get over that vehemence, and strain your voice less; I wished to try what you would say, if I brought forward what I did.

'Calixtus. You know that we have not met about a jocular, but about a very serious matter. Nor is there any reason why you should try me as you would a pupil, whether I understand logic or not. I shall not learn it from you, seeing that I have myself taught it for several years. And to say truth, I have not discovered any great acquaintance with that art in yourself. But, with respect to your having in a matter of such great moment so boldly and constantly denied that which you know to be true, nay, which very boys know to be true,-I say that you have sinned against your conscience, and have offended God by a grievous sin, which He will follow by a grievous punishment, unless you repent from your heart.'

It seems, however, that whether our disputant maintained the field by force of logic or not, he finally routed his opponent by a stratagem, more ingenious than straightforward. In the course of the dispute he insisted on referring to the Hebrew text, and grounding his arguments on that alone. The Jesuit at once confessed himself to be but imperfectly acquainted with that language; and as the Lutheran insisted on his proposition, the colloquy was manifestly at an end. However, though the main point was lost-for the young nobleman joined the Church of Rome-Calixtus's reputation was made. He was rewarded by the Duke with a professorship in the university, and in 1615 he was received into the theological faculty, inaugurating his career with a thesis,—that kingdoms and states cannot safely coexist with the religion of Papists or Jesuits.

From the period of his obtaining the dignity of Professor, the reputation of Calixtus extended itself more and more widely throughout Germany. He married, in 1619, Catherine Gertner, the only event which, for some years, diversified his theological studies. Year after year, and one might almost say, month after month, he continued to pour forth a series of works, which it is wonderful that any one man could have found the time even to copy out. Thus, besides published letters, congratulatory poems and the like, and in addition to a number of treatises edited by him, he published one hundred and seven works in Latin and nine in German, besides leaving twenty-seven more ready for the press. It was his hard fate to be at once the most zealous labourer for the universal peace of Christendom and the author who, in a most polemical age, was under the necessity of composing the largest number of polemical treatises. A common object of attack both to the Reformed and to Catholics, he was, perhaps, more bitterly hated by Lutherans than by either. Add to which, that he witnessed the greater part of the miseries of the thirty years' war; and that when, in 1625, the university was dispersed by that and by the pestilence, he alone of all the professors remained at his post; and it will be manifest that the end

and aim of all his wishes, peace, was never removed further from any man than from him.

It was early in his career that the outcry of Syncretism was raised against him by his Lutheran colleagues. A new faith, an unheard-of schism, a betrayal of truth, a contempt of the Lutheran communion, Philippism, Synergism, Crypto-Papism, Crypto-Calvinism, Mahometanism, Babelism, Samaritanism, Anti-Christianism, Libertinism, Neutralism, Indifferentism, Quodlibetic faith, and Atheism; all these charges were brought against him, in innumerable specimens of those little, fat, square quartos, in which the presses of Frankfort, Jena, and Leipsic then abounded. Theses, syntagmata, apologies, programmes, articles, memorials, were all hurled against him; partly by Calvinists, but principally by the rigid Lutherans, of whom Statius Buscher and John Hülsemann may stand as types.

Nothing could be more wearisome than to trace the course of all these controversies. Even the German patience of Dr. Hencke shrinks from the task; and yet even in the first, and as yet only published volume of his biography, the enumeration is long enough to try the patience of most readers to its extreme limit. The two great principles on which the whole theology of our doctor was founded were these: 1st, That the essential principles of Christianity were preserved inviolate in the three denominations of Christians, and were all contained in the Apostles' Creed. 2d, That the tenets which had been received by the whole Catholic Church during the first five centuries were to be considered as of equal weight with the express declarations of Holy Scripture. Whole books were filled with compositions extracted from the writings of Calixtus, and which were held up as heretical; the indefatigable Moller has collected fifty-one of these. Some of them are exceedingly curious, and make the Syncretism of our author approach that which is so widely spreading among us now; as for instance, that the Roman Pontiff held the primacy of dignity with respect to the whole Church, and a certain primacy of power, though only jure ecclesiastico, in the Western Church; that the invocation of saints was to a certain extent both lawful and expedient; that prayers for the dead were by no means to be forbidden; that between the day of death and that of judgment there is a middle state, the nature of which he did not pretend to define; that the number of Sacraments was neither defined by Scripture nor by universal tradition; that baptized infants were justified by the faith of the Church; that a certain degree of merit might be attributed to good works. So much for his endeavours to approach the Catholics; he was not less desirous

of endeavouring to propitiate the Reformed. Thus he asserts that the Holy Eucharist may in a certain sense be named a mere commemoration of Christ's death; that S. Augustine's doctrine and that of Calvin were identical on the question of predestination; that God might be called improperly and per accidens the occasion of sin; (and, indeed, in the first edition of his Epitome Theologiæ,' he had worded the assertion still more offensively, writing was where he afterwards substituted might be called.) For these deflections both on one side and on the other from the Lutheran doctrine, the rigid Protestants fell upon him like a swarm of wasps. Abraham Calovius distinguished himself above the rest; Hülsemann, Dannhauer, and the Saxon divines were scarcely behind him. And it must never be forgotten that Lutheranism is the most intolerant of all religions that ever were invented: we have seen almost in our own times a Swedish preacher condemned to death and imprisoned for life, for having affirmed in the pulpit that good works might in a certain sense be called the cause of salvation. Nor, as was natural, did our doctor find a whit more favour in the eyes of Roman Catholics on account of his concessions. They perhaps were the more indignant because he openly espoused the cause, and borrowed some of the arguments, of Marc Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato, whose varied career was sketched in a late number of the Christian Remembrancer. However that may be, Leo Allatius and Abraham Ecchelensis attacked him whenever they found an opportunity; his old pupil, Nihusius, whose reconciliation with Rome made a considerable stir, was one of his most venomous assailants. The Calvinists alone seem to have refrained from persecuting him, though he was certainly on fundamental points more widely at variance with them than with either of the other communions.

His Epitome Theologiæ,' in 1619, was received with general applause war and plague prevented him for some years after from bringing out any great work. In 1628 he took in hand a Summa Theologiæ; in 1629 he gave to the public a history of those heresies which concern the Incarnation (in which, by the way, he was himself accused of renewing the heresy of Elipandus). In 1631 he published a treatise on the marriage of clergy, in which, forgetting his usual moderation, he made no scruple about speaking of the Hildebrandine heresy ;' and in 1634 he printed his Moral Theology.'

By this time the divines of Helmstädt were largely imbued with his own pacific spirit; and in consequence the mission of John Dury was warmly welcomed by himself and his colleagues. Passing over the labours of the next years, we come to

one of the most remarkable events in which Calixtus took a part, the Charitative Colloquy of Thorn.

It was about the same time at which Dury settled himself in England that another attempt at union had its origin in an entirely different quarter. There was one Bartholomew Nigranus, who had been pastor of the Reformed communion at Dantzic, and had afterwards joined the Roman Church; he thought that it might be possible, by means of a general conference, to bring the three religious bodies, Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, into communion with each other. It would seem that his scheme did not extend to the Socinians, who, as is well known, abounded in Prussia and in Poland. It appears that Nigranus had formed his plan as early as 1636; but he had no means of interesting the King of Poland, then Ladislas IV., in his design till six years later. This monarch, himself a zealous Roman Catholic, nevertheless entertained the greatest hopes from the proposed conference. It could not meet as a council, nor a synod of any kind; it was a new thing, and therefore must have a new name; and the title chosen was that of a Charitative Colloquy.

In 1643 it happened that a provincial Synod of the Polish bishops met at Warsaw, under the presidency of Matthew Lubienski, Archbishop of Gnesen. The Primate embraced the opportunity of setting forth the practicability of the scheme originated by Nigranus; and a synodal letter was drawn up to those who dissent in points of faith from the Roman Catholic Church in the kingdom of Poland and the duchy of Lithuania, by which they are invited to a friendly congress and fraternal reconciliation at Thorn, in Prussia, on the 10th ' of October, 1644.' George Tyskievicz, Bishop of Samogitz, was to be president; and the base on which the colloquy was to be conducted, was to be Holy Scripture and the authority of the Primitive Church.

The Calvinists entertained no very great hopes of a real reconciliation. The Duke of Courland, however, and the Elector of Brandenburg, as vassals of the King of Poland, (the latter in respect of his duchy of Prussia,) assembled their divines at Orle; the result was a determination to be present at the conference if the king would defer its meeting till the next year. Ladislas, overjoyed that his Reformed subjects had so far consented to gratify him, altered the day to August 28th, 1645. In the meantime the Lutherans, the least important body of the three, had held their own assembly at Lesne, and were unanimous in determining to accept the invitation. At the appointed time the little town of Thorn was full to overflowing. The king appointed three presidents, George Tyskievicz as repre

senting the Roman Catholics, Zbigneus de Goray Gorayski, Lord of Chelm, for the Reformed, and Sigismund Guildenstern, Lord of Stume, for the Lutherans. Ladislas was himself represented by George de Tenczin, Chancellor of the kingdom. On the Roman side there were five-and-twenty theologians, some from each bishopric; their chief was George Schönhoff. The Reformed sent fifteen, of whom John Berg was nominal head; but to the surprise of every one, the chief management of their affairs was left to the Lutheran George Calixtus, incomparably the ablest man in the assembly. The Lutherans also sent fifteen divines, of whom John Hülsemann was the most celebrated. Other theologians afterwards joined the conference.

Before the proceedings commenced, a violent quarrel broke out between the Lutherans and the Reformed, the former insisting that Calixtus ought not to be present among the latter. Calixtus himself protested that he only agreed with his Calvinist associates in their opposition to Rome, and that his sole purpose in joining them was his earnest desire to promote Christian unity. Matters being thus accommodated, each party prepared for the first session.

At eight o'clock on the morning of August 28th, the Roman theologians attended a Mass of the Holy Ghost, celebrated pontifically by George Tyskievicz in the church of S. John Baptist. This finished, they repaired to the Town-hall, where they were the first to arrive. The Chancellor took his place in the middle of the upper end; on his right hand sat Tyskievicz, and by him in order the Catholic divines. The Reformed had met at the Gymnasium, whence, as soon as they heard that their opponents had already taken their places, they repaired to the scene of action under Goray Gorayski, and occupied the left hand of the President. The Lutherans were unfortunate in being compelled to forego the assistance of Guildenstern, laid up by a violent attack of gout. They came last, and contented themselves with the lowest place. George Calixtus, together with the divines of Elbing-one here sees the effects of John Dury's labours in that place-and those of Thorn, took up a separate position.

The Chancellor commenced by a speech, in which he set forth the piety of Ladislas, the advantages of Christian unity, the happy results which might be expected if the present proceedings could be continued as they had been begun, in a brotherly spirit, and the necessity of instituting some strict rules respecting the order and method of the conference. He next exhibited the letters patent, in virtue of which he assumed the office of President, and then read the royal injunctions which laid down the method to be pursued throughout the