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The Great Controversy 1888
to find there, not the teachings of popery, but the doctrines of Luther.
Henceforth he gave himself, with entire devotion, to the cause of the
gospel.
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“The most learned of the nobles of France,” his genius and elo-
quence, his indomitable courage and heroic zeal, and his influence at
court—for he was a favorite with the king—caused him to be regarded
by many as one destined to be the reformer of his country. Said Beza,
“Berquin would have been a second Luther, had he found in Francis I.
a second elector.” “He is worse than Luther,” cried the papists. More
dreaded he was indeed by the Romanists of France. They thrust him
in prison as a heretic, but he was set at liberty by the king. For years
the struggle continued. Francis, wavering between Rome and the
Reformation, alternately tolerated and restrained the fierce zeal of the
monks. Berquin was three times imprisoned by the papist authorities,
only to be released by the monarch, who, in admiration of his genius
and his nobility of character, refused to sacrifice him to the malice of
the hierarchy.
Berquin was repeatedly warned of the danger that threatened him
in France, and urged to follow the steps of those who had found safety
in voluntary exile. The timid and time-serving Erasmus—who with
all the splendor of his scholarship failed of that moral greatness which
holds life and honor subservient to truth—wrote to Berquin: “Ask
to be sent as ambassador to some foreign country; go and travel in
Germany. You know Beda and such as he—he is a thousand-headed
monster, darting venom on every side. Your enemies are named legion.
Were your cause better than that of Jesus Christ, they will not let you
go till they have miserably destroyed you. Do not trust too much to
the king’s protection. At all events, do not compromise me with the
faculty of theology.”
But as dangers thickened, Berquin’s zeal only waxed the stronger.
So far from adopting the politic and self-serving counsel of Erasmus,
he determined upon still bolder measures. He would not only stand in
defense of the truth, but he would attack error. The charge of heresy
which the Romanists were seeking to fasten upon him, he would rivet
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upon them. The most active and bitter of his opponents were the
learned doctors and monks of the theological department in the great
university of Paris, one of the highest ecclesiastical authorities both in
the city and the nation. From the writings of these doctors, Berquin