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Dialogue concerning Prophetic Truth, 1497, defends the author as an accredited prophet of reform. He claims a special divine revelation in addition to the directions given by Scripture, reason, and experience. The Treatise concerning the Rule and Government of the City of Florence, 1497, pleads for the maintenance of a republic as the most suitable form of government for the city.

SAVONAROLA left many smaller treatises on mystical and ascetic themes. Among them are two works written in the year 1492 which are still widely read: a Treatise of Mental Prayer, and a Treatise of the Love of Christ.

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"Best known of all . . are the meditations on the Psalms 50-51, and 30-31, written by SAVONAROLA in prison a few days before his death. The first is purely devotional in treatment, closing in the vision of the future renovation of Zion and the writer's oblation of himself as a victim upon the Cross of Christ. In the second, which was left unfinished, a more personal note is struck; it depicts the struggle between hope and despondency in SAVONAROLA's own soul, ending with the vindication of his revelations as 'divine illuminations' and the utterance of his trust in the Lord and in His name.""

In Holland the growing discontent with the condition of Christianity found voice in JOHN WESSEL, 1420-1489, who won the surnames of The Light of the World and The Master of Contradictions. LUTHER acknowledged his worth when he said, "Had I read WESSEL sooner my enemies would have said that I had borrowed my whole doctrine from him."

WESSEL'S writings were collected and edited by LUTHER in 1521. They included works on Providence, The Cause and Effects of the Incarnation and Passion, Ecclesiastical Dignity and Power. The Sacrament of Penance, What is the true Communion of the Saints? and Purgatory. In spite of

5 Edmund G. Gardner, Ency. Religion and Ethics, Vol. XI.,

p. 218.

the fact that his theology was mediæval in type, a long series of charges was brought against him, and from fear of the Inquisition he recanted; but with something of the spirit of Galileo he said to the court; "If Christ were now present and ye were to treat Him as ye do me He might be condemned by you as a heretic. However He would get the better of you by His acuteness."

JOHN PUPPER of Goch, d. 1475, anticipated LUTHER'S doctrine of justification by faith; he wrote a work entitled Christian Liberty, and a Dialogue concerning the growth of the ecclesiastical law. JOHN RUCHRAT of Wesel, 14191481, also stands in the goodly succession of reformers before the Reformation. His books on the Ecclesiastical Power, and on the troubled question of Indulgences, brought him under condemnation and they were burned as heretical.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE DAWN OF THE NEW DAY

The century that witnessed the rebirth of culture, literature, and liberty was also the witness of the fall of Constantinople, 1453, the consequent dissolution of the Eastern Empire, and the recovery of peace in Italy, 1530, after nearly forty years of war.

The fall of Constantinople made Italy the sole heir to the ancient Grecian civilisation which committed its treasures and its scholars to her care. Through the Italian wars these treasures became known to France, Spain, and Germany, where they exerted their refining and quickening influence.

In Italy the renaissance of learning was almost entirely literary and artistic, unrestrained by morality and religion. Vanity Fair, as JOHN BUNYAN pictured it in his Pilgrim's Progress, fairly represents the Rome of the Renaissance. But amid the careless multitudes there were some conspicuous representatives of the spiritual interests of the revival. FRANCESCO FILELFO, 1398-1481, roused the whole of Florence to wondering admiration of his learning. MARSILIUS FICINUS, 1463-1499, wrote a book entitled The Christian Religion, 1474, and eight years later issued his Platonic Theology, "a beautiful but too visionary and hypothetical system of theism, the groundworks of which lay deep in the meditations of ancient Oriental sages." The illustrious JOHN PICUS of Mirandola, 1463-1494, published an exposition of Genesis i., based upon his researches into the Jewish Cabala. He called it the Heptaplus of John Picus of

Mirandula concerning Six of the Sevenfold Days in the Story of Genesis, 1490. This was the fruit of his transformation from "the proud vaunter of universal knowledge into the humble student of the Bible." Some Letters of his remain, and four sets of verses entitled, Twelve Rules, partly Exciting and partly Directing a Man in Spiritual Battle, The Twelve Weapons of Spiritual Battle, The Christian's Affection towards Jesus Christ, and A Prayer of Pico Mirandola to God. SIR THOMAS MORE translated them.

Consider, when thou art movèd to be wroth,

He who that was God and of all men the best,

Seeing himself scorned and scourgèd both,

And as a thief between two thieves threst,

With all rebuke and shame; yet from his breast

Came never sign of wrath or of disdain,
But patiently endured all the pain! ....

Think on the very lamentable pain,
Think on the piteous cross of woeful Christ,

Think on his blood, beat out at every vein,
Think on his precious heart carvèd in twain:
Think how for thy redemption all was wrought.
Let him not lose, what he so dear hath bought.

That greatest of Italian humanists, "the most brilliant classical scholar of his age," ANGELO AMBROGINI, 14541494, opened to the poets of Italy a career of epic and lyric fame. He is better known as POLITAN, and is universally recognised as the chief exponent of the new classical culture.

In Spain the spirit of the renaissance stirred in RAYMOND of Sabunde, f1, 1434, who became a professor of theology at Toulouse. His Book of Nature or of the Creatures, 1434-1436, denied the view that reason and faith, philosophy and theology, are opposed and irreconcilable. As MONTAIGNE says, "he undertaketh by humane and natural reasons, to establish and verifie all the articles of Christian religion against Atheists."1

1 Essays (Florio's trans.), Bk. II., Chap. 12. "An Apology for Raymond Sebond."

There are two books given to us by God: that is the book of the universe of the creatures, or the book of nature, and the other is the book of sacred Scripture . . . The first book, i.e. nature, cannot be falsified, nor obliterated, nor falsely interpreted. . . . But the second can be falsified and falsely interpreted and understood amiss.

The first effect of this return to classical study was to make the forms of Christian literature seem mean and worthless, and its subjects difficult and unmanageable in comparison with those of the literae humaniores. The second result was that the literature of Europe began to branch out into national literatures each with its own individuality.

In Germany and northern Europe generally, the purely literary interest of the Renaissance gave place to that of religion. Foremost among the men who led this development was JOHN REUCHLIN, 1455-1522, a scholar, a jurist, and a student of the Hebrew language. His mystical writings The Marvellous Word, 1494, and The Cabalistic Art, 1517, tried to interpret Christian teaching by the aid of the Jewish Cabala. His Book of Aphorisms on the Art of Preaching was a pioneer work in modern homiletics.

But REUCHLIN'S influence depended far less upon his writings than upon his labours as a student of Hebrew; he was the father of Hebrew philology among Christians. MELANCTHON went so far as to say that his Rudiments of Hebrew entitled him to the highest praise from all living and future believers.

The chief apostle of the tolerant and scholarly spirit of humanism in Germany was DESIDERIUS ERASMUS, 14661536, whose student years at Deventer, 1475-1484, gave him an early acquaintance with its aims. His first book was a small volume of Poems, 1495. This was followed by Adages, 1500, which in its enlarged edition, A Thousand

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