26. An epoch was made in Hebrew criticism by a work of Louis Cappel,

professor of that language at Saumur, the Arcanum Punctuationis

Revelatum, in 1624. He maintained in this an opinion promulgated by

Elias Levita, and held by the first reformers and many other

protestants of the highest authority, though contrary to that vulgar

orthodoxy which is always omnivorous, that the vowel points of Hebrew

were invented by certain Jews of Tiberias in the sixth century. They

had been generally deemed coeval with the language, or at least

brought in by Esdras through divine inspiration. It is not surprising

that such an hypothesis clashed with the prejudices of mankind, and

Cappel was obliged to publish his work in Holland. The protestants

looked upon it as too great a concession in favour of the Vulgate;

which having been translated before the Masoretic punctuation, on

Cappel’s hypothesis, had been applied to the text, might now claim to

stand on higher ground, and was not to be judged by these innovations.

After twenty years, the younger Buxtorf endeavoured to vindicate the

antiquity of vowel-points; but it is now confessed that the victory

remained with Cappel, who has been styled the father of Hebrew

criticism. His principal work is the Critica Sacra, published at Paris

in 1650, wherein he still farther discredits the existing manuscripts

of the Hebrew scriptures, as well as the Masoretic punctuation.[665]

[665] Simon, Eichhorn, &c. A detailed account of this controversy

about vowel-points between Cappel and the Buxtorfs will be found

in the 12th volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle; and a shorter

précis in Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das alte Testament, vol. i.,

p. 242.

|Hebrew scholars.|

27. The rabbinical literature, meaning as well the Talmud and other

ancient books, as those of the later ages since the revival of

intellectual pursuits among the Jews of Spain and the East, gave

occupation to a considerable class of scholars. Several of these

belong to England, such as Ainsworth, Godwin, Lightfoot, Selden, and

Pococke. The antiquities of Judaism were illustrated by Cunæus in Jus

Regium Hebræorum, 1623, and especially by Selden, both in the Uxor

Hebraica, and in the treatise De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta

Hebræos. But no one has left a more durable reputation in this

literature than Bochart, a protestant minister at Caen. His Geographia

Sacra, published in 1646, is not the most famous of his works, but the

only one which falls within this period. It displays great learning

and sagacity; but it was impossible, as has been justly observed, that

he could thoroughly elucidate this subject at a time when we knew

comparatively little of modern Asia, and had few good books of

travels. A similar observation might of course be applied to his

Hierozoicon, on the animals mentioned in Scripture. Both these works,

however, were much extolled in the seventeenth century.

|Chaldee and Syriac.|

28. In the Chaldee and Syriac languages, which approach so closely to

Hebrew, that the best scholars in the latter are rarely unacquainted

with them, besides the Buxtorfs, we find Ferrari, author of a Syriac

lexicon, published at Rome in 1622; Louis de Dieu of Leyden, whose

Syriac grammar appeared in 1626; and the Syriac translation of the Old

Testament in the Parisian Polyglott, edited by Gabriel Sionita, in

1642. A Syriac college for the Maronites of Libanus, was founded at

Rome by Gregory XIII.; but it did not as yet produce anything of

importance.

|Arabic.|

|Erpenius.|

|Golius.|

29. But a language incomparably more rich in literary treasures, and

long neglected by Europe, began now to take a conspicuous place in the

annals of learning. Scaliger deserves the glory of being the first

real Arabic scholar; for Postel, Christman, and a very few more of the

sixteenth century, are hardly worth notice. His friend, Casaubon, who

extols his acquirements, as usual, very highly, devoted himself some

time to this study. But Scaliger made use of the language chiefly to

enlarge his own vast sphere of erudition. He published nothing on the

subject; but his collections became the base of Rapheling’s Arabic

lexicon; and it is said that they were far more extensive than what

appears in that work. He who properly added this language to the

domain of learning was Erpenius, a native of Gorcum, who, at an early

age, had gained so unrivalled an acquaintance with the Oriental

languages as to be appointed professor of them at Leyden in 1613. He

edited the same year the above-mentioned lexicon of Rapheling, and

published a grammar, which might not only be accounted the first

composed in Europe that deserved the name, but became the guide to

most later scholars. Erpenius gave several other works to the world,

chiefly connected with the Arabic version of the Scriptures.[666]

Golius, his successor in the Oriental chair at Leyden, besides

publishing a lexicon of the language, which is said to be still the

most copious, elaborate, and complete that has appeared,[667] and

several editions of Arabic writings, poetical and historical,

contributed still more extensively to bring the range of Arabian

literature before the world. He enriched with a hundred and fifty

manuscripts, collected in his travels, the library of Leyden, to which

Scaliger had bequeathed forty.[668] The manuscripts belonging to

Erpenius found their way to Cambridge; while, partly by the

munificence of Laud, partly by later accessions, the Bodleian Library

at Oxford became extremely rich in this line. The much larger

collection in the Escurial seems to have been chiefly formed under

Philip III. England was now as conspicuous in Arabian as in Hebrew

learning. Selden, Greaves, and Pococke, especially the last, who was

probably equal to any Oriental scholar whom Europe had hitherto

produced, by translations of the historical and philosophical writings

of the Saracenic period, gave a larger compass to general

erudition.[669]

[666] Biogr. Univ.

[667] Jenisch, præfatio in Meninski Thesaurus Linguarum

Orientalium, p. 110.

[668] Biogr. Univ.

[669] Jenisch, Eichhorn, Biogr. Universelle, Biogr. Britannica.

|Other Eastern languages.|

30. The remaining languages of the East are of less importance. The

Turkish had attracted some degree of attention in the sixteenth

century; but the first grammar was published by Megiser, in 1612, a

very slight performance; and a better at Paris, by Du Ryer, in

1630.[670] The Persic grammar was given at Rome by Raymondi, in 1614;

by De Dieu, at Leyden, in 1639; by Greaves, at London, in 1641 and

1649.[671] An Armenian dictionary, by Rivoli, in 1621, seems the only

accession to our knowledge of that ancient language during this

period.[672] Athanasius Kircher, a man of immense erudition, restored

the Coptic, of which Europe had been wholly ignorant. Those farther

eastward had not yet begun to enter much into the studies of Europe.

Nothing was known of the Indian; but some Chinese manuscripts had been

brought to Rome and Madrid as early as 1580; and not long afterwards,

two Jesuits, Roger and Ricci, both missionaries in China, were the

first who acquired a sufficient knowledge of the language to translate

from it.[673] But scarcely any farther advance took place before the

middle of the century.

[670] Eichhorn, v., 367.

[671] Id. 320.

[672] Eichhorn, 351.

[673] Id. 64.

SECT. IV.

_On Geography and History._

|Purchas’s Pilgrim.|

31. Purchas, an English clergyman, imbued by nature, like Hakluyt,

with a strong bias towards geographical studies, after having formed

an extensive library in that department, and consulted, as he

professes, above 1,200 authors, published the first volume of his

Pilgrim, a collection of voyages in all parts of the world, in 1613;

four more followed in 1625. The accuracy of this useful compiler has

been denied by those who have had better means of knowledge, and

probably is inferior to that of Hakluyt; but his labour was far more

comprehensive. The Pilgrim was at all events a great source of

knowledge to the contemporaries of Purchas.[674]

[674] Biogr. Univ. Pinkerton’s Collection of Voyages and Travels.

The latter does not value Purchas highly for correctness.

|Olearius and Pietro della Valle.|

32. Olearius was ambassador from the Duke of Holstein to Moscovy and

Persia from 1633 to 1639. His travels, in German, were published in

1647, and have been several times reprinted and translated. He has

well described the barbarism of Russia and the despotism of Persia; he

is diffuse and episodical, but not wearisome; he observes well and

relates faithfully: all who have known the countries he has visited

are said to speak well of him.[675] Pietro della Valle is a far more

amusing writer. He has thrown his travels over Syria and Persia into

the form of letters written from time to time, and which he professes

to have recovered from his correspondents. This perhaps is not a very

probable story, both on account of the length of the letters, and the

want of that reference to the present time and to small passing events

which authentic letters commonly exhibit. His observations, however,

on all the countries he visited, especially Persia, are apparently

such as consist with the knowledge we have obtained from later

travellers. Gibbon says that none have better observed Persia, but his

vanity and prolixity are insufferable. Yet I think that Della Valle

can hardly be reckoned tedious; and if he is a little egotistical, the

usual and almost laudable characteristic of travellers, this gives a

liveliness and racy air to his narrative. What his wife, the Lady

Maani, an Assyrian Christian, whom he met with at Bagdad, and who

accompanied him through his long wanderings, may really have been, we

can only judge from his eulogies on her beauty, her fidelity, and her

courage; but she throws an air of romance over his adventures, not

unpleasing to the reader. The travels of Pietro della Valle took place

from 1614 to 1626; but the book was first published at Rome in 1650,

and has been translated into different languages.

[675] Biogr. Univ.

|Lexicon of Ferrari.|

33. The Lexicon Geographicum of Ferrari, in 1627, was the chief

general work on geography; it is alphabetical, and contains 9,600

articles. The errors have been corrected in later editions, so that

the first would probably be required in order to estimate the

knowledge of its author’s age.[676]

[676] Salfi, xi., 418. Biogr. Universelle.

|Maps of Blaew.|

34. The best measure, perhaps, of geographical science, are the maps

published from time to time, as perfectly for the most part, we may

presume, as their editors could render them. If we compare the map of

the world in the “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum sive Novus Atlas” of Blaew,

in 1648, with that of the edition of Ortelius, published at Antwerp in

1612, the improvements will not appear exceedingly great. America is

still separated from Asia by the straights of Anian about lat. 60; but

the coast to the south is made to trend away more than before;

on the N.E. coast we find Davis’s Sea, and Estotiland has vanished to

give way to Greenland. Canada is still most inaccurate, though there

is a general idea of lakes and rivers better than in Ortelius.

Scandinavia is far better, and tolerably correct. In the South, Terra

del Fuego terminates in Cape Horn, instead of being united to Terra

Australis; but in the East, Corea appears as an oblong island; the Sea

of Aral is now set down, and the wall of China is placed north of the

fiftieth parallel. India is very much too small, and the shape of the

Caspian Sea is wholly inaccurate. But a comparison with the map in

Hakluyt, mentioned in our second volume, will not exhibit so much

superiority of Blaew’s Atlas. The latter, however, shows more

knowledge of the interior country, especially in North America, and a

better outline in many parts, of the Asiatic coast. The maps of

particular regions in Europe are on a large scale, and numerous.

Speed’s maps 1646, appear by no means inferior to those of Blaew; but

several of the errors are the same. Considering the progress of

commerce, especially that of the Dutch, during this half century, we

may rather be surprised at the defective state of these maps.

|Davila and Bentivoglio.|

35. Two histories of general reputation were published in the Italian

language during these fifty years; one of the civil wars in France by

Davila, in 1630, and another of those in Flanders by Cardinal

Bentivoglio. Both of these had the advantage of interesting subjects;

they had been sufficiently conversant with the actors to know much and

to judge well, without that particular responsibility which tempts an

historian to prevarication. They were both men of cool and sedate

tempers, accustomed to think policy a game in which the strong play

with the weak, obtuse, especially the former, in moral sentiment, but

on this account not inclined to calumniate an opposite party, or to

withhold admiration from intellectual power. Both these histories may

be read over and over with pleasure; if Davila is too refined, if he

is not altogether faithful, if his style wants the elegance of some

older Italians, he more than redeems all this by the importance of his

subject, the variety and picturesqueness of his narration, and the

acuteness of his reflections. Bentivoglio is reckoned, as a writer,

among the very first of his age.

|Mendoza’s Wars of Granada.|

|Mezeray.|

|English historians.|

|English histories.|

36. The History of the War of Granada, that is, the rebellion of the

Moriscos in 1565, by the famous Diego de Mendoza, was published

posthumously in 1610. It is placed by the Spaniards themselves on a

level with the most renowned of the ancients. The French have now

their first general historian, Mezeray, a writer esteemed for his

lively style and bold sense, but little read, of course, in an age

like the last or our own, which have demanded an exactness in matter

of fact, and an extent of historical erudition, which was formerly

unknown. We now began, in England, to cultivate historical

composition, and with so much success, that the present period was far

more productive of such works as deserve remembrance than a whole

century that next followed. But the most considerable of these have

already been mentioned. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s History of Henry VIII.

ought here to be added to the list, as a book of good authority,

relatively at least to any that preceded, and written in a manly and

judicious spirit. Camden’s Life of Elizabeth is also a solid and

valuable history. Bacon’s Life of Henry VII. is something more; it is

the first instance in our language of the application of philosophy to

reasoning on public events in the manner of the ancients and the

Italians. Praise upon Henry is too largely bestowed; but it was in the

nature of Bacon to admire too much a crafty and selfish policy; and he

thought also, no doubt, that so near an ancestor of his own sovereign

should not be treated with severe impartiality.

SECT. V.

_On general State of Literature._

|Universities.|

37. Of the Italian and other continental universities, we have little

to say beyond what may be collected from the general tenor of this

literary history, that they contributed little to those departments of

knowledge to which we have paid most attention, and adhering

pertinaciously to their ancient studies, were left behind in the

advance of the human mind. They were, indeed, not less crowded with

scholars than before, being the necessary and prescribed road to

lucrative professions. In theology, law, and medicine, sciences, the

two former of which, at least, did not claim to be progressive, they

might sustain a respectable posture; in philosophy, and even in polite

letters, they were less prominent.

|Bodleian library founded.|

38. The English universities are in one point of view very different

from those of the rest of Europe. Their great endowments created a

resident class, neither teachers nor students, who might devote an

unbroken leisure to learning with the advantage of that command of

books which no other course of life could have afforded: It is true

that in no age has the number of these been great; but the diligence

of a few is enough to cast a veil over the laziness of many. The

century began with an extraordinary piece of fortune to the university

of Oxford, which formed in the seventeenth century, whatever it may

since have been, one great cause of her literary distinction. Sir

Thomas Bodley, with a munificence which has rendered his name more

immortal than the foundation of a family could have done, bestowed on

the university a library collected by him at great cost, building a

magnificent room for its reception, and bequeathed large funds for its

increase. The building was completed in 1606; and Casaubon has, very

shortly afterwards, given such an account of the university itself, as

well as of the Bodleian library, as will perhaps be interesting to the

reader, though it contains some of those mistakes into which a

stranger is apt to fall.

|Casaubon’s account of Oxford.|

39. “I wrote you word,” he says, in July 1613, to one of his

correspondents, “a month since, that I was going to Oxford, in order

to visit that university and its library, of which I had heard much.

Everything proved beyond my expectation. The colleges are numerous;

most of them very rich. The revenues of these colleges maintain above

two thousand students, generally of respectable parentage, and some

even of the first nobility; for what we call the habits of pedagogues

(pædagogica vitæ ratio) is not found in these English colleges.

Learning is here cultivated in a liberal style; the heads of houses

live handsomely, even splendidly, like men of rank. Some of them can

spend ten thousand livres [about 1,000_l_. at that time, if I

mistake not] by the year. I much approved the mode in which pecuniary

concerns are kept distinct from the business of learning.[677] Many

still are found, who emulate the liberality of their predecessors.

Hence, new buddings rise every day; even some new colleges are raised

from the foundation; some are enlarged, such as that of Merton, over

which Savile presides, and several more. There is one begun by

Cardinal Wolsey, which if it should be completed, will be worthy of

the greatest admiration. But he left at his death many buildings which

he had begun in an unfinished state, and which no one expects to see

complete. None of the colleges, however, attracted me so much as the

Bodleian library, a work rather for a king than a private man. It is

certain that Bodley, living or dead, must have expended 200,000 livres

on that building. The ground plot is the figure of the letter T. The

part which represents the perpendicular stem was formerly built by

some prince, and is very handsome; the rest was added by Bodley with

no less magnificence. In the lower part is a divinity school, to which

perhaps nothing in Europe is comparable. It is vaulted with peculiar

skill. The upper story is the library itself, very well built, and

fitted with an immense quantity of books. Do not imagine that such

plenty of manuscripts can be found here, as in the royal library (of

Paris); there are not a few manuscripts in England, but nothing to

what the king possesses. But the number of printed books is wonderful,

and increasing every year; for Bodley has bequeathed a considerable

revenue for that purpose. As long as I remained at Oxford, I passed

whole days in the library; for books cannot be taken out, but the

library is open to all scholars for seven or eight hours every day.

You might always see therefore many of these greedily enjoying the

banquet prepared for them, which gave me no small pleasure.”[678]

[677] Res studiosorum et rationes separatæ sunt, quod valde

probavi. I have given the translation which seemed best; but I

may be mistaken.

[678] Casaub. Epist., 899.

40. The Earl of Pembroke, Selden, and above all, archbishop Laud,

greatly improved the Bodleian library. It became, especially through

the munificence of that prelate, extremely rich in Oriental

manuscripts. The Duke of Buckingham presented a collection made by

Erpenius to the public library at Cambridge, which, though far behind

that of the sister university, was enriched by many donations and

became very considerable. Usher formed the library of Trinity College,

Dublin; an university founded on the English model, with noble

revenues, and a corporate body of fellows and scholars to enjoy them.

|Catalogue of Bodleian library.|

41. A catalogue of the Bodleian library was published by James in

1620. It contains about 20,000 articles. Of these no great number

are in English, and such as there are chiefly since the year

1600; Bodley, perhaps, had been rather negligent of poetry and plays.

The editor observes that there were in the library three or four

thousand volumes in modern languages. This catalogue is not classed,

but alphabetical; which James mentions as something new, remarking at

the same time the difficulty of classification, and that in the German

catalogues we find grammars entered under the head of philosophy. One

published by Draud, Bibliotheca Classica, sive Catalogus Officinalis,

Frankfort, 1625, is hardly worth mention. It professes to be a general

list of printed books; but as the number seems to be not more than

30,000, all in Latin, it must be very defective. About two fifths of

the whole are theological. A catalogue of the library of Sion College,

founded in 1631, was printed in 1650; it contains eight or nine

thousand volumes.[679]

[679] In Museo Britannico.

|Continental libraries.|

42. The library of Leyden had been founded by the first prince of

Orange. Scaliger bequeathed his own to it; and it obtained the

oriental manuscripts of Golius. A catalogue had been printed by Peter

Bertius as early as 1597.[680] Many public and private libraries

either now began to be formed in France, or received great accessions;

among the latter, those of the historian De Thou, and the president

Seguier.[681] No German library, after that of Vienna, had been so

considerable as one formed in the course of several ages by the

electors Palatine at Heidelberg. It contained many rare manuscripts.

On the capture of the city by Tilly, in 1622, he sent a number of

these to Rome, and they long continued to sleep in the recesses of the

Vatican. Napoleon, emulous of such a precedent, obtained thirty-eight

of the Heidelberg manuscripts by the treaty of Tolentino, which were

transmitted to Paris. On the restitution of these in 1815, it was

justly thought that prescription was not to be pleaded by Rome for the

rest of the plunder, especially when she was recovering what she had

lost by the same right of spoliation; and the whole collection has

been replaced in the library of Heidelberg.

[680] Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, c. 3.

[681] Id. ibid.

|Italian academies.|

43. The Italian academies have been often represented as partaking in

the alleged decline of literary spirit during the first part of the

seventeenth century. Nor is this reproach a new one. Boccalini, after

the commencement of this period, tells us that these institutions,

once so famous, had fallen into decay, their ardent zeal in literary

exercises and discussions having abated by time, so that while they

had once been frequented by private men, and esteemed by princes, they

were now abandoned and despised by all. They petition Apollo,

therefore, in a chapter of his Ragguagli di Parnasso, for a reform.

But the god replies that all things have their old age and decay, and

as nothing can prevent the neatest pair of slippers from wearing out

so nothing can rescue academies from a similar lot; hence, he can only

advise them to suppress the worst, and to supply their places by

others.[682] If only such a counsel were required, the institution of

academies in general would not perish. And, in fact, we really find

that while some societies of this class came to nothing, as is always

the case with self-constituted bodies, the seventeenth century had

births of its own to boast, not inferior to the older progeny of the

last age. The Academy of Humourists at Rome was one of these. It arose

casually at the marriage of a young nobleman of the Mancini family,

and took the same line as many had done, reciting verses and

discourses, or occasionally representing plays. The tragedy of

Demetrius, by Rocco, one of this academy, is reckoned among the best

of the age. The Apatisti of Florence took their name from Fioretti,

who had assumed the appellation of Udeno Nisielo, Academico Apatista.

The Rozzi of Siena, whom the government had suppressed in 1568,

revived again in 1605, and rivalled another society of the same city,

the Intronati. The former especially dedicated their time to pastoral,

in the rustic dialect (comedia rusticale), a species of dramatic

writing that might amuse at the moment, and was designed for no other

end, though several of these farces are extant. [683]

[682] Ragg., xviii., c. 1.

[683] Salfi, vol. xii.

|The Lincei.|

44. The Academy della Crusca, which had more solid objects for the

advantages of letters in view, has been mentioned in another place.

But that of the Lincei, founded by Frederic Cesi, stands upon a higher

ground than any of the rest. This young man was born at Rome in 1585,

son of the duke of Acqua Sparta, a father and a family known only for

their pride and ignorance. But nature had created in Cesi a

philosophic mind; in conjunction with a few of similar dispositions,

he gave his entire regard to science, and projected himself, at the

age of eighteen, an academy, that is, a private association of

friends for intellectual pursuits, which, with reference to their

desire of piercing with acute discernment into the depths of truth, he

denominated the Lynxes. Their device was that animal, with its eyes

turned towards heaven, and tearing a Cerberus with its claws; thus

intimating that they were prepared for war against error and

falsehood. The church, always suspicious, and inclined to make common

cause with all established tenets, gave them some trouble, though

neither theology nor politics entered into their scheme. This

embraced, as in their academies, poetry and elegant literature; but

physical science was their peculiar object. Porto, Galileo, Colonna,

and many other distinguished men, both of Italy and the Transalpine

countries, were enrolled among the Lynxes; and Cesi is said to have

framed rather a visionary plan of a general combination of

philosophers, in the manner of the Pythagoreans, which should extend

itself to every part of Europe. The constitutions of this imaginary

order were even published in 1624; they are such as could not have

been realised, but from the organization and secrecy that seem to have

been their elements, might not improbably have drawn down a

persecution upon themselves, or even rendered the name of philosophy

obnoxious. Cesi died in 1630, and his academy of Lynxes did not long

survive the loss of their chief.[684]

[684] Salfi, xi., 102. Tiraboschi, xi., 42, 243.

|Prejudice for antiquity diminished.|

45. The tide of public opinion had hitherto set regularly in one

direction; ancient times, ancient learning, ancient wisdom and virtue,

were regarded with unqualified veneration; the very course of nature

was hardly believed to be the same, and a common degeneracy was

thought to have overspread the earth and its inhabitants. This had

been at its height in the first century after the revival of letters,

the prejudice in favour of the past, always current with the old, who

affect to dictate the maxims of experience, conspiring with the

genuine lustre of classical literature and ancient history, which

dazzled the youthful scholar. But this aristocracy of learning was now

assailed by a new power which had risen up in sufficient strength to

dispute the pre-eminence. We, said Bacon, are the true ancients; what

we call the antiquity of the world was but its infancy. This thought

equally just and brilliant, was caught up and echoed by many; it will

be repeatedly found in later works. It became a question whether the

moderns had not really left behind their progenitors; and though it

has been hinted, that a dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther than

the giant, this is, in one sense, to concede the point in

dispute.[685]

[685] Ac quemadmodum pygmæus humeris gigantis insidens longius

quam gigas prospicere, neque tamen se gigante majorem habere aut

sipi multum tribuere potest, ita nos veterum laboribus

vigiliisque in nostros usus conversis adjicere aliquid, non

supercilia tollere, aut parvi facere, qui ante nos fuerunt,

debemus. Cyprianus, Vita Campanellæ, p. 15.

46. Tassoni was one of the first who combated the established

prejudice by maintaining that modern times are not inferior to

ancient; it well became his intrepid disposition.[686] But Lancilotti,

an Italian ecclesiastic, and member of several academies, pursued this

subject in an elaborate work, intended to prove--first, that the world

was neither morally worse nor more afflicted by calamities than it had

been; secondly, that the intellectual abilities of mankind had not

degenerated. It bears the general title, L’Hoggidi, To-Day; and is

throughout a ridicule of those whom he calls Hoggidiani, perpetual

declaimers against the present state of things. He is a very copious

and learned writer, and no friend to antiquity; each chapter being

entitled Disinganno, and intended to remove some false prejudice. The

first part of this work appeared in 1623, the second, after the

author’s death, not till 1658. Lancilotti wrote another book with

somewhat a similar object, entitled Farfalloni degl’Antichi Istorici,

and designed to turn the ancient historians into ridicule; with a good

deal of pleasantry, but chiefly on account of stories which no one in

his time would have believed. The same ground was taken soon

afterwards by an English divine, George Hakewill, in his “Apology, or

Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of

the World,” published in 1627. This is designed to prove that there is

not that perpetual and universal decay in nature which many suppose.

It is an elaborate refutation of many absurd notions which seem to

have prevailed; some believing that even physical nature, the sun and

stars, the earth and waters, were the worse for wear. A greater number

thought this true of man; his age, his size, his strength, his powers

of mind were all supposed to have been deteriorated. Hakewill

patiently and learnedly refuted all this. The moral character of

antiquity he shows to be much exaggerated, animadverting especially on

the Romans. The most remarkable, and certainly the most disputable

chapters, are those which relate to the literary merits of ancient and

modern times. He seems to be one of the first who ventured to put in a

claim for the latter. In this he anticipates Wotton, who had more to

say. Hakewill goes much too far in calling Sydney’s Arcadia “nothing

inferior to the choicest piece among the ancients”; and even thinks

“he should not much wrong Virgil by matching him with Du Bartas.” The

learning shown in this treatise is very extensive, but Hakewill has no

taste, and cannot perceive any real superiority in the ancients.

Compared with Lancilotti, he is much inferior in liveliness, perhaps

even in learning; but I have not observed that he has borrowed

anything from the Italian, whose publication was but four years

earlier.

[686] Salfi, xi., 381.

|Browne’s Vulgar Errors.|

47. Browne’s Inquiry into Vulgar Errors displays a great deal of

erudition, but scarcely raises a high notion of Browne himself as a

philosopher, or of the state of physical knowledge in England. The

errors he indicates are such as none but illiterate persons, we should

think, were likely to hold; and I believe that few on the Continent,

so late as 1646, would have required to have them exploded with such

an ostentation of proof. Who did not know that the phœnix is a fable?

Browne was where the learned in Europe had been seventy years before,

and seems to have been one of those who saturate their minds with bad

books till they have little room for anything new that is better. A

man of so much credulity and such an irregular imagination as Browne

was almost sure to believe in witchcraft and all sorts of spiritual

agencies. In no respect did he go in advance of his age, unless we

make an exception for his declaration against persecution. He seems to

have been fond of those trifling questions which the bad taste of the

schoolmen and their contemporaries introduced; as whether a man has

fewer ribs than a woman, whether Adam and Eve had navels, whether

Methusaleh was the oldest man; the problems of children put to adults.

With a strong curiosity and a real love of truth, Browne is a striking

instance of a merely empirical mind; he is at sea with sails and a

rudder, but without a compass or log-book; and has so little notion of

any laws of nature, or of any inductive reasoning either as to

efficient or final causes, that he never seems to judge anything to be

true or false except by experiment.

|Life and character of Peiresc.|

48. In concluding our review of the sixteenth century, we selected

Pinelli, as a single model of the literary character, which loving and

encouraging knowledge, is yet too little distinguished by any writings

to fall naturally within the general subject of these volumes. The

period which we now bring to a close will furnish us with a much more

considerable instance. Nicholas Peiresc was born in 1580, of an

ancient family in Provence, which had for some generations held

judicial offices in the parliament of Aix. An extraordinary thirst for

every kind of knowledge characterized Peiresc from his earliest youth,

and being of a weak constitution, as well as ample fortune, though he

retained, like his family, an honourable post in the parliament, his

time was principally devoted to the multifarious pursuits of an

enlightened scholar. Like Pinelli, he delighted in the rarities of art

and antiquity; but his own superior genius, and the vocation of that

age towards science, led him on to a far more extensive field of

inquiry. We have the life of Peiresc written by his countryman and

intimate friend Gassendi; and no one who has any sympathy with science

or with a noble character will read it without pleasure. Few books

indeed of that period are more full of casual information.

49. Peiresc travelled much in the early part of his life; he was at

Rome in 1600, and came to England and Holland in 1606. The hard

drinking, even of our learned men,[687] disconcerted his southern

stomach; but he was repaid by the society of Camden, Savile, and

Cotton. The king received Peiresc courteously, and he was present at

the opening of parliament. On returning to his native province, he

began to form his extensive collections of marbles and medals, but

especially of natural history in every line. He was, perhaps, the

first who observed the structure of zoophytes, though he seems not to

have suspected their animal nature. Petrifactions occupied much of his

time; and he framed a theory of them which Gassendi explains at

length, but which, as might be expected, is not the truth.[688] Botany

was among his favourite studies, and Europe owes to him, according to

Gassendi, the Indian jessamine, the gourd of Mecca, the real Egyptian

papyrus, which is not that described by Prosper Alpinus. He first

planted ginger, as well as many other Oriental plants, in an European

garden, and also the cocoa-nut, from which, however, he could not

obtain fruit.

[687] Gassendi, Vita Peiresc, p. 51.

[688] P. 147.

50. Peiresc was not less devoted to astronomy; he had no sooner heard

of the discoveries of Galileo than he set himself to procure a

telescope, and had in the course of the same year, 1610, the pleasure

of observing the moons of Jupiter. It even occurred to him that these

might serve to ascertain the longitude, though he did not follow up

the idea. Galileo indeed, with a still more inventive mind, and with

more of mathematics, seems to have stood in the way of Peiresc. He

took, as far as appears, no great pains to publish his researches,

contenting himself with the intercourse of literary men, who passed

near him, or with whom he could maintain correspondence. Several

discoveries are ascribed to him by Gassendi; of their originality, I

cannot venture to decide. “From his retreat,” says another biographer,

“Peiresc gave more encouragement to letters than any prince, more even

than the Cardinal de Richelieu, who sometime afterwards founded the

French Academy. Worthy to have been called by Bayle the

_attorney-general_ of literature, he kept always on the level of

progressive science, published manuscripts at his own expense,

followed the labours of the learned throughout Europe, and gave them

an active impulse by his own aid.” Scaliger, Salmasius, Holstenius,

Kircher, Mersenne, Grotius, Valois, are but some of the great names of

Europe whom he assisted by various kinds of liberality.[689] He

published nothing himself, but some of his letters have been collected.

[689] Biogr. Universelle.

51. The character of Peiresc was amiable and unreserved among his

friends; but he was too much absorbed in the love of knowledge for

insipid conversation. For the same reason, his biographer informs us,

he disliked the society of women, gaining nothing valuable from the

trifles and scandal upon which alone they could converse.[690]

Possibly the society of both sexes at Aix, in the age of Peiresc, was

such as, with no excessive fastidiousness, he might avoid. In his

eagerness for new truths, he became somewhat credulous; an error not

perhaps easy to be avoided, while the accumulation of facts proceeded

more rapidly than the ascertainment of natural laws. But for a genuine

liberality of mind and extensive attainments in knowledge, very few

can be compared to Peiresc; nor among those who have resembled him in

this employment of wealth and leisure, do I know that any names have

descended to posterity with equal lustre, except our two countrymen of

the next generation, who approached so nearly to his character and

course of life, Boyle and Evelyn.

[690] Gassendi, p. 219.

CHAPTER XXVII.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1650 TO 1700.

SECT. I.

_Dutch Scholars--Jesuit and Jansenist Philologers--Delphin Editions--

French Scholars--English Scholars--Bentley._

|James Frederic Gronovius.|

1. The death of Salmasius, about the beginning of this period, left a

chasm in critical literature which no one was equal to fill. But the

nearest to this giant of philology was James Frederic Gronovius, a

native of Hamburg, but drawn, like several more of his countrymen, to

the universities of Holland, the peculiarly learned state of Europe

through the seventeenth century. The principal labours of Gronovius

were those of correcting the text of Latin writers; in Greek we find

very little due to him.[691] His notes form an useful and considerable

part of those which are collected in what are generally styled the

Variorum editions, published, chiefly after 1660, by the Dutch

booksellers. These contain selections from the older critics, some of

them, especially those first edited, indifferently made and often

mutilated; others with more attention to preserve entire the original

notes. These, however, are, for the most part, only critical, as if

explanatory observations were below the notice of an editor; though,

as Le Clerc says, those of Manutius on Cicero’s epistles cost him much

more time than modern editors have given to their conjectures.[692] In

general, the Variorum editions were not greatly prized, with the

exception of those by the two Gronovii and Grævius.[693]

[691] Baillet. Critiques Grammairiens, n. 548. Blount. Biogr.

Univ.

[692] Parrhasiana, i., 233.

[693] A list of the Variorum editions will be found in Baillet,

Critiques Grammairiens, n. 604.

|James Gronovius.|

|Grævius.|

2. The place of the elder Gronovius, in the latter part of this

present period, was filled by his son. James Gronovius, by

indefatigable labour, and by a greater number of editions which bear

his name, may be reckoned, if not a greater philologer, one not less

celebrated than his father. He was, at least, a better Greek critic,

and in this language, though far below those who were about to arise,

and who did, in fact, eclipse him long before his death, Bentley and

Burman, he kept a high place for several years.[694] Grævius, another

German whom the Dutch universities had attracted and retained,

contributed to the Variorum editions, chiefly those of Latin authors,

an erudition not less copious than that of any contemporary scholar.

[694] Baillet, n. 548. Niceron, ii., 177.

|Isaac Vossius.|

3. The philological character of Gerard Vossius himself, if we might

believe some partial testimonies, fell short of that of his son Isaac;

whose Observations on Pomponius Mela, and an edition of Catullus, did

him extraordinary credit, and have placed him among the first

philologers of this age. He was of a more lively genius, and perhaps

hardly less erudition, than his father, but with a paradoxical

judgment, and has certainly rendered much less service to

letters.[695] Another son of a great father, Nicolas Heinsius, has by

none been placed on a level with him; but his editions of Prudentius

and Claudian are better than any that had preceded them.

[695] Niceron, vol. xiii.

|Decline of German learning.|

|Spanheim.|

4. Germany fell lower and lower in classical literature. A writer, as

late as 1714, complains, that only modern books of Latin were taught

in the schools, and that the students in the universities despised all

grammatical learning. The study, “not of our own language, which we

entirely neglect, but of French,” he reckons among the causes of this

decay in ancient learning; the French translations of the classics led

many to imagine that the original could be dispensed with.[696]

Ezekiel Spanheim, envoy from the court of Brandenburg to that of Louis

XIV., was a distinguished exception; his edition of Julian, and his

notes on several other writers, attest an extensive learning, which

has still preserved his name in honour. As the century drew nigh to

its close, Germany began to revive; a few men of real philological

learning, especially Fabricius, appeared as heralds of those greater

names which adorn her literary annals in the next age.

[696] Burckhardt, De Linguæ Latinæ hodie neglectæ Causis Oratio,

p. 34.

|Jesuit colleges in France.|

5. The Jesuits had long been conspicuously the classical scholars of

France; in their colleges the purest and most elegant Latinity was

supposed to be found; they had early cultivated these graces of

literature, while all polite writing was confined to the Latin

language, and they still preserved them in its comparative disuse.

“The Jesuits,” Huet says, “write and speak Latin well, but their style

is almost always too rhetorical. This is owing to their keeping

regencies (an usual phrase for academical exercises) from their early

youth, which causes them to speak incessantly in public, and become

accustomed to a sustained and polished style above the tone of common

subjects.”[697] Jouvancy, whose Latin orations were published in 1700,

has had no equal, if we may trust a panegyric, since Maffei and

Muretus.[698]

[697] Huetiana, p. 71.

[698] Biogr. Univ.

|Port-Royal writers. Lancelot.|

6. The Jansenists appeared ready at one time to wrest this palm from

their inveterate foes. Lancelot threw some additional lustre round

Port-Royal by the Latin and Greek grammars, which are more frequently

called by the name of that famous cloister than by his own. Both were

received with great approbation in the French schools, except, I

suppose, where the Jesuits predominated, and their reputation lasted

for many years. They were never so popular though well known, in this

country. “The public,” says Baillet of the Greek grammar, which is

rather the more eminent of the two, “bears witness that nothing of its

kind has been more finished. The order is clear and concise. We find

in it many remarks, both judicious and important for the full

knowledge of the language. Though Lancelot has chiefly followed

Caninius, Sylburgius, Sanctius, and Vossius, his arrangement is new,

and he has selected what is most valuable in their works.”[699] In

fact, he professes to advance nothing of his own, being more indebted,

he says, to Caninius than to anyone else. The method of Clenardus he

disapproves, and thinks that of Ramus intricate. He adopts the

division into three declensions. But his notions of the proper

meaning of the tenses are strangely confused and erroneous: several

other mistakes of an obvious nature, as we should now say, will occur

in his syntax; and, upon the whole, the Port-Royal grammar does not

give us a high idea of the critical knowledge of the seventeenth

century, as to the more difficult language of antiquity.

[699] Baillet, n. 714.

|Latin grammars. Perizonius.|

7. The Latin, on the other hand, had been so minutely and laboriously

studied, that little more than gleanings after a great harvest could

be obtained. The Aristarchus of Vossius, and his other grammatical

works, though partly not published till this period, have been

mentioned in the last volume. Perizonius, a professor at Franeker, and

in many respects one of the most learned of this age, published a good

edition of the Minerva of Sanctius in 1687. This celebrated grammar

had become very scarce, as well as that of Scioppius, which contained

nothing but remarks upon Sanctius. Perizonius combined the two with

notes more ample than those of Scioppius, and more bold in differing

from the Spanish grammarian.

|Delphin editions.|

8. If other editions of the classical authors have been preferred by

critics, none, at least of this period, have been more celebrated than

those which Louis XIV., at the suggestion of the Duke de Montausier,

caused to be prepared for the use of the Dauphin. The object in view

was to elucidate the Latin writers, both by a continual gloss in the

margin, and by such notes as should bring a copious mass of ancient

learning to bear on the explanation, not of the more difficult

passages alone, but of all those in which an ordinary reader might

require some aid. The former of these is less useful, and less

satisfactorily executed than the latter; for the notes, it must be

owned that, with much that is superfluous even to tolerable scholars,

they bring together a great deal of very serviceable illustration. The

choice of authors as well as of editors was referred to Huet, who

fixed the number of the former at forty. The idea of an index on a

more extensive plan than in any earlier editions, was also due to

Huet, who had designed to fuse those of each work into one more

general, as a standing historical analysis of the Latin language.[700]

These editions are of very unequal merit, as might be expected from

the number of persons employed, a list of whom will be found in

Baillet.[701]

[700] Huetiana, p. 92.

[701] Critiques Grammairiens, n. 605.

|Le Fevre and the Daciers.|

9. Tanaquil Faber, thus better known than by his real name, Tanneguy

le Fevre, a man learned, animated, not fearing the reproach of

paradox, acquired a considerable name among French critics by several

editions, as well as by other writings in philology. But none of his

literary productions were so celebrated as his daughter, Anne le

Fevre, afterwards Madame Dacier. The knowledge of Greek though once

not very uncommon in a woman, had become prodigious in the days of

Louis XIV.; and when this distinguished lady taught Homer and Sappho

to speak French prose, she appeared a phœnix in the eyes of her

countrymen. She was undoubtedly a person of very rare talents and

estimable character; her translations are numerous, and reputed to be

correct, though Niceron has observed that she did not raise Homer in

the eyes of those who were not prejudiced in his favour. Her husband

was a scholar of kindred mind and the same pursuits. Their union was

facetiously called the wedding of Latin and Greek. But each of this

learned couple was skilled in both languages. Dacier was a great

translator; his Horace is perhaps the best known of his versions; but

the Poetics of Aristotle have done him most honour. The Daciers had to

fight the battle of antiquity against a generation both ignorant and

vain-glorious, yet keen-sighted in the detection of blemishes, and

disposed to avenge the wrongs of their fathers who had been trampled

upon by pedants with the help of a new pedantry, that of the court and

the mode. With great learning they had a competent share of good

sense, but not perhaps a sufficiently discerning taste, or liveliness

enough of style, to maintain a cause that had so many prejudices of

the world now enlisted against it.[702]

[702] Baillet. Niceron, vol. iii. Bibliothèque Universelle,

x. 295, xxii. 176, xxiv. 241, 261, Biogr. Univers.

|Henry Valois. Complaints of decay of learning.|

10. Henry Valois might have been mentioned before for his edition of

Ammianus Marcellinus in 1636, which established his philological

reputation. Many other works in the same line of criticism followed;

he is among the great ornaments of learning in this period. Nor was

France destitute of others that did her honour. Cotelier, it is said,

deserved by his knowledge of Greek to be placed on a level with the

great scholars of former times. Yet there seems to have been some

decline, at least toward the close of the century, in that

prodigious erudition which had extinguished the preceding period. “For

we know no one,” says Le Clerc, about 1699, “who equals in learning,

in diligence and in the quantity of his works, the Scaligers, the

Lipsii, the Casaubons, the Salmasii, the Meursii, the Vossii, the

Seldens, the Gronovii, and many more of former times.”[703] Though

perhaps in this reflection there was something of the customary bias

against the present generation, we must own that the writings of

scholars were less massive, and consequently gave less apparent

evidence of industry than formerly. But in classical philology at

least, a better day was about to arise, and the first omen of it came

from a country not yet much known in that literature.

[703] Parrhasiana, vol. i., p. 225. Je viens d’apprendre, says

Charles Patin in one of his letters, que M. Gronovius est mort à

Leyden. Il restoit presque tout seul du nombre des savans

d’Hollande. Il n’est plus dans ce pais-là des gens faits comme

Jos. Scaliger, Baudius, Heinsius, Salmasius, et Grotius. (P. 582.)

|English learning. Duport.|

11. It has been observed in the last volume, that while England was

very far from wanting men of extensive erudition, she had not been at

all eminent in ancient or classical literature. The proof which the

absence of critical writings, or even of any respectable editions,

furnishes, appears weighty; nor can it be repelled by sufficient

testimony. In the middle of the century James Duport, Greek professor

at Cambridge, deserves honour by standing almost alone. “He appears,”

says a late biographer, “to have been the main instrument by which

literature was upheld in this university during the civil disturbances

of the seventeenth century; and though little known at present, he

enjoyed an almost transcendant reputation for a great length of time

among his contemporaries as well as in the generation which

immediately succeeded.”[704] Duport however has little claim to this

reputation except by translations of the writings of Solomon, the book

of Job, and the Psalms, into Greek hexameters, concerning which his

biographer gently intimates that “his notions of versification were

not formed in a severe or critical school,” and by what has certainly

been more esteemed, his Homeri Gnomologia, which Le Clerc and bishop

Monk agree to praise, as very useful to the student of Homer. Duport

gave also some lectures on Theophrastus about 1656, which were

afterwards published in Needham’s edition of that author. “In these,”

says Le Clerc, “he explains words with much exactness, and so as to

show that he understood the analogy of the language.”[705] “They are

upon the whole calculated,” says the bishop of Gloucester, “to give no

unfavourable opinion of the state of Greek learning in the university

of that memorable crisis.”

[704] Museum Criticum, vol. ii., p. 672 (by the Bishop of

Gloucester and Bristol).

[705] Bibliothèque Choisie, xxv., 18.

|Greek not much studied.|

12. It cannot be fairly said that our universities declined in general

learning under the usurpation of Cromwell. They contained, on the

contrary, more extraordinary men than in any earlier period, but not

generally well affected to the predominant power. Greek, however,

seems not much to have flourished, even immediately after the

restoration. Barrow, who was chosen Greek professor in 1660, complains

that no one attended his lectures. “I sit like an Attic owl,” he says,

“driven out from the society of all other birds.”[706] According

indeed to the scheme of study retained from a more barbarous age, no

knowledge of the Greek language appears to have been required from the

students, as necessary for their degrees. And if we may believe a

satirical writer of the time of Charles II., but one whose satire had

great circulation and was not taxed with falsehood the general state

of education both in the schools and universities was as narrow,

pedantic, and unprofitable, as can be conceived.[707]

[706] See a biographical memoir of Barrow prefixed to Hughe’s

edition of his works. This contains a sketch of studies pursued

in the university of Cambridge from the twelfth to the

seventeenth century, brief indeed, but such as I should have been

glad to have seen before, p. 62. No alteration in the statutes,

so far as they related to study, was made after the time of Henry

VIII. or Edward VI.

[707] Eachard’s Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the

Clergy. This little tract was published in 1670, and went through

ten editions by 1696.

|Gataker’s Cinnus and Antonius.|

13. We were not, nevertheless, destitute of men distinguished for

critical skill, even from the commencement of this period. The first

was a very learned divine, Thomas Gataker, one whom a foreign writer

has placed among the six protestants most conspicuous, in his

judgment, for depth of reading. His Cinnus, sive Adversaria

Miscellanea, published in 1651, to which a longer work, entitled

Adversaria Posthuma, is subjoined in later editions, may be introduced

here; since, among a far greater number of scriptural explanations,

both of these miscellanies contain many relating to profane antiquity.

He claims a higher place for his edition of Marcus Antoninus the next

year. This is the earliest edition, if I am not mistaken, of any

classical writer published in England with original annotations. Those

of Gataker evince a very copious learning, and the edition is still

perhaps reckoned the best that has been given of this author.

|Stanley’s Æschylus.|

14. Thomas Stanley, author of the History of Ancient Philosophy,

undertook a more difficult task, and gave in 1663 his celebrated

edition of Æschylus. It was, as every one has admitted, by far

superior to any that had preceded it; nor can Stanley’s real praise be

effaced though it may be diminished, by an unfortunate charge that has

been brought against him, of having appropriated to himself the

conjectures, most of them unpublished, of Casaubon, Dorat, and

Scaliger, to the number of at least three hundred emendations of the

text. It will hardly be reckoned a proof of our nationality, that a

living English scholar was the first to detect and announce this

plagiarism of a critic, in whom we had been accustomed to take pride,

from these foreigners.[708] After these plumes have been withdrawn,

Stanley’s Æschylus will remain a great monument of critical learning.

[708] Edinburgh Review, xix., 494. Museum Criticum, ii., 498.

(Both by the Bishop of London.)

|Other English philologers.|

15. Meric Casaubon by his notes on Persius, Antoninus, and Diogenes

Laertius, Pearson by those on the last author, Gale on Iamblichus,

Price on Apuleius, Hudson, by his editions of Thucydides and Josephus,

Potter by that of Lycophron, Baxter of Anacreon, attested the progress

of classical learning in a soil so well fitted to give it nourishment.

The same William Baxter published the first grammar, not quite

elementary, which had appeared in England, entitled, De Analogia, seu

Arte Latinæ Linguæ Commentarius. It relates principally to etymology,

and to the deduction of the different parts of the verb from a stem,

which he conceives to be the imperative mood. Baxter was a man of some

ability, but, in the style of critics, offensively contemptuous

towards his brethren of the craft.

|Bentley.|

|His epistle to Mill.|

16. We must hasten to the greatest of English critics in this, or

possibly any other age, Richard Bentley. His first book was the

Epistle to Mill, subjoined to the latter’s edition of the chronicle of

John Malala, a Greek writer of the lower empire. In a desultory and

almost garrulous strain, Bentley pours forth an immense store of novel

learning and of acute criticism, especially on his favourite subject,

which was destined to become his glory, the scattered relics of the

ancient dramatists. The style of Bentley, always terse and lively,

sometimes humorous and drily sarcastic, whether he wrote in Latin or

in English, could not but augment the admiration which his learning

challenged. Grævius and Spanheim pronounced him the rising star of

British literature, and a correspondence with the former began in

1692, which continued in unbroken friendship till his death.

|Dissertation on Phalaris.|

17. But the rare qualities of Bentley were more abundantly displayed,

and before the eyes of a more numerous tribunal, in his famous

dissertation on the epistles ascribed to Phalaris. This was provoked,

in the first instance, by a few lines of eulogy on these epistles by

Sir William Temple, who pretended to find in them indubitable marks of

authenticity. Bentley, in a dissertation subjoined to Wotton’s

Reflections on Modern and Ancient Learning, gave tolerably conclusive

proofs of the contrary. A young man of high family and respectable

learning, Charles Boyle, had published an edition of the Epistles of

Phalaris, with some reflection on Bentley for personal incivility; a

charge which he seems to have satisfactorily disproved. Bentley

animadverted on this in his dissertation. Boyle the next year, with

the assistance of some leading men at Oxford, Aldrich, King, and

Atterbury, published his Examination of Bentley’s Dissertation on

Phalaris; a book generally called, in familiar brevity, Boyle against

Bentley.[709] The Cambridge giant of criticism replied in an answer

which goes by the name of Bentley against Boyle. It was the first

great literary war that had been waged in England; and like that of

Troy, it has still the prerogative of being remembered after the

Epistles of Phalaris are almost as much buried as the walls of Troy

itself. Both combatants were skillful in wielding the sword: the arms

of Boyle, in Swift’s language, were given him by all the gods; but his

antagonist stood forward in no such figurative strength, master of a

learning to which nothing parallel had been known in England, and that

directed by an understanding prompt, discriminating, not idly

sceptical, but still farther removed from trust in authority,

sagacious in perceiving corruptions of language, and ingenious, at the

least, in removing them, with a style rapid, concise, amusing, and

superior to Boyle in that which he had most to boast, a sarcastic

wit.[710]

[709] “The principal share in the undertaking fell to the lot of

Atterbury; this was suspected at the time, and has since been

placed beyond all doubt by the publication of a letter of his to

Boyle.” Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 69.

[710] In point of classical learning the joint stock of the

confederacy bore no proportion to that of Bentley; their

acquaintance with several of the books upon which they comment

appears only to have begun upon that occasion, and sometimes they

are indebted for their knowledge of them to their adversary;

compared with his boundless erudition, their learning was that of

school boys, and not always sufficient to preserve them from

distressing mistakes. But profound literature was at that period

confined to few, while wit and raillery found numerous and eager

readers. It may be doubtful whether Busby himself, by whom every

one of the confederated band had been educated, possessed

knowledge which would have qualified him to enter the lists in

such a controversy.” Monk’s Bentley, p. 69. Warburton has justly

said, that Bentley by his wit foiled the Oxford men at their own

weapons.

18. It may now seem extraordinary to us, even without looking at the

anachronisms or similar errors which Bentley has exposed, that any one

should be deceived by the Epistles of Phalaris. The rhetorical

common-places, the cold declamation of the sophist, the care to please

the reader, the absence of that simplicity, with which a man who has

never known restraint in disguising his thoughts or choosing his

words, is sure to express himself, strike us in the pretended letters

of this buskined tyrant, the Icon Basilice of the ancient world. But

this was doubtless thought evidence of their authenticity by many, who

might say, as others have done in a happy vein of metaphor, that they

seemed not written with a pen but with a sceptre. The argument from

the use of the Attic dialect by a Sicilian tyrant, contemporary with

Pythagoras, is of itself conclusive, and would leave no doubt in the

present day.

|Disadvantages of scholars in that age.|

19. “It may be remarked,” says the Bishop of Gloucester, “that a

scholar at that time possessed neither the aids nor the encouragements

which are now presented to smooth the paths of literature. The

grammars of the Latin and Greek languages were imperfectly and

erroneously taught; and the critical scholar must have felt severely

the absence of sufficient indices, particularly of the voluminous

scholiasts, grammarians, and later writers of Greece, in the

examination of which no inconsiderable portion of a life might be

consumed. Bentley relying upon his own exertions and the resources of

his own mind, pursued an original path of criticism, in which the

intuitive quickness and subtlety of his genius qualified him to excel.

In the faculty of memory so important for such pursuits, he has

himself candidly declared that he was not particularly gifted.

Consequently, he practised throughout life the precaution of noting in

the margin of his books the suggestions and conjectures which rushed

into his mind during their perusal. To this habit of laying up

materials in store, we may partly attribute the surprising rapidity

with which some of his most important works were completed. He was

also at the trouble of constructing for his own use indices of authors

quoted by the principal scholiasts, by Eustathius and other ancient

commentators, of a nature similar to those afterwards published by

Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Græca; which latter were the produce of

the joint labour of various hands.”[711]

[711] Monk’s Life of Bentley, p. 12.

SECT. II.

ON ANTIQUITIES.

_Grævius and Gronovius--Fabretti--Numismatic Writers--Chronology_.

|Thesauri of Grævius and of Gronovius.|

20. The two most industrious scholars of their time, Grævius and

Gronovius, collected into one body such of the numerous treatises on

Roman and Greek antiquities, as they thought most worthy of

preservation in an uniform and accessible work. These form the

Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum by Grævius, in twelve volumes, the

Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum by Gronovius, in thirteen volumes; the

former published in 1694, the first volumes of the latter in 1697.

They comprehend many of the labours of the older antiquaries already

commemorated from the middle of the sixteenth to that of the

seventeenth century, and some also of a later date. Among these, in

the collection of Grævius, are a treatise of Albert Rubens, son of the

great painter, on the dress of the Romans, particularly the laticlave

(Antwerp, 1665), the enlarged edition of Octavius Ferrarius on the

same subject, several treatises by Spanheim and Ursatus, and

the Roma Antica of Nardini, published in 1666. Gronovius gave a place

in his twelfth volume (1702) to the very recent work of a young

Englishman, Potter’s Antiquities, which the author, at the request of

the veteran antiquary, had so much enlarged, that the Latin

translation in Gronovius is nearly double in length the first edition

of the English.[712] The warm eulogies of Gronovius attest the merit

of this celebrated work. Potter was but twenty-three years of age; he

had of course availed himself of the writings of Meursius, but he has

also contributed to supercede them. It has been said that he is less

exact in attending to the difference of times and places than our

finer criticism requires.[713]

[712] The first edition of Potter’s Antiquities was published in

1697 and 1698.

[713] Biogr. Univ.

|Fabretti.|

21. Bellori, in a long list of antiquarian writings, Falconieri in

several more, especially his Inscriptiones Athleticæ, maintained the

honour of Italy in this province so justly claimed as her own.[714]

But no one has been accounted equal to Raphael Fabretti, by judges so

competent as Maffei, Gravina, Fabroni, and Visconti.[715] His

diligence in collecting inscriptions was only surpassed by his

sagacity in explaining them; and his authority has been preferred to

that of any other antiquary.[716] His time was spent in delving among

ruins and vaults to explore the subterranean treasures of Latium; no

heat nor cold nor rain nor badness of road could deter him from these

solitary peregrinations. Yet the glory of Fabretti must be partly

shared with his horse. This wise and faithful animal, named Marco

Polo, had acquired, it is said, the habit of standing still, and as it

were pointing, when he came near an antiquity; his master candidly

owning that several things which would have escaped him had been

detected by the antiquarian quadruped.[717] Fabretti’s principal works

are three dissertations on the Roman aqueducts, and on the Trajan

column. Little, says Fabroni, was known before about the Roman galleys

or their naval affairs in general.[718] Fabretti was the first who

reduced lapidary remains into classes, and arranged them so as to

illustrate each other; a method, says one of his most distinguished

successors, which has laid the foundations of the science.[719] A

profusion of collateral learning is mingled with the main stream of

all his investigations.

[714] Salfi, vol. xi., 364.

[715] Fabretti’s life has been written by two very favourable

biographers, Fabroni, in Vitæ Italorum, vol. vi., and Visconti, in

the Biography Universelle.

[716] Fabroni, p. 187, Biogr. Univ.

[717] Fabroni, p. 192.

[718] P. 201.

[719] Biogr. Univ.

|Numismatics. Spanheim--Vaillant.|

22. No one had ever come to the study of medals with such stores of

erudition as Ezekiel Spanheim. The earlier writers on the subject,

Vico, Erizzo, Angeloni, were not comparable to him, and had rather

dwelt on the genuineness or rarity of coins than on their usefulness

in illustrating history. Spanheim’s Dissertations on the Use of

Medals, the second improved edition of which appeared in 1671, first

connected them with the most profound and critical research into

antiquity.[720] Vaillant, travelling into the Levant, brought home

great treasures of Greek coinage, especially those of the Seleucidæ,

at once enriching the cabinets of the curious and establishing

historical truth. Medallic evidence, in fact, may be reckoned among

those checks upon the negligence of historians, which having been

retrieved by industrious antiquaries, have created that caution, and

discerning spirit which has been exercised in later times upon facts,

and which, beginning in scepticism, passes onward to a more rational,

and therefore more secure, conviction of what can fairly be proved.

Jobert, in 1692, consolidated the researches of Spanheim, Vaillant,

and other numismatic writers in his book, entitled La Science des

Medailles, a better system of the science than had been

published.[721]

[720] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xxii.

[721] Biogr. Univ.

|Chronology. Usher.|

23. It would, of course, not be difficult to fill these pages with

brief notices of other books that fall within the extensive range of

classical antiquity. But we have no space for more than a mere

enumeration, which would give little satisfaction. Chronology has

received some attention in former volumes. Our learned archbishop

Usher might there have been named, since the first part of his Annals

of the Old Testament, which goes down to the year of the world 3828,

was published in 1650. The second part followed in 1654. This has been

the chronology generally adopted by English historians, as well as by

Bossuet, Calmet, and Rollin, so that for many years it might be called

the orthodox scheme of Europe. No former annals of the world had been

so exact in marking dates and collating sacred history with profane.

It was, therefore, exceedingly convenient for those who, possessing no

sufficient leisure or learning for these inquiries, might very

reasonably confide in such authority.

|Pezron.|

24. Usher, like Scaliger and Petavius, had strictly conformed to the

Hebrew chronology in all scriptural dates. But it is well known that

the Septuagint version, and also the Samaritan Pentateuch, differ

greatly from the Hebrew and from each other, so that the age of the

world has nearly 2,000 years more antiquity in the Greek than in the

original text. Jerome had followed the latter in the Vulgate; and in

the seventeenth century it was usual to maintain the incorrupt purity

of the Hebrew manuscripts, so that when Pezron, in his Antiquité des

Temps Devoilée, 1687, attempted to establish the Septuagint

chronology, it excited a clamour in some of his church, as derogatory

to the Vulgate translation. Martianay defended the received

chronology, and the system of Pezron gained little favour in that

age.[722] It has since become more popular, chiefly, perhaps, on

account of the greater latitude it gives to speculations on the origin

of kingdoms and other events of the early world, which are certainly

somewhat cramped in the common reckoning. But the Septuagint

chronology is not free from its own difficulties, and the internal

evidence seems rather against its having been the original. Where two

must be wrong, it is possible that all three may be so; and the most

judicious inquirers into ancient history have of late been coming to

the opinion, that, with some few exceptions, there are no means of

establishing accurate dates before the Olympiads. While the more

ancient history itself, even in leading and important events, is so

precarious as must be acknowledged, there can be little confidence in

chronological schemes. They seem, however, to be very seducing, so

that those who enter upon the subject as sceptics become believers in

their own theory.

[722] Biogr. Univ. arts. Pezron and Martianay. Bibliothèque

Univ., xxiv., 103.

|Marsham.|

25. Among those who addressed their attention to particular portions

of chronology, Sir John Marsham ought to be mentioned. In his Canon

Chronicus Ægyptiacus, he attempted, as the learned were still more

prone than they are now, to reconcile conflicting authorities without

rejecting any. He is said to have first started the ingenious idea

that the Egyptian dynasties, stretching to such immense antiquity,

were not successive but collateral.[723] Marsham fell, like many

others after him, into the unfortunate mistake of confounding

Sesostris with Sesac. But in times when discoveries that Marsham could

not have anticipated, were yet at a distance, he is extolled by most

of those who had laboured, by help of the Greek and Hebrew writers

alone, to fix ancient history on a stable foundation, as the restorer

of the Egyptian annals.

[723] Biograph. Britannica. I have some suspicion that this will

be found in Lydiat.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.

SECT. I.

_Papal Power limited by the Gallican Church--Dupin--Fleury--Protestant

Controversy--Bossuet--His Assaults on Protestantism--Jansenism--

Progress of Arminianism in England--Trinitarian Controversy--Defences

of Christianity--Pascal’s Thoughts--Toleration--Boyle--Locke--French

Sermons--And English--Other Theological Works._

|Decline of papal influence.|

1. It has been observed in the last volume that while little or no

decline could be perceived in the general church of Rome at the

conclusion of that period which we then had before us, yet the papal

authority itself had lost a part of that formidable character, which,

through the Jesuits, and especially Bellarmin, it had some years

before assumed. This was now still more decidedly manifest; the

temporal power over kings was not, certainly, renounced, for Rome

never retracts anything; nor was it, perhaps, without Italian

Jesuits to write in its behalf; but the common consent of nations

rejected it so strenuously, that on no occasion has it been brought

forward by any accredited or eminent advocate. There was also a

growing disposition to control the court of Rome; the treaty of

Westphalia was concluded in utter disregard of her protest. But such

matters of history do not belong to us, when they do not bear a close

relation to the warfare of the pen. Some events there were which have

had a remarkable influence on the theological literature of France,

and indirectly of the rest of Europe.

|Dispute of Louis XIV. with Innocent XI.|

2. Louis XIV., more arrogant, in his earlier life, than bigoted,

became involved in a contest with Innocent XI., by a piece of his

usual despotism and contempt of his subjects’ rights. He extended in

1673 the ancient prerogative, called the regale, by which the king

enjoyed the revenues of vacant bishoprics, to all the kingdom, though

many Sees had been legally exempt from it. Two bishops appealed to the

pope, who interfered in their favour more peremptorily than the times

would permit. Innocent, it is but just to say, was maintaining the

fair rights of the church, rather than any claim of his own. But the

dispute took at length a different form. France was rich in prelates

of eminent worth, and among such, as is evident, the Cisalpine

theories had never lain dormant since the councils of Constance and

Basle. Louis convened the famous assembly of the Gallican clergy in

1682. Bossuet, who is said to have felt some apprehensions lest the

spirit of resistance should become one of rebellion, was appointed to

open this assembly; and his sermon on that occasion is among his most

splendid works. His posture was, indeed, magnificent: he stands

forward, not so much the minister of religion as her arbitrator; we

see him poise in his hands earth and heaven, and draw that boundary

line which neither was to transgress; he speaks the language of

reverential love towards the mother church, that of St. Peter, and the

fairest of her daughters to which he belongs, conciliating their

transient feud; yet, in this majestic tone which he assumes, no

arrogance betrays itself, no thought of himself as one endowed with

transcendant influence; he speaks for the church, and yet we feel that

he raises himself above those for whom he speaks.[724]

[724] This sermon will be found in Œuvres de Bossuet, vol. ix.

|Four articles of 1682.|

3. Bossuet was finally entrusted with drawing up the four articles,

which the assembly, rather at the instigation, perhaps, of Colbert

than of its own accord, promulgated as the Gallican creed on the

limitations of papal authority. These declare: 1. That kings are

subject to no ecclesiastical power in temporals, nor can be deposed

directly or indirectly by the chiefs of the church; 2. That the

decrees of the council of Constance as to the papal authority are in

full force and ought to be observed; 3. That this authority can only

be exerted in conformity with the canons received in the Gallican

church; 4. That, though the pope has the principal share in

determining controversies of faith, and his decrees extend to all

churches, they are not absolutely final, unless the consent of the

catholic church be superadded. It appears that some bishops would have

willingly used stronger language, but Bossuet foresaw the risk of an

absolute schism. Even thus the Gallican church approached so nearly to

it that, the pope refusing the usual bulls to bishops nominated by the

king, according to the concordat, between thirty and forty Sees, at

last, were left vacant. No reconciliation was effected till 1693, in

the pontificate of Innocent XII. It is to be observed, whether the

French writers slur this over or not, that the pope gained the honours

of war; the bishops who had sat in the assembly of 1682, writing

separately letters which have the appearance of regretting, if not

retracting, what they had done. These were, however, worded with

intentional equivocation; and as the court of Rome yields to none in

suspecting the subterfuges of words, it is plain that it contented

itself with an exterior humiliation of its adversaries. The old

question of the regale was tacitly abandoned; Louis enjoyed all he had

desired, and Rome might justly think herself not bound to fight for

the privileges of those who had made her so bad a return.[725]

[725] I have derived most of this account from Bausset’s life of

Bossuet, vol. ii. Both the bishop and his biographer shuffle a

good deal about the letter of the Gallican prelates in 1693. But

when the Roman legions had passed under the yoke at the Caudine

forks, they were ready to take up arms again.

|Dupin on the ancient discipline.|

5. The doctrine of the four articles gained ground perhaps in the

church of France through a work of great boldness, and deriving

authority from the learning and judgment of its author, Dupin.

In the height of the contest, while many were considering how far the

Gallican church might dispense with the institution of bishops at

Rome, that point in the established system which evidently secured the

victory to their antagonist, in the year 1686, he published a treatise

on the ancient discipline of the church. It is written in Latin, which

he probably chose as less obnoxious than his own language. It may be

true, which I cannot affirm or deny, that each position in this work

had been advanced before; but the general tone seems undoubtedly more

adverse to the papal supremacy than any book which could have come

from a man of reputed orthodoxy. It tends, notwithstanding a few

necessary admissions, to represent almost all that can be called power

or jurisdiction in the see of Rome as acquired, if not abusive, and

would leave, in a practical sense, no real pope at all; mere primacy

being a trifle, and even the right of interfering by admonition being

of no great value, when there was no definite obligation to obey. The

principle of Dupin is that the church having reached her perfection in

the fourth century, we should endeavour, as far as circumstances will

admit, to restore the discipline of that age. But, even in the

Gallican church, it has generally been held that he has urged his

argument farther than is consistent with a necessary subordination to

Rome.[726]

[726] Bibliothèque Universelle, vi., 109. The book is very clear,

concise, and learned, so that it is worth reading through by

those who would understand such matters. I have not observed that

it is much quoted by English writers.

|Dupin’s Ecclesiastical Library.|

6. In the same year, Dupin published the first volume of a more

celebrated work, his Nouvelle Bibliothèque des Auteurs

Ecclesiastiques, a complete history of theological literature, at

least within the limits of the church, which, in a long series of

volumes, he finally brought down to the close of the seventeenth

century. It is unquestionably the most standard work of that kind

extant, whatever deficiencies may have been found in its execution.

The immense erudition requisite for such an undertaking may have

rendered it inevitable to take some things at second hand, or to fall

into some errors; and we may add other causes less necessary, the

youth of the writer in the first volumes, and the rapidity with which

they appeared. Integrity, love of truth, and moderation, distinguish

this ecclesiastical history, perhaps beyond any other. Dupin is often

near the frontier of orthodoxy, but he is careful, even in the eyes of

jealous catholics, not quite to overstep it. This work was soon

translated into English, and furnished a large part of such knowledge

on the subject as our own divines possessed. His free way of speaking,

however, on the Roman supremacy and some other points, excited the

animadversion of more rigid persons, and among others of Bossuet, who

stood on his own vantage-ground, ready to strike on every side. The

most impartial critics have been of Dupin’s mind; but Bossuet, like

all dogmatic champions Of orthodoxy, never sought truth by an

analytical process of investigation, assuming his own possession of it

as an axiom in the controversy.[727]

[727] Bibliothèque Universelle, iii. 39, vii. 335, xxii. 120.

Biogr. Universelle. Œuvres de Bossuet, vol. xxx. Dupin seems not

to have held the superiority of bishops to priests jure divino,

which nettles our man of Meaux. Ces grands critiques sont peu

favorables aux supériorités ecclésiastiques, et n’aiment guère

plus celles des evêques que celle du pape, p. 491.

|Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History.|

7. Dupin was followed a few years afterwards by one not his superior

in learning and candour (though deficient in neither), but in skill of

narration and beauty of style, Claude Fleury. The first volume of his

Ecclesiastical History came forth in 1691; but a part only of the long

series falls within this century. The learning of Fleury has been said

to be frequently not original; and his prolixity to be too great for

an elementary historian. The former is only blameable when he has

concealed his immediate authorities; few works of great magnitude have

been written wholly from the prime sources; with regard to his

diffuseness, it is very convenient to those who want access to the

original writers, or leisure to collate them. Fleury has been called

by some credulous and uncritical; but he is esteemed faithful,

moderate, and more respectful or cautious than Dupin. Yet many of his

volumes are a continual protest against the vices and ambition of the

mediæval popes, and his Ecclesiastical History must be reckoned among

the causes of that estrangement, in spirit and affection, from the

court of Rome which leavens the literature of France in the eighteenth

century.

|His Dissertations.|

8. The dissertations of Fleury, interspersed with his history, were

more generally read and more conspicuously excellent. Concise, but

neither dry nor superficial; luminous, yet appearing simple;

philosophical without the affectation of profundity, seizing

all that is most essential in their subject without the tediousness of

detail or the pedantry of quotation; written, above all, with that

clearness, that ease, that unaffected purity of taste, which belong to

the French style of that best age, they present a contrast not only to

the inferior writings on philosophical history with which our age

abounds, but, in some respects, even to the best. It cannot be a crime

that these dissertations contain a good deal which, after more than a

century’s labour in historical inquiry, has become more familiar than

it was.

|Protestant Controversy in France.|

9. The French protestants, notwithstanding their disarmed condition,

were not, I apprehend, much oppressed under Richelieu and Mazarin. But

soon afterwards an eagerness to accelerate what was taking place

through natural causes, their return into the church, brought on a

series of harassing edicts, which ended in the revocation of that of

Nantes. During this time, they were assailed by less terrible weapons,

yet such as required no ordinary strength to resist, the polemical

writings of the three greatest men in the church of France, Nicole,

Arnauld, and Bossuet. The two former were desirous to efface the

reproaches of an approximation to Calvinism, and of a disobedience to

the Catholic church, under which their Jansenist party was labouring.

Nicole began with a small treatise, entitled La Perpétuité de la Foi

de l’Eglise Catholique, touchant l’Eucharistie, in 1664. This aimed to

prove that the tenet of transubstantiation had been constant in the

church. Claude, the most able controvertist among the French

protestants, replied in the next year. This led to a much more

considerable work by Nicole and Arnauld conjointly, with the same

title as the former; nor was Claude slow in combating his

double-headed adversary. Nicole is said to have written the greater

portion of this second treatise, though it commonly bears the name of

his more illustrious colleague.[728]

[728] Biogr. Univ.

|Bossuet’s exposition of Catholic faith.|

10. Both Arnauld and Nicole were eclipsed by the most distinguished

and successful advocate of the Catholic church, Bossuet. His

Exposition de la Foi Catholique was written in 1668, for the use of

two brothers of the Dangeau family; but having been communicated to

Turenne, the most eminent protestant that remained in France, it

contributed much to his conversion. It was published in 1671; and

though enlarged from the first sketch, does not exceed eighty pages in

octavo. Nothing can be more precise, more clear, or more free from all

circuity and detail than this little book; everything is put in the

most specious light; the authority of the ancient church, recognised

by the majority of protestants, is alone kept in sight. Bossuet limits

himself to doctrines established by the Council of Trent, leaving out

of the discussion not only all questionable points, but, what is

perhaps less fair, all rites and usages, however general, or

sanctioned by the regular discipline of the church, except so far as

formally approved by that council. Hence, he glides with a transient

step over the invocation of saints and the worship of images, but

presses with his usual dexterity on the inconsistencies and weak

concessions of his antagonists. The Calvinists, or some of them, had

employed a jargon of words about real presence, which he exposes with

admirable brevity and vigour.[729] Nor does he gain less advantage in

favour of tradition and church authority from the assumption of

somewhat similar claims by the same party. It has often been alledged

that the Exposition of Bossuet was not well received by many on his

own side. And for this there seems to be some foundation, though the

Protestant controvertists have made too much of the facts. It was

published at Rome in 1678, and approved in the most formal manner by

Innocent XI. the next year. But it must have been perceived to

separate the faith of the church, as it rested on dry propositions,

from the same faith living and embodied in the every-day worship of

the people.[730]

[729] Bossuet observes that most other controversies are found to

depend more on words than substance, and the difference becomes

less the more they are examined; but in that of the eucharist the

contrary is the case, since the Calvinists endeavour to

accommodate their phraseology to the Catholics, while essentially

they differ. Vol. xviii., p. 135.

[730] The writings of Bossuet against the Protestants occupy nine

volumes, xviii.-xxvi., in the great edition of his works.

Versailles, 1816. The Exposition de la Foi is in the eighteenth.

Bausset, in his life of Bossuet, appears to have refuted the

exaggerations of many Protestants as to the ill reception of this

little book at Rome. Yet there was a certain foundation for it.

See Bibliothèque Universelle, vol. xi., p. 455.

|His conference with Claude.|

11. Bossuet was now the acknowledged champion of the Roman church in

France; Claude was in equal pre-eminence on the other side. These

great adversaries had a regular conference in 1678. Mademoiselle

de Duras, a protestant lady, like most others of her rank at

that time, was wavering about religion, and in her presence the

dispute was carried on. It entirely turned on church authority. The

arguments of Bossuet differed only from those which have often been

adduced by the spirit and conciseness with which he presses them. We

have his own account which of course gives himself the victory. It was

almost as much of course that the lady was converted; for it is seldom

that a woman can withstand the popular argument on that side, when she

has once gone far enough to admit the possibility of its truth by

giving it a hearing. Yet Bossuet deals in sophisms which, though

always in the mouths of those who call themselves orthodox, are

contemptible to such as know facts as well as logic. “I urged,” he

says, “in a few words what presumption it was to believe that we can

better understand the word of God than all the rest of the church, and

that nothing would thus prevent there being as many religions as

persons.”[731] But there can be no presumption in supposing that we

may understand anything better than one who has never examined it at

all; and if this rest of the church, so magnificently brought forward,

have commonly acted on Bossuet’s principle, and thought it

presumptuous to judge for themselves; if out of many millions of

persons a few only have deliberately reasoned on religion, and the

rest have been, like true zeros, nothing in themselves, but much in

sequence; if also, as is most frequently the case, this

presumptuousness is not the assertion of a paradox or novelty, but the

preference of one denomination of Christians, or of one tenet

maintained by respectable authority to another, we can only scorn the

emptiness, as well as resent the effrontery of this common-place that

rings so often in our ears. Certainly, reason is so far from

condemning a deference to the judgment of the wise and good, that

nothing is more irrational than to neglect it; but when this is

claimed for those whom we need not believe to have been wiser and

better than ourselves, nay, sometimes whom without vain-glory we may

esteem less, and that so as to set aside the real authority of the

most philosophical, unbiassed, and judicious of mankind, it is not

pride or presumption, but a sober use of our faculties that rejects

the jurisdiction.

[731] Œuvres de Bossuet, xxiii., 290.

|Correspondence with Molanus and Leibnitz.|

12. Bossuet once more engaged in a similar discussion about 1691.

Among the German Lutherans there seems to have been for a long time a

lurking notion that on some terms or other a reconciliation with the

church of Rome could be effected; and this was most countenanced in

the dominions of Brunswick, and above all in the university of

Helmstadt. Leibnitz himself and Molanus, a Lutheran divine, were the

negotiators on that side with Bossuet. Their treaty, for such it was

apparently understood to be, was conducted by writing; and when we

read their papers on both sides, nothing is more remarkable than the

tone of superiority which the catholic plenipotentiary, if such he

could be deemed without powers from anyone but himself, has thought

fit to assume. No concession is offered, no tenet explained away; the

sacramental cup to the laity, and a permission to the Lutheran clergy

already married to retain their wives after their re-ordination, is

all that he holds forth; and in this, doubtless, he could have had no

authority from Rome. Bossuet could not veil his haughty countenance,

and his language is that of asperity and contemptuousness instead of

moderation. He dictates terms of surrender as to a besieged city when

the breach is already practicable, and hardly deigns to show his

clemency by granting the smallest favour to the garrison. It is

curious to see the strained constructions, the artifices of silence,

to which Molanus has recourse in order to make out some pretence for

his ignominious surrender. Leibnitz, with whom the correspondence

broke off in 1693, and was renewed again in 1699, seems not quite so

yielding as the other; and the last biographer of Bossuet suspects

that the German philosopher was insincere or tortuous in the

negotiation. If this were so, he must have entered upon it less of his

own accord, than to satisfy the princess Sophia, who, like many of her

family, had been a little wavering, till our act of settlement became

a true settlement to their faith. This bias of the court of Hanover is

intimated in several passages. The success of this treaty of union, or

rather of subjection, was as little to be expected as it was

desirable; the old spirit of Lutheranism was much worn out, yet there

must surely have been a determination to resist so unequal a

compromise. Rome negotiated as a conqueror with these beaten

Carthaginians; yet no one had beaten them but themselves.[732]

[732] Œuvres de Bossuet, vols. xxv. and xxvi.

|His Variations of Protestant Churches.|

13. The warfare of the Roman church may be carried on either in a

series of conflicts on the various doctrines wherein the reformers

separated from her, or by one pitched battle on the main question of a

conclusive authority somewhere in the church. Bossuet’s temper, as

well as his inferiority in original learning, led him in preference to

the latter scheme of theological strategy. It was also manifestly that

course of argument which was most likely to persuade the unlearned. He

followed up the blow which he had already struck against Claude in his

famous work on the Variations of Protestant Churches. Never did his

genius find a subject more fit to display its characteristic

impetuosity, its arrogance, or its cutting and merciless spirit of

sarcasm. The weaknesses, the inconsistent evasions, the extravagances

of Luther, Zuingle, Calvin, and Beza pass, one after another, before

us, till these great reformers seem like victim prisoners to be hewn

down by the indignant prophet. That Bossuet is candid in statement, or

even faithful in quotation, I should much doubt; he gives the words of

his adversaries in his own French, and the references are not made to

any specified edition of their voluminous writings. The main point, as

he contends it to be, that the protestant churches (for he does not

confine this to persons), fluctuated much in the sixteenth century, is

sufficiently proved; but it remained to show that this was a reproach.

Those who have taken a different view from Bossuet may perhaps think

that a little more of this censure would have been well incurred; that

they have varied too little rather than too much; and that it is far

more difficult, even in controversy with the church of Rome, to

withstand the inference which their long creeds and confessions, as

well as the language too common with their theologians, have furnished

to her more ancient and catholic claim of infallibility, than to

vindicate those successive variations which are analogous to the

necessary course of human reason on all other subjects. The essential

fallacy of Romanism, that truth must ever exist visibly on earth, is

implied in the whole strain of Bossuet’s attack on the variances of

protestantism: it is evident that variance of opinion proves error

somewhere; but unless it can be shown that we have any certain method

of excluding it, this should only lead us to be more indulgent towards

the judgment of others, and less confident of our own. The notion of

an intrinsic moral criminality in religious error is at the root of

the whole argument; and till protestants are well rid of this, there

seems no secure mode of withstanding the effect which the vast weight

of authority asserted by the Latin church, even where it has not the

aid of the Eastern, must produce on timid and scrupulous minds.

|Anglican writings against Popery.|

14. In no period has the Anglican church stood up so powerfully in

defence of the protestant cause as in that before us. From the era of

the restoration to the close of the century the war was unremitting

and vigorous. And it is particularly to be remarked, that the

principal champions of the church of England threw off that ambiguous

syncretism which had displayed itself under the first Stuarts, and,

comparatively at least with their immediate predecessors, avoided

every admission which might facilitate a deceitful compromise. We can

only mention a few of the writers who signalised themselves in this

controversy.

|Taylor’s Dissuasive.|

15. Taylor’s Dissuasive from Popery was published in 1664; and in

this, his latest work, we find the same general strain of protestant

reasoning, the same rejection of all but scriptural authority, the

same free exposure of the inconsistencies and fallacies of tradition,

the same tendency to excite a sceptical feeling as to all except the

primary doctrines of religion, which had characterised the Liberty of

Prophesying. These are mixed, indeed, in Taylor’s manner, with a few

passages (they are, I think, but few), which singly taken might seem

to breathe not quite this spirit; but the tide flows for the most part

the same way, and it is evident that his mind had undergone no change.

The learning, in all his writings is profuse; but Taylor never leaves

me with the impression that he is exact and scrupulous in its

application. In one part of this Dissuasive from Popery, having been

reproached with some inconsistency, he has no scruple to avow that in

a former work he had employed weak arguments for a laudable

purpose.[733]

[733] Taylor’s Works, x., 304. This is not surprising, as in his

Ductor Dubitantium, xi., 484, he maintains the right of using

arguments and authorities in controversy, which we do not believe

to be valid.

|Barrow.--Stillingfleet.|

16. Barrow, not so extensively learned as Taylor, who had read rather

too much, but inferior, perhaps, even in that respect to hardly any

one else, and above him in closeness and strength of reasoning,

combated against Rome in many of his sermons, and especially

in a long treatise on the papal supremacy. Stillingfleet followed, a

man deeply versed in ecclesiastical antiquity, of an argumentative

mind, excellently fitted for polemical dispute, but perhaps by those

habits of his life rendered too much of an advocate to satisfy an

impartial reader. In the critical reign of James II., he may be

considered as the leader on the protestant side; but Wake, Tillotson,

and several more would deserve mention in a fuller history of

ecclesiastical literature.

|Jansenius.|

17. The controversies always smouldering in the Church of Rome,

sometimes breaking into flame, to which the Anti-Pelagian writings of

Augustin had originally given birth, have been slightly touched in our

former volumes. It has been seen that the rigidly predestinarian

theories had been condemned by the court of Rome in Baius, that the

opposite doctrine of Molina had narrowly escaped censure, that it was

safest to abstain from any language not verbally that of the church,

or of Augustin whom the church held incontrovertible. But now a more

serious and celebrated controversy, that of the Jansenists, pierced,

as it were, to the heart of the church. It arose before the middle of

the century. Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, in his Augustinus, published,

after his death, in 1640, gave, as he professed, a faithful statement

of the tenets of that father. “We do not inquire,” he says, “what men

ought to believe on the powers of human nature, or on the grace and

predestination of God, but what Augustin once preached with the

approbation of the church, and has consigned to writing in many of his

works.” This book is in three parts: the first containing a history of

the Pelagian controversy, the second and third an exposition of the

tenets of Augustin. Jansenius does not, however, confine himself so

much to mere analysis, but that he attacks the Jesuits Lessius and

Molina, and even reflects on the bull of Pius V. condemning Baius,

which he cannot wholly approve.[734]

[734] A very copious history of Jansenism, taking it up from the

council of Trent, will be found in the fourteenth volume of the

Bibliothèque Universelle, p. 139-398, from which Mosheim has

derived most of what we read in his Ecclesiastical History. And

the History of Port-Royal was written by Racine, in so

perspicuous and neat a style, that, though we may hardly think

with Olivet that it places him as high in prose writing as his

tragedies do in verse, it entitles him to rank in the list, not a

very long one, of those who have succeeded in both. Is it not

probable, that in some scenes of Athalie he had Port-Royal before

his eyes? The history and the tragedy were written about the same

time. Racine, it is rather remarkable, had entered the field

against Nicole in 1666, chiefly indeed to defend theatrical

representations, but not without many sarcasms against Jansenism.

|Condemnation of his Augustinus in France.|

18. Richelieu, who is said to have retained some animosity against

Jansenius on account of a book called Mars Gallicus, which he had

written on the side of his sovereign the king of Spain, designed to

obtain the condemnation of the Augustinus by the French clergy. The

Jesuits, therefore, had gained ground so far that the doctrines of

Augustin were out of fashion, though few besides themselves ventured

to reject his nominal authority. It is certainly clear that Jansenius

offended the greater part of the church. But he had some powerful

advocates, and especially Antony Arnauld, the most renowned of a

family long conspicuous for eloquence, for piety, and for opposition

to the Jesuits. In 1649, after several years of obscure dispute,

Cornet, syndic of the faculty of Theology in the University of Paris,

brought forward for censure seven propositions, five of which became

afterwards so famous, without saying that they were found in the work

of Jansenius. The faculty condemned them, though it had never been

reckoned favourable to the Jesuits; a presumption that they were at

least expressed in a manner repugnant to the prevalent doctrine. Yet

Le Clerc, to whose excellent account of this controversy in the

fourteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle we are chiefly

indebted, declares his own opinion that there may be some ambiguity in

the style of the first, but that the other four are decidedly

conformable to the theology of Augustin.

|And at Rome.|

19. The Jesuits now took the course of calling in the authority of

Rome. They pressed Innocent X. to condemn the five propositions, which

were maintained by some doctors in France. It is not the policy of

that court to compromise so delicate a possession as infallibility by

bringing it to the test of that personal judgment, which is of

necessity the arbiter of each man’s own obedience. The popes have in

fact rarely taken a part, independently of councils, in these school

debates. The bull of Pius V., a man too zealous by character to regard

prudence, in which he condemned many tenets of Baius, had not, nor

could it, give satisfaction to those who saw with their own eyes that

it swerved from the Augustinian theory. Innocent was, at first,

unwilling to meddle with a subject which, as he owned to a friend, he

did not understand. But after hearing some discussions, he grew more

confident of his knowledge, which he ascribed, as in duty bound, to

the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and went so heartily along with the

Anti-Jansenists, that he refused to hear the deputies of the other

party. On the 31st of May, 1653, he condemned the five propositions,

four as erroneous, and the fifth in stronger language; declaring,

however, not in the bull, but orally, that he did not condemn the

tenet of efficacious grace (which all the Dominicans held), nor the

doctrine of Saint Augustin, which was, and ever would be that of the

church.

|The Jansenists take a distinction.|

20. The Jansenists were not bold enough to hint that they did not

acknowledge the infallibility of the pope in an express and positive

declaration. Even if they had done so, they had an evident recognition

of this censure of the five propositions by their own church, and

might dread its being so generally received as to give the sanction

which no catholic can withstand. They had recourse, unfortunately, to

a subterfuge which put them in the wrong. They admitted that the

propositions were false, but denied that they could be found in the

book of Jansenius. Thus, each party was at issue on a matter of fact,

and each erroneously, according at least to the judgment of the most

learned and impartial protestants. The five propositions express the

doctrine of Augustin himself; and if they do this, we can hardly doubt

that they express that of Jansenius. In a short time, this ground of

evasion was taken from their party. An Assembly of French prelates in

the first place, and afterwards Alexander VII., successor of Innocent X.,

condemned the propositions, as in Jansenius, and in the sense

intended by Jansenius.

|And are persecuted.|

21. The Jansenists were now driven to the wall: the Sorbonne in 1655,

in consequence of some propositions of Arnauld, expelled him from the

theological faculty; a formulary was drawn up to be signed by the

clergy, condemning the propositions of Jansenius, which was finally

established in 1661; and those who refused, even nuns, underwent a

harassing persecution. The most striking instance of this, which still

retains an historical character, was the dissolution of the famous

convent of Port-Royal, over which Angelica Arnauld, sister of the

great advocate of Jansenism, had long presided with signal reputation.

This nunnery was at Paris, having been removed in 1644 from an ancient

Cistertian convent of the same name, about six leagues distant, and

called for distinction Port-Royal des Champs. To this now unfrequented

building some of the most eminent men repaired for study, whose

writings being anonymously published, have been usually known by the

name of their residence. Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole, Lancelot, De Sacy,

are among the Messieurs de Port-Royal, an appellation so glorious in

the seventeenth century. The Jansenists now took a distinction, very

reasonable, as it seems, in its nature, between the authority which

asserts or denies a proposition, and that which does the like as to a

fact. They refused to the pope, that is, in this instance, to the

church, the latter infallibility. We cannot prosecute this part of

ecclesiastical history farther; if writings of any literary importance

had been produced by the controversy, they would demand our attention;

but this does not appear to have been the case. The controversy

between Arnauld and Malebranche may perhaps be an exception. The

latter, carried forward by his original genius, attempted to deal with

the doctrines of theology as with metaphysical problems, in his Traité

de la Nature et de la Grace. Arnauld animadverted on this in his

Réflexions Philosophiques et Théologiques. Malebranche replied in

Lettres du Père Malebranche à un de ses Amis. This was published in

1686, and the controversy between such eminent masters of abstruse

reasoning began to excite attention. Malebranche seems to have retired

first from the field. His antagonist had great advantages in the

dispute, according to received systems of theology, with which he was

much more conversant, and perhaps on the whole in the philosophical

part of the question. This however cannot be reckoned entirely a

Jansenistic controversy, though it involved those perilous

difficulties which had raised that flame.[735]

[735] An account of this controversy will be found at length in

the second volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle.

|Progress of Arminianism.|

|Courcelles.|

22. The credit of Augustin was now as much shaken in the protestant,

as in the catholic regions of Europe. Episcopius had given to the

Remonstrant party a reputation which no sect so inconsiderable in its

separate character has ever possessed. The Dutch Arminians were at no

time numerous; they took no hold of the people; they had few

churches, and though not persecuted by the lenient policy of Holland,

were still under the ban of an orthodox clergy, as exclusive and

bigoted as before. But their writings circulated over Europe, and made

a silent impression on the adverse party. It became less usual to

bring forward the Augustinian hypothesis in prominent or unequivocal

language. Courcelles, born at Geneva, and the successor of Episcopius

in the Remonstrant congregation at Amsterdam, with less genius than

his predecessor, had, perhaps, a more extensive knowledge of

ecclesiastical antiquity. His works were much in esteem with the

theologians of that way of thinking; but they have not fallen in my

way.

|Limborch.|

23. Limborch, great-nephew of Episcopius, seems more than any other

Arminian divine to have inherited his mantle. His most important work

is the Theologia Christiana, containing a system of divinity and

morals, in seven books and more than 900 pages, published in 1686. It

is the fullest delineation of the Arminian scheme; but as the

Arminians were by their principle free inquirers, and not, like other

churches, bondsmen of symbolical formularies, no one book can strictly

be taken as their representative. The tenets of Limborch, are, in the

majority of disputable points, such as impartial men have generally

found in the primitive or Ante-Nicene fathers; but in some he probably

deviates from them, steering far away from all that the protestants of

the Swiss reform had abandoned as superstitious or unintelligible.

|Le Clerc.|

24. John Le Clerc, in the same relationship to Courcelles that

Limborch was to Episcopius, and like him transplanted from Geneva to

the more liberal air, at that time, of the United Provinces, claims a

high place among the Dutch Arminians; for though he did not maintain

their cause either in systematic or polemical writings, his commentary

on the Old Testament, and still more his excellent and celebrated

reviews, the Bibliothèques Universelle, Choisie, and Ancienne et

Moderne, must be reckoned a perpetual combat on that side. These

journals enjoyed an extraordinary influence over Europe, and deserved

to enjoy it. Le Clerc is generally temperate, judicious, appeals to no

passion, displays a very extensive, though not perhaps a very deep

erudition, lies in wait for the weakness and temerity of those he

reviews, thus sometimes gaining the advantage over more learned men

than himself. He would have been a perfect master of that sort of

criticism, then newly current in literature, if he could have

repressed an irritability in matters personal to himself, and a degree

of prejudice against the Romish writers, or perhaps those styled

orthodox in general, which sometimes disturbs the phlegmatic

steadiness with which a good reviewer, like a practised sportsman,

brings down his game.[736]

[736] Bishop Monk observes that Le Clerc “seems to have been the

first person who understood the power which may be exercised over

literature by a reviewer.” Life of Bentley, p. 209. This may be

true, especially as he was nearly the first reviewer, and

certainly better than his predecessors. But this remark is

followed by a sarcastic animadversion upon Le Clerc’s ignorance

of Greek metres, and by the severe assertion, that “by an

absolute system of terror, he made himself a despot in the

republic of letters.” The former is so far true, that he neither

understood the Greek metres as well as Bentley and Porson, or

those who have trod in their steps, nor supposed that all

learning was concentred in that knowledge, as we seemed in danger

of supposing within my memory. The latter is not warranted by the

general character of Le Clerc’s criticisms, which, where he has

no personal quarrel, is temperate and moderate, neither traducing

men, nor imputing motives; and consequently unlike certain

periodical criticism of a later date.

|Sancroft’s Fur Prædestinatus.|

25. The most remarkable progress made by the Arminian theology was in

England. This had begun under James and Charles; but it was then taken

up in conjunction with that patristic learning, which adopted the

fourth and fifth centuries as the standard of orthodox faith. Perhaps

the first very bold and unambiguous attack on the Calvinistic system

which we shall mention came from this quarter. This was an anonymous

Latin pamphlet, entitled Fur Prædestinatus, published in 1651, and

generally ascribed to Sancroft, at that time a young man. It is a

dialogue between a thief under sentence of death and his attendant

minister, wherein the former insists upon his assurance of being

predestinated to salvation. In this idea there is nothing but what is

sufficiently obvious; but the dialogue is conducted with some spirit

and vivacity. Every position in the thief’s mouth is taken from

eminent Calvinistic writers, and what is chiefly worth notice, is that

Sancroft, for the first time, has ventured to arraign the greatest

heroes of the Reformation; not only Calvin, Beza, and Zanchius, but

who had been hitherto spared, Luther and Zuingle. It was in the nature

of a manifesto from the Arminian party, that they would not defer in

future to any modern authority.[737]

[737] The Fur Prædestinatus is reprinted in D’Oyly’s Life of

Sancroft. It is much the best proof of ability that the worthy

archbishop ever gave.

|Arminianism in England.|

26. The loyal Anglican clergy, suffering persecution at the hands of

Calvinistic sectaries, might be naturally expected to cherish the

opposite principles. These are manifest in the sermons of Barrow,

rather perhaps by his silence than his tone, and more explicitly in

those of South. But many exceptions might be found among leading men,

such as Sanderson; while in an opposite quarter, among the younger

generation who had conformed to the times, arose a more formidable

spirit of Arminianism, which changed the face of the English church.

This was displayed among those who, just about the epoch of the

Restoration, were denominated Latitude-men, or more commonly

Latitudinarians, trained in the principles of Episcopius and

Chillingworth, strongly averse to every compromise with popery, and

thus distinguished from the high church party, learned rather in

profane philosophy than in the fathers, more full of Plato and

Plotinus than Jerome or Chrysostom, great maintainers of natural

religion and of the eternal laws of morality, not very solicitous

about systems of orthodoxy, and limiting very considerably beyond the

notions of former ages, the fundamental tenets of Christianity. This

is given as a general character, but varying in the degree of its

application to particular persons. Burnet enumerates as the chief of

this body of men, More, Cudworth, Whichcot, Tillotson, Stillingfleet;

some, especially the last, more tenacious of the authority of the

fathers and of the church than others, but all concurring in the

adoption of an Arminian theology.[738] This became so predominant

before the revolution, that few English divines of eminence remained,

who so much as endeavoured to steer a middle course, or to dissemble

their renunciation of the doctrines which had been sanctioned at the

synod of Dort by the delegates of their church. “The Theological

Institutions of Episcopius,” says a contemporary writer, “were at that

time (1685) generally in the hands of our students of divinity in both

universities, as the best system of divinity that had appeared.”[739]

And he proceeds afterwards: “The Remonstrant writers, among whom there

were men of excellent learning and parts, had now acquired a

considerable reputation in our universities by the means of some great

men among us.” This testimony seems irresistible; and as one hundred

years before the Institutes of Calvin were read in the same academical

studies, we must own, unless Calvin and Episcopius shall be maintained

to have held the same tenets, that Bossuet might have added a chapter

to the Variations of Protestant Churches.

[738] Burnet’s History of His Own Times, i., 187. Account of the

new sect called Latitudinarians, in the collection of tracts,

entitled Phœnix, vol. ii., p. 499.

[739] Nelson’s Life of Bull, in Bull’s Works, vol. viii., p. 257.

|Bull’s Harmonia Apostolica.|

27. The methods adopted in order to subvert the Augustinian theology

were sometimes direct, by explicit controversy, or by an opposite

train of scriptural interpretation in regular commentaries; more

frequently perhaps indirect, by inculcating moral duties, and

especially by magnifying the law of nature. Among the first class, the

Harmonia Apostolica of Bull seems to be reckoned the principal work of

this period. It was published in 1669, and was fiercely encountered at

first, not merely by the presbyterian party, but by many of the

church, the Lutheran tenets as to justification by faith being still

deemed orthodox. Bull establishes as the groundwork of his harmony

between the apostles Paul and James, on a subject where their language

apparently clashes in terms, that we are to interpret St. Paul by St.

James, and not St. James by St. Paul, because the latest authority,

and that which may be presumed to have explained what was obscure in

the former, ought to prevail;[740] a rule doubtless applicable in many

cases, whatever it may be in this. It, at least, turned to his

advantage; but it was not so easy for him to reconcile his opinions

with those of the reformers, or with the Anglican articles.

[740] Nelson’s Life of Bull.

|Hammond--Locke--Wilkins.|