Ep. lx. lib. iii. p. 818.two years, and a fourth time the year following. The third son by this marriage had the cardinal Lorrain for his godfather. She was delivered of her fifth son at Antwerp, in March 15295 and died there in August following. Some say that he married a third time, and that he divorced his last wife; but he mentions nothing thereof in his letters. Mr. Bayle says that Agrippa lived and died in the Romish communion, but Sextus Senensis asserts that he was a Lutheran. Agrippa, in some passages of his letters, does indeed treat Luther with harsh epithets; however, in the nineteenth chapter of his Apology, he speaks in so favourable a manner of him, and with such contempt of his chief adversaries, that it is likely Sextus Senensis's assertion was founded upon that paffage. Bishop Burnet, in his History of the Reformation, speaks of Agrippa, as it he had been an advocate for the divorce of Henry VIII. Mr. Bayle refutes this, and Book ii, says that the ambassador of the emperor at London wrote to Agrippa, desiring him to support the interest of the queen: Agrippa replied that he would readily engage therein, if the emperor would give him orders for that purpose; and declares that he detested the base compliance of those divines who approved of the divorce: and with regard to the Sorbonne, "I am not ignorant (says he) by what arts this affair was carried on in the Sorbonne at Paris, who by their rashness have given sanction to an example of such wickedness. When I consider it, I can scarce contain myself from exclaiming in imitation of Pesdius, Say, ye Sorbonnists, what has gold to do with divinity? What piety and faith shall we imagine to be in their breasts, whose consiences are more venal than sincere, and who have sold their judgements and decisions, which ought to be revered by all the Christian world, and have now suilied the reputation they Ep. xx. lib. vi.p974. had established for faith and sincerity by infamous avarice."
Agrippa was accused of having been a magician and sorcerer, and in compact with the devil; but we shall not offer such an affront to the understandings of our readers as to aim at clearing him from this imputation[1]. However, as Mr.Bayle
- ↑ Paulus Jovius tells us, that Agrippa had always a devil attending him, in the shape of a black dog: that when he was dying, being advised to repent, he pulled from the dog's neck a collar, studded with nails which formed some necromantic inscription, and said to him, "Get away, thou wretched beast, which art the cause of my total destruction." The dog ran away to the river Soane, and leaped in, and was never seen more. In Elogiis, cap. xi.Martin del Rio fays, that when he travelled, he used to pay money at the inns, which seemed very good, but in a few days it appeared to be pieces of horn of
