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152 The disorders occasioned by the rapid progress of the Reformation, having completely shaken his faith in the sanguine speculations of his youth, seem at length, by alarming his fears as to the fate of existing establishments, to have unhinged his understanding, and perverted his moral feelings. The case was somewhat the same with his friend Erasmus, who (as Jortin remarks) “began in his old days to act the zealot and the missionary with an ill grace, and to maintain, that there were certain heretics, who might be put to death as blasphemers and rioters.” (pp. 428, 481). In the mind of Erasmus, other motives, it is not improbable, concurred; his biographer and apologist being forced to acknowledge that “he was afraid lest Francis, and Charles, and Ferdinand, and George, and Henry VIII., and other persecuting princes, should suspect that he condemned their cruel conduct.” Ibid. p. 481.

Something, it must at the same time be observed, may be alleged in behalf of these two illustrious persons; not, indeed, in extenuation of their unpardonable defection from the cause of religious liberty, but of their estrangement from some of their old friends, who scrupled not to consider, as apostates and traitors, all those who, while they acknowledged the expediency of ecclesiastical reform, did not approve of the violent measures employed for the accomplishment of that object. A very able and candid argument on this point may be found in Bayle, Article Castellan, Note Q.

, p. 24.

The following short extract will serve to convey a general idea of Calvin’s argument upon the subject of usury.

“” Calvini Epistolæ.

, p. 34.

prevailing idea among Machiavel’s contemporaries and immediate successors certainly was, that the design of the Prince was hostile to the rights of mankind; and that the author was either entirely unprincipled, or adapted his professed opinions to the varying circumstances of his own eventful life. The following are the words of Bodinus, born in 1530, the very year when Machiavel died; an author whose judgment will have no small weight with those who are acquainted with his political writings: “Machiavel s’est bien fort mésconté, de dire que l’éstat populaire est le meilleur: et néantmoins ayant oublié sa première opinion, il a tenu en un autre lieu, que pour restituer l’Italie