Up to this time Latin had been the only language of the learned; and to our own days it has remained the language of the Roman Church. The Reformation created or at least emancipated the vulgar tongue. The exclusive office of the priest had ceased; the people were called to learn and know for themselves. In this one fact was involved the ruin of the language of the priest, and the inauguration of the language of the people. It is no longer to the Sorbonne alone, to a few monks, or ecclesiastics, or literary men, that the new ideas are to be addressed; but to the noble, the citizen, and the labourer. All men are now to be preached to; nay more, all are to become preachers—wool-combers and knights, as well as doctors and parish-priests. A new language is wanted, or at the least the language of the people must undergo an immense transformation, a great enfranchisement, and, drawn from the common uses of life, must receive its patent of nobility from renovated Christianity. The Gospel, so long slumbering, has awoke; it speaks and addresses whole nations, everywhere kindling generous affections; it opens the treasures of heaven to a generation that was thinking only of the mean things on earth; it shakes the masses; it talks to them of God, of man, of good and evil, of the pope and the Bible, of a crown in heaven, and perhaps a scaffold upon earth. The popular tongue, which hitherto had been the language of chroniclers and troubadours only, was called by the Reformation to act a new part, and consequently to new developments. A new world is opening upon society, and for a new world there must be new languages. The Reformation removed the French from the swaddling bands in which it had hitherto been bound, and reared it to its majority. From that time the language has had full possession of those exalted privileges that belong to the operations of the mind and the treasures of heaven, of which it had been deprived under the guardianship of Rome. No doubt the language is formed by the people themselves: they invent those happy words, those energetic and figurative expressions, that impart to language such colouring and life. But there are resources beyond their reach, and which can only proceed from men of intellect. Calvin, when called upon to discuss and to prove, enriched his mother-tongue with modes of connexion and dependence, with shadows, transitions, and dialectic forms, that it did not as yet possess.
These elements were already beginning to ferment in the head of the young student at the college of La Marche. This lad, who was destined to exercise so powerful a mastery over the human heart, was also to subjugate the language he would have to use as his weapon. Protestant France subsequently habituated itself to the French of Calvin, and Protestant France comprehends the most cultivated portion of the nation; from it issued those families of scholars and dignified magistrates who exerted so powerful an influence over the refinement of the people; out of it sprung the Port Royal,[1124] one of the greatest instruments that have ever contributed to form the prose and even the poetry of France, and who, after endeavouring to transfer to the Gallican catholicism the doctrine and language of the Reformation, failed in one of his projects, but succeeded in the other; for Roman-catholic France was forced to go and learn of her Jansenist and reformed adversaries how to wield those weapons of language without which it cannot contend against them.[1125]
PERSECUTIONS AND TERROR.
While the future reformer of religion and language was thus growing to maturity in the college of La Marche, everything was in commotion around the young and serious scholar, who took no part as yet in the great movements that were agitating society. The flames that consumed the hermit and Pavanne had spread terror through Paris. But the persecutors were not satisfied; a system of terror was set on foot throughout France. The friends of the Reformation no longer dared correspond with one another, for fear their intercepted letters should betray to the vengeance of the tribunals both those who wrote them and those to whom they were addressed.[1126] One man, however, ventured to carry intelligence from Paris and France to the refugees at Basle, by sewing a letter that bore no signature under his doublet. He escaped the squadrons of arquebusiers, the maréchaussée of the several districts, the examinations of the provosts and lieutenants, and reached Basle without the mysterious doublet being searched. His tidings filled Toussaint and his friends with alarm. "It is frightful," said Toussaint, "to hear of the great cruelties there inflicted!"[1127] Shortly before this, two Franciscan monks had arrived at Basle, closely pursued by the officers of justice. One of them named John Prévost had preached at Meaux, and had afterwards been thrown into prison at Paris.[1128] All that they told of Paris and Lyons, through which they had passed, excited the compassion of these refugees. "May our Lord send his grace thither," wrote Toussaint to Farel; "I assure you that I am sometimes in great anxiety and tribulation."
HOPE AND LIBERTY.
These excellent men still kept up their courage; in vain were all the parliaments on the watch; in vain did the spies of the Sorbonne and of the monks creep into churches, colleges, and even private families, to catch up any word of evangelical doctrine that might there be uttered; in vain did the king's soldiers arrest on the highways everything that seemed to bear the stamp of the Reformation: those Frenchmen whom Rome and her satellites were hunting down and treading under foot, had faith in better days to come, and already perceived afar off the end of this Babylonish captivity, as they called it. "The seventieth year, the year of deliverance, will come at last," said they, "and liberty of spirit and of conscience will be given to us."[1129] But the seventy years were destined to last nearly three centuries, and it was only after calamities without a parallel that these hopes were to be realized. It was not in man, however, that the refugees placed any hope. "Those who have begun the dance," said Toussaint, "will not stop on the road." But they believed that the Lord "knew those whom he had chosen, and would deliver his people with a mighty hand."[1130]
The Chevalier d'Esch had in effect been delivered. Escaping from the prison at Pont à Mousson, he had hastened to Strasburg; but he did not remain there long. "For the honour of God," immediately wrote Toussaint to Farel, "endeavour to prevail on the knight, our worthy master,[1131] to return as speedily as possible; for our brethren have great need of such a leader?" In truth, the French refugees had new cause of alarm. They trembled lest that dispute about the Lord's Supper, which had so much distressed them in Germany, should pass the Rhine, and cause fresh troubles in France. Francis Lambert, the monk of Avignon, after visiting Zurich and Wittemberg, had been in Metz; but they did not place entire confidence in him; they feared lest he should have imbibed Luther's sentiments, and that by controversies, both useless and "monstrous" (as Toussaint calls them), he might check the progress of the Reformation.[1132] Esch therefore returned to Lorraine; but it was to be again exposed to great dangers, "along with all those who were seeking the glory of Jesus Christ."[1133]
TOUSSAINT AT PARIS—IMPRISONED.
Yet Toussaint was not of a disposition to send others to the battle without joining in it himself. Deprived of his daily intercourse with Œcolampadius, reduced to associate with an ignorant priest, he had sought communion with Christ, and felt his courage augmented. If he could not return to Metz, might he not at least go to Paris? True, the piles of Pavanne and the hermit of Livry were smoking still, and seemed to repel from the capital all those who held the same faith as they did. But if the colleges and the streets of Paris were struck with terror, so that no one dared even name the Gospel and the Reformation, was not that a reason why he should go thither? Toussaint quitted Basle, and entered those walls where fanaticism had taken the place of riot and debauchery. While advancing in christian studies, he endeavoured to form a connexion with those brethren who were in the colleges, and especially in that of the Cardinal Lemoine, where Lefevre and Farel had taught.[1134] But he could not long do so freely. The tyranny of the parliamentary commissioners and of the theologians reigned supreme in the capital, and whoever displeased them was accused of heresy.[1135] A duke and an abbot, whose names are unknown to us, denounced Toussaint as a heretic; and one day the king's sergeants arrested the youth from Lorraine and put him in prison. Separated from all his friends, and treated like a criminal, Toussaint felt his wretchedness the more keenly. "O Lord," exclaimed he, "withdraw not thou thy Spirit from me! for without it I am but flesh and a sink of iniquity." While his body was in chains, he turned in heart to those who were still combating freely for the Gospel. There was Œcolampadius, his father, and "whose work I am in the Lord," said he.[1136] There was Leclerc, whom he no doubt believed, on account of his age, "unable to bear the weight of the Gospel;"[1137] Vaugris, who had displayed all the zeal "of the most affectionate brother" to rescue him from the hands of his enemies;[1138] Roussel, "by whom he hoped the Lord would bring great things to pass;"[1139] and lastly, Farel, to whom he wrote, "I commend myself to your prayers, for fear that I should fall in this warfare."[1140] How must the names of all these men have softened the bitterness of his imprisonment, for he showed no signs of falling. Death, it is true, seemed hanging over him in this city where the blood of a number of his brethren was to be poured out like water;[1141] the friends of his mother, of his uncle the Dean of Metz, and the Cardinal of Lorraine, made him the most lavish offers.[1142]......"I despise them," answered he; "I know that they are a temptation of the devil. I would rather suffer hunger, I would rather be a slave in the house of the Lord, than dwell with riches in the palaces of the wicked."[1143] At the same time he made a bold confession of his faith. "It is my glory," exclaimed he, "to be called a heretic by those whose lives and doctrines are opposed to Jesus Christ."[1144] And this interesting and bold young man subscribed his letters, "Peter Toussaint, unworthy to be called a Christian."
FIRMNESS AND COURAGE.