HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND OTHER LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Reasons for omitting Mathematics 831
Academy del Cimento 831
Royal Society 832
Academy of Sciences at Paris 832
State of Chemistry 832
Becker 833
Boyle 833
His Metaphysical Works 833
Extract from one of them 833
His Merits in Physics and Chemistry 834
General Character of Boyle 834
Of Hooke and Others 834
Lemery 835
Slow Progress of Zoology 835
Before Ray 835
His Synopsis of Quadrupeds 835
Merits of this Work 835
Redi 836
Swammerdam 836
Lister 836
Comparative Anatomy 836
Botany 837
Jungius 837
Morison 837
Ray 837
Rivinus 838
Tournefort 838
Vegetable Physiology 839
Grew 839
His Anatomy of Plants 840
He discovers the Sexual System 840
Camerarius confirms this 840
Predecessors of Grew 840
Malpighi 840
Early Notions of Geology 840
Burnet’s Theory of Earth 840
Other Geologists 841
Protogæa of Leibnitz 841
Circulation of Blood Established 842
Willis--Vieussens 842
Malpighi 842
Other Anatomists 842
Medical Theories 843
Polyglott of Walton 843
Hottinger 844
Spencer 844
Bochart 844
Pococke 844
D’Herbelot 844
Hyde 844
Maps of the Sansons 844
De Lisle’s Map of the World 845
Voyages and Travels 845
Historians 845
De Solis 845
Memoirs of De Retz 845
Bossuet on Universal History 846
English Historical Works 846
Burnet 846
General Character of 17th Century 846
Conclusion 847
INTRODUCTION
TO THE
LITERATURE OF EUROPE
IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1600 TO 1650.
SECT. I.
_Decline of merely philological, especially Greek, Learning--Casaubon--
Viger--Editions of Greek and Latin Classics--Critical Writings--Latin
Style--Scioppius--Vossius--Successive Periods of modern Latinists._
|Learning of 17th century less philological.|
1. In every period of literary history, if we should listen to the
complaints of contemporary writers, all learning and science have been
verging towards extinction. None remain of the mighty, the race of
giants is no more; the lights that have been extinguished burn in no
other hands; we have fallen on evil days, when letters are no longer
in honour with the world, nor are they cultivated by those who deserve
to be honoured. Such are the lamentations of many throughout the whole
sixteenth century; and with such do Scaliger and Casaubon greet that
which opened upon them. Yet the first part of the seventeenth century
may be reckoned eminently the learned age; rather however in a more
critical and exact erudition with respect to historical fact, than in
what is strictly called philology, as to which we cannot, on the
whole, rank this so high as the preceding period. Neither Italy nor
Germany maintained its reputation, which, as it has been already
mentioned, had begun to wane towards the close of the sixteenth
century. The same causes were b work, the same preference of studies
very foreign to polite letters, metaphysical philosophy, dogmatic
theology, patristic or mediæval ecclesiastical history, or, in some
countries, the physical sciences, which were rapidly gaining ground.
And to these we must add a prevalence of bad taste, even among those
who had some pretensions to be reckoned scholars. Lipsius had set an
example of abandoning the purest models; and his followers had less
sense and taste than himself. They sought obsolete terms from Pacuvius
and Plautus, they affected pointed sentences, and a studied
conciseness of period, which made their style altogether dry and
jejune.[1] The universities, and even the gymnasia or schools of
Germany, grew negligent of all the beauties of language. Latin itself
was acquired in a slovenly manner, by help of modern books, which
spared the pains of acquiring any subsidiary knowledge of antiquity.
And this neglect of the ancient writers in education caused even
eminent scholars to write ill, as we perceive in the supplements of
Freinshemius to Curtius and Livy.[2]
[1] Biogr. Univ. art. Grævius. Eichhorn, iii. 1. 320.
[2] Eichhorn, 326.
|Popularity of Comenius.|
2. A sufficient evidence of this is found in the vast popularity which
the writings of Comenius acquired in Germany. This author, a man of
much industry, some ingenuity, and little judgment, made
himself a colossal reputation by his Orbis Sensualium Pictus, and
still more by his Janua Linguarum Reserata, the latter published in
1631. This contains, in 100 chapters subdivided into 1000 paragraphs,
more than 9300 Latin words, exclusive, of course, of such as recur.
The originality of its method consists in weaving all useful words
into a series of paragraphs, so that they may be learned in a short
time, without the tediousness of a nomenclature. It was also intended
to blend a knowledge of things with one of words.[3] The Orbis
Sensualium Pictus has the same end. This is what has since been so
continually attempted in books of education, that some may be
surprised to hear of its originality. No one, however, before Comenius
seems to have thought of this method. It must, unquestionably, have
appeared to facilitate the early acquirement of knowledge in a very
great degree; and even with reference to language, if a compendious
mode of getting at Latin words were the object, the works of Comenius
would answer the purpose beyond those of any classical author. In a
country where Latin was a living and spoken tongue, as was in some
measure the case with Germany, no great strictness in excluding
barbarous phrases is either practicable or expedient. But, according
to the received principles of philological literature, they are such
books as every teacher would keep out of the hands of his pupils. They
were, nevertheless, reprinted and translated in many countries; and
obtained a general reception, especially in the German empire, and
similarly circumstanced kingdoms.[4]
[3] Biogr. Univ.
[4] Baillet, Critiques Grammairiens, part of the Jugemens des
Sçavans (whom I cite by the number or paragraph, on account of
the different editions), No. 634, quotes Lancelot’s remark on the
Janua Linguarum, that it requires a better memory than most boys
possess to master it, and that commonly the first part is
forgotten before the last is learned. It excites disgust in the
scholar, because he is always in a new country, every chapter
being filled with words he has not seen before; and the
successive parts of the book have no connection with one another.
Morhof, though he would absolutely banish the Janua Linguarum
from all schools where good Latinity is required, seems to think
rather better of the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, as in itself a
happy idea, though the delineations are indifferent, and the
whole not so well arranged as it might be. Polyhistor. lib. ii.
c. 4.
|Decline of Greek learning.|
3. The Greek language, meantime, was thought unnecessary, and few,
comparatively speaking, continued to prosecute its study. In Italy it
can merely be said that there were still professors of it in the
universities; but no one Hellenist distinguishes this century. Most of
those who published editions of Greek authors in Germany, and they
were far from numerous, had been formed in the last age. The decline
was progressive; few scholars remained after 1620, and a long blank
ensued, until Fabricius and Kuster restored the study of Greek near
the end of the century. Even in France and Holland, where many were
abundantly learned, and some, as we shall see, accomplished
philologers, the Greek language seems to have been either less
regarded, or at least less promoted by eminent scholars, than in the
preceding century.[5]
[5] Scaliger, even in 1602, says: Quis hodie nescit Græcè? sed
quis est doctus Græcè? Non dubito esse aliquot, sed paucos, et
quos non novi ne de nomine quidem. Te unum novi et memoriæ avorum
et nostri sæculi Græcè doctissimum, qui unus in Græcis
præstiteris, quæ post renatas apud nos bonas literas omnes
nunquam præstare potuissent. He goes on to speak of himself, as
standing next to Casaubon, and the only competent judge of the
extent of his learning; qui de præstantia doctrinæ tuæ certo
judicare possit, ego aut unicus sum, aut qui cæteros hac in re
magno intervallo vinco. Scal. Epist. 72.
|Casaubon.|
4. Casaubon now stood on the pinnacle of critical renown. His Persius
in 1605, and his Polybius in 1609, were testimonies to his continued
industry in this province.[6] But with this latter edition the
philological labours of Casaubon came to an end. In 1610 he accepted
the invitation of James I., who bestowed upon him, though a layman, a
prebend in the church of Canterbury, and, as some, perhaps
erroneously, have said, another in that of Westminster.[7] He died in
England within four years after, having consumed the intermediate time
in the defence of his royal patron against the Jesuits, and in writing
Animadversions on the Annals of Baronius; works ill-suited to
his peculiar talent, and in the latter of which he is said to have had
but little success. He laments, in his epistles, the want of leisure
for completing his labours on Polybius; the king had no taste but for
theology, and he found no library in which he could pursue his
studies.[8] “I gave up,” he says, “at last, with great sorrow, my
commentary on Polybius, to which I had devoted so much time, but the
good king must be obeyed.”[9] Casaubon was the last of the great
scholars of the sixteenth century. Joseph Scaliger, who, especially in
his recorded conversation, was very sparing of praise, says expressly,
“Casaubon is the most learned man now living.” It is not impossible
that he meant to except himself; which would by no means be unjust, if
we take in the whole range of erudition; but in the exactly critical
knowledge of the Greek language, Casaubon had not even a rival in
Scaliger.
[6] The translation that Casaubon has here given of Polybius has
generally passed for excellent, though some have thought him a
better scholar in Greek than in Latin, and consequently not
always able to render the sense as well as he conceived it.
Baillet, n. 902. Schweighauser praises the annotations, but not
without criticism, for which a later editor generally finds room
in an earlier. Reiske, he says, had pointed out many errors.
[7] The latter is contradicted by Beloe, Anecdotes of Literature,
vol. v., p. 126, on the authority of Le Neve’s Fasti Ecclesiæ
Anglicanæ.
[8] Jacent curæ Polybianæ, et fortasse æternum jacebunt, neque
enim satis commodus ad illa studia est locus. Epist. 705. Plura
adderem, nisi omni librorum præsidio meorum deficerer. Quare
etiam de commentariis Polybianis noli meminisse, quando rationes
priorum meorum studiorum hoc iter mirificè conturbavit, ut vix
sine suspirio ejus incepti possim meminisse, quod tot vigiliis
mihi constitit. Sed neque adest mea bibliotheca, neque ea studia
multum sunt ad gustum illius, cujus solius, quamdiu hic sum
futurus, habenda mihi ratio. Ep. 704 (Feb. 1611). Rex optimus
atque ευσεβεστατος [eusebestatos] rebus theologicis ita
delectatur, ut aliis curis literariis non multum operæ impendat.
Ep. 872. Ego quid hic agam, si cupis scire, hoc unum respondebo,
omnia priora studia mea funditus interiisse. Nam maximus rex et
liberalissimus unico genere literarum sic capitur, ut suum et
suorum ingenia in illo detineat. Ep. 753.
[9] Decessi gemens a Polybiano commentario, quem tot laboribus
concinnaveram; sed regi optimo parendum erat. Ep. 854. Feb. 1613.
|Viger de Idiotismis.|
5. A long period ensued, during which no very considerable progress
was made in Greek literature. Few books occur before the year 1650
which have obtained a durable reputation. The best known, and, as I
conceive, by far the best of a grammatical nature, is that of Viger de
Idiotismis præcipuis Græcæ Linguæ, which Hoogeveen and Zeunius
successively enlarged in the last century. Viger was a Jesuit of
Rouen, and the first edition was in 1632. It contains, even as it came
from the author, many valuable criticisms, and its usefulness to a
Greek scholar is acknowledged. But, in order to determine the place of
Viger among grammarians, we should ascertain by comparison with
preceding works, especially the Thesaurus of Stephens, for how much he
is indebted to their labours. He would probably, after all deductions,
appear to merit great praise. His arrangement is more clear, and his
knowledge of syntax more comprehensive, than that of Caninius or any
other earlier writer; but his notions are not unfrequently imperfect
or erroneous, as the succeeding editors have pointed out. In common
with many of the older grammarians, he fancied a difference of sense
between the two aorists, wherein even Zeunius has followed him.[10]
[10] An earlier treatise on Greek particles by Devarius, a Greek
of the Ionian Islands, might have been mentioned in the last
volume. It was republished by Reusmann, who calls Devarius, homo
olim haud ignobilis, at hodie pæne neglectus. He is thought too
subtle in grammar, but seems to have been an excellent scholar. I
do not perceive that Viger has borrowed from him.
|Weller’s Greek grammar.|
6. In a much lower rank, we may perhaps next place Weller, author of a
Greek grammar, published in 1638, of which its later editor, Fischer,
says that it has always stood in high repute as a school-book, and
been frequently reprinted; meaning, doubtless, in Germany. There is
nothing striking in Weller’s grammar; it may deserve praise for
clearness and brevity; but, in Vergara, Caninius, and Sylburgius,
there is much more instruction for those who are not merely
schoolboys. What is most remarkable is, that Weller claims as his own
the reduction of the declensions to three, and of the conjugations to
one; which, as has been seen in a former chapter,[11] is found in the
grammar of Sylburgius, and is probably due to Ramus. This is rather a
piece of effrontery, as he could scarcely have lighted by coincidence
on both these innovations. Weller has given no syntax; what is added
in Fischer’s edition is by Lambert Bos.
[11] Page 239.
|Labbe and others.|
|Salmasius de Lingua Hellenistica.|
7. Philip Labbe, a French Jesuit, was a laborious compiler, among
whose numerous works not a few relate to the grammar of the Greek
language. He had, says Niceron, a wonderful talent in multiplying
title pages; we have fifteen or sixteen grammatical treatises from
him, which might have been comprised in two or three ordinary volumes.
Labbe’s Regulæ Accentuum, published in 1635, was once, I believe, of
some repute; but he has little or nothing of his own.[12] The Greek
grammars published in this age by Alexander Scot and others
are ill-digested, according to Lancelot, without order or principle,
and full of useless and perplexing things;[13] and that of Vossius, in
1642, which is only an improved edition of that of Clenardus, appears
to contain little which is not taken from others.[14] Erasmus Schmidt
is said by Eichhorn to be author of a valuable work on Greek
dialects;[15] George Pasor is better known by his writings on the
Hellenistic dialect, or that of the Septuagint and New Testament.
Salmasius, in his Commentarius de Hellenistica, (Leyden, 1643), has
gone very largely into this subject. This, he says, is a question
lately agitated, whether there be a peculiar dialect of the Greek
Scriptures; for, in the last age, the very name of Hellenistic was
unknown to scholars. It is not above half a century old. It was
supposed to be a Hebrew idiom in Greek words; which, as he argues
elaborately and with great learning, is not sufficient to constitute a
distinct dialect, none of the ancients having ever mentioned one by
this name. This is evidently much of a verbal dispute; since no one
would apply the word to the scriptural Greek, in the same sense that
he does to the Doric and Attic. Salmasius lays down two essential
characteristics of a dialect: one, that it should be spoken by people
differing in locality; another, that it should be distinguishable by
single words, not merely by idiom. A profusion of learning is
scattered all round, but not pedantically or impertinently; and this
seems a very useful book in Greek or Latin philology. He may perhaps
be thought to underrate the peculiarities of language in the Old and
New Testament, as if they were merely such as passed current among the
contemporary Greeks. The second part of this Commentary relates to the
Greek dialects generally, without reference to the Hellenistic. He
denies the name to what is usually called the common dialect, spoken,
or at least written, by the Greeks in general after the time of
Alexander. This also is of course a question of words; perhaps
Salmasius used a more convenient phraseology than what is often met
with in grammarians.
[12] Niceron, vol. xxv.
[13] Baillet, n. 706.
[14] Id. n. 711.
[15] Geschichte der Cultur, iii. 325.
|Greek editions--Savile’s Chrysostom.|
8. Editions of Greek classics are not so numerous as in the former
period. The Pindar of Erasmus Schmidt, in 1614, and the Aristotle
of Duval, in 1619, may be mentioned: the latter is still in request
as a convenient and complete edition. Meursius was reckoned a good
critical scholar, but his works as an editor are not very
important. The chief monument of his philological erudition is the
Lexicon Græco-Barbarum, a glossary of the Greek of the lower
empire. But no edition of a Greek author published in the first
part of the seventeenth century is superior, at least in
magnificence, to that of Chrysostom by Sir Henry Savile. This came
forth, in 1612, from a press established at Eton by himself,
provost of that college. He had procured types and pressmen in
Holland, and three years had been employed in printing the eight
volumes of this great work; one, which both in splendour of
execution, and in the erudition displayed in it by Savile, who had
collected several manuscripts of Chrysostom, leaves immeasurably
behind it every earlier production of the English press. The
expense, which is said to have been eight thousand pounds, was
wholly defrayed by himself, and the tardy sale of so voluminous a
work could not have reimbursed the cost.[16] Another edition, in
fact, by a Jesuit, Fronto Ducæus (Fronton le Duc), was published at
Paris within two years afterwards, having the advantage of a Latin
translation, which Savile had imprudently waived. It has even been
imputed to Ducæus, that, having procured the sheets of Savile’s
edition from the pressmen while it was under their hands, he
printed his own without alteration. But this seems an apocryphal
story.[17] Savile had the assistance, in revising the text,
of the most learned coadjutors he could find in England.
[16] Beloe’s Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v., p. 103. The copies
sold for 9_l_. each; a sum equal to nearly 30_l_. at present, and
from the relative wealth of the country, to considerably more.
What wonder that the sale was slow? Fuller, however, tells us,
that when he wrote, almost half a century afterwards, the book
was become scarce. Chrysostomus, says Casaubon, a Savilio editur
privata impensa, animo regio. Ep. 738 (apud Beloe). The principal
assistants of Savile were, Matthew Bust, Thomas Allen, and
especially Richard Montagu, afterwards celebrated in our
ecclesiastical history as bishop of Chichester, who is said to
have corrected the text before it went to the press. As this is
the first work of learning, on a great scale, published in
England, it deserves the particular commemoration of those to
whom we owe it.
[17] It is told by Fuller, and I do not know that it has any
independent confirmation. Savile himself says of Fronto Ducæus,
“Vir doctissimus, et cui Chrysostomus noster plurimum debet.”
Fuller, it may be observed, says that the Parisian edition
followed Savile’s “in a few months,” whereas the time was two
years; and, as Brunet (Manuel du Libraire) justly observes, there
is no apparent necessity to suppose an unfair communication of
the sheets, even if the text should be proved to be copied.
|Greek learning in England.|
9. A very few more Greek books were printed at Eton soon afterwards;
and though that press soon ceased, some editions of Greek authors,
generally for schools, appeared in England before 1650. One of these,
the Poetæ Minores of Winterton, is best known, and has sometimes been
reprinted; it does little credit to its original editor, the text
being exceedingly corrupt, and the notes very trifling. The Greek
language, however, was now much studied;[18] the age of James and
Charles was truly learned; our writers are prodigal of an abundant
erudition, which embraces a far wider range of authors than are now
read; the philosophers of every class, the poets, the historians and
orators of Greece, to whom few comparatively had paid regard in the
days of Elizabeth, seem as familiar to the miscellaneous writers of
her next successors, as the fathers of the church are to the
theologians. A few, like Jeremy Taylor, are equally copious in their
libations from both streams. But though thus deeply read in ancient
learning, our old scholars were not very critical in philology.
[18] It might appear, at first sight, that Casaubon intended to
send his son Meric to Holland, under the care of Heinsius,
because he could not get a good classical education in England.
Cupio in Græcis, Latinis, et Hebraicis literis ipsum serio
exerceri. Hoc in Anglia posse fieri sperare non possumus: nam hic
locupletissima sunt collegia, sed quorum ratio toto genere
diversa est ab institutis omnium aliorum collegiorum. Ep. 962
(1614). But possibly he meant that, on account of his son’s
foreign birth, he could not be admitted on the foundation of
English colleges, though the words do not clearly express this.
At the king’s command, however, Meric was sent to Oxford. One of
Casaubon’s sons went to Eton school; literis dat operam in
gymnasio Etoniensi. Ep. 737 (apud Beloe’s Anecdotes; I had
overlooked the passage). Theological learning, in the reign of
James, opposed polite letters and philology, Est in Anglia, says
Casaubon, theologorum ingens copia; eo enim fere omnes studia sua
referunt. Ep. 762. Venio ex Anglia (Grotius writes in 1613),
literarum ibi tenuis est merces; theologi regnant, leguleii rem
faciunt; unus ferme Casaubonus habet fortunam satis faventem,
sed, ut ipse judicat, minus certam. Ne huic quidem locus fuisset
in Anglia ut literatori, theologum induere debuit. Epist. Grot.
p. 751.
|Latin editions--Torrentius.|
10. In Latin criticism, the pretensions of the seventeenth century are
far more considerable than in Greek. The first remarkable edition,
however, that of Horace by Torrentius, a Belgian ecclesiastic, though
it appeared in 1602, being posthumous, belongs strictly to the
preceding age. It has been said that Dacier borrowed much for his own
notes from this editor; but Horace was so profusely illustrated in the
sixteenth century, that little has been left for later critics, except
to tamper, as they have largely done, with his text. This period is
not generally conspicuous for editions of Latin authors; but some
names of high repute in grammatical and critical lore belong to it.
|Gruter.|
11. Gruter, a native of Antwerp, who became a professor in several
German universities, and finally in that of Heidelberg, might have
been mentioned in our history of the sixteenth century, before the
expiration of which some of his critical labours had been
accomplished. Many more belong to the first twenty years of the
present. No more diligent and indefatigable critic ever toiled in that
quarry. His Suspiciones, an early work, in which he has explained and
amended miscellaneous passages, his annotations on the Senecas, on
Martial, on Statius, on the Roman historians, as well as another more
celebrated compilation which we shall have soon to mention, bear
witness to his immense industry. In Greek he did comparatively but
little; yet he is counted among good scholars in that language. All
others of his time, it has been said, appear mere drones in comparison
with him.[19] Scaliger indeed, though on intimate terms with Gruter,
in one of his usual fits of spleen, charges him with a tasteless
indifference to the real merit of the writers whom he explained, one
being as good as another for his purpose, which was only to produce a
book.[20] In this art Gruter was so perfect, that he never failed to
publish one every year, and sometimes every month.[21] His eulogists
have given him credit for acuteness and judgment, and even for
elegance and an agreeable variety; but he seems not to have preserved
much repute except for his laborious erudition.
[19] Baillet, n. 483. Bayle. Niceron, vol. ix.
[20] Non curat utrum charta sit cacata, modo libros multos
excudat. Scalig. secunda.
[21] Bayle, note i.
|Heinsius.|
12. Daniel Heinsius, conspicuous as secretary of the synod of Dort,
and a Latin poet of distinguished name, was also among the first
philologers of his age. Many editions of Greek and Latin writers, of
annotations upon them, Theocritus, Hesiod, Maximus Tyrius, Aristotle,
Horace, Terence, Silius, Ovid, attest his critical skill. He
is praised for a judicious reserve in criticism, avoiding the trifles
by which many scholars had wearied their readers, and attending only
to what really demanded the aid of a critic, as being corrupt or
obscure. His learning was very extensive and profound, so that in the
panegyrical tone of the times, he is set above all the living, and
almost above all the dead.[22]
[22] Baillet, n. 517.
|Grotius.|
13. Grotius contributed much to ancient philology. His editions of
Aratus, Stobæus, the fragments of the lost Greek dramas, Lucan and
Tacitus are but a part of those which he published. In the power of
illustrating a writer by parallel or resembling passages from others,
however remote, his taste and fondness for poetry, as much as his vast
erudition, have made him remarkable. In mere critical skill, he was
not quite so great a master of the Greek as of the Latin language; nor
was he equal to restoring the text of the dramatic poets.
|Rutgersius, Reinesius, Barthius.|
14. The Variæ Lectiones of Rutgersius, in 1618, whose premature death
cut off a brilliant promise of erudition, are in six books, almost
entirely devoted to emendation of the text, in such a miscellaneous
and desultory series of criticisms, as the example of Turnebus and
other scholars had rendered usual.[23] Reinesius, a Saxon physician,
in 1640 put forth a book with the same title, a thick volume of about
700 pages, of multifarious learning, chiefly, but not exclusively,
classical. He is more interpretative, and less attentive to restore
corrupted texts than Rutgersius.[24] The Adversaria of Gaspar Barthius
are better known. This work is in 60 books, and extends to about 1500
pages in folio. It is exactly like those of Turnebus and Muretus, an
immense repertory of unconnected criticisms and other miscellaneous
erudition. The chapters exceed in number the pages, and each chapter
contains several articles. There is, however, more connection,
alphabetical or otherwise, than in Turnebus; and they are less
exclusively classical, many relating to mediæval and modern writers.
The sixtieth book is a commentary on a part of Augustin de Civitate
Dei. It is difficult to give a more precise notion of Barthius; he is
more _æsthetic_ than Turnebus, but less so than Muretus; he
explains and corrects fewer intricate texts than the former, but deals
more in parallel passages and excursive illustrations.[25] Though
Greek appears more than in Turnebus, by far the greater part of
Barthius’s Adversaria relates to Latin, in the proportion of at least
fifteen to one. A few small poems are printed from manuscripts for the
first time. Barthius, according to Morhof, though he sometimes
explains authors very well, is apt to be rash in his alterations,
hasty in his judgments, and has too much useless and frivolous matter.
Bayle is not more favourable. Barthius published an edition of
Statius, and another of Claudian.
[23] “This work,” says Niceron (vol. xxxii.), “is in esteem: the
style is neat and polite, the thoughts are just and refined; it
has no more quotations than the subject requires.”
[24] Bayle observes of the writings of Reinesius in general, that
“good judges of literature have no sooner read some pages, but
they place him above those philologers who have only a good
memory, and rank him with critics who go beyond their reading and
know more than books have taught them. The penetration of their
understanding makes them draw consequences, and form conjectures,
which lead them to discover hidden treasures. Reinesius was one
of these, and made it his chief business to find out what others
had not said.”
[25] The following are the heads of the fourth chapter of the
first book, which may serve as a specimen of the Adversaria: Ad
Victoris Uticensis librum primum notæ et emendationes. Limites.
Collimitia. Quantitas. H. Stephanus notatur. Impendere. Totum.
Omnimodè. Dextrales. Asta. Francisii Balduini audacia castigatur.
Tormenta antiqua. Liguamen Arx capitis. Memoriæ. Cruciari.
Balduinus denuo aliquoties notatur. It is true that all this
farrago arises out of one passage in Victor of Utica, and
Barthius is far from being so desultory as Turnebus: but 3000
columns of such notes make but a dictionary without the help of
the alphabet. Barthius tells us himself that he had finished two
other volumes of Adversaria, besides correcting the first. See
the passage in Bayle, note K. But he does not stand on very high
ground as a critic, on account of the rapidity with which he
wrote, and, for the same reason, has sometimes contradicted
himself. Bayle. Baillet, n. 528. Niceron, vol. vii. Morhof, lib.
v. 1. 10.
|Other critics--English.|
15. Rigault, or Rigaltius, Petit, Thysius, and several more, do honour
to France and the Low countries during this period. Spain, though not
strong in classical philology, produced Ramiresius de Prado, whose
Πεντηκονταρχος [Pentêkontarchos], sive quinquaginta militum ductor,
1612, is but a book of criticism with a quaint title.[26] In Latin
Literature we can hardly say that England made herself more
conspicuous than in Greek. The notes of John Bond on Horace,
published in 1606, are properly a work of the age of Elizabeth: the
author was long a schoolmaster in that reign. These notes are only
little marginal scholia for the use of boys of no great attainments;
and in almost every instance, I believe, taken from Lambinus. This
edition of Horace, though Antony Wood calls the author a most noted
critic and grammarian, has only the merit of giving the observations
of another concisely and perspicuously. Thomas Farnaby is called by
Baillet one of the best scholiasts, who says hardly anything useless,
and is very concise.[27] He has left notes on several of the Latin
poets. It is possible that the notes are compiled, like those of Bond,
from the foreign critics. Farnaby also was a schoolmaster, and
schoolmasters do not write for the learned. He has however been
acknowledged on the continent for a diligent and learned man. Wood
says he was “the chief grammarian, rhetorician, poet, Latinist, and
Grecian of his time; and his school was so much frequented, that more
churchmen and statesmen issued thence than from any school taught by
one man in England.”[28]
[26] This has been ascribed by some to his master Sanctius,
author of the Minerva, Ramirez himself having been thought
unequal to such remarks as we find in it. Baillet, n. 527.
[27] N. 521.
[28] Athenæ Oxonienses, vol. iii.
|Salmasius.|
16. But the greatest in this province of literature was Claude
Saumaise, best known in the Latin form Salmasius, whom the general
suffrage of his compeers placed at their head. An incredible
erudition, so that it was said, what Salmasius did not know, was
beyond the bounds of knowledge, a memory such as none but those great
scholars of former times seem to have possessed, a life passed,
naturally enough, in solitary labour, were sufficient to establish his
fame among the learned. His intellectual strength has been more
questioned; he wrote, it has been alleged, on many subjects that he
did not well understand, and some have reduced his merit to that of a
grammatical critic, without altogether rating this so highly as the
world has done.[29] Salmasius was very proud, self-confident,
disdainful, and has consequently fallen into many errors, and even
contradictions, through precipitancy. In his controversy with Milton,
for which he was little fitted, he is rather feeble, and glad to
escape from the severity of his antagonist by a defence of his own
Latinity.[30] The works of Salmasius are numerous, and on very
miscellaneous subjects; among the philological, his Annotations on the
Historiæ Augustæ Scriptores seem to deserve mention. But the most
remarkable, besides the Commentary on the Hellenistic Dialect, of
which an account has been given, is the Plinianæ Exercitationes,
published in 1629. These remarks, nominally on Pliny, are, in the
first instance, on Solinus. Salmasius tells us that he had spent much
time on Pliny; but finding it beyond the powers of one man to write a
commentary on the whole Natural History of that author, he had chosen
Solinus, who is a mere compiler from Pliny, and contains nothing from
any other source. The Plinianæ Exercitationes is a mass of learning on
the geography and natural history of Pliny in more than 900 pages,
following the text of the Polyhistor of Solinus.[31]
[29] Baillet, n. 511, is excessively severe on Salmasius; but the
homage due to his learning by such an age as that in which he
lived cannot be extenuated by the censure of a man like Baillet,
of extensive, but rather superficial attainments, and open to
much prejudice.
[30] Milton began the attack by objecting to the use of _persona_
for an individual man; but in this mistaken criticism uttered
himself the solecism _vapulandum_. See Johnson’s Lives of the
Poets. This expression had previously been noticed by Vavasseur.
[31] Nemo adeo ut propriam, suumque veluti regnum, sibi criticen
vindicatum ivit, ac Claudius Salmasius, qui, quemadmodum nihil
unquam scripsit, in quo non insignia multa artis criticæ vestigia
deprehendas, ita imprimis, ut auctores cum notis et
castigationibus absolutissimis editos taceamus, vasto illo
Plinianarum Exercitationum opere, quantum in eo eruditionis
genere valeret demonstratum dedit. Morhof. lib. v. c. 1. § 12.
The Jesuits, Petavius and Harduin, who did not cordially praise
any Protestant, charged this book with passing over real
difficulties, while a mass of heterogeneous matter was foisted
in. Le Clerc (or La Croze) vindicates Salmasius against some
censures of Harduin in Bibl. Univ. vol. iv.
|Good writers of Latin.|
17. It had been the desire of those who aspired to reputation for
taste and eloquence to write well in Latin, the sole language, on this
side of the Alps and Pyrenees, to which the capacity of choice and
polished expression was conceded. But when the French tongue was more
cultivated and had a criticism of its own, this became the natural
instrument of polite writers in France, and the Latin fell to the
merely learned who neglected its beauties. In England it had never
been much studied for the purposes of style; and though neither in
Germany nor the Low Countries it was very customary to employ the
native language, the current Latin of literature was always careless
and often barbarous. Even in Italy the number of good writers in that
language was now very scanty. Two deserve to be commemorated
with praise, both historians of the same period. The History and
Annals of Grotius, in which he seems to have emulated, with more
discretion than some others, the nervous brevity of Tacitus, though
sometimes not free from a certain hardness and want of flow, nor
equal, consequently, in elegance to some productions of the sixteenth
century, may be deemed a monument of vigorous and impressive language.
The Decades of Famianus Strada, a Roman Jesuit, contain a history of
the Flemish war, not written certainly in imitation of Tacitus, whom
the author depreciated, but with more classical spirit than we usually
find in that age. Scarcely any Latin, however, of this period is equal
to that of Barclay in the Argenis and Euphormio. His style, though
rather diffuse, and more florid than that of the Augustan age, is
perhaps better suited to his subjects, and reminds us of Petronius
Arbiter, who was probably his model.
|Scioppius.|
|His Philosophical Grammar.|
18. Of the grammatical critics, whose attention was solely turned to
the purity of Latin style, two are conspicuous, Gaspar Scioppius and
Gerard Vossius. The first, one of those restless and angry spirits
whose hand is against all the world, lived a long life of controversy
and satire. His productions, as enumerated by Niceron, mostly
anonymous, are about one hundred; twenty-seven of which, according to
another list, are grammatical.[32] The Protestants, whom he had
abandoned, and the Jesuits whom he would not join, are equally the
objects of his anger. In literature, he is celebrated for the
bitterness of his attacks on Cicero, whom he spared as little as he
did his own contemporaries. But Scioppius was an admirable master of
the Latin language. All that is remembered of his multifarious
publications relates to this. We owe to him a much improved edition of
the Minerva of Sanctius. His own Grammatica Philosophica, (Milan,
1628,) notwithstanding its title, has no pretentions to be called
anything more than an ordinary Latin grammar. In this I observed
nothing remarkable but that he denies the gerund and supine to be
parts of the verb, considering the first as passive participles, and
the second as nouns substantive; a theory which seems erroneous.
[32] Niceron, vol. xxxv. Biog. Univ.
|His Infamia Famiani.|
19. The Infamia Famiani of Scioppius was written against Famianus
Strada, whom he hated both as a Jesuit, and as one celebrated for the
beauty of his style. This book serves to show how far those who wrote
with some eloquence, as Strada certainly did, fell short of classical
purity. The faults pointed out are often very obvious to those who
have used good dictionaries. Scioppius is however so fastidious as to
reject words employed by Seneca, Tacitus, and even Phædrus, as of the
silver age; and sometimes probably is wrong in his dogmatic assertion
of a negative, that no good authority can be found.
|Judicium de Stylo Historico.|
20. But his most considerable work is one called Judicium de Stylo
Historico, subjoined to the last, and published after his death, in
1650. This treatise consists chiefly of attacks on the Latin style of
Thuanus, Lipsius, Casaubon, and other recent authors; but in the
course of it we find the remarks of a subtle and severe observer on
the ancients themselves. The _silver_ age he dates from the
latter years of Augustus, placing even Ovid within it. The
_brazen_ he carries up to Vespasian. In the silver period he
finds many single words as well as phrases not agreeable to the usage
of more ancient authors. As to the moderns the Transalpine writers, he
says, speaking as an Italian, are always deficient in purity; they
mingle the phraseology of different ages as preposterously as if they
were to write Greek in a confusion of dialects; they affect obscurity,
a broken structure of periods, a studied use of equivocal terms. This
is particularly perceived in the school of Lipsius, whose own faults,
however, are redeemed by many beauties even of style.[33] The
Italians, on the contrary, he proceeds to say, read nothing but what
is worthy of imitation, and shun every expression that can impair the
clearness and purity of a sentence. Yet even in Manutius and in the
Jesuit Maffei, he finds instances of barbarism, much more in the
French and German scholars of the sixteenth age; expressing contempt
upon this account for his old enemy, Joseph Scaliger. Thuanus, he
says, is full of modern idioms; a crime not quite unpardonable, when
we remember the immensity of his labour, and the greater importance of
other objects of it that he had in view.
[33] Transalpinis hominibus ex quotidiano Latini sermonis inter
ipsos usu, multa sive barbaræ, sive plebeiæ ac deterioris notæ,
sic adhærescere solent, ut postea cum stylum arripuere, de
Latinitate eorum dubitare nequaquam iis in mentem veniat. Inde
fit ut scripta eorum plerumque minus puritatis habeant, quamvis
gratia et venustas in iis minime desideretur. Nam hæc natura duce
melius fiebant, quam arte aut studio. Accedit alia causa cur non
æquè pura sit multorum Transalpinorum oratio, quod nullo ætatis
discrimine ac delectu in autorum lectione versantur, et ex omnium
commixtione varium quoddam ac multiforme pro suo quisque ingenio
dicendi genus effingunt, contempto hoc Fabii monito: “Diu non
nisi optimus quisque et qui credentem sibi minime fallat,
legendus est, sed diligenter ac pæne ad scribendi solicitudinem;
nec per partes modo scrutanda omnia, sed perlectus liber utique
ex integro resumendus.” Itaque genus illud corruptæ orationis,
seu κακοζηλιας [kakozêlias], effugere nequeunt, quod κοινισμον
[koinismon] vocant, quæ est quædam mista ex variarum linguarum
ratione oratio, ut si Atticis Dorica, Ionica, Æolica etiam dicta
confundas; cui simile est si quis sublimia humilibus, vetera
novis, poetica vulgaribus, Sallustiana Tullianis, æneæ et ferreæ
ætatis vocabula aureis et argenteis misceat, qui Lipsio
deductisque ab eo viris, solennis et jam olim familiaris, est
morbus. In quibus hoc amplius, verba maxime impropria,
comprehensionem obscuram, compositionem fractam, aut in frustula
concisam, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerilem captationem
passim animadvertas. Magnis tamen, non nego, virtutibus vitia sua
Lipsius redimit, imprimis acumine, venere, salibus (ut excellens
viri ingenium ferebat) tum plurimis lectissimis verbis
loquendique modis, ex quibus non tam facultatem bene scribendi,
ejusque, quod melius est, intellectum ei deesse, quam voluntatem,
quo minus rectiora malit, ambitiuscule, plaususque popularis
studio præpediri intelligas. Italorum longè dispar ratio. Primum
enim non nisi optimum legere et ad imitandum sibi proponere
solent; quod judicio quo cæteras nationes omnium consensu
superant, imprimis est consentaneum. Deinde nihil non faciunt, ut
evitent omnia, unde aliquid injucundæ et contaminandæ orationis
periculi ostenditur. Latinè igitur nunquam loquuntur, quod fieri
vix posse persuasum habeant, quin quotidianus ejus linguæ usus ad
instar torrentis lutulentus fluat, et cujusque modi verborum
sordes secum rapiat, quæ postea quodam familiaritatis jure sic se
scribentibus ingerant, ut etiam diligentissimos fallant, et haud
dubie pro Latinis habeantur. Hoc eorum consilium cum non
intelligant Transalpini, id eorum inscitiæ perperam assignant.
Sic rectè Paulo Manutio usu venit, ut quoniam vix tria verba
Latina in familiari sermone proferre poterat, eam Germani
complures, qui loquentem audituri ad eum venerunt, vehementer præ
se contemnerent. Huic tamen nemo qui sanus sit ad puritatis et
elegantiæ Latinæ summam quicquid defuisse dixerit, p. 65.
|Gerard Vossius de Vitiis sermonis.|
21. Gerard Vossius, a far greater name in general literature than
Scioppius, contributed more essentially to these grammatical rules;
and to him, perhaps, rather than to any other one man, we may refer
the establishment of as much correctness of writing as is attainable
in a dead language. Besides several works on rhetoric and poetry,
which, as those topics were usually treated in ages of more erudition
than taste or philosophy, resolved themselves into philological
disquisitions, looking only to the language of the ancient writers, we
have several more strictly within that province. The long use of Latin
in writings on modern subjects, before the classical authors had been
studied, had brought in a host of barbarisms, that even yet were not
expelled. His treatise De Vitiis Sermonis et Glossematis
Latino-barbaris is in nine books; four published in 1645, during the
author’s life; five in 1685. The former are by far the most copious.
It is a very large collection of words in use among modern writers,
for which there is no adequate authority. Of these many are plainly
barbarous, and taken from the writers of the middle ages, or at best
from those of the fifth and sixth centuries. Few of such would be used
by any tolerable scholar. He includes some which, though in themselves
good, have a wrong sense given to them. Words however occur,
concerning which one might be ignorant without discredit, especially
before the publication of this treatise, which has been the means of
correcting the ordinary dictionaries.
22. In the five posthumous books, which may be mentioned in this
place, having probably been written before 1650, we find chiefly what
the author had forgotten to notice in the former, or had since
observed. But the most valuable part relates to the “falso suspecta,”
which fastidious critics have unreasonably rejected, generally because
they do not appear in the Augustan writers. Those whom he calls
“Nizoliani verius quam Ciceroniani,” disapproved of all words not
found in Cicero.[34] It is curious to perceive, as Vossius shows us,
how many apparently obvious words do not occur in Cicero; yet it would
be mere affectation to avoid them. This is perhaps the best part of
Vossius’s treatise.
[34] Paulus Manutius scrupled to use words on the authority of
Cicero’s correspondents, such as Cælius or Pollio; a ridiculous
affectation, especially when we observe what Vossius has pointed
out, that many common words do not occur in Cicero. It is amazing
to see the objections of these Ciceronian critics.
|His Aristarchus.|
23. We are indebted to Vossius for a still more important work on
grammar, the Aristarchus, sive de Arte Grammatica, which first
appeared in 1635. This is in seven books; the first treats of grammar
in general, and especially of the alphabet; the second of
syllables, under which head he dwells at great length on prosody;[35]
the third (which, with all the following, is separately entitled De
vocum Analogia) of words generally, and of the genders, numbers, and
cases of nouns. The same subject occupies the fourth book. In the
fifth, he investigates verbs; and in the sixth, the remaining parts of
speech. The last book relates to syntax. This work is full of
miscellaneous observations, placed for the most part alphabetically
under each chapter. It has been said that Vossius has borrowed almost
everything in this treatise from Sanctius and Scioppius. If this be
true, we must accuse him of unfairness; for he never mentions the
Minerva. But the edition of this grammar by Scioppius was not
published till after the death of Vossius. Salmasius extolled that of
the latter above all which had been published.[36]
[35] In this we find Vossius aware of the rule brought to light
by Dawes, and now familiar, that a final vowel is rarely short
before a word beginning with s and a mute consonant.
[36] Tuum de grammatica à te accepi exactissimum in hoc genere
opus, ac cui nullum priorum aut prisci ævi aut nostri possit
comparari. Apud Blount in Vossio. Daunou says of the grammatical
and rhetorical writings of Vossius: Ces livres se recommandent
par l’exactitude, par la méthode, par une littérature très
étendue. Gibert en convient, mais il trouve de la prolixité.
D’autres pourraient n’y voir qu’une instruction sérieuse, souvent
austère, et presque toujours profitable. Biogr. Univ.
|Progress of Latin Style.|
24. In later times the ambition of writing Latin with accuracy and
elegance has so universally declined, that the diligence of Scioppius
and Vossius has become hardly valuable except to schoolmasters. It is,
however, an art not contemptible, either in respect to the taste and
discernment for which it gives scope in composition, or for the
enhanced pleasure it reflects on the pages of ancient writers. We may
distinguish several successive periods in its cultivation since the
first revival of letters. If we begin with Petrarch, since before his
time there was no continuous imitation of classical models, the first
period will comprise those who desired much, but reached little, the
writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, destitute of
sufficient aids, and generally incapable of clearly discriminating the
pure from the barbarous in Latin. A better æra may be dated from
Politian; the ancients were now fully known, and studied with intense
labour; the graces of style were frequently caught; yet something was
still wanting to its purity and elegance. At the end of a series of
improvements, a line marked by Bembus, Sadolet, and Longolius, we
arrive at a third period, which we may call that of Paulus Manutius,
the golden age of modern Latinity. The diligence in lexicography of
Robert Stephens, of Nizolius, of Manutius himself, and the
philological treatises of their times, gave a much greater nicety of
expression; while the enthusiasm with which some of the best writers
emulated the ancients inspired them with a sympathetic eloquence and
grace. But towards the end of the century, when Manutius, and Muretus,
and Maphæus, and others of that school had been removed by death, an
age of worse taste and perhaps of more negligence in grammar came on,
yet one of great scholars, and of men powerful even in language; the
age of Lipsius, of Scaliger, of Grotius. This may be called the fourth
period; and in this apparently the purity of the language, as well as
its beauty, rather declined. Finally, the publications of Scioppius
and Vossius mark the beginning of another period, which we may
consider as lasting to the present day. Grammatical criticism had
nearly reached the point at which it now stands; the additions, at
least, which later philologers, Perizonius, Burman, Bentley, and many
others have made, though by no means inconsiderable, seem hardly
sufficient to constitute a distinct period, even if we could refer
them properly to any single epoch. And the praise of eloquent
composition has been so little sought after the close of the years
passed in education, or attained only in short and occasional
writings, which have left no durable reputation behind, that we may
consider the Latin language, for this purpose, to have silently
expired in the regions of polite literature.
SECT. II.
_Antiquities of Rome and Greece--Gruter--Meursius--Chronology._
|Gruter’s collection of inscriptions.|
25. The antiquities of Greece and Rome, though they did not occupy so
great a relative space in the literature of this period as of the
sixteenth century, were, from the general increase of erudition, not
less frequently the subject of books than before. This field indeed is
so vast, that its harvest had in many parts been scarcely touched, and
in others very imperfectly gathered by those we have already
commemorated, the Sigonii, the Manutii, the Lipsii, and their
fellow-labourers in ancient learning. The present century opened with
a great work, the Corpus Inscriptionum by Gruter. A few endeavours had
long before been made[37] to collect the ancient inscriptions, of
which the countries once Roman, and especially Italy, were full. The
best work hitherto was by Martin Smetius of Bruges, after whose death
his collection of inscriptions was published at Leyden in 1588, under
the superintendence of Dousa and Lipsius.
[37] See p. 160.
|Assisted by Scaliger.|
26. Scaliger first excited his friend Gruter to undertake the task of
giving an enlarged edition of Smetius.[38] He made the index for this
himself, devoting the labour of the entire morning for ten months (a
summo mane ad tempus cœnæ) to an occupation from which so little glory
could accrue. “Who,” says Burman, “would not admire the liberal
erudition and unpretending modesty of the learned of that age, who,
worn as they were by those long and weary labours of which they freely
complain in their correspondence with each other, though they knew
that such occupations as these could gain for them no better name than
that of common clerks or mere drudges, yet hesitated not to abandon
for the advantage of the public those pursuits which a higher fame
might be expected to reward? Who in these times would imitate the
generosity of Scaliger, who, when he might have ascribed to himself
this addition to the work of Smetius, gave away his own right to
Gruter, and declined to let his name be prefixed either to the index
which he had wholly compiled, or to the many observations by which he
corrects and explains the inscriptions, and desired, in recompence for
the industry of Gruter, that he alone should pass with posterity as
the author of the work?”[39] Gruter, it is observed by Le Clerc, has
committed many faults: he often repeats the same inscriptions, and
still more frequently has printed them from erroneous copies; his
quotations from authors, in whom inscriptions are found, sometimes
want exactness; finally, for which he could not well be answerable, a
vast many have since been brought to light.[40] In consequence of the
publication of Gruter’s Inscriptions, the learned began with
incredible zeal to examine old marbles for inscriptions, and to insert
them in any work that had reference to antiquity. Reinesius collected
as many as make a respectable supplement.[41] But a sort of æra in
lapidary learning was made by Selden’s description, in 1629, of the
marbles, brought by the Earl of Arundel from Greece, and which now
belong to the university of Oxford. These contain a chronology of the
early times of Greece, on which great reliance has often been placed,
though their antiquity is not accounted very high in comparison with
those times.
[38] Burman in Præfatione ad Gruteri Corpus Inscript. Several of
Scaliger’s epistles prove this, especially the 405th addressed to
Gruter.
[39] Id. p. 6.
[40] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xiv., p. 51. Burman, _ubi supra_, gives
a strange reason for reprinting Gruter’s Inscriptions with all
their blemishes, even the repetitions; namely, that it was
convenient to preserve the number of pages which had been so
continually referred to in all learned works, the simple
contrivance of keeping the original numeration in the margin not
having occurred to him.
[41] Burman, _ubi supra_.
|Works on Roman antiquity.|
27. The Jesuit Donati published, in 1633, Roma vetus et nova, which is
not only much superior to anything previously written on the
antiquities of the city, but is preferred by some competent judges, to
the later and more known work of Nardini. Both these will be found,
with others of an earlier date, in the third and fourth volumes of
Grævius. The tenth volume of the same collection contains a
translation from the history of the Great Roads of the Roman Empire,
published in French by Nicolas Bergier in 1622; ill arranged, it has
been said, and diffuse, according to the custom of his age, but
inferior. Grævius declares, in variety of learning to no one work that
he has inserted in his numerous volumes. Guther, whose treatise on the
pontifical law of Rome appears in the fifth volume, was, says the
editor, “a man of various and extended reading, who had made extracts
from every class of writers, but had not always digested his learning
or weighed what he wrote. Hence much has been found open to criticism
in his writings, and there remains a sufficient harvest of the same
kind for any one who should care to undertake it.” The best work on
Roman dress is by Octavius Ferrarius, published partly in 1642, partly
in 1654. This has been called superficial by Spanheim; but Grævius,
and several other men of learning, bestow more praise.[42] The Isiac
tablet, covered with emblems of Egyptian antiquity, was illustrated by
Pignoria, in a work bearing different titles in the successive
editions from 1605; and his explanations are still considered
probable. Pignoria’s other writings were also in high esteem with the
antiquaries.[43] It would be tedious to enumerate the less important
productions of this kind. A minute and scrupulous criticism, it has
been said, distinguished the antiquaries of the seventeenth century.
Without, perhaps, the comprehensive views of Sigonius and Panvinius,
they were more severely exact. Hence forgery and falsehood stood a
much worse chance of success than before. Annius of Viterbo had
deceived half the scholars of the preceding age. But when Inghirami,
in 1637, published his Etruscarum Antiquitatum Fragmenta, monuments of
Etruscan antiquity, which he pretended to have discovered at Volterra,
the imposture was speedily detected.[44]
[42] Niceron, v. 80. Tiraboschi, xi. 300.
[43] Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Univ.
[44] Salfi, Continuation de Ginguéné xi. 358.
|Geography of Cluverius.|
28. The Germania Antiqua of Cluverius was published in 1616, and his
Italia Antiqua in 1624. These form a sort of epoch in ancient
geography. The latter, especially, has ever since been the great
repertory of classical illustration on this subject. Cluverius,
however, though a man of acknowledged ability and erudition, has been
thought too bold an innovator in his Germany, and to have laid down
much on his own conjecture.[45]
[45] Blount. Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Univ.
|Meursius.|
|Ubbo Emmius.|
29. Meursius, a native of Holland, began when very young, soon after
the commencement of the century, those indefatigable labours on
Grecian antiquity, by which he became to Athens and all Hellas what
Sigonius had been to Rome and Italy. Niceron has given a list of his
publications, sixty-seven in number, including some editions of
ancient writers, but for the most part confined to Illustrations of
Greek usages; some also treat of Roman. The Græcia feriata, on
festivals and games; the Orchestra, on dancing; the Eleusinia, on that
deeply interesting and in his time almost untouched subject, the
ancient mysteries, are collected in the works of this very learned
person, or scattered through the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum of
Gronovius. “Meursius,” says his editor, “was the true and legitimate
mystagogue to the sanctuarius of Greece.” But his peculiar attention
was justly shown to “the eye of Greece,” Athens. Nothing that bore on
her history, her laws and government, her manners and literature, was
left by him. The various titles of his works seem almost to exhaust
Athenian Antiquity: De Populis Atticæ--Athenæ Atticæ--Cecropia--Regnum
Atticum--Archontes Athenienses--Pisistratus--Fortuna Attica--Atticarum
Lectionum Libri IV.--Piraeus--Themis Attica--Solon--Areopagus--
Panathenæa--Eleusinia--Theseus--Æschylus--Sophocles et Euripides. It
is manifest that all later learning must have been built upon his
foundations. No one was equal to Meursius in this province; but the
second place is perhaps due to Ubbo Emmius, professor of Greek at
Groningen, for his Vetus Græcia Illustrata, 1626. The facilities of
elucidating the topography of that country were by no means such as
Cluverius had found for Italy; and in fact little was done in respect
to local investigation in order to establish a good ancient geography
till recent times. Samuel Petit, a man placed by some in the very
first list of the learned, published in 1635 a commentary on the
Athenian laws, which is still the chief authority on that subject.
30. In an age so peculiarly learned as this part of the seventeenth
century, it will be readily concluded that many books must have a
relation to the extensive subject of this section; though the stream
of erudition had taken rather a different course, and watered the
provinces of ecclesiastical and mediæval more than those of heathen
antiquity. But we can only select one or two which treat of
chronology, and that chiefly because we have already given a place to
the work of Scaliger.
|Chronology of Lydiat. Calvisius.|
31. Lydiat was the first who, in a small treatise on the various
calendars, 1605, presumed in several respects to differ from that of
the dictator of literature. He is in consequence reviled in Scaliger’s
Epistles as the most stupid and ignorant of the human race, a
portentous birth of England, or at best an ass and a beetle, whom it
is below the dignity of the author to answer.[46] Lydiat was however
esteemed a man of deep learning, and did not flinch from the
contest. His Emendatio Temporum, published in 1609, is a more general
censure of the Scaligerian chronology, but it is rather a short work
for the extent of the subject. A German, Seth Calvisius, on the other
hand, is extolled to the skies by Scaliger for a chronology founded on
his own principles. These are applied in it to the whole series of
history, and thus Calvisius may be said to have made an epoch in
historical literature. He made more use of eclipses than any preceding
writer; and his dates are reckoned as accurate in modern as in ancient
history.[47]
[46] Ante aliquot dies tibi scripsi, ut scirem ex te quis sit
Thomas Lydiat iste, quo monstro nullum portentosius in vestra
Anglia natum puto; tanta est inscitia hominis et confidentia. Ne
semel quidem illi verum dicere accidit. And again:--Non est
similis morio in orbe terrarum. Paucis asinitatem ejus
perstringam ut lector rideat. Nam in tam prodigiosè imperitum
scarabæum scribere, neque nostræ dignitatis est, neque otii.
Scalig. Epist. 291. Usher, nevertheless, if we may trust Wood,
thought Scaliger worsted by Lydiat. Ath. Oxon. iii. 187.
[47] Blount. Biogr. Univ.
|Petavius.|
32. Scaliger, nearly twenty years after his death, was assailed by an
adversary whom he could not have thought it unworthy of his name to
repel. Petau, or Petavius, a Jesuit of uncommon learning, devoted the
whole of the first of two large volumes, entitled Doctrina, Temporum,
1627, to a censure of the famous work De Emendatione Temporum. This
volume is divided into eight books; the first on the popular year of
the Greeks; the second on the lunar; the third on the Ægyptian,
Persian, and Armenian; the fourth on the solar year; the fifth treats
of the correction of the paschal cycle and the calendar; the sixth
discusses the principles of the lunar and solar cycles; the seventh is
entitled an introduction to computations of various kinds, among which
he reckons the Julian period; the eighth is on the true motions of the
sun and moon, and on their eclipses. In almost every chapter of the
first five books, Scaliger is censured, refuted, reviled. It was a
retribution upon his own arrogance; but published thus after his
death, with no justice done to his great learning and ability, and
scarcely the common terms of respect towards a mighty name, it is
impossible not to discern in Petavius both an envious mind, and a
partial desire to injure the fame of a distinguished protestant. His
virulence indeed against Scaliger becomes almost ridiculous. At the
beginning of each of the first five books, he lays it down as a
theorem to be demonstrated, that Scaliger is always wrong on the
particular subjects to which it relates; and at the close of each, he
repeats the same in geometrical form as having been proved. He does
not even give him credit for the invention of the Julian period,
though he adopts it himself with much praise, positively asserting
that it is borrowed from the Byzantine Greeks.[48] The second volume
is in five books, and is dedicated to the historical part of
chronology, and the application of the principles laid down before. A
third volume in 1630, relating to the same subjects, though bearing a
different title, is generally considered as part of the work.
Petavius, in 1633, published an abridgment of his chronological
system, entitled Rationarium Temporum, to which he subjoined a table
of events down to his own time, which in the larger work had only been
carried to the fall of the empire. This abridgment is better known,
and more generally useful than the former.
[48] Lib. vii., c. 7.
|Character of this work.|
33. The merits of Petavius as a chronologer have been differently
appreciated. Many, of whom Huet is one, from religious prejudices
rejoiced in what they hoped to be a discomfiture of Scaliger, whose
arrogance had also made enemies of a large part of the literary world.
Even Vossius, after praising Petavius, declares that he is unwilling
to decide between men who have done for chronology more than any
others.[49] But he has not always been so favourably dealt with. Le
Clerc observes, that as Scaliger is not very perspicuous, and Petavius
has explained the former’s opinions before he proceeds to refute them,
those who compare the two will have this advantage, that they will
understand Scaliger better than before.[50] This is not very
complimentary to his opponent. A modern writer of respectable
authority gives us no reason to consider him victorious. “Though the
great work of Petavius on chronology,” says M. St. Martin, “is
certainly a very estimable production, it is not less certain that he
has in no degree contributed to enlarge the boundaries of the science.
The author shows too much anxiety to refute Scaliger, whether right or
wrong; his sole aim is to destroy the edifice, perhaps too boldly
elevated by his adversary. It is not unjust to say that Petavius has
literally done nothing for positive chronology; he has not even
determined with accuracy what is most incontestable in this science.
Many of the dates which he considers as well established, are still
subject to great doubt, and might be settled in a very different
manner. His work is clear and methodical; and, as it embraces the
whole of chronology, it might have become of great authority: but
these very qualities have rendered it injurious to the science. He
came to arrest the flight which, through the genius of Scaliger, it
was ready to take, nor has it made the least progress ever since; it
has produced nothing but conjectures, more or less showy, but with
nothing solid and undeniable for their basis.”[51]
[49] Vossius apud Niceron, xxxvii. 111. Dionysius Petavius
permaulta post Scaligerum optime observavit. Sed nolim judicium
interponere inter eos, quorum uterque præclare adeo de
chronologia meritus est, ut nullis plus hæc scientia debeat....
Qui sine affectu ac partium studio conferre volet quæ de
temporibus scripsere, conspiciet esse ubi Scaligero major laus
debeatur, comperiet quoque ubi longe Petavio malit assentiri;
erit etiam ubi ampliandum videatur; imo ubi nec facile veritas à
quoquam possit indagari. The chronology of Petavius was
animadverted upon by Salmasius with much rudeness, and by several
other contemporaries engaged in the same controversy. If we were
to believe Baillet, Petavius was not only the most learned of the
order of Jesuits, but surpassed Salmasius himself _de plusieurs
coudées_. Jugemens des Sçavans, n. 513. But to judge between
giants we should be a little taller ourselves than most are.
Baillet, indeed, quotes Henry Valois for this preference of
Petavius to any other of his age, which, in other words, is much
the same as to call him the most learned man that ever lived; and
Valois was a very competent judge. The words, however, are found
in a funeral panegyric.
[50] Bibl. Choisie, ii. 186. A short abstract of the Petavian
scheme of chronology will be found in this volume of Le Clerc.
[51] Biogr. Univ. art. Petavius.
CHAPTER XIX.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1600 TO 1650.
_Claim of Popes to temporal Power--Father Paul Sarpi--Gradual Decline
of papal Power--Unpopularity of Jesuits--Controversy of Catholics
and Protestants--Deference of some of the latter to Antiquity--
Wavering in Casaubon--Still more in Grotius--Calixtus--An opposite
School of Theologians--Daillé--Chillingworth--Hales--Rise of the
Arminian Controversy--Episcopius--Socinians--Question as to Rights
of Magistrates in Religion--Writings of Grotius on this Subject--
Question of Religious Toleration--Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying--
Theological Critics and Commentators--Sermons on Donne--and
Taylor--Deistical Writers--English Translation of the Bible._
|Temporal supremacy of Rome.|
1. The claim of the Roman see to depose sovereigns was like the
retractile claws of some animals, which would be liable to injury were
they not usually sheathed. If the state of religion in England and
France towards the latter part of the sixteenth century required the
assertion of these pretended rights, it was not the policy of a court,
guided as often by prudence as by zeal or pride, to keep them for ever
before the eyes of the world. Clement VIII. wanted not these latter
qualities, but they were restrained by the former; and the
circumstances in which the new century opened, did not demand any open
collision with the civil power. Henry IV. had been received back into
the bosom of the church; he was now rather the ally, the favoured
child of Rome, than the object of proscription. Elizabeth again was
out of the reach of any enemy but death, and much was hoped from the
hereditary disposition of her successor. The temporal supremacy would
therefore have been left for obscure and unauthorised writers to
vindicate, if an unforeseen circumstance had not called out again its
most celebrated champions. After the detection of the gunpowder
conspiracy, an oath of allegiance was imposed in England, containing a
renunciation, in strong terms, of the tenet that princes
excommunicated by the pope might be deposed or murdered by their
subjects. None of the English catholics refused allegiance to James;
and most of them probably would have felt little scruple at taking the
entire oath, which their arch-priest, Blackwell, had approved. But the
see of Rome interfered to censure those who took the oath; and a
controversy singularly began with James himself in his “Apology for
the Oath of Allegiance.” Bellarmin answered, in 1610, under the name
of Matthew Tortus; and the duty of defending the royal author was
devolved on one of our most learned divines, Lancelot Andrews, who
gave to his reply the quaint title, Tortura Torti.[52] But
this favourite tenet of the Vatican was as ill fitted to please the
Gallican as the English church. Barclay, a lawyer of Scottish family,
had long defended the rights of the crown of France against all
opponents. His posthumous treatise on the temporal power of the pope
with respect to sovereign princes was published at London in 1609.
Bellarmin answered it next year in the ultra-montane spirit which he
had always breathed; the parliament of Paris forbade the circulation
of his reply.[53]
[52] Biogr. Britann. art. Andrews. Collier’s Ecclesiastical
History. Butler’s English Catholics, vol. i. Matthew Tortus was
the almoner of Bellarmin, whose name he thought fit to assume as
a very slight disguise.
[53] Il pretesto, says Father Paul of Bellarmin’s book, è di
scrivere contra Barclajo; ma il vero fine si vede esser per
ridurre il papa al colmo dell omnipotente. In questo libro non si
tratta altro, che il suddetto argumento, e più di venti cinque
volte è replicato, che quando il papa giudica un principe indegno
per sua colpa d’aver governo overo inetto, ò pur conosce, che per
il bene della chiesa sia cosa utile, lo può privare. Dice più
volte, che quando il papa comanda, che non sia ubbidito ad un
principe privato da lui, non si può dire, che comandi che
principe non sia ubbidito, ma che privata persona, perchè il
principe privato dal papa non è più principe. E passa tanto
inanzi, che viene à dire, il papa può disponere secondo che
giudica ispediente de’ tutti i beni di qual sivoglia Christiano,
ma tutto sarebbe niente, se solo dicesse che tale è la sua
opinione; dice, ch’è un articolo della fede catholica, ch’è
eretico, chi non sente così, e questo con tanta petulantia, che
non vi si può aggiungere. Lettere di Sarpi, 50.
|Contest with Venice.|
|Father Paul Sarpi.|
2. Paul V. was a pope imbued with the arrogant spirit of his
predecessors, Paul IV. and Pius V.; no one was more prompt to exercise
the despotism which the Jesuits were ready to maintain. After some
minor disputes with the Italian states, he came, in 1605, to his
famous conflict with the republic of Venice, on the very important
question of the immunity of ecclesiastics from the civil tribunals.
Though he did not absolve the subjects of Venice from their
allegiance, he put the state under an interdict, forbidding the
celebration of divine offices throughout its territory. The Venetian
clergy, except the Jesuits and some other regulars, obeyed the senate
rather than the pope. The whole is matter of known history. In the
termination of this dispute, it has been doubted which party obtained
the victory; but in the ultimate result and effect upon mankind, we
cannot, it seems, well doubt that the see of Rome was the loser.[54]
Nothing was more worthy of remark, especially in literary history,
than the appearance of one great man, Fra Paolo Sarpi, the first who,
in modern times and in a Catholic country, shook the fabric not only
of papal despotism, but of ecclesiastical independence and power. For
it is to be observed that in the Venetian business, the pope was
contending for what were called the rights of the church, not for his
own supremacy over it. Sarpi was a man of extraordinary genius,
learning, and judgment: his physical and anatomical knowledge was such
as to have caused at least several great discoveries to be assigned to
him;[55] his reasoning was concise and cogent; his style perspicuous
and animated. A treatise “Delle Materie Beneficiarie,” in other words,
on the rights, revenues, and privileges, in secular matters, of the
ecclesiastical order, is a model in its way. The history is so short
and yet so sufficient, the sequence so natural and clear, the proofs
so judiciously introduced, that it can never be read without delight
and admiration of the author’s skill. And this is more striking to
those who have toiled at the verbose books of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, where tedious quotations, accumulated, not
selected, disguise the argument they are meant to confirm. Except the
first book of Machiavel’s History of Florence, I do not remember any
earlier summary of facts so lucid and pertinent to the object. That
object was, with Father Paul, neither more nor less than to represent
the wealth and power of the church as ill-gotten and excessive. The
Treatise on Benefices led the way, or rather was the seed thrown into
the ground that ultimately produced the many efforts both of the press
and of public authority to break down ecclesiastical privileges.[56]
[54] Ranke is the best authority on this dispute, as he is on all
other matters relating to the papacy in this age, vol. ii., p.
324.
[55] He was supposed to have discovered the valves of the veins,
the circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction of
the pupil, the variation of the compass. A quo, says Baptista
Porta of Sarpi, aliqua didicisse non solum fateri non
erubescimus, sed gloriamur, cum eo doctiorem, subtiliorem,
quotquot adhuc videre contigerit, neminem cognovimus ad
encyclopædiam. Magia Naturalis, lib. vii., apud Ranke.
[56] A long analysis of the Treatise on Benefices will be found
in Dupin, who does not blame it very much. It is worth reading
through, and has been commended by many good judges of history.
|History of Council of Trent.|
3. The other works of Sarpi are numerous, but none require our
present attention except the most celebrated, his History of the
Council of Trent. The manuscript of this having been brought to London
by Antonio de Dominis, was there published, in 1619, under the name of
Pietro Soave Polano, the anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto. It was quickly
translated into several languages, and became the textbook of
protestantism on the subject. Many incorrectnesses have been pointed
out by Pallavicini, who undertook the same task on the side of Rome;
but the general credibility of Father Paul’s history has rather gained
by the ordeal of hostile criticism. Dupin observes that the long list
of errors imputed by Pallavicini, which are chiefly in dates and such
trifling matters, make little or no difference as to the substance of
Sarpi’s history; but that its author is more blamable for a malicious
disposition to impute political motives to the members of the council,
and idle reasonings which they did not employ.[57] Ranke, who has
given this a more minute scrutiny than Dupin could have done, comes
nearly to the same result. Sarpi is not a fair, but he is, for those
times, a tolerably exact historian. His work exhibits the general
excellences of his manner; freedom from redundancy, a clear, full,
agreeable style; a choice of what is most pertinent and interesting in
his materials. Much has been disputed about the religious tenets of
Father Paul; it appears to me quite out of doubt, both by the tenor of
his history, and still more unequivocally, if possible, by some of his
letters, that he was entirely hostile to the church, in the usual
sense, as well as to the court of Rome, sympathising in affection, and
concurring generally in opinion, with the reformed denomination.[58]
But as he continued in the exercise of his functions as a Servite
monk, and has always passed at Venice more for a saint than a heretic,
some of the Gallican writers have not scrupled to make use of his
authority, and to extenuate his heterodoxy. There can be no question
but that he inflicted a severe wound on the spiritual power.
[57] Hist. Eccles. Cent. 17.
[58] The proofs of this it would be endless to adduce from the
history: they strike the eye in every page, though it cannot be
expected that he should declare his way of thinking in express
terms. Even in his letters he does not this. They were printed,
with the date, at least, of Verona, in 1673. Sully’s fall he
laments, “having become partial to him on account of his firmness
in religion.” Lett. 53. Of the republic of the United Provinces
he says: La nascenza di quale si come Dio ha favorito con grazie
inestimabili, così pare che la malizia del diavolo oppugni con
tutte le arti. Lett. 23. After giving an account of one Marsilio,
who seems to have been a Protestant, he adds: Credo se non fosse
per ragion di stato, si trovarebbono diversi, che saltarebbono da
questo fosso di Roma nella cima dell riforma; ma chi teme una
cosa, chi un’altra. Dio però par che goda la più minima parte dei
pensieri umani. So ch’ ella mi intende senza passar più oltre.
Lett. 81., Feb., 1612. Sarpi speaks with great contempt of James
I., who was occupied like a pedant about Vorstius and such
matters. Se il re d’Inghilterra non fosse dottore, si potrebbe
sperare qualche bene, e sarebbe un gran principio, perchè Spagna
non si può vincere, se non levato il pretesto della religione, ne
questo si leverà se non introducendo i reformati nell’Italia. E
si il rè sapesse fare, sarebbe facile e in Torino, e quì. Lett.
88. He wrote, however, a remarkable letter to Casaubon, much
about this time, hinting at his wish to find an asylum in
England, and using rather too different language about the king:
In eo, rarum, cumulatæ virtutes principis ac viri. Regum idea
est, ad quam forte ante actis sæculis nemo formatus fuit. Si ego
ejus protectione dignus essem, nihil mihi deesse putarem ad
mortalis vitæ felicitatem. Tu, vir præstantissime, nihil te
dignius efficere potes, quam tanto principi mea studia
commendare. Casaubon, Epist. 811. For _mea_ in another edition is
read _tua_; but the former seems preferable. Casaubon replied,
that the king wished Paul to be a light to his own country; but
if anything should happen, he had written to his ambassador, ut
nulla in re tibi desit.
|Gallican liberties. Richer.|
4. That power, predominant as it seemed in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, met with adversaries besides Sarpi. The French
nation, and especially the parliament of Paris, had always vaunted
what were called the liberties of the Gallican church; liberties,
however, for which neither the church itself, nor the king, the two
parties interested, were prone to display much regard. A certain
canonist, Richer, published in 1611 a book on ecclesiastical and
political power; in which he asserted the government of the church to
be a monarchy tempered with aristocracy; that is, that the authority
of the pope was limited in some respects by the rights of the bishop.
Though this has since become a fundamental principle among the
Cisalpine catholics, it did not suit the high notions of that age; and
the bishops were content to sacrifice their rights by joining in the
clamour of the papal party. A synod assembled by Cardinal du Perron,
archbishop of Sens, condemned the book of Richer, who was harassed for
the rest of his life by the persecution of those he had sought to
defend against a servitude which they seemed to covet. His
fame has risen in later times. Dupin concludes a careful analysis of
Richer’s treatise with a noble panegyric on his character and style of
writing.[59]
[59] Hist. Eccles. Cent. 17. l. ii. c. 7. Niceron, vol. xxvii.
The Biographie Universelle talks of the republican principles of
Richer: it must be in an ecclesiastical sense, for nothing in the
book, I think, relates to civil politics. Father Paul thought
Richer’s scheme might lead to something better, but did not
highly esteem it. Quella mistura del governo ecclesiastico di
monarchio e aristocrazia mi pare una composizione di oglio e
acqua, che non possono mai mischiarsi insieme. Lettere di Sarpi,
109. Richer entirely denies the infallibility of the pope in
matters of faith, and says there is no authority adduced for it
but that of the popes themselves. His work is written on the
principles of the Jansenizing Gallicans of the 18th century, and
probably goes farther than Bossuet, or any who wished to keep on
good terms with Rome would have openly approved. It is prolix,
extending to two volumes 4to. Some account of Richer will be
found in Histoire de la Mère et du Fils, ascribed to Mezeray, or
Richelieu.
|Perron.|
5. The strength of the ultra-montane party in the Gallican church was
Perron, a man of great natural capacity, a prodigious memory, a vast
knowledge of ecclesiastical and profane antiquity, a sharp wit, a pure
and eloquent style, and such readiness in dispute, that few cared to
engage him.[60] If he did not always reason justly, or upon consistent
principles, these are rather failings in the eyes of lovers of truth,
than of those, and they are the many, who sympathize with the
dexterity and readiness of a partizan. He had been educated as a
Protestant, but, like half the learned of that religion, went over
from some motive or other to the victorious side. In the conference at
Fontainebleau with Du Plessis Mornay, it has been mentioned already
that he had a confessed advantage; but victory in debate follows the
combatant rather than the cause. The supporters of Gallican liberties
were discouraged during the life of this cardinal. He did not
explicitly set himself against them, or deny, perhaps, the principles
of the Council of Constance; but, by preventing any assertion of them,
he prepared the way, as it was hoped at Rome, for a gradual
recognition of the whole system of Bellarmin. Perron, however, was
neither a Jesuit, nor very favourable to that order. Even so late as
1638, a collection of tracts by the learned brothers DuPuy, on the
liberties of the church, was suppressed at the instance of the nuncio,
on the pretext that it had been published without permission. It was
reprinted some years afterwards, when the power of Rome had begun to
decline.[61]
[60] Dupin.
[61] Dupin 1. iii. c. 1. Grot. Epist. 1105. Liber de libertatibus
ecclesiæ Gallicanæ ex actis desumptus publicis, quo regis
regnique jura contra molitiones pontificias defenduntur ipsius
regis jussu vendi est prohibitus. See also epist. 519.
|Decline of papal power.|
6. Notwithstanding the tone still held by the court of Rome and its
numerous partisans, when provoked by any demonstration of resistance,
they generally avoided aggressive proceedings, and kept in reserve the
tenets which could not be pleasing to any civil government. We should
doubtless find many assertions of the temporal authority of the pope
by searching into obscure theology during this period; but after
Bellarmin and Perron were withdrawn from the stage, no prominent
champions of that cause stood forth; and it was one of which great
talents and high station alone could overcome the intrinsic
unpopularity. Slowly and silently, the power of Rome had much receded
before the middle of the seventeenth century. Paul V. was the last of
the imperious pontiffs who exacted obedience as sovereigns of
Christendom. His successors have had recourse to gentler methods, to a
paternal rather than regal authority; they have appealed to the moral
sense, but have rarely or never alarmed the fears of their church. The
long pontificate of Urban VIII. was a period of transition from
strength to weakness. In his first years, this pope was not inactively
occupied in the great cause of subduing the Protestant heresy. It has
been lately brought to light, that soon after the accession of Charles
I., he had formed a scheme, in conjunction with France and Spain, for
conquering and partitioning the British islands: Ireland was to be
annexed to the ecclesiastical state, and governed by a viceroy of the
Holy See.[62] But he afterwards gave up these visionary projects, and
limited his ambition to more practicable views of aggrandizement in
Italy. It is certain that the temporal principality of the popes has
often been a useful diversion for the rest of Europe: the duchy of
Urbino was less in our notions of importance than Germany or Britain;
but it was quite as capable of engrossing the thoughts and passions of
a pope.
[62] Ranke, ii. 518. It is not at all probable that France and
Spain would have seriously coalesced for any object of this kind:
the spoil could not have been safely divided. But the scheme
serves to show the ambition, at that time, of the Roman See.
|Unpopularity of the Jesuits.|
7. The subsidence of catholic zeal before the middle of this
age deserves especially to be noted at a time when, in various
directions, that church is beginning to exalt her voice, if not to
rear her head, and we are ostentatiously reminded of the sudden
revival of her influence in the sixteenth century. It did undoubtedly
then revive; but it is equally manifest that it receded once more.
Among the leading causes of this decline in the influence, not only of
what are called ultra-montane principles, but of the zeal and faith
that had attended them, a change as visible, and almost as rapid as
the reaction in favour of them which we have pointed out in the latter
part of the sixteenth century, we must reckon the increasing
prejudices against the Jesuit order. Their zeal, union, indefatigable
devotion to the cause, had made them the most useful of allies, the
most formidable of enemies; but in these very qualities were involved
the seeds of public hatred and ultimate ruin. Obnoxious to Protestant
states for their intrigues, to the lawyers, especially in France, for
their bold theories of political power and encroaching spirit, to the
Dominicans for the favour they had won, they had become, long before
the close of this period, rather equivocal and dangerous supporters of
the See of Rome.[63] Their fate, in countries where the temper of
their order had displayed itself with less restraint, might have led
reflecting men to anticipate the consequences of urging too far the
patience of mankind by the ambition of an insulated order of priests.
In the first part of this century the Jesuits possessed an extensive
influence in Japan, and had re-united the kingdom of Abyssinia to the
Roman church. In the course of a few years more, they were driven out
from both; their intriguing ambition had excited an implacable
animosity against the church to which they belonged.
[63] Clement VIII. was tired of the Jesuits, as we are told by
Perron, who did not much love them. Perroniana, pp. 286, 288.
|Richelieu’s care of Gallican liberties.|
8. Cardinal Richelieu, though himself a theological writer, took great
care to maintain the liberties of the French crown and church. No
extravagance of Hildebrandic principles would find countenance under
his administration. Their partisans endeavoured sometimes to murmur
against his ecclesiastical measures; it was darkly rumoured that he
had a scheme of separating the Catholic church of France, something in
the manner of Henry VIII., from the supremacy of Rome, though not from
her creed; and one Hersent published, under the name of Optatus
Gallus, a book so rapidly suppressed, as to be of the greatest rarity,
the aim of which was to excite the public apprehension of this
schism.[64] It was in defence of the Gallican liberties, so far as it
was yet prudent to assert them, that De Marca was employed to write a
treatise, De Concordaniâ Sacerdotii et Imperii. This book was censured
at Rome; yet it does not by any means come up to the language
afterwards usual in the Gallican church; it belongs to its own age,
the transitional period in which Rome had just ceased to act, but not
to speak as a mistress. De Marca was obliged to make some concessions
before he could obtain the bulls for a bishopric. He rose however
afterwards to the see of Paris. The first part of his work appeared in
1641, the second after the death of the author.
[64] Biogr. Univ.--Grot. epist. 982, 1354. By some other letters
of Grotius, it appears that Richelieu tampered with those schemes
of reconciling the different religions which were then afloat,
and all which went on setting the Pope nearly aside. Ruarus
intimates the same. Epist. Ruar. p. 401.
|Controversy of Catholics and Protestants.|
|Increased respect for the fathers.|
9. In this most learned period, according to the sense in which the
word was then taken, that Europe has ever seen, it was of course to be
expected that the studious ecclesiastics of both the Romish and
Protestant denomination would pour forth a prodigal erudition in their
great controversy. It had always been the aim of the former to give an
historical character to theological inquiry; it was their business to
ascertain the faith of the Catholic church as a matter of fact, the
single principle of its infallibility being assumed as the basis of
all investigation. But their opponents, though less concerned in the
issue of such questions, frequently thought themselves competent to
dispute the field; and conversant as they were with ecclesiastical
antiquity, found in its interminable records sufficient weapons to
protract the war, though not to subdue the foe. Hence, partly in the
last years of the sixteenth century, but incomparably more in the
present, we find an essential change in the character of theological
controversy. It became less reasoning, less scriptural, less general
and popular, but far more patristic, that is, appealing to the
testimonies of the fathers, and altogether more historical than
before. Several consequences of material influence on religious
opinion sprang naturally from this method of conducting the
defence of Protestantism. One was that it contracted very greatly the
circle of those who, upon any reasonable interpretation of the
original principle of personal judgment, could exercise it for
themselves; it became the privilege of the deeply learned alone.
Another that, from the real obscurity and incoherence of
ecclesiastical authorities, those who had penetrated farthest into
that province of learning were least able to reconcile them; and
however they might disguise it from the world, while the pen was in
their hands, were themselves necessarily left, upon many points, in an
embarrassing state of doubt and confusion. A third effect was, that
upon these controversies of Catholic tradition, the church of Rome had
very often the best of the argument; and this was occasionally
displayed in those wrestling matches between religious disputants,
which were held, publicly or privately, either with the vain hope of
coming to an agreement, or to settle the faith of the hearers. And
from the two last of these causes it arose, that many Protestants went
over to the church of Rome, and that a new theological system was
contrived to combine what had been deemed the incompatible tenets of
those who had burst from each other with such violence in the
preceding century.
|Especially in England. Laud.|
10. This retrocession, as it appeared, and as in spirit it was,
towards the system abandoned in the first impetuosity of the
Reformation, began in England about the conclusion of the sixteenth
century. It was evidently connected with the high notions of
ecclesiastical power, of an episcopacy by unbroken transmission from
the apostles, of a pompous ritual, which the rulers of the Anglican
church took up at that time in opposition to the puritans. It rapidly
gained ground in the reign of James, and still more of his son.
Andrews, a man far more learned in patristic theology than any of the
Elizabethan bishops, or perhaps than any of his English contemporaries
except Usher, was, if not the founder, the chief leader of this
school. Laud became afterwards, from his political importance, its
more conspicuous head; and from him it is sometimes styled. In his
conference with the Jesuit Fisher, first published in 1624, and
afterwards with many additions in 1639, we find an attempt not feeble,
and we may believe, not feigned, to vindicate the Anglican
Protestantism, such as he meant it to be, against the church of Rome,
but with much deference to the name of Catholic, and the authority of
the ancient fathers.[65] It is unnecessary to observe, that this was
the prevalent language of the English church in that period of forty
years, which was terminated by the civil war; and that it was
accompanied by a marked enhancement of religious ceremonies, as well
as by a considerable approximation to several doctrines and usages of
the Romanists.
[65] Ce qu’il y a de particulier dans cette conférence, c’est
qu’on y cite beaucoup plus les pères de l’église, que n’ont
accoutumé de faire les Protestans de deça la mer. Comme l’église,
Anglicane a une vénération toute particulière pour l’antiquité,
c’est par là que les Catholiques Romains l’attaquent
ordinairement. Bibl. Univ. i. 336. Laud, as well as Andrews,
maintained “that the true and real body of Christ is in that
blessed sacrament.” Conference with Fisher, p. 299. (edit. 1639.)
And afterwards, “for the church of England, nothing is more plain
than that it believes and teaches the true and real presence of
Christ in the eucharist.” Nothing is more plain than the
contrary, as Hall, who belonged to a different school of
theology, though the friend of Laud, has in equivalent words
observed. Hall’s works (Pratt’s edition), vol. ix., p. 374.
|Defections to the Catholic church.|
11. The progress of the latter church for the first thirty years of
the present century was as striking and uninterrupted as it had been
in the final period of the sixteenth. Victory crowned its banners on
every side. The signal defeats of the elector Palatine and the king of
Denmark, the reduction of Rochelle, displayed an evident superiority
in the ultimate argument to which the Protestants had been driven, and
which silences every other; while a rigid system of exclusion from
court favour and of civil discouragement, or even of banishment and
suppression of public worship, as in the Austrian dominions, brought
round the wavering and flexible to acquiesce with apparent willingness
in a despotism they could neither resist nor escape. The nobility,
both in France and Germany, who in the last age had been the first to
embrace a new faith, became afterwards the first to desert it. Many
also of the learned and able Protestants gave evidence of the jeopardy
of that cause by their conversion. It is not, however, just to infer
that they were merely influenced by this apprehension. Two other
causes mainly operated; one, to which we have above alluded, the
authority given to the traditions of the church, recorded by the
writers called fathers, and with which it was found very difficult to
reconcile all the protestant creed; another, the intolerance
of the reformed churches, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, which gave as
little latitude as that which they had quitted.
|Wavering of Casaubon.|
12. The defections, from whatever cause, are numerous in the
seventeenth century. But two, more eminent than any who actually
renounced the Protestant religion, must be owned to have given evident
signs of wavering, Casaubon and Grotius. The proofs of this are not
founded merely on anecdotes which might be disputed, but on their own
language.[66] Casaubon was staggered by the study of the fathers, in
which he discovered many things, especially as to the eucharist, which
he could not in any manner reconcile with tenets of the French
Hugonots.[67] Perron used to assail him with arguments he could not
parry. If we may believe this cardinal, he was on the point of
declaring publicly his conversion before he accepted the invitation of
James I. to England; and even while in England he promoted the
Catholic cause more than the world was aware.[68] This is more than we
can readily believe, and we know that he was engaged both in
maintaining the temporal rights of the crown against the school of
Bellarmin, and in writing animadversions on the ecclesiastical annals
of Baronius. But this opposition to the extreme line of the
ultra-montanists might be well compatible with a tendency towards much
that the reformers had denounced. It seemed in truth to disguise the
corruptions of the Catholic church by rendering the controversy almost
what we might call personal; as if Rome alone, either by usurping the
headship of the church, which might or might not have bad
consequences, or by its encroachments on the civil power which were
only maintained by a party, were the sole object of that religious
opposition, which had divided one half of Europe from the other. Yet
if Casaubon, as he had much inclination to do, being on ill terms with
some in England, and disliking the country,[69] had returned to
France, it seems probable that he would not long have continued in
what, according to the principles he had adopted, would appear a
schismatical communion.
[66] In his correspondence with Scaliger, no indications of any
vacillation as to religion appear. Of the unfortunate conference
between Du Plessis Mornay and Du Perron, in the presence of Henry
IV., where Casaubon himself had been one of the umpires, he
speaks with great regret, though with a full acknowledgment that
his champion had been worsted. Quod scribis de congressu Diomedis
cum Glauco, sic est omnino, ut tu judicas rectè. Vir optimus, si
eum sua prudentia orbi Gallico satis explorata non defecisset,
nunquam ejus certaminis aleam subiisset. After much more he
concludes: Equidem in lacrymas prope adducor, quoties subit animo
tristissima illius diei species, cum de ingenua nobilitate, de
excellenti ingenio, de ipsa denique veritate pompaticè adeo vidi
triumphatum. Epist. 214. (Oct., 1600.) See also a letter to
Heinsius on the same subject. Cassaub. Epist. 809. In a letter to
Perron himself, in 1604, he professed to adhere to Scripture
alone, against those who vetustatis auctoritatem pro ratione
obtendunt. Epist. 417. A change however came gradually over his
mind, and he grew fascinated by this very authority of antiquity.
In 1609 he had, by the king’s command, a conference on religion
with Du Perron, but very reluctantly, and, as his biographer
owns, quibusdam visus est quodammodo cespitasse. Casaubon was,
for several reasons, no match in such a disputation for Perron.
In the first place, he was poor and weak, and the other powerful,
which is a reason that might dispense with our giving any others;
but secondly, he had less learning in the fathers; and thirdly,
he was entangled by deference for these same fathers; finally, he
was not a man of as much acuteness and eloquence as his
antagonist. The issue of battle does not follow the better cause,
but the sharper sword, especially when there is so much
_ignoratio elenchi_ as in this case.
[67] Perron continued to persecute Casaubon with argument,
whenever he met him in the king’s library. Je vous confesse (the
latter told Wytenbogart) qu’il m’a donné beaucoup des scrupules
qui me restent, et auxquels je ne sais pas bien répondre ... il
me fache de rougir. L’escapade que je prens est que je n’y puis
répondre, mais que j’y penserai. Cassauboni Vita (ad edit.
Epistolarum, 1709.). And in writing to the same Wytenbogart,
Jan., 1610, we find similar signs of wavering. Me, ne quid
dissimulem, hæc tanta diversitas a fide veteris ecclesiæ non
parum turbat. Ne de aliis dicam, in re sacramentaria a majoribus
discessit Lutherus, a Luthero Zuinglius, ab utroque Calvinus, a
Calvino qui postea scripserunt. Nam constat mihi ac certissimum
est, doctrinam Calvini de sacra eucharistia longe aliam esse ab
ea quæ in libro observandi viri Molinæi nostri continetur, et quæ
vulgo in ecclesiis nostris auditur. Itaque Molinæum qui
oppugnant, Calvinum illi non minus objiciunt, quam aliquem è
veteribus ecclesiæ doctoribus. Si sic pergimus, quis tandem erit
exitus? Jam quod idem Molinæus, omnes veterum libros suæ doctrinæ
contrarios respuit, ut ὑποβολιμαιους [hypobolimaious], cui
mediocriter docto fidem faciet? Falsus illi Cyrillus,
Hierosolymorum episcopus; falsus Gregorius Nyssenus, falsus
Ambrosius, falsi omnes. Mihi liquet falli ipsum, et illa scripta
esse verissima, quæ ille pronuntiat ψευδεπιγραφα.
[pseudepigrapha]. Ep. 670. See also Epist. 1043, written from
Paris in the same year. He came now to England, and to his great
satisfaction found the church and its prelates exactly what he
would wish. Illud solatio mihi est, quod in hoc regno speciem
agnosco veteris ecclesiæ, quam ex patrum scriptis didici. Adde
quod episcopis ὁσημεραι συνδιαγω [hosêmerai syndiagô]
doctissimis, sapientissimis, ευσεβεστατοις [eusebestatois], et
quod novum mihi est, priscæ ecclesiæ amantissimis. (Lond., 1611.)
Ep. 703. His letters are full of similar language. See 743, 744,
772, &c. He combined this inordinate respect for authority with
its natural concomitant, a desire to restrain free inquiry.
Though his patristic lore should have made him not unfavourable
to the Arminians, he writes to Bertius, one of their number,
against the liberty of conscience they required. Illa quam passim
celebras, prophetandi libertas, bonis et piis hujus ecclesiæ
viris mirum in modum suspecta res est et odiosa. Nemo enim
dubitat de pietate Christiana actum esse inter vos, si quod
videris agere, illustrissimis ordinibus fuerit semel persuasum,
ut liberum unicuique esse velint, via regia relicta semitam ex
animi libidine sibi aliisque aperire. Atqui veritas, ut scis, in
omnibus rebus scientiis et disciplinis unica est, et το φωνειν
ταυτο [to phônein tauto] inter ecclesiæ veræ notas, fateantur
omnes, non est postrema. Ut nulli esse dubium possit, quin tot
πολυσχιδεις [polyschideis] semitæ totidem sint errorum
diverticula. Quod olim de politicis rebus prudentissimi
philosophorum dixerunt, id mihi videtur multo etiam magis in
ecclesiasticis locum habere, την αγαν ελευθεριαν εις δουλειαν εξ
αναγκης τελευτᾶν, [tên agan eleutherian eis douleian ex anagkês
teleutan], et πασαν τυραννιδα αναρχιας [pasan tyrannida
anarchias] esse κρειττην [kreittên] [sic!] et optabiliorem....
Ego qui inter pontificios diu sum in patria mea versatus, hoc
tibi possum affirmare, nulla re magis stabiliri την τυραννιδα
[tên tyrannida] του χξζ [tou chxz], quam dissentionibus nostris
et dissidiis.
Meric Casaubon’s “Pietas contra Maledicos Patrii Nominis ac
Religionis Hostes,” is an elaborate vindication of his father
against all charges alleged by his adversaries. The only one that
presses is that of wavering in religion. And here Meric candidly
owns that his father had been shaken by Perron about 1610. (See
this tract subjoined to Almeloveen’s edition of the Epistles, p.
89.) But afterwards, by dint of theological study, he got rid of
the scruples the cardinal had infused into him, and became a
Protestant of the new Anglican school, admiring the first six
centuries, and especially the period after Constantine: Hoc
sæculum cum duobus sequentibus ακμη της εκκλησιας [akmê tês
ekklêsias], flos ipse ecclesiæ et ætas illius aurea queat
nuncupari. Prolegomena in Exercitationes in Baronium. His friend
Scaliger had very different notions of the fathers. The fathers,
says he, in his blunt way, are very ignorant, know nothing of
Hebrew, and teach us little in theology. Their interpretations of
scripture are strangely perverse. Even Polycarp, who was a
disciple of the apostles, is full of errors. It will not do to
say that, because they were near the apostolic age, they are
never wrong. Scaligerana Secunda. Le Clerc has some good remarks
on the deference shown by Casaubon to the language held by the
fathers about the eucharist, which shook his Protestantism. Bibl.
Choisie, xix. 230.
[68] Perroniana. Grot. Epist., pag. 939.
[69] Several of his letters attest his desire for returning. He
wrote to Thuanus imploring his recommendation to the queen
regent. But he had given much offence by writing against
Baronius, and had very little chance of an indemnity for his
prebend of Canterbury, if he had given that up on leaving
England. This country, however, though he sometimes calls it
μακαρων νησος [makarôn nêsos], did not suit his disposition. He
was never on good terms with Savile, the most presumptuous of the
learned, according to him, and most scornful, whom he accused of
setting on Montague to anticipate his animadversions on Baronius,
with some suspicion, on Casaubon’s part, of stealing from him.
Ep. 794, 848, 849. But he seems himself to have become generally
unpopular, if we may trust his own account. Ego mores Anglorum
non capio. Quoscunque habui notos priusquam huc venirem, jam ego
illis sum ignotus, verè peregrinus, barbarus; nemo illorum me vel
verbulo appellat; _appellatus silet_. Hoc quid sit, non scio.
Hic---- [Henricus Wotton] vir doctissimus ante annos viginti
mecum Genevæ vixit, et ex eo tempore literis amicitiam columius.
Postquam ego e Galliis, ille Venetiis huc convenimus, desii esse
illi notus; meæ quoque epistolæ responsum dedit nullum; an sit
daturus nescio. Ep. 841. It seems difficult to account for so
marked a treatment of Casaubon, except on the supposition that he
was thought to pursue a course unfavourable to the Protestant
interest. He charges the English with despising everyone but
themselves; and ascribes this to the vast wealth of their
universities; a very discreditable source of pride in our
ancestors, if so it were. But Casaubon’s philological and
critical skill passed for little in this country, where it was
not known enough to be envied. In mere ecclesiastical learning he
was behind some English scholars.
|And of Grotius.|
13. Grotius was from the time of his turning his mind to theology,
almost as much influenced as Casaubon by primitive authority, and
began, even in 1614, to commend the Anglican church for the respect it
showed, very unlike the rest of the reformed, to that standard. But
the ill-usage he sustained at the hands of those who boasted their
independence of papal tyranny, the caresses of the Gallican clergy
after he had fixed his residence at Paris, the growing dissensions and
virulence of the Protestants, the choice that seemed alone to be left
in their communion, between a fanatical anarchy, disintegrating
everything like a church on the one hand, and a domination of bigoted
and vulgar ecclesiastics on the other, made him gradually less and
less averse to the comprehensive and majestic unity of the Catholic
hierarchy, and more and more willing to concede some point of
uncertain doctrine, or some form of ambiguous expressive. This
is abundantly perceived, and has often been pointed out in his
Annotations on the Consultation of Cassander,[70] written in 1641, in
his Animadversion on Rivet, who had censured the former treatise as
inclining to Popery, in the Votum pro Pace Ecclesiasticâ and
in the Rivetiani Apologetici Discussio; all which are collected in the
fourth volume of the theological works of Grotius. These treatises
display an uniform and progressive tendency to defend the church of
Rome in everything that can be reckoned essential to her
creed; and, in fact, he will be found to go farther in this direction
than Cassander.
[70] Casaubon himself hailed Grotius as in the right path. In
hodiernis contentionibus in negotio religionis et doctè et piè
judicat, et in veneratione antiquitatis cum iis sentit, qui
optimè sentiunt. Epist. 883. See also 772, which is addressed to
him. This high respect for the fathers and for the authority of
the primitive church grew strongly upon him, and the more because
he found they were hostile to the Calvinistic scheme. He was
quite delighted at finding Jerome and Chrysostom on his side.
Epist. 29. (1614). In the next year, writing to Vossius, he goes
a great length. Cæterum ego reformatarum ecclesiarum miseriam in
hoc maximè deploro, quod cum symbola condere catholicæ sit
ecclesiæ, ipsis inter se nunquam eam in rem convenire sit datum,
atque interim libelli apologetici ex re nata scripti ad
imperatorem, reges, principes, aut ut in concilio œcumenico
exhiberentur, trahi cœperint in usum longè alienum. Quid enim
magis est alienum ab unitate catholica quam quod diversis in
regionibus pastores diversa populo tradere coguntur? Quam mirata
fuisset hoc prodigium pia antiquitas! Sed hæc aliaque multa
mussitanda sunt nobis ob iniquitatem temporum. Epist. 66. He was
at this time, as he continued till near the end of his life, when
he moved on farther, highly partial to the Anglican church. He
was, however, too Erastian for the English bishops of the reign
of James, as appears by a letter addressed to him by Overall, who
objected to his giving, in his treatise De Imperio circa Sacra, a
definitive power in controversies of faith to the civil
magistrate, and to his putting episcopacy among non-essentials,
which the bishops held to be of divine right. Grotius adhered to
his opinion, that episcopacy was not commanded as a perpetual
institution, and thought, at that time, that there was no other
distinction between bishops and priests than of precedency.
Nusquam meminit, he says in one place, Clemens Romanus exsortis
illius episcoporum auctoritatis, quæ ecclesiæ consuetudine post
Marci mortem Alexandriæ, atque eo exemplo alibi, introduci cœpit,
sed planè ut Paulus Apostolus, ostendit ecclesias communi
presbyterorum, qui iidem omnes et episcopi ipsi Pauloque
dicuntur, consilio fuisse gubernatas. Even in his latter writings
he seems never to have embraced the notions of some Anglican
divines on this subject, but contents himself, in his remarks on
Cassander, who had said, singularly as it may be thought,
Convenit _inter omnes_ olim Apostolorum ætate inter episcopos et
presbyteros discrimen nullum fuisse, sed postmodum ordinis
servandi et schismatis evitandi causa episcopum presbyteris
fuisse præpositum, with observing, Episcopi sunt presbyterorum
principes; et ista προστασια [prostasia] (præsidentia) à Christo
præmonstrata est in Petro, ab Apostolis vero, ubicunque fieri
poterat, constituta, et a Spiritu Sancto comprobata in
Apocalypsi. Op. Theolog. iv. 579, 621.
But to return from this digression to the more immediate purpose.
Grotius for several years continued in this insulated state,
neither approving of the Reformation nor the church of Rome. He
wrote in 1622 to Episcopius against those whom he called
Cassandrians, Qui etiam plerosque Romanæ ecclesiæ errores
improbantibus auctores sunt, ne ab ejus communione discedant. Ep.
181. He was destined to become Cassandrian himself, or something
more. The infallibility of the church was still no doctrine of
his. At illa auctoritas ecclesiæ αναμαρτητου [anamartêtou], quam
ecclesiæ, et quidem suæ, Romanenses ascribunt, cum naturali
ratione non sit evidens, nam ipsi fatentur Judaicam ecclesiam id
privilegium non habuisse, sequitur ut adversus negantes probari
debeat ex sacris literis. Epist. secunda series, p. 761 (1620).
And again: Quæ scribit pater de restituendis rebus in eum statum,
qui ante concilium Tridentinum fuerat, esset quidem hoc
permultum; sed transubstantiatio et ei respondens adoratio pridem
Lateranensi concilio definita est, et invocatio peculiaris
sanctorum pridem in omnes liturgias recepta. P. 772 (1623).
Grotius passed most of his latter years at Paris, in the
honourable station of ambassador from the court of Sweden. He
seems to have thought it a matter of boast that he did not live
as a Protestant. See Ep. 196. The Hugonot ministers of Charenton
requested him to communicate with them, which he declined, p.
854, 856 (1635). He now was brooding over a scheme of union among
Protestants: the English and Swedish churches were to unite, and
to be followed by Denmark. Constituto semel aliquo tali
ecclesiarum corpore, spes est subinde alios atque alios se
aggregaturos. Est autem hæc res eo magis optanda protestantibus,
quod quotidie multi eos deserunt et se cœtibus Romanensium
addunt, non alia de causa, quam quod non unum est eorum corpus,
sed partes distractæ, greges segreges, propria cuique sua
sacrorum communio, ingens præterea maledidicendi certamen. Epist.
866 (1637). See also p. 827 (1630). He fancied that by such a
weight of authority, grounded on the ancient church, the exercise
of private judgment, on which he looked with horror, might be
overruled. Nisi interpretandi sacras literas, he writes to
Calixtus, libertatem cohibemus intra lineas eorum, quæ omnes illæ
non sanctitate minus quam primæva vetustate venerabiles ecclesiæ
ex ipsa prædicatione scripturis ubique consentiente hauserint,
diuque sub crucis maximè magisterio retinuerint, nisi deinde in
iis quæ liberam habuere disputationem fraterna lenitate ferre
alii alios discimus, quis erit litium sæpe in factiones, deinde
in bella erumpentium finis? Ep. 674 (Oct., 1636). Qui illam
optiman antiquitatem sequuntur ducem, quod te semper fecisse
memini, iis non eveniet, ut multum sibi ipsis sint discolores. In
Angliâ vides quam bene processerit dogmatum noxiorum repurgatio,
hac maximè de causa quod qui id sanctissimum negotium procurandum
suscepere nihil admiscuerunt novi, nihil sui, sed ad meliora
sæcula intentam habuere oculorum aciem. Ep. 966 (1688).
But he could not be long in perceiving that this union of
Protestant churches was impossible from the very independence of
their original constitution. He saw that there could be no
practicable reunion except with Rome itself, nor that, except on
an acknowledgment of her superiority. From the year 1640 his
letters are full of sanguine hopes that this delusive vision
would be realised. He still expected some concession on the other
side; but, as usual, would have lowered his terms according to
the pertinacity of his adversaries, if indeed they were still to
be called his adversaries. He now published his famous
annotations on Cassander, and the other tracts mentioned in the
text, to which they gave rise. In these he defends almost
everything we deem popery, such as transubstantiation (Opera
Theologica, iv. 619), stooping to all the nonsensical evasions of
a spiritual mutation of substance and the like; the authority of
the pope (p. 642), the celibacy of the clergy (p. 645), the
communion in one kind (ibid), and in fact is less of a Protestant
than Cassander. In his epistles he declares himself decidedly in
favour of purgatory, as at least a probable doctrine, p. 930. In
these writings he seems to have had the countenance of Richelieu.
Cardinalis quin ἑνωσεως [henôseôs] negotium in Gallia successurum
sit, dubitare se negat. Epist. sec. series, p. 912. Cardinalis
Ricelianus rem successuram putat. Ita certè loquitur multis.
Archiepiscopus Cantuariensis pœnas dat honestissimi consilii,
quod et aliis bonis sæpe evenit, p. 911. Grotius is now run away
with by vanity, and fancies all will go according to his wish,
showing much ignorance of the real state of things. He was left
by some from whom he had entertained hopes, and thought the Dutch
Arminians timid. Vossius ut video, præ metu, forte et ex Anglia
sic jussus, auxilium suum mihi subtrahit, p. 908. Salmasius adhuc
in consiliis fluctuat. Est in religionis rebus suæ parti
addictior quam putabatur. P. 912. De Episcopio doleo; est vir
magni ingenii et probus, sed nimium cupidus alendæ partis. But it
is probable that he had misinterpreted some language of these
great men, who contemplated with regret the course he was taking,
which could be no longer a secret. De Grotii ad papam defectione,
a French protestant of some eminence for learning writes, tanquam
re certa, quod fama istuc distulit, verum non est. Sed non sine
magno metu eum aliquid istiusmodi meditantem et conantem quotidie
inviti videmus. Inter protestantes cujuslibet ordinis nomen ejus
ascribi vetat, quod eos atrocius sugillavit in Appendice de
Antichristo, et Annotatis ad Cassandri consultationem. Sarravii
Epistolæ, p. 58 (1642). And again he expresses his strong
disapprobation of one of the later treatises. Verissimè dixit
ille qui primus dixit Grotium papissare. P. 196. See also pp. 31,
53.