SWISS COMMUNION. the simple presbyter. Hence the shadow of episcopacy that survived till 1592 derived its mission, orders, and jurisdiction altogether from a presbyterian source: and hence the new arrangements made at that epoch were no more than the legitimate consequence of principles inherent in the creed of Knox and his Genevan associates. The Scotish Kirk, in common with all those who drew their teaching from Geneva, shewed a like impatience of state-patronage and secular intermeddling1; while ecclesiastical censures were as loudly fulminated, and the sword of excommunication in constant use. might be simplified. A solemn de- The following specimen (quoted jects to Christ. Sir, when you were in your swaddling clouts, Christ reigned freely in this land, in spite of all His enemies. His officers and ministers convened and assembled for ruling of His Kirk, which was ever for your welfare also, when the same enemies were seeking your destruction; and have been by their assemblies and meetings since terrible to these enemies, and most steedable [helpful] for you. Will you now, when there is more than necessity, challenge Christ's servants, your best and most faithful subjects for their convening, and for the care they have of their duty to Christ and you, when you should rather commend and countenance them, as the godly kings and emperors did? The wisdom of your Council, which is devilish and pernicious, is this, that you may be served by all sorts of men, to come to your purpose and grandeur, Jew and Gentile, Papist and Protestant.' It is curious to observe that the English Puritans held the same doctrine. Cartwright declares, in his Reply to Dr Whitgift's Answer (pp. 180, 181), that the civil magistrates 'must remember to submit themselves unto the churche . . . . to throw doune their crownes before the churche, yea, as the prophet speaketh, to licke the dust of the feete of the churche.' CHAPTER IX. ON THE STATE OF INTELLIGENCE AND PIETY. 3 lite literature. ALTHOUGH the Reformation of the sixteenth century has contributed in no small measure to develop all the nobler faculties of man, and thereby inaugurated a new phase of European civilisation2, its primary effect was not propitious to the cultivation of polite literature and gave no healthy Decline of poimpulse to the arts and sciences. The agitations, in the midst of which it flourished, interfered with the repose of students, or, converting some into ecclesiastical polemics, made them concentrate their chief attention on the primitive records of the Church,-the Fathers, Councils, Canonists, and Historians. We accordingly meet with few, if any, classical scholars in the latter half of the century, who proved themselves a match either in erudition or in elegance for giants like Erasmus, Ludovicus Vives, or Jean Budé (Budæus). Italy itself, which formed the cradle where the literature of ancient Greece had been revived, 2 Few writers question the reality of this change; but Balmez, in his Protestantism and Catholicity compared, has laboured to establish that Europe suffered grievously even in its moral and social relations from the progress of the Lutheran movement. His main positions are, that European civilisation had reached all the development that was possible for it before the rise of Protestantism; that Protestantism perverted the course of civilisation, and so produced immense evils; and that all the progress, or apparent progress, which has since been effected, is made in spite of Protestantism! R. P. 3 Döllinger (Die Reformation, I. 418 sq.) has consequently some reason on his side when he infers from evidence there collected, that the Reformation was not so exclusively the friend of literature as some have represented. 'It is generally believed,' says Warton (Engl. Poetry, III. 13, ed. 1840), 'that the reforma. tion of religion in England, the most happy and important event in our annals, was immediately succeeded by a flourishing state of letters. But this was by no means the case:' cf. Hallam, Lit. of Europe, 1. 464 sq. Lond. 1840, and Roscoe's Life of Leo X. II. 237 sq. Lond. 1846. CC could hardly boast of one Hellenist at the close of the present period1. Nor can this declension be ascribed entirely to the barbarous intermeddling of the 'Holy Office' and the consequent flight of scholars from the southern to the northern states of Europe. England2, which had often furnished an asylum to such fugitives, was, generally speaking, in the same condition. The decline of taste is indicated most of all by the degenerate character of the Latinity, and the undue attention commonly bestowed on the less cultivated authors; while Greek, which at the opening of the sixteenth century, had, in spite of its alleged connexion with heretical doctrines, captivated a large class of students, now receded for a time and fell into comparative oblivion. 1 Ranke, Popes, I. 493. It is true,' he writes, that another Aldus Minutius appeared at Rome, and that he was professor of eloquence; but neither his Greek nor his Latin could win admirers.' In other European countries some progress was visible in the second half of the century; as the names of Henry Stephanus (Estienne), Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon will sufficiently indicate. 2 See Warton, as above, pp. 14, 15. On p. 16 we have the following evidence from the founder of Trinity College, Oxford: 'He [cardinal Pole] advyses me to order the Greeke to be more taught there than I have provyded. This purpose I well lyke: but I fear the tymes will not bear it now. I remember when I was a young scholler at Eton [circ. 1520], the Greeke tonge was growing apace; the studie of which is now a-late much decaid.' Luther himself regretted this unreasonable neglect of classical authors: cf. Blunt, Reform. in England, p. 104, 6th ed. 3 Priests in their confessions of young scholars, used to caution them against learning Greek: 'Cave a Græcis ne fias hæreticus.' And Eras mus, who mentions this and other like facts, had the greatest difficulties in obtaining currency at Cambridge for his edition of the Greek Testament. On the other hand, the following picture of a French savant, Duchâtel (Castellanus), will both exhibit the voracity of students at this period, and the fastidiousness of their taste: 'Duchâtel retrouva, dans l'emploi de lecteur, les loisirs qu'il avait eus à Bâle lorsqu'il remplissait les fonctions de correcteur dans l'im primerie de Froben. Il les consacra, n'en laissant rien perdre, à relire les anciens auteurs latins et grecs et à se perfectionner dans toutes les études. Suivant le conseil de Platon, qui recommande aux gens studieux de ne remplir leur estomac qu'une fois par jour, il mangeait, à huit heures du matin, un morceau de pain, ne buvait à ce repas qu'un verre de vin, et dinait à cinq heures. Il donnait trois ou quatre heures au sommeil, et le reste de ses nuits au travail. Le matin, il étudiait les philosophes et les mathématiciens; dans l'aprèsmidi, les historiens et les poëtes. Pour ses études nocturnes, il réservait la Bible, qu'il lisait en hébreu durant deux heures, et les interprètes proof of intel racy. These facts, however, cannot, in the present instance, This decline no be regarded as the omens of returning barbarism nor symp- lectual degene toms of intellectual poverty and weakness. Men's thoughts were feverishly intent on moral and religious, to the disregard of literary and scholastic questions. Yearnings were excited in their spirits, which could find no satisfaction in the cloudy reveries of Christian Platonism, nor in the frigid reasonings of Aristotle: and it was only when the Reformation was established, when the controversies it provoked were losing their original freshness and intense attraction, that the study of the pagan authors was more generally resumed, and sacred images replaced more freely1 by conceptions borrowed from the Greek mythology, or the writings of philosophers who shed imperishable lustre on the speculations of the ancient world. moral revolu The Reformation, itself one product of the intellectual Need of some enlightenment, which sprang up in the former period 5, tion. was in turn the parent of a moral, social, and religious revolution. It allied itself, indeed, with the great Biblical movement of the age preceding; but, as the necessities of the case required, its progress rather coincided with the practical and mystical, than with the critical direction of that movement. When Luther burst the fetters that once held him in complete subjection to the papacy, the western Church was lamentably fallen: it was ignorant, disordered, and demoralised. So deeply rooted was this feeling in the hearts of men, that numbers who had little or no personal affection for the author of Protestantism regarded his first onslaught with unqualified approbation". du Nouveau Testament, entre lesquels il préférait saint Jérôme, trouvant que saint Augustin est un sophiste de mauvais goût, qui ne sait pas trop sa grammaire.' Hauréau, François Ier et sa Cour, pp. 219, 220, Paris, 1855. 4 See Warton, III. 396 sq. on what he terms the 'fresh inundation of classical pedantry.' 5 See Middle Age, pp. 384, 385. 7 Above, p. 2, n. 2. Reforms of some kind or other were felt to be imperatively needed, and the sanguine therefore hoped that Luther was himself the man whom Providence had now commissioned for restoring to the Church of God her ancient characterTestimony of istics. Before the rise of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Bellarmine; heresy,' is the confession of the prince of Romish controversialists', 'according to the testimony of persons then alive, there was almost an utter abandonment of equity in the ecclesiastical courts; in morals there was no discipline, in sacred literature no erudition, in Divine things no reverence. Religion was on the point of vanishing from the earth.' And similar witness had been borne already by another Latomus. and of Barth. polemic who was struggling to resist the onward march of the Reformers; 'I have frequently avowed,' he writes2, 1 Bellarmin. Concio XXVIII; Opp. 2 Barthol. Latomus, in his con- tressing tale: 'Miserabilis illa facies, quam proxime, quum Visitatorem agerem [A. D. 1527], vidi, me ad edendum hunc catechismum simplicissime et brevissime tractatum coegit. Deum immortalem! quantam calamitatem ibi vidi: vulgus, præsertim autem illud, quod in agris vivit, item plerique parochi, adeo nullam Christianæ doctrinæ cognitionem habent, ut dicere etiam pudeat. Et tamen omnes sancto illo Christi nomine appellantur, et nobiscum communibus utuntur sacramentis, quum Orationem Dominicam, symbolum Apostolicum et Decalogum non modo non intelligant, sed ne verba quidem referre possint. Quid multis moror? nihil omnino a bestiis differunt. Jam autem quum Evangelium passim doceatur, illi vel maxime Christianorum libertate fruuntur (Und nun das Evangelium kommen ist, dennoch fein gelehret haben, aller Freiheit meisterlich zu missbrauchen). Quid hic Christo respondebitis, episcopi, quibus illa cura est divinitus demandata? Vos enim estis, quibus vel solis illa Christianæ religionis calamitas debetur etc.:' in Francke's Libr. Symbol. Eccl. Lutheran. Part II. p. 63. |