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FIFTH AND LAST EPOCH

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

LITERATURE UNDER THE TUDORS.

ENGLISH poetry has, hitherto, appeared to us under catholic colours; the Vatican was the abode of the muses who sang beneath the half formed dome of St. Peter, erected for them by Michael Angelo; they are now on the eve of apostatizing and turning protestant. Their change of religion was not, however, felt in a very decided manner, for the Reformation took place before the language had emerged from its barbarism; all the writers of the first order made their appearance subsequently to the reign of Henry VIII.

My observation relative to

138 LITERATURE UNDER THE TUDORS.

Shakspeare, Pope, and Dryden will be seen hereafter.

Be this as it may, a chief feature pervades the epoch upon which we now enter; in the same manner as I portrayed the middle age to the reader, before I adverted to the authors of those times, it seems proper that I should preface the second part of this work by some inquiries on the subject of the Reformation. How was it brought about? what were its consequences to the human mind, to literature, to the arts, to governments? These are questions well worthy of our consideration.

HERESIES AND SCHISMS WHICH PRECEDED THE SCHISM

OF LUTHER.

FROM the moment when the cross was planted at Jerusalem, attacks were unceasingly directed against the unity of the Church. The philosophies of the Hebrews, the Persians, the Indians, and the Egyptians, had become concentrated in Asia under the dominion of Rome; from this focus, kindled by the evangelic spark, issued that torrent of opinions as various as the manners of the heresiarchs were dissimilar. It were easy to draw up a catalogue of the philosophic systems, and place, in juxta-position to each, its corresponding heresy. Tertullian acknowledged that heresies were to christianity what philosophic systems were to paganism, with this difference, that philosophic systems were the truths of pagan worship, whereas heresies were the errors of the christian religion.

St. Augustine reckoned, in his time, eightyeight heresies, beginning with the Simonians and ending with the Pelagians.

The church withstood the attacks of all; her perpetual struggle accounts for those councils, synods, assemblies of every name and every species, which are noticed from the very dawn of christianity. Nothing is so wonderful as the indefatigable activity of the christian community : intent upon defending itself against the edicts of the emperors and against persecutions, it was moreover called upon to combat its own children and its domestic enemies. The very existence of the faith was, no doubt, at stake: had not heresies been constantly cut out of the bosom of the church by canons, denounced and stigmatized in writings, the people would have been at a loss to understand to what religion they belonged. In the midst of sects propagating themselves unopposed, and assuming endless ramifications, the christian principle would have been exhausted in its numberless derivations, as a river is lost in the multitude of its channels.

The middle ages, properly so called, were not free from schism. Several innovators in Italy, Wicliff in England, Jerome of Prague and John Huss in Germany, were precursors of the reformers of the sixteenth century. A multitude of heresies were at the bottom of those doctrines, which gave rise to the frightful crusades against the unfortunate Albigenses. In the very schools

of theology a spirit of curiosity shook the dogmas of the church; the questions at issue were by turns obscene, impious, and childish.

In the tenth century, Valfrede raised his voice against the resurrection of the body. Béranger explained, in his own way, the mystery of the eucharist. The errors of Roscelius, Abelard, Gilbert de la Porée, Peter Lombard, and Peter of Poitiers, acquired celebrity. It was asked if Jesus Christ, as man, was anything; those who denied it were called Nihilianists. At length the scriptures were wholly set aside, and arguments in proof of the christian truths were drawn solely from the doctrine of Aristotle. Scholastic divinity reigned paramount, and William of Auxerre was the first to resort to the terms materia and forma, applied to the doctrine of the sacraments. Heloise inquired of Abelard why quadrupeds and birds were the only animals brought to Adam to receive their names from him. Was Jesus Christ, between his death and resurrection, what he had been before his death and after his resurrection? was his glorified body seated or standing in heaven? was his body, which is eaten in the eucharist, naked or clothed ?-Such were the questions which engaged the most orthodox minds; and Luther himself was less audacious in his investigations.

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