604 THE KEFOflMATlON IN EllENCH SWITZERLAND.
It was forbidden under pain of death to write against the Interim. Nevertheless, over thirty attacks appeared from the "Chancellery of God" at Magdeburg. Bullinger and Calvin wrote against it.
Calvin published the imperial proclamation and the text of the Interim in full, and then gave his reasons why it could never bring peace to the Church. He begins with a quotation from Hilary in the Arian controversy : " Specious indeed is the name of peace, and fair the idea of unity; but who doubts that the only peace of the Church is that which is of, Christ?" This is the key-note of his own exposition on the true method of the pacification of Christendom.
Elector Maurice of Saxony, who stood between two fires, — his Lutheran subjects and the Emperor, — modified the Augsburg Interim, with the aid of Melanchthon and the other theologians of Wittenberg, and substituted for it the Leipzig Interim, Dec. 22, 1548. In this document the chief articles of faith are more cautiously worded so as to admit of an evangelical interpretation, but the Roman ceremonies are retained, as adiaphora^ or things indifferent, which do not compromise the conscience nor endanger salvation. It gave rise to the Adiaphoristic Controversy between the strict and the moderate Lutherans. Melanchthon was placed in a most trying position in the midst of the contest. In the sincere wish to save Protestantism from utter overthrow and Saxony from invasion and desolation by imperial troops, he yielded to the pressure of the courtiers and accepted the Leipzig Interim in the hope of better times. For this conduct he was severely attacked by Flacius, his former pupil, and denounced as a traitor. When Calvin heard the news, he wrote an earnest letter of fraternal rebuke to Melanchthon, and reminded him of Paul's unyielding firmness at the Synod of Jerusalem on the question of circumcision.^
1 Letter of July 18, 1550, quoted in § 90, pp. 395 sq. Dyer decidedly defends Melanchthon in this adiaphoristic controversy, and makes the follow-
§ 122. AGAINST THE WORSHIP OF RELICS. 1543. 605
Protestantism in Germany was brought to the brink of ruin, but was delivered from it by the treason of the Elector Maurice. This shrewd, selfish politician and master in the art of dissimulation, had fust betrayed the Protestants, by aiding the Emperor in the defeat of the Smalkaldian League, whereby he gained the electorate ; and then he rose in rebellion against the Emperor and drove him and the Fathers of Trent out of Tyrol (1551). He died in 1553 of a deadly wound which he received in a victorious battle against his old friend Albrecht of Brandenburg.^
The final result of the defeat of the Emperor was the Augsburg Treaty of Peace, 1555, which for the first time gave to the Lutherans a legal status in the empire, though with certain restrictions. This closes the period of the Lutheran Reformation.
§ 122. Against the Worship of Relics. 1543.
Advertissement tres-utile du grand proffit qui reviendroit a la Glirestient€, sHl se faisoit inventoive de tous les corps sainctz et reliques, qui sont tant en Italie qxi'en France Allemai(/ne, Hespaigne, et autres lioijaumes et Pai/s. Gen., 1543, 1544, 1551, 1563, 1579, 1599. Reprinted in Opera, VI. 405-452. A Latin edition by Nicolaus Gallasius (des Gallars) was published at Geneva, 1548. It appeared also in Englisii (^4 very projitahle treatise, etc.), London, 1561, and in two German translations (by Jakob Eysenberg of AVittenbcrg, 1557, etc., and by J. Fisciiart, 1584, or 1583, under the title Der heilig Brotkorb der h. Iloniischen Reliquien). See Henry, II. 3.33 and III., Appendix, 204-206. A new English translation by Beveridge in Calvin's Tracts relating to the Reformation, Edinb., 1844, pp. 289- .341.
In the same year in which Calvin answered Pighius, he published a French tract on Relics, which was repeatedly
ing remark (p. 240) : " What a prospect do these squabbles hohl out for the future union of the Protestant Ciiurch! A silly and scandalous, we had almost said, a childish, quarrel about a surplice and a few minor ceremonies divides the Protestants into hostile factions at the moment of their most eminent peril ! With such feelings, how should they liope in quieter times to arrange those more serious questious, which turned on really important points of doctrine 1 "
1 For a description of the character of Moritz, sec Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, vol. V. 160 sqq. (6th ed. 1881).
IjOG the reformation in FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
printed and translated. It was the most popular and effective of his anti-papal writings. He indulged here veiy freely in his power of ridicule and sarcasm, which reminds one almost of Voltaire, but the spirit is altogether different. He begins with the following judicious remarks, which best characterize the book : —
" Augustin, in his work, entitled On the Labor of Monks, complaining of certain itinerant impostors, who, as early as his day, plied a vile and sordid traffic, by carrying the relics of martyrs about from place to place, adds, • If, indeed, they are relics of martyrs.' By this expression he intimates the prevalence, even in his day, of abuses and impostures, by which the ignorant populace were cheated into the belief that bones gathered here and there were those of saints. Wliile the origin of tlie imposture is thus ancient, there cannot be a doubt that in the long period which has since elapsed, it has exceedingly increased, considering, especially, tliat the world has since been strangely corrupted, and has never ceased to become worse, till it has reached the extreme wherein we now behold it.
"But the first abuse and, as it were, beginning of the evil was, that when Christ ought to have been sought in his Word, sacraments, and spiritual influences, the world, after its wont, clung to his garments, vests, and swaddling-clothes; and thus overlooking the principal matter, followed only its accessory. The same course was pursued in regard to apostles, martyrs, and other saints. For when the duty was to meditate diligently on their lives, and engage in imitating them, men made it their whole study to contemplate and lay up, as it were in a treasury, their bones, shirts, girdles, caps, and similar trifles.
" I am not unaware that in this there is a semblance of pious zeal, the allegation being, that tiie relics of Christ are kept on account of the reverence which is felt for himself, and in order that the remembrance of him may take a firmer hold of tiie mind. And the same thing is alleged with regard to the saints. But attention should be paid to what Paul says, viz., that all divine worship of man's devising, having no better and surer foundation than his own opinion, be its semblance of wisdom what it may, is mere vanity and folly.
" Besides, any advantage, supposed to be derived from it, ought to be contrasted with the danger. In this way it would be discovered that the possession of such relics was of little use, or was altogether superfluous and frivolous, whereas, on the other hand, it was most difficult, or rather impossible, that men should not thereby degenerate into idolatry. For they cannot look upon them, or handle them, without veneration ; and there being no limit to this, the honor due to Christ is forthwith paid to them. In short, a longing for relics is never free from superstition, nay, what is worse, it is the parent of idolatry, with which it is very generally conjoined.
"All admit, without dispute, that God carried away the body of Moses from human sight, lest the Jewish nation should fall into the abuse of wor-