The project of Francis I. and of Melancthon described in the portion of the volume devoted to France and Germany, and the important letters hitherto unknown in our language, which are given there, appear worthy of the attention of enlightened and serious minds.

We conclude with Italy. We could have wished to describe in this volume Calvin’s journey to Ferrara, and even his arrival at Geneva; but the great space given to other countries did not permit us to carry on the Genevese Reformation to that period. Two distinguished men, whose talents and labors we respect, M. Albert Rilliet, of Geneva, and M. Jules Bonnet, of Paris, have had a discussion about Calvin’s transalpine expedition. M. Rilliet’s essay (Deux points obscurs de la vie de Calvin) was published as a pamphlet, and M. Bonnet’s answer (Calvin en Italie) appeared in the Revue Chrétienne for 1864, p. 461 sqq., and in the Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français for 1864, p. 183 sqq. M. Rilliet denies that Calvin ever visited the city of Aosta, and M. Bonnet maintains that he did. Data are unfortunately wanting to decide a small number of secondary points; but the important fact of Calvin’s journey through Aosta, seems beyond a doubt, and when we come to this epoch in the Reformer’s life, we will give such proofs—in our opinion incontestable proofs—as ought to convince every impartial mind.

Before describing Calvin’s residence at Ferrara, the author had to narrate the movements which had been going on in Italy from the beginning of the Reformation. Being obliged to limit himself, considering the extent of his task, he had wished at first to exclude those countries in which the Reformation was crushed out, as Italy and Spain. On studying more closely the work there achieved, he could not make up his mind to pass it over in silence. Among the oldest editions of the books of that period which he has made use of is a copy of the works of Aonio Paleario (1552), recently presented by the Marquis Cresi, of Naples, to the library of the School of Evangelical Theology at Geneva. This volume wants thirty-two leaves (pp. 311 to 344), and at the foot of p. 310 is the following manuscript note: Quæ desunt pagellæ sublatæ fuerunt de mandato Rev. Vicarii Neap.; ‘the missing pages were torn out by order of the Reverend Vicar of Naples.’ This was an annoyance to the author, who wished to read those pages all the more because the inquisition had cut them out. Happily he found them in a Dutch edition belonging to Professor André Cherbuliez.

Some persons have thought that political liberty occupied too great a space in the first volume of this history; we imagined, however, that we were doing a service to the time in which we live, by showing the coexistence in Geneva of civil emancipation and evangelical reform. On the continent, there are men of education and elevated character, but strangers to the Gospel, who labor under a mistake as to the causes which separate them from Christianity. In their opinion it arises from the circumstance that the Church whose head is at Rome is hostile to the rights of the people. Many of them have said that religion might be strengthened and perpetuated by uniting with liberty. But is it not united with liberty in Switzerland, England, and the United States of America? Why should we not see everywhere, and in France particularly, as well as in the countries we have just named, religion which respects the rights of God uniting with policy which respects the rights of the people? It is not the Encyclic of Pius IX. that the Gospel claims as a companion, it is liberty. The Gospel has need of liberty, and liberty has need of the Gospel. The people who have only one or other of these two essential elements of life are sick; the people who have neither are dead.

‘The greatest imaginable absurdity,’ says one of the eminent philosophers and noble minds of our epoch, M. Jouffroy, ‘would be the assertion that this present life is everything, and that there is nothing after it. I know of no greater in any branch of science.’ Might there not, however, be another absurdity worthy of being placed by its side? The same philosopher says that, so far as regards our state after this life, ‘science and philosophy have not, after two thousand years, arrived at a single accepted result.’[[4]] Consequently, by the side of the absurdity which M. Jouffroy has pointed out, we confidently place another, as the second of ‘the greatest imaginable absurdities,’ namely, that which consists in believing, after two thousand years of barren labors, that there is another way besides Christianity to know and possess the life invisible and eternal. The essential fact of the history of religion and the history of the world: God manifest in the flesh, is the ray from heaven which reveals that life to us, and procures it for us. We know what a wind of incredulity has scattered over barren sands many noble souls who aspire to something better, and for whom Christ has opened the gates of eternity; but let us hope that their fall will be only temporary, and that many, enlightened from on high, turning their eyes away from the desert which surrounds them, and lifting them towards heaven, will exclaim: I will arise and go to my Father.

We must, as Jouffroy says, ‘recommence our investigations;’ but ‘first of all,’ he adds, ‘we must confess the secret vice which has hitherto rendered all our exertions powerless.’ That secret vice consists in considering the question in an intellectual and theoretical point of view only, while it is absolutely necessary to grapple with it in a practical way, and to make it an individual fact. The matter under discussion belongs to the domain of humanity, not of philosophy. It does not regard the understanding alone, but the conscience, the will, the heart, and the life. The real vice consists in our not recognizing, within us, the evil that separates us from God, and, without us, the Saviour who leads us to Him. The royal road to learn and possess life invisible and eternal is the knowledge and possession of that Son of Man, of that Son of God, who said with authority: I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE: NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER BUT BY ME.

MERLE D’AUBIGNÉ.

La Graveline, Eaux Vives, Geneva:
May, 1866.

CONTENTS OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.

BOOK VI.