tors betray, lest by forcing their hard-won liberties forward into fresh fields of controversy they should risk the whole. The error which looked to them so flagrant they hoped to burn away in his funeral pile. But his truth is saved for us by that very fire, which tries every man's work of what sort it is. For, without that baleful light, it would doubtless have perished with him.

CHAPTER III.

SOCINUS.

AMONG the Italian free inquirers who sought refuge in Switzerland from dread of the Roman Inquisition, we find the name of Lælius Socinus. He had been conspicuous (it is said) in a society or club formed in 1546 of about forty members, who were accustomed to meet in Vicenza, to discuss questions growing out of the new Reform, including the church doctrine of the Trinity. This was the same year when Servetus opened his correspondence with Calvin and his doctrine had already (1539), as we see in Melanchthon's correspondence, been reported as dangerously current in northern Italy. What with him had been a motive of exalted religious mysticism became with these young men a topic of scholarly criticism and rational inquiry. The society, if it ever had a formal existence, was soon dispersed. Its secret ramifications were traced. The inquisitorial police were set on all sides to the task of uprooting its feeble growth. In Venice it was thought to suppress the rising heresy by drowning in the sea. We are told1 how the victims were taken out by night in boatloads, the boats being connected two-and-two by a plank laid across, upon which the condemned were placed; then, the boats being pulled suddenly apart, they were plunged into the water, just gasping a prayer to Christ as the waves of the Adriatic closed over them. The more fortunate found safety in exile. Lælius, with some of his com

1 By Cantù, also by Ranke.

panions, escaped to Switzerland in 1547; and here, after a year or two of travel, he found a home, usually in Zurich, for most of his remaining years, till his death, in 1562.1

The family of Socinus (Sozzini) was eminent in Siena, and was allied by marriage with several houses of rank, notably that of Piccolomini. Their family record, as given by Cantù, preserves more than two hundred names. The father of Lælius, Mariano, had been "captain of the people," lecturer on jurisprudence in two or three universities, and ambassador to Florence and to the pope. An anecdote of his youth is that, being reproved for more than once neglecting a college exercise, he answered simply, "I have married a wife." "Well," said the professor, "Socrates was married too." "Ah, but," replied the student, "Xanthippe was a scold, and I dare say ugly at that; while my wife is both beautiful and sweet-tempered." Lælius was last but one in a family of twelve children; and would seem to have inherited his mother's serious loveliness of disposition, with a clear and sagacious understanding that led him, in later life, "to scent out as many errors in theology as he lived years. As student of jurisprudence, he "sought its true source in the Divine fountains of Scripture, and was early drawn into those questions of the Reformed theology which then attracted all the boldest minds of the day. When (to copy the words of Camerarius) "he left a home rich in wealth and dignity," to become

2

1 Mr. Gordon, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, as the result of later investigations, treats the whole story of his flight, with the attending circumstances, as a myth"; and relates that his attention was called to topics of reform by Camillo Renato, a Sicilian, who is described as a sort of Catholic Quaker.

2 The phrase used in the Life by Samuel Przypkowski (-covius), one of the "Polish Brethren," whose biography of the Socini, uncle and nephew, is the earliest and most authentic source for our scanty knowledge of them.

LELIUS SOCINUS.

5 I

(adds Maier) "an exile for his faith in Christ," he was not quite twenty-two.1

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His candid intelligence, with the confiding sweetness of manner native to him, drew forth an almost unvarying tribute of personal affection from the leading German and Swiss Reformers, very rare in that day of acrimonious disputation. Bullinger, the wise and generally broad-hearted successor of Zwingli as pastor of Zurich, was his warm friend from first to last. Melanchthon wrote of him to Maximilian of Austria, afterwards emperor: "His diligence and fidelity are such that he might well serve an illustrious sovereign in embassies and in many other affairs;" adding that, by the reading of prophets and apostles, he has been "brought to worship of the true God and all offices of piety, and has begun the study of Hebrew with a burning zeal for sacred learning." 'Furthermore," writes Bullinger, "he is clear-eyed (prudens) and active, worthy whether to teach in public or to serve some prince in high matters of state." "He is a man," adds Auerbach, most accomplished in every sort of merit; most dear to me, and my best of comrades" (fautor). Maffinski, one of the group of Polish gentlemen whom he met as fellow-students in Germany, reports of him in 1550: "I am ever so much (oppido quam) delighted with his gracious company. I honor his upright character, his frankness in speaking his mind, with his learning and purity of life. Not only I but everybody here loves him and makes much of him. In a word, there is not a man in Wittenberg who does not seek and prize his friendship." His scholar friends would speak of him, playfully, by the title of Cicero's dialogue on Friendship, as "Lælius, sive de Amicitiâ."

1 These citations, with those which immediately follow, are copied from 'Die Protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Fausto Socin," by F. Trechsel, a pastor near Berne, who has given, largely from manuscript sources, our only detailed portraiture of the man.

Almost the only discordant note in this singular harmony of praise appears to be from the uneasy jealousy of two of his own countrymen-Celso Martinengo, who had been stung by some freedom in a young Italian, an associate of Lælius, and that acrid busybody, Peter Paul Vergerio. These two convey to Bullinger their "grave suspicion of him, that he favors the opinion of Arius, Servetus, and the Anabaptists, and does not acknowledge or sincerely profess adoration of the holy Trinity." Calvin, too, with whom he has been on terms of friendly communication, writes to him in 1552: “I am very sorry that the generous intelligence which the Lord has bestowed on you should busy itself vainly upon matters of no account." He adds the warning, which some have taken as a threat: Unless you quickly cure this itch of questioning, it is to be feared that you will bring upon yourself heavy sufferings." It is to the credit of both, that this sharp hint did not sever the good-will between them; and that, in spite of yet graver differences, the good offices of Bullinger kept them friends to the end.

The story of his life for the fifteen years after leaving Italy is easiest told by marking it in three portions, divided by two visits to his native land. Speaking generally, he is to be known in the first of these as the eager and restless inquirer; in the second, as the courteous and candid disputant; in the last, as the recluse student and thinker, with a probable tendency to lines of more radical speculation. But he is never a man of clear positive thought, or an active propagandist. Winning and ingenuous, he sought and found friends in the several local circles of the Reformation. He discusses with Calvin in Geneva the physical difficulties involved in a resurrection of the body. He takes part at Basel with Myconius, whose "Confession" has brought a larger tolerance among the Reformers than