CHAPTER XVI.
THE KING OF FRANCE INVITES MELANCTHON TO RESTORE UNITY AND TRUTH.
(End of 1534 to August 1535.)

While the work of the Reformation appeared exposed to great dangers in a small city of the Alps, it had in the eyes of the optimists chances of success in two of the greatest countries of Europe—France and Italy. The two finest geniuses of the reform, Melancthon and Calvin, had been summoned to those two countries respectively. Luther, their superior by the movements of his heart and the simplicity of his faith, was inferior to them as a theologian, and they probably surpassed him in their capacity to comprehend in their thoughts all nations and all churches.

The first half of the sixteenth century was the epoch of a great transformation to the people of Europe; there had been nothing like it since the introduction of Christianity. During the middle ages, the pope was the guardian of Christendom, and the people were infants, who, not having attained the necessary age, could not act for themselves. The pontificial hierarchy opened or shut the gates of heaven, laid down what every man ought to believe and do, dominated in the councils of princes, and exercised a powerful influence over all public institutions. But a wardship is always provisional. When a man attains his majority, he enters into the enjoyment of his property and rights, and having to render an account to none but God, he walks without guardians by the light which his conscience gives him. There is also a time of majority for nations, and Christian society attained that age in the sixteenth century. From that moment it ceased to receive blindly all that the priests taught; it entered into a higher and more independent sphere. The teaching of man vanished away; the teaching of God began again. Once more those words were heard in Christendom which Paul of Tarsus had uttered in the first century: ‘I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.’[[669]] But it must be carefully observed that it was by throwing open the Bible to their generation that the reformers realized this sentence. If they had not restored a heavenly torch to man, if they had left him to himself in the thick shadows of the night, he would have remained blind, uneasy, restless, and unsatisfied. The holy emancipation of the sixteenth century invited those who listened to it to draw freely from the divine Word all that was necessary to scatter the darkness of their reason and fill up the void in their hearts. Elevating them above the goods of the body, above even arts, literature, science, and philosophy, it offered to their soul eternal treasures—God himself. The Gospel, then restored to the world, gave an unaccustomed force to the moral law, and thus conferred on the people who received it two boons,—order and liberty,—which the Vatican has never possessed within its precincts.

Alarm And Joy.

All men, however, did not understand that the majority which each must necessarily attain individually is at the same time essential to them collectively, and that the Church in particular must inevitably attain it. There were many, among those who were interested in the prosperity of nations, who felt alarm at the abolition of the papal guardianship. They saw that this stupendous act would work immense changes in the sphere of the mind; that society as a whole, literature, social life, politics, the relations of foreign countries with one another, would be made new. This prospect, which was a subject of joy to the greater number, excited the liveliest apprehensions in others. Those especially who had not learnt that man, as a moral being, can only be led by free convictions, imagined that all society would run wild and be lost if that power was suppressed which had so long intimidated and restrained it by the fear of excommunications and the stake. These men, alarmed at the sight of the free and living waters of reform and wishing at any cost to save the nations of Europe from the deluge which appeared to threaten them, thought it their duty to confine them still more, to restore, strengthen and raise the imperilled dikes, and thus keep the stagnant waters in the foul canals where they had stood for ages.

Notwithstanding his liberal tendencies with regard to literature and the arts, Francis I. was not exempt from these fears, and gave a helping hand to a restoration,—often a cruel restoration of the Romish jurisdiction. Henry VIII., of little interest as an individual, though great as a king, and who was truly the father, predecessor, and fore-runner of Elizabeth and her reign, even while striving ineffectually to preserve the catholic doctrines in his realm, separated it decisively from the papacy, and by so doing laid the foundations of the liberty and greatness of England. Francis I., on the other hand, maintained the papal supremacy in his dominions, and labored to restore it in the countries where it had been abolished. In 1534 and 1535 we see him making great exertions to that end, and finding numerous helpers to back him up.

The idea of restoring unity in the Christian Church of the West, not only engrossed the attention of those who were actuated by despotic views, but also of noble-minded and liberal men. ‘By what means can we succeed?’ they asked. The violent answered, ‘By force;’ but the wise represented that Christian unity could not be brought about by the sword. Those who were occupied with this great question determined to examine whether they could not solve it by means of mutual concessions; and they set about their task with different motives and in different tempers. They formed three categories.

There existed at that time in all parts of Europe men of wit and learning, children of the Renaissance, who disliked the superstitions and abuses of Rome, as well as the bold doctrines and severe precepts of the Reformation. They wanted a religion, but it must be an easy one, and more in conformity (as they held) with reason. Between Luther and the pope, they saw Erasmus, and that elegant and judicious writer was their apostle: hence the Elector of Saxony called them Erasmians.[[670]] They thought that by melting popery and protestantism together they might realize their dreams.

In like manner, too, there were persons to be found of greater or less eminence in whom the desire prevailed to maintain Europe in that papal wardship which had lasted through all the middle ages: they feared the most terrible convulsions if that supreme authority should come to an end. At their head in France was the king. Francis I. had also a more interested object: he desired, from political motives, to unite protestants and catholics, because he had need of Rome in Italy to recover his preponderance there, and of the protestants in Germany to humble Charles V. To this class also belonged, to a greater or less extent, William du Bellay, the king’s councillor and right hand in diplomacy. So far as concerns doctrine, both were on the side of Erasmus; but, in an ecclesiastical point of view, while the prince inclined to a moderate papal dominion, the minister would have preferred a still more liberal system.

The Moderate Evangelicals.