[1008] Strype’s Life of Grindal, p. 42; see also Bayle. Elizabeth gave him a pension for a book on fortification.
Minus Celsus Koornhert. 32. Mino Celso, of Siena, and another of the same class of refugees, in a long and elaborate argument against persecution, De Hereticis Capitali Supplicio non Afficiendis, quotes several authorities from writers of the sixteenth century in his favour.[1009] We should add to these advocates of toleration the name of Theodore Koornhert, who courageously stood up in Holland against one of the most encroaching and bigoted hierarchies of that age. Koornhert, averse in other points to the authority of Calvin and Beza, seems to have been a precursor of Arminius; but he is chiefly known by a treatise against capital punishment for heresy, published in Latin after his death. It is extremely scarce, and I have met with no author, except Bayle and Brandt, who speaks of it from direct knowledge.[1010] Thus, at the end of the sixteenth century, the simple proposition, that men for holding or declaring heterodox opinions in religion ought not to be burned alive, or otherwise put to death, was itself little else than a sort of heterodoxy; and, though many privately must have been persuaded of its truth, the Protestant churches were as far from acknowledging it as that of Rome. No one had yet pretended to assert the general right of religious worship, which, in fact, was rarely or never conceded to the Romanists in a Protestant country, though the Huguenots shed oceans of blood to secure the same privilege for themselves.
[1009] Celso was formerly supposed to be a fictitious person, but the contrary has been established. The book was published in 1584, but without date of place. He quotes Aconcio frequently. The following passage seems to refer to Servetus. Superioribus annis, ad hæretici cujusdam in flammis constantiam, ut ex fide dignis accepi, plures ex astantibus sanæ doctrinæ viri, non posse id sine Dei spiritu fieri persuasum habentes, ac propterea hæreticum martyrem esse plane credentes, ejus hæresin pro veritate complexi, in fide naufragium fecerunt, fol. 109.
[1010] Bayle, Biogr. Univ. Brandt, Hist. de la Reformation des Provinces Unies, i. 435. Lipsius had, in his Politica, inveighed against the toleration of more religions than one in a commonwealth. Ure, seca, ut membrum potius aliquod, quam totum corpus intereat. Koornhert answered this, dedicating his answer to the magistrates of Leyden, who, however, thought fit to publish that they did not accept the dedication, and requested that those who read Koornhert would read also the reply of Lipsius, ibid. This was in 1590, and Koornhert died the same year.
Decline of Protestantism. 33. In the concluding part of the century, the Protestant cause, though not politically unprosperous, but rather manifesting some additional strength through the great energies put forth by England and Holland, was less and less victorious in the conflict of opinion. It might, perhaps, seem to a spectator, that it gained more in France by the dissolution of the League, and the establishment of a perfect toleration, sustained by extraordinary securities in the edict of Nantes, than it lost by the conformity of Henry IV. to the Catholic religion. But, if this is considered more deeply, the advantage will appear far greater on the other side; for this precedent, in the case of a man so conspicuous, would easily serve all who might fancy they had any public interest to excuse them, from which the transition would not be long to the care of their own. After this time, accordingly, we find more numerous conversions of the Huguenots, especially the nobler classes, than before. They were furnished with a pretext by an unlucky circumstance. In a public conference, held at Fontainebleau, in 1600, before Henry IV., from which great expectation had been raised, Du Plessis Mornay, a man of the noblest character, but, though very learned as a gentleman, more fitted to maintain his religion in the field than in the schools, was signally worsted, having been supplied with forged or impertinent quotations from the fathers, which his antagonist, Perron, easily exposed. Casaubon, who was present, speaks with shame, but without reserve, of his defeat; and it was an additional mortification, that the king pretended ever afterwards to have been more thoroughly persuaded by this conference, that he had embraced the truth, as well as gained a crown, by abandoning the Protestant side.[1011]
[1011] Scaliger, it must be observed, praises very highly the book of Du Plessis Mornay on the mass, and says, that no one after Calvin and Beza had written so well; though he owns that he would have done better not to dispute about religion before the king. Scaligerana Secunda, p. 461. Du Plessis himself, in a publication after the conference of Fontainebleau, retaliated the charge of falsified quotations on Perron. I shall quote what Casaubon has said on the subject in another chapter. See the article Mornay, in the Biographie Universelle, in which, though the signature seems to indicate a descendant or relation, the inaccuracy of the quotations is acknowledged.
Desertion of Lipsius. 34. The men of letters had another example, about the same time, in one of the most distinguished of their fraternity, Justus Lipsius. He left Leyden on some pretence in 1591 for the Spanish Low Countries, and soon afterwards embraced the Romish faith. Lest his conversion should be suspected, Lipsius disgraced a name, great at least in literature, by writing in favour of the local superstitions of those bigoted provinces. It is true, however, that some, though the lesser, portion of his critical works were published after his change of religion.
Jewell’s Apology. 35. The controversial divinity poured forth during this period is now little remembered. In England it may be thought necessary to mention Jewell’s celebrated apology. This short book is written with spirit; the style is terse, the arguments pointed, the authorities much to the purpose; so that its effects are not surprising. This treatise is written in Latin; his Defence of the Apology, a much more diffuse work, in English. Upon the merits of the controversy of Jewell with the Jesuit Harding, which this defence embraces, I am not competent to give any opinion; in length and learning it far surpasses our earlier polemical literature.
English theologians. 36. Notwithstanding the high reputation which Jewell obtained by his surprising memory and indefatigable reading, it cannot be said that many English theologians of the reign of Elizabeth were eminent for that learning which was required for ecclesiastical controversy. Their writings are neither numerous nor profound. Some exceptions ought to be made. Hooker was sufficiently versed in the fathers, and he possessed also a far more extensive knowledge of the philosophical writers of antiquity than any others could pretend. The science of morals, according to Mosheim, or rather of casuistry, which Calvin had left in a rude and imperfect state, is confessed to have been first reduced into some kind of form, and explained with some accuracy and precision by Perkins, whose works, however, were not published before the next century.[1012] Hugh Broughton was deep in Jewish erudition. Whitaker and Nowell ought also to be mentioned. It would not be difficult to extract a few more names from biographical collections, but names so obscure that we could not easily bring their merit as scholars to any sufficient test. Sandys’s sermons may be called perhaps good, but certainly not very distinguished. The most eminently learned man of the queen’s reign seems to have been Dr. John Rainolds; and a foreign author of the last century, Colomies, places him among the first six in copiousness of erudition whom the Protestant churches had produced.[1013] Yet his works are, I presume, read by nobody, nor am I aware that they are ever quoted; and Rainolds himself is chiefly known by the anecdote, that having been educated in the church of Rome, as his brother was in the Protestant communion, they mutually converted each other in the course of disputation. Rainolds was on the Puritan side, and took a part in the Hampton Court conference.
[1012] Mosheim, Chalmers.