Luther has been accused by the Catholic writers as having been fond of wine and of the amufements of the field. He, indeed, much shocked their prejudices by marrying a nun, by name Catharine Bore. His followers, however, tell us that he was a man of the ftricteft temperance, that he drank nothing but water, that he would occafionally fast for two or three days together, and then eat a herring and fome bread.

MELANCTHON.

NO fooner had the Reformers emancipated themselves from the tyranny of the Pope, than the pious and the amiable Melanthon faw the neceffity of fome kind of Church government.

"Alas," fays he, in one of his letters," the "Church must have certain perfons to conduct it, "to maintain order in it, to keep a watchful eye

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upon those who are called to the facred ministry, ❝and upon the doctrines of the profeffors of it, and "to exercise ecclefiaftical jurisdiction: so, if there "were no Bifhops, we must conftitute fome. "Alas," adds he," the Church is fallen back again

❝ into

"into its ancient tyranny. The leaders of the people, ignorant, and flattering those whom they

govern, care little about the fanctity of their "doctrine, and the purity of ecclefiaftical difci"pline; instead of performing good actions, they "aim only at power. I am refolved to break " away from them. I find myfelf amongst them," continues this excellent man, "like Daniel "amongst the lions."

Melancthon had fo little opinion of the certainty and utility of religious disputes, that when his mother, who was a Catholic, asked him in the most serious manner what the ought to believe, in fuch a conflict of opinions as at that time agitated the Christian World, he advifed her to continue to pray, and to believe as fhe was used to do, and not to fuffer her mind to be troubled concerning the controverted points of religion. Abbé de Choisy fays, that on a fimilar occafion he told this excellent woman, "The new religion is the most "plausible, the ancient religion has the most * certainty."

BEZA

made the following lines upon Luther :

Roma orbem domuit, Romam fibi Papa fubegit
Viribus illa fuis, fraudibus ifta fuis.
Quanto ifto major Lutherus, major & illâ,
Iflum illamque uno qui domuit calamo.

I nunc Alcidem memorato Græcia mendax :
Lutheri ad calamum ferrea elava nibil.

Rome won the world, the Pope o'er Rome prevail'd,
And one by force, and one by fraud prevail'd.
Greater than each was Luther's prowess fhewn,
Who conquer'd both by one poor pen alone.
Come now, then, Greece, and tell thy wonted lies,
Exalt thy fam'd Alcides to the skies;
Let his heroic deeds thy hiftory fill,

Mere corporal strength muft yield to mental skill,
The Hero's club to the Reformer's quill.

Beza diftinguished himfelf fo very much as an orator in favour of the Reformed religion, at the celebrated conference of Poiffy in 1561, at which were present Catharine of Medicis, Charles the Ninth, and the King of Navarre, that the Cardinal of Lorraine told him, when he had finished his harangue, how happy he was to have heard him fpeak; and that he hoped that the Conference

Conference which had been then called, would find no difficulty in coming to such an accommodation as might fettle all the difputes between the Catholics and the Proteftants. The Conference, however, ended as many of the fame kind had done before it; the different parties went away more diffatisfied with each other, if poffible, than they were before it.

Beza, in the latter part of his life, was very much harraffed by a continual wakefulness in the night. This he attempted to alleviate by turning into Latin verse (in which he had a great facility) fome paffages of Scripture, and fome fentiments of piety. He had thefe expreffions moft conftantly in his mouth, from St. Bernard:

Domine tege quod fuit, quod erit rege.

Domine quod cepifti perfice, ne in portu naufragium accidet.

JOHN CALVIN.

ACCORDING to Charpentier his real name was CAUVIN. The fame author fays, that this celebrated Reformer was subject to eleven different difcafes. This wretched ftate of body moft probably

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bably rendered him fo exceffively peevish and illhumoured, that fome of the people of Geneva, faid of him, that they had rather go to Hell with Beza, than to Heaven with Calvin. His peevifhnefs, no lefs than his virulence, feems to have infected fome of his modern followers. In one of his writings against Luther, who had called him a declaimer, Calvin, to prove how completely well he understood reafon and argumentation, bursts out into the following rhapfody: "Your "whole school is nothing but a ftinking ftye of "pigs. Dog, do you understand me? Do you "understand me, madman? Do you understand me, you great beast ?"

M. Charpentier fays, that Cardinal Richelieu was very anxious to find out fome perfon who had been perfonally acquainted with Calvin; and that at laft he met with an old Clergyman, a Canon of a French Cathedral, who told him, upon his oath, that he was acquainted with him at Paris, and that he remembered meeting him one day, in a by-lane of that city, disguised as a labourer, with a hough in his hand; that Calvin told him he had that inftant changed cloaths with a countryman for a fum of money; and that he was making what hafte he could to the frontiers, to escape the pursuit of the Lieutenant-Criminal, who was in fearch of him for fome particular religious opinion which he had delivered in

the