[Footnote 692: Including the apocryphal books.] [Footnote 693: _Facultatis Theologiæ Parisiensis Responsum._ Gerdesius, _Hist. Evang. renov._ iv. App. p. 77.] [Footnote 694: Du Bellay, _Mémoires_, ed. Petitot, Introd. p. 123. Schmidt, _Hist. Theol._ p. 36 (ed. 1850).] [Footnote 695: 'England und Ich pflegen zusammen zu halten und sämmtlich unsere Sachen vornehmen.'—Rex Galliæ ad principes protest. _Corp. Ref._ ii. p. 830.] [Footnote 696: 'Quam pulchre staremus.'—Sturm to Melanchthon, MS.] [Footnote 697: Ibid.] [Footnote 698: 'Neque bonus ullus erit, qui reclamet in pontificis monarchiam.—_Corp. Ref._ ii. p. 762.] BOOK III. FALL OF A BISHOP-PRINCE, AND FIRST EVANGELICAL BEGINNINGS IN GENEVA. CHAPTER I. THE RENAISSANCE, THE REFORMATION, THE MIDDLE AGES. (1526.) The Reformation was necessary to christian society. The Renaissance, daughter alike of ancient and of modern Rome, was a movement of revival, and yet it carried with it a principle of death, so that wherever it was not transformed by heavenly forces, it fell away and became corrupted. The influence of the humanists—of such men as Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and afterwards of Montaigne—was a balmy gale that shed its odours on the upper classes, but exerted no power over the lower ranks of the people. In the elegant compositions of the men of letters, there was nothing for the conscience, that divinely appointed force of the human race. The work of the Renaissance, had it stood alone, must of necessity, therefore, have ended in failure and death. There are persons in these days who think otherwise: they believe that a new state of society would have arisen without the Reformation, and that political liberty would have renewed the world better than the Gospel. This is assuredly a great error. At that time liberty had scarcely any existence in Europe, and even had it existed, and the dominion of conscience not reappeared along with it, it is certain that, though powerful enough, perhaps, to destroy the old elements of order prevailing in society, it would have been unable to substitute any better elements in their place. If, even in the nineteenth century, we tremble sometimes when we hear the distant explosions of liberty, what must have been the feeling in the sixteenth? The men who were about to appear on the theatre of the world were still immersed in disorder and barbarism. Everything betokened great virtues in the new generation, but also tumultuous passions; a divine heroism, but also gigantic crimes; a mighty energy, but at its side a languishing insensibility. A renewed society could not be constituted out of such elements. It wanted the divine breath to inspire high thoughts, and the hand of God to establish everywhere the providential order.