BERNARDINO OCHINO.* LORD MACAULAY, in his essay on Bacon, tells
us that Bernardino Ochino's sermons on free-will were translated into English by the accomplished mother of the philosopher, adding that this fact is " the more curious, because Ochino was one of that small and audacious band of Italian Reformers, anathematised alike by Wittenberg, by Geneva, by Zurich, and by Rome, from which the Socinian sect deduces its origin." This is probably all that most of our readers know about Ochino. It is in so far misleading that it naturally suggests that Ochino's connection with the Socinians filled some considerable portion of his life, whereas it was only after he had passed the bourne of threescore years and ten that he was formally accused of Socinianiam, and he seems never to have joined the Socinian sect at all Macaulay, however, is correct on the main point,—that Ochino's latest writings betray a strong Socinian tendency, and that, in the closing period of his life, he was at war with all the orthodox Churches. His changes of opinion represent the entire theological cycle through which passed the most intrepidly speculative minds of the sixteenth century. The story of his troublous and changeful career is profoundly interesting. In the occurrences of his life and the successive phases of his spiritual development is reflected, as in a mirror, the history of one of the most eventful centuries in the whole Christian era. Dr. Benrath's volume is not, in its English dress at least, brilliantly eloquent; but its narrative is clear, its informa- tic% is sufficient, its quotations from Ochino's writings are apposite and ample, and we have not observed any shortcoming either in good-sense or in good-feeling. It deserves to be care-
• Bernardino &Rao, of &eta : a Contribution-towards the Ilistory of the Refortna- Ho& By Hari Benrath. Translated from the German by Helen Zimmern. With
Preface by William Arthur A.M. London : Nisbet and Co. 1876.
fully studied by all who are interested in a supremely interesting period. Having said this, we leave the book, merely availing ourselves of its assistance while we briefly sketch the career of Bernardino Ochino.
He was born in Siena in 1487, a date ascertained by the circum- stance of his calling himself, in a writing published in 1563, " an old man of seventy-six." His father's name was Tommasini, but the people in the district of Siena in which he was brought up were then and continue to this day nicknamed from their quarter, Oca, which means the Goose quarter. Glasgow, we believe, rejoices in a locality similarly designated, and the most literal rendering of Ochino's name into English that we can think of would be " Little Bernard of the Goose-dubs." In his early boyhood Italy was agitated by that vague spiritual and social un- rest which preceded the great moral convulsion of the sixteenth century. It showed itself in various movements of opinion affect- ing municipal life in the Italian cities, movements generally followed by speedy reaction, the men who had ridden on the crest of the advancing wave being hurled down and dragged in the sand and shingle of its reactionary back-flow. Savonarola, for example, was carried on the advancing wave of one such move- ment into a position of practical supremacy in Florence. His as- cendency was as brief as it was imposing, and Ochino, who, in his infancy, may have heard his father talking of Savonarola as the greatest of preachers, and one of the most prominent personages in Italy, was but fifteen when the fallen dictator was hanged and burnt. °chino, we may safely conclude, was at this time a. noticing, intelligent lad, of great emotional sensibility andardent moral aspiration, much more likely to sympathise with Savona- rola than with his murderers. This does not imply that he had any doubt as to the infallibility of the Church. The partial revival of monasticism which took place in the north of Italy soon alter the death of Savonarola afforded him the means of provisionally satisfying the cravings of his spiritual nature. The rule of the Friars of St. Francis, named the Observants, seemed to him the " strictest, severest, and most harsh" to which he could be admitted, and for this reason he joined them. He was still young, and in old age, long after he had renounced allegiance to Rome, he bore witness to the beneficial influence of the convent in guarding him from youthful vice. Always dis- tingushed by emotional and intellectual receptivity, Ochino' enables us to realise, from his manner of conducting him- self as an Observant, the way in which noble-minded and devout young men of the period dealt with the problems of their spiritual life. To expiate original and actual sin, to earn Paradise, to escape hell, were the aims of pious youth, and they hoped to attain them by fastings, prayers, continence, vigils. After Ochino had been for some considerable time an Observant, and had earned high distinction in the Order, the Capuchins arose, offering a still sterner renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil than that of the Observants, and he became a Capuchin. This was in 1534.
No decisive change had as yet taken place in his religious. opinions. He was still engaged in solving, by dint of prayers, fastings, assiduous preaching, and other good works, the problem of his salvation. He had no conception of solving it, except by laying greater stress upon the old methods. But if we carefully consider, we shall find that the problem in question was, by its very nature, as apprehended by Ochino, insoluble. This is a. matter worth looking into, for we came here upon the very philosophy of the Reformation, in the sense of an intelligent• account of its deepest cause. Ochino, and the whole body of his devout contemporaries regarded sin as infinitely culpable,— necessarily so, because it consisted in offending an Infinite Being.. The debt of the sinner was infinite. What was the inevitable result in the case of intensely pious and vigorously logical minds, bent upon working out their own salvation ? It was accumulation of austerities, with no issue but despair, death, or the tranquillity of mental confusion. No number of good works, no aggravation of penances, could pay an infinite debt. Addition of finite quanti- ties will never make up an infinite. This was the thought that oppressed the strong mind of Luther almost to the point of despair. This was the thought, more or less distinctly realised, that led Ochino to adopt the severest conventual discipline he could find, passing from the Observants to the Capuchins, and introducing for himself and such as would follow him longer vigils, more protracted fasts, rougher clothing, sharper flagellation even than those of the ordinary Capuchin. Cui bolo 7 He was not nearer to " salvation " than before, for the balance against him was infinite. In times when religions belief is comparatively lax, and when men and women have become simply incapable of believin g in everlast-
ring torment, it is practically impossible to realise the agonising influence of this fact upon persons who were not surer of death itself than they were of the unspeakable horrors of Dante's hell. Only, however, when we more or less realise this, can we have any notion of the glory and joy—the lighting-up of the soul as with the very splendour of heaven—experienced by a Luther or an Ochino, when it suddenly flashed upon them that salvation was not of works at all, but of grace, and that the whole infinite debt had been paid by One who, being himself God, could lend infinite value to his righteousness, freely bestowed upon all who by faith received it. Such was the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which produced the greatest revolution in the spiritual history of man that has taken place since the beginning of the Christian era. This, and nothing less than this, explains the Reformation.
Ochino lingered long in the Church of Rome, nor can it be denied that he had in all the essentials of dogmatic belief been a Protestant for several years during which he continued to wear the Capuchin garb, and to preach as a servant of the Pope. He said himself that he had been preaching a masked Gospel. But we cannot on that account charge him with false- hood or hypocrisy. The hope had not yet been altogether nega- tived that the Roman Church would effect its reformation from within, and Juan Valdez, the Spaniard, whose influence was power- ful with Ochino to lead him to the doctrine of free grace, laid slight stress upon ecclesiastical changes, and great stress upon change of heart. But a decision was at last forced upon Ochino. Cardinal Caraffa, who was destined, in the capacity of Pope, to play one of the most important parts in the drama of modern history, had already attained predominance in the Councils of the Papacy, and his fixed determination was to deal with Protestantism, and with every one who favoured Pro- testantism, as you deal with mad dogs and venomous snakes. Under his auspices, the Inquisition had begun its baneful career in Italy. Ochino was invited to Rome to give explanation of some dubious circumstances to the Holy Father, and be actually set out to obey the summons. But he was warned by many friends that if he reached Rome, he would never return, and he tardily awoke to a sense of the extremity of his danger. It was high time. "If he had journeyed another day towards Rome, he would have fallen into the bands of emissaries who were watching the Capuchin convent of Porta Camollia, near Siena." Starting from Florence in the latter end of August, 1642, he made for Ferrara, and then striking across the plain of Lombardy, entered Switzerland and set his face towards Geneva. He was now fifty-five, " a venerable old man, with a tall figure and an imposing appearance." His fame as a mighty preacher and a saintly man had preceded him. He had been twice elected Vicar-General of the Capuchins. Calvin received him with friendliness, but there seems from the first to have been something in the genius and character of Ochino which inspired the great Genevan hierarch with distrust.
It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that Ochino, who was conscious of having committed no offence except that of preach- ing Christ, and who had narrowly escaped death for this crime, should henceforward denounce the Papacy as Antichrist, but it seems to us, in this more sympathetic age, to be melancholy that afterbeing fifty-five years a Roman Catholic, he should have spoken so harshly of those he had left. He was an acrimonious contro- versialist. He retained, however, his popularity as a preacher, wherever he could End Italians to hear him. For six years he lived in England, where he was appointed prebendary of Canter- bury, without being compelled to reside in the town. After the death of Edward VI. he was banished from this country, and he re-entered Geneva on the day after the burning of Servetus. It is greatly to his credit that, at the risk of becoming unpopular in the Reformed communion, he did not disguise his disapproval of that act. In 1555 he was invited to undertake the charge of a Protestant congregation in Zurich. He was now approaching his seventieth year, but the eagerness and vivacity of his mind were unabated, and the theologians of Zurich were startled to find him throwing out hints indicative that he considered the reformed creed too narrow. He had met with Socinus, and been pro- foundly impressed by intercourse with him. With an audacity which might well have been rather less forward, he published an attempted proof that polygamy is not condemned in the Bible. He was expelled from Zurich, and turned in the direction of Poland. But even that happy land of the free-thinkers of the period was no refuge for him. He was com- manded to leave the country. Meantime, the plague descended open him, and took away three of his four children, whose
mother -had previously died. With his one remaining child he wandered forth, scarce knowing whither he went. " Wearied to death, he bade his friends and his companions in the faith a last farewell on Advent Sunday. There we lose every trace of him. At the close of the year 1564 he died in solitude at Schlackau, in Moravia." No memorial tablet marks his grave, no tradition tells what became of his surviving boy.
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