turn be desolated, and Judah, restored, shall dwell for ever in Jerusalem.'

The texts in MICAII generally spoken of as exclusively prophetical of Christ, our commentator thinks refer literally to Hezekiah and times subsequent to the defeat of the Assyrians. But thou, Bethlehem-Ephratah, out of thee shall he come forth to be a ruler in Israel, viz., ' Hezekiah, who will deliver the people from the Assyrian.'

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion; shout, O Daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King cometh unto thee lowly, and riding upon an ass, even on a colt, the foal of an ass. This text, which is referred to Christ in Matthew (chapter xxii.), is connected by Villanovanus with the compassionate Zerubabel and his entrance into Jerusalem.

No one will be surprised to learn that these comments of the learned Villanovanus did not escape the notice of the great ecclesiastical centres of his day. That of Lyons is by-and-by found condemning outright both them and the book they pretend to illustrate. That of Madrid is content to order by far the greater number of the glosses to be expunged, but leaves the Bible itself available to the privileged; whilst that of Rome, less tolerant, not only condemns the expositions, but puts the book upon the Index prohibitorius. The perusal of such comments, preparatory to drawing the pen through them, it was surmised by the far-sighted ecclesiastics of Rome might lead to independent thought,

and this is precisely what the Church they represent would have every man, woman, and child in the land most carefully to eschew.

Calvin, we may imagine, was not likely to think any better of Villanovanus's annotations than the heads of the Church of Rome; on the contrary, pinning his faith on its text as prophetical in the very strictest sense of the word, any attack on its sufficiency as a ground for dogmatic conclusion was felt by him to be a matter much more serious than by the Church of Rome, which sets its own traditions as equipollent to, where not even of higher authority than, that of the Bible on all matters of faith. To see the Scriptures of the Jews otherwise than as Calvin and the Reformers saw them was, in their eyes, to question the infallible book they had substituted for the infallible Pope so lately abandoned by them. We should therefore expect to meet Calvin, with occasion serving, making a point against our expositor on the ground of the Pagnini; and accordingly we find Servetus's comments brought up against him in the most marked manner during his Geneva Trial, whilst in the Déclaration pour maintenir la vraye Foye, and the Defensio orthodoxæ Fidei, they are spoken of as impertinences and impieties, the Publisher being said at the same time to have been nothing less than cheated out of the money he paid the editor for his work. Who,' says Calvin, shall venture to say that it was not thievish in the editor when he took five hundred livres in payment for the vain trifles

and impious follies with which he encumbered almost every page of the book?' ('Opusc. Theol. Om.' p. 703).

Notwithstanding the great Reformer's denunciations, however, though we may not agree with Villanovanus in all his conclusions, nor approve of his passing without mention Melchior Novesianus, to whom he was indebted for his text, when we look on the beautiful volume he aided in producing, and think of him as the one man of his age who had independent opinions on the real or possible meaning of the poetical writings of the Hebrew people, consonant as these are in so many respects with the views entertained by the most advanced biblical critics of the present day, we are not disposed to think that he was overpaid. the Church dignitaries of Vienne seen the Pagnini Bible of Michael Villanovanus with the same eyes as the hierarchs of Rome, Madrid, and Lyons, the matter he added must needs have seriously compromised him with them. His numerous, excessively free, and highly heterodox interpretations of the Psalms and Prophets, nevertheless, in so far as we have been able to discover, appear to have lost Villeneuve neither countenance nor favour at Vienne, which is not a little extraordinary.

Had

CHAPTER XVI.

ENGAGEMENT AS EDITOR BY JO. FRELON OF LYONSCORRESPONDENCE WITH CALVIN.

THE Pagnini Bible out of hand, Villanovanus's time would seem not yet to have been so fully occupied by his profession as to debar him from continuing to engage in a good deal of miscellaneous literary work for his friends the publishers of Lyons, among the number of whom we have now particularly to notice. John Frelon, a man of learning, like so many of the old publishers, entertaining tolerant or more liberal views of the religious question, inclined towards, if not openly professing, the Reformed Faith, and the personal friend of Calvin.

For Frelon Villeneuve edited a variety of works, mostly, as it seems, of an educational kind, such as grammars, accidences, and the like; translating several of these from Latin into Spanish, for the laity; and, as the priesthood of the Peninsula appear not to have cultivated the classical languages of Greece and Rome to the same extent as those of France and Germany, also turning the Summa Theologia of St. Thomas Aquinas, a work entitled Desiderius peregrinus, and

another, the Thesaurus animæ Christianæ, into their vernacular for them. Brought into somewhat intimate relationship with Villeneuve, whom Frelon at this time could not have known as Michael Servetus, the Reformation, its principles, its objects, and the views of its more distinguished leaders, would hardly fail to come up as topics of conversation between him and his learned editor. Frelon must soon have seen how much better than common Villeneuve was informed in this direction; and it has been said, not without every show of truth, that at his suggestion Servetus, under his assumed name of Villeneuve or Villanovanus, was led to enter on the correspondence with Calvin which we believe had so momentous an influence on his future fate. Frelon saw Villeneuve full of unusual ideas on many of the accredited dogmas of the Christian faith; and, not indisposed, though indifferently prepared, to discuss these himself, he very probably suggested the great Reformer of Geneva as the man of all others the most likely to feel an interest in them, as well as the most competent to give an opinion on their merits. Hence the correspondence which, begun in 1546, went on into 1547, and may even have extended into the following year.

That Frelon was the medium of communication between Villeneuve and Calvin is satisfactorily shown by the publisher's letter to the Spaniard, inclosing one for him just received from the Reformer. The corre

1 Sandius, Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum.