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7- OLAUS PETRI AND HIS WORK. 217
they had at least two children, Elisabeth and Reginald.
81
His great outburst of literary activity in the two years after
his marriage may also be taken as a sign that his life at
this period was one of comfort, repose and hopefulness.
Olaus principles as a reformer have been well ex
pounded by ex-provost Berggren of Upsala. I will quote
some sentences from the closing pages of this valuable
essay (pp. 76-7):
"It is no great art," says Olaus, "to
punish or to break
down, for a Turk or a heathen can do that ;
but it is an art
to knock down what is wrong, and with reason and under
standing to set up again that which is right and true." Olaus
himself both broke down and built up, and he has proved that
he understands how both one and the other ought to be done.
He has broken down what needed to be broken, and built up
what needed to be built, and his greatness lies not least in the
latter. The most striking proof of this is in the New Testa
ment in Swedish of 1526, A Hand-book in Swedish, The
Swedish Mass, his postils, his catechism and his hymn-book.
We cannot reflect without wonder on what he had so effected in
a very short time, and under circumstances which were not the
most favourable. Part of what he thus "set
up"
remains
even now, after more than three and a half centuries, for the
edification of the present generation. It is not pre-eminently
through depth of thought, through wealth of great and
original ideas that he distinguishes himself, but it is through the
fresh, healthy, purpose-like element in what he proclaims ;
it is
by virtue of his skill in producing just what the hour requires
that he has his strength. It is a marked feature of his char
acter that he only wills to build up through instruction, that he
only wishes to work upon the feelings through the understand
ing. His reforming activity was not exhibited merely in com
bating one or more doctrines contrary to the Scripture, in
removing the most injurious accretions, or false developments
from the organism of the Church, in merely impressing life
with the stamp of an external Churchmanship, in calling forth
occasional pious thoughts and dispositions, but he aimed above
51
Biogr. Lexicon, Vol. xi., p. 178. Elisabeth married a cer
tain Ericus Petri in Stockholm, and Reginald took his degree as
Magister Philosophise in Germany. The fullest account of the
two brothers appear to be by J. G. Hallman : The tvenne
Broder Oluff P. Phase och Laur. P. til lefverne och vandel
beskrivne, Stockholm, 1726. Laurentius does not seem to have
taken the name Phase, which Olaus used.
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