Poor, despised Carlstadt, when he saw his hopeful pupil upset (as he then supposed) the pope and cast the church to the winds, thought that surely Luther would not assume to himself infallible authority and supreme jurisdiction. In this he was mistaken, as he found to his cost. For men who aid in rebellion against lawful authority too often find themselves a prey to usurpers; and the Bible, torn from the anointed hands of its only rightful interpreter, became simply a slave; its sacred text an exordium for every fanatic and an accomplice to every scoundrel. The position which Ochino took was the same as that of all other heresiarchs, from him whom St. Polycarp addressed as "the first born of Satan," down to the very latest. He constantly applied to himself the language which only one apostle dared to use. Although he did not profess to have seen the third heaven, yet he did profess to be thoroughly competent to teach and determine the Christian revelation. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that he soon found himself in bad odor at Geneva, where an authority, equally respectable, and likewise acknowledging the right of private examination, nevertheless burned alive poor wretches who were so unfortunate as not to agree with it. After founding the Italian Church at Geneva, and there publishing several works, so outrageous in their character as to draw condemnation even from some Protestant historians, Ochino became embroiled with the Calvinists. The natural result of these quarrels was his excommunication and banishment by the latter. He fled with a woman to whom he had been sacrilegiously married. At Basle, he published his sermons. Thence he was called to preach at Augsburg, where he enjoyed great popularity and a salary, until the invasion of Charles V. compelled him to flee with Stancari of Mantua. Having met, at Strasburg, his old friend, Peter Martyr, who, meanwhile, had openly apostatized, he journeyed with him to England, and there preached to the Italian refugees. On the death of Edward VI., he returned to Switzerland, and was chosen pastor of the exiles of Locarno, who had obtained from the Senate the use of a church and their native language. But as at Geneva, so at Zurich, the right of private judgment involved not merely the right to believe as one might list, but also the right, if one were able, to force every body else to believe in like manner. Ochino was accused of anti-trinitarianism and also of sanctioning polygamy, and obliged to swear that he would live and die in the faith of—what? who? The Catholic Church, whose demand on the human intellect is at once a command to believe and a reason for believing, backed by the pledged word of Jesus Christ? No! Ochino had rejected her authority. He now swore to live and die in the teaching of Zwinglius. This oath, however, seemed to lose its force in a few days. For he shortly attacked what he had sworn to defend, and, in his Laberinto, denied almost every article of the Christian faith. Banished from Switzerland, he fled, in the dead of winter, with his four children, into Poland, where he soon afterward earned universal contempt, by publicly countenancing King Sigismund in a projected bigamy. Bullinger, whom Ochino had called the "pope of Zurich," says of him, "He is far advanced in the science of perdition, and an ungrateful wretch toward the senate and the ministers, full of malice and impiety." Beza also characterizes him as "Bernardinum Ochinum, monachum magni nominis apud Italos, et auctorem ordinis Capucinorum, qui in fine se ostendit esse iniquum hypocritam. Bernardino Ochino, a monk of great name among the Italians, founder of the Capuchins," (this a mistake,) "who finally showed himself to be a wicked hypocrite."
From these words of Beza, Boverio has sought to infer that the apostate finally repented and was restored to the Catholic communion. He has also introduced testimony to prove that Ochino was poniarded at Geneva, after professing the Catholic faith and confessing to a priest. But historians seem to favor the tradition recorded by Graziani, who says, "Ochinus Polonia excessit, ac omnibus extorris ac profugus, cum in vili Moraviæ pago a vetere amico hospitio esset acceptus ibi senio fessus cum uxore ac duabus filiabus, filioque una peste interiit. Ochino died in Poland a universal outcast, after having accepted the hospitality of an old friend, in an obscure village of Moravia. Here, worn out with age, he perished, together with his wife, two daughters and son, in one pestilence."
To rehearse the various opinions of Ochino would be a difficult and thankless task. Like most of the reformers, he taught the total depravity of human nature and human reason, and, in order to establish the motives of faith, appealed to private illumination, assuming for the disciple what he denied to the teacher.
Besides this miserable travesty of the Christian distinction between the natural and supernatural orders, there is in his doctrine scarcely one point of resemblance to the Catholic faith. Having cast away the ballast that had steadied his earlier years, the power which had carried him on such a brilliant course proved his ruin. His ignominious death did not excite enough pity to cause itself to be remembered. He disappeared a lonely and abandoned wreck.
OLD BOOKS.
I.
Let the world run after new books; commend me to the enduring fascination of old ones—not old only in authorship, but old in imprint, in form and comeliness, or perhaps uncomeliness!
What value is there in gilded edges and Turkey leather, which must be handled so gingerly, compared with the sturdy calfskin, ribbed and bevelled, which has outlived generations of human calves? and what is tinted hot-press to the page grown yellow in the atmosphere of centuries? The quaintly spelt word, the ornamented initial which begins each chapter, and the more elaborate ornamentation of dedication and title-page—all so poor now as works of art, yet in their day masterpieces of handicraft—there is a spell in them! till from that olden time