Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/326

 322 Gilbert As a result of natural ability and long practice, Bucer seems to have taught without the appearance of strain either for himself or his pupils, since he is praised for his facility.' Joined with this was remarkable power of making his discourses perspic- uous. 5 In praising this quality his English panegyrists agree with John Sturm, who remarked upon the skill in dialectic which enabled him to impress his hearers, 6 and said of his writings : In his volumes, which he wrote very many, there is the plain impression to be discerned of many great virtues, of diligence, of charity, of truth, of acute- ness, of judgment, of learning. Wherein he hath a certain proper kind of writing, whereby he doth not only teach the reader, but affects him with the sweetness of his sentences, and with the manner of his arguing, which is so teaching and so logical, that it may be perceived how learnedly he separates probable reasons from necessary, how forcibly he confirms what he has to prove, how subtly he refutes, not with sharpness, but with truth. 7 Bucer was able to make difficult subjects clear and simple, and to present matter adapted to the audience before him. In England he is said to have held the attention of the less as well as of the more educated, 8 but according to John Sturm this was not true of his public discourses in Germany, because he pro- ceeded by demonstration rather than by the use of examples. 9 He perhaps had profited from a conversation with Luther at Wittenberg. Luther, after hearing Bucer preach, declared that he was himself the better preacher, because when he ascended the pulpit he looked upon his audience, and then preached that they might understand him, while Bucer 's sermon was intelligible only to the learned. 10 Bucer 's personal appearance was in his favor, for the gaze of his eye and the form of his brow were in harmony with his learning, and his voice was strong and musical, and fitted to his matter and to the sounding 4 Martini Buceri Scripta Anglicana, Basil, 1577, p. 886. 6 /&.,p. 877. 6 Alfred Erichson, Martin Butzer, Strassburg, 1891, p. 45. 7 Scripta Anglicana, on an unnumbered page preceding the table of con- tents, trans. John Milton in The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, in his Works, Pickering ed., vol. 4, p. 289. . 8 Scripta Anglicana, p. 886. 9 Ib., Letter to Walsingham following the Epistola Dedicator ia. 10 Die Handschriftliche Geschichte Ratzeberger's uber Luther und seine Zeit, ed. Neudecker, Jena, 1850, p. 87.