XV. from the Roman Church, were of a cruel character CHAP. and operation and none displayed this lamentable feature more painfully, than the order that all foreigners should quit the kingdom. As English Protestants were flying to France, Germany, and Switzerland, to escape her persecutions; so the French and Flemish reformers sought an asylum in England, from the analogous severities of their oppressing governments. But the very cause of their coming, produced the order for their expulsion; and the Spanish Jesuit, who was in our island at the time, records and exults in the fact, that by this proclamation more than thirty thousand heretics, strangers of different nations,' were compelled in a few days to quit the country which they had chosen as a 'safe harbor' for their endangered lives.34 "After mentioning the burning of the English heretics, Ribadineira adds, To do this with greater soscega, quickness, and efficacy, the queen commanded that all foreigners who had no public offices, nor were naturalized, should, within so many days, under severe penalties, go out of the kingdom. By this sole command, more than 30,000 heretics of various nations and sects, who in the time of Edward had flown from all parts into England, as the den and secure port for their errors and wickednesses, were expelled.' p. 216, 217. In 1557, an Act of Parliament was passed, that every person born under the dominion of the French king, not being denizen, should depart the realm, and not return during the wars with France. 4 & 5 Philip and Mary, c. 6. stat. v. 2, p. 136. NOTE On the Catholic Invectives against Protestants. Ir surprises us at first to read, in the Roman Catholic sermons and compositions of this period, and in so many since, such bitter and indiscriminate abuse of the Protestants of all sects, under the general name of heretics and infidels. They are classed repeatedly with Turks, Atheists, and unbelievers, without any other separation than the typographical comma, as if they were considered by the writers, and meant to be represented by them to the reader, as no other and no better. The papal author, be it in a history, sermon, edict, bull, or controversial treatise, continually masses together and assails, with undistinguishing invectives, as well the infidel who disbelieves all Christianity, and even the Deity, with the reformers who most sincerely accredit and II. BOOK invidious epithets and damnatory reprobation, as one loathsome mass of impiety and detestation. It seems such irrational and violent and wilful prejudice to class together intentionally and deliberately the Atheist and the Protestant, and to load them alike with such inveterate and rancorous epithets of reproach and vilification, that we can scarcely understand how any persons of cultivated intellect, of the Catholic church, could have so pertinaciously and so universally pursued this practice. Our most illustrious names in science or literature, and especially if clergymen, are seldom noticed without some depreciating adjunct. For some time, this surprised myself, and I could not account for it to my own satisfaction; until at last I discovered that it was done upon a premeditated system of their hierarchical policy. The ingenious chieftains of the papal church, after the first ardent conflicts, in which they gained no victories and made no intellectual conquests, observed, that to discuss the points of difference between themselves and the Protestants, was to make the opinions of the latter more known; to subject their own tenets to investigation, discussion, and the consequential decisions of human judgment, and to take the chance of the varying talents of their own defenders: and to be so often defeated and so strenuously opposed, as to make it morally certain that if they resorted to human reasoning, and rested on the mind's unbiassed conviction, their excluding system would be overthrown; and their papal and traditional Christianity would be improved and enlightened into what was really scriptural, apostolic, and divine. To prevent this evil, and to maintain their despotism unshaken, and their artificially compacted system unbroken and intire, they felt it more prudent to withdraw from discussion, and to dissuade such preaching. Where the government was Catholic, their safety lay most surely in resting upon the arm of power, while it was disposed to befriend them; and in teaching their dogmas and rites as positive injunctions and authoritative institutions commanded by the pope as the voice of their church, as their only qualified and rightful judge, and therefore indisputably placed by the adoption and decision of the popedom beyond the province, the right and the power of human reason. We are led to this inference, not from speculations and guesses of our own imagination, but from the express instructions of the cardinal Valiero, the friend of St. Charles Borromeo, who, in his Rhetorica Ecclesiastica, thus recommends the papal clergy to shape their public preaching. His words are: Admonishing the clergy, when they address a sermon to the people, not to start a disputation against heretics; not to mention their arguments, lest they fall into the suspicion of vanity, and throw scruples into the minds of the simple. Let them say generally, that all heretics are wretched persons, &c. But I should deem it more useful that ecclesiastical orators should pass over in silence their pernicious opinions, as confuted and exploded by the most learned men for many ages." * * Monentes clericos, ne habentes concionem ad populum, temere disputationem instituant contra hæreticos; eorum argumenta ne commemorent, ne forte in vanitatis suspicionem incidunt, et simplicium mentibus scrupulum injiciant. . . . în universum dicant, miseros esse hæreticos, &c.... sed utilius duxerim ut perniciosas eorum opiniones a doctissimis hominibus multis jam sæculis confutatas et explosas, ecclesiastici oratores silentio prætereant: tempus que, rem pretiosissimam in explicatione divinæ legis, &c. ponant.' Rhet. Eccl. 1. 2, c. 45. The principle enforced in this passage is to speak of Protestants only with general invective, and not to specify their opinions or their arguments, and if possible not to mention their doctrines at all. The amiable jesuit, abbate Roberti, whose mildness of temper seems never to desert him but when he mentions heretics, that is, Protestants, in his letter on preaching against the 'spiriti forti' of the age, so lately as 1781, cites Valiero, with the applausive epithets of chiarissimo' as to himself, and aureo opuscolo as to his work, v.4. p. 95, as a right admonition to the clergy not to preach against innovators 'li novatori.' The rule he inculcates is, that in a metropolis like Paris or Venice, where the opinions contrary to the Catholic faith or to religion could not be concealed, but were often in active opposition, they might and should be resisted; but in towns and villages, and places where the contrary tenets were not known, or only to a few, or but imperfectly heard of, to be entirely silent upon them. He says, our famous English jesuit (and traitor) Father Parsons, in one of his books, acted upon a different principle, because he wrote in a schismatic revolt to a national multitude, of atheists, sceptics, and latitudinarians, and wished by a most reasoned volume to draw them TO BE CHRISTIANS and Catholics.' ib. p. 63. Reader! who were the persons whom the really good abbate Roberti, in 1781, knew so little of, as to call a moltitudine nazionale di atei, di scettici, di latitudinarii,' whom this earlier jesuit Parsons, who will appear in our future Chapters, wished to make Christians? No other than our venerable reformers, and Protestant church and nation, in the time of Elizabeth. Thus Roberti exemplifies the advice of Valiero-call them, in a lump, miseros,' &c. And in the same manner the abbe Bergier, in his Encyclopædie Theologique, published at Padua in 1788, repeatedly links together 'les heretiques et les incredules,' and labors to give the impression that there is no difference between Protestants and atheists, sceptics and latitudinarians. So strong is the tendency to confound them, that we have seen enlightened Catholic laymen in our own day disposing themselves to believe and to print that our present church of England is still, as Roberti intimates, of this character. On this system, Roberti in 1781 thus characterizes Luther and the reformed ideas, and thus applies his principle: If in some island not yet assailed by the movements of the innovators, or in some corner of Italy, where only some curious persons who read pamphlets, or some doctor who piqued himself on erudition, had any information on these theological madnesses, a preacher should ascend a pulpit before a people accustomed to take in crowds indulgences of pardon from Assisi, and to give alms for masses for the souls of the dead poor, and should relate to them that a wicked and turbulent German apostate (un cattivo e turbolento apostata Tedesco) had raved against purgatory and indulgences, I should have disapproved of him, tho he had been a better controvertist than Bellarmin. p. 103. By the people, he does not mean the mere mob. When I mention the people, I do not mean only haberdashers and fishmongers: When I speak of people, I mean a duke of twenty; a prince of thirty; a marquis of forty; as Seneca says, 'I term the togatos the people. By people, therefore, I mean in this place gentlemen, in other respects polite, prudent merchants, industrious artizans, and others who, unused to actual study, and ignorant of certain books, are living in una securita tranquillissima della lor fede.' p. 64. CHAP. XV. BOOK II. It is from the universal practice of this system of general abuse of Protestants by the most reprobating epithets, and of the altum silentium as to their doctrines and opinions, that the great mass of the Catholic population of all classes, have been kept in total ignorance of every thing concerning the Reformation and its professors, than that both are execrable and foolish things. Our officers and travellers found many amusive instances of this perversion and delusion when they first entered Portugal and Spain. That the same system of ignorance is still pursued whenever it can be enforced, we see from Wolff's Journal in Syria, in May 1824: The Catholic archbishop, Pierre Coupery, pronounced excommunication against every Catholic who should enter into conversation with me about religion.' v. 2. p. 302. It is manifest that the contest was given up by the Romish church as an intellectual or as a scriptural question, within a few years after Luther's decided attack, and was then rested upon its traditions and on its power. The original tradition was in no written shape. It was invisible to every human eye, and undiscoverable by any human research. But it was inferred from the older ritual ceremonies, from some allusions in some fathers contradicted by others, from some decrees of councils, and principally from the papal determinations which had been issued in different ages, as discussions or expediencies had occasioned various pontiffs to assert them. Hence as the written Scripture was not their foundation, the written Scriptures were depreciated and put aside, and the Catholic population was forbidden or discouraged from reading them. Every other line of study and reading was recommended in preference to them. It was on this principle that some of the old French poets composed their poems. We see this in the instance of Jean Bouchet, who lived in 1536. The Catholic bibliographer, Gouget, says of him, 'Another motive which led him to write his Triomphes,' was to hinder women from reading the translations of the Bible made by the heretics and their works, and to substitute his poems for those dont la lecture devoit leur etre interdite." Biblioth. Franc. v. 11. p. 286. It was on this principle that the Jesuits forbade the queen mother of France from being present at the discussions between the Catholic and the Huguenot disputants at Poissy. In this system of wilful abuse and calumny, the Dominicans and the Jesuits have been peculiarly prominent. Few of their works mention Protestants in any other way. It was on this plan that Sanders was procured or induced to make up his History of the English Reformation under Henry VIII. Edward VI. and Elizabeth, which he wilfully composed of the most calumniating falsehoods; and being thus concocted and seasoned to their taste and purposes, it was made the standard authority for the Catholic historians on the continent, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ribadineira, a contemporary, quotes it as his authority; and so do many others that I have seen, of the same period. CHAP. XVI. AMBASSADORS TO ROME-NEW POPES-PAUL IV. DEGRADES THE foreign transactions of England during these domestic calamities, contributed no lustre of political glory, to divert or abate the national dissatisfaction. The heart of the country was not with its government, and its antient spirit sank to a wintry torpidity. Its arm was unnerved, and its character decayed; while the competition between France and the emperor was undiminished and inextinguishable. The war between these jealous potentates continued during the Spring and Summer of 1554, with a fluctuating success in Italy, and with a gradual progress of the French force in Flanders.' The great anxiety of the Parisian court was to keep England from intermeddling. Pole wished the pacification ' Thus in March, Strozzi, on the French side, gained a victory over the duke of Florence, and took the pope's nephew, Ascanio, a prisoner. Noailles, 3. p. 150. But tho he raised his force to 25,000 men, p. 275, yet on 2d August, he was totally defeated by the marquis Marignan, with the imperial army, near Lucignano, with the loss of 2,000 taken, and 4,000 slain. See Marignan's letter to Charles V. in Lett. Prin. v. 3. 155. In Flanders, the connetable Montmorency invaded the Netherlands, and took Marienburg, Durant, and other places, and defeated the emperor's vanguard at Renty. p. 268, 276, 317. In November Brisac entered Piedmont, and took Yvrea from the Spaniards. v. 4. p. 70. 2See Henry 2d's letter of 24th May, Noail. v. 3. p. 234; the connetable's, p. 319; and the king's, of 24th Sept. p.320; Mary's answer, of 14th Nov. 323; and the subsequent dispatches. СНАР. XVI. |