ation 
 
FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 
iUHN L Ai.VIN. 
 
/v 
 
 , NOV 13 1931 
 
 JOHN CALVIN 
 
 The Genevan Reformation: 
 
 A Sketch. 
 
 THOMAS GARY JOHNSON, 
 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Polity in Union Theological 
 Seminary, Richmond, Va. 
 
 ^ 
 
 RICHMOND, VA.: 
 The Presbyterian Committee of Publication. 
 
Copyrighted 
 
 BY 
 
 JAS. K. HAZEN, Secretary of Publication, 
 1900. 
 
TO 
 
 my Tatber and mother, 
 
 AND TO 
 
 my Sister, 
 
 WHOM God hath taken, 
 
 IN EACH OF WHOM MUCH OF THE PURITY, STRENGTH AND SWEETNESS 
 
 OF Calvinism was incorporated, 
 
 THIS little ACCOUNT OF 
 
 Calvin's great services to Geneva and the world 
 is affectionately dedicated. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Bibliography, 7 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 General Statement. — Divisions of Calvin's Life. — Origin of the 
 Genevan Reformation. — Its Progress, il 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Calvin's Childhood and Youth: The Period of His Train- 
 ing UNDER THE PARENTAL RoOF AND IN SCHOOLS TILL HiS 
 
 Sudden Conversion in 1532 and Determination to the 
 Service of Christianity. — Birth and Parentage. — His 
 Education. — His Conversion and Further Education. — His 
 First Literary Venture. — Determination to the Service of 
 Christianity, 13 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 The Period of Calvin's Elaboration of the Doctrines of the 
 HoLY^ Scriptures, Embodied Chiefly in His Immortal 
 Institutes, 1532-1541. — Open Break with the Church of 
 Rome. — A Wandering Evangelist in France, 1533-34. — 
 In Exile in Basle: The Production of the Institutes. — 
 Travelling in Italy and France under the Name of Charles 
 d' Espeville, 1535-1536. — The Reformation in Geneva Prior 
 to Calvin's Coming, 1532-1536. — Calvin's First Period in 
 Geneva, 1536-1538. — Calvin in Strasburg. — Still the Head 
 of the Genevan Church, 1538-1541, 19 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Period of His Establishment and Defense of, as Scrip- 
 tural, of an Order of Ecclesiastical Polity, Correspond- 
 ing TO His System of Faith, Which is Known as Pres- 
 byterianism, 1541-1549. — Calvin's Labors in this Period. — 
 Distinctive Principles of Calvin's Ecclesiastical Polity. — His 
 Struggles with the Patriots and Libertines in Behalf of Dis- 
 cipline. — The Death of His Wife in 1549, 47 
 
4 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER V. p^oE. 
 
 The Period of Calvin's Great Controversies Waged with 
 THE Purpose of Advancing Union Amongst Bodies of 
 Evangelical Christians and Maintaining the Truth of 
 His System, 1549-1564. — Calvin's Labors and Achievements, 
 1549-1564. — The Agreement with the Zurichers on the 
 Lord's Supper: An Instance of Calvin's Irenical Efforts. — 
 The Controversy with Servetus, an Illustration of Calvin's 
 Honor to God's Word as He Understood and to the Unity 
 of the Church. — Calvin's Death. — Some of His Character- 
 istics, 64 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Influence of John Calvin. — Not Perpetuated by Impos- 
 ing Tomb. — His Influence on Civil and Religious Liberty. — 
 The Conserving Power of Calvinism in Protestant Church 
 Life. — Conclusion, 91 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 We offer to the public, in the present form, our lectures 
 on John Calvin and the Genevan Reformation, as given 
 during the present session, 1899-1900. They were in- 
 tended to serve as a supplement to class-book instructions, 
 to correct, as we see things, some current misrepresenta- 
 tions, and to give emphasis to certain features of Calvin's 
 teaching and life adjudged by us to be of special value as 
 means to the enlargement of Christian manhood and the 
 production of holy living. Nevertheless, it is hoped that 
 it may be granted that we have fairly called it a sketch of 
 Calvin's life and of the movement in Geneva of which he 
 was the heart. 
 
 While the lectures were designed to meet the needs of 
 our students as we conceive them, designed through them 
 to affect the life of our Southern Zion, we hope that in- 
 telligent men in our church generally, and in other Calvin- 
 istic churches who have not time to read long biographies, 
 will find in our "Sketch" a clear outline of the "Great John 
 of Geneva" and his work ; and we are perfectly assured 
 that the men of our day ought to acquaint themselves with 
 the character of Calvin. A thorough acquaintance with 
 Calvin would prove a powerful uplifting force in all who 
 love God, and would fill with veneration and awe for the 
 majesty of Calvin's character a large portion of the unre- 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 generate multitude, and that, too, the nobler portion of that 
 multitude. 
 
 It is hoped by some of our wide-awake pastors that his- 
 tory classes may be formed amongst their young men and 
 women for the common study of the past of our own faith, 
 polity, worship and life, and thus the life of the present 
 church be deepened and broadened by close contact with 
 those great epochs in the Reformed faith in which God 
 opened the windows of heaven and poured out his bless- 
 ings upon his waiting church. We have not been able to 
 throttle the wish that this little book might come to be so 
 used ; and if that should happen, we would undertake, with 
 the blessing of God, to follow it soon with similar sketches 
 on the Reformation in the Netherlands, in England, and in 
 Scotland, and in France. 
 
 Finally, we pray to the God of all grace, who gave John 
 Calvin to Geneva and to the world, to use these pages in 
 creating in every one who shall read them that supreme 
 love to God, that sense of personal responsibility, that com- 
 bination of purity, strength and sweetness which the Cal- 
 vinistic system, beyond any other, has been creating in the 
 past. T. C. J. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, 
 
 Richmond, Va., December 25, 1899. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 § I. Bibliography. 
 
 I. Sources. 
 
 John Calvin : Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated 
 from the original Latin and collated with the author's last 
 edition in French. By John Allen. Third American edition, 
 revised and corrected. In two volumes. 8vo. Philadelphia : 
 Presbyterian Board of Publication. James Russell, Publishing 
 Agent. 
 
 John Calvin and Theodore Beza: Tracts Relating to the Re- 
 formation; With His Life by Theodore Beza. Translated 
 from the original Latin by Henry Beveridge, Esq. Vols. L, IL, 
 in. 8vo. Edinburgh : Printed for the Calvin Translation So- 
 ciety. MDCCCXLIV. 
 
 John Calvin (Bonnet) : Letters of. Compiled from the Original 
 Manuscripts and Edited luith Historical Notes. By Dr. Jules 
 Bonnet. Vols. I., II., III. Translated from the original Latin 
 and French. Philadelphia : Presbyterian Board of Publication. 
 No. 821 Chestnut Street. 
 
 John Calvin : Commentaries. Edinburgh ; Printed for the Calvin 
 Translation Society. 
 
 II. Biographies, Histories, etc. 
 
 Paul Henry, D. D. : The Life and Times of John Calvin, the 
 Great Reformer. Translated from the German of Paul Henry, 
 D. D., minister and seminary-inspector in Berlin. By Henry 
 Stebbing, D. D., F. R. S. Author of History of the Church 
 and the Reformation, in Lardner's Encyclopjedia ; History of 
 the Church of Christ from the Diet of Augsburg; Lives of the 
 Italian Poets, etc. In two volumes. 8vo. New York: Robert 
 Carter & Brothers, No. 285 Broadway. 1851. 
 
8 Bibliography. 
 
 Very valuable for materials, but not well organized and 
 written in involved and prolix style. The writer admires 
 Calvin, but depreciates the great doctrine of predestination. 
 He does not understand it. He brings out Calvin's catho- 
 licity of spirit, shows the earnestness of his desires for the 
 union of Protestantism, but misstates the basis of union as 
 Calvin saw it. He does not understand Calvin's view of 
 the Lord's Supper, makes the kinship of Calvinism and 
 Lutheranism greater than it was, turns his "history" into a 
 plea for the support of the state-union of the Lutheran and 
 Reformed Churches in Prussia brought about in the first 
 quarter of our century. He does not understand and value 
 aright true Presbyterian or representative church polity. 
 
 Felix Bungener : Calvin, His Life, His Labors, and His Writings. 
 Translated from the French of Felix Bungener. Author of 
 History of the Council of Trent. Edinburgh : T. and T. 
 Clark, 38 George Street. London : Hamilton, Adams & Co. 
 Dublin : J. Robertson & Co. MDCCCLXIII. 
 
 This is a popular, but trustworthy, work in the main. 
 It must be said of this author also that he is out of sympa- 
 thy with some of the distinctive doctrines of Calvinism, 
 particularly that of predestination, and that occasionally he 
 makes statements which rest at best on no more than re- 
 spectable tradition. 
 
 M. Guizot: Great Christians of France: St. Louis and Calvin. 
 By M. Guicot, Member of the Institute of France. London : 
 Macmillan & Co. 1879. 
 
 This is a short, popular, readable work. It is not in- 
 tended to be more than a sketch. This author roundly says 
 that Calvin made two great mistakes in his teaching which 
 he would not have made had he lived in our more en- 
 lightened age. One of these mistakes he says was Calvin's 
 teaching the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the scrip- 
 tures, and the other his teaching predestination. We have 
 always admired M. Guizot's style as much as his judgment. 
 We believe that John Calvin, by the grace of God, if he 
 
Bibliography. 9 
 
 were to appear on earth again in the blaze of nineteenth 
 century civilization would honor the word of God as much 
 as ever, and would be forced by facts evident to his dis- 
 cernment and intelligence to teach his doctrine of predesti- 
 nation. 
 
 Thomas H. Dyer : The Life of John Calvin. London : John Mur- 
 ray. 1850. 
 
 A valuable and "impartial work." 
 
 Thomas Smythe: Calvin and His Enemies. Philadelphia: Pres- 
 byterian Board of Education. 
 
 An excellent sketch. Dr. Smythe, however, commits 
 himself to certain subordinate views ; for example, that 
 Calvin was ordained in the usual manner as a Protestant 
 minister or teaching elder, which many of the profoundest 
 students of the history of the times do not feel free to do. 
 
 Elijah Waterman: Memoirs of the Life and Writing of John 
 Calvin, Together with a Selection of Letters Written by Him 
 and Other Distinguished Reformers. Hartford. 1813. 
 
 Thomas McCrie, D. D. : The Early Years of John Calvin. A 
 Fragment. i509-'36. Edinburgh. 1880. 
 
 A fragment, but valuable as far as it goes. 
 
 Charles W. Shields : Trial of Servetus. In Presbyterian and Re- 
 formed Review. July, 1893. 
 
 E. Renan (Frothingham Translation) : John Calvin, in "Studies in 
 Religious History and Criticism." New York. 1864. 
 
 A brilliant study. 
 
 James Anthony Froude: Calvinism, an Address Delivered to the 
 Students of St. Andrews, March 17, 1871, in His Short Studies 
 on Great Subjects. Second series. New York. 1873. 
 
 William Cunningham : The Reformers and the Theology of the 
 Reformation. Edinburgh. 1862. 
 
 John Tulloch : Leaders of the Reformation. Edinburgh. 1839. 
 
 Encyclopedias : The Brittanica, Johnson's Universal, Schaff- 
 Herzog, McClintock & Strong; all have good articles on Cal- 
 
10 Bibliography. 
 
 Philip Schaff: John Calvin, His Life and Character. In The 
 Creeds of Christendom. Vol. I., p. 421, et seq. New York: 
 Harper Brothers. 1884. 
 
 Philip Schaff : History of the Christian Church. By Philip 
 Schaff, D. D., LL. D., Professor of Church History in Union 
 Theological Seminary, New York. Vol. VH. Modern Chris- 
 tianity; The Swiss Reformation. New York: Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons. 1892. 
 
 Not as sympathetic as the Vol. VI. on the German Re- 
 formation, in which the author deals at length with the life 
 and character of Luther; but still a most helpful and in- 
 forming work, with the usual characteristics of Dr. Schaff 's 
 style and method. 
 
 Merle D'Aubigne: History of the Reformation in Europe in the 
 Time of Calvin. 
 
 By a great admirer of Calvin, a true disciple of the re- 
 formers, a man of brilliant literary gifts. It is the work of 
 a great advocate, very fraught with interest and instruc- 
 tion, though at times one-sided. 
 
 George P. Fisher, D. D. : History of the Reformation. New 
 York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 A work of accuracy, cool judgment, and prevalent im- 
 partiality. 
 
 LuDwiG Hausser (Sturge's) : The Period of the Reformation, 
 I577~i648. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 
 
 Remarkable for insight into the contemporary politics ; 
 but marked by want of sympathetic appreciation in the 
 treatment of Calvin and Calvinism. 
 
JOHN CALVIN AND THE GENEVAN 
 REFORMATION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 General Statement. 
 
 § 2. Divisions of Calvin's Life. 
 
 John Calvin was the great constructive genius of the 
 Reformation period; he was the father and head of the 
 Reformation movement in the second generation of re- 
 formers ; and he gave, by the good help of God, soHdity 
 and enduring persistence to the movement. 
 
 His Hfe falls naturally into four periods, viz., First, that 
 of his childhood and youth, the period of his training under 
 the parental roof and in various schools, until his "sudden 
 conversion" under the incitement of God's word and the 
 operation of the Holy Ghost, 1 509-1 532;* second, that of 
 his elaboration of the doctrine of the holy scriptures, chiefly 
 embodied in his immortal "Institutes," 1 532-1 541 ; third, 
 that of his establishment in Geneva and vindication from 
 the scriptures of an order of ecclesiastical government cor- 
 responding to his system of faith, which is known as Pres- 
 byterianism, 1541-1549; fourth, that of his great contro- 
 versies waged with the hope, not only of preserving the 
 truths in his system of faith and polity, but of favoring 
 Christian union among evangelical Christians, 1 549-1 564. 
 
 * This date is not perfectly certain. It is certain, however, that 
 a little after the middle of the year 1533 Calvin was an advocate of 
 the persecuted reformers. 
 
12 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 § 3- Origin of the Genevan Reformation; its Progress. 
 
 Calvin has not the honor indeed of having begun the 
 Reform movement in Geneva. His labors there did not 
 begin until 1536, at which time the city had already form- 
 ally adopted the Reformation. The credit of instituting 
 the movement for reform in Geneva must be given to the 
 impulsive, rash, but ingenuous and noble, William Farel 
 and his helpers between 1532 and 1536; but the work of 
 securing, maintaining and perfecting the Reformation 
 called for a man of larger gifts than those possessed by 
 Farel or any of his earlier co-workers. Calvin was the man 
 needed. Pressed with all the stern zeal of an Old Testa- 
 ment prophet by Farel into the conduct of the struggle in 
 Geneva, Calvin at once became the real head and heart of 
 the movement. Henceforth, while he lived, even through 
 his period of exile, the history of John Calvin includes the 
 history of Geneva. He was at once the embodiment and 
 highest exponent of its excellences and the inveterate foe, 
 warring ever against its evils. He was also much more. 
 His history is, in a large sense, the history of Reformed 
 Christendom of his day, in all its religious, moral and po- 
 litical forthputtings. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Calvin's Childhood and Youth : The Period of His 
 Training under the Parental Roof and in Schools 
 Till His Sudden Conversion in 1532, and Determi- 
 nation TO THE Service of Christianity. 
 
 § 4. Birth and Parentage. 
 
 John Calvin was born July 10, 1509, at Noyon, a ca- 
 thedral town in the northern province of Picardy in France. 
 His father was Gerard Cauvin, a man who occupied a po- 
 sition of considerable prominence in his region, being dis- 
 trict attorney for his county, secretary to the Bishop of 
 Noyon, and proctor of the chapter of the diocese. He was 
 a man of harsh and austere character, but honored and 
 favored by the most distinguished families of his district. 
 Gerard Cauvin was the son of a cooper by trade of the 
 village of Pont I'Eveque. As he had lifted himself in the 
 social and civil scale, so he was desirous of doing for his 
 children. The priesthood has always been looked upon by 
 the poor but aspiring as an avenue to ease and distinction. 
 Naturally, therefore, Gerard destined his boys to the priest- 
 hood. His wife, Jeanne Lanfranc, of Cambrai, noted for 
 beauty and piety, was ready enough, no doubt, to unite with 
 her ambitious husband in giving her sons to the church. 
 Accordingly, the two brothers of John Calvin who grew 
 up were educated for clergymen and became chaplains in 
 the Romish Church, and John was for some years also des- 
 tined by his father to the priesthood. 
 
 Gerard's day was the day of pluralities, absenteeism, and 
 all irregularities in the filling of ecclesiastical positions. 
 "Pope Leo X. received the tonsure as a boy of seven, was 
 made archbishop in his eighth, and cardinal-deacon in his 
 
14 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 thirteenth year (with the reservation that he should not 
 put on the insignia of his dignity nor discharge the duties 
 of his office till he was sixteen), besides being canon in 
 three cathedrals, rector in six parishes, prior in three con- 
 vents, abbot in thirteen additional abbeys, and bishop of 
 Amalfi, deriving revenues from them all." * Gerard was, 
 therefore, doing the regular irregular thing when in John's 
 twelfth year he secured for him a part of the revenue of a 
 chaplaincy in the cathedral of Noyon, and when in his son's 
 eighteenth year he secured for him the additional charge of 
 S. Martin de Marteville. True he was not of canonical age, 
 he had to hire a priest to officiate in his place, but he had 
 received the tonsure, looked toward the priesthood, and on 
 the income of these places he could pursue his studies pre- 
 paratory thereto. 
 
 § 5. His Education. 
 
 His early education was with the children of the noble 
 family of Mommor. With the younger members of theMom- 
 mor family also he was sent to Paris at the age of fourteen, 
 or in the year 1523, to study the classics and philosophy in 
 the colleges of La Marche and Montaigu. In La Marche 
 he was helpfully impressed by Maturinus Corderius, a man 
 of genuine worth, who became a helper of Calvin in Geneva 
 years later. In the College of Mont Aigu he distinguished 
 himself by his acquisitions in the grammar course and in 
 dialectics. He had as his master here a Spaniard of con- 
 siderable attainments. Four years were spent in these col- 
 leges. They were years of earnest study. Calvin was 
 equally distinguished already as a scholar and as a youth 
 of severe morals. He was a strict censor of everything 
 vicious in himself and in his companions. Hence he was 
 called by his fellows, without reproach, "The Accusative 
 Case." 
 
 During this period he had been a Romanist of the Ro- 
 
 * Schafif : History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII., p. 301. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 15 
 
 manists and strongly drawn toward the priesthood ; but 
 his father, discerning his wonderful talents and seeing that 
 the law was a surer road to wealth and honor, had changed 
 his former purpose and now directed his son to study law. 
 To this change John seems to have himself been driven by 
 a dissatisfaction with the old theology. He had been led 
 of late to the study of the scriptures by Peter Robert Olivet. 
 
 To study law Calvin went first to Orleans to sit at the 
 feet of Petrus Stella, the first French lawyer of his time. 
 Thence he removed to Bourges and studied under the 
 world-famous Alciat. At Orleans he had studied very 
 hard, working late at night, and going over everything, 
 meditating on and digesting it, after awaking in the morn- 
 ing before arising. He had been regarded rather as a 
 teacher than a pupil, often officiating as a professor. "On 
 his departure he was presented with a doctor's degree free 
 of expense and with the unanimous consent of all the peo- 
 fessors as a return for the services which he had rendered 
 to the academy." * At Bourges, while not neglecting law, 
 he formed a friendship with Melchior Wolmar, from whom 
 he learned Greek. 
 
 These three great professors were naturally adversaries 
 to the church. They knew that much of what the church 
 taught had no historical basis, and French jurists to that 
 time and long after were the hereditary antagonists of 
 Rome. They would naturally give an impetus to Calvin's 
 anti-Romeward movement. 
 
 § 6. His Conversion and Further Education. 
 
 Though occupied with law and Greek, Calvin was irre- 
 sistibly drawn toward the study of theology while at 
 Bourges. He studied the Bible with great earnestness and 
 thoroughness. Here he seems to have been converted. In 
 speaking of himself at this time he says, "My conscience 
 was very far from being in a condition of certain peace. 
 
 * Beza : Life of John Calvin, p. xxiii. in Calvin's Tracts, Vol. I. 
 
i6 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 Every time that I looked down into myself or lifted my 
 heart up to God, such a supreme horror took possession of 
 me that there was no purification or expiation which could 
 have cured me ; and the more closely I considered my own 
 nature, so much the more was my conscience goaded with 
 fierce stings, so that there remained no other comfort ex- 
 cept to deceive myself. But God, who took pity upon me, 
 conquered my heart and subdued it to dociUty by a sudden 
 conversion. . . . Having then received some taste and 
 knowledge of true piety, so great a desire was incontinently 
 kindled in me to profit by it that, although I did not entirely 
 renounce all other studies, yet I paid but little attention to 
 them." * 
 
 His residence at Orleans seems to have been interrupted 
 by a visit to Noyon in the summer of 1531, on the death of 
 his father, and by a sojourn at Paris in the same year. 
 
 § 7. His First Literary Venture. 
 
 In April, 1532, Calvin ventured before the public with 
 his first literary work — his commentary on the treatise on 
 " Clemency by Seneca " — the publication of which re- 
 duced him to temporary financial embarrassment. In this 
 work Calvin appears as a brilliant humanist. Henry, Gui- 
 zot,and others, attempt to discover in it the apologist for the 
 Reformation ; they would have us believe that the real mo- 
 tive of the work was to induce Francis I. to take a more fa- 
 vorable attitude toward the reformers ; but, as Bungener 
 says, ''The author in his most confidential letters says no- 
 thing of the kind, nor is there anything in his later works, in 
 which he might so often have found an opportunity of re- 
 calling the true intention of this. ... In fact, the idea at- 
 tributed to him does not belong to his age, and is one from 
 which no man is further than he. To ask clemency of a 
 king for the friends of the reformed faith would, in his 
 
 * Quoted in Giiizot: St. Louis and Calvin, p. 159. Cf. Preface 
 to the Psalms. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 17 
 
 eyes, have been to ask clemency and compassion for truth — 
 for the gospel — and to ascribe to the king authority over 
 God himself." * 
 
 Calvin appears in his commentary on Seneca as a Hu- 
 manist. He appears there as a very high one — a moral 
 zealot, punctual, orderly and conscientious in regard to 
 little things as well as great things — a Saul of Tarsus. He 
 began his literary effort, with this book, as a Humanist; 
 he was soon to show himself as a Christian. He was to 
 come to love the religion set forth by Old Testament 
 prophets and New Testament apostles more than he loved 
 letters. In this respect his experience was like that of 
 Zwingli and that of Melanchthon. While they walked in 
 intellectual light — the intellectual light of the word of God 
 — God begot them unto life by the power of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 No wonder that Rome hates the open Bible and that 
 Protestantism loves the open Bible. God by his word spoke 
 peace to the tortured soul of Luther; filled the cultured 
 souls of Zwingli and Melanchthon with blood earnestness ; 
 turned the refined, penetrating, profound, but Pharisaic, 
 genius, John Calvin, into the greatest Christian of his day, 
 the bulwark of his truth against all comers, its propagator 
 to the ends of the earth. 
 
 § 8. Determination to the Service of Christianity. 
 
 Calvin had the world before him. As a humanist, a 
 churchman, or a lawyer, he might have made for himself a 
 career of surpassing splendor. His "sudden conversion" 
 diverted his energies into an humbler and grander ave- 
 nue. It was thus made his to be the greatest interpreter 
 and exponent of the religion of Jesus Christ since the days 
 of the apostles. 
 
 It was impossible that a man of his gifts and graces 
 should not become the head and leader of the movement 
 
 * Bungener : Life of Calvin, p. 24. 
 
i8 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 for reform. People saw that he could serve them. He 
 says of himself and the period immediately subsequent to 
 his conversion, "Being of a shy and solitary nature, I have 
 always loved retirement and tranquillity ; I began, therefore, 
 to seek out some hiding place and some means of with- 
 drawing myself from my fellows ; but, so far from attain- 
 ing my desire, it seemed on the contrary, as if every retreat 
 I chose in a remote spot was at once converted into a public 
 school. In short, although it has always been my chief 
 desire to live in private without being known, yet God has 
 led me hither and thither, and turned me in so many direc- 
 tions by different changes that he never left me at peace in 
 any place until, in spite of my own desires, he made me 
 come forward and brought me into public life." * 
 
 One of the first services which the church of Calvin's day 
 needed was a reconstruction of the system of scripture 
 teaching. Luther and the early reformers had thrown into 
 confusion the Mediaeval efforts to construe this teaching. 
 The world was waiting for some man to pick the ele- 
 ments of truth out of the old beliefs ; and out of them and 
 the new truths brought to light by the now open Bible give 
 it a connected system of Bible teaching. Calvin heard the 
 cry of need. In the next chapter we shall sketch his his- 
 tory as he attempts to supply the need. 
 
 * Guizot : St. Louis and John Calvin, p. 159. Cf. Preface to the 
 Psalms. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Period of Calvin's Elaboration of the Doctrines 
 OF the Holy Scriptures Chiefly Embodied in His 
 Immortal Institutes, 1^32-41. 
 
 § 9. Open Break with the Church of Rome. 
 
 For a little while after Calvin's conversion there ap- 
 peared to be some probability of the French court's favor- 
 ing reform. The king's sister, Margaret, was a patroness 
 of the new movement. Several preachers who favored a 
 moderate reformation were heard in the Paris pulpits. The 
 king, from political motives and out of regard to his sister, 
 was so conciliatory as to incur the suspicion of favoring 
 the Reformation. He even invited Melanchthon to Paris 
 as a councillor. Hence Calvin, along with others, seems, 
 at this date, to have looked for reform from within the 
 church. These hopes were not destined to fulfillment, and 
 Calvin himself helped to discover their groundlessness. 
 
 His friend Nicolas Cop had been elected rector of the 
 University of Paris, and was to deliver his inaugural ora- 
 tion on All Saints' day, November i, 1533. At his request 
 Calvin prepared his oration. This oration was at once an 
 attack on the scholastic theologians of the day as sophists 
 and obscurantists, and a plea for a reformation on a New 
 Testament basis. Both the Sorbonne and the Parliament 
 regarded this academic oration as an attack on the church. 
 In consequence both Cop and Calvin were forced to flee. 
 Calvin is said to have escaped in the garb of a vine-dresser 
 with a hoe on his shoulder, after having been let down from 
 a window by the use of sheets. 
 
 § 10. A Wandering Evangelist in France, i533-'34- 
 Calvin's flight from Paris turned out to the furtherance 
 of the gospel in Southern France. He passed a large part 
 
20 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 of this period under the protection of Queen Margaret of 
 Navarre in her native city of Angouleme. Calvin Hved in 
 Angouleme with a weahhy friend, Louis du Tillet, who 
 was canon of the cathedral, and who had acquired a very 
 fine library, containing many rare and valuable works. He 
 taught Tillet Greek, cultivated the friendship of eminent 
 men, aided Peter Robert Olivet in the completion and re- 
 vision of the French translation of the Bible, which was 
 published at Neuchatel in 1535 with a preface by Calvin. 
 
 From Angouleme he made excursions to Paris, Orleans, 
 Nerac — where he met Le Fevre d'Etaples, the father of 
 French Protestantism, to Poictiers — where he made con- 
 verts of several persons of eminence, and celebrated the 
 communion of the Lord's Supper for the first time after 
 the Protestant conception.* 
 
 Toward the close of his stay at Angouleme Calvin, on a 
 venturesome visit to Paris, met for the first time Michael 
 Servetus. He was so impressed with the impiety and dan- 
 ger of his views that he was ready to incur the risk of a 
 semi-public disputation with him. A time and place for 
 the disputation was fixed. Calvin kept his appointment, 
 but Servetus did not appear, as Calvin reminded him 
 twenty years later. 
 
 Calvin had resigned his ecclesiastical benefices at Noyon 
 and Pont I'Eveque May 4, 1534; he had thus formally 
 closed his connection with the Church of Rome. In this 
 year he wrote at Orleans his first book in behalf of Protes- 
 tant theology, entitled the Sleep of the Soul. On scriptural 
 grounds he overturns the Anabaptist conceit of the sleep 
 of the soul between death and the resurrection, and main- 
 tains the conscious communion of saints. His purpose was 
 to protect evangelical Protestantism from the charges of 
 heresy and vagary. 
 
 The outbreak of persecution in the fall of 1534 was the 
 occasion of Calvin's leaving his native land. He was ac- 
 
 * This rests on a somewhat uncertain tradition. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 21 
 
 companied by Louis du Tillet, his friend and pupil, who 
 was to remain his companion till August, 1537, and then 
 return to his country and the Roman Church. Near Metz 
 they were robbed by an unfaithful servant. They reached 
 Strasburg in destitution, but were kindly received and 
 aided, especially by Bucer. 
 
 § II. In Exile in Basle — The Production of the Insti- 
 tutes. 
 
 After a short interval of rest at Strasburg Calvin and his 
 friend proceeded to Basle. Here he was to secure the pub- 
 lication of his immortal "Institutes," in the year 1536. He 
 seems to have completed the manuscript in August, 1535. 
 
 The purpose of this work he himself states in the preface 
 in the following noble words : 
 
 "Most mighty and renowned monarch ! When I began 
 the composition of this treatise, I entertained no thought 
 of laying it before your Majesty. My object was to exhibit 
 the simplest elements of Christianity, and thus to lead those 
 who had already some love of the gospel to the knowledge 
 of its principles. I labored especially for my fellow coun- 
 trymen, the French, knowing that many among them hun- 
 ger and thirst after righteousness, while few only have 
 attained to even a moderate degree of knowledge. Hence 
 the unpretending character of the book. When, however, I 
 saw that certain cruel persecutors possessed such power in 
 your kingdom, that no place of refuge for true doctrine 
 existed any longer, it seemed to me that I should be ac- 
 complishing a useful design could I at the same time and 
 by the same means both instruct them and make you ac- 
 quainted with the nature of our belief; that you might 
 thence learn the real character of that doctrine against 
 which those madmen rage with such fury and carry fire 
 and sword through your kingdom." 
 
 Here Calvin makes the primary aim of the "Institutes" 
 to be the instruction of his fellow Protestants among the 
 French. A secondary aim was apologetic. Calvin, in his 
 
22 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 preface to the Psalms, published years later, enlarges on 
 this apologetic aim. He says, "This was the occasion 
 which led to the ptibUcation of the 'Institutes.' My first 
 object was to free my brethren, whose death is precious in 
 the sight of God, from a shameful slander; my next was, 
 as many of our unhappy people were threatened with simi- 
 lar cruelties, to excite at least some feeling of pity and 
 compassion for their sufferings in other nations." 
 
 With the succeeding editions of the "Institutes" the pri- 
 mary aim became more and more controlling. It was de- 
 signed to be a book of instruction in the essential doctrines 
 of the gospel for the people, but mediately, as it was de- 
 signed to be used immediately by candidates for the min- 
 istry in their training. In the preface to the Strasburg 
 edition of 1539 Calvin tells us that the design of the work 
 was "so to prepare theological students for the reading of 
 God's word, that they might easily commence their labors." 
 He had therefore arranged the subjects in such order, and 
 had so explained them, that the reader might comprehend 
 without difficulty what he was to find in the holy scrip- 
 tures, and to what end he was to use all that which they 
 taught him. "In his expositions [of the books of the Bible] 
 therefore he had introduced no long dogmatical investiga- 
 tions. The pious reader would accordingly be spared great 
 annoyance if he undertook the reading of this work with 
 judgment." He adds, "My commentary on the Epistle to 
 the Romans will explain my meaning better than words." 
 
 Here we learn that the "Institutes," as issued in the sec- 
 ond edition, was intended to serve as an introduction to the 
 study of the holy scriptures on the part of theological stu- 
 dents, which is ever the great end of systematic theology. 
 
 Just here we come on the most conspicuous feature of 
 the great system embodied in the "Institutes," its thorough- 
 going biblical character. Much war is made to-day on 
 systematic theology. "Biblical theology" is contrasted with 
 systematic as if systematic were not thoroughly biblical, 
 and some such systems are not biblical. The Mediaeval 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 23 
 
 system builders were guilty of doing what present decriers 
 of systematic theology charge all systematic theologians 
 with having done. They made large use of occasional and 
 detached passages of scripture interpreted without much 
 regard to context or to historical meaning. They set out 
 not to construct out of the contents of Bible teaching a 
 well-knit system of truth, but to prove by detached passages 
 the several parts of a system derived from other than 
 scriptural sources. Calvin's system is quite different. He 
 was thoroughly saturated with Bible teaching. There was 
 no man of his day who made less of human philosophy or 
 ecclesiastical tradition as a source of authority in religion. 
 He made nothing of them. He accepted the Bible as the 
 inspired word of God. He put it in the place of the in- 
 fallible church. It was to him the one source of authority 
 in religion. His systematic theology — the "Institutes" — 
 was an attempt to organize in one comprehensive whole 
 the several teachings of the Bible as he saw them. In par- 
 ticular, he would give place in this system to those great 
 doctrines of sovereign election, salvation by grace, and jus- 
 tification by faith which the reformers had discovered 
 anew, or for the first time as taught in the scriptures. Cal- 
 vin did not, indeed, try to write a history of the unfolding 
 of doctrine in the ages of inspiration. In that sense his 
 theology is not "biblical theology ;" but he did try to take 
 the Bible teachings and arrange them, and them only, into 
 a comprehensive system ; and no other man since the days 
 of the apostles has done so much to give us a systematic 
 view of purely scriptural truth. No man can say with 
 truth that Calvin's "Institutes" were not intended to be 
 such an attempt at the systematic exhibition of scripture 
 truth ; for he professedly tried to give such a work in the 
 "Institutes;" he taught that in its light the Bible should 
 be studied, and therein invited the closest comparison of 
 the totality of scripture truth with the teachings of his 
 book. Nor can any one say that Calvin's effort was not 
 proximately successful. His was the most biblical syste- 
 
24 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 matic theology of his day, just as the Calvino-Covenant 
 theology is the most biblical systematic theology of our 
 day. It is far more biblical than any so-called "biblical 
 theology" yet produced. Guizot says, "His book is only 
 the development and commentary of the great Christian 
 truths, facts, dogmas and precepts with which the holy 
 scriptures furnished him." * Philip Schaff says, " His 
 whole theology is scriptural rather than scholastic, and dis- 
 tinguished for the skillful and comprehensive working up 
 of the teaching of the Bible, as the only pure fountain of 
 revealed truth and the infallible rule of the Christian faith." 
 . . . "He could assert with truth on his deathbed that he 
 never knowingly twisted or misinterpreted a single passage 
 of the scriptures." f 
 
 The first edition of the "Institutes" was a short hand- 
 book containing six chapters, entitled severally, of the Dec- 
 alogue, of the Apostles' Creed, of the Lord's Prayer, of 
 Baptism, and the Lord's Supper, of the Other So-Called 
 Sacraments, of Christian Liberty, Church Government and 
 Discipline. "The second edition has seventeen, the third 
 twenty-one chapters. In the author's last edition of 1559 
 it grew to four or five times its original size, and was 
 divided into four books, each book into a number of chap- 
 ters (from seventeen to twenty-five), and each chapter into 
 sections. It follows in the main, like every good catechism, 
 the order of the Apostles' Creed, which is the order of 
 God's revelation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The first 
 book discusses the knowledge of God the Creator (theology 
 proper) ; the second, the knowledge of God the Redeemer 
 (Christology) ; the third, of the Holy Spirit and the appli- 
 cation of the saving work of Christ (Soteriology) ; the 
 fourth, the means of grace, namely, the church and the 
 sacraments." $ 
 
 * Guizot : St. Louis and John Calvin, p. 180. 
 
 tSchaff: Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I., p. 458. 
 
 t Schaff : History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII., p. 334. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 25 
 
 It is commonly agreed that the work was greatly im- 
 proved as it passed through its numerous editions, and the 
 author himself tells us that he was never satisfied with it 
 till in the final revision and edition of 1559. Nevertheless, 
 it is as commonly agreed that in the first edition the ele- 
 ments of the entire system appeared. The later additions 
 were really expansions. 
 
 The following elements are found in the "Institutes" : 
 ( I ) The ecumenical, or the doctrines of the Trinity and of 
 Christology elaborated by the great ecumenical councils of 
 the fourth century and held by the "orthodox" Greek and 
 Latin churches, as well as by evangelical Protestants. (2) 
 The Augustinian element, or those doctrines which the 
 great Bishop of Hippo had deduced from the scriptures, 
 especially from the writings of Paul — man's original up- 
 rightness, the fall, the consequent total depravity of all 
 Adam's natural posterity, their moral inability to help them- 
 selves, the servitude of their wills to sin, the necessity of 
 salvation by grace if men are to be saved at all, and, as 
 corollaries, the doctrines of predestination and the final 
 perseverance of the saints. 
 
 Calvin took a clearer view of these Bible doctrines than 
 Augustine was able to get. Augustine was in bondage to 
 the sacramentalism of his age. He believed in the necessity 
 of water baptism in order to salvation, and he believed in 
 the ex opere operato theory as to the efficiency of the sacra- 
 ments ; he believed that water baptism is so tied to spirit- 
 ual regenerative grace that every one really baptized with 
 water is regenerated. He knew only too well, however, 
 that many who have been baptized give the most solid evi- 
 dence afterwards of being in a lost estate. He could not 
 hold to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints there- 
 fore. Instead he taught that certain regenerate persons 
 fall from grace, and taught only the perseverance of the 
 elect. Calvin had shaken himself so far free from the 
 trammels of sacramentalism that he could teach the Bible 
 doctrine of the perseverance of saints, or the regenerate. 
 
26 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 (3) Third, the Anselmic-Aquinas element, or the substi- 
 tutionary theory of the atonement, which Anselm set forth 
 in the form of equivalence and which Thomas Aquinas de- 
 veloped and modified, giving us the so-called substitution- 
 ary theory of the atonement. (4) The common Protestant 
 element, including the doctrine of justification by faith, the 
 scriptures the sole source of authority in religion, the 
 analogy of faith the great canon for their interpretation, 
 the doctrine of progressive sanctification, of immediate 
 passage, at death, into glory, the denial of purgatory, the 
 doctrine of the final judgment with eternal rewards and 
 pimishments, the definition of the church as two-fold — 
 visible and invisible; affirmation of the right of infant 
 church membership, notwithstanding inability to give 
 proper grounds for administering baptism to children, as- 
 sertion of the duty of the state to uphold and protect the 
 church, abolition of all holy days save Sabbath, insufficient 
 vindication of Sabbath, denial of transubstantiation, of 
 sacrament of penance, of extreme unction, of marriage as 
 a sacrament, etc. (5) The element common to Calvin and 
 Luther — the verbal inspiration of the scriptures,* our jus- 
 tification on the ground of Christ's righteousness imputed 
 to us and received by faith. (6) The Zurich-Genevan- 
 Anglican element — the doctrine of the Lord's Supper as 
 set forth in the Consensus Tiguriniis. (7) The ultramon- 
 tane view of proper relation of church and state held in 
 common with Roman Church. (8) The distinctive Cal- 
 vinistic element — the Presbyterian form of ecclesiastical 
 polity, and the emphasis laid on certain cardinal doctrines 
 of theology, anthropology, soteriology taught for the most 
 part by Augustine, and by him and his school solely, since 
 the days of the apostles, viz., unconditional election, par- 
 ticular redemption, total depravity, efficacious grace, and 
 perseverance of the saints. 
 
 * SchafiF misrepresents Calvin here. We suppose the Doctor 
 was under the influence of the time-ghost of Union Theological 
 Seminary, New York. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation, 27 
 
 These doctrines are often spoken of as distinctive of 
 Calvin's teaching. This is not correct. Every one of them 
 had been taught by devout Bible students prior to Calvin ; 
 but the emphasis laid on them in Calvin's system does con- 
 stitute one of its distinctive features. No man had given to 
 predestination its proper place in theology before. Calvin 
 saw clearly that it was involved in the scriptural doctrine of 
 God and necessary to the honor of God. He also realized 
 quite as fully as Augustine the comfort of the doctrine to a 
 Christian and its necessity if salvation be reaHzed in any 
 case. So Calvin's great grasp of Bible truth enabled him 
 to define the scope of the redemptive work, the estate of 
 moral helplessness into which man came by the fall, and 
 the need and fact of salvation by grace, and man's assur- 
 ance of salvation once he believes, as they had never been 
 defined before. They are all vital doctrines and funda- 
 mental in the Bible teaching ; and it is at once a great merit 
 and a distinctive feature of Calvin's system that he brings 
 these doctrines into becoming prominence. 
 
 We shall say something further about Calvin's church 
 polity in a succeeding lecture. 
 
 It should also be said in this connection that John Cal- 
 vin's Calvinism was probably broad enough to include both 
 sublapsarianism and supralapsarianism. It is said, with 
 doubtful justice, that in the "Institutes" he speaks as a 
 supralapsarian, but in his commentaries as a sublapsarian ; 
 he does not seem to have cared to make the distinction. 
 It is unjust therefore to him to align him with either side. 
 Perhaps he would have said, as our own Dr. Dabney * has 
 said, that the distinction is one that should never have been 
 made. To us it seems certain that he regarded himself as 
 holding the very ground of Augustine on this subject. 
 Historians generally call Augustine a sub — or an infra — 
 lapsarian. If Calvin is to be called sub — or supra — , then 
 
 *R. L. Dabney, D. D., LL. D. : Syllabus and Notes of the 
 Course of Systematic and Polemic Theology, p. 233. 
 
28 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 he must be called sub; but, we repeat, it appears that he 
 would have preferred to bear neither title. The gist of his 
 view in his own words is, "Man falls according to the ap- 
 pointment of divine providence; but he falls by his own 
 fault." * 
 
 § 12. Travelling in Italy and France under the Name 
 of Charles d'Espeville, 1 535-1 536. 
 
 Calvin, after completing his work on the "Institutes" in 
 1535, made his way to Italy. He was probably moved by 
 a desire to preach the gospel in the very strongholds of 
 the Romish Church. He may have been looking for an 
 opening for a more active life work, albeit he was so dis- 
 inclined to break into his habits of study. He spent some 
 time at the court of Renee, daughter of Louis XII. of 
 France, Duchess of Ferrara. He won many admirers there 
 and some earnest disciples. The most important of these 
 was the Duchess herself. 
 
 Calvin remained her pastor from this time till his death 
 in 1564. He gave her noble rebukes when she needed them, 
 as in 1555 when her husband forced her to conform to the 
 Romish ceremonial ; noble commendation, as when she 
 opened her castle of Montargis in France, whither she had 
 returned, to the reformers in 1562, and when she gave her 
 haughty refusal to the summons of the Duke de Guise that 
 she should give them up ; and the noblest consolation pos- 
 sible under the circumstances after the death of her son- 
 in-law, this same Duke de Guise. 
 
 After a few months' stay in Ferrara, persecution arising, 
 Calvin travelled to several other points in North Italy, 
 everywhere talking and preaching, that the truth might be 
 spread. In 1536 he stayed some weeks with a family of 
 distinction in the vicinity of Aosti; but alarm was given 
 to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Measures were 
 taken for the arrest of the disturber. He escaped, but with 
 difficulty, having to traverse dangerous Alpine passes. 
 
 * Calvin: Institutes, Book III., Chap, xxiii., Sec. 8. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 29 
 
 Calvin went thence into France. He spent some time 
 at Noyon ; won to his views Mary, one of his sisters, his 
 brother Anton and others. France, however, could no 
 longer be his home. Accordingly, with his brother and 
 sister, he set out once more for Basle ; but as the war, again 
 renewed between the Emperor Charles V. and Francis I. 
 of France, was being waged in Lorraine, he essayed to go 
 by way of Geneva. 
 
 This city, which was to be the great theatre of his action, 
 was reached about the end of August, 1536. He was 
 merely passing through. He did not, as he tells us, propose 
 to stay more than one night. Providence had brought to 
 Geneva in an hour of need the man she needed — the only 
 man in all Europe or the world, so far as is known, who 
 could do Geneva's and Christendom's work needing done 
 then and there. 
 
 § 13. The Reformation in Geneva Prior to Calvin's 
 Coming, 1 532-1 536. 
 
 Philip Schaff says with reference to the political history 
 of Geneva, "Geneva was originally governed by a bishop 
 and a count, who divided the spiritual and secular govern- 
 ment between them. Duke Charles HI. of Savoy tried to 
 subdue the city with the aid of an unworthy and servile 
 bishop, Pierre de le Baume, whom he appointed from his 
 own family with the consent of Pope Leo X. But a pa- 
 triotic party, under the lead of Philibert Berthelier, Be- 
 sancon Hugues and Frangois Bonivard (Byron's "Prisoner 
 of Chillon"), opposed the attempt and began a struggle for 
 independence, which lasted several years and resembles on 
 a small scale the heroic struggle of Switzerland against 
 foreign oppression. . . . The patriots gained the victory 
 with the aid of the German Swiss. On February 20, 1526, 
 Bern and Freiburg concluded an alliance with Geneva, and 
 pledged their armed aid for the protection of her inde- 
 pendence. . . . The bishop appealed in vain to the Pope 
 and the Emperor, and left Geneva for St. Claude ; but he 
 
30 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 had to accept the situation and continued to rule ten years 
 longer (tih 1536). 
 
 "This political movement, of which Berthelier is the 
 chief hero, had no connection with the Reformation, but 
 prepared the way for it, and was followed by the evangeli- 
 cal labors of Farel and Viret and the organization of the 
 Reformed Church under Calvin." * 
 
 Even during the struggle for civil liberty opposition to 
 the Romish Church and to the Genevan clergy had begun 
 to grov/. This opposition was fed by reports of the Luth- 
 eran and Zwinglian movements, and by the establishment 
 of the Reformation in Bern in 1528. 
 
 But the pioneer of Protestantism in Geneva was William 
 Farel. He was one of the spiritual sons of Jaques le Fevre 
 d'Etaples of France, one of the most eloquent and forceful 
 evangelical preachers of his day, a devoted servant of God 
 ready to do or suffer anything in Christ's cause ; bold, 
 fearless, a born fighter; ingenuous, noble, but somewhat 
 rash, impetuous and violent in speech. 
 
 His preaching was so radical that he was driven out of 
 France toward the close of 1523. He spent some time in 
 Basle and Strasburg; taught school in Switzerland in va- 
 rious places after 1526; was made one of Bern's mission- 
 aries when that city adopted the Reformation in 1528. He 
 preached with great energy in most of the districts under 
 Bernese control. In 1529 he established the Reformation 
 in Neuchatel. He helped to secure the adoption of the 
 reformed doctrines by the Waldenses in Piedmont in 1532, 
 
 As Farel was returning from this visit he stopped in 
 Geneva. He explained to distinguished representatives of 
 the party of patriots the Protestant doctrines. The council 
 was alarmed and ordered Farel to leave the city. He was 
 summoned to the Episcopal Council in the house of Abbe 
 de Beaumont, the vicar-general of the diocese. He was 
 
 *Schaff: History of the Christian Churchy Vol. VII., pp. 233, 
 234- 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 31 
 
 treated there in the most contemptuous and contumelious 
 manner. He responded to this treatment with great dig- 
 nity, answering that he was ready to dispute with them 
 and to give an account of his faith and ministry. He was 
 ordered to leave the city in three hours. He escaped with 
 difficulty, covered with spittle and bruises inflicted by the 
 infuriated priests. 
 
 His next appearance in Geneva was in January, 1534, 
 when, under the protection of Bern, he held a public dispu- 
 tation with Furbity in the presence of the Great and Small 
 Councils and the delegates of Bern. This time Farel's stay 
 in Geneva was of longer duration. 
 
 On the 27th of August, 1535, the Great Council of the 
 Two Hundred issued an edict of the Reformation. This 
 was followed by another May 21, 1536. It was stated as 
 follows to the inhabitants of Geneva assembled in the 
 Church of St. Peter, ''By a decree of the Council of Two 
 Hundred you are assembled here, that it may be known if 
 there are any among you who have anything to say against 
 the word of God and the doctrine which is preached to us 
 in this city. . . . H so, let them speak so that we may 
 know if there be any who are not willing to live according 
 to the gospel which has been proclaimed to us since the 
 abolition of the mass and of the papal sacrifice." "Upon 
 which," says the register, "Without one single opposing 
 voice, it was unanimously agreed to, and carried by the 
 holding up of hands, and a promise and an oath taken to 
 God that all the people would live according to this holy 
 evangelical law and the word of God which has been made 
 known to them, forsaking all masses and other papal cere- 
 monies and frauds, images and idols and living together in 
 unity and in obedience to law." * 
 
 This was the birthday of the Reformation in Geneva; 
 but the child that day brought forth was born into a diffi- 
 
 * Guizot : St. Louis and John Calvin, pp. 212, 213. He quotes 
 the passages. 
 
32 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 cult and untoward environment. It needed most careful 
 attendance, wise guidance and strong defence. Though 
 Farel had done much, he felt that he was not competent to 
 make the movement a success. He was not preeminently 
 a man of thought, of tact, of organizing ability. He could 
 wage effective war on error. He fought as boldly as any 
 man could and with might for what was right; but there 
 was need now of a great constructive genius. Farel felt 
 this himself. He was ingenuous and noble in an unusual 
 degree. He was willing that his own reputation might be 
 eclipsed by that of an abler man. He sought for such a 
 man for Geneva. 
 
 Just at this time he was informed that Calvin was in the 
 city for a single night ; he hastened to the presence of the 
 author of the "Institutes." He endeavored to persuade him 
 to undertake with him the work of carrying on the re- 
 formation in Geneva. Calvin was strongly disinclined to 
 undertake work of this sort. He yearned for leisure in 
 which to study and set forth the truth. He could not but 
 be conscious of his great capacities as a thinker and writer. 
 He was constitutionally timid. He shrank from such con- 
 flicts as he saw inevitably before the leaders of the Refor- 
 mation in Geneva — a city notorious for its moral laxity. 
 As Calvin hesitated Farel became insistent. "When he 
 saw," says Calvin, "that he could gain nothing by prayer, 
 he tried imprecation, demanding that it might please God 
 to curse my retirement and the tranquillity which I was 
 seeking for my studies, if I held back and refused to give 
 succor and aid at such a time of need. And these words 
 terrified and shook me as if God from on high had stretched 
 out his hand upon me to stop me, so that I renounced the 
 journey which I had undertaken ; but conscious of my diffi- 
 dence and timidity, I refused to bind myself to undertake 
 any definite office." * 
 
 *Giiizot: vS"^. Louis and John Calvin, p. 214. Quoted from 
 Calvin's Preface to the Commentary on the Psalms. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 33 
 
 Nevertheless, recognizing in this call the voice of God, 
 this shrinking youth was soon to turn himself into a man 
 of steel. Turbulent and licentious Geneva was to become 
 "the scene of every crisis and every problem, great or small, 
 which can agitate human society." It was a "tottering 
 republic" with "a wavering faith and a nascent church." 
 Calvin knew that license and anarchy were worse than the 
 tyranny of Savoy and the servitude to the Pope. He saw 
 the necessity of a positive faith and government in order to 
 the salvation of the city and the people. He determined to 
 secure both the adoption of a confession of faith and the 
 application of a form of discipline — a Bible creed and a 
 Bible form of church government ; he determined to apply 
 in Geneva the truth of God and the pozver of God. 
 
 § 14. Calvin's First Period in Geneva, 1 536-1 538. 
 
 Calvin began his labors as teacher on the 5th of Septem- 
 ber, 1536, with expository lectures on Paul's epistles and 
 other parts of the New Testament. These lectures were 
 received with the greatest favor. They were delivered in 
 the afternoons in the Cathedral of St. Peter to great 
 throngs of enthusiastic listeners. The people seemed hun- 
 gry for the word of God. Calvin expounded it with ap- 
 proximate mastery. He has perhaps never been equalled 
 as an expositor of the word of God. 
 
 His ideal of an expositor is set forth in the preface of 
 his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans and is worthy 
 of the careful study of every one who would ever success- 
 fully expound the word of God. In his view "the most 
 excellent quality in an expositor is clearness combined with 
 brevity, it being his particular duty to exhibit the spirit of 
 the writer ; whence he errs from his proper line in propor- 
 tion as he turns the attention of the reader from the writer 
 on which he is employed." "We therefore wished that 
 some one might arise," he continues, "among those who de- 
 vote themselves to this branch of theology, who would 
 undertake to facilitate the study of scriptures without 
 
34 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 carrying the student through too great a mass of commen- 
 taries. How far I have succeeded in this attempt I leave 
 you and my readers to judge." * 
 
 Toward the latter part of September a disputation be- 
 tween the Protestants and Roman Catholics was held at 
 Lausanne. To this conference Calvin went as the young 
 lieutenant of Farel. Farel conducted the debate on the 
 Protestant side for the first five days. Then Calvin made 
 a couple of short speeches. They made clear his know- 
 ledge both of the fathers and the scriptures and the Romish 
 misunderstanding and misuse of each. Their effect was 
 tremendous. The Reformation was adopted in the Pays 
 de Vaud as it had been in Geneva. 
 
 Calvin returned to Geneva with augmented honors ; he 
 was soon after elected pastor, and under this title was sol- 
 emnly installed in the Church of St. Peter. His preaching 
 was heard with loud expressions of satisfaction. 
 
 Farel and he drew up a confession of faith, "a. brief 
 formula of belief and doctrine," as Beza says, "to give some 
 shape to the newly established church." Calvin wrote also 
 a catechism, not at first in its later form of questions and 
 answers, but consisting of ''brief summaries of all the 
 principal tenets of our religion." 
 
 This confession consists of twenty-one articles in which 
 the chief doctrines of the reformed faith are clearly and 
 simply stated, and that faith sharply discriminated from 
 that of Rome. The doctrine of predestination is only im- 
 plied, not stated, however. They teach briefly the princi- 
 ples of ecclesiastical organization, the duty of obeying civil 
 "statutes and decrees which are not in opposition to the 
 commandments of God." They establish "the punishment 
 of excommunication, which " they " hold to be a sacred 
 and salutary weapon in the hands of believers, so that the 
 wicked by their evil conversation may not corrupt the good 
 and dishonor Christ." They "hold that it is expedient and 
 
 * Quoted in Henry: Life of Calvin, Vol. I., p. 218. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 35 
 
 according to the ordinance of God that all open idolaters, 
 blasphemers, murderers, thieves, adulterers and false wit- 
 nesses, all seditious and quarrelsome persons, slanderers, 
 pugilists, drunkards and spendthrifts, if they do not amend 
 their lives after they have been duly admonished, shall be 
 cut off from communion with believers until they have 
 given satisfactory proof of repentance." 
 
 During this period Calvin had engaged in disputes with 
 Anabaptist intruders and had waged a controversy with the 
 unprincipled theological adventurer, and turncoat, the vain 
 and quarrelsome, the vagarious and unmanly Caroli, who 
 accused the Genevese reformers of being Arians. 
 
 Such were Calvin's early labors in Geneva as a teacher. 
 Meanwhile he had been trying to apply his principles of 
 ecclesiastical government. Farel, Calvin and Corault had 
 presented to the council a memorial concerning the future 
 organization and discipline of the church. They had re- 
 quested, in particular, the council to elect a certain number 
 of citizens to act with the ministers in the application of 
 discipline. They wished to bring the "power of God" as 
 well as the truth of God to bear on the lives of the Gene- 
 vese. Under their influence the Great Council of the Two 
 Hundred, on January 16, 1537, issued a series of orders 
 forbidding "immoral habits, foolish songs, gambling, dese- 
 cration of the Lord's day, baptism by midwives," and 
 directing that all idolatrous images should be burned. 
 
 They were not ready to sanction the power of excommu- 
 nication, which the ministers wanted ; but on the 29th of 
 July, 1537, the Council of the Two Hundred ordered all 
 the citizens, male and female, to give their assent to the con- 
 fession of faith in the Church of St. Peter. A large num- 
 ber complied; many refused. In November, 1537, the 
 council passed a measure that all who would not receive 
 the confession should be banished — a decree that could 
 never be carried into force. 
 
 There is much in this influence of the Genevan reformers 
 that we have to condemn. Having freed the Genevese 
 
36 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 from the bondage of Rome, they would reduce them by 
 force to a bondage to their confession. They had failed to 
 see that God alone is Lord of the conscience. They neither 
 gave nor expected religious toleration ; they did not regard 
 it as right. 
 
 Calvin, in his practical work in Geneva, had had a three- 
 fold end in view, viz., the independence of the church of 
 state control, the government of the church by itself en- 
 forced by penalties including that of excommunication 
 from the sealing ordinances, the reform of society, both 
 civil and religious, by the united powers of church and 
 state. 
 
 In this practical aim of Calvin's was the complex occa- 
 sion for struggle. The frivolous and libidinous people of 
 Geneva were disinclined to moral reform. The state was 
 disinclined to allow the autonomy of the church. It was 
 unwilling for a long time to concede to the presbytery the 
 right of excommunication. An harmonious alliance be- 
 tween church and state is a Utopian dream, impossible of 
 realization ; for how can two walk together except they 
 be agreed? 
 
 Impatient of rigid discipline, the people set themselves 
 against the council. In this opposition they were aided in 
 part by Bern, which was opposed to the tenet of excom- 
 munication. The radicalism of Farel and Calvin was also 
 displeasing to the people. Farel had early abolished all 
 holidays except Sunday, the use of unleavened bread in the 
 communion, and the baptismal fonts. Here, too, Bern sup- 
 ported the opponents of the Genevese reformers, being 
 itself less radical in its reforms and having some political 
 aspirations touching the acquisition of influence in Geneva. 
 
 In the February elections of 1538 the party of opposition 
 elected the four syndics and a majority of the members of 
 the Great Council. The new rulers moved with prudence. 
 They instituted some measures furthering the work of re- 
 form ; but they enforced the Bernese customs, and they 
 did nothing to suppress the popular vices. The preachers 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 37 
 
 therefore thundered against them, with the result first of 
 the banishment of Corault and later that of Farel and Cal- 
 vin. 
 
 The exile of Calvin and Farel occurred as follows : They 
 had been ordered to celebrate the Easter communion after 
 the Bernese custom. They refused to do so, owing to the 
 prevalent debauchery and disorder, and because they would 
 not subordinate the authority of God to that of Bern. On 
 Easter Sunday, April 21st, they preached, Calvin in St. 
 Peter's and Farel in St. Gervais's, to large audiences ; but 
 declared that they could not administer the sacrament 
 under the existing circumstances. Many of the hearers 
 were armed ; they drew their swords ; they drowned with 
 their shouts the voices of the preachers. The preachers 
 left the churches under guard of their friends. 
 
 On the next two days the Council of the Two Hundred 
 met in the cloisters of St. Peter's and deposed Calvin and 
 Farel and bade them leave the city within three days. 
 
 Zurich made some kind efforts to secure their restora- 
 tion; but the preachers, while ready to make minor con- 
 cessions, insisted on the necessity of discipline and its 
 exercise by a joint committee of ministers and laymen ; and 
 the Genevese confirmed the sentence of banishment May 
 26th. The exiles proceeded to Basle, whence Farel was 
 soon called to Neuchatel and Calvin a little later to Stras- 
 burg. 
 
 Calvin had received the news of his banishment with the 
 noble words, "Very well, it is better to serve God than man. 
 If we had sought to please men we should have been badly 
 rewarded, but we serve a higher Master, who will not with- 
 hold from us his reward." 
 
 § 15. Calvin in Strashurg. Still the Head of the Gene- 
 van Church, 1538-1541. 
 
 Having accepted an invitation to Strasburg, Calvin ar- 
 rived at that city in the early days of September, 1538. He 
 was cordially received by Bucer and the other leading re- 
 
38 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 formers of the place. The council appointed him assistant 
 professor of theology, in which capacity he lectured on the 
 Gospel of John and the Epistle of Paul to the Romans to 
 growing classes of admiring pupils. He was soon made 
 pastor also of the Church of the "Strangers," his church 
 consisting for the most part of French refugees. In this 
 he attempted again, and this time with considerable success, 
 to apply the discipline of the church for which he had been 
 expelled from Geneva. He regarded discipline as of hardly 
 less importance than doctrine. He gave to this church, too, 
 a liturgy in proximate correspondence with New Testa- 
 ment teaching, and rejecting almost entirely Mediaeval ad- 
 juncts. Philip Schaff nobly says of it: He substituted in 
 the place of Mediaeval worship "that simple and spiritual 
 mode of worship which is well adapted for intelHgent de- 
 votion, if it be animated by the quickening presence and 
 power of the Spirit of God, but becomes jejune, barren, 
 cold and chilly if that power is wanting. He made the 
 sermon the central part of worship, and substituted instruc- 
 tion in the vernacular for the reading of the mass in Latin. 
 He magnified the pulpit, as the throne of the preacher, 
 above the altar of the sacrificing priest. He opened the 
 inexhaustible fountain of free prayer in public worship, 
 with its endless possibilities of application to varying cir- 
 cumstances and wants. He restored to the church like 
 Luther the inestimable blessing of congregational singing, 
 which is the true popular liturgy and more efifective than 
 the reading of written forms of prayer." * The rites of 
 baptism and the Lord's Supper were entirely stripped of 
 later adjuncts and performed in the gospel simplicity. 
 
 This liturgy became the model of that subsequently es- 
 tablished in Geneva, though with modifications, and of 
 those in the Reformed French Church and of British Pres- 
 byterianism. By the introduction of the Psalter in the ver- 
 nacular, Calvin comforted and inspired the persecuted 
 French Protestants in all later years. 
 
 * Schaff: History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII., p. 379. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 39 
 
 But these years at Strasburg were filled not only with 
 professional and pastoral work. Calvin here was prolific 
 as an author. He sent forth in 1539 his matured theologi- 
 cal views in a carefully revised edition of the "Institutes ;" 
 and in the same year his valuable commentary on the Epis- 
 tle to the Romans. During this period he wrote also a 
 French treatise on the Lord's Supper, and an overwhelming 
 answer to Bishop Sadolet's letter to the Genevese. 
 
 Calvin also served, as at the colloquies of Frankfort, 
 Worms and Regensberg, as a commissioner of Strasburg 
 and the Dukes of Luneberg — of one or both. At these 
 conferences, which were among German-speaking peoples, 
 Calvin was at something of a disadvantage — an admired 
 adviser rather than a public protagonist. Stahelin thus 
 defines his position at these conferences, "The young 
 Frenchman, with his reserved and rather shy manners, 
 must have been a singular apparition among the princes 
 and most eminent men of learning in the German empire 
 amongst whom he was suddenly thrown. As they often 
 spoke in German he did not always understand what was 
 being discussed, and his position was rather that of a 
 learned and reliable man whom his friends had summoned 
 to give them valuable advice than that of one who took an 
 active part in official debates." * 
 
 Calvin soon came to expect little good from the col- 
 loquies. He was not of the kind that compromises truth. 
 Protestants and Romanists cannot come together except 
 upon compromise or utter abandonment of position on the 
 part of one party or the other. There is a radical antago- 
 nism between them. Calvin's presence furthered no sort of 
 union between the two great wings of Christendom. 
 
 His presence in these colloquies and his exile in Stras- 
 burg, indeed, were productive of good in the formation of 
 pure, noble and enduring friendships, the broadening of 
 
 * Stahelin: , Vol. I., p. 233. Quoted in Guizot: St. Louis 
 
 and John Calvin, p. 240. 
 
40 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 his understanding of the Lutheran and ZwingHan wings of 
 Protestantism and the widening of his sympathies. 
 
 These friendships, especiahy that with Melanchthon, 
 show that Calvin possessed a strong and fervid affectional 
 nature, and that his friendships could easily bridge con- 
 siderable chasms in the faith, provided only he believed in 
 the genuine Christianity of the man. The expressions of 
 affection of these two great men for each other, notwith- 
 standing their theological differences, occurring in their 
 correspondence, strike a man in our superficial age as too 
 fervid ; but they and much matter besides in Calvin's lit- 
 erary remains effectually overthrow the somewhat current 
 view that Calvin was a man all head and no heart. He is 
 shown to have been a man of inclusive and generous affec- 
 tions, which, however, were curbed and directed by the 
 dominant affection of his being, viz., that for God his Sav- 
 iour. These friendships lent a charm to his life, as did also 
 his marriage, which took place in August, 1540. 
 
 The courtship of John Calvin strikes a man with a less 
 high sense of duty and less devotion to God as unnatural. 
 With Calvin God was first and all the world, including 
 every woman, was second to that first love. His devotion 
 to God was such that he would probably hardly have 
 thought seriously of taking a wife had not his friends, out 
 of consideration for his comfort and prolonged usefulness,. 
 urged him incessantly to do so. The exhortations of his 
 friends, reinforced by his feelings of loneliness and his 
 need of care, finally occasioned his seeking a help-meet. A 
 help-meet was what he sought — one to aid him in his work 
 for God, not a hindrance. 
 
 What he thought of his future wife and the view which 
 he then took of marriage we may learn from his letter to 
 Farel bearing the date of May 19, 1539, "Remember what 
 I expect from one who is to be a companion through life. 
 I do not belong to the class of loving fools, who, blinded by 
 passion, are ready to expend their affection on vice itself. 
 Do you wish to know what kind of beauty alone can win 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 41 
 
 my soul? It is that in which grace and virtue, contented- 
 ness and suavity are united with simpHcity ; and I can hope 
 that a woman with these quahties would not be negligent 
 of my general well-being." * 
 
 It amuses us that he was apparently willing to submit 
 the choice of a wife for himself largely to his friends. 
 After a good deal of prospecting on their part, he came to 
 the conclusion that in Idelette de Bure, widow of John 
 Storder, who had been one of Calvin's prominent converts 
 from Anabaptism, a woman of education and dignity of 
 character, he had found that cluster of qualities for which 
 he looked in a wife, albeit her health was poor and she had 
 several small children. 
 
 They were married with a good deal of public solemnity 
 and pomp, and lived in increasing happiness for nine years, 
 when, after a lingering illness, she was taken from his 
 side. Calvin's wife was an exalted Christian. Calvin 
 esteemed her as a woman and loved her as a wife. 
 
 His admiration, affection and devotion to his wife are 
 often incidentally expressed or implied in his correspond- 
 ence. The severity of grief upon her death is also nobly 
 indicated in his letter to Viret, April 7, 1549. The letter 
 runs as follows : 
 
 "Although my wife's death has pressed hard upon me, I 
 seek as much as possible to conquer my sorrow, and my 
 friends contend with each other to afford me consolation; 
 but in truth neither their nor my efforts can accomplish 
 what we wish. Useless, however, as it may be, it is a 
 greater comfort to me than I can describe. You know the 
 tenderness, or far rather ought I to say the weakness, of 
 my heart, and you are well aware therefore that if I had 
 not exercised the whole force of my spirit to soften my 
 agony, I could not have borne it ; and indeed the cause of 
 my distress is not a trifling one. I am separated from the 
 best of companions, who, if anything harder could have 
 
 * Quoted in Henry: Life of John Calvin, Vol. I., p. 264. 
 
42 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 happened to me, would willingly have been my companion, 
 not only in exile and in want, but in death itself. She was 
 a true help to me in her life in the duties of my office. She 
 never opposed me in the slightest matter. As she had no 
 anxiety for herself, so through her whole sickness she 
 avoided telling me that she had any for her children. 
 But as I feared this silence might uselessly increase her 
 care, I began myself, three days before her death, to speak 
 on the subject, and promised to do for her children what- 
 ever lay in my power. She immediately answered that she 
 had already commended them to God ; and on my replying 
 that this would not hinder my caring for them, she an- 
 swered, 'I am sure you will not forsake the children who 
 are commended to God.' But yesterday I learnt that when 
 a friend requested her to speak with me respecting the 
 children, she answered her briefly that the one thing neces- 
 sary was that they should be God-fearing and pious people : 
 'It is not necessary to make my husband promise to bring 
 them up in holiness and the fear of God. If they be pious 
 he will be to them an unsought father ; if they be not, they 
 do not deserve that I should pray for them.' And this 
 greatness of soul will indeed influence me more powerfully 
 than all the directions she could have given." * 
 
 His family life no doubt helped Calvin to be a better pas- 
 tor and gave reach to his sympathies. What could be 
 sweeter in any man's letters than this reference to Viret's 
 little girl in a letter to the father, "I sympathize with your 
 little daughter; but she will forgive her mother when she 
 has a sister or brother born to her. The weaning I hope is 
 well over." The man that can pass from matters of impor- 
 tance to the griefs of a child as Calvin here does is quite 
 human in the best sense. Both in his references to his own 
 home life and in his intimations of the view which his 
 
 * Quoted in Henry: Life of Calvin, Vol. I., pp. 266, 267. Cf. 
 Bonnet : Calvin's Letters, Vol. II., pp. 216, 217, for a translation 
 superior in some respects. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 43 
 
 friends should take of wife and children we find ample 
 evidence that Calvin, in commenting on Ephesians v. 28-33, 
 was also writing out of his own heart. He says, "It is a 
 thing against nature that any one should not love his wife, 
 for God has ordained marriage that two may be made one 
 person — a result which certainly no other alliance can 
 bring about. When Moses says that a man shall leave fa- 
 ther and mother and cleave unto his wife, he shows that a 
 man ought to prefer marriage to every other union, as 
 being the holiest of all. It reflects our union to Christ." 
 
 From these attractive, but too little understood, features 
 of Calvin's character and life we must return to the consid- 
 eration of a part of his literary output while at Geneva, 
 a work that showed that the exile was still the pastor of the 
 Genevese — his answer to the overture of Bishop Sadolet. 
 
 The confusion consequent on Calvin's banishment from 
 Geneva seemed to Rome the occasion for winning to herself 
 the allegiance of Geneva. Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras in 
 Dauphiny, seemed to be the man for the enterprise. He 
 was of highly respectable morals, amiable qualities of heart, 
 and a man of letters. He had shown himself opposed to 
 the bitterer forms of persecution employed by the Roman- 
 ists against the Protestants. By reason of his character 
 and history, therefore, he was particularly well fitted for 
 the task of reconciling the Genevese. His letter to the Gen- 
 evese was a sophistical, but plausible, plea wherefore the 
 people of Geneva should abandon the new-fangled teach- 
 ings and cult of the reformers and come back and walk 
 again in the old path tried and '"approved of all everywhere 
 and in all times." Dignified as his letter was, it basely 
 aspersed, to the damage of the impression which the writer 
 wished to make, the motives of the reformers. 
 
 The letter was in Latin and therefore did less damage 
 than if it had been in French ; but it did damage. There 
 was no man in Geneva to answer it. The great pastor of 
 the Genevese was in exile. He took up the cudgels there ; 
 his answer to Sadolet was exhaustive of the points made by 
 
44 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 the amiable, but wily, ecclesiastic, an indignant, but tem- 
 pered, vindication of his ministry as one called of God and 
 not inspired by ambition or self-seeking. As a demolition 
 of Sadolet's argument Calvin's reply was complete ; but his 
 reply was more than a demolition of his adversary's argu- 
 ment; it was an attack on Rome and her deviations from 
 truth. Hear a part of his impeachment in his own words : 
 
 "I will not permit you, Sadolet, by inscribing the name 
 of church on such abominations, both to defame her against 
 all law and justice, and prejudice the ignorant against us, 
 as if we were determined to wage war against the church ; 
 for, though we admit that in ancient times some seeds of 
 superstition were sown, which detracted somewhat from 
 the purity of the gospel, still you know that it is not so long 
 ago since those monsters of impiety with which we war 
 were born or, at least, grew to such a size. Indeed, in at- 
 tacking, breaking down and destroying your kingdom we 
 are armed not only with the energy of the divine word, but 
 with the aid of the holy fathers also. 
 
 "That I may altogether disarm you of the authority of 
 the church, which, as your shield of Ajax, you ever and 
 anon oppose to us, I will show by some additional exam- 
 ples how widely you differ from that holy antiquity. 
 
 "We accuse you of overthrowing the ministry, of which 
 the empty name remains with you without the reality. As • 
 far as the office of feeding the people is concerned, the very 
 children perceive that bishops and presbyters are dumb 
 statues, while men of all ranks know by experience that 
 they are active only in robbing and devouring. We are in- 
 dignant that in the room of the sacred supper has been 
 substituted a sacrifice by which the death of Christ is 
 emptied of its virtues. We exclaim against the execrable 
 traffic in masses, and we complain that the supper of the 
 Lord, as to one of its halves, has been stolen from the 
 Christian people. We inveigh against the accursed wor- 
 ship of images. We show that the sacraments are vitiated 
 by many profane notions. We tell how indulgences crept 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 45 
 
 in with fearful dishonor to the cross of Christ. We lament 
 that by means of human traditions Christian liberty has 
 been crushed and destroyed. Of these and similar pests 
 we have been careful to purge the churches which the Lord 
 has committed to us. Expostulate with us if you can for 
 the injury which we inflicted on the Catholic Church by 
 daring to violate its sacred sanctions. The fact is now too 
 notorious for you to gain anything by denying it, viz., that 
 in all these points the ancient church is clearly on our side, 
 and opposes you not less than we ourselves do." * 
 
 Thus Calvin marches on charging and proving through- 
 out one of the ablest and most successful, as well as most 
 dignified, controversial papers of the time. Luther was de- 
 lighted. He said of this paper, "This answer has hand and 
 foot, and I rejoice that God raises up men who will give 
 the last blow to popery and finish the war against Anti- 
 Christ which I began." f The answer gave great satisfac- 
 tion to all but the most hostile at Geneva. It made Calvin 
 precious to all the friends of freedom. It gave new proof 
 that he was fit to be the pastor of the city. 
 
 Meanwhile, and during the following months, Geneva 
 was falling into more and more of disorder. Discipline was 
 nil and immorality ran riot. The political freedom of the 
 country was in danger. Bern, outwitting the Genevese 
 commission, acquired treaty sovereignty, which the Great 
 Council would not acknowledge. 
 
 The Genevese themselves were divided into three parties, 
 the Bernese, Roman Catholic parties and Reformers. The 
 Bernese party was decimated by poHtical execution. Both 
 that party and the Roman Catholic made blunders. The 
 party of the Reformers began again to grow in relative 
 power and numbers. 
 
 Thus the way was prepared for the recall of Calvin. 
 This was discussed in the council early in 1539, again in 
 
 * Calvin's Tracts, Vol. I., pp. 49, 50. 
 t Schaff: Vol. VII., p. 412. 
 
46 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 February, 1540, and decided upon September 21, 1540. 
 From that time on increasingly earnest measures were 
 taken to get him. The syndics' letter bearing date of Octo- 
 ber 22d concludes, "On behalf of our Little, Great and Gen- 
 eral Councils (all of which have strongly urged us to take 
 this step), we pray you very affectionately that you will be 
 pleased to come over to us, and to return to your former 
 post and ministry; and we hope that by God's help this 
 course will be a great advantage for the furtherance of the 
 holy gospel, seeing that our people very much desire you, 
 and we will so deal with you that you shall have reason to 
 be satisfied." * The seal of the letter bore the legend,"After 
 darkness I hope for light." 
 
 Calvin loved Geneva, but had borne bitter experiences 
 there. He knew that Titanic struggles awaited him should 
 he return. The theologians at Strasburg contended that 
 his place was there at the head of the French Church and a 
 teacher of theology in the seminary. After a time both 
 Calvin and his friends, however, swung around to the con- 
 clusion that his place was in Geneva. He yearned over 
 Geneva while he dreaded to return. "There is no place 
 under heaven," he writes to Viret, "of which I can have a 
 greater dread, not because I have hated it, but because I see 
 so many difficulties presented in that quarter which I do 
 feel myself far from being able to surmount." f But he 
 remembered that in this matter he was not his own master. 
 He presented his heart as a sacrifice and offered it up to 
 God. He returned to Geneva in early September, 1541. 
 
 * Quoted in Schaff: History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII., 
 P- 431- 
 
 ■\ Calvin's Letters, Vol. I., p. 231. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Period of His Establishment, and Defence of as 
 Scriptural, of an Order of Ecclesiastical Govern- 
 ment, Corresponding to His System of Faith, 
 Which is Known as Presbyterianism, i 541-1549. 
 
 § 16. Calvin's Labors in this Period. 
 
 Upon Calvin's return to Geneva he entered into labors 
 more abundant. He was professor of theology, preacher, 
 pastor, member of the church court, head of schools, author, 
 correspondent with all Protestant Europe, head of the 
 Reformation movement, fighting controversies on every side 
 in behalf of the truth — the protagonist of Protestantism 
 against the papacy and the protagonist of biblical Protes- 
 tantism against the rationalists. Beza says of "the ordinary 
 labors" of Calvin at this time, "During the week he 
 preached every alternate and lectured every third day; on 
 Thursday he presided in the meetings of presbytery (con- 
 sistory), and on Friday he attended the ordinary scripture 
 meeting called the congregation, where he had his full 
 share of duty. He also wrote most learned commentaries on 
 several of the books of scripture, besides answering the 
 enemies of religion, and maintaining an extensive corres- 
 pondence on matters of great importance. Any one who 
 reads these attentively will be astonished how one man 
 could be fit for labors so numerous and great." * He was 
 a preeminently laborious and faithful man in every one of 
 his church relations. It may touch a sympathetic chord in 
 the breasts of some of our city workers to learn that Cal- 
 vin "proposed the establishment of 'clubs open only to 
 
 *Beza: Life of Calvin, in Calvin's Tracts, Vol. I., p. xxxix. 
 
48 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 members of the association, in which young men and fa- 
 thers of famihes could meet and discuss matters relating 
 to the war and other things useful to the common- 
 wealth,' " * and that four such clubs were established. 
 Thus this busy man took measures to break up the resort 
 to taverns. 
 
 Nor is this all. He was appointed, together with three of 
 the syndics of Geneva, in 1541 to draw up a new code of 
 laws for Geneva. He went into this work with his usual 
 energy and faithfulness, giving attention to the "minutest 
 details concerning the administration of justice, the city 
 police, the military, the firemen, the watchmen on the 
 towers and the like." f 
 
 His advice was sought on all important afifairs of state, 
 although he was not a citizen of Geneva until 1559, which 
 was eighteen years after his second return to the city. He 
 was the moral head of Reformed Geneva — of state as well 
 as church, though he never held a civil office and was never 
 a member of a council and never appeared before one of 
 the councils except when asked, or when some religious 
 question was being debated. 
 
 That part of his labors which cost him most of trials in 
 this period and was most important to the city of Geneva 
 was the introduction of his form of ecclesiastical govern- 
 ment. To this he gave himself at once on his return. 
 
 § 17. Distinctive Principles of Calvin's Ecclesiastical 
 Polity. 
 
 On his arrival in Geneva Calvin had no sooner paid his 
 respects to the magistrates than he requested them at once 
 to appoint a commission to draw up an ecclesiastical consti- 
 tution and discipline in accord with the word of God and 
 the primitive church. 
 
 A fortnight later this commission had drawn up "a hun- 
 
 *Guizot: St. Louis and John Calvin, p. 266. 
 tSchaff: Vol. VII., p. 464- 
 
Calvin and tpie Genevan Reformation. 49 
 
 dred and sixty-eight" articles which contained a complete 
 scheme of church government. This scheme was presented 
 to the council on the 26th of September, 1541. It suffered 
 modifications prior to its adoption by the several councils. 
 Finally on the 2d of January, 1542, "the ecclesiastical ordi- 
 nances were accepted by the General Assembly, consisting 
 of 2,000 citizens ;" * so that Calvin could write as he did 
 March 14, 1542, "We at length possess a presbyterial court 
 such as it is, and a form of discipline such as these dis- 
 jointed times will permit." f He had won so much only by 
 the greatest tact, wisdom and persistence. 
 
 The distinctive principles of this system of government 
 were — 
 
 1. The self-government of the church under the head- 
 ship of Christ. 
 
 2. Ecclesiastical discipline of all the members of the 
 church from the greatest to the smallest to be exercised by 
 a parliamentary court consisting of ministers of the gospel 
 and ruling elders. 
 
 3. A consistory, or parliamentary court, consisting of 
 elders of two classes, to exercise this discipline. 
 
 4. The recognition and reinstitution of the New Testa- 
 ment ruling eldership. 
 
 Even in a sketch such as this these principles of church 
 polity deserve more particular illustration : 
 
 I. Calvin distinguished sharply between church and state, 
 but he saw no propriety in their separation ; held that they 
 were independent of one another each in its own domain; 
 but that they ought in action to combine and mutually sup- 
 port one another. He held to the duty of the church to 
 maintain relations of absolute independence and separation 
 from the state only when it is necessary in order to her own 
 self-government. He believed that God in Christ is head 
 of both church and state. Here lay one of his mistakes. 
 
 *Guizot: St. Louis and John Calvin, p. 239. 
 t Calvin's Letters, Vol. I., p. 316. 
 
50 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 God, viewed as Creator and moral Governor of the uni- 
 verse, is head of the state. God, viewed as Redeemer also, 
 is head of the church. Calvin thought every state ought 
 to acknowledge Christ as its head. This was the concep- 
 tion of his age. He was not able to shake it off. Hence 
 not unnaturally he thought that two such institutions under 
 one divine head ought to be in alliance here below. 
 
 The logic of such a position is persecution by the state on 
 the grounds of religious heresy. If the state has any right 
 to profess Christ as its head and to propagate his religion, 
 then it must vindicate the laws of Christ ; it must punish 
 heresy with the forces at its command. Thus naturally 
 we shall find the Genevan state punishing with fine, ban- 
 ishment and death such men as Gruet, Bolsec and Servetus. 
 God never gave the state as such the right to profess Chris- 
 tianity or to push it. 
 
 Calvin was wrong in holding that the state could prop- 
 erly be Christian in any such sense ; it was a common error 
 of his age. He was wrong in holding the propriety of a 
 union between church and state, and thus making the state 
 profess and enforce the laws of both tables of the Deca- 
 logue. He tended, however, in this false union of church 
 and state to make the church the superior member of the 
 alliance. 
 
 He was right in contending for the autonomy of the 
 church — her free self-government, even at the cost of 
 breaking the alliance of church and state and the church's 
 entire support of herself. This was no small service to 
 Protestant Christendom wherein generally too much power, 
 in the rebound from papal tyranny, had been given to the 
 temporal princes. 
 
 2. Calvin valued discipline as second only to teaching. 
 The effort to introduce discipline had been the primary oc- 
 casion of his expulsion from Geneva. He introduced it 
 successfully in the French congregation at Strasburg. The 
 need of it was one reason for his recall to Geneva. It is 
 one of the greatest factors in his influence to this day. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 51 
 
 This stern discipline, based on his noble creed, has formed 
 the heroic French, Dutch, English, Scotch-Irish and Amer- 
 ican and Australian Puritans to this day. 
 
 Calvin proposed to realize, so far as possible, the ideal of 
 the "church without spot or wrinkle," which Paul sets 
 forth in the Epistle to the Ephesians v. 27. He sought the 
 glorification of God by the dominion of his word in the life 
 of Christians. In his doctrine of the church he provided 
 for the application in the church of the power of Christ as 
 well as the teaching of Christ. He knew, however, that 
 the ideal of a perfect church could only be imperfectly 
 realized. He teaches, as in his commentary on Matthew 
 xiii. 47, that " the church while on earth is mixed with 
 good and bad and will never be free from all impurity. . . . 
 Although God, who is a God of order, commands us to ex- 
 ercise discipline, he allows for a time to hypocrites a place 
 among believers until he shall set up his kingdom in perfec- 
 tion on the last day. As far as we are concerned, we must 
 strive to correct vices and to purge the church of impurity, 
 although she will not be free from all stain and blemish till 
 Christ shall separate the sheep from the goats." 
 
 The importance of discipline Calvin formally sets forth 
 in his introduction to the discussion of "The Discipline of 
 the Church" contained in the "Institutes," Book IV., Chap- 
 ter xii. He says, "As some have such a hatred of discipline 
 as to abhor the very name, they should attend to the fol- 
 lowing consideration : that if no society and even no house, 
 though containing only a small family, can be preserved in 
 a proper state without discipline, this is far more necessary 
 in the church, the state of which ought to be the most or- 
 derly of all. As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of 
 the church, so discipline forms the ligaments which connect 
 the members together and keep each in its proper place. 
 . . . Discipline, therefore, serves as a bridle to curb and 
 restrain the refractory who resist the doctrine of Christ, or 
 as a spur to stimulate the inactive, and sometimes as a 
 father's rod with which those who have grievously fallen 
 
52 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 may be chastised in mercy and with the gentleness of the 
 spirit of Christ. Now, when we see the approach of certain 
 beginnings of a dreadful desolation in the church, since 
 there is no solicitude or means to keep the people in obedi- 
 ence to our Lord, necessity itself proclaims the want of a 
 remedy ; and this is the only remedy which has been com- 
 manded by Christ or which has ever been adopted among 
 believers." * 
 
 In accordance with the teaching of Christ, Calvin made 
 three degrees of discipline, viz., private admonition, admo- 
 nition in the presence of witnesses or before the church, 
 and excommunication. Excommunication is to be em- 
 ployed only "for the correcting of atrocious crimes," such as 
 "adultery, fornication, theft, robbery, sedition, perjury, 
 false witness, and other similar crimes, together with obsti- 
 nate persons, who after having been admonished even of 
 smaller faults, contemn God and his judgment." Admoni- 
 tion in the presence of witnesses is to be employed against 
 "public offences" of less heinousness and against private 
 offences of inferior sort, when private admonition has 
 failed. Private admonition is to be employed universally 
 whenever occasion shall require. "Pastors and presbyters, 
 beyond all others, should be vigilant in the discharge of this 
 duty, being called by their office, not only to preach to the 
 congregation, but also to admonish and exhort in private 
 houses, if in any instances their public instructions may 
 not have been sufficiently efficacious, as Paul inculcates 
 when he says that he 'taught publicly and from house to 
 house,' and protests himself to be 'pure from the blood of 
 all men,' having 'ceased not to warn every one night and 
 day with tears.' " f 
 
 The ends of discipline are, "First, that those who lead 
 scandalous and flagitious lives may not, to the dishonor of 
 
 * Institutes. Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, 
 1841. 
 
 f Institutes, Vol. II., pp. 411, 412. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 53 
 
 God, be numbered among Christians. . . . For as the 
 church is the body of Christ, it cannot be contaminated with 
 such foul and putrid members without some ignominy be- 
 ing reflected upon the Head." "The second end is, that 
 the good may not be corrupted, as is often the case, by 
 constant association with the wicked ; for such is our pro- 
 pensity to error, nothing is more easy than for evil exam- 
 ples to seduce us from rectitude of conduct." "A little 
 leaven leaveneth the whole lump." "The third end is, that 
 those who are censured or excommunicated, confounded 
 with the shame of their turpitude, may be led to repent- 
 ance." 
 
 On no point does Calvin lay more emphasis than that 
 discipline of every degree is to be administered only "with 
 a spirit of gentleness." "For there is constant need of the 
 greatest caution, according to the injunction of Paul, re- 
 specting a person who may have been censured, 'lest per- 
 haps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch 
 sorrow ;' for thus a remedy would become a poison ; but 
 the rule of moderation may be better deduced from the end 
 intended to be accomplished ; for as the design of excom- 
 munication is that the sinner may be brought to repentance, 
 and evil examples taken away, to prevent the name of 
 Christ from being blasphemed and other persons tempted 
 to imitation ; if we keep these things in view, it will be easy 
 to judge how far severity ought to proceed and where it 
 ought to stop." * He inculcates earnestly the duty of try- 
 ing to win to a holy life the excommunicated. He made it 
 the church's duty to receive into communion again, on his 
 repentance, one who had been excommunicated ; and this 
 also though the repentance were after a second excommu- 
 nication. "Such," he says, "as are expelled from the 
 church, therefore, it is not for us to expunge from the 
 number of the elect, or to despair of them as already lost. 
 It is proper to consider them as strangers to the church, 
 
 * Calvin: Institutes, Vol. II., pp. 415, 416. 
 
54 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 and consequently from Christ, but this only as long as they 
 remain in a state of exclusion." * 
 
 Anathema, or the devotion of a person to eternal perdi- 
 tion, he thought, ought never be resorted to, or, at least, 
 very rarely. 
 
 Calvin would make the discipline of the ministers of the 
 gospel only more rigid than that of the people. As ensam- 
 ples to the flock they were under special obligations to live 
 an approvable life. Against the Romish Church he vindi- 
 cated the minister's right to marriage, on the one hand, and 
 on the other denied his right to exemption from the civil 
 courts, and taught that they should be afflicted with the 
 same punishments as laymen for misdemeanors. 
 
 Little just criticism can be passed against Calvin's views 
 of the importance of discipline, its proper ends, and as to 
 the spirit with which it should be exercised. Owing to the 
 unhappy union of church and state which all Calvin's age 
 believed in, he was not so happy in locating the power of 
 discipline; but this brings us to the third distinctive fea- 
 ture of his polity. 
 
 3. Church discipline should be exercised by a presbytery 
 (consistory), consisting of elders of two classes — minis- 
 ters of the gospel and ruling elders. 
 
 This is a correct, biblical principle in cases where the 
 officers are duly elected by the church members in full 
 communion ; but in Geneva, owing to the union of church 
 and state, this presbytery (consistory) embraced, in the 
 time of Calvin, five city pastors and twelve elders, selected 
 two from the Lesser Council and ten from the Council of 
 Sixty, or that of Two Hundred. The elders were chosen 
 by the Lesser Council, but confirmed by the preachers. 
 The preachers were always elected first by the body of 
 preachers already in existence ; but their election had to be 
 further confirmed by approval on the part of the Lesser 
 Council. Lastly, if the congregation had anything to ob- 
 
 * Calvin : Institutes, Vol. II., pp. 417, 418. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 55 
 
 ject it was made its duty to state its objection to the syndics 
 that all might be satisfied with the choice. 
 
 Thus it appears that the state, as such, had a good deal to 
 do with the appointment of the members of the consistory. 
 
 This came of the state's having the church as its church. 
 The court of the church was really the state's court to at- 
 tend to its church's business. '"This consistory was never 
 to assume any of the rights of civil power. If the infliction 
 of [corporal] punishment seemed necessary to it, it was to 
 lay the circumstance before the government, it belonging 
 unto God to determine the powers of both." * 
 
 This presbytery was the controlling power in the church 
 of Geneva. Its severest punishment was that of excom- 
 munication. The council was disposed to deny the con- 
 sistory this right ; and it only granted the undisputed 
 power of excommunication after the year 1555. Before 
 that, excommunicated persons were ever appealing to the 
 council. 
 
 Confused readers often malign the consistory of the Ge- 
 nevan Church, confusing it with the council — the Little 
 Council — a civil organ which condemned Gruet, Bolsec and 
 Servetus, whose names "do not even appear in the re- 
 cords" f of the consistory. 
 
 The formal president of the consistory was one of the 
 syndics. Calvin exercised a controlling influence in its de- 
 cisions, but only by his moral and intellectual weight. 
 
 A sort of subsidiary organ of ecclesiastical rule was the 
 Venerable Company, which consisted of all the ministers 
 of the city and district of Geneva. It took the general 
 supervision of all strictly ecclesiastical affairs, especially 
 education, ordination and installation of ministers of the 
 gospel ; but, as we have seen, no one could be admitted to 
 the ministry and installed without the cooperation of the 
 civil government and the assent of the people. 
 
 * Henry : Life of Calvin, p. 386. 
 tSchaff: Vol. VII., p. 482. 
 
56 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 The great fault with the appHcation of this feature of 
 Calvin's policy in Geneva was that the communicants had 
 too little power in the choice of the rulers ; that the state 
 had any power in the case, and that the consistory recog- 
 nized that it was in some sense an instrument of state. 
 
 Had Calvin but gotten rid of the idea of the propriety 
 of the union between church and state, or had he been 
 forced to separate the church from the state, he would have 
 deserved unqualified approval for resurrecting the biblical 
 organ of church government — a presbytery composed of 
 elders of two classes, elders who both rule and teach, and 
 elders who rule only. 
 
 Calvin saw clearly that in the New Testament the bishop 
 is an elder and the elder a bishop. He, therefore, in com- 
 mon with the reformers generally taught the parity of the 
 ministry ; but he saw also that among these New Testa- 
 ment officers, called indifferently elders or bishops, there 
 were two classes. Thus we come to the fourth distinctive 
 principle of Calvinism. 
 
 4. The recognition and reinstitution of the New Testa- 
 ment ruling eldership. Commenting on Romans xii. 8 and 
 I Corinthians xii. 28, Calvin says, " 'Governors' I appre- 
 hend to have been persons of advanced years, selected from 
 the people, to unite with the bishops in giving admonitions 
 and exercising discipline. For no other interpretation can 
 be given of that injunction, 'He that ruleth, let him do it 
 with diligence.' Therefore, from the beginning, every 
 church has had its senate or council, composed of pious, 
 grave and holy men, who were invested with that jurisdic- 
 tion in the correction of vices, of which we shall soon treat. 
 Now, that this regulation was not of a single age, experi- 
 ence itself demonstrates. This office of government is 
 necessary, therefore, in every age." * 
 
 Presbyterians to-day may see the New Testament ruling 
 elder more accurately. They may prove his existence and 
 
 * Calvin : Institutes, Book IV., Chap, iii.. Sec. 8. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 57 
 
 prerogatives more conclusively ; but Calvin deserves credit 
 for having discerned the officer more clearly than any other 
 man of his time. 
 
 It may be noted also, in passing, that Calvin reinstituted 
 the New Testament office of the deacon. They were elected 
 in the same manner as the elders. They were of two kinds, 
 first, those who were to administer the alms regularly col- 
 lected, and, second, those who were to take care of the 
 sick and to provide food for the poor. 
 
 § 18. Calvin's Struggle zvith the Patriots and Liber- 
 tines in Behalf of Discipline. 
 
 Calvin infused the spirit of Puritanism by degrees into 
 the church and state of Geneva; so that "dancing, gam- 
 bling, drunkenness, the frequentation of taverns, profanity, 
 luxury, excesses at public entertainments, extravagance 
 and immodesty in dress, licentious or irreligious songs, 
 were forbidden, punished by censure or fine or imprison- 
 ment ;" * and so that the reading of immoral books and 
 bad novels was prohibited. Heresy, idolatry and blas- 
 phemy and adultery after the second offence were punished 
 by the state of Geneva with the death penalty. 
 
 Even the strictly ecclesiastical discipline introduced by 
 Calvin was perhaps too rigid, though it helped to make 
 Geneva the greatest school of Christ on earth. The en- 
 deavor on the part of the state to discipline for ecclesiasti- 
 cal offences was an usurpation and a deprivation of reli- 
 gious liberty — a thing to be forever deplored, though a 
 thing found in Calvin's day in every Protestant and Roman 
 Catholic country under the sun. It must be admitted that 
 Calvin inspired state as well as church with his spirit, 
 tiiough at times they went beyond him — became more rigid 
 and stern than he was. 
 
 It was some time before the state came into full sym- 
 pathy with his system. For years there were struggles be- 
 
 *Schaff: Vol. VII., pp. 489, 490. 
 
58 Calvin and tpie Genevan Reformation. 
 
 tween the consistory, or the Venerable Company, and the 
 council, the council espousing the cause of lax discipline. 
 The party of stern discipline, therefore, in their efforts at 
 discipline during the first ten years often found themselves 
 v^ithstood by the council. Individuals knowing of this dif- 
 ference of the powers were bolder and more contemptuous ; 
 and at least two considerable parties maintained a bitter 
 conflict with Calvin for years. 
 
 These were the Patriots and the Libertines : 
 
 1. The Patriots, or Children of Geneva, as they called 
 themselves, included many of the oldest Genevese families. 
 Fabri Ameaux, Perrin, Berthelier and Vandel. They had 
 helped to win the freedom of Geneva. They had even 
 helped to introduce the Reformation as a sort of bulwark 
 against their old enemies ; but they were wild, wayward, 
 licentious folk, impatient of all law and restraint. They 
 desired not freedom, but license. They hated Calvin's dis- 
 cipline. They were furious at the thought of the city's 
 coming under the control of his party. His party was 
 growing. Refugees from all quarters of Europe, especially 
 from PYance, were flocking to him — men who had left 
 home and property for religion. They were ready to be- 
 come citizens of the city in which Calvin ministered. They 
 strengthened his power. The Patriots succeeded at one 
 time in prohibiting the carrying of arms by the refugees 
 and their admission to citizenship. This, however, was 
 only a temporary victory. The refugees were of that very 
 stuff of which good citizens were made. They were ad- 
 mitted in great numbers to citizenship, at times when the 
 government was favorable. 
 
 2. The Libertines, or Spiritualists, as they called them- 
 selves, were the bitterest opponents of Calvin's system of 
 discipline. 
 
 They were pantheists and antinomians. They said, 
 "'What I do God does." "What God does we do, for he is 
 in us." Sin is a mere phantasy or illusion. It ceases to be 
 as soon as we get rid of the notion that it exists. They in- 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 59 
 
 dulged in the gTossest licentiousness. The wife of Ameaux 
 justified her hcentiousness by the doctrine of the commu- 
 nion of saints. They taught that legal marriage is carnal 
 and not binding. They magnified spiritual marriage. 
 They parodied the gospel, blasphemed God and Christ, 
 were, in short, moral swine, cheats and liars. 
 
 These parties were constant thorns in Calvin's side, 
 prodding him on every turn. They, singly or in union, 
 availed themselves of every adverse turn in the relations 
 of the consistory to the Civil Council, i. e., of every ad- 
 verse turn in Calvin's relation to the council. 
 
 In reference to the struggle between himself and these 
 parties he says in the preface to his commentary on the 
 Psalms (1557), "If I should describe the course of my 
 struggles by which the Lord has exercised me from this 
 period, it would make a long story, but a brief reference 
 may suffice. It affords me no slight consolation that David 
 preceded me in these conflicts ; for as the Philistines and 
 other foreign foes vexed this holy king by continual wars, 
 and as wickedness and treachery of the faithless of his own 
 house grieved him still more, so was I on all sides assailed, 
 and had scarcely a moment's rest from outward or inward 
 struggles ; but when Satan had made so many efforts to 
 destroy our church, it came at length to this, that I, unwar- 
 like and timid as I am, found myself compelled to oppose 
 my own body to the murderous assault and to ward it off. 
 Five years long had we to struggle without ceasing for the 
 upholding of discipline ; for these evil-doers were endowed 
 with too great a degree of power to be easily overcome; 
 and a portion of the people, perverted by their means, 
 wished only for an unbridled freedom. To such worthless 
 men, despisers of the holy law, the ruin of the church was 
 a matter of utter indifference, could they but obtain the 
 liberty to do whatever they desired. Many were induced 
 by necessity and hunger, some by ambition or by a shame- 
 ful desire of gain, to attempt a general overthrow, and to 
 risk their own ruin as well as ours rather than be subject to 
 the laws. Scarcely a single thing, I believe, was left unat- 
 
6o Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 tempted by them during this long period which we might 
 not suppose to have been prepared in the workshop of Sa- 
 tan. Their wretched design could only be attended with 
 a shameful disappointment. A melancholy drama was thus 
 presented to me; for much as they deserved all possible 
 punishment, I should have been rejoiced to see them pass- 
 ing their lives in peace and respectability, which might have 
 been the case had they not wholly rejected every kind of 
 prudent admonition." 
 
 Calvin is not the man to magnify his own experiences. 
 Our limits do not allow us to follow him in these struggles, 
 to see the contumely and insult heaped upon him on his 
 way to his lecture-room, to hear shots fired before his bed- 
 room door, to hear him called Cain, to hear the dogs called 
 after him, to see him threatened in the pulpit, to see the 
 men with a vow on them to throw him in the Rhone ; but 
 we shall take the liberty of re-presenting one incident in 
 this struggle, and, as we shall not take this side of his his- 
 tory up in the next period, we shall go beyond the year 
 1549 to that of 1553 for this incident. 
 
 In the year 1553, the old struggle between the consistory 
 and the council was being gone over again — the struggle 
 as to which should exercise the right of excommunication. 
 The Libertines availed themselves of this disagreement be- 
 tween the council and the consistory. "They ranged them- 
 selves on the side of the council, and Berthelier, one of their 
 most violent partisans — a man whose unbelief and immor- 
 ality were known to all — presented himself at the Lord's 
 Supper, and was excommunicated by the consistory. He 
 complained to the council, which declared it would not 
 ratify the sentence, and that 'if Berthelier had no impedi- 
 ment in his own conscience which hindered him from ap- 
 proaching the table of the Lord, the council authorized him 
 to do so.' 'Gentlemen,' said Calvin, 'as for me I would 
 rather suffer death than allow the table of my Lord to be 
 profaned in such a manner.' " * 
 
 * Guizot : St. Louis and John Calvin, p. 280. 
 
Calvin and the Genev^an Reformation. 6i 
 
 The council knew Calvin. It was overawed. It sent 
 word to Berthelier to stay away for the present if he could ; 
 but Berthelier and his friends wished to provoke an open 
 rupture. On Sunday, the 3d of September, 1553, the Lib- 
 ertines were present in St. Peter's in large numbers and 
 thronged the benches near the communion table. Calvin 
 ascended the pulpit and preached on the state of mind and 
 heart proper in those who would approach the Lord's table. 
 He concluded his sermon with these words : 
 
 "As for me, so long as it shall please God to keep me 
 here, since he has given me resolution and I have derived 
 it from him, I shall not fail to exercise it when there is 
 need; and I will rule my life in accordance with the will of 
 my Master, which is quite clear and well known to me. 
 . . . We are now about to receive the holy sacrament, and 
 if any one who has been excommunicated by the consistory 
 tries to approach that table, at the risk of my life I am pre- 
 pared to do my duty." * 
 
 He came down from the pulpit and blessed the elements. 
 Several of the Libertines made a movement as if to seize 
 the bread and wine. Calvin spread his hands over them 
 and cried, "You may break these limbs, you may cut off my 
 arms, you may take my life ! Shed my blood if you will ; it 
 is yours ! but never shall one compel me to give things that 
 are sacred to the profane and to dishonor the table of my 
 God." 
 
 The Libertines were not prepared for action so decided. 
 They glanced at one another. They heard a murmur from 
 the congregation which threatened danger, they hesitated 
 and drew back from the table. The agitated throng of be- 
 lievers then partook of the sacramental elements in silence. 
 
 In the afternoon of the same day Calvin preached again. 
 He said : 
 
 "I do not know if this is not the last sermon I shall ever 
 preach in Geneva ; not that I leave by my own wish or that 
 
 * Quoted in Guizot : St. Louis and Jolin Calvin, p. 281. 
 
62 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 I desire to depart from this spot and to give up the author- 
 ity which I hold ; but I take that which has been done to 
 signify that Geneva will receive my services no longer, and 
 will seek to compel me to do what God does not permit. So 
 long as I am free to preach and to serve you I will do it 
 in the name of the Lord ; but if I am forced into an intoler- 
 able position, I will not resist the constituted authorities 
 and I must go." * 
 
 His conduct had been determined. His language is 
 guarded. He showed himself respectful of authority ; but 
 claimed the right of acting in accord with the dictates of 
 his own conscience. Geneva had tried the experiment of 
 getting on without Calvin before. The Libertines even 
 drew back. The magistrates hesitated and dared not carry 
 out their decision. Debates as to where the power of ex- 
 communication ought to be lodged, whether with the con- 
 sistory or the council, continued for two years. In 1555 the 
 councils of Geneva agreed that the power belonged of right 
 to the consistory. 
 
 We remember that the period of this struggle over dis- 
 cipline was one prolific of books. We wonder that in the 
 midst of commotions as numerous, continued and great as 
 those experienced by any political agitator, Calvin showed 
 all his stupendous power for calm, unruffled, penetrating 
 and profound thought. We see some evidence in the cause 
 of our wonder, however, that through all these struggles 
 Calvin maintained a consciousness of rectitude, a con- 
 sciousness of his fighting the Lord's battles. One element 
 of strength with him was the belief of his enemies in this 
 consciousness of duty on Calvin's part. The majesty of his 
 character helped to overawe them. 
 
 § 19. The Death of His Wife in 1549. 
 We have had occasion to speak of the circumstances of 
 Mrs. Calvin's death in another connection. We take up 
 
 * Quoted in Guizot: St. Louis and John Calvin, pp. 281, 282. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 63 
 
 the subject here to speak more particularly of the effect of 
 her death on Calvin. Bungener says : 
 
 "The remembrance of her whom he had lost was never 
 effaced from his heart ; though still young, he never formed 
 other ties, and never pronounced the name of Idelette but 
 with profound regard for her virtues and with tender re- 
 spect for her memory. 
 
 "Never was homage more legitimate, never regrets more 
 deserved. In losing Idelette de Bure, Calvin not only lost 
 the companion of his ministry and life, he also lost a virtue. 
 If the mission of the Christian woman is to console and 
 bless, to remind men of the rights of charity — too much 
 neglected in the ages of revolution — none were worthier 
 than Idelette to carry out this mission at the reformer's 
 side. Often sick and morose and soured by the resistance 
 of men and things which bend but slowly to the designs of 
 genius, Calvin lost too early those domestic affections for 
 which he was so well calculated and of which he experi- 
 enced the salutary influence only for nine years. Many a 
 time doubtless during those years of heroic conflict and 
 of secret despondency, of which his correspondence repro- 
 duces the phases, he regained his calmness by the side of 
 the courageous and gentle woman who made no compro- 
 mise with duty. Many a time, perhaps, he was tempered 
 and softened by one of those words which come from the 
 heart and of which woman possesses the secret ! And when 
 at length, in gloomier days, the controversies of opinions 
 commingled with the shock of parties, raised up Bolsec, 
 Servetus and Gentilis, who can say how much the reformer 
 was in want of the counsels and kindly influence of Idelette 
 de Bure ?" * 
 
 Bungener probably overstates her influence ; but it was 
 great. Calvin was lonely the rest of his life, and not cared 
 for as he ought to have been. 
 
 Soon after the death of his wife he began those efforts in 
 behalf of the union of the Protestant world which charac- 
 terized the last period of his own life. 
 
 * Bungener : Life of Calvin, pp. 22,2,, 234. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Period of Calvin's Great Controversies Waged 
 WITH THE Purpose of Advancing Union Among 
 Bodies of Evangelical Christians and Maintain- 
 ing THE Truths of His System, i 549-1 564. 
 
 § 20. Calvin's Labors and Achievements, 1 549-1 564. 
 
 Calvin's labors during this period were in considerable 
 part controversial and polemical, but with the double end of 
 the conservation of the truth and the union of all Protestant 
 bodies. He sent forth many works, indeed, of a positive 
 and constructive sort. In 1559 he completed the last edi- 
 tion of the "Institutes." "In 1549," we have from his pen 
 or tongue, commentaries on "the Epistle to Titus, and that 
 to the Hebrews; in 1550, the Epistle of St. James, and the 
 two to the Thessalonians ; in 1551, the Epistles of St. John 
 and St. Jude, and a new edition of all St. Paul's Epistles ; 
 in 1552, the Acts; in 1553, St. Matthew, St. Mark, and 
 St. Luke, which were arranged as a harmony and supplied 
 with a parallel commentary, followed by a commentary on 
 St. John;"* in 1551, a commentary on Isaiah; in 1554, 
 a commentary on Genesis. Afterwards came, in 1557, the 
 Psalms, and the same year the Prophet Hosea; in 1559, 
 the twelve minor prophets; in 1561, Daniel; in 1563, Ex- 
 odus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah, 
 and in 1564, Joshua, f Several and extended series of 
 sermons appeared between 1552 and 1564. In 1550 a trea- 
 tise on Eternal Predestination and Providence of God, and 
 another on The Christian Life appeared, and many other 
 
 * Bungener : Life of Calvin, p. 282. 
 t Bungener : Life of Calvin, p. 326. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 65 
 
 works in the course of the period of which space fails us 
 to tell. He was also influencing as before the civil and in- 
 dustrial life of Geneva. Not a law was passed without the 
 consultation of Mr. Calvin. No new business enterprise 
 was permitted without Mr. Calvin's advice. Robert 
 Stephens consults Mr. Calvin on printing and receives 
 help. The council asks Mr. Calvin to be present at the ex- 
 amination of a surgeon who will practice in Geneva. A 
 dentist, with the new art of repairing and preserving the 
 teeth will ply his new art in Geneva. He is sent to Mr. 
 Calvin. Calvin puts himself into the hands of the dentist, 
 approves his work, and recommends him to the magis- 
 trates.* 
 
 Calvin's labors as the head of the Reformation movement 
 in Western Christendom entailed on him at this time vast 
 expenditure of energy. Luther was dead. Calvin was the 
 only great leader living. He made it his business to fur- 
 ther the movement in Great Britain, Poland, Holland, all 
 Switzerland, South Germany, and especially in France. 
 He wrote long letters to Somerset and did much to forward 
 reform in the kingdom of the young Edward ; corres- 
 ponded with the king of Poland in the interest of reform 
 there, directed the movement in France, sending hosts of 
 preachers and giving them a form of polity and a confes- 
 sion. In 1559 he founded the Academy and College of 
 Geneva. 
 
 But over and above these pacific labors Calvin poured 
 himself out in efforts for the union of Protestantism. 
 These efforts at times took irenical forms, but at other 
 times assumed that of pole'mics. No man longed more for 
 the union of the Protestant world than John Calvin ; but he 
 desired union on the basis of the truth. Hence in part his 
 intense animosity toward radical error. There were two 
 inspiring causes of his hatred of error : error took the place 
 of truth and Calvin loved truth, and error rent the body of 
 
 * Bungener : Life of Calvin, p. 330. 
 
66 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 Christ, the church, and so dishonored the Redeemer God, 
 and Calvin loved God with all his heart. 
 
 This was the period of his great controversies against 
 errors in Protestantism. The period was ushered in by his 
 struggle in behalf of church union resulting in the agree- 
 ment with the Zurichers. In it occurred the first great con- 
 troversy — that concerning predestination — with Bolsec, and 
 the second great controversy — on the Trinity — 1553, with 
 Servetus. Then followed smaller controversies on the 
 Trinity with Matthaeus Gribaldi, Blandrata, Gentilis and 
 others. During this period also (1556 and following) oc- 
 curred the controversies with Westphal and Hesshus on the 
 doctrine of the sacrament. In the course of these years 
 also, as has been shown, the final struggle with the Liber- 
 tines took place. 
 
 In the remaining portion of this sketch we shall describe 
 briefly the Zurich Confession as an example of Calvin's 
 irenical work. We shall sketch the controversy with Ser- 
 vetus to illustrate Calvin's temper in this part of his labors, 
 than which no more difficult illustration can be taken ; and 
 we shall finally attempt an estimate of his character. 
 
 § 21. The Agreement zvith the Zurichers on the Lord's 
 Supper; an Instance of Calvin's Irenical Efforts. 
 
 Luther had reopened the sacramental controversy again 
 in the year 1545 by an attack on the Zwinglians. They had 
 defended themselves by a sharp reply. Calvin was dis- 
 pleased with both parties. He entered into correspondence 
 on the subject with Bullinger, and on Bullinger's invitation 
 he, together with Farel, went to Zurich in May, 1549. 
 Both parties went into the work of forming a creed with 
 an admirable spirit of frankness and forbearance. They 
 produced the so-called "Consensus Tigurinus," in which 
 the view of Calvin and the developed view of Zwingli are 
 stated in harmony, so far as stated at all. The "Consensus" 
 was published in 155 1. It was adopted by all the reformed 
 cantons except Bern. It passed into the reformed confes- 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 67 
 
 sions, and remains to this day the confessional statement of 
 the Reformed Churches. Dr. Schaff says, "In practice, 
 however, it has among Presbyterians, CongregationaUsts 
 and Baptists largely given way to the Zwinglian view, 
 which is more plain and intelligible, but ignores the mysti- 
 cal element in the holy communion." * 
 
 To us Calvin's view seems to have differed from that 
 taught by our own Dr. Dabney only by magnifying the 
 work of the Holy Spirit in communion and bringing the 
 sacrament into more prominent connection with our in- 
 grafting into Christ. Not that Dabney makes nothing of 
 these, but that Calvin made more. 
 
 Calvin's view of the mystical union between Christ and 
 the believer was a very high one. He loved to dwell on 
 those scriptures which set forth the believer's relation to 
 Christ, "We are members of his body, his flesh and his 
 bones." "I am the vine, ye are the branches," etc. Calvin 
 held that this union is produced by the Holy Spirit with 
 whom Christ baptizes, the Holy Spirit using as his instru- 
 ments the word and sacraments. Calvin did not explain 
 this union. He teaches that Paul himself wondered at 
 rather than explained it. f 
 
 Calvin's view of the mystical union has often been mis- 
 represented as a kind of Christo-Pantheism, involving a 
 transfusion of the substance of Christ into the believer. 
 But Calvin was no pantheist. No man was farther from 
 it. Moreover, more than once he distinctly repudiates the 
 idea of transfusion of substance. For example, both in the 
 ^'Consensus Tigurinus" and in the exposition of it. In the 
 '"Exposition" he says, "But here again, as the minds of 
 men always conceive grossly of the heavenly mysteries of 
 God, it was necessary to obviate delirious dreams. With 
 this view we laid down the definition that what we say of 
 the partaking of Christ's flesh must not be understood as 
 
 * Schaff: Vol. VII., p. 593- 
 
 t Calvin : Institutes, Book IV., Chap, xvii., Sees. 7, ff. 
 
68 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 if any commingling or transfusion of substance took place, 
 but that we draw life from the flesh once offered in sacri- 
 fice. If any one is displeased with this explanation, I say, 
 first, that he has some fiction of his own brain which is no- 
 where taught in scripture, and by no means accords with 
 the analogy of faith ; and I say, second, that it is too pre- 
 sumptuous, after taking up a meaning at random, to lay 
 down the law to others. If they insist that the substance of 
 the flesh of Christ is commingled with the soul of man in 
 how many absurdities will they involve themselves ?" . . . 
 "We acknowledge that the sacred union which we have 
 with Christ is incomprehensible to carnal sense. His join- 
 ing us with him so as not only to instill his life into us, but 
 to make us one with himself, we grant to be a mystery too 
 sublime for our comprehension, except in so far as his 
 words reveal it; but are we therefore to dream that his 
 substance is transferred into us or that he is defiled by our 
 impurities ?" * 
 
 We might collect a world of proofs. Calvin was no pan- 
 theist either in his doctrine of the Lord's Supper or of the 
 mystical union. He occasionally used figures which might 
 be unduly pressed contrary to his meaning, but in this he 
 had inspired precedent. His figures were good for his pur- 
 pose to set forth the closeness and intimacy of the relation- 
 ship between Christ and the believer. He frankly and 
 humbly confessed his inability to comprehend this union. 
 He contemned, in the most outspoken way, any pantheistic 
 explanation as to the mode. 
 
 Calvin's notion of the mystical union and his notion that 
 the sacrament is an instrumentality of the Spirit in in- 
 creasing the union gave him a sympathy with the Lutheran 
 denials that the sacraments should be regarded as mere 
 external marks of profession and not also badges and sym- 
 bols of divine grace; that they are mere empty symbols, 
 and that God does not truly testify in them what he figures, 
 
 * Calvin's Tracts, Vol. II., p. 239. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 69 
 
 and by his secret agency perform and fulfill what he tes- 
 tifies.* 
 
 Luther had misunderstood the Zwinglian view, and de- 
 claimed against it as though Zwingli saw in the sacraments 
 external marks of profession and empty symbols merely. 
 Zwingli's exhibition of the Lord's Supper had been inade- 
 quate at first, but it had grown to be something like the true 
 view in his own life time, as is clear from his Confession 
 sent to Francis L shortly before his death. 
 
 In 1549 Calvin, perceiving the essential correctness of 
 the contemporary Zurich or Zwinglian view, and yet sym- 
 pathizing with Luther's war on the bare earlier view as he 
 understood it, and remaining true to what had been distinc- 
 tive in his own view of the sacrament — the emphasis of the 
 union in the communion between the believer and Christ 
 effected by the Spirit — wrote the "Consensus Tigurinus," 
 or Zurich Confession, which has become the formal creed 
 of the Reformed Churches. 
 
 It is of such general interest and intrinsic importance 
 that we incorporate it entire without apology. 
 
 The "Consensus Tigurinus." Written by Calvin in 1549 for 
 THE Purpose of Uniting all Branches of the Reformed 
 Church in a Common Doctrine as to the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Heads of Agreement. 
 
 I. The Whole Spiritual Government of the Church Leads us to 
 Christ. 
 
 Seeing that Christ is the end of the law, and the knowledge of 
 him comprehends in itself the whole sum of the gospel, there is no 
 doubt that the object of the whole spiritual government of the 
 church is to lead us to Christ, as it is by him alone we come to 
 God, who is the final end of a happy life. Whosoever deviates 
 from this in the slightest degree can never speak duly or appositely 
 of any ordinance of God. 
 
 * Calvin's Tracts, Vol. II., p. 224. 
 
70 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 2. A True Knowledge of the Sacraments from the Knoivlcdge 
 of Christ. 
 
 As the sacraments are appendages of the gospel, he only can 
 discourse aptly and usefully of their nature, virtue, office and ben- 
 efit who begins with Christ, and that not by adverting cursorily to 
 the name of Christ, but by truly holding for what end he was given 
 us by the Father and what blessings he has conferred upon us. 
 
 3. Nature of the Knowledge of Christ. 
 
 We must hold therefore that Christ, being the eternal Son of 
 God, and of the same essence and glory with the Father, assumed 
 our flesh to communicate to us by right of adoption that which he 
 possessed by nature, namely, to make us sons of God. This is done 
 when ingrafted by faith into the body of Christ, and that by the 
 agency of the Holy Spirit we are first counted righteous by a free 
 imputation of righteousness and then regenerated to a new life, 
 whereby, being formed again in the image of our heavenly Father, 
 we renounce the old man. 
 
 4. Christ a Priest and King. 
 
 Thus Christ in his human nature is to be considered as our 
 priest, who expiated our sins by the one sacrifice of his death, put 
 away all our transgressions by his obedience, provided a perfect 
 righteousness for us, and now intercedes for us, that we may have 
 access to God. He is to be considered as a repairer, who by the 
 agency of his Spirit reforms whatever is vicious in us that we may 
 cease to live to the world and the flesh and God himself may live 
 in us. He is to be considered as a king who enriches us with all 
 kinds of blessings, governs and defends us by his power, provides 
 us with spifitual weapons, delivers us from all harm, and rules and 
 guides us by the sceptre of his mouth ; and he is to be so con- 
 sidered, that he may raise us to himself, the true God, and to the 
 Father, until the fulfilment of what is finally to take place, viz., 
 God be all and in all. 
 
 5. How Christ Communicates Himself to Us. 
 
 Moreover, that Christ may thus exhibit himself to us and pro- 
 duce these effects in us, he must be made one with us, and we must 
 be ingrafted into his body. He does not infuse his life into us 
 unless he is our head, and from him the whole body, fitly joined 
 together, through every joint of supply according to his working, 
 maketh increase of the body in the proportion of each member. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 71 
 
 6. Spiritual Communion — Institution of the Sacraments. 
 
 The spiritual communion which we have with the Son of God 
 takes place when he, dwelling in us by his Spirit, makes all who 
 believe capable of all the blessings which reside in him. In order 
 to testif}'^ this, both the preaching of the gospel was appointed and 
 the use of the sacraments committed to us, namely, the sacraments 
 of holy baptism and the holy supper. 
 
 7. The Ends of the Sacraments. 
 
 The ends of the sacraments are to be marks and badges of Chris- 
 tian profession and fellowship or fraternity, to be incitements to 
 gratitude and exercises of faith and a godly life; in short, to be 
 contracts binding us to this. But among other ends the principal 
 one is that God may, by means of them, testify, represent, and seal 
 his grace to us. For, although they signify nothing else than is 
 announced to us by the word itself, yet it is a great matter, first, 
 that there is submitted to our eye a kind of living images which 
 make a deeper impression on the senses, by bringing the object in 
 a manner directly before them, while they bring the death of Christ 
 and all his benefits to our remembrance, that faith may be better 
 exercised ; and, secondly, that what the mouth of God had an- 
 nounced is, as it were, confirmed and ratified by seals. 
 
 8. Gratitude. 
 
 Now, seeing that these things which the Lord has given as 
 testimonies and seals of his grace are true, he undoubtedly truly 
 performs inwardly by his Spirit that which the sacraments figure 
 to our eyes and other senses ; in other words, we obtain possession 
 of Christ as the fountain of all blessings, both in order that we 
 may be reconciled to God by means of his death, be renewed by his 
 Spirit to holiness of life ; in short, obtain righteousness and salva- 
 tion and also in order that we may give thanks for the blessings 
 which were once exhibited on the cross, and which we daily receive 
 by faith. 
 
 9. The Signs and the Things Signitied not Disjoined, but Dis- 
 tinct. 
 
 Wherefore, though we distinguish between the signs and the 
 things signified, as we ought, yet we do not disjoin the reality from 
 the signs, but acknowledge that all who in faith embrace the prom- 
 ises there offered receive Christ spiritually, with his spiritual gifts, 
 while those who had long been made partakers of Christ continue 
 and renew that communion. 
 
'j'Z Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 10. The Promise Principally to be Looked to in the Sacraments. 
 And it is proper to look not to the bare signs, but rather to the 
 
 promise thereto annexed. As far, therefore, as our faith in the 
 promise there offered prevails, so far will that virtue and efficacy 
 of which we speak display itself. Thus the substance of water, 
 bread and wine by no means offers Christ to us, nor makes us 
 capable of his spiritual gifts. The promise rather is to be looked 
 to, whose office it is to lead us to Christ by the direct way of faith — 
 faith which makes us partakers of Christ. 
 
 11. We are not to Stand Gazing 07i the Elements. 
 
 This refutes the error of those who stand gazing on the elements, 
 and attach their confidence of salvation to them ; seeing that the 
 sacraments separated from Christ are but empty shows, and a 
 voice is distinctly heard throughout proclaiming that we must 
 adhere to none but Christ alone and seek the gift of salvation from 
 none but him. 
 
 12. The Sacraments Effect Nothing by Themselves. 
 
 Besides, if any good is conferred upon us by the sacraments, 
 it is not owing to any proper virtue in them, even though in this 
 you should include the promise by which they are distinguished ; 
 for it is God alone who acts by his Spirit. When he uses the in- 
 strumentality of the sacraments, he neither infuses his own virtue 
 into them nor derogates in any respect from the effectual working 
 of his Spirit, but, in adaptation to our weakness, uses them as 
 helps ; in such manner, however, that the whole power of acting 
 remains with him alone. 
 
 13. God Uses the Instrument, but All the Virtue is His. 
 Wherefore, as Paul reminds us, that neither he that planteth nor 
 
 he that watereth is anything, but God alone that giveth the increase, 
 so also it is to be said of the sacraments that they are nothing be- 
 cause they will profit nothing unless God in all things make them 
 effectual. They are indeed instruments by which God acts effica- 
 ciously when he pleases, yet so that the whole work of our salva- 
 tion must be ascribed to him alone. 
 
 14. The Whole Accomplished by Christ. 
 
 We conclude, then, that it is Christ alone who in truth baptizes 
 inwardly, who in the Supper makes us partakers of himself, who, 
 in short, fulfils what the sacraments figure, and uses their aid in 
 such manner that the whole effect resides in his Spirit. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 73 
 
 15. How the Sacraments Confirm. 
 
 Thus the sacraments are sometimes called seals, and are said 
 to nourish, confirm and advance faith, and yet the Spirit alone is 
 properly the seal, and also the begiimer and finisher of faith. For 
 all these attributes of the sacraments sink down to a lower place, 
 so that not even the smallest portion of our salvation is transferred 
 to creatures or elements. 
 
 16. All Who Partake of the Sacraments do not Partake of the 
 Reality. 
 
 Besides, we carefully teach that God does not exert his power 
 indiscriminately in all who receive the sacraments, but only in the 
 elect ; for as he enlightens unto faith none but those whom he hath 
 foreordained to life, so by the secret agency of his Spirit he makes 
 the elect receive what the sacraments offer. 
 
 17. The Sacraments do not Confer Grace. 
 
 By this doctrine is overthrown that fiction of the Sophists which 
 teaches that the sacraments confer grace on all who do not inter- 
 pose the obstacle of mortal sin; for besides that in the sacraments 
 nothing is received except by faith, we must also hold that the 
 grace of God is by no means so annexed to them that whoso re- 
 ceives the sign also gains possession of the thing ; for the signs are 
 administered alike to reprobate and elect, but the reality reaches the 
 latter only. 
 
 18. The Gifts offered to All, but Received by Believers Only. 
 
 It is true indeed that Christ with his gifts is offered to all in 
 common, and that the unbelief of man not overthrowing the truth 
 of God, the sacraments always retain their efficacy; but all are 
 not capable of receiving Christ and his gifts. Wherefore nothing 
 is changed on the part of God, but in regard to man each receives 
 according to the measure of his faith. 
 
 19. Believers Before and Without the Use of the Sacraments 
 Communicate with Christ. 
 
 As the use of the sacraments will confer nothing more on un- 
 believers than if they had abstained from it, nay, is only destructive 
 to them, so without their use believers receive the reality which 
 is there figured. Thus the sins of Paul were washed away by bap- 
 tism, though they had been previously washed away. So likewise 
 baptism was the laver of regeneration to Cornelius, though he had 
 already received the Holy Spirit. So in the Supper Christ commu- 
 
74 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 nicates himself to us, though he had previously imparted himself, 
 and perpetually remains in us; for, seeing that each is enjoined to 
 examine himself, it follows that faith is required of each before 
 coming to the sacrament. Faith is not without Christ; but inas- 
 much as faith is confirmed and increased by the sacraments, the 
 gifts of God are confirmed in us, and thus Christ in a manner 
 grows in us and we in him. 
 
 20. The Benefit not Ahvays Received in the Act of Communicat- 
 ing. 
 
 The advantage which we receive from the sacraments ought by 
 no means to be restricted to the time at which they are admin- 
 istered to us, just as if the visible sign, at the moment when it is 
 brought forward, brought the grace of God along with it ; for those 
 who were baptized when mere infants God regenerates in child- 
 hood or adolescence, occasionally even in old age. Thus the utility 
 of baptism is open to the whole period of life, because the promise 
 contained in it is perpetually in force; and it may sometimes 
 happen that the use of the holy Supper, which, from thoughtless- 
 ness or slowness of heart, does little good at the time, afterwards 
 bears its fruit. 
 
 21. No Local Presence Must he Imagined. 
 
 We must guard particularly a-gainst the idea of any local pres- 
 ence; for while the signs are present in this world, are seen by 
 the eyes and handled by the hands, Christ, regarded as man, must 
 be sought nowhere else than in heaven, and not otherwise than 
 with the mind and eye of faith. Wherefore it is a perverse and 
 impious institution to enclose him under the elements of this 
 world. 
 
 22. Explanation of the Words, "This is My Body." 
 
 Those who insist that the formal words of the Supper, "This is my 
 body ; this is my blood," are to be taken in what they call the pre- 
 cisely literal sense we repudiate as preposterous interpreters; for 
 we hold it out of controversy that they are to be taken figuratively 
 — the bread and wine receiving the name of that which they sig- 
 nify. Nor should it be thought a new or unwonted thing to 
 transfer the name of things figured by metonymy to the sign, as 
 similar modes of expression occur throughout the scriptures, and 
 we by so saying assert nothing but what is found in the most an- 
 cient and most approved writers of the church. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 75 
 
 2.2,. Of the Eating of the Body. 
 
 When it is said that Christ, by our eating of his flesh and drink- 
 ing of his blood, which are here figured, feeds our souls through 
 faith by the agency of the Holy Spirit, we are not to understand 
 it as if any mingling or transfusion of substance took place, but 
 that we draw life from the flesh once offered in sacrifice and the 
 blood shed in expiation. 
 
 24. Transtibstantiation and Other Follies. 
 
 In this way are refuted not only the fiction of the papists con- 
 cerning transubstantiation, but all the gross figments and futile 
 quibbles which either derogate from his celestial glory or are in 
 some degree repugnant to the reality of his human nature ; for we 
 deem it no less absurd to place Christ under the bread or couple 
 him with the bread than to transubstantiate the bread into his body. 
 
 25. The Body of Christ Locally in Heaven. 
 
 And that no ambiguity may remain when we say that Christ is 
 to be sought in heaven, the expression implies and is understood by 
 us to intimate distance of place ; for though, philosophically speak- 
 ing, there is no place above the skies, yet as the body of Christ, 
 bearing the nature and mode of a human body, is finite and is con- 
 tained in heaven as its place, it is necessarily distant from us in 
 point of space as heaven is from earth. 
 
 26. Christ not to be Adored in the Bread. 
 
 If it is not lawful to affix Christ in our imagination to the bread 
 and wine, much less is it lawful to worship him in the bread; for 
 although the bread is held forth to us as a symbol and pledge of 
 the communion which we have with Christ, yet as it is a sign and 
 not the thing itself, and has not the thing either included in it or 
 fixed to it, those who turn their minds towards it with the view of 
 worshipping Christ make an idol of it. 
 
 In this document Calvin made no compromise; nor can 
 the Zurichers be said to have made any. One element of 
 their past creed on the Lord's Supper — the activity of the 
 Holy Ghost in order to profitable communion — received 
 new emphasis. That was Calvin's distinctive element. 
 
 There is a deal of confusion in the minds of modern the- 
 ologians as to Calvin's view of the Supper. It is commonly 
 supposed that his earlier view was closer akin to the Luth- 
 
76 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 eran view; that in the "Consensus Tigurinus" he draws 
 nearer the Zwinghan. Some even hold that later he tended 
 toward the Lutheran view again. They tell us that on this 
 subject he was swayed by his great desires for union, now 
 with the Lutherans and again with the Swiss ; but such 
 men can know neither Calvin nor his teaching. 
 
 Calvin did deplore the divisions in the Protestant camp 
 greatly. He would have healed all divisions in the Protes- 
 tant ranks by the general inculcation of the truth; but to 
 get Zurich and Geneva together Calvin would never have 
 compromised an iota of truth. In the preface to the "Ex- 
 position" of the "Consensus" he says "We are all agreed 
 that peace is not to be purchased by the sacrifice of truth ; 
 and hence I acknowledge that better were heaven con- 
 founded with earth than that the defence of sound doctrine 
 should be abandoned. Whosoever heartily and strenuously 
 opposes sophistical quibbles, which conciliate by giving a 
 gloss to erroneous doctrine, I blame not; nay, rather, I 
 claim for myself this praise, that there is scarcely an in- 
 dividual who can take more pleasure than I do in a candid 
 confession of the truth." * 
 
 Had Calvin and the Zurichers not both honestly accepted 
 the "Consensus" of 1549, he could not have written them 
 as he did in 1554, viz., "But assume that there was formerly 
 some discordance, because the thing could not be cleared up 
 at first glance and disposed of, what humanity is there in 
 reopening a sore which was closed up and cured ? In order 
 that the faithful might not be distracted by disputes which 
 have only too much prevailed, we proposed to them our 
 agreement by which they could hold. This good zealot saw 
 clearly that all whom he styles Sacramentarians have one 
 same faith and confess it as with one same mouth, and even 
 if the two excellent doctors, Zwinglius and Qicolampadius, 
 who were known to be faithful servants of Jesus Christ, 
 were still alive, they would not change one word of our 
 
 * Calvin's Tracts, Vol. II., p. 222. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. ']'j 
 
 doctrine. For our good brother of blessed memory, Martin 
 Bucer, after seeing our agreement, wrote me that it was an 
 inestimable blessing for the whole church. Wherefore 
 there is more malice in this new corrector * thus stirring 
 up odium on account of it. . . . 
 
 "On the whole, my dear and honored brethren, as we 
 ought to take at least as much pains in maintaining the 
 truth and cherishing concord as Satan in striving to ruin 
 both, I have wished to do what was in my power, and also 
 try, if peradventure those who have hitherto been of too 
 obstinate a temper might be tamed ; if not, that those who 
 are of sound judgment should be furnished with the de- 
 fence of our cause so as to be the better able to stop their 
 mouths. 
 
 "This blockhead, of whom I am sorry to speak so often, 
 reproaches us with having such an abyss of opinions that 
 no one understands what his companion would say. Now, 
 methinks, I know so well what you believe and hold that 
 I am confident of having here written down what each of 
 you would write in the same place ; for I have not usurped 
 the office of dictating what you are to confess after me, but 
 rather refer the whole to your discretion. I have, however, 
 proceeded boldly to compose this short treatise [the "Ex- 
 position"] because by former experience I had learned how 
 agreeable my labors had been to you, and that you had also 
 sufficiently declared it to be so." f 
 
 Nobody who knows John Calvin can doubt, since he 
 could write thus, that he beheved that in 1554 he stood 
 where he had in 1549. Nor can any one read the "Insti- 
 tutes," so frequently revised before this and revised with 
 great care after this, and then read his tracts on the Supper, 
 and fail to see that in Calvin's own view his doctrine of the 
 Supper in the "Consensus" was his doctrine of the Supper 
 in the "Institutes." 
 
 * The "corrector" referred to here had been making an attack 
 on the "Consensus Tigurinus." 
 t Tracts, Vol. II., pp. 210-212. 
 
78 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 There is in the "Institutes" some figurative language 
 employed of our union with Christ and of the Supper. He 
 sets his doctrine forth with great plainness in the "Con- 
 sensus." He sets the same doctrine forth everywhere. He 
 taught the same doctrine always. That doctrine is also the 
 doctrine of our standards ; and it is the doctrine of the 
 great teachers of our church, save that Calvin made more 
 of the need of the Holy Spirit in order to our getting any 
 good out of the ordinance, in order to the deepening of our 
 union with Christ our Head. Calvin made much of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 For a time he hoped that this "Consensus" would prevail 
 also in Germany; but the stricter Lutherans took offence. 
 
 § 22. The Controversy zvith Servetiis; an Illustration 
 of Calvin's Honor to God's Word and the Unity of the 
 Church. 
 
 Calvin stood for a pure doctrine and a pure discipline. 
 "Under pain of abdication," Rilliet says, "Calvin must do 
 everything rather than suffer by his side in Geneva a man 
 whom he considered the greatest enemy of the Reforma- 
 tion, and the critical position in which he saw it in the 
 bosom of the republic was one motive more to remove, if 
 it was possible, the new element of dissolution which the 
 free sojourn of Servetus would have created. . . . To 
 tolerate Servetus with impunity in Geneva would have been 
 for Calvin to exile himself. . . . He had no alternative. 
 The man whom a Calvinist accusation had caused to be 
 arrested, tried and condemned to the flames in France could 
 not find an asylum in the city from which that accusation 
 had issued." * This was no doubt Calvin's judgment. The 
 unity, nay, the very existence of the church of Geneva, as 
 well as the honor of God and his word, seemed to Calvin 
 to demand of him all he did in the case of Servetus. 
 
 But of the case of Servetus more in detail : 
 
 * Quoted in Schaff : Vol. VII., pp. 765, 766. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 79 
 
 Michael Servetus was born at Villanueva, a city of Ara- 
 gon, in the year 1509. He received his early education in 
 a Dominican convent. Later, being destined to the law by 
 his father, he studied at Toulouse. He at one time be- 
 longed to the household of Quintana, father confessor of 
 the Emperor Charles V., and so derived his support from 
 the church. Even then, according to his own testimony, 
 he regarded the Roman Church as a harlot and murderess. 
 In 1530 he appeared at Basle and worried the reformers. 
 CEcolampadius, Capito and Bucer, and Zwingli, who was 
 on a visit there at the time, by his "vain, presumptuous and 
 argumentative " character and subversive doctrines con- 
 cerning Christ. During 1531 and 1532 he was frequently 
 in Basle, sometimes in the suite of the emperor. He was 
 very ambitious. He regarded himself as the true reformer. 
 In 1 53 1 he brought out his first work on the "Errors of the 
 Trinity," putting his real name on the title page. The work 
 was a bitter attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, not with- 
 out a certain dash and plausibility, but vague and super- 
 ficial. It made a great stir. The reformers were univer- 
 sally indignant. Bucer declared from the pulpit that the 
 writer deserved to be torn limb from limb. The govern- 
 ment of Basle caused the book to be seized. The author, 
 however, soon published another work in which he ex- 
 plained away or retracted most of the first, not as wrong, 
 but as immature. This second work repeated the attacks 
 on the Trinity, and betrayed a wild and impious pantheism. 
 It made little stir, and Servetus, despairing of any consid- 
 erable success in Germany or Switzerland, betook himself 
 to France. 
 
 He was in Paris in 1534 both as professor and student, 
 receiving instruction in medicine, mathematics and astron- 
 omy. He became distinguished for his acute perception, 
 vivid imagination and great powers of acquisition, and 
 exuberance in theories, some ingenious and worthy, others 
 absurd. He conjectured the mode of the blood's circula- 
 tion. His lectures on astronomy and mathematics were 
 
8o Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 mixtures of science and fancies. While his gifts of mind 
 and speech drew students to his rooms, his character re- 
 pelled them. He was exacting, and arrogant, and self- 
 complacent. He became offensive to the "Parliament" of 
 Paris, and they forbade him to teach astrology or to predict 
 from the stars. In consequence he left Paris, resided for 
 short periods at Lyons, Avignon and Charlieu. In 1542 
 he settled at Vienne in Duphine. There he lived twelve 
 years under the name of Villanueva, conformed outwardly 
 to the Roman Catholic Church, and was in high repute as a 
 physician. But he continued to busy himself in schemes 
 for the reform of Christianity. He gave himself to the 
 study of Revelation, and concluded that the time was come 
 for a great struggle in the church, and that he was to play a 
 big part in that struggle. He set forth his multitudinous 
 fancies in a new work called "Restoration of Christianity." 
 Stahelin gives this account of the teaching of the book, 
 "The fundamental principle of the whole book is the asser- 
 tion of the one absolute and indivisible God. It would be 
 impossible to imagine any direct action of God upon the 
 world ; he is separated from it by an immeasurable abyss. 
 The instruments which he uses, the links which unite the 
 infinite and the finite, are found in the world of thought. 
 Every thought or idea must be contemplated as a personal 
 reality, having its origin in the being of God, and itself an 
 image of his eternal essence. Perfectly distinct and yet 
 not separate from God, these ideas animate matter, and 
 thus unite it to God. There are, therefore, three worlds, 
 each of which has its own separate existence, although they 
 are all closely united one to the other — God, ideas, and 
 things or beings. All beings are contained in ideas, all 
 ideas in God ; God is all things, and all things are God." * 
 Some modern apologists for Servetus attempt to deny 
 that Servetus was a pantheist ; but their denial does not 
 seem well founded. The author who can say, "As the word 
 
 * Quoted in Guizot: St. Louis and John Calvin, p. 299. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 8i 
 
 of God is essentially man, so the Spirit of God is essentially 
 the spirit of man. By the power of the resurrection all the 
 primitive elements of the body and spirit have been re- 
 newed, glorified and immortalized, and all these are com- 
 municated to us by Christ in baptism and the Lord's Sup- 
 per. The Holy Spirit is the breath from the mouth of 
 Christ (John xx. 22). As God breathes into man the soul 
 with the air, so Christ breathes into his disciples the Holy 
 Spirit with the air. . . . The deity in the stone is the 
 stone, in gold it is gold, in the wood it is wood, according 
 to the proper idea of things. In a more excellent way the 
 deity in man is man, in the spirit it is spirit." * We say the 
 man who could talk so gave John Calvin good ground for 
 calling him a pantheist, which he did. 
 
 In his anthropology Servetus was a Pelagian. He held 
 to baptismal regeneration with the Roman Catholics ; but 
 he rejected infant baptism as an invention of the devil and 
 the second root of all the corruptions of the church. 
 
 Calvin and Servetus had been in Paris together in 1534. 
 The antagonism broke out there. They were to meet in 
 public disputation, but Servetus failed to keep the appoint- 
 ment. Nevertheless, owing to his itch to come into rela- 
 tions with so great a man as Calvin, Servetus wrote him 
 many letters between 1540 and 1546. Calvin answered his 
 letters, but was careful to avoid the appearance of intimacy 
 with him. He was not hopeless of his conversion, knowing 
 the power of God's Spirit. This is shown in a letter of his 
 to Frellon. But in the year 1548 the correspondence ap- 
 pears to have wholly ceased. In that year Calvin writes to 
 Viret, "I suppose you have read the answer which I sent 
 Servetus ; it was my wish to have nothing more to do with 
 this incurably hard-necked, heretical man, and certainly it 
 was well to follow in this case the precept of the apostle." f 
 Servetus subsequently sent to Calvin, however, a copy 
 
 *Rest, 182. Quoted in Schaff: Vol. VII., p. 746. 
 t Henry: Life of Calvin, Vol. II., p. 182. 
 
82 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 of the "Institutes" full of marginal notes in which he at- 
 tacked the doctrines the work contained. 
 
 The publication of his "Restitution of Christianity," be- 
 tween September, 1552, and January, 1553, without name 
 of author or printer, but with the initial letters of the au- 
 thor's name and country at the end — M. S. V. — Michael 
 Servetus, Villanueva, was the occasion of a storm both at 
 Lyons, a seat of Roman Catholic power, and at Geneva. 
 
 A refugee at Geneva twitted a Romanist relative at 
 Lyons with indififerentism on the part of the Papal Church 
 of Lyons to license. He instanced and described the case 
 of Servetus and his works. He even sent the first four 
 pages of the "Restitution of Christianity" to prove what 
 Servetus had done. 
 
 The Catholic authorities at Lyons at once took the mat- 
 ter in hand. Servetus tried to lie out of the authorship; 
 but this was impossible. Too many indications pointed to 
 Servetus. The refugee who had sent the first leaves of the 
 "Restitution" was appealed to. This man (William de 
 Trie) answered as follows, "When I wrote the letter which 
 you communicated to those who were in it accused of in- 
 difference, I did not think that the matter would have gone 
 so far. My only intention was to let you see the fine zeal 
 and devotion of those who call themselves the pillars of the 
 church, and yet allow such evils to exist among them, 
 whilst they harshly persecute poor Christians who desire 
 nothing more than to serve God in simplicity. . . . li 
 the printed book was placed before him, he might deny it, 
 but he cannot deny his own writing. . . . But I must 
 confess that I have had great difficulty in obtaining from 
 Monsieur Calvin that which I send you; not that he is 
 unwilling that such execrable blasphemy should be pun- 
 ished, but that it seems to him that, since he does not wield 
 the sword of justice, it is his duty to confute heresy by 
 sound doctrine rather than to seek to extirpate it by any 
 other method ; but I have importuned him so greatly, rep- 
 resenting that I should be charged with making reckless 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 83 
 
 assertions unless he come to my aid, that at length he has 
 consented to give up that which I send you." * 
 
 The matter which DeTrie thought so important were 
 certain pages of the "Institutes" annotated in Servetus' 
 own hand-writing, and certain autograph letters from Ser- 
 vetus to Calvin in which he maintained the very notions 
 maintained in the "Restitution." 
 
 Servetus was utterly unable to defend himself against 
 this new evidence. After some pitiful tergiversation, he 
 is said to have burst into tears and uttered the most "un- 
 expected lie, denying that he was Servetus." "I will tell 
 you," said he, "the whole truth. Twenty-five years ago 
 when I was in Germany, a book by a certain Servetus, a 
 Spaniard, was published at Hagenau ; I do not know 
 whence he came. At that time I was in correspondence 
 with Calvin ; he addressed me as Servetus on account of 
 the similarity of our views, and after that I assumed the 
 character of Servetus." f 
 
 After this exhibition of himself severer measures were 
 undertaken against him. He was arrested and imprisoned ; 
 but was aided apparently by the jailor and other friends to 
 escape. His whereabouts between this date, April 5, 1553, 
 and July, 1553, are unknown. Meanwhile, on the 17th of 
 June, his Roman Catholic judges had condemned him to be 
 "burnt alive over a slow fire at the place of public execu- 
 tion, so that his body should be reduced to cinders as well 
 as his books." 
 
 On the 17th of July Servetus took up his abode in a little 
 hostelrie on the banks of the Rhone, in Geneva, where he 
 lingered for twenty-seven days. To his host, whose curi- 
 osity was greatly excited about him, he replied, "No" [I 
 am not married]. "There are plenty of women in the 
 world without marrying." It seems probable that he had 
 
 * Quoted in Guizot : St. Louis and John Calvin, pp. 307, 308, 
 from Revue des Deux Mondes, 1848, 1,822. 
 t Henry : Life of Calvin, pp. 189, 190. 
 
84 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation, 
 
 come to Geneva relying on the aid of the Libertines, who 
 were just at this time gathering themselves for another 
 struggle with Calvin; but John Calvin was more than a 
 match for both. He requested one of the syndics to arrest 
 Servetus, and accordingly this was done on the 13th of 
 August, 1553. He provided a formal prosecutor. In a 
 letter to Sulzer, dated 8th September, 1553, Calvin says, 
 "For I do not disguise it, that I considered it my duty to 
 put a check, so far as I could, upon this most obstinate and 
 ungovernable man, that his contagion might not spread 
 further." * The first examination of Servetus took place 
 on the 15th of August; thence the trial dragged its slow 
 length along for two months. The Little Council, which 
 was the chief legislative and judicial organ of the little 
 republic, before which the trial took place, was soon con- 
 vinced of the substantial correctness of Calvin's charges. 
 Calvin had really become the prosecutor after the opening 
 of the trial ; but such Libertines as were members of the 
 council did what they could to stay proceedings. On the 
 19th of September the council determined to apply officially 
 to the pastors and magistrates of the four cantons of Bern, 
 Zurich, Schaflfhausen and Basle for their opinion of the 
 trial. On the i8th of October their messengers returned, 
 bringing the answers. While cautious, guarded and sor- 
 rowful in tone, they were unanimous in recommending 
 severity in dealing with the accused. 
 
 At length, on the 26th of October, the council passed a 
 resolution condemning him to be burnt alive for his great 
 errors and blasphemies. 
 
 During the trial Calvin had shown great sternness and 
 horror of Servetus' views and character ; but in vitupera- 
 tive denunciation he was far surpassed by Servetus. He 
 had never concealed his feelings that the penalty ought to 
 be capital, but he used all his endeavors to change the 
 manner of death from burning to some milder form. 
 
 * Calvin's Letters, Vol. II., p. 428. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 85 
 
 When brought together by the intervention of Farel just 
 prior to the execution, Servetus begged Calvin's pardon. 
 Calvin protested that he had never carried any private ani- 
 mosity toward him, and reminded Servetus of his efforts to 
 win him to the truth. Calvin appears to us cold in this 
 interview ; but he had been cruelly abused, and entered on 
 the conversation without hope of accomplishing any real 
 good. He regarded Servetus as a hopeless heretic. 
 
 Calvin has been severely blamed for the death of Serve- 
 tus, and he is blameworthy in connection with that matter, 
 but not as much as he is often made out to be. 
 
 He is blameworthy for holding that the state ought to 
 hold Jesus Christ as its head, profess his religion and vindi- 
 cate both tables of the Decalogue. He was not blame- 
 worthy for holding that Servetus was a profane and im- 
 pious heretic and worthy of extreme punishment had the 
 republic been legitimately theocratic. His union of church 
 and state drove him logically to persecution, as such union 
 must always logically do. He had a wrong creed as to 
 proper relation of church and state and conscientiously 
 acted up to it. He believed that the state ought to vindicate 
 the first table of the Decalogue, and under his inspiration 
 Geneva vindicated it. It is often alleged, too, that such 
 conduct toward Servetus is in direct conflict with the Pro- 
 testant principle, the right of private judgment. 
 
 But (i) the right of private judgment is not a right of 
 license in overt profanity and impiety to the Creator and 
 moral Governor of the universe. (2) The blame which at- 
 taches to Calvin for not having seen that God has never 
 given any state, but that of ancient Israel, the right to pro- 
 fess his worship as the Redeemer God and vindicate the 
 first table of the Decalogue, attaches equally to all Chris- 
 tendom of his day. Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Angli- 
 cans, German and Swiss Reformed, all held the propriety 
 of State religion and persecution of heretics. Thousands 
 were put to death in his life-time by Protestants and Roman 
 Catholics whose lives were unexceptionable, simply because 
 
86 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 they were Lutherans, Reformed, or Papists, as the case 
 might be. Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, the Swiss reform- 
 ers, without exception, Hving at the time, and Cranmer 
 approved of the execution of Servetus, and many of them 
 in so many words. 
 
 The only dissentient voices heard in the age were those 
 of a few free thinkers, whom fellow-feehng made wondrous 
 kind. Toleration and liberty of religious belief came only 
 after long ages of persecution and after persecution was 
 seen to be utterly impotent to accomplish its end. Tolera- 
 tion and liberty of belief were involved in the Reformation ; 
 but the germ developed slowly. The world had been so 
 long used to union of church and state. 
 
 Now, are we to blame Calvin, who saw so much of truth, 
 above all the world because he saw not the truth on this 
 point? Miserable pigmies! we survey the life of Calvin 
 in the light of the torch which he alone held up and see 
 this one considerable failure of his and decry him. He 
 made Geneva a city set on a hill indeed. Men can see 
 clearly in her light. They have seen this relatively small 
 blotch on her great luminary ; they would persuade us that 
 this luminary was a monster of darkness. Calvin was a 
 man. He erred in this case as all the rest of Christendom 
 was erring. Doing so, he was still the greatest and best 
 man in Christendom on the day he did it. Ernest Renan 
 is right when he says that Calvin succeeded in his work as 
 reformer "because he was the most Christian man of his 
 age." * 
 
 He did here what he thought he ought to do for the 
 honor of God's truth and the safety of his church. 
 
 § 23. Calvin's Death. 
 
 Calvin's struggles were not over with 1553. The Liber- 
 tines made some further, but feeble, efforts against him. 
 After 1555, however, he had peace in Geneva. The ene- 
 
 * Quoted in Bungener : Life of Calvin, p. 40. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 87 
 
 mies of the word and the church were cowed, if not anni- 
 hilated. Thence for nine years he continued his great 
 labors. He wrote, he preached, he lectured, he attended 
 the meetings of the consistory and of the Venerable Com- 
 pany of Pastors. He did this in spite of growing maladies, 
 headaches and dyspepsia, gravel and gout, fever and 
 asthma. He carried on his shoulders the burdens of Re- 
 formed Christendom, even after his own physical infirmi- 
 ties had reduced him to a state of the greatest exhaustion. 
 
 He preached for the last time on the 6th of February, 
 1564; he was carried to church and partook of the com- 
 munion for the last time on the 2d of April ; he made his 
 last will and testament on the 25th of April, in which he 
 acknowledged his own unworthiness and his trust in God's 
 free election of grace and the abounding merits of Christ ; 
 he was visited by the four syndics and the whole Little 
 Council of the republic on the 27th of April, and addressed 
 them as a father, thanking them for their devotion, begging 
 pardon for his gusts of temper, and exhorting them to pre- 
 serve in Geneva the pure doctrine and government of the 
 gospel; he made a similar address to all the ministers of 
 Geneva on the 28th and took an affectionate leave of them ; 
 he had these ministers to dine in his house on the 19th of 
 May, was himself carried to the table, ate a little with them 
 and tried to converse, but growing weary had to be taken 
 to his chamber, leaving with the words, "This wall will not 
 hinder my being present with you in spirit, though absent 
 in body." Farel (in his eightieth year) walked all the way 
 to Geneva from Neuchatel to take leave of the man whom 
 he had compelled to work in Geneva, and whose glorious 
 career he had watched without the least shadow of envy. 
 
 With the precious word of God, which he had done so 
 much to make plain to his own and all subsequent ages, in 
 his heart and on his tongue, he died on the 27th of May, 
 1564- 
 
88 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 § 24. Some of Calvin's Characteristics. 
 
 1. Physically a man "all bone and nerve." He was of 
 medium height, dark complexion, thin, pale, in feeble 
 health. His best features were flaming eyes, a lofty fore- 
 head, a prominent nose, a well-formed mouth ; but his 
 whole face was finely cut and indicative of resolution, pene- 
 tration and intelligence. 
 
 2. Not without admiration for beauty in nature, though 
 it is charged that he was wanting in this trait. The four- 
 teenth chapter of the first book of the "Institutes," on 
 Creation, is full of admiration for the beauty of the uni- 
 verse. Calvin does not indeed go into laudations of the 
 Alps ; it is a remarkable fact that one has to search far in 
 the works of his contemporaries for expressions of admira- 
 tion of these wonders of Europe. Calvin's life was so busy 
 that aesthetics ought to have been pushed aside. There was 
 call for the exercise of nobler faculties. 
 
 3. He loved poetry and music, could compose correctly 
 at least, and gave each its proper place in the worship of 
 the Reformed Church. Luther is usually held in happy 
 contrast to Calvin as a poet and musician, and so he may 
 be; but Calvin had real and just appreciation of these arts. 
 
 4. Calvin was a man of warm and intense afifections, 
 though reserved. He is often misjudged as cold and un- 
 emotional, as an intellectual, logical machine. This is far 
 from true. The history of his domestic life and his cor- 
 respondence with Melanchthon, Viret, Farel and many 
 others prove this grossly unjust. His friendships were 
 intense, his affections passionate. His onerous duties, his 
 delicate health, his reserve of temperament modified the 
 expressions of his regards ; but he felt intensely. His 
 feelings were one of the big parts of him. 
 
 5. A man of the greatest courage. He tells us that he 
 was constitutionally timid. So he seems to have been ; but 
 his courage always rose with the occasion. In the presence 
 of the greatest dangers his very daring annihilated danger. 
 
 6. He was a man of iron will. He was always resolute. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 89 
 
 In exile or the honored moral head of Geneva alike this 
 resolution was one of his marked traits. This explains his 
 courage. That was never insensibility to danger. It was 
 the resolute doing of what he thought he ought in spite of 
 the clearest perception of danger. 
 
 7. He was a man of extraordinary intellectual powers — 
 accute observation, retentive memory, constructive imagi- 
 nation, great elaborative power, the logical faculty of an 
 Aristotle. He has been called "the Aristotle of the Re- 
 formation," "the theologian," and "the Thomas Aquinas 
 of the Reformed Church," in consideration of his powers 
 and achievements. We are amazed at his clearness and 
 profundity. 
 
 Passing now to his qualities as a Christian — 
 
 8. The fear — reverent and holy, not craven fear — of God 
 and zeal for his glory was the dominant characteristic of 
 his life. He felt that he belonged to God ; that God had 
 put him into this world to glorify himself in him, and that 
 God would at once graciously help him meet his responsi- 
 bilities and hold him to account. His business was to 
 glorify God. In the preface to the last edition of his "In- 
 stitutes" he writes, "I have the testimony of my own con- 
 science. . . . that since I undertook the office of teacher 
 I have had no other object in view than to profit the church 
 by maintaining the pure doctrine of godliness." Hence the 
 "majesty of his character," of which the Genevese spoke 
 and by which they were so much impressed. He was de- 
 voted to God and conscious of it. 
 
 His life was hid with Christ in God. No man cared less 
 for the things of this life. No man had his affections more 
 set on things above. He loved and practiced apostolic 
 poverty. He could say with Paul, "We are poor, but make 
 many rich." 
 
 9. He was a good hater of things evil. He is sometimes 
 charged with having been passionate, censorious and im- 
 patient of contradictions, and perhaps with a degree of 
 justice ; but his passion was usually directed against moral 
 
90 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 folly, against wickedness, and so his censoriousness and 
 impatience of contradiction — not against mere stupidity. 
 Indeed, he was remarkable for his patience and kindly 
 Christian spirit in dealing with those who were weak 
 rather than wicked. If he was sometimes impatient of 
 contradiction, it is pertinent to observe that the eagle might 
 be impatient of a snail's attempt to instruct him how to 
 fly. Some men have no right to expect a patient hearing 
 of their opinions. They have not thought enough, maybe 
 from lack of diligence or opportunity, maybe from lack of 
 capacity. 
 
 10. Calvin was intolerant of error. So every man should 
 be, and that, too, whether the error be one of theory or 
 practice ; for theory soon expresses itself in life. We 
 ought to be as intolerant of error as Calvin was ; but we 
 ought not to use some weapons against it which Calvin, 
 under the influence of the spirit of his age, used. 
 
 11. He was a man of catholic spirit. Lutherans, Angli- 
 cans and Polish Protestants were all really Christians to 
 him. Presbyterians of to-day are remarkable for catho- 
 licity of spirit. They get it legitimately. Calvin was a big, 
 broad man — bigger than Luther. He undervalued no 
 truth, but he could make the distinction between essential 
 truths and truths of less importance. 
 
 12. Calvin was the most father-like man of the Reforma- 
 tion period in his attitude toward Christendom. The 
 mighty and splendid Luther was a big, warlike elder 
 brother, bragging gloriously ever of what he was ever 
 gloriously doing. Listen to him as he begins his will, "I 
 am well known in heaven, on earth and in hell," and as he 
 closes it, "This wrote the notary of God and the witness of 
 his gospel, Dr. Martin Luther." Calvin, though later born, 
 comes into the place of earthly father to all Protestant 
 Christendom ; he thinks for it, toils for it, comforts it, 
 carries it through dangers, fights for it, but says Httle of 
 his labors except when attacked. He was the Paul — he, not 
 Luther — of the Reformation period. John Calvin seems 
 to have been the most Christlike man of his age. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 Influence of John Calvin. 
 
 § 25. Not Perpetuated by Imposing Tomb. 
 
 "So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land 
 of Moab, according to the word of the Lord ; and he buried 
 him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor : 
 but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." Ac- 
 cording to Calvin's injunction, that everything should be 
 done "after the customary fashion, the earth alone covered 
 his remains, and the only official epitaph he received was 
 that inscribed beside his name in the consistorial register, 
 "Went to God, Saturday the 27th." How long his dust 
 was left undisturbed no man can say; but his grave has 
 been dug over again and again for more than two centuries. 
 Toward the middle of our century a small black stone was 
 set to mark the place where his remains were supposed to 
 have been laid ; but there is no certainty that the spot has 
 been correctly identified. 
 
 "Strangers," says Bungener, " have been seen who are 
 indignant at that small stone ; but others contemplate it 
 with more emotion than would have been called forth by a 
 splendid mausoleum, even though it unquestionably pointed 
 out the spot. Such an abandonment of the perishable being 
 brings you face to face with the thinking, living, immortal 
 being in another world — already immortal on earth by the 
 profound and ineffaceable traces which God has given him 
 to leave upon it. You contemplate him in his work; you 
 follow him through three centuries which have seen him so 
 mighty over so many souls, even of those who have been 
 trained to hate him ; and there you understand how the city 
 created in his image should have felt no more than he did 
 the need of marking out his last resting place. . . . Cal- 
 
92 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 vin was going to carry on, when absent in the body, that 
 reign which his genius and faith had founded. Thus 
 thought the Genevese and all those who already peopled his 
 vast empire and all those who were yet to people it, and 
 death in causing the man to disappear did but exalt the 
 reformer." * 
 
 Calvin had his only worthy monument in his works, 
 which speak of a candor and manly honesty which never 
 evaded a difficulty, and which revealed a clearness, a thor- 
 oughness and a conciseness without a parallel, in those 
 immortar'Institutes"and in those commentaries, in what he 
 had taught and the church which he had fashioned. We 
 can name no other man since the apostles who has ex- 
 erted so great and beneficent an influence on history, and 
 that in so many directions. He has specially helped educa- 
 tion, politics, religion and family life. We will illustrate by a 
 brief consideration of one or two of these lines of influence. 
 
 § 26. His Influence on Civil and Religious Liberty. 
 
 We shall not point to the historical proofs of this influ- 
 ence. The most respectable writers on modern history, 
 irrespective of their schools, teach us that Calvin's influ- 
 ence on civil and religious liberty has been vast. They tell 
 us particularly that the civil and religious liberty of the 
 Dutch, the British and the North Americans of to-day is 
 the fruitage of Calvinistic teaching; and they trace these 
 channels of influence in no uncertain way. We propose 
 here to indicate merely how Calvinistic teaching must beget 
 the spirit of liberty both civil and religious. 
 
 Calvin's form of church government was the purest, 
 manliest, noblest type of church government on earth. It 
 was a high type of representative government. It could 
 not fail to suggest the right of suffrage in those citizens 
 of civil governments who were possessed of the proper 
 character and intelligence, and the rule of the state only by 
 officers so chosen by the free voices of the citizens. As it 
 
 * Life of Calvin, pp. 348, 349. 
 
Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 93 
 
 suggested this as to the government of state, so by con- 
 trast with other forms of ecclesiastical government it stim- 
 ulated liberty in churches. 
 
 But certain of Calvin's theological and anthropological 
 teaching in a still more powerful way stimulated the spirit 
 of civil and religious liberty, particularly his doctrines of 
 the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Cal- 
 vin represented truly the sovereignty of God as absolute. 
 When God commands a certain thing and any other being 
 bids another thing, a man must do what God commands. 
 In the first Confession of the Genevese, prepared by Farel 
 and Calvin, man's duties toward the state are defined. We 
 are there taught that the citizen must obey all decrees and 
 statutes, except those zvhich contravene the commandments 
 of God. Look toward that city set on a hill, all tyrants, 
 whether kinglings, democracies, plutocracies or hierarchies. 
 For there men believe that God is of right the one absolute 
 sovereign. Therefore, be careful in what direction you ex- 
 ercise your powers. Order these men and their disciples to 
 do something contrary to the word of God. They will 
 defy you. Ye Spanish tyrants in the Netherlands, ye Stu- 
 arts, strutting about the divine right of kings, and all your 
 like, look sharp. Your sovereignty at best is only a very 
 relative thing, as the Calvinists see things. God is their 
 sovereign absolute, they know ; and they know he will hold 
 them responsible for obedience to him, whatever you bid 
 and however you threaten. Make war on their duty as 
 defined by God in his word, imprison, burn, bury alive, you 
 cannot hold the allegiance of those Calvinists. They know 
 they are God's in right and fact. Aye, they know that they 
 are kings in virtue of the divine birthright, priests by the 
 imposition of the noblest hand — chosen of God, born of 
 God, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. 
 
 Such truths breed liberty. 
 
 § 27. The Conseri'ing Poiver of Calvinism in Protes- 
 tant Church Life. 
 
 The earlier reformers burst the shackles of Romanism 
 
94 Calvin and the Genevan Reformation. 
 
 and taught some glorious truths with great clearness. Cal- 
 vin rounded out their teaching, gave it systematic form 
 and permanence. It may be seriously doubted whether 
 Protestantism would have been more than a temporary 
 phase in the history of Western Christendom without John 
 Calvin's work. He built up for it an impregnable fortress 
 of truth in his "Institutes" and commentaries, and by his 
 discipline moulded the life by the application thereto of 
 the power of God. 
 
 The Calvinistic churches in the world to-day remain, as 
 Calvin was, the great expounders of the gospel to the world 
 by word and life, and the steadying power for all Protes- 
 tant Christendom, without which the rest of Protestantism 
 could not do its work. They have been the teachers and, 
 within certain limits, the guides and the support of the 
 whole Protestant world. 
 
 § 28. The Conclusion. 
 
 My fellow-students for the gospel ministry in Union 
 Seminary, this rough sketch of the Genevan Reformation 
 and its great leader has been set before you not simply with 
 the hope of informing your minds. We have hoped that 
 by dwelling on the character of Calvin as God made him 
 you might be led to follow him as he followed Christ ; 
 that you might catch something of his great spirit, might 
 come to honor God's word as he honored it and toil for 
 God's church as he toiled for it, come to fear God and him 
 alone as he feared God ; might be led, by the example of his 
 assiduity in the years of preparation for his great work, to 
 cultivate the same spirit of devotion now and here in your- 
 selves. 
 
 I warn you that the truth about such a man as Calvin 
 cannot be brought to your attention without your thereby 
 becoming responsible for it. You are under a moral obli- 
 gation to use his great example as a means for your own 
 spiritual as well as intellectual growth. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Ameaux, 58. 
 
 Anathema, 54. 
 
 Angouleme, 20. 
 
 Anselm, 26. 
 
 Aosti, 28. 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 26, 89. 
 
 Aristotle, 89. 
 
 Augustine, 25, 27. 
 
 Baume, Pierre de la, 29. 
 
 Beaumont, Abbe de, 30. 
 
 Bern : Adopted Reformation, 30 ; 
 
 customs of, in Geneva, 36 ; 
 
 influence of, in Geneva, 36, 
 
 Z7> 45- 
 
 Berthelier, 29, 30, 58, 60, 61. 
 
 Beza, 7, 15, 34, 47. 
 
 Blandatra, 66. 
 
 Bolsec, 50, 55, 63, 66. 
 
 Bonivard, Frangois, 29. 
 
 Bucer, 21, yj^ 77, 79. 86. 
 
 Bullinger, 66. 
 
 Bungener, Felix, quoted or re- 
 fererd to, 8, 16. 17, 63, 64, 65, 
 86, 91, 92. 
 
 Bure, Idelette de, 41 ; her char- 
 acter, 41, 42; her death and its 
 consequences to Calvin, 62, 64. 
 
 Calvin, John, divisions of his 
 life, 11; relation to the Refor- 
 mation, II, 12; birth and pa- 
 rentage, 13, 14; education with 
 family of Mommor and at va- 
 rious colleges and universities, 
 14, 15, 16; conversion, 15, 16; 
 first literary venture, 16, 17; 
 determination to the service of 
 Christianity, 17, 18; break 
 with Rome, 19; wandering 
 evangelist in France, 19, 21 ; 
 produces institutes, 21-28; 
 Calvinistic theology, biblical. 
 
 Calvin, John. 
 
 22; improved Augustinianism, 
 25; Calvinism broad, 27; Cal- 
 vin in Italy and France under 
 the name d'Espeville, 28, 29; 
 first period in Geneva, 33-37 ; 
 practical ends in view at this 
 time, 36 ; exile from Geneva, 
 2,7; call to and residence in 
 Strasburg, 37-46; professor of 
 theology there and pastor of 
 Church of the Strangers, 38; 
 view of discipline, 38; at col- 
 loquies of Frankfort, Worms, 
 and Regensberg, 39 ; friend- 
 ships formed at this time, 39, 
 40 ; courtship and marriage, 
 41, fif. ; view of a wife, 40, 41; 
 answer to Sadolets' letter, 44. 
 45 ; recalled to Geneva, 46 ; 
 his ecclesiastical and civil 
 labors, i54i-'49. 47, 48; church 
 polity established, 48, fif. ; dis- 
 tinctive principles of his 
 church polity, 49, ff. ; struggle 
 with the Patriots and Liber- 
 tines for discipline, 57, fif. r 
 looses his wife, 62, 63, 64; 
 labors and achievements, 1549- 
 1564, 64-66; writes Consensus 
 Tigurinus, or Zurich Confes- 
 sion, 66, flf. ; controversy witlr 
 Servetus, 78, ff. ; blame in con- 
 nection with the death of Ser- 
 vetus, 84, ff. ; death of, 86, ff. ; 
 characteristics, 88, ff. ; influ- 
 ence, how perpetuated, 91, 92; 
 his influence on civil and re- 
 ligious liberty, 92, 93 ; conserv- 
 ing power of Calvinism, 93,. 
 94- 
 
96 
 
 Index. 
 
 Calvinism, of John Calvin, ele- 
 ments of, 25-27; relation to 
 civil and religious liberty, 92, 
 9.^ ; conserving power of, 93, 
 94- 
 
 Capito, 79. 
 
 Caroli, 35. 
 
 Cauvin, Gerard father of John 
 Cauvin, or Calvin, his charac- 
 ter, 13 ; death, 16. 
 
 Charles III., Duke of Savoy, 29. 
 
 Charles V., Emperor, 29, 79. 
 
 Church and State, Calvin's view 
 of proper relations of, 49, 50. 
 
 Clubs, established by Calvin, 47. 
 
 Confession, the Zurich, 66. 
 
 Confession of Faith, Calvin and 
 Farel's, 34. 
 
 Consensus Tigtiriims, 26, 66, 67, 
 69, ff. ; exposition of, 67, ff. 
 
 Consistory of Geneva, 54, ff. 
 
 Corault, 35, 36, 37. 
 
 Corderius, Maturinus, 14. 
 
 Dabney, R. L., D. D., LL. D., 27, 
 67. 
 
 Dentistry, approved by Calvin, 
 
 .65-. 
 
 Discipline, Calvin's view of ec- 
 clesiastical, 50-54; degrees of, 
 52 ; ends of, 52-53 ; spirit with 
 which to be administered, ac- 
 cording to Calvin, 54, ff. 
 
 Edward VI., of England, 65. 
 
 Espeville, de, 28, 29. 
 
 Excommunicated, how to be 
 dealt with, 53. 
 
 Excommunication, 52. 
 
 Exposition, of Scripture, Cal- 
 vin's idea of, 33. 
 
 Farel, William, instituter of 
 Genevan Reformation, 12, 30- 
 32; character of, 30, 31; at 
 conference of Lausanne, 34 ; 
 at work with Calvin in Gen- 
 ■eva, 33-37 ; exile of, 38 ; called 
 to Neuchatel, 37 ; letter to, 40 ; 
 at Zurich in 1549, 66; efforts 
 in behalf of Servetus, 85; 
 sees Calvin for last time, 87. 
 
 Fabri, 58. 
 
 Francis I. of France, 16, 29, 69. 
 
 Furbity, 31. 
 
 Geneva, character of people of. 
 at beginning of Reformation, 
 36; condition of in 1539, 45; 
 recalls Calvin, 45, 46. 
 
 Gentiles, 63, 66. 
 
 Gribaldi, Matthaeus, 66. 
 
 Gruet, 50, 55. 
 
 Guise, Duke de, 28. 
 
 Guizot, M., quoted or referred 
 to, 8, 16, 18, 24, 32, 48, 49, 60, 
 61, 62, 80, 83. 
 
 Henry, Paul, D. D., quoted or 
 referred to, 7, 8, 16, 34, 41, 42, 
 55, 81, 83. 
 
 Hesshus, 66. 
 
 Hughues, Besangon, 29. 
 
 Institutes, production of, and 
 character of, 21, ff. ; aim of, 
 21, 22; editions of, 24, 39; ele- 
 ments of teaching in, 25, ff. ; 
 quoted, 28, 52, 53, 54, 56, 64. 
 
 Laufranc, Jeanne, wife of Gerard 
 Cauvin, mother of John Cal- 
 vin, 13. 
 
 Lausanne, conference of, 34. 
 
 Le Febre d'Etaples, 20, 30. 
 
 Leo X., 12. 
 
 Libertines, 58, 62, 82. 
 
 Liberty, civil and religious, 92, 
 
 93- 
 
 Liturgy, Calvin's, 38. 
 
 Lord's Supper, Calvin's view of, 
 66-78 ; same in "Institutes" 
 and Consensus Tigurinus, 77, 
 78 ; Zwingli's view, 69. 
 
 Louis, XII., 28. 
 
 Luther, 17, 26, 66, 88, 90. 
 
 Margaret, of Angauleme, 19, 20. 
 
 Melancthon, 17, 19, 86, 88. 
 
 Moses, 91. 
 
 Oecolampadius, 76, 79. 
 
 Olivet, Peter Robert, 15, 20. 
 
 Pantheism, Calvin repudiates in 
 connection with doctrine of the 
 Mystical Union, 67, ff. ; 
 
 Parliament of Paris, 19, 80. 
 
 Patriots, the, 58. 
 
 Paul, 90. 
 
 Perrin, 58. 
 
 Polity, distinctive principles of 
 Calvin's Church, 49, ff. 
 
 Quintana, 79. 
 
Index. 
 
 97 
 
 Reformation, Genevan, origin 
 of, 12 ; conduct of prior to 
 Calvin's coming, 29-32. 
 
 Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 28. 
 
 Rilliet, quoted, 78. 
 
 Ruling eldership, 56, 57. 
 
 Sadolet, letter of, 39; his char- 
 acter and effort with the Gen- 
 evese, 43, ff. 
 
 Saul of Tarsus, 17. 
 
 Schaff, Philip, quoted or referred 
 to, 10, 14, 24, 26, 29, 30, 38, 
 45, 46, 48, 55. 57, 67, 78. 
 
 Seneca, Calvin's commentary on 
 "Clemency by," 16. 
 
 Servetus, Michael, 20, 50, 55, 63. 
 66; life of, 79, ff. 
 
 Sleep of the Soul, 20. 
 
 Somerset, 65. 
 
 Sorbonne, 19. 
 
 Spiritualists of Geneva, 58, 59. 
 
 Stahelin, 39, 80. 
 
 State, church and State, Cal- 
 vin's view of proper relation, 
 49, 50. 
 
 Stella, Petrus, 15. 
 
 Stephens, Robert, 65. 
 
 Storder, John, 41. 
 
 Theology, biblical, 23 ; Calvinis- 
 tic, 23, ff. 
 
 Tillet, Louis du, 20, 21. 
 
 Toleration, religious, how re- 
 lated to Reformation, 86. 
 
 Transfusion of substance, in 
 Lord's Supper, rejected by 
 Calvin, 67, 68. 
 
 Trie. William de, 82, 83. 
 
 Union, of believers to Christ, or 
 "mystical," 67. 
 
 Union, of Church and State, Cal- 
 vin's view of, 49, 50- 
 
 University of Paris, 19. 
 
 Vandel, 58. 
 
 Venerable comnany, the, 55, 58. 
 
 Viret, 30, 41, 46, 81, 86. 
 
 Westphal, 66. 
 
 Wolmar, Melchior, 15. 
 
 Zurich, Confession of, 69, ff. ; in- 
 effectual interference in be- 
 half of Calvin and Farel, 37. 
 
 Zwinglians, 66, 68, 69, 76. 
 
 Zwingli, 17, 69, 79.