When L'Advocat published his concise Biographical Dictionary, the
Jansenists, the methodists of France, considered it as having been
written with a view to depreciate the merit of _their_ friends. The
spirit of party is too soon alarmed. The Abbé Barral undertook a
dictionary devoted to their cause. In this labour, assisted by his good
friends the Jansenists, he indulged all the impetuosity and acerbity of
a splenetic adversary. The Abbé was, however, an able writer; his
anecdotes are numerous and well chosen; and his style is rapid and
glowing. The work bears for title, "Dictionnaire Historique, Littéraire,
et Critique, des Hommes Célèbres," 6 vols. 8vo. 1719. It is no unuseful
speculation to observe in what manner a faction represents those who
have not been its favourites: for this purpose I select the characters
of Fenelon, Cranmer, and Luther.
Of Fenelon they write, "He composed for the instruction of the Dukes of
Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri, several works; amongst others, the
Telemachus--a singular book, which partakes at once of the character of
a romance and of a poem, and which substitutes a prosaic cadence for
versification."
But several luscious pictures would not lead us to suspect that this
book issued from the pen of a sacred minister for the education of a
prince; and what we are told by a famous poet is not improbable, that
Fenelon did not compose it at court, but that it is the fruits of his
retreat in his diocese. And indeed the amours of Calypso and Eucharis
should not be the first lessons that a minister ought to give his
scholars; and, besides, the fine moral maxims which the author
attributes to the Pagan divinities are not well placed in their mouth.
Is not this rendering homage to the demons of the great truths which we
receive from the Gospel, and to despoil J. C. to render respectable the
annihilated gods of paganism? This prelate was a wretched divine, more
familiar with the light of profane authors than with that of the fathers
of the church. Phelipeaux has given us, in his narrative of Quietism,
the portrait of the friend of Madame Guyon. This archbishop has a lively
genius, artful and supple, which can flatter and dissimulate, if ever
any could. Seduced by a woman, he was solicitous to spread his
seduction. He joined to the politeness and elegance of conversation a
modest air, which rendered him amiable. He spoke of spirituality with
the expression and the enthusiasm of a prophet; with such talents he
flattered himself that everything would yield to him.
In this work the Protestants, particularly the first Reformers, find no
quarter; and thus virulently their rabid catholicism exults over the
hapless end of Cranmer, the first Protestant archbishop:--
"Thomas Cranmer married the sister of Osiander. As Henry VIII. detested
married priests, Cranmer kept this second marriage in profound secrecy.
This action serves to show the character of this great reformer, who is
the hero of Burnet, whose history is so much esteemed in England. What
blindness to suppose him an Athanasius, who was at once a Lutheran
secretly married, a consecrated archbishop under the Roman pontiff whose
power he detested, saying the mass in which he did not believe, and
granting a power to say it! The divine vengeance burst on this
sycophantic courtier, who had always prostituted his conscience to his
fortune."
Their character of Luther is quite Lutheran in one sense, for Luther was
himself a stranger to moderate strictures:--
"The furious Luther, perceiving himself assisted by the credit of
several princes, broke loose against the church with the most
inveterate rage, and rung the most terrible alarum against the pope.
According to him we should have set fire to everything, and reduced to
one heap of ashes the pope and the princes who supported him. Nothing
equals the rage of this phrenetic man, who was not satisfied with
exhaling his fury in horrid declamations, but who was for putting all in
practice. He raised his excesses to the height by inveighing against the
vow of chastity, and in marrying publicly Catherine de Bore, a nun, whom
he enticed, with eight others, from their convents. He had prepared the
minds of the people for this infamous proceeding by a treatise which he
entitled 'Examples of the Papistical Doctrine and Theology,' in which he
condemns the praises which all the saints had given to continence. He
died at length quietly enough, in 1546, at Eisleben, his country
place--God reserving the terrible effects of his vengeance to another
life."
Cranmer, who perished at the stake, these fanatic religionists proclaim
as an example of "divine vengeance;" but Luther, the true parent of the
Reformation, "died quietly at Eisleben:" this must have puzzled their
mode of reasoning; but they extricate themselves out of the dilemma by
the usual way. Their curses are never what the lawyers call "lapsed
legacies."