the worth of forgiveness, of
patience, of pity, of kindness, and of obedience to duty. Why leave
these sure things and quarrel over inscrutable mysteries?"

This point that the things which are essential to salvation are clear
and luminous is a frequently occurring one in his writings.
Impenetrable mysteries do not interest him, and he declares with
reiteration that controversies and divisions are occasioned mainly by
the proclamation of dogma on these inscrutable things. In a remarkable
work, which remains still in manuscript--his _De arte dubitandi et
confidendi, sciendi et ignorandi_,--he pleads for a religion that fits
the facts of life and for the use of intelligence even in these lofty
matters of spiritual experience where most astonishing miracles occur.
He returns, in this writing, to his old position that the truths which
concern salvation are clear and appeal powerfully to human reason.
"There are, I know," he says, "persons who insist that we should
believe even against reason. It is, however, the worst of all errors,
and it is laid upon me to fight it. I may not be able to exterminate
the monster, but I hope to give it such a blow that it will know that
it has been hit. Let no one think that he is doing wrong in using his
mental faculties. It is our proper way of arriving at the truth."[9]

Without entering in detail into the bottomless controversy of those
times, let us endeavour to get an adequate view of Castellio's type of
Christianity, and then we shall be able to form an estimate of the man
who in the {99} strong power of his faith stood almost alone as the
great battle of words raged around him.[10]

Those on the other side of the controversy began always from the
opposite end of the spiritual universe to his point of departure.
_They_ were fascinated with the mysteries of the Eternal Will, and used
all the keys of their logic to unlock the mysteries of foreknowledge,
predestination, and grace which has wrought the miracle of salvation
for the elect. Castellio, on the other hand, in true modern fashion,
starts always with the concrete, the near and the known, to work upward
to the nature of the unknown. We must, he says, try to discover the
Divine attributes and the Divine Character by first finding out what
our own deepest nature implies. If God is to speak to us it must be in
terms of our nature. Before undertaking to fathom with the plummet of
logic the unsoundable mystery of foreknowle