Illuminism.

The prophet indeed came back. His religion was a kind of rationalism embellished with illuminism. ‘Every man,’ he said, ‘has the Holy Spirit; for this is nothing but his own reason. There is no hell; our flesh alone is condemned, and every soul will have eternal life.’

Luther, alarmed, wrote immediately to the Antwerp Christians.[[771]] ‘I see,’ said he, ‘that there are spirits of error stirring among you; and I will not by my silence allow an evil to spread which I may have power to prevent. Under the papacy Satan held his court in peace. But one who is mightier (Christ) having now come and conquered him, Satan is furious and creates an uproar. If therefore one of these men wishes to talk with you about high and difficult questions worked out by them, say to him—What God reveals to us suffices us.... Art thou mocking us that thou wouldst induce us to search into things which thyself knowest not? The devil attempts to bring forward profitless and incomprehensible questions to the end that he may draw giddy minds out of the right path. We have enough to do for our whole life if we endeavor to become well acquainted with Jesus Christ. Let useless prattlers alone.’

The Christians of the Netherlands profited by these counsels. A great number of men enlightened by the Gospel enlightened others by means of it. These unknown men were Gerard Wormer, William of Utrecht, Peter Nannius, Lawrence, Hermann Coq, Nicholas Quicquius, the learned Walter Delenus, and at the imperial court, Philip de Lens, secretary of Brabant.[[772]] In spite of all the efforts of the censura sacra, the truth was spreading in all directions; and a people of believers was forming who were to become a people of martyrs.

CHAPTER X.
‘TOOTHING-STONES.’
(1525-1528.)

Charles The Fifth.

If Rome was for some centuries to crush the new people, the offspring of the Gospel in the east of Europe, in Hungary, there was at the western extremity of the European continent another people which she was to strive, with still greater violence, to annihilate. The Netherlands were to become the theatre selected by the adherents of the papacy for the accomplishment on the grandest scale of their greatest crimes. Charles the Fifth, a prince who on some occasions displayed a tolerant spirit, was the man from whom were to proceed the cruel edicts; and his successor was to go beyond him in the art of destruction.

Charles the Fifth had some remarkable qualities. He was active, intelligent, a keen politician, brave, energetic, and calm. But a lofty soul was wanting to him. He was destitute of faith, of compassion and of justice, addicted to intemperance of every kind, especially to that of the table. He did not eat, he devoured; and his excesses hastened his end. But if he made no scruple of transgressing the greatest commandments of God, he was all the more eager to observe cold and trivial ceremonies. He used holy water and had mass sung to him every day. He invoked the saints; and, in drawing up his will, in order to make more sure of the pardon of his sins, he commended his soul not only to God, but also to the blessed Virgin Mary, the blessed St. Peter, St. Paul, St. George, St. Anne, and generally to all the saints, male and female, of Paradise, and to the converted thief (au bon larron).[[773]] He appeared zealous for the ordinances of God, affected like certain Jews to ‘write them on his door-posts,’ but he did not put them in his heart; and he sought to make up for great offences ‘by some paltry trash of satisfaction.’ His son Philip, and others who after him occupied the throne of Spain, likewise adopted and carried out, in a manner yet more striking, this hypocritical and shameful system. Charles was not a bigot from fanaticism; he was not afraid to imprison the Holy Father himself. He did not in reality put much difference between evangelical and Romish creeds. But, endowed with considerable judgment, he understood that the doctrine which offered resistance to the despotism of the popes would assuredly in certain cases offer resistance to the despotism of princes; and he feared that, if liberty were once established in the Church, people would end with wanting to introduce it in the State. Now, this was in his eyes the crime of crimes. Thus, although the schemes of his policy often led him to spare the Protestants, Charles was really a decided enemy of the Reformation. He found it a difficult matter at this epoch to destroy it in Germany, where he was not sovereign master, and by doing so he would have damaged his influence. But it was otherwise in the Netherlands. If he had received the empire by free election of his peers, he held these provinces by right of succession, and was determined to treat them according to his own good pleasure. He assumed therefore to hold carte blanche with regard to them.

The generous inhabitants of these provinces had liberties of ancient date, and they freely lavished their treasures on the emperor. But the prince was not in the humor to be stayed in his course either by their rights or their gifts. He would massacre, burn, and crush them. Thirty thousand men, some say fifty thousand, were sacrificed in the Netherlands as heretics during the reign of Charles the Fifth. In this matter he did not stand much upon ceremony. His secretaries fabricated frightful placards, which, being silently posted up in the streets of the towns, proclaimed cruel penalties, filled peaceful citizens with terror, and soon made numerous victims. The most excellent of his subjects were burnt, drowned, buried alive or strangled for having read the Word of God and maintained the doctrines which it teaches. The most cruel methods were the best. This great prince, therefore, who has been and is still extolled by so many voices, instead of being crowned with glory, ought to be branded by posterity with the mark of its reprobation.

Charles Of Egmont.