BEZA AS A TRANSLATOR: HIS PERVERSIONS OF THE WORD OF GOD.

The Holy Bible, According to the Authorized Version (A. D. 1611). With an Explanatory and Critical Commentary, and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter, Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. New Testament, Vol. I., St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1878. Royal 8vo.

Η Καινή Διαθήκη κ. τ. λ. Novum Testamentum D. Ν. Jesu Christi Graeco-Latinum, Theodoro Beza interprete. Tiguri (ex typographeo Bodmeriano), 1671.

N preparing the way to treat of the corruptions or deliberate mistranslations that disfigure all English Bibles outside of the Church, it was impossible to omit mention of the great "Reformer" of Wittemberg. He was the immediate founder of the school of modern heretical mistranslation, though only virtually the inventor of the new exegesis, which seeks to destroy the Bible under pretext of investigating its meaning. And in a former article we have laid before our readers sufficient evidence, not only from his practice but also from his avowed principles, that he considered it his right to treat the Word of God as suited his humor or the interests of his theological system, omitting, altering, or adding to its words and falsifying its sense. To the examples alleged might have been added a hundred others.

But there is another great "Reformer" and propagator of the New Gospel, who must on no account be overlooked; for he was a master in this wicked art of mistranslation, and his influence on

1 A Protestant divine has lately cautioned his brethren to avoid the use of the words "Reformation" and " Reformers," in their controversial dealings with Catholics. And his reason is that the latter, if they are conscientiously attached to their belief, must resent any imputation that it could have been reformed, that is, changed for the better. The advice was given, no doubt, with kindly, charitable intent, and we thank the author for it. But Catholics have so long heard these words that they have become indifferent to them, and have themselves no scruple to use them in their technical sense, as indicating individuals or an epoch, without going behind this outward meaning. They use them, so to speak, with quotation marks, either expressed or understood. We rather think the word has its advantages for those who are disposed to reflect seriously. Its latent blasphemy will soon be made plain to whoever soberly investigates its full force of meaning. It virtually says that the work of the Divine Architect and his inspired Apostles was clumsy patchwork, needing human repairs to prevent it from falling to pieces. What is this but to deny God's wisdom or God's power? The human element in the Church is in perpetual need of reformation or improvement, and will so remain to the day of judgment. But the divine element, the body of doctrine and morals bequeathed by Christ to His Church, of its nature, and further by divine promise, is irreformable, and the system which pretends to reform His work carries its absurdity with it in its very name.

the labors of English heterodox interpreters was perhaps far greater than that of Luther. We mean Theodore Beza. And to understand the career of this reforming Bible-interpreter, some idea of his early life is necessary. In the gay and reckless youth who showed himself now and then in the law-schools of Orleans, or in the fashionable fop whose amours formed the gossip of Parisian society towards the close of the first half of the sixteenth century,' none of his associates would have recognized the future friend and successor of the prophet of Geneva, the religious politician who was one day to figure in scenes of conspiracy and bloody war, the astute theologian who was to prop up the most revolting features of Calvinism by gloss and commentary and, when needed, by mistranslation and perversion of God's Holy Word. The law-studies of the embryo jurist were the veriest sham. Not Minerva and Themis, but Venus and Flora were his tutelary deities. He turned aside with abhorrence from the dreary pages2 of Bartolo and Baldo, and found more genial sources of inspiration in the licentious muse of Catullus and Martial. His series of poems begun in Orleans and continued at Paris, in imitation of such models, reflects more perhaps of their lubricity than of their poetic coloring; and we can only smile at the apology or evasion afterwards used by the grave theologian of fifty to account for the sins of his youth. He says that, though he was pained by the moral filth of those old poets, and therefore compelled to read them with half-averted eyes, yet his incautious admiration of their wit and elegance induced him to do his best to resemble them in style; which excuse the Anglican biographer of Calvin disposes of with this brief comment: "A fine piece of prudish hypocrisy !" What would Mr. Dyer have said had he adverted to another excuse given in the same preface, in which Beza pretends that while composing these loose poems he did not understand what he was writing about, because of his tender age 5

1 Beza's course of study in Orleans extended from the fifteenth to the twentieth year of his age (1534-39); his sojourn in Paris from that year to his twenty-ninth (1539-48), in which he fled to Geneva.

This same thought he expressed by a happily-coined word, when living some years amid the gayeties of Parisian life, in a letter to his friend Pomponius Macutus (Pompon Maclot)," Mihi quidem nunquam libebit Bagrono@andı?sv."

3 Beza's words are taken from his preface to the second edition of his poems, published by Stephanus, in 1569: Etsi enim, quod vere dico, illorum obscoenitate sic offendebar ut oculos etiam ipsos a quibusdam inter legendum averterem, tamen, ut illa ætate non satis cautus, ita illius quidem melle, istius vero salibus capiebar, ut in scribendo quam simillimus eôrum (de ipso charactere loquor) evadere studerem." Life of Calvin, by Thos. H. Dyer, London (Murray), 1850, p. 244.

5 Not having the full Latin original we give this passage as translated by the friendly hand of a Calvinist: "Iene Edlen aber schämen sich nicht Alles, was ich in dicterischem Spiel (denn ein solches trieb mich ganz gewiss bei den meisten dieser Poesien,

If this story were true, the innocence of the young student might be edifying, though in a well-taught Christian lad of sixteen or eighteen summers it could scarce be counted a prodigy. But it was not true either in fact or argument. And we can only pity the straits to which the theologian and "Evangelist" (as they called him) of riper years was reduced when called on to account for the wild sallies of his youth. He would have the world believe that the poems in question were written before his twentieth year. He had said, this once,' in his preface to the second edition of his poems, not only to remove the charge of immorality, but also, perhaps, with an author's vanity, and to forestall mere literary criticism, as the book was now obtaining a wider circle of readers. And consistency as well as shame made him stick to the statement. He repeated it again in his sixtieth year (1578). But the repetition of the assertion did not make it any the more credible. It met always the same smile of incredulous derision from his Lutheran and Catholic opponents. Nor has it found favor with his adherents and coreligionists of our day. Even Baum, his panegyrist rather than biographer, is forced to admit that Beza from interested motives has assigned a false date to these licentious effusions of his youth. With the modesty of a devotee, yet with the frankness of an impartial historian, he "ventures" to deny the truth of Beza's assertion."

welche ich, die Alten nachahmend, verfertigt, ehe ich selber Altershalben verstand was das bedeute) von den Liebeleien jener poetischen Candida geschrieben, auf die keusche, auserwählte Gattin zu beziehen." Theodor Beza nach handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt von Johan Wilh. Baum, Leipzig, 1843, p. 78. In addition to the silly excuse, he here adroitly manages to misstate the true issue between himself and his adversaries, Catholic and Lutheran.

1 In his letter dedicating the Juvenilia (2d edition) to Wolmar: "Hic (at Orleans) a me intra annum ætatis vicesimum perscripta fere sunt omnia poemata quæ aliquot post annos edidi." (Baum's Beza, p. 29.) Melchior (or as Beza affectedly calls him, Melior) Wolmar was the teacher by whom Beza had been seduced into Lutheranism, as the new religion was then called in France.

2 "Fast alle Gedichte dieser Art (the poems addressed to Candida) tragen einen Charakter von Intimität, welcher viel besser auf seine spätern pariser Verhältnisse passt als auf die in Orleans. Ich wage dies zu behaupten gegen die ausdrücklichen Worte Beza's," 1. c. p. 29. He goes on to explain how Beza's position later in life, and the attacks of his enemies MAY (how kind this little word, but how untrue!) have moved him to antedate the poems as far back as possible. Die spätere stellung des Mannes, die Jesuitische Anklagsucht und Anderes, MAG ihn bewogen haben diese Arbeiten so früh als möglich zu setzen." When your anti-Catholic combatant is sore beset, he never fails to fall back on the Jesuits for assistance. Surely, no Jesuit ever distinguished himself by assaulting Beza. The Launays, Bolsecs, Castalios, and Remonds were not members of the Order. And it would be hard to find any one, Jesuit or not, who has said more to the injury of Beza's character than the Lutheran theologians, from the fiery Schlussemberg (in his Theologia Calviniana) to the impartial biographer Schlosser, in our own day. That ugly compound of prevarication, fraud, evasion, mental reservation, etc., to which calumny has affixed the name of

Had Beza in his younger days been taken to task for his verses, he would in all probability have imitated his lewd Pagan masters, put on a bold face, and defiantly maintained that moral soundness was the duty of the poet himself, but not of his strains, which might be good or wicked as he chose to make them, and that their so-called wickedness only gave them an additional charm of elegance :

Nam castum esse decet pium poetam

Ipsum: Versiculos nihil necesse est,

Qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,

Si sint molliculi ac parum pudici.

Or he might have argued that his verse could not be fairly taken as an index to his life, and that his poetic flights might follow a very different path from his daily walk and conversation. Or with still greater effrontery, like him of Sulmona, he might have rushed at once from theory to fact and boldly maintained that his muse was naughty but his life beyond reproach.

Crede mihi, mores distant a carmine nostro;
Vita verecunda est, musa jocosa mihi,'

But what might have passed unheeded in the mouth of the young debauchee of Paris would have roused the indignation of all religious men through Europe, and have probably led to inquiries and fatal discoveries if uttered at Geneva by the elderly theologian and Pontiff of the Reformed Church.

Unquestionably, Beza's life, as Dyer3 says, was as free as his verses. And Schlosser1 intimates plainly enough that the early career of this young gallant would have furnished an ample field for confession had he been disposed later in life, or had the circumstances in which he was placed allowed him, to imitate the candor of an Augustine. His plea of youthful ignorance during his student

Jesuitism, was never better exemplified than in the daily life and actions of the leading Reformers, both on the Continent of Europe and in Great Britain, as impartial history bears witness.

1 Trist, II, 353

This was the name by which Beza was generally known in Germany. At the conference of Mompelgard with the Lutherans, when Beza was unwilling to come to definite action, saying that a few theologians might agree on articles of faith, but the two Churches (Lutheran and Calvinist) would not accept their decision, Andreae, the Tübingen Superintendent, answered him: "Fear not. They call me the German (Lutheran) Pope, and you are known as the Pope of the French. Let us put our heads together and agree, and all the Bishops under us will follow." This anecdote is told by Beza himself. Nor was it all a joke on the part of Andreae, for he seems to have entertained a high idea of his own power and infallibility. Apud Baum, p. 63.

Ibid., p. 244

life in Orleans (to which period he would restrict the composition of his Juvenilia) is worth nothing to any one who has read Beza's own accounts of the condition of things in the law-school of that city, or who is acquainted with the horrible immorality of nearly all the universities at that period, and those especially in which Lutheranism was established, or into which it was beginning to creep. No innocence, no tender age was likely to be a safeguard against the prevailing corruption. They were wholesale sinks of immorality, and were so denounced in private and public even by the ministers of the new religion. The year after Beza left Orleans, Rudolph Gualterius (Walther), writing to Bullinger,' gives a fearful picture of the students and professors of the University of Marburg. The same was no less true of Rostock, Jena, Frankfort, Tübingen (styled by its own superintendent a new Sodom and Gomorrah), Helmstadt, Koenigsberg, and others. Wittemberg, where Luther lived, preached, and taught by word and example, enjoyed the bad preeminence that well became the birthplace and chief seat of the new religion, which taught, amongst other things, that good works were unnecessary, and perhaps a hindrance to salvation. Preachers, like Musæus, who had seen the results of Wittemberg education, denounced the place from their pulpits as the Devil's own foul cesspool (eine stinkende Cloake des Teufels). They warned parents, as they valued their own and their children's salvation, not to send their sons to that den of iniquity. It were far better, said another from his pulpit, that a mother should plunge a dagger into her son's heart, or consign him at once to a house of public infamy, than send him to Wittemberg. Camerarius had already, in 1536, consulted Luther whether it would not be better to abolish all public schools in Lutheran Germany, since they had become so many hiding-places for vice and iniquity. Melanchthon used to say with

1 This letter was first published by Fuesslin in the middle of the last century, in his Beyträge zur Erläuterung der Kirchen-Reformations-Geschichten des Schweitzerlandes, Zurich, 1742-1758. His words are: "Disciplina morum hic talis est, qualem Bacchadibus suis Lyaeus et Cupidinibus Venus præscripsit. . . . Sed cur non his uterentur moribus discipuli, cum maxima professorum pars hæc soleat?" "The law of morals here is such as the God of wine would lay down for his Bacchants, and Venus for her Cupids.... But why should the students act otherwise when such are the morals of most of the professors?" Not long after William, Landgrave of Hesse, in whose territory lay Marburg University, wrote a letter to the Duke of Holstein, begging him to forego his purpose of sending his son there, because (as he mildly stated the case) its morals were not the best (weil daselbst die Sitten nicht zum Bessten wären).

See the authorities given in full by Döllinger: Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkungen, Regensburg, 1848, vol. i. pp. 230, 506-21.

Ego quidem sæpe cogito, an non satius sit nullas esse publicas scholas, quam hoc otium quasi asylum improbitati et vitiis constitutum. Ep. ad Luth, apud Döllinger 1. c. p. 525.