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RIESBECK ’S TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY 165
LETTER XLVI.
Leipfick.
I CANNOT quit Saxony without faying fomething to you of the reformation which
began here.
fhe origin of the reformation, as a queftion of learning, is difficult to determine.
Between the times of John Hufs and Luther, Paul of Tubingen, Brulfer, Bafil of Gro-
ningen, and feveral Englifh, openly profeffed the doétrines of the reformed. The Val-
denfes had {pread their opinions very confiderably long before the time of Hufs; and
between their time and the era of Hufs, Wickliff, John of Paris, Arnaud de Villeneuve,
William of St. Amour, Evrard, bifhop of Saltzburg, and many others taught the tenets
of Luther and Calvin. It is certain, that from the time of the Albigeois to the breaking
out of the reformation, there was no period in which fome remarkable man did not
openly maintain the principles of the Proteftant religion. Between the time of Peter
de Waldo, (who did moft towards the fpreading of the fect of the Albigeois, though
they do not take their name from him, as fome have thought,) and Berenger, who
came not a hundred years after him, we meet with Pierre de Bruis, Henry de Thou-
loufe, and Arnaud Hot, who, with many others, made the doétrines held by the Pro-
teftants of the prefent day; known all over France. The celebrated bifhop Honoré of
Autun, who wrote upon free will, and in the fpirit of the Proteftants of this day, called
the Pope the great bealt, and the Whore of Babylon, lived in 1115, and Berenger died
in 10913 fo that there is hardly a generation between them. ;
In the fame century with Berenger, Arnolph, bithop of Orleans, diftinguifhed him-
felf at the council of Rheims, by a fpeech much more violent than any thing which
Luther has written againft the power of the Pope. Ina word, the opinions of Pro-
teftants are to be met with in the earlieft ages of the church; and an attentive reader
of ecclefiaftical hiftory will foon fee, that they are connected with the opinions of the
firft fetaries, and that it was not the bare novelty of his opinions which made Luther
remarkable. !
Whoever is a little acquainted with the hiftory of the century before Luther, and can
form to himfelfa precife idea of the {tate of Saxony, previous to the breaking out of the
reformation, will eafily fee, that other things befides theology, contributed to this event,
and that Luther only gave the long waited for fignal of revolt.
Since the time of the Emperor Sigifmund, (who would have brought about the re-
volution himfelf, if his knowledge had correfponded with his thirft for reformation,
and who for want of that knowledge fuffered himfelf to be led by the nofe by fome
cardinals) Germany had been at work on a reformation. If a Catholic at this time
was to fay what was faid, not only in the fchools and in publications; but at the
council of Conftance before the whole nation, at the diet of the empire, and by par-
ticular princes in their tranfactions with each other, he would be put into a prifon
as a violent heretic. It is indeed wonderful, how the minds of the Catholic princes
were changed by the heat of difpute after that ftep was once taken, which they
themfelves had before endeavoured to produce. The well known hundred grievances
(which in the end grew to much more than a hundred) of the German nation plainly
fhewed, that moft of the courts of Germany were ready to protect the firft bold nian
who would revolt again{t the court of Rome, and fupport the political grievances with
theological arguments. The cunning, active, and very eloquent /Eneas Syivius, who
effected the concordate betwixt the Pope and the empire by his crafty manceuvres, awak-
ened ftill more the jealoufy of all the thinking patriots of Germany. Though he was
a fub-
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