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1 2 3
4 5 6
HuLSEAN Lectures,
1,F St. J. .UN's CiiinrH, St, John, N. H.
SI. JOHN, N. I!.
J. 6t A. McMillan, 98 I'rlnck Wn.i.rAM Strket.
1 M M « .
Kntercd according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year 1888,
Ky RKV. JOHN dkSOVRKS,
In the Office of the iMinister of Agriculture, at Ottawa.
3 3 7 ^ t)
ELI-:CTORS OF THE HULSEAN FOUNDATION
IN run University of Camiikiix.k,
Brook H Foss Wkstcott, D.D.
Regius Professor of Divinity, Canon of U\st minster :
Fknton John Antmonv Hokt, D.D.
llulsean Professor of Di7'inity :
JosKi'ii Rawso.n LiMiiv, D.D.
Norrisian Professor of Divinity :
Chari.ks Taylor, D.D.
Muster of St. John's Coltet^e ;
And Id THE Mbmokv ov
CiiAKi.KS Anthony Swainson, D.D.
/■ornn-y/y /.a,iy Marxaret Professor of /)i7'inity, an,/ Master of Cltrist' s College:
William Hkpuoktii Tho.mi-son, D.D.
Formerly Master of Trinity College ,
These Lectures,
DELIVERED HV THEIR APPOINTMENT, ARE GRATEFIM.I.V
AND RESPECTFULI.V DEDICATED.
l^RKFACH.
Tmk subject of Ciikistian Kki'Mon, and tin; history of the
various eliforts to prcniiote it from tlie time of the Reformation,
have seldom been dealt with by Kiislish elnirch historians. The
late Rev. H. H.Wilson, in iiis liampton Lectures, was almost the
only writer to treat the topic scientifically, i)ut his purpose pre-
vented him from more than intliv idual references in liis notes to
the leaders of earlier movements, ilu- work of Kaki. Hkrinc,
published as far back as the year 1H36, remains still the standard
history, and the present writer had jilanned to translate it,
adding the results of recent publications of the Leibnitz corres-
pondence, and dealing also with the relations in |>ast time of the
Church of England and the foreign Reformed Churches.
An occasion for dealing separately with the last of the.se
topics presented itself when the writer was appointed Select
Preacher at Cambridge, almost on the exact bi-centenary of the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in October 1885. The dis-
course then delivered, pointing out the old relations of cordial
sympathy and communion between the Anglican and Huguenot
Churches, is included in the present volume. The ai>i>eal was
received with assent by the members of the theological faculty
at Cambridge, and words of sympathy and approval came from
Drs. Hatch and Eairbairn at Oxford, Profes.sor A. S. Farrar at
Durham, the venerable Bishop of Worcester, and many others.
Still more acceptable, as a testimony to the practical possibility
of the step advocated, was a communication from I)k. Eigkne
Beksier. In this letter, the distinguished leader of the Reformed
Church in Paris declared not only his cordial a.ssent to the plea,
but expressed his willingness to co-operate personally in any
effort to bring together the two Churches.* Having been ap-
* See Appeiuli.v.
VI
Prcjaie.
pointed Hulseaii lecturer shortly afterwards, tl'c writer foiiiul the
opportunity of discussing the history and rationale of Christian
Reunion from a wider standpoint, by investigatinj; the p -ogress
, and results of the various endeavours made during llie sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries hy lUicer, Melancthon, Durie, Calixtus,
Grotius, and Leibnitz. It was hoped that an outline, restricted
by the narrow limits of four lectures, and by the hindrances of
other duties, might be supplemented by later additions, including
an examination of the Durie MSS. at Cambridge, kindly otTered
by Professor Mayor, and of the un|)ublished Leibnitziana in the
Archives of Hanover.
JUit circumstances prevented the fulfilment of this plan, and
the meagre and imperfect sketch would never have been pub-
lished but for the belief that it may induce some more capable
hand to achieve a work so important. For the Reunion of Chris-
tendom is no mere literary or academical topic, but a practical
question of the hour, calling for labourers, if not yet ripe for settle-
ment. On every side there is a consciousness that the hour is
near when all who profess and call themselves Christians must
remember their title and their cause, and that they are descend-
ants, however far removed, of those who were " of one heart and
of one soul." Not many years ago, in a humble Church, situated
in a distant land, an event took p'ace more signiiicant to the
student of history than many a Council. In the English Church
at Cronstadt, as a testimony indeed to the personal esteem in
which its minister was held by those of different creed, but in
itself none the less remarkable, there were gathered together,
at a service after restoration, the representatives of all the
Churches in the City. By the side of the Holy Table knelt the
Russian pope and the Roman priest, the Lutheran and the Re-
formed ministers, forgetting for an hour the wars of centuries,
and remembering only the "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." f
t The details were verified by the writer on the spot, when occupying the s.ime
ch.iplaincy in 1880, in succession to the Ri:v. J. Mi Swinky, in whose time {1874) it
occurred.
Preface.
Vll
Surely it is impossible to (lisrc^jard siu li a si^ii ol tlu- times,
but rather should we feel that the , a practical example of liucer's method, in its attempt and its failure.—
Conclusion.
Notes on Lecture I /,.
15
Lecti're II. — Protestant RciDiion, pp. 21-1^6
The histories of Christian Retniion by Tabaraud and K. Heriug : their
scope and results.— Clan .)f the present lectures : (,j) Protestant Reunion helure
i66j: (/>) Western Reunion. - Development of processes : recognition of the iii-
suflTicieiicy of Bucer's diplomatic method recognized.- Two causes alfec tini; the
Liter development : (i) Laymen begin to take part in theological controversy :
^2) the "acadenii, travels" bring the representatives of opposite schools into
contact.— Ihe Irenimm of David I'arxus. — Career of John Durie and Calix-
tiis. — Misrepresentations of Crotius by Hallam. (irotius not inconsistent in
his respect for antiquity, nor irritated by Huguenot neglect. He aimed at prac-
tical results, and his sole err >r the belief that in his time a complete reiunon of
the West was still possible. — Conclusion.
Notes ok Lecture II, p^ ■
37
Lecture III. — 77/6- Reunion of Western Christendom.
PP- !i-54
Causes of failure of etTorts to promote Protestant Reunion. — Results of the
cxsaro-papism in the German States before and after the treaties of Westphalia.
Efforts for reunion commenced by Church of Rome : irenical works published
after 1660. 'Ihe work of Bishop Spinola mainly inspired by Austria ami the
moderate .school; inheritors of Cassander's policy. 'I'be .Austrian and (;allican
attitude. — I, iiiiiNiTZ : The first aoinaintance with the reimiou eflort ; visit to
Rome; he turns to the (;allican t:hurch. — Bossiicr : The correspondence,
1691-1702.— Failure of the effort. Real value of the work of Leibnitz.
Notes on Lecture III p, 55
(ix)
X
Table of Contents.
Lecture IV. — The Religion of Nationality, ..//». 59-68
Causes of failure ; apparent and conjectural.— Kxainination of the princi-
ples of Leibnitz ; his philosophical conception of history and religious progress.
— He perceives the impossibility of union with Rome, finally of any union with
Churches of the Roman obedience. — His conception of the State as embodied
in a Good Prince. His theory of nationality hampered by survival of idea of
universal visible church. — Growth of the idea of Nationality in political and
spiritual conceptions. — All great movements have been national, not ecclesi-
astical. — Conclusion.
Notes on Lecture IV, p. 69
The Huguenots and the Church of England,
PP- 12r^7
Uecay of belief that Martyrdom was the criterion of a true faith, upheld by
Pascal and Paley. Two causes : (a) study of early niartyrology ; (/>) knowledge
that all beliefs have had martyrs : Yet survival of some elements in present
day. — The bi-centenary of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; generous
welcome of the exiles in England ; received as the confessors of a common
faith. Full recognition of the eminence of Huguenot scholars and divines :
Saumaise, Scaliger, Blondel, Rivet, Casaubon, Dumoulin, Bochart, Uaille,
Durell, Brevint, Basire, Amyraut. — The loss of all intercourse at present day.
Causes suggested : {a) Dualism in Anglican Church ; (/>) greater prominence
after Civil War to belief in episcopal succession as a note of Church ; (c)
decay of alliance against Church of Rome; () isolation of Huguenots during
eighteenth century. — Recognition of foreign Protestants by Church of t^ngland
in seventeenth century : by Overall, Cosin, Bramhall, Sanderson, Sancroft,
.'Vtterbury. — Decay of the Gallican Church. The appeal of the Reformed
Church of France to the Church of England and the University of Cambridge.
li '
Notes on Sermon, p. 89
Appendix P- 9^
Letter of Ur. Eug&ne Bersier upon the reunion of the Reformed Church of
France with the Anglican Church.
LECTURE I.
Christian Reunion
I'
lecturp: I.
MuKaplOL oi (.IprjVOTTOLOl, OTL vlol 6e0V KXyOrj(TOVT(U.
(Mattk. V. y.)
'HERE have been few incidents in the history of the
building in which we are assembled more memor-
able than when, in the year 1551, the whole uni-
versity was gathered together at the funeral of the Regius
professor of theology. Not even when, but recently, Cam-
bridge rendered the last honours to one who for two
generations had taken representative share in every activity
and distinction of university life ;' not even when, just fifty
years ago, as some here still remember, a vast procession
followed to its last resting-place the remains of Charles
Simeon,'^ — not even these seem to have surpassed the in-
tensity of feeling displayed at the burial of a stranger,
of one whose face, two years before he died, was unknown
to all of those three thousand who followed the procession
to his grave.
And yet there seems to have been no rhetorical exag-
geration when the Public Orator, according to the custom
of the time, declared the virtues of the departed ; nor when
Matthew Parker, fit representative alike of the genius of
the university and of the Church of England, held up that
life in his sermon as the very example of the Christian char-
acter, and added to his bidding prayer the petition that all
of themselves might be admitted to that beatific vision " 171
the which doth now rejoice that excellent and reverend
Hulscan Lectures.
!l
father, Martin Bucer, 'wliom God liatJi catted to tus
rcst."'^ And all knew well the cause of this unexampled
honour, in life and in death. While others had been foremost
in the critical work of the Reformation, or in proclaiming
its doctrines, Bucer's work had been, from first to last, the
effort for Christian Reunion. If Luther had been pre-
eminently the Reformer, and Melancthon the "Preceptor"
of Germany, Bucer had been its peace-maker.
Throughout the great moments of the struggle (though
not among the authors of its supreme irenic effort, the
Augtistana), Bucer had been ever active, moving from
camp to camp ; at Marburg, striving in vain to reconcile
Luther and Zwingli ;' at Schweinfurt and Cassel building up,
with infinite pains, the structure of negociation and com-
promise which led to the short-lived Concordia of Witten-
berg.' Then, turning to the wider interests of the whole
Church, side by side with Melancthon, and meeting a
congenial spirit in the legate Contarini, he had seemed
for a moment to have reached the goal of his life, and to
have found a way of peace for Western Christendom." And
last of all, before his call to England, he had laboured to
effect that broad and comprehensive reform in the territories
of the Archbishop of Cologne, which has so many links
with the historic development of the Church of England.'
But as, in time of theological strife, the peace-maker's work
is in every sense the forlorn hope, each effort had alien-
ated some unsatisfied partisan. The Swiss, whose cause
he had so largely helped, regarded him askance; and in
his own city of Strasburg, where for a generation he had
labored, he experienced the prophet's fate. Even from
Luther himself had come at times hard words of reproach.
Christian Reunion.
But with Luther there was always safe appeal to Philip
sober, and more than one fervid acknowledgment came
from the great reformer as to a work and a character so
different from his own.**
And yet, if«we except his honourable share in the great
work of restoring, upon the old foundations, the structure
of the Church of England, there is not one of his irenical
efforts which did not seem to end in completest failure.
We are familiar, from the researches of Henke and Tholuck,
with the state of religious disunion in Germany at the
beginning of the 17th century." Not only was the chasm
between Rome and the Evangelical Churches fixed and
irretrievable, but those churches themselves waged against
one another an even more bitter internecine war. A hun-
dred years only had passed since Luther had proclaimed
the universal priesthood of believers ; and now Luther's
spirit — or at least the spirit of his earlier and greater
days — seemed lost and forgotten amongst those disciples
who struggled and squabbled over the shreds of his pro-
phetic mantle. And so Jacob Boehme, not the least philo-
sophic mind of that age, could see the very Tower of Babel
realized, not in Rome only, but in Protestant Germany.'"
We have read how Lutherans asked indignantly what was
left to preach about, when an edict forbade polemical ser-
mons against the Reformed ; how the saintly Arndt was
the victim of intolerance ;" how, sadder still, Paul Gerhardt,
the singer of immortal strains, was himself infected with
the epidemic, and rather suffered deprivation than accept
an injunction to refrain from words of censure against his
fellow protestants.'- And if the Reformed Churches showed
a comparative moderation, which was often, perhaps, the
Hulscan Lectures.
\
virtue of necessity, we know that at Dordrecht the bitterest,
the most contemi;)tuous treatment, was meted out to Epis-
copius and the Remonstrants, whose only crime it was to
have refused subscription to dogmas which, as they believed,
had neither certain warrant of Scripture nor had obtained
the complete assent of the undivided Church.
What wonder then that, in the face of a strife so suicidal,
the Church of Rome had not only regained much that she
had lost, but seemed more capable of aggressive action than
at any previous period in her history. It is customary to
speak of a " Catholic Reaction ;" but this phrase, though
consecrated by long and authoritative usage, seems but
imperfecdy to connote the ohenomena which history re-
cords. Not only in the Protestant countries, but throughout
Western Europe, there had been reformation ; and indeed
the Reformation of the sixteenth century would not have
been, as it was, an event of universal importance for the
whole Church, had it not beneficially affected, in some
measure, even those quarters where it was most vehemently
opposed. It is no exaggeration to declare that, from the
end of the sixteenth century, the progress which the Refor-
mation had exacted from its foes was so great that, in
proportion to the former condition, it represented a greater
relative advance than in the Protestant lands themselves.*''
The council of Trent, with all its vicissitudes, had yet learned
something in its experience of eighteen years. In place of
the contradictory chaos of traditional opinions, a system
had been defined, which cautiously steered a middle course
between the extremes of Pelagianism and Augustinianism,
which silently removed some patent errors, and as silently
passed over other but more dangerous topics, which recog-
Christian Reunion.
nized as belonging to the pale of the Church all who did
not explicitly renounce her obedience, and which recom-
mended itself by seeming clearness and adaptability to
different minds and varied conditions.
For the Papal Court, since the separation, had ceased
to give glaring offence to public opinion by immorality and
nepotism. And this immunity from the old attacks encour-
aged to offcnsi\e measures, for which new allies were gained
and new methods of warfare employed. Whatever obloquy
has justly attached itself to the Society of Jesus on account
of the practical adoption and exaggeration of casuistical
methods — which, indeed, had been stated as theorems by
the schoolmen, or from the scurrilous attacks of a Scioppius
and his kindred upon the Scaligers and Casaubons, history
recognizes the immense impetus given, not only to *he
Roman system, but even, in some measure, to the cause
of progress and civilisation. If the first protest against
the belief in witchcraft can no longer be vindicated (as
Leibnitz believed) for the Jesuit von Spec; or the claim to
have perfected secondary education, and justified the proud
inscription on their seminaries, " Deo ct Musis'' yet the
missionary labors of a Xavier and a Ricci make as great
an epoch in the history of Christianity as when Robert
Nelson and his friends created the great Anglican mis-
sionary society a century later. And if the fatal necessity
of being advocates and apologists, rather than searchers for
the truth, placed a Petau, a Sirmond, a Suarez, and an
Arias Montanus on a lower literary level than their great
Protestant rivals ; yet within the Roman obedience there
were not wanting those whose memory lives in that calendar
which claims its saints from every church and nation, — a
Hill scan Led tires.
Cas.«anclcr, true brother to Melancthon and Rucer, combin-
ing the highest form of humanistic culture with the fullest
sympathy for the spiritual and political needs of his age; a
Carlo Horromeo, the ideal of the Christian bishop ; and,
greatest of all, if indeed he may be claimed for that com-
munion, the obscure Neapolitan monk, whose book of the
" Bene/ii of Christ's Death''' was given once more to the
world by a Cambridge scholar after the Inquisition had
seemingly blotted it out for ever."
If, then, the Roman Church, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, was strong in numbers, in reforms at
least partially effected, in the enthusiastic devotion of new
adherents, — while, on the other hand, the Protestant
churches on the continent were divided by bitter con-
troversies, repelled all free en(iuiry, and almost justified
the sneer of Joseph Scaliger that Lutheranism was the
" grave of science," — what hope was there for Christian
reunion ?
Bucer's work had found no successor; and had there
been one, there was no longer a Cassander or a Contarini
to meet him in a kindred spirit. It was in the spiritual
heritage of another Reformer, greater than Bucer, and pre-
served in its purity and energy because it was limited by-
no abstract system, that now was found the hope of Protest-
antism and of Reunion. Such a view of Melancthon's
influence may be contested by those who remember that
a so-called "Melancthonism " or " Philippism " is described
as a definite theological system in some of those analytic
histories of dogma which record each momentary phase of
party warlare. Or it may be urged, with more plausibility,
that Melancthon's own writings were the exclusive text
Christian Reunion.
v^
books of tin- universities of Melnistiiclt and Altdorf, and
of j;reat part of I'rotestant (Germany.'' Hut those writings,
which were the reflection of the author's mind and char-
acter, represent in themselves tlic Reformation from its
irenicai rather than its positive and didactic side. Jus^ as
the ^reat practical work of Melancthon's life, the ''Confessio
Aui^nsliDia " was, in every sense, a declaration for peace
which he did not scruple to alter, confessedly and publicly,
when it seemed that by the publication of the Variata in
1540 a better hope of union might result;'" so his infinite
humility could make confession of error to his enemy
Flacius, or submit to blame and correction from those who
were unutterably his inferiors. The distinctive note of
character, as compared with Bucer, seems to be this : with
Bucer, all but the most cardinal tlogmatic statements were
things indifferent, — everything was to him a matter for
accommodation, in the view of the one thing needful,
Reunion ; so that he sometimes scrupled not, in all sin-
cerity of mind, to attain his object by processes needing
that sort of casuistic " direction of the intention " which
gained an unenvied notoriety for a very different school
of theology. Now, Melancthon's theological symjjathy
could think itself into the mental attitudes even of his
opponents ; to his philosophic mind the distinction of fun-
damentals and non-fundamentals was constantly present ;
his accurate knowledge of antiquity recognised the value
of links with catholic institutions, deplored the inevitable
breach with them, and experienced the same repulsion as
Luther, though it was not expressed with equal vehemence,
to the crude iconoclasm of Carlstadt and his successors.
Above all, his life knew no finality. He never looked upon
\\\
8
Hulscan Lectures.
his past woi'ls and actions as liavinj;' created unaltirablc
precedents. Who can recollect without emotion the narra-
tive told by Andreii, helonj^in^ to those last sad years,
harassed by the contnjvcrsies around him, and his life
embittered by the memory of its one mistake — how, when
asked once more to subscribe his name to one of those
'' Tcstimonia'' which the school of lUicer considered to be
the efiuivalent of ai^reement, yet Melancthon refused. He
admitted that formerly he hatl given assent to the opinion
of others not his own ; but now this could no lonj,^er be.
'"Many Ihiniis have I ^crittcn 7i'hich noiv I approve not.
Tliinlcest thou iliat in t/iirty years I have teamed noth-
ing/''^' He had learned that more was needed to secure
Reuni(jn than so many ambiguous phrases and so many
signatures on a i)archment ; and to those who were now
his spiritual heirs he had bequeathed those attributes which
alone could give hope for it in the future. To them he
handed down that which had been noble in the Humanistic
movement, that passionate love of truth, but also a depth
of personal religion, too often lost in the mere antagonism
to superstition, seen c»nly from its ludicrous side ; above all,
that charity which in his own life had borne, believed,
hoped, and endured all things. To them he bequeathed
his repulsion to the loud phrases of professional theologians,
his shrinking from the noise of assemblies, save when
supreme duty called him there ; and, not least of all, that
feature which comj)leted and crowned his character — that
cvrpttTTcAia, as far removed from the chilling persijtage of
Erasmus and Mutianus as from the baser ribaldry of inferior
partisans.
I
) I I
II
Christian Reunion.
And althouj^h, at the bt-j^inninj^ of the seventeenth cen-
tury, a Leonard I hitter could tear down the portrait of
Melancthon and trample it under foot at Wittenberg itself,
there were not wanting, as years passed on, successors fit
to share alike the mantle and the spirit. At Leyden, Francis
Junius'" and Uytenbogaert ; at Heidelberg, David Paraus ;
Ward and Davenant'" at Cambridge ; Rainoldes and Abbot
at Oxford ; Cameron,"' who passed from Scotland to France,
and was to found the liberal school of Saumur, as Durie to
Germany on the business of his life-long |)ilgrimagc; above
all, the great succession through Caselius to Calixtus at
HelmstJidt, — all these were the heirs of Melancthon's s )irit,
and the work to which they gave heart and soul and
strength was Christian Reunion.
But the first practical effort of the seventeenth century,
and one that was to prove once and for all time the insufti-
ciency of Hucer's system, was attempted, not at Wittenberg
nor Geneva nor Leyden, but in the metropolis of the luist-
ern Church. It has been the custom to regard the career
of Cyril Lucaris as a mere isolated tragedy, as an incident
solely personal ; the career of an eclectic who attemj)ted an
impossible scheme of reconciliation, and whose scheme
perished with himself.-' W^hatever be true in this tradi-
tional view, it ignores at least one fact, patent to all who
examine the diplomatic history of the time (especially the
relations of England and France to the Porte) — namely,
that almost every power in Europe was more or less actively
interested in the struggle between Cyril and his Turkish and
Jesuit adversaries. In fact, the great c(jntest of the Thirty
Years' war was represented in its theological phase on the
historic scene of Constantinople. More than five hundred
lO
Huhcan Lectures.
! i
::!!
years had passed sinct" the long existinj^ separation be-
tween East and West had been forinally consuniinated,
when the Roman legates placed the Hnll cf exconmiuni-
tion upon the high altar of St. .Sojjhia. Since that time, the
Eastern Chi^rch had experiencetl the great changes conse-
([uent upon the Turkish rule, and the loss of even the last
relics of the old Oreek ci\ilisation. Hut, theologically, it
stood unmoved ; recognising no new light nor means of
spiritual nourishment since, eight centuries before, John of
Damascus had opcnetl and had closetl tlu' ' hduntain of
knowledge.' '" The century of the Reformation had witnessed
two eager efiorts to enlist the Eastern Church on either side
of the great struggle. For seven years the Lutherans had
maintained correspondence with Jcremias II, endeaxouring
to effect reunion on the basis of the Aui^ustana. At the
same time Possevino, one of the adroitest of Jesuit mis-
sionaries, after futile endeavours to restore the Roman
influence in Sweden, passed into Russia, and there suc-
ceeded in obtaining a form of union which owed its reason
of existence to the political necessities of Poland. The
hopes of the Vatican were now, once more, directed to
Constantinople, and, under the protection of the French
Embassy, a Jesuit mission was established at dalata in the
early years of the seventeenth century.
It is well known how Cyril Lucaris, a native of Crete,
and therefore a Venetian subject, after studying at Padua
and Venice, under Margunius, Piccolomini, and Cremoninus,
came to Cieneva."' The obscure chronology of his earlier
life makes it difficult to identify with certainty the period
c)f his sojourn; but whether in the last years of the sixteenth
century, or (as the two most recent writers incline to believe)
(I
C hrislian Reunion.
II
in 160:!, he came there under influence., .vhich decided his
i'uture.
It has been well said that during the sixtienth century,
if not in many other ajj^cs, the history of universities is the
history of civilisation ; and the youngest of all, the Academy
of (ieneva, mii^ht seem at that lime to have feared no com-
parison with I'veii the most ancient and illustrious. It was
there that a thousanil hearers hatl listened to the lectures of
its first professor of theolo_i;y ; it was there that, within the
space of a ^eutration, within tiie narrow limits of the old
city, had taught Hotoman, the two Ciodefroids, Sarrasin,
Serranus, Joseph Scaliger, and Isaac Casauhon.
When Cyril came to (ieneva, many of the great teachers
had passed away; but He/a, fit representative alike of
Humanism and the Reformation, still lived, in advanced
age and honourable povert}', the object of ilexoted attach-
ment. He had taught in Calvin's chair, as late as 151JH:
he pn .iched for the last time in iTkhx And if Cyril's
sojourn belongs to the latter of possible dates, he may
have been an eye-witness of the memorable liscalnde of
1602, and the heroic defence of the city of Christian scholars
against the treacherous onslaught of Savoy.
What wonder that the brief experience of this sojourn
influenced the young Cireek for life. What contrast must
he have drawn between the degradation of the luistern
Church and the strength and spirituality of the Reforma-
tion, as seen at Cenexa, when he was called to the throne
of Athanasius. He had been witness of Roman tactics in
the Russian union. l^Ie had visited the Lutheran univer-
sities, and a sojourn in ICngiand laid the foundation of his
life-long interccmrse with Archbishop Abbot.
t^r
12
Hidsean Lechires.
With these Western friends Cyril continued in constant
correspondence. Surely there is no more unique feature
in church history — one might say even in the history of
humanity — tlian the picture of character shown to us in the
correspondence of Cyril. We see one already in full man-
hood, who had enjoyed the very highest culture that the
great Italian schools could give; who had already, in the
matter of the Polish Reunion, passed his apprenticeship in
public afil'airs ; who, as Patriarch of Alexandria, still bore
the title of "Judge of the inhabited world" — asking his
correspondents for advice and correction, putting before
them his difficulties, laying bare the honest process of
enquiry in his mind, as .veil as his deep longing for Re-
union ; and yet without an atom of the self-conscious pride
aping humility. Well might Archbishop Abbot, no mean
judge of men, write of him :
"/ doe perceive that there hrcatheth in him a soiile, as,
on the one side, full of piety and devotion ; so, on the other
side, full of prudence and discretion'^ -^
But when, in 162 1, he became Patriarch of Constanti-
nople, the crisis of his life approached. In spite of the
frequent exiles that were almost a necessary incident of a
Patriarch's life, in spite of Jesuit intrigues and the rivalries
of his suffi-agans, he carried on his negociations with Eng-
land and the other Reformed Churches, and it seemed as
if at last the great hope of his life was to be accomplished.
From every quarter in Europe came voices of encourage-
ment; (justavus of Sweden and the English James I,
promised him their diplomatic support ; the venerable
Company of Geneva agreed to a basis of reunion which
would have left the cjuestion of ritual open, and admitted
Christian Reunion.
13
the appciil to patristic authority on difficult points of Scrip-
ture. The theologians of the Netherlands sent one of their
own number to Constantinojjle as a mark of their hearty
co-operation.
But when the other Patriarchs were consulted, and the
great scheme opened to them, then the supreme difficulty
appeared. Cierasimus of Alexandria declined to move. The
others were silent or evasive. Then Cyril determined on
the step which only his own honesty of purpose can com-
pletely justify. He published the famous ^'Confession of
the Oricntat Clmrchr It was, indeed, no mere transcript
of Western symbols of the Reformed type : its basis was
a sincere attempt, in Bucer's manner, to fuse the two prin-
ciples of the appeal to Scripture and Justification by Faith
into the dogmatic ground-work of the Eastern Church.
But it had the supreme defect of expressing only one
man's belief. Received with enthusiasm by the Reformed
Churches, the virulence of his Roman foes knew no bounds.
Again and again he was deposed. Only the constant
friendship of Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador,
one of those scholarly diplomatists of the age, who was not
less able to grapple with the Eastern Question at a time
when the Turk was a terror to be deprecated in the Litany,
because he was eager to secure rare manuscripts, and able
to decipher them, — only to his aid, and that of his Dutch
colleague Haga, did Cyril on many an occasion owe his
life. At last, after a fifth exile, the toils closed round him ;
the absent Sultan was persuaded by a false charge, and the
sentence of death was hastily executed. Happiest perhaps
for Cyril that he did not live to witness his own condemna-
tion, signed by one whom he had treated as his own son,
I
H
Hulsean Lectures.
1
lilllili
''I
! i:l :
Metrophanes of Alexandria. But it needed not the formal
censure of the Synods of Constantinople and Jassy; it
needed not the published creed of Petrus Mogila, to purge
from the Greek Church opinions never entertained by its
members. And yet Cyril's life had not been lived in vain.
As to the Eastern Church, indeed, the harvest of the
seed he sowed has only in our own time been in part
revealed, when a Bryennios and kindred spirits are again
sending fortli " ecclesiastical truth " to the world ; or, as in
Russia, where, after long oppression, the evangelical com-
munities are spreading far and wide, once more the Star
is seen in the East.
But the fruit of his labour in other lands was seen far
sooner. Those disciples of Melancthon who had so eagerly
and sympathetically watched his labors, had learned much
from them, and from their failure. For them, henceforth,
there would be no more of those artificial treaties, which
here assumed an agreement, and there disguised a differ-
ence. Their day had passed with those who really believed
in them. But the men of the seventeenth century felt that
the working of the law of separation must precede the pro-
cess of reunion ; and they understood that Christ himself
came to bring division at. first, out of which true unity
should be evolved. For their ideal was not the storied
Babel on earth, seeking to reach the skies, and ending in
disaster, but that eternal city " which hath foundations,
wJiosc hnitdcr and matter is GOD."
NOTES ON LECTURE I.
'The Rev. W. H. Thonii)son, Master of Trinity, formerly Pro-
fessor of Greek, and one of the electors of tiie Hulsean Founda-
tion.
-The Rev. C. Simeon f 1836.
"The Latin speech was delivered by the Piil)lic Orator, \V.
Haddon ; the sermon preached by Parker. (Strype's Parker, i.,
56; Mullinger, History of Caiiibridi^t' Ihiiversity, 11., 1 17-125;
Hubertus, "'Ki>i'' wari' hisiori voin /cbeu, sterbcu, begrebuiss. . .
D. M. /A") The funeral sermon, " How we ought to take the
Death of the Godly," was also printed in London by Jugge (n. d.),
but no copy appears to be extant.
*Cf. Zwingli, Op. iv., 173, ct scq. Luther Epist. 12 17 (DeWette,
IV., 26), and Haum, Capifo u. Jiiiccr, p. 316.
•^Cf. Corp. Ri'/., III., 75-81, including Bucer's declaration.
"See Luther's H'crAr (Walcli), .wii., 389-1005 ; and Corp. Re/.,
IV., 119-676 The final rock of failure was the fi.xed resolve of
Luther: '' J')e acfiapfioris rebus agi nihil potest, nisi prius vere
conveniat de doctrina et de rebus neressariis." (Luth. Epist. ap.
De VVette, v. 260. )
^Cf. Drouven, £>. Reformation, in. d. k'idn. Prov., 1876.
"Luther spoke contemptuously of Bucer as a '■'Klappermaul^'
but well appreciated his value in his better hours. On the other
side, the most bitter attacks were not wanting. The Jesuit Posse-
vino declared that Bucer died a Jew {De atheismo Hirreticonun.
VIII., 23), but this was a common charge at that time. /Kgidius
Hunnius wrote a treatise entitled "Ca/z'inus juddizans." Bossuet
included a fierce denunciation of Bucer in his Histoire des I 'aria-
tions (lib. iv., g 25), sneering at his repeated marriages, which he
erroneously describes as three in number, spoke of " equivoques
affectees" and declared that Calvin himself had accused Ikicer of
falsehood. But this is incorrect: what Calvin objected to was
iiiill 1 1
II
I
I
i6
Notes on Lecture I.
Bucer's obscurity of statement: "/"w Buccri obscuritalcm vittipcras
et inerito."
Luther at Marburfj, meeting Rucer, "shook his hand, and said,
smilinjj; and pointing: his finger at iiim : '/^u hist ciit Schalk loid
eiti Xcblcry (Hauni, p. 459; ICrichson, p. 16.)
"Especially the three works of Tlioluck's later life, Das acacfe-
uiisc/ic I.cbcti iin X \' 1 1'"^ Jahr)uiiide>t{\\?\\Q, \'?>^i^)^ Lcbcuszciii^^cn
der liithcrischcn Kin he (Berlin, 1859), and Das kirchlichc Lcbcn
ini Xl'J/"-" Jahr/iHudert {\\k:Y\\n, 1861-2J.
'•"'Also versteiiet uns recht was Babel und der Thurm zu
Babel audeutet : Die stadt Babel ist der Hams Mensche der diese
Stadt autf Erden bavvet; der Tiiurm ist sein eigen erwehleter
Gott imd (jottesdienst. Alle Vernunft-Gelahrte aus der Schule
dieser Welt sind die Baumeister dieses Thurmes. Alle diejenize
welche sich zu Lehrern aufwerllen und von Menschen darzu
beruft'en worden ohne Gottes Geist, die sind alle Wercknieister,
u. s. w." {Mystcrinm inaguiiDi, oder lirklllning iiber das erste liiicli
Mosis, 1640. Cap. XXXVI., I 8.)
" Cf. Wildenhahn, y. Anidt. (Leipz. 1847-58.) The many sus-
picions as to Arndt's orthodoxy were silenced at last by Polycarp
I^yser's decision : " The book (meaning the ' Vicr liWcher vom
'ivahrcn Christetithinn^) is good, if the reader is good." See also
Tholuck's Lebcnszeugen, p. 261.
^'■'See the essay by VV. Schircks, in Stud. u. A'rit. 1855, heft. 3.
"Cf. Henke, Leben von G. Catixtus, 11., 220, ct seq.
'*The famous work, ^^Del beneficio di Giesh Crista crocijisso"
falsely attributed to Paleario, is now known to have been the work
of a Benedictine monk, named Benedetto of Mantua. See Ben-
rath in the Zeitschri/t filr Kircticngcschichte (iS'/y). It was redis-
covered at Cambridge in 1854, and edited by the late Professor
Babington, as also by Tischendorf.
'* See Tholuck's Academisches Lcbeu, and Hase's Kirchengcs-
chichte, loth edition, p. 423.
'"The original edition of the ^'Confcssio Augnsiami" (1531)
had been accepted as a declaration of peace by many outside the
strict Lutheran lines. Calvin himself, while minister at Strasburg,
Nofcs on Lecture I.
n
signed it, and again as delegate to the Conference of Regensburg
in 1 54 1. It was signed by Karel and Heza at the Conference of
Worms in 1537, by Kriederich lli., <;lector of the I'falz, in 1561,
and by many other Reformed princes. The second edition, the
so-called '^ I 'aria/a," was jiublished in 1540; and so far from tliere
being any concealment or disguise about the alterations, the words
" ;;/// 7'/n's ctneuJirf' stand upon tiie title-page. See SchafV, Hist.
Creeds of Christendom, p. 236, et scq
"The story will be found in a letter of .\ndreil to Marbach.
See Fecht's collection of Marbach's letters, p. 580.
"'Fra>'cis JiNUS, or I)u Jon (the elder), whose autobiography
is included in Miiller's lieketuitttissc inerA'7vi\ydii^er Illattncr, 11.,
179, et seq. Du Jon was fiercely attacked by Scaliger.
cum aimed, not at reunion, but at a mutual toleration.
His Ireni-
'"Davenant {1572-1641). A prot%^ of Whittaker, in 1614-15
disputed publicly with Scultetus at Cambridge ; made Lady Mar-
garet Professor and Pres. of Queen's Coll. One of the English
delegates at Dort, where his influence did much to soften the
e.xtremes of Gomarus and his party. Often in trouble with the
Council on account of his tolerant policy. In 1631 made to kneel
before Privy Council, in presence of Laud, Harsnet, and Neile,
but dismissed \/ith an injunction not to offend. In 1638, published
his treatise, ".')e Pace inter Evangelicos procuranda Scnteutice
Qitatuor,'' which included the opinions of Morton, Hall, and some
French divines. In 1641 he published his ^^Adhortatio ad pacem
ecclesicc.''' Of Davenant it was said by Ussher that " he under-
stood the Predestinarian controversy better than any man since
St. Austin."
'^"Cameron. Came from Scotland to Bordeaux in 1600, became
a minister, then teacher, at Bergerac. Appointed later to a chair
at S^dan, but finally called to Saumur in Gomar's place. He
taught there till 1620. After many wanderings, died in 1625.
'^'As Pichler's biography {Cyr. I.ucaris,odcr dcr Protestantismus
in dcr Oriental. Kirchc. Mun., 1862) cannot be accepted as a
definitive account of Cyril Lucaris, the student must be referred to
the sources, Aymon's ISIomimens authentiques de la religion des
Crecs, Cyril's own Lettres anecdotes, edited separately in 17 18, also
included in Aymon ; Smith's Miscellanea, Lond., 1709, and his
B
r
'5'
m
18
Notes on Lecture I.
!
11 ! i
Collectanea de C. L. ; and Kimniers Monitmeiita fidei ecclesice
Orientalis, Jena, 1800. Two articles by Mohnike and Twesten,
resp. in the Stud. n. A'lit., 1832, and the Deutsche Zeitschrift f. Chr.
Wiss., 1850, are wortli consulting.
Pichler makes no reference to an able study on Cyril published
at Athens in 1859 by Rhenieres. The essay by A. Mettetal lays no
claim to original research.
"Ilr/yr^ yvwo-ews- Kd. Lequien, Par. 17 12.
'■''The family of Lucaris were old Greek noljility, connected
with the Paleologi, originally from Epidaurus in lllyria; had
accepted voluntary exile to escape Turkish tyranny. Crete had
been purchased by Venice from the Counts of Montferrat. Many
of the young Greeks studied at the Italian universities. Padua
had three special colleges for them — the Colte,q;inni Cypriu)n,
founded by Garphranius for four Candiotes ; the Collegium Col-
lunium, for eight Greeks ; and the Collegium Veiietum, for twenty-
four students, of whom sixteen were to be of Crete. In the first
of these Cyril was educated. He was assisted from the first by
his kinsman Meletius, afterwards Patriarch of Alexandria. Ac-
cording to his first biographer, Leger, Cyril remanied at Padua
till his twenty-third year. In 1596 he was attending the Synod of
Brzesc.
'•'♦Letter to Sir Thomas Roe, of Nov. 20, 1622. (Roe's Cones-
poudence, p. 102.)
^1
'd
id
id
ly
la
",
>/-
y-
st
5y
c-
ja
of
'S-
N
LECTURE II,
Protestant Reunion.
:
;iii
ili;! II
LECTURE II.
MuKupioi oi elpr)voTroioi, on viol 6tov KkrjOi'urovTai.
{Mutth. V, y.)
C^hJi I'2 who endeavours to describe the various efforts
^^i^ to promote Christian Reunion in the seventeenth
century, feels how great were the difficulties expe-
rienced by those predecessors by whose labours he has
2)rofited. For the work is not to describe the history ol"
one movement, but of many ; proceeding sometimes in
parallel, sometimes in intersecting courses ; now the politi-
cal and now the religious element jjredominating : indeed,
more than once, in the same country, at the same period,
two distinct currents of irenical purpose are manifest ; as
in France, in 1631, when the partial union between Luther-
ans and Reformed was accomplished at the Synod of
Charenton, while Richelieu was aiming at a wider scheme,
which should have brought the whole nation into one
ecclesiastical organization.
And so when, at the beginning of the century, a member
of the Oratorian order in France attempted the first history
of Reunion, inspired by the somewhat sanguine hope that,
under the auspices of the First Napoleon, Western Christ-
endom miglit be finally united, he abandoned all effort at
philosophical treatment, or even classification of any sort,
and narrated, as detached incidents, each irenical effort,
with its measure of success or failure.' And even when, a
generation later, the German scholar Karl Hering, per-
p
I |!
I! ' i
22
Ifii/scan Lectures.
foniKcl the same task, on a larj^cr scale, with jrieater
knowleclj^e and a more cathoHc spirit, the reader yet seeks
ill vain an answer to the natural questions which the history
suggests, as to the connection between the different efforts,
the respective share of political interest, and growth of
religious feeling ; above all, as to the principles on which
the leaders of each movement based their proposals for
peace, and the reason why some of the greatest minds of
the century, a Cirotius and a Leibnitz, after strenuously
taking part in one or other of the movements, occupied at
the close of their lives an ambiguous position of neutrality.''
Not only the prescribed limits of time, but other reasons
no less peremptory, have caused me to restrict, as far as
possible, the scope of my own investigation. In treating
of the seventeenth century alone, almost every condition
and aspect of the question comes to view ; and in omitting,
so far as the narrower question of Protestant Reunion is
concerned, all reference to the various schemes of compre-
hension that were proposed or attempted iv the Church of
England, I avoid the necessarily imperfect discussion of a
topic which demands separate treatment, not merely on
account of the difference of conditions, but from its surpas-
sing historic interest, and its incalculable importance as a
practical question in these present times.
And while almost every conceivable method of arrange-
ment, whether geographical or chronological, from the
causes stated, incurs danger of repetition or omission, I
propose to adopt the simplest plan of all, that of taking,
in block, the two great groups of irenical effort — first of
Protestant Reunion, belonging to the period before 1660,
with its central figures, John Durie, Calixtus, and Hugo
1
Protestant Reunion.
2 7
(iroti
tl then the 1;
Jt towards tlic R<
, iiiivi iin.;ii iin, iciim_'r movci
union of the whole West, which, though schemed by Riche-
lieu and James 1 and (irotius, never approaches tanyihlc
shape till taken up by Durie's counterpart, the Catholic
bishop Spinola, whose ceaseless journeyinj^s and nej^oci-
ations prepare the statje ff)r the entry (jf Leibnitz and
Bossuet.
VVe have seen, in the earlier Reformation period, one
irenical system, that of liucer — that which may be called
the "Diplomatic method" — was j^enerally adopted. Ex-
cellent in intention, it suffered fatally from lack of uniformity
of jjrinciple, or even of any recoj^mised princij)le underlyiny;
it; and at last Melancthon abandoned his reluctant approval.
He tlid not live to inauji^urate practically a better metiiod,
and his becjuest to posterity consisted, as we have seen, not
so much in doctrines stereotyped in symbols as in a s])irit
continued in worthy successors, maintaining the lofty ideal
of learning, and the spirit of charity and toleration, which
shadowed forth (if it did not absolutely state) that recogni-
tion of theological ethics as the ultimate expression, of which
a true successor of Melancthon in this century has left so
imperishable a monument.'
But two remarkable influences were found in combina-
tion, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, which
strengthened the desire for reunion, and tended to counter-
balance the hard scholastic tone of Lutheran and Reformed
orthodoxy.
It is at this time that learned laymen are found to take
earnest part in theological discussion ; often with reluctance,
as when the great scholar, Hermann Conring, writes to a
friend that he would fain have held aloof from religious
:i i
24
Hidscan Lcc hires.
.
Mi'! \
Mi
I !
I
i
controversy, hut that his conscience would not suffer him
to keep silence.' Throuiihout the century, in a Selden, a
Pascal, Thoniasius, Leibnitz, Lock^\ and many others, the
influence is ever beneficial, not merely in the introduction
of a freer and more philosophical, but indeed of a gentler
and more Christian tone of discussion ; and if, by excep-
tion, a St'ldcn may have permitted his sense of superiority
and even the vials of scorn to overflow, not only in private
t;:ble-talk, but in public controversy, we must remember
tli;a he had to deal with adversaries who found anathema
easier than argument against his History of Tithes, and he
may have deemed those wieklers of the " gilt-edged testa-
ments " as deficient in the spiritual unction which they
claimed, as in the human learning which they despised.'
And, secondly, it has been pointed out by one whose
researches on this jjeriod form the stepping-stone for every
later investigation, that the custom of " academic travels "
had the greatest influence in widening" the views and extend-
ing the sympathies of students. Indeed, the '' pcregrinatio
acadanica " was not a feature peculiar to this century ; for
all will recollect that description of a journey through the
universities of I'^urope in the ^'Letters of obscw'c men''
which a tradition one willingly accepts attributes to the
lighter vein of no less a writer than Melancthon himself
But the seventeenth century made it a recognised part of
an academical, and es[)ecially of a theological curriculum."
The journeys extended far and lasted long. France,
Italy, and England are constantly mentioned ; but the
Netherlands, then in the very summit of intellectual and
national glory, was their especial goal. There Lutheran
visitors reluctantly admitted the virtues and talents of Re-
JVotcstant Hainion.
25
formed teachers. There Myslenta, extremest zealot from
Wittenberj4-, experiences and confesses the spell of the
personal fascination of ICpiscopins, just as the Calvinist
Heidegger visits at Strasburg the redoubtable Lutheran
controversialist Dannhauer, and is received with a cor-
diality he never forgets. We hear of one student who, after
passing' seven years at Wittenberg, studies at Utrecht, at
Paris, and at Oxford. Another comes to the same univer-
sity for two years to learn Hebrew from one who first
illustrated a nanu' now doubly memorable in the annals
of theology.'
It was upon a scene thus prepared and jireparing that
the first voice spoke forth, exhorting the two great sections
of Protestantism to seek peace.
The "//vv/zV/cy;/ " of Daviil Panius recommends a gen-
eral congress of the Protestant powers, including iMigland
and the Scandinavian countries ; that its work should be a
separation of doctrines into essentials and non-essentials,
indicating clearly his owr view that a temperate discussion
would prove the real points of controversy to be both few
and unimportant. It is an appeal to the kings anil peoi)le,
" i/ivo/oiii enim siudi sunt.''' But the time was not yet
ripe. To the joy of anxious Jesuits, the Lutherans scorn-
fully rejected a proposal which one of their s])okesmen
described as a diabolical invention."
And now a person ccMues forth, compared with whom
even Bucer's memory ])ales in respect of single-hearted
devotion to tlie cause of Reunion.
The career of John DrRii;, extending oxer more than
half a century, would need volumes to descril)e, and its
main outline is doul)lless familiar to us all. We remember
26
Hulscan Lectures.
how the young Scotchman, after leaving Oxford, was
brought into contact with that good genius of the time,
Sir Thomas Roe, who, recalled from Constantinople, after
having been the preserver of Cyril's life, now became the
friend and adviser of Durie. At first, all seemed to promise
success. Armed with strong recommendation from Arch-
bishop Abbot, as well as from Davenant and Hall ; j)ublicly
favored by Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstierna ; received
with warmest welcome by the congenial minds at Helmstiidt,
Durie accepted without misgiving the cold and even hostile
attitude of the Jena and Leipzig divines. To us, at the
present time, it seems wonderful that a theologian who held
himself so distinctly aloof from all current controversy
should have been able to gain even a hearing from his
contemporaries. F or Durie's own theological position, sel-
dom brought into evidence till the close of his life, was
much that of a mediaeval mystic, retiring from the ingenui-
ties of the schoolmen to the contemplation of divine things.
We find that, at the last, in his retirement at Cassel, he
found his own consolation in that Pietistic movement by
which Labadie from one side, Molinos and Spener on
others, transfused once more a needed life-blood into cur-
rent theology. It is even alleged against him as a heresy,
by a later writer of Mosheim's school, that he held that the
" Word of God, diFrent on men's lips, is the same in their
hearts," a doctrine which, however we may judge it, we
know to have been familiar to such minds as Eckart and
Tauler.
His basis of reunion was, therefore, far different from
the almost utilitarian position of Bucer ; and if it varies in
expression in the course of his long career, it is by a natural
ii
Protestant Rauiion. 27
development, a wider conception of the differing conditions
of each community, and an experience sadly purchased of
the many failures of his life-long quest.
But so far from deserving the charge brought against him
by one writer, of a random adoption of contradictory prin-
ciples, we find an almost pedantic inculcation of elaborate
practical methods, developed from a very clear statement
of principles. Seeing that all controversies and schisms
have arisen from the three differences, of opii "on, method
and temper of discussion, and form of worship, he pre-
scribes for the cure of each. In the first place, almost in
the words used later by Jeremy Taylor and Stillingfleet,
he would reduce the sum of fundamental doctrine to its
minimum in the Apostles' creed. For the second, he would
revive the forgotten discipline of practical theology, em-
powering the Superintendents to check mere scholastic
controversies, and to encourage the study of the higher
casuistry, as in England Sanderson and Taylor understood
it. Less practical or possible are his recommendations for
the abolition of all sectarian names, and less admirable his
proposal for a Censorship upon theological writings.
And it seemed at the time that he first made these
proposals that success would attend his hopes. In the years
1630 and 1631, as if in celebration of the great centenary of
Augsburg, the Protestant cause, with its new champion from
the North, was in height of prosperity; and the hearts of
even the bitterest controversialists more open to thoughts
of union. In the same year, 1631, two important events,
on the Reformed side, at the Synod of Charenton, and of
Lutherans, the Colloquy of Leipzig, marked a real advance
towards mutual comprehension. At the former, under the
ii
28
Htdsemi Lectures.
"m.
w\
■I
auspices of Amyraut, Blondcl, and jSIestrezat, it was decided
that Lutherans should be admitted to Communion, "since"
— as it was declared — "the churches of the Augsburg-
Confession agree in fundamental articles with the Re-
formed churches, and their service is without idolatry and
superstition." At Leipzig, the Reformed churches declared
their admiration of, and assent to, the Augsburg Confession
(meaning, naturally, its later redaction), and gave assent
also to a number of articles proposed with a specific pur-
pose of furthering reunion."
If the practical work achieved was slight and of scant
duration, that which was important in the Leipzig Colloquy
was the fact of nearer personal contact and mutual under-
standing. And a proof, not without value, of the advance
made was afforded by the indignant protests from the
Roman camp against these dangerous signs of alliance ;
more than one Jesuit denouncing this new heresy as leading
surely to indifference in religion, and from thence as surely
to atheism.
On Abbot's death, Durie found that all his hopes of
support from England depended on a personage of different
character. But whatever judgment may be passed on
Laud's policy within the English Church, it is impossible
to deny that, in his dealings with the Protestant cause on
the Continent, it was as broad and statesmanlike as that of
Abbot himself The sole condition imposed was the recep-
tion of Anglican Orders ; and to this Durie assented, as
Leighton twenty years later, and was supplied with cre-
dentials more full and authoritative even than before.
But from henceforth Durie was to experience a series of
disappointments and failures. In Sweden, whither he next
Protestant Reunion.
29
bent bis steps, filled with highest hopes of success through
Oxcnstierna's influence, and from the many links of analogy
between the Swedish and Anglican reformations, he was
received with jealousy and suspicion. His very right to
speak in the name of the Reformed Churches was openly
doubted ; and when at last admitted to a public hearing, he
was silenced by the raising of side-issues, and soon after was
directed to leave the country. In Denmark he experi-
enced a similar failure ; for the demand of the Lutheran
clergy that the Reformed, as a preliminary step, should
" renounce all their distinctive opinions," could hardly have
inspired hope even in Durie's sanguine disposition. Then
for many years he abandoned his wanderings, but while
resident in England was cease! :ssly active in propaganda.
Without a suspicion from either side of interested motive,
he accepted each phase of religious change ; he subscribed
the Covenant, and then the Engagement; but would not
join the Westminster Assembly without the King's consent,
against whose trial he vehemently protested. Preaching
before Parliament in 1645, he besought them not to "make
the gates of their Jerusalem too narrow." Sent by Crom-
well forth once more on the work of his life, he remembered
the Swedish difficulties, and sought to procure a prelimi-
nary union of all sections of the Reformed ranks. Here he
was partly successful ; but in Germany the frequent enquiry
why he did not first unite Christians in his native land,
before coming to other countries, was perhaps more difficult
to answer than the other arguments employed against him.
And for twenty years after the Restoration he continued in
the same activity, never bating heart or hope till the very
last, when a great pang of disillusion seems to have over-
TT'
I' r-
39
Hulsean Lectures.
\ I
come him, and is breathed in his last utterance : " The fruit
of my labour is but this, that I see more misery among
Christians than among heathen ; I see the cause of this
misery, and the need of remedy ; and I have but the wit-
ness of my own conscience that I strove to apply it.'""
If such seeming failure was the lot of the wandering-
prophet, little better was the fate of the great scholar Calix-
tus, who, at the end of his life, when all his hopes seemed
near consummation at the Synod of Thorn, found himself
excluded by Lutheran bigotry from the very assembly which
had met to accomplish the objects he had consistently
advocated." And yet the real influence of Calixtus, and of
the University of Helmstiidt in that age, can hardly be
overrated. If it does not present the unique picture of
Geneva in the former century, with siege and pestilence on
either hand, and those teachers with their meagre pittances
and myriad hearers ; yet, in its absolute unity of spirit and
teaching (for at last the colleagues of Calixtus had been all
his pupils), the spectacle is almost as remarkable. As Durie
represents the endeavour after reunion from the side of
practical theology, Helmstiidt urged the historical side with
an authority and learning which could not be denied. By
the admission of objective tests, more extensive than those
which Durie at any time demanded or would concede ; by
accepting the consent of the first five centuries, Calixtus
placed himself once more in possible relations, not only
with the Anglican hierarchy, but the moderate section of
the Gallican and Austrian clergy. Indeed, Calixtus' many
anti-Roman writings are directed rather against the new
school, the Jesuits, and the renegades like Nihusius, bitter
against the faith which had been abandoned.
I
Protestant Reunion.
31
But it was reserved for one, greater far than Durie or
Calixtus, and who all his life had been eager in the same .
cause, to close this chapter in the history of Christian
Reunion. And there is the more reason to dwell upon the
share of Hugo Grotius in this work, since a misrepresenta-
tion of it — "gross as a mountain, open, palpable" — has
long been regarded as a faithful record, coming as it does
from the hand of a great English historian, whose conspicu-
ous, and, indeed, in almost every case merited distinction,
is his impartiality. Unlike Calixtus, whose life has been
fitly recorded by one of his own spiritual descendants,
Grotius, whose country but recently has given him the
tardy tribute of a prophet's tomb, yet lacks the rarer monu-
ment of fitting biography. Before Grotius had been long
dead, we know that Richard Baxter, in one of his least
happy moments, charged him with having virtually seceded
to Rome, and the Anglican theologian, Bramhall, vindi-
cated the great memory wronged, in a memorable treatise.
But it seems hardly credible that the authority of Hallam's
name should have been given, and for so long without
question, to a statement which is not even free from material
inaccuracies, which is based upon a most imperfect grasp of
facts, and throughout adopts the method of a hostile advo-
cate. That statement is made at great length, with strong
profession of accuracy, and with all its apparatus of quota-
tion from the epistles. Its conclusion is to represent
Grotius as "stooping to nonsensical evasions," "runaway
with vanity," a " searcher 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 im-
posers;" his change of standpoint is attributed to "ill-usage
Hulseau Lectures.
received from the Huguenots," and the " caresses of the
Gallicans. " '^ And as, upon the mind of the general reader,
the pointed EngHsh phrase leaves surer dint than the most
faithful Latin quotations, what wonder that many may have
eagerly added Grotius to that category of the '^greatest,
7viscst, fficauest of mankind^' the imagined extension of
which gives so much consolation to mediocrity. And so,
for more than a generation, that verdict has stood unchal-
lenged and unanswered —
''^As London's column, pointing to the skies^
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies"
That the statement contains much that is true in sub-
stance can be readily admitted. That Hallam doubtless
believed he was fairly judging Grotius may be as certain
as our knowledge that the impartiality he invariably meted
to a character he disliked, he here fails to grant to one
which he admired but could not comprehend. Nor is it
any discredit to that universal reading which is already
impossible, and soon will be inconceivable, that Hallam had
failed to master that literature of Dutch and French Pro-
testant theology belonging to the first half of the seventeenth
century, which alone would furnish labour for a life-time.
But we may wonder that he should have failed to remember
that noble Apologia for his own life and opinions which
Grotius gives in the introduction to his Votum pro Pace
ecclesiastica, and written in 1642, three years before his
death :
''' Instructed from my childhood in the Holy Scriptures,
but by teachers who thotight not alike C07icer7iing[ things
Divine, I understood that Christ had ivilled that all named
after him, and trusting in his salvation, should be one, as
Protestant Reunion.
*
he is one with the Father. . . . And the beauty of the
primitive Church did greatly please me, at that time when
she was without question Catholic, since all Christians, save
a few separated and clearly distinguished parts, remained
in 07ie communion, from the Rhine to Africa and Egypt,
from the Britannic ocean to the Euphrates''
But as my limits forbid the preferable task of giving
Grotius' vindication in his own words, suffer me, in con-
cluding this section of my subject, to state the moments
which are traceable in his admitted change of attitude, and
which the verdict of Hallam seems to have in some places
imperfectly judged, and in others completely misappre-
hended.
To charge it as a piece of reaction against Calixtus and
Grotius that they had strong respect for antiquity, is surely
a proof of more than careless statement. Melancthon at
Augsburg, or Jewell in his Apology, as we know, were
strenuous champions on a field which is now deserted by
their old opponents. Even so strenuous a champion of the
Reformed Church as Du Moulin writes thus to Bishop
Andrewes :
"/ am not so brazen-faced as to give sentence against
those lights of the ancient Church. . . . The venerable
antiquity of those primitive ages shall akvays weigh more
with me than any man's newfangled institution." ^'-
But while, from the first, the recognition of, and appeal
to, antiquity was integral part of the Reformation platform,
it may indeed be admitted that, gradually, as new points of
controversy arose, two schools of opinion within the Refor-
mation were evolved, the one giving less and the other more
relative weight to the verdict of antiquity ; while the attempt
c
^Ili
34
Ihdsean Lectures.
to urge the individual authority of certain Fathers as a bar
without appeal, seemed at last, to a great body of Protestants,
to be a threatening evil, for which Daille applied a some-
what extreme but not unneeded antidote.
Nor, secondly, can any personal pique at the narrow
feeling of the F'rench Protestants be regarded as an efficient
cause of Grotius' change. As a Remonstrant, he had been,
indeed, at first repelled from their communion, an act of
intolerance not to be defended. But those who study the
annals of French Protestantism will understand why, instead
of the syncretism which their own interest seemed to suggest,
a hardness and rigor appears in their controversial literature.
It was the result, not only of long years of persecution, but
of the fatal political birthright of the Edict, making them a
separated community, cut off from the sympathies of fellow
citizens by the very privileges which were one by one
destroyed.''
But the third moment to be regarded is in the attitude
of Grotius to the movement for reunion as a work of his
life. He who was a statesman, who had made history with
Gustavus and Richelieu, was not content, like Durie, with
declarations and colloquies ; nor, like Calixtus, would deign
to bandy pamphlets with opponents like Calov and Hiilse-
mann. He saw the failure of their work, which he had
ardently helped, and aimed at some scheme where action
was possible, and success within measurable sight. As he
had seen Protestant union a failure wherever tried, so he
now turned to the wider scheme which had for its goal the
reunion of Western Christendom."
But, lastly, there is one point, indeed, where those who
desire to play the schoolmaster to Grotius may prove him
Protestant Rauiiou.
35
wrong. He believed, and believed without reason, that it
was possible to take up in 1640 the plan which Cassandcr
had offered in vain in 1560. But the stream which then
was narrow, and might have been bridged over by a few
practical reforms, and a few prompt concessions, was now
a wide gulf. Yet still there was possibility, if a concurrence
of political interest and of developed sympathy could be
found ; and, in any case, there are some who, if they had
lived at that time, would not have grieved to err with Gro-
tius and Leibnitz, if, indeed, they erred at all.
And here, with a final record of failure, this section of
my subject ends. And the failure seemed irremediable.
Who could unite with those whose reply, like Luther's to
Zwingli's outstretched hand and offered friendship at Mar-
burg, was: ''Ye have another spirit!'''' Who could not
feel that some inherent drawback must attach to schemes
which no efforts, no faith, could bring to success ? And
there was the consciousness reawakening, thought on by
Calixtus, pressing on Grotius, carried by Leibnitz into
practice, that schemes which at best only reunited a fraction
could not have elements of finality in them. How could
eternal foundations be laid for temporary expedients ?
And in our memories the onward vista of later attempts
confirms the prognostic of Grotius. We know the failure
of Tillotson's splendid effort, supported by his sovereign
and by that galaxy of names illustrious in theology. We
know how two genuine efforts to unite the Prussian and
Anglican Churches failed ; we know the history of that
union of the two Protestant sections in this century, the
failure of which broke Frederich William's heart, and
dashed the life-long hope of Bunsen ; we know how the
36
IIulscaiL Lcchircs.
Evangelical Alliance, with all its splendid promise, has been
sterile of practical result. And the reason was in the con-
viction that, however it might be justifiable to erect barriers
against persecution, such methods lost with their object
their reason of existence; it was in the conviction that the
work of Christianity is not to perpetuate divisions, but to
end them ; that as the heathen could conceive nothing
human alien to himself, so the Christian scheme knows no
barriers of eternal separation between those who profess to
call themselves after the name of Christ.
NOTES ON LECTURE II
'The work of Tabaraiid [Hisioirc critique dcs projels d'uuioti)
was written early in the century, but suppressed. It was pub-
lished in 1824.
'^Gcschichtc dcr kirchlichen CMonsvcrsiichc, Leipz., 1836, re-
mains still the standard work upon its subject, and is so acknow-
ledged by authorities like K. Hase and Niedner. Its account of
the labours of Melancthon and Dune is still the best ; but recent
publication of the Leibnitz Correspondence has thrown much
new light on the later phases of the work of Union.
"That which may be called the "definitive word" upon the
character of Melancthon was uttered by Richard Rothe, in his
speech delivered in the Aula of the University of Heidelberg, on
the three hundredth anniversary of Melancthon's death. (Apr.
19,1860.) He described M.'s career as "the great turning-point
in the history of Christianity, from the exclusively religious-eccle-
siastical, to the religious-ethical aim." He believed that not one
of M.'s contemporaries, not even Zwingli, was able to appreciate
him.
*Scaliger said that he had sometimes thought of writing upon
the corruptions of the text of Scripture. Cf. Scaliirerana 11., s. v.
Josephe: "11 y a plus de 50 additions on mutations au N. T. et
aux Evangiles ; c'est chose estrange, je n'ose la dire ; si c'estoit
un auteur profane ; j'eu parlerois autrement." He gave his reasons
for holding back in some verses addressed to De Thou :
"O Musiis et nos parili ample.xtis atnorc" etc.
(see Bernays, p. 204), and in plain words addressed to Martinus
Lydius in Franeker. (Seal, epp., p. 576.)
^"Divers members of both Houses were members of the
As:;embly of Divines, and had the same liberty with the Divines
to sit and debate. ... In which debates Mr. Selden spake
admirably, and confuted divers of them in their own learning.
And sometimes, when they had cited a text of Scripture to prove
their assertion, he would tell them : 'Perhaps iu your little pocket
Bibles, with gilt leaves, the translation may be thus, but the Greek
1, !
11!
;;|i
i'l
1 f: I
■' 'ti
38
Notes on Lecture II.
or the Hebrew sifjuijies thus and thus ; ' and so he would totally
silence them." (Whilelock's Memorials, ed. 1732, p. 71.)
"Tholuck has given an exhaustive account of the "peregrinatio
arudei/iiea^' in his "^Icacfeifiisi //es Leben" cited supra.
'John Ligiitfoot (1602-1675), author of the Horae Hebraicae.
*^Cf. Hering, UnionsversucIu\ i., 283.
"Cf. Hering, Unionsversucfie, i., 326-358.
'"For the life of Durie, which still demands an adequate bio-
graphy, there are abundant MS. materials at Cassel, Cambridge,
and doubtless other places. The account given by Hering, in the
second volume of his work, is still the best, and is closely followed
by Moller in Herzog-Plitt's Encyclop'ddic.
" Hering, loc. cit. ; Henke, Lebcn von G. Calixt, 11., 186.
'^Hallam, History of Literature, 11., 208, note.
'•*Du Moulin (Molinei ad episc. Wint., epist. iii.).
'^As far back as the year 1614. on the occasion of the National
Synod of Tonneins, Grotius had fully recognised the narrower and
less attractive side of Huguenot orthodoxy. With grave humour
he pointed out that one difficulty in the way of any approxima-
tion between the Reformed Church of France and that of England
was in the fact that the extreme Huguenots, like the Scottish
Puritans, regarded episcopacy as "an invention of the devil and
the mark of the beast." (Hering, i., 322.) He perceived, also,
the deficiencies of Du Moulin himself for tlie task pressed upon
him by James I.
'^Grotius admitted that he had gained his first ideas of Re-
union from F^r. Junius ( Votum pro pace cedes., contra Rivetuin),
and had strengthened them by the perusal of Cassander's writings.
A mind temperate and philosophic as his, nourished upon severe
and universal study, was unconsciously impelled by the shallow
polemics of his contemporaries to take a more favorable view of
the objects of the invectives. He pointed out the weakness of
the arguments which identified the Papacy with Antichrist, as
also the pleas of the victorious party at Dort. His sympathies
to the last were with the efforts of Durie, to whom he wrote in
warmest terms in 1641, shortly before his death.
LECTURE III.
Christian Reunion
I!
lii
i'M
LECTURE III
Maxdpioi ol flpy^voTTOioi, on vloi 6tov K\r]6rj(TOvraL.
{Mat/fi. V. 9.)
^^i N the necessarily abbreviated account of the efforts to
^Mi promote reunion among the Protestant churches, the
endeavour has been made to show that their failure
•was due, not merely to the intolerance of Lutherans and
Reformed on either side, but to an essential and insuper-
able difference of opinion on the question of the Church.
Calixtus, in his later stages, and Grotius more constantly
and systematically, had upheld a theory, far indeed removed
from the Roman conception, but which was as unacceptable
on other grounds to his Protestant contemporaries.
And when we consider that theory, to which, in the
present century, Thomas Arnold gave such epigrammatic
expression in one of his best-remembered letters ;' when we
consider that Grotius denied Episcopacy to be a vital note
of the church, while recognising its historical position, and
hs utility as an element of practical organization ; when we
remember his view of the function of the State, and that no
man ever held more strongly the belief that, everywhere,
"over all causes ecclesiastical as well as civil," the secular
power should be supreme, we may well wonder at the
superficial criticism which inferred an approximation to
Rome on the part of one who was Rome's most dangerous,
because most temperate and most intelligent, adversary.
And, on the other hand, while the Augsburg Confession,
unlike the Reformed symbols, whether Anglican or Galli-
I
42
H2ilscan Lechu'cs,
can, held to the statement, " quod una sancta ecclesia pcr-
pctuo mansjira sHy it is difficult to understand why, on this
side, Grotius did not find support in the more conservative
Lutheranism which carried so many ecclesiastical theories
into strenuous practice.
And yet it was without bitterness that the great scholar
relinquished his hopeless task, nor even without a certain
satisfaction, "for even the endeavour after that which is
noble," he writes, " yields the fruit of joyful recollection."
And, in another place : " If we obtain no more than that we
diminish hatred, and make Christians kinder ^nd nearer to
one another, is not this even worth the labour and the oblo-
quy with which we must purchase it? " Those words were to
be, for half a century, the epitaph upon Protestant Reunion.
But another influence had its weight alike in the earlier
efforts as in the subsequent relaxation and abandonment.
It is customary to speak of England as the country, par
excellence, where ecclesiastical changes were due to political
forces. And yet, not even in the days of pliant Tudor par-
liaments, do we find such absolute expression of what has
been called " csesaro-papism," as when, in the space of fifty
years, one German state changed five times from the Re-
formed to the Lutheran side ; and when the bright excep-
tions in the rulers of Hesse and Electoral Saxony, whose
own aspirations seemed to reflect those of their people,
only threw into more vivid relief the arbitrary subjection of
religion to political expediency. For many of the countless
religious colloquies of the sixteenth century were but politi-
cal measures, and the interest in them ceased, on the part
of princes, when the treaties of Westphalia settled the
Germanic system. The princes cared not for efforts after
Christian Reunion.
43
religious federation, the success of which might lessen their
own absolute authority. And, therefore, the virtual erection
of numerous Protestant state-churches, although a sure
barrier against Roman aggression, was a hindrance, not
only to any progress towards national unity, but to that
conception of Christianity in its aspect of a universal church
which their own creeds acknowledged.
And now, from another side, the cause of union was to
be advocated. That aggressive progress which was the
feature of the Roman Church during the first half of the
seventeenth century ended with the treaties of Westphalia ;
but numerous converts from all classes of society, from
many of the reigning houses, and even some additions to
the more enviable conquests from the ranks of scholars of
European reputation, which had begun with Justus Lipsius,
and added Lucas Holsten and Nihusius, were not wanting.
And the interest which the apprehensions of Rome began
to direct towards reunion is proved by the many treatises
which from this time were published, such as the Meditata
Concordia, bv the Jesuit Masen, in 1664, the Aurora pads,
by the Bishop of Mainz, in the following year, the Tuba
pads of Prcetorius, and many others.''
It is significant of the modern spirit which from the
middle of the centtry pervades Europe that it was a com-
mercial enterprise, an association to promote trade with
India, that enlisted the sanction of the Roman power on
behalf of Christian reunion. Rojas Spinola, Bishop of Tina,
is in more than one respect the counterpart of Durie. We
find in him the same overpowering possession by one idea,
the same unquestioned sincerity, the same self-sacrificing
exertions. Whether the authority he claimed from the
H
44
Hiilscan Lectures.
Emperor and from the Pope would have proved as com-
plete in ratification as in promise, has been doubted, and
must always remain a question. But a remarkable docu-
ment, preserved in a transcript from the hand of Leibnitz,
proves beyond doubt that, on the side of the Emperor at
least, the measures proposed were in full accordance with
the policy of Vienna, and were watched and encouraged
with keenest interest. And it was abundantly clear that, as
the previous efforts for Protestant reunion had laid bare
some irreconcilable differences in the Protestant ranks, so
now, on the side of those accepting the Roman obedience,
differences as marked, and as much based on the existence
of divergent principles, became manifest. Cassander, speak-
ing of the state of theological parties in France in the
middle of the sixteenth century, had remarked that, besides
the blind followers of Rome and the Huguenots, there was
a third party, " ordo vwderatorum et pacificaiomm'' who
recognise, he says, " the need of many reforms in the
Church, but yet disapprove of the importunity of the new
preachers. These seek such means by which the Church,
with least possible revolution, should be brought into har-
mony with Holy Scripture and antiquity ; and that both
sides, or at least those of both sides, 'qui saniorcs sunt,'
should be restored to Christian unity."''
Especially in France and with the house of Hapsburg
the memory of the old antagonism with Rome had not been
obliterated, and in both territories the results of successful
resistance survived, not only in a measure of practical inde-
pendence, but in a recognised theory. If this is less mani-
fest in the case of Austria, owing to the fact that the efforts
of bishops were often neutralized by the superior influence
Christian Reunion.
45
of the Imperial confessors, generally Jesuits, and always
attached to Rome, it cannot be forgotten how three suc-
cessive Emperors, in the era of the Reformation, had held
the scales ; how Charles V, although personally averse to
Luther's movement, had rivalled the deed of Genseric, while
his two immediate successors had each shown the strongest
leaning to measures of reform and reunion.
And the Galilean Church, from the time of Charles the
Great, had preserved an ideal not unworthy of an origin
which claimed an inheritance from Irenceus and Hilary.
Not as claiming an exceptional position in the universal
church, but as affirming in her own case a general and
certain rule of ecclesiastical common law, she maintained
her own principles, customs, and liberties. Indeed, this
ideal, to which few could refuse admiration, had not always
been clearly grasped. Sometimes on the side of the crown,
sometimes from the bishops, there had been lack of energy,
or of consistent action. But there was always a recupera-
tive force in the very possession of a great tradition, and
again and again, as under Hincmar and Yvo of Chartres,
Saint Louis, and Philip IV, the encroachments of the Papacy
had encountered strenuous and successful resistance.'
But the opportunity of an alliance between these kindred
ecclesiastical traditions in Austria and France was checked
by the long- continued political opposition between the two
courts. And the phases of the political conflict are strangely
intermingled with those of the irenical effort of Spinola we
have now to examine; each of the two countries, in turn,
making effort to secure an agreement with Protestant
powers like Brunswick and Hanover, which political rea-
sons alone made advantageous.
T^-
rr
i
:
'I'
46
riidsean Lccliires.
For a time Spinola's exertions bore but scanty fruit.''
But in 1 67 1 he gained an earnest adlierent in Cardinal
Albrizzi, the Nuncio at Vienna, and six years later the
scheme came under the official cognizance of Innocent XI.
The question of practical concessions, such as the cup and
the marriage of clergy, were favorably considered ; and
either on this, or on the occasion of a later visit, the Pope
gave sanction to the declaration, by virtue of which the
salvation of those outside the pale of the Roman obedience,
a Grotius, a Leibnitz, or an I. Newton, might be deemed
possible, through a charitable supposition of their invincible
ignorance.
But it was in the school of Helmstiidt, where Calixtus
had left adequate successors in his son, in Conring, and
above all, in Molanus, Abbot of Loccum, that S])inola was
to find most friendly reception and readiest agreement.
And it must be admitted that the plan explained to them
was one that might well have excited interest and a hope of
ultimate success. It was not asked of the Protestants that
they should abandon a single article of faith, of constitution,
or of ceremonial. Nor should the rights of princes or of
pastors suffer diminution. The great Anathema of the Bull,
In cccna Domini, with which the Council of Trent had
incorporated all Protestant Churches, mnually proclaimed,
W'as no longer to be published. The decisions of Trent
itself were to be considered as suspended. A new general
council, at which the Protestant churches should be sum-
moned, not as culprits, but as legitimate members, should
decide the future practice and doctrine of a reunited Church.
The primacy of the Pope was to be indeed acknowledged,
but without necessary admission of divine right, or of any
Christian Reunion.
47
historical theory of its orij^in, l:>ut solely as a matter of
practical utility.
Such concessions, so sweeping and unexpected, while
they provoked suspicion in many minds, had an irresistible
attraction for those among what may be called the Grotian
section of Protestants. Spinola's principle of "suspension,"
that is to say, of preliminary union, with suspension of all
controverted points, commended itself above all to those
who desired Reunion from its political and social side, and
it attracted no more ardent adherent at Hanover than the
famous Electress, distinguishetl even among the many
women who in that age took conspicuous part in literature
and politics, the mother of English kings ; and it was her
friend and confidant, Leibnitz, into whose hands the direc-
tion of further negociations was entrusted.
To Leibnitz the question was one long ago studied with
interest. When, after his early academical disappointments,
he had accepted at Mainz the service of the Archbishop,
and enjoyed the intimacy of Boineburg, he had lived in the
very atmosphere of that liberal Catholicism of the Cassan-
drian type which was se]:)arated by so narrow a division
from Melancthonian Protestantism. And his wide studies
in comparative politics, and, above all, that note in his
character of which he boasts, " that my preference is to seek
that which is admirable in every system, and not that which
merits blame," combined to prepare in him not only a
favorable prepossession for the cause of Reunion, but a'.'o
a thorough acquaintance with its possible conditions.
The same rumours which had been circulated concern-
ing Grotius accompanied Leibnitz in his visit to Rome in
J689. Yet the offer of the Vatican librarianship, with pros-
48
Hulsean Lectures.
\iQc\. of the Cardinal's hat, did not for a moment tempt himr^
to the indispensable condition ; and he returned to the
North, if not with the after influences of Luther's visit, yet
with clear conception of the absolute and irremovable differ-
ences which separated himself from the Roman system.
And when he a^ain took up the reunion (luestion, the
proposals of Spinola had slender value in his eyes. It is
in a Catholic federation independent of Rome that he now
saw prospect of success. Austria, over untrustworthy, was
swayed by changing jiolitical motives. It was to the Galil-
ean Church, then in the crisis of controversy with Rome,
that he turned his hopes. And he believed that he might
find a fit and willing colleague in that prelate who, but a
few years before, had proclaimed the Gallican liberties, and
who enjoyed the support of a monarch whose power as yet
had known no check.
Bossuet's name was already famous in the history
of attempted ecclesiastical reunion by his "'Exposition of
ttie Caitiolic Faitti^^ a treatise in which, with unequalled,
brevity and lucidity, he had placed the central doctrines of
his Church in their most favorable light and most moderate
expression. And it is significant that the only objection
made to that treatise, on the part of those to whom it was-
addressed, was a doubt as to the authority with which he
offered so minimized a statement. And there seemed,
indeed, to be some foundation for the doubt, since eight
years elapsed before a Papal Brief expressed a formal
approbation of the treatise. It will be remembered that..
in this masterpiece of controversial skill, the opposition^
of the Lutherans and Reformed, as well as their partial
approximation in France in the year 1631, are made use o£
Christian Rcicnioii. ^.c)
in the most ctlective, because most courteous and moderate
manner; and how, in conclusion, the rij^dit claimed by his
opponents of enlbrcin^r synodical decisions upon recalcitrant
individuals is contrasted with the claim of appeal to Scrip-
ture and the spiritual en]i^t,ditenment of the individual Chris-
tian. And when, seven years later, Hossuet and Claude,
the rei)resentative leader of the HuL^uenots, met in an
almost public discussion, it is equally sii,niificant of the
chant^ed situation that, instead of debating, as their fathers
at Augsburg and Trent, the profoundcr ])oints of doctrine
at issue, "Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate:
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," the only
question mooted is that of the authority of the Church.
It was well known to Leibnitz that the tension between
France and the Papal See had increased year by year. In
1682, before the four central articles of the Galilean Church
were affirmed at the Assembly of the French clergy, he
remembered the famous sermon on the " Unity of the
Church," when each incident of past resistance to Rome,
each acknowledgment of independence, was emphasized
with a distinctness which lost nothing from the accompany-
ing protestation of attachment and allegiance to the Pope.
Surely there seemed no unreasonable hope that the expon-
ent of such opinions would welcome an alliance from a
quarter where there was so much symjiathy and so little
seeming difference.
For a time the intercourse between them was carried on
by means of intermediaries, but at the close of the year 1691
we find Leibnitz and Bossuet in direct correspondence.
The former, although he had seen reason to think lighdy
of Spinola's mission, had completely accepted his method,
D
vni
50
Ilulscan Lectures.
thai of suspension. \\\ a remarkable state jjajjer, which liis
latest editor is inclined to date as early as 1684, he had
passed in review all the various expedients which had been
tried with such scant measure of success ; the failure of
public colloquies, of attempted distinctions between funda-
mental and n(Mi-fundamental doctrines, of attempted his-
torical standards which defined by an arbitrary date a
supposed limit of primitive purity."
Leibnitz, with obvious reference to the decision of Pope
Innocent, points out that every Christian is admittedly within
the pale of the universal Church, and can neither be styled
heretic nor schismatic, who professes a desire to believe
and obey what is tau^jht by Scripture and made clear by
authorized interpretation. And errors of fact will not debar
him from this right and jjrivilciie, as if he should have
failed to acknowledj>c some council as oecumenical. This
point is naturally emphasized by a quotation from Bellarmine
as to the last Lateran Council, who candidly admitted that
" etiam inter catliotieos^' a doubt as to its oecumenical char-
acter remained.
And so, by disregarding the Council of Trent, and
awaiting final decision from a free Council to be convoked,
he saw real prospect of union, if each party met in the
same spirit. He believed that the Protestant seniors and
superintendents would willingly accept episcopal consecra-
tion, with the title of Bis/iops of the Tetdonic rite, having
equal rank with their colleagues of the Latin and Greek
rites. And, with a retrospective reference to the Regens-
burg Conference, when reunion seemed so near at hand,
he concludes by declaring that, now once more, the hour
has come.
Christian Reunion,
The severest critic of liossuet's ecclesiastical policy will
admit that the corresijondeiice that now began with Leibnitz
is marked on iiis side with an ai^solute candour. I-'rom the
first he rejectetl the method of sHspmsion as iMa(.lmissil)le,
while he hojies much from that of cxposidon. On matters
of practice there mij^ht be concessions, but on cardinal
points the Roman Church would not give way. With the
Council of Trent she stood or fell.
In some degree this negative attitude, so disappointing
to Leibnitz, may justly be attributed to causes outsiile the
mere theological (luestion. In SjMnola's mission, which
Bossuet regarded as an Austrian political cxjiedient, he
took no interest, and tlie aciUe phase of the relations be-
tween the Court of Louis XIV ami Rome made it neetlful
to observe a guarded attitude. He knew how powerful
were the intluences already at work at Versailles in weak-
ening the Gallican cause and aiming at a retractation of its
declaration, and he feared, not without reason, that by com-
mitting himself to a scheme like that of Leibnitz, he might
forfeit the confidence of the Oallican clergy, and be dis-
avowed by the Court.
Hut, even with these needful admissions, it is obvious
that, to Bossuet's clear intelligence, the practical difficulties
of the system of "suspension" were not hidden. He felt,
also, that the Council of Trent was the real barrier between
them ; that a plan of union possible before it, now found in
it an insuperable hindrance. And it is upon this point alone
that the remaining portion of the first correspondence turns.
Leibnitz adduces argument upon argument to prove that
the Council had never been accepted universally. It had
not been formally accepted in France; Henry IV, at his
I
52
JluUcaii Lectures.
\ i
I !'
i:':
abjuration, had especially cxcei)tc(l it; it had not been ac-
cepted by the I'rince Priniale of the dernian Knipire, the
Archbishop of iMainz. He reminds Dossuet of its one-sided
constitution. Out of 2S1 bishoj)s, more than the half had
been Italian, and only two ( lermans had been present."
And he shows further, that, even assuming an itcumeni-
cal charactei, that had never absolutely precluded a practical
susjjension in the interest of the whole Cluueh. At the
Council of Basel an e.\])ress decree of Constance had been
suspended in order to admit the Bohemian Calixtines.
Should not a similar concession be i)ossil)le when the whole
Protestant world was in (luestion?""
Broken olit' for some years, the correspondence was re-
sumed in i6y8 by a further ap])eal from Leibnitz to the
Bishop of Mcaux. The issue is now still further narrowed
to a tliscussion of one decision of the Council of Trent in
reference to the Apocryj)ha. Afte; urging those irresistible
arguments drawn from the history of the Canon, Leibnitz
declares that, on this p(tint, at least, the method of exposi-
tion is impossible.''
Even with adversaries so courteous, the tone of dis-
cussion had gradually become warmer. Bossiv.'t did not
always restrain a tone of superiority, so natiu-al to one who
had as yet never met an intellectual etpial. And Leibnitz
did not spare occasional irony at a method of controversy
which assumetl authority and certainty instead of ])roving
them ; and at last, rising to a pitch of earnest feeling of
which his character was rarely susceptible, he adjured the
Bishoj) to beware, lest in striving to uphold the authority
of the Catholic Church he should inflict upon it irreparable
hurt. He pointed to the state of France; he ai)pealed to
1 -
L li 1 -istiau Reunion .
53
him to use the s^^reat talents entrusted to him in the cr.use of
charity and peace. " I know not whether that wouhl not lie
the interest even of Rome, but certainly that of the Truth!"
And thus the effort ended. The victory on all points
will ho ailjuyed, and riolidy. to Leibnitz ; but there are few
who will have refused some chivalrous sympathy to his
adversary, now in advanced a^e, and broken health, who
at the same time was occupied with the Ouietistic contro-
versy, and with a j)r()posed censure upon Jesuit casuistry ;
who was attackiuj^ Rome herself in his denunciation of the
loose Pelagianisms of Cardinal Sfondrati,'" aiul yet found
eners^y to break a lance, not in,i«loriously, with the master-
mind of Europe.
And the victor himself abandoned the cause he had so
long befriended, when the passing- of the Act of Settlement
in England made the Protestantism of Hanover a matter
of highest political necessitv.
Once more he occupied himself with a project of Protest-
ant reunion, and for a time it was hoped that by the efforts
of the Archbishop of York, much interested in the scheme,
a form of episcopal government on the English motlel
might have been introtluced into Prussia."
But the work he had abandoned had taught to him.
and to the world, another of the great experimental les-
sons which are ever purchased with the failure of so many
high hopes and strenuous etHbrts. He found no consola-
tion in the speedy humiliation of that Gallican Church
which had refused his overtures, and which was forced, by
political necessities, to humble itself at the feet of Rome.
He could not read the future, nor understand that while
the Protestant Churches were to experience the successive
i :!$'
54
Hulsea n Lee hi res.
i\
1'
1 1 >■
solvents of Pietism and Rationalism, Rome was to continue
unchanged, rejecting each generous movement from within,
as she had rejected the overtures from without Sailer and
Wessenberg were to learn, by bitter experience, the lesson
of Pole and Contarini, — that for primitive doctrine and
primitive life there was in the Roman Church only jealousy
and suspicion. But, little as they knew it, Grotius and
Leibnitz had not laboured in vain. Not their schemes
of ecclesiastical union, but their political labours had ad-
vanced the idea of Nationality ; they recognized some of
its claims and attributes ; they realized the personality of
the State. And that true instinct within them, that " 77/(?
Fatherland must greater be" greater than dynastic or
geographical limits, though it erred in supposing that the
outward organization must share the universality of the
ideal, yet it brought together, if not in order, each ele-
ment of the problem, on the one side the individualism
of Nationality, on the other the universal brotherhood of
Christianity, and the prediction of Leibnitz, " We labour
for posterity, but one day the work will end itself" {res
ipsa se aliqiiando conficiet), will find in its fulfilment the
noblest monument of his labours and of his faith. ''
1|
NOTES ON LP:CTURE III.
' Stanley's Life of Arnold. Letter to Mr. Justice Coleridge,
II., p. 265: "I am for High Clnircli and no priest."
- Hiedennann, Gcschichtc des Xl'/II'^t Jahr/inuderf, i., 324.
■' " Et tertio loco est ordo nioderatorum et paciricatoruni, (iiii
et corrigenda nonnulla in Ecclesia agnoscunt, netiue tainen itn-
portiinitateni noveilorum (ut vocant) concionatorum ai)]>rohant ;
hi quc-ernnt consilia quibus Ecclesia ad normam divin:e Scriptiirc'e
et ecclesice priscie, quam minima fieri potest mutatione, et retentis
quod fieri potest anticjuitatis relicjuiis, constitiiatiir, ut utracjue
pars, vel certcj qui iu utrdquc parte saniores sun/, ad Christianam
concordiam et unionem reducantur." (Cassander, ap. Gieseier,
IV., 576, note.)
* Niedner, Kircheui^cscfiichte (1S66;, p. 740.
•^Spinola's first relations in the Protestant camp were with
Molanus, Abbot of Loccum, a pupil of Cali.xtus, and the inheri-
tor of the Syncretistic principles of his master. Molanus left a
memorandum of the results of the correspondence in his ''Regulcc
circa Cliristianorum ouuiiuni ccclesiasticani ;r//;//<^«i'w," included
in Bossuet's Works, ed. Versailles, xxv., 205. He believed that
both sides might be reconciled by mutual declarations of unity in
fundamentals. Another personage who played a part in the cor-
respondence was the sister of the Electress Sophia, Abbess of
Maubuisson, a friend of Hossuet's. Through her influence, the
latter was at length persuaded to take part in the efforts. See
Planck's Gescliichte dcr Prof. Tlieologie, p. 314.
"The memoir is entitled ''JJes Miihodcs de Rtunion:' Cf. Klopi?,
I., 19-36.
' Leibnitz to Hossuet, May 8, 1699.
•* His authority being the Miscellanea Bolieinica of the Jesuit
Balbinus, and tioldast, de regno Boheni.
'•*'• La conciliation par voye d'e.xposition cesse ici." (L. to B.,
April 30, 1700. Cf. Eoucher de Careil, 11., 301.}
(55)
n
I ^
56
Note
s on
Lcchirc III .
)\
Pf
11
'" Celestino Sfundrati ( 1644-1696), while i)rofessor at Salzburg,
bad attacked the Gallicaii declaration in bis Tiaciatits Rci:,aliae
(S. Gall., 16S2) and other treatises. Raised in 1695 to the Cardin-
alate, be pubHsbed, in the following year, bis "■ Nodus pracdcsfhia-
tionis dissoliitiis,'" ihn unsoinid theology of which gave Bossuet his
opportunity. In 1697, and again in 1700, a formal denunciation
was laid before the Pope, combined with a censure of Jesuit
casuistry.
"The eflurls'at union planned by Jablonski and Archbishop
Sharpe ba\e been often narrated. (See Newcome's Life of
Sharf>i\ i.ond., 1825, and documents in the Museum Haganum,
III., 1-174.)
'-The stages of Leibnitz's efforts for union may be thus defined:
{a) Intercourse at IMainz witii Hoineburg and J. Ph. von
Schonborn.
{b\ The "Academie-Vorschlag " of 1669-72. (Cf. Briefe von
L., ed. Klopp, I., 19.)
{c) Meeting with .Spinola at Hanover (1679).
^d] Relations with Huet and Bossuet. The central topic not
discussed until 1679. Then with Molanus, Barkbausen, and Ulr.
Calixtus ; the manifesto of Molanus {JMcthodus iinioitis) was pub-
lished in 1683. In the following year Spinola obtained, at Rome,
from Innocent XI, with full approval of Noyelles, general of the
Jesuits, the decision U|)on " invincible ignorance." In 1685 Leib-
nitz wrote his memorandum "Dcs Mcthodcs dc Reunion.'' Four
years later he made his memorable Journey to Rome. (Cf.
Guhrauer's Lebcn, 11., 90.) Then followed the correspondence
with Pellisson and Madame Brinon, in which Bossuet was clearly
a constant adviser.
(6') 1691-95 : First correspondence between Leibnitz and J^os-
suet.
(f) 1698-9-1702: Second correspondence between Leibnitz
and Bossuet, the latter seemingly reluctant, and only writing
once between January 11, 1698-9. and January 9, 1699-1700. The
last letter (Leibnitz to Bossuet) dated February, 1701-2. [Cf. edd.
of the Letters by Foucher de Careil and (). Klopp, passim, many
included in Bossuet's Ocuvres and Guhrauer's biography. Also
the essay by E. Pfleiderer : C IV. Leibnitz ah. Patriot, u. s. vv.
(Leipz., 1870).]
LECTURE IV.
Christian Reunion
I
;
Ms
LECTURE IV.
'Ett' dAi;^£ws KiiTuXaiLpdvofxaL Sri ovk ((ttl TTpoin,mo\yfirT-q^ b
«eos- dW h TTiKvri Wvu o - lier own di.i^nitaries ; Isaac Basire,
Hiii,aienot by origin, Anglican by adoption, is the uniciue
missionary figure of his age. Indeed, at the time (jf the
Restoration, when much depended upon the (piestion of
the King's rehgious views, it was from the Huguenot min-
isters of Charenton that Cliarles II sought and oljtained
a declaration that satisfied those to whom he owed his
throne.-"' And if a still highei* title to resi)ect be sought,
may not those who have visited the old lii)rary near the
ruined cathedral of Dunblane, and have noticed Mo'i'se
Amyraut's treatise on Predestination scored and re-scored
with ai)proving comments from the hand of the noblest
of the sons of the Church of England, may not they
fancy that it was from a Huguenot source that deeper
and wider thoughts as to the awful mysteries of destiny
and grace dawned upon the mind of Robert Leighton."
And now all has changed. The leaders of the Re-
formed Church of France are hardly known even by
name to the Anglican student, and communion between
the two bodies has long ceased. Surely a phenomenon
so remarkable and so regrettable deser\'es more than a
passing comment. For all the reasons that would justify
on either side a formal separation are conspicuously ab-
sent. It might be justified by a dej)arture from a com-
mon faith: but the old Confcssio Gallicana of 1559, so
nearly allied to our own xxxi.x Articles, holds still the
same honoured place in Huguenot estimation ; it was
solemnly re-aftirmed at the last general Synod ; and it
is received with as much readiness and completeness of
assent as could be claimed, individually and collectively,
III
iii J
nil
II
I :
IMAGE EVALUATION
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The HiiQiie7iots and
on behalf of their own symbol, for the members of the
Anglican Church."
Nor is the Huguenot body fallen into that stagnant
repose which, as in the community of Dutch Jansenists,
and some ancient Oriental churches, causes a virtual,
though not a justifiable, isolation. That same vitality, of
which future historians of the Church of England will
justly boast, is to be found there also. While, on the
one side, the evangelical school of Monod presents fidelity
to the older standpoints of confessional strictness and bib-
lical literalism, on the other side there is the same expan-
sion, the same willingness to accept the results of scientific
thought and investigation ; and if there be somewhat more
of explicitness in the demarcation of opinion, it may well
be accounted for by the conditions of a body which
possesaes neither the advantages nor the disadvantages of
exclusive state support and wealthy endowments.''
But the causes of the alienation may be traced, if they
cannot be justified ; and he would have studied the consti-
tution of both churches but empirically and superficially
who did not fully recognize that the danger was always
imminent.
I. That remarkable dualism in the constitution of the
Anglican Church, its union of Catholic and Protestant
elements, which suggested Chatham's shallow epigram,
but which has abundantly contributed to her duration
and present activity through the necessary sequences of
alternate movement and reaction, would alone difference
her from churches which, at the time of the ReformatTon,
experienced a more logical, but far less practical de\-elop-
ment.
The Church of England. 79
2. Nor can it be forgotten that although the idea 01
■episcopal succession as a note of the church had never
been abandoned at the English Reformation, yet it held
.a far less prominent and exclusive position until the cir-
•cumstances, first of the Puritan movement, and later of
the Civil War, brought it to the front as a crucial dis-
tinction. And even, as will be seen later, when the
reaction against Puritanism had obtained the mastery in
the Church of England, those who honestly study the
•writings of the Laudian school of divines, both in their
controversies with Rome and with the Puritans, cannot
but recognize that, although the dilemma was neither ad-
mitted nor admissible, yet their language was as absolute
and decided against episcopacy without reformation as it
was against reformation without episcopacy.
3. And another cause, closely connected with the pre-
<:eding, was the gradual weakening of the old tie of com-
bative union, the alliance defensive and offensive against
the Church of Rome. The great period of anti-Roman
polemic in England was at its height when the Huguenot
Refugees demanded English hospitality. Tillotson and
.Stillingfleet and Barrow, and so many others, had but
recently spoken, or were still to put forth those utter-
ances which ended argument, though they could not end
^controversy. That the alliance should fail at last is in-
telligible, since any merely negative union must be in its
nature transitory, but regrettable to those who recognize
that its failure is less due to any real tendency towards
peace and union than to torpid indifference, or even the
-abandonment, consciously or unconsciously, of vital prin-
iciples.
8o
The Hunienots and
4. Nor can the disastrous results of the \ox\^ separation':
of the eighteenth century be forgotten. We know welR
that the circumstances of the Huguenots who remained in)
France, and the horrors of their jjcrsecution, were but
pardy known in England Also that the great ecclesiasti-
cal generation of the Tillotsons and Wakes was followed*
by those who mirrored instead of resisting an .ge of poli-
tical corruption. And since the Huguenots in France were-
accounted rel^els if they exercised their service, the Englislii
Church may be pardoned on political grounds for not at-
tempting overt interference. But when we compare the-
annals of the two Churches during the time, — on the one-
side the comfortable hierarchy, intriguing for jireferment
and translation, engaged in deistical controversies, and ful-
minating charges against enthusiasm ; and, on the other, the
pastors of the desert venturing with their lives in their
hands to preach the Word, and to administer the sacra-
ments to their scattered Hocks, their children bastards by-
law, their property confiscated, each public service at once-
an act of heresy and treason, not even the primitive church,
can display a life like that of Paul Rabaut,"' nor endurance:
comparable to that of the desert pastors. The persecutions-
of the early Chrisdans were few and intermittent. This-
lasted for more than a hundred years. And yet no word^
of protest, no cry of sympathy, came from the Potters ancJ.
Herrings and Huttons and Seekers who ruled the Church>
of England. The acute Paley could trace no evidential
martyrdom among those thousands who, too ostentatiously,,
perhaps, could "keep a conscience."'" It was the voice of-
the sceptic Voltaire alone that aroused Europe and avenged,
the judicial murder of Calas.-" If, then, there was separa-
The Church of England.
8i
tion, if there was a breach of comnninion, whose was the
fault ? Whose the loss ?
But it is not to recall sad memories of past controver-
sies, but rather the fact that for so lonjt;^ a time relations of
brotherly afibction, and afterwards of courteous reccjj^nition,
at least, united the Churches. All will admit the gross
historic fallacy of dating the Church of England from the
Reformation only, and ignoring the precious links of union
with Augustin and Columba, Ansclm and Grosseteste. But
is it not an equally disastrous error to efface the whole of
Post-Reformation history from Edward VI to Charles I ;
virtually to excommunicate all the Archbishops from Parker
to Abbot; to stamp implicitly as heretical the doctrines
which in this University were taught alike by Whitgift
and Cartwright, by Chaderton and Whitaker, Playfere and
Davenant,-' which Hooker accepted, which Donne and An-
drews preached, which George Herbert illustrated in his
saintly life ? And even when we pass on to the period of
the Laudian movement, we find the same full and frank
admission of the Protestant name, and the catholicity of all
Protestant Churches.
F .'^ if these Churches, as we are sometimes assured
now, are mere alien communities beyond the limits of the
Catholic Church, this was unknown to Overall, who said:
" Though we are not to lessen the jus divinum of Episco-
pacy, where it is established and may be had, yet we must
take heed that we do not, for want of Episcopacy, where it
cannot be had, cry down and destroy all the Reformed
Churches abroad, and say that they have neither ministers
nor sacraments."
r
82
The Hugiioiois and
It was not known to Cosin, who declared in his test-
ament : " Wheresover in the world Churches bearing the
name of Christ invocate ; worship, with one mouth and
heart, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost, if from actual communion with them I am now de-
barred . . . nevertheless always in my heart and so .1 and
affection I hold communion and unite with them — that
which I wish especially to be understood of the Protestant
and well-reformed Churches." ''■*
It was not known to Bramhall, when he declared
that " the Episcopal divines in Enj^land unchurch not the
Protestant Churches. We do readily grant them the true
nature and essence of a church, if not the integrity and
perfection."-^
It was not known to Sandkrson, who never lost an
occasion of expressing reverence for the great teachers of
France and Germany. It was not known to Laud himself,
who declared that " his continued labours were to recon-
cile the divided Protestants in Germany, that they might
go with united force against the Romanists."'"
It was not known to the non -juror Sancroft, who
joined with Tillotson in his efforts to restore communion
with foreign Protestants, and asked Dissenters to join
with him " in prayer for a blessed union of all Reformed
Churches at home and abroad."'"
It was not known even to the last of those champions
of lost causes in church and state, who for more than a
century was to shed lustre upon the title of High Church-
man : for Francis Atterbury at the supreme moment of
life, with the turned axe and Tower Hill seemingly full in
■
The Clmrch of England.
83
prospect, declared before his judges tliat throughout his hfe
he had ever been faithful to the Protestant cause.
But this is known, and is confidently proclaimed to us
by those modern teachers who arrogate to themselves the
right to appoint the limits and the landmarks of the Univer-
sal Church, who excommunicate and unchurch the bodies
to which the great scholars of time past extended affection
and communion ; and who lavish on the theology of all
foreign churches, and of the greatest centuries of the Re-
formed Church of England, a contempt which seldom owes
its birth to familiarity. We know that it is not to the wise
and prudent always that mysteries are revealed ; but it is
hard to understand that the true doctrine of the Church of
England, and of its relation to other churches, should have
been entirely hid from the great divines of these past ages,
and should have been reserved as a special revelation for
the anonymous journalists of our own more fortunate times.
True it is that none should regret the decay of the
merely negative, merely combative Protestantism, with its
often savage polemic and its platform rhetoric; but some
of us may well regret the gradual loss of the old Protestant
spirit, the rugged simplicity of the Elizabethan writers, the
sobriety and breadth of the Jacobean and Caroline divines,
and to have gained in exchange that which, at its very best,
represents the same error it rightly detects in the negative
Protestantism of the past — the error of confounding an
element of religious life, a principle, and a force, with the
whole substance of religion itself
But it is not from sendmental and antiquarian motives
alone that the Huguenot Churches can plead for sympathy ;
not merely by quoting the blazons of illustrious ancestry.
84
The J/upticnois and
They can plead at once the intense urtjency of the situation
in France, the ttJtal hick ol' other aj^ency, and their own
active quahfications for the work. There are some, per-
haps, who recollect the old j4lories of Gallican independence,
and looking on theoloj;y rather from an aesthetic than a
religious point of view, feel that, side by side with Francois
de Sales and Hossuet, Hourdalone anfisic. and <•
lorona, botli fefcrriiiK to the perstTUtion under St'i)!. Severus),
and the attc'ni|)ts to jjain the anthorilies by l)ril)ery (<■ .///.c*'
II -13), he more tlian once denounced tlie pretensions of those
who, on the strenj^tii of a brief imprisonment, attempted to |)ose
as martyrs. ( ./y intoxication at the last.
(dc JcJkii. 12.1
■•' Cyi'kian. NotwithstanchiiK thi- difVicuIties of his position,
owin^- to his own lli^ht, ry|)rian protested against the extraordi-
nary i^retensicjns of tile Confessors at Cartiiai^e, after tlie Decian
persecutit)n. (()|)p. ed. Paris, 1643, epist. 14, 15, 21, and Rettberg,
Cyprianus, p. 66, .svv/. )
•' EfSKiiit's. As to the disorjjani/ation imder the Decian and
Valerian persecutions see H. I"., vi. 41 and viii. i ; much fuller dis-
closures, however, beinj; found in the /i/u r dc piOiilcntia of I'etrus
Alexandrinus, with rejjard to the persecution of i^iocletian. Cf.
Routh. A'(7. sacr, iv. 22, scq.
* The whole subject of the f.apsi an. I the kindred cjuestion
of the claims of the confessors is best illustratetl in the treatise
of Petrus Alexandrinus, (|uoted above. Besides the well-known
classes of librllatici and fradiforcs, he si)eaks (jf those who sent
their heathen, and sometimes even their Christian slaves, to i^er-
sonate them in the act of sacrifice. In Cartlia};e and Alexandria
the episcopal authority was practically overthrown by the indis-
criminate use of micyac pads by the confessors, while in Rome
and Antioch the milder rule fnially obtained acceptance. Cf.
Hausrath, Kleinc Schriflcn, p. 45, 6.
* Pf.rpeti'a. "Perpetua autem, ut alicjuid doloris jjustaret,
inter costas i)uncta exululavit ; et crrantem dexteram tirunculi
gladiatoris ipsa in jugulum suum posuit. Fortasse tanta femina
aliter non potuisset occidi, quia ab immundo spiritu timebatur, nisi
ipsa voluisset."
(89)
90
Notes.
[Pdssio SS. Pcrpctuae cl Fiiici/a/is, ed. Hurler, in SS. Mart.
Acta St/ccfa, p. 142.]
" FoXK, ^Ic/s and MoiiinneiiLs (1S3S), vi. 694, and vii. 550.
' The date of tlie Revocation, wiiich lias been contested in re-
cent times, seems satisfactorily fix( ')y the entry in Dans^eau's
Journal: ''Luudi, 22 Oituhrc, d Fi^ taincblcan : Ce jour la. oi>
enregistra dans tout le royaunie la cassation de I'c'dit de Nantes.
et Ton coninienca u raser tous les temples (]iii restoient. . . . Le
soir it y cut coniedie italienne." Joiinial dc J)aii,i>eaii, Taris, 1S54,
i> 237.
" P^NCJLiSH I'KKi.iNc! IN 1685. As far back as i6Si, before the
JJra,i;ofiades, while what may be called legal persecution only was
practised, public opi"'on had forced a Proclamation from Charles
II, which offered to the immigrants already flocking to England,
letters of denization witiiout any charge, and many other civic
privileges. It promised a general Hill of Naturalisation. This
document had a great effect in France, and for a time suspended
the persecution. (R. L. Poole, //nj^. of Dispersioti, p. 76.) In the
autumn of 1685 a royal brief for a national collection was issued,
concerning which see the following note. The popular indigna-
tion was manifested in pamphlets, of which a great number are
preserved at the British Museum, such as The Great Pressures
and (,'7-ievanres of the Protestants of Prance, by E. E. [Edmoncl
Everard], 1681, fol. James IPs dislike to the Huguenots was-
clearly manifested in the order for the burning of Claude's I*/o n-
tes des ]\otestants, the order appearing in the Gazette of May 8^
1686. Cf. Benoist, iv. 491 ; et seq., Kennet, Hist, of Engl. iii. 403^
and Cooper, Lists of Foreign Protestants and Aliens, p. xviii^
(Camd. Soc. 1862.)
" For the history of the Royal Bounty see Supp/etnentaiy Note-
5 of Mr. R. L. Poole's Huguenots of the Dispersion, a work to
which French students will admit their great indebtedness. The
researches on the subject had already been undertaken by Aj.' new,
J^rotestant Exiles, i. 36-58, but in a manner not very accessible to-
the general reader. The two national collections of 1681-2 and
1685, together with parliamentary and other grants, realised
nearly ^'200,000. The subsequent history of the fund, "not very
creditable," as Mr. Poole justly saj's, "to the national financiers,""
may be read in his appendix. But the unfortunate epilogue in nc>
way concerns the spontaneous munificence of the national gift.
Azotes.
91
'" Saimaisk (15S8-165S) had known Casaubon in Paris, but
became a Protestant wliile studyint;; at Heidelberg- under Denis
(iodefroy. He married the daiigiiter of Desbordes, a zealous
Huguenot. Tiie only personal annoyance he suffered on account
of his religious views was when Marillac, the (ianfr drs Stta/i.i-.
refused assent to the resignation by the fatiier of his ofiice in
favour of his son.
" ScALic.KR. According to Sca/iirt'raiia II (s. v. Scaliger), he
was converted to Protestantism at the age of 22. '" I! avait 22 aus
([uand il fut cateciiis^ par M. de Chandien et par M. V'iret. Ce fut
le frure de M. de Buzenval, ([ui est maintenant Papiste, ([ui me
mena au presche durant les premiers troubles." Bernays (./../.
Sca/isfvr, Herl. 1S55), e.\plains the seemingly contradictory state-
ments m the Sca/i^t'rainx: " Wie alle Menschen, die sich einen
gleichiiiiissigen Fortschritt ihrer wissenschaftlichen und religi'lsen
Entwicklung zu erhalten verstehen, legte audi Scaliger in reiferen
Jahren manche Starrgliiubigkeit seiner Jugend ab."
.Sc. was not at all edified by many of the Protestants, particu-
larly as to the extreme sections, who discredited all non-Biblical
learning. Arniinius, indeed, was " cv'r ind.xii/tus" (Seal. 11, s. v.
Arminius), but of Gomarus: " II pense estre le plus scavant theo-
logien de tons. 11 s'entend Ti la chronologie comme nioy a faire
de la fausse monnoye."
'-' David Bi.ondkl (1591-1655.) As early as 1619 his Modcstc
declaration dc la vcritv des ci^l. rcfonnees appeared. His fame as
an anti-Roman writer was established by his J'st'iido-Isidorus et
Turriaiins vapiilautcs (1628J, a work greatly admired by F.nglish
divines, and which, as far as scholars were concerned, finished the
Isidorian controversy. His even greater work, De la /'rimaitte de
rEi>li.se (1641), was viewed with favour even by the French court.
Cf. Xiceron, viii. 48, seq.
'•* Anijre RiVKT (1572-1651), like Blondel, spent the greater
part of his life in Holland. Although distinguished in the polemic
against Rome, his main claim to distinction is in his exegetical
works, his Jsagogc nd scripturani sacrani V. ct N. T. (1616) long
remaining a standard work.
'* CvsAiiiON. The admirable monograph of the late Rf^ctor of
Lincoln College has raised a monument to one Huguenot worthy
only to be paralleled by Professor A. Schweitzer's study on Amy-
92
Azotes.
m
rant, Tlicol. JahrhVicltcr, 1S52. aiul same of tlit; articlt-s in tlie new
edition of Haaji's France /'ro/cs/aii/c.
''^ PiKRRK DiMon.iN (1568-1658), the most indefatigal)le com-
batant of a polemical ajje, wiiose life has jet to he written. C.
Schmidt's article in the new edition of Herzog's K. E. enumerates
his works, and the leadiii!;- incidents of his life. He was created
D. D. by Cambridt^e on the occasion of his first visit to Knsjland,
in 1615, wiien invited by James 1, at the sii,t^<;estion of Duplessis
Mornay, to discuss a union of Protestant Churches.
'"S.VMrKL HocHAKr (1599-1667), nei)hew of i'ierre Dumoulin,
educated under Saumur iulluence, visited Oxford with Cameron.
His famous works, Gcographia Sacra (1646) and Ilicrozoicou
(1663), were esteemed l)y Catholics as well as Protestants; the
latter was dedicated to Charles J I. In 1650 he engaged in a
friendly controversy with Morley. the result of which was pub-
lished in his I'lpistola qua rcsp. ad. in qitacs/ioiics.
'"Jk.w Daim.i'; (1594- 1 670), for list of works, see new edition
of Haag, /•>'. /'/•. His treatise He T liniploy dcs saints plrcs was
comparatively an early work (1632). No less than 724 of his
Charenton sermons were published.
'^JoHN DiKKi.i. (1626-1683). Dean of Windsor. His " ricze/
of the i^ovcnnuoit of the Re/oriiied C/inrc/ies (1662), contains a
very sufficient proof of ihe friendly attitude of Charenton to the
Church of England.
'"Damkl Mkkvint (1616-1695), Dean of Lincoln. Acted with
Durell in 1659 in procuring from Daille and the other Charento'i
ministers the declaration concerning the Protestant orthodoxy of
diaries 11. See next note.
'^"The many rumours in circulation as to the conversion of
Cliarles II to the Roman Catholic faith, and the fact that his
hopes of Restoration in 1659 depended on die sanction and eflbrts
of the Presbyterian party, induced him to apply to the Consistoire
of Charenton for a declaration of his Protestant orthodoxy. This
was readily granted, and letters to that effect were written by
DailkS Drelincourt. Delangle, and Caches. See Kennet's Register
and Chronicle, 1728, pp. 91-4, containing the letter of Gaches to
Baxter, and of Daille and Drelincourt to the Huguenot ministers
.
Notes.
93
in Lontion, Stoiippe and Leroy. Caches vouclied lor the fact uf
Charles's attendance at tlie Trotestant service at Rouen and
Rochelle. Wlien, in 1661, the Savoy congregation adopted a
translation of the Anglican liturgy, the question as to the legiti-
macy of the step was submitted to the Charenton Cuiisistoire,
which unanimously decided " that they ought not to make any
scruple to submit to the order of that Cluirch." (Kennet, p. 460,
and see Durell's Rcfoiiiicd Churches, 1662.) An interesting letter
of Amyraut's, given by Duliourdieu in his Appeal to the Jiiigtish
Nation, p. 105, gives the view of that great tlieologian on the
same subject: " / 'eterem illani vestram litiiri^iain lei^i atteiitissiiuc:
est aitfein itia sane talis, ineojiictieio, tit in innltis zelmn veie ehris-
tiannui inccndere et fnleni efficacissiine fovcre apta nata est. In
aliis, oinni veneno caret ; universe, illibata retii^ione, et non tnoclo
sine conscientiae ullo vulnerc, sed etiatn cum adinodunt nientorabiti
pietatis fructu, celcbrari et usurpari possit.'' The passage is (juoted
in Mr. Poole's work already cited, suppl. Note iv.
-'The Leightonian library at Dunblane was opened in 16S8, the
catalogue first printed 1793. For particulars of foundation see
Irving's Lives 0/ Scottish Writers, 1839, 11, 146. I.eighton's notes
can be easily recognised by comparing his autograi^ii. Among
the books may be mentioned, as siiowing Leighton's wide read-
ing, Arndt's /'aradies (,'orttein (1666), Balzac, Lettres (1634 6), the
Bible in Irish, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, Brantonie's JPanoires, Lord
Brooke, Cowley, Saint Cyran's Lettres Spirituettes, a great num-
ber of Dailies works, Doime, Du Bartas, a forgotten book called
"t'e:'esica (1562), and the Conf.
Sigismundi or Marchica (1614), and all derive much of their
foundation from the Consensus Tigurinus (1549). The c. c. con-
sists of 40 articles drawn up in May, 1559, under the influence of
94
Notes.
Chandieu, and accepted by the national synod of llie same year,
confirmed by Henri I\ in 1571. Cf. August!, Corp. Iibr. symbol.,
1846, p. 126, ci sfq.
''^ As it would be impossible in the limits of a note to furnish
any account of the present state of French Protestantism, the
reader nuist be referred to Decoppet, /'aris Protvstaut ( 1N76), and
Th. de I'ratt, Aumiaire Proicstant. There is a somewhat meagre
but impartial sketch by C. Pfender in the new edition of Herzog's
R. E.
^' Pail Rahmt (1718-1794), his life now fully known since the
recent publication by M. Picherat-Dardier of his correspondence.
He served the great cause from boyhood, first as a guide to the
itinerant ministers, then as a reader, proposant (lie only studied
half a year at Lausanne). His career as preacher began 1742.
The bitterest persecution took place 1742-5, but there was no
real amnesty till the edict of toleration of 1787. Then Rabaut
tnjoyed a few years of rest, though the Revolution at last
molested him.
'■'•'As to Paley's remark, ''that he could not afford to keep a
conscience^' see Meadley's Memoir of VV. Paley, 2nfl ed., Edinb.,
iSio, p. 89, and also the Life by Chalmers, prefixed to the edition
of Paley's Works, published in 1819, p. xvii.
"" Among the causes for the cessation of intercourse should be
mentioned the eccentricities of the Camisard "prophets" in
London, which provoked P'rancis Lee's History of JMontanisin,
and his own reversion to High Church principles.
"' For the theology of Cambridge in the Elizabethan age, the
reader must be referred to Strype, supplemented by Mr. Mullin-
ger's excellent history. An article on Peter Baro will be found in
the last published volume of Mr. Stephen's Biof^r, Dictionary. It
is remarkable that a Huguenot should have led the Arminian re-
action. The very high esteem in which the foreign reformers were
held at Cambridge was evidenced in 1595, when William Barret,
fellow of Caius, for contemptuous language about Calvin, was
censured and forced to sign a retractation. [Cf. Strype's Whit-
gift, IV. caps. 14-16, and Append. 22-25, and Cooper's Annals of
Cambridge, 11, 529-536-]
\
Notes. g !j
-''The passage (juotecl from Overall was the favourite (/h/t/i/i
x-of his pupil Cosin, who referred always to him as his "lord and
.master Overall." It will be found in Cosin's works (Angl. Catli.
Lib. IV, 449), where also is included (ib. pp. 400-409) Cosin's own
view of the Huguenot ministry and sacraments, iii his letter to
M. Cordel of Hlois. The testament is given in the Life by IJasire,
-and also in Works, Vol. 1.
^^ Vindication of Croiius, in Ang. Cath. Libr. Rramhall's
Works, III, 518. Sanderson, Episcopacy not prejudicial, 11, 15.
. -■'" Hist, of Troubles, pp. too, 134, 355, 419 (ed. 1695).
'*" Ablx;y and Overton, Hist, of England in iSth Century, \, 370.
^The last step of decadence was reached even before the
Vatican Council, when the notorious journalist Louis Veuillot was
practically upheld by the Curia against the censure of Mgr. Du-
panlouii. The last moments of Montalembert, and his treatment
by the Vatican authorities, are also memorable.
'''' Sermons de Saurin, Paris, 1835, 11, 107, ct seq., translated into
lilnglish, 1775-6, at Cambridge, in six vols.
■''* See Hist, of the Erenc/i Refugee Church of Canterbury [i^Hi)
by M. le Pasteur Martin. A modification of the English liturgy
•was adopted by Pasteur Mieville in 1790, but the sitting posture 'rit
.the reception of the Holy Communion is preserved. Laud's
attempt in 1634 to suppress the service was ineffectual.
;).
' Scrivener, Cod. Bez. p. vi., and Heppe, 77/. Beza's Leben u.
.■ausgeTvahlte .Scht if ten, p. 364. The Codex was presented to Cam-
bridge in 1 58 1.
APPENDIX
(SfC rre/ac,-.)
t^
Paris,
216 lioulevard I'ereire,
Lc 23 Fivrier, jS86.
. t ^ f.,it vrm viies et ie me f^licite de les sentir
If> mrt;iL>'ti tout ;i liHt \us viit-^i ci j'- '"^ .
Je pa.taj,c loi souvenl entretenu de ce sujet
avee ic uu>v, ^ ^. .. ^ i-p.rlicp R^form^e de 1< ranee. J ai
cio-np de Tun on, orscuie nous avons tani ue muu
^'°'L^,S'u: raiS^Ultrutrenouer ,es Hen. .ui o„t uni
:ltrur ceU^; r.r pl.e c„r.,-,e„„e, - d'unu „os e.or.. pour
soutenir la grande cause