The Calixtines, on their part, also felt the influence of the movement which was shaking the Christian world. One tie still bound them to the Roman hierarchy. ‘Who is it that appoints pastors?’ they wrote to Luther; ‘is it not the bishops who have received authority from the Church to do so?’ The reformer’s answer was at once modest and decided. ‘What you ask of me,’ he replied, ‘is beyond my power. However, what I have I give to you; but I intend that your own judgment and that of your brethren should be exercised in the most complete freedom. I offer you nothing more than counsel and exhortation.’[[616]] The reformer’s opinion was contained in a treatise annexed to his letter; and therein he showed that each congregation had a right itself to choose and to consecrate its own ministers. The modesty with which Luther expressed himself is something far removed from the arrogance which his enemies delight to attribute to him. The Calixtines, captivated by the reformer’s charity and faith, determined in an assembly held in 1524, to continue in the way marked out by Luther the reformation begun by John Hus. This decision called forth keen opposition on the part of some of the body, and its unity was broken. The number, however, of the Lutheran Calixtines continually increased. They received in general such of the evangelical doctrines as were still wanting to them; and henceforth they differed from the United Brethren only by their want of discipline and more intercourse with the world.

It was not in Bohemia alone that John Hus had become the forerunner of the Reformation; he had been so in other lands of Eastern Europe. One country, Poland, seemed as if it must precede other nations in the path of reformation. But after some rough conflicts with Jesuitism it passed from the van to the rear. Having lost the Gospel, it lost independence, and now remains in the midst of Europe a ruined monument, showing to the nations what they become when they allow the truth to be taken away from them. Already, in 1431, some of the disciples of Hus had come into Poland, and had publicly defended at Cracow evangelical doctrines against the doctors of the university, and this in the presence of the king and the senate. In 1432, other Bohemians arrived in Poland, and announced that the general council of Basel had received their deputies. The bishop of Cracow, a steadfast adherent of the Romish party, fulminated an interdict against them.[[617]] But the king and even several of the bishops were not at all disturbed thereby, and they gave a favorable reception to these disciples of John Hus, so that their doctrines were diffused in various parts of Poland. Wycliffe was also known there; and, about the middle of the fifteenth century, Dobszynski, a Polish poet, composed a poem in his honor.

Thus Hus and Wycliffe, Bohemia and England, countries so wonderfully unlike each other, were at the same time, as early as the fifteenth century, laboring to disseminate the light in the land of the Jagellons. It was not in vain. In 1459, Ostrorog, palatine of Posen, presented to the Diet a project of reform which, without touching upon dogmas, distinctly pointed out abuses, and established the fact that the pope had no authority whatever over kings, because the kingdom of Christ is not of this world. In 1500, celibacy and the worship of relics were attacked in some works published at Cracow. In 1515 Bernard of Lublin established the express principle of the Reformation—that we must believe only the Word of God, and that we ought to reject the tradition of men.[[618]] This was the state of things when the Reformation appeared. How would it be received?

The common people both in the country and in the towns were in general dull of understanding and destitute of culture. But the citizens of the great towns, who by commerce were brought into intercourse with other populations, and particularly with those of Germany, had developed themselves and began to be acquainted with their rights. A wealthy and powerful aristocracy were predominant in the country. The clergy had no power at all. The Church had no influence whatever on the State, nor did the State ever assist the Church. The priests themselves, by reason of their worldliness and their immorality, were in many places objects of contempt. Sigismund I., the reigning sovereign, was a prince of noble character and of enlightened mind; and he endeavored to promote a taste for the sciences and the arts. Such a country appeared to be placed in circumstances very favorable for the reception of the Gospel.

Lutheranism In Poland.

The Reformation had no sooner begun, than Luther’s writings arrived in Poland, and laymen began to read them with eager interest. Some young Germans, who had been students at Wittenberg, made known the Reformation in the families in which they were engaged as tutors; and afterwards they endeavored to propagate it among the flocks of which they became pastors. Some young Poles flocked around Luther; and afterwards they scattered abroad in their native land the seed which they had collected at Wittenberg.

The Reformation naturally began in that part of Poland which lay nearest to Germany, of which Posen is the capital. In 1524 Samuel, a Dominican monk, attacked there the errors of the Roman Church. In 1525, John Seclucyan preached the Gospel in the same district; and a powerful family, the Gorkas, received him into their mansion, in which they had already established evangelical worship, and gave him protection against his persecutors.[[619]] This pious man availed himself of the leisure afforded him by this Christian hospitality to translate the New Testament into Polish. Alone, in the chamber in which he had been obliged to take refuge, he accomplished, like Luther in the Wartburg, a work which was to be the enlightening of many souls.

The Gospel did not stop here. Just as in a dark night one flash which shines in the west is succeeded by another on the farthest borders of the east, so the doctrine of salvation, after appearing in the west of Poland, suddenly showed itself in the north, in the east, even as far as Königsberg. From the still chamber in which John Seclucyan carried on his valuable labors the Polish reveille transports us into a great, flourishing, and populous town, to which foreigners in great numbers resorted from all quarters. Dantzic, which then belonged to Poland, became the principal focus of the Reformation in these lands. From 1518, German merchants, attracted thither by the commerce and industry of the city, took pleasure in recounting there the great discoveries which Luther was making in the Bible. A pious, enlightened, decided man, named Jacob Knade, a native of Dantzic, gave ear to the good news which the Germans proclaimed and received them joyfully. He opened his house immediately to all who wished to hear the same. His frank and open disposition and his amiable address made it easy for any one to cross the threshold of his abode. He did not confine himself to Christian conversation. As he was an ecclesiastic, he began to preach in public his faith in the church of St. Peter. He loved the Saviour and knew how to make others love Him. To flowers he added fruit, and to good words good works. Convinced that marriage is a divine institution, the object of which is to preserve the holiness of life, he married. This act raised a terrible storm. The enemies of the Reformation, persuaded that if this example were followed the Church of Rome could not subsist, had him thrown into prison.[[620]] Released after six months, he was compelled to leave the town; and he would have wandered to and fro if a noble in the neighborhood of Thorn had not offered him an asylum, as the Gorka family had done to the evangelist of Posen. The nobles of Poland showed themselves noble indeed; and in practising hospitality they entertained angels unawares.[[621]]

The bishop of the diocese, of which Dantzic with its priests was a dependency, awakened from their slumbers, tried all means of beating back what they called heresy; and for this purpose they founded the fraternity of the Annunciation of Mary, the members of which were diligently to visit all persons who were spoken of as brought to the Gospel. ‘Come now,’ they said to them, ‘return to the Catholic and Apostolic Church, beyond whose pale there is no salvation.’ But the evangelical work, instead of falling off, continued to increase. Various divines had filled the post of Knade at Dantzic—the Hebraist Böschenstein, a Carmelite, Binewald, and others.

Doctor Alexander.