[599] Seckendorf. This remarkable letter will be found also in Roscoe’s Leo X., Appendix No. 185. It bears date April 1520. See also a letter of Petrus Mosellanus, in Jortin’s Erasmus, ii. 353; and Luther’s own letter to Leo, of March 1519.
Simultaneous reform by Zwingle. 57. A counterpart to the reformation that Luther was thus effecting in Saxony might be found at the same instant in Switzerland, under the guidance of Zwingle. It has been disputed between the advocates of these leaders, to which the priority in the race of reform belongs. Zwingle himself declares, that in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began to preach the gospel at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying upon human authority.[600] But that is rather ambiguous, and hardly enough to substantiate his claim. In 1518, which of course is after Luther’s appearance on the scene, the Swiss reformer was engaged in combating the venders of indulgences, though with less attention from the court of Rome. Like Luther, he had the support of the temporal magistrate, the council of Zurich. Upon the whole, they proceeded so nearly with equal steps, and were so little connected with each other, that it seems difficult to award either any honour of precedence.[601]
[600] Zwingle apud Gerdes, i. 103.
[601] Milner, who is extremely partial in the whole of this history, labours to extenuate the claims of Zwingle to independence in the preaching of reformation; and even pretends that he had not separated from the church of Rome in 1523, when Adrian VI. sent him a civil letter. But Gerdes shows at length that the rupture was complete in 1520. See also the article Zwingle in Biogr. Universelle.
The prejudice of Milner against Zwingle throughout is striking, and leads him into much unfairness. Thus he asserts him, v. 510, to have been consenting to the capital punishment of some Anabaptists at Zurich. But, not to mention that their case was not one of mere religious dissidence, it does not by any means appear that he approved their punishment, which he merely relates as a fact. A still more gross misrepresentation occurs in p. 526.
Reformation prepared beforehand. 58. The German nation was, in fact, so fully awakened to the abuses of the church, the disclaimer of papal sovereignty in the councils of Constance and Basle had been so effectual in its influence on the public mind, though not on the external policy of church and state, that, if neither Luther nor Zwingle had ever been born, there can be little question that a great religious schism was near at hand. These councils were to the Reformation what the parliament of Paris was to the French Revolution. Their leaders never meant to sacrifice one article of received faith; but the little success they had in redressing what they denounced as abuses, convinced the laity that they must go much farther for themselves. What effect the invention of printing, which in Italy was not much felt in this direction, exerted upon the serious minds of the Teutonic nations, has been already intimated, and must appear to every reflecting person. And when this was followed by a more extensive acquaintance with the New Testament in the Greek language, nothing could be more natural than that inquisitive men should throw away much of what seemed the novel superstructure of religion, and, what in other times such men had rarely ventured should be encouraged by the obvious change in the temper of the multitude to declare themselves. We find that Pellican and Capito, two of the most learned scholars in western Germany, had come, as early as 1512, to reject altogether the doctrine of the real presence. We find also that Œcolampadius had begun to preach some of the protestant doctrines in 1514.[602] And Erasmus, who had so manifestly prepared the way for the new Reformers, continued, as it is easy to show from the uniform current of his letters, beyond the year 1520, favourable to their cause. His enemies were theirs, and he concurred in much that they preached, especially as to the exterior practices of religion. Some, however, of Luther’s tenets he did not and could not approve; and he was already disgusted by that intemperance of language and conduct, which, not long afterwards, led him to recede entirely from the Protestant side.[603]
[602] Gerdes, i. 117, 124, et post. In fact the precursors of the Reformation were very numerous, and are collected by Gerdes in his first and third volumes, though he has greatly exaggerated the truth, by reckoning as such Dante and Petrarch, and all opponents of the temporal power of the papacy. Wessel may, upon the whole, be fairly reckoned among the Reformers.
[603] In 1519 and 1520, even in his letters to Albert archbishop of Mentz, and others by no means partial to Luther, he speaks of him very handsomely, and with little or no disapprobation, except on account of his intemperance, though professing only a slight acquaintance with his writings. The proofs are too numerous to be cited. He says, in a letter to Zwingle, as late as 1521, Videor mihi fere omnia docuisse, quæ docet Lutherus, nisi quod non tam atrociter, quodque abstinui a quibusdam ænigmatis et paradoxis. This is quoted by Gerdes, i. 153, from a collection of letters of Erasmus, published by Hottinger, but not contained in the Leyden edition. Jortin seems not to have seen them.
Dangerous tenets of Luther. 59. It would not be just, probably, to give Bossuet credit in every part of that powerful delineation of Luther’s theological tenets, with which he begins the History of the Variations of Protestant churches. Nothing, perhaps, in polemical eloquence is so splendid as this chapter. The eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly of form, fierce of eye, terrible in his beak and claws. But he is too determined a partizan to be trusted by those who seek the truth without regard to persons and denominations. His quotations from Luther are short, and in French; I have failed in several attempts to verify the references. Yet we are not to follow the Reformer’s partizans in dissembling altogether, like Isaac Milner, or in slightly censuring, as others have done, the enormous paradoxes which deform his writings, especially such as fall within the present period. In maintaining salvation to depend on faith as a single condition, he not only denied the importance, in a religious sense, of a virtuous life, but asserted that every one who felt within himself a full assurance that his sins were remitted (which, according to Luther, is the proper meaning of Christian faith), became incapable of sinning at all, or at least of forfeiting the favour of God, so long, but so long only, as that assurance should continue. Such expressions are sometimes said by Seckendorf and Mosheim to have been thrown out hastily, and without precision; but I fear it will be found on examination that they are very definite and clear, the want of precision and perspicuity being rather in those which are alleged as inconsistent with them, and as more consonant to the general doctrine of the Christian church.[604] It must not be supposed for a moment that Luther, whose soul was penetrated with a fervent piety, and whose integrity as well as purity of life are unquestioned, could mean to give any encouragement to a licentious disregard of moral virtue; which he valued, as in itself lovely before God as well as man, though in the technical style of his theology, he might deny its proper obligation. But his temper led him to follow up any proposition of Scripture to every consequence that might seem to result from its literal meaning; and he fancied that to represent a future state as the motive of virtuous action, or as any way connected with human conduct, for better or worse, was derogatory to the free grace of God, and the omnipotent agency of the Spirit in converting the soul.[605]
[604] See in proof of this Luther’s works, vol. i. passim (edit. 1554). The first work of Melanchthon, his Loci Communes, published in 1521, when he followed Luther more obsequiously in his opinions than he did in after-life, is equally replete with the strongest Calvinism. This word is a little awkward in this place; but I am compelled to use it, as most intelligible to the reader; and I conceive that these two reformers went much beyond the language of Augustin, which the schoolmen thought themselves bound to recognise as authority, though they might elude its spirit. I find the first edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes in Von der Hardt, Historia Litteraria Reformationis, a work which contains a great deal of curious matter. It is called by him, opus rarissimum, not being in the edition of Melanchthon’s theological works; which some have ascribed to the art of Peucer, whose tenets were widely different.