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THE WORKS OF HENRY HALLAM.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

LITERATURE OF EUROPE

IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH,
AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.

HENRY HALLAM, F.R.A.S.,

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES
IN THE FRENCH INSTITUTE

VOLUME II.

WARD, LOCK & CO.,

LONDON: WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK: BOND STREET.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
ON THE GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE END OF THEFOURTEENTH CENTURY.
	Page
Retrospect of Learning in Middle Ages Necessary	1
Loss of learning in Fall of Roman Empire	1
Boethius—his Consolation of Philosophy	1
Rapid Decline of Learning in Sixth Century	2
A Portion remains in the Church	2
Prejudices of the Clergy against Profane Learning	2
Their Uselessness in preserving it	3
First Appearances of reviving Learning in Ireland and England	3
Few Schools before the Age of Charlemagne	3
Beneficial Effects of those Established by him	4
The Tenth Century more progressive than usually supposed	4
Want of Genius in the Dark Ages	5
Prevalence of bad Taste	5
Deficiency of poetical Talent	5
Imperfect State of Language may account for this	6
Improvement at beginning of Twelfth Century	6
Leading Circumstances in Progress of Learning	6
Origin of the University of Paris	6
Modes of treating the Science of Theology	6
Scholastic Philosophy—its Origin	7
Roscelin	7
Progress of Scholasticism; Increase of University of Paris	8
Universities founded	8
Oxford	8
Collegiate Foundations not derived from the Saracens	9
Scholastic Philosophy promoted by Mendicant Friars	9
Character of this Philosophy	10
It prevails least in Italy	10
Literature in Modern Languages	10
Origin of the French, Spanish, and Italian Languages	10
Corruption of colloquial Latin in the Lower Empire	11
Continuance of Latin in Seventh Century	12
It is changed to a new Language in Eighth and Ninth	12
Early Specimens of French	13
Poem on Boethius	13
Provençal Grammar	14
Latin retained in use longer in Italy	14
French of Eleventh Century	14
Metres of Modern Languages	15
Origin of Rhyme in Latin	16
Provençal and French Poetry	16
Metrical Romances—Havelok the Dane	18
Diffusion of French Language	19
German Poetry of Swabian Period	19
Decline of German Poetry	20
Poetry of France and Spain	21
Early Italian Language	22
Dante and Petrarch	22
Change of Anglo-Saxon to English	22
Layamon	23
Progress of English Language	23
English of the Fourteenth Century—Chaucer, Gower	24
General Disuse of French in England	24
State of European Languages about 1400	25
Ignorance of Reading and Writing in darker Ages	25
Reasons for supposing this to have diminished after 1100	26
Increased Knowledge of Writing in Fourteenth Century	27
Average State of Knowledge in England	27
Invention of Paper	28
Linen Paper when first used	28
Cotton Paper	28
Linen Paper as old as 1100	28
Known to Peter of Clugni	29
And in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century	29
Paper of mixed Materials	29
Invention of Paper placed by some too low	29
Not at first very important	30
Importance of Legal Studies	30
Roman Laws never wholly unknown	31
Irnerius—his first Successors	31
Their Glosses	31
Abridgements of Law—Accursius’s Corpus Glossatum	31
Character of early Jurists	32
Decline of Jurists after Accursius	32
Respect paid to him at Bologna	33
Scholastic Jurists—Bartolus	33
Inferiority of Jurists in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries	34
Classical Literature and Taste in dark Ages	34
Improvement in Tenth and Eleventh Centuries	34
Lanfranc and his Schools	35
Italy—Vocabulary of Papias	36
Influence of Italy upon Europe	36
Increased copying of Manuscripts	36
John of Salisbury	36
Improvement of Classical Taste in Twelfth Century	37
Influence of increased Number of Clergy	38
Decline of Classical Literature in Thirteenth Century	38
Relapse into Barbarism	38
No Improvement in Fourteenth Century—Richard of Bury	39
Library formed by Charles V. at Paris	39
Some Improvement in Italy during Thirteenth Century	40
Catholicon of Balbi	40
Imperfection of early Dictionaries	40
Restoration of Letters due to Petrarch	40
Character of his Style	41
His Latin Poetry	41
John of Ravenna	41
Gasparin of Barziza	42
CHAPTER II.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1400 TO 1440.
Zeal for Classical Literature in Italy	42
Poggio Bracciolini	42
Latin Style of that Age indifferent	43
Gasparin of Barziza	43
Merits of his Style	43
Victorin of Feltre	44
Leonard Aretin	44
Revival of Greek Language in Italy	44
Early Greek Scholars of Europe	44
Under Charlemagne and his Successors	45
In the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries	45
In the Twelfth	46
In the Thirteenth	46
Little Appearance of it in the Fourteenth Century	47
Some Traces of Greek in Italy	47
Corruption of Greek Language itself	47
Character of Byzantine Literature	48
Petrarch and Boccace learn Greek	48
Few acquainted with the Language in their Time	49
It is taught by Chrysoloras about 1395	49
His Disciples	49
Translations from Greek into Latin	50
Public Encouragement delayed	51
But fully accorded before 1440	51
Emigration of learned Greeks to Italy	52
Causes of Enthusiasm for Antiquity in Italy	52
Advanced State of Society	52
Exclusive Study of Antiquity	53
Classical Learning in France low	53
Much more so in England	53
Library of Duke of Gloucester	54
Gerard Groot’s College at Deventer	54
Physical Sciences in Middle Ages	55
Arabian Numerals and Method	55
Proofs of them in Thirteenth Century	56
Mathematical Treatises	56
Roger Bacon	57
His Resemblance to Lord Bacon	57
English Mathematicians of Fourteenth Century	57
Astronomy	58
Alchemy	58
Medicine	58
Anatomy	58
Encyclopædic Works of Middle Ages	58
Vincent of Beauvais	59
Berchorius	59
Spanish Ballads	59
Metres of Spanish Poetry	60
Consonant and assonant Rhymes	60
Nature of the Glosa	61
The Cancionero General	61
Bouterwek’s Character of Spanish Songs	61
John II.	62
Poets of his Court	62
Charles, Duke of Orleans	62
English Poetry	62
Lydgate	63
James I. of Scotland	63
Restoration of Classical Learning due to Italy	63
Character of Classical Poetry lost in Middle Ages	64
New School of Criticism in Modern Languages	64
Effect of Chivalry on Poetry	64
Effect of Gallantry towards Women	64
Its probable Origin	64
It is shown in old Teutonic Poetry; but appears in the Stories of Arthur	65
Romances of Chivalry of two Kinds	65
Effect of Difference of Religion upon Poetry	66
General Tone of Romance	66
Popular Moral Fictions	66
Exclusion of Politics from Literature	67
Religious Opinions	67
Attacks on the Church	67
Three Lines of Religious Opinions in Fifteenth Century	67
Treatise de Imitatione Christi	68
Scepticism—Defences of Christianity	69
Raimond de Sebonde	69
His Views misunderstood	69
His real Object	70
Nature of his Arguments	70
CHAPTER III.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1440 TO THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
The year 1440 not chosen as an Epoch	71
Continual Progress of Learning	71
Nicolas V.	71
Justice due to his Character	72
Poggio on the Ruins of Rome	72
Account of the East, by Conti	72
Laurentius Valla	72
His Attack on the Court of Rome	72
His Treatise on the Latin Language	73
Its Defects	73
Heeren’s Praise of it	73
Valla’s Annotations on the New Testament	73
Fresh Arrival of Greeks in Italy	74
Platonists and Aristotelians	74
Their Controversy	74
Marsilius Ficinus	75
Invention of Printing	75
Block Books	75
Gutenberg and Costar’s Claims	75
Progress of the Invention	76
First printed Bible	76
Beauty of the Book	77
Early printed Sheets	77
Psalter of 1547—Other early Books	77
Bible of Pfister	77
Greek first taught at Paris	78
Leave unwillingly granted	78
Purbach—his Mathematical Discoveries	78
Other Mathematicians	78
Progress of Printing in Germany	79
Introduced into France	79
Caxton’s first Works	79
Printing exercised in Italy	79
Lorenzo de’ Medici	80
Italian Poetry of Fifteenth Century	80
Italian Prose of same Age	80
Giostra of Politian	80
Paul II. persecutes the Learned	81
Mathias Corvinus	81
His Library	81
Slight Signs of Literature in England	81
Paston Letters	82
Low Condition of Public Libraries	83
Rowley	83
Clotilde de Surville	83
Number of Books printed in Italy	83
First Greek printed	84
Study of Antiquities	84
Works on that Subject	84
Publications in Germany	85
In France	85
In England, by Caxton	85
In Spain	85
Translations of Scripture	85
Revival of Literature in Spain	86
Character of Labrixa	86
Library of Lorenzo	87
Classics corrected and explained	87
Character of Lorenzo	87
Prospect from his Villa at Fiesole	87
Platonic Academy	88
Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino	88
Philosophical Dialogues	89
Paulus Cortesius	89
Schools in Germany	89
Study of Greek at Paris	91
Controversy of Realists and Nominalists	91
Scotus	91
Ockham	92
Nominalists in University of Paris	92
Low State of Learning in England	92
Mathematics	93
Regiomontanus	93
Arts of Delineation	93
Maps	94
Geography	94
Greek printed in Italy	94
Hebrew printed	95
Miscellanies of Politian	95
Their Character, by Heeren	95
His Version of Herodian	96
Cornucopia of Perotti	96
Latin Poetry of Politian	96
Italian Poetry of Lorenzo	97
Pulci	97
Character of Morgante Maggiore	97
Platonic Theology of Ficinus	98
Doctrine of Averroes on the Soul	98
Opposed by Ficinus	99
Desire of Man to explore Mysteries	99
Various Methods employed	99
Reason and Inspiration	99
Extended Inferences from Sacred Books	99
Confidence in Traditions	100
Confidence in Individuals as inspired	100
Jewish Cabbala	100
Picus of Mirandola	101
His Credulity in the Cabbala	101
His Literary Performances	102
State of Learning in Germany	102
Agricola	103
Renish Academy	103
Reuchlin	104
French Language and Poetry	104
European Drama	104
Latin	104
Orfeo of Politian	105
Origin of Dramatic Mysteries	105
Their early Stage	105
Extant English Mysteries	105
First French Theatre	106
Theatrical Machinery	107
Italian Religious Dramas	107
Moralities	107
Farces	107
Mathematical Works	107
Leo Baptista Alberti	108
Lionardo da Vinci	108
Aldine Greek Editions	109
Decline of Learning in Italy	110
Hermolaus Barbarus	111
Mantuan	111
Pontanus	111
Neapolitan Academy	112
Boiardo	112
Francesco Bello	113
Italian Poetry near the End of the Century	113
Progress of Learning in France and Germany	113
Erasmus—his Diligence	114
Budæus—his early Studies	114
Latin not well written in France	115
Dawn of Greek Learning in England	115
Erasmus comes to England	116
He publishes his Adages	116
Romantic Ballads of Spain	116
Pastoral Romances	117
Portuguese Lyric Poetry	117
German popular Books	117
Historical Works	118
Philip de Comines	118
Algebra	118
Events from 1490 to 1500	119
Close of Fifteenth Century	119
Its Literature nearly neglected	119
Summary of its Acquisitions	119
Their Imperfection	120
Number of Books printed	120
Advantages already reaped from Printing	120
Trade of Bookselling	121
Books sold by Printers	121
Price of Books	122
Form of Books	122
Exclusive Privileges	122
Power of Universities over Bookselling	123
Restraints on Sale of Printed Books	124
Effect of Printing on the Reformation	124
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1500 TO 1520.
Decline of Learning in Italy	125
Press of Aldus	125
His Academy	126
Dictionary of Calepio	126
Books printed in Germany	126
First Greek Press at Paris	126
Early Studies of Melanchthon	127
Learning in England	127
Erasmus and Budæus	128
Study of Eastern Languages	128
Dramatic Works	128
Calisto and Melibœa	128
Its Character	129
Juan de la Enzina	129
Arcadia of Sanazzaro	129
Asolani of Bembo	130
Dunbar	130
Anatomy of Zerbi	130
Voyages of Cadamosto	130
Leo X., his Patronage of Letters	131
Roman Gymnasium	131
Latin Poetry	132
Italian Tragedy	132
Sophonisba of Trissino	132
Rosmunda of Rucellai	132
Comedies of Ariosto	132
Books printed in Italy	133
Cælius Rhodiginus	133
Greek printed in France and Germany	133
Greek Scholars in these Countries	134
College at Alcala and Louvain	134
Latin Style in France	135
Greek Scholars in England	135
Mode of Teaching in Schools	136
Few Classical Works printed here	137
State of Learning in Scotland	137
Utopia of More	137
Inconsistency in his Opinions	138
Learning restored in France	138
Jealousy of Erasmus and Budæus	138
Character of Erasmus	139
His Adages severe on Kings	139
Instances in illustration	140
His Greek Testament	142
Patrons of Letters in Germany	142
Resistance to Learning	143
Unpopularity of the Monks	145
The Book excites Odium	145
Erasmus attacks the Monks	145
Their Contention with Reuchlin	145
Origin of the Reformation	146
Popularity of Luther	147
Simultaneous Reform by Zwingle	147
Reformation prepared beforehand	147
Dangerous Tenets of Luther	148
Real Explanation of them	149
Orlando Furioso	150
Its Popularity	150
Want of Seriousness	150
A Continuation of Boiardo	150
In some Points inferior	151
Beauties of its Style	151
Accompanied with Faults	151
Its Place as a Poem	152
Amadis de Gaul	152
Gringore	152
Hans Sachs	152
Stephen Hawes	153
Change in English Language	153
Skelton	154
Oriental Languages	154
Pomponatius	155
Raymond Lully	155
His Method	155
Peter Martyr’s Epistles	156
CHAPTER V.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Superiority of Italy in Taste	157
Admiration of Antiquity	158
Sadolet	158
Bembo	159
Ciceronianus of Erasmus	159
Scaliger’s Invective against it	160
Editions of Cicero	160
Alexander ab Alexandro	160
Works on Roman Antiquities	161
Greek less Studied in Italy	161
Schools of Classical Learning	161
Budæus—his Commentaries on Greek	161
Their Character	162
Greek Grammars and Lexicons	162
Editions of Greek Authors	163
Latin Thesaurus of R. Stephens	163
Progress of Learning in France	164
Learning in Spain	165
Effects of Reformation on Learning	165
Sturm’s Account of German Schools	165
Learning in Germany	166
In England—Linacre	166
Lectures in the Universities	166
Greek perhaps Taught to Boys	167
Teaching of Smith at Cambridge	167
Succeeded by Cheke	168
Ascham’s Character of Cambridge	168
Wood’s Account of Oxford	168
Education of Edward and his Sisters	169
The Progress of Learning is still slow	169
Want of Books and Public Libraries	169
Destruction of Monasteries no Injury to Learning	169
Ravisius Textor	170
Conrad Gesner	170
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Progress of the Reformation	171
Interference of Civil Power	171
Excitement of Revolutionary Spirit	172
Growth of Fanaticism	172
Differences of Luther and Zwingle	172
Confession of Augsburg	173
Conduct of Erasmus	173
Estimate of it	174
His Controversy with Luther	174
Character of his Epistles	176
His Alienation from the Reformers increases	176
Appeal of the Reformers to the Ignorant	176
Parallel of those Times with the Present	177
Calvin	177
His Institutes	177
Increased Differences among Reformers	178
Reformed Tenets spread in England	178
In Italy	178
Italian Heterodoxy	179
Its Progress in the Literary Classes	180
Servetus	180
Arianism in Italy	181
Protestants in Spain and Low Countries	181
Order of Jesuits	181
Their Popularity	181
Council of Trent	182
Its Chief Difficulties	182
Character of Luther	182
Theological Writings—Erasmus	183
Melanchthon—Romish Writers	183
This Literature nearly forgotten	184
Sermons	184
Spirit of the Reformation	184
Limits of Private Judgment	185
Passions instrumental in Reformation	185
Establishment of new Dogmatism	186
Editions of Scripture	186
Translations of Scripture	186
In English	187
In Italy and Low Countries	187
Latin Translations	187
French Translations	188
CHAPTER VII.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE, MORAL, AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OF JURISPRUDENCE, INEUROPE, FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Logic included under this head	188
Slow Defeat of Scholastic Philosophy	188
It is sustained by the Universities and Regulars	188
Commentators on Aristotle	188
Attack of Vives on Scholastics	189
Contempt of them in England	189
Veneration for Aristotle	189
Melanchthon countenances him	189
His own Philosophical Treatises	190
Aristotelians of Italy	190
University of Paris	190
New Logic of Ramus	190
It meets with unfair treatment	191
Its Merits and Character	191
Buhle’s account of it	191
Paracelsus	191
His Impostures	192
And Extravagancies	192
Cornelius Agrippa	192
His pretended Philosophy	193
His Sceptical Treatise	193
Cardan	193
Influence of Moral Writers	194
Cortegiano of Castiglione	194
Marco Aurelio of Guevara	194
His Menosprecio di Corte	194
Perez d’Oliva	195
Ethical Writings of Erasmus and Melanchthon	195
Sir T. Elyot’s Governor	195
Severity of Education	196
He seems to avoid Politics	196
Nicholas Machiavel	196
His motives in writing the Prince	197
Some of his Rules not immoral	197
But many dangerous	197
Its only Palliation	198
His Discourses on Livy	198
Their leading Principles	198
Their Use and Influence	199
His History of Florence	199
Treatises on Venetian Government	199
Calvin’s Political Principles	199
Jurisprudence confined to Roman Law	200
The Laws not well arranged	200
Adoption of the entire System	200
Utility of General Learning to Lawyers	200
Alciati—his Reform of Law	201
Opposition to him	201
Agustino	201
CHAPTER VIII.
HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE OF TASTE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Poetry of Bembo	201
Its Beauties and Defects	202
Character of Italian Poetry	202
Alamanni	202
Vittoria Colonna	202
Satires of Ariosto and Alamanni	203
Alamanni	203
Rucellai	203
Trissino	203
Berni	203
Spanish Poets	204
Boscan and Garcilasso	204
Mendoza	204
Saa di Miranda	205
Ribeyro	205
French Poetry	205
Marot	206
Its Metrical Structure	206
German Poetry	206
Hans Sachs	206
German Hymn	206
Theuerdanks of Pfintzing	206
English Poetry—Lyndsay	206
Wyatt and Surrey	207
Dr. Nott’s Character of them	207
Perhaps rather exaggerated	208
Surrey improves our versification	208
Introduces Blank Verse	208
Dr. Nott’s Hypothesis as to his Metre	208
It seems too extensive	209
Politeness of Wyatt and Surrey	209
Latin Poetry	210
Sannazarius	210
Vida	210
Fracastorius	210
Latin Verse not to be disdained	210
Other Latin Poets in Italy	211
In Germany	211
Italian Comedy	211
Machiavel	211
Aretin	211
Tragedy	212
Sperone	212
Cinthio	212
Spanish Drama	212
Torres Naharro	212
Lope de Rueda	212
Gil Vicente	213
Mysteries and Moralities in France	213
German Theatre—Hans Sachs	213
Moralities and Similar Plays in England	214
They are turned to religious Satire	214
Latin Plays	214
First English Comedy	215
Romances of Chivalry	215
Novels	215
Rabelais	216
Contest of Latin and Italian Languages	216
Influence of Bembo in this	217
Apology for Latinists	217
Character of the Controversy	217
Life of Bembo	217
Character of Italian and Spanish Style	218
English Writers	218
More	218
Ascham	218
Italian Criticism	218
Bembo	218
Grammarians and Critics in France	219
Orthography of Meigret	219
Cox’s Art of Rhetoric	219
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Geometrical Treatises	220
Fernel Rhœticus	220
Cardan and Tartaglia	220
Cubic Equations	220
Beauty of the Discovery	221
Cardan’s other Discoveries	221
Imperfections of Algebraic Language	222
Copernicus	222
Revival of Greek Medicine	223
Linacre and other Physicians	223
Medical Innovators	224
Paracelsus	224
Anatomy	224
Berenger	224
Vesalius	224
Portal’s Account of him	225
His Human Dissections	225
Fate of Vesalius	225
Other Anatomists	225
Imperfection of the Science	225
Botany—Botanical Gardens	226
Ruel	226
Fuchs	226
Matthioli	226
Low State of Zoology	226
Agricola	227
Hebrew	227
Elias Levita—Pellican	227
Arabic and Oriental Literature	227
Geography of Grynæus	228
Apianus	228
Munster	228
Voyages	228
Oviedo	228
Historical Works	228
Italian Academies	229
They pay regard to the Language	229
Their fondness for Petrarch	229
They become numerous	229
Their Distinctions	230
Evils connected with them	230
They succeed less in Germany	230
Libraries	230
CHAPTER X.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Progress of Philology	231
First Editions of Classics	231
Change in Character of Learning	232
Cultivation of Greek	232
Principal Scholars—Turnebus	232
Petrus Victorius	233
Muretus	233
Gruter’s Thesaurus Criticus	234
Editions of Greek and Latin Authors	235
Tacitus of Lipsius	235
Horace of Lambinus	235
Of Cruquius	236
Henry Stephens	236
Lexicon of Constantin	237
Thesaurus of Stephens	237
Abridged by Scapula	238
Hellenismus of Caninius	239
Vergara’s Grammar	239
Grammars of Ramus and Sylburgius	239
Camerarius—Canter—Robortellus	240
Editions by Sylburgius	241
Neander	241
Gesner	241
Decline of Taste in Germany	242
German Learning	242
Greek Verses of Rhodomanu	242
Learning Declines	243
Except in Catholic Germany	243
Philological Works of Stephens	243
Style of Lipsius	244
Minerva of Sanctius	244
Orations of Muretus	244
Panegyric of Ruhnkenius	244
Defects of his Style	245
Epistles of Manutius	245
Care of the Italian Latinists	245
Perpinianus—Osorius—Maphœus	246
Buchanan—Haddon	246
Sigonius, De Consolatione	246
Decline of Taste and Learning in Italy	247
Joseph Scaliger	247
Isaac Casaubon	248
General Result	249
Learning in England under Edward and Mary	249
Revival under Elizabeth	249
Greek Lectures at Cambridge	250
Few Greek Editions in England	250
School Books enumerated	250
Greek taught in Schools	251
Greek better known after 1580	251
Editions of Greek	252
And of Latin Classics	252
Learning lower than in Spain	252
Improvement at the End of the Century.	253
Learning in Scotland	253
Latin little used in Writing	253
Early Works on Antiquities	254
P. Manutius on Roman Laws	254
Manutius, De Civitate	254
Panvinius—Sigonius	255
Gruchius	255
Sigonius on Athenian Polity	256
Patrizzi and Lipsius on Roman Militia	256
Lipsius and other Antiquaries	256
Saville on Roman Militia	257
Numismatics	257
Mythology	257
Scaliger’s Chronology	258
Julian Period	258
CHAPTER XI.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Diet of Augsburg in 1555	259
Progress of Protestantism	259
Its Causes	260
Wavering of Catholic Princes	260
Extinguished in Italy and Spain	260
Reaction of Catholicity	260
Especially in Germany	261
Discipline of the Clergy	261
Influence of Jesuits	261
Their Progress	262
Their Colleges	262
Jesuit Seminary at Rome	262
Patronage of Gregory XIII.	262
Conversions in Germany and France	263
Causes of this Reaction	263
A rigid Party in the Church	264
Its Efforts at Trent	264
No Compromise in Doctrine	265
Consultation of Cassander	265
Bigotry of Protestant Churches	266
Tenets of Melanchthon	266
A Party hostile to him	267
Form of Concord, 1576	267
Controversy raised by Baius	267
Treatise of Molina on Free will	268
Protestant Tenets	268
Trinitarian Controversy	268
Religious Intolerance	270
Castalio	270
Answered by Beza	271
Aconcio	271
Minus Celsus, Koornhert	271
Decline of Protestantism	272
Desertion of Lipsius	272
Jewell’s Apology	272
English Theologians	272
Bellarmin	273
Topics of Controversy changed	273
It turns on Papal Power	274
This upheld by the Jesuits	274
Claim to depose Princes	274
Bull against Elizabeth	274
And Henry IV.	275
Deposing Power owned in Spain	275
Asserted by Bellarmin	275
Methods of Theological Doctrine	275
Loci Communes	275
In the Protestant and Catholic Church	276
Catharin	276
Critical and Expository Writings	276
Ecclesiastical Historians	277
Le Clerc’s Character of them	277
Deistical Writers	277
Wierus, De Præstigiis	278
Scot on Witchcraft	278
Authenticity of Vulgate	278
Latin Versions and Editions by Catholics	278
By Protestants	279
Versions into Modern Languages	279
CHAPTER XII.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Predominance of Aristotelian Philosophy	279
Scholastic and genuine Aristotelians	280
The former class little remembered	280
The others not much better known	280
Schools of Pisa and Padua	280
Cesalpini	280
Sketch of his System	280
Cremonini	281
Opponents of Aristotle	281
Patrizzi	281
System of Telesio	281
Jordano Bruno	282
His Italian Works—Cena de li Ceneri	282
Della Causa, Principio ed Uno	282
Pantheism of Bruno	283
Bruno’s other Writings	284
General Character of his Philosophy	285
Sceptical Theory of Sanchez	286
Logic of Aconcio	286
Nizolius on the Principles of Philosophy	286
Margarita Antoniana of Pereira	287
Logic of Ramus—its Success	288
CHAPTER XIII.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Soto, De Justitia	289
Hooker	290
His Theory of Natural Law	290
Doubts felt by others	290
Essays of Montaigne	290
Their Characteristics	290
Writers on Morals in Italy	293
In England	293
Bacon’s Essays	293
Number of Political Writers	294
Oppression of Governments	294
And Spirit generated by it	294
Derived from Classic History	294
From their own and the Jewish	294
Franco Gallia of Hossoman	295
Vindiciæ of Languet	295
Contr’Un of Boetie	295
Buchanan, De Jure Regni	296
Poynet, on Politique Power	296
Its liberal Theory	296
Argues for Tyrannicide	297
The Tenets of Parties swayed by Circumstances	297
Similar Tenets among the Leaguers	298
Rose on the Authority of Christian States over Kings	298
Treatise of Boucher in the same Spirit	299
Answered by Barclay	299
The Jesuits adopt these Tenets	299
Mariana, De Rege	299
Popular Theories in England	300
Hooker	300
Political Memoirs	301
La Noue	301
Lipsius	301
Botero	301
His Remarks on Population	301
Paruta	302
Bodin	302
Analysis of his Treatise called the Republic	302
Authority of Heads of Families	302
Domestic Servitude	303
Origin of Commonwealths	303
Privileges of Citizens	303
Nature of Sovereign Power	304
Forms of Government	304
Despotism and Monarchy	304
Aristocracy	305
Senates and Councils of State	305
Duties of Magistrates	305
Corporations	305
Slaves, part of the State	305
Rise and Fall of States	306
Causes of Revolution	306
Astrological Fancies of Bodin	306
Danger of sudden Changes	307
Judicial Power of the Sovereign	307
Toleration of Religions	307
Influence of Climate on Government	307
Means of obviating Inequality	308
Confiscations—Rewards	308
Fortresses	308
Necessity of Good Faith	309
Census of Property	309
Public Revenues	309
Taxation	309
Adulteration of Coin	310
Superiority of Monarchy	310
Conclusion of the Work	310
Bodin compared with Aristotle and Machiavel	310
And with Montesquieu	310
Golden Age of Jurisprudence	311
Cujacius	311
Eulogies bestowed upon him	311
Cujacius, an Interpreter of Law rather than a Lawyer	312
French Lawyers below Cujacius—Govca and others	312
Opponents of the Roman Law	313
Faber of Savoy	313
Anti-Tribonianus of Hottoman	313
Civil Law not countenanced in France	314
Turamini	314
Cau Law	314
Law of Nations; its early State	314
Francis a Victoria	314
His Opinions on Public Law	315
Ayala, on the Rights of War	315
Albericus Gentilis on Embassies	316
His Treatise on the Rights of War	317
CHAPTER XIV.
HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1550 TO 1600.
General Character of Italian Poets in this Age	318
Their usual Faults	318
Their Beauties	318
Character given by Muratori	318
Poetry of Casa	318
Of Costanzo	319
Baldi	319
Caro	319
Odes of Celio Magus	319
Coldness of the Amatory Sonnets	320
Studied Imitation of Petrarch	320
Their Fondness for Description	320
Judgment of Italian Critics	320
Bernardino Rota	320
Gaspara Stampa; her Love for Collalto	321
Is ill-requited	322
Her Second Love	322
Style of Gaspara Stampa	322
La Nautica of Baldi	322
Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso	323
Satirical and burlesque Poetry; Aretin	323
Other burlesque Writers	324
Attempts at Latin Metres	324
Poetical Translations	324
Torquato Tasso	324
The Jerusalem excellent in Choice of Subject	324
Superior to Homer and Virgil in some Points	324
Its Characters	325
Excellence of its Style	325
Some Faults in it	325
Defects of the Poem	326
It indicates the peculiar Genius of Tasso	326
Tasso compared to Virgil	326
To Ariosto	326
To the Bolognese Painters	327
Poetry Cultivated under Charles and Philip	327
Luis de Leon	328
Herrera	328
General Tone of Castilian Poetry	329
Castillejo	329
Araucana of Ercilla	329
Many epic Poems in Spain	329
Camœns	330
Defects of the Lusiad	330
Its Excellencies	330
Mickle’s Translation	330
Celebrated Passage in the Lusiad	331
Minor Poems of Camœns	331
Ferreira	331
Spanish Ballads	331
French Poets numerous	332
Change in the Tone of French Poetry	333
Ronsard	333
Other French Poets	334
Du Bartas	334
Pibrac; Desportes	335
French Metre and Versification	335
General character of French Poetry	335
German Poetry	336
Paradise of Dainty Devices	336
Character of this Collection	336
Sackville’s Induction	336
Inferiority of Poets in early years of Elizabeth	337
Gascoyne	337
Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar	337
Sydney’s Character of Contemporary Poets	338
Improvement soon after this Time	338
Relaxation of Moral Austerity	339
Serious Poetry	339
Poetry of Sydney	339
Epithalanium of Spenser	340
Poems of Shakspeare	340
Daniel and Drayton	340
Nosce Teipsum of Davies	340
Satires of Hall, Marston, and Donne	341
Modulation of English Verse	341
Translations of Homer by Chapman	341
Of Tasso by Fairfax	342
Employment of Ancient Measures	342
Number of Poets in this Age	342
Scots and English Ballads	343
The Faery Queen	343
Superiority of the First Book	343
The succeeding Books	344
Spenser’s Sense of Beauty	344
Compared to Ariosto	344
Style of Spenser	345
Inferiority of the latter Books	345
Allegories of the Faery Queen	346
Blemishes in the Diction	346
Admiration of the Faery Queen	346
General Parallel of Italian and English Poetry	347
Decline of Latin Poetry in Italy	347
Compensated in other Countries	347
Lotichius	347
Collections of Latin Poetry by Gruter	348
Characters of some Gallo-Latin Poets	348
Sammarthanus	349
Belgic Poets	349
Scots Poets—Buchanan	349
CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Italian Tragedy	350
Pastoral Drama	351
Aminta of Tasso	351
Pastor Fido of Guarini	352
Italian Opera	352
The National Taste revives in the Spanish Drama	353
Lope de Vega	353
His Extraordinary Fertility	353
His Versification	354
His Popularity	354
Character of his Comedies	354
Tragedy of Don Sancho Ortiz	355
His Spiritual Plays	356
Numancia of Cervantes	356
French Theatre—Jodelle	357
Garnier	357
Comedies of Larivey	358
Theatres in Paris	358
English Stage	359
Gammar Gurton’s Needle	359
Gorboduc of Sackville	359
Preference given to the Irregular Form	359
First Theatres	360
Plays of Whetstone and Others	360
Marlowe and his Contemporaries	360
Tamburlaine	361
Blank Verse of Marlowe	361
Marlowe’s Jew of Malta	361
And Faustus	361
His Edward II.	361
Plays whence Henry VI. was taken	361
Peele	362
Greene	362
Other Writers of this Age	363
Heywood’s Woman Killed with Kindness	363
William Shakspeare	364
His First Writings for the Stage	364
Comedy of Errors	365
Love’s Labour Lost	365
Taming of the Shrew	365
Midsummer Night’s Dream	365
Its Machinery	366
Its Language	366
Romeo and Juliet	366
Its Plot	367
Its Beauties and Blemishes	367
The Characters	367
The Language	367
Second Period of Shakspeare	368
The Historical Plays	368
Merchant of Venice	368
As You Like It	369
Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour	369
CHAPTER XVI.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Italian Writers	369
Casa	369
Tasso	370
Firenzuola	370
Character of Italian Prose	370
Italian Letter Writers	370
Davanzati’s Tacitus	371
Jordano Bruno	371
French Writers—Amyot	371
Montaigne; Du Vair	371
Satire Menippée	372
English Writers	372
Ascham	372
Euphues of Lilly	373
Its Popularity	373
Sydney’s Arcadia	374
His Defence of Poesie	374
Hooker	374
Character of Elizabethan Writers	374
State of Criticism	375
Scaliger’s Poetics	375
His Preference of Virgil to Homer	375
His Critique on Modern Latin Poets	376
Critical Influence of the Academics	376
Dispute of Caro and Castelvetro	377
Castelvetro on Aristotle’s Poetics	377
Severity of Castelvetro’s Criticism	377
Ercolano of Varchi	378
Controversy about Dante	378
Academy of Florence	378
Salviati’s Attack on Tasso	379
Pinciano’s Art of Poetry	379
French Treatises of Criticism	379
Wilson’s Art of Rhetorique	379
Gascoyne; Webbe	380
Puttenham’s Art of Poesie	380
Sydney’s Defence of Poesy	380
Novels of Bandello	380
Of Cinthio	381
Of the Queen of Navarre	381
Spanish Romances of Chivalry	381
Diana of Monte-Mayor	382
Novels in the Picaresque Style	382
Guzman d’Alfarache	382
Las Guerras de Granada	383
Sydney’s Arcadia	383
Its Character	383
Inferiority of other English Fictions	384
CHAPTER XVII.
HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE FROM 1500 TO 1600.
Tartaglia and Cardan	385
Algebra of Pelletier	385
Record’s Whetstone of Wit	385
Vieta	385
His Discoveries	386
Geometers of this Period	388
Joachim Rhœticus	388
Copernican Theory	388
Tycho Brahe	389
His System	389
Gregorian Calendar	390
Optics	390
Mechanics	390
Statics of Stevinus	391
Hydrostatics	392
Gilbert on the Magnet	392
Gesner’s Zoology	392
Its Character by Cuvier	392
Gesner’s Arrangement	393
His Additions to known Quadrupeds	393
Belon	394
Salviani and Rondelet’s Ichthyology	394
Aldrovandus	394
Botany—Turner	395
Maranta—Botanical Gardens	395
Gesner	396
Dodœns	396
Lobel	396
Clusius	396
Cæsalpin	396
Dalechamps—Bauhin	397
Gerard’s Herbal	397
Anatomy—Fallopius	397
Eustachius	397
Coiter	398
Columbus	398
Circulation of the Blood	398
Medicinal Science	398
Syriac Version of New Testament	399
Hebrew Critics	399
Its Study in England	399
Arabic begins to be Studied	399
Collection of Voyages by Ramusio	400
Curiosity they awakened	400
Other Voyages	401
Accounts of China	401
India and Russia	401
English Discoveries in the Northern Seas	401
Geographical Books—Ortelius	401
Guicciardini	402
French Memoirs	403
Universities in Italy	403
In other Countries	403
Libraries	403
Collections of Antiquities in Italy	404
Pinelli	404
Italian Academies	405
Society of Antiquaries in England	405
New Books and Catalogues of them	406
Literary Correspondence	406
Bibliographical Works	406
Restraints on the Press	407
Index Expurgatorius	407
Its Effects	407
Restrictions in England	407
Latin more employed on this account	408
Influence of Literature	408
CHAPTER XVIII.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Learning of 17th Century less Philological	[409]
Popularity of Comenius	[409]
Decline of Greek Learning	[410]
Casaubon	[410]
Viger de Idiotismis	[411]
Weller’s Greek Grammar	[411]
Labbe and Others	[411]
Salmasius de Lingua Hellenistica	[412]
Greek Editions—Savile’s Chrysostom	[412]
Greek Learning in England	[413]
Latin Editions—Torrentius	[413]
Gruter	[413]
Heinsius	[413]
Grotius	[414]
Rutgersius—Reinesius—Barthius	[414]
Other Critics—English	[414]
Salmasius	[415]
Good Writers of Latin	[415]
Scioppius	[416]
His Philosophical Grammar	[416]
His Infamia Famiani	[416]
Judicium de Stylo Historico	[416]
Gerard Vossius, de Vitiis Sermonis	[417]
His Aristarchus	[417]
Progress of Latin Style	[418]
Gruter’s Collection of Inscriptions	[418]
Assisted by Scaliger	[419]
Works on Roman Antiquity	[419]
Geography of Cluversius	[420]
Meursius	[420]
Ubbo Emmius	[420]
Chronology of Lydiat—Calvisius	[420]
Petavius	[421]
Character of this Work	[421]
CHAPTER XIX.
HISTORY Of THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Temporal Supremacy of Rome	[422]
Contest with Venice	[423]
Father Paul Sarpi	[423]
History of Council of Trent	[424]
Gallican Liberties—Richter	[424]
Perron	[425]
Decline of Papal Power	[425]
Unpopularity of the Jesuits	[426]
Richelieu’s Care of Gallican Liberties	[426]
Controversy of Catholics and Protestants	[426]
Increased respect for the Fathers	[426]
Especially in England—Laud	[427]
Defections to the Catholic Church	[427]
Wavering of Casaubon	[428]
And of Grotius	[429]
Calixtus	[434]
His Attempts at Concord	[434]
High Church Party in England	[435]
Daillé on the Right Use of the Fathers	[435]
Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants	[436]
Character of this Work	[436]
Hales on Schism	[438]
Controversies on Grace and Free will—Augustinian Scheme	[438]
Semi-pelagian Hypothesis	[439]
Tenets of the Reformers	[439]
Rise of Arminianism	[440]
Episcopius	[440]
His Writings	[440]
Their Spirit and Tendency	[440]
Great Latitude allowed by them	[441]
Progress of Arminianism	[441]
Cameron	[441]
Rise of Jansenism	[441]
Socinus—Volkelius	[442]
Crellius—Ruarus	[442]
Erastianism maintained by Hooker	[443]
And Grotius	[444]
His Treatise on Ecclesiastical Power of the State	[444]
Remark upon this Theory	[446]
Toleration of Religious Tenets	[446]
Claimed by the Arminians	[446]
By the Independents	[447]
And by Jeremy Taylor	[447]
His Liberty of Prophesying	[447]
Boldness of his Doctrines	[447]
His Notions of Uncertainty in Theological Tenets	[448]
His low Opinion of the Fathers	[448]
Difficulty of Finding out Truth	[449]
Grounds of Toleration	[449]
Inconsistency of One Chapter	[450]
His General Defence of Toleration	[450]
Effect of this Treatise	[451]
Its Defects	[451]
Great Erudition of this Period	[452]
Usher—Petavius	[452]
Sacred Criticism	[452]
Grotius—Coccejus	[452]
English Commentators	[453]
Style of Preaching	[453]
English Sermons	[453]
Of Donne	[454]
Of Jeremy Taylor	[454]
Devotional Writings of Taylor and Hall	[454]
In the Roman	[455]
And Lutheran Church	[455]
Infidelity of some Writers—Charron—Vanini	[455]
Lord Herbert of Cherbury	[456]
Grotius de Veritate	[457]
English Translation of the Bible	[457]
Its Style	[457]
CHAPTER XX.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Subjects of this Chapter	[458]
Aristotelians and Ramists	[458]
No improvement till near the End of the Century	[459]
Methods of the Universities	[459]
Scholastic Writers	[459]
Treatises on Logic	[460]
Campanella	[460]
His Theory taken from Telesio	[460]
Notion of Universal Sensibility	[461]
His Imagination and Eloquence	[461]
His Works Published by Admai	[462]
Basson	[463]
Berigard	[463]
Magnen	[463]
Paracelsists	[463]
And Theosophists	[463]
Fludd	[464]
Jacob Behmen	[464]
Lord Herbert de Veritate	[464]
His Axioms	[465]
Conditions of Truth	[465]
Instinctive Truths	[466]
Internal Perceptions	[466]
Five Notions of Natural Religion	[466]
Remarks of Gassendi on Herbert	[467]
Gassendi’s Defence of Epicurus	[468]
His chief Works after 1650	[468]
Preparation for the Philosophy of Lord Bacon	[468]
His Plan of Philosophy	[468]
Time of its Conception	[469]
Instauratio Magna	[470]
First Part—Partitiones Scientiarum	[470]
Second Part—Novum Organum	[470]
Third Part—Natural History	[470]
Fourth Part—Scala Intellectûs	[471]
Fifth Part—Anticipationes Philosophiæ	[471]
Sixth Part—Philosophia Secunda	[471]
Course of studying Lord Bacon	[472]
Nature of the Baconian Induction	[472]
His Dislike of Aristotle	[474]
His Method much required	[474]
Its Objects	[474]
Sketch of the Treatise De Augmentis	[474]
History	[474]
Poetry	[475]
Fine Passage on Poetry	[475]
Natural Theology and Metaphysics	[475]
Form of Bodies might sometimes be inquired into	[475]
Final Causes too much slighted	[476]
Man not included by him in Physics	[476]
Man—in Body and Mind	[476]
Logic	[476]
Extent given it by Bacon	[476]
Grammar and Rhetoric	[477]
Ethics	[477]
Politics	[477]
Theology	[478]
Desiderata enumerated by him	[478]
Novum Organum—First Book	[478]
Fallacies—Idola	[478]
Confounded with Idols	[478]
Second Book of Novum Organum	[479]
Confidence of Bacon	[479]
Almost justified of late	[480]
But should be kept within Bounds	[481]
Limits to our Knowledge by Sense	[481]
Inductive Logic—whether confined to Physics	[481]
Baconian Philosophy built on Observation and Experiment	[482]
Advantages of the latter	[482]
Sometimes applicable to Philosophy of Human Mind	[483]
Less so to Politics and Morals	[483]
Induction less conclusive on these Subjects	[483]
Reasons for this Difference	[484]
Considerations on the other Side	[484]
Result of the whole	[485]
Bacon’s Aptitude for Moral Subjects	[486]
Comparison of Bacon and Galileo	[487]
His Prejudice against Mathematics	[488]
Bacon’s Excess of Wit	[488]
Fame of Bacon on the Continent	[489]
Early Life of Descartes	[491]
His beginning to philosophise	[491]
He retires to Holland	[491]
His Publications	[492]
He begins by doubting all	[492]
His First Step in Knowledge	[492]
His Mind not Sceptical	[493]
He arrives at more Certainty	[493]
His Proof of a Deity	[493]
Another Proof of it	[494]
His Deductions from this	[494]
Primary and Secondary Qualities	[495]
Objections made to his Meditations	[495]
Theory of Memory and Imagination	[496]
Seat of Soul in Pineal Gland	[497]
Gassendi’s Attacks on the Meditations	[497]
Superiority of Descartes	[497]
Stewart’s Remarks on Descartes	[498]
Paradoxes of Descartes	[499]
His Just Notions and Definitions	[500]
His Notion of Substances	[501]
Not Quite Correct	[501]
His Notions of Intuitive Truth	[501]
Treatise on Art of Logic	[502]
Merits of his Writings	[502]
His Notions of Free will	[502]
Fame of his System, and Attacks upon it	[503]
Controversy with Voet	[503]
Charges of Plagiarism	[504]
Recent Increase of his Fame	[505]
Metaphysical Treatises of Hobbes	[505]
His Theory of Sensation	[506]
Coincident with Descartes	[506]
Imagination and Memory	[506]
Discourse or Train of Imagination	[507]
Experience	[507]
Unconceivableness of Infinity	[507]
Origin of Language	[508]
His Political Theory interferes	[508]
Necessity of Speech exaggerated	[509]
Use of Names	[509]
Names Universal not Realities	[509]
How imposed	[510]
The Subject continued	[510]
Names differently imposed	[511]
Knowledge	[511]
Reasoning	[512]
False Reasoning	[512]
Its frequency	[513]
Knowledge of Fact not derived from Reasoning	[514]
Belief	[514]
Chart of Science	[515]
Analysis of Passions	[515]
Good and Evil relative Terms	[515]
His Paradoxes	[515]
His Notion of Love	[516]
Curiosity	[516]
Difference of Intellectual Capacities	[516]
Wit and Fancy	[517]
Differences in the Passions	[517]
Madness	[517]
Unmeaning Language	[517]
Manners	[517]
Ignorances and Prejudice	[518]
His Theory of Religion	[518]
Its supposed Sources	[518]
CHAPTER XXI.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Casuistical Writers	[521]
Importance of Confession	[521]
Necessity of Rules for the Confessor	[521]
Increase of Casuistical Literature	[521]
Distinction of subjective and objective Morality	[522]
Directory Office of the Confessor	[522]
Difficulties of Casuistry	[522]
Strict and Lax Schemes of it	[523]
Convenience of the latter	[523]
Favoured by the Jesuits	[523]
The Causes of this	[523]
Extravagance of the strict Casuists	[524]
Opposite Faults of Jesuits	[524]
Suarez, De Legibus	[524]
Titles of his Ten Books	[524]
Heads of the Second Book	[525]
Character of such Scholastic Treatises	[525]
Quotations of Suarez	[525]
His Definition of Eternal Law	[526]
Whether God is a Legislator	[526]
Whether God could permit or commend wrong Actions	[527]
English Casuists—Perkins—Hall	[527]
Selden, De Jure Naturali Juxta Hebræos	[528]
Jewish Theory of Natural Law	[528]
Seven Precepts of the Sons of Noah	[528]
Character of Selden’s Work	[528]
Grotius and Hobbes	[528]
Charron on Wisdom	[529]
La Mothe le Vayer—his Dialogues	[529]
Bacon’s Essays	[529]
Their Excellence	[530]
Feltham’s Resolves	[530]
Browne’s Regligio Medici	[531]
Selden’s Table Talk	[532]
Osborn’s Advice to his Son	[532]
John Valentine Andrax	[532]
Abandonment of Anti-Monarchical Theories	[533]
Political Literature becomes historical	[533]
Bellenden De Statu	[534]
Campanella’s Politics	[534]
La Mothe le Vayer	[534]
Naude’s Coups d’Etat	[534]
Patriarchal Theory of Government	[534]
Refuted by Suarez	[535]
His Opinion of Law	[535]
Bacon	[536]
Political Economy	[536]
Serra on the Means of obtaining Money without Mines	[537]
His Causes of Wealth	[537]
His Praise of Venice	[537]
Low Rate of Exchange not essential to wealth	[587]
Hobbes.—His Political Works	[538]
Analysis of his Three Treatises	[538]
Civil Jurists of this period	[543]
Suarez on Laws	[544]
Grotius—De Jure Belli et Pacis	[544]
Success of this Work	[544]
Its Originality	[545]
Its Motive and Object	[545]
His Authorities	[545]
Foundation of Natural Law	[546]
Positive Law	[546]
Perfect and Imperfect Rights	[546]
Lawful Cases of War	[546]
Resistance by Subjects unlawful	[547]
All Men naturally have Right of War	[547]
Right of Self-Defence	[548]
Its Origin and Limitations	[548]
Right of Occupancy	[549]
Relinquishment of it	[549]
Right over Persons—By Generation	[549]
By Consent	[549]
In Marriage	[549]
In Commonwealths	[549]
Right of Alienating Subjects	[549]
Alienation by Testament	[550]
Rights of Property by Positive Law	[550]
Extinction of Rights	[550]
Some Casuistical Questions	[550]
Promises	[550]
Contracts	[551]
Considered ethically	[551]
Promissory Oaths	[552]
Engagements of Kings towards Subjects	[552]
Public Treaties	[552]
Their Interpretation	[553]
Obligation to repair Injury	[553]
Rights by Law of Nations	[554]
Those of Ambassadors	[554]
Right of Sepulture	[554]
Punishments	[554]
Their Responsibility	[555]
Insufficient Causes of War	[556]
Duty of avoiding it	[556]
And Expediency	[556]
War for the sake of other Subjects	[556]
Allies	[556]
Strangers	[556]
None to Serve in an Unjust War	[556]
Rights in War	[557]
Use of Deceit	[557]
Rules and Customs of Nations	[557]
Reprisals	[557]
Declarations of War	[557]
Rights by law of nations over Enemies	[558]
Prisoners become Slaves	[558]
Rights of Postliminium	[558]
Moral Limitation of Rights in War	[558]
Moderation required as to spoil	[559]
And as to Prisoners	[559]
Also in Conquest	[559]
And in Restitution to right Owners	[559]
Promises to Enemies and Pirates	[559]
Treaties concluded by competent Authority	[560]
Matters relating to them	[561]
Truces and Conventions	[561]
Those of Private persons	[561]
Objections to Grotius made by Paley unreasonable	[561]
Reply of Mackintosh	[561]
Censures of Stewart	[562]
Answer to them	[562]
Grotius vindicated against Rousseau	[565]
His Arrangement	[565]
His Defects	[565]
CHAPTER XXII.
HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Low Estimation of the Seicentisti	[566]
Not quite so great as formerly	[566]
Praise of them by Rubbi	[566]
Also by Salfi	[566]
Adone of Marini	[567]
Its Character	[567]
And Popularity	[567]
Secchia Rapita of Tassoni	[568]
Chiabrera	[569]
His Followers	[569]
The Styles of Spanish Poetry	[570]
The Romances	[570]
The Brothers Argensola	[570]
Villegas	[571]
Quevedo	[571]
Defects of Taste in Spanish Verse	[571]
Pedantry and far-fetched Allusions	[572]
Gongora	[572]
The Schools formed by him	[573]
Malherbe	[573]
Criticisms upon his Poetry	[574]
Satires of Regnier	[574]
Racan—Maynard	[574]
Voiture	[574]
Sarrasin	[575]
Low state of German Literature	[575]
Literary Societies	[575]
Opitz	[575]
His Followers	[576]
Dutch Poetry	[576]
Spiegel	[576]
Hooft-Cats-Vondel	[577]
Danish Poetry	[577]
English Poets numerous in this age	[577]
Phineas Fletcher	[577]
Giles Fletcher	[578]
Philosophical Poetry	[578]
Lord Brooke	[578]
Denham’s Cooper’s Hill	[579]
Poets called Metaphysical	[579]
Donne	[580]
Crashaw	[580]
Cowley	[580]
Johnson’s Character of him	[580]
Narrative Poets—Daniel	[580]
Drayton’s Polyolbion	[581]
Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals	[581]
Sir John Beaumont	[582]
Davenant’s Gondibert	[582]
Sonnets of Shakspeare	[582]
The person whom they address	[583]
Sonnets of Drummond and others	[584]
Carew	[584]
Ben Jonson	[585]
Wither	[585]
Habington	[585]
Earl of Pembroke	[585]
Suckling	[586]
Lovelace	[586]
Herrick	[586]
Milton	[586]
His Comus	[586]
Lycidas	[587]
Allegro and Penseroso	[587]
Ode on the Nativity	[588]
His Sonnets	[588]
Anonymous Poetry	[588]
Latin Poets of France	[588]
In Germany and Italy	[588]
In Holland—Heinsius	[589]
Casimir Sarbievius	[589]
Barlæus	[589]
Balde—Greek Poems of Heinsius	[590]
Latin Poets of Scotland—Jonston’s Psalms	[590]
Owen’s Epigrams	[590]
Alabaster’s Roxana	[590]
May’s Supplement to Lucan	[590]
Milton’s Latin Poems	[591]
CHAPTER XXIII.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Decline of the Italian Theatre	[591]
Filli de Sciro	[592]
Translations of Spanish Dramas	[592]
Extemporaneous Comedy	[593]
Spanish Stage	[593]
Calderon—Number of his Pieces	[593]
His Comedies	[593]
La Vida es Sueno	[594]
A Secreto agravio secreta vengança	[595]
Style of Calderon	[595]
His Merits sometimes overrated	[596]
Plays of Hardy	[596]
The Cid	[597]
Style of Corneille	[598]
Les Horaces	[598]
Cimia	[598]
Polyeucte	[599]
Rodogune	[599]
Pompey	[599]
Heraclius	[599]
Nicomède	[600]
Faults and Beauties of Corneille	[600]
Le Menteur	[600]
Other French Tragedies	[600]
Wenceslas of Rotron	[600]
Popularity of the Stage under Elizabeth	[601]
Number of Theatres	[601]
Encouraged by James	[601]
General Taste for the Stage	[601]
Theatres closed by the Parliament	[602]
Shakspeare’s Twelfth Night	[602]
Merry Wives of Windsor	[603]
Measure for Measure	[604]
Lear	[604]
Timon of Athens	[604]
Pericles	[605]
His Roman Tragedies—Julius Cæsar	[606]
Antony and Cleopatra	[606]
Coriolanus	[606]
His Retirement and Death	[607]
Greatness of his Genius	[607]
His Judgment	[607]
His Obscurity	[608]
His Popularity	[608]
Critics on Shakspeare	[609]
Ben Jonson	[609]
The Alchemist	[609]
Volpone, or The Fox	[610]
The Silent Woman	[610]
Sad Shepherd	[611]
Beaumont and Fletcher	[611]
Corrupt State of their Text	[611]
The Maid’s Tragedy	[611]
Philaster	[612]
King and no King	[613]
The Elder Brother	[613]
The Spanish Curate	[613]
The Custom of the Country	[613]
The Loyal Subject	[613]
Beggar’s Bush	[613]
The Scornful Lady	[614]
Valentinian	[614]
The Two Noble Kinsmen	[615]
The Faithful Shepherdess	[615]
Rule a Wife, and have a Wife	[616]
Some other Plays	[616]
Origin of Fletcher’s Plays	[616]
Defects of their plots	[616]
Their Sentiments and Style Dramatic	[617]
Their Characters	[617]
Their Tragedies	[617]
Inferior to their Comedies	[618]
Their Female Characters	[618]
Massinger—Nature of his Dramas	[619]
His Delineations of Character	[619]
His Subjects	[619]
Beauty of His Style	[620]
Inferiority of his Comic Powers	[620]
Some of his Tragedies particularized	[620]
And of his other Plays	[620]
Ford	[621]
Shirley	[621]
Heywood	[622]
Webster	[622]
His Duchess of Malfy	[622]
Vittoria Corombona	[622]
CHAPTER XXIV.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Decline of Taste in Italy	[623]
Style of Galileo	[624]
Bentivoglio	[624]
Boccalini’s News from Parnassus	[624]
His Pietra del Paragone	[625]
Terrante Pallavicino	[625]
Dictionary Delia Crusca	[625]
Grammatical Works—Buonmattei—Bartoli	[626]
Tassoni’s Remarks on Petrarch	[626]
Galileo’s Remarks on Tasso	[626]
Sforza Pallavicino	[626]
And other Critical Writers	[626]
Prolusiones of Strada	[627]
Spanish Prose—Gracian	[627]
French Prose—Du Vair	[627]
Balzac	[628]
Character of his Writings	[628]
His Letters	[628]
Voiture—Hotel Rambouillet	[629]
Establishment of French Academy	[630]
Its objects and Constitution	[630]
It publishes a Critique on the Cid	[631]
Vaugelas’s Remarks on the French Language	[631]
La Mothe le Vayer	[632]
Legal Speeches of Patru	[632]
And of Le Maistre	[632]
Improvement in English Style	[633]
Earl of Essex	[633]
Knolles’s History of the Turks	[634]
Raleigh’s History of the World	[635]
Daniel’s History of England	[635]
Bacon	[635]
Milton	[636]
Clarendon	[636]
The Icon Basilice	[636]
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy	[637]
Earle’s Characters	[637]
Overbury’s Characters	[637]
Jonson’s Discoveries	[637]
Publication of Don Quixote	[638]
Its Reputation	[638]
New Views of its Design	[638]
Probably erroneous	[638]
Difference between the two Parts	[639]
Excellence of this Romance	[639]
Minor Novels of Cervantes	[639]
Other Novels—Spanish	[639]
And Italian	[639]
French Romances—Astrée	[639]
Heroic Romances—Gomberville	[640]
Calprenède	[640]
Scuderi	[641]
Argenis of Barclay	[641]
His Euphormis	[643]
Campanella’s City of the Sun	[643]
Few Books of Fiction in England	[643]
Mundus Alter et Idem of Hall	[644]
Godwin’s Journey to the Moon	[644]
Howell’s Dodona’s Grove	[644]
Adventures of Baron de Fænesle	[644]
CHAPTER XXV.
HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
State of Science in 16th Century	[645]
Tediousness of Calculations	[645]
Napier’s Invention of Logarithms	[645]
Their Nature	[645]
Property of Numbers discovered by Stifelius	[645]
Extended to Magnitudes	[646]
By Napier	[646]
Tables of Napier and Briggs	[646]
Kepler’s New Geometry	[647]
Its Difference from the Ancient	[647]
Adopted by Galileo	[648]
Extended by Cavalieri	[648]
Applied to the Ratios of Solids	[648]
Problem of the Cycloid	[648]
Progress of Algebra	[649]
Briggs—Girard	[649]
Harriott	[649]
Descartes	[650]
His Application of Algebra to Curves	[650]
Suspected Plagiarism from Harriot	[650]
Fermat	[651]
Algebraic Geometry not successful at first	[652]
Astronomy—Kepler	[652]
Conjectures as to Comets	[652]
Galileo’s Discovery of Jupiter’s Satellites	[653]
Other Discoveries by him	[653]
Spots of the Sun discovered	[653]
Copernican System held by Galileo	[654]
His Dialogues, and Persecution	[654]
Descartes alarmed by this	[655]
Progress of Copernican System	[655]
Descartes denies General Gravitation	[655]
Cartesian Theory of the World	[655]
Transits of Mercury and Venus	[656]
Laws of Mechanics	[656]
Statics of Galileo	[657]
His Dynamics	[657]
Mechanics of Descartes	[658]
Law of Motion laid down by Descartes	[658]
Also those of Compound Forces	[659]
Other Discoveries in Mechanics	[659]
In Hydrostatics and Pneumatics	[659]
Optics—Discoveries of Kepler	[660]
Invention of the Telescope	[660]
Of the Microscope	[660]
Antonio de Dominis	[660]
Dioptrics of Descartes—Law of Refraction	[661]
Disputed by Fermat	[661]
Curves of Descartes	[661]
Theory of the Rainbow	[661]
CHAPTER XXVI.
HISTORY OF SOME OTHER PROVINCES OF LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Aldrovandus	[662]
Clusius	[662]
Rio and Marcgraf	[662]
Jonston	[662]
Fabricius on the Language of Brutes	[663]
Botany—Columna	[664]
John and Gaspar Bauhin	[664]
Parkinson	[664]
Valves of the Veins discovered	[665]
Theory of the Blood’s Circulation	[665]
Sometimes ascribed to Servetus	[665]
To Columbus	[666]
And to Cæsalpin	[666]
Generally unknown before Harvey	[667]
His Discovery	[667]
Unjustly doubted to be Original	[667]
Harvey’s Treatise on Generation	[668]
Lacteals discovered by Asellius	[668]
Optical Discoveries of Scheiner	[669]
Medicine—Van Helmont	[669]
Diffusion of Hebrew	[669]
Language not studied in the best method	[669]
The Buxtorfs	[670]
Vowel Points rejected by Cappel	[670]
Hebrew Scholars	[671]
Chaldee and Syriac	[671]
Arabic	[671]
Erpenius	[671]
Golius	[671]
Other Eastern Languages	[672]
Purchas’s Pilgrim	[672]
Olearius and Pietro della Valle	[672]
Lexicon of Ferrari	[672]
Maps of Blaew	[672]
Davila and Bentivoglio	[673]
Mendoza’s Wars of Granada	[673]
Mezeray	[673]
English Historians	[673]
English Histories	[673]
Universities	[673]
Bodleian Library founded	[674]
Casaubon’s Account of Oxford	[674]
Catalogue of Bodleian Library	[674]
Continental Libraries	[675]
Italian Academies	[675]
The Lincei	[675]
Prejudice for Antiquity diminished	[676]
Browne’s Vulgar Errors	[677]
Life and Character of Peiresc	[677]
CHAPTER XXVII.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
James Frederic Gronovius	[678]
James Gronovius	[679]
Grævius	[679]
Isaac Vossius	[679]
Decline of German Learning	[679]
Spanheim	[679]
Jesuit Colleges in France	[679]
Port-Royal Writers—Lancelot	[679]
Latin Writers—Perizonius	[680]
Delphin Editions	[680]
Le Fevre and the Daciers	[680]
Henry Valois—Complaints of Decay of Learning	[680]
English Learning—Duport	[681]
Greek not much studied	[681]
Gataker’s Cinnus and Antoninus	[681]
Stanley’s Æschylus	[682]
Other English Philologers	[682]
Bentley	[682]
His Epistle to Mill	[682]
Dissertation on Phalaris	[682]
Disadvantages of Scholars in that Age	[683]
Thesauri of Grævius and of Gronovius	[683]
Fabretti	[684]
Numismatics, Spanheim—Vaillant	[684]
Chronology—Usher	[684]
Pezron	[685]
Marsham	[685]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Decline of Papal Influence	[685]
Dispute of Louis XIV. with Innocent XI.	[686]
Four Articles of 1682	[686]
Dupin on the ancient Discipline	[686]
Dupin’s Ecclesiastical Library	[687]
Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History	[687]
His Dissertations	[687]
Protestant Controversy in France	[688]
Bossuet’s Exposition of Catholic Faith	[688]
His Conference with Claude	[688]
Correspondence with Molanus and Leibnitz	[689]
His Variations of Protestant Churches	[690]
Anglican Writings against Popery	[690]
Taylor’s Dissuasive	[690]
Barrow—Stillingfleet	[690]
Jansenius	[691]
Condemnation of his Augustinus in France	[691]
And at Rome	[691]
The Jansenists take a Distinction	[692]
And are Persecuted	[692]
Progress of Arminianism	[692]
Courcelles	[693]
Limborch	[693]
Le Clerc	[693]
Sancroft’s Fur Prædestinatus	[693]
Arminianism in England	[694]
Bull’s Harmonia Apostolica	[694]
Hammond—Locke—Wilkins	[694]
Socinians in England	[695]
Bull’s Defensio Fidei Nicenæ	[695]
Not Satisfactory to all	[695]
Mystics	[696]
Fenelon	[696]
Change in the Character of Theological Literature	[696]
Freedom of many Writings	[696]
Thoughts of Pascal	[697]
Vindications of Christianity	[699]
Progress of Tolerant Principles	[700]
Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary	[700]
Locke’s Letter on Toleration	[700]
French Sermons	[701]
Bourdaloue	[701]
Compared with Bossuet	[702]
Funeral Discourses of Bossuet	[702]
Fléchier	[703]
English Sermons—Barrow	[703]
South	[704]
Tillotson	[704]
Expository Theology	[704]
Pearson on the Creed	[704]
Simon’s Critical Histories	[705]
CHAPTER XXIX.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Aristotelian Metaphysics	[705]
Their Decline. Thomas White	[706]
Logic	[706]
Stanley’s History of Philosophy	[707]
Gale’s Court of Gentiles	[707]
Cudworth’s Intellectual System	[707]
Its object	[708]
Sketch of it	[708]
His plastic nature	[708]
His account of old Philosophy	[708]
His Arguments against Atheism	[709]
More	[709]
Gassendi	[710]
His Logic	[710]
His Theory of Ideas	[710]
And of the Nature of the Soul	[710]
Distinguishes Ideas of Reflection	[711]
Also Intellect from Imagination	[711]
His Philosophy misunderstood by Stewart	[712]
Bernier’s Epitome of Gassendi	[713]
Process of Cartesian Philosophy	[713]
La Forge—Regis	[714]
Huet’s Censure of Cartesianism	[715]
Port-Royal Logic	[716]
Malebranche	[717]
His Style	[717]
Sketch of his Theory	[717]
Character of Malebranche	[724]
Compared with Pascal	[724]
Arnauld on True and False ideas	[725]
Norris	[725]
Pascal	[725]
Spinosa’s Ethics	[726]
Its general Originality	[726]
View of his Metaphysical Theory	[727]
Spinosa’s Theory of action and Passion	[731]
Character of Spinosism	[732]
Glanvil’s Scepsis Scientifica	[733]
His Plus Ultra	[734]
Dalgarno	[735]
Wilkins	[736]
Locke on Human Understanding	[736]
Its merits	[736]
Its Defects	[737]
Origin of Ideas according to Locke	[737]
Vague Use of the Word Idea	[738]
An Error as to Geometrical Figure	[739]
His Notions as to the Soul	[740]
And its Immateriality	[740]
His Love of Truth and Originality	[741]
Defended in two cases	[742]
His View of Lunatic Ideas	[742]
General Praise	[743]
Locke’s Conduct of Understanding	[743]
CHAPTER XXX.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Casuistry of the Jesuits	[744]
Pascal’s Provincial Letters	[744]
Their Truth questioned by some	[744]
Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium	[745]
Its Character and Defects	[745]
Cudworth’s immutable Morality	[745]
Nicole—La Placette	[746]
Other Writers	[746]
Moral System of Spinosa	[746]
Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturæ	[747]
Analysis of Prolegomena	[748]
His Theory expanded afterwards	[749]
Remarks on Cumberland’s Theory	[752]
Puffendorf’s Law of Nature and Nations	[753]
Analysis of this Work	[754]
Puffendorf and Paley compared	[757]
Rochefoucault	[757]
La Bruyère	[758]
Education—Milton’s Tractrate	[758]
Locke on Education—Its merits	[759]
And Defects	[759]
Fenelon on Female Education	[761]
Puffendorf’s Theory of Politics	[762]
Politics of Spinosa	[764]
His Theory of a Monarchy	[766]
Amelot de la Houssaye	[766]
Harrington’s Oceana	[766]
Patriarcha of Filmer	[767]
Sydney’s Discourses on Government	[767]
Locke on Government	[768]
Observations on this Treatise	[771]
Avis auz Refugiéz, perhaps by Bayle	[772]
Political Economist’s	[772]
Mun on Foreign Trade	[773]
Child on Trade	[773]
Locke on the Coin	[773]
Statistical Tracts	[774]
Works of Leibnitz on Roman Law	[775]
Civil Jurists—Godefroy—Domat	[775]
Noodt of Usury	[776]
Law of Nations—Puffendorf	[776]
CHAPTER XXXI.
HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Improved Tone of Italian Poetry	[776]
Filicaja	[777]
Guidi	[777]
Menzini	[778]
Salvator Rosa—Redi	[778]
Other Poets	[778]
Christina’s Patronage of Letters	[778]
Society of Arcadians	[778]
La Fontaine	[779]
Character of his Fables	[779]
Boileau: His Epistles	[780]
His Art of Poetry	[780]
Comparison with Horace	[780]
The Lutrin	[780]
General Character of his Poetry	[780]
Lyric Poetry lighter than before	[781]
Benserade	[781]
Chaulieu	[781]
Pastoral Poetry	[781]
Segrais	[781]
Deshouliéres	[781]
Fontenelle	[782]
Bad Epic Poems	[782]
German Poetry	[782]
Waller	[782]
Butler’s Hudibras	[783]
Paradise Lost—Choice of Subject	[783]
Open to some Difficulties	[783]
Its Arrangement	[783]
Characters of Adam and Eve	[784]
He owes less to Homer than the Tragedians	[784]
Compared with Dante	[784]
Elevation of his Style	[785]
His Blindness	[786]
His Passion for Music	[786]
Faults in Paradise Lost	[786]
Its Progress to Fame	[786]
Paradise Regained	[787]
Samson Agonistes	[787]
Dryden—His earlier Poems	[787]
Absalom and Achitophel	[788]
Mac Flecknoe	[788]
The Hind and Panther	[789]
Its Singular Fable	[789]
Its Reasoning	[789]
The Fables	[789]
His Odes—Alexander’s Feast	[790]
His Translation of Virgil	[790]
Decline of Poetry from the Restoration	[790]
Some Minor Poets enumerated	[790]
Latin Poets of Italy	[791]
Ceva	[791]
Sergardi	[791]
Of France—Quillet	[791]
Menage	[792]
Rapin on Gardens	[792]
Santeul	[793]
Latin Poetry in England	[793]
CHAPTER XXXII.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Italian and Spanish Drama	[793]
Racine’s first Tragedies	[793]
Andromaque	[794]
Britannicus	[795]
Berenice	[795]
Bajazet	[795]
Mithridate	[796]
Iphigénie	[796]
Phèdre	[797]
Esther	[797]
Athalie	[797]
Racine’s Female Characters	[798]
Racine compared with Corneille	[798]
Beauty of his Style	[798]
Thomas Corneille—His Ariane	[799]
Manlius of La Fosse	[799]
Molière	[799]
L’Avare	[799]
L’Ecole des Femmes	[800]
Le Misanthrope	[800]
Les Femmes Savantes	[801]
Tartuffe	[801]
Bourgeois Gentilhomme—George Dandin	[801]
Character of Molière	[802]
Les Plaideurs of Racine	[802]
Regnard—Le Joueur	[802]
His Other Plays	[803]
Quinault—Boursault	[803]
Dancourt	[803]
Brueys	[804]
Operas of Quinault	[804]
Revival of the English Theatre	[804]
Change of Public Taste	[804]
Its Causes	[805]
Heroic Tragedies of Dryden	[805]
His later Tragedies	[805]
Don Sebastian	[806]
Spanish Friar	[806]
Otway	[806]
Southern	[807]
Lee	[807]
Congreve	[807]
Comedies of Charles II.’s Reign	[807]
Wycherley	[808]
Improvement after the Revolution	[808]
Congreve	[808]
Love for Love	[808]
His other Comedies	[808]
Farquhar—Vanbrugh	[809]
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Low State of Literature in Italy	[809]
Crescimbeni	[810]
Age of Louis XIV. in France	[810]
Fontenelle—his Character	[810]
His Dialogues of the Dead	[811]
Those of Fenelon	[811]
Fontenelle’s Plurality of Worlds	[811]
His History of Oracles	[811]
St. Evremond	[812]
Madame de Sevigné	[812]
The French Academy	[812]
French Grammars	[813]
Bouhour’s Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène	[813]
Attacked by Barbier d’Ancour	[814]
La Manière de Bien Penser	[815]
Rapin’s Reflections on Eloquence and Poetry	[815]
His Parallel’s of Great Men	[815]
Bossu on Epic Poetry	[816]
Fontenelle’s Critical Writings	[816]
Preference of French Language to Latin	[816]
General Superiority of Ancients disputed	[816]
Charles Perrault	[816]
Fontenelle	[817]
Boileau’s Defence of Antiquity	[817]
First Reviews—Journal des Sçavans	[817]
Reviews Established by Bayle	[818]
Reviews Established by Le Clerc	[818]
Leipsic Acts	[819]
Bayle’s Thoughts on the Comet	[819]
His Dictionary	[819]
Baillet—Morhof	[820]
The Ana	[820]
English Style in this Period	[820]
Hobbes	[821]
Cowley	[821]
Evelyn	[821]
Dryden	[821]
His Essay on Dramatic Poesy	[822]
Improvements in his Style	[823]
His Critical Character	[823]
Rymer on Tragedy	[823]
Sir William Temple’s Essays	[824]
Style of Locke	[824]
Sir George Mackenzie’s Essays	[824]
Andrew Fletcher	[824]
Walton’s Complete Angler	[824]
Wilkins’ New World	[824]
Antiquity defended by Temple	[825]
Wotton’s Reflection’s	[825]
Quevedo’s Visions	[825]
French Heroic Romances	[826]
Novels of Madame La Fayette	[826]
Scarron’s Roman Comique	[826]
Cyrano de Bergerac	[827]
Segrais	[827]
Perrault	[827]
Hamilton	[827]
Télémaque of Fenelon	[827]
Deficiency of English Romances	[828]
Pilgrim’s Progress	[828]
Turkish Spy	[829]
Chiefly of English Origin	[830]
Swift’s Tale of a Tub	[831]
CHAPTER XXXIV.
HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND OTHER LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Reasons for omitting Mathematics	[831]
Academy del Cimento	[831]
Royal Society	[832]
Academy of Sciences at Paris	[832]
State of Chemistry	[832]
Becker	[833]
Boyle	[833]
His Metaphysical Works	[833]
Extract from one of them	[833]
His Merits in Physics and Chemistry	[834]
General Character of Boyle	[834]
Of Hooke and Others	[834]
Lemery	[835]
Slow Progress of Zoology	[835]
Before Ray	[835]
His Synopsis of Quadrupeds	[835]
Merits of this Work	[835]
Redi	[836]
Swammerdam	[836]
Lister	[836]
Comparative Anatomy	[836]
Botany	[837]
Jungius	[837]
Morison	[837]
Ray	[837]
Rivinus	[838]
Tournefort	[838]
Vegetable Physiology	[839]
Grew	[839]
His Anatomy of Plants	[840]
He discovers the Sexual System	[840]
Camerarius confirms this	[840]
Predecessors of Grew	[840]
Malpighi	[840]
Early Notions of Geology	[840]
Burnet’s Theory of Earth	[840]
Other Geologists	[841]
Protogæa of Leibnitz	[841]
Circulation of Blood Established	[842]
Willis—Vieussens	[842]
Malpighi	[842]
Other Anatomists	[842]
Medical Theories	[843]
Polyglott of Walton	[843]
Hottinger	[844]
Spencer	[844]
Bochart	[844]
Pococke	[844]
D’Herbelot	[844]
Hyde	[844]
Maps of the Sansons	[844]
De Lisle’s Map of the World	[845]
Voyages and Travels	[845]
Historians	[845]
De Solis	[845]
Memoirs of De Retz	[845]
Bossuet on Universal History	[846]
English Historical Works	[846]
Burnet	[846]
General Character of 17th Century	[846]
Conclusion	[847]

INTRODUCTION
TO THE
LITERATURE OF EUROPE
IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1600 TO 1650.

Sect. I.

Decline of merely philological, especially Greek, Learning—Casaubon—Viger—Editions of Greek and Latin Classics—Critical Writings—Latin Style—Scioppius—Vossius—Successive Periods of modern Latinists.

Learning of 17th century less philological. 1. In every period of literary history, if we should listen to the complaints of contemporary writers, all learning and science have been verging towards extinction. None remain of the mighty, the race of giants is no more; the lights that have been extinguished burn in no other hands; we have fallen on evil days, when letters are no longer in honour with the world, nor are they cultivated by those who deserve to be honoured. Such are the lamentations of many throughout the whole sixteenth century; and with such do Scaliger and Casaubon greet that which opened upon them. Yet the first part of the seventeenth century may be reckoned eminently the learned age; rather however in a more critical and exact erudition with respect to historical fact, than in what is strictly called philology, as to which we cannot, on the whole, rank this so high as the preceding period. Neither Italy nor Germany maintained its reputation, which, as it has been already mentioned, had begun to wane towards the close of the sixteenth century. The same causes were b work, the same preference of studies very foreign to polite letters, metaphysical philosophy, dogmatic theology, patristic or mediæval ecclesiastical history, or, in some countries, the physical sciences, which were rapidly gaining ground. And to these we must add a prevalence of bad taste, even among those who had some pretensions to be reckoned scholars. Lipsius had set an example of abandoning the purest models; and his followers had less sense and taste than himself. They sought obsolete terms from Pacuvius and Plautus, they affected pointed sentences, and a studied conciseness of period, which made their style altogether dry and jejune.[1] The universities, and even the gymnasia or schools of Germany, grew negligent of all the beauties of language. Latin itself was acquired in a slovenly manner, by help of modern books, which spared the pains of acquiring any subsidiary knowledge of antiquity. And this neglect of the ancient writers in education caused even eminent scholars to write ill, as we perceive in the supplements of Freinshemius to Curtius and Livy.[2]

[1] Biogr. Univ. art. Grævius. Eichhorn, iii. 1. 320.

[2] Eichhorn, 326.

Popularity of Comenius. 2. A sufficient evidence of this is found in the vast popularity which the writings of Comenius acquired in Germany. This author, a man of much industry, some ingenuity, and little judgment, made himself a colossal reputation by his Orbis Sensualium Pictus, and still more by his Janua Linguarum Reserata, the latter published in 1631. This contains, in 100 chapters subdivided into 1000 paragraphs, more than 9300 Latin words, exclusive, of course, of such as recur. The originality of its method consists in weaving all useful words into a series of paragraphs, so that they may be learned in a short time, without the tediousness of a nomenclature. It was also intended to blend a knowledge of things with one of words.[3] The Orbis Sensualium Pictus has the same end. This is what has since been so continually attempted in books of education, that some may be surprised to hear of its originality. No one, however, before Comenius seems to have thought of this method. It must, unquestionably, have appeared to facilitate the early acquirement of knowledge in a very great degree; and even with reference to language, if a compendious mode of getting at Latin words were the object, the works of Comenius would answer the purpose beyond those of any classical author. In a country where Latin was a living and spoken tongue, as was in some measure the case with Germany, no great strictness in excluding barbarous phrases is either practicable or expedient. But, according to the received principles of philological literature, they are such books as every teacher would keep out of the hands of his pupils. They were, nevertheless, reprinted and translated in many countries; and obtained a general reception, especially in the German empire, and similarly circumstanced kingdoms.[4]

[3] Biogr. Univ.

[4] Baillet, Critiques Grammairiens, part of the Jugemens des Sçavans (whom I cite by the number or paragraph, on account of the different editions), No. 634, quotes Lancelot’s remark on the Janua Linguarum, that it requires a better memory than most boys possess to master it, and that commonly the first part is forgotten before the last is learned. It excites disgust in the scholar, because he is always in a new country, every chapter being filled with words he has not seen before; and the successive parts of the book have no connection with one another.

Morhof, though he would absolutely banish the Janua Linguarum from all schools where good Latinity is required, seems to think rather better of the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, as in itself a happy idea, though the delineations are indifferent, and the whole not so well arranged as it might be. Polyhistor. lib. ii. c. 4.

Decline of Greek learning. 3. The Greek language, meantime, was thought unnecessary, and few, comparatively speaking, continued to prosecute its study. In Italy it can merely be said that there were still professors of it in the universities; but no one Hellenist distinguishes this century. Most of those who published editions of Greek authors in Germany, and they were far from numerous, had been formed in the last age. The decline was progressive; few scholars remained after 1620, and a long blank ensued, until Fabricius and Kuster restored the study of Greek near the end of the century. Even in France and Holland, where many were abundantly learned, and some, as we shall see, accomplished philologers, the Greek language seems to have been either less regarded, or at least less promoted by eminent scholars, than in the preceding century.[5]

[5] Scaliger, even in 1602, says: Quis hodie nescit Græcè? sed quis est doctus Græcè? Non dubito esse aliquot, sed paucos, et quos non novi ne de nomine quidem. Te unum novi et memoriæ avorum et nostri sæculi Græcè doctissimum, qui unus in Græcis præstiteris, quæ post renatas apud nos bonas literas omnes nunquam præstare potuissent. He goes on to speak of himself, as standing next to Casaubon, and the only competent judge of the extent of his learning; qui de præstantia doctrinæ tuæ certo judicare possit, ego aut unicus sum, aut qui cæteros hac in re magno intervallo vinco. Scal. Epist. 72.

Casaubon. 4. Casaubon now stood on the pinnacle of critical renown. His Persius in 1605, and his Polybius in 1609, were testimonies to his continued industry in this province.[6] But with this latter edition the philological labours of Casaubon came to an end. In 1610 he accepted the invitation of James I., who bestowed upon him, though a layman, a prebend in the church of Canterbury, and, as some, perhaps erroneously, have said, another in that of Westminster.[7] He died in England within four years after, having consumed the intermediate time in the defence of his royal patron against the Jesuits, and in writing Animadversions on the Annals of Baronius; works ill-suited to his peculiar talent, and in the latter of which he is said to have had but little success. He laments, in his epistles, the want of leisure for completing his labours on Polybius; the king had no taste but for theology, and he found no library in which he could pursue his studies.[8] “I gave up,” he says, “at last, with great sorrow, my commentary on Polybius, to which I had devoted so much time, but the good king must be obeyed.”[9] Casaubon was the last of the great scholars of the sixteenth century. Joseph Scaliger, who, especially in his recorded conversation, was very sparing of praise, says expressly, “Casaubon is the most learned man now living.” It is not impossible that he meant to except himself; which would by no means be unjust, if we take in the whole range of erudition; but in the exactly critical knowledge of the Greek language, Casaubon had not even a rival in Scaliger.

[6] The translation that Casaubon has here given of Polybius has generally passed for excellent, though some have thought him a better scholar in Greek than in Latin, and consequently not always able to render the sense as well as he conceived it. Baillet, n. 902. Schweighauser praises the annotations, but not without criticism, for which a later editor generally finds room in an earlier. Reiske, he says, had pointed out many errors.

[7] The latter is contradicted by Beloe, Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v., p. 126, on the authority of Le Neve’s Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ.

[8] Jacent curæ Polybianæ, et fortasse æternum jacebunt, neque enim satis commodus ad illa studia est locus. Epist. 705. Plura adderem, nisi omni librorum præsidio meorum deficerer. Quare etiam de commentariis Polybianis noli meminisse, quando rationes priorum meorum studiorum hoc iter mirificè conturbavit, ut vix sine suspirio ejus incepti possim meminisse, quod tot vigiliis mihi constitit. Sed neque adest mea bibliotheca, neque ea studia multum sunt ad gustum illius, cujus solius, quamdiu hic sum futurus, habenda mihi ratio. Ep. 704 (Feb. 1611). Rex optimus atque ευσεβεστατος rebus theologicis ita delectatur, ut aliis curis literariis non multum operæ impendat. Ep. 872. Ego quid hic agam, si cupis scire, hoc unum respondebo, omnia priora studia mea funditus interiisse. Nam maximus rex et liberalissimus unico genere literarum sic capitur, ut suum et suorum ingenia in illo detineat. Ep. 753.

[9] Decessi gemens a Polybiano commentario, quem tot laboribus concinnaveram; sed regi optimo parendum erat. Ep. 854. Feb. 1613.

Viger de Idiotismis. 5. A long period ensued, during which no very considerable progress was made in Greek literature. Few books occur before the year 1650 which have obtained a durable reputation. The best known, and, as I conceive, by far the best of a grammatical nature, is that of Viger de Idiotismis præcipuis Græcæ Linguæ, which Hoogeveen and Zeunius successively enlarged in the last century. Viger was a Jesuit of Rouen, and the first edition was in 1632. It contains, even as it came from the author, many valuable criticisms, and its usefulness to a Greek scholar is acknowledged. But, in order to determine the place of Viger among grammarians, we should ascertain by comparison with preceding works, especially the Thesaurus of Stephens, for how much he is indebted to their labours. He would probably, after all deductions, appear to merit great praise. His arrangement is more clear, and his knowledge of syntax more comprehensive, than that of Caninius or any other earlier writer; but his notions are not unfrequently imperfect or erroneous, as the succeeding editors have pointed out. In common with many of the older grammarians, he fancied a difference of sense between the two aorists, wherein even Zeunius has followed him.[10]

[10] An earlier treatise on Greek particles by Devarius, a Greek of the Ionian Islands, might have been mentioned in the last volume. It was republished by Reusmann, who calls Devarius, homo olim haud ignobilis, at hodie pæne neglectus. He is thought too subtle in grammar, but seems to have been an excellent scholar. I do not perceive that Viger has borrowed from him.

Weller’s Greek grammar. 6. In a much lower rank, we may perhaps next place Weller, author of a Greek grammar, published in 1638, of which its later editor, Fischer, says that it has always stood in high repute as a school-book, and been frequently reprinted; meaning, doubtless, in Germany. There is nothing striking in Weller’s grammar; it may deserve praise for clearness and brevity; but, in Vergara, Caninius, and Sylburgius, there is much more instruction for those who are not merely schoolboys. What is most remarkable is, that Weller claims as his own the reduction of the declensions to three, and of the conjugations to one; which, as has been seen in a former chapter,[11] is found in the grammar of Sylburgius, and is probably due to Ramus. This is rather a piece of effrontery, as he could scarcely have lighted by coincidence on both these innovations. Weller has given no syntax; what is added in Fischer’s edition is by Lambert Bos.

[11] Page 239.

Labbe and others. 7. Philip Labbe, a French Jesuit, was a laborious compiler, among whose numerous works not a few relate to the grammar of the Greek language. He had, says Niceron, a wonderful talent in multiplying title pages; we have fifteen or sixteen grammatical treatises from him, which might have been comprised in two or three ordinary volumes. Labbe’s Regulæ Accentuum, published in 1635, was once, I believe, of some repute; but he has little or nothing of his own.[12] The Greek grammars published in this age by Alexander Scot and others are ill-digested, according to Lancelot, without order or principle, and full of useless and perplexing things;[13] and that of Vossius, in 1642, which is only an improved edition of that of Clenardus, appears to contain little which is not taken from others.[14] Erasmus Schmidt is said by Eichhorn to be author of a valuable work on Greek dialects;[15] George Pasor is better known by his writings on the Hellenistic dialect, or that of the Septuagint and New Testament. |Salmasius de Lingua Hellenistica.| Salmasius, in his Commentarius de Hellenistica, (Leyden, 1643), has gone very largely into this subject. This, he says, is a question lately agitated, whether there be a peculiar dialect of the Greek Scriptures; for, in the last age, the very name of Hellenistic was unknown to scholars. It is not above half a century old. It was supposed to be a Hebrew idiom in Greek words; which, as he argues elaborately and with great learning, is not sufficient to constitute a distinct dialect, none of the ancients having ever mentioned one by this name. This is evidently much of a verbal dispute; since no one would apply the word to the scriptural Greek, in the same sense that he does to the Doric and Attic. Salmasius lays down two essential characteristics of a dialect: one, that it should be spoken by people differing in locality; another, that it should be distinguishable by single words, not merely by idiom. A profusion of learning is scattered all round, but not pedantically or impertinently; and this seems a very useful book in Greek or Latin philology. He may perhaps be thought to underrate the peculiarities of language in the Old and New Testament, as if they were merely such as passed current among the contemporary Greeks. The second part of this Commentary relates to the Greek dialects generally, without reference to the Hellenistic. He denies the name to what is usually called the common dialect, spoken, or at least written, by the Greeks in general after the time of Alexander. This also is of course a question of words; perhaps Salmasius used a more convenient phraseology than what is often met with in grammarians.

[12] Niceron, vol. xxv.

[13] Baillet, n. 706.

[14] Id. n. 711.

[15] Geschichte der Cultur, iii. 325.

8. Editions of Greek classics are not so numerous as in the former period. The Pindar of Erasmus Schmidt, in 1614, and the Aristotle of Duval, in 1619, may be mentioned: the latter is still in request as a convenient and complete edition. Meursius was reckoned a good critical scholar, but his works as an editor are not very important. |Greek editions—Savile’s Chrysostom.| The chief monument of his philological erudition is the Lexicon Græco-Barbarum, a glossary of the Greek of the lower empire. But no edition of a Greek author published in the first part of the seventeenth century is superior, at least in magnificence, to that of Chrysostom by Sir Henry Savile. This came forth, in 1612, from a press established at Eton by himself, provost of that college. He had procured types and pressmen in Holland, and three years had been employed in printing the eight volumes of this great work; one, which both in splendour of execution, and in the erudition displayed in it by Savile, who had collected several manuscripts of Chrysostom, leaves immeasurably behind it every earlier production of the English press. The expense, which is said to have been eight thousand pounds, was wholly defrayed by himself, and the tardy sale of so voluminous a work could not have reimbursed the cost.[16] Another edition, in fact, by a Jesuit, Fronto Ducæus (Fronton le Duc), was published at Paris within two years afterwards, having the advantage of a Latin translation, which Savile had imprudently waived. It has even been imputed to Ducæus, that, having procured the sheets of Savile’s edition from the pressmen while it was under their hands, he printed his own without alteration. But this seems an apocryphal story.[17] Savile had the assistance, in revising the text, of the most learned coadjutors he could find in England.

[16] Beloe’s Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v., p. 103. The copies sold for 9l. each; a sum equal to nearly 30l. at present, and from the relative wealth of the country, to considerably more. What wonder that the sale was slow? Fuller, however, tells us, that when he wrote, almost half a century afterwards, the book was become scarce. Chrysostomus, says Casaubon, a Savilio editur privata impensa, animo regio. Ep. 738 (apud Beloe). The principal assistants of Savile were, Matthew Bust, Thomas Allen, and especially Richard Montagu, afterwards celebrated in our ecclesiastical history as bishop of Chichester, who is said to have corrected the text before it went to the press. As this is the first work of learning, on a great scale, published in England, it deserves the particular commemoration of those to whom we owe it.

[17] It is told by Fuller, and I do not know that it has any independent confirmation. Savile himself says of Fronto Ducæus, “Vir doctissimus, et cui Chrysostomus noster plurimum debet.” Fuller, it may be observed, says that the Parisian edition followed Savile’s “in a few months,” whereas the time was two years; and, as Brunet (Manuel du Libraire) justly observes, there is no apparent necessity to suppose an unfair communication of the sheets, even if the text should be proved to be copied.

Greek learning in England. 9. A very few more Greek books were printed at Eton soon afterwards; and though that press soon ceased, some editions of Greek authors, generally for schools, appeared in England before 1650. One of these, the Poetæ Minores of Winterton, is best known, and has sometimes been reprinted; it does little credit to its original editor, the text being exceedingly corrupt, and the notes very trifling. The Greek language, however, was now much studied;[18] the age of James and Charles was truly learned; our writers are prodigal of an abundant erudition, which embraces a far wider range of authors than are now read; the philosophers of every class, the poets, the historians and orators of Greece, to whom few comparatively had paid regard in the days of Elizabeth, seem as familiar to the miscellaneous writers of her next successors, as the fathers of the church are to the theologians. A few, like Jeremy Taylor, are equally copious in their libations from both streams. But though thus deeply read in ancient learning, our old scholars were not very critical in philology.

[18] It might appear, at first sight, that Casaubon intended to send his son Meric to Holland, under the care of Heinsius, because he could not get a good classical education in England. Cupio in Græcis, Latinis, et Hebraicis literis ipsum serio exerceri. Hoc in Anglia posse fieri sperare non possumus: nam hic locupletissima sunt collegia, sed quorum ratio toto genere diversa est ab institutis omnium aliorum collegiorum. Ep. 962 (1614). But possibly he meant that, on account of his son’s foreign birth, he could not be admitted on the foundation of English colleges, though the words do not clearly express this. At the king’s command, however, Meric was sent to Oxford. One of Casaubon’s sons went to Eton school; literis dat operam in gymnasio Etoniensi. Ep. 737 (apud Beloe’s Anecdotes; I had overlooked the passage). Theological learning, in the reign of James, opposed polite letters and philology, Est in Anglia, says Casaubon, theologorum ingens copia; eo enim fere omnes studia sua referunt. Ep. 762. Venio ex Anglia (Grotius writes in 1613), literarum ibi tenuis est merces; theologi regnant, leguleii rem faciunt; unus ferme Casaubonus habet fortunam satis faventem, sed, ut ipse judicat, minus certam. Ne huic quidem locus fuisset in Anglia ut literatori, theologum induere debuit. Epist. Grot. p. 751.

Latin editions—Torrentius. 10. In Latin criticism, the pretensions of the seventeenth century are far more considerable than in Greek. The first remarkable edition, however, that of Horace by Torrentius, a Belgian ecclesiastic, though it appeared in 1602, being posthumous, belongs strictly to the preceding age. It has been said that Dacier borrowed much for his own notes from this editor; but Horace was so profusely illustrated in the sixteenth century, that little has been left for later critics, except to tamper, as they have largely done, with his text. This period is not generally conspicuous for editions of Latin authors; but some names of high repute in grammatical and critical lore belong to it.

Gruter. 11. Gruter, a native of Antwerp, who became a professor in several German universities, and finally in that of Heidelberg, might have been mentioned in our history of the sixteenth century, before the expiration of which some of his critical labours had been accomplished. Many more belong to the first twenty years of the present. No more diligent and indefatigable critic ever toiled in that quarry. His Suspiciones, an early work, in which he has explained and amended miscellaneous passages, his annotations on the Senecas, on Martial, on Statius, on the Roman historians, as well as another more celebrated compilation which we shall have soon to mention, bear witness to his immense industry. In Greek he did comparatively but little; yet he is counted among good scholars in that language. All others of his time, it has been said, appear mere drones in comparison with him.[19] Scaliger indeed, though on intimate terms with Gruter, in one of his usual fits of spleen, charges him with a tasteless indifference to the real merit of the writers whom he explained, one being as good as another for his purpose, which was only to produce a book.[20] In this art Gruter was so perfect, that he never failed to publish one every year, and sometimes every month.[21] His eulogists have given him credit for acuteness and judgment, and even for elegance and an agreeable variety; but he seems not to have preserved much repute except for his laborious erudition.

[19] Baillet, n. 483. Bayle. Niceron, vol. ix.

[20] Non curat utrum charta sit cacata, modo libros multos excudat. Scalig. secunda.

[21] Bayle, note i.

Heinsius. 12. Daniel Heinsius, conspicuous as secretary of the synod of Dort, and a Latin poet of distinguished name, was also among the first philologers of his age. Many editions of Greek and Latin writers, of annotations upon them, Theocritus, Hesiod, Maximus Tyrius, Aristotle, Horace, Terence, Silius, Ovid, attest his critical skill. He is praised for a judicious reserve in criticism, avoiding the trifles by which many scholars had wearied their readers, and attending only to what really demanded the aid of a critic, as being corrupt or obscure. His learning was very extensive and profound, so that in the panegyrical tone of the times, he is set above all the living, and almost above all the dead.[22]

[22] Baillet, n. 517.

Grotius. 13. Grotius contributed much to ancient philology. His editions of Aratus, Stobæus, the fragments of the lost Greek dramas, Lucan and Tacitus are but a part of those which he published. In the power of illustrating a writer by parallel or resembling passages from others, however remote, his taste and fondness for poetry, as much as his vast erudition, have made him remarkable. In mere critical skill, he was not quite so great a master of the Greek as of the Latin language; nor was he equal to restoring the text of the dramatic poets.

Rutgersius, Reinesius, Barthius. 14. The Variæ Lectiones of Rutgersius, in 1618, whose premature death cut off a brilliant promise of erudition, are in six books, almost entirely devoted to emendation of the text, in such a miscellaneous and desultory series of criticisms, as the example of Turnebus and other scholars had rendered usual.[23] Reinesius, a Saxon physician, in 1640 put forth a book with the same title, a thick volume of about 700 pages, of multifarious learning, chiefly, but not exclusively, classical. He is more interpretative, and less attentive to restore corrupted texts than Rutgersius.[24] The Adversaria of Gaspar Barthius are better known. This work is in 60 books, and extends to about 1500 pages in folio. It is exactly like those of Turnebus and Muretus, an immense repertory of unconnected criticisms and other miscellaneous erudition. The chapters exceed in number the pages, and each chapter contains several articles. There is, however, more connection, alphabetical or otherwise, than in Turnebus; and they are less exclusively classical, many relating to mediæval and modern writers. The sixtieth book is a commentary on a part of Augustin de Civitate Dei. It is difficult to give a more precise notion of Barthius; he is more æsthetic than Turnebus, but less so than Muretus; he explains and corrects fewer intricate texts than the former, but deals more in parallel passages and excursive illustrations.[25] Though Greek appears more than in Turnebus, by far the greater part of Barthius’s Adversaria relates to Latin, in the proportion of at least fifteen to one. A few small poems are printed from manuscripts for the first time. Barthius, according to Morhof, though he sometimes explains authors very well, is apt to be rash in his alterations, hasty in his judgments, and has too much useless and frivolous matter. Bayle is not more favourable. Barthius published an edition of Statius, and another of Claudian.

[23] “This work,” says Niceron (vol. xxxii.), “is in esteem: the style is neat and polite, the thoughts are just and refined; it has no more quotations than the subject requires.”

[24] Bayle observes of the writings of Reinesius in general, that “good judges of literature have no sooner read some pages, but they place him above those philologers who have only a good memory, and rank him with critics who go beyond their reading and know more than books have taught them. The penetration of their understanding makes them draw consequences, and form conjectures, which lead them to discover hidden treasures. Reinesius was one of these, and made it his chief business to find out what others had not said.”

[25] The following are the heads of the fourth chapter of the first book, which may serve as a specimen of the Adversaria: Ad Victoris Uticensis librum primum notæ et emendationes. Limites. Collimitia. Quantitas. H. Stephanus notatur. Impendere. Totum. Omnimodè. Dextrales. Asta. Francisii Balduini audacia castigatur. Tormenta antiqua. Liguamen Arx capitis. Memoriæ. Cruciari. Balduinus denuo aliquoties notatur. It is true that all this farrago arises out of one passage in Victor of Utica, and Barthius is far from being so desultory as Turnebus: but 3000 columns of such notes make but a dictionary without the help of the alphabet. Barthius tells us himself that he had finished two other volumes of Adversaria, besides correcting the first. See the passage in Bayle, note K. But he does not stand on very high ground as a critic, on account of the rapidity with which he wrote, and, for the same reason, has sometimes contradicted himself. Bayle. Baillet, n. 528. Niceron, vol. vii. Morhof, lib. v. 1. 10.

Other critics—English. 15. Rigault, or Rigaltius, Petit, Thysius, and several more, do honour to France and the Low countries during this period. Spain, though not strong in classical philology, produced Ramiresius de Prado, whose Πεντηκονταρχος, sive quinquaginta militum ductor, 1612, is but a book of criticism with a quaint title.[26] In Latin Literature we can hardly say that England made herself more conspicuous than in Greek. The notes of John Bond on Horace, published in 1606, are properly a work of the age of Elizabeth: the author was long a schoolmaster in that reign. These notes are only little marginal scholia for the use of boys of no great attainments; and in almost every instance, I believe, taken from Lambinus. This edition of Horace, though Antony Wood calls the author a most noted critic and grammarian, has only the merit of giving the observations of another concisely and perspicuously. Thomas Farnaby is called by Baillet one of the best scholiasts, who says hardly anything useless, and is very concise.[27] He has left notes on several of the Latin poets. It is possible that the notes are compiled, like those of Bond, from the foreign critics. Farnaby also was a schoolmaster, and schoolmasters do not write for the learned. He has however been acknowledged on the continent for a diligent and learned man. Wood says he was ’the chief grammarian, rhetorician, poet, Latinist, and Grecian of his time; and his school was so much frequented, that more churchmen and statesmen issued thence than from any school taught by one man in England.”[28]

[26] This has been ascribed by some to his master Sanctius, author of the Minerva, Ramirez himself having been thought unequal to such remarks as we find in it. Baillet, n. 527.

[27] N. 521.

[28] Athenæ Oxonienses, vol. iii.

Salmasius. 16. But the greatest in this province of literature was Claude Saumaise, best known in the Latin form Salmasius, whom the general suffrage of his compeers placed at their head. An incredible erudition, so that it was said, what Salmasius did not know, was beyond the bounds of knowledge, a memory such as none but those great scholars of former times seem to have possessed, a life passed, naturally enough, in solitary labour, were sufficient to establish his fame among the learned. His intellectual strength has been more questioned; he wrote, it has been alleged, on many subjects that he did not well understand, and some have reduced his merit to that of a grammatical critic, without altogether rating this so highly as the world has done.[29] Salmasius was very proud, self-confident, disdainful, and has consequently fallen into many errors, and even contradictions, through precipitancy. In his controversy with Milton, for which he was little fitted, he is rather feeble, and glad to escape from the severity of his antagonist by a defence of his own Latinity.[30] The works of Salmasius are numerous, and on very miscellaneous subjects; among the philological, his Annotations on the Historiæ Augustæ Scriptores seem to deserve mention. But the most remarkable, besides the Commentary on the Hellenistic Dialect, of which an account has been given, is the Plinianæ Exercitationes, published in 1629. These remarks, nominally on Pliny, are, in the first instance, on Solinus. Salmasius tells us that he had spent much time on Pliny; but finding it beyond the powers of one man to write a commentary on the whole Natural History of that author, he had chosen Solinus, who is a mere compiler from Pliny, and contains nothing from any other source. The Plinianæ Exercitationes is a mass of learning on the geography and natural history of Pliny in more than 900 pages, following the text of the Polyhistor of Solinus.[31]

[29] Baillet, n. 511, is excessively severe on Salmasius; but the homage due to his learning by such an age as that in which he lived cannot be extenuated by the censure of a man like Baillet, of extensive, but rather superficial attainments, and open to much prejudice.

[30] Milton began the attack by objecting to the use of persona for an individual man; but in this mistaken criticism uttered himself the solecism vapulandum. See Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. This expression had previously been noticed by Vavasseur.

[31] Nemo adeo ut propriam, suumque veluti regnum, sibi criticen vindicatum ivit, ac Claudius Salmasius, qui, quemadmodum nihil unquam scripsit, in quo non insignia multa artis criticæ vestigia deprehendas, ita imprimis, ut auctores cum notis et castigationibus absolutissimis editos taceamus, vasto illo Plinianarum Exercitationum opere, quantum in eo eruditionis genere valeret demonstratum dedit. Morhof. lib. v. c. 1. § 12. The Jesuits, Petavius and Harduin, who did not cordially praise any Protestant, charged this book with passing over real difficulties, while a mass of heterogeneous matter was foisted in. Le Clerc (or La Croze) vindicates Salmasius against some censures of Harduin in Bibl. Univ. vol. iv.

Good writers of Latin. 17. It had been the desire of those who aspired to reputation for taste and eloquence to write well in Latin, the sole language, on this side of the Alps and Pyrenees, to which the capacity of choice and polished expression was conceded. But when the French tongue was more cultivated and had a criticism of its own, this became the natural instrument of polite writers in France, and the Latin fell to the merely learned who neglected its beauties. In England it had never been much studied for the purposes of style; and though neither in Germany nor the Low Countries it was very customary to employ the native language, the current Latin of literature was always careless and often barbarous. Even in Italy the number of good writers in that language was now very scanty. Two deserve to be commemorated with praise, both historians of the same period. The History and Annals of Grotius, in which he seems to have emulated, with more discretion than some others, the nervous brevity of Tacitus, though sometimes not free from a certain hardness and want of flow, nor equal, consequently, in elegance to some productions of the sixteenth century, may be deemed a monument of vigorous and impressive language. The Decades of Famianus Strada, a Roman Jesuit, contain a history of the Flemish war, not written certainly in imitation of Tacitus, whom the author depreciated, but with more classical spirit than we usually find in that age. Scarcely any Latin, however, of this period is equal to that of Barclay in the Argenis and Euphormio. His style, though rather diffuse, and more florid than that of the Augustan age, is perhaps better suited to his subjects, and reminds us of Petronius Arbiter, who was probably his model.

Scioppius. 18. Of the grammatical critics, whose attention was solely turned to the purity of Latin style, two are conspicuous, Gaspar Scioppius and Gerard Vossius. The first, one of those restless and angry spirits whose hand is against all the world, lived a long life of controversy and satire. His productions, as enumerated by Niceron, mostly anonymous, are about one hundred; twenty-seven of which, according to another list, are grammatical.[32] The Protestants, whom he had abandoned, and the Jesuits whom he would not join, are equally the objects of his anger. In literature, he is celebrated for the bitterness of his attacks on Cicero, whom he spared as little as he did his own contemporaries. But Scioppius was an admirable master of the Latin language. All that is remembered of his multifarious publications relates to this. |His Philosophical Grammar.| We owe to him a much improved edition of the Minerva of Sanctius. His own Grammatica Philosophica, (Milan, 1628,) notwithstanding its title, has no pretentions to be called anything more than an ordinary Latin grammar. In this I observed nothing remarkable but that he denies the gerund and supine to be parts of the verb, considering the first as passive participles, and the second as nouns substantive; a theory which seems erroneous.

[32] Niceron, vol. xxxv. Biog. Univ.

His Infamia Famiani. 19. The Infamia Famiani of Scioppius was written against Famianus Strada, whom he hated both as a Jesuit, and as one celebrated for the beauty of his style. This book serves to show how far those who wrote with some eloquence, as Strada certainly did, fell short of classical purity. The faults pointed out are often very obvious to those who have used good dictionaries. Scioppius is however so fastidious as to reject words employed by Seneca, Tacitus, and even Phædrus, as of the silver age; and sometimes probably is wrong in his dogmatic assertion of a negative, that no good authority can be found.

Judicium de Stylo Historico. 20. But his most considerable work is one called Judicium de Stylo Historico, subjoined to the last, and published after his death, in 1650. This treatise consists chiefly of attacks on the Latin style of Thuanus, Lipsius, Casaubon, and other recent authors; but in the course of it we find the remarks of a subtle and severe observer on the ancients themselves. The silver age he dates from the latter years of Augustus, placing even Ovid within it. The brazen he carries up to Vespasian. In the silver period he finds many single words as well as phrases not agreeable to the usage of more ancient authors. As to the moderns the Transalpine writers, he says, speaking as an Italian, are always deficient in purity; they mingle the phraseology of different ages as preposterously as if they were to write Greek in a confusion of dialects; they affect obscurity, a broken structure of periods, a studied use of equivocal terms. This is particularly perceived in the school of Lipsius, whose own faults, however, are redeemed by many beauties even of style.[33] The Italians, on the contrary, he proceeds to say, read nothing but what is worthy of imitation, and shun every expression that can impair the clearness and purity of a sentence. Yet even in Manutius and in the Jesuit Maffei, he finds instances of barbarism, much more in the French and German scholars of the sixteenth age; expressing contempt upon this account for his old enemy, Joseph Scaliger. Thuanus, he says, is full of modern idioms; a crime not quite unpardonable, when we remember the immensity of his labour, and the greater importance of other objects of it that he had in view.

[33] Transalpinis hominibus ex quotidiano Latini sermonis inter ipsos usu, multa sive barbaræ, sive plebeiæ ac deterioris notæ, sic adhærescere solent, ut postea cum stylum arripuere, de Latinitate eorum dubitare nequaquam iis in mentem veniat. Inde fit ut scripta eorum plerumque minus puritatis habeant, quamvis gratia et venustas in iis minime desideretur. Nam hæc natura duce melius fiebant, quam arte aut studio. Accedit alia causa cur non æquè pura sit multorum Transalpinorum oratio, quod nullo ætatis discrimine ac delectu in autorum lectione versantur, et ex omnium commixtione varium quoddam ac multiforme pro suo quisque ingenio dicendi genus effingunt, contempto hoc Fabii monito: “Diu non nisi optimus quisque et qui credentem sibi minime fallat, legendus est, sed diligenter ac pæne ad scribendi solicitudinem; nec per partes modo scrutanda omnia, sed perlectus liber utique ex integro resumendus.” Itaque genus illud corruptæ orationis, seu κακοζηλιας, effugere nequeunt, quod κοινισμον vocant, quæ est quædam mista ex variarum linguarum ratione oratio, ut si Atticis Dorica, Ionica, Æolica etiam dicta confundas; cui simile est si quis sublimia humilibus, vetera novis, poetica vulgaribus, Sallustiana Tullianis, æneæ et ferreæ ætatis vocabula aureis et argenteis misceat, qui Lipsio deductisque ab eo viris, solennis et jam olim familiaris, est morbus. In quibus hoc amplius, verba maxime impropria, comprehensionem obscuram, compositionem fractam, aut in frustula concisam, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerilem captationem passim animadvertas. Magnis tamen, non nego, virtutibus vitia sua Lipsius redimit, imprimis acumine, venere, salibus (ut excellens viri ingenium ferebat) tum plurimis lectissimis verbis loquendique modis, ex quibus non tam facultatem bene scribendi, ejusque, quod melius est, intellectum ei deesse, quam voluntatem, quo minus rectiora malit, ambitiuscule, plaususque popularis studio præpediri intelligas. Italorum longè dispar ratio. Primum enim non nisi optimum legere et ad imitandum sibi proponere solent; quod judicio quo cæteras nationes omnium consensu superant, imprimis est consentaneum. Deinde nihil non faciunt, ut evitent omnia, unde aliquid injucundæ et contaminandæ orationis periculi ostenditur. Latinè igitur nunquam loquuntur, quod fieri vix posse persuasum habeant, quin quotidianus ejus linguæ usus ad instar torrentis lutulentus fluat, et cujusque modi verborum sordes secum rapiat, quæ postea quodam familiaritatis jure sic se scribentibus ingerant, ut etiam diligentissimos fallant, et haud dubie pro Latinis habeantur. Hoc eorum consilium cum non intelligant Transalpini, id eorum inscitiæ perperam assignant. Sic rectè Paulo Manutio usu venit, ut quoniam vix tria verba Latina in familiari sermone proferre poterat, eam Germani complures, qui loquentem audituri ad eum venerunt, vehementer præ se contemnerent. Huic tamen nemo qui sanus sit ad puritatis et elegantiæ Latinæ summam quicquid defuisse dixerit, p. 65.

Gerard Vossius de Vitiis sermonis. 21. Gerard Vossius, a far greater name in general literature than Scioppius, contributed more essentially to these grammatical rules; and to him, perhaps, rather than to any other one man, we may refer the establishment of as much correctness of writing as is attainable in a dead language. Besides several works on rhetoric and poetry, which, as those topics were usually treated in ages of more erudition than taste or philosophy, resolved themselves into philological disquisitions, looking only to the language of the ancient writers, we have several more strictly within that province. The long use of Latin in writings on modern subjects, before the classical authors had been studied, had brought in a host of barbarisms, that even yet were not expelled. His treatise De Vitiis Sermonis et Glossematis Latino-barbaris is in nine books; four published in 1645, during the author’s life; five in 1685. The former are by far the most copious. It is a very large collection of words in use among modern writers, for which there is no adequate authority. Of these many are plainly barbarous, and taken from the writers of the middle ages, or at best from those of the fifth and sixth centuries. Few of such would be used by any tolerable scholar. He includes some which, though in themselves good, have a wrong sense given to them. Words however occur, concerning which one might be ignorant without discredit, especially before the publication of this treatise, which has been the means of correcting the ordinary dictionaries.

22. In the five posthumous books, which may be mentioned in this place, having probably been written before 1650, we find chiefly what the author had forgotten to notice in the former, or had since observed. But the most valuable part relates to the “falso suspecta,” which fastidious critics have unreasonably rejected, generally because they do not appear in the Augustan writers. Those whom he calls “Nizoliani verius quam Ciceroniani,” disapproved of all words not found in Cicero.[34] It is curious to perceive, as Vossius shows us, how many apparently obvious words do not occur in Cicero; yet it would be mere affectation to avoid them. This is perhaps the best part of Vossius’s treatise.

[34] Paulus Manutius scrupled to use words on the authority of Cicero’s correspondents, such as Cælius or Pollio; a ridiculous affectation, especially when we observe what Vossius has pointed out, that many common words do not occur in Cicero. It is amazing to see the objections of these Ciceronian critics.

His Aristarchus. 23. We are indebted to Vossius for a still more important work on grammar, the Aristarchus, sive de Arte Grammatica, which first appeared in 1635. This is in seven books; the first treats of grammar in general, and especially of the alphabet; the second of syllables, under which head he dwells at great length on prosody;[35] the third (which, with all the following, is separately entitled De vocum Analogia) of words generally, and of the genders, numbers, and cases of nouns. The same subject occupies the fourth book. In the fifth, he investigates verbs; and in the sixth, the remaining parts of speech. The last book relates to syntax. This work is full of miscellaneous observations, placed for the most part alphabetically under each chapter. It has been said that Vossius has borrowed almost everything in this treatise from Sanctius and Scioppius. If this be true, we must accuse him of unfairness; for he never mentions the Minerva. But the edition of this grammar by Scioppius was not published till after the death of Vossius. Salmasius extolled that of the latter above all which had been published.[36]

[35] In this we find Vossius aware of the rule brought to light by Dawes, and now familiar, that a final vowel is rarely short before a word beginning with s and a mute consonant.

[36] Tuum de grammatica à te accepi exactissimum in hoc genere opus, ac cui nullum priorum aut prisci ævi aut nostri possit comparari. Apud Blount in Vossio. Daunou says of the grammatical and rhetorical writings of Vossius: Ces livres se recommandent par l’exactitude, par la méthode, par une littérature très étendue. Gibert en convient, mais il trouve de la prolixité. D’autres pourraient n’y voir qu’une instruction sérieuse, souvent austère, et presque toujours profitable. Biogr. Univ.

Progress of Latin Style. 24. In later times the ambition of writing Latin with accuracy and elegance has so universally declined, that the diligence of Scioppius and Vossius has become hardly valuable except to schoolmasters. It is, however, an art not contemptible, either in respect to the taste and discernment for which it gives scope in composition, or for the enhanced pleasure it reflects on the pages of ancient writers. We may distinguish several successive periods in its cultivation since the first revival of letters. If we begin with Petrarch, since before his time there was no continuous imitation of classical models, the first period will comprise those who desired much, but reached little, the writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, destitute of sufficient aids, and generally incapable of clearly discriminating the pure from the barbarous in Latin. A better æra may be dated from Politian; the ancients were now fully known, and studied with intense labour; the graces of style were frequently caught; yet something was still wanting to its purity and elegance. At the end of a series of improvements, a line marked by Bembus, Sadolet, and Longolius, we arrive at a third period, which we may call that of Paulus Manutius, the golden age of modern Latinity. The diligence in lexicography of Robert Stephens, of Nizolius, of Manutius himself, and the philological treatises of their times, gave a much greater nicety of expression; while the enthusiasm with which some of the best writers emulated the ancients inspired them with a sympathetic eloquence and grace. But towards the end of the century, when Manutius, and Muretus, and Maphæus, and others of that school had been removed by death, an age of worse taste and perhaps of more negligence in grammar came on, yet one of great scholars, and of men powerful even in language; the age of Lipsius, of Scaliger, of Grotius. This may be called the fourth period; and in this apparently the purity of the language, as well as its beauty, rather declined. Finally, the publications of Scioppius and Vossius mark the beginning of another period, which we may consider as lasting to the present day. Grammatical criticism had nearly reached the point at which it now stands; the additions, at least, which later philologers, Perizonius, Burman, Bentley, and many others have made, though by no means inconsiderable, seem hardly sufficient to constitute a distinct period, even if we could refer them properly to any single epoch. And the praise of eloquent composition has been so little sought after the close of the years passed in education, or attained only in short and occasional writings, which have left no durable reputation behind, that we may consider the Latin language, for this purpose, to have silently expired in the regions of polite literature.

Sect. II.

Antiquities of Rome and Greece—Gruter—Meursius—Chronology.

Gruter’s collection of inscriptions. 25. The antiquities of Greece and Rome, though they did not occupy so great a relative space in the literature of this period as of the sixteenth century, were, from the general increase of erudition, not less frequently the subject of books than before. This field indeed is so vast, that its harvest had in many parts been scarcely touched, and in others very imperfectly gathered by those we have already commemorated, the Sigonii, the Manutii, the Lipsii, and their fellow-labourers in ancient learning. The present century opened with a great work, the Corpus Inscriptionum by Gruter. A few endeavours had long before been made [37] to collect the ancient inscriptions, of which the countries once Roman, and especially Italy, were full. The best work hitherto was by Martin Smetius of Bruges, after whose death his collection of inscriptions was published at Leyden in 1588, under the superintendence of Dousa and Lipsius.

[37] See p. 160.

Assisted by Scaliger. 26. Scaliger first excited his friend Gruter to undertake the task of giving an enlarged edition of Smetius.[38] He made the index for this himself, devoting the labour of the entire morning for ten months (a summo mane ad tempus cœnæ) to an occupation from which so little glory could accrue. “Who,” says Burman, “would not admire the liberal erudition and unpretending modesty of the learned of that age, who, worn as they were by those long and weary labours of which they freely complain in their correspondence with each other, though they knew that such occupations as these could gain for them no better name than that of common clerks or mere drudges, yet hesitated not to abandon for the advantage of the public those pursuits which a higher fame might be expected to reward? Who in these times would imitate the generosity of Scaliger, who, when he might have ascribed to himself this addition to the work of Smetius, gave away his own right to Gruter, and declined to let his name be prefixed either to the index which he had wholly compiled, or to the many observations by which he corrects and explains the inscriptions, and desired, in recompence for the industry of Gruter, that he alone should pass with posterity as the author of the work?”[39] Gruter, it is observed by Le Clerc, has committed many faults: he often repeats the same inscriptions, and still more frequently has printed them from erroneous copies; his quotations from authors, in whom inscriptions are found, sometimes want exactness; finally, for which he could not well be answerable, a vast many have since been brought to light.[40] In consequence of the publication of Gruter’s Inscriptions, the learned began with incredible zeal to examine old marbles for inscriptions, and to insert them in any work that had reference to antiquity. Reinesius collected as many as make a respectable supplement.[41] But a sort of æra in lapidary learning was made by Selden’s description, in 1629, of the marbles, brought by the Earl of Arundel from Greece, and which now belong to the university of Oxford. These contain a chronology of the early times of Greece, on which great reliance has often been placed, though their antiquity is not accounted very high in comparison with those times.

[38] Burman in Præfatione ad Gruteri Corpus Inscript. Several of Scaliger’s epistles prove this, especially the 405th addressed to Gruter.

[39] Id. p. 6.

[40] Bibl. Choisie, vol. xiv., p. 51. Burman, ubi supra, gives a strange reason for reprinting Gruter’s Inscriptions with all their blemishes, even the repetitions; namely, that it was convenient to preserve the number of pages which had been so continually referred to in all learned works, the simple contrivance of keeping the original numeration in the margin not having occurred to him.

[41] Burman, ubi supra.

Works on Roman antiquity. 27. The Jesuit Donati published, in 1633, Roma vetus et nova, which is not only much superior to anything previously written on the antiquities of the city, but is preferred by some competent judges, to the later and more known work of Nardini. Both these will be found, with others of an earlier date, in the third and fourth volumes of Grævius. The tenth volume of the same collection contains a translation from the history of the Great Roads of the Roman Empire, published in French by Nicolas Bergier in 1622; ill arranged, it has been said, and diffuse, according to the custom of his age, but inferior. Grævius declares, in variety of learning to no one work that he has inserted in his numerous volumes. Guther, whose treatise on the pontifical law of Rome appears in the fifth volume, was, says the editor, “a man of various and extended reading, who had made extracts from every class of writers, but had not always digested his learning or weighed what he wrote. Hence much has been found open to criticism in his writings, and there remains a sufficient harvest of the same kind for any one who should care to undertake it.” The best work on Roman dress is by Octavius Ferrarius, published partly in 1642, partly in 1654. This has been called superficial by Spanheim; but Grævius, and several other men of learning, bestow more praise.[42] The Isiac tablet, covered with emblems of Egyptian antiquity, was illustrated by Pignoria, in a work bearing different titles in the successive editions from 1605; and his explanations are still considered probable. Pignoria’s other writings were also in high esteem with the antiquaries.[43] It would be tedious to enumerate the less important productions of this kind. A minute and scrupulous criticism, it has been said, distinguished the antiquaries of the seventeenth century. Without, perhaps, the comprehensive views of Sigonius and Panvinius, they were more severely exact. Hence forgery and falsehood stood a much worse chance of success than before. Annius of Viterbo had deceived half the scholars of the preceding age. But when Inghirami, in 1637, published his Etruscarum Antiquitatum Fragmenta, monuments of Etruscan antiquity, which he pretended to have discovered at Volterra, the imposture was speedily detected.[44]

[42] Niceron, v. 80. Tiraboschi, xi. 300.

[43] Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Univ.

[44] Salfi, Continuation de Ginguéné xi. 358.

Geography of Cluverius. 28. The Germania Antiqua of Cluverius was published in 1616, and his Italia Antiqua in 1624. These form a sort of epoch in ancient geography. The latter, especially, has ever since been the great repertory of classical illustration on this subject. Cluverius, however, though a man of acknowledged ability and erudition, has been thought too bold an innovator in his Germany, and to have laid down much on his own conjecture.[45]

[45] Blount. Niceron, vol. xxi. Biogr. Univ.

Meursius. 29. Meursius, a native of Holland, began when very young, soon after the commencement of the century, those indefatigable labours on Grecian antiquity, by which he became to Athens and all Hellas what Sigonius had been to Rome and Italy. Niceron has given a list of his publications, sixty-seven in number, including some editions of ancient writers, but for the most part confined to Illustrations of Greek usages; some also treat of Roman. The Græcia feriata, on festivals and games; the Orchestra, on dancing; the Eleusinia, on that deeply interesting and in his time almost untouched subject, the ancient mysteries, are collected in the works of this very learned person, or scattered through the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum of Gronovius. “Meursius,” says his editor, “was the true and legitimate mystagogue to the sanctuarius of Greece.” But his peculiar attention was justly shown to “the eye of Greece,” Athens. Nothing that bore on her history, her laws and government, her manners and literature, was left by him. The various titles of his works seem almost to exhaust Athenian Antiquity: De Populis Atticæ—Athenæ Atticæ—Cecropia—Regnum Atticum—Archontes Athenienses—Pisistratus—Fortuna Attica—Atticarum Lectionum Libri IV.—Piraeus—Themis Attica—Solon—Areopagus— Panathenæa—Eleusinia—Theseus—Æschylus—Sophocles et Euripides. It is manifest that all later learning must have been built upon his foundations. No one was equal to Meursius in this province; but the second place is perhaps due to Ubbo Emmius, professor of Greek at Groningen, for his Vetus Græcia Illustrata, 1626. |Ubbo Emmius.| The facilities of elucidating the topography of that country were by no means such as Cluverius had found for Italy; and in fact little was done in respect to local investigation in order to establish a good ancient geography till recent times. Samuel Petit, a man placed by some in the very first list of the learned, published in 1635 a commentary on the Athenian laws, which is still the chief authority on that subject.

30. In an age so peculiarly learned as this part of the seventeenth century, it will be readily concluded that many books must have a relation to the extensive subject of this section; though the stream of erudition had taken rather a different course, and watered the provinces of ecclesiastical and mediæval more than those of heathen antiquity. But we can only select one or two which treat of chronology, and that chiefly because we have already given a place to the work of Scaliger.

Chronology of Lydiat. Calvisius. 31. Lydiat was the first who, in a small treatise on the various calendars, 1605, presumed in several respects to differ from that of the dictator of literature. He is in consequence reviled in Scaliger’s Epistles as the most stupid and ignorant of the human race, a portentous birth of England, or at best an ass and a beetle, whom it is below the dignity of the author to answer.[46] Lydiat was however esteemed a man of deep learning, and did not flinch from the contest. His Emendatio Temporum, published in 1609, is a more general censure of the Scaligerian chronology, but it is rather a short work for the extent of the subject. A German, Seth Calvisius, on the other hand, is extolled to the skies by Scaliger for a chronology founded on his own principles. These are applied in it to the whole series of history, and thus Calvisius may be said to have made an epoch in historical literature. He made more use of eclipses than any preceding writer; and his dates are reckoned as accurate in modern as in ancient history.[47]

[46] Ante aliquot dies tibi scripsi, ut scirem ex te quis sit Thomas Lydiat iste, quo monstro nullum portentosius in vestra Anglia natum puto; tanta est inscitia hominis et confidentia. Ne semel quidem illi verum dicere accidit. And again:—Non est similis morio in orbe terrarum. Paucis asinitatem ejus perstringam ut lector rideat. Nam in tam prodigiosè imperitum scarabæum scribere, neque nostræ dignitatis est, neque otii. Scalig. Epist. 291. Usher, nevertheless, if we may trust Wood, thought Scaliger worsted by Lydiat. Ath. Oxon. iii. 187.

[47] Blount. Biogr. Univ.

Petavius. 32. Scaliger, nearly twenty years after his death, was assailed by an adversary whom he could not have thought it unworthy of his name to repel. Petau, or Petavius, a Jesuit of uncommon learning, devoted the whole of the first of two large volumes, entitled Doctrina, Temporum, 1627, to a censure of the famous work De Emendatione Temporum. This volume is divided into eight books; the first on the popular year of the Greeks; the second on the lunar; the third on the Ægyptian, Persian, and Armenian; the fourth on the solar year; the fifth treats of the correction of the paschal cycle and the calendar; the sixth discusses the principles of the lunar and solar cycles; the seventh is entitled an introduction to computations of various kinds, among which he reckons the Julian period; the eighth is on the true motions of the sun and moon, and on their eclipses. In almost every chapter of the first five books, Scaliger is censured, refuted, reviled. It was a retribution upon his own arrogance; but published thus after his death, with no justice done to his great learning and ability, and scarcely the common terms of respect towards a mighty name, it is impossible not to discern in Petavius both an envious mind, and a partial desire to injure the fame of a distinguished protestant. His virulence indeed against Scaliger becomes almost ridiculous. At the beginning of each of the first five books, he lays it down as a theorem to be demonstrated, that Scaliger is always wrong on the particular subjects to which it relates; and at the close of each, he repeats the same in geometrical form as having been proved. He does not even give him credit for the invention of the Julian period, though he adopts it himself with much praise, positively asserting that it is borrowed from the Byzantine Greeks.[48] The second volume is in five books, and is dedicated to the historical part of chronology, and the application of the principles laid down before. A third volume in 1630, relating to the same subjects, though bearing a different title, is generally considered as part of the work. Petavius, in 1633, published an abridgment of his chronological system, entitled Rationarium Temporum, to which he subjoined a table of events down to his own time, which in the larger work had only been carried to the fall of the empire. This abridgment is better known, and more generally useful than the former.

[48] Lib. vii., c. 7.

Character of this work. 33. The merits of Petavius as a chronologer have been differently appreciated. Many, of whom Huet is one, from religious prejudices rejoiced in what they hoped to be a discomfiture of Scaliger, whose arrogance had also made enemies of a large part of the literary world. Even Vossius, after praising Petavius, declares that he is unwilling to decide between men who have done for chronology more than any others.[49] But he has not always been so favourably dealt with. Le Clerc observes, that as Scaliger is not very perspicuous, and Petavius has explained the former’s opinions before he proceeds to refute them, those who compare the two will have this advantage, that they will understand Scaliger better than before.[50] This is not very complimentary to his opponent. A modern writer of respectable authority gives us no reason to consider him victorious. “Though the great work of Petavius on chronology,” says M. St. Martin, “is certainly a very estimable production, it is not less certain that he has in no degree contributed to enlarge the boundaries of the science. The author shows too much anxiety to refute Scaliger, whether right or wrong; his sole aim is to destroy the edifice, perhaps too boldly elevated by his adversary. It is not unjust to say that Petavius has literally done nothing for positive chronology; he has not even determined with accuracy what is most incontestable in this science. Many of the dates which he considers as well established, are still subject to great doubt, and might be settled in a very different manner. His work is clear and methodical; and, as it embraces the whole of chronology, it might have become of great authority: but these very qualities have rendered it injurious to the science. He came to arrest the flight which, through the genius of Scaliger, it was ready to take, nor has it made the least progress ever since; it has produced nothing but conjectures, more or less showy, but with nothing solid and undeniable for their basis.”[51]

[49] Vossius apud Niceron, xxxvii. 111. Dionysius Petavius permaulta post Scaligerum optime observavit. Sed nolim judicium interponere inter eos, quorum uterque præclare adeo de chronologia meritus est, ut nullis plus hæc scientia debeat.... Qui sine affectu ac partium studio conferre volet quæ de temporibus scripsere, conspiciet esse ubi Scaligero major laus debeatur, comperiet quoque ubi longe Petavio malit assentiri; erit etiam ubi ampliandum videatur; imo ubi nec facile veritas à quoquam possit indagari. The chronology of Petavius was animadverted upon by Salmasius with much rudeness, and by several other contemporaries engaged in the same controversy. If we were to believe Baillet, Petavius was not only the most learned of the order of Jesuits, but surpassed Salmasius himself de plusieurs coudées. Jugemens des Sçavans, n. 513. But to judge between giants we should be a little taller ourselves than most are. Baillet, indeed, quotes Henry Valois for this preference of Petavius to any other of his age, which, in other words, is much the same as to call him the most learned man that ever lived; and Valois was a very competent judge. The words, however, are found in a funeral panegyric.

[50] Bibl. Choisie, ii. 186. A short abstract of the Petavian scheme of chronology will be found in this volume of Le Clerc.

[51] Biogr. Univ. art. Petavius.

CHAPTER XIX.

HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1600 TO 1650.

Claim of Popes to temporal Power—Father Paul Sarpi—Gradual Decline of papal Power—Unpopularity of Jesuits—Controversy of Catholics and Protestants—Deference of some of the latter to Antiquity—Wavering in Casaubon—Still more in Grotius—Calixtus—An opposite School of Theologians—Daillé—Chillingworth—Hales—Rise of the Arminian Controversy—Episcopius—Socinians—Question as to Rights of Magistrates in Religion—Writings of Grotius on this Subject—Question of Religious Toleration—Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying—Theological Critics and Commentators—Sermons on Donne—and Taylor—Deistical Writers—English Translation of the Bible.

Temporal supremacy of Rome.

1. The claim of the Roman see to depose sovereigns was like the retractile claws of some animals, which would be liable to injury were they not usually sheathed. If the state of religion in England and France towards the latter part of the sixteenth century required the assertion of these pretended rights, it was not the policy of a court, guided as often by prudence as by zeal or pride, to keep them for ever before the eyes of the world. Clement VIII. wanted not these latter qualities, but they were restrained by the former; and the circumstances in which the new century opened, did not demand any open collision with the civil power. Henry IV. had been received back into the bosom of the church; he was now rather the ally, the favoured child of Rome, than the object of proscription. Elizabeth again was out of the reach of any enemy but death, and much was hoped from the hereditary disposition of her successor. The temporal supremacy would therefore have been left for obscure and unauthorised writers to vindicate, if an unforeseen circumstance had not called out again its most celebrated champions. After the detection of the gunpowder conspiracy, an oath of allegiance was imposed in England, containing a renunciation, in strong terms, of the tenet that princes excommunicated by the pope might be deposed or murdered by their subjects. None of the English catholics refused allegiance to James; and most of them probably would have felt little scruple at taking the entire oath, which their arch-priest, Blackwell, had approved. But the see of Rome interfered to censure those who took the oath; and a controversy singularly began with James himself in his “Apology for the Oath of Allegiance.” Bellarmin answered, in 1610, under the name of Matthew Tortus; and the duty of defending the royal author was devolved on one of our most learned divines, Lancelot Andrews, who gave to his reply the quaint title, Tortura Torti.[52] But this favourite tenet of the Vatican was as ill fitted to please the Gallican as the English church. Barclay, a lawyer of Scottish family, had long defended the rights of the crown of France against all opponents. His posthumous treatise on the temporal power of the pope with respect to sovereign princes was published at London in 1609. Bellarmin answered it next year in the ultra-montane spirit which he had always breathed; the parliament of Paris forbade the circulation of his reply.[53]

[52] Biogr. Britann. art. Andrews. Collier’s Ecclesiastical History. Butler’s English Catholics, vol. i. Matthew Tortus was the almoner of Bellarmin, whose name he thought fit to assume as a very slight disguise.

[53] Il pretesto, says Father Paul of Bellarmin’s book, è di scrivere contra Barclajo; ma il vero fine si vede esser per ridurre il papa al colmo dell omnipotente. In questo libro non si tratta altro, che il suddetto argumento, e più di venti cinque volte è replicato, che quando il papa giudica un principe indegno per sua colpa d’aver governo overo inetto, ò pur conosce, che per il bene della chiesa sia cosa utile, lo può privare. Dice più volte, che quando il papa comanda, che non sia ubbidito ad un principe privato da lui, non si può dire, che comandi che principe non sia ubbidito, ma che privata persona, perchè il principe privato dal papa non è più principe. E passa tanto inanzi, che viene à dire, il papa può disponere secondo che giudica ispediente de’ tutti i beni di qual sivoglia Christiano, ma tutto sarebbe niente, se solo dicesse che tale è la sua opinione; dice, ch’è un articolo della fede catholica, ch’è eretico, chi non sente così, e questo con tanta petulantia, che non vi si può aggiungere. Lettere di Sarpi, 50.

Contest with Venice. 2. Paul V. was a pope imbued with the arrogant spirit of his predecessors, Paul IV. and Pius V.; no one was more prompt to exercise the despotism which the Jesuits were ready to maintain. After some minor disputes with the Italian states, he came, in 1605, to his famous conflict with the republic of Venice, on the very important question of the immunity of ecclesiastics from the civil tribunals. Though he did not absolve the subjects of Venice from their allegiance, he put the state under an interdict, forbidding the celebration of divine offices throughout its territory. The Venetian clergy, except the Jesuits and some other regulars, obeyed the senate rather than the pope. The whole is matter of known history. In the termination of this dispute, it has been doubted which party obtained the victory; but in the ultimate result and effect upon mankind, we cannot, it seems, well doubt that the see of Rome was the loser.[54] |Father Paul Sarpi.| Nothing was more worthy of remark, especially in literary history, than the appearance of one great man, Fra Paolo Sarpi, the first who, in modern times and in a Catholic country, shook the fabric not only of papal despotism, but of ecclesiastical independence and power. For it is to be observed that in the Venetian business, the pope was contending for what were called the rights of the church, not for his own supremacy over it. Sarpi was a man of extraordinary genius, learning, and judgment: his physical and anatomical knowledge was such as to have caused at least several great discoveries to be assigned to him;[55] his reasoning was concise and cogent; his style perspicuous and animated. A treatise “Delle Materie Beneficiarie,” in other words, on the rights, revenues, and privileges, in secular matters, of the ecclesiastical order, is a model in its way. The history is so short and yet so sufficient, the sequence so natural and clear, the proofs so judiciously introduced, that it can never be read without delight and admiration of the author’s skill. And this is more striking to those who have toiled at the verbose books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where tedious quotations, accumulated, not selected, disguise the argument they are meant to confirm. Except the first book of Machiavel’s History of Florence, I do not remember any earlier summary of facts so lucid and pertinent to the object. That object was, with Father Paul, neither more nor less than to represent the wealth and power of the church as ill-gotten and excessive. The Treatise on Benefices led the way, or rather was the seed thrown into the ground that ultimately produced the many efforts both of the press and of public authority to break down ecclesiastical privileges.[56]

[54] Ranke is the best authority on this dispute, as he is on all other matters relating to the papacy in this age, vol. ii., p. 324.

[55] He was supposed to have discovered the valves of the veins, the circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction of the pupil, the variation of the compass. A quo, says Baptista Porta of Sarpi, aliqua didicisse non solum fateri non erubescimus, sed gloriamur, cum eo doctiorem, subtiliorem, quotquot adhuc videre contigerit, neminem cognovimus ad encyclopædiam. Magia Naturalis, lib. vii., apud Ranke.

[56] A long analysis of the Treatise on Benefices will be found in Dupin, who does not blame it very much. It is worth reading through, and has been commended by many good judges of history.

History of Council of Trent. 3. The other works of Sarpi are numerous, but none require our present attention except the most celebrated, his History of the Council of Trent. The manuscript of this having been brought to London by Antonio de Dominis, was there published, in 1619, under the name of Pietro Soave Polano, the anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto. It was quickly translated into several languages, and became the textbook of protestantism on the subject. Many incorrectnesses have been pointed out by Pallavicini, who undertook the same task on the side of Rome; but the general credibility of Father Paul’s history has rather gained by the ordeal of hostile criticism. Dupin observes that the long list of errors imputed by Pallavicini, which are chiefly in dates and such trifling matters, make little or no difference as to the substance of Sarpi’s history; but that its author is more blamable for a malicious disposition to impute political motives to the members of the council, and idle reasonings which they did not employ.[57] Ranke, who has given this a more minute scrutiny than Dupin could have done, comes nearly to the same result. Sarpi is not a fair, but he is, for those times, a tolerably exact historian. His work exhibits the general excellences of his manner; freedom from redundancy, a clear, full, agreeable style; a choice of what is most pertinent and interesting in his materials. Much has been disputed about the religious tenets of Father Paul; it appears to me quite out of doubt, both by the tenor of his history, and still more unequivocally, if possible, by some of his letters, that he was entirely hostile to the church, in the usual sense, as well as to the court of Rome, sympathising in affection, and concurring generally in opinion, with the reformed denomination.[58] But as he continued in the exercise of his functions as a Servite monk, and has always passed at Venice more for a saint than a heretic, some of the Gallican writers have not scrupled to make use of his authority, and to extenuate his heterodoxy. There can be no question but that he inflicted a severe wound on the spiritual power.

[57] Hist. Eccles. Cent. 17.

[58] The proofs of this it would be endless to adduce from the history: they strike the eye in every page, though it cannot be expected that he should declare his way of thinking in express terms. Even in his letters he does not this. They were printed, with the date, at least, of Verona, in 1673. Sully’s fall he laments, “having become partial to him on account of his firmness in religion.” Lett. 53. Of the republic of the United Provinces he says: La nascenza di quale si come Dio ha favorito con grazie inestimabili, così pare che la malizia del diavolo oppugni con tutte le arti. Lett. 23. After giving an account of one Marsilio, who seems to have been a Protestant, he adds: Credo se non fosse per ragion di stato, si trovarebbono diversi, che saltarebbono da questo fosso di Roma nella cima dell riforma; ma chi teme una cosa, chi un’altra. Dio però par che goda la più minima parte dei pensieri umani. So ch’ ella mi intende senza passar più oltre. Lett. 81., Feb., 1612. Sarpi speaks with great contempt of James I., who was occupied like a pedant about Vorstius and such matters. Se il re d’Inghilterra non fosse dottore, si potrebbe sperare qualche bene, e sarebbe un gran principio, perchè Spagna non si può vincere, se non levato il pretesto della religione, ne questo si leverà se non introducendo i reformati nell’Italia. E si il rè sapesse fare, sarebbe facile e in Torino, e quì. Lett. 88. He wrote, however, a remarkable letter to Casaubon, much about this time, hinting at his wish to find an asylum in England, and using rather too different language about the king: In eo, rarum, cumulatæ virtutes principis ac viri. Regum idea est, ad quam forte ante actis sæculis nemo formatus fuit. Si ego ejus protectione dignus essem, nihil mihi deesse putarem ad mortalis vitæ felicitatem. Tu, vir præstantissime, nihil te dignius efficere potes, quam tanto principi mea studia commendare. Casaubon, Epist. 811. For mea in another edition is read tua; but the former seems preferable. Casaubon replied, that the king wished Paul to be a light to his own country; but if anything should happen, he had written to his ambassador, ut nulla in re tibi desit.

Gallican liberties. Richer. 4. That power, predominant as it seemed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, met with adversaries besides Sarpi. The French nation, and especially the parliament of Paris, had always vaunted what were called the liberties of the Gallican church; liberties, however, for which neither the church itself, nor the king, the two parties interested, were prone to display much regard. A certain canonist, Richer, published in 1611 a book on ecclesiastical and political power; in which he asserted the government of the church to be a monarchy tempered with aristocracy; that is, that the authority of the pope was limited in some respects by the rights of the bishop. Though this has since become a fundamental principle among the Cisalpine catholics, it did not suit the high notions of that age; and the bishops were content to sacrifice their rights by joining in the clamour of the papal party. A synod assembled by Cardinal du Perron, archbishop of Sens, condemned the book of Richer, who was harassed for the rest of his life by the persecution of those he had sought to defend against a servitude which they seemed to covet. His fame has risen in later times. Dupin concludes a careful analysis of Richer’s treatise with a noble panegyric on his character and style of writing.[59]

[59] Hist. Eccles. Cent. 17. l. ii. c. 7. Niceron, vol. xxvii. The Biographie Universelle talks of the republican principles of Richer: it must be in an ecclesiastical sense, for nothing in the book, I think, relates to civil politics. Father Paul thought Richer’s scheme might lead to something better, but did not highly esteem it. Quella mistura del governo ecclesiastico di monarchio e aristocrazia mi pare una composizione di oglio e acqua, che non possono mai mischiarsi insieme. Lettere di Sarpi, 109. Richer entirely denies the infallibility of the pope in matters of faith, and says there is no authority adduced for it but that of the popes themselves. His work is written on the principles of the Jansenizing Gallicans of the 18th century, and probably goes farther than Bossuet, or any who wished to keep on good terms with Rome would have openly approved. It is prolix, extending to two volumes 4to. Some account of Richer will be found in Histoire de la Mère et du Fils, ascribed to Mezeray, or Richelieu.

Perron. 5. The strength of the ultra-montane party in the Gallican church was Perron, a man of great natural capacity, a prodigious memory, a vast knowledge of ecclesiastical and profane antiquity, a sharp wit, a pure and eloquent style, and such readiness in dispute, that few cared to engage him.[60] If he did not always reason justly, or upon consistent principles, these are rather failings in the eyes of lovers of truth, than of those, and they are the many, who sympathize with the dexterity and readiness of a partizan. He had been educated as a Protestant, but, like half the learned of that religion, went over from some motive or other to the victorious side. In the conference at Fontainebleau with Du Plessis Mornay, it has been mentioned already that he had a confessed advantage; but victory in debate follows the combatant rather than the cause. The supporters of Gallican liberties were discouraged during the life of this cardinal. He did not explicitly set himself against them, or deny, perhaps, the principles of the Council of Constance; but, by preventing any assertion of them, he prepared the way, as it was hoped at Rome, for a gradual recognition of the whole system of Bellarmin. Perron, however, was neither a Jesuit, nor very favourable to that order. Even so late as 1638, a collection of tracts by the learned brothers DuPuy, on the liberties of the church, was suppressed at the instance of the nuncio, on the pretext that it had been published without permission. It was reprinted some years afterwards, when the power of Rome had begun to decline.[61]

[60] Dupin.

[61] Dupin 1. iii. c. 1. Grot. Epist. 1105. Liber de libertatibus ecclesiæ Gallicanæ ex actis desumptus publicis, quo regis regnique jura contra molitiones pontificias defenduntur ipsius regis jussu vendi est prohibitus. See also epist. 519.

Decline of papal power. 6. Notwithstanding the tone still held by the court of Rome and its numerous partisans, when provoked by any demonstration of resistance, they generally avoided aggressive proceedings, and kept in reserve the tenets which could not be pleasing to any civil government. We should doubtless find many assertions of the temporal authority of the pope by searching into obscure theology during this period; but after Bellarmin and Perron were withdrawn from the stage, no prominent champions of that cause stood forth; and it was one of which great talents and high station alone could overcome the intrinsic unpopularity. Slowly and silently, the power of Rome had much receded before the middle of the seventeenth century. Paul V. was the last of the imperious pontiffs who exacted obedience as sovereigns of Christendom. His successors have had recourse to gentler methods, to a paternal rather than regal authority; they have appealed to the moral sense, but have rarely or never alarmed the fears of their church. The long pontificate of Urban VIII. was a period of transition from strength to weakness. In his first years, this pope was not inactively occupied in the great cause of subduing the Protestant heresy. It has been lately brought to light, that soon after the accession of Charles I., he had formed a scheme, in conjunction with France and Spain, for conquering and partitioning the British islands: Ireland was to be annexed to the ecclesiastical state, and governed by a viceroy of the Holy See.[62] But he afterwards gave up these visionary projects, and limited his ambition to more practicable views of aggrandizement in Italy. It is certain that the temporal principality of the popes has often been a useful diversion for the rest of Europe: the duchy of Urbino was less in our notions of importance than Germany or Britain; but it was quite as capable of engrossing the thoughts and passions of a pope.

[62] Ranke, ii. 518. It is not at all probable that France and Spain would have seriously coalesced for any object of this kind: the spoil could not have been safely divided. But the scheme serves to show the ambition, at that time, of the Roman See.

Unpopularity of the Jesuits. 7. The subsidence of catholic zeal before the middle of this age deserves especially to be noted at a time when, in various directions, that church is beginning to exalt her voice, if not to rear her head, and we are ostentatiously reminded of the sudden revival of her influence in the sixteenth century. It did undoubtedly then revive; but it is equally manifest that it receded once more. Among the leading causes of this decline in the influence, not only of what are called ultra-montane principles, but of the zeal and faith that had attended them, a change as visible, and almost as rapid as the reaction in favour of them which we have pointed out in the latter part of the sixteenth century, we must reckon the increasing prejudices against the Jesuit order. Their zeal, union, indefatigable devotion to the cause, had made them the most useful of allies, the most formidable of enemies; but in these very qualities were involved the seeds of public hatred and ultimate ruin. Obnoxious to Protestant states for their intrigues, to the lawyers, especially in France, for their bold theories of political power and encroaching spirit, to the Dominicans for the favour they had won, they had become, long before the close of this period, rather equivocal and dangerous supporters of the See of Rome.[63] Their fate, in countries where the temper of their order had displayed itself with less restraint, might have led reflecting men to anticipate the consequences of urging too far the patience of mankind by the ambition of an insulated order of priests. In the first part of this century the Jesuits possessed an extensive influence in Japan, and had re-united the kingdom of Abyssinia to the Roman church. In the course of a few years more, they were driven out from both; their intriguing ambition had excited an implacable animosity against the church to which they belonged.

[63] Clement VIII. was tired of the Jesuits, as we are told by Perron, who did not much love them. Perroniana, pp. 286, 288.

Richelieu’s care of Gallican liberties. 8. Cardinal Richelieu, though himself a theological writer, took great care to maintain the liberties of the French crown and church. No extravagance of Hildebrandic principles would find countenance under his administration. Their partisans endeavoured sometimes to murmur against his ecclesiastical measures; it was darkly rumoured that he had a scheme of separating the Catholic church of France, something in the manner of Henry VIII., from the supremacy of Rome, though not from her creed; and one Hersent published, under the name of Optatus Gallus, a book so rapidly suppressed, as to be of the greatest rarity, the aim of which was to excite the public apprehension of this schism.[64] It was in defence of the Gallican liberties, so far as it was yet prudent to assert them, that De Marca was employed to write a treatise, De Concordaniâ Sacerdotii et Imperii. This book was censured at Rome; yet it does not by any means come up to the language afterwards usual in the Gallican church; it belongs to its own age, the transitional period in which Rome had just ceased to act, but not to speak as a mistress. De Marca was obliged to make some concessions before he could obtain the bulls for a bishopric. He rose however afterwards to the see of Paris. The first part of his work appeared in 1641, the second after the death of the author.

[64] Biogr. Univ.—Grot. epist. 982, 1354. By some other letters of Grotius, it appears that Richelieu tampered with those schemes of reconciling the different religions which were then afloat, and all which went on setting the Pope nearly aside. Ruarus intimates the same. Epist. Ruar. p. 401.

Controversy of Catholics and Protestants. 9. In this most learned period, according to the sense in which the word was then taken, that Europe has ever seen, it was of course to be expected that the studious ecclesiastics of both the Romish and Protestant denomination would pour forth a prodigal erudition in their great controversy. It had always been the aim of the former to give an historical character to theological inquiry; it was their business to ascertain the faith of the Catholic church as a matter of fact, the single principle of its infallibility being assumed as the basis of all investigation. But their opponents, though less concerned in the issue of such questions, frequently thought themselves competent to dispute the field; and conversant as they were with ecclesiastical antiquity, found in its interminable records sufficient weapons to protract the war, though not to subdue the foe. Hence, partly in the last years of the sixteenth century, but incomparably more in the present, we find an essential change in the character of theological controversy. |Increased respect for the fathers.| It became less reasoning, less scriptural, less general and popular, but far more patristic, that is, appealing to the testimonies of the fathers, and altogether more historical than before. Several consequences of material influence on religious opinion sprang naturally from this method of conducting the defence of Protestantism. One was that it contracted very greatly the circle of those who, upon any reasonable interpretation of the original principle of personal judgment, could exercise it for themselves; it became the privilege of the deeply learned alone. Another that, from the real obscurity and incoherence of ecclesiastical authorities, those who had penetrated farthest into that province of learning were least able to reconcile them; and however they might disguise it from the world, while the pen was in their hands, were themselves necessarily left, upon many points, in an embarrassing state of doubt and confusion. A third effect was, that upon these controversies of Catholic tradition, the church of Rome had very often the best of the argument; and this was occasionally displayed in those wrestling matches between religious disputants, which were held, publicly or privately, either with the vain hope of coming to an agreement, or to settle the faith of the hearers. And from the two last of these causes it arose, that many Protestants went over to the church of Rome, and that a new theological system was contrived to combine what had been deemed the incompatible tenets of those who had burst from each other with such violence in the preceding century.

Especially in England. Laud. 10. This retrocession, as it appeared, and as in spirit it was, towards the system abandoned in the first impetuosity of the Reformation, began in England about the conclusion of the sixteenth century. It was evidently connected with the high notions of ecclesiastical power, of an episcopacy by unbroken transmission from the apostles, of a pompous ritual, which the rulers of the Anglican church took up at that time in opposition to the puritans. It rapidly gained ground in the reign of James, and still more of his son. Andrews, a man far more learned in patristic theology than any of the Elizabethan bishops, or perhaps than any of his English contemporaries except Usher, was, if not the founder, the chief leader of this school. Laud became afterwards, from his political importance, its more conspicuous head; and from him it is sometimes styled. In his conference with the Jesuit Fisher, first published in 1624, and afterwards with many additions in 1639, we find an attempt not feeble, and we may believe, not feigned, to vindicate the Anglican Protestantism, such as he meant it to be, against the church of Rome, but with much deference to the name of Catholic, and the authority of the ancient fathers.[65] It is unnecessary to observe, that this was the prevalent language of the English church in that period of forty years, which was terminated by the civil war; and that it was accompanied by a marked enhancement of religious ceremonies, as well as by a considerable approximation to several doctrines and usages of the Romanists.

[65] Ce qu’il y a de particulier dans cette conférence, c’est qu’on y cite beaucoup plus les pères de l’église, que n’ont accoutumé de faire les Protestans de deça la mer. Comme l’église, Anglicane a une vénération toute particulière pour l’antiquité, c’est par là que les Catholiques Romains l’attaquent ordinairement. Bibl. Univ. i. 336. Laud, as well as Andrews, maintained “that the true and real body of Christ is in that blessed sacrament.” Conference with Fisher, p. 299. (edit. 1639.) And afterwards, “for the church of England, nothing is more plain than that it believes and teaches the true and real presence of Christ in the eucharist.” Nothing is more plain than the contrary, as Hall, who belonged to a different school of theology, though the friend of Laud, has in equivalent words observed. Hall’s works (Pratt’s edition), vol. ix., p. 374.

Defections to the Catholic church. 11. The progress of the latter church for the first thirty years of the present century was as striking and uninterrupted as it had been in the final period of the sixteenth. Victory crowned its banners on every side. The signal defeats of the elector Palatine and the king of Denmark, the reduction of Rochelle, displayed an evident superiority in the ultimate argument to which the Protestants had been driven, and which silences every other; while a rigid system of exclusion from court favour and of civil discouragement, or even of banishment and suppression of public worship, as in the Austrian dominions, brought round the wavering and flexible to acquiesce with apparent willingness in a despotism they could neither resist nor escape. The nobility, both in France and Germany, who in the last age had been the first to embrace a new faith, became afterwards the first to desert it. Many also of the learned and able Protestants gave evidence of the jeopardy of that cause by their conversion. It is not, however, just to infer that they were merely influenced by this apprehension. Two other causes mainly operated; one, to which we have above alluded, the authority given to the traditions of the church, recorded by the writers called fathers, and with which it was found very difficult to reconcile all the protestant creed; another, the intolerance of the reformed churches, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, which gave as little latitude as that which they had quitted.

Wavering of Casaubon. 12. The defections, from whatever cause, are numerous in the seventeenth century. But two, more eminent than any who actually renounced the Protestant religion, must be owned to have given evident signs of wavering, Casaubon and Grotius. The proofs of this are not founded merely on anecdotes which might be disputed, but on their own language.[66] Casaubon was staggered by the study of the fathers, in which he discovered many things, especially as to the eucharist, which he could not in any manner reconcile with tenets of the French Hugonots.[67] Perron used to assail him with arguments he could not parry. If we may believe this cardinal, he was on the point of declaring publicly his conversion before he accepted the invitation of James I. to England; and even while in England he promoted the Catholic cause more than the world was aware.[68] This is more than we can readily believe, and we know that he was engaged both in maintaining the temporal rights of the crown against the school of Bellarmin, and in writing animadversions on the ecclesiastical annals of Baronius. But this opposition to the extreme line of the ultra-montanists might be well compatible with a tendency towards much that the reformers had denounced. It seemed in truth to disguise the corruptions of the Catholic church by rendering the controversy almost what we might call personal; as if Rome alone, either by usurping the headship of the church, which might or might not have bad consequences, or by its encroachments on the civil power which were only maintained by a party, were the sole object of that religious opposition, which had divided one half of Europe from the other. Yet if Casaubon, as he had much inclination to do, being on ill terms with some in England, and disliking the country,[69] had returned to France, it seems probable that he would not long have continued in what, according to the principles he had adopted, would appear a schismatical communion.

[66] In his correspondence with Scaliger, no indications of any vacillation as to religion appear. Of the unfortunate conference between Du Plessis Mornay and Du Perron, in the presence of Henry IV., where Casaubon himself had been one of the umpires, he speaks with great regret, though with a full acknowledgment that his champion had been worsted. Quod scribis de congressu Diomedis cum Glauco, sic est omnino, ut tu judicas rectè. Vir optimus, si eum sua prudentia orbi Gallico satis explorata non defecisset, nunquam ejus certaminis aleam subiisset. After much more he concludes: Equidem in lacrymas prope adducor, quoties subit animo tristissima illius diei species, cum de ingenua nobilitate, de excellenti ingenio, de ipsa denique veritate pompaticè adeo vidi triumphatum. Epist. 214. (Oct., 1600.) See also a letter to Heinsius on the same subject. Cassaub. Epist. 809. In a letter to Perron himself, in 1604, he professed to adhere to Scripture alone, against those who vetustatis auctoritatem pro ratione obtendunt. Epist. 417. A change however came gradually over his mind, and he grew fascinated by this very authority of antiquity. In 1609 he had, by the king’s command, a conference on religion with Du Perron, but very reluctantly, and, as his biographer owns, quibusdam visus est quodammodo cespitasse. Casaubon was, for several reasons, no match in such a disputation for Perron. In the first place, he was poor and weak, and the other powerful, which is a reason that might dispense with our giving any others; but secondly, he had less learning in the fathers; and thirdly, he was entangled by deference for these same fathers; finally, he was not a man of as much acuteness and eloquence as his antagonist. The issue of battle does not follow the better cause, but the sharper sword, especially when there is so much ignoratio elenchi as in this case.

[67] Perron continued to persecute Casaubon with argument, whenever he met him in the king’s library. Je vous confesse (the latter told Wytenbogart) qu’il m’a donné beaucoup des scrupules qui me restent, et auxquels je ne sais pas bien répondre ... il me fache de rougir. L’escapade que je prens est que je n’y puis répondre, mais que j’y penserai. Cassauboni Vita (ad edit. Epistolarum, 1709.). And in writing to the same Wytenbogart, Jan., 1610, we find similar signs of wavering. Me, ne quid dissimulem, hæc tanta diversitas a fide veteris ecclesiæ non parum turbat. Ne de aliis dicam, in re sacramentaria a majoribus discessit Lutherus, a Luthero Zuinglius, ab utroque Calvinus, a Calvino qui postea scripserunt. Nam constat mihi ac certissimum est, doctrinam Calvini de sacra eucharistia longe aliam esse ab ea quæ in libro observandi viri Molinæi nostri continetur, et quæ vulgo in ecclesiis nostris auditur. Itaque Molinæum qui oppugnant, Calvinum illi non minus objiciunt, quam aliquem è veteribus ecclesiæ doctoribus. Si sic pergimus, quis tandem erit exitus? Jam quod idem Molinæus, omnes veterum libros suæ doctrinæ contrarios respuit, ut ὑποβολιμαιους, cui mediocriter docto fidem faciet? Falsus illi Cyrillus, Hierosolymorum episcopus; falsus Gregorius Nyssenus, falsus Ambrosius, falsi omnes. Mihi liquet falli ipsum, et illa scripta esse verissima, quæ ille pronuntiat ψευδεπιγραφα. Ep. 670. See also Epist. 1043, written from Paris in the same year. He came now to England, and to his great satisfaction found the church and its prelates exactly what he would wish. Illud solatio mihi est, quod in hoc regno speciem agnosco veteris ecclesiæ, quam ex patrum scriptis didici. Adde quod episcopis ὁσημεραι συνδιαγω doctissimis, sapientissimis, υσεβεστατοις, et quod novum mihi est, priscæ ecclesiæ amantissimis. (Lond., 1611.) Ep. 703. His letters are full of similar language. See 743, 744, 772, &c. He combined this inordinate respect for authority with its natural concomitant, a desire to restrain free inquiry. Though his patristic lore should have made him not unfavourable to the Arminians, he writes to Bertius, one of their number, against the liberty of conscience they required. Illa quam passim celebras, prophetandi libertas, bonis et piis hujus ecclesiæ viris mirum in modum suspecta res est et odiosa. Nemo enim dubitat de pietate Christiana actum esse inter vos, si quod videris agere, illustrissimis ordinibus fuerit semel persuasum, ut liberum unicuique esse velint, via regia relicta semitam ex animi libidine sibi aliisque aperire. Atqui veritas, ut scis, in omnibus rebus scientiis et disciplinis unica est, et το φωνειν ταυτο inter ecclesiæ veræ notas, fateantur omnes, non est postrema. Ut nulli esse dubium possit, quin tot πολυσχιδεις semitæ totidem sint errorum diverticula. Quod olim de politicis rebus prudentissimi philosophorum dixerunt, id mihi videtur multo etiam magis in ecclesiasticis locum habere, την αγαν ελευθεριαν εις δουλειαν εξ αναγκης τελευτᾶν, et πασαν τυραννιδα αναρχιας esse κρειττην [sic!] et optabiliorem.... Ego qui inter pontificios diu sum in patria mea versatus, hoc tibi possum affirmare, nulla re magis stabiliri την τυραννιδα του χξζ quam dissentionibus nostris et dissidiis.

Meric Casaubon’s “Pietas contra Maledicos Patrii Nominis ac Religionis Hostes,” is an elaborate vindication of his father against all charges alleged by his adversaries. The only one that presses is that of wavering in religion. And here Meric candidly owns that his father had been shaken by Perron about 1610. (See this tract subjoined to Almeloveen’s edition of the Epistles, p. 89.) But afterwards, by dint of theological study, he got rid of the scruples the cardinal had infused into him, and became a Protestant of the new Anglican school, admiring the first six centuries, and especially the period after Constantine: Hoc sæculum cum duobus sequentibus ακμη της εκκλησιας flos ipse ecclesiæ et ætas illius aurea queat nuncupari. Prolegomena in Exercitationes in Baronium. His friend Scaliger had very different notions of the fathers. The fathers, says he, in his blunt way, are very ignorant, know nothing of Hebrew, and teach us little in theology. Their interpretations of scripture are strangely perverse. Even Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostles, is full of errors. It will not do to say that, because they were near the apostolic age, they are never wrong. Scaligerana Secunda. Le Clerc has some good remarks on the deference shown by Casaubon to the language held by the fathers about the eucharist, which shook his Protestantism. Bibl. Choisie, xix. 230.

[68] Perroniana. Grot. Epist., pag. 939.

[69] Several of his letters attest his desire for returning. He wrote to Thuanus imploring his recommendation to the queen regent. But he had given much offence by writing against Baronius, and had very little chance of an indemnity for his prebend of Canterbury, if he had given that up on leaving England. This country, however, though he sometimes calls it μακαρων νησος, did not suit his disposition. He was never on good terms with Savile, the most presumptuous of the learned, according to him, and most scornful, whom he accused of setting on Montague to anticipate his animadversions on Baronius, with some suspicion, on Casaubon’s part, of stealing from him. Ep. 794, 848, 849. But he seems himself to have become generally unpopular, if we may trust his own account. Ego mores Anglorum non capio. Quoscunque habui notos priusquam huc venirem, jam ego illis sum ignotus, verè peregrinus, barbarus; nemo illorum me vel verbulo appellat; appellatus silet. Hoc quid sit, non scio. Hic—— [Henricus Wotton] vir doctissimus ante annos viginti mecum Genevæ vixit, et ex eo tempore literis amicitiam columius. Postquam ego e Galliis, ille Venetiis huc convenimus, desii esse illi notus; meæ quoque epistolæ responsum dedit nullum; an sit daturus nescio. Ep. 841. It seems difficult to account for so marked a treatment of Casaubon, except on the supposition that he was thought to pursue a course unfavourable to the Protestant interest. He charges the English with despising everyone but themselves; and ascribes this to the vast wealth of their universities; a very discreditable source of pride in our ancestors, if so it were. But Casaubon’s philological and critical skill passed for little in this country, where it was not known enough to be envied. In mere ecclesiastical learning he was behind some English scholars.

And of Grotius. 13. Grotius was from the time of his turning his mind to theology, almost as much influenced as Casaubon by primitive authority, and began, even in 1614, to commend the Anglican church for the respect it showed, very unlike the rest of the reformed, to that standard. But the ill-usage he sustained at the hands of those who boasted their independence of papal tyranny, the caresses of the Gallican clergy after he had fixed his residence at Paris, the growing dissensions and virulence of the Protestants, the choice that seemed alone to be left in their communion, between a fanatical anarchy, disintegrating everything like a church on the one hand, and a domination of bigoted and vulgar ecclesiastics on the other, made him gradually less and less averse to the comprehensive and majestic unity of the Catholic hierarchy, and more and more willing to concede some point of uncertain doctrine, or some form of ambiguous expressive. This is abundantly perceived, and has often been pointed out in his Annotations on the Consultation of Cassander,[70] written in 1641, in his Animadversion on Rivet, who had censured the former treatise as inclining to Popery, in the Votum pro Pace Ecclesiasticâ and in the Rivetiani Apologetici Discussio; all which are collected in the fourth volume of the theological works of Grotius. These treatises display an uniform and progressive tendency to defend the church of Rome in everything that can be reckoned essential to her creed; and, in fact, he will be found to go farther in this direction than Cassander.

[70] Casaubon himself hailed Grotius as in the right path. In hodiernis contentionibus in negotio religionis et doctè et piè judicat, et in veneratione antiquitatis cum iis sentit, qui optimè sentiunt. Epist. 883. See also 772, which is addressed to him. This high respect for the fathers and for the authority of the primitive church grew strongly upon him, and the more because he found they were hostile to the Calvinistic scheme. He was quite delighted at finding Jerome and Chrysostom on his side. Epist. 29. (1614). In the next year, writing to Vossius, he goes a great length. Cæterum ego reformatarum ecclesiarum miseriam in hoc maximè deploro, quod cum symbola condere catholicæ sit ecclesiæ, ipsis inter se nunquam eam in rem convenire sit datum, atque interim libelli apologetici ex re nata scripti ad imperatorem, reges, principes, aut ut in concilio œcumenico exhiberentur, trahi cœperint in usum longè alienum. Quid enim magis est alienum ab unitate catholica quam quod diversis in regionibus pastores diversa populo tradere coguntur? Quam mirata fuisset hoc prodigium pia antiquitas! Sed hæc aliaque multa mussitanda sunt nobis ob iniquitatem temporum. Epist. 66. He was at this time, as he continued till near the end of his life, when he moved on farther, highly partial to the Anglican church. He was, however, too Erastian for the English bishops of the reign of James, as appears by a letter addressed to him by Overall, who objected to his giving, in his treatise De Imperio circa Sacra, a definitive power in controversies of faith to the civil magistrate, and to his putting episcopacy among non-essentials, which the bishops held to be of divine right. Grotius adhered to his opinion, that episcopacy was not commanded as a perpetual institution, and thought, at that time, that there was no other distinction between bishops and priests than of precedency. Nusquam meminit, he says in one place, Clemens Romanus exsortis illius episcoporum auctoritatis, quæ ecclesiæ consuetudine post Marci mortem Alexandriæ, atque eo exemplo alibi, introduci cœpit, sed planè ut Paulus Apostolus, ostendit ecclesias communi presbyterorum, qui iidem omnes et episcopi ipsi Pauloque dicuntur, consilio fuisse gubernatas. Even in his latter writings he seems never to have embraced the notions of some Anglican divines on this subject, but contents himself, in his remarks on Cassander, who had said, singularly as it may be thought, Convenit inter omnes olim Apostolorum ætate inter episcopos et presbyteros discrimen nullum fuisse, sed postmodum ordinis servandi et schismatis evitandi causa episcopum presbyteris fuisse præpositum, with observing, Episcopi sunt presbyterorum principes; et ista προστασια (præsidentia) à Christo præmonstrata est in Petro, ab Apostolis vero, ubicunque fieri poterat, constituta, et a Spiritu Sancto comprobata in Apocalypsi. Op. Theolog. iv. 579, 621.

But to return from this digression to the more immediate purpose. Grotius for several years continued in this insulated state, neither approving of the Reformation nor the church of Rome. He wrote in 1622 to Episcopius against those whom he called Cassandrians, Qui etiam plerosque Romanæ ecclesiæ errores improbantibus auctores sunt, ne ab ejus communione discedant. Ep. 181. He was destined to become Cassandrian himself, or something more. The infallibility of the church was still no doctrine of his. At illa auctoritas ecclesiæ αναμαρτητου quam ecclesiæ, et quidem suæ, Romanenses ascribunt, cum naturali ratione non sit evidens, nam ipsi fatentur Judaicam ecclesiam id privilegium non habuisse, sequitur ut adversus negantes probari debeat ex sacris literis. Epist. secunda series, p. 761 (1620). And again: Quæ scribit pater de restituendis rebus in eum statum, qui ante concilium Tridentinum fuerat, esset quidem hoc permultum; sed transubstantiatio et ei respondens adoratio pridem Lateranensi concilio definita est, et invocatio peculiaris sanctorum pridem in omnes liturgias recepta. P. 772 (1623).

Grotius passed most of his latter years at Paris, in the honourable station of ambassador from the court of Sweden. He seems to have thought it a matter of boast that he did not live as a Protestant. See Ep. 196. The Hugonot ministers of Charenton requested him to communicate with them, which he declined, p. 854, 856 (1635). He now was brooding over a scheme of union among Protestants: the English and Swedish churches were to unite, and to be followed by Denmark. Constituto semel aliquo tali ecclesiarum corpore, spes est subinde alios atque alios se aggregaturos. Est autem hæc res eo magis optanda protestantibus, quod quotidie multi eos deserunt et se cœtibus Romanensium addunt, non alia de causa, quam quod non unum est eorum corpus, sed partes distractæ, greges segreges, propria cuique sua sacrorum communio, ingens præterea maledidicendi certamen. Epist. 866 (1637). See also p. 827 (1630). He fancied that by such a weight of authority, grounded on the ancient church, the exercise of private judgment, on which he looked with horror, might be overruled. Nisi interpretandi sacras literas, he writes to Calixtus, libertatem cohibemus intra lineas eorum, quæ omnes illæ non sanctitate minus quam primæva vetustate venerabiles ecclesiæ ex ipsa prædicatione scripturis ubique consentiente hauserint, diuque sub crucis maximè magisterio retinuerint, nisi deinde in iis quæ liberam habuere disputationem fraterna lenitate ferre alii alios discimus, quis erit litium sæpe in factiones, deinde in bella erumpentium finis? Ep. 674 (Oct., 1636). Qui illam optiman antiquitatem sequuntur ducem, quod te semper fecisse memini, iis non eveniet, ut multum sibi ipsis sint discolores. In Angliâ vides quam bene processerit dogmatum noxiorum repurgatio, hac maximè de causa quod qui id sanctissimum negotium procurandum suscepere nihil admiscuerunt novi, nihil sui, sed ad meliora sæcula intentam habuere oculorum aciem. Ep. 966 (1688).

But he could not be long in perceiving that this union of Protestant churches was impossible from the very independence of their original constitution. He saw that there could be no practicable reunion except with Rome itself, nor that, except on an acknowledgment of her superiority. From the year 1640 his letters are full of sanguine hopes that this delusive vision would be realised. He still expected some concession on the other side; but, as usual, would have lowered his terms according to the pertinacity of his adversaries, if indeed they were still to be called his adversaries. He now published his famous annotations on Cassander, and the other tracts mentioned in the text, to which they gave rise. In these he defends almost everything we deem popery, such as transubstantiation (Opera Theologica, iv. 619), stooping to all the nonsensical evasions of a spiritual mutation of substance and the like; the authority of the pope (p. 642), the celibacy of the clergy (p. 645), the communion in one kind (ibid), and in fact is less of a Protestant than Cassander. In his epistles he declares himself decidedly in favour of purgatory, as at least a probable doctrine, p. 930. In these writings he seems to have had the countenance of Richelieu. Cardinalis quin ἑνωσεως negotium in Gallia successurum sit, dubitare se negat. Epist. sec. series, p. 912. Cardinalis Ricelianus rem successuram putat. Ita certè loquitur multis. Archiepiscopus Cantuariensis pœnas dat honestissimi consilii, quod et aliis bonis sæpe evenit, p. 911. Grotius is now run away with by vanity, and fancies all will go according to his wish, showing much ignorance of the real state of things. He was left by some from whom he had entertained hopes, and thought the Dutch Arminians timid. Vossius ut video, præ metu, forte et ex Anglia sic jussus, auxilium suum mihi subtrahit, p. 908. Salmasius adhuc in consiliis fluctuat. Est in religionis rebus suæ parti addictior quam putabatur. P. 912. De Episcopio doleo; est vir magni ingenii et probus, sed nimium cupidus alendæ partis. But it is probable that he had misinterpreted some language of these great men, who contemplated with regret the course he was taking, which could be no longer a secret. De Grotii ad papam defectione, a French protestant of some eminence for learning writes, tanquam re certa, quod fama istuc distulit, verum non est. Sed non sine magno metu eum aliquid istiusmodi meditantem et conantem quotidie inviti videmus. Inter protestantes cujuslibet ordinis nomen ejus ascribi vetat, quod eos atrocius sugillavit in Appendice de Antichristo, et Annotatis ad Cassandri consultationem. Sarravii Epistolæ, p. 58 (1642). And again he expresses his strong disapprobation of one of the later treatises. Verissimè dixit ille qui primus dixit Grotium papissare. P. 196. See also pp. 31, 53.

In 1642 Grotius had become wholly averse to the Reformation. He thought it had done more harm than good, especially by the habit of interpreting everything on the papal side for the worse. Malos mores qui mansere corrigi æquum est. Sed an non hoc melius successurum fuerit, si quisque semet repurgans pro repurgatione aliorum preces ad Deum tulisset, et principes et episcopi correctionem desiderantes, non rupta compage, per concilia universalia in id laborassent. Dignum est de quo cogitetur, p. 938. Auratus, as he calls him, that is, D’Or, a sort of chaplain to Grotius, became a Catholic about this time. The other only says—Quod Auratus fecit, idem fecit antehac vir doctissimus Petrus Pithæus; idem constituerat facere Casaubonus si in Gallia mansisset, affirmavit enim id inter alios etiam Cordesio. p. 939. Of Casaubon he says afterwards: Casaubonus multo saniores putabat Catholicos Galliæ quam Carentonianos. Anglos autem episcopos putabat a schismatis culpa posse absolvi, p. 940. Every successive year saw him now draw nearer to Rome. Reperio autem quicquid communiter ab ecclesia occidentali quæ Romanæ cohæret recipitur, idem reperiri apud Patres veteres Græcos et Latinos, quorum communionem retinendam esse vix quisquam neget. Si quid præter hoc est, id ad liberas doctorum opinationes pertinet; in quibus suum quis judicium sequi potest, et communionis jus non amittere, p. 958. Episcopius was for limiting articles of faith to the creed, but Grotius did not agree with this, and points out that it would not preserve uniformity. Quam multa jam sunt de sacramentis, de ecclesiarum regimine, in quibus, vel concordiæ causa, certi aliquid observari debet. Alioqui compages ecclesiæ tantopere nobis commendata retineri non potest, p. 941. It would be endless to quote every passage tending to the same result. Finally, in a letter to his brother in Holland, he expresses his hope that Wytenbogart, the respectable patriarch of Arminianism, would turn his attention to the means of restoring unity to the church. Velim D. Wytenbogardum, ubi permiserit valetudo, nisi id jam fecerit, scriptum aliquid facere de necessitate restituendæ in ecclesia unitatis, et quibus modis id fieri possit. Multi pro remedio monstrant, si necessaria a non necessariis separentur, in non necessariis sive creditu sive factu relinquatur libertas. At non minor est controversia, quæ sint necessaria, quam quæ sint vera. Indicia, aiunt, sunt in scripturis. At certè etiam circa illa loca variat interpretatio. Quare nondem video an quid sit melius, quam ea quæ ad fidem et bona opera nos ducunt retinere, ut sunt in ecclesia catholica; puto enim in iis esse quæ sunt necessaria ad salutem. In cæteris ea quæ conciliorum auctoritate, aut veturum consensu recepta sunt, interpretari eo modo quo interpretati sunt, illi qui commodissimè sunt locuti, quales semper aliqui in quaque materia facile reperientur. Si quis id a se impetrare non possit, ut taceat, nec propter res de quibus certus non est, sed opinationem tantum quandam habet turbet unitatem ecclesiæ necessariam, quæ nisi retinetur ubi est, et restituitur ubi non est, omnia ibunt in pejus, p. 960. (Nov. 1648.) Wytenbogard replied very well: Si ita se res habet, ut indicia necessariorum et non necessariorum in scriptura reperiri nequeant, sed quæri debeant in auctoritate conciliorum aut veterum consensu, eo modo quo interpretati sunt illi, qui commodissimè locuti sunt, prout Excellentia tua videtur existimare, nescio an viginti quinque anni, etiamsi illi mihi adhuc restarent, omnesque exigui ingenii corporisque mei vires in mea essent potestate, sufficerent ut maturo cum judicio perlegam et expendam omnia quæ eo pertinent. This letter is in the Epistolæ præstantium et eruditorum virorum edited by Limborch in 1683, p. 826. And Grotius’s answer is in the same collection. It is that of a man who throws off a mask he had reluctantly worn. There was in fact no other means of repelling Wytenbogard’s just observation on the moral impossibility of tracing for ourselves the doctrine of the Catholic church as an historical inquiry. Grotius refers him to a visible standard. Quare considerandum est, an nonfacilius et æquius sit, quoniam doctrina de gratia, de libero arbitrio, necessitate fidei bonorumque operum obtinuit in ecclesia quæ pro se habet universale regimen et ordinem successionis, privatos se in aliis accommodare, pacis causa, iis quæ universaliter sunt recepta, sive ea aptissimis explicationibus recipiendo, sive tacendo, quam corpus illud catholicum ecclesiæ se in articulo tolerantiæ accommodare debere uniuscujusque considerationibus et placitis. Exempli gratiâ: Catholica ecclesia nemini præscribit ut precetur pro mortuis, aut opem precum sanctorum vita hac defunctorum imploret: solummodo requirit, ne quis morem adeo antiquum et generalem condemnet. The church does, in fact, rather more than he insinuates, though less than Protestants generally fancy.

I have trespassed on the patience of the general reader in this very long note, which may be thought a superfluous digression in a work of mere literature. But the epistles of Grotius are not much read; nor are they in many private libraries. The index is also very indifferent, so that without the trouble I have taken of going over the volume, it might be difficult to find these curious passages. I ought to mention that Burigny has given references to most of them, but with few quotations. Le Clerc, in the first volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle, reviewing the epistles of Grotius, slides very gently over his bias towards popery; and I have met with well-informed persons in England, who had no conception of the lengths to which this had led him. It is of far more importance, and the best apology I can offer for so prolix a note, to perceive by what gradual, but, as I think, necessary steps, he was drawn onward by his excessive respect for antiquity, and by his exaggerated notions of Catholic unity, preferring at last to err with the many, than to be right with the few. If Grotius had learned to look the hydra schism in the face, he would have had less fear of its many heads, and at least would have dreaded to cut them off at the neck, lest the source of life should be in one of them.

That Grotius really thought as the fathers of Trent thought upon all points in dispute cannot be supposed. It was not in the power of a man of his learning and thoughtfulness to divest himself of his own judgment, unless he had absolutely subjugated his reason to religious awe, which was far from being the case. His aim was to search for subtle interpretations, by which he might profess to believe the words of the church, though conscious that his sense was not that of the imposers. It is needless to say that this is not very ingenuous; and even if it could be justifiable relatively to the person, would be an abandonment of the multitude to any superstition and delusion which might be put upon them. Via ad pacem expeditissima mihi videtur, si doctrina, communi consensu recepta, commodè explicetur, mores, sanæ doctrinæ adversantes, quantum fieri potest, tollantur, et in rebus mediis accommodet se pars ingenio totius. Epist., 1524. Peace was his main object; if toleration had been as well understood as it was afterwards, he would perhaps have compromised less.

Baxter having published a Treatise of the Grotian Religion, wherein he imputed to Grotius this inclination towards the church of Rome, Archbishop Bramhall replied, after the Restoration, with a vindication of Grotius, in which he does not say much to the purpose, and seems ignorant of the case. The epistles indeed, were not then published.

Besides the passages in these epistles above quoted, the reader who wishes to follow this up may consult Epist. 1108, 1460, 1561, 1570, 1706 of the first series; and in the second series, p. 875, 896, 940, 943, 958, 960, 975. But there are also many to which I have made no reference. I do not quote authorities for the design of Grotius to have declared himself a convert, if he had lived to return to France, though they are easily found; because the testimony of his writing is far stronger than any anecdote.

14. But if any one could put a different interpretation on these works, which would require a large measure of prejudice, the epistles of Grotius afford such evidence of his secession from the Protestant side, as no reasonable understanding can reject. These are contained in a large folio volume, published in 1687, and amount to 1766 of one series, and 744 of another. I have quoted the former, for distinction’s sake, by the number, and the latter by the page. Few, we may presume, have taken the pains to go through them, in order to extract all the passages that bear upon this subject. It will be found that he began, as I have just said, by extolling the authority of the Catholic or universal church, and its exclusive right to establish creeds of faith. He some time afterwards ceased to frequent the Protestant worship, but long kept his middle path, and thought it enough to inveigh against the Jesuits and the exorbitancies of the see of Rome. But his reverence for the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries grew continually stronger; he learned to protest against the privilege, claimed by the reformers, of interpreting Scripture otherwise than the consent of the ancients had warranted; visions, first of an union between the Lutheran and English churches, and then of one with Rome itself, floated before his eyes; he sought religious peace with the latter, as men seek it in opposition to civil government, by the redress of grievances and the subsequent restoration of obedience. But in proportion as he perceived how little of concession was to be obtained, he grew himself more ready to concede; and though at one time he seems to deny the infallibility of the church, and at another would not have been content with placing all things in the state they were before the council of Trent, he came ultimately to think such a favourable sense might be put on all the Tridentine decrees, as to render them compatible with the Confession of Augsburg.

15. From the year 1640 his course seems to have been accelerated; he intimates no disapprobation of those who went over to Rome; he found, as he tells us, that whatever was generally received in the church of Rome, had the authority of those Greek and Latin fathers, whose communion no one would have refused; and at length, in a remarkable letter to Wytenbogart, bearing date in 1644, he puts it as worthy to be considered, whether it would not be more reasonable for private men who find the most essential doctrines in a church of an universal hierarchy and a legitimate succession, to wave their differences with it for the sake of peace, by putting the best interpretations they can, only keeping silence on their own opinions, than that the Catholic church should accommodate itself to the separate judgment of such men. Grotius had already ceased to speak of the Arminians as if he was one of themselves, though with much respect for some of their leaders.

16. Upon a dispassionate examination of all these testimonies, we can hardly deem it an uncertain question whether Grotius, if his life had been prolonged, would have taken the easy leap that still remained; and there is some positive evidence of his design to do so. But, dying on a journey and in a protestant country, this avowed declaration was never made. Fortunately indeed for his glory, since his new friends would speedily have put his conversion to the proof, and his latter years might have been spent, like those of Lipsius, in defending legendary miracles, or in waging war against the honoured dead of the Reformation. He did not sufficiently remember that a silent neutrality is never indulged to a suspicious proselyte.

17. It appears to me, nevertheless, that Grotius was very far from having truly subjected his understanding to the church of Rome. The whole bent of his mind was to effect an exterior union among Christians; and for this end he did not hesitate to recommend equivocal senses of words, convenient explanations, and respectful silence. Listening attentively, if I may be allowed such a metaphor, we hear the chaunt of the Æsculapian cock in all he has written for the catholic church. He first took up his reverence for antiquity, because he found antiquity unfavourable to the doctrine of Calvin. His antipathy to this reformer and to his followers led him on to an admiration of the episcopal succession, the organized hierarchy, the ceremonial and liturgical institutions, the high notions of sacramental rites, which he found in the ancient church, and which Luther and Zuingle had cast away. He became imbued with the notion of unity as essential to the catholic church; but he never seems to have gone the length of abandoning his own judgment, or of asserting any positive infallibility to the decrees of man. For it is manifest that, if the councils of Nice or of Trent were truly inspired, it would be our business to inquire what they meant themselves, not to put the most convenient interpretations, nor to search out for some author or another who may have strained their language to our own opinion. The precedent of Grotius, therefore, will not serve those who endeavour to bind the reason of the enlightened part of mankind, which he respected like his own. Two predominant ideas seem to have swayed the mind of this great man in the very gradual transition we have indicated; one, his extreme reverence for antiquity and for the consent of the catholic church; the other, his Erastian principles as to the authority of the civil magistrate in matters of religion. Both conspired to give him an abhorrence of the ‘liberty of prophesying,’ the right of private men to promulgate tenets inconsistent with established faith. In friendly conversation or correspondence, even perhaps; with due reserve, in Latin writings, much might be indulged to the learned, room was to be found for an Erasmus and a Cassander; or, if they would themselves consent, for an Episcopius and a Wytenbogart, at least for a Montagu and a Laud; but no pretext was ever to justify a separation. The scheme of Grotius is, in a modified degree, much the same as that of Hobbes.

Calixtus. 18. In the Lutheran church we find an eminent contemporary of Grotius, who may be reckoned his counterpart in the motives which influenced him to seek for an entire union of religious parties, though resembling him far more in his earlier opinions, than in those to which he ultimately arrived. This was George Calixtus, of the university of Helmstadt, a theologian, the most tolerant, mild, and catholic in his spirit, whom the Confession of Augsburg had known since Melanchthon. This university indeed, which had never subscribed the Form of Concord, was already distinguished by freedom of inquiry, and its natural concomitant, a large and liberal spirit. But in his own church generally, Calixtus found as rigid schemes of orthodoxy, and perhaps a more invidious scrutiny into the recesses of private opinion, than in that of Rome, with a less extensive basis of authority. The dream of good men in this age, the reunion of Christian churches in a common faith, and, meanwhile, the tolerance of differences, were ever the aim of Calixtus. But he fell, like the Anglican divines, into high notions of primitive tradition, placing, according to Eichhorn and Mosheim, the unanimity of the first six centuries by the side of Scripture itself. He was assailed by the adherents of the Form of Concord with aggravated virulence and vulgarity; he was accused of being a papist and a Calvinist, reproaches equally odious in their eyes, and therefore fit to be heaped on his head; the inconsistency of calumnies being no good reason with bigots against uttering them.[71]

[71] Eichhorn, vol. vi., part ii., p. 20. Mosheim. Biogr. Univ.

His attempts at concord. 19. In the treatise, published long after his death, in 1697, De tolerantia Reformatorum circa quæstiones inter ipsos et Augustanam confessionem professes controversas consultatio, it is his object to prove that the Calvinists held no such tenets as should exclude them from Christian communion. He does not deny or extenuate the reality of their differences from the Confession of Augsburg. The Lutherans, though many of them, he says, had formerly maintained the absolute decrees of predestination, were now come round to the doctrine of the first four centuries.[72] And he admits that the Calvinists, whatever phrases they may use, do not believe a true and substantial presence in the Eucharist.[73] But neither of these errors if such they are, he takes to be fundamental. In a shorter and more valuable treatise, entitled Desiderium et studium concordiæ, ecclesiasticæ, Calixtus proposes some excellent rules for allaying religious heats. But he leans far too much towards the authority of tradition. Every church, he says, which affirms what others deny, is bound to prove its affirmation; first by Scripture, in which whatever is contained must be out of controversy, and secondly (as Scripture bears witness to the church that it is the pillar and foundation of truth, and especially the primitive church which is called that of the saints and martyrs), by the unanimous consent of the ancient church; above all, where the debate is among learned men. The agreement of the church is therefore a sufficient evidence of Christian doctrine, not that of individual writers, who are to be regarded rather so far as they testify the catholic doctrine, than as they propound their own.[74] This deference to an imaginary perfection in the church of the fourth or fifth century must have given a great advantage to that of Rome, which is not always weak on such ground, and doubtless serves to account for those frequent desertions to her banner, especially in persons of very high rank, which afterwards occurred in Germany.

[72] Nostri e quibus olim multi ibidem absolutum decretum approbarunt, paulatim ad sententiam primorum quatuor sæculorum, nempe decretum juxta præscientiam factum, receperunt. Qua in re multum egregiè laboravit Ægidius Hunnius. Difficile autem est hanc sententiam ita proponere, ne quid Pelagianismo habere affine videatur, p. 14.

[73] Si tamen non tam quid loquantur quam quid sentiant attendimus, certum est eos veri corporis et sanguinis secundum substantiam acceptorum præsentiam non admittere. Rectius autem fuerit utramque partem simpliciter et ingenuè, quod sentit, profiteri, quam alteram alteri ambiguis loquendi formulis imponere. Qualem conciliandi rationem inierunt olim Philippus et Bucerus, nempe ut præscriberentur formulæ, quarum verba utraque pars amplecteretur, sed singulæ suo sensu acciperent ac interpretarentur. Quem conatum, quamvis ex pio eoque ingente concordiæ desiderio et studio profectum, nulla successûs felicitas excepit. p. 70. This observation is very just in the abstract; but in the early period of the reformation, there were strong reasons for evading points of difference, in the hope that the truth would silently prevail in the course of time. We, however, who come later, are to follow the advice of Calixtus, and, in judging as well as we can, of the opinions of men, must not altogether regard their words. Upon no theological controversy, probably, has there been so much of studied ambiguity as on that of the eucharist. Calixtus passes a similar censure on the equivocations of some great men of the preceding century in his other treatise mentioned in the text.

[74] Consensu itaque primæ ecclesiæ ex symbolis et scriptis manifesto doctrina Christiana rectè confirmatur. Intelligimus autem doctrinam fundamentalem et necessariam, non quasvis appendices et quæstiones, aut etiam quorundam scripturæ locorum interpretationes. De talibus enim unanimis et universalis consensus non poterit erui vel proferri. Et magis apud plerosque spectandum est, quid tanquam communem ecclesiæ sententiam proponunt, quam quomodo eam confirmant aut demonstrant, p. 85. I have not observed in the little I know of Calixtus, any proof of his inclination toward the church of Rome.

Gerard Vossius, as Episcopius wrote to Vorstius in 1615, declared in his inaugural lecture as professor of theology, his determination to follow the consent of antiquity, in explicatione Scripturarum et controversiarum diremtionibus diligenter examinare et expendere catholicum et antiquissimum consensum, cum sine dubio illud quod a pluribus et antiquissimis dictum est, verissimum sit. Epist. Virorum præstantium, p. 6.

High-church party in England. 20. The tenets of some of those who have been called High-church Anglicans may in themselves be little different from those of Grotius and Calixtus. But the spirit in which they have been conceived is altogether opposite. The one is exclusive, intolerant, severe, dogmatical, insisting on uniformity of faith as well as of exterior observances; the other catholic in outward profession, charitable in sentiment, and in fact one mode, though a mode as imprudent as it was oblique, in which the latitudinarian principle was manifested. The language both of Grotius and Calixtus bears this out, and this ought closely to be observed, lest we confound the real laxity of one school with the rigid orthodoxy of the other. One had it in view to reconcile discordant communions by mutual concession, and either by such explication of contrarieties as might make them appear less incompatible with outward unity, or by an avowed tolerance of their profession within the church; the other would permit nothing but submission to its own authority: it loved to multiply rather than to extinguish the risks of dissent, in order to crush it more effectually; the one was a pacific negotiator, the other a conquering tyrant.

Daillé on the right use of the Fathers. 21. It was justly alarming to sincere protestants, that so many brilliant ornaments of their party should either desert to the hostile side, or do their own so much injury by taking up untenable ground.[75] Nothing, it appeared to reflecting men, could be trusted to the argument from antiquity: whatever was gained in the controversy on a few points was lost upon those of the first importance. It was become the only secure course to overthrow the tribunal. Daillé, himself one of the most learned in this patristic erudition whom the French reformed church possessed, was the first who boldly attacked the new school of historical theology in their own stronghold, not occupying their fortress, but razing it to the ground. The design of his celebrated Treatise concerning the right use of the Fathers, published in 1628, is, in his own words, to show, “that they cannot be the judges of the controversies in religion at this day between the papist and the protestant,” nor, by parity of reasoning, of many others; “1. Because it is, if not an impossible, yet at least a very difficult thing to find out what their sense hath been touching the same. 2. Because that their sense and judgment of these things, supposing it to be certainly and clearly understood, not being infallible, and without all danger of error, cannot carry with it a sufficient authority for the satisfying the understanding.”

[75] It was a poor consolation for so many losses, that the famous Antonio de Dominis, archbishop of Spoleto, came over to England, and by his books de Republica Ecclesiastica, as well as by his conversation, seemed an undisguised enemy to the church of Rome. The object of his work is to prove that the pope has no superiority over other bishops. James gave de Dominis the deanery of Windsor and a living; but whether he, strictly speaking, belonged to the church of England, I do not remember to have read. Preferments were bestowed irregularly in that age. He returned, however, to the ancient fold; but did not avoid suspicion, being thrown into prison at Rome; and after his death, the imputations of heresy against him so much increased that his body was dug up and burned. Neither party has been ambitious to claim this vain and insincere, though clever prelate.

22. The arguments adduced by Daillé in support of the former of these two positions, and which occupy the first book of the treatise, are drawn from the paucity of early Christian writers, from the nature of the subjects treated by them having little relation to the present controversies, from the suspicions of forgery and interpolation affecting many of their works, the difficulty of understanding their idioms and figurative expressions, the habit of some of the fathers to say what they did not believe, their changes of mind, the peculiar and individual opinions of some among them, affording little evidence of the doctrine of the church; finally, the probability that many who differed from those called the fathers, and whose writings have not descended to us, may have been of as good authority as themselves.

23. In the second book, which in fact has been very much anticipated in the first, he shows that neither the testimony nor the doctrine of the fathers is infallible (by which word he must be understood to mean that it raises but a slight presumption of truth), proving this by their errors and contradictions. Thus he concludes that, though their negative authority is considerable, since they cannot be presumed ignorant of any material doctrine of religion, we are to be very slow in drawing affirmative propositions from their writings, and much more so in relying upon them as undoubted verities.

24. It has been said of this treatise on the right use of the fathers, that its author had pretty well proved they were of no use at all. This indeed is by no means the case, but it has certainly diminished not only the deference which many have been wont to pay to the opinion of the primitive writers, but what is still more contended for, the value of their testimony, whether as to matters of fact, or as to the prevailing doctrines of the Christian church. Nothing can be more certain, though in the warmth of controversy men are apt to disregard it, than that a witness, who deposes in any one case what can be disproved, is not entitled to belief in other assertions which we have no means of confuting, unless it be shown that the circumstances of his evidence render it more trust-worthy in these points than we have found it before. Hence, such writers as Justin and Irenæus ought not, except with great precaution, to be quoted in proof at all, or at least with confidence; their falsehood, not probably wilful, in assertions that have been brought to a test rendering their testimony very precarious upon any other points. Daillé, it may be added, uses some circumspection, as the times, if not his own disposition, required in handling this subject, keeping chiefly in view the controversies between the Romish and protestant churches: nor does he ever indulge in that tone of banter or acrimony which we find in Whitby, Barbeyrac, Jortin, and Middleton; and which must be condemned by every one who reflects that many of these writers exposed their lives, and some actually lost them, in the maintenance and propagation of Christianity.

25. This well-timed and important book met with a good reception from some in England, though it must have been very uncongenial to the ruling party. |Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants.| It was extolled and partly translated by Lord Falkland; and his two distinguished friends, Chillingworth and Hales, found in it the materials of their own bold revolt against church authority. They were both Arminians, and, especially the former, averse in all respects to the Puritan school. But like Episcopius, they scorned to rely, as on these points they might have done, on what they deemed so precarious and inconclusive as the sentiments of the fathers. Chillingworth, as is well known, had been induced to embrace the Romish religion, on the usual ground that a succession of infallible pastors, that is, a collective hierarchy, by adhering to whom alone we could be secure from error, was to be found in that church. He returned again to the protestant religion on being convinced that no such infallible society could be found. And a Jesuit, by name Knott, having written a book to prove that unrepenting protestants could not be saved, Chillingworth published, in 1637, his famous answer: The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation. In this he closely tracks the steps of his adversary, replying to every paragraph and almost every sentence.

Character of this work. 26. Knott is by no means a despicable writer, he is concise, polished, and places in an advantageous light the great leading arguments of his church. Chillingworth, with a more diffuse and less elegant style, is greatly superior in impetuosity and warmth. In his long parenthetical periods, and in those of other old English writers, in his copiousness, which is never empty or tautological, there is an inartificial eloquence springing from strength of intellect and sincerity of feeling, that cannot fail to impress the reader. But his chief excellence is the close reasoning, which avoids every dangerous admission and yields to no ambiguousness of language. He perceived and maintained with great courage, considering the times in which he wrote and the temper of those he was not unwilling to keep as friends, his favourite tenet, that all things necessary to be believed are clearly laid down in Scripture. Of tradition, which many of his contemporary protestants were becoming as prone to magnify as their opponents, he spoke very slightingly; not denying of course a maxim often quoted from Vincentius Lirinensis, that a tradition strictly universal and aboriginal must be founded in truth, but being assured that no such could be shown; and that what came nearest, both in antiquity and in evidence of catholic reception, to the name of apostolical, were doctrines and usages rejected alike by all denominations of the church in modern times.[76] It will be readily conceived, that his method of dealing with the controversy is very different from that of Laud in his treatise against Fisher; wherein we meet chiefly with disputes on passages in the fathers, as to which, especially when they are not quoted at length, it is impossible that any reader can determine for himself. The work of Chillingworth may at least be understood and appreciated without reference to any other; the condition, perhaps, of real superiority in all productions of the mind.

[76] “If there were anything unwritten which had come down to us with as full and universal a tradition as the unquestioned books of canonical Scripture, that thing should I believe as well as the Scripture; but I have long sought for some such thing, and yet I am to seek; nay, I am confident no one point in controversy between papists and protestants can go in upon half so fair cards, for to gain the esteem of an apostolic tradition, as those things which are now decried on all hands; I mean the opinion of the Chiliasts and the communicating infants.” Chap. 3, § 82. He dilates upon this insecurity of tradition in some detached papers, subjoined to the best editions of his work. Chillingworth might have added an instance if he had been writing against Romanising Anglicans. Nothing can come so close to the foolish rule above-mentioned, as the observation of celibacy by bishops and priests, not being married before their ordination, which, till the time of Luther, was, as far as we have reason to believe, universally enjoined in the church; no one, at least, has ever alleged an authority to the contrary. Yet those who talk most of the rule of Vincentius Lirinensis set aside without compunction the only case in which we can truly say that it may with some show of probability be applied. Omnia vincit amor.

27. Chillingworth was, however, a man versed in patristical learning, by no means less so, probably, than Laud. But he had found so much uncertainty about this course of theological doctrine, seducing as it generally is to the learned, “fathers,” as he expresses it, “being set against fathers, and councils against councils,” that he declares, in a well-known passage, the Bible exclusively to be the religion of protestants; and each man’s own reason to be, as from the general tenor of his volume it appears that he held it, the interpreter of the Bible.[77] It was a natural consequence that he was a strenuous advocate not so much for toleration of separate churches, as for such an “ordering of the public service of God, that all who believe the Scripture and live according to it, might, without scruple or hypocrisy or protestation against any part, join in it;”[78] a scheme when practicable, as it could not possibly be often rendered, far more eligible than the separation of sects, and hence the favourite object of Grotius and Taylor, as well as of Erasmus and Cassander. And in a remarkable and eloquent passage, Chillingworth declares that “protestants are inexcusable, if they did offer violence to other men’s consciences;” which Knott had said to be notorious, as in fact it was, and as Chillingworth ought more explicitly to have admitted.[79] “Certainly,” he observes in another place, “if protestants are faulty in this matter [of claiming authority], it is for doing it too much and not too little. This presumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the words of God, the special senses of men upon the general words of God, and laying them upon men’s consciences together, under the equal penalty of death and damnation, this vain conceit that we can speak of the things of God better than in the words of God; this deifying our own interpretations and tyrannous enforcing them upon others; this restraining of the word of God from that latitude and generality, and the understandings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and the apostles left them, is and hath been the only fountain of all the schisms of the church, and that which makes them immortal;[80] the common incendiary of Christendom, and that which tears in pieces not the coat but the bowels and members of Christ. Take away these walls of separation and all will quickly be one. Take away this persecuting, burning, cursing, damning of men for not subscribing the words of men as the words of God; require of Christians only to believe Christ, and to call no man master but him only; let those leave claiming infallibility that have no title to it, and let them that in their words disclaim it, disclaim it also in their actions. In a word, take away tyranny,” &c.[81]

[77] This must always be understood with the condition, that the reason itself shall be competently enlightened: if Chillingworth meant more than this, he carried his principle too far, as others have done. The case is parallel in jurisprudence, medicine, mechanics, and every human science: any one man, primâ facie, may be a competent judge, but all men are not so. It is hard to prove that there is any different rule for theology; but parties will always contend for extremes; for the rights of bigots to think for others, and the rights of fools to think for themselves.

[78] Chap. 3, § 81.

[79] Chap. 5, § 96.

[80] “This persuasion,” he says in a note, “is no singularity of mine, but the doctrine which I have learned from divines of great learning and judgment. Let the reader be pleased to peruse the 7th book of Acontius de Stratagematibus Satanæ, and Zanchius his last oration delivered by him after the composing of the discord between him and Amerbachius, and he shall confess as much.”

[81] Chap. 4, § 17.

28. It is obvious that in this passage, and indeed throughout the volume, Chillingworth contravenes the prevailing theories of the Anglican church, full as distinctly as those of the Roman. He escaped however unscathed by the censure of that jealous hierarchy; his private friendship with Laud, the lustre of his name, the absence of factious and sectarian connections, and still more perhaps the rapid gathering of the storms that swept both parties away, may be assigned as his protection. In later times his book obtained a high reputation; he was called the immortal Chillingworth; he was the favourite of all the moderate and the latitudinarian writers, of Tillotson, Locke, and Warburton. Those of opposite tenets, when they happen to have read his book, can do nothing else but condemn its tendency.

Hales on Schism. 29. A still more intrepid champion in the same cause was John Hales; for his little tract on Schism, not being in any part directed against the church of Rome, could have nothing to redeem the strong protestations against church authority, “which,” as he bluntly expresses it, “is none;” words that he afterwards slightly qualified. The aim of Hales, as well as of Grotius, Calixtus, and Chillingworth, was to bring about a more comprehensive communion; but he went still farther; his language is rough and audacious;[82] his theology in some of his other writings has a scent of Racow; and though these crept slowly to light, there was enough in the earliest to make us wonder at the high name, the epithet Ever-memorable, which he obtained in the English church.

[82] “I must, for my own part, confess that councils and synods not only may and have erred, but considering the means how they are managed, it were a great marvel if they did not err, for what men are they of whom those great meetings do consist? Are they the best, the most learned, the most virtuous, the most likely to walk uprightly? No, the greatest, the most ambitious, and many times men of neither judgment nor learning; such are they of whom these bodies do consist. Are these men in common equity likely to determine for truth?”—Vol. i., p. 60, edit. 1765.

“Universality is such a proof of truth as truth itself is ashamed of; for universality is but a quainter and a trimmer name to signify the multitude. Now human authority at the strongest is but weak, but the multitude is the weakest part of human authority; it is the great patron of error, most easily abused and most hardly disabused. The beginning of error may be and mostly is from private persons, but the maintainer and continuer of error is the multitude. Private persons first beget errors in the multitude and make them public; and publicness of them begets them again in private persons. It is a thing which our common experience and practice acquaints us with, that when some private persons have gained authority with the multitude, and infused some error into them and made it public, the publicness of the error gains authority to it, and interchangeably prevails with private persons to entertain it. The most singular and strongest part of human authority is properly in the wisest and most virtuous; and those I trow are not the most universal.”—iii. 164.

The treatise on Schism, from which these last passages are not extracted, was printed at Oxford in 1642, with some animadversions by the editor. Wood’s Athenæ, iii. 414.

Controversies on grace and free will. Augustinian scheme. 30. It is unnecessary to say that few disputes in theology have been so eagerly conducted, so extensively ramified, as those which relate to the free will of man, and his capacity of turning himself towards God. In this place nothing more will be expected than a brief statement of the principal question, doing no injustice by a tone of partiality to either side. All shades of opinion, as it seems, may be reduced to two, which have long divided and will long divide the Christian world. According to one of these, the corrupt nature of man is incapable of exerting any power towards a state of acceptance with God, or even of willing it with an earnest desire, until excited by preventing (præveniens) grace; which grace is vouchsafed to some only, and is called free, because God is not limited by any respect of those persons to whom he accords this gift. Whether those who are thus called by the influence of the Spirit, are so irresistibly impelled to it, that their perseverance in the faith and good works which are the fruits of their election, may surely be relied upon, or, on the other hand, may either at first obdurately resist the divine impulses, or finally swerve from their state of grace, is another question, upon which those who agree in the principal doctrine have been at variance. It is also controverted among those who belong to this class of theologians, whether the election thus freely made out of mankind depends upon an eternal decree of predestination, or upon a sentence of God following the fall of man. And a third difference relates to the condition of man after he has been aroused by the Spirit from a state of entire alienation from God; some holding that the completion as well as commencement of the work of conversion is wholly owing to the divine influence, while others maintain a co-operation of the will, so that the salvation of a sinner may, in some degree, be ascribed to himself. But the essential principle of all whom we reckon in this category of divines is the necessity of preventing grace, or, in other words, that it is not in the power of man to do any act, in the first instance, towards his own salvation. This, in some or other of its modifications, used to be deemed the orthodox scheme of doctrine; it was established in the Latin church by the influence of Augustin, it was generally held by the schoolmen, by most of the early reformers, and seems to be inculcated by the decrees of the council of Trent, as much as by the articles of the church of England. In a loose and modern acceptation of the word, it often goes by the name of Calvinism, which may perhaps be less improper, if we do not use the term in an exclusive sense, but, if it is meant to imply a particular relation to Calvin, leads to controversial chicane, and a misstatement of the historical part of the question.

Semi-pelagian hypothesis. 31. An opposite class of theological reasoners belong to what is sometimes called the Semi-pelagian school. These concur with the former in the necessity of assistance from the Spirit to the endeavours of man towards subduing his evil tendencies, and renewing his heart in the fear and love of God, but conceive that every sinner is capable of seeking this assistance, which will not be refused him, and consequently of beginning the work of conversion by his own will. They therefore either deny the necessity of preventing grace, except such as is exterior, or, which comes effectively to the same thing, assert that it is accorded in a sufficient measure to every one within the Christian church, whether at the time of baptism, or by some other means. They think the opposite opinion, whether founded on the hypothesis of an eternal decree or not, irreconcilable with the moral attributes of the Deity, and inconsistent with the general tenor of Scripture. The Semi-pelagian doctrine is commonly admitted to have been held by the Greek fathers; but the authority of Augustin, and the decisions of the Western church caused it to assume the character of a heresy. Some of the Scotists among the schoolmen appear to have made an approach to it, by their tenet of grace ex congruo. They thought that the human virtues and moral dispositions of unregenerate men were the predisposing circumstances which, by a sort of fitness, made them the objects of the divine goodness in according the benefits of his grace. Thus their own free will, from which it was admitted that such qualities and actions might proceed, would be the real, though mediate, cause of their conversion. But this was rejected by the greater part, who asserted the absolute irrespective freedom of grace, and appealed to experience for its frequent efficacy over those who had no inherent virtues to merit it.

Tenets of the reformers. 32. The early reformers, and none more than Luther, maintained the absolute passiveness of the human will, so that no good actions, even after conversion, could be ascribed in any proper sense to man, but altogether to the operation of the Spirit. Not only, however, Melanchthon espoused the Synergistic doctrine, but the Lutheran church, not in any symbolic book, but in the general tenets of its members, has been thought to have gone a good way towards Semi-pelagianism, or what passed for such with the more rigid party.[83] In the reformed church, on the contrary, the Supra-lapsarian tenets of Calvin, or the immutable decrees of election and reprobation from all eternity, were obviously incompatible with any hypothesis that made the salvation of a sinner depend upon himself. But towards the close of the sixteenth century, these severer notions (which it may be observed by the way, had always been entirely rejected by the Anabaptists, and by some of greater name, such as Sebastian Castalio) began to be impugned by a few learned men. This led in England to what are called the Lambeth articles, drawn up by Whitgift, six of which assert the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, and three deny that of the Semi-pelagians. But these, being not quite approved by the queen, or by Lord Burleigh, were never received by authority in our church. There can nevertheless be no reasonable or even sincere doubt that Calvinism, in the popular sense, was at this time prevalent; even Hooker adopted the Lambeth articles with verbal modifications that do not affect their sense.

[83] Le Clerc says that the doctrine of Melanchthon, which Bossuet stigmatises as Semi-pelagian, is that of the council of Trent. Bibl. Choisie, v. 341. I should put a different construction upon the Tridentine canons; but of course my practice in these nice questions is not great.

Rise of Arminianism. 33. The few who, in England or in the reformed churches upon the Continent, embraced these novel and heterodox opinions, as they were then accounted, within the sixteenth century, excited little attention in comparison with James Arminius, who became professor of theology at Leyden in 1604. The controversy ripened in a few years; it was intimately connected, not, of course, in its own nature, but by some of those collateral influences which have so often determined the opinions of mankind, with the political relations between the Dutch clergy and the States of Holland, as it was afterwards with the still less theological differences of that government with its Stadtholder; it appealed, on one side to reason, on the other to authority and to force; an unequal conflict, till posterity restore the balance. Arminius died in 1609; he has left works on the main topics of debate; but in theological literature, the great chief of the Arminian or Remonstrant church is Simon Episcopius. |Episcopius.| The principles of Episcopius are more widely removed from those of the Augustinian school than the five articles, so well known as the leading tenets of Arminius, and condemned at the synod of Dort. Of this famous assembly it is difficult to speak in a few words. The copious history of Brandt is perhaps the best authority; though we must own that the opposite party have a right to be heard. We are here, however, on merely literary ground, and the proceedings of ecclesiastical synods are not strictly within any province of literary history.

His writings. 34. The works of Episcopius were collectively published in 1650, seven years after his death. They form two volumes in folio, and have been more than once reprinted. The most remarkable are the Confessio Remonstrantium, drawn up about 1624, the Apology for it against a censure of the opposite party, and what seems to have been a later work, and more celebrated, his Institutiones Theologicæ. These contain a new scheme of religion, compared with that of the established churches of Europe, and may justly be deemed the representative of the liberal or latitudinarian theology. For though the writings of Erasmus, Cassander, Castalio, and Acontius had tended to the same purpose, they were either too much weakened by the restraints of prudence, or too obscure and transitory, to draw much attention, or to carry any weight against the rigid and exclusive tenets which were sustained by power.

Their spirit and tendency. 35. The earlier treatises of Episcopius seem to speak on several subjects less unequivocally than the Theological Institutions; a reserve not perhaps to be censured, and which all parties have thought themselves warranted to employ, so long as either the hope of agreement with a powerful adversary, or of mitigating his severity, should remain. Hence the Confession of the Remonstrants explicitly states that they decline the Semi-pelagian controversy, contenting themselves with asserting that sufficient grace is bestowed on all who are called by the gospel, to comply with that divine call and obey its precepts.[84] They used a form of words, which might seem equivalent to the tenet of original sin, and they did not avoid or refuse that term. But Episcopius afterwards denies it, at least in the extended sense of most theologians, almost as explicitly as Jeremy Taylor.[85] It was common in the seventeenth century to charge the Arminians, and especially Episcopius, with Socinianism. Bossuet, who seems to have quarrelled with all parties, and is neither Molinist nor Jansenist, Calvinist nor Arminian, never doubting that there is a firm footing between them, having attacked Episcopius and Grotius particularly for Semi-pelagianism and Socinianism, Le Clerc entered on their defence. But probably he would have passed with Bossuet, and hardly cared if he did pass, for a heretic, at least of the former denomination himself.[86]

[84] Episcop. Opera, vol. i., p. 64. De eo nemini litem movent Remonstrantes. I am not sure that my translation is right; but I think it is what they meant. By prevenient grace they seemed to have meant only the exterior grace of the gospel’s promulgation, which is equivalent to the Semi-pelagian scheme, p. 189. Grotius latterly came into this opinion, though he had disclaimed everything of the kind in his first dealings with theology. I have found the same doctrine in Calixtus; but I have preserved no reference as to either.

[85] Instit. Theolog., lib. iv., sect. v., c. 2. Corruptionis istius universalis nulla sunt indicia nec signa; imo non pauca sunt signa ex quibus colligitur naturam totam humanam sic corruptam non esse. The whole chapter, Ubi de peccato, quod vocant, originis agitur, et præcipua S. S. loca quibus inniti creditur, examinantur, appears to deny the doctrine entirely; but there may be some shades of distinction which have escaped me. Limborch (Theolog. Christiana lib. iii., c. 4.) allows it in a qualified sense.

[86] Bibl. Choisie, vol. v.

Great latitude allowed by them. 36. But the most distinguishing peculiarity in the writings of Episcopius was his reduction of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity far below the multitudinous articles of the churches; confining them to propositions which no Christian can avoid acknowledging without manifest blame; such, namely, wherein the subject, the predicate, and the connexion of the two are declared in Scripture by express or equivalent words.[87] He laid little stress on the authority of the church; notwithstanding the advantage he might have gained by the Anti-Calvinistic tenets of the fathers, admitting indeed the validity of the celebrated rule of Vincentius Lirinensis, in respect of tradition, which the upholders of primitive authority have always had in their mouths, but adding that it is utterly impossible to find any instance wherein it can be usefully applied.[88]

[87] Necessaria quæ scripturis continentur talia esse omnia, ut sine manifesta hominis culpa ignorari, negari aut in dubium vocari nequeant; quia videlicet tum subjectum, tum prædicatum, tum subjecti cum prædicato connexio necessaria in ipsis scripturis est, aut expressè, aut æquipollenter. Inst. Theol. l. iv., c. 6.

[88] Instit. Theolog. l. iv., sect. i., c. 15. Dupin says of Episcopius: Il n’a employé dans ses ouvrages que des passages de l’écriture sainte qu’il possédoit parfaitement. Il avoit aussi lu les Rabbins, mais on ne voit pas qu’il eût étudié les pères ni l’antiquité ecclésiastique. Il écrit nettement et méthodiquement, pose des principes, ne dissimule rien des objections qu’on peut faire contre, et y repond du mieux qu’il peut. On voit en lui une tolérance parfaite pour les Sociniens quoiqu’il se déclare contre eux; pour le parti d’Arminius, jamais il n’a eu de plus zélé et de plus habile défenseur, Bibliothèque des Auteurs séparés de l’Eglise Romaine,, ii. 495.

The life of Episcopius has been written by Limborch. Justice has been done to this eminent person and to the Arminian party which he led, in two recent English works, Nicholls’ Calvinism and Arminianism displayed, and Calder’s Life of Episcopius (1835). The latter is less verbose and more temperate than the former, and may be recommended, as a fair and useful production, to the general reader. Two theological parties in this country, though opposite in most things, are inveterately prejudiced against the Leyden school.

Progress of Arminianism. 37. The Arminian doctrine spread, as is well known, in despite of obloquy and persecution, over much of the protestant region of Europe. The Lutheran churches were already come into it; and in England there was a predisposing bias in the rulers of the church towards the authority of the primitive fathers, all of whom, before the age of Augustin, and especially the Greek, are acknowledged to have been on that side, which promoted the growth of this Batavian theology.[89] Even in France, it was not without considerable influence. |Cameron.| Cameron, a divine of Saumur, one of the chief protestant seminaries, devised a scheme of syncretism, which, notwithstanding much opposition, gained ground in those churches. It was supported by some highly distinguished for learning, Amyraut, Daillé, and Blondel. Of this scheme it is remarkable, that while in its literal purport it can only seem a modification of the Augustinian hypothesis, with an awkward and feeble admixture of the other, yet its tendency was to efface the former by degrees, and to slide into the Arminian hypothesis, which ultimately became almost general in the reformed church.

[89] General Vossius, in his Historia Pelagiana, the first edition of which, in 1618, was considerably enlarged afterwards, admitted that the first four centuries did not countenance the predestinarian scheme of Augustin. This gave offence in Holland; his book was publicly censured, he was excommunicated and forbidden to teach in public or private. Vossius, like others, remembered that he had a large family, and made, after some years, a sort of retractation, which, of course, did not express his real opinion. Le Clerc seems to doubt whether he acted from this motive or from what he calls simplicity, an expression for weakness. Vossius was, like his contemporary Usher, a man of much more learning than strength of intellect. Bibliothèque Universelle, xvii. 312, 329. Niceron, vol. xiii.

Rise of Jansenism. 38. These perplexities were not confined to protestant theology. The church of Rome, strenuous to maintain the tenets of Augustin, and yet to condemn those who did the same, has been charged with exerting the plenitude of her infallibility to enforce the belief of an incoherent syncretism. She had condemned Baius, as giving too much efficacy to grace; she was on the point of condemning Molina for giving too little. Both Clement VIII. and Paul V. leaned to the Dominicans against the Jesuits in this controversy; but the great services and influence of the latter order prevented a decision which would have humbled them before so many adversaries. It may, nevertheless be said that the Semi-pelagian, or Arminian doctrine, though consonant to that of the Jesuits, was generally ill received in the church of Rome, till the opposite hypothesis, that of Augustin and Calvin, having been asserted by one man in more unlimited propositions than had been usual, a reaction took place, that eventually both gave an apparent triumph to the Molinist party, and endangered the church itself by the schism to which the controversy gave rise. The Augustinus of Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, was published in 1640, and in the very next year was censured at Rome. But, as the great controversy that sprung out of the condemnation of this book belongs more strictly to the next period, we shall defer it for the present.

Socinus. Volkelius. 39. The Socinian academy at Racow which drew to itself several proselytes from other countries, acquired considerable importance in theological literature after the beginning of the century. It was not likely that a sect, regarded with peculiar animosity, would escape in the general disposition of the catholic party in Poland to oppress the dissidents whom they had long feared; the Racovian institution was broken up and dispersed in 1638, though some of its members continued to linger in Poland for twenty years longer. The Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, published at Amsterdam (in the title-page, Irenopolis), in 1658, contains chiefly the works of Socinian theologians who belong to this first part of the century. The Prælectiones Theologicæ of Faustus Socinus himself, being published in 1609, after his death, fall within this class. They contain a systematic theology according to his scheme, and are praised by Eichhorn for the acuteness and depth they often display.[90] In these, among his other deviations from the general orthodoxy of Christendom, Socinus astonished mankind by denying the evidences of natural religion, resolving our knowledge even of a deity into revelation. This paradox is more worthy of those who have since adopted it, than of so acute a reasoner as Socinus.[91] It is, in fact, not very congenial to the spirit of his theology, which, rejecting all it thinks incompatible with reason as to the divine attributes, should at least have some established notions of them upon rational principles. The later Socinians, even those nearest to the time, did not follow their master in this part of his tenets.[92] The treatise of Volkelius, son-in-law of Socinus, De vera Religione, is chiefly taken from the latter. It was printed at Racow in 1633, and again in Holland in 1641; but most of the latter impression having been burned by order of the magistrates, it is a very scarce book, and copies were formerly sold at great prices. But the hangman’s bonfire has lost its charm, and forbidden books, when they happen to occur, are no longer in much request. The first book out of five in this volume of Volkelius, on the attributes of God, is by Crellius.

[90] Eichhorn, vi. part 1, p. 283. Simon, however, observes that Socinus knew little Greek or Hebrew, as he owns himself, though he pretends to decide questions which require a knowledge of these languages. I quote from Bibliothèque Universelle, vol. xxiii., p. 498.

[91] Tillotson, in one of his sermons (I cannot give the reference, writing from memory), dissents, as might be expected, from this denial of natural religion, but with such encomiums on Socinus as some archbishops would have avoided.

[92] Socinum sectæ ejus principes nuper Volkelius, nunc Ruarus non probant, in eo quod circa Dei cognitionem petita e natura rerum argumenta abdicaverit. Grot. Epist. 964. See too Ruari Epist., p. 210.

Crellius. Ruarus. 40. Crellius was, perhaps, the most eminent of the Racovian school in this century.[93] Many of its members, like himself, were Germans, their sect having gained ground in some of the Lutheran states about this time, as it did also in the United Provinces. Grotius broke a lance with him in his treatise De Satisfactione Christi, to which he replied in another with the same title. Each retired from the field with the courtesies of chivalry towards his antagonist. The Dutch Arminians in general, though very erroneously, supposed to concur in all the leading tenets of the Racovian theologians, treated them with much respect.[94] Grotius was often reproached with the intimacies he kept up among these obnoxious sectaries; and many of his letters, as well as those of Curcellæus and other leading Arminians, bear witness to the personal regard they felt for them.[95] Several proofs of this will be also found in the epistles of Ruarus, a book which throws much light on the theological opinions of the age. Ruarus was a man of acuteness, learning, and piety, not wholly concurring with the Racovians, but not far removed from them.[96] The commentaries of Grotius on the Scriptures have been also charged with Socinianism; but he pleaded that his interpretations were those of the fathers.

[93] Dupin praises Volkelius highly, but says of Crellius: il avoit beaucoup étudié, mais il n’étoit pas un esprit fort élevé. Bibl. des Auteurs separés, ii. 614 v. 628. Simon, on the contrary, (ubi suprà) praises Crellius highly, and says no other commentator of his party is comparable to him.

[94] The Remonstrants refused to anathematize the Socinians, Episcopius says, on account of the apparent arguments in their favour, and the differences that have always existed on that head. Apologia Confessionis. Episc. Op. vol. i. His own tenets, were probably what some would call Arian; thus he says, personis his tribus divinitatem tribui, non collateraliter aut co-ordinatè, sed subordinatè. Inst. Theol. 1. iv., c. 2, 32. Grotius says, he finds the Catholics more tractable about the Trinity than the Calvinists.

[95] Grotius never shrunk from defending his intimacy with Ruarus and Crellius, and after praising the former, concludes, in one of his letters, with this liberal and honest sentiment. Ego vero ejus sum animi, ejusque instituti, ut mihi cum hominibus cunctis, præcipue cum Christianis quantumvis errantibus necessitudinis aliquid putem intercedere, idque me neque dictis neque factis pigeat demonstrare. Epist. 860. Hæretici nisi aliquid haberent veri ac nobiscum commune, jam hæretici non essent. 2da Series, p. 873. Nihil veri eo factum est deterius, quod in id Socinus incidit. p. 880. This, he thought, was the case in some questions, where Socinus, without designing it, had agreed with antiquity. Neque me pudeat consentire Socino, si quando is in veram veteremque sententiam incidit, ut sanè fecit in controversia de justitia per fidem, et aliis nonnullis. Id. p. 797. Socinus hoc non agens in atiquæ ecclesiæ sensus nonnunquam incidit, et eas partes, ut ingenio valebat, percoluit feliciter. Admiscuit alia quæ etiam vera dicenti auctoritatem detraxere. Epist. 966. Even during his controversy with Crellius he wrote to him in a very handsome manner. Bene autem in epistola tua, quæ mihi longè gratissimi advenit, de me judicas, non esse me eorum in numero, qui ob sententias salva pietate dissentientes, alieno a quoquam sim animo, aut boni alicujus amicitiam repudiare. Etiam in libro de vera religione, [Volkelii] quem jam percurri, relecturus et posthac, multa invenio summo cum judicio observata; illud vero sæculo gratulor, repertos homines, qui neutiquam in controversiis subtilibus tantum ponunt, quantum in vera vitæ emendatione, et quotidiano ad sanctitatem profectu. Epist. 280 (1631). He wrote with kindness and regret on the breaking up of the establishment at Racow in 1638. Ep. 1006: Grotius has been as obnoxious on the score of Socinianism as of Popery. His Commentaries on the Scriptures are taxed with it, and in fact he is not in good odour with any but the Arminian divines, nor do they, we see, wholly agree with him.

[96] Ruarus nearly agreed with Grotius as to the atonement; at least the latter thought so. De satisfactione ita mihi respondit, ut nihil admodum controversiæ relinqueretur. Grot. Epist. 2da series, p. 881. See also Ruari Epistolæ, p. 148, 282. He paid also more respect to the second century than some of his brethren, p. 100, 439, and even struggles to agree with the Ante-Nicene fathers, though he cannot come up to them, p. 275, 296. But in answer to some of his correspondents who magnified primitive authority, he well replies: Deinde quæro quis illos fixit veritati terminos? quis duo illa prima sæcula ab omni errore absolvit? Annon ecclesiastica historia satis testatur, nonnullas opiniones portentosas jam tum inter eos qui nomen Christi dederant, invaluisse? Quin ut verum fatear, res ipsa docet nonnullos posterioris sevi acutius in enodandis Scripturis versatos; et ut de nostra ætate dicam, valde me pœniteret Calvini vestri ac Bezæ si nihilo solidius sacras literas interpretarentur, quam video illos ipsos, quos tu mihi obducis, fecisse, p. 183. He lamented the fatal swerving from protestantism into which reverence for antiquity was leading his friend Grotius: fortassis et antiquitatis veneratio, quæ gravibus quibusdam Pontificiorum erroribus præluxit, ultra lineam eum perduxit, p. 277 (1642); and in answer to Mersenne, who seems to have had some hopes of his conversion, and recommended to him the controversy of Grotius with Rivet, he plainly replies that the former had extenuated some things in the church of Rome which ought to be altered, p. 258. This he frequently laments in the course of his letters, but treats him with gentleness in comparison with some of the sterner Socinians. It is remarkable that even he and Crellius seem to have excluded the members of the church of Rome, except the “vulgus ineruditum et Cassandri gregales,” from salvation; and this while almost all churches were anathematizing themselves in the same way. Ruar. Epist., p. 9 and p. 167.

This book contains two centuries of epistles, the second of which is said to be very scarce, and I doubt whether many have read the first, which must excuse my quotations. The learning, sense, and integrity of Ruarus, as well as the high respect which Calixtus, Curcellæus, and other great men felt for him, render the book of some interest. He tells us that while he was in England, about 1617, a professorship at Cambridge was offered to him, worth 100l. per annum, besides as much more from private pupils, p. 71. But he probably mistook the civil speeches of individuals for an offer: he was not eminent enough for such a proposal on the part of the university; and at least he must have been silent about his Socinianism. The morality of the early Socinians was very strict and even ascetic, proofs of which appear in these letters, p. 306 et alibi.

Erastianism. 41. Two questions of great importance which had been raised in the preceding century, became still more interesting in the present, on account of the more frequent occasion that the force of circumstances gave for their investigation, and the greater names that were engaged in it. Both of these arose out of the national establishment of churches, and their consequent relation to the commonwealth. One regarded the power of the magistrate over the church he recognized; the other involved the right of his subjects to dissent from it by non-conformity, or by a different mode of worship.

Maintained by Hooker. 42. Erastus, by proposing to substitute for the ancient discipline of ecclesiastical censures, and especially for excommunication, a perpetual superintendence of the civil power over the faith and practice of the church, had given name to a scheme generally denominated Erastianism, though in some respects far broader than anything he seems to have suggested. It was more elaborately maintained by Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity, and had been, in fact, that on which the English reformation under Henry was originally founded. But as it was manifestly opposed to the ultra-montane pretensions of the See of Rome, and even to the more moderate theories of the catholic church, being, of course, destructive of her independence, so did it stand in equal contradiction to the Presbyterian scheme of Scotland and of the United Provinces. |And Grotius.| In the latter country, the states of Holland had been favourable to the Arminians, so far at least as to repress any violence against them; the clergy were exasperated and intolerant; and this raised the question of civil supremacy, in which Grotius, by one of his early works entitled Pietas Ordinum Hollandiæ, published in 1613, sustained the right of the magistrate to inhibit dangerous controversies.

His Treatise on ecclesiastical power of the state. 43. He returned, after the lapse of some years, to the same theme in a larger and more comprehensive work, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra. It is written upon the Anglican principles of regal supremacy, which had, however, become far less popular with the rulers of our church, than in the days of Cranmer, Whitgift, and Hooker. After stating the question, and proving the ecclesiastical power of the magistrate by natural law, Scripture, established usage, agreement of Heathen and Christian writers, and the reason of the thing, he distinguishes control over sacred offices from their exercise, and proceeds to inquire whether the magistrate may take the latter on himself; which, though practised in the early ages of the world, he finds inconvenient at present, the manners required for the regal and sacerdotal character being wholly different.[97]

[97] Cap. 4.

44. Actions may be prescribed or forbidden by natural divine law, positive divine law, or human law; the latter extending to nothing but what is left indefinite by the other two. But though we are bound not to act in obedience to human laws which contradict the divine, we are also bound not forcibly to resist them. We may defend ourselves by force against an equal, not against a superior, as he proves first from the Digest, and secondly from the New Testament.[98] Thus the rule of passive obedience is unequivocally laid down. He meets the recent examples of resistance to sovereigns, by saying that they cannot be approved where the kings have had an absolute power; but where they are bound by compact or the authority of a senate or of estates, since their power is not unlimited, they may be resisted on just grounds by that authority.[99] “Which I remark,” he proceeds to say, “lest any one, as I sometimes have known, should disgrace a good cause by a mistaken defence.”

[98] Cap. 3.

[99] Sin alicubi reges tales fuere, qui pactis sive positivis legibus et senatus alicujus aut ordinum decretis adstringerentur, in hos, ut summum imperium non obtinent, arma ex optimatum tanquam superiorum sententia sumi justis de causis potuerunt. Ibid.

45. The magistrate can alter nothing which is definitely laid down by the positive law of God; but he may regulate the circumstantial observance even of such; and as to things undefined in Scripture he has plenary jurisdiction; such as the temporalities of the church, the convocation of synods, the election of pastors. The burthen of proof lies on those who would limit the civil power by affirming anything to be prescribed by the divine law.[100] The authority attributed in Scripture to churches does not interfere with the power of the magistrate, being persuasive and not coercive. The whole church has no coercive power by divine right.[101] But since the visible church is a society of divine institution, it follows that whatever is naturally competent to a lawful society, is competent also to the church, unless it can be proved to be withdrawn from it.[102] It has, therefore, a legislative government (regimen constitutivum), of which he gives the institution of the Lord’s day as an example. But this does not impair the sovereign’s authority in ecclesiastical matters. In treating of that supremacy, he does not clearly show what jurisdiction he attributes to the magistrate; most of his instances relating to the temporalities of the church, as to which no question is likely to arise.[103] But, on the whole, he means undoubtedly to carry the supremacy as far as is done in England.

[100] Ibid.

[101] Cap. 4.

[102] Quandoquidem ecclesia cœtus est divina lege non permissus tantum sed et institutus, de aspectabili cœtu loquor, sequitur ea omnia quæ cœtibus legitimis naturaliter competunt, etiam ecclesiæ competere, quatenus adempta non probantur. Ibid.

[103] Cap. 5.

46. In a chapter on the due exercise of the civil supremacy over the church, he shows more of a protestant feeling than would have been found in him when he approached the latter years of his life;[104] and declares fully against submission to any visible authority in matters of faith, so that sovereigns are not bound to follow the ministers of the church in what they may affirm as doctrine. Ecclesiastical synods he deems often useful, but thinks the magistrate is not bound to act with their consent, and that they are sometimes pernicious.[105] The magistrate may determine who shall compose such synods;[106] a strong position which he endeavours to prove at great length. Even if the members are elected by the church, the magistrate may reject those whom he reckons unfit; he may preside in the assembly, confirm, reject, annul its decisions. He may also legislate about the whole organisation of the established church.[107] It is for him to determine what form of religion shall be publicly exercised; an essential right of sovereignty as political writers have laid it down. And this is confirmed by experience; “for if any one shall ask why the Romish religion flourished in England under Mary, the protestant under Elizabeth, no cause can be assigned but the pleasure of these queens, or, as some might say, of the queens and parliaments.” In this manner Grotius disposes of a great question of casuistry by what has been done; as if murder and adultery might not be established by the same logic. Natural law would be resolved into history, were we always to argue in a similar way. But this, as will appear more fully hereafter, is not the usual reasoning of Grotius. To the objection from the danger of abuse in conceding so much power to the sovereign, he replies that no other theory will secure us better. On every supposition the power must be lodged in men, who are all liable to error. We must console ourselves by a trust in divine providence alone.[108]

[104] Cap. 6. He states the question to be this: An post apostolorum ætatem aut persona aut cœtus sit aliquis aspectabilis, de quâ quove certi esse possimus ac debeamus, quæcunque ab ipsis proponantur, esse indubitatæ veritatis. Negant hoc Evangelici; aiunt Romanenses.

[105] Cap. 7.

[106] Designare eos, qui ad synodum sunt venturi.

[107] Cap. 8. Nulla in re magis elucescit vis summi imperii, quam quod in ejus arbitrio est quænam religio publicè exerceatur, idque præcipuum inter majestatis jura ponunt omnes qui politicè scripserunt. Docet idem experientia; si enim quæras cur in Anglia Maria regnante Romana religio, Elizabetha vero imperante, Evangelica viguerit, causa proxima reddi non poterit, nisi ex arbitrio reginarum, aut, ut quibusdam videtur, reginarum ac parlamenti, p. 242.

[108] Cap. 8.

47. The sovereign may abolish false religions and punish their professors, which no one else can. Here again we find precedents instead of arguments; but he says that the primitive church disapproved of capital punishments for heresy, which seems to be his main reason for doing the same. The sovereign may also enjoin silence in controversies, and inspect the conduct of the clergy without limiting himself by the canons, though he will do well to regard them. Legislation and jurisdiction, that is, of a coercive nature, do not belong to the church, except as they may be conceded to it by the civil power.[109] He fully explains the various kinds of ecclesiastical law that have been gradually introduced. Even the power of the keys, which is by divine right, cannot be so exercised as to exclude the appellant jurisdiction of the sovereign; as he proves by the Roman law, and by the usage of the parliament of Paris.[110]

[109] Ibid.

[110] Cap. 9.

48. The sovereign has a control (inspectionem cum imperio) over the ordination of priests, and certainly possesses a right of confirmation, that is, the assignment of an ordained minister to a given cure.[111] And though the election of pastors belongs to the church, this may, for good reasons, be taken into the hands of the sovereign. Instances in point are easily found, and the chapter upon the subject contains an interesting historical summary of this part of ecclesiastical law. In every case, the sovereign has a right of annulling an election, and also of removing a pastor from the local exercise of his ministry.[112]

[111] Cap. 10. Confirmationem hanc summæ potestati acceptam ferendam nemo sanus negaverit.

[112] Cap. 10.

Remark upon this theory. 49. This is the full development of an Erastian theory, which Cranmer had early espoused, and which Hooker had maintained in a less extensive manner. Bossuet has animadverted upon it, nor can it appear tolerable to a zealous churchman.[113] It was well received in England by the lawyers, who had always been jealous of the spiritual tribunals, especially of late years, when, under the patronage of Laud, they had taken a higher tone than seemed compatible with the supremacy of the common law. The scheme, nevertheless, is open to some objections when propounded in so unlimited a manner, none of which is more striking than that it tends to convert differences of religious opinion into crimes against the state, and furnishes bigotry with new arguments as well as new arms, in its conflict with the free exercise of human reason. Grotius, however, feared rather that he had given too little power to the civil magistrate than too much.[114]

[113] See Le Clerc’s remarks on what Bossuet has said. Bibliothèque Choisie, v. 349.

[114] Ego multo magis vereor, ne minus quam par est magistratibus, aut plusquam par est pastoribus tribuerim, quam ne in alteram partem iterum (?) excesserim, nec sic quidem illis satisfiet qui se ecclesiam vocant. Epist. 42. This was in 1614, after the publication of the Pietas Ordinum Hollandiæ. As he drew nearer to the church of Rome, or that of Canterbury, he must probably have somewhat modified his Erastianism. And yet he seems never to have been friendly to the temporal power of bishops. He writes in August, 1641, Episcopis Angliæ videtur mansurum nomen prope sine re, accisa et opulentia et auctoritate. Mihi non displicet ecclesiæ pastores et ab inani pompa et a curis sæcularium rerum sublevari, p. 1011. He had a regard for Laud, as the restorer of a reverence for primitive antiquity, and frequently laments his fate; but had said, in 1640, Doleo quod episcopi nimium intendendo potentiæ suæ nervos odium sibi potius quam amorem populorum pariunt. Ep. 1390.

Toleration of religious tenets. 50. Persecution for religious heterodoxy, in all its degrees, was in the sixteenth century the principle, as well as the practice of every church. It was held inconsistent with the sovereignty of the magistrate to permit any religion but his own; inconsistent with his duty to suffer any but the true. The edict of Nantes was a compromise between belligerent parties; the toleration of the dissidents in Poland was nearly of the same kind; but no state, powerful enough to restrain its sectaries from the exercise of their separate worship, had any scruples about the right and obligation to do so. Even the writers of that century, who seemed most strenuous for toleration, Castalio, Celso, and Koornhert, had confined themselves to denying the justice of penal and especially of capital inflictions for heresy; the liberty of public worship had but incidentally, if at all, been discussed. Acontius had developed larger principles, distinguishing the fundamental from the accessory doctrines of the gospel; which, by weakening the associations of bigotry, prepared the way for a catholic tolerance. Episcopius speaks in the strongest terms of the treatise of Acontius, de Stratagematibus Satanæ, and says that the Remonstrants trod closely in his steps, as would appear by comparing their writings; so that he shall quote no passages in proof, their entire books bearing witness to the conformity.[115]

[115] Episcop. Opera, i. 301 (edit. 1665.)

Claimed by the Arminians. 51. The Arminian dispute led by necessary consequence to the question of public toleration. They sought at first a free admission to the pulpits, and in an excellent speech of Grotius, addressed to the magistrates of Amsterdam in 1616, he objects to a separate toleration as rending the bosom of the church. But it was soon evident that nothing more could be obtained; and their adversaries refused this. They were driven therefore to contend for religious liberty, and the writings of Episcopius are full of this plea. Against capital punishment for heresy he raises his voice with indignant severity, and asserts that the whole Christian world abhorred the fatal precedent of Calvin in the death of Servetus.[116] This indicates a remarkable change already wrought in the sentiments of mankind. Certain it is that no capital punishments for heresy were inflicted in protestant countries after this time; nor were they as frequently or as boldly vindicated as before.[117]

[116] Calvinus signum primus extulit supra alios omnes, et exemplum dedit in theatro Gebennesi funestissimum, quodque Christianus orbis merito execratur et abominatur; nec hoc contentus tam atroci ficinore, cruento simul animo et calamo parentavit. Apologia pro Confess. Remonstrantium, c. 24, p. 241. The whole passage is very remarkable, as an indignant reproof of a party, who, while living under popish governments, cry out for liberty of conscience, and deny the right of punishing opinions; yet, in all their writings and actions when they have the power, display the very opposite principles.

[117] De hæreticorum pœnis quæ scripsi, in iis mecum sentit Gallia et Germania, ut puto, omnis. Grot. Epist., p. 941 (1642.) Some years sooner there had been remains of the leaven in France. Adversus hæreticidia, he says, in 1626, satis ut arbitror plane locutus sum, certè ita ut hic multos ob id offenderim, p. 789. Our own Fuller, I am sorry to say, in his Church History, written about 1650, speaks with some disapprobation of the sympathy of the people with Legat and Wightman, burned by James I., in 1614; and this is the more remarkable, as he is a well-natured and not generally bigoted writer. I should think he was the latest protestant who has tarnished his name by such sentiments. James, who in some countries would have had certain reasons for dreading the fire himself, designed to have burned a third heretic, if the humanity of the multitude had not been greater than his own.

By the independents. 52. The Independents claim to themselves the honour of having been the first to maintain the principles of general toleration, both as to freedom of worship, and immunity from penalties for opinion. But that the Arminians were not as early promulgators of the same noble tenets, seems not to have been proved. Crellius in his Vindiciæ pro Religionis Libertate, 1636, contended for the Polish dissidents, and especially for his own sect.[118] The principle is implied, if not expressed, in the writings of Chillingworth, and still more of Hales; but the first famous plea, in this country, for tolerance in religion, on a comprehensive basis and on deep-seated foundations, was the liberty of Prophesying by Jeremy Taylor. |And by Jeremy Taylor.| This celebrated work was written according to Taylor’s dedication, during his retirement in Wales, wither he was driven, as he expresses it, “by this great storm which hath dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces,” and published in 1647. He speaks of himself as without access to books; it is evident, however, from the abundance of his quotations, that he was not much in want of them: and from this, as well as other strong indications, we may reasonably believe, that a considerable part of this treatise had been committed to paper long before.

[118] This short tract, which will be found among the collected works of Crellius, in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, contains a just and temperate pleading for religious liberty, but little which can appear very striking in modern times. It is said, nevertheless, to have been translated and republished by D’Holbach about 1760. This I have not seen, but there must, I presume, have been a good deal of condiment added to make it stimulating enough for that school.

His Liberty of Prophesying. 53. The argument of this important book rests on one leading maxim, derived from the Arminian divines, as it was in them from Erasmus and Acontius, that the fundamental truths of Christianity are comprised in narrow compass, not beyond the Apostles’ creed in its literal meaning; that all the rest is matter of disputation, and too uncertain, for the most part, to warrant our condemning those who differ from us, as if their error must be criminal. This one proposition, much expanded, according to Taylor’s diffuse style, and displayed in a variety of language, pervades the whole treatise; a small part of which, in comparison with the rest, bears immediately on the point of political toleration, as a duty of civil governments and of churches invested with power. In the greater portion, Taylor is rather arguing against that dogmatism of judgment, which induces men, either singly or collectively, to pronounce with confidence where only a varying probability can be attained. This spirit is the religious, though not entirely the political, motive of intolerance; and, by chasing this from the heart, he inferred not that he should lay wide the door to universal freedom, but dispose the magistrate to consider more equitably the claims of every sect.“Whatsoever is against the foundation of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of obedience, or destructive to human society and the public and just interests of bodies politic, is out of the limits of my question, and does not pretend to compliance or toleration; so that I allow no indifferency, nor any countenance to those religions whose principles destroy government, nor to those religions, if there be any such, that teach ill life.”

Boldness of his doctrines. 54. No man, as Taylor here teaches, is under any obligation to believe that in revelation, which is not so revealed, but that wise men and good men have differed in their opinions about it. And the great variety of opinions in churches, and even in the same church, “there being none that is in prosperity,” as he, with rather a startling boldness puts it, “but changes her doctrines every age, either by bringing in new doctrines, or by contradicting her old,” shows that we can have no term of union, but that wherein all agree, the creed of the apostles.[119] And hence, though we may undoubtedly carry on our own private inquiries as much farther as we see reason, none who hold this fundamental faith are to be esteemed heretics, nor liable to punishment. And here he proceeds to reprove all those oblique acts which are not direct persecutions of men’s persons, the destruction of books, the forbidding the publication of new ones, the setting out fraudulent editions and similar acts of falsehood, by which men endeavour to stifle or prevent religious inquiry. “It is a strange industry and an importune diligence that was used by our forefathers; of all those heresies which gave them battle and employment, we have absolutely no record or monument, but what themselves, who are adversaries, have transmitted to us; and we know that adversaries, especially such who observed all opportunities to discredit both the persons and doctrines of the enemy, are not always the best records or witnesses of such transactions. We see it now in this very age, in the present distemperatures, that parties are no good registers of the actions of the adverse side; and, if we cannot be confident of the truth of a story now, now I say that it is possible for any man, and likely that the interested adversary will discover the imposture, it is far more unlikely that after ages should know any other truth, but such as serves the ends of the representers.”[120]

[119] “Since no churches believe themselves infallible, that only excepted which all other churches say is most of all deceived, it were strange if, in so many articles, which make up their several bodies of confessions, they had not mistaken, every one of them, in some thing or other.” This is Taylor’s fearless mode of grappling with his argument; and any other must give a church that claims infallibility the advantage.

[120] Vol. vii, p. 424. Heber’s edition of Taylor.

His notions of uncertainty in theological tenets. 55. None were accounted heretics by the primitive church, who held by the Apostles’ creed, till the council of Nice defined some things, rightly indeed, as Taylor professes to believe, but perhaps with too much alteration of the simplicity of ancient faith, so that “he had need be a subtle man who understands the very words of the new determinations.” And this was carried much farther by later councils, and in the Athanasian creed, of which, though protesting his own persuasion in its truth, he intimates not a little disapprobation. The necessary articles of faith are laid down clearly in Scripture; but no man can be secure, as to mysterious points, that he shall certainly understand and believe them in their true sense. This he shows first from the great discrepancy of reading in manuscripts, (an argument which he over-states in a very uncritical and incautious manner); next, from the different senses the words will bear, which there is no certain mark to distinguish, the infinite variety of human understandings, swayed, it may be, by interest, or determined by accidental and extrinsical circumstances, and the fallibility of those means, by which men hope to attain a clear knowledge of scriptural truth. And after exposing, certainly with no extenuation, the difficulties of interpretation, he concludes that since these ordinary means of expounding Scripture are very dubious, “he that is the wisest, and by consequence the likeliest to expound truest, in all probability of reason, will be very far from confidence; and, therefore, a wise man would not willingly be prescribed to by others; and if he be also a just man, he will not impose upon others; for it is best every man should be left in that liberty, from which no man can justly take him, unless he could secure him from error; so here there is a necessity to conserve the liberty of prophesying and interpreting Scripture; a necessity derived from the consideration of the difficulty of Scripture in questions controverted, and the uncertainty of any internal medium of interpretation.”

His low opinion of the fathers. 56. Taylor would in much of this have found an echo in the advocates of the church of Rome, and in some protestants of his own communion; but he passed onward to assail their bulwarks. Tradition or the testimony of the church, he holds insufficient and uncertain, for the reasons urged more fully by Daillé; the authority of councils is almost equally precarious, from their inconsistency, their liability to factious passions, and the doubtful authenticity of some of their acts; the pope’s claim to infallibility is combated on the usual grounds; the judgment of the fathers is shown to be inconclusive by their differences among themselves, and their frequent errors; and professing a desire that “their great reputation should be preserved as sacred as it ought,” he refers the reader to Daillé for other things; and, “shall only consider that the writings of the fathers have been so corrupted by the intermixture of heretics, so many false books put forth in their names, so many of their writings lost which would more clearly have explicated their sense, and, at last, an open profession made and a trade of making the fathers speak not what themselves thought, but what other men pleased, that it is a great instance of God’s providence and care of his church, that we have so much good preserved in the writings which we receive from the fathers, and that all truth is not as clear gone as is the certainty of their great authority and reputation.”[121]

[121] It seems not quite easy to reconcile this with what Taylor has just before said of his desire to preserve the reputation of the fathers sacred. In no writer is it more necessary to observe the animus with which he writes; for, giving way to his impetuosity, when he has said anything that would give offence, or which he thought incautious, it was not his custom, so far as we can judge, to expunge or soften it, but to insert something else of an opposite colour, without taking any pains to harmonize his context. He probably revised hardly at all what he had written before it went to the press. This makes it easy to quote passages, especially short ones, from Taylor, which do not exhibit his real way of thinking; if, indeed, his way of thinking itself did not vary with the wind that blew from different regions of controversy.

Difficulty of finding out truth. 57. The authority of the church cannot be any longer alleged when neither that of popes and councils, nor of ancient fathers is maintainable; since the diffusive church has no other means of speaking, nor can we distinguish by any extrinsic test the greater or better portion of it from the worse. And thus, after dismissing respectfully the pretences of some to expound Scripture by the Spirit, as impertinent to the question of dictating the faith of others, he comes to the reason of each man, as the best judge for himself, of religious controversies; reason, that may be exercised either in choosing a guide, if it feel its own incompetency, or in examining the grounds of belief. The latter has great advantages, and no man is bound to know anything of that concerning which he is not able to judge for himself. But reason may err, as he goes on to prove, without being culpable; that which is plain to one understanding being obscure to another, and among various sources of error which he enumerates as incidental to mankind, that of education being “so great and invincible a prejudice, that he who masters the inconvenience of it is more to be commended than he can justly be blamed that complies with it.” And thus not only single men but whole bodies take unhesitatingly and unanimously opposite sides from those who have imbibed another kind of instruction, and “it is strange that all the Dominicans should be of one opinion in the matter of predestination and immaculate conception, and all the Franciscans of the quite contrary, as if their understandings were formed in a different mould and furnished with various principles by their very rule.” These and the like prejudices are not absolute excuses to every one, and are often accompanied with culpable dispositions of mind; but the impossibility of judging others renders it incumbent on us to be lenient towards all, and neither to be peremptory in denying that those who differ from us have used the best means in their power to discover the truth, nor to charge their persons, whatever we may their opinions, with odious consequences which they do not avow.

Grounds of toleration. 58. This diffuse and not very well arranged vindication of diversity of judgment in religion, comprised in the first twelve sections of the Liberty of Prophesying, is the proper basis of the second part, which maintains the justice of toleration as a consequence from the former principle. The general arguments, or prejudices, on which punishment for religious tenets had been sustained, turned on their criminality in the eyes of God, and the duty of the magistrate to sustain God’s honour and to guard his own subjects from sin. Taylor, not denying that certain and known idolatry, or any sort of practical impiety, may be punished corporally, because it is matter of fact, asserts that no matter of mere opinion, no errors that of themselves are not sins, are to be persecuted or punished by death or corporal infliction. He returns to his favourite position, that “we are not sure not to be deceived;” mingling this, in that inconsequent allocation of his proofs which frequently occurs in his writings, with other arguments of a different nature. The governors of the church, indeed, may condemn and restrain as far as their power extends, any false doctrine which encourages evil life, or destroys the foundations of religion; but if the church meddles farther with any matters of question, which have not this tendency, so as to dictate what men are to believe, she becomes tyrannical and uncharitable; the Apostles’ creed being sufficient to conserve the peace of the church and the unity of her doctrine. And, with respect to the civil magistrate, he concludes that he is bound to suffer the profession of different opinions, which are neither directly impious and immoral, nor disturb the public peace.

Inconsistency of one chapter. 59. The seventeenth chapter, in which Taylor professes to consider which among the sects of Christendom are to be tolerated and in what degree, is written in a tone not easily reconciled with that of the rest. Though he begins by saying that diversity of opinions does more concern public peace than religion, it certainly appears in some passages, that on this pretext of peace, which with the magistrate has generally been of more influence than that of orthodoxy, he withdraws a great deal of that liberty of prophesying which he has been so broadly asserting. Punishment for religious tenets is doubtless not at all the same as restraint of separate worship; yet we are not prepared for the shackles he seems inclined to throw over the latter. Laws of ecclesiastical discipline, which, in Taylor’s age, were understood to be binding on the whole community, cannot, he holds, be infringed by those who take occasion to disagree, without rendering authority contemptible; and if there are any as zealous for obedience to the church, as others may be for their opinions against it, the toleration of the latter’s disobedience may give offence to the former: an argument strange enough in this treatise! But Taylor is always more prone to accumulate reasons than to sift their efficiency. It is indeed, he thinks, worthy to be considered in framing a law of church discipline, whether it will be disliked by any who are to obey it; but, after it is once enacted, there seems no further indulgence practicable than what the governors of the church may grant to particular persons by dispensation. The laws of discipline are for the public good, and must not so far tolerate a violation of themselves as to destroy the good that the public ought to derive from them.[122]

[122] This single chapter is of itself conclusive against the truth of Taylor’s own allegation that he wrote his Liberty of Prophesying in order to procure toleration for the episcopal church of England at the hands of those who had overthrown it. No one ever dreamed of refusing freedom of opinion to that church; it was only about public worship that any difficulty could arise. But, in truth, there is not one word in the whole treatise which could have been written with the view that Taylor pretends.

His general defence of toleration. 60. I am inclined to suspect that Taylor, for some cause, interpolated this chapter after the rest of the treatise was complete. It has as little bearing upon, and is as inconsistent in spirit with, the following sections as with those that precede. To use a familiar illustration, the effect it produces on the reader’s mind is like that of coming on deck at sea, and finding that, the ship having put about, the whole line of coast is reversed to the eye. Taylor, however, makes but a short tack. In the next section, he resumes the bold tone of an advocate for freedom; and, after discussing at great length the leading tenet of the Anabaptists, concludes that, resting as it does on such plausible, though insufficient grounds, we cannot exclude it by any means from toleration, though they may be restrained from preaching their other notions of the unlawfulness of war, or of oaths, or of capital punishment; it being certain that no good religion teaches doctrines whose consequences would destroy all government. A more remarkable chapter is that in which Taylor concludes in favour of tolerating the Romanists, except when they assert the pope’s power of deposing princes, or of dispensing with oaths. The result of all, he says, is this: “Let the prince and the secular power have a care the commonwealth be safe. For whether such or such a sect of Christians be to be permitted, is a question rather political than religious.”

61. In the concluding sections he maintains the right of particular churches to admit all who profess the Apostles’ creed to their communion, and of private men to communicate with different churches, if they require no unlawful condition. But “few churches, that have framed bodies of confession and articles, will endure any person that is not of the same confession; which is a plain demonstration that such bodies of confession and articles do much hurt.” “The guilt of schism may lie on him who least thinks it; he being rather the schismatic who makes unnecessary and inconvenient impositions, than he who disobeys them, because he cannot do otherwise without violating his conscience.”[123] The whole treatise on the Liberty of Prophesying ends with the celebrated parable of Abraham, found, as Taylor says, “in the Jews’ books,” but really in an Arabian writer. This story Franklin, as every one now knows, rather unhandsomely appropriated to himself; and it is a strange proof of the ignorance as to our earlier literature which then prevailed, that for many years it continued to be quoted with his name. It was not contained in the first editions of the Liberty of Prophesying; and, indeed, the book from which Taylor is supposed to have borrowed it was not published till 1641.

[123] This is said also by Hales, in his tract on Schism, which was published some years before the Liberty of Prophesying. It is, however, what Taylor would have thought without a prompter.

62. Such is this great pleading for religious moderation; a production not more remarkable in itself than for the quarter from which it came. In the polemical writings of Jeremy Taylor we generally find a staunch and uncompromising adherence to one party; and from the abundant use he makes of authority, we should infer that he felt a great veneration for it. In the Liberty of Prophesying, as has appeared by the general sketch, rather than analysis we have just given, there is a prevailing tinge of the contrary turn of mind, more striking than the comparison of insulated passages can be. From what motives, and under what circumstances, this treatise was written, is not easily discerned. In the dedication to Lord Hatton of the collective edition of his controversial writings after the Restoration, he declares that “when a persecution did arise against the church of England, he intended to make a reservative for his brethren and himself, by pleading for a liberty to our consciences to persevere in that profession, which was warranted by all the laws of God and our superiors.” It is with regret we are compelled to confess some want of ingenuousness in this part of Taylor’s proceedings. No one reading the Liberty of Prophesying can perceive that it had the slightest bearing on any toleration that the episcopal church, in the time of the civil war, might ask of her victorious enemies. The differences between them were not on speculative points of faith, nor turning on an appeal to fathers and councils. That Taylor had another class of controversies in his mind is sufficiently obvious to the attentive reader, and I can give no proof in this place to any other.

Effect of this treatise. 63. This was the third blow that the new latitudinarian school of Leyden had aimed in England at the positive dogmatists, who, in all the reformed churches, as in that of Rome, laboured to impose extensive confessions of faith, abounding in inferences of scholastic theology, as conditions of exterior communion, and as peremptory articles of faith. Chillingworth and Hales were not less decisive; but the former had but in an incidental manner glanced at the subject, and the short tract on Schism had been rather deficient in proof of its hardy paradoxes. Taylor, therefore, may be said to have been the first who sapped and shook the foundations of dogmatism and pretended orthodoxy; the first who taught men to seek peace in unity of spirit rather than of belief; and, instead of extinguishing dissent, to take away its sting by charity, and by a sense of human fallibility. The mind thus freed from bigotry is best prepared for the public toleration of differences in religion; but certainly the despotic and jealous temper of governments is not so well combated by Taylor as by later advocates of religious freedom.

Its defects. 64. In conducting his argument, he falls not unfrequently into his usual fault. Endowed with a mind of prodigious fertility, which a vast erudition rendered more luxuriant he accumulates without selection whatever presents itself to his mind; his innumerable quotations, his multiplied reasonings, his prodigality of epithets and appositions, are poured along the interminable periods of his writings, with a frequency of repetition, sometimes of the same phrases, which leaves us to suspect that he revised but little what he had very rapidly composed. Certain it is that, in his different works, he does not quite adhere to himself; and it would be more desirable to lay this on the partial views that haste and impetuosity produce, than on a deliberate employment of what he knew to be insufficient reasoning. But I must acknowledge that Taylor’s fairness does not seem his characteristic quality.

65. In some passages of the Liberty of Prophesying, he seems to exaggerate the causes of uncertainty, and to take away from ecclesiastical antiquity even that moderate probability of truth which a dispassionate inquirer may sometimes assign to it. His suspicions of spuriousness and interpolation are too vaguely sceptical, and come ill from one who has no sort of hesitation, in some of his controversies, to allege as authority what he here sets aside with little ceremony. Thus, in the Defence of Episcopacy, published in 1642, he maintains the authenticity of the first fifty of the apostolic canons, all of which, in the Liberty of Prophesying, a very few years afterwards, he indiscriminately rejects. But this line of criticism was not then in so advanced a state as at present; and, from a credulous admission of everything, the learned had come sometimes to more sweeping charges of interpolation and forgery than would be sustained on a more searching investigation. Taylor’s language is so unguarded that he seems to leave the authenticity of all the fathers precarious. Doubtless there is a greater want of security as to books written before the invention of printing than we are apt to conceive, especially where independent manuscripts have not been found; but it is the business of a sagacious criticism, by the aid of internal or collateral evidence, to distinguish, not dogmatically as most are wont, but with a rational, though limited assent, the genuine remains of ancient writers from the incrustations of blundering or of imposture.

Great erudition of this period. 66. A prodigious reach of learning distinguishes the theologians of these fifty years, far greater than even in the sixteenth century; and also, if I am not mistaken, more critical and pointed, though in these latter qualities it was afterwards surpassed. And in this erudition the Protestant churches we may perhaps say, were upon the whole more abundant than that of Rome. But it would be unprofitable to enumerate works which we are incompetent to appreciate. Blondel, Daillé, and Salmasius on the continent, Usher in England, are the most conspicuous names. Blondel sustained the equality of the apostolic church both against the primacy of Rome, and the episcopacy for which the Anglicans contended; Salmasius and Daillé fought on the same side in that controversy. |Usher, Fetavius.| The writings of our Irish primate, Usher, who maintained the antiquity of his order, but not upon such ground as many in England would have desired, are known for their extraordinary learning, in which he has perhaps never been surpassed by an English writer. But for judgment and calm appreciation of evidence, the name of Usher has not been altogether so much respected by posterity, as it was by his contemporaries. The church of Rome had its champions of less eminent renown: Gretser, perhaps the first among them, is not very familiar to our ears; but it is to be remembered, that some of the writings of Bellarmin fall within this period. The Dogmata Theologica of the jesuit Petavius, though but a compilation from the fathers and ancient councils, and not peculiarly directed against the tenets of the reformed, may deserve mention as a monument of useful labour.[124] Labbe, Sirmond, and several others, appear to range more naturally under the class of historical than theological writers. In mere ecclesiastical history—the records of events rather than opinions—this period was far more profound and critical than the preceding. The annals of Baronius were abridged and continued by Spondanus.

[124] The Dogmata Theologica is not a complete work; it extends only at far as the head of free will. It belongs to the class of Loci Communes. Morhof, ii. 539.

Sacred criticism. 67. A numerous list of writers in sacred criticism might easily be produced. Among the Romanists, Cornelius à Lapide has been extolled above the rest by his fellow jesuit Andrès. His Commentaries, published from 1617 to 1642, are reckoned by others too diffuse; but he seems to have a fair reputation with protestant critics.[125] The Lutherans extol Gerhard, and especially Glass, author of the Philologia Sacra, in hermeneutical theology. Rivet was the highest name among the Calvinists. Arminius, Episcopius, the Fratres Poloni, and indeed almost every one who had to defend a cause, found no course so ready, at least among protestants as to explain the Scriptures consistently with his own tenets. |Grotius, Coccejus.| Two natives of Holland, opposite in character, in spirit, and principles of reasoning, and consequently the founders of opposite schools of disciples, stand out from the rest—Grotius and Coccejus. Luther, Calvin, and the generality of protestant interpreters in the sixteenth century had, in most instances, rejected with some contempt the allegorical and multifarious senses of Scripture which had been introduced by the fathers, and had prevailed through the dark ages of the church. This adherence to the literal meaning was doubtless promoted by the tenet they all professed, the facility of understanding Scripture. That which was designed for the simple and illiterate, was not to require a key to any esoteric sense. Grotius, however, in his Annotations on the Old and New Testament, published in 1633—the most remarkable book of this kind that had appeared, and which has had a more durable reputation than any perhaps of its precursors—carried the system of literal interpretation still farther, bringing great stores of illustrative learning from profane antiquity, but merely to elucidate the primary meaning, according to ordinary rules of criticism. Coccejus followed a wholly opposite course. Every passage, in his method, teemed with hidden senses; the narratives, least capable of any ulterior application, were converted into typical allusions, so that the Old Testament became throughout an enigmatical representation of the New. He was also remarkable for having viewed, more than any preceding writer, all the relations between God and man under the form of covenants, and introduced the technical language of jurisprudence into theology. This became a very usual mode of treating the subject in Holland, and afterwards in England. The Coccejans were numerous in the United Provinces, though not perhaps deemed quite so orthodox as their adversaries, who, from Gisbert Voet, a theologian of the most inflexible and polemical spirit, were denominated Voetians. Their disputes began a little before the middle of the century, and lasted till nearly its close.[126] The Summa Doctrinæ of Coccejus appeared in 1648, and the Dissertationes Theologicæ of Voet in 1649.

[125] Andrès, Blount. Simon, however, says he is full of an erudition not to the purpose, which, as his Commentaries on the Scriptures run to twelve volumes, is not wonderful.

[126] Eichhorn, vi. pt. i., p. 264. Mosheim.

English Commentators. 68. England gradually took a prominent share in this branch of sacred literature. Among the divines of this period, comprehending the reigns of James and Charles, we may mention Usher, Gataker, Mede, Lightfoot, Jackson, Field, and Leigh.[127] Gataker stood, perhaps, next to Usher in general erudition. The fame of Mede has rested, for the most part, on his interpretations of the Apocalypse. This book had been little commented upon by the reformers; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century, several wild schemes of its application to present or expected events had been broached in Germany. England had also taken an active part, if it be true what Grotius tells us, that eighty books on the prophecies had been published here before 1640.[128] Those of Mede have been received with favour by later interpreters. Lightfoot, with extensive knowledge of the rabbinical writers, poured his copious stores on Jewish antiquities, preceded in this by a more obscure labourer in that region, Ainsworth. Jackson had a considerable name, but is little read, I suppose, in the present age. Field on the Church has been much praised by Coleridge; it is, as it seemed to me, a more temperate work in ecclesiastical theory than some have represented it to be, and written almost wholly against Rome. Leigh’s Critica Sacra can hardly be reckoned, nor does it claim to be, more than a compilation from earlier theologians: it is an alphabetical series of words from the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, the author candidly admitting that he was not very conversant with the latter language.

[127] “All confess,” says Selden, in the Table-talk, “there never was a more learned clergy—no man taxes them with ignorance.” In another place, indeed, he is represented to say, “The jesuits and the lawyers of France, and the Low Country-men have engrossed all learning; the rest of the world make nothing but homilies.” As far as these sentences are not owing to difference of humour in the time of speaking, he seems to have taken learning in a larger sense the second time than the first. Of learning, not theological the English clergy had no extraordinary portion.

[128] Si qua in re libera esse debet sententia, certè in vaticiniis præsertim cum jam Protestantium libri prodierint fermè centum (in his octoginta in Anglia sola, ut mihi Anglici legati dixere,) super illis rebus, inter se plurimum discordes. Grot. Epist. 895.

Style of preaching. 69. The style of preaching before the Reformation had been often little else than buffoonery, and seldom respectable. The German sermons of Tauler, in the fourteenth century, are alone remembered. For the most part, indeed, the clergy wrote in Latin what they delivered to the multitude in the native tongue. A better tone began with Luther. His language was sometimes rude and low, but persuasive, artless, powerful. He gave many useful precepts, as well as examples, for pulpit eloquence. Melanchthon and several others, both in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well in the Lutheran as the reformed church, endeavoured, by systematic treatises, to guide the composition of sermons. The former could not, however, withstand the formal, tasteless, and polemical spirit that overspread their theology. In the latter a superior tone is perceived. Of these, according to Eichhorn, the Swiss preachers were most simple and popular, the Dutch most learned and copious, the French had most taste and eloquence, the English most philosophy.[129] It is more than probable that in these characteristics he has meant to comprise the whole of the seventeenth century. Few continental writers, as far as I know, that belong to this its first moiety, have earned any remarkable reputation in this province of theology. |English sermons.| In England several might be distinguished out of a large number. Sermons have been much more frequently published here than in any other country; and, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, form a large proportion of our theological literature. But it is of course not requisite to mention more than the very few which may be said to have a general reputation.

[129] Eichhorn, t. vi., part ii., p. 219, et post.

Of Donne. 70. The sermons of Donne have sometimes been praised in late times. They are undoubtedly the productions of a very ingenious and a very learned man; and two folio volumes by such a person may be expected to supply favourable specimens. In their general character, they will not appear, I think, much worthy of being rescued from oblivion. The subtlety of Donne, and his fondness for such inconclusive reasoning, as a subtle disputant is apt to fall into, runs through all of these sermons at which I have looked. His learning he seems to have perverted in order to cull every impertinence of the fathers and schoolmen, their remote analogies, their strained allegories, their technical distinctions; and to these he has added much of a similar kind from his own fanciful understanding. In his theology, Donne appears often to incline towards the Arminian hypotheses, which, in the last years of James and the first of his son, the period in which these sermons were chiefly preached, had begun to be accounted orthodox at court; but I will not vouch for his consistency in every discourse. Much, as usual in that age, is levelled against Rome: Donne was conspicuously learned in that controversy; and though he talks with great respect of antiquity, is not induced by it, like some of his Anglican contemporaries, to make any concession to the adversary.[130]

[130] Donne incurred some scandal by a book entitled Biathanatos, and considered as a vindication of suicide. It was published long after his death, in 1651. It is a very dull and pedantic performance, without the ingenuity and acuteness of paradox; distinctions, objections, and quotations from the rabble of bad authors whom he used to read, fill up the whole of it. It is impossible to find a less clear statement of argument on either side. No one would be induced to kill himself by reading such a book, unless he were threatened with another volume.

Of Jeremy Taylor. 71. The sermons of Jeremy Taylor are of much higher reputation; far indeed above any that had preceded them in the English church. An imagination essentially poetical, and sparing none of the decorations which, by critical rules, are deemed almost peculiar to verse; a warm tone of piety, sweetness, and charity; an accumulation of circumstantial accessories whenever he reasons, or persuades, or describes; an erudition pouring itself forth in quotation, till his sermons become in some places almost a garland of flowers from all other writers, and especially from those of classical antiquity, never before so redundantly scattered from the pulpit, distinguish Taylor from his contemporaries by their degree, as they do from most of his successors by their kind. His sermons on the Marriage Ring, on the House of Feasting, on the Apples of Sodom, may be named without disparagement to others, which perhaps ought to stand in equal place. But they are not without considerable faults, some of which have just been hinted. The eloquence of Taylor is great, but it is not eloquence of the highest class; it is far too Asiatic, too much in the style of Chrysostom and other declaimers of the fourth century, by the study of whom he had probably vitiated his taste; his learning is ill placed, and his arguments often as much so; not to mention that he has the common defect of alleging nugatory proofs; his vehemence loses its effect by the circuity of his pleonastic language; his sentences are of endless length, and hence not only altogether unmusical, but not always reducible to grammar. But he is still the greatest ornament of the English pulpit up to the middle of the seventeenth century; and we have no reason to believe, or rather much reason to disbelieve, that he had any competitor in other languages.

Devotional writings of Taylor. 72. The devotional writings of Taylor, several of which belong to the first part of the century, are by no means of less celebrity or less value than his sermons. Such are the life of Christ, the Holy Living and Dying, and the collections of meditations, called the Golden Grove. |And Hall.| A writer as distinguished in works of practical piety was Hall. His Art of Divine Meditation, his Contemplations, and indeed many of his writings, remind us frequently of Taylor. Both had equally pious and devotional tempers; both were full of learning, both fertile of illustration; both may be said to have had strong imagination and poetical genius, though Taylor let his predominate a little more. Taylor is also rather more subtle and argumentive; his copiousness has more real variety. Hall keeps more closely to his subject, dilates upon it sometimes more tediously, but more appositely. In his sermons there is some excess of quotation and far-fetched illustration, but less than in those of Taylor. These two great divines resemble each other, on the whole, so much that we might for a short time not discover which we were reading. I do not know that any third writer comes close to either. The Contemplations of Hall are among his most celebrated works. They are prolix, and without much of that vivacity or striking novelty we meet with in the devotional writings of his contemporary, but are perhaps more practical and generally edifying.[131]

[131] Some of the moral writings of Hall were translated into French by Chevreau in the seventeenth century, and had much success. Niceron, xi. 348.

In the Roman. 73. The religious treatises of this class, even those which by their former popularity, or their merit, ought to be mentioned in a regular history of theological literature, are too numerous for these pages. A mystical and ascetic spirit diffused itself more over religion, struggling sometimes, as in the Lutherans of Germany, against the formal orthodoxy of the church, but more often in subordination to its authority, and cooperating with its functions. The writings of St. Francis de Sales, titular Bishop of Geneva, especially that on the Love of God, published in 1616, make a sort of epoch in the devotional theology of the church of Rome. Those of St. Teresa, in the Spanish language, followed some years afterwards; they are altogether full of a mystical theopathy. But De Sales included charity in his scheme of divine love; and it is to him, as well as others of his age, that not only a striking revival of religion in France, which had been absolutely perverted or disregarded in the sixteenth century, was due, but a reformation in the practices of monastic life, which became more active and beneficent, with less of useless penance and asceticism than before. New institutions sprung up with the spirit of association, and all other animating principles of conventual orders, but free from the formality and torpor of the old.[132]

[132] Ranke, ii. 430.

And Lutheran church. 74. Even in the German churches, rigid as they generally were in their adherence to the symbolical books, some voices from time to time were heard for a more spiritual and effective religion. Arndt’s Treatise of True Christianity, in 1605, written on ascetic and devotional principles, and with some deviation from the tenets of the very orthodox Lutherans may be reckoned one of the first protests against their barren forms of Faith [133]; and the mystical theologians, if they had not run into such extravagances as did dishonour to their names would have been accessions to the same side. The principal mystics or theosophists have generally been counted among philosophers, and will therefore find their place in the next chapter. The German nation is constitutionally disposed to receive those forms of religion which address themselves to the imagination and the heart. Much therefore of this character has always been written, and become popular, in that language. Few English writings of the practical class, except those already mentioned, can be said to retain much notoriety. Those of George Herbert are best known; his Country Parson, which seems properly to fall within this description, is on the whole a pleasing little book; but the precepts are sometimes so overstrained, as to give an air of affectation.

[133] Eichhorn, v. part i., p. 355. Biogr. Univ. Chalmers.

Infidelity of some writers. Charron. 75. The disbelief in revelation, of which several symptoms had appeared before the end of the sixteenth century, became more remarkable afterwards both in France and England, involving several names not obscure in literary history. The first of these, in point of date, is Charron. The religious scepticism of this writer has not been generally acknowledged, and indeed it seems repugnant to the fact of his having written an elaborate defence of Christianity; yet we can deduce no other conclusion from one chapter in his most celebrated book, the Treatise on Wisdom. Charron is so often little else than a transcriber, that we might suspect him in this instance also to have drawn from other sources; which however would leave the same inference as to his own tenets, and I think this chapter has an air of originality.

Vanini. 76. The name of Charron, however, has not been generally associated with the charge of irreligion. A more audacious, and consequently more unfortunate writer was Lucilio Vanini, a native of Italy, whose book De Admirandis Naturæ Reginæ Deæque Mortalium Arcanis, printed at Paris in 1616, caused him to be burned at the stake by a decree of the parliament of Toulouse in 1619. This treatise, as well as one that preceded it, Amphitheatrum Æternæ Providentiæ, Lyons, 1615, is of considerable rarity, so that there has been a question concerning the atheism of Vanini, which some have undertaken to deny.[134] In the Amphitheatrum I do not perceive anything which leads to such an imputation, though I will not pretend to have read the whole of a book full of the unintelligible metaphysics of the later Aristotelians. It professes at least to be a vindication of the being and providence of the Deity. But the later work, which is dedicated to Bassompierre, and published with a royal privilege of exclusive sale for six years, is of a very different complexion. It is in sixty dialogues, the interlocutors being styled Alexander and Julius Cæsar, the latter representing Vanini himself. The far greater part of these dialogues relate to physical, but a few to theological subjects. In the fiftieth, on the religion of the heathens, he avows his disbelief of all religion, except such as nature, which is God, being the principle of motion, has planted in the hearts of man; every other being the figment of kings to keep their subjects in obedience, and of priests for their own lucre and honour;[135] observing plainly of his own Amphitheatrum, which is a vindication of providence, that he had said many things in it which he did not believe.[136] Vanini was infatuated with presumption, and, if he resembled Jordano Bruno in this respect, fell very short of his acuteness and apparent integrity. His cruel death, and perhaps the scarcity of his works, has given more celebrity to his name in literary history than it would otherwise have obtained.

[134] Brucker, v. 678.

[135] In quanam religione verè et piè Deum coli vetusti philosophi existimârunt? In unica Naturæ lege, quam ipsa Natura, quæ Deus est (est enim principium motûs), in omnium gentium animis inscripsit; cæteras vero leges non nisi figmenta et illusiones esse asserebant, non a cacodæmone aliquo inductas, fabulosum namque illorum genus dicitur a philosophis, sed a principibus ad subditorum pædagogiam excogitatas, et a sacrificulis ob honoris et auri aucupium confirmatas, non miraculis, sed scriptura, cujus nec originale ullibi adinvenitur, quæ miracula facta recitet, et bonarum ac malarum actionum repromissiones polliceatur, in futura tamen vita, ne fraus detegi possit, p. 366.

[136] Multa in eo libro scripta sunt, quibus a me nulla præstatur fides. Così va il mondo.—ALEX. Non miror, nam ego crebris vernaculis hoc usurpo sermonibus: Questo mondo è una gabbia de’ matti. Reges excipio et Pontifices. Nam de illis scriptum est: Cor Regis in manu Domini, &c. Dial. LVI., p. 428.

The concluding pages are enough to show with what justice Buhle and Tennemann have gravely recorded Vanini among philosophers. Quæso, mi Juli, tuam de animæ immortalitate sententiam explices.—J. C. Excusatum me habeas rogo.—AL. Cur ita?—J. C. Vovi Deo meo quæstionem hanc me non pertractaturum, antequam senex dives et germanus evasero.—AL. Dii tibi Nestoreos pro literariæ reipublicæ emolumento dies impertiant: vix trigesimum nunc attigisti annum et tot præclaræ eruditionis monumenta admirabili cum laude edidisti.—J. C. Quid hæc mihi prosunt?—AL. Celebrem tibi laudem comparârunt.—J. C. Omnes famæ rumusculos cum uno amasiæ basiolo commutandos plerique philosophi suadent.—AL. At alter ea perfrui potest.—J. C. Quid inde adimit?...—AL. Uberrimos voluptaris fructus percepisti in Naturæ arcanis investigandis.—J. C. Corpus mihi est studiis enervatum exhaustumque; neque in hac humana caligine perfectam rerum cognitionem assequi possumus; cum ipsummet Aristotelem philosophorum Deum infinitis propemodum locis hallucinatum fuisse adverto, cumque medicam facultatem præ reliquis certissimam adhuc incertam et fallacem experior, subscribere cuperem Agrippæ libello quem de scientiarum vanitate conscripsit.—AL. Laborum tuorum præmium jam consecutus es; æternitati nomen jam consecrâsti. Quid jucundius in extremo tuæ ætatis curriculo accipere potes, quam hoc canticum? Et superest sine te nomen in orbe tuum.—J. C. Si animus meus una cum corpore, ut Athei fingunt, evanescat, quas ille ex fama post obitum delicias nanscisci poterit? Forsitan gloriolæ voculis, et fidiculis ad cadaveris domicilium pertrahatur? Si animus, ut credimus libenter et speramus, interitui non est obnoxius, et ad superos evolabit, tot ibi perfruetur cupediis et voluptatibus, ut illustres ac splendidas mundi pompas et laudationes nec pili faciat. Si ad purgatorias flammas descendet, gratior erit illi illius orationis, Dies iræ, dies illa, mulierculis gratissima recitatio, quam omnes Tulliani glossuli, dicendique lepores, quam subtilissimæ et pene divinæ Aristotelis ratiocinationes: si Tartareo, quod Deus avertat, perpetuo carceri emancipatur, nullum ibi solatium, nullam redemptionam inveniet.—AL. O utinam in adolescentiæ limine has rationas excepissem!—J. C. Prætorita mala ne cogites, futura ne cures, præsentia fugias.—AL. Ah!—J. C. Liberaliter inspiras.—AL. Illius versiculi recordor. Perduto è tutto il tempo, che in amor non si spende.—J. C. Eja quoniam inclinato jam die ad vesperam perducta est disputatio (cujus singula verba divino Romanæ ecclesiæ oraculo, infallibilis cujus interpres a Spiritu sancto modo constitutus est Paulus V., serenissimæ Burghesiæ familiæ soboles, subjecta esse volumus, ita ut pro non dictis habeantur, si quæ forsitan sunt, quod vic crediderim, quæ illius placitis ad amussim non consentiant), laxemus paulisper animos, et a severitate ad hilaritatem risumque traducamus. Heus pueri! lusorias tabulas huc adferte. The wretched man, it seems, had not much reason to think himself a gainer by his speculations; yet he knew not that the worst was still behind.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 77. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his Treatise de Veritate, and still more in that De Religione Gentilium, has been justly deemed inimical to every positive religion. He admits indeed the possibility of immediate revelation from heaven, but denies that any tradition from others can have sufficient certainty. Five fundamental truths of natural religion he holds to be such as all mankind are bound to acknowledge, and damns those heathens who do not receive them as summarily as any theologian.[137]

[137] These five articles are—1. Esse Deum summum.—2. Coli debere.—3. Virtutem pietatemque esse præcipuas partes cultûs divini.—4. Dolendum esse ob peccata, ab iisque resipiscendum.— 5. Dari ex bonitate justitiaque divina præmium vel pœnam tum in hac vita, tum post hanc vitam.... Hisce quippe ubi superstitiones figmentaque commiscuerint, vel animas suas criminibus quæ nulla satis eluat pœnitentia, commaculaverint, a seipsis perditio propria, Deo vero summo in æternum sit gloria. De Religione Gentilium, cap. 1.

Grotius de Veritate. 78. The progress of infidelity in France did not fail to attract notice. It was popular in the court of Louis XIII., and, in a certain degree, in that of Charles I. But this does not belong to the history of literature. Among the writers who may have given some proofs of it we may reckon La Mothe le Vayer, Naudé, and Guy Patin.[138] The writings of Hobbes will be treated at length hereafter. It is probable that this sceptical spirit of the age gave rise to those vindications of revealed religion which were published in the present period. Among these the first place is due to the well-known and extensively circulated treatise of Grotius. This was originally sketched in Dutch verse, and intended for the lower classes of his countrymen. It was published in Latin in 1627.[139] Few, if any, books of the kind have been so frequently reprinted; but some parts being not quite so close and critical as the modern state of letters exacts, and the arguments against Jews and Mahometans seeming to occupy too much space, it is less read than formerly.

[138] La Mothe le Vayer has frequently been reckoned among those who carried their general scepticism into religion. And this seems a fair inference, unless the contrary can be shown; for those who doubt of what is most evident, will naturally doubt of what is less so. In La Mothe’s fourth dialogue, under the name of Oratius Tubero, he pretends to speak of faith as a gift of God, and not founded on evidence; which was probably but the usual subterfuge. The Naudæana are full of broad intimations that the author was, as he expresses it, bien déniaisé; and Guy Patin’s letters, except those near the end of his life, lead to a similar conclusion. One of them has certainly the appearance of implicating Gassendi, and has been quoted as such by Sir James Mackintosh, in his Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy. Patin tells us, that Naudé, Gassendi, and he were to sup together the following Sunday. Ce sera une débauche, mais philosophique, et peut-être quelque chose d’avantage, pour être tous trois guéris du loup-garou, et être délivrés du mal des scrupules qui est le tyran des consciences, nous irons peut-être jusque fort près du sanctuaire. Je fis l’an passé ce voyage de Gentilly avec M. Naudé, moy seul avec luy, tête-à-tête; il n’y avoit point de témoins, aussi n’y en falloit-il point; nous y parlâmes fort librement de tout, sans que personne en ait été scandalizé, p. 32. I should not, nevertheless, lay much stress on this letter in opposition to the many assertions of belief in religion which the writings of Gassendi contain. One of them, indeed, quoted by Dugald Stewart, in note Q. to his first Dissertation, is rather suspicious, as going too far into a mystical strain for his extremely cold temperament.

[139] Niceron, vol. xix. Biogr. Univ.

English translation of the Bible. 79. This is not a period in which many editions or versions of the Scriptures were published. The English translation of the Bible had been several times revised, or re-made, since the first edition by Tyndal and Coverdale. It finally assumed its present form under the authority of James I. Forty-seven persons, in six companies, meeting at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge, distributed the labour among them; twenty-five being assigned to the Old Testament, fifteen to the New, seven to the Apocrypha. The rules imposed for their guidance by the king were designed, as far as possible, to secure the text against any novel interpretation; the translation, called the Bishop’s Bible, being established as the basis, as those still older had been in that; and the work of each person or company being subjected to the review of the rest. The translation, which was commenced in 1607, was published in 1611.[140]