Beacon lights of the Reformation

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DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

" Here I take my stand ; I can do no other ; God help me. Amex,"

(Figure and motto on livther Monument at Worms,)

BEACON, LIGHTS OF THE
REFORMATION.

BY

W. H. WITH ROW.

TORONTO :
WILLIAM BRIGGS,

WeSI.EV HuiI.DlNGS.

Montreal : C. W. COATES. Halifax : S. F. HUESTIS.

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninetj'-nine, by William Brioos, at the
Department of Agriculture.

CONTENTS,

Pagb
I.
Introduction ---------9

II.
John Wycliffe - - - 17

III.
John Huss and Jerome of Prague - . . 35

IV.

GiROLAMO Savonarola ------- 71

V.
MartixV Luther HI

VI.
Ulrich Zwingle 155

VII.
John Calvin 179

VIII.

Gaspard de Colignv - ... - - 197

IX.
William Tyndale - - - - - - - - 217

X.
John Knox - 235

XI.
Thomas Cranmer 274

XII.

Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley - - - - 289

\iFkr

LOOKOUT TOWER IX " LUTHER's
COUNTRY."

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

DK. MARTix LUTHER Frontispiece

LOOKOUT TOWER IN " LUTIIER'S COUNTRY" - - - - vi

EARLY ENGLISH IN ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL 15

STATUE OF WYCLIFFE ON LUTHER MONUMENT AT WORMS - 16

JOHN WYCLIFFE 19

STATUE OF JOHN HUSS ON LUTHER MONUMENT AT WORMS - 34

CONSTANCE, SEEN FROM THE LAKE 37

CITY OF PRAGUE, FROM THE OLD STONE BRIDGE - - - 42

TOWN HALL, PRAGUE, BOHEMIA 45

THE CHANCELLERY, CONSTANCE 53

THE CHANCELLERY, CONSTANCE, FROM THE REAR - - - 57

THE RHINE GATE TOWER, CONSTANCE ----- 62

THE SCHNETZ-THOR, CONSTANCE 63

THE HIGH HOUSE, CONSTANCE 67

BUST OF SAVONAROLA 70

FLORENCE, SHOWING THE ARNO AND BRIDGES - - - 73

PONTE VECCHIO — THE OLD BRIDGE, FLORENCE , - - 79
THE DUOMO, OR CATHEDRAL, FLORENCE, GIOTTO's TOWER AND

BRUNELLESCHl'S DOME 87

PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE 100

LOGGIA DEI LANZI, FLORENCE 103

MODERN MONKS IN ANCIENT CLOISTERS 107

ERFURT, GERMANY 110

CATHEDRAL AND CHURCH OF ST. SEVERUS, ERFURT - - 113

HAUNTS OF LUTHER, AUGUSTINE MONASTERY, ERFURT - - 115

HEIDELBERG CASTLE AND THE RIVER NECKAR - - - 117

THE LIBRARY TOWER, HEIDELBERG 117

UNIVERSITY, ERFURT 121

ERFURT — DISTANT VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL - - - - 121

SIXTEENTH CENTURY HOUSES, ERFURT 126

CATHEDRAL OF WORMS 130

THE LUTHER HOUSE, EISENACH 133

THE CASTLE OF THE WARTBURG 136

THE GREAT COURTYARD OF THE WARTBURG - - - - 139

FIRST COURT OF THE WARTBURU 141

VIll. ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGR

inner court of the wartburg 14;^

Luther's study in the wartburo 145

luther house, frankfort 148

Luther's abstraction 150

the house in which luther died 152

ZWINGLE's MONUMENT AT ZURICH — ALSO HIS SWORD, BATTLE-
AXE, AND HELMET 154

THE WASSERKIRCHE, ZURICH 154

CLOISTERS, CATHEDRAL CHURCH, ZURICH - - - - 157

CLOISTERS OF CATHEDRAL CHURCH, ZURICH - - - - 159

ANCIENT FOUNTAINS, ZURICH 162

ANCIENT GATEWAY AND CHURCH OF OUR LADY, ZURICH - 165

OLD GUILD HOUSES, ZURICH 167

OLD STREET, ZURICH 16S

COLLEGE AND MINSTER, ZURICH 170

IN THE HISTORICAL MUSEUM, ZURICH 173

INTERIOR OF THE WASSERKIRCHE MUSEUM, ZURICH - - 176

JOHN CALVIN 178

GENEVA 182

geneva from rousseaus island 190

statue of peter waldo on luther monument at worms 196

farel's mondmfnt 199

charles ix. and catharine de medici on the night of

ST. BARTHOLOMEW 20f»

ASSASSINATION OF COLIGNY 212

WILLIAM TYNDALE - - - - 216

ANTWERP AND ITS CATHEDRAL 227

TYNDALE's STATUE ON THE THAMES EMBANKMENT - - - 2.31

"HE WHO NEVER FEARED THE FACE OF MAN " - - - 2.34

HOUSE OF CARDINAL BEATON AND THE COWGATE, EDINBURGH 237

ST. GILES' CHURCH, EDINBURGH 246

HOLY'ROOD PALACE, EDINBURGH 251

CORNER OF WEST BOW, EDINBURGH 254

JOHN KNOX PREACHING IN EDINBURGH 259

JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE, EDINBURGH 263

THE martyrs' MONUMENT, GREYFRIAR'S CHURCHYARD, EDIN-
BURGH 265

EDINBURGH CASTLE, FROM THE GRASS MARKET, WHtRE THE

MARTYRS WERE EXECUTED 271

OXFORD AND ITS COLLEGES 291

BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

I.

INTRODUCTION.

By the Reformation is often understood the great
religious movement of the sixteenth century — the
greatest since the dawn of Christianity. But there
were " reformers before the Reformation," and in this
book we shall give the word a wider meaning. We
shall use it to include the revival of primitive Christ-
ianity in a corrupt church, in many lands and ex-
tending through long centuries. The light of the
Gospel had become dim and had well-nigh flickered to
extinction. But he that walketh among the golden
candlesticks was to rekindle their dying fires, and to
send forth his light and his truth into all lands and
to the end of time.

" The Reformation,' says Dr. SchafF, " was neither
a political, nor a philosophical, nor a literary, but a
religious and moral movement ; although it exerted
a powerful influence in all these directions. It started
with the practical question, How can the troubled
conscience find pardon and peace and become sure of
personal salvation ? It brought the believer into

10 BEACON LICHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

direct relation and union with Christ as the one and
all-sufficient source of salvation, in opposition to tra-
ditional eeclesiasticism and priestly and saintly inter-
cession. The Protestant goes directly to the Word of
Crod for instruction, and to the throne of grace in his
devotions.

" The three fundamental doctrines of Protestantism
are : The absolute supremacy of the Word of Christ ;
the absolute supremacy of the grace of Christ ; and
the general priesthood of believers; that is, tlie right
and duty of the Christian laity, not only to read the
Bible in the vernacular tongue, but also to take part
in the government and all the public affairs of the
Church."

It is frequently asserted that the Reformation was
the offspring of political events ; that it resulted from
the ambition of princes, their rivalry with the Pope
and the avidity of laics to seize upon the property of
the Church, rather than from a deeply-felt spiritual
necessity of the age ; that, in fine, it was more a conse-
(luence of temporal expedienc}^ than of religious prin-
ciple. We shall try to show, on the contrary, that it
was a great providential movement; that it was a
moral necessity of the period ; that it was a mighty
effort of the mind to emancipate itself from ecclesias-
tical authority; and that, instead of spreading from
a central source, it was indigenous in almost every
country where it now prevails.

The beginnings of great reforms are to be found not
amid the loud bustle and great events of the age, but
in the mental conflicts of humble seekers after truth,

INTRODUCTION. 11

groping their way in loneliness, and surrounded by
doubt and darkness, towards the light which an un-
erring instinct tells them somewhere shineth. The
growth of thought may be slow ; its seed-truths may
be long in germinating ; they may be deposited in an
unfriendly soil, and have a late and chilling spring ;
but a golden harvest shall wave at last upon the
stubborn glebe.

Primitive Christianity was an Arethusan fount,
which had disappeared for ages, and, though not de-
stroyed, flowed darkly underground, only to burst
forth with the Reformation, and again with its sacred
waters to revive and fructify the dead and barren
nations. Or, like a smouldering fire, covered and
smothered by the grey ashes of accumulated rites and
ceremonies, till it had become dark and cold, it now
kindled afresh, to illume the darkness and to cheer
the souls of men.

Among the prominent causes of the Reformation
were : The corruptions of religion ; the vices of the
clergy ; the great schism of the West ; and the revival
of letters. Upon each of these we shall slightly
enlarge.

In the course of ages religion had departed from
her primitive simplicity. One fatal step was the
union of temporal and spiritual power. The aggre-
gation of political influence around the Bishop of
Rome increased the danger of Christianity losing its
original purity. The Gothic as well as the Latin
nations generally submitted to the spiritual claims of
Rome, and thus increased her political prestige. But

12 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

with every increase of power caine a decrease in piety,
and a further departure from the primitive faith.

AuxiHary to these corruptions in hastening the
Reformation were the vices of the clergy. These had
become notoriously flagrant. Especially had the men-
dicant friars, by their sloth, their ignorance, their
effrontery, and their rapacity, fallen under general
odium. Begging monks thronged the taverns and
places of viler resort. The monastic houses were
often dens of corruption. Even the regular clergy
were inconceivably ignorant and depraved. Instead
of being the patterns of virtue, they were too often
patrons of vice. Many of them could not read the
offices of the Church, and few ever preached an
original sermon, or, indeed, a sermon of any kind.

But, perhaps more than any other cause, the great
schism of the West in the fourteenth century, con-
duced to lessen the influence of the Papacy. The
spectacle of three claimants to the chair of St. Peter,
as Christ's vicars on earth, hurling anathemas, excom-
munications, and recriminations at each other, neces-
sarily, during the long period of anarchy and con-
fusion which ensued, awakened deep questionings as
to the validity of their claims, and as to the reality of
their boasted infallibility.

The last of these general causes that we shall men-
tion is the revival of letters, greatly accelerated as it
was by the fall of Constantinople and by the dis-
covery of printing. The press is confessedly the
guardian of libert}^ and pre-eminently of religious
liberty. By means of the press those seed-truths, of

INTRODUCTIOX. 13

which true liberty is but the fruit, are wafted lightly
as thistle-down to the world's end, and they bring
forth in every land their glorious harvest.

Yet, corrupt as the Church had become, it was never
without seekers after truth. Many were the earnest
prayers, like that of Ajax, for the light ; many the
watchers for the dawn. Many were those who,

"Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touched God's right hand in the darkness,
And were lifted up and strengthened."

The English Reformation, like the land of its
origin, was insular, and w^as comparatively unaffected
by foreign influence.

The church planted by St. Columba on lona's
rocky island, in the seventh century, " continued to
flourish till the beginning of the ninth century, un-
contaminated by the errors which had already
corrupted the less secluded churches, and long
after the rest of the western churches had submitted
to the Pope of Rome. The light of departing day
illumes those northern crags longer than lands nearer
to the sun, and earlier does the dawn return. So the
light of primitive Christianity lingered in the " isle
of saints," and the dawn of the Reformation arose
sooner there than elsewhere ; and there has it attained
its brightest day. But never was the darkness total ;
refracted gleamings continued to shine till the twi-
light of the evening mingled with that of the dawn.

We shall not attempt in these pages a consecutive
history of the Reformation in the many lands

14 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

in which ifc arose, and during the long periods in
which it was in progress. That would require
many volumes. We shall endeavor to sketch briefly
the life work of the great men who, throughout the
ages of religious darkness and superstition, were
beacon lights blazing with the tire of divine truth,
illumining the gloom of night and heralding the
dawn of day.

We enrich these pages with a quotation from
Milton, in which he sets forth with stately eloquence
the unspeakable blessings of the Reformation :

" When I recall to mind, at last, after so many
dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train
of error had almost swept all the stars out of
the firmament of the Church ; how the bright and
blissful Reformation, by divine power, strook through
the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-
Christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving
joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads
or hears, and the sweet odor of the returning Gospel
imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then
was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners,
where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it ;
the schools opened ; divine and human learning raked
out of the embers of forgotten tongues ; the princes
and cities trooping apace to the new-erected banner
of salvation ; the martyrs, with the unresistible might
of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and
scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon."

SPECIMEX OF EAHLY ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT OF THE SCRIPTURES-
PART OF THE FIRST CHAPTER OF ST. JOHN's GOSPEL.
THE EAGLE IS THE SYMBOL AND THE ATTRI-
BUTE IN ART OF ST. JOHN.

STATUE OF WY

CLIFFE ON LUTHER MONUMENT AT WORMS.

11.

JOHN WYCLIFFE,

THE MORNING STAR OF THE REFORMATION.

It was with reverent interest that the present writer
visited the famous Lambeth Palace, London — for over
seven hundred years the residence of the Archbishops
of Canterbury, the primates of England. But not
the beauty of St. Mary's venerable chapel, nor the
grandeur of the stately hall, guard-room, or battle-
mented gateway presented the chief attractions to
our mind. It was the tragic memories of the pictur-
esque Lollards' tower that most deeply enlisted our
sympathies. In its narrow cell many prisoners for
conscience' sake saw the weary days drag on, while
the iron entered their very souls. Here are the rings
in the walls to which the prisoners were bound, the
brands burned by the hot irons used in torture, the
notches by which the victims of tyranny computed
their calendar of wretchedness, and the trap-door in
the floor by which, as the tide rose, they could be let
down unseen into the river. Here the destined mar-
tyr, Cranmer, who had dispensed a sumptuous hospi-
tality in this very palace, languished in mental and
bodily misery before he atoned, amid the flames, for
the weakness of his recantation.
2 17

18 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

It was an easy transition from this memory-
haunted prison of the Lollards, in Lambeth, to the
chief scene of the public life of Wycliffe, the father of
Lollardism, at Oxford. It was with peculiar interest
that we visited the quadrangles and chambers of Queen
Philippa's and Merton colleges where, as a scholar,
he studied, and the stately halls of Balliol where, as
master, he taught. The venerable shade of the first
and greatest of the English Reformers seemed yet to
haunt their cloistered seclusion.

Of the early life of Wycliffe* but little is known.
He was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire, about the
year 1324, and was descended of good old English
stock. His ancestors for three hundred years had
occupied the same land, and had given its designation
to the obscure village of Wycliffe — a name destined
to become famous to the end of time. The lad was
designed for the Church, almost the only sphere of
intellectual activity in that age. Nearly all the
lawyers, physicians and statesmen, as well as the
instructors of youth in school and college, were
ecclesiastics. He was, therefore, early sent to Oxford,
the great seat of learning of Western Europe.

" England," says Milnian, " was almost a land of
schools ; every cathedral, almost every monastery, had
its own ; but youths of more ambition, self-confi-
dence, supposed capacity, and of better opportunities,
thronged to Oxford and Cambridge, now in their

* The name is written in sixteen different ways, but we adopt that
which is most common. In those days every man spelled as was
right in his own eyes.

JOHN WYCLIFFE.

19

highest repute. In England, as throughout Christ-
endom, that wonderful rush, as it were, of a vast part
of the population towards knowledge, thronged the
universities with thousands of students, instead of the
few hundreds who have now the privilege of entering

JOHN WYCLIFFE.

those seats of instruction." Anthony a Wood states
that about this time there were 30,000 scholars at-
tending the University. But this must be a great
exaggeration. The course of study, too, was far less
comprehensive than at present.

20 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

This was emphatically the " growing time " of Eng-
land's history. We quote in illustration the pictur-
esque phrase of the most vivid depictor of this jDeriod,
the Rev. J. R. Green :

" The vigor of English life showed itself socially in
tlie wide extension of commerce, in the rapid growth
of the woollen trade, and the increase of manufactures
after the settlement of Flemish weavers on the eastern
coast; in the progress of the towns, fresh as they
were from the victory of the craft-guilds ; and in the
development of agriculture through the division of
lands, and the rise of the tenant farmer and the free-
holder. It gave nobler signs of its activity in the
spirit of national independence and moral earnestness
which awoke at the call of Wycliffe. New forces of
thought and feeling, which were destined to tell on
every age of our later history, broke their way
through the crust of feudalism in the socialist re-
volt of the Lollards, and a sudden burst of military
glory threw its glamor over the age of Crecy and
Poitiers."

At Oxford Wycliffe became as distinguished for
erudition as for piety. "The fruitful soil of his natural
ability," writes quaint old Fuller, " he industriously
improved by accjuired learning. He was not only
skilled in the fashionable arts of that age, and in that
abstruse and crabbed divinity, all whose fruit is
thorns, but he was also well versed in the Scriptures,
a rare accomplishment in those days." His study of
the Scriptures and of the early Fathers created a dis-
gust for the logic-chopping divinity of the schoolmen,
and won for him the name of the Evangelic Doctor.

JOHN WYCLIFFE. 21

" WyclifFe's logic, his scholastic subtlety, some rhe-
torical art, his power of reading the Latin Scriptures,
his various erudition, may be due to Oxford ; but the
vigor and energy of his genius, his perspicacity, the
force of his language, his mastery over the vernacular
English, the high supremacy which he vindicated for
the Scriptures, which by immense toil he promulgated
in the vulgar tongue — these were his own, to be
learned in no school, to be attained by none of the
ordinary courses of study. As with his contemporary
and most congenial spirit, Chaucer, rose English
poetry, in its strong homely breadth and humor, in
the wonderful delineation of character with its finest
shades, in its plain, manly good sense and kindly
feeling ; so was Wycliffe the father of English prose,
rude but idiomatic, biblical in much of its picturesque
phraseology, at once highly colored by and coloring
the translation of the Scriptures."*

One of the most dreadful plagues which ever
devastated Europe was the pestilence known as the
Black Death, w^hich, in the early part of the four-
teenth century, swept away, it is estimated, more
than half the inhabitants. This scourge of God made
a profound impression on the devout mind of
Wycliffe. In his first treatise, " The Last Age of the
Church," he describes these evils as a divine judg-
ment for the corruptions of the times. " Both venge-
ance of swerde," he wrote " and myschiefe unknown
before, by which men thes dais should be punished,
shall fall for synne of prestis."

* Milman's " Latin Christianity." Vol. viii., p. 158.

22 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE KEFORMATION.

A characteristic feature of the times was the multi-
plication of religious orders. The White, Black, Grey
and Austin friars swarmed throughout the kingdom.
" They invaded," says Milman, " every stronghold of
the clergy — the university, the city, the village
parish. They withdrew the flock from the discipline
of the Church, intercepted their offerings, estranged
their affections, heard confessions with more indul-
gent ears, granted absolution on easier terms." These
sturdy beggars who argued that Christ and his dis-
ciples, like themselves, were medicants,* WyclifFe un-
•paringly denounced. He branded the higher orders
as hypocrites, " who, professing mendicancy, had
stately houses, rode on noble horses, had all the pride
and luxury of wealth with the ostentation of poverty."
The humbler he described as " able-bodied beggars,
who ought not to be permitted to infest the land."

The eloquence and learning of WyclifFe won him
fame and honors. He was made warden of Balliol
College, lecturer in divinity, and rector of Fylinghara.
He was soon chosen, too, as the champion of the realm
against the encroachments of the Pope of Rome.
Urban V. demanded the arrears of 1,000 marksf of
Peter's pence alleged to be due the pontifi". This
Edward III. refused to pay. The sturdy English
Barons answered on this wise : " Our ancestors won
this realm and held it against all foes by the sword.

* With similar perverted ingenuity the Communists of the first
French revohition claimed Jesus Christ as " le hon sansculotte."

t A mark was 13s. 4d. sterling ; but the purciiasing power of
money was much greater then than now.

JOHN WYCLIFFE. 23

Let the Pope come and take it by force ; we are
ready to stand up and resist him." " Christ alone is
the Suzerain. It is better, as of old, to hold the realm
immediately of him," Wycliffe, with much boldness
and learning, vindicated the independence of the
kingdom of the temporal authority of the Pope.

Another grievance was, that foreign prelates and
priests, who never saw the country and could not
speak its language, were presented to English dioceses
and livings; and the country was drained of tithes,
to be squandered in ecclesiastical profligacy at Rome
and Avignon. A parliamentary remonstrance states
that " The taxes paid to the Pope yearly out of Eng-
land were four times the amount paid to the King."
Wycliffe was sent as a delegate to Bruges to protest
against this wrong. Justice he failed to obtain ; but
he learned the true character of the Papacy, On his
return he did not scruple to denounce the Pope as
"Antichrist, the proud worldly priest of Rome — the
most accursed of clippers and purse-kervers."

Another evil of the times was the engrossing of all
civil offices by ecclesiastics, from the Lord Chan-
cellor's down to that of clerks of the kitchen and
keeper of the king's wardrobe. To this Piers Plough-
man refers in the lines :

Some serven the kinge and his silver tellen,
In the Checkkei-e (P]xchequer) and the Chauncelrie,
chalengynge his dettes.

One of these worldly prelates was able to equip
three ships of war and a hundred men-at-arms for the

24 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

king. Against this secularizing of the clergy Wy-
cliffe strongly inveighs, and sets forth as an antidote
his " Christian Rule of Life." " If thou art a priest,"
he says, " live thou a holy life. Pass other men in holy
prayer, holy desire and holy speaking ; in counselling
and teaching the truth. Ever keep the commandments
of God, and let his Gospel and his praises ever be
in thy mouth. Ever despise sin, that man may be
withdrawn therefrom, and that thy deeds may be so
far rightful that no man shall blame them with reason.
Let thy open life be thus a true book, in which the
soldier and the layman may learn how to serve God
and keep his commandments. For the example of a
good life, if it be open and continued, striketh rude
men much more than open preaching with the Word
alone. And waste not thy goods in great feasts for
rich men, but live a frugal life on poor men's alms and
goods. Have both meat and drink and clothing, but
the remnant give truly to the poor ; to those who have
freely wrought, but who now may not labour from
feebleness and sickness, and thus sbalt thou be a true
priest, both to God and to man."

WyclifFe's antagonism to the Papal party in the
realm soon brought upon him their persecution. He
was cited to appear before the Bishop of London on
the charge of " holding and publishing erroneous and
heretical doctrines." Appear he did, but not alone.
His powerful friends, " Old John of Gaunt, time-honor-
ed Lancaster," and Lord Henry Percy, Lord Marshal
of England, stood by him in the Lady Chapel of old
St. Paul's. The Lord Marshal demanded a seat for

JOHN WYCLIFFE. 25

WyclifFe : " He hath many things to answer, he needs
a soft seat."

" But," writes Foxe, " the Bishop of London cast eft-
soons into a furnish chafe with those words, said ' He
should not sit there. Neither was it,' said he, ' ac-
cording to law or wisdom that he, who was cited there
to appear to answer before his ordinary, should sit down
during the time of his answer, but he should stand.'
Upon these words a fire began to heat and kindle be-
tween them, insomuch that they began to rate and re-
vile one the other. Then the duke, taking the Lord
Percy's part, with hasty words began also to take up
the bishop. To whom the bishop again did render and
requite, not only as good as he brought, but also did
so far excel him in this railing art of scolding, that
the duke blushed, and was ashamed, because he could
not overpass the bishop in brawling and railing."

A tumult arose in the city between the partisans of
earl and bishop, and in the larger contention the case
of WyclifFe, for the time, passed out of view.

Soon two Papal bulls, nay three of them, were de-
spatched against Wyclitfe. The University of Oxford
was commanded to prohibit the teachings which, " in
his detestable madness," he promulgated. In a special
letter the Pope lamented that tares were suffered to
grow up among the pure wheat in that seat of learning,
and even to grow ripe without any care being applied
to root them up. The reformer was cited before
the Archbishop of Canterbury, and appeared at the
episcopal palace of Lambeth. Old John of Gaunt
\vas no longer by his side, nor the Lord Marshal of

26 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION,

England. But he was environed by the true hearts
of the English people.

The sturdy citizens of London, always the bulwark
of liberty, were now openly attached to his teaching.
They forced their way into St. Mary's chapel, and by
their menaces deterred the prelates from the condem-
nation of the '■ Evangelic Doctor." " These were,"
writes the contemporary historian, "as reeds shaken
by the wind ; they became in their speech as soft as
oil." The death of Gregory XI. and the great schism
of the Church, with its rival Pope and anti-Pope
hurling anathemas at each other, put an end for a
time to the persecution of the champion of English
liberty.

Amid his manifold travails and tribulations, Wy-
cliffe fell ill, and was brought seemingly to death's
door. The leaders of the mendicant friars, whose
wickedness he had denounced, thought this a fitting
opportunity to procure the reversal of his severe con-
demnation of their order. In his mortal weakness
they invaded his cell and urged the retraction of his
judgments before himself passing to the tribunal of
the great Judge of all. Rising on his couch, and
summoninp' all his strength, the heroic soul exclaimed :
" I shall not die, but live, and shall again declare the
evil deeds of the friars ! "

The strong will triumphed. The craven monks
hastened from the cell, and Wycliffe soon rose from
his bed to proclaim anew with tongue and pen the
doctrines of the Cross. To antagonize the false teach-
ing of the mendicant friars, he himself sent forth

JOHN WYCLIFFE. 27

itinerant preachers, who, at market cross and in
village church, and on the highway, declared in plain,
bold English speech the glorious evangel of the
Gospel.

" The novelty, and, no doubt," says Milman, " the
bold attacks on the clergy, as well as the awfulness of
the truths now first presented in their naked form,
shook, thrilled, enthralled the souls of men, most of
whom were entirely without instruction, the best
content with the symbolic teaching of the ritual."
So greatly did his doctrines prevail that it passed into
a proverb — " You cannot see two men together but
one of them is a Wycliffite."

Wyclitte was now engaged upon the greatest work
of his life — the translation from the Latin Vulgate of
the Bible into the English tongue, finished in 1380 —
over five hundred years ago. This book it was that
shook the Papal throne, that stirred the thought of
Christendom, that roused the Anglo-Saxon mind,
that opened in the common speech a fountain of
living water, and for all times a well of English
undefiled, the true source of England's liberties and
England's greatness. In the " Kings' Library " of the
British Museum, we examined with intensest interest
a beautiful copy of that first English Bible.*

* The following is a specimen of this first translation of Luke
X. 88-42 : " Forsooth it was don. wliile thei wenten, and he entride
in to sum castel : and sum womman, Martha hi name, receyuede
him into hir hous. And to this Martlia was a sister, Marie hi
name, which also sittiiige by sydis the feet of the Lord, herde the
word of Him. Forsothe Martha bisyede about moche seruyce.
Which stood and seide, Lord, is it not of charge to thee that my

28 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

This, doubtless in separate portions, must have
been widely copied ; for one of the reformer's adver-
saries bitterly complains, as though it were a dire
calamity, " that this Master John WyclifFe hath so
translated the Scripture that laymen, and even women,
who could read, were better acquainted therewith than
the most lettered and intelligent of the clei'gy. In
this way," he continues, " the Gospel pearl is cast
abroad and trodden under foot of swine ; and that
which was before precious, both to clergy and laity,
is rendered as it were the common jest of both ! The
jewel of the Church is turned into the sport of the
people, and what was hitherto the principal gift of
the clergy and divines is made forever common to
the laity."

Even Lingard, the Roman Catholic historian, states
that "in the hands of WyclifFe's poor priests this
translation became an engine of M^onderful power."
The new doctrines acquired partisans and protectors
in the higher classes ; a spirit of enquiry was gener-
ated, and the seeds sown of that religious revolution
which, in a little more than a century, astonished and
convulsed the nations of Europe.

The cost of a complete copy of the Scriptures, all
written out by hand, was so great that only the
wealthy could afford to possess one. But the sacred

sister lefte me aloone, for to mynystre? Therefore seye to hir,
that she helpe me. And the Lord, answeringe, seide to hir,
Martha, Martha, thou ert bysi and ert troublid anentis ful manye
thingis ; forsoth o thing is necessarie. Marie hath chose the beste
part, which schal not be take awey fro hir."

JOHN WYCLIFFE. 29

evangel was brought within the reach of all by means
of a great brass-and-leathern bound copy, chained to
the desk of the parish church. Here, at stated times,
some learned clerk or layman would read the oracles
of God to the eager group assembled to hear them.
In the old church at Chelsea, and elsewhere, may still
be seen these ancient desks. In 1429, the cost of a
New Testament alone was £2 16s. 8d., equal to more
than $100 of our present money. At that time £5
was a sufficient amount for the yearly maintenance
of a tradesman, yeoman, or curate. It required half
a year's income to procure what can now be had for
sixpence.

The Bible-hating prelates brought forward a bill in
the House of Lords for suppressing WyclifFe's trans-
lation. Bold John of Gaunt stoutly declared : " We
will not be the dregs of all, seeing that other nations
have the law of God, which is the word of our faith,
written in their own language," and the bill was
thrown out.

The famous uprising of the people against odious
tyranny, known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion, now took
place. It had no connection with religion, but the
prelates used it as a ground for casting odium upon
Wycliffe. A synod assembled at the Grey Friars,
London, formally condemned ten articles drawn from
his writings as heretical, and an Act was passed by
the House of Lords — the first statute of heresy
enacted in Eng^land — commandincj the arrest and
imprisonment of all WyclifFe's preachers, that they
might answer in the Bishops' courts.

30 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

The toils of fate seemed gathering around the
intrepid reformer. Even sturdy John of Gaunt
advised submission to tlie bench of bishops. But
Wycliffe shrank not from the danger. He was again
condemned by a convocation of clergy at Oxford. He
boldly appealed, not to the Pope, but to the King.
There was as yet no statute in England for the burn-
ing of heretics, and under the protection of the civil
law he defied his adversaries. He was excluded from
Oxford, but from his pulpit at Lutterworth he boldly
proclaimed the doctrines of salvation by faith, and
controverted the Romish dogma of the real presence
in the Eucharist.

In his humble rectory hard by, his busy pen wrote
volume after volume,* in strong, plain English speech,
that all men might understand — expounding, enforc-
ing, unfolding the teaching-s of that blessed book
which he had first given the people in their own
mother tongue. By the hands of rapid copyists these
were multiplied and scattered abroad on all the winds
— seeds of truth immortal, destined to bring forth a
glorious harvest in the hearts and lives of future
generations of English confessors, ay, and martyrs,
for the faith.

Wycliffe himself failed of the honor of martjaxlom,
not from the lack of courage on his part, or of the
evil will on the part of his enemies, but through the
good providence of God. His closing years passed in

*" His industry," says Dean Milman, " even in those laborious
daj's, was astonishing. The number of his books baffles calculation.
Two hundred are said to have been burned in Bohemia alone."

JOHN WYCLIFFE. 31

hallowed and congenial toil at Lutterworth. For two
years previous to his death he suffered from partial
paralysis ; but his high courage, his earnest zeal, his
fervent faith, were unpalsied to the last. While
breaking the bread of the Lord's Supper to his be-
loved flock, the final summons came. Standing at the
altar with the sacred emblems in his hand, he fell to
the ground, deprived at once of consciousness and
speech. He left no words of dying testimony, nor
needs there such. His whole life was an epistle,
known and read of all men. His spirit passed away
from earth on the last day of the year 1384.

Yet he did not all die. In the hearts of thousands
of faithful followers his doctrines lived. In the troub-
lous times that came upon the realm, his disciples
bore the glorious brand of " Gospellers," or Bible-men.
Ay, and in the Lollards' Tower, on the scaffold, and
amid the fires of Smithfield, they bore their wit-
ness to the truth that maketh free. The first of the
noble army of martyrs, the smoke of whose burning
darkened the sky of England, was William Sawtre}^,
rector of St. Osyth's, in London. Then followed John
Badbee, a humble tailor, who, denying the dogma of
transubstantiation, avowed his faith in the Holy
Trinity. " If every Host," he declared, " consecrated
on the altar were the Lord's body, then were there
twenty thousand Gods in England ; but he believed in
the one God omnipotent."

The lofty as well as the lowly, in like manner bore
witness of the truth. Among the most illustrous
victims of Papal persecution was the gallant knight

32 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. As his sentence
was read, he answered, " Ye may judge my body, but
ye have no power over my soul," and, like his Master,
he prayed for his murderers. As he walked to the
stake he refused the aid of an earthly priest : " To
God only, now and ever present, would he confess,
and of Him entreat pardon." His last words, drowned
amid the crackling of faofofots and the roar of the
flames, were of praise to God. Such were some of the
glorious fruits of Wycliffe's teaching in the generation
following his own death.

Although removed by God's providence from the
evils of those troublous times, yet the malice of his
enemies suffered not the bones of Wycliffe to lie quiet
in the grave. Thirty years after his death, the Council
of Constance — the same council which, in violation
of a plighted faith, burned the two most illustrious
disciples of Wycliffe, Jerome and Huss — wreaked
its petty rage upon the dead body of the English
reformer, by decreeing that it should be disinterred
and cast forth from consecrated ground. But not till
thirteen years later was this impotent malice fulfilled.
At the command of Pope Martin V., his bones were
dug up from their grave, burned to ashes, and strewed
upon the neighboring stream.

" And so," observes Foxe, " was he resolved into
three elements, earth, fire, and water; they think
thereby to abolish both the name and doctrine of
Wycliffe for ever. But though they digged up his
body, burned his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet
the Word of God and truth of his doctrine, with the

JOHN WYCLIFFE. 33

fruit and success thereof, they could not burn, which
yet to tliis day do remain, notwithstanding the
transitory body and bones of the man were thus con-
sumed and dispersed."

" The ashes of WycIifFe," to quote the words of
Fuller, " were cast into a brook which entered the
Avon, and they were carried to the Severn, from the
Severn to a narrow sea, and from the narrow sea into
the wide ocean ; the ashes of WycIifFe thus becoming
an emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all
over the world."

" The Avon to the Severn runs,
The Severn to the sea ;
So Wycliffe's ashes shall be borne
Where'er those waters be."

STATUE OF JOHN HUSS ON LUTIIEK jMONUMENT AT WORMS.

III.

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE.

In the summer months of the year 1414, all eyes and
all minds in Europe were directed towards the fair
city of Constance, a free town of the German Empire
upon the Boden See. From all parts of Christendom
were assembling here whatever was most august in
Church and State for the greatest Ecumenical
Council of Latin Christianity ever held. During the
three years and a half of its continuance there were
present, though probably not all at the same time,
one Pope, four patriarchs of the Eastern Church,
twenty-nine prince-cardinals, thirty-three archbishops,
one hundred and fifty bishops, one hundred and thirty-
four abbots, and in all, including patriarchs, cardinals,
abbots, bishops, archbishops, doctors, provosts, and
other ecclesiastics of various ranks, no less than
eighteen thousand clergy.

The Emperor Sigismund, princes of the empire,
dukes, burgraves, margraves, counts, barons and
other nobles and deputies of the free cities and the
representatives of the great powers of Christendom,
with their numerous retinues, swelled the population
of the little city from forty thousand to one hundred

35

^6 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

and forty thousand persons. Now shrunken to a
t:)wn of only ten thousand, it gleams with its crown
of grey-stone towers, surrounded by the waters of
the Boden See, like a pearl set in sapphires.

Far different was the aspect of the busy scene in
those bright summer days well nigh five centuries
ago. Down the chestnut-covered slopes of the Alps
wound, day after day and week after week, the
stately cavalcades of sovereign princes and the ambas-
sadors of kings, of cardinals and prelates, with glit-
tering escorts of gallant knights and mail-clad men-
at-arms, or with splendid and numerous retainers.
Bands of pilgrims in humbler guise, on horse-back or
on foot, chanting Latin hymns or beguiling the way
with jest or story, swelled the train. Chapmen and
merchants brought goods of every sort on the backs
of mules or in lumbering vehicles, to supply every
demand of luxury or necessity. The blue lake was
gemmed with snowy sails, wafting their contingent
of priests or lajnnen, of pride and pomp, to that
strange assemblage.

" It was not only, it might seem," writes the graphic
pen of Milman, " to be a solemn Christian council, but
a European congress, a vast central fair, where every
kind of commerce was to be conducted on the boldest
scale, and where chivalrous or histrionic or other
amusements were provided for idle hours and for idle
people. It might seem a final and concentrated burst
and manifestation of medigeval devotion, mediasval
splendor, mediaeval diversions; all ranks, all orders,
all pursuits, all professions, all trades, all artisans,

38 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

with their various attire, habits, manners, language,
crowded into a single city.

" Day after day the air was alive with the stand-
ards of princes and the banners emblazoned with the
armorial bearings of sovereigns, of nobles, of knights,
of Imperial cities, or glittering with the silver crozier,
borne before some magnificent bishop or mitred
abbot. Night after night the silence was broken by
the pursuivants and trumpeters announcing the
arrival of some high or mighty count or duke, or the
tinkling mule-bells of some lowlier caravan. The
streets were crowded with curious spectators, eager to
behold some splendid prince or ambassador, some
churchman famous in the pulpit, in the scliool, in the
council, or it might bo in the battlefield, or even some
renowned minnesinger or popular jongleur." *

Booths and wooden buildings were erected without
the walls, and thousands of pilgrims encamped in the
adjoining country. All the great nations were repre-
sented : Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Hungary, the
Tyrol, the Black Forest, Thuringia, Brabant, Flanders,
the distant North, England and Scotland, and even
Constantinople and Antioch.

The great object of this council was threefold :
First, to put an end to the great schism which for six-
and-thirty years had rent Catholic Christendom.
During that time Pope and anti-Pope — at one time
three rival Popes — had hurled their anathemas and
recriminations at each other's heads, to the great
scandal of the Church and the relaxation of the

* " Latin Christianity," Murray's ed., Vol. viii., pp. 228, 229.

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE, 89

bonds of discipline, and indeed of all ecclesiastical
authority, and to the consequent corruption of morals.
Second, to reform the state of religion, which had
greatly suffered through this chronic strife and
schism. And thirdly, for the suppression of heresy —
a task for which the Churchmen of the day were
always eager and alert. To give the history of the
council is not the purpose of this brief sketch, but to
trace the coui'se and far-reaching consequences of its
heresy-quelling efforts in the judicial murders of John
Huss and of Jerome of Prague.

Of the many thousands of priests or laymen
assembled in the city of Constance at this eventful
period, probably not one seemed in appearance less
likely to attract the attention of the great council or
to transmit his name to after times than the humble
priest from the distant kingdom of Bohemia, who
rode quietly into the town, and took up his lodgings
in the house of a poor widow. Yet to thousands
throughout Christendom this august assembly is
known only through the heroic martyrdom of Jerome
and Huss ; and multitudes of pilgrims are drawn, by
the spell of their moral heroism, from many lands to
visit the scene of their sufferings. Not the scenes of
stately pageantry, of Imperial pomp and pride, but the
dismal dungeons in which the martyrs languished,
and the rude rock which commemorates their death
at the stake are the most sacred places and are
invested with the most hallowed memories of the city
of Constance.

The Bohemian Reformation was the direct offspring

40 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

of English Lollardism. John Huss was the discipline
of John WyclifFe. The relations of the two countries
were intimate. Anne of Bohemia, the consort of
Richard II., favored the new doctrine. Jerome of
Prague sat at WyclifFe's feet at Oxford, and brought
his writings in great numbers to Bohemia, and trans-
lated them into the common speech.

In the little town of Hussinetz, from which he
takes his name, was born, in the year 1373, the child
whose heroic after-career and tragic death were to be,
in the eyes of millions, the chief glory of his native
land. Huss was instructed in all the learning of his
age, and took honorable degrees at the University of
Prague — " the decorations," says his biographer, " of a
victim for the sacrifice." He was characterized by
youthful piety and fervent zeal. While reading the
" Life of St. Lawrence," it is said, he was aroused to
enthusiasm, and thrust his hand into the flames to
try what part of the martyr's suffering he could
endure — an unconscious forecast of his own tragic
fate and undying fame.

On account of his learning and piety, Huss became
preacher in the university and chaplain to the Queen.
He rapidly rose to distinction at the university,
which was attended by twenty thousand, or, as Mil-
man says, thirty thousand students of Bohemia
and Germany,* and at length became rector. He
studied carefully the works of Wycliffe and preached
boldly his doctrines. The Archbishop of Prague
denounced those teachings, and threatened with the

*It has now 154 Professors and 1,871 students.

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 41

heretic's death — the death of the stake — all who
should preach them.

Huss was not the man to speak with bated breath
at the command of authority. The strife between
Churchmen and Wycliffites became a burning question
at the university. The Bohemians took sides with
their countrymen against the Germans, and in street,
on bridge, and in square the hot-headed gownsmen
substituted clubs and stones for syllogisms and argu-
ments. The German faction were deprived of certain
rights of voting for academic officers, and in revenge
they abandoned the city and established the rival
University of Leipsic.

John Huss continued fearlessly to preach against
the corruptions of religion and the vices of the clergy.
Pope Alexander V. issued a bull against the doctrines
of WyclifFe, and the Archbishop of Prague committed
two hundred of his books, many of them the property
of the university, to the flames. Huss protested
against this wanton destruction, and procured pay-
ment for the costly manuscripts. His own safety was
menaced, but he continued to preach. He appealed
from the judgment of a venal Pope to the unerring
tribunal of the skies.

" I, John Huss," he wrote, " offer this appeal to
Jesus Christ, my Master and my just Judge, who
knows, defends, and judges the just cause." He was
summoned to Rome, charged with every conceivable
crime. The Bohemian king and people, fearing the
machinations of his enemies, refused to let him cross
the Alps, and he retired for a time into seclusion.

CITY OF PRAGUE, FROM THE OLD STONE BRIDGB.

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 43

From his retreat he sent forth a book demonstrating
what Rome has never yet admitted, that the writings
of the so-called heretics should be studied, not burned.

There now came to Bohemia vendors of indulgences,
seeking to gain thereby recruits for the Pope's war
against Ladislaus, King of Naples. The blasphemous
sale of remission of sins past and permission for sins
in the future, which a century later awoke the indig-
nation of Luther, aroused the abhorrence of Huss. He
boldly denounced the impiety of the " sin-mongers,"
and his disciple, Jerome, burned the Pope's bull
beneath the gallows.

"Dear master," said the Town Council to the
rector, " we are astonished at your lighting up a fire,
in which you run the risk of being burned yourself."
But the heroic soul heeded not the prophetic words.
He went everywhere preaching with tongue and pen
against the doctrine of indulgences, the worship of
images, the corruptions of the clergy. '■ They who
cease to preach," he said, " will be reputed traitors in
the day of judgment."

The last bolt of Papal vengeance was hurled. The
city of Prague, and wherever Huss sojourned, were
laid under an interdict. A silence and gloom as of
death fell upon the land. No longer the matin bell
or Angelus rang from the minster spire, or the twin-
towered Theinkirche, or from the many belfries of
church or monastery. Even the dying were denied
the last unction and sacred viaticum for the journey
to the spirit world, and their bodies were consigned
to earth without the hallowed rites of religion — the

44 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

wrath of man casting deeper darkness over the
shadows of the grave.

But the nation was aroused. " Huss," says Mil-
man, " was now no isolated teacher, no mere follower
of a condemned English heretic ; he was even more
than the head of a sect; he almost represented a
kingdom — no doubt much more than the half of
Bohemia." Like Luther's, his words were half
battles. His books on the abominations of monks
and the members of Antichrist, directed against the
hierarchy, were sledge-hammer blows that were felt
throughout Europe.

It was at this juncture that the Council of Con-
stance was convoked. Huss, strong in the conscious-
ness of his integrity, proffered to go thither and to
vindicate his orthodoxy before the great tribunal of
Christendom. In a paper affixed to the gates of the
palace at Prague, he challenged his enemies to meet
and confute him at the great council. Yet he was
not without his forebodings of evil. In a sealed paper
which he left, containing his will and confession, to
be opened only on his death, he wrote : " I expect to
meet as many enemies at Constance as our Lord at
Jerusalem — the wicked clergy, even some secular
princes, and those Pharisees the monks."

" I confide," he wrote to a friend, " altogether in the
all-powerful God — in my Saviour. I trust that he
will accord me his Holy Spirit, to fortify me in his
truth, so that I may face with courage temptations,
prisons, and, if necessary, a cruel death. Therefore,
beloved, if my death ought to contribute to his

TOWN HALL, PKAUUK, UOHEMIA.

46 BEACOM LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

glory, pray that it may come quickly, and that he
may enable me to support all my calamities with
constancy. Probably, therefore, you will never more
behold my face at Prague."

Before setting out on his journey, he asked and
received from Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, a
safe-conduct, commanding all ecclesiastical and secular
princes to allow him "to pass, sojourn, stop, and
return freely and surely." He travelled unattended,
on horseback, and took lodgings in the house of a
poor widow, whom he compares to her of Sarepta, at
Constance.

Pope John XXIII., who was trembling for fear of
his own safety, received him graciously. He solemnly
declared: "Though John Huss had killed my own
brother I would not permit any harm to be done to
him in Constance." Yet he eagerly sacrificed him in
the hope of averting his own fate. John had two
rival Popes to contend with — Gregory XII. and
Benedict XIII. (They were all three subsequently
deposed by the council, and Martin V. elected in their
place). To prevent or postpone his own deposition.
Pope John entered upon the persecution and suppres-
sion of heresy, an object which he felt would unite,
for the time at least, all the rival factions of the
council.

Two bitter enemies of Huss, whom he had worsted
in controversy — an offence not to be forgiven — had
preceded him to Constance, and now preferred charges
of heresy. He was summoned to the presence of the
Pope and cardinals. He demanded to be arraigned

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 47

before the whole council, but yielded to the summons,
saying, " I shall put my trust in our Saviour, Jesus
Christ, and shall be more happy to die for his glory
than to live denying the truth."

Notwithstanding his appeal to the safe-conduct of
the Emperor, he was separated from his Bohemian
friend and protector, the noble John de Chlum, and
confined in prison, first in the bishop's palace, and then
in a dungeon of the Dominican convent, on an island
near the city. In this loathsome vault — its walls
reeking with damp, and so dark that only for a short
time each day was he able to read by the feeble light
struggling through an aperture in the roof — for well
nigh eight weary months, with irons on his legs, and
fastened by a chain to the wall,* the valiant con-
fessor languished, and only escaped from its durance
vile through the door of martyrdom. The old monas-
tery is now — such changes brings the whirligig of
time — a hotel, and modern tourists loiter in the
quaint Romanesque cloisters, and dine in the vaulted
refectory of the monks, above the dungeon of John
Huss.

The Emperor Sigismund broke into a rage at the
violation of his safe-conduct, and gave orders " imme-
diately to set John Huss at liberty, and, if necessarj",
to break open the dooi-s of the prison." But the
persistence of the Pope prevented his release. On

* Years after his death, it was said that this indignity was in-
flicted because Huss attempted to escape. But all the evidence
availalile is against that accusation, wl^ich, even if true, would liave
been no justification of his treatment.

48 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

Christmas Day the Emperor himself arrived, and in
the grand old cathedral, dating from 1048, he read, in
the dalmatic of a deacon, the lesson for the day :
" There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus " — an
ill omen to the Pope of the influence of this modern
Caesar. On a throne of state sat Sigismund and the
Empress, To the former the Pope presented a sword,
exhorting him to use it for the defence of the council.
It was upon himself that its weight first fell.

No open breach, however, as yet took place. The
Pope presented the Emperor that distinguished reward
of the most eminent of the faithful — a golden rose —
and offered him the more substantial aro-ument of a
subsidy of 200,000 florins. But dark accusations were
made against the scandalous life of the sinful old man,
misnamed " his Holiness." Of such lurid iniquity
were these that an honest English bishop cried out in
righteous indignation that " the Pope deserved to be
burned at the stake."

John XXIII. yielded to the inevitable, resigned
the papacy, and fled by stealth in the mean disguise
of a groom, riding on an ill-accoutred horse, with a
cross-bow on the pommel of his saddle, from Constance
to Schaft'hausen, and afterwards to the depths of the
Black Forest — " A wandering vagabond," says a con-
temporary chronicler, " seeking rest and finding none"
— "Vagabundus mobilis, quaerens requiem et non
inveniens."

The accusations against the fugitive Pope were for-
mulated in seventy-two distinct charges. Sixteen of
these, as too unutterbly vile for discussion, were

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 49

dropped. Of the remaining fifty-six he was con-
victed, and was solemnly deposed by the council
from St. Peter's chair. His armorial bearings were
defaced, his " fisherman's ring " was broken, and he
was brought back a captive and consigned to the very
prison in which, for six months, the victim of his
tyranny had languished.

But what a contrast between these men ! The
wretched, deposed pontiff — hurled for his crimes from
his high place, and crushed by his infamy — exclaimed,
in the bitterness of his soul, " Would to God that I
had never mounted to such a height ! Since then I
have never known a happy day." In a cell separated
by the space of but a few steps, sat and wrote by the
dim liglit struggling into his dungeon, the heroic con-
fessor and destined martyr of the faith. Unmoved by
the rage of his enemies, his soul was strong in God.
In his serene majesty of spirit he refused life and
liberty at the cost of doing violence to his conscience.

Amid such stirring events as the deposition of a
sovereign pontiff, the case of John Huss, the Bohemian
priest, was for the time postponed. Though Sigis-
mund writhed under the accusation of having violated
his Imperial guarantee of safety, he shrank from be-
coming the defender of heresy and schism against the
persecuting zeal of such an august assembly as the
great council.

The fall of the Pope gave opportunity for the con-
genial employment of the persecution of heresy. The
doctrines of the English reformer, John Wycliffe,
were the first object of denunciation. Three hundred
4

50 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

and five distinct propositions from his writings were
condemned. In impotent malice this assembly of all
that was most august in Church and State in Christen-
dom wreaked its rage upon the dead body which had
lain for thirty years in its quiet grave at Lutterworth.
WyclifFe's remains were ordered to be rifled from their
tomb, and with his books to be given to the flames.
But near at hand, and in their power, was a living
exjDonent of those hated doctrines, who would be more
sentient to their torture. John Huss was therefore
brought before the council, not so mucli for examina-
tion, as for prejudged condemnation.

The council was to be favored with two victims
instead of one. An illustrious disciple was to share
the martyrdom of his illustrious master. Jerome of
Prague was only two years younger than John Huss;
but while his rival in learning and religious zeal, he
was his inferior in moral energy, and probably also in
physical nerve. After visiting the universities of
Cologne, Heidelberg, Paris, and Oxford, he preached
boldly the doctrines of Wyclifl^e, and became also the
ardent disciple and colleague in the reform move-
ment of John Huss. When his revered and honored
friend left Prague for Constance Jerome had said,
" Dear master, be firm ; maintain intrepidly what
thou hast written and preached. Should I hear that
thou hast fallen into peril I will come to thy succor."

In fulfilment of this pledge he now hastened to
Constance — himself determined to plead his friend's
cause before the council. He entered the city un-
known, and mingling with the gossiping crowd

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 51

learned the common rumor that his friend was
already 2:)re-condemned. His own faith and courage
failed, and feeling that all was lost he sought safety
in flight.

While traversing the Black Forest, w^hich stretches
for many gloomy leagues over mountain and valley,
he lodged for the night with the village cure. Burst-
ing with indignation at the outrages inflicted on his
friend, he denounced the council as " a' synagogue of
Satan, a school of iniquity." The bold words were
repeated to the village authorities, and Jerome was
arrested, and by order of the council was sent to
Constance, riding in a cart, bound with chains and
guarded by soldiers.

He was arraigned before the assembly, loaded
with fetters. He was accused of the odious crime of
heresy. It was intolerable that the greatest council
ever held, with an Emperor at its head, which had
just deposed the Pope himself, should be bearded by
two contumacious priests from a half-barbarous land.
" Prove that what I have advanced were errors,"
Jerome calmly replied, "and I will abjure them with
all humility." Hereupon a tumult arose, and a multi-
tude of voices cried out, " To the flames with him ; to
the flames." " If it is your pleasure that I must die,"
answered Jerome, " The will of God be done."

But his hour was not yet come. He was sent back
to his dungeon and heavily ironed. For two days he
was chained in a torturing posture, with outstretched
hands, to a lofty beam ; and for a year he lingered,
the prey of bodily weakness and mental anguish in

52 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

this loathsome prison cell. Even the consolation of
sharing the imprisonment of his friend Huss was
denied him.

After six months' weary confinement, Huss was at
length arraigned before the council. " Fear not," he
said to his friends, " I have good hope that the words
which I have spoken in the shade shall hereafter be
preached on the house top " — " Spero quod quae dixi
sub tecto prsedicabuntur super tectis." These words
of cheer were to his disciples in many an hour of
persecution and gloom an encouragement and inspira-
tion. In the great hall of the Kaufhaus, where the
tourist to-day gazes with curious eye on the fading
frescoes on the wall, the great council sat — prelates,
priests, and deacons in mitres, alb, stole, chasuble and
dalmatic; and secular princes in robes of state and
wearing the insignia of office — all to crush one
manacled but unconquerable man.

The writings of Huss were presented — there were
twenty-seven in all — the authorship of which he
frankly admitted. From these, thirty-nine articles
were extracted alleged to be heretical. He was
accused of denying transubstantiation, of teaching the
doctrines of Wycliffe, of appealing from the Pope
to Christ, and other such heinous crimes. Huss
attempted to reply, but was met by an outburst of
mockery and abuse. " One would have said," writes
Maldoneiwitz, who was present, " that these men were
ferocious wild beasts rather than grave and learned
doctors." Huss appealed to the Scriptures, but was
howled down with rage. " They all," says Luther,

THE CHANCELLKKY, CONSTANCE.

54 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

in his vigorous phrase, "worked themselves into a
frenzy like wild boars — they bent their brows and
gnashed their teeth against John Huss."

Two days later he was again arraigned. For
nearly two hours an almost total eclipse darkened the
sun, as if in sj'mpathy with the dire eclipse of truth
and justice on the earth. The Emperor sat on his
throne of state. Men in armor guarded the prisoner
in chains. His bitter adversaries, including the
Cardinal of Cambray, who had won renown as " the
hammer of the heretics," were his accusers.

" If I die," said Huss to a friend, " God will answer
for me at the day of judgment." Accused of urging
the people to take arms, he replied, " I certainly did ;
but only the arms of the Gospel — the helmet and
sword of salv^ation." The Emperor urged uncondi-
tional submission. " If not," he added, " the council
will know how to deal with you. For myself, so far
from defending you in your errors, I will be the first
to light the fires with my own hands." " Magnani-
mous Emperor," replied Huss, with keen but seem-
ingly unconscious sarcasm, " I give thanks to your
Majesty for the safe-conduct which you gave me — "
He was here interrupted and sent back to prison.

Again he was arraigned, and again he was con-
demned by the council. Even the Emperor — super-
stition and anger stifling the voice of conscience —
declared " that his crimes were worthy of death ; that
if he did not forswear his errors he must be burned."
Still, his saintly life, his great learning, his heroic
couragre commanded the admiration even of his

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 55

enemies ; and they exhorted him even with tears to
abjure, and a form of recantation was presented to
him.

" How can I ? " he asked. " If Eleazer, under the
Old Law, refused to eat the forbidden fruit lest he
should sin against God, how can I, a priest of the
New Law, however unworthy, from fear of punish-
ment so brief and transitory, sin so heinously against
the law of God. It is better for me to die, than by
avoiding momentary pain to fall into the hands of
God, and perhaps into eternal fire. I have appealed
to Jesus Christ, the one All-powerful and All-just
Judge ; to him I commit my cause, who will judge
every man, not according to false witness and erring
councils, but according to truth and man's desert."

He was accused of arrogance in opposing his
opinion to that of so many learned doctors. " Let
but the lowest in the council," he replied, " convince
me, and I will humbly own my error. Till I am con-
vinced," he added, with grand loyalty to conscience,
" not the whole universe shall force me to recant."

Huss spent his last hours in prison in writing to his
friends in Prague. " Love ye one another " — so runs
his valediction — " never turn any one aside from the
divine truth. I conjure you to have the Gospel
preached in my chapel of Bethlehem so long as God
will permit. Fear not them that kill the body, but
who cannot kill the soul."

His faithful friends loved him too well to counsel
moral cowardice. They urged him to be faithful to
the end. " Dear master," said the brave knight, John

56 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

de Chlum, " I am an unlettered man, unfit to counsel
one so learned. But if in your conscience you feel
yourself to be innocent, do not commit perjury in the
sight of God, nor leave the path of truth for fear of
death."

" O noble and most faithful friend," exclaimed Huss,
with an unwonted gush of tears, " I conjure thee
depart not till thou hast seen the end of all. Would
to God I were now lead to the stake rather than to be
worn away in prison."

After all, Huss was but human. In his lonely cell
he had his hours of depression, and, like his blessed
Master, his soul was at times exceeding sorrowful.
" It is hard," he wrote, " to rejoice in tribulation. The
flesh, O Lord ! is weak. Let thy Spirit assist and
accompany me ; for without thee I cannot bravo
this cruel death. . . . Written in chains," is the
pathetic superscription of the letter, " on the eve of
the day of St. John the Baptist, who died in prison
for having condemned the iniquity of the wicked."

But for the most part his courage was strong, and,
like Paul and Silas, he sang his " Sursum Corda " in
the prison : " The Lord is my light and my salvation ;
whom shall I fear ? The Lord is the strength of my
life ; of whom shall I be afraid ? " " Shall I," he
wrote, " who for so many years have preached
patience and constancy under trials — shall I fall into
perjury, and so shamefully scandalize the people of
God ? Far from me be the thought ! The Lord
Jesus will be my succor and my recompense."

He freely forgave all his enemies — even his chief

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE.

57

accuser, who came to gloat upon his sufferings in his
cell, and whom he heard say to the gaoler, " By the
grace of God we will soon burn this heretic." After
thirty days longer of weary confinement, he was
brought forth to receive his sentence. The august
ceremony took place in
the venerable cathedral.
Sigismund and the
princes of the empire
sat on thrones of state.
The cardinals in scarlet
robes, the bishops in
golden mitres, filled tlie
chancel. High mass was
sungf ; the solemn music
pealing through the
vaulted aisles, and the
fragrant incense rising
like a cloud. But Huss
stood guarded by sol-
diers in the porch, " lest
the holy mysteries
should be defiled by the
presence of so great a

heretic." He then advanced, and after long and
silent prayer, stood at the tribunal.

The Bishop of Lodi preached from the text, " That
the body of sin might be destroyed." It was a violent
outburst of deimnciation. Turning to the Emperor at
its close he said, " It is a holy work, glorious prince,
which is reserved for you to accomplish. Destroy

IHL ( HA.NCLLLERY, CONSTANCE,
JROM THE REAR.

o8 BEACON LIGHTS OP THE REFORMATIO^ST.

heresies, errors and, above all, this obstinate heretic,"
pointing to Huss, who knelt in fervent prayer.
" Smite, then, such great enemies of the faith, that
your praises may proceed from the mouths of children
and that your glory may be eternal. May Jesus
Christ, forever blessed, deign to accord you this
favor !"

After this unapostolic benediction, the council,
which claimed to be under the especial inspiration
and guidance of the Holy Spirit, proceeded to its
work of cursing and bitterness and death. The
writings of Huss were first condemned to be de-
stroyed, then himself to be degraded from his office of
priest, and his body to be burned. " Freely came I
hither," said Huss in that supreme hour, " under the
safe-conduct of the Emperor," and he looked stead-
fastly at Sigismund, over whose face there spread a
deep blush.* "Oh! blessed Jesus," he went on,
" this thy council condemns me because in my afflic-
tions I sought refuge with thee, the one just Judge."

Yet with a sublime magnanimity he fervently
prayed for his persecutors : " Lord Jesus, pardon
my enemies ; pardon them for thine infinite mercy."
To this day men point to a stone slab in the pave-
ment of the church — a white spot on which always
remains dry, when the rest is damp — as the place
where Huss stood when sentenced to be burned at
the stake,

*At the Diet of Worms, a hundred years later, when Charles V.
was urged to violate the safe conduct which he had given Luther,
he replied, remembering this scene, " No ; I should not like to
blush like Sigismund."

John huss and jerome of Prague. 59

The last indignities were now to be inflicted.
Priestly vestments were first put upon the destined
victim, and then, in formal degradation, removed.
As they took the chalice of the sacrament from his
hands, the apparitor said, " Accursed Judas, we take
away from thee this cup filled with the blood of
Jesus Christ." " Nay," he replied, " I trust that this
very day I shall drink of his cup in the Kingdom of
Heaven."

They placed on his head a paper mitre daubed over
with devils, with the words of cursing : " We devote
thy soul to the devils in hell." " And I commend my
soul," he meekly replied, " to the most merciful Lord
Christ Jesus. I wear with joy this crown of shame,
for the love of him who wore for me a crown of
thorns,"

Then the Church — too holy, too tender to imbrue
her hands in the blood of her victim — having declared
him no longer a priest but a layman, delivered him to
the secular power to be destroyed. He was conducted
between four town sergeants and followed by a guard
of eight hundred horsemen and a great multitude of
people, from the grey old minster to the place of exe-
cution, in a green meadow without the walls. Before
the bishop's palace the guard halted, that Huss might
see the fire on which his books were burning. Know-
ing that truth is mighty — next to God himself — he
only smiled at the inefi'ective act of malice. So great
was the crowd of people that, in crossing the moat, it
almost broke down the bridge.

Arrived at his funeral pyre, Huss knelt down and

60 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

recited several of the penitential psalms, and prayed,
" Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me. Into thy hands I
commit my spirit. I beseech thee to pardon all my
enemies." " We know not what this man's crime
maybe," said the people; "we only know that his
prayers to God are excellent." As he prayed his
paper mitre fell from his head. A soldier rudely
thrust it on, with the jeer, " He shall be burned with
all his devils." " Friend," said the patient martyr,
" I trust that I shall reign with Christ since I die for
his cause."

He was then bound to the stake with a rusty
chain, and wood and straw were heaped about him.
As the fire was applied and the smoke wreaths rose,
the voice of the dying martyr was heard singing the
Christe Eleison ; " Jesus, son of the living God, have
mercy upon me." Then his head fell upon his breast,
and the awful silence was broken only by the crack-
ling of faggots and the roar of the flames. In impo-
tent rage his executioners gathered his ashes and cast
them into the swift-flowing Rhine. But the zeal of
his followers scraped up the very earth of the spot,
and bore it as a precious relic to Bohemia.

But one victim could not appease the wrath of this
zealous council. Another still languished in prison
for whose blood it thirsted. Every vestige of heresy
must be destroyed. For six long months Jerome had
lain in his noisome dungeon. He was commanded to
abjure his faith or to perish in the flames. He was a
man of less heroic mould than Huss. He was now
deprived of the supj)ort of that strong spirit on which

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 61

he had leaned. His body was enfeebled and his spirit
broken by his long confinement in chains, in darkness,
and on meagre fare. He was only forty years of age,
and the love of life was strong within him. He
shrank from torture, and in an hour of weakness he
affixed his name to a sentence of retractation.

The council, as if eager for his death, rejected the
retractation as ambiguous and imperfect, and de-
manded a fuller abjuration. But the hour of weak-
ness was past. The love of truth prevailed over the
love of life. With a moral heroism that almost atones
for his single act of yielding, he withdrew his re-
cantation. " I confess," he wrote, " that, moved by
cowardly fear of the stake, against my conscience, I
consented to the condemnation of the doctrines of
Wycliffe and Huss. This sinful retractation I now fully
retract ; and am resolved to maintain their tenets
unto death, believing them to be the true and pure
doctrine of the Gospel, even as their lives were blame-
less and holy."

By these words he signed his own death-warrant.
He was speedily condemned as a relapsed heretic.
He demanded an opportunity of making a defence.
" What injustice! " he exclaimed. " You have held me
shut up for three hundred and forty days in a fright-
ful prison, in the midst of filth, noisomeness, stench,
and the utmost want of everj^thing. You then bring
me out, and lending an ear to my mortal enemies, you
refuse to hear me." He was at length granted an
opportunity to reply to the hundred and seven
charges preferred against him. He defended himself

62

BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

with extraordinary eloquence and learning — "now
deeply pathetic, now with playful wit or taunt-
ing sarcasm, confounding, bewildering, overpowering
his adversaries. He stood fearless, intrepid, like

another Cato, not only
despising, but courting
death." Of all the sins
of his life, he said, none
weighed so heavy on
his conscience as his
unworthy denial of the
doctrines of Wyclifie
and Huss. " From my
lieart I confess and de-
clare with horror," he
exclaimed, " that I dis-
gracefully quailed when
through fear of death I
condemned their doc-
trines. ... I de-
clare anew, I lied like
a wretch in adjuring
their faith." " Do you
suppose I fear to die ? "
he demanded. " You
have held me for a whole year in a frightful dungeon,
more horrible than death itself. You have treated me
more cruelly than Turk, Jew or pagan, and my flesh
has literally rotted off" my bones alive, and I make
no complaint." Yet he exhorted, for the truth's sake,
that they would listen to that voice which was soon
to be hushed forever.

THE RHINE GATE TOWER,
CONSTANCE.

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE,

63

He was again haled from the prison to the church
to receive his sentence. The troops again were under
arms. The council sat in state. Again high mass
and chanted hymns consecrated judicial murder. On
his way to the place
of burning Jerome
repeated, with firm
voice, the Apostle's
creed and chanted the
litanies of the Church.
As they piled the fag-
gots and straw about
him, he sang the
hymn, " Salve, festa
dies " — " Hail, joyful
day," as though it
were his birthday — as
it was — into immortal
life. As the execu-
tioner was lighting
the fire behind his
back, he said, " Light
it before my face.
Had I been afraid, I
would not have been
here." He then com-
mitted his soul to

God, and prayed in tlie Bohemian tongue as long as
life lasted.

On the occasion of the present writer's visit to
Constance, I made a pilgrimage to the places made

THE SCHNETZ-THOR, CONSTANCE.

64 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

sacred by these* imperishable memories. Early in the
morning I went to the old cathedral, founded 1052,
with its sixteen lofty monolithic columns. In the
stone floor is shown a large slab which always re-
mains white when the rest of the pavement is damp.
On this spot Huss stood — so runs the legend— on July
6th, 1415, when the council condemned him to be
burnt at the stake. In the choir are wonderfully
quaint satirical wood carvings, dating from 1470 —
Adam and Eve rocking Cain in a cradle; Absalom
wearing huge spurs ; St. George and the Dragon ; St.
Jerome and the Lion; the Apostles, with grave
German faces and mediaeval costumes, recognized by
their attributes carved above their heads ; a vision of
heaven, with harpers, crowned saints, the strange
apocalyptic "beasts" — griffins, unicorns, dog-headed
figures, etc. — all carved with realistic power.

I went next to the Kaufhaus, in whose great hall
the council that condemned Huss sat, 1414-1418.
Now this Catholic city glorifies his memory by a
series of exquisite frescoes on the walls of this very
chamber. In one scene the noble figure of Huss is
shown, surrounded by a crowd of bishops, cardinals
and soldiers, while a gross old monk is taking down
the evidence against him. In another, Huss is being
taken in a boat at night to prison. A monk holds a
flaring torch which illumines the calm face of the
martyr and the steel morions and crossbows of the
carousing soldiers, one of whom holds a huge flagon
to his lips. Another shows the building of the pyre
and the burning of the martyr. The soldiers are

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 65

grim and indifferent, the faces of the monks are con-
torted with rage, a timid girl is shrieking with
terror, a Hussite disciple is beseeching for his honored
teacher. Another shows the " Auswanderung der
Protestanten," in 1548; old age and childhood alike
exiled from their homes, carrying their Bibles and
baggage ; one girl with a pet bird in a cage. The
whole history of Constance is written on these walls.
As we gaze, the past seems more real than the
present.

On the walls of the vaulted chapel of the ancient
monastery — now the dining-room of our hotel — were
faded frescoes of scenes of martyrdom, from which
the hearts of the pious monks gathered courage, in
the far-off years forever flown. In a dark and dismal
dungeon in the basement of an ivy-covered round
tower, where for a short time each day a beam of
light found entrance, with irons on his legs and
fastened by a chain to the walls, the heroic Huss was
confined for nearly eight months before he glorified
God amid the flames. The cloisters surround a beau-
tiful ([uadrangle, covered with noble frescoed scenes
from the history of Constance.

Then I walked out beneath the limes and poplars
to the sacred spot where the martyrs suffered, with-
out the gate. No chiselled monument commemorates
their death — nothing but a huge granite boulder
— emblem of the unflinching endurance of their forti-
tude and of the endless endurance of the faith for
which they suffered. Deeply engraved upon its
rugged surface are the words,
5

66 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

" HiERONVMUS VON PRAGf — 30 MaR | 7 JUIN | 1416.

Johannes Husf — 6 | 14 ] Juli, 1415."

Then I walked back through the Hussenstrasse,
through the Schnetzthor, a wonderfully quaint struc-
ture, built, as an inscription affirms, in the thirteenth
century. Near here is shown the house where Huss
was arrested, with a quaint relief of 1415, with the
following satirical verses, in old German script :

" O uic' nur armen Xropf,
.^icr nal)m man mid) beim §cf)opf.

" $icrr)cr id) cnh'onncn mar,
^tn bod) nit h'um au^ ber gefal)r."

These may be freely rendered somewhat as follows :

"O woe to me, poor simpleton,
Here one took hold of me by the hair
(of the head).

' ' To this place I had run away,
Am still for all in jeopardy."

Passing through Jerome Street — for so is the name
of the hero commemorated after nearly five hundred
years — we reach St. Paul's tower, now a brewery,
wliere the martyr was imprisoned for a year before
his death. We moderns seem intruders amid these
shadows of the distant past. But most real and
reverent of them all are the potent memories of the
heroic Huss and Jerome.

Measured by years, their lives were short — Huss
was forty-two and Jerome forty-one. But measijred

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE.

67

b}^ sublime achievement, by heroic daring, by high-
souled courage, their lives were long, and grand, and
glorious. They conquered a wider liberty, a richer
heritage for man.
They defied oppres-
sion in its direst form
— the oppression of
the souls of men.
The}^ counted not
their lives dear unto
them for the testi-
mony of Jesus. They
have joined the im-
mortal band whose
names the world will
not willingly let die.
Their ashes were
sown upon the wan-
dering wind and rush-
ing wave, but their
spirits are alive for
evermore. Their name
and fame, in every
age and every land,
have been an inspira-
tion and a watchword
in the conflict of
eternal right against
ancient wrong.

In the age immediately succeeding his own, the
name of Huss became a battle-cry on many a gory
field ; and the Hussite wars are a tragic page in the

THE IIKill llOUSK, CONSTANCK.

68 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

history of the world. All Bohemia rose to avenge
the death of its apostles and martyrs. Knight and
baron, with hand on sword, swore defiance to the
power which had doomed to death Jerome and Huss.
Among these emerged into prominence the terrible
name of Ziska, " The one-eyed," as it signifies, who
soon became a portent of wrath to the foes of his
country. The communion of the cup as well as of
the bread was cherished as a national right of
Bohemia, which had received the Gospel from the
Greek rather than from the Latin Church. Ziska
made a sacramental chalice the standard of his army
and he signed his name, " Ziska of the Cup." A
bloody war was waged to maintain this badge of
national independence.

His sacrifice of Huss cost Sigismund a long and,
cruel war, and well-nigh cost him his kingdom of Bo-
hemia. A fierce fanaticism raged on either side.
Cities were stormed, lordly palace and costly shrine
were given to the flames. From the Danube to the
Rhine, from the Alps to the Netherlands, was a wild
whirl of battle. Two hundred thousand men were
in arms. Ziska, with his fierce war chariots,
mowed down armies as with the scythe of death.
When, by the loss of his sole remaining eye, he be-
came blind, he became only the more terrible — his
victories as sweeping, his vengeance more deadly.
He was conqueror in a hundred fights, and was con-
quered in only one. The track of his armies was
like that of a desolating simoon. It was traced b}^
scath of fire and sword, by plundered towns and
burning villages and devastated plains. His death,

JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE. 69

like his life, was a portent of wrath. According to
tradition, he ordered his body to be left to the crows
and kites, and his skin to be converted into a drum,
on which should resound the dreadful march of
death.

For thirteen years the wild war waged ; and then,
after a short respite, again broke out, and for half a
century longer desolated Central Europe — a terrible
penalty for a terrible crime. But not yet was the cup
of misery full. Again and again has Bohemia been
made the battle-ground of the nations — in the Thirty
Years' war, the Seven Years' war, and in our own
day was fought on its soil the great battle of Sadowa.

More pleasing memories of the land of Huss are the
Moravian Brethren, who share his doctrine and ex-
emplify his spirit. As the foster mother of Method-
ism, as the mother of modern missions, and as their
most energetic promoter, the Church of the Moravian
Brethren, which is more than any other the Church of
Huss, commands the admiration of mankind. Not by
wrath and bloodshed, not by strife and bitterness, but
by the spirit of devotion, of self-sacrifice, of martyr-
dom, are the victories of the Cross achieved. While
we deprecate the wild fanatic wars of the Hussites,
let us revere as among the noblest heroes of the race
Jerome of Praoue and John Huss.

BUST OF SAVONAROLA.

IV.

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA,

THE MARTYR OF FLORENCE.

"Cross of my Lord, give room ! give room I

To thee my flesh be given I
Cleansed in thy lires of love and praise,

My soul rise pure to heaven !
Ah 1 vanish each unworthy trace

Of earthly care or pride ;
Leave only graven on my heart

The Cross, the Crucified."— /S'aronaro^a.

On a brilliant July day I stood in the vast and shadowy
Duomo of Florence, where four hundred years ago
Savonarola proclaimed, like a new Elijah, to awestruck
thousands, the judgments of Heaven upon their guilty
city. I went thence to the famous Monastery of San
Marco, of which he was prior. I paced the frescoed
cloisters where he was wont to con his breviary, and the
long corridors lined on either side with the prison-like
cells of the cowled brotherhood. I stood in the bare
bleak chamber of the martj^r-monk, in which he used
to weep and watch and write and pray. I sat in his
chair. I saw his eagle- visaged portrait, his robes, his
rosary, his crucifix, his Bible — richly annotated in his

71

72 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATIO^.

own fine clear hand — and his MS. sermons which so
shook the Papacy.

The same day I stood in the dungeon vaults of the
fortress-like Palazzo del Podesta, lurid with crimson
memories, where the great reformer was imprisoned ;
and in the paved square whence his brave soul
ascended in a chariot of flame from the martyr's
funeral pyre ; and I seemed brought nearer to that
heroic spirit who, amid these memory-haunted scenes,
four centuries ago spoke brave words for God and
truth and liberty, that thrill our souls to-day.

The age in which Savonarola lived was one of the
most splendid in the history of European art and
literature. Even during the darkness of the middle
ages, the lamp of learning was fanned into a flicker-
ing flame in many a lonely monkish cell, and the love
of liberty was cherished in the free cities of the
Italian peninsula. But with the dawn of the Renais-
sance came a sunburst of light that banished the
night of ages. The fall of Constantinople scattered
throughout Western Europe the scholars who still
spoke the language of Homer and of Chrysostom, and
taught the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The
agents of Lorenzo il Magnifico swept the monasteries
of the Levant for the precious MSS., the flotsam
and jetsam of the ancient world, which had drifted
into these quiet retreats. The invention of a German
mechanic gave new wings to this rescued learning,
and from the presses of Florence, Venice, and Rome,
and later of Amsterdam, Paris, and London, it flew
abroad on all the winds.

74 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

In Italy the Aretliusan fount of long-buried art
and science sprang to life, sparkling and flashing in
the new-found light. From the rich soil of the Cam-
pagna were daily rescued fresh relics of the past —
lovely marble torsos, whose very fragments were at
once the rapture and despair of the new-born instinct of
art. Rome woke to the consciousness of the priceless
wealth long buried in her bosom. The earth seemed
to renew her youth. There were giants in those
days. Michael Angelo, great as poet, painter, and
sculptor ; Da Vinci, Ghiberti, Celini, Fra Lippi,
Macchiavelli, Petrarch, Politian — a brotherhood of
art and letters never equalled in the world.*

But no good or evil is unmixed. This revived
learning brought with it a revived paganism. This
quickened art contained the seeds of its own moral
taint. Social corruption and political tyranny and
treachery flourished amid this too stimulating atmos-

* Not among the ' ' giants " of the time, but as one of its tenderest
and most loving spirits, is to be mentioned Fra Angelico, whose
lovely frescoes of saints and angels and Madonnas still adorn the
cells of San Marco. He could not preach, but he could paint such
beatific visions as fill our ej'es with tears. He never touched
his brush till he had steeped his inmost soul in prayer. Overcome
with emotion, the tears often streamed down his face as he painted
the Seven Sorrows of Mary or the raptures of the saved. He would
take no money for his work, it was its own exceeding great reward.
When offered the Archbishopric of Florence he humbly declined,
and recommended for that dignity a brother monk. He died at
Rome while sitting at his easel — caught away to behold with open
face the beatific vision on which his inner sight so long had dwelt.
The holy faces of his angels still haunt our memory with a spell of
power. Well did the saintly painter wear the name of Fra Angelico
— the Angelic Brother.

GiROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 75

phei'e. The moral antiseptic of a vital Christianity
was wantin^y. The salt had lost its savor, and moral
corruption ensued. The state of the Church was at
its very worst. The Papacy was never more Heaven-
defying in its wickedness. A succession of human
monsters occupied St. Peter's chair. Paul II., Sixtus
IV., Innocent VIII., and the infamous Borgia — Alex-
ander VI. — had converted the Vatican into a theatre
of the most odious vices. While wearing the title of
Christ's Vicars on earth, they were utterl}^ pagan in
sentiment and worse than pagan in life.

" They regarded," says Macaulay, " the Christian
mysteries of which they were the stewards, just as
the Augur Cicero and the Pontifex Maximus Ca3sar
regarded the Sibylline books and the pecking of the
sacred chickens. Among themselves they spoke of
the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Trinity in the
same tone in which Cotta and Velleius talked of the
oracle of Delphi, or of the voice of Faunus in the
mountains."

Said Leo X. — himself a priest at eight and a car-
dinal at fourteen years of age — to his secretary,
Beml)o, " All ages know well enough of what advan-
tage this fable about Christ has been to us and ours."
The same Bembo cautions a friend against reading
the Epistles of St. Paul, " lest his taste should be cor-
rupted." Of the works of Macchiavelli, the foremost
writer of the times, sa3^s Macaulay, " Such a display
of wickedness — naked yet not ashamed — such cool,
judicious, scientific atrocity, seem rather to belong to
a fiend than to the most depraved of men." Yet the

76 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

highest honors of his age were heaped upon him, and
at the first courts of Italy his atrocious sentiments
evoked no condemnation, but rather the warmest
approval.

The city of Florence was, not even excepting Rome,
the chief seat of the Renaissance revival in Italy. It
was the very focus of art, of literature, of commerce.
Its revenue, sa3^s Macaulay, was greater than that
which both England and Ireland yielded to Elizabeth.
Its cloth manufactures employed thirty thousand
workmen. Eighty banks transacted its business and
that of Europe, on a scale that might surprise " even
the contemporaries of the Barings and the Roths-
childs."

" Every place," continues the brilliant essayist, " to
which the merchant princes of Florence extended
their gigantic traffic, from the bazaars of the Tigris
to the monasteries of the Clyde, was ransacked for
medals and manuscripts. Architecture, painting and
sculpture were munificently encouraged. We can
hardly persuade ourselves that we are reading of
times in wliich the annals of England and France
present us only with a frightful spectacle of poverty,
barbarity and ignorance. From the oppressions of
illiterate masters and the sufferings of a brutalized
peasantr}^ it is delightful to turn to the opulent and
enlightened States of Italy — to the vast and magnifi-
cent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas, the
museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every
article of comfort and luxury, the manufactories
swarming with artisans, the Apennines covered with

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 77

rich cultivation to their very summits, the Po waft-
ing the harvests of Lombardy to the granaries of
Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and
the furs af Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With
peculiar pleasure every cultivated mind must repose
on the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence. . . ,
But, alas ! for the beautiful city. A time was at hand
when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to be
poured forth and shaken out over those pleasant
countries — a time for slaughter, famine, beggary,
infamy, slavery, despair."

A characteristic of Florence has ever been her pas-
sionate love of liberty. On her arms for six hundred
years has been inscribed the glorious word " Libertas."
When other cities crouched beneath the heel of
tyrants she flourished as a free Republic. At length
the princely house of the Medici obtained a sway
which was really that of a monarch. The ostenta-
tious prodigality of Lorenzo the Magnificent, at once
beguiled Florence of her liberty, corrupted her virtue,
and hastened the calamities by which she was over-
whelmed.

At this time, and on such a stage, God called
Savonarola to play his brief but heroic part. The
grandest soul of the fifteenth century animated his
frail body. He beheld with dismay the corruptions of
the times. He foretold the outpouring of the vials of
wrath upon the land. He sought to set up Christ's
throne in the earth. Like John the Baptist, he was
a voice crying, " Repent ye, for tlie kingdom of
heaven is at hand." Like John the Baptist, he fell
a martyr to the truth which he proclaimed.

78 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

Savonarola was the scion of a noble family of
Padua, but he was born at the ancient city of
Ferrara, whose mouldering palaces and deserted
streets still speak of its former opulence and splen-
dor. He derived much of liis heroic character from
his brave-souled mother, who recalls the noble women
of the early days of Rome. To her unfaltering faith
his heart turned ever for support and inspiration
even in his sternest trials and his darkest hour. He
had been educated for the profession of medicine, but
the deeper misery of the world's moral maladies were
to demand his sympathy and succor, rather than its
physical ills.

He felt in his soul a call of God to devote himself
to a religious life, and he fled from a world lying in
wickedness to the cloistered seclusion of the Domini-
can Monastery of Bologna. Here he performed the
humblest duties of the convent, toiling in the garden,
or repairing the garments of the monks. " Make me
as one of thy hired servants," was the cry of his
world-weary heart as he sought refuge in the quiet
of God's house. At the same time, he devoted every
hour of leisure to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas,
the Angelical Doctor, to those of St. Augustine, and
above all, to the study of the Word of God. He was
much given to prayer and fasting, to perplexed and
often tearful thought. Like all great souls he nour-
ished his spiritual strength by solitary communings
with God, and wrestling with the great problems of
duty and destiny. In two poems of this period, " De
Ruina Mundi " and " De Ruina Ecclesise," he mourns
over the moral ruin of the \70rld and of the Church,

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80 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

In his soul there rankled, too, the deep and tender
wound of disappointed affection. In his youth he had
loved, with all the passionate ardor of his nature, a
daughter of the princely House of Strozzi. But the
impaired fortunes of his family caused the rejection of
his suit — it is said with scorn — by the proud patrician.

The zealous neophyte was greatly grieved at the
ignorance and worldliness of the monks. But he
found congenial employment in teaching them the
principles of philosophy, and in expounding the
Scriptures. His first attempt at public teaching, by
which he was afterwards to sway so wonderfully the
hearts of men, were very disheartening. In his native
town of Ferrara he could not get a hearing, and he
somewhat bitterly remarked, " A prophet has no
honor in his own country." Even in Florence his
first audience never exceeded twenty-five persons, col-
lected in the corner of a vast church. " I could not,"
he said, " so much as move a chicken."

But " the Word of God was as a fire in his bones,"
and could not be restrained. On his removal to the
convent of San Marco he besought the prayers of the
brethren and essayed to preach. He began a course
of sermons on the Book of Revelation " and applied,"
says his biographer, " with tremendous force the
imagery of John's vision to the condition and pros-
pects of Italy. With a voice that rolled like thunder
or pierced w^ith the wild and mournful anguish of the
loosened winds, he denounced the iniquities of the
time, and foretold the tribulations that were at hand."

Soon, so rapidly his audience grew, he had to leave

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 81

the chapel and preach in the open cloisters, " standing
beneath a damask rose tree," to the multitudes who
thronged to hear. To this day the place is pointed
out, and a damask rose still marks the spot. He had
found at length his work, and for the remaining
eight years of his life his voice was the most potent in
Italy.

The burden of his preaching, he tells us, were these
three propositions : " That the Church of God would
be renovated in the then present time ; that fearful
judgments would precede that renovation ; and that
these thing would come soon." With the anointed
vision of the seer, discerning wisely the signs of the
times, he exhorted men to repentance from sin and
reformation of life.

Soon the convent of San Marco became too small to
hold the crowd of eager listeners, and the great Duomo
became thenceforth the theatre of the eloquence of
the preaching friar. The pale face and deep dark
eyes gazed around on the assembly, and the awe-
inspiring voice hlled the mighty dome. Before him
were gathered the types of the many-colored life of
Florence, " Politicians who only thought of how they
could best promote the advantage of their country or
themselves ; courtiers who spent their life in frivolity
and gilded sin, and like resplendent moths fluttered
about the light that consumed them ; philosophers
who made Aristotle or Plato their study and guide ;
artists who, having caught the Renaissance spirit,
were more heathen than Christian in their conceptions
and aims; merchants, too, and tradesmen, and artisans,
6

82 BEACON LIGHTS OP^ THE REFORMATION.

and laborers, and country peasants — all flocked to hear
the eloquent and mysterious friar, and all heard some-
thing which, in spite of themselves, cut deep into their
heart and conscience.

" At times a simultaneous and universal sob would
rise audibly from the breasts of his multitudinous
hearers. At other times tears would appear in all
eyes, moistening the driest and flowing freely from
the sensitive and tender. Yet, again, there were
moments when a manifestation of horror ran through
the whole assembly. And not seldom, when men and
women, of all conditions, left the cathedral after some
overwhelming display of holy passion, whether of in-
dignation or of sorrow and pity, there was a silence
amongst them all, utter and solemn, which told, more
than words could do, of the profound impression the
faithful preacher had made."

The preaching of the bold monk proved very dis-
tasteful to the princely Lorenzo de Medici, by whom
he had been promoted to the dignity of prior of San
Marco. He, therefore, after attempting in vain to
bribe him with gifts, sent a message threatening
banishment from the city unless he learned more
courtly ways. " Tell Lorenzo, from me," was the in-
trepid answer, " that though he is the first in the State,
and I a foreigner and a poor brother, it will, never-
theless, happen that I shall remain after he is gone."

These words were afterwards called to mind as the
greatest of the Medici lay upon his deathbed. In that
solemn hour the dying prince sent for the only man
in Florence who had dared to cross his will. The

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 83

faithful preacher urged, as the condition of Divine
pardon, reparation for deeds of oppression and the
restoration of the usurped liberties of Florence. But
the ruling passion was strong in death, and the prince
passed to the tribunal of the skies without the priestly
absolution that he craved.

The succeeding prince, Pietro de Medici, was no less
a tyrant than his sire. But the pulpit of Savonarola
continued to be the ruling power in Florence. The
bold monk was therefore banished to Bologna, where
he ceased not to proclaim the judgments of God. At
length he returned, on foot, with nothing but his
staff' and wallet, to the destined scene of his brief
triumph and glorious martyrdom.

Foreseeing the evils that threatened the State, he
saw, or thought he saw, in the smiling heavens, the
vision of a sword bearing the words " Gladius Domini
super terram cito et velociter " — " The sword of the
Lord on the earth, swiftly and soon." That sword
proved to be the French king, Charles VIIL, who,
with a powerful army, subdued the peninsula as far
as Naples. As the tread of armies drew near, again
the prophetic voice of Savonarola was heard in the
great Duomo, proclaiming the judgments of God in
tones which come across the ages and move our souls
to-day. His text was, " Behold I, even I, do bring a
flood of waters upon the earth."

" Behold," he said, " the cup of your iniquity is full.
Behold the thunder of the Lord is gathering, and it
shall fall and break the cup, and your iniquity, which
seems to you as pleasant wine, shall be poured out

84 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE ftEFORMATlOK.

upon you, and shall be as molten lead. And you, O
priests, who say, ' Ha ! ha ! there is no Presence in
the sanctuary — the Shechinah is naught — the Mercy-
seat is bare ; we may sin behind the veil and who
will punish us ? ' To you I say, The presence of God
shall be revealed in his temple as a consuming fire,
and your sacred garments shall become a winding
sheet of flame, and for sweet music there shall be
shrieks and hissing, and for soft couches there shall
be thorns, and for the breath of wantons shall come
the pestilence ; for God will no longer endure the
pollution of his sanctuary ; he will thoroughly purge
his Church.

" Ye say in your hearts, ' God lives afar off*, and
his word is a parchment written by dead men, and
he deals not as in the days of old.' But I cry again
in your ears, God is near, and not afar off"; his judg-
ments change not ; he is the God of armies. The
strong men who go up to battle are his ministers,
even as the storm and fire and pestilence. He drives
them by the breath of his angels, and they come
upon the chosen land which has forsaken the cove-
nant. And thou, 0 Italy, art the chosen land : has
not God placed his sanctuary in thee, and thou hast
polluted it ? Behold the ministers of his wrath are
upon thee — they are at thy very doors.

" Yet there is a pause. There is a stillness before
the storm. Lo ! there is blackness above, but not a
leaf quakes. The winds are stayed that the voice of
God's warning may be heard. Hear it now, O
Florence, chosen city in the chosen land ! Repent and

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 85

forsake evil ; do justice ; love mercy ; put away all
uncleanness from among you, and then the pestilence
shall not enter, and the sword shall pass over you and
leave you unhurt.

" For the sword is hanging from the sky ; it is
quivering ; it is about to fall ! The sword of God
upon the earth, swift and sudden ! Is there not a
king with his army at the gates ? Does not the earth
shake with the tread of the horses and the wheels of
the swift cannon ? Is there not a fierce multitude
that can lay bare the land as with a sharp razor ?
God shall guide them as the hand guides a sharp
sickle, and the joints of the wicked shall melt before
him ; and they shall be mown down as stubble.

" But thou, O Florence, take the offered mercy.
See ! the cross is held out to you ; come and be healed.
Wash yourselves from the black pitch of your vices,
which have made you even as the heathen ; put away
the envy and hatred which have made your city even
as a lair of wolves. And then shall no harm happen
to you ; and the passage of armies shall be to you as
the flight of birds ; and famine and pestilence shall
be far from your gates, and you shall be as a beacon
among the nations.

" Listen, O people ! over whom my heart yearns as
the heart of a mother over the children she has
travailed for ! God is my witness that, but for your
sakes, I would willingly live as a turtle in the depths
of the forest, singing low to my Beloved, who is mine
and T am his. For you I toil, for you 1 languish, for
you my nights are spent in watching, and my soul

86 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

melteth away for very heaviness. O Lord, thou
knowest I am willing, I am ready. Take me, stretch
me on thy cross ; let the wicked who delight in
blood, and rob the poor, and defile the temple of their
bodies, and harden themselves against thy mercy —
let them wag their heads and shoot out the lip at
me ; let the thorns press upon my brow, and let my
sweat be anguish — I desire to be like thee in thy great
love. But let me see the fruit of my travail ; let this
people be saved ! Let me see them clothed in purity ;
let me hear their voices rise in concord as the voices of
angels ; let them see no wisdom but thy eternal law,
no beauty but in holiness. Then shall they lead the
way before the nations, and the people from the four
winds shall follow them, and be gathered into the
fold of the saved. Come, 0 blessed promise ! And
behold I am willing — lay me on the altar ; let my
blood flow and the fire consume me ; but let my
witness be remembered among men, that iniquity
may not prosper forever."

Nor were the labors of Savonarola for the welfare
of Florence confined to the pulpit of the Duomo. He
went forth alone and on foot as embassy to the
invader, Charles VIII. In the spirit of Elijah rebuk-
ing Ahab, he boldly admonished him. "Most Christian
King," he began, " thou art an instrument in the
Lord's hand, who sends thee to assuage the miseries
of Italy (as I have foretold for many years past), and
lays on thee the duty of reforming the Church which
lies prostrate in the dust. But if thou failest to be
just and merciful ; if thou dost not show respect to

88 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

the city of Florence, to its women, its citizens, its
liberty ; if thou forgettest the work for which the
Lord sends thee ; he will then choose another to per-
form it, and will in anger let his hand fall heavily
upon thee, and will punish thee with dreadful
scourges. These things I say to thee in the name
of the Lord."

Once again " a poor wise man by his wisdom de-
livered a city " besieged by its enemies. The humble
monk was a stronger defence of Florence than its
walls and moats and armaments. Its ruler, Pietro de
Medici, fled in the hour of peril, and, in the disguise
of a lackey, sought an asylum in Venice. His palace
was sacked and his treasures of art scattered by the
fickle mob, whom only the influence of Savonarola
could call back to order.

The French armies entered the city as allies instead
of as enemies. Their long stay, however, wore out
their welcome. Charles submitted an ultimatum
which Capponi, the tribune of the people, refused to ac-
cept. " Then we will sound our trumpets," exclaimed
the irritated king, threatening force. " And we," cried
the patriot tribune, rending the parchment in pieces,
" we will ring our bells." And the old cow, as the
Florentines called the great bell in the tower of the
Palazzo Vecchio, began to low,* its deep reverbera-
tions sounding like a tocsin over the city, where every
house would become a fortress, and every citizen a
soldier for the defence of its ancient rights.

*" La vacca muglia" was the phr-ase for the ringing of this great
bell, whose deep-toned notes still boom from its lofty tower.

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 89

Again Savonarola became the champion of liberty.
Again he bearded the lion in his lair, and in the name
of God commanded the invader to depart. And
again the king of France obeyed the words of the
preaching friar.

Pietro had fled, Charles had retired, and Florence
was free to adopt a new constitution. Again all eyes
were turned toward Savonarola, as the noblest mind
and most potent will in Italy. And he shrank not
from the task. He longed to see Christ's kingdom
established in the earth — a kingdom of truth and
righteousness, with God as its supreme ruler and
law-giver.

"Your reform," he said, "must begin with things
spiritual, which are superior to all that are material,
which constitute the rule of life, and are life itself ;
and all that is temporal ought to be subservient to
morals and to religion on which it depends. If you
wish to have a good government it must be derived
from God. I certainly would not concern myself with
the aiiairs of state were it not for that end."

A Great Council — a council of eighty and a court
of eight magistrates — was therefore appointed to ad-
minister the affairs of the city, on the model of the
ancient Republic of Venice. Taxation was equalized,
and a right of appeal secured to the Great Council of
the people. Yet the prior of San Marco souglit no
personal power. " He was never to be seen in the
meetings in the Piazza," writes his contemporary,
Vellari, " nor at the sittings of the Signoria ; but he
became the very soul of the whole people, and th^

90 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

chief author of all the laws by which the new
government was constituted." From his bare and
solitary cell his spirit ruled the souls of men by the
right divine of truth and righteousness.

" The authority of Savonarola," writes an un-
friendly critic,* " was now at its highest. Instead of
a republic, Florence assumed the appearance of a
theocracy, of which Savonarola was the prophet, the
legislator and the judge." A coin of this period is
still extant, bearing a cross and the legend, "Jesus
Christum Kex Noster " — " Jesus Christ, our King; "
and over the portal of the civic palace was placed
the inscription, "Jesus Christus Rex Florentini

POPULI."

The great object of Savonarola's life was the estab-
lishment of Christ's kingdom in the earth, and the
bringing into conformity thereto of all the institutions
of this world. He began with his own convent of
San Marco, putting away all luxuries of food, cloth-
ing, costly ecclesiastical furniture and vestments.
He enforced secular diligence among the monks, and
assigned to the more gifted regular preaching duties.
Hebrew, Greek and the Oriental languages were sedu-
lously taught, and San Marco became a famous school
of the prophets and propaganda of the Christian faith
in foreign parts.

Yet the prior's rule was not stern, but kindly and
gentle. He carefully cultivated the hearts and intel-
lect of the youthful novices, and sought the inspira-
tion and refreshment of their company. With a true

* Roscoe, " Ljife of Leo X.," p. 346.

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 91

philosophy he used to say, " If you wish me to preach
well, allow me time to talk to my young people, for
God often speaks by these innocent j^ouths, as by
pure vessels full of the Holy Ghost."

Numbers of young enthusiasts sought to become
the disciples of this ruler of men. But the wise prior
strongly discouraged the rash assumption of irre-
vocable vows. A gilded youth of the aristocracy of
Florence was induced to hear the great preacher. At
first he listened with scarce concealed contempt. But
the spell of that mighty spirit seized his heart, and
he was soon at the convent gate begging admission to
its cloistered solitude. Savonarola bade him prove
the strength of his convictions by a Christian life
amid the temptations of the world. He endured the
trial, and again sought the privilege of becoming a
monk. The prior sent him back to nurse the sick
and bury the dead. A month later he was permitted
to assume the cowl and enter what was, in fact, the
Christian ministry of the day. Fra Benedetto — such
was his conventual name — in his memorials of his
master, has recorded the loving care with which
Savonarola, after sending him back to the conflicts
of life, never lost sight of him ; but often invited him
to his cell for solemn conversation on the duties and
rewards of a religious life.

The moral reformation of the people was the great
object of Savonarola's preaching and prayer. And
seldom, if ever, has such a general reformation ensued.
His biographer tlms records the result: "The whole
city was stirred to its depths. What may be called a

92 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

revival of religious interest swept through all classes,
and an almost universal desire was manifested for a
reformation of life. The churches were filled with
devout worshippers. The spirit of prayer entered
families. Women exchanged a richly adorned and
often meretricious mode of dress for one of modest sim-
plicity. The young men, instead of flaunting their
folly before the eyes of the citizens, now gave them-
selves up to religious and benevolent works. Artisans
and others of their rank, might be seen reading the
Bible or some religious work during the interval
allowed for the midday meal. Men in business were
found making restitution, even to large amounts, for
gains which they had unjustly gotten. Gaming
houses and drinking saloons were deserted. Theatres
and masquerades were closed. Impure books and
pictures in vast numbers were publicly burned. Evil
practices and sports were discontinued. Crime was
diminished. Luxury was at an end. Obscenity was
banished. ' Wonderful thing,' exclaims an Italian
writer, ' that in a moment such a change of customs
should take place.' "

A pernicious carnival custom of long standing was
an obstacle to the completeness of this reform. The
youths of the city had been wont, in masquerade cos.
tumes, to levy contributions on the citizens to be
spent in convival excesses around great bonfires in
the public squares. Savonarola sought to turn this
enthusiasm into a pious channel. He oi'ganized the
youths into companies, and dressed in symbolic white
and crowned with laurel, they sang soft Tuscan

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 93

hymns and begged alms, not for themselves but for
the poor.

A new sort of bonfire, too, was substituted for those
of previous carnivals — a " bonfire of vanities." In
this theocratic community there was no longer need
for the masks and masquerades of folly, for the
implements of gaming and wickedness. Troops of
white-robed and impulsive young inquisitors, there-
fore, went from house to house asking for " vanities,"
whose proper place was the fire; and stopping the
gaily bedizened holiday-makers in the street and
exhortins: them, for their soul's health, to make a
burnt sacrifice of the "Anathema" — the unseemly
fineries upon their persons.

The annals of the time record many a serio-comic
scenes as these mischief-loving young Florentines
sought out the abode of some forlorn spinster or
ancient dandy, and brought to light the dyes and
perfumes and rouge pots, the wigs, and masks and
frippery with which they in vain attempted to con-
ceal the ravages of age. The artist's studio gave up
every picture that could raise a blush upon the cheek
of innocence, and the vice-suggesting writings of
Ovid, Boccaccio and Pulci were heaped upon the
growing pile. The heart of the city seemed moved
by a common impulse to this moral purgation, as
when at Ephesus, under the preaching of Paul four-
teen centuries before, "many of them which used
curious arts brought their books together and burned
them before all men. And they counted the price of
them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver."

94 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

In the Piazza della Signoria, a pyramid of " vani-
ties " was collected, sixty feet high and eighty yards
in circuit. After morning coinmunion, a long proces-
sion wound from the Duomo to the Piazza. Tlie
white-robed children lined the square, and their pure
clear voices chanted the " lauds " and carols written
for the day. Then the torch was applied ; the flames
leaped and writlied and revelled amid the things of
folly and shame ; the trumpets blared, and the clang-
orous bells filled the air with peals of triumph and joy.

" Florence," says a historian of the event, " was
like a city burning its idols, and with solemn cere-
mony vowing fidelity in all the future to the worship
of the one true God. One more offering up of ' vani-
ties ' by fire took place in the following year. Then
followed a burning of a different sort on the same
spot, in which the person of Savonarola furnished
food for the flame and excitement for the populace ;
which burning ended the grand Florentine drama of
the flfteenth century."

Already the clouds were gathering which were to
shroud in an eclipse of woe the glories of that aus-
picious day. There were many in the once gay and
luxurious Florence who were not in harmony with
the high moral tone to which society was keyed.
There were also secret agents and friends of the fugi-
tive Medici. These combined against the Frateschi,
or followers of Savonarola, and chief supporters of
the republic. A conspiracy for the restoration of
Pietro was detected. Five of its leaders were tried
and found guilty, and suffered the inevitable penalty

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 95

in that age of liioh treason. Savonarola was averse
to their execution, would have preferred their exile,
but was overruled by what were deemed necessities
of state.

Under the civil disturbances, trade languished and
idleness and poverty prevailed. Then famine and
pestilence followed — the mysterious Black Death of
the middle ages — and the sick, the dying and the
dead were in every street and square. Savonarola
remained at his post — although the plague entered
the monastery — and became the chief succor of the
terror-stricken community.

But the chief enemy of the intrepid friar was that
" Nero of the Papacy," the infamous Borgia, Alex-
ander VI. The Pope sent first a flattering invitation
to " his much-beloved son, the most zealous of all the
laborers in the Lord's vineyard," inviting him to
Rome — in order to deprive Florence of his wise coun-
cils. Savonarola respectfully declined the invitation,
urging his broken health and the need of his services
to the new government. Then the tiger claws which
stroked so smoothly in their silken sheath were
shown ; and " Girolamo Savonarola, a teacher of here-
tical doctrine," was s-ummoned under heav}'- penalties
to the presence of the sovereign pontiff. The prior of
San Marco refused to leave his post ; when the en-
raged Pope, dreading the power of his eloquence, pro-
hibited his preaching.

For a time Savonarola yielded obedience, but the
sweet constraint of the Gospel compelled him to pro-
claim its truths. '• Without preaching," he exclaimed,

96 BEACON LIGHTS OP THE REFORMATION.

" I cannot live." His Lenten sermons, as his voice
rang once more through the Duomo, fell with strange
power on the hearts of men. Their fame rang
through Europe, and even the Sultan of Turkey had
them translated, that he might understand the con-
troversy that was shaking Christendom. But through
them all there ran an undertone of sadness, and
prescience of his impending dooni. He felt that he
was engaged in a conflict, the only end of which for
him was death. " Do you ask me," he said, " what
the end of the war will be ? I answer that in general
it will be victory, but thnt, individually, I shall die
and be cut to pieces. But that will only give a wider
circulation to my doctrine, which is not from me, but
from God. I am only an instrument in his hand,
and am resolved, therefore, to fight to the last."

The Pope, thinking every nature as venal as his
own, now tried the eftocts of bribery, and offered the
preaching friar a princedom in the Church and a car-
dinal's hat if he would only cease from "prophesying."
" Come to my sermon to-morrow," said the monk to
the ambassador, " and you shall have my answer."
In the presence of a vast assembly in the Duomo,
Savonarola, with burning words, refused the glitter-
ing bribe. " I will have no other crimson hat," he
exclaimed, with a foreboding of his coming doom,
" than that of martyrdom, crimsoned with my own
blood."

When the bold defiance was reported to the Pope,
for a moment conscience-stricken at the spectacle of
such heroic virtue, he exclaimed, " This must be a true

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 97

servant of God." But the strong vindictive passions
soon awoke again. The terrors of the major excom-
munication were launched against his victim, and all
men were commanded to hold him as one accursed.
The Cardinal of Siena, afterwards Pope Julius II.,
sent a secret message to the persecuted friar, offering
to have the ban removed for the sum of five thousand
crowns. " To buy off the Pope's curse," was the
defiant answer, " were a greater disgrace than to
bear it."

The commission of an awful crime in his family
again stung the guilty conscience of the Borgia to a
brief remorse. The dead body of his son, the Duke
of Gandia, was found floating in the Tiber, pierced
with many stabs, and the crime was traced to his
brother Caesar, a cardinal of the Church. The fratri-
cide smote the world with horror ; and Savonarola
wrote the wretched pontiff a letter of pious counsel
and condolence. But the tide of worldliness soon
swept again over that sordid nature. The resources
of the Church were lavished on the murderer, and
the man of God w^as persecuted with still more bitter
malignity.

Savonai-ola's last Lenten sermons seemed burdened
with a I'oreknowledge of his near-approaching fate.
They were more intensely earnest than ever, like the
words of a dying man, to whom the verities of the
unseen were already laid bare. The light of his eye
was undimmed, and the eloquent voice still thrilled as
of yore the hearts of the multitude who thronged the
Duomo. But the frail body was wasted almost to
7

08 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

emaciation. An inward fire seemed to consume his
frame. So intense were the emotions excited, that
the shorthand reporter of his sermons narrates, " such
was the anguish and weeping that came over him,
that he was obliged to stop recording his notes."

The anathema of the Pope, at which conquering
monarchs have turned pale, lay upon the lone monk,
but his courage quailed not. " A wicked, unbelieving
Pope," he said, " who has gained his seat by bribery,
is not Christ's Vicar. His curses are broken swords ;
he grasps a hilt without a blade. His commands are
contrary to Christian life ; it is lawful to disobey
them— nay, it is not lawful to obey them." And
turning away from the wrath of man to the righteous
tribunal of God, he inly said, like one of old, " Let
tliem curse, but bless thou."

One of his last public acts was a solemn appeal to
Heaven in vindication of his integrity of soul. Tak-
ing in his hand the vessel containing the consecrated
Host, he thus addressed the listening multitude :
" You remember, my children, I besought you, when
I should hold this sacrament in my hand in the face
of you all, to pray fervently to the Most High, that
if this work of mine does not come from him, lie
shall send a fire and consume me, that I may vanish
into the eternal darkness away from his light, which
I have hidden with my falsity. Again I beseech you
to make that prayer, and to make it now."

Then, with wrapt and uplifted countenance, he
prayed, in a voice not loud, but distinctly audible in
the wide stillness :

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 99

" Lord, if I have not wrought sincerity in my soul,
if my word cometh not from thee, smite me in this
moment with thy thunder, and let the tires of thy
wrath consume me."

In the solemn silence of that moment he stood
motionless, when suddenly a beam of golden light,
striking on the pale and furrowed face, lit it up as
with a celestial halo. " Behold the answer," said each
man in his heart and many with their lips. Then,
with the yearning solicitude of a father for his chil-
dren about to be orphaned, the brave-souled monk
stretched out his wasted hand, and, in a voice in
which tears trembled, pronounced the benediction on
the people — " Benedictione perpetua, benedicat vos,
Pater Eternus."

But the curse of Rome was a terror to all weaker
souls than that of the intrepid martyr. The Pope
threatened, unless Savonarola were silenced or im-
prisoned, to lay the whole city of Florence under an
interdict, which should cut it off from all intercourse
with the world, and render its merchants and citizens
liable to the confiscation of their goods. That argu-
ment conquered. The voice through which God
spoke to Europe was soon to be silenced for ever.

A strange event, however, first took place, one
possible only under the high-wrought feelings of the
times. This conflict between the gre^xt prior and
Pope of Rome was felt to be one on which the judg-
ment of Heaven might be invoked. A Franciscan
monk, therefore, challenged Savonarola to walk with
him through the flames, as an ordeal of the rightness

PALAZZO VECCIIIO, FLORENCE.

(In front of this building Savonarola was burned.)

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 101

or wrongness of his teachings. Of this challenge the
prior took no notice. An enthusiastic disciple, how-
ever, Fra Dominico by name, eagerly took up the
gauntlet. Indeed many persons of all ranks, includ-
ing his own sisters and other noble ladies, offered to
undergo the ordeal in vindication of their honored
master. Savonarola at first opposed the strange pro-
ject ; but all Florence clamored for the ordeal, and
he at last consented. Perhaps his high-wrought faith
believed that God would answer by fire as he did at
the prayer of Elijah.

The day appointed for the fiery trial came. All
Florence poured into the great square. After early
communion, the monks of San Marco walked in pro-
cession to the scene of the ordeal, chanting the canticle
— " Exurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici ejus " — "Let
God arise and let his enemies be scattered." But the
Franciscan champion remained within the civic
palace. He evidently had no intention of under-
going the ordeal himself, but wished to throw the
blame of its non-fulfilment on the party of Savona-
rola. He objected first to the crucifix, then to the
cope, then to the gown which Fra Dominico wore.
These were in succession laid aside, when still further
excuses were made. Then a heavy rain drenched the
impatient multitude and rendered the trial impossible.
A confused tumult arose. The enemies of Savona-
rola made a rush to seize his person. His friends
rallied around him, and under their protection he
returned to San Marco. The object of his foes was,
in part at least, secured. His credit with the people

102 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

seemed to be shaken and his honor and integrity
compromised.

Despairing of the reform of the Church by the
Pope, Savonarola had written a letter to Charles
VIII., urging the convocation of a General Council
for that purpose. This letter was intercepted by
fraud and sent to the vindictive Borgia, who there-
upon launched new fulminations against his victim.
These new terrors influenced the magistrates of
Florence to abandon the prior to his impending fate,
and at last to become the instruments of his ruin.

The day after the frustrated ordeal was Palm
Sunday. For the last time Savonarola addressed in
words of cheer and counsel the brethren of San
Marco. As they were assembled for evening prayers,
sounds of tumult were heard without, and soon a mob
of armed men assailed the gates. Some thirty monks
barricaded the doors and fouoht in their lon£ white
robes as bravely for their beloved prior as ever
Knight Templar fought for the tomb of Christ.
" Let me go and give myself up," he said, seeking to
quell the strife. " I am the sole cause of this myself."
" Do not abandon us," they cried. " You will be torn
to pieces, and then what shall become of us ? " Yield-
ing to their entreaties, he summoned them to the
choir that they might seek God in prayer.

Meanwhile the mob set fire to the doors, scaled the
walls and burst into the choir. The civic guards
soon entered and led away, as prisoners, Savonarola
and his brave friend, Fra Dominico. A brutal mob,
made up of the very dregs of the city, clamored for

LOGGIA DKl LANZI, FLOUENCK.
(This lo-Kia fronts the great square, the scene of Savonarola's martyrdom.)

104 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

his blood aud wreaked their ratre upon their un-
resisting victim. He was kicked, smitten, spat upon,
and bitterly reviled. " This is the true light," cried a
low ruffian, as he thrust a flaring torch in his face.
Other vile wretches buffeted him with their fists, and
jeered, like another mob in the presence of another
Victim, " Prophesy who it is that smote thee." But,
like the Master whom he served, who, when he was
buffeted answered not, the patient confessor endured
with meekness the very bitterness of human rage and
hate. He was thrust into prison, and was soon
brought to trial.

On the very day of the ordeal, Charles VIII. died,
and all hope of a general council or of succor for
Savonarola was at an end. The Pope and his craven
creatures had their victim in their power. " During
many days," says the historian of the event, " the
prior was subjected to alternate examination and
torture. He was drawn up from the ground by ropes
knotted round his arms, and then suddenly let down
with a jerk, which wrenched all the muscles of his
sensitive frame. Fire, too, was at times put under
his feet. How often torture was applied to him we
have no means of learning. One witness, Violi, de-
clares that he had seen him, in one day, hoisted by
the rope no fewer than fourteen times ! "

A venal notary, who afterwards suffered for his
crime the remorse of Judas, was bribed to falsify the
confessions wrung from the tortured man by the
thumb-screw and the rack, so as to find ground for
condemnation. But even his enemies have left it on

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 105

record that, " after much and careful questioning,
extending tlirough many days and aided by the tor-
ture, they could extort scarcely anything from him."
In his lonely cell, in the intervals of his torture, the
brave soul turned from the strife of tongues to com-
mune with God. With his mutilated hand he wrote
his meditations, which are still extant, on the 31st
and 51st Psalms. "I shall place my hope on the
Lord," he said, " and before long I shall be set free
from all tribulation."

His doom had long been decreed. Alexander
Borgia had declared that Savonarola should be put to
death even though he were John the Baptist. Sent-
ence of death was therefore pronounced upon him
and on his two devoted friends, Fra Dominico and
Fra Silvestro.

On the morning of May 23rd, 1498, after early
communion in the prison, the destined victims walked
together to the place of doom in the great square of
the ordeal and of tlie " Bonfire of Vanities." The
Pope's commissioner stripped ofi' their gowns and
pronounced the last anathema : " I separate you from
the Churcli militant and triumphant." " Militant,
not triumphant," replied, with a calm, clear voice, the
hero soul of Savonarola — " not triumphant ; that is
beyond your power." A vast mob surged around the
scaffold and the martyr pyre, but he seemed to see
them not. With unfaltering step and with a rapt
smile upon his pale, worn face he went to his death.
His last words were, like those of his Lord and
Master and of the proto-martyi', " Into thy hands,
0 Lord, I commit my spirit."

106 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

His comrades in life and in death with equal
dignity met their fate. They were first hanged till
dead and then burned to ashes. As the torch was
applied, writes the biographer, " from the storied
Piazza, the saddest and most suicidal ' burning ' that
Florence had ever witnessed sent up its flame and
smoke into the bright heaven of that May morning.
On this 2ord day of May, 1498, aged forty-five years,
the greatest man of his day — great on every side of
him, great as a philosopher, a theologian, a statesman,
a reformer of morals and religion, and, greatest of all,
as a true man of God — died in a way which was
worthy of him, a martyr to the truth for which he
had lived."

" Lest the city should be polluted by his remains,"
says a contemporary, " his ashes were carefully
gathered and thrown into the Arno."

In the narrow cell at San Marco, in which Savon-
arola wept and watched and prayed, hangs a con-
temporary painting of this tragic scene, and by its
side a portrait of the martyr monk with his keen
dark eyes, his eagle visage, his pale cheek, and his
patient thought-worn brow. In a case beneath are
his vestments, his crucifix, rosary, Bible and MS.
sermons. As we gaze on these relicts, thought and
emotion overleap the intervening centuries, and we
seem brought into living contact with the hero soul,
who counted not his life dear unto him for the testi-
mony of Jesus.

The ungrateful city which exiled or slew her
greatest sons, Dante and Savonarola, was overtaken by

108 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

a swift Nemesis. Soon the Medici returned in power,
and long ruled with an iron hand. When Rome,
the proud City of the Seven Hills, " that was eternal
named," was besieged, taken and sacked by a foreign
army, the prophetic words of the great prior were
remembered. Florence for a time again drove the
Medician tyrants from power. Again "the Council
elected and proclaimed Christ the King of Florence,
and the famous cry, ' Viva Gesu Christo, Nostro Re/
was once more the watchword of the city." But des-
potism was again installed on the ruins of freedom,
"and for long centuries the light of Florence was
extinguished."

In fitting words a late biographer of the reformer
thus concludes the memorial of his life :

" It seemed like the acting of a piece of historical
justice when, nearly four hundred years after the
martyrdom of the prior, the late King Victor Im-
manuel opened the first parliament of a united Italy
in the city of Florence, and in the venerable hall of
the Consiglio Maggiore. The representative assembly
which gathered in the room of Savonarola's Great
Council, bridged over centuries of darkness and mis-
rule, connecting the aspirations of a hardly-won free-
dom in the present with those of a distant and
glorious past, and secured permanently, let us hope,
for the whole of Italy the precious liberties for which
the Monk of San Marco died.

"The day which Savonarola saw afar off from
amidst the darkness and trouble of the fifteenth
century, and through times of scourging, has now

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 109

dawned. The seed wliich was then and afterwards
sown, and moistened by so much blood, is now ready
for harvest. National unity, constitutional freedom,
and religious equality, are things secured. The Pope
has been deprived of his temporal power. Rome is
the capital of a free and united people, and Italy Is
fast asserting for itself a prominent place among the
nations of Europe."

V.

MARTIN LUTHER.

" In Martin Luther," says the Chevalier Bunsen,
" we have the greatest hero of Christendom since the
days of tlie apostles." He was the foremost actor in
the greatest event of modern times. " For him," says
Carlyle, " the whole world and its history was waiting,
and he was the mighty man whose light was to flame
as a beacon over long centuries and epochs of the
world."

Luther was a child of the people. " I am a
peasant's son," he says, " my father, my grandfather,
and my great-grandfather were thorough peasants —
Rocte Bauern." " He was born poor and brought up
poor ; one of the poorest of men," says Carlyle, " yet,
what were all emperors, popes and potentates in com-
parison ! " He was one of Gods anointed kings and
priests — the kingliest soul of modern times.

In the little village of Eisleben, in Saxony, in the
year 1488, this cliiid of destiny was born. " My
parents," writes the reformer, " were very poor. My
father was a poor wood-cutter, and my mother has
often carried wood U|)on her back that she might pro-
cure the means of bringing up lier children." But,

111

112 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

though poor, his parents soiiglit to make tlieir son a
scholar, and he was sent successively to the schools of
Magdeburg and Eisenach, and to the University of
Erfurt. A stern discipline ruled in the village school.
Luther complains of having been punished fifteen
times in a single morning. So poor was he that,
when pinched with hunger, he used to sing from door
to door the sweet German carols of the time for food.
One day the kind-hearted Ursula Cotta, the wife of
the burgomaster of Ilefeld, took pity on the lad, and
adopted him into her household during his school
days at Eisenach.

At the University of Erfurt Luther was a very
diligent and successful student, becoming familiar
with both classic lore and scholastic philosophy.
The most important event of his college life was his
discovery in the library of the university of an old
Latin Bible — a book which ho had never seen in its
entirety before. "In that Bible," says D'Aubigne,
" the Reformation lay hid."

Two other events also occurred which affected the
whole of his after life. A serious illness brought him
almost to death's door, and his friend and fellow-
student, Alexis, was smitten dead by his side by a
stroke of lightning. The solemn warning spoke to
the heart of Luther like the voice that spoke to Saul
on the way to Damascus. He resolved to give up his
hopes of worldly advancement, and to devote himself
to the service of God alone. He had been trained for
the practice of law, but he entered forthwith an
Augustinian monastery. His scholastic habit gave

114 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

place to a monk's coarse serge dress. The accom-
plished scholar and young doctor of philosophy per-
formed the menial tasks of porter of the monastery,
swept the church, cleaned out the cells, and with his
wallet by his side begged bread for the mendicant
brotherhood from door to door. He also studied with
zeal the scholastic theology, and especially the Word
of God. He sought to mortify his body for the
health of his soul. A little bread and a small herring
were often his daily food, and sometimes he fasted
for four days at a time. The youthful monk was, at
least, terribly in earnest in his self-imposed penance.
Never had Rome a more sincere devotee.

" I tortured myself almost to death," he wrote, " in
order to procure peace with God for my troubled
heart and agitated conscience ; but, surrounded with
thick darkness, I found peace nowhere." The words
of the creed, which he had learned in his childhood,
now brought comfort to his heart : " I believe in the
forgiveness of sins," and that other emancipating
word, " the just shall live by faith." At the end of
two years he was ordained priest. As he received
authority "to offer sacrifice for the living and the
dead," his intense conviction of the real presence of
Christ upon the altar almost overwhelmed his soul.

Luther was now summoned, in the twenty-fifth
year of his age, to the chair of philosophy and theo-
logy in the University at Wittenberg. He devoted
himself with zeal to the study and exposition of the
Word of God. He was also appointed preacher to
the university and town council, and the impassioned
energy of his sermons charmed every heart.

HAUNTS

OF LUTIIEK, AUGUSTINE MONASTERY, ERFURT.

1. Luther's room in Monastery.

2. Entrance to Monastery.

3. Cloisters of Monastery.

4. Monastery Chapel.

116 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

Two or tliree years later lie was sent as the agent
of his order to negotiate certain business with the
Vicar-General at Rome. As he drew near the seven-
hilled city — the mother city of the Catholic faith, the
seat of God's Vicegerents upon earth — he fell upon
his knees, exclaiming, " Holy Rome, I salute thee."
He went the round of the churches. He visited the
sacred places. He said mass at the holiest altars.
He did everything that could be done to procure the
religious benefits which the hallowed sites of Rome
were supposed to impart.

The warlike Julius now sat upon the Papal chair.
The infamous Borgia had Init recently been sum-
moned to his account. The scarce disguised paganism
of the Papal court filled the soul of the Saxon monk
with horror. He tells of wicked priests who, when
celebrating the solemnities of the mass, were wont to
use, instead of the sacred formula, the mocking words,
" Panis es, et panis manebis " — " Bread thou art, and
bread thou shalt remain." " No one," he says again,
" can imagine what sins and infamies are committed
in Rome. If there is a hell, Rome is built over it."

It was a dreadful disenchantment to his soul. He
came to the Eternal City as to the holy of holies on
earth. Ho found it the place where Satan's seat was.
One day, while toiling on his knees up the steps of
Pilate's stairs — the very steps, according to tradition,
trodden by our Lord on the last night of his mortal
life, "than which," says an inscription at the top,
" there is no holier spot on earth " — there flashed once
more through his soul the emancipating words, " The

^t^^L

<7 ///iMi^

HEIDELBERG CASTLE AND THE
RIVER NECKAR.

While on his way to Rome in 1510, and also
in 1518, Luther made a visit to Heidelberf?,
which has so man.y stirring Reformation
memories. In the museum of the castle are
shown \ery interesting memorials of the
great Reformer, including portraits of
Luther and his wife, and the wedding ring
with which he espoused the gentle nun,
Catherine von Bora.

THE LIBRARY TOAVKR.

118 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

Just shall live by faith. ' He rose from his knees.
His soul revolted from the mummeries of Rome.
The Reformation was begun.

Luther returned to his university, his heart full of
grief and indignation at the corruptions of religion
which he had witnessed. But it needed yet another
revelation of Romish fraud to rouse his mighty soul
to arms against the mystery of ini(}uity which had so
long beguiled the minds of men. That revelation was
soon made. The mea.sure of Papal iniquity was filled
up by her shameless traffic in pardons for sins past,
present and to come. Were not the historic evidences
of this wickedness irrefragable, it would be deemed
incredible.

To gain money for the erection of the colossal
church of St. Peter's — one which should eclipse in
splendor and magnificence all the churches of Christ-
endom— Pope Leo X,* sent forth indulgence-mongers
across the Alps to extort alike from prince and peas-
ant, by the sale of licenses to sin, the gold required
for his vain glorious purpose.

One of the most shameless of these indulgence-
sellers, the Dominican monk, John Tetzel, found his
way to the quiet towns and cities of central Ger-
many. In the pomp and state of an archbishop he
traversed the country. Setting up his great red
cross and pulpit in the market-places, he offered his
wares with the effrontery of a mountebank and

* " Of pi'odigal expenditure and magnificent tastes, he would
have been," said a Roman prelate, " a perfect man if he had had
some knowledge of religion."

MARTIN LUTHER. 119

quacksalver, to which he added the most frightful
blasphemies. " This cross," he would say, pointing
to his standard, " has as much efficacy as the very
cross of Christ. There is no sin so great that an
indulgence cannot remit ; only let the sinner pay
well, and all will be forgiven him." Even the
release of souls in purgatory could be purchased
by money. And he souglit to wring the souls of
his hearers by appeals to their human affections.

" Priest ! noble ! merchant ! wife ! youth ! maiden !
Do you not hear your parents and friends who are
dead cry from the bottomless abyss, ' We are suffer-
ing horrible torments ; a trifling alms will save us ;
you can give it, and you will not ? ' "

As the people shuddered at these words, the brazen
imposter went on : " At the very instant that the
money rattles at the bottom of the chest, the soul
escapes from purgatory and flees to heaven."

Increasing in blasphemy, he added, " The Lord our
God no longer reigns. He has resigned all power to
the Pope." Yet, with strange inconse(|uence, he
would appeal to the people to come to the aid of
"poor Leo X., who had not means to shelter the
bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul from the rain and
hail, by which they were dishonored and polluted."

There was a graded price for the pardon of every
sin, past or future, from the most venial to the most
heinous — even those of nameless shame.

The honest soul of Luther was roused to indigna-
tion by these impieties. " If God permit," he said,
"I will make a hole in Tetzel's drum." He denied the

120 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATIOX.

efficacy of the Pope's indulgences, declaring, " Except
ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." But still the
delusion spread. The traffic in licenses to sin throve
amain. The brave reformer took his resolve. He
would protest in the name of God against the flagrant
iniquity.

At noon on the day before the feast of All Saints,
when whoso visited the Wittenberg church was
promised a plenary pardon, he walked boldly up and
nailed upon the door a paper containing the famous
ninety-five theses against the doctrine of indulgences.
The first of these, which gives the keynote of the
whole, read thus : " When our Lord and Master Jesus
Christ says, ' Repent,' he means that the whole life
of believers upon earth should be a constant and
perpetual repentance."

This 31st of October, 1517, was the epoch of the
Reformation. The sounds of the hammer that nailed
this bold protest to the church door echoed through-
out Europe, and shook the Papal throne. Thus was
flung down the gauntlet of defiance to the spiritual
tyranny of Rome,

The theses created a prodigious sensation. " As
nobody was willing to bell the cat," wrote the
reformer, " poor Luther became a famous Doctor
because he ventured to do it. But I did not like this
glory, and the tune was nearly too high for my
voice." " Oh ! " he writes again, " with what anxiety
and labor, with what searching of the Scriptures,
have I justified myself in conscience in standing up
alone against the Pope." Tetzel, of course, attacked

ERFURT.

Erfurt, the capital of
Thuringia, was the abodt
of Luther while attending
the University. It had at
that time more than <i
thousand students, and
was, says Luther, "so
celebrated a seat of learn
ing that others were as
grammar schools com
pared with it." It w.i^
here that Luther found
the old Latin Bible, whii 1
was such a revelation to
his soul. The most doni
inant building is thf <>M

UNIVERSITY, ERFURT.

cathedral datmg from the
thirteenth century. Near
by is the Augustinian
Monastery, now convert-
ed into an orphan- house,
called Martinstift, in hon-
or of the most illustrious
inmate the l)uilding ever
liad. Here is still shown
tlie dingy little room, with
the chair and table which
Luther is said to have
used, and the Bible which
lie studied occupying a
place among the relics of
the great Reformer.

LRFURT DISTANT VIEW

OF TllE CATIIEPKAL.

122 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

the theses with virulence, caused them to be publicly
burned, and declared their author worthy of the same
fate. Luther cogently defended them.

Soon more able opponents than Tetzel appeared
against the reformer — Prierias, the Papal censor;
Dr. Eck, a learned theologian ; and Cajctan, the
Papal legate. But Luther defied them all. " I will
not," he wrote, " become a heretic by denying the
truth ; sooner will I die, be burnt, be banished, be
anathematized. If I am put to death, Christ lives;
Christ my Lord, blessed for evermore. Amen ! " He
was summoned to Rome to meet the charges of heresy
alleged against his teaching, but the venue of the
conference with the Papal legate was changed to
Augsburg, in Germany.

" When all men forsake you," asked the legate,
" where will you take refuge ? "

" Under Heaven — sub ccelo " — said Luther, looking
upward with the eye of faith. " If I had four hun-
dred heads," he said again, in his striking manner,
I would rather lose them all than retract the testi-
mony I have borne to the holy Christian faith.
They may have my body if it be God's will, but my
soul they shall not have."

After ten days spent in profitless disputation,
Luther appealed " from the Pope ill-informed to the
Pope better informed," and then to a general coun-
cil. By the advice of his friends, who feared lest he
should be betrayed into the power of his enemies, he
left Augsburg by night. By the connivance of the
town authorities he escaped through a postern gate

MARTIN LUTHER. 123

in the wall, and rode over forty miles the next day.
His horse, we read, was a hard trotter ; and Luther,
unaccustomed to riding, and worn out with the jour-
ney, was glad to throw himself down on a truss of
straw.

The champion of the Reformed doctrine accepted a
challenge of the famous Dr. Eck, the Chancellor of
Ingoldstadt, to discuss at Leipsic the primacy of the
Pope, the doctrine of purgatory, and other matters in
dispute between the adherents of the Church of
Rome and those of the Reformed faith. The disputa-
tion took place in a public hall of the ducal palace, in
the presence of Duke George. Each disputant had a
rostrum to himself. The hall was crowded with
spectators, who warmly applauded their favorite
champions. The war of words lasted twenty days,
and resulted, as such logomachy generally does, in a
drawn battle, neither party admitting defeat.

Luther startled his opponents by avowing his belief
in certain doctrines of both Huss and WyclifFe, which
had been denounced by the Council of Constance.
" It matters not by whom they were taught or con-
demned," he said, " they are truth."

The breach was widening between the Saxon monk
and the Church of Rome. It was asserted that such
an impious apostate must be in league with the Devil.
Nay, it was affirmed that he carried a devil about
with him, confined in a small box !

Yet it was a violent wrench that tore Luthei- from
the companionship of his old friends. To one of
these, Staupitz, he wrote : " You have abandoned me.

124 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

I have been very sad on your account, as a wearied
child cries after its mother." Yet loyalty to the con-
victions of his conscience demanded the sacrifice of
any earthly tie.

A storm of fanaticism was kindled against the bold
reformer. His doctrines were condemned by the
universities of Cologne and Louvain. The priests of
Meissen even taught publicly that he who should kill
Luther would be without sin.* Such teaching pro-
duced its natural result. One day a stranger, who
held a pistol concealed beneath his cloak, demanded of
him, " Why do you go thus alone T' "I am in God's
hands," said the heroic soul, " what can man do unto
me ? " and the would-be assassin, brought into con-
scious conflict with the Almighty, turned pale and
fled trembling away. ^

Before his final breach with Rome, Luther wrote a|
letter of respectful remonstrance to the Pope, invoking j
him to set about the work of reformation in his cor- .
rupt court and in the Church. With this letter heii
sent a copy of his discourse on " Christian Liberty," <
in which he set forth, in a noble and elevated strain,
" the inwardness of true religion, the marriage of the
soul to Christ through faith in the Word, and the
vital connection of faith and works."

But this remonstrance only hastened his condem-
nation. What the Pope wanted was not arguments,
but submission. The last weapon of Papal tyranny
was now employed. A bull of excommunication was

* Ut sine peccato esse eum censebant qui me interfecerit.
Liitheri Epistola I., 383. Quoted by U'Aubign^, Bk. V., c. 2.

MARTIN LUTHER. 125

launched against the reformer. With symbolical
ceremonial and solemn cursings— with bell, book and
candle — the Saxon monk was cut oli' from Christen-
dom, and incurred the dreadful anathema of the
mitred tyrant of Rome. He was soon to be
arraigned before the mightiest monarch since the
days of Cliarlemagne.

But his intrepid spirit quailed not. " What will
happen," he wrote, " I know not, and I care not to
know. Wherever the blow shall reach me, I fear not.
The leaf of a tree falls not to the ground without the
will of our Father. How much less we ourselves. It
is a little matter to die for the Word, since the Word,
which was made flesh, first died for us."

With grave deliberation — for he felt that the act
was irretrievable — Luther solemnly appealed from the
Pope of Rome to a General Council of the Church.
" I appeal," he wrote " from the said Pope as an un-
just, rash, and tyrannical judge ; as an heretic and
apostate, misled, hardened, and condemned by the
Holy Scriptures ; as an enemy, an Antichrist, an
adversary, an oppressor of Holy Scripture ; and as a
despiser, a calumniator, and blasphemer of the holy
Christian Church."

" The son of the Medici," writes D'Aubigne, " and
the son of the miner of Mansfeldt, have gone down
into the lists ; and in this desperate struggle, which
shakes the world, one does not strike a blow which
the other does not return. Tlie monk of Wittenberg
will do all that the sovereign pontiff' dares do. He
gives judgment for judgment. He raises pile for pile.

SIXTEEXTII-CENTUHY HOUSES, ERFURT.

MARTIN LUTHER. 127

The Pope had burned his books. He would burn the
Pope's bull."

On the 10th of December, therefore; 1520, amid a
great concourse of doctors and students of Witten-
berg, Luther cast upon the blazing pyre the papal
bull, saying, as he did so, " As thou hast vexed the
Holy One of Israel, so may everlasting fire vex and
consume thee."

The breach with Rome was complete. He had de-
clared war unto death. He had broken down the
bridge behind him. Retreat was henceforth impos-
sible. " Hitherto I have been only playing with the
Pope," he said. " I began this work in God's name ;
it will be ended without me and by his might . . .
The Papacy is no longer what it was yesterday. Let
it excommunicate me. Let it slay me. It shall not
check that which is advancing. I burned the bull at
first with trembling, but now I rejoice more at it than
at any other action of my life."

The Pope waged a crusade against Luther and his
doctrines. His books were ordered everywhere to be
burned. The young Emperor, Charles V., gave his
consent to their destruction in his hereditary States.
" Do you imagine," said the friends of the reformer,
" that Luther's doctrines are found only in those books
which you are throwing into the fire ? They are
written where you cannot reach them, in the hearts
of the people. If you will employ force, it must be
that of countless swords unsheathed to massacre a
whole nation."

The German fatherland, with its ancient instincts

128 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

of truth and liberty, responded almost as one man to
the invocation of the miner's son. New students
flocked to Wittenberg every day, and six hundi-ed
youths, the flower of the nation, sat at the reformer's
feet. The churches were not large enough for the
crowds who hung upon his words.

The Papal part}' appealed to Charles V. to crush
the heresy w4iich was springing up in his domin-
ion. But the young emperor was shrewd enough to
perceive that even he dare not so outrage public
sentiment as to condemn Luther unheard. The bold
monk was therefore summoned to appear before a diet
of the empire at Worms, and answer for his contu-
macy. He was ill at the time, but rejoiced in the oppor-
tunity to bear witness to the truth.

" If I cannot go to Worms in health," he said, " I
will be carried there, sick as I am. I cannot doubt
that it is the call of God. He still lives who pre-
served the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace. If he
will not save me, my life is of little consequence."

The young emperor granted a safe-contkict to " the
honorable our well-beloved and pious Doctor Martin
Luther," which was signed in the name of " Charles
the Fifth, by the grace of God, Emperor, always
august, King of Spain, of the Two Sicilies, of Jerusa-
lem, of Hungary, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Bur-
gundy, Count of Hapsburg," etc., etc. Luther, in
feeble health, made his journey to Worms in a
farmer's wagon. At Erfurt, the university pro-
fessors and students came out in a procession to greet
him as the champion of the faith. His progress was

MARTIN LUTHER. l20

like that of a victorious general. The people thronged
to see the man who was going to lay his head at the
feet of the Emperor.

" There are too many bishops and cardinals at
Worms," said some. " They will burn you as they
did John Huss."

" Huss has been burned," replied the intrepid monk,
" but not the truth with him. Though they should
kindle a fire all the way from Worms to Wittenberg,
the flames of which should reach to heaven, I would
walk through it in the name of the Lord — I would
appear before them — I would enter the jaws of this
Behemoth, and break his teeth, confessing the Lord
Jesus Christ."

Even his enemies could not but admire his high
courage and holy zeal. One day, as he entered an
inn, a military officer demanded, " Are you the man
that has undertaken to reform the Papacy ? How can
you hope to succeed ? " " I trust in God iVlmighty,'
replied Luther, " whose word and commandment I
have before me." The officer was touched by his
piety, and responded, " My friend, I am a servant of
Charles, but your Master is greater than mine. He
will aid and preserve you."

The Papal party, true to their doctrine that no
faith is to l)e kept with heretics, endeavored to
invalidate his safe-conduct, and argued that it was
monstrous that a man exconnnunicated by the Pope
should plead before the emperor. Even Luther's
friends feared lest the fate of Huss should be his. As
he approached the city one of them sent him word,
9

'.,-• L

CATHEDRAL OF WORMS.

MARTIN LUTHER, 131

" Do not enter Worms." With a dauntless confidence
in God, the heroic monk replied in the memorable
words, " Though there were as many devils in Worms
as tiles on the housetops, yet will I enter in." *

Luther's entry into Worms was more like a trium-
phal procession than like the citation of a heretic
before an Imperial tribunal. He was preceded by a
herald with trumpet and tabard, and accompanied by
an escort of a hundred knights and gentlemen on horse-
back, and two thousand people on foot, who had come
without the walls to conduct him into the town. The
roofs and windows along the route were crowded
with spectators, who gazed with profoundest interest
upon this champion of the rights of humanity, of the
supremacy above Pope or Kaiser, of the Word of God
and the individual conscience. As Luther, clad in his
monk's frock, stepped from the open waggon in which
he rode, he said, in accents of unfaltering faith, " Deus
stabit pro me " — " God will be my defence."

Till late at night a multitude of counts, barons and
citizens thronged to call upon him. His enemies
meantime were active, and urged the emperor, now
that he had the arch-heretic in his power, to disregard
his safe-conduct and to crush him at once. " Nay,"
said the youthful and ingenuous Charles V., remem-
bering the shameful treachery of his Imperial prede-

* Wenn so viel Teiifel zu Worms waren, als Ziegel auf den
Dachern nocli woUt Icli hiiiein. — Lutheri Opera, quoted by D'Au-
bigiifi. " The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the
17th of April, 1521, "says Carlyle, "may be oonsidored as the
greatest scene in modern Pjuropean history."

132 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

cessor at Constance, a hundred years before, " I do
not wish to bhish hke Sigismund."

The next day Lutlier was summoned before the
diet ; and having commended his soul to God in
prayer, he went undismayed to meet the august con-
clave. So great was the throng in the streets that
he had to be conducted through gardens and private
premises into the great hall of audience. In the ante-
chambers and deep recesses of the windows five
thousand eager spectators were crowded. The no-
blest hearts of Germany stood by him. The brave
old soldier, George of Freundsberg, grizzled with
many years and scarred with many battles, tapjoed
Luther on the shoulder as he passed, and said, " Poor
monk ! poor monk ! thou art going to make a nobler
stand than I or any other captain have ever made in
the bloodiest of our fights ! But if thy cause is just,
and thou art sure of it, go forward in God's name and
fear nothing. God will not forsake thee." The
gallant knight Hutten also on this very day wrote
him : " Dearly beloved Luther, my venerable father !
fear not and stand firm. The counsel of the wicked
has beset you ; but fight valiantly for Christ's cause.
May God preserve you ! "

The Saxon monk stood now before the Imperial
diet. Never had man stood before a more august
assembly. On his throne sat Charles V., sovereign of
a great part of the old world and the new. Around
him sat six royal electors, twenty-four grand dukes,
eight margraves, thirty bishops and abbots, and a
crowd of princes and counts of the empire. Papal

THE LUTHER HOUSE, EISENACH.

134 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

nuncios, and foreign ambassadors. There, in his
monk's frock, stood the man on whom had fallen the
curse and interdict of Rome, summoned to defend
himself against the Papacy, before all that was most
exalted and august in Christendom.

" Some of the princes," writes D'Aubigne, " when
they saw the emotion of this son of the lowly miner
of Mansfeldt in the presence of this assembly of
kings, approached him kindly, and one of them said
to him, " Fear not them which kill the body, but are
not able to kill the soul." Another added : " When
ye shall be brought before governors and kings for
my sake, the Spirit of your Father shall speak in
you." Thus w^as the reformer comforted with his
Master's Word by the princes of this world."

The arraignment and defence were repeated in both
Latin and German. " Martin Luther," said the Chan-
cellor in a loud, clear voice, " his sacred and invincible
Imperial Majesty has cited you before his throne in
accordance with the advice and counsel of the Holy
Roman Empire, to require you to answer two ques-
tions: First, Do you acknowledge these books to
have been written by you ? " and he pointed to a pile
of twenty volumes on a table: "and secondly, Are
you prepared to retract these books and their con-
tents, or do you persist in the opinions you have
advanced in them ? "

" Let the titles of the books be read," said Luther's
counsel. This having been done, Luther replied :
" Most Gracious Emperor, gracious princes and lords !
I acknowledge as mine the books that have just been

MARTIN LUTHER. 135

named ; I cannot deny them. As to the second ques-
tion, seeing that it concerns faith and the salvation
of souls, and in which the Word of God, the greatest
and most precious treasure either in heaven or earth,
is interested, I should act irapi'udently were I to reply
without reflection. I might affirm less than the
circumstance demands, or more than truth requires,
and so sin against this saying of Christ : ' Whosoever
will deny me before men, him will I also deny before
my Father which is in heaven.' For this reason I
entreat your Imperial Majesty, with all humility, to
allow me time, that I may answer without offending
against the Word of God."

A respite of four-and-twenty hours was granted,
and the diet adjourned. Luther had restrained his
natural impetuosity, but no fear of consequences
shook his soul. That night he wrote to a friend :
" With Christ's help, I shall never retract a tittle of
my works." Still he felt that the crisis of his life
was at hand. In the agony of his soul on that night
of prayer, as if groping in the darkness for the sus-
taining hand of God, were wrung forth the following
pleading cries, which, overheard by a friend of the
reformer, were left on record as one of the most
precious documents of histoiy :

" My last hour is come ; my condemnation is pro-
nounced. O God, do thou help me against all the
wisdom of this world. O God, hearest thou me not ?
0 God, art thou dead ? Nay, thou canst not die.
Thou hidest thyself only. Act then, 0 God. Stand
by my side. Lord, where stayest thou ? I am ready

iiiff castles of
G e r m a n \
founded 1070.
Here, accordiiigf to tra-
dition, took place in
1207 the famous Siin-
gerkrieg, or contest
between the Minne-
sanger, or rival min-
strels of the Father-
land. Here dwelt the
lovely St. Elizabeth of
Hungary, wife of Lud-
wig the Clement, Land-
grave of Thuringia.
She ended her short
life of devotion and
trial at the age of
twenty-four, A.D. 1231.
The most potent mem-
ories, however, are
those of the great
Reformer as described
in our text. The cut
on page 145 shows the
interior of the Luther
Chamber.

THE CASTLE OF THE WARTBURG.

MARTIN LUTHER. 137

to lay down my life for thy truth. Though the
world should be filled with devils, though my body
should be slain, be cut to pieces, be burned to ashes,
my soul is thine. I shall abide with thee forever.
Amen ! O God, help me. Amen." These wrestlings
of his soul in the hour of his Gethsemane are the key
of the Reformation. Luther laid hold upon the very
throne of God, and was enbraved with more than
mortal might.

The next day Luther was again arraigned before
the crowded diet. He modestly requested that if,
through ignorance, he should violate the proprieties
of the august presence, he might be pardoned, for he
had not been brought up in the palaces of kings, but
in an obscure convent. " If I have spoken evil," he
said, quoting the words of our Lord, " bear witness of
the evil. As soon as I am convinced I will retract
every error, and be the first to lay hold upon my
books and throw them into the fire." " But," he went
on, in his grand loyalty to truth, " unless I am con-
vinced by the testimony of Scripture, I cannot and
will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to
speak against his conscience." Then looking round
upon that great assembly of the might and majesty
of Christendom, he uttered the immortal words :
" Hier stehe Ich. Icli kann nicht anders, Gott helfe
mir" — " Here I take my stand ; I can do no other;
God help me. Amen." " It is," says Carlyle, " the
greatest moment in the modern history of men." The
heroic scene is commemorated in the grand Luther
Monument erected near the place where these words
were uttered.

138 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

" This monk speaks with an intrepid heart and
unshaken courage," said the Emperor, Some of
Luther's friends began to tremble for his fate, but
with unfaltering faith he repeated, " May God be my
helper, for I can retract nothing."

The Papal party, fearing the effect of Luther's
dauntless daring, redouV)led their efforts with the
emperor to procure his condemnation. In this they
were successful. The next day Charles V. caused sen-
tence to be pronounced against the reformer. " A
single monk," he said, " misled by his own folly, has
risen against the faith of Christendom. To stay such
impiety I will sacrifice my kingdoms, my treasures,
my friends, my body, my blood, my soul and my life.
I am about to dismiss the Augustine Luther, forbidding
him to cause the least disorder among the people ; I
shall then proceed against him and his adherents as
contumacious heretics, by exconmiunication, by inter-
dict, and by every means calculated to destroy them."
Luther is further described as not a man, but Satan
himself dressed in a monk's frock, and all men are
admonished, after the expiration of his safe conduct,
not to conceal him, nor to give him food or drink, but
to seize him and deliver him into custody.

But the heart of the nation was on the side of
Luther. There were, it is said, four hundred knights
who would have maintained his safe conduct, and
under their protection he was permitted to depart
from Worms. He visited first the village of his sires
and preached in the little church of Eisenach. As he
was travelling next day, accompanied by two friends,

MARTIN LUTHER.

139

through the Thuringian Forest, five horsemen, masked

and armed, sprang upon them, and before he was

aware, Luther found himself a prisoner in the hands

^v "^^ of those unknown men.

ough devious forest-

TIIE GREAT COURTYARD
OF THE WARTBURG.

ways, adopted to avoid detecti(m or pursuit, he was
conveyed up a mountain slope, and by midnight
reached the lofty and isolated fortress of the Wart-
burg — a place of refuge provided for him by his

140 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

friend, the " wise " Elector of Saxony. He was fur-
nished with a knight's dress and a sword, and directed
to let his hair and beard grow, so that even the
inmates of the castle might not discover who he was.
Indeed, he tells us, he hardly recognized himself.
Here in his mountain eyrie, like John at Patmos, he
remained in hiding till the outburst of the storm of
persecution was overpast.

At first his friends thought that Luther was slain.
But soon, as evidence of his vigorous life and active
labors, a multitude of writings, tracts, pamphlets and
books were sent forth from his mysterious hiding-
place, and were everywhere hailed with enthusiasm.
The bold blows of the imprisoned monk shook the
very throne of the Papacy. Within a year he
published one hundred and eighty-three distinct
treatises. He worked hard, too, at his translation of
the Scriptures into the German tongue, and secure in
his mountain fortress he sang his song of triumph —
" Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." —

" A safe stronghold our God is still —
A trusty shield and weapon."

But he was not without his hours of darkness and
visitations of Satan. His long confinement proved
irksome, and wore upon his spirits and his health.
One day, as in bodily depression he was working at
his desk, at his translation of the Bible, to his
disordered vision appeared an apparition of Satan
in a hideous form, forbidding him to go on with his
sacred task. Seizing his ink horn, the intrepid monk

FIRST COURT OF THE WARTBURG.

142 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

hurled it at the head of the arch-enemy of man, who
instantly disappeared. On the walls of the old castle
of the Wartburg may be seen the ink stains to the
present day.

The progress of the Reformation in Germany
needed the control of a firm hand and wise head
to restrain it from tending toward enthusiasm or vio-
lence. Luther could no longer endure the restraint
of the Wartburg, and after ten months' concealment
he left its sheltering walls. He went boldly to
Wittenberg, though warned of the hostility of Duke
George. " I would go," he wrote, in his vigorous
way, " though it for nine whole days rained Duke
Georges, and each one nine times more furious than
he." Your true reformer must be no coward. Like
John the Baptist, like Luther, Knox or Wesley, he
must boldly face death or danger, counting not his
life dear unto him for the testimony of Jesus.

At Wittenberg, Luther was received by town and
gown with enthusiasu), and preached with boldness
and success alike against the corruptions of Rome
and the doctrinal errors which threatened the nascent
Reformation. Among the many opponents of Luther,
none was more virulent and violent than the royal
polemic, Henry VIIL, King of England. He ordered
the reformer's writings to be burned at St. Paul's
Cross; and in his own "Defence of the Sacraments,"
written, says a historian, " as it were with his scep-
tre," he sought to crush beneath the weight of his
invective the German monk, whom he denounced as
" a wolf of hell, a poisonous viper, a limb of the devil."

INNiiK COURT UK THE WAHTBUKG.

144 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

" Behold," cried the Papal sycophants, " the most
learned work the sun ever saw." "He is a Con-
stantine, a Charlemagne," said others ; " nay, he is
more, he is a second Solomon." Pope Leo averred
that his book could only have been written by the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and bestowed on the
king the title of " Defender of the Faith," which the
sovereisrns of Eng^land have ever since borne.

Luther handled his royal antagonist without gloves.
He was an equal master of invective, and he used it
without stint. He refuted the book in detail, and
concluded with bold defiance : " It is a small matter,"
he said. " that I should revile a king of earth, since
he fears not to blaspheme the King of heaven.
Before the Gospel which I preach must come down
popes, priests, monks, princes, devils. Let these swine
advance and burn me if they dare. Though my ashes
were thrown into a thousand seas, they will arise,
pursue and swallow this abominable herd. Living, I
will be the enemy of tlie Papacy ; burnt, I shall be its
destruction."

We defend not Luther's railing tongue, but it must
be said in apology that it was an age of hard words
and strong blows. The venerable Bishop Fisher
inveighs against Luther as " an old fox, a mad dog,
a ravening wolf, a cruel bear ; " and Sir Thomas
More, Lord Chancellor of England, uses yet more
violent language. But the coarseness of this railing
was partly veiled beneath the stately Latin language
in which it was clothed.

By tongue and pen the new doctrines were every-

146 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

where proclaimed. Despite the burning of Protest-
ant books, they rapidly multiplied. In 1522-23, in
Wittenberg alone, were published eight hundred and
fifty pamphlets and books, of which three hundred
and seventeen were by Luther himself, and many of
them were translated into English, French, Italian and
Spanish. The churches could not contain the multi-
tude who thronged to hear the gospel. At Zwickau,
from the balcony of the rathhaus, or town-hall,
Luther preached to twenty-five thousand persons in
the market-place.

The Reformed doctrines spread rapidly, especially
in Germany and the Low Countries, and soon, at
Antwerp, a whole convent of monks were followers
of Luther. They were imprisoned and condemned to
death. Some escaped, but two — Esch and Voes, the
proto-martyrs of the Reformation — were burned at
the stake at Brussels, July 1, 1523. As the flames
arose around them, Esch said, " I seem to lie upon a
bed of roses." Then both repeated the Creed and
sang the Te Deum, and joined the noble army of
martyrs in the skies. Luther commemorated their
death in a beautiful hymn, and soon in almost every
hamlet in the Netherlands and Germany were sung
the triumphs of the martyrs' faith :

" No ! no ! their ;islies shall not die ;
But, borne to every land,
Where'er their sainted dust shall fall
Upsprings a holy band."

Luther used his utmost influence to repress and
mitigate the unhappy Peasants' War, waged by the

MARTIN LUTHER. 147

fanatical Anabaptists. For this, not the Reformation,
but the cruel land laws and feudal oppression of the
toiling multitudes are to blame. Nevertheless, upon
the unhappy people fell the brunt of the war, and
many thousands were slain.

We now approach an event of great influence on
the social character of the Reformation, and on the
future of the Protestant clergy. Luther had long
asserted the right of a priest to marry ; but for him-
self, he averred, he had no thought of it, for he every
day expected the punishment and death of a heretic.
At length he considered it his duty to bear his testi-
mony in the most emphatic manner against the
Romish " doctrine of devils," forbidding to marry.
He therefore espoused the fair Katharine von Bora, a
lady of noble family, who had for conscience' sake
abandoned the vocation of a nun. It was eight years
after his first breach with Rome. He was then
forty-two years old ; so his reforming zeal cannot be
ascri])ed, as it has been, to his impatient haste for
wedlock.

All Catholic Europe hurled its accusations and
calumnies upon the reformer. But in the solace of
his happy home, and in the society of his "dear and
gracious Ketha" — his "Lord Ketha" or "Doctoress
Luther," as, on account of her native dignity, he
often called her — his spirit, amid his incessant toils
and trials, found a sweet repose. In after years, in
his songs and mirth and frolics with his children, he
forgot the persecution of his enemies. By this bold
act he made once more possible to the ministers of

LUTHER HOUSE, FRANKFORT.

MARTIN LUTHER. 149

Christ that sweet idyl of domestic happiness which
the Church of Rome, to the great detriment of man-
ners and morals, had banished from the earth.

The remaining twenty years of Luther's life were
less fertile in dramatic incident. They were, how-
ever, fruitful in labors of lasting benefit to mankind.
The greatest of these was his translation into the com-
mon German tongue of the Holy Scriptures. This
has fixed the language and faith of almost the whole
of the German Fatherland. His commentaries, ser-
mons and chorals, and his work for popular educa-
tion are the undying evidences of his wise head, his
large heart, his fervent piet}^ and his unflagging
energy. The care of the churches, his labors as
professor and preacher at Wittenberg, his theological
disputations, by which he sought to mould the doc-
trines of the Reformed faith, engrossed his busy days
and trenched far upon his nights. He took also an
active part in all the public events of his country.

Some of the dogmas of Rome Luther retained to
the very last. His strangely literal mind accepted
without question the doctrine of transubstantiation,
or, perhaps more properly, consubstantiation. This
doctrine he defended in a disputation with Zwingle,
at Marburg, for several successive days. At the
beginning of the controversy he wrote in chalk upon
the table cover the words : " Hoc est corpus meum "
— " This is my body ; " and at the close of the wordy
war, in testimony of his unalterable faith, he raised
tlie cloth and sliook it in the face of his antagonist,
crying, " Hoc est corpus meum."

MARTIN LUTHER. 151

Luther's disposition was sunny, cheerful and mag-
nanimous ; but his temper was often irascible and his
anger violent. Yet beneath the surface he had a
warm, genial and generous heart. To use his own
graphic words, he was " rough, boisterous, stormy
and warlike, born to light innumerable devils and
monsters."

But the home side of Luther's character is its most
delightful aspect. Playing on his German flute, from
which he said the devils fled away ; singing his
glorious German carols ; paying mirthful homage to
his gentle spouse, the grave " Lady Ketha ; " romping
with his little Hans and Katharina around a Christ-
mas tree ; or tearfully wrestling with God for the life
of his babe Magdalen, and then, awe-struck, following
the flight of her departing spirit through the un-
known realms of space — these things knit to our
souls the great-hearted Dr. Martin Luther.

His latter years were frequently darkened by sick-
ness, sorrow, the death of friends, doctrinal differences
among the Reformed churches, and the gloomy
shadows of war hanging over his beloved country.
His work was done, and he longed to depart and be
at rest. " I am worn out," he wrote in his sixtieth
year, " and no more any use. I have finished my
course. There remains only that God gather me to
my fathers, and give my body to the worms." Three
years later, January, 154G, witl\ his three sons, he
travelled to Eisleben to settle a dispute between the
Counts of ]\Iansfe]dt and some of the miner folk. He
preached four times, enjoyed the recollections of his

THE HOUSE IN WHICH LUTHER DIED,

MARTIN LUTHER. 153

birthplace, and wrote loving letters to his " profoundly
learned Lady Ketha."

His conversation in those last days was unusually
earnest, rich and impressive. It related to death,
eternity, and the recognition of friends in heaven.
On February 17th he was seized with a painful
oppression at the chest, and after fervent prayer,
with folded hands, and thrice repeating to his friends
the words, " Father, into thy hands I commit my
spirit; thou hast redeemed me, thou faithful God,"
he quietly passed away. His remains were removed
in solemn procession to Wittenberg, and deposited in
the castle chapel, near the pulpit from which he had
so often and so eloquently preached.

Luther was emphatically a man of prayer. He
lived in its very atmosphere. " Bene orasse," he used
to say, " est bene studuisse." He habitually fed his
soul on the Word of God. " The basis of his life,"
says Carlyle, " was sadness, earnestness. Laughter
was in this Luther, but tears, too, were there. Tears
also were appointed him, tears and hard toil. I will
call this Luther a true, great man — great in intellect,
in courage, affection and integrity. Great, not as a
hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain — so simple,
honest, spontaneous. Ah, yes, unsubduable granite,
piercing far and wide into the heavens, yet in the
clefts of it fountains, green beautiful valleys with
flowers ! A right spiritual hero and prophet ; once
more a true son of nature and fact, for whom these
centuries, and many that are yet to come, will be
thankful to Heaven."

ZWINGLE S MONUMENT AT
ZURICH ;

ALSO HIS SWORD, BATTLE-AXE,
AND HELMET.

TIIL A\ \S&ERKIRCIIE, ZURICH,

VI.

ULRICH ZW INGLE.

The Reformation in Europe was a simultaneous
movement in many lands, for which the age was fully
ripe. The stirring of thought produced by the spread
of learning, through the invention of printing and the
revived study of the sacred Scriptures, led to religious
inquiry, and loosened from the minds of earnest
thinkers the bonds of superstition. Among the
mountains of Switzerland, where freedom ever had
her home, were many lovers of religious liberty and
many leaders of reform. But towering above them
all, like the snowy Jungfrau above all the Bernese
Alps, shines the majestic character of Ulrich Zwingle.

On New Year's Day, 1484, seven weeks after the
birth of Luther, in a lonely chalet overlooking Lake
Zurich, which lay far below, the future Swiss re-
former saw the light. His boyhood was spent as
a goatherd amid the mountain solitudes. " I have
often thought," writes his friend, Myconius, " that
being brought near to heaven on these sublime
heights, he then contracted something heavenly and
divine."

In the louii' nio^hts of winter, while the storm
155

156 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

howled aloof, the boy listened with thrilling pulse to
the stirring tale of Tell and Flirst and Winkelried,
and to the Scripture stories and quaint legends of his
pious grandmother. As his father was the well-to-do
amnian, or bailiff, of the parish, young Zwingle was
sent to school successively to Basle and Berne, and to
the University of Vienna. He studied literature,
philosophy and theology, and developed an extra-
ordinary talent for music. He said his first mass in
his native village in his twenty-second year.

The Swiss cantons then, as often since, hired their
sturdy peasantry as mercenary soldiers to the great
powers of Europe. Twice Zwingle accompanied, as
chaplain, the troops of his native canton to the Italian
war. He came back, like Luther, disgusted with the
idleness and profligacy of the Italian monks, and with
the corruptions of the Italian Church. By tongue
and pen he remonstrated with his countrymen against
the mercenary shedding of their blood for a foreign
power, and sought to revive the ancient spirit of
liberty. He devoted himself with intense zeal to the
study of the Scriptures in their original tongues,
which quickly loosened from his mind the fetters of
Rome.

In 1516 Zwingle was transferred to the vicarship
of Einsiedeln, near Lake Zurich, long the richest and
most frequented pilgrimage church of Europe. As
many as one hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims
were wont to visit it annually. The object of adora-
tion was an ugly black doll, dressed in gold brocade
and glittering with jewels— Our Lady of Einsiedeln.

ULRICH ZWINGLE.

157

An inscription at the sacred shrine offered the full
forgiveness of all sins — plena remissio peccatorum a
culpa et a ptena.

Zwingle's whole soul revolted against the flagrant
idolatry. He boldly preached Christ as the only
sacrifice and ransom for sin. " Can unprofitable

CLOISTERS, CATHEDHAL CHURCH, ZURICH.

works," he asked from tlie pulpit, " can long pilgrim-
ages, offerings, images, the invocation of the Virgin or
of the Saints, secure for you the grace of God ? What
efficacy has a glossy cowl, a smooth-shorn head, a
long and flowing robe ? God is all around you and
hears you, wherever you are, as well as at our Lady
of Einsiedeln's. Christ alone saves, and he saves
everywhere."

158 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

This new and strange doctrine smote the hearts of
the people like a revelation from the sky. The pil-
grims went everywhere telling the strange news.
" Whole bands," says D'Aubign*^, " turned back with-
out completing the pilgrimage. Mary's worshippers
diminished in numbers daily. It was their offerings
that largely made up the stipend of Zwingle, but he
felt happy in becoming poor if he could make others
rich in the truth that maketh free."

To the Pope's nuncio, who called him to account, he
said : " With the help of God, I will go on preaching
the Gospel, and this preaching shall make Rome
totter." And so it did. The civil governor caused
the inscription to be removed from the lintel of the
church, the relics which the pilgrims revered were
burned, and the new doctrine prevailed.

In 1518 the Cathedral church of Zurich became
vacant, and Zwingle was elected preacher. On New
Year's Day he entered the pulpit, from which as from
a throne he thenceforth ruled the souls of men. " To
Christ," he cried, " to Christ will I lead you — the true
source of salvation. His Word is the only food I
wish to set before your souls." He began forthwith
to expound the Gospels and Epistles — long a sealed
book to the people. Like another Baptist, he boldly
preached repentance and remission of sins — denounc-
ing the luxury, intemperance and vice of the times.
" He spared no one," says Myconius ; " neither Pope,
emperor, kings, dukes, princes, lords. All his trust
was in God, and he exhorted the whole city to trust
solely in him." On market days he had a special

CLOISTERS

OF

CATHEDRAL

CHURCH

AT
ZURICH.

160 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

service for the benefit of the neighboring peasants^
who on that day thronged to the city. " The Hfe of
Christ." he said, " has too long been hidden from the
people," and he sought by every means to make it
known.

With his zeal for the Gospel was blended a fervid
love of fatherland. Piety and patriotism were the
twin passions of his soul. He sternly rebuked those
who for the love of money lent themselves as the
hireling soldiers of foreign powers — thus, as he called
it, " selling their very flesh and blood." " The cardinal
of Zion," he said, " who recruits for the Pope, rightly
wears a red hat and cloak ; you need only to wring
them and you behold the blood of your kinsmen."

At Zurich Zwingle was brought into direct antag-
onism with the Papal power. Over the wild St.
Gothard Pass had come from Rome an indulgence-
monger of even more flagrant impudence than Tetzel.
" Here," cried Abbot Samson, " are pardons on
parchment for a crown— on paper for threepence."
He bargained with the Knight Jacques de Stien to
exempt from hell forever himself and his five hundred
men-at-arms for a dapple-grey horse to which he took
a fancy. Walking in procession with his acolytes
around the churchyard, he pretended to see the souls
of the departed escaping from the graves to heaven,
and exclaimed, " Ecce volant,"—" See how they fly ! "
A wag climbed the belfry tower and shook a bag of
feathers on the procession, crying, in derision, "See
how they fly ! " Zwingle sternly denounced such

tJLRICH ZWINGLE. 161

impious inoclceiy, and forbade tlie Pope's indulgence-
luonger to enter Zurich.

The zealous labors of the Swiss reformer woi^e
upon his health, and he was ordered to repair to the
baths of Pfeifiers. Here, in a frightful crorge between
impending rocks, in a house shaken by the concussion
of the raging torrent and drenched by its spray, and
so dark that lamps had to be burned at midday, for
some weeks he dwelt.

The fearful plague, known as the Great Death —
der Grosse Tod — now broke out in Zurich, more than
decimating the population. Zwingle hastened from
his refuge to the place of danger among the dying
and the dead. He was soon smitten down, and never
expected to rise again. In that solemn hour he wrote,
in rugged verse, a hymn of faith and trust :

" Lo, cat the door, I hear Death's knock ;
Shield me, O Lord, my strength and rock ;
The hand once nailed upon the tree,
Jesus ujjlift and shelter me."

He was at length restored to the pulpit of Zurich,
and preached with greater power than ever. " There
was a report,' wrote his friend, Myconius, " that you
could not be heard three paces off. But all Switzer-
land rings with your voice." The Reformed doctrines
spread from town to town. At Basle, on the festival
of Corpus Christi, instead of the relics which ^t was
customary to bear through tlie streets, was borne a
Bible, with the inscription, "This is the true relic;
all others are but dead men's bones."
11

i'^ifiZ /"c/y^-i/ ^

ANCIENT FOUNTAINS, ZURICH.

ULRICH ZWINGLE. 163

Attempts were made by the agents ot' the Papacy
to take away tlie reformer's life by poison, or by the
assassin's dagger. When warned of his peril, the
intrepid soul replied : " Through the help of God, I
fear them no more than a lofty rock fears the roaring
waves." The town council placed a guard around his
house every night.

Zwingle asked for a conference at which his enemies
might publicly bring their charges against his life or
doctrine. He appeared in the council hall with his
Bible in his hand. " I have preached that salvation
is found in Jesus Christ alone," he said, " and for this
I am denounced as a heretic, a seducer of the people,
a rebel. Now, then, in the name of God, here I
stand." But his enemies, while secretly plotting
against his life, dared not openly confront him. " This
famous sword will not leave its sheath to day," said
the burgomaster, as he broke up the assembly.

Like Luther, the Swiss reformer perceived that
the enforced celibacy of the clergy was a yoke whicli
the Scriptures had not imposed, and one which caused
unspiritual natures to fall into sin. He therefore
wrote against the Romish rule, and showed his con-
sistency by marrying a worthy widow, Anna Rein-
hardt, wlio made him a noble and loving wife.

A fashion of the time was the holding of public
disputations on the topics of controversy between
the Reformed and Romish Clmrches. A celebrated
one, which lasted eighteen days, took place between
Eck and Faber, champions of the Papacy, and the

164 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

Reformers CEcolainpadius and Zwingle. A contem-
porary rhymer thus describes the scene :

" Eck stamps with his feet and thumps with his hands ;
He blusters, he swears, and he scolds ;
Whatever the Pope and the cardinals teach.
Is the faith, he declares, that he holds."

But the simple truth of the Gospel shone all the more
conspicuously by contrast with the sophistries and
superstitions of Rome.

Even in the ranks of the Reformed arose differences
of doctrinal opinion. We have referred in a previous
chapter to the disputation between Zwingle and
Luther, at Marburg, on the subject of the Lord's
Supper. Luther, in accordance with his impetuous
character, had spoken violently and warmly ; Zwingle
replied calmly and coolly. The public disputa-
tion, as is the general result of such logomachies,
left them both unconvinced, unreconciled. At the
close, Zwingle, dissolved in tears, exclaimed, " Let us
confess our union in all things in which we agree ;
and as for the rest, let us remember that we are
brothers." But the sturdy and headstrong Saxon
monk would bate no jot of his convictions of right,
and the breach between the two reformers was never
fully healed. So great anger can dwell even in
celestial minds.

" I came not," says Christ, " to send peace on the
earth, but a sword." The doctrines of the Cross in
the early centuries arrayed mankind into hostile
camps — the friends of Christianity and its foes. So

ANCIEXT C;ATEWAY

AND

CHURCH OF OUR LADY

ZURICH.

166 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE KEFORMATION.

was it during the Reformation era. All Europe
was marshalled into two great armies — the adherents
of the Romish Church and those who embraced the
soul-emancipating doctrines of the Reformed faith.

In Switzerland the hostile lines were sharply
defined : canton was opposed to canton ; city to city.
The Protestant free cities demanded reliuious tolera-
tion and the right of return for those who had been
banished for conscience' sake. The Catholic cantons
refused this demand, and a Reformed minister was
apprehended and burned. At Berne and Basle
tumults broke out, and the images of the saints were
hurled from their niches and trampled under foot.
Men-at-arms buckled on their hauberks and helmets,
seized lance and arquebuse, and through mountain
passes and forest defiles marched for the attack or
defence of the Reformed faith.

" Luther and the German Reformation," writes
D'Aubigne, " declining the aid of the temporal
power, rejecting the force of arms, and looking for
victory only in the confession of the truth, were
destined to see their faith crowned with the most
brilliant success. Zwingle and the Swiss Reforma-
tion, stretching out their hands to the mighty ones of
the earth, and grasping the swoi'd, were fated to
witness a horrible, cruel and bloody catastrophe fall
upon the Word of God."

The army of the Catholic cantons advanced against
Zurich. The Zurich lansquenets marched out for the
defence of their native city. " Stay with the coun-
cil." said the Burgomaster to Zwingle ; " we have

OLD GUILD HOUSES, ZURICH.

168 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

need of you." " No," he replied, " when my brethren
expose their lives I will not remain quietly by my
fireside." Then taking his glittering halberd, which

he had carried at
the battle of Ma-
rignan, he rode off
with the troops.
Every day divine
service was held in
the camp. No dice,
no cards were seen,
no oaths were
heard ; but psalms,
and hymns, and
prayers consecrat-
ed each hour. The
M^ar was for a time
postponed and an
armed truce pre-
vailed.

The Catholic
cantons, without
warning, renewed
the war. Their at-
tack upon Zurich
was like the deadly
and resistless sweep
of one of their own
mountain avalanches. Not till the Papal army held
the heights near the city was its approach known. It
was a night of terror in Zurich. The scene is thus

OLD STREET, ZURICH.

ULRICH ZWINGLE. 169

described in the vivid pages of D'Aubigne : " The thick
darkness — a violent storm — the alarum bell ringing
from every steeple — the people rushing to arms — the
noise of swords and guns — the sound of trumpets and
drums, combined with the roaring of the tempest —
the sobs of women and children — the cries which
accompanied many a heart-rending adieu — an earth-
(|uake which violently shook the mountains as though
nature shuddered at the impending ocean of blood :
all increased the terrors of this fatal night — a night
to be followed by a still more fatal day."

At break of dawn, October 11th, 1531, the banner
of the city was flung forth, but — sinister omen —
instead of floating proudly on the breeze, it hung
listless on the pulseless air. Forth from his happy
home stepped Zwingle clad in arms. After a fond
embrace from his wife and children, he rode forth
with the citizen soldiery of the town. The brave-
souled woman kept back her tears, although her
husband, brother, son, and many kinsmen were in the
ranks — destined to return no more.

Zwingle set out with a presentiment of disaster ;
yet not for a moment did he falter in what he con-
sidered the path of duty. " Our cause," he said to
his friends, "is a righteous one, but badly defended.
It will cost me my life, and the life of many an
upright man who wishes to restore to religion its
native purity, and to his country its ancient morals.
But God will not forsake his servants ; he will help
even when you believe all is lost. My confidence is
in him alone. I submit myself to bis will."

COLLEGE AXD 3IIXSTER,
ZURICH.

ULRICH ZWINGLE. 171

As the forlorn hope cHmbed the Albis Mountain to
its crest, they beheld the hostile army, eight thousand
veteran men-at-arms, strongly encamped, and heard
the fierce challenge of their mountain horns. Against
this host the little Protestant republic could oppose
in all scarce one thousand eight hundred men. It
was with the utmost difficulty that the rude artil-
lery of the period was dragged up the rough moun-
tain road, and the arduous climb exhausted the
strength of the mail-clad men-at-arms.

When the Protestant troops at length gained the
upland meadows, every head was uncovered, every
knee was bowed in prayer. The Catholic army also
fell upon their knees, and amid solemn silence each
man crossed himself and repeated five Paters, as many
Aves, and the Credo. Then their leader, desecrating
the words of religion to a cruel war-cry, exclaimed :
" In the name of the Holy Trinity, of the Holy Mother
of God, and of all the heavenly host — fire ! " And
volley upon volley flashed from the levelled arque-
buses and echoed back from the surrounding moun-
tains. " How can we stay calmly upon these heights,"
exclaimed Zwingle, " while our brethren are shot
down ? In the name of God, I will die with them or
aid in their deliverance." " Soldiers," cried the leader,
" uphold the honor of God and of our lords; be brave,
like brave men." " Warriors," said Zwingle, who
stood helmet on head and halberd in hand, " fear
nothing. If we are this day to be defeated, still our
cause is good. Commend yourselves to God."

The action had scarcely begun when Zwingle

172 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REB^ORMATION.

stooping to console a dying man, was smitten by a
missile which wounded his head and closed his lips.

He struggled to his feet, but was twice struck down
and received a thrust from a lance. Falling upon his
knees he was heard to sa}', " What matters this mis-
fortune ! They may indeed kill the body, but they
cannot kill the soul." These were his last words. As
he uttered them he fell backwards and lay upon the
ground, his hands clasped, his eyes upturned to
heaven. Crushed beneath the weight of numbers, the
little band of Protestants, after performing deeds of
heroic valour, and leaving five hundred men dead
upon the field, was utterly defeated. Twenty seven
members of the council and twenty-five Protestant
pastors who accompanied their flocks to the field of
battle were among the slain.

The darkness of night was now gathering on the
field of battle. In the deepening gloom, stragglers
of the Catholic army prowled with torches and
lanterns over the field of carnage, to slay the wounded
and to rob the dead. " What has your heretical faith
done for you ?" they jeeringly demanded of the con-
quered Protestants. " We have dragged your Gospel
through the mire. The Virgin and the saints have
punished you. Call upon the saints and confess to
our priests — the mass or death."

The dying reformer lay upon the gory field, hear-
ing^ shouts of the victors, and the gfroans of the
wounded, and surrounded by the mangled bodies of
the dead. Beyond the moonlight and the starlight he
looked up into that heaven whither, all life's battles

IN THE HISTORICAL MUSEUM, ZURICH.

174 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

an(i fightings over, he was soon to pass. " Do you
wish a priest to confess you ? " asked a soldier prowl-
ing near. Zwingle could not speak, but shook his
head. "Think at least of the Mother of God and
call upon the saints," said the man. Protesting
against the errors of Rome even in his latest hour,
the dying reformer again expressed his emphatic
dissent. Hereupon the rough trooper began to curse
him as a miscreant heretic. Curious to know who it
was who thus despised the saints, though in the very
article of death, he turned the gory head to the light
of a neighboring camp-fire " I think it is Zwingle,"
he exclaimed, letting it fall. " Zwingle," cried a
Papal captain, " that vile heretic ! Die, obstinate
wretch !" and with his impious sword he smote him on
the throat. Thus died the leader of the Swiss Refor-
mation, in darkness and defeat, by the hand of a hire-
ling soldier.

But still further indignities were heaped upon his
mangled frame. The ruthless soldiery demanded that
his body should be dismembered and distributed
throughout the Papal cantons. " Nay," cried a gener-
ous captain, " peace be to the dead. God alone be
their judge. Zwingle was a brave and loyal man."
But the cruel will of the mob prevailed. The drums
beat to muster, a court martial was formed, the dead
body was tried and condemned to be quartered for
treason, and burned for heresy. " The executioner
of Lucerne," writes D'Aubigne, " carried out the
sentence. Flames consumed Zwingle's disjointed mem-
bers ; the ashes of swine were mingled with his ; and

ULRICH ZWINGLE. 175

a lawless multitude rushing upon his remains, flung
them to the four winds of heaven."

The kindled fire of the Swiss Reformation seemed
extinguished in blood. Zurich on that night of
horrors became a Rachel weeping for her children and
refusing to be comforted because they were not. As
the wounded fugitives, escaping through the darkness,
brought the tidings of disaster, the tocsin of alarum
knelled forth, and tears and lamentations resounded
through the streets. Almost every household mourned
a husband, brother, son, among the slain. Anna
Zwingle had lost all three, and her son-in-law, her
brother-in-law, and other kinsmen besides. As the
fatal news, "Zwingle is dead ! is dead 1" rang through
the streets and pierced like a sword her heart, she
knelt amid her fatherless babes in her chamber of
prayer and poured out her agonizing soul to God.

The city in the hour of its deepest despair was
roused to heroic eftbrt. It rallied every available man
and gun. The imminent danger of its capture was
averted and another battle with the army of the Papal
cantons was fought. The latter made a night attack,
the soldiers wearing white shirts over their armor
and shouting their watchword — " the Mother of God"
— that they might recognize each other in the dark.
The men of Zurich were again defeated, and eight
hundred of their number left upon the field ; but
they proved too stubborn a foe to be completely con-
quered. Zurich maintained the Protestant faith ; and
from the pulpit in which it was first preached by
Zwingle it has ever since been manfully declared.

In the Wasserkirche,
Zurich, so named for hav-
ing once stood in the
water, is a fine museum
of antiquities, including
Zwing-Ie's Greek Bible,
with annotations in his
own handwriting, letters
to his wife, and other
memorials of the great
Reformer. Here is also
the bust of Lavater, the
famous pastor and poet
of Zurich, who was killed
in its streets in 1799, when
the French captured the
city.

\

INTERIOR OP THE WASSERKIRCHE
MUSEUM, ZURICH.

ULRICH ZWINGLE. 177

On the neighboring battle-field a grey stone slab
commemorates the spot where the Swiss reformer
fell ; but his truest monument is the Protestant
Church of his native land, of which he was, under
God, the father and founder.

Zwingle died at what may seem the untimely age
of forty-eight ; but measured by results his life was
long. He was not a disciple of Luther, but an inde-
pendent discoverer of the truth. " It was not from
Luther," he said, " that I received the doctrine of
Christ, but from God's Word. I understood Greek
before I ever heard of Luther." The great mistake
of his life was his consent to the use of carnal
weapons for the defence of the Bride of Heaven, the
Church of Christ. But in extenuation of this grievous
fault — and grievously he answered for it — it has been
pleaded that he believed that the fatherland belonged
to Christ and his Church, and must be defended for
their sake ; and that Switzerland could only give
herself to Christ so far and so long as she was free.

Wiser in this regard than Zwingle, Luther over and
over declared : " Christians fight not with the sword
and arquebuse, but with sufiering and with the Cross.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses ; but we
will remember the name of the Lord our God." " My
kingdom is not of this world," said the Master, "else
would my servants fight." Not with weapons forged
by mortal might, but by weapons of iunnortal temper
— the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, which
is the Word of God — shall earth's grandest victories
be aftined.
.■/' 12

VII.

JOHN CALVIN.

It was with profound reverence that the present
writer made a pilgrimage to the scenes made memor-
able forever by the principal events of the life and
by the death of John Calvin, the great French Re-
former. Few places in Europe possess greater histori-
cal interest than the fair city of Geneva, mirrored in
the placid Leman, where the deep blue waters of the
arrowy Rhone issue from the lovely lake. For
centuries it has been the sanctuary of civil and
religious liberty, and its history is that of the
Reformation and of free thought. The names of
Calvin, Knox, Beza, Farel, the Puritan exiles ; and
later, of Voltaire, Rousseau, Madame de Stael, and
many other refugees from tyranny, are forever asso-
ciated with this little republic.

But the chief interest attaches to the name of
Calvin, the greatest intellect and most potent and far-
reaching influence of the Reformation Era. " His
system of doctrine and policy," writes a recent
biographer, " has shaped more minds and entered into
more nations than that of any other Reformer. In
every land it made men strong against the interfer-
ence of the secular power with the rights of Christians.

179

180 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

It gave courage to the Huguenots ; it shaped the
theology of the Palatinate ; it prepared the Dutch for
the heroic defence of tlieir national rights ; it has
controlled Scotland to the present hour ; it formed
the Puritanism of England ; it has been at the basis
of the New England character ; and everywhere it
has led the way in practical reforms."

It was therefore with intense interest that I
visited the house in which Calvin lived and the
church in which he held his famous disputations, and
from whose pulpit, like a czar upon his throne, he
wielded an almost despotic influence over the minds
of men in many lands. The church was closed, and
while I was looking for the sexton a Roman Catholic
priest, whom I accosted, went for the key, and with
the greatest courtesy conducted me through the
building and explained its features of historic interest.
It seemed to me very strange to have that adherent
of the ancient faith exhibit the relics of him who was
its greatest and most deadly foe. With something of
the old feeling of proprietorship, he looked around
the memory-haunted pile and said proudly, yet regret-
fully, " This was all ours once," and he pointed in
conflrmation to the beautiful chapel of the Virgin and
to the keys of St. Peter sculptured on the walls. Then
he led me to Calvin's pulpit, once the most potent
intellectual throne in Europe, and to Calvin's chair —
in which I sat, without feeling my Arminian
orthodoxy affected thereby — and pointed out other
memorials of the great reformer.

Calvin's house, in a narrow street, is now occupied

JOHN CALVIN. 181

for purposes of trade, and presents little of interest.
His cjrave I could not visit, for no man knows where
his body is laid. By his own express desire no
monument was erected over his remains, and now the
place of their rest has passed from the memory of
men. Nor needs he such memorial. His truest
monument is the grand work he was enabled to do
for God and for humanity — a monument more lasting
than brass — more glorious than any sculptured pile.

A reminiscence of Voltaire is the Rue des Phil-
osophes. Near by is his villa, and the chapel w^hich,
with a cynical ostentation — " sapping a solemn creed
with solemn sneer,"— he built, still bears the in-
scription, " Deo Erexit Voltaire."

In the evening twilight I walked down the Rhone
to its junction with the Arve. The former flows clear
as crystal from the pellucid lake ; the latter rushes
turbid with mud from the grinding glaciers. For a
long distance the sharp contrast between the two may
be traced — " the tresses," says the poetic Cheever, "of
a fair-haired girl beside the curls of an Ethiopian ; the
Rhone, the daughter of day and sunshine ; the Arve,
the child of night and frost."

" Fair Leman woes nie witli its crystal face,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stilhiess of their aspect in each trace,
Its clear depths yield of their fair light and hue.
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood . . . here the Rhone
Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a
throne."

JOHN CALVIN. 183

The far-shining " Sovran Blanc " loomed distinctly
through the air, like a visible throne of God in the
heavens. While the stately architecture of the city
is chiefly modern, the aspects of nature are still the
same as met the gaze of the exiles from many lands
who found here a refuge.

John Calvin — or Chauvin, as the name was some-
times written — was born at Noyon, in Picardy, on the
10th of July, 1509, twenty-six years after the birth of
Luther. He belongs, therefore, to the second gene-
ration of reformers. His father, Gerard Calvin, was
a man of distinguished ability, whose talents had
raised him to the position of notary in the ecclesi-
astical court of Noyon, and secretary of the diocese.
His mother, we read, was a woman of " remarkable
beauty and unassuming piety." From her he prob-
ably inherited his delicate features, and to her pious
training he doubtless owes the religious disposition of
his early youth.

At school he was a student of remarkable promise —
singularly free from the prevailing follies and fri-
volities of the time. Indeed, the austerity of this
young censor of the morals of his fellow-students
procured for him the nickname of " the Accusative
Case." Calvin was educated in the strictest tenets of
the Romish faith. As a child he took part in the
religious processions of the Church, and, through
paternal influence, at the age of twelve he received
the ofiice and income of chaplain of La Gesine, though,
of course, without performing its duties. On the
eve of Corpus Christi, the boy solemnly received the

184 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

tonsure — as the shaving of the crown, by which he
became admitted to the first rank of the clergy, was
designated. This abuse of ecclesiastical privilege was
quite the fashion of the times. The Cardinal of
Lorraine received far higher preferment at the age
of four years, and Alphonso of Portugal became a
cardinal at eight.

At the age of fourteen, Cahin was sent to college
at Paris, where he made remarkable progress in his
studies. Four years later his father concluded to
qualify his son for the profession of jurist, and sent
him to study law under celebrated teachers at Bourges
and Orleans. So great was his proficiency, that he
sometimes took the place of the professors during
their temporary absence. He continued also his study
of scholastic theology, and began the critical reading
of the New Testament in the original Greek. The
day, we are told, he spent in the study of the law
and a great part of the night in the study of the
Bible. Through the teaching of this higher law his
confidence in his hereditary faith was shaken, and
the light of truth shone upon his soul. The death of
his father interrupted his university course, and we
next hear of him as the editor of an annotated edition
of Seneca, exhibiting a wide acquaintance with the
classics and an almost Ciceronian skill in the grand
old Latin tongue.

Shortly after this took place what he himself calls
his " sudden conversion," whose process he thus
describes. " After my heart had long been prepared
for the most earnest self-examination," he writes.

JOHN CALVIN. 185

" on a sudden the full knowledge of the truth, like a
bright light, disclosed to nie the al^yss of errors in
which I was weltering, the sin and shame with which
I was defiled. A horror seized my soul, when I
became conscious of my wretchedness and of the
more terrible misery that was before me. And what
was left, 0 Lord, for me, miserable and abject, but
with tears and cries of supplication to abjure the old
life which thou didst condemn, and to flee into thy
path."

He describes his vain attempts to obtain peace of
mind through the services and penances of the
Church. " Only one haven of salvation is there for
our souls," he writes, " and that is the compassion of
God which is offered us in Christ. We are saved by
grace ; not by our merits, not by our works."

Zeal for the truth of God now became the passion
of his life. The hour for indecision was past. He
threw up his ecclesiastical benefices, the income of
which he could not conscientiously retain, and cast in
his lot with the persecuted reformers at Paris, and,
notwithstanding his youth, was soon accounted a
leader among them. The bitterness of the persecu-
tion of the Protestants compelled him to fly, first
from Paris, and then, not without tears and a dislocat-
ing wrench, from his native land. He fled to the
court of the beautiful and accomplished Margaret,
Queen of Navarre, where he was confirmed in his new
opinions by the society and counsel of the venerable
Lefevre, the father of the Reformation in France.
He next found refuge at Strasburg and Basle, where
he pursued the study of Hebrew.

186 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

At Basle the young theologue issued the first edi-
tion of his celebrated " Institutes of the Cliristian
Religion," one of the most famous and influential
books ever written — a book which is still a monu-
ment of the genius and piety, and of the relentless
logic and stern theology of its author. Jt has been
stigmatized by Catholic writers as "the Koran of the
heretics," and has been translated into most of the
languages of Europe, including Greek, and even into
Arabic. The striking characteristic of this book is
the prominence given to the doctrine of predestina-
tion.

The dominating thought is the absolute supremacy
of the Divine will. " That will," writes a recent com-
mentator, " though hidden from man, is not arbitrary,
but is most wise and holy. The human race, cor-
rupted radically in the fall with Adam, has upon it
the guilt and impotence of original sin ; its redemp-
tion can be achieved only through an incarnation and
propitiation ; of this redemption only electing grace
can make the soul a participant, and such grace once
given is never lost ; this election can come only from
God, and it includes only a part of the race, the rest
being left to perdition ; election and perdition are
both predestinated in the divine plan ; that plan is a
decree eternal and unchangeable ; all that is external
and apparent is but the unfolding of this eternal
plan."

Calvin seems himself to have shrunk from the
logical consequence of this " decretum horrible " —
" this horrible decree," as he calls it. He sought to

JOHN CALVIN. 187

evade those consequences by denying that God is the
author of sin, and by asserting that men act freely
and not of necessity in spite of this decree — that the
doctrine of election is a stimulus to good works, and
not an opiate to inaction. And such, under intense
conviction of the sovereign will and spotless holiness
of God, it doubtless is ; as the heroic histor}^ of the
Calvanistic Churches proves ; but this is despite, not
in consequence, of its logical result.

At the invitation of the Duchess Renee, Calvin
took refuge at the Court of Ferrara, where he won
certain high-born ladies to the persecuted opinions of
the reformers. But the vigilance of the Inquisition
compelled him to retrace his steps across the Alps.
On his way to Basle he stopped at Geneva, intending
to remain but a single night. But here occurred an
event which shaped the whole future of his life.

Through the labors of William Farel, the scion of a
noble family of Dauphine, the Reformed doctrines had
obtained a foothold in Geneva. But they still met
with powerful opposition, and the morals of the city
were exceedingly corrupt. Farel waited on Calvin at
his inn, and besought him to remain and take part in
the work of reformation. Calvin declined, pleading
his need of repose and desire for study. " Since you
refuse to engage in the work of God," exclaimed
Farel, with the solemn menace of a Hebrew prophet,
" His curse will alight upon your studies and on you."
Calvin was struck with terror, and felt as if the hand
of the Almighty had been stretched out from heaven
and laid upon him. " I yielded," he writes, " as if to
the voice of the Eternal."

188 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

He immediately began his work by preaching in
the cathedral, and by preparing a catechism for the
instruction of the young, " since," he wisely remarks,
" to build an edifice which is to last long, the children
must be instructed according to their littleness." No
mercenary motive urged him to his duty, for we read
that after six months the council voted him six
crowns, " seeing he had not received anything."

He set to work at once to reform the moi'als of the
gay and pleasure-loving city. Stringent ordinances
were prescribed, restraining sumptuousness of apparel
and personal adornment. A hairdresser, for instance,
narrates a historian of the times, for arranging a
bride's hair in what was then deemed an unseemly
fashion, was imprisoned for two days. Games of
chance and dancing were also prohibited. The
fashionable fribbles of the day revolted from this
strictness, and procured the banishment of the faith-
ful preacher. " It is better to obey God than man,"
said Calvin ; and though " he loved Geneva as his own
soul," he departed from its ungrateful walls.

He was welcomed to Strasburg, and put in charge
of a church of one thousand five hundred French
refugees. Here he married Idelette de Bures, the
widow of an Anabaptist preacher whom he had con-
verted. In her he found a faithful and devoted wife,
" who never opposed me," he says, " and always aided
me." For nine happy years she cheered and consoled
his stormy life ; and when she died, his grief and the
strength and tenderness of his attachment were shown
in letters, still extant, whose pathos touches our hearts
across the silent centuries.

JOHN CALVIN. 189

Three years after his expulsion he was urged by
both the town council and the people to return to
Geneva. He yielded, " offering to God his slain heart
as a sacrifice, and forcing himself to obedience." Not
only was a " plain house " set apart for him, but also,
we read, " a piece of cloth for a coat." He returned to
spend the remaining twenty-three years of his life in
the city to which he was to give its chief fame. It
was with the full and fair understanding that his dis-
cipline should be carried out. To build up a Christian
Church, pure and spotless in morals and in doctrine,
was the ideal of his life.

A presbyterial council assumed control of both
secular and sacred affairs. Even regulations for
watching the gates and for suppressing fires were
found in the writing of Calvin. The lofty and the
lowly w^ere alike subjected to one inflexible rule. All
profaneness, drunkenness, and profligacy, and even
innocent recreations, were rigorously suppressed.
Severe penalties were often inflicted for slight offences.
Persons were punished for laughing during divine
service. Dancing, the use of cards or of nine-pins,
and the singing of secular songs were offences against
the law ; so was giving to children the names of
Catholic saints. For attempting to strike his mother,
a youth of sixteen was scourged and banished, and for
a graver offence of the same nature another was be-
headed. The use of torture in criminal trials was
allowed, and the penalty for heresy was death by fire,
a law which has left its blackest stigma on Calvin's
name.

JOHN CALVIN. 191

The effect on society of this austere rule was mar-
vellous. From being one of the most dissolute,
Geneva became one of the most moral cities of
Europe. It became the home of letters and the refuge
of the persecuted Protestants of every land. " The
wisest at that time living," writes the judicious
Hooker, " could not have bettered the system." " It
was the most perfect school of Christ," says Knox,
who was here three times, 1554-56, "since the days of
the Apostles." " This is a reformation," writes Luther,
" that has hands and feet."

Nevertheless, these rigid restraints provoked strong
opposition. " Lewd fellows of the baser sort " writhed
under their enforced morality. Calvin was the object
of their intensest hate. Upon him they heaped the
utmost indignity. The very dogs in the streets were,
in contumely, named after him, and were incited to
attack his person with cries of " seize him ! " " seize
him ! " and his clothes and flesh were torn by their
fangs. As he sat at his study table, in a single night
fifty gunshots were fired before the house. Once he
walked into the midst of an infuriated mob and
offered his breast to their daggers. His iron will
subdued them all. He prevented, he said upon his
death-bed, over three hundred riots which would have
desolated Geneva.

The darkest shadow upon the name and fame of
Calvin is his complicity in the death of Servetus.
This remarkable man was a Spanish physician of
great ability. He almost anticipated Harvey's dis-
covery of the circulation of the blood. He published

192 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

a book against the doctrine of the Trinity, and
wrote a number of letters to Calvin in the same
strain, and inveighing against the reformer himself.
Yet for thirty years, under an assumed name, he
conformed outwardly to the Roman Church. He
subsequently published, anonymously, another work
on the " Restoration of Christianity," in which the
doctrine of the Trinity and infant baptism were
described as the two great hindrances to this result.

Servetus was arrested and tried for heresy by the
Roman Archbishop of Lyons. He denied his author-
ship of the obnoxious book. Calvin, at the request of
a friend, furnished, in the letters written thirty years
before, the evidence which procured the condemna-
tion of the accused. Servetus, however, escaped, and
after a few months came to Geneva, lodging in an
obscure inn near the city wall. After a month Calvin
was informed of his presence, and procured his
arrest. He was arraigned before the council, and
defended his opinions with acuteness, but with much
insolent invective, and demanded the condemnation
of Calvin. To his surprise, he was himself con-
demned and sentenced to be burned.

The conclusion of this tragic story is thus told by the
judicious Fisher : " He called Calvin to his prison and
asked pardon for his personal treatment of him ; but
all attempts to extort from him a retractation of his
doctrines were inetlectual. He adhered to his opin-
ions with heroic constancy, and was burned at the
stake on the morning of the 27th of October, 1553."

Calvin made an attempt to have the mode of his

JOHN CALVIN. 193

death changed to one less painful — to beheading,
instead of burning — and there is reason to believe
that he expected that Servetus would recant. Still,
it is indisputable that he consented to his death,
which, however, was the act of the whole council,
and not of one individual. " Servetus," says Guizot,
" obtained the honor of being one of the few martyrs
to intellectual liberty ; while Calvin, who was
undoubtedly one of those who did most toward the
establishment of religious liberty, had the misfortune
to ignore his adversary's right to liberty of belief."

The principles of toleration — of free thought and
free speech — were ill understood even by those who
had themselves suffered the bitter wrongs of religious
persecution.

At the very time that Calvin was involved in these
stormy conflicts he was wielding probably the most
potent intellectual influence in Europe. He was in
communication with the leaders of the Reformation
in every land. " In England, and France, and Scot-
land, and Poland, and Italy," writes Fisher, " on the
roll of his correspondents were princes and nobles, as
well as theologians. His counsels were called for and
prized in matters of critical importance. He writes
to Edward VI. and Elizabeth, to Somerset and Cran-
mer. The principal men in the Huguenot party
looked up to Calvin as to an oracle."

To his lectures tln^onged students from Scotland,

Holland and Germany. From six o'clock in the

morning till four in the afternoon the classes were

together, except at the dinner-hour, from ten to

13

194 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

eleven. On alternate weeks he preached every day,
and often on Sundays, besides his regular theological
lectures. Hundreds of Protestant exiles, the most
cultivated men of the age, sat at his feet. After a
day of toil it was his rest to give half the night to
his pen and his books. His commentaries — by far
the best of the age — cover nearly the whole of both
the Old Testament and the New.

" For a long time," writes a biographer, " in the
closing period of his life, he took but one meal in a
day, and this was often omitted. He studied for
hours in the morning, preached, and then lectured
before taking a morsel of food. Too weak to sit up,
he dictated to an amanuensis from his bed, or trans-
acted business with those who came to consult him."

His lofty and intrepid spirit triumphed over all
physical infirmity. From his sick bed he regulated
the affairs of the French Reformation. He called the
members of the senate and the clergy of the city
around his dying couch, and, taking each by the
hand, bade them an aflfectionate farewell. " He had
taught," he said, " sincerely and honestly, according
to the Word of God. Were it not so," he added, " I
well know that the wrath of God would impend over
my head." " We parted from him," writes his friend,
Beza, "with our eyes bathed in tears and our hearts
full of unspeakable grief."

Thus this great man passed away, on the 27th of
May, 1564. He was in the fifty-fifth year of his age.
His whole earthly wealth was about two hundred
dollars. This he bequeathed to his relations and to

JOHN CALVIN. 195

poor foreigners. He chose to be poor, and persist-
ently refused any addition to his very modest salary.
" If I am not able to avoid the imputation of being
rich in life," he said, " death shall free me from this
stain." The labors of his pen and brain were prodig-
ious. His published works fill fifty-two octavo
volumes. Besides these, in the library of Geneva, are
twenty thousand manuscript sermons.

Their Arminian aversion to the logical consequen-
ces of Calvin's theology has, with many, extended
also to his person and character. But let us, while
rejecting what we may deem the errors of his
intellect, admire the greatness of his soul. He feared
God, and loved righteousness, and loathed iniquity,
and scorned a lie. His brave spirit dominated over
a weak and timorous body, and he consecrated with
an entire devotion his vast powers to the glory of
God and the welfare of his fellow men.

STATUE OF PETEU WALDO ON LUTIIEU M0NU3IEXT AT WOKMS.

VIII.

OASPARD BE COLIGNY,

ADMIRAL OF FRANCE.

No historic record presents features of more tragic
and pathetic interest than that of French Protes-
tantism. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the
AlbitJjenses and Waldenses maintained, amid manifold
persecutions, the purity of the Christian faith. At
the base of the majestic Luther monument at Worms,
sits the sturdy figure of Peter Waldo, the founder of
that Waldensean Church, which boldly testified for
the truth throughout long generations.

In 1521, the very year in which "the monk that
shook the world" confronted the power of the empire
at Worms, the New Testament was published in
French, and Lefevre and Farel were preaching
throughout France the vital doctrine of the Reforma-
tion— salvation by faith. Margaret of Navarre, the
sister of Francis I., adopted the new opinions, which
were also favored by the IVIarquise de Chatillon, the
high-souled and brave-hearted nu^ther of Gaspard de
Coligny. Under the pious training of this noble
mati'on the young Gaspard grew up in hearty sym-
pathy with " the religion," as it was pre-eminently

197

198 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

called, of which he was destined to become so con-
spicuous a champion and martyr.

But the new doctrines fell under the ban of the
Sorbonne. The persecution which began with the
burnin'g of six Lutherans in the Place de la Grev^e
spread throughout the " infected " provinces. Thou-
sands were massacred, towns and villages were burned
to ashes, and some of the fairest regions of France
were turned into a desert. But, like the Israelites in
Egypt, the Reformed, " the more they were vexed the
more they multiplied and grew." Before the death
of Francis I. it was estimated that one-sixth of the
population of France, and these its most intelligent
artisans and craftsmen, were adherents of " the
religion." During the short reign of his son, Henry
II., they so increased in numbers and in boldness that
they paraded the streets of Paris in thousands,
chanting the hymns of Clement Marot, and were
already a powerful political party.

Coligny was a scion of one of the greatest families
in France. His own promotion was rapid. He be-
came in quick succession Colonel, Captain-General,
Governor of Picardy and Admiral of France. He
introduced a rigid discipline that converted, says
Brantome, the army from a band of brigands into
noble soldiers. He served with distinction in the
Netherlands against the Spaniards, but was captured
at the seige of St. Quentin, and was carried prisoner
to Antwerp. Here he lay ill with a fever for many
weeks.

During his convalescence he profoundly studied

GASPARD DE COLIGNY.

199

the Scriptures. He had always sympathized with
the Reformed faith, but now he openly espoused the
Calvinist creed. By tliis
act he imperilled his
high position and must
have foreseen the stern
conflict with the domi-
nant party in which he,
as the leading member
of the persecuted relig-
ion, must engage. But
he boldly cast in his lot
with this despised and
hated party, choosing,
like Moses, rather to
suffer affliction with the
people of God than to
enjoy the pleasures of
sin for a season.

In this resolve he
never wavered, but in
an age of selfishness,
treachery and vice in
high places he stood
like a tower of trust,
" four-square, to all the
winds that blew." He
obtained his release from

farel's monument.

prison by a ransom of fifty thousand crowns, and
in his castle of Chatillon, with his wife and boys,
enjoyed a brief interval of domestic repose before

200 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

entering on his career of noble patriotism, which was
to end only with his death. His brother D'Andelot,
also cast in his lot with the Reformed party, and
boldly declared his choice.

" How now, sirrah ! " exclaimed the king, " have
you, too, become moon-stricken, that you utter this
vile trash of Calvin, and rant like a common heretic
against our Holy Mother-Church ? "

" Sire," said the brave man, " in matters of religion
I can use no disguise, nor could I deceive God were I
to attempt it. Dispose of my life, property, and
appointments as you will, my soul is subject only to
my Creator from whom I received it, and whom alone
in matters of conscience, I must obey. In a word.
Sire, I would rather die than go to mass."

The enraged monarch drew his rapier and menaced
the uncourtly knight with instant death; when his
rage cooled he stripped D'Andelot of his honors and
threw him into prison.

On the death of Henry II., by the splintered lance
of Montgomery, the feeble Francis II., not sixteen
years of age, fell under the influence of the haughty
Guises and of the Queen-mother, the infamous
Catherine de Medicis — "the sceptered sorceress of
Italy, on whom we gaze with a sort of constrained
and awful admiration as upon an embodiment of
power — but power cold, crafty, passionless and cruel
— the power of the serpent of basilisk eye, and iron
fang, and deadly grip, and poisonous trail." The per-
secution of the Huguenots,* as they were called, went

* This word is a corruption of the German Eidgenossen, i.e..
Confederates.

GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 201

on apace. They were every day accused, imprisoned,
fined, banished or burned.

From being a religious movement Calvinism be-
came political disaffection and rebellion. Its first
grave error was the " conspiracy of Amboise." An
attempt was made to expel the Guises and restore the
real government to the youthful king who was a
mere puppet in their hands. It failed through
treachery, and the Guises wreaked a terrible revenge.
The streets of Amboise ran red with blood and the
Loire was choked with Huguenot corpses. The
balcony is still shown where Francis and his child-
wife — Mary, Queen of Scots, only fifteen — the Guises
and the cruel Medicis, sat to gloat upon the death-
pangs of their victims. A contemporary engraving
of the scene is now before us. The beautiful and
high-born look down from their place of power upon
the headless bodies and the gibbets with their ghastly
burden, while Villemongis, a brave nobleman, dipping
his hands in the crimson tide, cries out, beneath the
headman's sword, " Lord, behold the blood of thy
children ; thou wilt take vengeance for them." The
nation recoiled from these atrocities, and Calvinism
became daily more widespread and defiant.

An assembly of notables was convened at Fontaine-
bleau. Coligny presented to the king a petition for
the toleration of " the religion." It was endorsed :
" The supplication of those who in divers provinces
invoke the name of God according to the rule of
piety." "Your petition bears no signature," said
Guise. " Give me but the opportunity," replied the

202 BEACON LIGHTS OT THE REFORMATION.

Admiral, " and I will get fifty thousand signatures in
Normandy alone." " And I," cried Guise, " will lead
against them five hundred thousand who will sign the
reverse in their blood." Not to be intimidated by
such threats, Coligny earnestly pleaded for that
religious liberty which few men of the age could com-
prehend. The Guises urged the assassination of the
Protestant leaders, but from this depth of infamy the
king recoiled, or perhaps his courage only failed.
The Guises now contrived a notable " rat-trap " for
the Huguenots, whereby every heretic in the kingdom
was on the same day to be murdered.

At Christmas-tide, 1560, the anniversary of God's
message of peace and good-will to men, a formula
which no Huguenot could sign was to be presented to
every man and woman in the realm, the rejection of
which was to be punished with death. Everything was
in readiness, but a higher power interposed. " A pale
horse," says Dr. Punshon, "stood before the palace
gate, and the rider passed the wardens without chal-
lange and summoned the young king to give account
at a higher tribunal." In his dying despair the un-
happy boy called upon the Virgin and all the saints,
vowing that should he be restored he would spare
none — however near and dear — should they be
tainted with heresy. But he died and, while the
Queen-mother, Catharine, sat intriguing in her
cabinet, was huddled into his grave at St. Denis
unattended, unlamented.

On the death of Francis II., his brother, a boy of
only ten and a-half years, was proclaimed, under the

CxASPARD DE COLIGXT. 203

title of Charles IX. The Queen-mother, the wily
Medicis, was, as Regent, the chief authority. For a
time she dallied with the Huguenots, and a partial
toleration of their worship was permitted. The fickle
Antoine of Navarre was induced to abjure his Prot-
estant faith, and was promoted to high office in the
realm. His wife, the heroic Jeanne d'Albret, passion-
ately embracing her son, the future Henry IV., ex-
claimed : " Oh, my son, if you renounce the religion of
your mother, she will renounce you." " My dear
madam," said the wily Catharine, " it is best to
appear to yield." " Rather than deny my faith,"
exclaimed the true-hearted woman, " if I had my son
in one hand and my kingdom in the other, I would
throw them both into the sea."

Relying on the edict of toleration, the Huguenots
of Vassy were assembled one Sunday morning for
worship. The Duke of Guise, with his men-at-arms,
riding by swore that he would " Huguenot them to
some purpose." He fell upon the unarmed congre-
gation and killed sixty-four and wounded two hun-
dred. The " massacre of Vassy " was the outbreak of
the civil war, which for thirty long years rent the
unhappy kingdom.

As Coligny, on hearing of this massacre, pondered
in his bed by night the awful issue before him, he
heard his wife sobbing by his side. " Sound your
conscience," he said ; " are you prepared to face con-
fiscation, exile, shame, nakedness, hunger for yourself
and children, and death at the hands of the headsman
after that of your husband ? I gi\e you three weeks
to decide."

204 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

" They are gone already," the brave soul replied.
" Do not delay, or I myself will bear witness against
you before the bar of God."

Coligny cast in his lot and fortune with the perse-
cuted religion, and rode off next morning to join the
Huguenot army of Conde. The camp became like a
religious congregation. Night and morning there
were public prayers; dice, cards, oaths, private forag-
ing and lewdness were sternly forbidden. Cond^
seized Orleans, Tours, Bourges. Calvin appealed
from Geneva to all the Protestant powers for aid.
Germany sent four thousand horse. Elizabeth of
England garrisoned Havre, Dieppe, Rouen. Philip
II. sent six thousand Spanish veterans to crush the
rebel Huguenots. Navarre and Guise, with eighteen
thousand men, besieged Rouen — " We must snatch it
from the maw of those bull-dog English," said the
crafty Catharine. After three assaults it was taken
by storm. For eight bloody days sack and pillage
raged with implacable fury through its picturesque
streets. But the unkingly Navarre received his
death-wound in the siege and soon expired,

Condd and the Huguenots met Montmorency and
the Catholics at Dreux. For seven hours the battle
raged till eight thousand dead strewed the plain.
Guise swooped down on Orleans, swearing that he
" would take the burrow where the foxes had retreated
and chase the vermin over all France." As he rode
beneath the walls he was waylaid by a fanatical
Huguenot soldier and shot with poisoned bullets.
Coligny, who had actually warned his enemy against

GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 205

private attempts on his life, was accused by the son
of Guise as the assassin, and was made at last the
victim of the bloodiest revenge in history.

A hollow truce was now concluded which only gave
the Catholic party time to recruit their exhausted
resources. At Bayonne, in 1564, Catharine received a
visit from her daughter, Elizabeth, wife of the bigot
Philip II., and from his persecuting minister, the
merciless Alva. While gay pageants amused the
populace this dark trio plotted the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. Alva especially urged the destruction
of the Protestant leaders. " Ten thousand frogs," he
said, " are not worth the head of one salmon."

The Huguenot leaders attempted to seize the young
king, and to free him from the malign influence of
Catharine. They failed, but Coligny, with three thou-
sand men, gallantly held at bay eighteen thousand of
the enemy before Paris. In this engagement fell the
aged Montmorenci, Constable of France, concerning
whom Brantomc writes that, without ceasing his
paternosters he would say, " Go hang me that rascal,
run that fellow through with a pike, burn me this
village," thus combining war and religion in a single
act. Hence the proverb : "Beware of the Constable's
paternosters."

The Huguenot soldiers, serving without pay, smart-
ing from defeat, ill-provisioned and marching barefoot
in wintry weather, gave their rings, trinkets and
forage-money to appease their mercenary allies. Such
an army was invincible, and marched to victory
everywhere. Coligny, ever anxious for peace, signed

206 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

a truce and retreated to Chatillon. The fugitives
at length reached that famous Protestant refuge
Rochelle — "our own Roclielle, proud city of the
waters" — whither also fled Prince Cond^ Queen
Margaret of Navarre, with her son, the future Henry
IV., and other Protestant leaders ; and St. Bartholo-
mew was again postponed.

Having now access to the sea, Coligny raised
a fleet, in which the same pious discipline was en-
forced as in his armies, and kept up constant inter-
course with the English ports. Soon the Huguenots
had an army of twenty thousand men. As Condd
rode into battle his leg was shattered by a kick from
a horse. " Gentlemen of France," he cried, " see how
a Condd goes to battle for Christ and his country,"
but he was soon unhorsed and shot by a Captain of
the Guards. A Te Deum was sung in all the churches
of France, and in Rome, Madrid and Brussels for the
death of this Protestant prince.

Coligny, himself wounded, dared not bear the
tidings to Rochelle. The heroic Queen of Navarre it
was who raised the soldiers from despair. She rode
along the ranks with her son Henry at her side, and
addressed the troops in burning words, offering her
dominions, her treasures, her son, her life. A univer-
sal shout accepted the young Henry of Navarre as
the Protestant leader ; and the grey haired Coligny
was the first to kiss the hand of the boy of fifteen,
whose white plume was to be the oriflamme of victory
on many a bloody field.

Domestic bereavements, one after another, now

GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 207

befell Coligny. His two brothers — " his right and
left hand," he said — died, not without a suspicion of
poison ; and in swift succession, his wife, his first-
born son, and his beloved daughter Renee ; and his
chateau was pillaged. Still he waged, though with a
heavy heart, the unequal conflict with his foes. At
Moncontour a pistol shot shattered his jaw, yet he
kept his saddle and brought off his army, although
with the loss of six thousand men. Still his high
courage faltered not, and by a decisive victory he
won a full toleration for the long-persecuted Hu-
guenots.

The perfidious Catharine plied her subtlest craft,
and fawned, and smiled, and " murdered while she
smiled." The young king seemed to give his full
confidence to Coligny. His sister, the fair, frail
Margaret of Valois, was given in marriage to the
young Protestant hero, Henry of Navarre. The
Admiral himself renewed his youth in second nuptials
with the noble and beautiful Jacqueline of Savoy ;
and on the eve of the blackest crime of the age " all
went merry as a marriage bell."

" The cautious fish have taken the bait," exulted
the treacherous Medicis. The Queen of Navarre left
her court at Rochelle to witness at the Louvre the
nuptials of her son. In a few days she was a corpse
— poisoned, it was whispered, by a pair of perfumed
gloves. Still the high-souled Admiral deemed his
sovereign incapable of such foul treachery. The de-
ferred nuptials of Navarre and Margaret of Valois, at
length took place — on a great scaffold in front of the

208 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

even then venerable Notre Dame. Four days later,
August 22nd, as Coligny was returning from a visit
to the king, a shot from a window shattered his arm
and cut off a tinger. The King and Queen-mother
visited with much apparent sympathy the wounded
Admiral, and disarmed his noble nature of distrust.
It was, he thought, the private malice of the Guises,
his implacable foes.

The arch -conspirators, the harpy Medicis, Anjou
and Guise — for the king was rather the tool than the
mover of the plot — urged on the preparations for
their damning crime. Under the plea of protection
the Huguenots were lodged in one quarter of the cit}^
around which was drawn a cordon of Anjou's guards.
The aw^ful eve of St. Bartholomew, August 24th,
1572, arrived. The king sat late in the Louvre, pale,
trembling and agitated ; his unwomaned mother
urging him to give the signal of death. " Craven,"
she hissed, as the cold sweat broke out on his brow.
" Begin, then," he cried, and a pistol shot rang out on
the still night air. He would have recalled the signal,
but the " royal tigress " reminded him it was too
late ; and, " even as they spoke the bell of St. Ger-
main I'Auxerrois tolled heavy and booming through
the darkness," and the tocsin of death was caught up
and echoed from belfry to belfry over the sleeping
town.

Then the narrow streets became filled with armed
men, shouting, " For God and the King." The chief of
the assassins, the Duke of Guise, with three hundred
soldiers, rushed to the lodgings of the Admiral. Its

CHARLES IX. AND CATHARINE DE MEDICI ON THE NIGHT OF
ST. BARTHOLOMEW.
14

210 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

doors were forced. Coligny, wakeful from his recent
wound, had heard the tumult and was at prayer with
his chaplain. " 1 have long been prepared to die," said
the brave old man. " Save your lives if you can, you
cannot save mine. I commend my soul to God."
" Art thou Coligny ? " demanded Besme, a bravo of
Guise's, bursting in. " I am," said the hero soul.
Then looking in the face of the assassin, he said,
calmly, " Young man, you should respect my grey
hairs, but work your will : you abridge my life but
a few short days."

Besme plunged a sword into his breast, and the
soldiers rushing in despatched him with daggers. "Is
it done ? " demanded Guise from the court-yard below.
"It is done, my lord," was the answer, and they threw
the dead body from the window to the stone pave-
ment. By the fitful light of a torch, Guise wiped
the blood from the venerable face. " I know it,"
he cried, joyfully, " it is he," and he spurned the
dead body with his foot, and ordered the hoary head
to be smitten off, that the unsexed Medicis might
gloat upon it in her boudoir. What became of it is
not known. One story reports that it was sent as an
acceptable present to the Pope at Rome ; another, that
it took its place with those of the murdered Flemish
nobles, Egmont and Horn, in Philip's cabinet at
Madrid. The dishonored body, after being dragged
for two days through the streets, was hung on a
gibbet. When the king came to glut his revenge by
gazing on his victim, as the courtiers shrank from the
piteous object, " Fie," he exclaimed, in the words of

GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 211

monster Vitellius, " the body of an enemy is always a
pleasant sight."

Through the narrow streets rushed the midnight
assassins, shouting, " Kill ! kill ! Blood-letting is good
in August. Death to the Huguenots. Let not one
escape." Candles burned in all the windows of the
Catholic houses, lighting the human hyenas to the
work of slaughter. The sign of peace, the holy cross,
was made the assassins' badge of recognition. The
Huguenot houses were marked and their inmates,
men and women, maids and matrons, old age and in-
fancy, were given up to indiscriminate massacre.
The Queen-mother and her " dames of honor," from
the palace windows, feasted their eyes on the scene of
blood ; and the king himself, snatching an arquebuse,
shot down the wretched suppliants who fled for
refuge to his merciless gates. For a week the carni-
val of death continued. The streets ran red with
blood. The Seine was choked with corpses. Through-
out the realm, at Meaux, Angers, Bourges, Orleans,
Lyons, Toulouse, Rouen, and many another city and
town, the scenes of slaughter were repeated, till
France had immolated, in the name of religion, one
hundred thousand of her noblest sons. Young Henry
of Navarre was spared only to the tears and prayers
of the king's sister, his four-days' bride.

Rome held high jubilee over this deed of death.
Cannon thundered, organs pealed, and sacred choirs
sang glory to the Lord of Hosts for this signal favor
vouchsafed his Holy Church ; and on consecrated
medals was perpetuated a memorial of the damning

ASSASSINATION OF COLIGNY.

GASPARD DE COLIOxNY. 213

infamy forever.* In the Sistine chapel may still be
seen Vesuri's picture of the tnigedy, with the inscrij)-
tion — " Pontifex Colvjnii necem prohat " — the holy
Pontiff approves the slaughter of Coligny." In the
gloomy cloisters of the Escurial, the dark-browed
Philip, on the reception of the tidings, laughed — for
the first time in his life, men said — a sardonic, exult-
ing, fiendish laugh.

The brave Rochelle became again a refuge for the
oppressed, and for six months endured a bloody siege,
in which fifty thousand of the besiegers perished by
the sword or by disease: and Rochelle, Montauban and
Nismes secured their civic independence and the free
exercise of the Protestant faith. Ere long a dreadful
doom overtook the wretched Charles, the guilty
author, or at least instrument, of this crime. Within
twenty months he lay tossing upon his death couch
at Paris. His midnight slumbers were haunted by
hideous dreams.

"The darkness" — we quote from Froude — "was
peopled with ghosts, which were mocking and mouth-
ing at him, and he would start out of his sleep to find
himself in a pool of blood — blood — ever blood!" The
night he died, his nurse, a Huguenot, heard his self-
accusations. " I am lost," he muttered ; " I know it
but too well : I am lost." He sighed, blessed God
that he had left no son to inherit his crown and in-
famy, and passed to the great tribunal of the skies.

*A copy of this lies before us as we write — an angel with a
sword slaying the Huguenots, with the legend, vuonotorvm

STRAGES.

214 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

The bloody and deceitful man shall not live out half
liis days. He was only twenty-four when he died.

His brother, Duke of Anjou, an effeminate debau-
chee, assumed the crown as Henry III. Within four
years from the massacre of St. Bartholomew the
Huguenots had wrung from him a peace which raised
them to a higher dignity and power than they had
ever known before. A " Holy League " of their foes
was formed for their destruction. A prolonged war
followed, of which the hero was Henry of Navarre.
The truculent king procured the assassination in his
own presence of that Duke of Guise, who had been
the chief instrument in the massacre of the Hugue-
nots. He spurned with his foot the dead body of
Guise, as Guise had spurned that of Colignj^ sixteen
years before. In six months he was himself assassin-
ated by the fanatic monk, Jacques Clement.

The dagger of Clement gave France a Huguenot
king, the gallant Henri Quatre, who at Ivry had won
new renown. To give peace to the realm he recanted
the Protestant faith, with which his life was little in
accord. " Paris is well worth a mass," he said. But
by the Edict of Nantes he gave the Huguenots full
toleration. After a reign of twenty years he, too,
fell a victim to the assassin's dagger in the hand of
the fanatical monk, Ravaillac.

A hundred years later, the dragonades of Louis
XIV. and his revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove
half a million of his best subjects from the kingdom,
and impoverished his realm and led to the triumph of
Protestant principles in Europe. Of all the Huguenot

GASfARD DE COLIGlSrY. 216

heroes of these three hundred years none are so truly
heroic, none are so pious and so pure as Gaspard
de Coligny, the martyr Admiral of France. It was he
who organized reform and disciplined the reformers,
and taught them their strena;th when united, their
weakness apart. Like his illustrious contemporary,
William the Silent, he was, in the principles of re-
ligious toleration, far ahead of his age.

Coligny's home-life was particularly winning. Fond
of letters, of art, his garden and grounds, his life of
arms was one foreign to his gentle tastes. He slept
at most six hours, he drank little wine and ate little
meat. He had daily prayers and frequent sermons
and psalm-singing in his household ; yet it was one
of cheerful gaiety. His affection for his wife and
children was intense.

" I fail to find," says Besant, " in any gallery of
worthies in any country or any century any other
man so truly and so incomparably great. There was
none like him ; not one even among our Elizabethan
heroes, so true and loyal, so religious and steadfast, as
the great Admiral." The world is forever ennobled,
life is richer, grander, truer, our common humanity is
elevated and dignified, because such as he have lived
and died.

WILLIAM TYNDALE

IX.

WILLIAM TYNDALE.

In the history of the English Bible there is no name
that occupies a more honored place than that of
William Tyndale. No man has so imperishably left
his impress on that book as he. The authorized
version of the present day, with its majestic rhythm,
its subtle harmony, its well of English undefiled, is
substantially that which Tyndale gave the English-
speaking race. No revision of the text can ever
change its grand basic character.

" Those words which we repeat as the holiest of all
words," says a recent biographer of the great trans-
lator ; " those words which are the first that the
opening intellect of the child receives with wondering
faith fi'om the lips of its mother, which are the last
that tremble on the lips of tlie dying as he commends
his soul to God, are the words in which Tyndale gave
to his countrymen tlie Book of Life." The service
which Tyndale thus rendered that wondrous instru-
ment of thought, the English tongue, is akin in its
far-reaching influence to that of even Shakespeare
himself.

This being the case, it is strange that so little is
217

218 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

known of the facts of Tyndale's life, or of the factors
which contributed to mould his character. Even the
place and date of his birth are not certainly known.
According to tradition, he was born in the county of
Gloucester, in the flat and fertile region through
which winds the sluggish Severn. The family, how-
ever, are said to have come from the North during
the Wars of the Roses, and to have taken their name
from the lovely Tyne valley in which, from time
immemorial, their ancestors dwelt. The only kins-
men of whom any record is known are a brother
John, who became a London merchant of some repute,
and another named Edward, a country gentleman,
who basked in the light of court favor at the very
time that his martyr brother was done to death by
court hatred and intrigue.

The family must have been of good social standing
and of considerable means, for at an early age the
future scholar and translator was sent to Oxford to
receive the best training; that the kinordom could
afford. He was enrolled as a student at Magdalen
Hall, one of the oldest and one of the most pictur-
esquely beautiful in that city of colleges. Often must
he have paced those quaintly-carved cloisters, or
wandered, deep in thought, through the leafy arcades
which skirt the classic Isis. In the oaken dining-
hall, among portraits of the distinguished scholars
and divines of Magdalen College, still looks down the
grave countenance of William Tyndale, the most illus-
trious of them all.

Among the great spirits at this time at that focus

WILLIAM TYNDALE. 219

of intellectual life were Erasmus, the acute and
learned Dutchman ; More, the future Lord Chancellor
of England ; and Collet, afterwards Dean of St.
Paul's, whose lectures on the New Testament were so
full of religious fire and force that he incurred the
suspicion and narrowly escaped the penalty of heresy.
Tyndale seems to have shared the zeal in the study
of the Scriptures of Collet, for he soon became dis-
tinguished for special progress in that sacred lore.
He probably shared also his religious convictions, for
we read that he " privily read some parcel of divinity
to certain students and fellows of Masfdalen Colleo-e."

He incurred thereby the suspicion of the authori-
ties, and consulted his safety by retiring to the sister
university of Cambridge. Here he enjoyed, there is
reason to believe, the instruction of Erasmus, the
most brilliant Greek scholar in Europe. At all
events, he acquired a familiar and accurate acquaint-
ance with the lans^uao-e of the New Testament, which
enabled him afterwards to render its nervous force
into the vernacular speech of his fellow-countrymen.
Here also he made the acquaintance of that Thomas
Bilney, who was destined, like himself, to glorify God
amid the flames. The fellow- students little thoug-ht,
as they paced together the quadrangle of their col-
lege, that through the same fiery door of martyrdom
they should pass to the skies.

At Cambridge Tyndale received his academic
degrees and entered on the sacred calling which had
long been the object of his life. On leaving the uni-
versity lie assumed the duties of a tutor in the family

220 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

of Sir John Walsh, a Gloucestershire baronet. The
position of a tutor or chaplain in the country house
of the period was often very humiliating. " The
coarse and ignorant squire/' says Macaulay, " who
thought it belonged to his dignit}^ to have grace said
every day at his table by an ecclesiastic in full
canonicals, found means to reconcile dignity and
economy. A young levite — such was the phrase then
in use — might be had for his board, a small garret,
and ten pounds a year, and might not only perform
his own professional functions, might not only be the
most patient of butts and of listeners, but might also
save the expense of a gardener, or of a groom. He
was permitted to dine with the family, but he was
expected to content himself with the plainest fare.
He might fill himself with the corned beef and car-
rots, but as soon as the tai-ts and cheesecakes made
their appearance he quitted his seat, and stood aloof
till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast,
from the greater part of which he had been excluded."
It seems certain, however, that the position of Tyn-
dale was much more honorable than that here
described, for we read that so greatly were his abili-
ties respected that he went on preaching excursions
throughout the surrounding villages, and even to
the great city of Bristol. At the table of his patron,
who dispensed an open-handed hospitality, he met
the neighboring squires and clergy. The religious
questions which were agitating the nation of course
were warmly discussed, and the Cambridge scholar,
fresh from the university, was more than a match in

WILLIAM TYNDALE. 221

argument for the country clergy, whose learning had
become rusty by disuse. The advanced opinions of
the young tutor soon provoked the suspicion and dis-
like of the dry-as-dust divines of the old school,
and even called forth the remonstrance of Lady
Walsh, his patron's wife. " Why," she expostulated,
" one of these Doctors may dis-spend one hundred
pounds, another two hundred, another three hundred ;
and, what ! were it reason, think you, that we should
believe you, a tutor with ten pounds a year, before
them ? "

Tyndale, however, would not submit to this com-
mercial rating of his opinions, and translated the
" Enchiridion Militis Christiani," or " Manual of a
Christian Soldier " of Erasmus, in support of his
conflict with the " Hundred Pound Doctors " of
Little Sodburg. These gentlemen resenting their
refutation, accused, after the manner of the age, the
obnoxious tutor of heresy. He was summoned before
the Chancellor of the Diocese, who, " after rating him
like a dog, dismissed him uncondemned."

These discussions confirmed the future reformer in
his growing convictions of the errors of Rome. The
entire Papal system seemed to him honeycombed with
fraud. He broached his doubts to an aged priest,
whose sincerity and piety invited his confidence.
" Do you not know," replied his friend, " that the
Pope is the very Antichrist of whom the Scriptures
speak ? " " The thought," says Tyndale's biographer,
" shot through his mind like a flash of lightning across
the midnight sky. From that day the great object

222 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

of his life was to prove to his countrymen that the
Pope was indeed Antichrist."

That they might learn the true character of primi-
tive Christianity, and thus realize how great were the
corruptions of Rome, he felt that they must first have
access to the Word of God in their own mother
tongue. And to give them that access became thence-
forth his ruling purpose. " If God spare my life," he
exclaimed to a learned antagonist, " ere many years I
will cause the boy that driveth the plough to know
more of the Scriptures than you do."

For the furtherance of his great design he proceeded
to London, to seek the patronage of Tonstall, the
learned and reputed liberal bishop of that city. As
a credential of his scholarship and a passport, as he
hoped, to episcopal favor, he translated into nervous
English one of the orations of Isocrates. But the
learned prelate had little liking or leisure for the
succor of poor scholars : and Tyndale's reception at
Lambeth Palace was marked by chilling reserve.
" There was no room in my lord's house," he some-
what bitterly remarks, " for translating the Bible,
but much room for good cheer " — for the bishop's
dinners were famous for their profusion and elegance.

In his chagrin and disappointment he sought solace,
like a wise man, in active Christian work. While
preaching in one of the city churches, he attracted the
attention of Humphrey Monmouth, a wealthy mer-
chant, who invited him to his own house, became his
patron and friend, and provided the " sodden meat,
single small beer and humble apparel, which were all,"

WILLIAM TYNDALE. 223

as he himself tells us, " that a good priest required."
The London Maecenas had a mind enlarged by travel
and enriched by observation and thought. He had
seen at Jerusalem and Rome the corruptions and
superstitions that spring up at the very centres and
sacred places of the Christian faith, and was prepared
to sympathize with the general movement toward
reform of the Church throughout Europe.

Monmouth advised his friend to seek in the free
cities of Holland and Germany those facilities for the
prosecution of his life purpose which he could not
find in his native land. He therefore embraced a
self-imposed exile from that England which he loved
so well. As the Dutch vessel in which he took pas-
sage to Hamburg dropped down the Thames, and he
took his last look of the grim old Tower, the fort at
Tilbury, and the green familiar hills, did a prescience
that he should never see them more cross his mind ?
Yet so it was. There remained for him but twelve
years more of life — in exile, in toil and travel, in
bonds and imprisonment — and then, through the
sharp swift pangs of martyrdom, he entered on his
endless and exceeding great reward.

From Hamburg Tyndale proceeded to Wittenberg,
to seek the counsel and assistance of the illustrious
Father of the Reformation, who was himself engaged
in translating the Word of God into the Teutonic
tongue. Under this inspiration he toiled diligently,
and " without being helped with English of any that
had interpreted the Scriptures beforetime," he assures
us, " he endeavored singly and faithfully, so far forth

224 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

as God gave him the gift of knowledge, to give his
countrymen a true and honest translation of the Word
of Life in their native tongue."

With money furnished bj'- Monmouth he proceeded
to Cologne, to pass his translation through the press.
The greatest secrecy was observed ; but, unfortu-
nately, the suspicions of a Romish priest were
aroused. Having plied the printers with wine, he
elicited the important secret that an English New
Testament was then in the press. The meddling
priest informed the ecclesiastical authorities, who
promptly procured an interdict of the w^ork. Deeply
chagrined at this interruption of his project, Tyndale
sailed up the castled Rhine to Worms, doubtless more
anxious about the safety of his precious MSS. than
observant of the beauties of the storied stream.

In the old Rhenish city, in which the excitement of
the famous diet which forms the epoch of the Refor-
mation had scarce subsided, he completed, by the aid
of Peter SchcefFer, the son of SchoefFer who is claimed
as the inventor of the art of printing, an octavo
edition of the New Testament. It was a notable fact
that in this now decayed old city, where Luther con-
fronted all the powers of the Papacy, was printed the
first English New Testament, the great instrument in
the conversion of a kingdom, and the grand charter
of English liberties.*

* The only copy of this Bible extant is in the Bapti.st College at
Bristol. " I have translated, brethern and susters moost dere, and
tenderly beloved in Christ," says the prologue, " The Newe Testa-
ment for your spiritual edyfyinge, consolasion and solace."

WILLIAM TYNDALE. 225

In spite of the utmost endeavor of the Enghsh
customs authorities to exclude the " pernicious
poison," the obnoxious book found entrance to the
kingdom. Through lonely outports, or by bold
adventurers on harborless and unguarded coasts, or
concealed in consignments of merchandise, copies of
the precious book reached the hands of Lollard
merchants, and were distributed by friends of the
reformer, disguised as chapmen or pedlars, through-
out the kingdom. By royal proclamation the book
was denounced and ordered to be burned. The bishops
eagerly searched out and bought or confiscated every
copy they could find, and great bonfires of the Word
of God blazed at St. Paul's cross, where Tonstall pub-
licly denounced its alleged errors. Still the people
were hungry for the Bread of Life, and the bishop's
money, contributed for its extirpation, served but to
print new editions of the condemned book.

Tyndale was compelled to retire from Worms to the
secluded city of Marburg, where he improved his
translation and wrote those works on practical reli-
gion and those scathing exposures of the frauds and
errors of Rome which so greatly aided the Reforma-
tion in England. His treatise on " Obedience " set
forth with vigorous eloquence the mutual duties of
sovereign and subject, clergy and people. Sir Thomas
More, the college companion of Tyndale, dipped his
pen in gall to denounce " this malicious book, wherein,"
he asserts, " the writer sheweth himself so puflfed up
with the poison of pride, malice and envy, that it is
more than a marvel that the skin can hold together."
15

226 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

The king himself, however, was of a different opinion ;
for finding a copy of the book which the hapless
Anne Boleyn had carefully read and marked " with
her nail " on the margin, he said, " this is a book for
me and all kings to read."

Tyndale now proceeded to Antwerp, whose busy
wharves and warehouses and marts were the great
centre of trade with England, to buy type and pro-
cure money for a new and improved edition of the
Scriptures. By a strange coincidence — or was it not
rather a providence ? — that Bishop Tonstall who had
refused his aid to the translator in London, was now
in Antwerp trying to buy up the stock of Bibles for
his bonfires before they should be scattered through
the country. An old chronicle records that through
his agent, Packington, Tyndale sold a quantity of
books to this episcopal merchant, whose money
enabled the almost penniless exile to flood the
country with his new edition.* The merchant Pack-
ington is said to have consoled the bishop, in his
chagrin and anger, by advising him to buy up the
printing presses if he would make sure of stopping
the work. Thus does God make even the wrath of
man to praise him.

In 1531 Tyndale removed to Antwerp, as that
great commercial centre offered better facilities for the
printing and introduction into England of the Word

* In this edition were given several wood cuts and a short com-
ment on the text generally, calling attention to the errors of Rome ;
as when on the words, "None shall appear before me empty,"
Tyndale satirically remarks, " This is a good text for the Pope."

ANTWERP AND ITS
CATHEDKAL.

228 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

of God. We like to think of the zealous reformer as
threading the narrow and winding streets of the
quaint old Flemish city, visiting its guild-houses and
exchange, pausing in the cathedral square to gaze at
the exquisite tracery of the fretted stone spire, or to
listen to the wondrous music of its sweet, wild chimes j
or, as he paced through its solemn aisles, to feel his
soul grow sad within him as he beheld the rank
superstition and almost idolatry of the people.

After the fall of Wolsey, Henry VIII. invited Tyn-
dale to return to England. But unwilling to exchange
the liberties secured to him by the privileges of the
free city of Antwerp, for the uncertain protection of
a king's favor, he declined. He felt keenly the
trials which he enumerates — " His poverty, his exile
out of his natural country, his bitter absence from his
friends, his hunger, his thirst and cold, the great
danger wherewith he was everywhere compassed, the
innumerable hard and sharp fightings which he
endured."

Yet he was willing to endure any suffering, any
bonds of imprisonment, nay, even death itself, so that
the Word of God were not bound. " I assure you,"
he solemnly declared, " if it would stand with the
king's most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare
text of the Scripture to be put forth among his
people, be it the translation of what person soever
shall please his Majesty, I shall immediately make
promise never to write more, nor abide two days in
these parts after the same, but immediately to repair
unto his realm, and there most humbly submit myself

WILLIAM TYNDALE. 229

at the feet of his Royal Majesty, offering my body to
suffer what pains or tortures, yea, what death his
Grace will, so that this be obtained."

The following year his faithful friend and co-
laborer, John Fryth, who was his own son in the
Gospel, ventured over to England. He was speedily
entangled in a disputation on the sacraments, and was
condemned to be burned. He refused to escape when
an opportunity was given him by sympathizing
friends, lest he should " run from his God and from
the testimony of his Holy Word — worthy then of a
thousand hells." While in Newgate prison, in a dis-
mal dungeon, laden with bolts and fetters, and his
neck made fast to a post with a collar of iron, he
spent his last days writing, by the light of a candle,
which was necessary even at midday, his dying testi-
mony to the truth. So, " with a cheerful and merry
countenance, he went to his death, spending his time
with godly and pleasant communications."

As he was bound to the stake in that Smithfield
market, which is one of the most sacred places on
English soil. Dr. Cook, a London priest, " admonished
the people that they should in nowise pray for him —
no more than they would do for a dog." At these
words, Fryth, smiling amid the pangs of martyrdom,
desired the Lord to forgive them, and passed from the
'curse and condemnation of men to the joy and bene-
diction of Christ.

Tyndale wrote to his friend in prison words of com-
fort and exhortation : " Be of good courage, and com-
fort your soul with the hope of your high reward, and

230 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

follow the example of all your other dear brethren
which chose to suffer in hope of a better resurrection."
He was soon himself to follow the same glorious path
to immortality. His last work was the complete
revision of his former translation of the whole Scrip-
tures, leaving it as the most precious legacy ever
given to the English-speaking race.*

At length the machinations of his enemies tri-
umphed. He lodged at the house of Thomas Pojaitz,
a relative of his former friend, Lady Walsh. Here he
was safe ; but through the wiles of an English priest
he was induced to leave his only shelter. He was
immediately seized by Flemish officers and hurried to
the neighboring castle of Vilvorde, the " Bastile of
the Low Countries." He experienced in all its bitter-
ness " the law's delay." For eighteen weary months
the process of his trial lingered. His controversial
works had to be translated into Latin, that the
learned Doctors of Louvain might find therein ground
for his condemnation.

Meanwhile the destined martyr languished in his
noisome dungeon. In a letter still extant he com-
plains of " its cold and damp, of the tedious winter
nights which he had to spend alone in the dark, and
he entreats his keeper to send him warmer clothing,
to allow him the use of a candle, and, above all, to
grant him the use of his Hebrew Bible and dic-

* The title of this edition reads thus : " The news Testament
dilygently corrected and compared with the Greke by William
Tyndale and fynisshed in the yere of our Lorde God A.M.D. &
xxxiiii. in the moneth of November."

TYNDALE's statue on the THAMES
EMBANKMENT.

232 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

tionary, that he mio^ht prosecute tlie work for which
he felt that but few days remained." He translated
a great part of the Old Testament, which was after-
wards incorporated in liis edition of the Bible. So
exemplary was his prison life, that it is recorded that
he converted his keeper, his keeper's daughter, and
others of his household.

On the 6th of October, 1536, being then in the
fifty-second year of his age, Tyndale was led forth
from his dungeon to his death. Having been bound
to the stake, he cried aloud, as the last utterance of
his steadfast and loyal patriotism and zeal for the
Word of God, " O Lord, open the King of England's
eyes ! " He was then strangled, and his body burned
to ashes. No monument marks the spot; but his
perpetual memorial — tlie grandest that man ever had
— is the first printed Bible in the English tongue.

Tyndale's dying prayer was soon answered in the
sense of the king's sanctioning the circulation of the
Word of God. The very year of his martyrdom, the
first Bible ever printed on English ground, the trans-
lation of Miles Coverdale, was published by the king's
special license. The year following, Tyndale's own
translation, the basis of every subsequent version, was
published by royal authority and placed in the parish
churches throughout the realm, so that all who would
might read. Never again could the Word of God be
bound or sealed from the reading of the English
people.

Tyndale's portrait, as preserved for us at Magdalen
College, reveals a grave-faced man with broad high

WILLIAM TYNDALE. 233

brow, seamed with thouo-ht, clear calm eyes, as of one
who walked in the vision of spiritual realities, and a
grey and pointed beard. He wears a scholastic robe,
an SS. collar, and a black skull cap. He describes him-
self as " ill-favored in this world, and without grace
in the sight of men, speechless and rude, dull and
slow-witted, weary in body, but not faint in soul."
Yet to him was vouchsafed to do a grander work for
England and the English-speaking race than any man
who ever lived. On the bank of the river of the ten
thousand masts, a grateful people have placed an
effigy of this benefactor of mankind.

Of his marvellous translation Mr. Froude thus
speaks: "The peculiar geiiius which breathes through
it, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon
simplicity, the preternatural grandeur — unequalled,
unapproached in the attempted improvements of
modern scholars — all bear the impress of the mind of
one man — William Tyndale. Lying, while engaged
in that great office, under the shadow of death, the
sword above his head and ready at any moment to
fall, he worked under circumstances alone perhaps
truly worthy of the task which was laid upon him —
his spirit, as it were divorced from the world, moved
in a purer element than common air."

HE WHO NEVER FEARED THE FACE OF MAN."

X.

JOHN KNOX.

Like John the Baptist from the wilderness,

He comes in rugged strength to courts of i%ings,
Approaches in the name of God and flings

The gage of battle down with hardiesse

Of loftiest courage, and doth truth confess
Amid a base and sordid age that rings
With conflict 'gainst the saints of God, and brings

The wrath of Heaven down in stern redress.

Not clothed in raiment soft is he ; a stern
Iconoclast, he smites the idols down

In Rimmon's lofty temple, and doth turn

To scorn of Baal's power the pride and crown ;

Therefore his country garlands now his urn
With wreath immortal of unstained renown.

— Withroiv.

On the 24th of November, 1572, John Knox died.
That period of intellectual and religious quickening
which gave birth to Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingle,
Calvin, Bucer, Farel, Beza, and Jansen, produced no
nobler soul than that of the Father of the Scottisli
Reformation. Froude, indeed, declares that he was
the greatest man of his age. His countrymen, especi-
ally, should reverence his memory. He stood between
Scotland and utter anarchy. He was the bulwark of
national liberty against civil and religious despotism.

235

236 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

We will attempt to trace in a few pages the chief
incidents of his busy life, and to note his influence on
his age and on the destiny of Scotland. He was born
in 1505, of a good family, at Haddington, in East
Lothian. With the afterward distinguished George
Buchanan, he was trained in Latin, Greek, and schol-
astic philosophy, at the University of St. Andrew's.
Disgusted with the barren trifling of the schoolmen,
he turned with enthusiasm to the study of the primi-
tive Fathers, especially to the writings of St. Jerome
and St. Augustine. Here he found a system of re-
ligious truths very different from that taught in the
cloisters of St. Andrew's. The result was a gradual
alienation from the doctrines of Rome leading to a
divorce from her communion and a repudiation of her
authority.

The ferment of the Reformation was already
leavening Scottish society. The vigorous verse of Sir
David Lyndsay was lashing the vices of the clergy,
and the bright wit of Buchanan was satirizing that
cowled legion of dullness, the monks. Patrick Hamil-
ton had the honor of being, in 1528, the proto-martyr
of the Scottish Reformation. He was soon followed
by the intrepid George Wishart. The mantle of the
latter, as he ascended in his chariot of flame, seems to
have fallen upon Knox. He had already renounced
his clerical orders — for he had been ordained priest —
and boldly espoused the persecuted doctrines. He
soon encountered the rage of the infamous Archbishop
Beaton, who employed assassins to destroy him.

No tittle of evidence connects the name of Knox

IIOUSK OF CARDINAL BEATON AND TIIK COWGATR,
EDINRURfill,

238 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

with the subsequent murder of the Archbishop ; but
he has been censured for taking refuge for his life
with the Protestant insurgents in the castle of St.
Andrew's — a censure which he must share with the
apostolic John Rough, and with the high-minded Sir
David Lyndsay. Invited to become preaclier to the
forces in the castle, he, after some hesitation, con-
sented. He opened his commission in the presence
of the members of the university, the sub-prior of the
abbey, and many canons and friars, by challenging
the entire Papal system as false and anti-Christian.
The Romanist party unwisely took up the gage of
battle, only to be disastrously defeated in public dis-
cussion. This was Knox's initiation into his life-long
conflict with the Church of Rome.

The garrison of St. Andrew's, disappointed of
English succor, and attacked by French land and sea
forces, surrendered on terms of honorable capitula-
tion. But the treaty of capitulation was violated.
The leading lay insurgents were thrust into French
dungeons, and Knox and his fellow-confessors were
chained like common felons to the benches of the
galleys on the Loire. Upon Knox, as the arch-heretic,
were heaped the greatest indignities. The coarse
felon's fare, exposure to the wintry elements, the
unwonted toil of tugging at a heavy oar, undermined
his health, but could not break his intrepid spirit.
Although a single act of conformity to Roman ritual
would have broken their chains, yet neither he nor
any of his companions in captivity would bow in the
temple of Rimmon. When mass was celebrated on

JOHN KNOX. 239

the galleys, they resolutely covered their heads in
protest against what they considered the idolatrous
homage of a " breaden god."

One day (it is Knox who tells the story) an image
of the Virgin was presented to a Scotch prisoner —
probably himself — to kiss. He refused ; when the
officer thrust it into his hands, and pressed it to his
lips. Watching his opportunity, the prisoner threw
it far into the river, saying :

" Lat our Ladie now save herself ; sche is lycht
enoughe, lat hir leirne to swime."

It was useless attempting to convert such obstinate
heretics ; so they were let alone thereafter.

The following year, 1548, the galleys hovered on
the coast of Scotland to intercept English cruisers ;
and upon the Scottish prisoners was enforced the
odious task of serving against their country and the
cause of the Reformation. From long and rigorous
confinement and excessive labor, Knox fell ill ; but as
he beheld from the sea the familiar spires of St.
Andrew's, where he had first preached the Gospel, he
exclaimed, in the full assurance of faith, that he should
not die, but live to declare again God's glory in the
same place — a prediction which was strikingly
fulfilled.

Although lying in irons, sore troubled by bodily
infirmities, in a galley named Koi^tre Dame, Knox
found opportunity to send to his " best beloved
brethren of the congregation of St. Andrew's, and to
all professors of Christ's true evangel," godly counsels
and encouragements concerning their religious duties

240 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

in the perils of the times. After weli-nigh two years'
captivity in the noisome galleys, during which time
the seeds of many of his subsequent infirmities were
planted, Knox was set at liberty.

The Reformation was rapidly spreading in England
under the patronage of Edward VI. and the zeal of
Bishop Cranmer ; and Knox accepted from the Privy
Council the appointment of chaplain in ordinary to
his Majesty. As court preacher, the boldness and
freedom of his sermons produced an unusual sensation
among the sycophants and parasites whose vices he
denounced. His zeal and political, as well as religious,
influence, drew upon him the animosity of the Roman
Catholic lords, and he was cited before the council to
answer charges preferred against him, but was
honorably acquitted.

He was offered a benefice in the city of London,
that of AUhallows, and even the mitre of Rochester,
but declined both dignities with their emoluments on
account of his anti-prelatical principles. He rejoiced
in the progress of the Reformation in England, and
in the suppression of the idolatries and superstitions
of the Mass ; but he regretted the temporizing policy
that retained in the ritual and hierarchical institutions
the shreds and vestiges of Popery.

After the accession of Mary, Knox continued to
preach, though with daily increasing peril, the
doctrines of the Reformation. At length, his papers
being seized, his servant arrested, and himself pursued
by the persecuting zeal of the court party, he with-
drew, by the persuasion of his friends, beyond the

JOHN KNOX. 241

sea. An exile from his native land and from his
family — for in the meantime he had married — he
longed to return to the religious warfare from which
he seemed to have fled, " I am ready to suffer more
than either poverty or exile," he writes, " for the
profession of that religion of which God has made me
a simple soldier and witness-bearer among men ; but
my prayer is that I may be restored to the battle
again."

At Geneva, whither he repaired, he made the
acquaintance of Calvin, and other great lights of the
Reformation, and enjoj^ed the society of many dis-
tinguished refugees from the Marian persecution.
Here he devoted himself to study, especially in
Oriental learning, then almost unknown amonof his
countrymen. His enemies say that he also embraced
the anti-monarchical principles of the Swiss Republic.

Invited by the Protestant refugees of Frankfort
to become their pastor, he consented to do so ; but
soon became involved in a controversy with the
prelatical faction of the English exiles, who antici-
pated on the continent the prolonged conflict between
conformists and non-conformists, which subsequently
convulsed the mother country.

The Reformation seemed to have been crushed out
in Scotland with the capture of the castle of St.
Andrew's, the last stronghold of the Protestant party,
and with the banishment of the Protestant clergy
which followed. But Knox, yearning for the con-
version of his country to the "true evangel," resolved,
though at the peril of his life, to visit the persecuted
16

242 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

remnant lurking in obscure wynds of the city or in
remote country houses, and to try to fan to a flame
the smouldering embers of the Reformation, appar-
ently well-nigh extinct.

He was received with joy by brethren found faith-
ful even in tribulation. " I praisit God," he writes,
" perceaving that in the middis of Sodome, God had
mo Lottis than one, and mo faithful dochteris than
twa. Depart I cannot unto sic tyme as God quenche
the thirst a litill of our brethrene, night and day
sobbing, gronying for the breid of lyfe."

He journeyed through the hill country — the refuge
of the Lollards of Scotland — preaching and teaching-
day and night, kindling the zeal of the disheartened,
and binding the scattered faithful in a bond of
mutual helpfulness and common fidelity to Christ
and his Gospel — the first of those solemn Leagues
and Covenants by which Scottish Protestantism was
confederated against both popery and prelacy. Like
the sound of a clarion, his voice stirred the hearts of
the people. " The trumpet blew the auld sound," he
exclaims, " till the houssis culd not conteane the voce
of it."

Smoothing his rugged style to not uncourtly
phrase, he wrote a letter of self-justification to the
Queen Regent: "I am traduceit as an heretick, accusit
as a false teacher and seducer of the pepill, besydis
uther opprobries, whilk may easilie kindill the wrath
of majestratis, whair innocencie is not knawin." He
appeals to the justice of Heaven, and refutes the false
accusations against him.

JOHN KNOX. 243

The remonstrance produced little effect. The first
principles of religious toleration were unknown in
high places. Non-conformity to the religion of the
sovereign was accounted rebellion against her person.
" Please you, my Lord, to read a pasquil ? " the
Regent contemptuously remarked, handing the docu-
ment to the Archbishop of Glasgow, the bitter enemy
of the Reformer.

Cited before an ecclesiastical court at Edinburgh,
Knox repaired thither ; but, daunted by his boldness,
his accusers abandoned their charge. He returned to
Geneva to become, at the request of the congregation,
pastor of the church in that place. But no sooner
had he left the kingdom than the Roman Catholic
clergy regained their courage. In solemn consistory
they adjudged his body to the flames and his soul to
damnation, and in impotent rage caused his ef&gy to
be burned at the market-cross, amid the jeers of a
ribald mob.

While at Geneva, Knox's busy pen was engaged in
fio-htino: the battles of the reformed faith. He lent
also important assistance in translating that version
of the Scriptures known as the Geneva Bible, one of
the most powerful agents of the Scottisli Reformation.
The cruel burning of the venerable Walter Milne by
the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, for the alleged crime
of heresy, was the spark which exploded the mine of
popular indignation against the priest party in Scot-
land.

Knox felt that his place was in the thick of the
impending conflict. Denied passage through England

244 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

by the antipathy of Elizabeth, after leaving Geneva
forever, he sailed directly from Dieppe to Leith.
The day after his arrival he writes from Edinburgh :
" I am come, I praise my God, even into the brunt of
the battle." The Queen Regent resolved to crush the
Reformation, and declared that the Protestant clergy
" should all be banished from Scotland, though they
preached as truly as ever St. Paul did."

On the outbreak at Perth, the Regent attempted to
dragoon the Protestants into conformity by French
cuirassiers. The Lords of the Congregation took arms
in defence of Christ's Kirk and Gospel. The sum-
mons sped like the fiery cross over the hills of Scot-
land. Knox preached everywhere, like John the
Baptist in the wilderness, the evangel of grace.

The iconoclastic zeal of the new converts led, in
many places, to the destruction of images and the
sacking of monasteries and churches — events which
have been a grievance with sentimental antiquarians
to this day. But the evils with which the Reformers
were contending were too imminent and too deadly
to admit of very great sympathy for the carved and
painted symbols of idolatry. Better, thought they,
that the stone saints should be hurled from their
pedestals than that living men should be burned at
the stake ; and Knox is actually accused of the
worldly wisdom implied in the remark, " Pull down
their nests, and the rooks will fly away." We are
not sure but that those stern iconoclasts would have
regarded the sparing of these strongholds of supersti-
tion as analogous to the sin of Israel in sparing the

JOHN KNOX. 245

fenced cities of the Philistines, " We do nothing,"
says Knox, " but go about Jericho, blowing with
trumpets, as God giveth strength, hoping victory by
his power alone."

The Protestant Lords, in solemn assembly at Edin-
burgh, deposed the Regent and appointed a Council
of Government. This sentence Knox approved and
defended. Thus was struck the first heavy blow at
the feudal tenure of the crown in Europe, and Knox
became one of the earliest expounders of the great
principles of constitutional government and limited
monarchy, a hundred years before these principles
triumphed in the sister kingdom.

Disaster assailed the Congregation. Their armies
were defeated ; their councils were frustrated. But
in the darkest hour the fiery eloquence of Knox re-
kindled their flagging courage. An English army
entered Scotland. The French troops were driven
from the country. The religious fabric, supported by
foreign bayonets, fell in ruins to the ground, and the
Reformation was established by law.

The Protestant Council, with the aid of Knox, pro-
ceeded to the organization of society. Liberal pro-
vision was made for public instruction. In every
parish was planted a school ; and to Knox is it largely
owing that for three centuries Scotland has been the
best educated country in Europe.

At this juncture arrived Mary Stuart, to assume
the reins of goverment. Of all who came within the
reach of her influence, John Knox alone remained
proof against the spell of her fascinations. The Mass

246

BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

to which she adhered was more dreaded by him, he
said, than ten thousand armed men. And soon the
Protestant party had cause to distrust the fair false
queen, who, with light words on her lip and bright
smiles in her eye, had seen head after head of the
Huguenot nobles fall in the Place de la Greve, and

ST. GILES CHURCH, EDINBURGH.

who subsequently put her perjured hand to the bloody
covenant of the Catholic League.

Knox was now installed in the old historic church
of St. Giles, Edinburgh, where, to listening thousands,
he thundered with an eloquence like his who " shook
the Parthenon and fulmined over Greece." " His
single voice puts more life in us," exclaims a hearer,
" than six hundred trumpets pealing in our ears." He

JOHN KNOX. 247

spared not the vices of the court, and, with a spirit as
dauntless as that of Ambrose rebuking the Emperor
Theodosius, condemned the conduct of the queen. She
sent for him in anger.

" Is he not afraid ? " wliispered the courtiers.

"Why should the plesing face of a gentilwoman
affray me ? " retorted Knox ; " I have luiked in the
faces of mony angry men, and yet have not been
affrayed above measure."

" My subjects, then," said the queen, after a pro-
tracted interview, " are to obey you and not me ? "

" Nay," he replied, " let prince and subject both
obey God."

" I will defend the Kirk of Rome," she continued ;
" for that, I think, is the Kirk of God."

" Your will, madam," answered Knox, "is no reason;
neither does your thought make the Roman harlot
the spouse of Jesus Christ."

The subtle queen next tried the effect of flattery on
the stern reformer. She addressed him with an air
of condescension and confidence as " enchanting as if
she had put a ring on his finger." But the keen-eyed
man could not be thus hooded like a hawk on lady's
wrist.

The Protestant Lords were beguiled, by the cun-
ning wiles of the crowned siren, of the rights won
by their good swords. Knox, with seeming presci-
ence of the future, protested against their weakness,
and solemnly renounced the friendship of the Earl of
Murray as a traitor to the true evangel. But the
submission of the haughty barons of Scotland availed

248 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

nothing with the queen while one frail old man
bowed not to her proud will. He was summoned
before her.

" Never prince was so handled," she exclaimed ;
" but I vow to God I will be revenged ; " and she
burst into passionate weeping.

Waiting till she became calm, Knox defended his
public utterances. " He must obey God rather than
man," he said. " He was not his own master, but his
who commanded him to speak plainly, and to flatter
no flesh on the face of the earth."

The queen burst again into tears. The stern old
man seemed to relent. " He took no delight in the
distress of any creature," he said, " and scarce could
bear his own boys' weeping when he chastened them
for their faults ; but," he added, " rather than hurt
his conscience, or betray his country, he must abye
even the tears of a queen."

Sentimental readers wax indignant at the iron-
hearted bigot who could endure unmoved the weep-
ing of a woman, young and lovely, and a queen.
But possibly the vision of the headless trunks of the
martyrs of Amboise steeled his nature against the
wiles of the beautiful siren, who beheld unmoved that
sight of horror; and a thought of their weeping
wives and babes may have nerved his soul to stand
between his country and such bloody scenes.

Knox at length was cited before Queen Mary on
the accusation of treason. As she took her seat, she
burst into laughter. " That man," she exclaimed,
" had made her weep, and shed never a tear himself.

JOHN KNOX. 249

She would now see if she could make him weep." But
Knox was not made of such "penetrable stuff" as to
be moved by fear.

The impracticable man was a thorn in the side of
both queen and courtiers. He could neither be over-
awed by authority, nor bribed by personal interest,
nor cajoled by flattery. The ill-starred Darnley mar-
riage was consummated. Knox publicly protested
against it, although he kept clear of Murray's insur-
rection against the queen. The Protestant Lords
being driven into exile in consequence of the disas-
trous failure of their revolt, the Catholic faction
rapidly gained the ascendant. But the bloody scene
of Rizzio's murder, and the consequent political con-
vulsions, frustrated their hopes of supremacy.

Knox, though innocent of all complicity with that
foul deed, by which some of Scotland's noblest names
were stained, was yet compelled to retire from Edin-
burgh to Kyle, and subsequently visited the English
court. He was absent from the realm when the dark
tragedy of Kirk-a-Field was enacted, rendered still
more horrible by the infamous marriage of the queen
with her husband's murderer. Craig, the colleague of
Knox at St. Giles, commanded to publish the banns of
these fatal nuptials — vile as those of Clytemnestra
and ^gisthus — publicly took Heaven and earth to
witness that he abhorred and detested the marriage as
scandalous and hateful in the eyes of God and men.

The heart of the nation was stirred to its depths.
The Protestants, almost to a man, believed Mary
guilty of the death of Darnley. Broadsides of verse

250 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

invoked a bloody vengeance on the perfidious wife
and queen, as in the following example :

" Her dulesome death be worse than Jezebel,

Whom through a window surely men did thraw ;
Whose blood did lap the cruel hundys fell,
And doggis could her Avicked bainis gnaw."

" Bothwell was no his lane in his sin," said the
people, " and he suldna be his lane in the punishment."
With this Rhadamanthine judgment the stern spirit
of Knox and of most of the ministers concurred.
The nation rose in its majesty, and deposed the queen
who had brought a stain upon the Scottish name.

Romance and poetry, and even the pages of sober
history, have cast a glamor around the fair and fasci-
nating woman, who, by her witcheries, beguiled all
who came within her influence — all save our stern
Reformer. Her beauty and her misfortunes, her long
imprisonment and the tragic pathos of her death, have
softened the rigor of historical judgment concerning
her life. But the relentless literary iconoclasm of
Froude has broken the idol of romance, and exposed
her faults and vices, which were neither few nor light.

Knox's profound conviction of Mary Stuart's guilt
must be his justification for what has been regarded
as his harsh and almost vindictive treatment of his
fallen sovereign. He felt that her crimes might not
be condoned without becoming a partaker in her
iniquity. They were not merely political offences,
but sins against high Heaven, which called aloud for
reti'ibution. " The queen had no more right," he

JOHN KNOX.

251

said, " to commit murder and adultery than the
poorest peasant." And to the criminal lenity of the
nation he attributed the civil war, which reddened
mountain gorse and moorland heather, and made
many a rippling burn run ruddy to the sea with
stains of Scotland's noblest blood.

"=^^

HOLYROOD PALACE, EDINBURGH.

In the confusion and anarchy which followed
Murray's murder, was fulfilled the saying. " Woe unto
thee, O land, when thy king is a child ! " The malice
of Knox's enemies — and no man ever had more viru-
lent ones — took advantage of the death of his power-
ful protector to hound down the aged and enfeebled

252 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

minister of God. His life even was threatened by
the Marian forces in possession of the city, and an
arquebuse was fired into his room. The ball failed to
take effect only in consequence of a change of his
accustomed seat.

The spiteful tribe of slander-mongers also distilled
their venom, and strove to poison the public mind
against him. His friends counselled his withdrawal
from the reach of the turbulent Edinburgh mob. But
the sturdy veteran refused, till they told him that
they would defend him with their lives, but that if
blood was shed the blame would be his. Upon this,
" sore against his will," he retreated to St. Andrew's,
the scene of his earliest labors and of some of his
greatest triumphs.

Yet he was once more to be restored to his beloved
flock at St. Giles. The queen's party being driven
from the city, Knox returned thither to die. Yet
once more, like a lamp which a blast of wind fans
into intenser flame only to flicker sooner to extinc-
tion, so the fiery soul was again to blaze forth in
righteous indignation, and the clarion voice was again
to fill the hollow arches of St. Giles before it became
silent forever.

The blood-curdling story of St. Bartholomew's dread
massacre might well wake the dead or cause the stones
to cry out. As post after post brought tidings of
fresh atrocities to the tingling ears of the Scottish
Protestants, a thrill of horror convulsed the heart of
the nation. It seemed as if the mystical angel of the
Apocalypse poured his vial of wrath upon the earth,

JOHN itNOX. 253

and it became as blood. The direst crime since the
crucifixion, at which the sun was darkened and the
earth trembled, cried to Heaven for vengeance.

In the gay French capital, as the midnight tocsin
rang its knell of doom, human hyenas raged from
house to house, from street to street, howling, " Kill !
kill ! " Maids and matrons, aged men and little child-
ren, were offered in bloody holocaust to the Papal
Moloch. Infants were snatched from their mother's
arms and tossed on spear points through the streets ;
and high-born ladies were dragged in death by hooks
through the gutters reeking with gore. The noblest
head in France, the brave Coligny's, was borne by a
ruffian on a pike, its hoary hair bedabbled with blood.
The craven king, from his palace windows, glutted
his cruel eyes with the murder of his people. For a
week the carnival of slaughter continued. In the
capital and the provinces seventy thousand persons
perished.

But throughout Protestant Christendom a thrill of
horror curdled the blood about men's hearts. They
looked at their wives and babes, then clasped them
closer to their hearts and swore eternal enmity to
Rome. For once the cold language of diplomacy
caught tire and glowed with the white heat of indig-
nation. At London, Elizabeth, robed in deepest
mourning, and in a chamber draped with black,
received the French ambassador, and sternly rebuked
this outrage on humanity. Her minister at Paris, in
the very focus of guilt and danger, fearlessly
denounced the crime.

254

BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

In Edinburgh, John Knox was borne to the great
kirk and lifted up into the pulpit, " with a face wan
and weary as of one risen from the dead." Over the

CORXER OF WEST BOW, EDINBURGH.

upturned sea of faces — the women's pale with tear-
ful passion, the men's knit as in a Gorgon frown —
gleamed his kindling eyes. The weak voice quavered

JOHN KNOX. 255

with emotion, now melting their souls with sympathy,
now tiring their indignation at the deed of blood.
Gathering up his expiring energies, like a prophet
of the Lord he hurled forth words of doom, and
denounced God's wrath against the traitor king. He
declared that his name should be a curse and a hissing
to the end of time, and that none of his seed should
ever sit upon his throne.

But Huguenoterie was not buried in the gory
grave dug on St. Bartholomew. From the martyrs'
blood, more prolific than the fabled dragon's teeth,
new hosts of Christian heroes sprang, contending for
the martyr's starry and un withering crown. Like
the rosemary and thyme, which the more they are
bruised give out the richer perfume. Protestantism in
France breathed forth those odors of sanctity which
shall never lose their fragrance till the end of time.

Knox's work was well-nigh done. A few days
after the scene above described, he tottered home
from the pulpit which he should occupy no more,
followed by a sympathetic multitude of his " bairns,"
as he atFectionately called his children in the Gospel,
till he entered his house, which he never left again
alive. With a prescience of his near approaching
end, he calmly set his house in order, paying his ser-
vants and settling his worldly affairs. He gave also
his dying charge and last farewell to the elders and
deacons of his church, and to his fellow-ministers in
the Gospel.

The Earl of Morton he solemnly charged to main-
tain the true evangel, the cause of Christ and his

256 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

kirk, the welfare of his sovereign and of the reahn.
"If you shall do so," he said, "God will bless and
honor you ; but if you do it not," he continued in
solemn menace, " God shall spoil you of these bene-
fits, and your end shall be ignominy and shame."

Though his right hand had forgot its cunning, and
his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, yet did he
not forget Jerusalem, but remembered her above his
chief joy. His continual prayer was, " Be merciful,
O Lord, to thy Church, which thou hast redeemed.
Give peace to this afflicted commonwealth. Raise up
faithful pastors, who will take the charge of thy
Church."

The reading of the Scriptures and of " Calvin's
Sermons " cheered almost every hour of his sickness.
The day before his death, Sunday, November 23rd,
he was in holy ecstasy. " If any be present, let them
come and see the work of the Lord," he exclaimed ;
and as the by-standers approached his bed, the
veteran confessor, having fought the fight and kept
the faith, exulted, like another Paul, in his approach-
ing deliverance, and beheld in holy vision the triumph
of the true Church, " the spouse of Christ, despised of
the world, but precious in the sight of God." " I
have been in heaven," he continued, " and have
possession. I have tasted of the heavenly joys,
where presently I am."

The last day of his life, being in physical anguish,
a friend expressed sympathy for his suffering. " It
is no painful pain," he said, " but such as shall, I
trust, put an end to the battle." He was willing to

John knox. 257

be thus for years, he said, if God so pleased, and if
he continued to shine upon his soul through Jesus
Christ.

Exulting in the sure and certain hope of a glorious
resurrection, he requested his wife to read the
fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians. " O, what sweet
and salutary consolation," he exclaimed, " the Lord
hath afforded me from that chapter ! "

" Read where I first cast my anchor," he added, a
little later; when she repeated Christ's pleading,
pathetic intercession for his disciples in John xvii. —
a passage which, with Isaiah liii., and a chapter from
the Ephesians, he had read to him every day.

" Now, for the last time," said the dying saint, " I
commend my body, spirit, soul, into thy hands, 0
Lord. . . . Within a short time I shall exchange
this mortal and miserable life for a blessed immor-
tality through Jesus Christ. . . . Even so, Lord
Jesus, come quickly."

After evening worship, said a friend, " Sir, heard
ye the prayers ? " " Would to God," he replied, " that
you and all men had heard them as I have heard
them ! I praise God for that heavenly sound."

After an interval of quiet, he exclaimed, " Now it
is come"! and ere midnight tolled from the Tollbooth
tower, the weary wheels of life stood still, and, with-
out a struggle, he expired. The eloquent tongue was
now silent forever. The noble heart throbbed no
more. The face that never blanched before man,
became pale at the icy touch of Death. His
long toil and travail were ended. The Christian
17

258 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

athlete laid his arms forever down, and entered into
his eternal rest.

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.

. . . He hates him,
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer."

In two days his body was laid beside the walls of
St. Giles, the scene of his apostolic ministrations.
The Regent, the principal nobility, the neighboring
ministers, and a great concourse of people paid their
last homage, not without sighs and tears, to one of
Scotland's noblest sons. As he was laid in the grave,
the Earl of Morton pronounced his eulogy in the
memorable words, "Here lies he who never feared the
face of man."

Rarely did so strong a soul tabernacle in so frail a
body. Knox was of low stature, slight frame, and, as
age, care and sickness did their work, of worn and
rugged features, which were, however, kindled by
piercing dark eyes. His grey hair and long grey
beard gave him a venerable and dignified mien.

Knox's chief power was in the pulpit. There he
reigned without a rival. Indeed, we must go back to
the golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch and Con-
stantinople before we can find his equal in eloquence
and in influence on contemporary political events.

The afterward celebrated James Melville thus des-
cribes Knox's preaching at St. Andrew's : " In the
opening up of his text, he was moderate the space of
an half-houre : but ere he had done with his sermone,

260 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

he was sa active and vigorous that he was lyk to ding
the pulpit in blads, and flie out of it."

His words rang like anvil -strokes where swords are
forged for battle. He was not a man clothed with
soft raiment, and speaking smooth things, but a stern
prophet of the truth, rebuking sin when flaunting in
velvet as well as when cowerinir in raofs. He Was
ungraced with that fine complacency which speaks
only in flowery phrase and courtly compliment in the
presence of the great. He felt that he stood ever in
his presence before whom all earthly distinctions
vanish, and the meanest and the mightiest are alike
the objects of his love and the subjects of his law.
He walked " as ever in his great taskmaster's eye."

Yet his nature was not naturally stern. " I know,"
he said, as he lay upon his death-bed, " that many
have frequently and loudly complained, and do yet
complain of my too great severity. But God knows
that my mind was always void of hatred to the persons
of those against whom I thundered the severest judg-
ments."

In refutation of the charge of seditious railing
against his sovereign, he said that he had not railed
against her, unless Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspir-
ed writers were also railers. He had learned plainly
and boldly to call wickedness by its own terms. " I
let them understand," he proudly said, " that I am
not a man of the law that has my tongue to sell for
silver or favors of the world."

To the last, Knox was a devoted student of Holy
Scripture, fivery month the Book of Psalms was

JOHN KNOX. 261

read in course ; and the sayings of our Lord and
teachings of St. Paul were ever on his lips and in his
heart.

Knox was twice married, first to Miss Bowes, of
Berwick, a lady of good family, who for seven years
made him a faithful help-meet during his frequent
exiles and journejdngs. After her death he remained
a widower for upwards of three years, when he married
Margaret Stewart, a daughter of Lord Ochiltree.

Knox was a voluminous writer, as well as an elo-
quent preacher, and a man active in public affairs.
His literary style is marked by the characteristics of
the age. It is somewhat involved, sometimes harsh,
always strong, and often picturesque and animated,
although devoid of ornament, for he utterly despised
the graces of rhetoric.

No man was ever more bitterly maligned and tra-
duced during his life, or persecuted in the grave with
posthumous malice. Even his very bones have been
flung out of their resting-place, and no man knoweth
where they are laid. Political partisanship and re-
ligious rancor have combined in aspersing his charac-
ter, his motives and his conduct. " A romantic
sympathy with the Stuarts," says Froude, " and a
shallow liberalism, which calls itself historical phil-
osophy, has painted over the true Knox with the
figure of a maniac."

Nor even after a controversy of three centuries
above his slumbering dust, has he been relieved of
the odium which was heaped upon his memory. Like
his distinguished contemporary, Lord Bacon, who,

262 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

overwhelmed with obloquy and reproach, committed
his reputation to after ages and to foreign lands, so
the maligned and persecuted Father of the Scottish
Reformation, conscious of the approval of his Maker,
appealed from the passions and prejudices of his
enemies to the judgment of posterity. " What I have
been to my country," he declares, "albeit this un-
thankful age will not know, yet the ages to come
will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. For,
to me," he plaintively continues, " it seems a thing
most unreasonable that in my decrepid age I shall be
compelled to fight against shadows and houlets, that
dare not abide the light."

" The full measure of Knox's greatness," says the
philosophic Froude, " no man could then estimate. It
is, as we look back over that stormy time, and weigh
the actors in it one against the other, that he stands
out in his full proportions. No grander figure can
be found in the entire history of the Reformation in
this island than that of Knox. He was no narrow
fanatic, M'^ho could see truth and goodness nowhere
but in his own formula. He was a large, noble,
generous man, with a shrewd perception of actual
fact, who found himself face to face with a
system of hideous iniquity. . . . His was the
voice which taught the peasant of the Lothians that
he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with
the proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his
forefathers. He was the one antagonist whom Mary
Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive. He it
was that raised the poor commons of his country

JOHN KNOX.

263

into a stern and rugged people, who might be hard
narrow, superstitious and fanatical, but who, never-
theless, were men whom neither king, noble, nor

JOHN KNOX S HOUSE, EDINBURGH.

priest could force again to submit to tyranny. The
spirit which Knox created saved Scotland."
,'. . To-day he belongs not to Scotland, but to the
world. While men love virtue and revere piety and

264 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

admire heroism, so long will the memory of Knox be
a legacy of richest blessing and an inspiration to
highest courage and to noblest effort for the glory of
God and for the welfare of man.

In the High Street, Edinburgh, still stands Knox's
house, a quaint old place, with a steep outer stair. It
is carefully maintained as a museum of relics of the
great reformer — as nearly as possible in its original
condition. It was with feelings of profound rever-
ence that I stood in the room in which Knox died,
and in the little study — very small and narrow, only
about four feet by seven — in which he wrote the
" History of the Scottish Reformation." I sat in his
chair at his desk, and I stood at the window from
which he used to preach to the multitude in the High
Street — now a squalid and disreputable spot. The
motto on the house front reads :

" 8t)fe. ®ob. nbDfc. al. anb. l)c. nt)d)tIiot)r. a^. l)e. ec(f."

A garrulous Scotch wife, with a charming accent,
showed a number of interesting relics, including his
portrait and that of the fair, false queen, whose guilty
conscience he probed to the quick, and those of the
beautiful Four Maries of her court.

The old St. Giles Church, which so often echoed
with the eloquence of Scotland's greatest son, is one
of the most interesting of historic structures. Within
its walls are buried the Regent Murray and the great
Earl of Montrose ; and without, beneath the stone
pavement of the highway, once part of the church-
yard, lies the body of John Knox. A metal plate.

JOHN KNOX.

265

with the letters " T. K., 1572," conjecturally marks his
grave — the exact position is unknown — and all day

TUK MAUTYKS' M0NUMP:NT, GREYFRIAR's CHURCHYARD,
EDINBURGH.

long the carts and carriages rattle over the bones of
the great Scottish Reformer.

The churchyard of old Greyfriars, not far distant,

266 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

is an epitome of Scottish history. On the broad flat
stone, now removed, the Solemn League and Coven-
ant was signed, 1638, and on Martyrs' Monument one
reads, "From May 27th, 1661, that the most noble
Marquis of Argyll were beheaded, until February 18th,
1668, there were executed in Edinburgh about one
hundred noblemen, gentlemen, ministers and others,
the most of whom lie here." Nourished by such
costly libations, the tree of liberty took root and
flourished strong and fair.

Around the blue banner of the Scottish Covenant
gather memories as heroic as ever thrilled the heart
of man. As we read to day its story, two hundred
years after the last covenanting martyr went to God,
our souls are touched to tenderness and tears. Like
a waft of mountain air, fragrant with the bloom of
the gorse and heather, comes the inspiration of the
noble lives and nobler deaths of those brave confes-
sors of the faith and witnesses for God. No single
name looms up so conspicuously as that of Knox at
an early period ; but the heroes of the Covenant were
a grand army of brave men, battling and dying for the
truth.

The "old leaven" of Popery was still working in the
land when James VI., paltering with the popish lords,
was reminded by the bold Andrew Melville that
" there were two kings in the realm, one King James
and the other King Jesus, whose subject King James
was."

On the 1st of March, 1638, after a sermon in the
old Greyfriars' church, a great parchment was spread

JOHN KNOX. 267

upon a broad, flat tombstone in the churchyard, and
was subscribed by such numbers that space failed, so
that many could affix only their initials ; and many
of the signatures were written in blood. Never did
nation before make more solemn and awful engage-
ment to God than this. It was received as a sacred
oath, and was defended with the heart's blood of
Scotland's bravest sons. The covenanting host ral-
lied round the blue and crimson flag, then first flung
to the winds, emblazoned with the words, " For
Christ's Crown and Covenant."

The Earl of Montrose, originally a Covenanter,
changed sides and raised the white flag for the king.
He blazed like a meteor through the Highlands, win-
ning brilliant victories, carrying terror and bloodshed
into many a peaceful vale. He was at length defeated
and exiled ; but returning in arms, was apprehended ,
beheaded and quartered, with the utmost indignities
of that stern age, at Edinburgh.

After the Restoration the covenants were torn by
the hands of the common hangman, and burned with
drunken mockery. Rather than submit to tlic
" black prelacy," four hundred ministers resigned
their livings and were driven out in the depth of
winter upon the snowy wolds. Their places were
filled by a mob of illiterate hirelings, so that it
was said, " the cows were in jeopardy because the
herd boys were all made parsons." Men and women
were driven at the point of the sabre and under the
penalty of a fine to a service which they abhorred ;
and to give " meat, drink, house, harbor or succor "
to an ejected minister was a crime.

268 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

The Covenanting Church, driven from its altars,
betook itself to the wilderness — to lonely straths
and distant vales, where the scream of the eagle
and the thunder of the cataract blended with the
singing of the psalm and the utterance of the
prayer, while armed sentinels kept watch on the
neighboring hills. At the rippling burn infants were
baptized, and at those mountain altars youthful
hearts plighted their marriage vows. " It is some-
thing," says Gilfillan, "to think of the best of a nation
worshipping God for years together in the open air,
the Druids of the Christian faith."

Claverhouse swept through the country like a de-
stroying angel. Twelve hundred prisoners were
dragged to Edinburgh and huddled together for four
long months in Greyfriar's churchyard, where the
Covenant had been signed, with no covering but the
sky, no couch but the cold earth. The Covenanters,
banned like wild beasts, withdrew with their Bibles
and their swords to dark glens, wild heaths, rugged
mountains, and rocky caves. The preachers, stern
eremites, gaunt and haggard, proclaimed, like a new
Elijah, the threatenings of God's wrath against his
foes. As such live in history and tradition the names
of Cargill, Cameron and Renwick, and such has Sir
Walter Scott portrayed in his marvellous creations,
Ephraim Macbriar and Habakuk Mucklewrath.

Wild superstitions were mingled with lofty faith.
Some claimed the gift of second sight, and uttered
dark prophesies of the future. They believed in
magic and Satanic agency. " Claverhouse was in

JOHN KNOX. 269

leac^ue with the arch-fiend, and lead could not harm
him, nor water drown. Only to the cold steel of the
Highland skean or the keen edge of the claymore was
his body vulnerable." And in the violent and bloody
deaths of many of their persecutors they beheld the
avenging hand of God.

The moral heroism of these brave men has never
been surpassed. Take, as examples, the fate of Richard
Cameron and David Hackstoun. When Cameron was
ordained the minister who laid his hand upon his
head predicted " that that head should be lost for
Christ's sake, and be set up before sun and moon in
the sight of the world." But the prophecy daunted
not his daring. He was the most powerful of the
covenanting preachers, and his voice stirred the souls
of the people like the peal of a clarion. His home
was the wild muir, his bed the heather, his pillow a
stone, his canopy the sky.

At Airsmoss he, with Hackstoun and about sixty
companions, were attacked by the Royal troops. "This
is the day I have prayed for," he exclaimed with pro-
phetic soul ; " to day I gain the crown." He fell
pierced with wounds. His head and his hands were
hacked off and borne on a halberd through the High
Street of Edinburgh, the fingers uplifted as in prayer.
" These," said Murray, as he delivered them to the
officials of the Privy Council, "are the head and hands
of a man who lived praying and preaching, and died
praying and fighting."

With shocking barbarity they were presented to
Cameron's father, in the Tollbooth in Edinburgh,

270 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

with the unfeeling and mocking enquiry if he knew
to whom they belonged ? " Oh, yes," said the poor
old man, taking them and kissing them, " they are my
son's, my ow^n dear son's. Good is the will of the
Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but has made
goodness and mercy to follow us all our days."

As the saintly Peden sat on Cameron's grave he
lifted his streaming eyes to heaven and pronounced
his noblest eulogy in the prayer : " Oh ! to be with
Ritchie." " Bury me beside Ritchie," he asked on his
death-bed, " that I may have rest in my grave, for I
have had little in my life." But his prayer w^as not
to be answered, for forty days after his own burial
the ruffian soldiery disinterred his body and hanged
it on a gibbet.

The Cameronian rank and file, humble pedlars
and weavers and weak women, were no less heroic
than their leaders. A martyr spirit seemed to ani-
mate every frame. The story of John Brown, the
Ayrshire carrier, has been often told, but will never
lose its power to touch the heart. His only crime
was the worship of God according to the dictates of
his conscience. Surprised by troopers, he walked at
their head, " rather like a leader than a captive," to
his own door. " To your knees," cried Claverhouse,
" for you must die."

John prayed with such feeling that the dragoons
were moved to tears. He tenderly kissed his wife
and babes, and prayed, " May all purchased and pro-
mised blessings be multiplied unto you." '' No more
of this," roared the unrelenting Claverhouse, and he

JOHN KNOX.

271

ordered the dragoons to fire. Seeing them waver, he
snatched a pistol, and, with his own hand, shot the
p-ood man throuo-h the brain. As he fell the brave
wife caught her husband's shattered head in her lap.

EDINliUlUai CASTLK, FROM TUK (UiASS MARKET, WHERE
THE MARTYRS WERE EXECUTED.

" What think you of your husband now ? " de-
manded the titled ruffian. " I aye thocht muckle o'
him, sir," was the brave response, " but never sae
nmckle as I do this day." " I would think little to

272 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

lay thee beside liim," he answered. "If you were
permitted, I doubt na ye would," said the God-fearing
woman ; " but how are you to answer for this morn-
ing's work ? " " To men I can be answerable, and as
to God," was the blasphemous answer, " I will take
him into my own hands," and the brutal soldier struck
spurs to his horse and galloped away.

" Meekly and calmly," continues the record of this
martyrdom, " did this heroic woman tie up her hus-
band's head in a napkin, compose his body, and cover
it with her plaid — and not till these duties were per-
formed did she permit the pent-up current of her
mighty grief to burst forth, as she sat down beside
the corpse and wept bitterly."

" Will you pray for the king ? " queried Major Bal-
four of three Glasgow laborers. " We will pray for
all within the election of grace," was their reply.
" Do you question the king's election ? " he asked.
" Sometimes we question our own," they answered.
Such contumacy was unpardonable, and within an
hour the dogs lapped their blood.

" Though every hair on my head were a man," said
another dying martyr, " I would die all these deaths
for Christ and his cause." " Will you renounce the
Covenant ? " demanded the soldiers of a peasant
whom they found sleeping on the muir with a Bible by
his side. '" I would as soon renounce my baptism,"
he replied, and in an instant dyed the heather with
his blood.

In moss hags, in hollow trees, in secret caves, in
badgers' holes, in churchyards, and other haunted

JOHN KNOX. 27S

spots — even in burial lots ; in haystacks, in meal
chests, in chimneys, in cellars, in garrets, in all manner
of strange and loathsome places, the fugitives for con-
science, from the sword or the gallows, sought shelter,
and marvellous were their hairbreadth escapes from
the fury of the persecutors. In hunger, and perils,
and penury, and nakedness, these " true-hearted Cov-
enanters wrestled, or prayed, or suffered, or wandered
or died." Many of Scotland's grandest or loveliest
scenes are ennobled by the martyr memories of those
stormy times ; by the brave deaths of those heroes of
the Covenant, and by their blood that stained the
sod,

"On the niuirland of mist where the martyrs lay ;
Where Cameron's sword and Bible were seen
Engraved on the stone where the heather grows green."

For eight-and-twenty years the flail of persecution
had scourged the land. Nearly twenty thousand, it
is estimated, had perished by fire, or sword, or water,
or the scaffold, or had been banished from the realm,
and many, many more had perished of cold and
hunger in the moss hags and morasses. They went
rejoicing from the sorrows and trials of earth to the
everlasting rewards of heaven.

" The struggle and grief are all passed,
The glory and worth live on."

li

XI.

THOMAS CRANMER.

The character of Cranmer exhibits, strangely blended,
great strength and great weakness, the noblest fidelity
and painful apostacj^ the grandest heroism and
pitiful cowardice. But, thank God, the heroic tri-
umphs over the ignoble. Like a day that has been
beclouded by storms, but whose sun at last sets in
splendor, so his life-sun went down sublimely, and
left a long trail of glory in the sky, and " nothing in
his life became him like his leaving it."

A complete story of Cranmer would be almost a
history of the English Reformation. We can here
give only a rapid outline sketch. He was born in
1489, and died in 1555. In the sixty-six years of his
life he bore a prominent part in the history of Eng-
land during three reigns, and reached the highest
ecclesiastical dignity in the realm. At school he was
trained by a harsh preceptor, from whom, he says, he
" learned little and suffered much."

On his father's death he was sent, at the early age
of fourteen, to Jesus College, Cambridge. Here, for
eight years, he was a diligent student of the scholastic
learning of the day. Twelve years longer he spent

274

THOMAS CRANMER. 275

in the study of philosophy and the Holy Scriptures
before he received his degree of Doctor of Divinity.
He continued five years longer at this college, recog-
nized as one of the most learned men of his time, and
not till the ripe age of thirty-nine did he enter upon
the public life in which he subsequently played so
prominent a part.

In 1529 Henry VIII., twenty-five years after his
marriage with Katharine of Arragon, affected to be
troubled by religious scruples, because she had been
his brother's widow, and wished a divorce, that he
might wed the younger and fairer Anne Boleyn. The
Pope, Clement VII., under various pretexts, evaded
and postponed giving a decision on the subject. The
impatient monarch asked the opinion of Cranmer and
other learned men expert in ecclesiastical law. Cran-
mer answered that the question should be decided by
the Bible ; that the divines of the English universities
were as well fitted to give judgment as those of Rome
or any foreign country ; and that both the king and
Pope would bo bound to abide by their decision.

The bluff" monarch declared that Cranmer " had got
the right sow by the ear," and he was summoned to
court, made a royal cha[)lain, and was ordered to
prepare an argument on the (piestion. The conclusion
of the argument was that marriage with a brother's
widow was condemned by the Scriptures, the Councils,
and the Fathers. "^Fhis opinion is not surprising,
since it is hel<l by many Protestant clergy of the
present da}^

Cranmer having declared his readiness to defend

276 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

his decision even at Rome, was sent thither on an
embassy. His more familiar acquaintance with the
" Holy City " and the Papal court opened his eyes to
the manifold corruptions of both the one and the
other. He then visited the leading Lutheran clergy
of Germany, and seems to have become completely
converted to the Reformed doctrines. He showed his
dissent from the Roman decree enforcing the celibacy
of the clergy by marrying the niece of Osiander, one
of the leading reformers.

Returning to England, he was appointed Arch-
bishop of Canterbury in 1533. His consecration was
delayed for six months because he declared his inten-
tion not to receive the archbishopric from the Pope,
whom he considered to have no authority within the
realm. The Pope, deeply chagrined, did not feel at
liberty, however, to quarrel with his powerful
suffragan.

Cranmer proceeded with the divorce, and declared
Henry's marriage null and void. In this he has been
accused of subserviency to liis royal master ; but
although we believe him to have sanctioned a grievous
moral wrong, we believe, also, his own strong convic-
tions of right, and not the will of the king, to have
been his supreme motive. The Pope, enraged at this
contempt of his authority, excommunicated the king,
and Cranmer became the active instrument of the
Reformation. A violent breach between England
and Rome took place. The payment of Peter's Pence
was discontinued, and the Papal power was entirely
set aside. Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and

THOMAS CRANMER. 277

three others, refused to accept the change of succes-
sion, and, in spite of Cranmer's remonstrance, were
put to death as traitors to the crown.

Crannier now urged forward the transhxtion of the
Scriptures, and the placing of a copy in every parish
church in the reahn. Gardiner, a Romanist bishop,
strongly opposed the circulation of the Bible in the
vulgar tongue. " Does it contain any heresies ? " de-
manded the king. The bishop could not affirm that
it did. " Then, in God's name, let it be issued among
our people," exclaimed the impetuous monarch. As
soon as Cranmer received some copies of the new
edition, he exclaimed, " Glory to God," and declared
that it afforded him more pleasure than the gift of
£10,000.

The people thronged to the churches to read the
sacred volume, which, for safety, was chained to the
desks. So great were the crowds, that the best
scholars among them used to read to the others who
stood or sat around. A prisoner in the Lollards'
tower, at a period soon after this, being accused of
having said that he " trusted to see the day when
maids will sing the Scriptures at their wheels, and
yeomen at the plough," replied, " I thank God that I
have seen that day, and I know husbandmen better
read in the Scriptures than many priests."

Notwithstanding the many cares of his high office,
Cranmer rose daily at five o'cloqk, and gave many
hours to study, especially to the study of God's Word.
He preaclied with great diligence, confirming his
teaching l)y (juotations from Scripture. " And such

278 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

heat and conviction," writes Foxe, "accompanied the
archbishop's sermons, that the people departed from
them with minds possessed with a great hatred of
vice, and burning with a desire for virtue."

The whole country, in consequence of the breach
with the Pope, was laid under an interdict, and all the
curses in the Papal armory were hurled against the
hapless people. No marriages nor baptisms might
take place with the sanction of the Pope, and the dead
must be consigned to unhallowed graves, without the
consoling rites of religion. The king retorted by the
dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of
their revenues — a measure warranted by the corrup-
tion and profligacy which they harbored. The monks
had always been " the soldiery of the Pope " and the
enemies of the Reformation ; and Henry proceeded on
the principle subsequently avowed by Knox, " Pull
down the nests and the rooks will fly away."

Cranmer sought to have their revenues devoted to
religious purposes, but in spite of his efforts the
greater part of their lands were diverted to secular
objects. From the condition of Spain and Italy
to-day, we may conceive the probable condition of
England, had those bastiles of ignorance, wantonness,
and superstition been allowed to remain.

The order of public service, under the influence of
Cranmer, was greatly changed, a liturgy and prayers,
in the English tongue, superseding the Latin mum-
blings of a mass-priest. The fickle king, now grown
weary of the hapless Anne Boleyn, soon found occa-
sion of accusation against her. Cranmer, because he

THOMAS CKAXMER. 279

was the queen's friend, was ordered to confine himself
to his palace of Lambeth. But he wrote a spirited
letter in her defence to the king. On evidence which
conveyed conviction to his mind, he subsequently de-
claimed the marriage void.

Four days after, Anne Boleyn was beheaded on that
gloomy Tower Hill, whose soil was soaked with so
much of England's noblest blood. She faced the
stern ordeal with constancy and courage. " The
headsman, I hear," she said to the lieutenant, " is
very expert, and my neck is very slender ; " and she
clasped it with her little hands and smiled. Her last
words were " To Christ I commend my soul." The
best defence of her character is the fact that three
days after her death, Henry married her rival, Jane
Seymour.

Under a Roman Catholic reaction, the Act of Six
Articles, or " whip with six strings," as it was called,
was passed, re-establishing several of the errors of
Rome, and enjoining the celibacy of the clergy.
This act Cranmer strongly opposed, but ineffectually ;
and, indeed, was compelled to send his wife out of the
country to avoid the penalty of death. In London
alone, in fourteen days, hve hundred persons were
haled to prison for the violation of this act, some of
whom were executed. Cromwell, a staunch friend
of the Reformation, now fell under the king's dis-
pleasure, and, under the convenient plea of high
treason, was put to deatli. Cranmer l)ravely stood
by him to the last, not fearing the wrath of the king.

The Roman party, gaining courage, procured the

280 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

prohibition of the Bible to all except nobles and gen-
tlemen. Plots were laid by his enemies against the
archbishop ; but the king, who was expected to
favor the plots, honored the fidelity of his servant
by warning him of the menaced attack, Cranmer
invited the two arch-plotters to his palace, and asked
their counsel as to the treatment of such designs.
They both loudly censured such villainy, and declared
that the traitors who plotted it deserved death, one
of them vowing that if an executioner were wanting
he would perform the office himself. " Know ye these
letters, my masters ? " demanded the archbishop, con-
fronting them with the evidence of their guilt. He then,
after solemn rebuke, freely pardoned them. Indeed,
his clemency passed into a proverb. " Do my Lord
Canterbury an ill turn," it was said, •' and you make
him your friend forever."

Renewed attempts were made against the primate.
" If they do so now," said the king, who was not
without his generous qualities, " what will they do
with him when I am gone ? " and he gave him, after
the manner of an Oriental monarch, his signet ring, as
a pledge of his protection. Henry had much keen
discernment. Referring to Cranmer's crest — three
pelicans — he admonished him to be ready, like the
pelicans, to shed his blood for his spiritual children.
"You are likely," he said, in unconscious prophecy, "to
be tested at length, if you stand to your tackling."

In his own last hours, the king sent for his faith-
ful and honored servant. Cranmer faithfully ad-
irionished the monarch, who was about to appear

THOMAS CRANMER. 281

before the great tribunal of the skies, to look for
salvation to Christ alone, and asked if he trusted
in him. Then the king, unable to speak, " did
wring the archbishop's hand in his," says Foxe, " as
hard as he could, and shortly after departed." Like
David's, his hands were too deeply imbrued with
blood for hiui to build for the Lord the temple of a
Reformed Church. That was reserved for the inno-
cent hands of his son Edward and his daughter
Elizabeth.

Cranmer was appointed by the king's will one
of the Council of Regency during the minority of
Edward VI., who was only nine years old. During
the " boy-king's " life his influence was great, and
was directed to the establishment of the Reformed
religion, which, with the brief interval of Mary's
reign, has ever since obtained in England. The wor-
ship of images was prohibited, and the Scriptures, no
longer bound, were open to the study of every rank
and condition.

Many editions of the Bible were printed and freely
disseminated. The English Book of Common Prayer,
in almost its present form, the Book of Homilies, and
the Articles of Religion, were all set forth in the
vulgar tongue for the instruction of the common
people. The new service book was founded on the
liturgies of the primitive Church, divested of most of
the Roman additions, and retaining the phraseology
of Scripture. The pure and noble English and simple
dignity of that service have made it a priceless
heritage to the Anglo-Saxon race, and the grandest

282 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

monument to the memory of the martyr- primate of
England.

Cranmer has been accused of austerity to the
adherents of the ancient faith. Numerous facts,
however, go to prove his lenity and clemency. " If
it ever come to their turn," remonstrated a friend,
"they will show you no such favor." '• Well," said
Cranmer, " if God so will, we must abide it." And
abide it he did, even unto death.

Nevertheless, the principles of religious toleration
were not then, nor for long afterwards, understood ;
and persecution for religious opinions marked Catholic
and Protestant alike. Cranmer's complicity, although
only as a member of the council by which she was
condemned, in the death by fire of the Anabaptist,
Joan Bocher, is a dark stain on his character, like the
burning of Servetus on that of Calvin. The Protes-
tant party, however, have ever more freely permitted
the use of the press to their opponents than the
Romanists, wdiose inflexible rule it has been to sup-
press all discussion of controversial subjects. " Turn
or burn " is the conclusive argument they have sought
to employ.

When Edward VI. resolved to leave the crown to
Lady Jane Grey, Cranmer reluctantly consented to
the change of succession. But having taken his
stand, he adhered faithfully to the hapless queen of a
day, and shared her fall. His last official act was to
serve at the funeral of Edward VI. The next day he
was ordered to confine himself to his palace of
Lambeth.

THOMAS CRANMER. 283

On the accession of Mary, of bloody memory, the
Mass was again set up, and the kingdom was once
more distracted by a religious revolution. Cranmer
boldly wrote and published a declaration against the
Mass. " My Lord, we doubt not that you are sorry
that it hath gone forth," said the complaisant Roman
bishop, Heath. " I intended," replied the intrepid
reformer, " to have made it on a more large and
ample manner and to have set it on St. Paul's Church
door, and on the doors of all the churches of London,
with mine own seal joined thereto." He was soon
sent to the Tower on charge of treason. He was
attainted by a pliant parliament, but it was resolved
to proceed against him for heresy alone.

He was sent down to Oxford with Latimer and
Ridley, to go through the form of disputing with the
doctors and divines on the contested points of relig-
ion. All three were condemned, although they were
not so much as heard, and were confined in the
Bocardo, or common jail, like common felons. Cran-
mer was reduced to " stark beggary," for all his effects
had been confiscated; he had not a penny in his
purse, and his jailers refused to allow his friends to
bestow alms upon him — a privilege granted to the
vilest criminals.

After a year's imprisonment, he was cited before
the commissioners of Philip of Spain and of Mary,
" with," says Foxe, " the Pope's collector and a rabble-
ment of such other like." He was charged with
heresy, treason, and adultery, for so his lawful mar-
riage was called. He made a firm reply, concluding

284 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

thus : " I cast fear apart ; for Christ said to his
apostles that in the latter days they should suffer
much sorrow, and be put to death for his name's sake.
' Moreover,' he said, ' confess me before men, and be
not afraid. If you do so, I will stand with you ; if
you shrink from me, I will shrink from you.' This
is a comfortable and terrible saying ; this maketh me
to set all fear apart. I say, therefore, the Bishop of
Rome treadeth under foot God's laws and the king's."

He was then remanded to the Bocardo, and the
mockery of citing him to appear within eighty days,
before the Pope at Rome, while he was confined a
close prisoner in England, was proceeded with. He
wrote to the (][ueen that he was content to go, but his
bonds were not relaxed, and for his failure to perform
the impossible, he was condemned as contumacious,
and sentenced to death. He was led from his dungeon
to see his fellow-prisoners, Ridley and Latimer, burned
at the stake.

He was also, with every symbol of contumely and
shame, degraded from his high office. He was in-
vested with alb, surplice, and stole as a priest, and
with the robes of a bishop and archbishop, " as he is
at his installing," says Foxe, in simple, homely phrase,
that carries conviction of its truthfulness, "saving
this, that as everything there is most rich and costly,
so everything in this was of canvas and old clouts,
with a mitre and a pall of the same put upon him in
mockery, and the crosier staff was put in his hand.
Then a barber clipped his hair round about, and the
bishops scraped the tops of his fingers where he had

THOMAS CRANMER. 285

been anointed ; wherein Bishop Bonner bore himself
so rough and unmannerly as the other bishop was to
him soft and gentle.

" ' All this,' quoth the archbishop, ' needed not ; I had
myself done with this gear long ago.' Last of all
they stripped him out of his gown into his jacket,
and put upon him a poor yeoman beadle's gown, full
bare and nearly worn, and as evil made as one might
see, and a townsman's cap on his head, and so
delivered him to the secular power. Then spake
Lord Bonner, saying to him, ' Now are you no lord
any more.' And thus, with great compassion and
pity of every man, in this ill-favored gown, was he
carried to prison. ' Now that it is past,' said the
destined victim, ' my heart is well quieted.' "

Every art was used — threatening, flattering, entreat-
ing, and promising — to induce him to make some
assent to the doctrines of the Papacy. For awhile he
stood firm, but at last the fear of the flames shook
his fortitude, the high courage and serene faith which
had sustained him in his bold confession of Christ
deserted him, and, in an hour of weakness, Cranmer
fell. He consented to affix his signature to a formu-
lary of recantation.

" The queen," says Foxe, " having now gotten a
time to revenge her old grief, received his recantation
very gladly ; but of her purpose to put him to death
she would nothing relent. Now was Cranmer's cause."
he quaintly adds, " in a miserable taking, who neither
inwardly had any quietness in his own conscience,
nor yet outwardly any help in his adversaries.

286 BEACOX UGHTS OF THE REFORMATIOX.

Neither could he die honestly, nor yet live unhonestly.
And whereas he sought profit, he fell into double
disprofit, that neither with good men could he avoid
secret shame, nor yet with evil men the note of
dissimulation."

The following year — so slowly did the grim process
linger — Cranmer was brought from the prison to the
beautiful church of St. Mary's, to hear his final sent-
ence. The mayor and aldermen, priests and friars,
and a great concourse of people, assembled to witness
the scene. " It was a lamentable sifrht," savs Foxe :
" He that late was Archbishop and Primate of all
England, and Kings Privy Councillor, being now in
a bare and ragged gown, and ill-favoredly clothed,
with an old s^^uare cap, exposed to the contempt of
all men."

Dr. Cole preached a sermon, in which he declared
that while Cranmer's sin against God was forgiven,
yet his crime against the queen demanded his death.
All the while the venerable archbishop stood, " now
lifting up his hands and eyes in prayer to God, and
now for very shame letting them falL More than
twenty several times," goes on the contemporary
chronicler, " the tears gushed out abundantly and
dropped down marvellously from his fatherly face.'
But he wept not for Ms present or prospective suf-
fering, but for his dire apostacy, which he was now
resolved, as far as possible, to retrieve.

When asked to make his confession of faith, " I will
do it,'" he said, '" and with a good will." Then he asked
the people to pray to God for him to forgive his sins.

THOMAS CRANMER. 287

which above all men, both in number and greatness,
he had committed. " But there is one offence," he
went on, " which, above all, at this time doth vex and
trouble me," and he drew from his cloak his last con-
fession of " his very faith," in which, to the astonish-
ment of all, he boldly retracted his previous recan-
tation as follows :

" And now I come to the great thing that so much
troubleth my conscience, more than anything that ever
I did or said in my whole life ; and that is, the set-
ting abroad of a writing contrary to the truth, which
now here I denounce and refuse, as things written
with my hand, contrary to the truth which I thought
in my heart, and which were written for fear of
death, and to save my life, if it might be. And foras-
much as my hand offended, writing contrary to my
heart, my hand shall first be punished therefor ; for
when I come to the fire, it shall first be burned. And
as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy and
Antichrist, with all his false doctrine."

" Stop the heretic's mouth and take him away," cried
Cole. Then Cranmer being dragged down from the
stage — we follow the vivid narrative of Foxe — was
led away to the fire, the monks meanwhile " vexing,
troubling, and threatening him most cruelly." When
he came to the place, in front of Balliol College, where
he had seen Latimer and Ridley glorify God amid
the flames, he knelt down, put off his garments, and
prepared himself for death. Then was he bound by
an iron chain to the stake, and the faggots piled about
his body.

288 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

As the flames arose, he stretched forth his risfht
hand, which he hekl in the fiercest blaze, steadfast
and immovable. His eyes were lifted up to heaven,
and oftentimes he repeated, " This hand has offended !
Oh, this unworthy right hand ! " so long as his voice
would suffer him ; and using often the words of St.
Stephen, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," in the
greatness of the flame he gave up the ghost.

He had overcome at last. The day of his death
was the grandest of his life. The hour of weakness
was past. The hour of triumph had come. The
strong will, and lofty faith, and steadfast courage
defied even the agonies of the fire. Beyond the jeer-
ing mob and the cruel priests, he beheld the beatific
vision of the Lord he loved ; and above the roar of
the flames and the crackling of faggots, fell sweetly
on his inner ear the words of benediction and pardon,
" Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into
the joy of thy Lord."

His brief apostacy deepens our sympathy, like the
gaping wound the warrior receives in deadly conflict
with his foe. His human weakness proves his kin-
ship to our souls. A man of like passions with our-
selves, he fell — fell grievously — but, laying hold upon
the strength of God, he rose again. Like repentant
Peter, the glory of his final confession makes us for-
give, and almost forget, the shame of his denial of his
Lord.

XII.

LATIMER AND RIDLEY.

Of the effif^ies on the Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford,
two of the most impressive are those of Bishops
Latimer and Ridley, the former bending beneath the
weight of well nigh fourscore years. Side by side
on that very spot those noble souls glorified God amid
the flames, and passed through the gate of martyrdom
to their reward on high. It is fitting, therefore, that
side by side we trace their life history and record
their sublime confession of the faith.

Hugh Latimer sprang from that sturdy Saxon stock
which constitutes the bone and sinew of the English
race. " By yeoman's sons," he declared in his first
sermon before King Edward VI., " the faith of Christ
is, and hath been, chiefly maintained," and by his own
brave life and heroic death, he illustrated the saying.
The following is his own account of his parentage,
given in his famous " Sermon of the plougli : "

" My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his
own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds by
the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled as
much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had a walk for
a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine.
19 289

290 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

He was able, and did find tlie Icing a harness with
himself and his horse, and so he came to the place
where he should receive the king's wagfes. I can
remember that I buckled his harness when he went
unto Blackheath Field."

He goes on to say, " My father kept me to school,
or else I had not been able to preach before the
King's Majesty now. He married my sisters with
five pounds, or twenty nobles, apiece, and he brought
them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hos-
pitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he
gave to the poor. And all this he did on the same
farm."

The subject of our sketch was born in 1480, at
Turcaston, and went in his fourteenth year to Cam-
bridge University, where he pursued a full scholastic
course, and became a Fellow of Clare Hall. In his
zeal for the new learning then springing into life, he
crossed the sea and sat at the feet of the great Italian
scholars of the university of Padua. He diligently
studied the Roman theology, and was so zealous in
the observance of the rites of the Church that he was
made the cross-bearer in the religious processions. He
had, indeed, the intention of becoming a friar, think-
ing thereby more effectually to serve God.

" I was as obstinate a papist," he writes, " as any
was in England, insomuch that, when I should be
bachelor of divinity, my whole oration went against
Philip Melanchthon and against his opinions. Master
Bilney, or rather Saint Bilney, that suffered death
for God's Word's sake, heard me at that time, and

292 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

perceived that I was zealous without knowledge. He
came to ine afterward in ray study and desired me to
hear his confession. I did so, and learned more than
before in many years. So from that time forward I
began to smell the Word of God, and forsook the
school doctors and such fooleries."

He became forthwith a zealous preacher of the
faith he once opposed. He was therefore cited before
Wolsey, and charged with holding heretical opinions.
But the astute cardinal, finding him no ignorant
fanatic, to the chagrin of his enemies, gave him a
general license to preach. He preached, therefore,
more zealously than ever, defending the doctrines of
the Reformation, and inveighing against indulgences
and other Roman usages.

When Henry VIII. began to throw off the shackles
of the Papac}^ Latimer was appointed one of the
royal chaplains. But he bated not a jot of his sturdy
boldness of speech. He strongly remonstrated against
tlie king's inhibition of the Holy Scriptures and
religious books in the English tongue. The bluff
king never shrank from plain honest dealing, and
the inhibition was shortly removed. Latimer was now
appointed to a living in Wiltshire, where his zealous
itinerating aroused the ire of his enemies. He was
cited before the Archbishop of Canterbury for heres}^
But through the interference of the king he was
acquitted.

Yet he courted not the favor of the monarch who
protected him. " Have pity on your soul," he cried,
remonstrating with the king in the spirit of Elijah

LATIMER AND RIDLEY. 293

rebuking Ahab, " and think that the clay is even at
hand when you shall give an account of your office
and of the blood that has been shed by your sword."
He reproved boldly the unpreaching prelates of his
day. " I would ask you a strange question," he once
said, with biting irony, to a ring of bishops at St.
Paul's Cross, " Who is the most diligent prelate in all
England ? I will tell you. It is the Devil. He
passeth all the rest in doing of his office. Therefore,
if you will not learn of God, for very shame learn of
the Devil."

Latimer's moral earnestness, his homely hamor, his
shrewd wit, his broad charity, his transparent sym-
pathy, made his sermons come home to every man's
conscience. No such preaching had ever been heard
in England, and as the peasants of Galilee listened to
the Great Teacher, so the common people heard him
gladly.

In 1535, Latimer was appointed Bishop of Win-
chester, and opened the convocation with two of his
boldest sermons. He devoted himself with great zeal
to his official duties, and especially labored to remove
the superstitious ceremonies of Romanism, which still
clung like strangling ivy around the goodly trunk of
the Protestant faith. He steadfastly pointed to
Christ as the true object of adoration. For the cele-
bration of the Lord's Supper he prepared a hymn,
setting forth, as follows, its spiritual character:

" Of Christ's body this is a token,

Which on the cross for our sins was broken ;
Wherefore of your sins you must be forsakers,
If of Christ's death ye will be partakers."

294 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

He preached with great diligence — twice on Sun-
days and often during the week — and was bold in
denouncing sin, even in his sermons before the court.
His plainness of speech gave much offence to the
courtiers, whose vices he rebuked, and complaint was
ixiade to the king, whereupon the bishop made the
following defence : " I never thought m3^self worthy,
nor did I ever sue to be a preacher before your
Grace, but I was called to it, and am willing, if you
mislike me, to give place to my betters ; and if it be
your Grace's pleasure so to allow them for preachers,
I could be content to bear their books after them ;
but if your Grace allow me for a preacher, I would
desire your Grace to give me leave to discharge my
conscience, and to frame my doctrine according to my
audience."

In 1539, through the influence of Gardiner and
other Romanizing bishops, the Act of Six Articles
was passed, making it penal to impugn transubstanti-
ation, communion in one kind, the celibacy of the
clergy, monastic vows, private masses, and auricular
confession. Latimer at once resigned the honors of an
office whose duties he could not discharge with the
approval of his conscience, and retired into privacy.
Being compelled by ill-health to seek medical aid in
London, he was discovered by Gardiner's spies, and
was thrust into the gloomy Tower — that grim prison
of so many of England's best and noblest sons. Here
he languished for six slow-rolling years, till he had
well-nigh attained the allotted limit of threescore
and ten.

LATIMER AND RIDLEY. 295

The accession of Edward VJ., released from his
bondage the venerable prisoner. He was pressed by
the House of Commons to resume his bishopric, but
declined the charge on account of his age and infirmi-
ties. These, however, did not prevent his diligently
pursuing his studies, for which purpose, we read, he
used sometimes to rise at two o'clock in the morning.
He frequently preached at court and throughout the
country. His chief residence was at Lambeth, where
he enjoyed the hospitality of his friend Cranmer, the
Primate of all England. Hither many resorted to
him for temporal and spiritual advice. " I cannot go
to my book," he said, " for poor folk who come to me
desiring that their matters may be heard." The
" law's delay," especially in the case of poor suitors,
was then even more proverbial than now.

He took little part in the public direction of the
Reformation ; but as the popular favorite, and through
his powerful preaching, he did more than any other
man to prepare the way for it in the hearts of the
people.

But his life-day, so strangely flecked with sunshine
and shadow, was destined to have a lurid close. On
the accession of Mary, of sanguinary memory, the old
persecuting edicts were re-enforced. The fulmina-
tions of Rome were again hurled against the ad-
herents of the Reformation — at lofty and lowly alike.
So distinguished a mark as Latimer could not long
escape the menaced blow. But he sought not to
evade it, and calmly awaited its fall. It came swift,
and sure, and fatal.

296 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

He was at Coventry when the summons was issued
citing him before the Privy Council. He had ample
warning, but refused to escape. John Carless, a
Protestant w^eaver, who afterwards died in prison for
the truth, informed him of the approach of the offi-
cers— not of justice, but of cruel and flagrant wrong.
But in the spirit of a martyr, he felt that the best
use he could make of his life would be to lay it down
for the testimony of Jesus.

As he was led through Smithfield market — a spot
consecrated by the fires of martyrdom — he said,
" that place had long groaned for him," expecting
soon to be consigned to the flames. He was again
remanded to the gloomy prison of the Tower. As
the frosts of winter smote through the stone w^alls of
his chamber and chilled the thin blood of age, he
wrote to the Lieutenant that, " unless they allowed
him fire he should deceive them ; for they purposed
to burn him, but he should be starved with cold."

His imprisonment, however, was not without its
joys. As the number of prisoners increased, his
friends Cranmer, Ridley and Bradford shared his
chamber. In the study of the New Testament they
solaced their souls and confirmed their convictions of
the errors of Rome. In such employment the long
months of winter passed away, and when the trees
bourgeoned forth, and the lambs skipped in the
meadows, and the larks soared in the ether, they
rode on ambling palfreys, guarded by wardens, from
the Tower down to Oxford, cited thither to dispute
with the learned doctors of the university. How

LATIMER AND RIDLEY. 297

bright and beautiful must this fair world have
seemed as they passed beneath the hawthorn and
apple blossoms of the Thames valley in the year of
grace, 1554 — their last ride through the rural loveli-
ness of " Merrie England."

The learned doctors and logic-mongers of Oxford,
assailed the already prejudged bishops with argu-
ments from the Fathers, the decisions of Councils, and
the trivial distinctions of the schoolmen. But Lati-
mer stoutly replied that these things had no weight
with him only as they were confirmed by Holy Scrip-
ture. With such an obstinate heretic what could the
purblind doctors do but hale him away again to
prison ? This was accordingly done, and in the grim
Bocardo, or felon's jail of Oxford, the destined martyr,
with his companions in tribulation, were confined.

The lonii" months of the summer, so bright and
beautiful without, so dark and dreary in his gloomy
cell, dragged on. Bat even the dungeon gloom was
irradiated with the light of God's smile, and many
fervent prayers for his beloved England, so rent by fac-
tion, and for the persecuted Church of Christ therein,
went up from the grey-haired patriot bishop kneeling
on the stone floor of his narrow cell. Seven times
over during this last imprisonment he diligently read
read and studied the New Testament.

At length, on the 30th of September, Latimer and
Ridley were brought forth for their final arraignment.
The scene in the stately Church of St. Mary's was
one of pomp and splendor, so far as thrones of state
and embroideries ^of golden tissue can give splendor

298 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

to a high crime against justice and righteousness.
Latimer's appearance is thus described : " He held
his hat in his hand, having a kerchief on his head,
and upon it a great cap, such as townsmen use, with
two broad flaps to button under the chin wearing an
old threadbare Bristol frieze gown, girded to his body
with a penny leather girdle, at which his Testament
hung by a string of leather, and his spectacles, with-
out case, depending about his neck upon his breast."

The Papal ecclesiastics accused him of want of
learning, on which he emphatically replied, " Lo, you
look for learning at my hands, who have gone so long
to the school of oblivion, making the bare walls my
library, keeping me so long in prison without book,
or pen and ink, and now you let me loose to come and
answer to articles."

But remonstrance was futile. He had only to hear
sentence pronounced, to be degraded from office with
puerile and insulting ceremonies, and be led away to
be burned. In the public square in front of Balliol
College the stakes were planted and the faggots piled.
From a wooden pulpit a sermon was preached to the
assembled multitude, aspersing the name and fame of
the reformers, but they were not suffered to reply.
" Well," said Latimer, appealing to the great tribunal
and the last assize, " there is nothing hid but shall be
opened."

The jailer then took off his prison clothes to prepare
him for the stake, when it was seen that he had put
on a shroud as an underg-arment. Although an infirm
old man, yet, divinely strengthened *or this ordeal by

LATIMER AND RIDLEY. 299

fire, he now " stood upright, as comely a father as one
might anywhere behold." As he stood at the stake
the grand old hero, turning to Ridley, who was
" coupled with him for a connnon flight," uttered these
words, which still stir our souls across the centuries :

" Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the
man : we shall this day light such a candle, by God's
grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."
Then lifting up his voice, he cried, "O, Father in
heaven, receive my soul ! " The fire burned fiercely ;
and, bending towards the flames he seemed to bathe
his hands therein, when the explosion of a bag of
gunpowder fastened to his body swiftly ended his life.

His companion in martyrdom was yet a child when
Latimer had reached man's estate. Nicholas Ridley
was born early in the sixteenth century, of old
Northumbrian stock. He was educated as a zealous
Romanist at the universities of Cambridge, Paris and
Lou vain. But his study of the Scriptures enlightened
his mind, and he embraced the doctrines of the Refor-
mation. He forthwith preached strongly against the
errors of Popery. On the accession of Edward VI. he
became, successively, court preacher, Bishop of Ro-
chester, and Bishop of London.

" He so labored and occupied himself in preaching
and teaching the true and wholesome doctrines of
Christ," says E'oxe, " that a good child never was
more loved by his dear parents than he was by his
flock and diocese. To these sermons the people re-
sorted, swarming about him like bees, and coveting
the sweet flowers and wholesome juice of the fruit-

300 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

fill doctrine, which he not only preached, but showed
the same by his life."

During: the prevalence of the fatal pestilence known
as the " sweating sickness," when many fled from the
city to save their lives, he braved the danger and
steadfastly ministered to his flock. On the accession
of Mary, Eidley was deposed from oflice, and, with
Cranmer and Latimer, was, as we have already
narrated, thrown into the Tower. During the famous
Oxford disputation his critical knowledge of Greek
enabled him to correct many attempts to pervert the
meaning of ancient writers. But it availed not to
avert a fate already foredoomed. When the death
sentence was pronounced, Ridley calmly replied to
his judges, " Although I be not of your company, yet
I doubt not that my name is written in another place,
whither this sentence will send us sooner than we
should have come by the course of nature."

During his last imprisonment he was deprived of
most of his books, and denied the use of pen, ink, or
paper ; but in his zeal for study he cut the lead from
the lattice of his windows, and wrote on the maro-in
of the few books left him. From his prison cell
Ridley sent a letter of apostolic greeting and encour-
agement to his friend Bradford, who was shortly
afterwards burned at Smithfield, saying, " O Eng-
land ! England ! repent thee of thy sins ! " — and
then to his companion in the flames, " Be of good
comfort, brother, for we shall sup this night with
the Lord."

As he was himself led to the stake, Ridley embraced

LATIMER AND RIDLEY. 301

his fellow-sufferer, Latimer, saying, " Be of good heart,
brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the
flame or else strengthen us to abide it. So long as
the breath is in my body," he went on, " I well never
deny my Lord Christ and his known truth." Then
lifting up his hands, he uttered the patriotic prayer
for his country, which, although it so persecuted him,
he loved to the end : " I beseech thee, Lord God, have
mercy upon the realm of England, and deliver her
from all her enemies."

Latimer soon died, but on Ridley's side the fire
burned slowly, so that his torture was prolonged and
dreadful. Yet was he "strengthened to abide it."
His own brother-in-law, desiring to relieve his pain
heaped on more faggots, which, however, kept the fire
down still longer. Frequently he groane'd in the
bitterness of his anguish, " O Lord, have mercy upon
me ! " and urged the bystanders to let the fire reach
his body. At length one understood him and pulled
the faggots apart. The flames leaped up and caught
the gunpowder hung around his neck. A sharp ex-
plosion followed, and he moved no more.

By such constancy and courage and fiery pangs of
martyrdom was the faith of Jesus confessed in those
days of tribulation ; and by such a costly sacrifice
were the triumphs of the Gospel secured. And this
testimony was not availing. Julius Palmer, a Fellow
of Magdalen College, a bigoted Romanist, was present,
and, convinced of the trutli of the doctrines for which
men die thus, became himself a convert to the Pro-
testant faith, and soon sealed his testimony with his
blood.

302 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

The terrors of the stake and faggot were powerless
against men like these. John Rogers died bathing
his hands in the flames " as if they had been cold
water." John Lambert cried, exultingly amid the
flames, " None but Christ." " The Holy Spirit," said
Thomas Bilney, " shall cool the flames to my refresh-
ing," and praying, like Stephen, for his murderers, he
" fell on sleep." In three years three hundred
martyrs thus glorified God amid the flames. But
every death at the stake won hundreds to the perse-
cuted cause. " You have lost the hearts of twenty-
thousand that were rank papists," ran a letter to
Bonner, " within the last twelvemonth."

The Church of Christ in an age of luxury and self-
indulgence may well revert to those days of fiery
trial, and catch inspiration from the faith and zeal
and lofty courage, unfaltering even in the agonies of
death, of those noble confessors and witnesses for God.
Amid the darkness of the times they held aloft the
torch of truth, and handed down from age to age the
torn yet triumphant banner of the faith, dyed with
their hearts' best blood.

They recall the sublime words of Tertullian, which,
sounding across the centuries, still thrill the soul like
the sound of a clarion : " We say, and before all men
we say, and torn and bleeding under your tortures we
cry out, ' We worship God through Christ.' We con-
quor in dying, and are victorious when we are sub-
dued. The flames are our victory robe and our tri-
umphal car. Kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind
us to powder. The oftener you mow us down, the

LATIMER AND RIDLEY. 303

more we grow. The martyr's blood is the seed of
the Church."* In kindred spirit exclaims Justin
Martyr : " You can kill us, but you cannot harm us."i"

" The rosemary and thyme," says Bacon, " the more
they are incensed (or bruised) give out the richer
perfume." So under the cruel flail of persecution the
confessors of Jesus breathed forth the odors of holi-
ness, which are fragrant throughout the world to-day.
From the martyr's blood, more prolific than the fabled
dragon's teeth, new hosts of Christian heroes rose,
contending for the martyr's starry and unwithering
crown.

Age after age the soldiers of Christ have rallied to
the conflict whose highest reward was the o^uerdon of
death. They bound persecution like a wreath about
their brow, and rejoiced in the " glorious infamy " of
suffering for their Lord. Beside the joys of heaven,
they won imperishable fame on earth, and were en-
nobled by the accolade of martyrdom to the lofty
peerage of the skies. Wrapped in their fiery vest and
shroud of flame, they yet exulted in their glorious
victory. While their eyes filmed with the shadows
of death, their spirits were entranced by the vision of
the opening heaven ; and above the jeers of the ribald
mob swept sweetly o'er their souls the song of the
redeemed before the throne. Beyond the shadows of
time, and above the sordid things of earth, they
soared to the grandeur of the infinite and the eternal.

* " Sanguis Martyrum Semen Ecclesiae." Tertul. Apol., C. 50.
tJus. Mar. Apol., 1.

304 BEACON LIGHTS OF THE REFORMATION.

Like a solemn voice falling on the dull ear of man-
kind, these holy examples urged the enquiry, " What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and
lose his own soul ? " And that voice awakened an
echo in full many a heart. The martyrs made more
converts by their deaths than by their lives. Of the
group of "great reformers" commemorated in this
series of papers, all save four suffered as martyrs to
the truth, and all save one of these by the agonizing
death of fire. Yet they live forever in the memory
of mankind, and they still rule our spirits from their
sceptred urns with a potent and abiding spell.

THE END.

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