586 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
acquired by actual trial and experience. Nobody can learn to swim without going into the water.
The Landgrave put himself at the head of the church, and reformed it after the Saxon model. He abolished the mass and the canon law, confiscated the property of the convents, endowed hospitals and schools, arranged church visitations, and appointed six superintendents (1531).
The combination of Lutheran and Reformed elements in the Hessian reformation explains the confessional complication and confusion in the subsequent history, and the present status of the Protestant Church in Hesse, which is claimed by both denominations.!
The best service which the Landgrave did to the cause of learning and religion, was the founding of the University of Marburg, which was opened July 1, 1527, with a hundred and four students. It became the second nursery of the Protestant ministry, next to Wittenberg, and remains to this day an important institution. Francis Lambert, Adam Kraft, Erhard Schnepf, and Hermann Busch were its first theological professors.?
Lambert now had, after a roaming life of great poverty, a settled situation with a decent support. He lectured on his favorite books, the Canticles, the Prophets, and the Apocalypse; but he had few hearers, was not popular with his Ger- ‘man colleagues, and felt unhappy. He attended the eucharistic Colloquy at Marburg in October, 1529, as a spectator,
1 Dr. Vilmar of Marburg (originally Reformed) tried to prove that the Hessians were Lutherans, but did not know it. His colleague, Dr. Heppe, with equal learning tried to prove the opposite. A German proverb speaks of the ‘‘blind Hessians,’? and this applies at least to those unfortunate twenty thousand soldiers who allowed themselves to be sold by their contemptible tyrant (Frederick II., a convert to the Church of Rome, d. 1785), like so many heads of cattle, for twenty-one million thalers, to the king of England to be used as powder against the American colonies. Hence the ugly meaning of the term ‘‘Hessians’’ in America, which does great injustice to their innocent countrymen and descendants.
2 Heuke, Die Lraffnung der Wriversitat Marburg, Marb. 1862.
§ 98. THE REFORMATION IN HESSE. 587
became a convert to the view of Zwingli, and defended it in his last work.!. This must have made his position more uncomfortable. He wished to find “ some little town in Switzerland where he could teach the people what he had received from the Lord.”? But before this wish could be fulfilled, he died with his wife and daughter, of the pestilence, April 18, 1530. He was an original, but eccentric and erratic genius, with an over-sanguine temperament, with more zeal and eloquence than wisdom and discretion. His chief importance lies in the advocacy of the principle of ecclesiastical selfgovernment and discipline. His writings are thoughtful; and the style is clear, precise, vivacious, and direct, as may be expected from a Frenchman.®
Lambert seems to have had a remote influence on Scotland, where principles of church government somewhat similar to his own were carried into practice after the model of the Reformed Church of Geneva. For among his pupils was Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martyr of the Scotch Reformation, who was burned at St. Andrews, Feb. 29, 1528. According to the usual view, William Tyndale also, the pioneer of the English Bible Version, studied at Marburg about the same time; for several of his tracts contain on the titlepage or in the colophon the imprint, “ Hans Luft at Marborow (Marburg) in the land of Hesse.” ®
1 De Symbolo Feederis, etc., published at Strassburg after his death, 1530. He says in the preface: ‘‘ Volo ut mundus sciat me sententiam circa Canam Domini demutasse.’? Herminjard, 11. 240.
2 Letter to Bucer, March 14, 15380, ib. II. 242.
8 Dr. Déllinger, II. 18, uses his complaints of the prevailing immorality as a testimony against the Reformation, but judges favorably of his writings.
4 His name is entered on the University Album of the year 1527, together with two other Scotchmen, John Hamilton and Gilbert Winram. See Jul, Cesar, Catalogus Studiorum schole Marpurgensis, Marb. 1875, p. 2. Comp. Lorimer, Patrick Hamilton, Edinb. 1857, and the careful sketch of Professor Mitchell of St. Andrews, in the Schaff-Herzog ‘‘ Encycl.’’ II. 935 sqq.
5 The fact of Tyndale’s sojourn in Marburg has been disputed without good reason by Mombert in the preface to his facsimile edition of Tyndale’s Pentateuch, New York, 1884 (p. XXIX.). He conjectures that ‘ Marbo-