The Radical Resurgence

by Loraine Boettner

We must now consider an event in the life of Calvin which to a certain extent has cast a shadow over his fair name and which has exposed him to the charge of intolerance and persecution. We refer to the death of Servetus which occurred in Geneva during the period of Calvin’s work there. That it was a mistake is admitted by all. History knows only one spotless being—the Savior of sinners. All others have marks of infirmity written which forbid idolatry.

Calvin has, however, often been criticized with undue severity as though the responsibility rested upon him alone, when as a matter of fact Servetus was given a court trial lasting over two months and was sentenced by the full session of the civil Council, and that in accordance with the laws which were then recognized throughout Christendom. And, far from urging that the sentence be made more severe, Calvin urged that the sword be substituted for the fire, but was overruled. Calvin and the men of his time are not to be judged strictly and solely by the advanced standards of our twentieth century, but must to a certain extent be considered in the light of their own sixteenth century. We have seen great developments in regard to civil and religious toleration, prison reform, abolition of slavery and the slave trade, feudalism, witch burning, improvement of the conditions of the poor, etc., which are the late but genuine results of Christian teachings. The error of those who advocated and practiced what would be considered intolerance today, was the general error of the age. It should not, in fairness, be permitted to give an unfavorable impression of their character and motives, and much less should it be allowed to prejudice us against their doctrines on other and more important subjects.

The Protestants had just thrown off the yoke of Rome and in their struggle to defend themselves they were often forced to fight intolerance with intolerance. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries public opinion in all European countries justified the right and duty of civil governments to protect and support orthodoxy and to punish heresy, holding that obstinate heretics and blasphemers should be made harmless by death if necessary. Protestants differed from Romanists mainly in their definition of heresy, and by greater moderation in its punishment. Heresy was considered a sin against society, and in some cases as worse than murder; for while murder only destroyed the body, heresy destroyed the soul. Today we have swung to the other extreme and public opinion manifests a latitudinarian indifference toward truth or error. During the eighteenth century the reign of intolerance was gradually undermined. Protestant England and Holland took the lead in extending civil and religious liberty, and the Constitution of the United States completed the theory by putting all Christian denominations on a parity before the law and guaranteeing them the full enjoyment of equal rights.

Calvin’s course in regard to Servetus was fully approved by all the leading Reformers of the time. Melanchthon, the theological head of the Lutheran Church, fully and repeatedly justified the course of Calvin and the Council of Geneva, and even held them up as models for imitation. Nearly a year after the death of Servetus he wrote to Calvin: “I have read your book, in which you clearly refuted the horrid blasphemies of Servetus…. To you the Church owes gratitude at the present moment, and will owe it to the latest posterity. I perfectly assent to your opinion. I affirm also that your magistrates did right in punishing, after regular trial, this blasphemous man.” Bucer, who ranks third among the Reformers in Germany, Bullinger, the close friend and worthy successor of Zwingli, as well as Farel and Beza in Switzerland, supported Calvin. Luther and Zwingli were dead at this time and it may be questioned whether they would have approved this execution or not, although Luther and the theologians of Wittenberg had approved of death sentences for some Anabaptists in Germany whom they considered dangerous heretics, adding that it was cruel to punish them, but more cruel to allow them to damn the ministry of the Word and destroy the kingdom of the world; and Zwingli had not objected to a death sentence against a group of six Anabaptists in Switzerland. Public opinion has undergone a great change in regard to this event, and the execution of Servetus which was fully approved by the best men in the sixteenth century is entirely out of harmony with our twentieth century ideas.

As stated before, the Roman Catholic Church in this period was desperately intolerant toward Protestants; and the Protestants, to a certain extent and in self-defense, were forced to follow their example. In regard to Catholic persecutions Philip Schaff writes as follows:

We need only refer to crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, which were sanctioned by Innocent III, one of the best and greatest of popes; the tortures and autos-da-fé; of the Spanish Inquisition, which were celebrated with religious festivities; and fifty thousand or more Protestants who were executed during the reign of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands (1567-1573); the several hundred martyrs who were burned in Smithfield under the reign of bloody Mary; and the repeated wholesale persecutions of the innocent Waldenses in France and Piedmont, which cried to heaven for vengeance. It is vain to shift the responsibility upon the civil government. Pope Gregory XIII commemorated the massacre of St. Bartholomew not only by a Te Deum in the churches of Rome, but more deliberately and permanently by a medal which represents “The Slaughter of the Huguenots” by an angel of wrath.2

And then Dr. Schaff continues:

The Roman Church has lost the power, and to a large extent also the disposition, to persecute by fire and sword. Some of her highest dignitaries frankly disown the principle of persecution, especially in America, where they enjoy the full benefits of religious freedom. But the Roman curia has never officially disowned the theory on which the practice of persecution is based. On the contrary, several popes since the Reformation have endorsed it…. Pope Pius IX., in the Syllabus of 1864, expressly condemned, among the errors of this age, the doctrine of religious toleration and liberty. And this pope has been declared to be officially infallible by the Vatican decree of 1870, which embraces all of his predecessors (notwithstanding the stubborn case of Honorius I) and all his successors in the chair of St. Peter.3

And in another place Dr. Schaff adds, “If Romanists condemned Calvin, they did it from hatred of the man, and condemned him for following their own example even in this particular case.”

Servetus was a Spaniard and opposed Christianity, whether in its Roman Catholic or Protestant form. Schaff refers to him as “a restless fanatic, a pantheistic pseudo-reformer, and the most audacious and even blasphemous heretic of the sixteenth century.”4 And in another instance Schaff declares that Servetus was “proud, defiant, quarrelsome, revengeful, irreverent in the use of language, deceitful, and mendacious,” and adds that he abused popery and the Reformers alike with unreasonable language.5 Bullinger declares that if Satan himself should come out of hell, he could use no more blasphemous language against the Trinity than this Spaniard. The Roman Catholic Bolsec, in his work on Calvin, calls Servetus “a very arrogant and insolent man,” “a monstrous heretic,” who deserved to be exterminated.

Servetus had fled to Geneva from Vienne, France; and while the trial at Geneva was in progress the Council received a message from the Catholic judges in Vienne together with a copy of the sentence of death which had been passed against him there, asking that he be sent back in order that the sentence might be executed on him as it had already been executed on his effigy and books. This request the Council refused but promised to do full justice. Servetus himself preferred to be tried in Geneva, since he could see only a burning funeral pyre for himself in Vienne. The communication from Vienne probably made the Council in Geneva more zealous for orthodoxy since they did not wish to be behind the Roman Church in that respect.

Before going to Geneva, Servetus had urged himself upon the attention of Calvin through a long series of letters. For a time Calvin replied to these in considerable detail, but finding no satisfactory results were being accomplished he ceased. Servetus, however, continued writing and his letters took on a more arrogant and even insulting tone. He regarded Calvin as the pope of orthodox Protestantism, whom he was determined to convert or overthrow. At the time Servetus came to Geneva the Libertine party, which was in opposition to Calvin, was in control of the city Council. Servetus apparently planned to join this party and thus drive Calvin out. Calvin apparently sensed this danger and was in no mood to permit Servetus to propagate his errors in Geneva. Hence he considered it his duty to make so dangerous a man harmless, and determined to bring him either to recantation or to deserved punishment. Servetus was promptly arrested and brought to trial. Calvin conducted the theological part of the trial and Servetus was convicted of fundamental heresy, falsehood and blasphemy. During the long trial Servetus became emboldened and attempted to overwhelm Calvin by pouring upon him the coarsest kind of abuse.6 The outcome of the trial was left to the civil court, which pronounced the sentence of death by fire. Calvin made an ineffectual plea that the sword be substituted for the fire; hence the final responsibility for the burning rests with the Council.

Dr. Emilé Doumergue, the author of Jean Calvin, which is beyond comparison the most exhaustive and authoritative work ever published on Calvin, has the following to say about the death of Servetus:

Calvin had Servetus arrested when he came to Geneva, and appeared as his accuser. He wanted him to be condemned to death, but not to death by burning. On August 20, 1553, Calvin wrote to Farel: “I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death, but I desire that he should be spared the cruelty of the punishment”—he means that of fire. Farel replied to him on September 8th: “I do not greatly approve that tenderness of heart,” and he goes on to warn him to be careful that “in wishing that the cruelty of the punishment of Servetus be mitigated, thou art acting as a friend towards a man who is thy greatest enemy. But I pray thee to conduct thyself in such a manner that, in future, no one will have the boldness to publish such doctrines, and to give trouble with impunity for so long a time as this man has done.”

Calvin did not, on this account, modify his own opinion, but he could not make it prevail. On October 26th he wrote again to Farel: “Tomorrow Servetus will be led out to execution. We have done our best to change the kind of death, but in vain. I shall tell thee when we meet why we had no success.” (Opera, XIV, pp. 590, 613-657).

Thus, what Calvin is most of all reproached with—the burning of Servetus—Calvin was quite opposed to. He is not responsible for it. He did what he could to save Servetus from mounting the pyre. But, what reprimands, more or less eloquent, has this pyre with its flames and smoke given rise to, made room for! The fact is that without the pyre the death of Servetus would have passed almost unnoticed.

Doumergue goes on to tell us that the death of Servetus was “the error of the time, an error for which Calvin was not particularly responsible. The sentence of condemnation to death was pronounced only after consultation with the Swiss Churches, several of which were far from being on good terms with Calvin (but all of which gave their consent) . . . Besides, the judgment was pronounced by a Council in which the inveterate enemies of Calvin, the free thinkers, were in the majority.”7

That Calvin himself rejected the responsibility is clear from his later writings. “From the time that Servetus was convicted of his heresy,” said he, “I have not uttered a word about his punishment, as all honest men will bear witness.”8 And in one of his later replies to an attack which had been made upon him, he says:

For what particular act of mine you accuse me of cruelty I am anxious to know. I myself know not that act, unless it be with reference to the death of your great master, Servetus. But that I myself earnestly entreated that he might not be put to death his judges themselves are witnesses, in the number of whom at that time two were his staunch favorites and defenders.9

Before the arrest of Servetus and during the earlier stages of the trial Calvin advocated the death penalty, basing his argument mainly on the Mosaic law, which was, “He that blasphemeth the name of Jehovah, he shall surely be put to death” (Lev. 24:16)—a law which Calvin considered as binding as the decalogue and applicable to heresy as well. Yet he left the passing of sentence wholly to the civil council. He considered Servetus the greatest enemy of the Reformation and honestly believed it to be the right and duty of the State to punish those who offended against the Church. He also felt himself providentially called to purify the Church of all corruptions, and to his dying day he never changed his views nor regretted his conduct toward Servetus.

Dr. Abraham Kuyper, the statesman-theologian from Holland, in speaking to an American audience not many years ago expressed some thoughts in this connection which are worth repeating. Said he:

The duty of the government to extirpate every form of false religion and idolatry was not a find of Calvinism, but dates from Constantine the Great and was the reaction against the horrible persecutions which his pagan predecessors on the Imperial throne had inflicted upon the sect of the Nazarene. Since that day this system had been defended by all Romish theologians and applied by all Christian princes. In the time of Luther and Calvin, it was a universal conviction that that system was the true one. Every famous theologian of the period, Melanchthon first of all, approved of the death by fire of Servetus; and the scaffold, which was erected by the Lutherans, at Leipzig for Kreel, the thorough Calvinist, was infinitely more reprehensible when looked at from a Protestant standpoint.

But whilst the Calvinists, in the age of the Reformation, yielded up themselves as martyrs, by tens of thousands, to the scaffold and the stake (those of the Lutherans and Roman Catholics being hardly worth counting), history has been guilty of the great and far-reaching unfairness of ever casting in their teeth this one execution by fire of Servetus as a crimen nefandum.

Notwithstanding all this I not only deplore that one stake, but I unconditionally disapprove of it; yet not as if it were the expression of a special characteristic of Calvinism, but on the contrary as the fatal after effect of a system, grey with age, which Calvinism found in existence, under which it had grown up, and from which it had not yet been able entirely to liberate itself.10

Hence when we view this affair in the light of the sixteenth century and consider these different aspects of the case, namely, the approval of the other reformers, a public opinion which abhorred toleration as involving indifference to truth and which justified the death penalty for obstinate heresy and blasphemy, the sentence also passed on Servetus by the Roman Catholic authorities, the character of Servetus and his attitude toward Calvin, his going to Geneva for the purpose of causing trouble, the passing of sentence by a civil court not under Calvin’s control, and Calvin’s appeal for a lighter form of punishment, we come to the conclusion that there were numerous extenuating circumstances, and that whatever else may be said, Calvin himself acted from a strict sense of duty. View him from any angle you please; paint him as Cromwell asked himself to be painted “warts and all” and, as Schaff has said, “He improves upon acquaintance.” He was, beyond all question, a man sent from God, a world shaker, such as appears only a few times in the history of the world.

Notes

Notes

1. This article is excerpted from Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination(Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1932), pages 412-419.
2. Schaff, History of the Swiss Reformation, Volume II, page 698.
3. Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Volume I, page 464.
4. Schaff, Swiss Reformation, page 669.
5. Schaff, , Volume II, page 787.
6. Reference: Schaff, , page 778.
7. Doumergue, article: “What Ought to be Known About Calvin,” Evangelical Quarterly, January, 1929.
8. Opera, VIII., page 461.
9. Calvin’s Calvinism, page 346.
10. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, page 129

Dr. Boettner was born on a farm in northwest Missouri. He was a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (Th.B., 1928; Th.M., 1929), where he studied Systematic Theology under the late Dr. C. W. Hodge. Previously he had graduated from Tarkio College, Missouri, and had taken a short course in Agriculture at the University of Missouri. In 1933 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, and in 1957 the degree of Doctor of Literature. He taught Bible for eight years in Pikeville College, Kentucky. A resident of Washington, D.C., eleven years and of Los Angeles three years. His home was in Rock Port, Missouri. His other books include: Roman Catholicism, Studies in Theology, Immortality, and The Millennium.

A common quotation from “Augustine”?

The question most commonly bouncing off the Internet wall to me about Augustine is the source of the following quotation: “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.” In late 2004, I have seen the quotation, unattributed, on a brass plaque outside the front door of the national headquarters of The Grange, 1616 H Street NW, in Washington DC.

This page has now an interesting history. If you read down, you will see the sequence of scholarly discovery, first in 1997 when a colleague brought new material to me, then in 2010, when a kindly and learned web-stranger brought still new material. The story grows more interesting and is well worth reading to the end.

The quotation seems to have gotten into circulation as something attributed to Augustine, and so I am asked the source. I cannot find the text in Augustine’s own texts, nor does it sound Augustinian to me, but it is clearly popular. So I went on a web-crawl. To my surprise, delight, and then bemusement, I found that this quotation is a pan-denominational maxim, quoted as authoritative in a dizzying variety of incompatible Christian traditions. The closest I came to a source was Wesley, until I found a specific reference to John XXIII’s first encyclical, Ad Petri cathedram of 1959. I cannot find the Latin text on-line, but the English translation is available, whence this quotation, its paragraph 72:

But the common saying, expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors, must be recalled with approval: in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.

I take that as suggesting that the Vatican’s own scribes and scholars cannot find a sure attribution.

8 September 1997: Thanks to Prof. Gerald Schlabach of Bluffton College, I now have the following report, more than a century old, which gives the saying a seventeenth-century date:

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7, pp. 650-653 (repr. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1965)

It was during the fiercest dogmatic controversies and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, that a prophetic voice whispered to future generations tile watchword of Christian peacemakers, which was unheeded in a century of intolerance, and forgotten in a century of indifference, but resounds with increased force in a century of revival and re-union:

“IN ESSENTIALS UNITY, IN NON-ESSENTIALS LIBERTY, IN ALL THINGS CHARITY.

NOTE

On the Origin of the Sentence: “In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis (or, dubiis) libertas, in utrisque (or, omnibus) caritas.”

This famous motto of Christian Irenics, which I have slightly modified in the text, is often falsely attributed to St. Augustin (whose creed would not allow it, though his heart might have approved of it), but is of much later origin. It appears for the first time in Germany, A.D. 1627 and 1628, among peaceful divines of the Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and found a hearty welcome among moderate divines In England.

The authorship has recently been traced to RUPERTUS MELDENIUS an otherwise unknown divine, and author of a remarkable tract in which the sentence first occurs. He gave classical expression to the irenic sentiments of such divines as Calixtus of Helmstadt, David Pareus of Heidelberg, Crocius of Marburg, John Valentin Andreae of Wuerttemberg, John Arnd of Zelle, Georg Frank of Francfort-on-the-Oder, the brothers Bergius in Brandenburg, and of the indefatigable traveling evangelist of Christian union, John Dury, and Richard Baxter. The tract of Meldenius bears the title, Paraenesis votiva pro Pace Ecclesiae ad Theologos Augustanae Confessionis, Auctore Ruperto Meldenio Theologo, 62 pp. in 4to, without date and place of publication. It probably appeared in 1627 at Francfort-on-the-Oder, which was at that time the seat of theological moderation. Mr. C. R. Gillett (librarian of the Union Theological Seminary) informs me that the original copy, which he saw in Berlin, came from the University of Francfort-on-the-Oder after its transfer to Breslau.

Dr. Luecke republished the tract, in 1860, from a reprint in Pfeiffer’s Variorum Auctorum Miscellanea Theologiae (Leipzig, 1736, pp. 136-258), as an appendix to his monograph on the subject (pp. 87-145). He afterwards compared it with a copy of the original edition in the Electoral library at Cassel. Another original copy was discovered by Dr. Klose in the city library of Hamburg (1858), and a third one by Dr. Briggs and Mr. Gillett in the royal library of Berlin (1887).

The author of this tract is an orthodox Lutheran, who was far from the idea of ecclesiastical union, but anxious for the peace of the church and zealous for practical scriptural piety in place of the dry and barren scholasticism of his time. He belongs, as Luecke says (“Stud. und Kritiken,” 1851, p. 906), to the circle of “those noble, genial, and hearty evangelical divines, like John Arnd, Valentin Andrea,, and others, who deeply felt the awful misery of the fatherland, and especially the inner distractions of the church in their age, but who knew also and pointed out the way of salvation and peace.” He was evidently a highly cultivated scholar, at home in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and in controversial theology. He excels in taste and style the forbidding literature of his age. He condemns the pharisaical hypocrisy, the philodoxia, philargia, and philoneikia of the theologians, and exhorts them first of all to humility and love. By too much controversy about the truth, we are in danger of losing the truth itself. Nimium altercando amittitur Veritas. “Many,” he says, “contend for the corporal presence of Christ who have not Christ in their hearts.” He sees no other way to concord than by rallying around the living Christ as the source of spiritual life. He dwells on the nature of God as love, and the prime duty of Christians to love one another, and comments on the seraphic chapter of Paul on charity (1 Cor. 13). He discusses the difference between necessaria and nonnecessaria. Necessary dogmas are, (1) articles of faith necessary to salvation; (2) articles derived from clear testimonies of the Bible; (3) articles decided by the whole church in a synod or symbol; (4) articles held by all orthodox divines as necessary. Not necessary, are dogmas (1) not contained in the Bible; (2) not belonging to the common inheritance of faith; (3) not unanimously taught by theologians; (4) left doubtful by grave divines; (5) not tending to piety, charity, and edification. He concludes with a defense of John Arnd (1555-1621), the famous author of “True Christianity,” against the attacks of orthodox fanatics, and with a fervent and touching prayer to Christ to come to the rescue of his troubled church (Rev. 22: 17).

The golden sentence occurs in the later half of the tract (p. 128 in Luecke’s edition), incidentally and in hypothetical form, as follows:-

“Verbo dicam: Si nos servaremus IN necesariis Unitatem, IN non-necessariis Libertatem, IN UTRISQUE Charitatem, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae.” [In a word, I’ll say it: if we preserve unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials, and charity in both, our affairs will be in the best position.]

The same sentiment, but in a shorter sententious and hortative form, occurs in a book of Gregor Frank, entitled Consideratio theologica de gravibus necessitatibus dogmatum Christianorum quibus fidei, spei et charitatis officia reguntur [Theological discussion on the most serious essentials in Christian doctrine governing the duties of faith, hope and charity], Francf. ad Oderam, 1628. Frank (1585-1661) was first a Lutheran, then a Reformed theologian, and professor at Francfort. He distinguishes three kinds of dogmas: (1) dogmas necessary for salvation: the clearly revealed truths of the Bible; (2) dogmas which are derived by clear and necessary inference from the Scriptures and held by common consent of orthodox Christendom; (3) the specific and controverted dogmas of the several confessions. He concludes the discussion with this exhortation:-

“Summa est.: Servemus IN necessariis unitatem, IN non-necessariis libertatem, IN utrisque charitatem.”

He adds, “Vincat veritas, vivat charitas, maneat libertas per Jesum Christum qui est veritas ipsa, charitas ipsa, libertas ipsa.” [Let truth prevail, let charity prevail, let liberty abide through Jesus Christ who is truth itself, charity itself, freedom itself.]

Bertheau deems it uncertain whether Meldenius or Frank was the author. But the question is decided by the express testimony of Conrad Berg, who was a colleague of Frank in the same university between 1627 and 1628, and ascribes the sentence to Meldenius.

Fifty years dater Richard Baxter, the Puritan pacificator In England, refers to the sentence, Nov. 15, 1679, In the preface to The True and Only Way of Concord of All the Christian Churches, London, 1680, In a slightly different form: “I once more repeat to you the pacificator’s old despised words, ‘Si in necessariis sit [esset] unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in charitas, optimo certo loco essent rcs nostrae.” Luecke was the first to quote this passage, but overlooked a direct reference of Baxter to Meldenius in the same tract on p. 25. This Dr. Briggs discovered, and quotes as follows:-

“Were there no more said of all this subject, but that of Rupertus Meldenius, cited by Conradus Bergius, it might end all schism if well understood and used, viz.” Then follows the sentence. Baxter also refers to Meldenius on the preceding page. This strengthens the conclusion that Meldenius was the “pacificator.” For we are referred here to the testimony of a contemporary of Meldenius. Samuel Werenfels, a distinguished irenical divine of Basel, likewise mentions Meldenius and Conrad Bergius together as ironical divines, and testes veritatis, and quotes several passages from the Paraenesis votiva.

Conrad Bergius (Berg), from whom Baxter derived his knowledge of the sentence, was professor in the university of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, and then a preacher at Bremen. He and his brother John Berg (1587-1658), court chaplain of Brandenburg, were irenical divines of tile German Reformed Church, anti moderate Calvinists. John Berg attended the Leipzig Colloquy of March, 1631, where Lutheran and Reformed divines agreed on the basis of the revised Confession of 1540 in every article of doctrine, except the corporal presence and oral manducation. The colloquy “as ill advance of the spirit of the age, and had no permanent effect See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom I. 558 sqq., and Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum in Eclesiis Reformatis publicatarum, p. LXXV. and 653-668

Dr. Briggs has investigated tile writings of Conrad Bergius and his associates in the royal library of Berlin. In his “Praxis Catholica divini canonis contra quasuis haereses et schismata,” [Catholic practice of the divine canon against whatever heresies and schisms] etc., which appeared at Bremen in 1639, Bergius concludes with the classical word of “Rupertus Meldenius Theologus,” and a brief comment on it. is quoted by Baxter in the form just given. In the autumn of 1627 Bergius preached two discourses at Frankfurt on the subject of Christian union, which accord d with the sentence, and appeared in 1628 with tile consent of the theological fatuity. They were afterwards incorporated in his Praxis Catholica. He was thoroughly at home in the polemics anti irenics of his age, anti can be relied on as to tile authorship of the sentence.

But who was Meldenius? This is still an unsolved question. Possibly he took his name from Melden, a little village on the borders of and Silesia. His voice was drowned, and his name forgotten, for two centuries, but is now again heard with increased force. I subscribe to the concluding words of my esteemed colleague, Dr. Briggs: “Like a mountain stream that disappears at times under tile rocks of its bed, and re-appears deeper down in the valley, so these long-buried principles of peace have reappeared after two centuries of oblivion, and these irenical theologians w ill be honored by those who live in a better age of the world, when Protestant irenics have well-nigh displaced tile old Protestant polemics end scholastics.”

The origin of the sentence was first discussed by a Dutch divine, Dr. Van der Hoeven of Amsterdam, in 1847; then by Dr. Luecke of Goettingen Ueber das Alter, den Verfasser, die urspruengliche Form und den wahren Sinn des kirchlichen Friedenspruchs ‘In necessariis unites,’ etc., Goettingen 1850 (XXII. and 146 pages); with supplementary remarks in the “Studien und Kritiken ” for 1851, p. 905-938. Luecke first proved the authorship of Meldenius. The next steps were taken by Dr. Klose, in the first edition of Herzog’s “Theol. Encycl.” sub vol. IX. (1858), p. 304 sq., and by Dr. Carl Bertheau, in the second edition of Herzog, IX. (1881), p. 528-530. Dr. Briggs has furnished additional information in two articles in the “Presbyterian Review,” vol. VIII., New York, 1887, pp. 496-499, and 743-746.

The earliest known occurrence of this so far is to my knowledge once again “Catholic”, if somewhat dubiously so, given that the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique calls the De republica ecclesiastica “a very interesting blend of theses Anglican and Gallican” (vol. 4, col. 1670), and the 2nd edition of the New Catholic encyclopedia, De Dominis himself an “apostate”:

In preparing vol. XVII of the Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius I came across a letter which the French scholar Jean de Cordes addressed to Grotius on 9 November 1634 (Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. D’Orville 51).  In this letter the source of the adage is mentioned, be it rather vaguely:  the works of Marc’ Antonio de Dominis (1560-1624), archbishop of Split (Spalato).  After some research I have found the device in book 4, chapter 8 of De republica ecclesiastica libri X, London/Hannover 1617-1622) i.e. “on p. 676 of the first volume published in London in 1617, at the end of chapter 8 of book 4, which treats of the papacy” (H. J. M. Nellen, “De zinspreuk ‘In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas,'” Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschidenis 79, no. 1 (1999): 106, 104 (99-106)).  Cf. http://spu.worldcat.org/title/marci-antonii-de-dominis-de-republica-ecclesiastica-libri-x/oclc/476586221.  There (and on p. 104 of this article) it appears as follows:

Quod si in ipsa radice, hoc est sede, vel potius solio Romani pontificis haec abominationis lues purgaretur et ex communi ecclesiae consilio consensuque auferretur hic metus, depressa scilicet hac petra scandali ac ad normae canonicae iustitiam complanata, haberemus ecclesiae atrium aequabile levigatum ac pulcherrimis sanctuarii gemmis splendidissimum. Omnesque mutuam amplecteremur unitatem in necessariis, in non necessariis libertatem, in omnibus caritatem. Ita sentio, ita opto, ita plane spero, in eo qui est spes nostra et non confundemur.

Now if this plague of an abomination [were to] be cleared away at the root—i.e. see or rather throne of the Roman pontiff—itself, and [if] that fear hanging over the common counsel and consent of the Church (suppressed, of course, by this stone that makes men stumble [(cf. 1 Pet 2:8 in the Vulgate)], and reduced to the ‘equity’ of canon law) [were to] be removed, we would have an equitable atrium of the Church polished and [rendered] surpassingly brilliant by the beautiful gems of the sanctuary. And we would all embrace a mutual unity in things necessary; in things non necessary liberty; in all things charity. This I feel, this I desire, this I do indeed hope for, in him who is our hope and we are not confounded.

I would welcome any suggestions for the refinement of this translation.

This was quoted by De Cordes (who claimed to “ay trouvé [it] dans les oeuvres de Dominis”) in his letter to Grotius dated 9 November 1634 (above) as follows:

in necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas et in omnibus charitas

(Nellen, 102).  Grotius knew De Dominis personally, and, indeed, was in possession of this first volume of the De republica ecclesiastica by 1619 (Nellen, 103).  But he wouldn’t have been able to track the maxim down on the strength of this vague reference alone (Nellen, 104).

For additional passages in De Dominis’ De republica ecclesiastica that give voice to similar sentiments, see Nellen, 104n20:  bk. 7, chap. 6, sec. 21 (p. 104); bk. 7, chap. 9, sec. 18 (p. 130); bk. 7, chap. 9, sec. 27 (p. 132); bk. 7, chap. 9, sec. 204 (p. 197); bk. 7, chap. 12, sec. 113 (p. 316).

Would the presence of De Dominis in England go some way towards accounting for the major role played by Richard Baxter (1615-1691) in the dissemination of the maxim several decades later?  “The apostacy [(geloofsafval)] of the Archbishop and his flirtation with Anglicanism made him for representatives of the Reformation an important trump card in the religious controversy with Rome” (Nellen, 105)—for as long, at least, as that flirtation lasted.  And quite probably longer.

Prior to this ground-breaking article by Nellen (which, he admits, may well be superceded by “the definitive answer” published “in 2065—or perhaps much earlier” (Nellen, 101)), the consensus of more than a century had been that it was the work of Peter Meiderlin (1582-1651) (anagrammatico-pseudonymously Rupertus Meldenius), and appeared for the very first time in the first (i.e. 1626) printing of his Paraenesis votiva pro pace ecclesiae ad theologos Augustanae Confessionis (http://spu.worldcat.org/title/paraenesis-votiva-pro-pace-ecclesiae-ad-theologos-augustanae-confessionis/oclc/34765422):

Verbo dicam: si nos servaremus in necessariis unitatem, in non necessariis libertatem, in utrisque caritatem, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae.

(Meiderlin’s Paraenesis was so rare that Friedrich Lücke reproduced it in an appendix to his Über das Alter, den Verfasser, die ursprüngliche Form und den wahren Sinn des kirchlichen Friedenssprüches “In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas”:  eine literar-historische theologische Studie (Göttingen:  Dieterich, 1850).)

“Meiderlin is [therefore] a disciple of Johann Arndt, but he seeks less to defend the ideas of his master (in whom one can see a precursor of ‘Pietism’) than to bring an end to the dogmatic rivalries of the theologians of the Augsburg Confession” (Joseph Lecler, “À propos d’une maxime citée par le Pape Jean XXIII: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas,” Recherches de science religieuse 49 (1961): 552 (549-560)).

In Catholic (but also some Protestant) hands, dubiis was substituted for non necessaries [(note also the presence of omnibus rather than, as in Meiderlin, utrisque)], and this had supposedly the effect of extending “the rule of Meldenius . . . to much more than just the necessaria [(for salvation)] and the non necessaria [(for salvation)]”, much more than just the “fundamental articles”:  “the tripartite maxim. . . . [thus] lost its original Protestant nuance, in order to extend liberty to the entire domain of questions debated, doubtful, and undefined [(non définies par l’Église)]” (Lecler, 559-560).  There are many helpful references to the literature (but most notably Krüger and Eekhof) in Lecler, who isn’t doing much in the way of original scholarship, but mostly summarizing the work of others (Eekhof and Krüger, and, for more than a century total behind them, Bauer, Lücke, and Morin).

But the 1999 article by Nellen has, for now at least, returned this once again to (a dubious) “Catholicism”.

Here is a bit more in the way of 20th- and 21-century bibliography, thrown in quite willy nilly as encountered.  I do not claim to have read what follows, nor that this list is anything even close to exhaustive.

Burr, Viktor. “Zur Geschichte des Wahlspruches:  In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.”  In 110 Jahre Unitas-Salia zu Bonn/1847 bis 1957 – Festschrift zum 110. Stiftungsfest des W.K.St.V. Unitas-Salia, der Mutterkorporation des Unitas-Verbandes, edited by Anton Brenig, 7-24.  Bonn, 1957.

Post by Steve Perisho