' When the language
used has a strong antique flavor, it is not always easy to keep apart
the pagan style and the theistic belief.
This temper sometimes manifests itself in times of misfortune with a
striking sincerity. Some addresses to God are left us from the latter
period of Firenzuola, when for years he lay ill of fever, in which,
though he expressly declares himself a believing Christian, he shows
that his religious consciousness is essentially theistic. Hie
sufferings seem to him neither as the punishment of sin, nor as
preparation for a higher world; they are an affair between him and God
only, who has put the strong love of life between man and his despair.
'I curse, but only curse Nature, since Thy greatness forbids me to
utter Thy name.... Give me death, Lord, I beseech Thee, give it me
now!'
In these utterances and the like, it would be vain to look for a
conscious and consistent Theism; the speakers partly believed
themselves to be still Christians, and for various other reasons
respected the existing doctrines of the Church. But at the time of the
Reformation, when men were driven to come to a distinct conclusion on
such points, this mode of thought was accepted with a fuller
consciousness; a number of the Italian Protestants came forward as
Anti-Trinitarians and Socinians, and even as exiles in distant
countries made the memorable attempt to found a church on these
principles.
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