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LETTER XLVI.
Leipjick.
I CANNOT quit Saxony without faying fomething to you of tne reformation which
k^fh^orisiin of the reformation, as a queftion of learning, is difficult to determine.Between the times of John Hufs and Luther, Paul of Tubingen, Brulfer, Bafil of Gro-ningen , and feveral Englifh, openly profeffed the doftnnes of the reformed The Val-denfes bad fpread their opinions very conhderably long before the time of Hufs; andbetween their time and the sera of Hufs, Wickliff, John of Pans, Arnaud de Villeneuve,William of St Amour, Evrard, bifhop of Saltzburg, and many others taught the tenetsof Luther and Calvin. It is certain, that from the time of the Albigeois to the breakingout of the reformation, there was no period in which fome remarkable man did notopenly maintain the principles of the Proteftant religion. Between the time of Peterde Waldo (who did moft towards the fpreading of the feet of the Albigeois , thoughthey do not take their name from him, as fome have thought,) and Berenger, whocame not a hundred years after him, we meet with Pierre de Bruis, Henry de Thou-loufe and Arnaud Hot, who, with many others, made the doannes held by the Pro-teges of the prefent day, known all over France . The celebrated bifhop Honore ofAutun who wrote upon free will, and in the fpiiit of the Pioteftants of this day, calledthe Pope the great bead, and the Whore of Babylon, lived in 1115, and Berenger diedin 1091 ; fo that there is hardly a generation between them. .
In the fame century with Berenger, Arnolph, billiop of Orleans, diihnguifhed him-felf at the council of Rheims , by a fpeech much more violent than any thing whichLuther has written againft the power of the Pope. In a word, the opinions of Pro-teftants are to be met with in the earlieft ages of the church ; and an attentive readerof ecclefiaftical hiftory will foon fee, that they are conneded with the opinions of thefirft fedaries, and that it was not the bare novelty of his opinions which made Lutherremarkable. c T 1 j
Whoever is a little acquainted with the hiftory of the century before Luther, and canform to himfelf a precife idea of the ftate of Saxony , previous to the bieaking out of thereformation, will eafily fee, that other things belldes theology, contributed to this event,and that Luther only gave the long waited for fignal of revolt.
Since the time of the Emperor Sigifmund, (who would have brought about the re-volution himfelf, if his knowledge had correfponded with his third for reformation,and who for want of that knowledge differed himfelf to be led by the nofe by fomecardinals) Germany had been at work on a reformation,. ^ If a Catholic at this timewas to fay what was faid, not only in the fchools and in publications, but at thecouncil of. Conftance before the whole nation, at the diet of the etnpiie, and by pat-ticular princes in their tranladions with each other, he would be put into a prifonas a violent heretic. It is indeed wonderful, how the minds of the Catholic princeswere changed by the heat of 'difpute after that ftep was once taken, which theythemfelves had before endeavoured to produce. The well known hundred grievances(which in the end grew to much more than a hundred) of the German nation plainlyIhewed, that moft of the courts of Germany were ready to protecT the firft bold manwho would revolt avainlt the court of Rome, and fupport the political grievances withtheological arguments. The cunning, aftive, and very eloquent iEneas Sylvius, whoeffefted the concordats betwixt the Pope and the empire by his crafty manoeuvres, awak-ened ftill more the iealoufy of all the thinking patriots of Germany . Though he was
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