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miglit preriously hare existed, for we learn that the monks had a part of their libraries called the inferno, which was not the part which they least visited, for it contained, or hid, all the prohibited books which they could sroupf^le into it. But thb inquisitorial power assumed its most formidable shape in the council of Trent, when some gloomy spirits from Rome niid Madrid foresaw the revolution of this new age of books.
Inquisitors of books were appointed; at Rome they consisted nf certain cardinals and "the master of the holy palace;" and literary inquisi- tors were elected at Madrid, at Lisbon, at Naples and for the Low Countries; they were watching the ubiquity of the human mind. These cata- logues of prohibited books were called Indexet; and at Rome a body of these literary despots are still called " the Congregation of the Index." The simple Index is a list of condemned books which are never to be opened; but the Expurga- toty Index indicates those only prohibited till thqr have undergone a purification. No book was to be allowed on any subject, or in any language, which contained a single position, an ambiguous sentence, even a word, which, in the most distant sense, could be construed opposite to the doctrines of the supreme au thori ty of this coun- cil of Trent; where it seems to have been enacted, that all men, literate and illiterate, prince and peasant, the Italian, the Spaniard tmd the Nether- lander, should take the mint-stamp of their thoughts from the council of Trent, and millions of souls be struck off at one blow, out of the same used mould.
The sages who compiled these indexes, indeed, long had reason to imagine that passive obedi- ence was attached to the human character; and therefore they considered, that the publications of their adversaries required no other notice than a convenient insertion in their indexes. But the heretics diligently reprinted them with ample prefaces and useful annotations.
The results of these indexes were somewhat curious. As they_ were formed in different countries, the opinions were often diametrically opposite to each other. The learned Aria.s Mon- tanua, who was a chief inquisitor in the Ncther- land8,and concerned in the Antwerp index, lived to see his own works placed in the Roman index; while the inquisitor of Naples was so displeased with the Spanish index, that he persisted to assert that it had never been printed at Madrid! Men who began by insisting that all the world should not differ from their opinions, ended by not agreeing with themselves. A civil war ragetl among the index makers; and if one criminated, the other retaliated. If one discovered ten places necessary to be expurgated, another found thirty, and a third inclined to place the whole work in the condemned list. The inquisitors at length became so doubtful of their own opinions, that they sometimes expressed in their license for printing, that "they tolerated the reading, after the book had been corrected by themselves, till such time as the work should be
considered worthy of lomo farther correction." The expurgatory indexes excited louder com- plaints tlian those which simply condemned books; because the purgers or castrators, as they were termed, or, as Milton calls them, " the executioners of books," by omitting, or interpo- lating passages, made an author say, or unsay, what the inquisitors chose; and their editions, after the death of the authors, were comparid to the erasures or forgeries in records : for the books which an author leaves behind him, with bis last corrections, are like his last will and testament, and the public are the legitimate heirs of an author's opinions.
1664, May '37. Died, JoHH Calvin, an emi- nent reformer. He was born at Noyon, in Picardy, July 10, 1509, and educated at Paris, under Corderius, with a view te the church. He became dissatisfied with the tenets of the church of Rome, and altered his mind with respect to the ecclesiastical state. This change in his opinions induced him to study the law, in which he made a considerable progress; but his open avowal of the Protestant faith, rendered bis stay in France dangerous, and he retired to Basil, where he published, in 1535, his Instttuliont of the Christian Religion, to which he prefixed an elegant dedication to Francis I. This work rendered his name famous among all the rc- fonned,andwas translated into several languages. The year following he settled at Geneva, as minister and professor of divinity, having Farel for his colleague. But soon after he was obliged to leave Geneva, together with Farel, for refusing the sacrament indiscriminately to the people. Calvin then went to Strasburg, where he offici- ated in a French church of his own establish- ment, and was also chosen professor of divinity. The divines of Strasburg appointed Calvin to be their deputy at the diet of worms. In the mean time the citizens of Geneva requested his return to the city, and after repeated solicitations he consented, and arrived there in 1541. His first undertaking was to set on foot a system of ecclesiastical discipline, strictly presbyterian, and as rigorous and assuming as that of Rome itself. The mconsistency between pretensions and prac- tice, which Calvin evinced, when himself in possession of pbwer; and that spirit of intole- ranee and persecution which writers, both catho- lic and protestant, have attributed to him, but which in the preface to his own Institute!, he deprecates. The burning of Scrvetus; the be- heading of Perrin, a distinguished citizen of Geneva, with whom he had political or private dis.sensions; the unrelenting persecution of Cas- tellio, and the imprisonment of Bolscc, both of whom had ventured to controvert his favourite doctrine of predestination; these are facts which history has placed on record, and from the stains'of which, his most ardent admirers have found it ditticull to redeem his character. He continued in that city actively employed as a
{(readier and a writer till his death, which lappened in 1564. Themoral character of Cal- vin was irreproachable, and he appears to have
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