For, from the heights which they must reach in order to meet with God, the history of the world, instead of exhibiting to them, as to the ignorant crowd, a confused chaos, is seen like a majestic temple, on which the invisible hand of God himself is at work, and which, from humanity, as the rock on which it is founded, is rising up to his glory.

Shall we not see God in those great phenomena, those great personages, those great states, which rise, and suddenly, so to speak, spring from the dust of the earth, giving to human life a new impulse, form, and destiny? Shall not we see Him in those great heroes who start up in society, at particular epochs, displaying an activity and a power beyond the ordinary limits of man, and around whom individuals and nations come without hesitation, and group themselves as around a higher and mysterious nature? Who flung forward into space those comets of gigantic form and fiery tail, which only appear at long intervals, shedding on the superstitious herd of mortals either plenty and gladness, or pestilence and terror? Who, if not God?... Alexander seeks his origin in the abodes of Divinity; and in the most irreligious age there is no great renown which strives not to connect itself in some way with heaven.

And do not those revolutions, which cast down dynasties, or even whole kingdoms into the dust; those huge wrecks which we fall in with in the midst of the sands; those majestic ruins which the field of humanity presents, do not those cry loud enough, God in History? Gibbon, sitting amid the wrecks of the Capitol, and contemplating the venerable ruins, acknowledges the intervention of a higher power. He sees, he feels it, and in vain would turn away from it. This spectre of a mysterious power reappears behind each ruin, and he conceives the idea of describing its influence in the history of the disorganisation, the decline and fall of this Roman power, which had subjugated the nations. This powerful hand, which a man of distinguished genius, one, however, who had not bent the knee before Jesus Christ, perceives athwart scattered fragments of the tomb of Romulus, reliefs of Marcus Aurelius, busts of Cicero and Virgil, statues of Cæsar and Augustus, trophies of Trajan, and steeds of Pompey, shall not we discover amid all ruins, and recognise as the hand of our God?

Strange! this interposition of God in human affairs, which even Pagans had recognised, men reared amid the grand ideas of Christianity treat as superstition.

The name which Grecian antiquity gave to the Sovereign God, shows us that it had received primitive revelations of this great truth of a God, the source of history, and of the life of nations. It called him Zeus,[1] that is to say, He who gives life to all that lives, to individuals and nations. To his altars kings and subjects come to take their oaths, and from his mysterious inspirations Minos and other legislators pretend to have received their laws. Nay more, this great truth is figured by one of the most beautiful myths of Pagan antiquity. Even Mythology might teach the sages of our day. This is a fact which it may be worth while to establish; perhaps there are individuals who will oppose fewer prejudices to the lessons of Paganism than to those of Christianity. This Zeus, then, this Sovereign God, this Eternal Spirit, the principle of life, is father of Clio, the Muse of History, whose mother is Mnemosyne or Memory. Thus, according to antiquity, history unites a celestial to a terrestrial nature. She is daughter of God and man. But, alas! the short-sighted wisdom of our boasted days is far below those heights of Pagan wisdom. History has been robbed of her divine parent, and now an illegitimate child, a bold adventurer, she roams the world, not well knowing whence she comes, or whither she goes.

But this divinity of Pagan antiquity is only a dim reflection, a flickering shadow of the Eternal Jehovah. The true God whom the Hebrews worship, sees meet to imprint it on the minds of all nations that he reigns perpetually on the earth, and for this purpose gives, if I may so express it, a bodily form to this reign in the midst of Israel. A visible Theocracy behoved for once to exist on the earth, that it might incessantly recall the invisible Theocracy which will govern the world for ever.

And what lustre does not the great truth—God in History—receive from the Christian Dispensation? Who is Jesus Christ, if he be not God in History? It was the discovery of Jesus Christ that gave John Müller, the prince of modern historians, his knowledge of history. "The Gospel," he says, "is the fulfilment of all hopes, the finishing point of all philosophy, the explanation of all revolutions, the key to all the apparent contradictions of the physical and moral world; in short, life and immortality. Ever since I knew the Saviour, I see all things clearly; with him there is no difficulty which I cannot solve."[2]

So speaks this great historian; and, in truth, is not the fact of God's appearance in human nature the key-stone of the arch, the mysterious knot which binds up all the things of earth, and attaches them to heaven? There is a birth of God in the history of the world, and shall God not be in history? Jesus Christ is the true God in the history of men. The very meanness of his appearance proves it. When man wishes to erect a shade or shelter on the earth, you may expect preparations, materials, scaffolding, workmen, tools, trenches, rubbish. But God, when he is pleased to do it, takes the smallest seed, which a new-born babe could have clasped in its feeble hand, deposits it in the bosom of the earth, and, from this grain, at first imperceptible, produces the immense tree under which the families of the earth recline. To do great things by imperceptible means is the law of God.

In Jesus Christ this law receives its most magnificent fulfilment. Of Christianity, which has now taken possession of the portals of nations, which is, at this moment, reigning or wandering over all the tribes of the earth from the rising to the setting sun, and which incredulous philosophy herself is obliged to acknowledge as the spiritual and social law of the world—of this Christianity, (the greatest thing under the vault of heaven, nay, in the boundless immensity of Creation,) what was the commencement? An infant born in the smallest town of the most despised nation of the earth—an infant whose mother had not what the poorest and most wretched female in any one of our cities has, a room for birth—an infant born in a stable and laid in a manger!... There, O God, I behold and I adore Thee!

The Reformation knew this law of God, and felt she had a call to accomplish it. The idea that God is in history was often brought forward by the Reformers. In particular, we find it on one occasion expressed by Luther, under one of those grotesque and familiar, yet not undignified figures which he was fond of employing in order to be understood by the people. "The world," said he one day at table among his friends; "the world is a vast and magnificent game at cards, consisting of emperors, kings, and princes. For several ages the pope has beaten the emperors, princes, and kings, who stooped and fell under him. Then our Lord God came and dealt the cards, taking to himself the smallest, [Luther,] and with it has beaten the pope, who beat the kings of the earth.... God used it as his ace. 'He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree,' says Mary." (Luke, i, 52.)

The period whose history I am desirous to trace, is important with reference to the present time. Man, on feeling his weakness, is usually disposed to seek for aid in the institutions which he sees existing around him, or in devices, the offspring of his own imagination. The history of the Reformation shows that nothing new is done with what is old, and that if, according to our Saviour's expression, there must be new vessels for new wine, there must also be new wine for new vessels. It directs man to God, the sole actor in history—to that divine Word—always ancient, from the eternity of the truths which it contains—always new, by the regenerating influence which it exerts, which three centuries ago purified society, restoring faith in God to those whom superstition had enfeebled; and which, at all epochs in the world's history, is the source from which salvation proceeds.

It is singular to see a great number of individuals under the agitation produced by a vague longing for some fixed belief, actually applying to old Catholicism. In one sense, the movement is natural. Religion being so little known, they imagine the only place to find it is where they see it painted, in large characters, on a banner, which age makes respectable. We say not that every kind of Catholicism is incapable of giving man what he wants. Our belief is, that a distinction should be carefully drawn between Catholicism and the Papacy. The Papacy we hold to be an erroneous and destructive system; but we are far from confounding Catholicism with it. How many respectable men, how many true Christians has not the Catholic Church contained! What immense services did not Catholicism render to existing states on their first formation, at a time when it was still strongly impregnated with the Gospel, and when the Papacy was only sketched above it in faint outline! But we are far away from those times. In our day an attempt is made to yoke Catholicism to the Papacy; and if catholic Christian truths are presented, they are little else than baits to allure men into the nets of the hierarchy. There is nothing to be expected from that quarter. Has the papacy abandoned one of its practices, its doctrines, its pretensions? Will not this religion, which other ages were unable to bear, be still less tolerable to ours? What revival was ever seen to emanate from Rome? Is it from the Papal hierarchy, all engrossed by earthly passions, that the spirit of faith, hope, and charity, which alone will save us, can proceed? Is it an effete system, which has no life for itself, which is everywhere struggling with death, and exists only by aid borrowed from without, that will give life to others, and animate Christian society with the heavenly breath for which it sighs?

Or will this void in heart and soul, which some of our contemporaries begin to feel, dispose others of them to apply to the new Protestantism which has in several places supplanted the principal doctrines taught in the days of the Apostles and Reformers? A great vagueness of doctrine reigns in many of those Reformed Churches whose original members gave their blood as a seal of the living faith which animated them. Men of distinguished talents, alive to all that is beautiful in creation, have fallen into singular aberrations. A general faith in the divinity of the Gospel is the only standard which they are willing to follow. But what is this Gospel? This is the essential question; and yet all are silent on it, or, rather, each speaks in his own way. What avails it to know that in the midst of the people stands a vessel placed there by God in order to cure them, if none care for its contents, if none endeavour to appropriate them? This system cannot fill up the existing void. While the faith of the Apostles and Reformers is now in all quarters displaying its activity and power in the conversion of the world, this vague system does nothing, gives no light, no life.

But let us not be without hope. Does not Roman Catholicism confess the great doctrines of Christianity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier, the Truth? Does not vague Protestantism hold in its hand the Book of Life, which is "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness?" And how many upright spirits, honourable in the eyes of men, and pleasing in the sight of God, are found among the followers of these two systems! How shall we not love them?—how shall we not ardently desire their complete emancipation from the elements of the world? Charity is of vast extent; she takes the most opposite opinions into her embrace, that she may bring them to the feet of Jesus Christ.

Already there are signs which show that these two extreme opinions are in course of approximating to Jesus Christ, who is the centre of truth. Are there not some Roman Catholic churches in which the reading of the Scriptures is recommended and practised? And, in regard to Protestant rationalism, how great the advance which it has already made! It did not originate in the Reformation, for the history of this great revolution will prove that it was a time of faith; but may we not hope that it is tending towards it? May not the force of truth reach it through the Word of God, and, reaching, transform it? Even now it gives signs of religious sentiment, inadequate, no doubt, but still forming an approach towards sound doctrine, and giving hopes of decisive progress.

Both Protestantism and old Catholicism are in themselves out of the question, and off the field; and it must be from some other source that the men of our day are to derive a saving power. There must be something which comes not of man, but of God. "Give me," said Archimedes, "a point outside the world, and I will lift it from its poles." True Christianity is this point outside the world. It lifts the human heart from the double pivot of egotism and sensuality, and will one day lift the whole world from its evil course, and make it turn on a new axis of righteousness and peace.

Whenever religion is in question, three objects engage the attention—God, man, and the priest. There can only be three religions on the earth, according as God, man, or the priest, is the author and head. By the religion of the priest, I mean that which is invented by the priest for the glory of the priest, and is ruled over by a sacerdotal caste. By the religion of man, I mean those systems, those various opinions which human reason forms, and which, created by man under disease, are, in consequence, utterly devoid of power to cure him. By the religion of God, I mean the truth as God himself has given it, having for its end and result the glory of God and the salvation of men.

Hierarchism, or the religion of the priest, Christianity, or the religion of God, rationalism, or the religion of man, are the three systems which in our days share Christendom among them. There is no safety either for man or for society in hierarchism and rationalism. Christianity alone will give life to the world; but, unhappily, of the three dominant systems it is not the one which counts the greatest number of followers.

Followers, however, it has. Christianity is doing its work of regeneration among many Catholics in Germany, and, doubtless, in other countries also. In our opinion, it is accomplishing it more purely and efficaciously among the evangelical Christians in Switzerland, France, Great Britain, the United States, etc. Blessed be God, the revivals, individual or social, which the Gospel produces, are no longer in our day rare events, for which we must search in ancient annals!

What I design to write, is a general history of the Reformation. I purpose to follow its course among the different nations, and to show that the same truths have everywhere produced the same results; at the same time, pointing out the diversities occasioned by differences of national character. And, first, it is in Germany especially that we find the primitive type of reform. There it presents the most regular development, there, above all, it bears the character of a revolution not limited to this or that people, but embracing the whole world. The Reformation in Germany is the fundamental history of reform. It is the great planet; the other Reformations are secondary planets, which turn with it, lighted by the same sun, and adapted to the same system, but still having a separate existence, each shedding a different light, and always possessing a peculiar beauty. To the Reformation of the sixteenth century we may apply the words of St. Paul, "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory." (1 Cor., xv, 41.) The Swiss Reformation took place at the same time with that of Germany, and independently of it, and presented, more especially at an after period, some of the grand features which characterise the German Reformation. The Reformation in England has very special claims on our attention, from the powerful influence which the Church of that kingdom is now exercising over the whole world. But recollections of family and of flight, the thought of battles, sufferings, and exile endured for the cause of the Reformation in France, give it, in my eyes, a peculiar attraction. Considered in itself, and also in the date of its commencement, it presents beauties of its own.

I believe that the Reformation is a work of God; this must have been already seen. Still, I hope to be impartial in tracing its history. Of the principal Roman Catholic actors in this great drama—for example, of Leo X, Albert of Magdeburg, Charles V, and Doctor Eck—I believe I have spoken more favourably than the greater part of historians have done. On the other hand, I have not sought to hide the faults and failings of the Reformers.

Since the winter of 1831-32, I have delivered public lectures on the period of the Reformation, and I then published my opening Address.[3] These lectures have served as a preparative for the work which I now offer to the public.

This history has been drawn from sources made familiar to me by long residence in Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and by the study, in the original tongues, of documents relating to the religious history of Great Britain, and some other countries besides. These sources are indicated by notes throughout the work, and therefore require not to be mentioned here.

I could have wished to authenticate the different parts of my narrative by numerous original notes, but found that, if long and frequent, they might interrupt the course of the narrative in a manner disagreeable to the reader. I have, therefore, confined myself to certain passages which seemed fitted to make him more thoroughly acquainted with subject.

I address this history to those who love to see past events simply as they were, and not by the help of the magic mirror of genius, which magnifies and gilds, but sometimes also diminishes and distorts them. Neither the philosophy of the eighteenth, nor the romance of the nineteenth century, will furnish my opinions or my colours. I write the history of the Reformation in its own spirit. Principles, it has been said, have no modesty. Their nature is to rule, and they doggedly insist on the privilege. If they meet in their path with other principles which dispute their ascendancy, they give battle instantly; for a principle never rests till it has conquered. Nor can it be otherwise. To reign is its life; if it reigns not, it dies. Hence, while declaring that I am not able, and that I have no wish to rival other historians of the Reformation, I make a reservation in favour of the principles on which this history rests, and fearlessly maintain their superiority.

I cannot help thinking that as yet no history of the memorable epoch which I am about to describe exists in French. When I commenced my work, I saw no indication that the blank was to be filled up. This circumstance alone could have induced me to undertake the work, and I here bring it forward as my excuse. The blank exists still; and I pray Him from whom every good gift "cometh down" to grant that this humble attempt may not be without benefit to some of its readers.

J. H. M. D'AUBIGNÉ.

Eaux-Vives, near Geneva.

HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION
IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BOOK I.

CHAP. I.

STATE OF MATTERS BEFORE THE REFORMATION.

Christianity—Two distinguishing Principles—Formation of the Papacy—First encroachments—Influence of Rome—Co-operation of Bishops and Factions—External Unity of the Church—Internal Unity of the Church—Primacy of St. Peter—Patriarchates—Co-operation of Princes—Influence of the Barbarians—Rome invokes the Franks—Secular Power—Pepin and Charlemagne—The Decretals—Disorders of Rome—The Emperor the Pope's Liege Lord—Hildebrand—His character—Celibacy—Struggle with the Emperor—Emancipation of the Pope—Hildebrand's Successors—The Crusades—The Church—Corruption of Doctrine.

The enfeebled world was rocking on its base when Christianity appeared. National religions which had sufficed for the fathers, could no longer satisfy the children. The new generation could not be moulded in the ancient forms. The gods of all nations transported to Rome, had there lost their oracles, as the nations had there lost their liberty. Brought face to face in the Capitol, they had mutually destroyed each other, and their divinity had disappeared. A great void had been made in the religion of the world.

A kind of deism, destitute of spirit and life, kept floating, for some time, over the abyss in which the vigorous superstitions of the ancients were engulfed. But, like all negative beliefs, it was unable to build. Narrow national distinctions fell with the gods, and the nations melted down into one another. In Europe, Asia, and Africa, there was now only one empire, and the human race began to feel its universality and its unity.

Then the Word was made flesh.

God appeared among men, and as a man, "to save that which was lost." In Jesus of Nazareth "dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."

This is the greatest event in the annals of the world. Ancient times had prepared it,—new times flow from it. It is their centre, their bond, and their unity.

Thenceforth all the popular superstitions were without meaning, and the slender remains which they had saved from the great shipwreck of infidelity sank before the Majestic Sun of eternal truth.

The Son of man lived thirty-three years here below, curing the sick, instructing sinners, having no place where to lay his head, yet displaying, in the depth of this humiliation, a grandeur, a holiness, a power, and divinity, which the world had never known. He suffered, died, rose again, and ascended to heaven. His disciples, beginning at Jerusalem, traversed the empire and the world, everywhere proclaiming their Master "the Author of eternal salvation." From the heart of a nation, which stood aloof from all nations, came forth a mercy which invited and embraced all. A great number of Asiatics, Greeks, and Romans, till then led by priests to the feet of dumb idols, believed the Word which suddenly illumined the earth "like a sunbeam," as Eusebius expresses it.[4] A breath of life began to move over this vast field of death. A new people, a holy nation, was formed among men, and the astonished world beheld, in the disciples of the Galilean, a purity, a self-denial, a charity, a heroism, of which it had lost even the idea.

Two principles, in particular, distinguished the new religion from all the human systems which it drove before it. The one related to the ministers of worship, the other to doctrine.

The ministers of Paganism were in a manner the gods whom those human religions worshipped. The priests of Egypt, Gaul, Scythia, Germany, Britain, and Hindostan, led the people so long, at least, as the eyes of the people were unopened. Jesus Christ, no doubt, established a ministry, but he did not found a particular priesthood. He dethroned the living idols of the nations, destroyed a proud hierarchy, took from man what man had taken from God, and brought the soul again into immediate contact with the divine source of truth, proclaiming himself sole Master and sole Mediator.—"One is your Master, even Christ," said he; "and all ye are brethren." (Matt., xxiii, 8.)

In regard to doctrine, human religions had taught that salvation was of man. The religions of the earth had framed an earthly religion. They had told man that heaven would be given him as a hire—they had fixed its price, and what a price! The religion of God taught that salvation came from God, was a gift from heaven, the result of an amnesty, of an act of grace by the Sovereign. "God," it is said, "has given eternal life."

It is true, Christianity cannot be summed up under these two heads, but they seem to rule the subject, especially where history is concerned; and as we cannot possibly trace the opposition between truth and error, in all points, we must select those of them which are most prominent.

Such, then, were two of the constituent principles of the religion which at that time took possession of the empire, and of the world. With them we are within the true land-marks of Christianity—out of them Christianity disappears. On the preservation or the loss of them depended its greatness or its fall. They are intimately connected; for it is impossible to exalt the priests of the church, or the works of believers, without lowering Jesus Christ in his double capacity of Mediator and Redeemer. The one of these principles should rule the history of religion, the other should rule its doctrine. Originally, both were paramount; let us see how they were lost. We begin with the destinies of the former.

The Church was at first a society of brethren, under the guidance of brethren. They were all taught of God, and each was entitled to come to the Divine fountain of light, and draw for himself. (John, vi, 45.) The Epistles, which then decided great questions of doctrine, were not inscribed with the pompous name of a single man—a head. The Holy Scriptures inform us, that the words were simply these, "The apostles, elders, and brethren, to our brethren." (Acts, xv, 23.)

But even the writings of the apostles intimate, that from the midst of these brethren a power would rise and subvert this simple and primitive order. (2 Thess., ii, 2.)

Let us contemplate the formation, and follow the development of this power—a power foreign to the Church.

Paul of Tarsus, one of the greatest apostles of the new religion, had arrived at Rome, the capital of the empire and of the world, preaching the salvation which comes from God. A church was formed beside the throne of the Cæsars. Founded by this apostle, it consisted at first of some converted Jews, some Greeks, and some citizens of Rome. For a long time it shone like a pure light on a mountain top. Its faith was everywhere spoken of; but at length it fell away from its primitive condition. It was by small beginnings that the two Romes paved their way to the usurped dominion of the world.

The first pastors or bishops of Rome early engaged in the conversion of the villages and towns around the city. The necessity which the bishops and pastors of the Campagna di Roma felt of recurring in cases of difficulty to an enlightened guide, and the gratitude which they owed to the Church of the metropolis, led them to remain in close union with it. What has always been seen in analogous circumstances was seen here; this natural union soon degenerated into dependence. The superiority which the neighbouring churches had freely yielded, the bishops of Rome regarded as a right. The encroachments of power form one large part of history, while the resistance of those whose rights were invaded forms the other. Ecclesiastical power could not escape the intoxication which prompts all those who are raised to aim at rising still higher. It yielded to this law of humanity and nature.

Nevertheless, the supremacy of the Roman bishop was at this time limited to oversight of the churches within the territory civilly subject to the prefect of Rome.[5] But the rank which this city of the Emperors held in the world, presented to the ambition of its first pastor a larger destiny. The respect paid in the second century to the different bishops of Christendom was proportioned to the rank of the city in which they resided. Now Rome was the greatest, the richest, and the most powerful city in the world. It was the seat of Empire,—the mother of nations; "All the inhabitants of the earth belong to it," says Julian;[6] and Claudian proclaims it "the fountain of law."[7]

If Rome is queen of the cities of the world, why should not its pastor be the king of bishops? Why should not the Roman Church be the mother of Christendom? Why should not the nations be her children, and her authority their sovereign law? It was easy for the ambitious heart of man to reason in this way. Ambitious Rome did so.

Thus Pagan Rome, when she fell, sent the proud titles which her invincible sword had conquered from the nations of the earth to the humble minister of the God of peace seated amidst her ruins.

The bishops in the different quarters of the empire, led away by the charm which Rome had for ages exercised over all nations, followed the example of the Campagna di Roma, and lent a hand to this work of usurpation. They took pleasure in paying to the Bishop of Rome somewhat of the honour which belonged to the Queen city of the world. At first there was no dependence implied in this honour. They treated the Roman pastor as equal does equal;[8] but usurped powers grow like avalanches. What was at first mere brotherly advice soon became, in the mouth of the Pontiff, obligatory command. In his eyes a first place among equals was a throne.

The Western bishops favoured the designs of the pastors of Rome, either from jealousy of the Eastern bishops or because they preferred the supremacy of a pope to the domination of a temporal power.

On the other hand, the theological factions which rent the East sought, each in its turn, to gain the favour of Rome, anticipating their triumph from the support of the principal Church of the West.

Rome carefully registered these requests, these mediations, and smiled when she saw the nations throwing themselves into her arms. She let slip no occasion of increasing and extending her power. Praise, flattery, extravagant compliments, consultation by other churches, all became, in her eyes, and in her hands, titles and evidents of her authority. Such is man upon the throne; incense intoxicates him, and his head turns. What he has he regards as a motive to strive for more.

The doctrine of the Church, and of the necessity of her external unity, which began to prevail so early as the third century, favoured the pretensions of Rome. The primary idea of the Church is, that it is the assembly of the saints, (1 Cor., i, 2,) the assembly of the first-born whose names are written in heaven. (Heb., xii, 23.) Still, however, the Church of the Lord is not merely internal and invisible. It must manifest itself outwardly, and it was with a view to this manifestation that the Lord instituted the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. The Church considered as external, has characteristics different from those which distinguish her as the Church invisible. The internal Church, which is the body of Christ, is necessarily and perpetually one. The visible Church, doubtless, has part in this unity, but considered in herself, multiplicity is a characteristic attributed to her in the Scriptures of the New Testament. While they speak to us of a Church of God,[9] they mention, when speaking of the Church, as externally manifested, "the Churches of Galatia," "the Churches of Macedonia," "the Churches of Judea," "all the Churches of the Saints."[10] These different Churches, unquestionably, may to a certain extent cultivate external union; but though this tie be wanting, they lose none of the essential qualities of the Church of Christ. In primitive times, the great tie which united the members of the Church was the living faith of the heart, by which all held of Christ as their common Head.

Various circumstances early contributed to originate and develop the idea of the necessity of an external unity. Men accustomed to the ties and political forms of an earthly country, transferred some of their views and customs to the spiritual and eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ. Persecution, powerless to destroy, or even to shake this new society, drew its attention more upon itself, and caused it to assume the form of a more compact incorporation. To the error which sprung up in deistical schools, or among sects, was opposed the one universal truth received from the Apostles, and preserved in the Church. This was well, so long as the invisible and spiritual Church was one with the visible and external Church. But a serious divorce soon took place; the form and the life separated from each other. The semblance of an identical and external organisation was gradually substituted for the internal and spiritual unity which forms the essence of genuine religion. The precious perfume of faith was left out, and then men prostrated themselves before the empty vase which had contained it. The faith of the heart no longer uniting the members of the Church, another tie was sought, and they were united by means of bishops, archbishops, popes, mitres, ceremonies, and canons. The living Church having gradually retired into the hidden sanctuary of some solitary souls, the external Church was put in its place, and declared to be, with all its forms, of divine institution. Salvation, no longer welling up from the henceforth hidden Word, it was maintained that it was transmitted by means of the forms which had been devised, and that no man could possess it if he did not receive it through this channel. None, it was said, can, by his own faith, attain to eternal life. Christ communicated to the Apostles, and the Apostles communicated to the Bishops, the unction of the Holy Spirit; and this Spirit exists nowhere but in that order! Originally, whosoever had the Spirit of Jesus Christ was a member of the Church, but the terms were now reversed, and it was maintained that none but members of the Church received the Spirit of Jesus Christ.[11]

In proportion as these ideas gained ground, the distinction between clergy and people became more marked. The salvation of souls no longer depended solely on faith in Christ, but also, and more especially, on union with the Church. The representatives and heads of the Church obtained a part of the confidence due only to Jesus Christ, and in fact became mediators for the flock. The idea of the universal priesthood of Christians accordingly disappeared step by step; the servants of the Church of Christ were likened to the priests under the Old Dispensation; and those who separated from the bishop were put in the same class with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. From an individual priesthood, such as was then formed in the Church, to a sovereign priesthood, such as Rome now claims, the step was easy.

In fact, as soon as the error as to the necessity of a visible unity of the Church was established, a new error was seen to arise, viz., that of the necessity of an external representative of this unity.

Although we nowhere find in the gospel any traces of a pre-eminence in St. Peter over the other apostles; although the very idea of primacy is opposed to the fraternal relations which united the disciples, and even to the spirit of the gospel dispensation, which, on the contrary, calls upon all the children of the Father to be servants one to another, recognising one only teacher, and one only chief; and although Jesus Christ sharply rebuked his disciples, as often as ambitious ideas of pre-eminence arose in their carnal hearts, men invented, and by means of passages of Scripture ill understood, supported a primacy in St. Peter, and then in this apostle, and his pretended successors at Rome, saluted the visible representatives of visible unity—the heads of the Church!

The patriarchal constitution also contributed to the rise of the Roman Papacy. So early as the three first centuries, the churches of metropolitan towns had enjoyed particular respect. The Council of Nice, in its Sixth Canon, singled out three cities, whose churches had, according to it, an ancient authority over those of the surrounding provinces; these were Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch. The political origin of this distinction is betrayed by the very name which was at first given to the bishop of these cities. He was called Exarch, in the same way as the civil governor.[12] At a later period, the more ecclesiastical name of Patriarch was given to him. This name occurs for the first time in the Council of Constantinople, but in a different sense from that which it received at a later period; for it was only a short time before the Council of Chalcedon, that it was applied exclusively to the great metropolitans. The second ecumenical Council created a new patriarchate, that of Constantinople itself, the new Rome, the second capital of the empire. The Church of Byzantium, so long in obscurity, enjoyed the same privileges, and was put by the Council of Chalcedon in the same rank as the Church of Rome. Rome then shared the patriarchate with these three churches; but when the invasion of Mahomet annihilated the sees of Alexandria and Antioch—when the see of Constantinople decayed, and later, even separated from the west, Rome remained alone, and circumstances rallied all around her see, which from that time remained without a rival.

New accomplices, the most powerful of all accomplices, came also to her aid. Ignorance and superstition seized upon the Church, and gave her up to Rome with a bandage on her eyes, and chains on her hands. Still this slavery was not completed without opposition. Often did the voice of the churches protest their independence: This bold voice was heard especially in proconsular Africa and the East.[13]

But Rome found new allies to stifle the cry of the Churches. Princes, whom tempestuous times often caused to totter on the throne, offered her their support if she would in return support them. They offered her spiritual authority, provided she would reinstate them in secular power. They gave her a cheap bargain of souls, in the hope that she would help them to a cheap bargain of their enemies. The hierarchical power which was rising, and the imperial power which was declining, thus supported each other, and, by this alliance, hastened their double destiny.

Here Rome could not be a loser. An edict of Theodosius II, and of Valentinian III, proclaimed the bishop of Rome "Rector of the whole Church."[14] Justinian issued a similar edict. These decrees did not contain all that the popes pretended to see in them; but in those times of ignorance it was easy for them to give prevalence to the interpretation which was most in their favour. The power of the emperors in Italy becoming always more precarious, the Bishops of Rome failed not to avail themselves of the circumstance to shake off their dependence.

But energetic promoters of the Papal power had by this time emerged from the forests of the North. The barbarians, who had invaded the West, and there fixed their abode, after intoxicating themselves with blood and rapine, behoved to lower their fierce sword before the intellectual, power which they encountered. Altogether new to Christianity, ignorant of the spiritual nature of the Church, and requiring in religion a certain external show, they prostrated themselves, half savages, and half Pagans, before the High Priest of Rome. With them the West was at his feet. First, the Vandals, then the Ostrogoths, a little later the Burgundians, afterwards the Visigoths, lastly, the Lombards and Anglo-Saxons, came to do obeisance to the Roman Pontiff. It was the robust shoulders of the sons of the idolatrous North which finished the work of placing a pastor of the banks of the Tiber on the supreme throne of Christendom.

These things took place in the West at the beginning of the seventh century, precisely at the same period when the power of Mahomet, ready also to seize on a portion of the globe, was rising in the East.

From that time the evil ceases not to grow. In the eighth century we see the Bishops of Rome with one hand repulsing the Greek Emperors, their lawful sovereigns, and seeking to chase them from Italy, while, with the other, they caress the Mayors of France, and ask this new power, which is beginning to rise in the West, for a share in the wrecks of the empire. Between the East, which she repels, and the West, which she invites, Rome establishes her usurped authority. She rears her throne between two revolts. Frightened at the cry of the Arabs, who, become masters of Spain, vaunt that they will soon arrive in Italy by the passes of the Pyrennees and the Alps, and proclaim the name of Mahomet on the seven hills—amazed at the audacious Astolphus, who, at the head of his Lombards, sends forth his lion-roar, and brandishes his sword before the gates of the eternal city, threatening massacre to every Roman,[15]—Rome, on the brink of ruin, looks around in terror, and throws herself into the arms of the Franks. The usurper Pepin asks a pretended sanction to his new royalty; the Papacy gives it to him, and gets him in return to declare himself the defender of the "Republic of God." Pepin wrests from the Lombards what they had wrested from the emperor; but, instead of restoring it to him, he deposits the keys of the towns which he has conquered on the altar of St. Peter, and, swearing with uplifted hand, declares that it was not for a man he took up arms, but to obtain the forgiveness of his sins from God, and do homage to St. Peter for his conquests.

Charlemagne appears. The first time, he goes up to the Cathedral of St. Peter devoutly kissing the steps. When he presents himself a second time, it is as master of all the kingdoms which formed the empire of the West, and of Rome herself.

Leo III deems it his duty to give the title to him who already has the power, and, in the year 800, at the feast of Noel, places on the head of the son of Pepin the crown of the Emperor of Rome.[16] From that time the pope belongs to the empire of the Franks, and his relations with the East are ended. He detaches himself from a rotten tree which is about to fall, in order to engraft himself on a vigorous wild stock. Among the Germanic races, to which he devotes himself, a destiny awaits him to which he had never ventured to aspire.

Charlemagne bequeathed to his feeble successors only the wrecks of his empire. In the ninth century civil power being everywhere weakened by disunion, Rome perceived that now was the moment for her to lift her head. When could the Church better make herself independent of the State than at this period of decline, when the crown which Charles wore was broken, and its fragments lay scattered on the soil of his ancient empire?

At this time the spurious Decretals of Isidore appeared. In this collection of pretended decrees of the popes, the most ancient bishops, the contemporaries of Tacitus and Quintilian, spoke the barbarous Latin of the ninth century. The customs and constitutions of the Franks were gravely attributed to the Romans of the time of the emperors; popes quoted the Bible in the Latin translation of St. Jerome, who lived one, two, or three centuries after them; and Victor, Bishop of Rome, in the year 192, wrote to Theophilus, who was Archbishop of Alexandria, in 395. The impostor, who had forged this collection, strove to make out that all the bishops derived their authority from the Bishop of Rome, who derived his immediately from Jesus Christ. Not only did he record all the successive conquests of the pontiffs, but he, moreover, carried them back to the remotest periods. The popes were not ashamed to avail themselves of this despicable invention. As early as 865, Nicholas I selected it as his armour[17] to combat princes and bishops. This shameless forgery was for ages the arsenal of Rome.

Nevertheless, the vices and crimes of the pontiffs were for some time to suspend the effects of the Decretals. The Papacy celebrates its admission to the table of kings, by shameful libations. It proceeds to intoxicate itself, and its head turns amidst the debauch. It is about this time that tradition places upon the Papal throne a damsel named Joan, who had fled to Rome with her lover, and, being taken in labour, betrayed her sex in the middle of a solemn procession. But let us not unnecessarily aggravate the disgrace of the Court of the Roman Pontiffs. Abandoned females did reign in Rome at this period. A throne, which pretended to exalt itself above the majesty of kings, grovelled in the mire of vice. Theodora and Marozia, at will, installed and deposed the pretended Masters of the Church of Christ, and placed upon the throne of Peter their paramours, their sons, and their grandsons. These scandalous proceedings, which are but too true, perhaps, gave rise to the tradition of Popess Joan.

Rome becomes a vast theatre of disorder, on which the most powerful families in Italy contend for ascendancy—the Counts of Tuscany usually proving victorious. In 1033, this house dares to place upon the pontifical throne, under the name of Benedict the Ninth, a young boy brought up in debauchery. This child of twelve, when pope, continues his ineffable turpitude.[18] A faction elects Sylvester in his stead, and at length Pope Benedict, with a conscience loaded with adultery, and a hand dyed with the blood of murders,[19] sells the popedom to an ecclesiastic of Rome.

The Emperors of Germany, indignant at so many disorders, cleansed Rome with the sword. The empire, exercising its rights of superiority, drew the triple crown out of the mire into which it had fallen, and saved the degraded popedom by giving it decent men for heads. Henry III, in 1046, deposed three popes, and his finger, adorned with the ring of the Roman Patricians, pointed out the bishop to whom the keys of the confession of St. Peter were to be remitted. Four popes, all Germans, and nominated by the emperor, succeeded each other. When the pontiff of Rome died, deputies from that Church appeared at the imperial court, like the envoys from other dioceses, to request a new bishop. The emperor was even glad to see the pope reforming abuses, strengthening the Church, holding councils, inducting and deposing prelates, in spite of foreign monarchs; the Papacy, by these pretensions, only exalted the power of the emperor, its liege lord. But there was great danger in allowing such games to be played. The strength which the popes were thus resuming, by degrees, might be turned, all at once, against the emperor himself. When the viper recovered, it might sting the bosom which warmed it. This was what actually happened.

Here a new epoch in the Papacy begins. It starts up from its humiliation, and soon has the princes of the earth at its feet. To exalt it is to exalt the Church, is to aggrandise religion, is to secure to the mind its victory over the flesh, and to God his triumph over the world. These are its maxims, and in these ambition finds its profit, fanaticism its excuse.

The whole of this new tendency is personified in one man,—Hildebrand.

Hildebrand, by turns unduly extolled or unjustly stigmatised, is the personification of the Roman pontificate in its power and glory. He is one of those master spirits of history, which contain in them an entire order of new things, similar to those presented in other spheres by Charlemagne, Luther, and Napoleon.

Leo IX took up this monk in passing through Clugny, and carried him to Rome. From that time Hildebrand was the soul of the popedom, until he became the popedom itself. He governed the Church in the name of several pontiffs before his own reign under that of Gregory VII. One great idea took possession of this great genius. He wishes to found a visible theocracy of which the pope, as vicar of Jesus Christ, will be head. The remembrance of the ancient universal dominion of Pagan Rome haunts his imagination, and animates his zeal. He wishes to restore to Papal Rome all that the Rome of the Emperors had lost. "What Marius and Cæsar," said his flatterers, "could not do by torrents of blood, thou performest by a word."

Gregory VII was not led by the Spirit of the Lord. To this Spirit of truth, humility, and meekness, he was a stranger. He sacrificed what he knew to be true, when he judged it necessary to his designs. In particular, he did so in the affair of Berenger. But a spirit far superior to that of the common run of pontiffs, a deep conviction of the justice of his cause, undoubtedly did animate him. Bold, ambitious, and inflexible in his designs, he was, at the same time, dexterous and supple in the employment of means to ensure their success.

His first labour was to embody the militia of the Church, for he behoved to make himself strong before he attacked the empire. A Council held at Rome cut off pastors from their families, and obliged them to belong entirely to the hierarchy. The law of celibacy, conceived and executed under popes who were themselves monks, changed the clergy into a kind of monastic order. Gregory VII pretended to have over all the bishops and priests of Christendom the same power which an abbot of Clugny had over the order over which he presided. The legates of Hildebrand, comparing themselves to the proconsuls of ancient Rome, traversed the provinces to deprive pastors of their lawful wives, and if need were, the pope himself stirred up the populace against married ministers.[20]

But Gregory's main purpose was to shake Rome free of the empire. This bold design he never would have ventured to conceive, had not the dissensions which troubled the minority of Henry IV, and the revolt of the German princes, favoured its execution. The pope was then like one of the grandees of the empire. Making common cause with the other great vassals, he forms a party in the aristocratic interest, and then forbids all ecclesiastics, under pain of excommunication, to receive investiture to their benefices from the Emperor. He breaks the ancient ties which unite churches and their pastors to the authority of the prince, but it is to yoke all of them to the pontifical throne. His aim is by a powerful hand to enchain priests, kings, and people, and make the pope a universal monarch. It is Rome alone that every priest must fear, in Rome alone that he must hope. The kingdoms and princedoms of the earth are his domain, and all kings must tremble before the thunder of the Jupiter of modern Rome. Woe to him who resists! Subjects are loosed from their oath of allegiance, the whole country is smitten with interdict, all worship ceases, the churches are shut, and their bells are mute; the sacraments are no longer administered, and the word of malediction reaches even to the dead, to whom the earth, at the bidding of a haughty pontiff, refuses the peace of the tomb.

The pope, who had been subject from the earliest days of his existence, first to the Roman Emperors, then to the Frank Emperors, and, lastly to the German Emperors, was now emancipated, and walked, for the first time, their equal, if not, indeed, their master. Gregory VII was, however, humbled in his turn; Rome was taken, and Hildebrand obliged to flee. He died at Salerno, saying, "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore die I in exile."[21] Words thus uttered at the portals of the grave who will presume to charge with hypocrisy?

The successors of Gregory, like soldiers who arrive after a great victory, threw themselves, as conquerors, on the subjugated churches. Spain, rescued from Islamism, Prussia, delivered from idols, fell into the hands of the crowned priest. The crusades, which were undertaken at his bidding, every where widened and increased his authority. Those pious pilgrims, who had thought they saw saints and angels guiding their armies, and who, after humbly entering the walls of Jerusalem barefoot, burned the Jews in their synagogue, and, with the blood of thousands of Saracens, deluged the spots to which they had come, seeking the sacred footsteps of the Prince of Peace, carried the name of pope into the East, where it had ceased to be known from the time when he abandoned the supremacy of the Greeks for that of the Franks.

On the other hand, what the armies of the Roman republic and of the empire had not been able to do, the power of the Church accomplished. The Germans brought to the feet of a bishop the tribute which their ancestors had refused to the most powerful generals. Their princes, on becoming emperors, thought they had received a crown from the popes, but the popes had given them a yoke. The kingdoms of Christendom, previously subjected to the spiritual power of Rome, now became its tributaries and serfs.

Thus every thing in the Church is changed.

At first it was a community of brethren, and now an absolute monarchy is established in its bosom. All Christians were priests of the living God, (1 Peter, ii, 9,) with humble pastors for their guides; but a proud head has risen up in the midst of these pastors, a mysterious mouth utters language full of haughtiness, a hand of iron constrains all men, both small and great, rich and poor, bond and slave, to take the stamp of its power. The holy and primitive equality of souls before God is lost, and Christendom, at the bidding of a man, is divided into two unequal camps—in the one, a caste of priests who dare to usurp the name of Church, and pretend to be invested in the eyes of the Lord with high privileges—in the other, servile herds reduced to blind and passive submission, a people gagged and swaddled, and given over to a proud caste. Every tribe, language, and nation of Christendom, fall under the domination of this spiritual king, who has received power to conquer.

CHAP. II.

Grace—Dead Faith—Works—Unity and Duality—Pelagianism—Salvation at the hands of Priests—Penances—Flagellations—Indulgences—Works of Supererogation—Purgatory—Taxation—Jubilee—The Papacy and Christianity—State of Christendom.

But, along with the principle which should rule the history of Christianity was one which should rule its doctrine. The grand idea of Christianity was the idea of grace, pardon, amnesty, and the gift of eternal life. This idea supposed in man an estrangement from God, and an impossibility on his part to reenter into communion with a Being of infinite holiness. The opposition between true and false doctrine cannot, it is true, be entirely summed up in the question of salvation by faith, and salvation by works. Still it is its most prominent feature, or rather, salvation considered as coming from man is the creating principle of all error and all abuse. The excesses produced by this fundamental error led to the Reformation, and the profession of a contrary principle achieved it. This feature must stand prominently out in an introduction to the history of the Reformation. Salvation by grace, then, is the second characteristic which essentially distinguished the religion of God from all human religions. What had become of it? Had the Church kept this great and primordial idea as a precious deposit? Let us follow its history.

The inhabitants of Jerusalem, Asia, Greece, and Rome, in the days of the first emperors, heard the glad tidings, "By grace are ye saved through faith—it is the gift of God." (Ephes., ii, 8.) At this voice of peace—at this gospel—at this powerful word—many guilty souls believing were brought near to Him who is the source of peace, and numerous Christian churches were formed in the midst of the corrupt generation then existing.

But a great misapprehension soon arose as to the nature of saving faith. Faith, according to St. Paul, is the means by which the whole being of the believer—his intellect, his heart, and his will—enter into possession of the salvation which the incarnation of the Son of God has purchased for him. Jesus Christ is apprehended by faith, and thenceforth becomes every thing for man, and in man. He imparts a divine life to human nature; and man thus renewed, disengaged from the power of selfishness and sin, has new affections, and does new works. Faith (says Theology, in order to express these ideas) is the subjective appropriation of the objective work of Christ. If faith is not an appropriation of salvation, it is nothing; the whole Christian economy is disturbed, the sources of new life are sealed up, and Christianity is overturned at its base.

Such was the actual result. The practical view being gradually forgotten, faith soon became nothing more than what it still is to many—an act of the understanding—a simple submission to superior authority.

This first error necessarily led to a second. Faith being stripped of its practical character, could not possibly be said to save alone. Works no longer coming after it, behoved to be placed beside it, and the doctrine that man is justified by faith and by works gained a footing in the Church. To the Christian unity, which includes under the same principle justification and works, grace and law, doctrine and duty, succeeded the sad duality, which makes religion and morality to be quite distinct,—a fatal error, which separates things that cannot live unless united, and which, putting the soul on one side, and the body on the other, causes death. The words of the apostle, echoing through all ages, are, "Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" (Gal., iii, 3.)

Another great error arose to disturb the doctrine of grace. This was Pelagianism. Pelagius maintained that human nature is not fallen—that there is no hereditary corruption—and that man, having received the power of doing good, has only to will it in order to perform it.[22] If goodness consists in certain external actions, Pelagius is right. But if we look to the motives from which those external actions proceed, we find in every part of man selfishness, forgetfulness of God, pollution, and powerlessness. The Pelagian doctrine, driven back from the Church by Augustine, when it advanced with open front, soon presented a side view in the shape of semi-Pelagianism, and under the mask of Augustinian formulæ. This heresy spread over Christendom with astonishing rapidity. The danger of the system appeared, above all, in this—by placing goodness, not within, but without, it caused a great value to be set on external works, on legal observances, and acts of penance. The more of these men did, the holier they were; they won heaven by them, and individuals were soon seen (a very astonishing circumstance, certainly) who went farther in holiness than was required. Pelagianism, at the same time that it corrupted doctrine, strengthened the hierarchy; with the same hand with which it lowered grace it elevated the Church; for grace is of God, and the Church is of man.

The deeper our conviction that the whole world is guilty before God, the more will we cleave to Jesus Christ as the only source of grace. With such a view, how can we place the Church on a level with him, since she is nothing but the whole body of persons subject to the same natural misery? But, so soon as we attribute to man a holiness of his own, all is changed, and ecclesiastics and monks become the most natural medium of receiving the grace of God. This was what happened after Pelagius. Salvation, taken out of the hands of God, fell into the hands of priests, who put themselves in the Lord's place. Souls thirsting for pardon behoved no longer to look towards heaven, but towards the Church, and, above all, towards its pretended head. To blinded minds, the Pontiff of Rome was instead of God. Hence the greatness of the popes and indescribable abuses. The evil went farther still. Pelagianism, in maintaining that man may attain perfect sanctification, pretended, likewise, that the merits of saints and martyrs might be applied to the Church. A particular virtue was even ascribed to their intercession. They were addressed in prayer, their aid was invoked in all the trials of life, and a real idolatry supplanted the adoration of the true and living God.

Pelagianism, at the same time, multiplied rites and ceremonies. Man imagining that he could, and that he ought, by good works, to render himself worthy of grace, saw nothing better fitted to merit it than outward worship. The law of ceremonies becoming endlessly complicated, was soon held equal at least to the moral law, and thus the conscience of Christians was burdened anew with a yoke which had been declared intolerable in the times of the apostles. (Acts, xv, 10.)

But what most of all deformed Christianity was the system of penance which rose out of Pelagianism. Penance at first consisted in certain public signs of repentance, which the Church required of those whom she had excluded for scandal, and who were desirous of being again received into her bosom.

By degrees, penance was extended to all sins, even the most secret, and was considered as a kind of chastisement to which it was necessary to submit, in order to acquire the pardon of God through the absolution of priests.

Ecclesiastical penance was thus confounded with Christian repentance, without which there cannot be either justification or sanctification.

Instead of expecting pardon from Christ only by faith, it was expected chiefly from the Church by works of penance.

Great importance was attached to the outward marks of repentance, tears, fastings, and macerations, while the internal renewal of the heart, which alone constitutes true conversion, was forgotten.

As confession and works of penance are easier than the extirpation of sin, and the abandonment of vice, many ceased to struggle against the lusts of the flesh, deeming it better to supply their place by means of certain macerations.

Works of penance substituted in lieu of the salvation of God kept multiplying in the Church from the days of Tertullian in the third century. The thing now deemed necessary was to fast, go barefoot, and wear no linen, etc., or to quit house and home for distant lands, or, better still, to renounce the world and embrace the monastic state!

To all this were added, in the eleventh century, voluntary flagellations. These, at a later period, became a real mania in Italy, which at that time was violently agitated. Nobles and peasants, young and old, even children of five, go two and two by hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, through villages, towns and cities, with an apron tied round their waist, (their only clothing,) and visit the churches in procession in the dead of winter. Armed with a whip, they flagellate themselves without mercy, and the streets resound with cries and groans, such as to force tears from those who hear them.

Still long before the evil had reached this height, men felt the oppression of the priests and sighed for deliverance. The priests themselves had perceived, that if they did not apply a remedy, their usurped power would be lost, and, therefore, they invented the system of barter, so well known under the name of Indulgences. What they said was this:—"You penitents are not able to fulfil the tasks which are enjoined you? Well, then, we, priests of God, and your pastors, will take the heavy burden on ourselves. For a fast of seven weeks," says Regino, Abbot of Prum, "there will be paid by a rich man twentypence, by one less so tenpence, by the poor threepence, and so in like proportion for other things."[23] Bold voices were raised against this traffic, but in vain.

The pope soon discovered the advantages which he might draw from these indulgences. In the thirteenth century, Alexander Hales, the irrefragable doctor, invented a doctrine well fitted to secure this vast resource to the Papacy, and a bull of Clement VII declared it an article of faith. Jesus Christ, it was said, did far more than was necessary to reconcile God to men; for that a single drop of his blood would have sufficed; but he shed much blood in order to found a treasury for his church, a treasury which even eternity should not be able to exhaust. The supererogatory merits of the saints, i. e. the value of the works which they did beyond their obligation, served also to augment this treasury, the custody and administration of which have been intrusted to Christ's vicar upon earth, who applies to each sinner for the faults committed after baptism these merits of Jesus Christ and the saints according to the measure and quantity which his sins render necessary. Who will venture to attack a practice whose origin is so holy?

This inconceivable traffic soon extends, and becomes more complex. The philosophers of Alexandria speak of a fire in which souls are to be made pure. This philosophical opinion, which several ancient doctors had adopted, Rome declared to be a doctrine of the Church. The pope, by a bull, annexed purgatory to his domain. He decreed that man should there expiate what he might not be able to expiate here below, but that indulgences could deliver souls from that intermediate state in which their sins must otherwise detain them. This dogma is expounded by Thomas Aquinas in his famous theological Summa. Nothing was spared to fill the mind with terror. The torments which the purifying fire inflicts on those who become its victims were painted in dreadful colours. Even at the present day, in many Catholic countries, we see pictures exhibited in churches, or in the public streets, in which poor souls in the midst of burning flames are calling in agony for relief. Who could refuse the redemption money which, on falling into the treasury of Rome, was to ransom the soul from such sufferings?

In order to give regularity to this traffic, there was shortly after drawn up (probably by John XXII,) the famous and scandalous taxation of indulgences, of which there have been more than forty editions.

Ears the least delicate would be offended were we to repeat all the horrible things contained in it.

Incest will cost, if it is not known, five groschen, if known, six; so much will be paid for murder, so much for infanticide, adultery, perjury, house-breaking, etc. "Shame upon Rome," exclaims Claudius Esperse, a Roman theologian, and we add, Shame upon human nature! for we cannot reproach Rome with anything which does not recoil upon man himself. Rome is humanity magnified in some of its evil propensities. We say this for the sake of truth, and we also say it for the sake of justice.

Boniface VIII, the boldest and most ambitious of the popes after Gregory VII, outstripped all his predecessors.

In the year 1300 he published a bull, by which he announced to the Church, that every hundred years all persons repairing to Rome would there obtain a plenary indulgence. Crowds flocked from Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, France, Spain, Germany, Hungary, and all quarters. Old men of sixty and seventy set out, and there was counted at Rome in one month to the number of two hundred thousand pilgrims. All these strangers bringing rich offerings, the pope and the Romans saw their treasury filled.

Roman avarice soon fixed each jubilee at fifty years, next at thirty-three, and at last at twenty-five. Then for the greater convenience of buyers, and the greater profit of sellers, the jubilee and its indulgences were transported from Rome to all parts of Christendom. There was no occasion to leave home. What others had gone to seek beyond the Alps, each might purchase at his own door.

The evil could not go farther.

Then the Reformer arose.

We formerly saw what became of the principle which should rule the history of Christianity, and we have now seen what became of that which should rule its doctrine; both were lost.

To establish a mediating caste between man and God, and insist that the salvation which God gives shall be purchased by works, penances, and money, is the Papacy.

To give to all by Jesus Christ without a human mediator, and without that power, which is called the Church, free access to the great gift of eternal life, which God bestows on man, is Christianity and the Reformation.

The Papacy is an immense wall raised between man and God by the labour of ages. Whosoever would pass it must lay his account with paying or suffering. And yet will it not be passed?

The Reformation is the power which threw down this wall, restored Christ to man, and levelled the path by which he may come to his Creator.

The Papacy interposes the Church between God and man. Christianity and the Reformation make them meet face to face. The Papacy separates—the Gospel unites them.

Having thus traced the history of the decay and extinction of the two great principles which distinguish the religion of God from all the religions of man, let us attend to some of the results of this vast alteration.

First, however, let us pay some tribute of respect to this Church of the middle ages which succeeded that of the Apostles and Fathers, and preceded that of the Reformers. The Church, although decayed, and always more and more enslaved, still was the Church, that is to say, still remained the most powerful friend that man possessed. Her hands, though tied, could still bless. During those ages, great servants of Jesus Christ, men, who in essential doctrines were true Protestants, shed a benign light, and in the most humble convent or the most obscure parish, were found poor monks and poor priests to solace deep griefs. The Catholic Church was not the Papacy. The latter acted the part of oppressor, the former that of the oppressed. The Reformation, which declared war on the one came to deliver the other. And yet, truth to tell, the Papacy itself was sometimes, in the hands of God, who brings good out of evil, a necessary counterpoise to the power and ambition of princes.

CHAP. III.

Religion—Relics—Easter Merriment—Manners—Corruption—Dissorderly Lives of Priests, Bishops, and Popes—A Priest's Family—Education—Ignorance—Ciceronians.

Let us now attend to the State of the Church before the Reformation.

The people of Christendom no longer expecting the gratuitous gift of eternal life from the true and living God, it was necessary, in order to obtain it, to have recourse to all the methods which a superstitious, timid, and frightened conscience could invent. Heaven is full of saints and mediators who can solicit the favour. Earth is full of pious works, sacrifices, observances, and ceremonies, which can merit it. Such is the picture of the religion of this period, as drawn by one who was long a monk, and afterwards a fellow-worker with Luther.

Myconius says, "The sufferings and merits of Christ were as a vain tale, or as the Fables of Homer. Not a word was said of the faith by which the righteousness of the Saviour, and the inheritance of eternal life, are secured. Christ was a severe judge, ready to condemn all who did not recur to the intercession of saints, or the indulgences of popes. Instead of him there figured as intercessors, first the Virgin Mary, like the Diana of Paganism, and after her saints, of whom the popes were continually enlarging the catalogue. These mediators gave the benefit of their prayers only to those who had deserved well of the orders founded by them. For this it was necessary to do not what God commands in his word, but a great number of works which monks and priests had devised, and which brought in large sums of money. These were, Ave-Marias, prayers of St. Ursula, and St. Bridget. It was necessary to chant and cry night and day. There were as many places of pilgrimage as there were mountains, forests, or valleys. But these toils might be bought off with money. Money, therefore, and every thing that had any value, chickens, geese, ducks, eggs, wax, straw, butter, and cheese, were brought to the convents and to the priests. Then chants resounded, and bells were rung, perfumes filled the sanctuary, and sacrifices were offered; kitchens were stuffed, glasses rattled, and masses winding up threw a cover over all these pious works. The bishops did not preach, but they consecrated priests, bells, monks, churches, chapels, images, books, cemeteries, all these things yielding large returns. Bones, arms, and feet, were presented in gold and silver boxes. They were given out to be kissed during mass, and this too yielded a large profit."

"All these folks maintained, that the pope being in the place of God, (2 Thess., ii, 4,) could not be deceived, and they would not hear of any thing to the contrary."[24]

In the Church of All Saints at Wittemberg were shown a piece of Noah's Ark, a small portion of soot from the furnace of the Three Young Men, a bit of the manger in which our Saviour was laid, hair from the beard of the great Christopher, and nineteen thousand other relics of greater or less value. At Schaffhausen was shown the breath of St. Joseph, which Nicodemus had received into his glove. In Wurtemberg, a vender of indulgences was seen selling his wares, and having his head adorned with a large feather, plucked from the wing of the archangel Michael.[25] But there was no occasion to go to a distance in quest of these precious treasures. Persons with hired relics travelled the country, and hawked them about, as has since been done with the Holy Scriptures. The faithful, having them thus brought to their houses, were spared the trouble and expence of pilgrimage. Relics were exhibited with great ceremony in the churches, while those travelling hawkers paid a fixed sum to the owners, and also gave them so much per centage on their returns. The kingdom of heaven had thus disappeared, and men, to supply its place on the earth, had opened a disgraceful traffic.

In this way, a profane spirit had invaded religion, and the most sacred seasons of the Church, those which, most forcibly and powerfully invited the faithful to self-examination and love, were dishonoured by buffoonery and mere heathen blasphemies. The "Easter Drolleries" held an important place in the acts of the Church. As the festival of the resurrection required to be celebrated with joy, every thing that could excite the laughter of the hearers was sought out, and thrust into sermons. One preacher imitated the note of the cuckoo, while another hissed like a goose. One dragged forward to the altar a layman in a cassock; a second told the most indecent stories; a third related the adventures of the Apostle Peter, among others, how, in a tavern, he cheated the host by not paying his score.[26] The inferior clergy took advantage of the occasion to turn their superiors into ridicule. The churches were thus turned into stages, and the priests into mountebanks.

If such was the state of religion, what must that of morals have been? It is true, and equity requires we should not forget, that, at this time, corruption was not universal. Even when the Reformation took place, much piety, righteousness, and religious vigour, were brought to light. Of this, the mere sovereignty of God was the cause; but still, how can it be denied, that He had previously deposited the germs of this new life in the bosom of the Church? In our own day, were all the immoralities and abominations which are committed in a single country brought together, the mass of corruption would undoubtedly fill us with alarm. Still it is true, that, at this period, evil presented itself in a form, and with a universality, which it has never had since. In particular, the abomination of desolation was seen standing in the holy place, to an extent which has not been permitted since the period of the Reformation.

With faith morality had decayed. The glad tidings of eternal life is the power of God for the regeneration of man. But take away the salvation which God gives, and you take away purity of heart and life. This was proved by the event.

The doctrine and the sale of indulgences operated on an ignorant people as a powerful stimulus to evil. It is no doubt true, that, according to the doctrine of the Church, indulgences were of use only to those who promised to amend, and actually kept their promise. But what was to be expected of a doctrine which had been invented with a view to the profit which it might be made to yield? The venders of indulgences, the better to dispose of their wares, were naturally disposed to present them in the most winning and seductive form. Even the learned were not too well informed on the subject, while the only thing seen by the multitude was, that indulgences gave them permission to sin. The merchants were in no haste to disabuse them of an error so greatly in favour of the trade.

In those ages of darkness, what disorders and crimes must have prevailed when impunity could be purchased with money! What ground could there be for fear when a trifling contribution to build a church procured exemption from punishment in the world to come! What hope of renovation, when all direct communication between men and their God had ceased—when, estranged from him, their spirit and life, they moved to and fro among frivolous ceremonies and crude observances in an atmosphere of death!

The priests were the first to yield to the corrupting influence. In wishing to raise, they had lowered themselves. They had tried to steal from God a ray of his glory, that they might place it in their own bosom; but, instead of this, had only placed in it some of the leaven of corruption, stolen from the Evil one. The annals of the period teem with scandalous stories. In many places people were pleased to see their priest keeping a mistress, in the hope that it might secure their wives from seduction.[27] How humbling the scene which the house of such a priest must have presented! The unhappy man maintained the woman and the children she might have borne him, out of tithes and alms.[28] His conscience upbraided him. He blushed before his people, his servants, and his God. The woman fearing, that, in the event of the priest's death, she might become destitute, sometimes made provision beforehand, and played the thief in her own house. Her honour was gone, and her children were a living accusation against her. Objects of universal contempt, both parties rushed into quarrelling and dissipation. Such was the home of a priest!... In these fearful scenes, the people read a lesson of which they were not slow to avail themselves.[29]

The rural districts became the theatre of numerous excesses. The places where priests resided were often the abodes of dissoluteness. Corneille Adrian at Bruges,[30] and Abbot Trinkler at Cappel,[31] imitated the manners of the East, and had their harems. Priests associating with low company, frequented taverns and played at dice, crowning their orgies with quarrels and blasphemy.[32] The Council of Schaffhausen issued an order forbidding priests to dance in public except at marriages, or to carry more than one kind of weapon. They, moreover, ordered that such priests as were found in houses of bad fame should be stript of their cassocks.[33] In the archbishopric of Mayence, they leapt the walls at night, and then shouted and revelled in all sorts of debauchery within taverns and inns. Doors and locks were not secure from their attacks.[34] In several places, each priest was liable to the bishop in a certain tax for the female he kept, and for every child she bore him. One day, a German bishop, who was attending a great festival, openly declared that in a single year, the number of priests who had been brought before him for this purpose amounted to eleven thousand. This account is given by Erasmus.[35]

Among the higher orders of the priesthood, the corruption was equally great. The dignitaries of the Church preferred the turmoil of camps to chanting at the altar, and to take lance in hand, and reduce those around them to obedience, was one of the first qualities of a bishop. Baldwin of Tours, who was constantly warring with his vassals and neighbours, razed their castles, built others of his own, and thought of nothing but enlarging his territory. It is told of a certain bishop of Eichstadt, that when he sat in his court, he had a coat-of-mail under his gown, and a large sword in his hand. One of his sayings was, that in fair fight he was not afraid of five Bavarians.[36] The bishops and the inhabitants of the towns where they resided were perpetually at war. The burghers demanded freedom, while the priests insisted on absolute obedience. When the latter proved victorious, they punished revolt, and satiated their vengeance with numbers of victims; but the flame of insurrection burst forth at the very moment when they imagined they had suppressed it. And what a spectacle was presented by the pontifical throne at the period immediately preceding the Reformation! To say the truth, even Rome was not often witness to such infamy.

Roderigo Borgia, after he had lived with a lady of Rome, continued the same illegitimate intercourse with her daughter, Rosa Vanozza, and had five children by her. This man, a cardinal and an archbishop, was living at Rome with Vanozza, and other females besides, frequenting churches and hospitals, when the pontifical chair became vacant by the death of Innocent VIII. Borgia secured it by buying each cardinal for a regular price. Four mules loaded with gold publicly entered the palace of Cardinal Sforza, the most influential among them. Borgia became Pope under the name of Alexander VI, and was delighted at having thus reached the pinnacle of pleasure.

On his coronation-day, he appointed his son Cæsar, a youth of ferocious temper and dissolute habits, Archbishop of Valentia and Bishop of Pampeluna. Then, when his daughter Lucretia was married, he celebrated the occasion in the Vatican with fêtes which were attended by his mistress, Julia Bella, and enlivened by comedies and obscene songs. "All the ecclesiastics," says a historian,[37] "had mistresses, and all the convents of the capital were houses of bad fame." Cæsar Borgia espoused the faction of the Guelphs, and when, by their assistance, he had destroyed the Ghibelins, he turned round upon the Guelphs, and, in like manner, destroyed them. But he was unwilling that any should share the spoil with him, and, therefore, after Alexander had, in 1497, made his eldest son Duke of Benevento, the Duke disappeared. George Schiavoni, a dealer in wood on the banks of the Tiber, one night saw a dead body thrown into the river, but said nothing; such occurrences were common. The dead body proved to be that of the Duke, who had been murdered by his brother Cæsar.[38] Nor was this enough. Having taken offence at his brother-in-law, he made him be stabbed on the stair of the pontifical palace. The wounded man, covered with blood, was carried to his apartment, where he was constantly watched by his wife and sister, who, dreading Cæsar's poison, prepared his food with their own hands. Alexander placed sentinels at his door, but Cæsar laughed at their precautions, and as the pope was going to see his son-in-law, Cæsar said to him, "What is not done at dinner will be done at supper." In short, he one day forced his way into the room, drove out the wife and sister, and calling in his executioner, Michilotto, the only person to whom he showed any confidence, looked on while his brother-in-law was strangled.[39] Alexander had a favourite, named Peroto. The pope's partiality for him offended the young Duke. He pursued him, and Peroto, taking refuge under the pontifical mantle, clasped the pope in his arms. Cæsar stabbed him, and the blood of his victim sprung into the pontiffs face.[40] "The pope," adds a contemporary witness to these scenes, "loves his son the Duke, and is much afraid of him." Cæsar was the handsomest and most powerful man of his age. He fought with six wild bulls, and despatched them with ease. Every morning at Rome persons were found who had been assassinated during the night, while poison carried off those whom the sword could not reach. Men dared not to move or breathe in Rome, every one trembling till his own turn should arrive. Cæsar Borgia was the hero of crime. The spot of earth where iniquity attained this dreadful height was the pontifical throne. When once man has given himself over to the powers of darkness, the higher the station he pretends to occupy in the sight of God, the deeper he sinks into the abysses of hell. The dissolute fêtes which were given in the pontifical palace by the pope, his son Cæsar, and his daughter Lucretia, cannot be described, or even thought of, without horror. The impure groves of antiquity, perhaps, never saw the like. Historians have accused Alexander and Lucretia of incest, but the proof seems defective. The pope had prepared poison for a rich cardinal, in a small box of comfits which were to be served after a sumptuous repast. The cardinal being put on his guard, bribed the steward, and the poisoned box was placed before Alexander, who ate of it and died.[41] The whole city ran to see the dead viper, and could not get enough of the sight.[42]

Such was the man who occupied the pontifical see at the beginning of the century in which the Reformation commenced.

The clergy having thus brought religion and themselves into disrepute, a powerful voice might well exclaim, "The ecclesiastical state is opposed to God and to his glory. The people well know this, and but too well do they show it, by the many songs, proverbs, and jests, against priests, which are current among the lower classes, and by all those caricatures of monks and priests which we see on all the walls, and even on playing cards. Every man feels disgust when he sees or when he hears of an ecclesiastic." These are Luther's words.[43]

The evil had spread through all ranks. A spirit of error had been sent to men, corruption of manners kept pace with corruption of faith, and a mystery of iniquity lay like an incubus on the enslaved Church of Jesus Christ.

There was another consequence which necessarily resulted from the oblivion into which the fundamental doctrine of the gospel had fallen. Ignorance was the companion of corruption. The priests having taken into their own hands the distribution of a salvation which belongs only to God, deemed this a sufficient title to the respect of the people. What occasion had they to study sacred literature? Their business was not to expound the Scriptures, but to give diplomas of indulgence—a ministry which called not for the laborious acquisition of extensive knowledge.

In the rural districts, says Wimpheling, the persons selected for preachers were miserable creatures, who had been previously raised from beggary, cast-off cooks, musicians, huntsmen, grooms, and still worse.[44]

The higher clergy were often sunk in deep ignorance. A Bishop of Dunfeld congratulated himself that he had never learned either Greek or Hebrew, while the monks contended that all heresies sprung out of these languages, and especially out of the Greek. "The New Testament," said one of them, "is a book full of briers and serpents. "The Greek," continued he, "is a new language recently invented, and of it we ought specially to beware. As to Hebrew, my dear brethren, it is certain that all who learn it, that very instant become Jews." We quote from Heresbach, a friend of Erasmus, and a respectable writer. Thomas Linacer, a learned and celebrated ecclesiastic, had never read the New Testament. In the last days of his life, (in 1524,) he caused a copy of it to be brought, but immediately dashed it from him with an oath, because, on opening it, he had lighted on these words, "I say unto you, Swear not at all." Now he was a great swearer. "Either this is not the gospel," said he, "or we are not Christians."[45] Even the Theological Faculty of Paris did not hesitate at this time to say, in presence of the Parliament, "It is all over with religion if the study of Greek and Hebrew is allowed." If, among ecclesiastics, there were a scattered few who had made some attainments, it was not in sacred literature. The Ciceronians of Italy affected great contempt for the Bible because of its style. Men calling themselves priests of the Church of Jesus Christ, translated the writings of holy men inspired by the Spirit of God into the style of Virgil and Horace, in order to adapt them to the ears of good society. Cardinal Bembo, instead of the Holy Spirit, wrote the breath of the heavenly zephyr; instead of to forgive sins,—to bend the manes and the Sovereign God; and instead of Christ the Son of God,—Minerva sprung from the forehead of Jupiter. Having one day found the respectable Sadolet engaged in translating the Epistle to the Romans, he said to him, "Leave off this child's play; such trifling ill becomes a man of gravity."[46]

Such are some of the consequences of the system under which Christendom then groaned. Our picture, undoubtedly, proves both the corruption of the Church and the necessity of a Reformation; and it was this we proposed in sketching it. The vital doctrines of Christianity had almost entirely disappeared, and with them the light and life which constitute the essence of genuine religion. The strength of the Church had been wasted, and its body, enfeebled and exhausted, lay stretched almost without life, over the whole extent which the Roman empire had occupied.

CHAP. IV.

Imperishable nature of Christianity—Two Laws of God—Apparent Power of Rome—Hidden Opposition—Decay—Threefold Opposition—Kings and Subjects—The Pope judged in Italy—Discoveries by Kings and Subjects—Frederick the Wise—His Moderation—His Anticipation.

The evils which then afflicted Christendom, viz., superstition, infidelity, ignorance, vain speculation, and corruption of manners—all natural fruits of the human heart—were not new upon the earth. Often had they figured in the history of states. In the East, especially, various religions which had had their day of glory, but had become enervated, had been attacked by them, and, yielding to the assault, had fallen under it, never again to rise. Is Christianity to experience the same fate? Will she be destroyed like these ancient popular religions? Will the blow which gave them death be strong enough to deprive her of life? Is there nothing that can save her? Will those hostile powers that now oppress her, and which have already overthrown so many other forms of worship, be able to seat themselves without opposition on the ruins of the Church of Jesus Christ?

No! There is in Christianity what there was not in any of those popular religions. It does not, like them, present certain abstract ideas, interwoven with traditions and fables, destined to fall, sooner or later, under the attacks of human reason. It contains pure truth, founded on facts capable of standing the scrutiny of every upright and enlightened mind. Christianity does not aim merely at exciting certain vague religious sentiments, which, when they have once lost their charm, cannot be again revived. Its end is to satisfy, and it, in fact, does satisfy, all the religious wants of human nature, whatever the degree of refinement to which it may have attained. It is not the work of man, whose labours fade and are effaced; it is the work of God, who sustains what he creates; and the pledge of its duration is the promise of its divine Head.

It is impossible that human nature can ever rise so high as to look down on Christianity, or if, for a time, human nature do think herself able to dispense with it, it soon appears with renewed youth and life, as alone fit for curing souls. Degenerate nations then return with new ardour to those ancient, simple, and powerful truths, which, in the hour of their infatuation, they had turned from with disdain.

Christianity, in fact, displayed in the sixteenth century the same regenerating power which it had exerted in the first. After fifteen centuries the same truths produced the same results. In the days of the Reformation, as in those of Paul and Peter, the Gospel, with invincible force, overthrew the mightiest obstacles. Its sovereign power was manifested from north to south among nations differing most widely from each other in manners, character, and intellectual development. Then, as in the days of Stephen and James, it lighted up the fire of enthusiasm and devotedness in nations which seemed almost extinguished, and exalted them even to the height of martyrdom.

How was this revival of the Church and of the world accomplished?

The observer might then have seen the operation of two laws by which God governs the world at all times.

First, as He has ages to act in, he begins his preparations leisurely, and long before the event which He designs to accomplish.

Then, when the time is come, he produces the greatest results by the smallest means. It is thus he acts in nature and in history. When he wishes an immense tree to grow, he deposits a little grain in the earth; and, when he wishes to renew his Church, he employs the humblest instrument to accomplish what emperors and all the learned and eminent in the Church were unable to perform. By and by we will search for and we will discover this little seed which a Divine hand deposited in the earth in the days of the Reformation; but at present, let us endeavour to ascertain the various means by which God prepared this great event.

At the period when the Reformation was ready to burst forth, Rome appeared to be in peace and safety. One would even have said that nothing could disturb her triumph after the great victories which she had gained. General Councils—those Upper and Lower Houses of Catholicity—had been subdued. The Vaudois and the Hussites had been suppressed. No University, with the exception, perhaps, of that of Paris, which sometimes raised its voice when its kings gave the signal, doubted the infallibility of the oracles of Rome. Each seemed to have accepted his alloted share in her power. The higher clergy deemed it better to give a distant chief the tenth part of their revenues, and quietly consume the other nine, than to hazard all for an independence which would cost much and yield little. The lower clergy, decoyed by the perspective of rich benefices, which ambition made them fancy and discover in the distance, were willing, by a little slavery, to realise the flattering hopes which they entertained. Besides, they were almost everywhere so oppressed by the chiefs of the hierarchy, that they could scarcely struggle under their powerful grasp, far less rise boldly and hold up their heads. The people knelt before the Roman altar, and kings themselves, though they began in secret to despise the Bishop of Rome, durst not venture to attack his power with a hand which the age would have deemed sacrilegious.

But opposition, if it seemed externally to have slackened, or even ceased, when the Reformation burst forth, had more inward strength. A nearer view of the edifice will disclose to us more than one symptom which presaged its downfall. General Councils, though vanquished, had diffused their principles throughout the Church, and carried division into the enemy's camp. The defenders of the hierarchy were divided into two parties, viz., those who maintained the system of absolute Papal domination, on the principles of Hildebrand, and those who were desirous of a constitutional Papal government, offering guarantees and giving liberty to the churches.

Nor was this the whole. Faith in the infallibility of the Roman bishop was greatly shaken among all parties; and, if no voice was raised in opposition to it, it was because every one rather desired anxiously to retain the little faith in it which he still had. The least shock was dreaded, because it might overturn the edifice. Christendom held in its breath; but it was to prevent a disaster by which its own existence might have been endangered. From the moment when man trembles at the thought of abandoning a long venerated belief, it has lost its influence over him, and even the appearance of respect which he may be desirous to keep up will not be long maintained. The Reformation had been gradually prepared in three different worlds—the political, the ecclesiastical, and the literary. Political bodies, private Christians, and theologians, the literary and the learned, all contributed to the revolution of the sixteenth century. Let us take a survey of this triple opposition, concluding with the literary class, though, at the period immediately preceding the revolution, it was perhaps the most powerful of all.

First, among political bodies, Rome had lost much of its ancient credit. Of this the Church herself was the primary cause; for, properly speaking, it was not the errors and superstitions which she had introduced into Christianity that gave the fatal blow. Before Christendom could have been able to condemn her on this account, it must have stood higher than the Church, in respect of intellectual and religious development. But there was a class of things which the laity well understood, and it was by these they judged the Church. She had become of the "earth, earthy." The sacerdotal empire, which tyrannised over the nations, existed solely by the illusions of its subjects; and having a halo for its crown, had forgotten its nature, and left heaven, with his spheres of light and glory, to plunge into the vulgar interests of burghers and princes. Though representing those who are born of the Spirit, the priests had exchanged the Spirit for the flesh. They had abandoned the treasures of knowledge, and the spiritual power of the Word, for the brute force and tinkling of the age.

The thing happened naturally enough. At first the Church pretended that her object was to defend spiritual order. But in order to protect it from the opposition and assaults of the people, she had resorted to earthly means, to vulgar weapons, which a false prudence had induced her to take up. When the Church had once begun to handle such weapons, her spirituality was at an end. Her arm could not become temporal without rendering her heart temporal also. The appearance presented soon became the reverse of what it had been at the outset. At first she had thought proper to employ the earth in defending heaven; now she employed heaven to defend the earth. Theocratic forms became in her hands merely a mean of accomplishing worldly interests. The offerings which the people laid at the feet of the sovereign pontiff of Christendom were expended in maintaining the luxury of his court and the soldiers of his armies. His spiritual power served him as a ladder on which to climb, and then put the kings and nations of the earth under his feet. The charm broke, and the power of the Church was lost as soon as the men of the world could say, "She is become as one of us."

The great were the first to examine the titles of this imaginary power.[47] This examination might, perhaps, have been sufficient to overthrow Rome; but, happily for her, the education of princes was everywhere in the hands of her adepts. These inspired their august pupils with sentiments of veneration for the Roman pontiff. The rulers of the people grew up within the sanctuary, and princes of ordinary capacity could never entirely quit it. Several even had no other ambition than to be found in it at the hour of death. They preferred to die under a cassock rather than a crown.

Italy, that apple of discord in Europe, perhaps contributed most to open the eyes of kings. Having occasion to communicate with popes on matters which concerned the temporal prince of the States of the Church, and not the Bishop of bishops, they were greatly astonished when they saw them ready to sacrifice rights which appertained to the pontiff, in order to secure certain advantages to the prince. They discovered that these pretended organs of truth had recourse to all the petty wiles of politics, to deceit, dissimulation, and perjury.[48] Then, at length, the bandage, which education had tied upon the eyes of princes, fell off. Then wily Ferdinand of Arragon tried stratagem against stratagem. Then the impetuous Louis XII caused a medal to be struck with this inscription, "Perdam Babylonis nomen."[49] And honest Maximilian of Austria, grieved to the heart on learning the treachery of Leo X, declared openly, "Henceforth this pope, too, is to me nothing better than a villain; now I can say that throughout my life not one pope has kept faith with me, or been true to his word. If it please God, I hope that this one will be the last."[50]

Kings and states began, moreover, to feel impatient under the heavy burden which the popes imposed on them, and to demand that Rome should free them from contributions and annats which wasted their resources. Already had France opposed Rome with the pragmatic sanction, and the heads of the empire claimed to share in it. In 1511 the emperor took part in the Council of Pisa, and had even at one time an idea of seizing the popedom for himself. But, among the rulers of the people none were so useful to the Reformation as the prince in whose states it was to commence.

Of all the Electors of that period, the most powerful was Frederick of Saxony, surnamed the Wise. Having succeeded, in 1487, to the hereditary states of his family, he had received the electoral dignity from the emperor, and in 1493 undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was dubbed "Knight of the Holy Sepulchre." His power and influence, his riches and liberality, raised him above all his equals. God chose him to be the tree under whose shelter the seed of truth might be able to push forth its first blade, without being uprooted by storms from without.[51]

No man was better fitted for this noble service. Frederick possessed the general esteem, and, in particular, had the entire confidence of the emperor, whom he even represented in his absence. His wisdom consisted not in the dexterous arts of a wily politician, but in an enlightened and foreseeing prudence, the first maxim of which was never to offer violence, from interested motives, to the laws of honour and religion.

At the same time, he felt in his heart the power of the word of God. One day when Staupitz, the Vicar-General, was with him, the conversation turned upon those who entertained the people with vain declamation. "All discourses," said the Elector, "which are filled only with subtleties and human traditions, are wondrously cold, nerveless, and feeble. It is impossible to advance one subtlety which another subtlety cannot destroy. The Holy Scriptures alone are clothed with such power and majesty, that, destroying all our learned logical contrivances, they press us home, and constrain us to exclaim, 'Never man so spake.'" Staupitz having signified that he was entirely of this opinion, the Elector shook him cordially by the hand, and said, "Promise me that you will always think so."*

Frederick was just the prince required at the outset of the Reformation. Too much feebleness on the part of its friends might have allowed it to be strangled, while too much haste might have caused the storm, which at the very first began with hollow murmuring sound to gather against it, to burst too soon. Frederick was moderate but strong. He had that Christian virtue which God always requires in those who would adore his ways—he waited upon God. He put in practice the wise counsel of Gamaliel, "If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it." Acts, v, 38, 39. "Matters," said this prince to Spengler of Nuremberg, one of the most enlightened men of his time; "matters are come to such a point, that there is nothing more which men can do in them; God alone must act. To His mighty hand, therefore, we commit these great events, which are too difficult for us." Providence made an admirable choice in selecting such a prince to protect his work in its infancy.

CHAP. V.

The People—The Empire—Providential Preparations—Impulse of the Reformation—Peace—Middle Classes—National Character—Yoke of the Pope—State of the Empire—Opposition to Rome—The Burghers—Switzerland—Valour—Liberty—Small Cantons—Italy—Obstacles to Reform—Spain—Obstacles—Portugal—France—Preparations—Hopes Deceived—Netherlands—England—Scotland—The North—Russia—Poland—Bohemia—Hungary.

The discoveries made by kings had gradually extended to their subjects. The wise began to habituate themselves to the idea that the Bishop of Rome was only a man, and sometimes even a very bad man. They had a suspicion that he was no holier than the bishops, whose reputation was very equivocal. The licentiousness of the popes roused the indignation of Christendom, and hatred of the Roman name rankled in the heart of the nations.[52]

Numerous causes concurred in facilitating the deliverance of the different countries of the West. Let us glance at these countries.

The empire was a confederation of different states, with an emperor at their head, each state having supreme authority within its own territory. The Imperial Diet, composed of all the princes or sovereign states, legislated for the whole Germanic body. It belonged to the emperor to ratify the laws, decrees, or resolutions of the assembly, and to see them applied and carried into execution, while the seven most powerful princes under the title of Electors, had the disposal of the imperial crown.

The north of Germany, inhabited chiefly by the ancient Saxon race, had acquired the greatest degree of freedom. The emperor, incessantly attacked by the Turks in his hereditary possessions, was obliged to court those princes and bold nations whose aid was then necessary to him. Free towns in the north, west, and south of the empire, had, by their trade, their manufactures, and exertions of every description, risen to a high degree of prosperity, and thereby of independence, but the powerful house of Austria, then invested with the imperial crown, held the greater part of the southern states of Germany under its control, and closely watched their movements. It was preparing to extend its dominion over the whole empire, and even beyond it, when the Reformation interposed a mighty barrier to its encroachments, and saved the independence of Europe.

As Judea, when Christianity arose, was in the centre of the ancient world, so Germany was in the centre of Christendom, looking at once toward the Netherlands, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Denmark, and all the North. It was in the heart of Europe that the principle of life was to be developed, and the beatings of this heart were to circulate through all the arteries of the body the noble blood which was to give animation to all its members.

The particular constitution which the empire had received conformably to the dispensation of Providence, favoured the propagation of new ideas. Had Germany been a monarchy properly so called, like France or England, the arbitrary will of the monarch might have been able long to arrest the progress of the gospel. But it was a confederation. Truth attacked in one state might be received with favour in another.

The internal peace which Maximilian had just secured for the empire was not less favourable to the Reformation. For a long time the numerous members of the Germanic body had taken pleasure in tearing each other. Nought had been seen but trouble and discord, war incessantly renewed, neighbour against neighbour, town against town, and noble against noble. Maximilian had given a solid basis to public order, by erecting the Imperial Chamber, with power to decide in all questions between different states. The inhabitants of Germany, after all their troubles and disquietudes, saw the commencement of a new era of security and repose. Nevertheless, when Luther appeared, Germany still presented to the observing eye that kind of motion which agitates the sea after long protracted storms. The calm was uncertain. More than one example of this will be seen as we proceed. By giving an entirely new impulse to the Germanic nations, the Reformation put an end for ever to all the former causes of agitation. Destroying the system of barbarism, which had till then been paramount, it put Europe in possession of a new system.

Christianity had, at the same time, exercised a peculiar influence on Germany. The middle classes had made rapid improvement. Throughout the different quarters of the empire, and more especially in the free towns, were numerous institutions well fitted to improve the great mass of the population. In these arts flourished. The burghers, devoting themselves in security to the calm toils and sweet relations of social life, became more and more accessible to knowledge, and in this way were continually acquiring new influence and authority. The foundation of the Reformation in Germany was not to be laid by magistrates, who must often shape their conduct according to political exigencies, nor by nobles fired with the love of military glory, nor by a greedy and ambitious clergy, working religion for profit, as if it were their exclusive property. The task was reserved for the citizens, the commonalty, the great body of the people.

The national character of the Germans was specially fitted to adapt itself to a religious Reformation. No spurious civilisation had enervated it. The precious seed, which the fear of God deposits in the bosom of a people, had not been thrown to the winds. Ancient manners yet existed, displaying themselves in that integrity and fidelity, that love of labour, that perseverance, that serious temper, which is still to be seen, and gives presage of greater success to the gospel, than the jeering levity, or boorish temper of some other European nations.

The people of Germany were indebted to Rome for the great instrument of modern civilisation, viz., faith, polish, learning, laws, all save their courage and their arms, had come from the sacerdotal city, and, in consequence, Germany had ever after been in close alliance with the Papacy. The one was a kind of spiritual conquest by the other, and we all know to what purposes Rome has invariably applied her conquests. Nations which were in possession of faith and civilisation before a Roman pontiff existed, always maintained in regard to him, a greater measure of independence. Still the more thorough the subjugation of the German, the more powerful will the reaction be when the period of awakening shall arrive. When Germany does open her eyes, she will indignantly break loose from the chains which have so long held her captive. The bondage she has had to endure will make her more sensible of her need of deliverance; and freedom, and bold champions of the truth, will come forth from this house of hard labour and bondage, in which all her people have, for ages, been confined.

There was, at that time, in Germany, what the politicians of our days call a "see-saw system." When the emperor was of a resolute character, his power increased; when, on the contrary, he was of a feeble character, the influence and power of the princes and electors were enlarged. Never had these felt themselves stronger in regard to their chief than in the time of Maximilian, at the period of the Reformation; and as he took part against it, it is easy to understand how favourable the circumstance of his comparative weakness must have been to the propagation of the gospel.

Moreover, Germany was tired of what the Romans derisively styled "the patience of the Germans." They had indeed, shown much patience from the days of Louis of Bavaria, when the emperors laid down their arms, and the tiara was placed, without opposition, above the crown of the Cæsars.

The contest, however, had done little more than change its place, by descending several steps. The same struggles which the emperors and popes had exhibited to the world were soon renewed on a smaller scale, in all the towns of Germany, between the bishops and the magistrates. The burghers took up the sword which the emperors had allowed to drop from their hands. As early as 1329 the burghers of Frankfort on the Oder had intrepidly withstood all their ecclesiastical superiors. Excommunicated for having continued faithful to the Margrave Louis, they had been left for twenty-eight years without mass, baptism, marriage, or Christian burial; and, when the monks and priests made their re-entry, they laughed at it as a comedy or farce,—sad symptoms, doubtless, but symptoms of which the clergy were the cause. At the period of the Reformation this opposition between the magistrates and ecclesiastics had increased. The privileges of the former, and the temporal pretensions of the latter, were constantly causing jostling and collision between the two bodies.

But burgomasters, councillors, and secretaries of towns, were not the only persons among whom Rome and the clergy found opponents. Wrath was at the same time fermenting among the people, and broke out as early as 1502, when the peasantry, indignant at the grinding yoke of their ecclesiastical sovereigns, entered into a combination which goes under the name of the Shoe-Alliance.

Thus everywhere, both in the upper and lower regions of society, a grumbling sound was heard,—a precursor of the thunder which was soon to burst. Germany seemed ripe for the work which the sixteenth century had received as its task. Providence, which moves leisurely, had every thing prepared, and the very passions which God condemns were to be overruled by his mighty hand for the accomplishment of his designs.

Let us see how other nations were situated.

Thirteen small republics, placed with their confederates in the centre of Europe among mountains, forming, as it were, its citadel, contained a brave and simple people. Who would have gone to those obscure valleys in quest of persons who, with the sons of Germany, might be the deliverers of the Church? Who would have thought that petty unknown towns, just emerging from barbarism, hid behind inaccessible mountains, at the extremity of nameless lakes, would, in point of Christianity, take precedence of Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome? Nevertheless, it so pleased Him who wills that one spot of earth be watered with dew, and that another spot on which the rain has not descended shall remain parched, (Amos.)

There were other circumstances besides which might have been expected to throw numerous obstacles in the way of the Reformation among the Helvetic Republics. If, in a monarchy, the impediments of power were to be dreaded, the thing to be feared in a democracy was the precipitation of the people.

But Switzerland had also had its preparations. It was a wild but noble tree, which had been preserved in the bosom of the valleys, in order that a valuable fruit might one day be engrafted on it. Providence had diffused among this new people principles of independence and freedom, destined to display their full power whenever the signal for contest with Rome should be given. The pope had given the Swiss the title of Protectors of the Liberty of the Church; but they seem to have taken the honourable appellation in a very different sense from the pontiff. If their soldiers guarded the pope in the vicinity of the ancient Capitol, their citizens, in the bosom of the Alps, carefully guarded their religious liberties against the assaults of the pope and the clergy. Ecclesiastics were forbidden to apply to a foreign jurisdiction. The "Letter of the Priests" (Pfaffenbrief, 1370) was an energetic protestation of Swiss liberty against the abuses and power of the clergy. Amongst these states, Zurich was distinguished for its courageous opposition to the pretensions of Rome. Geneva, at the other extremity of Switzerland, was at war with its bishop. These two towns particularly signalised themselves in the great struggle which we have undertaken to describe.

But if the Swiss towns, accessible to every kind of improvement, were among the first to fall in with the movement of reform, it was otherwise with the inhabitants of the mountains. The light had not yet travelled so far. These cantons, the founders of Swiss freedom, proud of the part which they had performed in the great struggle for independence, were not readily disposed to imitate their younger brethren of the plains. Why change the faith with which they had chased Austria, and which had by its altars consecrated all the scenes of their triumph? Their priests were the only enlightened guides to whom they could have recourse. Their worship and their festivals gave a turn to the monotony of their tranquil life, and pleasantly broke the silence of their peaceful retreats. They remained impervious to religious innovation.

On crossing the Alps, we find ourselves in that Italy which was in the eyes of the majority the Holy Land of Christendom. Whence should Europe have expected the good of the Church if not from Italy, if not from Rome? Might not the power which by turns raised so many different characters to the pontifical chair, one day place in it a pontiff who would become an instrument of blessing to the heritage of the Lord? Or if pontiffs were to be despaired of, were there not bishops and councils, who might reform the Church? Nothing good comes out of Nazareth; but out of Jerusalem, out of Rome!... Such might be the thoughts of men, but God thought otherwise. He said, "Let him who is filthy, be filthy still," (Rev., xxii,) and abandoned Italy to her iniquities. This land of ancient glory was alternately a prey to intestine wars and foreign invasion. The wiles of politics, the violence of faction, the turmoil of war, seemed to have sole sway, and to banish far away both the gospel and its peace.

Besides, Italy, broken, dismembered, and without unity, seemed little fitted to receive a common impulse. Each frontier was a new barrier where truth was arrested.

And if the truth was to come from the North, how could the Italians, with a taste so refined, and a society in their eyes so exquisite, condescend to receive any thing at the hands of barbarous Germans? Were men who admired the cadence of a sonnet more than the majesty and simplicity of the Scriptures, a propitious soil for the seed of the divine word? But be this as it may, in regard to Italy, Rome was still to continue Rome. Not only did the temporal power of the popes dispose the different Italian factions to purchase their alliance and favour at any price, but in addition to this, the universal ascendancy of Rome presented various attractions to the avarice and vanity of the ultramontane states. The moment that the question of emancipating the rest of the world from Rome should be raised, Italy would again become Italy; domestic quarrels would not prevail to the advantage of a foreign system. Attacks on the head of the Peninsular family would at once revive affections and common interests which had long been in abeyance.

The Reformation had therefore little chance in that quarter. And yet there did exist, beyond the mountains, individuals who had been prepared to receive the gospel light, and Italy was not entirely disinherited.

Spain had what Italy had not—a grave, noble, and religiously-disposed people. At all times has it numbered men of piety and learning among its clergy, while it was distant enough from Rome to be able easily to shake off the yoke. There are few nations where one might have more reasonably hoped for a revival of that primitive Christianity which Spain perhaps received from St. Paul himself. And yet Spain did not raise her head among the nations. She was destined to fulfil the declaration of Divine wisdom, "The first shall be last." Various circumstances led to this sad result.

Spain, in consequence of its isolated position, and its distance from Germany, must have felt only slight shocks of the great earthquake which so violently heaved the empire. It was moreover, engrossed with treasures very different from those which the word of God then offered to the nations. The new world eclipsed the eternal world. A land altogether new, and apparently silver and gold, inflamed all imaginations. An ardent desire for riches left no room in a Spanish heart for nobler thoughts. A powerful clergy, with scaffolds and treasures at its disposal, ruled the Peninsula. The Spaniard willingly yielded a servile obedience to his priests, who, disburdening him of the prior claims of spiritual occupation, left him free to follow his passions, and to run the way of riches, discoveries, and new continents. Victorious over the Moors, Spain had, at the expence of her noblest blood, pulled down the crescent from the walls of Grenada, and many other cities, and, in its place, planted the cross of Jesus Christ. This great zeal for Christianity, which seemed to give bright hopes, turned against the truth. Why should Catholic Spain, which had vanquished infidelity, not oppose heresy? How should those who had chased Mahomet from their lovely country allow Luther to penetrate into it? Their kings did even more. They fitted out fleets against the Reformation, and in their eagerness to vanquish it, went to seek it in Holland and England. But these attacks aggrandised the nations against which they were directed, and their power soon crushed Spain. In this way, these Catholic regions lost, through the Reformation, even that temporal prosperity which was the primary cause of their rejection of the spiritual liberty of the gospel. Nevertheless, it was a brave and generous people that dwelt beyond the Pyrenees. Several of their noble sons with the same ardour, but with more light than those who had shed their blood in Moorish dungeons, came to lay their life, as an offering, on the faggot piles of the Inquisition.

It was nearly the same with Portugal as with Spain. Emmanuel the Happy gave it an age of gold, which must have unfitted it for the self-denial which the gospel demands. The Portuguese, rushing into the recently discovered routes to the East Indies and Brazil, turned their backs on Europe and the Reformation.

Few nations might have been thought more disposed than France to receive the gospel. Almost all the intellectual and spiritual life of the middle ages centred in her. One would have said that the paths were already beaten for a great manifestation of the truth. Men who were the most opposed to each other, and who had the greatest influence on the French people, felt that they had some affinity with the Reformation. St. Bernard had given an example of that heart-felt faith, that inward piety, which is the finest feature of the Reformation, while Abelard had introduced into the study of theology that reasoning principle, which, incapable of establishing truth, is powerful in destroying falsehood. Numerous heretics, so called, had rekindled the flames of the word of God in the French provinces. The University of Paris had withstood the Church to the face, and not feared to combat her. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Clemangis and the Gersons had spoken out boldly. The pragmatic sanction had been a great act of independence, and promised to prove the palladium of the Gallican liberties. The French nobility, so numerous and so jealous of their precedence, and who, at this period, had just seen their privileges gradually suppressed to the extension of the influence of the crown, must have felt favourably disposed towards a religious revolution, the effect of which might be to restore a portion of the independence which they had lost. The people, lively, intelligent and open to generous emotions, were accessible to the truth in a degree as great, if not greater, than any other people. The Reformation might have promised to be, in this nation, the birth that was to crown the long travail of many ages. But the Church of France, which seemed for so many generations to have been rushing in the same direction, turned suddenly round at the moment of the Reformation, and took quite a contrary direction. Such was the will of Him who guides nations and their rulers. The prince who then sat in the chariot and held the reins, and who, as a lover of letters, might have been thought likely to be the first to second reform, threw his people into another course. The symptoms of several centuries proved fallacious, and the impulse given to France struck and spent itself on the ambition and fanaticism of its kings. The Valois took the place which she ought to have occupied. Perhaps, if she had received the gospel, she would have become too powerful. God was pleased to take the feeblest nations, nations that as yet were not, to make them the depositaries of his truth. France, after having been almost reformed, ultimately found herself again become Roman Catholic. The sword of princes thrown into the scale, made it incline towards Rome. Alas! another sword, that of the reformed themselves, completed the ruin of the Reformation. Hands habituated to the sword, unlearned to pray. It is by the blood of its confessors, and not by that of its enemies, that the gospel triumphs.

At this time the Netherlands was one of the most flourishing countries in Europe. It contained an industrious population, enlightened by the numerous relations which it maintained with the different quarters of the world, full of courage, and zealous to excess for its independence, its privileges, and its freedom. Placed on the threshold of Germany, it must have been one of the first to hear the sound of the Reformation. Two parties, quite distinct from each other, occupied these provinces. The more Southern one was surfeited with wealth, and submitted. How could all those manufactures, carried to the highest perfection—how could that boundless traffic by land and sea—how could Bruges, the great entrepot of the trade of the North—how could Antwerp, that queen of commercial cities, accommodate themselves to a long and sanguinary struggle for points of faith? On the contrary, the northern provinces defended by their sands, the sea, and their inland waters, and still more, by the simplicity of their manners, and their determination to lose all sooner than the gospel, not only saved their franchises, their privileges, and their faith, but also conquered their independence, and a glorious national character.

England scarcely seemed to promise what she has since performed. Repulsed from the Continent, where she had so long been obstinately bent on conquering France, she began to throw her eye towards the ocean, as the domain which was to be the true scene of her conquests, and which was reserved for her inheritance. Twice converted to Christianity, once under the ancient Britons, and the second time under the Anglo-Saxons, she very devoutly paid to Rome the annual tribute of St. Peter. But she was reserved for high destinies. Mistress of the ocean, and present at once in all the different quarters of the globe, she, with the nations that were to spring from her, was one day to be the hand of God in shedding the seeds of life over the remotest islands and the largest continents. Already several circumstances gave a presentiment of her destiny. Bright lights had shone in the British Isles, and some glimmerings still remained. A multitude of foreigners, artists, merchants, and mechanics, arriving from the Netherlands, Germany, and other countries, filled their cities and their sea-ports. The new religious ideas must have been conveyed easily and rapidly. In fine, the reigning monarch was an eccentric prince, who, possessed of some knowledge and great courage, was every moment changing his projects and ideas, and turning from side to side, according to the direction in which his violent passions blew. It was possible that one of the inconsistencies of Henry VIII might prove favourable to the Reformation.

Scotland was at this time agitated by factions. A king five years old, a queen regent, ambitious nobles, and an influential clergy, kept this bold nation in constant turmoil. It was, nevertheless, one day to hold a first place among those that received the Reformation.

The three kingdoms of the North, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, were united under a common sceptre. These rude and warlike nations seemed to have little in common with the doctrine of love and peace. And yet, by their very energy, they were, perhaps, more disposed than the people of the South to receive the evangelical doctrine in its power. But, the descendants of warriors and pirates, they brought, it would seem, too warlike a character to the Protestant cause; at a later period, their sword defended it with heroism.

Russia, retired at the extremity of Europe, had few relations with other states, and belonged, moreover, to the Greek communion. The Reformation effected in the Western exerted little or no influence on the Eastern Church.

Poland seemed well prepared for a reform. The vicinity of the Christians of Bohemia and Moravia had disposed it to receive, while the vicinity of Germany must have rapidly communicated, the evangelical impulse. So early as 1500, the nobility of Poland Proper had demanded the cup for the laity, appealing to the usage of the primitive Church. The liberty enjoyed by its towns, and the independence of its nobles, made it a safe asylum for Christians persecuted in their own country, and the truth which they brought thither was received with joy by a great number of its inhabitants. In our days, however, it is one of the countries which has the smallest number of confessors.

The flame of reformation, which had long gleamed in Bohemia, had been almost extinguished in blood. Nevertheless, precious remains which had escaped the carnage, still survived to see the day of which John Huss had a presentiment.

Hungary had been torn by intestine wars under the government of princes without character and without experience, and who had at last yoked the fate of their people to Austria, by giving this powerful House a place among the heirs of the crown.

Such was the state of Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century, which was destined to produce so mighty a transformation in Christian society.

CHAP. VI.

Roman Theology—Remains of Life—Justification by Faith—Witnesses for the Truth—Claude—The Mystics—The Vaudois—Valdo—Wickliffe—Huss—Prediction—Protestantism before the Reformation—Arnoldi—Utenheim—Martin—New Witnesses in the Church—Thomas Conecte—The Cardinal of Crayn—Institoris—Savonarola—Justification by Faith—John Vitraire—John Laillier—John of Wessalia—John of Goch—John Wessel—Protestantism before the Reformation—The Bohemian Brethren—Prophecy of Proles—Prophecy of the Franciscan of Isenach—Third Preparative—Literature.

Having pointed out the state of nations and princes, we now proceed to the preparation for Reform, as existing in Theology and in the Church.

The singular system of Theology which had been established in the Church must have powerfully contributed to open the eyes of the rising generation. Made for an age of darkness, as if such an age had been to exist for ever, it seemed destined to become obsolete and defective in all its parts as soon as the age should have improved. Such was the actual result. The popes had from time to time made various additions to Christian doctrine. They had changed or taken away whatever did not accord with their hierarchy, while any thing not contrary to their system was allowed to remain till further orders. This system contained true doctrines, such as redemption, and the influence of the Holy Spirit; and these an able theologian, if any such then existed, might have employed to combat and overthrow all the rest. The pure gold, mingled with the worthless lead in the treasury of the Vatican, made it easy to detect the imposition. It is true, that when any bold opponent called attention to it, the fanner of Rome immediately threw out the pure grain. But these very proceedings only increased the confusion.

This confusion was unbounded, and the pretended unity was only a heap of disunion. At Rome there were doctrines of the Court, and doctrines of the Church. The faith of the metropolis differed from the faith of the provinces; while in the provinces, again, the variation was endless. There was a faith for princes, a faith for the people, and a faith for religious orders. Opinions were classed as belonging to such a convent, such a district, such a doctor, such a monk.

Truth, in order to pass peacefully through the time when Rome would have crushed her with an iron sceptre, had done, like the insect which with its threads forms the chrysalis in which it shuts itself up during the cold season. And strange enough, the instruments which divine truth had employed for the purpose were the so much decried schoolmen. These industrious artisans of thought had employed themselves in unravelling all theological ideas, and out of the numerous threads had made a veil under which the ablest of their contemporaries must have found it difficult to recognise the truth in its original purity. It seems a sad thing, that an insect full of life, and sometimes glowing with the most brilliant colours, should enclose itself, apparently without life, in its dark cocoon; and yet it is the shroud that saves it. It was the same with truth. Had the selfish and sinister policy of Rome, in the days of her ascendancy, met the truth in naked simplicity, she would have destroyed, or at least tried to destroy it, but disguised as it was, by the theologians of the time, under subtleties and endless distinctions, the popes either saw it not, or thought that, in such a state, it could not do them harm. They accordingly patronised both the workmen and their work. But spring might come, and then forgotten truth might lift her head, and throw aside her shroud. In her seeming tomb, having acquired new strength, she might now again prove victorious over Rome and all its errors. This spring arrived. At the moment when the absurd trappings of the schoolmen were falling off under the attack of skilful hands, and amid the jeers of the new generation, truth made her escape, and came forth all young and beautiful.

But not merely did the writings of the schoolmen bear powerful testimony in favour of truth. Christianity had everywhere imparted a portion of her own life to the life of the people. The Church of Christ was like a building which had fallen into ruin; in digging among its foundations, a portion of the solid rock on stitutions, which dated from the pure times of the Church, were still existing, and could not fail to suggest to many minds evangelical ideas utterly at variance with the prevailing superstitions. Moreover, the inspired writers and ancient doctors of the Church, whose writings were extant in many libraries, occasionally sent forth a solitary voice; and may we not hope that this voice was listened to in silence by more than one attentive ear? Let us not doubt, (and how sweet the thought!) Christians had many brothers and many sisters in those monasteries, in which we are too ready to see nothing but hypocrisy and dissoluteness.

The Church had fallen in consequence of having lost the grand doctrine of Justification by faith in the Saviour; and hence, before she could rise, it was necessary that this doctrine should be restored. As soon as it was re-established in Christendom, all the errors and observances which had been introduced, all that multitude of saints, pious works, penances, masses, indulgences, etc., behoved to disappear. As soon as the one Mediator and his one sacrifice were recognised, all other mediators and other sacrifices were done away. "This article of justification," says one whom we may regard as divinely illumined on the subject,[53] "is that which creates the Church, nourishes, builds up, preserves, and defends her. No man can teach well in the Church, or successively resist an adversary, unless he hold fast by this truth. This," adds the writer from whom we quote, "is the heel which bruises the Serpent's head."

God, who was preparing his work, raised up during the revolution of ages a long series of witnesses to the truth. But the truth to which those noble men bore testimony, they knew not with sufficient clearness, or at least were unable to expound with sufficient distinctness. Incapable of accomplishing the work, they were just what they should have been in order to prepare it. We must add, however, that if they were not ready for the work, the work was not ready for them. The measure was not yet filled up. Ages had not accomplished their destined course, and the need of a true remedy was not generally felt.

No sooner had Rome usurped power than a powerful opposition was formed against her,—an opposition which extended across the middle ages.

In the ninth century, Archbishop Claude of Turin, and in the twelfth century, Peter of Bruges, his disciple Henry, and Arnold of Brescia, in France and in Italy endeavour to establish the worship of God in spirit and in truth. Generally, however, in searching for this worship, they confine it too much to the exclusion of images and external observances.

The Mystics, who have existed in almost all ages, seeking in silence for holiness of heart, purity of life, and tranquil communion with God, cast looks of sadness and dismay on the desolation of the Church. Carefully abstaining from the scholastic brawls and useless discussions under which true piety had been buried, they endeavoured to withdraw men from the vain mechanism of external worship, and from the mire and glare of ceremonies, that they might lead them to the internal repose enjoyed by the soul which seeks all its happiness in God. This they could not do without coming at every point into collision with accredited opinions, and without unveiling the sores of the Church. Still they had no clear view of the doctrine of justification by faith.

The Vaudois, far superior to the Mystics in purity of doctrine, form a long chain of witnesses to the truth. Men enjoying more freedom than the rest of the Church, appear to have inhabited the heights of the Alps in Piedmont from ancient times; and their numbers were increased, and their doctrine purified, by the followers of Valdo. From their mountain tops the Vaudois, during a long series of ages, protest against the superstitions of Rome.[54] "They contend for the living hope which they have in God through Christ, for regeneration, and inward renewal by faith, hope, and charity, for the merits of Jesus Christ, and the all-sufficiency of his righteousness and grace."[55]

Still, however, this primary truth of a sinner's justification, this capital doctrine, which ought to have risen from the midst of their doctrines, like Mont Blanc from the bosom of the Alps, has not due prominence in their system. Its top is not high enough.

In 1170, Peter Vaud, or Valdo, a rich merchant of Lyons, sells all his goods and gives to the poor. He, as well as his friends, seem to have had it in view practically to realise the perfection of primitive Christianity. He, accordingly, begins in like manner with the branches, and not the root. Nevertheless, his word is powerful, because of his appeal to Scripture, and shakes the Roman hierarchy to its very foundations.

In 1360, Wickliffe appears in England, and appeals from the pope to the word of God, but the real internal sore of the Church is, in his eyes, only one of the numerous symptoms of disease.

John Huss lifts his voice in Bohemia, a century before Luther lifts his in Saxony. He seems to penetrate farther than his predecessors into the essence of Christian truth. He asks Christ to give him grace to glory only in his cross, and in the inestimable weight of his sufferings, but his attention is directed less against the errors of the Roman Church, than the scandalous lives of its clergy. He was, however, if we may so speak, the John Baptist of the Reformation. The flames of his martyrdom kindled a fire in the Church, which threw immense light on the surrounding darkness, and the rays of which were not to be so easily extinguished.

John Huss did more; prophetic words came forth from the depth of his dungeon. He had a presentiment, that the true Reformation of the Church was at hand. So early as the period when chased from Prague, he had been forced to wander in the plains of Bohemia, where his steps were followed by an immense crowd of eager hearers, he had exclaimed, "The wicked have begun to lay perfidious nets for the Bohemian goose;[56] but if even the goose, which is only a domestic fowl, a peaceful bird, and which never takes a lofty flight into the air, has, however, broken their toils, other birds of loftier wing will break them with much greater force. Instead of a feeble goose, the truth will send eagles and falcons, with piercing eye."[57] The Reformers fulfilled this prediction.

And after the venerable priest had been summoned before the Council of Constance, after he had been thrown into prison, the chapel of Bethlehem, where he had proclaimed the Gospel and the future triumphs of Jesus Christ, occupied him more than his defence. One night, the holy martyr thought he saw, in the depth of his dungeon, the features of Jesus Christ, which he had caused to be painted on the walls of his study, effaced by the pope and the bishops. The dream distresses him, but next day he sees several painters employed in restoring the pictures in greater number and splendour. Their task finished, the painters, surrounded by a great multitude, exclaim, "Now, let popes and bishops come, they never shall efface them more." John Huss adds, "Many people in Bethlehem rejoiced, and I among them." "Think of your defence, rather than of dreams," said his faithful Friend, Chevalier de Chlum, to whom he had communicated the dream. "I am not a dreamer," replied Huss; "but this I hold for certain—the image of Christ will never be effaced. They wished to destroy it, but it will be painted anew in men's hearts by far abler preachers than I. The nation which loves Jesus Christ will rejoice; and I, awaking among the dead, and, so to speak, rising again from the tomb, will thrill with joy."[58]

A century elapsed, and the torch of the Gospel, rekindled by the Reformers, did, in fact, illumine several nations which rejoiced in its light.

But in those ages, a word of life is heard not only among those whom Rome regards as its adversaries; Catholicity itself—let us say it for our comfort—contains in its bosom numerous witnesses to the truth. The primitive edifice has been consumed; but a noble fire is slumbering under its ashes, and we see it from time to time throwing out brilliant sparks.

It is an error to suppose that, up to the Reformation, Christianity existed only under the Roman Catholic form, and that, at that period only, a part of that church assumed the form of Protestantism.

Among the doctors who preceded the sixteenth century, a great number, doubtless, inclined to the system which the Council of Trent proclaimed in 1562, but several also inclined to the doctrines professed at Augsburgh in 1530 by the Protestants; the majority, perhaps, vibrated between the two.

Anselm of Canterbury lays down the doctrines of the incarnation and expiation as of the essence of Christianity.[59] And in a treatise in which he teaches how to die, he says to the dying person, "Look only to the merits of Jesus Christ." St. Bernard with powerful voice proclaims the mystery of redemption. "If my fault comes from another," says he, "why should not my righteousness also be derived? Certainly, it is far better for me to have it given me, than to have it innate."[60] Several schoolmen, and after them chancellor Gerson, forcibly attack the errors and abuses of the Church.

But, above all, let us think of the thousands of obscure individuals unknown to the world, who, however, possessed the true life of Christ.

A monk named Arnoldi, daily in his quiet cell utters this fervent exclamation, "O Jesus Christ my Lord! I believe that thou alone art my redemption and my righteousness."[61]

Christopher of Utenheim, a pious bishop of Bâsle, causes his name to be written on a picture painted on glass, and surrounds it with this inscription, that he may have it always under his eye, "The cross of Christ is my hope; I seek grace, and not works."[62]

Friar Martin, a poor Carthusian, wrote a touching confession, in which he says, "O most loving God! I know there is no other way in which I can be saved and satisfy thy justice, than by the merit, the spotless passion, and death of thy well-beloved Son. Kind Jesus! All my salvation is in thy hands. Thou canst not turn the arms of thy love away from me, for they created, shaped, and ransomed me. In great mercy, and in an ineffable manner, thou hast engraved my name with an iron pen on thy side, thy hands, and thy feet," etc. Then the good Carthusian places his confession in a wooden box, and deposits the box in a hole which he had made in the wall of his cell.[63]

The piety of Friar Martin would never have been known had not the box been found, 21st December, 1776, in taking down an old tenement which had formed part of the Carthusian Convent at Bâsle.

But this touching faith these holy men had only for themselves, and knew not how to communicate to others. Living in retreat, they might more or less say, as in the writing which Friar Martin put into his box, "Et si hæc prædicta confiteri non possim lingua, confiteor tamen corde et scripto." "And these things aforesaid, if I cannot confess with the tongue, I, however, confess with the heart and in writing." The word of truth was in the sanctuary of some pious souls, but, to use a Scripture expression, it had not "free course" in the world. Still, if the doctrine of salvation was not always confessed aloud, there were some in the very bosom of the Church of Rome who, at least, feared not to declare openly against the abuses which dishonoured it.

Scarcely had the Councils of Constance and Bâsle, which condemned Huss and his followers, been held, than the noble series of witnesses against Rome, to which we have been pointing, again appears with greater lustre. Men of a noble spirit, revolting at the abominations of the Papacy, rise up like the prophets under the Old Testament, like them sending forth a voice of thunder, and with a similar fate. Their blood reddens the scaffold, and their ashes are thrown to the wind.

Thomas Conecte, a Carmelite, appears in Flanders, and declares, "that abominations are done at Rome, that the Church has need of reformation, and that, in the service of God, one must not fear the excommunications of the pope."[64] Flanders listens with enthusiasm, but Rome burns him in 1432, and his contemporaries exclaim that God has exalted him to heaven.[65]

André, Archbishop of Crayn, and a Cardinal, being at Rome as the ambassador of the emperor, is amazed when he sees that the holiness of the pope, in which he had devoutly believed, is only a fable; and in his simplicity he addresses evangelical representations to Sextus IV. He is answered with mockery and persecution. Then (1482) he wishes a new Council to be assembled at Bâsle. "The whole Church," exclaims he, "is shaken by divisions, heresies, sins, vices, iniquities, errors, and innumerable evils, so much so, that it is on the eve of being swallowed up by the devouring abyss of condemnation.[66] This is my only reason for proposing a General Council for the Reformation of the Catholic faith, and the amendment of manners." The Archbishop of Bâsle was thrown into the prison of that town, and there died. Henry Institoris, the inquisitor, who first moved against him, used these remarkable words, "The whole world is crying out and demanding a council; but no human power can reform the Church by means of a Council. The Almighty will find another method, which is now unknown to us, though it is at the door; and, by this method the Church will be brought back to its primitive condition."[67] This remarkable prophecy, pronounced by an inquisitor, at the very period of Luther's birth, is the finest apology for the Reformation.

The Dominican, Jerome Savonarola, shortly after he had entered the order at Bologna in 1475, devotes himself to constant prayer, fasting, and macerations, and exclaims, "O thou who art good, in thy goodness teach me thy righteousness."[68] Translated to Florence in 1489, he preaches with effect; his voice is thrilling, his features animated, his action beautifully attractive. "The Church," exclaims he, "must be renewed." And he professes the grand principle which alone can restore life to it. "God," says he, "forgives man his sin, and justifies him in the way of mercy. For every justified person existing on the earth, there has been an act of compassion in heaven; for no man is saved by his works. None can glory in themselves; and if in the presence of God, the question were put to all the righteous, 'Have you been saved by your own strength?' they would all with one voice exclaim, 'Not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy name be the glory.' Wherefore, O God, I seek thy mercy, and I bring thee not my own righteousness: the moment thou justifiest me by grace, thy righteousness belongs to me; for grace is the righteousness of God. So long, O man, as thou believest not, thou art, because of sin, deprived of grace. O God, save me by thy righteousness, that is, by thy Son, who alone was found righteous among men."[69] Thus the great and holy doctrine of justification by faith gladdens the heart of Savonarola. In vain do the prelates of the Church oppose him;[70] he knew that the oracles of God are superior to the visible church, and that he must preach them with her, without her, or in spite of her.—"Fly far from Babylon," exclaims he. It is Rome he thus designates. Rome soon answers him in her own way. In 1497 the infamous Alexander launches a brief at him, and in 1498 torture and faggot do their work on the Reformer.

A Franciscan, named John Vitraire, of Tournay, whose monastic spirit seems not of a very elevated description, nevertheless, declaims forcibly against the corruption of the Church. "It were better for a man," says he,[71] "to cut his child's throat than put it into a religion not reformed. If your curate, or any other priest, keep women in his house, you ought to go and drag the women by force, or in any other way, pell-mell, out of the house. There are some persons who say prayers to the Virgin Mary, in order that, at the hour of death, they may see the Virgin Mary. Thou shalt see the devil, and not the Virgin Mary." The monk was ordered to retract, and he did so in 1498.

John Laillier, a Doctor of Sorbonne, declares, in 1484, against the tyrannical domination of the hierarchy. "All ecclesiastics," says he, "have received equal power from Christ. The Roman Church is not the head of other churches. You ought to keep the commandments of God and the Apostles; and, in regard to the command of all the bishops and other lords of the Church, care no more for it than you would for a straw; they have destroyed the Church by their tricks.[72] The priests of the Eastern Church sin not in marrying; and, believe me, neither shall we in the Western Church if we marry. Since St. Sylvester the Church of Rome has been, not a church of Christ, but a church of State and money. We are no more bound to believe the legends of the saints than the Chronicles of France."

John of Wessalia, a doctor of theology at Erfurt, a man of great spirit and intellect, attacks the errors on which the hierarchy rests, and proclaims the holy Scriptures to be the only source of faith. "It is not religion" (that is, the monastic state) "that saves us," says he to some monks, "but the grace of God. God has from all eternity kept a book in which he has entered all his elect. Whosoever is not entered there will not, through eternity; and whosoever is, will never see his name erased. It is solely by the grace of God that the elect are saved. He whom God is pleased to save, by giving him grace, will be saved, though all the priests in the world were to condemn and excommunicate him. And he whom God sees meet to condemn, though these should all wish to save him, will be made to feel his condemnation.[73] How audacious in the successors of the apostles to order, not what Christ has prescribed in his holy books, but what they themselves devised, when carried away, as they now are, by a thirst for money, or a rage for power. I despise the pope, the Church, and the Councils, and I extol Jesus Christ." Wessalia, who had gradually arrived at those convictions, boldly announces them from the pulpit, and enters into communication with deputies from the Hussites. Feeble, bent with age, and wasted by disease, the courageous old man, with tottering step, appears before the Inquisition, and, in 1482, dies in its dungeons.

About the same time, John de Goch, prior at Malines, extolled Christian liberty as the soul of all the virtues. He charged the received doctrine with Pelagianism, and surnamed Thomas Aquinas the "Prince of Error." "Canonical Scripture alone," said he, "deserves full faith, and has an irrefragable authority. The writings of the ancient fathers are of authority only in so far as they are conformable to canonical truth.—There is truth in the common byword, 'What a monk dares undertake, Satan would blush to think.'"

But the most remarkable of the forerunners of the Reformation was undoubtedly John Wessel, surnamed "The Light of the World," a man full of courage and love for the truth, who taught theology successively at Cologne, Louvain, Paris, Heidelberg, and Gröningen. Luther said of him, "Had I read his works sooner, it might have been said, Luther has drawn everything from Wessel; so much do his spirit and mine accord."[74] "St. Paul and St. James," says Wessel, "say different but not contrary things. Both hold that the just live by faith, but a faith which works by love. He who understanding the gospel believes, desires, hopes, confides in the good news, and loves Him who justifies and blesses him, gives himself entirely to Him whom he loves, and attributes nothing to himself, knowing that in himself he has nothing.[75] The sheep should distinguish between the things on which they feed, and avoid a hurtful food, though it should be offered by the shepherd. The people ought to follow their shepherds to the pastures, but when they lead them to what is not pasture, they are no more shepherds; and because they are not in their duty, the flock is no longer bound to obey them. Nothing is more effectual in destroying the Church than a corrupt clergy. All Christians, even the meanest and simplest, are bound to resist those who destroy the Church.[76] The commands of prelates and doctors ought to be performed only in the manner prescribed by St. Paul, (1 Thess., v, 21;) namely, in so far as, sitting in the chair of Moses, they speak according to Moses. We are the servants of God, and not of the pope, according as it is said, 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.' The Holy Spirit has reserved to himself to foster, quicken, preserve, and enlarge the unity of the Church, and not abandoned it to the Roman Pontiff, who often gives himself no concern about the matter. Even sex does not hinder a woman, if she is faithful and prudent, and has love shed abroad in her heart, from feeling, judging, approving, and concluding, by a judgment which God ratifies."

Thus, as the Reformation approaches, the voices which proclaim the truth are multiplied. One would say the Church is bent on demonstrating that the Reformation had an existence before Luther. Protestantism was born into the Church, the very day that the germ of the Papacy appeared in it, just as in the political world conservative principles began to exist the very moment that the despotism of the great or the disorders of the factious showed open front. Protestantism was even sometimes stronger than the Papacy in the ages preceding the Reformation. What had Rome to oppose to all these witnesses for the truth at the moment when their voice was heard through all the earth?

But this was not all. The Reformation existed not in the teachers only; it existed also among the people. The doctrines of Wickliffe, proceeding from Oxford, had spread over Christendom, and had preserved adherents in Bavaria, Swabia, Franconia, and Prussia. In Bohemia, from the bosom of discord and war, ultimately came forth a peaceful Christian community, which resembled the primitive Church, and bore lively testimony to the great principle of Evangelical opposition, viz., "That Christ himself, not Peter and his successor, is the rock on which the Church is built." Belonging equally to the German and Slavonian races, these simple Christians had missionaries among the different nations who spoke their tongues, that they might without noise gain adherents to their opinions. At Rostoch, which had been twice visited by them, Nicolas Kuss began in 1511 to preach publicly against the pope.[77]

It is important to attend to this state of things. When wisdom from above will with loud voice deliver her instructions, there will everywhere be intellects and hearts to receive it. When the sower, who has never ceased to walk over the Church, will come forth for a new and extensive sowing, the earth will be ready to receive the grain. When the trumpet, which the Angel of the covenant has never ceased to blow, will cause it to sound louder and louder, many will make ready for battle.