Chapter VI (1)

HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.

_Advance of the Reformation--Differences of Opinion--Erasmus--The Protestant Opinions spread farther--Their Prevalence in Italy-- Reaction of Church of Rome--Theological Writings--Luther--Spirit of the Reformation--Translations of Scripture._

|Progress of the Reformation.|

1. The separation of part of Europe from the church of Rome is the great event that distinguishes these thirty years. But as it is not our object to traverse the wide field of civil or ecclesiastical history, it will suffice to make a few observations rather in reference to the spirit of the times, than to the public occurrences that sprung from it. The new doctrine began to be freely preached, and with immense applause of the people, from the commencement of this period, or, more precisely, from the year 1522, in many parts of Germany and Switzerland; the Duke of Deuxponts in that year, or, according to some authorities, in 1523, having led the way in abolishing the ancient ceremonies, and his example having been successively followed in Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg, Brunswick, many imperial cities, and the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden, by the disciples of Luther; while those who adhered to Zwingle made similar changes in several cantons of Switzerland.

|Interference of civil power.|

2. The magistrates generally proceeded, especially at the outset, with as great caution and equity as were practicable in so momentous a revolution; though perhaps they did not always respect the laws of the empire. They commonly began by allowing freedom of preaching, and forbad that any one should be troubled about his religion. This, if steadily acted upon, repressed the tumultuous populace, who were eager for demolishing images, the memorials of the old religion, as much as it did the episcopal courts, which, had they been strong enough, might have molested those who so plainly came within their jurisdiction. The Reformation depended chiefly on zealous and eloquent preachers; the more eminent secular clergy, as well as many regulars, having espoused its principles. They encountered no great difficulty in winning over the multitude; and when thus a decisive majority was obtained, commonly in three or four years from the first introduction of free preaching, the government found it time to establish, by a general edict, the abolition of the mass, and of such ceremonies as they did not deem it expedient to retain. The conflict between the two parties in Germany seems to have been less arduous than we might expect. It was usually accompanied by an expulsion of the religious of both sexes from their convents, a measure, especially as to women, unjust and harsh,[675] and sometimes by an alienation of ecclesiastical revenues to the purposes of the state, but this was not universal in Germany, nor was it countenanced by Luther. I cannot see any just reason to charge the Protestant princes of the empire with having been influenced generally by such a motive. In Sweden, however, the proceedings of Gustavus Vasa, who confiscated all ecclesiastical estates, subject only to what he might deem a sufficient maintenance for the possessors, have very much the appearance of arbitrary spoliation.[676]

[675] Bilibald Pirckheimer wrote to Melanchthon complaining that a
convent of nuns at Nuremberg, among whom were two of his sisters,
had been molested and insulted because they would not accept
confessors appointed by the senate. Res eo deducta est ut quicunque
miserandas illas offendere et incessere audet, obsequium Deo se
præstitisse arbitretur. Idque non solum a viris agitur, sed et a
mulieribus; et illis mulieribus, quarum liberis omnem exhibuere
caritatem. Non solum enim viris, qui alios docere contendunt, se
ipsos vero minime emendant, urbs nostra referta est, sed et
mulieribus curiosis, garrulis et otiosis, quæ omnia potius quam
domum propriam gubernare satagunt. Pirckheimer Opera, Frankf. 1610,
p. 375. He was a moderate man, concurring with the Lutherans in
most of their doctrine, but against the violation of monastic vows.
Several letters passed between him and Erasmus. The latter, though
he could not approve the hard usage of women, hated the monks so
much, that he does not greatly disapprove what was done towards
them. In Germaniâ multa virginum ac monachorum monasteria
crudeliter direpta sunt. Quidam magistratus agunt moderatius.
Ejecerunt eos duntaxat, qui illic non essent professi, et vetuerunt
novitios recipi; ademerunt illis curam virginum, et jus alibi
concionandi quam in suis monasteriis. Breviter, absque magistratus
permissu nihil licet illis agere. Videntur huc spectare, ut ex
monasteriis faciant parochias. Existimant enim hos conjuratos
phalangas et tot privilegiis armatos diutius ferri non posse.
(Basil. Aug. 1525.) Epist. Dcccliv. Multis in locis durè tractati
sunt monachi; verum plerique cum sint intolerabiles, alia tamen
ratione corrigi non possunt. Epist. Dcclvii.

[676] Gerdes Hist. Evangel. Reform. Seckendorf, et alii supra nominati.
The best account I have seen of the Reformation in Denmark and
Sweden is in the third volume of Gerdes, p. 279, &c.

|Excitement of revolutionary spirit.|

3. But while these great innovations were brought in by the civil power, and sometimes with too despotic a contempt of legal rights, the mere breaking up of old settlements had so disturbed the minds of the people, that they became inclined to further acts of destruction, and more sweeping theories of revolution. It is one of the fallacious views of the Reformation, to which we have adverted in a former page, to fancy that it sprung from any notions of political liberty, in such a sense as we attach to the word. But, inasmuch as it took away a great deal of coercive jurisdiction exercised by the bishops, without substituting much in its place, it did unquestionably relax the bonds of laws not always unnecessary; and inasmuch as the multitude were in many parts instrumental in destroying by force the exterior symbols of the Roman worship, it taught them a habit of knowing and trying the efficacy of that popular argument. Hence the insurrection of the German peasants in 1525 may, in a certain degree, be ascribed to the influence of the new doctrine; and, in fact, one of their demands was the establishment of the Gospel. But as the real cause of that rebellion was the oppressive yoke of their lords, which, in several instances before the Reformation was thought of, had led to similar efforts at relief, we should not lay too much stress on this additional incitement.[677]

[677] Seckendorf.

|Growth of fanaticism.|

4. A more immediate effect of overthrowing the ancient system was the growth of fanaticism, to which, in its worst shape, the antinomian extravagances of Luther yielded too great encouragement. But he was the first to repress the pretences of the Anabaptists;[678] and when he saw the danger of general licentiousness which he had unwarily promoted, he listened to the wiser counsels of Melanchthon, and permitted his early doctrine upon justification to be so far modified, or mitigated in expression, that it ceased to give apparent countenance to immorality; though his differences with the church of Rome, as to the very question from which he had started, thus became of less practical importance, and less tangible to ordinary minds than before.[679] Yet in his own writings we may find to the last such language as to the impossibility of sin in the justified man, who was to judge solely by an internal assurance as to the continuance of his own justification, as would now be universally condemned in all our churches, and is hardly to be heard from the lips of the merest enthusiast.

[678] Id. Melanchthon was a little staggered by the first Anabaptists,
who appeared during the concealment of Luther in the castle of
Wartburg. Magnis rationibus, he says, adducor certè ut contemnere
eos nolim, nam esse in iis spiritus quosdam multis argumentis
apparet, sed de quibus judicare præter Martinum nemo facile possit.
As to infant baptism, he seemed to think it a difficult question.
But the Elector observed that they passed for heretics already, and
it would be unwise to moot a new point. Luther, when he came back,
rejected the pretences of the Anabaptists at once.

[679] See two remarkable passages in Seckendorf, part ii. p. 90, and
p. 106. The æra of what may be called the palinodia of early
Lutheranism was in 1527, when Melanchthon drew up instructions for
the visitation of the Saxon churches. Luther came into this; but it
produced that jealousy of Melanchthon among the rigid disciples,
such as Amsdorf and Justus Jonas, which led to the molestation of
his latter years. In 1537, Melanchthon writes to a correspondent:
Scis me quædam minus horridè dicere, de prædestinatione, de assensu
voluntatis, de necessitate obedientiæ nostræ, de peccato mortali.
De his omnibus scio re ipsa Lutherum sentire eadem, sed ineruditi
quædam ejus Φορτικωτερα [Phortikôtera] dicta, cum non videant quo
pertineant, nimium amant. Epist. p. 445. (edit. 1647.)

I am not convinced that this apology for Luther is sufficient.
Words are of course to be explained, when ambiguous, by the context
and scope of the argument. But when single detached aphorisms, or
even complete sentences in a paragraph, bear one obvious sense, I
do not see that we can hold the writer absolved from the imputation
of that meaning, because he may somewhere else have used a language
inconsistent with it. If the Colloquia Mensalia are to be fully
relied upon, Luther continued to talk in the same antinomian strain
as before, though he grew sometimes more cautious in writing. See
chap. xii. of that work; and compare with the passages quoted by
Milner, v. 517, from the second edition (in 1536) of his Commentary
on the Galatians. It would be well to know if these occur in that
of 1519. But Luther had not gone greater lengths than Melanchthon
himself.

|Differences of Luther and Zwingle.|

5. It is well known that Zwinglius, unconnected with Luther in throwing off his allegiance to Rome, took in several respects rather different theological views, but especially in the article of the real presence, asserted by the Germans as vigorously as in the Church of Rome, though with a modification sufficient, in the spirit of uncompromising orthodoxy, to separate them entirely from her communion, but altogether denied by the Swiss and Belgian reformers. The attempts made to disguise this division of opinion, and to produce a nominal unanimity by ambiguous and incoherent jargon, belong to ecclesiastical history, of which they form a tedious and not very profitable portion.

|Confession of Augsburg.|

6. The Lutheran princes, who the year before had acquired the name of Protestants, by their protest against the resolutions of the majority in the diet of Spire, presented in 1530 to that held at Augsburg the celebrated confession, which embodies their religious creed. It has been said that there are material changes in subsequent editions, but this is denied by the Lutherans. Their denial can only be as to the materiality, for the fact is clear.[680]

[680] Bossuet, Variations des Eglises Protestantes, vol. i. Seckendorf,
p. 170. Clement, Bibliothèque Curieuse, vol. ii. In the editions of
1531 we read: De cœna Domini docent, quod corpus et sanguis Christi
vere adsint, et distribuantur vescentibus in cœna Domini, et
improbant secus docentes. In those of 1540, it runs thus: De cœna
Domini docent, quod cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur corpus et
sanguis Christi vescentibus in cœna Domini.

|Conduct of Erasmus.|

7. Meantime, it was not all the former opponents of abuses in the church who now served under the banner of either Luther or Zwingle. Some few, like Sir Thomas More, went violently back to the extreme of maintaining the whole fabric of superstition; a greater number, without abandoning their own private sentiments, shrunk, for various reasons, from an avowed separation from the church. Such we may reckon Faber Stapulensis, the most learned Frenchman of that age after Budæus; such perhaps was Budæus himself;[681] and such were Bilibaldus Pirckheimer,[682] Petrus Mosellanus, Beatus Rhenanus, and Wimpfeling, all men of just renown in their time. Such, above all, was Erasmus himself, the precursor of bolder prophets than himself, who, in all his later years, stood in a very unenviable state, exposed to the shafts of two parties who forgave no man that moderation which was a reproach to themselves. At the beginning of this period, he had certainly an esteem for Melanchthon, Œcolampadius, and other reformers; and though already shocked by the violence of Luther, which he expected to ruin the cause altogether, had not begun to speak of him with disapprobation.[683] In several points of opinion, he professed to coincide with the German reformers; but his own temper was not decisive; he was capable of viewing a subject in various lights; his learning, as well as natural disposition, kept him irresolute; and it might not be easy to determine accurately the tenets of so voluminous a theologian. One thing was manifest, that he had greatly contributed to the success of the Reformation. It was said, that Erasmus had laid the egg, and Luther had hatched it. Erasmus afterwards, when more alienated from the new party, observed, that he had laid a hen’s egg, but Luther had hatched a crow’s.[684] Whatever was the bird, it pecked still at the church. In 1522, came out the Colloquies of Erasmus, a book even now much read, and deserving to be so. It was professedly designed for the instruction and amusement of youth; but both are conveyed at the expense of the prevalent usages in religion. The monkish party could not be blind to its effect. The faculty of theology at Paris, in 1526, led by one Beda, a most bigoted enemy of Erasmus, censured the Colloquies for slighting the fasts of the church, virginity, monkery, pilgrimages, and other established parts of the religious system. They incurred of course the displeasure of Rome, and have several times been forbidden to be read in schools. Erasmus pretended that in his Ιχθυοφαγια [Ichthyophagia] he only turned into ridicule the abuse of fasting, and not the ordinances of the church. It would be difficult, however, to find out this distinction in the dialogue, or, indeed, anything favourable to the ecclesiastical cause in the whole book of Colloquies. The clergy are everywhere represented as idle and corrupt. No one who desired to render established institutions odious could set about it in a shorter or surer way; and it would be strange if Erasmus had not done the church more harm by such publications than he could compensate by a few sneers at the reformers in his private letters. In the single year 1527, Colinæus printed 24,000 copies of the Colloquies, all of which were sold.

[681] Budæus was suspected of Protestantism, and disapproved many
things in his own church; but the passages quoted from him by
Gerdes, i. 186, prove that he did not mean to take the leap.

[682] Gerdes, vol. i. § 66-83. We have seen above the moderation of
Pirckheimer in some respects. I am not sure, however, that he did
not comply with the Reformation after it was established at
Nuremberg.

[683] Male metuo misero Luthero; sic undique fervet conjuratio; sic
undique irritantur in illum principes, ac præcipuè Leo pontifex.
Utinam Lutherus meum secutus consilium, ab odiosis illis ac
seditiosis abstinuisset. Plus erat fructus et minus invidiæ. Parum
esset unum hominem perire; si res hæc illis succedit, nemo feret
illorum insolentiam. Non conquiescent donec linguas ac bonas
literas omnes subverterint. Epist. Dxxviii Sept. 1520.

Lutherus, quod negari non potest, optimam fabulam susceperat, et
Christi pene aboliti negotium summo cum orbis applausu cœperat
agere. Sed utinam rem tantam gravioribus ac sedatioribus egisset
consiliis, majoreque cum animi calamique moderatione; atque utinam
in scriptis illius non essent tam multa bona, aut sua bona non
vitiasset malis haud ferendis. Epist. Dcxxxv. 3d Sept.
1521.

[684] Epist. Dccxix. Dec. 1524.

|Estimate of it.|

8. But about the time of this very publication we find Erasmus growing by degrees more averse to the radical innovations of Luther. He has been severely blamed for this by most Protestants; and doubtless, so far as an undue apprehension of giving offence to the powerful, or losing his pensions from the emperor and king of England might influence him, no one can undertake his defence. But it is to be remembered, that he did not by any means espouse all the opinions either of Luther or Zwingle; that he was disgusted at the virulent language too common among the reformers, and at the outrages committed by the populace; that he anticipated great evils from the presumptuousness of ignorant men in judging for themselves in religion; that he probably was sincere in what he always maintained as to the necessity of preserving the communion of the Catholic church, which he thought consistent with much latitude of private faith; and that, if he had gone among the reformers, he must either have concealed his real opinions more than he had hitherto done, or lived, as Melanchthon did afterwards, the victim of calumny and oppression. He had also to allege, that the fruits of the Reformation had by no means shown themselves in a more virtuous conduct; and that many heated enthusiasts were depreciating both all profane studies, and all assistance of learning in theology.[685]

[685] The letters of Erasmus, written under the spur of immediate
feelings, are a perpetual commentary on the mischiefs with which
the Reformation, in his opinion, was accompanied. Civitates aliquot
Germaniæ implentur erroribus, desertoribus monasteriorum,
sacerdotibus conjugatis, plerisque famelicis ac nudis. Nec aliud
quam saltatur, editur, bibitur ac subatur; nec docent nec discunt;
nulla vitæ sobrietas, nulla sinceritas. Ubicunque sunt, ibi jacent
omnes bonæ disciplinæ cum pietate (1527) Epist. Dccccii. Satis jam
diu audivimus, Evangelium, Evangelium, Evangelium; mores
Evangelicos desideramus. Epist. Dccccxlvi. Duo tantum quærunt,
censum et uxorem. Cætera præstat illis Evangelium, hoc est,
potestatem vivendi ut volunt. Epist. Mvi. Tales vidi mores
(Basileæ) ut etiamsi minus displicuissent dogmata, non placuisset
tamen cum hujusmodi [sic] fœdus inire. Epist. Mlxvi. Both these
last are addressed to Pirckheimer, who was rather more a protestant
than Erasmus; so that there is no fair suspicion of temporising.
The reader may also look at the 788th and 793d Epistle, on the wild
doctrines of the Anabaptists and other reformers, and at the 731st,
on the effects of Farel’s first preaching at Basle in 1525. See
also Bayle, Farel, note B.

It is become very much the practice with our English writers to
censure Erasmus for his conduct at this time. Milner rarely does
justice to any one who did not servilely follow Luther. And Dr.
Cox, in his life of Melanchthon, p. 35, speaks of a third party,
“at the head of which the learned, witty, vacillating, avaricious,
and artful Erasmus is unquestionably to be placed.” I do not deny
his claim to this place; but why the last three epithets? Can
Erasmus be shown to have vacillated in his tenets? If he had done
so, it might be no great reproach; but his religious creed was
nearly that of the moderate members of the church of Rome, nor have
I observed any proof of a change in it. But vacillation may be
imputed to his conduct. I hardly think this word is applicable;
though he acted from particular impulses, which might make him seem
a little inconsistent in spirit; and certainly wrote letters not
always in the same tone, according to his own temper at the moment,
or that of his correspondent. Nor was he avaricious; at least I
know no proof of it; and as to the epithet artful, it ill applies
to a man who was perpetually involving himself by an unguarded and
imprudent behaviour. Dr. Cox proceeds to charge Erasmus with
seeking a cardinal’s hat. But of this there is neither proof nor
probability; he always declared his reluctance to accept that
honour, and I cannot think that in any part of his life he went the
right way to obtain it.

Those who arraign Erasmus so severely (and I am not undertaking the
defence of every passage in his voluminous Epistles), must proceed
either on the assumption that no man of his learning and ability
could honestly remain in the communion of the church of Rome, which
is the height of bigotry and ignorance; or that, according to his
own religious opinions, it was impossible for him to do so. This is
somewhat more tenable, inasmuch as it can only be answered by a
good deal of attention to his writings. But from various passages
in them, it may be inferred, that, though his mind was not made up
on several points, and perhaps for that reason, he thought it right
to follow, in assent as well as conformity, the catholic tradition
of the church, and above all, not to separate from her communion.
The reader may consult, for Erasmus’s opinions on some chief points
of controversy, his Epistles, Dcccxxiii.,
Dcccclxxvii. (which Jortin has a little misunderstood),
Mxxxv., Mliii., Mxciii. And see Jortin’s
own fair statement of the case, i. 274.

Melanchthon had doubtless a sweeter temper and a larger measure of
human charities than Erasmus, nor would I wish to vindicate one
great man at the expense of another. But I cannot refrain from
saying, that no passage in the letters of Erasmus is read with so
much pain as that in which Melanchthon, after Luther’s death, and
writing to one not very friendly, says of his connection with the
founder of the Reformation, Tuli servitutem pœne deformen, &c.
Epist. Melanchthon, p. 21 (edit. 1647). But the characters of
literary men are cruelly tried by their correspondence, especially
in an age when more conventional dissimulation was authorised by
usage than at present.

|His controversy with Luther.|

9. In 1524, Erasmus, at the instigation of those who were resolved to dislodge him from a neutral station his timidity rather affected, published his diatribe, De Libero Arbitrio, selecting a topic upon which Luther, in the opinion of most reasonable men, was very open to attack. Luther answered in a treatise, De Servo Arbitrio, flinching not, as suited his character, from any tenet because it seemed paradoxical, or revolting to general prejudice. The controversy ended with a reply of Erasmus, entitled Hyperaspistes.[686] It is not to be understood, from the titles of these tracts, that the question of free will was discussed between Luther and Erasmus in a philosophical sense; though Melanchthon, in his Loci Communes, like the modern Calvinists, had combined the theological position of the spiritual inability of man with the metaphysical tenet of general necessity. Luther on most occasions, though not uniformly, acknowledged the freedom of the will as to indifferent actions, and also as to what they called the works of the law. But he maintained that, even when regenerated and sanctified by faith and the Spirit, man had no spiritual free will; and as before that time he could do no good, so after it, he had no power to do ill; nor, indeed, could he, in a strict sense, do either good or ill, God always working in him, so that all his acts were properly the acts of God, though, man’s will being of course the proximate cause, they might, in a secondary sense, be ascribed to him. It was this that Erasmus denied, in conformity with the doctrine afterwards held by the council of Trent, by the church of England, and, if we may depend on the statements of writers of authority, by Melanchthon and most of the later Lutherans. From the time of this controversy Luther seems to have always spoken of Erasmus with extreme ill-will; and if the other was a little more measured in his expressions, he fell not a jot behind in dislike.[687]

[686] Seckendorf took hold of a few words in a letter of Erasmus, to
insinuate that he had taken a side against his conscience in
writing his treatise, De Libero Arbitrio. Jortin, acute as he was,
seems to have understood the passage the same way, and endeavours
to explain away the sense, as if he meant only that he had
undertaken the task unwillingly. Milner of course repeats the
imputation; though it must be owned that, perceiving the absurdity
of making Erasmus deny what in all his writings appears to have
been his real opinion, he adopts Jortin’s solution. I am persuaded
that they are all mistaken, and that Erasmus was no more referring
to his treatise against Luther, than to the Trojan war. The words
occur in an answer to a letter of Vives, written from London,
wherein he had blamed some passages in the Colloquies on the usual
grounds of their freedom as to ecclesiastical practices. Erasmus,
rather piqued at this, after replying to the observations,
insinuates to Vives, that the latter had not written of his own
free will, but at the instigation of some superior. Verum, ut
ingenue dicam, perdidimus liberum arbitrium. Illic mihi aliud
dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus. By a figure of speech far
from unusual, he delicately suggests his own suspicion as Vives’s
apology. And the next letter of Vives leaves no room for doubt:
Liberum arbitrium non perdidimus, quod tu asserueris,--words, that
could have no possible meaning upon the hypothesis of Seckendorf.
There is nothing in the context that can justify it; and it is
equally difficult to maintain the interpretation Jortin gives of
the phrase, aliud dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus, which
can mean nothing but that he wrote what he did not think. The
letters are Dcccxxix. Dccclxxi. Dccclxxvi. in Erasmus’s Epistles;
or the reader may turn to Jortin, i. 413.

[687] Many of Luther’s strokes at Erasmus occur in the Colloquia
Mensalia, which I quote from the translation. “Erasmus can do
nothing but cavil and flout, he cannot confute.” “I charge you in
my will and testament, that you hate and loath Erasmus, that
viper.” ch. xliv. “He called Erasmus an epicure and ungodly
creature, for thinking that if God dealed with men here on earth as
they deserved, it would not go so ill with the good, or so well
with the wicked.” ch. vii. Lutherus, says the other, sic respondit
(diatribæ De Libero Arbitrio), ut antehac in neminem virulentius;
et homo suavis post editum librum per literas dejerat se in me esse
animo candidissimo, ac propemodum postulat, ut ipsi gratias agam,
quod me tam civiliter tractavit, longe aliter scripturus si cum
hoste fuisset res. Ep. Dcccxxxvi.

|Character of his epistles.|

10. The epistles of Erasmus, which occupy two folio volumes in the best edition of his works, are a vast treasure for the ecclesiastical and literary history of his times. Morhof advises the student to commonplace them; a task which, even in his age, few would have spared leisure to perform, and which the good index of the Leyden edition renders less important. Few men carry on so long and extensive a correspondence without affording some vulnerable points to the criticism of posterity. The failings of Erasmus have been already adverted to; it is from his own letters that we derive our chief knowledge of them. An extreme sensibility to blame in his own person, with little regard to that of others; a genuine warmth of friendship towards some, but an artificial pretence of it too frequently assumed; an inconsistency of profession both as to persons and opinions, partly arising from the different character of his correspondents, but in a great degree from the varying impulses of his ardent mind, tend to abate that respect which the name of Erasmus at first excites, and which, on a candid estimate of his whole life, and the tenor even of this correspondence, it ought to retain. He was the first conspicuous enemy of ignorance and superstition, the first restorer of Christian morality on a scriptural foundation, and, notwithstanding the ridiculous assertion of some moderns that he wanted theological learning, the first who possessed it in its proper sense, and applied it to its proper end.

|His alienation from the reformers increases.|

11. In every succeeding year the letters of Erasmus betray increasing animosity against the reformers. He had long been on good terms with Zwingle and Œcolampadius, but became so estranged by these party differences, that he speaks of their death with a sort of triumph.[688] He still however kept up some intercourse with Melanchthon. The latter years of Erasmus could not have been happy; he lived in a perpetual irritation from the attacks of adversaries on every side; his avowed dislike of the reformers by no means assuaging the virulence of his original foes in the church, or removing the suspicion of lukewarmness in the orthodox cause. Part of this should fairly be ascribed to the real independence of his mind in the formation of his opinions, though not always in their expression, and to their incompatibility with the extreme doctrines of either side. But an habitual indiscretion, the besetting sin of literary men, who seldom restrain their wit, rendered this hostility far more general than it need have been, and, accompanied as it was with a real timidity of character, exposed him to the charge of insincerity, which he could better palliate by the example of others than deny to have some foundation. Erasmus died in 1536, having returned to Basle, which, on pretence of the alterations in religion, he had quitted for Friburg in Brisgau a few years before. No differences of opinion had abated the pride of the citizens of Basle in their illustrious visitor. Erasmus lies interred in their cathedral, the earliest, except Œcolampadius, in the long list of the literary dead, which has rendered that cemetery conspicuous in Europe.

[688] Bene habet, quod duo Coryphæi perierint, Zuinglius in acie,
Œcolampadius paulo post febri et apostemate. Quod si illis favisset
ενυαλιορ [enyalior], actum fuisset de nobis. Epist. Mccv. It is of
course to be regretted, that Erasmus allowed this passage to escape
him, even in a letter. With Œcolampadius he had long carried on a
correspondence. In some book the latter had said, Magnus Erasmus
noster. This was at a time when much suspicion was entertained of
Erasmus, who writes rather amusingly, in Feb. 1525, to complain,
telling Œcolampadius that it was best neither to be praised nor
blamed by his party; but if they must speak of him, he would prefer
their censure to being styled _noster_. Epist. Dccxxviii. Milner
quotes this, leaving poor Erasmus to his reader’s indignation for
what he would insinuate to be a piece of the greatest baseness. But
in good truth, what right had Œcolampadius to use the word
_noster_, if it could be interpreted as claiming Erasmus to his
ownside? He was not theirs as Œcolampadius well knew, in exterior
profession nor theirs in the course they had seen fit to pursue.

It is just towards Erasmus to mention, that he never dissembled his
affection for Lewis Berquin, the first martyr to protestantism in
France, who was burned in 1528, even in the time of his danger.
Epist. Dcccclxxvi. Erasmus had no more inveterate enemies
than in the university of Paris.

|Appeal of the reformers to the ignorant.|

12. The most striking effect of the first preaching of the Reformation was that it appealed to the ignorant; and though political liberty, in the sense we use the word, cannot be reckoned the aim of those who introduced it, yet there predominated that revolutionary spirit which loves to witness destruction for its own sake, and that intoxicated self-confidence which renders folly mischievous. Women took an active part in religious dispute; and though in many respects the Roman catholic religion is very congenial to the female sex, we cannot be surprised that many ladies might be good protestants against the right of any to judge better than themselves. The translation of the New Testament by Luther in 1522, and of the Old a few years later, gave weapons to all disputants; it was common to hold conferences before the burgomasters of German and Swiss towns, who settled the points in controversy, one way or other, perhaps as well as the learned would have done.

|Parallel of those times with the present.|

13. We cannot give any attention to the story of the Reformation, without being struck by the extraordinary analogy it bears to that of the last fifty years. He who would study the spirit of this mighty age may see it reflected as in a mirror from the days of Luther and Erasmus. Man, who, speaking of him collectively, has never reasoned for himself, is the puppet of impulses and prejudices, be they for good or for evil. These are, in the usual course of things, traditional notions and sentiments, strengthened by repetition, and running into habitual trains of thought. Nothing is more difficult, in general, than to make a nation perceive any thing as true, or seek its own interest in any manner, but as its forefathers have opined or acted. Change in these respects has been, even in Europe, where there is most of flexibility, very gradual; the work, not of argument or instruction, but of exterior circumstances slowly operating through a long lapse of time. There have been, however, some remarkable exceptions to this law of uniformity, or, if I may use the term, of _secular variation_. The introduction of Christianity seems to have produced a very rapid subversion of ancient prejudices, a very conspicuous alteration of the whole channel through which moral sentiments flow, in nations that have at once received it. This has also not unfrequently happened through the influence of Mohammedism in the East. Next to these great revolutions in extent and degree, stand the two periods we have begun by comparing; that of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and that of political innovation wherein we have long lived. In each, the characteristic features are a contempt for antiquity, a shifting of prejudices, an inward sense of self-esteem leading to an assertion of private judgment in the most uninformed, a sanguine confidence in the amelioration of human affairs, a fixing of the heart on great ends with a comparative disregard of all things intermediate. In each there has been so much of alloy in the motives, and, still more, so much of danger and suffering in the means, that the cautious and moderate have shrunk back, and sometimes retraced their own steps, rather than encounter evils which at a distance they had not seen in their full magnitude. Hence we may pronounce with certainty what Luther, Hutten, Carlostadt, what again More, Erasmus, Melanchthon, Cassander, would have been in the nineteenth century, and what our own contemporaries would have been in their times. But we are too apt to judge others, not as the individualities of personal character and the varying aspects of circumstances rendered them, and would have rendered us, but according to our opinion of the consequences, which, even if estimated by us rightly, were such as they could not determinately have foreseen.

|Calvin.|

|His Institutes.|

14. In 1531, Zwingle lost his life on the field of battle. It was the custom of the Swiss that their pastors should attend the citizens in war to exhort the combatants, and console the dying. But the reformers soon acquired a new chief in a young man superior in learning and probably in genius, John Calvin, a native of Noyon in Picardy. His Institutions, published in 1536, became the text-book of a powerful body, who deviated in some few points from the Helvetic school of Zwingle. They are dedicated to Francis I., in language, good, though not perhaps as choice as would have been written in Italy, temperate, judicious, and likely to prevail upon the general reader, if not upon the king. This treatise was the most systematic and extensive defence and exposition of the protestant doctrine which had appeared. Without the over-strained phrases and wilful paradoxes of Luther’s earlier writings, the Institutes of Calvin seem to contain most of his predecessor’s theological doctrine, except as to the corporal presence. He adopted a middle course as to this, and endeavoured to distinguish himself from the Helvetic divines. It is well known that he brought forward the predestinarian tenets of Augustin more fully than Luther, who seems however to have maintained them with equal confidence. They appeared to Calvin, as doubtless they are, clearly deducible from their common doctrine as to the sinfulness of all natural actions, and the arbitrary irresistible conversion of the passive soul by the power of God. The city of Geneva, throwing off subjection to its bishop, and embracing the reformed religion in 1536, invited Calvin to an asylum, where he soon became the guide and legislator, though never the ostensible magistrate, of the new republic.

|Increased differences among reformers.|

15. The Helvetian reformers at Zurich and Bern were now more and more separated from the Lutherans; and in spite of frequent endeavours to reconcile their differences, each party, but especially the latter, became as exclusive and nearly as intolerant as the church which they had quitted. Among the Lutherans themselves, those who rigidly adhered to the spirit of their founder’s doctrine, grew estranged, not externally, but in language and affection, from the followers of Melanchthon.[689] Luther himself, who never withdrew his friendship from the latter, seems to have been alternately under his influence, and that of inferior men. The Anabaptists, in their well-known occupation of Munster, gave such proof of the tremendous consequences of fanaticism, generated, in great measure, by the Lutheran tenet of assurance, that the paramount necessity of maintaining human society tended more to silence these theological subtilties, than any arguments of the same class. And from this time that sect, if it did not lose all its enthusiasm, learned how to regulate it in subordination to legal and moral duties.

[689] Amsdorfius Luthero scripsit, viperam eum in sinu alere, me
significans, omitto alia multa. Epist. Melanchthon, p. 450 (edit.
1647). Luther’s temper seems to have grown more impracticable as he
advanced in life. Melanchthon threatened to leave him. Amsdorf and
that class of men flattered his pride. See the following letters.
In one, written about 1549, he says: Tuli etiam antea servitutem
pæne deformem, cum sæpe Lutherus magis suæ naturæ, in qua
φιλονεικια [philoneikia] erat haud exigua, quam vel personæ suæ,
vel utilitati communi serviret, p. 21. This letter is too
apologetical and temporising. Nec movi has controversias quæ
distraxerunt rempublicam; sed incidi in motas, quæ cum et multæ
essent et inexplicatæ, quodam simplici studio quaerendæ veritatis,
præsertim cum multi docti et sapientes initio applauderent,
considerare eas cœpi. Et quamquam materias quasdam horridiores
autor initio miscuerat, tamen alia vera et necessaria non putavi
rejicienda esse. Hæc cum excerpta amplecterer, paulatim aliquas
absurdas opiniones vel sustuli vel lenii. Melanchthon should have
remembered, that no one had laid down these opinions with more
unreserve, or in a more “horrid” way of disputation than himself in
the first edition of his Loci Communes. In these and other
passages, he endeavours to strike at Luther for faults which were
equally his own, though doubtless not so long persisted in.

Melanchthon, in the first edition of the Loci Communes, which will
scarcely be found except in Von der Hardt, sums up the free will
question thus:

Si ad prædestinationem referas humanum voluntatem, nec in externis,
nec in internis operibus ulla est libertas, sed eveniunt omnia
juxta destinationem divinam.

Si ad opera externa referas voluntatem, quædam videtur esse,
judicio naturæ, libertas.

Si ad affectus referas voluntatem, nulla plane libertas est, etiam
naturæ judicio. This proves what I have said in another place, that
Melanchthon held the doctrine of strict philosophical necessity.
Luther does the same, in express words, once at least in the
treatise De Servo Arbitrio, vol. ii. fol. 429 (edit. Wittenberg,
1554).

In an epistle often quoted, Melanchthon wrote: Nimis horridæ
fuerunt apud nostros disputationes de fato, et disciplinæ
nocuerunt. But a more thoroughly ingenuous man might have said
nostros for apud nostros. Certain it is, however, that he had
changed his opinions considerably before 1540, when he published
his Moralis Philosophiæ Epitome, which contains evidence of his
holding the synergism, or activity and co-operation with divine
grace, of the human will. See p. 39.

The animosity excited in the violent Lutherans by Melanchthon’s
moderation in drawing up the confession of Augsburg is shown in
Camerarius, Vita Melanchthon, p. 124 (edit. 1696). From this time
it continued to harass him till his death.

|Reformed tenets spread in England.|

|In Italy.|

16. England, which had long contained the remnants of Wicliffe’s followers, could not remain a stranger to this revolution. Tyndale’s New Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1526; the first translation that had been made into English. The cause of this delay has been already explained; and great pains were taken to suppress the circulation of Tyndale’s version. But England was then inclined to take its religion from the nod of a capricious tyrant. Persecution would have long repressed the spirit of free judgment, and the king, for Henry’s life at least, have retained his claim to the papal honour conferred on him as defender of the faith, if “Gospel light,” as Gray has rather affectedly expressed it, had not “flashed from Boleyn’s eyes.” But we shall not dwell on so trite a subject. It is less familiar to every one, that in Italy the seeds of the Reformation were early and widely sown. A translation of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes under the name of Ippofilo da Terra Nigra, was printed at Venice in 1521, the very year of its appearance at Wittenberg; the works of Luther, Zwingle, and Bucer, were also circulated under false names.[690] The Italian translations of Scripture made in the fifteenth century were continually reprinted; and in 1530 a new version was published at Venice by Brucioli, with a preface written in a protestant tone.[691] The great intercourse of Italy with the cisalpine nations, through war and commerce, and the partiality of Renée of France, duchess of Ferrara, to the new doctrines, whose disciples she encouraged at her court, under the pretext of literature, contributed to spread an active spirit of inquiry. In almost every considerable city, between 1525 and 1540, we find proofs of a small band of protestants, not in general abandoning the outward profession of the church, but coinciding in most respects with Luther or Zwingle. It has lately been proved that a very early proselyte to the Reformation, and one whom we should least expect to find in that number, was Berni, before the completion, if not the commencement, of his labour on the Orlando Innamorato; which he attempted to render in some places the vehicle of his disapprobation of the church. This may account for the freedom from indecency which distinguishes that poem, and contrasts with the great licentiousness of Berni’s lighter and earlier productions.[692]

[690] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Italy. Epigrams were written in
favour of Luther as early as 1521 (p. 32).

[691] Id. p. 53, 55.

[692] This curious and unexpected fact was brought to light by
Mr. Panizzi, who found a short pamphlet of extreme scarcity, and
unnoticed, I believe, by Zeno or any other bibliographer (except
Niceron, xxxviii. 76), in the library of Mr. Grenville. It is
written by Peter Paul Vergerio, and printed at Basle in 1554. This
contains eighteen stanzas, intended to have been prefixed by Berni
to the twentieth canto of the Orlando Innamorato. They are of a
decidedly protestant character. For these stanzas others are
substituted in the printed editions, much inferior, and, what is
remarkable, almost the only indecent passage in the whole poem. Mr.
Panizzi is of opinion, that great liberties have been taken with
the Orlando Innamorato, which is a posthumous publication, the
earliest edition being at Venice, 1541, five years after the
author’s death. Vergerio, in this tract, the whole of which has
been reprinted by Mr. P. in iii. 361 of his Boiardo, says of Berni:
Costui quasi agli ultimi suoi anni non fù altro che carne e mondo;
di che ci fanno ampia fede alcuni suoi capitoli e poesie, delle
quali egli molti fogli imbrattò. Ma perchè il nome suo era scritto
nel libro della vita, ne era possibile ch’egli potesse fuggire
delle mani del celeste padre, &c. Veggendo egli che questo gran
tiranno non permittea onde alcuno potesse comporre all’aperta di
quei libri, per li quali altri possa penetrare nella cognizione del
vero, andando attorno per le man d’ognuno un certo libro profano
chiamato innamoramento d’Orlando, che era inetto e mal composto, il
Berna [sic] s’immaginò di fare un bel trattato; e ciò fù ch’egli si
pose a racconciare le rime e le altre parti di quel libro, di che
esso n’era ottimo artefice, e poi aggiungendovi di suo alcune
stanze, pensò di entrare con questa occasione e con quel mezzo
(insin che d’Altro migliore ne avesse potuto avere) ad insegnare la
verità dell’Evangelio, &c. Whether Vergerio is wholly to be
trusted in all this account, more of which will be found on
reference to Panizzi’s edition of the Orlando Innamorato, I must
leave to the competent reader. The following expressions of Mr. P.,
though, I think, rather strong, will show the opinion of one
conversant with the literature and history of those times. “The
more we reflect on the state of Italy at that time, the more have
we reason to suspect that the reforming tenets were as popular
among the higher classes in Italy in those days, as liberal notions
in ours.” P. 361.

|Italian heterodoxy.|

17. The Italians are an imaginative, but not essentially a superstitious people, or liable, nationally speaking, to the gloomy prejudices that master the reason. Among the classes, whose better education had strengthened and developed the acuteness and intelligence so general in Italy, a silent disbelief of the popular religion was far more usual than in any other country. In the majority, this has always taken the turn of a complete rejection of all positive faith; but, at the æra of the Reformation especially, the substitution of Protestant for Romish Christianity was an alternative to be embraced by men of more serious temperaments. Certain it is, that we find traces of this aberration from orthodoxy, in one or the other form, through much of the literature of Italy, sometimes displaying itself only in censures of the vices of the clergy; censures, from which, though in other ages they had been almost universal, the rigidly Catholic party began now to abstain. We have already mentioned Pontanus and Mantuan. Trissino, in his Italia Liberata, introduces a sharp invective against the church of Rome.[693] The Zodiacus Vitæ of Manzolli, whose assumed Latin name, by which he is better known, was Palingenius Stellatus, teems with invectives against the monks, and certainly springs from a protestant source.[694] The first edition is of 1537, at Basle. But no one writer is more indignantly severe than Alamanni.[695]

[693] This passage, which is in the sixteenth canto, will be found in
Roscoe’s Leo X., Append. No. 164; but the reader would be mistaken
in supposing, as Roscoe’s language seems to imply, that it is only
contained in the first edition of 1548. The fact is that Trissino
cancelled these lines in the unsold copies of that edition, so that
very few are found to contain them; but they are restored in the
edition of the Italia Liberata, printed at Verona in 1729.

[694] The Zodiacus Vitæ is a long moral poem, the books of which are
named from the signs of the zodiac. It is not very poetical, but by
no means without strong passages of sense and spirit in a lax
Horatian metre. The author has said more than enough to incur the
suspicion of Lutheranism. I have observed several proofs of this;
the following will suffice:--

Sed tua præsertim non intret limina quisquam
Frater, nec monachus, vel quavis lege sacerdos.
Hos fuge; pestis enim nulla hac immanior; hi sunt
Fæx hominum, fons stultitiæ, sentina malorum,
Agnorum sub pelli lupi, mercede colentes,
Non pietate Deum; falsa sub imagine vecti
Decipiunt stolidos, ac religionis in umbra
Mille actus vetitos, et mille piacula condunt, &c.
Leo (lib. 5).

I could find, probably, more decisive Lutheranism in searching
through the poem, but have omitted to make notes in reading it.

[695] Ahi cieca gente, che l’hai troppo ’n pregio;
Tu credi ben, che questa ria semenza
Habbian più d’Altri gratia e privilegio;
Ch’altra trovi hoggi in lei vera scienza
Che di simulation, menzogne e frodi.
Beato ’l mondo, che sarà mai senza, &c.
Satir. i.

The twelfth Satire concludes with a similar execration, in the name
of Italy, against the church of Rome.

|Its progress in the literary classes.|

18. This rapid, though rather secret progress of heresy among the more educated Italians, could not fail to alarm their jealous church. They had not won over the populace to their side; for, though censures on the superior clergy were listened to with approbation in every country, there was little probability that the Italians would generally abjure modes of faith so congenial to their national temper as to have been devised, or retained from heathen times, in compliance with it. Even of those who had associated with the reformers, and have been in consequence reckoned among them, some were far from intending to break off from a church which had been identified with all their prejudices and pursuits. Such was Flaminio, one of the most elegant of poets and best of men; and such was the accomplished and admirable Vittoria Colonna.[696] But those who had drunk deeper of the cup of free thought had no other resource, when their private assemblies had been detected, and their names proscribed, than to fly beyond the Alps. Bernard Ochino, a Capuchin preacher of great eminence, being summoned to Rome, and finding his death resolved upon, fled to Geneva. His apostacy struck his admirers with astonishment, and possibly put the Italians more on their guard against others. Peter Martyr, well known afterwards in England, soon followed him; the academy of Modena, a literary society highly distinguished, but long suspected of heresy, was compelled, in 1542, to subscribe a declaration of faith; and though Lombardy was still full of secret protestants, they lived in continual terror of persecution during the rest of this period. The small reformed church of Ferrara was broken up in 1550; many were imprisoned and one put to death.[697]

[696] M’Crie discusses at length the opinions of these two, p. 164-177,
and seems to leave those of Flaminio in doubt; but his letters,
published at Nuremberg in 1571, speak in favour of his orthodoxy.

[697] Besides Dr. M’Crie’s History of the Reformation in Italy, which
has thrown a collected light upon a subject interesting and little
familiar, I have made use of his predecessor Gerdes, Specimen
Italiæ Reformatæ; of Tiraboschi, viii. 150; of Giannone, iv. 108,
et alibi; and of Galluzzi, Istoria del Gran Ducato, ii. 292, 369.

|Servetus.|

19. Meantime the natural tendency of speculative minds to press forward, though checked at this time by the inflexible spirit of the leaders of the Reformation, gave rise to some theological novelties. A Spanish physician, Michael Reves, commonly called Servetus, was the first to open a new scene in religious innovation. The ancient controversies on the Trinity had long subsided; if any remained whose creed was not unlike that of the Arians, we must seek for them among the Waldenses, or other persecuted sects. But even this is obscure; and Erasmus, when accused of Arianism, might reply with apparent truth, that no heresy was more extinct. Servetus, however, though not at all an Arian, framed a scheme, not probably quite novel, which is a difficult matter, but sounding very unlike what was deemed orthodoxy. Being an imprudent and impetuous man, he assailed the fundamental doctrines of reformers as much as of the Catholic church, with none of the management necessary in such cases, as the title of his book, printed in 1531, De Trinitatis Erroribus, is enough to show. He was so little satisfied with his own performance, that in a second treatise, called Dialogues on the Trinity, he retracts the former as ill written, though without having changed any of his opinions. These works are very scarce and obscurely worded, but the tenets seem to be nearly what are called Sabellian.[698]

[698] The original editions of the works of Servetus very rarely occur:
but there are reprints of the last century, which themselves are by
no means common.

|Arianism in Italy.|

20. The Socinian writers derive their sect from a small knot of distinguished men, who met privately at Vicenza about 1540; including Lælius Socinus, at that time too young to have had any influence, Ochino, Gentile, Alciati, and some others. This fact has been doubted by Mosheim and M’Crie, and does not rest on much evidence; while some of the above names are rather improbable.[699] It is certain, however, that many of the Italian reformers held anti-trinitarian opinions, chiefly of the Arian form. M’Crie suggests, that these had been derived from Servetus; but it does not appear that they had any acquaintance, or concurred in general with him, who was very far from Arianism; and it is much more probable that their tenets originated among themselves. If, indeed, it were necessary to look for an heresiarch, a Spanish gentleman, resident at Naples, by name Valdes, is far more likely than Servetus. It is agreed that Valdes was one of the chief teachers of the Reformation in Italy; and he has also been supposed to have inclined towards Arianism.[700]

[699] Lubienecius, Hist. Reformat. Polonicæ. M’Crie’s Hist. of
Reformation in Italy, p. 154.