[967] They are contained in a small volume, 1649, with Savile’s other

treatise on the Roman Militia.

[968] It is remarkable that, in Jewel’s Defence of the Apology, by far

the most learned work in theological erudition which the age

produced, he quotes the Greek fathers in Latin; and there is a

scanty sprinkling of Greek characters throughout this large volume.

|Learning in Scotland.|

51. Scotland had hardly as yet partaken of the light of letters; the

very slight attempts at introducing an enlarged scheme of education,

which had been made thirty years before, having wholly failed in

consequence of the jealous spirit that actuated the chiefs of the old

religion and the devastating rapacity that disgraced the partisans of

the new. But in 1575, Andrew Melville was appointed principal of the

university of Glasgow, which he found almost broken up and abandoned. He

established so solid and extensive a system of instruction, wherein the

best Greek authors were included, that Scotland, in some years time,

instead of sending her own natives to foreign universities, found

students from other parts of Europe repairing to her own.[969] Yet Ames

has observed that no Greek characters appear in any book printed in

Scotland before 1599. This assertion has been questioned by Herbert. In

the treatise of Buchanan, De Jure Regni (Edinburgh, 1580), I have

observed that the Greek quotations are inserted with a pen. It is at

least certain that no book in that language was printed north of the

Tweed within this century, nor any Latin classic, nor dictionary, nor

any thing of a philological nature except two or three grammars. A few

Latin treatises by modern authors on various subjects appeared.[970] It

seems questionable whether any printing-press existed in Ireland: the

evidence to be collected from Herbert is precarious; but I know not

whether any thing more satisfactory has since been discovered.

[969] M’Crie’s Life of Melville, vol. i. p. 72.

[970] The list of books printed in Scotland before 1550, which I have

given on p. 167, on the authority of Herbert, appears not to be

quite accurate. Pinkerton’s Scottish Poems (1786), i. 104; (1792),

i. 22.

|Latin little used in writing.|

52. The Latin language was by no means so generally employed in England

as on the Continent. Our authors have from the beginning been apt to

prefer their mother-tongue, even upon subjects which, by the usage of

the learned, were treated in Latin; though works relating to history,

and especially to ecclesiastical antiquity, such as those of Parker and

Godwin, were sometimes written in that language. It may be alleged that

very few books of a philosophical class appeared at all in the far-famed

reign of Elizabeth. But probably such as Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft,

Roger’s Anatomy of the Mind, and Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity would

have been thought to require a learned dress in any other country. And

we may think the same of the great volumes of controversial theology; as

Jewel’s Defence of the Apology, Cartwright’s Platform, and Whitgift’s

Reply to it. The free spirit, not so much of our government, as of the

public mind itself, and the determination of a large portion of the

community to choose their religion for themselves, rendered this descent

from the lofty grounds of learning indispensable. By such a deviation

from the general laws of the republic of letters, which, as it is

needless to say, was by no means less practised in the ensuing age, our

writers missed some part of that general renown they might have

challenged from Europe; but they enriched the minds of a more numerous

public at home; they gave their own thoughts with more precision,

energy, and glow; they invigorated and amplified their native language,

which became in their hands more accommodated to abstract and

philosophical disquisition, though, for the same reason, more formal and

pedantic than any other in Europe. This observation is as much intended

for the reigns of James and Charles as for that of Elizabeth.

SECT. II.

_Principal Writers--Manutius, Sigonius,

Lipsius--Numismatics--Mythology--Chronology of Scaliger_.

|Early works on antiquities.|

53. The attention of the learned had been frequently directed, since the

revival of letters, to elucidate the antiquities of Rome, her customs,

rites, and jurisprudence. It was more laborious than difficult to

commonplace all extant Latin authors; and, by this process of

comparison, most expressions, perhaps, in which there was no corruption

of the text, might be cleared up. This seems to have produced the works

already mentioned, of Cælius Rhodiginus and Alexander ab Alexandro,

which afford explanations of many hundred passages that might perplex a

student. Others had devoted their time to particular subjects, as

Pomponius Lætus, and Raphael of Volterra, to the distinctions of

magistrates; Marlianus, to the topography of ancient Rome; and

Robortellus, to family names. It must be confessed that most of these

early pioneers were rather praiseworthy for their diligence and

good-will, than capable of clearing away the more essential difficulties

that stood in the way: few treatises, written before the middle of the

sixteenth century, have been admitted into the collections of Grævius

and Sallengre. But soon afterwards an abundant light was thrown upon the

most interesting part of Roman antiquity, the state of government and

public law, by four more eminent scholars than had hitherto explored

that field, Manutius, Panvinius, and Sigonius in Italy, Gruchius (or

Grouchy) in France.

|P. Manutius on Roman Laws.|

54. The first of these published in 1558 his treatise De Legibus

Romanorum; and though that De Civitate did not appear till 1585, Grævius

believes it to have been written about the same time as the former.

Manutius has given a good account of the principal laws made at Rome

during the republic; not many of the empire. Augustinus, however,

archbishop of Tarragona, had preceded him with considerable success; and

several particular laws were better illustrated afterwards by Brisson,

Balduin, and Gothofred. It will be obvious to any one, very slightly

familiar with the Roman law, that this subject, as far as it relates to

the republican period, belongs much more to classical antiquity than to

jurisprudence.

|Manutius, De Civitate.|

55. The second treatise of Manutius, De Civitate, discusses the polity

of the Roman republic. Though among the very first scholars of his time,

he will not always bear the test of modern acuteness. Even Grævius, who

himself preceded the most critical age, frequently corrects his errors.

Yet there are marks of great sagacity in Manutius; and Niebuhr, who has

judged the antiquaries of the sixteenth century as they generally

deserve, might have found the germ of his own celebrated hypothesis,

though imperfectly developed, in what this old writer has suggested;

that the populus Romanus originally meant the inhabitants of Rome intra

pomœria, as distinguished from the cives Romani, who dwelt beyond

that precinct in the territory.[971]

[971] The first paragraph of the preface to Niebuhr’s history deserves

to be quoted. “The History of Rome was treated, during the first

two centuries after the revival of letters, with the same

prostration of the understanding and judgment to the written letter

that had been handed down, and with the same fearfulness of going

beyond it, which prevailed in all the other branches of knowledge.

If any one had asserted a right of examining the credibility of the

ancient writers and the value of their testimony, an outcry would

have been raised against his atrocious presumption. The object

aimed at was, in spite of all internal evidence, to combine what

was related by them; at the utmost, one authority was in some one

particular instance postponed to another as gently as possible, and

without inducing any further results. Here and there, indeed, a

free-born mind, such as Glareanus, broke through these bonds; but

infallibly a sentence of condemnation was forthwith pronounced

against him; besides, such men were not the most learned, and their

bold attempts were only partial, and were wanting in consistency.

In this department, as in others, men of splendid talents and the

most copious learning conformed to the narrow spirit of their age;

their labours extracted from a multitude of insulated details what

the remains of ancient literature did not afford united in any

single work, a systematic account of Roman antiquities. What they

did in this respect is wonderful; and this is sufficient to earn

for them an imperishable fame.”

|Panvinius--Sigonius.|

|Gruchius.|

56. Onuphrius Panvinius, a man of vast learning and industry, but of

less discriminating judgment, and who did not live to its full maturity,

fell short, in his treatise, De Civitate Romana, of what Manutius (from

whom, however, he could have taken nothing) has achieved on the same

subject, and his writings, according to Grævius, would yield a copious

harvest to criticism.[972] But neither of the two was comparable to

Sigonius of Modena,[973] whose works on the Roman government not only

form an epoch in this department of ancient literature, but have left,

in general, but little for his successors. Mistakes have of course been

discovered, where it is impossible to reconcile, or to rely upon, every

ancient testimony; and Sigonius, like the other scholars of his age,

might confide too implicitly in his authorities. But his treatises, De

Jure Civium Romanorum, 1560, and De Jure Italiæ, 1562, are still the

best that can be read in illustration of the Roman historians and the

orations of Cicero. Whoever, says Grævius, sits down to the study of

these orations, without being acquainted with Sigonius, will but lose

his time. In another treatise, published in 1574, De Judiciis Romanorum,

he goes through the whole course of judicial proceedings, more copiously

than Heineccius, the most celebrated of his successors, and with more

exclusive regard to writers of the republican period. The Roman

Antiquities of Grævius contain several other excellent pieces by

Sigonius, which have gained him the indisputable character of the first

antiquary, both for learning and judgment, whom the sixteenth century

produced. He was engaged in several controversies; one with

Robortellus,[974] another with a more considerable antagonist, Gruchius,

a native of Rouen, and professor of Greek at Bordeaux, who, in his

treatise, De Comitiis Romanorum, 1555, was the first that attempted to

deal with a difficult and important subject. Sigonius and he

interchanged some thrusts, with more urbanity and mutual respect than

was usual in that age. An account of this controversy, which chiefly

related to a passage in Cicero’s oration, De Lege Agraria, as to the

confirmation of popular elections by the comitia curiata, will be found

in the preface to the second volume of Grævius, wherein the treatises

themselves are published. Another contemporary writer, Latino Latini,

seems to have solved the problem much better than either Grouchy or

Sigone. But both parties were misled by the common source of error in

the most learned men of the sixteenth century, an excess of confidence

in the truth of ancient testimony. The words of Cicero, who often spoke

for an immediate purpose, those of Livy and Dionysius, who knew but

imperfectly the primitive history of Rome, those even of Gellius or

Pomponius, to whom all the republican institutions had become hardly

intelligible, were deemed a sort of infallible text, which a modern

might explain as best he could, but must not be presumptuous enough to

reject.

[972] In Onuphrio Panvinio fuerunt multæ literæ, multa industria, sed

tanta ingenii vis non erat, quanta in Sigonio et Manutio, quorum

scripta longe sunt limatiora.

Paulus Manutius calls Panvinius, ille antiquitatis helluo, spectatæ

juvenis industriæ ... sæpe litigat obscuris de rebus cum Sigonio

nostro, sed utriusque bonitas, mutuus amor, excellens ad

cognoscendam veritatem judicium facit ut inter eos facile

conveniat. Epist. lib. ii. p. 81.

[973] It appears from some of the Lettere Volgari of Manuzio, that the

proper name of Sigonius was not Sigonio, but Sigone. Corniani (vol.

vi. p. 151) has made the same observation on the authority of

Sigone’s original unpublished letters. But the biographers, as well

as Tiraboschi, though himself an inhabitant of the same city, do

not advert to it.

[974] The treatises of Robortellus, republished in the second volume

of Gruter’s Lampas, are full of vain glory and affected scorn of

Sigonius. Half the chapters are headed, Error Sigonii. One of their

controversies concerned female prænomina, which Robortellus denied

to be ancient, except in the formula of Roman marriage, Ubi tu

Cajus, ego Caja; though he admits that some appear in late

inscriptions. Sigonius proved the contrary by instances from

republican times. It is evident that they were unusual, but several

have been found in inscriptions. See Grævius, vol. ii. in

præfatione.

|Sigonius on Athenian polity.|

57. Besides the works of these celebrated scholars, one by Zamoscius, a

young Pole, De Senatu Romano (1563), was so highly esteemed, that some

have supposed him to have been assisted by Sigonius. The latter, among

his other pursuits, turned his mind to the antiquities of Greece, which

had hitherto, for obvious reasons, attracted far less attention than

those of ancient Italy. He treated the constitution of the Athenian

republic so fully, that, according to Gronovius, he left little for

Meursius and others who trod in his path.[975] He has, however,

neglected to quote the very words of his authorities, which alone can be

satisfactory to a diligent reader, translating every passage, so that

hardly any Greek words occur in a treatise expressly on the Athenian

polity. This may be deemed a corroboration of what has been said above,

as to the decline of Greek learning in Italy.

[975] Nonnulla quidem variis locis attigit Meursius et alii, sed

teretiore prorsus et rotundo magis ore per omnia Sigonius. Thesaur.

Antiq. Græc. vol. v.

|Patrizzi and Lipsius on Roman militia.|

58. Francis Patrizzi was the first who unfolded the military system of

Rome. He wrote in Italian a treatise, Della Milizia Romana, 1583, of

which a translation will be found in the tenth volume of Grævius.[976]

It is divided into fifteen parts, which seem to comprehend the whole

subject: each of these again is divided into sections; and each section

explains a text from the sixth book of Polybius, or from Livy. But he

comes down no lower in history than those writers extend, and is

consequently not aware of, or but slightly alludes to, the great

military changes that ensued in later times. On Polybius he comments

sentence by sentence. He had been preceded by Robortellus, and by

Francis, Duke of Urbino, in endeavouring to explain the Roman

castrametation from Polybius. Their plans differ a little from his

own.[977] Lipsius, who some years afterwards wrote on the same subject,

resembles Patrizzi in his method of a running commentary on Polybius.

Scaliger, who disliked Lipsius very much, imputes to him plagiarism from

the Italian antiquary.[978] But I do not perceive, on a comparison of

the two treatises, much pretence for this insinuation. The text of

Polybius was surely common ground, and I think it possible that the work

of Patrizzi, which was written in Italian, might not be known to

Lipsius. But whether this were so or not, he is much more full and

satisfactory than his predecessor, who, I would venture to hint, may

have been a little over-praised. Lipsius, however, seems to have fallen

into the same error of supposing that the whole history of the Roman

militia could be explained from Polybius.

[976] Primus Romanæ rei militaris præstantiam Polybium secutus detexit,

cui quantum debeant qui post illum in hoc argumento elaborarunt,

non nescient viri docti qui Josephi Scaligeri epistolas, aut Nicii

Erythræi Pinacothecam legerunt. Nonnulli quidem rectius et

explicatius sunt tradita de hac doctrina post Patricium a Justo

Lipsio et aliis, qui in hoc stadio cucurrerunt; ut non difficulter

inventis aliquid additur aut in iis emendatur, sed præclare tamen

fractæ glaciei laus Patricio est tribuenda. Grævius in præfat. ad

10mum volumen. This book has been confounded by Blount and Ginguéné

with a later work of Patrizzi entitled Paralleli Militari, Rome,

1594, in which he compared the military art of the ancients with

that of the moderns, exposing, according to Tiraboschi (viii. 494),

his own ignorance of the subject.

[977] All these writers err, in common, I believe, with every other

before General Roy, in his Military Antiquities of the Romans in

Britain (1793), in placing the prætorium, or tent of the general,

near the front gate of the camp, called Porta Prætoria, instead of

the opposite, Porta Decumana. Lipsius is so perplexed by the

assumption of this hypothesis, that he struggles to alter the text

of Polybius.

[978] Scalig. Secunda. In one of Casaubon’s epistles to Scaliger, he

says: Franciscus Patritius solus mihi videtur digitum ad fontes

intendisse, quem ad verbum alii, qui hoc studium tractarunt, cum

sequuntur tamen ejus nomen ne semel quidem memorarunt. Quod equidem

magis miratus sum in illis de quorum candore dubitare piaculum esse

putassem.

|Lipsius and other antiquaries.|

59. The works of Lipsius are full of accessions to our knowledge of

Roman antiquity, and he may be said to have stood as conspicuous on this

side of the Alps as Sigonius in Italy. His treatise on the amphitheatre,

1584, completed what Panvinius, De Ludis Circensibus, had begun. A later

work, by Peter Fabre, president in the parliament of Toulouse, entitled

“Agonisticon, sive de Re Athletica,” 1592, relates to the games of

Greece as well as Rome, and has been highly praised by Gronovius. It

will be found in the eighth volume of the Thesaurus Antiquitatum

Græcarum. Several antiquaries traced the history of Roman families and

names; such as Fulvius Ursinus, Sigonius, Panvinius, Pighius, Castalio,

Golzius.[979] A Spaniard of immense erudition, Petrus Ciaconius

(Chacon), besides many illustrations of ancient monuments of

antiquities, especially the rostral column of Duilius, has left a

valuable treatise, De Triclinio Romano, 1588.[980] He is not to be

confounded with Alfonsus Ciaconius, a native also of Spain, but not of

the same family, who wrote an account of the column of Trajan.

Pancirollus, in his Notitia Dignitatum, or rather his commentary on a

public document of the age of Constantine so entitled, threw light on

that later period of imperial Rome.

[979] Grævius, vol. vii.

[980] Blount, Niceron, vol. xxxvi.

|Saville on Roman militia.|

60. The first contribution that England made to ancient literature in

this line was the “View of Certain Military Matters, or Commentaries

concerning Roman Warfare,” by Sir Henry Saville, in 1598. This was

translated into Latin, and printed at Heidelberg, as early as 1601. It

contains much information in small compass, extending only to about 130

duodecimo pages. Nor is it borrowed, as far as I could perceive, from

Patrizzi or Lipsius, but displays an independent and extensive

erudition.

61. It would encumber the reader’s memory were these pages to become a

register of books. Both in this and the succeeding periods we can only

select such as appear, by the permanence, or, at least, the immediate

lustre of their reputation, to have deserved of the great republic of

letters better than the rest. And in such a selection it is to be

expected that the grounds of preference or of exclusion will

occasionally not be obvious to all readers, and possibly would not be

deemed, on reconsideration, conclusive to the author. In names of the

second or third class there is often but a shadow of distinction.

|Numismatics.|

62. The foundations were laid, soon after the middle of the century, of

an extensive and interesting science--that of ancient medals.

Collections of these had been made from the time of Cosmo de Medici, and

perhaps still earlier; but the rules of arranging, comparing, and

explaining them were as yet unknown, and could be derived only from

close observation, directed by a profound erudition. Eneas Vico of

Venice, in 1555, published “Discorsi sopra le Medaglie degl’Antichi;”

“in which he justly boasts,” says Tiraboschi, “that he was the first to

write in Italian on such a subject; but he might have added that no one

had yet written upon it in any language.”[981] The learning of Vico was

the more remarkable that he was by profession an engraver. He afterwards

published a series of imperial medals, and another of the empresses;

adding to each a life of the person and explanation of the reverse. But

in the latter he was excelled by Sebastian Erizzo, a noble Venetian, who

four years after Vico published a work with nearly the same title. This

is more fully comprehensive than that of Vico: medallic science was

reduced in it to fixed principles, and it is particularly esteemed for

the erudition shown by the author in explaining the reverses.[982] Both

Vico and Erizzo have been sometimes mistaken; but what science is

perfect in its commencement? It has been observed that the latter,

living at the same time in the same city, and engaged in the same

pursuit, makes no mention of his precursor; a consequence, no doubt, of

the jealous humour so apt to prevail with the professors of science,

especially when they do not agree in their opinions. This was the case

here; Vico having thought ancient coins and medals identical, while

Erizzo made a distinction between them, in which modern critics in

numismatic learning have generally thought him in the wrong. The

medallic collections, published by Hubert Golzius, a Flemish engraver,

who had examined most of the private cabinets in Europe, from 1557 to

1579, acquired great reputation, and were long reckoned the principal

repertory of that science. But it seems that suspicions entertained by

many of the learned have been confirmed, and that Golzius has published

a great number of spurious and even of imaginary medals; his own good

faith being also much implicated in these forgeries.[983]

[981] Tiraboschi, ix. 266. Ginguéné, vii. 292. Biogr. Univ.

[982] Idem.

[983] Biogr. Univ.

|Mythology.|

63. The ancient mythology is too closely connected with all classical

literature to have been neglected so long as numismatic antiquity. The

compilations of Rhodiginus and Ab Alexandro, besides several other

works, and indeed all annotations on Greek and Latin authors, had

illustrated it. But this was not done systematically; and no subject

more demands a comparison of authorities, which will not always be found

consistent or intelligible. Boccaccio had long before led the way, in

his Genealogiæ Deorum; but the erudition of the fourteenth century could

clear away but little of the cloud that still in some measure hangs over

the religion of the ancient world. In the first decade of the present

period we find a work of considerable merit for the times, by Lilio

Gregorio Giraldi, one of the most eminent scholars of that age,

entitled Historia de Diis Gentium. It had been preceded by one of

inferior reputation, the Mythologia of Natalis Comes. “Giraldi,” says

the Biographie Universelle, “is the first who has treated properly this

subject, so difficult on account of its extent and complexity. He made

use not only of all Greek and Latin authors, but of ancient

inscriptions, which he has explained with much sagacity. Sometimes the

multiplicity of his quotations renders him obscure, and sometimes he

fails in accuracy, through want of knowing what has since been brought

to light. But the Historia de Diis Gentium is still consulted.”

|Scaliger’s Chronology.|

64. We can place in no other chapter but the present a work, than which

none published within this century is superior, and perhaps none is

equal in originality, depth of erudition and vigorous encountering of

difficulty, that of Joseph Scaliger, De Emendatione Temporum. The first

edition of this appeared in 1583; the second, which is much enlarged and

amended, in 1598; and a third, still better, in 1609. Chronology, as a

science, was hitherto very much unknown; all ancient history, indeed,

had been written in a servile and uncritical spirit, copying dates, as

it did everything else, from the authorities immediately under the

compiler’s eye, with little or no endeavour to reconcile discrepancies,

or to point out any principles of computation. Scaliger perceived that

it would be necessary to investigate the astronomical schemes of ancient

calendars, not always very clearly explained by the Greek and Roman

writers, and requiring much attention and acuteness, besides a

multifarious erudition, oriental as well as classical, of which he alone

in Europe could be reckoned master. This work, De Emendatione Temporum,

is in the first edition divided into eight books. The first relates to

the lesser equal year, as he denominates it, or that of 360 days,

adopted by some eastern nations, and founded, as he supposes, on the

natural lunar year, before the exact period of a lunation was fully

understood; the second book is on the true lunar year and some other

divisions connected with it; the third on the greater equal year, or

that of 365 days; and the fourth on the more accurate schemes of the

solar period. In the fifth and sixth books he comes to particular

epochs, determining in both many important dates in profane and sacred

history. The seventh and eighth discuss the modes of computation, and

the terminal epochs used in different nations, with miscellaneous

remarks and critical emendations of his own. In later editions these two

books are thrown into one. The great intricacy of many of these

questions, which cannot be solved by testimonies, often imperfect and

inconsistent, without much felicity of conjecture, serves to display the

surprising vigour of Scaliger’s mind, who grapples like a giant with

every difficulty. Le Clerc has censured him for introducing so many

conjectures, and drawing so many inferences from them, that great part

of his chronology is rendered highly suspicious.[984] But, whatever may

be his merit in the determination of particular dates, he is certainly

the first who laid the foundations of the science. He justly calls it

“Materia intacta et a nobis nunc primum tentata.” Scaliger in all this

work is very clear, concise, and pertinent, and seems to manifest much

knowledge of physical astronomy, though he was not a good mathematician,

and did little credit to his impartiality, by absolutely rejecting the

Gregorian calendar.

[984] Parrhasiana, ii. 363.

|Julian period.|

65. The chronology of Scaliger has become more celebrated through his

invention of the Julian period; a name given, in honour of his father,

to a cycle of 7980 years, beginning 4713 before Christ, and consequently

before the usual date of the creation of the world. He was very proud of

this device; “it is impossible to describe,” he says, “its utility;

chronologers and astronomers cannot extol it too much.” And what is more

remarkable, it was adopted for many years afterwards, even by the

opponents of Scaliger’s chronology, and is almost as much in favour with

Petavius as with the inventor.[985] This Julian period is formed by

multiplying together the years of three cycles once much in use--the

solar of twenty-eight, according to the old calendar, the lunar or

Metonic of nineteen, and the indiction, an arbitrary and political

division, introduced about the time of Constantine, and common both in

the church and empire, consisting of fifteen years. Yet I confess myself

unable to perceive the great advantage of this scheme. It affords, of

course, a fixed terminus, from which all dates may be reckoned in

progressive numbers, better than the æra of the creation, on account of

the uncertainty attending that epoch; but the present method of

reckoning them in a retrograde series from the birth of Christ,

which seems never to have occurred to Scaliger or Petavius, is not found

to have much practical inconvenience. In other respects, the only real

use that the Julian period appears to possess is, that dividing any year

in it by the numbers 28, 19, or 15, the remainder above the quotient

will give us the place such year holds in the cycle, by the proper

number of which it has been divided. Thus, if we desire to know what

place in the Metonic cycle the year of the Julian period 6402, answering

to the year of our Lord 1689, held, or in other words, what was the

Golden Number, as it was called, of that year, we must divide 6402 by

19, and we shall find in the quotient a remainder 18; whence we perceive

that it was the eighteenth year of a lunar or Metonic cycle. The

adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which has greatly protracted the

solar cycle by the suppression of one bissextile year in a century, as

well as the virtual abandonment of the indiction, and even of the solar

and lunar cycles, as divisions of time, have greatly diminished whatever

utility this invention may have originally possessed.

[985] Usus illius opinione major est in chronicis, quæ ab orbe condito

vel alio quovis initio ante æram Christianam inchoantur. Petav.

Rationarium Temporum, part ii. lib. i. c. 14.

CHAPTER XI.

HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1550 TO 1600.

_Progress of Protestantism--Reaction of the Catholic Church--The

Jesuits--Causes of the Recovery of Catholicism--Bigotry of Lutherans--

Controversy on Free will--Trinitarian Controversy--Writings on

Toleration--Theology in England--Bellarmin--Controversy on Papal

Authority--Theological Writers--Ecclesiastical Histories--Translations

of Scripture._

|Diet of Augsburg in 1555.|

1. In the arduous struggle between prescriptive allegiance to the Church

of Rome and rebellion against its authority, the balance continued for

some time after the commencement of this period to be strongly swayed in

favour of the reformers. A decree of the diet of Augsburg in 1555,

confirming an agreement made by the emperor three years before, called

the Pacification of Passau, gave the followers of the Lutheran

confession for the first time an established condition, and their rights

became part of the public law in Germany. No one, by this decree, could

be molested for following either the old or the new form of religion;

but those who dissented from that established by their ruler were only

to have the liberty of quitting his territories, with time for the

disposal of their effects. No toleration was extended to the Helvetic or

Calvinistic, generally called the Reformed party; and by the

Ecclesiastical Reservation, a part of the decree to which the Lutheran

princes seem not to have assented, every Catholic prelate of the empire

quitting his religion was declared to forfeit his dignity.

|Progress of Protestantism.|

2. This treaty, though incapable of warding off the calamities of a

future generation, might justly pass, not only for a basis of religious

concord, but for a signal triumph of the Protestant cause; such as, a

few years before, it would have required all their stedfast faith in the

arm of Providence to anticipate. Immediately after its enactment, the

principles of the confession of Augsburg, which had been restrained by

fear of the imperial laws against heresy, spread rapidly to the shores

of the Danube, the Drave, and the Vistula. Those half-barbarous nations,

who might be expected, by a more general analogy, to remain longest in

their ancient prejudices, came more readily into the new religion than

the civilised people of the south. In Germany itself the progress of the

Reformation was still more rapid: most of the Franconian and Bavarian

nobility, and the citizens of every considerable town, though subjects

of Catholic princes, became Protestant; while in Austria it has been

said that not more than one thirtieth part of the people continued firm

in their original faith. This may probably be exaggerated; but a

Venetian ambassador in 1558 (and the reports of the envoys of that

republic are remarkable for their judiciousness and accuracy) estimated

the Catholics of the German empire at only one-tenth of the

population.[986] The universities produced no defenders of the ancient

religion. For twenty years no student of the university of Vienna had

become a priest. Even at Ingolstadt it was necessary to fill with laymen

offices hitherto reserved for the clergy. The prospect was not much more

encouraging in France. The Venetian ambassador in that country (Micheli,

whom we know by his reports of England under Mary), declares that in

1561 the common people still frequented the churches, but all others,

especially the nobility, had fallen off; and this defection was greatest

among the younger part.

[986] Ranke, vol. ii., p. 125, takes a general survey of the religious

state of the empire about 1563.

|Its causes.|

3. This second burst of a revolutionary spirit in religion was as rapid,

and perhaps more appalling to its opponents, than that under Luther and

Zuingle about 1520. It was certainly prepared by long working in the

minds of a part of the people; but most of its operation was due to that

generous sympathy which carries mankind along with any pretext of a

common interest in the redress of wrong. A very few years were

sufficient to make millions desert their altars, abjure their faith,

loath, spurn, and insult their gods; words hardly too strong, when we

remember how the saints and the Virgin had been honoured in their

images, and how they and those were now despised. It is to be observed,

that the Protestant doctrines had made no sensible progress in the south

of Germany before the Pacification of Passau in 1552, nor much in France

before the death of Henry II. in 1559. The spirit of reformation,

suppressed under his severe administration, burst forth when his weak

and youthful son ascended the throne, with an impetuosity that

threatened for a time the subversion of that profligate despotism by

which the house of Valois had replaced the feudal aristocracy. It is not

for us here to discriminate the influences of ambition and oligarchical

factiousness from those of high-minded and strenuous exertion in the

cause of conscience.

|Wavering of Catholic princes.|

4. It is not surprising that some Catholic governments wavered for a

time, and thought of yielding to a storm which might involve them in

ruin. Even as early as 1556, the duke of Bavaria was compelled to make

concessions which would have led to a full introduction of the

Reformation. The emperor Ferdinand I. was tolerant in disposition, and

anxious for some compromise that might extinguish the schism; his

successor, Maximilian II., displayed the same temper so much more

strongly, that he incurred the suspicion of a secret leaning towards the

reformed tenets. Sigismund Augustus, king of Poland, was probably at one

time wavering which course to adopt; and though he did not quit the

church of Rome, his court and the Polish nobility became extensively

Protestant; so that, according to some, there was a very considerable

majority at his death who professed that creed. Among the Austrian and

Hungarian nobility, as well as the burghers in the chief cities, it was

held by so preponderating a body that they obtained a full toleration

and equality of privileges. England, after two or three violent

convulsions, became firmly Protestant; the religion of the court being

soon followed with sincere good-will by the people. Scotland, more

unanimously and impetuously, threw off the yoke of Rome. The Low

Countries very early caught the flame, and sustained the full brunt of

persecution at the hands of Charles and Philip.

|Extinguished in Italy,|

|and Spain.|

5. Meantime the infant Protestantism of Italy had given some signs of

increasing strength, and began more and more to number men of

reputation; but, unsupported by popular affection, or the policy of

princes, it was soon wholly crushed by the arm of power. The reformed

church of Locarno was compelled in 1554 to emigrate in the midst of

winter, and took refuge at Zurich. That of Lucca was finally dispersed

about the same time. A fresh storm of persecution arose at Modena in

1556; many lost their lives for religion in the Venetian States before

1560; others were put to death at Rome. The Protestant countries were

filled with Italian exiles, many of them highly gifted men, who, by

their own eminence, and by the distinction which has in some instances

awaited their posterity, may be compared with those whom the revocation

of the edict of Nantes long afterwards dispersed over Europe. The

tendency towards Protestantism in Spain was of the same kind, but less

extensive, and certainly still less popular than in Italy. The

Inquisition took it up, and applied its usual remedies with success. But

this would lead us still further from literary history than we have

already wandered.

|Reaction of Catholicity;|

6. This prodigious increase of the Protestant party in Europe after the

middle of the century did not continue more than a few years. It was

checked and fell back, not quite so rapidly or so completely as it came

on, but so as to leave the antagonist church in perfect security. Though

we must not tread closely on the ground of political history,

nor discuss too minutely any revolutions of opinion which do not

distinctly manifest themselves in literature, it seems not quite foreign

from the general purpose of these volumes, or at least a pardonable

digression, to dwell a little on the leading causes of this retrograde

movement of Protestantism; a fact as deserving of explanation as the

previous excitement of the Reformation itself, though, from its more

negative nature, it has not drawn so much of the attention of mankind.

Those who behold the outbreaking of great revolutions in civil society

or in religion, will not easily believe that the rush of waters can be

stayed in its course, that a pause of indifference may come on, perhaps

very suddenly, or a reaction bring back nearly the same prejudices and

passions as those which men had renounced. Yet this has occurred not

very rarely in the annals of mankind, and never on a larger scale than

in the history of the Reformation.

|especially in Germany.|

7. The church of Rome, and the prince whom it most strongly influenced,

Philip II., acted on an unremitting uncompromising policy of subduing,

instead of making terms with its enemies. In Spain and Italy the

Inquisition soon extirpated the remains of heresy. The fluctuating

policy of the French court, destitute of any strong religious zeal, and

therefore prone to expedients, though always desirous of one end, is

well known. It was, in fact, impossible to conquer a party so prompt to

resort to arms and so skilful in their use as the Huguenots. But in

Bavaria Albert V., with whom, about 1564, the reaction began, in the

Austrian dominions Rodolph II., in Poland Sigismund III., by shutting up

churches, and by discountenancing in all respects their Protestant

subjects, contrived to change a party once exceedingly powerful into an

oppressed sect. The decrees of the council of Trent were received by the

spiritual princes of the empire in 1566; “and from this moment,” says

the excellent historian who has thrown most light on this subject,

“began a new life for the Catholic church in Germany.”[987] The

profession of faith was signed by all orders of men; no one could be

admitted to a degree in the universities, nor keep a school without it.

Protestants were in some places excluded from the court; a penalty which

tended much to bring about the reconversion of a poor and proud

nobility.

[987] Ranke, ii. 46.

|Disciplines of the clergy.|

8. The reaction could not, however, have been effected by any efforts of

the princes against so preponderating a majority as the Protestant

churches had obtained, if the principles that originally actuated them

had retained their animating influence, or had not been opposed by more

efficacious resistance. Every method was adopted to revive an attachment

to the ancient religion, insuperable by the love of novelty or the force

of argument. A stricter discipline and subordination was introduced

among the clergy; they were early trained in seminaries apart from the

sentiments and habits, the vices and virtues of the world. The monastic

orders resumed their rigid observances. The Capuchins, not introduced

into France before 1570, spread over the realm within a few years, and

were most active in getting up processions and all that we call foolery,

but which is not the less stimulating to the multitude for its folly. It

is observed by Davila, that these became more frequent after the

accession of Henry III. in 1574.

|Influence of Jesuits.|

9. But, far above all the rest, the Jesuits were the instruments of

regaining France and Germany to the church they served. And we are the

more closely concerned with them here, that they are in this age among

the links between religious opinion and literature. We have seen in the

last chapter with what spirit they took the lead in polite letters and

classical style, with what dexterity they made the brightest talents of

the rising generation, which the church had once dreaded and checked,

her most willing and effective instruments. The whole course of liberal

studies, however deeply grounded in erudition or embellished by

eloquence, took one direction, one perpetual aim--the propagation of the

Catholic faith. They availed themselves for this purpose of every

resource which either human nature or prevalent opinion supplied. Did

they find Latin versification highly prized? their pupils wrote sacred

poems. Did they observe the natural taste of mankind for dramatic

representations, and the repute which that species of literature had

obtained? their walls resounded with sacred tragedies. Did they perceive

an unjust prejudice against stipendiary instruction? they gave it

gratuitously. Their endowments left them in the decent poverty which

their vows required, without the offensive mendicancy of the friars.

|Their progress.|

10. In 1551 Ferdinand established a college of Jesuits at Vienna; in

1556 they obtained one, through the favour of the duke of

Bavaria, at Ingolstadt, and in 1559 at Munich. They spread rapidly into

other Catholic states of the empire, and some time later into Poland. In

France their success was far more equivocal; the Sorbonne declared

against them as early as 1554, and they had always to encounter the

opposition of the parliament of Paris. But they established themselves

at Lyons in 1569, and afterwards at Bordeaux, Toulouse, and other

cities. Their three duties were preaching, confession, and education;

the most powerful levers that religion could employ. Indefatigable and

unscrupulous, as well as polite and learned, accustomed to consider

veracity and candour, when they weakened an argument, in the light of

treason against the cause (language which might seem harsh, were it not

almost equally applicable to so many other partisans), they knew how to

clear their reasonings from scholastic pedantry and tedious quotation

for the simple and sincere understandings whom they addressed; yet, in

the proper field of controversial theology, they wanted nothing of

sophistical expertness or of erudition. The weak points of Protestantism

they attacked with embarrassing ingenuity; and the reformed churches did

not cease to give them abundant advantage by inconsistency,

extravagance, and passion.[988]

[988] Hospinian, Hist. Jesuitarum. Ranke, vol. ii. p. 32, et post.

Tiraboschi, viii. 116. The first of these works is entirely on one

side, and gives no credit to the Jesuits for their services to

literature. The second is of a very different class, philosophical

and profound, and yet with much more learning, that is, with a more

extensive range of knowledge than any writer of Hospinian’s age

could possess.

|Their colleges.|

11. At the death of Ignatius Loyola in 1556, the order he had founded

was divided into thirteen provinces, besides the Roman; most of which

were in the Spanish peninsula or its colonies. Ten colleges belonged to

Castile, eight to Aragon, five to Andalusia. Spain was for some time the

fruitful mother of the disciples, as she had been of the master. The

Jesuits who came to Germany were called “Spanish priests.” They took

possession of the universities: “they conquered us,” says Ranke, “on our

own ground, in our own homes, and stripped us of a part of our country.”

This, the acute historian proceeds to say, sprung certainly from the

want of understanding among the Protestant theologians, and of

sufficient enlargement of mind to tolerate unessential differences. The

violent opposition among each other left the way open to these cunning

strangers, who taught a doctrine not open to dispute.

|Jesuit seminary at Rome.|

12. But though Spain for a time supplied the most active spirits in the

order, its central point was always at Rome. It was there that the

general to whom they had sworn resided; and from thence issued to the

remotest lands the voice, which, whatever secret councils might guide

it, appeared that of a single, irresponsible, irresistible will. The

Jesuits had three colleges at Rome; one for their own novices, another

for German, and a third for English students. Possevin has given us an

account of the course of study in Jesuit seminaries, taking that of Rome

as a model. It contained nearly 2000 scholars, of various descriptions.

“No one,” he says, “is admitted without a foundation of grammatical

knowledge. The abilities, the dispositions, the intentions for future

life, are scrupulously investigated in each candidate; nor do we open

our doors to any who do not come up in these respects to what so eminent

a school of all virtue requires. They attend divine service daily; they

confess every month. The professors are numerous; some teaching the

exposition of Scripture, some scholastic theology, some the science of

controversy with heretics, some casuistry; many instruct in logic and

philosophy, in mathematics, or rhetoric, polite literature, and poetry;

the Hebrew and Greek, as well as Latin, tongues are taught. Three years

are given to the course of philosophy, four to that of theology. But if

any are found not so fit for deep studies, yet likely to be useful in

the Lord’s vineyard, they merely go through two years of practical, that

is, casuistical theology. These seminaries are for youths advanced

beyond the inferior classes or schools; but in the latter also religious

and grammatical learning go hand in hand.”[989]

[989] Possevin, Bibliotheca Selecta, lib. i. c. 39.

|Patronage of Gregory XIII.|

13. The popes were not neglectful of such faithful servants. Under

Gregory XIII., whose pontificate began in 1772, the Jesuit college at

Rome had twenty lecture-rooms and 360 chambers for students; a German

college was restored, after a temporary suspension; and an English one

founded by his care; perhaps there was not a Jesuit seminary in the

world which was not indebted to his liberality. Gregory also established

a Greek college (not of Jesuits), for the education of youths, who there

learned to propagate the Catholic faith in their country.[990] No

earlier pope had been more alert and strenuous in vindicating his claims

to universal allegiance; nor, as we may judge from the well-known

pictures of Vasari in the vestibule of the Sistine chapel, representing

the massacre of St. Bartholomew, more ready to sanction any crime that

might be serviceable to the church.

[990] Ranke, i. 419, et post. Ginguéné, vii. 12. Tiraboschi, viii. 34.

|Conversions in Germany and France.|

14. The resistance made to this aggressive warfare was for some time

considerable. Protestantism, so late as 1578, might be deemed

preponderant in all the Austrian dominions except the Tyrol.[991] In the

Polish diets the dissidents, as they were called, met their opponents

with vigour and success. The ecclesiastical principalities were full of

Protestants; and even in the chapters some of them might be found. But

the contention was unequal, from the different character of the parties:

religious zeal and devotion, which fifty years before had overthrown the

ancient rites in northern Germany, were now more invigorating sentiments

in those who rescued them from further innovation. In religious

struggles, where there is anything like an equality of forces, the

question soon comes to be which party will make the greater sacrifice

for its own faith. And while the Catholic self-devotion had grown far

stronger, there was much more of secular cupidity, lukewarmness, and

formality in the Lutheran church. In a very few years the effects of

this were distinctly visible. The Protestants of the Catholic

principalities went back into the bosom of Rome. In the bishopric of

Wurtzburg alone 62,000 converts are said to have been received in the

year 1586.[992] The emperor Rodolph and his brother archdukes, by a long

series of persecutions and banishment, finally, though not within this

century, almost outrooted Protestantism from the hereditary provinces of

Austria. It is true that these violent measures were the proximate cause

of so many conversions; but if the reformed had been ardent and united,

they were much too strong to have been thus subdued. In Bohemia,

accordingly, and Hungary, where there was a more steady spirit, they

kept their ground. The reaction was not less conspicuous in other

countries. It is asserted that the Huguenots had already lost more than

two-thirds of their number in 1580;[993] comparatively, I presume, with

twenty years before; and the change in their relative position is

manifest from all the histories of this period. In the Netherlands,

though the seven United Provinces were slowly winning their civil and

religious liberties at the sword’s point, yet West Flanders, once in

great measure Protestant, became Catholic before the end of the century;

while the Walloon Provinces were kept from swerving by some bishops of

great eloquence and excellent lives, as well as by the influence of the

Jesuits planted at St. Omar and Douay. At the close of this period of

fifty years the mischief done to the old church in its first decennium

was very nearly repaired; the proportions of the two religions in

Germany coincided with those which had existed at the Pacification of

Passau. The Jesuits, however, had begun to encroach a little on the

proper domain of the Lutheran church; besides private conversions,

which, on account of the rigour of the laws, not certainly less

intolerant than in their own communion, could not be very prominent,

they had sometimes hopes of the Protestant princes, and had once, in

1578, obtained the promise of John king of Sweden to embrace openly the

Romish faith, as he had already done in secret to Possevin, an emissary

dispatched by the Pope on this important errand. But the symptoms of an

opposition, very formidable in a country which has never allowed its

kings to trifle with it, made this wavering monarch retrace his steps.

His successor, Sigismund, went farther, and fell a victim to his zeal,

by being expelled from the kingdom.

[991] Ranke, ii. 78.

[992] Ranke, ii. 121. The number seems rather startling.

[993] Id. p. 147.

|Causes of this reaction.|

15. This great reaction of the papal religion after the shock it had

sustained in the first part of the sixteenth century, ought for ever to

restrain that temerity of prediction so frequent in our ears. As women

sometimes believe the fashion of last year in dress to be wholly

ridiculous, and incapable of being ever again adopted by any one

solicitous about her beauty, so those who affect to pronounce on future

events are equally confident against the possibility of a resurrection

of opinions which the majority have for the time ceased to maintain. In

the year 1560, every Protestant in Europe doubtless anticipated the

overthrow of popery; the Catholics could have found little else

to warrant hope than their trust in Heaven. The late rush of many

nations towards democratical opinions has not been so rapid and so

general as the change of religion about that period. It is important and

interesting to inquire what stemmed this current. We readily acknowledge

the prudence, firmness, and unity of purpose, that for the most part

distinguished the court of Rome, the obedience of its hierarchy, the

severity of intolerant laws, and the searching rigour of the

Inquisition, the resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic

faith, the influence of the Jesuits over education; but these either

existed before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand

an overwhelming force of opinion. It must be acknowledged that there was

a principle of vitality in that religion, independent of its external

strength. By the side of its secular pomp, its relaxation of morality,

there had always been an intense flame of zeal and devotion.

Superstition it might be in the many, fanaticism in a few; but both of

these imply the qualities which, while they subsist, render a religion

indestructible. That revival of an ardent zeal, though which the

Franciscans had, in the thirteenth century, with some good and much more

evil effect, spread a popular enthusiasm over Europe, was once more

displayed in counteraction of those new doctrines, that themselves had

drawn their life from a similar development of moral emotion.

|A rigid party in the church.|

16. Even in the court of Leo X., soon after the bursting forth of the

Reformation in Saxony, a small body was formed by men of rigid piety,

and strenuous for a different species of reform. Sadolet, Caraffa

(afterwards Paul IV.), Cajetan, and Contareni, both the latter eminent

in the annals of the church, were at the head of this party.[994]

Without dwelling on what belongs strictly to ecclesiastical history, it

is sufficient to say that they acquired much weight; and while adhering

generally to the doctrine of the church (though Contareni, held the

Lutheran tenets on justification), aimed steadily at a restoration of

moral discipline, and the abolition of every notorious abuse. Several of

the regular orders were reformed, while others were instituted, more

active in sacerdotal duties than the rest. The Jesuits must be

considered as the most perfect type of the rigid party. Whatever may be

objected, perhaps not quite so early, to their system of casuistry,

whatever want of scrupulousness may have been shown in their conduct,

they were men who never swerved from the path of labour, and, it might

be, suffering in the cause which they deemed that of God. All

self-sacrifice in such circumstances, especially of the highly gifted

and accomplished, though the bigot steels his heart and closes his eyes

against it, excites the admiration of the unsophisticated part of

mankind.

[994] Ranke, i. 133.

|Its efforts at Trent.|

17. The council of Trent, especially in its later sessions, displayed

the antagonist parties in the Roman church, one struggling for lucrative

abuses, one anxious to overthrow them. They may be called the Italian

and Spanish parties; the first headed by the Pope’s legates, dreading

above all things both the reforming spirit of Constance and Basle, and

the independence either of princes or of national churches; the other

actuated by much of the spirit of those councils, and tending to confirm

that independence. The French and German prelates usually sided with the

Spanish; and they were together strong enough to establish as a rule,

that in every session, a decree for reformation should accompany the

declaration of doctrine. The Council, interrupted in 1547 by the measure

that Paul III. found it necessary for his own defence against these

reformers to adopt, the translation of its sittings to Bologna, with

which the Imperial prelates refused to comply, was opened again by

Julius III. in 1552; and having been once more suspended in the same

year, resumed its labour for the last time under Pius IV. in 1562. It

terminated in 1564, when the court of Rome, which, with the Italian

prelates, had struggled hard to obstruct the redress of every grievance,

compelled the more upright members of the council to let it close, after

having effected such a reformation of discipline as they could obtain.

That court was certainly successful in the contest, so far as it might

be called one, of prerogative against liberty; and partially successful

in the preservation of its lesser interests and means of influence. Yet

it seems impossible to deny that the effects of the council of Trent

were on the whole highly favourable to the church, for whose benefit it

was summoned. The Reformation would never have roused the whole north of

Europe, had the people seen nothing in it but the technical problems of

theology. It was against ambition and cupidity, sluggish ignorance and

haughty pomp, that they took up arms. Hence the abolition of many long

established abuses by the honest zeal of the Spanish and Cisalpine

fathers in that council took away much of the ground on which the

prevalent disaffection rested.

|No compromise in doctrine.|

18. We should be inclined to infer from the language of some

contemporaries, that the council might have proceeded farther with more

advantage than danger to their church, by complying with the earnest and

repeated solicitations of the Emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, and even the

court of France, that the sacramental cup should be restored to the

laity, and that the clergy should not be restrained from marriage. Upon

this, however, it is not here for us to dilate. The policy of both

concessions, but especially of the latter, was always questionable, and

has not been demonstrated by the event. In its determinations of

doctrine, the council was generally cautious to avoid extremes, and

left, in many momentous questions of the controversy, such as the

invocation of saints, no small latitude for private opinion. It has been

thought by some that they lost sight of this prudence in defining

transubstantiation so rigidly as they did in 1551, and thus opposed an

obstacle to the conversion of those who would have acquiesced in a more

equivocal form of words. But, in truth, no alternative was left upon

this point. Transubstantiation had been asserted by a prior council, the

Fourth Lateran in 1215, so positively, that to recede would have

surrendered the main principle of the Catholic church. And it is also to

be remembered, when we judge of what might have been done, as we fancy,

with more prudence, that, if there was a good deal of policy in the

decisions of the council of Trent, there was no want also of

conscientious sincerity; and that whatever we may think of this

doctrine, it was one which seemed of fundamental importance to the

serious and obedient sons of the church.[995]

[995] A strange notion has been started of late years in England, that

the council of Trent made important innovations in the previously

established doctrines of the Western Church; an hypothesis so

paradoxical in respect to public opinion, and, it must be added, so

prodigiously at variance with the known facts of ecclesiastical

history, that we cannot but admire the facility with which it has

been taken up. It will appear, by reading the accounts of the

sessions of the council either in Father Paul, or in any more

favourable historian, that even in certain points, such as

justification, which had not been clearly laid down before, the

Tridentine decrees were mostly conformable with the sense of the

majority of those doctors who had obtained the highest reputation;

and that upon what are more usually reckoned the distinctive

characteristics of the Church of Rome, namely, transubstantiation,

purgatory, and invocation of the saints and the Virgin, they assert

nothing but what had been so ingrafted into the faith of this part

of Europe, as to have been rejected by no one without suspicion or

imputation of heresy. Perhaps Erasmus would not have acquiesced

with good-will in all the decrees of the council; but was Erasmus

deemed orthodox? It is not impossible that the great hurry with

which some controversies of considerable importance were dispatched

in the last sessions, may have had as much to do with the short and

vague phrases employed in respect to them, as the prudence I have

attributed to the fathers; but the facts will remain the same on

either supposition.

No general council ever contained so many persons of eminent

learning and ability as that of Trent; nor is there ground for

believing that any other ever investigated the questions before it

with so much patience, acuteness, temper, and desire of truth. The

early councils, unless they are greatly belied, would not bear

comparison in these characteristics. Impartiality and freedom from

prejudice no Protestant will attribute to the fathers of Trent; but

where will he produce these qualities in an ecclesiastical synod?

But it may be said that they had only one leading prejudice, that

of determining theological faith according to the tradition of the

Catholic church, as handed down to their own age. This one point of

authority conceded, I am not aware that they can be proved to have

decided wrong, or at least against all reasonable evidence. Let

those who have imbibed a different opinion ask themselves whether

they have read Sarpi through with any attention, especially as to

those sessions of the Tridentine council which preceded its

suspension in 1547.

|Consultation of Cassander.|

19. There is some difficulty in proving for the council of Trent that

universality to which its adherents attach an infallible authority. And

this was not held to be a matter of course by the great European powers.

Even in France the Tridentine decrees, in matters of faith, have not

been formally received, though the Gallican church has never called any

of them in question; those relating to matters of discipline are

distinctly held not obligatory. The Emperor Ferdinand seems to have

hesitated about acknowledging the decisions of a council, which had at

least failed in the object for which it was professedly summoned--the

conciliation of all parties to the church. For we find that even after

its close, he referred the chief points in controversy to George

Cassander, a German theologian of very moderate sentiments and temper.

Cassander wrote, at the emperor’s request, his famous Consultation,

wherein he passes in review every article in the Confession of Augsburg,

so as to give, if possible, an interpretation consonant to that of the

Catholic church. Certain it is that, between Melanchthon’s desire of

concord in drawing up the Confession, and that of Cassander in judging

of it, no great number of points seem to be left for dispute. In another

treatise of Cassander, De Officio Pii Viri in hoc Dissidio Religionis

(1561), he holds the same course that Erasmus had done before, blaming

those who, on account of the stains in the church, would wholly subvert

it, as well as those who erect the pope into a sort of deity, by setting

up his authority as an infallible rule of faith. The rule of controversy

laid down by Cassander is, Scripture explained by the tradition of the

ancient church, which is best to be learned from the writings of those

who lived from the age of Constantine to that of Gregory I., because,

during that period, the principal articles of faith were most discussed.

Dupin observes that the zeal of Cassander for the reunion and peace of

the church made him yield too much to the Protestants, and advance some

propositions that were too bold. But they were by no means satisfied

with his concessions. This treatise was virulently attacked by Calvin,

to whom Cassander replied. No one should hesitate to prefer the spirit

of Cassander to that of Calvin; but it must be owned that the practical

consequence of his advice would have been to check the profession of the

reformed religion, leaving amendment to those who had little disposition

to amend anything. Nor is it by any means unlikely that this

conciliatory scheme, by extenuating disagreements, had a considerable

influence in that cessation of the advance of Protestantism, or rather

that reaction to which we have lately adverted, and of which more proofs

were long afterwards given.

|Bigotry of Protestant churches.|

20. We ought to reckon also among the principal causes of this change

those perpetual disputes, those irreconcileable animosities, that

bigotry, above all, and persecuting spirit, which were exhibited in the

Lutheran and Calvinistic churches. Each began with a common

principle--the necessity of an orthodox faith. But this orthodoxy meant

evidently nothing more than their own belief, as opposed to that of

their adversaries; a belief acknowledged to be fallible, yet maintained

as certain, rejecting authority in one breath, and appealing to it in

the next, and claiming to rest on sure proofs of reason and Scripture,

which their opponents were ready with just as much confidence to

invalidate.

|Tenets of Melanchthon.|

21. The principle of several controversies which agitated the two great

divisions of the Protestant name was still that of the real presence.

The Calvinists, as far as their meaning could be divined through a dense

mist of nonsense which they purposely collected,[996] were little, if at

all, less removed from the Romish and Lutheran parties than the

disciples of Zuingle himself, who spoke out more perspicuously. Nor did

the orthodox Lutherans fail to perceive this essential discrepancy.

Melanchthon, incontestably the most eminent man of their church after

the death of Luther, had obtained a great influence over the younger

students of theology. But his opinions, half concealed as they were, and

perhaps unsettled, had long been tending to a very different line from

those of Luther. The deference exacted by the latter, and never

withheld, kept them from any open dissension. But some, whose admiration

for the founder of their church was not checked by any scruples at his

doctrine, soon began to inveigh against the sacrifice of his favourite

tenets which Melanchthon seemed ready to make through timidity, as they

believed, or false judgment. To the Romanists he was willing to concede

the primacy of the Pope and the jurisdiction of bishops; to the

Helvetians he was suspected of leaning on the great controversy of the

real presence; while, on the still more important questions of faith and

works, he not only rejected the Antinomian exaggerations of the high

Lutherans, but introduced a doctrine, said to be nearly similar to that

called Semi-Pelagian; according to which the grace communicated to adult

persons so as to draw them to God required a correspondent action of

their own free will in order to become effectual. Those who held this

tenet were called Synergists.[997] It appears to be the same, or nearly

so, as that adopted by the Arminians in the next century, but was not

perhaps maintained by any of the schoolmen; nor does it seem consonant

to the decisions of the council of Trent, nor probably to the intention

of those who compiled the Articles of the English Church. It is easy,

however, to be mistaken as to these theological subtleties, which those

who write of them with most confidence do not really discriminate by any

consistent or intelligible language.

[996] See some of this in Bossuet, Variations des Eglises Protestantes,

l. ix. I do not much trust to Bossuet; but it would be too easy to

find similar evidence from our own writers.

[997] Mosheim. Bayle, art. Synergistes.

|A party hostile to him.|

22. There seems good reason to suspect that the bitterness manifested by

the rigid Lutherans against the new school was aggravated by some

political events of this period; the university of Wittenberg, in which

Melanchthon long resided, being subject to the elector Maurice, whose

desertion of the Protestant confederacy and unjust acquisition of the

electorate at the expense of the best friends of the Reformation, though

partly expiated by his subsequent conduct, could never be forgiven by

the adherents and subjects of the Ernestine line. Those first protectors

of the reformed faith, now become the victims of his ambition, were

reduced to the duchies of Weimar and Gotha, within the former of which the

university of Jena, founded in 1559, was soon filled with the sternest

zealots of Luther’s school. Flacius Illyricus, most advantageously known

as the chief compiler of the Centuriæ Magdeburgenses, was at the head of

this university, and distinguished by his animosity against Melanchthon,

whose gentle spirit was released by death from the contentions he

abhorred in 1560. Bossuet exaggerates the indecision of Melanchthon on

many disputable questions, which, as far as it existed, is rather

perhaps a matter of praise; but his want of firmness makes it not always

easy to determine his real sentiments, especially in his letters, and

somewhat impaired the dignity and sincerity of his mind.

|Form of Concord, 1576.|

23. After the death of Melanchthon, a controversy, began by one Bentius,

relating to the ubiquity, as it was called, of Christ’s body, proceeded

with much heat. It is sufficient to mention that it led to what is

denominated the Formula Concordiæ, a declaration of faith on several

matters of controversy, drawn up at Torgau in 1576, and subscribed by

the Saxon and most other Lutheran churches of Germany, though not by

those of Brunswick, or of the northern kingdoms. It was justly

considered as a complete victory of the rigid over the moderate party.

The strict enforcement of subscription to this creed gave rise to a good

deal of persecution against those who were called Crypto-Calvinists, or

suspected of a secret bias towards the proscribed doctrine. Peucer,

son-in-law of Melanchthon and editor of his works, was kept for eleven

years in prison. And a very narrow spirit of orthodoxy prevailed for a

century and a half afterwards in Lutheran theology. But in consequence

of this spirit, that theology has been almost entirely neglected and

contemned in the rest of Europe, and scarce any of its books are

remembered by name.[998]

[998] Hospinian, Concordia Discors, is my chief authority. He was a

Swiss Calvinist, and of course very hostile to the Lutheran party.

But Mosheim does not vindicate very strongly his own church. See

also several articles in Bayle; and Eichhorn, vi. part i. 234.

|Controversy raised by Baius.|

24. Though it may be reckoned doubtful whether the council of Trent did

not repel some wavering Protestants by its unqualified re-enactment of

the doctrine of transubstantiation, it prevented, at least, those

controversies on the real presence which agitated the Protestant

communions. But in another more extensive and important province of

theology, the decisions of the council, though cautiously drawn up, were

far from precluding such differences of opinion as ultimately gave rise

to a schism in the church of Rome, and have had no small share in the

decline of its power. It is said that some of the Dominican order, who

could not but find in their most revered authority, Thomas Aquinas, a

strong assertion of Augustin’s scheme of divinity, were hardly content

with some of the decrees at Trent, as leaving a door open to

Semi-Pelagianism.[999] The controversy, however, was first raised by

Baius, professor of divinity at Louvain, now chiefly remarkable as the

precursor of Jansenius. Many propositions attributed to Baius were

censured by the Sorbonne in 1560, and by a bull of Pius V. in 1567.

He submitted to the latter; but his tenets, which are hardly

distinguishable from those of Calvin, struck root, especially in the Low

Countries, and seem to have passed from the disciples of Baius to the

famous bishop of Ypres in the next century. The bull of Pius apparently

goes much farther from the Calvinistic hypothesis than the council of

Trent had done. The Jansenist party, in later times, maintained that it

was not binding upon the church.[1000]

[999] Du Chesne, Histoire du Baianisme, vol. i. p. 8. This opinion is

ascribed to Peter Soto, confessor to Charles V., who took a part in

the reconversion of England under Mary. He is not to be confounded

with the more celebrated Dominic Soto. Both these divines were

distinguished ornaments of the Council of Trent.

[1000] Some of the tenets asserted in the Articles of the Church of

England are condemned in this bull, especially the 13th. Du Chesne,

p. 78, et post. See Biogr. Univ. art. Baius and Bayle. Du Chesne is

reckoned an unfair historian by those who favour Baius.

|Treatise of Molina on Free will.|

25. These disputes, after a few years, were revived and inflamed by the

treatise of Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, in 1588, on free will. In this he

was charged with swerving as much from the right line on one side as

Baius had been supposed to do on the other. His tenets, indeed, as

usually represented, do not appear to differ from those maintained

afterwards by the Arminians in Holland and England. But it has not been

deemed orthodox in the Church of Rome to deviate ostensibly from the

doctrine of Augustin in this controversy; and Thomas Aquinas, though not

quite of equal authority in the church at large, was held almost

infallible by the Dominicans, a powerful order, well stored with

learning and logic, and already jealous of the rising influence of the

Jesuits. Some of the latter did not adhere to the Semi-Pelagian theories

of Molina; but the spirit of the order was roused, and they all exerted

themselves successfully to screen his book from the condemnation which

Clement VIII. was much inclined to pronounce upon it. They had before

this time been accused of Pelagianism by the Thomists, and especially by

the partisans of Baius, who procured from the universities of Louvain

and Douay a censure of the tenets that some Jesuits had promulgated.[1001]

[1001] Du Chesne, Biogr. Univ., art. Molina. The controversy had begun

before the publication of Molina’s treatise; and the faculty of

Louvain censured thirty-one propositions of the Jesuits in 1587.

Paris, however, refused to confirm the censure. Bellarmin, in 1588,

drew up an abstract of the dispute by command of Sixtus V. In this

he does not decide in favour of either side, but the Pope declared

the Jesuit propositions to be sanæ doctrinæ articuli, p. 258. The

appearance of Molina’s book, which was thought to go much farther

towards Pelagianism, renewed the flame. Clement VIII. was very

desirous to condemn Molina; but Henry IV., who now favoured the

Jesuits, interfered for their honour. Cardinal Perron took the same

side, and told the Pope that a Protestant might subscribe the

Dominican doctrine. Ranke. ii. 295, et post. Paul V. was also

rather inclined against the Jesuits; but it would have been hard to

mortify such good friends, and in 1607 he issued a declaration

postponing the decision _sine die_. The Jesuits deemed themselves

victorious, as in fact they were. Id. p. 358.

|Protestant tenets.|

26. The Protestant theologians did not fail to entangle themselves in

this intricate wilderness. Melanchthon drew a large portion of the

Lutherans into what was afterwards called Arminianism; but the reformed

churches, including the Helvetian, which, after the middle of the

century, gave up many at least of those points of difference which had

distinguished them from that of Geneva, held the doctrine of Augustin on

absolute predestination, on total depravity, and arbitrary irresistible

grace.

|Trinitarian controversy.|

27. A third source of intestine disunion lay deep in recesses beyond the

soundings of human reason. The doctrine of the Trinity, which

theologians agree to call inscrutable, but which they do not fail to

define and analyse with the most confident dogmatism, had already, as we

have seen in a former passage, been investigated by some bold spirits

with little regard to the established faith. They had soon however a

terrible proof of the danger that still was to wait on such momentous

aberrations from the proscribed line. Servetus having, in 1553,

published at Vienne in Dauphiné, a new treatise, called Christianismi

Restitutio, and escaping from thence, as he vainly hoped, to the

protestant city of Geneva, became a victim to the bigotry of the

magistrates, instigated by Calvin, who had acquired an immense

ascendancy over that republic.[1002] He did not leave, as far as

we know, any peculiar disciples. Many, however, among the German

Anabaptists held tenets not unlike those of the ancient Arians. Several

persons, chiefly foreigners, were burned for such heresies in England,

under Edward VI., Elizabeth, and James. These Anabaptists were not very

learned or conspicuous advocates of their opinions; but some of the

Italian confessors of Protestantism were of more importance. Several of

these were reputed to be Arians. None however became so celebrated as

Lælius Socinus, a young man of considerable ability, who is reckoned the

proper founder of that sect which takes its name from his family.

Prudently shunning the fate of Servetus, he neither published anything,

nor permitted his tenets to be openly known. He was however in Poland

not long after the commencement of this period; and there seems reason

to believe that he left writings, which, coming into the hands of some

persons in that country who had already adopted the Arian hypothesis,

induced them to diverge still farther from the orthodox line. The

Anti-Trinitarians became numerous among the Polish Protestants; and in

1565, having separated from the rest, they began to appear as a distinct

society. Faustus, nephew of Lælius Socinus, joined them about 1578; and

acquiring a great ascendancy by his talents, gave a name to the sect,

though their creed was already conformable to his own. An university, or

rather academy, for it never obtained a legal foundation, established at

Racow, a small town belonging to a Polish nobleman of their persuasion,

about 1570, sent forth men of considerable eminence and great zeal in

the propagation of their tenets. These, indeed, chiefly belong to the

ensuing century; but, before the termination of the present, they had

begun to circulate books in Holland.[1003]

[1002] This book is among the scarcest in the world, ipsa raritate

rarior, as it is called by Schelhorn. Il est reconnu, says De Bure,

pour le plus rare de tous les livres. It was long supposed that no

copy existed except that belonging to Dr. Mead, afterwards to the

Duke de la Valiere, and now in the royal library at Paris. But a

second is said to be in the Imperial library at Vienna; and Brunet

observes, on connoit à peine trois exemplaires, which seems to hint

that there may be a third. Allwoerden, in his Life of Servetus,

published in 1727, did not know where any printed copy could be

found, several libraries having been named by mistake. But there

were at that time several manuscript copies, one of which he used

himself. It had belonged to Samuel Crellius, and afterwards to La

Croze, from whom he had borrowed it, and was transcribed from a

printed copy, belonging to an Unitarian minister in Transylvania,

who had obtained it in England between 1660 and 1670.

This celebrated book is a collection of several treatises, with the

general title, Christianismi Restitutio. But that of the first and

most remarkable part has been differently given. According to a

letter from the Abbé Rive, librarian to the Duke de la Valiere, to

Dutens, which the latter has published in the second edition of his

Origines des Decouvertes attribuées aux Modernes, vol. ii. p. 359,

all former writers on the subject have been incorrect. The

difference, however, is but in one word. In Sandius, Niceron,

Allwoerden, and, I suppose, others, the title runs: De Trinitate

Divina, quod in ea non sit _indivisibilium_ trium rerum

illusio, sed vera substantiæ Dei manifestatio in verbo, et

communicatio in spiritu, libri vii. The Abbè Rive gives the word

_invisibilium_, and this I find also in the additions of

Simler to the Bibliotheca Universalis of Gesner, to which M. Rive

did not advert. In Allwoerden, however, a distinct heading is given

to the 6th and 7th dialogues, wherein the same title is repeated,

with the word _invisibilium_ instead of _indivisibilium_.

It is remarked in a note, by Rive or Dutens, that it was a gross

error to put _indivisiblium_, as it makes Servetus say the

contrary of what his system requires. I am not entirely of this

opinion; and if I understand the system of Servetus at all, the

word _indivisibilium_ is very intelligible. De Bure, who seems

to write from personal inspection of the same copy, which he

supposed to be unique, gives the title with _indivisibilium_.

The Christianismi Restitutio was reprinted at Nuremburg, about

1790, in the same form as the original edition, but I am not aware

which word is used in the title-page; nor would the evidence of a

modern reprint, possibly not taken immediately from a printed copy,

be conclusive.

The life of Servetus by Allwoerden, Helmstadt, 1727, is partly

founded on materials collected by Mosheim, who put them into the

author’s hands. Barbier is much mistaken in placing it among

pseudonymous works, as if Allwoerden had been a fictitious

denomination of Mosheim. Dictionnaire des Anonymes (1824) iii. 555.

The book contains, even in the title-page, all possible vouchers

for its authenticity. Mosheim himself says in a letter to

Allwoerden, non dubitavi negotium hoc tibi committere, atque

Historiam Serveti concinnandam et apte construendem tradere. But it

appears that Allwoerden added much from other sources, so that it

cannot reasonably be called the work of any one else. The

Biographie Universelle ascribes to Mosheim a Latin history of

Servetus, Helmstadt, 1737; but, as I believe, by confusion with the

former. They also mention a German work by Mosheim on the same

subject in 1748. See Biogr. Univ., arts. Mosheim and Servetus.

The analysis of the Christianismi Restitutio given by Allwoerden is

very meagre, but he promises a fuller account which never appeared.

It is a far more extensive scheme of theology than was promulgated

in his first treatises; the most interesting of Servetus’s opinions

being, of course, those which brought him to the stake. Servetus

distinctly held the divinity of Christ. Dialogus secundus modum

generationes Christi docet, quod ipse non sit creatus nec finitæ

potentiæ, sed vere adorandus, verusque Deus. Allwoerden, p. 214. He

probably ascribed this divinity to the presence of the Logos, as a

manifestation of God by that name, but denied its distinct

personality in the sense of an intelligent being different from the

Father. Many others may have said something of the same kind, but

in more cautious language, and respecting more the conventional

phraseology of theologians. Ille crucem, hic diadema. Servetus in

fact was burned, not so much for his heresies, as for some personal

offence he had several years before given to Calvin. The latter

wrote to Bolsec in 1546, Servetus cupit huc venire, sed a me

accersitus. Ego autem nunquam committam, ut fidem meam eatenus

obstrictam habeat. Jam enim constitutum habeo, si veniat, nunquam

pati ut salvus exeat. Allwoerden, p. 43. A similar letter to Farel

differs in some phrases, and especially by the word _vivus_

for _salvus_. The latter was published by Witenbogart, in an

ecclesiastical history written in Dutch. Servetus had, in some

printed letters, charged Calvin with many errors, which seems to

have exasperated the great reformer’s temper, so as to make him

resolve on what he afterwards executed.

The death of Servetus has perhaps as many circumstances of

aggravation as any execution for heresy that ever took place. One

of these, and among the most striking is, that he was not the

subject of Geneva, nor domiciled in the city, nor had the

Christianismi Restitutio been published there, but at Vienne.

According to our laws, and those, I believe, of most civilised

nations, he was not amenable to the tribunals of the republic.

The tenets of Servetus are not easily ascertained in all respects,

nor very interesting to the reader. Some of them were considered

infidel and even pantheistical; but there can be little ground for

such imputations, when we consider the tenor of his writings, and

the fate which he might have escaped by a retractation. It should

be said in justice to Calvin, that he declares himself to have

endeavoured to obtain a commutation of the sentence for a milder

kind of death. Genus mortis conati sumus mutare, sed frustra.

Allwoerden, p. 106. But he has never recovered, in the eyes of

posterity, the blow this gave to his moral reputation, which the

Arminians, as well as Socinians, were always anxious to depreciate.

De Serveto, says Grotius, ideo certi aliquid pronuntiare ausus non

sum, quia causam ejus non bene didici; neque Calvino ejus hosti

capitali credere audeo, cum sciam quam inique et virulente idem

ille Calvinus tractaverit viros multo se meliores, Cassandrum,

Balduinum, Castellionem. Grot. Op. Theolog. iv. 639. Of Servetus

and his opinions he says in another place very fairly, Est in illo

negotio difficillimo facilis error, p. 655.

[1003] Lubienecius, Hist. Beformat Polonicæ. Rees, History of Racovian

Catechism. Bayle, art. Socinus. Mosheim. Dupin. Eichhorn.

28. As this is a literary, rather than an ecclesiastical history, we

shall neither advert to the less learned sectaries, nor speak of

controversies which had chiefly a local importance, such as those of the

English Puritans with the established church. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical

Polity will claim attention in a subsequent chapter.

|Religious intolerance.|

|Castalio.|

29. Thus, in the second period of the Reformation, those ominous

symptoms which had appeared in its earlier stage, disunion, virulence,

bigotry, intolerance, far from yielding to any benignant influence, grew

more inveterate and incurable. Yet some there were, even in this

century, who laid the foundations of a more charitable and rational

indulgence to diversities of judgment, which the principle of the

Reformation itself had in some measure sanctioned. It may be said that

this tolerant spirit rose out of the ashes of Servetus. The right of

civil magistrates to punish heresy with death had been already impugned

by some Protestant theologians, as well as by Erasmus. Luther had

declared against it; and though Zuingle, who had maintained the same

principle as Luther, has been charged with having afterwards approved

the drowning of some Anabaptists in the lake of Zurich, it does not

appear that his language requires such an interpretation. The early

Anabaptists, indeed, having been seditious and unmanageable to the

greatest degree, it is not easy to show that they were put to death

simply on account of their religion. But the execution of Servetus, with

circumstances of so much cruelty, and with no possible pretext but the

error of his opinions, brought home to the minds of serious men the

importance of considering, whether a mere persuasion of the truth of our

own doctrines can justify the infliction of capital punishment on those

who dissent from them; and how far we can consistently reprobate the

persecutions of the church of Rome, while acting so closely after her

example. But it was dangerous to withstand openly the rancour of the

ecclesiastics domineering in the Protestant churches, or the usual

bigotry of the multitude. Melanchthon himself, tolerant by nature, and

knowing enough of the spirit of persecution which disturbed his peace,

was yet unfortunately led by timidity to express, in a letter to Beza,

his approbation of the death of Servetus, though he admits that some saw

it in a different light. Calvin, early in 1554, published a dissertation

to vindicate the magistrates of Geneva in their dealings with this

heretic. But Sebastian Castalio, under the name of Martin Bellius,

ventured to reply in a little tract, entitled “De Hereticis quomodo cum

iis agendum sit variorum sententiæ.” This is a collation of different

passages from the fathers and modern authors in favour of toleration, to

which he prefixed a letter of his own to the Duke of Wirtemburg, more

valuable than the rest of the work, and, though written in the cautious

style required by the times, containing the pith of those arguments

which have ultimately triumphed in almost every part of Europe. The

impossibility of forcing belief, the obscurity and insignificance of

many disputed questions, the sympathy which the fortitude of heretics

produced, and other leading topics are well touched in this very short

tract, for the preface does not exceed twenty-eight pages in 16mo.[1004]

[1004] This little book has been attributed by some to Lælius Socinus;

I think Castalio more probable. Castalio entertained very different

sentiments from those of Beza on some theological points, as

appears by his dialogues on predestination and free will, which are

opposed to the Augustinian system then generally prevalent. He

seems also to have approximated to the Sabellian theories of

Servetus on the Trinity. See p. 144, edit. 1613.

|Answered by Beza.|

30. Beza answered Castalio, whom he perfectly knew under the mask of

Bellius, in a much longer treatise, “De Hæreticis a Civili Magistratu

Puniendis.” It is unnecessary to say, that his tone is that of a man who

is sure of having the civil power on his side. As to capital punishments

for heresy, he acknowledges that he has to contend, not only with such

sceptics as Castalio, but with some pious and learned men.[1005] He

justifies their infliction, however, by the magnitude of the crime, and

by the Mosaic law, as well as by precedents in Jewish and Christian

history. Calvin, he positively asserts, used his influence that the

death of Servetus might not be by fire, for the truth of which he

appeals to the Senate; but though most lenient in general, they had

deemed no less expiation sufficient for such impiety.[1006]

[1005] Non modo cum nostris academicis, sed etiam cum piis alioqui et

eruditis hominibus mihi negotium fore prospicio, p. 208. Bayle has

an excellent remark (Beza, note F.) on this controversy.

[1006] Sed tanta erat ejus hominis rabies, tam execranda tamque

horrenda impietas, ut Senatus alioqui clementissimus solis

flammis expiari posse existimarit, p. 91.

|Aconcio.|

31. A treatise written in a similar spirit to that of Castalio, by

Aconcio, one of the numerous exiles from Italy, “De Stratagematibus

Satanæ, Basle, 1565,” deserves some notice in the history of opinions,

because it is, perhaps, the first wherein the limitation of fundamental

articles of Christianity to a small number is laid down at considerable

length. He instances, among doctrines which he does not reckon

fundamental, those of the real presence and of the Trinity; and, in

general, such as are not either expressed in Scripture, or deducible

from it by unequivocal reasoning.[1007] Aconcio inveighs against capital

punishments for heresy; but his argument, like that of Castalio, is good

against every minor penalty. “If the clergy,” he says, “once get the

upper hand, and carry this point, that, as soon as one opens his mouth,

the executioner shall be called in to cut all knots with his knife, what

will become of the study of Scripture? They will think it very little

worth while to trouble their heads with it; and, if I may presume to say

so, will set up every fancy of their own for truth. O unhappy times! O

wretched posterity! if we abandon the arms, by which alone we can subdue

our adversary.” Aconcio was not improbably an Arian; this may be

surmised, not only because he was an Italian Protestant, and because he

seems to intimate it in some passages of his treatise, but on the

authority of Strype, who mentions him as reputed to be such, while

belonging to a small congregation of refugees in London.[1008] This book

attracted a good deal of notice; it was translated both into French and

English; and, in one language or another, went through several editions.

In the next century it became of much authority with the Arminians of

Holland.

[1007] The account given of this book in the Biographie Universelle is

not accurate; a better will be found in Bayle.

[1008] Strype’s Life of Grindal, p. 42; see also Bayle. Elizabeth gave

him a pension for a book on fortification.

|Minus Celsus Koornhert.|

32. Mino Celso, of Siena, and another of the same class of refugees, in

a long and elaborate argument against persecution, De Hereticis Capitali

Supplicio non Afficiendis, quotes several authorities from writers of

the sixteenth century in his favour.[1009] We should add to these

advocates of toleration the name of Theodore Koornhert, who courageously

stood up in Holland against one of the most encroaching and bigoted

hierarchies of that age. Koornhert, averse in other points to the

authority of Calvin and Beza, seems to have been a precursor of

Arminius; but he is chiefly known by a treatise against capital

punishment for heresy, published in Latin after his death. It is

extremely scarce, and I have met with no author, except Bayle and

Brandt, who speaks of it from direct knowledge.[1010] Thus, at

the end of the sixteenth century, the simple proposition, that men for

holding or declaring heterodox opinions in religion ought not to be

burned alive, or otherwise put to death, was itself little else than a

sort of heterodoxy; and, though many privately must have been persuaded

of its truth, the Protestant churches were as far from acknowledging it

as that of Rome. No one had yet pretended to assert the general right of

religious worship, which, in fact, was rarely or never conceded to the

Romanists in a Protestant country, though the Huguenots shed oceans of

blood to secure the same privilege for themselves.

[1009] Celso was formerly supposed to be a fictitious person, but the

contrary has been established. The book was published in 1584, but

without date of place. He quotes Aconcio frequently. The following

passage seems to refer to Servetus. Superioribus annis, ad hæretici

cujusdam in flammis constantiam, ut ex fide dignis accepi, plures

ex astantibus sanæ doctrinæ viri, non posse id sine Dei spiritu

fieri persuasum habentes, ac propterea hæreticum martyrem esse

plane credentes, ejus hæresin pro veritate complexi, in fide

naufragium fecerunt, fol. 109.

[1010] Bayle, Biogr. Univ. Brandt, Hist. de la Reformation des

Provinces Unies, i. 435. Lipsius had, in his Politica, inveighed

against the toleration of more religions than one in a

commonwealth. Ure, seca, ut membrum potius aliquod, quam totum

corpus intereat. Koornhert answered this, dedicating his answer to

the magistrates of Leyden, who, however, thought fit to publish

that they did not accept the dedication, and requested that those

who read Koornhert would read also the reply of Lipsius, ibid. This

was in 1590, and Koornhert died the same year.

|Decline of Protestantism.|

33. In the concluding part of the century, the Protestant cause, though

not politically unprosperous, but rather manifesting some additional

strength through the great energies put forth by England and Holland,

was less and less victorious in the conflict of opinion. It might,

perhaps, seem to a spectator, that it gained more in France by the

dissolution of the League, and the establishment of a perfect

toleration, sustained by extraordinary securities in the edict of

Nantes, than it lost by the conformity of Henry IV. to the Catholic

religion. But, if this is considered more deeply, the advantage will

appear far greater on the other side; for this precedent, in the case of

a man so conspicuous, would easily serve all who might fancy they had

any public interest to excuse them, from which the transition would not

be long to the care of their own. After this time, accordingly, we find

more numerous conversions of the Huguenots, especially the nobler

classes, than before. They were furnished with a pretext by an unlucky

circumstance. In a public conference, held at Fontainebleau, in 1600,

before Henry IV., from which great expectation had been raised, Du

Plessis Mornay, a man of the noblest character, but, though very learned

as a gentleman, more fitted to maintain his religion in the field than

in the schools, was signally worsted, having been supplied with forged

or impertinent quotations from the fathers, which his antagonist,

Perron, easily exposed. Casaubon, who was present, speaks with shame,

but without reserve, of his defeat; and it was an additional

mortification, that the king pretended ever afterwards to have been more

thoroughly persuaded by this conference, that he had embraced the truth,

as well as gained a crown, by abandoning the Protestant side.[1011]

[1011] Scaliger, it must be observed, praises very highly the book of

Du Plessis Mornay on the mass, and says, that no one after Calvin

and Beza had written so well; though he owns that he would have

done better not to dispute about religion before the king.

Scaligerana Secunda, p. 461. Du Plessis himself, in a publication

after the conference of Fontainebleau, retaliated the charge of

falsified quotations on Perron. I shall quote what Casaubon has

said on the subject in another chapter. See the article Mornay, in

the Biographie Universelle, in which, though the signature seems to

indicate a descendant or relation, the inaccuracy of the quotations

is acknowledged.

|Desertion of Lipsius.|

34. The men of letters had another example, about the same time, in one

of the most distinguished of their fraternity, Justus Lipsius. He left

Leyden on some pretence in 1591 for the Spanish Low Countries, and soon

afterwards embraced the Romish faith. Lest his conversion should be

suspected, Lipsius disgraced a name, great at least in literature, by

writing in favour of the local superstitions of those bigoted provinces.

It is true, however, that some, though the lesser, portion of his

critical works were published after his change of religion.

|Jewell’s Apology.|

35. The controversial divinity poured forth during this period is now

little remembered. In England it may be thought necessary to mention

Jewell’s celebrated apology. This short book is written with spirit; the

style is terse, the arguments pointed, the authorities much to the

purpose; so that its effects are not surprising. This treatise is

written in Latin; his Defence of the Apology, a much more diffuse work,

in English. Upon the merits of the controversy of Jewell with the Jesuit

Harding, which this defence embraces, I am not competent to give any

opinion; in length and learning it far surpasses our earlier polemical

literature.

|English theologians.|

36. Notwithstanding the high reputation which Jewell obtained by his

surprising memory and indefatigable reading, it cannot be said that many

English theologians of the reign of Elizabeth were eminent for that

learning which was required for ecclesiastical controversy. Their

writings are neither numerous nor profound. Some exceptions ought to be

made. Hooker was sufficiently versed in the fathers, and he possessed

also a far more extensive knowledge of the philosophical writers of

antiquity than any others could pretend. The science of morals,

according to Mosheim, or rather of casuistry, which Calvin had left in a

rude and imperfect state, is confessed to have been first reduced into

some kind of form, and explained with some accuracy and precision by

Perkins, whose works, however, were not published before the next

century.[1012] Hugh Broughton was deep in Jewish erudition. Whitaker and

Nowell ought also to be mentioned. It would not be difficult to extract

a few more names from biographical collections, but names so obscure

that we could not easily bring their merit as scholars to any sufficient

test. Sandys’s sermons may be called perhaps good, but certainly not

very distinguished. The most eminently learned man of the queen’s reign

seems to have been Dr. John Rainolds; and a foreign author of the last

century, Colomies, places him among the first six in copiousness of

erudition whom the Protestant churches had produced.[1013] Yet his works

are, I presume, read by nobody, nor am I aware that they are ever

quoted; and Rainolds himself is chiefly known by the anecdote, that

having been educated in the church of Rome, as his brother was in the

Protestant communion, they mutually converted each other in the course

of disputation. Rainolds was on the Puritan side, and took a part in the

Hampton Court conference.

[1012] Mosheim, Chalmers.

[1013] Colomesiana. The other five are Usher, Gataker, Blondel, Petit,

and Bochart. See also Blount, Baillet, and Chalmers, for

testimonies to Rainolds, who died in 1607. Scaliger regrets his

death as a loss to all Protestant churches, as well as that of

England. Wood admits that Rainolds was “a man of infinite reading,

and of a vast memory:” but laments that, after he was chosen

divinity lecturer at Oxford in 1586, the face of the university was

much changed towards Puritanism. Hist. and Antiq. In the Athenæ,

ii. 14, he gives a very high character of Rainolds, on the

authority of Bishop Hall and others, and a long list of his works.

But, as he wanted a biographer, he has become obscure in comparison

with Jewell, who probably was not at all his superior.

|Bellarmin.|

37. As the century drew near its close, the church of Rome brought

forward her most renowned and formidable champion, Bellarmin, a Jesuit,

and afterwards a cardinal. No one had entered the field on that side

with more acuteness, no one had displayed more skill in marshalling the

various arguments of controversial theology, so as to support each other

and serve the grand purpose of church authority. “He does not often,”

says Dupin, “employ reasoning, but relies on the textual authority of

Scripture, of the councils, the fathers, and the consent of the

theologians; seldom quitting his subject, or omitting any passage useful

to his argument; giving the objections fairly, and answering them in few

words. His style is not so elegant as that of writers who have made it

their object, but clear, neat, and brief, without dryness or barbarism.

He knew well the tenets of Protestants, and states them faithfully,

avoiding the invective so common with controversial writers.” It is

nevertheless alleged by his opponents, and will not seem incredible to

those who know what polemical theology has always been, that he attempts

to deceive the reader, and argues only in the interests of his cause.

38. Bellarmin, if we may believe Du Perron, was not unlearned in

Greek;[1014] but it is positively asserted on the other side that he

could hardly read it, and he quotes the writers in that language only

from translations. Nor has his critical judgment been much esteemed. But

his abilities are best testified by Protestant theologians, not only in

their terms of eulogy, but indirectly in the peculiar zeal with which

they chose him as their worthiest adversary. More than half a dozen

books in the next fifty years bear the title of Anti-Bellarminus: it

seemed as if the victory must remain with those who should bear away the

_spolia opima_ of this hostile general. The Catholic writers, on

the other hand, borrow everything, it has been said, from Bellarmin, as

the poets do from Homer.[1015]

[1014] Perroniana.

[1015] Dupin. Bayle. Blount. Eichhorn, vi. part ii. p. 30. Andrès,

xviii. 243. Niceron, vol. xxxi.

|Topics of controversy changed.|

39. In the hands of Bellarmin, and other strenuous advocates of the

church, no point of controversy was neglected. But in a general view we

may justly say that the heat of battle was not in the same part of the

field as before. Luther and his immediate disciples held nothing so

vital as the tenet of justification by faith alone; while the arguments

of Eckius and Cajetan were chiefly designed to maintain the modification

of doctrine on that subject, which had been handed down to them by the

fathers and schoolmen. The differences of the two parties, as to the

mode of corporeal presence in the eucharist, though quite sufficient to

keep them asunder, could hardly bear much controversy, inasmuch as the

primitive writers, to whom it was usual to appeal, have not, as is

universally agreed, drawn these metaphysical distinctions with much

preciseness. But when the Helvetic churches, and those bearing the

general name of Reformed, became, after the middle of the century, as

prominent, to say the least, in theological literature as the Lutheran,

this controversy acquired much greater importance; the persecutions in

England and the Netherlands were principally directed against this

single heresy of denying the real presence, and the disputes of the

press turned so generally upon no other topic.

|It turns on Papal power.|

40. In the last part of the century, through the influence of some

political circumstances, we find a new theme of polemical discussion,

more peculiarly characteristic of the age. Before the appearance of the

early reformers, a republican or aristocratic spirit in ecclesiastical

polity strengthened by the decrees of the councils of Constance and

Basle, by the co-operation, in some instances, of the national church

with the state in redressing, or demanding the redress of abuses, and

certainly also both by the vices of the court of Rome, and its diversion

to local politics, had fully counter-balanced, or even in a great

measure silenced, the bold pretensions of the school of Hildebrand. In

such a lax notion of papal authority, prevalent in Cisalpine Europe, the

Protestant Reformation had found one source of its success. But for this

cause the theory itself lost ground in the Catholic church. At the

council of Trent the aristocratic or episcopal party, though it seemed

to display itself in great strength, comprising the representatives of

the Spanish and Gallican churches, was for the most part foiled in

questions that touched the limitations of papal supremacy. From this

time the latter power became lord of the ascendant. “No Catholic,” says

Schmidt, “dared after the Reformation to say one hundredth part of what

Gerson, Peter d’Ailly, and many others had openly preached.” The same

instinct of which we may observe the workings in the present day, then

also taught the subjects of the church that it was no time to betray

jealousy of their own government when the public enemy was at their

gates.

|This upheld by the Jesuits.|

41. In this resuscitation of the court of Rome, that is, of the papal

authority, in contradistinction to the general doctrine and discipline

of the Catholic church, much, or rather most, was due to the Jesuits.

Obedience, not to that abstraction of theologians, the Catholic church,

a shadow eluding the touch and vanishing into emptiness before the

enquiring eye, but to its living acting centre, the one man, was their

vow, their duty, their function. They maintained, therefore, if not

quite for the first time, yet with little countenance from the great

authorities of the schools, his personal infallibility in matters of

faith. They asserted his superiority to general councils, his

prerogative of dispensing with all the canons of the church, on grounds

of spiritual expediency, whereof he alone could judge. As they grew

bolder, some went on to pronounce even the divine laws subject to this

control; but it cannot be said that a principle which seemed so

paradoxical, though perhaps only a consequence from their assumptions,

was generally received.

|Claim to depose princes.|

|Bull against Elizabeth.|

42. But the most striking consequence of this novel position of the

papacy was the renewal of its claims to temporal power, or, in stricter

language, to pronounce the forfeiture of it by lawful sovereigns for

offences against religion. This pretension of the Holy See, though

certainly not abandoned, had in a considerable degree lain dormant in

that period of comparative weakness which followed the great schism.

Paul III. deprived Henry VIII. of his dominions, as far as a bull could

have that effect; but the deposing power was not generally asserted with

much spirit against the first princes who embraced the Reformation. In

this second part of the century, however, the see of Rome was filled by

men of stern zeal and intrepid ambition, aided by the Jesuits and other

regulars with an energy unknown before, and favoured also by the

political interests of the greatest monarch in Christendom. Two

circumstances of the utmost importance gave them occasion to scour the

rust away from their ancient weapons--the final prostration of the

Romish faith in England by Elizabeth, and the devolution of the French

crown on a Protestant heir. Incensed by the former event, Pius V., the

representative of the most rigid party in the church, issued in 1570 his

famous bull, releasing English Catholics from their allegiance to the

queen, and depriving her of all right and title to the throne. Elizabeth

and her parliament retaliated, by augmented severities of law against

these unfortunate subjects, who had little reason to thank the Jesuits

for announcing maxims of rebellion it was not easy to carry into effect.

Allen and Persons, secure at St. Omer and Douay, proclaimed the sacred

duty of resisting a prince who should break his faith with God and the

people, especially when the supreme governor of the church, whose

function it is to watch over its welfare, and separate the leprous from

the clean, has adjudged the cause.

|And Henry IV.|

|Deposing power owned in Spain.|

43. In the war of the League men became more familiar with this tenet.

Those who fought under that banner did not all acknowledge, or at least

would not in other circumstances have admitted, the pope’s deposing

power; but no faction will reject a false principle that adds strength

to its side. Philip II., though ready enough to treat the See of Rome as

sharply and rudely as the Italians do their saints when refractory,

found it his interest to encourage a doctrine so dangerous to monarchy

when it was directed against Elizabeth and Henry. For this reason we may

read with less surprise in Balthazar Ayala, a layman, a lawyer, and

judge-advocate in the armies of Spain, the most unambiguous and

unlimited assertion of the deposing theory:--“Kings abusing their power

may be variously compelled,” he says, “by the sovereign pontiff to act

justly; for he is the earthly vicegerent of God, from whom he has

received both swords, temporal as well as spiritual, for the peace and

preservation of the Christian commonwealth. Nor can he only control, if

it is for the good of this commonwealth, but even depose kings, as God,

whose delegate he is, deprived Saul of his kingdom, and as pope Zachary

released the Franks from their allegiance to Childeric.”[1016]

[1016] Ayala, De Jure et Officiis Bellicis (Antwerp 1597), p. 32.

|Asserted by Bellarmin.|

44. Bellarmin, the brilliant advocate of whom we have already spoken,

amidst the other disputes of the protestant quarrel, did not hesitate to

sustain the papal authority in its amplest extension. His treatise “De

Summo Pontifice, Capite Totius Militantis Ecclesiæ,” forms a portion,

and by no means the least important, of those entitled “The

Controversies of Bellarmin,” and first appeared separately in 1586. The

pope, he asserts, has no direct temporal authority in the dominions of

Christian princes; he cannot interfere with their merely civil affairs,

unless they are his feudal vassals, but indirectly, that is, for the

sake of some spiritual advantage, all things are submitted to his

disposal. He cannot depose these princes, even for a just cause, as

their immediate superior, unless they are feudally his vassals; but he

can take away and give to others their kingdoms, if the salvation of

souls require it.[1017] We shall observe hereafter how artfully this

papal scheme was combined with the more captivating tenets of popular

sovereignty; each designed for the special case, that of Henry IV.,

whose legitimate rights, established by the constitution of France, it

was expected by this joint effort to overthrow.

[1017] Ranke, ii. 182.

|Methods of theological doctrine.|

45. Two methods of delivering theological doctrine had prevailed in the

Catholic church for many ages. The one, called positive, was dogmatic

rather than argumentative, deducing its tenets from immediate

authorities of scripture or of the fathers, which it interpreted and

explained for its own purpose. It was a received principle, conveniently

for this system of interpretation, that most parts of scripture had a

plurality of meaning; and that the allegorical, or analogical senses

were as much to be sought as the primary and literal. The scholastic

theology, on the other hand, which acquired its name, because it was

frequently heard in the schools of divinity and employed the weapons of

dialectics, was a scheme of inferences drawn, with all the subtlety of

reasoning, from the same fundamental principles of authority, the

scriptures, the fathers, the councils of the church. It must be evident

upon reflection, that where many thousand propositions, or sentences

easily convertible into them, had acquired the rank of indisputable

truths, it was not difficult, with a little ingenuity in the invention

of middle terms, to raise a specious structure of connected syllogisms;

and hence the theology of the schools was a series of inferences from

the acknowledged standards of orthodoxy, as their physics were from

Aristotle, and their metaphysics from a mixture of the two.

|Loci Communes.|

46. The scholastic method, affecting a complete and scientific form, led

to the compilation of theological systems, generally called Loci

Communes. These were very common in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, both in the church of Rome, and, after some time, in the two

protestant communions. But Luther, though at first he bestowed immense

praise upon the Loci Communes of Melanchthon, grew unfavourable to all

systematic theology. His own writings belong to that class we call

positive. They deal with the interpretation of scripture, and the

expansion of its literal meaning. Luther rejected, except in a very

sparing application, the search after allegorical senses. Melanchthon

also, and in general the divines of the Augsburg confession, adhered

chiefly to the principle of single interpretation.[1018]

|In the Protestant,|

The Institutes of Calvin, which belong to the preceding part of the

century, though not entitled Loci Communes, may be reckoned a full

system of deductive theology. Wolfgang Musculus published a treatise

with the usual title. It should be observed that, in the Lutheran

church, the ancient method of scholastic theology revived after the

middle of this century, especially in the divines of Melanchthon’s

party, one of whose characteristics was a greater deference to

ecclesiastical usage and opinion, than the more rigid Lutherans would

endure to pay. The Loci Theologici of Chemnitz and those of Strigelius

were, in their age, of great reputation; the former, by one of the

compilers of the Formula Concordiæ, might be read without risk of

finding those heterodoxies of Melanchthon, which the latter was supposed

to exhibit.[1019]

[1018] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Cultur. vi. part i. p. 175. Mosheim, cent.

16, sect. 3, part ii.

[1019] Eichhorn, 236. Mosheim.

|and Catholic Church.|

47. In the church of Rome the scholastic theology retained an undisputed

respect; it was for the heretical protestants to dread a method of keen

logic, by which their sophistry was cut through. The most remarkable

book of this kind, which falls within the sixteenth century, is the Loci

Theologici of Melchior Canus, published at Salamanca in 1563, three

years after the death of the author, a Dominican, and professor in that

university. It is of course the theology of the reign and country of

Philip II.; but Canus was a man acquainted with history, philosophy, and

ancient literature. Eichhorn, after giving several pages to an abstract

of this volume, pronounces it worthy to be still read. It may be seen by

his analysis how Canus, after the manner of the schoolmen, incorporated

philosophical with theological science. Dupin, whose abstract is rather

different in substance, calls this an excellent work, and written with

all the elegance we could desire.[1020]

[1020] Eichhorn, p. 216-227. Dupin, cent. 16, book 5.

|Catharin.|

48. Catharin, one of the theologians most prominent in the council of

Trent, though he seems not to have incurred the charge of heresy, went

farther from the doctrine of Augustin and Aquinas than was deemed

strictly orthodox in the Catholic church. He framed a theory to

reconcile predestination with the universality of grace, which has since

been known in this country by the name of Baxterianism, and is, I

believe, adopted by many divines at this day. Dupin, however, calls it a

new invention, unknown to the ancient fathers, and never received in the

schools. It has been followed, he adds, by nobody.

|Critical and expository writings.|

49. In the critical and expository department of theological literature,

much was written during this period, forming no small proportion of the

great collection called Critici Sacri. In the Romish church, we may

distinguish the Jesuit Maldonat, whose commentaries on the evangelists

have been highly praised by theologians of the Protestant side; and

among these, we may name Calvin and Beza, who occupy the highest

place,[1021] while below them are ranked Bullinger, Zanchius, Musculus,

Chemnitz, and several more. But I believe that, even in the reviving

appetite for obsolete theology, few of these writers have yet attracted

much attention. A polemical spirit, it is observed by Eichhorn,

penetrated all theological science, not only in dogmatical writings, but

in those of mere interpretation; in catechisms, in sermons, in

ecclesiastical history, we find the author armed for combat, and always

standing in imagination before an enemy.

[1021] Literas sacras, says Scaliger of Calvin, tractavit ut tractandæ

sunt, vere inquam et pure ac simpliciter sine ullis argutationibus

scholasticis, et divino vir præditus ingenio multa divinavit quæ

non nisi a linguæ Hebraicæ peritissimis (cujusmodi tamen ipse non

erat), divinari possunt. Scaligerana Prima. A more detailed, and

apparently a not uncandid statement of Calvin’s character as a

commentator on Scripture, will be found in Simon, Hist. Critique du

Vieux Testament. He sets him, in this respect, much above Luther.

See also Blount, art. Calvin. Scaliger does not esteem much the

learning of Beza, and blames him for affecting to despise Erasmus

as a commentator. I have named Beza in the text as superior to

Zanchius and others, in deference to common reputation, for I am

wholly ignorant of the writings of all.

|Ecclesiastical historians.|

50. A regular and copious history of the church, from the primitive ages

to the Reformation itself, was first given by the Lutherans under the

title, Centuriæ Magdeburgenses, from the name of the city where it was

compiled. The principal among several authors concerned, usually called

Centuriators, was Flacius Illyricus, a most inveterate enemy of

Melanchthon. This work has been more than once reprinted, and is still,

in point of truth and original research, the most considerable

ecclesiastical history on the Protestant side. Mosheim, or his

translator, calls this an immortal work;[1022] and Eichhorn speaks of it

in strong terms of admiration for the boldness of the enterprise, the

laboriousness of the execution, the spirit with which it cleared away a

mass of fable, and placed ecclesiastical history on an authentic basis.

The faults, both those springing from the imperfect knowledge, and from

the prejudices of the compilers, are equally conspicuous.[1023] Nearly

forty years afterwards, between the years 1588 and 1609, the celebrated

Annals of Cardinal Baronius, in twelve volumes, appeared. These were

brought down by him only to the end of the twelfth century; their

continuation by Rainaldus, published from 1646 to 1663, goes down to

1566. It was the object of protestant learning in the seventeenth

century, to repel the authority and impugn the allegations of Baronius.

Those of his own communion, in a more advanced stage of criticism, have

confessed his mistakes; many of them arising from a want of acquaintance

with the Greek language, indispensable, as we should now justly think,

for one who undertook a general history of the church, but not

sufficiently universal in Italy, at the end of the sixteenth century, to

deprive those who did not possess it of a high character for erudition.

Eichhorn speaks far less favourably of Baronius than of the

Centuriators.[1024] But of these two voluminous histories, written with

equal prejudice on opposite sides, an impartial and judicious scholar

has thus given his opinion.

[1022] Cent. 16, sect. 3, part ii. c. 9. This expression is probably in

the original; but it is difficult to quote Maclaine’s translation

with confidence, on account of the liberties which he took with the

text.

[1023] Vol. vi. part ii. p. 149.

[1024] Id. p. 180.

|Le Clerc’s character of them.|

51. “An ecclesiastical historian,” Le Clerc satirically observes, “ought

to adhere inviolably to this maxim, that whatever can be favourable to

heretics is false, and whatever can be said against them is true;

while, on the other hand, all that does honour to the orthodox is

unquestionable, and everything that can do them discredit is surely a

lie. He must suppress too with care, or at least extenuate, as far as

possible, the errors and vices of those whom the orthodox are accustomed

to respect, whether they know anything about them or no; and must

exaggerate, on the contrary, the mistakes and faults of the heterodox to

the utmost of his power. He must remember that any orthodox writer is a

competent witness against a heretic, and is to be trusted implicitly on

his word; while a heretic is never to be believed against the orthodox,

and has honour enough done him, in allowing him to speak against his own

side, or in favour of our own. It is thus that the Centuriators of

Magdeburg, and thus that Cardinal Baronius have written; each of their

works having by this means acquired an immortal glory with its own

party. But it must be owned that they are not the earliest, and that

they have only imitated most of their predecessors in this plan of

writing. For many ages, men had only sought in ecclesiastical antiquity,

not what was really to be found there, but what they conceived ought to

be there for the good of their own party.”[1025]

[1025] Parrhasiana, vol. i. p. 168.

|Deistical writers.|

52. But in the midst of so many dissentients from each other, some

resting on the tranquil bosom of the church, some fighting the long

battle of argument, some catching at gleams of supernatural light, the

very truths of natural and revealed religion were called in question by

a different party. The proofs of this before the middle of the sixteenth

century are chiefly to be derived from Italy. Pomponatius has already

been mentioned, and some other Aristotelian philosophers might be added.

But these, whose scepticism extended to natural theology, belong to the

class of metaphysical writers, whose place is in the next chapter. If we

limit ourselves to those who directed their attacks against

Christianity, it must be presumed that, in an age when the tribunals of

justice visited, even with the punishment of death, the denial of any

fundamental doctrine, few books of an openly irreligious tendency could

appear.[1026] A short pamphlet by one Vallée, cost him his life

in 1574. Some others were clandestinely circulated in France before the

end of the century; and the list of men suspected of infidelity, if we

could trust all private anecdotes of the time, would be by no means

short. Bodin, Montaigne, Charron, have been reckoned among the rejecters

of Christianity. The first I conceive to have acknowledged no revelation

but the Jewish; the second is free, in my opinion, from all reasonable

suspicion of infidelity; the principal work of the third was not

published till 1601. His former treatise, “Des Trois Vérités,” is an

elaborate vindication of the Christian and Catholic religion.[1027]

[1026] The famous Cymbalum Mundi, by Bonaventure des Periers, published

in 1538, which, while it continued extremely scarce, had the

character of an irreligious work, has proved, since it was

reprinted, in 1711, perfectly innocuous, though there are a few

malicious glances at priests and nuns. It has always been the habit

of the literary world, as much as at present, to speak of books by

hearsay. The Cymbalum Mundi is written in Dialogue, somewhat in the

manner of Lucian, and is rather more lively than books of that age

generally were.