The new pope was an Englishman of great ability; and the only one, it is said, that ever sat on the papal throne. He was originally a monk of St. Albans, but obliged to leave his home because of the severity of his father. After traveling for some time on the continent, and studying divinity and canon law with great ardor and success, and rising from rank to rank in ecclesiastical orders, he was at length raised to the highest order of ecclesiastical greatness by the name of Adrian IV. His English name was Nicolas Breakspeare.
An opportunity now presented itself to get rid of the bold reformer. The Emperor Barbarossa was on his way to receive from the hands of Adrian the imperial crown. He sent forward an embassy of three cardinals to meet the Emperor, and to request as the price of his coronation the surrender of Arnold of Brescia into his hands. To a man who thought so little of human life as Frederick, it seemed but a light thing indeed, and he compelled the friends of Arnold to deliver him up into the hands of the papal emissaries. No time was now to be lost, lest his friends should hear of it and attempt to rescue him. The church took upon itself the summary condemnation and execution of the rebel, without employing, as usual, the temporal sword. Before break of day the officer of the pope had imbrued his hands in the blood of his victim; his dead body was burned to ashes, and the remains cast into the Tiber, lest the people should collect and worship the relics of their martyred friend. The clergy triumphed in his death, but his memory lived in the minds of the Romans. "And in the ashes of Arnold's funeral pile," says Milman, "smouldered for centuries the fire, which was at length to blaze out in irresistible violence."
Bernard, the great antagonist of Abelard and of Arnold, had passed peacefully away at Clairvaux in the year 1153. The saint, the philosopher, and the reformer, are gone-gone to another world; gone to be judged, not by papal decrees, but by the throne of eternal righteousness and immaculate holiness. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the work which He finished for lost and guilty sinners, is the alone ground of pardon and acceptance in God's sight. There is no purgatory but the precious blood of His cross. But, what a mercy, that blood can make the vilest clean! "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." Nothing short of the blood of Jesus can make a soul whiter than snow and fit for heaven. All other means are but a mockery, a delusion of Satan, which only deepens and perpetuates the guilt of the soul. "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin." Salvation is by faith alone without works of law. We must be grafted into the true vine before we can bear fruit to God. Christ is the only fruit-bearer; believers are branches. "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." Apart from a true and living faith in Christ, there is no pardon, no salvation, no happiness, and no heaven; "but blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." (Psa. 51:7, 127Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalm 51:7)
12Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. (Psalm 51:12); 1 John 1:7; 2:67But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)
6He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. (1 John 2:6).)
We now return to our history, and first we would notice -