D'AUBIGNES HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.* Tins volume, its preface says,
was published as a contribution to the memory of the great doctor on the occasion of the tercen- tenary of his death. This day was kept by the Evangelical Alliance (one does not quite understand why the day of his death was chosen) as a day of thanksgiving.
The history is taken up just before Calvin's flight from Paris to Angoulerne, whence he went to Poitiers, at each place gathering around him groups of followers. While at Poitiers he attained the age of twenty-five, at which, in the regular course, be would have taken priest's orders. By refusing to do . so, by giving up his preferment and at the same time selling his patrimony at Nyon, he adopted the final resolution of abandoning all attempts at reforming the Roman Catholic Church from within, and cast himself loose from it its avowed enemy. He next established himself at Paris, where the Reformers were then iu the full tide of prosperity. This prosperity Was short-lived. With a strange and fatal rashness the famous Placards were drawn up and printed on handbills .containing violent denunciations of the doctrines and practices of the priests. These were posted up in all parts of Paris, and even in the private apartments of the palace. The consequence was a terrible reaction against the Reformers, as rebels and revolutionists. Francis, up to that time neutral, was incensed, and the fires of persecution were lighted. Calvin was not personally implicated in the Placard Plot or its con- sequences. Tired of the turmoil of Paris, and wishing to study and write in greater retirement, he had gone first to Strasburg and then to Basle, where he was safe and in the midst of friends. There he published his vindication of the French Reformers addressed to Francis. After a short interval he crossed the Alps into Italy, and there we leave him in order to trace the progress of the new doctrines at Geneva and in the Canton Vaud.
At Geneva the politically Liberal party opposed to the Prince- Bishop was gradually becoming identical with that of the Reform. They were as yet a weak minority. The sympathy and occa- sional assistance of Protestant Berne were not enough to make the balance even. Farel and others who had gone as preachers were expelled. Froment, Farel's young pupil, was sent by him to take his place. It seemed a hopeless task. He set out to re- turn, but when scarcely outside the walls, ashamed Of his des- pondency,. he retraced his steps. He took a room in the city, 4' made several copies in his best handwriting," set up a school, and prospered. After a time be began to preach, first privately, then publicly in the streets. Continual riots were the conse- quence. There was a plot to massacre the Reformers, but by this time they bad become numerous and united enough to de- fend themselves, and there was generally more noise than blood- shed.
The narrative occupies a space of time of less than three years, and is therefore a very small instalment of what promises to be a very long work. This method of publishing books in parts is becoming frequent. There are excuses for it. Probably more copies are sold and more eyes peruse a book if it comes out piecemeal than if it comes out all at once. But of all ways of practising the art of forgetting, and taking the greatest possible time to imbibe the least possible information, reading a book by little bits is the most effectual. It does not matter so much in a eensation novel, the object of which is pleasurable passing ex- citement and not information ; but in a biography or a history homoeopathic doses are objectionable, and where the style is dif- fuse like M. d'Aubign6's, particularly so.
The author in his preface anticipates, and deprecates on the ground of the important moral significance of the time, the charge of introducing unnecessary detail. But diffuseness does not always arise from excessive detail. When it does, it is un- objectionable. Minute incidents simply told are effective and interesting. Nobody quarrels with Macaulay for telling us how long the coach used to take in going from London to York, or with Carlyle for stopping to remark how Monk Samson tucked up his frock when he started on his journey from Bury to King Henry's Court, or with M. d'Aubign6 for noticing the white horse on which Farel rode across the Alps to the Conference of the New Reformers with the Waldenses in their far-off Alpine valley ; on the contrary, one would like to know which pass he went over. But when multiplicity of pages is chiefly due to multiplicity of observations and reflections, and when a chapter is introduced by a weak and not very appropriate sermon, it is wearisome. What is the use of beginning a volume with such phrases as "Religion needs liberty, and the convictions
• ifidory of the Reformation in Europe in the Thee of Calein, By J. H. Merle d'Aubigne, D.D. Vol ILL Loudon: Longman. 1834.
inspired by her ought to be exempt from the control of the Louvre and the Vatican Religious persecution deserves to be reprobated A persecuting government is not only i]iberal, it is impious,"—and so On? What definite idea is intended to be conveyed by the following sentence :—"It is a bad sign when the Church admits into the numbsr of those who are to point out the gate of salvation either men who have not passed through it, or who have not the gift of the word, or are deficient in wisdom?" Does it mean anything more than that bad clergy- men are a bad sign ? If that is all, it is wholly irrelevant to the context.
Writers of this school seem really to think that it would not be reverent or becoming in them to write about religious men or religious events without continually introducing meaningless phrases such as have been quoted. Rather perhaps they begin in their early writings by thinking so,—by thinking that the habitual use of such language, however inappropriate, is the best means of procuring the constant recognition of religious and spiritual power in the visible world. The habit once formed re- mains. It is difficult to abstain from using trite phrases which are so ready at one's elbow, though the spirit which 'gave them meaning is gone. But it is a pity they cannot be printed in a dif- ferent type, or in red ink, so that ordinary readers might arrive more readily at the substance which they only conceal. They are like the common-places with which a case is introduced to a jury, or like the inevitable platitude on civil and religious liberty in Lord Russell's speeches. Everybody has beard them so often and they are so entirely above criticism that all interest favour- able or adverse is lost.
Yet this volume is better than its predecessors. There is more of simple narrative, less display of shallow sectarian spirit. It contains matter which has not before been written in English. Still at times is felt the want of a kindly genial Christian philosophy which attributes all good to one source, no matter where found and in what company, which believes that actions are better evidence of a faith than names. And sometimes it would seem as if M. d'Aubigne thought that the" World "—what- ever portion of humanity he may include under that word—ex- isted only to be a foil, a dark background, against which the "Evan- gelicals "—whoever he may wish to indicate by that term—may shine the more conspicuously and radiantly. Ai such a foil indeed he seems to think the world is worth depicting, otherwise why, for instance, should he have considered "The Papacy" sufficiently worthy of attention for him to have written a preface to a history of it, after baying in that very preface been careful to tell us that- his opinion of all Popes is such that he sees no jade milieu between casting himself at the Pope's feet and rejecting him as a usurper and a blasphemer, and that in reading their history we must never forget the "primitive and hereditary lie" of the Popedom ? One would have thought the history of a primitive and hereditary lie, and of usurpers and blasphemers, need not be written or read.
At any rate M. d'Aubign6 makes no secret of his opinions, whatever may be thought of them. Those who open his pages know what to expect and what not to expect.
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