The Scottish Reformation Part 15

CHAPTER XI.

ALESIUS.

We owe it to the Rev. Christopher Anderson, the author of the 'Annals of the English Bible,' that attention has been once more turned to the deeply interesting story of Alexander Alane, or Alesius. Princ.i.p.al Lorimer, in his 'Scottish Reformation,' has thrown further light on him.

And Dr Merle D'Aubigne, who appears to have minutely examined most of his tracts and commentaries, has wrought into his graphic but imaginative narrative much of the information which they have been the chief means of handing down to us. It was after his expatriation that he received from Melanchthon the name of Alesius, or the wanderer.

[Sidenote: His miraculous Escape.]

This highly distinguished but long forgotten _alumnus_ of St Andrews University was born in Edinburgh on the 23rd of April 1500, of honest parents, and received the first rudiments of his education in his native city. It was probably while he was still there that he had vouchsafed on his behalf those wonderful interpositions of Providence, which remained through life engraven on his heart, and which he thus relates in his preface to his Commentary on the Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy, published at Leipzig in 1551. "Certe ab infantia [Diabolus]

me saepe incautum opprimere voluit, et perdere non tam insidiis et crudelitate hostium, quam praecipitio in ignem et aquam. Verum ille, qui servavit me inter omnia pericula et infantem de gradibus patris mei cadentem in acervum lapidum advectorum ad extruendum supremum tabulatum in aedibus, et reptantem manibus in cac.u.mine altissimi montis, ex cujus declivi vel praerupto, divinitus in alterum latus in quo facilis erat descensus, subito perveni."[283] With even more than his usual licence, Dr D'Aubigne thus recounts this adventure: He "was fond of going with other boys of his own age to the heights which environ Edinburgh. The great rock on the summit of which the castle stands, the beautiful Calton Hill, and the picturesque hill called Arthur's Seat, in turn attracted them. One day, it was in 1512, Alexander and his friends, having betaken themselves to the last-named hill, amused themselves by rolling over and over down a slope which terminated in a precipice.

Suddenly the lad found himself on the brink; terror deprived him of his senses; some hand grasped him and placed him in safety, but he never knew by whom or by what means he had been rescued. The priests gave the credit of this escape to the paper with which they had provided him, but Alexander himself attributed it to G.o.d and his father's prayers."[284]

[Sidenote: Discussions with Patrick Hamilton.]

Alesius, or Alane as he was still called, being of good abilities, was early sent to the university, and seems to have been one of the first set of students who entered St Leonard's College (the college founded by Prior John Hepburn, with the consent of Archbishop Alexander Stuart) after its opening in 1512. His studies appear to have been prosecuted there in the usual way, and in 1515 he became a determinant, or took the degree of B.A.;[285] and, probably after acting for a few years as a regent in the college, he was drafted as a novice into the priory, and ultimately became one of its canons. When John Major came to St Andrews in 1523 as princ.i.p.al of the Paedagogium, he, like Hamilton and some others who ultimately shared the same opinions, studied theology under him, and made great progress, especially in the study of the schoolmen and the fathers of the Christian church. He was, like most of the young scholastics of his time, fond of disputation; and if he listened to those lectures on the gospels which Major gave to the press some years after, he probably imbibed from his teacher that combative att.i.tude towards the new opinions which at this period of his life he showed.

D'Aubigne says: "His keenest desire was to break a lance with Luther....

As he could not measure himself personally with the man whom he named _arch-heretic_, Alesius had refuted his doctrine in a public discussion held at the university. The theologians of St Andrews had covered him with applause.[286] ... Alesius, alive to these praises and a sincere catholic, thought that it would be an easy task for him to convince young Hamilton of his errors.... Armed cap-a-pie, crammed with scholastic learning, and with all the formulae 'quo modo sit, quo modo nonsit,'" he had various discussions with him. "Hamilton had before him nothing but the Gospel, and he replied to all the reasonings of his antagonist with the clear, living, and profound word of the Scriptures.... Alesius, struck and embarra.s.sed, was silenced, and felt as if 'the morning star were rising in his heart. It was not merely his understanding that was convinced, the breath of a new life penetrated his soul."[287] He continued from time to time to visit the reformer while he lived, and to cherish his memory after he had been so cruelly put to death.

When the opinions and martyrdom of Hamilton were the subject of conversation among the canons, several of the younger of whom were attached to him, Alesius refused to condemn him. He was not yet by any means, as Dr Lorimer would have it, a Lutheran; he was not yet prepared to separate himself from the old church; but he saw and mourned over her corruptions, and longed, and in a quiet way laboured, for the removal of them, and also yearned for the revival of a more earnest Christian spirit, and more correct moral conduct among those over whom his influence extended. From that day no one could induce him to express approval of the proceedings which had been taken against Hamilton, or to p.r.o.nounce an unfavourable judgment on the articles for which he had been condemned to death.

[Sidenote: Patrick Hepburn.]

This silence brought him under the suspicion of his more bigoted a.s.sociates, and gave special offence to his superior, Prior Patrick Hepburn (the nephew of Prior John, who had founded St Leonard's College), a violent, coa.r.s.e, immoral young n.o.ble, emulous of the debaucheries and vices, as well as of the cultured _hauteur_, of the young French ecclesiastics of rank among whom his youth had been pa.s.sed.

Knox has given a graphic if rather coa.r.s.e account of the revelries of this young man and his gay a.s.sociates, more in keeping with what we should have expected from the sons of Tarquin in heathen Rome than from the _elite_ of the young ecclesiastics of a primatial Christian city, and under the eye of an aged archbishop.[288] The representation of Alesius is only the more credible because it is the more restrained, and the one representation corroborates the other, and proves to what a low ebb morality had sunk among the ministers of the old church in Scotland before it was swept away. Not only did this bold bad man set at nought the laws of G.o.d and the canons of his church, and make a boast of doing so among his boon companions, but even when the archbishop sought to separate him from his unlawful connection, the prior collected his armed retainers, and would have fought with him had not the Earl of Rothes and the Abbot of Arbroath, the primate's hopeful nephew, come between the two bands and patched up a sort of truce between their leaders.

The Christian lives and healthful influence of the younger canons could not but be felt to be a standing rebuke by their superior, and doubtless were one main cause why he bore them so deep a grudge and gave way to such savage outbursts of temper in his intercourse with them. He is said to have denounced them, and especially Alesius, to the aged primate, and probably with the view of entrapping him into some unguarded expression of approval of the new opinions, he got him appointed to preach the sermon at the opening of a synod of bishops and priests which was held at St Andrews probably in the Lent of the year 1529. Alesius, while carefully avoiding everything which might give needless offence to his hearers, thought, to use his own words, that in such presence, and speaking in the Latin language, he would not discharge his duty unless he earnestly exhorted those set in authority over the churches to the practice of piety, the observance of good morals, the study of Christian doctrine, and the pious teaching and governing of their churches. He confesses that he earnestly inveighed against immoral priests, but he adds that as he had said nothing in a disloyal spirit, or more harshly than the facts warranted, and had attacked no one by name, the sermon gave no offence to good men. But his irate and domineering prior imagined that the sermon was specially aimed at him, and was intended to hold him up to the ridicule of the a.s.sembled prelates and clergy. Having already defied the archbishop, Hepburn could not brook such a liberty on the part of one of his own subordinates. An opportunity soon occurred to him of paying back with interest the insult which he imagined had been done to him.

[Sidenote: a.s.saulted and Imprisoned.]

It so happened that the whole college of canons resolved, for many and grave reasons, to lodge a complaint with the king respecting the harshness and cruelty of their superior. When this came to Hepburn's ears, he rushed with a band of armed attendants into the sacred chapter-house where the canons were a.s.sembled, and when admonished by Alesius, who probably presided in the meeting, not in the heat of pa.s.sion to be guilty of any foolish prank, he ordered the speaker to be seized by his armed attendants, and drawing his sword would have run it through him had not two of the canons forcibly dragged him back and turned aside his weapon. The affrighted and timid canon cast himself at his superior's feet and entreated him to spare his life, but in return only received a kick in the breast which nearly proved fatal to him.

When he had partially recovered from this, and was being hurried off to prison, another dastardly attack was made on him, but that was parried by the prior's own retainers, who saw that he was beside himself with rage and fury. After this all the other canons were seized and imprisoned, but on the remonstrance of certain n.o.ble friends they were ordered to be released by the king, who was then in St Andrews and was informed of what had taken place.

[Sidenote: His Prison changed.]

The king's order was speedily carried out in regard to all save Alesius; but he, notwithstanding all remonstrances of friends, was not only detained in custody, but was even thrust into a more filthy dungeon, called by the sufferer, in one of his treatises, _teterrimo specu subtus terram inter bufones et serpentes_,[289] and in another a _latrina_,[290] or sink, to which I know nothing at all corresponding in St Andrews save the underground chamber near the college hall,[291] and the roughly-hewn cavern still subsisting in the rock to the north of the house at the end of Castle Street, going down by the southern entrance by thirty or more somewhat irregular steps through the rock, and terminating in a small chamber of rounded or oval form, having an opening in its roof originally little more than a foot in diameter, but now considerably enlarged, and to which on the other side a covered pa.s.sage from the castle leads down. They might well abandon hope who entered there, and possibly one at least of its uses was for literally immuring those who were never again to have further intercourse with their fellow-men. In this or some other equally horrible place the poor canon was confined for eighteen or twenty days; and when, after repeated remonstrances on the part of the king and the magistrates of the city, the prior was obliged to produce his victim, he enjoined him strictly on no account to utter one word about the shameful maltreatment to which he had been subjected. Alesius, however, had suffered too horribly in this place to let slip the opportunity so unexpectedly presented to him of telling the worst to the friendly magistrates, and entreating them to save him from all further risk of a repet.i.tion of this barbarous cruelty. But the magistrates, though friendly, were easily persuaded that all was now to go right. As soon, however, as they were got out of the way under this persuasion, the prior upbraided the poor canon for having divulged the whole disgusting truth which he had enjoined him to conceal, and ordered him to be again placed in confinement, in which he was left to languish for nearly a year. But this confinement was in a less objectionable place, and apparently within the precincts of the priory; and when the prior was absent the canons occasionally had the prisoner brought out from his ward, and even permitted him, as in former times, to take a leading part in the services at the altar. On one occasion the prior, coming back unexpectedly, and seeing what occurred in his absence, ordered Alesius at once into confinement, threatening on the morrow to have him off to the old filthy place where his life had been so nearly sacrificed before, and where he was to be entrusted to the care of a more remorseless jailer.

[Sidenote: He escapes by Night.]

As soon as their superior left them for the night the canons, satisfied that all hope of preserving the life of their comrade in St Andrews was at an end, and that if he did not seek safety by instant flight horrible torments and certain death awaited him, gathered round him and urged him to escape. On his expressing a wish to consult with other friends before taking a step so serious, they pressed him only the more urgently to flee and leave the country at once, as he would certainly be pursued, and, if overtaken, brought back for condign punishment. The sequel I give in his own unvarnished statement, which is to me more touching from its very simplicity than the highly embellished _rechauffees_ of D'Aubigne: "Etsi maximo dolore afficiebar c.u.m cogitarem mihi e patria, qua nihil dulcius est bene inst.i.tutis naturis, discedendum esse, tamen, et necessitati, et tot bonorum virorum consiliis parendum duxi."[292]

And then follows a parting scene only less affecting than that of St Paul from the disciples on the seash.o.r.e at Tyre, and proving that even yet all good was not extinguished from the hearts of those under the rule of this vicious prior, and encouraging the hope, which was afterwards fully realised, that the best of them would ultimately find a more congenial home in a new and purified church. Only the apostle, though in a heathen land, could kneel down in open day on the seash.o.r.e to pray with his friends, and they without challenge could accompany him to the ship which waited to receive him; while these men, though living in a professedly Christian land, had secretly to bring out their friend from the place of confinement and comfort him, and then send him away alone into the thick darkness to pursue his weary journey under cover of night to that broad firth which bounds Fifeshire on the north, if haply he might find on its sh.o.r.es some boat to ferry him across, or on its bosom some friendly craft to convey him without loss of time beyond the reach of his implacable persecutor. "Clam igitur educ.u.n.t me domo, instruunt et viatico. Ita c.u.m lachrymantes inter nos vale dixissemus, et illi suavissima commemoratione ill.u.s.trium virorum et sanctorum qui similiter e patria tyrannidi cesserunt, maesticiam meam non nihil leva.s.sent, media jam nocte in densissimis tenebris solus iter ingredior."[293] Sadly he plodded on his way through the darkness, oppressed with forebodings, for he knew of no hospitable retreat in other lands; he had neither friend nor acquaintance among foreigners; he could speak no language but his native tongue and Latin; and he had some reason to fear that he might be cla.s.sed with those vagabonds who had been driven out from various Continental states because of their fanatical opinions, and were justly suspected even by Protestants in Germany. But in the mult.i.tude of distracting thoughts within him he encouraged himself in the Lord his G.o.d and in Christ his Saviour. Ere morning had well dawned his journey was completed, and he got safely on shipboard, where, according to his own account, _quidam h.o.m.o germa.n.u.s_[294]--that is, according to some, a certain man a German; according to others, a certain man a kinsman--received him very affectionately, and afterwards nursed him with great kindness during the sea-sickness from which he suffered throughout the stormy voyage.

[Sidenote: His Dundee Friends.]

On the day following his escape, when the vessel which sheltered him had already sailed, there came hors.e.m.e.n to the sh.o.r.e, sent by the prior from St Andrews, to make search for the fugitive. When they returned without success to their master, he is reported to have summoned before him a certain citizen of Dundee, whom he suspected to have aided in providing a ship for the canon. This merchant citizen[295] took with him another true-hearted favourer of the Reformation, James Scrymgeour, provost of the town; and on the former denying that he had given the a.s.sistance which he was accused of doing to Alesius, and which probably he could deny with a good conscience, his sons in St Andrews and Dundee having been too prudent to involve him in their little plot, the provost spoke out boldly to the haughty prior, and said: Why make a work about this?

I, myself, if I had known that Alexander was preparing to go away, would with the greatest pleasure have furnished him both with a ship and with provisions for his voyage, that he might be put in safety beyond the reach of your cruelty. a.s.suredly, had he been my brother I would long ago have rescued him from those perils and miseries in which you have involved him.

Thus Alexander Alesius was driven from his much-loved native land, destined never to return to it more, or again to see the friends and relations to whom he was so warmly attached. "Could any one then have whispered in the ear of the disconsolate exile that he was on the road to far more extensive usefulness" and freedom; that he would gain many friends in foreign lands, and would not only be spared to labour there for more than thirty years, but would also be honoured to be the first to plead by his writings for the free circulation of the Scriptures in his native Scotland, and one of the first to help on Cranmer in England, and Hermann von Wied, the reforming Archbishop of Cologne, in Germany; that he would be privileged to attend, as one of the Protestant representatives, many of the most important colloquies of the leaders of the old and the new church on the Continent, to be the intimate friend of Luther and Melanchthon, to labour as a professor of theology in two German universities, and to live and die in the greatest honour and respect among those with whom he laboured,--"how incredible would it all have seemed to him!" Yet it was thus G.o.d meant it, and thus He brought it to pa.s.s; and if there was one among the Scottish exiles of those times who was less embittered towards his persecutors than another, or more ready to yield to them in things indifferent or of minor importance, if only he could gain their hearts for Christ and His cause in matters of highest moment, it was he.

[Sidenote: Driven by the Tempest to Malmo.]

[Sidenote: Hermann von Wied's Apologue.]

The ship in which Alesius sailed was bound for France, probably for Dieppe or Rouen, with which towns the trade of Scotland was carried on, and where many Scottish merchants resided or had factors; but she had not gone far on her way from port when a violent westerly gale carried her across the German Ocean, drove her into the Sound, and made it necessary to get her into the harbour at Malmo in Scania, in order to refit her. There, as well as at the French ports named, there was a community of Scottish merchants, probably by this time enjoying the ministrations of John Gaw or Gall, another St Andrews _alumnus_, early won over to the cause of the Reformation. The community of Malmo, a year or two before, had given its adhesion to the same cause, and its leading ministers, as well as the Scottish chaplain, were, therefore, prepared to welcome and treat with all kindness their exiled co-religionist, as he himself, twenty-five years after, feelingly narrates.[296] After being refitted at Malmo, the vessel proceeded on her voyage to France, where Alesius left, and plodding his way along the northern coast, visited Belgium, where he would meet with friendly Scots at Bruges, and probably also at Antwerp. He then pa.s.sed up the Rhine to Cologne, where, as already suggested, he was favourably received by the Archbishop, Hermann von Wied, who afterwards became a friend of the Reformation, though at this time, like Alesius himself, not yet decided altogether to break with the old church. It is no doubt to this visit he refers in the following pa.s.sage of the treatise from which I have repeatedly quoted: "When lately at Cologne I conversed familiarly with a certain man of the highest learning and authority, and perceived how deeply he was grieved by the disturbed state of the church in Germany. I began to exhort him to interpose his judgment in certain matters of dispute, because I hoped that milder views might gain the ascendancy if princes and people only had such monitors excelling in learning and authority. When I had argued long in support of my opinion, heaving a sigh, but making no formal reply to my arguments, he bade me listen to an apologue: When the lion, worn out with old age, could no longer obtain his prey by hunting, he fell on the device of inviting the beasts to visit him in his den. There came to him a bear, a wolf, and a fox.

The bear entered first, and being affably received by the lion, and conducted round the den, he was asked how he was pleased with the amenity of the place. Being no courtier, the bear answered bluntly that he could never stay in such a filthy hole, among heaps of decaying carca.s.ses. The lion, enraged, chid the bear for finding fault with the amenity of the royal den, and tearing him up, cast away his carca.s.s among the others. The wolf, who had been standing by, seeing in what danger he was, thought by artifice to soothe the haughty mind of the lion. He accordingly approached, was led round the den, and was asked whether the smell of the heap of carca.s.ses was unpleasant to him. The wolf replied, in a carefully considered speech, that he had never seen anything more pleasant. This artifice, however, was of no avail to the wolf. The lion meted out the same treatment to him as to the bear, tearing him up for his impudent flattery. The fox, who had witnessed all this, and how both the simplicity of the bear and the flattery of the wolf had given equal offence to the lion, was in great perplexity what to answer when it came to his turn. He went forward, however, and being interrogated as the others had been whether the smell of the den was disagreeable, he replied modestly that he could not express any opinion on the point, as he was labouring under a cold in the head." Alesius waited to hear from his host the moral or application of the apologue, but this was not given by him. He preferred to leave it to his own good sense, merely counselling him to be cautious of engaging in such discussions for the present. Ultimately, however, both came to see that there is a time to speak as well as a time to keep silence; and it is interesting to note that to the last both observed similar moderation in their statements of doctrine, both evinced the same desire, by conciliation to gain opponents, rather than to provoke them, notwithstanding all the hard usage they both met with from their secular and ecclesiastical superiors.

[Sidenote: Befriended by Melanchthon.]

Soon after this Alesius appears to have pa.s.sed on from Cologne to Wittenberg, and there for a time to have resumed the study of theology, as well as of Greek and Hebrew, under Melanchthon and the other gifted teachers in that university. Luther he does not seem to have met for a time, or to have been acquainted with his writings when he published his _first_[297] treatises. Melanchthon cherished a special affection for Alesius and the Scottish exiles who soon after followed him to Wittenberg, believing that they were the descendants of those Scoti who had sent the early Christian missionaries to Germany, and that it became him to repay to them the great kindness the heathen Germans had received from their forefathers in the distant past.[298]

It was while he was thus occupied that Alesius heard of the cruel edict of the Scottish bishops, and it hardly admits of doubt that he submitted to Melanchthon, and got corrected by him, his little treatise against their decree, forbidding the New Testament Scriptures to be used by the laity in the vernacular. It is a very pithy and forcible bit of pleading for the right of the Christian laity to possess and study the Scriptures in their own tongue. This remarkable treatise struck the true key-note in the contest it ushered in, and helped it on to victory--a victory which was substantially to be gained ere Knox had taken his place among the combatants on the side of the Reformation at all.[299]

To this epistle Cochlaeus replied without loss of time,[300] and ere the year was out Alesius rejoined in that Responsio ad Cochlei calumnias,[301] in which he has given so touching an account of his own maltreatment, so interesting a statement of his own opinions in matters of faith and church polity, and so trenchant a reply to the sophistries and slanders of his opponent.[302]

[Sidenote: Cochlaeus.]

This able and, for the age, singularly temperate reply made a deep impression in England as well as in Scotland, and doubtless prepared the way for that offer of employment there which two years subsequently was made him by Cranmer, whom, in his moderation and earnest desire to avoid a total rupture between the old church and the new life, he then so much resembled. But whatever its merits, the disputatious Cochlaeus--"der gewaffnete mann," as Luther sneeringly terms him--was determined that his opponent should not have the last word in the dispute, and accordingly in August 1534 he published at Leipsic his Apologia pro Scotiae Regno adversus personatum Alexandrum Alesium Scotum.[303] In this treatise he repeats the a.s.sertion in his previous one that Melanchthon, not Alesius, was the author of these epistles. He charges Alesius with putting lies into the mouth of a foreigner to the discredit of his native country, and tells him that if he had the power he would gladly send him away to Scotland with his hands tied behind his back to be ignominiously punished as a traitor and a public slanderer. His opponent's minute and temperate narrative of facts appears to have made no impression on him. He is content magisterially to p.r.o.nounce it absurd and incredible, and inconsistent with itself as well as with probability. He appears in his ire to forget that the king of Scots and his subjects were better able to judge of its truthfulness than he, a foreigner, could be; and that after saying all he could for the bishops and superior clergy in his former reply, he had been obliged to conclude with the damaging admission that possibly there were "bishops and prelates who, neither in sanct.i.ty of life nor in acquaintance with sacred learning, responded to or satisfied their dignity and office."

[Sidenote: Effect of his Treatises.]

The epistles of Cochlaeus, if abusive and less cogent in reasoning, as well as less relieved by any sparkle of wit or racy anecdote than those of Alesius, are certainly written in a more easy and flowing Latin style, and, in that respect at least, the Scottish prelates had no reason to be ashamed of the champion who had volunteered his services in their cause. Nor were they wanting in those more substantial expressions of their satisfaction which Cochlaeus, like most of the controversialists of his time, evidently coveted. The Archbishops of St Andrews and Glasgow testified their grat.i.tude for his services by sending him liberal presents. The king wrote him a letter, a contemporary transcript of which is still extant, and also, as is stated by Cochlaeus himself in a letter to a Polish archbishop, sent him some more material tokens of his regard.[304] And even the messenger who had brought over the copies of his first epistle received, as it now appears, a present of fifty pounds Scots.[305] Alesius, though in quite another way, did not lack his reward, and it came in the way which he valued most--the treatises he had written, to a certain extent at least, got into circulation both in Scotland and in England. They cheered the hearts of the faithful under all the terrible trials to which they were subjected in the later years of James's reign, when he seems to have abandoned his former kindliness, and surrendered himself in a great measure to the priests and to vicious indulgences. They carried conviction to the minds of many, and gradually ripened opinion to demand the right to do publicly what many had learned to do secretly--to study the Word of G.o.d, and especially the New Testament, in their native tongue. This right was authorised by an Act of the Scottish Parliament pa.s.sed in 1543,[306] when Cardinal Betoun was in disgrace, and the Archbishop of Glasgow was left alone to protest against it. This Act was the first real victory of the reformed party in Scotland, and it was mainly due to the able and temperate pleading of Alesius that this great boon, or indeed I may say this indefeasible right of Christian laymen, was granted. The same subject had been reverted to by him in his more elaborate treatise, De authoritate Verbi Dei, which was published in 1542 in Latin, and some time after was translated into English.[307]

[Sidenote: Erasmus intervenes.]

One other episode in this controversy remains still to be adverted to.

This is the intervention of the great humanist, Erasmus,--an incident in his history on which his biographers with one consent have observed a judicious silence. Nevertheless, the fact is as undoubted as melancholy that he--who had done so much to promote the freer circulation and profounder study of the Greek original of the New Testament, and had even ventured, under the patronage of Pope Leo X., to bring out a Latin version of the New Testament more true to the original than the Vulgate version, that those who knew only Latin might understand more fully the meaning of the original--in his old age, when irritated by the course of events, and by his controversies with Luther, consented to recommend this scurrilous pamphleteer to his friends in Scotland. His own letter is not now extant, or, if extant, is not at present accessible; but the answer sent to him by the Scottish king has been preserved, like his letter to Cochlaeus, among the MSS. in the British Museum. It is sufficient to prove the fact that Erasmus did intervene, and commend to his Scottish friends a writer who represents Luther's translation of the New Testament, which more than any other book has made Germany what it is, as the "pabulum mortis, fomes peccati, velamen malitiae, praetextus falsae libertatis, in.o.bedientiae praesidium, disciplinae corruptio, morum depravatio, concordiae dissipatio ... vitiorum scaturigo ...

rebellionis incendium ... charitatis peremptio ... veritatis perduellio."

[Sidenote: At Cambridge and London.]

In 1535 Alesius, having received encouragement from the agents of the English king then negotiating an alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany, came over to England with a letter of recommendation from Melanchthon.[308] He was favourably received by Archbishop Cranmer, by Crumwell the Vicar-General, and by the king himself, who appointed him king's scholar, and instructed Crumwell, as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, to give him a place as a reader in divinity there. He accordingly went into residence in Queen's College, the same college which shortly before had been the home of Erasmus while lecturing in the university on Greek, and towards the end of the year he began a course of lectures on the Hebrew Psalter. He is supposed to have been the first who delivered lectures in Cambridge on the Hebrew Scriptures, but he was not suffered to do it long in peace. It could not be concealed that he was a favourer of the new opinions and a friend of Melanchthon, and that he had, in fact, been recommended by him to the king and the chancellor of the university. By the time he had entered on the exposition of Psalm viii. he was challenged by one of the champions of the old learning to a public disputation, and courageously accepted the challenge; but when the day appointed for the discussion arrived, his opponent did not venture to meet him in open fight. He preferred to plot against him in secret, and to foment tumult among the scholars, till Alesius, finding that his life was in danger, and that he could not count on the protection of the university authorities, deemed it his duty to leave Cambridge and return to London.[309]

[Sidenote: Returns to the Continent.]

For the next three years he remained there, supporting himself chiefly by the practice of medicine, which he studied under a London physician of note. He occasionally, however, gave a.s.sistance to his reforming friends in the varying fortunes of these unquiet times. He did so notably in a convocation or a meeting of the superior clergy in 1536 or 1537,[310] being put forward by Cranmer and Crumwell as the chief spokesman on the reforming side, the opinions of which he defended with considerable force and ability, so far as the notes of the debates preserved by Foxe in his 'Acts and Monuments' enable us to judge.[311]

His appearance on this occasion brought him into sharp collision with Stokesley, Bishop of London. On the other hand, it secured for him the warm friendship of Cranmer and Latimer, towards both of whom he continued to the last to cherish a deep affection, and of whose martyrdom he spoke with so much grief when he published his Commentary on the First Book of Psalms. While in England, as Thomasius tells us, he married an English lady, by name Catherine de Mayn; and when Henry VIII.

once more veered round to his former moorings, and pa.s.sed the b.l.o.o.d.y statute of the six articles, insisting _inter alia_ on the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the celibacy of the clergy, Alesius, like several other married priests, had to consult his safety and that of his family by a hurried retreat to the Continent.[312]

Among those who had to leave England about the same time were John M'Alpine[313] and John Fyffe--or, as they were henceforth to be surnamed by Melanchthon, Joannes Macchabaeus and Joannes Fidelis--both, like Alesius himself, Scotsmen, the former having been prior of the Dominican monastery at Perth, and the latter an _alumnus_ and teacher in St Leonard's College. They had, along with several other known favourers of the Reformation, been obliged to leave Scotland at an earlier period, and after finding a temporary shelter in England, apparently at Salisbury, under the protection of Bishop Shaxton, who was then a favourer of the reformed opinions, were, like Alesius himself, to find their ultimate home and special work on the Continent--the one in the University of Copenhagen, the other in the University of Frankfort on the Oder. They seem to have gone first to Wittenberg, and while the others for a time resumed their studies there, Alesius almost immediately on his return was selected by Melanchthon to accompany him to the colloquy at Worms, and then to that at Regensburg, which were attended not only by the Lutheran and the Catholic theologians, but also by Bucer, Calvin, and other reforming divines of Stra.s.sburg. So it came about that Alesius, who had suffered exile in the cause of the Reformation in Scotland, and still had striven to promote it, was probably the first of our countrymen to be brought into contact with Calvin, who was ultimately to exercise so marked an influence on the form and mode of that Reformation, and who too was then an exile both from his native land and from the scene of his earlier labours. To the last Alesius seems to have been the one of his pupils to whom the gentle and timid Melanchthon most closely clung, and it was by his recommendation that in the very year of his return to the Continent he was promoted to be Professor of Divinity in the University of Frankfort on the Oder. And it is something of which a Scotchman and a St Andrean may be proud, that the university of that little princ.i.p.ality of Brandenburg, which has since expanded into the great kingdom of Prussia, was indebted for two of its first Protestant professors of divinity to Scotland and to St Andrews.

[Sidenote: Leaves Frankfort for Leipsic.]

His stay at Frankfort, however, was but short, a controversy having arisen between him and one of his colleagues about the propriety of attaching civil punishments to adultery and other offences against the seventh commandment. In 1542, or early in 1543, he resigned his professorship, and transferred his family to Leipsic. Melanchthon, who, though concurring in his opinions, blamed his hasty resignation, yet exerted himself to procure an appointment for him in the great Saxon university; so also did Ludovicus Fachsius, at once the Burgomaster and the head of the Faculty of Law, of whose kindness he makes special mention in the dedication to his sons of his edition of Melanchthon's Catechism, which he had used when superintending their religious instruction.[314]

[Sidenote: The Perth Martyrs.]

The remaining twenty-one years of his life were spent busily and usefully in this famous university, though he suffered somewhat severely during the Schmalkaldic war and the seige of Leipsic. It was there that most of his theological treatises were elaborated and published. He was twice at least chosen Rector of the university--viz., in 1555 and in 1561.[315] In 1542, as already stated, he published in Latin the arguments he had used in his disputation with Stokesley, Bishop of London, on the authority of the Word of G.o.d, and against the doctrine of the seven sacraments, both confirming his former arguments as to the rights of the Christian laity, and maintaining the supremacy of Scripture over tradition. He had previously published his inaugural dissertation in the University of Frankfort, 'De rest.i.tuendis scholis,'

in which he advocated at length the great need for university training for the ministers of the protestant churches, and gave a detailed account of his own opinions, which he affirmed were then in full accord with those of the Lutheran churches. In 1543, probably before he was fully settled at Leipsic, it is said that on hearing the news of the favourable change which had taken place in Scotland on the death of James V. and the accession of Arran to the regency, he, like many other Scottish exiles, had serious thoughts of returning home, and availing himself to the uttermost of this unexpected opportunity which seemed to be opening for carrying forward the work of the Reformation in the land which was still dear to him. But before he had fully made up his mind to follow this course, he fortunately heard that the fickle regent had already begun to change his policy, and that though the privilege of freely reading the Scriptures in the vernacular, for which he had so earnestly contended, was legally secured, the triumph of the Reformation was by no means so near at hand as at first he had been led to suppose.