[3]See "Corpus historicorum medii ævi," G. Eccard, vol. II; Joh. Burchardi, high chamberlain to Alexander VI, "Diarium," p. 2134. Guicciardini, "Dell'istoria d'Italia," p. 211, ed. Panthéon Littéraire.
[4]See, in Casanova's "Mémoires," the picture of this degradation. See also the "Mémoires" of Scipione Rossi, on the convents of Tuscany at the close of the eighteenth century.
[5]From Homer to Constantine, the ancient city was an association of freemen, whose aim was the conquest and destruction of other freemen.
[6]"Mémoires de la Margrave de Baireuth." See also Misson, "Voyage en Italie," 1700. Compare the manners of the students at the present day. "The Germans are, as you know, wonderful drinkers: no people in the world are more flattering, more civil, more officious; but yet they have terrible customs in the matter of drinking. With them everything is done drinking; they drink in doing everything. There was not time during a visit to say three words before you were astonished to see the collation arrive, or at least a few jugs of wine, accompanied by a plate of crusts of bread, dished up with pepper and salt, a fatal preparation for bad drinkers. Then you must become acquainted with the laws which are afterwards observed, sacred and inviolable laws. You must never drink without drinking to some one's health; also, after drinking, you must offer the wine to him whose health you have drunk. You must never refuse the glass which is offered to you, and you must naturally drain it to its last drop. Reflect a little, I beseech you, on these customs, and see how it is possible to cease drinking; accordingly, they never cease. In Germany it is a perpetual drinking-bout; to drink in Germany is to drink forever."
[7]See his letters, and the sympathy expressed for Luther.
[8]See a collection of Albert Durer's wood-carvings. Remark the resemblance of his "Apocalypse" to Luther's "Table Talk."
[9]Calvin, the logician of the Reformation, well explains the dependence of all the Protestant ideas in his "Institutes of the Christian Religion," I. (1) The idea of the perfect God, the stern Judge. (2) The alarm of conscience (3) The impotence and corruption of nature. (4) The advent of free grace. (5) The rejection of rites and ceremonies.
[10]"In the measure in which pride is rooted within us, it always appears to us as though we were just and whole, good and holy, unless we are convinced by manifest arguments of out injustice, uncleanness, folly, and impurity. For we are not convinced of it if we turn our eyes to our own persons merely, and if we do not think also of God, who is the only rule by which we must shape and regulate this judgment.... And then that which had a fair appearance of virtue will be found to be nothing but weakness.
"This is the source of that horror and wonder by which the Scriptures tell us the saints were afflicted and cast down, when and as often as they felt the presence of God. For we see those who were as it might be far from God, and who were confident and went about with head erect, as soon as He displayed His glory to them, they were shaken and terrified, so much so that they were overwhelmed, nay swallowed up in the horror of death, and that they fainted away."—Calvin's "Institutes," I.
[11]Saint Augustine.