History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century Volume III Part 1

History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century.

Volume III.

by J. H. Merle D'Aubigne.

PREFACE TO VOLUME THIRD.

A spirit of examination and inquiry is in our days continually urging the literary men of France, Switzerland, Germany, and England to search after the original doc.u.ments which form the basis of Modern History. I desire to add my mite to the accomplishment of the important task which our age appears to have undertaken. Hitherto I have not been content simply with reading the works of contemporary historians: I have examined eye-witnesses, letters, and original narratives; and have made use of some ma.n.u.scripts, particularly that of Bullinger, which has been printed since the appearance of the Second Volume of this Work in France.[1]

[1] Bullinger's Chronik, Frauenfeld, 1838-1840.

But the necessity of having recourse to unpublished doc.u.ments became more urgent when I approached (as I do in the Twelfth Book) the history of the Reformation in France. On this subject we possess but few printed memoirs, in consequence of the perpetual trials in which the Reformed Church of that country has existed. In the spring of 1838 I examined, as far as was in my power, the ma.n.u.scripts preserved in the public libraries of Paris, and it will be seen that a ma.n.u.script in the Royal Library, hitherto I believe unknown, throws much light on the early stages of the Reformation; and in the autumn of 1839 I consulted the ma.n.u.scripts in the library belonging to the consistory of the pastors of Neufchatel, a collection exceedingly rich with regard to this period, as having inherited the ma.n.u.scripts of Farel's library; and through the kindness of the Chatelain of Meuron I obtained the use of a ma.n.u.script life of Farel written by Choupard, into which most of these doc.u.ments have been copied. These materials have enabled me to reconstruct an entire phasis of the Reformation in France. In addition to these aids, and those supplied by the Library of Geneva, I made an appeal, in the columns of the _Archives du Christianisme_, to all friends of history and the Reformation who might have any ma.n.u.scripts at their disposal; and I here gratefully acknowledge the different communications that have been made to me, in particular by M. Ladeveze, pastor at Meaux. But although religious wars and persecutions have destroyed many precious doc.u.ments, a number still exist, no doubt, in various parts of France, which would be of vast importance for the history of the Reformation; and I earnestly call upon all those who may possess or have any knowledge of them, kindly to communicate with me on the subject. It is felt now-a-days that these doc.u.ments are common property; and on this account I hope my appeal will not be made in vain.

It may be thought that in writing a general History of the Reformation, I have entered into an unnecessary detail of its first dawnings in France. But these particulars are almost unknown, the events that form the subject of my Twelfth Book, occupying only four pages in the _Histoire Ecclesiastique des Eglises reformees au Royaume de France_, by Theodore Beza; and other historians have confined themselves almost entirely to the political progress of the nation.

Unquestionably the scenes that I have discovered, and which I am now about to relate, are not so imposing as the Diet of Worms.

Nevertheless, independently of the christian interest that is attached to them, the humble but heaven-descended movement that I have endeavoured to describe, has probably exerted a greater influence over the destinies of France than the celebrated wars of Francis I. and Charles V. In a large machine, not that which makes the greatest show is always the most essential part, but the most hidden springs.

Complaints have been made of the delay that has taken place in the publication of this third volume; and some persons would have had me keep back the first until the whole was completed. There are, possibly, certain superior intellects to which conditions may be prescribed; but there are others whose weakness must give them, and to this number the author belongs. To publish a volume at one time, and then a second whenever I was able, and after that a third, is the course that my important duties and my poor ability allow me to take.

Other circ.u.mstances, moreover, have interposed; severe afflictions have on two occasions interrupted the composition of this third volume, and gathered all my affections and all my thoughts over the graves of beloved children. The reflection that it was my duty to glorify that adorable Master who addressed me in such powerful appeals, and who vouchsafed me such Divine consolation, could alone have given me the courage required for the completion of my task.

I thought these explanations were due to the kindness with which this Work has been received both in France and England, and especially in the latter country. The approbation of the Protestant Christians of Great Britain, the representatives of evangelical principles and doctrines in the most distant parts of the world, is most highly valued by me; and I feel a pleasure in telling them that it is a most precious encouragement to my labours.

The cause of truth recompenses those who embrace and defend it, and such has been the result with the nations who received the Reformation. In the eighteenth century, at the very moment when Rome thought to triumph by the Jesuits and the scaffold, the victory slipped from her grasp. Rome fell, like Naples, Portugal, and Spain, into inextricable difficulties; and at the same time two Protestant nations arose and began to exercise an influence over Europe that had hitherto belonged to the Roman-catholic powers. England came forth victorious from those attacks of the French and Spaniards which the pope had so long been stirring up against her, and the Elector of Brandenburg, in spite of the wrath of Clement XI., encircled his head with a kingly crown. Since that time England has extended her dominion in every quarter of the globe, and Prussia has taken a new rank among the continental states, while a third power, Russia, also separated from Rome, has been growing up in her immense deserts. In this manner have evangelical principles exerted their influence over the countries that have embraced them, and _righteousness hath exalted the nations_ (Prov. xiv. 34). Let the evangelical nations be well a.s.sured that to Protestantism they are indebted for their greatness. From the moment they abandon the position that G.o.d has given them, and incline again towards Rome, they will lose their glory and their power. Rome is now endeavouring to win them over, employing flattery and threats by turns; she would, like Delilah, lull them to sleep upon her knees,......but it would be to cut off their locks, that their adversaries might put out their eyes and bind them with fetters of bra.s.s.

Here, too, is a great lesson for that France with which the author feels himself so intimately connected by the ties of ancestry. Should France, imitating her different governments, turn again towards the papacy, it will be, in our belief, the signal of great disasters.

Whoever attaches himself to the papacy will be compromised in its destruction. France has no prospect of strength or of greatness but by turning towards the Gospel. May this great truth be rightly understood by the people and their leaders!

It is true that in our days popery is making a great stir. Although labouring under an incurable consumption, she would by a hectic flush and feverish activity persuade others and herself too that she is still in full vigour. This a theologian in Turin has endeavoured to do in a work occasioned by this History, and in which we are ready to acknowledge a certain talent in bringing forward testimonies, even the most feeble, with a tone of candour to which we are little accustomed, and in a becoming style, with the exception, however, of the culpable facility with which the author in his twelfth chapter revives accusations against the reformers, the falsehood of which has been so authentically demonstrated and so fully acknowledged.[2]

[2] La Papaute consideree dans son origine et dans son developpement au moyen age, ou reponse aux allegations de M. Merle D'Aubigne dans son Histoire de la Reformation au seizieme siecle, par l'abbe C.

Magnin, docteur en theologie. Geneve, chez Berthier-Guers, 1840.

As a sequel to his Biography of Luther, M. Audin has recently published a Life of Calvin, written under the influence of lamentable prejudices, and in which we can hardly recognise the reformers and the Reformation. Nevertheless, we do not find in this author the shameful charges against Calvin to which we have just alluded; he has pa.s.sed them over in praiseworthy silence. No man that has any self-respect can now venture to bring forward these gross and foolish calumnies.

Perhaps on some other occasion we shall add a few words to what we have already said in our First Book on the origin of popery. They would here be out of place.

I shall only remark, in a general way, that it is precisely the _human_ and very rational causes that so clearly explain its origin, to which the papacy has recourse to prove its _divine_ inst.i.tution.

Thus christian antiquity declares that the universal episcopacy was committed to all the bishops, so that the bishops of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Rome, Carthage, Lyons, Arles, Milan, Hippo, Caesarea, &c., were interested and interfered in all that took place in the christian world. Rome immediately claims for herself that duty which was inc.u.mbent on all, and reasoning as if no one but herself were concerned in it, employs it to demonstrate her primacy.

Let us take another example. The christian churches, established in the large cities of the empire, sent missionaries to the countries with which they were connected. This was done first of all by Jerusalem; then by Antioch, Alexandria, and Ephesus; afterwards by Rome: and Rome forthwith concludes from what she had done after the others, and to a less extent than the others, that she was ent.i.tled to set herself above the others. These examples will suffice.

Let us only remark further, that Rome possessed alone in the West the honour that had been shared in the East by Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Antioch, and in a much higher degree by Jerusalem;[3] namely, that of having one apostle or many among its first teachers. Accordingly, the Latin Churches must naturally have felt a certain respect towards Rome. But the Eastern Christians, who respected her as the Church of the political metropolis of the empire, would never acknowledge her ecclesiastical superiority. The famous General Council of Chalcedon ascribed to Constantinople, formerly the obscure Byzantium, the same privileges (t? ?sa p?ese?a) as to Rome, and declared that she ought to be elevated _like her_. And hence when the papacy was definitively formed in Rome, the East would not acknowledge a master of whom it had never heard mention; and, standing on the ancient footing of its catholicity, it abandoned the West to the power of the new sect which had sprung up in its bosom.

The East even to this day calls herself emphatically catholic and orthodox; and whenever you ask one of the Eastern Christians, whom Rome has gained by her numerous concessions, whether he is a catholic?

"No," replies he directly, "I am papistian (a papist)."[4]

[3] St. Epiphany says, that our Lord committed to James the Elder at Jerusalem his throne on earth (t?? ?????? a?t?? ?p?

t?? ???): and speaking of the bishops a.s.sembled at Jerusalem, he declares that the whole world (pa?ta ??s??) ought to submit to their authority. Epiph. Haeres., 70, 10; 78, 7.

[4] Journal of the Rev. Joseph Wolff. London 1839, p. 225.

If this History has been criticized by the Romish party, it seems also to have met with others who have regarded it in a purely literary light. Men for whom I feel much esteem appear to attach greater importance to a literary or political history of the Reformation, than to an exposition grounded on its spiritual principles and its interior springs of action. I can well understand this way of viewing my subject, but I cannot partic.i.p.ate in it. In my opinion, the very essence of the Reformation is its doctrines and its inward life. Every work in which these two things do not hold the chief place may be showy, but it will not be faithfully and candidly historical. It would be like a philosopher who, in describing a man, should detail with great accuracy and picturesque beauty all that concerns his body, but should give only a subordinate place to that divine inhabitant, the soul.

There are no doubt great defects in the feeble work of which I here present another fragment to the christian public; and I should desire that it were still more copiously imbued with the spirit of the Reformation. The better I have succeeded in pointing out whatever manifests the glory of Christ, the more faithful I shall have been to history. I willingly adopt as my law those words, which an historian of the sixteenth century, a man of the sword still more than of the pen, after writing a portion of the history of that Protestantism in France which I do not purpose narrating, addresses to those who might think of completing his task: "I would give them that law which I acknowledge myself: that, in seeking the glory of this precious instrument, their princ.i.p.al aim should be that of the arm which has prepared, employed, and wielded it at His good pleasure. For all praise given to princes is unseasonable and misplaced, if it has not for leaf and root that of the living G.o.d, to whom alone belong honour and dominion for ever and ever."[5]

[5] As the French original does not indicate the source whence this quotation is taken, it may not be improper to mention that it will be found in the _Histoire Universelle_ of Theodore Agrippa D'Aubigne, 3 vols folio, Amsterdam 1626. D'Aubigne was then a refugee at Geneva, and in the preface to this work, which contains a history of the world and more especially of France and French Protestantism during his lifetime, he bequeaths to his children the task of completing the history he had partially traced out, and prescribes to them (in the pa.s.sage quoted above) the spirit in which it should be performed. He little thought that two centuries and a half would pa.s.s away before his legacy would be accepted and the history of Protestantism completed. [_Note by the Translator._]

HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.

BOOK IX.

FIRST REFORMS. 1521 AND 1522.

CHAPTER I.

Progress of the Reformation--New Period--Usefulness of Luther's Captivity in the Wartburg--Agitation in Germany--Melancthon and Luther--Enthusiasm.

[Sidenote: PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION.]

For four years an old doctrine had been again proclaimed in the Church. The great tidings of _salvation by grace_, published in earlier times in Asia, Greece, and Italy, by Paul and his brethren, and after many ages re-discovered in the Bible by a monk of Wittemberg, had resounded from the plains of Saxony as far as Rome, Paris, and London; and the lofty mountains of Switzerland had re-echoed its powerful accents. The springs of truth, of liberty, and of life, had been re-opened to the human race. Thither had the nations hastened in crowds, and drunk gladly; but those who had there so eagerly quenched their thirst, were unchanged in appearance. All within was new, and yet everything _without_ seemed to have remained the same.

The const.i.tution of the Church, its ritual, its discipline, had undergone no change. In Saxony, and even at Wittemberg, wherever the new ideas had penetrated, the papal wors.h.i.+p continued with its usual pomp; the priest before the altar, offering the host to G.o.d, appeared to effect an ineffable transubstantiation; monks and nuns entered the convents and took their eternal vows; the pastors of the flocks lived without families; religious brotherhoods met together; pilgrimages were undertaken; believers hung their votive offerings on the pillars of the chapels; and all the ceremonies, even to the most insignificant observances of the sanctuary, were celebrated as before. There was a new life in the world, but it had not yet created a new body. The language of the priest formed the most striking contrast with his actions. He might be heard thundering from the pulpit against the ma.s.s, as being an idolatrous wors.h.i.+p; and then might be seen coming down to the altar, and scrupulously performing the pomps of this mystery. In every quarter the new Gospel sounded in the midst of the ancient rites. The priest himself did not perceive this strange contradiction; and the people, who had admiringly listened to the bold language of the new preachers, devoutly practised the old observances, as if they were never to lay them aside. Everything remained the same, at the domestic hearth and in social life, as in the house of G.o.d.

There was a new faith in the world, but not new works. The sun of spring had shone forth, but winter still seemed to bind all nature; there were no flowers, no foliage, nothing outwardly that gave token of the change of season. But these appearances were deceitful; a vigorous sap was circulating unperceived below the surface, and was about to change the aspect of the world.

It is perhaps to this prudent progress that the Reformation is indebted for its triumphs. Every revolution should be accomplished in the mind before it is carried out externally. The inconsistency we have noticed did not even strike Luther at first. It seemed to him quite natural that the people, who read his works with enthusiasm, should remain devoutly attached to the abuses which they a.s.sailed. One might almost fancy he had sketched his plan beforehand, and had resolved to change the mind before changing the forms. But this would be ascribing to him a wisdom the honour of which belongs to a higher Intelligence. He carried out a plan that he had not himself conceived.

At a later period he could recognise and discern these things: but he did not imagine them, and did not arrange them so. G.o.d led the way: it was Luther's duty to follow.

[Sidenote: A NEW ERA.]

If Luther had begun by an external reform; if, as soon as he had spoken, he had attempted to abolish monastic vows, the ma.s.s, confession, and forms of wors.h.i.+p, most a.s.suredly he would have met with a vigorous resistance. Man requires time to accommodate himself to great revolutions. But Luther was by no means the violent, imprudent, daring innovator that some historians have described.[6]

The people, seeing no change in their customary devotions, fearlessly abandoned themselves to their new teacher. They were even surprised at the attacks directed against a man who still left them their ma.s.s, their beads, their confessor; and attributed them to the low jealousy of obscure rivals, or to the cruel injustice of powerful adversaries.

Yet Luther's opinions agitated their minds, renewed their hearts, and so undermined the ancient edifice that it soon fell of itself, without human agency. Ideas do not act instantaneously; they make their way in silence, like the waters that, filtering behind the rocks of the Alps, loosen them from the mountain on which they rest; suddenly the work done in secret reveals itself, and a single day is sufficient to lay bare the agency of many years, perhaps of many centuries.

[6] Hume and others.

A new era was beginning for the Reformation. Already truth was restored in its doctrine; now the doctrine is about to restore truth in all the forms of the Church and of society. The agitation is too great for men's minds to remain fixed and immovable at the point they have attained. Upon those dogmas, now so mightily shaken, were based customs that were already tottering to their fall, and which must disappear with them. There is too much courage and life in the new generation for it to continue silent before error. Sacraments, public wors.h.i.+p, hierarchy, vows, const.i.tution, domestic and public life,--all are about to be modified. The s.h.i.+p, slowly and laboriously constructed, is about to quit the docks and to be launched on the open sea. We shall have to follow its progress through many shoals.

[Sidenote: USEFULNESS OF LUTHER'S CAPTIVITY.]