tracts, which were published about 1580, the year of the Armada. Udal and Penry, on their trials, were charged with the authorship, or with a wilful knowledge of the authors. But they refused to make any revelations, and the real authorship of these once dreaded and proscribed, but now ludicrous, lampoons remains a mystery. The government denounced them in royal proclamations, and tracked the itinerant printing-press from county to county. But Martin-Marprelate escaped their vigilance, and replied to their proclamations with coarse, popular jests, and libels on the bishops. There is some reason to believe that the whole was a contrivance of the Jesuits. The reader may consult Osborne's "Hidden Works of Darkness" for further information on the subject.-In a graver tone the Brownists carried on a long controversy with Cartwright, the leader of the Presbyterian or Genevan Puritans. Cartwright himself had suffered heavily from the Prelatists, but he was shocked to hear it asserted that the Church of England was Antichrist. He held that it was a true Church, though he desired many reformations in it. "There are," he says, "I confess, in the Church of England, divers things not suiting well with the purity of the Gospel; yet are there also those wherein you bring a wrong report of her, charging her with the evil which she doeth not, and taking from her the good which the Lord doeth in her. Your [Brownist] assemblies seek, indeed, divers things which are to be desired; yet overcharged, not only in the disordered manner of seeking them, but also in the things themselves which you seek to obtain." "Those assemblies," he said, "which had Christ for their head and their foundation, were, in his opinion, the Churches of God, and such he considered the parochial congregations of the Church of England. The testimony of the Spirit of God, by his manifold graces poured upon them, bore witness that they were the Churches of God. The Lord in mercy had set divers burning lamps in those assemblies, whereby light was conveyed, more or less, to most parts of the land. All the Churches of Christ in Europe gave the Church of England the right hand of fellowship; and, though he pressed not this as an argument against separation, yet," he observed, that the fact "ought to stay all sudden and hasty judgment to the contrary, and to silence all severe objections until the cause on both sides should be fully examined by the light of divine truth." (Brook's

Life of Cartwright, page 305.) A noble and generous testimony in favour of the Church of England, from the first and greatest of her adversaries, and honourable to the man who wrote it!

CALVINISTS. This term is vaguely used to designate those,

whatever Church or sect they belong to, who receive the theological tenets of Calvin. With more propriety it is applied to the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, France, and Germany, of which Calvin was the first great leader. In the present article it is employed, in a still more limited sense, with reference to the Reformed or Calvinistic Churches of Germany and Switzerland as distinguished from the Lutherans. It is thus used in general upon the Continent, where its application to doctrinal views is almost unknown. In this latter sense, Calvinism is a theological system, the nature of which must be learned from those who treat on dogmatic divinity, or from the writings of Calvin himself.

John Calvin was born in 1509 at Noyon in Picardy, and sent early to the university of Paris. He was at first designed for the Church, but his father, perceiving his wonderful and precocious talents, changed his mind and had him educated for the law, as a certain path to high distinction. Young Calvin had already begun to read the Scriptures, and to feel misgivings as to the soundness of the Church of Rome. He repaired to Orleans, and afterwards to Bruges, where he was instructed in Greek, then a very rare accomplishment, by Melchior, from whom he also learned the doctrines of the Reformers. He was possessed of two benefices, although not yet in priest's orders, which he now resigned, and devoted himself to the work of the Reformation. Returning to Paris he avowed his new principles, and so doing incurred the anger of the Sorbonne, the high theological academy of France, and of the parliament of Paris. Francis I. was then upon the throne, a zealous champion of the papacy, and Calvin was more than once in imminent danger of the flames; from which he was saved by the good offices of the queen of Navarre, Francis's sister, a Protestant lady of great worth and piety. Calvin retired to Basle, and here, before he had completed his twenty-seventh year, in the year 1536, he

published his "Institutio Christianæ Religionis," dedicated in a conciliatory preface to Francis himself.

Whatever differences may have existed as to certain peculiarities in Calvin's creed, or some points in his personal history, there has never been, amongst those who were competent to judge, a dissentient voice as to the extraordinary merit of this wonderful performance. It was designed, not merely as an answer to the Church of Rome, but as a complete body of practical and dogmatic theology. It was the first attempt of the kind by any of the reformers, and it still retains its supremacy amidst innumerable rivals, all of which it may be said to have provoked into existence. It has been said of it, that its effect upon the Christian world was so remarkable, that it must be looked upon as one of those books that have changed the face of society. It was written in Latin; Calvin himself translated it into French; and it was soon republished in English and in other languages. Within twenty years it took its place at Oxford and Cambridge by the side of Aristotle, and was lectured on in the Protestant universities of all Europe. Calvin, still a young man, had achieved successes such as the wisest men seldom reach till after a life of toil. He surpassed all the reformers in mental power and genius; it is said he exceeded them as much in asperity and turbulence. Perhaps his early triumph was dearly purchased, in the loss of something of his modesty and meekness!

Calvin returned to Geneva in 1536, and found the reformed religion just established there by law. Viret, Farel, and others, leaders of the Reformation, were then preaching and labouring at Geneva, and at their desire Calvin joined them, became a distinguished teacher, and very soon, by the force of his mind and character, the Protestant leader and chieftain. In conjunction with Farel, Calvin prepared a confession of faith and a system of Church government; but the Genevese, urged by the Romish priests and still attached to their old ceremonies, rose against the reformers, and in consequence Calvin and Farel were banished. Calvin retired to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a French congregation, amongst whom he introduced his own method of Church government. This was the first Calvinistic Church, properly so called; and to this event we may trace the peculiar characteristics of the Huguenot, or French

reformed Church, in subsequent times. But in a short time, Calvin and his friend, too important to be spared in difficult times and from so small a republic, were recalled to Geneva and their sentences reversed. Calvin was now in the height of his power, revered at home and courted or dreaded abroad. In November, 1541, his code or system of Church government was promulgated by the civil authority, and the Calvinistic Church established at Geneva.

He now conceived the vast and laudable ambition of providing all continental Christendom, or at least all Protestant Europe. with one and the same system of Church government. It was a noble design,-to reduce all the reformed Churches to one rule of faith and one form of polity. Its failure was perhaps inevitable; perhaps, too, greater advantages have resulted from its failure than would have attended upon its success. No similar attempt has since been made, and the possibility of uniting all Protestant Churches in one visible union is a problem not yet solved.

Before Calvin entered upon this great design, the field had been already, to some extent, preoccupied by other labourers. Zuingle had formed a Church in Switzerland, and Luther in Germany. Of the Lutheran Church we shall speak hereafter (see LUTHERANS) It is sufficient for our purpose to mention here, that Luther, notwithstanding his dauntless courage in opposing what he saw to be the corruptions of the papacy, had retained some things which gave offence to other reformers, and seemed a compromise with superstition. He was disposed to treat with toleration images, altars, wax tapers, exorcism, and private confession. Above all, upon the subject of the eucharist he seemed almost to symbolize with the Church of Rome. It was not the mass itself, but the abuses of the mass, against which Luther protested. In the Confession of Augsburg, in which the doctrines of the Lutheran Church were formally propounded in 1530, we have these words, "Our Churches are wrongfully accused to have abolished the mass; for the mass is still retained among us and celebrated with great reverence, yea and almost all the ceremonies that have been in use; saving that, with the songs in Latin, we mingle certain psalms in Dutch;" and it proceeds to refute the various corruptions with which the Church of Rome had obscured the sacrament. This confession, the

earliest of all Protestant creeds, was republished in 1531 and 1540, but with no material alterations; and the real presence in the mass is repeatedly asserted. "There is one common mass appointed according to the institution of Christ, wherein the pastors of the Churches do consecrate for themselves, and give unto others, the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ."

Touching the supper of the Lord, together with the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ are truly exhibited to them that eat of the Lord's supper." As the Reformation advanced, these views appeared to the reformers in other countries, who were beyond the immediate influence of Luther's mind, obscure and dangerous. Zuingle, in Switzerland, avoiding Luther's error, fell into the opposite extreme. His aim was to establish, in his own country, a form of worship which should be remarkable for its simplicity, and as far remote as possible from everything which might have a tendency to revive the superstitions, in which alone he saw danger to the Church of Christ. On the eucharist he differed widely from Luther. The bread and wine he maintained were nothing more than symbols of the body and blood of Christ-appropriate signs to show the Lord's passion and keep it in remembrance; or, to use an expression common amongst the Zuinglians, "Nihil esse in cœnâ quam memoriam Christi." Zuingle died in 1530, while the Swiss Church was scarcely yet cemented. Martin Bucer succeeded him, and endeavoured to moderate some of his statements, and bring about a union between the Swiss and German Churches. The Helvetic confession of 1536 was presented by him to the divines at Wirtemberg with this hope, and it modifies the absolute negation of a spiritual presence as held by Zuingle. "We say that the supper is a mystical thing, wherein the Lord doth indeed offer to them that are his, his body and blood, that is himself, to the end that he may more and more live in them and they in him." Some of the clergy of the Swiss Church now joined the Lutheran party, and great hopes were entertained by the friends of peace on both sides, that a reconciliation might be effected. But in 1544 Luther published his confession of faith in reference to the eucharist, which was directly opposed to that of Zuingle and Bucer, and the prospect of a union seemed to be more remote than ever. Luther died in 1546; and Melancthon, a reformer, firm and earnest, but of the gentlest mould, again attempted