DE

"Igli- taoki

•YAHJE-wani¥Eiasinnf- DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

SOME HERETICS
YESTERDAY

OF

S. E. HERRICK, D.D.
MINISTER OF MT. VERNON CHURCH, BOSTON

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
&ie Mtoagibe Vxesti, "ffamtri&oe
1885

H 434-3

Copyright, 1884,
Bt S. E. IlEKBICK.
All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0 Houghtoi£& Co.

<&W page
OF HONOR AND AFFECTION
I HAVE WRITTEN LAST,
THAT I MIGHT INSCRIBE IT, WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE,
TO THE MOST FAITHFUL
AND YET MOST KINDLY OF CRITICS,
MY WIFE,
UNDER WHOSE PATIENT SCRUTINY
EVERY PAGE OF MY BOOK
HAS PASSED.

PREFACE.

Lest some reader should be disappointed in the
contents of the present volume, let me briefly say by
way of preface that no new facts are brought to light
in the following pages ; they are old stories simply re
told — not for students — but for the young men and
women of the Congregation to which it is my privilege
to minister, and whom I am trying to train, from Sun
day to Sunday, in the Christian graces of Faith, Hope,
and Charity, and in that Kingdom which is " right
eousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."
The several chapters were prepared from week to
week and delivered as a course of Sunday Evening
Lectures during, the last winter, with no thought of
publication until the last one had been given. Indeed
such a purpose, arising at an earlier day, would have
suggested a preparation so protracted and thorough as
to preclude the possibility of producing them at inter
vals so brief. Nor would they now be committed to
the types but for the strenuous entreaty of my people.
The Luther celebrations of last autumn turned the
minds of men anew, throughout the Christian world,

VI PRE FA CE.
to that great revolt against traditionalism and author
ity which we call the Reformation. To show that the
revolt neither began nor ended with Luther — if in
deed it can be said to be finished yet ; to follow it in
its gradual development in principle and trace it in its
geographical and national expansion ; at the same time
to exhibit it concretely in the lives of its leaders, and
so to bring the reader into a personal sympathy with
them and awaken an interest in personal investigation ;
is the object which I have endeavored to accomplish.
And yet, I should not be content, if I could feel that
only this were attained. The great Protestants of the
past have gained comparatively little for the world, if
they have not established for all succeeding ages the
indefectible right to question even their authority, and
the perpetual privilege of intellectual readjustment.
In other words, a traditional Protestantism has no
more right to a claim of infallibility than a traditional
ecclesiasticism. Every age that the world has seen so far has been
prefatory ; it is hardly probable that the present age
is final. The five centuries from the birth of Tauler
to the death of "Wesley (1290-1791) are unified by a
visible progress of religious thought and of spiritual
life. There is no good reason for supposing that the
lines along which that progress has developed have yet
found their termini. It may be said of these " Here
tics of Yesterday," as the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews says of the worthies of the Ancient Jewish
Church : " These all having obtained a good report

PREFACE. vn
through faith, received not the promise ; God having
provided some better thing for us, that they without
us should not be made perfect." Nor shall we be per
fected without the work and attainment, the broader
light and clearer knowledge, of the coming years.
Mt. Veenon Church, Boston, July, 1884.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
I. TAULEE AND THE MYSTICS  1
II. WiCLiir  23
III. Htrs  45
IV. Savonarola .  71
V. Latimer  97
VI. Cranmer  127
VII. Melancthon  155
VIII. Knox  181
IX. Calvin  207
X. Coligny  235
XI. William Beewstee  263
XII. Wesley  289

I.
TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
A. d. 1290-1361.
Cckious it is to observe how these Common-sense Philosophers, men
who brag chiefly of their irrefragable logic, and keep watch and ward, as
if this were their special trade, against 'Mysticism,' and 'Visionary The
ories,' are themselves obliged to base their whole system on Mysticism, and
a Theory ; on Faith, in short, and that of a very comprehensive kind ; the
Faith, namely, either that man's Senses are themselves Divine, or that
they afford not only an honest, but a literal representation of the workings
of spme Divinity. So true is it that for these men also, all knowledge of
the visible rests on belief of the invisible and derives its first meaning and
certainty therefrom. — Carlyle, Essay on Novalis.

SOME HERETICS OF YESTERDAY.

i.
TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
a. d. 1290-1361.
Man's religion, like himself, combines the seen and
temporal with the unseen and eternal. The soul, or
spirit, or unseen reality of religion, is something en
tirely distinct from the visible form in which it is
embodied. The two may exist apart, but the normal
condition is that of combination in balance and har
mony and mutual helpfulness. Religion may exist
only as a corpse ; and it may exist also only as a dis
embodied spirit. There may be only the visible ap
pearance, the phenomena of churches and dogmas and
sacraments and sermons, without any interior and
spiritual reality. There have been, as we know, not
only individuals, but whole communities and long ages,
in which this has been the case, when religion has
been like the fair shell of a nut in which the kernel
has completely decayed. And, on the other hand,
there may be religion which takes on little or no vis
ible manifestation, no church, no human ministry, no
formulated creed, no sacraments, nothing save the spir
itual intercourse between man and his God. But as
in the human constitution body and soul are intended

4 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
to exert a mutual influence, each working healthfully
and helpfully upon the other, — the body giving ut
terance and expression to the soul and carrying out
its purposes and desires, and the soul animating the
body and informing it with grace and beauty, — so
also is the intent in all religion. All form is to the
end of spiritual life and vigor, and spiritual life is
in order to outward influence and fruitf ulness. But
neither in man nor in his religion are the twain often
found in perfect balance. The one or the other is
likely to preponderate, and in both cases the flesh
tends to get the upper hand of the spirit, and to
tyrannize over it. Then comes the necessity for a
protest and a reaction to restore the normal relation ;
and in this fact lies the whole meaning of Protestant
ism, in whatever age it appears and whatever the tem
porary form it takes. Matthew Arnold, in his recent
lecture on Emerson, said that " Mr. Emerson's great
work lay in this, that he was the friend and aider of
those who would live in the spirit," which is but an
other way of saying that Mr. Emerson was a mystic.
For mysticism is not an ism, but an effort. It has
not to do so much with doctrine as with life. It is not
a revolt from theory or from prevalent belief, but
from materialism in practice and conduct. Hence it
is not peculiar to any one age or church or country,
but is found in all times and under all ecclesiastical
and theological systems, and under the religions of
paganism as well as under that of Christianity. Per
haps it is impossible to construct a formula for mys
ticism that shall be brief, concise, and adequate, and so
answer the demands of a definition, as it certainly is
impossible to find one. The more, because the thing
itself has always been a reaction from formula. It is

MYSTICISM— THE WALK WITH GOD. 5
one of those spiritual things which may be spiritually
discerned, wherever it appears, but which transcend
the limitations of words. You may chase it through the
dictionary, but you will not capture it there ; the net
work of words is as incapable of holding it as are the
meshes of a seine to retain a wave of the sea. I sus
pect that the first mystic of whom we have any record
was Enoch, and that the four words which give us his
whole biography come nearer to a true definition than
any attempt that has since been made by theologians
or philosophers, "Enoch walked with God." That
such solitary prominence should have been given to the
name of one man among a multitude of others in that
far-off age beyond the flood indicates that he was dis
tinguished from his fellows in some such way as Prince
Gautama was in India, as Confucius was in China, as
Socrates was in Greece, and as in after times Tauler
and his companions were in Germany, Fenelon in
France, and the Wesleys in England. There is dis
cernible in them all the same craving to get above
the low and unspiritual level of their respective times,
to break away from the formalism and perfunctoriness
of the average religious life, to find a union with God
which shall be as real as the common relationships of
daily life.
It was in that darkest time that is just before day
that the German mystics arose. It was not yet the
dawn of the Reformation. These men were preparers
of the way ; voices crying in the wilderness, as John
the Baptist heralded the coming of Christ. Tauler
was the forerunner of Luther, though he did his work
solely with reference to the call of present duty, all
unconscious and unsuspicious of the bright future to
which that work was leading up the German people.

b TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
But very little is known of his earlier days, save that
he was born the son of a wealthy family in the city of
Strasburg, in the year 1290. At the age of eighteen,
he betook himself to a religious life. That expression
now does not mean that a man leaves the work-bench
or the counter, or any honest and respectable calling.
We live in the happy day in which religion is under
stood to possess and sanctify any useful calling, in
which it is as holy and as God-approved a work to
make shoes or sell calico as it is to translate the Scrip
tures or go on a mission to the heathen. But not so
then. To enter upon a religious life meant to join
some order of monks, to renounce, at least outwardly,
the employments and enjoyments of the world and
live in the convent. Shortly after his renunciation of
the world he proceeded to Paris, which was at that
time the great centre of Christian learning, and where
able professors were expounding to thousands of stu
dents the philosophy of Aristotle and the speculations
of the Schoolmen. It was the characteristic doctrine
of scholasticism that Christianity was a mere objec
tive phenomenon, to be looked at and studied simply
as a movement of history. That it was also an in
ward life was well-nigh forgotten. God and Christ
were banished from human sympathies ; men studied
and speculated upon the divine nature as one might
peer at the sun through a telescope from the snow-
covered summit of a mountain, where its life-giving
warmth is unfelt. Religious thought was purely spec
ulative and religious life as purely in externals, and
in neither of these could Tauler find much satisfac
tion. It was life, not logic, that he longed for. He
turned over the huge volumes with an eager mind and
a yearning heart, but found not what he sought. It

AT PARIS. 7
was like looking through window-panes upon which
the dust of years had settled and over which genera
tions of spiders had spun their webs, while he longed
for open vision. In after years when he had become
the preacher of a living gospel, this student-life at
Paris seemed, when he remembered it, to fill him with
disgust. "Those great masters at Paris," he says,
"do read vast books and turn over the leaves with
great diligence, which is a very good thing ; but spir
itually enlightened men read the true living book,
wherein all things live ; they turn over the pages of
the heavens and the earth and read therein the mighty
and admirable wonders of God." But dry and frigid
and unsatisfactory to him as all this logic-chopping of
the schools was, it probably was not without an in
direct benefit. It made him feel still more keenly
a hunger for spiritual realities. It prepared him to
welcome the light still more eagerly when the light
should come. And come it did. On returning from
Paris to Strasburg to take up his work as a preaching
friar, not well knowing as yet what he had to preach,
he fell in with a distinguished brother of his own or
der, who was teaching the people in their own lan
guage, with great enthusiasm. He was mighty in the
doctrines of the Schoolmen, but along with his meta
physics he gave the hungry people much of the Scrip
ture story, in a popular and pictorial form, turning it
into parables and allegories, teaching them withal the
evil of sin, and the necessity of being at one with God.
This Master Eckart produced a great impression upon
Tauler, and seems to have firmly settled him in the
truth that was then dawning upon the world, that
" outward rites and observances are not necessary to
the essence of piety." This truth Tauler took up and

8 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
carried forward and supplemented. He taught likewise
that outward rites and observances are not necessary
to the essence of piety, but he added also this, that true
piety is in the application of religious principles to
real life. He showed that piety had its positive as
well as its negative aspect ; what it is, as well as what
it is not. " One can spin," he says, " another can make
shoes ; and all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. I
tell you, if I were not a priest, I would esteem it a
great gift that I was able to make shoes, and would
try to make them so well as to be a pattern to4 all."
" The measure with which we shall be measuredfis the
faculty of love in the soul, — the will of a man ; by
this shall all his life and works be measured."
Truth has ever its counterfeit, even as substance its
shadow; and the mysticism which was springing up
in the minds of thoughtful people was accompanied
by its grotesque imitations and burlesques. There
were not wanting men who were ready, then as now,
to turn the truth of God into a lie, and make His grace
a cloak for licentiousness. Even in our own day there
are men who, whether from constitutional inability or
from willful perversion, make no distinction between
faith and presumption, between inward freedom of
the spirit and lawlessness, between an easy conscience
and holiness. So this resurrection of true faith was
accompanied by the upspringing of the Brethren and
Sisters of the Free Spirit, as they called themselves.
Tauler himself felt the hindrance which they imposed
upon the truth, and, though charitable and gracious in
his disposition, handled them without gloves whenever
the opportunity offered. " These Free Spirits," he
says, " strive after a false freedom, and, on pretext of
following the inward light, follow only the inclinations
of their own nature."

PERVERSIONS OF MYSTICISM. 9
It would not be possible for me to give, within the
compass of a brief lecture, any adequate and discrim
inating review of the character and results of the
mysticism of the fourteenth century. I must content
myself with quoting from Mr. Vaughan a single sen
tence : " The memorable step of progress (made by
Tauler and his companions) is briefly indicated by
saying that they substituted the idea of the immanence
of God in the world for the idea of the emanation
of the world from God." 1 And it is easy to see how
this new thought — an old thought now, and one that
has grown very precious to the Christian world —
would, in its first freshness and impressiveness, be
likely to be perverted and parodied and made the pre
text both for theoretical error and vicious practice.
" All things are in God and all things are God," said
Master Eckart. " All creatures in themselves are
naught : all creatures are a speaking or utterance of
God." " Simple people conceive that we are to see
God as if He stood on that side and we on this. It
is not so ; God and I are one in the act of my per
ceiving Him." It is easy to see how such statements
as these could be misconstrued and perverted ; how
they might be interpreted as a deification of the crea
ture, and the exaltation of self-will might be construed
as an expression of the will of God ; how all distinc
tion between good and evil, virtue and vice, might be
swept away, and all external conduct become a matter
of indifference. Nay, let these utterances be hard
ened into intellectual dogma, and they are the most
dangerous of falsehoods. If God is thus unqualifiedly
in all created things, and all things are filled with
Him, then my will, whatever it be, is but the putting
1 Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, hook vi., ch. 6.

10 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
forth of His will, and my act is the act of God Him
self. But the loftier the truth, the baser the parody
of which it is susceptible. The devil, says St. Augus
tine, is but the ape of God.
The little that we know about Tauler's personal his
tory after he returned to Strasburg and began to ex
ercise his vocation as a preaching friar may be gath
ered about three events, and, meagre as it is, will be
quite sufficient to show us what manner of man he
was. These events are, —
1. His defiance of the papal ban.
2. His conversion.
3. The advent of the plague usually known as the
Black Death.
1. " According to mediseval notions, Christendom
was one, — one church and one political state. The
whole ecclesiastical power centred in the Pope, who
was the world-priest. And the whole civil power cen
tred in the Emperor, who was the world-king." 1 The
Pope was chosen by the college of cardinals. The
Emperor was similarly chosen by a number of princes
called Electors, though, after his choice by electors,
the Emperor had to be approved and acknowledged
by the Pope. Sometimes there was a contested elec
tion in either case, — two popes claiming the papal
tiara, two emperors claiming the imperial crown. In
the year 1314 this state of things occurred in the
empire ; Frederick of Austria and Louis of Bavaria
both claimed the election, and both were crowned, and
for eight weary years there was a contest between them
for the undivided power. The people were divided in
their sentiments. The Pope could recognize but one
of the claimants, and Frederick was his favorite. The
1 Dr. T. M. Lindsay, Reformation, p. 178.

THE BAN. 11
burghers of Strasburg declared for Louis, and thought
that the Pope had no right to interfere in civil affairs.
He had his own throne at Rome ; let him attend to
his business and rule the church. And so the Pope
said, " Strasburg shall be put under the ban, and all
cities, towns, and individuals who acknowledge Louis
for their emperor." We must not forget what this
meant. It closed the doors of all the churches. It
forbade the preaching of the gospel to those who were
under the interdict, though if the Pope were right
and the people wrong, one would think that they
needed preaching all the more. It refused the sacra
ments to Christian people ; it compelled the wicked
and lawless to go unadmonished. It reduced society,
as far as possible, to the condition of paganism. The
sick could receive no comfort, and the dying no assur
ance of absolution. And poor as the aid and comfort
of the church were in those days to the weary and the
heavy-laden, they were yet far better than none. The
priests and the monks took their departure to other
towns and provinces which sided with the Pope, in
order to avoid excommunication. In a word, the mul
titudes of the poor and the ignorant were made to suf
fer for the offenses of their superiors ; and if the ban
were deserved at all, it was made to press the heaviest
where it was least deserved and most feared.1 Through
1 " That awful doom which canons tell
Shuts paradise and opens hell ;
Anathema of power so dread,
It blends the living with the dead,
Bids each good angel soar away,
And every ill one claim his prey ;
Expels thee from the church's care,
And deafens Heaven against thy prayer ;
Arms every hand against thy life,

12 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
all this long and fearful contest, in which the Pope's
curse hung like a thunder-cloud over Alsatia, Tauler
shrank not for a moment from his customary labors.
The heavens were clear over his head. In the fear of
God and the love of man all lower fear vanished away.
The church door of his convent was not to be nailed
up. Day after day he went about encouraging the
fearful, consoling the sorrowing, telling men every
where of the love of God, endeavoring in every way
to vary and multiply his labors so as far as possible to
fill the places deserted by his brethren. He was the
good shepherd of his own flock and of all the shep-
herdless flocks that he could reach by his voice or his
pen. God's gentleness made him great in that fearful
time, — very great. If we knew nothing else about
him than this, this alone would glorify him as a star
of the first magnitude in that dark night of the Middle
Ages. Strong and tender, brave and Christly man,
John Tauler ! There is no sainthood since apostolic
days that can outrival thine ! He addressed a letter
to his brother-priests about this time, urging them to
Bans all who aid thee in the strife,
Nay, each whose succor cold and scant
With meanest alms relieves thy want ;
Haunts thee while living, — and, when dead,
Dwells on thy yet devoted head ;
Rends Honor's scutcheon from thy hearse,
Stills o'er thy bier the holy verse,
And spurns thy corpse from hallowed ground,
Flung like vile carrion to the hound ; —
Such is the dire and desperate doom
For sacrilege decreed by Rome.'' — Lord ofthe Isles.
Sir Waller's picture, so far from being overdrawn, is tamer
than the facts would warrant, through the exigencies of rhyme
and metre. For a description less bizarre, but really more ade
quate, see Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets, part I., xxxvi.

CONVERSION. 13
comfort the people, and keep on preaching and adminis
tering the sacraments. " For," he says, " ye are bound
to visit and console the sick, remembering the bitter
pain and death of Christ, who hath made satisfaction,
not for your sins only, but also for those of the whole
world ; who doth represent us all before God, so that
if one falleth innocently under the ban, no pope can
shut him out of heaven. Ye should, therefore, give
absolution to such as wish therefor, giving heed rather
to the bidding of Christ and his apostles than to the
ban, which is issued only out of malice and^avarice."
"Those who hold the true Christian faith, and sin
only against the person of the Pope, are no heretics.
Those rather are real heretics who obstinately refuse
to repent and forsake their sins : for let a man have
been what he may, if he will so do, he cannot be cast
out of the true church. Through Christ, the truly
penitent thief, murderer, traitor, adulterer, all may
have forgiveness. Such as God beholdeth under an
unrighteous ban, He will turn for them the curse into
a blessing." Luther himself uttered no braver words
than these, two hundred years later, at Worms or
Wittenberg. 2. His greatness appears in another way, though
perhaps quite as significantly, in the crisis of his life,
which is commonly called his conversion, which oc
curred in 1340, when Tauler was fifty years of age.
His humility and childlikeness of spirit were as con
spicuous in this as was his bravery in his treatment of
the ban. He had been preaching now for many years,
and his fame had gone f a* and wide. He was known
and loved as a good and holy man. There appeared
one day in his audience a stranger,1 who heard the
1 Nicholas of Basle.

14 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
sermon through, and then desired to make confession
and receive absolution. This he did several times.
At length the layman requested, to the doctor's sur
prise, that he would preach a sermon setting forth
the highest spiritual attainment and how it may be
reached. The sermon was preached, and it is still
extant, setting forth, in four and twenty articles, the
highest spiritual attainment. But the godly layman
was not satisfied. He plainly told the preacher that,
while preaching to others, he had not yet discovered
the sinfulness of his own heart, that he had never yet
made a complete surrender of his own will to God,
and that he had come thirty leagues, not so much to
hear him preach as to warn him against deceiving
himself. A flush of indignation for a moment spread
itself over the doctor's face, that a layman should
dare to address him thus ; but instantly he recog
nized it as the faithful wound of a friend, and took
the reproof with the utmost humility and sweetness of
spirit. The word, like a flash of lightning, had illu
mined the depths of his nature, had detected in him a
lurking pride and self-sufficiency of which he had been
all unaware, and, deeply humbled and mortified, he
embraced the layman, saying, "Thou hast been the
first to tell me of my fault. Oh, stay with me, and
show me how I may overcome it. I Thou shalt be my
spiritual father, and I will be thy poor, sinful son."
Now this was not morbidness, but downright honesty.
It was the fifty-first Psalm, translated into the Ger
man of the Middle Ages. It was the cry of the self-
recognized and self - condemned publican, " God be
merciful to me a sinner." So humbled in this new
degree of self-knowledge did the poor friar become,
that for two years his lips were sealed in shame. He

NICHOLAS OF BASLE. 15
did not dare to preach. The agony of his spirit wasted
his body and reduced his physical strength as if a dis
ease were upon him. He was taunted by his enemies
for his silence, and even his friends suspected and for
sook him. His fellow-monks ridiculed him for being
stricken with a sorrow that they could not understand.
Even the mercy of God, which he had preached so
freely to others, he felt too wicked and too unworthy
to claim for himself. But out of this furnace he was
to come forth as gold that has been tried in the fire.
The night of weeping was to be followed by a morn
ing of joy. As he lay one day upon his couch there
came into his thought the recollection of the suffer
ings and love of his Lord, and of his own ungrate
fulness, and there welled up out of his heart and
overflowed from his lips these words, " O merciful
God, have mercy upon me a poor sinner ; have mercy
in thine infinite compassion, for I am not worthy to
live upon the face of the earth ! " And as a mother
hears the cry and runs to the succor of her child, God
came to him with abundant comfort. Emptied of
himself, he was filled with the peace that passeth
understanding, and with the peace came power.
"Now," said his faithful friend, "thou knowest the
power of God's grace. Now thou wilt understand
the Scripture as never before, and be able to show
thy fellow-Christians the way to eternal life. Now
one of thy sermons will bring more fruit than a
hundred aforetime, coming, as it will, from a simple,
loving, humbled heart ; and much as the people have
set thee at naught, they will now far more love and
prize thee. But a man with great treasure must
guard against thieves. See to it that thou hold fast
thy humility, by which thou wilt best keep thy riches.

16 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
Now thou needest my teaching no longer, having found
the right Master, whose instrument I am, and who
sent me hither. Now in all godly love thou shalt
teach me in turn." And it all came true. From this
time forth he was known and loved, and honored and
reverenced, for his life of active love and pity, of
patience and meekness, — a life in imitation of Christ.
From this time they called him " Doctor Illuminatus,"
the Doctor upon whom a great light hath shined.1
3. A few years after this occurred the third event
which served to disclose the greatness and real Christ-
liness of the man. In 1348 the Black Death appeared
in Strasburg. It was a plague, says Petrarch, that
desolated the world. For fifteen years previous it
had been ravaging the Orient. It had been accom
panied, or rather preceded, by terrible convulsions
of nature and by a great variety of calamities, which,
in those days, and even down to our own time, were
regarded rather as the capricious visitations of a
wrathful God than as the inevitable and legitimate
results of natural causes. There had been droughts,
famines, floods, swarms of locusts, and earthquakes
which had changed in an hour the contour of vast
areas of the earth's surface. The order of the seasons
even seemed to have lost its stability, — heavy snows
falling in summer and fierce lightnings in winter, ex-
1 John Tauler's Covenant, A. D. 1340 : " Dear Lord and
Bridegroom, I here vow and promise to Thee surely, that all
which Thou wiliest I also will. Come sickness, come health,
come pleasure or pain, sweet or bitter, cold or heat, wet or dry,
whatever Thou wiliest that do I also will ; and desire altogether
to come out from my own will, and to yield a whole and willing
obedience unto Thee, and never to desire aught else, either in
will or thought ; only let Thy will be accomplished in me in time
and in eternity."

BLACK DEATH. 17
cessive cold in July and a corresponding degree of heat
in December, and at last the plague. Vast masses
of organic matter, the bodies of unburied animals
and men, were strewn over the ground. The locusts
that had devoured every green thing and exhausted all
life became in turn the prey of death, and poisoned
with their corruption the air which they had before
darkened with their flight. Some chroniclers tell us
that the fetid atmosphere became visible ; so heavily
was it laden with pestilence and death that its folds
covered the earth and draped the hill-sides like a
funeral pall. No country was exempt from the vis
itation, no classes were secure from attack, whole
towns were made desolate. On the land every house
was a pest-house, and on the sea the ships were float
ing morgues, often with no helmsman to guide them,
freighted with corpses, and spreading their contagion
wherever wind and wave chanced to waft them. There
were not enough of the living to care for the dead or
to dig their graves, and the very rivers were conse
crated as cemeteries, and floated along through town
and field their crowded drift of death.1
The estimated mortality is appalling to think of
after half a thousand years have passed. It is as
if the habitable world had been swept by a flood of
death. In the Orient forty millions perished. In
Europe twenty-five millions. The city of London
alone lost one hundred thousand. Italy lost one half
of all its population ; Southern France two thirds. In
many parts of France it was computed that only one
out of ten was left alive. In Tauler's own little city
of Strasburg sixteen thousand persons fell victims to
1 See Vaughan, vol. i., book vi., ch. 7. Also, Hecker's Epi
demics of ihe Middle Ages.
2

18 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
it. And the plague did more than destroy life. It
dissolved the very bonds of society. Natural affection
seemed to die even in the hearts of fathers and
mothers, husbands and wives. Fear of danger slew its
tens of thousands, and where it did not slay it made
men hard and women cruel. Trade and commerce
came to a stand-still. The merchant dreaded to touch
the money of his customer, the buyer equally feared
the merchandise of the seller. Death was lurking
everywhere and in everything. " Every man dreaded
not merely the touch and the breath of his neighbor,
but his very eye, so subtile and so swift seemed the
infection." Superstition aggravated the horror. Men,
thinking to appease the wrath of God by penance,
formed themselves into wandering bands, with rules
for self-torture. In ghastly processions, half-naked,
and chanting wild and doleful airs, they traversed the
continent of Europe, scourging and lacerating them
selves, entreating others to join in their fanatical will-
worship, and only spreading more widely the very
contagion which they deprecated by their scourgings
and ululations. Then, too, an ignorant and unrea
soning race - hate played its part. Here and there
where Jews were assembled they were accused of
creating the pestilence by poisoning the wells, and
thousands of them were burned in their homes, twelve
thousand in the city of Mayence alone. " At Stras
burg a monster scaffold was erected in the Jewish
burial-ground, and two thousand were burnt alive in a
single holocaust. At Basle all the Jews were burnt
together in a wooden edifice erected for the purpose.
At Spires they set their quarter in flames and per
ished by their own hands." On every hand there was
terror or cruelty, recklessness or despair.

THE HERESY OF LOVE. 19
John Tauler had got far beyond any fear of the
pestilence that walketh in darkness or the destruction
that wasteth at noon -day. He had compassed the
endeavor of the true mystic, and was " walking with
God." He dwelt in the secret place of the Most
High, and abode under the shadow of the Almighty.
With two brother-monks of like mind, by day and
by night he went about among the dead and dying,
preparing these for burial, and inspiring, comforting,
cheering with the promises of the gospel, those who
were entering the valley of death. He was mother,
nurse, and minister in one. Works of love are bet
ter, said he, than lofty contemplation, and to carry
broth to a sick brother more pleasing to God than
to be rapt away at such a time in devoutest prayer.
" Love took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with
might, —
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of
sight."
Meantime the renewal of the Pope's ban had increased
the terrors of the ignorant, and added to the general
distress. But this was no time to question whether
the Pope was to be obeyed. Obeying him in such a
case would surely be disloyalty to God. Ban or no
ban these brothers should not die unshrived, nor go
out into the dark unlighted by the candle of his faith
or the comfort of the sacrament. His word was as
good as the Pope's. " Son, daughter, thy sins are for
given thee for the dear Lord's sake. If thou truly
repentest die in peace." Tauler had learned the great
lesson that man's highest good is to find the living
God and to come to Him ; and that this is for every
man, and that every man must find Him and come to
Him for himself ; and that neither priest nor pope

20 TAULER AND THE MYSTICS.
can stand between the two. He knew that the church
might ban or bless whom she would ; the ban or the
blessing were equally of no account in such high af
fairs as these. There was the voice of God himself
made articulate by the lips of the man Christ Jesus,
and sounding forevermore, through the sin and sorrow
and sickness and death of this world for every soul
that would heed it, " Come unto me all ye that labor
and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of me to be meek and
lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls."
That yoke he had taken, that rest he had found, and
these dying brothers of his should know it, and should
know the way to it ; and if the ban burnt him, or the
plague slew bim in making it known, what mattered
it ? he was with God, and God was with him here or
there. The Dark Ages were passing away. That time
could not be wholly dark that could give to the world
one such character as this. Through that long historic
night there gleams many a star of chivalry, there
burns many a meteor of knightly valor, there sounds
many a chanson of heroism ; but what feats of knight-
errantry, what devotion of crusader, what enthusiasm
of battle for the rescue of captive knighthood or the
recovery of conquered shrine, is worthy for a moment to
compare with this ? Without question there were mul
titudes numbered among the mystics of the fourteenth
century who reflected no honor upon the name. There
are always shams in plenty masquerading as true men
and women ; and some even of these are honest, being
egregiously self -deceived. But hold them up by Tauler
and the difference is painfully clear. Throw the
leaden coin down along with the silver, and what you

LUX IN TENEBRIS. 21
thought was a ring is only a pitiful thud. The saint
hood of Tauler is the sainthood of all time. There is
no other. Its one unchanging formula, yesterday and
to-day and forever, is, " Whosoever he be among you
that forsaketh not all that he hath and taketh not up
his cross and followeth not after me, he cannot be my
disciple." The gateway to the kingdom of heaven,
now as then, is the spirit of a little child.

II.
WICLIF.
A. d. 1324-1384.
Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear,
And at her call is Wiclif disinhumed:
Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed
And flung into the brook that travels near;
Forthwith, that ancient Voice, which Streams can hear,
Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind,
Though seldom heard by busy human-kind) —
"As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst
An emblem yields to friends and enemies
How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."
Wordsworth's Eccl. Sonnets, part II., xiii.

II.
WICLIF.
A. d. 1324-1384.
There is said to have been preserved in the city of
Prague a missal, containing the ancient liturgy of the
Hussites, one of whose rich illuminations represents
Wiclif at the top of the page kindling a spark. Just
below, Hus is portrayed blowing the spark into a
flame. And finally, underneath Hus stands Luther,
brandishing a lighted torch. It is a just portrayal
of the relations in which the three men stood histor
ically to each other. Whether the familiar designa
tion by which Wiclif has been styled " the Morning-
Star of the Reformation " was suggested by the pic
ture, or whether the picture was inspired by a title
that had been already given, I do not know. It is cer
tainly true that Wiclif was the pioneer in the heroic
work in which Hus gave up his life and Luther was
put under the ban, and which has had as its modern
outcome the freedom and greatness of the three great
est powers of the world in the nineteenth century, —
free Germany, free England, and free America.
Protestants of every tongue have just united with
Germany in celebrating the four hundredth anniver
sary of Luther's birth. But to all English-speaking
peoples a more significant as well as a more venerable
anniversary will come with the last day of the year

26 WICLIF.
(1884) upon which we are about to enter.1 On that
day five centuries will have elapsed since John Wiclif
died. It is too petty and invidious a question to ask,
which of the two men is the more worthy of distinc
tion ? Each did his work, and did it well, — the work
for which the Church and the world were ignorantly
waiting. The two worked along similar lines, by sim
ilar methods, under the inspiration of the same thought,
— the inalienable right of every human spirit to the
liberty of the sons of God. They both attacked one
system of spiritual tyranny, both asserted the same
right of private judgment, both appealed to the same
standards of authority and reason, both were Protes
tants before Protestantism existed as a system. And
yet Englishmen — and we are English — cannot for
get that our Wiclif dared to call the Pope Antichrist
a century and a half before the Wittenberg monk
burned the bull of that Pope's successor ; that a Bible
in their own language went forth to the common peo
ple of England from the Lutterworth parsonage, pre
ceding by the same space of one hundred and fifty
years the German Bible that was set free from the
towers of the Wartburg. We cannot forget that the
Oxford scholar knew little Greek and less Hebrew,
and so had to translate from a translation, while the
subsequent revival of Oriental learning enabled the
German to draw from the original tongues in which
the " holy men of old wrote as they were moved by
the Holy Ghost." We cannot forget that the work of
the Englishman had to be painfully copied by hand
and secretly distributed, and so was handicapped in its
course, while that of the German found the printing-
press waiting to give it a thousand wings. Whatever
1 Spoken December 16, 1883.

REIGN OF EDWARD III. 27
judgment, therefore, might be pronounced by the
world at large as to the relative merits of the two
men, and the relative value of the parts they respec
tively bore in the great historic movement of the Ref
ormation, we English-speakers, at least, must claim
that for us Wiclif stands preeminent.
That was a great century in the first quarter of
which Wiclif had his birth, and in the last quarter of
which he died. It would have been marked in Eng
lish annals had he not lived at all. Few reigns have
been more splendid than that of Edward the Third,
who came to the throne within a few years of Wiclif 's
birth, and held it for half a century. It was the cen
tury of Cre"cy and Poitiers, which gave to Englishmen
for a time the mastery of France. Chivalry then pro
duced its consummate flower in the person of the
Black Prince, than whom, in his best days, knight
was never more brave or gentle, more bold or gra
cious. It was during the fifty years of Edward's reign
that architecture lent her assistance to religion in the
completion of those glorious structures which for hun
dreds of years have made Lincoln and Wells and Pe
terborough and Salisbury and Westminster and Win
chester the favorite resorts of poetry and devotion.
It was then that the great William of Wykeham
founded the first of the famous public schools of Eng
land. It was then that Chaucer sung the " Canterbury
Pilgrimage " and the " Romaunt of the Rose." It
was then that the nation finally cast off the trammels
of a foreign tongue, and the English first asserted it
self as a true national language ; the laws began to
be published and the proceedings of the courts to be
conducted in the dialect of the people. Great prog
ress was made in jurisprudence. Trial by jury dis-

28 WICLIF.
placed the ruder methods of the ordeal and the com
bat, and more important new laws were passed in the
time of Edward than in all the preceding reigns since
the Conquest ; none more important, perhaps, than
the famous act designated, from its initial word, the
statute of praemunire, wliich was introduced for the
purpose of checking papal encroachments on the pre
rogatives of the crown, and which finally resulted in
its being made a penal offense to endeavor to enforce
the authority of papal bulls and provisions upon Eng
lish soil. Learning, also, was eagerly pursued ; thirty
thousand students at one time, and from almost all
ranks of society, thronged the halls and colleges of
Oxford, and first gave it the dignity of a great Uni
versity. Besides all this, great changes took place in the
structure of society; men were brought more nearly
to one level than they had ever been before. The strin
gency of the old feudal system was relaxed, and finally
passed away under the force of events which legisla
tion would have been powerless to control. That ter
rible Black Death, which in the course of a few months
swept away a full half of the population of England,
had its beneficent results. It made labor scarce and
created a rise in wages. It broke up that custom
which had long had the force of law, by which tenants
might not leave the estates of their old landlords. It
sent them, by a law as inevitable as gravity, to the
points where the best wages were to be had for their
labor, and practically brought servitude to an end.
The masses became free people working for their wages.
Such was the reign of Edward III., which was wholly
embraced in the life of Wiclif : magnificent in its con
quests, splendid in its arts, revolutionary in its juris-

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGES. 29
prudence, beneficent in its social aspects, inspiring to
patriotism, propitious to .learning. The whole move
ment of the age was towards freedom, liberality, en
largement. And yet we have not touched its highest
glory, for we have said nothing of its religious aspect.
All this was setting for the jewel ; all this was the
environment of Wiclif. It has been said that a great
age makes a great man. The doctrine of environ
ment is a favorite doctrine of to-day. But it is cer
tain that a great man helps to make a great age. It
is not possible at present, and perhaps it will not be
possible for many years to come, if ever, to settle the
questions, how much Wiclif owed to his environment,
and how much his environment owed to him. For,
strangely enough, the great mass of his works, unlike
those of Luther, remain still in manuscript, in the Latin
tongue, deposited among continental archives, and so
accessible to but few among even critical students of
history. We know he was great, but how great can as
yet be told only approximately. Even his enemies ac
knowledged his intellectual preeminence in language
which friendship could hardly have surpassed. I
translate a few words quoted by Dr. Lechler from a
popish chronicler : 1 "A doctor in theology the most
eminent of his day ; in philosophy, deemed second
to none ; in scholastic discipline, incomparable. He
soared far above others in the subtlety of his genius,
and surpassed them in the profundity of his knowl
edge." It will be sufficient for my purpose at this time if
we look briefly at Wiclif's work under the three as
pects in which that work was successively developed ;
as a patriot, a religious reformer, and a man of
letters. 1 Knighton.

30 WICLIF.
1. Wiclif is already from forty to forty-five years of
age before he is seen to enter, at least with any promi
nence, into the affairs of his time. His life previous to
1365 is involved in much obscurity. Of his boyhood
and early training and of his parentage almost nothing
is known. Even the year of his birth is uncertain.
That he was trained in the University of Oxford, and
was faithful and devout and of an exceptionally bright
mind, and of large attainments as a scholar as scholar
ship then was, is evident from the fact that he was
made successively Fellow of one college, Master of a
second, and Warden of a third. In this great silent
period he must have been very assiduous in laying his
foundations. The grand structure which the after-
years beheld could have rested upon no dilettanteism
or perf unctoriness. We may well believe that he was,
what a recent investigator1 has called him, "The
foremost man of his university, the acknowledged
representative of the greatness of Grosseteste and
Ockham," and, as one of his most bitter contemporary
opponents affirmed, " By the common sort of divines
esteemed little less than a god." 2
From his quiet, cloister-led student life, he suddenly
steps, forth into the arena of public affairs. And it
surprises us, as we read the story, to see what a man
of affairs he is, — intense, clear of vision, practical.
It is not as the priest, or the scholar, or the religious
reformer, but as the patriot that he comes to the front.
1 Professor Burrows, Wiclif 's Place in History, p. 4.
2 " Even in the present day he is reckoned by the learned
among the four greatest schoolmen whom the fourteenth century
possessed, and as sharing the palm with Duns Scotus, Occam,
and Bradwardine." — Dr. Johann Loserth, Wiclif and Hus,
p. xv.

EDWARD III. AND URBAN V. 31
' He was always a reformer, to be sure, but his ideas
passed through a gradation which was compelled and
colored by the aspects of the time. They are political
at first, during his middle life ; afterwards the polit
ical aspect fades out, and more distinctly religious
motives come to the front.1 He is first of all con
cerned in the condition of' the state, its welfare, its
liberties, its honor ; and we shall see how he was in
evitably and by a sort of evolutionary process brought
from this into the work of a religious reformer, and
from that into his work under its final aspect as
a Bible translator and man of letters. His first move
ment, then, was in this wise : —
In 1365, when Wiclif was from forty to forty-five
years of age, Pope Urban V. made a demand upon
Edward III. for the annual payment of one thousand
marks as a feudal tribute. This tribute had been im
posed one hundred and fifty years before by Pope
Innocent III. upon King John and his successors, as
the condition of their holding the crown, but had long
fallen into irregularity, and of late years entirely into
disuse. So that Urban not only demanded the annual
payment of one thousand marks, but also arrearages
for thirty-three years, a sum which would be equal
now to about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars
of our money. In the previous century it was ascer
tained that the papal see for several years had drawn
out of England an annual revenue of sixty thousand
marks, or six hundred thousand dollars of our money.
Besides this it has been computed that at this very
time more than half the landed property of the king
dom was in the hands of the Romish priesthood.2
1 Lechler, ii., p. 313.
2 Le Bas' Life of Wiclif, p. 131 (London, 1832). "Of fifty-

32 WICLIF.
And to this must also be added the fact that the Pope
had, so far as possible, filled English benefices with
foreigners, whose revenues, as estimated by Robert
Grosseteste, the famous bishop of Lincoln, were no
less than seventy thousand marks, — seven hundred
thousand dollars, three times the clear revenue of the
king. And when we consider, as Mr. Hallam says,1
that the purchasing power of money at that time was
twenty-four or twenty-five times as great as it is at
present, we can conceive how the heart of a patriot
would be stirred at this despotic and robber-like usur
pation of the papacy upon the sovereign rights of the
English crown, and this shameless financial spoliation
of the country for the benefit of a foreign court. Such
rapacity was no trifle. Its enormous and greedy exac
tions fell, where all taxes fall, upon industry. They
withdrew the capital which supported labor. They
persistently bled the rank and file of the people whom
Wiclif loved, and in whose true welfare, both temporal
and spiritual, his heart and soul were bound up. This,
then, first of all, he felt to be God's call to him, John
Wiclif. Into this church and state question he now
threw himself with all the weight of his learning and
logic and devotion to truth and justice. How much
he personally had to do with its final decision perhaps
can never be known, but it was decided finally upon
the grounds of principles which he had personally
adduced and defended : —
When the demand was made by the Pope there was
coupled with it an alternative as insolent as the de-
three thousand knightly holdings on the national register, twenty-
eight thousand belonged to Mother Church ! " — White's Eighteen
Christian Cent., p. 359, Eng. ed.
1 Hallam, Middle Ages, chap, ix., part ii.

THE VOICE OF ENGLAND. 33
mand itself was extortionate. Edward was apprised
that upon failure to comply he " would be cited by
process to appear at the papal court to answer for the
default to his civil and spiritual sovereign ; " a threat
one would think hardly to be brooked by the con
queror of Crecy and the acknowledged hero of his
time. Without making any personal response, how
ever, which might have lowered his dignity, the king
laid the matter before his Parliament. Their answer
was sharp and conclusive. It is spicy reading to-day.
It must have rung down at the Pope's feet like the
iron gauntlet of the indignant king ; more than that,
it was the mailed hand of incensed England. " For
asmuch as neither King John, nor any other king,
could bring this reakn and kingdom in such thralldom
and subjection but by common consent of Parliament,
the which was not done ; therefore that which he did
was against his oath at coronation. If, therefore, the
Pope should attempt anything against the king by
process, or other matters in deed, tbe king with all his
subjects should, with all their force, resist the same." 1
Here was Protestantism with a vengeance ; the thing
itself full-grown, before the name of it had ever been
heard of. A large spark it was that Wiclif had
kindled. Neither Hus nor Luther could make it
much brighter or fiercer than that. It was in fact a
national renunciation of vassalage, a declaration of
independence as significant and as fruitful as one that
was to be made four hundred years later by sons of
these same men not yet born, in a city not yet built,
in a world not yet known to exist.
I say this was Wiclif's spark. There is good reason
for supposing that he was himself a member of this
1 Le Bas' Life of WicliJ^ap^J^j^A^.
3

34 WICLIF.
Parliament. He has left on record a rSsumS of the
speeches then made and a most lucid arrangement of
the arguments by which the decision was supported.
They are palpably the rescript of his own thought and
utterance. They read like the " Quorum pars fui."
That he was personally identified with the parliamen
tary measure, and regarded as largely responsible for
the result, is evidenced by the fact that he was chal
lenged to defend the action, and promptly did so in a
way that quenched his adversary. That his influence
had been of no secondary value in bringing about this
result is still further attested by the fact that the king
now beean to look to him for further aud more honor-
able service of a political nature. Among the Romish
abuses there was one that had long been heavy and
was now growing heavier, namely, the occupation of
benefices by foreigners. When a vacancy occurred in
any clerical or collegiate office, it had long been the
custom on the part of the Pope to appoint some fa
vorite from the continent as the incumbent, until a
very large proportion of such places were now held
by aliens. It was well enough in the ruder centuries
when England could not raise her own scholars, but as
the condition of things had now changed and was still
brightening, it began to be felt as an injustice and a
humiliation. It was an intolerable insult to that na
tional spirit which was now asserting itself. And so
in 1374 the king appointed a commission, of which
Wiclif was a prominent member, to meet at Bruges
and confer with the papal authorities about the abro
gation of the abuse in question. They had full power
"to conclude such a treaty as should at once secure
the honor of the Church and uphold the rights of the
English crown and realm." It was high honor for

THE CITY OF BRUGES. 35
Wiclif that he should thus have been matched by his
sovereign with a plenipotentiary of the Pope. It in
dicated that he had earned the highest confidence of
the monarch for his sagacity and for his interest in
the true welfare of his king and country. It made, no
doubt, an era in his life. It certainly was the pivot
upon which he swung from the position of a political
to that of a more distinctly religious reformer. His
visit to Bruges was in some respects parallel, it has
been suggested,1 to Luther's famous visit to Rome,
nearly a century and a half later, which opened his
eyes to unsuspected enormities and changed the cur
rent of his thought and feeling. The city of Bruges
had at that time just passed into the hands of the
dukes of Burgundy, and had reached the very summit
of prosperity. It was the commercial centre of the
world. The magnificence of its court surpassed that
of any European monarch. The enormous prosperity
of its woolen trade gave rise to the chivalric order of
the Golden Fleece. The argosies of Venice and Genoa
brought to it the wealth of the East, and ships of every
land discharged their cargoes upon its quays. Its
public buildings were magnificent. In this very cen
tury of Wiclif's visit was erected that famous belfry
which our Longfellow immortalized, and whose chimes
the reformer may have been among the very first to
hear. A score of foreign courts had their ambassadors
here. The toilet and costume of the women were so
superb that when the queen of Philip the Fair of
France visited the city she was piqued at being as but
one queen among a hundred. But even then, as the
keen-eyed Englishman may have seen, the goodly city
was hastening to its decadence. There was already
i By Lechler, i., p. 229,

36 WICLIF.
visible the moral disintegration, the spiritual degra
dation, which the papal power wrought everywhere;
visible through the purple and golden drapery, the
sure prelude of disaster and decay. For two years the
commission was busied in negotiating with the papal
plenipotentiaries, but with little or no success. Eng
land was worsted in the treaty, but through no fault of
Wiclif, we may be sure. The king had formed his com
mission on the plan of a gridiron-pendulum, in which
the contraction of one metal counteracts the expansion
of the other. He had joined with Wiclif a bishop
and other ecclesiastics who were favorable to the cause
of the Pope, and so the crying wrongs remained prac
tically unredressed. But Wiclif came home to Eng
land with no less determination to keep up the warfare
to which he had committed hiniself. He had had new
experience of the chicanery and treachery of Rome.
He had come face to face with her diplomatists and
had penetrated their disguises. He had owned in
some sort hitherto the supremacy of the papal church ;
henceforth he used no measured terms in declaring
her iniquity and perfidy.
That he had been faithful to the interests of his
sovereign we may judge from the fact that upon his
return the king made him rector of Lutterworth, —
the village which is forever associated henceforth with
his name ; where he taught and preached and trans
lated the Bible, and peacefully died.
I can notice but one more event in looking at this
political aspect of his life. His constant labors in
behalf of the independence of the crown and the free
dom of the people from foreign exactions drew upon
him a fierce eruption of ecclesiastical wrath. In 1377
he was cited before a convocation in St. Paul's to

THE MENDICANTS. 37
answer to the charge of publishing various erroneous
doctrines. There were hot-heads present among his
friends, notably John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
as well as among his enemies. The tribunal was
broken up by a personal squabble between them with
out Wiclif's utterance of a single word. But the
affair was not to end thus. A list of charges was
drawn up and sent to the Pope, who forthwith issued
no less than five bulls, three of them addressed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London,
the fourth to the King, and the fifth to the University
of Oxford, directing them to inquire into the opinions
alleged to be held by Wiclif, and if he should be con
victed to imprison him until further orders. The Pope
demanded thus only a preliminary inquiry, reserving
for himself the process for heresy proper. Wiclif now
seemed to be on a fair way to the stake. But man
proposes, and the Pope was only man. Before the
matter could be brought to an issue Gregory XI. died,
and there arose the famous schism, in which two popes
were recognized, — Urban VI. by England, Clement
VII. by France, — and each had enough to do to
watch and anathematize and excommunicate and foil
and hate the other, without troubling himself with
the Heretic of Lutterworth.
2. As a religious reformer Wiclif first comes be
fore us only towards the close of his life. In 1381,
only three years before his death, he enters upon
a conflict with the mendicant monks. There were
wandering up and down the land swarms of religious
beggars, — tramps they would be called now, — claim
ing to be living the Christly life in a self-imposed
poverty, and yet levying a most burdensome tax upon
the patient and long-suffering charity of the people.

38 WICLIF.
Of course they were priests, and they took every ad
vantage of the superstitious reverence with which,
among the common people, the clerical office was
regarded. They preached and taught in every parish,
with all the authority of the rector himself. They
listened to confession, and gave absolution wherever
there was a hand outstretched with money. If a
crime had been secretly committed it could be con
fessed to these monks, who came from nowhere and
went nowhere, absolution granted, conscience, appeased,
and no restraining influence left upon the criminal,
where it was most needed, in the knowledge of any
one in the immediate locality of the offense. " Let
us follow our own pleasure," said men disposed to evil.
" Some one of the preaching brothers will soon travel
this way, — one whom we never saw before, and never
shall see again, — so that when we have had our will
we can confess without trouble or annoyance." 1 The
consequence of all this was, that being no longer com
pelled to blush in the presence of their local ministers,
they broke out into unbridled licentiousness. These
vagrant clerics intruded themselves into every home,
and oftentimes transgressed the home's dearest sancti
ties, and made light of its most sacred relationships.
They traded, as Chaucer tells us, in pigs' bones, and
innumerable other equally holy and equally useless
relics. They were a swarm of gypsies, protected in
their petty knaveries by a clerical garb, and shielded
by the authentication of the Church. The mendicant
orders had been originally instituted a hundred years
before, when monastic institutions had expanded into
castles of luxury, for the laudable object of exhibiting
to the world an illustration of primitive Christian
1 Le Bas, ch. iii. p. 109.

THE MENDICANTS. 39
simplicity and self-denial. They had then been hon
orable, as doubtless they were in the main sincere
and devout. But they deteriorated as soon as they
began to be honored. As various privileges were be
stowed upon them their numbers naturally multi
plied. It was pleasant to be regarded with favor by
pope and by people and yet lead the easy life of de
pendence, taking a living from the charity which
deemed it an honor to have its gifts received. The
orders, of course, increased with great rapidity. They
became arrogant, as beggars will when giving has
become the rule. Moreover, these barefoot friars,
do-nothings, who professed that to them ownership of
property was an accursed thing, by some hocus-pocus
managed to get wealth and yet feel no qualms. The
institution had grown into the proportions of a gigantic
fraud. They became utterly shameless in belying the
fundamental principles of their orders. " It is matter
of melancholy presage," says a chronicler of the time,
"that these friars have piled up their mansions to a
royal altitude. They exhibit inestimable treasures
within their spacious edifices. They beset the dying
bed of the noble and the wealthy, in order to extort
secret bequests from the fears of guilt or superstition.
As the agents of papal extortion, they are incessantly
applying the arts of flattery, the stings of rebuke,
or the terrors of confession." Such were the poor
brethren, — the holy mendicants.
Their preaching was as villainous as their practice ;
a medley of ancient legends and fabulous tales and
grotesque riddles, interspersed with vilification of the
regular priesthood and praises of mendicancy.
Such a shameful abuse could not exist in the same
kingdom with Wiclif and he remain silent. His pen

40 WICLIF.
and his tongue were unsparing and unwearied. He
lashes, mocks, ridicules, lampoons them unmercifully.
His words sting and cut. He lays bare their hypoc
risy and pretense. He shows the people their extor
tion, and the worthlessness of their relics and their
pardons. They are, he says, the tail of the Apocalyp
tic dragon. He writes a book against them in fifty
chapters, every chapter a fusillade of truth set on fire
with indignation.
But it was not in Wiclif's nature to tear down with
out building up. He drives out the bad, not to leave
a vacuum, but to put the good in its place. Never
was more faithful, more simple and practical preacher
than he. The Word of God is the one substance he
declares of true preaching: "The sower soweth the
Word." Out of false preaching comes the spiritual
deadness of the people. These friars are preaching
falsehoods and living a falsehood, and out of false
hood nothing but falsehood can come. Indeed, there
could be given in our theological schools of the pres
ent day no better rules for ministerial training than
the thoughts of this old master of five hundred years
ago upon what to preach and how to preach it. " It
is God's Word that should be preached, for God's
Word is the bread of souls, the indispensable, whole
some bread ; and therefore to feed the flock in a spir
itual sense without Bible-truth is the same thing as
if one were to prepare for another a bodily meal with
out bread. God's Word is the life-seed which begets
regeneration and spiritual life. Now the chief busi
ness of a preacher is to beget and to nourish up mem
bers of the Church. Therefore it is God's Word he
must preach; then only will he succeed in his aims."
And the how he says must be suitable to the what.

THE POOR PRIESTS. 41
The soul and the life of the preacher must be in tune
with the words, or the words can have no power.
All of which Wiclif illustrated in his own preaching
and life. As we read these words we may well believe
the tradition that it was this very man that Chaucer
had in mind when he wrote of the good parson, —
" a clerk
That Christ's pure gospel would sincerely preach
And his parishioners devoutly teach.

This noble ensample to his flock he gave,
That first he wrought and afterward he taught
The word of life he from the gospel canght."
Thoroughly convinced of the power of simple truth
rightly taught and devoutly lived, Wiclif conceived
the idea of sending forth through the land a company
of honest and godly men, who without special eccle
siastical training should tell the gospel story to the
people. Thus originated the poor priests. It was not
unlike the scheme of Wesley almost within present
memory. " These men went forth in long garments
of coarse red woolen cloth, barefoot and staff in hand
in order to represent themselves as pilgrims and their
wayfaring as a kind of pilgrimage, their coarse woolen
dress being a symbol of their poverty and toil. Thus
they wandered from village to village, through the
kingdom, without stop or rest, preaching, teaching,
warning, wherever they could find willing hearers,
sometimes in church or chapel, wherever any such
stood open for prayer and quiet devotion ; sometimes
in the church-yard when they found the church itself
closed ; and sometimes in the public street or market
place." 1 They had all gone forth from Wiclif's
i Leehler, i. 310.

42 WICLIF.
school ; they were filled with Wiclif's spirit, and Wic
lif's one aim was theirs : to give the people the pure
Word of God.
Thus Wiclif fought the mendicants and they never
recovered in England from that day to this.
It is undoubtedly true that Wiclif's work was
mainly of a political and ethical kind, but he bore
also decidedly important relations to Protestant the
ology, relations which will doubtless be more fully rec
ognized when his writings are brought to light. The
paramount authority of Scripture was certainly as
fully and boldly asserted by him as it ever was in
later times by Luther himself. Perhaps Milton in
his " Areopagitica " did not claim too much for him
when he said: "Had it not been the obstinate per-
verseness of our prelates against the divine and admi
rable spirit of Wiclif to suppress him as a schismatic
and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Hus and
Jerom, no, nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had
been ever known : the glory of reforming all our neigh
bors had been completely ours." J
3. Of course his work as a reformer runs into and
pervades his literary labors. In the forefront of these
labors must stand that monumental endeavor to give
the whole Bible to his countrymen in their own lan
guage ; an endeavor which occupied the closing years
of his life, and wliich binds that life up into unity as
with a clasp of pure gold. How vast his other liter
ary work was, I have already intimated. There are
extant still scores of works written by him, filled with
various learning, no man can say exactly how numer
ous, the majority of them as yet unprinted, and even
1 Areopagitica. Milton's Prose Works, vol. ii., p. 91, Bonn's
edition. See, also, Fisher's Reformation, p. 60.

BENEFACTION TO LITERATURE. 43
untranslated. They remain as they left his pen or
the pens of his disciples, for the most part in the Im
perial Library of Vienna.1 They played their unknown
part in that great reformation, and we are enjoying
their untraceable results to-day. We drink many a
refreshing draught without knowing what mountain's
summit caught it from the heavens or what stream
forwarded it to our cup. But that this man opened
the Bible first to our English fathers we know ; and
our Christian days and institutions, and our noble lit
erature are all saturated with the imperishable results
of his toil. We cannot put it into words, we cannot
even measure it in our thought. The Bible that we
read to-day does not look to our eyes like the page of
Wiclif ; the men of the fourteenth century would have
as great difficulty in reading it as we have in decipher
ing their rude and grotesque utterance. But his work
underlies and supports the precious superstructure
through which we walk as by still waters, or in which
we lie down as in green pastures, even as the rough
granite underlies all nature's quiet beauty or impressive
sublimity. The work of this man underlies the lisping
utterance of the infant scholar who repeats " The Lord
is my shepherd " in our own dear English speech, as
that granite makes possible the nodding daisy or the
flower of grass. And that work too is, as I said, in all
our literature. It did more than anything else to
1 Since the above was written, it has come to my notice that
a society of English and German scholars has undertaken to
edit the complete works of Wiclif, and give them to the world.
Some portion of them has already appeared. It is greatly to
the credit of Christian scholarship that it thus marks the com
pletion of five centuries since the reformer's death, as greatly to
its shame that it has delayed the work so long.

44 WICLIF.
form and fix our English speech. Your newspaper to
morrow morning would not have been possible with
out it. It was the seed out of which our libraries have
grown. It has made the common mind intelligent.
It has made the peasant the peer of the priest. It
was the quickening of that national thought which
has blossomed and fruited in Bacon and Milton and
Shakespeare, in Mrs. Browning and George Eliot, in
Thackeray and Hawthorne. Better than all this, it
was the liberation of Christian faith and hope. It un
bound these twin sisters to go wherever there should be
English homes, to brighten and bless them ; wherever
there should be English toil, to dignify it ; wherever
there should be English graves, to tell of the Resurrec
tion and the Life. In one final word, Wiclif's trans
lation of the Bible was, for the English-speaking race
around the world, the second Resurrection. The day
of its completion was the Easter day of the English
language. The reformer died in peace, December 31, 1384.
Long years after, impotent malice dug up his bones
and burnt them, a confession at once both of malice
and of impotence. The Word of the Lord endureth
forever.

III.
JOHN HUS.
A. d. 1373-1416.
In the lonely struggle of duty, the inevitable loss of human aid must be
replaced by our affinity with God. He that invented human virtue, and
breathed into us our private veneration for its greatness ; He that loves
the martyr-spirit, scorning suffering for the sake of truth; He that be
holds in every faithful mind the reflection of Himself; He that hath built
an everlasting world, at once the shelter of victorious goodness and the
theatre of its yet nobler triumphs, enwraps us in His immensity, and sus
tains us by His love. — James Maktiheau, The Strength of the Lonely.

III.
JOHN HUS.
A. d. 1373-1416.
As we look upon a historical map, representing the
Europe of the Middle Ages, no obvious relation is
suggested as existing between the island of Great
Britain and a little state in the heart of continental
Europe, called Bohemia. There seems to be but one
point of resemblance even, and that somewhat fanci
ful : Britain is insulated by water, and Bohemia is
isolated by a surrounding wall of mountains. The
latter country, indeed, is not unlike a vast natural for
tification, lying four-square, with its angles closely
coinciding with the cardinal points of the compass.
This great square mountain embankment, perfectly
unbroken save a little opening or gateway in the
southeast into Moravia, incloses an area of nearly
twenty thousand square miles ; so that if you were to
take a map of New England and look at it diagonally,
the two States of New Hampshire and Vermont, taken
together, would resemble Bohemia in shape, and would
not materially differ from it in superficial measure
ment. But this fanciful point of resemblance which
I have noticed between the isolation of Bohemia and
the insulation of Great Britain is not so fanciful as
to have been unproductive of other and very real re
semblances which the map does not suggest. As far

48 JOHN HUS.
back as the times of wliich we are to treat, and be
yond, this seclusion had favored the development of
a strong and vigorous national spirit, not inferior to
that wliich sprang up in England during the three
or four centuries after the Norman Conquest. Indeed,
similar developments were taking place at the same
time in the two countries. In both, the national lan
guage was beginning to assert itself in literature, in
religion, and in law. In both, the patriotic spirit, jeal
ous of foreign influence and confident in its own re
sources, was creating a literature of its own, and was
demanding that, instead of Latin and German and
Norman, the English and the Bohemian shouCd be the
language of the churches and the courts. The Bible
had been translated into Bohemian two or three years
before Wiclif gave it to his countrymen in English.
And in both countries, as we shall see, the liberation
of the Scriptures produced the same results. And
with all this, the mountains round about Bohemia and
the waters round about England had very much to do.
Both were " accessible enough to all that was good,
useful, and improving ; " and yet both were " so far
secluded by nature as to encourage the patriotic pur
pose of maintaining and cherishing their own proper
character, customs, and institutions." 1
But besides these resemblances, fanciful and real,
between the two countries, and their progress in na
tional development, there was a real connection be
tween them so close, that the events of the fifteenth
century in Bohemia must be regarded as the direct
results of the fourteenth century in England. John
Wiclif was spiritually the progenitor of John Hus ;
and the Hussite movement in Central Europe, six hun-
1 Dr. Gillett.

ANNE OF BOHEMIA. 49
dred miles away from England as the bird flies, was
as certainly impelled by the Wicliffian movement in
Oxford, as the little chronometer in a jeweler's win
dow on Washington Street is driven by an electric im
pulse from the observatory clock in Cambridge. And
what was the inconspicuous wire through which this
far-off influence was exerted ?
In 1382, two years before the death of Wiclif, King
Richard II. of England had married Anne of Bohe
mia, daughter of the Emperor Charles IV. Thus was
established a close relationship between the two king
doms. For twelve years Anne lived in England, and
during that time imbibed the sentiments of Wiclif,
and fostered the reforms which he inaugurated. The
ladies of her court, largely drawn, of course, from her
own people, shared her religious sympathies ; and
when she died in 1394, ten years after Wiclif's death,
they returned to Bohemia, carrying not only their sen
timents, but many copies of his books. The writings
of the English reformer were thus introduced into Bo
hemia under the best auspices, which accounts for the
fact, noticed in the last lecture, that great numbers of
Wiclif's works are still preserved in manuscript in the
Imperial Library at Vienna.
There was another channel through which the Eng
lish reformer's influence was powerfully exerted upon
the distant little kingdom. In 1348 Anne's father,
Charles IV., had founded the University of Prague,
which became almost immediately, under the imperial
favor, in wealth and numbers and influence, the fore
most university of continental Europe, with the sin
gle exception of that of Paris. Between the univer
sities of that day there was constant and rapid com
munication. A common language, the Latin, was in
i

50 JOHN HUS.
use in all the lecture-rooms. In it all scholarly inter
course was conducted. The students moved freely
from one university to another, and the professors
could be equally well understood by all, whatever their
nationality. A student needed to learn no new lan
guage in going from the lectures of Wiclif at Oxford,
to those of Gerson at Paris, or to those of Hiibner
at Prague. This free student movement thus did for
its time what the printing-press came to accomplish
more rapidly and more thoroughly a century later.
Thus, even before Anne's death, Wiclif's writings
made as much noise and came to be almost as well
known in Bohemia as in England.
And one other preliminary fact needs to be noted.
In her endurance of the evils which Wiclif combated,
England was not an exceptional sufferer. The same
curse of mendicancy prevailed throughout Christen
dom. Continental as well as insular ' Europe was
burdened with papal exactions. The Church every
where was distracted by the claims of rival popes, and
disgraced by the perfunctoriness and avarice of its
priesthood. The satires of Chaucer and the complaint
of Piers Plowman might as well have been written
in French or German as in English, and they would
have met with as true and hearty an echo from the
popular feeling. In various ways the thoughts and
discussions of teachers and students percolated down
wards through the minds of the people at large, just
as they do now. The popular mind is quick at
receiving hints and suggestions ; and exaggerated as
individual ideas may be, the average opinion soon
settles to something like the level of the truth. An
illustration is recorded in one of the Hussite chron
icles. Two English students from Oxford make their

THE PICTURE ON THE TAVERN WALLS. 51
way to Bohemia to attend lectures at the University
of Prague. They are hot from the teachings of Wiclif,
or some of his disciples. Stopping at an inn in the
outskirts of the city, they persuade the host to per-.
mit them to paint a picture upon his walls. On this
side one of them delineates a representation of the
Saviour in his humble entrance into Jerusalem, seated
upon an ass, poor people casting their garments in the
way, little children scattering leaves and branches be
fore him, and his disciples in humble guise and bare
foot following behind. On that side of the room the
other student draws the picture of a papal procession ;
the head of the church mounted on a magnificent
charger ancl wearing the triple crown, his raiment
and the trappings of his horse studded with jewels,
soldiers going before to clear the way, and following
on, a company of scarlet cardinals only less gorgeous
than their master. It was a sermon in the universal
language which every guest of the inn could read, and
the significance of which the wayfaring man, though a
fool, could hardly misapprehend. This was the hint,
doubtless, which, more than a hundred years after
ward, Luther and his artist-friend Cranach expanded
into that series of pictures which they called the
Antithesis, and which wrought in a similar way for
the progress of the Reformation among the people of
Germany. It is supposed that John Hus derived his name from
a village in Southern Bohemia, Husinec, where he
was born, July 6, 1373. His early days were passed
under the tuition of the monks in the monastery of
his native village ; and when they could carry his edu
cation no farther he entered the high school of a
neighboring town, where he completed his preparatory

52 JOHN HUS.
studies. Meantime his father had died, leaving little
to the mother but the boy with his bright mind and
eager hopes. His love of learning was insatiable,
and when he returned home from the high school,
and the widowed mother propounded to him the ques
tion, "What shall we do now, my son?" his answer
was ready. "I am going to Prague, mother: God
will take care of us." The mother's piety had inspired
that of her son, and she was now nothing behind him
in her faith. She had nothing to give him but her
blessing and her prayers ; he must make his way alone
by the help of God. Full of maternal solicitude, how
ever, for the boy, who had never been farther away
from home than the neighboring village, and who was
now about to enter upon scenes so strange and full
perchance of unknown peril, the good woman deter
mined to go with her boy to the capital, and personally
commend him to the care of the rector of the univer
sity. We are told that when Hannah, the mother of
the Prophet Samuel, took her boy up to present him
in the house of the Lord in Shiloh, she took with her
a gift of three bullocks, an ephah of flour, and a
bottle of wine. The poor Bohemian mother could
take no such munificent offering. But out of her
poverty she took as an offering to the rector a cake
and a goose. I do not suppose she intended any pun
upon the name Hus, which means goose, but it
probably was all she had to give. On the way the
goose escaped and could not be recaptured, which
filled the poor woman's mind with a double grief :
first, that now she had only her one poor cake to offer
to the rector, and then, that, being not entirely free
from the superstition of her age, the loss of the goose
seemed to her an ill-omen of the fortunes of her son.

A DROP IN THE RIVER. 53
But her religion was of that simple and very exalted
sort which knows a ready refuge from all fears, and
so, falling upon her knees then and there, she com
mended the boy to the Father of the fatherless, and
the two journeyed on.
I do not think that the retrospects of history furnish
us with many such scenes as that : the poor, but gentle
and loving mother clinging so fondly to her boy that
she could not let him set off alone to the great univer
sity town, but must walk with him all the way. I
imagine them walking together, a quaint couple in their
peasant guise, beguiling the weary distance by their
chat of days gone and days to come, of memories and
hopes, stopping now and then to offer their devotions
at some wayside shrine, glad when night came to find
the shelter of some rude inn, or, if that was not to be
had, too poor to have any fears, lying out under the
roof of the great Father's house. How differently
men must have read their future from the way that
angels were reading it !
Antecedently, we would not expect any very notice
able results to follow from taking up a country lad,
sixteen years of age, and dropping him down into a
great and splendid university where were gathered
thousands of students from every nation of Europe.1
Very much like letting fall one drop more into the
ever changing river. But this drop was charged
with a power and a personality which would not ad
mit of its being swallowed up. Its influence pene
trated and spread, and yet kept itself distinct. John
1 Authorities differ widely as to the number of students in
Prague at this time, some putting it as high as forty thousand and
upwards, others as low as five thousand, or even less. See an
article by Henry Rogers, in Good Words, January, 1866.

54 JOHN HUS.
Hus was more even to the university than the uni
versity could be to John Hus. The diamond is more
than the setting. We cannot follow him through his
university career from one degree to another. It was
a brightening way over which he passed, until in his
twenty-eighth year he was made dean of the theolog
ical faculty, and one year later became rector of the
university, filling now the very place of that reverend
man to whom the mother had brought her boy thir
teen years before with her simple offering of a cake.
One single incident of these student days reveals the
stuff that was in him. Truth seemed to him the one
precious thing, for which everything else might be
profitably hazarded, — the pearl of great price. One
day, having read the story of St. Lawrence, who was
roasted to death on a gridiron, he asks himself the
question, "Does the truth mean as much to me as
that? Would I be willing to pay the price?" A
companion doubts his devotion, and into the fire goes
his hand up to the wrist, only to be saved by the for
cible interference of his friend, who doubts his con
stancy no longer.
It was in his pulpit that Hus's work was mainly done
and his influence chiefly exerted. His name is associ
ated with the Bethlehem Chapel more intimately than
Wiclif's is with the church at Lutterworth. "Its
pulpit," said one of his Jesuitical enemies, speaking
of the Bethlehem Chapel, " Its pulpit is John Hus's
triumphal chariot, and the paintings upon the walls
are the blazonry of his armor." The force which he
personally added to the great Reformation movement
was not of a theological so much as of a moral and
spiritual kind. It was principally by the preaching
of righteousness rather than by any attacks upon an

BETHLEHEM CHAPEL. 55
erroneous system of belief, or any attempts at chang
ing the formal confession of the Church. It was the
life of men around him that he sought to purify and
elevate, and so to modify the life of the Church within,
rather than to change its formularies. He was always
combating sin rather than heresy ; and men who per
sistently do that, will always run the risk of being
accused of heresy, and, if the age will allow, of being
burned for it by those who set orthodoxy of thought
above correctness of life. Theologically, Hus was
never the heretic that Wiclif was; he was at first
apparently indifferent to the sentence pronounced
upon Wiclif's books by the council of the university.
Indeed, in one case at least, he unhesitatingly pro
nounced a writing of the Englishman heretical, and
advised his friend Jerome to burn it or throw it into
the Moldau. But he felt along with the English re
former, in relation to the evils of the times, the cor
ruptions of the church, the absurd pretensions of the
popes, the dishonesty of ecclesiasticism, and the moral
and spiritual indifference of men around him. . It was
for fighting these things that he gave up his life at
last. And the fight was chiefly conducted in the pul
pit of Bethlehem Chapel. And what was Bethlehem
Chapel? A few years previously two wealthy citizens of
Prague, inspired, perhaps, by the fact that the Bible
had just been translated into the national tongue,
desired that there might be some place where the
Word of God might be preached independently of the
cumbrous order of the church service, — not a place
for masses and for music, but simply a sacred audi
torium, where the people could come together to be
instructed in religious truth. And so they built this

56 JOHN HUS.
large and beautiful house, and called it by the signifi
cant name Bethlehem, — the house of bread. And a
house of bread it truly was from the time that Hus
was inducted into its pulpit in the year 1402, when he
was twenty-nine years of age, until, ten years later, he
went forth a wanderer under the ban.
Hus was now filling a position, or rather several
positions, of peculiar power and influence. He was
rector of the university, and thus capable of reaching
an intelligent and thinking multitude large enough in
itself to constitute the population of a very respectable
city, — a population, too, which had its vital connec
tion with all thinking Europe. Through these students
he was touching the remoter parts of the continent.
At the same time he was confessor to Queen Sophia
of Bavaria, second wife to King Wenzel of Bohemia,
a woman of strong mind and high character, who was
both wise and good enough to appreciate the wisdom
and goodness of her chaplain. He was thus brought
into familiar relations with many people of great in
fluence among the Bohemian and Bavarian nobility.
And finally, he was appealing, as no other man in all
Bohemia did or could, to the awakened national spirit,
to the growing patriotism of the people, by his con
tinual and eloquent discourses in their own language
in the Bethlehem pulpit, where he ruled the thought
of the masses like a king upon his throne. He was,
in truth, mightier than the archbishop, mightier in
some ways than the king himself, as both king and
archbishop in due time discovered.
Now when a man is raised to such a position of
power and such a degree of popularity as a preacher,
one of two things will be likely to come of it. If his
conscience is larger than his vanity, he will become a

USES WICLIF'S THUNDER. 57
martjsp. to his cause. If his vanity is larger than his
conscience, his cause will become a martyr to him.
Hus's conscience and love of truth were immensely
larger than his vanity, if indeed there was any vanity
in the man, and so he himself became the martyr.
His very position was now heading him towards the
fire that was to consume him. The necessity of
that position, as spiritual guide and instructor of the
thousands that thronged his preaching, drove him to
an earnest and independent study of the Scriptures.
If his chapel is to be any true house of bread he must
have the bread to break. And the more he studies
the Sacred Scriptures, the more profoundly does he
become convinced that the writings of Wiclif are in
accordance with them. He finds himself in growing
sympathy with the English reformer. Current facts
lend confirmation to his writings. What has been
written in England concerning the endless squabbles
of ecclesiastics for place and power, concerning the
simony and greed of prelates and priests, concerning
the false confidence which Christian people are repos
ing in a life of formalism and pretense, holds equally
true in Bohemia. He translates the books and com
mends them to others. Their thought and spirit get
into his sermons. Through his influence Bohemia
itself is rapidly becoming saturated with Wicliffian
thought.1 But a state of things exists in the university which
1 A recent writer has brought to light the fact that Hus, in
his own writings upon contemporary evils, largely appropriated
Wiclif's work, — adopting whole chapters, indeed, with no greater
changes than the substitution of Boemia for Wiclif's Anglia, and
of Rex Boemorum for Rex Anglorum. — Dr. Johann Loserth,
Wiclif and Hus, book ii., ch. 10.

58 JOHN HUS.
is about to cause trouble. Four nations are repre
sented among the students, — Bavaria, Saxony, Po
land, and Bohemia. Each is represented in its coun
cil and has a voice in its government. Each foreign
nation is equal in every respect to the home national
ity ; so that when the question comes up before the
council of tolerating or condemning the writings of
Wiclif, they are swiftly condemned by a vote of three
to one. Some fellow-officer soon after sees Hus with
one of Wiclif's tracts in his hand, and remonstrates
with him. " Do you not know that the council has
sent Wiclif and his writings to perdition ? " "I only
wish," is the brave reply, " that my soul, when liber
ated from my body, may be in the place where Wic
lif is." i
But the Bohemian spirit is aroused. Both students
and professors feel the tyranny of this foreign major
ity. They appeal to the king ; the basis of represen
tation is changed. The government of the university
is made what it professes to be — national. Hus is
again put at the head of it, and twenty-five hundred
German students withdraw at once from Prague and
from Bohemia, and found the still famous University
of Leipsic. But it was a victory for Hus, which still
held his face towards the fatal fire ; that German
wrath will make itself felt by and by in the Council
of Constance, which will doom him to the stake. It
will join with the ecclesiastics all over the continent,
who already fear and hate the brave, strong preacher
of the Bethlehem Chapel, who persists in showing up
1 An answer which reminds us of Father Taylor's witty re
sponse, made in the same spirit, to one who suggested that prob
ably Dr. Channing was in perdition, — " Well, I had n't thought
of it, but — won't he change the character of the place ? "

MENDICANTS AGAIN. 59
the rottenness of their system ancl the baseness of
their conduct.
At this time we must remember that that long-stand
ing disgrace of which I spoke in the last lecture, the
papal schism, still exists. There are two popes, one
at Rome and one at Avignon; some adhere to one,
some to the other. Hus, like Wiclif before him, re
jects both, claiming that Jesus Christ alone is head of
the church. A majority at the great universities at
Oxford and Paris and Prague believe that the two
popes should resign ; or, if they will not resign, should
be deposed and a new pope elected. And so a coun
cil is called to meet in Pisa in 1409, with this object
in view. The Popes are summoned, but refuse to rec
ognize the authority of the council. A vote of depo
sition is passed, and the council elects another pope,
and the only result is that matters are more compli
cated than ever, and, instead of two popes, there are
three. Alexander V., the new Pope, asserts his rights,
however, and among his earliest official acts he issues
a bull in favor of the mendicants. This arouses
afresh the preacher of Bethlehem Chapel. He re-
forges Wiclif's old bolts, and hurls them right and
left with tremendous effect. He makes it hot for
these vagrants, going up and down Bohemia, intrud
ing themselves into the work of better men ; selling
their dried bones and lying indulgences ; hearing con
fessions and peddling out worthless pardons ; pro
claiming their vows of poverty, and laying their greedy
hands on the earnings of the poor, and extorting by
their terrific bugbears the dying bequests of the rich.
And the ecclesiastics far and near begin to cry
heresy. An old Bohemian chronicler observes that
"while Hus rebuked the vices of the laity, he was

60 JOHN HUS.
only praised. Men said the Spirit of God spoke
through him. But just as soon as he attacked the
Pope and the higher and lower clergy, rebuking
their pride, avarice, simony, and other vices, and claim
ing that they should not accumulate property, the
whole priesthood rose up against him, saying, ' He is
an incarnate devil — a heretic.'"1 The archbishop
himself grew jealous, and summoned all holders of he
retical books, especially the writings of Wiclif, Hus,
and Jerome, to bring them to him, and a multitude
are brought, — two hundred or more of Wiclif's, —
" carefully written and splendidly bound," and com
mitted to the flames. But the university resists the
summons, claiming that it owes no allegiance to the
archbishop, but holds directly from the Pope. It ap
peals, but the appeal is of no avail. The archbishop's
authority is indorsed by a bull from the Pope, which
not only decrees all Wicliffian literature to the flames,
but furthermore forbids Hus to preach any more from
Bethlehem pulpit. From this latter prohibition Hus
again appeals from the Pope ill-informed to the Pope
well-informed, and calmly sets forth the reasonable
grounds of his appeal. But the archbishop waits for
no further issue, but proceeds to book-burning, and,
still further, solemnly excommunicates the recusant
students and their leader, Master John Hus. And
then all Bohemia was on fire with indignation. The
king cursed, the queen wept, the nobility protested
with more vigor than elegance, the people were en
raged ; even the rabble composed vulgar ballads and
sung profane and ribald songs under the archbishop's
windows, until that lordly functionary trembled in his
bedchamber more from fear than from wrath. And
1 Gillett, i. 143.

THE PIRATE-POPE. 61
the real result was that Wiclif's books multiplied more
rapidly than they were burned ; and Master- Hus, with
king and queen and nobles and town and gown all at
his back, went on preaching in Bethlehem Chapel as
Bethlehem Chapel even had not heard him preach be
fore. Of course, he is now brought by his conduct more
immediately into conflict with the Pope.
To this pope we must pay our brief respects. It is
Pope John XXIII.1 Of all the moral monstrosities
that ever found their way into the papal chair, he was
one of the most immoral and the most monstrous. In
his boyhood vicious and unfilial, in his youth following
the profession of a pirate on the sea and of a bandit
upon the land, there was almost no form of wicked
ness with which he was unacquainted, no phase of cru
elty which he had not practiced. He deliberately be
took himself to the life of an ecclesiastic because he
thought it offered him a safer, surer, and speedier
method of gratifying his lusts, and of gaining the
wealth and power coveted by his avarice and ambi
tion. It is generally considered that his predecessor
in the papal chair came to his death by poison admin
istered by his (John's) hand, and that he then, to use
a modern but expressive phrase, bulldozed the con
clave into conferring the tiara upon himself. Such
was John XXIII., who made the name of John so
disgraceful that no successor in the papal chair has
ventured to assume it. It would take the rarest de
gree of sainthood to lift it out of that depth of infamy
into which its last possessor plunged it.
This was the man with whom Hus now had to do, a
man not to be trifled with, who was as cruel and re-
1 Alexander V. died in 1410, the year following his election.

62 JOHN HUS.
morseless a pirate in the Church as he had ever been
upon the sea. In the summer of 1412 he put Hus
under the ban. I have already explained the force of
such an edict. " None might give him food or drink,
light or fire. None might buy of him or sell to him.
None might converse or hold intercourse with him.
None might give him a night's lodging or even a
draught of water. Every city, village, or castle where
he might reside was put under interdict. The sacra
ments could not be administered there. All religious
worship was suspended there. If he died excommu
nicate he was to be denied burial, or if he was excom
municated being dead and buried, his body was to be
torn from its grave and exposed to be wasted by the
elements or consumed by beasts of prey." 1
And the Pope meant to do the work thoroughly.
Not content with launching vthe curse with all its
weight against Hus, he demanded that the Bethlehem
Chapel should be leveled to the ground, lest it should
remain a centre of pestilent heresy.
At first Hus paid no regard to the ban, but went
on with his preaching and teaching as before ; and it
speaks a world of honor to the faith and loyal courage
of the Bohemians that not only his chapel still stood,
but that it was still thronged, like a house of bread as
it was, by hungry hearers. Of course, there were
multitudes who avoided him as they would have
shunned one who was stricken with the plague, while
all who followed him or listened to him were banned
with him. And this inevitably led to a distressing
state of things in the city. Its social and commercial
interests would suffer seriously. Hus would have
been still protected by the king and by the nobles and
1 Dr. Gillett, i. 226.

BANNED, BUT UNSILENCED. 63
by the large majority of the university, had he chosen
to remain ; but he unselfishly determined, for a while
at least, to depart ; and so, making a solemn appeal to
God, he goes forth, like the scape-goat of old, into the
wilderness. But even this probably increased his power instead
of diminishing it. The walls of his chapel now were
expanded to the horizon, and its dome lifted to the sky.
He preaches in field and wood. He talks, unknown, to
peasants. He reads everywhere the tracts of Wiclif.
He blows that spark into a broader flame. Coming
himself continually into clearer light, he spreads every
where among the people the light wliich he has him
self. Freely he has received, he freely gives. He in
culcates the plain and practical duties of piety. It is
the life of men which he is trying to elevate, not to
cast down the Pope. He wants them to trust in reali
ties and not in shams. " Why do you worship that
cross of wood ? " he cries. " Two sticks placed cross
wise are not more holy than when laid side by side.
Why do you confess to these wandering monks ? Who
has made them judges over you ? Lay your way open
before the Lord. Confess your sins to the true judge.
Declare your faults not only with the tongue, but with
the conscience, and then believe, trust, and hope to
obtain mercy." And the people everywhere repeated
these sayings of his. " This man," said one of his
enemies, "is sending his messengers everywhere, to
nobles, to soldiers, to common people, to women."
Some one tells him in his wanderings, that since he
has been put under the Pope's ban one of his oldest
and dearest friends, a theological professor in the uni
versity, has deserted him and gone over to the side of
the Pope. His only answer, free from all bitterness,

64 JOHN HUS.
is : " Truth is my friend and Palecz is my friend, but
both being my friends, Truth I must honor in prefer
ence." What suffers most in the man is the pastor's
heart. Again and again he writes to the flock at Beth
lehem Chapel in this strain: " God knows how I long
to be with you and instructing you. For twelve years
it has been my greatest consolation to observe your dil
igence in hearing God's word and to witness the true
and sincere repentance of many. But pray for me,
that in all places where a need exists, in cities, in vil
lages, in castles, in the fields, in the forests, wherever
I can be of any use, pray for me that the word of God
may not be kept back in me." He has witnessed a
good confession in Bethlehem Chapel, a good confes
sion in that still broader chapel whose walls have been
the mountains round about Bohemia and whose roof
is the open sky. He has one other last confession to
make with " the noble army of martyrs."
During this period of Hus's voluntary exile from
Bohemia, in the year 1413, the Emperor Sigismund
and Pope John XXIII. agreed upon arrangements for
a general council, to be held in the city of Constance
in the following year. The object of the council, as
originally contemplated, was that which had so often
challenged the interest and employed the diplomacy of
both civil and ecclesiastical rulers in vain, the resto
ration of the unity of the Church and its purification
from other abuses. But Bohemian affairs had of late
become so prominent under the immense personal in
fluence of Hus, that it was determined to give them
an equally prominent place in the deliberations of the
council. For this reason it was important that Hus
should be summoned and placed on trial. The Bohe
mian question could only be settled by dealing with its

COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 65
head in person. Constance of itself was an insignifi
cant town, but that council made its name immortal.
Not only the great importance of the questions to be
discussed, but the character and constitution of the
council itself, made it nearly the most important, and
perhaps altogether the most impressive, ecclesiastical
assemblage ever gathered. " It embraced nearly all
the men of the age, of any eminence in learning, sta
tion, or authority." All Christendom contributed to the
mighty throng ; 1 forty thousand strangers were quar
tered in and about the little city; the buildings of the
town were utterly inadequate to the concourse. Booths
and sheds were erected without the walls, and far
away into the adjacent country. Thousands lived in
camp. Entertainments of every sort were multiplied
for soldiers and servants and caterers. A historian of
the time, commenting upon its magnitude, tells us that
thirty thousand horses might have been counted at one
time within the city's circuit. There were thirty cardi
nals, twenty archbishops, one hundred and fifty bishops,
a multitude of abbots and doctors, and four thousand
priests. Among the sovereigns were the Elector Pala
tine, the Electors of Mentz and Saxony, the Dukes of
Austria, of Bavaria, and of Silesia, with their respec
tive retinues. There were margraves and counts and
barons and noblemen and knights almost without num
ber. Besides all these there was a miscellaneous multi
tude of all trades and professions, and of no trade or
profession, such as an unparalleled occasion would be
likely to draw together for business, for pleasure, or
for mischief. For four years this mighty council was
1 L'Enfant, Histoire du Concile de Constance, torn, i., 80, 81,
ed. Amsterdam, 1727. 5

66 JOHN HUS.
in session. With the various discussions which oc
cupied it I can now have nothing to do, save those
which immediately bear upon the destinies of Hus.
To this council, then, Hus received from the Emperor
Sigismund a safe conduct, charging all people to aid
him in his journey, to refrain from molesting him, to
regard the safety of his person, to infringe in nowise
upon his liberty. But he was apprehensive from the
first that the end of his career was at hand. He was
no longer to be girded round by the fortress - like
walls of his beloved Bohemia, and by the safer secur
ity of the loving hearts of those whom he was wont to
call " his dear Bohemians." Could he take them with
him they would offer him but feeble protection in such
a Vanity Fair. He does the last things as one who
is going upon a returnless journey. And then upon
the 14th of October he sets out, with two or three
faithful friends, for what is to be more like Pande
monium broke loose, than a council of the Church
of God on earth. But the pledge of the Emperor
will of course be sacred; and he is joyful in the
thought that he will have the opportunity to defend
his doctrines, and to vindicate his conduct before the
assembled representatives of Christendom. But never
was pledge more villainously broken, or a hope more
cruelly disappointed. For eighteen days he is on his
way, and everywhere meets with cheer and encourage
ment. The country people venerate his name and are
glad to get a sight of his face. He arrives at length
on the 3d of November, and for three weeks keeps in
close seclusion. He is a man of peace and never yet
stirred up strife for strife's sake. The Pope has for the
time suspended his sentence of excommunication and
given him the most solemn pledges of personal safety.

SIGISMUND'S PERJURY. 67
And yet, before the month goes by, and before his
case has been even called for a hearing, the words of
both emperor and pope are causelessly violated, and
he is seized, for no assigned or assignable reason, and
thrown into the dungeon of the Dominican monastery.
I said for no assignable reason; a reason was given,
the reason which Rome in all ages has been accus
tomed to give, that it would be wrong to keep faith
with a heretic. A pitiful begging of the whole ques
tion, for that was the very point at issue which the
council was to decide : whether he was a heretic or not.
I will not linger to describe this wretched travesty
and mockery of trial, nor the horrors of imprisonment
with insufficient food, until he was wasted almost to
a shadow; the unmitigated darkness and loathsome
ness of his dungeon, in which he could not stand
erect or recline at length ; its companionship of chat
tering rats ; its clammy floor and walls ; the fetters
which he wore by day and the stocks of iron in which
he was compelled to pass the nights. From the 6th of
December until the 6th of the following July he was
an uncondemned captive. And not only uncondemned,
but practically unheard. Four hearings, so-called, he
did have, but they were hearings of the council, and
not hearings of Hus. There were dreary iterations
and reiterations of charges, with not the slightest at
tempt at substantiation and with no permission of
response. " Recant ! Recant ! " was the demand, but
there was nothing to recant. How can one recant what
he has never held ? Hus's differences with the Church
had not been as to the substance of her teachings, but
as to the character of her life. And that that was
altogether out of the way this great council was itself
an evidence and a confession, called, as it had been

68 JOHN HUS.
primarily, to purge the Church of inveterate scandals.
" Convict me of heresy by the teachings of Christ and
his apostles (avowedly you have no truly constituted
pope), and I will cheerfully recant. But as yet there
is nothing to recant. I cannot abjure errors that have
been imputed to me by false witnesses." And so it
was once, twice, thrice. The fourth and last time he
is dragged up out of his dungeon. The cat's silly
play with the mouse is over now ; he is pronounced
once for all an incorrigible heretic. They go through
with the meaningless farce of putting on him a priestly
robe and stripping it off again, of thrusting into his
hand a sacramental chalice and snatching it away, as
though a priest unto God could be thus made and
unmade. How to deal with his tonsure puzzles them.
His head is shaven, how to unshave it and then shave
it again is the question, as important to be sure as
any they have to settle. Also, whether the work shall
be done with razor or with scissors. Fair parallel of
some questions agitated just now. At length they set
tle it by clipping his ring of hair, north, south, east,
and west, in cross-shape with scissors.1 They call it
1 Mais lorsqn'il fallut lui 6ter les marques de la tonsure, il
s'eleva une grande contestation entre les Prelats, pour savoir, s'il
falloit y employer le rasoir ou seulement les ciseaux. Surquoi
Jean Hus se tournant vers l'Empereur, " Voyez," dit-il, "ils ne
sauroient meme s'accorder entre eux sur la maniere de m'insul-
ter." Reichentlial dit qu'on le lava, afin de lui 6ter les marques
de sa tonsure, mais qu'il se moquoit de toutes ces ceremonies.
Enfin les ciseaux l'ayant emporte sur le rasoir, on lui coupa les
cheveux en croix afiu qu'il lie parut aucune marque de couronne.
Nous apprenons du Droit Canon que cette degradation met le
Pretre au rang des La'iques et que quoiqu'elle ne lui ote pas le
caractere qui est indelibile, elie le rende pour jamais incapable
d'exercer les functions de la Pretrise. — L'Enfant, Histoire du
Concile de Constance, torn, i., 408, ed. Amsterdam, 1727.

THE BURNING. 69
his degradation from the priesthood. It is the degra
dation of priesthood, to be sure, but not of his. And
then they cry, He belongs to the Church no longer, let
him be burnt. And Sigismund, forsworn, perjured,
consciously, blushingly guilty, lets them have their
way, and, like Pilate, washes the hands which a sea
could never cleanse.
The sentence is not delayed. The council has
other work to do, and goes on with its pottering
business, while the very grandest soul that the world
knew that day goes out to ascend in his chariot of
fire. Like the song of the lark, which floats down
the air when the sweet singer itself is no longer
visible, so out of the cloud of smoke and flame are
heard the last words of the martyr's mortal language,
" Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace and
good will towards men. We praise Thee ! We bless
Thee ! We worship Thee ! We glorify Thee ! We
give thanks to Thee for thy great glory ! "
The mighty host of pilgrims stand silent as though
smitten by some vision of heavenly apocalypse, and
when the smoke clears away there are some ashes and
a handful of iron links hanging to a blackened stake.
But John Hus is with God.

IV.
SAVONAROLA.
a. d. 1452-1498.
As the moon
Doth by the rolling of her heavenly sphere,
Hide and reveal the strand unceasingly;
So fortune deals with Florence. Dante, Paradise, xv. 80.

IV.
SAVONAROLA.
A. d. 1452-1498.
The drama of history presents us with no scenes
more fascinating in their splendor, or more impressive
in their tragedy, than those which the fifteenth century
saw enacted in Italy. Private magnificence reached
its zenith, and common wretchedness sunk to its na
dir. Art achieved its most brilliant triumphs, and re
ligion fell into its dreariest formalisms. Government,
nominally republican, was the plaything of strong-
handed and unprincipled adventurers, who were rich,
or mighty, or cunning enough to control the nerveless
popular will. Learning among the clergy meant dab
bling in scholasticism ; among the higher or wealthier
laity, some slight acquaintance with pagan writers,
and a love for classic antiquities ; among the common
people there was little or none. It is almost enough,
in order to describe the moral and social life of the
century, to say that it was the age of the Medici at
Florence, and of the Borgias at Rome ; an age of cul
ture wedded to corruption ; an age whose external garb
was elegance, whose inmost heart was moral rotten
ness ; an age whose only grand enthusiasms were for
art and vice ; all other enthusiasms were accounted
vulgar and had died out. Patriotism and religion, at
least, if not dead, were comatose. The one needed a
Judas Maccabseus, the other a John the Baptist.

74 SAVONAROLA.
The reformatory movement which we contemplate
in the life of Savonarola, which is nearly coincident
with the latter half of the fifteenth century, stands by
itself. It has no obvious connection, either local or
dynamic, with any movement wliich we have con
sidered, or any which we shall consider. There was
no agitation leading up to it as the work of Wiclif
led up to that of Hus ; it was followed by none as
nearly consequent upon it as the work of Hus was
followed by that of Luther. It was not, like the
work of these, the inauguration of a mighty spiritual
movement, to be taken up by strong successors when
the author laid it down, to sweep on in gathering
power and greater triumphs, but it begins and ends
before our eyes. It could not be represented by any
such symbolic picture as that one of Wiclif kindling a
spark, which Hus blows into a flame, at wliich Luther,
in turn, lights his torch ; but in this case the spark is
lighted, the flame kindled, and the torch waved by a
single hand, and when that hand drops the torch there
is none to take it up, and the light goes out. It is
like a song, which may tarry for a little in the mem
ory, but whose notes do not linger in the air when the
voice that raised it has become silent. And so Savona
rola stands alone, like Melchisedek, without any rec
ognizable predecessor or successor, his reformation as
unique and circumscribed by definite historic lines as
the literary or artistic glory of that Florence which
saw its beginning, and middle, and end. It is re
markable that a work which, while it was going on,
gathered so great interest about itself, should have
taken so little from the past and bequeathed so little
to the future. So far as we can see, Savonarola left
little heritage to the subsequent ages besides the story

SAVONAROLA'S BIRTH. 75
of his career and the memory of his example. He
stands thus in strange contrast with the other famous
men of his age. The Laurentian Library, founded
by Cosmo de Medici, and enriched by Lorenzo the
Magnificent, still abides, a part of the permanent
pride of Florence. The lovely conceits and dream
like images to which the brush of Fra Angelico gave
birth still adorn the convent of San Marco, where
Savonarola prayed, and taught, and governed not
only his monks, but Florence itself. Michael Angelo,
who chiseled marble furiously during the very years
when the fiery friar was subduing harder hearts, be
queathed to the world work that, after four centuries,
is as fresh and forceful as when it left his hand.
But of Savonarola only a memory lingers. He
seemed to crash into the world's history suddenly,
and from some far off space, and to leave it as sud
denly and mysteriously, like a comet in a hyperbolic
orbit, which once invades the circles of the solar
system ; never seen before, to be never seen again.
He was like the prophet Jonah at Nineveh : a stern
and fiery preacher of righteousness, accomplishing an
immediate work, and then both the preacher and his
work passing out of history.
Girolamo Savonarola, though identified with Flor
ence, was not a Florentine. He was born at Ferrara,
of an honorable family, September 21, 1452. His
grandfather was a learned physician of considerable
renown, who had been called to the court of that state
by its sovereign, who was a patron of learning, and
delighted to surround himself by men of art and let
ters. It was intended by his family that Girolamo
should follow the profession of his grandfather, and
maintain the traditions and the local relations of his

76 SAVONAROLA.
house, and the work of his education proceeded in
accordance with this intent. But, as it has turned out
in so many instances, the lines of manhood's character
were already so strongly cut in the disposition of the
boy that it could not be moulded and compressed
within the lines of parental purpose. Eaglets cannot
be converted into rooks, take them as near the shell as
you please. The prominent feature of his childhood
seems to have been a keen moral sensibility, which
was impressed even to anguish by the sights and sounds
of events that were continually occurring about him.
Ferrara, now a solemn and decayed old town, with
grass growing in its streets, and with less than a third
of its former population, was at that time one of the
busiest and one of the gayest capitals of Europe, shel
tering a hundred thousand people within its walls.
Like all the Italian cities of the Middle Ages, its glory
was inseparably wedded with disgrace. Splendor and
cruelty walked hand in hand. In the ducal palace
perpetual feastings were going on in gorgeous saloons,
where the clinking of glass and crystal overhead was
matched by the clanking of fetters in the dungeons
underneath. The masters of social order 'passed easily
and without any apparent gradations of feeling, from
splendors to horrors, from horrors to splendors. From
the association of his family with the court, the boy
was brought into early contact with and familiar
knowledge of its magnificence, and the violent con
trast which it presented to the sorrows and wretch
edness of the people. He felt himself in a world
where all things were mismatched. He was living in
times that were out of joint. He wandered by him
self. His great relief was to get out of the city whose-
• social disorders he was powerless to affect, and to pore

THE PUZZLE OF LIFE. 77
over his Bible and St. Thomas Aquinas in the peace
ful meadows of the Po. Sometimes his sorrows would
drive him to one or other of the churches, where for
hours he would lie prostrate upon the pavement in
some obscure corner, and wet the marble with his tears.
So early in life did he pass through that experience,
the puzzle of every thoughtful life, which the Hebrew
Psalmist was the first to voice, and over whose solu
tion the social science of the world is still perplexed :
" I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They are not in
trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like
other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about
as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.
Their eyes stand out with fatness : they have more
than heart could wish. They are corrupt and speak
wickedly concerning oppression : they speak loftily.
Therefore his people return hither, and waters of a
full cup are wrung out to them. And they say ' How
doth God know ? ' and ' Is there knowledge with the
Most High?' Behold, these are the ungodly, who
prosper in the world : they increase in riches. When
I thought to know this it was too painful for me, until
I went into the sanctuary of God." Singularly like
this language of the old Hebrew Psalmist are some
words of a youthful poem composed at this very time
by Savonarola : "I see the whole world in confusion ;
every virtue and every noble habit gone. There is no
shining light. None are ashamed of their vices. He
is happy who lives by rapine and feeds on the blood
of another, who robs widows and his own infant chil
dren, and who drives the poor to ruin. That soul is
deemed refined and rare who gains the most by fraud
and force, who scorns heaven and Christ, and whose
constant thoughts are bent on others' destruction." 1
i Villari, i., 15.

78 SAVONAROLA.
Just now there came into his life an episode which,
had he been permitted to have his own will, would
have changed his whole career, and we should have
assembled here this evening to listen to an entirely
different story, whose subject would probably have
been — not Savonarola. There came into his mind
a vision, transitory, but very bright, of a possible
life of real happiness even in this world, and he turned
aside for a little to pursue it. A family of refugees
from Florence came to live in Ferrara in the house
next his father's. There was one beautiful daughter.
The sorrows of the banished exiles touched Girolamo's
sensitive nature, and pity led to love. He dared to
ask for the young Florentine's hand, but she frostily
informed him that a Strozzi could never wed with a
Savonarola. His pride of birth was at least equal to
hers, and a refusal for such a reason was sufficient to
turn his love to scorn.
Though this event doubtless had its influence by
way of adding weight to his determination, yet it was
not the principal reason for the course of life upon
which he now entered. His often-repeated prayer for
many years had been, " O Lord ! make known to me
the way in which I am to guide my soul ! " Deeper
and deeper the conviction had grown that the religious
life was the only refuge to which he could betake him
self. Conscience pointed to the monastery. In no
other way was it possible in the Italy of that day, to
openly profess a devotion to the service of God and the
welfare of human souls"; and desire powerfully sec
onded conscience. His tender sensibilities cannot en
dure a parting from his mother, ancl he takes advan
tage of a holiday when the family are all from home,
and goes away to Bologna, and seeks for admission to

BECOMES A MONK. 79
the Dominican monastery there. He asks only that he
may be employed in some menial service, in mending
the garments of the brethren, or digging in the convent
garden. But the superior, after a little, penetrates
this veil of genuine modesty, finds out that the novice
knows the Bible and St. Thomas, and that he is versed
in natural science and letters, and sets him at work as
a teacher of the other novices ; makes him a lecturer,
and finally sends him out as a preaching friar. His
preaching does not make much impression ; his voice
is harsh, his ways are awkward. For seven years,
from 1475 to 1482, when he is thirty years old, he con
tinues in the convent at Bologna, giving himself to the
study of the Sacred Scriptures until, as the story goes,
he knew the Bible every word by heart. He dwells
upon the prophets chiefly, compares the dark times of
Hebrew history with these Italian days. He finds him
self in sympathy with the fierce denunciations made in
old time against unrighteousness, the avarice of priests,
and the cruelty of rulers. He sees the old prophetic vis
ions repeated. They visit his own dreams and fill his
waking thoughts until he feels himself possessed of
the prophetic spirit. He feels that the clouds of Je
hovah's wrath impend over Italy, as they once hung
over Syria. He is in manifest training to be a preacher
of "the wrath to come." One important thing these
seven years in the Bologna convent taught him, which
was necessary to complement the knowledge he had
previously gained. Before going into this retreat he
had become deeply convinced of the ruin of the world.
He now became equally impressed that there was a
similar state of things in the Church. He had only
fled from one evil to fall into another. There was al
most as little of sainthood in the sphere he had entered,

80 SAVONAROLA.
as there was. of truth and honesty in that which he
had left.
In 1482 he is sent by his superior to preach in Fer
rara, his native city ; but his stay is short and his suc
cess indifferent. Whether it is for the old proverbial
reason, that a prophet is without honor in his own
country, as he himself suspected, or, as others have
suggested, because he could not descend to the vulgar
sensationalisms, and low buffooneries, and questionable
jokes, which then formed the stock in trade of the
average preaching friar, from one cause or another he
gets no hold upon the popular interest. And a war
being imminent just then in Northeastern Italy, the
convent is disbanded. The monks are sent here and
there, and Savonarola is assigned, we may well believe
by a divine predestination, to the convent of San
Marco in Florence, with which all his work henceforth,
to the end of life, is to be associated. It is here and
now that his life for the first time becomes historic.
As he enters these cool and quiet precincts, he
may well be excused for thinking that he has at
last found the blessed retreat which his vexed and
weary spirit has craved so long. It seems like a bit
of heaven let down to earth. Sanctity, repose, and
beauty are all the immediate suggestions of the place.
For a thoughtful, studious, devout, patriotic, beauty-
loving man such as Savonarola was, the convent of
San Marco must have seemed a very paradise. Built
some forty years before by the munificence of Cosmo
de Medici, it had been enriched by him and by his
grandson Lorenzo with priceless treasures of literature
and of art. Here had been deposited what was at
the time the rarest collection of books and manu
scripts to be found in Italy. The walls of chapel and

LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT. 81
cloister had been adorned by that angelic artist who
prayed while he painted on his knees, whose every
lightest touch was a devout aspiration. Here St. An-
tonino had shed abroad his lovely charities till they
filled the streets and houses of Florence like a sweet
and enduring perfume, so that even to this day his
name is uttered by Florentines in the hushed voice of
reverent love. Here scholars and artists came from
all parts of Italy to consult its books and to study
its pictures. Such was the place to which the young
friar had come for the beginning of his career. He
little thought it was the splendidly illuminated initial
of a tragedy that would end in fire and blood. Flor
ence did not know that day what manner of man she
had admitted to her hospitality in the person of the
obscure preaching friar. As little did he know the
Florence that lay around his peaceful retreat. They
were soon to become acquainted.
Very naturally the friar became acquainted with
Florence before the city became acquainted with him.
For the first five or six years of his residence he is
unconsciously preparing for his work. Let us look
briefly at the facts as they met him.
Lorenzo de Medici is now at the height of his fame,
and has everything his own way in Florence. It is
hardly necessary to repeat the story of his rise. Flor
ence was nominally a republic, but really a little des
potism. The Medici family having long before risen
to great wealth in mercantile operations, had gained
controlling power in civil affairs, and had held it now
for three generations. The people, naturally indolent,
fond of splendor, proud of their city's easy preemi
nence in beauty, in architecture, in art, were content
to have the power lodged where it was, so long as it

82 SAVONAROLA.
was strongly held, and they were kept in good humor
by festivals, and holidays, and entertainments. And
apart from the fact that the people were slaves, the
Medici had given them much to be proud of. What
Cosmo and Lorenzo had done for San Marco, they
had done for every quarter of the city. The tokens
of their munificence remain to this day, and have
gone far for four hundred years to make Italy a shrine
dear to the pilgrim of art or of devotion. But the
pride and greed of the rulers had taken all this grati
fication out of the sweat and blood of the people.
And in Lorenzo, who was now the despot of the hour,
both the greatness and the wickedness of his family
seemed to have culminated. He had secured his po
sition by the murder of his brother. " He had first
conciliated the affection of the higher and the devotion
of the lower classes, by his munificence and works of
general utility, and then had extinguished every spark
of personal independence." Sagacious but cruel, re
fined but without honor, cultured but corrupt, of most
exquisite tastes but of equally profligate habits, writing
a sonnet in praise of some virtue in the morning and
devoting the night ensuing to debaucheries, neither
fearing God nor regarding man where he had any
slightest desire to accomplish, shrinking from neither
the use of poison nor of stiletto if one life or a hundred
stood in his way, Lorenzo was magnificent, to be sure,
as the ages have called him, but it was the magnifi
cence which Milton has ascribed to Satan himself.
Such was the splendid fiend who was lording it over
the Florentines when the monk of Ferrara came to
San Marco. And " like prince, like people," he had
made his subjects drunken with the wine of his own
intoxication. He had done his best to turn Florence

BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH FLORENCE. 83
into a pagan city, and had well-nigh succeeded. He
had favored, of course, the revival of ancient learn
ing, and imparted great enthusiasm to the pursuits of
heathen literature, until pagan manners were affected
by the better classes, and even the clergy had come to
set a value upon the authority of a classic author above
that of Isaiah or St. Paul, and an ancient statue of
Pan or Jove was regarded with a reverence greater
than was due to an image of the Virgin or the Crucifix.
Though if the latter were elegantly carved they might
of course be admitted to the artistic pantheon.
So the monk becomes acquainted with Florence, but
he finds that Florence is viler than Ferrara. He can
not escape from that terrible thought of the " wrath
to come," the wrath that must come, as God himself
is true, and just, and holy. If earth will not purge it
self, the heavens must break, and let down their floods
of fire and brimstone. He preaches now and then in
Florence ; but hearers are few and indifferent, twenty-
five or thirty in his audience — men in general prefer
a different fare. And so he is sent out to preach in
various towns of Lombardy; this in the end of 1486.
Everywhere he finds the same cloud of wrath im
pending. His very soul is overwhelmed within him.
His nights are spent in prayers and tears, and when he
slumbers there are those visions of the wrath to come,
the sword of God hanging over Italy. Here at last
his mouth is opened, and he speaks like the messenger
of God. He finds response. The people begin to see
dimly what he sees so clearly. They come in multi
tudes. He begins to feel that he has not mistaken
his mission. About this time he is called to attend a
meeting of the chapter of his order in which were to
be discussed certain doctrines of theology, and certain

84 SAVONAROLA.
questions of discipline. For the dogmas of theology in
question, or against them, he has nothing to say. They
seem to him of little moment. The monk sits silent,
indifferent, and unobserved. But when the questions
of discipline are up, his spirit is aroused. Discipline,
— he thinks there is need enough of that ! It is not a
doctrinal but a moral reformation that is the church's
crying need. "In the ancient times the Church had
wooden chalices and golden prelates: now, she has
golden chalices and wooden prelates." He scathes
the vices and corruption of the clergy like an old
prophet. Among his listeners there is Pico della Mi
randola, the most learned man of his age, one who has
large influence at the Florentine court, and who is ad
mired by the great Lorenzo for his learning. He is
won to the side and to the friendship of the fiery friar.
He recognizes the truth and the genius that are in the
man. He informs Lorenzo, who, bad as he is, is yet
•willing to gather into Florence all genius, whether in
religion or anything else, as a trophy of his own mag
nificence. He wishes this wonderful friar to be re
called to his convent and retained there, and his wish
is law. Because his superiors summon him, to whom
he has vowed obedience, Savonarola returns to Flor
ence, not because the great Lorenzo wishes it. He has
only feelings of repugnance for the tyrant. His very
return will only hasten that bitter conflict with the
Medici and all their purposes, towards which he is be
ing inevitably carried. He has little thought of any
new successes as a preacher in Florence, but Pico has
spread great reports of his genius and his power.
Men come to his lectures in the convent. There is
something fresh and forceful in the man, something
different from the ordinary monkish chaff, something

LECTURES IN SAN MARCO. 85
weird and fascinating, moreover, in his exposition of
the Apocalypse, and his application of its visions to the
times and the people. He dwells in the terrors mainly,
and yet he does not ignore the gentler side of the gos
pel. Hear this on the love of Jesus Christ. " The love
of Jesus Christ is to be seen in that warm affection
for Him which leads the faithful to wish that his soul
may become almost a part of that of Christ, and that
the living principle in the Lord may be reproduced in
himself, not in the way of an external image but as an
inward and divine inspiration. This love is omnipo
tent, uniting the finite creature with the Infinite Crea
tor. Man, in fact, rises continually from humanity to
something divine when he is animated by this love,
which is the sweetest of all affections, penetrates the
soul, acquires a mastery over the body, and causes
the faithful to walk on earth, rapt as it were in the
spirit." a This monk had something to say woijth the
hearing. He spoke to men out of the Word of God
and his own costly experience. He was no ignorant
prater or retailer of old fables. Moreover he was in
deep sympathy with the wrongs of the people, while he
was both indignant and compassionate towards their
hypocrisy and sin. The convent chapel is too narrow
to hold all who wish to hear him. They fill the clois
ters and the court. He must go to the cathedral. He
is getting a strong grip upon the city's conscience. He
spares no class from the Medici down. His boldness
brings him into conflict with Lorenzo. He is warned
that he must be more moderate. He understands that
those who admonish him are from the neighborhood of
the palace. "Go tell your master," he thunders, "to
prepare to repent of his sins, for the Lord spares no
one, and has no fear of the princes of the earth ! "
i Villari, i., 109.

86 SAVONAROLA.
A month or two after, he is chosen prior of San Marco,
the institution which has been built and adorned and
sustained by the Medici, but it makes no change in his
fidelity. He feels his responsibility to God alone. It
had been the invariable custom for the newly-elected
prior to go immediately upon his election and pay
homage to Lorenzo. He ignored the precedent ut
terly. He knew the wickedness of the man. He
knew how he was oppressing and debauching the
people. What concord could there be between Christ
and Belial ? How could he pay respects to a tyrant
for whom he had only abhorrence and detestation?
He could not plunge into such an abyss of self-con
tempt. He would not so wrong his conscience, and
stultify the truth which he had spoken in the ears of
all Florence. The tyrant knows the monk's power
and is very politic. He thinks it better to propitiate
than fjp crush him. He sends rich presents to the
convent, and large donations to the poor ; but it is
of no avail. He sends for a rival preacher, if pos
sible to preach the prior down, and that too fails, for
the people have learned to love their great preacher,
and have faith in him ; they know him for a true, and
honest, and godly man. And so he preaches on,
and all Florence listens. Lorenzo, too, believes in
him, though he hates him. The following year, 1492,
Lorenzo is taken with his final illness, and as he ap
proaches death he wants a confessor. " For whom
shall we send ? " ask his attendants. " Send for the
prior of San Marco ; he is an honest man," said the dy
ing reprobate. " No other ever dared say No ! to me."
And the friar did not say No to this request. Before
he will absolve him, however, he demands three things.
" First, it is necessary that you should have a full and

PA TRIOTISM. 87
lively faith in the mercy of God." " That I have most
fully." " Second, you must restore that which you
have unjustly taken, or enjoin your sons to restore it
for you." The tyrant hesitates, but finally assents.
"Third, you must restore liberty to the people of
Florence." At this Lorenzo turns his face to the wall
and is silent. But the monk knows how to say No,
and leaves the sick man to die unshriven. It is a
drawn battle between greed and remorse.
Savonarola now appears before us in a second his
toric aspect, as the Restorer of liberty to Florence.
This year of Lorenzo's death was a crisis, not only
in the affairs of Florence, but of all Italy. His
shrewdness and moderation and tact in political affairs
had made him a controlling influence throughout the
peninsula. He had held the balance of power. His
position, both geographically and dynamically, had
made him a mediator between the chiefs of the dif
ferent states. His son Piero, who now succeeded him,
was, if possible, more vicious, but less politic. He was
weak at the very points where his father had been
strong. He was equally selfish and greedy of power,
but was utterly ignorant in matters of government,
so that he was despised by the people ; and his rude
and vulgar manners made him detested by the nobles
and the neighboring princes. There had been some
things to qualify and render tolerable the tyranny of
the father ; that of the son was unmitigated and un
bearable. In the same year Pope Innocent VIII.
died, and the infamous Roderigo Borgia x bought the
succession to the papal chair. The character of the
man is too utterly detestable to describe.2 The only
1 Alexander VI.
2 Even Roseoe, who affects to doubt many of the stories of

88 SAVONAROLA.
language that could compass it, would be unfit to
write, or even to whisper. Debauchery, venality, and
murder are not terms sufficiently specific. This man
had in view no less an object than the subjection of
all the states of Italy, and their partition among his
illegitimate sons. Piero de Medici was weak enough
to be made his tool. The Pope saw his way clear,
through him, to the ultimate possession of Tuscany.
Under such conditions as these, what had poor Florence
to hope for, but a change from the control of the
Medici to that of the Borgias ; or, as the proverb has
it, from the frying-pan into the fire ? What was to
prevent ? Only the fact that God himself was work
ing ; an element in the problem that neither Piero,
nor Borgia, nor the Florentines had taken into ac
count. Savonarola kept on preaching ; some late facts had
added to his popularity. That Lorenzo the Magnif
icent had in his dying hour chosen him for his con
fessor, and that he had dared to refuse him absolu
tion, the superb courage of the man, the dauntless
independence, the growing freedom of his speech, his
outspoken championship of the liberties of the people,
the incontestible fact also that he had prophesied the
death both of Lorenzo and the late pope, — all this
conspired to make him what he had now incontrovert-
ibly become, the most prominent citizen of Florence.
To him all the Florentines were looking, though they
hardly knew for what. In him they hoped, but they
could not have defined their hopes. They were like a
flock of sheep surrounded by wolves, a wolf indeed
Alexander's crimes, calls him " The scourge of Christendom, and
the opprobrium of the human race." — Life of Lorenzo (Bohn's
ed.), p. 336.

CHARLES VIII. OF FRANCE. 89
within the fold, and they looking piteously towards
their shepherd. And the shepherd was faithful, even
to the laying down of his life for the sheep. One
wolf broke in upon them for whose advent they had
not looked, but whose coming, and the direction from
which he would come, Savonarola had not obscurely
predicted. " A storm will break in," said he, " a
storm that will shake the mountains ; over the Alps,
there will come against Italy one like Cyrus, of whom
Isaiah wrote." And that very year Charles VIII. of
France actually did come, crashing down into Italy
with a great army, to seize the vacant throne of Naples.
There was no quarrel between France and Florence,
but Tuscany lay directly in the route of the invading
army, and was an attractive field for conquest. Piero,
weak and cowardly, went to meet the invader, and, to
propitiate Charles, put the only defenses of the inter
mediate country into his hands, and thus " opened to
him the defenseless city," with all its treasures and
the lives of its citizens, " without any conditions of com
pensation or guaranties of peace." Then, for the first
time, the indolent Florentine blood boiled with indig
nation. The people were basely betrayed by one who
should, and who could have defended them. The whole
city was one seething cauldron of defenseless and help
less wrath. There is only one calm spirit, and all eyes
turn towards Savonarola, the prophet of the Lord.
He, if any one, can tell them what to do. He is the
man who dwells unmoved in the secret place of the
Most High and under the shadow of the Almighty.
They throng to the cathedral, and what strange di
rections they hear from his lips ! They become still
from their tumultuous passion, as the winds and waves
when another voice said Peace! to the storm on Galilee.

90 SAVONAROLA.
" Your first business," he says, " is repentance. Re
pent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ! O
Florence, the time of thy music and dancing is at an
end ; now is the time for pouring out rivers of tears
for your sins." " O Lord, who died for the love of
us, and for our transgressions, pardon, O Lord, these
poor Florentines." The writers of the time called it
a miracle. The people were like little children in his
hands, subdued, quiet, penitent. They send an em
bassy to the camp of the king, with Savonarola at its
head, clad in his monkish garb : with the dignity of an
old prophet he appears before the invader, recognizes
his divine mission as God's instrument, and with the
authority born of the consciousness of his own mission,
equally divine, commands him to show mercy, as he
hopes for mercy at the hands of God. " If thou for-
gettest the work for which He sends thee, He will
choose another to fulfill it, and will let the hand of
His wrath fall upon thee with terrible scourges. I
say this to thee in the name of the Lord."
By general consent Savonarola becomes now the
legislator of Florence. He holds such a power as
neither Piero, nor Lorenzo, nor even Cosmo had ever
known. Upon the expulsion of the Medici, and the
speedy departure of the French army, the government
was utterly disorganized. The people had so long been
treated as chattels, or puppets, moved by the will of
their masters, that they seemed incapable of organiza
tion, or even of harmonious action. Upon Savonarola
devolved the chief burden of framing a constitution.
He keeps on with his preaching. He drives home the
idea that all wholesome government must begin with
personal reformation, amendment of life. " Seek first
the kingdom of God," he cries. That year is the

CONFLICT WITH ALEXANDER VI. 91
miracle of civil history. He reestablishes the republic
upon the basis of three or four simple principles:
1. Fear God. 2. Prefer the weal of the republic to
thine own. 3. A general amnesty. 4. A grand coun
cil, after the pattern of Venice, but without a doge.
They had had enough of doges, and chiefs, and self-
seeking masters. He himself might have been king
if he would, but the simple-hearted man never thought
of such a thing. " Jesus Christ," he says, " shall be
the only King of Florence." And in their enthusiasm
the multitudes take it for their huzza, " Viva Cristo !
Viva Firenze ! " For himself the simple friar will
have only his pulpit for a throne, and even over his
pulpit he has inscribed the legend, " Jesus Christ the
King of Florence." And thus for three years he
exerted, as Macchiavelli asserts, an influence of un
precedented power. " Unrighteous gains were given
up, deadly enemies embraced each other in love, god
less sports came to an end." Lives of chastity took
the place of incontinence and debauchery. The lewd
scenes of the carnival gave way to the pure and beau
tiful rites of Palm Sunday. People made bonfires
and cast into them their obscene books. It really
looked for a time as if the kingdom which is right
eousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, had
come. But sterner scenes than any he had yet en
countered were preparing for the good monk, and we
are brought now to the last act of the drama, in which
he encounters the wrath of the Borgia.
At first Alexander had no special hatred for Sav
onarola. But now his cherished project, of getting
possession of Tuscany for his own family, seemed likely
to be abortive. He had hoped to deal easily with
the weak and wicked Piero. But now the Medici

92 SAVONAROLA.
were banished, and a price had been set upon their
heads. And things in Florence looked hopeful, neither
for their restoration, nor for his getting the prize he
coveted in any other way. He knew that it was the
prior's work, and so long as he was exerting that
mighty sway over the people, through his pulpit, the
Pope's designs must be futile. Tidings come to his
ears, moreover, that Savonarola is hoping for the
reformation of all Italy, upon the Florentine plan.
He is preaching scathing sermons upon the papal in
iquities and rapacities. His blows are felt even within
the walls of San Angelo. This man must be put
down, but cautiously. In July, 1495, he writes a
kindly letter to Savonarola, and summons him to
Rome. It is cunning, sounds like Herod's counsel to
the wise men. "Much beloved Son: We hear that
among all the laborers in the Lord's vineyard you
show the most zeal. This greatly delights us, and
we give praise therefor to Almighty God. We have
heard that you affirm that what you have said of
future events proceeds not from yourself but from
God, and we are desirous to discourse with you in
order that we may, through your mediation, know
better what is pleasing to God, and practice the same.
Therefore, we exhort you, in all holy obedience, to
come to us without delay, who will receive you with
love and with charity." The fox! The treachery is
too palpable. It is the invitation of the spider to the
fly. Fortunately, Savonarola was sick at the time,
and had a valid excuse for remaining at home. Then
a cardinal's hat is offered him, and the Pope pro
poses to make him Archbishop of Florence. The
monk's righteous indignation is aroused afresh at the
insult to his sincerity and honor. " Does he think to

WAR TO THE KNIFE. 93
tempt me with a red hat?" and he sends back the
indignant answer, " I will have no other red hat from
you than that wliich you have already given to other
servants of my Master, — the red hat of flame."
Then comes an imperative command to hasten imme
diately to Rome. Savonarola is really sick, and,
moreover, worn almost to a shadow by his superhuman
labors, and he cannot endure the journey. But Rod-
erigo Borgia is not to be outwitted nor defeated in
such wise. He forbids him to preach. But the monk
takes his authority from a higher power. The ban
and interdict are threatened, and the monk keeps on
with what strength he can. There are plots to assas
sinate him. The Medici have their partisans in Flor
ence who gradually get elected into the council. A
pestilence breaks out in the city, and the ignorant
people, who have come to look upon Savonarola as
little less than a god, get to be impatient because he
does not work miracles for their relief ; a breath, a
murmur, a susurrus is in the air. It is fanned with
skill and energy by the friends of the Medici. It
grows and threatens ill. But the monk is calm, God
fearing, man-loving, through it all. The plague breaks
out in his convent, where two hundred and fifty friars
are living together. Rich Florentines come and offer
their villas to him that he may retreat from the con
tagion. Retreat ! he never retreated from anything
but sin. But he gladly accepts them for his poor,
frightened monks. The Pope's son is assassinated,
and Savonarola, detesting the man, nevertheless pities
the father, and sends him a kindly letter of condolence,
but utterly free from any unmanly concession or breath
of flattery. And so he comes to the last year of his
life ; he has already predicted that he shall not see

94 SAVONAROLA.
its close. He perceives the toils thickening around
him ; but he is courageous, and makes manly Chris
tian warfare to the end. He is excommunicated as
a heretic, though no saint of the Roman calendar
ever held more faithfully to all the dogmas of the
Church. But the Pope, he knows, and all the world
knows, is not that Church's lawful head. His tiara
has been purchased by open and shameless bribery.
And Savonarola, as his last grand stand for truth
and righteousness, has written letters summoning the
crowned heads of Christendom to unite in calling a
general council to depose this pretended pope, and
heal the wounds of the Church. One of his messengers
is assassinated on his journey, and a letter found upon
him. It is sent to Alexander, whose ill-will is now
inflamed to the pitch of ferocity, — the friar's doom
is inevitably sealed. While this has been going on,
however, a strange thing has occurred in Florence,
which sharply turns the popular feeling against the
man who has been, till now, the object of their love
and veneration.
A monk of another order, jealous of Savonarola's
good name, has offered to test the question of his
orthodoxy by appealing to the ordeal of fire. Sa
vonarola believes in no such nonsense ; but one of
his devoted monks insists upon accepting the chal
lenge in his behalf. The fire is kindled, and the two
parties are ready to walk through it. A petty discus
sion arises about accessories, and is kept up until it
amounts almost to a public riot. All Florence is upon
the scene, the dispute lasts till nightfall, and neither
party has yet entered the flames, and a heavy rain
closes the day and extinguishes the fire. The populace
have been disappointed of their treat, and the whole

THE END. 95
weight of their indignation falls upon Savonarola.
What mattered their accessories to him if he were a
true prophet ? They accuse him of being an im
postor, — him the best and truest friend that Florence
ever had. Plainly his career is drawing to a close.
Alexander will find slight barriers interposing now
between him and his victim. The prior is seized, with
two of his monks who have been his most faithful and
loving disciples, and made a prisoner until it shall be
decided whether he shall be tried in Florence, or sent
to Rome to be dealt with immediately by the Pope.
It is settled at last that he shall be tried at home, "on
the charge of being an impostor. Florence, whose
brightest crown has been his life of glorious self-sacri
fice, shall have for her deepest infamy that his death
was within her gates, and by her own faithless hand.
Day after day, for six successive days, he is dragged
forth from his dungeon and examined, as the phrase
is, by torture. Six days in succession, he is raised by
his wrists strapped together behind his back, until his
muscles are lacerated and his bones disjointed. He
faints and raves alternately under the agony, but
clings to the truth, — he has not taught of himself, but
has striven to be God's faithful messenger. That is
all that examination can get out of him, and upon that
he is sentenced to be hanged and burned. Hanged
and burned he is forthwith, his last words, as he goes
cheerfully up to the gibbet and the flame, " My Lord
was pleased to die for my sins, why should I not be
glad to give up my poor life for love to Him ? " And
with some little faint Bickerings of the liberty he had
sought to give to his beloved people, Florence and
Italy sank back once more into the old and indolent
slavery of the mediseval centuries.

LATIMER.
a. d. 1480-1555.
In all ages, more or less, there is a new school of thought rising up
under the eyes of an older school of thought. And probably in all ages
the men of the old school regard with some little anxiety the ways of the
men of the new school. — Feed. Seebohm.

LATIMER.
a. d. 1480-1555.
About a hundred years have passed since Wiclif
rested from his labors in the quiet rectory of Lutter
worth. During the lapse of that century, we have wit
nessed the transference of the work which he inaugu
rated, to the distant state of Bohemia, where John Hus
raised Wiclif's spark into a flame, which was met by
the counter-fires of the Council of Constance. And
still later we have seen the strange, sporadic, almost
miraculous work of Savonarola at Florence, appear
ing like a meteor out of the darkness, and falling back
like a meteor into the darkness again. And now we
are ready to ask, How has the good work been faring
meanwhile in England ? I have known forest fires,
after having been subdued, and apparently extin
guished, to work for a long time under the surface,
fed by dry roots and by long accumulations of fallen
leaves, and finally, after weeks or even months had
passed by and all thought of conflagration had been
quieted, to break forth with greater vigor than ever
under some favoring wind or some protracted drought.
Thus for a century after his death Wiclif's work went
on, obscurely, but without cessation, under the surface
of England's social and political life. Much had been
done to check it. Edict after edict had been promul-

100 LATIMER.
gated against his writings. His books, and even his
bones, had been burned by the Council of Constance.
Many of 'his avowed disciples had been drawn into
anarchy, and had brought down upon his cause the
arm not only of ecclesiastical but of civil authority.
His movement was seized upon by politicians, as re
ligious movements so often have been by men who
sought to avail themselves of contemporary excite
ments for the promotion of their own objects. And
so Wiclifism — or, as it came now to be called in con
tempt, Lollardism — had come to be not only an ob
ject of scorn to those who were in authority, but a
profession of peril to those who adopted it. "It is
always the fate of popular movements, that the foolish
and the bad get hold of the skirts of the wise and the
good ; that, like the camp-followers of an army, all
manner of vagrants attach themselves to soldiers of
truth and godliness." 1
Nevertheless, the true doctrines preached by Wiclif
never died out of England. They had taken a deep
hold upon the mind and heart of the common peo
ple. There probably was no time during the century
when his followers, had they dared to declare them
selves, could not have been counted by thousands.
His poor preachers had gone up and down the land,
and had come to be loved and venerated in the cabins
of the poor, as much as the mendicant monks were
scorned and detested. His tracts, and, especially dif
ferent portions of his New Testament, were copied
and passed from hand to hand, to be read to little com
panies of devout believers by the cottage rush-light,
and sometimes in the open fields among the cattle.
Herdsmen, ploughboys, and mechanics taught each
1 Stoughton, Our English Bible, p. 50.

WICLIF'S INFLUENCE. 101
other the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's
Prayer, in their own English tongue. Christ and the
apostles seemed very near and precious to them, speak
ing in the simple language of the common people, and
no longer in the outlandish Latin of the monks. So
the fire burned vigorously under the surface of social
life ; so vigorously, that Longland, Bishop of Lincoln,
in a single visitation of his diocese, had upwards of
two hundred of these simple students of the Scrip
tures, principally mechanics and farm-laborers, brought
before him as heretics.1 They knew nothing of the
dialectics of the schoolmen, but they had abundance
of good, hard, English common sense. They could
see and appreciate the difference between the religion
that was preached by the fishermen of Galilee, and
that which was practiced by the monks of their own
time. " Talk about changing the bread and wine into
the flesh and blood of the Creator of the world," say
they ; " let us put a mouse into the pyx, and we shall
see whether it be the flesh of the Son of God." One
of them was audacious enough to try the experiment,
and Longland had him burnt for it.2
Thus for a hundred years the doctrines of Wiclif
made their way among the common people. There
was no great prophet to rise up and fill his place in
the Church, and so make his reform conspicuous in
England. Hus was his real successor, and he was
away in Bohemia. His real successor in his own coun
try was the Bible which he had left behind him ; and
the book was a silent preacher, that could not be sum
moned before bishops and councils ; that could not be
efficiently tried, and condemned, and put out of the
way; that did its work, upon the whole, far better
i Demaus, Life of Latimer, p. 65. 2 Id., p. 66.

102 LA TIMER.
than a living preacher, and where it most needed to
be done, in the great heart of the commonalty. It
leavened the lower and middle classes, and so grandly
prepared the way for the coming of another prophet
of the living voice, when the hour should strike for
reform to be made prominent again as a movement in
the church and the state.
And now we must note one of those strange coinci
dences of history which more than hint at the opera
tion of a divine plan and purpose underneath all hu
man movements, which, let the passions of men play
as they will, are sure to bring about the intent of
God. We remarked in the last lecture that the work
of Savonarola in Italy had no visible connection
with any great reformatory movement either precedent
or subsequent to itself; that it was islanded, so to
speak, in the sea of history. And that is true. But
even as an island often has an invisible connection
with the neighboring continent, in some subaqueous
reef, or some shoal or spit of sand or rocks, which is
only to be detected by the plummet, so the work of
Savonarola had a real though invisible connection
with that of Latimer and the great Reformation of the
English Church in the times of Henry VIII. and Ed
ward VI. That great free movement of students from
one university to another, of which I have spoken so
often, carried some influences, in a quiet but most
effective way, from Italy even into England. The en
thusiasm for the new learning, which Lorenzo the
Magnificent had done so much to foster, had drawn to
Florence several Oxford students. There was Thomas
Linacre, who was a tutor to Lorenzo's own chil
dren ; John Colet, who afterwards became Dean of St.
Paul's in London, and founded the famous St. Paul's

JOHN COLET. 103
school, and was biblical lecturer at Oxford ; Wil
liam Grocyn, divinity professor in Exeter College, who
taught Greek to Erasmus and Sir Thomas More ; and
William Lilly, who was the first to teach Greek in the
city of London. These men came back to England
from Florence, bringing not only the revival of learn
ing from the Medicean court, but a revival of spiritual
religion in their own souls from the fiery preaching
of the Prior of San Marco. The Reformation thus
strikes its roots in the high places of the Church, in
the halls and colleges, in lecture-rooms and professors'
chairs. It bids fair now to become confluent with the
spirit that is abroad among the common people. John
Colet is especially to be noted among these men. He
stands first in this hidden line of apostolic succession,
next to Savonarola. The monk of San Marco left be
hind him no better work than the conversion of this
young Englishman. He was son of a lord mayor of
London, born to fortune, and, better, destined to per
petual influence for good. He seemed to see, almost
with the eyes of Savonarola himself, the wickedness
that was in high places. "Unless there could be a
reform of the clergy, from the Pope at the head down
to the monks and the clergymen, he saw no chance of
saving the Church. ' Oh, Jesu Christ,' he says, ' wash
for us, not our feet only, but also our hands and our
head! Otherwise our disordered church cannot be
far from death.' " 1
The great name of John Colet deserves something
more than the mere passing notice which I can give it
here. He deserves honor, especially in these times of
ours, as having fought, amid circumstances immeas
urably more trying and oppressive, the same battle
1 Seebohm, Protestant Revolution, pp. 77, 78.

104 LATIMER.
which is now being waged under obloquy, against the
vicious principles and methods of scholasticism. The
system of the schoolmen claimed to embrace universal
knowledge. The sceptre which it extended over the
entire field, indiscriminately over the domain of nat
ural science, and of philosophy, and of theology, was
a rigid instrument, composed in part, of the old laws
of earlier logicians, and in part, of isolated texts of
Scripture. To this instrument, which was at once
sceptre and foot-rule, every new hypothesis in science,
every new suggestion in the way of interpretation,
must be brought, and judged by its agreement or
disagreement therewith. Investigation was smothered
and facts suppressed. From this dogmatism Colet
revolted with all his soul. The new learning, which
had opened to him the Greek Testament, had brought
him face to face with the fresh facts of the gospel
story and with the suggestive letters of the apostles ;
he roamed through them as through a garden fra
grant with the morning dews, and was filled with dis
taste for the hortus siccus of dried and labeled speci
mens which had been cut from their natural stocks
and pressed and deodorized in the musty pigeon-holes
of the system-makers. He was the first among Eng
lish reformers to resist the traditional belief in the ver
bal inspiration of the whole Bible, — perhaps I should
say in the inspiration of the Bible at all, — and to
regard it rather as the production of inspired men.
One of those vital distinctions which lay at the heart
of the new theology of that day, and which is being
emphasized afresh in these days of ours. If the Bible
is to be called an inspired book, then, logically, it
may be used as an arsenal of proof-texts for any pur
pose whatever. If it is a story of events and experi-

JOHN COLET. 105
ences, of varying human moods and feelings, of divine
self-disclosures in providence and history, which men
were authorized and empowered by an indwelling and
illumining Spirit to record, then it is quite a differ
ent thing, and cannot be so used without traversing its
intent. Doubtless one may take a beautiful tree, glorious for
its wealth of leaf and blossom and fruitage, and hew
it branch from trunk, and cut it up into lengths to suit
his own convenience, and manufacture it into boxes
and barrels to hold his merchandise, cribs for his
corn, and pens for his cattle ; but let him not then ap
ply the adjective divine to his manufacture, nor call
upon his neighbors to worship his handiwork, though
knocked together out of heaven - provided materials.
It is not divine, but very human, if indeed it be not
inhuman. We will not worship the image which Neb
uchadnezzar has set up, though God have furnished the
gold. And this was John Colet's new departure. For
this he was charged with making infidels, by men whose
unreasoning belief in the verbal inspiration of the
book had "led men blindfold into a condition of
mind in which they practically ignored the Scriptures
altogether." Now mark the succession of influence. See how the
light is passed from hand to hand, " the light of the
glorious gospel of the blessed God." Under the in
fluence of this apostolic man, John Colet, there comes
a poor Dutch student, who, eager for the new learning,
but too poor to go to Italy, works his way over to Eng
land, where, he has heard, they can teach him Greek.
John Colet can teach him Greek, and something more.
The pupil, who soon outstrips his master, is the after
wards famous Erasmus of Rotterdam; the man who

106 LATIMER.
did more than any other of his age, not even except
ing Luther himself, to satirize the monkish ignorance
and ecclesiastical follies that were around him. He
gives another mighty influence to the Reformation
among the scholars, by editing the Greek Testament
with a Latin translation. The book becomes the talk
of the universities. It opens a new world to men
who have become weary of the chaff of the schoolmen.
They are brought for the first time into quickening
contact with the word of God. That Greek Testament
of Erasmus is quietly doing among the scholars just
what Wiclif's English Testament has been doing for a
hundred years among the common people. It will
strike some mighty practical mind very soon that will
use it in a practical way. It falls into the hands of a
poor scholar, Thomas Bilney by name, who has been
trying to get ease for his conscience by fastings and
vigils, by buying masses and indulgences, and who
wonders if there be any clear light at all to which he
can betake himself. As he opens the book his eye
lights upon those words of St. Paul, so familiar to us
as to seem trite, but fresh and new to him as sun
shine to one who has lived through an Arctic night :
" This is a faithful saying and worthy of all accepta
tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sin
ners." "This one sentence," he says, "through the
power of God working on my heart, in a manner at
that time unknown to me, rejoiced my soul, then deeply
wounded by a sight and sense of my sins, and almost
in the depths of despair, so that I felt an inward
comfort and quietness which I cannot describe ; but it
caused my broken heart to rejoice." 1 While Bilney
1 Tulloch, Leaders of Reformation, p. 286 ; Demaus, Life of
Latimer, p. 26.

BILNEY'S CONFESSION. 107
was at Cambridge, a young Englishman was there pass
ing through the divinity schools, an ardent lover of the
Church, zealous for its constitution and order, hating
the new opinions that are rife, indignant at the attacks
that are being made on all sides against the vices of its
priesthood, denouncing upon every occasion the use of
the Scriptures by the people, holding to the strictest
regimen of penance and confession. He is a recognized
power among the partisans of the Church ; a hot papist ;
in fact, so prominent for his high and zealous ecclesi-
asticism, that the university has made him the official
cross-bearer, to carry the great silver cross of the uni
versity in its parades and processions ; and when he
comes to take his degree as Bachelor in Divinity, he
makes a violent oration against Philip Melancthon.
Bilney admires the spirit of the man, and withal dis
covers from certain passages of his oration that he is
ill at ease, and needs to know what he himself has ex
perienced. He seeks him out, goes to his study, begs
him to hear his confession. They are both children of
the one Church, and Bilney makes his confession. He
tells the touching story of his own spiritual conflict.
He has done penance. He has paid for masses and
absolutions. He has diligently applied himself to all
the soul remedies which the young divine had recom
mended in his oration. He has fasted and wept and
prayed, till he was more dead than alive. At last he
has read that book which the Church has forbidden to
be used by the people, and found peace in the knowl
edge of God's free love in the gift of his Son. And
now, he asks, must I abandon my peace, and go back to
my penance and despair ? The frank and simple story
of Bilney's spiritual conflicts revealed to the young
priest, as he afterwards said, more of himself than he

108 LATIMER.
ever knew before. It was a revelation to him, of a
truth ancl a life of which he had been profoundly igno
rant ; of a peace and a health for which he too had
longed, but which he had never found. He sought
and found it now. The young priest was Hugh Lat
imer. I have thus far given you his spiritual gene
alogy : Savonarola converted John Colet, John Colet
converted the great Erasmus, Erasmus converted
Thomas Bilney, and Thomas Bilney converted Hugh
Latimer.1 The little that can be said of Latimer's early years
is to be gathered mainly from his own discourses in
later life. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it
could not have been far from the year 1484, which
marks the close of a century from the death of Wiclif.
His father was a well-to-do yeoman of Leicestershire,
of whom all that we know Latimer himself has told
us, in a sermon preached before the young king,
Edward VI. " My father had a farm of three or four
pounds by year at the uttermost; and hereupon he
tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had
walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked
thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a
harness, with himself and his horse. I can remember
that I buckled his harness when he went unto Black-
heath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not
been able to have preached before the king's majesty
now. He married my sisters with five pound or
twenty nobles apiece ; so that he brought them up in
1 Perhaps the word " converted " should not be pressed in its
conventional sense in all these cases, but this is the underground
wire through which the impulse from Florence was conveyed to
the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and ultimately to the
British throne.

LATIMER'S FATHER. 109
godliness and the fear of God. He kept hospitality
for his poor neighbors ; and some alms he gave to the
poor." And in another sermon he says : " My father
was as diligent to teach me to shoot as to learn me
any other thing, and so I think other men did their
children : he taught me how to draw, how to lay my
body in my bow, and not to draw with strength of
arms as other nations do, but with strength of the
body. I had my bows bought me according to my
age and strength : as I increased in them so my bows
were made bigger and bigger ; for men shall never
shoot well except they be brought up in it ; it is
a goodly art, a wholesome kind of exercise, and much
commended in physic."
It is only a glimpse that we get into that old Eng
lish country home of four hundred years ago, but it is
a glimpse that reveals a good deal. There is piety
towards God, sound parental training, loyalty to king
and country, compassion towards the poor, thrift and
honesty, a care for physical health, a liking for
domestic toil and rural sports, a fine, breezy, whole
some atmosphere about the whole picture, something
which makes us glad and thankful while we read it in
Latimer's homely words, that we ourselves have sprung
from just such cradles as this old Leicestershire farm
house. And as one reads the sermons of the reform
er's later years, in the light of these few words of
description, in which, as he himself says, he always
calls a spade a spade, we feel the same wholesome
farm-house atmosphere in his rough but manly speech,
his shrewdness of observation, his homely figures, his
utter freedom from cant on one side and from scholas
ticism on the other, and his invariable directness in
dealing with whatever matter he has in hand.

110 LATIMER.
He passed to the University of Cambridge in 1506,
and graduated successively Bachelor of Arts, Master
of Arts, and Bachelor of Divinity. It was a singular
recognition of these peculiar powers, by virtue of which
he was afterwards to wield so great an influence, that
while he was yet an undergraduate in Divinity he was
appointed one of twelve preachers, licensed, by a
peculiar privilege of the University of Cambridge, to
officiate in any part of England. Those were stirring
times, in the world of thought and letters, during
which Latimer was in residence at Cambridge, but
the stir seems hardly to have affected him till the very
close of his university career. Just as one would ex
pect from what he himself has disclosed of his parent
age and early years at home, Latimer is the typical
Englishman ; averse to change, impatient of novelties,
loving to do everything just as it has been done from
time immemorial. Had the Sharp's rifle been in
vented in that day, he would still have cleaved to the
good old yewen-bow which his father taught him how
to handle. Erasmus was then in Cambridge awaken
ing the greatest enthusiasm in his teaching of Greek ;
but the good old Anglo-Saxon and a little Latin were
enough for Latimer. No good was to come out of
these new-fangled notions. Greek was the language
of heresy. George Stafford was reading divinity
lectures and expounding the Old Testament and the
New. But the good old school-doctors, St. Anselm
and St. Thomas Aquinas, pure fountains of orthodoxy,
honored by the Church for centuries, had long ago
told, if not all that could be learned from the Scrip
tures, at least all that any one ought to want to know.
He was an obstructive of the worst type. No new
departure for him ! What a valuable man he would

CONSER VA TISM. Ill
have been to the hyper-Calvinists of to-day, if his
birth could only have been delayed for four hundred
years ! And one other " if," — if he could not have
been softened and converted. But even he was
convertible when the warm tides of Bilney's piety
poured themselves around his stubborn soul. He was
thoroughly honest, as obstructives generally are. He
had implicit confidence in the Church as already con
stituted. And believing as he did, that most perilous
heresy was spreading among the students, he was
eager, even to indignation, against the promoters of
the new doctrines. " Perceiving the youth of the
university inclined to the reading of the Scriptures,
and leaving off the school-doctors, he came amongst
the youth, gathered together of daily custom to their
disputations ; and then most eloquently made to them
an oration, dissuading them from this new-fangled
kind of study of the Scriptures, and vehemently per
suaded them to the study of the school-authors." *
I have told you of his conversion at the hands
of Thomas Bilney. And when that took place, and
the simplicity of the gospel once possessed him, the
same temper which made him so enthusiastic a sup
porter of the rights and dogmas of the Church made
him an equally zealous advocate of religious and eccle
siastical reform. From the first to the last, however,
his preaching was exceedingly simple and practical,
and comparatively undoctrinal. He spoke ever of the
real interests and duties of the Christian life. He
addressed the hearts and consciences of men, and so
could be understood of all, whether of great intellect
or little. He had adopted no new creed, he had
simply got a new vision of Christ. He wished for no
1 Latimer's Remains, quoted by Demaus, p. 30.

112 LATIMER.
new form of worship, he would have men to be simply
true and honest in the forms they already had. He
was still a priest in the Church in which he had been
baptized and ordained, and expected to live and die in
its communion. But he had discovered that fastings
and penance and supplication of saints did not give
peace to the soul ; that peace had been already pro
cured by Christ, and full atonement made by Him ;
that all the works of man's invention, — going on pil
grimages, offering candles to the shrines of saints,
creeping to a cross, — were not the good works of
a Christian life ; that they procured nothing and evi
denced nothing ; but that a life of holiness, in obe
dience to God, visiting the sick, relieving the poor,
teaching the ignorant for the love of Christ, and leading
men to repentance, was the true life for a Christian to
lead. - All this he now began to preach, mightily and
everywhere, not only within the precincts of the uni
versity, one of whose preachers he was, but all about
the country. He would even go into lazar-houses and
hospitals to preach Christ, to jails ancl prisons, and
other places where outcasts were gathered for whom
no man cared. And his homely sense, and bright
humor, and overflowing goodness, and conscientious
appeals made him welcome alike in the pest-house and
in the University Church of St. Mary's. Such a man
must soon emerge in an horizon of broader observa
tion. He must step into the field of history.
The Bishop of Ely hears of the stir at Cambridge
caused by the new learning of the schools and the new
preaching in the pulpits, and thinks it time to look
after that quarter of his diocese. Without announce
ment, he drops into St. Mary's one day while Latimer
is preaching, to judge for himself whether certain

CARDINAL WOLSETS PROTECTION. 113
charges are true. The preacher calmly waits till the
bishop and his attendants are seated, and then, re
marking that a new audience, especially of such a rank,
deserves a new theme, he gives out a new text : " Christ
being come, an High Priest of good things to come,"
etc. (Heb. ix. 11), and draws out the theme, " Jesus
Christ the true pattern of a Christian bishop." In
showing what a true bishop is, he inevitably showed
what the present bishop was not. The contrast was
painful, no doubt. At any rate, the bishop forbade
him to preach any more in any of the churches of
Cambridge. There was one place, however, just at
hand which was exempt from the bishop's jurisdiction,
the priory church of the Augustines. And the prior,
being in sympathy with Latimer, gave him the free
use of his pulpit, so that there was no cessation of his
preaching or his influence. But the man must be
stopped, if possible, and so an appeal is made to the
great Cardinal Wolsey, who cites Latimer to appear
before him for examination. And now his old admi
ration for the schoolmen stands him in good stead.
The cardinal finds him thoroughly posted in Duns and
Aquinas ; knows far more about them, it appears, than
his accusers. Such a man surely is not very deeply
infected with the new heresies. He is a thorough
scholastic, and fairly captures the great cardinal.
" But tell me, Master Latimer, why the Bishop of Ely
misliketh thy proceedings ; tell me the truth." Lati
mer then, in his honest, straightforward way, tells
how he preached before him on Christ as the pattern
of a Christian bishop, and gives the text and the sub
stance of the sermon. " And did you preach before
him no other doctrine than this ? " " No, surely,"
said Latimer. Then said the cardinal, " If the Bishop
8

114 LATIMER.
of Ely cannot abide such doctrine, you shall have my
license, and shall preach it unto his beard, let him say
what he will." And so Latimer was discharged, with
the cardinal's license henceforth to preach not only in
Cambridge, but through all England. It makes us
think more kindly of the great archbishop, if possible,
than even Shakespeare's touching picture of his hu
miliation, to know that one of his later official acts
was thus put forth in defense of a brother English
man who had sprung from a similar rank to that of
his own origin, and who had been unjustly accused in
the honest performance of his Christian duty.
From this time Latimer stands out as a prominent
figure in English history, his name associated with
several others of whom we always think in connection
with him, notably those of Thomas Cranmer and Nic
olas Ridley. From these men, however, he differed
as much in the aspects of his work as in the elements
of his personal character. Ridley, who was afterwards
burned with him, was more of a scholar, and did his
work mainly among scholars. Cranmer, though he
became the .highest prelate in England, was more
noted for the political aspect of his career. Latimer,
in his person and in his work, furnished a connection
between the common people and the higher classes.
In him the two streams of reformation, that among
the commonalty and that in the court, became conflu
ent. He blended the two movements and made them
one. He took up the Wiclifian influence and welded
it with the work of Henry VIII. as perhaps no other
person could have done. Like Savonarola, he laid his
hand upon the extremes of society and brought the
two together, and that too, like the Florentine, mainly
by the force of his preaching. He lived in three

THE DIVORCE OF KATHERINE. 115
marked reigns. That we may more succinctly gather
up his work, we shall look at him in his relations to
the King Henry VIIL, as preacher to Edward VI.,
and as the victim of Bloody Mary.
The great cardinal (Wolsey) did not live long
enough to know fully what would be the results of that
protection which he had so generously extended to
Latimer. We need not derogate from that generosity
by supposing what his conduct would have been had
he lived and continued in power. Let us give him
full credit for what he did with good intent. Just
after Wolsey's fall, in 1529, Henry VIII., intent upon
his divorce from Queen Katherine, called upon the
universities of England and the continent to decide
the question whether or no marriage with a deceased
brother's wife were contrary to the law of God and of
nature, and Latimer was one of the twelve men ap
pointed by his own university of Cambridge to voice
its opinion. That decision was given early in the fol
lowing spring, and was favorable to the wishes of the
king. We cannot doubt that, whatever motives swayed
that commission on one side and on the other, Latimer
was perfectly honest in his opinion that the king's
marriage had been immoral and illegal. We cannot
believe that he was looking to any consequences ul
terior to an impartial decision of the question upon
grounds of morality and religion alone. He would
have decided in the same way had it been proposed to
him by the humblest subject of the realm. Nor had
he any reason to suppose that the king would know
his personal sentiment in a commission whose opinions
would undoubtedly be divided. But there was a royal
emissary in Cambridge while the debate was going on,
who discovered Latimer's position and reported it to

116 LATIMER.
the king. And the king, knowing his great repute as
a preacher, and curious to hear the man whose elo
quence had made such a sensation in Cambridge, forth
with summoned him to preach before the court the
next Sunday. To any ordinary man such a summons
would be a great event. Indeed, extraordinary ambi
tion mio-ht regard it as the culmination of life's hon-
ors. But this son of a yeoman, this simple-hearted,
plain-spoken man of the common people, with his un
kempt language and farmer-like ways, takes his first
appearance at court as a part of the divine ordering
of life, apparently going to Windsor as he would go
to some little chapel in the outskirts of Cambridge,
and with no different motive, to preach his new-found
gospel. How utterly ingenuous and unselfish he is in
the whole matter appears at once. When the king
comes and speaks to him after the sermon, he falls on
his knees and begs that his majesty will pardon a poor
woman who is lying under sentence of death in Cam
bridge jail. He and Bilney have visited her, and
they are persuaded of her innocence. And Latimer
goes back to Cambridge elated and thankful, not that
he has preached before the court, and his majesty was
pleased to commend his. discourse, but that he carries
the poor ignorant woman's pardon safe in his pocket.
Almost immediately upon his return to Cambridge,
the king summons another commission ; this time to
consult concerning the prohibition of religious books
which are circulating through the kingdom, to exam
ine their contents and decide what are erroneous and
seditious, and what are good and fruitful. The action
is aimed more immediately at the circulation of the
Scriptures in English. Again Latimer is appointed
upon this commission. But the majority are opposed

LETTER TO HENRY. 117
to him, and they vote for a wholesale and sweeping
condemnation, and a royal proclamation immediately
follows confirming their action. But Latimer is not
the man to be content with a simple protest before
his fellows. He sits down, and writes a letter to the
king himself in favor of the free circulation of the
Scriptures in the English tongue. Whether we con
sider the man who wrote it, the age in which it was
written, the haughty and imperious monarch to whom
it was addressed, or its style and contents, there is
nothing grander in the whole realm of literature.
These are its closing words: "Wherefore, gracious
king, remember yourself : have pity upon your soul :
and think that the day is even at hand when you shall
give an account of your office, and of the blood that
hath been shed by your sword. In the which day that
your grace may stand steadfastly, and not be ashamed,
but be clear and ready in your reckoning, and to have
(as they say) your quietus est sealed with the blood
of our Saviour Christ, which only serveth at that day,
is my daily prayer to Him that suffered death for our
sins, which also prayeth to his Father for grace to us
continually, to whom be all honor and praise forever !
Amen ! The Spirit of God preserve your grace ! "
This was a man to stand before kings !
The immediate object of the letter was not gained.
But it speaks a world for the heroism and grandeur
of Latimer's character, and much also for Henry's
magnanimity, that he honored the man who dared to
write it, by making him almost immediately one of the
royal chaplains.
He came to reside at court. Anne Boleyn was
queen now, and he fell into her good graces, which
fact served him well while her star was in the ascend-

118 LATIMER.
ant. But life here was not to his liking, with his sim
ple tastes and homely mode of life, and the king soon
appointed him rector of the country parish of King
ton, in Wiltshire. And here again he was happy,
going about among the sick and poor, talking with
farmers and ploughmen, doing good in all sorts of
ways, — a good pastor to a loving people, whose de
scendants, to this day, are proud of the memory of good
Master Latimer. But how impossible to bottle up
such a man in an obscure country parish ! He must
preach the blessed gospel ; and so, taking advantage
of his old Cambridge license to preach anywhere in
England, he not only fills his own pulpit, but goes out
on every side, to Bristol, to London, to Kent. And
so inevitably he comes into repeated conflict with the
old papistical spirit. He exposes the frauds of relics
and images. He enlightens the poor people as to the
mummeries and shams by which their souls are imposed
upon, and their pockets robbed of their wages ; he
turns them away from saints to the Saviour. We may
say that he might better have confined himself to the
work of his parish. But he felt that England was his
parish, and the Word of God was as fire shut up in
his bones. Preaching in London, he falls under the
displeasure of the bishop of that diocese, who is now
engaged with Sir Thomas More in the violent suppres
sion of heresy, who summons him to answer for preach
ing in his territory without express permission. This
leads to long persecution, and finally to his imprison
ment, and even to his excommunication. His appeal
to the king at length procures his release.
Cromwell soon after this became chancellor in the
place of Sir Thomas More, and Cranmer was made
about the same time Archbishop of Canterbury. Both

MADE BISHOP OF WORCESTER. 119
knew and appreciated Latimer, and through their
friendship, aided perhaps by the influence of Anne
Boleyn, Latimer is suddenly lifted out of the troubles
in which he was involved, by being made Bishop of
Worcester. One would hardly think it consonant
with the tastes and habits of the man. But it raised
him above the reach of petty persecution for the time,
and enlarged in some ways the scope of his influence.
His work as bishop he made simply that of pastor in
a larger parish. Throughout that diocese, at least, he
could teach the pure gospel unhindered, and see that
his rectors and curates preached it. He makes his
visitations to his churches and clergy truly pastoral.
He brings to the administration of his diocese his old
yeoman-like shrewdness and common sense. He tells
his clergy that they must reside on their livings ; he
will have them spend their time in reading the Scrip
tures and setting a good example. The people must
not be undertaking pilgrimages ; they will please God
better by the true exercise of their bodily labor, pro
viding for their families ; it will be more profitable for
their soul's health to bestow upon the poor what they
are wont to bestow on images. Fathers and masters
must teach their children and servants the Lord's
Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments in
the mother tongue, and curates must repeat them in
their sermons till all are familiar with them. More
over all are to be brought up to work, that begging
may not be the scandal of the nation. Such was the
good bishop's reformatory work.
And he meant that his true religion and Anglo-
Saxon sense should strike up and down through all
those grades of society which it was a bishop's privi
lege to reach. The king should have no more immu-

120 LATIMER.
nity than the ploughboy. And so one New Year's
Day, when the bishops and nobles were accustomed to
send gifts to the king, jewels and presents of gold and
silver, good Latimer sends up his gift among them,
or rather himself puts it into the king's own hand, a
New Testament with the leaf turned down to the text,.
" Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." A
wonder of wonders that bluff and fiery King Hal did
not " off with his head."
He is the same faithful, outspoken, honest friend to
God, and purity, and justice, and truth, as a bishop,
that he was as a village pastor. When he takes his
seat in Parliament for the first time as a peer of the
realm, and the question is up on the disestablishment
of the monasteries, he opposes with all his might their
perversion to secular uses. Could Latimer have had
his way in the sixteenth century, England would not
now have been cursed so heavily as she is, by the cries
of the poor and the clamors of the communist. Many
a lordly manor and many a noble hall, which has come
down to its present owners, not as the righteous and
legitimate reward of industry and honest toil, but as
the gift of favoritism to some worthless ancestor,
would now be yielding its revenues to widespread and
popular needs. He remonstrates against religious
houses which had been endowed for the relief of the
poor, being turned into king's stables. He entreats
Cromwell to spare the abbey of Great Malvern, " not
for monkery, God forbid, but to maintain preaching,
teaching, study, with praying and good works and true
hospitality." On June 9, 1536, is held the first Protestant Con
vocation of the Church of England, and Latimer is
appointed to preach the opening sermon. There he is

SERMON BEFORE CONVOCATION. 121
the same protesting spirit against clerical abuse. He
is a bishop now, and can speak untrammeled. Around
him are men who had sought to silence him, who had
sought his life. He takes for his text the Parable of
the Unjust Steward. Savonarola might have been
more fiery, he could not have been more incisive or
more practical ; humor, scorn, parable, keen wit, in
dignation, and yet abounding kindness of heart which
Latimer never forgot, sent that sermon home to the
hearts and consciences of the bishops, and to the heart
of all England. It was fruitful of beneficent changes,
which I cannot dwell upon.
Latimer's work as bishop, however, was now about
finished. The famous act of the Six Articles con
cerning the real presence, vows of chastity, communion
in both kinds, private masses, celibacy of the clergy,
and auricular confession, was brought forward in Par
liament by the popish party, was passed, and enforced
by a bill of penalties of the most sanguinary character.
Upon which Latimer resigned his episcopate. He
came home from the House of Parliament, and threw
off his episcopal robes, saying, as he did so, that he
thought he was lighter than he had ever found himself
before. He was now getting old and weary. His
spirit was neither crushed nor quenched, but he longed
for rest. But he was not suffered to remain in quiet.
He was too dangerous a spirit to be allowed his free
dom. He was no longer the Lord Bishop of Worces
ter, but plain Hugh Latimer again. As such he was
amenable to episcopal authority upon the slightest pre
tense. He was seized and imprisoned upon the accu
sation that he had spoken against the Six Articles,
and was kept a prisoner until the death of Henry in
1547.

122 LATIMER.
Happy days came again for the old man with the
accession of Edward VI., the godly boy, the Josiah of
the English throne. It is useless to speculate upon
what Edward might have been had his life been pro
longed to manhood. Never was son while a boy more
unlike his father. By the general pardon, proclaimed
as usual upon the day of the king's coronation, Lati
mer was set free, and at once taken into high favor.
He was even urged to resume his bishopric. But he
did not want again to be immersed in public affairs.
He was old and weary. He was content, as he hu
morously expressed it, to be a quondam, thanking
God that he had come to his quondamship by honest
means. But he did not mean to rust out. He could
and would preach. And men would hear him. The
great English heart had a warm place for old Master
Latimer. He never opened his mouth but men of
every rank crowded about to listen. When he preached,
as he often did, before the boy-king, it was necessary
to erect a pulpit in the king's garden, so that the
multitudes could be accommodated. He preached
once in St. Margaret's, Westminster, and all the pews
were broken in pieces, so great was the throng. His
good friend, Archbishop Cranmer, would have him
come and live with him at Lambeth. And the two
old men, who had only one great cause at heart, read
and studied and wrote together, and were happy.
Some of the beautiful homilies of the Church of
England are the fruit of those Indian summer days.
It is a fine picture that history gives of old white-
headed Latimer and grave and gentle Cranmer
dwelling together in the evening of life, among the
gray towers of Lambeth palace, worshiping together
in its lovely chapel, reading in its library, walking in

ACCESSION OF MARY. 123
its gardens, praying together for their young king,
and for the good work which is going on in their
beloved Church of England. It is a gracious touch
which Latimer himself adds to the picture, in one of
his quaint sermons. " I am no sooner in the garden,"
says he, " and have read awhile but by and by com
eth there some one or other knocking at the gate.
Anon cometh my man, and saith, ' Sir, there is one at
the gate that would speak with you.' When I come
there, then is it some one or other poor body that
desireth me that I will speak that his matter may
be heard." Then turning to the Lord Protector,1
who was present, he entreated him, for the love of
God, to see justice promptly administered, and not
provoke divine vengeance by neglecting the suits of
the poor.
Alas ! that such lovely autumn days should be so
soon followed by the winter and the storm.
With the early death of Edward, and the accession
of Mary, all this was changed. The reactionary party
came into power. Mary, indignant at Cranmer's posi
tion in relation to the matter of the succession, when
Edward died, visited her wrath without measure upon
him, and all who had concurred with him. Latimer
had left Lambeth and retired into the country. But
he was speedily summoned to London and immured
in the Tower. He went willingly and joyfully ; pass
ing through Smithfield he said, " This place hath a
great while longed for me." After lying all winter in
the Tower without any fire, about even this he could
be humorous, telling his persecutors that the cold
would cheat the fire, if they did not look better after
him. He was carried to Oxford, along with Cranmer
1 Somerset.

124 LATIMER.
and Ridley, to dispute with certain commissioners upon
the doctrine of the mass. The whole affair was a
farce, enacted with the purpose of procuring a pretext
for their condemnation. Latimer declines to dispute.
He is an old man, and not so quick at his Latin as he
once was. He has been all winter in prison without
any books. He can tell them simply what he believes,
but he does not believe in their doctrine of the mass.
For more than a year the farce is unaccountably pro
longed. The old man is worn out with his long im
prisonment. "You look for learning at my hand,
which have gone so long to the school of oblivion,
making the bare walls my library ; keeping me so long
in prison without book or pen or ink ; and now you let
me loose to come and answer to articles. You deal
with me as though two were appointed to fight for
life and death, and over night one, through friends and
favor, is cherished and hath good counsel how to
encounter his enemy ; the other, for envy or lack of
friends, all the whole night is set in the stocks. In
the morning, when they shall meet, the one is in
strength and lively, the other is stark of his limbs
and almost dead for feebleness. Think you that to
run through this man with a spear is not a goodly
victory ? "
The end is what was intended. Latimer and Ridley
were condemned, and led forth to the fire. It is
superfluous to tell how joyfully they went, as if to a
sweet night's rest after a weary day, or to repeat that
beautiful good-night of old Master Latimer, " Be of
good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man. We
shall, this day, light such a candle, by God's grace, in
England as I trust shall never be put out."
It never has been; from that candle has been

LIGHT AT EVENING-TIME. 125
lighted the cheer and brightness, the faith and purity,
the joy and hope of English-speaking homes in all the
world. " Bodies fall by wild sword-law ;
But who would force the soul tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant."

VL
CRANMER.
a. d. 1489-1556.
Victory sickens, ignorant where to rest !
Woedswokth, Eccl. Sonnets, part IT.,

VI.
CRANMER.
A. d. 1489-1556.
The subject of the present chapter affords a strong
contrast, at many points, both of character and con
duct, to the career which has just engaged our at
tention. Latimer was admirable, from first to last,
for his strong simplicity. Cranmer, though he may
not be righteously charged with duplicity, was never
theless a strange paradox of strength and weakness.
Latimer never feared the face of man. Cranmer,
though the word coward would be too strong to apply
to him, was exceedingly politic. There was a well-
defined line of personal safety which he was careful
to never overstep. Familiar as he was, with the famil
iarity of a favorite, he would never have ventured to
put a Testament, with that significantly folded leaf,
into the hand of Henry. Bishop Hooper said of him,
in a letter to the Swiss reformer, Bullinger, that he
was " too fearful about what might come to him." It
is quite probable, however, that a man of less caution
would have accomplished less in the positions which
Cranmer was called to fill. His faults, and they were
grave ones, were seldom those of commission, but
rather of infirmity, — a weak yielding to others, in
stead of being true to the convictions of his own con
science. He is, historically, the most prominent figure
9

130 CRANMER.
among the divines and statesmen of the English Refor
mation. He did more than any other man, save Henry
himself, to give shape to the movement, and his mark
is scored more deeply than that of any other man
to-day in the constitution and services of the English
Church. That that Church, in its separation from
the Church of Rome, did not become simply another
papacy, is due to him. Henry's will was good enough
to make it so, and the strength of the episcopate
would have been largely with him. It is common
enough to hear the statement that the Reformation
in England was owing to the king's determination to
gratify, at all hazards, his unlawful passions. But
that is not true. The desire to divorce Katherine
and to wed Anne furnished only an occasion, not a
cause. After this object had been accomplished,
Henry thought, just as he had thought before, that
the papal doctrines were in nowise at fault. He had
written a book against Luther and the new doctrines
that were spreading in Germany, — a book full of
vigor and virulence. And he hated them as much as
ever. Indeed, he was at heart a papist to the end
of his life. The only difference was that he proposed
to be pope in his own dominions. Independence, not
reformation, was all that he wanted. And it is owing,
for the most part, to Cranmer that the Church got
anything more. He was the fellow, in early years, of
Latimer and Bilney, and loved the truth that they
loved, drew it pure from the same fountains, and
finally became as it were the official head of the
movement which they conducted on humbler levels.
For this he had, as he needed, more finesse than they;
he lacked somewhat of that which they had in abun
dance, toughness of moral fibre.

EARLY TRAINING. 131
It is probable that Cranmer was born to a some
what softer cradle than Latimer. He belonged to
that class of English people that were fond, some four
hundred years ago, of boasting that their ancestors
" came over with the Conqueror ; " a class wliich has
gained more virtues from the soil and the people their
ancestors conquered than were brought to the con
quest. His mother, as well as his father, was of an
ancient family, and so it is probable that both his
birth and his domestic training were blessed with some
advantages, and cumbered with some disadvantages,
that Latimer's never knew. He was born at Aslacton,
near Nottingham, July 2, 1489. His early nurture
was of the hall, and not of the farm-house; of a
gentleman, not of a yeoman ; and so, unlike Latimer,
he was fitted, from the first, for the softness of the
court. His physical energies were trained in a dif
ferent way. He did not learn how to " lay his body
in the bow," but was taught to ride and to man
age a mettlesome horse, became expert in hunting
and hawking, which were the accomplishments of the
gentle-born at that day. It was then, as it is now :
the farmer's boy learns to swing the axe and guide
the plough ; the rich man's son to ride gracefully and
play polo at Newport. And mental and moral char
acteristics are apt to diverge in similar lines. Lati
mer always calls a spade a spade. Cranmer, if he
knows what the implement is at all, gives it some
euphuistic name. It is doubtful, however, if the
mental discipline to which Latimer was subjected was
equal to that which was bestowed upon Cranmer.
The father of the latter, according to a chronicle of
the time, "did sett hym to scole with a mervellous

132 CRANMER.
severe and cruell scolemaster." x And just as men
of that day meant fifteen times as much as we do
when they spoke of pounds, shillings, and pence, so
it is with these terms of severity and cruelty. The
severities of our school-rooms would have been mere
pleasantries to the pedagogue of Cranmer's boyhood.
He was restrained by no tender-hearted school-com
mittee in the administration of school-room justice,
but plied the birch in autocratic freedom. Nicholas
Udall, the famous schoolmaster of Eton in Cranmer's
time, has been handed down in the verses of Thomas
Tusser, one of his pupils, who could not forget or
forgive the smart inflicted by his master : —
" From Paul's I went,
To Eton sent,
To learn straightways
The Latin phrase.
Where fifty-three
Stripes given to me
At once I had;
For fault but small,
Or none at all,
It came to pass
Thus beat I was.
See, Udall, see,
The mercy of thee
To me, poor lad."
And Cranmer himself commented in after years
even more seriously upon the severities of his own
school-master. "His tyranny towards youthe was
suche, that, as he thoughte, the saide scolemaster so
appalled, dulled, and daunted the tender and fyne
wittes of his scolers, that thei comonlie more hated
1 Anecdotes of Archbishop Cranmer, by Ralph Morice, his Secre
tary. Camden Society's Publications.

SCHOLARSHIP. 133
and aborred good literature than favored or inbraced
the same ; whose memories were also therby so mu-
tulated and wounded that for his parte he lost moche
of that benefitt of memory aud audacitie in his youthe
that by nature was given unto hym, whiche he could
never recover." x
But however much Cranmer may have suffered in
his own estimation under the severity of this early dis
cipline, it did not kill his love of learning. He was,
from his boyhood to the end of his life, the enthusiastic
scholar; the patient, investigating, and thorough stu
dent; loving knowledge for itself, and never, thinking
of it as a ladder by which he might climb into emi
nence. He is a fine illustration of the fact that Fame
seeks the man who never thinks of seeking for her,
but who is intent upon learning from the pure delight
which he has in letters. When Cardinal Wolsey
founded his new college at Oxford, and sent to Cam
bridge for a company of its foremost scholars to be
fellows of the new institution, Cranmer was solicited
to be of the number. And it is evidence of his en
tire freedom from anything like selfish ambition, that
neither the fine salary offered, nor the avenues to pro
motion opened before him by the friendship of the
great cardinal, were sufficient to tempt him away from
his humble place as the scholar of Jesus College, in
Cambridge. He became a student in this college in 1503, at
fourteen years of age, his father having died a little
before. From that time until he was twenty-two, he
gave himself unweariedly, and with great success, to
the usual scholastic studies. I have already described
1 Anecdotes and Character of Archbishop Cranmer, by Ralph
Morice, his Secretary.

134 CRANMER.
the intellectual and spiritual ferment which at thia
time was taking place at Cambridge. With the open
and ingenuous mind of the true scholar, Cranmer was
always ready to welcome light from any quarter. He
never seems to have passed through any such sudden
and almost violent transition as Latimer did. He
seized upon the new learning as enthusiastically as he
had pursued the old. When Erasmus came to teach
Greek he was not afraid of it as Latimer was because
it was the language of heresy ; the fathers and school
men were not sufficient for him, if anything was to be
known which they had not taught. And so after he
has given eight years to the schoolmen, he gives four
or five more to Erasmus and Faber. And then, as the
books and doctrines of Luther are being brought over
into England, engaging the attention of the learned,
and even enlisting the antagonism of King Henry,
Cranmer determines to discover their truth or false
hood for himself, and gives three years more to the
study of the Bible alone. There is something im
pressive in this immense prodigality of time. These
new questions, and particularly that radical question
which is now beginning to agitate the minds not only
of theologians but of the common people, whether the
authority of the Romish Church or that of the Scrip
tures should dictate the rule of faith, are not to be set
tled, as some men think to settle similar questions in
these days, by listening to a course of boisterous lec
tures on one side or the other, or reading a half dozen
review articles, or by the intemperate dogmatism of
newspaper writers. He must get at the spirit and
meaning of the Word of God by calm and open-
minded and unwearying study. And what he has de
manded of himself he also imposes upon others. He

THE ROYAL DIVORCE. 135
is a doctor of divinity and has been made examiner
in theology to the university. And he demands as the
first condition of a certificate to any student, however
superior his other acquirements, a competent knowl
edge of the Bible. To this demand he adheres reso
lutely, in the face of all the traditions of the univer
sity, and in spite of the deep and bitter animosity
which the unwonted conditions awaken among the
students. And so it comes to pass that Cranmer is forty years
old, a ripe scholar, with a vast mass of erudition at
his command, — for he has read slowly, with pen in
hand, — making note of everything as he has passed
along, probably one of the best furnished men, intel
lectually, that the University of Cambridge can pro
duce, when, by what seems like a mere accident, he
suddenly appears upon the scene of history. Of
course, like everybody else, he has been interested in
the great national question concerning the divorce of
Queen Katherine. He has thought it over in all its
aspects. It was not so simple a question as we with
our clearer light are apt to think it. But one answer
could be given now. But we must put ourselves back
into the England of three hundred and fifty years ago.
There was, on the one side, a wedded life of more
than a score of years, in which Katherine had been to
Henry a true and faithful wife, had borne his children,
had been known and loved through all England as a
true queen, and the marriage had been sanctioned
from the first by the authority of the Pope, which all
parties had then recognized. But there were grave
facts on the other side. There was much at stake
beside the "inclinations of the profligate monarch."
These alone might have been and probably were his

136 CRANMER.
prime motives. But his statesmen and people were
thinking of something else. The succession to the
throne was endangered. The Princess Mary might
not live. Or if she did, no queen regnant had so far
ever occupied the throne. Whether she lived or died,
as custom and law then were, the death of Henry
would have been surely followed by insurrection or
civil war. And so when the king's passions suggested
to him the divorce of the old wife and the wedding of
a new one, men of all classes were ready to consider
whether the first marriage had been legal, or whether,
if contrary to the laws of God and nature, the Pope's
dispensation had ever made it really valid. If it had
been wrong at the outset, then there was no heir to
the throne. And even if the wrong had been made
right by a score of years of wedded life, still, accord
ing to immemorial custom, there was no heir.1
While matters were in this unsettled condition a
fearful sickness broke out at Cambridge, and Cranmer,
taking two young pupils who were studying with him,
retired to the house of a kinsman near Waltham.
While he was there the king, who was on a journey,
passed the night at Waltham Abbey. Two of his suite
were lodged in the house where Cranmer was sojourn
ing, and at the supper-table the one theme came up
which was discussed at all the supper-tables of the
kingdom. Cranmer casually remarked, that he had
not probably looked into the matter so thoroughly as
his hearers, but it seemed to him that if the divines
of the universities should decide that marriage with a
brother's widow is illegal, and if it were proved that
Katherine had been married to Prince Arthur, her
1 See the question discussed at length by Froude, History,
ch. ii.

IN THE SERVICE OF HENRY VIII. 137
marriage to Henry could be declared null and void by
the ordinary ecclesiastical courts without any necessity
of an appeal to Rome. This entirely innocent remark
made its author Archbishop of Canterbury, lifted him
from the state of a humble student to that of the first
subject of the realm, and brought him finally to the
stake. It was reported to Henry, who saw the point
in a twinkling, and exclaimed, " Who is this Dr. Cran
mer ? I must see him. Let him be sent for out of
hand. This man, I trow, has got the right sow by the
ear." This casual remark of Cranmer had indeed a
broader scope than even he dreamed of at the time of
its utterance. It logically involved the Reformation in
all its length and breadth. If the Bible could be con
sulted as an authority without need of appeal to the
Pope in this single case of temporary interest, then
why not in all cases ? If its decisions were binding
without appeal in such a matter as the divorce of the
King of England, then why not in all matters pertain
ing in any way to the interests of the realm ? Cran
mer had thus put an end, unwittingly, to his quiet and
beloved student life, and was immediately commanded
by the king to put his thoughts upon the divorce ques
tion into a book. The next three or four years were
accordingly spent by him exclusively in the king's
business, in writing his book, in going to Rome and
Germany at Henry's command, to defend its doctrine
at the papal and imperial courts, in discussing the
subject with the doctors of the universities. Had he
entered upon this work with far less of honest convic
tion than he really had at first, he could hardly have
failed under such a procedure to become a strong par
tisan. Nor need we doubt his entire honesty in it all,
cruel as it seems to the forsaken and dishonored

138 CRANMER.
queen, subservient as it seems to the brutish passions
of her husband. Such men as CEcolampadius, Zwingli,
and Calvin on the continent, men who could have had
no personal interest in the matter, entirely agreed
with him upon the invalidity of the marriage. And
yet one cannot but feel, as he is devoting his time
and his superb scholarship to the question, that he
is being made the tool of the king. The only fact
that forbids us to call him so is that Henry never
seems to despise him. No man was ever quicker to
detect a base mind than Henry VIII., or swifter to
visit it with contempt when detected. And his bear
ing towards Cranmer is always one of respect.
While he is away upon this business in Germany
(1532), two events occur which bear seriously upon
his future history. He marries a niece of Osiander,
and the Archbishop of Canterbury dying, the king
at once nominates Cranmer to the vacant primacy.
Whether Cranmer looked upon this offered elevation
as a reward for service already performed, or as a
bribe for other service which might be disgraceful, or
whether he thought his marriage was a valid bar to its
honorable acceptance, cannot be known. At any rate
he desired to decline it, and did his best to escape the
promotion. He tarried long upon the way home, and
by one pretext after another tried to delay his return,
in the hope that the monarch would change his pur
pose. I think he must be entirely acquitted of all
selfish ambition in the matter. Indeed, the disregard
for place and honor must be considered one of the dis
tinguishing graces of his character. But he was not
strong enough to refuse the king's command. At his
consecration, when the usual oath of ecclesiastical alle
giance to the Pope was presented to him, he took it

MADE ARCHBISHOP. 139
with an emphatic protest that his first allegiance was
to his king and country ; that with him the royal su
premacy must take precedence of papal authority. By
this act he gained a right to the title, which some his
torians have accorded and others disputed, of "the
first Protestant Archbishop of the Church of Eng
land." It was not much of a protest, however, under
the circumstances. It involved no special courage. It
jumped with the humor of the mighty sovereign who
was at his back, and who had lifted him to his seat.
Indeed, the oath would have been quite as courageous
without the protest. The courage of that immediate
hour was on the side of the popish party, with the
bishops and priests who in various parts of the king
dom were condemning the action of the king from
their pulpits. If Cranmer had been of their mind, he
would probably have held his peace and let matters
take their way. Nevertheless the protest, little as it
cost him, was a very decided step in the progress of
the Reformation. It was an official declaration, on the
part of the highest ecclesiastical authority in England,
of the king's and the country's virtual independence
of the Pope. Invested with his new authority under
this protest, he could now, pope or no pope, pronounce
Henry's marriage with Katherine void, which he at
once proceeded to do. And in so doing he virtually
brought the first fagot for his own burning ; for by
that act he necessarily declared the Princess Mary ille
gitimate, a fact which she will not forget — and who
can blame her ? — when she comes to the throne. And
so poor Katherine, unthroned, uncrowned, and robbed
of a name and honor dearer to any virtuous woman
than ever throne or crown could be, declared now to
be only a cast-off mistress of the man to whom she

140 CRANMER.
has been faithful for a score of years, her child unfa
thered, and declared by the highest authority of the
kingdom the offspring of a guilty love, goes away to
weep out her remaining life in disgrace and solitude.
Papist as she was, and Protestant as I am, I blush
that the Reformation ever advanced by one step at
such a cost. She was a martyr quite as truly as any
that her savage daughter ever roasted at Smithfield,
or beheaded on Tower Hill.
Little more than a week after he had pronounced
Katherine's disgrace, Cranmer set her crown upon the
brows of her successor, Anne Boleyn. What a farce
it must all have seemed, this crowning and uncrown
ing, before he had done with it ! Just three years later
he was called upon to declare this second marriage
void, after standing godfather to Anne's child, Eliza
beth; then to see that sight, in Christian England,
under a monarch that called himself Christian, and
Defender of the Faith, — that sight worthy of Nero
or Herod, — of a wife beheaded one day and another
wedded the next ; to see her die after a few months of
wifehood, and then to celebrate the marriage of a
fourth; and then in a few days to preside over the
convocation which annuls this bond, and in less than
a fortnight more to see the royal Bluebeard adding
Katherine Howard's name to the fatal list ; to be com
pelled in a year and a half to tell the king that this
last wife has played him false, and to see him wedded
once more to a virtuous woman, who only manages to
keep her crown upon her head and her head upon her
shoulders by a piece of finesse worthy of Cranmer
himself ; to stand at last by the death-bed of the mon
arch, and administer the consolations of the last hour
to his earthy and sensual soul ; to crown his successor,

INFLUENCE WITH ANNE. 141
and to stand again by him in his dying hour ; and, in
spite of his oath to the contrary, to lend himself to a
plot that proposes to rob the rightful successor of her
crown, and that brings the fairest, wisest, loveliest
maiden of England to the block ; and so to wind up
his fortunes with the day that closes the career of the
"twelfth -day queen," — such was Cranmer's part in
the matrimonial affairs of Henry VIII. Read the
story from either point of view, as it has been recorded
by Catholic or by Protestant writers, — and there have
been moderate and reasonable, as well as violent and
unfair historians on either side, — and the man's lack
of heroism is palpable and lamentable. There is no
heroism in him. If he is not exactly a coward, he is
but one shade off. Latimer, though he believed in the
illegality of Katherine's marriage, yet, put into Cran
mer's place, would have lost his head from his shoulders
time and again. The man's softness was largely due
to nature, and largely, no doubt, to an extreme view
into which he had grown of the divine right, the false
and fatal theory that the king can do no wrong.
Apart from all this, however, as Archbishop of Can
terbury and Primate of all England, he accomplished
much for the establishment of the Reformation. He
befriended it always so far as was consistent with his
personal safety. As we saw in the last chapter, he
befriended Latimer and Ridley. Through his early
acquaintance with Anne Boleyn, in whose father's
family he had lived while writing his book on the di
vorce question, and whom he had converted, intellec
tually at least, to a friendship for the new doctrines,
he no doubt kept the king friendly to them also, while
Anne was in favor.
In 1533, within a year of the king's marriage to

142 CRANMER.
Anne, Cranmer, by his influence in Parliament, se
cured the passage of an act which may be regarded
as the official termination of papal authority in Eng
land. It was not, of course, the eradication of pa
pacy ; that did not take place in Henry's, nor yet
in Edward's time. But it very materially circum
scribed the visible power of Rome. It was legally
determined, and the legislation was indorsed by con
vocation and by the universities, that " the Bishop
of Rome has no greater jurisdiction conferred upon
him in this realm of England than any other foreign
bishop." It was an entirely safe degree of influence
for Cranmer to exert. It stirred up against him a
virulent animosity among the bishops and clergy, to
be sure, but it was a measure which would be sure to
keep him in favor with the king, who was delighted
with anything that would confirm his newly-assumed
claim to be the head of the Church. It newly em
phasized the royal prerogative, and gave Henry's as
sumption the force of law.
The next year he turns aside a little from politics to
attend to the more strictly theological aspects of his
work. With the consent of convocation, he sets on
foot a translation of the Scriptures. It was at the
same time and about the same business that Latimer
wrote that famous letter to the king, after which Henry
made the brave man his royal chaplain. The work
was accomplished within the space of three or four
years, and, chiefly through Cranmer's and Latimer's
influence, an order was procured in 1538 that a copy
of the Bible in the English tongue should be set up in
every church in a convenient place for public reading.
A great advance this — let us give Cranmer all the
merit we can — upon the condition of things only a

TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE. 143
little time before, when poor men and women had only
little fragments of the Scriptures, painfully copied by
hand, passed slyly about from one neighbor to another,
hidden in barns and cellars, concealed in the rick of
straw, or even buried in the ground. " It was won
derful," says Strype, "to see with what joy this book
of God was received, not only among the learneder
sort and those that were noted for lovers of the Ref
ormation, but generally all England over, among all
the vulgar and common people ; and with what greed
iness God's Word was read, and what resort to places
where the reading of it was. Everybody that could
bought the book, or busily read it, or got others to
read it to them, if they could not themselves : and
divers more elderly people learned to read on purpose.
And even little boys flocked among the rest to hear
portions of the Holy Scriptures read.". And then the
old chronicler goes on with the story of a boy who was
persecuted at home for going to the church to mingle
with the little knot of listeners, fascinated as he was
with the story of the Gospels, and how, to escape his
father's insane wrath, he secretly learned to read, and
clubbed his scanty funds with those of another youth
till they could purchase a New Testament, which they
read in turn, and, to conceal it, hid it under the bed-
straw ; how, being discovered again and dragged from
his couch by the hair of his head and beaten unmer
cifully, he endured the beating with a kind of joy, con
sidering it was for Christ's sake, and shed not a tear,
his father seeing which was more enraged, and ran
down and fetched a halter and put it about his neck,
saying he would hang him.1 And so, though Cranmer
1 " The cruel treatment of William Maldon, when a boy, at
Chelmsford, by his Father." — Narratives ofReformation. Cam
den Society.

144 CRANMER.
was not much of a martyr himself, and, if placed at
that very time under the same conditions, would prob
ably have been out-heroed by the boy, was nevertheless
doing something to help the cause for which martyrs
suffered. The dissolution of monasteries and other religious
houses was now going on with great vigor. Henry,
finding that as head of the Church he had more than
his hands full, had placed at the head of ecclesiasti
cal affairs Thomas Cromwell, a man who, as his fate
proved, was more vigorous, though less politic, than
Cranmer. In this matter they two now worked to
gether. The minister ancl the archbishop labored
towards the same end, but with a different spirit and
from different motives. The one hated to see the
kingdom drained of its wealth, to send taxes and
annats to Rome, and to support an idle, vicious, un
productive, and worthless class in the community. He
had the eye of a shrewd and practical political econ
omist. He longed to rid the kingdom of a burden
which bore heavily upon the pecuniary interests of
the king and the civil interests of the people. Cran
mer, on the other hand, cooperated with Cromwell on
more distinctively religious grounds. The king, of
course, did not care for the spirit or motive of either
so long as he could convert the vast property held in
various ways to his own uses. He had lived fast, and
his treasury was impoverished. His father had left
enormous wealth, and Henry had come to his throne
the richest monarch of Europe. But the vast re
sources had been squandered, and this movement
promised to restore his fortunes. Suddenly it was
discovered that Parliament had passed an act giving
to the king and his heirs all the monastic estab-

ROYAL ROBBERY. 145
lishments in the kingdom whose revenues were two
hundred pounds per annum or less. Three hundred
and eighty establishments thus fell at a single blow
into the king's possession, yielding him one hundred
thousand pounds ready money, and an income be
sides of thirty-two thousand pounds per year. Put
it into the dollars of the present day, and it means
seven million five hundred thousand dollars ready
money, and an income of two million four hundred
thousand dollars, — a sum of which ordinary minds
can have not much more adequate conceptions than
of eternity, or the infinitude of space. Besides all
this, three or four years later the final suppression of
all the monasteries was decreed. JThese vast resources
had originally been devoted to religious, benevolent,
literary, and hospitable uses. And their perversion
to the uses of private rapacity was a gigantic wrong.
It is no wonder that the spoliation resulted in riots
and insurrections. Latimer had the courage to lift up
his voice against it, like the blast of a trumpet. His
white and honest soul could not bear to see the whole
sale sacrilege. Cranmer also protested, but mildly.
His place and position, and favor with the king, gave
him the opportunity, and made it his duty, to protest
with vigor, but there was no vigor in the man. He
kept the line of personal safety in his eye, and dared
not overstep it by a hair's breadth. There they were,
— going for uses which would be of no large benefit
to the people, of no advantage for public accommoda
tion, not for hostelries, and hospitals, and caravansa
ries, for colleges and schools, — shrines, gold and sil
ver vessels, relics, fair domains, abbeys, monasteries,
nunneries, to be given to king's favorites, to be spent
in useless wars, to be wasted in debaucheries. And
10

146 CRANMER.
all that Cranmer and his fellow-protestants secured —
and it marks like a thermometric scale the timidity
of the primate — was that six new bishoprics were
formed, and fourteen abbeys were converted into ca
thedrals, or collegiate churches. Perhaps Latimer
himself would have secured no more, but he would
have made a brave attempt, if he had lost his head
for it.
The story of Cromwell's fall is familiar to all who
have read the history of Henry VIII. Cranmer inter
ceded for the unfortunate man, but his intercession
was, like himself, weak, and of no avail. So was his
intercession for Anne Boleyn, even when he knew, or
might have been well assured, of her innocence.
Of course Cranmer could not take even so luke
warm a stand as he did in promoting the Reformation
without making many enemies. Conspiracies were
formed once and again for his overthrow by Bonner
and Gardiner. But they were thwarted by the king.
Cranmer was too useful a primate. Henry would
rather have sacrificed the whole bench of bishops
than lose one who served him so well. But these
very conspiracies against him were something for
after ages to be thankful for. They disclosed a lovely
feature in Cranmer's character. They did not em
bitter him. They did not sour him. Cranmer's
charity, unlike his courage, knew no circumscribing
lines which it could not overstep. The very men who
plotted against his life, who charged him with heresy,
with malfeasance, with treason, were as freely forgiven
as if they had charged him with some petty offense
against propriety. So that it passed into a proverb,
" Do my lord of Canterbury an injury and it will
make him your friend." He was certainly ChristJy

ACCESSION OF EDWARD. 147
upon some occasions when to have been vindictive
would have been easier.
When Edward VI. came to the throne, in 1547,
Cranmer, by the will of Henry, became head of the
Council of Regency ; but he acquiesced in the ar
rangement by which Somerset became Lord Pro
tector. It was a happy day for Cranmer when he set
the crown upon the young king's brow. The short
time that he reigned offered few opportunities for the
display of the weaker side of the archbishop's char
acter. He was relegated now to the life which he
loved, and had not to study how he might reconcile
duty with the pleasure of the king. He became the
quiet student among the towers and gardens of his
palace at Lambeth, and engaged himself largely dur
ing these few peaceful years upon the formularies of
the English Church. Those beautiful services, which
every devout Christian loves, and every lover of ma
jestic and rhythmic English admires, speak every Sun
day, in every episcopal church, of the loving labor of
Cranmer's pen. The noble Litany is offered through
the words of his sympathetic translation. The Thirty-
nine Articles were largely framed by him, a workman
who, in this at least, needed not to be ashamed. He
secured to the English Church a creed in consonance
with those of the reformed churches of the conti
nent. He corresponded frequently, and at length,
with the wise men of Germany, of France, of Hol
land, of Geneva. He called scholars from abroad to
shed the light of their religion and learning at the
English court.1 So passed the happy days until that
too brief reign was over, at the close of which Cran
mer again gave evidence of his weakness, and took
1 See McCrie's Knox, Period III.

148 CRANMER.
the last step which made for him the fires of Oxford
inevitable. He stands by the dying-bed of Edward,
as he had stood by that of his father. When Henry
was dying. he had exacted a vow from Cranmer that
under no circumstances would he consent to any al
teration in the succession of the crown. It was due
to the Lady Mary, Henry's child by his first wife,
Katherine of Arragon.1 Her religious tendencies
were well known. Even Henry himself had not been
able, either by authority or force, to compel her to
his views. Edward feared for the good work of the
Reformation should it fall into her hands, — and af
ter events proved that no fears could have been too
strong. The dying boy made his will, by which he
decreed the diversion of the crown from the imme
diate line of Henry to the head of his young cousin,
the Lady Jane Grey, and with earnest entreaties be
sought Cranmer to give his sanction to the devise.
It was a hard place, and Cranmer, with his tender.
heart towards the dying king, and with his fears for
the interests of the Church, had not the strength to
stand by the vow which he had made to the father,
which was, moreover, the thing of right, and justice,
and honor. His weakness would have sealed his
doom now if it had not been sure before. He ac-
1 Bythe will of Henry, the crown "was bequeathed to the
prince (Edward) and his issue, or, in default of such issue, to
his own heirs, lawfully begotten of his entirely beloved wife,
Queen Katherine, or any other lawful wife whom he might here
after marry. ' For lack of such issue and heirs ' it was to de
scend, in compliance of Act of Parliament, to the Lady Mary
and her heirs, and next to Elizabeth and her heirs, provided
they married not without the consent of their brother, or of the
Council to be named for his guardianship." — Froude, Hist.,
ch. xxiii.

MARY'S GRUDGE. 149
ceded to Edward's request, recognized the Lady Jane
as queen, and, for a wonder, continued to stand by
her after her cause had been deserted by nearly all
others. And so Mary, afterwards to be known as the Bloody,
came to the throne. It was hers by right, and the
right made her strong from the start. There were
some questions that were rankling in her breast that
she proceeded to answer. Who had labored with
tongue and pen, with hand and foot, through England
and on the continent, for years, to accomplish the de
thronement of her mother ? Cranmer ! Who had offi
cially pronounced that mother a twenty-years' mistress,
and herself illegitimate, — a princess without a name ?
Cranmer ! Who had joined her father's hand in mar
riage to an upstart of inferior rank, while her royal
mother was still living, in loyal and loving seclusion ?
Cranmer ! Who had helped her brutish father to break
her mother's heart ? Cranmer ! And who, through
all these years, had aided and abetted him in perpetu
ating the wrong ? Cranmer ! Who had officially ban
ished from England the authority and the rites of the
Church which she loved ? Cranmer ! Who, to crown
the long list of wrongs, had permitted her personal
rights to be ignored, and had lent himself to the at
tempt to put another upon her throne, and her hered
itary crown upon the head of another? Cranmer!
There was no man in the realm to whom she owed
such a measure of indignation and wrath.1
1 Foxe says, " For as yet the old grudges agaynst the arch
bishop for the devoreement of her mother remayned hid in the
bottom of her heart, —
" ' Manet alta mente repostnm
Judicium Paridis spretasque injuria matris.' "
— Narratives of Reformation. Camden Society.

™m

150 CRANMER.
There can be no question, I think, that his destruc
tion was determined upon from the moment the scep
tre was put into her hand. And that sending of Cran
mer up to Oxford along with Ridley and Latimer, to
dispute with the doctors about doctrines and sacra
ments, was all a matter of policy on Mary's part. She
would have him condemned and burnt as a heretic
rather than upon these purely personal grounds which
I have named. She could gratify her vengeance and
yet preserve a sort of rehgious decorum, if decorum is
not too strong a word to be applied to incarnate and
frantic cruelty.1
A strong glamour of romance has been thrown
around the last days of Cranmer by many friendly
and not always ingenuous pens. His recantations of
heresy, six in number, in which he gradually conceded
all that his theological enemies desired, are deemed to
have been more than canceled by his dying declara
tion, his recantation of his recantations, and he has
been triumphantly numbered with the martyrs. But
I confess that I do not feel very triumphant for
Cranmer as I re-read the story of his life and death.
The truth is he did not withdraw his recantations so
long as he perceived the hope of life before him.
Only when death was certain, and he already stood
face to face with the judgment -seat of God, and
covering the truth could no longer avail to save his
life, did he say, "This hand hath sinned, and this
hand shall be the first to burn." It is like the con
fession which a trembling man makes when he comes
1 It is also supposed by some that the queen was determined
to gratify her enmity by causing Cranmer to suffer the more
painful death by burning for heresy rather than by decapi
tation, which was the penalty for high treason.

WORDS BEFORE THE FIRE. 151
under the shadow of the gallows. His last confession
was extorted by fear, even as his recantations had
been. The noble army of martyrs cannot claim him.
He was the victim of his own weakness. That fatal
line of self-interest was his bane to the very last.
His going into the fire was brave enough. It has
some elements even of grandeur. And though his
final confession was elicited by the thought that he
was about to appear before God, we need not ques
tion, I think, whether it or the recantations were false.
Let me close with a few words which he uttered 1 as
he was going to the fire, that our involuntary reflec
tions may not get the better of our charity.
" Good Christian people, my dearly beloved brethren
and sisters in Christ, I beseech you most heartily to
pray for me to Almighty God that he will forgive me
all my sins and offenses, which be many without num
ber and great above measure. But yet one thing
grieveth my conscience more than all the rest, whereof,
God willing, I intend to speak more hereafter." And
here, kneeling down, he said : —
" O Father of heaven ! O Son of God, Redeemer
of the world ! O Holy Ghost, proceeding from them
both, three persons and one God, have mercy upon me
most wretched caitiff and miserable sinner. I have
offended both heaven and earth more than tongue can
express. Whither, then, may I go, or whither should
I flee for succor ? To heaven I am ashamed to lift up
mine eyes, and in earth I find no refuge. What shall
I then do ? Shall I despair ? God forbid ! O good
God ! Thou art merciful and refusest none that come
to Thee for succor. To Thee, therefore, do I come. To
1 Narratives of the Days of the Reformation. Edited for the
Camden Society by J. G. Nichols, F. S. A.

152 CRANMER.
Thee do I humble myself, saying, 0 Lord God, my sins
are great, but yet have mercy upon me for thy great
mercy. Thou didst not give thy Son unto death,
O heavenly Father, for our little and small sins only,
but for all and the greatest of the world, so that the
sinner return and repent unto Thee with his whole
heart as I do here at this present. ... I crave noth
ing, O Lord, for mine own merits but for thy name's
sake, that it may be hallowed thereby, and for thy
dear Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."
Then standing up, he said : " Every man, good
people, desireth at the time of his death to give some
good exhortation that others may remember after his
death and be the better thereby. So I beseech God
grant me grace that I may speak that something at
this my departure whereby God may be glorified and
you edified." Then he exhorts them against the love
of the world and its false glamours, to obey their king
and queen in the fear of God ; that they live in love
like brothers and sisters, avoiding strife and conten
tion ; that the rich in the world's goods remember how
hard it is to get into the kingdom of God with their
wealth ; that they be generous and charitable to God's
poor. " And now I come to the great thing that so much
troubleth my conscience more than any other thing
that ever I did or said in my hfe. And that is setting
abroad in writing what was contrary to my conscience
and the truth, which now I here renounce and refuse
as things written with my hand contrary to the truth
which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of
death, to save my life if it might be. And that is all
such bills or papers which I have written and signed
with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have

BURNT— BUT NO MARTYR. 153
written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my
hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my
hand, therefore, shall first be punished, for if I may
come to the fire that shall first be burnt ; I refuse the
Pope utterly as Christ's enemy and antichrist, with all
his false doctrine. For the sacrament I believe as in
my book against the Bishop of Winchester " — And
here, adds the Chronicler, he was suffered to say no
more. And so he went to the fire, as one has said,
without the apostate's shame, but without the martyr's
crown.

VIL
MELANCTHON. A. d. 1497-1560.
Res et verba Philippus; verba sine re Erasmus; res sine verbis Lu-
therus; nee res, nee verba Carolostadius ; that is, what Philip Melancthou
writes has hands and feet ; the matter is good and the words are good ;
Erasmus Roterodamus writes many words but to no purpose ; Luther has
good matter hut the words are wanting ; Carlstadt has neither good words
nor good matter. — Luthek, Table-Talk. DCCCXLVI.

VIL
MELANCTHON.
A. d. 1497-1560.
I AM apprehensive that the character which will
now pass under review may fail to awaken that degree
of interest wliich has been elicited by some others that
we have considered. The landscape of Melancthon's
life is a quiet one. There is little to make it pic
turesque. It has no rugged, striking, tragic features.
The story has no thrilling episodes. There is little or
no dramatic movement. It is the history of a retiring,
thoughtful, studious man. His life is of even tenor,
seldom skirting even the outer rim of a dangerous
vortex, and his death is natural and peaceful. The
great reformer, whose associate he was, drew both
Melancthon's portrait and his own in that remark
able contrast which has been so often quoted : " I,
Martin Luther, am born to be forever fighting with
opponents, and with the devil himself, which gives a
controversial and warlike cast to all my works. I clear
the ground of stumps and trees, root up thorns and
briers, fill up ditches, raise causeways, and smooth the
roads through the woods: but to Philip Melancthon
it belongs, by the grace of God, to perform a milder
and more grateful labor; to build, to plant, to sow, to
water, to please by elegance and taste." 1 Theologically
i Luther's Preface to Melancthon's Colossians.

158 MELANCTHON.
and historically it is impossible to separate Melanc-
thon from Luther ; they belong each to the other in the
story of the Reformation, as the centripetal and the
centrifugal forces in the movements of nature, and for
a similar reason. The one is the necessary comple
ment of the other. The centripetal force unbalanced
by the centrifugal would draw all movement inward
until it would cease in a centre of perfect repose. The
centrifugal unbalanced by the centripetal would fly
off and expend itself uselessly in the void of infinite
space. Protestantism itself generally needs to be re
strained and modified by a protest within itself, as
every steam-engine needs the self-controlling arrange
ment known as the " governor " to keep its energies
within the lines of self-preservation. It is apt to go
too fast and too far; to become ultra in expression
and action. It was particularly so in the Protestant
ism which was voiced by Luther. It has been quite
the fashion with historians of the Reformation to
charge Melancthon with timidity and even with weak
ness, and the popular mind is probably possessed of
such a conception of his character. But weak he
surely was not, and if he was timid, his fears were
never of a personal or ignoble character. His fear
was never for himself, but only for the cause of truth,
which he loved as fervently as did Luther. Luther
was boldly and fearlessly executive ; Melancthon was
calmly and thoughtfully judicial. Luther saw but one
thing at a time, and drove at that with all his might
and main ; Melancthon had at once a more penetrant
and a more comprehensive vision. Dr. John Duncan
said of the two men, " If a subject could be split up
into twelve separate points, and also compressed into
one, Luther would take the one, Melancthon the

MELANCTHON AND LUTHER. 159
twelve." Luther was for striking the blow, come
what would, and perish what might ; Melancthon saw
remoter consequences, and would modify the blow in
its force and its direction accordingly. Luther was
very courageous, in that he dared to oppose single-
handed, not only the hierarchy of Rome with all its
traditions and venerable associations and worldly pomp
and power, but as many devils as could pack them
selves tile-fashion upon the house-tops of Worms. But
I am not sure that of the two men Melancthon was
not the braver, for he calmly dared to oppose or mod
ify the opinion of Luther. In his famous utterance,
" Here I stand ; I cannot do otherwise ; God help
me! " Luther claimed the indefeasible privilege of the
individual reason to know and judge the truth for it
self. But after he had asserted and gained this right
for himself and his German fellow-reformers, he re
fused the same right to Calvin and to Zwingli, and
Melancthon was strong enough to protest against Lu
ther's Protestantism at this point. Luther was the
friend of private judgment for himself ; Melancthon
glimpsed a principle which Luther did not see, the
possibility of spiritual life apart from mere dogmatic
orthodoxy. He saw from afar a light, which has not
yet broken in its full -orbed significance upon the
world; that the truth of God cannot be absolutely
fixed in human symbols; that the most perfect creed
is a totally inadequate representation of the divine
thought ; that truth is spirit and life and therefore is
perpetually renovating its expression ; in a word, that
the face of a sphinx carved in stone, though by infi
nite toil of human brain and hand, can be no perma-
-nent representation of the ever-manifesting face of the
living God.

°m

160 MELANCTHON.
In the person of Philip Melancthon, the revival of
learning and the reformation of religion found their
first complete coalescence. The two movements had
proceeded side by side, each more or less intimately
related to the other, but never becoming identified or
united in the person of any standard-bearer. Erasmus
had thus far been the leader in the field of letters, the
foremost scholar of his time, and at first it seemed
probable that his mighty literary influence would be
devoted to the cause of religion. He had attacked as
vigorously as ever did Luther himself the vices of the
monks and the moral degeneracy of the age. He might
have won as lofty a renown had he only thought noth
ing of renown. He illustrates the Christian paradox
that -whoso saveth his life shall lose it, and whoso
loseth his life for Christ's sake and the gospel's shall
save it unto life eternal. He was a self-seeker and a
time-server. He shunned personal danger and dreaded
obloquy. And so though he sympathized with Luther,
and really helped the cause of reform by his Greek Tes
tament and by his " Praise of Folly," he held himself
aloof as tribulation came on, and, it is said, spent his
days hoping for a cardinal's hat, which he never got.
But Melancthon, hardly second to him in scholarship,
with reason to cherish as lofty earthly hopes, who was
sought again and again by the papists for his great
learning as eagerly as his services were gladly given
to the Protestant cause, stands up in grateful and
everlasting remembrance as the scholar of the Refor
mation. While Luther gave to the movement a force
which its enemies could not resist, Melancthon im
parted to it a dignity which they could not despise or
ignore. What Leo X. was pleased at first to regard.
as a mere monkish squabble, he was soon compelled to

THE GOOD ARMORER. 161
recognize as a movement of intellectual and spiritual
power. Behind the battering-rams of Friar Martin's
words, there was Master Philip's profundity of scholar
ship and clearness of thought. These two men seemed
to have transmuted and spiritualized the callings of
their respective fathers. Martin was the son of a
miner, Philip of an armorer. What the one took out
of the earth in huge blocks of ore, the other fashioned
deftly into lance heads and coats of mail for the bat
tle-field or the tournament. Luther could not reduce
the new theology to an objective system nor present it
dialectically. And so the miner's son drew forth the
metal and the armorer's son fashioned it. And the
church which to this day bears Luther's name, to this
day uses the confession of faith which Melancthon
penned. Again, Luther made men see the pernicious nature
of error ; Melancthon lifted before their vision the at
tractive beauty of truth. The one shattered abuses ;
the other furnished something better to put in their
place. So that while the world is right, no doubt, in
honoring Luther as the head and aggressive leader of
the Reformation, the popular mind, we fear, is in
danger of yielding scant justice, if indeed it be not
guilty of positive injustice, in the part which it at
tributes to Melancthon.
You may have listened to stories dramatically more
interesting, you have considered no characters more
winsome, more lovely, more thoroughly admirable, than
that which we now consider in some detail.
Philip Schwarzerd was born in Bretten, Saxony,
February 16, 1497, a year made famous by the dis
covery of the North American continent by Cabot,
and the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco
il

162 MELANCTHON.
da Gama, the year before Savonarola was burned at
Florence, five years before the University of Witten
berg was founded, which Melancthon himself was
afterwards to render illustrious. His father, George
Schwarzerd, was a skillful armorer, a calling in high
repute in tliose days, bringing the artificer into the
acquaintance, and sometimes into the friendship, of
the knights and nobles whom he served by his craft.
Go into any well-furnished museum of ancient armor
like that of the Tower of London or Windsor Castle,
and see the deftly-woven coats of mail, as flexible as a
lady's purse and as impenetrable as an iron plate, the
nicely jointed helmets and gauntlets, and think that
it was all wearily forged by hand, when there was no
machinery and no steam power, and you will see that
the artificer was of necessity also an artist. In the
Middle Ages he was treated as an officer of the highest
rank ; he was awarded the first place in military pre
cedency, and his person was protected by extraordi
nary penalties.1 George Schwarzerd's excellent work
brought him into the friendship of many noblemen, and
even into that of the Emperor Maximilian, who be
stowed upon him, in return for a very skillful suit of
armor, a family coat-of-arms, representing a lion sitting
upon a shield and helmet, holding tongs and hammer in
his paws. Better than all this, he was a devout, God
fearing man, allowing nothing to interfere with his
habits of prayer. Kind to the poor, gentle, not con
cerning himself especially with laying up this world's
goods, and always putting first the kingdom of God,
1 There is a story told of a Highland armorer who had been
guilty of some outrage for which justice was demanded. But as
the chief could not dispense with his armorer's services, he gen
erously compounded by hanging two weavers instead.

REUCHLINS PROTEGE. 163
such a man of course would make good, honest, trust
worthy armor. And his wife was of like mind with
himself. It was thus a godly home into which Philip
Schwarzerd came at his birth. For ten years only was
he blessed with its shelter, but its influences never
ceased to be felt. Long years after, he used to say to
his students in his university lectures, " This I learned
from my mother ; " or, " My father taught me thus ; "
and when he lay dying half a century later, he re
peated to his children the very words in wliich he had
been blessed by his own dying father.
After his father's death he was sent to a prepara
tory school in a neighboring town, where he was domi
ciled with a sister of the famous scholar Reuchlin, re
nowned for the impetus which he gave to the study of
the Greek and Hebrew languages. The lad was after
Reuchlin's own heart, and a great friendship sprang
up between them. Reuchlin called Philip his son,
gave him books, watched the development of his
scholarship with a parental interest, and, according
to the custom among learned men of the day, changed
his surname Schwarzerd, " black earth," to its Greek
equivalent Melancthon, by which he was ever after
ward to be known. Marvelous stories are told of his
scholarship in these childish days, of his discussions
and disputations, of his compositions in Greek and
Latin poetry, of his easy superiority to all his fellows,
which it is not worth while to dwell upon. One
almost wearies of the story of uniform excellence both
in conduct and scholarship, almost longs for some
spice of boyish mischief, some exploit or escapade,
some outbreak of fun or hilarity, to remind us that
this prodigy is yet a boy. But for this you look in
vain. The nearest approach to it is the composition

164 MELANCTHON.
of a humorous piece in the form of a comedy, which he
dedicates in gratitude to Reuchlin, and persuades his
school-fellows to perform in the great scholar's pres
ence, and which furnishes the occasion upon which
he is dubbed with his new and permanent name of
Melancthon. At twelve years of age he is ready for the university
and proceeds to Heidelberg. Here, too, we are greeted
by the same story of unvarying excellence, of im
mense acquisition, of easy victory ; acknowledged by
the students as the Grecian of the university, doing
not only his own work, but writing orations in the
learned languages for his fellow-students, and even for
the professors, which they are not ashamed to deliver
as their own. At fourteen years of age he is Bachelor
of Arts, and the university, unwilling on the score of
his youth to advance him as rapidly as he wishes, he
proceeds to Tubingen, the university of his friend
Reuchlin. Here, at seventeen years of age, he is made
Master of Arts, and begins to lecture upon the clas
sical authors. His fame begins to spread widely.
Even the great Erasmus begins to fear for his laurels,
though without apparent jealousy. " What promise," he
writes, " does not that youth, or boy, as we might almost
term him, Philip Melancthon, hold out ? He is about
equally eminent in Latin and Greek. What acuteness
in argument ! What quickness of invention ! What
purity of diction ! What vastness of memory ! What
variety of reading ! What modesty and gracefulness
of behavior ! Ancl what a princely mind ! " And
again, writing to QScolampadius, "I am persuaded
that Christ designs this youth to excel us all : he will
totally eclipse Erasmus ! " A true prophecy that,
by God's inevitable laws. The name that is above

REUCHLIN'S BIBLE. 165
every name is that of one who was not grasping of his
Godhead, but made himself of no reputation. And
Melancthon had already laid his honors and his hopes
at the feet of Jesus Christ.
He is now about to enter the conspicuous arena
upon which his career as the scholar of the Reforma^
tion is to be enacted. It is noticeable that in his case '
there appears to be nothing like an epoch of con
version. He is a warm-hearted, ingenuous, devout
Christian, and seems to have been so from childhood ;
to have absorbed a genuine spiritual religion from the
atmosphere of his early home and the tuition of his
father and mother, the normal way, as I believe, in
the Christian household. It is the object for which
the family was instituted at the first, to be the nur
sery of godly life and character. The flame which at
any rate had been kindled very early at the altar of
domestic piety, he had fed incessantly with its appro
priate nutriment during his student career. A little
Bible had been given him by Reuchlin, which was his
inseparable companion. He carried it in his bosom
to the end of life. It was oftener in his hand than
any other book. He did not discover the sacred
volume, as Luther had done a few years before, but
had grown into familiarity with it as he had with
his school-books, Virgil and Terence. His friends
often saw him perusing it, and supposed it to be some
favorite classic. He was reading it at church when
others thought it a service-book. While the monk was
preaching from some proposition in Aristotle, or de
tailing the stale stories of the Gesta Romanorum, or
the legends of the saints, he was busied with the words_J
of Jesus or the Letters of Paul. It was thus, as I
said at the outset, that the revival of letters and the

166 MELANCTHON.
reformation in religion found their first perfect con
fluence in this man's personal history.
After he has been five or six years at Tiibingen and
is now twenty-one years of age, the Elector Frederick
the Wise is seeking for some scholar to be professor
of Greek in his new university at Wittenberg. And
by the advice of Reuchlin he applies to Melancthon,
and by the advice of Reuchlin, Melancthon goes. In
giving this advice to the young scholar, Reuchlin with
a prophetic accuracy, which must have been a theme
of wonder in after years, applied to Philip the com
mand which God gave to Abraham : " Get thee out
of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy
father's house unto a land that I will show thee ; and
I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou
shalt be a blessing ; " adding, " This accords with the
presentiment of my mind ; and thus I hope it will be
with thee hereafter, my Philip, my care and my com
fort." It was an era in Melancthon's life, an era in the
history of the university, an era in the Reformation.
These were stirring times in Wittenberg. It was then
the most famous city in Europe, and the eyes of the
civilized world were directed towards it. Little less
than a year before, Luther had nailed up his ninety-
five theses on its church door. The great protest had
begun, and this had been its birthplace. And now a
new factor was to enter into the work. Melancthon's
fame had preceded him, and the university and the
city were eager to see what manner of man he was.
His first appearance was not prepossessing. Little
of stature, shy and awkward, boyish and insignificant,
he caused a general feeling of disappointment. But
four days later, when he delivered his inaugural " On

ENTHUSIASM OF TOWN AND GOWN. 167
a Reformation in the Studies of Youth," there was a
mighty reaction in his favor. His conquest of the
university and the town was complete. Luther was
charmed. Students forthwith began to throng his
lecture rooms — two thousand at once. He awakened
a greater enthusiasm even than Erasmus at Cam
bridge. From all parts of Germany, from all parts of
Europe, they came, among them princes, counts, barons,
noblemen of every rank. And from the very first he
threw himself into sympathy with the thoughts and
purposes of Luther. He began his lectures simulta
neously upon Homer and the writers of the New
Testament, and kept them side by side ; saying with
reference to the pagan classics, that like Solomon he
sought Tyrian brass and gems that he might bring them
to the adornment of the temple of the Lord. I have
several times intimated that in that day the surest and
speediest way to touch all Europe was to come into
contact with a body of university students. And what
a favoring providence was this, that just at the hour
when Luther was striking his first fierce blows against
Tetzel and his indulgences, this man should have
been sent to Wittenberg to gather there this vast
body of intelligent youth, to inevitably catch the fire
of Luther's indignation and spread it through the
great university system. And not only indirectly by
the influence of his great name did the young pro
fessor aid the reformer, but by his exposition he
brought forth and illustrated the Pauline doctrines of
grace and justification by faith. We can see here the
reason why Master Latimer, while yet an unconverted
papist, upon taking his first degree in theology made
an oration against Philip Melancthon instead of tak
ing Luther himself for a subject. Melancthon was in

168 MELANCTHON.
reality spreading Lutheranism farther and faster than
Luther was. And he was giving to Luther's notions
the sanction and indorsement of the finest scholarship
of Europe. Luther himself became his scholar both
in exegesis and in theology. A year before this, in
1517, the same year that he posted his ninety - five
theses against the sale of indulgences, Luther had
begun his translation of the Scriptures, which he after
wards carried on in his Wartburg imprisonment. In
this great work he now received signal help from the
far better scholarship of Melancthon. The scholar
collated the versions, determined the text, and revised
Luther's renderings, — a work whose importance it is
impossible to overestimate in the classical permanence
which was given to Luther's Bible. And about the
same time he performed another service which Luther
himself was utterly incompetent to undertake, in
erecting what was the first, and for a long time the
only, important system of Protestant theology. Luther
had no system, introduced none. The scholastic and
patristic schemes dominated all religious thinking. As
a theologian Luther simply took his place in the suc
cession of those mighty men who arose through the
Christian ages, and one by one emphasized each his
own truth, and left it as his solitary contribution to
the Christian thought of mankind. " The progressive
landmarks of theology might be determined," says
Dr. John Duncan, " by selecting typical texts of Scrip
ture to describe the points made emphatic by the
principal teachers of the Church. Thus, one might
connect the name of Athanasius with the words, ' Go
ye into all the world, teaching ancl baptizing in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost.' Augustine, with the words, ' By grace are ye

"LOCI COMMUNES." 169
saved through faith, and that not of yourselves ; it is
the gift of God.' 'Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy He
saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing
of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly.'
Anselm, with the words, ' Christ suffered for our sins,
the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to
God.' Remigius, ' I am the good shepherd : the good
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.' ' My sheep
hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.'
Luther, ' Knowing that a man is not justified by the
works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ,
even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might
be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works
of the law : for by the works of the law shall no flesh
be justified ; ' and Calvin, ' Blessed be God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath chosen us in Him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and without blame before Him in love.' " 1 ~_
Now Melancthon rendered this most important ser
vice to Luther, which Luther was incompetent to per
form for himself. He took up this doctrine of justi
fication which Luther was emphasizing and set it in a
system, exhibited it in its correlations and dependences,
showed its consistency with other truth, by publishing
about this time his " Loci Communes," or Theological
Commonplaces. It really marked a great era in sci
entific theology ; Luther declared that it was irrefut
able, and worthy not only of immortality, but of being
exalted to the position of canonical authority. Even
Romish theologians declared that it was doing more to
injure the papal power than all other Lutheran writ
ings together. Its clearness of method and incisive-
1 Colloquia Peripatetica, p. 10.

170 MELANCTHON.
ness of statement gave its simple assertions almost the
force of demonstration. Erasmus said it was like a
mighty army drawn up in order of battle. Calvin de
clared that its perfect simplicity afforded an exhibi
tion of the noblest method of handling Christian doc
trine. It spread through not only Germany, but
France, and even Italy, with the rapidity of a thrilling
romance. A singular fortune came to it in the latter
country. It was translated into Italian and published
at Venice, and the name of the author being literally
translated, it was widely read and heartily approved
under the name of Messer Philippo de Terra Nera,
until the stupid inquisitors at length discovered that
Terra Nera was Melancthon, when it was suppressed.
The rose under another name did not smell as sweet.
How wide its influence became may be inferred from
the fact that during the author's lifetime no less than
sixty editions were issued. It also indicates to us
something of the ingenuous and unshackled nature of
Melancthon's thought, that he was making perpetual
changes in it from first to last. He saw truth as ever
self-revealing, its new wine ever demanding new bot
tles, the inadequacy of any temporary human expression
to hold permanently the ever disclosing divine thought.
Melancthon became a controversialist unintention-
nally upon the occasion of the Leipsic discussion at
which he was present as an interested auditor. This
in brief was a discussion, to which Dr. Eck had chal
lenged Carlstadt and Luther, upon the authority of
the Pope and the supremacy of the Roman Church.
Melancthon wrote an account of the discussion, in
which the papal contestant had been sadly worsted,
and was thus personally and publicly for the first time
compelled to be a participant in the great warfare.

ZWICKAU PROPHETS. 171
Eck attacked him violently and with vituperation, but
his violence was no match for Melancthon's calmness,
nor his abuse for Melancthon's thorough scholarship.
Scores of pens have recently rehearsed the story of
Luther's burning of the Pope's bull in 1520, the Diet
of Worms, and the escape of Luther from his ene
mies by being seized by the friendly messengers of
the Elector, who carried him to the Wartburg. Dur
ing this Wartburg imprisonment, Melancthon was left
alone as the only visible leader of the Reformation,
and sadly did he feel the need of Luther's inspiration.
But he kept on bravely with his work, encouraged by
comforting letters from his imprisoned friend, until at
length a storm arose which he, mild spirit as he was,
was impotent to quell, — by which indeed it seemed
to some that he was likely to be swept off his founda
tions. We have already seen how fanaticism attached
itself to the work of Wiclif in England after he died,
to the work of Hus in Bohemia after he was burned,
how a similar spirit arose and accomplished the de
struction of Savonarola at Florence. And now, in
Luther's enforced absence, a corresponding movement
threatened to undo his work at Wittenberg. A hand
ful of ignorant enthusiasts appeared from Zwickau, —
the Zwickau prophets they were called, — claiming the
illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. They
sympathized with Luther's teachings against the vices
of the monks, against papal authority, and now, with
the inconsistency of all fanatics, they claimed an equal
or greater authority for themselves. " They boasted
direct revelations from God, prophetic visions, dreams,
and familiar conversations with the Deity. Scripture
was a thing of secondary importance. For communion
and intercourse with God, they looked not to faith,

172 MELANCTHON.
which as Luther taught accepts submissively what the
Word of God reveals to the conscience and the heart,
but to a mystic process of self-abstraction from every
thing external, sensual, and finite, until the soul be
comes immovably centred in the one Divine Being.
This spirit, seemingly so elevated and pure, broke out,
nevertheless, into fanaticism of the wildest kind, by pro
claiming and demanding a general revolution, in which
all the priests were to be killed, all godless men de
stroyed, a community of goods to be set up, and the
kingdom of God established." 1 That the gentle Me
lancthon was no match for such an infernal outbreak
was not his fault, but his misfortune. With his natu
ral frankness and ingenuousness of disposition, he was
led to seriously examine the claims of these men, when
they ought to have been crushed at once and decisively.
But they had won Carlstadt to their side, and Melanc
thon was always ready to see the reason that might be
at the bottom of anything, if possibly any reason there
were. Greatly to his relief, Luther, hearing of the
turmoil, broke jail at once, hastened to the scene in
spite of the Elector's authority and the ban which was
over him, and, like the enraged lion that he was, quelled
and quenched the disturbance forever.
The next important service rendered by Melancthon
to the Reformation cause, was upon occasion of his ap
pointment upon a commission to prepare instructions
for the ministers in the electorate of Saxony. Here
his insight and calm reasonableness again balanced
Luther's tendency to ultraism. Luther's doctrine of
justification by faith was liable then, as it has been in
all subsequent times, to great abuse. The doctrine of
the free forgiveness of all sins, upon the sole condition
1 Kostlin's Luther, Am. ed. p. 269.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PASTORS. 173
of faith in God's mercy in Christ Jesus, has been often
so presented as to keep out of view the necessity of re
pentance on the part of the sinner. Men have gone on
to sin knowing that God's grace is free and abundant.
Melancthon now comes to the front with Luther's doc
trine balanced and complemented by the doctrine of
true penitence. He draws up for the instruction of
the ministers a series of articles which is to this day
regarded as the first confession of faith of the Lu
theran churches. Its opening words are good doctrine
for to-day. "How many," he says, "now only speak
of the forgiveness of sins, and nothing or very little of
repentance, and yet there is no forgiveness without re
pentance, and forgiveness cannot be understood without
repentance. And when we preach forgiveness of sins
without repentance, it will come to pass that the people
will believe that they have already obtained forgiveness
and will become secure and careless. Therefore we in
struct pastors that they preach the whole gospel, and
not one part without the other." How essential Lu
ther felt this perpetual balancing and modification of
his work by that of Melancthon to be, may be inferred
from the fact, that he was laboring strenuously at this
time to have Melancthon relieved from his classical
work in the university and made professor of theology.
In 1529, when Melancthon was thirty-two years old,
and Luther forty-six, was convened the second Diet
of Spires, which gave to the reformers the name of
Protestants.1 By this body, the liberty which every
prince had possessed, to control his own ecclesiastical
affairs as he thought proper, was revoked, all further
1 The first Diet of Spires, in 1526, had decreed that, until
the meeting of a general council, each state should determine for
itself what religion should be professed within its own territory.

174 MELANCTHON.
innovation in religion was interdicted, the celebration
of the mass was nowhere to be disallowed, and the
Anabaptists were made subject to capital punish
ment. And this was notably accomplished merely by
a majority of Catholic votes which had been procured
by papal influence. Against this was the Protest.
In this matter Melancthon had no small share. The
result of that diet, which to-day is the joy of millions,
caused his gentle spirit no little disquietude and sor
row at the time. He had always cherished the hope
of a united church. Indeed it was his dream, after
Luther and all his friends had declared it could not
be, and even to the end of life. In his great agita
tion his friends endeavored, in vain, to cheer him, and
urged him to cast his fears to the winds, to which he
gave this beautiful response : " If I had no anxieties
I should lose a powerful incentive to prayer ; but when
cares and anxieties impel to devotion, which is the best
means of consolation, a religious mind cannot do with
out them. Thus trouble compels me to pray, and
prayer drives away trouble."
Melancthon's love of an honorable peace in all mat
ters of theological difference, — and I do not think, in
spite of volumes which have been written to the con
trary, that he ever desired any other, — was made con
spicuous this same year at what is known as the Mar
burg Conference. The Saxon and the Swiss reformers
differed, among other things, upon the question of the
real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the
sacrament. Luther held essentially to the Romish
view to the end of his days, making some incompre
hensible distinction between transubstantiation and
consubstantiation, the difference between which is no
more important, and not nearly so intelligible, as

AUGSBURG CONFESSION. 175
the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee.
The Swiss, on the contrary, believed that the sacra
ment is commemorative, and that the presence is only
spiritual, apprehended purely by faith in the recipient.
When they came together to discuss the matter, Me
lancthon closed his report in these words, — words
worthy of the man, and worthy to be emphasized in
these days which have witnessed some disputes on less
important matters : " Though we are not yet agreed
whether the body and blood of Christ are corporeally
present in the bread and wine, yet, as far as conscience
permits, each party shall manifest a Christian affection
towards the other, and both shall earnestly implore
Almighty God that he would by his Spirit lead and
establish us in whatever is the truth." And for this
lovely spirit he was, and sometimes still is, branded
as a traitor and a weakling.
The very next year (1530) a far more important
affair engaged his thought and labor. The Diet of
Augsburg was called to deliberate upon the Turkish
war and on the existing religious disputes. The Em
peror Charles V. was to be present. Luther, being
under the ban, could not go, and Melancthon was
chosen, of course, to stand as the head of the Prot
estant party. It fell to him to draw up the articles
of the Protestant faith, to be presented before the
Emperor, that he might be in full possession of the
matters in dispute. He thus became, in a sense in
which Luther never was, the very mouthpiece and ex
ponent of Protestantism. He felt the critical and
responsible nature of the task and shrank from it.
Not only thought, but wakefulness and prayers, and
strong crying and tears, it cost him. Again and
again his tears stained his pages. It is pleasant to

176 MELANCTHON.
us to see how a man so mighty with thought and pen
could be humbled by the feeling of incompetency.
But it was finished, and it is a safe thing to say that
no man then living, that we know anything about,
could have written the Augsburg Confession, save
Philip Melancthon. It was translated into almost
every language of Europe. It was read in the courts
of kings and princes. It was the delight of scholars
and theologians. Perhaps better than any other be
quest of his pen, it embalms, for all ages, the memory
of Melancthon's power and piety. By this confession,
and more particularly in a defense of it, which he
afterwards wrote, Melancthon, no doubt, endeavored
to find some general ground upon wliich it would be
possible to maintain fellowship with the mother church.
He was naturally a pacificator, as Luther was natu
rally a belligerent. But I do not see that there is any
need for supposing that he was not, from first to last,
unchanged in his regard for the essential principles of
the Protestant doctrine. It was his aim through life
to assert his convictions in a form which opponents
could accept without wronging conscience or violating
truth. He gave other people the credit for having a
conscience as well as himself. He respected the rights
of private judgment more truly, I think, than even
Luther did. And yet both were certainly needed for
the work, as a sphere or a magnet must have two poles,
as a progressing boat must be pulled simultaneously
by a right-hand oar and a left. How far Melancthon
was ready to go in the way of concession was still
farther manifest when he signed the articles of the
Smalcald Convention, particular notice of which I
must omit, with the proviso that he would acknowl
edge the supreme authority of the Pope jure humano,

LUTHER'S DEATH— LEIPSIC INTERIM. 177
if the Pope would permit the preaching of the pure
gospel. It is not strange that Luther's spirit cooled a
little towards him for all this, and yet it shows courage
and stanch conviction on Melancthon's part, that for
the possibility of preserving ecclesiastical unity he was
willing, even thus far, to risk Luther's dislike. But
there was never any rupture. Each thoroughly be
lieved in the other. And when Luther died, in 1546,
and Melancthon was left alone, his sorrow and con
scious desolation were great. No lovelier tribute of
affectionate admiration was ever laid upon the grave
of a friend or brother than the Latin oration of
Melancthon for Luther.
The survivor tarried fourteen years, — years of
weariness, and yet of incessant toil ; years of doubled
responsibility and of painful anxiety ; years, too, in
which he incurred great reproach, though I must
think unjustly, as the standard-bearer of the Reforma
tion. Possibly had Luther lived he would have been
spared the censure which has fallen upon him. That
censure came about, briefly, in this way. In 1548,
two years after Luther's death, an attempt was made
to harmonize the evangelical and papal parties by a
provisional agreement, until the Council of Trent
should finally settle their differences. It is known as
the Leipsic Interim.1 Under this entirely provisional
1 This " Interim " was put forth as a response, on the part
of the Protestants, to one which had been previously published
by the Emperor. The year before, the Smalcald League, com
posed of those princes and cities which were favorable to the
Reformation, had been overpowered at the battle of Miihlberg
(April 24, 1547) by Charles, who now supposed himself in a
position to carry out his long-cherished idea of a united empire
with an undivided church. To this end he drew up a provision
confession of faith, called the Augsburg Interim, which, howe-
12

178 MELANCTHON.
and temporary compromise Melancthon made great
concessions, — concessions which Luther would un
questionably have frowned upon, and which he cer
tainly would never have submitted to, even as an
expedient, for a week or a single day. " Melancthon
declared that, though the Interim was inadmissible,
yet, so far as indifferent points were concerned, it
might be received." " He was willing to tolerate
both a popedom and a hierarchy, provided, however,
both were stripped of divine rights, and deprived of
all power in matters of faith." The relation of faith
to works, and the doctrine of the sacraments, might, he
thought, be expressed in such general terms that both
parties could accept them for the time. He allowed
the necessity of good works for salvation, but not ne
cessity in the Romish sense. It was sufficient simply
to say that they were necessary. So, too, he would
allow the seven sacraments, but only as rites which
had no inherent efficacy to salvation. And this was
the head and front of his offense. In a time when
feeling was fierce, and opinion dogmatic in the ex
treme, I call his conduct not pusillanimous, but cour
ageous. He afterwards retracted even this ; — it had
been but tentative at most — and never swerved from
that system of sound Protestant doctrine which no
other than himself could have constructed, his " Loci
Communes." He was always ready to sacrifice a mere
form of expression to the weakness or ignorance of
his brethren.
There are three points in which the difference be
tween Luther and Melancthon may be briefly ex
pressed.1being distasteful to Papists and Protestants alike, he was unable
to enforce.
1 F. A. Cox, Life of Melancthon, ch. xi.

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE. 179
1. Melancthon thought that the ancient form of ec
clesiastical government might be retained on condition
of not annulling the authority of Scripture.
2. Melancthon thought that Luther carried his doc
trine of justification by faith to the extent of nullify
ing the importance and obligation of good works, and
that his statements required explanation.
3. Melancthon differed in respect to the sacrament,
thinking that Luther's doctrine of consubstantiation
differed nothing from the Romish idea of corporeal
presence.1 The remaining years of Melancthon's life were filled
with the toils of his professorship, carried on often in
great physical weakness and weariness, but in a spirit
of thorough consecration to the cause of truth and to
the kingdom of Christ. In my study of his character
and work I have come to love with a kind of personal
affection the gentle scholar, the unassuming and quiet
but thoroughly conscientious and loyal man, whose
charity was as broad and universal as his attainments,
and whose far-sighted wisdom, even in the clouds and
turmoils of the sixteenth century, could discern some
precious principles which we, with three hundred years
1 A story is told of a dinner-party invited to meet Melancthon
at Tiibingen, at which the famous preacher Zell, of Strasburg,
was present. The latter, being asked by Melancthon what he
thought of the Lord's Supper, answered, "Christ simply said,
' This is my body, this is my blood.' That I believe, and that
seems to me sufficient to be said. But as for believing that I
must receive tbe body and blood, substantialiter, essentialiter, real-
iter, naturaliter, prxsentialiter, localiter, corporaliter, transubstantial-
iter, quantitative, qualitative, ubiqualiter, camaliter, I believe the
devil has brought these words from hell." " You are entirely
correct," was Melancthon's only reply,

180 MELANCTHON.
advantage in the nineteenth, have hardly been brave
enough to assert.
His last words, as he was asked by an attendant at
his bedside if he desired anything more, were, Aliud
nihil, nisi ccelum. "Nothing — but heaven ! "

VIIL
KNOX.
a. d. 1505-1572.
The one supremely great man that Scotland possessed, — the one man
without whom Scotland, as the modern world has known it, would have
had no existence. . . . His was the voice which taught the peasant of the
Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the
proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. He was the
one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive;
he it was that raised the poor commons of his countiy into a stern and
rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious, and fanatical,
but who nevertheless were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could
force again to submit to tyranny. — Fkoude.

VIII.
KNOX.
a. d. 1505-1572.
" In the history of Scotland," says Carlyle, " I can
find properly but one epoch : we may say it contains
nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation
by John Knox. A poor, barren country, full of con
tinual broils, dissensions, massacrings : a people in
the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better,
perhaps, than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce
barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement
with each other how to divide what they fleeced from
these poor drudges ; but obliged, as the Columbian
republics are at this day, to make of every alteration
a revolution ; no way of changing a ministry but by
hanging the old ministers on gibbets ; this is a histor
ical spectacle of no very singular significance. It is a
country as yet without a soul ; nothing developed in it
but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now, at
the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were,
under the ribs of this outward, material death. A
cause, the noblest of causes, kindles itself, like a bea
con set on high ; high as heaven, yet attainable from
earth ; whereby the meanest man becomes a citizen
not only, but a member of Christ's visible Church." 1
Carlyle might have spoken even more strongly and
1 Heroes, Lecture IV.

184 KNOX.
still have been free from the charge of exaggeration.
The history of Scotland is the history of the Reforma
tion, and the history of the Reformation is the biogra
phy of one man — John Knox. Up to the time of
the Reformation there can scarcely be said to have
been in Scotland any compact national life, or any
truly national spirit. Patriotism existed only in the
crude forms of feudalism or clannishness. There was
no large and comprehensive unity of feeling, no in
tegrity of national life. Every man was primarily a
clansman, only secondarily a Scot. The condition of
things was thus entirely different from that which we
have witnessed in England and in Germany. Both in
England and on the continent feudalism had virtually
come to an end ; the people had advanced one degree
farther at least out of their barbarism. The growth
of trade and of large towns had created a powerful
middle class, which is always a fountain and reservoir
of national spirit. This middle class, wherever it ex
ists, is essentially the people. It must be looked to,
either to carry reforms, or to suppress innovations.
Like the great fly-wheel of a factory, it garners, con
tinues, and distributes power. But in Scotland there
was in this sense no people. The towns, mean and in
significant at best, were severally under the control of
the petty chiefs whose castles stood in their immediate
vicinity, and their inhabitants knew no higher law
than to follow these chiefs in their predatory enter
prises, to believe as they believed, and to act as they
commanded. Animosities more bitter and feuds more
lasting often existed between neighboring chiefs and
their respective clans than ever arose in later times
between Englishmen and Frenchmen, or between
Frenchmen and Germans. In a word, Scotland, down

RELIGION IN SCOTLAND. 185
to the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a polit
ical chaos. Out of this incongruous and heterogene
ous mass it was the work of the Reformation to bring
the unity, order, and compactness of national life.
Whatever should accomplish such a work as this must,
of course, discover and seize upon some common feel
ing of necessity, some universal want which lay below
all differences, some felt emergency which all could
recognize as pressing upon the dearest interests of all
conditions of men, whether knights or retainers, chiefs
or clansmen, patrons or clients.
That common necessity existed in the state of relig
ion and its institutions. That which should stand be
fore the eyes of men as the expression of all that is
highest and holiest, truest and purest, humblest and
most sincere, in the human heart towards God, and
at the same time as the exponent of the divine truth,
and holiness, and mercy towards man, had sunk in
Scotland, as almost nowhere else, into something more
than the negation of all this. Nowhere, outside of
Italy, was the Church so corrupt, or so shameless in
its corruption. It held in its grasp the largest share
of the wealth of the kingdom. The lives of its prel
ates and priests were scandalous to a degree that no
language that is now permissible would enable us to
express. Severe as the language of Knox was in the
pulpit, and broad even almost to grossness as it now
reads upon the pages of his history, it is more than
borne out in the stinging rhymes of the satires of the
Chaucer of Scotland, Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount.
Indeed, Chaucer's most realistic pictures of the Eng
lish priesthood in the fourteenth century are tame
when compared with Sir David's description of the
Scottish clergy at the beginning of the sixteenth. The

186 KNOX.
Beatons, in licentiousness of life, in insatiableness of
avarice, and in the cruelty of their judicial murders,
maintained the traditions of a system that had been
made infamous by a John XXIII. and an Alexander
VI. The churches had ceased to be resorts for men
in need of spiritual grace, or hungering for the bread
of life, and had become mere marts for trafficking in
indulgences, relics, and anathemas, and the common
clergy were themselves densely ignorant of the mean
ing of the prayers wliich they were paid to mumble.
In addition to all this, even this poor travesty of
religion was rapidly converting Scotland into a mere
continental dependency. It was hardly more than a
province of France. Almost all the higher ecclesias
tical offices were filled by incumbents of French birth
or training. The alliance of the Scottish Crown with
the House of Guise, and the emphatic devotion of that
house to the propagation of ecclesiasticism in its most
fanatical and bigoted aspects, were leading many to
fear that church and state together would soon drag
Scotland into a condition of helpless and hopeless for
eign servitude.
Some seeds of liberty, however, had been scattered,
which were destined not to be wholly fruitless. Wafted
like thistle-down over the border from England, the
doctrines of Wiclif had found some obscure reception.
There had been Lollards and Bible-men, though in
small numbers, in Scotland for a century. They had
even found their way into the young universities of
Glasgow and St. Andrews. Even Hussism had had
its martyr in a young Bohemian who had been burned
for denying the corporeal presence and the value of
auricular confession. Scottish students, too, in these
later times, had strayed as far from home as Witten-

PATRICK HAMILTON. 187
berg, and had listened to Luther and Melancthon.
And it is to one of these that we must look as being
the real connecting link between the German Refor
mation under Luther and that which was soon to be
come the Scottish revolution under John Knox.
Patrick Hamilton, a young man of noble blood, had
pursued his studies on the continent, had been brought
into contact with Luther, and had embraced his doc
trines. Returning to Scotland he eagerly began to
communicate the light which he had received, and may
really be considered the first who lighted the candle
of the great Reformation in his own land. And he
lighted it very effectively, both by his life and by his
death. Connected as he was, not only with the higher
nobility but with royalty itself, his influence reached
people of every social rank. The Scottish nobility
were quite as ready as any other class to entertain
reformation ideas, not because they cared much more
for one doctrine than another, but because they were
covetous of the immense estates which were held by the
Church, at this time fully one half of the real property
of the kingdom. Patrick Hamilton's preaching was
getting to be dangerous. This young nobleman Arch
bishop Beaton decoyed to St. Andrews under pretense
of desiring to confer with him upon some ecclesiastical
changes, and speedily charged, tried, and convicted
him, and in the same day set upon his head the mar
tyr's " ruby crown." The flame of persecution which
burned Patrick Hamilton became the flame of Revo
lution.1 Those who kindled found themselves power
less to extinguish it. One of his retainers is said to
have remarked to the archbishop, " Gif ye burn more
1 " From each drop of his blood was to spring up a fresh her
etic." — Froude.

188 KNOX.
let them be burnt in how sellars : for the reik of Mr.
Hamilton has infected as many as it did blow upon." 1
This was in 1528, one year before the meeting of that
Diet of Spires which gave the name to Protestantism,
eight years after Luther had burned the Pope's bull at
Wittenberg, two years before Melancthon wrote the
Augsburg Confession ; just about the time, too, that
Henry VIII. is summoning the universities of Europe
to decide the question " Whether marriage with a de
ceased brother's widow is illegal."
Not far from the time that Patrick Hamilton was
taking his martyr's degree in front of the old college
gates at St. Andrews, another young man was gradu
ating in arts at the sister University of Glasgow. A
plain yeoman's son, nobody had heard of him then ; his
life was all before him. But from the chariot of fire
that had just gone up a prophet's mantle had fallen
unseen, that was to rest through coming years upon his
shoulders ; and more than the spirit and power of the
Elijah who had departed was to be upon the Elisha
that was coming on. This young man was John Knox,
the greatest name that God through Scotland has yet
given to the world. The training of his boyhood and
youth had probably been not very unlike that of Lat
imer forty or fifty years before, excepting those dif
ferences which would naturally arise from the different
social and political conditions of Scotland and Eng
land. Indeed from first to last there are many points
of close resemblance between the characters and the
careers of the two men. Knox was the Scottish Lati
mer. Their fathers were in the same rank of life.
Latimer tells of buckling his father's armor when he
1 Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, vol. i., p. 42.
Wodrow Society's edition.

WHAT KNOX LEARNED AT COLLEGE- 189
went to Blackheath-field ; and Knox, with a true Scots
man's liking for an ancient pedigree, relates that " his
great-grandfather, gudeschir, and father, served under
the earls of Bothwell, and some of them died under
their standards." Both were men of the people. Both
were thoroughly honest in thought and speech ; sincere,
loyal, fearless ; loving truth better than life ; setting
little store by earthly honors ; incorruptible, acting and
speaking out their inmost hearts before prince or peas
ant ; rebuking wrong upon the throne or under the
mitre ; both humorous and wholesomely satirical ; both
beginning life as devout papists, emerging into middle
manhood as protesting spirits, scoring lasting and be
neficent influences upon their times and countries ; one
to be sure passing out of time through fiery gates, but
the other would have swerved from his path not a single
hair's-breadth to have secured a more painless way.
In the course of his college career at Glasgow, John
Knox has imbibed one or two dangerous principles.
He has received them from a lecturer who was trained
in the universities of the continent, where the light
was broadly shining which as yet had hardly dawned
upon Scotland. One of these principles relates to the
Church, the other to the State. One is that the Church
is superior to its highest officers ; that the power of
popes and prelates is derived from the Church itself ;
that a general council may judge, rebuke, restrain, or
even depose them from their dignity ; that ecclesiastical
censures and even papal excommunications have no
force if pronounced upon invalid or irrelevant grounds.
The other principle, relating to the State, is analogous,
namely: that the authority of kings and princes is
originally derived from the people, and that for just
cause it may revert ; that if rulers become tyrannical

190 KNOX.
or employ their power for the destruction of their sub
jects, they may be controlled, and, if need be, pro
ceeded against judicially even to capital punishment.
These two principles constituted the best part of
Knox's acquisition at the university. Indeed they
were the basis of his whole subsequent career. More
than that, they were the principles whose operation
was to overthrow the Stuart dynasty, and, a hundred
years after this time, to become the foundation of the
Puritan commonwealths of New England, and indeed
of the American government as it is to-day. But I
say they were dangerous principles then and there, as
the young man was to learn at his cost. Especially
dangerous when such men as the Beatons had the ec
clesiastical power in their hands, and the state was
under such a combination of tyranny as that of the
Guises and the Stuarts.
For a number of years, however, Knox seems to have
revolved these principles in silence, doing nothing to
bring himself into publicity or to render himself ob
noxious either to the ecclesiastical or secular authority.
Indeed, so far is he at present from making any break
with the existing order that he becomes a priest, and
then devotes himself to study and to private tuition
until he is nearly forty years of age. But he has not
forgotten Patrick Hamilton. That story is kept alive
in his recollection by the cruelty of Beaton, and his
principles are being daily confirmed by his studies of
Jerome and Augustine. The merchants of Dundee
and Leith, moreover, are bringing Tyndale's Bibles into
the country with their merchandise across the German
Ocean. The treatises of Melancthon and Luther are
stealing in, in the same quiet way. Sir David Lynd-
say keeps on writing his sharp satires, lashing the vices

HAM1LT0NS REIK. 191
of the clergy ; and George Buchanan, Knox's fellow-
student at the university and the first scholar in Scot
land, is doing the same kind of work.1 Indeed, though
history is silent concerning Knox for this ten or a
dozen years, we need be at no great loss in con
jecturing what was the course and development of his
thought. During these years Henry VIII. has been
divorced from Katherine and has married Anne, and
the papacy has been temporarily overthrown in Eng
land. The Lutheran Reformation has conquered in
Wittenberg, Calvin has published his " Institutes " at
Geneva, Loyola has founded his order of Jesuits " to
advance the interests of the Roman Catholic hierarchy
against Protestantism within and without the Romish
Church." Besides all this, and much more abroad,
there has been no small stir all around him here in
Scotland. The prophecy about Patrick Hamilton's
smoke is coming true. Besides a multitude of com
mon people, the Earl of Glencairn, Lord Kilmaurs,
the Earl of Errol, Lord Ruthven, Sir James Sandi-
lands with all his family, the Laird of Lauriston, and a
great number of other men of rank have enrolled them
selves as friends of the Reformation. Plainly with
these principles working within and all this going on
around, the man cannot remain hidden forever. He
must avow himself. The occasion comes in 1543,
when Knox is thirty-eight years old.
Cardinal Beaton, some time during these silent years
of Knox's life, had banished from Scotland a young
scholar for the crime of teaching the Greek Testa
ment. This young man, according to all accounts a
1 " If the Church of Scotland had a Luther in Knox, it had an
Erasmus in the wide and polished culture of George Buchanan."
— Dean Stanley, Scottish Church, p. 98, English edition.

192 KNOX.
most lovable and winsome character, went to Cam
bridge, and fell under the influence of Bilney and Lat
imer. How wonderfully all this reformation history
in England, in Germany, in Scotland, is jointed and
dovetailed together by the coincidences of personal
experience ! You recollect how Savonarola converted
John Colet, and Colet Erasmus, and Erasmus Bilney,
and Bilney Latimer. And now here we discover two
links more of the same chain. Bilney and Latimer
together awaken the faith and devotion of George
Wishart, the banished Scotchman. He returns to
Scotland in this year 1543, and arouses in John Knox
a zeal which regenerates the nation. There is some
thing almost romantic about the attachment of these
two men. They were thoroughly unlike save in their
common love for the truth. Wishart is gentle as a
woman, courteous, affable, a veritable son of consola
tion ; not wanting in courage, to be sure, for he is
threatened with assassination continually if he will not
stop preaching ; but all the gentler graces seem to
be predominant, just the opposite of Knox. Knox is
held by him as by the power of a spell ; is charmed
and devoted ; follows him around from place to place ;
accompanies him everywhere, with a sword to defend
him from any possible violence ; plays, in a word,- the
part of big brother to him, though he himself is of
no great stature ; but he feels like a lion, and would
die for George Wishart. But Wishart's preaching
cannot be long endured by Cardinal Beaton. It is
mighty, mightier even than Patrick Hamilton's. It
takes hold of strong men and melts them. They love
him for his very gentleness. They attach themselves
to him as publicans and sinners once attached them
selves to the young preacher of Galilee ; and the

CAUGHT BY GUILE. 193
priests hate him as their predecessors hated the Naza-
rene, and for the same reason. Beaton seizes Wishart
and burns him up, and Knox is now a Protestant to
the backbone.
And yet it is a difficult thing to get this man to
take up the work. There is some feeling of conscious
inadequacy about him which holds him back. He has
fairly to be thrust into it. The cross is laid upon his
shoulders by other hands ; he does not take it up him
self. But once laid upon him he never dares to put it
off till God Almighty changes it for a crown. As we
see him, in later years, standing calm in the presence
of indignant and threatening royalty, daring the scaf
fold and the flame, it is difficult to believe that John
Knox ever shrank in timidity or wept in self-distrust.
The charge which has sometimes been made against
him, that he was a man of hasty and turbulent im
pulses, that he had a zeal that outran wisdom, is
abundantly disproved by the extreme hesitancy with
which he entered even the outermost portals of an ac
tive reformer's life, and that only when he was forty-
two years of age.
He had taken refuge with some pupils in the Castle
of St. Andrews, which at that time was the headquar
ters and stronghold of those who were attached to the
reforming interest, and was there quietly conducting
their education and reading them lectures, among other
topics, upon the Gospel of St. John. There are some
of the garrison who hear him, and the knowledge of
his teaching gets abroad. There are some wise and
some great men there, — Sir David Lyndsay of the
Mount, and Henry Balnaves, Lord of Session. They
desire him to fill the place of preacher to the garrison.
He is shocked at the very suggestion. He cannot,
13

194 KNOX.
will not run, where God has not manifestly called
him. Then say they among themselves, " He shall be
.manifestly called." Now Knox will have to stand for
the first time by that old principle of his about the
power of the Church to create its own officers. It has
an application which he has not thought of in any re
lation to himself. The plan is shrewdly laid and skill
fully executed. On a fixed day all the congregation are
assembled, Knox, of course, among them. A sermon
is preached in which is declared the power of any con
gregation, however small, over any one in whom they
perceive gifts suited to the office, and the danger of
such a person in rejecting the call of those who desire
his instruction. And then, in application, said the
preacher, fixing his eyes upon Knox, " Such a person
this congregation find you, John Knox, to be. And
in God's name, and in the name of all who are here
present, I charge you not to refuse this vocation, but
to take upon you this public office and charge of
preaching, even as you look to avoid God's displeasure
and desire his grace to be multiplied unto you." Then
to the congregation: "Was not this your charge to
this man, John Knox, by my lips ? " And the congre
gation rises up as one man with one voice, " It was,
and we approve it." And the modest man, yet no
braver in all this world, is overwhelmed, bursts into
tears, and flies in confusion and distress to his cham
ber.1 It is well to remember this afterwards, when he
will be charged with willfulness and conceit of his
own opinion, and a bigoted desire to compel the con
sciences and wills of men into conformity with his
own ideas of truth and duty. But he is compelled to
1 Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, vol. i., p. 187.
Wodrow Society's edition.

A GALLEY-SLAVE. 195
abide by his principle. This is the way that bishops
are made, if truly made at all ; in this way does the
hand of the great Head of the Church reach the head
of his anointed, then and now. This is God's ordina
tion ; this is valid until the same power shall revoke
it, — pope or prelate cannot. Henceforth his gift of
thought and utterance belong to God and to God's
true cause in Scotland or in all the world, wheresoever
God's Providence may send him.
That Providence sends him very soon to strange
quarters, — a most unpromising field, one would think.
Yet what place can there be where truth needs not to
be lived and spoken ? A few days or weeks, at most,
elapse when a French squadron appears before the
Castle of St. Andrews, and the little garrison is com
pelled to surrender. The honorable terms of capitu
lation are grossly violated, and Knox, with others, is
carried off to France and confined in the galleys. The
life of a galley-slave was peculiarly calculated to crush
the very spirit out of a man. As a punishment it was
brutal and imbruting ; the men chained together and
to their oars, with insufficient room for any natural
muscular action, sometimes under a stifling deck ;
compelled often to tug at the oar without cessation for
twenty-four hours together ; their very food put into
their mouths by the master ; the slightest relaxation
of effort visited with the stinging lash ; if one sank
exhausted, speedily thrown overboard, and another
chained in, in his place ; all this, of course, had a ten
dency first to embitter, then to dehumanize and make
ferocious, and finally to stupefy. To preserve patience
and hope and courage, and, most of all, an indepen
dent spirit, under such physical conditions, were marvel
ous, well-nigh miraculous. But Knox was the man to

196 KNOX.
do it. He could have sung a song at midnight along
with Paul and Silas, in the Philippian dungeon, with
his feet fast in the stocks. Like them, he not only
preserved his own spirit, but was a comfort to his fel
low-prisoners. Every attempt was made to induce or
compel them to deny their faith, but there was no wa
vering even on the part of a single man. The spirit
of Knox seemed to take possession of the entire crew.
" Mother ! Mother of God, forsooth ! " he says, in
scornful indignation, as the galley-master holds out an
image of the virgin for him to kiss, and, releasing a
hand from the oar for an instant, he sweeps the thing
overboard : " She is but a painted bredd, I tell you —
let her swim ! " l In their cruising, they come again
under the walls of dear old St. Andrews, and the pris
oners recognize the beloved towers, but almost despair
as they are not permitted to touch their native soil.
"Be of good cheer," he says; "I see the steeple of that
place where God first opened my mouth to his glory,
and I shall not depart this life until I have glorified
Him again in that same place." And. yet, notwith
standing all his cheer and bravery, I cannot doubt that
this two years' life of slavery in the galleys, while it
made his convictions the more precious, and, as it
were fire, burnt the gold of truth into the very sub
stance of his mind, added somewhat, also, to the as
perity of his character. It is well for us to recollect
what a much suffering man he had been at the hands
of that system which he afterwards fought with such
indignation and almost unsparing fury. He will need
no apology for his warfare that gives and asks no
quarter. 1 Knox, Reformation in Scotland, vol. i., p. 227. Wodrow Soci
ety's edition. " After that," he quaintly adds, " was no Scotish
man urged with that idolatrie."

KNOX IN ENGLAND. 197
When Edward VI. came to the throne of England
it is supposed that Knox was released at his personal
request. At any rate we find him now for a number
of years in England, and made one of the king's
chaplains. This is that happy time when Latimer
was tarrying with Cranmer in Lambeth, and Knox
must have frequently been in conference with them.
Here in England, notwithstanding he is worn and
wasted with his long galley servitude, he enters into
abundant labors, — stationed at Berwick, and then at
Newcastle in the north, preaching every day and often
several times in the day, the English Church glad to
receive him, notwithstanding his Scottish accent, and
even almost thrusting him into places of distinction.
They want to make a bishop of him. The Duke of
Northumberland writes to Secretary Cecil, that he
would make a good whetstone to sharpen my Lord
of Canterbury; but Cranmer, we fear, would have
wanted even more sharpening than Knox could have
given him: it was temper, rather than sharpening,
that that blade needed, and Knox could not have im
parted that, even as Latimer had failed. But Knox
would not have the English bishopric, nor yet the vic
arage of an important church, but kept his eye and
his heart towards Scotland. He did not believe there
was any Scriptural authority for the episcopal office
as it existed either in the Romish or the English
Church. The only true bishop, he said, was a preacher
of the gospel ; his principles were of more consequence
to him than a mitre and a crozier, and all the honor
and power and emolument that would have accompa
nied them ; but he would preach for these English
men anywhere in the kingdom till such time as it
pleased God to let him go over the Scottish border.

198 KNOX.
And that time was not yet. For the work which
needed to be done in Scotland he needed some train
ing different from any that had thus far fallen to him.
And so when Bloody Mary comes to the throne, he
is compelled to go to the continent. Had he accepted
the bishopric, or even a simple vicarage, we may be
sure he would not have done this; he would have
stayed by his post till Mary had dismissed him, along
with Latimer and Ridley and Cranmer, through the
flames. But he was simply an exile, a wandering
preacher ; and so he turns his steps to the continent,
January, 1554.
I cannot dwell upon this continental experience, his
visits to various French and Swiss churches, his con
ferences with learned men, his acquaintance with Cal
vin and the regimen of Geneva, from which he was
confirmed in those old principles of his by seeing their
practical working, and which were afterward to be
embodied in the constitution of the Scottish Church.
Neither can I dwell upon his literary work, in aiding
in the translation of the English version of the Sacred
Scriptures known as the Geneva Bible, and in compos
ing the Liturgy which became the guide of the public
worship of the Reformed Church of Scotland down
to the time of the Westminster Confession. There is
one feature that comes out clearly in Knox's charac
ter at this time that we must not lose sight of. He is
far more stern in his judgment of himself than he ever
is in the denunciation of others. No one has read
Knox's character aright who has come to look upon
him as a narrow, uncharitable, censorious, self-right
eous, and self-constituted judge of the characters of
those who differed from him. In a letter written dur
ing this Geneva exile to his mother-in-law, who was to

KNOX AND CALVIN— "FIRST BLAST." 199
him a mother in deed, he says : " Alas ! this day, my
conscience accuseth me that I spake not so plainly as
my duty was to have done. The blind love that I did
bear to this my wicked carcass was the chief cause
that I was not fervent and faithful enough. I was
not so diligent as my office required, but sometime, by
counsel of carnal friends, I spared the body; some
time I spared in worldly business. And besides I was
assaulted, yea, infected with more gross sins : that is,
my wicked nature desired the favor, the estimation,
and praise of men, and so privily and craftily did
they enter into my breast that I could not perceive
myself to be wounded till vainglory had almost got the
upper hand." This may be called morbid ; it is cer
tainly conscientious and unsparing towards himself.
The influence of Geneva upon Knox has probably
been overestimated. His opinions and principles were
formed long before he came into contact with Calvin
and Beza. Calvin was in no sense his master, but
his confrere. Knox was fifty years of age before he
saw Calvin. He was confirmed by the Genevan, not
conformed by him. Those early principles which were
instilled into him at Glasgow College were adopted by
him before they were received by Calvin ; and those
principles, underlying as they did the thinking of both,
brought the two men into life-long sympathy.
I must not pass over one of the most important, and
certainly the most injudicious, act of Knox's life, which
was performed here at Geneva, — an act which he un
doubtedly felt to be called for at the time, but which
sadly handicapped him afterward. Aroused to fierce
indignation by the cruelties of Bloody Mary, which
had exiled him to the continent, he wrote a treatise
against woman's rights, which he called " The First

200 KNOX.
Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment
of Women ; " in which he inveighed strongly against
the right of woman to hold the reins of authority. He
gained sufficient wisdom never to give a second blast.1
The book made him obnoxious to two queens, during
whose reigns he had his part to play ; to Mary, Queen
of Scots, who was soon to take her hereditary throne,
and to Elizabeth of England, who was to exert as great
a power in Scotland as any of its own sovereigns.
In 1559, after his long exile of twelve years, which
had been but once, and then briefly, interrupted, Knox
returned to Scotland for the conflict which ended only
with his life. Mary of Guise, widow of James V.,
was acting as regent. Through all these years the ref
ormation movement was growing and consolidating,
and through all these years it had been looking to
wards Knox as its only capable leader, and its friends
had longed for his permanent restoration. He re
turned just in time, as he said, for the brunt of the
battle. The regent had just entered into an agree
ment with the Guises of France to assist them in their
designs against Elizabeth, and as a part of the plan
had determined to suppress the Reformation by force.
This determination had the effect to still further con
solidate and arouse the reforming interest, which was
doubly courageous now that Knox was among them.
Almost immediately, without any intention on his
part, he was forced into the part of an iconoclast. Af
ter one of his sermons at Perth against image worship
and idolatry of the mass, the " rascall multitude," as
1 "My purpose is thrise to blowe the trumpet in the same
mater, if God so permitte : twise I intende to do it without
name, but at the last blast, to take the blame vpon my selfe, that
all others may be purged." — Preface to The First Blast, etc.

ICONOCLASM. 201
Knox himself called them, beset a priest who was about
to celebrate mass, and did not desist until they had
sacked a monastery and laid it in ruins. It was a
wild, frantic outburst of the people because their min
isters had just been outlawed. It was an act of that
barbarism which Rome itself had done its best to per
petuate. " It is hard, certainly," says Principal Tul
loch,1 commenting upon the inconoclasm of the Scot
tish Reformation, " to blame that Reformation for an
odious inheritance of social disorder transmitted to it
by the corrupt system which it displaced." It was not
an act of premeditated rebellion. But the people had
suddenly found their power, and the queen-regent dis
covered it too, and prudently made an accommodation
with the Protestants. The Protestant leaders, who now
came to be known as the Lords of the Congregation,
soon took possession of the capital, deposed the regent,
concluded a treaty with England, ancl with the assist
ance of troops, sent to their aid by Elizabeth, became
the masters of Scotland, and called a free parliament
to settle religious difficulties. Almost instantaneously
Scotland was revolutionized. The hated repression
exercised by the Guises was virtually at an end. By
a single act the reformed religion became the religion
of the state, and Knox was the Savonarola whose in
fluence was paramount. Roman Catholic worship was
interdicted, and the Pope's jurisdiction abolished. It
was the real beginning of anything like a compact and
unified national life for Scotland. But so far it was
the work of the people by themselves. The estates
had wrought, and with great unanimity, but without
the throne. Mary of Guise died shortly after her dep
osition, and young Mary, Queen of Scots, came homi
1 Luther and other Leaders, p. 399.

202 KNOX.
the next year to take her throne. And now begins
that long story, upon which fortunately we are not re
quired to enter far, which has been the theme of con
flicting historians and romancists and poets and dram
atists for three hundred years. What was Mary of
Scotland? Can anybody surely tell us? That she
was young and fair and fascinating all agree. That
she was frail too many say. That she was relentless,
cruel, even to treachery and murder, is averred. That
she was an injured saint a few have been bold enough
to affirm. That she was a combination of Guise and
Stuart blood is not antecedently in her favor. That
she married Darnley without love, and afterwards,
while professing most ardent affection, was privy to the
diabolism of blowing him up with gunpowder while a
convalescent; that she took an Italian musician for
her paramour, whose blood-stains are still on exhibition
for a sixpence at Holyrood House ; that she gave her
love to Bothwell before blowing Darnley out of life,
and married him out of hand when that horrid work
was accomplished : all this on one side. And that she
was a most refined and scholarly lady, so devoutly
pious withal that she could write " O Domine Deus !
speravi in Te," and must have going on about her the
perpetual offices of religion, on the other side; and
who can tell us the truth? And who knows what
were her relations with Elizabeth, and her designs
upon the British throne ? It is all one of the insoluble
puzzles of history.
But now, her relations with Knox. Knox is now, at
her coming home, the pastor of Edinburgh ; in fact, as
truly Archbishop of Scotland as ever Beaton had
been of St. Andrews in his proudest, lordliest days.
Mary's first act upon coming into the realm had been,

MIGHT OR RIGHT f 203
in contravention of the well-known act of Parliament,
and in spite of the well-known temper of the nation,
an act of bold defiance, in setting up the mass at
Holyrood. It would have been more gracious, to say
the least, had she asked for some consultation, or in
some way sought for accommodation. It was doubtful
in the then temper of the people, after ages of out
rage, to be sure, whether any arrangement could have
been made. It would, at least, have propitiated them,
and the regard thus shown for the popular feeling
would have won for her strength which she greatly
needed. Of course there was a blast at once from the
pulpit of old St. Giles' Church, which was a throne
at that hour more powerful than that at Holyrood.
Mary is indignant at what she thinks the reformer's
coarse handling of the affair, and summons him at
once to the palace. The picture is one that has been
often drawn by the muse of history and her sister of
romance. Mary in tears, and Knox calm, unmoved,
and with a sternness upon his face that reminds one
of John the Baptist in the presence of the king whom
he had dared to rebuke. Of course there can be no
coalescence of feeling, no sympathy of either for the
other. Mary and Knox are not two private characters
in this matter, whose personal rights and privileges
are at stake. Each is the embodiment of a principle.
Mary says, " Might is right." Knox insists that
" Right is might," and sooner or later they two and
all the world find it so. And yet there is every rea
son to believe that Knox, if he could have done so,
would have yielded somewhat to Mary's tears. He
is not steel all through. He does not like to see the
woman weep. He feels that he is getting to be an
old man and she is but a girl. He tells her that he

204 KNOX.
takes no delight in any one's distress; that he can
hardly bear to see his own boys weep when corrected
for their faults ; but that since he had only discharged
his duty he was constrained, though unwillingly, to
sustain her majesty's tears rather than hurt his con
science and betray the commonwealth through his si
lence.1 In all the interviews between the queen and the
reformer, and there are six of them narrated by him
self, there does not seem to be any real rudeness on
the part of Knox. It is sheer manliness all through,
and loyalty, not first to his queen to be sure, of course
not, but loyalty to God and the great Scottish nation,
at the head and heart of whose true interests God has
placed him. Her language indeed is the more rude.
" Who are you that presume to school the nobles and
sovereign of this realm?" "Madame, a subject born
within the same." 2
There is little more that can be told within my pres
ent limits, of Knox's connection with the Scottish
revolution. I must commend my readers to the quaint
and racy pages of his own inimitable " History."
He is the real king in Edinburgh, and in Scotland,
preaching on, week after week, in old St. Giles', whose
stern and unadorned grandeur, as it rises with its
imperial crown high above the old town to-day, is
the best illustration of his character. Crowds, three
thousand at a time, press within its walls to hear his
burning words, whose fire does not dim with the
growing age and bodily weakness of the man. The
English ambassador writes to Cecil : " Where your
1 Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, vol. ii., 389.
Wodrow Society's ed.
2 Ibid.

ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 205
honor exhorteth us to stoutness, I assure you the voice
of one man is able in an hour to put more life in us
than six hundred trumpets continually blustering in
our ears."
With varying fortunes of some small ebb and flow
the Reformation goes on, until Mary marries Bothwell
and is compelled to abdicate in favor of her son, and
the good Murray is made regent. At length the
throne in St. Giles and the throne at Holyrood are in
complete accord. It seems as if the old man were to
be permitted to see the completion of his work ; but
suddenly Murray is assassinated, and his friend, worn
out already with labors out of number and out of
measure, is prostrated by this grief in a sickness from
which he never recovers.
Almost his last public service is a complete vindica
tion from all those charges of rudeness, indelicacy, and
injustice which have been so liberally showered upon
him for three hundred years. Over from France come
those thrilling echoes of Catherine de Medicis' mid
night bell, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
This is the work of the bloody Guises. For this they
have been scheming over yonder there in France.
With these fiendish plotters the lovely Queen of Scots
is in league until death. That tolling might have
been heard from St. Giles' tower but for John Knox.
And bitter and grievous as the disastrous tidings must
have been to the faithful old man, we are glad that he
was spared long enough to creep up the High Street
and into his pulpit, to breathe out what was at once
the expression of his indignation and a perfect vindi
cation of his life-long and far too thankless conflict.

IX.
CALVIN.
a. d. 1509-1564.
While laboring for the destruction of absolute power in the spiritual
order, the religious revolution of the sixteenth century was not aware of
the true principles of intellectual liberty. It emancipated the human
mind, and yet pretended still to govern it hy laws. In point of fact, it
produced the prevalence of free inquiry ; in point of principle, it believed
that it was substituting a legitimate for an illegitimate power. It had not
looked up to the primary motive, nor down to the ultimate consequences of
its own work. It thus fell into a double error. On the one side, it did not
know or respect all the rights of human thought; at the very moment that
it was demanding these rights for itself, it was violating them towards
others. On the other side, it was unable to estimate the rights of authority
in matters of reason. I do not speak of that coercive authority which
ought to have no rights at all in such matters, but of that kind of authority
which is purely moral, and acts solely by its influence upon the mind. —
Guizot, History of Civilization. Lect. xii.

IX.
CALVIN.
A. d. 1509-1564.
There are certain great rivers which send their
waters out into the sea with such force and volume
that they continue for many leagues from their mouths
unmixed and clearly distinguishable from the flood
around them. They flow on as rivers still, preserving
their integrity, their freshness, and even their color,
though their banks are no longer of earth or of rock,
but only of yielding water, like themselves. The
great ocean of human thought and life is continually
replenished by streams of personal influence. Each
thinker, discoverer, actor, brings into the world's work
his individual contribution, which is soon swallowed
up. It has its own proper effect, no doubt, upon the
quality of the great whole, but it speedily becomes
untraceable as a distinct and personal force. Litera
ture, law, science, art, are, for the most part, aggrega
tions of impersonal energy, which it is impossible now
to analyze and redistribute to their several sources.
But in all departments of the world's history there
are some men, like the Amazon, whose work refuses
to be speedily absorbed and assimilated. After they
have poured themselves into the world's common treas
ury of thought and experience, they remain still what
they were before. So strong, and vigorous, and force-
14

210 CALVIN.
ful are they that their personality abides. Such men
are Coke and Blackstone in law, Shakespeare in let
ters, Bacon in science, Michael Angelo in art. The
cessation of visible life in each of these cases has
made no difference in the integrity of force and in
fluence. And such a man is Calvin in theology, a man whose
influence is as personal and sharply defined after three
centuries have passed over his grave, as when he made
his first contribution to the world's religious thought.
This figure which I have used — of a mighty river
wliich shoots its flood far out into the sea — is capable
of a further expansion. If we seek for the reason why
the man's influence so long survives himself, we need
not go far to find it. He gathered up the spiritual
and intellectual forces that had been started by the
reformation movement, and marshaled and systema
tized them, and bound them into unity by the mastery
of his logical thought ; as the river gathers cloud and
rill, and snow-drift and dew-fall, and constrains them
through its own channel into the unity and directness
of a powerful current. The action of Luther was
impulsive, magnetic, popular, appealing to sentiment
and feeling ; that of Calvin was logical and construc
tive, appealing to understanding and reason. He was
the systematizer of the Reformation. Melancthon, to
be sure, essayed something in the same direction, as
we have already seen ; but his Augsburg Confession,
compared with Calvin's " Institutes," is as a log-hut
of the backwoods compared with a military fortress.
Luther's work was national ; so was Latimer's ; so was
Knox's. Calvin's work was national, and more ; he
gave to the Reformation a universality like that of
the gigantic system with which they all were at war.

THE PROTESTANT POPE. 211
Calvin, more than any other man that has ever lived,
deserves to be called the Pope of Protestantism.
While he was still living his opinions were deferred
to by kings and prelates, and even after he was dead
his power was confessed by his enemies. The papists
called his " Institutes " the " Heretics' Koran." Thirty
years after his death, Cardinal Alexander de Medicis,
afterwards Pope Leo XL, while on a journey, turned
aside with his whole retinue, got down from his litter,
and went on foot to see the cottage in which he had
been told John Calvin was born.1 Not a few, even at
this day, accord to him the attribute of infallibility.
He set up authority against authority, and maintained
and perpetuated what he set up by the inherent clear
ness and energy and vigor of his own mental concep
tions. The authority of the Romish Pope was based
upon the venerable tradition of the past that had
grown up by the accretion of ages ; the authority of
the Protestant Pope rested upon a logical structure
which he himself built up, out of blocks hewn from
alleged Scripture assertion and legitimate inferences
therefrom. The authority of the Romish Pope was
not unlike that image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream,
whose brightness was excellent, and the form thereof
terrible, with its head of fine gold, its breast and arms
of silver, its belly and thighs of brass, its legs of iron,
and its feet part of iron and part of clay; without
homogeneousness and without consistency. The au
thority of the Protestant Pope was both homogeneous
and consistent, but it was a skeleton rather than an
image. He put the Bible into his crucible and set
under it the fires of his pure, logical processes, until
he had consumed from it all the graces of imagina-
i Guizot, St. Louis and Calvin, p. 156.

212 CALVIN.
tion, all the soft and flowing garniture of fancy and
of feeling, and turned it out a system, a skeleton,
showing admirable proportions and nice articulation,
but its living tissues destroyed and its fresh color
gone. Let no one suppose that I shall fall into the cheap
fashion of the hour, of sneering at Calvin or of de
preciating his work. The man himself is one of the
wonders of all time, and his work was admirable,
beyond any words of appreciation that it is possible
for me to utter. For while he himself tolerated no dif
ferences of theological opinion, and would have bound
all thought by his own logical chain, this nineteenth
century is as much indebted to his work as it is to that
of Luther. That work constituted the world's larg
est step towards democratic freedom. It set the in
dividual man in the presence of the living God, and
made the solitary soul, whether of prince or pauper,
to feel its responsibility to, and dependence upon,
Him alone who from eternity has decreed the spar
row's flight or fall. Out of this logical conception of
the equality of all men in the presence of Jehovah, he
deduced the true republican character of the Church;
a theory to which all Americans, and especially we of
New England, owe our rich inheritance. He gave to
the world, what it had not before, a majestic and con
sistent conception of a kingdom of God ruling in the
affairs of men ; of the beauty and the blessedness of
a true Christian state ; of the possibility of the city
of God being one day realized in the universal sub
ordination of human souls to divine authority.
The name of Calvin is as indissolubly associated
with the history of Geneva as is Savonarola with that
of Florence, or Hus with that of Prague. It will be

GENEVA PRIOR TO CALVIN'S ADVENT. 213
necessary, therefore, to an understanding of his work,
to glance at the condition of affairs in Geneva in the
earlier part of the sixteenth century. During the
first quarter of the century, i. e., while Calvin was
boy and youth, Geneva was in a condition of anarchy,
the causes of which lay far in the past. To go no
farther back, however, than the period just preceding
the reformer's birth, in 1504, Charles III., Duke of
Savoy, entered into a struggle for the subjugation of
Geneva, which lasted for twenty years. Finding that
he could accomplish nothing by wily plots with the
citizens themselves, he procured, through the Pope,
Leo X., the appointment of a scion of his own house
(Savoy) as bishop, upon condition that the bishop
should give the control of the city, so far as civil
affairs were concerned, into the hands of the duke.
This resulted in a rebellion on the part of the citizens,
which ultimately became a revolution, and liberated
the city from the Savoy control, and put the power,
civil and military, into the hands of the citizens. Of
course, there were two parties among the citizens
themselves, — a popular and a ducal, or a republican
and a Savoyard party. Nicknames were bandied to
and fro, as in all such conflicts ; and we come here,
for the first time, upon one of those terms, which, being
originally applied in contempt, become in time badges
of high honor and moral nobility. The ducal party,
whose recklessness and licentiousness made them des
picable in the eyes of the quiet and more respectable
people, were called Mamelukes. The opponents of
the duke, who were in favor of forming a compact
with the Swiss, were termed Confederates, eidgenossen,
afterwards corrupted into huguenots. The eidgenos
sen, or citizen party, were successful, and the duke

214 CALVIN.
and his family bishop were thrown out. So far, it was
simply a civil revolution. In fact, neither one party
nor the other cared much for any religious reform.
But about this time there came to Geneva a young
Frenchman, William Farel, preaching the doctrines
of religious liberty promulgated by the German re
formers, and showing up the vices, superstitions, and
idolatries of the Romish Church, — a man of great zeal
and intrepidity, utterly fearless, and of unbounded en
thusiasm, preaching at all times and in all places, in
town or in field, regardless of his life, and frequently
hazarding it in the boldness of his denunciations ; a
man who knew how to kindle a flame of popular feel
ing, but without the power to organize or control it.
By order of the council, a public disputation was held,
at which Farel challenged any one to discuss with him
the subjects in debate between the Church of Rome
and the reformers. The result of the discussion was
a sudden and almost volcanic religious revolution.
The people, demoralized by their civil disturbances,
impulsive and impetuous, impatient of restraint, car
ried away in part by the sense of freedom already
gained in political affairs, rushed to the churches, de
stroyed the relics, overthrew the altars, and then by
act of council abolished the Romish religion and de
clared Protestantism established in its place. But no
act of council or Parliament or congress can make a
people religious. The forces which had been set free
by Farel, and the liberty which had been proclaimed
by edict, needed to be organized, controlled, and di
rected, and Farel felt his helplessness.
Such was the condition of affairs when Calvin sud
denly appeared in Geneva, coming into the city as a
stranger, and intending to tarry but a night, but des-

"THE FATHER OF THE MAN." 215
tined to be for thirty years its most conspicuous citi
zen, and forevermore identified with its history. And
who was Calvin ?
John Calvin was a Frenchman, born in Noyon, Pic
ardy, July 10, 1509, four or five years after the Savoy
ard struggle began in Geneva. Unlike most of the
characters which we have, passed under review, his
childhood was spent in circumstances of great comfort,
not to say of affluence. His father was a man of in
fluence in church and state, and by his official rela
tions was able to open at once to his son the avenues
of preferment. He was placed for his early tuition
in a noble family, to be educated with their children.
That abundant means might not be wanting during
his career as a student, when he was only thirteen
years old, his father procured for him a presentation
to an ecclesiastical benefice, and still another when he
was eighteen, though he never was ordained according
to the rites of the Church. In regard to these early
benefices two things are noticeable as indicating the
clear integrity and crystalline firmness of his charac
ter. One is, that, being educated thus with abundance
of worldly resources at his command, placed in entire
independence at thirteen years of age, he did not be
come soft and effeminate ; that his energies did not
evaporate in indolence and self-indulgence ; that his
moral fibre did not become flaccid ; that his mental
power maintained from first to last its fine, hard grain
and temper. And the other notable thing is, that
when the definite course of his life was settled in his
own mind, he resigned his benefices, though the resig
nation left him poor, and poor he remained to the end
of his life. Not that there was any superfluous hon
esty in the act, but it was out of keeping entirely with

216 CALVIN.
the ecclesiastical morals of the time. I said that he
did not become soft. On the contrary, during these
early years at Paris, at first under the famous Corde-
rius, and then under a learned Spaniard who was also
the instructor of Loyola, he was rigorously abstinent
in his living and most ardent in his studies. He was
a reformer in spirit before he was through with his
Latin Grammar, so out of sympathy with even the in
nocent frivolities of boyhood that his fellows nick
named him the " Accusative Case." He seems to
have had a marvelous acuteness and power of mental
mastery from the outset. He saw through things from
their roots to their ramifications without effort, a very
incarnation of logic. Of such a penetrating genius
himself, he had no patience with stupidity, and little
forbearance with those who saw differently. This,
along with that low living which, however favorable to
high thinking, wastes the physical energy and makes
the nerves sensitive and intolerant, gained for him the
reputation of censoriousness. His face was thin, the
features pinched, his eye unearthly in its keenness,
his frame wasted, his intellect a Damascus blade
sheathed in too frail a scabbard, an electric light in
closed in a shade of too little opacity.
For ten years he gave himself to language and logic
and philosophy, a severe and unsparing discipline,
which made him the prince of reasoners and the per
fect master of Latin elegance and terseness that he
was. Never was man clearer in the apprehension of
his own thought, or more precise in its expression.
One of his chapters is like a web of chain-mail.
At this time two events occurred which turned him
for a while into a different course. His father had
a quarrel with some of his ecclesiastical friends, and

A LAW STUDENT. 217
thought that the law offered better opportunities for
his son's promotion than the priesthood, and Calvin
himself began to think less of an ecclesiastical career
through some studies which he had been making in
the Bible. To Orleans, therefore, he now betook him
self for the study of the law. It had not the same
fascination for him as his previous studies, neverthe
less he gave himself to it with the same energy and
with the same distinguished success, at the same time
sitting up half the night and often living upon one
meal a day that he might keep up the studies which
he was unwilling to drop. His knowledge of juris
prudence was soon so comprehensive and profound
that the professors frequently called upon him to take
their duty in the lecture-room. There was no position
in the legal profession, it is said, to which he might
not have aspired, and in bis twenty-fourth year the
university bestowed upon him the doctorate without
fees, as a compliment to his legal acquirements.
It must have been while he was here at Orleans that
the great change occurred which marked the begin
ning of his spiritual life, and which led him to take
the side of the reformation party. We do not know
much about it. There is only a hint given incidentally
in the Preface to his " Commentary on the Psalms."
He was always reticent concerning his spiritual expe
riences, but he speaks there in few but very significant
words of his " sudden conversion." " I became con
scious of my wretchedness," he says ; " and there was
nothing left for me but with tears and cries of suppli
cation to abjure the old life, which Thou, O Lord,
hast condemned, and to flee into thy path." Of this
change he says, " God himself suddenly produced it.
He instantly subdued my heart to the obedience of
his will."

218 CALVIN.
Meagre as is the information which Calvin has given
us concerning this crisis in his experience, I think we
may find in it the key not only of his subsequent hfe,
but of his theological system. It bears a resemblance
sufficiently close to the analogous experience of Au
gustine to account for the general likeness which exists
between their systems of logical thought. Calvin
found himself suddenly seized in the grip of an irre
sistible power, and was consciously as clay in the hand
of a potter. With the attribute of power his system
begins. He sees power working to an end ; intel
ligent, therefore involving foreknowledge. But in
knowledge there can be no element of contingency or
uncertainty. The movements of the universe, there
fore, from star to atom, are constrained within ada
mantine lines of predestined order. That saving grasp
had laid hold upon his life in the execution of an eter
nal decree. A decree equally inevitable necessitated
the perdition of his neighbor. The holy are holy, and
the sinful are sinful, alike by the ordination of God,
and for his mere good pleasure. On this iron path
way of deduction Calvin walks with a step that is firm,
fearless, unflinching. Within its lines he compels all
facts ; to its demands he conforms all Scripture. In
his deductive method he seems consciously to possess
an instrument which is applicable alike to temporals
and eternals. He never thinks of making an induc
tion. He has no idea of asking whether or no God
may not be revealing himself in life and experience,
and history and institutions; and if so, whether it
might not be well to balance and modify the process
of reasoning downward by reasoning sometimes in
the contrary direction. One can scarcely avoid the
thought, while following him, that he is making Scrip-

INFLUENCE AT PARIS. 219
ture ancillary to his logic, instead of humbling his
logic to the service of Scripture.
His law studies were now finished, and his father
having died, he felt free to pursue his literary inclina
tions, and. returned to Paris. He seems to have con
templated nothing more than the quiet, modest, studi
ous life of a man of letters. But the man could not
be hid. His immense erudition, and his distinguished
career as a student of law, had already made him
widely known. He had already been consulted, along
with other continental scholars, concerning the validity
of Henry VIII.'s marriage with Katherine.1 The
new doctrines were rife among the students of the
French capital, and the only place where a man of his
clear vision and new experience could stand was with
the reformers. He became, by mere force of personal
character and attainments, and without intent on his
own part, their guide in thought and study, and their
spiritual counselor. They crowded upon him in his
retirement, so that, as he says, " My solitary place
became like a public school." But the reforming
interest was weak as yet in France, and at this time
was undergoing great persecution ; and on account
of an act which, perhaps, evinced greater zeal than
prudence on Calvin's part, he was speedily obliged to
flee from Paris for his life. One of his friends was
made rector of the university, and Calvin wrote for
him his inaugural address. Instead of taking some
literary or scholastic theme, he made it a vigorous
defense of the reformed doctrine, especially justifica-
1 In 1530, when twenty-one years of age, he wrote a letter
upon the royal divorce, giving his opinion in favor of it, on the
ground that the marriage was illegal as being within the degrees
prohibited by Scripture. — Burnet, Hist. Ref.

220 CALVIN.
tion by faith ; and so great was the wrath it aroused
among the Sorbonists that both the author and the
speaker were compelled to escape as best they could.
Then follow two or three years of wandering, to Basle,
to Saintonge, to Noyon, and finally into Italy ; during
which period, nevertheless, he accomplishes a work
which makes an epoch in theology, and for which he
has been called " The Aristotle of the Reformation."
" The Institutes of the Christian Religion " was called
out in response to a royal calumny. Francis I., who
was at this time persecuting violently the reformers
of France, but who was desirous, while crushing the
new doctrines, to keep on good terms with the reform
ing princes of Germany, gave out that his endeavors
were directed against certain fanatics and subverters
of social order like the Anabaptists. And Calvin
simply undertakes to repel the mean aspersion. He
has no thought of writing anything new or strange,
anything original even. He simply undertakes to tell
what the true Christian faith is now, what it was in
the beginning, what it has always been. It is not
peculiar to the reformers. He simply professes to
gather up the truths which Christians of all ages
had held, Augustine and Remigius, and Anselm and
Luther. He binds them together in the adamantine
[chains of his logic, shows their consistency and corre
lation, and then dedicates it to his majesty Francis I.
"This, your majesty, is what the reformers believe,
whom you are persecuting, and we leave it now to
your majesty, and to all the world, to say, whether
we are Anabaptists and communists and rioters, or
whether we are members of the true Church Catholic
of all time."
A marvelous work, view it in what aspect we will !

PREDESTINATED AND CALLED. 221
Written by a young man twenty-five years of age, in
an interval of his flittings as a proscribed wanderer ;
covering the whole ground of revealed truth, nothing
wanting and nothing redundant ; a system to which,
during the remainder of his life, he added nothing,
and from which he took nothing of material import;
a system as compact, consistent, lucid, and unwasting
as a cube of rock-crystal, and as hard and cold as that.
After a brief and stealthy visit to France for the
purpose of taking a final farewell of his native country,
he sets out for Basle, where he means to settle himself
for a life of retirement and study. His life furnishes,
at this point, a striking illustration of his favorite doc
trine of divine decrees. Owing to the disturbed con
dition of the country, he cannot get to Basle by the
ordinary route, and is compelled to go around by
Geneva. He has arrived in the city in the afternoon
of a summer day (1536), and goes to a quiet inn
intending to refresh himself with a night's slumber
and then proceed on his journey. It is at the time
when the great preacher Farel finds himself so pow
erless amid the forces which he has aroused by his
fiery and furious eloquence. Some one has recognized
Calvin and reports his presence to Farel, who at once
calls upon him, and compels him, as if by a prophet's
word, to change all his plans, remain in Geneva, and
help him in his work. There must have been some
thing very awe-inspiring in the man who could sway
and bend to his will such an iron character as Calvin's.
He resists, pleads his desire for study, his unfitness,
but without avail. He says that he was struck with
terror by Farel's formidable obtestation,1 and felt as
1 " I denounce you in the name of Almighty God, and declare
that if you pretend the love of study in such a case, you are

222 CALVIN.
if the hand of the Almighty had been stretched out
from heaven and laid upon him, and he was power
less to resist. And so the place, the hour, and the
man, by the foreknowledge and predestination of God,
through the instrumentality of human agency, are
brought together.
The task wliich confronted Calvin at Geneva was
an arduous one. He had been suddenly seized and
thrust into a turbulent and stormy scene of social
forces, and bidden to quell and harmonize them and
set them in orderly working. " He desired to estab
lish and promote Christian faith in accordance with
his own views ; to secure to the religious society wliich
had been founded in virtue of that faith, on the one
hand religious independence of state control, and on
the other due authority and power in matters of
religion over its members and faithful adherents ; to
reform public and private morality both in civil and
religious society, in the name of the allied powers of
church and state, and by their mutual help. Such,"
says the French philosopher Guizot,1 " was the three
fold design which Calvin hoped to accomplish. No
doubt he had not set it very distinctly before him, nor
had he fully realized all that it involved and all its
difficulties, but he commenced the struggle with a
stout heart and a resolute mind." I question the dis
tinguished philosopher's suggestion that Calvin's work
did not lie very distinctly in his own mind. The man
who had written the " Institutes " at twenty-five, and
never was known to waver or hesitate in anything else
seeking your own things and not the things of Christ unless you
become our fellow-laborer in this cause," were the impetuous
words of Farel." — Beza, Jo. Calv. Vita.
1 St. Louis and Calvin, pp. 216, 217.

A CITYS CREED. 223
through indistinct mental vision, knew from the first
what he wanted to do, and how to proceed in doing it.
He meant to establish in Geneva a province of the
kingdom of God. So far as it was possible for him to
get a controlling hand upon the affairs of the church
and the state, he meant to govern both by the prin
ciples laid down in the Bible, as he, Calvin, understood
those principles. He was at once appointed teacher
of theology, and shortly afterward elected pastor.
Together with Farel he drew up a confession of faith,
or body of Christian belief, which was at once adopted
by the city's representative council of two hundred,
and by them ordered to be proclaimed as binding upon
the whole body of citizens, — a city ordinance in fact.
Some of these articles related not only to faith, but to
practice, and were very radical. One of them related
to the rite of excommunication and the limitation of
the privileges of the Lord's Supper. These, together
with stringent regulations concerning matters of social
conduct, some of which were in themselves indifferent,
were at once put into operation, and of course devel
oped violent opposition. We all know that in nature,
when motion is suddenly and sharply arrested, it is
converted into heat; if the motion has been violent
and the momentum is great, the heat is correspond
ingly great. And such was the result when a sudden
and radical external reformation was imposed by edict
upon the manners and morals of Geneva. A gay and
pleasure-loving people were suddenly arrested in the
practice of customs and the indulgence of gayeties to
which they had long been used. Of course such re
pression as this caused a violent eruption of indig
nation. Many even of those who had been friends
of the Reformation, and who themselves were modest

224 CALVIN.
in demeanor and moderate in life, sided with those
who deemed their personal liberties violated. Not
without show of reason they charged Calvin and
Farel with the design of establishing a new papacy ;
and the speedy result was that Calvin and Farel were
banished by a counter-edict from the city. Plainly,
Geneva was not yet ready for the rule of the saints,
So far from it, it was in danger of being lost to the
reformed cause altogether. The detent was lifted
as suddenly as it had been imposed by the expansive
power of the suppressed and imprisoned forces ; a les
son which violent reformers, it would seem, can never
learn but by costly or ruinous experience.
Things now (1538) became really worse than ever
at Geneva. Disorder and irreligion grew riotous;
licentiousness and violence prevailed openly in the
streets. To make matters still more hazardous for the
reformed cause a most wily and politic servant of the
Pope was watching matters from a little distance and
waiting his opportunity. Cardinal Sadolet saw the
chance now of restoring the papal authority. He
writes a cautious, gentle, flattering letter to the Gene
van senate, deploring the city's misfortunes, saying
not a word in accusation of the banished ministers,
and softly exploring the probabilities or possibilities
of the city's restoration to the fold of the Old Church.
Calvin has no thought or desire to return to Geneva.
His time is passing pleasantly in the converse of schol
ars, — Bucer and Melancthon and the Saxon theologi
ans, — in attendance upon councils, in study and writ
ing, in preaching ancl lecturing in Strasburg ; but the
wiles of the cardinal stir his indignation. Peppery as
the little man is, and sensitive as to his banishment,
he has an honest Christian desire in his heart for the

RECALLED. 225
city's welfare and for the peace of the true reformers
who are living there. And he writes an answer to
Sadolet's feeler, which silences him forever. He re
minds us of one of the little monitors of modern war
fare, carrying a single gun, but swift and fierce and
infallible, which steams for a few moments out from
its hiding-place, and sinks the great '74 that disap
pears forever. For three years he is a banished man,
and the three years do something for him and more
for the city. He marries in a cool, logical, business
like way in the interval, and not much is to be said,
because he himself never says much, of his domestic
relations. He never wears his heart upon his sleeve
for an hour, — scarcely puts it in sight. He will not
take us into his intimacy nor let us love him. Many
more tears have been shed under Calvin than were ever
shed over him. But Geneva fares badly without him.
Their political liberty has degenerated to the broadest
license. There is no moral or civil restraint. The very
syndics J themselves have proved powerless and worth
less. Two of them perish by a violent death, the
1 " The sovereign power in Geneva was vested in a series of
three Councils : First, The General Council, composed of all
such citizens and burgesses as had reached the age of twenty-five
years. Secondly, The Council of Two Hundred, which consisted
of two hundred and fifty citizens or burgesses, and had its vacan
cies filled up as soon as they amounted to fifty. The members
were required to be thirty years of age, and held office for life,
unless they became bankrupt, or were degraded at a censure
annually passed. This Council generally met on the first Mon
day of every month. Thirdly, The Council of Twenty Five. Its
members were chosen from the Council of Two Hundred, and
were subject to the same scrutiny as the larger court. The
Syndics or magistrates, four in number, were selected annually
frorn the Council of Twenty Five, and were first chosen in f
city about the year 1090. They continued in office for a y
15

226 CALVIN.
other two are exiled for malfeasance. Three years of
anarchy and disorder have shown to all the good ele
ments of the city's population their inherent weakness
and inability to meet the riot and disaster and lawless
ness of the time. A reactionary sentiment has been
growing up in Calvin's favor His disinterested letter
to Cardinal Sadolet, so ready, so complete, so final in
its efficacy, has warmed their hearts towards him. The
little keen-eyed Frenchman, of clear grit and of iron
soul, is the man who can bring order out of chaos and
rule Geneva, and they call him back. Reluctantly he
comes, this time to stay and to rule, until twenty-four
years later he gives up his authority with his life.
It must be remembered that Calvin had had a
double education, as a theologian and a lawyer, and
that he had been equally eminent in both depart
ments. There was the stuff in him for two distinct
and thoroughly furnished men. And yet, while he
was both a theologian and a lawyer, the two characters
were merged and blended into a perfect unity. He
was the most competent man of his time to be either
at the head of church or state, or both. And in Ge
neva he was both. With the greatest enthusiasm and
cordiality the structures of religion and of government
were now committed to his hands, and he built them
into one as the theologian and the jurist were com
bined in his own personality. He framed both the
ecclesiastical order and the civil laws. He meant that
both church and state, while preserving distinctness of
function, " should be intimately connected and mutu
ally cooperative for a common end, — the realization of
the kingdom of God in the lives of the people. The
and were not reeligible for four." — Billiet, Calvin and Servetus.
IN ote by Translator.

VARIETY OF LABORS. 227
church was to infuse a religious spirit into the state ;
the state was to uphold and foster the interests of the
church." The work of religion, in the maintenance of
preachers and the instruction of the people and the
training of the children, must be enforced by law, and
if necessary secured by the intervention of the magis
trate. Offenses against ecclesiastical order must be
visited by civil penalties, even unto death. He draws
up the Great Code of ecclesiastical and moral legisla
tion which is to guide the ecclesiastical courts of con
sistory and council, and the whole people swear to it
in a great assembly. It enters minutely into all the
affairs of life. It takes the Genevan in his cradle, and
does not desert him till he is in his grave. It attends
him on his wedding day, and dictates the affairs of
his domestic life. It controls his food, his dress, his
amusements, his labor, the gifts he shall bestow, the
expenses he shall incur, the outfit of his christening,
his bridal, and his funeral.1
The life-long work of administration upon which
Calvin had entered was enough to have engaged the
energies even of such a man as himself, had there been
nothing but administrative work for him to do. With
his genius for both comprehensiveness and detail, he
watches and shapes the minutest legislation, even to
the watching the city gates, the order of the streets,
the suppression of fires. At the same time he is
preaching every day every other week, and three days
in every week lecturing on theology. He must be
every week in the consistory and preside over its de
liberations. Besides all this, he writes commentaries
upon the whole of Scripture — witness the fifty stout
volumes that bear his name upon the shelves of our
? Tulloch, Luther and other Leaders, p. 206.

228 CALVIN.
libraries. His correspondence is varied and unceas
ing. " I have not time," he writes to a friend, " to
look out of my house at the blessed sun, and if things
continue thus I shall forget how it looks. When I
have settled my usual business, I have so many let
ters to write, so many questions to answer, that many
a night is spent without any offering of sleep being
brought to nature." J
And it must not be supposed that Calvin's trium
phant return and reestablishment in Geneva insured
him a peaceful enjoyment of his authority. The old
libertine forces were not expelled. There were many
in Geneva who said that it was better to live in hell
with Beza than in heaven with Calvin. One can
scarcely wonder even at this grim preference, as he
reads of divers applications of the reformer's legisla
tion. A barber is arrested and imprisoned for dress
ing a bride's hair in flowing tresses, and the bride's
mother and friends, who have aided and abetted the
barber, are treated in the same manner. Dancing and
card-playing are put under the ban and made penal
offenses ; all holidays are abolished, except Sunday.
" These things," said Calvin, " are not wrong in them
selves, but they have been so abused that it is the
wisest way to abrogate them altogether." There were
to be no more feasting and revels at weddings. All
the lighter follies and amusements of society were to
be abolished. Of course all the darker vices of licen
tiousness and debauchery, and drunkenness and pro-
1 Among the MSS. of Calvin in the Library of Geneva is a,
fasciculus, with the title : " Lettres par divers Kois, Princes,
Seigneurs, et Dames pour consulter sur les cas de conscience
epineaux, ou pour le remercier de ses ouvrages." — Tweedie,
Calvin and Servetus, p. 45.

A ROD OF IRON. 229
fanity, were summarily dealt with. The penalties were
severe, in many cases out of all proportion to the of
fenses to which they were attached. Parental author
ity was defended with exceeding rigor : a little girl
was beheaded for striking her mother; a boy who
only threatened the same unfilial act was condemned
to death. A young child was ordered to be whipped
for singing some silly words to a Psalm tune ; and a
man who, hearing an ass bray, said, " What a fine
Psalm he chants to be sure!" was banished from the
city. And so on. Calvin made the mistake, which
was not the mistake of his age only, but which has
been repeated again and again by men who suppose
that some temporary and stringent regulations, im
posed upon a rude people in far off and ignorant ages,
may be taken as the divinely authorized and perpetual
regulations of all human society ; who deem that there
has been no advance from Judaism to Christianity;
who think that the Old Testament, equally with the
New, is to be adopted and enforced as the law of life.
Such a rule of rigid morals was not to be perma
nently enforced without the utmost toil and conflict
and watchfulness. To hold a city of twenty thousand
inhabitants — volatile, restless, made up of very diverse
elements — under the Mosaic code, notwithstanding
the palpable blessings of order and good morals, was a
more than Herculean task. And Calvin did it. No
other man since Moses's day has ever accomplished it
on such a scale.
Apart from all this, there is one aspect of Calvin's
life which looms upon us in the retrospect with a lurid
and awful grandeur which chills our blood and makes
us wish that the story might here come to an end.
And yet it was inevitable that he should play his part

230 CALVIN.
in the fierce conflicts of his day as a controversialist.
As such, he did a work both good and bad, to be for
ever praised and forever regretted. His peculiar doc
trines of predestination and election were challenged
then as they are now, sometimes seriously, sometimes
recklessly and maliciously, sometimes by scholars not
to be ignored, sometimes by fanatics and wild enthu
siasts, to whom his best response woidd have been
silence. His controversies with Bolsec and Castellio
and Fabri and Westphal, and especially with Bul-
linger and Melancthon, we may pass by, but the world
will still hold that Calvin burned Servetus. Let me
tell the horrible story as briefly and ingenuously as
possible. Michael Servetus was a Spaniard, born in the same
year with Calvin, 1509, a physician of considerable
renown, who had achieved great success in his profes
sion in France, who seems to have anticipated Harvey
in his conjecture of the circulation of the blood, and
who, like many men of large success, had a large en
dowment of vanity and self-conceit. With not a very
well balanced mind, he proposed to himself, when
hardly twenty-one, the task of reforming the world
upon the subject of the Trinity. Long years before
his final conflict with Calvin, he had challenged him,
while at Paris, to discuss the subject, and when Cal
vin appeared in readiness, Servetus declined the en
counter. Calvin, no doubt, was then disgusted with
his cowardice. For twenty years now Servetus had
led a roving sort of life, and during that time had
been aspersing Calvin as a theologian and as a man.
Moreover, he had played the hypocrite meantime ;
for, after having published his book concerning Trin
itarian errors, he received the hospitalities of the

THE TRIAL. 231
Archbishop of Vienne, who befriended him as a pa
tron of literature, and while with him professed to be
a true churchman. For more than twenty years, in
deed, while under the archbishop's patronage, he con
formed to the Catholic Church and attended mass,
unsuspected of heresy by his patron. And during
this very time, under assumed names, he was publish
ing his books, and even bribing the archbishop's own
printer to print them for him. At length, through
evidence which was afforded by Calvin, he was discov
ered ; his hypocrisy was detected, the archbishop was
informed, and Servetus was arrested and put on trial.
He denied the authorship of his books, swore he had
not written on the errors of the Trinity, and when the
documents from Calvin were put in evidence, and he
found that conviction was inevitable, he managed to
escape' from his jailer, and the court at Vienne was
compelled to be content with burning his effigy and
seizing and confiscating what little property he had
left behind.
And now what does the poor, condemned, banned,
and foolish wanderer do but deliberately thrust his
head into the lion's mouth ! What hallucination turns
his footsteps straight to the gates of Geneva ? There
he takes lodging, and tarries for a month in a little inn
just by the city gate, under the almost omniscient in
spection of Calvin's eye ; of course Calvin's eye detects
him, and the master of Geneva has him arrested and
brought to trial. He is wily, he is acute, he is some
times abusive ; he caricatures Calvin and his doctrines ;
his opinions are wild and fanatical, and out of keeping
with any recognized philosophy ; he descends to the
most abusive personalities against Calvin ; calls him
pitiful wretch, disciple of Simon Magus, a liar, and

232 CALVIN.
even a murderer. And it must be confessed that Cal
vin is not far behind him in his retorts. Servetus is
an obscene dog, a perfidious villain, and the reformer
publicly devotes him to eternal fire. And so for two
months it goes on, reminding us of the pitiful Guiteau
case, and leaving us in the same dismal state of ques
tioning whether the man is fool or knave, or both.
And yet the man is honest in his central conviction
that the doctrine of the Trinity as presented by Cal
vin is false. He adheres to that even to the latest
words he speaks. At length he is condemned to the
doom of heretics in that day, and on the morning after
is led out and chained up to the stake, and out of the
curling flames his last words rise to heaven, we may
be sure not unheard or unheeded, — " Jesus, thou Son
of the Eternal God, have mercy upon me ! "
Why try to excuse the crime ? Why multiply dis
cussion upon the matter ? Why try to save the honor
of an ecclesiastical idol now, three hundred years after
Calvin has seen the matter as it was in the light of
God ? Calvin does not excuse it now ; why should
we ? Calvin, with all his greatness, and all his good
ness, and all his logic, was human — scarcely humane.
I cannot make much of the fact that his very hands
did not lay the fagots ; that he tried to have the mode
of Servetus's execution changed ; that the case of Ser
vetus was already stirring up a party against Calvin
in Geneva ; that it was the method of the day, with
all religious parties, to burn for heresy ; that Melanc
thon and Bullinger, and the gentlest of the reformers,
gave their sanction to the deed. Make much of all
this who will, and apologize for it who may, that I be
lieve in Calvinism high or low, broad or narrow, does
not devolve upon me any responsibility for Calvin's

HIS WORK PARTIAL — NOT FINAL. 233
crime. And crime it was, under the most favorable
treatment of the subject.
I am not sure that it is not a blessing to us in these
later times that Calvin had so large a hand in the
burning of Servetus. Let it remind us that logic is
not religion, though Calvin was religious. Let it
prove to us that system may exist, and yet the very
soul of pure and undefiled truth may not be held in
its meshes ; that men may get out of their interpre
tation of the Bible, however well concatenated and
consistent, false deductions as to duty and life.
In fact, the weakness of Calvinism lies at the point
of this suggestion, for it has a great weakness notwith
standing all its magnificent strength and superb pro
portions. There are some regions over which logic
cannot be supreme, which, indeed, it cannot enter. Its
conclusions do not hold in the realm of love, of faith,
of penitence, of prayer, of adoration, and of hope.
In that border land where the finite meets the Infinite,
where time touches eternity, where the Spirit of God
and the spirit of man transact, — at that point where
the Father falls upon the neck of his child and kisses
him, dialectics cease. Man has other faculties besides
those of the understanding, which are at least coordi
nate with it in their authority. They must play their
part in the interpretation of the divine utterances, and
must be honored by us even as God has honored them
in his Word and in his ways. Nor can any one man,
or any one age, interpret God for all men and all ages.
Neither Augustine, nor Calvin, nor any of their suc
cessors, has been empowered to say, " 3fy interpreta
tions are ultimate and infallible." St. Paul has inti
mated that a time is coming when even that of which
we now boast as knowledge will pass away. " Other

234 CALVIN.
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is
Jesus Christ." Augustine, Remigius, Anselm, Luther,
Calvin, may do their work in adding to the glorious
pile ; but let no man dare to say, the temple of truth
has been witnessed in its perfection by these eyes, and
carried by this hand to its completion.
Calvin's life continued but little longer, — a few
years of wasting toil but of impetuous energy, of tire
less work in preaching, teaching, reading, writing, gov
erning, till he sank out of life, as Beza says, with the
setting sun, on May 27, 1564, in his fifty-fifth year.
No man is certain of the place where his body lies,
but the sun never sets upon his monument.

COLIGNY.
a. d. 1517-1572.
Opposition is the bast mordant to fix the color of your thought in the
general belief. — Dk. 0. W. Holmes, Border-Lines.
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold ;
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worship'd stocks and stones,
Forget not : in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all th' Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who having learned thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
Milton's Sonnet, On the late Massacre in Piemont.

COLIGNY.
a. d. 1517-1572.
A RECENT writer a upon the present religious con
dition of France says : " The French are a people
of interest. Their qualities of mind, their suscepti
bility to great suggestions, their quick apprehension
of ideas, the irresistible fascination which seizes them
when under great impulses, their ardor and enthu
siasm, are characteristics which command considera
tion. . . . They communicate earnestly what they
think and feel. They have a spirit of aggression.
They have never failed to put their stamp upon the
times and things with which they have to do." The
French character, a compound, in the main, of Celtic
and Teutonic elements, doubtless presents these as its
most obvious and impressive features. They appear
prominently at every stage of the national history.
This susceptibility to great suggestions, this fascina
tion under grand impulses, this aggressive enthusiasm
for communicating what they think and feel, go far
in accounting for the great civil and social upheavals
which have marked their history, and for the sudden
and radical changes which have repeatedly taken
place in their government. They go far, likewise, in
1 Rev. Dr. A. F. Beard, of the American Chapel, Paris, in
Andover Review, January, 1884.

233 COLIGNY.
accounting for the strong and permanent hold with
which certain notions are rooted in the French mind,
and for their perpetual recurrence in French history.
An idea is firmly held as it is clearly grasped,
whether by an individual or a community; and so,
with Frenchmen, a great idea is easy to start, and
correspondingly hard to kill. This assertion is abun
dantly verified by the history of the reformed religion
in France. Its beginnings were rapid, its enemies
were powerful and determined, the forces which were
bent upon its extinction were manifold and rigorous.
And yet, for three hundred years, it has survived,
under persecutions which have been nowhere else so
injurious, and under outrages which have been no
where else so malignant. In the beginning of the
sixteenth century France seemed likely to take the
lead of the Reformation in Europe. Five years be
fore Luther posted his theses in Wittenberg, Faber
had put forth at Paris his commentaries on St. Paul's
Epistles, in which the chief Lutheran doctrines were
clearly defended, and had said to his pupil, Farel,
"God will renovate the world, and you will be a
witness of it." Indeed, far back of this time, there
were lingering in the south and southeast of France
remnants of the old Albigenses, and of the Vaudois,
who for centuries had held to the simple truths of
the gospel, in opposition to the corruptions of Home ;
who, if they were not indeed the immediate inheritors
of the purity of the primitive apostolic church, at
least may be said to have led the way of all others
in emancipation from papal thralldom. Their origin
is uncertain.1 Peter Waldo, so far from being their
1 Within the first two centuries Christianity had extended to
Lyons.

FABER, FAREL, AND BRICONNET. 239
founder, more probably derived his name from them.1
For a thousand years, in the valleys of the Alps, they
realized the vision of the Hebrew prophet, of a bush
that was burned with fire and yet not consumed.
As early as 1512, Jacques Le Fevre d'Etaples, or,
by his Latin name, Faber Stapulensis, who had studied
in Florence while Savonarola was preaching there,
by his biblical studies became convinced of the neces
sity of reform in the life of the Church. This man,
profoundly versed in the new learning, and as deeply
impressed by the spiritual needs of the time, became
the patriarch of the French Reformation. He drew
to his instruction two men who became sympathetic
and powerful helpers. The one was that William
Farel, who, as we saw in the last lecture, started the
work in Geneva, and fixed Calvin there as his suc
cessor. The other was William Briconnet, who shortly
became Bishop of Meaux. In these three men it
seemed, for a time, as if there were a threefold cord,
not to be quickly broken : Faber, the scholar, who
could write and defend the new opinions ; Farel, the
fiery and enthusiastic preacher, who could put Faber's
work in a popular and forceful way ; and Briconnet,
the bishop, who, with his ecclesiastical authority and
influence, could further and defend the efforts of both.
,The see of Meaux, it would seem, might have become
the Wittenberg of France. It had its Elector Fred
eric in Briconnet, its Melancthon in Faber, its Luther
in Farel. But, alas ! one strand of the cord was weak.
Bishop Briconnet, wanting the courage to maintain
his convictions against charges of heresy which were
made against him, turned about, and even acquiesced
1 The Israel of the Alps, by Alexis Muston, translated by Wil
liam Hazlitt, ch. i.

240 COL1GNY.
in the persecution which was instituted in his diocese.
Farel, as we have seen, was driven to Geneva, and
Faber betook himself to the court of the good Mar
garet of Navarre.
But a great work had already been accomplished,
even before Briconnet's defection ; a work which was
destined to fill, with its record of undying faith, and
quenchless courage, and knightly honor, and unmeas
ured sorrow, the bloodiest page of history. Faber
and Farel had set on foot a movement which for a
long time was to make its own way without human
patronage, and with little of human leadership. Faber
had given the people the New Testament in their own
language. Tracts and handbills containing portions
of the Bible were scattered abroad in great numbers.
About this time arose a singer, who helped the cause
mightily, — " the Robert Burns of his day," — who,
without any great degree of piety, could write with
equal ease a religious hymn, a popular ballad, or a
stinging satire. Clement Marot wrote poetry for the
profligate Diana of Poitiers, directed bis squibs against
the Sorbonists ; better than all, translated the Psalms
of David into rhymes which soon all Paris and all
France were singing. It even became the fashion to
sing them at court. The king sang the 47th Psalm
• — "Like as the hart doth pant and bray" — for a
hunting song. Each courtier had his favorite Psalm.
The nobles sang them in their castles, the workmen at
their toil. Charles V. rewarded the poet for his Psalms
with a purse of two hundred doubloons. The more
violent among the papists tried to suppress them.
One translated the Odes of Horace into French,
and set them to music, hoping to supplant Marot ;
but his work fell dead. The Psalms, for a time,

CLEMENT MAROT. 241
crowded out the ribald songs of the street. What
the fashionable world sang for fashion's sake, the
humble vine-dressers in the valleys sang for the sake
of the light, and comfort, and peace it brought to
their souls. Clement Marot did as great a work for
Huguenoterie, in its infancy, as Charles Wesley did
two hundred and fifty years afterwards for Method
ism. A Romish historian wrote : " The wise world,
stupidly wise in this, which judges of things by the
outward appearance only, praised this sort of amuse
ment, not seeing that under this chant, or rather new
enchantment, a thousand pernicious novelties crept
into their souls." 1 We saw, too, in the last lecture,
how at this time Calvin, while a student in Paris, was
disseminating the reformation truth, and how people
came in throngs to his study to hear him expound the
Scriptures. It was thus, in a great variety of ways, that the
truth gained a footing in France. It was as if some
great invisible hand were stretched down out of
heaven to scatter the seed broadcast. It fell in all
sorts of strange places, no one could tell how. There
was no recognizable human leader ; the movement was
carried on privately. There was nowhere any organ
ization ; for half a century there was no form, no
church, no discipline, no creed. A few men came
together here and there, "in fields, gardens, barns,
no matter where. Their preachers," says a satirist
of the time, " were butchers, bricklayers, publicans,
and other venerable doctors of that sort." The night
was the most frequent time of their assemblage.
Their sexton and bell-ringer was often a boy who
1 Florimond de Remond, quoted by White, St. Bartholomew,
p. 49, English edition. 16

242 COLIGNY.
would pass through the street whistling a tune, as
our boys in Boston now call their mates to the evening
rendezvous. Or a careless string would be hung from
a window, insignificant to all but those who knew the
token. That French susceptibility to grand ideas,
that fascination under great impulses, that enthusiasm
for communicating what they think and feel, so char
acteristic of the French nature, were supplying the
lack of form and organization. Men were held to
gether by the invisible bond of a grand thought, — the
idea which had seized them severally and held them
as one, — that priestcraft, and pretense, and churchly
arrogance were all to be swept away, and to exist no
longer as barriers to interpose between the individual
soul of man and the face and favor of his God. And
so for fifty years, with no other organization than this,
Huguenoterie was gathering through all France. For
a long time the summer showers that fall upon the
slopes of a hundred hills may be kept apart ; they
may trickle and wander through a thousand dark
crevices, and secret conduits, and obscure ravines,
through water-ways that seem to have no common
outlet ; but the principle of gravity is in every drop,
and the hour of union, soon or late, is at length
inevitable. But the church which was thus gathering under its
invisible leadership was subjected to bitter persecu
tion. If the flame of its life was continually fed by
oil from hidden conduits, it was no less constantly
threatened with extinction by floods of oppression.
Francis I., who held the throne of France from 1515
to 1547, pursued a very crooked and inconsistent, not
to say self-contradictory, course towards the Reforma
tion ; at one time tolerating it, at another persecuting

HENRY II. 243
its followers without mercy. His policy was of the
sort which cries alternately good Lord and good
devil. It was to him, when, afraid of offending the
German princes on one hand, and yet of offending the
ultramontanism of Spain on the other, he persecuted
the Protestants upon the plea that they were robbers
and Anabaptists, that Calvin wrote that sharp dedi
cation of his "Institutes." A monarch utterly without
independence of mind, veering in his course according
to the policy of the hour. The later part of his
reign particularly was signalized by various edicts of
extreme severity, under which men were hunted to the
death like hares. Whole villages were swept out of
existence. At one time, week followed week of con
tinuous slaughter, until, in less than two months,
twenty-two towns and villages were utterly destroyed,
four thousand men and women were slain, and seven
hundred were sent to the galleys. A witness wrote,
" I saw in one church between four and five hundred
poor women and children butchered." Barns were
burned filled with refugees who had retreated to them
for hiding. Some fled into caves, and were suffocated
by fires kindled at the entrances. And yet the re
ligion, without a name and without a church, lived on.
Did I not say truly, that with Frenchmen a great idea
is easy to start, but hard to kill ?
Then came the reign of Henry II. (for twelve years,
1547-1559), with Catherine de Medicis for his queen,
Diana of Poitiers for his mistress, and the Guises for
his counselors and bosom friends, — names all of them
to send a thrill of horror through the most callous and
passionless stoicism. If Francis I. had ever wavered
and shown himself mercifully inclined towards Prot
estantism, his son could be accused of no such weak-

244 COLIGNY.
ness. His little finger was thicker than his father's
loins. His reign began with rigor. He meant to
consolidate his kingdom by compelling all men to
think in one way. All right to property was taken
away from heretics by edict (1551), no plea was al
lowed them in the courts, they were denied the right
of petition to king or Parliament. And yet in this
reign it was that the scattered elements came together
and compacted themselves into a church, the Reformed
Church of France. The fierce determination to anni
hilate heresy aroused it and brought it to bay. It
stood up and declared itself, and was surprised at its
own strength. It began to gather into itself some
new elements. It was not only the humble and the
poor who now allied themselves with its fortunes.
Men and women of wealth, lawyers, bankers, merchants,
were drawn to the hated doctrines. They had their
secret votaries even in the court. Calvin's " Institutes "
had been written for men of thought, and miserable
a coadjutor as Erasmus had personally turned out to
the cause of the Reformation, his satires still had their
power. Huguenoterie was speedily to develop into a
mighty political force. It could do something beside
sing the psalms of Marot. It had hands and feet, and
could march and fight when the man should appear
to marshal and command its energies. The man was
getting ready, and the hour was drawing nigh.
The actual organization of the reformed churches
began in a very simple and beautiful way. The theo
retical question has often been debated, whether, if a
company of men were cast away upon some desert
island without priest or minister, any true church with
valid ordinances could be formed. That hypothetical
question was a practical one in Paris in the year

THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE. 245
1555, which is the date of the first organization of the
Huguenots. It was in this wise. A child was born to
a noble Frenchman in whose house a little company of
Protestants were accustomed to meet secretly for relig
ious worship. Drawn together in such tender sympa
thies as proscribed people always are, they rejoiced
in the joy of the household over the cradle of the lit
tle child. " But how," said the father to his friends,
"shall it be consecrated to God in baptism? I am
unwilling to have the popish rites performed over it.
I cannot carry it away into Geneva or Germany. We
need a church and the sacraments for ourselves and
our children. Why may we not form a church, and
elect a pastor from among ourselves ? Surely there
are those among us who are godly enough and learned
enough." Strange that it had not been suggested
before in all that fifty years ! Some among them were
still afraid to entertain the proposal lest it should sub
ject them to new and fiercer persecution. But they
talked about it, prayed and fasted over it, and finally
acceded to it. They cast their votes for one who
should be their pastor, and one name was on all the
ballots. In the same way they chose a certain number
to be elders and deacons. And so was constituted the
first church of the Huguenots, Christian, apostolic, and,
so far as external polity was concerned, democratic.
From that time the scattered Protestants throughout
France became Huguenots in reality, as they were in
name, eidgenossen, confederates. " They were organ
ized," says Beza, " according to the example of the
Church in primitive times." In less than three years
from this time, so rapid was the movement towards
organization, there were two thousand regular congre
gations of reformed worshipers scattered over France,

246 COLIGNY.
numbering four hundred thousand persons. And one
year later (May, 1559) so strong were they that they
ventured to hold a general synod, adopt a confession
of faith, and settle their national organization.
We have thus traced, in barest outline, the history
of the Huguenots during the period of their sup
pression. They are now an organized and significant
power in the state. As such their history may best be
followed by tracing that of a single man, — a man
who was the first and greatest leader of the Huguenots,
in whom the reform found its best representative,
whether as a social, political, or spiritual force ; who
was recognized at home and abroad as its head and
its heart, at whom all its enemies struck, in whom all
its friends confided, and who was the first and most
prominent victim in that Bartholomew massacre, which
annihilated the power, though it could not crush the
spirit, of the Reformed Church of France.
Gaspard de Coligny, Marquis of Chatillon, was born
February 16, 1517, the year of Luther's theses, at
Chatillon-sur-Loing. He was of a house whose mem
bers had been concerned in the great movements of
France for five hundred years. His father had taken
lessons from Chevalier Bayard, had been grand mar
shal under Francis I., and was one of the chieftains
on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. His mother was
Louise de Montmorenci, proudest of all the names of
the old French nobility. Admiral Coligny thus rep
resented in himself the finest product of ancient
chivalry taken up and glorified by Christianity. He
stands at a singular crisis in history. Feudalism was
just dying out, Renovated Religion was just coming in
along with the Renaissance, and the forces of all three
were confluent in this man's character, as they were

THE TRAINING OF COLIGNY. 247
found, probably, in no other of his age. Such a con
junction in any other age would have been impossible
from the nature of the case. As a representative of
the old chivalry, he was a most perfect, gentle knight.
He seems to have been the last consummate flower
produced by the stalk before it died down forever, at
least in France, as perhaps Sir Philip Sidney was in
England, who was contemporary with him.1 All that
blood untainted by dishonor or by vice, breeding the
most scrupulous and delicate, the refinements of a
home that had grown up into a nursery for his in
fancy, through long generations of brave and pure an
cestors, and that had been adorned by as many gen
erations of gracious and lovely motherhood, — all that
this could do, had its outcome in Gaspard de Coligny.
In addition to this, his boyhood had the advantages
of the revival of letters. He had come of a race of
warriors who could carve their way well enough with
the sword, and bear down their antagonists in the
tournament with the lance, but who could do little
more than make their mark with the pen. But Gas
pard and his brothers had a generous tuition in lan
guages and philosophy, added to the training of the
court and the field. And then, to crown and complete
the whole, his childhood received a fine spiritual cul
ture from his mother, Louise de Montmorenci, who
was left a widow when Gaspard was but five years
old. Madame de Chatillon had been among the few
ladies at the royal court, of high rank, whose hearts
were pure, and whose lives were absolutely free from
scandal. She sympathized heartily with the new spirit
1 Sir Philip Sidney was in Paris when the massacre of St.
Bartholomew took place, and narrowly escaped being one of its
victims.

248 COLIGNY.
of religious reform. She carefully secured for her
children tutors of a like mind, so that the education
which they received developed the fine combination of
the heroic, the courtly, the scholarly, and the spiritual.
And in Gaspard the balance of these seems to have
been as nearly perfect as in any character that greets
us from the page of history. He was as brave as he
was courtly, as scholarly as brave, as devout and spir
itual as scholarly, and withal of good temper and good
sense. No character of modern history seems to me
so nearly to resemble him as our own Washington, —
a character of whom even those who were his enemies
have nothing to say save what is good. BrantSme,
who fought against him and the Huguenots, says :
" Chatillon was prodigiously learned and eloquent ; he
understood and spoke Latin well ; he had both studied
and read ; was always reading when not engaged in
affairs ; he was a lord of honor ; a man of goodness,
sage, mature, well-advised, politic, and brave ; a cen
sor and weigher of things, loving honor and virtue."
Francis of Guise, but two years younger, was the
friend and intimate of his youth, and the two have
been often compared, destined as they were in after
years to become the popular champions of two great
parties ; the name of Guise becoming the watchword
and war-cry of the Papists, as that of Coligny was of
the Huguenots. They looked alike ; in early days
seemed to feel and think alike ; but the one developed
the devil, the other the saint. "The one was am
bitious, selfish, crafty ; the other ingenuous, frank,
open-hearted ; the one made religion serve his own
purposes ; the other served the cause of religion with
a faith that was heroic, and with aims that imparted a
grandeur even to his failures."1 1 Blackburn.

HIS BRAVERY. 249
At the age of twenty-six he enters fully upon the
profession of arms. He is seen upon the fields of
Italy, Lorraine, Flanders, and Northern France, al
ways loyal, and never weighing his life against the
interests of his king. Indeed, to the very last, when
king and court at times are ready to hew him in
pieces or burn him at the stake, it is avowedly the
highest interest of king and country that forms his
most sacred motive. He is a most fearless knight.
Summoned home from the siege of Luxembourg by
his granduncle Montmorenci, on a plea of important
matters that demand immediate attention, he finds it
to be only a pretext to get a favorite nephew out of
danger, is indignant at being thrust into the false po
sition of apparent cowardice, and hastens back to the
scene of death. Wounded fearfully in the trenches,
yet fighting on, he is forced by his commander to re
tire. His throat is torn open by a musket ball, and
the surgeon thinks he will bleed to death ; but only
ten days will he be forced to keep his tent, and then,
against the protests of his superiors, takes the field
anew. The king discovers that he has no man like
this Chatillon to command an enterprise of danger or
of delicacy ; sends him upon commissions of policy or
of hazard, — now to quell a revolt in Rochelle, then to
relieve the army in Italy, again to defend the garrison
at Boulogne. And yet the man has no love for fight
ing ; never was a more peace-loving soul. Conflict
for conflict's sake is his abhorrence from first to last.
Even those plays at warfare in the tilt-yard and the
tournament have for him no fascination. The tourna
ment was tbe fashionable prize-fight of that age. It
was the form of brutal entertainment that was popu
lar with kings and princes and the lords and ladies

250 COLIGNY.
the courts. To Coligny it was as barbarous, hideous,
disgraceful as are the contests of the prize-ring to-day
to the friends of the society for the prevention of
cruelty. In 1547, when he is thirty years of age, he marries
Charlotte de Laval, a marriage attended with results
of signal importance to Coligny, to the Huguenots, to
France, to the Church of Christ, and doubtless to us
here and now.
As if fortune were intent upon heaping all her
favors upon him at once, he soon after receives a sum
mons from his king,1 who says, "For your bravery
everywhere, your superior discipline, your meritorious
services at Cerisola and Boulogne, I confer upon you
another order of knighthood. Receive the collar of
my order of St. Michael." A few days after another
summons, this time to no empty decoration, but to
substantial service, which he relished better : " I ap
point you colonel - general of the French Infantry."
He is not a Huguenot yet, far less a leader of the Hu
guenots, only the best young officer in the army of the
King of France ; but see how God is preparing the
man for the work which lies hidden before him. I
have already shown you how the work was gradually
being prepared for the man ; this is how the man was
being prepared for his work. The work and the man
will soon be brought together, and that young wife at
home in the castle, Charlotte de Laval, will have
something to do with it. With his new commission
Coligny goes to the camp, and straightway the man
puts himself into the whole army. It is a motley
crew. Here are troops of foreign mercenaries, who
care far less for the victories of war than for plunder
1 Henry II.

REFORMS THE ARMY. 251
and rioting. There is little order in the camp or in
the field. The men are idle, dissipated, profane, swear
ing in all the languages of the continent. They are
debauchees at rest, brigands on the march. Coligny
will have no such disorder ; a soldier, if not a Chris
tian, should at least be a gentleman. Profanity shall
be abolished ; for the first offense he awards eight
days in prison, on bread and water ; for the second,
the amende honorable, in the shirt and upon the
knees ; for the third, the hand to be struck off. And
the swearing ceases. There shall be no more quarrels
among men, or duels between officers. Whatever a
soldier takes shall be taken only by permission, and
scrupulously paid for. The honor of woman shall be
respected ; whoever insults or attacks a woman shall
be hanged or strangled to death. They thought at
first that the law would prove a dead letter, but it was
carried out. " This offender," said they, " lives in
your own town, under the walls of your own castle :
will you punish him ? " " All the more for that ; he
knows that I mean what I say." When the order was
once established its beneficence was seen and acknowl
edged. Coligny's own regiment was to be depended
upon for any service of unusual hazard. The towns
through which he marched, or in whose neighborhood
he encamped, felt secure. His men became a legion
that would start to their feet at his call. An old
writer,1 not a Huguenot nor a friend to the Hugue
nots, says that Coligny's rules preserved the lives of
millions of persons, to say nothing of their goods and
property. He was thus the inventor of modern mili
tary discipline. He, more than any other man, made
the soldier even of to-day. He was the first to make
honor the condition of wearing the uniform.
1 Brantdme.

252 COLIGNY.
My limits will not allow me to detail the career
through which Coligny rose to the highest point of
court favor. He was, of course, the object of abuse,
suspicions, envies, jealousies, as every true man must
be on such a path. In 1552 he is made, at thirty-five
years of age, Admiral of France. In 1556 he is sent
by his king, Henry II., to negotiate the treaty of Vau-
celles with Philip of Spain.1 The truce agreed upon
is to last for five years. It is a truce not favorable
to the Pope, because it binds Henry not to interfere
with the Spanish operations in Italy. But Diana of
Poitiers and the Guises and the Pope know how to
manipulate Henry, and they compel him to break the
truce before a single year has passed by. And so in
a few short months Coligny sees his peace-making
work at an end, and true to his king, though the king
is false to himself, he is again in the field. And now
comes that famous siege of St. Quentin, which you can
best read, or rather see like a picture, in the pages of
Motley and Prescott.2 Coligny holds the town for
three weeks against an overwhelming force. The delay
saves Paris, but the fortunes of war are against Co
ligny, and he is made a prisoner. It was just at this
time that that little Huguenot Church first formed in
Paris was holding its meetings, and other churches
were springing into organic life all over the kingdom.
Coligny held back that Spanish army just long enough
to keep it from sweeping through France and blotting
the new little churches all out of existence. He was
1 See Prescott's Philip II., book i., ch.v.
2 It was the capture of that city upon St. Lawrence's Day in
memory of which Philip built the Escorial. For the story of the
siege vide Prescott, Philip IL, book i., ch. vii. ; Motley, Dutch Re
public, part i., ch. ii.

PRISON REFLECTIONS. 253
even then working for the great cause without know
ing at the time how great a service he was render
ing. But he is now drawing into a closer relation
to the proscribed and hated people. Shut up for
months in a Flemish prison, his Bible is his constant
companion. His brother Andelot sends him books
which let in more and more of the new light. Calvin
knows the kindly religious influences under which he
has been trained, and writes him. It leads to corre
spondence. All the best men and women whom he
knows favor the Huguenots ; he is more than half a
Huguenot himself. But if he goes over, what will it
cost him ? The favor of his king, and the extinction of
any hopes which he may have cherished of further pre
ferment. It will bring him into constant suspicion,
perhaps into persecution. Hitherto he had made a
compromise with himself. He had believed, along with
Erasmus, that the Church might be reformed from
within. His father and uncles had never broken with
the old Church. But he sees now that the compromise
cannot be honestly maintained. The next year, after
all these months of thought and reading and prayer,
he is released upon the payment of the heavy price of
fifty thousand crowns for his liberty. Doubtless he
counts it light for the joy of getting back to his dear
old castle home of Chatillon, and to his wife and the
child that has been born to them.
One evening after his return he is walking with his
wife under the open sky under the castle tower, and
she says to him: "How wonderful that you should
have been blest in your captivity with the kuowledge
of the truth ! And now why do you not publicly avow
your faith and have a chaplain with us, preaching in
the castle and the little towns about us ? "

254 COLIGNY.
" Perhaps I might not hold out if I were subjected
to persecution, and you, in your sorrows and suffer
ings, would entreat me to yield at the expense of faith
and honor."
" Indeed, you should never be tempted thus by me.
I would be crushed to nothing a thousand times rather
than see you deny Christ."
" This, then, is the last cable that holds me. I
know the tortures which the Protestants are com
pelled to endure. Whoever makes a public profession
of the Huguenot faith in France is likely to be seized
and burned, and his property confiscated to the king.
If I were alone in the world this would not deter me.
If you are prepared with faith and courage to un
dergo what is common to others, I will not be want
ing in my duty. There shall be a family altar, a
chaplain in our castle, a church growing up in our
town, a gospel preached to the poor. I will be a Hu
guenot." "And the joys beyond all these! The glories of
the eternal heavens ! " whispered Charlotte de Chatil
lon. Noble man and woman ! And how nobly was
the promise kept by them both until Charlotte's death,
and by her husband until the terrible day of St. Bar
tholomew !
One day not long afterwards, the good knight of
Chatillon and his wife were in the little Huguenot
congregation in the neighborhood when the Lord's
Supper was to be celebrated. As the service was
about to begin Coligny arose, and said, " I beseech
the congregation not to take offense at my weakness,
but to believe me sincere and pray for me, when I ask
the minister to explain the Lord's Supper a little more
fully."

THE MAN FINDS HIS WORK. 255
All were astonished. The minister, in a few simple
words, responded to the request ; and the great admi
ral, never before so great as now, when clothed with
the simplicity of a little child, arose again, and said :
" Permit me, brethren, to return thanks to God for
this instruction, and to the pastor who has given it so
patiently. God sparing me, I shall seek to receive the
communion on the first day hereafter when it is ad
ministered in my parish."
" Why not now? " said the pastor.
" I have not made yet so public a profession of my
faith as I ought."
" You are making it now. Do you believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ as the only Saviour and Intercessor
for fallen man? Do you agree with us in the doc
trines which the Scriptures teach, as far as you know
them?" " Most sincerely I do," said the admiral.
" Then, in the name of my Lord and my brethren,
I invite you to this table, unless the elders think that
our usual rules should be strictly observed."
" By no means let us debar one of the Lord's
disciples, for it is His table, and not ours," said a
venerable elder. " Where the spirit of the Lord is
there is liberty." 1
And so the great Admiral Coligny crowned the
best honors that his king could bestow by becoming
a Huguenot, and taking to himself the higher alle
giance to the King of kings, — an allegiance in which
he was as brave and true a knight, as unflinching a
soldier, as stainless in his spiritual honor, as he had
ever been in the service of Francis or of Henry.
From this time Coligny became inevitably the head
i Blackburn, Coligny, etc., Cornaton's Memoirs.

256 COLIGNY.
of the Huguenots. It could not have been otherwise.
The cause had been growing for the man and the man
for the cause, and when the hour struck the twain
were wedded in a union whieh only St. Bartholomew's
awful day saw terminated.
It was my object in this lecture to give only the
history of the rise and first development of the Re
formed Church of France. I can therefore do noth
ing more than outline the remainder of the story.
It was this same year, 1559, that Francis II. came
to the throne, a boy of sixteen, who was married to
Mary, Queen of Scots, the niece of the Guises. This
brought that hated family more than ever into power,
and they instituted measures for the speedy extinction
of heresy throughout the kingdom. One of these
brothers controlled the army ; the other was put at the
head of the treasury. Coligny was retired from office,
and for a time lived quietly at Chatillon. But the
Huguenots were now beginning to feel their associated
power. Executions of popular favorites who ad
hered to the reformed opinions, and more especially
the slaughter at Amboise,1 so far from depressing
them seemed to fire their courage. They dared to
hold immense open-air meetings, not for the purpose
of expressing disaffection or rebellion, but for relig
ious worship. And yet the court, strangely blinded,
persisted in the policy of extermination. Edicts were
promulgated "that every house proved to have har
bored an assembly of Protestants should be razed to
the ground, and that whosoever should be present at
1 A plot had been laid, in whieh Coligny had no part or lot, to
seize the person of the king, who was at the castle of Amboise,
and so rescue the throne from the influence of the Guises. It
failed, and the failure was followed by wholesale massacres.

FRANCIS II. 257
a private meeting should be sentenced to death, with
out hope of pardon or pity." Massacre followed mas
sacre without abatement. Beza is authority for the
statement that the infants of murdered fathers and
mothers wandered through the streets crying pite-
ously, less cared for than the dogs, with no bed but
the flagstones; no one daring to relieve their hunger,
or give them shelter, for fear of being accused of
heresy. The finances of the kingdom had long been in a
bad way, and an assembly of Notables was called to
provide for the expenses of the court. Coligny took
advantage of the assembly, and at once put himself
forward as the champion of his hounded and hunted
brethren. We must remember that the right of peti
tion had been revoked. It was death to champion the
Huguenots in any way. But when was Coligny ever
afraid to serve either his earthly or his heavenly king ?
He presented before the assembly two petitions. In
one he shows the real causes of the kingdom's dis
quietude, and disclaims for his people any part in the
Amboise affair. In the other he pleads for freedom
of thought and liberty of worship. He wants only
that Christians of one name shall have the privileges
that are granted to those of another. Nay, he will be
content with less than that. His people are willing to
be excluded from towns, or to have a town or two in
each province. They are willing to go miles away
from all others who would be offended or disturbed
by their assemblies. But the Guises are inexorable.
They will destroy the Huguenots by crushing their
leaders. And Coligny has now put himself into an
attitude in which they will never more be reconciled
with him. A general massacre is planned, and in
17

258 COLIGNY.
order to facilitate it the Bourbons, the house of Na
varre, are summoned to court. At this moment, when
a thousand furies are poising in the air for their de
scent, the king dies. It is as if the hand of God were
stretched out from heaven to avert the slaughter.
Calvin, in one of his letters at the time, commenting
upon the event, says : " Did you ever hear or read of
anything so opportune as the death of the little king?
Just when there was no remedy for our extreme per
ils, God suddenly appeared from heaven, and ,he who
had pierced the eye of the father struck the ear of the
son." 1
The accession of Charles IX. strengthened the
hands of Catherine de Me'dicis, who had hitherto been
overshadowed. Francis had been ruled by Mary
Stuart, who was controlled by her uncles, the Guises ;
but Charles was a boy ten years old, scarcely out
of the arms of his mother, who now reasserted her
authority. Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre,
would have been lawfully regent during the minority
of Charles, but he was too weak to assert his claims,
and the government fell virtually into the hands of
the queen-mother. She hates both the Guise and the
Huguenot: the former, because his political power
threatens to abridge that of the throne ; the latter,
because his religious principles are opposed to unlim
ited despotism. Both threaten her prerogative, but
from different sides. She proposes to herself, there
fore, to first make an alliance with the Protestants for
the removal of the Guises, and cautiously bids for the
support of Huguenotism, which now embraces nearly
1 Francis died from an abscess in the ear ; his father, Henry
II., was pierced through the eye, while tilting, by the splinter of
a broken lance.

MASSACRE AT VASSY. 259
one fourth of the population, and more than three
fourths of all the men of letters in the kingdom. Ac
cordingly Montmorenci and Coligny are taken seem
ingly into high favor, and the Huguenots gain a good
degree of toleration. Refugees come trooping back
from England, Germany, Switzerland, and the Nether
lands. A conference is called to meet at Poissy for
the arrangement of religious differences, which results
in an edict of toleration for the Huguenots, though
under severe restrictions. In less than two months the
edict is deliberately broken by the infamous massa
cre at Vassy. The Duke of Guise, upon entering the
town on a Sunday morning, finds the Protestants
assembling in a barn for religious worship, and directs
his armed escort to break up the assembly. The poor
people, mechanics and tradesmen for the most part,
with their wives and children, try vainly to defend
themselves by closing the doors ; but they are no match
for two or three hundred well-armed soldiery. The
duke is struck by a flying missile, and in his rage
orders his men to spare nobody ; and a single hour
sees more than forty wives made widows, sixty Hugue
nots slain outright and two hundred wounded, some
of them mortally. Electric wires could scarcely have
spread the tidings more swiftly throughout France.
It was the signal for civil war.
Wherever the papists were in the majority other
slaughters followed : at Paris, at Sens, at Rouen, and
a score of other places. At Toulouse there was a
monumental massacre of three thousand, which was
commemorated by the Roman Catholics of that city in
centennial festivals in 1662, in 1762, and which would
have been commemorated in 1862 had it not been
prohibited by the government of Napoleon III.1
1- Dr. T. M. Lindsay, Reformation, p. 84.

260 COLIGNY.
I cannot follow the scenes of the next ten years,
through which Coligny stood the friend, and, so far as
mortal arm could be, the defender of his hunted peo
ple : that bloody decree of Paris, by which with one
stroke of the pen the entire Huguenot population of
the kingdom were proscribed ; Romanists commanded
to arm in every parish, and at the tap of drum or stroke
of bell to rise and slay their neighbors, without respect
to age, or sex, or ties of family, without fear of being
called to account, until, as it was said, fifty thousand
were murdered ; the plots for Coligny's assassination ;
his own proscription and outlawry ; how his castle was
dismantled, and his furniture, in eighty wagon-loads,
carted to Paris and sold at public auction ; his village
burned ; his escutcheon publicly broken to pieces ; and
his noble bearing under it all. The varying conditions
of the churches and their leaders, under the caprices
of Catherine, make too long and sad a story, up to the
peace of St. Germain in 1570. Then came the bloody
crisis, in which the red hand of Rome descended with
the great destructive blow from which, to this day, the
Protestantism of France has never recovered.
At the beginning of Charles's reign Catherine un
dertook to break the power of the Guises by allying
herself with the Huguenots ; but now she fears that
the Huguenots themselves will abridge her influence,
and plots for their destruction. The sole key to the
woman's inconsistency is her ambition for personal
power, which has been threatened first from one side,
then from the other. The poor weak, dissolute king
seems to have formed a strange liking for Coligny, in
spite of his Iluguenotism. The brutal mother sees a
way through her son's fondness for accomplishing her
cherished purposes. She will have the Huguenot lead-

ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 261
ers at court for a grand holiday, and through them
deal the churches her fatal blow. Young Henry
of Navarre will probably come to the throne of France,
and he must marry into her family ; the throne must
not pass out of her control. Henry of Navarre is
known as a Huguenot. What a bright thought, to
wed him to her daughter, and have all the Huguenot
leaders, high with hopes for the betterment of their
condition, come to the wedding, and then give a signal
for their slaughter, beginning with Coligny ! A plot
worthy of Catherine de Medicis, — worthy to crown
the long series of bloody deeds which have made her
family infamous from the days of Savonarola ! That
is the plan, and it is carried out to the letter. The
wedding-day comes : the Huguenots are there, Coligny
and all the rest. Some bungler tries to shoot him by
stealth and fails, but it is only a short reprieve.
The dawn of St. Bartholomew breaks, August 24,
1572. The awful tolling of the beU is heard. The
assassins begin. Coligny, first pierced with sword-
thrusts, is thrown to the pavement, unrecognizable.
Guise, grim master of ceremonies, stoops and wipes
the blood from the face of the murdered man to
reassure himself that it is the corpse of his enemy,
then kicks it, and leaves it to be beheaded by the mob,
dragged headless through the streets of Paris, and
finally hung by the heels upon the common gallows.
Then all through the sweet dawning light, and all
that summer's day, and day after day, through Paris,
through France, the work proceeds, as if cruelty ran
¦ on electric cords, till seventy thousand,1 of all ages, are
1 This is Sully's estimate ; De Thou says twenty thousand ;
some authorities fix the number as high as one hundred thou
sand.

262 COLIGNY.
slain, — lusty manhood, and hoary hairs, babyhood at
the breast, indiscriminately slaughtered, — until tiger
ish fury is wearied out, and earth, burdened with the
dead, can bear no more.
And yet that church lived on ; it lives to-day. It
sent even across the sea a precious contribution to the
faith and devotion of American liberty and American
religion. To it and that long series of troubles which
led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes we owe
those names which shine like stars in the sky of our
history : the Bowdoins, and Faneuils, and Boudinots ;
the Sigourneys, and Jays, and De Lanceys ; the
Pintards, and Bayards, and Grimk^s, — a cordon of
brilliants, stretching, like the beacons of our eastern
coast, from Cape Elizabeth to Florida. And that
church is rising again. A grand idea is easy to start
with Frenchmen, but hard to kill. France is one of
those nations of which it is surely said, " The king
doms of this world shall become the kingdom of our
Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever
and ever."

XI.
WILLIAM BREWSTER.
A. d. 1560-1644.
As on the first Christians in Antioch and in Eome, before churches
existed there, the duty was incumbent of forming churches according to
the mind of Christ, so on them in England, where Christ's institution
had been subverted, and a different institution set up in its place, there
was incumbent a duty of re-formation of churches. — Dk. Leonard
Bacon.

XI.
WILLIAM BREWSTER.
A. d. 1560-1644.
In the preceding chapters I have traced the Refor
mation movement, as it were, by a broken line upon
the map of history. It has not always been possible
to see, or even to conjecture, the connection which
doubtless existed, binding that movement in different
lands and through different ages into perfect in
tegrity. The current has sometimes seemed to be
underground, and not traceable at all ; not seldom
traceable only obscurely ; at other times obviously
unbroken through protracted periods and over long
distances. We saw its faint rise in the uplands of
modern history, among the Mystics of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, where the footsteps of the
ordinary traveler do not penetrate ; its somewhat
broader and more concrete development under Wic
lif in England, and Hus in Bohemia, and Savonarola
in Italy, until it took on more of a national aspect in
the German Reformation under Luther, the Anglican
under Henry "Vlll., the Genevan under Calvin, the
Scottish under Knox, and the French under Coligny
and the Huguenots. And now we prick the chart in
a strange quarter. The movement takes us away from
the map of Europe, to which we have been confined
hitherto, across a thousand leagues of almost un-

266 WILLIAM BREWSTER
traveled sea, to desolate and almost unknown shores.
And yet, although the break in our line is, geograph
ically, so unprecedented and enormous, we are even
more certain of the continuity and identity of the
movement than we were in passing from Lutterworth
to Prague, from Florence to Oxford, from Witten
berg to Paris, or from Geneva to Chatillon. It is
a long link, but by no means an obscure one, that
binds Plymouth and American Christianity to the
Anglican Reformation.
I am to explain to you how it is that we are here,
with the peculiarities of our church order and relig
ious life ; how we are connected in this great chain
of causes and effects with the work of Wiclif and
Hus, and Luther and Latimer. It is, of course, a
very familiar story ; but its importance to ourselves
and to our children can never be overestimated. It
is the old and well-worn title-deed which reveals to
us and authenticates to the world the descent of our
heritage. Its rehearsal is like that legal process of
searching the title, which, however often it has been
done in the past, must needs be done anew at every
stage of the property's descent.
The Plymouth pilgrimage, then, was a part of the
great Reformation movement, and to identify it as
such in its spirit and in fact is the principal object of
this lecture. It was the same great impulse that
found expression in Wiclif and Latimer, in Luther
and Melancthon, in Calvin and Coligny, that brought
our fathers — William Brewster chief among them —
to these shores. Indeed, we may say that the pilgrim
age was the culmination of the Anglican Reformation.
That reformation, though it seemed for the time to
have culminated in the severance of the Church of

ORIGIN OF PURITANISM. 267
England from the papacy, under Henry VIIL, was,
nevertheless, very imperfect. It was little more than
the substitution of one Pope for another. It made
the King, instead of the Pope, the head of the Church
and the fountain of spiritual authority. Henry was
not a man to care very much for any real purification
of morals or renovation of life. It was the division
of power in his realm that he could not tolerate.
And when he had once declared his independence of
the papacy, he bent all his endeavors to make it real
and permanent. He took advantage of the same
methods which men use now — governors and presi
dents sometimes — to enlarge and perpetuate their
powers, the judicious use of patronage and perquisites.
He dissolved the monasteries and other religious estab
lishments, and conveyed noble abbeys and broad do
mains and fat livings and rich sinecures to multitudes
of his favorites, so that they and their heirs and their
innumerable dependents would be sure to say, " If
this is what reformation means, we will stand by the
Reformation." He put these things, according to the
modern political proverb, " where they would do the
most good." Hundreds of livings which had hereto
fore been held under the appointment of monasteries
and abbots were now in the gift of the king and lay
lords, and this bound Parliament to the royal interest.
But all this, of course, only effected an external and
political reformation. A great change, to be sure, — so
great that the temporary relapse of a few years under
Mary was not sufficient to countervail it, — but far
short of those grand spiritual results which were con
templated by such men as Latimer and Ridley. Side
by side with this governmental and political Protestant
ism which was established under Henry and Edward,

268 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
and still further under Elizabeth, and which had se
cured all that it had desired or hoped for, there was
growing a popidar and spiritual Protestantism, which
unceasingly longed for purity in the worship of God,
simplicity in the administration of ordinances, and
renovation of life. And this was the origin of Non
conformity and Puritanism. There was no thought
at first among people of this sort of any separation
from the Church of England as established by law.
And if Elizabeth and her silly successor, James I.,
had been of generous spirit and of judicious temper,
the Church of Old England might possibly have held
the churches of New England in communion and alle
giance to this very day. But Elizabeth had more than
the willfulness and autocracy and tyranny and super
stition of her father, and James surpassed them both
in all these qualities. Elizabeth compelled the spirit
ual life of her realm to assert itself in Puritanism ; then
drove Puritanism into separation from the Church, and
ultimately into expatriation and pilgrimage. The first
year of Elizabeth's reign was signalized by an Act of
Uniformity, which made it a penal offense for any
religious assembly, great or small, to worship God
after any fashion save that prescribed by the Prayer-
Book, or for any minister to conduct a service of any
sort save as accompanied by the prescribed dress,
forms, ceremonies, and words, to the letter. Some of
these things were identified, in the minds not only of
the common people, but of the clergy and prelates
also, with a superstition which they abjured and
detested. And to make them compulsory, under
penalty of fines and imprisonment, was a tyranny
no less than that which they had endured under
Rome itself. Moreover, in all parts of England the

ORIGIN OF SEPARATION. 269
people had been accustomed, from the times of Wiclif
and his poor priests, save in the days of Mary, and even
then secretly, to meet for simple worship and the read
ing of the Word. And now this Protestant queen —
a " petticoated Pope " she has been called — made this
simple act a crime on the part of any of her subjects,
high or low. Plainly the Reformation had gone as far
as it was likely to go in the national church. They
must steal their liberty, or look for it in separation,
and perhaps in exile and banishment. The Act of
Supremacy had empowered the queen to establish
what was known as the Court of High Commission,
whose members were to be appointed at her absolute
discretion, and whose powers were scarcely less than
those of the Spanish Inquisition. " They were au
thorized to make inquiry concerning all heretical
opinions, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies, false
rumors or talks, slanderous words and sayings ; to
punish all persons willfully absent from church or
divine service established by law ; to visit and reform
all heresies and schisms ; to call before them all per
sons suspected of ecclesiastical offenses, and examine
them, and, according to their answers, to punish them
by excommunication, by fire, or by unlimited imprison
ment." 1 Any three members of this commission,
one being a bishop, might constitute a court with full
powers, might command the services of sheriffs and
justices, for the apprehension and punishment of any
persons in any part of the kingdom. In the reign of
Mary multitudes of ministers had fled to the continent
to escape persecution at her hands, and these had come
under the influence of the German and Swiss reform
ers, whose views of church government were not pre-
1 Dr. Bacon, Genesis of New England Churches, pp. 78, 79.

270 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
latic. There had been congregations of these English
exiles in Frankfort, Zurich, Geneva, and other places,
many of whom had returned upon the accession of
Elizabeth, expecting that the Protestant queen would
pursue a liberal policy. They were disappointed, and
the High Commission had its hands full in dealing
with them. Many of them found themselves vexed
with prosecutions, their ministers suspended and thrown
into jails and prisons, for Non-conformity. It is no
wonder that, under these conditions, men began se
riously to inquire whether the English Church were
not ranging itself, in its spirit and its methods, along
with the Romish Church, whose authority it had re
jected ; and whether the one had any better right than
the other to claim to be exclusively the Church of
Jesus Christ on earth, or even in the English nation ;
and whether, also, if a company of sincere believers
anywhere should statedly meet for religious worship
and the observance of Christian ordinances, it might
not claim to be a church of Jesus Christ. And for
daring to assert and defend this as their theory of the
Church, men were hanged, in the days of good Queen
Bess, in England.1 And for daring to put their theory
into practice, many were seized and imprisoned, in
irons, for four or five years together, without trial, or
charge, or privilege of bail. Many aged widows and
old men and young maidens were thrust into crowded
jails, where the fever raged, and miserably perished.
Others were beaten almost to death with cudgels, and
this under the authority of the Head of the Reformed
Church of England. And yet the heresy which, let
1 See Froude's History of England, conclusion ; Dr. Wad-
dington's Penry ; Bacon's Genesis of New England Churches,
chaps, viii., ix.

SCROOBY. 271
us remember, if we are ever tempted to be of a per
secuting spirit, we now call orthodoxy grew, as heresy
always will under such treatment; so that, as Sir
Walter Raleigh said, arguing against a bill in Par
liament for the suppression of the Separatists, " there
are near twenty thousand of them in England."
When James I. came to the throne, upon the death
of Elizabeth (1603), matters grew even worse. The
monarch avowed his purpose to make the Separatists
conform, or " to harry them out of the land." And
because he was as good, or rather as bad, as his word,
New England was first settled as it was.
At this time there was standing in an insignificant
village in the North of England, Scrooby by name,
on the great post-road from London to Berwick, an
ancient manor-house which had belonged to the arch
bishops of York. To it the great Wolsey had re
treated in his disgrace, to meditate upon the instabil
ity of human greatness and the uncertainty of royal
favor. Henry VIII. himself had lodged there. Eliz
abeth had desired to gain possession of it for her fa
vorite, the Earl of Leicester, but the archbishop would
not be persuaded to part with it. Of late years, how
ever, the old manor-house had become alienated from
the see, and at this time of which I speak was occu
pied under lease by one William Brewster. He had
been a man of affairs under Elizabeth, and had seen
much of court and diplomatic life at home and abroad.
Educated at the University of Cambridge, he possessed
the knowledge of books, in addition to that better
knowledge gained by experience and travel and large
intercourse with men. In the "Old Colony Records "
there is an inventory of his books, numbering nearly
three hundred volumes, of wliich sixty-four are in the

272 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
learned languages, — a library more considerable for
that day than one of two thousand would be now.
When he was about twenty-five years of age he en
tered the service of Mr. William Davison, one of
Queen Elizabeth's ambassadors, and afterwards one
of her principal secretaries of state. He was thus
brought while a young man into acquaintance with the
splendid court of Elizabeth. He must have met with
Sir Philip Sidney, with Walsingham and Cecil, Lord
Burleigh, not improbably with Sir Walter Raleigh
and Shakespeare and Bacon and Spenser and Dray
ton. Through many years of faithful service he was
with the secretary, going with him upon important for
eign embassies, and serving him as under-secretary,
and trusted, as Governor Bradford says, " above all
others that were about him, employed in matters of
greatest trust and secrecy, esteemed rather as a son
than as a servant ; and for his wisdom and godliness,
the secretary would converse with him more like a
friend and familiar than a master." x And what man
ner of man this young William Brewster was still fur
ther appears from the fact that when his patron fell
into misfortune and unmerited disgrace this friend did
not desert him. He became involved in the unhappy
affair of Mary, Queen of Scots. When Elizabeth
had determined upon Mary's execution, she ordered
Mr. Secretary Davison to make out the death-warrant.
She signed it, and bade him take it to the lord chan
cellor for the great seal, which he did, and it was
sealed and executed accordingly. The execution ac
complished and poor Mary's head off, Elizabeth chided
the secretary for his haste in obeying her own com-
1 Governor Bradford's " Memoir of Elder Brewster," Young's
Chronicles of the Pilgrims, p. 463.

QUEEN'S POST. 273
mands, and, to throw dust into the eyes of her con
science, deprived him of his office, confiscated his
property, and thrust him into the Tower. But Brew
ster was no fair-weather friend. " He remained," as
Governor Bradford tells us, with the fallen secretary,
" some good time after that he was put from his place,
doing him many faithful offices of service in the time
of his troubles." x But this was the turning-point in
Brewster's history. He was wanted for higher service
than any that he could render at the court of Eliza
beth. There was a little company of persecuted Chris
tian people up in the North of England, of whom as
yet he knew nothing, they knowing as little of him,
who even now were needing his help. He was not a
Separatist as yet, though a Puritan in his principles,
doubtless, as his patron the secretary had been. At
this crisis in his affairs, probably through the in
fluence of some court friend, he was appointed one
of the queen's posts on the great high road from
London to York and Edinburgh ; and the next that
we hear of him he is domiciled in that capacity in the
archbishop's old manor-house at Scrooby. He is not
to be thought of by us as merely " the postmaster of
Scrooby." Scrooby had little to do with his office, or
his office with Scrooby. There was not then, as now,
a post-office in every village. The service was one of
great trust and responsibility, and more for the use
of the queen, her court and parliament and govern
ment officers, than for the general use of the people.
It was not a provision for private correspondence.
Here, as the queen's or king's officer, — for he held
over under James, — he tarried for some thirteen years.
1 Governor Bradford's " Memoir of Elder Brewster," ' <
Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, p. 464.
18

274 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
Here he was married and children were born unto
him ; here he was a man of note, and made his influ
ence felt for good through all the country around;
and here, better than all, he became godfather and
protector to the first Christian church of New Eng
land. Seeing, year after year, the suspension, depri
vation, and silencing of ministers whom he knew,
upon whose ministry he had attended, and the contin
ued persecution of men for no other reason than their
desire to live soberly, righteously, and godly, and to
worship in their own way, and despairing of any
change for the better in the Church, he quietly with
drew, and associated himself with a little company of
men and women who worshiped in the neighborhood.
They had a deposed rector for their pastor, and for
their teacher a man of gentle, ingenuous spirit, whose
name, John Robinson, we have all learned to speak
with loving reverence, as though he were still the pas
tor and teacher of us all. " They joined themselves
(by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate in
the fellowship of the gospell, to walk in all his wayes
made known, or to be made known unto them accord
ing to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost
them, the Lord assisting them." 1 They completed
their organization as a separate church by choosing
Brewster himself as their ruling elder, and thenceforth
worshiped with him in the old manor-house, which
had been in turn the lodging-place of royalty and the
abode of the proudest prelate that England ever saw,
but which had never before sheltered three as noble
souls as John Robinson, William Brewster, and Wil
liam Bradford.
1 Governor Bradford's "History of Plymouth Colony," in
Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, p. 21. This was in 1602.

THE BODY MORE THAN THE MEMBER. 275
But a company of people thus asserting their right
to exist as a separate church, and meeting regularly
for worship and for instruction, could hardly expect
to defy the Act of Uniformity with impunity. They
had need to count the cost, and see whether, with their
little handful, they would be able to meet the king,
who would come against them with his twenty thousand.
They speedily found that James's threat to "make
them conform or harry them out " was no meaningless
piece of bravado. Harry them he did forthwith : the
whole machinery of persecution was set in motion for
their special benefit. " Some," says one of their num
ber, " were taken and clapt into prison ; others had
their houses beset and watched night and day, they
barely escaping ; while the most part were fain to fly
and leave all, — habitations, friends, and means of liv
ing." Under these various persecutions Brewster was
their strong stay, his friendship the one visible bond
of union. He had been long in coming into this re
lationship with them, and when he came it was for a
lifelong union, an inviolable marriage, for richer, for
poorer, to love and to cherish till death should part.
There was, and is, something as grand as it is simple
about the pilgrim view of the church relationship. It
is not a sentimental liking for an institution ; it is not
an artificial and superficial union founded upon some
preterite history : but it is a giving up of the living
man to other living men, wholly, the interest of all
the interest of each, and the corporate spiritual life
of the body dearer to each than any or all separate
and individual interests can be. And so it at once
became the question of all questions with these men,
not, How shall I personally escape the storm of royal
and ecclesiastical wrath ? That question would have

276 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
been easily answered : I will take myself into a strict
personal retirement, and nourish my spiritual life in
solitude and safety. That, however, was not the ques
tion, but, How shall we save and nourish this corporate
life ? Here is a church of Jesus Christ, a compacted
spiritual and social force for the kingdom of God:
how shall we save it to the world ? It is a unity more
precious than any solitary unit of selfhood can be.
See how the reasoning and conduct of these men were
along the line of the principle that the individual is
primarily for the church, and only secondarily is the
church for the individual. And so they said, The
church must not be dissipated, but must move as one
man, even though it be to the ends of the earth. To
the ends of the earth it proved ultimately to be. But
whither first ? Why, to the nearest place where the
church could be permitted to maintain its precious
corporate life, and that was to the free states of Hol
land, just across the German Ocean. There, they had
heard, was freedom for all. But what must they per
sonally sacrifice to preserve this precious corporate
force, the life of the church? First of all, native
land ; for how long they could not tell, perhaps for
ever. It turned out to be forever. They must go to
a strange people, of strange language, of different cus
toms ; probably to new and unwonted employments ;
to a country that had just been, and might soon again
be, the scene of bloody war. As Bradford said,1 " to
go into a country they knew not but by hearsay,
where they must learn a new language and get their
livings they knew not how, seemed an adventure al
most desperate. . . . But these things did not dismay
1 Bradford's History of Plymouth Colony, ut supra, pp. 25,
26.

DIFFICULTIES OF ESCAPE. 277
them, although they did sometimes trouble them ; for
their desires were set in the ways of God and to enjoy
his ordinances. They rested in his providence, and
knew whom they had believed." But how long would
it take them, a few men and women with a rather
meagre array of worldly gear, to get across to Hol
land, a few hours' sail, with their little church ? Brew
ster, who was their man of affairs, had chartered a
ship that could take them all. But it was necessary
to be cautious ; the ports were closed against Separa
tists. If their going were to be bruited abroad they
would be in danger of seizure and imprisonment.
They managed to embark, and thought they were safe.
But their captain betrayed them to the authorities, and
they were taken from their ship in open boats, their
persons searched and rifled, their women treated with
gross indignity, and their leaders, Brewster and Brad
ford among them, " clapt into prison." Thus, for six
months, the attempt was a miserable failure. Had
their church any existence then? Where was it?
One member here, another there ; some in prison cells,
some in voluntary hiding. There was no edifice.
There was no sign of visible organism. Where was
the little church of Scrooby, that afterwards became
the church of Plymouth and " the mother of us all " ?
It was where the first Church of Christ on earth was
when its head and leader was in the Arimathean's
tomb, and the disciples had scattered and fled. It was
in the secret thought, and unshaken purpose, and un-
decaying affection, and unchanged spiritual loyalty of
their locally scattered but secretly united souls. They
were still at one, and the next spring they tried again.
But, with all their caution, their plans were discov
ered and their purposes well-nigh defeated. It was a

278 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
broken, fragmentary flight, in which husbands were
separated from wives and parents from children ; some
were taken and subjected again to fines and imprison
ments, and after long delay released ; some were ex
posed to a tempestuous voyage of fourteen days in
crossing that little patch of water. What, through all
these tribulations, sustained their courage and kept
their purpose firm ? Nothing but the consciousness
that they were on the side of God and everlasting
truth, and God was with them. " And so it came to
pass," as St. Paul says, " that they escaped all safe to
land," — words of which Bradford's read like a para
phrase : " In the end they all got over, some at one
time, some at another, and met together again with
no small rejoicing."
In Amsterdam they were now (summer of 1608).
But for no very long time, — a year or thereabouts.
Other Separatists were there. In fact, Amsterdam
had become a harbor for persecuted exiles, not only
from other parts of England, but from all parts of the
Continent. There were other churches there founded
after the fashion of their own. But few churches of
that or of any other day were so fortunate as to have
for their leading spirits such men as John Robinson
and Elder Brewster. And among these Separatists al
ready on the ground were uneasy, contentious, crotch
ety spirits, who were embroiling their brethren and
keeping them in hot water upon petty questions about
peculiarities of female dress : whether the pastor's wife
should wear whalebones, and cork heels upon her
shoes, and other equally important matters. To our
Pilgrims the causes of strife seemed so pitiful, and the
minds which could be exercised by them so petty, that
they speedily moved their church forty miles away to

LEYDEN. 279
the ancient city of Leyden, where now their home was
to be for eleven years. Already had they well earned
the name of Pilgrims.
It was a famous era in the history of Holland and
in the history of human liberty at which our little
church came to Leyden. It was just at the close of
what has been called " the mqst glorious war for lib
erty ever waged." It was the very year in which the
grand twelve years' truce between Spain and her re
volted colonies had been negotiated and ratified. Was
there a divine prearrangement in this, that the truce
was made just to cover the period during which the
Pilgrims were to remain ; that peace should be insured
for so long a time, when peace, after all its turmoils,
was what the little church most desired and needed for
its compacting, its growth, and its influence? And
Leyden was a noble* city, with its famous university.
Here Arminius had taught, and founded that system
which has shared with Calvin's in the disputes of two
hundred years. Here too Scaliger had taught, and
Grotius was already making his contribution to the
fame of the city and its university. Years of peace
and of honor, and yet of struggle too, were these years
of its Leyden life to the little church. John Robinson,
who had been a fellow of his college at home, was
loved and honored here. He was taken into the bosom
of the university, which became a second Alma Mater
to him, was made free of its privileges and a member
of its society.1 Brewster, whose life at college and at
court, and whose experience on his embassy to Hol
land years before, had given him much advantage in
his return, was an ornament to the little band of ex
iles, in the eyes of the strangers around them. He
1 George Sumner's Memoirs of the Pilgrims at Leyden, p. 18.

280 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
grew famous among the students as a teacher of his
own language through his knowledge of Latin, which
all could understand. As for the rank and file of the
company, they peacefully and quietly adapted them
selves to their new conditions, learning the trades and
arts of the people among whom they sojourned, as dy
ers and weavers, wool-carders and printers ; betaking
themselves to such employments as they could find,
without being a burden to any, and eating their bread
in honesty, and in gladness and singleness of heart. It
was a peaceful harbor after the storm. There, in their
own language, " they enjoyed much sweet and delight
ful society and spiritual comfort together in the ways
of God, and lived together in peace and love and holi
ness." 1 They deserve to be called the Huguenots of
England, and William Brewster was their Coligny.
One by one other dear English names were added
to the roll of the little church while it tarried in Ley
den, each one no doubt awakening and then in turn
assuaging the homesickness which they must have
often felt. It was here that Robert Cushman joined
them, who preached the first sermon that was printed
in New England ; and Miles Standish, who had fought
for the Dutch against Spain, and who could read Cse
sar and fight as well as he, and who was to be in
future years their defender against the savages of the
1 Governor Bradford's History, ut supra, p. 36. Bradford
further records a beautiful tribute to their social influence :
"The magistrates of the city, about the time of their coming
away, or a little before, in the public place of justice, gave this
commendable testimony of them, in reproof of the Walloons,
who were of the French Church in the city. ' These English,'
said they, ' have lived amongst us now this twelve years, and yet
we never had any suit or accusation come against any of them.
But your strifes and quarrels are continual,' " etc. Id. p. 39.

LEYDEN NOT THEIR REST. 281
New World ; and John Carver, who was to be their
first governor over the seas; and Edward Winslow,
who was to be one of his successors. And so they
grew into what was, for a colony of exiles, a strong
congregation, worshiping in the house of their pastor
twice on the first clay of the week and once in the in
tervening time ; ecclesiastically isolated, but by that
very isolation driven more closely in upon the resources
of their own fellowship, and growing strong in the
tenderness of the bond which made them one in Christ
Jesus. The influences around them were friendly, as I have
said. They won the respect and love of their Dutch
neighbors. But in the course of a few years they be
gan to feel that this was not, could not be, their rest.
The preservation and perpetuity of their church was
ever uppermost in their thoughts. It was a light
which must be kept burning, it was the hope of their
children, it was one of the hopes of the world. They
wanted it to continue, to be a refuge for others who
should be like-minded with themselves.
'¦'¦First," they said,1 "the hardness of their present
place and country, to them so great, was such that
few would come to continue with them ; while could a
place of better and easier living be found, such dis
couragements would be removed.
" Second. Though in general their people bore
all difficulties cheerfully and resolutely in their best
strength, old age was coming on some, great and con
tinued labors and trials were hastening it before its
time upon others, and it was apparent that in the
present state of things there was danger of soon being
scattered or of sinking under their burdens.
1 Condensed from Bradford, ut supra, pp. 45-47.

282 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
" Third. Over them was the task-master Necessity,
forcing them to become task-masters not only to ser
vants, but in a measure to their children, wounding
the heart of many a father and mother and producing
sad consequences. Children of the best dispositions
and gracious inclinations, who were learning to bear
the yoke in their youth and willing to share in their
parents' labors, were yet at times so oppressed by labor
that, though with minds free and willing, their bodies
became bowed under the weight and early disfigured,
the vigor of nature being exhausted in the very bud.
And what was worse, many of their children, by the
surrounding temptations and the great licentiousness
of the youth of the country and their evil example,
were drawn away, grew headstrong, leaving their par
ents: some becoming soldiers, others sailing on dis
tant voyages, others taking to worse courses, to their
parents' grief, their souls' danger, and the dishonor of
God, all foreboding a degenerate and corrupt poster
ity." And to this they added J " their great desire to
live under the protection of England and to retain the
language and name of Englishmen, their inability to
give their children here such an education as they
themselves had received, and also their grief at the
profanation of the Sabbath in Holland."
And, finally, grandest thought of all in the hearts
of these generous, self-sacrificing men, "A great hope
and inward zeal they had of laying some good foun
dation for propagating and advancing the kingdom of
Christ in remote parts of the world ; yea, though they
should be but stepping-stones unto others for the per
forming of so great a work."
1 These supplementary reasons are not given by Bradford, but
added by Edward Winslow.

THE MAYFLOWER. 283
And whither should they go, and how procure the
means for such an undertaking ? At length all pos
sible quarters being canvassed, they send their mes
sengers to the Virginia Company in London to apply
for a grant to plant themselves under its general gov
ernment, and to petition his majesty for a grant of
liberty or freedom in religion.
The Virginia Company of course entertained the
proposition eagerly, but no toleration under the seal
of the king was to be thought of. All that could be
elicited from that quarter was an assurance that the
king and the bishops " would wink at their depar
ture." But the feuds and factions of the Virginia Company
were such in the arrangement of the matter that their
charter was long delayed, and finally never used. An
agreement was entered into with certain merchant ad
venturers, whose terms were exceedingly oppressive,
by which the Mayflower was to take the company
on board at Southampton, and the Speedwell was
to bring them to that port and keep them company
across the sea. The church did not propose to go in
its integrity, — only those who freely offered them
selves ; if the majority chose to go, the pastor, Rob
inson, was to go with them. A little less than half
of the whole number offered, and the pastor tarried
behind. The hope, however, was that at no distant
time they would be reunited. Meantime each party
was to exercise all the functions of a church.
All being in readiness, they spent a day of solemn
fasting and prayer, and their pastor having preached
them a farewell discourse, they poured out their sup
plications before the Lord with abundance of tears,
then proceeded together to the port of Delft, where the

284 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
last good-bys were said, and the Pilgrims for the third
time went out, not knowing whither they went. They
find the Mayflower at Southampton, according to
agreement, and after a few days occupied in necessary
preparations the two little ships spread their sails for
the unknown port. Accidents happen, and they must
put back once and again ; finally the Speedwell is left
behind as unfit for the voyage, and the Mayflower,
with one hundred and one passengers, on the 16th
September, 1620, proceeds on her way alone. What
a harvest was in that handful of seed-corn ! What a
precious freight of the world's best hopes to be in
trusted in so frail a bark to the rough waves and
the rude blasts of the autumnal equinox ! What a
venture for men who had hardly been out of sight
of land, for timid women and little children ! What
audacity of faith, what ineffable courage ! And what
royal determination, when, in mid-ocean, their little
craft weakened by the September gales, strained and
yielding in her frame, they refuse to put back at the
suggestion of the captain and other officers, and bring
out an old iron screw, whose use none could have fore
told, and press the bulging timbers back into their
place ! They were born to found empire or church,
these men and women.
The story thenceforth is too familiar to be dwelt
upon save in the most cursory manner. I will not
endeavor even to freshen its outlines in your recollec
tion. I do not need tell you of the immortal compact,
drawn up, no doubt, by Elder Brewster himself, which
has been pronounced the germ of American constitu
tions; nor when, and where, and how, the Pilgrims
landed. Why should I rehearse their debarkation
amid the snows ; their resting upon the Sabbath, ac-

THE ROCK. 285.
cording to the commandment, for six Sabbaths ; their
long explorations and weary journeys to and fro about
the shores of Cape Cod, the rain often hardening to
ice upon their garments, until they were like coats of
iron, women and children mewed up meanwhile in the
little ship, their monotonous sea-life prolonged to three
weary months and more, until at last they found the
divinely appointed place, and set their feet upon the
rock, of which one of New England's scholars has
said, "Even then, without its fellow upon our shores,
it was destined to be without its fellow on any shore
throughout the world. Nature had laid it, the Archi
tect of the universe had laid it, when the morning stars
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for
joy. There it had reposed unseen by human eye, the
storms and floods of centuries beating and breaking
on it. There it had reposed awaiting the slow-coming
feet, which, guided and guarded by no mere human
power, were now to make it famous forever. The
Pilgrims trod it, it would seem, unconsciously, and left
nothing but authentic tradition to identify it. Their
thoughts, at that hour, were upon no stone of earthly
mould. If they observed at all what was beneath
their feet, it may indeed have helped them still more
fervently to lift their eyes to Him who had been pre
dicted and promised ' as the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land,' and may have given renewed em
phasis to the psalm, which, perchance, they may have
recalled : ' From the end of the earth will I cry unto
Thee when my heart is overwhelmed : lead me to the
rock that is higher than I.' Their trust was only in
the Rock of Ages." x
1 Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, Oration at the Two Hundred and
Fiftieth Anniversary of ihe Landing of the Pilgrims, 1870.

286 WILLIAM BREWSTER.
William Brewster was now getting to be an old
man, three-score years of age ; but for nearly a quar
ter of a century longer he was spared to be known
and loved by the little church of the Pilgrimage as
Elder Brewster. I have used his name partly be
cause of the greatness and nobleness of the man him
self, and partly because of the official relation which
he sustained to the transit of the reformed religion
from the Old World to the New. The Pilgrims first
left England as a church ; they tarried at Amster
dam as a church ; they remained eleven years at Ley
den as a church ; they embarked upon the Mayflower,
and sailed the sea, and stepped upon the shores of
Plymouth as a church. This, therefore, as I said at
the outset, was the true culmination of the Reforma
tion of the Church of England. That they brought
a Christian state with them also was incidental, not
essential. They were the first to exhibit to the world
what are the true relations that should exist between
the two : that the Church shall be free, absolutely free,
in its worship and ordinances and discipline ; that the
State shall only protect it ; that neither the one nor
the other shall interfere in the peculiar function of its
fellow. Calvin had not made the discovery at Geneva,
nor Knox in Scotland. The Huguenots were dimly
looking towards it, and hoping for it. The Church
of England had not even remotely approached it.
The Pilgrims accomplished it ; but " with a great price
obtained they this freedom."
The foundations that were laid by Brewster and his
companions have been loftily built upon by later ages
with much that is good, with much also that is evil ;
something of gold, silver, precious stones, doubtless, —
something doubtless of wood, hay, stubble, which time

ABIDING FOUNDATIONS. 287
and change, and the judgments of God which time and
change always bring, will surely burn away.
But the foundation will abide of belief in the eter
nal verities of a just and righteous God, who is the
friend of all who obey Him ; of faith in his Son, who
is the divine Saviour, and must be the supreme Master
of human life ; of a revelation of faith and a law of
practice that are sufficient for all the moral needs of
men, and adequate to the renovation of the world.

XII.
JOHN WESLEY.
a. d. 1703-1791.
The power of the Gospel to create anew has been its standing miracle in
all the Christian ages. It is its highest and most divine authentication.
Celsus was right, looking from his own point of view. No mere human
culture can change the nature of man. It can only cover over, civilize,
and adorn. But those in whom sin has become a second nature are the
very persons in whom the Gospel has wrought its most wondrous trans
formations, from Paul and Augustine down to the Wesleyan revivals of
the last century and the most remarkable conversions of to-day. — E. H.
Sears, Sermons and Songs.

19

XII.
JOHN WESLEY.
A. d. 1703-1791.
The eighteenth century was but three years old
when John Wesley was born, and his life extended
into its last decade. The eighty-eight years of that
life embraced eleven of the twelve that Anne was
upon the throne, the thirteen years of the reign of
George I., the thirty-three of that of George IL, and
something more than thirty of that of George III.
The latest biographer of Wesley1 has quoted a writer
in tbe "North British Review," who says, "Never has
a century risen in Christian England so void of soul
and faith. It rose as a sunless dawn following upon
a dewless night. There was no freshness in the past
and no promise in the future. The Puritans were
buried and the Methodists were not born. The phi
losopher of the age was Bolingbroke, the moralist was
Addison, the minstrel was Pope, and the preacher was
Atterbury. The world had the idle, discontented look
of the morning after some mad holiday; and like
rocket-sticks, and the singed paper from last night's
squibs, the spent jokes of Charles and Rochester lay
all about, and people yawned to look at them. The
reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign of faith
and earnestness had not commenced." This sharp in-
1 Tyerman, Life and Times of John Wesley, vol. i., p. 61.

292 JOHN WESLEY.
dictment of the age is true, but it does not go far
enough ; it does not express the full enormity of the
fact. If the reign of buffoonery was past, it was only
because all that was worst in the buffoonery of the
Restoration period had been adopted into society that
claimed for itself the perfection of respectability and
propriety. The buffoon was still there ; only the paint
had been washed from his face, his party-colored garb
exchanged for decent clothes, and his indecent tum
blings laid aside for a gait that was curbed into a
stilted and uneasy dignity. The reign of Queen Anne
still claims to have been the golden age of English
literature, and it shows a polished surface, to be sure,
to the eye which gives but a cursory glance at its rec
ords. There are Steele, and Addison, and Pope, and
Bishop Berkeley, and Samuel Clarke, walking in the
garments of literary and social chastity, and Young
with his vast religious pretentiousness ; but Swift,
greater intellectually than any of them, and a high
church dignitary to boot, would have disgraced the
license of the Merry Monarch's court and outdone it
in profanity. Etherege, and Wycherley, and Buck
ingham, and Aphra Behn, and even Dryden, made the
literature of Charles II. 's age infamous for all time.
Anne's reign produced no such numerous spawn of
indecency ; but neither did it give birth to any such
pure lights of heavenly radiance as Milton, and Izaak
Walton, and Bishop Burnett, and Isaac Barrow, and
John Bunyan. It was as cold and spiritually lifeless
as it was elegant. Licentiousness was the open and
shameless profession of the higher classes in the days
of Charles ; in the time of Anne it festered under the
surface. On my lady's table is lying a volume of
Bishop Jeremy Taylor's " Sermons," or his " Holy

STATE OF MORALS AND RELIGION. 293
Living and Dying." But lift the book, and under
neath you will be likely to find the licentious comedies
of Etherege showing evidences of more frequent peru
sal. It was an age of unbounded extravagance and
worldliness. Material splendor was a grand passion,
and next to that, indulgence in gross animal pleasure.
In order to obtain money for vain display, and to com
mand the greatest amount of vicious pleasures, all
means were resorted to, and the discrimination between
honesty and dishonesty was well-nigh obliterated.
Gambling was an almost universal practice, among
men and women alike. Lords and ladies were skilled
in knavery ; disgrace was not in cheating, but in being
cheated. Both sexes were given to profanity and to
drunkenness. Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlbor
ough, could swear more bravely than her husband
could fight. Gin had been introduced just at the close
of the last century ; before the middle of this its an
nual consumption in England rose to seven million
gallons. And as all fashions, good and bad, work
downwards, hardly ever in the opposite direction, the
middle classes ran the same race of corruption, and
the lowest were eager to follow. Tradesmen and shop
keepers aped the follies of the Court, with their " long
wigs and swords, velvet breeches and hunting-caps."
The wages of the poor were spent in guzzling beer at
merry-makings ; in wakes ancl fairs, badger-baitings
and cock-fights. Matters were running in very much
the same course as they were in France at the same
time, — a course which in the latter country had its
terrific outcome in the Revolution, near the close of the
century. And the only thing which in all probability
saved England from a similar social earthquake was
the sudden rise of Methodism, which laid hold of the

294 JOHN WESLEY.
lower classes and converted them before they were
ripe for an explosion. That such an explosion did not
occur in England, no thanks are due to any general
religious influence that was exerted by the Church, or
even by the Dissenting interest. The Dissenters had
become cold and formal and the Church was well-nigh
moribund. Parsons celebrated holy communion and
preached to a score of hearers in the morning, devoted
the afternoon of Sunday to cards, and hunted foxes
the rest of the week with the neighboring squires. In
very many cases the sole religious requisition made
upon the clergyman was of a negative sort ; he need
not even write his sermons, there were sermons enough
in the world ready made ; he must only take care not
to scandalize the Church by too gross indulgence in
liquor or politics. Probably at no period in its his
tory was the outlook so dark upon the moral, relig
ious, and social life of England. The fullness of time
had certainly come. We can see it now as probably
it could not then have been discerned. Unless some
superhuman force had seized upon society for its im
mediate transformation and purification, it must have
sunk into a perdition like that of the Cities of the
Plain, or have been rent into fragments by some rev
olutionary explosion from beneath.
The transforming and renovating energy was gath
ering in a very inconspicuous and entirely unconscious
way. " In November, 1729, four young gentlemen of
the University of Oxford — Mr. John Wesley, Fellow
of Lincoln College ; Mr. Charles Wesley, student of
Christ Church; Mr. Morgan, Commoner of Christ
Church ; and Mr. Kirkham, of Merton College — be
gan to spend some evenings in a week together in
reading, chiefly the Greek Testament." These four

GROWTH OF METHODISM. 295
young men were the first Methodists, a "handful of
corn," whose fruit now, after a hundred and fifty
years, shakes like Lebanon and flourishes like the
grass of the earth. The Methodists to-day number
five millions ; and if we calculate the hearers at the
rate of thrice the number of church-members there is
a total of 15,000,000 of persons coming continually
under Methodist instruction and influence, and meet
ing week after week for the worship of God. In the
light of these figures alone, it is not an immodest or
immoderate assertion which one of the historians of
Methodism makes when he declares it to be the
greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ ;
greater than the spread of primitive Christianity in
the first two centuries, greater than the Reformation
of the sixteenth century, — this reformation, wliich be
gan in the days of our grandfathers, and part of which
we have witnessed ourselves; which has given to
America its dominant popular faith, with a standard
planted in almost every village of the land ; and which
is building churches and chapels, year in and year
out, at the rate of nearly two every day.1
For more than fifty years one man was the control
ling spirit of this great movement ; one man gave it
form and consistency; the leader of the four young
men who met to spend some evenings in the week in
reading, chiefly the Greek Testament, — John Wesley.
Let us turn back for a few moments to glance at
the facts of his childhood and youth.
About fifteen miles to northeast of Scrooby, where
1 I have found it somewhat difficult to get at the exact statis
tics of Methodism ; in fact, it grows so rapidly that the statisti
cian and census-taker can hardly keep their figures up with its
progress.

296 JOHN WESLEY.
the Pilgrim Church was first gathered, lies the parish
of Epworth, of which for forty years the Reverend
Samuel Wesley was the learned and godly rector. To
him and his wife Susannah were born nineteen chil
dren, one of whom, John, came just about one hun
dred years after the Pilgrim Congregation was first
assembled in Scrooby manor-house. His brother
Charles, destined to be the poet of Methodism, as
John was to be its prophet, was five years younger.
The material advantages surrounding Wesley's child
hood, one would naturally think, must have been slen
der ; the parental care must have been rather minutely
subdivided, the parental income also. Indeed, before
John was three years old his father was imprisoned
for debt, and before he was six the parsonage was de
stroyed by fire, and he had a narrow escape with his
life, being drawn through an upper window but a
moment before the roof fell in. His mother must
have been a veritable well-spring of wholesome and
gracious influences to her children, commanding, as
she did, after they had come into ripe and influential
manhood, not only their loving reverence for her per
son but their respect for her judgment and practical
counsel. She was large-minded and liberal and far-
seeing ; loved God with all her heart, and her neigh
bor as herself. The piety of the household was of a
wholesome type, free from hypocrisy and pretense of
every sort ; the children being trained and treated as
Christians from their infancy, and not as pagans who
might possibly become Christians at some future time.
Jack, as they called him, came to the communion and
received the sacrament at his father's hand when he
was eight years of age. He thought in after years that
he sinned away that "washing of the Holy Ghost"

FALLING FROM GRACE. 297
which he received in baptism ; but the reader of his
life looks in vain for the evidence of any such " fall
from grace." Shortly after his first communion he
was attacked by the small-pox, but bore the terrible
scourge with such heroic patience that his mother
wrote, "Jack has borne his disease bravely, like a
man, and indeed like a Christian, without complaint."
His " fall from grace " occurred, as he thought, when
he was at the Charterhouse School in London, where he
was sent at ten years of age. We love Wesley for the
beautiful tenderness and delicacy of his conscience,
and the ingenuousness and frankness of his confes
sions, and for his fidelity in dealing with himself,
never adopting any lower or easier standard than he
applies to others ; but when we think of the little fel
low taken up to London from the warm atmosphere
of a Christian home, and immersed in the unfriendly
influences of a great public school, as public schools
were then and are in England to this day, subjected
to the tyrannies and ferocities of scores of elder boys,
to their ridicule and browbeating, made all the more
severe because of his poverty, and discover that he
bore it all with the same patience that he did the
small-pox, suffering wrongfully with cheerful fortitude,
and that at the same time he was faithful in his stud
ies, acquiring all approbation for diligence and assidu
ity, we may be more charitable to him than he was to
himself, or than his latest biographer has been, who
says that " John Wesley entered the Charterhouse a
saint, and left it a sinner." We will agree that he was
a saint when he entered ; we do not believe that he had
forfeited his right to the name when he departed.
He proceeded in due time to Oxford, being elected
to Christ Church on a Charterhouse foundation. He

298 JOHN WESLEY.
seems to have had no purpose to enter the Church,
though it was the earnest desire of his parents that
he should succeed to the incumbency of his father.
Indeed, he afterwards supposed that at this time he
was not even a Christian. But of one thing he seems
to have possessed throughout a profound conviction;
carrying his beliefs in the reality and nearness of
the spiritual world even to superstition. He hears
ghost stories and tells them, believes them and writes
about them in all seriousness. They do not inspire
him indeed with any vulgar terrors, but they intensify
his convictions of the existence of the supernatural
realm, and undoubtedly exercise an important influ
ence upon his future life. In this, however, he is no
exception. Ghosts and witches at that time, and for
a hundred years after, were realities to the learned and
ignorant alike. Wesley was born only eleven years
after the Salem Delusion, and the very next year after
Cotton Mather published his "Magnalia." Strange
things were very soon to happen in his own experience.
Whether he became a Christian in early childhood
or not, there certainly came a turning-point in his spir
itual history when he was twenty-three years of age,
upon his perusal of two famous books, Thomas a Kem-
pis's " Imitation of Christ " and Jeremy Taylor's
" Holy Living and Dying." " When I met with the
first," he says, " the nature and extent of inward re
ligion, the religion of the heart, appeared to me in a
stronger light than ever it had done before. I saw
that giving even all my life to God (supposing it pos
sible to do this, and go no further) would profit me
nothing, unless I gave my heart, yea all my heart, to
Him. I saw that simplicity of intention and purity of
affection, one design in all we speak and do, and one

SUSANNAH WESLEY. 299
desire ruling all our tempers, are indeed the wings of
the soul, without which she can never ascend to God.
I sought after this from that hour." And if ever mor
tal man attained to that simplicity of intention and
purity of affection, that singleness of design and desire,
it was John Wesley. At this stage of his history his
mother seems to have been his guide and helper, not
only in his religious experience, but in the formation
of his religious opinions. There is something wonder
ful in this Oxford scholar, of four years' standing, and
of first-rate attainments, sending his heart-doubts and
theological difficulties away down to the country par
sonage in Lincolnshire, to have them solved by his
care-worn, " many-childed mother." There is some
thing more wonderful in the clean way in which she
unties the knots or — cuts them. The Methodist
Church owes its system of doctrine quite as much,
I think, to Susannah Wesley as to her illustrious son.
To the intuitions of a woman she added the logic of
a gownsman and the love of a saint. Finer letters
were never written. It is not to be wondered at that
Methodists have been pioneers in the enfranchisement
of feminine speech, that they have believed in it, and
practiced it from the first. They would have dis
graced their origin otherwise.
At length, in accordance with the wishes of his
parents, Wesley was ordained a deacon in 1725, but
with little thought of pursuing any other than a col
legiate life. In the popular mind, Wesley has been
so completely identified with the ignorant and humble
multitudes to whose spiritual elevation he gave all the
best endeavors of his life, and his ministers were so
often men of very meagre intellectual gifts, and the
great Church which he founded, in its early days, set

300 JOHN WESLEY.
such slight estimate upon any other human attain
ments than those of a purely spiritual kind, that
Wesley himself has been underrated on the intel
lectual side. But his scholarship was of fine quality.
Wesley was Greek lecturer in the University, and
fellow of Lincoln College, at twenty -four years of
age. He was the peer, in his intellectual endow
ments, of any literary character of that most literary
period. No gownsman of the University, no lawned
and mitred prelate of his time, was intellectually the
superior of this itinerating Methodist, — a bishop more
truly than the Archprelate of Canterbury himself in
everything but the empty name. The hosts of literary
pamphleteers and controversialists that rained their
attacks upon his system, in showers, were made to feel
the keenness of his logic and the staggering weight of
his responsive blows. It is a fine sight to look upon
from this distance, that of this single, modest man,
an unpretentious knight of true religion and conse
crated learning, beset for forty years by scores, yes
hundreds, of assailants, armed in all the ostentation of
churchly dignity, shooting at him with their arrows of
tracts and sermons ; newspaper writers pouring upon
him their ceaseless squibs ; malicious critics assailing
his motives and his methods with innuendoes and false
suggestions ; ponderous professors tilting at him with
their heavier lances of book and stately treatise ; and
he, alone, giving more than thrust for thrust, and his
brother Charles furnishing the inspiriting accompani
ment of martial music until the one man has chased a
thousand, and the two have put ten thousand to flight.
- It was at this time, while attending to his college
duties, that Wesley settled upon those convictions, —
which during his life-time were peculiar to the Meth-

EARLY DOCTRINES. 301
odists, but which at this day are so generally accepted
by believers in spiritual religion everywhere, — which
are practically adopted and acted upon even by many
whose denominational pride and traditional proclivi
ties cause them to reject the doctrines formally and
theoretically. Let me briefly state them in his own
language : —
" Justification means present forgiveness, pardon of
sins, and acceptance with God. The condition of this
is faith. I mean not only that without faith we can
not be justified, but also that as soon as any one has
true faith, in that moment he is justified. Good works
follow this faith, but cannot go before it, much less
can sanctification, which implies a continued course
of good works springing from holiness of heart.
" Repentance must go before faith, and fruits meet
for it if there be opportunity. By repentance I mean
conviction of sin, producing real desires and sincere
resolutions of amendment; and by fruits meet for
repentance, I mean forgiving our brother, ceasing
from evil, and doing good, using the ordinances of
God, and in general obeying Him according to the
measure of grace whioh we have received. But these
I cannot as yet term good works, because they do not
spring from faith and the love of God.
" By salvation I mean, not barely deliverance from
hell or going to heaven, but a present deliverance
from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive
health, its original purity, a recovery of the divine
nature, the renewal of our souls after the image of
God in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, and
mercy, and truth. This implies all holy and heavenly
tempers, and, by consequence, all holiness of conver
sation.

302 JOHN WESLEY.
" Faith is the sole condition of this salvation.
Without faith we cannot thus be saved, for we can
not rightly serve God unless we love Him. And we
cannot love Him unless we know Him, and we cannot
know Him unless by faith.
" Faith in general is a divine, supernatural convic
tion of things not seen, i. e., of things past, future, or
spiritual. Justifying faith implies not only a divine
conviction that God was in Christ reconciling the
world to himself ; but a sure trust and confidence
that Christ died for my sins ; that He loved me, and
gave himself for me. And the moment a penitent
sinner believes that, God pardons and absolves him.
" And as soon as his pardon or justification is wit
nessed to him by the Holy Ghost he is saved. He
loves God and all mankind. He has the mind that
was in Christ, and power to walk as He walked.
From that time, unless he makes shipwreck of his
faith, salvation gradually increases in his soul."
To these doctrines Wesley added others, as his re
ligious experience grew in later years. But this is a
fair summary of what was held by the first Methodists.
And there was nothing here to furnish sufficient
grounds for a new sect. Indeed, Wesley intended no
such thing. These things were legitimately held as
actually embraced in, or deducible from, the Articles
of the Church of England, from which Wesley con
templated no withdrawal. Methodism was not a dis
senting from, but a supplementing of, the doctrines
and life of the Church. It was a return to realism.
It was an honest, earnest endeavor not to bring in a
new theology, but to put some life under the ribs of
the old. It closely resembled the movement which,
in these days of ours, has been termed the Theological

THEOLOGICAL RENAISSANCE. 303
Renaissance of the nineteenth century. These state
ments of Wesley, trite, and even formal, as they seem
to us, were the New Theology of his day. They were
deemed heretical and mischievous. All the artillery
of wit, of scorn, of ridicule, of hatred, were trained
upon them. But it was a movement within the
Church, and not from the Church. Wesley refused
through life to be called anything but a presbyter of
the Church of England ; even when he was excluded
from the majority of her pulpits, he still worshiped at
her altars, communed within her walls, and constrained
all his followers to do likewise. Indeed, Methodism,
during the first third of its history, was little more
than a society of English churchmen banded together
for mutual edification, for social prayer, and confer
ence, and singing, and the study of the Scriptures.
Wesley would hold no service, nor would he suffer
any of his preachers to do so, in any place at the
same hour of the church service, if that church
itself would hold all who wanted to worship. Ac
cordingly, the first Methodists held their services at
an early hour in the morning, or late at night, and
durino- the canonical hours would be found in the
parish churches. They had no separate communion
season, save when the rector was of scandalous life,
or when the communicants could not be accommodated
within consecrated walls.1
1 In 1786, when Wesley was eighty-three years old, the Meth
odists at Deptford requested to be allowed to have service in the
Methodist chapel at the same time that there was service in the
church. " It is easy to see," he tells them, " that this would be
a formal separation from the Church. We fixed both our morn
ing and evening service, all over England, with this very design,
— that those of the Church, if they chose it, might attend both
the one and the other. But to fix it at the same hour is obliging

304 JOHN WESLEY.
But we must return to Oxford, where Methodism is
now being born. These four young men, to whom
others were gradually drawn, — George Whitefield
among them, — had for their ideal, simple fidelity.
They were orthodox, at least in the depths of their
own consciousness. All that they purposed was hon
estly to put their orthodoxy in practice, to be conscien
tious in life, in thought, speech, behavior, in study, in
conversation, in society, and in solitude. There should
not be a rubric of the Church, nor a demand of the
moral law, which they would not help each other to
obey, and diligently endeavor to obey themselves in the
spirit and mind of Christ. And the effect of all this
upon Oxford was much like that which was produced
by Christ and his disciples at Jerusalem ; their hours
of devotion and of study were faithfully kept, and
men around called them Methodists, because they
lived methodically. They had their plans of study
for every day in the week. They rose early to get
additional time for charitable work. They visited
the workhouse and the jail to instruct the prisoners.
They established schools for poor children, and taught
them. They refused to spend money in selfish indul
gence, that they might help the needy. They sought
out those treatises for leisure reading which would aid
them to live in the Spirit. They exercised a brotherly
and affectionate care for each other's highest welfare.
They sought to win young students around them from
vicious courses. They were simply what in these days
would be called a Young Men's Christian Association.
In all this Wesley was the leader and exemplar to
them to separate either from the Church or us, and this I judge
to be not only inexpedient but totally unlawful for me to do." —
Tyerman, vol. iii., p. 488.

VOLUNTARY POVERTY. 305
whom they all looked. He was a pattern of diligence,
of self-denial, of generosity. One year his income was
thirty pounds ; he lived on twenty-eight pounds, and
gave away forty shillings. The next year he received
sixty pounds ; he still lived on twenty-eight pounds,
and gave away thirty-two pounds. The third year he
received ninety pounds, still lived on twenty -eight
pounds, and gave away sixty-two pounds. The fourth
year he received one hundred and twenty pounds, lived
as before on twenty-eight pounds, and gave away all
the rest. One cold winter's day he met a poor girl
who was a pupil in one of their schools. She seemed
nearly frozen. He said to her, " You «eem half frozen ;
have you nothing to wear but that linen gown?"
" Sir, this is all I have." He puts his hand to his
pocket, but there is no money there. He goes sadly
to his room, and his walls that are hung with pictures
seem to upbraid him. He strips them down, saying
to himself, " How can thy Master say to thee, Well
done, good and faithful servant ! Thou hast adorned
thy walls with the money which might have screened
this poor creature from the cold ! O Justice ! O
Mercy ! Are not these pictures the blood of this poor
maid ? " 1 And this was no spurt of generosity. When
he was an old man past his three-score years and ten,
and his Methodism had become triumphant through
the kingdom, an order passed the House of Lords that
the commissioners of excise send out circular letters
1 We are reminded of the tender-heartedness of a like-minded
map, Charles Kingsley, who, when the famine was raging in
India, pushed his plate aside as the head-lines of the morning
paper fell under his eye, exclaiming, " Take it away ! Take it
away ! I cannot eat while my brothers are dying by thousands
of hunger ! " 20

306 JOHN WESLEY.
to all persons suspected of possessing plate, and to
those who have not regularly paid duty on the same.
John Wesley received a circular. This was his re-
Pty: —
" Sir, — I have two silver tea-spoons in London,
and two in Bristol. This is all the plate I have at
present : and I shall not buy any more while so many
around me want bread.
" I am, sir, your most humble servant,
" John Wesley."
Such, in a very meagre outline, was Methodism in
its earliest aspects at Oxford, when various circum
stances began to arise, in the providence of God, for
transplanting it to a wider sphere. It looked at first
more like destruction than transplantation. Wesley's
father was an old man, and wanted his son to succeed
him as rector of Epworth. Wesley himself preferred
to stay and continue his work in Oxford. But neither
purpose was in the divine plan. Another applicant
secured the rectory, for which Wesley was not sorry.
About this time General Oglethorpe was engaged in
his benevolent designs for the colonization of Georgia.
Oglethorpe, being a man of generous means and large
influence, had been endeavoring to mitigate the harsh
ness of those laws which imposed imprisonment for
what were only technical crimes. Every year thou
sands of men were imprisoned for the simple crime of
being poor. A small debt was sufficient to keep a man
in jail for life. Oglethorpe at length secured legisla
tion which liberated a multitude of these unfortunates,
and took still further steps to procure a settlement for
them on the Savannah River. At this time, also, there
had been going on in Germany a religious revival in

OGLETHORPE'S COLONY. 307
which thousands of persons had been converted, who
were forthwith subjected to the most terrible persecu
tion by the Catholic authorities. To these victims of
almost unheard of cruelties Oglethorpe also offered an
asylum in his new colony, which was gratefully ac
cepted. A company of Scottish Highlanders, and still
further a band of Moravians, speedily followed. So
Georgia was settled, taking its name from George IL,
who gave it its charter in 1732.
Wesley's intense earnestness and spirit of self-sac
rifice had come to Oglethorpe's ears, and the General
persuaded him to go to his new colony, holding forth
as the grand inducement the opportunity, which now
presented, of Christianizing the native races of the
American Continent. And for two years Wesley tar
ried here in America, without at all being able to ac
complish the purpose which had brought him. He
Christianized few or no Indians, and the strange mix
ture of social and religious elements which made up
the colony did not receive his labor kindly, and he re
turned to England. He was to do a greater work for
America than he had ever dreamed of, but in no way
that man could then have anticipated: by indirect
influence, and largely after he himself should have
passed away from earth. He was brought here, in
this strange episode of his experience, to gain what he
afterwards called his conversion. It threw him into
contact with some pious Moravians, from whose con
versation he was led to question the depth and value
of his own religious experience. There was a fearful
storm at sea on the passage out ; and while all were
expecting to go to the bottom, and the English were
trembling and terrified, the Germans were singing
their hymns to God with uplifted faces and calm

308 JOHN WESLEY.
hearts, and Wesley discovered that his own trust was
exceedingly defective. He longed for this open secret
of the Moravians. When he returned to London he
sought the Moravian society there, and they instructed
him in the way of God more perfectly. He learned
the lesson, and to his former unreserved consecration
of himself to God he now added that constant and
unbroken peace which passeth understanding. It was
a long and roundabout journey for such an issue, when
the Word was so nigh him. He found not what he
sought, but what he found was worth the cost. This
was no doubt the completion of his equipment for his
grand, lifelong, apostolic work. Out of this new ex
perience there was to come a new plank for the great
Methodist platform, a plank which Wesley magnified,
perhaps unduly, because of the vast change which it
effected in his own feelings rather than in his princi
ples ; which in later times he and some of his followers
insisted upon under the erroneous name of perfection ;
which has subjected them to unmerited ridicule, but
whieh is no empty tenet of enthusiasm, but a veritable
experience ; which Christians of every name believe
in, and which it is every Christian's privilege to attain
and duty to seek — the repose and the energy of faith.
And now, at thirty-five years of age (1738), he is
in England again absolutely without any plan of life,
save that he believes all the world to be his parish,
and that he must preach the gospel wherever he can
get a chance. He has not the remotest idea of build
ing up a system, but simply to do the work of the
present hour as God leads the way. He is a priest
of the Church of England, and the highest of high
churchmen, our ritualistic brothers of to-day not more
so. Wherever there is a pulpit of the Church of Eng-

OUT-DOOR PREACHING. 309
land open to him he fills it. But his heart is ablaze
with the love of Christ and the love of men, and he
is possessed of a passionate desire to proclaim in all
places his new-found doctrine of present salvation by
faith alone, and the holiness of life consequent there
upon. Further than this he does not plan or look. In
less than one year from this time he will be launched
upon his career as the Apostle of Methodism.
The man's intense eagerness, his theory of instanta
neous conversion to God, and the remarkable spiritual
results which seem to be immediately consequent upon
his preaching, do not particularly commend him to the
high and dry ministers of the Established Church ; and
gradually the pulpits of the establishment close to him,
as certain flowers are said to shut up their petals at
sunrise. But George Whitefield, one of the old Ox
ford club, has been preaching at Bristol, and sends to
Wesley to come and help him. He goes, not doubting
the will of God; but what a shock to this persist
ent high churchman. Whitefield is preaching in no
church, in no conventicle even, but, in what seems to
Wesley a most disorderly and unauthorized way, in
the open fields, to thousands of people at a time.
"I could scarce reconcile myself," he says, "at first,
to this strange way of preaching in the fields ; having
been all my life, till very lately, so tenacious of every
point relating to decency and order, that I should
have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had
not been done in a church." Strange that the good
man had never thought what ecclesiastical walls shel
tered Him who spake as never man spake, and the
band of fishermen and tent-makers, who after Him,
published his gospel from Britain to India. But what
scruples can stand against the emergency? Whitefield

310 JOHN WESLEY.
must leave ; here are thousands that no edifice could
hold, even if the churches were not, by a kind of tacit
consent, closed to them. He had to preach in Georgia
in the open air. Why not here? He does preach.
The Rubicon is crossed. The flaming torch is lighted
to burn through England henceforth for more than
forty years; to be taken from Wesley's dying hand
to flame through all the world till there shall be no
more night and the nations shall need no candle, nei
ther light of the sun. He is here in Bristol for nine
months, — such a nine months as Bristol never saw
before ; no ! nor England, nor the world since the day
of Pentecost.
Wesley's notions of propriety were destined to be
still further shocked. Among the multitudes that
thronged around him, strange physical demonstrations
began to appear. They shocked even Whitefield when
he heard of them, and he remonstrated with Wesley
for seeming to permit or encourage them. Men were
smitten by his words as a field of standing corn by a
tempest. Intense physical agony prostrated them upon
the ground. They stood trembling, with fixed eye
balls, staring as though they were looking into eternal
horrors. Some, who seemed utterly incapable of any
thing like enthusiasm, were struck as dead. Others
beat their breasts and begged for forgiveness for their
sins. Others were actually torn and maimed in uncon
scious convulsions. The story of the demoniac in the
gospels was, to all appearances, realized over and
over. And again, under his assurances of full for
giveness and free salvation, the storm would give way
to calm, and these same persons would be at peace,
clothed, and in their right minds. Wesley was help
less ; never was more honest, straightforward, ingen-

ORGANIZATION. 311
uons work. He was himself amazed, startled, almost
terrified, but " I have come to the conclusion," he says,
"that we must all suffer God to carry on his own
work in the way that pleaseth Him." I am not anxious
to account for all this. Wesley's attitude was the right
one. There is one simple general principle with which
we are all acquainted which seems sufficient to cover
•all the cases, namely, that every thought, every emotion,
every mental experience infallibly registers itself upon
the physical nature. It is the law of smiles and tears,
of groans and laughter, and of all involuntary gesture ;
the law under which we all are, whether awake or
asleep, listening to a story, a song, or a sermon. The
action of the law is modified, of course, by the quality
of the natures upon which it works. Wesley was
preaching to men and women who were densely igno
rant, in many cases, of the nature of sin, and of the
story of God's redemptive mercy. His words to them
were as truly the opening of an Apocalypse as when
John saw the vision of his Lord, and fell at his feet
as dead.
And this Bristol experience was repeated, over and
over again, through all England, and Ireland, and
Wales, and to some extent in Scotland.
Methodism now (1739) began to develop, as by
some inherent law, into an organization. In this one
year two or three great steps are visible. Wesley
sent out his first lay preacher. It was simply and
naturally an expansion that is always to be looked for
when men have learned the real meaning and power
of the gospel. They must tell it. But even this was,
at first, a shock to Wesley's old high church notions.
Now as before, however, he saw that human notions
of order and form must give way to higher necessity.

312 JOHN WESLEY.
He would not ordain, he would not undertake to con
fer any clerical prerogatives, he would not break any
known rule of the Church of England as by law
established. He simply encouraged men to tell the
glorious truths which they understood and felt. Such
was the beginning of that system of itinerancy by
which, from first to last, Wesley had seven hundred
men under his direction, penetrating to every lomote
village of England. This same year too was built the
first chapel, the old Foundry in London, mother of all
the Methodist churches in the world; and the first
Methodist society was organized. These societies were
simple companies based upon the plan of the old
Oxford club, and for the same purpose of mutual
helpfulness and doing good to others in every possiblo
way. They multiplied. Everywhere he went a society
was formed. But how could their permanent welfare
be secured ? Who should watch over them while he
was moving about from place to place, absent at
times from any given place long months together?
A happy accident reveals the method, a method which
has been one great source of strength to Methodism
from that day to this. The Bristol people (ih 1742)
were devising ways and means to pay for their chapel.
One proposes that the society shall be divided into
groups of twelve, and over each group some one shall
be appointed to collect from every member a penny a
week. Wesley approves, and with his keen intuition
he at once sees, and seizes upon, the plan for high spir
itual ends. Each group shall be a little class, and
the leader, who takes a penny a week, shall also keep
account of each member's way of life and spiritual
welfare. So the class-meeting was born.
I cannot go on from this point to detail Wesley's

APOSTOLIC EXPERIENCES. 313
grand work. My object has been chiefly to give the
story of his relation to the rise of a great reformatory
movemenL When he was but thirty-six years old,
he had already leavened, with a redemptive force, the
social life of his century. His apostolate continues
through more than fifty years. The story which
St. Paul gives of his labors and sufferings in the
11th chapter of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians
might have been almost literally adopted by Wesley as
the record of his own : —
" Are they ministers of Christ ? (I speak as a fool,)
I am more ; in labors more abundant, in stripes above
measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.
" Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save
one. " Thrice was I beaten with Tods, once was I stoned,
thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have
been in the deep ;
" In journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils
of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in
perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils
in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among
false brethren;
" In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and
nakedness. " Beside those things that are without, that which
cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches."
Indeed, I think that the story of the English Apostle
is the more wonderful. There must be many a field
in Great Britain thick-sown with stones which have
been thrown at John Wesley and his proto-Methodists.
Traveling from four to five thousand miles every
year, and preaching from two to four times nearly

314 JOHN WESLEY.
every day to audiences of thousands ; often disturbed
by mobs of men more savage than wild beasts ; keep
ing an eye on all his preachers, and receiving their
reports ; starting a publishing house, and carrying it
on, that his people everywhere might have wholesome
intellectual fare within their scanty means ; taking
no money but just what would suffice for his bare
expenses; stopping for no storms or floods, fires or
frosts ; reading and studying on horseback, and an
swering innumerable assaults through the press, from
bishops, archbishops, and ecclesiastical foes of all
ranks ; compiling grammars in Greek, and Hebrew,
and French, and Latin, for his students ; editing,
writing, translating, or abridging not less than two
hundred different publications ; eager only, in it all,
to save men and to extend the kingdom of God. Half
a million souls were to be numbered as his adherents
at the close of that fifty years ; and outside of this, a
vast multitude that no man can number, morally and
spiritually benefited by his movement. He is, I think,
the finest illustration of consecrated, unselfish, whole
hearted devotion, for fifty solid years of this old
world's dark history, that the Church of Christ has
ever offered to the vision of men, perhaps to that of
angels.

INDEX.

Alexander V. elected Pope, 59 ; dies, 61.
Alexander VI. (Roderigo Borgia) elected
Pope, 87 ; his character, 88 ; aims con
cerning Italy, 88 ; thwarted, 91 ; con
flict with Savonarola, 92-94.
Amsterdam, Separatists at, 278.
Anne of Bohemia, and Richard II. , 49.
Anne Boleyn, crowned by Cranmer, 140 ;
favors Latimer, 118, 119.
Anne, Queen, character of her age, 292.
" Antithesis, The," 51.
Antonio, St. , Prior of S. Marco, 81.
Architecture, in Edward III.'s reign, 27.
Armorer, calling of the, in Middle Ages,
162.
Arnold, Matthew, on Emerson, 4.
Arthur, Prince, question of his marriage
with Katherine, 136.
Augsburg Confession, 176 ; and Calvin's
"Institutes," 210.
Augsburg, Diet of, called, 175.
Augsburg Interim, 177, n.
Ban, The, its meaning, 11, 62 ; Scott's
description of, 11, 12; Tauler's defi
ance of, 10 ; Hus's do., 62 ; Savonaro
la's do., 93.
Beaton, Archbishop, 187 ; cardinal, 191.
Bethlehem Chapel, 54-57.
Bible, "Wiclif's translation, 26 ; inspira
tion, 104 ; Cranmer's, 142 ; its recep
tion by all classes, 143 ; Geneva, 198.
Bilney, Thomas, and Erasmus's Testa
ment, 106 ; confesses to Latimer, 107 ;
and converts him, 108.
Black Death, at Strasburg, 16 ; universal
ravages, 17 j effects, 18 ; its results in
England, 28.
Black Prince, 27.
Bohemia, its relations to England, 47,
48.
Bonner, Bishop, conspires with Gardiner
against Cranmer, 146.
Borgia, Roderigo. See Alexander VI.
Bradford, William, on Elder Brewster,
272, 273 ; at Scrooby, 274 ; on going to
Holland, 276 ; imprisoned, 277 ; on the
Pilgrims at Leyden, 280 ; reasons for
going to America, 281.
BrewBter, William, 265 ; education, 271 ;
his library, 271 ; court life, 272 ; Brad

ford's account of, 272, 273 ; at Scrooby,
274 ; at Amsterdam, 275 ; at Leyden,
276-283 ; leader of the Pilgrims, 284 ;
in New England, 286.
Briconnet, William, Bishop of Meaux,
239, 240.
Bruges, in the fourteenth century, 35.
Buchanan, George, 191.
Burrows, Professor Montagu, estimate
of Wiclif, 30.
Cabot, discovery of North American con
tinent by, 161.
Calvin, 209 ; permanence of his personal
influence, 210 ; the pope of Protestant
ism, 211 ; the world's obligations to,
212 ; his appearance at Geneva, 214 ;
birth and early years, 215 ; as a stu
dent, 216 ; goes to Orleans, 217 ; knowl
edge of jurisprudence, 217 ; the key to
his system, 218 ; returns to Paris, 219 ;
position on the divorce question, 138,
219 ; arouses the wrath of the Sorbon-
ists, 220 ; occasion of the " Institutes,"
220, 221 ; sets out for Basle, and stops
at Geneva, 221 : what he designed at
Geneva, 222, 223 ; draws up a confes
sion for the city, and banished, 223,
224 ; answers Sadolet, 224 ; at Stras
burg, 224 ; marriage, 225 ; recalled to
Geneva, 226 ; character of his admin
istration, 227 ; severity, 228 ; his mis
take, 229 ; controversies, 230 ; his part
in the affair of Servetus, 230-233 ; the
strength and weakness of his system,
233, 234; corresponds with Coligny,
253.
Carlstadt, Luther's characterization of,
155; discussion with Eck, 170; con
verted by " Zwickau Prophets," 172.
Carlyle, Thomas, on Knox, quoted, 183.
Carver, John, 281.
Channing, Dr., and Father Taylor, 58, n.
Charles II., literature of his reign, 292.
Charles III., Duke of Savoy, attempts
the subjugation of Geneva, 213.
Charles IV., Emperor, founds University
of Prague, 49.
Charles Vin., of France, descent upon
Italy, 89 ; interview with Savonarola,
90.

316

INDEX.

Charles IX., of France, relations to the
Huguenots, 258-261.
Chaucer, 27 ; on the monks, 37 j his
"good parson," 41; satires, 50 ; com
pared With Sir David Lyndsay, 185.
Church, of England, its indebtedness to
Cranmer, 147.
Class-meetings, Methodist, origin of,
312.
Colet, John, Dean of St. Paul's, 102;
converted by Savonarola, 103 ; revolts
from scholasticism, 104 ; ' ' new depart
ure," 105.
Coligny, Gaspard de, 237 ; birth and par
entage, 246, 247 ; training, 247, 248 ;
Brantome's estimate of, 248 ; adopts
profession of arms, 249 ; courage, 249 ;
marriage, 250 ; knighted, 250 ; reforms
the army, 251 ; Admiral of France,
252 ; siege of St. Quentin, 252 ; impris
onment, 253 ; becomes a Huguenot,
254 ; retired from office, 256 ; at the
assembly of notables, 257 ; taken into
royal favor, 258 ; proscribed, 260 ; as
sassinated, 261.
Constance, Council of, 65; burns Hus,
69 ; burns Wiclif's books and bones,
100.
Convocation, first Protestant of Church
of England, 120 ; Latimer's sermon
before, 121.
Council of Constance, called, 64 ; its
magnitude, 65 ; its character and deal
ings with Hus, 66-69.
Council of Pisa, 69.
Cranmer, Thomas, compared with Lati
mer and Ridley, 114 ; invites Latimer
to Lambeth, 122 ; character contrasted
with Latimer's, 129-131 ; his " Scole
master," 132; invited to Oxford by
Wolsey, 133 ; welcomes the new learn
ing, 134 ; casual remark upon the di
vorce question, 135-137 ; sent for and
employed by Henry, 137 ; in Germany,
138 ; made Archbishop of Canterbury,
138 ; bis protest at consecration, 139 ;
pronounces the royal marriage void,
139 ; his part in Henry's matrimonial
affairs, 140 ; influence in Parliament,
142 ; procures the translation of the
Bible, 142 ; his part in the dissolution
of the monasteries, 144 ; protests
against perversion of church revenues,
145 ; conspiracies against him, 146 ;
his charitable temper, 146, 147 ; head
of Council of Regency, 147 ; liturgical
work, 147 ; consents to a change in
the succession, 148 ; grounds of Mary's
hatred, 149 ; sent to Oxford, 150 ; value
of his recantations, 150 ; prayer and
speech at martyrdom, 151-153.
Creeds, inadequate expressions of truth,
159.
Cromwell, Thomas, High Chancellor,
122 ; his conduct in ecclesiastical af
fairs, 144 ; his fall, 146.
Cushman, Robert, 280.

Davison, William, Secretary of State to
Queen Elizabeth, 272 ; relations with
Elder Brewster, 272, 273.
Diana of Poitiers, 240, 243.
Duncan, Dr. John, quoted, 158 ; on the
progress of theology, 168, 169.
Eck, Dr., discussion with Luther, 170;
and Melancthon, 171.
Eckart, Master, 7.
Edward ILL, character of his reign, 27,
28 ; resists the demands of Urban V.,
31-33 ; appoints the Bruges Commis
sion, 34 ; his mistake, 36.
Edward VL, Latimer's sermons before,
108 ; favors Latimer, 122.
Eidgenossen, 213.
Eighteenth century, religious character
of, 291-293.
Elizabeth, Queen, her relations to Puri
tanism, 268-271 ; " the petticoated
Pope," 269.
Emerson, a mystic, 4.
English exiles, on the continent, 270.
English language becomes national, 27.
Enoch, the first mystic, 5.
Epworth, 296.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, 103 ; comes to
England, 105 ; his Greek Testament,
106 ; superseded by Melancthou, 160 ;
his praise of Melancthon, 1G4.
Escorial, built, 252.
Faber Stapulensis (Jacques Le Fevre
d'Etaples), Patriarch of French Ref
ormation, 239.
Farel, Wiliam, preaches in Geneva, 214 ;
summons Calvin to his assistance, 221;
banished from Geneva, 224 ; in France,
239.
Ferrara, in the fifteenth century, 76.
Flagellants, The, 18.
Florence, in the fifteenth century, 75,
80 ; work of Savonarola in, 87-91.
Fra Angelico, 75.
France, religion in, previous to sixteenth
century, 237-241.
Francis I., character of his policy, 242,
243.
Francis, LT., policy towards the Hugue
nots, 256.
Frederick of Austria, dispute with Louis
of Bavaria, 10.
Frederick, the Wise, invites Melancthon
to Wittenberg, 166.
Free Spirit, Brethren and Sisters of, 8.
French character, the, 237, 238.
Galley-Slave, life of, 195.
Geneva, 212 ; condition in sixteenth cen
tury, 213 ; Farel at, 214 ; state of af
fairs when Calvin came, 214; Calvin's
work in, 222, 223 ; baniBhes Calvin and
Farel, 224 ; Geneva without Calvin,
225 ; recalls Calvin, 226 ; reformation
in, 227-229 ; Servetus arrives at, 231 ;
scheme of government, 225.

INDEX.

317

Georgia, colonized, 306.
" Gesta Romanorum," text-book of the
monks, 165.
Golden Fleece, Order of the, 35.
Gregory XI., bulls against Wiclif, 37 ;
dies, 37.
Grey, Lady Jane, Edward's will in her
favor, 148.
Grocyn, William, 103.
Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of Lincoln,
30,32. v '
Guise, Francis of, 248.
Guizot, upon Calvin, 222.
Hamilton, Patrick, link between German
and Scottish reformation, 187: burned
by Beaton, 187 ; bis reik, 188, 191.
Henry IL, of France, his attitude to
wards Huguenots, 243; Knights Co
ligny, 250 ; negotiates the treaty of
Vaucelles, 252 ; death, 258, n.
Henry VIII., calls upon the Universities
to appoint Divorce Commission, 115 ;
summons Latimer to preach before
him, 116 ; appoints commission upon
rehgious books 116 ; makes Latimer
his chaplain, 117 ; his present from
Latimer, 120 ; death, 121 ; always a
papist, 130, 267 ; at Waltham Abbey,
136 ; hears of Cranmer and sends for
him, 137 ; nominates him archbishop
of Canterbury, 138; his matrimonial
affairB, 140 ; calls Cromwell to his as
sistance, 144 ; appropriation of eccle
siastical revenues, 145, 267 ; Henry's
win, 148 ; lodged at Scrooby, 271.
"Heretics' Koran," 211.
"High Commission," court of, 269.
Hooper, Bishop, his characterization of
Cranmer, 129.
Huguenots, derivation of name, 213;
their origin, 238-242 ; first organiza
tion of, 245 ; first general synod, 246 :
Coligny at the head of, 255, 257 ; mas
sacres of, 257, 259, 260, 261 ; America's
debt to, 262.
Hus, John, relations to Luther and
Wiclif, 25 ; birth, 51 ; early training,
52 ; his mother, 52 ; goes to Prague,
53 ; at the university, 54 ; in Bethlehem
Chapel, 54-57 ; rector of the univer
sity, 57 ; extent of influence, 57 ; uses
Wiclif's work, 57, n. ; opposed to Ger
man students, 58 ; against the mendi
cants, 59 ; conflict with archbishop,
60 ; appeals to the pope, 60 ; excom
municated, 60 ; under the ban, 62 ; a
wanderer, 63 ; goes to the Council of
Constance, 66 ; imprisonment, 67 ; de
gradation and martyrdom, 68, 69 ; last
words, 69.
Hussism, in Scotland, 186.
Immanence of God, peculiar doctrine of
the Mystics, 9.
Innocent III., Pope, imposes tribute
upon King John, 31.

Innocent VHL, Pope, 87.
Inspiration, of the book? — or of the
writers ? 104.
" Institutes of the Christian Religion,"
Calvin's, when and why written, £20.
Italy, political condition in fifteenth
century, 73 ; descent upon by Charles
James L, « harries " the Separatists, 271,
Jerome of Prague, 54.
Jews, race-hate against, 18.
John, King, tribute imposed upon bv
Innocent HI., 31.
John of Gaunt, befriends Wiclif, 37.
John XXTIT., Pope, character, 61 ; bans
Hus, 62 ; arranges for Council of Con
stance, 64.
Jurisprudence, growth of, in England,
27, 28.
Justification, Wesley's doctrine of, 301.
Katherine of Arragon, her divorce, com
plications of the question, 135 ; Cran
mer's view, 136 ; Cranmer pronounces
her marriage void, 139 ; a martyr, 140.
Kingsley, Charles, anecdote of, 305.
Knox, John, 183, graduates at Glasgow,
188 ; the Scottish Latimer, 189 ; what
he learned at college, 189, 190 ; devo
tion to George Wishart, 192 ; diffidence,
193; in castle of St. Andrews, 193;
made preacher to the garrison, 194 ; in
the galleys, 195; his courage, 196;
chaplain to Edward VI., 197 ; offered
a bishopric, 197 ; driven to the Con
tinent, 198 ; relations to Calvin, 199 ;
"First Blast," 200; returns to Scot
land, 200 ; iconoclasm, 201 ; pastor at
Edinburgh, 202 ; bearing before Mary
Stuart, 203, 204 ; power in Scotland,
204 ; his vindication, 205.
Latimer, Hugh, 99 ; birth, 108 ; his
father and his early home 108, 109 ;
at Cambridge, 110 ; a typical English
man, 110 ; an obstructive, 111 ; oration
against Melancthon, 107 ; Converted
by Bilney, 108 ; his preaching, 112 ;
before the Bishop of Ely, 113; cited
before Wolsey, 113 ; protected and
licensed by him, 114 ; upon the Di
vorce Commission, 115 ; preaches be
fore Henry, 116 ; upon commission to
examine religious books, 116 ; his letter
to Henry, 117 ; a royal chaplain, 117 ;
rector of Kington, 118 ; all England
his parish, 118 ; bishop of Worcester,
119 ; new year's gift to the king, 120;
position on disestablishment of monas
teries, 120 ; sermon before convoca
tion, 121 ; resigns bishopric, 121 ; im
prisonment, 121 ; in favor with Edward,
122 ; popular as a preacher, 122 ; with
Cranmer at Lambeth, 122 ; imprisoned
by Mary, 123 ; will not dispute at Ox-

318

INDEX.

ford, 124 ; burned, 124 ; character con
trasted with Cranmer's, 129-131.
Latin, the common language, 49.
Laval, Charlotte de, 250, 253.
Le Bas, C. W., quoted, 38.
Lechler, Dr., quoted, 29.
Le Fevre. See Faber.
Leipsic discussion, 170.
Leipsic Interim, 177.
Leipsic University, origin of, 58.
L'Enfant, description of Hus's degrada
tion, 68, n.
Leo X., Pope, 213.
Leo XL, Pope, 211.
Leyden, Separatists at, 279-283; the
city and its university, 279.
Library, Laurentian, 75.
Linacre, Thomas, 102.
Lollardism, 100 ; in Scotland, 186.
Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, persecutes
Wiclifites, 101.
Loserth, Dr. J., quoted, 30.
Louis of Bavaria, dispute of, with Fred
erick of Austria? 10, 11.
Luther, Martin, his relations to Hus and
Wiclif, 25, 26; to Melancthon, 157,
158 ; his characterization of Melanc
thon, 155, 157 ; relation of his work to
Melancthon's, 160, 161 ; aided by Me
lancthon, 168 ; imprisoned, 171 ; his
doctrine of " Consubstantiation," 174 ;
naturally a belligerent, 176 ; grows
cool towards Melancthon, 177 ; death,
and Melancthon's oration, 177 ; points
of difference between Melancthon and,
179 ; compared with Calvin, 210.
Lutterworth, 36, 54.
Lyndsay, Sir David, of the Mount, 185,
190, 193.
Maldon, William, his cruel treatment,
143, n.
Mamelukes, nickname, 213.
Marburg Conference, 174.
Marot, Clement, 240.
Mary, accession, 123, 149 ; grounds of
her bitterness against Cranmer, 149.
Mary, Queen of Scots, comes to Scot
land, 201 ; her history, 202 ^ relations
witli Knox, 203, 204.
Maximilian, Emperor, 162.
" Mayflower, The," 283, 284.
Medicis, Alexander de, visits birthplace
of Calvin, 211.
Medicis, Catherine de, 243 ; plots alter
nately against the Guises and the Hu
guenots, 258, 260 ; plans the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, 261.
Medicis, Cosmo de, 75 ; builds San Mar
co, 80.
Medicis, Lorenzo de, character, 82 ; or
ders Savonarola to Florence, 84 ; tries
to bribe him, 86 ; his death-bed, 87.
Medicis, Piero de, succeeds Lorenzo, 87 ;
character, 87 ; betrays Florence to
Charles VTIL, 89.
Melancthon, Philip, 157 ; Luther's char

acterization of, 155, 157 ; his protest
against Luther's Protestantism, 159 ;
supersedes Erasmus as a reformer,
160 ; relation of his work to Luther's,
1G0, 161 ; his birth and parentage, 161,
1G2 ¦ Reuchlin's affection for, 163 ; his
name changed, 164 ; goes to Heidel
berg, 164 ; to Tubingen, 164 ; Erasmus
praises him, 164; development of his
piety, 165 ; called to Wittenberg, 166 ;
conquest of city and university, 107 ;
method of his instruction, 167 ; ren
ders aid to Luther, 168 ; " Loci Com
munes," 169 ; fortunes of the book,
170 ; involved in controversy, 170 ;
leader of the Reformation, 171 ; toler
ation of "Zwickau Prophets," 172;
instructions for Saxon ministers, 173 ;
relation to second Diet of Spires, 173 ;
and to Marburg Conference, 174 ; re
port on the Sacramental Controversy,
175 ; at Diet of Augsburg, 175 ; draws
up the "Confession," 176; concilia
tory temper, 176 ; signs the Smalcald
Articles, 176 ; funeral oration for Lu
ther, 177 ; pointB of difference between
Luther and, 179 ; anecdote of Zell and,
179, n. ; death, 180.
Mendicants, in England, 37 ; origin, 38,
39 ; rapacity, 39.
Methodism, rise of, 294 ; saved England
from revolution, 293 ; rapid growth,
295; its debt to Susannah Wesley,
299 ; early doctrines of, 300 ; a move
ment within, not from the church, 303,
304 ; its development in organization,
311.
Methodists, the Oxford, 294, 304.
Michael Angelo, 75.
Milton, John, on Wiclif, 42.
Mirandola, Pico della, hears Savonarola,
84.
Monasteries, dissolution of by Henry
VHL, 144, 145.
Money, value of in fourteenth century,
32.
Montmorenci, Louise de, 246, 247.
Moravians, their influence upon Wesley,
307.
MUhlberg, battle of, 177, n.
Murray, regent of Scotland, 205.
Mystic, the first, 5.
Mysticism, a reaction, 4 ; indefinable, 4 ;
found under all systems, 5 ; perver
sions of, 9.
Mystics, the German, 5.
Navarre, house of, 258 ; Anthony, king
of, 258 ; Henry of, 261.
Nicholas of Basle, rebukes Tauler, 14.
Oecolampadius, position on the divorce
question, 138.
Oglethorpe, General James, colonizes
Georgia, 306.
Orleans, Calvin at, 217.
Osiander. Cranmer marries niece of, 138.

INDEX.

319

Paris, Calvin at, 216, 219.
Parliament, English, its response to Ur
ban V., 33.
Pilgrims, The, at Scrooby, 274 ; their
view of the church relation, 275, 286 ;
"harried," 276,277; at Amsterdam,
278 ; at Leyden, 279-281 ; their reasons
for going to the New World, 281 ; de
parture from Holland, 283 ; their voy
age, 284 ; in America, 285-287.
Pisa, Council of, 59.
Plymouth Pilgrimage, its connection
with the EngUsh Reformation, 266.
Plymouth Rock, Hon. R. C. Winthrop
concerning, 285".
" Poor priests," Wiclif's, 41.
Praemunire, statute of, 28.
Prague, ancient missal of, 25 ; university
of, 49.
" Protest, The," at Diet of Spires, 174.
Protestantism, necessity of protest
against, 158.
Puritanism, origin of, 267.
Religion, has both body and soul, 3.
Reuchlin, his affection for Melancthon,
163.
Revival of learning, its coalescence with
the Reformation, 160.
Richard II. , marries Anne of Bohemia,,
49.
Ridley, Nicolas, burning of, 124.
Robinson, John, at Scrooby, 274 ; hon
ored in Holland, 279.
Sadolet, Cardinal, endeavors to reestab
lish papal authority in Geneva, 224 ;
silenced by Calvin, 225.
San Marco, convent of, 80, 81.
Savonarola, Girolamo, isolation of his
work, 74 ; birth, 75 ; character in boy
hood, 76, 77; falls in love, 78 ; goes to
Bologna, 78 ; a novice, 79 ; sent to
Ferrara, 80 ; to Florence, 80 ; in San
Marco, 81 ; becomes acquainted with
Lorenzo, 82 ; preaches in Lombardy,
83; at a chapter of his order, 84;
heard by Pico, 84 : preaching in Flor
ence, 85 ; conflict with Lorenzo, 86 ;
popular as Prior, 88; leader of the
people, 88 ; sent to Charles VIH., 90 ;
legislator, 90 ; reforms Florence, 91 ;
conflict with Alexander VI. , 91, 92;
refuses prelatic honors, 92 ; braves
ban and plague, 93 ; endeavors for a
general council, and failure, 94 ; events
leading to his martyrdom, 94, 95 ; ob
scure connection with English reform
ers, 102 ; succession of influence from
Savonarola to Latimer, 108.
Savoyard party in Geneva, 213.
Schism, papal, 37, 59.
Scholasticism, its view of Christianity, 6.
Schwarzerd, George, 162.
Schwarzerd, Philip. See Melancthon.
Scotland, condition of before the Refor
mation, 183-187.

Scott, Sir Walter, description of the ban,
11, 12.
Scrooby, 271 ; Brewster at, 273 ; Sepa
ratists at, 274-276 ; covenant of church
at, 274.
Separatism, origin of, 269.
Servetus, Michael, at Paris, 230 ; at Vi
enne, 231 ; at Geneva, 231 ; trial and
execution, 232, 233.
Sidney, Sir Philip, in France, 247.
Sigismund, Emperor, arranges for Coun
cil of Constance, 64 ; his perfidy, 69.
" Six Articles," Act, 121.
Smalcald Convention, 176.
Somerset, Lord Protector, 123.
"Speedwell, The," 283, 284.
Spires, Diets of, 173, 174.
Stafford, George, 110.
Standish, Miles, 280.
Stanley, A. P., quoted, 191, n.
St. Bartholomew, massacre of, 205, 260-
262.
St. Quentin, siege of, 252.
Strasburg, Tauler's birthplace, 6 ; put
under the ban, 11 ; black death at, 16 ;
Jews persecuted at, 18 ; Calvin at, 224.
Students, free movement of, 50.
Supremacy, Act of, 269.
Swiss Reformers, their view of the sac
rament, 175.
Symbols, inadequate expressions of
truth, 159.
Tauler, John, forerunner of Luther, 5 ;
birth, 6 ; goes to Paris, dissatisfied
with scholasticism, 6 ; returns to Stras
burg, 7 ; his teaching, 8 ; relations to
Eckart and his teaching, 9 ; defies the
ban, 10 ; urges his brethren to disre
gard it, 13 ; conversion, 13 ; rebuked
by Nicholas of Basle, 14 ; humility,
15; "Doctor Illuminatus," 16; his
covenant, 16 ; braves the plague, 19 ;
chivalry, 20.
Taylor, Father, anecdote of, 58, n.
Tetzel and Luther, 167.
Theology, progress of, from Athanasius
to Calvin, 168, 169.
Toulouse, massacre of, 259.
Truth, perpetually renovating its expres
sion, 159.
Tulloch, Principal, on Scottish icono-
clasm, 201.
Tusser, Thomas, his complaint concern
ing his schoolmaster, 132.
Udall, Nicholas, head master of Eton.
132.
Uniformity, Act of, 268.
Urban V., demand upon Edward DX,
31 ; resisted by Parliament, 33.
Vasco da Gama, Cape of Good Hope
doubled by, 161.
Vassy, massacre of, 259.
Waldo, Peter, 238.

320

INDEX.

Waltham, King Henry and Cranmer at,
136.
Wesley, Charles, 296, 300.
Wesley, John, 291 ; birth and parentage,
296 ; has the small-pox, 297 ; at the
Charterhouse school, and " fall from
grace," 297 ; goes to Oxford, 297 ; be
lieves in ghosts, 298 ; rehgious opin
ions formed by his mother, 299 ; or
dained a deacon, 299 ; scholarship,
300 ; formal statement of his doctrines,
301, 302 ; his position in relation to
Church of England, 303 ; leader of the
Oxford Methodists, 304 ; his generos
ity, 305 ; letter to excise commissioner,
306 ; goes to Georgia, 307 ; what he
learns from the Moravians, 308 ; re
turns to England, 308 ; helps White-
field, 309 ; field-preacher, 310 ; expe
riences at Bristol, 310, 311 ; his itiner
ants, 312 ; apostolic experiences, 313 ;
variety of his labors, 314.
Wesley, Rev. Samuel, rector of Epworth,
296.
Wesley, Susannah, 296 ; debt of Meth
odism to, 299.
Whitefield, George, among the Oxford
Methodists, 304 ; preaching at Bristol,
309.
Wiclif, John, relations to Hus and Lu
ther, 25, 26 ; times of, 27 ; writings, 29 ;
birth and early training, 30 ; historical

development of his work, 31 ; opposes
Urban V-, 31-34; in Parliament, 34 j
at Bruges, 34 ; Edward's confidence in
him, 35 ; failure at Bruges, 36 ; rector
of Lutterworth, 36; before convoca
tion, 36 ; religious reformer, 37 ; fights
the Mendicants, 37^0 ; his " poor
priests," 41 ; relations to Protestant
theology, 42 ; literary labors, 42 ; re
lation to English literature, 43 ; death,
44 ; works preserved in Vienna, 49 ;
condemned by University of Prague,
58 ; bones burned by Council of Con
stance, 100 ; posthumous influence in
England, 99-101.
Winslow, Edward, 281, 282.
Winthrop, Hon. Robert C, on landing
of the Pilgrims, 285.
Wishart, George, 191 ; his martyrdom,
193.
Wittenberg, Melancthon, called to, 166 ;
enthusiasm at, 167.
Wolsey, Cardinal, cites Latimer, 113 ;
and befriends him, 114 ; invites Cran
mer to Oxford, 133.
Wykeham, William, founds Winchester
school, 27.
Zell, of Strasburg, anecdote, 179, n.
"Zwickau Prophets," 171.
Zwingh, position on the divorce ques
tion, 138.

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history in existence. — Professor Calvin E. Stowe, Andover, Mass.
Illustrated New Testament.
The New Testament op our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. With engravings on wood from designs of Fra
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This elegant and sumptuous edition of the New Testament is ad
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sion of the text is the one used.
Blaise Pascal.
Thoughts, Letters, and Opuscules. Translated from
the French by O. W. Wight, A. M., with Introductory Notices
and Notes. 12mo, $2.25.
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by a Life of Pascal, a Critical Essay, and a Biographical Notice
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Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 9
Peep of Day Series.
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10 Religious Publications of
Dean Stanley said of these volumes : " They are amongst the very
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These were the scenes in which I first became acquainted with the
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Physical Geography of the Holy Land. A Supple
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A capital summary of our present knowledge. — London Athenceum.
Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament,
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Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ii
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