HISTORY
OF THE
REFORMATION IN EUROPE
IN THE TIME OF CALVIN.
BY
J. H. MERLE D’AUBIGNE, D.D.
TRANSLATED BY
WILLIAM L. B. CATES,
JOINT AUTHOR OF WOODWARD AND CATES’S ‘ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF CHRONOLOGY,’EDITOR OF ‘THE DICTIONARY OF GENERAL BIOGRAPHY,’ ETC.
‘Les choses de petite durée ont coutume de devenir fanées, quandelles ont passé leur temps.
‘Au règne de Christ, il n’y a que le nouvel homme qui soitflorissant, qui ait de la vigueur, et dont il faille faire cas.’
Calvin.
VOL. VI.
SCOTLAND, SWITZERLAND, GENEVA.
NEW YORK:
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS,
530 BROADWAY
1877.
PREFACE.
The author of the History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Centurydied at Geneva, 21 October, 1872, when only a few chapters remained tobe written to complete his great work. Feeling, as he often said, thattime was short for him now (he was not far from his eightieth year),and stimulated by the near prospect of the end towards which he hadbeen incessantly straining for fifty years, he worked on with redoubledardor. ‘I count the minutes,’ he used to say; and he allowed himself norest. Unhappily the last minutes were refused him, and the work was notfinished. But only a small portion is wanting; and the manuscripts ofwhich the publication is continued in the present volume will bring thenarration almost to its close.
Ten volumes have appeared. It was the author’s intention to comprisethe remainder of his history in two additional volumes. He had sketchedhis programme on a sheet of paper as follows:—
‘WITH GOD’S HELP.
‘Order of subjects, saving diminution or enlargement,according to the extent of each.
‘Vol. XI. to the death of Luther.
- ‘Scotland down to 1546.
- ‘Denmark.
- ‘Sweden.
- ‘Bohemia and Moravia.[iv]
- ‘Poland.
- ‘Hungary.
- ‘Geneva, Switzerland, and Calvin.
- ‘Germany, to death of Luther, 1546.
‘Vol. XII. to the death of Calvin.
- ‘Netherlands, 1566.
- ‘Spain.
- ‘Italy.
- ‘Scotland down to 1560.
- ‘England, to the Articles of 1552.
- ‘Germany, 1556.
- ‘France, 1559.
- ‘Calvin and his work in Geneva and in Christendom to his death, 1564.
The numerous manuscripts left by M. Merle d’Aubigné includeall the articles set out in the programme as intended to form Vol. XI.(VI. of the second series), and three of the articles destined for Vol.XII., the first two and the fifth.
The work will undoubtedly present important gaps. Nevertheless, thegreat period, the period of origination, will have been describedalmost completely. But there is one chapter which it is very much to beregretted that he has not written. That is the last, relating to thework and the influence of Calvin in Christendom. The man who for fiftyyears had lived in close intercourse with Calvin, who had made hiswritings, his works, and his person the objects of his continual study,and had become impregnated with his spirit more, perhaps, than any onein our age; the man who was t