wisely, who, having renounced the Bishop of Rome's religion, would not, upon the sudden, thrust the monks and nuns, with the other religious persons, out of their abbeys and monasteries, but only took order, that, as they died, they should die both for themselves and their successors, expressly forbidding any new to be chosen in their places, so that, by that means, their colleges might, by little and little, by the death of the fellows, be extinguished. Whereby it came to pass, that all the rest of the Cathusians, of their own accord, forsaking their cloisters, yet one of them all alone for a long time remained therein, quietly and without any disturbance, holding the right of his convent, being never enforced to change either his place, or habit, or old ceremonies, or religion before by him received. The like order was taken at Coire in the diet of the Grisons; wherein it was decreed, that the ministers of the reformed religion should be maintained of the profits and revenues of the church, the religious men, nevertheless, still remaining in their cloisters and convents, to be by their death suppressed, they being now prohibited to choose any new instead of them which died. By which means, they which professed the new religion, and they who professed the old, were both provided for." * The aim of the chapter from which I have extracted the foregoing passage, is to show, that "it is a most dangerous thing, at one and the same time, to change the form, laws, and customs of a commonwealth." The scope of the author's reasonings may be judged of from the concluding paragraph. "We ought then, in the government of a well ordered estate and commonweath, to imitate and follow the great God of Nature, who in all things proceedeth easily, and by little and little; who of a little seed causeth to grow * Book iv. Chap. iii.-The book from which this quotation is taken was published only twenty-three years after the murder of Servetus at Geneva; an event which leaves so deep a stain on the memory not only of Calvin, but on that of the milder and more charitable Melanchthon. The epistle of the latter to Bullinger, where he applauds the conduct of the judges who condemned to the flames this incorrigible heretic, affords the most decisive of all proofs, how remote the sentiments of the most enlightened Fathers of the Reformation were from those Christian and philosophical principles of toleration, to which their noble exertions have gradually, and now almost universally, led the way. a tree, for height and greatness, right admirable, and yet for all that insensibly; and still by means conjoining the extremities of nature, as by putting the spring between winter and summer, and autumn betwixt summer and winter, moderating the extremities of the terms and seasons, with the selfsame wisdom which it useth in all other things also, and that in such sort, as that no violent force or course therein appeareth." * Notwithstanding these wise and enlightened maxims, it must be owned on the other hand, that Bodin has indulged himself in various speculations, which would expose a writer of the present times to the imputation of insanity. One of the most extraordinary of these, is his elaborate argument to prove, that, in a well constituted state, the father should possess the right of life and death over his children;-a paradox which forms an unaccountable contrast to the general tone of humanity which characterizes his opinions. Of the extent of his credulity on the subject of witchcraft, and of the deep horror with which he regarded those who affected to be skeptical † Book iv. Chap. iii.-The substance of the above reflection has been compressed by Bacon into the following well known aphorisms. "Time is the greatest innovator; shall we then not imitate time? "What innovator imitates time, which innovates so silently as to mock the sense?" The resemblance between the two passages is still more striking in the Latin versions of their respective authors. "Deum igitur præpotentem naturæ parentem imitemur, qui omnia paulatim : namque semina perquam exigua in arbores excelsas excrescere jubet, idque tam occultè ut nemo sentiat." Bodinus. "Novator maximus tempus; quidni igitur tempus imitemur?" "Quis novator tempus imitatur, quod novationes ita insinuat, ut sensus fallant ? Bacon. The Treatise of Bodin De la République (by far the most important of his works) was first printed at Paris in 1576, and was reprinted seven times in the space of three years. It was translated into Latin by the author himself; with a view chiefly (as is said) to the accommodation of the scholars of England, among whom it was so highly esteemed, that lectures upon it were given in the University of Cambridge, as early as 1580. In 1579, Bodin visited London in the suite of the Duc d'Alençon; a circumstance which probably contributed not a little to recommend his writings, so very soon after their publication, to the attention of our countrymen. In 1606, the treatise of The Republic was done into English by Richard Knolles, who appears to have collated the French and Latin copies so carefully and judiciously, that his version is, in some respects, superior to either of the originals. It is from this version, accordingly, that I have transcribed the passages above quoted; trusting, that it will not be unacceptable to my readers, while looking back to the intellectual attainments of our forefathers, to have an opportunity, at the same time, of marking the progress which had been made in England, more than two centuries ago, in the arts of writing and of translation. For Dr. Johnson's opinion of Knolles's merits as an historian, and as an English writer, see the Rambler, No. 123. * about the reality of that crime, he has left a lasting memorial in a learned and curious volume entitled Démonomanie; while the eccentricity of his religious tenets was such, as to incline the candid mind of Grotius to suspect him of a secret leaning to the Jewish faith.† In contemplating the characters of the eminent persons who appeared about this era, nothing is more interesting and instructive than to remark the astonishing combination, in the same minds of the highest intellectual endowments, with the most deplorable aberrations of the understanding; and even, in numberless instances, with the most childish superstitions of the multitude. Of this apparent inconsistency, Bodinus does not furnish a solitary example. The same remark may be extended, in a greater or less degree, to most of the other celebrated names hitherto mentioned. Melanchthon, as appears from his letters, was an interpreter of dreams, and a caster of nativities; and Luther not only sanctioned, by his authority, the popular fables about the sexual and prolific intercourse of Satan with the human race, but seems to have seriously believed that he had himself frequently seen the arch enemy face to face, and held arguments with him on points of theology.§ Nor was the study of the severer. sciences, on all occasions, an effectual remedy against such illusions of the imagination. The sagacious Kepler was an astrologer and a visionary; and his friend Tycho Brahe, the Prince of Astronomers, kept an idiot in his service, to whose prophecies he listened as revelations from above. During the long night of Gothic barba * De la Démonomanie des Sorciers. Par J. Bodin Angevin, à Paris, 1580. This book, which exhibits so melancholy a contrast to the mental powers displayed in the treatise De la République, was dedicated by the author to his friend, the President de Thou; and it is somewhat amusing to find, that it exposed Bodin himself to the imputation of being a magician. For this we have the testimony of the illustrious historian just mentioned. (Thuanus, Lib. cxvii. 9.) Nor did it recommend the author to the good opinion of the Catholic church, having been formally condemned and prohibited by the Roman Inquisition. The reflection of the Jesuit Martin del Rio on this occasion is worth transcribing. "Adeo lubricum et periculosum de his disserere, nisi Deum semper, et catholicam fidem, ecclesiaeque Romana censuram tanquam cynosuram sequaris." Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex. Auctore Martino del Rio, Societatis Jesu Presbytero. Venet. 1640, p. 8. † Epist. ad Cordesium, (Quoted by Bayle.) Jortin's Life of Erasmus, p. 156. See Note E. See the Life of Tycho Brahe, by Gassendi. avowed partiality for the reformed faith (to which he fell a martyr in the massacre of Paris,) procured many proselytes to his opinions in all the Protestant countries of Europe. In England his logic had the honor, in an age of comparative light and refinement, to find an expounder and methodizer in the author of Paradise Lost; and in some of our northern universities, where it was very early introduced, it maintained its ground till it was supplanted by the logic of Locke. It has been justly said of Ramus, that, “although he had genius sufficient to shake the Aristotelian fabric, he was unable to substitute any thing more solid in its place" but it ought not be forgotten, that even this praise, scanty as it may now appear, involves a large tribute to his merits as a philosophical reformer. Before human reason was able to advance, it was necessary that it should first be released from the weight of its fetters.* It is observed, with great truth, by Condorcet, that, in the times of which we are now speaking, "the science of a logician. "Pulsâ tandem barbarie, Petrus Ramus politioris literaturæ vir, ausus est Aristotelem acrius ubique et liberius incessere, universamque Peripateticam philosophiam exagitare. Ejus dialectica exiguo tempore fuit apud plurimos summo in pretio, maxime eloquentiæ studiosos, idque odio scholasticorum quorum dictio et stylus ingratæ fuerant auribus Ciceronianis." Logica Artis Compendium, Auctore R. Sanderson, Episc. Lincoln, pp. 150, 151. Edit. Decima. Oxon. The first edition was printed in 1618. * Dr. Barrow, in one of his mathematical lectures, speaks of Ramus in terms far too contemptuous. "Homo, ne quid gravius dicam, argutulus et dicaculus.""Sane vix indignationi meæ tempero, quin illum accipiam pro suo merito, regeramque validius in ejus caput, quæ contra veteres jactat convicia." Had Barrow confined this censure to the weak and arrogant attacks made by Ramus upon Euclid (particularly upon Euclid's definition of Proportion,) it would not have been more than Ramus deserved; but it is evident he meant to extend it also to the more powerful attacks of the same reformer upon the logic of Aristotle. Of these there are many which may be read with profit, even in the present times. I select one passage as a specimen, recommending it strongly to the consideration of those logicians who have lately stood forward as advocates for Aristotle's abecedarian demonstrations of the syllogistic rules. "In Aristotelis arte, unius præcepti unicum exemplum est, ac sæpissime nullum: Sed unico et singulari exemplo non potest artifex effici; pluribus opus est et dissimilibus. Et quidem, ut Aristotelis exempla tantummodo non falsa sint, qualia tamen sunt? Omne best a: omne c est b: ergo omne c est a. Exemplum Aristotelis est puero à grammaticis et oratoribus venienti, et istam mutorum Mathematicorum linguam ignoranti, novum et durum: et in totis Analyticis istâ non Atticâ, non Ionicâ, non Doricâ, non Æolicâ, non communi, sed geometricâ linguâ usus est Aristoteles, odiosâ pueris, ignotâ populo, à communi sensu remotâ, à rhetoricæ usu et ab humanitatis usu alienissima." (P. Rami pro Philosophica Parisiensis Academia Disciplina Oratio, 1550.) If these strictures should be thought too loose and declamatory, the reader may consult the fourth chapter (De Conversionibus) of the seventh book of Ramus's Dialectics, where the same charge is urged, in my opinion, with irresistible force of argument. political economy did not exist. Princes estimated not the number of men, but of soldiers in the state;-finance was merely the art of plundering the people, without driving them to the desperation that might end in revolt ;—and governments paid no other attention to commerce, but that of loading it with taxes, of restricting it by privileges, or of disputing for its monopoly." The internal disorders then agitating the whole of Christendom, were still less favorable to the growth of this science, considered as a branch of speculative study. Religious controversies every where divided the opinions of the multitude;-involving those collateral discussions concerning the liberty of conscience, and the relative claims of sovereigns and subjects, which, by threatening to resolve society into its first elements, present to restless and aspiring spirits the most inviting of all fields for enterprise and ambition. Amidst the shock of such discussions, the calm inquiries which meditate in silence the slow and gradual melioration of the social order, were not likely to possess strong attractions, even to men of the most sanguine benevolence; and, accordingly, the political speculations of this period turn almost entirely on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of different forms of government; or on the still more alarming questions concerning the limits of allegiance and the right of resistance. The dialogue of our illustrious countryman Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, though occasionally disfigured by the keen and indignant temper of the writer, and by predilection (pardonable in a scholar warm from the schools of ancient Greece and Rome) for forms of policy unsuitable to the circumstances of Modern Europe, bears, nevertheless, in its general spirit, a closer resemblance to the political philosophy of the eighteenth century, than any composition which had previously appeared. The ethical paradoxes afterwards inculcated by Hobbes as the ground work of his slavish theory of government, are anticipated and refuted; and a powerful argument is urged against that doctrine of Utility which has attracted so much notice in our times. The political reflections, too, incidentally introduced by the same author in his History |