Rome, meanwhile, was not indifferent to what was taking place at Geneva. Between the papacy and the Reformation there were action and reaction, which kept both in constant agitation. When once the Catholic reaction began, not content with mere resistance, it assumed the offensive. The partisans of the pope, still pretty numerous in Geneva, informed the Bishop de la Baume of what occurred in the town; and he, who like all dispossessed princes was always expecting to be restored to his episcopal see, the sweets of which he remembered better than the bitterness, communicated with the pope. The latter gave to La Baume the cardinal’s hat, in the hope that this dignity might be a bait to draw the Genevese to place themselves once more under the crook of their bishop. Then he invited the prelates who were nearest neighbors to Geneva to take in hand the cause of their colleague. The Bishops of Lyons, Besançon, Lausanne, Vienne, Turin, Langres and Carpentras, met the Bishop of Geneva in the first of these towns. ‘The flock,’ they said, ‘being now deprived of its pastors, men so eminent, we must seize the opportunity to rescue it from the Reformation.’[787] Many Genevese Catholics had emigrated to Lyons, and they spared no pains to bring about the restoration of the prelate. Pierre de la Baume asked of his colleagues ‘the recovery of his diocese.’ The Cardinal of Tournon, the notorious persecutor of the Vaudois, and the introducer of the Jesuits into France, who was at this time archbishop of Lyons, was president of the meeting. He had thus an opportunity of satisfying his inextinguishable passion against the Calvinists. Jean Philippe, chief author of the banishment of Calvin, met with Tournon in the church at Lyons, and carried on intrigues with him.[788] The affair might perhaps have had a violent ending, but that a man was there present of a different stamp from the archbishop. This was Cardinal Sadoleto, who, as bishop Carpentras, a town in Dauphiné bordering on Savoy, seemed by his neighboring position bound to concern himself more particularly with Geneva. He was connected with Bembo, secretary to Leo X., was a great lover of the classics, of philosophy and the arts, and was a man of great eloquence, says Beza, but used it for extinguishing the true light.[789] He very much regretted that the Reformation appeared to be taking precedence of the Renaissance. He was, however, of more liberal mind than adherents of the pope usually were. He loved Melanchthon. He thought that it was not right to address the Genevese in the imperious tone of a master, with dogmatic arguments of the school, or with the intolerance of inquisitors, but rather in a polite style. Sadoleto was therefore instructed to write a letter to the Genevese in which he was to invite them mildly to return to the bosom of the Church. That the contrivances and efforts of the pope, of the Bishop de la Baume, of the Cardinal of Tournon and his colleagues, should issue only in a letter, was rather a feeble conclusion.
Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
LETTER OF SADOLETO TO GENEVA.
But they probably saw that they were powerless to do more. The cardinal-bishop hoped to gain over the Genevese ‘by wheedling them with fine words to turn them away from Jesus Christ,’ says a contemporary, ‘and by blaming the ministers of whom God had made use for reforming the town.’[790] On March 26 his messenger, Jean Durand, of Carpentras, was admitted into the hall of the council, and delivered the missive addressed by his bishop to his well-beloved brethren the syndics, councils, and citizens of Geneva. There was not a word about the conference at Lyons. ‘It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to me to write to you. The reason is that while at Carpentras I have heard reports concerning you which partly make me sad and partly give me hope.’ Knowing how seductive flattery is, he writes the most beautiful eulogy of Geneva. ‘I love the noble aspect of your town, the order and form of your republic, the excellence of the citizens, and, above all, the exquisite humanity which you display towards all foreign people and nations.’ But by the side of this flattering picture he hastens to place a portrait not so pleasing of the reformers. ‘Certain crafty men, enemies of Christian union and peace, have cast into your town the seeds of discord. I hear on one side the weeping, sighing, and groaning of our holy Church. On the other side I perceive that these innovators are not only pestilential to souls, but also pernicious in a high degree to public and private affairs.’ Next he himself makes an almost evangelical profession. He exalts the Word of God which, says he, ‘does not entangle minds in difficult processes of reasoning; but, a heavenly affection of the heart coming to its aid, offers itself with clearness to our understandings.’ He exalts the work of Christ, ‘who was willing to be our salvation, by suffering death in the flesh and afterwards resuming an immortal life.’ He even exalts justification by faith, faith alone, which all Roman controversialists curse. ‘This everlasting salvation comes to us,’ said he, ‘by faith alone in God and in Jesus Christ. When I say by faith alone, I do not mean that charity and the duty of a Christian are dispensed with.’ Sadoleto was undoubtedly sincere in these professions. He belonged, as is known, to a small body of men feebly inclined towards the Gospel, who were at that time supported by the papacy in the hope that they would be the means of bringing back the Protestants. But he must have known well that the doctrine of the reformers, far from dispensing with duty and charity, asserted them, made them possible, and at the same time necessary.
Having thus gained his hearers, as he thought, the cardinal-bishop began the contest. ‘The loss of the soul,’ said he, ‘being the greatest ill possible to a man, our duty is, to the utmost of our power, to take care. Amidst the waves of our life we are in need of some means of escape from striking on the rocks and losing the vessel. This is what the Catholic Church has provided for fifteen hundred years; while these crafty men only began their innovations against the perpetual authority of the Church five-and-twenty years ago.’ Then follows a fine rhetorical burst which lacks nothing but truth and solidity. ‘Here is the point,’ said he; ‘here is the parting of the ways, the one road leading unto life, the other unto everlasting death. Every man arrives by his own road before the judgment-seat of the supreme Judge, Catholic and Protestant alike, there to have his cause investigated.’
The Catholics get off wonderfully, but when the turn of the Evangelicals comes it is quite otherwise with them. Sadoleto takes good care not to let the simple faithful ones appear, and brings before the tribunal only ‘one of the promoters of these divisions.’ He does not name either Luther or Calvin, but it is evident that it is one of them that he brings on the scene, probably the latter. Having leave to speak, the reformer begins thus: ‘O sovereign God! when I considered how all but universally corrupt are the morals of ecclesiastics, I was justly moved to anger against them; and when I thought also how much time I had spent in the study of theology and of human science, and that nevertheless I had not attained in the Church the rank which my labors deserved, while other men, my inferiors, were raised to honors and to benefices, I induced the greater part of the people to despise the decrees of the Church. I asserted that the bishops of Rome had falsely usurped the title of vicars of Christ; and having by this reputation of learning and wisdom obtained renown among the nations, I caused many seditions and divisions in the Church.’
CONCLUSION OF THE LETTER.
Sadoleto having made the reformer speak in this fashion, again addresses the men of Geneva, and says to them, ‘How will it turn out, then, brethren, whom I wish to be united with me?’ The result of this double appearance is inevitable, and the promoter of all this evil, ‘taking his stand upon his works, holding in contempt the general assemblies of bishops, dismembering the one spouse of Christ, and tearing to pieces the Lord’s robe, can only weep for ever over his misery, gnashing his teeth even at himself.’ Consequently, the cardinal-bishop exhorts his brethren of Geneva, after having removed all the mists of error, to abide in union with our holy mother Church.[791]
The reasoning of Sadoleto failed in its basis. He had confounded the Reformation of the sixteenth century with the so-called reforms of the preceding centuries. Those attempts, numerous enough, aimed at the morals of the clergy and the abuses of the Church without attacking the doctrine, and they miscarried. But the true Reformation directed its efforts against the false doctrines of Rome, in order to put the doctrine of the Gospel in its place. ‘It took the bull by the horns,’ as Luther says, and had him down. Liberal Catholics have imagined, that if from the first such a course as Sadoleto’s had been adopted, the course of the Reformation would have been entirely different.[792] But they are mistaken, as the Bishop of Carpentras was, who, aiming his blows at an enemy in the air, hit nothing but the air.