Excerpt from History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, Vol. 1
The very charms of our secular historians have done much to throw church history and historians into the shade. In childhood we are fascinated with the spirit-stirring annals of Greece and Rome, and as we advance in years, Hume, Robertson, Gibbon, &c. Tend to con firm the illusion that while secular events form the staple of history, the memorials of that body to which all worldly things are subordin ated in the Divine counsels, and which is destined to surpass all earthly empires in duration and glory, are merely adventitious and episodical.
Some of our histories of particular periods and churches, and many of our ecclesiastical biographies, are admirable of their kind. But, neither together nor separately, do they supply the place of more extensive works. No where do we find so long and important a period as the sixteenth century, treated with the fulness which it receives in the pages of this Genevan historian.
If any be prejudiced against this work because written by a foreigner, be it remembered that this very circumstance is attended with peculiar advantages. Residing at one time in Germany, at an other in Belgium, settling finally at Geneva, and frequently visiting France, the author has had manifest facilities for collecting his materi als, and by familiarity with some of the most important scenes of the Reformation, he has been enabled to describe these with much of the animation and graphic power of an eye-witness.
In the scenic effect of many of his descriptions, and the dramatic turn which his narrative derives from a frequent use of the present tense, ’ the author may offend the taste of many of his readers on this side of the Channel, and the same persons will probably complain that.
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