A spirit of examination and inquiry is in our days continually urging the literary men of France, Switzerland, Germany, and England to search after the original documents which form the basis of Modern History. I desire to add my mite to the accomplishment of the important task which our age appears to have undertaken. Hitherto I have not been content simply with reading the works of contemporary historians: I have examined eye-witnesses, letters, and original narratives; and have made use of some manuscripts, particularly that of Bullinger, which has been printed since the appearance of the Second Volume of this Work in France. But the necessity of having recourse to unpublished documents became more urgent when I approached (as I do in the Twelfth Book) the history of the Reformation in France. On this subject we possess but few printed memoirs, in consequence of the perpetual trials in which the Reformed Church of that country has existed. In the spring of 1838 I examined, as far as was in my power, the manuscripts preserved in the public libraries of Paris, and it will be seen that a manuscript in the Royal Library, hitherto I believe unknown, throws much light on the early stages of the Reformation; It may be thought that in writing a general History of the Reformation, I have entered into an unnecessary detail of its first dawnings in France. But these particulars are almost unknown, the events that form the subject of my Twelfth Book, occupying only four pages in the Histoire Ecclesiastique des Eglises rÉformÉes au Royaume de France, by Theodore Beza; and other historians have confined themselves almost entirely to the political progress of the nation. Unquestionably the scenes that I have discovered, and which I am now about to relate, are not so imposing as the Diet of Worms. Nevertheless, independently of the christian Complaints have been made of the delay that has taken place in the publication of this third volume; and some persons would have had me keep back the first until the whole was completed. There are, possibly, certain superior intellects to which conditions may be prescribed; but there are others whose weakness must give them, and to this number the author belongs. To publish a volume at one time, and then a second whenever I was able, and after that a third, is the course that my important duties and my poor ability allow me to take. Other circumstances, moreover, have interposed; severe afflictions have on two occasions interrupted the composition of this third volume, and gathered all my affections and all my thoughts over the graves of beloved children. The reflection that it was my duty to glorify that adorable Master who addressed me in such powerful appeals, and who vouchsafed me such Divine consolation, could alone have given me the courage required for the completion of my task. I thought these explanations were due to the kindness with which this Work has been received both in France and England, and especially in the latter country. The approbation of the Protestant Christians of Great Britain, the representatives of evangelical principles and doctrines in the most distant parts of the world, is most highly valued by me; and I feel a pleasure in telling them that it is a most precious encouragement to my labours. The cause of truth recompenses those who embrace and defend it, and such has been the result with the nations Here, too, is a great lesson for that France with which the author feels himself so intimately connected by the ties of ancestry. Should France, imitating her different governments, turn again towards the papacy, it will be, in our belief, the signal of great disasters. Whoever attaches himself to the papacy will be compromised in its destruction. France has no prospect of strength or of greatness but by turning It is true that in our days popery is making a great stir. Although labouring under an incurable consumption, she would by a hectic flush and feverish activity persuade others and herself too that she is still in full vigour. This a theologian in Turin has endeavoured to do in a work occasioned by this History, and in which we are ready to acknowledge a certain talent in bringing forward testimonies, even the most feeble, with a tone of candour to which we are little accustomed, and in a becoming style, with the exception, however, of the culpable facility with which the author in his twelfth chapter revives accusations against the reformers, the falsehood of which has been so authentically demonstrated and so fully acknowledged. As a sequel to his Biography of Luther, M. Audin has recently published a Life of Calvin, written under the influence of lamentable prejudices, and in which we can hardly recognise the reformers and the Reformation. Nevertheless, we do not find in this author the shameful charges against Calvin to which we have just alluded; he has passed them over in praiseworthy silence. No man that has any self-respect can now venture to bring forward these gross and foolish calumnies. Perhaps on some other occasion we shall add a few words to what we have already said in our First Book on the origin of popery. They would here be out of place. I shall only remark, in a general way, that it is precisely the human and very rational causes that so clearly explain its origin, to which the papacy has recourse to prove its divine institution. Thus christian antiquity declares that the universal episcopacy was committed to all the bishops, Let us take another example. The christian churches, established in the large cities of the empire, sent missionaries to the countries with which they were connected. This was done first of all by Jerusalem; then by Antioch, Alexandria, and Ephesus; afterwards by Rome: and Rome forthwith concludes from what she had done after the others, and to a less extent than the others, that she was entitled to set herself above the others. These examples will suffice. Let us only remark further, that Rome possessed alone in the West the honour that had been shared in the East by Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Antioch, and in a much higher degree by Jerusalem; 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 |