THE ECLECTIC.

JANUARY, 1861.

I.

THE REFORMERS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.*

In all epochs of transition and reform, we must expect to meet with much that is inconsistent. During violent reactions from past errors, men find it difficult to keep from excess, and moderation seldom comes till the victory is achieved.

There is usually a mixture of folly and evil in most movements, however praiseworthy in themselves, which makes what is good too often an offence to feeble minds, "who want human actions and characters to be riddled through the sieve of their own ideas before they can accord their admiration or sympathy." Yet God's heroes are not as man's heroes; nor would they satisfy the modern demand for ideal men, whose dogmas are to be exact in every iota, whose feelings are to be refined to maudlin effeminacy, and whose actions are always to be irreproachably graceful. Not moulded on such a conventional type were stormy Luther and rude John Bunyan-men who stemmed the torrent of this world's errors, like rough boulders cast into the bed of the foaming stream, not hewn by mortal hands, but torn in convulsive throes from their foundations in the mountains.

It may be very satisfactory for the amiable amongst us to suppose that the characters of Christian men are always to be

I. Lettres de Jean Calvin. Recueillies pour la première fois, et publiés d'apres les Manuscrits originaux. Par Jules Bonnet. 2 tomes.

II. Des Lebens Calvin. Hambourg.

III. Leaders of the Reformation. (New and enlarged edition.) Dr. Tulloch. IV. Etudes sur la Renaissance. Erasme. Thomas Morus. Melancthon. Par D. Nisard.

V. Michel Servet. La doctrine philosophique et religieuse. Giordano Bruno, et la philosophie au seizième siècle. Emile Laisset.

VI. Michael Servetus, und seine Vorgänger. Heidelburg,

VII. Jordano Bruno. M. Christian Bartholmess.

VOL. V.

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universally esteemed, but "the blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men," and a careful study of the history of the past may cure us of Pelagian heresy.

To understand the inconsistencies and errors in the lives of such men as Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Erasmus, Thomas More, or Cranmer, we must endeavour to form a clear idea of the confusion and tumult of the times in which they lived. Let us remember, that in the earlier years of the sixteenth century, Europe had been devastated by war, and decimated by the plague. After the discoveries of Columbus, the minds of many were intoxicated with the love of novelty and adventure. Science and philosophy, which had so long been confined to dungeons and cloisters, were ready once more to spread their treasures before the inquiring eyes of men. The Renaissance, with its handmaid, printing, was reviving the classical wisdom of antiquity. The false Aristotle was dethroned in favour of the real. The NeoPlatonist made way for the true Plato, and new thoughts were suggested to the minds of the most ignorant, which violently clashed with the opinions of the Middle Ages. And while the Renaissance was unlocking the libraries of antiquity, the Reformation carried men back to the scenes of primitive Christianity. Ignorance and pedantry had hitherto been impervious to all advances: but the Reformation dispelled the clouds, and disengaged Religion from the meshes of Philosophy.

On the one side, was a real and healthy creed, boldly measuring its strength with worn-out formulas and old abuses, whilst, on the other, were the scholasticism and ignorance of Eastern Europe contending against the light of genius from Italy.

Calm and peace-loving men, whose hearts had never been disturbed by the violence of political passions, and never affected by selfish considerations, now felt themselves stirred to the innermost depths of their being by the new and startling questions which were discussed around them. "How to do one's duty ?" "How to serve God?"-these were the questions which absorbed the hearts and reasons of mankind.

There was confusion everywhere, peace nowhere-men of opposite characters and different principles were drawn into the strife.

Giordano Bruno lived like a pilgrim, and sought his home from land to land. Michael Servetus, flying sometimes to a place of concealment, and sometimes braving the most imminent perils, travelled onwards to his inevitable fate. Philip Schwaetzerd (whom Reuchlin had playfully named by the more euphonious Greck equivalent, Melancthon,) was retiring in disposition and

devoted to study, having neither the temper nor the capacity which fitted him for a religious reformer. But conscience would not let him be neutral. He was torn from the retirement of Wittenburg, to fight side by side with vehement Luther. Erasmus was weak and sickly, having a little body, which (as he said in one of his letters) lodged a spirit always ready to make its escape. He shuddered at every draught of air; he was hysterical as a woman. He loved rest, and hated dissension. But see him thrown prominently forward into the midst of the contest, and impelled, against his will, to perpetual activity. Sir Thomas More jests with his children in private life, and luxuriates in the pure domestic pleasures of his Chelsea home; whilst in his public life he is the favourite of the King, and the cynosure for envious and admiring eyes. But lift the curtain, and behold him in the secret hours of the night, plying the bloody scourge, and burning the midnight oil; agonized with doubt, and endeavouring through weary vigils to reconcile reverence for the Church with belief in the Truth; and to infuse new life into the mouldering skeleton of the past.

Such was the chaos which was destined to be the cradle of modern society;—a period of civil and moral war, when every man's hand was forced to be against his brother's.

But it must be remembered that, in all such periods of political and social excitement, human nature will manifest itself in its brightest and darkest contrasts. The virtues and vices of men will appear to stand out in bas-relief-their peculiarities of character displaying themselves with remarkable distinctness. It has been well observed, that religious ideas once set afloat in the world, at such a time, have the fate of melodies, which are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them so coarse, feeble, or out-of-tune, that people are in danger of crying out that the melodies themselves are detestable.

In one sense, the lives of the heroes of the Reformation remain yet to be written. The Protestant historians, in the spirit of partizanship, have dwelt too exclusively on the bright side of their characters-on their holiness of life, and on their zeal for the truth. They have forgotten that deep spiritual realities are seldom to be learnt by men without bitter wrestling with their own sins and sorrows, and that those who have gained faith and strength to do their duty in this life, will often retain much ignorant prejudice, and much narrow egotism to mar the nobility of their grandest deeds. There is no task more difficult than the attempt to restore in the present, the characters of those persons who have greatly influenced their generations in different stages of the past. The creative faculty of the biographer impels him to bring his

portraits into what painters term "keeping," and in his endeavour to make a satisfactory whole of some sort, he is tempted to sacrifice truth to the artistic beauty of his chiaroscuro. But when we enthrone our own idols, we are forced to be iconoclasts to the images of others.

In such a struggle as that of the Reformation, the main difference between the brave and stalwart men, who were destined to be the pillars of modern society, and those who had no standard higher than mere expediency, consisted in this-that the former had within their own hearts a principle of self-renunciation and self-mastery which raised them above the things of time and sense; and that in all their wrestlings with the ignorance of their times, and the weakness of their erring natures, they were animated by a leading idea of duty, and by a solemn recognition of something to be lived for beyond this world.

Further than this we need not argue. We have unwisely left to Roman Catholic historians the opportunity of removing the "halos from the brows of our saints," because we have forgotten to tone their portraits down to the natural flesh-tints of humanity. Yet, while we are careful to be exact in our statement of facts, and unprejudiced in our estimates of the past, let us remember (with Dr. Tulloch) that that is a "poor and one-sided criticism which delights to expose the inconsistencies" and failings of great men. It is "the basest office a man can fall into," says an old writer, "to make his tongue the whipper of a worthy man. The honest man would rather be a grave to his neighbour's failings than in any way uncurtain them. I care not for his humour who loves to clip the wings of a worthy fame." It has been declared that the bitterness of party-spirit, and the detraction and rancour of religious writers, have done more to bring Christianity into contempt than all the ribald sneers of Voltaire, or the profane paradoxes of Strauss. And, moreover, that is an illogical and contemptible spirit which causes one sect to wink at the vices of its partizans, and to triumph in the faults of its opponents. For as old Jacob Behmen taught, "Nature did not come into men for the sake of sin, and why should it fall away for the sake of grace ?" A Christian is "a man leavened by the Gospel, but only a man still."

Öf the truthful historian, as of the philosopher, two qualities are required-those of induction and deduction:-the first, needing the renunciation of all prejudice, and the second, the steady reasoning from facts to saber conclusions. But he will never attain to these principles who is not first guided by Shakespeare's maxim -"Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."

To read history aright we must interpret it by our own expe

rience. We must not be content with cold and unsatisfactory surface-pictures ("simulacrums," as Carlyle would call them.) Schiller has remarked what undefinable and overpowering associations will be awakened in our hearts by the mention of oldremembered names. And this saying is never more true than of the heroes of the Reformation. Men of like passions to ourselves, who lived and struggled in one of the most momentous periods of this world's history, we are interested in every episode of their lives, and their strong emotions have uncovered their secret thoughts for our inspection. Do not the characters of those days seem to pass before us like living pictures projected upon the pages of time?

There is the solitary monk at Worms, standing alone in the midst of the "mailed chivalry" of Germany, surrounded by the velvet and ermine of the Electors, and the red robes of the Cardinals. Pale with recent sickness, and emaciated with suffering, he stands uncovered before them, his fiery eyes burning with the intensity of his purpose; whilst one strain is vibrating in his heart-the burden of the old German hymn, "Ein Jester Burg ist unser Gott." Again he appears to us in later years, with wife and children by the fireside, with a flash of humour on his broad Teutonic features, and the lines of thought on his massive brow. The picture shifts, and it is Melancthon-the gentle Philip, with slight youthful figure and studious expression of face, whose portrait Holbein has left us. He has stolen unnoticed into the controversy at Leipsic, where John Von Eyck, with the voice of a crier, and the gestures of a tragic actor, is overwhelming Carlstadt, whose failing memory and increasing irritation render him more and more vulnerable to his attacks. Melancthon comes to the rescue, and furnishes him with an answer to the sophisms of the preacher, who, more of a soldier than a theologian, rudely cries, "What dost thou here, Philip? Occupy thyself with thy books!"

Or would we change the scene? It is Calvin-the boy at school, with grave severity of manner and strange precocity of intellect, already surnamed "The Accusative" by his companions. Or it is Calvin in his matured manhood, thin and diseased through the austerities of his youth. His keen eyes are sunken in their sockets from want of sleep; his body is weak from over-exertion; but, endowed with the vehemence of his will (the head of the Genevan theocracy,) he interposes his emaciated frame as an invincible barrier to stem the profligacy of the Libertines. Stern and undaunted, the mark for gibes and sneers, and the theme of detracting witticisms, he yet endeavours to crush men into unity. Speaking generally of the different parties which divided