CHAPTER III.

SAVONAROLA A PREACHER.

Savonarola in Lombardy-Expounds the Apocalypse-Babylon a patristic type of Rome-Essential differences between the Gospel of Christ and the religion of Christians-Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII.-Savonarola preaches at Brescia, and denounces impending destruction to the apostate Church of Rome-His prophetic claims-Studies and writings.

It was in the year that gave birth to Luther, when Savonarola made his first, but unsuccessful entrance into the pulpit. His eloquence, like the new-born person of the German reformer, was in its infancy, and none perceived that nevertheless' Heaven lay about it.' Savonarola, however, was not to be discouraged. We read of his making trials in divers towns. His mind was full of truth-he was an artist, if yet a comparatively dumb one; but he could not rest without making some effort to promulge it—he must teach, if but with a stammering lip. Part of his time he spent in Lombardy, expounding to youths the Scriptures-part in making the preparatory trials just mentioned, at long and accidental intervals, and without publicity.

CH. III.

THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN.

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Sedulous as a biblical student generally, Savonarola, like most religious enthusiasts, was an ardent admirer and expounder of the Apocalypse. The divinest of poems, this work of the beloved disciple, his Lord's-day holy labour, when, islanded on solitary Patmos, the apostle was in the Spirit, and heard behind him a great voice as of a trumpet,-this marvellous prophecy has ever affected in an incomparable degree the imagination of the pious, and excited more devout emotion than any other book in the sacred volume. To the mystical mind it has always been an intense subject of meditation, the imprisoned Saint having therein assembled together all the types and symbols, contained elsewhere separately in the records of revelation, with others then for the first time conceived, making thus a grand composite revelation, inclusive of the Old and New, as the complement and supplement of both. It is as if God had made up his jewels, and set his seal upon the casket that enshrined the sacred treasures. What increases the interest also is the visionary character of the poem-the manner in which it is believed to open up the designs of Providence to the world's end-thus making the student thereof a seer into the most distant future.

There are few who even now are either willing or able to interpret the contents of the Apocalypse in a spiritual or moral sense. In a time, when to refer the mystical language of Holy Writ to invisible arcana, was to swim counter to the stream of patristic authority, what else could be expected but a substitution of one visible thing for another, as the explanation of the mystical term? If Peter (1. v. 13) greeted his correspondents with the salutation of the co-elect Church which is in Babylon,' the primitive fathers, according to Eusebius, understood him to date from Rome. However fanciful, however strained may

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ROME BECOME BABYLON.

B. II.

seem to be their solutions, they never violate this canon-never allow themselves to depart from some literal sense concerning the past, which they merely exchange for some literal sense concerning the present. Nor has an Augustine yet risen, qualified by his genius to elevate the sublime subject of the Apocalypse above the terrene level, and to translate its pro-Dantean argument into a revelation of eternity

rather than of time.

Very early, then, was ancient Babylon accepted as a type of Rome, and the words of the Apocalypse were understood to refer to the corrupt and adulterated Christianity, which was so soon established in the seven-hilled city. Savonarola, boldly poetic as were his fancy and imagination, though a Reformer, was yet no innovator. He was a man of genius, but he was also a man of learning. And his learning exercised constant control upon the daring of his genius. Purely religious though he was, yet many of the superstitions of the age, as we have already seen, still clung to him he manifested rather an instinct for the discovery, than a perfected knowledge of the truth. More should not be expected from him under all the circumstances of time and place, and the conditions which qualified his intellectual progress. wonder, therefore, that his zeal should be fired by a never-doubted conviction that Babylon and Rome were synonymous terms. 'What is Babylon,' said Savonarola, but Rome? Babylon signifies confusion. There is not in the world greater confusion of crimes and all sorts of iniquity than at Rome. Since they have made it a dwelling for harlots, God will make it a stall for swine and horses!'

No

Alas! the fact only too strongly justified the analogy. The Church of Christ had indeed (to quote from Dr. Henry More,) 'degenerated-or rather apostatized, from the purity of the Gospel into the ab

CH. III.

PAGANO-CHRISTIANISM.

89

horred condition of anti-christianism, and yet retained the external possession of Christianity, using indeed the name and history of Christ and his Apostles, but introducing thereupon such a face of idolatry and heathenish superstition, and barbarous cruelty against the true servants of Christ, that by those whose judgements are more free and piercing, such a state of the Church cannot but be deemed rather a revival of paganism, than an uninterrupted succession of true Christianity in the world; or, to use the softest language that the truth of the thing will admit of, it cannot be judged pure and unadulterate Christianity, but a kind of pagano-christianism, the pagan rites, idolatries, and superstitions being practised upon Christian objects, and this paganism in this pretended Christianity being maintained with as ferine cruelty as paganism itself was in the time of the heathen emperors.' Alas! not only in appearance, as they who would accommodate the language of the New Testament to the traditions and ceremonies of the Church in one or two of its historical manifestations, would have us to believe-not only in appearance but in reality, are there great differences between the record and the institution. Moreover such differences must be--for the New Testament presents in all its parts the ideal of a Church, equally existing in an individual and a corporation, while the institution is fain to be content with such compromise as could be effected between the ideal and actual, under specific circumstances of time and place. Nothing can more strictly mark this than the sinless state of human perfection required of every Christian by St. John. For such an one, no special sacrifice would be required, whose life would be all one sacrifice to truth and goodness-no special sacrament needed, whose every meal would be a sacrament-no shrine or altar or sacred building wanted for his devotion, to whom

r

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NOMINAL CHRISTIANITY

B. II.

every place would be altogether holy, and no spot on earth unblessed by Him who made it. How deeply

all this was felt by Savonarola, what he says in prayer sufficiently vouches. Such is the character he contemplated as becoming the Christian, and such is the character presented to us in the Gospel-a being carrying about in his person and habits of mind the most hallowed influences, and consecrating the very air in which he moves with the sanctity of his presence. But, alas! such is not man! The Christian is his highest style, but who has yet deserved it? Nominal Christianity from the first was and could only be a corruption of that which gave it birth. Nominal Christianity is not necessarily the religion of Christ-the doctrines of the scholars are not necessarily those of the master. Nominal Christianity is a system made by professed Christians, not by Christ. It follows and embodies the usages of nominal Christians, not the example of Christ. From the Church of Antioch to the present day it has been so, and could not be otherwise. The pure religion of Christ, as revealed in the New Testament, contemplates man as restored to his original purity, as incapable of sin, as a veritable child of God-but nominal Christianity has ever accommodated itself to fallen humanity, sympathized with its errors, and condescended to its infirmities. When it became joined to the world, and was taken into partnership with the state, this was more particularly the case. A more decided compromise was effected between the ideal and the possible; and at different periods and in different places, nominal Christianity has assumed different phases according to the circumstances and condition of the age and country. But no such compromise-no such accommodation is contemplated by the Gospels; on the contrary, their very spirit is directly opposed to it in every shape and in every