reckon a far greater treasure than gold and taste, and a man of pleasure, he had the silver."* This instance of a grant of mo- manners and accomplishments then only to ney so obstinately contested, and the exam-be learnt in the Italian capitals. Adrian, a ple of a party of placemen and courtiers, native of Utrecht, was a learned and conwho are represented as its sole supporters, scientious schoolman, of sincere zeal for shows clearly enough that the spirit of the his religion, and desirous of reforming the house of commons was not abated, nor its manners of the clergy according to the importance lessened, by Tudor rule, at least model of his own austere life; but as inon those matters which were justly consid- tolerant as any of his contemporaries, igered as most exclusively within their prov-norant of mankind, and not sharing that ince. Sir Thomas More, the first English-taste for polite literature which now shed man known to history as a public speaker, a lustre over Italy. At Adrian's death, in who had distinguished himself by opposi- 1523, Wolsey renewed his canvass, to protion to former grants, was now speaker of mote the success of which seems to have the house of commons, and supported the been the mainspring of his policy during measures of the court. Neither his elo- the eight years before, which guided him quence nor his virtue could gain more than in disposing of the influence of England to a temporary advantage. Wolsey is said to Francis or to Charles. Several cardinals have gone into the house of commons with voted for him; but neither of the contia train of retainers, and to have expressed nental princes could seriously intend to his wonder at the profound silence that fol- make an English minister their master, or lowed his entrance. The speaker, what- indeed to throw the scarcely shaken power ever might be his coalition with the court, of the papacy into the hands of a turbulent did not forget the duty and dignity of his and ambitious man. Henry himself, who office, but "protested that, according to the in his moments of facility or impetuosity ancient liberties of the house, they were had promoted his minister's project, was not bound to make an answer, and that he, too acute not to perceive, in his calmer as speaker, could make no reply till he had moods, the peril of placing such a spiritual received their instructions;" an answer sovereign over his head. Had Wolsey which was perhaps the pattern of that been successful, we now see how vainly he made by a successor in the chair at one of must have struggled against the current most critical moments of English history. of human affairs: he would have withstood As France was now bounded on either it manfully, but he must have fallen after side by the Spanish and Burgundian do- more bloodshed than that unavailing strugminions of Charles V., the occasions of en- gle actually cost: for he was bolder than mity and pleas for war were necessarily most men; he held the necessity of genemultiplied between that young monarch ral ignorance to good government; and and Francis I. The pope easily prevailed he doubtless would have punished heretics upon the emperor to turn his arms to the with more satisfaction in defence of his expulsion of the French from Italy. Hen-own authority, than he had done in defendry also supported the imperial cause, but ing that of others.t

hesitated for a time about an open rupture During this period the war was waged with Francis. The death of Leo X. in between Charles and Francis, in Italy, 1520, after a short but most memorable with various fortune. Clement VII. espontificate, in which a mortal blow was poused the French interest; but the deserstruck at the greatness of the Roman see, tion of the national cause by Charles of displayed the bold ambition of Wolsey, who Bourbon, a prince of the royal blood, and then declared himself a candidate for the his conspiracy with England and Austria papacy; rather, probably, to strengthen his against his own country, proved to Francis pretensions on the next vacancy, than with the forerunner of calamities seldom expehopes of immediate success. This faint at-rienced by princes. At the battle of Pavia, tempt yielded to the influence of the em- on the 24th of February, 1525, the French peror, who bestowed the triple crown on army was totally routed, and Francis I. his preceptor Adrian; a man in almost all was himself made prisoner. Bourbon, feelpoints the opposite of his celebrated prede-ing, perhaps, a momentary shame at the cessor. Leo, a patron of art and a lover of misfortunes which he helped to bring on literature, ignorant of theology and indif- his native country, with tears in his eyes ferent to it, was little qualified to foresee addressed the captive monarch, saying, the danger to which his throne was about "Had you followed my counsel, you should to be exposed by the controversies of ob- not have needed to be in this estate." The scure monks in the northern provinces of king answered by turning up his eyes to Germany: a man of the world, a man of heaven, and exclaiming "Patience! since

fortune has failed me," in the native lan-¡peror, under the auspices of the pope, and guage of a man who regarded the pity of a thence called most clement and most holy, traitor as the last of insults. Henry VIII. Henry VIII. was declared protector of the affected joy at the victory of his ally, but holy league, with an estate in Naples of demanded the aid of Charles to recover his 30,000 crowns a year for himself, and of inheritance in France, and in return offered 10,000 crowns a year to the cardinal. The to complete the nuptials of the emperor bribes were afterwards increased to much with his daughter Mary, which had been larger sums. In the course of 1526 the stipulated long before.* The English gov- disturbances in Italy were somewhat comernment, however, dreaded the success of posed. In 1527 an event occurred, unthe emperor, and in August concluded a paralleled perhaps in all its circumstances, treaty of peace and alliance with France, and considered in that age as the most exin which the states of Italy which still re-traordinary which the chances and changes tained their political existence concurred. of war could have produced, On the 6th Charles V., feeling this jealousy throughout of May, the constable of Bourbon, at the Europe, consented to open a negotiation at head of an imperial army of 30,000 men, Madrid for the release of Francis; to which marched to the sack of the city of Rome. the chief impediment was the reluctance He was at the head of the army with a of the latter to restore to Charles the duchy ladder in his hand, with which he meant to of Burgundy, the wrongful acquisition of scale the walls. At the moment when he Louis XI. The French monarch at last was lifting his foot to place it on the first yielded; a peace seemed to be made by the step of the ladder, he was shot dead. treaty of Madrid in 1526, which restored Though the taking of a great city is alFrancis to his dominion, after a captivity ways one of the most horrible scenes of of more than a year. When his horse human guilt and misery, we are assured by sprung on the French territory, he joyfully all writers that the storming of Rome surexclaimed, “I am again a king!" When passed every other in horror. More exaspressed to perform the treaty by swearing perated than dispirited by the fall of their to observe which he earned his release leader, the soldiers entered the city with from prison, he answered by declaring, that cries of revenge. On their first rushing “he had no right to dismember the king-into the streets, they butchered some of the dom, which at his coronation he had sworn defenceless prelates, who were flying from to preserve entire; that the states of Bur-destruction. They had permission to pilgundy refused to concur in the cession; lage for five or six days, which includes the that the parliament of Paris, the senate of impunity for that time of every form of the monarchy had, pronounced the stipula- human criminality which men greedy of tion to that effect to be void; and that the plunder, smarting with wounds, intoxicated pope had dispensed with the oath, which by liquor, or tempted by other lures, can his holiness treated as null, because it was imagine or perpetrate. Five thousand men a promise to do a wrong. He even carried are said to have perished; the number of his solicitude to multiply pretexts so far as women and children, on whom such asto allege, that, in consequence of Henry's saults often fall with most severity, it would rights as duke of Normandy, the cession of be horrible to conjecture; but war in most Burgundy could not be valid without his of its horrors raged in the unhappy city for consent. To all these evasions it was a several months during the siege of the sufficient answer, that he was bound to castle of St. Angelo, where the pope and know the extent of his powers when he the college of cardinals had taken refuge. had signed the treaty; that if he had, how- Some peculiar circumstances render it ever, discovered that he had exceeded his probable that the horrors of this assault, authority, he ought to surrender himself however heightened by rhetorical ampliagain a prisoner; that the resistance of the fication, are in the chief particulars constates of Burgundy, and of the parliament sonant to historical truth. The death of of Paris, were obviously and notoriously Bourbon left his army uncurbed by a prompted by himself; and that Clement leader; and the scenes which followed VII. had dishonored his authority by a were peculiarly unfitted for attempts to scandalous approbation of the perjury of a restore discipline. The army was comprince whose ally he was about to become. posed of a mercenary soldiery, called toIt is remarkable that neither party appeal-gether from every country by the sole lure ed to the people of Burgundy, who were of pay and plunder; without national charseized as lawful booty by Louis XI., and acter; without habits of co-operation; withagreed to be restored as stolen goods by out favorite chiefs; often without that acFrancis I. In the league against the em-quaintance with each other's language, by means of which some of them might be reclaimed; to all which it may be added,

* Herbert, 7.

† Ibid.

that some of the assailants, otherwise the ings of like frailties with ourselves, always, most likely to be merciful, were impelled in proportion to its magnitude, robs a man by religious zeal not to spare the altars, the of some share of his rational and moral temples, or even the priests, of idols. Many nature.

German soldiers might have imbibed, from Truth is not often dug up with ease: the preaching of Luther, that abhorrence when it is a general object of aversion,of popery which they had now the means when it is represented as an immoral or of indulging, in the great city where that even impious search, the difficulties that religion had triumphed for a thousand impede our labors are increased; the most years. irresistible passions of our nature, and the Such was the hypocrisy of Charles V., most lasting interests of society, conspire that, on learning the misfortunes of the against improvement of mind; and it is pope, he gave orders for a general mourn- thought a crime to ascertain what is gening, suspended the rejoicings for the birth erally advantageous, though thereby only of his son, and commanded prayers to be can be learned the arduous art of doing offered throughout Spain for the deliver- good with the least alloy of evil.* ance of the pontiff, whom the emperor] The reformation of 1517 was the first himself had commanded his generals to successful example of resistance to human imprison.

CHAP. IX.

HENRY VIII.-CONTINUED.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE REFORM-
ATION.
1527.

authority. The reformers discovered the free use of reason; the principle came forth with the Lutheran revolution, but it was so confused and obscured by prejudice, by habit, by sophistry, by inhuman hatred, and by slavish prostration of mind, to say nothing of the capricious singularities and fantastic conceits which spring up so plentifully in ages of reformation, that its chiefs were long unconscious of the potent spirit which they had set free. It is not yet THE reformation of religion in the six- wholly extricated from the impurities which teenth century, when regarded only from a followed it into the world. Every reformer civil point of view, is doubtless one of the has erected, all his followers have labored most memorable transactions in the history to support, a little papacy in their own comof the civilized and Christian world. For munity. The founders of each sect owned, a century and a half almost all the import- indeed, that they had themselves revolted ant wars of Europe originated in the mu- against the most ancient and universal autual animosity of the Christian parties. thorities of the world; but they, happy All the inventions and discoveries of man men! had learnt all truth, they therefore are only various exertions of his mental forbad all attempts to enlarge her stores, powers; they depend solely upon the im- and drew the line beyond which human provement of his reason. With the vigor reason must no longer be allowed to cast a of reason must keep pace the probability of glance. adding new discoveries to our stock of The popish authority claimed by Luthertruth, and of applying some of them to the ans and Calvinists was indeed more odious enjoyment and ornament, as well as to the and more unreasonable, because more selfmore serious and exalted uses of human contradictory, than that which the ancient life. By a parity of reasoning we perceive, church inherited through a long line of that those who remove impediments on the ages; inasmuch as the reformers did not road to truth as certainly contribute to ad- pretend to infallibility, perhaps the only advance its general progress, as if they were vantage, if it were real, which might in directly employing the same degree of sa- some degree compensate for the blessings gacity in the pursuit of a particular discov- of an independent mind, and they now ery. The contrary may be affirmed of all punished with death those dissenters who those who oppose hindrances to free, fear- had only followed the examples of the most less, calm, unprejudiced, and dispassionate renowned of Protestant reformers, by a reinquiry: they lessen the stores of know- bellion against authority for the sake of ledge; they relax the vigor of every intellectual effort; they abate the chances of future discovery.

* Whoever is desirous of estimating the value of knowledge, will find the noblest observations on that

grand subject, which have been made since Bacon,

in Mr. Herschell's "Discourse on Natural Philoso

Every impediment to the utmost liberty of inquiry or discussion, whether it consists phy;" the finest work of philosophical genius which in the fear of punishment, in bodily restraint, this age has seen. In reading it, a momentary rein dread of the mischievous effects of new author of the Novum Organum" could not see the gret may sometimes pass through the fancy, that the truth, or in the submission of reason to be-wonderful fruits of his labor in two centuries.

reason.

maintaining the paramount sovereignty of ties of the schools, and their appeal to the authority of a pagan reasoner, raised up The flagrant inconsistency of all Protest- against the papacy and the priests a rivalry, ant intolerance is a poison in its veins which which was followed, in the first instance, must destroy it. The clerical despotism by the masters of the Roman law, and afwas directly applicable only to works on terwards by the revivers of ancient literatheology; but, as religion is the standard ture. The council of Constance, though of morality, and politics are only a portion cruel persecutors of those who outran their of morality, all great subjects were inter- own dissent, yet asserted the jurisdiction dicted, and the human mind, enfeebled and of councils over popes, even so far as to degraded by this interdict, was left with its maintain not only their power to condemn cramped and palsied faculties to deal with in- the errors of pontiffs, but even their authorferior questions, on condition, even then, of ity to depose, elect, or otherwise chastise keeping out of view every truth capable of the sovereign pontiffs. A predisposition being represented as dangerous to any dog- against the ecclesiastical claims had prema of the established system. The suffer- vailed so generally and reached so high, ings of the Wickliffites, the Vaudois, and that the emperor Maximilian himself was the Bohemians, seemed indeed to have fully not ́indisposed to the new opinions.* The proved the impossibility of extinguishing kindness and patronage immediately grantopinion by any persecution in which a large ed to the great heresiarch by the excelbody of men can long concur. But the two lent elector of Saxony, seems either to incenturies which followed the preaching of dicate some previous concert, or to evince Luther, taught us, by one of the most san- so extensive an alienation from the clergy, guinary and terrific lessons of human expe- that express words were not needful. rience, that in the case of assaults on mental The letters of Erasmus, the prince of the liberty, Providence has guarded that para- restorers of literature, who gave too much mount privilege of intelligent beings, by proof of preferring peace to truth, bear the confining the crimes of mankind, as it has weightiest testimony to the joy and thanks seen fit for a season to allow that their vir- of European scholars at the hopes of delivtues should be circumscribed. Extirpation erance held out by the Saxon reformation, is the only persecution which can be suc- during its earliest and most pacific period. cessful, or even not destructive of its own At the same time, with an excess of wariobject. Extirpation is conceivable; but the ness not suited to the temperament of his extirpation of a numerous sect is not the correspondent, he exhorts Luther to observe work of a moment. The perseverance of more moderate and temperate language, great bodies in such a process, for a suf- and to attack the papal agents more than ficient time, and with the necessary fierce- the holy see itself. In the first negotianess, is happily impracticable. Rulers are tions of the papal agents with the heretical mortal: shades of difference in capacity, chiefs, it was insinuated by the former, that character, opinion, arise among their suc- their opponents might maintain their doccessors. Aristocracies themselves, the stead- trines in the private disputations of the iest adherents to established maxims and learned, if they would only desist from the revered principles of rule, are exposed to mischievous practice of inflaming the ignothe contagion of the times. Julius aimed rant by preaching or writing on such subat Italian conquest; Leo thought only of jects. These suggestions were natural to art and pleasure; Adrian burned alike with the statesmen, the courtiers, and the semizeal for reforming the clergy and for main- pagan scholars of the court of Leo, at a taining the faith. Higher causes are in time when a double doctrine and a system action for the same purpose. If pity could of secret opinions had rendered the wellbe utterly rooted out, and conscience struck educated among the Italians unbelievers, dumb; if mercy were banished, and fellow- who regarded the ignorant as doomed to be feeling with our brethren were extinguish- their dupes, and thought the art of deluding ed; if religion could be transformed into the multitude beneficial to most men, as bigotry, and justice had relapsed into bar- well as easy and agreeable to their rulers. barous revenge, even in that direful state, But Martin Luther was of a character the infirmities, nay, the vices, of men, in- thoroughly exempt from falsehood, duplicity, dolence, vanity, weariness, inconstancy, dis- and hypocrisy. Educated in the subtleties trust, suspicion, fear, anger, mutual hatred, of schools, and the severities of cloisters, and hostile contest, would do some part of he annexed an undue importance to his the work of the exiled virtues, and dissolve own controversies, and was too little acthe league of persecution long before they could exterminate the conscientious.

* Sleidan. de Stat. Relig. et Imper. Car. V. Cæsare, i. 21. edit. 1685.

Many causes had combined to prepare † March 29, 1519. London. Erasm. Epist. lib. vi. p. the soil for the reformation. Even the subtle-14. Sleidan, i. 85.

quainted with the affairs of the world, to Augustin. It is a characteristic fact, that see the manner in which they might be dis- he had been two years in the monastery turbed by such disputes. It is very proba- before he had seen a Latin bible,* which ble, that, if he had perceived it, his logical he embraced with delight; so human and obstinacy would unwillingly, if at all, have traditional had Christianity then become. sacrificed a syllogism to a public interest. He was speedily regarded as the most Two extraordinary circumstances appeared learned member of his order in the ema little before this time, so opportunely, that pire. The elector of Saxony, who had they might be said to be presented to him just founded an university at Wittemberg, as instruments for the accomplishment of appointed the young monk to a professorhis purpose: these were, the invention of ship of philosophy, and at the same time, the art of printing, and the use of the Ger- made him one of the ministers of the town. man tongue in addresses to the people. His Such a policy has often induced the absolute ordinary duties led him to make weekly princes of small states, whose limited reveaddresses to all classes. The use of the nues are insufficient for the support of an vernacular language rendered him as easily university, to select men of reputation for understood by the low as by the high; and their academical offices, who may attract printing had so lessened the cost of copy-multitudes to the seminary. They are often ing, that the poorest man, or club, or society, content to connive at the eccentricities and could buy a copy of his sermons and tracts, to screen the errors of men of genius, prowhich were written with clearness and vided their halls are crowded with admiring brevity, as well as with such a mastery over hearers and pupils. his language, as to have raised the spoken In 1510 he visited Rome on the affairs dialect of his own province into the literary of his monastery, where he was shocked by language of Germany, and to rank him as finding that the sincerity and fervor of his the first of the writers who have disclosed own devotion were looked at with wonder the treasures of that copious and nervous and with derision by his Italian brethren, tongue. These distinctions he doubtless who hurried and muttered over their litowed partly to the veneration entertained urgy. It was not, however, till the year for his translation of the Scriptures, and 1517 that he made any public opposition to partly to popular tracts, which were not practices directed or allowed by the church. only most skilfully adapted to the capacity The occasion of this resistance was the of the multitude, but perhaps too much issue and sale of indulgences, to raise a accommodated to their taste by a plentiful sum of money adequate to the cost of comseasoning of those personalities and scur- pleting St. Peter's church at Rome. These rilities, which, though they promoted his indulgences appear to have been granted purpose for the time, cannot be perused in early times: their original purpose, and without displeasure by his warmest admi- the only efficacy ascribed to them by the rers in succeeding ages. church, was grounded on the acceptance of

This great reformer of mankind was born sums of money instead of the often very at Eisleben, in the county of Mansfeldt, severe penances which the ecclesiastical in the year 1483, about thirty years after law imposed on penitents as the temporal the invention of printing, and about twelve punishment of the offences. No pope or before the discoveries of America and of a council taught that indulgences were a maritime road to India; a time when the permission for future offences, still less that papacy had not recovered the blow struck they had any relation to those punishments against it by the council of Constance; and which supreme justice may finally employ sufficiently late to draw help from the re- in the administration of the moral world. vival of ancient literature, which the writ- With some apparent inconsistency however, ings of Erasmus show to have been spread and with much additional danger to the beyond the Alps, and even beyond the community, they stretched their authority Rhine. The ardor of his mind, the eleva- into the unseen world, by teaching that intion of his genius, and the meditative char- dulgences extended to a part, or to the acter of his country, early led him to that whole, of the purification of minds of imcontemplation of the vast and the invisible, perfect excellence in purgatory. The proto that aspiring pursuit of the perfect and duce of the indulgences was, in general, the boundless, which lift the soul of man avowedly destined for purposes which were above the vulgar objects of sense and appe- accounted pious: they were at first rare, tite, of fear and ambition. being granted with apparent consideration,

The fate of a comrade, who was struck dead by lightning while walking in the fields with Luther, alarmed and agitated him; and in 1505 he devoted himself to a religious life, as a monk of the order of St. VOL. I.

19

* Milner, Christ. Church, iv. 424.

"Polichius often declared that there was a strength of intellect in this man which, he plainly foresaw, would produce a revolution in the popular and scholastic religion of the times."-Melancthon, quoted by Milner, Church History, iv. 326. 2C