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SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS INTRODUCTORY TO THE REFORMATION.

"AFTER toiling through a long dismal night of papal darkness, and regions of the shadow of death, a beam of gospel day, as the morning spread upon the mountains, revives the fainting spirit." During the last thousand years we have lost, in the visible church, almost all the grand features of primitive Christianity. The establishment and spread of the gospel pale, under Constantine and his successors, soon reduced it to a mere system of this world. The pride of bishops, the pomp of churches, and the lust of other things, together with the general extinction of vital godliness, rendered the outward churches but a miserable asylum for those simple souls, who, having the sentence of death in themselves, sought to live a life of faith on the Son of God. Hence, in the seventh century, the poor persecuted Paulicians, and the humble Valdenses, preferred their respective states of exile, to communion with lordly bishops and squalid monks, though in populous cities and in pompous temples. Now and then, God raised up in the catholic church a few faithful ministers and witnesses to the truth, such as Claudius of

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838

The Papacy Opposed.

Cent. 16.

Turin, and Arnulph of Orleans, by whose labours some additions were made to the stock of genuine religion. The twelfth century furnished the translation of the gospels into the French tongue, by Waldo, through whose instrumentality the knowledge of divine truth was abundantly spread in many parts of Europe. In the following century, opinions inimical to the Roman church were so prevalent, that a court of inquisition was found necessary in order to restrain the growing evil. Centuries fourteenth and fifteenth have produced some very strong measures in favour of reformation ; and in the year 1450, at Mentz, stood forth that great and successful reformer-A PRINTED BIible.

These circumstances, taken together, afford a view of events, both in their order and operation, abundantly calculated to prepare the way for those mighty champions, who, in the century before us, stepped forward, and asserted the supremacy of the Scripture Tribunal, and with the sword of the spirit inflicted a deadly wound on the head of the beast. Nor should we forget, while entering on the period of reformation, that the pride, usurpation, and insolence, of the Roman pontiff had rendered him so hateful to surrounding potentates, that his humiliation was a most desirable object. The abominations of the popedom were so exceedingly flagrant, that catholic writers themselves, so far from labouring to extenuate them, speak of them in language the most -expressive and striking.

Sixteen years of this centúry elapsed before the first grand blow was struck at the papal engine, by Luther, who, at the commencement of this period, was a youth, in the monastery at Erfurt, where, like a Moses, he was nursed in the bosom of that establishment, he was of providence designed to subvert. A few remarks on the

Chap. 1.

Alexander the Sixth.

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intermediate space will be proper to introduce the glorious Epoch of Reformation.

The last century closed, and the present commenced, under the pontificate of ALEXANDER the Sixth," whom ‹ humanity disowns," says Mosheim," and who is rather to be considered as a monster than a man. The worldwas delivered from this papal fiend in the year 1503, by the poisonous draught which he had prepared for others, as is generally believed." Pius the third succeeded, and few days finished his career. JULIUS the Second, by fraud and bribery, obtained the vacant chair, and supported his pontificate by one continued scene of war and bloodshed. The violence and domination of this wretch stirred up the opposition of surrounding monarchs; and a council was assembled at Pisa, for the purpose of regulating the affairs of the church, and of limiting papal dominion. In opposition to this council, Julius assembled another under his own influence; and while he was forging thunder-bolts to hurl at his enemies, the king of terrors dragged him away from his work to the bar of infinite justice, where we must leave him, in order to follow LEO the Tenth in his highpriestly career, which commenced in the year 1513. Leo ranks with the learned of his day ; but he was a true pope, and the sound patron of all the old ecclesiastical abuses. However well Leo might have loved his books when a monastic, it is certain, when a pope, he devoted a great part of his time to the most base indulgences; and bis prodigality, pride, and luxury, were the principal procuring causes of that opposition to the papacy, made by the renowned Luther.

The system of monkery was now so overgrown, that it became a mere excrescence, which threatened to weigh down and render odious that very body which it

840

Monkish Trick

Cent. 16.

The for

was designed to support and adorn. The Dominicans and the Franciscans were at daggers drawn. mer of these maintained that the Virgin Mary was conceived and born in original sin; the latter denied it, and affirmed her to have been as immaculate as her Son. This produced a sharp and bitter contest, and they mutually committed each other's souls to hell for such heresy; but these reciprocal anathemas were, after all, the least of their wickedness, for they had recourse to fraudulent miracles to support their several claims to orthodoxy. One instance of this sort by the Dominicans will afford a fine specimen of the times. Pious frauds were deemed truly justifiable, and these were not only practised upon those without the pale of the church, but also upon one another within. The Dominicans, therefore, had resolved, at a chapter held at Vimpsen, in 1504, to have recourse to these means in order to support their claims against the Franciscans. The experiment was tried at Bern, by four of the most enterprising members of the monastery, upon Jetzer, a poor, simple, but superstitious, and austere, lay-brother, of the same house. The prior, one of the four who had undertaken the plot, having secretly conveyed himself into Jetzer's cell, appeared, about midnight, in a most horrible shape, surrounded with howling dogs, and seeming to blow fire and smoke from his nostrils, by means of a contrivance he had prepared for the purpose. With grievous shrieks and yellings, he told the affrighted monk that he was a Dominicau ghost, condemned to purgatory for having laid aside his monastie habit, and that it would raise his brother Jetzer exceedingly high in the estimation of all true Christians if he would undertake to deliver him from such a de plorable state. The means prescribed were, that Jetze

Chap. 1.

upon Jetzer.

341

should submit to the discipline of the whip for eight days, and lie, during mass, in the chapel on the ground, in the form of one crucified. In the morning the frightful story was told to all the convent, who recommended the course prescribed by the ghostly visitor; to this the poor simpleton complied, for which he was exalted in the discourses of the friars as a saint of an extraordinary cast. The next night the farce was renewed by the prior, attended with two others, dressed as hideous as himself, who informed Jetzer that the Dominican order was peculiarly dear to the Virgin, because they had given due honour to her Son, and had not, like the Franciscans, made them both equal. To render these scenes the more miraculous, the spectre developed some of the secrets of Jetzer's life, which he had obtained from the poor deluded monk's confessor. These appearances were repeated several times, under various characters; at length the person of the Virgin, attended with a number of little cherubs, was introduced into the drama; she, of course, was made to pronounce the Dominicans orthodox, and to express her dislike to their opponents. Before her departure, she promised him a pledge of her bigh regard, by imprinting the five wounds of Christ upon him, and immediately seizing him by the hand, she with great violence, thrust a nail through it, and left the poor deluded dupe in the greatest agony. The night following she renewed her visit, in order to administer healing to the first wound, and to inflict the other four; for this purpose she brought some cloth in which the Saviour's body had been wound at his burial, and also a stupifying draught, which, giving to Jetzer, threw him into a deep sleep, by which means the Virgin prior and his associates were enabled to bore the other hand, and both the feet, and 2 E 2

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