Church from Popish slavery and darkness, and didst let the light of Thy true gospel be so mildly (!) again kindled, by Thy true servant Dr. Martin Luther, and others who duly followed him in Thy holy and blessed word, as well in these realms and lands as elsewhere, widely and broadly around us.' Doctor Daniel has the good taste to object to this celebration : 'Quam sententiam ferret ipse Lutherus de festo reformationis, nescimus; ego quidem vehementer animi pendeo. Illa festivitas semper quandam speciem novitatis præbet: denique non confert ad pacem Christianorum reconciliandam, sed sæpissime iracundias commovet recentes, magnosque animorum motus.' In Prussia, another festival was instituted in 1816, which proves the truth of Schiller's lines: But still the heart doth need a language,—still the commemoration of the departed (Todten Fest) on the last Sunday after Trinity. This has given rise to bitter reproaches from the more rigid Lutherans.You neglect,' say they, 'the festival of Easter, and you obtrude upon us the Papist com'memoration of All Souls.' Nevertheless, the natural instinct of man-(that instinct which in so many parts of Germany, and in some remote districts of England, has led to the beautiful custom of leaving a vacant chair on the eve of All Saints, when the family closes in round the fire, for its departed members) has been stronger than Lutheranism, and the Todten Fest is rapidly prevailing throughout Germany. The Lutheran fast days depart more widely from the ancient Church order than any other part of their system. In one or two principalities, there is a monthly fast; in most, there are three penitential days, though the time of year selected for their observation differs widely. In Saxony, they are held on the Friday before the last Sunday after Trinity, and on the Friday after Reminiscere; in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on the Friday after Sexagesima, on Good Friday, on the third Sunday after Trinity, and on the Friday before the first Sunday in Advent; in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, on the Friday after Reminiscere, and the Friday before the first Sunday in Advent; in Bavaria, on Sexagesima Sunday. In Prussia, the commemoration is made on the Friday after Jubilate (the third Sunday after Easter). Most certainly,' observes Dr. Daniel, if a prize were given for the discovery of the most inappropriate 'season for a time of penitence, the Prussian Church would, without any manner of doubt, be entitled to it.' Nor have the Danes much mended the matter. They celebrate their Almindelig Bededag on the Friday which follows the fourth Sunday after Easter, according to the institution of King Christian V., in 1686. Without entering further into other Lutheran observances, such as auricular confession and absolution, exorcism and baptism, and the like, we have said enough to show how much external similarity there is between their rites and those of the Roman Catholic Church. So far as outward observances go, the gulf lies, not between Catholics and Protestants, (we use the latter word in the strict sense,) but between Protestants and Reformed. We must now for one moment glance at the ecclesiastical position of the latter. Their communion may be conveniently divided into four portions; those of Scotland, France, Switzerland, and Holland: for the few German States, such as the Palatinate, which embraced this religion, were merely fac-similes of the Swiss movement. The three first named seemed to vie with each other in desecrating churches; the French Calvinist, for example, exulted in destroying the most undoubted relics, such as those of S. Martin; the Scotch, as every one knows, have (when not restrained by the law) reduced their ecclesiastical buildings to the level of pigsties; and the Swiss are not much better. Honourable exception must be made in favour of Holland. The Dutchman's two sacraments are, preaching and psalm-singing, and he shows his estimation of them by the magnificent pulpits and organs which abound in that country. The expense of such an organ as that of Haarlem, and of such pulpits as are to be found at the Hague, or Amsterdam, or Rotterdam, is hardly calculable. Not content with this, it has also pleased them to erect rood-screens at an almost fabulous expense; any one who has visited Holland will have been struck with the elaborateness and massiveness of the brass, which is their usual material. This, however, is the exception; the majority of European Calvinists have always delighted in making their churches as plain and as filthy as possible. While Lutherans never, for one moment, dreamt of reconsecrating Catholic buildings, Calvinists delighted to do so; and in some cases went through the same process with regard to churches which had been intermediately occupied by Lutherans. The political struggle between the two heresies was never more strikingly developed, than when the Calvinist Elector Palatine, son-in-law of our James I., went to take possession of his new kingdom of Bohemia. Acting upon the suggestions of his favourite preacher Scultetus, he tore down the images, and defaced the decorations, of the Lutheran churches at Prague; and to the hatred of his tenets thereby engendered among that powerful body, may be, in a great measure, ascribed the loss of his kingdom. Any one who wishes to see this remarkable episode of ecclesiastical, as well as civil history, strikingly set forth, cannot do better than read Mr. James's romance of Heidelberg. But notwithstanding the fury of the contest between Lutherans and Reformed, there arose, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, more than one divine who was determined to reconcile the two bodies. Of these, the first, and deserving to be the most famous, was John Dury.' John Dury, whose name was afterwards to be mixed up with the religious parties of Europe for nearly half a century, and who did and suffered more for the cause of peace-such as it was-than probably any other man, was born at Edinburgh,2 towards the end of the sixteenth century. His father, of the same name, was an apostate monk, and became a celebrated preacher of the school of Knox, in that neighbourhood. Some 1 The sources from whence the history of John Dury, better known by his Latin name of Duræus, may be learnt, are in part given by Mosheim, vol. v. p. 277: he has, however, omitted the most important of all; namely, the English writings of Duræus himself. Of these the following are most to our purpose: 1. A Brief Relation of that which hath lately been attempted to procure Ecclesiastical Peace among Protestants. Published by Samuel Hartlib. London. 1640. 2. A Summary Account of Master John Dury's former and latter Negotiations for the Procuring of true Gospel Peace, with Christian Moderation and Charitable Unity among the Protestant Churches and Academies. London: printed for the Author in 1657. These two are identical down to page 32 of the former, which is the same as page 23 of the latter. The Brief Relation' has three more pages, containing a sort of epilogue, which concludes that portion of Dury's labours. 3. The Unchanged and Single-hearted Peacemaker. London. 1650. 4. Consultationum Irenicarum podioplwois. Amsterdam. 1664. Of Biographies, the best are; 1. G. Arnoldus; Historia Johannis Duræi, an university thesis, delivered under the presidency of J. C. Kohler, and usually quoted as that of Colerus. Wittenberg, 1716. 2. Benzelius; Dissertatio de Johanne Durao, maximeque de Actis ejus Suecanis; a thesis delivered before the celebrated Mosheim, and generally called from him. The proceedings of Duræus at Marburg are said to be related by Schenk in his Vita Professorum Theologiæ Marburgensium, page 207; but this book the writer has not been able to see. Jablonski has recorded his attempts in Prussia and Poland, in his Historia Consensus Sendomiriensis. His journeys in the Palatinate, Switzerland and Denmark are related in Seelen's Delicia Epistolarum; in the Museum Helveticum, and in the Fasciculus Epistolarum Theologicarum of Elswitch. Of all single works, that of Benzelius is incomparably the best; the thesis of G. Arnoldus, besides containing many mistakes, extends no further than to 1657, and is written in so flippant a style that it is a trial of patience to labour through it. Beside these, the present writer has examined more than twenty pamphlets of Duræus himself, from most of which something may be gleaned as to his personal history. Should any reader be curious enough to compare the account given in the text with those of Arnoldus and Benzelius, he may rest assured that any departure from their statements is based on the accounts of the subject of their biography, who must have been best acquainted with the details of his own life. 2 Arnoldus tells us that he was a Scotchman; and adds 'Reliqua si desideres merum okóтos.' But the truth is, that John Dury, the father, was by no means an unimportant personage in his day. political sermons of his having enraged the Government, he thought it prudent to fly into Holland, became a pastor at Leyden, and there spent the rest of his life. Here our hero was educated, embraced independent views, and, in 1628, settled as pastor to the English factory at Elbing, in Prussia. It was the period of that tremendous struggle between the Reformation and the Church of Rome, which, after promising to render the former triumphant throughout Europe, concluded by driving it back in all quarters, by cooping it up in countries with which, at the commencement of the century, it would have disdained to be satisfied, and by causing its great antagonist to make efforts which recalled her former struggle with the Emperors of the world, and to send forth saints who might rival the Gregories and the Leos of her earlier days. Sweden and Austria, the never-conquered king' and Oxenstiern on the one side, Wallenstein and Tilly on the other, fought out, so far as human arms were concerned, the contest. At that time Elbing formed part of the dominions of Gustavus Adolphus, and was the residence of Dr. Godeman, one of his privy counsellors. This person contracted an intimate friendship with Dury, and was the first to suggest to him that whoever should be able to bring to pass a general inter-communion throughout Protestant Christendom would indeed deserve the blessing of the peacemakers. This was the utmost pitch to which the imagination of the Swedish privy counsellor soared; it was that, also, which occupied the greater part of the life of Dury. For the second phase of these tendencies to reconciliation, that, namely, which included Rome in the general peace, had its rise, as we shall sec, in George Calixtus, and did not occupy the mind of his predecessor till nearly the conclusion of his life. Dury instantly caught at the idea, and offered to devote himself to the work, if he could see any hope of being enabled to carry forward his scheme. It chanced that, at this period, Sir Thomas Rowe (whose history is so intimately mixed up with that of the celebrated patriarch of Constantinople, Cyril Lucar) was sent ambassador extraordinary to Gustavus, and happened to take Elbing on his way back to England. He heard of the plan from Dury, communicated it to the Chancellor Oxenstiern -perhaps, on the whole, the greatest man whom Sweden ever produced-and agreed with him in thinking that both Gustavus and Charles I. should render all the support that might lie in their power for so excellent an object. On his return to England, Sir Thomas communicated the proposals to several of his friends, by whom they were much relished; but by none more so than by the Lord Chancellor. This was in 1630; and by the advice of those interested in the matter, Dury was invited to England: an invitation which he the more readily accepted, as his congregation at Elbing was now broken up, in consequence of the failure of its commercial proceedings. To England, therefore, Dury went, and was well received, not only by Archbishop Abbot, which, from the character of the man, we might have expected, but also by Laud, who then filled the chair of London. It was agreed that he should return to Germany, should see Gustavus Adolphus, and should concert such measures as might seem advisable to that monarch and to the other Protestant princes. Our divine, nothing loath, accepted the mission, and had his first interview with the king of Sweden at Würtzberg, in 1631. Gustavus, at this moment, was the dictator of Protestant Europe; the battle of Leipsic had laid Germany at his feet; Protestants and Reformers hastened to pour in their forces to his assistance; while the cruel sack and destruction of Magdeburg, by Tilly, stirred up a warm feeling of execration against the Catholic leaders. Such, then, was Gustavus when Dury, fortified with a letter of recommendation signed by thirty-eight English divines, presented himself at the court. The king heard him with interest, and offered to furnish him with letters patent, recommending his person and his design to all the Protestant princes. The negotiator, however, had, singularly enough, some objection against receiving such a document from any but an ecclesiastical authority; he asked leave to decline it for the present; and all that was settled was a recommendation to the divines of the various sects to prepare the way by their sermons for a general peace. Having thus made a beginning with the Lutherans, Dury thought it expedient to try his success among the Calvinists; he therefore visited in order Hanau, the Palatinate, the Duchy of Zweibrücken, and the Wetterau. . Whether it were the interest which Dury had excited, or whether the Lutherans and Calvinists felt that their only hope of success lay in union, can hardly be determined; but on the 3d of March in this same year, a colloquy between the Protestants and the Reformed had been held at Leipsic. The fairest professions were made on either side. The Confession of Augsburg was perused and reperused; but no substantial step was taken. The conference, however, served to furnish our pacificator with another, among the many documents which he always carried about with him. But, in the meantime, the fortunes of his great patron had changed. Schiller tells the story in brief: An account of this Synod is given by Sagittarius in his Introduction to Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 1588. NO. LXXXVII.-N.S. |