On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    with ' Ochinote known character for integrity . It probably originated in the mortification felt by the Catholics at his defection from their party ; and may be set down as one of those stale devices which writers , who are hardly pressed , seldom scruple to employ in the course of controversial warfare . Ochino had many powerful friends in the North of Italy , whom he had attached to his cause by the piety and integrity of his life * no less than by

    his brilliant and matchless eloquence as a pulpit orator . Among these was the Duchess of Ferrara , who aided his flight to Venice by supplying him with a disguise , and furnishing hini with the pecuniary provision necessary For his journey . From Venice he pursued his course to Geneva , where many Italian exiles had previously taken up their abode , and formed themselves into a separate religious society . Ochino ' s motive for making choice of Geneva as the place of his retreat , is said to have been a hope that he might be elected pastor of this little church , but in this hope he appears , from some cause or other , to have been disappointed .

    The departure of so celebrated and justly popular a character from his native country , and his renunciation of the doctrines of the Romish Church , were subjects of universal astonishment and regret among his Catholic friends . Cardinal Caraffa addressed an expostulatory letter to him , in which , after bestowing upon him the most extravagant encomiums , and calling him his * ' Father , * ' he breaks out into the following exclamation : €€ O infatuated old man ! who has bewitched thee , that thou shouldst make to thyself another Christ , whom thou hast not learned from the Catholic Church ! " Claudio Tolomeo , on hearing of his flight , addressed a letter to him , commencing with these words : < c On returning from my villa to Rome , a few days ago , I unexpectedly heard some news , which not

    6 nly took me by surprise , but absolutely astounded me , by its absurdity and incredibility . For I was told that , by some unaccountable means or other , you had been induced to go over from the Catholics to the Lutherans , and to give the sanction of your name to that heretical and impious sect . I was all consternation at the intelligence ! " Other eminent individuals expressed themselves in terms equally honourable to the character of Ochino , and equally descriptive of the sorrow which they felt at his change of sentiments : but the brethren of the Capuchin order were overwhelmed with grief at the loss which they had sustained ; and Boverius , their historian , tells his readers , that he could not refrain from tears , when he came to that part of his narrative which related to this subject .

    On the arrival of Ochino at Geneva , he published a vindication of rumself in three letters , of which one was addressed to the chief magistrate at Sienna , his native city , another to Claudio Tolomeo , and the third to Jerome Mutius ; and in this vindication he animadverted , with considerable warmth and severity , upon the Pope , and all who still remained in communion with the Romish Church . In the years 1543 and 1544 , he Hke-

    Untitled Article

    744 Biographical Notice * of Eminent Continental Unitarian * .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1831, page 744, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2603/page/20/