Correspondence with Molanus and Leibnitz. 12. Bossuet once more engaged in a similar discussion about 1691. Among the German Lutherans there seems to have been for a long time a lurking notion that on some terms or other a reconciliation with the church of Rome could be effected; and this was most countenanced in the dominions of Brunswick, and above all in the university of Helmstadt. Leibnitz himself and Molanus, a Lutheran divine, were the negotiators on that side with Bossuet. Their treaty, for such it was apparently understood to be, was conducted by writing; and when we read their papers on both sides, nothing is more remarkable than the tone of superiority which the catholic plenipotentiary, if such he could be deemed without powers from anyone but himself, has thought fit to assume. No concession is offered, no tenet explained away; the sacramental cup to the laity, and a permission to the Lutheran clergy already married to retain their wives after their re-ordination, is all that he holds forth; and in this, doubtless, he could have had no authority from Rome. Bossuet could not veil his haughty countenance, and his language is that of asperity and contemptuousness instead of moderation. He dictates terms of surrender as to a besieged city when the breach is already practicable, and hardly deigns to show his clemency by granting the smallest favour to the garrison. It is curious to see the strained constructions, the artifices of silence, to which Molanus has recourse in order to make out some pretence for his ignominious surrender. Leibnitz, with whom the correspondence broke off in 1693, and was renewed again in 1699, seems not quite so yielding as the other; and the last biographer of Bossuet suspects that the German philosopher was insincere or tortuous in the negotiation. If this were so, he must have entered upon it less of his own accord, than to satisfy the princess Sophia, who, like many of her family, had been a little wavering, till our act of settlement became a true settlement to their faith. This bias of the court of Hanover is intimated in several passages. The success of this treaty of union, or rather of subjection, was as little to be expected as it was desirable; the old spirit of Lutheranism was much worn out, yet there must surely have been a determination to resist so unequal a compromise. Rome negotiated as a conqueror with these beaten Carthaginians; yet no one had beaten them but themselves.[732]
[732] Œuvres de Bossuet, vols. xxv. and xxvi.
His Variations of Protestant Churches. 13. The warfare of the Roman church may be carried on either in a series of conflicts on the various doctrines wherein the reformers separated from her, or by one pitched battle on the main question of a conclusive authority somewhere in the church. Bossuet’s temper, as well as his inferiority in original learning, led him in preference to the latter scheme of theological strategy. It was also manifestly that course of argument which was most likely to persuade the unlearned. He followed up the blow which he had already struck against Claude in his famous work on the Variations of Protestant Churches. Never did his genius find a subject more fit to display its characteristic impetuosity, its arrogance, or its cutting and merciless spirit of sarcasm. The weaknesses, the inconsistent evasions, the extravagances of Luther, Zuingle, Calvin, and Beza pass, one after another, before us, till these great reformers seem like victim prisoners to be hewn down by the indignant prophet. That Bossuet is candid in statement, or even faithful in quotation, I should much doubt; he gives the words of his adversaries in his own French, and the references are not made to any specified edition of their voluminous writings. The main point, as he contends it to be, that the protestant churches (for he does not confine this to persons), fluctuated much in the sixteenth century, is sufficiently proved; but it remained to show that this was a reproach. Those who have taken a different view from Bossuet may perhaps think that a little more of this censure would have been well incurred; that they have varied too little rather than too much; and that it is far more difficult, even in controversy with the church of Rome, to withstand the inference which their long creeds and confessions, as well as the language too common with their theologians, have furnished to her more ancient and catholic claim of infallibility, than to vindicate those successive variations which are analogous to the necessary course of human reason on all other subjects. The essential fallacy of Romanism, that truth must ever exist visibly on earth, is implied in the whole strain of Bossuet’s attack on the variances of protestantism: it is evident that variance of opinion proves error somewhere; but unless it can be shown that we have any certain method of excluding it, this should only lead us to be more indulgent towards the judgment of others, and less confident of our own. The notion of an intrinsic moral criminality in religious error is at the root of the whole argument; and till protestants are well rid of this, there seems no secure mode of withstanding the effect which the vast weight of authority asserted by the Latin church, even where it has not the aid of the Eastern, must produce on timid and scrupulous minds.
Anglican writings against Popery. 14. In no period has the Anglican church stood up so powerfully in defence of the protestant cause as in that before us. From the era of the restoration to the close of the century the war was unremitting and vigorous. And it is particularly to be remarked, that the principal champions of the church of England threw off that ambiguous syncretism which had displayed itself under the first Stuarts, and, comparatively at least with their immediate predecessors, avoided every admission which might facilitate a deceitful compromise. We can only mention a few of the writers who signalised themselves in this controversy.
Taylor’s Dissuasive. 15. Taylor’s Dissuasive from Popery was published in 1664; and in this, his latest work, we find the same general strain of protestant reasoning, the same rejection of all but scriptural authority, the same free exposure of the inconsistencies and fallacies of tradition, the same tendency to excite a sceptical feeling as to all except the primary doctrines of religion, which had characterised the Liberty of Prophesying. These are mixed, indeed, in Taylor’s manner, with a few passages (they are, I think, but few), which singly taken might seem to breathe not quite this spirit; but the tide flows for the most part the same way, and it is evident that his mind had undergone no change. The learning, in all his writings is profuse; but Taylor never leaves me with the impression that he is exact and scrupulous in its application. In one part of this Dissuasive from Popery, having been reproached with some inconsistency, he has no scruple to avow that in a former work he had employed weak arguments for a laudable purpose.[733]
[733] Taylor’s Works, x., 304. This is not surprising, as in his Ductor Dubitantium, xi., 484, he maintains the right of using arguments and authorities in controversy, which we do not believe to be valid.
Barrow.—Stillingfleet. 16. Barrow, not so extensively learned as Taylor, who had read rather too much, but inferior, perhaps, even in that respect to hardly any one else, and above him in closeness and strength of reasoning, combated against Rome in many of his sermons, and especially in a long treatise on the papal supremacy. Stillingfleet followed, a man deeply versed in ecclesiastical antiquity, of an argumentative mind, excellently fitted for polemical dispute, but perhaps by those habits of his life rendered too much of an advocate to satisfy an impartial reader. In the critical reign of James II., he may be considered as the leader on the protestant side; but Wake, Tillotson, and several more would deserve mention in a fuller history of ecclesiastical literature.
Jansenius. 17. The controversies always smouldering in the Church of Rome, sometimes breaking into flame, to which the Anti-Pelagian writings of Augustin had originally given birth, have been slightly touched in our former volumes. It has been seen that the rigidly predestinarian theories had been condemned by the court of Rome in Baius, that the opposite doctrine of Molina had narrowly escaped censure, that it was safest to abstain from any language not verbally that of the church, or of Augustin whom the church held incontrovertible. But now a more serious and celebrated controversy, that of the Jansenists, pierced, as it were, to the heart of the church. It arose before the middle of the century. Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, in his Augustinus, published, after his death, in 1640, gave, as he professed, a faithful statement of the tenets of that father. “We do not inquire,” he says, “what men ought to believe on the powers of human nature, or on the grace and predestination of God, but what Augustin once preached with the approbation of the church, and has consigned to writing in many of his works.” This book is in three parts: the first containing a history of the Pelagian controversy, the second and third an exposition of the tenets of Augustin. Jansenius does not, however, confine himself so much to mere analysis, but that he attacks the Jesuits Lessius and Molina, and even reflects on the bull of Pius V. condemning Baius, which he cannot wholly approve.[734]
[734] A very copious history of Jansenism, taking it up from the council of Trent, will be found in the fourteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle, p. 139-398, from which Mosheim has derived most of what we read in his Ecclesiastical History. And the History of Port-Royal was written by Racine, in so perspicuous and neat a style, that, though we may hardly think with Olivet that it places him as high in prose writing as his tragedies do in verse, it entitles him to rank in the list, not a very long one, of those who have succeeded in both. Is it not probable, that in some scenes of Athalie he had Port-Royal before his eyes? The history and the tragedy were written about the same time. Racine, it is rather remarkable, had entered the field against Nicole in 1666, chiefly indeed to defend theatrical representations, but not without many sarcasms against Jansenism.
Condemnation of his Augustinus in France. 18. Richelieu, who is said to have retained some animosity against Jansenius on account of a book called Mars Gallicus, which he had written on the side of his sovereign the king of Spain, designed to obtain the condemnation of the Augustinus by the French clergy. The Jesuits, therefore, had gained ground so far that the doctrines of Augustin were out of fashion, though few besides themselves ventured to reject his nominal authority. It is certainly clear that Jansenius offended the greater part of the church. But he had some powerful advocates, and especially Antony Arnauld, the most renowned of a family long conspicuous for eloquence, for piety, and for opposition to the Jesuits. In 1649, after several years of obscure dispute, Cornet, syndic of the faculty of Theology in the University of Paris, brought forward for censure seven propositions, five of which became afterwards so famous, without saying that they were found in the work of Jansenius. The faculty condemned them, though it had never been reckoned favourable to the Jesuits; a presumption that they were at least expressed in a manner repugnant to the prevalent doctrine. Yet Le Clerc, to whose excellent account of this controversy in the fourteenth volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle we are chiefly indebted, declares his own opinion that there may be some ambiguity in the style of the first, but that the other four are decidedly conformable to the theology of Augustin.