repent, He will surely visit you." So ended the disputation.

We cannot be surprised that it did no good.

"A man convinced against his will,

Is of the same opinion still;"

and in spite of the victory of the Helmstadt Protestant, Herr Klencke went over to Rome.

the young

causes;

The results of such a step are not unknown to us. We have seen in our own days the excitement it the hopes on one side, the dismay on the other. But to realize the feelings which this conversion occasioned, we must realize the intensity (even greater than now) of the hatred which then ruled between Rome and her enemies. Men stood before the threshold of the Thirty Years' War. Religion was fast ripening into that dread watch-word which was to deluge all Germany, for a generation, in blood. The adhesion, therefore, or non-adhesion of a powerful family was a question not of theology, (nor even general politics,) but of personal interest to all around. It might become, perhaps, a question of life or death, to the district. No wonder, then, that the conversion of young Klencke to Rome was made matter for discussion in the highest quarters. The reigning Duke of Brunswick was then about to be married to the Princess Anna Sophia of Brandenburg. The wedding festivities took place at Wolfenbüttel within a very few days of the Hämalschenburg disputation. What more natural than that Friedrich Ulrich (the pupil of Caselius and Martini at Helmstadt, and interested, therefore, in the views of their school) should feel pleasure in the victory of its most promising disciple; and speak of him, as such, to those now crowding around him? "Hofmann and

Pfafrad couldn't have done this.

He is the sort of person we want in these times; he must go to Helmstadt e."

In this, then, lay the result of the Klencke disputation; it set Calixtus before the world as a man of mark. He was summoned to Wolfenbüttel to wait upon the Duke; and received from him, shortly afterwards, a vacant professorship. On the 12th of December, 1614, a rescript was issued in the Duke's name, informing the University of his nomination, and calling upon the authorities to receive him fitly. "We have constituted and received our worthy and well-learned liegeman Master George Calixtus to be our Professor of Theology in our Julian University: of our grace requiring that ye will not only recognise, honour and hold him for such, but also as soon as possible assign him work," &c.

The Anti-Melanchthons at Helmstadt were furious. They had already bent envious eyes on Calixtus. They had even made complaints, or rather grumblings concerning him, on plea of his mispronouncing some Lutheran Shibboleth; and now, therefore, though they could not deny his merits; though when asked officially -for the information of the Consistorium-they were fain to answer that "they knew nothing in him to blame as to learning, life or morals, but could well give good testimony concerning him;" adding too "that they had no doubts whatever in regard to his erudition and diligence (exhibited a long time in his private lectures); that in promptitude and dexterity of public teaching he was not lacking; but could discharge the duties of the post committed to him, with honour f;"-they yet contrived to raise a controversial e Henke, i. 172. f Ibid., i. 174.

din which would have frightened one less resolute than the young Duke-Bridegroom.

Pfafrad and Sattlers were the chief conspirators; the latter, (so at least it was then supposed,) because he wanted the appointment for a nephew. But reason is not quite extinct in the world; and some of the party began soon to discover that they were likely to reap little from their factious opposition, but bitterness and disunion in future years. The cabal, therefore, came (for this time) to an end.

Calixtus was sworn into office as Ordinary Professor of Theology on the 18th of January, 1615. He was then twenty-eight years old.

The wrath of his adversaries has been described. How long it lasted we have curious proof in the following quaint letter from a friend of his at Wolfenbüttel, written a full year (or more) after the appointment was completed.

"Dear Magister Calixtus,-Folks have been casting a rare bell about you here; and they have brought so much metal to it and worked so hard that they sweat. But I rather suspect that their labour will be in vain; that the bell cracked in the mould, and has not turned out as the worthies wished. How could it be otherwise? what is stronger than truth? what weaker and more transitory than lies? Don't be afraid. It will all come right in the end. Yet inasmuch as the General Consistorium has been convened chiefly on your account, and that they wanted to make you out to be a heretic and a Calvinist, I should like, in strict confidence, to hear what has been done; and I beg you,

8 Pfafrad and Sattler-as well as Hofmann above-mentioned-were strong adherents of the Ramist school.

h Eine Glocke giessen: a German proverb for hatching gossip.

therefore, to be so kind as to let me know this, in cipher i "

So Calixtus was now, (in spite of them,) a Professor at Helmstadt. It was a great event, in every view: "I congratulate you," wrote one of his friends, “and I congratulate the Christian religion. Yourself, because you have attained to a position, from whence. your remarkable learning may be more clearly seen, and may shine out before everybody to the honour and advancement of true religion. Religion itself too I congratulate; because I see that a beginning is being made towards the choice of such men to support her cause, as unite with theology good learning. The force of this latter word you know k."

i Briefwechsel, p. 6.

Göttingen MSS., i. 239, in Henke, i. 305, note 1.

CALI

CHAPTER X.

Calixtus a Professor.

YALIXTUS is, from this point onwards, a fixture. Whatever of change ruled the world around him, he himself remained, (outwardly at least,) the same. The distresses of his day did not leave him unscathed. In material interests, and in mental discomfort, he paid the penalty of those troublous times. But Helmstadt was henceforth to be his home, and the work of a professor his life's employment. Using, therefore, his accession to this employment as a resting-place, we may cast a hasty glance over the state of Europe and the circumstances which were to surround our friend's career.

Disintegration was the law of the age. In this lay its misery. It may indeed be true that the undefined and the general can only be developed in its finer proportions by a perpetual process of subdivision and severance; yet the process itself can never be otherwise than painful; and the Church especially must feel it a grievance, when those who should "speak the same thing," are struggling together about points of detail. Such a strife may be one of the conditions of progress; nay, an evidence of a ripening towards that rich diversity which marks God's world as well in mind as matter. But the transition-state is bitterness. Nothing more distressful to individual men; nothing more destructive of public peace. How this was illus