[1013] Colomesiana. The other five are Usher, Gataker, Blondel, Petit, and Bochart. See also Blount, Baillet, and Chalmers, for testimonies to Rainolds, who died in 1607. Scaliger regrets his death as a loss to all Protestant churches, as well as that of England. Wood admits that Rainolds was “a man of infinite reading, and of a vast memory:” but laments that, after he was chosen divinity lecturer at Oxford in 1586, the face of the university was much changed towards Puritanism. Hist. and Antiq. In the Athenæ, ii. 14, he gives a very high character of Rainolds, on the authority of Bishop Hall and others, and a long list of his works. But, as he wanted a biographer, he has become obscure in comparison with Jewell, who probably was not at all his superior.
Bellarmin. 37. As the century drew near its close, the church of Rome brought forward her most renowned and formidable champion, Bellarmin, a Jesuit, and afterwards a cardinal. No one had entered the field on that side with more acuteness, no one had displayed more skill in marshalling the various arguments of controversial theology, so as to support each other and serve the grand purpose of church authority. “He does not often,” says Dupin, “employ reasoning, but relies on the textual authority of Scripture, of the councils, the fathers, and the consent of the theologians; seldom quitting his subject, or omitting any passage useful to his argument; giving the objections fairly, and answering them in few words. His style is not so elegant as that of writers who have made it their object, but clear, neat, and brief, without dryness or barbarism. He knew well the tenets of Protestants, and states them faithfully, avoiding the invective so common with controversial writers.” It is nevertheless alleged by his opponents, and will not seem incredible to those who know what polemical theology has always been, that he attempts to deceive the reader, and argues only in the interests of his cause.
38. Bellarmin, if we may believe Du Perron, was not unlearned in Greek;[1014] but it is positively asserted on the other side that he could hardly read it, and he quotes the writers in that language only from translations. Nor has his critical judgment been much esteemed. But his abilities are best testified by Protestant theologians, not only in their terms of eulogy, but indirectly in the peculiar zeal with which they chose him as their worthiest adversary. More than half a dozen books in the next fifty years bear the title of Anti-Bellarminus: it seemed as if the victory must remain with those who should bear away the spolia opima of this hostile general. The Catholic writers, on the other hand, borrow everything, it has been said, from Bellarmin, as the poets do from Homer.[1015]
[1014] Perroniana.
[1015] Dupin. Bayle. Blount. Eichhorn,vi. part ii.p. 30. Andrès, xviii. 243. Niceron, vol. xxxi.
Topics of controversy changed. 39. In the hands of Bellarmin, and other strenuous advocates of the church, no point of controversy was neglected. But in a general view we may justly say that the heat of battle was not in the same part of the field as before. Luther and his immediate disciples held nothing so vital as the tenet of justification by faith alone; while the arguments of Eckius and Cajetan were chiefly designed to maintain the modification of doctrine on that subject, which had been handed down to them by the fathers and schoolmen. The differences of the two parties, as to the mode of corporeal presence in the eucharist, though quite sufficient to keep them asunder, could hardly bear much controversy, inasmuch as the primitive writers, to whom it was usual to appeal, have not, as is universally agreed, drawn these metaphysical distinctions with much preciseness. But when the Helvetic churches, and those bearing the general name of Reformed, became, after the middle of the century, as prominent, to say the least, in theological literature as the Lutheran, this controversy acquired much greater importance; the persecutions in England and the Netherlands were principally directed against this single heresy of denying the real presence, and the disputes of the press turned so generally upon no other topic.
It turns on Papal power. 40. In the last part of the century, through the influence of some political circumstances, we find a new theme of polemical discussion, more peculiarly characteristic of the age. Before the appearance of the early reformers, a republican or aristocratic spirit in ecclesiastical polity strengthened by the decrees of the councils of Constance and Basle, by the co-operation, in some instances, of the national church with the state in redressing, or demanding the redress of abuses, and certainly also both by the vices of the court of Rome, and its diversion to local politics, had fully counter-balanced, or even in a great measure silenced, the bold pretensions of the school of Hildebrand. In such a lax notion of papal authority, prevalent in Cisalpine Europe, the Protestant Reformation had found one source of its success. But for this cause the theory itself lost ground in the Catholic church. At the council of Trent the aristocratic or episcopal party, though it seemed to display itself in great strength, comprising the representatives of the Spanish and Gallican churches, was for the most part foiled in questions that touched the limitations of papal supremacy. From this time the latter power became lord of the ascendant. “No Catholic,” says Schmidt, “dared after the Reformation to say one hundredth part of what Gerson, Peter d’Ailly, and many others had openly preached.” The same instinct of which we may observe the workings in the present day, then also taught the subjects of the church that it was no time to betray jealousy of their own government when the public enemy was at their gates.
This upheld by the Jesuits. 41. In this resuscitation of the court of Rome, that is, of the papal authority, in contradistinction to the general doctrine and discipline of the Catholic church, much, or rather most, was due to the Jesuits. Obedience, not to that abstraction of theologians, the Catholic church, a shadow eluding the touch and vanishing into emptiness before the enquiring eye, but to its living acting centre, the one man, was their vow, their duty, their function. They maintained, therefore, if not quite for the first time, yet with little countenance from the great authorities of the schools, his personal infallibility in matters of faith. They asserted his superiority to general councils, his prerogative of dispensing with all the canons of the church, on grounds of spiritual expediency, whereof he alone could judge. As they grew bolder, some went on to pronounce even the divine laws subject to this control; but it cannot be said that a principle which seemed so paradoxical, though perhaps only a consequence from their assumptions, was generally received.
Claim to depose princes. 42. But the most striking consequence of this novel position of the papacy was the renewal of its claims to temporal power, or, in stricter language, to pronounce the forfeiture of it by lawful sovereigns for offences against religion. This pretension of the Holy See, though certainly not abandoned, had in a considerable degree lain dormant in that period of comparative weakness which followed the great schism. Paul III. deprived Henry VIII. of his dominions, as far as a bull could have that effect; but the deposing power was not generally asserted with much spirit against the first princes who embraced the Reformation. In this second part of the century, however, the see of Rome was filled by men of stern zeal and intrepid ambition, aided by the Jesuits and other regulars with an energy unknown before, and favoured also by the political interests of the greatest monarch in Christendom. Two circumstances of the utmost importance gave them occasion to scour the rust away from their ancient weapons—the final prostration of the Romish faith in England by Elizabeth, and the devolution of the French crown on a Protestant heir. |Bull against Elizabeth.| Incensed by the former event, Pius V., the representative of the most rigid party in the church, issued in 1570 his famous bull, releasing English Catholics from their allegiance to the queen, and depriving her of all right and title to the throne. Elizabeth and her parliament retaliated, by augmented severities of law against these unfortunate subjects, who had little reason to thank the Jesuits for announcing maxims of rebellion it was not easy to carry into effect. Allen and Persons, secure at St. Omer and Douay, proclaimed the sacred duty of resisting a prince who should break his faith with God and the people, especially when the supreme governor of the church, whose function it is to watch over its welfare, and separate the leprous from the clean, has adjudged the cause.
And Henry IV. 43. In the war of the League men became more familiar with this tenet. Those who fought under that banner did not all acknowledge, or at least would not in other circumstances have admitted, the pope’s deposing power; but no faction will reject a false principle that adds strength to its side. Philip II., though ready enough to treat the See of Rome as sharply and rudely as the Italians do their saints when refractory, found it his interest to encourage a doctrine so dangerous to monarchy when it was directed against Elizabeth and Henry. |Deposing power owned in Spain.| For this reason we may read with less surprise in Balthazar Ayala, a layman, a lawyer, and judge-advocate in the armies of Spain, the most unambiguous and unlimited assertion of the deposing theory:—“Kings abusing their power may be variously compelled,” he says, “by the sovereign pontiff to act justly; for he is the earthly vicegerent of God, from whom he has received both swords, temporal as well as spiritual, for the peace and preservation of the Christian commonwealth. Nor can he only control, if it is for the good of this commonwealth, but even depose kings, as God, whose delegate he is, deprived Saul of his kingdom, and as pope Zachary released the Franks from their allegiance to Childeric.”[1016]