374 THE STRAY SHEEP THE FOREST. is a good Father to you......and forasmuch as you cannot attain to this, because the finite cannot correspond to infinity, I pray that he will vouchsafe to increase your strength, that you may love and serve him with your whole heart."* Notwithstanding these exhortations, Margaret was not consoled. She bitterly regretted the spiritual guides whom she had lost; the new pastors forced upon her to bring her back did not possess her confidence, and whatever the bishop might say, she felt herself alone in the midst of the court, and all around her appeared dark and desolate. "As a sheep in a strange country," wrote she to Briçonnet, "wandering about, not knowing where to find its pasture, through lack of knowing its new shepherds, naturally lifts its head to catch the breeze from that quarter where the chief shepherd was once accustomed to give her sweet nourishment, in such sort am I constrained to pray for your charity......Come down from the high mountain, and in pity regard, among this benighted people, the blindest of all thy fold. "MARGARET."+ The Bishop of Meaux, in his reply, taking up the image of the stray sheep under which Margaret had depicted herself, uses it to describe the mysteries of salvation under the figure of a wood: "The sheep entering the forest, led by the Holy Ghost," said he, "is immediately enchanted by the goodness, beauty, straightness, length, breadth, depth, and height, and the fragrant and invigorating sweetness of this forest...... and when it has looked all around, has seen only Him in all, and all in Him;t and moving rapidly through its depths, finds it so pleasant, that the way is life, and joy, and consolation." The bishop then shows her the sheep searching in vain for the limits of the forest (an image of the soul that would fathom the mysteries of God), meeting with lofty mountains, which it endeavours to scale, finding everywhere "inaccessible and incomprehensible infinity." He then teaches her the road by which the soul, inquiring after God, sur MS. Bibl. Roy. S. F. 337, dated 10th July. mounts all these difficulties; he shows how the sheep in the midst of the hirelings finds "the cabin of the great Shepherd,” and “enters on the wing of meditation by faith;" all is made smooth, all is explained; and she begins to sing: "I have found him whom my soul loveth." * Thus wrote the Bishop of Meaux. At that period he was burning with zeal, and would gladly have seen all France regenerated by the Gospel. Often would his mind dwell especially on those three great individuals who seemed to preside over the destinies of its people, the king, his mother, and his sister. He thought that if the royal family were enlightened, all the people would be so, and the priests, stirred to rivalry, would at last awaken from their lethargy. "Madam," wrote he to Margaret, "I humbly entreat Almighty God, that he will be pleased of his goodness to kindle a fire in the hearts of the king, of his mother, and in your own......so that from you there may go forth a light burning and shining on the rest of the nation; and particularly that class by whose coldness all others are frozen." Margaret did not share these hopes. She speaks neither of her brother nor of her mother; they were subjects she dared not touch upon; but, replying to the bishop in January 1522, with a heart wrung by the indifference and worldliness of those around her, she said: "The times are so cold, my heart so icy;" and signs her letter," your frozen, thirsty, and hungry daughter, "MARGARET." This letter did not discourage Briçonnet, but it made him ponder; and feeling how much he, who desired to re-animate others, required to be animated himself, he commended himself to the prayers of Margaret and of Madam de Nemours. "Madam," wrote he, with great simplicity, "I beseech you to awaken the poor slumberer with your prayers."+ Such in 1521 were the sentiments interchanged at the court of France. A strange correspondence, no doubt, and which, after more than three centuries, a manuscript in the * Studio veritatis aliis declarandæ inflammatus. Act. Martyrum, p. 334. + MS, Bibl. Royale. 376 BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH AT MEAUX. ' Royal Library has revealed to us. Was this influence of the Reformation in such high places a benefit to it or a misfortune? The sting of truth penetrated the court; but perhaps it only served to arouse the drowsy beast, and exciting his rage, caused it to spring with deadlier fury on the humblest of the flock. CHAPTER VII. Beginning of the Church at Meaux-The Scriptures in French-The Artisans and the Bishop-Evangelical Harvest-The Epistles of St. Paul sent to the King-Lefevre and Roma-The Monks before the Bishop-The Monks before the Parliament-Briçonnet gives way. THE time was indeed approaching when the storm should burst upon the Reformation; but it was first to scatter a few more seeds and to gather in a few more sheaves. This city of Meaux, renowned a century and a half later by the sublime defender* of the Gallican system against the autocratic pretensions of Rome, was called to be the first town of France where regenerated Christianity should establish its dominion. It was then the field on which the labourers were prodigal of their exertions and their seed, and where already the ears were falling before the reapers. Briçonnet, less sunk in slumber than he had said, was animating, inspecting, and directing all. His fortune equalled his zeal; never did man devote his wealth to nobler uses, and never did such noble devotedness promise at first to bear such glorious fruits. The most pious teachers, transferred from Paris to Meaux, from that time acted with more liberty. There was freedom of speech, and great was the stride then taken by the Reformation in France. Lefevre energetically expounded that Gospel with which he would have rejoiced to fill the world. He exclaimed: "Kings, princes, nobles, people,' all nations should think and aspire after Christ alone.† Every Bossuet. + Reges, principes, magnates omnes et subinde omnium nationum populi, ut nihil aliud cogitent......ac Christum. Fabri. Comm. in Evang. Præf. THE WORD OF GOD ALL-SUFFICIENT." 377 priest should resemble that archangel whom John saw in the Apocalypse, flying through the air, holding the everlasting Gospel in his hand, and carrying it to every people, nation, tongue, and king. Come near ye pontiffs, come ye kings, come ye generous hearts!......Nations, awake to the light of the Gospel, and inhale the heavenly life.* The Word of God is all-sufficient."+ Such in truth was the motto of that school: THE WORD OF GOD IS ALL-SUFFICIENT. In this device the whole Reformation is embodied. "To know Christ and his Word," said Lefevre, Roussel, and Farel, "is the only living and universal theology......He who knows that, knows everything." The truth was making a deep impression at Meaux. Private meetings took place at first; then conferences; and at last the Gospel was preached in the churches. But a new effort inflicted a still more formidable blow against Rome. Lefevre desired to enable the Christians of France to read the Holy Scriptures. On the 30th October 1522, he published a French translation of the four Gospels; on the 6th November, the remaining books of the New Testament; on the 12th October 1524, all these books together, at the house of Collin in Meaux; and in 1525, a French version of the Psalms. Thus was begun in France, almost at the same time as in Germany, that printing and dissemination of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue which, three centuries later, was to be so wonderfully developed throughout the world. In France, as on the other side of the Rhine, the Bible had a decisive influence. Experience had taught many Frenchmen, that when they sought to know Divine things, doubt and obscurity encompassed them on every side. In how many moments and perhaps years in their lives had they been tempted to regard the most certain truths as mere • Übivis gentium expergiscimini ad Evangelii lucem. Fabri Comm. in Evang. Præf. + Verbum Dei sufficit. Ibid. Hæc est universa et sola vivifica Theologia......Christum et verbum ejus esse omnia. Ibid. in Ev. Johan. p. 271. § Le Long. Biblioth. sacrée, 2d edit. p. 42. 378 THE ARTISANS AND THE BISHOP. delusions! We need a ray from heaven to enlighten our darkness. Such was the ejaculation of many a soul at the epoch of the Reformation. With longings such as these, numbers received the sacred writings from the hands of Lefevre; they were read in their families and in private; conversations on the Bible became frequent; Christ appeared to those souls so long misled, as the centre and the sun of all revelation. No longer did they require demonstrations to prove that Scripture was from God; they knew it, for by it they had been transported from darkness to light. Such was the course by which so many distinguished persons in France attained a knowledge of God. But there were yet simpler and more common paths, if such can be, by which many of the lower classes were brought to the truth. The city of Meaux was almost wholly inhabited by artisans and dealers in wool. "There was engendered in many," says a chronicler of the sixteenth century, ardent a desire of knowing the way of salvation, that artisans, fullers, and wool-combers took no other recreation, as they worked with their hands, than to talk with each other of the Word of God, and to comfort themselves with the same. Sundays and holidays especially were devoted to the reading of Scripture, and inquiring into the good pleasure of the Lord." Briçonnet rejoiced to see piety take the place of superstition in his diocese. Lefevre, aided by the renown of his great learning," says a contemporary historian, contrived so to cajole and circumvent Messire Guillaume Briconnet with his plausible talk, that he caused him to turn aside grievously, so that it has been impossible up to this day to free the city and diocese of Meaux from that pestilent doctrine, where it has so marvellously increased. The misleading that good bishop was a great injury, as until then he had been so devoted to God and to the Virgin Mary."+ Yet all were not so grievously turned aside, as the Fran Act. des Mart. p. 182. + Histoire Catholique de notre temps, par Fontaine, de l'ordre de St. François. Paris, 1562. |