while one of the first Counſellors of Auguſtus Elector of Saxony,[Notes 1] and if we may believe Thuanus,[1] he left that Court only becauſe he was ſuſpected to be one of thoſe who adviſed Gaſper Peucer to publiſh an Expoſition of the Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper agreeable to the Geneva Confeſſion of Faith. That Hiſtorian adds, that having left the Court of Saxony he retired with the Prince of Orange, and was employed in very important affairs; but that whilſt he applied himſelf to them he fell ſick and died at Antwerp September the 50th 1581 at the age of threeſcore and three years.[Notes 2] He was very much eſteemed by Monſieur du Pleſſis Mornai.[2] He is thought to be the author of the Oration which was delivered before Charles IX. King of France, December the 23d 1570, in the name of ſeveral Princes of Germany.[3] It is to him people aſcribe the famous Treatiſe which is intitled, Vindiciæ contra Tyrannos;[4] i.e. “A Defence againſt Tyrants.” The Latin Letters which he wrote to Sir Philip Sidney were printed at Frankfort in the year 1639.[Notes 3] Those which he wrote in the ſame tongue to both the Camerarius’s, father and ſon, were publiſhed in the year 1646, and have been reprinted with ſome others[Notes 4] in the year 1685: there is a beautiful Preface[Notes 5] prefixed to them, which contains a noble Panegyric upon him.
They publiſhed at Hall in the year 1699 a large Collection of thoſe Letters, which he wrote to his maſter the Elector of Saxony[5] during the courſe of the nego-
- ↑ Thuanus gives us too imperfect an account of this. The expoſition of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was publiſhed in the year 1573. Languet was not then at the court of Saxony, but at the Emperor’s; and he did not leave that employment till the year 1577,[10] that his Electoral Highneſs of Saxony had given him leave to retire where ever he pleaſed; and ſince that time he always kept up a great correſpondence with that Prince, though he applied himſelf to the affairs of Prince Caſimir, or to thoſe of the Prince of Orange. All this is proved by the letters publiſhed in the year 1699.
- ↑ This appears from the following paſſage.[11] “Du Pleſſis at his arrival at Antwerp found his wife and children ſick. And even a ſon whom God had given him in his abſence, was ſoon after ſnatched away from him. But beſides this, his intimate friend Monſieur Languet was dead: Madam du Pleſſis, though ſick herſelf, had attended him to his laſt moment. His dying words were theſe. That the only thing which grieved him was, that he had not been able to ſee Monſieur du Pleſſis again before he died, to whom he would have left his very heart, had it been in his power. That he had wiſhed to live, to ſee the world reformed; but ſince it became daily worſe and worſe, he had no longer any buſineſs in it; that the Princes of theſe times were ſtrange men; that virtue had much to ſuffer, and little to get: That he pitied Monſieur du Pleſſis very much; to whoſe ſhare a great part of the misfortunes of the time would fall, and who would ſee many unhappy days; but that he muſt take courage, for God would aſſiſt him. For the reſt he begged one thing of him, in his laſt farewell, namely that he would mention ſomething of their mutual friendſhip, in the firſt book he ſhould publiſh. Which Monſieur du Pleſſis did ſoon after in a ſhort preface to the Latin tranſlation of his treatiſe of the Truth of the Chriſtian religion.” The commendations, which he beſtows on Languet in that preface, and what others have publiſhed upon the ſame ſubject, have been carefully collected by Voetius.[12] The epitaph alone is worth a panegyrick. You will meet with it in the ſame Voetius.
Obſerve that Languet ſhewed himſelf a very affectionate and zealous friend to Monſieur du Pleſſis, at the time of the maſſacre committed on St. Bartholomew’s day.[13] - ↑ Monſieur Colomies gives a very ſtrong proof of it in his Melanges Hiſtoriques[14] or Hiſtorical Miſcellanies. He takes it from a letter of Languet to his hero Sir Philip Sidney, dated from Vienna January the firſt, 1574.
- ↑ What I have obſerved upon this ſubject in the firſt ſketch of this dictionary is too long to be conveniently inserted in this place; I thought it therefore more proper to refer it to the end of this work in the form of a diſſertation.
Some perſons ſuppoſe him to be the author of the book, entitled de Furoribus Gallicis,[15] of the madneſs of the French: but without any juſt ground.[16] It was thought in his family, that he wrote the famous apology for the Prince of Orange; the reaſon of this opinion was, that he had ſent a copy of it to every one of his relations, as a work of his own compoſing. And yet Grotius ascribes[17] this apology to another French man, named Peter de Villiers.[18] - ↑ Monsieur Ludovicus profeſſor in the Univerſity of Hall has given us this edition. We ſhould be ſtill more obliged to him, had he added to it an index of the principal ſubjects mentioned in them, and had he taken care to have the errors of the printers or of the tranſcribers with regard to proper names mere exactly corrected. People wonder that he prefixed no preface to this book, and that whereas the editions publiſhed in Germany are generally conſiderable by their indexes, there is none to Languet’s letters, where it was wanted more than in a great many other books; becauſe each of theſe letters contains ſeveral particular
for nothing more paſſionately, than to return into Germany, to ſee the author of that book; which he did accordingly in the year 1549.
I find ſomething in this account, which puzzles me; for it is not at all probable, that a man who has conceived ſuch an eſteem for Melanchthon, by reading his Body of Divinity, that he takes him for the only wiſe man in the world,[7] ſhould take a journey to Leipſick, continue there ſome time, and embrace there the Proteſtant Religion without waiting once upon that divine; and that he ſhould be impatient to make him a viſit, only upon reading at Bologna another work of that author. It is not true that Camerarius aſſerts this other work was the treatiſe de Anima (concerning the ſoul) and that it determined Languet to return into Germany. He expreſſes himſelf ſo as to hint, not a ſecond journey, but the firſt, pepulerat tandem ut in Germanian veniret. i. e. “Determined him at laſt to come into Germany.”[8] Laſtly it is very ſtrange, that if Languet had been Camerarius’s diſciple and boarder at Leipſic in the year 1548, Camerarius ſhould yet aſſert that Langius did not come into Germany till the year 1549, out of a deſire to ſee Melanchthon, occaſioned by a book he read in Italy. It is unqueſtionable that either Camerarius or Monſieur de la Mare muſt be here miſtaken. It is moſt probable that the former is in the right, for Languet himſelf relates,[9] that having read Melanchthon’s Body of Divinity in Italy in the year 1547, and not being thoroughly ſatisfied with what is there obſerved concerning the Lord’s Supper, he was determined to go and conſult the author himſelf, and ſaw him in the year 1549. Would he ſpeak thus, if he had embraced the Proteſtant Religion at Leipſick, in the year 1547, and if Camerarius had been his profeſſor and his Landlord that ſame year in the ſame city?
- Notes
- References
- ↑ Melanchthonem ab eo tempore tante æſtimare, ut reliquos cæcutire ac proprirs affactibus indulgere judicaret, unum autem ſapere Melanchthonem. Idem, ibid. p. 9.
- ↑ Camer. in Vita Melanchth. pag. m. 344.
- ↑ Languet, Epiſt. 15. ad Joach. Camerar. pag. m. 27.
- ↑ It is the 28th of thoſe which he wrote to Camerarius the ſon.
- ↑ Vie de Du Pleſſis Mernas, pag. 56. under the year 1581.
- ↑ Diſput. Theologic. vol. 4. pag. 238, & ſeq.
- ↑ See the Vie de Mr. du Pleſſis, pag. 22. See alſo pag. 12.
- ↑ Pag. 13; 14.
- ↑ Mentioned above in quotation (44) of the article BEZA.
- ↑ See Mr. de la Mare, in Vita Langueti, pag. 67, 68.
- ↑ Lib. 3. Belgic. Annal.
- ↑ La Mare, in Vita Langueti, pag. 121, 122.
