g that
centuries ago any one should think, as it delights in thinking; it
honors the noble of former times as its spiritual kindred; but let it
beware of pride, for if he were to rise again amid the means, the
experience, the knowledge of this age, he would soon hasten in advance
of it also, as they ever do, who regard not that, which one generation
of men style truth, but the eternal fundamental truth of all ages; who
have not pious feeling alone--not wisdom alone; to whom alone it is
revealed, by whose earnest and constant endeavor it is attained, to be
wise and good at the same time."

Footnote 7: It may not be uninteresting to many readers to learn
something of the after fate of this man, who occupies so prominent a
place in the foregoing history. His last letter to Zwingli, as far as
known, is dated February 14th, 1523, and his last to Myconius,
September 4th, 1524. In these already he complains of the restless
agitation in Basel, rising up in hostility to every more moderate view:
"It is my conviction," he writes, "that at present obstacles are thrown
in the way of the sciences as well as of the Gospel, by none more than
by those who made us believe, they would have swallowed both. Yet one
durst not complain aloud; for that old, 'Leave me my Christ untouched,'
has lately become a litany among them.'" Now more than ever his life
was devoted to the study of Grecian and especially Roman antiquity; for
theology and church history he never had any great affection. In the
beginnings of the Reformation he looked chiefly at the victory of
science, the revival of the study of the languages, the need of a more
thorough investigation of the classical ages, and was, therefore,
favorable to it. But as soon as this Reformation ventured forth from
the narrow circles of the academical lecture-room, the student's
chamber and the polite world, to move in which had become a matter of
necessity to him, upon the theatre of public life, and appeared under
democratic forms; as soon as unlearned advocates for it rose up beside
the educated and strove for approval and influence with the people,
wounding his refined taste by their rude manners and their rough
language, he began to grow uneasy. He feared directly the opposite of
what he had first hoped for, the final overthrow of all thorough
scientific culture. Of the great transformation wrought in the life of
the church and the people, with its beneficial results for religion and
politi