Soliloquies of the Soul, the Garden of Roses, the Valley of Lilies, the treatise on the Three Tabernacles, and a few other minor essays. Among these, the Imitation of Christ justly holds the highest rank. Next in merit is the Garden of Roses, which is still more sententious in its character. The moral and religious views of Thomas à Kempis, cannot be said to have originated wholly in his own mind. The mystical theology is very much a matter of experience; and this experience was partly one's own and partly transmitted from generation to generation. Thomas draws largely from the stream of tradition which had flowed down through the Brethren of the Life in Common. Side by side with his own, he introduces the experiences, maxims and examples of other members of the community, who had lived before him. He did, indeed, by a process of assimilation make them all perfectly his own. They all bear the marks of his own peculiar genius. It is his heart that beats in every sentiment. Though Thomas was himself but little versed in classical literature, his disciples, Lange, Spiegelberg, Liber, and, most of all, Agricola and Hegius, contributed much to the revival of ancient learning in Holland and Germany. While he was friendly to all pure knowledge, he found his chief delight in practical wisdom of a religious nature. His leading course of thought is this. We all naturally seek for something to make us happy; but we can never find it in the things of the world. The world has nothing substantial; everything in it is transient, and all its pleasures are attended with sorrows. There is here no true satisfaction, but disappointment, change, misery and death. We cannot find in the society of others what we need. They are frail, changeable, and deceitful. The chief good cannot be found in them. Nor is there anything in ourselves on which we can rely for happiness. We are full of weaknesses and of sin, and are either sunken in sensuality or lifted up with pride and self-sufficiency. God alone can satisfy the wants and the longings of the human soul. ion with him is the only sure felicity, a union effected not by an act of ours, but by the grace of God. Grace is the love of God imparting itself to men, giving them true freedom, and power to do what is right. By imitating Christ, Thomas did not mean the Un respecting the author of the Imitation of Christ, thinks there is no longer room to doubt that it was written by Thomas à Kempis. While the external evidence is said to be in his favor, the internal is pronounced irresistible. 1845.] Decline and Fall of the Community 233 particular things, but Hence the peculiar watching and imitating of his example in Although he was a good Catholic, the hierarchy had no significancy with him. His inward spiritual life led him to place no high estimate on any external magnificence and show. It is a remarkable fact that in all his writings, he never alludes to the pope but once or twice, and then to show that neither he nor his leaden bulls are anything but dust, and ashes.1 Decline and Fall of the Community. Early efforts were made by the jealous mendicant friars whose influence over the common people and over the young was very much weakened, to crush the institution which had supplanted them. They maintained that there were only two lawful modes of life, the secular and the monastic; that the Brethren were a genus tertium, neither the one nor the other, and consequently were living in violation of the canonical law. Zerbolt wrote an elaborate defence, which it is not necessary to notice particularly here. A more violent assault was made by Matthew Grabow, once a member of the community at Gröningen. He brought an accusation before the council of Constance, in which he aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the order. But Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, the most influential man of the times, and Peter D'Ailly, of Cambray, and twelve other distinguished theologians, espoused the cause of the party assailed and the accuser of the Brethren was condemned. No danger henceforth was to be feared from without, and a period of great prosperity ensued. In order to form a correct general estimate of the success of the fraternity, it will be necessary to distinguish the different periods. of its history. Its flourishing period extended from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth. During that time, it sent out its fresh religious influence, and gave a strong impulse to the public mind, and raised the education of the young to a new and proud distinction. A reforming council, Sapiens est ille, qui spernit millia mille. Omnia sunt nulla, Rex, Papa, et plumbea bulla. Cunctorum finis, mors, vermis, fovea, cinis.-Hortul. Rosar. IV. 3. Comp. Vallis lilior. XXV. 3. Nemo unius diei certitudinem vivendi habet, nec impetrare potest a Papa, bullam nunquam moriendi. and even popes and cardinals favored its interests. The people flocked from all quarters to its places of worship, and the youth to its schools. Within the same interval of time, particularly between 1425 and 1451, most of the Houses of the Brethren were established. In the Netherlands, we find the fraternity settled not only at Deventer, Zwoll and Windesheim, but at Amersford, Hoorn, Delft, Hattem, Herzogenbush, Gröningen, Gouda, Harderwijk, Utrecht, Brussels, Antwerp, Louvain, Ghent, Grammont, Nimeguin, and Doesburg. Beyond the borders of the Netherlands, there were Houses at Emmerich, Munster, Cologne, Nieder Wesel, Osnabrück, Hildesheim, Herford, Rostock and Culm. Indeed, they were found up the Rhine as far as Swabia, and in the interior of Germany as far as Merseburg. In the course of the sixteenth century, there was a very observable decline. The last House established by the Brethren was that in Cambray in the year 1505, which continued however only till 1554. In so celebrated a place as Zwoll there were only three students in 1579. The last member of the establishment at Rostock, Arsenius, died in 1575. Only a very few Houses, as that at Munster, were in existence, at the beginning of the sev enteenth century. The institution could retire from the scene of action with honor; it had accomplished its end. The causes of its decay were not assaults from without, but the altered circumstances of the times. The age of improvement which the Brethren in part, at least led on, had outstripped them. Other mightier agencies were in successful operation, and theirs were no longer necessary, nor would these, in fact, have been any longer adequate to the exigencies of society, in that age. They belonged rather to a preparatory dispensation. They were like the morning star, which fades away, when the sun appears. The Brethren had always used great diligence in copying books. But the art of printing now rendered such labor useless, and the more so from the circumstance that at the very beginning, it was applied to the same object, to multiplying copies of the Scriptures, of other religious works and of useful school books. As soon as the presses of Gutenburg, Faust, and Schöffer were in successful operation at Mayence and Eltville, the Brethren at Marienthal in the vicinity, began to turn their attention to the art, and established a press, at the latest, in 1474, and perhaps as early as 1468. Their example was followed by the Houses at Herzogenbusch, Gouda, Louvain, Rostock, and by the cloister Hem near Schoon 1845.] Education-Use of the Native Language. 235 hoven. The well known Parisian printer, Jodocus Badius, called Ascensius from his native place Asche, near Brussels, who published excellent editions of the ancient classics, was educated in one of the schools of the Brethren. But the rapid progress in printing soon made in all the countries of Europe, rendered the labors of the Brethren, in this respect, comparatively unimpor tant. The second cause of prosperity to the institution was its strong and commanding position in respect to education. It had estab tablished schools where none were existing before, had done away the monastic mode of instruction and substituted a better, and had actually reared in its own bosom and sent out many excellent teachers. But in this work, also, it was now outdone. The best of its students, such as Hegius, Van den Busche, and Dringenberg, established independent schools, in which a more liberal course of study was pursued, and, consequently, the rush of students was now to the latter instead of the schools of the Brethren. Besides, a new impulse in favor of ancient learning had been given from another quarter, from Italy, which stood in more immediate contact with Germany, and henceforth the latter country took the precedence of Holland, so much so that Dringenberg, Agricola and Erasmus, the most distinguished of the Dutch scholars settled in Germany, where the universities were beginning greatly to excel the schools founded by the Brethren. The third cause of the celebrity of this order, the use of the native language in religious instruction, had become very common, and especially, at the opening Reformation, it ceased to be a distinguishing mark of those who had done so much to introduce it. Most of all did the Reformation itself, in its whole extent, overshadow the feebler efforts of the Brethren. All these circumstances tended to bring the institution of the Life in Common to its termination, and to dismiss the Brethren from the field, the expiration of their term of service having arrived. If now we review the facts which have come before us in this narrative, we shall perceive that the fraternity, formed by Gerard, stood in intimate connection with the course of important events in the progress of religion. Like everything truly excellent and great, it had its origin in the remote past, and looked forward prophetically to the distant future. In its intention, and, to no small extent, in its spirit also, it was formed after the model of the apostolic church at Jerusalem; and in an age of darkness it was the first gleam of that twilight which preceded the Reformation. In some re pects, though in very different degrees, it resembled the associations of the Pythagoreans and the Essenes, the mother church at Jerusalem, and the nobler monastic institutions, especially that of the earlier Benedictines. In later times, the Pietists, and the Moravians, and in the present age, societies for circulating the Scriptures and for promoting Christian knowledge among the people and education among the youth, and, in fine, all our benevolent institutions remind us more or less vividly of the Brethren of the Life in Common. The most striking analogy by far exists between the Pietists and the Brethren. The former aimed at reviving vital religion in the Lutheran church, without assailing the stiff theology of the orthodox. As they were viewed with suspicion by the church, and often violently opposed, a necessity arose for forming-very much after the manner of modern voluntary associations-little fraternities, in order to act with more effect in promoting piety, and to secure mutual protection and support. So the Brethren also still adhered to the Catholic church, and, without controverting the scholastic theology, gave their attention to matters, in their view, more important-to the cultivation of spirituality in religion. Both the Pietists and the Brethren, aimed at the religion of the heart; both were averse to idle speculation, and were devoted to practical piety; both had recourse directly to the common people and to the youth; both sought to produce in all the persons under their influence, separation from the world, deep repentance for sin, and an ardent personal piety; both held private and social meetings for religious edification in the free exercises of which laymen participated; both made free use of religious tracts in propagating their sentiments; both had a centre of operations, Deventer and Halle, with which all the other establishments were closely connected; both aimed at making all the inmates feel as if they were members of the same family, and under the influence of this sentiment the young received their entire course of intellectual and religious training; both were extensively engaged, in the manner which two such different periods required, in the publication of the Scriptures and other religious and valuable books; both had a powerful reforming influence upon the schools, and upon the general character of the age. |