and, in the discharge of his functions, obtained
general esteem: he was much regarded by the Emperors Ferdinand and
Maximilian. In 1537, he published at Leipsic a Latin work, "On the
method of procuring Religious Concord,--_Methodus Concordiae
Ecclesiasticae_." He addressed it to the pope, to all sovereigns,
bishops, doctors, and generally to all christians, exhorting them to
peace, and to desist from contention. He assumed in it, that the true
religion had been preserved in the Catholic church; but he allows that
modern doctors had involved it in numerous scholastic subtleties,
unknown to antiquity. He complains that on one hand the reformers left
nothing untouched; that, on the other, the scholastics would retain
every abuse, and every superfluity: Wisdom, he thought, lay between
them; the reformers should have respected what antiquity consecrated;
the Catholics should have abandoned modern doctrines and modern
practices to the discretion of individuals.

The "Royal Road," or _Via Regia_ of Wicelius, a still more important
work, was published by him at Helmstadt in 1537. Both works were
approved, and the perusal of them warmly recommended, by the emperors:
they have been often reprinted; they are inserted, with a life of their
author, in the second volume of _Brown's Fasciculus_.

"If all the divines of those times," says Father Simon the
oratorian,[073] "had possessed the same spirit as Wicelius, the
affairs of religion might have taken a different turn."

[Sidenote: CHAP. XII.]

[Sidenote: XII.3. His Project of Religious Pacification]

_Cassander_, another peacemaker, mentioned with praise by Grotius, is
the subject of a long and interesting article in _Dupin's Ecclesiastical
History_:[074]

"He was," says Dupin, "solidly learned; and thoroughly versed in
ecclesiastical antiquity and the controversies of his own times.
The flaming zeal, which he had for the re-union and peace of the
church, made him yield much to the Protestants, and led him to
advance some propositions that were too bold. But he always kept in
the communion of the Catholic church. He declared that he submitted
to its judgments, and openly condemned the authors of the schism
and their principal errors. He was a gentle, humble and moderate
man; patient under afflictions, and entirely disinterested. In his
disputes, he never returned injury for injury; and neither in his
manners nor in hi