THE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION, IN GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND; AND IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS, IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, REVIEWING D'AUBIGNÉ, MENZEL, HALLAM, BISHOP SHORT, PRESCOTT, RANKÉ, Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, RT. REV. M. J. SPALDING, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for t of Kentucky. EMME COLLECTION Stereotyped by Hills, O'Driscoll & Co., 141 Main St., Cincinnati. PREFACE TO VOLUME I. FIFTEEN years ago I published a Review of D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland. The edition having been soon exhausted, I was often called on by friends to issue a second one; but circumstances beyond my control have prevented me from doing so until the present time. During this interval several editions of D'Aubigné's work have been published in England and the United States, and two new volumes have been added, continuing the history of the German and Swiss Reformation, and commencing that of England. No notice, however, has been taken by the author, so far as I have been able to discover, of the facts and reasoning contained in the Review, though the latter was republished in Ireland. romance. In preparing a second edition, I at first hesitated whether it would be worth while to pay any further attention to a writer, who is clearly so bitter a partisan, and so wholly unreliable as an historian. His pretended history is, in fact, little better than a He omits more than half the facts, and either perverts or draws on his imagination for the remainder. This may seem a strong accusation; but it is amply borne out by the authorities and specifications contained in the Review. Starting out apparently with the pre-determination to paint the German Reformers as saints, and the Reformation as the work of God, he makes every thing bend to his preconceived theory. iii |