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the opportunity of being introduced to the Pope; but he describes him as a handsome-looking man, about fortyfive years of age.

"Few persons (he says) are aware of the sort of life the Pope leads, or, speaking more correctly, the life he is doomed to spend. He sees no company but those who are formally introduced; he has no private friend or companion to converse with; he dines alone, and as long as he lives must take all his meals by himself; he cannot take the fresh air or stir abroad but as the Pope. His revenues are not more than a thousand a year; with this, however, he contrives to be charitable, but is necessarily always poor. He is very fond of flowers. A florist, knowing his taste, sought an opportunity the other day of presenting him with a bouquet. The Pope admired it greatly, but said, 'I am sorry I cannot pay you, I have no money, but I will send you a slice of Christmas cake.'"'

The Pope, however honoured, has a great rival in the Virgin, who, in the hearts of the Catholics, holds a place before any person of the Trinity. Now, being a female, her votaries believe she has the same love of dress, as is common to the sex. To propitiate her favour it is necessary to give her an embroidered pocket-handkerchief, or a pair of silk stockings, or perhaps (though Mr. Gardiner did not look so close) a brocaded under-petticoat. Lady Drummond, at Naples, being solicited for a present, gave a light blue and silver dress, in which the Virgin was paraded. The Duke of Sapony gave her his wedding coat; but the rascals of priests took out the real jewels, and substituted false ones.

At p. 275 is an interesting chapter on the present state of music in Italy,

The Benefit of Christ's Death. By Aonio Paleario. Edited by the Rev. J. Ayre, M.A. 18mo. pp. xx. 124. THIS little volume, like many others of similar exterior modesty, is a bibliographical curiosity. It is the republi

which has so fallen that the author says he could not discover the least inclination for music amongst the people; it seems to have declined with the other arts. "It is a question (he says) whether there are more than three persons in Italy at all equal to the great characters of a former age,-Capocci the astronomer, who has explained the phenomena of the aerolites, Rossini the composer, and Matteucci the physiologist;" but he thinks, under a more liberal government, like the present, the genius of the people may be called forth, and the Italians once more take rank among the nations of the earth.

cation of an old translation of an Italian work, with which some interesting circumstances are connected. The author, Antonio dalla Paglia, or, as he more generally called himself, Aonio Paleario, was one of those Italians, who hailed the dawn of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, with more sanguine expectations than were subsequently realised. As the friend of Sadolet and Pole, he would have occupied a respectable position in literary history, if his writings and his fate had not procured him a wider distinction. The events of his life are related in Dr. McCrie's valuable work on the Suppression of the Reformation in Italy, and in the introduction prefixed to this volume, to which the reader may be referred.

The treatise which is now

re

published was the cause of Paleario's martyrdom. It appeared anonymously at Venice, in 1543, under the title of "Trattato utilissimo del beneficio de Giesu Christo verso i Christiani." Vergerio, another Italian Reformer, says of it, that "Reginald Pole, the British Cardinal, was esteemed the author of that book, or partly so; at least it is known that he with Flaminio, Priuli, and his other friends, defended and circulated it."* Pole, it must be remembered, was then considered a friend to the Reformers, a character of which he had completely divested himself when he returned to England. "So great was its popularity (observes the editor), that 40,000 copies are said to have been sold in six years, and it was translated into several other languages." (p. xvi.) Its great reputation, and the eagerness with which it was read, from being written in Italian, and not in Latin, as was generally the case, increased the virulence of enemies whom Paleario's sentiments had already made. The eloquence with which he defended himself before the Senate of Sienna, and the influence of powerful friends in the conclave, preserved him for a time, but could not defend him against the reaction of the

* Schelhorn, Amænit. Eccl. i. p. 158.

Papal power. After several years of peril, he was deliberating in 1566 about removing from Milan to Bologna, when, on the accession of Pius V. the accusations against him were directed to be re-heard. The charges were, the denial of purgatory, the disapproval of burying in churches, ridiculing the monastic life, and lastly, the doctrine of justification by faith, which a few years before had been well received in Italy. Judgment was given against him, and he was condemned after more than three years' imprisonment in the seventieth year of his age.

Paleario published several works, of which this treatise on "The Benefit of Christ's Death" is the principal, and its literary history is very remarkable. "It was, as before noticed, particularly distasteful to the Romish authorities; and consequently the most strenuous attempts were made to suppress it. It is forbidden by the various prohibitory indexes, in which the title only is recited, without Paleario's name ; and indeed, in one index, it is ranked amongst the books of which the authors were not certainly known."* (p. xvi.)

How successful the attempts to suppress this treatise were, is mentioned particularly by Mr. Macaulay, in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1840. art. "The Revolutions of the Papacy." "Heretical books were sought out and destroyed with unsparing rigour. which were once in every house were so effectually destroyed that no copy of

Works

them is now to be found in the most ex

tensive libraries. One book in particular, entitled Of the Benefit of the Death of Christ, had this fate. It was written in Tuscan, was many times reprinted, and

was eagerly read in every part of Italy.

But the Inquisitors detected in it the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. They proscribed it, and it is now as utterly lost as the second decade of Livy." (Quoted in Introd. p. xvii.)

The only writer, says Dr. M'Crie, who appears to have seen the original of this work for two centuries, is

In the index of Benedict XIV. 1758, p. 203, we find this article, "Palearius Aonius, 1 Cl. App. Ind. Trid." The appendix to the index of the Council of Trent was published by Clement VIII. with his index in 1596. The first class denotes those writers whose works are altogether forbidden.-REV.

Riederer. It is unmentioned, we may add, in Vogt's "Catalogus Librorum Rariorum," a proof of its extremest rarity, as perhaps it had escaped his observation entirely. The present editor conjectures that a copy may yet lurk in some unexplored recess, a suggestion which will probably cause no little stir among bibliographers. To the bookseller, who should discover such a rarity, it would prove a literary Eldorado.

It was early translated into English and French, and Dr. M'Crie has shown that an early English version existed in Scotland in 1577, from an item in the will of Thomas Bassinden, a printer at Edinburgh, who died October 18 of that year: "foure Benefite of Christe, the piece 2 sh." It was this statement that attracted the notice of the present Editor, who has succeeded in finding a copy of the fourth English edition, "London, printed by E. G. for Andrew Hebb, dwelling at the signe of the Bell in Saint Paul's Churchyard, 1638." He has since ascertained the existence of two other copies, and more may yet be discovered.

This translation was made, not indeed from the Italian original, but from the French version; and it appears from the Translator's Preface, that he was ignorant of the name of the author. It is identified, however, with Paleario's work by its agreement with his own description of it before the Senate of Sienna, and by the account supplied by Riederer, the possessor of the unique copy, (Nachrichten zur kirchen-gelehrten, t. iv. p. 121, 235241). The translator's initials (A. G.) only are given; but they are supposed to designate Arthur Golding, who was employed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in rendering into English the works of several of the foreign Reformers, of the Latin classics, and of other writers.

The Editor of this volume is the Rev. John Ayre, who is already well known by similar useful labours in connection with the "Parker Society." He thus describes the nature of this edition :

"The spelling and the punctuation have been modernized, but no liberty has been taken with the text, except by the rare introduction of a word absolutely needed to complete the sense. Such additions

are included in brackets. The passages quoted from the Fathers have been subjoined; the Scripture references also have been corrected, and the verses of the chapters given." (p. xix.)

Mr. Ayre expresses his hopes that the printing of this interesting relic of the age of the Reformation may not only prove useful to the reader, but also that "the attention now called to it may lead to its re-translation into its original tongue," for the benefit of the land in which it first appeared.

The treatise is methodical, commencing with the fall of man, and pursuing the subject, through the giving of the law for the knowledge of sin, to redemption through Christ, and its practical fruits; and closes with a chapter on "remedies against distrust." Besides this method, which is common to the Reformers, we may notice the capaciousness of mind which appears in this treatise, as it generally does in their writings; for statements which now would be thought almost incompatible, or at least to require explanation, meet in perfect harmony in their pages. They are not afraid of depreciating one doctrine by giving full prominence to another; they do not apprehend the charge of Antinomianism, on the one hand, or of formality, on the other: but can combine the sublimest views of the sacraments

with justification by faith in the Saviour. Indeed, any other system than one which allows its due importance to every subject, must tend to the weakening of some portion of divine truth; or, at all events, to preventing the full operation of some or other of the Christian motives.

From so brief a treatise it would be almost superfluous to quote single passages; and, if the account we have given of this volume does not lead the reader to possess himself of it, our labour has failed already. We will, however, quote the following able distinction between different kinds of fear: "And the good Christians must never bereave themselves quite of this childly fear, which is the singular friend of Christian charity; like as the slavish fear is such an enemy unto it, as they can by no means dwell together." (p. 115.) The portion of the concluding chapter, on "Predestina

tion," is quite in harmony with the second clause of our seventeenth article, which attributes a useful or pernicious operation to that doctrine, according to the light in which it is viewed.

We must close these remarks by thanking the editor for thus bringing to light a literary curiosity of the first class, and also a treatise of singular comprehensiveness, and most powerful style, such as leaves our present diluted mode of writing far behind. Perhaps we shall not be making an unwelcome suggestion, if we recommend the republication,_under the same editorship, of the "Detection of the Arts of the Spanish Inquisition," by De Montes. This work, which was first published in Latin at Heidelberg in 1567, was translated into English, and went through two editions, to the last of which is subjoined an account of Protestant martyrs at Valladolid. The translation now bears a very high price for its size, a thin quarto; while its literary value may be inferred from its having furnished materials to Dr. McCrie for his "Reformation in Spain." The original work is inserted in the Appendix to the Catalogue of the Council of Trent,* and, what perhaps is still more curious, it appears in the list, published under the directions of the Duke of Alva, for the Spanish dominions in Flanders (Ed. Antwerp, 1570, p. 61,) under the misnomer of Gonsalinus Regnaldus, in the first class. For Spanish exiles in England such a republication would doubtless have a great historical interest.

The Deity of Jesus Christ essential to the Christian Religion. By James Abbadie, D. D. Dean of Killaloe. 18mo. pp. xxiv. 336. (Doctrinal Puritans, vol. xiii.)

THIS treatise, which is here republished singly, is generally considered as the third volume of the author's celebrated work "On the Truth of the Christian Religion." It is reprinted from an early translation, which was revised in 1777 by the late Abraham Booth, who made some abridgements,

*Gonsalvius (Reginaldus) Montanus. Sanctæ Inquisitionis Hispanicæ Artes Detectæ, ac palam traductæ. App. Ind. Trid. (Ed. Benedict. xiv. p. 114.)

where it did not affect the argument to do so, and a few slight additions, where elucidation, or enforcement of the argument, was required.

The celebrity of the original work will excuse our entering, at some length, into its literary history, in order to show what eulogies its merits have obtained in quarters where no prepossession in its favour can be presumed. We shall begin, however, with pointing out some instances of unaccountable neglect.

M. de Barante, in his interesting sketch of French literature during the eighteenth century, while reviewing the previous period, has slightly glanced at the writings of the Protestant refugees, from whose number he has selected only one as requiring a particular notice, namely, Bayle. Some notice, perhaps, was required for an author whose influence was felt so powerfully by the succeeding generation. Yet it may well be regretted that the elegant historian could not afford a line to show that better fruits than scepticism were borne on those transplanted stems. Not to mention Saurin, the services of Abbadie in the cause of religion might have claimed an acknowledgment from his pen, and a suspicion of unfairness involuntarily

comes over our mind.

Nor is this the only instance in which this able apologist of revelation has experienced undeserved neglect. It might have been supposed that La Harpe, who boldly stood forth in the cause of religion during the times of revolutionary infidelity, would gladly have inscribed so respected a name upon his banner. But in the whole "Course of Literature," although many an appropriate place occurs, he never once mentions him; nor yet in his Apology (second edition, 1796), even when enumerating the eminent moderns whom religion reckons among her disciples, from Pascal to Bossuet (c. 24, p. 162), unless, indeed, a vague &c. should be thought to include the author of "The Truth of Christianity." Yet an apologist for religion whom Voltaire commends, and a French Protestant whom the Abbé Sabatier praises, must possess no common claim on the writers of literary history. The former, in his "Age of Louis XIV." describes Abbadie as "celebrated for

his treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion," and the latter, in his "Three Ages of French Literature,” though rarely just to Protestants, acknowledges that it "gives him a distinguished rank among the defenders of religion." He adds, that it "is marked by strength of reasoning, connection of proofs, great method of arrangement, and a style full of warmth and energy. Hence Madame de Sevigné, and M. de Bussy Rabutin, are unbounded in their praises, when they speak of this excellent treatise, in their letters." And under the head of Bayle, when eulogising the consistency and conviction of the teachers and de fenders of religion, he thus enumerates them,-Chrysostom, Augustine, Cyril, Athanasius, Huet, Abbadie, Bossuet, Fénélon, Bourdaloue, and Massillon.

The Abbé Guenée, author of the Jewish Letters, written in defence of the Old Testament, having had to traverse the whole ground of the Evidences, found the value of Abbadie as a guide. He not only refers occasionally to him, but, speaking of reputed additions to the text of Scripture, says, "This excellent writer has discussed and solved this objection in a way that leaves no room for an answer; it is surprising that M. de Voltaire could take upon himself to reproduce it." (Vol. i. p. 206, ed. 1826, German and Polish Letters, 1. 9, s. 2.)

The ex-Benedictine Chaudon, in his Historical Dictionary (ed. 1805), does not hesitate to say of Abbadie that "he has rendered great services to religion by some of his works. His treatises on the Truth of the Christian Religion, on the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and on the Art of Self-knowledge, translated into different languages, and written with power of reasoning and energy of style, had the suffrages both of Catholics and Calvinists" (Protestants). The Editors of the "Library of a Man of Taste" (ed. 1772, vol. ii. p. 348), of whom Chaudon is supposed to have been one, go further still, describing the first of these as "the most powerfully conceived and most solidly written work that we possess on this subject." *

* A passage in praise of Abbadie from the Abbé Houteville is given in the Preface to the work before us, p. xi.

François de Neufchateau, who was once a member of the French Directory, has devoted an essay, prefixed to an edition of Pascal's Thoughts, to the subject of Writers on the Evidences. He specifies six, all of the age of Louis XIV., whose works he regards as the chefs d'œuvre of the French language, namely, Pascal, Bossuet, Dangeau, Abbadie, Jacquelot, and Fénélon, and says they should be republished and disseminated (pp. xviii. xxxi.) His opinion is entitled to the greater weight from his having lived through a period of revolutionary infidelity, and thus learned by practice what were the best works of the kind. In his youth he had been a reader of such books in a village assembly, and had found by experience which were the best suited to the purpose.

We cannot help calling to mind, after repeating these testimonies, how remarkable a tribute was offered to the abilities of Bayle by the Parliament of Toulouse, in declaring his will valid in France (although, as a professed Protestant, he was virtually denaturalised), on the ground that such a man could not be considered a foreigner. The circumstance is honourable to that body, not only as paying homage to literary eminence, but also as contravening the prevailing system of oppression. Yet it must be regretted that a happier instance was not chosen; for, in selecting Bayle as the exception to a persecuting policy, a sort of credit was given to his sceptical philosophy, which could hardly fail of acting as a pernicious example. Had such an exception been made in favour of Abbadie, whose writings were held in sufficient esteem to justify it, a valuable testimony would have been given to the cause of religion. But it is to be feared, that the bigotry of the age preferred extending its scanty tolerance to an enemy of religion, rather than a friend who belonged to another communion.

Mr. Hallam, in that portion of his History of Literature which embraces

We knew a worthy French priest in Lower Normandy, who told us the best History of England was written by a Frenchman, meaning Rapin. His patriotism overcame his other predilections, for Rapin was a Protestant.

GENT. MAG. VOL. XXIX.

the subject of theology, from 1650 to 1700, after mentioning the Evangelical Demonstration of Huet, proceeds asfollows:-"The next place, if not a higher one, might be given to the treatise of Abbadie, a French refugee, published in 1684. His countrymen bestow on it the highest eulogies, but it was never so well known in England, and is now almost forgotten." (Vol. iv. p. 95, Paris edition.) This neglect of it in our country is easily accounted for, as few French works become extensively known in England, except through the medium of translation; and when its style grows obsolete the reputation of the original also declines. Besides there is a fashion even in these things, and we are too proud of Paley, or too well satisfied with him, to think it necessary to go further. But, whenever the whole question is under consideration, the value of Abbadie is felt; and Mr. Bickersteth, in his "Christian Student," includes the two treatises, and styles the former "a very able and irrefragable defence," and says of the latter (the one now republished) that "it will abundantly repay the student."

The eccentric Robert Robinson, whose "Plea for the Divinity of Christ" was one of the principal publications during the Socinian controversy of the last century, is supposed to have borrowed many of his arguments from Abbadie without acknowledgment. This suspicion produced a severe retort from the late Robert Hall when they were first in company together. Mr. Robinson (who, with his constitutional unsteadiness, had forsaken the ground he formerly maintained), indulged in sarcastic remarks upon "juvenile defenders of the faith," and made various efforts to set the young man down. At length Mr. Hall was provoked to reply, that "if he ever rode into the field of public controversy, he should not borrow Dr. Abbadie's boots." (Life of Hall by Gregory, 1833, p. 37.) "This enigmatical retort (adds Dr. Gregory) Mr. Robinson understood, and probably felt more than Mr. Hall had anticipated; for he

*François de Neufchateau professedly excludes Huet's work from his list, as being merely learned, and his other writings as even still less useful. 3 E

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