History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, Vol. 6 (of 8)

VOL. VI. SCOTLAND, SWITZERLAND, GENEVA.

NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 530 BROADWAY 1877.

PREFACE.

The author of the History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century died at Geneva, 21 October, 1872, when only a few chapters remained to be written to complete his great work. Feeling, as he often said, that time was short for him now (he was not far from his eightieth year), and stimulated by the near prospect of the end towards which he had been incessantly straining for fifty years, he worked on with redoubled ardor. ‘I count the minutes,’ he used to say; and he allowed himself no rest. Unhappily the last minutes were refused him, and the work was not finished. But only a small portion is wanting; and the manuscripts of which the publication is continued in the present volume will bring the narration almost to its close.

Ten volumes have appeared. It was the author’s intention to comprise the remainder of his history in two additional volumes. He had sketched his programme on a sheet of paper as follows:--

‘WITH GOD’S HELP.

‘Order of subjects, saving diminution or enlargement, according to the extent of each.

‘Vol. XI. to the death of Luther.

‘Scotland down to 1546. ‘Denmark. ‘Sweden. ‘Bohemia and Moravia. ‘Poland. ‘Hungary. ‘Geneva, Switzerland, and Calvin. ‘Germany, to death of Luther, 1546.

‘Vol. XII. to the death of Calvin.

‘Netherlands, 1566. ‘Spain. ‘Italy. ‘Scotland down to 1560. ‘England, to the Articles of 1552. ‘Germany, 1556. ‘France, 1559. ‘Calvin and his work in Geneva and in Christendom to his death, 1564.

The numerous manuscripts left by M. MERLE D’AUBIGNÉ include all the articles set out in the programme as intended to form Vol. XI. (VI. of the second series), and three of the articles destined for Vol. XII., the first two and the fifth.

The work will undoubtedly present important gaps. Nevertheless, the great period, the period of origination, will have been described almost completely. But there is one chapter which it is very much to be regretted that he has not written. That is the last, relating to the work and the influence of Calvin in Christendom. The man who for fifty years had lived in close intercourse with Calvin, who had made his writings, his works, and his person the objects of his continual study, and had become impregnated with his spirit more, perhaps, than any one in our age; the man who was the first to hold in his hand, to read without intermission, and to analyze almost all the innumerable pieces that proceeded from the pen of the reformer, would have been able to trace for us with unrivalled authority the grand figure of his hero, and to describe the immense influence which he had on the sixteenth century, in distant regions as well as in his immediate circle. The absence of this concluding chapter, which the author had projected and which he long meditated but still delayed to write, remains an irreparable loss.

The editors (M. le pasteur ADOLPHE DUCHEMIN, son-in-law of the eminent historian, and M. E. BINDER, Professor of Exegesis at the Theological College of Geneva, colleague and friend of M. Merle d’Aubigné) have confined themselves to verifying the numerous quotations scattered through the text, to testing the accuracy of the references given in the notes, and to curtailing here and there developments which the author would assuredly have removed if he had edited the work himself. As the matters proposed to form Vol. XI. are sufficient to form two volumes and even to commence a third, it has been necessary to alter the arrangement indicated above.

The division of the narrative into chapters, and the titles given to the chapters, are for the most part the work of the editors.

Two other volumes are to follow the one now presented to the public.

GENEVA April, 1875.