I see Luther, indeed, presenting the Bible to Germany surprised and misled; and Calvin administering the cup of the Lord's Supper to gentlemen of the court of Francis I. or to the rich burgesses of Geneva. Here, in one place, Reuchlin and Ulrich of Hutten are jeering, and laughing at the monks, and there, in another, Gustavus Adolphus is brandishing his valiant sword in defence of the new gospel; but still, again, among these bold promoters of the Reformation, among these indefatigable champions of gospel-christianity, as they proudly entitle themselves, would that I were shown one of those souls inspired from above to pour upon the miseries of the age the treasures of divine consolations! I behold party-leaders, Bible-expounders, soldiers, politicians, and savants; but of friends of the poor, of protectors of old age and deserted infancy, of men who sacrifice all and who sacrifice themselves even, to gain the right, the privilege, of drying up the tears of the afflicted and of holding out the helping hand to the unfortunate—of these I see none. These are all in the ranks of that church whose privilege it will always be, and which no sect has ever been able to take from her, to prove that she alone is the veritable spouse of Jesus Christ, because she alone is the true mother of men! Behold St. Philip Neri and his companions of the Oratory of Rome, whose remembrances still live in the hospital of the Trinity for pilgrims—St. Philip Neri, whose name, after more than three hundred years, is always associated in the Eternal City with the idea of whatever is most tender and good. By the side of St. Philip, his contemporary and friend, St. Camillus of Lellis, institutor of a congregation specially devoted to the care of the sick poor; while, by a like inspiration, the Spaniard, St. John of God, established, in 1540, that charitable order, spread since then throughout Christendom, and whose members rival in self-sacrificing devotion the disciples of St. Camillus in consecrating themselves to the work of relieving human infirmities. In fine, if St. Vincent of Paul constitutes the glory and, more than the glory, the consolation of the seventeenth century, the sixteenth century has, nevertheless, the right to claim him in part; for it saw his birth, and it gave to him the first inspirations of that zeal and charity which draw down every day upon his name the grateful benedictions of all who languish and suffer—upon that name at once the humblest and the most popular of all names.
In conclusion, if, in this picture of the Catholic glories of the sixteenth century, it were necessary also to find place for men of the sword and men of law, are there many figures more martial than that of Bayard, the chevalier "without fear and without reproach," or those of the admirable Knights-Hospitallers of Malta, who, in 1585, under the orders of their grand-master, La Valette, stood as a living rampart, against which all the forces of Islamism dashed and broke themselves, and who did for Christian Europe in the sixteenth century what, a century later, the immortal Sobieski had to do with his brave Polanders?
As to men of law, Catholic France has the right to name with pride the grand-chancellor Hôpital; and Protestant England has not the right to claim Thomas More. It was this courageous magistrate who refused to subscribe to the divorce of Henry VIII., and who, when entreated by his wife not to expose himself to capital punishment by opposing the king's wishes, replied in these beautiful words: "What! Would you have me compromise my eternity for the sake of twenty years which yet perhaps remain for me to live?" He died upon the scaffold, the 6th of July, 1535, with the constancy of a martyr; worthy precursor of that long and illustrious generation of witnesses to the faith, who, during all the second half of the sixteenth century, watered with purest of blood the soil of England, and did more honor, it seems to me, to the ancient renown of "The Isle of Saints" than a Cranmer, the courtly and apostate archbishop, or an Essex, one of the numerous lovers of that princess who foully stained with mire and blood the throne upon which she sat, and that state church of which she made a mere vassal of that throne.
After having rectified and completed, so far as it has been given me to do, this painting, so original and vigorous, but at the same time so manifestly devoted to a preconceived and systematized idea, I arrive at a conclusion which is applicable not to the sixteenth century only, but to all the epochs of history.
It is that, after the likeness of man himself, each phase of the life of humanity bears in it two souls, and, as it were, two humanities. These are the twins that struggled together in the womb of Rebecca, and on the occasion of which the Lord responded to the troubled mother: "Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided out of thy womb, and one people shall overcome the other." (Gen. xxv. 23.)
Yes, as each one of us bears within him two men, whose unceasing struggle makes up the whole prize and the whole grandeur of the moral life, so in like manner each age of the world bears within it two ages: the one which is the docile instrument of God in the pursuit of truth and the accomplishment of justice; and the other, which paralyzes a part of the living forces of humanity by leading them astray into error, or by putting them to the service of selfishness and evil.
This grand principle of the philosophy of history, due to Christian psychology and the true knowledge by man of himself, has been admirably demonstrated by St. Augustine. One sees, from numerous passages in his writings, how that holy doctor was impressed by the perpetual antagonism and irreconcilable opposition between these two powers, or "cities," (as he terms them,) who always and everywhere are making war upon each other, and to whom each succeeding century serves but as a battle-field.
Quite as much and even more than others, does the sixteenth century present to the look of the observer the militant dualism of these two principles: the one, calling itself the Reformation of the church by disorder and violence; the other, wishing to be, and which has been, the fruitful and pacific renovation of Christian life by humble zeal and true charity. The Protestant Reformation claims the sixteenth century as exclusively its own. I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated that, by its most beautiful and most enduring parts and characteristics, the century belongs neither to Luther nor Calvin; but that the Catholic Church can exhibit it with just pride alike to her friends and her enemies.
From this study, made in the light of this principle, I would also deduce a second conclusion and apply it directly to the times in which we live.