Si ad opera externa referas voluntatem, quædam videtur esse, judicio naturæ, libertas.
Si ad affectus referas voluntatem, nulla plane libertas est, etiam naturæ judicio. This proves what I have said in another place, that Melanchthon held the doctrine of strict philosophical necessity. Luther does the same, in express words, once at least in the treatise De Servo Arbitrio, vol. ii. fol. 429 (edit. Wittenberg, 1554).
In an epistle often quoted, Melanchthon wrote: Nimis horridæ fuerunt apud nostros disputationes de fato, et disciplinæ nocuerunt. But a more thoroughly ingenuous man might have said nostros for apud nostros. Certain it is, however, that he had changed his opinions considerably before 1540, when he published his Moralis Philosophiæ Epitome, which contains evidence of his holding the synergism, or activity and co-operation with divine grace, of the human will. See p. 39.
The animosity excited in the violent Lutherans by Melanchthon’s moderation in drawing up the confession of Augsburg is shown in Camerarius, Vita Melanchthon, p. 124 (edit. 1696). From this time it continued to harass him till his death.
Reformed tenets spread in England. 16. England, which had long contained the remnants of Wicliffe’s followers, could not remain a stranger to this revolution. Tyndale’s New Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1526; the first translation that had been made into English. The cause of this delay has been already explained; and great pains were taken to suppress the circulation of Tyndale’s version. But England was then inclined to take its religion from the nod of a capricious tyrant. Persecution would have long repressed the spirit of free judgment, and the king, for Henry’s life at least, have retained his claim to the papal honour conferred on him as defender of the faith, if “Gospel light,” as Gray has rather affectedly expressed it, had not “flashed from Boleyn’s eyes.” But we shall not dwell on so trite a subject. |In Italy.| It is less familiar to every one, that in Italy the seeds of the Reformation were early and widely sown. A translation of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes under the name of Ippofilo da Terra Nigra, was printed at Venice in 1521, the very year of its appearance at Wittenberg; the works of Luther, Zwingle, and Bucer, were also circulated under false names.[690] The Italian translations of Scripture made in the fifteenth century were continually reprinted; and in 1530 a new version was published at Venice by Brucioli, with a preface written in a protestant tone.[691] The great intercourse of Italy with the cisalpine nations, through war and commerce, and the partiality of Renée of France, duchess of Ferrara, to the new doctrines, whose disciples she encouraged at her court, under the pretext of literature, contributed to spread an active spirit of inquiry. In almost every considerable city, between 1525 and 1540, we find proofs of a small band of protestants, not in general abandoning the outward profession of the church, but coinciding in most respects with Luther or Zwingle. It has lately been proved that a very early proselyte to the Reformation, and one whom we should least expect to find in that number, was Berni, before the completion, if not the commencement, of his labour on the Orlando Innamorato; which he attempted to render in some places the vehicle of his disapprobation of the church. This may account for the freedom from indecency which distinguishes that poem, and contrasts with the great licentiousness of Berni’s lighter and earlier productions.[692]
[690] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Italy. Epigrams were written in favour of Luther as early as 1521 (p. 32).
[691] Id. p. 53, 55.
[692] This curious and unexpected fact was brought to light by Mr. Panizzi, who found a short pamphlet of extreme scarcity, and unnoticed, I believe, by Zeno or any other bibliographer (except Niceron, xxxviii. 76), in the library of Mr. Grenville. It is written by Peter Paul Vergerio, and printed at Basle in 1554. This contains eighteen stanzas, intended to have been prefixed by Berni to the twentieth canto of the Orlando Innamorato. They are of a decidedly protestant character. For these stanzas others are substituted in the printed editions, much inferior, and, what is remarkable, almost the only indecent passage in the whole poem. Mr. Panizzi is of opinion, that great liberties have been taken with the Orlando Innamorato, which is a posthumous publication, the earliest edition being at Venice, 1541, five years after the author’s death. Vergerio, in this tract, the whole of which has been reprinted by Mr. P. in iii. 361 of his Boiardo, says of Berni: Costui quasi agli ultimi suoi anni non fù altro che carne e mondo; di che ci fanno ampia fede alcuni suoi capitoli e poesie, delle quali egli molti fogli imbrattò. Ma perchè il nome suo era scritto nel libro della vita, ne era possibile ch’egli potesse fuggire delle mani del celeste padre, &c. Veggendo egli che questo gran tiranno non permittea onde alcuno potesse comporre all’aperta di quei libri, per li quali altri possa penetrare nella cognizione del vero, andando attorno per le man d’ognuno un certo libro profano chiamato innamoramento d’Orlando, che era inetto e mal composto, il Berna [sic] s’immaginò di fare un bel trattato; e ciò fù ch’egli si pose a racconciare le rime e le altre parti di quel libro, di che esso n’era ottimo artefice, e poi aggiungendovi di suo alcune stanze, pensò di entrare con questa occasione e con quel mezzo (insin che d’altro migliore ne avesse potuto avere) ad insegnare la verità dell’Evangelio, &c. Whether Vergerio is wholly to be trusted in all this account, more of which will be found on reference to Panizzi’s edition of the Orlando Innamorato, I must leave to the competent reader. The following expressions of Mr. P., though, I think, rather strong, will show the opinion of one conversant with the literature and history of those times. “The more we reflect on the state of Italy at that time, the more have we reason to suspect that the reforming tenets were as popular among the higher classes in Italy in those days, as liberal notions in ours.” P. 361.
Italian heterodoxy. 17. The Italians are an imaginative, but not essentially a superstitious people, or liable, nationally speaking, to the gloomy prejudices that master the reason. Among the classes, whose better education had strengthened and developed the acuteness and intelligence so general in Italy, a silent disbelief of the popular religion was far more usual than in any other country. In the majority, this has always taken the turn of a complete rejection of all positive faith; but, at the æra of the Reformation especially, the substitution of Protestant for Romish Christianity was an alternative to be embraced by men of more serious temperaments. Certain it is, that we find traces of this aberration from orthodoxy, in one or the other form, through much of the literature of Italy, sometimes displaying itself only in censures of the vices of the clergy; censures, from which, though in other ages they had been almost universal, the rigidly Catholic party began now to abstain. We have already mentioned Pontanus and Mantuan. Trissino, in his Italia Liberata, introduces a sharp invective against the church of Rome.[693] The Zodiacus Vitæ of Manzolli, whose assumed Latin name, by which he is better known, was Palingenius Stellatus, teems with invectives against the monks, and certainly springs from a protestant source.[694] The first edition is of 1537, at Basle. But no one writer is more indignantly severe than Alamanni.[695]
[693] This passage, which is in the sixteenth canto, will be found in Roscoe’s Leo X., Append. No. 164; but the reader would be mistaken in supposing, as Roscoe’s language seems to imply, that it is only contained in the first edition of 1548. The fact is that Trissino cancelled these lines in the unsold copies of that edition, so that very few are found to contain them; but they are restored in the edition of the Italia Liberata, printed at Verona in 1729.