If ever the Spirit of God has
shone upon the Church, then surely is the time for the sending of
divine aid, when the most manifest religiousness, ripeness of
judgment, science, wisdom, dignity of all the Churches on earth
have flocked together in one city, and with employment of all
means, divine and human, for the investigation of truth, implore
the promised Spirit that they may make wholesome and prudent
decrees. Let there now leap to the front some mannikin master of
an heretical faction, let him arch his eyebrows, turn up his
nose, rub his forehead, and scurrilously take upon himself to
judge his judges, what sport, what ridicule will he excite! There
was found a Luther to say that he preferred to Councils the
opinions of two godly and learned men (say his own and Philip
Melanchthon's) when they agreed in the name of Christ. Oh what
quackery! There was found a Kemnitz to try the Council of Trent
by the standard of his own rude and giddy humour. What gained he
thereby? Infamy. While he, unless he takes care, shall be buried
with Arius, the Synod of Trent, the older it grows, shall
flourish the more, day by day, and year by year. Good God! what
variety of nations, what a choice assembly of Bishops of the
whole world, what a splendid representation of Kings and
Commonwealths, what a quintessence of theologians, what sanctity,
what tears, what fears, what flowers of Universities, what
tongues, what subtlety, what labour, what infinite reading, what
wealth of virtues and of studies filled that august sanctuary! I
have myself heard Bishops, eminent and prudent men,--and among
them Antony, Archbishop of Prague, by whom I was made
Priest,--exulting that they had attended such a school for some
years; so that, much as they owed to Kaiser Ferdinand, they
considered that he had shown them no more royal and abundant
bounty than this of sending them to sit in that Academy of Trent
as Legates from Bohemia.
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