THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
ton, 1750) he sets forth in spirited style the plan of salvation and of the Christian life after the Edwardean conception, and he explicitly advocates the doctrine of a general atonement. In the Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin (1758) he argues that, while sin is a terrible evil, God permits it as a necessary means of the best good, and the universe is '' more holy and happy than if sin and misery had never entered." God could have prevented sin without violating free will. On the whole his work was more general than specific, modifying the prevalent conceptions in the direction of greater simplicity and reasonableness. He sometimes approaches quite near subsequent forms of expression. A collected edition of his works appeared at New York (3 vols., 1811), and another (and better) at Boston, with memoir by Tryon Edwards (2 vols., 1850).
BELLARMINE, bel"lar-min'
In Louvain (§ 1). In Rome. The Disputationes (§ 2). New Duties after 1589. Controversial Writings (§3).
Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino, the famous Roman Catholic controversialist, was born at Montepulciano (26 m. s.w. of Arezzo), in Tuscany, Oct. 4, 1542; d. in Rome Sept. 17, 1621. He was a nephew of Pope Marcellus II, and came of a noble though impoverished family. His abilities showed themselves early; as a boy he knew Vergil by heart, and composed a number of poems in Italian and Latin; one of his hymns, on Mary Magdalene, is included in the Roman breviary. His father destined him for a political career, hoping that he might restore the fallen glories of the house; but his mother wished him to enter the Jesuit order, and her influence prevailed. He entered the Roman novitiate in 1560, remained in Rome three years, and then went to a Jesuit house at Mondovi in Piedmont. Here he learned Greek, and taught it as fast as he learned it. His systematic study of theology began at Padua in 1567 and 1568, where his teachers were Thomists, the Jesuits not yet having had time to develop a theology of their own.
After a visit to Venice, where he increased his renown as a public speaker, Bellarmine was sent by the general, Francis Borgia, in 1569, to Louvain, then the most famous Roman Catholic university. He was ordained priest at Ghent on Palm Sunday, 1570, by the elder Jansenius. A strict Augustinian theology prevailed among the teachers at Louvain, represented by Bajus, the precursor of Jansenism (see Bajus, Michel). Bellarmine had not enough deep knowledge of his own nature or Christian experience to be able to appreciate the Augustinian doctrines of the corruption of man and the necessity of divine grace to any good movement of the win. He contended accordingly against the propositions of Bajus, though i. In his own views and expressions in
Louvain. the great controversy on grace were always a little uncertain. He was the first Jesuit to teach at the university, where the subject of his course was the Summa of St. Thomas; he also made extensive studies in the Fathers and medieval theologians, which gave him the material for his book De scriptoribus ecclesias-
ticis (Rome, 1613), which was later revised and enlarged by Sirmond, Labbeus, and Oudm. In the Netherlands he gained a knowledge of the great controversy with the Protestants which he could hardly have got in Italy, though he seems never to have come into personal contact with the evangelical leaders. Finally he learned Hebrew, and wrote his often reprinted grammar. His genius for teaching, clearness of thought, and adroitness in controversy were indisputable.
Bellarmine's residence in Louvain lasted seven years. His health was undermined by study and asceticism, and in 1576 he made a journey to Italy to restore it. Here he was detained by the commission given him by Gregory XIII to lecture on polemical theology in the new Roman College. He devoted eleven years to this work, out of whose activities grew his celebrated Disputationes de controversiis christiance fidei, first published at
Ingolstadt, 4 vols., 1581-93. It occu-
2. In Rome, pies in the field of dogmatics the same
The "Dis- place as the Annates of Baronius in
putationes." the field of history. Both were the
fruits of the great revival in religion and learning which the Roman Catholic Church had witnessed since 1540. Both bear the stamp of their period; the effort for literary elegance, which was considered the principal thing at the beginning of the sixteenth century, had given place to a desire to pile up as much material as possible, to embrace the whole field of human knowledge, and incorporate it into theology. Bellarmine's exposition of the views and arguments of the Protestants is surprisingly full and accurate, so much so that the circulation of the book in Italy was for a time not encouraged. He fails, like most of his contemporaries, in understanding the principle of historical development, and his belief in authority, pressed to an extreme, injured his sense of truth and allowed him to handle both the Bible and history in an arbitrary manner. The first volume treats of the Word of God, of Christ, and of the pope; the second of the authority of councils, and of the Church, whether militant, expectant, or triumphant; the third of the sacraments; and the fourth of grace, free will, justification, and good works. The most important part of the work is contained in the five books on the Roman pontiff. In these, after a speculative introduction on forms of government in general, holding monarchy to be relatively the best, he says that a monarchical government is necessary for the Church, to preserve unity and order in it. Such power he considers to have been established by the commission of Christ to Peter. He then proceeds to demonstrate that this power has been transmitted to the successors of Peter, admitting that a heretical pope may be freely judged and deposed by the Church since by the very fact of his heresy he would cease to be pope, or even a member of the Church; this is almost like an echo of the great councils of the fifteenth century. The third section discusses Antichrist; Bellarmine gives in full the theory set forth by the Greek and Latin Fathers, of a personal Antichrist to come just before the end of the world and to be accepted by the Jews and