History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century

PREFACE TO VOLUME THIRD,

abandoned the West to the power of the new sect which had sprung up in its bosom. The East even to this day calls herself emphatically catholic and orthodox; and whenever you ask one of the Eastern Christians, whom Rome has gained by her numerous concessions, whether he is a catholic? "No," replies he directly, "I am papistian (a papist)." *

If this History has been criticized by the Romish party, it seems also to have met with others who have regarded it in a purely literary light. Men for whom I feel much esteem appear to attach greater importance to a literary or political history of the Reformation, than to an exposition grounded on its spiritual principles and its interior springs of action. I can well understand this way of viewing my subject, but I cannot participate in it. In my opinion, the very essence of the Reformation is its doctrines and its inward life. Every work in which these two things do not hold the chief place may be showy, but it will not be faithfully and candidly historical. It would be like a philosopher who, in describing a man, should detail with great accuracy and picturesque beauty all that concerns his body, but should give only a subordinate place to that divine inhabitant, the soul.

There are no doubt great defects in the feeble work of which I here present another fragment to the christian public; and I should desire that it were still more copiously imbued with the spirit of the Reformation. The better I have succeeded in pointing out whatever manifests the glory of Christ, the more faithful I shall have been to history. I willingly adopt as my law those words, which an historian of the sixteenth century, a man of the sword still more than of the pen, after writing a portion of the history of that Protestantism in France which I do not purpose narrating, addresses to those who might think of completing his task: "I would give them +Journal of the Rev. Joseph Wolff. London 1839, p. 225.

VOL. III.

that law which I acknowledge myself: that, in seeking the glory of this precious instrument, their principal aim should be that of the arm which has prepared, employed, and wielded it at His good pleasure. For all praise given to princes is unseasonable and misplaced, if it has not for leaf and root that of the living God, to whom alone belong honour and dominion for ever and ever."*

As the French original does not indicate the source whence this quotation is taken, it may not be improper to mention that it will be found in the Histoire Universelle of Theodore Agrippa D'Aubigné, 3 vols folio, Amsterdam 1626. D'Aubigné was then a refugee at Geneva, and in the preface to this work, which contains a history of the world and more especially of France and French Protestantism during his lifetime, he bequeaths to his children the task of completing the history he had partially traced out, and prescribes to them (in the passage quoted above) the spirit in which it should be performed. He little thought that two centuries and a half would pass away before his legacy would be accepted and the history of Protestantism completed. [Note by the Translator.]

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