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THE 
 REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 

 
 
 
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 BY DR. SMELLIE. 
 
 
 
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 oT 5 1996 
 r je R | A Vv Zé. U 
 
 
 
 The Reformation 
 its Literature 
 
 By ALEXANDER YSMELLIE 
 M.A., D.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF ‘‘ MEN OF THE COVENANT ” 
 
 ANDREW MELROSE LTD. 
 LONDON & NEW YORK 
 
First Published October 1025 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ON ex ROAD on ‘ ‘ I 
 . DOCTRINALLY : ANSELM AND THE “ “CUR DEus Homo. z 
 2. DEVOTIONALLY: THE “ THEOLOGIA GERMANICA.” 
 3. POLEMICALLY: ERASMUS, “IN PRAISE OF FOLLY.” 
 
 THE RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER. 25 
 THE “THREE PRIMARY TREATISES.” 
 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER ’ eeARAO 
 THE “COMMENTARY ON THE GALATIANS.” 
 
 THE WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN 
 
 BU Ra. 4 ‘ : ; : Pury t 
 
 THE “TABLE TALK.” 
 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION . ‘ i493 
 MELANCHTHON AND THE “LOCI COMMUNES.” 
 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE t Lg y 
 THE “HEIDELBERG CATECHISM.” 
 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH , . A ; SalEAT 
 THE ‘“‘ INSTITUTES.” 
 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS . t ; ‘ G107 
 THE ‘“‘ORDONNANCES” OF GENEVA. 
 
 Pie bo lOr BOOKS IN HIS HAND : 193 
 WILLIAM TINDALE AND THE ENGLISH “ NEW LSA eer és 
 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL : ahve LO 
 THE “PLACES” OF PATRICK HAMILTON. 
 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND j mada I 
 JOHN KNox’s “HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN 
 
 SCOTLAND ” 
 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE . i : Br hs y 
 THE ‘‘SCOTS CONFESSION.” 
 
 A BONNY FIGHTER : : ; : . 289 
 
 BLAISE PASCAL AND THE ep CUAL IE: 5 
 INDEX : : ; : ; ; ¢ 313 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/reformationinitsOOsmel 
 
 - eS 
 
LECTURE I 
 ON THE ROAD 
 1. DOCTRINALLY: ANSELM AND THE “CUR DEUS HOMO” 
 
 2. DEVOTIONALLY : THE “ THEOLOGIA GERMANICA ” 
 3. POLEMICALLY: ERASMUS, ‘IN PRAISE OF FOLLY ”’ 
 

 
LECTURE I 
 ON THE ROAD 
 
 1, DOCTRINALLY: ANSELM AND THE “ CUR DEUS HOMO ” 
 2. DEVOTIONALLY: THE ‘“ THEOLOGIA GERMANICA ” 
 8. POLEMICALLY: ERASMUS, “IN PRAISE OF FOLLY ”’ 
 
 HEN does the spring-time of the year begin? Not 
 when the signs of its presence are incontrovertible 
 and plain for all men tosee. Not when 
 “the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 
 
 Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 
 
 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough.” 
 The spring-time is well advanced then. These are not its 
 origins, nor is this the hour of its birth. It was on its way 
 long before there were such apparent tokens of its potency, 
 when the trees seemed utterly dead, when the airs of winter 
 were abroad, and when the snow was falling. The sap 
 was circulating through stem and branch. The vital 
 forces were busy underneath the surface, which by and by 
 would transform everything. It was the same with the 
 intellectual and spiritual spring-time of the Reformation. 
 It leaped into blossom and bud, it rejoiced as a strong man 
 to run its race, when Martin Luther learned for himself 
 the secret of the Lord, and forthwith spoke what he knew 
 and testified what he had seen. But its path had been 
 prepared before Luther’s advent. He had his predecessors, 
 to whom he was quick to acknowledge the reality and the 
 largeness of his debt. They were not so frank and out- 
 
 3 
 

 
 4 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 spoken as he was. They did not break so irretrievably 
 with the past. But some of his thoughts were theirs, and 
 his affinities with them were genuine and intimate. They 
 helped to usher in that new era, to which he was to give 
 visibility and vigour. 
 
 I propose just now to speak of two of these approaches 
 to the Protestant Reformation. There is the approach 
 along the road of devotion ; and the other approach along 
 the road of polemic and sarcasm and denunciation. There 
 is the quarrel of humble, believing, and saintly souls with 
 a system and a Church which were far from satisfying their 
 deepest hunger and thirst; and the quarrel of clever, 
 observant, indignant, and disillusioned minds with pre- 
 tensions which they felt to be hollow, and with abuses 
 which offended their sense of seemliness and right. The 
 heart which cries out for God, the living God; and the 
 reason which weighs in its scales the beliefs and the prac- 
 tices, the creed and the conduct, of contemporary religion, 
 and finds them miserably wanting—both of them were 
 evidences that the spring of the year had actually set in. 
 
 Very much is being written in our own time about 
 Mysticism and the Mystics. If one may judge from the 
 copious literature that it evokes, it is a subject which has 
 special attractions for multitudes of thoughtful men and 
 women among ourselves. And that, in an age too material- 
 istic and too pleasure-loving, is a welcome evidence that 
 the soul is yet alive, and that the windows of many of our 
 contemporaries continue open towards Jerusalem. For 
 _ Mysticism is nothing else than faith in the unseen and 
 spiritual world, which is the most real of all worlds. In 
 The Varieties of Religious Experience—that brilliant and 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 5 
 
 engrossing book, although some of us wish that the brilliance 
 had more heat and glow infused into it, and that the 
 engrossment passed more frequently than it does from 
 the scrutiny of the student to the enthusiasm and affection 
 of the disciple ; that, in short, the sea of glass were mingled 
 with palpitating and quivering fire—Professor William 
 James tells us what are the marks of Mysticism. 
 
 One of them he calls Ineffability. No adequate report can 
 be given to outsiders of the contents of the Mystic’s universe. 
 You may behold the truth and the blessedness, but it is 
 with the eye that resides within. You may recognise in 
 them the medicine for the restlessness and the division of 
 your nature. You may feel that they are the principle 
 of a new life in you, a new life which can never grow old. 
 “ But I do not know,” writes Canon Bigg, “ how you can 
 prove this, except as you prove that bread is good to eat, 
 that is to say, by eating it.” It is all so exceedingly 
 personal and individual, so marvellously enriching and 
 sacred, that it is impossible to impart or transfer it to others. 
 We hear a Voice that our neighbours do not hear. We see 
 a Hand they do not see which beckons us away. We are 
 initiated into a secret, and we taste a sweetness, which 
 are not to be learned, John Tauler maintains, “from the 
 masters of Paris’’: they are altogether too great and good 
 to be unfolded, in their breadth and length and depth and 
 height, by any human lips. 
 
 But, despite the fact that it traffics in what is un- 
 speakable, in the silver and gold and pearls and rubies of 
 an inner kingdom of God, Mysticism, Professor James 
 reminds us also, is distinguished by its Noetic quality. 
 Its treasures may defy all analysis and transcend all 
 exposition. Yet it does not speak the language of 
 

 
 6 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 hypothesis and surmise. It does not live among Perhapses 
 and Peradventures. It is a knowledge, a certitude, an 
 assurance, an unassailable conviction. But you do ‘not 
 attain this knowledge by logic, with its syllogisms and 
 processes ; the Mystic stands apart from the Schoolman, 
 and is citizen of a different world ; you reach the know- 
 ledge more immediately and directly by the intuitions 
 of the soul. The heart has its faculties as well as the 
 brain ; and indeed the heart contrives to travel a long 
 distance farther, and to achieve a vast deal more, than the 
 brain. It is persuaded that it does not follow cunningly 
 devised fables when it moves among the wonders of the 
 supersensual realm ; it knows Him whom it has believed. 
 
 And there is more still to be said about the Mystic. He 
 is characterised, Mr. James goes on, by Passivity. That 
 does not mean that he is necessarily a recluse, or hermit, 
 rejecting the active toils of daily life. Tauler was splendidly 
 and self-sacrificingly practical in his service of God and 
 men. The author of the Theologia Germanica was a soldier, 
 and must have done his strenuous and valorous part in the 
 often-recurring wars of the Middle Ages. But it means 
 that, on the spiritual side of his being, the Mystic is con- 
 templative and quiet. Not his the pride in his own 
 capabilities and doings. Not his the trust in the stoutness 
 of his arm or the victory of his skill and prowess. His aim, 
 on the contrary, is to pass into the Dark Night of the Soul : 
 
 “O guiding night ! 
 O night more lovely than the dawn !”’ 
 
 There he is nothing. There his selfhood is lost in the 
 Desert of the Godhead, a Desert more fertile than orchard 
 or vineyard or garden. 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 7 
 
 ‘Occasionally the Passivity was pushed to excess, and 
 Mysticism stripped man, and, it might be, God too, of 
 consciousness and the attributes of personality. But, 
 in its wiser moods, it sought only the abandonment 
 and crucifixion of the lofty, assertive, high-thinking self ; 
 and therein it is in harmony with all truest and deepest 
 religion. One other feature Professor James remarks— 
 the Transiency of Mysticism. It is his designation for the 
 more magical and pathological elements in the Mystic’s 
 experience: his visions, his ecstasies, his conversations 
 not with men but with angels, his leaving the earth 
 behind to cross the threshold of the third heaven and to 
 see his Lord face to face. But these are hardly of the 
 essence of his faith and life. They are accidental and 
 extraordinary. They do not enter into the biography of 
 every Mystic. If Teresa of Avila has many of them to 
 relate, we hear nothing about them from the writer of the 
 Theologia Germanica. We may venture to regard them as 
 of lesser importance than the other traits and qualities on 
 which we have dwelt. 
 
 Let us picture, then, these godly men and women, 
 cherishing such convictions, and manifesting such a 
 character in those difficult and unspiritual centuries that 
 went before the Reformation. They are the salt of a fast- 
 degenerating earth. They are the lights of a world that, 
 for the most part, lies in densest shadow and gloom. They 
 have been admitted to a region of truth, of grace, and of 
 joy, to whose wealth no human speech can do justice. 
 They have a first-hand acquaintance with it, a blessed 
 familiarity ; and they would sooner doubt their own 
 existence than dispute its realities and powers. They have 
 died to all conceit of themselves, and sing the song of the 
 

 
 8 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 shepherd boy in the Valley of Humiliation, “‘ He that is 
 down needs fear no fall.” 
 
 There are soaring thinkers among them, like Meister 
 Heinrich Eckhart, ‘from whom,” as one of his pupils pro- 
 claimed, “‘ God kept nothing hid.”’ There are fearless and 
 quickening preachers, like John Tauler of Strassburg. There 
 are deeply exercised and suffering saints, like Henry Suso, who 
 cut in the flesh of his breast the letters of the name of Jesus, 
 and bore these stigmata branded on him throughout his life, 
 “about the length of a finger-joint.”” And there are gracious 
 and beautiful souls, like the unnamed layman who penned the 
 \ Theologia Germanica. Of that golden little book, the Dean 
 of St. Paul’s, who has done so much in our own day for the 
 elucidation of Mysticism, declares that ‘in some ways it 
 is superior to the famous treatise of Thomas a Kempis on 
 the Imitation of Christ.’ And Luther, with that warm- 
 hearted generosity of his, enrolled it in the most shining 
 company. ‘“‘ Next to the Bible and St. Augustine,” he 
 says, ““no book has ever come into my hands from which 
 I have learned more of what God and Christ and man and 
 all things are.’’ It is superlative praise; but, in simple 
 fact, it is not undeserved. 
 
 Unnamed the author is, and unnamed of his own free 
 will and deliberate purpose. He illustrated himself the 
 teaching of his pages, that the creature should always 
 remain hidden, and should be merely the channel and 
 vehicle of the Divine Spirit. He had the fulfilment of his 
 prayer, as sublime as it is lowly, “I would fain be to the 
 Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man.” Just 
 the finger which God employed to write down His thoughts 
 and commandments—that, and nothing more, this man 
 wanted to be; and the finger never dreamed of signing the 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 9 
 
 human autograph. The old preface delineates the scribe 
 as “‘a wise, understanding, faithful, righteous man’; as 
 one of those “ Friends of God” who had dedicated them- 
 selves to the pursuit of uncreated and everlasting Truth ; 
 and as belonging “‘aforetime to the Teutonic Order, and a 
 warden in the house of the Order in Frankfort.”’ 
 
 That is all we know about him. The probability is that 
 he wrote in, or near, the year 1350, more than a century and 
 a quarter before Martin Luther was born in Eisleben. It 
 was an evil time ; and, looking out from his Frankfort home, 
 the knight found no comfort anywhere. His native 
 Germany was vexed by political dissensions and the bitter 
 strifes of princes. It had been lying under the Papal Inter- 
 dict, with all the deprivations and sorrows which that 
 entailed. It had recently been devastated by the frightful 
 scourge of the Black Death. He sent his gaze farther 
 afield, and matters were worse and more hopeless. This 
 was the epoch of the Great Schism, when one Pope reigned 
 in Rome and a second in the “ Babylonish captivity ”’ of 
 Avignon ; when Christendom was rent in two; and when 
 each infallible successor of Peter denounced and excom- 
 municated his rival for an impostor and a cheat. But the 
 soul that is in alliance with God has discovered the point 
 of repose in the centre of the scorching and destructive 
 flame, and is independent of hostile circumstances. And 
 that was the happiness of the writer of the Theologza. 
 
 But what is his message for you and me? It is not 
 easy to put it down in categorical propositions; for he 
 has no definite and consecutive plan: let us remember that 
 he is a Mystic, and obeys the prompting of the heart rather 
 than the ratiocination of the intellect. Yet it is not 
 difficult to gather some of his dominant ideas. This is 
 

 
 10 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 one: He is the blessed man who has risen above the rule 
 of what is creaturely, finite, and temporal. If our chief 
 desire is for our gain and advantage in any shape or form, 
 we are far removed still from the goal of perfection. “So 
 long as a man taketh account of anything which is this or 
 that, whether it be himself or any other creature ; or doeth 
 anything ; or frameth a purpose for the sake of his own 
 likings, or desires, or opinions, or ends ; he cometh not unto 
 the life of Christ.” 
 
 Even God’s heaven and God Himself should be sought, 
 not for the benefit we shall reap when They are ours, 
 but from pure and unmixed delight in Their Own paralleled 
 worth. ‘‘ Whoever seeketh, loveth, and pursueth Good- 
 ness,’ the Goodness that is spelt with a capital letter, 
 “for nothing but the love of Goodness, he seeketh it 
 aright.””’ In which searching and exacting doctrine, 
 almost ‘‘too high for mortal men beneath the sky,” 
 we catch a suggestion of the standard to which, four 
 hundred years later, Jonathan Edwards bids us aspire 
 in his great Tveatise concerning the Religious Affections. 
 And this, also, is the writer’s faith: He is the blessed man 
 who has abjured his own will. Indeed, it is the primary 
 and cardinal article of his Credo. He is perpetually 
 entreating us to cast off the government of the “I,” the 
 ““Mine,”’ and the ‘‘ Me.’”’ He is sure that self-will is the 
 very fountain and root of sin. ‘‘ This,” he says, in a 
 graphic phrase, “‘is the mischief and wrong, and the bite 
 that Adam made in the apple which is forbidden because 
 it is contrary to God.” What is hell but the state of 
 - absolute and invincible egotism? ‘‘ Nothing burneth in 
 hell but self-will, and therefore it hath been said, ‘ Put off 
 thine own will and there will be no hell.’’’ And what is 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 11 
 
 heaven but “‘ None of self and all of Thee’ ? ‘‘ Were there 
 no self-will there would be no ownership, and in heaven 
 there is no ownership. If any one in heaven took upon 
 himself to call anything his own, he would straightway be 
 thrust into hell. If there were any person in hell who 
 should get quit of his self-will and call nothing his own, he 
 would come out of hell into heaven.’’ It may be daringly 
 expressed ; but it is entirely true. 
 
 Yet there is force in the observation of Dr. Rufus Jones, 
 himself a Mystic and therefore a critic wholly sympathetic 
 and friendly, that the end here and there set before us in the 
 Theologia Germanica is ‘‘a person who wills nothing, which is 
 a blank contradiction, for the central feature of personality 
 is will-activity.”’ It is not the annihilation of self, to which 
 the Gospel invites you and me; it is the continuous, and 
 voluntary, and glad, and unreserved surrender of self to 
 Christ our Master and Lord. / 
 
 Moreover, this is our author’s conviction: He is the 
 blessed man who is enflamed and consumed with love. 
 Does he not step up and up on the ladder that has three 
 stages, from Purification to Enlightenment, and from 
 Enlightenment to Union? Does he not comprehend 
 in what true beatitude consists >—“‘ not in any works or 
 wonders that God hath wrought, or ever shall work, so 
 far as these things exist or are done outside,” no, but “ these 
 things can make me blessed only in so far as they exist, or 
 are done and loved, known, tasted, and felt within me.”’ 
 Does he not read in the sights and sounds of nature, and in 
 the events of providence, so many hints and parables of 
 the invisible Lord Who leads him into captivity, till the 
 world that now is becomes “ an outer court of the Eternal,” 
 and the happenings that befall him from day to day are “a 
 

 
 12 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 guide and a path to God.”” Does he not carry an untroubled 
 heart through summer and winter? “ A true lover of God 
 loveth Him alike in having or in not having, in sweetness 
 or in bitterness, in good report or in evil report. And 
 therefore he standeth alike unshaken in all things, at all 
 seasons.” He gives thanks for June with its “ green 
 felicity’; and he gives thanks, no less, for “a drear- 
 nighted December.’ Always and everywhere he joys in 
 the God of his salvation. 
 
 The Atonement fascinates this unknown knight of 
 Frankfort, who was a cavalier of Christ as well as of the 
 Teutonic Order. How does he explain the marvel of 
 Calvary ? Not so forensically and legally as Anselm had 
 done in the Cur Deus Homo, of which Dr. Denney has said 
 that it is “ the greatest and truest book on the Atonement 
 that has ever been written.’’ The Cross may be the satis- 
 faction rendered to the honour and justice of God for human 
 sin; but it is more—it is the weeping cry of the heart of 
 God over human sin, in its rebelliousness, its wickedness, 
 and its evil. Whenever you have a good man, you have 
 a man sensitive to the criminality and the unutterable 
 wrongfulness of sin; and this sensitiveness is due to the 
 presence of God in the man. 
 
 But God is present in Christ in the fullest measure, and 
 thus Christ’s anguish over sin outruns all other anguish. 
 It spells for Him the bloody sweat in Gethsemane, and 
 the shame and forsakenness of Golgotha. ‘“‘ Behold, sin is 
 so hateful to God, and grieveth Him so sore, that He would 
 willingly suffer agony and death if one man’s sins might be 
 thereby washed out. And if He were asked whether He 
 would rather live and that sin should remain, or die and 
 destroy sin by His death, He would answer that He would 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 13 
 
 a thousand times rather die. For to God one man’s sin 
 is more hateful, and grieveth Him worse, than His own 
 agony and death.” And is not that a veracious glimpse 
 into the holy love of the Father and the Son ? 
 
 These are among the tenets of a winning and exquisite 
 book, almost six centuries old, but living and helpful to 
 this hour. Do you ask how the book was a finger-post on 
 the highway to the Reformation, and its writer a herald of 
 the preacher and doctor of Wittenberg ? Let us recall, then, 
 the language in which it was given to the world. This 
 happy warrior does not talk in ecclesiastical Latin. He 
 addresses his countrymen, with deep and overflowing 
 German feeling, in plain and homely German speech. 
 That was precisely what Luther himself did, and Luther 
 loved him for doing it. He edited and published the 
 Theologia in 1516, and he goes into raptures over its national 
 and familiar accent. The purists, he admits, may pro- 
 nounce the diction ‘“ unfringed and unornamented ” ; but 
 he is of a different mind: “ I thank God that I now hear 
 and find my God in the German tongue, better than I have 
 ever hitherto been able to do either in Latin, Greek, or 
 Hebrew.” 
 
 He is confident that his readers will coincide with him 
 that “‘German divines are the best.’”’ The Reformation 
 kindled a local patriotism, a pride of fatherland, which 
 had been almost non-existent before; and our author 
 preluded the awakening when he preferred the dialect 
 of the market-place and the household to the sonorous 
 unintelligibilities of cathedral and cloister and altar. 
 And let us recall, further, the fact of which the book is 
 significant. It demonstrates, as Principal Workman has 
 expressed it, “ the revolt of the individual, and especially 
 

 
 14 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 of the layman, against a Church life which tended to his 
 suppression.” The Friends of God, the Beghards, the 
 Brethren of the Common Life, the Mystics, however they 
 may be denominated, were wholly disappointed with the 
 Church as they knew it. Its elaborate organisation hin-~ 
 dered and shackled the free play of their own spiritual 
 powers. Its tyranny and its vices stirred their repugnance 
 and antagonism. 
 
 Their protest was not active and aggressive, like 
 that of John Wyclif and John Hus. They did not 
 throw themselves into outward movements of reform. 
 They did not attempt the reconstruction of what was so 
 far amiss. They chose the quieter method of passive 
 resistance. But when the Theologia Germamica transports 
 us, as indubitably as the Confessions of Augustine do, into 
 the inner sanctuary of the soul, it proclaims its dissatisfac- 
 tion with a system always too external and too despotic, 
 and now honeycombed with luxury, with pride, and with 
 sin. That, also, is its forecasting of the Reformation. 
 
 But, most of all, let us recall the truth which the book 
 publishes, and the temper which it breathes. It is a plea 
 for the religion which is inmost and profoundest. Some 
 have fancied that they detected in it a tincture of 
 pantheism ; but its pantheism, as Ullmann says, is “ not 
 that of speculation but of piety, bent-on bringing God 
 near in the most vital way, spirit to spirit, and heart to 
 heart.’’ Indeed, the “‘ dreaming of oneself into the Deity,” 
 the absorption of the human in the divine, is one of the 
 extravagances of the “false light’? against which its 
 chapters are earnest in warning us. No! it is a thoroughly 
 personal holiness which is commended here—a_ willing 
 communion with a God present and operative ; a humble 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 15 
 
 trust in the Christ Who seeks to perpetuate and reproduce 
 Himself in us ; a recovery by faith and penitence of “‘ the 
 divine spark ’’ which disobedience has woefully obscured, 
 and perhaps extinguished altogether ; a daily confidence in 
 the Lord the Spirit ; an unbroken quest of knowledge and, 
 still more, of Goodness—a quest “‘ all for love and nothing 
 for reward.’ This is the truth, these are the tones, of the 
 Reformers themselves. 
 
 We are in quite a different atmosphere, when we turn to 
 our second book and its author. The Encomium Monae— 
 In Praise of Folly, as the title is Englished—was written in 
 1509, when the man who gave it birth, Desiderius Erasmus, 
 was now forty-two years old. It grew out of a visit paid 
 to Bishop Fisher in Rochester, when Erasmus was on the 
 eve of sailing from England for the Continent. Sir Thomas 
 More had come down from London to see his friend before 
 he went away. It was the statesman who suggested the 
 volume, and its Latin name contains a punning and mis- 
 chievous allusion to him. Froude tells us that it was cast 
 finally into shape on a ride from Calais to Brussels, where 
 it was actually composed in a single week’s time. In any 
 Square inch of Turner’s canvases, John Ruskin maintains, 
 you may find infinity ; and, when you have a genius like 
 Erasmus, one short week affords leisure enough for the 
 production of an undying masterpiece. 
 
 You know what sort of man Erasmus was. He was an 
 amazing scholar. Johann Reuchlin and he were called 
 “the two eyes of Germany’; and, while Reuchlin would 
 have beaten him in Hebrew erudition, in most other 
 respects he was the superior. Men spoke of him as “ divine 
 and to be honoured as a god.”” North and south of the Alps 
 

 
 16 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 he was recognised as the literary chief of Europe. He 
 travelled everywhere that he might pick up learning’s 
 crumbs; he was a familiar figure in Paris and Rome, in 
 Bologna and Florence, in Louvain and Basel. He studied 
 Greek at Oxford, and taught it at Cambridge. He wrote 
 Latin so easy, so limpid, and so beautiful, that the most 
 classical of his contemporaries envied it from afar. 
 Humanism and the Renaissance had their supreme repre- 
 sentatives in Erasmus. 
 
 And he helped the Reformation greatly. Think of 
 but one surpassing service which he rendered it—his 
 edition of the Greek New Testament. That was the 
 quarry from which both Luther and Tindale dug their 
 priceless spoils, the original of the German and the English 
 versions of Gospel and Epistle. It is small wonder that 
 it came to be a proverb that the sickly scholar had laid 
 the egg which the bluff and boisterous monk of Wittenberg 
 hatched. 
 
 Yet Erasmus never joined the company of the Re- 
 formers. He stood aloof from the first, and the distance 
 widened more and more as the years ranon. Albert Diirer, 
 who had an immense admiration for him, and whose sym- 
 pathies were all with the new movement, cried to him in 
 vain, ““O Erasmus Roderdamus, Knight of Christ, ride 
 forth!’’ Luther, whom he had eulogised for a while as 
 playing an excellent part, angered him by and by by his 
 “enigmas and paradoxes’’: they were too startling and 
 too violent ; they sinned against the proprieties, and broke 
 every canon of good taste. But it was the man with “ the 
 very stout countenance ”’ who entered the Promised Land, 
 while the man of culture and moderation never got farther 
 than its borders, Forte et tpse, the real and unflinching 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 17 
 
 Reformer wrote to Cicolampadius, 7m campestribus Moab 
 morietuy—‘* Perhaps our Erasmus himself will die in the 
 plains of Moab.’ 
 
 Why did he halt half-way, and loiter on the threshold ? 
 No doubt there were various reasons. It has been pointed 
 out that he never shared the thoroughgoing evangelicalism 
 of the Reformers. ‘‘ His own theology,” says Dr. Beard, 
 “was a strongly ethical faith, out of which the characteristic 
 superstitions of Catholicism had disappeared, but which 
 Luther would certainly have declared to be naught.’ 
 Erasmus disapproved of the preaching of justification 
 through simple trust in the merits of Christ alone; he 
 held that to be a doctrine positively injurious to good 
 morality ; the “strange, sweet, solemn Cross” had not 
 the attraction for him which it had for the broken 
 and penitent heart of the seeker in the Augustinian 
 cloister in Erfurt. 
 
 Much, also, is to be allowed to the view that Erasmus 
 had been hoping for a gradual and an intellectual reform. 
 He would widen the boundaries of human knowledge; he 
 would teach men truth little by little, and year after year. 
 There must be no sudden apocalypse, for that was almost 
 certain to be a sudden catastrophe. Why rebel uncom- 
 promisingly against the Pope? Why turn Europe upside 
 down? Why establish in hot haste a new Church, on the 
 ruins of the old? Let the dawn come, not in one stride, 
 but slowly and surely. Let the tide creep in and up, 
 inch by inch, foot by foot. In due time it will be “ glad 
 confident morning.’”’ At the proper season the flood will 
 be full, and the noisome things that lay exposed on the 
 beach will be covered from sight and swept away. 
 
 This prudent, regular, scrupulously ordered advance 
 2 
 

 
 18 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 has so often been the ideal of minds that love the golden 
 mean, and distrust all aggressiveness and passion. And 
 yet— 
 ‘Give us now and then a man, 
 That we may crown him king, 
 
 Just to scorn the consequence, 
 And just to do the thing.” 
 
 But, probably, there was another motive ; and Erasmus 
 is not to be freed altogether from the reproach of a certain 
 personal cowardice and timidity. He was loth to offend 
 his numerous patrons among the princes and churchmen. 
 He desired to stand well with the world. He shrank 
 from endangering his intellectual kinghood. Mr. Froude 
 applauds him for his decision. ‘“‘ Erasmus, I consider, 
 may be pardoned for not wishing to be burned at the stake 
 in a cause with which he had imperfect sympathy.” But 
 if his sympathy unquestionably was imperfect, the chances 
 are that it would have grown fuller and more undisguised 
 had he acted himself a manfuller and bolder part. When 
 we are willing to do the will, cost what the doing may, we 
 come to know the doctrine. 
 
 Such was the writer of The Praise of Folly. It is the most 
 effective, if it is not the most important, of his books. In 
 his Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, Sir James Stephen 
 rather disparages it. ‘‘ The Praise of Folly,” he says, 
 “should never be separated from Holbein’s etchings, 
 without which the reader may now and then smile, but will 
 hardly laugh.” But I do not know. The etchings are 
 immensely clever and illuminating; but the text which 
 they illustrate is as brilliant in its wit, as mordant in its 
 criticism, and as relentless in its satire, as it can be. You 
 do not have the warm, deep, ruddy fire of the ruby here, 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 19 
 
 as in the Theologia Germanica ; but you have the dazzling 
 sheen and the piercing edge of the diamond. Erasmus 
 covers with ridicule, sharp, consuming, inimitable, the 
 people, the beliefs, and the practices, whose hollowness he 
 sees and condemns. 
 
 This is the scheme of the book. Moria, Folly, is herself 
 the speaker throughout. She is entirely frank in her self- 
 revelation ; she has no concealments and reticences. Her 
 father was Plutus, her mother a charming creature called 
 Youth. She was nurtured in the Fortunate Islands; and 
 the two nymphs, Drink and Ignorance, were her favourite 
 schoolmistresses. Her constant companions in_ those 
 girlish years were Self-Love, who goes with a mincing gait, 
 and holds her head so high; Flattery, who looks spruce, 
 and makes much noise and bustle; Forgetfulness, who sits 
 humdrum, as if she were half asleep; Laziness, leaning 
 on her elbow, and sometimes stretching out her arms with 
 a yawn; and Pleasure, who wears a garland of flowers, 
 and fragrance in her footing treads. 
 
 And now that she has arrived at womanhood, what a 
 sceptre is that which Folly wields! what an inheritance is 
 hers! ‘“‘ Mostly fools,’’ Thomas Carlyle described his fellow- 
 men in one of his splenetic and dyspeptic moods; but the 
 Lady Folly herself would have told him that he erred not 
 by excess but by defect ; she would have corrected the 
 *“Mostly”’ into “All,” for her writ runs everywhere, and 
 her worship is universal. “There is none, say you, builds 
 any altar, or dedicates any temple, to Folly. I marvel that 
 the world should be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am 
 so good-natured as to pass by and pardon this seeming 
 affront. To what purpose should I demand the sacrifice of 
 frankincense, cakes, goats, and swine ; since all persons in 
 

 
 20 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 all places pay me that acceptable service, which the divines 
 agree to be more effectual and meritorious, namely, an 
 imitation of my communicable attributes? Why should 
 I desire a temple, since the whole world is but one ample 
 and continuous choir, consecrated to my use?”’ Folly can 
 dispense with the shows and semblances, since the reality is 
 hers which they symbolise—hers, beyond cavil and debate. 
 
 But she has her special devotees whom she is particularly 
 solicitous to delineate and commend. There are the buyers 
 of salvation through indulgences and penances and the like. 
 “ By this easy way of purchasing pardons, any notorious 
 highwayman, any plundering soldier, any bribe-taking 
 judge, shall disburse some part of his unjust gains, and so 
 think all his grossest impieties sufficiently atoned for, as 
 if he had paid off all arrears, and might now begin upon a 
 new score.”” There are the preachers. They are peculiarly 
 dear to Folly’s soul, and she cannot say enough in laudation 
 of them. How they argue and quibble! ‘“ They find out 
 so many evasions, that the art of man can never bind them 
 fast.”’ ‘‘ They will cut asunder the toughest reasoning with 
 as much ease as Alexander did the Gordian knot.” They 
 have “a thousand niceties, quantities, formalities, quiddities, 
 and abstrusities,’”” which one would think nobody “ could 
 pry into, except he had not only such cat’s eyes as to see 
 best in the dark, but such a magical faculty as to pierce 
 through an inch-board and spy out what never had any 
 being.”” When next a Crusade was planned against Turks 
 and Saracens, Folly would advise that the army should be 
 composed of those ‘‘clamorous Scotists, and obstinate 
 Occamists, and invincible Albertists,’ and their dour, 
 crabbed, and profound companions. “‘ The engagement, I 
 fancy, would be mighty pleasant, and the victory on our 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 21 
 
 side not to be questioned. For which of the enemies 
 would not veil their turbans at so solemn an appearance ? 
 Which of the fiercest Janissaries would not throw away his 
 scimitar, and all the half-moons be eclipsed by the inter- 
 position of so glorious a host ?” 
 
 With Folly’s divines and expositions who “ strike the fire 
 of subtlety out of the flint of obscurity,” the Apostles and the 
 Fathers are not, of course, to be compared: they stand on 
 a lower level. The Apostles had a Lord and Master, “‘ Who 
 gave unto them to know the mysteries of God but not those 
 of philosophy.” The Fathers confuted the Jews and the 
 Heathens, but they did it “by their lives and miracles 
 rather than by words and syllogisms’”’; were they not a 
 feeble folk, even if they wrought righteousness, and waxed 
 valiant in fight, and died well ? 
 
 When, at length, she tears herself away from the 
 preachers, her most redoubtable henchmen and friends, 
 Dame Moria introduces us to the monks. “It is pretty to 
 observe how they regulate all their actions by weight and 
 measure to so exact a proportion, as if the whole loss of their 
 religion depended upon the omission of the least punctilio. 
 Thus they must be very critical in the precise number of 
 knots to the tying on of their sandals; what distinct 
 colours, and what stuff their respective habits are made of ; 
 how broad and long their girdles ; how big, and in what 
 fashion, their hoods ; whether their bald crowns be to a 
 hairbreadth of the right cut ; how many hours they sleep, 
 and at what minute rise to prayers.’’ Friars and monks 
 were the trusty adherents of Folly. 
 
 And up and up she climbs in the scale of dignity, to 
 bishops, and then to cardinals, and finally to the Popes 
 of Rome, “who pretend themselves Christ’s vicars.”’ 
 

 
 22 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 But how can they be that? Folly asks. Christ was 
 attended with “ poverty, nakedness, hunger, and the con- 
 tempt of this world,” while they live in great state and 
 magnificence. ‘‘ The working of miracles is old and out- 
 dated ; to teach the people is too laborious; to interpret 
 Scripture is to invade the prerogative of the Schoolmen ; 
 to pray is too idle ; to shed tears is craven and unmanly ; 
 to fast is too mean and sordid; to be accessible and 
 kindly is beneath the grandeur of him who will scarce give 
 princes the honour of kissing his toe; to die for religion 
 is too self-denying ; and to be crucified, as was their Lord 
 of Life, is base and ignominious.’’ Folly can be very 
 serious when she chooses, and the truths she speaks are at 
 times exceedingly uncomfortable and distasteful. 
 
 Pity it was that Erasmus did not ally himself frankly 
 with the right; he saw the wrong so clearly, and he laid 
 it bare with a scalpel that probed to the very quick. ‘‘ There 
 is a story that, when Charles v. was holding the Diet of 
 Augsburg in 1530, a party of actors asked leave to present 
 before him a play in dumb show. Permission being 
 granted, there entered the hall a masked figure, in a 
 doctor’s gown, upon whose back was a label, Johann 
 Reuchlin. He threw down upon the floor a bundle of 
 sticks, some straight, some crooked, and so departed. 
 Next followed another, in like attire, whose name was 
 Erasmus of Rotterdam: for a long time he tried to make 
 the crooked sticks square with the straight ones, and then, 
 finding his labour in vain, retired in manifest disturbance 
 of mind. The third masked figure was that of a monk, 
 labelled Martin Luther, who, bringing in fire and fuel, 
 set a light to the crooked sticks, and, when the flame 
 had caught them, retired in his turn. Then came in one 
 

 
 ON THE ROAD 23 
 
 
 
 clad like an Emperor, who with drawn sword tried to keep 
 the fire and the sticks apart, but, when the flame gathered 
 strength all the more, went away in great anger. Last of 
 all a Pope, bearing the name of Leo x., came in, wringing 
 his hands, till, looking about him for help, he saw two 
 jars, one full of oil, the other of water, and, rushing to 
 them like a madman, seized the oil and poured it upon 
 the fire, which, spreading itself all abroad, compelled him 
 to flee. Who these actors were no one knew ; for, without 
 waiting for reward, they disappeared. But the moral 
 of their play was such as even Charles v. might draw.’» 
 
 Yes, but a man of the endowment of Erasmus, with 
 such learning and such power, should have done far more 
 than try to make the crooked sticks square with the 
 straight ones. 
 
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LECTURE II 
 
 THE RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 THE “ THREE PRIMARY TREATISES ” 
 
 25 
 

 
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LECTURE II 
 
 THE RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 THE ‘THREE PRIMARY TREATISES ” 
 
 F Discretion, Prudence, Piety, and Charity, the 
 wise and generous hostesses of the House Beauti- 
 ful, we read that, one morning during his sojourn under 
 their roof, they showed the Pilgrim Christian ‘“‘ some of 
 the engines ”’ with which the servants of God had done 
 their wonders. As, for example, Moses’ rod; and the nail 
 with which Jael slew Sisera ; and the pitchers, trumpets, 
 and lamps with which Gideon put to flight the armies 
 of Midian. Then there were the ox’s goad with which 
 Shamgar routed and killed six hundred men; and the 
 jawbone wherewith Samson did mighty feats; and the 
 sling and stone with which David vanquished Goliath 
 of Gath ; and the sword wherewith the Lord will destroy 
 the Man of Sin in the day that He shall rise up to the prey. 
 “* Christian is made to see ancient things ’’—it is the author’s 
 marginal rubric to this part of his story. If he had been 
 disposed to add a modern engine to the ancient ones, 
 what would it have been? We may venture a guess. 
 It would have been the hammer with which Martin Luther 
 smote the errors of the Papacy, and awakened Europe 
 from its long sleep, and proclaimed to the world the birth 
 of a new era. 
 
 That resounding hammer was heard for the first time 
 27 
 

 
 28 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 on the day preceding the Feast of All Saints in the year 
 1517—that is, on the 31st of October. The Feast was 
 sure to draw crowds of visitors from the surrounding 
 country to Wittenberg, the little Saxon town midway 
 between Leipzig and Berlin, in whose university Luther 
 had taught Divinity for some half-dozen summers and 
 winters. In prospect of their coming, and that he might 
 ease and deliver his own soul, profoundly disquieted 
 by Archbishop Albrecht’s and John Tetzel’s sale of In- 
 dulgences, he nailed to the door of the Schloss Kirche, 
 the Castle Church, the announcement of his intention to 
 hold a public debate on the value of such Indulgences, 
 “aus Liebe zur Wahrheit und dem Wunsche ste an den Tag 
 zu bringen’’—“‘out of love for the truth and the desire 
 to have it elucidated.” 
 
 He proposed ninety-five Theses or subjects for the 
 debate. These ninety-five Theses he set down in cate- 
 gorical, trenchant, unmistakable propositions, one after 
 the other ; and, now, here they were, hung up in the light 
 of the sun, that the Wittenbergers and their guests of the 
 morrow might lodge them in their minds, and discuss their 
 rightness or wrongness, their wisdom or folly. It was, no 
 doubt, an academic document, which had been prepared 
 in accordance with the rules of scholastic etiquette ; and 
 therefore it was written in Latin. But, because the man 
 who penned it wanted his own kinsfolk to understand 
 what it contained, he made a duplicate in German ; and 
 the university printing-press could not throw off copies 
 quickly enough to meet the demand for them. The echoes 
 of that forceful hammer rang immediately through the 
 whole of the Fatherland ; and it is not an exaggeration to 
 say that they are ringing still. 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 29 
 
 Shall we hearken to its strokes, as they fall in rapid 
 succession ? ‘‘ The Pope has neither the will nor the 
 power to remit any penalties, except those which he has 
 imposed by his own authority or by that of the canons.” 
 “The Pope has no power to remit any guilt except by 
 declaring and warranting it to have been remitted by God.” 
 Those are Theses five and six ; and these are twenty-seven 
 and twenty-eight: ‘‘ They preach man who say that, as 
 soon as the money rattles in the chest, the soul flies out of 
 purgatory.” ‘It is certain that avarice is fostered by the 
 money chinking in the chest ; but to answer the prayers 
 of the Church is in the power of God alone.” We get to 
 the heart and core of the matter in thirty-two and thirty- 
 three: “Those who believe themselves made sure of 
 salvation by letters of pardon will be eternally damned 
 with their teachers.’’ ‘‘ One should especially beware of 
 all who say that these pardons from the Pope are that 
 inestimable gift by which man is reconciled to God.”’ 
 
 Or, after those tremendous negatives, let us take these 
 strong and comforting positives: “‘ Every Christian truly 
 repentant has rightfully a complete remission of guilt and 
 penalty, even without letters of pardon.” ‘‘ Every true 
 Christian, living or dead, shares in all the benefits of Christ 
 and of the Church, without letters of pardon.” Here, 
 again, in number forty-three, is Luther’s practical Christi- 
 anity ; for, if he did not like the Epistle of James, he some- 
 times inculcated it himself: “‘ Christians are to be taught 
 that he who gives to the poor, or lends to one in need, does 
 better than he who buys indulgences.”’ Or here, in number 
 fifty, is his charity, even towards Leo x.: “ Christians are 
 to be taught that, if the Pope knew the exactions of the 
 preachers of indulgences, he would rather have St. Peter’s 
 

 
 30 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Church in ashes than have it built with the skin, flesh, and 
 bones of his sheep.” 
 
 Now we are up among the sixties, and we listen both 
 to the evangelism and to the mother-wit of Doctor Luther : 
 “The true treasure of the Church is the Holy Gospel of 
 the glory and grace of God.” ‘‘ This treasure, however, is 
 deservedly most hateful, because it makes the first to be 
 last.’ ‘‘ While the treasure of indulgences is deservedly 
 most acceptable, because it makes the last to be first.” 
 “The treasures of the Gospel are nets, wherewith they 
 fished of old for the men of riches.” ‘“‘ The treasures of 
 indulgences are nets, wherewith they fish now for the 
 riches of men.” 
 
 And so the hammer goes on, reiterating its blows, so 
 short, so decisive, so memorable; till, when its work is 
 just about finished, in the ninety-second and ninety-third 
 Theses, we have a glimpse into the Mysticism which Luther 
 had learned from the Theologia Germanica and from the 
 Spirit of God: “‘ Away then with all those prophets who 
 say to the people of Christ, ‘ Peace, peace!’ and there is 
 no peace!’’ “‘ Blessed be all those prophets who say to 
 the people of Christ, ‘The Cross, the Cross!’ and there is 
 no Cross!’ That sounds a paradox, but it is an irrefutable 
 truth; for, as this man, whose words were half-battles, 
 but whose heart was broken and warm and tender, had 
 written to one friend a year before, “‘ The Cross at once 
 ceases to be the Cross as soon as you have joyfully 
 exclaimed in the language of the hymn: 
 
 ** “ Blesséd Cross, above all others 
 
 One and only noble Tree!’’’ 
 and as he told another comrade, ‘‘ When it is embraced, 
 kissed, blessed, and abundantly consecrated, its curse is 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 31 
 
 transformed into blessing, its injury into justice, its passion 
 into glory, and its crux into joy.” 
 
 That was how, in the late autumn of 1517, the hammer 
 began its destructive and constructive task. You notice 
 what one may be permitted to call its style and accent. It 
 would be unfair to expect a hammer to sing to us in “ the 
 Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders.”’ Its music will 
 neither be gentle and alluring, nor yet sustained and con- 
 tinuous. It will be staccato, vehement, rough at times, now 
 and then even fierce. ‘‘ The Theses,’ Principal Lindsay 
 says, “are singularly unlike what might have been antici- 
 pated from a Professor of Theology. They lack definition, 
 and contain many repetitions which might easily have been 
 avoided. They are simply ninety-five sturdy strokes struck 
 at a great ecclesiastical abuse which was searing the con- 
 sciences of many.” Luther felt that he was dealing with 
 evils which did not admit of lenient remedies or of con- 
 cessions and compromises. He spoke strongly because he 
 was strongly moved, and because he realised that strong 
 speech would be understood and remembered when quieter 
 and more concatenated argument would have little effect. 
 
 “I comfort myself,’ he writes in a letter, “ with the 
 thought that the Heavenly Father needs an occasional 
 servant who can be hard to the hard and rude to the 
 rude.’ Had not Christ smitten Pharisaic outwardness, 
 selfishness, and censoriousness with Woe upon Woe ? 
 Did not Paul flash out in hot indignation and withering 
 rebuke? Plainly he was in good company when he insisted 
 on calling unlovely things by their proper names, and when 
 he drove home their wrongness to the minds of the people 
 in sentences which were both brief and unsparing. “‘ The 
 polish of Erasmus and the benignity of Melanchthon,”’ 
 

 
 382. THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Heine declared, “‘ would never have brought us so far 
 as the divine brutality of Brother Martin.’’ Vigorous 
 language is amply justified when it attacks falsehoods, 
 which rob God of His peculiar glories, and which threaten 
 the everlasting welfare of men. 
 
 Some day, I hope, you will yourselves walk up the 
 Collegienstrasse in Wittenberg, past the Black Cloister of 
 the Augustinians which was Luther’s home, past the tall 
 building on the left hand where Melanchthon had his home, 
 and through the Market Square, with its two statues of these 
 princes of the Chariot, lingering for half an hour to visit 
 the Town Church in which Luther preached so often, and 
 then on again by Lucas Cranach’s house, till at length you 
 have arrived at the Schloss Kirche, near the barracks that 
 used to be the University. The church’s high circular 
 tower has been renovated in its upper portion at least; 
 and, garlanded about the top in conspicuous lettering, is the 
 first line of the Reformer’s great campaigning song, “ Ein 
 feste Burg ist unser Gott.” 
 
 Inside, also, the structure has been beautified and 
 adorned. In niches round the walls, effigies stand of 
 the men who captained the Reformation in the different 
 countries of Europe. Below the pulpit is the tomb 
 where all that is mortal of Luther lies; and, close by, is 
 Melanchthon’s grave; in their deaths “‘ the miner’s son 
 who drew forth the iron ore and the armourer’s son who 
 fashioned it ’ are not divided. But what you specially wish 
 to see is the Thesenttir, the Theses’ Door. The old wooden 
 one, with the unforgettable nail-marks in it, was destroyed 
 when, in 1760, the Austrians bombarded the town. But it 
 has been replaced by the costly bronze gates which King 
 William the Fourth put up in 1858. In clear-cut lines they 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 33 
 
 have graven on them the five-and-ninety propositions that 
 are the Protestants’ Magna Charta and Declaration of 
 Independence. “‘A grand and characteristic entrance,”’ 
 Robert Barbour says, ‘‘ do they make to the Church of the 
 Reformation—the Church of sincere repentance and im- 
 mediate forgiveness; as grand and characteristic as 
 Ghiberti’s gates do to the unreformed Church—the Church 
 of salvation by outward observance, of doctrine taught by 
 symbol and picture.’ If you are wise, you will halt for a 
 time with uncovered head before the Thesentiir, to thank 
 God reverently for all that it signifies, and to gain for your 
 own soul an inward image of it that will abide with you 
 always. 
 
 Over the three crowded years which followed—years 
 of conflict with Cardinal Cajetan, of abortive interviews 
 with Charles von Miltitz, and of Leipzig Disputations 
 with John Eck that helped Luther to grasp his essential 
 agreement with Hus, the brave witness-bearer of Bohemia 
 —we may not linger. We come to the harvest season of 
 1520, when, in the months between August and November, 
 Luther published what the Germans love to name the 
 Dret Grosse Reformations-Schriften, the Three Great Re- 
 formation Treatises. The hammer continues its work of 
 onslaught, of defence and advocacy, of explicit and per- 
 emptory avouchment. It has, indeed, become a pen, 
 which gives the printers of Frankfort and Basel more to 
 do than any other twenty or fifty pens. But it remains a 
 hammer-like pen, virile and robust and arousing. Mein 
 Handel, Luther explains, ist nicht ein Mittelhandel— My 
 way of transacting business is not the middle way of 
 policy and balance.’”’ He never failed to strike his nails 
 
 3 
 

 
 34 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 firmly on the head. His “tart rhetoric,” as Milton 
 denominates it in an adjective of commendation and not of 
 reproof, was invariably “ useful and available.”’ 
 
 The earliest of the three treatises to see the light— 
 by the 18th of August four thousand copies were in circula- 
 tion—was the Address to the German Nobility. Just before 
 it was written, its author had received letters of encourage- 
 ment from Ulrich von Hutten and Sylvester von Schaum- 
 burg, both of them leaders in that party of knights which 
 sought the restoration of national prestige under the 
 auspices of their own order. A patriot himself to the 
 roots of his being, he hoped much from these fellow- 
 patriots. That was why his message of appeal was sent 
 in the first instance to them, although men and women 
 of all classes were moved by it to wrath or to hope or to 
 prayer or to action. After the dedicatory letter to his 
 colleague in Wittenberg, ‘“‘the respected and worthy 
 Nicholas von Amsdorf,’’ and after kindly reference to 
 “the young and noble sovereign ’? whom God has set over 
 the realm, for Charles v. is still under twenty, Luther, 
 “a single poor man,”’ “a fool but also a sworn doctor of 
 the Holy Scriptures,” starts to enumerate the evils which 
 must be eradicated, and the reforms he knows to be urgent 
 and overdue. 
 
 At the outset, there are three walls, in appearance 
 impregnable, in reality defences of pasteboard, behind 
 which the Roman Church has been accustomed to entrench 
 herself, and which he levels to the ground. One is the 
 awfulness of the Spiritual Power, a Power so supreme and 
 so sacred that it transcends all temporal princedoms and 
 governments whatsoever. The second is the assertion 
 that no one except the Pope has the nght and the ability 
 
 ’ 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 35 
 
 to interpret Scripture. The third is the idea that only 
 the Bishop of Rome can convene a General Council ; 
 and who then is to call him in question for his errors 
 and sins ? 
 
 One by one the bulwarks, so formidable and so flimsy, 
 fall at the touch of the hammer. The real Spiritual 
 Power is the whole body of believers in Jesus Christ; ‘‘a 
 cobbler, a smith, a peasant—all alike are consecrated 
 bishops”’; and “if a little band of pious Christian lay- 
 men were taken prisoners and carried away to a desert, 
 and had not a clergyman among them, and were then 
 to agree to elect one of their number, married or un- 
 married, and were to order him to baptize and to preach, 
 this man would be as certainly a priest as if all the Popes 
 had ordained him.’ And as for the notion that the 
 successor of Peter is the sole interpreter of God’s Book, 
 how absurd that is! If it is true, where is the use of 
 Bibles at all? Let us “‘ burn them, and content ourselves 
 with the unlearned gentlemen at Rome, in whom the Holy 
 Ghost dwells.” The Scripture is for everybody, and the 
 heart enlightened from above can “discern and judge 
 what is right or wrong in matters of faith.’”’ The third 
 fortification tumbles and disappears with the other two. 
 It is not merely the wearer of the tiara who can convoke 
 a General Council. The injunction of the New Testament 
 to each of us is that, if our brother trespasses against us, 
 and will not listen to our expostulations in private, we 
 must tell the matter to the Church; and, when the Pope 
 is an offence to Christendom, every faithful member of 
 Christ’s commonwealth is bound to do what he can to 
 procure ‘‘a true free Council.” Thus “all the fences and 
 their whole array ”’ topple to the dust. 
 
386 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Next succeeds a long and damning catalogue of the 
 grievances to which Germany has been subjected by the 
 Papal court. Consider, Luther cries, the extravagant 
 pomp of the man who boasts of being the Vicar of Christ ; 
 his Master went on foot, but, if he goes out riding, he 
 has three or four thousand of a retinue, “‘ more than any 
 king or emperor’; in him, who pronounces himself 
 most holy and most spiritual, “‘ there is more worldliness 
 than in the world itself”’; Italy has been sucked dry to 
 maintain this luxury, and soon Germany will be equally 
 impoverished. Consider the avarice of the cardinals ; 
 all that they do is to bargain and traffic in prelacies and 
 bishoprics, “‘ which any robber could manage as well”’ ; 
 until ‘‘ Venice, Antwerp, and Cairo are nothing to this fair 
 and market at Rome.”’ 
 
 Consider that jostling and mercenary throng of 
 officials which the Vatican counts necessary to the 
 support of its dignity, for whose upkeep the German land 
 surrenders every year three hundred thousand guilders, 
 giving the foreigner more by far than it can contribute 
 to its own native rulers. And then the pilgrimages, to 
 which the faithful are bidden, and by which they are 
 reduced to destitution. And the new duties and new 
 vows which are perpetually devised, so that nowadays 
 “no one is content to walk in the broad highroad of God’s 
 commandments.” And the Saints’ Days, with their 
 drinking, gambling, idling, and all manner of sin; but, 
 instead of establishing a festival to St. Otilia or St. Barbara, 
 would it not be better to turn an imaginary holy day into 
 a real working day, filled with salutary toil from morning 
 to night ? 
 
 Ay, and, saddest of all, the wickedness and the 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 37 
 
 misery engendered by a compulsory celibacy. ‘‘ We see 
 how the priesthood is fallen, and how many a poor 
 priest is encumbered with a woman and children, and 
 burdened in his conscience, and no one does anything to 
 help him, though he might very well be helped... . I 
 say that these two, who are minded in their hearts to live 
 together in conjugal fidelity, are surely married before 
 God.” That is by no means the whole of this terrible list 
 of negligences, of haughtinesses, and of crimes, with which 
 Luther charges the Innocents and Gregorys and Leos, 
 those shepherds of Christ’s heritage who had forgotten 
 to feed the lambs and to tend the sheep. But you will 
 perceive in what a wretched case Germany lay, and how 
 determined one keen-sighted and strong-hearted man was 
 to castigate those who were responsible for his country’s 
 degradations and sorrows. 
 
 Luther proceeds to indicate the reforms which are 
 needful. He would terminate the suzerainty of the Pope 
 over the State. He would create a national Church, 
 with an ecclesiastical Council of its own which should be 
 the final court of appeal in religious questions. He would 
 clear away the vagrants—pilgrims, or mendicant monks, 
 or beggars—who were a public scandal and a constant 
 drain on honest citizens, by getting every town to support 
 its own poor and to close its gates against undesirable 
 aliens. He would dethrone that “ blind heathen teacher 
 Aristotle ’’—*‘ God sent him as a plague for our sins ’’— 
 from his dominant seat in the universities, and would 
 exalt the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ in his stead. 
 In schools of all kinds, for boys and for girls, he would 
 take care that the chief and most common lesson should 
 be the Scriptures ; ought not every Christian, by his ninth 
 

 
 38 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 c¢ 
 
 or tenth year, to know “‘all the Holy Gospels, containing 
 as they do his very name and life ” ? 
 
 He would have the people live more simply and more 
 temperately ; dispensing with velvet and cloth of gold and 
 silks and spices unless they can pay for these at once; 
 abandoning that excess in eating and drinking for which 
 Germany has an ill reputation throughout Europe, and 
 which has ‘‘ gained so much the upper hand that sermons 
 avail nothing.”” When Martin Luther claims Germany for 
 the Germans, he burns, with an ardent and a righteous 
 jealousy, to have the Germans train and discipline them- 
 selves into fitness for entering on their kingdom and for 
 possessing their possessions. 
 
 Such, in bare outline, is the Address to the Chnistian 
 Nobility of the German Nation respecting the Reformation 
 of the Christian Estate. It had an instantaneous popularity. 
 It ran like wildfire, north, south, east, west. None of 
 Luther’s writings became so familiar, or was so welcome. 
 Next in chronological order of the three Grosse Schriften 
 was the tract, somewhat longer but still quite short, a 
 pamphlet and not a volume, On the Babylonian Captivity 
 of the Church. It dates from the October of this fateful 
 and fertile year of 1520. If the Addvess was the Reformer’s 
 clarion-call to the laity, this is his admonition for the 
 theologians and clergy. Therefore he couches it, unlike 
 its neighbour, in the Latin of the schools. It may be 
 because of its Latinity that it does not have the same 
 commanding and compelling interest. The verve, the 
 élan, the vivaciousness of its predecessor are modified 
 and sobered into something more reasoned and deliberate. 
 
 The hammer is talking to us now, so far as such a 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER = 39 
 
 resolute hammer can, “ with measured beat and slow.” 
 But there is no diminution of purposefulness ; and, here and 
 there, the se@va indignatio is remorseless as ever. Could 
 anything be more scathing than this in condemnation of 
 an antagonist who would deny the cup to the laity in the 
 sacrament of the Supper ?—“‘ I see that the man is possessed 
 by an angel of Satan, and that those who act in collusion 
 with him are seeking to obtain a name in the world through 
 me, as being worthy to contend with Luther. But this 
 hope of theirs shall be disappointed, and, in my contempt 
 for them, I shall leave them for ever unnamed, and shall 
 content myself with this one answer to the whole of their 
 books. If they are worthy that Christ should bring them 
 back to a sound mind, I pray Him to do so in His mercy. 
 If they are not worthy of this, then I pray that they may 
 never cease to write such books, and that the enemies 
 of the truth may not be permitted to read any others.”’ 
 It is a prayer in which scorn and condemnation have 
 climbed to their summit and reached their uttermost. 
 They cannot farther go. 
 
 The Babyloman Captivity subjects to a_ searching 
 examination the sacramental system of Roman Catholi- 
 cism. ‘In the first place,” says its writer, “I deny that 
 the sacraments are seven in number, and assert that there 
 are only three, Baptism, Penance, and the Lord’s Supper.” 
 Probably you are surprised at his inclusion of Penance. 
 He hesitates over the question himself; and, in the con- 
 cluding paragraphs of the treatise, he virtually reverses 
 the finding he had stated before. ‘‘ If we speak with 
 perfect accuracy, there are only two sacraments in the 
 Church of God, Baptism and the Bread ’”—that is Luther’s 
 simple and comprehensive title for the Communion of 
 

 
 40 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 the Body and Blood of Our Lord; “since it is in these 
 alone that we see both a sign divinely instituted and a 
 promise of remission of sins. The sacrament of Penance, 
 which I have reckoned along with these two, is without 
 any visible and divinely appointed sign; and is nothing 
 else than a way and means of return to Baptism.” It is 
 delightful—is it not ?—to be allowed to watch our firm-set 
 and compactly-jointed Reformer in the act of making up 
 his mind. 
 
 The number of the sacraments settled, Luther explains 
 that their meaning has been obscured and their comfort 
 stolen by “the tyrant of Rome.” In the Bread, for 
 instance, “‘ this sweetest sacrament,” everything is spoiled 
 if we are forced to accept that figment of human opinion, 
 the dogma of transubstantiation, which “rests on no 
 support of Scripture or of reason.”’ All that is demanded 
 for the right keeping of the ordinance is the faith, which 
 depends on the word of a promising God, and which 
 leads on to the love that enlarges and enriches the spirit 
 of man. 
 
 So with Baptism. Infinite loads of theories and 
 traditions have been accumulated about it ; but one needs 
 only to remember that it is “‘a fortress of safety ’’ when it 
 is received in trustful dependence on the name of the Lord. 
 Wherever he goes, Luther cuts away the entangling jungle 
 and brushwood, and makes a straight path for the feet 
 of humble and believing men. ‘‘ It would be well,” he 
 protests, “either to do away by a general edict with all 
 vows, or at least to admonish everybody to take no vow 
 rashly.” The traveller’s highway to heaven should not 
 be concealed under those innumerable growths of man’s 
 planting and nurture; it is intended to be the freest 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 41 
 
 and clearest and openest of thoroughfares, and the way- 
 farer, even if he is a fool, should not err therein. 
 
 Luther has his verdict to record regarding the other 
 so-called sacraments of the Catholic Church. Sometimes 
 he does it in terms which astonish and startle us, as when he 
 says of Matrimony: “I, for my part, detest divorce, and 
 even prefer bigamy to it ”’ ; it is a sentence which we recall 
 years afterwards, when we read the melancholy story of 
 Philip of Hesse. But he wins our consent without any 
 abatements or qualifying provisos when, treating of Orders, 
 he reminds us that, ‘‘ however sacred or lofty may be the 
 works of priests or of the religious, they differ not at all in 
 the sight of God from the works of a husbandman labouring 
 in his field, or of a woman attending to her household 
 affairs.”’ Against force, fraud, and superstition Martin 
 Luther raises his unequivocal testimony. ‘“‘ For what have 
 I to do with the number or the greatness of those who are 
 in error ?’”’ heasks. And he replies to his own interrogative 
 in an aphorism characteristically satisfying and dauntless, 
 “ Truth is stronger than all.” 
 
 Luther had spoken to the laymen. He had spoken to 
 the Churchmen. Something remained yet to do—to speak 
 to the individual soul. And, before the month of October 
 in 1520 had ended, he did this also, in the last of the great 
 Reformation Treatises. It is shortest of the three: ‘a 
 very small book so far as the paper is concerned,”’ its pen- 
 man avowed, “ but one containing the whole sum of the 
 Christian life.’”’ It is shortest, and it is biggest and best, 
 holding in germ and miniature all the truth which is 
 enunciated in the others. It is the very noble tract on The 
 Freedom of a Christian Man. 
 

 
 42 ‘THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 A letter to Pope Leo x. introduces the tract or letter 
 which Charles von Miltitz, most approachable and politic 
 of the Reformers’ combatants, suggested and advised. Was 
 there not still some chance, Miltitz wondered, of propitiating 
 his Papal master, and of preventing the disaster of a feud 
 between Germany and Rome? Like the young Viscount 
 Falkland in the early days of the Civil War in England, he 
 “ingeminated the word, Peace! Peace!’’ So he per- 
 suaded Luther to draw up,-in brief summary, the narrative 
 of what was most vital in his belief, and to send it, 
 prefaced by this conciliatory epistle, to the ruler of the 
 Vatican. 
 
 Indeed, Luther is sincerely sorry for the Pope. “ You 
 sit, Leo, like a lamb in the midst of wolves, or like Daniel 
 in the midst of lions; you dwell, with Ezekiel, among 
 scorpions.”’ He wishes well to the man, whose position 
 is so pitiable and so perilous, though he can only abhor the 
 system of which the man is representative : “‘ It is all over 
 with the Court of Rome; the wrath is come upon her to 
 the uttermost.’ He longs for reconciliation, if it is re- 
 conciliation in the truth of Christ. ‘In fine, that I may 
 not approach you empty-handed, my Father, I bring with 
 me this little treatise, published under your name, as an 
 omen of good hope. I, in my poverty, have no other present 
 to make you ; nor do you need to be enriched by anything 
 but a spiritual gift. I commend myself to your Paternity 
 and Blessedness, whom may the Lord Jesus preserve for 
 ever.” There is a note of pathos in the eirenicon ; but the 
 invitation which it conveyed met with no response. The 
 hour for truce-making was past. 
 
 The liberty of Christ’s disciple—how is it secured ? 
 By faith, and by nothing else than faith. With two pro- 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 48 
 
 positions, that look as if they were contradictory but that 
 join hands in absolute agreement, Luther sets forth. ‘“‘A 
 Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to 
 none. A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, 
 and subject to every one.’”’ It is like him to fling out those 
 pregnant and provocative paradoxes, that are a challenge 
 to attention and that abide in the memory—lordship and 
 servantship are both alike the properties of the regenerated 
 soul, lordship first and servantship afterwards ; and to the 
 knowledge and experience of both it is faith alone which 
 leads the way. 
 
 Let the poorest of men commit himself in trust to 
 Jesus Christ as Saviour, Master, Shepherd ; and to what 
 estates he becomes heir! with what dignities he is 
 diademed! “ Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation ; 
 the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith 
 step in; and then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, 
 and grace, life, and salvation to the soul. For, if He isa 
 Husband, He must needs take to Himself that which is 
 His wife’s, and, at the same time, impart to His wife that 
 which is His.” Glorious “‘ wedding-ring of faith!’ Luther 
 exclaims, which binds the beggar-maid in an eternal union 
 with One, ‘‘ Whose righteousness rises above the sins of all 
 men, Whose life is more powerful than all death, Whose 
 salvation is more unconquerable than all hell.” 
 
 And the union, with its royalty, is for everybody ; yes, 
 and with its priesthood too. Those who wear sacerdotal 
 robes are not the only ministers of God; they may not be 
 His best ministers. ‘“‘ By the use of these words, Priest, 
 Clergy, Spiritual Person, an injustice has been done, since 
 they have been transferred from the body of Christians to a 
 few, who are now by a hurtful custom called Ecclesiastics.” 
 

 
 44. THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 You, I, even if we have received no human ordination, and 
 are invested with no churchly rank, will each of us be God’s 
 Aaron when our defects and darkness are overcome by the 
 grace of Christ. 
 “Onely another head 
 I have, another heart and breast, 
 Another musick, making live not dead, 
 
 Without Whom I could have no rest : 
 In Him I am well-drest.’’ 
 
 Thus the Christian man is the most free lord of all, and is 
 subject to none. But then he descends from his throne, 
 and girds himself willingly with the apron of the slave, and 
 is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to every one. 
 He gives heed to exercise his own body by fastings, watch- 
 ings, labour, so that it may be subdued to the spirit. He 
 may employ all the ceremonies of divine worship, which past 
 generations have found profitable for the furtherance of the 
 Christian life. And he abounds in sympathy and in help ; 
 “Leisure and he,’ as John Wesley said, “have taken 
 farewell of one another.’’ He devotes himself, ‘‘as a sort 
 of Christ ’’ to his neighbour, as Christ has devoted Himself 
 to him. 
 
 Yet all this diligence does not constitute the man a 
 child anda saint. It is the outcome of his salvation ; not 
 the purchase and price of it. It is the sign and fruit of 
 his faith; it is not part and parcel of its being. ‘“* Good 
 works,”’ as Luther puts it in one of his terse axioms, “‘ do 
 not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” 
 We recognise, as we read, that the Reformer is both radical 
 and conservative. He will uproot everything which hinders 
 the simplicity of the heart’s trust in Christ. But he will 
 maintain everything by which the heart discloses its love 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 45 
 
 for Christ, and its desire to promote His Kingdom among 
 men. He pulls down, and he builds up. 
 
 That is the most winning, as it is the most personal and 
 spiritual, of the Three Treatises. Even Hartmann Grisar, 
 Luther’s Jesuit biographer, admits its charm. He de- 
 nounces its revolutionary character. He has an implacable 
 dislike for its account of faith, as an intimate confidence in 
 the dying and living Saviour, a flight of the lonely soul to the 
 Only Lord, rather than as an acceptance of, and a submission 
 to, the teaching of the Church. But he acknowledges the 
 power of the book. It is “insinuating.” It is “ danger- 
 ously seductive.” It “ presents its wrong ideas in many 
 instances under a mystical garb, which appeals strongly to 
 the heart, and which Luther had made his own by the study 
 of older German models.” Even the ranks of Tuscany 
 ~ can scarce forbear to cheer. 
 
 The Treatises open for us a window into Luther’s mind 
 and heart. No other man could have written them. They 
 portray their author to the life. Let us think of but one of 
 his qualities—his humour, so irrepressible, so lively, so 
 picturesque, frequently so sardonic and biting, so invincible 
 and tremendous. 
 
 We may cull from their pages numerous illustrations 
 of it. As when he recommends a short and drastic 
 method of dealing with a Papal legate: “ If a courtling 
 came from Rome, he should receive the strict command 
 to withdraw, or to leap into the Rhine, or whatever river 
 be nearest, and to administer a cold bath to the Interdict, 
 seal and letters and all.’”’ Or as when he dissuades his 
 countrymen from the barrenness, and worse, of a pilgrimage 
 to the Holy City: “ It is said, “ The first time one goes to 
 
46 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Rome, he goes to seek a rogue ; the second time he finds 
 him ; the third time he brings him home with him.’ But 
 now they have become so skilful that they can do their three 
 journeys in one.’’ Or as when he depicts the Pope as a 
 blind leader of the blind: ‘“‘ He gives you lead for gold, 
 skin for meat, strings for a purse, wax for honey, words for 
 goods, the letter for the spirit. If you try to ride to heaven 
 on his wax and parchment, your carriage will soon break 
 down, and you will fall into hell.”” Or, once more, as when 
 he discusses the tragedy of Constance and the fiery home- 
 going of John Hus: “ We should overcome heretics, as the 
 old fathers did, with books and not with flames. If there 
 were any skill in overcoming heretics with flames, the 
 executioner would be the most learned doctor in the 
 world.” 
 
 Who can get away from sentences like these, from 
 the pith of them, from the clang and reverberation of 
 them? As men said, Luther’s words have hands and 
 feet. They chase us. They seize us. They will not let 
 us go. 
 
 But more important than the autobiographical value of 
 the Three Treatises, is the doctrine which they teach and the 
 message which they bring. Harnack tells us that the years 
 between 1519 and 1523 were “‘ the most beautiful years of 
 the Reformation.” For “in those years Luther was lifted 
 above himself, and seemed to transcend the limits of his 
 peculiar individuality—he was the Reformation, inasmuch 
 as he summed up in himself what was at once implied in 
 the return to Pauline Christianity and in the founding of a 
 new age.” There is the kernel of the whole matter. The 
 Address to the German Nobility, with its plea for the righteous- 
 ness which creates and exalts nations; The Babylonian 
 

 
 RESOUNDING HAMMER OF MARTIN LUTHER 47 
 
 Captivity of the Church, with its protest against the tyranny 
 of rites and sacraments ; and The Freedom of a Christian 
 Man, with its warmth of affection for the personal Christ ; 
 —are a return to Pauline Christianity, and are the founding 
 of a new age. And I pray that that may be why we 
 prize them and count them dear. 
 
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 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
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LECTURE III 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 THE “ COMMENTARY ON THE GALATIANS ” 
 
 EHIND both the public life and the theological 
 teaching of Martin Luther lay a profound personal 
 religion. This religion had become his through experi- 
 ences of the soul which were more than usually vital 
 and vivid. His sudden abandonment at the age of twenty- 
 two of his studies in law, and his entrance in the July of 
 1505 into the cloister of the Augustinian hermits at Erfurt, 
 were proof of the strife which already was raging within 
 him. Seven years were spent inside the monastery walls— 
 years whose outward monotony was broken, first, for six 
 months in 1509, when he was sent to teach Aristotle in 
 Wittenberg, and next by the memorable visit to Rome 
 in the winter of 1510 and I5II. 
 
 There was a strange difference between the external 
 calm which marked this section of his biography and 
 the tumult that surged through it all in the deep places 
 of his nature. He had sought the seclusion in the hope 
 that it would bring him peace; but peace was slow in 
 coming. God in those years appeared to him as a cruel 
 judge and an arbitrary despot. His favour, more or less 
 uncertain always, was not to be readily secured. The 
 path for the man who wanted to win salvation wound 
 uphill. It was the difficult path of obedience and 
 
 51 
 

 
 52 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 asceticism, of incessant prayer and unintermitted medita- 
 tion. Young Luther set himself to climb its steep ascent. 
 He buffeted his body. He shivered with cold in his 
 unheated cell. He starved himself until he was a skeleton, 
 “so that one could almost count his bones.’’ Sometimes 
 his brother-monks found him sunk on the stone floor in 
 a deathlike swoon. But still he was without the pacified 
 and approving conscience which he coveted; and God, 
 he thought, remained hostile and angry; and “when I 
 looked for Christ,’’ he said, ‘‘it seemed to me asif I saw 
 the devil.”” The greater his zeal, the sadder and the more 
 hopeless was his despair. 
 
 There were those who comforted and helped. His 
 spiritual director in the convent, “‘an excellent man and 
 a true Christian under the cursed cowl,’ gave him 
 Athanasius to read, and, better still, told him that his 
 first and most clamant duty was to believe in the forgive- 
 ness of sins. John Staupitz, the Vicar of the Augus- 
 tinians, and a child in the blameless family of God, took the 
 inquirer and sufferer to his heart. Staupitz knew the 
 Mystics, and taught his pupil to love them. Moreover, 
 he had a genius for friendship, and the doubting and 
 perplexed flew to him like weary birds seeking refuge 
 from the boisterous weather. 
 
 Augustine, too, was Luther’s guide, and he read him 
 with an eager avidity. He spoke to his condition; and 
 what he had written long before about God and the soul 
 and the world, about the worthlessness of the possessions 
 on which many are bent, and about the blessedness of the 
 life whose secret is on high and whose wealth is unseen, 
 so cheered the tempest-driven spirit of the Erfurt monk 
 that at times he felt as if he was ‘among choirs of angels.”’ 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 53 
 
 Best of all, there was the Bible. He ‘“ drank,” 
 Melanchthon says, “‘ with glowing fervour from the springs 
 of holy doctrine, the writings of the prophets and apostles, 
 in order to instruct himself in the divine will, and to nourish 
 fear and love with a strong testimony. Overwhelmed by 
 dolores et pavores, griefs and terrors, he plunged only the 
 more ardently into the study of the Scriptures.’’ Soon 
 there was no one in the cloister whose Biblical knowledge 
 rivalled his. Indeed, throughout the whole Order of the 
 Augustinians, men came to regard him as their chief expert 
 in this high and sacred learning. And yet the clouds 
 refused to lift, and he had no certainty of reconciliation 
 with God, and the waves and billows went over him. 
 
 Grisar more than questions the accuracy of Luther’s 
 account of his distress, and of the failure of the monastic 
 regimen to mend and cure it. He pronounces it an 
 exaggerated account, and he condemns Protestants for 
 their “uncritical acceptance’”’ of it. These too dark 
 and pessimistic pictures belong, he reminds us, to the 
 later life of Luther, and are “inspired by his polemic 
 against the old Church” which he had left. They are 
 “meant to illustrate his false assertion that, in the cloister 
 and in the Papacy, the way to obtain grace from God was 
 utterly unknown.” Really, they are “a fable,” which 
 had gradually grown up in the mind of the Reformer, 
 until he has persuaded himself that, instead of being an 
 imagination, it was a genuine history. 
 
 But while, here as everywhere, Luther is not content 
 with the commonplace language of ordinary men, it is 
 fact and not fancy which he records. The soul which has 
 thirsted through years of famine in the stony wilderness 
 is under small temptation to magnify its penuries and 
 

 
 54 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 miseries. It remembers them too distinctly to fall into 
 any mistakes in narrating them; and its most graphic 
 and most appalling delineations will not exceed but will 
 fall short of the truth. Even Luther, who in speech as in 
 deed was, as Julius Hare describes him, “‘a Titan walking 
 about among the pigmies until the earth seemed to rock 
 beneath his tread,’ would require ‘‘ one word more ’”’ to 
 do justice to this quest, these disappointments, and this 
 anguish of the heart. 
 
 It was very gradually that the ight grew to morning, 
 and that the quiet resting-place was gained. One day, 
 in his cell, as he read the Epistle to the Romans, he came 
 to the verse: The just shall live by faith—the verse which, 
 in future years, was to be his watchword and battlecry. 
 He paused over it ; he pondered it until its meaning was 
 clear ; and he understood that, in his routine of services 
 and privations and pains, he had been altogether on the 
 wrong track. <A vision of the simplicity of God’s “ easy, 
 artless, unencumbered plan’’ broke on him. But the 
 misgivings and vexations reasserted themselves, and the 
 end was not yet. 
 
 Every one knows how, in Rome, as Luther’s son Paul 
 heard his father relate when he was himself a boy of eleven, 
 the sentence from the Epistle fell again on his ears like the 
 peremptory note of a trumpet blown from heaven itself, 
 and rebuked him for his temporary relapse to the drudgery 
 and slavery of salvation by works. Thus the tides of the 
 inward strife flowed, back and forward; and we cannot 
 tell precisely when the tumult was at last composed and 
 still. The probability is that the troubles survived the 
 Erfurt period, and ran on into the early years in Witten- 
 berg ; so Boehmer has been assuring us recently, and the 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 55 
 
 researches of other scholars have led them to a similar 
 conclusion. 
 
 But at last God’s set time arrived, and Luther passed 
 into port from the stormy seas. ‘‘ J myself also was once 
 entangled with error,” he wrote when he looked back upon 
 it. “I thought Christ to be a Judge, Who must be 
 pacified by the observation of my Rule and Order. 
 Therefore, when I prayed, or when I said Mass, I used to 
 add in the end, ‘O Lord Jesus, I come unto Thee, and I 
 entreat Thee that these burdens and this straitness of my 
 religion may be a full recompense for all my sins.’ But 
 now I give thanks unto God, the Father of mercies, Who 
 hath called me out of darkness unto the light of His glorious 
 Gospel, and hath given me plentiful knowledge of Christ 
 Jesus my Lord, for Whose sake I count all things but loss.”’ 
 Nor was the long-drawn agony fruitless and in vain. It 
 made this Boanerges a Barnabas also. Pathemata mathe- 
 mata; and the discipline of his suffering and deliverance 
 qualified him to comfort those who were in any tribula- 
 tion with the comforts wherewith he had himself been 
 comforted of God. 
 
 When we recollect these bitter afflictions and their 
 happy issue, we have a clue to explain Luther’s attitude 
 towards the Bible. For him faith in Christ alone had been 
 the outgate from prison, and the remedy for mortal sick- 
 ness and impending death ; and thus he is sure that it is 
 Christ Who gives to the Bible its singular and unsurpass- 
 able worth. From Genesis to Revelation the Book must 
 be interpreted by the Gospel which it discloses, and which 
 is its centre and glory. Alle Schrift Christum zeiget: all 
 Scripture points Him out; hastens to meet and greet 
 

 
 56 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Him; concentrates on His person, His work, and His 
 grace. ‘‘ Look at Adam and Eve; they are full of sin 
 and death ; yet, because they hear the promise of the Seed 
 of the woman, Who shall bruise the serpent’s head, they 
 hope for the same things as we, namely, that death will 
 be done away, and sin wiped off, and righteousness, life, 
 and peace restored.’’ Or there is Abraham: he was “a 
 right, yea a perfect Christian, who lived in the most 
 evangelical fashion possible, in the Spirit of God and in 
 faith.” 
 
 And this principle, Alle Schrift Christum zeiget, not 
 only directs us to the marrow, the strength, and the sweet- 
 ness of the Old Testament; it is a touchstone by which 
 we can discriminate the varying values of the writings 
 of the New Testament. I suppose each of us has his 
 favourite portions in the Holy Book. Luther indisput- 
 ably had; and he prized those portions most which pub- 
 lished most emphatically the Evangel that abases man 
 and exalts man’s One and Only Redeemer. ‘‘ Therefore,”’ 
 he says, “‘are St. Paul’s Epistles more a Gospel than 
 Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For these do not set down 
 much more than the story of the works and miracles of 
 Christ ; but the grace which we receive through Him, 
 no one so boldly extols as St. Paul.’ Hearkening to such 
 a panegyric, we are scarcely surprised by the condemna- 
 tion that follows, even if we may not approve the verdict : 
 “Therefore is St. James’s Epistle, in comparison with 
 these, a mere letter of straw, for it has nothing evangelical 
 about it.” It was Paul, not James, who led Martin Luther 
 to Jesus Christ, out of darkness into marvellous light, 
 out of bondage into glorious liberty ; and he could never 
 forget the immensity of his debt. 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 57 
 
 Further, he learned from his spiritual conflicts his 
 method of unfolding the Word of God to others, in what 
 accents to sound it forth, where to put the stress, how to 
 apply the message. He is not a philological or a critical 
 commentator. He had not the special erudition of 
 Melanchthon and of Calvin; and he enjoyed even less 
 leisure than was granted them. He was concerned mainly 
 with the doctrines which he found in the Bible, and with 
 their practical uses for the men and women who were his 
 own contemporaries. 
 
 The chief part of his expositions had been delivered 
 in the form of sermons or homilies ; and there is always 
 the personal note in them, and the insistence that the 
 truth is as new as it is old, as modern as it is ancient, 
 intended for the Germans of the sixteenth century no less 
 than for the Hebrews of the old dispensation or the 
 Gentile converts of Asia Minor and Corinth and Rome. 
 “Some think,”’ he says, “‘ that the Germans are descended 
 from the Galatians. Neither is this divination perhaps 
 untrue. For the Germans are not much unlike to them 
 in nature. And I myself also am constrained to wish 
 to my countrymen more steadfastness and constancy ; 
 for, in all things we do, at the first brunt we be very hot, 
 but, when the heat of our affections is allayed, anon we 
 become more slack; and look! with what rashness we 
 begin things, with the same we give them over, and utterly 
 feyectsthem.” 
 
 There is nothing merely antiquarian in Luther’s exegesis. 
 It is always quick, powerful, sharp as a two-edged sword. 
 It is designed for the instruction and the hallowing of the 
 present even more than for the elucidation of the past. So 
 he discovers in Paul a hundred shrewd thrusts at “the 
 
58 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 wicked traditions of the Pope ’’; at “‘the hypocritical works 
 and merits of monks and friars’”’ ; at “the rules of Benedict, 
 Francis, or Augustine, in which there is not one jot of true 
 faith in Christ.’”? The apostle aids him, no less, to refute 
 “the fantastical opinions of the Anabaptists,’’ these 
 “light and brain-sick heads,’ who, here at Wittenberg, 
 have overturned and destroyed in a short space what 
 many true ministers, labouring night and day, have 
 builded up. 
 
 Yet there is no capricious ingenuity or arbitrary violence 
 in his treatment of the text. If ever there was a Gospeller 
 steeped in the understanding and the love of Christ’s 
 Cross, and if ever there was a Pauline man following hard 
 in the steps of the greatest of the apostles and the least 
 of all saints, it was Martin Luther. He is in harmony 
 with the spirit of the New Testament, when he is most 
 thoroughly and invigoratingly himself. And having been 
 shaped and moulded as he was, “ heated hot with burning 
 fears and battered with the shocks of doom,” he could 
 hardly have followed any other mode of declaring the 
 counsel of God. 
 
 In the autumn and winter of 1516, Luther lectured at 
 Wittenberg on the Epistle to the Galatians. The Com- 
 mentary, in a short form, was published three years sub- 
 sequently ; but the book as we know it now is much later 
 as well as much longer. It dates from 1535, and was 
 compiled from notes taken by some who listened to the 
 spoken utterances of the preacher and professor. He him- 
 self prefaced the fuller edition: ‘‘ I can scarcely believe,” 
 he confesses, “‘ that I was so plentiful in words, when I did 
 publicly expound this Epistle of St. Paul, as this book 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 59 
 
 showeth me to have been.” How he delighted in each 
 chapter, each verse, each syllable! “The Epistola ad 
 Galatas,’”’ he said jestingly and yet with serious meaning, 
 “is my Epistle ; I have plighted my troth to it; it is my 
 Katharine von Bora.’’ And how he rejoiced in its author ! 
 When Master Dietrich asked him, “‘ What kind of a person, 
 Herr Doctor, do you think St. Paul was?”’ he said, “I 
 think Paul must have been an insignificant-looking person— 
 a poor, dry, little man like Master Philip.”” But then he was 
 as essential and as inestimable as Master Philip. 
 
 In the Commentary Luther has abundant opportunities 
 of asserting his affection for him. He speaks of “the 
 flame, the great burning fire,’ of Paul’s heart, “‘ which 
 cannot be hid nor suffer him to hold his tongue”; and 
 of the “gunshot and artillery”? of his words, which 
 are “very thunder-claps from heaven”; and of his 
 “wonderful cunning in handling the afflicted consciences 
 of such as are fallen.’’ The fusile, tender, passionate, 
 Christ-possessed apostle was Luther’s honoured master 
 and ideal man. “I can never separate the two names 
 of Paul and Luther,’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge has 
 written in one place; and in another, ‘‘ How dearly Luther 
 loved Paul! and how dearly would Paul have loved 
 Luther ! ”’ 
 
 For a little while we may move through the good land of 
 the Commentary, to glean some of its fruits, and to learn 
 what the beliefs were which lay deepest in the soul of its 
 writer. 
 
 He is profoundly and perpetually conscious of the 
 perils which beset the life of the Christian, and of the 
 adversaries that threaten him. ‘“‘ For we have to do,’ he 
 

 
 60 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 warns his readers, “‘ with no small enemies, but strong and 
 mighty, and such as are in continual war against us, to wit, 
 our own flesh, all the dangers of the world, the law, sin, 
 death, the wrath and judgment of God, and the devil 
 himself, who never ceaseth to tempt us inwardly by his 
 fiery darts, and outwardly by his false apostles, to the end 
 that he may overthrow, if not all, yet the most part of us.” 
 Is it not an imposing and awesome recital of princes, 
 potentates, warriors ? 
 
 Sin, in Luther’s eyes, is “‘ a thing more horrible than can 
 be expressed, which ought to move us and make us afraid 
 indeed.”’ It is not simply the patent and palpable act 
 that is so dreadful ; it is the disposition beneath the act, 
 the heart from which, as from a fountain, our evil flows. 
 The disposition may be divinely renewed, the heart 
 gloriously quickened into another creation; and yet, so 
 long as we are here, the wicked principle is not eradicated, 
 and may, to the grievous shame and abasement of the saint, 
 reassert itself in baleful strength. 
 
 Or the world—how it detests Christ and Christ’s disciple ! 
 It may be a blatant and defiant world. ‘“‘ There is in it 
 nothing but ignorance, contempt, blasphemy, hatred of 
 God, and disobedience against all the words and works 
 of God.”’ Or it may be a self-righteous world, proud of 
 its own notions and achievements in religion. ‘It 
 braggeth of free will, of the light of reason, of the sound- 
 ness of the faculties and qualities of nature, and of good 
 works, as means whereby it can discern and attain grace 
 and peace.’’ The atmosphere is surely as unfriendly as 
 it can be. 
 
 Then there is “the ancient prince of hell,” always a 
 grim and stupendous entity to Luther. “As touching 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 61 
 
 myself, to say the truth, he sometimes assaileth me 
 so mightily, and oppresseth me with such heavy cogita- 
 tions, that he utterly shadoweth my Saviour Christ 
 from me, and in a manner taketh Him clean out of my 
 sight.’’ These depressions and faithlessnesses carry on 
 them his image and superscription ; but they are not his 
 only works. He is “such a cunning juggler.”’ He inflicts 
 more harm by plausible subterfuge than by unblushing 
 impiety. ‘‘ The white devil, which forceth men to commit 
 spiritual sins that they sell for righteousness, is far more 
 dangerous than the black devil, which only enforceth them 
 to commit fleshly sins.”” He can be “a peevish holy Satan,” 
 who “ would make me to be holy, when, in very deed, I 
 have nothing in me but evil.’”’ No escape is there from his 
 craft and cruelty, except for the man who encounters him 
 with a might more availing than his own, and says to him, 
 “ Sir Devil, I fear not thy threatenings and terrors, for there 
 is One Whose name is Jesus Christ, in Whom I believe ; 
 and He is thy tormentor, O Satan, for He hath bound thee 
 and holdeth thee captive, to the end that thou shouldst 
 no more hurt me.” The Lord Sabaoth’s Son, He and no 
 other one, shall conquer in the battle. 
 
 Ay, and the catalogue of our foes is not finished 
 yet. Death waits in ambush in front. Luther never 
 makes light of that “one fight more’’; he is not 
 disposed to “‘ greet the unseen with a cheer.” To him 
 “the time and the conflict of death” are a momentous 
 prospect. But the king of terrors compels him to cleave 
 to the King of Love all the more greedily, and to boast 
 of Christ all the more loudly. “‘ Thus when I feel the 
 dread of death, I say, Thou hast nothing to do with me, 
 O Death; for I have another Death which killeth thee, 
 

 
 62 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 my Death; and this Death which killeth is stronger than 
 that which is killed.” 
 
 “Sooner or later; yet one day 
 We all must pass that way ; 
 
 Each man, each woman, humbled, pale, 
 Pass veiled within the veil ; 
 
 Child, parent, bride, companion, 
 Alone, alone, alone. 
 
 I, bent by mine own burden, must 
 Enter my house of dust. 
 
 I, rated to the full amount, 
 Must render mine account. 
 
 Lord God of Mercy and of men, 
 Show mercy on us then!” 
 
 “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the 
 law ; but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory 
 through Our Lord Jesus Christ.”’ 
 
 Again and again Luther insists on the opposition of the 
 Law to the life of freedom and faith. Between true Christi- 
 anity and the Law he finds irreconcilable and invincible 
 contradiction. And this law which, if we would consult 
 our spiritual and eternal prosperity, we must resist to the 
 uttermost and abjure is, he asserts with an ever-increasing 
 decision in his tones, not the ceremonial law merely with its 
 elaborate ritual, but the moral law of the Ten Command- 
 ments. There is not a vestige of help for the soul of man 
 init; along the course it prescribes of effort and scrupulous 
 zeal and obedience and diligent good doing lie blank hope- 
 lessness, sheer humiliation, and abject defeat. Nor must 
 we attempt to mix law and grace, calling in the latter where 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 63 
 
 we have failed to satisfy the stringencies of the former. 
 That is to do “‘more mischief than a man’s reason can 
 conceive’; it “‘taketh away Christ with all His benefits ”’ ; 
 it “‘ utterly overthroweth the Gospel.” 
 
 Of course, the moral law has its value and its use. 
 It governs the man who has already tasted the un- 
 deserved forgiveness of God, and who, having been saved 
 without money or price of his own, is now ypielding 
 himself to the rule of his Saviour. Long before that, 
 too, it performs an indispensable service. Its end is “ to 
 accuse and condemn as guilty such as live in security, that 
 so they may be brought even to the brink of desperation, 
 trembling and quaking at the falling of a leaf.”” Its proper 
 office is “‘ to lead us out of our tents and tabernacles, that is 
 to say, from the quietness wherein we dwell, and from 
 trusting in ourselves, and to bring us into the presence of 
 God, to reveal His wrath unto us, and to set before us our 
 sins.” Thus it drives us on and up and away to Jesus 
 Christ. But it has no slightest share in our actual redemp- 
 tion ; and, if we imagine that by honouring and observing 
 it, we shall aid ourselves towards life and peace, we are the 
 dupes and victims of delusion. The law is an antagonist 
 to be trodden down, a tyrant to whom no quarter should 
 be shown. 
 
 You perceive what a crowd of enemies gathers about 
 the gate of the Christian career, and dogs the Christian to 
 the very end of his journey. It is like the dream of young 
 Vivia Perpetua in her prison at Carthage. In her vision 
 she saw a ladder of gold, the top of which rested in heaven. 
 Beyond the highest rung, surrounded by a white-robed 
 assembly, stood the Good Shepherd in the midst of a garden 
 more desirable than Eden. But, on either side of the 
 

 
 64 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 ladder, javelins and daggers and sharp knives were fixed, 
 and a hideous dragon guarded the approach to it. It was 
 so narrow, too, that only one could ascend it at a time, and, 
 ere the saint started to climb, he must first crush the dragon’s 
 head—Yes, but when Perpetua had set her foot on the 
 loathly beast, and had gone up between the bristling 
 javelins, she heard the Shepherd say, “ Béne venisti, 
 tegnon ! ’’—‘‘ Thou art welcome, My child!”’; and, when 
 she awoke, she had in her mouth the taste of the bread 
 and milk which He gave her in His paradise. So Luther 
 is aware of all the difficulties, and will hide none of them 
 from our view ; but he sees compensations that surpass and 
 repulse them, and these also he marshals and deploys before 
 our eyes. 
 
 For example, there is that great word Grace, with the 
 greater thing which the word designates. It was his 
 main quarrel with the Roman Church that she had beclouded 
 and misrepresented the freeness and the fullness of God’s 
 grace, and had bound human souls in a servitude which 
 they should never have known. “ For many heretofore 
 in the Papacy have gone about, with much labour and study, 
 to keep the law, the decrees of the Fathers, and the tradi- 
 tions of the Pope; and some, with painful and continual 
 exercises in watching and praying, did so weary and weaken 
 their bodies that afterwards they were able to do nothing, 
 miserably afflicting and tormenting themselves; and yet 
 they could never attain to a quiet conscience, and peace in 
 Christ, but doubted always of the goodwill of God towards 
 them.” 
 
 It had been his own slavery and distress. But, since 
 he had been taught the significance of grace, and of the 
 peace which proceeds from it like the stream from the 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 65 
 
 
 
 fountain, and the sunshine from the sun, he was citizen of 
 another world. ‘‘ There shall be no rest to my bones or to 
 thine, unless we hear these words, and cleave unto them 
 steadfastly and faithfully.” How can there be rest? 
 ‘“ The two fiends that torment us are Sin and Conscience.”’ 
 But, “ grace containeth the remission of sin, and peace 
 maketh a quiet and joyful conscience.’’ Let us arm our- 
 selves with them, and we have the victory against Despair 
 and everlasting death. ‘‘ Then is man strong, so that he 
 can neither be cast down with adversity, nor puffed up with 
 prosperity, but walketh on plainly and keepeth the high- 
 way.” Itis an inexpressible release, and we must ever give 
 thanks for it, and must daily take heed that we do not lose 
 its comfort and wealth. 
 
 But Luther has a still vaster and sweeter word for us to 
 set over against the battalions of our adversaries—the word 
 “Christ.’’ ‘‘ This diamond Christ Jesus,” “ this precious 
 pearl Christ ” ; no jewel can be compared with Him. Those 
 of us who wish to see what endless resources the Reformer 
 finds in Our Saviour and Lord must turn to Hermann’s 
 wonderful book, The Communion of the Christian with God, 
 and must read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the 
 chapter which is headed ‘‘ Luther and Christ.” How he 
 retained the Christological dogma of the Medieval Church 
 in which he had been nurtured, but breathed into it a vital 
 and ardent and magnificent content. How he was sure of 
 the Deity of Christ, and believed that “ the man who seeks 
 salvation will stop trying to help himself only when he knows 
 that God has helped him.” How he was just as rejoicingly 
 certain of Our Lord’s humanity, and rose from the humanity 
 step by step to the vision and conviction of the Deity. 
 “For the Scriptures begin very gently, and lead us on to 
 
 3 
 
66 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 
 
 Christ as to a Man, then afterwards to a Lord over all 
 creatures, and after that to a God. So do I enter delight- 
 fully and learn to know God. But the philosophers and 
 the all-wise men have wanted to begin from above; and 
 so they have become fools. We must begin from below, 
 and after that come upwards.”’ How, in short, confidence 
 in Christ is all that poor sinners need; for He is the true 
 and faithful Lover of those who are in trouble and anguish. 
 He is the merciful High Priest of the wretched and the 
 fearful. 
 
 When we turn back to the Commentary, we have 
 numerous illustrations of what Hermann has been explain- 
 ing to us. True Christian divinity, says Luther, will set 
 aside all curious and scholastic speculations about the 
 majesty of God; it will be more than content to discover 
 Him in Jesus Only. ‘ Know thou that there is no other 
 God besides this Man, Christ Jesus. Embrace Him, and 
 cleave to Him with thy whole heart ; for besides this way, 
 Christ, thou shalt find no way to the Father, no verity but 
 hypocrisy and lying, no life but eternal death.” 
 
 Is it not good of God to temper His wisdom, power, and 
 greatness to our capacity, by revealing Himself in this 
 pleasant mirror of His Son, incarnate for our redemption ? 
 So, when we are occupied in the matter of our salvation, let 
 us begin, not at the highest, as other religions do, but at 
 the lowest. Instead of cogitations about works, traditions, 
 philosophy, and the holy law, let us run straight to the 
 manger, and embrace the Virgin’s little Babe in our arms; . 
 and behold Him as He was born, sucking, growing up, 
 conversant among men, teaching, dying, rising again, 
 ascending above all the heavens, and having authority 
 over all things. This is the means to shake off terrors 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 67 
 
 and errors, like as the sun scatters the clouds. This is 
 the sight to keep us in the right way, that we may follow 
 whither Christ is gone. 
 
 Consistently, times without number, as one who glories in 
 having such an evangel to proclaim, Luther depicts this near, 
 accessible, gracious, trustworthy, and loveworthy Physician 
 and Shepherd of our souls. “I earnestly call upon you to 
 learn the true and proper definition of Christ, which re- 
 joiceth even the very angels of heaven. He is no Moses, 
 no lawgiver, no tyrant, but a mediator for sins, a free giver of 
 grace, righteousness, and life. He is no caster-down of the 
 afflicted, but a raiser-up of those who are fallen. He 
 might have satisfied for all the sins of the world by only one 
 drop of His blood ; but now He hath shed it plentifully, and 
 hath satisfied abundantly. If we define Christ thus, we 
 define Him rightly, and take hold of the true Christ, and 
 possess Himindeed. The miracle of that hour when he was 
 himself persuaded and enabled to define Christ thus, and 
 not as a vindictive Judge pursuing him with fiery indigna- 
 tion and penalty, never faded from Luther’s mind. 
 
 To participate in this sufficient grace, and to have this 
 full and running-over Christ as our own, what is requisite ? 
 The question recalls us to that other cardinal word of 
 Luther’s, Faith. Faith is requisite, and nothing except 
 faith. We are not to mix it, as the Roman doctors affirm, 
 with a charity of our own, and practice of piety, and benefi- 
 cence to which some personal merit may attach. Naked, 
 we come to Christ for dress. We are not to suppose, 
 either, that it is synonymous with an orthodox and un- 
 assailable creed. There is a confession of the Godhead and 
 the manhood of Jesus, which does not mean that we have 
 ourselves entered into eternal life through Him, This 
 

 
 68 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 confession, Luther avers, is the sheep’s clothing of false 
 prophets ; it is suffered by the devil, and it is practised by 
 the Pope. 
 
 No! the faith which saves and sanctifies and perfects 
 the soul is a matter of the right use of the personal 
 and possessive pronouns. Christ “‘ gave Himself for our 
 sins,’’ writes Paul ; and every word in the brief sentence is 
 replete with infinite meaning, but pre-eminently the little 
 word Our. ‘“ The effect,’’ says Paul’s interpreter, Luther, 
 “ altogether consisteth in the well applying of the pronouns, 
 which we find very often in the Scriptures ; wherein, also, 
 there is ever some vehemency and power. Thou wilt 
 easily say and believe that Christ, the Son of God, was given 
 for the sins of Peter, of Paul, and of other saints, whom we 
 account to have been worthy of this grace ; but it is a very 
 hard thing that thou, which judgest thyself unworthy, 
 shouldst from thy heart say and believe that Christ was 
 given for thine invincible, immeasurable, and horrible sins. 
 When it cometh to the putting to of this pronoun Our, 
 there our weak nature and reason starteth back.”’ 
 
 Or let us take the singular number. ‘‘ Who loved me and 
 gave Himself for me,”’ Paul writes again ; and such individ- 
 ualising language, like ambergris, leaves a rich scent, and is 
 an Oriental fragrancy to Paul’s commentator. ‘‘ Wherefore 
 these words, Which loved me, are full of faith. And he that 
 can utter this word, Me, and apply it unto himself with a 
 true and constant faith, as Paul did, shall be a good disputer 
 with Paul against the law. For Christ delivered neither 
 sheep, ox, gold, nor silver, but even God Himself, entirely 
 and wholly for me, even for me, I say, a miserable and 
 wretched sinner. Conceive and print this Me in thy heart, 
 not doubting but that thou art of the number of those to 
 

 
 THE DEEP HEART OF MARTIN LUTHER 69 
 
 ————- 
 
 whom this Me belongeth. And this manner of applying is 
 the very true force and power of faith.”” To master and 
 then to practise that page of Luther’s grammar in which 
 he treats of the personal and possessive is to be more than 
 conquerors Over every enemy and evil. 
 
 There was a point in that long spiritual conflict which 
 Bunyan narrates in Grace Abounding, when he greatly 
 wished to see some ancient godly man’s experience, who had 
 writ some hundred years before he was born. For the 
 religious authors of his own day, he thought, described only 
 that which others felt, or studied to answer such objections 
 as they perceived others were perplexed with, without going 
 down themselves into the deep. Well, after many such 
 desires, God cast into his hand one day a book of Martin 
 Luther. It was his Commentary on the Galatians ; it was so 
 old that it was ready to fall piece from piece if he did but 
 turn it over. The which, when he had but a little way 
 perused, he found his condition so largely and so profoundly 
 handled, as if Luther’s book had been written out of John 
 Bunyan’s own heart. ‘‘ Of particulars,” he goes on, “ here 
 I intend nothing. Only this, methinks, I must let fall 
 before all men: I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon 
 the Galatians, excepting the Holy Bible, before all the 
 books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded 
 conscience.”’ 
 
 Most fit for a wounded conscience—it is a true witness. 
 
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LECTURE IV 
 
 THE WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF 
 MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 THE ‘“* TABLE TALK” 
 
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LECTURE IV 
 
 THE WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF 
 MARTIN LUTHER 
 
 THE ‘* TABLE TALK ” 
 
 HE Tuischreden, the Colloquia Mensalia, the Table 
 
 Talk, of Dr. Martin Luther may fairly be claimed 
 
 as a monument of Protestantism. It is simply impossible 
 
 to conceive of it with a Roman Catholic origin and in a 
 
 Roman Catholic setting. Without the Reformation it 
 
 could not have been. And the world would have missed 
 much, if it had gone without so memorable a book. 
 
 A refined taste will find fault, justly enough, with some 
 of the book’s contents. Luther’s speech was broad rather 
 than cultured and delicate. He was a peasant’s son, 
 and he kept to the end all the franknesses and not a few 
 of the roughnesses of the class from which he sprang. 
 He called a spade a spade. He was ignorant of circum- 
 locutions, and despised them heartily. Occasionally he 
 used language which is quite unpardonable: it is too 
 loose and plain-spoken, too oblivious of seemliness and 
 reserve, too suggestive of what is forbidden and wrong ; 
 one is really sorry for the guests and the children who 
 were his listeners. We can only remember in his defence 
 that such language was common in those times in which 
 he lived ; ladies like Elizabeth of England and Margaret 
 of Navarre said things which the rudest and most reckless 
 
 73 
 

 
 74 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 tongues would hesitate about saying to-day ; and we can- 
 not be sufficiently. grateful for the cleansing influences 
 which have altered the tone and quality of our ordinary 
 discourse. 
 
 But, indeed, Luther’s directness of utterance might 
 more often be our pattern. We are in danger of being 
 swamped by a flood of false sentiment, which would 
 denude our talk and our writing of forcefulness and edge, 
 of arousal and strength. At times it is eminently necessary, 
 if I may borrow a phrase which I once heard Dr. A. B. 
 Davidson employ, to “dissect with a cleaver instead of 
 with a scalpel.”” Luther certainly knew how to do that, 
 and his dialect was never too faultily faultless. 
 
 This, too, we are not to forget: if his words, in the 
 abandonment and undress of the Tischreden, are marred 
 here and there by a coarseness that repels us, his life was 
 uniformly pure. It was spent, through more than a quarter 
 of a century, in the blaze of publicity. His critics and his 
 enemies were legion. But they could point to no moral 
 blemish or damaging stain in his character. Looking 
 back from our position of vantage, we feel that he blundered 
 at times in policy ; and we wish that he had been kinder 
 to the peasants and the Anabaptists, many of whom were 
 gracious and God-fearing men. But we are sure that, in 
 his own walk and behaviour, he bore himself habitually 
 as a gentleman and a Christian. Whatsoever things are 
 true, and reverend, and righteous, and untainted, and 
 amiable, and winning, Luther thought on these things week 
 after week and year after year—thought on them and 
 practised them. 
 
 The Table Talk, I said, is a monument which Pro- 
 testantism alone could have reared. And how is that ? 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 75 
 
 We consider the environment out of which the book 
 came. It is a product not of the cloister but of the home. 
 Once the building, within which these conversations took 
 place, and these shrewd and sententious and weeping 
 and laughing words were spoken, had been a cloister. 
 It was the residence of the Black Augustinians of Witten- 
 berg. But, after the Theses were nailed to the door of 
 the Schloss Kirche, and after the three Great Treatises 
 initiated the new day, the Augustinian brothers said their 
 good-byes one by one, going out from the silence of their 
 cells to the world of duty and conflict, to play in it their 
 own separate and useful parts. Soon Luther and John 
 Brisger were left alone, with young Wolfgang Sieberger, 
 who had meant to study theology but had discovered 
 its mysteries too trying and deep, for their janitor and 
 attendant. It was a cheerless life, so far as outward 
 comfort was concerned, in the vast deserted building. 
 “Before I was married,’ says Luther, ‘‘ the bed was not 
 made up for a whole year, and became foul with sweat. 
 But I worked all day, and was so tired at night, that 
 I tumbled into it without knowing that anything was 
 amiss.’’ 
 
 Then an amazing thing happened—amazing but in 
 every sense wholesome and good, though King Henry 
 the Eighth denounced it as a crime, and even Philip 
 Melanchthon was staggered and did not know at first 
 whether to approve or to condemn. Martin Luther, 
 recently a monk and dedicated to lifelong celibacy, married, 
 in the midsummer of 1525, when he was forty-two and she 
 was twenty-six, Katharine von Bora, till lately a nun 
 and vowed to perpetual virginity. He did it, to please 
 his old father and mother, anxious about his bodily welfare, 
 

 
 76 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 to stop the chatter of inquisitive tongues, and to fling down 
 the gage of battle more defiantly than ever to his ad- 
 versaries. ‘‘ Since they are so mad and foolish,” he wrote 
 to John Riihel, councillor in Mansfeld, ‘‘I have deter- 
 mined, before my death, to be found in the state ordained 
 of God, and so far as I can to rid myself entirely of my 
 former popish life.” 
 
 His bride and he, while they had always an un- 
 bounded respect for one another, fell in love, it would 
 seem, after the wedding rather than before it. But 
 Katharine soon transfigured the aspect of affairs in the 
 Augustinian cloister, which, by the gift of the Elector 
 Frederick, was now Luther’s house. Its bareness vanished. 
 Its cold was kindled into genial warmth. She was 
 energetic and capable to her finger-tips. Her husband 
 shristened her “‘the Morning Star of Wittenberg,’’ be- 
 cause, Summer and winter, she had her kitchen fire ighted 
 and her work in progress long in advance of anybody else. 
 By and by the children appeared, six in all, Hans the 
 eldest and Margaretha the youngest ; and their presence 
 finished what their mother’s had begun. The change in 
 the old monastery was complete. 
 
 This is the background of the Table Talk. This is the 
 scenery in the midst of which we must place the principal 
 speaker. The book proves that he was himself at his best 
 within the walls of his home. He might poke fun at 
 his ‘‘ dear Master,” his ‘‘ Lord Kathe,” and his “‘ Lady 
 Doctoress.’’ There were her imperial and perhaps im- 
 perious ways. ‘“‘ Dr. Luther said one day to his wife, 
 “You make me do what you will. You have full 
 sovereignty here, and I award you, with all my heart, 
 the command in all household matters, though I reserve 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 77 
 
 my rights in other concerns.’’’ Or there was her volu- 
 bility. Ona November morning in 1538, a learned English- 
 man, who did not know German, came to breakfast. Luther 
 said, “I will let my wife be your teacher ; she knows the 
 tongue so thoroughly that she completely beats me.” “TI 
 must have patience,’ he cried in his pretended distress, 
 “with the Pope, the ranters, the insolent nobles, my 
 household, and Kathe von Bora, so that my whole life is 
 nothing else than mere patience.’’ But his heart safely 
 trusted in her; and he would not exchange her, he pro- 
 tested, “for France and Venice.” It was with her in 
 his mind that he declared, ‘“‘ The state of matrimony is 
 the chief in the world after religion.”’ 
 
 His love of children and his gladness in their society 
 have many illustrations in the pages of the Tischreden ; 
 but none more touching and more poignant than the 
 story, which is told in full, of the death of fourteen- 
 year-old Magdalene. When she was laid in her coffin, 
 her father said, ‘‘ I am indeed joyful in spirit, but after 
 the flesh Iam very sad. Parting grieves one sorely, beyond 
 measure. Wonderful it is, to know that she is certainly 
 at peace and that all is well with her, and yet to be 
 so sorrowful.”’ Children, Dr. Martin thought, are “ the 
 loveliest little fools’’; they are “‘the choicest merry birds’’ ; 
 they are “like people intoxicated, living without fear, 
 springing and dancing with delight.”” Their faith in God 
 and in Christ, in the dear angels and in heaven, preached a 
 continual sermon to himself. Their experience, he felt, 
 is ‘‘ the most blessed and the best of all ; for they have no 
 secular cares, know nothing of the frightful and monstrous 
 fanaticism in the Church, suffer no terror of death nor of 
 hell, have only clean thoughts and joyful speculations,”’ 
 
‘ 
 
 
 
 78 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 It is all happier and more human—is it not ?—than 
 the loneliness of monasticism. We do not marvel that 
 Michelet should exclaim, ‘‘ What family more holy, what 
 home more pure? Hospitable table ! where I myself, for 
 a long time a guest, have found so many divine fruits on 
 which my heart yet lives.” 
 
 Or we turn to the daily routine which the book 
 delineates—a routine so busy and strenuous, so alert 
 and wakeful, so unconcealed and patent for all to see. 
 It harmonises more with the activity and unreserve of the 
 Protestant than with the contemplation and retirement 
 of the Romanist. How did the Table Talk, which fills 
 volumes, come into being? We owe its chapters to the 
 fact that Luther had twelve Boswells instead of one. His 
 doors stood open ; his Katharine and he were never with- 
 out a crowd of lodgers. There were orphaned nephews 
 and nieces, to whom they were parents. There were 
 priests, whose occupation was gone since they had broken 
 with the Church. There were visitors of wealth and title, 
 desirous to see the man who was so famous, or to consult 
 the man whose advice was usually so sage and sure. Over 
 and above, there were always students boarding in the 
 roomy place, and paying for their entertainment by the 
 services they rendered their host more frequently than 
 by any money they gave him. 
 
 It was a big, noisy, eager, inquisitive company which 
 sat down to eat and drink in the Lutherhaus, and 
 to question its master about all sorts of things, and 
 to hoard and treasure his replies as beyond both Greek 
 and Roman fame. Soon the custom was started of 
 taking notes, it may have been surreptitiously at the 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 79 
 
 
 
 
 
 outset, but ere long with no attempt to hide what 
 was being done. Conrad Cordatus began it in 1531, a 
 grey-headed and quick-tempered stranger from Austria, 
 who was a convert to the Reformed faith; and he was 
 followed by young Veit Dietrich; and he by Antony 
 Lauterbach, to whose diligence we owe a rich store of 
 spoil, for his reports, first from September 1531 to February 
 1533, and then from October 1536 to July 1539, require 
 a number of books to holdthem. There was John Schlagin- 
 haufen, too, sad of countenance, with a scrupulous and 
 troublesome conscience, but loyal to the core to the teacher 
 who aided him so truly. And there were the two Weller 
 brothers, Jerome and Peter; the one was Hans’s tutor, 
 and the other had a dog of which Luther said, ‘‘ If I were 
 as zealous in prayer as Peter’s dog is in feeding, I could 
 get anything from God; for the beast thinks of nothing 
 the livelong day but licking the platter.’’ Then, in later 
 years, John Mathesius took up the task; and, after him, 
 in the closing period of all, John Goldschmidt, whom we 
 know better by his Latinised name of Aurifaber. 
 
 Aurifaber it was who published the earliest collection 
 of the Colloquia Mensalia, twenty summers after the Re- 
 former’s death in 1546, keeping it back thus long because 
 Luther had commanded that no more books of his should 
 be given to the world, but unable to withhold it longer 
 because he was himself so perfectly convinced that his 
 contemporaries ought to be participants in the priceless 
 possession. You must picture those enthusiastic disciples 
 and indefatigable scribes, catching each crumb of wisdom 
 that falls from the mouth of their oracle, loving him in his 
 lightest part and in his full being, recording many a trivial- 
 ity and prosaic commonplace, but admitting us also to the 
 

 
 80 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 gloriously furnished chambers of one of the most royal 
 and original minds and one of the most tender and im- 
 passioned hearts our race has known. We thank them for 
 so incomparable a service. 
 
 The Table Talk, says Thomas Carlyle, is “the most 
 interesting now of all the books proceeding from 
 Luther, with beautiful unconscious displays of the 
 man.” It heightens our estimates of him that the 
 displays are unconscious. Subjected to the ordeal of 
 that incessant note-taking, some would have found a 
 refuge in the concealment of their real self, and would 
 have kept the trespassers to the outer courts of the 
 sanctuary, while others would have adopted a pose and 
 encased themselves in a triple bronze of words which 
 had but little content. But Luther is neither frightened 
 into silence nor seduced into hypocrisy. He maintains 
 his individuality all through. He is natural, uncon- 
 strained, expansive, daring, humble, brotherly, ardent, 
 always and everywhere alive. He speaks ex animo et 
 corde, just as if there were no intrusive pens scraping on 
 his right hand and his left. He was a supremely great 
 man who could do that. 
 
 I may be mistaken; but all this appears to me 
 peculiarly Protestant. The unfettered intercourse; the 
 questions and answers which look before and after, and 
 wander through eternity, and come back to one’s own 
 doorstep and to the privacies and sacrednesses of one’s own 
 soul ; the ample discussion of problems under the sun and 
 
 above it also—‘‘ Adam” and “ Abraham,” “ alchemy ” 
 and “allegory,” “‘ Anabaptists’”” and ‘“‘angels,” the 
 “ Antichrist ’’ and the “ Apostles,” ‘‘ Aquinas” and 
 
 a? 
 
 “ Aristotle’ and “ Augustine,” to travel no farther in 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 81 
 
 William Hazlitt’s Index than the first letter of the alphabet : 
 they are scarcely in agreement with the traditions and 
 habits of Catholicism. There you have more secrecy, 
 more limitation, and, it may be, more of the meditative 
 mood and temper. There the boundaries of debate are 
 fixed with more rigidity. There even one’s judgment 
 and one’s thinking must be subject to the authoritative 
 pronouncements of the Church; and such unshackled dis- 
 course as that of the dining-room in the Lutherhaus is not 
 encouraged. Better it is to sit still, and be quiet ; better 
 to commune in solitude with the heart and with God. 
 
 And the Protestant will be grievously to blame if he 
 omits the hour of hidden devotion and the practice of 
 contemplation ; probably he runs special risk of becoming 
 too outward and too talkative. But, after all, he breathes 
 a freer air than his Romanist neighbour, and moves 
 through a mightier world ; and it is wholly right that both 
 his mind and his lips, if only they are under the regulation 
 of the Spirit of God, should exercise themselves about 
 the sublimest and holiest subjects. There is health, there 
 is a tonic virtue, there are bracing and energising winds, 
 there are illumination and growth, in the boldness of such 
 speech as that of the Tischreden. 
 
 When we leave the book’s setting, and the life which it 
 describes, for its central and commanding figure, these 
 liberties are more manifest still. Luther’s sainthood was 
 cramped and restricted in no direction. It was compre- 
 hensive and wide, magnanimous and full. 
 
 He did not dream of starving and stunting his affections. 
 “Tt is told of Francis Xavier, one of the highest names on 
 
 the roll of the Papal canon,”’ writes Dr. James Walker in 
 6 
 

 
 82. THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 his lectures on Scottish Theology, “‘ that, on going away 
 to his noble work, he passed by his father’s gateway without 
 turning in to bid adieu to any in the house of his child- 
 hood, perhaps without so much as casting a lingering look 
 on the dear place.’’ Such a spirit, Dr. Walker insists, 
 is ‘utterly foreign to the old Scottish religion.” In that 
 religion, grace did not quench the flame of domestic love, 
 which is kindled from God’s own altar; it strengthened 
 the flame. The piety of men like John Welsh and Hugh 
 Mackail and John Livingston and Thomas Boston might 
 subordinate the ties of family and friendship to those 
 more compelling fervours which Christ stirs in the soul ; 
 but at the same time it rendered the ties firmer, sweeter, 
 and holier than they had formerly been. 
 
 Just so it was with Martin Luther. What he was as 
 husband and father we have seen already; but the Table 
 Talk is an eloquent witness to the depth and intensity of his 
 attachments in other directions. There never was a more 
 sympathetic or a more untiring helper, for instance, of 
 those who were in trouble ; he poured out on them all the 
 resources of an unselfish heart. Schlaginhaufen, he of the 
 mournful face, “‘ complained of his trials, on the right hand 
 and on the left. Doctor Luther said, ‘That the devil can 
 do in a masterly way ; otherwise he were no devil. Come 
 to me, dear friend, to Philip, to Cordatus, and believe 
 that we will surely comfort you with God’s Word. But if 
 you expect good from me, what may you not expect from 
 Christ Who died for you? Ah, if you would only look 
 for good things from Him Who is a thousand times better 
 than I am, or than Philip or Cordatus!’ ” 
 
 Or was it Philip himself who lay in distress of mind, 
 and at the very point of death? His eyes were sunk, his 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 83 
 
 senses gone, his speech stopped, his hearing closed, his 
 features fallen in and hollow. He knew nobody; he ate 
 and drank nothing. When Luther saw him thus disfigured, 
 he said, ‘“‘ How has Satan defaced this organon!’’ But he 
 turned to the window, and prayed the man who was the 
 half of his own soul back again to life and use. ‘‘ Our Lord 
 God,” he assured himself, ‘‘could not but hear me, for I 
 threw myself before His door, and wearied His ears with 
 all His promises which I could repeat out of Holy Writ.” 
 Thereupon he grasped Melanchthon’s hand, and exhorted 
 him, ‘‘ Bono animo esto Philippe; non morieris. Although 
 God has reason to slay, yet He willeth not the death of a 
 sinner. Wherefore, give no place to the spirit of sorrow, 
 and be not thine own murderer; but trust in the Lord, 
 Who can kill and make alive, can wound and bind up, 
 can smile and heal again.’”’ So Philip, thus addressed, 
 began to draw breath once more, but begged Luther not 
 to detain him, for he was on a good journey, and nothing 
 better could befall him. ‘‘ By no means, Philip,” re- 
 sponded Luther; “thou must serve Our Lord God yet 
 longer.”” This pertinacious and victorious love, which 
 will take no denial either of God or of man—is it not more 
 admirable than Xavier’s crucifixion of the heart’s longing 
 and emotion ? 
 
 Nor did Luther imagine that Christianity involved the 
 abridgment and the refusal of innocent joy. There has 
 too often been a morbid strain in the holiness of Roman 
 Catholic saints. Henri Lacordaire was a true man of God ; 
 but we shudder when we read how he scourged and tortured 
 his body. After celebrating Mass, says Pére Chocarne, he 
 would “‘enter the cell of one of his brethren with his 
 countenance still radiant. Then, humbly kneeling before 
 

 
 84. THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 him, he would beg him to do him the charity of chastising 
 him for the love of God. He uncovered his shoulders, and, 
 whether willing or unwilling, the brother was obliged to 
 give him a severe discipline. He would rise all bruised, 
 and, remaining for a long time with his lips pressed to the 
 feet of him who had flogged him, would give utterance to 
 his gratitude in the most lively terms, and then withdraw 
 with gladness on his brow and in his soul.’”’” That revolts 
 us. Those austerities and humiliations, we know, were 
 never ordained by Christ, Whose yoke is easy and whose 
 burden is light. 
 
 Luther had once believed in them and submitted to 
 them, when, like St. Simeon Stylites, he sought the white 
 robe and the palm through “frost, hail, fire and wind, and 
 snow.” But the Luther of the T7schreden lived under a 
 kindlier sky, and understood that he served no hard task- 
 master. At times, as in his use of beer and wine—you can 
 still see his jug in the cupboard of the ‘‘ Vorzimmer’”’ in 
 his home—we could have wished him more Puritanic than 
 he was; but the public conscience of his age was not so 
 sensitive as it is in ours to the evils wrought by strong 
 drink; and his indulgences were measured and temperate 
 compared with those of numbers around him. 
 
 There were other more unassailable ways in which he 
 was the “merry man of the Lord.’’ Like most rich and 
 many-sided natures, he had his hours of deep dejection. 
 Often, as he grew older, the fear would rise in him that 
 he had been spending his strength for naught and in 
 vain. On St. Stephen’s Day, at table, he said, “‘My 
 preaching is nothing better than if I went through a 
 great forest and cried aloud until it resounded again, so 
 that I heard the echo and empty reverberation ; for I 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 85 
 
 see and mark that no one will have Christ for his Lord.” 
 But he sent the depressions flying with a promise or with 
 a song. ‘‘ When I am chased by thoughts about Church 
 and home cares,” he told his auditors, “I take a psalm, or 
 a saying of Paul, and I go to sleep on it.” And, “in the 
 year 1541, Doctor Martin said that music is a glorious 
 and divine gift and present, which is altogether hostile to 
 the devil; and many tentationes and cogitationes may be 
 driven away therewith, for the devil cannot stand music.”’ 
 
 His humour came to his succour, too, and his power 
 of whole-hearted laughter. ‘‘ Tho’ a certain kind.of wit 
 may coexist with moral depravity,’ writes one of the 
 authors of the Guesses at Truth, “‘ there has often been a 
 playfulness in the best and greatest men—in Phocion, in 
 Socrates, in Luther, in Sir Thomas More—which, as it were, 
 adds a bloom to the severer graces of their character, 
 shining forth with amaranthine brightness when storms 
 assail them, and springing up in fresh blossoms under the 
 axe of the executioner.’’ Such healing trust and such 
 conquering happiness are to be preferred to Lacordaire’s 
 self-chosen pains. 
 
 Moreover, the Luther of the Table Talk gives his reason, 
 scope, and liberty in the sphere of religion. While the 
 company of students and visitors was still gathering round 
 that kindly board in Wittenberg, another very different 
 company had its birth in the opposing camp. Five and 
 a half years before the death of the Reformer, Pope 
 Paul 111. recognised at last the value to the Church 
 of the efforts of Ignatius Loyola, and the Society of 
 the Jesuits was formally established in the September 
 of 1540. There is no more emphatic contrast than that 
 between Luther and Loyola. The one had exchanged his 
 

 
 86 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 servitude and his burden for freedom and a large room. 
 The other had abandoned the soldiering of earth by 
 war for that campaigning which is spiritual; but, far 
 more than formerly, he put the stress on an obedience 
 which is absolute and even mechanical. Through simple 
 faith Luther entered a spacious kingdom, where he felt 
 that he was permitted and invited to roam at will. It 
 was the exact reverse with Loyola. Prompt military sub- 
 mission—‘‘ Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason 
 why ’’—was the sum and substance of his own life and of 
 the system which he enforced on others. 
 
 The Spiritual Exercises, in which he expounded his creed 
 and revealed himself, is the drill-book of an officer with superb 
 gifts of organisation and with an iron and inexorable will. 
 It marks out with pitiless clearness the path of duty for 
 the soul ; it tolerates no alternatives, no remonstrances, no 
 inquiries, no evidences of independence ; these are rebellion 
 and mutiny ; they must be stifled and trodden down. But 
 the Table Talk, like the man whose opinion it commemorates, 
 is nothing if not independent. We read its paragraphs, and 
 we recognise that the Johannine verse is applicable to it. 
 There is no fear in love, for perfect love casteth out fear. Up 
 and down the universe of the invisible and the eternal, just 
 as up and down the various coloured and extraordinarily 
 significant universe which lay beneath the scrutiny of his 
 eyes, Luther walked with a mind constantly on the alert, 
 to gaze, to admire, and to learn. 
 
 He never modified his reverence, for he could turn 
 nowhere on earth or in heaven without encountering God ; 
 but, equally, he never lost the openness and teachable- 
 ness of his disposition, or the keenness of his relish for 
 a new discovery, or the first freshness and enthusiasm 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 87 
 
 of his spirit. Dr. Henning asked him, “ Is reason to hold 
 no authority with Christians, since it is to be set aside 
 in matters of faith?’’ The Doctor replied, “‘ Previous 
 to faith and to the knowledge of God, reason is mere 
 darkness; but, in the hands of those who believe, ’tis 
 an excellent instrument. All faculties and gifts are 
 pernicious, when they are employed by the impious, but 
 most satisfying when they are possessed by godly persons.” 
 An excellent instrument and most satisfying gift he found 
 his own quickened and regenerated reason to be, and he 
 used it daily and diligently. Nor was it a dry, logical, 
 painstaking, and laborious reason ; it retained among its 
 qualities to the last the child’s imagination and sense of 
 wonder. 
 
 To Luther there was always something novel, amazing, 
 ineffable, in the works of God and in His Word, in the 
 world of creation and the world of redemption, in Christ 
 and in man. With him, as with Thomas Traherne, 
 “the corn’’ was ever “‘ orient and immortal wheat,’ and 
 the oldest things were strange and young. This enfran- 
 chised and adventurous intellect, so worshipful and yet so 
 free, transcends by an unreckonable distance that caged 
 and clipped and imprisoned creature for whose discipline 
 Loyola codified his rigorous decrees. 
 
 It only remains to follow the man whose affections were 
 so tender, whose experience was so victorious, and whose 
 liberties were so wide, into a few of the fields, in which he 
 wandered with such profit to himself, and from which he 
 culled and accumulated such spoils for his listeners and 
 friends. 
 
 Nature was his lesson-book. Its sights and sounds were 
 

 
 88 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 
 
 
 
 an instruction and a fascination. He felt that it overflowed 
 with signs and wonders. ‘‘ The world is full of God’s 
 miracles, which happen without ceasing. But because they 
 are so countless and so manifold, and furthermore so 
 altogether common, as saith St. Augustine, we do not 
 regard them, nor think of them. God the Lord gives daily 
 water from the rocks; bread from the sand; wine, beer, 
 butter, cheese, and vegetables from the earth. But He 
 gives them lavishly, without intermission, and no man is 
 surprised.” 
 
 Sometimes Luther fancied that, if God were not so 
 superabundantly generous and munificent, we should thank 
 Him more. “ For instance, if we were all born with only 
 one leg or foot, and in our seventh year received the second 
 leg; at fourteen one hand, at twenty its neighbour; we 
 might recognise the worth of the gifts for a time withheld, 
 and be more grateful.” It is a quaint surmise ; but he at 
 least did not fail in the recognition or the gratitude. God 
 beset him behind and before, in the smallest things as in the 
 largest. The tradition may be historically dubious which 
 represents him as carrying a nosegay in his hand to his Dis- 
 putations, and refreshing himself with its beauty and frag- - 
 rance in the heat of the debate; but a flower could be his 
 tutor in divinity. ‘If aman were to make one rose,” he 
 said, “he would be worthy of an empire.’’ And birds of 
 low degree transported him to the throne of the King of 
 kings. “I am persuaded,” he announced, “that it costs 
 God, yearly, more to maintain only the sparrows than the 
 revenue of the French monarch, with all his rents and taxes.”’ 
 Through and through, nature was magical and mystical. 
 
 But more unsurpassable still, was the domain of revela- 
 tion. At Luther’s table, Dr. Justus Jonas remarked, 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 89 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‘There is in the Holy Scripture a wisdom so profound, 
 that no man may perfectly study it or comprehend it.” 
 And the master of the table was of one mind with Jonas. 
 “Ay,” he said, ‘‘ we must ever remain scholars here : we 
 cannot sound the depth of a single verse ; we get told but 
 of the ABC, and that only in part.’’ The loftiest and most 
 soaring pupils, he was certain, die learning a knowledge so 
 illimitable. “I call upon St. Peter, St. Paul, Moses, and all 
 the saints, to tell me whether they ever fundamentally 
 appropriated one solitary word of God, without studying it 
 over and over and over again. The Psalm says, His under- 
 standing 1s infinite.” 
 
 To the mirror, that was so clear, the store that was 
 so endless, the ocean that had neither bottom nor shore, 
 it was his habit to repair for himself. Commentators 
 were disappointing, and he soon threw them aside; they 
 contained many things which his conscience could not 
 approve. “‘’Tis always better,’’ he concluded, “to see 
 with one’s own eyes than with those of other people.”’ 
 He could have wished for Homer’s or Virgil’s faculty that 
 he might celebrate the praises of the Book. ‘‘ Ah!” he 
 sighed, “if I were only a poet, I would write a costly 
 carmen, song, or canticle, concerning the use, power, and 
 fruitfulness of the Holy Word.” 
 
 Inside the spacious country of revelation lay the land 
 _ flowing with milk and honey which was Luther’s chosen 
 and dearest home—the land of God’s saving grace in Jesus 
 Christ. The Tischreden has a peculiar pleasure in expound- 
 ing its marvels. ‘‘ Christ,” its author says, “‘is the Begin- 
 ning and End of all my cogitations, day and night ; yet I 
 find and freely confess that I have attained but to a small 
 and weak commencement of the height, depth, and breadth 
 

 
 90 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 of this immeasurable and incomprehensible Wisdom, and 
 have scarce got and brought to light a few fragments out of 
 this most deep and precious Profundity.”’ 
 
 Now, it is his Lord’s humanity over which he lingers 
 —the amazement of the men of Nazareth in the Day 
 of Judgment that the Carpenter Who helped to build 
 their houses should have come to such high honour, 
 and should be the arbiter of their destinies, or how the 
 Child would carry Joseph’s dinner to him, and, when 
 He came back, Mary would often ask, “‘ My little Jesus, 
 where hast Thou been ?’”’; or how we cannot vex the 
 devil more than when with sounding voice we sing in 
 the church, Et homo factus est; et Verbum caro factum 
 est, for the devil cannot endure these words, and flies 
 away, because he well feels what is contained therein. 
 
 Again, it is Christ’s readiness to pardon and succour 
 that is the theme. “I expect more goodness from Kathe 
 my wife, from Philip Melanchthon, and from other friends, 
 than from my sweet and blessed Saviour Christ Jesus ; 
 and yet I know for certain that neither she nor any person 
 on earth will or can suffer that for me which He has suffered ; 
 why then should I be afraid of Him? This, my foolish 
 weakness, grieves me very much.’ Or, once more, he 
 takes refuge from his spiritual bankruptcy in the true deity 
 of Him Who bled on the shameful Tree: ‘“‘ Wherefore he 
 that preaches a God to me Who died not for me the death on 
 the Cross, that God will I not receive.’’ First and last, 
 Christ is Luther. Nonesuch. He never saw His like. 
 
 The experience of the Christian was many a time 
 the topic of the Talk. Ever a fighter Luther was ; and his 
 conversation is seldom so graphic and lively as when it 
 treats of the principalities and powers, the world-rulers 
 

 
 WISE AND WIDE HUMANITY OF MARTIN LUTHER 91 
 
 of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the 
 heavenly places, against whom the child of God prosecutes 
 his dread campaign. But the combatant has a hundred 
 potent helps. 
 
 There is faith: too “ weak it is, and yet it is a rock, 
 for it is the corner-stone of the heart.’’ There is prayer : 
 “Our Lord God hears, with quick delicate hearing, the 
 faintest breath’’; never let us forget to sigh and cry; 
 “as a shoemaker makes shoes, and a tailor coats, 
 so should a Christian pray— prayer is the Christian’s 
 business.”” There is the Church in which he is enrolled: 
 she resembles the amaranth, for she bathes her garments 
 in the blood of the Lamb, and is coloured over with red, 
 but still is more fair and comely and beautiful than any 
 state or assembly on the face of the earth ; and she never 
 withers and decays, for, though temporal kingdoms have 
 their changings, and soon fall and fade, this kingdom, which 
 is so deep-rooted, by no power can be destroyed or wasted. 
 There are troops of angels, too: ‘“ Gabriel is my servant, 
 Raphael is my coachman,”’ Luther boasted ; and what good 
 allies these are! ‘An angel’s is a fine, tender, kind heart. 
 As if we could find a man who had a heart sweet all through, 
 and a gentle will; without subtlety, yet of sound reason ; 
 at once wise and simple. He who has seen such a heart 
 has those tints wherewith he may picture to himself what 
 an angel is.” 
 
 And, only a little way ahead, after death has been 
 destroyed, and after the bright clear dawning of the 
 Last Day, early in the spring, when Christ will raise us 
 up, and will call us by name: ‘‘ Doctor Martin, Doctor 
 Jonas, Magister Michael Coeli, come hither ! ’’—there 
 is heaven. Where there will be no carnivorous beasts or 
 

 
 92. THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 
 
 venomous creatures, for all such, like ourselves, will be 
 relieved from the curse of sin, and will be to us as friendly 
 as they were to Adam in Paradise. Where there will be 
 little dogs, with golden hair, shining like precious stones. 
 Where the foliage of the trees, and the verdure of the grass, 
 will have the brilliancy of emeralds. Where we ourselves, 
 delivered from our mundane subjection to gross appetites, 
 shall have the same form as here but infinitely more perfect, 
 and our eyes will be radiant as the purest silver. To-day 
 or to-morrow, the Christian lives victoriously. 
 
 So, in spite of his dejections and his adversaries, the 
 Luther of the Table Talk lived from January to December. 
 “Thank God,” he exclaimed, ‘‘ the devil has never been 
 able altogether to vanquish me; he has burned himself 
 out on the Lord Christ.’’ It puts iron into our blood, and 
 fortitude into our souls, to hold fellowship with him. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 
 
 MELANCHTHON AND THE ‘LOCI COMMUNES ” 
 
 93 
 

 
LECTURE V 
 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 
 
 MELANCHTHON AND THE ‘“ LOCI COMMUNES ” 
 
 N a letter written in March 1542, Luther declared, 
 “Master Philip is doing more than all the rest; 
 he is the Atlas who sustains heaven and earth. Twenty 
 years previously his praises had been as unconditional 
 and as hearty. “‘ No one,” he said then, “ will boast that 
 Philip is superior or equal to Paul; it is enough that he 
 is next to Paul.’’ Luther’s generosities, like his anti- 
 pathies, were never in the comparative degree; they 
 were always superlative, always unconstrained and full. 
 Indeed, there could not be better friends than these two, 
 the monk who shook the world ‘and the preceptor of Ger- 
 many. It was not that they saw eye to eye in every 
 matter. In temperament they were entirely different ; 
 and there were important questions of belief in which 
 they did not agree. 
 
 But each recognised his need of the other. In Melanch- 
 thon’s scholarship, more accurate and more various than 
 his own, Luther found a powerful agency for the further- 
 ance of the Reformation. In Luther’s deep personal 
 religion and undaunted courage, Melanchthon was pro- 
 vided with the influences required to spiritualise his 
 humanism and to counteract his timidity. He looked 
 
 up to the older man with a constant admiration. 
 95 
 

 
 96 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 “Martin is too great and too wonderful for me to 
 describe in words,” he wrote. ‘‘ You know,” he told a 
 friend, ‘“‘ with what astonishment Alcibiades regarded 
 Socrates. In the same way, but in a Christian sense, I 
 regard Luther.” 
 
 Hand in hand, the man of originality and passion 
 and heroic action and the man of culture and modera- 
 tion and tenderness laid the foundations of the Pro- 
 testant Church. “I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and 
 altogether warlike,’ the stronger and mightier of the 
 two affirmed. ‘I am born to fight against innumerable 
 monsters and devils. I must remove stumps and stones, 
 cut away thistles and thorns, and clear the wild forests. 
 But Master Philip comes along softly and gently, sowing 
 and watering with joy, according to the gifts which God 
 has abundantly bestowed upon him.” It was the doing 
 of the Lord which linked the sower with the fighter, the 
 tiller of the fields with the slayer of the dragons. 
 
 We are to think, then, of Master Philip. Perhaps he 
 is not so easily read as his more leonine neighbour and 
 captain. There are elusive elements in him. Occasionally 
 he perplexed his contemporaries, and sometimes he dis- 
 appointed his friends. It is scarcely surprising that, 
 now and then, he is an enigma to us. We are drawn to 
 him irresistibly ; we feel his singular graciousness and 
 attraction ; but we are not certain that, in every instance, 
 we can appreciate his motives or interpret his mind. Yet 
 fet us do our best. 
 
 First, let us linger for a few minutes in the company 
 of the man himself. Outwardly, there is not much of 
 him. He is below middle size, thin, and frail. When he 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 97 
 
 walks, he carries one shoulder higher than the other. 
 His features, as you see them depicted in Diirer’s and 
 Cranach’s portraits, are not winning. The forehead is 
 lofty ; the blue eyes are large and bright ; but the cheeks 
 are sunken, and the face even in youth is lined and wrinkled : 
 his frequent sicknesses and unremitting studies make him 
 appear old before his time. When he begins to speak, 
 his manner is diffident and hesitating. He is well aware 
 of his own deficiencies in this respect: “ I am a logician,” 
 he says; “ Bugenhagen is a linguist ; Jonas is an orator ; 
 Luther is all in all. I can write in the presence of the 
 whole Roman Empire, but I am dumb in the presence of 
 an audience.” 
 
 It is manifest that, externally, Melanchthon has many 
 limitations. But let us listen to him for five minutes, 
 and we shall never be tempted to disparage him again. 
 We shall coincide with John Kessler, student in Witten- 
 berg in 1523, reformer in Switzerland by and by: “ You 
 would think he was only a boy not above eighteen years 
 old, when he walks by the side of Luther. Martin is 
 much taller than he; but in understanding and learning 
 Philip is a stalwart giant. One marvels that in so small 
 a body there can be concealed such a mountain of wisdom.” 
 
 Melanchthon was a grammarian who, little by little, 
 became a master in theology and in religion. He was only 
 twenty-one when, in 1518, he was installed as Professor of 
 Greek in Wittenberg. Already he was the rising hope of 
 the greatest scholars. euchlin, related to him through 
 his mother, was proud of his brilliant attainments. 
 Erasmus, the literary prince and dictator of Europe, 
 could hardly find language in which to utter his delight 
 in the stripling whose erudition was soon to rival his own. 
 
 7 
 

 
 98 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 “What sagacity in argument!” he cried; “‘ what purity 
 of style! what comprehension of recondite subjects! 
 what varied reading! what delicacy and almost royal 
 elegance of mind!” 
 
 That was how Melanchthon began. He was lover 
 and devotee of the ancient classic literature of Greece 
 and Rome. He fed himself and his disciples on Homer 
 and Plato, on Cicero and Virgil and Horace. He 
 might have been Browning’s pundit, who “settled Hoti’s 
 business, properly based Oun, gave us the doctrine of the 
 enclitic De.’’ His unflagging industry, the grammars he 
 wrote, the text-books he prepared, the editions of the old 
 writers he published, the diligence and the skill with which 
 he organised the schools and colleges of Germany: in all 
 these things we have the typical Humanist, the true child 
 and representative of the Renaissance. 
 
 No doubt, he had, from the first, a religious end in 
 view. He hoped through classical study to refine and 
 ennoble society, and to uplift a decaying and ignorant 
 Church. If in Italy the Revival of Learning had led 
 to unbelief and. Epicureanism, he meant that in the 
 Fatherland it should bring about the quickening of faith 
 and the purification of morals. So in his classes he 
 was careful to expound the Greek of St. Paul as well 
 as that of the orators and philosophers, the historians 
 and poets. 
 
 But he has not been long in Wittenberg until we 
 are conscious of a change. His interest in the New 
 Testament increases ; the questions of theology redouble 
 their value for him; his own individual religion gains in 
 life and power. This was part, and an incalculable part, 
 of the debt he owed to Luther. Of course, he clung to 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 99 
 
 
 
 the enthusiasms of his youth, and sometimes he com- 
 plained that the discussion of the problems of the faith 
 swallowed up everything else in the university : Homer 
 went a-begging, he said, and Demosthenes could get no 
 hearers. Yet the fact remains that, with himself, too, the 
 new affection was more dominant than the old; and the 
 compulsion of circumstances was not entirely responsible 
 for the dominance. He was a layman; he was never 
 ordained ; he was neither priest nor monk; and, never- 
 theless, he was the first definite and systematic theologian 
 of the Lutheran Church. It is a result which could not 
 have come about unless his own consent and predilection 
 had conducted him to it. 
 
 But it is pathetic to remark, also, that Melanchthon 
 was a lover of peace, who could not contrive to escape 
 from the turmoil and din of controversy. Luther felt 
 the stern joy of a warrior in the clash of arms ; it was the 
 reverse with his colleague ; he would fain have thrust the 
 sword into its scabbard, and have kept it there. He 
 belonged to that class of minds, never a happy one in those 
 days when conflict is keenly waged, and when men are 
 ranged sharply and irreconcilably either on this side or 
 on that, whose chief desire is to terminate differences, and 
 to discover what the combatants hold in common. 
 
 In 1530 he drew up the Augsburg Confession, one of 
 the characteristic documents of the Reformation. Its Pro- 
 testantism rings sound and clear ; yet it is a Protestantism 
 which is set forth with mildness and with consideration 
 for the opposing party; the trumpet is of silver rather 
 than of iron. Inevitably, there were those, more unbend- 
 ing than its author, who were displeased. ‘‘ I was born 
 under an unlucky star,’ he wrote to his brother George. 
 

 
 100 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 ‘Poverty, hunger, contempt, and suchlike misfortunes, 
 I can easily bear. But what prostrates me utterly is 
 strife. Other theologians wanted to compose the Con- 
 fession. Would God they had had their way! Perhaps 
 they could have done it better. Now they are dissatisfied 
 with mine, and wish it changed. One cries out here, and 
 another there. But I must maintain my principle of 
 omitting everything that increases the bitterness.”’ 
 
 At a subsequent period, after Luther had gone home to 
 God—Luther, who understood Melanchthon so intimately, 
 and championed him with a chivalrous loyalty—the trouble 
 sprang from his affinities not with Roman Catholics but 
 with Calvinists. Prolonged reflection on the subjects in 
 debate, between the German and the Swiss Reformers, 
 had convinced him how very much Geneva could say in 
 support of its tenets ; and he was eager to be a mediator 
 between the two schools. But now the orthodox Lutherans, 
 with the impetuous and belligerent Matthias Flacius 
 Illyricus at their head, assailed him for his apparent de- 
 sertion of their great master; and the newly established 
 University of Jena became a stronghold from which they 
 fulminated against Wittenberg. Nothing is so sad as the 
 quarrels of friends; and many a time Melanchthon was 
 weary of the misunderstandings, the bickerings, and the 
 suspicions. ‘‘ Viximus in Synodis,”’ he said, with a regretful 
 sigh, “‘et jam moriemur in illis’’—“ I have lived among 
 the disputes of ecclesiastics, and among them I shall die.” 
 His last prayer, when death did come to him, was that the 
 Churches might be one in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Much as we must sympathise with him, he is not to 
 be absolved altogether from blame. His was an appre- 
 hensive and shrinking nature; he was, like William 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 101 
 
 Guthrie of Fenwick and many another saint, “a great 
 melancholian’’; and it was peculiarly grievous to him 
 to be doomed to go “‘in company with pain, and fear, and 
 bloodshed, miserable train.’’ I believe that some of the 
 verdicts which have been passed upon him are too harsh. 
 Dr. Charles Beard says, “‘ He calls out our pity rather than 
 compels our admiration.”” And Dr. William Cunningham 
 is even more unsparing. His weaknesses and infirmities, 
 he tells us, when he was summoned to assert and maintain 
 the public interest of God’s cause in the world, prevent 
 his example from affording us much assistance—render 
 it, on the contrary, “‘a beacon to warn us against dangers 
 and temptations that might lead us to come short.” 
 
 John Calvin is kinder. In 1561, a year after the storm- 
 driven man had reached the quiet haven, he wrote some 
 sentences about him which Guizot praises as reconciling 
 truth, piety, and friendship most tenderly: ‘‘ A hundred 
 times, worn out with fatigue and overwhelmed with care, 
 thou didst lay thy head upon my breast, and say, ‘ Would to 
 God that I might die here!’ And I, times without number 
 since then, have earnestly desired that it had been granted 
 us to be together. Certainly thou wouldst have been 
 more valiant to face danger, and stronger to despise hatred, 
 and bolder to disregard false accusations.”’ 
 
 The most flagrant instance of Melanchthon’s com- 
 promises is that afforded by what is known as the 
 Adiaphoristic Controversy. Dislodged from his own better 
 judgment by the solicitations of his prince, Duke Maurice 
 of Saxony, he consented to the proposition that certain 
 Catholic usages might be counted among adiaphora, things 
 neutral and indifferent: such usages as Extreme Unction, 
 and many of the accompaniments of the Mass, and the 
 

 
 102 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 exclusive privilege of the bishops to ordain. That was 
 going a long way too far in the hope of placating the 
 enemy; and, had Luther been alive, he would have re- 
 strained his fellow-soldier from such fatal concessions. 
 
 Calvin dealt faithfully with the transgressor. He was 
 persuaded, he said, that the fear of death would not drive 
 Melanchthon to swerve a hairbreadth from the line of 
 duty ; but he knew that his friend recoiled from the charge 
 of a repulsive rigidity and stiffness. Was he not subject 
 to compunctions of this sort ?—“‘ Is it the part of a wise 
 man to divide the Church for trifles? Is not peace so 
 precious that it may be purchased at the price of some 
 inconveniences ? Is it not madness to hold so tenaciously 
 to every punctilio as to risk the very substance of the 
 Gospel ?”’ He besought him to be on his guard against 
 artful schemers, and to exert once more his “‘ divine great- 
 ness of soul.”’ ‘I would rather suffer along with you a 
 thousand deaths,’ he vowed, “than see you survive a 
 surrender of the truth.’”’ These are brotherly and Christly 
 words ; and Melanchthon himself soon acknowledged his 
 error. ‘‘I confess that in this matter I made a mistake, 
 and I ask pardon from God because I did not flee from 
 insidious counsels.”’ As far as in him lay, he sought to 
 rectify the wrong. 
 
 A beautiful trait in Melanchthon’s mental and spiritual 
 character is his readiness to the last to learn. The windows 
 of his soul stood open always to the entrance of fresh 
 light. While he had his fixed beliefs, from which, with all 
 his yieldingness of disposition, nothing could move him, 
 he realised at the same time how many and how momentous 
 the topics were about which his knowledge was capable of 
 expansion or of amendment. He was a seeker in his 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 103 
 
 maturity and his age, just as in that ardent and unsatisfied 
 youth when he hastened from point to point and added 
 conquest to conquest. His intellect never became stereo- 
 typed. His heart never ceased to aspire, to develop, and 
 to attain. 
 
 We have seen how Luther kept the child’s sense of 
 wonder to the end; but Melanchthon’s nature was both 
 more elastic and more disciplined than Luther’s. It 
 could stretch itself to take in ideas and conceptions from 
 which the older man would have started back with mis- 
 giving, if not with dismay. It was thoroughly familiar 
 with the laws of logic which guide the reason to new 
 acquisitions and results. It cherished a delicate and 
 sensitive love for the refinements, the exactitudes, and 
 the niceties of the truth. Then, moreover, he was essenti- 
 ally a student, indefatigable, patient, conscientious ; and 
 such a student is never content. 
 
 “No record Art keeps, 
 Of her travail and throes ; 
 
 There is toil on the steeps, 
 On the summit repose.”’ 
 
 But the toil continues through the whole of a lifetime, 
 and the summit with its repose is in that world which lies 
 above the mists and clouds of to-day. To his latest con- 
 scious minute on earth, Melanchthon left the things which 
 are behind, and pressed on toward the goal unto the prize 
 of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 I hope that we understand Philip Melanchthon some- 
 what better now—the young man rich in the world’s 
 scholarship, who forsook those treasures that he might 
 follow and expound Jesus Christ; the peace-lover, who 
 lived ‘‘in Meshec, which, they say, signifies Prolonging; 
 

 
 104 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 in Kedar, which signifies Blackness’; the timorous soul, 
 who was never far away from wars and rumours of wars ; 
 the inquirer, who believed that there is no end to learning ; 
 the mourner, who “played upon the bass and sounded 
 the sackbut ”’ with its doleful music. He moves us by 
 his frequent recital of his sufferings and his earnest calls 
 for our pity. 
 
 Adolf Hausrath thinks that he owed his melancholy 
 in part to the climate in which he was reared. He came 
 from South Germany, from the town of Bretten, which 
 lies not far from Karlsruhe; and the inhabitants of 
 this Upper Rhineland are prone, Hausrath maintains, 
 to forebodings and self-compassions and longings after 
 sympathy and succour. That may be so; but it is 
 not the whole explanation. Melanchthon might have 
 been born anywhere ; and still he would have been vexed 
 by accidie and gloom, as Jeremiah was, and Thomas 
 Didymus, and William Cowper, and Henri Frédéric Amiel, 
 and their spiritual kith and kin. It redounds the more to 
 his honour—one should rather say, to the praise of his 
 Lord’s grace, working for him and in him—that, in spite 
 of stumblings, and falls, he walked perseveringly on, and 
 did not utterly faint. 
 
 It is time that we turned to the book which is his most 
 important contribution to the science and philosophy of 
 religion. This is its very academic and almost repellent 
 title: Loci Communes Rerum Theologicarum sive Hypo- 
 typoses Theologice. Commonplaces, Outlines, brief and 
 summary Expositions of Theology: that is what the title 
 means. It was finished in April 1521, and was published a 
 month or two afterwards. Let us remember what a critical 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 105 
 
 and tempestuous year 1521 was, with Luther before the 
 Diet at Worms and then spirited away to the Wartburg, 
 with the fanaticism of Carlstadt and the Zwickau prophets 
 perturbing the Wittenberg Church, and with Melanchthon 
 burdened by a hundred public anxieties; and we shall 
 admire that power of detachment by which the thinker 
 could withdraw to the company of those holier themes 
 and more abiding realities. 
 
 He was preparing notes for his lectures on the Epistle 
 to the Romans; and the Loci were originally the out- 
 standing points of his argument. The book in its 
 earliest shape was quite a tiny one. Through the kindness 
 of a friend, its first edition lies before me as I write— 
 a desirable possession indeed, though the old vellum 
 binding is sadly frayed, and the leaves are browned with 
 age. There are 277 pages in all, from the title to the 
 Greek quotation at the close, Ov yap & Aoya 4 Bacsrste. 
 Tov beod, GAA & Ovveéwes— The kingdom of God is not in 
 word but in power.” But the pages are small, and the 
 printing is bold and large. The volume houses its infinite 
 riches in a little room, 
 
 You wish to hear what it contains; the pity is that 
 Melanchthon’s masterpiece has never been translated into 
 English. These, then, are the heads of theological know- 
 ledge : Deus, Unus et Trinus—God, Who is One and Three, 
 and Whose mystery is to be adored rather than curiously 
 investigated ; Cveatio ; Homo et Hominis Vires—Man and 
 the Powers of Man: intellect, affections, will, but “ our 
 will has no freedom”; Peccatum et Fructus Peccati, Vicia 
 —Sin and the Vices which are Sin’s wretched harvest ; 
 Pene, Lex, et Promissiones—Punishments, and the divine 
 Law which the Decalogue promulgates, and the great and 
 

 
 106 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 precious Promises which had their commencement as soon 
 as Adam fell ; Instauratio per Christum—Our Redemption 
 through Christ, Whose Gospel is the voice of peace and life ; 
 Gratia et Gratie Fructus—Grace with its Fruitage, the Grace 
 which consists in God’s favour and remits our sin and gives 
 us the Holy Spirit ; Fides, Spes, et Caritas—Faith, Hope, and 
 Love ; Predestinatio—God’s Foreknowledge and Decree: 
 “all things that occur, occur necessarily according to the 
 divine appointment’; Signa Sacramentalia—The Sacra- 
 ments, which are witnesses and seals of the goodwill of 
 Our Lord towards us, but which have no power to justify ; 
 Hominis Status, Magistratus, et Episcopi—tThe Civil Rulers 
 who bear the sword and guard the public peace, the Bishops 
 who are servants and not potentates of the Church ; finally, 
 Condemnatio, and, over against so awful an ending, Beati- 
 tudo—The Doom of the wicked and the Blessedness of the 
 reconciled and righteous. 
 
 That is the framework of the Loci Communes. It has 
 an aggressive note in its declarations. It is meant to bea 
 defence of the evangelical doctrine taught in Wittenberg, 
 and a refutation of the errors of Rome. But its leading 
 aim is practical. ‘‘ I desire nothing so much,” Melanchthon 
 says in the preface, “‘ as to make all Christians familiar with 
 the Holy Scripture alone, and to transform them into the 
 image of the same.’ He has another wish, still more 
 fervently cherished, to lead men distressed by their poverty 
 and sinfulness to Jesus, Who has such salvation to bestow 
 on the tempted, the beaten, and the miserable. Hoc est 
 Christum cognoscere, beneficia Ejus cognoscere, ““ To know | 
 Christ is to know His benefits, and not to contemplate His 
 nature or the modes of His incarnation.” 
 
 So the unpretentious treatise deserves Dr. Schaff’s 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 107 
 
 eulogium: “It presents the living soul of divinity in 
 striking contrast to the dry bones of degenerate scholasti- 
 cism, with its endless theses and antitheses, definitions and 
 divisions, and subdivisions.” There was one of Master 
 Philip’s pupils, who carried a copy of it to Strassburg, 
 and showed it to Nicholas Gerbel; and “it has so laid 
 hold of me,” the Strassburg preacher wrote, “that day 
 and night I cannot think of anything except Wittenberg.”’ 
 And Luther pronounced it invincible, and worthy not only 
 of immortality, but of a place in the Canon. 
 
 It was a notable achievement for a young man of 
 twenty-four ; here was Hercules facing and vanquishing 
 Cerberus when, in our less valorous and more indulgent 
 time, we are merely buckling on our armour. But this 
 was not the final form of the Loci Communes. The fact is 
 that it has three distinct forms, the first extending from 
 1521 to 1535, the second from 1535 to 1544, and the third 
 from 1544 to 1559. Each of these forms reveals the book 
 in a different aspect and in a more sumptuous dress. The 
 man whose Confession of Faith it was never fancied that 
 theology is a chose jugée, a circle determined for ever in its 
 size, which “‘returns upon itself andis bound.” He studied 
 theology under the shadow of the Cross ; and the Cross, as 
 an essayist of our day has said, “‘ opens its arms to the four 
 winds, and is a sign-post for free travellers.”” He went on 
 revising and altering what he had written, till the little 
 handbook of 1521 was magnified into a copious and stately 
 system of divinity. 
 
 “In my Loct,” he told his bosom friend Tonenen 
 Camerarius, ‘“‘I seem to have second thoughts. You 
 see I have tried to throw some light on obscure and 
 intricate subjects.”’ He had been searching the Scriptures 
 

 
 108 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 in the interval. He had explored more accurately and 
 more adequately the spacious world of the Fathers. 
 He had profited by the attacks of his opponents, as 
 Samson extracted honey from the lion. He had gaineda 
 riper understanding of the necessities of the Church.. His 
 words were less polemic than they had been at first. They 
 were calmer and softer. They showed more reverence for 
 the best and wisest teachers of the past. But they were as 
 firm in their attachment to Protestant belief. The re- 
 conciler was not a recreant. He had chosen his side, and 
 he never departed from it. 
 
 “T have tried to throw some light on obscure and 
 intricate subjects,” said Melanchthon to Camerarius. 
 What were some of these subjects ? In what directions do 
 the later editions of the Loci Communes depart from the 
 book’s original beliefs and contentions ? 
 
 To begin with, there is that high and difficult problem 
 of human freedom. Luther had denied this freedom out 
 and out. His great controversy with Erasmus was con- 
 cerned with it. Erasmus wrote De Libero Arbitno, 
 Regarding Man’s Liberty ; but Luther retorted De Servo 
 Arbitvio, Regarding the utter and helpless Bondage of 
 Man’s Will. To him the unconverted soul is like a column 
 of salt, like Lot’s wife encrusted and fossilised and petrified, 
 like a statue which has neither mouth nor eyes, like a dead 
 stone, like a block or a clod; it is a soul without the least 
 spark or vestige of spiritual power. In 1521 Melanchthon 
 agreed with the uncompromising doctrine: Nulla est 
 voluntatis nostre libertas, he declared. 
 
 But gradually he left it behind. First he said that, 
 in the sphere of natural life and morality, man has the 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 109 
 
 ability to determine and choose for himself. Then, by and 
 by, he went farther, and taught that, in our conversion 
 from sin to God, there is a consent of our will to the 
 great and holy and heavenly Will that seeks and finds us. 
 We must keep clear, he proclaimed, of the deliramenta 
 de Stoico fato, the madnesses of a Stoic fatalism, that 
 would rob us of our responsible personality, and would 
 reduce us to pieces of inert mechanism that have no initia- 
 tive of their own. Not this deliramentum is to be our 
 creed, but rather the wise postulate of Chrysostom, ‘O 62 
 tanav rov Bovardwevov eaxes, He Who draws us lovingly, 
 efficaciously, victoriously, draws a willing and responsive 
 captive, charmed to confess the Voice divine. 
 
 Yes, says Melanchthon in the version of the Locz 
 which appeared in 1548, there are three concurrent courses 
 operative in the happy change which makes us a new 
 creation in Christ Jesus—Verbum Det, Spiritus Sanctus, et 
 Voluntas, God’s Word, the Holy Spirit, and the Human 
 Will. Without the Word there is no contact of the Spirit, 
 and without the Will there is no acceptance of the offer 
 which Word and Spirit bring. But yet the Will is always 
 to be placed third, and neither second nor first, in the 
 order ; it becomes a deciding and indispensable element 
 in the case, only when it has been preceded and quickened 
 into gracious activity by the other two. 
 
 That is the Synergism of Melanchthon, to give it the 
 name which his opponents attached to the theory. It is 
 not the Pelagianism, against which Augustine fought with 
 might and main, and which exalts to too commanding a 
 significance the part of man in salvation; but neither is it 
 the strict and adamantine Lutheranism which asserts that 
 nec in externis nec in tnternis operibus ulla est libertas. It 
 

 
 110 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 bids me believe that, while in my renewal God is everywhere, 
 above me and behind me and around me, I follow on when 
 He calls, I open the door when He knocks, I welcome His 
 grace which is most irresistible and most sweet, I say my 
 Yes humbly and heartily when He asks, “ Wilt thou have 
 Christ and the blessedness which Christ imparts ?’’ Most 
 of us, surely, will be Philippists here rather than Martinians. 
 
 “It would be better,” says Dr. John Duncan, “to 
 abolish the word Synergia, for it is associated with a con- 
 troversy on one side of which I take a decided stand. But 
 I have no objection to use it, as it contains a truth. There 
 is a true and a false Synergia. That God works half, and 
 man the other half, is false ; that God works all, and man 
 does all, is true. God gsepyer ro OzAew; man berg xal 
 evepye. Or, again, I find that thought-provoking and 
 heart-satisfying book, the Colloquia Pertpatetica, express 
 it in this way: “ An electric shock passing through nature 
 is very different from divine grace acting on human wills. 
 We are clay in the hands of the Potter; but the will is 
 not passive clay, and it is not passive when first permeated 
 by the causal power of God.’’ He is Author and Finisher ; 
 but, at every step of the road and in every stage of the 
 process, He carries us along with Him. Our wills are ours, 
 ours to make them His. 
 
 Let us look again into the revised and amended Locz. 
 They have more to say than they used to have about the 
 importance of good works in believing men and women. 
 It is not that any meritoriousness attaches to them, so 
 that they have virtue to save or value to cover and cancel 
 sin. All that is requisite to our sharing in the favour 
 and life of God is that Justification on His side, which 
 means that He “ absolves us and pronounces us righteous,” 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 111 
 
 ¢ 
 
 and that Faith on our side, which means “ confidence in 
 mercy promised for Christ’s sake.” 
 
 But as he grew older, and observed the ideas and 
 the characters of his neighbours, and brooded more and 
 more on the Word and Will of God, Melanchthon was 
 impressed by the danger that people should rest too 
 easily on God’s justification as securing their well- 
 being whatever their demeanour and behaviour might 
 be, and impoverish their faith into a mere intellectual 
 apprehension of the truth, a dead historical thing, 
 instead of “‘a fresh light in the heart,” “an energetic 
 operation of the Holy Spirit,” a quality and habit which 
 regenerates and controls, a new sun rising within us and 
 bringing a new year. So, in the Locz of 1535, he wrote, 
 “Our obedience, that is, the righteousness of a good con- 
 science, or of works which God enjoins upon us, ought of 
 necessity to follow our reconciliations ” ; and, immediately 
 afterwards, he added, ‘‘ We are justified that we may live a 
 new spiritual life.”’ 
 
 There was a strongly ethical, as well as a deeply 
 evangelical, strain in Melanchthon’s Christianity; it has 
 been held, by Dr. James William Richard, that it is 
 precisely by this blending of ethics and evangelism, of 
 the royal Law and the royal Gospel, that he “has most 
 beneficially influenced Protestant theology.” Summing 
 up his aims and his endeavours, he said about himself, 
 “T am perfectly certain that I have pursued theology 
 non aliam ob causam nist ut vitam emendarem, for no other 
 reason than that I might moralise and ennoble life.” All 
 true and earnest souls will coincide with him. It is one 
 of the perils of Evangelicalism that it is haunted by the 
 Antinomian shadow. It has its own way of becoming 
 

 
 112 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 unethical ; for a man may find shelter in the doctrine of 
 Christ’s atonement and God’s forgiveness, and be very 
 careless about personal religion. “ The head,’ William 
 Law wrote once to John Wesley, “‘ can as easily amuse 
 itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of 
 Jesus as with any other notion.” 
 
 Melanchthon performed a salutary service when he 
 sounded his warning against this self-deception, and when 
 he summoned pardoned men to the daily culture and 
 disclosure of “‘ spiritual affections, the fear of God, trust, 
 worship, love, and the like.”” And yet, in that hour 
 of emancipation, when hearts were so recently delivered 
 from the grievous burdens imposed by Rome, he felt 
 what the risks attached even to the mention of our 
 doings and obediences. In his latest years he rang out, 
 once again, his conviction that the trust which “ accepts 
 the promise of Christ and reposes in Christ’ is the one 
 thing needful, and his detestation of “the error that 
 eternal life is merited by the worthiness of our own works.” 
 Constantly his soul points to its pole. 
 
 As remarkable as any of these modifications was his 
 advance in his views of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. 
 Cautiously, slowly, with scrupulous conscientiousness, he 
 came to his conclusions with reference to the mystery which, 
 to its inmost heart and its outmost verge, is benediction. 
 “‘ There is not a day nor a night for the last ten years,” he 
 assured an intimate friend in a letter of May 1538, “in 
 which I have not meditated upon it.” In this matter, 
 also, he was compelled, by the light and truth which broke 
 upon him as time went on, to dissent from Luther, and to 
 become more Protestant than Luther was. 
 
 At the outset he did not dispute his master’s dictum 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 1138 
 
 that the body of Christ is really and substantially present 
 in the bread, the blood of Christ really and substantially 
 present in the wine, and that body and blood, without 
 change in the material elements, are actually given to each 
 participant in the Supper. As a consequence, he adopted, 
 too, his master’s tenet of Ubiquity—how the flesh of Jesus is 
 omnipresent or multipresent, high on the heavenly Throne, 
 and yet contained and conveyed in the sacramental bread 
 and wine. 
 
 But, as he mused through day and night for those 
 ten years, Melanchthon was compelled to abandon these 
 beliefs. He never became a Zwinglian, holding that the 
 Lord’s Supper is merely commemorative, a monument to 
 remind us of Our Saviour’s sacrifice and so to evoke our 
 gratitude and love. But in fact, if not in name, he did 
 become a Calvinist, discovering in the sacred feast a true 
 and undoubted presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet a 
 presence not corporeal and dimensional but dynamic and 
 spiritual. ‘“‘ He is there, He Himself, with His human air,”’ 
 His divine majesty, and His transcendent refreshments and 
 riches. ‘“‘ Christ is not present for the sake of the bread,” 
 so he phrased his thought on the subject when, in 1541, he 
 and John Eck discussed the Eucharist at Regensburg— 
 “ Christ is not present for the sake of the bread, but for the 
 sake of man.” 
 
 The religious significance of the Holy Supper is the 
 chief concern with Melanchthon. It “‘incites us to faith 
 and intensifies the faith already within us,” he says in the 
 Loct of 1535. It is “‘ Christ testifying that His benefits 
 belong to us, when He gives us His body and makes 
 us His members, than which no closer union can be con- 
 
 ceived.” It is the Lord’s witness and assurance to His 
 8 
 
114 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 hungry and thirsty disciples that “‘ He is active within us, 
 because He is our Life.’”’ And when we thus eat the flesh 
 and drink the blood of the Son of Man, are we not guests at 
 the kingliest banquet, and do we not repair to a full 
 fountain ? 
 
 You see how the Loct Communes, with its altering voices, 
 is demonstration of its author’s growth in the grace and 
 knowledge of his Lord and Saviour. It is a tribute to the 
 magnanimity of Luther that, even when it no longer 
 uttered his verdict on every question of the faith, he never 
 lost his delight in it or in the man who composed it. One 
 day, when the end of his battle was not far off, he said to 
 his students, “‘ Read Philip’s Locz next to the Bible. In 
 this most beautiful book the pure theology is stated in a 
 quiet and orderly way. Augustine, Bernard, Bonaventura, 
 Lyra, Gabriel Biel, Staupitz, and others, have much that is 
 good ; but our Master Philip can explain the Scriptures and 
 present their meaning in brief compass.’”’ Who is not 
 enamoured of such invincible generosity ? It is well when 
 we see eye to eye ; but it is fifty times better when we are 
 joined heart with heart. 
 
 In the evening of the roth of April 1560, when he was 
 sixty-three, Philip Melanchthon got his release, and went 
 to be with God. Two days before, he had a little travelling- 
 bed taken into his study, and there he laid himself down. 
 His eyes wandered along the shelves of books, those silent 
 friends with whom he had so long taken counsel. Then 
 he asked for a sheet of notepaper, and with trembling 
 fingers he wrote on it the reasons why he was glad to depart. 
 On one side he said this: ‘‘ Thou shalt be done with sin. 
 Thou shalt be freed from vexations, and from the rage of the 
 

 
 THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION 115 
 
 theologians.”’ Then, turning it over, he continued: “‘ Thou 
 shalt come into the Light. Thou shalt see God. Thou 
 shalt behold the Son of God. Thou shalt learn the secret 
 mysteries which in this life thou couldst not understand— 
 why we were created as we are, what is the character of 
 the union of the two natures in Christ.” It makes us think 
 of Henry Vaughan, who would “most gladly die”’ because 
 death should unseal the problems he had found too puzzling 
 on earth, and who made the soul sing joyously: 
 “‘T that here saw darkly, in a glass, 
 
 But mists and shadows pass, 
 
 And by their own weak shine did search the springs 
 And source of things, 
 
 Shall with inlighted rays 
 Pierce all their ways.” 
 
 At last, Melanchthon’s lifelong curiosity was completely 
 satisfied. At last, his education was finished. 
 

 
 
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LECTURE VI 
 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 
 
 THE “ HEIDELBERG CATECHISM ” 
 
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LECTURE VI 
 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 
 
 THE “ HEIDELBERG CATECHISM ” 
 
 HE Catechisms of the Reformation are in them- 
 selves a most illuminating study. They range 
 from Luther’s Little Catechism, which saw the light in the 
 spring of 1529, and of which Dr. Justus Jonas said, “ It 
 may be bought for sixpence, but six thousand worlds will 
 not pay for it,’’ on to the Shorier Catechism of the West- 
 minster Assembly, which the Prolocutor delivered to the 
 House of Commons on the 25th of November 1647, and 
 six hundred copies of which the House ordered to be 
 printed for the use of its own members—such exercised 
 and serious theologians our Parliamentarians were in that 
 far-off time. They were found, those Reformation Cate- 
 chisms, in every country which the new movement reached 
 and influenced—Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland, 
 England, Scotland ; if the country had not its individual 
 and home-grown book, it translated and imported its 
 neighbour’s. They represent every shade and _ school 
 of the Protestant faith—Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican, 
 Melanchthonian. 
 
 What occasioned them at first was the discovery 
 of the gross ignorance in which the people lay of the 
 very rudiments of religion. It was a darkness which 
 might be felt, a midnight in which neither moon nor 
 
 11g 
 

 
 120 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 stars appeared. Commentaries and controversial treatises 
 could not grapple with this need ; something simpler was 
 required, a knowledge broken down into fragments, a 
 learning which might enter in at lowly doors. The Re- 
 formers saw that the end would best be attained by a 
 method of catechetical instruction, with questions and 
 answers by which the intellect is quickened, the heart 
 moved, the conscience roused and trained. 
 
 Their Catechisms are evidence, too, of one of the notable 
 features of the Reformation—its interest in the young and its 
 anxiety for their nurture in the truth. We are not surprised 
 that Luther, in whom to the last there was so much that is 
 childlike, should manifest this interest; but it astonishes 
 and delights us to meet it in Calvin, who seemed to have no 
 boyhood at all, but from the outset to be grave and mature 
 and complete. Asa matter of fact, however, the solicitude 
 had little to do with personal temperament. It sprang 
 from a clear-sighted conviction of the immeasurable im- 
 portance of the young to the prosperity alike of the Church 
 and of the State. That was why these men spared no 
 pains to diffuse the education which renews and strengthens 
 the soul as well as enlightens and enlarges the brain, not 
 abating their efforts till the victory was gained which the 
 old Scottish “ ballate ’’ commemorates : 
 
 “Our bairnes now weill knawis how 
 To worschip God with service trewe ; 
 
 Whilk mony yeir our fatheris deir, 
 Allace therefoir ! full sore misknew.’’ 
 
 One wonders whether, in our own day, we are as careful to 
 conserve this victory as we ought to be. 
 
 At present we are to glance at one of those Reformation 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 121 
 
 Catechisms—the most beautiful and, in some respects, the 
 noblest of them all. 
 
 Conciliatory and musical as its sentences for the most 
 part are, it was cradled in strife. One of the seven Kur- 
 fiirstenthiimer, Electoral Provinces, whose prerogative it 
 was to choose an Emperor for the German people, was 
 the district of the Palatinate, which had the picturesque 
 town of Heidelberg for its capital. In 1559, Frederick 
 of Simmern, der fromme Kurfiirst, the Pious Elector, 
 became its Prince. Himself a convinced Protestant, he 
 found his new kingdom a kind of battleground of contending 
 Protestant parties. The moderate and mediating views of 
 Melanchthon were predominant ; for Melanchthon had been 
 the chief actor in the introduction of the Reformation to 
 the Palatinate ; but, right and left of these middle men 
 were the unyielding Lutherans and the liberal Zwinglians. 
 
 Nor were they content to live and let live; their 
 disputes ran high. Tilemann Heshusius, professor in 
 the university, and General Superintendent of religious 
 affairs through the province, was particularly violent. He 
 was resolved to tolerate no teaching but Luther’s, with 
 reference to the presence of Christ’s body in, under, and 
 with the bread in the Sacrament of the Supper ; one day, 
 in front of the congregation, his anger got the mastery over 
 him, and he snatched the Communion cup from the hand 
 of his colleague, Klebitz, who was Zwinglian in his opinions. 
 
 These unseemly contentions vexed Frederick the Pious, 
 and he set himself to restore peace. First, he sought 
 Melanchthon’s advice; and that, as we should expect, 
 was all on the side of forbearance and comprehension : 
 he recommended a formula in which room should be made 
 for both of the beliefs that had caused the trouble. But 
 
122 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 this was not enough for the Elector. In the August of 
 1560, he declared himself Calvinist rather than Lutheran ; 
 and, Heshusius and Klebitz having been dismissed from 
 their posts in the university, he looked about for teachers 
 in harmony with his own sympathies. And this was how 
 the two authors of the Catechism came to Heidelberg. 
 
 Before we make their acquaintance, it will be worth 
 our while to tarry for a minute or so in the company of 
 Frederick himself. He was a man of conspicuous heroism 
 as well as of simple faith and unconcealed godliness. That 
 action of his in avowing his Calvinism was proof of no 
 ordinary bravery. Not another German prince had done 
 so. Many of them were Lutherans; that seemed natural 
 and right, for Luther was the very incarnation of German 
 sentiment and patriotism; but none of their number had 
 as yet given his adhesion to Geneva. It appeared almost a 
 disloyalty to prefer the alien teacher; and his brother- 
 rulers were cordially and hotly displeased with Frederick. 
 He was in real danger for a while. They told him that he 
 was untrue to the Augsburg Confession, and had forfeited 
 his right to the territories he governed. At the Maulbronn 
 Disputation, in 1564, they laboured to convince him of his 
 errors ; but the debate ended, as such debates do, in each 
 side being more firmly fixed in its own way. 
 
 Two years later, the clouds gathered even more omin- 
 ously about his head. His antagonists persuaded the 
 Emperor Maximilian to summon him before the Imperial 
 Diet. He went, ein armes einfaltiges Médnnlein, re- 
 membering how Elector John of Saxony had _ been 
 deprived of his dignities by Charles the Fifth, but con- 
 fident that, if he were honoured to suffer in the same 
 fashion, he should never be able to thank his God and 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 128 
 
 Father in heaven enough for it, either here in time or 
 yonder in eternity. The Emperor read to him the draft 
 of a decree, enjoining that the so-called Calvinistic in- 
 novation in the Palatinate must be abandoned, and that 
 certain convents whose doors had been closed must be 
 restored to their former owners. He was allowed an 
 interval to ponder what his decision should be. Then he 
 re-entered the Diet, his son John Casimir, whom he called 
 his spiritual armour-bearer, following him with a Bible 
 
 in his arms. “‘In matters of conscience and faith,” he | / 
 
 said, ‘I acknowledge only One God, Who is Lord of all ( 
 lords and King of all kings. Therefore I cannot admit 
 that your Imperial Majesty has power to command me in 
 what regards the soul and its salvation. The writings 
 of Calvin I have never read, as I can testify before God. 
 But as concerns my Catechism, I will confess to the same ; 
 and it is so fortified with proofs from Holy Scripture that 
 it remains unrefuted, and to my belief will ever remain so. 
 For the rest, I comfort myself in this, that my Saviour 
 Christ has given to me, as to all His people, the sure promise 
 that whatever I may lose here for His Name’s sake shall 
 be repaid a hundredfold in the other world. So I commend 
 myself to your Majesty’s grace.”’ 
 
 It is the accent of Peter before the Sanhedrin; of 
 Luther at Worms; of Andrew Melville in the Palace of 
 Falkland. It conquered the enemy. Augustus of Saxony, © 
 a stout Lutheran, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, 
 “ Fritz, thou hast indeed more piety than us all”; and 
 the Margrave of Baden, whose prejudice had been dogged 
 and bitter, was melted into admiration, and stood up to 
 own his mistake. ‘‘ Why should we contend with this 
 man ?”’ he asked ; “‘ he is better than any of us.” 
 

 
 124 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Frederick left the Diet unmolested ; he overcame by 
 the word of his testimony. Though the Emperor was 
 not quite satisfied, there was no more interference with 
 the religious beliefs and practices of Heidelberg during 
 the eleven years which had still to run of the Elector’s 
 rule. We are not surprised that, when, in 1576, Peter 
 Boquin preached his funeral sermon, he dwelt upon this 
 moving and splendid episode in his history, and he put the 
 question, “‘If martyrdom depends on the righteousness of 
 the cause, on the preparation and promptitude of the mind, 
 and on the readiness of the soul to suffer, may we not 
 justly reckon our excellent Prince among the martyrs of 
 Jesus Christ?”’ It is his proper title. It is the diadem 
 which is lawfully his. 
 
 Such was the man to whose initiative we owe the 
 Heidelberg Catechism. The fire of zeal glowed within him. 
 But, not less, the fire of charity. He had no liking for 
 the intolerance which was too prevalent in those days of 
 stress and storm. The Anabaptists, chased and harried 
 and shamefully entreated by other Protestant magnates, 
 lived in quietness under his protection. He surpassed 
 even his favourite Melanchthon in this special magnanimity. 
 “As one devil is not holier than another, but all are alike 
 the adversaries of God and His kingdom,” said Master 
 Philip, forgetting his gentleness for the moment, “so it is 
 with the Anabaptists : one is as black and evil as another.”’ 
 Here the Elector showed a more genuine and overflowing 
 Melanchthonism than Melanchthon’s self. 
 
 And who were the helpers, whom he had brought 
 to his court and university, to aid him in extending the 
 Reformation, and to compose the Catechism which he was 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE = 125 
 
 eager that his subjects should have for their tuition in 
 the faith ? They were two young men, Zacharias Ursinus 
 and Caspar Olevianus. We must look into their faces now. 
 
 Zacharias Ursinus, son of Andrew Bar, was born at 
 Breslau in July 1534. He studied at Wittenberg, where 
 he was one of Melanchthon’s most understanding and best- 
 loved pupils. When his years in the classroom were 
 over, and when he had spent some months in travel through 
 Switzerland and France, he was called by the magistrates 
 of his native town to be rector of their gymnasium. This 
 was in 1558. But, after two winters had come and gone, 
 and he recognised that his Calvinistic leanings were not 
 approved by all his neighbours, he resigned. Breslau 
 would have kept him when she heard that he was going 
 elsewhere ; but it was too late. ‘“‘I will betake me,’ he 
 said, “‘to the Zurichers, whose reputation is not great here, 
 but who have a famous name with other churches. They 
 are good and learned men, with whom I am determined 
 to spend my life. God will provide for the rest.”’ 
 
 And God did provide. He did not leave Ursinus long 
 in Ziirich. Frederick of the Palatinate was in quest of 
 coadjutors and assistants. He pleaded with the venerable 
 Peter Martyr to come, but he replied that he was too old 
 now to attempt these fresh enterprises: he had a friend 
 and scholar, however, whom he would commend to Frederick 
 with his whole heart, Zacharias Ursinus of Breslau. So, 
 in 1561, Ursinus was settled in Heidelberg, as Professor 
 of Theology, in the University, and as Superintendent 
 of the Sapienz College, the seminary where the licentiates 
 and pastors were trained for their life-work. 
 
 ‘‘ I know that he can labour terribly,’ Queen Elizabeth’s 
 Cecil said of Sir Walter Raleigh ; and Ursinus could labour 
 

 
 126 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 terribly. In addition to the five university lectures which 
 he gave each week, he was expected to preach every Sabbath 
 afternoon. But his were not the gifts of popular exposi- 
 tion or of eloquent appeal, and he begged that this part of 
 his functions might be transferred to some one else. In the 
 college his duties were still more onerous. He had not 
 only to teach but to tend in all possible ways some seventy 
 students, providing for their household supplies, consulting 
 for their health, caring for them when they were sick. It 
 was a complex burden, and he felt its staggering weight. 
 
 He was busy in official work from five in the morn- 
 ing until nine at night; and if a Catechism had to be 
 compiled, or a Constitution for the Church, or an answer 
 to a theological opponent, it must be done during the 
 hours which should have been given to sleep. Others 
 got holidays, but no fevig, he said, came to him; and 
 in his letters we catch an occasional sigh for a glimpse 
 of the hawthorn on the hedge and the green grass in the 
 field. ‘‘ It seems to be the will of God,’’ he mourned, “ that 
 I should die on my pistvinum, my treadmill.” Yet it 
 made no difference where he went ; he could not be any- 
 thing else than a toiler. 
 
 When Frederick was taken away by death, his son 
 Lewis succeeded him; and Lewis did not share his 
 father’s beliefs; he was Lutheran of the Lutherans. 
 Ursinus was driven from Heidelberg ; but John Casimir, 
 Frederick’s younger son, whom we have seen carrying 
 the Bible into the Diet at Augsburg, welcomed the 
 banished theologian to his own town of Neustadt-on- 
 the-Hardt. In his new home Ursinus worked on as un- 
 remittingly as ever; over his study door he had the ad- 
 monition inscribed, “‘ Amice, quisquis huc venis, aut agita 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 127 
 
 paucis, aut abi, aut me laborantem juva.” In Neustadt 
 he revised and completed one of his greatest books, his 
 Explanation of the Catechism ; and here, also, he wrote his 
 Admonitio Christiana, a noble defence of the verities to 
 which he clung. But his health was failing; and in 
 March 1583, when he was not yet fifty years old, his Master 
 called him. He would not take a thousand worlds, he 
 said as he turned his feet heavenward, for the assurance 
 of being owned by Christ. 
 
 In temperament Zacharias Ursinus was shy, timid, 
 retiring, now and then hypochondriac. After the Disputa- 
 tion at Maulbronn, he declared, ‘“‘ I have received a wound 
 which I do not expect to have healed in this life.” Often 
 he was filled with apprehensions for the future of the Church. 
 He was very modest, a man who sought no great things for 
 himself. But he had a learning which was wide and deep, 
 and, better than any of his contemporaries, he understood 
 how to communicate his learning to others. 
 
 The second author of the Hezdelberg Catechism, of one 
 ' heart and soul with Ursinus in what was deepest and holiest, 
 differed from him widely in gift and in disposition. Caspar 
 Olevianus, son of Gerhardt von der Olewig, was a native of 
 the city of Tréves, where he was born in 1536. He was 
 intended to be a lawyer, and went to Bourges to educate 
 himself in jurisprudence. But there a startling providence 
 changed the current of his plans. He saw some fellow- 
 students, a dear friend of his own among them, drowned in 
 the river before his eyes. He threw himself into the water 
 in the vain hope of rescuing his comrades from their peril ; 
 but he had himself to be dragged from the flood, with life 
 almost extinct. Before this, he had secretly embraced the 
 Protestant faith ; but now, delivered out of the depths, he 
 

 
 128 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 avowed his convictions openly, and bound himself by a 
 solemn pledge to become a preacher of the Gospel. 
 
 He learned all that he could. In Geneva he was a 
 disciple of Calvin, in Ziirich of Peter Martyr, in Lausanne 
 of Theodore Beza. He met William Farel, too, that incan- 
 descent evangelist of the Cross, who urged him to cut short 
 his preliminary training, and to get home without delay 
 that he might tell out the good news. Thus we find him at 
 twenty-three, back in Tréves, inaugurating the work of the 
 Reformation in the Roman Catholic town. He had the 
 facundia, the persuasive and gracious oratory, which 
 Ursinus lacked ; the common people heard him gladly. 
 
 But the ruling powers became alarmed soon, and the 
 Protestants had to flee, Olevianus having first suffered 
 imprisonment for Christ’s sake. It was the opportunity of 
 Frederick of Heidelberg, and he claimed the persecuted man. 
 He had ample payment for his hospitable kindness. Olevia- 
 nus, with his business habits, with his buoyancy and energy, 
 with his warm and intense devotion, was the real organiser 
 of the religious life of the Palatinate. Most of all, he in- 
 fluenced the multitudes through the sermons he preached 
 from the pulpit of St. Peter’s Church. Heidelberg had never 
 hearkened before to such faithful and memorable and 
 enkindling words, and, long after he was gone, he was 
 quoted as a pattern, and his discourses were commended to 
 students of theology as the models of what such utterances 
 ought to be. A nature so joyous, so active, and so ardent, 
 was the fitting complement of the erudition, the scholarly 
 industry and taste, and the brooding sensitiveness of Ursinus. 
 
 When the Lutheran reaction came under Lewis VI., 
 Olevianus had much hatred to face. He was dismissed 
 from his offices, and forbidden to preach; for a time he 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 129 
 
 was subjected to a kind of arrest. But the restraint did 
 not last long. By and by we meet him in Berleburg, the 
 capital of the little principality of Wittgenstein, whose 
 ruler, Ludwig von Sain, had offered him a hiding-place ; 
 “ Dr. Olevianus,’’ he wrote, “is a precious guest to me.” 
 And afterwards his home was in Herborn, where Count 
 John of Nassau had his court. There, in school and in 
 congregation, he accomplished a fruitful work. One part 
 of it was to establish a complete Presbyterian organisation, 
 and a Synod met for the first time in 1586, over which he 
 was chosen moderator. 
 
 Alike, by natural instinct and by divine grace, Caspar 
 Olevianus was a Church leader and statesman, whom 
 men were proud to follow, and whose guidance was uni- 
 formly safe and wise. The end came on a March day in 
 1587. Chapter after chapter of the Bible had been read 
 to him, and he testified that each one was refreshing and 
 sweet. At his request those round his bed sang to him 
 twice over his favourite hymn, one of Luther’s, ‘‘ Nun 
 bitten wir den heiligen Geist ”’: 
 
 ““O Holy Ghost, grant our desire, 
 With childlike faith our souls inspire. 
 And leave us not at last when we 
 
 Forsake this scene of misery ; 
 But, Lord have pity.” 
 
 Then his colleague Alsted went up to him and said, “‘ Dear 
 brother, you are now without doubt assured of your 
 salvation in Christ, as you have taught many others; is 
 it notso?”’ And Olevianus laid his hand on his heart, and 
 answered, ‘‘ Certissimus,’’—‘“I am most sure.” This Cer- 
 tissumus was his latest word; and who does not covet 
 such a homegoing ? 
 9 
 

 
 130 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Those were the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism. 
 They were young men when they bequeathed their great 
 legacy to the Church—Ursinus twenty-eight, Olevianus 
 twenty-six. Itisimpossible to say what in the book belongs 
 to the one, and what to the other. Though both voices 
 speak from it, and both hearts are palpitating beneath its 
 sentences, it is an absolute unity. It could not have dis- 
 pensed with Ursinus, didactic, dialectic, theoretic; but 
 neither could it afford to lose Olevianus, the practical worker, 
 the fervid preacher, whose imagination and pathos clothed 
 the logic of religion with beauty. Each of the fellow- 
 jabourers drew up beforehand a Catechism of his own 
 composition: that of Olevianus, free and popular, based on 
 his favourite idea of the Covenant of Grace; that of 
 Ursinus, severer, conciser, more academic. Yet, when it 
 came to the joint production, everything assumed an 
 independent colour; and the Heidelberg Catechism is in 
 reality a new creation, throbbing with a life emphatically 
 its own and proclaiming its message in individual tones. 
 Surely, if one may alter slightly a line of George Herbert’s, 
 “ God held their hands while they did write.” 
 
 Before it was published, the Catechism was prefaced in 
 unequivocal terms by the Elector himself. This Preface 
 fixes for us the precise date of its birth: “ Tuesday, the 
 nineteenth day of the month January, in the year of Our 
 Dear Lord and Saviour Christ, one thousand five hundred 
 and sixty-three.’’ During the same year and by the 
 authority of Frederick, a Latin translation was made by the 
 classical scholars, Joshua Lagus and Lambertus Pithopoeus ; 
 but, sonorous as the Latin is, it has not the homeliness or 
 the force or the charm of the German original, 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 131 
 
 In its plan and arrangement the Catechism follows the 
 scheme of the Epistle to the Romans, though we shall have 
 to leave out of sight the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters 
 of the great New Testament letter, which have no echo here. 
 There are 129 questions in all, and these are divided into 
 three parts. After two introductory questions, the First 
 Part treats, like the initial section of the Epistle, of the sin 
 and misery of man; the Second, like the central portion of 
 the apostolic letter, of man’s redemption by Christ; the 
 Third, like its closing chapters, of the thankfulness of the 
 redeemed, or the Christian life. 
 
 The whole is a picture of Christianity not so much in 
 theory as in experience. We see ourselves fallen, undone, 
 in midnight and in prison. But the day breaks, and the 
 iron gates are opened by a mighty Hand; we see the 
 Son of God leading us into glorious liberty. And, 
 finally, up from our grateful souls a willing obedience 
 springs; and we see our being and history effectually 
 transformed. The conception is at once simple and 
 comprehensive, easy and profound; and there is nothing 
 quite like it in any other Catechism of the Reformation. 
 
 Into these three divisions the customary topics are 
 worked—the Decalogue, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, 
 the doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments. They are 
 not regarded as comparatively unrelated subjects, standing 
 aloof from each other. Nor are they brought together 
 simply as so many ingredients in a speculative theology. 
 They find their fitting place in an organic system. So, 
 while the opening section of the Catechism has to do with 
 the knowledge of sin which originates in the knowledge 
 of law—law spiritual, searching, forgotten, broken, con- 
 demnatory—we are not called immediately to the study 
 

 
 182 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 of the Ten Commandments. ‘“ The Decalogue,’’ Ursinus 
 says, “ belongs to the First Part, so far as it is a mirror of 
 our sin and misery, but also to the Third Part, as being 
 the rule of our new obedience and Christian behaviour.” 
 Wisely the consideration of it in its details is kept until 
 we are looking at the portrait of the regenerated man, 
 created after God in righteousness and true holiness ; 
 and at the outset we have only the pregnant summary of 
 the Law which Jesus gave us: it is sufficient to disclose 
 how far we have wandered and how deeply we are sunk. 
 
 In the Second Division there is a commentary on the 
 Apostles’ Creed, which becomes, in the hands of Ursinus 
 and Olevianus, a panorama of the facts of redemption, as 
 they move from the purpose of the Father in the untrodden 
 past to the everlasting life which awaits His sons and 
 daughters in the untrackable future. To this part, also, 
 the exposition of the Sacraments is assigned; for, when 
 our ears are rendered alert to receive it, the Sacraments 
 have much to tell us about the Saviour and His salvation. 
 
 The Third Section, as we have seen, gives itself to 
 the interpretation of the Commandments, the easy yoke 
 and the light burden to which the Christian is voluntarily 
 subject, and of the Lord’s Prayer, in whose aspirations 
 he breathes out the spiritual and holy nature that has been 
 planted within him. Thus all the elements essential to a 
 Catechism are set in harmonious environment, and receive 
 the local habitation which suits them best. 
 
 Despite the troubles which its authors had to face, the 
 Heidelberg Catechism had from the first an extraordinary 
 popularity. It travelled very quickly beyond the Pala- 
 tinate, into those European lands where the Reformation 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 1338 
 
 was shaped and tinged by Geneva rather than by Witten- 
 berg. Later, it made for itself a new and permanent 
 home across the sea, in the German Reformed and the 
 Dutch Reformed Churches of North America. It has been 
 claimed that, after the Bible and the De Imitatione Chnisti 
 and The Pilgrim’s Progress, no book has been translated 
 into such a number and variety of languages. How shall 
 we explain a diffusion so wide and a welcome so cordial ? 
 
 It owes much to its moderation in the statement of 
 doctrine. If its Protestantism is convinced and robust, 
 it is a Protestantism without petulance and without 
 rancour. Only once does the Catechism become angry, in 
 the closing words of the Answer to the Eightieth Question, 
 which draws a contrast between the Lord’s Supper and 
 the Roman Mass. ‘ And thus,’”’ so these closing words 
 run, ‘“‘the Mass at bottom is nothing else than a denial 
 of the one Sacrifice and Passion of Jesus Christ, und etne 
 vermaledeite Abgotterei—and an accursed idolatry.’’ The 
 indictment may be valid in substance ; but, where every- 
 thing round about is calm and courteous, we are staggered 
 that it should be so scathing in accent. The old idea was 
 that the Parthian arrow had been fashioned and winged 
 by Frederick himself, indignant at the fulminations and 
 maledictions of the Council of Trent; but recently Pro- 
 fessor Hinke has unearthed a letter written to Calvin by 
 Olevianus, in which the latter assumes full responsibility 
 for the fierce and thundering anathema. It is the solitary 
 instance in which he speaks the truth more in wrath than 
 in love. 
 
 And if the Protestantism is measured and quiet, so 
 is the Calvinism. Nothing is more remarkable in this 
 connection than the silences of the Catechism. There 
 

 
 184 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 is the mystery of the origin of sin; no attempt is made to 
 fathom it ; we are only told in general terms that the ruin 
 of our spiritual nature, now ‘ wholly unapt to any good 
 and prone to all evil,’’ is traceable not to God but to the 
 free will of man. There is the problem of how to reconcile 
 divine sovereignty and human liberty ; that is but lightly 
 touched ; everywhere in the sphere of salvation grace 
 reigns, but everywhere true faith is needed to engraft us 
 into Christ and to make us recipients of His benefits. 
 There is the whole subject of election; we hear little 
 about it; and we hear nothing whatever of any decree of 
 reprobation and death. There is the perseverance of the 
 saints ; the Catechism will not affirm that it is necessary, 
 invincible, absolute; this, too, it leaves unmooted and 
 unsettled ; it would rather have us remember the solemn 
 and practical ‘If’ of the New Testament, We are made 
 partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence 
 steadfast unto the end. When they approach those reason- 
 ings high, it is as though Ursinus and Olevianus started to 
 sing the Psalm : 
 
 “Our hearts not haughty are, O Lord, 
 Our eyes not lofty be.”’ 
 
 They go softly ; and that is why so very many have been 
 able, and have been glad, to follow them. 
 
 Moreover, the Heidelberg Catechism is subjective and 
 not objective. It does not state the truth in the form of 
 dogma. It does not look at it as something outside us, 
 which is to be examined dispassionately with reason and 
 intellect, and which ought to be described in language 
 that aims first and last at scientific accuracy and precision. 
 The writers prefer to tell out what has touched and 
 transfigured their own souls. They refuse to be 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 135 
 
 impersonal. They make their words a joyous confession 
 of the faith which is uppermost and innermost in them- 
 selves. Usually they employ the singular number; in 
 the Questions it is “ Thou, thine, thee ’—in the Answers 
 itis ‘‘ I, mine, me.” Allis vivid and intimate ; frequently, 
 all is emotional and enthusiastic. 
 
 But is it wise, people have queried, to put language 
 which is so lively and so rich into the mouths of the 
 young learners of the Catechism? Will not the lips 
 be outrunning the mind’s convictions and the _ senti- 
 ments of the heart? Do you not tempt them to 
 traffic in the false commerce of truths unfelt? Cer- 
 tainly, there is a palpable danger here; but Ursinus and 
 Olevianus would have had their reply to such criti- 
 cisms and objections. They would have held that the 
 children in Christian families and in the Christian Church 
 are not strangers and foreigners but fellow-citizens with 
 the saints and of the household of faith. They would have 
 contended that, while the supernatural powers of the 
 Spirit of God are required for the renewal of every life, 
 even the youngest, the covenant of grace and peace is 
 made not with believing parents merely, but with their 
 descendants, and from the earliest conscious moment 
 these descendants should be encouraged to appropriate 
 the unspeakable privileges that are designed for them. 
 It was, indeed, their deliberate intention to summon the 
 child to know and to grasp his inheritance in the kingdom 
 of faith and hope and charity and holiness and peace. 
 And therefore their dialect is throughout the individual 
 and experimental and devotional dialect of the disciple 
 and the saint. 
 
 Which brings us to this additional explanation of the 
 

 
 1386 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Catechism’s charm and conquest. It is really a book not 
 only exact in definition and discrimination, but beautiful 
 and winning in temper; and to how few Catechisms can 
 these adjectives be applied! It is warm and unctional. 
 There are times when its utterances rise into pathos, and 
 other times when their rhythm clings to the memory like 
 that of a lyric. No one thinks of a Catechism and a poem 
 as having much affinity ; yet it is not an exaggeration to 
 say that often the Hezdelberg Catechism has all the char- 
 acteristics of prose poetry. 
 
 Opie, according to Dr. John Brown, mixed his colours 
 ‘with brains,’’ and therefore his paintings have lived ; 
 but, if a book is to laugh at the corroding and destruc- 
 tive tooth of time, it will be better of something more 
 than brains—it must be tinctured and vitalised with 
 the red life-blood of the heart. The German divines of 
 three and a half centuries ago understood the secret ; 
 and that is why we linger over their sentences still. 
 
 He would be a recreant Scotsman who should say a 
 word in disparagement of the Westminster Shorter Cate- 
 chism, albeit it was not Scottish at all in its origin but 
 English through and through. It is one of the great books 
 in small compass which have dominated the world. In its 
 unerringness, in its crystalline clarity, in its carefulness 
 of wording, it is unrivalled. But it lacks the palpitating 
 ardency of Heidelberg. Probably that was unavoidable. 
 When its authors put their pens to paper, the heat of the 
 war was over. They could survey more philosophically, 
 they could examine with sedateness the battlefields on 
 which their predecessors had fought for truth and God. To 
 them the Reformation was a finished achievement which 
 they might appraise and study; it was no longer an un- 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 1387 
 
 perfected enterprise for which they had to struggle to 
 tears and death. It was natural that, writing in less 
 exciting times, they should use language in which there is 
 less “unutterable, sickening, fainting desire.’”’ In words 
 that burn, Ursinus and Olevianus take precedence of them. 
 They did not simply count the truths of which they speak 
 more precious than gold, yea, than much fine gold; they 
 went with the Psalmist in this, also, that they are sweeter 
 than honey and the honeycomb. Their precious things are 
 more than ‘‘casketed jewels”’; they are “‘meat and 
 drink.” 
 
 Let us taste, we can do no more than taste, the special 
 quality of the Catechism. 
 
 We read that Solomon made the doors of the Temple 
 of olive wood, and carved on them carvings of cherubim 
 and palm trees and open flowers, and overlaid them with 
 gold. The porch and entrance of this book are invested 
 with the same sanctity and grace. Its First Question is, 
 “What is thy only comfort in life and in death ? ’’—how 
 it isolates me! how it concerns me! And he is a happy 
 man who throws his heart into the Answer: “ That I, 
 with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my 
 own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, 
 Who, with His precious blood, has fully satisfied for all 
 my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil ; 
 and so preserves me that, without the will of my Father 
 in heaven, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all 
 things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, 
 by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, 
 and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to 
 live unto Him.” It is the Christianity to which each of 
 

 
 138 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 us should be thirled : not an irksome law, not an elaborate 
 theory, not a mechanical round of observance, but God’s 
 best gift and man’s wealthiest blessing. 
 
 Or let us take the reply to the Twenty-first Question, 
 “What is true faith?”’ “It is not only a certain know- 
 ledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed 
 to us in His Word; but also a hearty trust, which the 
 Holy Ghost works in me by the Gospel, that not only 
 to others but to me also forgiveness of sins, everlasting 
 righteousness, and salvation are freely given by God, 
 merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.” 
 The assent of the understanding and the consent of the 
 will meet and mingle; and then mine is genuine faith ; 
 then I enter into the Rose Garden of my Redeemer and 
 Lord. Itis a Cvedo worth proclaiming to the world. 
 
 And let us pass on to Question Twenty-seven. ‘‘ What 
 dost thou understand by the providence of God ?”’ There 
 is a delightful minuteness in the response. ‘‘ The almighty 
 
 and everywhere-present power of God, whereby as it 
 were by His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth, with 
 all creatures ; and so governs them that herbs and grass, 
 rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and 
 drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all 
 things, come not by chance but by His Fatherly hand.”’ 
 That is a note to which we do well to hearken, when our 
 very poets are assuring us that though “day and night 
 we wait on a message from on high, still to us the 
 universe is dumb.” 
 
 It is a note which breeds strong souls, as the succeed- 
 ing Question and Answer teach. ‘‘ What does it profit 
 us to know that God has created, and by His provi- 
 dence upholds all things?” ‘“‘ That we may be patient 
 

 
 NEW LEARNING AND NEW EXPERIENCE 139 
 
 in adversity ; thankful in prosperity; and for what is 
 future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father, 
 that no creature shall separate us from His love, since all 
 creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they 
 cannot so much as move.” That is the Psalm of the 
 heart at leisure and untroubled. 
 
 A comprehensive significance is attached by the 
 Thirty-second Question to the Christian name. “Why 
 art thou called a Christian?” it asks. This is the reply, 
 “Because by faith I am a member of Christ, and thus 
 a partaker of His anointing; in order that I also may 
 confess His name; may present myself a living sacrifice 
 of thankfulness to Him; and may with free conscience 
 fight against sin and the devil in this life, and hereafter in 
 eternity reign with Him over all creatures.”” He renders 
 us an essential service who makes us realise the force and 
 scope of terms we are continually using, for the image and 
 superscription come to be rubbed off the coins that are in 
 daily circulation. And no one will value cheaply the title 
 of Christian, who ponders its message as that is expounded 
 by the writers of the Hetdelberg C atechism. 
 
 We catch ourselves looking back wistfully to the three 
 marvellous years between the Baptism and the Cross. 
 We wish that we could have had some personal share in 
 their privilege and miracle. But Ursinus and Olevianus 
 correct our mistake, and underline Christ’s word that it 
 is expedient for us that He should go away. A threefold 
 benefit we reap, their Forty-ninth Answer says, from His 
 ascension into heaven: ‘“ First, that He is Our Advocate 
 in the presence of His Father in heaven. Secondly, that 
 we have our flesh in heaven, as a sure pledge that He, as 
 the Head, will also take us, His members, up to Himself 
 

 
 140 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Thirdly, that He sends us His Spirit, as an earnest by 
 whose power we seek those things which are above and not 
 things on the earth.”” We need the Christ of the Throne, 
 as well as the Christ of the Galilean cornfields, and the 
 Christ Who loved us and gave Himself for us on the Tree. 
 
 It is hard to cease quoting. But with the Answers to 
 two of the Questions in the Third Part we must take fare- 
 well of the Catechism. They are short Answers, and so 
 differ from many in the book ; for, if the Catechism has a 
 fault, it is that its definitions are over-long for young 
 minds. But a child can remember what the teachers of 
 Heidelberg say about the two things in which true repent- 
 ance consists, the dying of the old man and the quickening 
 of the new. “And what,” inquires the Eighty-ninth 
 Question, “‘is the dying of the old man?” The Answer 
 tells us, “‘ Heartfelt sorrow for sin, causing us to hate and 
 turn from it always more and more.”’ And “ What is the 
 quickening of the new?” is asked next. And now the 
 reply comes: “ Heartfelt joy in God, causing us to take 
 delight in living according to His will in all good works.” 
 Thus, with weeping and with laughter, we journey on, 
 from step to step, from mile to mile, when we have been 
 redeemed from our misery by divine grace through Jesus 
 Christ Our Lord. 
 
 There are virtue and spiritual power in the Heidelberg 
 Catechism still, although it is more than three centuries 
 old. It is like the hills, which do not lose their grandeur, 
 though the eyes see them every day; or like the sunset, 
 which has been building in the sky its towers and palaces 
 since the world began; or like the faces of the children, 
 which are always satisfying and sweet. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 
 
 THE “INSTITUTES ” 
 
 141 
 

 
LECTURE VII 
 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 
 
 THE “INSTITUTES” 
 
 OHN CALVIN belongs to the generation after Luther. 
 He could not have done Luther’s pioneer work. The 
 strong and heroic nature of the German Reformer, the 
 
 frank boldness with which he fought his campaign against 
 Pope and Emperor, the fresh originality of his spoken and 
 written words: these were peculiarly his own. They gave 
 him in the age in which he lived, and they have given him 
 since, an eminence from which he can never be dethroned. 
 Calvin would have been the last to dispute Luther’s essential 
 grandeurs. He was not permitted to see him face to face, 
 and we know that he found it impossible to acquiesce in 
 all his opinions ; but he looked up to him with reverence 
 as a teacher whom he was proud to follow. He was pro- 
 foundly thankful to God for those mighty services which his 
 predecessor achieved and which it seemed as if no one else 
 could have attempted and carried through. 
 
 Yet, if Calvin was not a pathfinder in the same sense as 
 Luther was, his greatness was not less than that of the 
 protagonist of the Reformation. It may even be affirmed 
 that in some respects his genius and his accomplishment 
 were still more necessary to the perpetuation and the 
 success of the Protestant cause. 
 
 For Luther was intensely individual and intensely 
 143 
 
144 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 German. He had the resolution that prompted him to dare 
 anything for what he had been led to regard as true and 
 right ; but nevertheless he clung tenaciously to many of the 
 old thoughts and ways in which he had been trained. He 
 was “‘ equally powerful,’ Principal Fairbairn has said, “in 
 promoting and in resisting change; he stood up against 
 forces that would have overwhelmed a weaker or a smaller 
 man; but as a conservative by nature, he professed beliefs 
 that a man of a more consistent intellect would have 
 dismissed, and cherished customs which a more radical 
 reformer would have surrendered.”’ 
 
 Thus, while he abandoned the spurious authority of the 
 Pope for the beneficent authority of the Bible, he denounced 
 and rejected that writer of the New Testament whom he 
 fancied to be out of harmony with the foundation principle 
 of his creed. While he taught the priesthood and kinghood 
 of all Christian men without exception, he was unwilling to 
 yield any place in the commonwealth and the sanctuary to 
 peasants and Anabaptists who travelled farther along the 
 road of emancipation than he was prepared himself to go. 
 While he declared his readiness to accept whatever light 
 God sent him from the sacred page, he refused to recognise 
 Zwingli and Gcolampadius as brethren, although they too 
 were sincere lovers and disciples of the truth. His very 
 contradictions might endear him to multitudes of his 
 Teutonic kinsfolk, the majority of whom sympathised with 
 them themselves ; but they could not advance the interests 
 of the Reformation elsewhere. There was need for a less 
 arbitrary and autocratic, a more thorough and orderly, 
 presentation of the new doctrine and the new life. 
 
 If God had not sent Calvin close behind Luther, what 
 would have happened? On one side there would have 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 145 
 
 been reaction. The great and imposing unity of Rome 
 would have drawn numbers back to the fold and shelter 
 which they had left. Here were coherence and system ; 
 nothing was scattered, nothing divergent. Here stood a 
 Church which knew its own mind, a venerable Church 
 with the snows of age dignifying its head, the Church within 
 which they had themselves been born and nourished. Since 
 there were such variances and dubieties outside, would it 
 not be the part of wisdom to return to it, and in its un- 
 wavering voice to find relief from questioning and dispeace ? 
 And on the other side there would have been revolt. People 
 would have copied Luther’s idiosyncrasies and dualisms, but 
 would have pushed them to extremes of which he entirely 
 disapproved. The door would have been opened to all sorts 
 of sectaries and every shade of heresy, and men would have 
 thought and done what appeared right in their own eyes. 
 Tens of thousands were rescued by Calvin from 
 the clamour of reaction, and as many were prevented 
 through his instrumentality from the wilfulness of revolt ; 
 he kept men both from obscurantism and from anarchy. 
 If he did not originate like Luther, he consolidated, he 
 constructed, he systematised. He had none of his fore- 
 runner’s waywardnesses. His thinking was concatenated 
 and compact, his mind tense and unhesitant and firm, his 
 soul woven of one piece throughout. It was his to recast, 
 in forms that might endure, both the theology and the polity 
 of the Protestant Church. Organisation was indispensable, 
 if the liberty which had been gained was to be preserved, 
 and if the enfranchisement was not to degenerate into 
 laxity and licence; it is Calvin’s special glory that, alike in 
 the sphere of belief and in the sphere of conduct, he under- 
 
 stood how to organise. To his spiritual insight, his moral 
 Io 
 

 
 146 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 steadfastness, and his invincible perseverance, we owe it, 
 under God, that the Reformation has not been a passing 
 phase but an abiding fact. 
 
 One might speak of other distinctions between the 
 Lutheran movement and that which had Calvin for its 
 guide, another direction in which Geneva supplements or 
 corrects Wittenberg. Luther was scriptural, but Calvin 
 was more decisively and habitually scriptural ; the former 
 based his convictions of divine and eternal things largely 
 on the personal experiences of his soul, while the latter 
 came to his religion more incontestably and more uniformly 
 through the testimony of the Word. Then, also, the Ger- 
 man was subject of an empire, and was helped to the results 
 he reached by the co-operation of princes and nobles ; where- 
 as the Frenchman’s adopted home was a self-governing city, 
 where he was on democratic soil, and where he must com- 
 mend his ideas and usages to the minds and wills of freeborn 
 men. “It is probable,” writes Mr. Lecky in his History of 
 Rationalism in Europe, “that Calvin ultimately inclined 
 rather to the republican and Luther to the despotic theory.” 
 
 Such considerations as these may serve, perhaps, to 
 explain why the Reformed Church, which we associate with 
 the one, should have spread itself so much more widely, 
 and should have been welcomed by so many more con- 
 sciences and communities than the Lutheranism, which is 
 the monument of the other. 
 
 Calvin’s education for the life-work he was destined to 
 fulfil was extraordinarily complete ; it is as if nothing were 
 left out. It meant something that he was a native of 
 Picardy in Northern France ; for, though the town of Noyon, 
 within whose walls he was born, in July 1509, was clerical in 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 147 
 
 its atmosphere, the province itself was a kindly nurse to liberal 
 thought. Other men who were leaders in French religious re- 
 form were its sons— Jacques Lefévre, Robert Pierre Olivétan, 
 Gérard Roussel, Francois Vatable. It was a country, one 
 of its medizval bishops had declared, “fertile in warriors 
 and in servants of God”’; it was a fitting cradle for the 
 bravest warrior and truest servant of God among them all. 
 The boy’s father sprang from the common people, from 
 a race of hardy bargemen on the Oise; but he had risen 
 in the social scale by his industry and his abilities, and now 
 held several offices in the ecclesiastical courts. He was 
 determined that the lad should have the best training he 
 could procure for him. It was a happy providence that 
 among his friends was the noble family of Montmor, one of 
 whom, Charles de Hangest, was diocesan of Noyon; and 
 young Calvin was brought up in intimate companionship 
 with the children of this family, not indeed as a matter of 
 charity, but at the charges of his own father. To the end of 
 his life the Reformer never forgot that he was unus de plebe 
 homuncio, but to the end he was grateful for the courtesy 
 and culture which friendship with the Montmors had bred 
 in him: he had a politeness of conversation and a stateli- 
 ness of demeanour to which Luther could lay no claim. 
 Then came the years spent at the University of Paris, 
 no longer so world-famous as it had been once, but stirred 
 into fresh vitality by the advent of the new learning. It 
 was here that he acquired that wonderful style of his, both 
 in Latin and in French—“ exact, sober, precise, restrained ; 
 sad, perhaps, or a trifle cold; but full of conviction and 
 reason.” He had fine and inspiriting teachers—Mathurin 
 Cordier, who awoke in him the love of Cicero and Seneca, 
 and who followed him at length to Protestantism and to 
 

 
 148 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Geneva ; and Melchior Wolmar, who gave him his earliest 
 lessons in Greek, and who was already a Lutheran and may 
 have dropped seeds into his pupil’s mind that were to germi- 
 nate ere long. His chosen friends, too, were the worthiest 
 whom he could bind to himself, the three sons of Guillaume 
 Cop being among the most honoured of their number— 
 Guillaume Cop, who was physician to King Francis, and 
 correspondent of Reuchlin and Erasmus. 
 
 The student life of the University, as there is plenty 
 of contemporary evidence to prove, was morally very low, 
 and the temptations were numerous and strong. But 
 Calvin, partly through his unrelaxed devotion to work, 
 partly through the uplifting power of his friendships, 
 and partly through a high and laudable austerity which 
 marked him from the beginning, kept himself blameless 
 and pure. One compares him in this respect with a 
 young Englishman at Cambridge in the next century. 
 “ A certain niceness of nature,’ the Englishman says, “ an 
 honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of what I was 
 or what I might be, and lastly that modesty whereof I 
 may be excused to make some beseeming profession, 
 all these, uniting the supply of their natural aid together, 
 kept me above those low descents of mind.’”’ John Milton 
 and John Calvin had some good things in common. 
 
 The Church had been the goal to which as yet the 
 student’s face was set. But in his later years, you re- 
 member, the father in Noyon fell under the displeasure 
 and the ban of the ecclesiastical authorities, and he bade 
 his son turn aside from that first intention and prepare 
 himself instead for the profession of law. In the best 
 schools of the day, at Orléans and at Bourges, the youth 
 was equipped to be a pleader in the courts. This also, 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 149 
 
 
 
 we can see, was of God’s ordering. It required an intellect 
 legally trained, disciplined in the arts of examination and 
 argument and construction, to build up an elaborate and 
 convincing system of theology and to devise a working con- 
 stitution for a theocratic State. Like Augustine, Calvin 
 was being steered secretly by a supernatural and unerring 
 hand to the place and the task appointed for him. 
 
 But the vision tarried—the vision that was to make all 
 things new and to terminate the uncertainty. When his 
 father died in 1531, he reverted from law to literature. 
 In the succeeding year he published his first book, a com- 
 mentary on Seneca’s treatise, De Clemenita. It is erudite 
 and scholarly ; it is polished and brilliant ; its philosophy 
 is grave and serious ; its politics are courageous and earnest. 
 But it does not reveal a heart on fire for religion and 
 Christ ; the glowing stone from the altar of God has not 
 touched the soul and the lips, to change the humanist into 
 the prophet of the Most High. 
 
 Within a few months, however, that supreme trans- — 
 figuration came. On the first day of November 1533, 
 his friend, Nicolas Cop, delivered a memorable address as 
 Rector of the University of Paris—an address which was 
 composed as much by Calvin as by the speaker himself. 
 It was a commendation of the Gospel, which “ drives by 
 no threats, does not force by commands, teaches God’s 
 utmost goodwill towards us.” Is not this Christian wisdom 
 the queen of sciences ? Does it not publish the remission 
 of sins through the mere grace of the Heavenly Lord ? 
 Does it not promise us the Holy Spirit, to sanctify the 
 heart and to conduct us to eternal life? Is it not the 
 effectual comfort of minds in distress and the one secret 
 of purity and peace? These were the Rector’s conten- 
 

 
 150 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 tions. They seemed to deny the salvation by works 
 which the Church was accustomed to proclaim. They 
 approached perilously near Luther’s notion that sinful 
 men are justified by simple faith in Christ alone. The 
 ruling powers in the University were very angry; they 
 had some of the prominent sympathisers with reform 
 apprehended and imprisoned ; and both Cop and Calvin 
 found safety in flight. 
 
 Plainly, the great transaction which made him a 
 Christian and a Protestant had taken place in the eighteen 
 months that lay between the student’s book on Seneca 
 and the evangelical manifesto of this rectorial address. 
 There has been much discussion of how and when pre- 
 cisely it may have happened; but we are driven back 
 upon the scanty hints which Calvin himself, a reticent 
 man where the deep things of the soul are concerned, 
 furnishes and supplies. In one of his ablest books, his 
 Reply to Jacopo Sadoleto, he gives us a glimpse of the 
 inner unrest through which he had passed. He sought 
 forgiveness, he says, in accordance with the teachings of 
 the Roman Church, and he had some intervals of quiet, 
 but he was far off from true peace of conscience. Whenever 
 he descended into himself, or raised his thought to God, 
 extreme terror seized him, .terror which no expiations or 
 satisfactions could cure. The stings with which his con- 
 science was pricked were sharp, and he could discover no 
 ease except in trying to forget. 
 
 Then, in the Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, 
 there is an indication of how the conflict was stilled and 
 closed. ‘‘I was so obstinately addicted to the super- 
 stitions of the Papacy,” he confesses, lifting the veil for 
 a moment from those bygone years, “‘ that it was hard 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 151 
 
 to draw me from that deep slough. But by a sudden 
 conversion, God conquered and subdued my heart to 
 teachableness.”’ “By a sudden conversion ’’—it is all 
 that we are allowed to know. But it is enough. Calvin’s 
 preparation was finished at last. Mentally and spiritually 
 he was furnished for the mighty work he had to perform. 
 
 There was to be no rest for him henceforward. He 
 goes on, in the same memorable Preface, to describe how 
 he wanted to withdraw, as Paul did, to the seclusion and 
 solitude of some Arabia. “I have always loved tran- 
 quillity, being by nature shy and timid.” But, though 
 we hear of him in many quarters—at Paris, at Orléans, at 
 Angouléme where his friend Louis du Tillet had a library in 
 _whose treasures he revelled, at Poitiers where he observed 
 the Lord’s Supper with the simplicities of the Protestant 
 ritual—not one of them was the Arabia for which he 
 longed. “‘ All those who had some desire for pure doctrine 
 betook themselves to me in order to learn, although I 
 myself had done little more than begin. My retreats 
 were as public schools. And, while I have always had 
 this aim of living privately without being known, God 
 has so led me by various vicissitudes that He has never 
 let me repose in any place whatever, but, in spite of my 
 natural disposition, has brought me out into the light, ef 
 fait venir en jeu, comme on dit, and thrusts me on to the 
 stage, as the saying is.” Until he slept his last sleep, a 
 fierce glare was to beat on the shy and timid man, an 
 undesired notoriety was to pursue him. 
 
 In the spring of 1534, in Noyon, the town of his birth, 
 he cut the last cords which bound him to the old Church. 
 He resigned those benefices which his father had secured 
 for him when he was a boy, and the revenues of which had 
 
152. THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 done much to defray the cost of his education. Do you 
 recall what Robert Louis Stevenson says of Noyon? “In 
 the little pictorial map of our whole Inland Voyage, which 
 my fancy still preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the 
 amusement of odd moments, Noyon cathedral figures on 
 a most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large 
 as a department. I can still see the faces of the priests 
 as if they were at my elbow, and hear Ave Maria, Ora pro 
 nobis sounding through the church. All Noyon is blotted 
 out for me by these superior memories, and I do not care 
 to say more about the place. It was but a stack of brown 
 roofs at the best, where I believe people live very reputably 
 in a quiet way ; but the shadow of the church falls upon it 
 when the sun is low, and the five bells are heard in all 
 quarters, telling that the organ has begun. If ever I 
 join the Church of Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of 
 Noyon on the Oise.” John Calvin had a much better 
 chance than our “Hamlet and Shorter Catechist”’ of 
 becoming Bishop of Noyon on the Oise. But he abjured 
 the prize. He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater 
 riches than the treasures in Egypt. 
 
 By and by France, where the martyr-fires were now 
 blazing, was too crowded with plots and hazards for Calvin 
 to linger within its borders. Early in 1535 he left it and 
 went to Basel, where, in the house of Frau Katharine Klein, 
 he “ lived as it were concealed,” his identity hidden under 
 the name of Martinus Lucanius. It was in Basel that 
 he completed and issued a book, which he had commenced 
 to write when he was under Louis du Tillet’s hospitable 
 roof in Angouléme, and which has crowned him with both 
 love and hate. The first edition of the Institutes—the 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 1538 
 
 
 
 Christiane Religionis Institutio—printed by Thomas 
 Platter and Balthasar Lasius, and published by Johann 
 Oporin, appeared in March 1536. Its author was only 
 twenty-six, as Melanchthon was only twenty-four when the 
 Loct Communes saw the light, and Ursinus and Olevianus 
 were both under thirty when the Hezdelberg Catechism was 
 given to the world: the young men of the Reformation 
 period were giants in understanding and in grace. 
 
 But, significant as the Loct Communes and the Hevdel- 
 berg Catechism were, the Institutes was a more remarkable 
 and finished achievement than either. Of course, it was 
 not at the outset all that it subsequently became; the 
 first edition is small in bulk compared with the final edition 
 of 1559; but the noteworthy thing is that in the beliefs 
 which they expound, and the faith for which they do battle, 
 the two, although they are separated by a gulf of three- 
 and-twenty years, are substantially the same. Calvin’s 
 creed sprang from his brain and heart, in its ripe strength 
 and its full panoply, like the armed Minerva from the head 
 of Jupiter. It seemed to be deficient nowhere. 
 
 The Institutes, Professor Orr tells us, is as truly an 
 epoch-making book, in the world of religion, as Bacon’s 
 Novum Organum and Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia are in 
 the world of science, or as Kant’s Kvittk of Pure Reason is 
 in the world of philosophy. Its interest is not evanescent ; 
 it is permanent: we say of it, as Matthew Arnold says of 
 Shakespeare : 
 
 “Others abide our question; thou art free. 
 We ask and ask—thou smilest and art still.” 
 
 Whether we agree with it or no, its position is secure. 
 There was a double service which it rendered Protestants. 
 

 
 154 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 It showed them that there was a reasoned and reasonable 
 scheme of truth behind those tenets which they had 
 embraced ; and it gave them a faith as firmly jointed and 
 as stable as any of the splendid and mighty systems of the 
 Middle Ages. It satisfied the interrogations of their own 
 minds ; and it put into their hands a potent weapon with 
 which to confront their opponents. These were incalculable 
 results ; and yet they were scarcely the ends which the 
 author of the Institutes was most desirous to attain. He 
 had a purpose more immediate and more practical. 
 
 In the primitive years of Christianity, a Justin Martyr 
 or a Tertullian would write an Apology for the faith which 
 he and his fellows had embraced, and would present it to 
 the Emperor, in demonstration of the fact that the religion 
 of Jesus was innocuous and wholesome and _ beneficent, 
 and with the hope that the plea might mitigate the severities 
 measured out to “the panting huddled flock whose crime 
 was Christ.”” This was Calvin’s aim when he published 
 his Institutes. 
 
 The flames of persecution had been lighted in his 
 native France, and some of his personal friends had been 
 flung into them. The infant Protestant Church was 
 already the anvil on which the hostile hammers were 
 raining their deadly blows—which they sought to destroy, 
 but which wore them out and remained indestructible. 
 It was on its behalf that Calvin interposed. He would show 
 the ruling powers what a defensible and reasonable belief 
 Protestantism was. He would shield and rescue, if he could, 
 his maligned and suffering co-religionists. So he prefaced 
 his exposition of the verities which they and he esteemed 
 better than life by one of the greatest letters ever composed. 
 
 “To His Most Gracious Majesty, Francis, King of 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 155 
 
 France, and his sovereign, John Calvin wisheth peace 
 and salvation in Christ’’: it is the letter’s exordium. 
 Gravely and boldly, he tells the King, this youth of twenty- 
 six, that the initial duty of a monarch is to be just; that 
 he wrongs his office and himself if he punishes any one 
 unheard ; that he is the minister of God, and ought to 
 condemn no accused person to the fire or the gibbet 
 without investigating the charges brought against him. Yet 
 how cruelly the simple and godly men for whom he 
 spoke were treated! Alit nostrum vinculis constringuntur, 
 alu virgis ceduntur, alia in ludibrium circumducuntur, alit 
 proscribuntur, alia sevissime torquentur, alia fuga elabuntur. 
 
 Who were their assailants? They were the Roman 
 priests. “‘ They cease not to defame our doctrine. They call 
 it new, and of recent birth; they carp at it as doubtful 
 and uncertain ; they ask by what miracles it has been con- 
 firmed ; they query if it be fair to receive it against the 
 consent of so many holy fathers and the most ancient 
 custom.’ Those antagonists would not grant that Pro- 
 testants had a Church at all. Where were their im- 
 pressive forms? where their stately ritual? What had 
 they to set over against the majesty of Catholic hierarchies 
 and ceremonies ? It was a difficulty which, for a while, 
 had perturbed Calvin himself; but he knew the answer 
 now. “ We, on the contrary, maintain that the Church 
 may exist without any apparent form; and that the form 
 is not ascertained by that external splendour which they 
 foolishly admire, but by a very different mark, namely, 
 by pure preaching of the Word of God and rightful ad- 
 ministration of the Sacraments.” 
 
 Thus the noble letter moves convincingly on to the ap- 
 peal and prayer with which it closes. ‘‘ Your goodwill, we 
 

 
 156 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 are confident, we should regain, would you but once, with 
 calmness and composure, read this our confession, which 
 we wish to serve with Your Majesty instead of a defence. 
 . . - Most powerful and illustrious King, may the Lord, 
 the King of kings, establish your throne in justice and 
 your rulership in equity.” It is seldom that princes have 
 been addressed with braver courage or to better purpose. 
 
 The book, so, splendidly introduced, is masterly in its 
 wisdom and force. Its very planis a triumph. It follows 
 the arrangement of the Apostles’ Creed, which the Church 
 had cherished and repeated from the earliest times, as if 
 to manifest that Protestants, no less than Romanists, 
 loved the venerable symbol and had no thought of depart- 
 ing from its teaching. There are six chapters in this first 
 edition of the Institutes. The earliest one is an expansion 
 of the opening avowal of the Creed. “I believe in God 
 the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” The 
 Creator, and how we need Scripture to reveal Him to us, 
 and how we get His law in the Ten Commandments, and 
 how His providence and His will are the explanation of 
 all that is: that is the theme. 
 
 The second chapter comments on the Creed’s next 
 article: ‘‘I believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, our 
 Lord.”’ It is a sermon about sin and salvation—that we 
 have fallen, and are corrupt and enslaved through our sin ; 
 that God from the beginning had a purpose of redemption, 
 which He unfolded gradually, in many parts and many 
 ways; that Christ, in His Person, His offices, and His 
 work, is the sufficient Healer of our disease. 
 
 “TI believe in the Holy Ghost,’’—he who recites the 
 Creed goes on; and the third chapter of the Institutes 
 ranges over the wide field of the Spirit’s activities ; treating 
 
CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 157 
 
 of faith and repentance, of our free justification and of 
 the process and method of our sanctification ; refuting 
 the mistakes and falsities of Rome on each of these topics ; 
 painting winningly and attractively the life of a Christian 
 man; lingering especially over his prayers, and their 
 pattern and model in that prayer which Jesus taught His 
 disciples ; asserting, before it is done, his eternal election 
 to pardon and life, with the dread counterpart of the truth, 
 the reprobation of the unbelieving and wicked. 
 
 “T believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” the Creed bids us 
 affirm also ; and the Church is subject of the fourth chapter 
 in the Institutes—its nature and government, but especially 
 its sacraments, and particularly the Sacrament of the Lord’s 
 Supper; that Supper, so simple, so significant, is “an 
 exercise of faith, given to maintain, excite, and increase 
 it’’; it is “something spiritual’; in it Christ is “ truly 
 and efficaciously ’’ present, yet it is not His “ natural and 
 physical body which is given ’’—no, but “ all things which 
 He bestows as benefits to us by His body.” 
 
 Thus far, in the scheme and ordering of his book, 
 Calvin has held sedulously and deliberately by the Con- 
 fession which godly people all down the generations had 
 enshrined in their hearts and had repeated with their lips ; 
 and so has established his thesis that the teaching of 
 the Reformation, instead of being a fantastic novelty, a 
 new and portentous birth in time, was the true old teach- 
 ing of the Church: there was never a more consummate 
 dialectician than he, or an abler strategist. But in the 
 two chapters that remain, he forsakes his plan; he lets 
 himself go; he is more polemic now, more vivacious 
 and controversial ; he carries the war with zest into the 
 territory of the enemy. 
 

 
 158 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 One of these chapters is a keen and victorious argu- 
 ment against the five sacraments which Rome has added to 
 Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and notably against the 
 sacrament of Penance, with its appendages of auricular 
 confession, and works of supererogation, and indulgences, 
 and purgatory. The last chapter surveys, finely and 
 surely, the question of Christian liberty. Its author, we 
 learn, has no liking either for tyranny or for unchartered 
 licence. The liberty he loves consists in three things : ex- 
 emption from the law as a means of winning God’s favour, 
 the voluntary and glad obedience of justified men to the will 
 of their Lord, and their freedom either to claim or to forgo 
 those outward things which in themselves are indifferent. 
 
 “Nor is it anywhere forbidden to laugh,” says this 
 man whom his opponents called “the Accusative Case,”’ 
 “or to enjoy food, or to add new possessions to old 
 and ancestral property, or to be delighted with musical 
 harmonies ”’ ; one may so easily lose oneself in a labyrinth 
 of scruples and superstitions and abstinences, instead of 
 walking in a large room. Two governments, however, we 
 are under, so long as we are in the world—a spiritual and 
 a temporal. We obey the Church, when she proclaims not 
 what councils have decreed and bishops have promulgated 
 but what is in consonance with the Word of God. And 
 we honour our magistrates and rulers, even if they are 
 not in themselves good men—honour them to the full, 
 except when their commandment contradicts the declared 
 and palpable decree of our heavenly King. Such is the 
 measured and regulated liberty of Christian people. 
 
 There, then, in brief bald summary, is the first edition 
 of the Christiane Religionis Institutio. As its title shows, 
 it was a Latin book; not till 1541, five years after its 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 159 
 
 original appearance, did its penman translate it into 
 French “for the benefit of his countrymen.’ Compared 
 with what it became, it was limited in scope and contents ; 
 the last edition, which left Calvin’s hand in 1559, had grown 
 from a work in six chapters to one in four books and eighty 
 chapters. Yet it is all here in germ and in suggestion ; 
 the fundamental doctrine remains unchanged; “the 
 author,”’ as Principal Lindsay puts it, “ was not a man to 
 publish a treatise on theology without carefully weighing 
 all that had to be said.”’ 
 
 And, whether you take it in its shorter or in its longer 
 form, it is a great book. It is great in its constructive 
 power. It welds into a unity things which before had 
 stood apart in isolation, unrelated and alone. Athanasius 
 had preached the mystery of the Incarnation, God mani- 
 fest in flesh. Augustine had dwelt on the dark fact of 
 original sin and the bright fact of redeeming grace. 
 Anselm had gloried in the atonement of the Cross as a 
 satisfaction to divine justice and holy law. But Calvin 
 saw their mutual relations and their organic connection 
 each with each. He felt, also, that all of them were 
 required in Christian faith and experience. He brought 
 them together, so that they were separate no longer ; 
 and that is an incalculable gain to the Church of Christ. 
 
 And the book is great, too, in the freshness of its 
 style. The stiff and repellent phraseology of the schools 
 is little in evidence in its pages. The language is forceful ; 
 here and there it has a singular liveliness and elasticity 
 and exhilaration. The layman could read it as well as 
 the professional theologian. And soon both laymen and 
 theologians were reading it to excellent purpose. Its 
 influence was immense. The lessons it taught breathed 
 

 
 160 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 courage and pride into the Protestants of France. They 
 nerved the men of Holland to face the tragedies and to 
 perform the prodigies of valour which Mr. Motley’s chap- 
 ters commemorate. They bred Puritans in England 
 and Covenanters in Scotland. At length they crossed 
 the ocean, to nurture those stalwarts who drew up the 
 Declaration of Independence and laid the foundations of 
 the United States. Their. dominion has been as wide as 
 it has been deep. 
 
 That is because the Institutes inculcate what we know 
 as Calvinism. It has indeed been pointed out with perfect 
 truth that, while Calvinism may be “ stated in an occasional] 
 sentence or implied in a paragraph,” it is “‘ not the sub- 
 stance or determinative idea of the book.” It is not formu- 
 lated, and written out clear and large, as it is, for example, 
 in the Westminster Confession of Faith. But it is an- 
 nounced, none the less. And what are some of its notes 
 and emphases, as John Calvin saw and declared them ? 
 
 He is not only “ very sure of God ”’; God is the Centre 
 and the Pivot of his universe. He publishes and rejoices 
 in God’s sovereignty over all persons and all events, from 
 the eternity that is past on through the eternity that is 
 future. That His glory may be unveiled the world has 
 been made, and its course has been shaped; and “ our 
 very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.” 
 We do not understand Calvin, we have not penetrated to 
 the secret of his patience and his strength, till we realise 
 that he lives and moves and has his being, consciously and 
 constantly, in God: the conviction that the Divine Hand 
 and Thought have mapped out everything for him enables 
 him to walk with unfaltering step in the most difficult paths. 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 161 
 
 Then his reverence for Scripture, how patent it is! 
 how profound! Natural theology must be completed and 
 clarified by ‘‘another and better help’’—by the Bible, the 
 writers of which were “sure and authentic amanuenses 
 of the Divine Spirit.’”” Many arguments should convince 
 us of its heavenly inspiration; but the overcoming argu- 
 ment is a personal one, more intimate than the conjectures 
 or judgments or reasons of men, more availing than the 
 authority of the Church, more conclusive than any signs 
 or miracles: it is “the secret testimony ’”’ of the Holy 
 Ghost ; it is the response which He evokes from every soul 
 to the truth which He has inscribed in the Book. 
 
 Calvin turns to man, to find him utterly shipwrecked, 
 ruined, self-destroyed. In his present estate he is wholly 
 bad ; the head is sick, the heart is faint, the festering sores 
 are everywhere. The human soul, “ plunged into a deadly 
 abyss, not only labours under vice but is devoid of good.”’ 
 It had been Augustine’s humbling and shattering message, 
 and he is Augustine’s successor in maintaining that man 
 in his fallen condition is unable to lift himself into the 
 favour and life of God. Yet he does justice to our nature 
 even in its sin and misery. The unbeliever has his “ ex- 
 cellent endowments,”’ his “ virtues or images of virtues ”’ ; 
 the relics of the temple remain, although the Great In- 
 habitant is gone. 
 
 Christ is the Restorer of the devastation which man’s 
 evil has wrought; and Calvin makes much of Christ. 
 He stands, lost in admiration and praise, before the 
 surpassing marvel of the Cross; he sends his plumb-line 
 a little way down into its unfathomable depth of sorrow ; 
 “not only was the body of Christ given up as the price of 
 
 our redemption,” he says, “ but that which is a greater 
 II 
 

 
 162 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 price —He bore in His soul the torture of condemned 
 and ruined men.” But what such love and pain have 
 wrought does not profit us until, in faith and in repentance, 
 we receive the Gospel and the Saviour. 
 
 Yet it is not all who do so, nor nearly all; out of a 
 hundred who listen to the same unmatchable story of 
 Calvary, twenty perhaps welcome it; “the others set 
 no value on it, or deride or spurn or abominate it.” 
 Why is there this difference ? the author of the Institutes 
 asks. Trace things back to their fountain-head, he 
 replies, and you must admit that it is due to “the 
 mere pleasure of God.” His predestinating decree 
 has chosen those who are heirs of salvation; it has 
 not merely left but appointed the others to doom and 
 death. Calvin trembles to set forth this last appalling 
 fact ; but his vision of truth will not let him do otherwise. 
 its decretum quidem horribile, fateor—an enactment 
 tremendous, dread, awful ; but it seems to him that there 
 is no escaping the conclusion: “if we cannot assign any 
 reason for God’s bestowing mercy on His people but just 
 that it so pleases Him, neither can we have any reason 
 for His reprobating others but His will.”’ 
 
 There Calvinism is sterner than Augustinianism. The 
 great African teacher had represented God as active only in 
 the election to life. The lost, he thought, were simply passed 
 by, and were left to the consequences of their own sin. 
 Probably some of you will shrink, as I confess I shrink, 
 from accompanying Calvin all the way that he feels himself 
 compelled to go. Probably you may not be able to conceive 
 of God as positively affirming and postulating the death of 
 any one. But I bid you recollect how John Calvin feared 
 as he entered into this cloud, how he carried into its 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 163 
 
 shadow and thick darkness his unshakable conviction of the 
 absolute rectitude and holiness and perfection of the Lord 
 with Whom he had to do, and how he went steadfastly 
 forward because to his mind and his conscience there 
 was no other path for him to take. Most of us are afraid 
 to cling to truth and to commend and praise her, when she 
 comes to us with bitter acids in her cup and with a sharp 
 sword in her hand; but Calvin had no such cowardice ; 
 the cup and the sword amazed him, but he did not dream of 
 turning back from them or of putting them away. 
 
 This, too, ought not to be forgotten, that predestination, 
 whether on its side of woe or on its side of blessedness, is 
 , not the central doctrine of the Institutes. Theodore Beza, 
 who came after Calvin, and of whom men spoke as Calvino 
 Calvinior, raised it to a prominence which it does not 
 have in the book itself. There God’s election is of value, 
 there it is insisted upon, chiefly because the thought of it 
 ought to give assurance of salvation to the heart which 
 already believes in Jesus Christ. How can the gates of 
 hell, how can any adversary, prevail against him who has 
 been chosen in his Saviour from before the foundation of 
 the world ? His is an unassailable security, and he ought 
 to know that it is. 
 
 Those are a few of the outstanding headlands and 
 promontories in the coast-line of Calvinism. I do not need 
 to remind you that to very many it has appeared as an 
 ugly and repellent shore. They have heaped indictment 
 upon indictment against the system. It denies the Divine 
 Fatherhood. It annihilates human freedom. It pictures 
 our nature as a mass of depravity without a single redeem- 
 ing trait. It restricts God’s thought and care to the elect. 
 It scouts the virtues of the heathen, So it has become 
 

 
 164 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 a thing of gloom, a nightmare, a paralysing influence. 
 But this account of it is a travesty. It is false, because 
 it is ignorant. 
 
 One or two sentences from the Institutes will refute 
 
 some of these charges. This, for instance: “It is 
 because God first loves us that He afterwards recon- 
 ciles us to Himself.’”’ And this: ‘“‘ The human mind, 
 
 \however much fallen and perverted from its original 
 integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable 
 gifts from its Creator.’’ And this: “We see how He 
 visits those who cultivate virtue with many temporal 
 blessings.’’ Free will is not denied by Calvin, even if 
 he gives no larger place to it ; it is much more disparaged 
 and hidden by those modern views of man, which paint 
 in vivid colour his brute ancestry, his slow evolution, his 
 primitive savagery, and that commanding influence over 
 him of heredity and environment which seems to render his 
 sin a necessity. There are more depressing creeds than this 
 hated and derided Calvinism, current among ourselves. 
 
 The Calvinists, one hopes, are few, who imagine that 
 truth in its last and final shape was unlocked in the Basel 
 or the Geneva of the sixteenth century. No man has yet 
 beheld or grasped or explained the truth in its last and 
 final shape ; no man will, until, as Melanchthon said on his 
 death-bed, he comes into the Eternal Light and looks upon 
 the Face of the Son of God. It may well be that, in this 
 later time, those of us who are Calvinists would wish to 
 state some things with a different accent from Calvin’s 
 own. Perhaps we would omit the decree of reprobation. 
 Perhaps we should assign more space to man’s consent and 
 response to the Christ Who calls and saves and perfects 
 him. 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS FAITH 165 
 
 Perhaps we covet and desire a fuller exposition of the 
 love as well as of the sovereignty of God, though I like 
 some sentences about this subject which Professor Hastie 
 has written in his stimulating book on The Theology of the 
 Reformed Church. ‘‘ To separate the divine love from the 
 divine sovereignty,” he says, ‘‘ is to rob the divine love of 
 its strength, to reduce it to a mere reflex of human emotion, 
 an anthropomorphic habit or idea, and to make it but 
 an incident, or accident, or even a new unrelated perplexity 
 in the system of the universe. The divine love,’’ he goes 
 on, “is only the perfection of the divine sovereignty, the 
 consummation of the divine purpose disclosed at last in 
 God’s completion of the world by His self-communication 
 to immortal souls.”’ It is the flower which blooms out of 
 the whole of His work of creation and providence and grace, 
 and which has its deep-hidden root in the very adamantine 
 roots of His being and government. All’s love, not merely 
 although all’s law; nay, let us be more thoroughgoing— 
 All’s love because all’s law. 
 
 Make these abatements if you like, it is incontrovertible 
 that Calvinism has accomplished wonders for the world. 
 Its praises have been sung by men with whom its progenitor 
 could not have had the closest sympathy. In March 1871, 
 in a memorable address to the students of St. Andrews, 
 Mr. Froude was its eulogist. ‘‘ When all else has failed,” 
 he declared ; “‘ when patriotism has covered its face, and 
 human courage has broken down; when intellect has 
 yielded, as Gibbon says, ‘ with a smile or a sigh,’ content to 
 philosophise in the closet, and abroad worship with the 
 vulgar ; when emotion and sentiment and tender imagina- 
 tive piety have become the handmaids of superstition, and 
 have dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there is 
 

 
 166 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 any difference between lies and truth: the slavish form 
 of belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its many 
 forms, has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and 
 mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder 
 like flint than to bend before violence, or melt before 
 enervating temptation.” 
 
 More recently, in his Oliver Cromwell, Lord Morley 
 of Blackburn has evinced an equal enthusiasm. ‘“‘ Men 
 take a narrow view of Calvin,’ he writes, ‘““when they 
 think of him only as the preacher of justification by 
 faith, and the foe of sacerdotal mediation. His scheme 
 comprehended a doctrine that went to the very root of 
 man’s relations with the scheme of universal things; 
 a Church order as closely compacted as that of Rome; a 
 system of moral discipline as concise and as imperative 
 as the code of Napoleon. He built it all upon a certain 
 theory of the government of the universe, which by his 
 urgency has exerted an amazing influence upon the world. 
 It is a theory that might have been expected to sink men 
 crouching and paralysed into the blackest abysses of despair, 
 and it has in fact been answerable for much anguish in many 
 a human heart. Still, Calvinism has proved itself a famous 
 soil for rearing heroic natures. . . . Men who were bound 
 to suppose themselves moving in chains inexorably 
 riveted, along a track ordained by a despotic and unseen 
 Will before time began, have yet exhibited an active 
 courage, a resolute endurance, a cheerful self-restraint, 
 an exulting self-sacrifice, that we count among the highest 
 glories of the human conscience.” 
 
 One may well be content to leave Calvinism and Calvin’s 
 self to such capable and comprehending defenders. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 
 
 THE “*ORDONNANCES ” OF GENEVA 
 
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LECTURE VIII 
 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 
 
 THE “ORDONNANCES” OF GENEVA 
 
 OME German scholars have evinced recently a 
 curious tendency to disparage John Calvin. One 
 is almost disposed to imagine that they grudge him to 
 France and Geneva. Should not a man so commanding 
 and notable have been born within the borders of the 
 Fatherland ? Then, perhaps, he might have escaped the 
 artillery of criticism to which he has been subjected. But, 
 since his alien origin is indisputable, the cavillers will not 
 allow that he was really so great a figure after all. Here, 
 for example, is Albrecht Ritschl, with whom we are more 
 familiar in the realm of theology than in that of Church 
 history. Writing in 1880, in his Geschichte des Pietismus, 
 he questioned whether Calvin and Calvinism ought to be 
 credited with originality. ‘So far,’ he declared, ‘‘ as the 
 ideal of Calvinism is anti-Catholic, this is due to the in- 
 stigation of Luther; so far as it departs from Luther, it 
 goes back to the ideal of the Franciscans—the Franciscans 
 and the Anabaptists.”’ 
 
 To many of us that will appear a_ surprising 
 thesis, that the Reformer whom we reckoned the most 
 thoroughgoing, and the Reform which seemed to break 
 finally and irreparably with the past, are in fact of one 
 
 spiritual family with the medieval friars, and that, 
 169 
 

 
 170 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 across all intellectual and ecclesiastical and municipal 
 Alps, Geneva and Assisi join hands in closest alliance and 
 kinship. Yet Ritschl set a fashion which has approved 
 itself to others of his countrymen since: to Kattenbusch 
 and Loofs, Martin Schulze and Bernhard Bess. They are 
 all convinced that Calvin is by a long interval the inferior 
 of Luther ; and that, when it is compared with Lutheranism, 
 Calvinism is “an unmistakable mutilation ”’—eine gewisse 
 V erktimmerung—of the true Protestant faith. It renounces 
 “the German feeling of liberty.” It glorifies “‘a servile 
 submission to the letter.”’ It is, in short, the reassertion 
 of the belief and practice of the Middle Ages, “‘ pure and 
 simple.” 
 
 What can one think of these vagaries of the wise ? 
 The verdict of Professor Doumergue of Montauban, who 
 knows Calvin more intimately than any other man of 
 our time, is the only possible verdict: “‘ Ritschl is the 
 originator of a chauvinism at once theological and Ger- 
 manic, and of a kind of Lutheran nationalism, which are 
 no less obnoxious than the most vexatious political 
 chauvinism and nationalism.’”’ There is no reason why 
 we should abase Calvin in order to do justice to Luther. 
 Both of them stand in the foremost rank, and we can 
 as little dispense with the one as with the other. 
 
 It is mainly because of his Genevan polity that Ritschl 
 and his disciples accuse Calvin of a reversion to medizval- 
 ism. His vigilant regulation of the morals of the trouble- 
 some city, his comprehensive rules for Church and State— 
 what are they, it is asked, but a rehabilitating of the 
 asceticism of Francis and Dominic, a return to the govern- 
 ment of those Popes whose regimen was most unsparing 
 and rigorous? ‘It must be said,’ Martin Schulze con- 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 171 
 
 cludes, “‘ that Calvin did not, in principle, rise above the 
 monastic ideal of life, although life had for him a more 
 significant meaning, and although the effort to realise it 
 was far purer with him than in monachism.”’ The same 
 contention has been put even more uncompromisingly 
 by an American writer: “‘ As a matter of fact, the ethical 
 system of Calvin is profoundly reactionary, scholastic, and 
 Roman Catholic both in method and aim.” 
 
 It is indeed strange how entirely astray numbers of us 
 have been in our reading of those strenuous labours and 
 achievements by which the Reformer strove to build 
 Jerusalem in the turbulent little commonwealth for whose 
 uplifting and refinement he did so much. We had sup- 
 posed that these labours and achievements were too 
 practical to have anything in common with scholasticism, 
 and too public-spirited to be in intimate affinity with the 
 individual and self-centred piety of Franciscan monks. 
 And in spite of the teachers who are solicitous to correct 
 our misapprehensions, we are inclined to abide by our 
 opinion. Calvin certainly warns us against giving our 
 hearts to the vain and transitory world ; but he insists, no 
 less, that we have a very definite vocation to fulfil in the 
 world, and for its advantage and betterment. We are 
 here to do our part, actively, aggressively, in transforming 
 our surroundings, for the honour of God and for the good 
 of our neighbours. 
 
 Calvinism, says Ernst Tréltsch, would “rationalise and 
 discipline all life by its ethical theory and by its ecclesiastical 
 order.’’ It has everywhere been the parent, he perceives, 
 of “‘a lively energy, a severe morality, a social Christian 
 aim.’’ Yet Trdéltsch, too, persists in designating this quick 
 and eager philanthropy, this enlightened zeal for the 
 
ree 
 
 
 
 172 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 advancement of God’s kingdom among men, by the name 
 of asceticism. It is, he maintains, an znnerweltliche Askese, 
 an intramundane asceticism, that may be contrasted with 
 that extramundane variety of the Middle Ages which fled 
 in self-concern from contact with the world’s defilements 
 and dangers, and still is not diametrically different from 
 it. But “truly,” as Professor Doumergue queries, with a 
 Frenchman’s keen and pertinent logic, “‘is it not an abuse 
 of language to speak thus of asceticism?’ It would be 
 almost as reasonable to confound west with east, morning 
 with night, June with December. So, having listened to 
 Ritschl and Loofs and Tréltsch, we are compelled to dissent 
 from their finding, and to cling to our older notion that 
 Calvin and the medizvalists belong to opposing camps, and 
 are not to be reconciled except through some sheer per- 
 version of thought and utterance. 
 
 At Calvin’s endeavour to inaugurate the reign of God 
 in Geneva we are to look now. 
 
 Let us picture to ourselves a pleasant and bustling 
 city, with some thirteen thousand permanent residents. 
 It has always been a difficult community to govern, for its 
 burghers are a stormy and independent race. Lately 
 they have thrown off the yoke of the Dukes of Savoy, and 
 of their own Prince-Bishop, Pierre de la Baume, who has 
 shown himself too much of a Savoyard in his sympathies. 
 Led by William Farel, that burning and daring and homely 
 and forceful preacher of the Cross of Christ, they have 
 avowed themselves on the side of the Reformation, and 
 have taken the motto which they are to make famous in 
 subsequent years, Post tenebras Lux. These are the 
 dramatic events of August 1535, when Calvin, in Basel, 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 173 
 
 is finishing his letter to Francis I., with which the Institutes 
 is to be prefaced. 
 
 And how are the civic affairs controlled and directed 
 now? There is an Assembly of the townsfolk, the 
 Conseil Général, which meets whenever some special 
 emergency demands its intervention, but whose inalien- 
 able prerogative is to appoint every year the four Syndics, 
 as the principal magistrates are called. Add to these 
 four the Syndics of the previous twelvemonth, and a 
 certain number of Councillors selected by the magistrates 
 in office, and you have the Little Council; ultimately 
 it consists of twenty-five members; it is the inner and 
 aristocratic, deliberative, and executive body, which 
 probably is most influential in guiding the city’s policy 
 and practice. Outside of it is the Council of Sixty, and 
 the Sixty have been chosen by the Little Council. Outside 
 of this again, and quite recently formed after the pattern 
 that has been set by Bern, is a larger Council of Two 
 Hundred; those who sit on its benches have been selected 
 also by the Little Council ; and gradually it tends to absorb 
 most of the functions and duties of the Sixty. 
 
 The four Syndics, the Little Council, the Sixty, and the» 
 Two Hundred: that is the machinery of government in | 
 Geneva. And very jealous the City Fathers are of their 
 privileges and rights. The town, with its Conseil Général, 
 may in theory be a democratic republic ; but its interests 
 and its doings are managed by an oligarchy, which is 
 singularly determined to haveitsown way. Times without 
 number Calvin will discover this determination to his cost. 
 
 And about the citizens? In the sixteenth century 
 they were a cosmopolitan rather than a simple people. 
 Geneva was a centre of trade, where Frenchmen, Germans, 
 

 
 174 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 and Italians met and mingled, and where many of them 
 found a profitable and comfortable home. Its commerce 
 made it wealthy. Its burgesses were alert and ambitious, 
 sagacious and successful. They were lovers of liberty, 
 and meant, if they could, to retain and to develop that 
 freedom which they had already won. They were lovers, 
 too, of amusement and pleasure. “At their worst,” says 
 Professor H. D. Foster, “they were noisy, riotous, and 
 revolutionary ; fond of processions and ‘ mummeries’ 
 not always respectable or safe, of gambling, immorality, 
 and loose songs and dances ; possibly not over-scrupulous 
 at a bargain; and very self-assertive and obstinate. At 
 their best, they were grave, shrewd, business-like states- 
 men, working slowly but surely, with keen knowledge of 
 politics and human nature; with able leaders, ready to 
 devote time and money to public progress; and with a 
 pretty intelligent, though less judicious, following.” 
 
 A deft and adroit people, but a people headstrong and 
 wilful ; it will be no child’s play to educate and Christianise 
 them. Their unworthy traits, their excesses, are due in 
 considerable measure to the bad training they have 
 received from their clergy; historians are agreed that the 
 Roman Catholic priesthood in Geneva had been woefully 
 lax in character and lamentably deficient in vitality and 
 resolution, a priesthood both wicked and weak. We begin 
 to understand the problem which Geneva will present 
 to one who is anxious above all things that God’s name 
 should be hallowed, that His kingdom should come, and 
 that His will should be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
 
 It was the compulsion of divine Providence, disclosed 
 and announced by a violent man who would brook no 
 denial, which made Calvin a citizen of the town. When 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 175 
 
 the Institutes was completed and published, he had gone, 
 with his friend Du Tillet, on a brief visit to the court of 
 Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, a lady whose leanings, like those 
 of her cousin, Marguerite of Angouléme, were towards 
 Protestantism, although the pity was that she remained 
 among those whom Calvin was accustomed to call Nico- 
 demites—disciples who came under cover of darkness to 
 the Lord, and did not affirm their convictions openly in 
 the light of day. 
 
 Then, for a little, he ventured back to Paris, where he 
 had family business to transact. And then, travelling by a 
 circuitous route to Strassburg, because the direct road was 
 barred by war, he found himself, late in the July of 1536, 
 as he thought, for a single night, in Geneva. For a single 
 night !—with the exception of three and a half years of 
 banishment, this was to be his home, until, on Saturday, 
 27th May 1564, about eight in the evening, he left the 
 battles of the earth behind him for ever. 
 
 Man proposes but God disposes. And God’s mouthpiece 
 was that fiery William Farel, who saw in the young French- 
 man the very helper whom he needed to succour him in 
 the arduous enterprise of gospellising and regenerating 
 the city. In the Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, 
 a Preface which has already illuminated for us its author’s 
 history, Calvin narrates the unexpected and undesired 
 happening. “ Farel kept me at Geneva,” he says, “ not 
 so much by advice and entreaty as by a dreadful adjura- 
 tion, as if God had stretched forth His hand upon me from 
 on high to arrest me.’’ Of all men who have stood among 
 His servants and sons, Calvin was the least likely to resist 
 God’s hand, even although it detained and imprisoned him 
 where his human heart had no wish to be. 
 

 
 176 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 His life in Geneva falls into two unequal parts. At 
 the outset, there is the short period extending from July 
 in 1536 to April in 1538—the period to which Emile 
 Doumergue, most enthusiastic and untiring of annalists, 
 gives the title of Les Premiers Essats, ‘‘ The First Attempts,” 
 and the record of which fills the whole second volume of his 
 monumental biography. It was terminated by the ex- 
 pulsion of Calvin and his colleagues, Farel and Elie Coraut, 
 —Coraut, whose eyes were blind but whose speech was as 
 memorable and as eloquent as Nestor’s. The preachers 
 had asserted too emphatically the Church’s powers of 
 discipline, and had manifested too plainly their wholesome 
 zeal for civic purity ; and the pride of the Little Council 
 was wounded, and, although Bern made intercession for 
 the accused and evil-entreated men, the Council would not 
 relent, but drove out from its gates those of whom it was not 
 worthy. 
 
 Calvin went to Strassburg. There, as minister of the 
 French congregation, and in daily intercourse with Martin 
 Bucer, he spent three happy and fruitful years. There, 
 too, the Reformers of Germany learned to know him 
 and to hold him in highest esteem, and none more so 
 than Philip Melanchthon, who cast his own doubts and 
 troubles on his friend’s more firm-set faith and more fearless 
 courage. 
 
 But he was not long away, until Geneva realised into 
 what poverties she had plunged herself by her wrong- 
 doing. Things went more and more amiss without that 
 steady hand on the helm of affairs. Soon she summoned 
 him back. He was unwilling to return. He never forgot 
 the threats and hazards which had preceded his exile: 
 the bullies who had said that they would throw him into 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 177 
 
 the Rhone; the lewd fellows of the baser sort who sang 
 ribald songs under his windows; the shots fired before 
 his door, more than fifty in one night. Those were the 
 recollections which kindled repugnance whenever Geneva 
 rose before his mind. But again God’s finger pointed ; 
 and again, at the sacrifice of his own inclinations, he obeyed. 
 In September 1541 he re-entered the city. 
 
 The second section of his life within its walls began. It 
 lasted for more than two-and-twenty years; until, when we 
 think of Calvin, we think of Geneva also; the personality 
 and the place, the actor and the stage, are inextricably twined 
 together ; the Institutes and Geneva constitute Calvin’s 
 monumentum ere perennius. Was he more victorious in 
 this second sojourn ? Not immediately ; not for many a 
 day. He was no sooner settled in the house which the 
 repentant municipality gave him than he renewed the 
 struggle ; he was as persevering as he was clear-sighted 
 and brave. But the tides of the campaign ebbed as well 
 as flowed ; occasionally the ebb went so far, and the forces 
 of reaction were so strong, that Calvin came near being 
 banished anew. It made no difference to his purpose ; 
 he was one of those righteous men with clean hands who 
 hold on their way, whether the wind blows from the soft 
 south or the bleakest north. 
 
 At length he had the reward of his constancy. The 
 last nine years, from 1555 to 1564, were years of con- 
 spicuous triumph. There might still be tares among 
 God’s golden and precious wheat; but the tares did 
 not flaunt their presence any more. The Diabolonians 
 might lurk in the corners of Mansoul; but the flag of 
 Prince Emmanuel flew from the citadel. Geneva, once 
 
 ' so gay, so proud, so confident of itself, was transmuted 
 I2 
 

 
 178 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 into a theocracy, a kingdom over which God was Law- 
 giver and Lord. ‘‘ The most perfect school of Christ 
 that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles ’’— 
 thus from the inside, John Knox described it, when he 
 wrote in December 1556 to Mrs. Anna Lock. And when, 
 after his death, the members of the Little Council, formerly 
 so recalcitrant under his authority, sought to portray John 
 Calvin, this was the sentence, the satisfying epitaph, which 
 
 \ they inscribed in their minute-book, ‘God gave him a 
 character of great majesty.” He had not carried his 
 cross, he had not wrought his work, in vain. 
 
 Three times over, he set down in writing his concep- 
 tions of what Church and State ought to be. First there 
 were the Avticles of January 1537, the Articuli de Regimine 
 Ecclesia, the young man’s scheme for the rectification 
 and ennoblement of the Christian society. Next, in the 
 autumn of 1541, almost as soon as he was back in the vexa- 
 tious and rebellious town, there were the famous Ordon- 
 nances Eccléstastiques de l’Eglise de Genéve. Twenty years 
 later, in 1561, there were the revised Ovdonnances. This 
 last need not detain us. Here and there are alterations 
 and amendments ; something is expanded, or something 
 is rendered more explicit ; but in substance the rescension 
 of 1561 repeats what has been recommended or enacted 
 previously. It will be enough, therefore, if we glance at 
 the Avticles of 1537 and at the Ordonnances of 1541. 
 
 The earlier of the documents is short. It treats of 
 only a few subjects : the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper ; 
 the singing of the congregation in public worship; the 
 religious education of the young; the marriage tie and 
 union. This last, the law of husband and wife, had been 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 179 
 
 obscured and misrepresented contre toute rayson by the 
 decrees of the Papacy ; it were well that the Councillors 
 of Geneva, in conjunction with the ministers of the Church, 
 should study the whole topic, and should frame some rules 
 in accordance with the Word of God. 
 
 For the children of the city there ought to be prepared a 
 brief and easy outline of the Christian faith, a Catechism 
 such as that which Calvin provided for them without further 
 delay ; and, at certain seasons of the year, they ought to be 
 gathered before the ministers to be questioned and examined, 
 and to have the facts and doctrines of the Evangel explained 
 more fully : might it please the Council to order parents to 
 exercise care and diligence for these ends ? The singing of 
 Psalms by the congregation should be part of public wor- 
 ship, for in such frank and united prayers and praises God 
 has much delight ; it would be wise, therefore, to have the 
 young trained in those grave, sweet melodies, the older 
 people ‘‘ following with the heart what is sung by the 
 mouth,” until, through frequent listening, they have 
 learned themselves to lift up their voices harmoniously 
 and skilfully. 
 
 But the strength of the Aviicles lies in their discussion 
 of their initial theme, the right observance of the sacra- 
 ment of the Supper. ‘“‘ Nous trés-honnorés Seigneurs,’”’ 
 the old French runs, “Il est certain que une esglise 
 ne peut estre dicte bien ordonnée et reiglée synon en 
 laquelle la Saincte Céne de Nostre Seigneur est souvente- 
 foys célébrée et frequentée.” If things had been as he 
 desired, Calvin would have proposed the keeping of the 
 Holy Feast every Lord’s Day: that was the goal which 
 he set in front of him, and which, he hoped, would ere long 
 be attained; but meanwhile, “‘ because the weakness of 
 

 
 180 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 the people is such that there is danger of this most excellent 
 mystery being despised if it become common,” he advises 
 that it be observed once in each month. Now in the 
 Church of St. Pierre, and next in that of St. Gervais, and 
 then in that of de Rive, the three Protestant temples of 
 Geneva, let the Communion of the Lord’s body and blood 
 be solemnised statedly and reverently. But let all the 
 citizens be expected to take part month after month in the 
 sacred rite, and not those alone who reside in the neighbour- 
 hood of the particular place of celebration: the table is 
 not spread for sections and classes, it is meant for every 
 disciple and servant of Christ. 
 
 But now Calvin turns to what is central, critical, 
 crucial in the Avticles. Some might offer themselves for 
 Communion, “qui se declairent et manifestent par leur 
 meschante et juique vie nappertenir nullement a Jesus ”’ 
 —men whose presence would soil and contaminate the 
 blessed Supper. Such a sacrilege and profanation, such 
 a tragedy, must not be permitted. To guard against it, 
 and to conserve the purity of His fold and family, 
 Christ has armed His Church with the discipline de Vexcom- 
 munication: she may exclude open and contumacious 
 offenders from her company; she may reject their claim 
 to have a share in her fellowship. It is a weapon, of 
 course, to be employed sparingly, and never to be wielded 
 until after searching inquiry has been made. 
 
 Calvin considers that the best plan will be for the Coun- 
 cillors to appoint “‘ certaynes personnes de bonne vie et de 
 bon tesmoignage entre tous des fidéles,’’ Christians of incor- 
 ruptible constancy whom neither force nor fawning can 
 unpin. These are to~be resident in various parts of the 
 town. They are to be watchmen over the words and deeds 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 18] 
 
 of their neighbours. They are to inform the ministers of 
 all who despise Christ Jesus by indulgence in flagrant and 
 defiant sin. The ministers will forbid the delinquents to 
 come to the Lord’s Table. And if, after the admonition 
 and the veto, it is apparent “‘ that they wish to persevere 
 in hardness of heart,’’ then it is time to excommunicate 
 them—to shut them outside the royal and priestly house- 
 hold of the Church. 
 
 Now, to the civic powers in Geneva, this was the rock 
 of offence and the root of bitterness in the Articles. There 
 were other things which they did not like. They negatived 
 Calvin’s recommendation of a monthly celebration of the 
 Sacrament; on the back of his parchment they wrote, 
 “La Céne demeure a quattre fois l’année.”’ But still less 
 were they willing to approve his declaration that to the 
 membership and ministry of the Church belonged the 
 authority to exercise discipline and to pronounce excom- 
 munication. They wanted to retain that authority for 
 the municipality, for the State; where, no doubt, they 
 would have used it far more lazily and leniently than a 
 body of Calvinistic puritans would. 
 
 The Genevan magistrates of 1537 were stiff and 
 dogmatic Erastians, if one may be pardoned the anachron- 
 ism of talking about Erastians, when Thomas Erastus 
 was himself a boy of thirteen, and had not dreamed yet 
 of those seventy-five theses in which he was to contend 
 that the sins of professing Christians are to be punished 
 by the civil ruler with civil penalties, but not by pastors 
 and elders, whose work is to teach and exhort and con- 
 vince and persuade, but never to inflict deprivations and 
 disabilities and pains. 
 
 Calvin, on the contrary, was fighting for the doctrine 
 

 
 182 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 which, in the next century, and in the debates of the West- 
 minster Assembly, George Gillespie and Samuel Rutherfurd 
 grappled to their souls—the doctrine that “‘the Lord Jesus, 
 as King and Head of His Church, hath therein appointed a 
 government, in the hand of Church officers, distinct from 
 the civil magistrate.” He had unfurled the banner of 
 Spiritual Independence. We commence to see the width 
 and the depth of the differences which divide him from 
 the Little Council. 
 
 They bade him leave their city by and by, ostensibly 
 on other grounds, but really with this grudge against him 
 in their hearts. Then they discovered that they could 
 not do without him; and, abjuring his own predilection, 
 for Christ’s sake and theirs, he came to them again. The 
 very day on which he rode into Geneva—13th September 
 1541—they asked him to frame a Constitution for the 
 Church. His brothers in the ministry, and six members 
 from the Council, were associated with him in the task; 
 but his was the active brain, and his the rapid pen. In 
 twenty days the work was done. But it had to be sub- 
 mitted in succession to the Little Council, the Sixty, and 
 the Two Hundred. There was opposition still; it would 
 be too much to expect those tough contestants to give 
 way at once. But by the 25th of November the revisal 
 was finished, and Calvin was grateful that comparatively 
 little had been changed. The result was the Ecclesiastical 
 Ordinances of Geneva. The Ordinances are more elaborate 
 and more precise than the Avticles of 1537. 
 
 “There are four offices which Our Lord has instituted 
 for the government of His Church ’’—it is their intro- 
 ductory sentence ;—‘‘ premiérement, les pasteurs; puis, 
 les docteurs ; aprés, les anciens ; quartement, les diacres : 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 183 
 
 ministers, teachers, elders, deacons.’’ Calvin proceeds 
 to pass each of the offices in review. 
 
 He has often been taunted with the severity, the 
 mtkrologia, of his legislation for the Church’s members ; 
 those who bring the indictment ought at least to remember 
 that he is as exacting in his demands of the Church’s 
 ministers. Their election is to be preceded by an examina- 
 tion as to doctrine and life ; they must approve themselves 
 to the preachers who choose them ; and the Council made 
 haste to add that the choice must in each case seem expedi- 
 ent toitself. Calvin is certain that the impressive primitive 
 fashion of the laying on of hands at ordination is the proper 
 and fitting one ; but he admits that, meantime, it had best 
 be forborne lest it should tend to foster superstition. 
 
 Once every week the ministers of the town, and as 
 many as can attend from the villages round, are to meet 
 for discussion and elucidation of the Scriptuies; this 
 Friday colloquy is known soon as the Congregation ; and 
 many of the people resort to it, to hearken and to learn. 
 But, at intervals of three months, there is a gathering 
 even more momentous. The Vénérable Compagnie, as 
 the collective body of the preachers is styled, assembles 
 for self-examination, for the scrutiny and the correction 
 of what is blameworthy in demeanour and conduct within 
 its own ranks, for fraternal admonition, and, it may be, for 
 something sterner than admonition. 
 
 Two catalogues are supplied of things ugly and unseemly 
 in those who minister at God’s altar and in His sanctuary. 
 The first is of darker crimes; it starts from Heresy, and 
 Schism, and Rebellion against ecclesiastical order, and 
 Blasphemy that is open and deserving of civil punishment, 
 and travels on through other unlovely sins, till it closes with 
 
184 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Games forbidden by the laws, and Dances, with such-like 
 Follies. The second list is of faults not so scandalous but 
 still altogether reprehensible: any strange mode of ex- 
 pounding the Bible; any too curious search into vain 
 questions ; the forgetfulness of study and of the reading of 
 God’s Word; the failure to reprove vice, and the love of 
 flattery ; talk that is foolish, and talk that wounds and 
 rankles ; rashness, greediness, unbridled anger, a mode 
 of dress, or a telling of stories, out of keeping with the 
 seriousness and the dignity of the envoys of Christ. They 
 must be clean who bear the vessels of the Lord. And 
 it was an ample and a delicate enterprise which the 
 Venerable Company was instructed to discharge. 
 
 We need not linger over what Calvin says about the 
 teacher. To him there was no more essential and no more 
 honourable servant alike of the State and of the Church 
 than the “learned and expert man” who educated the 
 young, not merely in “sound doctrine from the Old and 
 New Testaments,’ but in “the languages and worldly 
 sciences.’ He was regarded as a member of the ministry, 
 and was installed on ministerial approval; ay, supple- 
 mented that vigilant and suspicious Little Council, “‘ and 
 after he has been presented to the government and ex- 
 amined by two of the magistrates.” 
 
 Nor is it necessary to pause over the account of the 
 deacon’s office and duty. The relief of the poor and the 
 supervision of the city hospital, the tendence of the old 
 and the infirm and the widow and the orphan, the sup- 
 pression of mendicancy: these are his cares. He, too, 
 must be selected and set apart with as much wisdom as the 
 teacher is. He, too, must feel that a high and religious 
 trust is committed to him. 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 185 
 
 But no paragraphs of the Ovdonnances are so important 
 as those which deal with the functions of the elders. In 
 his delineation of what they are to do and to be, Calvin 
 gets to the very heart of his ecclesiastical polity. To the 
 elders belongs the grave responsibility, the indispensable 
 task, of discipline. They are the watchmen set on the 
 walls of Zion, to observe, to regulate and, if there is cause 
 for it, to reprove and condemn what takes place within its 
 streets, its markets, and its houses. They shall acquaint 
 themselves with the life of each individual. They shall 
 expostulate with all meekness and affection with those 
 whom they see to be wayward and sinful. When conscience 
 drives them to it, they shall report to that Assembly which 
 is appointed for the correction of the offending and the evil. 
 
 And this Assembly, how is it composed? It is the 
 Consistoive, the Consistory of Geneva. The twelve elders 
 are init ; and they have been chosen by the Little Council, 
 after consultation first with the ministers and afterwards 
 with the Two Hundred. But in addition, the ministers 
 of the city themselves are in it, sometimes four in number, 
 sometimes as many as twelve. It meets every Thursday ; 
 and one of the Syndics is its president. Calvin is notin the 
 chair, except on those rare occasions when the magistrate 
 is absent ; but who can doubt that he is the power behind 
 the throne, and that his is the voice which carries decisive 
 and conclusive weight ? Of errors in belief as well as of 
 aberrations in life the Consistory takes cognizance ; but 
 its continual desire is that its warnings and punishments 
 “shall be naught but medicines to bring back sinners to 
 Our Lord.” 
 
 And how far in the way of discipline may this 
 churchly tribunal journey? There we are on the old 
 

 
 186 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 ground of quarrel; and there the city governors are 
 reluctant still to abate any of their pretensions. But 
 Calvin is resolved that the truth of spiritual independence 
 shall at least be formulated in definite words, even if he 
 should find it hard to translate the formula into historical 
 fact. So this is the decree of the Orvdonnances: “ That 
 all shall be done in such fashion that the ministers shall 
 have no civil jurisdiction and shall use none but the spiritual 
 sword of the Word of God as Saint Paul directs them ; 
 and that the authority of the government and of ordinary 
 justice shall in no way be diminished by the Consistory, 
 but that civil authority shall remain unimpaired. And, in 
 particular, where it shall be necessary to make some 
 punishment, or constrain the parties, the ministers with 
 the Consistory, having heard the parties and made re- 
 monstrances and admonitions as shall be fitting, shall report 
 all to the Council, which shall deliberate and order and 
 render judgment according to the merits of the case.”’ 
 
 Church and State, each has its sphere and each is under 
 obligation to Christ. The Church’s power of discipline 
 reaches to the point of excommunication; if something 
 yet more punitive and drastic is required, then, but not 
 till then, is the moment for the State to step in and do 
 its part. Calvin’s faculty of discrimination is unerring 
 and clear. 
 
 That is the millennial reign, the monarchy of God and 
 the saints, which Calvin laboured to establish in Geneva. 
 The ideal surely was gracious and sublime, even if we may 
 question some of the methods adopted to attain it. Men 
 have stigmatised the practical mystic who was its author 
 as a “pope,” a “ khalif,” a ‘“tyrant.’”’ But one recalls 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 187 
 
 that “‘tyrant of the Chersonese,’’ who was ‘“‘ freedom’s 
 friend ’’; and it was a master of the type of Miltiades, 
 one opines, whom Geneva needed. A town so difficult 
 and so fractious could hardly have been led to the balanced 
 and enlightened and heroic freedom which was ultimately 
 its glory except along the path of restrictions, limitations, 
 scrupulosities, denials. The law which Calvin administered 
 with strict and inexorable rectitude was its pedagogue 
 to conduct it to the liberty of Christ. And there are some 
 other considerations which should not be forgotten. 
 
 We have said that there was nothing monkish and 
 ascetic in the piety which devised the Ordonnances. But in 
 so far as they prescribed a meticulous and unwarrantable 
 vigilance over individual men and women and their private 
 affairs, they can scarcely be said to be Calvin’s own. He 
 might plant in their heart the motive of religion ; but the 
 scrutiny which they enacted had been in operation before 
 his time. 
 
 It is easy to declaim against the impertinence and 
 the despotism of a Consistory which rebuked one culprit 
 for possessing a copy of the Golden Legend, and another 
 for declaring the Pope to be a good man, and a third 
 for laughing during the sermon, a woman of seventy for 
 proposing to marry a stripling of twenty-five, a barber 
 for tonsuring a priest, a goldsmith for making a chalice. 
 We marvel at a little appendix to the Ordonnances, issued 
 in the November of 1546, which prohibited parents from 
 giving certain names in baptism to their children—names 
 suggestive of the old idolatry ; or those which pertain to 
 God and Christ ; or those that sound badly, as “ Gouin, 
 Mermet, Sermet, Allemande’”’; or those which are inept, 
 at whose absurdity people may mock, like ‘ Sepulchre, 
 

 
 188 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Croix, Typhaine, Nouel, Pasques, Pentecoste, Toussainct, 
 Dimanche, Chrestien.’’ To dislike and reject such designa- 
 tions might be eminently sensible ; but we feel as if it 
 were a hurt done to personal and family liberty to forbid 
 them by written decree. 
 
 Yet Calvin was not original in these particularities 
 and interferences. They had been a common feature in 
 municipal and magisterial government previous to his 
 day. Not a town of Switzerland or Germany but was 
 conservant already with similar stringencies. All that 
 he did was to adapt them to the atmosphere of the 
 Protestant Church, and to render them more religious 
 than they had once been. 
 
 Of course, we would not tolerate them in our ampler 
 and more unfettered age ; and we are disposed still less to 
 applaud the practice, pursued by Consistory and Council 
 alike, and by the man who prompted them both, of visiting 
 errors in faith as well as transgressions in conduct with 
 pains and penalties. Sebastien Castellio had to resign 
 his position as teacher of the school, and to leave Geneva 
 itself, because he doubted the inspiration of the Song of 
 Solomon. Jéréme Bolsec was banished for “ false opinions, 
 contrary to the Holy Scriptures, and the pure evangelical 
 truth.”” Michael Servetus, a man of distinct genius but of 
 overbearing temper, scornful of the orthodox beliefs, a 
 rationalist in his creed, who denied the pre-existence of 
 Christ and pronounced the doctrine of the Trinity ‘a sort 
 of three-headed Cerberus,’ was burned alive, by the order 
 of the Little Council, on an October day in 1553; and 
 Calvin believed that the execution was right, although he 
 would have wished for a swifter and kindlier manner of 
 death. “I hope the judgment will be capital in any 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 189 
 
 
 
 event,’ he wrote to Farel in August, “‘ but I desire cruelty 
 of punishment withheld.” 
 
 Those things are certainly abhorrent to us. But then 
 we ought to recollect that even the best and greatest man 
 cannot, in every detail of his faith and his life, rise above 
 the standards of his epoch. All Europe, in so far as it 
 was interested in religion, was convinced in that old 
 century that Servetus deserved to die. In Vienne, before 
 a Roman Catholic court, the same dread sentence had 
 gone forth against him which Geneva was subsequently to 
 carry into effect ; he avoided it only because he contrived 
 to escape from prison. Ere the tragedy was consummated 
 on the Hill of Champel, the Little Council sought the 
 advice of Bern, Basel, Ziirich, and Schaffhausen ; and they 
 answered without exception that the heretic ought to be 
 removed from the Churches. We are sorry that Calvin 
 did not surpass his contemporaries here, as he did so 
 royally elsewhere; but it may be that from the very 
 princes of the Chariot we make demands which occasionally 
 are Overweening and exorbitant. 
 
 One returns to that which undeniably is the new 
 element and the chief distinction in the Ovdonnances — 
 their definition of the right relations of Church and State, 
 and their unequivocal affirmation of the Church’s freedom 
 and power to keep itself pure and to guard and maintain 
 the honour of its Heavenly Lord. It was this which in- 
 volved Calvin in his long warfare with the Councillors of 
 Geneva, who wanted to dominate the spiritual no less than 
 the temporal realm. 
 
 He prevailed in the end, but not until the end: only in 
 the last nine years of his life was his contention undisputed 
 that the Church of Christ has the prerogative to excom- 
 

 
 199 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 municate the unworthy; only at last was his sway manifest 
 and complete. Even then he would not have succeeded 
 without the aid of those Protestant refugees from other 
 lands, many of them men of birth as well as men of 
 religion, who in their tribulations and persecutions had 
 found in Geneva an asylum and home. They were always 
 on Calvin’s side; and, when they were admitted to 
 citizenship, and became themselves members of the Two 
 Hundred or the Sixty or the Twenty-five, they secured his 
 triumph. Thus, at length, he demonstrated the rights of 
 the Church of Jesus Christ to keep its garments unspotted 
 and to purge and regulate its own house. 
 
 Well, but does not this prove him a child and heir of 
 Roman Catholicism, which has ever been keen to exalt and 
 magnify the Church? By no means. For, first, as the 
 Ordonnances have told us, he was quick to acknowledge 
 that the State has its proper sphere, and its peculiar and 
 essential service to render Christ; while Catholicism has 
 often been too ready to send the civil magistrate to 
 Canossa, and to degrade and humiliate him. And, next, 
 he based the Church’s discipline, not on its own inherent 
 wisdom and dignity, as the Papacy has been prone to do, 
 but on a stabler foundation, the Word of God, which is 
 the divine and perfect rule of faith and morals. Calvin 
 was Protestant to the core. 
 
 But frequently he is spoken of as if he were solely a 
 martinet and a precisian and therefore no better than the 
 Romanist with his traditions and penances and infallible 
 decrees. In the Memoir prefixed to Dr. A. W. Verrall’s 
 Literary Essays, a charming portico to a palace of delights, 
 it is related that Miss Jane Harrison once said to him, 
 

 
 CALVINISM IN ITS WORKS 191 
 
 apropos of some scholar from whom she differed, ‘‘ It is 
 intolerable that people should be allowed to go on talking 
 and teaching such nonsense !’’ He screwed up a whimsical 
 eye, and answered, “ All right, let’s have back the In- 
 quisition.”” There are those so flagrantly ignorant of 
 history that they enlarge Dr. Verrall’s retort—‘ The 
 Inquisition, or the Consistory.”’ 
 
 They have their best reply in the results and harvests 
 of Calvin’s regimen. He gave Geneva a trained and godly 
 ministry, qualified to lead her citizens in the ways of 
 knowledge, of righteousness, and of peace. ~He enriched 
 her with schools, over which he set the most illustrious 
 teachers of his generation, from whose classrooms a boy of 
 Geneva went forth to give a reason for his faith as ably as 
 “a doctor of the Sorbonne’”’; and behind and above the 
 schools he set a college, to which students flocked from all 
 countries—students who could reiterate Augustine’s cry, 
 “O Truth! Truth! thou knowest how the inmost marrow 
 of my soul longeth after thee!’’ He made the little city 
 by the side of the Lake the safe shelter for the oppressed of 
 many nationalities, and the strong citadel of the Reforma- 
 tion ; before the close of his life, six thousand refugees had 
 their dwelling within its walls; from its rest and refresh- 
 ment numbers of them went out to bear a brave witness 
 for Christ and to suffer martrydom for His name; until it 
 has been written of Calvin’s Geneva that it was “‘ a Garden 
 of the Lord where blood-red roses grew.”’ 
 
 When we remember that the man who accomplished 
 all this was physically weak, and was seldom free from one 
 ailment or another; when we think that he died com- 
 paratively young, at Jonathan Edwards’s age of fifty-five ; 
 when we realise that he bated not a jot of heart or hope— 
 
 i 
 ¥ 
 

 
 192 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 that he kept his loyalty, his love, his zeal—that he steered 
 right onward, although he was surrounded by innumerable 
 false friends—it will be strange if ours is not the panegyric 
 of the Little Council, ‘God gave him a character of 
 great majesty.” 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 
 
 WILLIAM TINDALE AND THE ENGLISH “NEW TESTAMENT” 
 
 BS 
 
5 At 
 Ger y ve pr.’ 
 
 Mare hetnns 
 
 “a Any 
 hi Pasa in 
 
 ae 
 
 NA ae 
 Aas * i, ie abe 
 Oe rer k (t, ie ‘arpty ty 
 
 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 
 
 WILLIAM TINDALE AND THE ENGLISH “* NEW TESTAMENT ” 
 
 R. LOWELL says of the classic literature of ancient 
 Greece: “It is as contemporary with to-day as 
 with the ears it first enraptured ; for it appeals not to the 
 man of then or now, but to the entire round of human 
 nature itself.” The words are as true in substance as 
 they are suggestively and eloquently phrased. Homer 
 and Plato have a life beyond life. They “ generate still,”’ 
 as Francis Bacon expresses it, “and cast their seeds in 
 the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions 
 and opinions in succeeding ages.”’ 
 
 But there is another literature which can claim, more 
 unmistakably still, this immortal and universal quality 
 —which, even more certainly, appeals not to the man 
 of then or now, but to the entire round of human 
 nature itself. It is the sacred literature that is 
 enshrined within the Bible. Sometimes, one is glad 
 to see, its pre-eminence has been acknowledged by those 
 who are most at home among the master minds of Greece. 
 So Professor Butcher, for example, has written of the 
 Bible, that it is “‘a vital growth ”’ which “‘has nourished 
 the spiritual life of successive generations.” “It is 
 the one book,” he declares, ‘“‘ which appears to have the 
 capacity of eternal self-adjustment, of uninterrupted 
 
 29 
 

 
 196 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 correspondence with an ever-shifting and ever-widening 
 environment.” Athens is invested neither with such an 
 undying youth nor with such a world-wide message as 
 Bethlehem and Calvary and Olivet. 
 
 It is to the honour of Protestantism that, wherever 
 she has established herself in life and power, her children 
 have been eager for the translation and diffusion of the 
 Bible. It has been their-desire and their labour to tell the 
 peoples in their own tongues the wonderful works of God. 
 Romanism can scarcely make that boast. Occasionally, 
 greatly daring, she has ventured indeed to make it. Father 
 Gasquet is one of the most ingenious and forcible of her 
 recent defenders. In his volume on The Old English Bible, 
 he has a theory of his own about the versions of God’s 
 Book which historians have usually ascribed to John 
 Wyclif and the Lollards. They had a very different 
 authorship, he maintains. They were not heretical; they 
 were Catholic and orthodox. If ever there was any trans- 
 lation due to Wyclif and Nicholas of Hereford and John 
 Purvey, it has long since completely disappeared; it 
 never had much vogue ; those manuscripts of the fourteenth 
 century which in whole or in part have descended to our 
 times, and they are nearly two hundred in number, we 
 owe to the zeal and activity of the medizval Church in 
 scattering the Scriptures, in the vernacular of the English 
 folk, among all ranks and conditions of the people. 
 
 One would fain give the hierarchy of that distant period 
 credit for such enthusiastic devotion to the enlightenment 
 and evangelisation of the country ; but the consistent record 
 of their purposes and methods unfortunately discourages 
 the entertainment of the idea. They have almost in- 
 variably left it to the heretics to spread broadcast the 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 197 
 
 Word of grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ ; 
 and they have been strangely apt to scold and persecute 
 and imprison and kill the heretics for spreading it. Father 
 Gasquet’s contention is like Balaklava: it is magnificent, 
 but it is not war. 
 
 A hundred years after John Wyclif died, Wiliam 
 Tindale was born. Let us look first into the face of the 
 man himself, and then let us turn to his most characteristic 
 and abiding piece of work. There can be no doubt that, 
 in the judgment of the dominant Church of his day, he 
 was a heretic. There can be as little doubt that, in the 
 judgment of all saints, whatever may be their Church 
 connection and designation among men, he is a hero of the 
 most veracious and radiant sort. ‘“‘‘ Heroic,’”’ says his 
 best English biographer, ‘‘is the appropriate epithet for 
 the character of Tindale, and ‘ heroic’ in the noblest and 
 highest sense of that somewhat misused word.” 
 
 His was not the fortitude which flames up in a supreme 
 moment to an extraordinary height, and which stirs an in- 
 stinctive surprise in all who witness it or hearken to the 
 tale of what it has risked and what it has done. It was the 
 finer fortitude which sees from afar the end it must attain, 
 and which journeys towards this predestined end over every 
 hindrance and through many difficult months. Tindale 
 was absolutely simple, earnest, unselfish, truth-loving. 
 He was patient to a degree. He did not falter or flinch 
 until the task was finished which he had prepared his mind 
 and inured his heart to do. This is the courage most to be 
 envied. This is heroism in the noblest and highest sense. 
 
 The details which are known of his life are comparatively 
 few. That which binds his history into a golden unity is 
 

 
 198 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 the master-passion running through it from first to last 
 to render into the speech of his countrymen the New 
 Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Both 
 the place and the date of his birth are uncertain. The 
 place was Gloucestershire ; it may have been the village of 
 Slymbridge. In the Dictionary of National Biography, 
 the date is given as lying somewhere between 1490 and 
 1495; and Robert Demaus, whose book is so scholarly 
 and thorough as well as so entrancing and satisfying, 
 arrives at the same conclusion ; but in Hastings’ Dictionary 
 of the Bible, Dr. J. H. Lupton travels back for a whole 
 decade, and thinks that the time may have been 1483, 
 the very year in which Luther was born at Eisleben. 
 
 First in Oxford, where old John Foxe tells us that he was 
 “from a child,” and next in Cambridge, Tindale got the 
 beginnings of his education—the beginnings, for, like that 
 historian who is buried at Mentone, he “ died learning.’”’ As 
 a boy in Oxford, he may have seen John Colet, who helped 
 to introduce the Reformation into England; as a young 
 man in Cambridge, he may have got his earliest lessons in 
 Greek from Desiderius Erasmus. About 1521 he left the 
 College Halls to face the discipline of life, and to take full 
 advantage of its opportunities. 
 
 We may trace his later course by remarking the various 
 dangers that he met, and some of the antagonists who 
 confronted and opposed him. They were all connected, 
 more or less intimately, with that settled and unchangeable 
 resolution of his to put the Bible into the tongue of the 
 common people. 
 
 At the start, then, we find him back in his native 
 county of Gloucester, tutor in the family of Sir John 
 Walsh, at his manor-house of Little Sodbury. But the 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 199 
 
 children are young, and he is chaplain more than tutor. 
 It is an office for which he is well fitted, not only because 
 he had been ordained and admitted to orders, but for a 
 deeper reason. At Cambridge he had been advancing in 
 other things than Latin and Greek; he was “ripened,” 
 Foxe says, ‘in the knowledge of God’s Word.” His own 
 study of Scripture had been prospered by the Spirit, the 
 Paraclete Who guides into all truth; and there was a 
 friend and fellow-student who would help him too, young 
 Thomas Bilney, who had suffered many things at the hands 
 of many physicians, and was nothing bettered but rather 
 grew worse, until he “had heard speak of Jesus,’’ and 
 forthwith knew in himself that he was healed of his plague. 
 
 By one agency and by another, Tindale has already 
 been led across the boundary-line from the natural life to 
 the supernatural and heavenly, and he hungers and thirsts 
 to point others in the same direction. He is blunt and 
 plain-spoken, we read; and there is need that he should 
 be. For Gloucestershire is the hardest of spiritual soils, 
 and its ecclesiastics are perverse in their attachment to 
 the old ignorance. From 1512, when Sylvester de Giglis 
 returned to Rome, to 1535, when Hugh Latimer was 
 consecrated Bishop of Worcester, there was no super- 
 intendent of religion himself resident in the diocese ; 
 the see was held, and its revenues were drawn, by Italians, 
 one of whom was soon to be Pope Clement the Seventh ; in 
 this era of slack and easy-going absenteeism, the home- 
 born priests did what was right in their own eyes. 
 
 So Tindale is often in argument and in conflict with 
 them. At length, after he has silenced them by translating 
 into English the Enchiridion Militis Christiant, Erasmus’s 
 Manual of a Christian Knight, and after he has commenced 
 

 
 200 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 to preach not merely in Sir John Walsh’s chapel but 
 publicly and, as they assert, in an irregular manner in the 
 village greens round Little Sodbury, they carry their 
 complaints of him to Dr. Parker, the Bishop’s Chancellor, 
 a man whose hostility to innovation is notorious and relent- 
 less. He ‘“‘reviled me, and rated me as though I had 
 been a dog,” Tindale reports. 
 
 It is growing clearer. to him that he must remove 
 from western England. But he does not go until he has 
 revealed his cherished secret. Communing with “a 
 certain learned man” who affirmed, “‘It were better 
 that we should be without God’s laws than without 
 the Pope’s,” he replies, ‘I defy the Pope and all his 
 laws”’; and he has this prediction to make, “‘ If God spare 
 my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth 
 the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou 
 doest.’’ Therein he echoes his master Erasmus, who had 
 already penned some memorable words, “I wish that 
 the husbandman may sing parts of the Gospel and the 
 Epistles of St. Paul at his plough, that the weaver may 
 warble them at his shuttle, that the traveller may with 
 their narratives beguile the toilsomeness of the road.” 
 But Tindale was built of oak and triple brass to a degree 
 which Erasmus was not. 
 
 He went to London, armed with a letter from his 
 patron to Sir Harry Guildford, the Controller of the Royal 
 Household. He hoped that Cuthbert Tunstall, lately 
 appointed Bishop, would sympathise with the purpose to 
 which he had consecrated his days and nights. Tunstall, 
 “a man, doubtless, out of all comparison,’ as his friend, 
 Sir Thomas More, said, was interested in the treasures of 
 learning which the Renaissance had begun to communicate 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 201 
 
 to Europe ; and if, as it has been put, “‘ Greece rose from 
 the grave with the New Testament in her hand,” would he 
 not have kindly looks and words and gifts for one who 
 proposed to interpret the Greek Testament to the English 
 race ? 
 
 But he had not. It was a long while before Tindale 
 managed to secure an interview with him, and then his 
 reception was frigid and disheartening. He had brought 
 a translation of Isocrates to prove that he was not incom- 
 petent for his mighty enterprise. But, as he wrote to that 
 brother of his soul, John Frith, he was “ evil-favoured in 
 this world and without grace in the sight of men, speechless 
 and rude, dull and slow-witted’’; and the diplomat and 
 statesman, “right, meet, and convenient to entertain 
 ambassadors and other noble strangers,”’ had not the wit 
 to perceive the diamond under the dross. He was “a 
 still Saturn ”’ to Tindale, seldom speaking, but walking 
 up and down musing, “a ducking hypocrite made to 
 dissemble.”” Tunstall was unresponsive from the first, 
 and ere long would be an open enemy. 
 
 Under the roof of Humphrey Monmouth, who had liked 
 him from the hour he heard him preach in St. Dunstan’s- 
 in-the-West—Monmouth, the generous and open-minded 
 merchant, whose house wise men loved, and ‘“‘ the true word 
 of welcome was spoken in the door ’”—Tindale spent some 
 time. “‘ He lived as a good priest as methought,”’ his host 
 said, when Wolsey examined him about it afterwards ; “he 
 studied most part of the day and of the night at his book ; 
 and he would eat but sodden meat by his goodwill, and 
 drink but small single beer.” Yet his disappointment 
 with Tunstall continued to vex him sorely. ‘I saw,’ he 
 owned sorrowfully at a later period, in his Preface to the 
 

 
 202 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Pentateuch, ‘‘ not only that there was no roome in my lorde 
 of London’s palace to translate the new testament, but also 
 that there was no place to do it in all englonde.”” Towards 
 the Continent his thoughts were directed now, and he set 
 sail for Hamburg in or about the May of 1524. During the 
 twelve years and a half of life which remained to him, he 
 was an exile. He never beheld his native land again. 
 
 The mists hang about the first months of his residence 
 in Germany. The probabilities are that he left Hamburg 
 soon for Wittenberg; the picture of Tindale learning 
 Luther’s great language through personal intercourse with 
 the Reformer himself is one that none of us will readily 
 part with. Certainly, from this time on, Luther fills the 
 place in his affection and in his teaching which Erasmus 
 had occupied formerly. Then he returned to Hamburg, 
 to receive one of those liberal and timely remittances of 
 money which Monmouth and other Englishmen with 
 Protestant convictions never failed to send him, and by 
 the aid of which he was able to fulfil his costly under- 
 takings. 
 
 But as yet there was no printing-press in Hamburg; and 
 Tindale, accompanied by his amanuensis William Roye— 
 an ally of whom he was glad to be rid by and by, because 
 Roye had no faculty of silence and did not understand 
 how to hold his tongue—went on to Cologne. There in the 
 press of Peter Quentel, under the shadow of the Dom, 
 the printing of the New Testament began. The intention 
 was to throw off three thousand copies in small quarto. 
 But Matthew’s Gospel was not yet completed when, with 
 the suddenness of a bolt from the blue, an order from the 
 city authorities forbade the prosecution of the work and 
 confiscated the sheets already finished. Tindale and 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 203 
 
 Roye, snatching away what they could of the precious 
 pages, fled immediately to Worms. 
 
 What had happened? John Cochlaeus—John Dobenek 
 is his homelier German name—one of Luther’s most 
 persevering adversaries, was himself passing a book 
 through Quentel’s printing-house at this very time. 
 Whispers reached him, they could hardly avoid doing 
 so, of the “two English apostates’’ and their plans. 
 By a clever little conspiracy of his own he made assur- 
 ance sure. Then, “mentally distracted between fear 
 and wonder,’ he went to Hermann Rinck, a senator of 
 Cologne and a knight, well known both to the Emperor 
 and to the King of England, and disclosed to him the 
 whole affair. Thus the bolt fell. But it was a brutum 
 fulmen ; it did no harm; rather God meant it unto good. 
 
 At Worms, a town kindly to the Reformation, at whose 
 Diet Luther had borne his splendid testimony only four 
 years before, the printing was resumed as though nothing 
 untoward had occurred. But now six thousand copies, 
 instead of three, were struck off; half of them in octavo, 
 and without notes or glosses, at Peter Schoeffer’s press ; 
 the other half in quarto, and with pithy and pungent 
 notes and glosses, to finish what had been interrupted at 
 Cologne, either from Peter Schoeffer’s types or from some- 
 body else’s. In the closing weeks of 1525, or the initial 
 weeks of 1526, the first edition of William Tindale’s English 
 New Testament was published at Worms. 
 
 It is a moving and thrilling story of how, in spite of 
 warnings and all the vigilance of bishops and magistrates, 
 the book was smuggled into England ; of how, by Tunstall’s 
 orders and those of Archbishop Warham, it was burned 
 at Paul’s Cross; of how it was reprinted six times over, 
 

 
 204 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 until some thirteen thousand copies were in circulation ; 
 of how men and women were outlawed and imprisoned for 
 reading it ; and of how it strengthened those, who at first 
 had fainted in the scorching heat of trial, to do valiantly 
 and to witness to the death. That is a story into which 
 we may not enter. 
 
 But let us note who comes forward now to denounce 
 Tindale’s New Testament and Tindale himself. It is a 
 man whom it grieves us to find on the wrong side, 
 Colet’s friend and Erasmus’s, Sir Thomas More. In 
 spite of his abundant culture and his wide-roomed 
 sympathy, More is wedded unalterably to the old Church. 
 His resentment against this novel rendering of Gospel 
 and Epistle is unmeasured. Tindale, he declares, has 
 “corrupted and changed ”’ the Evangel “‘ from the good 
 and wholesome doctrine of Christ to devilish heresies 
 of his own.”’ “ Above a thousand texts are wrong and 
 falsely translated.” The book is incurably bad; it is 
 impossible to amend it except by writing the whole of it 
 over again ; for “‘it is as easy to weave a new web of cloth 
 as to sew up every hole in a net.” 
 
 More’s chief quarrel with Tindale is that he has dis- 
 carded those words which long custom has sanctioned as 
 ecclesiastical and appropriate, and has adopted others that 
 have no associations with theology and ritual ; he has cast 
 down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low 
 degree. ‘“‘Congregation’”’ is substituted for “church ”’ ; 
 “seniors »)-fon. priests”); “love” fory * charityis 
 “favour ”’ for “‘ grace’’; “‘ knowledge ”’ for “‘ confession ”’ ; 
 “repentance ’”’ for “penance’’; “‘troubled”’ for ‘‘ contrite.” 
 But Tindale’s retort is triumphant. Not only does he 
 believe his vocabulary to be in better accord with the signi- 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 205 
 
 ficance of the Greek ; but he has deliberately shunned and 
 rejected terms which seemed to him to be depraved by 
 many abuses. Had not “‘ Church” come to be synonymous 
 with the clergy, “‘the multitude of shaven, shorn, and 
 oiled’’? “ Priest,” is it not almost a pagan name? and 
 have not the real origin and the true function of the priest- 
 hood been forgotten? Has not “charity” ceased to 
 denote an inner loveliness of the soul, and been deflected 
 to those outward and ostentatious benefactions foolishly 
 imagined to be meritorious in the sight of heaven? And 
 as for “confession,” “‘ penance,’ “‘ grace,”’ ‘‘ contrition,”’ 
 they were “‘the great juggling words, wherewith,” as St. 
 Peter prophesied, “‘ bishops and friars’? made merchandise 
 of the people.”” Blunt this man’s speech might be; but 
 the bluntness has an edge and point of its own under which 
 scholarly and artistic Thomas More must have winced. 
 Tindale hastened on from activity to activity ; it was 
 as if he were prompted by Andrew Marvell’s goad, “ But 
 at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying 
 near.” At Marburg—‘‘ Marlborow in the lande of Hesse,”’ 
 as he anglicises it quaintly in his colophons—he published 
 The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, and The True Obedience 
 of a Christian Man, and The Practice of Prelates. In the 
 first he pleaded for the faith which works by love. In the 
 second he gave prominence to the two great truths which 
 constitute the essence of the English Reformation: the 
 supremacy of Scripture in the sphere of the Church, and 
 the supremacy of the King in the sphere of the State. In 
 the third he condemned the Papal system with his whole 
 strength: ‘‘ The nearer unto Christ a man cometh, the 
 lower he must descend, and the poorer he must wax; 
 but the nearer unto the Pope ye come, the higher ye must 
 

 
 206 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 climb, and the more riches ye must gather, whencesoever 
 ye can get them to pay for your bills, and to purchase a 
 glorious name and license to wear a mitre and a cross and 
 a pall, and goodly ornaments.”’ 
 
 In Marburg, too, he had pleasant converse with 
 Francis Lambert, whom death was soon to claim, and 
 with Patrick Hamilton and John Frith, both of whom 
 were to go to God through the flames of martyrdom in 
 advance of himself. It was here, also, that Hans Luft 
 printed for him his translation of the Pentateuch, and 
 published it in the January of 1530, which would be 
 I531I in our newer style of reckoning. A singular volume 
 it is in its typography; for, while Genesis and Numbers 
 are in the customary Gothic lettering of the period, Exodus 
 and Leviticus and Deuteronomy are in Roman character : 
 perhaps Hans Luft had prepared the different scriptural 
 books for separate issue, and then, despite their piebald 
 dress, had them bound togetherintheend. The Pentateuch 
 is Tindale’s second notable contribution to the English 
 Bible. 
 
 But the shades of the prison-house were closing about 
 him; or, as we ought to say, some premonitory beams 
 and rays from that City which has no need of sun or moon 
 to shine in it were falling on his forehead. He had long 
 expected a violent death. When he heard of the burning 
 of the Testament, he wrote, ‘‘ They did none other thing 
 than that I looked for ; no more shall they do if they burn 
 me also.’”” Antwerp was the last of his earthly homes ; 
 there he lived in what was known as the English House, 
 the honoured guest of Thomas Poyntz, one of the prosperous 
 merchant adventurers of Tudor times. 
 
 In Antwerp he gave to the world his translation of 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 207 
 
 Jonah, and, in November 1534, his revision of the New 
 Testament, the crown of all his labour, which he had 
 been seeking to perfect for nine years past. But how his 
 diligence was redoubled as the end approached! The 
 succeeding year saw two fresh editions of the Testament 
 issued. One of them is celebrated because of its unusual 
 orthography. ‘“‘ Father’ it spells “‘ faether’’; “‘ mother,” 
 ““moether’”’; ‘‘ master,’ ““maester’’; ‘stone, stoene”’; 
 “most,” “ moost ”’; there are two hundred peculiar forms 
 in all. Some students have had a pretty and engaging 
 theory on the subject, that by these oddities Tindale was 
 trying to accommodate himself to those ploughboys for 
 whom he had prophesied that he would make the Bible 
 an accessible and readable book. But the more prosaic 
 explanation is the likelier one, that the eccentricities are 
 the misspellings of Flemish printers stumbling over the 
 difficulties and contradictions of our English speech, and 
 that for one reason or for another, this version did not 
 have the careful scrutiny of the translator himself. 
 
 The latest revision of all—it is in the old black letter, 
 and has an ecclesiastical calendar prefixed to it—had one 
 of those problems connected with it, too, which seem 
 made for the skill and ingenuity of scholars to sift and 
 settle. It bears a printer’s mark with the initials “ G. H.” 
 It used to be imagined that these stood for Guillaume 
 Hychyns, a name by which Tindale had frequently 
 designated himself from his university days onward. 
 But Henry Bradshaw, the Cambridge librarian, who 
 knew the omne scibile about books, and whose courtesy 
 was as unfailing as his erudition, for it was said that the 
 only introduction you needed to him was to be yourself in 
 a difficulty—Henry Bradshaw has shown that “G. H.” 
 
 99 66 
 

 
 208 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 means Gottfried van der Hagen, a_ sixteenth-century 
 publisher of Antwerp. 
 
 And now Tindale had come to the last scene, tragedy 
 when it is viewed from one side, coronation when it is 
 surveyed from another. Henry Phillips, a young English- 
 man to whom he had shown a multitude of kindnesses, 
 betrayed him to the Government in Brussels. It was 
 the 23rd or the 24th of May 1535. He was hurried 
 from Antwerp to the Castle of Vilvorde, where he lay in 
 prison for a year and a hundred and thirty-five days. 
 Thomas Poyntz wore himself out in efforts to win his 
 friend’s liberation. Over in England, Lord Chancellor 
 Cromwell who, through his envoy, Stephen Vaughan, had 
 already had many communications with Tindale, and who 
 was Protestant in belief and policy, bestirred himself on 
 the captive’s behalf. Even King Henry, at feud now 
 with the Pope, desired his subject’s rescue. 
 
 But all was without avail. Phillips and his accomplice, 
 Gabriel Donne, had been envoys of the bigoted Romanists ; 
 and exasperated as they were because they felt the reins of 
 power in England slipping from their grasp, they were 
 determined to show no mercy. A touching letter survives, 
 like Paul’s from the Mamertine dungeon, in which the 
 prisoner begs the Governor of Vilvorde, the Marquis of 
 Bergen-op-Zoom, to send him his warmer cap and warmer 
 coat, for he is suffering extremely from the cold, but, above 
 all, to permit him to have his Hebrew Bible, Hebrew 
 grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that he may spend his 
 time in that study. The likelihood is, though here there is 
 no categorical certainty, he completed his translation of the 
 Old Testament to the end of the Books of Chronicles. From 
 poring over the written Word he went directly and swiftly 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 209 
 
 to see Him Who is the Living Word, to be with Christ which 
 is very far better. On the 6th of October 1536 he was taken 
 from his gloomy vault to die. He was strangled, and then 
 his body was burned. He “‘cried,’”’ says John Foxe, “at the 
 stake with a fervent zeal and a loud voice, ‘ Lord, open the 
 King of England’s eyes!’ ” 
 
 The revolution of the seasons brings its revenges— 
 revenges which are vindications. Browning has a line 
 about Bedford—‘‘ Where. Bunyan’s statue stands facing 
 where stood his gaol.’ Not long ago the newspapers 
 recorded the fact that in Vilvorde, the town of his martyr- 
 dom, which remains still almost entirely Roman Catholic, 
 a statue was unveiled to the honoured and deathless memory 
 of William Tindale. 
 
 It is time to turn from the man to the book, the best 
 of books, which he gave to the English-speaking people. 
 Let us look at his New Testament in the 1534 edition: it 
 is, Bishop Westcott says, “‘ altogether Tindale’s noblest 
 monument.”’ 
 
 Even in it we are permitted many authentic glimpses 
 of the man himself. His individuality lights up his work. 
 Not so much in the Prologues with which he introduces 
 the different sacred writings, for these are often based on 
 what he had found in Luther, although he can be inde- 
 pendent too when he does not coincide with the Doctor of 
 Wittenberg—not so much in the Prologues do we have this 
 self-revelation, as in the lively and pregnant glosses of 
 the margin. ‘ Bengel himself,” if one may quote Westcott 
 again, “is not more terse and pointed.’ Occasionally 
 the gloss has a polemical tinge, and the Protestantism of 
 its writer is apparent. Opposite Luke ix. 4 we read: “‘ Go 
 
 14 
 

 
 210 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 not from house to house as friars do”’; x Corinthians xiv. 16 
 has this comment: “‘ To speak with tongues or with the 
 spirit is to speak that other understandeth not, as priests 
 say their sermons.”’ The Thessalonian imperative, ‘‘ Study 
 to be quiet and to do your own business,” is, we are told, 
 “a good lesson for idle monks.” 
 
 Tindale was a spiritual warrior of the type and family of 
 Botticelli’s ‘‘ Fortitude,’ as‘Mr. Ruskin describes him. He 
 seems worn at times, and somewhat weary, but you must not 
 suppose that he has fallen asleep ; when the far-off trumpet 
 blows, his hand instinctively grasps the sword-hilt, and he is 
 ready again for the fray. But generally the marginal notes 
 are not so militant in their accent. They are characteristic 
 dicta which illuminate not merely the text but the mind and 
 soul of him who penned them. At Cesarea Philippi Jesus 
 predicts the rejection and the Cross; and Tindale writes: 
 “When ought is said or done that should move to pride, 
 He dasheth them in the teeth with His death and passion.”’ 
 In the eighth chapter of Romans we come across a brief and 
 sufficient summary of the Pauline evangel : ‘‘ God chooseth 
 of His Own goodness and mercy; calleth through the 
 Gospel ; justifieth through faith ; glorifieth through good 
 works.” 
 
 This has its author’s clear-sightedness and vigour : 
 “Neither is outward circumcision or outward baptism 
 worth a pin of themselves, save that they put us in re- 
 membrance to keep the covenant made between God and 
 us.”’ This, on a verse in the third chapter of Ephesians, 
 acquaints us with the whole of God’s requirements and 
 man’s: ‘‘ Where true faith in Christ is, there is love to the 
 neighbour; and faith and love maketh us understand all 
 things. Faith understandeth the secrets of God and the 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 211 
 
 mercy that is given her in Christ. And love knoweth her 
 duty to her neighbour, and can interpret all laws and 
 ordinances, and knoweth how far forth they are to be kept 
 and when to be dispensed with.” Or what can be more 
 searching, conclusive, and satisfying than the three axioms 
 set over against three different passages in the Roman 
 Epistle >—“‘ To have pleasure in another man’s sin is 
 greater wickedness than to sin thyself’; “‘ Eternal life 
 is the serving of Christ”; ‘“‘ He is strong that can bear 
 another man’s weakness.” Tindale’s bow is not drawn 
 at a venture. His arrows are winged for the white centre 
 of the target ; and they find their mark. 
 
 But had Tindale that independent scholarship which 
 could adequately qualify him for the difficult and delicate 
 task of translation? Wyclif had worked with Jerome’s 
 Latin ; nothing more was possible to him in the less favoured 
 century in which his lot was cast. Now, since Constanti- 
 nople had fallen, and her learned men, with their parch- 
 ments and dictionaries and grammars, had fled westward 
 before the advance of the Moslem, the boundaries of 
 knowledge had been immensely widened. The Hellenic 
 speech of Luke and Paul and John, the Hebrew of psalmists 
 and prophets, began to disclose the treasures which they 
 had hidden. The more ignorant of the clergy might 
 denounce them as too intimately associated with paganism 
 and Judaism, as the emblems of apostate peoples, while 
 the language of Rome was the organ and symbol of the 
 faithful. But, when God means them to move forward, 
 it is useless attempting to turn back the hands of the clock ; 
 and those who saw farthest recognised in the new learning 
 an ally of religion, and admitted it frankly and gladly to 
 the circle of liberal education. 
 

 
 212 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Was Tindale familiar with this new learning? Some 
 have said, No. They have contended that he could form 
 no judgment of his own on the Hebrew and Greek 
 originals of the Bible. He took his Pentateuch and his 
 rendering of Jonah from Luther’s German; he went for 
 his New Testament partly to Luther’s German and partly 
 to the Latin, but not the Greek, of Erasmus. But that 
 is certainly to do our scholar a grave injustice. In that 
 pathetic letter which he sent to the Marquis of Bergen 
 from his cell in Vilvorde, he would not have begged for 
 his Hebrew Bible and Grammar and Dictionary if the 
 dialect of Hosea and Isaiah had been an unknown tongue 
 to him. At Worms and Marburg one of his companions 
 was the professor and critic whom Reuchlin and Sir 
 Thomas More were proud to know, Hermann von dem 
 Busche; and he is enthusiastic in his praise of Tin- 
 dale’s exceptional attainments as a linguist. He told 
 Spalatin that this Englishman who had translated the 
 New Testament was “so skilled in seven languages— 
 litiere Hebraice, Grece, Latine, Italice, Hispanice, 
 Bnitanmce, Gallice—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, 
 Spanish, English, French, that, whichever he spoke, 
 you would suppose it his native tongue.’ There is a 
 singular aptitude ; there is an abundant equipment. 
 
 But the best demonstration of Tindale’s ability to con- 
 sult the originals, and of his habit of consulting them, is 
 the internal evidence furnished by his translations them- 
 selves. Of course, he availed himself willingly of the labours 
 both of Luther and of Erasmus ; he was their debtor at a 
 ‘hundred points ; but he could differ from them too. He 
 did so frequently and conspicuously, and he preserved 
 throughout with a jealous care his own freedom and his 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 213 
 
 own impartiality. ‘‘ Wist ye not that I must goo aboute 
 my father’s busines ?’”’ It is his version of the question 
 of Jesus in the Temple; but the Latin of Erasmus has 
 “In his que patris mei sunt’; and the German of Luther 
 is not unlike it—‘‘ In dem das meins vatters ist ’’: neither 
 Latin nor German has any noun corresponding to Tindale’s 
 “busines.”” In the Philippians Paul has a fine and ex- 
 pressive Greek word, aroxupadoxia; “earnest expecta- 
 tion’”’ is that Anglicising of it with which we are best 
 acquainted. There are in it, Lightfoot says, the ideas of 
 eagerness and absorption, of longing and hope. Tindale 
 gets nearer the heart and message of the word than either 
 Luther or Erasmus—“ As I hertely loke for,’’ he renders 
 it, and we think of a man waiting with hungry eyes and 
 soul for the news he covets most. Once again: in the 
 succeeding chapter of the same Epistle, the Apostle de- 
 clares of the Christ of the humiliation, “ He emptied 
 Himself’; and both Latin and German hold as closely 
 as they can to the emphatic verb; Tindale breaks away 
 from them into the memorable paraphrase, “‘ He made 
 him silfe of no reputacion.” He is thankful for every 
 aid ; but he pursues his own path, and his erudition and 
 capacity give him an indefeasible right to pursue it. 
 
 One honours him for his power of taking pains. The 
 revision of a finished enterprise is never easy. It is 
 “seldom undertaken,’ Demaus says, “by the writer 
 to whom we owe the original, and seldom ably performed 
 by any other.” But Tindale was great alike in his first 
 book and in his second, in 1525 and in 1534. What seemed 
 worthy in its earlier dress became more attractive and 
 admirable in its later guise. Obscurity yielded to clear- 
 ness, and weakness to force; many a sentence received 
 

 
 214 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 a new music and rhythm; from first to last the English 
 was brought into more exact approximation with the 
 Greek of Evangelists and Apostles. ‘“‘ Here hast thou, 
 most dear reader,” the translator wrote in his Preface, 
 “the New Testament or covenant made with us of God 
 in Christ’s blood, which I have looked over again, now at 
 the last, with all diligence, and compared it unto the Greek, 
 and have weeded out of it‘many faults, which lack of help 
 at the beginning, and oversight, did sow therein.” 
 
 He had cause to make the humble boast. One looks at 
 the Sermon on the Mount in the two versions. “If the salt 
 be once unsavoury, what can be salted therewith ? it is 
 therefore good for nothing but to be cast out at the doors, 
 and that men tread it under feet ’’—thus the admonition 
 runs in 1525; but in 1534 we listen more unquestionably 
 to the very solemnities of the Master: “ If the salt have 
 lost her saltness, what can be salted therewith? It is 
 thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to 
 be trodden under foot of men.” ‘“ Behold the lilies ” is 
 transmuted into ‘‘Consider the lilies’; and ‘‘ What 
 raiment ye shall wear ”’ is rejected for the simpler and more 
 literal ‘‘ What ye shall put on.’’ Graphic, vivid, tragic, 
 is the conclusion of the Sermon, the ruin of the house built 
 upon the sand. “It was overthrown, and great was the 
 fall of it’’, so Tindale rendered the catastrophe in 1525; 
 but in 1534 the rendering is directer and more effective, 
 “It fell, and great was the fall thereof’”’: it is truer also 
 to the phraseology of the Evangelist, ’Exéoev, xai iv 7 
 BTW aLTIS WEyaAn. 
 
 Each of these may seem in itself a little improvement ; 
 but a multitude of little improvements constitutes per- 
 fection, and it was towards the goal of perfection that 
 
 -- 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 215 
 ET RS eal IES DS aE I hk A 
 Tindale’s face and heart were set. He loved the highest, 
 
 and scorned delights, and lived laborious days, to grasp it 
 for himself, and to give it to others. ) 
 
 He has had a great reward. Apart altogether from 
 the Gospel that it enshrines—the “ good, merry, glad, and 
 joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and 
 maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy ’’—there is no 
 book in the world comparable, on the score of its literary 
 charm and power, to our Authorised Version of the New 
 Testament. Newman, after he had himself deserted it for 
 the Rheims and Douai Version—a poor exchange indeed— 
 pays an irrepressible tribute, in The Grammar of Assent, 
 to its “‘ grave majestic English,’ and to those “ com- 
 positions which, even humanly considered, are among the 
 most sublime and beautiful ever written.”’ 
 
 Faber, after he had forsaken the Protestant for the 
 Catholic Church, is even more unreserved in his admiration. 
 “Who will say,” he writes, “that the marvellous English 
 of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds 
 of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like a music 
 that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells 
 which the convert scarcely knows how he can forgo. Its 
 felicities seem to be often almost things rather than words. 
 It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of the 
 national seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive 
 idolatry, in extenuation of whose fanaticism its intrinsic 
 beauty pleads availingly with the scholar. The memory 
 of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of child- 
 hood are stereotyped in its verses. It is the representative 
 of a man’s best moments. All that there has been about 
 him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, 
 speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible.”’ 
 

 
 216 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Now, it is not too much to assert that Tindale’s 1534 
 Testament is the real basis and foundation of the Authorised 
 Version. They are his accents which we hear init ; blunt when 
 bluntness is requisite ; vigorous and penetrating ; homely, 
 like the “natural sorrow, grief, or pain, that hath been and 
 may be again’”’; haunting and unforgettable ; melodious 
 and exquisite. As John was lifted above himself by the 
 enlightenment and enlargement of the Holy Ghost, that 
 he might tell the story of Christ, “ the illimitable God ”’ ; 
 and Paul, that in the Romans he might map out the King’s 
 Highway from the City of Destruction to the Celestial 
 City; and Peter, that he might comfort the strangers 
 scattered abroad in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, 
 and Bithynia: so Tindale could not have been without 
 the special aid and grace of the Spirit of God when he 
 couched in language incorruptible and undefiled and un- 
 fading the record, which most we need to know, of God’s 
 remedy for our sin and misery. 
 
 With equal eloquence and truth Mr. Froude has said: 
 “Of the translation itself, though since that time it has 
 been many times revised and altered, we may say that 
 it is substantially the Bible with which we are all 
 familiar. The peculiar genius—if such a word may be 
 permitted—which breathes through it, the mingled tender- 
 ness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural 
 grandeur, unequalled, unapproached in the attempted 
 improvements of modern scholars, all are here, and bear 
 the impress of the mind of one man, William Tindale.” 
 
 When we consider this, we realise how exceeding 
 abundantly, above what he asked or thought, his wishes 
 and prayers have been answered. In the preface to the 
 1534 edition, he wrote these words: “‘My part be not in 
 

 
 THE BEST OF BOOKS IN HIS HAND 217 
 
 Christ if mine heart be not to follow and live according 
 as I teach, and also if mine heart weep not night and day 
 for mine own sin and other men’s indifferently, beseeching 
 God to convert us all, and to take His wrath from us, and 
 to be merciful as well to all other men as to mine own soul, 
 caring for the wealth of the realm I was born in, for the 
 king and all that are thereof, as a tender-hearted mother 
 would do for her only son.”’ No one has done more than 
 William Tindale for the wealth of the realm he was born in. 
 The martyr went through fire and water ; but to-day the 
 lines are fallen to him in pleasant places, and he has a 
 goodly heritage. 
 

 
 
 
 
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LECTURE X 
 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 
 
 THE “ PLACKS ” OF PATRICK HAMILTON 
 
 219 
 

 
 
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LECTURE X 
 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 
 
 THE ‘‘ PLACES ” OF PATRICK HAMILTON 
 
 O European country stood in such sore and desperate 
 need of the Reformation as Scotland did. In 
 his Princeton Lectures on the subject, Dr. Hay Fleming 
 has four chapters on the Secondary Causes which promoted ~ 
 the success of the Protestant movement in our northern 
 land. They make very sad and terrible reading. The 
 first deals with Clerical Depravity, the downright and 
 shameful profligacy to which an enforced celibacy had led 
 in the case of multitudes of priests and monks and church- 
 men—*‘ the corruption of morals and profane lewdness 
 of life,’ as an old Scottish statute phrases it. The next 
 chapter speaks of the crass ignorance of the religious 
 guides of the people—curates, vicars, rectors, friars, and 
 nuns. That good shepherd of the sheep, Thomas Forret 
 of Dollar, was charged before the Bishop of Dunkeld with 
 the crime of preaching to his people every Sabbath. “I 
 thank God,” the Bishop said to him, “that I never knew 
 what the Old and New Testament was; therefore, Dean 
 Thomas, I will know nothing but my Portuese and my 
 Pontifical—my breviary and my book of ceremonies.’”” 
 That episcopal love of the darkness rather than of the 
 light was typical of a state of affairs which was common 
 and widespread. 
 
 221 
 

 
 222 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Then there was the conferring of benefices on men, 
 who not only had no heart in their work, but were 
 otherwise unfit; who were unworthy in character, or 
 without proper training either intellectual or spiritual, 
 or under age, or not even in orders. Sometimes mere 
 boys filled, at least nominally, important and lucrative 
 ecclesiastical offices. Finally, Dr. Fleming has something 
 to say about the credulity and the rapacity of the clergy 
 —how they lived in a wilderness of superstition; how 
 heartless and hard they were in their exactions. Saints, 
 miracles, relics, and pilgrimages were their favourite 
 themes ; and, like the scribes and elders of Christ’s day, 
 they laid heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, on the 
 shoulders and the souls of men. 
 
 First and last, it is a melancholy indictment; and 
 the sorrow and the sting of it lie in its truth. When 
 these were the morals and manners of the _ leaders, 
 was it any wonder that the people were backward 
 and benighted, rough and ungentle? An old writer 
 of the sixteenth century, a son of the Roman Catholic 
 Church who clung to it in spite of his discernment of its 
 faults and vices, the unknown author of The Complaynt 
 of Scotland, tells the ecclesiastics in plain words of the 
 imperative necessity that they should correct their abuses. 
 They should show a pattern which their parishioners 
 could follow. He conveys the wholesome advice in the 
 form of a fable which he has borrowed from an ancient 
 classic: “The philosophour Plutarque rehersis ane 
 exempil of the partan, quhilk reprevit ane of hyr yong 
 partans, because the yong partan wald nocht gang evyn 
 furtht, bot rather sche geid crukit, bakwart, and on syd. 
 Than the yong partan ansuert, quod sche, Mother, I can 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 223 
 
 nocht gang of my auen natur as thou biddis me, bot 
 nochtheles, wald thou gang furtht rycht befor me, than 
 I sal leyrn to follou thy futsteppis.”” When priests walk 
 not ‘“‘evyn furtht,” but ‘“‘crukit, bakwart, and on syd,” 
 their listeners are too apt to reproduce their deviations 
 and errors, and a whole commonwealth is dragged down 
 into the mire. 
 
 What Scotland needed was not the regarnishing of the 
 old Church; it was the refinding of the older Church, built 
 upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets in which 
 Jesus Christ Himself is the Chief Corner-Stone. Patrick 
 Hamilton was one of those who helped her to this supreme 
 discovery. Let us linger in his society for a little. 
 
 We think of him as a representative of the highest 
 knightliness and courage. 
 
 Born in 1503 or 1504, he was of noble blood, the grand- 
 son of the first Lord Hamilton, and the son of Sir Patrick 
 Hamilton, proprietor of Stonehouse in the county of 
 Lanark, and of Kincavel in the county of Linlithgow. His 
 mother belonged to the family of the Stewarts, and was 
 not far removed from the throne; she was the grand- 
 daughter of King James the Second: we are inclined to 
 forgive that ill-starred and fatal race some of its mis- 
 demeanours when we recollect that it gave us this intrepid 
 soldier of Christ. Thus he was child of one of the foremost 
 houses in the realm. Principal Lorimer, his biographer, 
 sees proof of God’s wise planning in the selection of an 
 aristocrat to be the first of Scottish evangelists and con- 
 fessors. For the kingdom was still feudal in sentiment and 
 habit. The majority of its inhabitants were content to 
 accept the decision of their masters, and to follow where 
 

 
 224 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 the overlord led the way. When one of lofty social rank, 
 a man of birth and consideration, stepped forward to 
 preach the reform of religion, he was sure to gain a hearing 
 and to produce an impression, to which a self-made trader 
 from the town or a humble peasant from the countryside 
 could not aspire. It was in Patrick Hamilton’s favour that 
 his forbears were well known and conspicuous in the land. 
 
 But his real greatness was not adventitious ; it was 
 personal; it was the greatness of an innate refinement 
 and a blameless character. Spottiswoode praises “ his 
 courteous behaviour to all sorts of people,’ and George 
 Buchanan portrays him as “‘juvenis ingenio summo’’— 
 ‘““a lad o’ pairts,’’ as we should say, and yet of balanced 
 and sober mind, refusing to be dazzled and bewitched 
 by those empty honours which enslave many, “‘ qui hominis 
 ambitiosi pravam gloriz captationem ferre non potuit.” 
 One can hardly avoid comparing and contrasting him 
 with his father, Sir Patrick. Both of them knew how to 
 win the victory over fear. Both were governed by the 
 sense of duty. Both demeaned themselves with daring 
 and self-devotion. But there the resemblance ends. The 
 father was a knight of the age of chivalry and romance; 
 the son a knight of the Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ. 
 The older man was typical of a day which was vanishing ; 
 the younger man of a day which was struggling to be born. 
 The one, it may be said, stood in the light of the sunset ; 
 the other caught the first splendours of the sunrise. 
 
 Sir Patrick met his death in April 1520, in that duel fought 
 out in the High Street of Edinburgh between the Hamiltons 
 and the Douglases which is known in history by the name 
 of “Cleanse the Causeway.” He had pleaded as long as 
 he could for peace ; but when others, not so brave as he, 
 
 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 295 
 
 cried out for battle and upbraided him with pusillanimity, 
 he flung himself impetuously into the fray. ‘‘ He came so 
 far before the lave,’ says Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, 
 “that he was hastily slain, and with him the Master of 
 Montgomery, with many other gentlemen and yeomen, 
 to the number of threescore and twelve persons.”’ It was 
 a close not unheroic to a valorous career; but it was 
 immeasurably surpassed, a few years afterwards, by his 
 son’s homegoing! In front of the gate of St. Salvator’s 
 College, in St. Andrews, he gave himself to the flames, a 
 witness for divine truth and for the heavenly Lord. He 
 also, but in a better cause, ‘‘ came so far before the lave 
 that he was hastily slain.”’ 
 
 We think of him, too, as a seeker who became step by 
 step and more and more a finder. 
 
 When he was a boy of thirteen, he was appointed lay- 
 abbot of Ferne in Ross-shire ; and the rents of the abbacy 
 served to maintain him as a student in Paris, where he 
 took his Master’s degree in 1520. During his student 
 years in Paris, he made his earliest acquaintance with 
 Lutheranism. The university was excited over the new 
 doctrines; and the Professors of the Sorbonne, having 
 examined those writings of the German monk which had 
 reached them, ordered them to be publicly burned as 
 dangerous and heretical. But there were more liberal 
 spirits among the teachers and scholars of Paris; and 
 the young Scot heard both sides of the question explained 
 and defended. 
 
 Soon he left Paris for Louvain, to learn more of 
 the classical languages and of philosophy, and perhaps 
 to meet and talk with Erasmus. Already it is clear 
 
 - 
 

 
 226 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 that his sympathies are with those who would break 
 through the old walls which had hemmed in the sphere 
 of knowledge, investigation, and thought. He discovers 
 much, we read, to nourish his mind in Plato; and he con- 
 demns the practice of studying Aristotle through the 
 glosses and commentaries of the Schoolmen without refer- 
 ence to the text itself. But, as yet, he does not count it 
 necessary to advocate the religious reformation of the 
 Church. He is Erasmian, but not Lutheran. And so he 
 remained for a year or two after his return to Scotland 
 
 In 1523 he was back, and was enrolled in St. Andrews 
 as an incorporatus, a post-graduate student. Patrick 
 Hepburn was prior, one of the most forceful and most 
 debauched churchmen of the time ; towards him Hamilton 
 could cherish only repulsion and antagonism. James Beaton, 
 the uncle of the more famous and infamous Cardinal, was 
 the newly admitted Archbishop ; for a while he was to 
 be more busily occupied with his political schemes than 
 with the concerns of his diocese. John Major, whom 
 Philip Melanchthon ridiculed, and whose notions were 
 medieval rather than modern, but who saw and denounced 
 some of the weaknesses of Roman Catholicism, was lectur- 
 ing on the Gospels; no doubt, the scholar of Paris and 
 Louvain was among his listeners. 
 
 And at the freshly instituted College of St. Leonards, 
 which had Gavin Logie for its Principal, there were 
 younger teachers of opener mind and more progressive 
 thinking, to whom Hamilton would be instinctively drawn ; 
 it may even be that, as the alumnus of a foreign university, 
 he was invited to aid them in their work. Still there was 
 no manifest breach with the accustomed order of things. 
 He composed and conducted the music of masses which 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 227 
 
 were sung in the cathedral. Whether or no he was 
 actually ordained to the priesthood, and the probabilities 
 are against rather than in favour of ordination, he was 
 not yet the declared adversary of the priests. If the 
 Church could have been mended from within, he would 
 have been content to remain its servant and child. 
 
 But there was an advance soon. In the summer of 
 1525 the Scottish Parliament passed its first Act against 
 Lutheran opinions. The kingdom had ever been clean, 
 it declared, ‘“‘ of all sic filth and vice’”’; and it must con- 
 tinue clean. ‘‘ Na maner of persoun strangear that hapnis 
 to arrife with their schippis within ony part of this realm ”’ 
 shall “‘ bring with thaim ony bukis or werkis of the said 
 Lutheris his discipillis or servandis, . . . under the pane of 
 escheting of ther schippis and gudis and putting of their 
 persouns in presoun.’’ Next year, 1526, despite those 
 thunders of the law, the captains of trading vessels were 
 bringing over copies of Tindale’s New Testament to Aber- 
 deen, Montrose, Leith, and St. Andrews; and the Arch- 
 bishop felt that he must take active and severe measures 
 against the spread of heresy. 
 
 But these futilities and tyrannies of Parliament and 
 Church seem to have had only a quickening influence on 
 Patrick Hamilton. He hated such repression, and he saw its 
 vanity. He grew bolder in his avowals of his own likings 
 for evangelical truth. In 1527, James Beaton, having heard 
 of his sayings and doings, cited him to appear before him, 
 as one who, “‘ without proper commission or the necessary 
 powers or privileges, had ventured to undertake the office 
 of preaching, and to propound his own false doctrines 
 as well as the foreign opinions of Martin Luther.” But 
 Hamilton, though recent events had given his beliefs more 
 

 
 228 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 definiteness and decision, wished a fuller assurance still, 
 before he answered for his faith to a hostile tribunal. He 
 yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and escaped to 
 the Continent. And Beaton, not yet prepared to proceed 
 to extremities, allowed him to go. The seeker was, to all 
 intents and purposes, a finder, ere he set sail from Scotland ; 
 but he wanted to hold converse with those who could 
 enable him to formulate and to defend his findings in the 
 right and most effective way. 
 
 The story approaches its climax. We think of 
 Hamilton, further, as a man whose death was yet greater 
 than his life. 
 
 It was Wittenberg which he had meant to make his 
 goal; but the plague was raging in the little Saxon town 
 on the Elbe, and everybody had fled from it who could 
 do so. Patrick Hamilton, much as he rejoiced in their 
 teaching, did not literally sit at Luther’s feet and 
 Melanchthon’s. He turned aside to Marburg, where the 
 Landgrave of, Hesse had just founded a university; his 
 name is inscribed in the first list of its students. 
 
 Here William Tindale and John Frith would strengthen 
 his hands in God. Here Francis Lambert, lately come from 
 Avignon to preside over the new theological faculty, was 
 his instructor, and learned to love him warmly. “ His judg- 
 ment in divine truth,’’ Lambert wrote, “‘ was eminently clear 
 and solid; I can truly say that I have seldom met with 
 any one who conversed on the Word of God with greater 
 spirituality and earnestness of feeling.” Here, too, 
 Patrick’s Places were composed and published; but 
 to them we shall return by and by. Indeed, so much 
 did he commend himself to his German friends, that they 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 229 
 
 begged him to stay among them. But his probation was 
 over and done; and his soul was burning with the 
 passionate desire to evangelise Scotland. Before 1527 
 was concluded, he was again in the midst of his kinsfolk. 
 
 And now there was not far to travel ; but how crowded 
 the weeks were with incident and experience! There was 
 the preaching in and about Linlithgow, which was with 
 demonstration of the Spirit and in power from on high ; 
 for it was the means of the conversion of the preacher’s 
 sister and brother. There was Patrick Hamilton’s marriage ; 
 one would fain know who his bride was, a lady with a heart 
 as fearless as his own, to wed a man whose face was set 
 towards the Hill of Reproach outside the gate. 
 
 Ere long there was the Archbishop’s invitation to 
 St. Andrews, to a conference with himself and his clergy. 
 This time it was immediately accepted; MHarnilton’s 
 hesitancies were past; he was eager to give a reason 
 for the faith that was in him. At first he was well 
 received. No restraint was put on his movements or 
 his words. He was free to debate in the schools 
 and to converse with those who visited him in his 
 lodgings. Perhaps Beaton would have been relieved, 
 if, once again, he had sought safety in flight ; he had not 
 the pleasure in persecution which his nephew had. But 
 Hamilton did not dream of fleeing. ‘“‘ He had come to St. 
 Andrews,’ he said, “‘to establish the pious in the true 
 doctrine; and if he turned his back, he would be a 
 stumbling-block in their path.’”’ And there were those 
 who were watching him with sinister intent. Soon he 
 was served with a summons to appear before the Arch- 
 bishop’s council. 
 
 The cruel and glorious close had arrived. His enemies 
 

 
 230 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 charged him with seven or eight different heresies. He 
 had taught that a man is justified not by works but by 
 faith alone ; that good works do not make a good man, but 
 that a good man does good works—a proposition which he 
 had found in Luther’s Von der Fretheit eines Christen- 
 menschen ; that every true Christian should know himself 
 to be in a state of grace; that faith, hope, and charity 
 are so linked together that he who has one of them has 
 all of them, and he who lacks one lacks all; that the 
 corruption of sin remains in children after their baptism ; 
 that no man is without sin so long as he lives on earth; that 
 no man can do good by the power of his own will; that all 
 men should read and understand the Word of God, and 
 especially the New Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 These were his deadly errors ; to us they are the first 
 principles of the truth, and the foundations on which 
 we rest ; he admitted without demur that he held them 
 all. There were other accusations which they laid at his 
 door ; but, because these touched what he regarded as 
 “disputable points,” he craved permission to leave them 
 alone ; if he was without cowardice, he was without rash- 
 ness too. But they had heard enough. They pronounced 
 him guilty. 
 
 That night he was arrested; and, next day, he was 
 led to the cathedral, where Friar Alexander Campbell, 
 stifling the inner protests of his own conscience, publicly 
 recited his heresies, and where Archbishop Beaton de- 
 prived him of his abbacy and delivered him to the secular 
 authorities for judgment. The magistrates did not loiter. 
 There were rumours that Hamilton’s powerful friends 
 were hastening with an armed force to secure his release. 
 They determined that he should die that very day—it was 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 231 
 
 
 
 the 29th of February 1528. Indeed, it was what he wished 
 himself. He was convinced that he would accomplish 
 more for Christ and Scotland by his death than by his 
 life. 
 
 Alexander Alane, who had been one of Hamilton’s 
 accusers but who had already come over to his side, con- 
 quered by his message and his character, has preserved 
 for us the narrative of the martyrdom. The executioners 
 blundered ; the fire was never so intense and swift as 
 it should have been; for six long hours the sufferer was 
 in the flames, the monks taunting him all the time and 
 bidding him recant; he was roasted rather than burned. 
 And he remained quiet and firm; occasionally he was 
 seen to smile; he had kindly words for the spectators— 
 his one stern word was for Friar Campbell, because he 
 knew that he was doing violence to his own convictions 
 of right and truth; he commended his widowed mother 
 to the care of a friend. When at length the end drew 
 near, a voice—surely it was not a hostile voice—called 
 from the crowd, and asked whether he still clung to the 
 doctrines for which he had been condemned. He raised 
 three fingers of his blackened hand and held them aloft, 
 saying, ““ How long, Lord, shall darkness lie over this 
 kingdom? Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 
 
 We recall white-haired Polycarp, eighty-and-six years 
 old, going to the flames in Smyrna rather than deny the 
 Master, who had never done him any wrong. This was 
 a mere youth of twenty-four, and he shared to the full 
 Polycarp’s valour and constancy. And neither the one life 
 nor the other was spilt as water on the ground. For, as the 
 Christians of Smyrna wrote when they had seen their teacher 
 die: ‘ Now the blessed Polycarp suffered martyrdom on the 
 

 
 232 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 seventh day before the Kalends of May, Statius Quadratus 
 being proconsul, but Jesus Christ being King for ever.” 
 Yes, Jesus’ Christ is King for ever; and it is sometimes 
 through the martyrdoms of His servants that He stab- 
 lishes, strengthens, and settles His royalty and dominion. 
 
 Which leads us on to another reflection. We think of 
 Patrick Hamilton as one who in a short time fulfilled a long 
 time. 
 
 Professor MacEwen, in that stately and satisfying 
 volume in which he has begun to tell us the history of the 
 Church in Scotland, says very wisely, ‘“‘ Hamilton had 
 not reached eminence either as a theologian or as a church- 
 man.” Hehadnothadleisuretodoso. Yet Dr. Mackwen 
 goes on to show how far-extending were the issues of his 
 death. Previously, no one had suffered in Scotland for 
 heretical beliefs, except John Resby, an unknown English 
 Lollard, and Paul Craw, a semi-political delegate from 
 Bohemia. It was a very different matter when Catholicism 
 struck down “ a high-born young Scot of rising reputation,’’ 
 whose only crime was that he had propagated opinions 
 inconsistent with the teaching and hurtful to the authority 
 of Rome. That was bound to create a stir. 
 
 The University of Louvain, where Hamilton had been a 
 scholar a year or two before, congratulated St. Andrews on 
 setting an example which continental nations would do 
 well to imitate. But there were other fruits of its severity 
 and tyranny which were not so pleasing to St. Andrews. 
 One of his friends, ‘‘ a merry gentleman,”’ gave Archbishop 
 Beaton an advice which was as shrewd as it was merry. 
 “My lord, yf ye burne any mo, except ye follow my 
 counsall, ye will utterlye destroy yourselves. Yf ye will 
 burne thame, lett thame be burnt in how sellarris ; for the 
 
 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL = 233 
 
 reik of Maister Patrick Hammyltoun hes infected as many 
 as it blew upoun.” 
 
 There could, in fact, be no doubt of the effects of 
 that pervasive and pungent smoke. Principal Lorimer 
 designates the sixteen or seventeen years which lay 
 between the martyrdom at St. Salvator’s and the 
 preaching of George Wishart “‘the Hamilton period 
 of the Scottish Reformation’’; and he makes clear to 
 us how many and how distinguished its children were— 
 Alexander Alane, whom German theologians were soon 
 to know as Alesius; and Thomas Forret, who counted 
 not his life dear to him that he might finish his course 
 with joy; and John Rough, who compelled John Knox 
 to preach ; and Sir James Scrymgeour ; and Henry Bal- 
 naves ; and John Erskine of Dun; and George Buchanan, 
 the foremost of Scottish humanists and men of letters. 
 Little Isobel Hamilton was born after her father’s death, 
 and he never saw her ; but his spiritual sons and daughters 
 were a great and shining company. 
 
 Herkless and Hannay, the historians of the Arch- 
 bishops of St. Andrews, recount the merits as well as the 
 
 sins of James Beaton. ‘‘ He saved his country. Henry 
 could not tempt him, and Francis did not purchase his 
 allegiance. ... In the years after Flodden, when her 
 
 independence was in the greatest danger, he protected 
 Scotland with steadfast purpose and incorruptible de- 
 votion.”’ Moreover, “‘he did not darken the age by 
 immoralities, and he could censure the unclean prior of 
 St. Andrews.” Still further, ‘‘ To the credit of his heart, 
 it may be alleged that he was not a fierce oppressor ; and 
 it might be argued that he persecuted unto death, only 
 because he knew no other way to crush a spiritual revolt.” 
 

 
 234 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 But there is the other side of the shield, and the impartial 
 historians let us see it too: ‘‘ He is not numbered among 
 the good and godly prelates who comforted the people, 
 and when there were men eager for religion he killed the 
 evangelists.”” James Beaton’s victim is more to be envied ; 
 he was the true conqueror. 
 
 It was during his brief stay in Marburg that Patrick 
 Hamilton drew up the only piece of writing which we have 
 from his pen. Francis Lambert suggested it to him. 
 “He was the first man,’’ Lambert records, ‘‘ after the 
 erection of the University, who put forth a series of theses 
 to be publicly defended.” Then the professor, whose 
 own Paradoxes were the programme of the Hessian Re- 
 formation, and whom all serious men loved for the vigour 
 of his thought and the earnestness of his personal Chris- 
 tianity, crowns with generous praise the performance of 
 his pupil. ‘‘ These theses,” he declares, ‘‘ were conceived 
 in the most evangelical spirit, and were maintained with 
 the greatest learning. It was by my advice that he pub- 
 lished them.” 
 
 Others prized them as highly as Lambert did. Knox, 
 for example, who inserted the “‘litill pithie werk” in 
 his History of the Reformation. And, before the Scots- 
 man, the English martyrologist Foxe, who makes room 
 in his Actes and Monuments for the ‘“ godly treatise, 
 not unprofitable to be seen and read of all men,” and 
 who appends to it ‘‘ certain notes or declarations ”’ of his 
 own. And, before Foxe, the value of the tract had been 
 recognised by young John Frith, who suffered at Smith- 
 field in July 1533, and who was Hamilton’s comrade at 
 Marburg. It was Frith who translated it out of the 
 academic Latin in which its author composed it “into the 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 235 
 
 English tongue, to the profit of his own nation.” He 
 thought that God, of His bounteous mercy, had specially 
 reserved it, to publish to the whole world what a man 
 these monsters, the chamberlain and the other bishops 
 of Scotland, had murdered. “If ye list,” said John Frith, 
 as he fulfilled this pious work for the sake of his friend 
 and the sake of his country, “‘ ye may call it Patrick’s 
 Places ; for it treateth exactly of certain common places, 
 which known, ye have the pith of all divinity.” ‘“ The 
 pith of all divinity ’—it is not a bad account of Patrick’s 
 Places. 
 
 But, when we look first into its pages, there is a possi- 
 bility of their bringing us a certain disappointment. For, 
 to begin with, there is their manner, their accent. Here 
 and there it seems too pedantic, stiff, and dry. ‘‘ Barbara, 
 Celarent, Darii, Ferioque’’—some of us retain a misty 
 and imperfect memory of the quaint verses which intro- 
 duced us to the forms and laws of syllogistic reason- 
 ing. And the Places have their precise and unescapable 
 syllogisms, with major proposition and minor proposition 
 and conclusion, each in its distinctive dress and each 
 with its individual significance. Here is an argument in 
 Barbara: “‘ He that loveth his neighbour keepeth all the 
 commandments of God; He that loveth God loveth his 
 neighbour; Ergo, he that loveth God keepeth all the 
 commandments of God.” Or, again, this is one in Dart: 
 “The keeping of the commandments is to us impossible ; 
 the law commandeth to us the keeping of the command- 
 ments; Ergo, the law commandeth to us what is im- 
 possible.” It is most logical and regular ; but we may be 
 disposed to pronounce it unattractive and hard, without 
 music or fragrance or grace. 
 

 
 236 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 But we must remember the audience whom Hamilton 
 addressed. His Places were originally a college thesis 
 prepared in order to be read to professors and students ; 
 and professors and students might have deemed them- 
 selves defrauded of their due, if they had got what was 
 too popular and easy and pleasant. This, also, has to 
 be said that, if the shape and the accent are academic, 
 the themes which are demonstrated and proved are the 
 highest and holiest—the verities that gather round sin 
 and salvation and Christ and eternity. And when you 
 have a heart that burns and glows, no curious exactitude 
 of form will stifle its emotion or disguise its ardour. 
 
 George Herbert was none the less a thrall to the 
 enchantments of his peerless Lord, because he shaped 
 his tribute now into the likeness of an altar and now into 
 the fashion of a bird’s outspread wings. And though the 
 author of the 119th Psalm seemed to be smothering and 
 cabining his enthusiasm by making his poem an elaborate 
 acrostic, and by resolving to introduce into each of his 
 verses one of the names of the divine law, in reality he did 
 nothing of the sort. His fervent affection for God’s Word 
 and God Himself soars above all fetters. It laughs to 
 scorn the stone walls and the iron bars. That is how it 
 was with Patrick Hamilton. 
 | Perhaps, however, it is the substance of the Places 
 rather than the manner, which disappoints. They con- 
 tain little which is absolutely fresh and new. They are 
 debtors to Tindale’s Parable of the Wicked Mammon and to 
 Luther’s earlie’ works. It is undeniable. Hamilton was 
 not an original and creative genius ; few of us are: most of 
 us are glad of those who have cut down the brushwood and 
 jungle before us, and cleared a path which we can follow. 
 
 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 237 
 
 
 
 
 
 And the Scotsman, if he is not a discoverer, has yet 
 his own aphoristic, axiomatic, memorable way of express- 
 ing the evangelical belief which is dear to his soul. His 
 treatise, John Foxe assures us, “albeit in quantity it 
 be short, yet in effect it comprehendeth matter able to 
 fill large volumes, declaring to us the true doctrine of the 
 Law, of the Gospel, of faith, and of works, with the nature 
 and properties and also the difference of the same, which 
 ought diligently to be learned and retained of all Christians.” 
 
 That is, beyond question, the merit of Patrick’s Places. 
 They declare the true doctrine. They set forth, without 
 prolixity, without adornment, in language that flies un- 
 erringly to its mark, the magnificent simplicities of the 
 Gospel of Christ. If they add nothing to Luther and 
 Tindale, they convey Luther’s message and Tindale’s 
 with less diffuseness and with more epigrammatic point 
 than it had when its authors proclaimed it. What they 
 say may be hackneyed and trite to us; we have heard it a 
 thousand times ; but to the men and women of Hamilton’s 
 generation it was as novel as Peter’s sermon on Pentecost 
 was to the Jews and proselytes who hearkened to it, or 
 as Paul’s preaching on the Acropolis was to the men of 
 Athens. . 
 
 That gives these unassuming Places an historical im- 
 portance no less than a biographic interest. They are 
 the first doctrinal manifesto of the Scottish Reformation. 
 They helped to decide the theology and the religion of that 
 Reformation in its primary stages. They reveal to us the 
 lessons which our fathers learned, and the treasures which 
 they grasped to their hearts, in that glad confident morning 
 when old things passed away for them and all things 
 became new. 
 

 
 238 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 It is a wholesome theology that they inculcate, a 
 humbling and regenerating and upbuilding religion that 
 they enforce. Hamilton ranges Law and Gospel over 
 against each other. ‘“‘ The law showeth us our sin; the 
 gospel showeth us remedy for it. The law showeth us 
 our condemnation ; the gospel showeth us our redemption. 
 The law is the word of ire ; the gospel is the word of grace. 
 The law is the word of despair ; the gospel is the word of 
 comfort. The law is the word of unrest ; the gospel is the 
 word of peace.”’ 
 
 He imagines a disputation between these two an- 
 tagonists. “‘ The law saith, ‘Pay thy debt’; the gospel 
 saith, ‘Christ hath paid it.’ The law saith, ‘ Thou art 
 a sinner; despair; and thou shalt be damned; the 
 gospel saith, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee; be of good 
 comfort ; thou shalt be saved.’ The law saith, ‘ Make 
 amends for thy sins’; the gospel saith, ‘ Christ hath made 
 it for thee.’ The law saith, ‘The Father of heaven is 
 angry with thee’; the gospel saith, ‘ Christ hath pacified 
 Him with His blood.’ The law saith, ‘Where is thy 
 righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction ?’; the gospel 
 saith, ‘Christ is thy righteousness, thy goodness, thy 
 satisfaction.’ The law saith, ‘ Thou art bound and obliged 
 to me, to the devil, and to hell’; the gospel saith, ‘ Christ 
 hath delivered thee from them all.’’”’ So, in the end, the 
 law is silenced, and the gospel prevails, and the helpless 
 prisoner sees the great iron gate opened in front of him 
 by a pierced Hand. 
 
 Hamilton goes on to paint, in strong, clear, definite 
 lines, the portrait of saving faith. ‘“ Faith is a cer- 
 tainty or assuredness. He that hath faith wotteth 
 well that God will fulfil His word. Thou wilt ask me, 
 
 es = |. — -* . 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 239 
 
 ‘What word?’ I answer, ‘The Gospel ’—Christ is our 
 Saviour ; Christ bought us with His blood ; Christ washed 
 us with His blood ; Christ offered Himself for us; Christ 
 bare our sins on His Own back. He that believeth the 
 Gospel shall be safe.’’ 
 
 Then, to drive the matter home, he opposes Faith 
 and Incredulity. “ Faith is the root of all good; in- 
 credulity is the root of all evil. Faith maketh God 
 and man good friends; incredulity maketh them foes. 
 Faith bringeth God and man together; incredulity 
 sundereth them. All that faith doth pleaseth God; all 
 that incredulity doth displeaseth God. Faith only maketh 
 a man good and righteous ; incredulity only maketh him 
 unjust and evil. Faith maketh a man a member of Christ ; 
 incredulity maketh him a member of the devil. Faith 
 showeth us God to be a sweet Father ; incredulity showeth 
 Him a terrible Judge. Faith holdeth stiff by the Word of 
 God ; incredulity wavereth here and there. Faith counteth 
 and holdeth God to be true; incredulity holdeth Him 
 false anda liar. Faith knoweth God ; incredulity knoweth 
 Him not. Faith loveth both God and his neighbour ; 
 incredulity loveth neither of them. Faith extolleth God 
 and His deeds; incredulity extolleth herself and her own 
 deeds.”’ After the sententious, suggestive antitheses, 
 who could be ignorant of the difference between Una and 
 Duessa, between the reality and the counterfeit ? 
 
 Next, hope and charity are explained. ‘‘ Hope is a 
 trusty looking after the thing that is promised us to 
 come.” “Charity is the love of thy neighbour ; for Christ 
 holdeth all alike, the rich, the poor, the friend and the foe, 
 the thankful and unthankful, the kinsman and stranger.”’ 
 ‘ Faith cometh of the Word of God ; hope cometh of faith ; 
 

 
 240 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 and charity springeth of them both. Faith receiveth God 
 hope receiveth His reward ; charity loveth her neighbour 
 with a glad heart, and that without any respect of reward.”’ 
 
 Finally, there is the subject of good works, on which 
 so readily and so fatally men go astray. ‘‘ Works make 
 us neither good nor evil, neither save nor condemn 
 us.” “‘ Whosoever believeth or thinketh to be saved by 
 his works, denieth that Christ is his Saviour, that Christ 
 died for him, and that all things pertain to Christ. For 
 how is He thy Saviour, if thou mightest save thyself by 
 thy works, or whereto should He die for thee if any works 
 might have saved thee ?”’ ‘‘ We should do no good works,” 
 therefore, “‘ for the intent to get the inheritance of heaven 
 or remission of sin’’; is not that as much as to say, “I 
 am Christ, I can save myself’? ‘‘I condemn not good 
 deeds,”’ Patrick Hamilton goes on; “‘ but I condemn the 
 false trust in them; for all the works wherein a man 
 putteth any confidence are therewith poisoned and become 
 ONLI 
 
 And this is his pleading and passionate conclusion : 
 “Press not to the inheritance of heaven through pre- 
 sumption of thy good works ; for, if thou do, thou countest 
 thyself holy and equal to God, because thou wilt take 
 nothing of Him for nought; and so shalt thou fall as 
 Lucifer fell for his pride.” 
 
 “Not the labour of my hands 
 Can fulfil Thy law’s demands ; 
 Could my zeal no respite know, 
 Could my tears for ever flow, 
 All for sin could not atone ; 
 Thou must save, and Thou alone.’’ 
 
 These extracts should make plain to us what is the 
 chief distinction of Patrick Hamilton. It is that he brought 
 

 
 A REFORMATION ILIAD IN A NUTSHELL 241 
 
 to Scotland the flavour and the fragrance of the German 
 Reformation, when that Reformation was in its blossom- 
 ing and gracious spring-time. Others were to be more 
 influential than he in defining the ideas of Scottish piety 
 and in constructing the framework of Scottish ecclesi- 
 asticism ; he did not leaven the Church of the future as 
 Knox and Melville and Henderson did. But this is his 
 glory, that he caught the healthful contagion of Luther’s 
 Gospel at a happy moment, and that he communicated to 
 his countrymen in its New Testament purity the good news 
 which had gladdened and enriched himself. 
 
 Luther’s later years were vexed by controversies not with 
 the foes merely but with the friends and champions of his 
 own Protestant creed; to Hamilton the lines fell in pleasant 
 places, because he knew nothing of these controversies 
 and of the debates and divergencies which they occasioned. 
 He found the year at the spring, the acceptable year of 
 the Lord. Men and women had just made the greatest 
 of all discoveries, that they do not need to earn salvation 
 by toilsome works of their own, to attempt to earn it and 
 to fail in the attempt, but that on the contrary they have 
 only to receive a perfect salvation which the Lord Jesus 
 Christ has procured for them at the cost of Calvary. 
 
 This was Hamilton’s one sufficient and transforming dis- 
 covery for himself ; this was his one elementary and com- 
 prehensive sermon to the men of his nation. ‘‘ What is this 
 to say, “ Christ died for thee’? Verily, that thou shouldest 
 have died perpetually ; and Christ, to deliver thee from 
 death, died for thee, and changed thy perpetual death 
 into His Own death; for thou madest the fault, and He 
 suffered the pain; and that, for the love He had to thee 
 
 before thou wast born, when thou hadst done neither good 
 16 
 

 
 242 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 nor evil. ... Finally, He desireth nought of thee, but 
 that thou wilt acknowledge what He hath done for thee, 
 and bear it in mind; and that thou wouldst help others 
 for His sake, both in word and deed, even as He hath 
 holpen thee for nought, and without reward. O, how 
 ready would we be to help others, if we knew His goodness 
 and gentleness towards us; He is a good and a gentle 
 Lord, for He doth all for nought. Let us, I beseech you 
 therefore, follow His footsteps, Whom all the world ought 
 to praise and worship.” The personal “assurance of 
 emancipation and peace through living faith in the atone- 
 ment of Christ ’’: that, as Professor MacEwen has phrased 
 it, was Patrick Hamilton’s evangel—these were his positives, 
 his affirmations, and his benefactions—for the dark and 
 necessitous Scotland of his time. 
 
LECTURE XI 
 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 
 
 JOHN KNOX’S “HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION 
 IN SCOTLAND” 
 

 
 
 
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LECTURE XI 
 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 
 
 JOHN KNOX’S “ HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION 
 IN SCOTLAND ” 
 
 OHN KNOX’S History is a revelation of himself. So, 
 before we mark some features of the book, we may 
 survey the features of the man. 
 
 He was a believer. 
 
 He had a faith which was clear-cut and decisive. He 
 did not lose himself in wandering mazes. His mind 
 abhorred vagueness and irresolution. In none of the 
 spheres in which he played his strenuous part was he a 
 trimmer, and, least, in the sphere of religion. How shall 
 we describe Knox’s belief? What are the adjectives 
 which portray it ? 
 
 It was sensible and sane. There was a motley crowd 
 of superstitions which he was resolved to drive from the 
 land and from the souls of his countrymen. Sometimes 
 his contempt is withering. In his report of his debate 
 with the Abbot of Crossraguel, he laughs to scorn the 
 Sacrament of the Mass. This “ poore.god of bread,’’ he 
 says, is more miserable than the idols over whose futility 
 Hebrew prophets made merry. Within one year he will 
 “ putrifie, and then he must be burnt.” The wind will 
 blow him to the sea; the rain or the snow will turn him 
 
 245 
 
246 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 into dough again. ‘‘ Yea, which is most of all to be feared, 
 that god is a pray (if he be not wel kept) to rattes and 
 mise ; for they will desyre no better denner than white 
 rounde gods ynew.” It is sheer and pitiless common 
 sense. The glamours, the pretensions, the miracles of 
 sacerdotalism melt into nothingness, when its searchlight 
 falls on them and its surgery dissects them. 
 
 Knox’s belief was Scriptural too. It was based on 
 the firm foundation of the Word of God. He taught the 
 Scottish people that they could not give the Bible an 
 excessive honour or a too complete obedience. In the 
 opening paragraphs of The Book of Discipline, he affirms 
 that the Old and New Testaments contain and express 
 “all thingis necessarie for the instructioun of the Kirk 
 and to mak the man of God perfite.”” Into the worship 
 and government of Christ’s realm, he would have nothing 
 admitted for which there is not a supernatural sanction ; 
 everything must be fashioned according to the pattern 
 shown in the Mount. In a Letter of Wholesome Counsell 
 which he addressed to the friends of reform in Scotland 
 when, in July 1556, he was about to leave them for a 
 season, his one anxiety is that they should love and search 
 the Scriptures. “‘ Therefore, deare Brethren, if that ye 
 looke for a lyfe to come, of necessitie it is that ye exercise 
 your selfis in the booke of the Lorde youre God. Let no 
 daye slyppe or want some comfort receyved from His 
 mouth. Open your eares, and He will speake even pleasant 
 thinges to your hart. Close not your eyes, but diligentlye 
 let them beholde what portion of substance is lefte to you 
 within your Father’s testament. Let your younge learne 
 to prayse the gracious goodnes of Him, whose mercy hath 
 called you from darkeness to lyghte and from deathe to lyfe.” 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 247 
 
 And what he asked from others it was his joy to 
 practise himself. In the narrative of his last days which 
 we owe to his “ faithful servitor, Richard Bannatyne,”’ 
 we are told that on Thursday, the 13th of November 1572, 
 he was so feeble that he had to “ leave his ordinary reading 
 of the Bible; for ilk day he read a certain chapters both 
 of the Auld Testament and of the New, with certain 
 Psalms, whilk Psalms he passed through every month 
 once.”’ This was the strong meat which nurtured a strong 
 man. 
 
 And his belief was evangelical. The “ Evangell ”’ 
 is, indeed, one of his favourite words; and his earliest 
 appearance in the fields of literature was as the editor 
 of a little treatise on Justification by Faith, which Henry 
 Balnaves, one of his fellow-prisoners in the French galleys, 
 no “speculative theolog’”’ but a simple layman, had 
 penned. We have already seen how, in the Scots Confes- 
 sion, his language rises into singular beauty and pathos 
 when the work and the sacrifice of the Saviour are the 
 theme. To God in Christ he attributes the entire glory 
 of our redemption. ‘‘ For we ar so dead, so blynd, and so 
 perverse, that neather can we feill when we ar pricked, 
 see the lycht when it schynes, nor assent to the will of 
 God when it is reveilled.”’ Therefore from first to last, 
 from the hole of the pit to the City into which there shall 
 in no wise enter anything that defileth, He must plan 
 and work and finish and perfect, and on His kind arms we 
 fall. It was the belief which Knox taught, because it was 
 the experience which he knew. 
 
 Knox was a churchman also. 
 If, since the era of the Reformation, the Kirk has been 
 
248 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 a potent and influential entity in Scotland, watching 
 over the highest interests of the commonwealth, reproving 
 public sin and contending for public godliness, gaining 
 and conserving and advancing the liberties of the land, 
 it was he who, under God, invested it with such sacredness 
 and majesty. He laboured to have its various courts 
 established and equipped. In particular, he made the 
 General Assembly the true Parliament and Legislation of 
 the country. ‘“‘ Take from us the freedom of Assemblies ’’, 
 he was accustomed to say, “‘ and take from us the Evangel.” 
 
 If, again, the preaching of the Gospel has had pre- 
 eminent importance in the worship of the Scottish Church, 
 and has enriched many generations of Scottish people with 
 a liberal education in the best knowledge, it is to Knox 
 and his coadjutors that we must trace this coronation of 
 the pulpit and the sermon. He proclaimed the necessity 
 for “‘ hailsome doctrin ” and for “ godlie and learned men ”’ 
 to tell it forth. He could not abide any “ vane schaddow ” 
 of a minister. He is not ‘‘a Dispensatour of Goddis 
 mysteries,’ he protested indignantly, “that in no wyse 
 can breik the breid of lyif to the faynting and hungrie 
 saules.”’ 
 
 And if, once more, there are few churches in the 
 world within which the rights of all the members are 
 so fully granted, and their responsibilities so effectively 
 taught, it was Knox who helped Scottish Presbyterians 
 to these democratic conceptions. He went farther than 
 either Luther or Calvin in his assertion of the duties and 
 endowments of the rank and file in the army of Christ. 
 Very significant is the chapter, in The Book of Discipline, 
 on the weekly Prophesying or Exercise. To it every 
 member ought to come. In it every member, if only he 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 249 
 
 ce 
 
 avoids ‘‘ peregryne and unproffitable questionis,”’ shall 
 have “‘libertie to utter and declair his mynd and knaw- 
 ledge to the comfort and edificatioun ”’ of all. One may 
 hazard the opinion that Presbytery, in none of its branches, 
 has made as much as it might have done of the weekly 
 Prophesying and Exercise. 
 
 John Knox found room in his churchmanship for 
 arrangements designed to be temporary. In The Book of 
 Common Order he set down prayers that might be used 
 in the conduct of the worship in God’s house. But it 
 never was compulsory to employ these. They were helps, 
 guides, models, rather than obligatory forms of liturgical 
 devotion. Everybody remembers, too, his institution 
 of Readers and Superintendents, in addition to the ministers 
 of the Word. But, in that dearth of fully qualified ex- 
 ponents of divine truth which marked a transition time, 
 the Reader’s humbler office was necessary; and, when 
 much had to be planned and organised, the Superintendent 
 had his function, even if he could assert no claim to 
 the pomps and powers of a Diocesan Bishop. These are 
 examples of devices admirably suited to the exigencies 
 of the hour, but not intended to be crystallised into per- 
 manence. 
 
 In permitting them, the Reformer showed a good 
 example. Not everything in the government of the 
 Church has equal importance, equal validity, and equal 
 abidingness. There are ordinances which are circum- 
 stantial rather than central, and which may be modified 
 and amended as years goon. Knox is to be honoured and 
 imitated both in his steadfastness and in his elasticity. 
 
 Dean Church, the worthy son of Hooker and Andrewes 
 and Ken, has written: ‘‘ Spavtam nactus es, hanc exorna 
 

 
 250 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 is the motto for every one whose lot is cast in any portion 
 of Christ’s Church.”” Few have lived in accordance with the 
 motto more consistently and more efficaciously than the 
 man who lifted the Kirk in Scotland out of the dust. 
 
 He certainly was a patriot. 
 
 More than most, he was dowered with the prefervidum 
 ingenium Scotorum; but in his case it was suffused with 
 the heavenlier passion that God should be glorified through 
 the length and breadth of the land. 
 
 He craved freedom for his country. It was not that 
 he was republican; he had a natural and religious rever- 
 ence for kings and all in authority. But if a ruler was 
 idolatrous, irreligious, forgetful of Christ and Christ’s 
 little ones, the ruler should have short shrift from him. 
 ““ Think ye,’ quod Mary, ‘that subjectis having power 
 may resist thair Princes?’ ‘ Yf their Princes exceed 
 thair boundis,’ quod he, ‘Madam, and do against that 
 whairfoir they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but thei 
 may be resisted, evin by power.’ At these wordis, the 
 Quene stood as it war amased, more then the quarter of 
 ane hour. At lenth scho said, ‘ Weall then, I perceave 
 that my subjectis shall obey you, and not me; and shall 
 do what thei list and nott what I command; and so man 
 I be subject to thame, and nott thei to me.’ ‘ God forbid,’ 
 answered he, ‘that ever I tack upoun me to command 
 any to obey me, or yitt to set subjectis at libertie to do 
 what pleaseth thame. Bot my travell is that boyth 
 princes and subjectis obey God.’’’ Young Mary Stewart, 
 beautiful, self-willed, brilliant, with the hard brilliance 
 of the diamond, determined to act as despotically as she 
 chose, had never heard such treason before. But modern 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 251 
 
 Scotland is the creation of the traitor, whom conscience 
 compelled to speak the truth. 
 
 He coveted intelligence, too, for his fellow-citizens. 
 In The Book of Discipline—which Professor Mitchell calls 
 “the most thoughtful, judicious, practical, and compre- 
 hensive ”’ of the documents of the Scottish Reformation— 
 Knox and his helpers painted the picture of their Ladder 
 of Learning, from the elementary school in which Grammar 
 and Latin and the Catechism were taught, through the 
 high school in each considerable town, with its training in 
 Logic and Rhetoric and the Languages, into the university. 
 Bursaries were to aid the climber, as he mounted from 
 step to step of the Ladder. What better service could the 
 nobles fulfil than to seek out and encourage such climbers ? 
 “ Off necessitie it is that your Honouris be most cairfull 
 for the virtuous educatioun and godlie upbringing of the 
 youth of this Realme, yf eather ye now thirst unfeanedlie 
 for the advancement of Christis glorie, or yit desire the 
 continewance of his benefits to the generatioun following.”’ 
 The pity is that the picture has not been more completely 
 embodied in fact. 
 
 And Knox desired to see the commonwealth per- 
 meated with brotherliness. He had his austerities. He 
 did not find life, as M. Renan found it, ‘a delightful ex- 
 cursion through freality,” a picnic and féte. But within 
 the determined and rigorous man throbbed a tender heart. 
 One of his anxieties was that the poor should be ministered 
 to and provided for. With “ stubburne and idill beggaris ”’ 
 he had no patience; but he yearned over “ personis of 
 honestie fallin into decay and penuritie,” and over “ the 
 lauboraris and manuraris of the ground; who, by these 
 creuell beastis the Papistis, have been so oppressit, that 
 

 
 252 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 thair life to thame has been dolorus and bitter.”’ He 
 would have “every several kirk’”’ take the oversight of 
 its less favoured members. And he waxed fierce against 
 Protestant barons and gentlemen, who had only changed 
 the tyranny of the clergy into the tyranny of the lord or 
 laird ; let them know that they will not “ escheip Goddis 
 hevy and feirfull judgementis.’”’ No philanthropist nor 
 socialist of them all has championed the cause of the poor 
 more manfully than Knox has done. 
 
 Unquestionably, he felt and proclaimed that the State 
 cannot prosper without godliness. “‘ No Commonwealth 
 can flurische or long indure without gude lawis and scharp 
 executioun of the same.’’ Some of his disciplinary regula- 
 tions were iron rather than silken. But a troublous period 
 needs firmness and strength in its guides even more than 
 it needs the “ droppings of warm tears.’’ And the ideal 
 of the Reformer was the noblest. It was that which 
 Calvin cherished for Geneva—to transmute a turbulent 
 people, held for ages in the bondage of ignorance and error 
 and consequent sin, into a kingdom of heaven on the earth. 
 This was why he had recourse to his “ bow of burning 
 gold,”’ his “‘ arrows of desire,” his ‘ spear,” his ‘‘ chariot 
 of fire.’ 
 
 Nor was he altogether unsuccessful. Professor Hume 
 Brown has said that, “‘ previous to the great religious 
 conflict, there never was an issue before the Scottish 
 people that went deep enough to elicit the instincts 
 and tendencies which must be awakened before what 
 we call a nation becomes possible.’”’ The Reformation, 
 he contends, much more than the War of Independence, 
 first gave birth to the civic and corporate life of the 
 land. 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 253 
 
 It remains to be added, and it means more than any- 
 thing else, that Knox was a good man. 
 
 The medizval virtue and grace of Honour, that peerless 
 quality to which knightly spirits aspired, has been analysed 
 into four ingredients—courage, compassion, truth, and 
 loyalty. Knox, not only a man of honour but a man of 
 religion, had, deep inwoven into his personal character, 
 these four magnificent essentials. 
 
 In later life his courage was leonine, unmistakable. 
 Yet, perhaps it was not always so dauntless. We recall 
 how he shrank back when, in the Castle of St. Andrews, 
 he was summoned by John Rough to undertake the work 
 of preaching. He recounts it in the History. ‘ The said 
 Johnne, abashed, byrst furth in moist abundand tearis, 
 and withdrew him self to his chalmer. His conteanance 
 and behaveour, fra that day till the day that he was com- 
 pelled to present him self to the publict place of preaching, 
 did sufficiently declair the greaf and truble of his hearte ; 
 for no man saw any sign of myrth of him, neyther yitt had 
 he pleasur to accumpany any man, many dayis together.” 
 But when he came forth from his retreat, the tremors 
 
 were gone, and his words were half-battles. ‘‘ Some said, 
 ‘Otheris sned the branches of the Papistrie; but he 
 stryckis at the roote, to destroy the hole.’ ... . Otheris 
 
 said, “ Maister George Wishart spak never so plainelye, 
 and yitt he was brunt; evin so will he be.’’”’ Probably 
 Knox’s bravery was God-given rather than constitutional. 
 After the black St. Bartholomew, some soldiers of Henry 
 of Navarre, who had fought valiantly in the streets against 
 their enemies, were frightened when they heard a voice 
 behind a hedge. They concluded that God lends courage 
 to His servants only as they require it, that He may keep 
 

 
 254 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 them waiting on Him. It looks as if John Knox had 
 learned that lesson. 
 
 His compassion may not be §0 evident to us, and 
 many have refused to credit him with any tender mercies. 
 But we think of the gentleness and patience of his letters 
 to Mrs. Elizabeth Bowes, his mother-in-law, “such a 
 weariful Mrs. Much-Afraid,” troubled always by self- 
 questionings and spiritual terrors. ‘‘ Mother, wald ye 
 not that Chrystis glorie suld appeir? Gif in you war 
 nether found syn, deth, weaknes, nor imperfectioun, 
 what neid had ye of Chrystis benefittis ? Remember, 
 mother, that Jesus the Sone of God came not in the flesche 
 to call the just, but he came to call synneris ; not to abyd 
 and rejose in thair auld iniquitie, but to repentance: that 
 is, to ane unfeaned dolour for the offences committit, 
 and to a daylie sorrowing, yea, and haittred for that whilk 
 resteth, with a hoip of mercie and forgivnes of God by the 
 redemptioun that is in Chrystis blude.”’ 
 
 And we think, no less, of his lowly sense of personal 
 inability, and his hunger for the comradeship and succour 
 of friends. ‘‘One thing I ashame not to affirme,” he 
 told another correspondent, Mrs. Anna Lock, “ that 
 familiaritie once throughlie contracted was never yet 
 brocken on my default. The cause may be that I have 
 rather need of all than that any hath need of me.” 
 Recalling such traits in his disposition, and such humilities 
 and kindlinesses in his utterance, we are constrained to 
 own that Mr. Taylor Innes’s paradoxical epithet, “ the 
 woman-hearted warrior,’’ may not be far amiss. 
 
 As for truth—the enthusiasm for it; the clarion-toned 
 proclamation of it, ““impugn it whoso list’; the fight to 
 have it enthroned and obeyed: that was the breath of his 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 255 
 
 nostrils. It was his joy when truth triumphed, his keenest 
 grief when she was wounded in the house of her friends. 
 He never had a sorer trial than when the good Earl of 
 Moray, that he might enhance his wealth and fame, seemed 
 for a time to be recreant to the cause of religion. The 
 matter fell so hot betwixt them, the Hzstory relates, that 
 they spake not together in the old brotherly way for more 
 than a year and a half. “ Seing,’’ said Knox with a sob 
 in his voice, “that I perceave myself frustrat of my ex- 
 pectatioun, which was, that ye should ever have preferred 
 God to your awin affectioun, and the advancement of his 
 treuth, to your singular commoditie, I committ you to 
 your awin wytt, and to the conducting of those who better 
 can please you.” He had not loved Moray so much, loved 
 he not righteousness more. 
 
 And personal loyalty to Christ, Redeemer, Keeper, 
 and King, controlled and sustained him through the whole 
 of his “long and painful battle.’ Usually he is silent 
 about the experiences of his soul; but, now and then, the 
 veil is lifted. In 1566 he wrote, “ with deliberat mynd 
 to his God,” a touching prayer and covenant. ‘‘ Thow 
 hes sealed into my heart remission of my sinnes,” he said 
 in the course of it, “which I acknawledge and confes 
 myself to have receaved be the precious bloode of Jesus 
 Christ ones shed.’’ Six years later, when he lay dying 
 in his house at the Netherbow, he bade his wife ‘‘ Go 
 read where I cast my first anchor’; and she turned to the 
 seventeenth chapter of St. John ; and, leaning on the strong 
 consolations of his Lord’s mighty and merciful intercession, 
 he went to the presence of Him Whom, having not seen, 
 he had loved. The deepest thing in John Knox was his 
 individual Christianity. 
 

 
 256 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Such was the man; and the book is in keeping with 
 the man. The History of the Reformatioun of Relhigioun 
 within the Realme of Scotland: Conteanyng the Maner 
 and by what Persons the Light of Christis Evangell hath bene 
 Manifested unto this Realme, after that Horrible and Unt- 
 versall Defectioun from the Trewth, which hes cume by the 
 Meanes of that Romane Antichrist—this History is, by far, 
 our best, completest, and most satisfying portrait of Knox. 
 He unveils himself to us in its pages in the affections and the 
 antipathies of that forcible and fiery nature of his. He 
 narrates many a speech which crossed his lips, many an 
 incident in his crowded career, and many a detail of the 
 part he played in the achievements of the time, which we 
 should never have known otherwise. 
 
 It is not given to contemporaries to realise the full 
 and abiding greatness of the heroes of their own age. 
 From the distance of the Continent Theodore Beza saw 
 the apostolic grandeurs of Knox; but in his own 
 country the prophet did not receive the honours which 
 were lawfully his, and, if we had been left for our 
 information regarding him to the annalists of his day 
 and his land, we must have fared badly indeed. Even 
 George Buchanan has only four brief references to the 
 biggest and kingliest Scotsman of that generation, or 
 of any generation. But what his neighbours failed to 
 do for him, Knox did for himself, in a more inimitable 
 fashion than they could. Often deliberately, and as often 
 unconsciously and indirectly, he has limned his features 
 for us in the graphic sentences of the History. 
 
 It seems as if a special providence had preserved the 
 book for us. He forbade it to be printed in his lifetime ; 
 it would hurt him more than it would profit his friends, 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 257 
 
 he said, if it saw the light too soon ; he knew the plainness 
 of its speech, not merely about the adversaries of the good 
 cause, but about those Protestant Lords who had not 
 been so chivalrous and unselfish in its defence as they 
 ought to have been. When he was gone, his secretary, 
 Richard Bannatyne, offered to the General Assembly to 
 set his master’s papers in order, if a pension was allowed 
 him for the purpose. The suggestion was immediately 
 complied with; but the publication tarried. 
 
 At last, in 1586, fourteen years after Knox’s death, 
 Thomas Vautrollier started printing the Hzstory, not in 
 Edinburgh but in London; but, when he had finished 
 twelve hundred copies, the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 interposed for some unexplained reason, and vetoed the 
 prosecution of the work. Sixty years ran on. Then, in 
 1644, when the Civil War was raging, in the era of Solemn 
 Leagues and Westminster Assemblies, the book was at 
 length given to the world. But it was a poor simulacrum 
 of its virile original, a ghostly phantom. [Its editor, 
 David Buchanan, was devoid of literary conscience. He 
 tampered with the text, omitted, interpolated, mutilated, 
 refined the asperities, clipped and pruned the roughnesses, 
 till people said that this was not the voice of Knox at 
 all, and that his name had no right to appear on the 
 title-page. 
 
 John Milton, in that great and eloquent piece of 
 English prose, the Aveopagitica, cried out against the 
 wrong: “If the work of any deceased author, though 
 never so famous in his lifetime and even to this day, come 
 to their hands for licence to be Printed or Reprinted, if 
 there be found in his book one sentence of a ventrous 
 edge, utter’d in the height of zeal, and who knows 
 
 1] 
 

 
 258 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 whether it might not be the dictat of a divine Spirit, 
 yet not suiting with every low decrepit humor of their 
 own, though it were Knox himself, the Reformer of a King- 
 dom, that shake it, they will not pardoun him their dash ; 
 the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost for 
 their fearfulness or their presumptous rashnesse.”’ 
 
 Ninety years more had to elapse before the real History, 
 in its native strength, was published ; in 1732 it was edited, 
 with that carefulness and reverence which it deserved, 
 from a written copy in the possession of the University 
 of Glasgow. More than a century later, in November 
 1846, working with a yet older manuscript, David Laing, 
 that prince of antiquaries and scholars and bookmen, 
 produced the definitive and crowning edition. Knox’s 
 book, like Knox himself, has passed through a world of 
 adventure and deliverance to the wealthy place. 
 
 The Lords of the Congregation asked him to write it. 
 That was in October 1559, when the Reformation move- 
 ment was yet young in Scotland. All sorts of false tales 
 were in circulation, at home and on the Continent, regard- 
 ing their motives and their actions; it was of immeasur- 
 able importance that a true account of these should be 
 set down by some one:thoroughly qualified to do so; and 
 who so fitted for the purpose as Knox? “Least that 
 Sathan,”’ he says, “‘ by our long silence shall tak occasioun 
 to blaspheym, and to sklander us Protestantis, as that our 
 fact tendit rather to seditioun and rebellioun then to 
 reformatioun of maners and abuses in Religioun, we have 
 thocht expedient to committ to writting the causes moving 
 us—us, ane great parte of the Nobilitie and Baronis of the 
 Realme—to tak the sweard of just defence against those 
 that most injustlie seak our destructioun,”’ 
 
THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 259 
 
 In the end of that year, 1559, the author commenced 
 his task of vindication. Weekly, at times daily, he put 
 on record the momentous events transpiring around him. 
 When he could steal a respite from his public toils, his pen 
 busied itself in its labour until 1566. As he went forward 
 with it, the work swelled to dimensions of which he had not 
 dreamed when he started. His original plan had been to 
 tell the story of the years from 1558 to 1561, closing with 
 the landing of Queen Mary at Leith in the dense and chilly 
 fog of the 19th of August in the latter year: did not the 
 very face of Heaven speak of the comfort she brought 
 into this country with her—*“ to wit, sorow, dolour, darknes, 
 and all impietie’’? That was the formative and critical 
 period of the Scottish Reformation. But when he had 
 related its happenings and achievements, he was led on, 
 most fortunately for us, to add both a preface and a supple- 
 ment ; to recount what had taken place previous to 1558, 
 and what befell after Mary Stewart’s calamitous arrival 
 in that wintry summer of 1561. 
 
 We understand now the History’s scheme and arrange- 
 ment. The Second and Third Books, the central portion, 
 are those which Knox composed first, and which the Lords 
 of the Congregation had desired him to write: they are 
 his plea and apology for the Reform which had revolution- 
 ised his country. The First Book is the preface of which 
 I have spoken; it describes the streaks of dawn which 
 heralded the sunrise and the daybreak. The Fourth 
 Book is the supplement ; it carries the recital forward into 
 the occurrences which followed what had seemed a decisive 
 and final victory, when, as is so frequently the case in 
 human affairs, there were disappointments, disillusion- 
 ments, returns of the enemy to vex and annoy, regrets and 
 

 
 260 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 griefs for the captain of the righteous cause. The Fifth, 
 and last, Book can scarcely be said to be Knox’s own; at 
 best it is the orderly presentment of those Scrolls found 
 among his papers after his death, of which Richard Banna- 
 tyne spoke to the General Assembly ; we may leave it 
 out of the reckoning. But every part of that which 
 authentically and undeniably belongs to the Reformer— 
 the centre, the prologue; the appendix—exhibits qualities 
 and virtues that are distinctively its own. 
 
 Let us commence where Knox commenced, with the 
 centre, the Second and Third Books, his defence of the 
 Reformation for which none had wrought more untiringly 
 and fought more valorously than himself. We are im- 
 pressed here chiefly by the patience and the exactitude 
 of his historical method. He has a keen and constant 
 sense of the value of documents. He is as modern as a 
 Freeman or a Stubbs in his desire for accuracy and fulness 
 of quotation. Petitions, Protestations, Letters, Appeals, 
 Addresses, Bands, and Covenants are cited in their very 
 words. When he gets to the great doings of 1560, the 
 Acts of Parliament abolishing Popery are recorded in all 
 their paragraphs and particulars ; and the Scots Confession, 
 the Order of Election for Superintendents and Ministers, 
 and the Book of Discipline are incorporated in their entirety. 
 
 The result is that, in this section of the History, we have 
 much less of Knox himself than in the other two ; although 
 nowhere, of course, can so individual a soul conceal alto- 
 gether its predilections and enthusiasms. But where we 
 lose the man we find the historian, intelligent, painstaking, 
 comprehensive, sifting and accumulating his material with 
 perseverance, with solicitude, and with wisdom. Knox 
 was biased, no doubt. He was the last man on earth 
 
 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 261 
 
 to sympathise with the temperament which can sit poised, 
 unmoved, impartial, “holding no form of creed, but 
 contemplating all ’”’— 
 “And ‘while the world runs round and round,’ IJ said, 
 ‘Reign thou apart, a quiet king.’”’ 
 
 It is the very opposite of the counsel he would have given 
 his spirit. But the Second and Third Books of his History 
 show him to us, also, as the indefatigable devotee of fact 
 and verity. 
 
 If now we go back to what I have called the preface 
 or prologue, that First Book which was later than its 
 successors in being composed although it delineates the 
 facts and words of an earlier time, how shall we characterise 
 it? Beyond all question, it has more literary interest 
 than any other division of the Hzstory. It is the best 
 certificate and demonstration of Knox’s astonishing powers 
 as a penman, his liveliness, his vigour, how clearly he saw 
 things, how memorably he could tell what he saw. There 
 are episodes in this First Book which have only to be read 
 once, and it will be strange if they are ever forgotten. 
 There are persons with whom we are confronted, and we 
 know them as well as if they and we lived next door instead 
 of being divided from each other by the gulf of a few 
 centuries. 
 
 Adam Reid of Barskimming and his fellow-Lollards 
 of Kyle, to the number of thirty, whom Archbishop 
 Blackader of Glasgow summoned to the bar of young 
 James the Fourth, but whose mother-wit was too much 
 for the Archbishop, dashing him out of countenance, and 
 turning the greatest part of the accusation to laughter— 
 with what gusto the scene is pictured! Or, for a different 
 sort of story, we almost feel the doom drawing nearer and 
 

 
 262 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 nearer to James the Fifth—the rout of Solway Moss, when 
 stout Oliver Sinclair was captured before he had struck a 
 blow, “‘ fleing full manfully’”’ as Knox says with that piti- 
 less irony of his; and how the bitter news sent the poor 
 king to his bed, where he could get no rest or quiet sleep, 
 but ever harped upon his old song, “ Fye, fled Oliver! 
 Is Oliver tane? All is loist!’?; and when his servants 
 asked him where he would have provision made for his 
 Yule, he answered disdainfully, “‘Chuse ye the place; 
 butt this I cane tell you, or Yule day, ye wilbe maisterless, 
 and the realme without ane King’”’; and then the death-bed 
 at Falkland, when, the certainty that a daughter was born 
 to him coming to his ears, he turned from such as spake 
 with him, and said, “ The devill go with it! It will end 
 as it begane! It came from a woman, and it will end ina 
 woman.’ It is all as haunting, as remorseless, as irre- 
 versible, as the movement of a Greek tragedy. 
 
 Or, for a narrative of yet another kind, with drama 
 in it and pathos and sternness and majesty, nothing can 
 surpass the account of the mission and death of George 
 Wishart. Wishart was Knox’s dear leader and friend ; 
 and, when he speaks of him, one detects, behind the reserve 
 and the reticence, such intensity and such love. “ After 
 supper he held comfortable purpose of the death of Goddis 
 chosen childrin, and mearely said, ‘Methink that I desyre 
 earnestlye to sleep; and thairwith he said, ‘ Will we sing 
 a Psalme?’ And so he appointed the 51st Psalme, which 
 was put in Scotische meter, and begane thus : 
 
 ““Have mercy on me now, good Lord, 
 After Thy great mercy ”’; 
 
 which being ended, he past to chalmer, and sonar then 
 his commoun dyet was, past to bed with these wourdis, 
 
 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 263 
 
 “God grant qwyet rest.’ Befoir mydnycht the place was 
 besett about that none could eschape to mack advertise- 
 ment.” The First Book of the History is the evidence of 
 Knox’s marvellous skill and native genius as a craftsman 
 and author. 
 
 And the Fourth Book, the supplement or appendix to 
 the central portion, has also its peculiar worth and indi- 
 vidual accent. It opens the clearest window into the 
 spirit, the aim, the purpose of the man himself. It dis- 
 closes his aspirations and his disappointments. It illumi- 
 nates his personality. We become more intimate with him. 
 We share his thoughts, his conflicts, and his sorrows. 
 There is much sadness in the record now. For the fair 
 morning has been overcast too soon with clouds, and the 
 chill winds of autumn are blowing prematurely through 
 the summer. 
 
 The Protestant nobles have departed from their zeal 
 on behalf of the true religion. ‘“‘ Suddandlie the most 
 parte of us declyned from the puritie of Goddis word, 
 and began to follow the warld; and so agane to schaik 
 handis with the Devill, and with idolatrie, as in this 
 Fourte Booke we will hear.’”’ The mischief was wrought 
 partly by the selfish temper of the nobles themselves, 
 who wished to enrich their families and their estates, 
 even if the Kirk of Christ were left in poverty ; but, still 
 more, it was traceable to a woman’s influence and fascina- 
 tion—to young Mary Stewart, with the spell of her beauty, 
 with her high spirit and courage, and with her clever and 
 indefatigable brain. 
 
 The Fourth Book has much to say about her. It 
 reports those interviews which she had with the Reformer, 
 and which are among the picturesque ingredients of 
 

 
 264 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 her biography and his. In a sense, they were well- 
 matched. He recognised in the charming girl the 
 power of a practised diplomatist. ‘In communicating 
 with her,’’ he wrote to Cecil, ‘I espied such craft as I 
 have not found in such age.’’ And in the grave, worn 
 preacher she must have discerned an authority and a 
 conviction which she had encountered nowhere else, and 
 which she could not browbeat and overcome. Once, at 
 least, he “‘ garred her greit,’’ although, as he told her, he 
 could “skarslie weill abyd the tearis of his awin boyes 
 whom his awin hand corrected,’ and much less could he 
 ‘rejoice in her Majesties weeping.”’ 
 
 But he was no “coarse man of the people bullying 
 a defenceless queen.’’ He was a warrior of the liberties 
 of the land and the Church, keeping his constant way, 
 and afraid only of. forgetting what he knew to be his 
 plain duty. ‘‘‘What ar ye within this Commonwealth ?’ 
 said sche. ‘A subject borne within the same,’ said he, 
 “Madam, and as God hes maid me, a profitable member 
 thairin.’’”’ The significance of that reply might be too 
 mighty to be caught by Mary’s ears; but as it has been 
 truly put, “we hear the echoes of it in Solemn Leagues 
 and Covenants, in Declarations of Rights, in Revolution 
 Settlements.’”’ Under God, John Knox was architect of 
 a Scotland enfranchised, intelligent, self-governing. 
 
 We come back to what has already been insisted on. 
 The History of the Reformation is the most satisfying auto- 
 biography of Knox himself. “‘ The abounding vitality 
 that quickens it from the first page to the last ’’—the 
 phrase is Professor Hume Brown’s—is reminiscent of the 
 preacher who thundered from the pulpit of St. Giles, 
 “whose habit was to emphasise with tone and gesture 
 

 
 THE YEARS OF GOD’S RIGHT HAND 265 
 
 every sentence that rose to his lips.” He was ‘a very 
 good hater,” like Dr. Bathurst in whom Samuel Johnson 
 delighted ; and his dislikes are written large and legible 
 on the pages of his book. But the quarrels were not 
 personal ones, and they were never petty or unreasonable ; 
 they were with the men and women who were hinderers 
 or enemies of the cause of God in the land. 
 
 There is an often-recurring grimness in those chapters. 
 There is not a little severity. Knox himself lived from 
 January to December under the powers of the world to 
 come. See him as he stands in the waiting-room at Holy- 
 rood, to which in her petulance and chagrin the Queen has 
 sent him. The Queen’s Maries are there—Mary Beaton, and 
 Mary Seaton, and Mary Carmichael, and Mary Hamilton— 
 sitting in all thair gorgeouse apparell.’”’ And he begins 
 talking to them. ‘“O fayre Ladyes, how pleasing war 
 this lyeff of youris, yf it should ever abyd, and then in 
 the end that we myght passe to heavin with all this gay 
 gear. But fye upoun that knave Death, that will come 
 whither we will or not! And when he has laid on his 
 arest, the foull wormes wilbe busye with this flesche, be 
 it never so fayr and so tender; and the seally soule, I 
 fear, shalbe so feable that it can neather cary with it gold, 
 garnassing, targatting, pearle, nor pretious stanes.”’ 
 
 But it is not all serious and stern. “‘ If you look into 
 Knox,” said Thomas Carlyle to the students of Edinburgh, 
 “you will find a beautiful Scotch humour in him, and a 
 great deal of laughter. We find really,” he went on, ““some 
 of the sunniest things come out of Knox that I have seen in 
 any man; for instance, in his History of the Reformation, 
 which is a book I hope every one of you will read, a glorious 
 old book.” Humour and laughter and sunny things—the 
 

 
 266 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 History is rich in them ; they are Knox’s “ meary bourds,”’ 
 to give them his own title, his lively jests. “‘ Melancholious 
 ressouns,” he told Lethington, ‘‘ wald haif sum myrth 
 intermixed.’”’ And so he would make room to describe 
 how, in a street fray, the image of St. Giles was pulled 
 away from those who were carrying him in procession, and 
 “dadded’”’ ignominiously on the causeway, till Dagon 
 was left without head or hands; and the Grey Friars 
 gaped, and the Black Friars blew, and the priests panted 
 and fled, and happy was he that first got to the house. 
 Or he would hold up to mockery and ridicule the preaching 
 of the monks. ‘The prieste, whose dewitie and office is 
 to pray for the people, standis up on Sounday and cryes, 
 “Ane hes tynt a spurtill. Thair is ane flaill stollin from 
 _thame beyound the burne. The goodwyiff of the uther 
 syde of the gait hes tynt a horne spune. Goddis maleson 
 and myne I geve to thame that knowis of this geyre, and 
 restoris it not.’’’ Those interludes were not only a relief 
 from the prevailing gravity; they were helping forward 
 the argument most effectively and victoriously. 
 
 We ought to prize the History, because it commemorates 
 the years of the right hand of the Most High. We ought 
 to prize it, also, because it paints the like of John Knox, 
 believer, churchman, patriot, and saint. 
 
LECTURE XII 
 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 
 
 THE “SCOTS CONFESSION ” 
 
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LECTURE XII 
 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 
 
 THE “SCOTS CONFESSION ” 
 
 “JF the Reformation in Scotland had to be char- 
 
 acterised in one word,”’ says the historian who 
 more than any other has made the subject his own, “ that 
 word might be Thorough.” There was no slackness in 
 those who guided and captained its progress. There was 
 no half-heartedness in the measures which they advocated 
 and adopted. Foremost among them stood a man, small 
 in person and feeble in body, but irresistible in moral force. 
 “He put more life into his hearers from the pulpit in an 
 hour than six hundred trumpets,” Sir Nicholas Throg- 
 morton wrote to Sir William Cecil. He “neither feared 
 nor flattered any flesh,’ the Regent Morton declared 
 when he lay newly dead. “‘ God be thanked,” exclaimed 
 King James to Mrs. Welsh, “that his three bairns are 
 lasses; for, if they had been three lads, I could never 
 have bruiked my three kingdoms in peace.’’ Such was 
 John Knox, the kingliest and most commanding figure of 
 the Scottish Reformation, a man who was nothing if he 
 was not vehement and zealous; and such was the work 
 which he carried through. Other realms, he said himself, 
 even those which were sincere in their doctrine, retained 
 “some foot-steppis of Antichrist, and some dreggis of 
 
 Papistrie’”’; but ‘‘ we—all praise to God alone !—have 
 269 
 

 
 270 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 nothing within our churches that ever flowed from that 
 man of synne.” It is a large claim; but it is justified 
 by the facts of the case. 
 
 No parliament which has ever sat in Edinburgh was 
 so important as that which met in the August of 1560. 
 Its legality might indeed be questioned. The Queen 
 Regent, Mary of Lorraine, had died in the previous June. 
 The reigning Queen, young Mary of Scots, was absent in 
 France ; she had issued no writs for the assembly; she 
 was represented at its sessions by no commissioner. But 
 the Treaty of Edinburgh, concluded a few days after the 
 Regent’s death, in which France and England and the 
 Scottish ‘‘ Lords of the Congregation ’’—the chiefs of the 
 Protestant party in the kingdom—were all interested, 
 had stipulated that the gathering should take place, and 
 that its acts should have the same validity and binding 
 force as if it had been summoned by royal authority. 
 
 No doubt the nobles, determined now on drastic changes 
 in the religious allegiance of the country, would have 
 convened in any event, and would have allowed no legal 
 scruples to deter them from the execution of their pur- 
 poses: people who have resolved upon a revolution are 
 not likely to be held back by punctilios and niceties. But, 
 when the work was done which they wished to have 
 achieved, the inevitable debate arose: was the new order 
 of things established on sure and unassailable foundations ? 
 was it all in accordance with law? could it be sustained 
 and defended, not in the court of equity merely, but at the 
 bar of jurisprudence and before the tribunal of government ? 
 
 At last, that all troublesome uncertainties might be laid 
 to rest, the parliament of the Regent Murray—or, if you 
 like to denominate it so, the first parliament of James the 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 271 
 
 Sixth, James being then a baby of eighteen months old— 
 on the 2oth of December 1567, ratified the momentous 
 decisions of 1560, and put them beyond the reach of legal 
 suspicion and dispute. The task of destruction and of 
 construction, the pulling down of the false and the building 
 up of the true, was gone about and finished at the earlier 
 date; it received the law’s approval, the legislature’s 
 formal and explicit sanction, at the later. 
 
 Let us get back to the August days of 1560. Parlia- 
 ment was opened on the Ist; but the members were not 
 in full attendance until the 8th. John Knox knew how 
 to improve the time of waiting. He preached to great 
 audiences from the pulpit of St. Giles on the prophecy of 
 Haggai, and on the need of rebuilding the temple of God. 
 It was a doctrine, he told his listeners, proper and suitable 
 to that crisis at which they and he had arrived. He was 
 so special and so strong that clever Maitland of Lethington, 
 whose wit could charm Queen Elizabeth, but whose “ shiftis 
 and fetches’ were not liked by “honest men of simple 
 conscience and upricht dealing,” grew uneasy. Having 
 “ greater respect to the warld than to Goddis glory,” and 
 feeling himself pricked, he said in mockage, ““ We mon now 
 forget our selffis, and beir the barrow to buyld the housses 
 of God!” Proud William Maitland had little wish to 
 experience such humilities and sacrifices. 
 
 But Knox’s preaching found more sympathetic hearers 
 _ than the man who was by and by to be Secretary of State 
 and the Reformer’s most astute and clear-sighted opponent. 
 Barons, gentlemen, burgesses, and others, “subjects of this 
 realm, professing the Lord Jesus within the same,”’ sent their 
 supplication to the Estates of Parliament. They prayed 
 the members to deal summarily with the old religion and 
 

 
 272 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 its representatives. They would have them abolish such 
 teaching and idolatry ‘‘as by God’s Word are both 
 condemned.” 
 
 Their petition did not fall on unwilling ears. The 
 benches of the Parliament House were filled now. The 
 Duke of Hamilton was there, and thirteen earls; the 
 Archbishop of St. Andrews, and five bishops; nineteen 
 lords; twenty ecclesiastics, as well abbots as priors; 
 the commissioners of twenty-two burghs; a hundred and 
 ten barons ; and many others: perhaps never before had 
 there been such a notable array. The temper of the 
 majority was apparent. As soon as they had disposed of 
 preliminaries they turned to the Supplication regarding 
 religion. Knox and his ministerial colleagues were bidden 
 prepare a statement of the Protestant faith. Four days 
 later they presented it to those who had asked for it: it 
 is the Confession, at which we shall have to look immediately. 
 
 With very little ado, and with few dissentient voices, 
 it was accepted. And this was simply the beginning. A 
 week later, in a single sitting, this relentless and icono- 
 clastic Parliament finished what it had commenced. By 
 one Act it declared that the jurisdiction of the Pope in 
 Scotland was at anend. By a second, it stamped with its 
 disapprobation all beliefs and all practices which were 
 contrary to the newly adopted creed. By a third, it for- 
 bade the celebration of the mass within the bounds of the 
 realm. Nor did it intend that there should be any trifling 
 with its statutes. To say or to hear mass was an offence 
 punishable at first with the confiscation of money and 
 goods ; then, with exile ; and, if it should be repeated three 
 times, with death itself. In explanation of rigours so 
 draconian, one can but remember the long midnight and 
 
 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 273 
 
 the weary captivity from which those Parliamentarians 
 were eager to escape. 
 
 Of course, the battle was by no means ended, and 
 Knox had many anxious hours in store for him. But here, 
 at least, was a prelude unmistakably Scottish and uncom- 
 promising. A modern writer gives us a somewhat dis- 
 paraging account of the neutral tints in which the scenery 
 of Japan has been dipped. “‘ There isn’t any fire. It is 
 all soft, dreamy, quiet, pale, faint, gentle, hazy, vapoury, 
 visionary—a land where lotus is a common article of diet, 
 and where there is scarcely a real summer. Even the 
 seasons are feeble ghostly things. The world is washed in 
 weak blues and greys and greens.” No such indeter- 
 minate adjectives are applicable to the landscape of 
 Scottish Church history in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. Its colours are vivid and fiery. Its changes 
 are startling and complete. Its summers blaze and burn. 
 When the men of that time hated and loved, they did so 
 out and out, with their whole souls. They pulled Popery 
 to the ground in the Edinburgh Parliament of 1560. They 
 dealt Prelacy as staggering a blow in the Glasgow Assembly 
 of 1638. When they smote, they did not spare. 
 
 It is the Scots Confession that is our subject now. This 
 is the old title: “‘ The Confessioun of Faith professit and 
 belevit be the Protestantis within the Realme of Scotland, 
 publischeit by thame in Parliament, and be the Estaitis 
 thairof ratifeit and approvit, as hailsome and sound doctrine, 
 groundit upoun the infallable trewth of Godis Word.” 
 Below the title is the text: “And this glaid tydingis of 
 the Kyngdome sall be precheit throuch the haill warld, for 
 
 a witnes unto all natiouns, and then sall the end cum.”’ 
 13 
 

 
 274 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 It is usually supposed that the composition of the 
 Confession was entrusted to the same six Johns who, 
 shortly afterwards, were assigned the work of preparing 
 the First Book of Discipline: John Winram, John Spottis- 
 woode, John Willock, John Douglas, John Row, and John 
 Knox; and, although there is no positive documentary 
 evidence to buttress the supposition, it is in itself intrinsi- 
 cally probable. Knox rose head and shoulders above his 
 five companions, and we shall not go wrong if we surmise 
 that the Confession is substantially his ; but, for a minute 
 or two, it will be worth our while to tarry in the society of 
 the others. 
 
 Among the six, Winram is the least definite and hearty 
 in his Protestantism. As sub-prior of the Augustinians | 
 in St. Andrews, he had preached the opening sermon at 
 the trial of George Wishart for heresy; though it has 
 to be recalled to his credit that the utterance was so 
 far from savouring of intolerance that Wishart begged and 
 obtained an interview with the preacher. Some have 
 thought that Winram was author of Archbishop Hamilton’s 
 Catechism, which was meant to rally back the waverers to 
 the tottering cause of Rome; and, though this is dubious, 
 it is certain that Knox and he had had their arguments 
 and differences. We do him no injustice if we pronounce 
 him a Reformer from expediency rather than from con- 
 viction; heis John, but he is not Boanerges. His cannot 
 have been an active share in devising the Confession, 
 if, as English Randolph reports, he and Maitland of 
 Lethington went over it afterwards, in order to mitigate 
 “the austeritie of maynie words and sentences which 
 sounded to proceede reather of some evil conceaved opinion 
 then of anie sounde judgement.” 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 275 
 
 Spottiswoode, too, was of the milder men, as we should 
 expect an Archbishop’s father to be. Yet he could do 
 brave things, as when, ten years after 1560, he went as re- 
 presentative of the kirk-session of Edinburgh to admonish 
 Kirkaldy of Grange, who held the Castle for Queen Mary, 
 of “ his offence against God.’’ When the Reformed Church 
 was being organised, he was appointed superintendent of 
 Midlothian and Tweeddale ; and, though such public service 
 was a burden to him, and he often requested that he might 
 be relieved and permitted to live in quietness in his parish 
 and manse of Calder, his petition was never granted, and 
 he persevered to the close of his life in the patient and 
 faithful performance of the distasteful duty. 
 
 Willock was more heroically built than either Winram 
 or Spottiswoode; to Knox he was like a right hand. An 
 Ayrshire man by birth, he had been on the side of the 
 Reformation for twenty years before he aided in putting 
 together the Confession and the Book of Discipline. He had 
 preached in London, and, during the reign of terror under 
 Mary Tudor, had practised asa physician in Friesland. Back 
 in his own land in 1558, he had called the nobles and barons 
 and gentlemen round his bed when he lay dangerously 
 sick, and had urged them to prosecute with diligence the 
 holy war on behalf of the true religion. He it was who 
 administered the Lord’s Supper for the first time in Edin- 
 burgh after the reformed manner. He it was, also, who, 
 when the Queen Regent was dying in June 1560, went to 
 see her, and “did planelie schaw unto hir, als weill the 
 vertew and strenth of the death of Jesus Christ, as the 
 vanitie and abominatioun of that idole the Mess” ; 
 and to him the unhappy lady confessed, ‘“ That thair 
 was na salvatioun bot in and by the death of Jesus Christ.” 
 

 
 276 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 A picturesque figure John Willock was; and he retained 
 the picturesqueness in those later years when, as if to solve 
 by anticipation and in his own person the Kikuyu con- 
 troversy, he was, at one and the same time, rector of 
 Loughborough in Leicestershire and moderator of the 
 General Assembly in Scotland. 
 
 John Douglas is less known. He was Provost of 
 St. Mary’s College, and- Rector of the University of St. 
 Andrews. He had welcomed the new light; but he can 
 hardly be enrolled among the stalwarts. In 1564, when 
 there was some debate about Queen Mary’s private Mass, 
 he was not sure whether it ought to be tolerated or put 
 down: ‘As concernyng hir awin Messe, I knaw it is 
 idolatrie, but I am nocht yit resolved whidder that by 
 violence we may tack it frome hir or nocht.” 
 
 John Row, father of the Church historian, was free 
 from these dubieties. He “‘thundered out mightily,” 
 Calderwood tells us, though once his opinions had been 
 just the reverse—“in the time of blindness the Pope 
 was to him as an angel of God.’ His was a remark- 
 able conversion. He was a lawyer, sent to watch over 
 the interests of Archbishop Hamilton at the Papal Court. 
 So impressed were the statesmen of the Vatican with his 
 abilities that they made him licentiate of one Italian uni- 
 versity and doctor of another, and then appointed him 
 nuncio to Scotland, to examine into the spread of heretical 
 beliefs, and to advise as to the best means of checking them. 
 But God turned the inquiry to strangely different issues. 
 It convinced Row of the truth of Protestantism; and, 
 first at Kennoway and then at Perth, the brilliant lawyer 
 was minister of the Kirk. He was in some respects the 
 most cultured of its ministers, reading the Scriptures 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 277 
 
 daily in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, and teaching his. 
 boys and girls to talk nothing but French in the intercourse 
 of the home. He was “a wise and grave father,’”’ says 
 Calderwood again, alike in the sphere of the family and in 
 the sphere of the Church. 
 
 Those were Knox’s coadjutors, capable and interesting 
 men each one, but none of them so great, so wise, so 
 sagacious, and so forceful as he was. The Confession is 
 stamped with his likeness, and sealed with his autograph. 
 He claims that it was presented within four days after the 
 Parliament had asked for it ; but it has to be recollected, 
 as Dr. M‘Crie reminds us, that ‘‘ the ministers were not 
 unprepared for this task’ ; their leader especially, through 
 his residence in Frankfurt and in Geneva, was well ac- 
 quainted with the symbolical books of the Continental 
 Reformation, to say nothing of the fact that in England, 
 at a yet earlier time, he had been consulted about the 
 Edwardine Articles of Religion. Thus quickly finished, 
 the book had some sort of revision, we have seen, from 
 Maitland and Winram ; and it may be that some of the 
 sentences which Knox had written on the “ obedience 
 and disobedience due to magistrates ’’ were expunged, as 
 “unfit to be entreated”’ at an hour when that arbitrary 
 queen and vindictive-tempered woman, Elizabeth of 
 England, had to be cajoled and humoured ; though Knox 
 himself is silent about any such alteration. By Saturday, 
 the 17th of August, everything was ready for the public 
 reading “‘in audience of Parliament.” 
 
 Many of the noblest and most romantic scenes in 
 Scottish history are connected with religion: the signing 
 of the Covenant in Greyfriars, for example, and the march 
 of the Non-Intrusionists from St. Andrew’s Church to 
 

 
 278 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Tanfield Hall. The reading of the Confession is worthy 
 of a place beside these. 
 
 Adversaries as well as friends were present. The 
 Parliament House was crowded. Article after Article, the 
 pregnant document was gone over. The three bishops, 
 St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, if they could not 
 acquiesce, maintained a cautious silence; they were 
 not theologians but ecclesiastics; they had not the 
 knowledge requisite to discuss or to refute the doctrines 
 to which they hearkened. The temporal lords, Athol, 
 Somerville, and Borthwick, had “the fine unreasoning 
 loyalty *—it is Mrs. MacCunn’s phrase for it—to dissent 
 on the ground that they would believe as their fathers 
 had believed ; the Earls of Cassillis and Caithness appear 
 to have joined them. These were the only malcontents. 
 “The rest of the whole three Estates,’ Knox records, 
 “by their public votes, affirmed the doctrine.” ‘ With 
 common consent,’ Randolph adds, ‘“‘ and as glad a will as 
 ever I heard men speak, they allowed the same.” 
 
 Some of these very lords, by their selfish covetousness, 
 their too steadfast adhesion to the creed that they should 
 take who have the power and they should keep who can, 
 were soon to hinder and prevent the Church’s prosperity. 
 But meanwhile a holier enthusiasm, a more patriotic temper, 
 lifted them above themselves. Statesmen, soldiers, self- 
 willed noblemen, were deeply moved. They forgot their 
 usual reticence. They vowed that they would end their 
 lives rather than change their faith. They offered to 
 shed their blood in defence of it. It was one of those high 
 moments when the soul looks out from the eyes, and when 
 men and nations leap from mediocrity and poverty to 
 unsuspected grandeurs. 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 279 
 
 The Scots Confession is, in itself, not undeserving: of 
 the weeping and the laughter with which it was greeted. 
 It is not so exhaustive, so logical, and so elaborate as some 
 other statements of Reformation doctrine. It is not so 
 carefully and nicely balanced. Its language is not always 
 chosen with such discrimination and wisdom. It is less 
 philosophical and more direct. But, whether you study 
 it in its rough native tongue or in the polished Latin into 
 which it was rendered by Patrick Adamson, you must 
 grant that it fills its own niche among the Confessions of a 
 great and formative time, and that the niche is a prominent 
 and distinguished one. It has, Professor Mitchell writes, 
 “a framework rather historical than dogmatic,” and “a 
 spirit liberal and manly, yet reverent and cautious.” It 
 fulfilled, he declares, an important service. ‘It contri- 
 buted to mould Scottish theology into a form somewhat 
 less minute and rigid than the Swiss, but considerably less 
 vague and indefinite than the earlier English.” 
 
 But let us take a brief survey of its contents, and then 
 perhaps we shall be better qualified to appraise its value. 
 After a Preface, which is as significant, as individual, 
 and as touching as anything in the whole Confession, 
 there are twenty-five Articles, many of them short, none 
 of them very long. And the spring from which the truths 
 enunciated in these Articles flow, the foundation on which 
 they are built, what are they? They are the written 
 Word of God. Everything necessary for salvation is 
 “ sufficientlie expressed’ in the Bible—‘‘ to wit, in those 
 buikis of the Auld and New Testamentis, quhilk of the 
 ancient have been reputed canonicall.” ‘‘ With all 
 humilitie,” say the authors in their Preface with a beautiful 
 personal note, ‘“‘ we imbrace the purity of Christ’s Gospell, 
 

 
 280 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 quhilk is the onelie fude of our sauls, and therefoir sa 
 precious unto us, that we ar determined to suffer the 
 extremest of warldlie daunger, rather than that we will 
 suffer our selves to be defraudit of the sam.” 
 
 Knox and his friends discovered in the Book of God 
 all the knowledge which the soul of man requires. Nor 
 were they at a loss to find an Interpreter for this vital 
 and essential Book. He was better than any Doctor, 
 Kirk, or Council. He was the illuminating Spirit of God. 
 “We ought, not sa meikle to luke what men before us 
 have said or done, as unto that quhilk the haly Ghaist 
 uniformelie speakes within the body of the Scriptures.” 
 Let us accustom ourselves to His thoughts and accents, 
 and thus we shall be prevented from going astray; for 
 He is “‘in nathing contrarious unto himselfe.’”’ The Bible, 
 unfolded and enforced by the Spirit, is the one sufficient 
 source from which the framers of the Confession desire to 
 draw the lessons which they would inculcate. 
 
 This, then, being foundation and spring of all religion 
 which deserves the name, what are the main ingredients 
 of true religion itself ? 
 
 First, like every theology that is living and deep, the 
 Scots Confession sets God and man in near proximity and 
 in sharp contrast—‘ I pitched so low, Thou so exceeding 
 high,’’ as a modern saint of another Church and school 
 has depicted it. God—He is “ Eternall, Infinit, Un- 
 measurable, Incomprehensible, Omnipotent, Invisible ; ane 
 in substance, and zit distinct in thre personnis, the Father, 
 the Son, and the Holie Gost.” And He created man 
 flawless, stately, loveworthy, after His Own image and 
 similitude, “to whome he gave wisdome, lordship, justice, 
 free-wil, and cleir knawledge of himselfe, sa that in the 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 281 
 
 haill nature of man there culd be noted no imperfectioun.”’ 
 But the beauty was blighted speedily; the bells were 
 jangled and thrown out of tune; till the image of the 
 Maker was ‘“utterlie defaced in man, and he and his 
 posteritie became enimies to God, slaves to Sathan, and 
 servandis unto sin.” It is a descent as melancholy as it 
 is rebellious and wanton, a catastrophe for which man has 
 only to blame his own conspiracy against “ the Soveraigne 
 Majestie ’’ he should have hastened to obey. 
 
 But God is as good as He is sovereign, and He found 
 a way of return for the transgressors. Nothing in the 
 Confession is more attractive, nothing is warmer, than the 
 homage it pays to the Redeemer, and the narrative it gives 
 of redemption. It describes the revelation of the promise 
 to “the faithfull Father under the Law,” so that they 
 “did see the joyfull daie of Christ Jesus.’’ It celebrates 
 the continuance, increase, and preservation of the Kirk 
 in all ages from Adam until the coming of the Deliverer 
 Himself. 
 
 When, at length, it is face to face with the Saviour, 
 its sentences, it has been said, have “the ring of martial 
 music.’’ There is the miracle of His Incarnation. “So 
 was borne the just seede of David, the Angell of the 
 great counsell of God, the very Messias promised, whome 
 we confesse and acknawledge Emmanuel, very God and 
 very man, two perfit natures united, and joyned in one 
 persoun.” There is the medicine of His Crucifixion. 
 “ Because the onelie Godhead culd not suffer death, neither 
 zit culd the onelie manhead overcome the samin, he joyned 
 both togither, that the imbecillitie of the ane suld suffer 
 and be subject to death, quhilk we had deserved; and 
 the infinit and invincible power of the uther, to wit, of the 
 

 
 282 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 Godhead, suld triumph and purchesse to us life, libertie, 
 and perpetuall victory. . . . Hee, being the cleane innocent 
 Lambe of God, was damned in the presence of an earthlie 
 Judge, that we suld be absolved befoir the tribunal seat 
 of our God.” 
 
 There jis the glory of His Resurrection. ‘We un- 
 doubtedly beleeve, in sa mekle as it wes impossible 
 that the dolours of death sulde reteine in bondage the 
 Author of life, that our Lord Jesus, crucified, dead, and 
 buryed, quha descended into hell, did ryse agayne for our 
 Justificatioun, and, destroying of him, quha wes the author 
 of death, brocht life againe to us, that wer subject to 
 death, and to the bondage of the same.” John Knox is 
 as certain as Charles Wesley that “ more than all in Him 
 we find.” 
 
 No Calvinistic Confession could omit reference to “ the 
 eternall and immutable decree,’ from and on which “al 
 our salvatioun springs and depends.” Thrice the Con- 
 fesston of 1560 commemorates the blessings which we owe 
 to this decree so mysterious but so munificent. It appointed 
 Christ to be the Shepherd of our souls. It is the secret 
 fountain and far-off heavenly origin of all that is good in us. 
 It is the explanation of that invisible but real Church 
 which is Christ’s “‘ bodie and spouse.”” What is this Church 
 but the elect of every age, every nation, and every tongue ? 
 —‘“as without Christ Jesus there is nouther life nor salva- 
 tioun, so sall there nane be participant thairof but sik as 
 the Father has gevin unto his Sone, and those that in 
 tyme come to him, avow his doctrine, and beleve into him.” 
 It is the bright and beneficent side of the divine predestin- 
 ation—what it bestows on men who have made shipwreck 
 of themselves, what it does for a world which has hope- 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 283 
 
 lessly wandered and lost its way—over which the Scottish 
 Reformers linger most. 
 
 As the Confession weaves a garland of conspicuous 
 dignity for the brows of Christ, so it is at pains to magnify 
 the work and grace of the Holy Spirit. It anticipates 
 John Owen, and Walter Marshall, and the teachers of 
 Keswick to-day, in ascribing to His operation all that is 
 true and venerable and just and pure and lovely in our 
 thought and life. ‘‘ As we willingly spoyle our selves of 
 all honour and gloir of our awin Creation and Redemption, 
 so do we also of our Regeneration and Sanctification, for 
 of our selves we ar not sufficient to think one gude thocht ; 
 bot he quha hes begun the wark in us is onlie he that 
 continewis us in the same, to the praise and glorie of his 
 undeserved grace.”’ 
 
 As soon as He takes possession, He regenerates and 
 renews. Does He not impel us to hate that which before 
 we loved, and to love that which before we hated? 
 Does He not introduce us to a continual battle of which. 
 we had no cognizance formerly; so that we “ fecht 
 against sinne’”’; so that we “‘sob and murne, when we 
 perceive ourselves tempted in iniquitie”’; so that, “ gif 
 we fal, we rise againe with earnest and unfained repent- 
 ance’’? And all those words and deeds and ways which 
 please the Lord our Master—“ warkes of twa sortes, the 
 ane done to the honour of God, the uther to the profite 
 of our Nichtbouris’’—does not He prompt and inspire 
 and cleanse and fructify them? Every virtue we possess, 
 and every victory won: they are His and not ours. 
 
 On its road to expound the subject of the Church, the 
 Confession halts for a little to speak of that which was 
 first and last in Luther’s scheme of Christian thought, our 
 

 
 284 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 justification on the ground of Christ’s merits. He is 
 “the end and accomplishment of the Law, be quhome 
 we ar set at liberty that the curse and malediction of God 
 fall not upon us.” In Him we stand flawless and com- 
 plete: ‘For the Father, beholding us in the body of 
 His Sonne, accepts our imperfite obedience as it were 
 perfite ”’ ; and our sin is not imputed to us, “‘ bot is remitted 
 and covered with Christ’s justice.’ Now, indeed, we 
 have part and lot in the Kirk, “‘ the company and multitude 
 of men chosen of God,’’ outside of whose ranks there is 
 neither life nor eternal felicity. 
 
 And the notes by which this true Kirk may be dis-. 
 cerned, what are they? Not “antiquitie,” or “title 
 usurpit,’’ or “lineal descente,’’ or “ place appointed,” or 
 number and strength and popular approval. Roman 
 Catholicism might boast of these, but the marks of the 
 genuine household of the saints were different—“‘ the trewe 
 preaching of the Worde,” “the right administration of 
 the Sacraments,”’ and “ Ecclesiastical discipline uprightlie 
 ministred.’” Let them be few and poor and of no account 
 in the world’s reckoning to whom these notes apply, yet 
 Christ is in the midst their Friend. 
 
 Three of the concluding Articles in the Confession 
 treat of the Sacraments and the right use of them. Knox, 
 as we should expect in a disciple and lover of Geneva, is 
 neither Lutheran nor Zwinglian here. He holds to the 
 real presence of Christ in these ordinances of His house, 
 though not to His corporeal presence. Not ‘‘ naked and 
 baire’’ symbols are those high mysteries of Baptism 
 and the Supper. ‘‘ No, wee assuredlie beleeve that be 
 Baptisme we ar ingrafted in Christ Jesus, to be made 
 partakers of his justice, be quhilk our sinnes ar covered. 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 285 
 
 And, alswa, that, in the Supper richtlie used, Christ Jesus 
 is so joined with us, that hee becummis very nurishment 
 and fude of our saules.”” There is to be no worshipping 
 of the signs, as if in themselves, apart from what they 
 signify, they are august, magical, sacrosanct ; but, just as 
 little, is there to be any despising of them as unprofitable 
 and vain. They are to be used reverently and thankfully, 
 for they are channels of grace and mercy and peace. 
 
 So the old Confession journeys forward to the prayers 
 with which it is terminated and crowned: ‘“ Arise, O Lord, 
 and let thy enimies be confounded ; let them flee from thy 
 presence that hate thy godlie Name. Give thy servands 
 strenth to speake thy word in bauldnesse, and let all 
 Natiouns cleave to thy knawledge. Amen.” 
 
 In 1647 the Church of Scotland, while it did not by any 
 definite decree discard the Confession of 1560, gave the 
 place which it had occupied to the Confession of the West- 
 minster Assembly ; and forty-three years later the State 
 sanctioned this change. Both the one and the other are 
 Calvinistic in their Protestantism; but, as Dr. Taylor 
 Innes tells us, “large differences ’”’ exist between them. 
 On such important matters as the doctrine of the visible 
 Church, of the Sabbath, of Predestination, of Assurance, 
 and of the Sacraments, all theologians have observed the 
 diversity. It extends to each sentence, and to each clause 
 of each sentence. And “in the tone and sentiment of the 
 two books, as well as in the mode of treatment and style 
 of thought,” Dr. Innes goes on to say there is a decided 
 contrast, “‘ which reminds us of the century between, 
 and of the difference between the standpoint of the Reform- 
 ing and the Puritan age—a difference not so great, perhaps, 
 

 
 286 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 as between that of the Puritans and our own, but still one 
 which is unmistakable.” 
 
 It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that some have 
 thought the old wine better than the new. There 
 were Marrow men who did so. And there was Edward 
 Irving. Twice a year the famous london preacher 
 read the Scots Confession to his congregation. It was, 
 he has written, “the banner of the Church in all her 
 wrestlings and conflicts,’ while the Westminster is 
 “but as the camp colours which she hath used during 
 her days of peace.” The one was ‘“‘for battle”; the 
 other is “‘ for fair appearance and good order.’’ He pre- 
 ferred the manifesto of the six Johns. It is composed, 
 he declared, ‘‘in a most honest, straightforward, manly 
 style, without compliment or flattery, without affectation 
 of logical precision and learned accuracy, as if it came 
 fresh from the heart of laborious workmen, all the day 
 long busy with the preaching of the truth, and sitting 
 down at night to embody the heads of what was continually 
 taught.” 
 
 It is a eulogium, an admiration, with which one may 
 be in hearty agreement, and still feel that there is 
 no need to disparage the creed which is, in Dr. Mitchell’s 
 words, “the mature products of the faith and thought of 
 the more learned Puritans of the south.” The later 
 Confession has a theological scholarship, a comprehensive- 
 ness of sweep, and a balance in statement, in which it 
 surpasses its predecessor. 
 
 But the Scottish book has its virtues. We may not 
 care, in our milder age, for the extraordinary agressiveness 
 of its onslaughts on Roman Catholicism. To it, the Church 
 of Rome is a “ pestilent synagoge,” a “ filthie synagogue,” 
 

 
 DOCTRINE WEDDED WITH LIFE 287 
 
 “the horrible harlot, the kirk malignant.” Our accents 
 are softer. But, all through the five-and-twenty chapters, 
 the language is full of a delightful directness, vigour, and 
 verve. Personality, experience, and a Christianity which 
 is real and vital and intimate, speak through these graphic 
 pages. Manifestly it was a strong religious impulse which 
 inspired them ; they were the spontaneous and irresistible 
 utterance of profound conviction. ‘“‘ Lang have we thristed, 
 dear Brethren, to have notified to the Warld the Sum of 
 that Doctrine quhilk we professe, and for the quhilk we 
 have susteined Infamie and Danger ’’—thus beautifully, 
 tenderly, with the whole heart and soul, the Preface sets 
 out. And of what worth is a Confession to an individual 
 and a Church, unless they have thirled and grappled it to 
 themselves in this fashion, and unless it expounds the 
 truth which is dearer to them than life itself ? 
 
 Side by side with its intensity and earnestness, the 
 1560 Confession has another conspicuous excellence. It 
 is what one may describe as its modesty. It makes no 
 excessive and arrogant claim. It does not dream of 
 asserting any infallibility. “‘ Protestand,” say the authors 
 in the Preface, “that, gif onie man will note in this our 
 confessioun onie Artickle or sentence repugnand to God’s 
 halie word, it wald pleis him of his gentleness and for 
 christian charities sake to admonish us of the same in 
 writing ; and we upon our honoures and fidelitie, be God’s 
 grace do promise unto him satisfactioun fra the mouth of 
 God, that is, fra his haly scriptures, or else reformatioun 
 of that quhilk he sal prove to be amisse.” It is not always 
 that Presbytery has spoken with such humility, such 
 teachableness, and such gracious wisdom. 
 
 And again, in one of the later Articles, these fathers 
 

 
 288 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 of the Kirk disavow both the intention and the ability 
 to legislate for the details of its worship through the 
 whole of its future. ‘‘ Not that we think,” they affirm, 
 “that any policy and an ordour in ceremonies can 
 be appoynted for al ages, times, and places. For as 
 ceremonies, sik as men have devised ar bot temporall, 
 so may and aucht they to be changed, when they rather 
 foster superstition then that they edifie the Kirk using 
 the same.” 
 
 There is a liberality here—there is an epietkeia, a sweet 
 reasonableness—which one scarcely looked for in those 
 knights and soldiers of Jesus Christ, who “lay down to 
 rest with corslet laced, pillowed on buckler cold and 
 hard.” They will not unduly trammel posterity. They 
 are mindful of the responsibilities and the rights of the 
 generations which are yet to be. They would yield 
 willing consent to the golden sentences of a great Scottish 
 churchman of a more recent day: “‘ The Church of Christ 
 has no liberty to become the slave even of its own 
 history. History is great, but Christ is greater. He is 
 a present Lord with a present will, and the Church abides 
 in Him.” 
 
 Take it for all in all, the Scots Confession merits the 
 thankful remembrance of every lover of Scotland and of 
 Christ. We read its original, living, and ardent words, 
 and we can sympathise with the white-headed nobleman, 
 who rose in his place in the Edinburgh Parliament, on that 
 August Saturday in 1560, to pour forth the gratitude of 
 his heart in unfeigned speech: “‘I am the oldest in this 
 company; and now that it hath pleased God to let me 
 see this day, where so many nobles and others have allowed 
 so worthy a work, I will say with Simeon, ‘ Nunc dimittis.’” 
 
LECTURE XIII 
 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 
 
 BLAISE PASCAL AND THE ‘“ PROVINCIALES”’ 
 
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LECTURE XIII 
 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 
 
 BLAISE PASCAL AND THE “ PROVINCIALES ” 
 
 T may be questioned, fairly enough, whether The 
 Provincial Letters ought to be assigned a place in 
 a series of talks on the Reformation in its Literature. 
 Let us frankly admit that only by a somewhat elastic use 
 of our title can their inclusion be justified. One has a 
 suspicion, indeed, that perhaps nobody might object more 
 emphatically to the company in which he found that he 
 was enrolled than the author of the Lettevs himself. If we 
 claim Pascal as fighting side by side with Luther and 
 Calvin and Knox, it has to be granted that his own estimate 
 of his personality and work would be entirely different. 
 Yet, while it is not hard to understand the motives which 
 would prompt his objection, our conclusion is not wrong ; 
 substantially it is true and right. 
 
 Blaise Pascal did not belong to the distinctively Re- 
 formation epoch. It was past and finished before he 
 was born. He was child not of the sixteenth but of the 
 seventeenth century, not of the age of the pioneers but 
 of the age of the philosophers and controversialists who 
 
 “defended or who combated what the pioneers had done. 
 
 ‘By the time that he saw the light, the nations of Europe 
 had taken their stand, for Protestantism or against. 
 Germany and Holland, England and Scotland, were com- 
 
 291 
 

 
 292 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 mitted to the new way; Italy, Spain, and France, the 
 last after passing through baths of hissing tears, clung to 
 the old. And he was French. He remained where his 
 countrymen had chosen to remain. He accepted the 
 decision at which already they had arrived. He had no 
 thought of breaking away from the ecclesiastical home of 
 his fathers. 
 
 That is the amazing thing. Pascal, whose exposure 
 of the abuses of Jesuitism is so complete, whose lash falls 
 stingingly and mercilessly on the soldiers of the Church, 
 was himself the Church’s devout and faithful son. To the 
 last he was submissive to the Papal See. The deepest 
 doctrine of his heart was the Calvinistic doctrine of God’s 
 efficacious grace, apart from which man is lost and un- 
 done; yet there was no accusation which he resented 
 more than that which his antagonists brought against 
 him of being a Calvinist in disguise. He shook Romanism 
 to its foundations, and he never separated or wished to 
 separate from Rome. One might almost say that, while 
 he embraced the fact or the thing which we designate 
 Protestantism, he resented and abjured the word. It is 
 difficult for the wisest to emancipate himself wholly from 
 old associations, predilections, and prejudices. The grave- 
 clothes may still adhere to Lazarus after he has been 
 raised up by Christ and has left his charnel-cave. 
 
 Having made these explanations, we need not scruple 
 about ranking Pascal’s Provinczales in the literature of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 He was born in June 1623, at Clermont-Ferrand, the 
 child of an old Auvergne family ; and he died, in the house 
 of his sister, Madame Périer, in Paris, on the 19th of August 
 

 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 293 
 
 1662. It was a short life; but into its thirty-nine years 
 he crowded much. Scientific experiment and discovery, 
 literary culture, philosophical speculation, the loftiest 
 theology, the warmest religion—Blaise Pascal was familiar 
 with them all; his is one of the royal intellects which 
 appear able to master every subject ; he stands among 
 the supreme geniuses of mankind. As a boy he was a 
 problem to his father, Etienne Pascal, himself a man of 
 reading and accomplishment as well as of worldly position ; 
 his precocity was so unusual and so exacting ; he wished 
 “ to know the reason of everything.”’ 
 
 By the time he was twelve, his bent towards mathe- 
 matics was so manifest that the father tried to hide from 
 him all books on arithmetic and geometry, and refused 
 to answer any questions about them, and bade the 
 young scholar busy himself exclusively with his Latin 
 and Greek. But he might as successfully have striven 
 to prevent a fish from swimming through the water or 
 a bird from soaring up into the blue sky. The boy 
 having found that the aim of mathematical science was 
 to make figures correctly and to ascertain their right 
 relations to each other, required nothing more. His 
 sister tells the story. ‘“‘ Being alone in a room where he 
 was accustomed to amuse himself, he took a piece of char- 
 coal and drew figures upon the floor, trying, for example, 
 to make a circle perfectly round, a triangle of which the 
 sides and angles were equal, and similar figures. He 
 succeeded in his task, and then endeavoured to determine 
 the proportion of the figures, although so careful had his 
 father been in hiding from him all knowledge of the kind, 
 that he did not even know the names of the figures. He 
 made names for himself, then definitions, then axioms, 
 

 
 294 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 and finally demonstrations ; and in this way had pushed 
 his researches as far as the thirty-second proposition of 
 the First Book of Euclid.” 
 
 Plainly, it was useless to retard this swift and ad- 
 venturous mind, and Etienne Pascal wisely abandoned 
 the attempt. Before he was seventeen, his son had 
 written a treatise on Conic Sections which excited 
 the incredulity and astonishment of the philosopher 
 Descartes. He invented a calculating machine. He veri- 
 fied what previously had only been theory about the 
 pressure of the atmosphere. In his later years, that he 
 might distract his thoughts from the acute physical pain 
 which he was suffering, he turned to the problems con- 
 nected with the cycloid ; within eight days, racked with 
 anguish as he was, he had established results for which 
 Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton were thankful afterwards 
 as they pursued their investigations into the Differential 
 and Integral Calculus. Pascal is a prince in the kingdom 
 of science. He deserves to be enthroned, with “ large- 
 brow’d Verulam,”’ among “ the first of those who know.” 
 
 There are two conversions in Pascal’s spiritual experi- 
 ence. First, in 1646, when he was twenty-three and when 
 the family was settled in Rouen—the father; Gilberte, 
 the elder daughter, who was to be Madame Périer by and 
 by; the son; and Jacqueline, the younger girl—God 
 called to him. It was a season when the influences of 
 religion moved all the four, and the world which is unseen 
 and eternal drew near. Etienne Pascal had been disabled 
 by an accident, and needed to rest more than was his wont. 
 He and his children, every one of them gifted and brilliant, 
 read together the books of St. Cyran and Cornelius Jansen, 
 and learned from them how the soul is saved from sin 
 
RAL ERAS 2 3" YRS RPS SRG AES NS PL ASE RSA FETA EPROPS TSE NOSE EE OOS EEA 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 295 
 
 and death through God’s grace and Christ’s cross and man’s 
 simple faith. The impression produced was profound ; 
 it was never entirely effaced; it was now that Jacqueline 
 set her heart on leaving the world and entering the cloister. 
 
 But, for a while, it did seem as if her brother forgot 
 his serious thoughts. His health, always delicate, had been 
 weakened by the intensity of his application to his studies ; 
 the doctors bade him desist from reading and writing ; 
 in his native Auvergne, and then in Paris, he flung himself 
 into the distractions and enjoyments of society. But, as 
 M. Faugére, one of his biographers, has said, “if his feet 
 touched for a moment the dust, his divine wings remained 
 unsoiled.”” He might be gay, but he was never dissolute ; 
 a restraining mercy and an inborn fastidiousness held him 
 back from riot and contamination. 
 
 At length, three years after the father’s death, when 
 Gilberte was married, and when Jacqueline was now an 
 inmate of the Convent of Port Royal, God’s second 
 and decisive summons came. There was in it, as there 
 is so often in a crisis of the soul, an amazing and 
 startling element. Just as, at the Damascus gate, Saul 
 the persecutor saw a light above the brightness of the 
 sun, and was confronted by Jesus Himself seated on 
 the throne of God, something equal miraculous befell 
 Pascal. Who that has read it has not been touched by 
 that cry of the heart, with its broken and unfinished 
 phrases, with its quivering and leaping life, in which he 
 recounts what happened to him? “ The year of Grace 
 1654, Monday, November 23rd, day of Saint Clement, 
 pope and martyr ’”’—so it begins. Then: “ From about 
 half-past ten at night, to about half after midnight, 
 Fire’’: there is the mystic supernatural light above the 
 

 
 296 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 glory of the sun. The revelation of the Lord follows: 
 “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the 
 philosophers and the wise. Security, security. God of 
 Jesus Christ. O righteous Father, the world hath not 
 known Thee, but I have known Thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears 
 of joy.” Finally, there is the obedience which must be 
 the issue of the heavenly vision. ‘“‘ Jesus Christ. I have 
 separated myself from Him. I have fled, renounced, 
 crucified Him. May I never be separated from Him. He 
 maintains Himself in me only in the ways taught in the 
 Gospel. Renunciation total and sweet.’ With all its 
 incompletenesses and ruggednesses this ‘‘ Amulet” of 
 Pascal—he wore it to the day of his death written on 
 parchment and stitched into his clothes—is one of the 
 most moving things in the literature of religion. 
 
 “ Renunciation total and sweet ’’—the phrase sum- 
 marises his remaining years. He took farewell of the 
 world. With the exception of the brief time he spent 
 in studying the curves of the cycloid and the lessons which 
 they taught, he left the pomps and triumphs of the reason 
 in its clearness, its versatility, and its strength, for the 
 pursuit of goodness and the single-hearted following of 
 Christ. Eighteen miles west of Paris, in the seclusion 
 of its peaceful valley, lay the famous monastery of Port 
 Royal, to which Jacqueline Pascal had already attached 
 herself. Her brother never actually and formally became 
 one of the Solitaries ; he could declare in the sixteenth of 
 the Provincial Letters that he did not belong to the com- 
 munity, and neither he did through any definite and out- 
 ward initiation ; but in spirit and in reality he was hence- 
 forward one of the quiet brotherhood. He had his own 
 little room in the Grange, over which M. de Saci was 
 

 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 297 
 
 —_— 
 
 director ; to it he withdrew whenever he chose, and in it 
 he hid himself through many of his days and nights from 
 the bustle and the temptation of the crowd. ‘“ He joins,”’ 
 Jacqueline wrote to Gilberte, “‘ in every office of the Church 
 from Prime to Compline’’—from the devotions of the 
 early morning to those with which the evening was closed 
 and hallowed. 
 
 Most of us will think Pascal’s renunciation only too 
 total and thorough. There was tenderness in it, as when 
 he desired to “serve the poor in a spirit of poverty,” this 
 being “‘ most agreeable to God.” There were patience 
 and cheerfulness ; for he not only acquiesced in suffering, 
 he welcomed it and bound it about him as a garment. 
 There was a wonderful humility ; he marvelled, he said, 
 that any one could feel attachment for him or delight in 
 his company. But occasionally his austerities were ex- 
 cessive, and he went too far in his efforts to forsake “ all 
 pleasure and all superfluities.’””’ He could not bear to see 
 Madame Périer caressing her children; was not that to 
 exalt the creature above the Lord? So afraid was he of 
 any sudden attack of sin, of any uprising of vanity or 
 complacency, that he wore a girdle of iron next his skin, 
 the sharp points of which he pressed against his flesh when 
 he thought himself in any spiritual danger. We may be 
 very certain that these denials and griefs were not de- 
 manded by Christ. 
 
 The end came not in his room at Port Royal but in his 
 sister’s house in Paris. His last words were, “‘ May God 
 never leave me!’”’ And God did not fail him. The Ever- 
 lasting Arms were underneath the weary and pain-worn 
 penitent. They carried him into the Father’s house not 
 made with hands, where there is fulness of joy. ‘ Philo- 
 

 
 298 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 sophers,”’ he had said, “‘ reckon two hundred and eighty-eight 
 sovereign goods.” But to him the one summum bonum 
 was to see God and to walk in the light of His presence. 
 And his Lord gave him his heart’s desire, and did not 
 withhold the request of his lips. 
 
 Pascal is remembered by two great books. 
 
 At one of them we.shall have to look immediately. 
 Its greatness is not that of size; a small volume holds it all. 
 But it lacks nothing ; it is perfect of its kind. It is the 
 work of an artist who is a master. No doubt, he has toiled 
 over it—toiled terribly; some of the Provincial Letters 
 were written six or seven times before their author let 
 them go out to the world. But the reader gets no glimpse 
 of the toil: he sees only the dazzling, delicate, tremendous, 
 inimitable result ; the fineness of the wit, the absoluteness 
 of the victory. The other book is as different as it can 
 be, broken, disjointed, fragmentary. Nothing is com- 
 pleted ; everything is detached and disconnected. Yet 
 it is the grander of the two. It deals with vaster and 
 more enduring themes. It sends its plumb-line down into 
 more abysmal deeps. It scales sublimer heights. It has 
 a fruitfuller message for the earnest and receptive soul. 
 
 How gladly one would linger over the Pensées, the 
 Thoughts, of Blaise Pascal! He had planned the com- 
 position of a defence of the Christian faith, and these 
 Thoughts were to be set in their own places in the treatise. 
 But his frail health hindered him from fulfilling his enter- 
 prise ; and we are left with the separate stones which the 
 cunning workman meant to fashion into a stately temple— 
 and “‘ behold, what manner of stones are here!’’ There 
 is not a sentence over which we may not pause and brood, 
 
LR TE ABS SA PSY PP A SUR SRE POA PPS TT TT 
 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 299 
 
 and from which we may not carry away the wealthiest 
 spoil. Pascal has his mighty, dominant, absorbing ideas, 
 which possess his imagination and his thought, which con- 
 stitute the truth that holds him in its thrall, which seem 
 to him the only things worth knowing and worth pro- 
 claiming. 
 
 One of those ideas is that of the strange contradictori- 
 ness of man, so royal in some respects and so beggarly 
 in others, a conglomerate of gold and clay: “ judge of 
 all things, yet a feeble earthworm ; depositary of truth, 
 yet a cesspool of uncertainty and error; the glory and the 
 offscouring of the world.” There he is, this marvellously 
 compounded creature, “‘ seeking and finding, and seeking 
 afresh ; so ingenious yet so stupid; so wise and yet so 
 incredibly foolish ; able to do so right yet constantly doing 
 so wrong; balancing between good and evil, sin and re- 
 pentance, till the wavering is cut short by death.” Con- 
 tinually Pascal is faced by the enigma and dislocation 
 of our human nature. 
 
 And how are the anomalies and perplexities to be 
 explained ? The query leads us to another of his 
 pregnant simplicities. Man has fallen, has disobeyed, 
 has sinned. He is dethroned and disinherited. He has 
 banished himself from his home and his riches in God. 
 But into his distance and penury he has borne some 
 faint reminiscences and fitful gleams of the nobility 
 which once was his. ‘‘ His very infirmities,” the Pensées 
 affirm, ‘‘ prove man’s grandeur; they are the infirmities 
 of a great lord, of a discrowned sovereign.”  ‘‘ Car 
 qui se trouve malheureux de n’étre pas roi, sinon un 
 roi dépossédé ?”’ But there is an adequate remedy for 
 the disharmony, the wretchedness, and the transgression. 
 
300 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 
 
 It is the incarnation and the Cross of Christ, the sacrifice 
 and passion of the Son of God. 
 
 Pascal dwells on this truth also—how, for the cure 
 of such unspeakable misery, such infinite mercy was 
 alone sufficient ; how men must submit in humility and 
 emptiness to God’s method of saving them; how they 
 may lose themselves in the intellectual discussion of 
 redemption, when they.ought rather to be receiving 
 it with a convicted conscience, a hungry heart, and 
 an obedient will. ‘‘To make a man a saint,’ Pascal 
 says, “grace is indispensably necessary ; and whoever 
 doubts this does not know what a saint is, nor what 
 a man is.” He knew himself; it was not theory of 
 which he was speaking now, it was experience. ‘“ There- 
 fore I stretch forth my arms to my Deliverer, Who, after 
 having been foretold for four thousand years, hath come 
 at last to suffer and to die for me, at the time and with all 
 the circumstances predicted of Him; and by His grace I 
 wait for death in peace, in the hope of being.united to Him 
 for ever ; and I live meanwhile rejoicing, whether in the 
 good things which it pleaseth Him to give me, or in the 
 evils which He sends me for my good, and which He has 
 taught me to endure by His example.’’ Pascal’s re- 
 nunciation is total ; but as undeniably it is sweet. 
 
 These are the postulates of the Pensées. It should 
 do us good to sit at the feet of such a teacher. For one 
 thing, it should make our religion more reflective and virile. 
 Our pieties are apt to run to shallowness or to emotion. 
 But we have a corrective for the danger in what Dean 
 Church has called Pascal’s ‘‘ clear downright seriousness, 
 and the startling boldness with which he faces the real 
 facts.”” If we hearken to him, he will keep us from the 
 

 
 
 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 301 
 
 easy-going acceptance of a traditional faith and from 
 the sentimentalism of mere feeling and affectionateness. 
 “Say what you will,” he maintains, “ there is something 
 in the Christian religion which is astonishing.” 
 
 And he does more than impel us to reflection. He opens 
 our eyes to the gravity, the solemnity, the awfulness of our 
 life. His prevailing note is one of admonition and severity. 
 He finds that sin is always busy, and that eternity is near, 
 and that the world-rulers of this darkness are fighting 
 against our souls. He bids us put flippancy far away. 
 “Le dernier acte est sanglant,’’ he says,—“ The last act is 
 tragedy, how pleasantly soever the play may have run 
 through the others.”” “On mourra seul,’”’ he says too,— 
 ‘“T shall die alone.’’ But then he sends us to God—the 
 God not of philosophers and of the wise, but of Jesus Christ, 
 Who is only found and held fast by the ways taught in 
 the Gospel. He knows the proud afar off; but from his 
 own experience the hermit of Port Royal can certify us that 
 He receives and forgives and crowns the broken in heart. 
 
 The Thoughts have tempted us to tarry with them too 
 long. We must leave them for our proper subject. First, 
 let us set The Provincial Letters in their historical frame- 
 work. Then let us glance at their theology. And, finally, 
 let us remind ourselves of their relentless dialectic and 
 extraordinary power. 
 
 This was how they came into existence. Foremost 
 among the leaders of Port Royal was the family of the 
 Arnaulds. One of their number, La Mére Angelique, 
 was the famous head of the sisterhood. A nephew of 
 hers, M. de Saci, to whom, as we have seen, Pascal owed 
 much, was the spiritual adviser of the monastery. Her 
 

 
 302 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 youngest brother, separated from her in age by a gulf 
 of many years, was Antoine Arnauld. He was a man of 
 property, who stripped himself of it all for the sake of 
 Christ and the Church. He was a man of learning, who 
 became a doctor in theology, and whose sympathies were 
 strong with the teaching of Augustine about man’s in- 
 ability and God’s sufficient and conquering grace. 
 
 These Augustinian sympathies of his, fearlessly avowed 
 in treatises and letters, drew upon Antoine Arnauld the 
 bitter enmity of the Jesuits. He was a Jansenist, a 
 disciple of Cornelius Jansen; and Jansenism had been — 
 condemned by Papal decree, and was abhorrent to the 
 members of the Society of Jesus. So, by packing the 
 court with creatures of their own, they persuaded the 
 Sorbonne, the theological faculty of Paris, to pronounce 
 an adverse judgment on Arnauld and his opinions. That 
 was in the opening weeks of 1656, and it was this judgment 
 which gave birth to the Pvovinciales. The accused man 
 was prepared to defend himself. But he could only do 
 it after the style of an erudite doctor of the schools, 
 academically, ponderously. Something lighter, cleverer, 
 more scintillating, with keener point, with deadlier thrust, 
 was needed, if the people were to be interested in the 
 controversy and were to appreciate its significance. That 
 was why Pascal was asked to try; and his trial was 
 a triumph, immediate, incontestable. The first of the 
 Letters appeared on the 23rd of January 1656; the second, 
 six days later; the eighteenth and last, on the 24th of 
 March 1657—into those fourteen months this supreme 
 achievement in literature, this campaign of wit and in- 
 dignation in which one bewildering and shattering blow 
 followed hard upon another, was compressed. 
 

 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 303 
 
 The secret of the authorship was jealously guarded. 
 Documents so direct in attack, so unsparing in satire, so 
 terrible in righteous anger, must not be sent from Port 
 Royal. Pascal had his lodging, therefore, in Paris, at a 
 little inn opposite to the Jesuit College of Clermont and 
 just behind the Sorbonne; his arrows were shaped and 
 winged, his weapons forged and sharpened, in near 
 proximity to the foe. The third Letter he closed mysteri- 
 Sasivemieb the capitals, oR AwA, BoP Ah. DeobiePpas: 
 they have been interpreted to mean, “ Et ancien ami, 
 Blaise Pascal, Auvergnat, fils de Etienne Pascal”: but 
 one would need to have been specially initiated ere he could 
 unriddle the hieroglyph. Later, he took the pseudonym 
 of “‘ Louis de Montalte.” He enjoyed the excitement of 
 this strategic warfare, in which the chief combatant was 
 concealed from view, and the adversary could not predict 
 when or how the next onslaught might be delivered. Of 
 the earlier Letters, it is said that six thousand were printed ; 
 of the later, ten thousand. But we should have to multiply 
 these figures many times over in order to arrive at an 
 accurate census of the readers ; the pamphlets were passed 
 from hand to hand ; everybody talked about them ; every- 
 body wanted to see them. 
 
 There are external distinctions between the Letters. 
 The first ten are addressed to the imaginary Provincial, 
 far from the madding crowd, by his friend who lives in the 
 throbbing centre of things. Those from the eleventh to 
 the sixteenth are sent directly to the Reverend Jesuit 
 Fathers. The last two are for one particular member 
 of the order, Father Annat. Other variations are to be 
 remarked. The opening three and the concluding three 
 are concerned with the censure on Antoine Arnauld. The 
 

 
 304 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 twelve which lie between are an indictment of the ethical 
 and moral code of the Jesuits ; and never was there such 
 an indictment, so convincing, so scathing, so unescapable. 
 Those to whose door it was brought raged against it ; but 
 they could not refute it. 
 
 If now we go in quest of the theology of the Provincial 
 Letters, we have the best exposition of that, as we should 
 expect, in those of them which treat of M. Arnauld’s 
 views, and which denounce the injustice of the condemna- 
 tion to which these views had been subjected. The theology, 
 though Pascal cried out against the notion that he had 
 any affinity with Geneva, is in its core and essence identical 
 with Calvin’s belief that not in us, but in the God of grace 
 and mercy and peace, our salvation lies. Jansenism found 
 the source of good in us not in the human will but in the 
 divine in Him from Whom all blessings flow; and there 
 Jesuitism, kinder to man and his habits and powers, joined 
 issue with it. The first two Letters, the wittiest although 
 not the weightiest of the whole series—“ the best comedies 
 of Moliére,”’ Voltaire said, are not so bright as these two 
 Letters—show us admirably the varying standpoints and 
 contentions. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the second. Pascal 
 represents himself as an inquirer, as yet undecided, 
 but anxious to ascertain the truth. The subject here 
 is what is known in ecclesiastical speech as “ sufficient 
 grace.” There are three teachers to whom the inquirer 
 listens and with whom he converses—a Molinist or Jesuit, 
 a New Thomist or Dominican, and a Jansenist. The 
 Jesuit is sure that grace is given to all men, and that its 
 efficacy depends on nothing else than the free will of the 
 recipient ; this for him is “ sufficient grace’ ; he magnifies 
 

 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 305 
 
 the human part and share in salvation. The Jansenist 
 cannot admit that man possesses such capacity and 
 endowment ; no grace is sufficient, he argues, except that 
 which is efficacious, and none is efficacious unless God 
 makes it so; he exalts the divine activity and goodness 
 in our redemption. The Dominican is the most pitiful 
 figure of the three ; at heart he coincides with the Jansenist, 
 but in word and in policy he helps the Jesuit ; his soul is 
 persuaded that Antoine Arnauld is right, but his vote 
 goes with the majority in the Sorbonne. How Pascal holds 
 up his weakness and inconsistency to ridicule and laughter ! 
 “The world is content with words; and so the name of 
 Sufficient Grace being received on both sides, though in 
 different senses, none except subtle theologians can dream 
 that the expression does not signify the same to the 
 Dominicans and the Jesuits; and the result will show 
 that the latter are not the greater dupes.”’ 
 
 Of course, the writer does not inform his correspondent 
 in the country in explicit sentences what his own con- 
 victions are; he is too perfect an artist to be so dogmatic 
 and frank; but he makes his veils diaphanous and thin, 
 till we can see the convictions gleaming through. He is 
 among the Jansenists, the Augustinians, the Calvinists— 
 whether he approves this last designation or no—who 
 sing the lowly song, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, 
 but unto Thy name be the glory, for Thy mercy and for 
 Thy truth’s sake!” 
 
 When we turn from the Lefievs which are suggested 
 by the high-handed treatment of Arnauld, and which 
 discuss the heresies laid to his charge, to those other twelve 
 which are occupied with the Jesuit morality itself, we are 
 
 conscious of a change of tone. For a while the wit remains, 
 20 
 

 
 306 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 the repartee, the brilliance; but gradually the voice 
 becomes more earnest, the pen more mordant and accusa- 
 tory, the combatant more impassioned in his remonstrance, 
 his rebuke, and his condemnation. Roman Catholic as 
 Blaise Pascal was, he could not endure the disingenuousness, 
 the craft, and the unscrupulousness of the disciples of 
 Ignatius Loyola. He placed them in a pillory where 
 they were dowered with.the scorn, first of Paris, then of 
 France, then of Europe. It is these twelve Letters which 
 furnish us with irresistible proof of his overwhelming 
 dialectic and his stupendous power. 
 
 No doubt his theological friends provided him with 
 much of the material of which he made such effective 
 use. His quotations from books of casuistical divinity 
 are innumerable ; had he himself toiled through the whole 
 contents of each of these books from title to colophon ? 
 No, he answers. “If I had done so, I must have spent 
 a great part of my life in reading very bad books.”’ But 
 he adds that he had not employed a single passage until 
 he had examined it in the volume from which it was cited, 
 and had studied it in its context and surroundings, that he 
 might run no risk of quoting it in a way which would have 
 been blameworthy and unfair. If he was a foeman who 
 gave no quarter, he was scrupulous in his endeavour to 
 fight honourably. 
 
 And then, he tells us also, he had himself ‘“ read 
 Escobar twice through.” The study opened to him 
 a new, unwholesome, malarial, appalling world, of 
 which he had had no conception before. ‘“‘ Not know 
 Escobar !”’ the monk exclaims in the fifth Letter: “the 
 member of our Society who compiled a Moral Theology 
 from twenty-four of our fathers!’ Pascal repaired the 
 

 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 307 
 
 ignorance ; he mastered the unedifying pages in which the 
 Spaniard of Valladolid expounded Jesuitical morality, 
 and did it so sympathetically that men coined the verb 
 “‘ escobarder,’’ which means “‘ to palter in a double sense.’’ 
 
 It was the saddest, dreariest, mournfullest of educa- 
 tions for the student. If Pascal was a Romanist, he 
 was a man of honour and a man of God; he reverenced 
 his conscience as his king; he abhorred lying and trickery 
 and deceit. He was austere and simple in his own prin- 
 ciples of conduct; he was unbending in his loyalty to 
 truth ; he had imagined that religion implied a morality 
 which would deviate from Christ’s straight road neither 
 to the right hand nor to the left. It was amazing to him, 
 and repugnant, to discover himself amongst teachers who, 
 in the name of religion, and for its advantage and diffusion, 
 justified every complexity, every evasion, every com- 
 promise. He recoiled, instantaneously, utterly, from their 
 theory and their practice. He felt that he did well to be 
 angry with them. 
 
 That scathing, scorching indictment—it is impossible 
 to enumerate all its counts and particulars; we must 
 content ourselves with one here and another there. There 
 is the Jesuit doctrine of Probability. The verdict of “‘a 
 single very grave doctor ’”’ may render an opinion probable, 
 may sanction what at the first blush appears morally 
 dubious and morally reprehensible, may in fact permit 
 us the indulgence of a desired and darling sin. It is not 
 essential that it should be his own opinion ; it is enough 
 that he should be able to quote it as somebody else’s. “A 
 doctor, being consulted, may give counsel not only probable 
 according to his opinion but contrary to his opinion, if 
 it is esteemed probable by others, when this contrary 
 

 
 308 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 opinion happens to be more favourable and more agreeable 
 to the person consulting.” 
 
 It is expressed more indubitably still, and more satisfy- 
 ingly for the transgressor who wishes to be fortified 
 in wrong-doing. ‘‘I say, moreover,” Pascal’s monkish 
 instructor continues, “that it would not be unreason- 
 able to give those who consult human opinion deemed 
 probable by some learned person, even though he should 
 be fully convinced that it is absolutely false.” ‘ Very 
 good, father,’ the pupil replies; “‘ your doctrine is most 
 convenient! Only to answer Yes or No at pleasure. 
 One cannot sufficiently prize such a boon. I see clearly 
 now what you gain by the contrary opinions which your 
 doctors have on every subject. The one is always of 
 use, and the other never does any harm. If you do 
 not find your harvest on this side you turn to that, 
 and so you are perpetually in safety.” 
 
 Or there is what the Jesuit pedagogue describes as 
 “the marvellous principle”’ of Directing the Intention. 
 ““The importance of it in our moral system is so great,” 
 he declares, “that I would venture almost to compare 
 it to the doctrine of Probability.”” Only let a man 
 divert his intention and attention from the evil in 
 which he is actor and partner; only let him fasten these 
 on the profitable consequences which will accrue from 
 the commission of the deed; and he is absolved and 
 guiltless, he may be worthy of commendation and 
 praise as he goes forward to the execution of his 
 purpose. The one danger to guard against is that he 
 should have the design of sinning for the mere sake of 
 sinning. ‘“‘ When any one whatever persists,” say the 
 prudent and discriminating casuists, ‘in having no other 
 

 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 309 
 
 end in evil than evil itself, we break with him; the thing 
 is diabolical; this holds without exception of age, sex, 
 or quality.” But how easy it is to perceive some plain 
 and palpable benefit that wickedness may bring some 
 coveted fruit and satisfaction to the senses or the circum- 
 stances, the soul or the estate! Then it may have free 
 course. ‘‘ Not that we do not, as far as we can, dissuade 
 from things forbidden ; but, when we cannot prevent the 
 act, we at least purge and cleanse the intention, and thus 
 correct the vice of the means by the purity of the end.” 
 Could there be ethics more comfortable, or more pernicious 
 and unholy ? 
 
 Or there is the matter of Equivocation. The Jesuits 
 have their facilities by which sin can be avoided in 
 speech. They allow ambiguous terms to be used — 
 terms which the listener understands differently from him 
 who employs them. And to make the equivocation 
 doubly secure, the accommodating moralists tell us how 
 to act when we cannot at the moment light upon terms 
 that are baffling and elusive enough. In such emergencies 
 we must call to our aid the method of Mental Reservation : 
 does not Sanchez commend and applaud it ? and is not 
 Filiutius of the same mind? “ After having said loud 
 out, ‘I swear that I did not do it,’ we add in a whisper, 
 ‘To-day.’ Or, after saying loud out, ‘ I swear,’ we whisper 
 beneath our breath, ‘ That I say,’ and afterwards continue 
 audibly, ‘that I did not do it.’ You see unmistakably,” 
 Pascal’s tutor appeals to him, “that this is to speak the 
 truth.” ‘“‘‘T admit it,’ said I, ‘but perhaps we would 
 find that it is to speak the truth in a whisper and the false- 
 hood loud out.’ ”’ 
 
 These are but samples of the damning exposure. 
 
810 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 
 
 Many more might be given. As, for example, the 
 Jesuit’s condonation of a spurious devotion. Let a man 
 be present outwardly when the Sacrament of the Mass 
 is celebrated, and that is all that is demanded of weak 
 human nature; his thoughts may be with his heart, and 
 that may be far away. Or, what is darker and more 
 hateful, the Jesuit’s excuse for assassination. The cause 
 of truth, the defence of the Church, may necessitate the 
 removal of somebody; and then killing is no murder. 
 “ After all,’? muses Pascal shrewdly as he hearkens to this 
 surprising lesson, ‘‘ the intention of him who wounds is no 
 comfort to him who is wounded; he does not perceive 
 this secret direction, and he only feels the direction of the 
 blow which smites him. I even know not whether it 
 would not be less galling to be brutally slain by an in- 
 furiated man, than to feel oneself poniarded conscientiously 
 by a devotee.” 
 
 Thus accusation is piled on accusation, and the cumula- 
 tive effect is overpowering ; the victory is complete. Of 
 course, the alleviations are left out, and no meritoriousness 
 is credited to the Society of Jesus ; one thinks of the lines 
 in Milton’s Samson Agomstes : 
 
 oO dark, voark? ack hae 
 
 Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, 
 
 Without all hope of day! ”’ 
 But the appalling charges themselves are only too accurate. 
 The worst of the quotations were taken from books not 
 published by individuals on their own private responsi- 
 bility, but sent out to the world stamped with the im- 
 primatur of the official heads of the Order. There was no 
 escaping the condemnation. It is not too much to say 
 that to this hour the Jesuits have not recovered from it. 
 

 
 A BONNY FIGHTER 311 
 
 Sometimes, as we have seen, it is the bright and flashing 
 rapier of his wit that is Pascal’s weapon. We watch 
 him as he wields it against M. le Moine and Father Bauny. 
 Nobody really sins, they aver, unless he does it against 
 five mighty deterrents: the conscious knowledge of God’s 
 love, the conscious recollection of his own weakness, the 
 conscious memory of the Physician Who can cure him, the 
 conscious desire and longing for deliverance, the conscious 
 exercise of prayer for divine succour and emancipation. 
 “OQ father!” the penman of the Letters cries, ‘‘ what a 
 blessing to some persons of my acquaintance! I must 
 bring them to you. Perhaps you have seldom seen people 
 with fewer sins. For they never think of God; their 
 vices get the start of their reason ; they have never known 
 either their infirmity or the Physician Who can cure it ; 
 they have never thought of desiring the health of their 
 soul, and still less of asking God to give it. So that they 
 are still, according to your doctors, as innocent as at their 
 baptism. . . . All their excesses made me think their 
 perdition certain, but you teach me that these excesses 
 make their salvation secure. Blessings on you, father, 
 for thus justifying people! O the nice way of being happy 
 in this world and in the next! I always thought that we 
 sinned the more, the less we thought of God. But from 
 what I see, when once one has so far gained upon oneself 
 as not to think of Him at all, all things in future become 
 pure. None of your half-sinners, who have some lingering 
 after virtue! They will all be damned, those half-sinners. 
 But for frank sinners, hardened sinners, sinners without 
 mixture, full and finished, hell does not get them. They 
 have cheated the devil by dint of giving themselves over 
 to him.” The lash is stinging. The rapier is keen. 
 

 
 312 THE REFORMATION IN ITS LITERATURE 
 
 But sometimes Pascal lifts and wields a kinglier weapon 
 —the great and deadly sword of irrepressible and holy 
 anger, his Durandal or Excalibur. His adversaries dare 
 to say that the love of God is not necessary to salvation ; 
 they go so far as to pretend that this dispensation from 
 loving God is “‘ the advantage which Jesus Christ brought 
 into the world.”’ He is horrified by the impiety. ‘“‘ Before 
 the Incarnation, men were obliged to love God ; but, since 
 God so loved the world as to give His Only Begotten Son, 
 the world which He has redeemed is discharged from 
 loving Him! Strange theology of our days! We pre- 
 sume to take off the Anathema which St. Paul pronounces 
 against those who ‘love not the Lord Jesus Christ.’ We 
 overthrow what St. John says, ‘ He that loveth not abideth 
 in death.’ We deny what Jesus Christ Himself asserts, 
 “Whoso loveth not keepeth not His commandments.’ 
 Thus those are made worthy to enjoy God in eternity, who 
 never once loved Him on earth. Behold the mystery of 
 iniquity accomplished!’’ Who will affirm that that in- 
 dignation is not most worthy and good ? 
 
 Pascal had no regrets for what he had done. The 
 Roman Pontiff condemned The Provincial Letters. But 
 he betook himself to a higher court. ‘‘ Ad Tuum tribunal, 
 Domine Jesu,” he said, “ appello.”’ 
 
INDEX 
 
 313 
 

 
 
 
 Li 
 J 
 
 4, A+ Aw 
 rat 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 Address to the German Nobility, 34, 
 46; its message, 34-8. 
 
 Adiaphoristic Controversy, the, 1ot. 
 
 Alane, Alexander, his narrative of 
 Patrick Hamilton’s martyrdom, 
 
 te Roe ae 
 
 Albrecht, Archbishop, his sale of 
 Indulgences, 28. 
 
 Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, 12. 
 
 Arnauld, Antoine, 302, 303-5. 
 
 Articles, the (Articult de Regimine 
 Ecclest@), 178-82. 
 
 Augsburg Confession, the, 99—I00. 
 
 Augustine, St., 52. 
 
 Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 
 The, 38, 39, 47. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, quoted, 195. 
 
 Balnaves, Henry, fellow-prisoner 
 with Knox, 247. 
 
 Bannatyne, Richard, quoted, 247; 
 puts Knox’s papers in order, 257, 
 260. 
 
 Barbour, Robert, quoted, 33. 
 
 Beard, Dr. Charles, quoted, 17, 1o1. 
 
 Beaton, Archbishop James, 226, 
 227,/220-30,-232;1233: 
 
 Beghards, the, 14. 
 
 Bergen-op-Zoom, Marquis of 
 (Governor of Vilvorde), 208, 212. 
 
 Beza, Theodore, 128, 163, 256. 
 
 Bible, the literature enshrined 
 within the, 195; its translation 
 and diffusion, 196. 
 
 Bigg, Canon, quoted, 5. 
 
 Boehmer, 54. 
 
 Bolsec, Jéréme, 188. 
 
 Book of Common Order, The, 249. 
 
 Book of Discipline, The, 246, 248, 
 251, 274. 
 
 Bora, Katharine von, 59, 75, 76, 
 77, 78, 90. 
 
 Bradshaw, Henry, his explanation 
 of the “G. H.’’ problem, 207-8. 
 
 Brethren of the Common Life, the, 
 14. 
 
 Brisger, John, 75. 
 
 Bucer, Martin, 176. 
 
 Buchanan, David, as Knox's editor 
 tampers with the text of the 
 History, 257. 
 
 Buchanan, George, 224, 233, 256. 
 
 Bunyan, John, in Grace Abounding, 
 quoted, 69. 
 
 Busche, Hermann von dem, quoted, 
 212. 
 
 Butcher, Professor, quoted, 195-6. 
 
 Cajetan, Cardinal, 33. 
 
 Calderwood, quoted, 276. 
 
 Calvin, John, quoted, 101; on 
 Melanchthon’s compromises, 102 ; 
 compared with Luther, 143-6; 
 his birth and education, 146-7 ; 
 compared with John Milton, 148 ; 
 prepares for the profession of 
 law, 148; reverts to literature 
 and publishes his first book, 149 ; 
 has a part in Nicolas Cop’s 
 rectorial address, 149-50; _ his 
 flight, 150; his inner unrest and 
 conflict, 150-7; he resigns his 
 benefices, 151-2; he hides his 
 identity in Basel, 152; he com- 
 pletes and issues the Institutes, 
 152-3; the notes and emphasis 
 of his beliefs, 160 ff.; tendency 
 of German scholars to disparage 
 him, 169-70; his endeavours in 
 Geneva, 172ff.; he goes to 
 Strassburg, 176; returns again 
 to Geneva, 177; his years of 
 triumph there, 177; his death, 
 and epitaph, 178; his concep- 
 tions of what Church and State 
 ought to be, 178 ff.; his Articles 
 and Ordonnances described, 178 ff.; 
 municipal and magisterial govern- 
 
 315 
 

 
 316 
 
 ment in his day, 188; his com- 
 ment as to Servetus’ sentence, 
 188-9; his actions and their 
 justification, 190-2. 
 
 Calvinism, what it has accom- 
 plished, 165; Lord Morley on, 
 166; Ernst Tréltsch on, 171-2. 
 See also Calvin. 
 
 Camerarius, Joachim, 107, 108. 
 
 Campbell, Friar Alexander, 
 231. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 80, 265. 
 
 Castellio, Sebastien, 188. 
 
 Catechisms of the Reformation, 
 the, 119 ff. 
 
 Charles v., story of dumb-show 
 play, 22-3; reference to, 34. 
 
 Christiane Religionis Institutio, the. 
 See Institutes. 
 
 Church, Dean, quoted, 249-50, 300. 
 
 Cochlaeus, john, 203. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, quoted, 
 
 230, 
 
 59. 
 Colet, John, 198. 
 Colloquia Mensalia, the, 73, 79. 
 Colloquia Peripatetica, quoted from, 
 TIO. 
 
 Commentary on the Psalms, 150, 
 175. 
 Commentary, The, 58, 59; _ its 
 
 contents gleaned, 59-69. 
 Complaynt of Scotland, The, author 
 of, quoted, 222-3. 
 Consistoive of Geneva, 185, 187, 188. 
 Cop, Nicolas, 149, 150. 
 Cordatus, Conrad, 79, 82. 
 Cunningham, Dr. William, quoted, 
 IOl. 
 Cur Deus Homo, 12. 
 
 Demaus, Robert, 198; quoted, 213. 
 
 Denney, Dr., quoted, 12. 
 
 Diet of Augsburg, story about 
 dumb-show play at, 22-3. 
 
 Dietrich, Veit, 
 
 Directing the Attention, 
 principle of, 308. 
 
 Douglas, John, 274, 276. 
 
 Doumergue, Professor, quoted, 170, 
 172, 176. 
 
 Dret Grosse Reformations-Schyriften, 
 the, 33 
 
 Duncan, Dr. John, quoted, rio. 
 
 Direr, Albert} 16, 
 
 Jesuit 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Eck, John, 33. 
 
 Eckhart, Heinrich, 8. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, fo. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 277. 
 
 Encomium Morie@ (In Praise of 
 Folly), 15, 18; scheme of the 
 book, 19-22. 
 
 Equivocation, Jesuit doctrine of, 
 
 309. 
 
 Erasmus, Desiderius, 15-8, 19, 22, 
 23,97, 108)) 193," 200; sane 
 225% 
 
 Escobar, 306-7. 
 
 Estates of Parliament, 271-2, 278. 
 
 Faber, quoted, 215. 
 
 Fairbairn, Principal, quoted, 144. 
 Farel, William, 128, 172, 175. 
 Faugére, M., Pascal’s biographer, 
 
 295. 
 Fisher, Bishop, 15. 
 Fleming, Dr. Hay, his Princeton 
 Lectures quoted from, 221-2. 
 Foster, Professor H. D., quoted, 
 
 174. 
 
 Foxe, John, quoted, 198, 199, 209, 
 234, 237: ‘, 
 
 Frederick, the Pious Elector, 121-4; 
 
 his decision at the Imperial 
 Diet, 123; prefaces the Cate- 
 chism, 130. 
 
 Freedom of a Christian Man, The, 
 41, 42-5, 47. 
 
 Friends of cea the, 14. 
 
 Frith, John, translates Patrick 
 
 Hamilton’s Places, 234-5. 
 Froude, Mr., quoted, 15-8, 165, 216. 
 
 Gasquet, Father, his theory as to 
 early Bible versions, 196-7. 
 
 Geneva, as in Calvin’s time, 172 ff. ; 
 the Consistory of, 185, 187. 
 
 Gerbel, Nicholas, quoted, 107. 
 
 Goldschmidt, John, 7a. 
 
 Grisar, Hartmann, Luther’s Jesuit 
 biographer, 45, 53. 
 
 Guesses at Truth, author of, quoted, 
 85. 
 
 Hamilton, Patrick, his birth and 
 parentage, 223-4; a student in 
 Paris, 225; goes to Louvain, 
 2253 returns to Scotland and is 
 enrolled in St. Andrews, 226; 
 

 
 INDEX 
 
 cited to appear before Arch- 
 bishop Beaton, 227; escapes to 
 the Continent, 228 ; again returns 
 to Scotland, 229; marries, 229; 
 summonsed before the Arch- 
 bishop’s council, 229; delivered 
 to the authorities for judgment, 
 230; sentenced to die that very 
 day, 230; his martyrdom, 231 ; 
 his Places, 234-6; his book 
 indebted to Tindale and Luther’s 
 eatlier works, 236; its theology 
 analysed, 238-40; his chief 
 distinction, 240-2. 
 
 Hare, Julius, quoted, 54. 
 
 Harnack, quoted, 46. 
 
 Hastie, Professor, quoted, 165. 
 
 Hausrath, Adolf, on Melanchthon, 
 
 104. 
 
 Heidelberg Cathechism, the, 120 ff. ; 
 its initiator, 121-4; its authors, 
 124-30 ; prefaced by the Elector, 
 130; its plan and arrangement, 
 131-2; its popularity, 132; its 
 moderation, 133-4; criticised, 
 135-6; its qualities tasted, 137— 
 40 ; referred to, 153. 
 
 Heine, quoted, 31-2. 
 
 Hepburn, Patrick, 226. 
 
 Herbert, George, quoted, 130, 136. 
 
 Herkless and Hannay, historians, 
 quoted, 233-4. 
 
 Hermann’s book, The Communion 
 of the Christian with God, referred 
 to, 65-6. 
 
 Heshusius, Tilemann, 121, 122. 
 
 History of the Reformation in Scot- 
 land (John Knox’s), 245, 253, 
 
 2553; considered and analysed, 
 256-66; its literary interest, 
 261-3; a Satisfying autobio- 
 
 graphy of Knox himself, 264-5. 
 Hume Brown, Professor, quoted, 
 252, 264-5. 
 Fuss) olin, /14,/33. 
 Hutten, Ulrich von, 34. 
 
 Illyricus, Matthias Flacius, assails 
 Melanchthon, roo. 
 Innes, Dr. Taylor, quoted, 285. 
 
 Institutes, the, completed and 
 issued, 152-3; an epoch-making 
 book, 153; its aim, 154; its 
 
 wisdom, force, and plan, 156-8 ; 
 
 317 
 
 its growth in the last edition, 
 
 159; its constructive power, 
 159; its notes and emphases, 
 160-3; itself a refutation of 
 
 some charges against Calvinistic 
 sternness, 164. 
 Irving, Edward, quoted, 286. 
 
 James v., stories of, 262, 269; his 
 first Parliament, 270-1. 
 
 James, Professor William, quoted, 
 5, 6, 7. 
 
 Jansenism, 302, 304, 305. 
 
 Jesuitism, 302-4; its doctrines 
 denounced and exposed, 305-11. 
 
 Jonas, Dr. Justus, 88-9; quoted, 
 T1Q. 
 
 Jones, Dr. Rufus, quoted, 11. 
 
 Kessler, John, describes Melanch- 
 thon, 97. 
 
 Knox, John, quoted, 178; _ his 
 chief features, 245 ; his scripturai 
 and evangelical belief, 246, 247; 
 as a churchman, 247-50; as a 
 patriot, 250; and Mary Queen 
 of Scots, 250; his brotherliness, 
 251-2; his noble ideal for the 
 people, 252; his courage, 253; 
 his compassion, 254; his zeal 
 for truth, 254-5; his loyalty 
 to Christ, 255; his Hzstory of 
 the Reformation considered, ana- 
 lysed, and quoted from, 256-66 ; 
 in the waiting-room at Holyrood, 
 265; his part in the Scottish 
 Reformation, 269-71;  bidden, 
 with his colleagues, prepare a 
 statement of the Protestant 
 faith, 272; his Scots Confession 
 considered, 273-88; his co- 
 adjutors in the Confession, 274-7. 
 
 Lacordaire, Henri, 83, 85. 
 
 Laing, David, produces the crown- 
 ing edition of Knox’s History, 
 258. 
 
 Lambert, Francis, 228, 234. 
 
 Lauterbach, Antony, 79. 
 
 Lecky, Mr., quoted, 146. 
 
 Leo x., Pope, 29; Luther’s epistle 
 to, 42. 
 
 Letter of Wholesome Counsell, quoted 
 from, 246. 
 

 
 318 
 
 Lewis VI., 126, 128. 
 
 Lightfoot, Bishop, quoted, 213. 
 
 Lindsay, Principal, quoted, 31, 159. 
 
 Lindsay, Robert, of Pitscottie, 
 quoted, 225. 
 
 Little Catechism, the, 119. 
 
 Loct Communes, the, 104-14, 153. 
 
 Logie, Gavin, 226. 
 
 Lords of the Congregation, 258, 
 259, 278. 
 
 Lorimer, Principal, 
 233. 
 
 Lowell, Mr., quoted, 195. 
 
 Loyola, Ignatius, contrasted with 
 Luther, 85-6; unscrupulousness 
 of disciples of, 306, 
 
 Luft, Hans, 296. 
 
 Luther, Martin, his predecessors, 
 35 )quoted;\’8, 13; édits and 
 publishes the Theologia, 13; 
 criticised by Desiderius Eras- 
 mus, 16; his resounding hammer, 
 27; nails his announcement to 
 the door of the Schloss Kirche, 
 28; his ..ninety-five |» Theses, 
 28-30, 33; his method of deal- 
 ing with evils, 31; he publishes 
 the Drei Grosse Reformations- 
 Schriften, 33; his hammer-like 
 pen, 33; he enumerates the evils 
 and the grievances, 34-7; he 
 indicates the reforms needful, 
 37-8; his pamphlet, On the 
 Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 
 38, 39; his views on the sacra- 
 mental system oof Roman 
 Catholicism, 33-41; his tract on 
 The Freedom of a Christian Man, 
 41, 42-5; his sorrow for Pope 
 Leo, 42; his Treatises criticised, 
 45-7; his profound personal 
 religion, 51; his asceticism, 52; 
 he gradually gains light and rest, 
 54, 553; his attitude towards the 
 Bible, 55-6; his sermons or 
 homilies, 57; his exegesis, 57; 
 lectures at Wittenberg on the 
 Epistle to the Galatians, 58; he 
 publishes the Commentary, 58, 
 59; its contents gleaned, 59-69 ; 
 Bunyan’s preference for Luther’s 
 Commentary next to the Bible, 
 69 ; Luther’s Table Talk a monu- 
 ment of Protestantism, 73, 74 ; 
 
 quoted, 223, 
 
 INDEX 
 
 he marries Katharine von Bora, 
 75; their home and children, 
 76; his love of children, 77; his 
 sainthood, 81; the intensity of 
 his attachments and friendship, 
 
 82-3; his victories over de- 
 pression, 85; his humour and 
 power of laughter, 85; the 
 
 contrast between Luther and 
 Loyola, 85-6; his opinions and 
 independence, 86; his reverence 
 and reason, 86-7; his lesson- 
 book Nature, 87-8; his reliance 
 on scriptural revelation, 88-9 ; 
 his theme Christ’s humanity and 
 pardoning power, 90; his potent 
 helps in the Christian fight, 90-1 ; 
 his thanks to God, 92 ; his friend- 
 ship with, and admiration of, 
 
 Melanchthon, 95-6; his views 
 on human freedom, 108; his 
 recommendation of Melanch- 
 
 thon’s Loct Communes, 114; his 
 Little Catechism, 119 ; compared 
 with Calvin, 143-6; Tindale a 
 debtor to Luther’s labours, 212-3. 
 
 MacEwen, Professor, quoted, 232, 
 
 242. 
 
 Maitland of Lethington, 266, 271, 
 274; 277. 
 
 Major, John, 226. 
 
 Martyr, Peter, 125, 128. 
 
 Mary Stewart (Queen of Scots), 250, 
 259, 263-4, 265, 279. 
 
 Mathesius, John, 79. 
 
 Maximilian, Emperor, summons 
 the Elector Frederick before the 
 Imperial Diet, 122-4. 
 
 Melanchthon, Philip, his home, 32 ; 
 his grave,’ 32 3) ‘quéted, 944; 
 mentioned in the Table Talk, 
 82-3; his friendship with, and 
 admiration of, Luther, 95, 96; 
 his outward appearance, 96-7; 
 John Kessler’s description of 
 him, 97; installed as Professor 
 of Greek in Wittenberg, 97; his 
 love of classic literature, 98; 
 his interest in theology, 98-9 ; 
 a lover of peace, 99; draws up 
 the Augsburg Confession, 99-100 ; 
 assailed by the orthodox Luther- 
 ans, 100; his apprehensive and 
 
 a 
 

 
 INDEX 
 
 shrinking nature, 100-1; _ his 
 compromises, 100-2; his mental 
 and spiritual character, 102-4; 
 his melancholy, 104; his Loc: 
 Communes considered, 104-14 ; 
 
 his views on the problem of 
 
 human freedom, 108-9; _ his 
 ‘““Synergism,’’ 109; his ethics 
 and evangelism, 111-2; _ his 
 
 views on the Sacrament of the 
 Lord’s Supper, 112-3; his last 
 writings and death, 114-5; his 
 friendship with Calvin, 176. 
 
 Michelet, quoted, 78. 
 
 Miltitz, Charles von, 33, 42. 
 
 Milton, John, quoted, 34, 310; 
 compared with Calvin, 148; 
 protests against the misediting 
 of Knox’s History, 257-8. 
 
 Mitchell, Professor, quoted, 
 279, 286. 
 
 Monmouth, Humphrey, 201, 202. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 15, 85, 204-5, 
 212, 
 
 Morley, Lord, quoted, 166. 
 
 Mysticism, 4, 5, 7, 8 
 
 Mystics, 4, 6, 7, 14. 
 
 251, 
 
 Newman, Bishop, quoted, 215. 
 
 Gcolampadius, 17, 144. 
 Olevianus, Caspar, 127-9, 130, 134, 
 
 137- 
 Ordonnances, the (Ovdonnances 
 Ecclésiastiques de lEglise de 
 
 Genéve), 178, 182 ff., 189. 
 Orr, Professor, quoted, 153. 
 
 Parker, the Bishop’s Chancellor, 
 reviles and rates Tindale, 200, 
 Pascal, Blaise, a post-Reformation 
 fighter, 291 ; his exposure of the 
 abuses of Jesuitism, 292; his 
 birth and childhood, 292-3; his 
 precocious interest in mathemati- 
 cal science, 293-4 ; his early con- 
 version, 294; in society in Paris, 
 295; God’s second summons to 
 him, 295-6; he becomes a non- 
 resident worshipper with the 
 Solitaries, 296-7 ; his austerities, 
 297; his last words, 297; his 
 Provincial Letters, 291-2, 298, 
 
 301-12 ; his Pensées, 298-301. 
 
 319 
 
 Pensées (the Thoughts), 
 298-301. 
 
 Phillips, Henry, betrays Tindale to 
 the Government in Brussels, 
 208. 
 
 Places (Patrick Hamilton’s), the, 
 234-40. 
 
 Polycarp, 231. 
 
 Pascal’s, 
 
 Port Royal, monastery of, 296, 
 301. 
 
 Poyntz, Thomas, 206, 208. 
 
 Praise’ of “Holly, Dhe 15, 4 1875 
 scheme of the book, 19-22. 
 
 Probability, Jesuit doctrine of, 
 307-8. 
 
 Provincial Letters, The, 291--2, 298 ; 
 their historical framework, 301-4 ; 
 their theology, 304 ff.; their 
 relentless dialectic and extra- 
 ordinary power, 305ff.; con- 
 demned by the Roman Pontiff, 
 ates 
 
 Queen’s Maries, the narrative of 
 Knox and the, 265. 
 
 Reformation, spring-time of the, 
 3. approaches -to’) they 4. ba- 
 the Catechisms of the, 119 ff. ; 
 Dr. Hay Fleming’s Princeton 
 Lectures on Scottish Reforma- 
 tion quoted from, 221-2 ; Patrick 
 Hamilton’s part in the, 241; 
 Professor Hume Brown on the 
 Scottish Reformation, 252. 
 
 Reply to Jacopo Sadoleto, 150. 
 
 Reuchlin, Johann, 15, 97, 212. 
 
 Richard, Dr. J. W., quoted, 111. 
 
 Ritschl, Albrecht, quoted, 169. 
 
 Rough, John, 253. 
 
 Row, John, 274, 276-7. 
 
 Roye, William, 202. 
 
 Ruskin, John, quoted, 210. 
 
 Schaff, Dr., quoted, 106—7. 
 
 Schaumburg, Sylvester von, 34. 
 
 Schlaginhaufen, John, 79, 82. 
 
 Schloss Kirche, the, Wittenberg, 
 28, 32,.75. 
 
 Schoeffer, Peter, his printing-press, 
 203. 
 
 Schulze, Martin, quoted, 170-1. 
 
 Scots Confession, the, 247, 272; 
 its full title, 273; Knox’s co- 
 

 
 320 
 
 adjutors in its composition, 
 274-7 ; a survey of its contents, 
 279-88. 
 
 Scottish Parliament passes its first 
 Act against Lutheran opinions, 
 a7. 
 
 Scottish Reformation, 
 also Reformation. 
 
 Servetus, Michael, 188-9. 
 
 Shorter Catechism, the, 119. 
 
 Sieberger, Wolfgang, 75. 
 
 Society of Jesus, 302, 306, 310; 
 its doctrines denounced and 
 exposed, 305-II. 
 
 Solitaries, the, 296. 
 
 Spiritual Exercises, the, 86. 
 
 Spottiswoode, John, 224, 274, 275. 
 
 Staupitz, John, 52. 
 
 Stephen, Sir James, quoted, 18. 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, quoted, 
 
 252. See 
 
 152. 
 
 Story about dumb-show play at 
 Diet of Augsburg, 22-3. 
 
 Suso, Henry, 8. 
 
 Table Talk, the, 73, 74, 76; how 
 it came into being, 78-9; its 
 compilers, 79; its contents 
 considered, 80-6, 90, 92. 
 
 Tauler, John, 5, 6, 8. 
 
 Tetzel, John, his sale of Indulgences, 
 28. 
 
 Theologica Germanica, 6, 7; its 
 unnamed author, 8-9; its pur- 
 pose, 9-14 ; contrasted, 19, 30. 
 
 Thesentiir, the Theses’ Door, 32, 
 
 33. 
 
 Theses, the ninety-five, 28-30, 31. 
 
 Three Great Reformation Treatises, 
 the, 33, 45-6. 
 
 Tindale, William, 16; his life 
 and history, 197-9; translates 
 Erasmus’s Enchiridion Mulitis 
 Christiant, 199; the Bishop’s 
 Chancellor reviles and rates him, 
 200; he goes to London, 200; 
 interviews Bishop Tunstall, 200-1; 
 sails for Hamburg, 202; starts 
 printing the New Testament, 
 202; flies to Worms and re- 
 sumes printing there, 203; first 
 
 INDEX 
 
 edition of English New Testa- 
 ment published, 203; More’s 
 resentment to Tindale’s trans- 
 lation, 204; ‘Tindale’s_ retort, 
 204~5; continues publishing at 
 Marburg and Antwerp, 205-7 ; he 
 is betrayed by Henry Phillips 
 to the Government in Brussels, 
 208; imprisoned in the Castle 
 of Vilvorde, 208; strangled, and 
 his body burned, 209; his 1534 
 New Testament considered, 209— 
 17; his scholarship, 211; his 
 ability to consult the originals, 
 212-3; his power of taking 
 pains, 213-4; his Testament 
 the real basis of the Authorised 
 Version, 216; copies of his New 
 Testament brought by trading 
 vessels to Scottish ports, 227. 
 
 Tischreden, the, 73, 74, 77, 81, 89. 
 
 Troltsch, Ernst, on Calvinism, 
 171-2. 
 
 Tunstall, Bishop Cuthbert, 200-1. 
 
 Ullman, quoted, 14. 
 Ursinus, Zacharias, 125-7, 130, 132, 
 134, 137. 
 
 Vaneties of Religious Experience, 
 The, mentioned, 5. 
 Verrall, Dr. A. W., quoted, 190-1. 
 
 Walker, Dr. James, quoted, 81-2. 
 Weller brothers, Jerome and Peter, 
 
 79: 
 Wesley, John, quoted, 44. 
 Westcott, Bishop, quoted, 209. 
 Westminster Confession of Faith, 
 
 160, 285, 286. 
 Westminster Shorter Catechism, 
 136. 
 
 Willock, John, 274, 275-6. 
 Winram, John, 274, 277. 
 Wishart, George, 253; 
 
 narrative of, 262. 
 Workman, Principal, quoted, 13-4. 
 Wyclif, John, 14. 
 
 Knox’s 
 
 Zwingh, 144. 
 

 
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