^.^^g^^^ToTFS"^ 
 
 BX 9418 .S73 
 
 1907 
 
 
 Stevenson, Richard 
 
 Taylor, 
 
 1853-1919. 
 
 
 
 John Calvin, 
 
 the statesman 
 
lUtn 0f i\\z minqixim 
 
 John Calvin: The Statesman 
 
 'By 
 
 Richard Taylor Stevenson 
 
 Chair of History Ohio Wes- 
 leyan University 
 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
 NEW YORK; EATON AND MAINS 
 
Copyright, 1907, by 
 Jennings and Graham 
 
IN MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 Jig ^ntk^, 
 
 WITH FILIAL GRATITUDE 
 AND LOVE 
 
/ 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 As A system of theology Calvinism has no place 
 in this volume. As a mighty force in the organ- 
 ization of ecclesiastical and political disciplines it 
 will demand fair if not full treatment. Contrasted 
 with Lutheranism Calvinism was the real strength 
 of the Reformation. Extinguished in France only 
 after a brutal war, glorious in the Netherlands, the 
 power behind the throne of Elizabeth, forbidding 
 the banns between the rocky fastnesses of Scotland 
 and the sunny plains of France, and in America 
 holding a thin frontier between the seaboard and 
 the savage until the day dawn of a fairer oppor- 
 tunity broke upon the young Republic, this new 
 power justifies all efforts at explanation. 
 
 Sober judges like Mark Pattison have said, "In 
 the sixteenth century Calvinism saved Europe;" 
 like Bancroft, ''He that will not honor the memory ^ 
 and respect the influence of Calvin knows little of 
 the history of American liberty ;" even John Morley 
 has lately declared, "To omit Calvin from the forces \ 
 of Western evolution is to read history with one /' 
 eye shut." John Calvin interests us far more than 
 
 5 
 
 I 
 
6 Proi^ogu^. 
 
 his doctrine of predestination. "History, as Dol- 
 linger has said, is no simple game of abstractions ; 
 men are more than doctrines. It is not a certain 
 theory of grace that makes the Reformation ; it is 
 Luther, it is Calvin. Calvin shaped the mold in 
 which the bronze of Puritanism was cast. That 
 commanding figure, of such vast power yet some- 
 how with so little luster, by his unbending will, his 
 pride, his gift of government, for legislation, for 
 dialectic in every field, his incomparable industry 
 and persistence had conquered a more than pon- 
 tifical ascendency in the Protestant world. He 
 meets us in England, as in Scotland, Holland, 
 France, Switzerland, and the rising England across 
 the Atlantic."^ John Calvin was the "sharp edge 
 of Protestantism" drawn against two forces ; Roman 
 Catholicism, more virile than ever in its new organ- 
 ization and moral revival, and the pagan impulse 
 which swept in with the abuse of the freedom of the 
 Reformation. Calvin's discipline was as potent as 
 his theology. 
 
 The most permanent contributions of Calvin's 
 genius lay less in the line of theology than of states- 
 manship. Calvin cherished the belief that the Ref- 
 ormation could be accomplished only by regener- 
 ation, by separation, and by negation. His change 
 of view-point with regard to the Church in which 
 he saw that men could conform with giving up 
 their sins, his experiences at Geneva, where he 
 
 • Morley's Cromwell, p. 47. 
 
PROI.OGUK. 
 
 found preachings, tumults, and image-breakings 
 with no true improvement, brought him face to face 
 with his "master problem, namely, by what means 
 could he best secure the expression of a changed 
 faith in a changed life."^ Calvin's chief title in 
 modern history is that of the statesman, not of the 
 theologian. And we agree with the scholar of Ox- 
 ford in his statement that we have less cause to be 
 grateful to Calvin for the system called Calvinism 
 than for the Church he organized. His theology 
 was derivative and less original than his polity, 
 yet he so interpreted the former as to make the 
 latter its logical outcome. 
 
 Dr. Fairbairn. Reformation. Camb. Mod. History, 2, 364. 
 
 NoTK. — The manuscript was in the hands of the printer 
 before the issue of Professor Williston Walker's "John 
 Calvin," by Putnam. References to this volume, an admir- 
 able one, have been possible in the proof sheets. 
 
 R. T. S. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Calvin's Youth, - - - - 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 The Age and its Problems, 
 
 26 
 
 III. 
 
 Wanderings, . - . . 
 
 - 42 
 
 IV. 
 
 Geneva before Calvin, - 
 
 61 
 
 V. 
 
 First Sojourn in Geneva, 
 
 - 76 
 
 VI. 
 
 Years of Exile, 
 
 91 
 
 VII. 
 
 Return to Geneva, - - - 
 
 - 112 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The New Discipline, 
 
 128 
 
 IX. 
 
 Calvin and Servetus, - 
 
 - 145 
 
 X. 
 
 The Man — Last Days, 
 
 161 
 
 XL 
 
 Statesmanship, - - - 
 
 182 
 
John Calvin: The Statesman 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CALVIN'S YOUTH. 
 
 Threescore: miles northeast of Paris, on the 
 railroad to Brussels, at the foot and on the slopes 
 of a hill, is Noyon. Through it there runs a small 
 stream which joins the Gise a little farther down 
 its course. The town was an ancient cathedral 
 center, and on account of its many churches, con- 
 vents, and priests was called Noyon-la-Sainte. 
 There, on July lO, 1509, was born John Calvin. 
 His ancestors, according to M. Le Franc, were 
 fishermen, or, as other narrate, bargemen, who lived 
 on the river Oise. His father, Gerard Cauvin, or 
 Calvin, of stern and severe character, became a 
 bourgeois of Noyon in 1497, ^o^e to a position of 
 responsibility as apostolic secretary to the Bishop 
 of Noyon, and became intimate with leading fam- 
 ilies of the neighborhood. He married the daughter 
 of one of the prominent citizens of the town, Le 
 
li John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 Franc, who had a good fortune. The bride of 
 Gerard, Jeanne Le Franc, was handsome and pious. 
 Though she died young, she lived long enough to 
 impress her ideas upon the precocious boy, and is 
 said to have taken him, after the custom of the day, 
 upon various pilgrimages to near-by shrines. On 
 her death the father took another wife, of whom 
 nothing is known. 
 
 John Calvin had four brothers and two sisters, 
 of whom two brothers died young, while two were 
 provided with benefices through the father's influ- 
 ence. Charles, the oldest, was made chaplain of 
 the cathedral in 1518, and the younger, Antoine, 
 chaplain of Tournerolle, but later, with a sister, 
 Marie, embraced the evangelical faith and followed 
 their reformer-brother to Geneva. The other sister 
 appears to have remained in the Catholic Church. 
 His brother Charles turned heretic or infidel, was 
 excommunicated in 1531, and died October i, 1537, 
 and for refusing the sacrament on his deathbed was 
 buried between the four pillars of a gibbet the year 
 after John announced his system to the world, "as 
 if to repeat the startling contrast of Esau and Jacob, 
 reprobation and election from the same womb." ^ 
 
 The legend of John's having been educated at a 
 charity school has been abandoned. His father 
 was a man of importance, and obtained Church 
 preferments for his sons. At the age of twelve 
 John secured a "benefice," or living, the rent of 
 some church property lying at Eppeville, a name 
 
CaIvVin's Youth. 13 
 
 he afterwards used as a pseudonym. September 
 29, 1527, he became curate of Saint Martin de 
 Martheville, and on the 5th of June he exchanged 
 this for a better one at Pont I'Eveque. The sons 
 were well educated in a college of Noyon, where 
 John had for companions the children of the Seig- 
 neur of Mommor. With them he went to Paris, 
 August, 1523, to enter college, living with his uncle 
 Richard near the Church of Saint Germain I'Auxer- 
 rois. From the bell tower of this old church a half 
 hundred years afterwards rang out the doom of the 
 Huguenots on Saint Bartholomew's night. Little 
 did any one dream of the mighty influence of the 
 thin-faced lad who daily walked under the shadow 
 of that tower. He was known as a studious book- 
 worm. His intimate friend and follower, Beza, 
 said of him that during this period he was "relig- 
 ious after a remarkable fashion, and a severe censor 
 of all the vices of his companions." He early got \ 
 the name of ''The Accusative Case,"^ a nickname j 
 suggestive of the leadership in morals and scholar- / 
 ship of a French lad in school life nearly four cen- ' 
 turies ago. 
 
 A quarrel between his father and the Chapter 
 of Noyon may have had its influence in chilling 
 the warmth of John's affection for his home Church. 
 "At the bottom of it," says M. Le Franc, "are 
 
 1 Walker, p. 42, questions the real foundation of this ; he cred- 
 its it to Calvin's " renegade one-time friend," Frangois Baudoin, later 
 his calumnist. 
 
14 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 money difficulties. Gerard Calvin was embarrassed 
 in his affairs, refused to render his accounts to the 
 Chapter, and put himself in complete opposition to 
 it. The influence of this quarrel on the mind of 
 the future reformer must have been considerable." 
 How much of this is speculation may be matter for 
 profitless discussion. However, the father was ex- 
 communicated by the Chapter, fell ill, and died, his 
 son having come home from Paris to bid him fare- 
 well and do the last filial offices. The fact that he 
 was buried in unconsecrated ground did not appeal 
 favorably to the proudly sensitive young collegian 
 from Paris. There was not lacking in the family 
 a substantial background of anti-papal feeling, and 
 though we can not know how extensive this was, 
 it is not hard to conceive that John reflected the 
 spirit of his family and of his native Picardy. The 
 state of this section of France throws some light 
 upon the growing antipathy to Rome on the part 
 of the young scholar. Picardy was open to all the 
 winds that blew across the Rhine. Robert Olivetan 
 was a Picard, and a kinsman of Calvin. He had 
 become a friend in Strassburg of Martin Bucer, 
 a reformer intimate with Luther and of marked 
 influence among men of the new faith. Picardy 
 was celebrated for its love of contention, or say 
 the principle of free speech, and the Bishop of 
 Noyon and the Chapter were engaged in a "per- 
 petual quarrel." So the fitting environment was 
 ready for the nursing of a reformer. 
 
CaIvVin's Youth. 15 
 
 Calvin was not an accident. The desire for a 
 better state of things in Church and State was 
 strong in his region. The city became for awhile 
 a sort of headquarters for the reformers in the 
 north of France. In the persecution which at- 
 tended the zeal of the inquisitor-general, striving 
 to recover Noyon to the Mother Church, the clergy 
 stood together with the plain people, and forced the 
 aristocrats to yield to the established order of the 
 old faith, and so Noyon fell back into the arms of 
 Rome. Thirty years after the death of Calvin, 
 Cardinal Alexander de Medicis passed through 
 Noyon and asked to be shown the home of Calvin. 
 He then inquired if there were any Protestants in 
 the town. His guide said: "Not a single one!" 
 This was doubtless an exaggeration, but it ex- 
 pressed the fact that Noyon had exhausted its 
 tendency to reform in furnishing to the world one 
 reformer. 
 
 At the age of fourteen Calvin entered the Col- 
 lege de la Marche. His great instructor in Latin 
 was Mathurin Cordier, to whom he afterwards 
 dedicated his Commentary on First Thessalonians. 
 Cordier afterwards followed his pupil to Geneva, 
 and was appointed director of the College of Ge- 
 neva, where he died the same year with Calvin. 
 From the College de la Marche Calvin was trans- 
 ferred to the more strictly ecclesiastical College de 
 Montaigu, and there he studied philosophy and 
 theology under a learned Spaniard. To this same 
 
i6 John CaIvVin: The: Statesman. 
 
 college came, in February, 1528, Ignatius Loyola, 
 in preparation for his life-work, in which his most 
 exacting duties were to be found in antagonism to 
 the toil of Calvin. 
 
 We can not discover anything unusual or spec- 
 tacular in the college career of the young student 
 from Noyon, save that he easily distanced all his 
 rivals. He seems to have had no heart for the riot- 
 ous hours of the young collegians of Paris, and 
 gave the police no trouble in their efforts to main- 
 tain order when "town and gown" met in a mid- 
 night brawl. He was reticent, proud, religious, 
 and studious beyond measure or wisdom. Beza 
 says he was even then ''doctor potius quam aud- 
 itor" — ^teacher rather than hearer. 
 
 At first his father had longed for his gifted son 
 to become priest, but changed his purpose. The son 
 said : ''My father saw that the study of law gener- 
 ally enriched those who pursued it, and this hope 
 made him suddenly change his mind with regard 
 to me. And thus it happened that being withdrawn 
 from the study of philosophy in order to learn the 
 law, I compelled myself to learn the law, so as to 
 obey my father's will. But all the while God in 
 His secret providence made me finally turn my 
 head in another direction." M. Guizot is inclined 
 to believe that his father's will was not the principal 
 guiding motive in Calvin's resolution. For when 
 he began his studies in Paris he was a special stu- 
 dent of Cordier, a sympathetic onlooker at the 
 
CaIvVin's Youth. 17 
 
 time of the rising tide of reform. Also his fellow- 
 countryman, Olivetan, was moving with the new 
 current of religion. Such influences could not have 
 failed to tell upon the mind of Calvin. When in 
 1529 he abandoned the Church for the law, he 
 went to Orleans and Bourges. One of his teachers 
 was Pierre de TEstoile, a learned jurist; another, 
 Alciate of Milan, an elegant scholar in ancient liter- 
 ature ; while more important still, another was Mel- 
 chior Wolmar, eminent in Greek, who read Demos- 
 thenes with his pupils for a time, and then turned 
 to the New Testament. Calvin became the favorite 
 pupil of Wolmar. His industry and abstemious- 
 ness, his freedom from any wildness to which others 
 were inclined, and his excesses in studying left for 
 years a notable memory in Orleans, and at the same 
 time laid the foundation for his plague for the rest 
 of his life — dyspepsia. 
 
 He was made Bachelor of Laws at Orleans, 
 February 14, 1 531, and on leaving the university 
 was offered the degree of Doctor of Laws without 
 the usual fees. Already his rank as a scholar is 
 exhibited in the fact that when the question of the 
 divorce of Henry VHI was referred to the scholars 
 on the Continent, Calvin was consulted. He ex- 
 pressed himself against the lawfulness of marriage 
 with a brother's widow. In the summer of 1531 
 he went to Noyon to see his father depart this life, 
 and returned to Paris with his brother Antoine. 
 Still deepening his knowledge of the classics, he 
 
i8 John Cai^vin: The; Statesman. 
 
 does not seem to have had any thought of breaking 
 with the CathoHc Church. Nor does he discuss re- 
 Hgious matters in correspondence with kis intimate 
 friends, Hke Francois Daniel. Daniel had asked 
 him to introduce his sister to the superior of a con- 
 vent, and Calvin wrote back that he had done so, 
 adding that he had given her a few admonitions, 
 as that she should not trust in her own strength, 
 but put all confidence in God. 
 
 Financial embarrassment compelled him to bor- 
 row two crowns from his friend, Duchemin, to 
 whom he expressed the hope of speedy repayment, 
 yet would none the less remain a debtor in grati- 
 tude for timely aid. The peculiar maturity of his 
 mind, his avoidance of a share in the noisy excite- 
 ments so common to student life in his day, his 
 intimacy with his teachers, and his high moral char- 
 acter marked him as a rare personality. The charge 
 of selfish coldness which has dripped from the pens 
 of writers like Audin disappears in the light of the 
 knowledge of his warm friendships. Three, young 
 men of like mind with himself were Duchemin, 
 Connam, and Daniel. While they felt the need of 
 reform, they refused to break with the Romish 
 Church, nor do Calvin's letters to them at this 
 period show traces of discontent with the ancient 
 communion. But when his mind began to consider 
 the question of separation, no stronger proof of his 
 capacity for friendship can be found than the fact 
 that though his leaving appeared inevitable, he and 
 
Calvin's Youth. 19 
 
 they remained friends. The first letter in Bonnet's 
 four octavo vohimes is to Daniel, and as late as 
 1559 Daniel renewed the correspondence with Cal- 
 vin, and entrusted to him the education of his son 
 Pierre. Calvin's first work was announced by the 
 author to Daniel in the words, ''Tandem jacta est 
 alea." Caesar had said just before crossing the 
 Rubicon, "Let the die be cast." Calvin could not 
 have meant by his half-playful adaptation of the 
 old phrase with which the Roman had turned over 
 a new leaf of history, that he was about to do the 
 same. And yet it fell not far from it. Calvin was 
 still a Humanist when he published his Commentary 
 on Seneca's "De Clementia." He sent a copy to 
 Erasmus, calling him "the honor and delight of the 
 world of letters." This was his first book. In it 
 there is evidence of a Stoic quality of mind which 
 never left him. He published it at his own expense, 
 April, 1532. In it may be seen ''his characteristic 
 love for the nobler type of Stoicism, great famil- 
 iarity with Greek and Roman literature, masterly 
 Latinity, rare exegetical skill, clear and sound judg- 
 ment,"^ but with no allusion to Christianity. Cal- 
 vin's "De dementia" has been considered by some 
 to have the aim of an apologist, as if he hoped to 
 save his fellows of the new faith from the wrath 
 of the king ; and to this Henry, Dorner, and Guizot 
 give their names ; but others like Stahelin deny it. 
 Schaflf says, "It is purely the work of a humanist. 
 
 1 Dr. Schaflf. 
 
20 John Cai^vin: The: State^sman. 
 
 not of an apologist or a reformer." It is not ad- 
 dressed to the king, and in the implied comparison 
 of the king to Nero Calvin could not have hoped 
 to allay any bitter feeling in the royal heart towards 
 the Protestants. The production is that of a bril- 
 liant young scholar, an admirer of the ancient clas- 
 sics, a soul tempered by the finer influences contrib- 
 uted to civilization by Stoicism. Letters, and not 
 religion, at this time in life held him in charm. 
 
 Suddenly just as a notable career, one marked 
 by the devotion of men of letters, and the favors 
 of magnates of the Church, began to dawn before 
 him, he joined the ranks of the reformers. He says 
 it was a "sudden conversion" (subito conversio). 
 But this can not mean that the new direction of all 
 his life currents was without thought or conscious 
 battle. He could not have been ignorant, as an 
 educated man, and one whose marvelous precocity 
 attracted attention in every circle he joined, of the 
 stir of the Reformation, favored by the men of let- 
 ters and opposed by the clergy at large. He soon 
 appeared as an interpreter of the Scriptures, and 
 his extraordinary familiarity with them, his insight 
 into their spiritual bent, tell the story of preparation 
 for the change. There was both slow approach 
 and sudden illumination. While he says, "God 
 Himself produced the change, He instantly sub- 
 dued my heart to obedience," yet we must think 
 that this "sudden conversion" was the result, the 
 climax, of much previous severe thought, and pos- 
 
Cai^vin's Youth. 21 
 
 sibly of struggle. The question is wrapped in ad- 
 ditional difficulty for the reason that Calvin does 
 not mention the time, place, or circumstances of the 
 decisive change. Le Franc puts the time in the 
 latter part of the year 1532, when Calvin was in 
 Orleans, or possibly in Paris.^ According to Beza 
 the conversion took place as far back as 1528, or 
 even 1527. Bolsec and Audin, whose narratives 
 are in spots the veriest libels, trace the great change 
 to wounded ambition, but in utter ignorance of 
 Calvin's character. 
 
 It will be recalled that in telling his friend Dan- 
 iel of his work on "Clemency" he had said ''the 
 die was cast." None the less fitting is the phrase 
 to describe the present turn of life, but now he 
 throws himself on the "mercy" of God. In mem- 
 orable words he discloses his wretchedness of soul, 
 not long after the issue of his book on "Clemency." 
 "After my heart had long been prepared for the 
 most earnest self-examination, on a sudden the full 
 knowledge of the truth, like a bright light, dis- 
 closed to me the abyss of errors in which I was 
 weltering, the sin and shame with which I was de- 
 filed. A horror seized my soul, when I became con- 
 scious of my wretchedness and of the more terrible 
 misery that was before me. And what was left, 
 O Lord, for me, miserable and abject, but with 
 tears and cries of supplication to abjure the old 
 life which Thou condemned and to flee into Thy 
 
 1 With this Walker agrees, p. 96. 
 
22 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 path?" He tells us that he had failed to find in- 
 ward peace through the usual methods of the 
 Church. "Only one haven of salvation is there for 
 our souls, and that is the compassion of God, which 
 is offered to us in Christ." Calvin was now a free 
 man inwardly. And if he had any doubts concern- 
 ing his outward course they were soon dispelled. 
 He, like Csesar, was the man to cross Rubicons 
 with a whole heart. Martin Luther's conversion 
 was no more significant, nor was that of John Wes- 
 ley, for the long future of the Reformation and of 
 Constitutional liberty hung upon the changed life 
 of this young Frenchman of twenty-three. He had 
 not been immoral ; he now became evangelical. He 
 had not lacked in Latinity, reading his favorite 
 Cicero through annually; but now he lifted the 
 Bible far above all books. He had never been a 
 lover of misrule, nor a destructionist, for he re- 
 vered the Church of his fathers ; but now he became 
 the mightiest builder of the age, like all truly great 
 men, loving order, and stretched a long arm out 
 over the generations to come. 
 
 The shy scholar becomes the refuge of troubled 
 souls. He had found the key to liberty, and men 
 came to him for the opening of the door from their 
 prison houses of doubt and sin. Though he tried 
 to escape the numbers that thronged his place of 
 residence, he could not fail to see that God was 
 about to use him for the help of his fellows, and to 
 those who sought his counsel he gave the keynote 
 
Calvin's Youth. 23 
 
 of his theology and his piety in the words with 
 which he began and closed his exhortations: "If 
 God be for us, who can be against us?" 
 
 Calvin had not been ordained priest in the 
 Roman Catholic Church, and had never read mass, 
 though he had early received the tonsure, destined 
 as he was for the priesthood. Like Melanchthon 
 he was a layman. It was not until 1536 that he 
 fully entered the ranks of ordained preachers, when 
 by the election of presbyters and council, and with 
 the consent of the whole people, he was chosen 
 pastor and began his "regular" ministry. He had 
 no hierarchy back of him, but a democracy. 
 
 The crisis and breach with Rome came in 1533. 
 The king had been offended because of an insult 
 offered to his sister by the Sorbonne in their con- 
 demnation of her "Mirror of a Sinful Soul," — a 
 mystical reverie, which omitted to mention purga- 
 tory and the intercession of saints, and was there- 
 fore judged to have denied them. Over this there 
 grew up a division between the liberals and the 
 traditionalists,^nd a slight rising of the tide towards 
 a moderate reform was apparent. Sev&ral preach- 
 ers whose sympathies leaned towards reformation 
 were permitted to preach in Paris pulpits. The 
 new rector of the university was Nicholas Cop, 
 the son of a distinguished physician, and a warm 
 friend of Calvin. All Saints' Day brought with it 
 the duty of delivering the annual oration, and a 
 month after his election, November i, 1533, before 
 
24 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 a large audience in the Church of the Mathurins, 
 the new rector spoke after a fashion to injure him- 
 self and his friend, John Calvin. Cop had asked 
 Calvin to write the address or to make substantial 
 contributions to it, and the result was, as Beza tells 
 the incident, "very different kind of oration from 
 the ordinary one, for he spoke of religious matters 
 with great freedom." In the speech Calvin made 
 a plea for the New Testament kind of reformation, 
 and boldly attacked the musty theologians of the 
 day as a set of sophists, ignorant of the true Gos- 
 pel. "They teach nothing of faith, nothing of the 
 love of God, nothing of the remission of grace, 
 nothing of justification, or if they do so, they per- 
 vert and undermine it all by their laws and soph- 
 istries. I beg of you, who are here present, not to 
 tolerate any longer these heresies and abuses."^ 
 
 The word was out and could not be recalled. 
 It was sufficient to rouse against Cop all the ire of 
 the conservatives. The Sorbonne interpreted the 
 address as a manifesto against the Holy Church, 
 and condemned it to the flames. Tiie rector of a 
 month fled to Basel. Calvin fell into their accu- 
 sation also, so we judge his share in the speech was 
 not a secret. He took temporary refuge in the 
 dwelling of a vine-dresser in the Fauburg St. Vic- 
 tor, changed his clothing, was let down from a 
 
 1 Calvin's share in Cop's Address is asserted by many authori- 
 ties, and denied by as many more. 
 
Calvin's Youth. 25 
 
 window,' Pauline fashion, and escaped from Paris 
 carrying a hoe upon his shoulder to perfect his dis- 
 guise. The police were quick upon his heels, yet 
 found nothing save his books and papers. 
 John Calvin now becomes a wanderer. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 THE AGE AND ITS PROBLEMS. 
 
 Bkfor]^ taking up the all too meager incidents 
 of Calvin's life in his wanderings, we must attempt 
 to familiarize our minds with the age in which he 
 was to play such a distinguished part. He touched 
 so many lives, the most illustrious of the century, 
 kings, bishops, scholars, statesmen, the opponent of 
 some, the pride of some, the spiritual father of 
 some, feared and hated and loved from the Tiber 
 to the Thames, and credited with greatness by all 
 who were qualified to give any decision, that one 
 will surely go astray if the background of his emi- 
 nent services be not painted in. 
 
 That "great and happy thing" which men call 
 the Renaissance was a timely recovery of the glories 
 and charm of Greek and Roman culture. One of 
 the most brilliant products of this spirit as it swept 
 over Europe bears the stamp of Calvin's literary 
 genius upon it, his first appearance in the field of 
 letters. The glorious air first breathed upon Italy, 
 then upon Germany, France, and England. The 
 sixteenth century rises to splendid proportions, full- 
 orbed and far-shining. If men did not all see fully, 
 26 
 
The Age and its Probi^ems. 27 
 
 they gazed eagerly. Ulrich von Hutteti, rejoicing 
 in the new light and filling his lines with the fresh 
 enthusiasm for Germany, and the passion against 
 Rome, cried out: "O century when studies bloom 
 and spirits awake; it is happiness to live in thee!" 
 Stars of the first magnitude In nearly all lines of 
 mental activity and practical daring glow with un- 
 diminished splendor, even to eyes that find it diffi- 
 cult to compass the glory of the twentieth century. 
 It is the age of Luther and Raphael, both born the 
 same year, 1483 ; of Erasmus and Michelangelo, 
 one the master of the new learning and the other 
 the noblest artist of his time ; the day of Columbus 
 and Cabot; of Leonardo da Vinci; of Francois 
 Rabelais ; of Vittoria Colonna, Henry VIII, Charles 
 V, Chevalier Bayard, Magellan and Loyola; of 
 Zwingli, Coligny, and William of Orange ; of John 
 Knox, Francis I, Melanchthon, Titian, Correggio, 
 Leo X, Cortez and Copernicus; an age plethoric 
 with discoverers, artists, architects, sculptors, states- 
 men, theologians, soldiers, thinkers, a noble band, 
 men of truths, men of errors, men of great parts 
 and of famous deeds. John Calvin holds high rank 
 in this illustrious company. 
 
 In the expressive phrase of Guizot, "Two con- 
 trary winds were blowing over Europe at this 
 period, one carrying with it skepticism and licen- 
 tiousness, while the other breathed only Christian 
 faith and the severest morality." It was an age 
 of intoxication, of reconstruction, of conflict. The 
 
28 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 spread of the literary spirit had serious conse- 
 quences for the Church, though it was not at first 
 clearly seen. Along with the revival of letters 
 there came a renewed study of the Fathers of the 
 Church, and, above all, of the Scriptures. Human- 
 ism was welcomed to different lands with somewhat 
 varying emphasis. In Italy it bred a skepticism 
 which concerned itself little enough with the moral 
 betterment of the Church and society ; in Germany 
 the study of the classics did not corrupt minds like 
 that of Reuchlin, and bent itself in sympathy with 
 the effort to found the new University of Witten- 
 berg, only seven years before the birth of Calvin ; 
 in England men like Colet and More smiled at the 
 dawn with a double joy, that of the saint as well 
 as that of the student ; and later on both for those 
 who stayed in the Roman Church and for those 
 who revolted, the new learning was a fortress and 
 strong tower, for in its arsenal the Catholic and the 
 Reformer, the followers of Loyola and of Calvin 
 alike sharpened their blades for fierce encounter. 
 The failure of the Popes to use the Renaissance 
 with a view to the moral improvement of human 
 society as well as its sesthetic advance tells the 
 story of a double loss. The over-emphasis of art- 
 loving popes upon the art products of their day, 
 especially in the early decades of the century, re- 
 veals a one-sided quality of soul which in the end 
 lost the very good at which wealth and taste and 
 skill were aiming. Pope Julius II represented the 
 
The Age and its Problems. 29 
 
 zenith of the effort to secure for the Church the 
 magnificent service of the art of the Renaissance. 
 He had the three greatest minds that any ruler 
 could hope for. Bramante, ''perhaps the most uni- 
 versal and gifted mind that ever used its mastery 
 over architecture," planned in St. Peter's the type 
 of the majestic extension of the Church. In the 
 roof of the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo depicted 
 the return of mankind to God, aided not only by 
 Judaism, but also by Graeco-Roman paganism, 
 showing a positive relationship between classical 
 antiquity and Christianity. Above all, in the four 
 pictures by Raphael, painted in the Camera delta 
 Segnatiira the year of Calvin's birth, can be seen 
 the aspiration of the soul of man in each of its 
 faculties, man going Godward by the sesthetic per- 
 ceptions, by philosophy, by Church order, and by 
 theology. The Papacy of the Renaissance led Eu- 
 rope in art. This Luther could not see. What he 
 saw was a ''Holy City" forsaking the Decalogue. 
 But its neglect of morals led to a decline in art. 
 
 Dr. Kraus, of ^lunich, a late authority in this 
 field, believes^ that the decline began with the fol- 
 lies and frailties of Leo X, who, though his reign 
 has been compared to that of Augustus, passed his 
 life in self-indulgence, while the north of Europe 
 was bursting the bonds which bound it to Rome. 
 As far back as 1498 Niccolo Macchiavelli saw in 
 the flames about Savonarola no prospect of reform 
 
 iCamb. Mod. Hist, vol, 2. 
 
30 John Calvin: Th]^ Statesman. 
 
 from Rome. And though a better man came with 
 the election of Adrian VI, a "Dutch saint," \vho 
 could not understand the newly-discovered Lao- 
 coon, saying, "These are heathen idols," he failed 
 to reconcile the Italian Renaissance with the con- 
 science of the Germanic world. 
 
 In 1523 Clement VII was elected Pope, but as 
 a contemporary remarked, "He lost courage and 
 let go the rudder." Vacillating between Charles V 
 and Francis I he beheld his holy city sacked by the 
 rough soldiery of Charles after the battle of Pavia, 
 perhaps the most important military event of the 
 century. In 1533 he gave his great-niece, yet in 
 her teens, to the royal house of France, a terrible 
 gift, for thirty-eight years afterwards she contrived 
 to flood the gutters of Paris with the blood of 
 Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Night. During 
 his pontificate the unity of the Catholic Church was 
 destroyed, and half of Europe found another cen- 
 ter of its faith. Italian corruption, a fatal con- 
 fusion of politics and religion, the incapacity of a 
 man who was neither venal, nor proud, nor licen- 
 tious, wrought out a bitter atonement for the sins 
 of a selfish predecessor. The harmonization of 
 mediaeval with modern thought and life, and the 
 perpetuation of an unbroken Catholicism, all mis- 
 carried because all strong moral force was gone 
 from the Italian people. Italy had burned its last 
 prophet in the Piazm della Signore at Florence. 
 It had also blown out the candle of its glory as 
 
The Age and its Problems. 31 
 
 the leader of European culture. Painting and sculp- 
 ture took a downward path after the death of 
 Raphael and Leonardo. ''Not only the Muses and 
 the Graces wept by Raphael's grave, the whole 
 Julian epoch was buried with him."^ 
 
 When the election of Alessandro Farnese as 
 Paul III, 1534, inaugurated the Counter-Reforma- 
 tion, it proved too late to save to Rome its distinc- 
 tion of being both the intellectual and the religious 
 center of Christian Europe. The results were fatal 
 to the hope of a universal ecclesiasticism which 
 Bramante suggested in his plans for St. Peter's, 
 and Raphael glorified in his cartoons. It has been 
 remarked by Newman that the greatest misfortune 
 lay, and still lies, in the fact that the Latin races 
 never realized, and do not even yet realize, what 
 they have lost in the Germanic defection. Yet it is as 
 striking a fact that the Reformed Church in all its 
 branches discovered its bridge of transfer from the 
 bank of Mediaeval autocracy to that of Modern 
 democracy in a Latin of the Latins, through whose 
 high character, magnificent culture, and persistent 
 will it was enabled to offset the aroused energy of 
 Rome, its quickened conscience, its giant organiza- 
 tion with an energy, a consecration, and a concep- 
 tion of the worth of the individual man able to 
 withstand the concentrated pressure of the whole 
 Roman Catholic world. 
 
 A significant difference appears in the symbols 
 
 1 Camb. Mod. Hist. 2, 28. 
 
32 John CaivVin: Thk Statesman. 
 
 of the two opponents. The old was getting itself 
 splendidly fashioned in marble; the new clearly 
 printed on the flying page; for with the building 
 of St. Peter's on the banks of the Tiber, and with 
 the issue of the ''Institutes" of John Calvin at Ge- 
 neva, we reach the two giant conceptions of the 
 century. The black and white page contrast oddly 
 enough with the golden dome. The one is objec- 
 tive, the other appeals to the inner eye. The one is 
 the proudest monument of religious institutional- 
 ism, the other beats its exacting notes for an irre- 
 sistible march into the future. Within the walls 
 of the Church are assembled the most sacred relics 
 of the Catholic faith. From Raphael to Canova, 
 Art has done her utmost to perpetuate the elaborate 
 symbolism of the Roman Catholic Church, accumu- 
 lated in the passing of a thousand years. In the 
 pages of Calvin, Logic reached the limit in mighty 
 effort to exalt the idea of the Sovereignty of God. 
 St. Peter's is the conclusion of an impulse which 
 led men for so many centuries to express their re- 
 ligious feelings by sensuous images of the grand, 
 the obscure, and the terrible. "It represents the 
 absorption of the religious by the aesthetic element, 
 which is the sure sign that the religious function 
 of architecture had terminated. The age of the 
 cathedrals had passed. The age of the printing- 
 press had begun. "^ 
 
 The two extremes of the French Renaissance 
 
 Lecky, Rationalism ; i. 267. 
 
Th^ Agi^ and its Probi,e;ms. 33 
 
 were the theologian and the satirist. Over against 
 John Calvin stood Francois Rabelais. Of no other 
 two men of their age have so many contradictory 
 opinions been held. A modern Frenchman, Vol- 
 taire, heir to the scholarship in which they both 
 reveled, as skeptical as the one and more critical 
 than the other in his assaults upon the Church, 
 more decent than Rabelais, less so than Calvin, 
 declared that the works of the great humorist were 
 "the most filthy ordure that a drunken monk could 
 possibly vomit." He did indeed make a coarse 
 picture of the corruption of the times in monastery 
 and castle, not without grim and terrible satire. He 
 was at once sensualist, scholar, and skeptic, yet he 
 remained in the Church. Coleridge declared him 
 to be among the deepest minds as well as the bold- 
 est thinker of his age. Charles Kingsley found him 
 strangely "evangelical." His versatility of humor 
 has led some to place him in the class with Shakes- 
 peare. By no stretch of the imagination can he be 
 reckoned in sympathy with Calvin, nor can Calvin 
 be thought of as looking with indifference upon 
 the riot with which Rabelais has peopled his pages. 
 Yet in their scorn of the life of the flesh to which 
 the monks devoted their days and nights, both men 
 represented the changing mind of the new day, 
 the view of a consistent life which men were every- 
 where demanding of those who handled sacred 
 things. 
 
 Yet the wit of Rabelais was utterly lacking in 
 
 3 
 
34 John Cai^vin : The) Stati^sman. 
 
 restraint, and his chidings were without conscience, 
 for while he scorned the frauds and folHes of the 
 papal court and lashed without limit of decency the 
 sins of the clergy, he continued to live in their com- 
 munion. The absolution of Clement VII and the 
 license of Francis I secured him the privileges of 
 a chartered libertine. He became the Momus of his 
 time, and his entire possession of the double spirit 
 of France, its love of logic and its love of life, its 
 learning and its licentiousness, made him at once 
 a communicant and a bacchanal. 
 
 In Calvin we have the antidote to Rabelais. If 
 the one was an ascetic, the other was a satyr. The 
 one drank before, during, and after writing; the 
 other was content with a repast of bread and water 
 once in thirty-six hours. The one was lord of mis- 
 rule in tavern or monastery; the other the lord 
 of order in Geneva. The one wrote a farce for 
 merriment, the other a tragedy which man finds 
 too serious for laughter. For the man of Geneva 
 life was a mission, and logic a flame. The one was 
 all too short for folly, the other too sure for doubt. 
 Thus in the sublime conviction that he fully under- 
 stood God's will for the world, Calvin endeavored 
 to translate his world of reason into one of prac- 
 tice, faithful to the last link of what he believed an 
 indissoluble logic. 
 
 The Rabelaisian spirit could not abide in Ge- 
 neva while Calvin ruled there. The two worlds 
 were mutually exclusive. "The demoniac of Ge- 
 
Th^ Age and its Problems. 35 
 
 neva," as the humorist called the puritan, was the 
 mightiest in his realm, and saved it from the de- 
 moralization to which the ebb-tide towards pagan- 
 ism was carrying it. 
 
 In another direction the demand for such a 
 leader as Calvin is most notable. In the definite 
 theological retrogression from Lutheranism, even 
 before Luther's death, the battle lines were drawn 
 not between Lutheranism and Jesuitism, but be- 
 tween Jesuitism and Calvinism. In their leadership, 
 their organization, their emphasis upon education 
 thxCy were not unlike. Each consecrated everything 
 to the purpose of its life and mission. Each tested 
 to the full the other's power of offense and defense. 
 "It is here," says Dr. A. V. G. Allen, ''that Calvin- 
 ism finds its place in the philosophy of history. 
 Its merit lay in its ability to resist Jesuitism on its 
 own ground. It did not hesitate to identify Cal- 
 vin's opinions with the divine will. In this respect 
 its audacity may be equaled, but is not surpassed 
 by the disciples of Loyola. Calvinism was the fight- 
 ing mood of the Reformation."^ 
 
 That we may give full measure to this concep- 
 tion of the place of Calvinism, we must know some- 
 what more of the Spanish soldier, pilgrim, saint, 
 and organizer whose work it was to save the Ro- 
 man Church from the assaults of the man of Ge- 
 neva. The story of the wounding of Loyola on 
 the ramparts of Pampeluna, and the collapse of the 
 
 1 Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 337. 
 
36 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 defense when he fell with both legs shattered by 
 a cannon shot is well known. His nerve was equal 
 to the pain of having one leg broken again on find- 
 ing it had been ill set, when he had a protruding 
 bone sawed off, while he calmly watched the sur- 
 geon's work. On his sick bed he asked for a ro- 
 mance. None was at hand, and instead he was 
 handed a life of Christ and the lives of some saints. 
 The ambitions of the soldier were changed, and he 
 rose from the sick bed another man. He offered 
 himself as a distributor of alms, and tried to go to 
 Palestine pilgrim-wise, staff in hand. Finding that 
 he lacked much to fit him for his life duty, he 
 turned himself at thirty-three years of age to the 
 school bench. He was far behind Calvin in his 
 Latin declensions, nor was he an apt pupil. He 
 had not yet taken holy orders, and by his zeal he 
 made himself "distinctly odious."^ He goes to the 
 University of Paris, and enrolls as a freshman, 
 February, 1528. He mingled in proportions dic- 
 tated not by good judgment so much as by an iron 
 will, the most lofty aims, the most austere practices, 
 and the drudgery of difficult study. He finally 
 overcame all obstructions and took his degree of 
 Master of Arts in 1534. Of more aid to him than 
 his degree were his six chosen companions, each 
 one of whom he had won individually. Never was 
 there a band of devoted followers picked to more 
 clearly defined aims. Though the men he gathered 
 
 1 Hughes' lyoyola. 24. 
 
Th]^ Ag^ and its Proble;ms. 37 
 
 around him were unlike, he bred in them the rarest 
 devotion to his ideal, enlisting the courtier Xavier, 
 ambitious for letters ; the youthful prodigy Laynez, 
 Doctor of Philosophy, and the tender shepherd boy, 
 Lefevre, to lay aside self in the cause of the society. 
 A French historian has said: "Loyola could apply 
 to himself admirably well that proverb which says, 
 'When a Spaniard is driving a nail into the wall, 
 and the hammer breaks, the Spaniard will drive it 
 in with his head !" Of none was this truer than of 
 Loyola, who counted no cost to get his plans to 
 work, through to the end of days. 
 
 On the 27th of September, 1540, the Society of 
 Jesus received from the Pope its bull of confirma- 
 tion, and the order was ready for the work of cap- 
 turing the next generation, to check the decadence 
 of the Church, and to offset the increasing might 
 of Calvinism. Loyola died in 1556, and Calvin in 
 1564, but they had laid down before their going 
 the lines of the grand strategy on which the battle 
 lasted far on into succeeding decades. Their fol- 
 lowers made for the cities, where they planted their 
 schools. Of Loyola some one wrote, contrasting 
 him with other Catholic orders: 
 
 "Bernardus valles, monies Benedictus amabat, 
 Oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes." 
 
 That is: The monks of Clairvaux loved their val- 
 leys; the Benedictines their mountain-tops; the 
 
38 John Cai^vin: The Statejsman. 
 
 Franciscans the rural towns; Ignatius the great 
 cities. 
 
 Action and reaction came with startHng sudden- 
 ness. The very year of England's breach with the 
 papacy, Loyola took his Master's degree at Paris. 
 The birth of this order on French soil was ominous 
 for the future of the Reformation in France. Even 
 before the establishment of the plans of Loyola 
 the Protestants had endured martyrdom under di- 
 rect encouragement of the king. They faced perse- 
 cution with wonderful courage, yet were not able 
 to cope with the rising energy of Romanism, unless 
 some equal might should direct in their behalf the 
 uncertain future. While Francis I was crowding 
 to the wall his subjects who were professing the 
 new faith, and burning alive the simple' Vaudians 
 of Provence who dared to break with Rome, the 
 Reformation was at a standstill in Italy; in Ger- 
 many it had laid the foundations of war between 
 the emperor and the Protestant princes, and Lu- 
 ther's closing days were made sad on account of 
 fraternal strife; the death of Henry VIII threw 
 England back into the folds of the Roman Church 
 and left his daughter to light the fires of Smith- 
 field ; Rome was renewing her vigor and preparing 
 for advance not only in Europe, but in the New 
 World she had lately claimed for her own. It was 
 a day of genuine alarm for the Protestants. Luther 
 had raised a storm, but was not the leader to con- 
 trol its fierce energies in the salvation of the reform 
 for which he had given his life. 
 
The Age and its Probi.e;ms. 39 
 
 In special, Luther's methods of securing the 
 results of his first efforts were not to the liking 
 of a large part of the new forces engaged in the 
 exodus from Rome. History was slowly tending 
 towards democracy. Luther failed to implant in 
 the minds of his host the principle of self-sustenta- 
 tion. He leaned too heavily upon the princes. His 
 congregations were but half emancipated from old 
 doctrines and old relations with authority. They 
 held truth with an alloy of falsehood. It was a 
 time when half measures were sure to prove un- 
 equal to the tremendous task. To quench the fires 
 of Philip of Spain, to raise men in Scotland or 
 France to face the princes of the House of Lor- 
 raine, or to match the craft of Jesuitism they 
 needed a sharper definition of differences from 
 Rome, and a closer alliance with the new life of the 
 modern world expressing itself in forms of pop- 
 ular control, and a simpler texture of organization 
 with which to front the age-long power of the 
 Popes. These did not come from Wittenberg. 
 While Luther resisted forces which would have 
 crushed weaker men, and goes to the end of time 
 one of the immortals of human progress, it yet 
 remains that he held to beliefs that a more logical 
 I intellect would have disowned, and cherished cus- 
 toms which a more radical reformer would have 
 surrendered. He seems himself to have felt that 
 he had not touched the secret springs of a perma- 
 nent victorv, and the nearer he drew to his close 
 
40 John Cai^vin: Th^ State:sman. 
 
 the more it became evident that no adequate pro- 
 vision for a permanent expansion of Protestant 
 doctrine and practice was to be hoped for under the 
 direction of the great German. 
 
 Then it must be remembered that as the more 
 eager rebels against the Roman Church pushed 
 forward to simpler and more secure positions, "re- 
 vival and reaction followed so fast on the heels 
 of reform that had the Lutheran Church stood 
 alone, neither the eloquence of its founder, nor the 
 sagacity and steadfastness of the Saxon Electors, 
 nor the vigor of Landgrave Philip could have saved 
 it/'^ No truly observant reader of the conflicting 
 spirits of this wonderful time will fail to note that 
 the tendencies working for reform were not ex- 
 hausted by Luther, for it did not follow that what 
 he did not do could not be done by another. A 
 more radical and complete reformation was 
 wrought out by the leader of the Swiss, Zwingli. 
 Their rebound from Rome was less traditional and 
 more historical and rational than in the case of the 
 Germans. While both leaned upon civil powers, 
 these powers were not the same. In Luther's case 
 the princes, in Zwingli's case the free people, backed 
 up the movement entrusted to their several leaders. 
 And when we reach the use that Calvin made of 
 the opportunity offered to him in Geneva, whereby 
 the ''elders'' — laymen — could freely express them- 
 selves as influential agents in the organization of 
 
 1 Dr. Pairbairn. Camb. Hist. 2. $45* 
 
The: Act and its Problems. 41 
 
 the Church, it is not hard to point the path trod 
 by the Reformed Church as it ran through Holland, 
 England, Scotland, and America, widening as it 
 went the thoroughfare in which free thought and 
 free religion, democracy, and constitutional govern- 
 ment were to find their fullest, their most glorious, 
 their most lasting illustrations. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 WANDERINGS 
 
 Cai^vin beat none too hasty a retreat from Paris. 
 The scandal of the oration was great. The king 
 wrote to the Parhament enjoining diHgent pro- 
 cesses against the "accursed Lutheran sect." 
 Within a week there were fifty Lutherans in prison. 
 But the fever of persecution quickly died down in 
 the veins of the vacillating ruler. On his return to 
 Paris, January 24, 1534, after effecting a secret 
 treaty with the German Protestant princes, the hunt 
 for heretics ceased. But only for a time. All 
 hopes of lasting quiet were blown to the winds 
 by a bit of fanatic folly on the part of over-zealous 
 Protestants. One Faret, a servant of the king's 
 apothecary, placarded a tract ''on the horrible, 
 great, intolerable abuses of the popish mass" 
 throughout Paris, October 18, 1534, and the citizens 
 rubbed their eyes in the morning to find their walls 
 and fences disgraced with a most offensive placard. 
 Even the door of the royal chamber at Fontaine- 
 bleua was smutched with a copy. It was a deplorable 
 act of folly, and aroused a furious persecution 
 against innocent people who not only had no part 
 42 
 
Wande:rings. 43 
 
 in the matter, but were innocent of any purpose to 
 offend the king. Before Christmas hundreds were 
 languishing in prison, and many went to the stake. 
 Wrath was whitehot. Both Church and State took 
 deep offense, and mingled in mediaeval style peni- 
 tence for real or imagined neglect of duty towards 
 the true faith, with immediate and harsh penalties 
 against the heretics. January 21, 1535, about eight 
 in the forenoon an extraordinary procession issued 
 from the Church of St. Germain I'Auxerrois, headed 
 by priests bearing precious relics of various sorts. 
 In due order came the king with head uncovered, 
 and after him princes of the blood, nobles, and high 
 officials. The oldest citizen of Paris had never 
 seen such a cortege, nor so vast a multitude, filling 
 pavement, doorway, window, and even roof. With 
 measured tread the procession moved through the 
 principal streets. Six times it paused, each time 
 before a temporary altar. Beside the altar there 
 hung a Lutheran, swinging in air from a movable 
 iron frame, while below him burned a glowing fire. 
 He was now lowered, now lifted, and his sufferings 
 prolonged until, at the pausing of the royal party, 
 he was finally dropped into the flames. Such was 
 the penance and such the persecution. Thus king 
 and people righted themselves before God! 
 
 We have slightly anticipated events, overlapping 
 some in the career of Calvin with the efforts of 
 Paris to get even with heresy. From the day of his 
 flight from the capital to the time of his arrival 
 
44 John Cai.vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 in Geneva Calvin wandered three years as a home- 
 less evangelist, studying at the home of a friend, 
 preaching, and writing in behalf of the Reforma- 
 tion. He is now in Southern France, then in 
 Switzerland, Italy, finally in Geneva. Dates and 
 places are not always easy to determine. Calvin's 
 life is not one of the sort, like Luther's, filled with 
 incidents of great dramatic value, and one has to 
 get into the deeper values of his career, the inner, 
 the hidden, and the indirect, to properly estimate 
 his place in history. Yet a few facts which have 
 been preserved show him to have been a man equal 
 to outward emergencies. May 4, 1534, he resigned 
 his benefices at Noyon and Pont I'Eveque, and 
 after a brief imprisonment at Noyon he was liber- 
 ated. It was then he finally renounced Roman 
 Catholicism. Fearing the forces of disorder which 
 lurked in the uncertain development of Protestant- 
 ism, he composed a tract against one of the peculiar 
 articles of faith of the Anabaptists, that of sleep 
 between death and the day of judgment. He did 
 not make his appeal as in his first work to the 
 classics, but to Holy Scripture, for evidence in 
 overthrowing the unsound views of the Anabap- 
 tists. Their unintelligent zeal he separated from 
 their fanatic faith, and left the evangelical position 
 in clear sunlight. Later on we find Calvin under 
 the protection of Queen Margaret of Navarre, in 
 her native city of Angouleme. Calvin lived with 
 a wealthy friend, Louis du Tillet, canon of the 
 
Wanderings. 45 
 
 cathedral. His unstrained intimacy here and ever 
 with men of letters and wealth and honorable po- 
 sition was of pronounced benefit to him. In this 
 place of seclusion he began his ^'Institutes/' He 
 also gave aid to his kinsman, Olivetan, in revising 
 and translating the Bible into French. The work 
 appeared at Neufchatel in June, 1535, with a 
 preface by Calvin. On going to Nerac, the tiny 
 capital of the queen, he became acquainted with 
 Le Fevre d'Etaples, the old Humanist and father 
 of French Protestantism. Near Poictiers, so the 
 legend affirms, he celebrated for the first time the 
 Lord's Supper with some friends in a cave, which 
 for a long time bore the name of ''Calvin's Cave." 
 
 Near the end of the year 1534 he risked a visit 
 to Paris. There a Spanish physician, named Ser- 
 vetus, crossed his path, having but recently pub- 
 lished a book, ''On the Errors of the Trinity." He 
 challenged Calvin to a public disputation. The 
 challenge was accepted, but the debate never came 
 off. Servetus failed at the last to put in an appear- 
 ance. Twenty years later Calvin reminded him 
 of his failure: "You know that at that time I was 
 ready to do everything for you, and did not even 
 count my life too dear that I might convert you 
 from your errors." What a blot would have been 
 removed from Calvin's fame if he had done so. 
 Better still, if he had never met the Spaniard. 
 
 Did he meet Rabelais in the province of Sain- 
 tonge? What an interesting bit of biography 
 
46 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 
 
 would be any portion of a conversation between 
 the champion theologian and the first humorist of 
 France, It is certain that Calvin denounced, in 
 1533, "Pantagruel" as an ''obscene book." Nor did 
 Rabelais spare Calvin in the third book of "Panta- 
 gruel," and we know what he thought of the 
 "demoniac of Geneva" at a still later day in Cal- 
 vin's history. There could be only mutual distaste 
 and disgust in any meeting between these two rep- 
 resentatives of the serious and the jovial side of 
 life. 
 
 On the increase of persecution Calvin takes the 
 road into uncertain exile. Under the name of 
 Martianus Lucanius he reaches Basel, carrying 
 with him the outlines of his immortal work. There 
 he remained from January, 1535, to March, 1536. 
 In this safe resting place he spent the time to high 
 profit with scholars. Erasmus, while in residence 
 in Basel from 15 14 to 1529, had issued his New 
 Testament and his editions of the Latin Fathers, 
 and there he died in July, 1536. The incident of 
 his meeting Calvin, and the story told of the re- 
 mark of the older scholar, that he saw "a great 
 pestilence arising in the Church against the 
 Church," is soundly doubted by Schaff, though it 
 is told with embellishments by Merle d'Aubigne, 
 as if he had been an interested looker-on during the 
 interview. The man whose piety and learning had 
 effectually changed Basel to the Protestant religion, 
 Oecolampadius, had died three years prior to the 
 
Wanderings. 47 
 
 arrival of Calvin, but others of like character were 
 on the ground, who gave to the Frenchman good 
 welcome. Myconius was chief pastor, and Simon 
 Gryn^eus was a scholarly Grecian, with whom Cal- 
 vin learned to appreciate the best methods, as he 
 himself tells us, of studying and explaining the 
 Scriptures. Sebastian Munster was to him a mas- 
 ter in Hebrew, "at whose feet he could sit without 
 shame." Thomas Platter was a vagrant scholar 
 and printer, from whose press Calvin's great book 
 came all too slowly to satisfy the impatience of the 
 strenuous author. All in all, Basel was a happy 
 spot for recruiting energies and giving free ex- 
 pression to opinion. There in a delightful environ- 
 ment he prepared himself for heavier tasks soon to 
 fall to his lot. 
 
 The year of the "Placards" is correctly noted 
 as a turning point in the history of French Prot- 
 estantism. The king had now become flint, and 
 his courtiers fury, to say nothing of the priesthood. 
 The dreadful tidings of their wrath against the 
 accused friends of Protestantism flew over Europe, 
 and aroused the Protestant princes of Germany to 
 remonstrate with Francis. He excused himself by 
 saying, "He had been constrained to use this rigor 
 against certain rebels who wished to trouble the 
 State under the pretext of religion." This excuse 
 evoked a remarkable reply. In August, 1535, a 
 small volume fell from the press at Basel bearing 
 no name of its author. It was dedicated in frank 
 
48 John Calvin: Th^ State:sman 
 
 and noble style to the French king. "This," said 
 the author afterwards, "was what led me to pub- 
 lish it : first, to relieve my brethren from an unjust 
 accusation, and then as the same sufferings still 
 hung over the heads of many poor faithful men in 
 France, that foreign nations might be touched with 
 commiseration for their woes, and might open to 
 them a shelter." "If the act," says Michelet, "was 
 bold, no less so was the style. The new French 
 language was then an unknown tongue. Yet here, 
 twenty years after Comines, thirty years before 
 Montaigne, we have already the language of Rous- 
 seau, his power if not his charm. But the most 
 formidable attribute of the volume is its penetrat- 
 ing clearness, its brilliance of steel rather than of 
 silver; a blade which shines, but cuts. One sees 
 that the light comes from within, from the depth 
 of the conscience, from a spirit rigorously con- 
 vinced, of which logic is the food. One feels that 
 the author gives nothing to appearances, that he 
 labors to find a solid argument upon which he can 
 live, and if need be, die." 
 
 In such terms is John Calvin introduced to us 
 by one of his most brilliant countrymen, as the 
 chief thinker of the age. The work was "Chris- 
 tiance Religionis Institutio." The author was 
 twenty-five years of age, and was seeking a hiding 
 place for the further pursuit of his studies. But 
 no man who wrote as he did could remain in hiding. 
 The apologist of martyrs, the thinker of the new 
 
Wande:rings. 49 
 
 faith, the legislator of the Reformed Church, he 
 went to the front of all leaders, of all confidence, 
 and of all wonderful service in the wide spreading 
 array of the nascent powers of the young Church, 
 just now, however, in danger of eclipse. 
 
 Guizot thinks the work was written originally 
 in French, when published at Basel in 1535 with- 
 out the author's name. But Dr. Schaff, after a pro- 
 longed analysis of the contending claims of the two 
 languages, Latin and French, avers, ''The question 
 of the priority of the Latin or French text is now 
 settled in favor of the former," and quotes Calvin's 
 statement in his preface to the French edition of 
 1 541, that he first wrote the Institutes in Latin for 
 readers of all nations, and then reproduced them 
 in French for the sake of his countrymen. The 
 dedicatory preface is dated August 23d, without 
 the year; but at the close of the book the month 
 of March, 1536, is given as the date of publication. 
 The first French edition, 1541, supplements the 
 date of the Preface correctly (August 2^, 1535)- 
 The manuscript then was completed in 1535, but 
 it took nearly a year to print the book. The error 
 arises from confounding the date of the Preface, 
 as given in the French editions (23 August, 1535), 
 with the latter date of issue (March, 1536). 
 
 Francis I, like Richelieu in the next century, 
 courted friendship with Protestant princes in Ger- 
 many, and even with the Turks, while in bitter 
 conflict with the Emperor and other Catholic 
 4 
 
50 John Calvin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 powers. Knowing the detestation with which his 
 ill-treatment of his own Protestant subjects was 
 regarded across the Rhine, he endeavored to excuse 
 himself on the ground that he had sent none to 
 death, except a few fanatics who were spreading 
 abroad their contempt for rulers, and by their prac- 
 tices tending to subvert good order in the kingdom. 
 It was to silence such calumnies as these that Cal- 
 vin published his apology for his suffering coun- 
 trymen. 
 
 The Dedication of the work is a masterpiece. 
 Its style is pure and bold. A nervous energy char- 
 acterizes its respectful appeal to the Caesar of the 
 day. It fills eighteen pages, and ranks with a small 
 handful of the greatest literary productions of the 
 kind in history. 
 
 The noble defense reaches its close with these 
 words : "But I return to you, Sire. ... I fear 
 I have gone too much into the detail, as this preface 
 already approaches the size of a full apology, 
 whereas I intended it not to contain our defense, 
 but only to prepare your mind to attend to the 
 pleading of our cause; for though you are now 
 averse and alienated from us, and even inflamed 
 against us, we despair not of regaining your favor, 
 if you will only read with calmness and composure 
 this our Confession, which we intend as our defense 
 before your Majesty. But, on the contrary, if your 
 ears are so preoccupied with the whispers of the 
 malevolent, as to leave no opportunity for the ac- 
 
 Bi 
 
Wanderings. 51 
 
 cused to speak for themselves, and if those outra- 
 geous furies, with your connivance, continue to per- 
 secute with imprisonments, scourges, tortures, con- 
 fiscations, and flames, we shall indeed, like sheep 
 destined to the slaughter, be reduced to the great- 
 est extremities. Yet we shall in patience possess 
 our souls and wait for the mighty hand of the Lord, 
 which undoubtedly will in time appear, and show 
 armed for the deliverance of the poor from their 
 afflictions, and for the punishment of their de- 
 spisers who now exult in such perfect security. 
 . . . May the Lord, the King of kings, estab- 
 lish your throne in righteousness, and your king- 
 dom with equity !" 
 
 Protestants and Catholics have joined in praise 
 of this monumental production. Says Van Ooster- 
 see, the eminent Dutch scholar: "No dry analysis 
 is able to give a worthy idea of this book, now 
 much more praised than read. Prefaced by the 
 renowned letter of apology to Francis I, a vestibule 
 worthy of its stately edifice, it points to the knowl- 
 edge of God as the key to the sanctuary of eternal 
 truth. While strictly systematic in its plan, it is 
 thoroughly practical in spirit, the expression of the 
 author's personal belief, and entirely founded on 
 Holy Scripture, explained most strikingly by the 
 exegete Calvin." Even Audin, the Romanist de- 
 famer of Calvin, whose willingness to believe all ill 
 of him is most startling in the face of overwhelm- 
 ing proof to the contrary, has this to say of the 
 
52 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 Preface to the Institutes: "The dedication is one of 
 the first monuments of the French language; it 
 wants neither boldness nor eloquence." When it 
 appeared, the literati declared that "it was a dis- 
 course worthy of a great king, a portico worthy 
 of a superb edifice, a composition which might be 
 ranked by the side of De Thou's introduction to 
 his Universal History, or with that of Casaubon 
 to his Polybius." F. W. Kampschulte, the fairest 
 of Roman Catholic biographers of Calvin, calls him 
 "the Aristotle ;" Martin, a liberal French historian, 
 calls him with more fitness, "the Thomas Aquinas" 
 of Protestantism. Guizot, the Protestant authority, 
 says: "In spite of its imperfections, it is on the 
 whole one of the noblest edifices ever erected by the 
 mind of man, and one of the mightiest codes of 
 moral law which has ever guided him."^ 
 
 The Institutes were not written in popular style 
 for the masses, and did not appeal to them with the 
 same warmth and homeliness as did Luther's tract 
 of "Christian Freedom." Written for scholars, it 
 was handed by them to the plainer folk of the Re- 
 formed Church. On the scent for heresy, the Sar- 
 bonne discovered the character of the work, and 
 ordered it to be burned ; but fortunately the print- 
 ing-press is as constructive as fire is destructive, 
 and the book went over Europe in short time. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that Calvin produced 
 a finished treatise upon theology in 1535. It is 
 equally erroneous to believe that he changed his 
 
 1 St. lyouis and Calvin, i8i. 
 
Wanderings. 53 
 
 views from that time until his death. At the same 
 time we can well accept the idea that his mind grew 
 in its range and balance of powers, and that his ad- 
 ditions to the skeleton of 1535 were both in agree- 
 ment with it and at the same time an amplification 
 of its foundation statements. Calvin was wonder- 
 fully precocious, and yet he must have grown in 
 every way after the first venture, for the breadth 
 of his vision and swing of his argument gained with 
 the passing years. In the first edition he put forth 
 a manual with six chapters, upon: (i) the Deca- 
 logue; (2) the Apostles' Creed; (3) the Lord's 
 Prayer; (4) Baptism and the Lord's Supper; (5) 
 the other so-called Sacraments ; (6) Christian Lib- 
 erty, Church Government, and Discipline. The sec- 
 ond edition has seventeen, the third twenty-one 
 chapters. In the author's edition of 1559 it grew 
 to five times ijts original size. Though the view 
 point is the same, the elaboration is that of a master 
 to whom the years brought their richest stores. 
 According to Schaff, Calvin's doctrine is stated in 
 more simple and less objectionable form. ''He 
 dwells on the comforting side of the doctrine, 
 namely, the eternal election by the free grace of 
 God in Christ, and leaves out the dark mystery of 
 reprobation and preterition."^ Yet as we shall see 
 in the case of Servetus, Calvin had grown harder 
 in his theory of the way in which such pests should 
 be disposed of, and this appears in his Institutes. 
 Calvin was not satisfied with his first efforts, 
 
 Schaff. Reformation in Switzerland. 334. 
 
54 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 and did not rest until he had retouched his book 
 many times. In the preface to the last edition, 
 five years before his death, he says: "In the first 
 edition of this work, not expecting that success 
 which the Lord, in His infinite goodness hath given 
 me, I handled the subject for the most part in a 
 superficial manner, as is usual in small treatises. 
 But when I understood that it had obtained from 
 almost all pious persons such a favorable accept- 
 ance as I never could have presumed to wish, much 
 less to hope, while I was conscious of receiving far 
 more attention than I had deserved, I thought it 
 would evince great ingratitude if I did not en- 
 deavor at least, according to my humble ability, 
 to make some suitable return for the attentions 
 paid to me — attentions of themselves calculated to 
 stimulate my industry. Nor did I attempt this only 
 in the second edition, but in every succeeding one 
 the work has been improved in some farther en- 
 largements. But though I repented not the labor 
 then devoted to it, yet I never satisfied myself till 
 it was arranged in the order in which it is now 
 published. ... I would rather it had been 
 done sooner, but it is soon enough, if well enough. 
 I shall think it has appeared at the proper time, 
 when I shall find it to have been more beneficial 
 than before to the Church of God. This is my only 
 wish." 
 
 First edition or last, it was sufficient to put Cal- 
 vin, at twenty-five as well as at fifty years of age, 
 in the front of the thinkers of the world. 
 
Wande;rings. 55 
 
 But Calvin was not only a writer. He was a 
 preacher, an evangelist, and soon after the publi- 
 cation of the Institutes, or possibly before the 
 printer had them ready for distribution, Calvin 
 crossed Northern France to Italy, and there spent 
 a few months at the brilliant court of the Duchess 
 Renee. He had appealed to the King of France 
 in a splendid Apology. He now sought the kins- 
 woman of the monarch to secure from her, by per- 
 sonal solicitation, aid for his distressed countrymen, 
 and also to strengthen her in the faith. He was 
 destined to become her monitor after a lofty and 
 judicious manner. 
 
 In a small upper salon of the palace of Ver- 
 sailles hangs a portrait of Renee, Duchess of Fer- 
 rara. Near by are Charles V, Christopher Colum- 
 bus, Francis I, Rabelais, and Mary of England. A 
 remarkable collection of worthies is this. The fea- 
 tures of the Duchess are plain, their expression 
 grave, the auburn hair stiffly curled, the high ruff 
 and collar hinting the misshapen shoulder. The 
 deep-set eyes tell of many trials. The mingled 
 courage and kindness in the lines of the mouth re- 
 veal the character of the protector and friend of the 
 Protestants. Even in her infancy she showed the 
 family spirit— 7/;z esprit tout de feu, one all of fire. 
 Her grandfather was at Agincourt, and when the 
 day was lost had tried in vain to rally the French 
 against the fierce plunges of the English. Her 
 father was Louis XII of France, her mother a 
 woman of high character, her governess, Madame 
 
56 John Cai^vin: The: State:sman. 
 
 de Soubise, a member of a family afterward re- 
 nowned for its sufferings in the cause of Protest- 
 antism. Her marriage with the Duke of Ferrara 
 gave her a home in what was called "a miniature 
 Florence." Enthusiasm is too tame a word with 
 which to describe the new spirit of inquiry which 
 was abroad in Italy. Upon her arrival in Ferrara, 
 1529, the Duchess chose for her private secretary 
 Bernardo Tasso, father of Torquato Tasso, the 
 poet. Artists, poets, philosophers, were always wel- 
 come at the palace. In 1535 two men reached Fer- 
 rara with letters of introduction from Queen Mar- 
 garet of Navarre, the one John Calvin, the other 
 his friend du Tillet. Calvin came under an assumed 
 name, "Charles Espeville." This was all but uni- 
 versal when men had missions of private character, 
 yet he seems not to have been disguised as to his 
 true personality during his stay at the court, at 
 least to the inner circle. 
 
 Calvin became the spiritual adviser of the Duch- 
 ess for the rest of his life. A free correspondence 
 of a singularly noble kind was kept up for many 
 years. His last letter to her was written just 
 twenty-three days before his death. Her court 
 became a place of refuge, and to it fled Clement 
 Marot, the Protestant poet. Marot became the 
 private secretary of the Duchess, and at her sug- 
 gestion he began his well known work of trans- 
 lating the Psalms into French. Their popularity 
 was great in the highest as well as in the lowest 
 circles of France. Francis I himself set the One 
 
Wande:rings. 57 
 
 Hundred and Twenty-eighth Psalm to music, and 
 yet a bit later it was made heresy to sing this col- 
 lection when they had become a part of the simple 
 liturgy of the Church at Geneva. 
 
 In time the husband's displeasure fell upon the 
 Duchess, and at his charge of heresy her Protestant 
 attendants were removed, and their places taken by 
 Italians, at which Rabelais, writing from Italy, 
 said, "It does n't look well." Her husband's con- 
 fessor said : "She remained obstinately fixed in her 
 heretical opinions." After a period of humiliation 
 in which the Inquisition was invited to examine 
 her, she regained her freedom. Upon the death of 
 her husband she left Ferrara, rather than change 
 her religion. Calvin wrote to dissuade her from 
 going to the court of France, but was unable to 
 move her. She did not lack courage, and faced 
 the evils and perils of her grandfather's court with 
 fixed will. At the time of the arrest of the Prince 
 of Conde by the Guises, her voice alone rang with 
 indignation. She said to her son-in-law, a Guise, 
 "Have a care. Monsieur; this is a wound that will 
 bleed long!" 
 
 Naturally the severity of the Duke d'Este 
 towards the Protestants rendered it impossible for 
 Calvin to long remain at the castle. But before 
 he left Ferrara he greatly fortified the faith of those 
 who were sick of Romanism. Without any idea 
 of his future residence he left for the North, headed 
 it is thought for some spot in Germany, where 
 he could retire to a quiet study and think and write 
 
58 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 for the Reformers' cause. Beyond this he seems 
 not to have had a thought. His experiences as he 
 wandered from place to place in Piedmont re- 
 flected the friendly or the inimical spirit which his 
 presence aroused. He remained in Piedmont sev- 
 eral weeks in the neighborhood of Aosta, at the 
 home of a family of rank, but at the spread of the 
 alarm and orders to arrest Calvin "and all others 
 of his party," he started over the mountains. It 
 was with difficulty that he escaped through peril- 
 ous Alpine passes, wherein he was, according to an 
 ancient tradition, pursued by the Marshal d'Aosta 
 to the very foot of the mountains with a drawn 
 sword in his hand. The tradition may have slender 
 foundation. But that Calvin's flight was regarded 
 as a memorable event is certified by a Cross in 
 Aosta. In 1541 a fountain topped by a cross was 
 erected in the main street at the market-place of 
 Aosta, and the following inscription may be read 
 to-day by the traveler: 
 
 Hanc 
 
 Calvini Fuga 
 
 ErExit Anno MDXLI. 
 
 reugionis constantia reparavit 
 
 Anno MDCCXU. 
 
 CiVIUM PlETAS 
 
 Renovavit kt adornavit 
 Anno MDCCCXLL 
 
 "This Cross, erected in 1541, in memory of Calvin's 
 flight, restored in 1741 by faithful believers, was renewed 
 and ornamented in 184 1 by the piety of the Citizens." 
 
Wanderings. 59 
 
 Seldom thus do "the faithful" celebrate their 
 deliverance from a foe so dangerous to the sta- 
 bility of the ancient order. Calvin's presence, even 
 at that young age, and without the great fame that 
 came later on in his life, gave them concern. The 
 Cross in the market-place, on which they chiseled 
 their own gratitude over the expulsion of the plague 
 of their homes, has also preserved the name and 
 suggested the might of an exile who was surpassed 
 in fame by only one other exile of Italy — the sad- 
 browed Florentine, Dante. 
 
 Calvin had been thrust out of Italy, never to 
 return. He could get no welcome among his own 
 race, the Latin, and in his quandary bent his steps 
 towards Basel or Strassburg. But overcome by 
 some impulse now unknown, he visited for the last 
 time his boyhood home, and by his preaching influ- 
 enced several of his kinsmen to accept the new re- 
 ligion. Among others were his sister Marie and 
 his only remaining brother, Antoine. In company 
 with them he set out for Basel, but as hostilities 
 had freshly broken out between Francis I and 
 Charles V he avoided Lorraine, the seat of war, 
 and journeyed on by way of Geneva. He intended 
 to remain in the city only over night. But his 
 destiny was linked to that of the city in a way he 
 could not foresee. Neither the stranger alighting 
 in front of the tavern for a night's lodging, nor the 
 little city, glowing with pride over its lately won 
 independence, could hope to understand each other 
 
6o 
 
 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 /^for some time. *'The Pearl of the Alps" had for 
 \ coat-of-arms a shield parted per pale, with a key on 
 one side and half an eagle on the other. The 
 people in jest declared it represented half a turkey 
 and a key to the wine cellar. True or not, this was 
 not altogether foreign to the general reputation of 
 the city. 
 
 A generation passed by, and the city discovered 
 that the man had come to unlock a new future, in 
 which keys to wine cellars were to have little part. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GENEVA BEFORE CALVIN. 
 
 Ge^nE^va was the last of the Subalpine cities to 
 revolt from Rome, yet it came to be the symbol 
 and center of the sternest and most impregnable 
 opposition to the old faith. It ultimately absorbed, 
 perpetuated, and glorified the life of the exile of 
 Noyon. To no other city of Europe could Calvin 
 have gone for such a favorable vantage ground 
 of defense of his reform as this independent little 
 metropolitan city offered to him. Though it re- 
 fused all at once to do his bidding, later on it fully 
 incorporated his spirit. There was nothing slug- 
 gish about the life of Geneva, nothing wooden, 
 nothing inanimate. As late as July, 1880, the sensi- 
 tive Amiel could truly say in his Journal Intime: 
 "Geneva is a cauldron always at the boiling point, 
 a furnace of which the fires are never extinguished. 
 Vulcan had more than one forge, and Geneva is 
 certainly one of those world-anvils on which the 
 greatest number of projects have been hammered 
 out. When one thinks that the martyrs of all 
 causes have been at work here, the mystery is ex- 
 plained a little; but the truest explanation is that 
 61 
 
62 John CaIvVin: The: Statesman. 
 
 Geneva — republican, Protestant, learned, and enter- 
 prising Geneva — has for centuries depended upon 
 herself for the solution of her own difficulties. 
 Since the Reformation she has always been on the 
 alert, marching with a lantern in her left hand and 
 a sword in her right."^ 'Xantern and Sword" 
 from the days of Calvin, and even from earlier 
 days, but from him indubitably the lantern got a 
 brighter radiance and the sword a keener edge, 
 which shone and cut to the dismay of the enemies 
 of the great little city and of its new faith. 
 
 Before the thirteenth century ushered in upon 
 Europe its new life, the counts and the bishops of 
 Geneva had struggled for temporal control, with 
 the victory going to the ecclesistical lords, but with 
 the new age there came a new force to which ap- 
 peal was made by the Genevan bishops for aid 
 against their rivals. The House of Savoy proved 
 too strong for the bishops whom it aided, and in 
 the end dictated the appointment of the episcopal 
 deputy for temporal administration, or vicedominus, 
 a post which the Savoy rulers controlled until 1528. 
 Meanwhile the burghers began to demand recog- 
 nition, and by 1387 secured the right of gathering 
 in a General Assembly to choose administrative offi- 
 cers. These were four ''syndics," selected annu- 
 ally, and a treasurer chosen for a term of three 
 years. Out of this there quickly developed the 
 'Xittle Council," ultimately of twenty-five members, 
 
 1 Amiel's Journal. 2, 301. 
 
Ge;ne;va Before Cai^vin. 63 
 
 the Inner executive body of the Interests of the 
 burghers. A second Council, soon attaining the 
 number of sixty, was established to discuss matters 
 not easily debatable In the General Assembly. 
 
 The tendency to aristocratic control Is evident 
 in the fact that the 'Xlttle Council," from 1459 on- 
 ward, designated the membership of this larger 
 Council. The division of authority between the 
 bishop, the vidomne, and the citizens, and the con- 
 sequent struggles for authority lasted until the 
 third decade of the sixteenth century. But during 
 three generations before Calvin's arrival aristo- 
 cratic use of popular power was a well established 
 fact In Geneva. The times when the little city was 
 melting its bells for cannon and men went to 
 church and worked on the fortifications with arms 
 in their hands. In the struggles with the bishop and 
 the duke, were highly favorable for the develop- 
 ment of the finest mettle for self-government. Up 
 to 1533 the conflict was almost wholly of a polit- 
 ical type against the bishop and the duke as tem- 
 poral rulers hostile to the chartered rights of Ge- 
 neva. But with the Increasing dependence of Ge- 
 neva upon Bern, which had adopted the principles 
 of the Reformation in 1528, and with the desire 
 for reform at home aroused by the fiery preaching 
 of Far el, who had entered the city armed with a 
 letter from Bern, Geneva declared for reform, for 
 resistance to papal abuses, and In favor of Bern 
 and the 'Word of God." Yet the spirit of the 
 
64 John Cai^vin : The Statesman. 
 
 authorities in granting to Farel the right of free 
 preaching was not that of thorough-going reform- 
 ers, rather that of conservative poHticians. The 
 magistrates moved slowly. The party in for vigor- 
 ous measures grew in importance. Formal Prot- 
 estantism was not declared until as late as 1535. 
 The two Councils which had assumed the lapsed 
 civil functions of the bishop and the Chapter now 
 began to widen their authority. Under pressure 
 from Farel they took in hand the introduction of 
 reform into the outlying villages. This expansion 
 stirred up Bern to military protest, and only the 
 stubborn soul of the little commonwealth enabled 
 her finally to achieve independence, both of enemies 
 and quasi friends, and to assert herself an inde- 
 pendent republic with nearly thirty dependent vil- 
 lages. 
 
 Genuine moral reform soon walked with the 
 political change. Fearless preachers like Paul Viret 
 and William Farel were unconsciously preparing 
 the way for the more commanding work of John 
 Calvin. Farel is worth no small space in our story, 
 for though he pales in the light that he introduced 
 into Geneva, the vast personality of Calvin, he yet 
 did a work and lived a life that bound him with 
 hooks of steel to the greater man whom he in splen- 
 did self-abnegation persuaded to stay in Geneva. 
 
 William Farel was born at Gap, a small town 
 in the hills of Dauphine, where the Waldensian 
 faith had once widely spread. He grew up an 
 
 IffiHH 
 
G^N^VA B^i^oRi: Cai^vin. 65 
 
 ardent papist, and fully believed in the efficacy of 
 works, pilgrimages, and relics. Yet his thirst for 
 knowledge took him to Paris, where he studied the 
 ancient languages, philosophy, and theology. His 
 principal teacher was Jacques Le Fevre d' Etaples, 
 the pioneer of the Reformation in France, Le 
 Fevre said to him in 1512: ''My son, God will re- 
 new the world, and you will witness it.'' This was 
 more than made good in the restless, and sometimes 
 fierce, and nearly always successful evangelism of 
 Farel. His radicalism compelled his flight to Basel 
 in 1523. There, and in the neighborhood, he held 
 public disputations, delivered lectures, and preached 
 sermons of such power that Oecolampadius wrote 
 to Luther that Farel was a match for the Sorbonne. 
 To Erasmus he was a disturber of the peace, and 
 in a moment of distrust the Council expelled him 
 from the city. In Bern he found warmer welcome, 
 and under the auspices of the Reformed Church of 
 that commonwealth he labored as a sort of mission- 
 ary bishop throughout that part of Switzerland, 
 turning every stump into a pulpit and mightily 
 arousing the people both for and against his doc- 
 trine. He justified his appointment, for the little 
 churches he planted in the southwest corner of the 
 Canton of Bern were the first in the ranks of strictly 
 French Protestantism. "With a daring often in- 
 trusive, a zeal not always courteous, and a rough 
 poetry in his utterances he traversed the whole 
 country." He was violent, but only in language, 
 5 
 
66 John CaivVin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 and amid hisses, shrieks, and flying missiles he 
 would silence the crowd by his self-command, and 
 then in hig^ own eloquent style he would persuade 
 his revilers to listen to his message. He was the 
 Whitefield of his day in Switzerland. Perils only 
 increased his audacity. He made the cathedrals 
 that were stained with his blood ring with the 
 echoes .of his penetrating voice. At Neufchatel he 
 so impressed his audience with the truth that the 
 citizens shouted for reform, and cleansed the church 
 of all papal apparatus, and in memory of the event 
 inscribed upon a pillar of the church : "On October 
 23, 1530, idolatry was overthrown and removed 
 from this church by the citizens." This city be- 
 came the first center of a presbyterial organization 
 in French Switzerland. 
 
 In 1531 Farel wrote to Zwingli: "I learn that 
 Geneva has thoughts of accepting Jesus Christ." 
 In her journal of 1532 the literary nun, Jeanne de 
 Jussie, made the following interesting note: ''A 
 shabby little preacher, one Master William, of 
 Dauphiny, has just arrived in the city." Forthwith 
 a sensation sprang up, for Farel made indifference 
 to himself and his message impossible. The allied 
 Cantons under the guidance of Bern backed the 
 evangelist, and Geneva was induced to give the 
 truth a free hearing. In a great debate, Peter 
 Caroli, a doctor of the Sorbonne, was defeated, 
 and the people began to yield to deeper convictions 
 of the saving power of the simple Gospel. Farel 
 
 HHI 
 
G^ne;va Be:i^ore Cai^vin. > 67 
 
 urged the Council to make the estabHshment of the 
 Reformation a thing of law. An edict of August 
 27th abolished the papal system. On the shield of 
 the city the inscription, "After Darkness, I hope 
 for Light," was changed to *Tost Tenebras, Lux." 
 The priests and nuns gradually took their depart- 
 ure. The sprightly Jeanne de Jussie tells of the 
 going to Annecy: "It was a piteous thing to see 
 this holy company in such a plight, so overcome 
 with fatigue and grief that several swooned by the 
 way. It was rainy weather, and all were compelled 
 to walk through muddy roads, except four poor in- 
 valids who were in a carriage. There were six 
 poor old women who had taken their vows more 
 than sixteen years before. Two of these who were 
 past sixty-six, and had never seen anything of the 
 world, fainted away repeatedly. They could not 
 bear the wind ; and when they saw the cattle in the 
 fields, they took the cows for bears, and the long 
 wooled sheep for ravening wolves." It took the 
 nuns from five in the morning till near midnight 
 to go a short league to Annecy. 
 
 The conclusion of the nun who writes with pic- 
 ture-making fidelity is that the upheaval was a just 
 punishment of the faithless clergy, who, she said, 
 "squandered dissolutely the ecclesiastical property, 
 keeping women in adultery and lubricity, and awak- 
 ening the anger of God, which brought divine judg- 
 ment upon them." History has no disproof of the 
 quickwitted nun's statement. 
 
68 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 So the people of Geneva changed front. Now, 
 without a bishop and with freedom from tyranny 
 already won, they were their own masters. Yet 
 they suffered from confusion. That they did not 
 at once cut loose from the discipline of the past is 
 evident from the various acts by which the Council 
 strove to order the life of the city. For under the 
 advice of Farel and from their sense of the need 
 of preventing social and moral anarchy they 
 adopted measures to promote good order, after a 
 striking fashion, and this too with Calvin nowhere 
 in sight. For they put the whole matter of regu- 
 ' lating the moral order of Geneva to a popular vote. 
 The crowd may not have known just what they 
 were voting for, but the leaders of the city evi- 
 dently did not care to take so important a step 
 without the support of the populace. 
 
 On Sunday, May 21, 1536, the whole body of 
 citizens with uplifted hands took the following oath. 
 After the first syndic, M. Claude Savoy, had pro- 
 posed the resolutions, "without any dissenting voice, 
 it was generally voted, and with hands raised in 
 air resolved and promised and sworn before God, 
 that we all by the aid of God desire to live in this 
 holy evangelical law and Word of God, as it has 
 been announced to us, desiring to abandon all 
 masses, images, idols, and all which may pertain 
 thereto, to live in union and obedience to justice. 
 . . . Also voted to try to secure a competent man 
 for the school, with sufficient salary to enable hini 
 
Ge:ne:va B^^or^ CaIvVin. 69 
 
 to maintain and teach the poor free ; and that every 
 one be bound" to send his children to the school 
 and have them learn ; and all the pupils and teach- 
 ers to be bound to go into residence at the great 
 school where the Rector and his Bachelors shall 
 be." 
 
 The vow to provide free education and to re- 
 quire all to get schooling is as typical of the coming 
 Puritan State as the vow to obey God. The church 
 and the school got together early in the history of 
 Puritanism. 
 
 By 1536, entirely aside from any dictation of 
 an intruder, as the Galiffes have been wont to call 
 Calvin, the Councils had assumed the entire control 
 of morals and religion, now doing with a free hand 
 what they had formerly shared with the ecclesi- 
 astical rulers. February 28, 1536, the Two Hun- 
 dred issues a formal proclamation prohibiting blas- 
 phemy ; profane oaths ; card playing ; protection of 
 adulterers, thieves, and vagabonds ; selling bread or 
 wine save at reasonable established prices ; and un- 
 authorized holding of taverns. There was to be 
 no holiday save Sunday; no coming of brides to 
 weddings with head uncovered; no baptizing or 
 marrying by private persons; no hearing mass 
 within or without the city. New England did not 
 invent ''blue laws;" nor did Old England; nor did 
 John Calvin. ''They were rather the sequelae of 
 the Middle Ages. They are the attempts of the 
 new Protestant State to take over the personal su- 
 
70 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 
 
 pervision exercised by the mediaeval state and 
 guild." 
 
 However earnest the civil power was to organ- 
 ize Genevan society after the expression of its new 
 convictions, it must not be thought that the actions 
 above narrated righted all matters at once. The 
 citizenship of the city did indeed consider itself 
 sufficient for control in place of the deposed bishop, 
 but it remained for Calvin in his farewell address 
 to say of the state at his coming: "In this church 
 there was well nigh nothing. There was preaching, 
 and that is all. . . . All was in confusion." 
 
 The usual exaggeration of the condition of 
 unchecked anarchy which is said to have charac- 
 terized Geneva before the arrival of Calvin will 
 need to be taken with serious modification. The 
 Catholics tell it, for it sullies the Reformation; the 
 hero-worshiper of Calvin tells it, for he is thus 
 enabled to glorify the Reformer who came in the 
 nick of time to prevent a collapse of the cause in 
 jeopardy of its own freedom. One must imagine a 
 city in which there was not a little discord due to 
 the shock of change, the flocking in of political 
 refugees, the unsettled results of factional conten- 
 tions both civil and religious, the inability of leaders 
 like the impulsive Farel to allay strife and sup- 
 plant it with settled peace, and it is not diffi- 
 cult to picture a situation calling loudly for the 
 coming and supremacy of a master mind and will. 
 And yet a city not peculiarly worse than other 
 
G^Ni;vA Before Cai^vin. 71 
 
 cities, not more lawless, nor more helpless to ad- 
 just its life in harmony with the new life and light 
 and impulse which were beginning to illuminate 
 and thrill the peoples of Western Europe. 
 
 Before Calvin came there was intolerance. The 
 case of John Balard is of interest and not without 
 pathetic character. In the Register of the City 
 Council we have the following entry for July 24, 
 1536: ^'John Balard was interrogated wherefore 
 he refused to hear the Word of God? He replied 
 that he believed in God, who taught him by His 
 Spirit. He could not believe our preachers. He 
 said that we could not compel him to go to the 
 sermon against his conscience. . . . We admon- 
 ished him that he should within three days obey 
 the proclamation or show just cause why he should 
 not. He replied: 'I desire to Hve according to 
 God's Gospel, but I do not wish to follow it accord- 
 ing to the interpretation of any private persons, but 
 according to the interpretation of the Holy Spirit 
 through the Holy Church universal in which I be- 
 lieve. Balard.' " This his creed, written in his own 
 hand on a scrap of paper is sewn with a faded red 
 thread to the records of that day. Though Balard 
 held high offices, he was compelled to yield to the 
 resistless current which was sweeping Geneva 
 away from its ancient moorings. He was required 
 to give "affirmative or negative answer" as to the 
 mass, and wrote: "The mass is bad." Balard was 
 a traditionalist it may be imagined, but he was a 
 
72 John Cai^vin: Tut Statesman. 
 
 sane official of repute, who was compelled to sub- 
 mit his religious scruples to his political necessi- 
 ties. He was up before the Council on several 
 occasions, significant in that they were not during 
 the time of Calvin's presence in the city, for the 
 first inquisition was dated July, 1536, before Cal- 
 vin's coming, and the last in 1539, at a time when 
 Calvin was in forced exile in Strassburg. Europe 
 did not wait to herald the appearance of Calvin 
 with the show of intolerance, and give its hateful 
 and bitter spirit the various exhibitions which array 
 themselves upon the pages of all histories of those 
 times, but, if Catholic, flung itself with tremendous 
 energy into the business of suppressing heresy at 
 all hazards, and if Protestant, did not hesitate to 
 give the stranger within its gates of orthodoxy 
 a most chilling welcome. 
 
 It must not be concluded that though the peo- 
 ple shook oflf the yoke of lord and bishop, 
 Geneva at this early date, or ever during Calvin's 
 rule, solved the question of representative govern- 
 ment. Slowly she made her way into the light of 
 the modern world. In the vital changes from the 
 old to the new faith the "Commune" had acted in 
 their sovereign capacity, but in the struggle for 
 independence and order there had been a growing 
 tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a 
 few men, "conservative, responsible, and experi- 
 enced." This was adopted by Calvin after seven 
 years' testing, and by John Winthrop in Massa- 
 
Geneva B^i^ore: Cai^vin. 73 
 
 chusetts Bay, a hundred years later. It was effi- 
 cient, but not without its perils to liberty. It is 
 true that the mettlesome spirit of the people saved 
 Geneva from falling into the grasp of despots, and 
 the influence of the preachers was not inactive in 
 preventing the magistrates from absorbing all au- 
 thority, and it was not until after both Calvin and 
 Beza, his great successor, were gone that the aris- 
 tocrats rose superior to the democrats, and devel- 
 oped a dangerous social and political supremacy. 
 Long before the French Revolution, there were 
 as many as three distinct upheavals in Geneva, in 
 1707, 1735-38, and 1782, in which the aristocracy 
 suffered assault. 
 
 What have we then in this eventful day? 
 Before Calvin Geneva had not adopted democracy ; 
 nor freedom of conscience ; nor liberty of worship ; 
 nor personal liberty; she had legislated upon 
 matters of amusement, commerce, sermons, holi- 
 days, and even styles in hair-dressing. The Church 
 had less right of initiative in the first days of the 
 attempts at reform under Farel than under Calvin, 
 If indeed it can be said to have had any at all. "It 
 had no rights of either property, discipline, revis- 
 ion of membership, or choice of pastors." ^ 
 
 This much in a general way we can affirm; 
 that Geneva was ready for Calvin. She had a 
 pecuHar temper which for lack of a better word 
 
 1 See the very able article of A. D, Foster in Amer. Hist. Rev. 
 Jan. 1903. 
 
74 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 may be called "mentality," and she could appreciate 
 the presence of a master mind. Many Protestant 
 writers have overshot the mark in cataloguing 
 her vices before the coming of Calvin, for no 
 people surrendered to immorality could have devel- 
 oped such brilliant wit and maintained such noble' 
 defense against a cordon of enemies. The Ge- 
 nevans were a complex people. They loved pleas- 
 ures, they were the inheritors of the feudal noisi- 
 ness and much given to turbulence. Processions, 
 games and dancing were to their taste. Shrewd 
 at a bargain they were not always scrupulous ; 
 self-assertive, they earned their independence. 
 Thrifty, they gathered fortunes. Intelligent, they 
 welcomed scholars. Public-spirited, loving liberty, 
 what they swore to support they died for. Near 
 France, they were something else than French ; 
 neighbors to Italy, they were not Italian ; nor were 
 they German because they got glimpses of the 
 Rhine. Full of contradictions, they were full of 
 charm. As one of their own well known citizens, 
 Bonivard, the "Prisoner of Chillon," said in his 
 Chronicles: "One might kill them rather than make 
 them consent to that from which they had once 
 dissented. . . . Otherwise they were for the most 
 part thoughtless and devoted to their pleasures; 
 but the war, necessarily, the reformation of relig- 
 ion, voluntarily, withdrew them therefrom." So 
 it seems that what Geneva did in schooling her- 
 self to lead the hosts of Puritanism in the middle 
 
Ge:ne:va Before Cai^vin. 75 
 
 of the sixteenth century she did of her own accord, 
 Bonivard being witness. 
 
 Into this volatile, sturdy, pleasure-loving, con- 
 tentious, masterful, loyal community, the right man 
 came at the right time to put the impress of his 
 imperial genius upon its plastic life, and to make 
 the impression so sure that some centuries passed 
 by before the outlines of the image were seriously 
 dulled, and so vital that its capacity for reproduc- 
 tion in other and distant lands has become the 
 marvel of historians. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 CALVIN'S FIRST SOJOURN IN GENEVA. 
 
 Two MONTHS after the public sanction to the 
 Reformation in Geneva (May 2ist), Calvin stepped 
 from a carriage of slender proportions in front of 
 a tavern in the city. The date was in the latter 
 part of July, not, as given by some, in August. 
 His desire was to make a short stay in the city, 
 and to proceed on his journey in the morning. 
 Clad in simple habit he appeared the scholar that 
 he was, a thin, abstemious, bookish man. His 
 countenance was pale, and according to one writer, 
 E. Haag, his beard was cut a la Frangois, his eye a 
 brilliant black, his bearing one of purpose. 
 
 His arrival was the turning point of his life; 
 its effect upon Geneva was incalculable. Of it 
 Montesquieu says : ''The Genevese ought to observe 
 the day of his arrival in their city as a festival." 
 The zeal of his friend du Tillet made known to 
 Farel that Calvin was in the city, and this unselfish 
 man immediately set about to hold him for the 
 good of Geneva. Farel had given himself to the 
 work of renovating the city, but had reached his 
 limit of influence after the primary impulse had 
 
 76 
 
First Sojourn in Geneva. 77 
 
 been expended, and the author of the Institutes was 
 to the fervent soul an answer of God to his prayer. 
 Under Calvin there might be secured such a mo- 
 mentum as none other could give. Farel brought 
 all his energy to bear upon the newcomer to gain 
 his consent to remain. To Calvin's plea that he 
 wished to study in Germany, and to his word "I 
 can not bind myself to one Church. I would be 
 useful to all," Farel opposed his utmost persua- 
 sions. Calvin pleaded his youth, his natural timidity, 
 and his inexperience in affairs of public action. 
 Farel thundered and threatened, and overbore Cal- 
 vin's protests. Long time after Calvin wrote : ''I n 
 was kept in Geneva, not properly by an express | 
 exhortation or request, but rather by the terrible / 
 threatenings of William Farel, which were as if/ 
 God had seized me by His awful hand from/ 
 Heaven. So I was compelled to give up the plan \ 
 of my journey, but yet without pledging myself j 
 to undertake any definite office, for I was con- / 
 scious of my timidity and weakness." 
 
 Merle d'Aubigne's dramatic account of the in- 
 terview must be taken with reserve, as some of 
 the facts he narrates have no origin save in his 
 imagination. 
 
 Calvin did not immediately rush to prominence. 
 Farel was for awhile, at least, in the popular view, 
 the chief minister of the Protestant movement in 
 Geneva. And yet Farel was justified in his expec- 
 tation that Calvin would prove a master workman 
 
78 John Calvin: The: State:sman. 
 
 in the organization of the Genevan Church, for in 
 the speedy preparation of the Articles deaHng with 
 Church government, of the Catechism, and of the 
 Confession of Faith, of which last Farel was the 
 main composer, though expressing the mind of 
 Calvin, the masterful presence of the newcomer 
 was evident. First, his colleagues, then the leaders 
 of government, finally the mass of the people felt 
 his strong hand in the life of Geneva. 
 
 It was not until February 13, 1537, and some 
 time after an earnest appeal on the part of Farel 
 to the Little Council for the grant of an adequate 
 sum for Calvin's support, that an amount was or- 
 dered, six gold crowns, and yet so unknown was 
 Calvin to the clerk that in the entry of the request 
 for the grant he referred to Calvin as "Iste 
 Gallus" — ''That Frenchman." The solitary exile, 
 with few intimate friends, moneyless, and sure of 
 only a night's lodging, was always a poor man, 
 but by sheer force of will and unwonted mental 
 activity and a profound conviction of the impera- 
 tive need of reform, he did finally succeed in 
 becoming the leader of every circle in which he 
 was thrown. We say advisedly, not at first, for 
 too many conflicting currents of opinion and prac- 
 tice made such mastery impossible at one stroke. 
 Calvin failed in his first attempt to bed the princi- 
 ples of the Reformation in the hearts and con- 
 sciences of the Genevese. 
 
 Before the coming of Calvin it had been voted 
 
First Sojourn in Gkn^va. 79 
 
 by the Council, May 24, 1536, to draft Articles to 
 secure the "unity of the State." On November 
 loth, following, prompt approval was given to a 
 plan submitted by Farel.^ January 16, 1537, the 
 records of the Little Council show that Articles 
 were submitted "given by MeG. Farel and other 
 preachers." There can be little doubt that in 
 these not only the mind but the very language of 
 Calvin are embodied, for thoughts and words of 
 the Institutes are unmistakable. 
 
 Calvin's main purpose was to secure a relig- 
 ious community. For fear that the too frequent 
 celebration of the Lord's Supper would cheapen 
 that holy rite, he recommended its observance once 
 a month. To protect this sacred ordinance against 
 > all mistreatment he urged that all unworthy cele- 
 » brants should be excluded. Here we reach the 
 core of his efforts to gain his ends — by their pro- 
 vision to enforce church discipline, the Articles get 
 their significance. The proposition to establish a 
 censorship of morals is quite evident from the 
 following, laid by the ministers before the Council ; 
 
 "Our Lord established communication as a means of 
 correction and discipline, by which those who led a dis- 
 orderly life unworthy of a Christian, and who despised 
 to mend their ways and to return to the strait way after 
 they had been admonished, should be expelled from the 
 body of the Church and cut off as rotten members until 
 they come to themselves and acknowledge their fault. 
 
 1 Professor W. Walker is of the opinion that the plan of Farel 
 was simply of anti-Roman character. John Calvin, p. 185. 
 
8o John Cai^vin: Th^ State^sman. 
 
 . . . We have an example given by St. Paul (i Tim. i 
 and I Cor. v), in a solemn warning that we should not 
 keep company with one who is called a Christian, but who 
 is, none the less, a fornicator, covetous, an idolator, a 
 railer, a drunkard, or an extortioner. So if there be in 
 us any fear of God, this ordinance should be enforced in 
 our Church. 
 
 "To accomplish this we have determined to petition 
 you (i. e., the town council) to establish and choose, ac- 
 cording to your good pleasure certain persons (namely, 
 the elders) of upright life and good repute among all the 
 faithful, likewise constant and not easy to corrupt, who 
 shall be assigned and distributed in all parts of the town 
 and have an eye on the life and conduct of every individ- 
 ual. If one of these see any obvious vice which is to be 
 reprehended, he shall bring this to the attention of some 
 one of the ministers, who shall admonish whoever it may 
 be who is at fault, and exhort him in a brotherly way to 
 correct his ways. If it is apparent that such remonstrance 
 do no good, he shall be warned that his obstinacy will be 
 reported to the Church. Then if he repents, there is in 
 that alone excellent fruit of this form of discipline. If he 
 will not listen to warnings, it shall be time for the minister, 
 being informed by those who have the matter in charge, 
 to declare publicly in the congregation the efforts which 
 have been made to bring the sinner to amend, and how all 
 has been in vain. 
 
 "Should it appear that he proposes to persevere in his 
 hardness of heart, it shall be time to excommunicate him; 
 that is to say, that the offender shall be regarded as cast 
 out from the companionship of Christians, and left in the 
 power of the devil for his temporal confusion, until he 
 shall give proof of penitence and amendment. In sign of 
 'his casting out he shall be excluded from the communion, 
 and the faithful shall be forbidden to hold familiar con- 
 verse with him. Nevertheless he shall not omit to attend 
 
First Sojourn in GiJn^va. 8i 
 
 the sermons in order to receive instruction, so that it may 
 be seen whether it shall please the Lord to turn his heart 
 to the right way. 
 
 "The offenses to be corrected in this manner are those 
 named by St. Paul above, and others like them. When 
 others than the said deputies — for example, neighbors or 
 relatives — shall first have knowledge of such offenses, they 
 may make the necessary remonstrances themselves. If 
 they accomplish nothing, then they shall notify the deputies 
 to do their duty. 
 
 "This, then, is the manner in which it would seem 
 expedient to us to introduce excommunication into our 
 Church and maintain it in its full force; for beyond this 
 form of correction the Church does not go. But should 
 there be insolent persons, abandoned to all perversity, who 
 only laugh when they are excommunicated, and do not 
 mind living and dying in that condition of rejection, it 
 shall be your affair to determine whether you should long 
 suffer such contempt and mocking of God to pass unpun- 
 ished. . . . 
 
 "If those who agree with us in faith should be pun- 
 ished by excommunication for their offenses, how much 
 more should the Church refuse to tolerate those who op- 
 pose us in religion? The remedy that we have thought of 
 is to petition you to require all the inhabitants of your 
 city to make a confession and give account of their faith, 
 so that you may know who agree with the gospel, and 
 who, on the contrary, would prefer the kingdom of the 
 pope to the kingdom of Jesus Christ." 
 
 To the pleasure-loving Genevese this was a 
 most drastic programme. The Protestantism which 
 was confined to independence of the control of 
 Rome, and even the establishment of a new doc- 
 trinal basis was not so obnoxious to them, but 
 6 
 
82 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 when the French theologian, with his exalted and 
 over-scrupulous morality proposed to become a 
 censor of morals and a master of discipline, they 
 resented his intrusion. Not all, indeed, but for the 
 time the "liberals" held the upper hand. Calvin 
 with his Confession, his Catechism, and his Dis- 
 cipline, was too sudden an incursion into the field 
 of their old life for any wise man to hope for the 
 immediate triumph of the new reform. Doubtless 
 there was enough vice to warrant reasonable vigor 
 in attempts to suppress it, and no one can fail to 
 commend the purity of the motive that lay back 
 of Calvin's plan, yet no one will deny that the 
 methods used were unwise. When in 1537 the 
 four newly -elected syndics upheld the ministers in 
 compelling the Council and all the citizens to swear 
 to the Confession, the opposition began to stir its 
 strength. Many people refused outright, as might 
 have been expected, to support the new regime. 
 
 The young men chafed, the liberal patriots 
 struggled in the net, the French refugees upheld 
 Calvin. These last played a rather conspicuous 
 part in the present contention. They have been 
 the subjects of malignant opprobrium on the part 
 of their enemies, who have counted them as inter- 
 lopers, and held worthy of eulogism by those whose 
 sympathies have been on the side of exiles in search 
 of homes and good order, of relief from persecu- 
 tion, and the reformation of society. The facts 
 §eem to be; these immigrants had been the vie- 
 
First Sojourn in G£;n^va. 83 
 
 tims, and those following them from France were 
 also in later years, of merciless treatment. Some 
 of them had been eminent enough to attract atten- 
 tion to their "heresy." They bore with them vis- 
 ible evidences of their ability to take the conse- 
 quences of their adherence to the new faith. They 
 had not been silenced on their native soil by fire, 
 sword, and noose, and were wont to express them- 
 selves as to their doctrinal position wherever their 
 exile bore them. Their arrivals in Geneva had 
 not been unnoticed before the coming of Calvin, 
 and they were numerous enough in 1536 to excite 
 the jealousy of the native patriots. A crisis was 
 soon reached, not on the merits of the new disci- 
 pline, but on a point of ceremony. 
 
 It was a blunder to decree that all who refused 
 to sign the Confession should take their departure 
 from the city ; to employ force of civil law to purify 
 the church by punishing vices and follies was not a 
 stroke of genius in statesmanship, at least from 
 the modern point of view. Calvin was still a young 
 man, and had no small sense of the worth of his 
 own views ; he had been urged against his will 
 to stay in Geneva to lead in the reform, and, true 
 to his nature, what he did at all he did with all 
 his might. He led on too fast, for the time. His 
 .aim was the independent self-government of the 
 Church. He had not originated the regulation of 
 private conduct; that was a peculiarity of Geneva 
 at his coming. But he made a serious attempt to 
 
84 John Cai.vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 recover for the Church, itself a creature of the 
 State and regulated by the State, the right of in- 
 dependent discipline. Within the limits of its own 
 power, the Church was not to look to the State 
 for aid in the enforcement of its discipline, and 
 the State was not to be called upon until such 
 time as the Church was proved to be unable to 
 control its own recalcitrant members. 
 
 The reformers contended for the right of ex- 
 communication in cases of stubborn disobedience; 
 the magistrates were not unwilling to assist in the 
 maintenance of discipline, but did not commit them- 
 selves at once to the clause of excommunication. 
 The whole people were not to be brought into line 
 by such restrictions as Calvin desired to impose. 
 Many of the influential citizens refused to take the 
 oath of the Confession. The Council found it im- 
 possible to enforce the stiff moral regimen. In 
 the general election of February, 1538, the anti- 
 clerical party managed to elect four syndics and a 
 majority of the Council, among whom were avowed 
 enemies of Calvin. 
 
 The political overturn was complete, and the 
 jeers of the populace at Far el and Calvin reflected 
 the new attitude of the authorities toward the re- 
 formers. A harsh order with regard to some of 
 the friends of Calvin brought down upon the Coun- 
 cil of Two Hundred severe denunciation on the 
 part of Calvin and his yoke-fellow, and there was 
 passed an order by the Council forbidding them 
 
First Sojourn in Gejneva. 85 
 
 "to mix in politics, but to preach the Gospel as God 
 has commanded." The same session of the Two 
 Hundred voted "to live under the Word of God 
 according to the ordinances of the lords of Bern." 
 To a man of Calvin's temper this was too insulting 
 to be borne, for it cut away completely all his plan 
 for self-initiative on the part of the Church, and 
 left in the hands of the civil power the determina- 
 tion of even the ritual of the Church. 
 
 To return now to the point of the ceremony 
 involved. The declination of the new rulers to 
 adopt a thoroughgoing policy of reform aroused the 
 reformers to an iron-willed devotion to their prin- 
 ciples. Yield? Not they. Not an inch. They 
 thundered against vices and charged the Council 
 with want of energy in their neglect to use proper 
 means for improving the moral condition of Ge- 
 neva. The return stroke was not long in falling. 
 March 12th Couralt, who was even more vehement 
 than Farel, was ordered to cease preaching. But, 
 undismayed, he took the pulpit on April 7th, and 
 lashed the people and magistrates of Geneva with- 
 out distinction. He compared the State of Geneva 
 to the kingdom of frogs, and the Genevese to rats. 
 The limit of forbearance was at hand, and the 
 fiery preacher was imprisoned, then deported to 
 Thonon, on the lake shore, where his death before 
 the close of the year removed one of the stirrers 
 of strife from the city. To Calvin and Farel, how- 
 ever, this harshness was merely reason for fresh 
 
86 John Cai^vin: The: State:sman. 
 
 denunciation of the Council. Calvin called it the 
 ''Devil's Council," and had a tumult in the city 
 on short notice. Libels flew around the ministers. 
 In the cool of the evening they heard the raucous 
 voices of street idlers crying out: "To the Rhone 
 with the traitors!" 
 
 The climax was reached Easter Sunday, April 
 2ist, when Calvin preached from the pulpit of St. 
 Peter's, and Farel from that of St. Gervais. They 
 had been ordered by the authorities to celebrate the 
 Easter Communion after the Bernese fashion, but 
 had refused to do so, owing to the existing state 
 of insubordination, and, as they alleged, to the 
 lamentable debauchery of some members of the 
 church who persisted in coming to the table of the 
 Lord. The preachers determined that God should 
 not be mocked with desecration, and they refused 
 to distribute the elements. This made the breach 
 complete. 
 
 To comprehend the gravity of the situation, one 
 must know the claims of Bern to right of offering 
 its services to its younger ally. Geneva had not 
 been unwilling to accept the advice of Bern, and 
 indeed had generally adopted the suggestions of 
 the Bernese Republic. But when the pastors of 
 Bern ventured to suggest the retention of the font, 
 and of certain fetes, Christmas, New Year's, An- 
 nunciation, and Ascension Day, and the use of un- 
 leavened bread in the Lord's Supper, there was 
 friction. All these Calvin had suppressed. While 
 
First Sojourn in Ge:ne:va. 87 
 
 he did not lay stress upon ceremonies, he cer- 
 tainly did not share the fanatic scorn of the igno- 
 rant touching some of the Catholic rites. His 
 theology may have been narrow in some respects, 
 but his attitude towards the English Prayer-Book 
 had in it a reflection of his general compass of 
 mind: "The Book of Common Prayer had in it 
 tolerabiles ineptias; some follies, which, however, 
 might be easily allowed to^pass." In his catechism 
 which he published in 1538, at Basel, he said: "We 
 should rather endeavor (to secure) a unity of doc- 
 trine and spirit among Christians than pettedly in- 
 sist on establishing certain ceremonies. Little will 
 be said of forms on the Day of Judgment." 
 
 While it may be possible to discover in this 
 statement of 1538 an indirect attempt to correct the 
 efforts of the Bernese to clap their rites upon the 
 Genevese in 1537, at any rate when Calvin was 
 summoned by the Council to conform in 1537 to 
 the Bernese usages, he stoutly refused to com- 
 promise the independence of the Genevan Church 
 by adopting them. With this spirit he and his com- 
 panion had delivered their minds on Easter Day 
 and had withheld the elements, for fear of profan- 
 ing "so 'loly a mystery" under the circumstanced 
 of popular tumult. That there was reason in their 
 refusal may be granted when we hear of the pres- 
 ence of many hearers with drawn swords, and 
 whose noisy objections drowned the voices of the 
 preachers. The services closed and friends gath- 
 
88 John Cai^vin: The State^sman. 
 
 ered about to give safe conduct home to the min- 
 isters. An ordinary man would have felt that he 
 had sufficiently waved his colors in the face of the 
 enemy, but John Calvin was not an ordinary man. 
 Despite the fact that the Little Council was sum- 
 moned immediately, and called the Two Hundred 
 together for the day following, and the General 
 Assembly for the day thereafter, Calvin delivered 
 another sermon at night on Easter Day in the 
 Church of St. Francis at Rive in the lower part 
 of the city. Here he was again threatened with 
 violence. 
 
 By a large vote of the General Assembly April 
 23d, Calvin and Farel were ordered to leave Geneva 
 within three days. No sign of dismay was evident 
 in the appearance and words of the two men, 
 Farel, who said to the messenger, "Well and good ; 
 it is from God;" and Calvin, who remarked: "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 our reward." The dry pages of the 
 Register of the Council on which were entered the 
 words the messenger brought back, tell their own 
 story of the uncrushed spirit of Calvin, for he left 
 Geneva immediately for Bern and laid the case 
 before the authorities of that city. Bern was de- 
 sirous of securing conformity touching ceremonies, 
 but had good cause to fear for the safety of the 
 Protestant reform in Geneva, and appealed to 
 
l^iRST Sojourn in Gisn^va. 89 
 
 Geneva for modification of its legislation. Geneva 
 refused to listen. Meanwhile Calvin and Farel 
 pushed on to Zurich and sought the interference 
 of the Synod which was in session April 28th. Be- 
 fore this body they declared that in their attitude 
 there was no objection to the Bernese rites if the 
 liberties of the individual church were not affected, 
 but they reaffirmed their position regarding a pro- 
 gramme for church reform. They got some sym- 
 pathy from the Synod, though they were advised 
 to use more tactful ways of gaining the end de- 
 sired in the midst of a people unused to rigorous 
 discipline. The Synod also sent them to Bern 
 with recommendation for support in their pur- 
 pose to gain admission to Geneva, and to this 
 Bern lent a willing hand, but when the embassy 
 dispatched by Bern with Calvin and Farel ap- 
 proached Geneva they found a hostile order refus- 
 ing them entrance, and were compelled to turn 
 back. Geneva confirmed the sentence of banish- 
 ment. May 28th, and fell to rejoicing over the vic- 
 tory by which baptismal fonts and unleavened bread 
 were to be used by unregenerate communicants. 
 It remained to be seen how far they could make 
 safe pilgrimage towards the goal unguided by the 
 man they had pushed out. For the present, they 
 were glad to go on without interference, dicta- 
 tion, or inspiration from John Calvin. 
 
 For his part he left Geneva, having failed, but 
 undisgraced. His natural impetuosity did not 
 
90 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 easily adjust itself to the party strifes of the con- 
 tentious community all too slowly going, as he 
 thought, towards a self-governing, orderly, Chris- 
 tian city. The exiles bent their faces to Basel, 
 where they had good welcome. Shortly Farel went 
 to Neufchatel, and two months later Calvin left 
 for Strassburg. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 YEARS OF EXILE. 
 
 The city in which Calvin found refuge was a 
 free imperial city of Germany, a sort of connecting 
 link between Germany, France and Switzerland, 
 and hospitable for the present to all Protestants, so 
 that those from France styled it the New Jeru- 
 salem. Having accepted the Reformation in 1523 
 in a spirit of evangelical friendship for the two 
 types of Protestantism, the Lutheran and the 
 Zwinglian, it became a clearing house for theolog- 
 ical harmony, and influenced by Martin Bucer, a 
 leader in irenic thought. Distinguished refugees 
 from France turned their steps thither with special 
 hopes of undisturbed enjoyment of free speech, free 
 worship, and freedom for organizing their mem- 
 berships into self-governing communities. The 
 later intolerance which attached to Strassburg did 
 not at this time hinder Calvin from finding sym- 
 pathetic welcome. 
 
 He reached Strassburg the first days of Sep- 
 tember, 1538, and preached his first sermon on the 
 8th of the same month. The leaders of the Church 
 gave him their confidence and open arms, and he 
 91 
 
92 John Calvin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 received the appointment by the Council of pro- 
 fessor of theology, with a small salary accompany- 
 ing. That it was insufficient we are not in doubt, 
 and only the proferred kindness of an intimate 
 friend, du Tillet, revealed to the deeply-wounded 
 and chagrined scholar that he need not depend upon 
 official support, if only he would become content 
 to withhold himself from public activity. This 
 Calvin could not do, and he declined the aid offered 
 by his old friend, who, by the way, was now turn- 
 ing his face back to Romanism. Calvin's financial 
 distress was oftentimes very real. To make ends 
 meet he swelled the fifty-two florins of annual sal- 
 ary which he got from the authorities, by taking 
 young French students to board. To his beloved 
 Farel he wrote: "I am so needy, that I have not a 
 cent in my pocket. You will be unwilling to credit 
 how expensive it is to keep house." Farel man- 
 aged to send him some money for lifting the tem- 
 porary burden. But the proud-spirited man made 
 it a condition that he should accept no more than 
 he could hope to repay within a reasonable time. 
 He worked on, not infrequently without the plain- 
 est necessities of life, but noted for a remarkable 
 generosity which gave to others all above his bare 
 living. 
 
 Yet he had an increasing number of friends, 
 was happy in his work, and steadily ripened for 
 the severe struggles awaiting him in the future. 
 It was a fortunate respite for him, and he grew in 
 
YijARS o^ ExiivE. 93 
 
 self-restraint, and power of control of the elements 
 of conflict. He broadened his views of the work 
 of the Reformation, coming as he did in contact 
 with the leaders of the Lutheran Church. While 
 he deplored their lack of discipline, and the 
 slavish dependence of the clergy upon the princes, 
 he found welcome at several of their Colloquies 
 summoned for the settlement of disputed questions. 
 As delegate he attended the diets or conferences 
 of Frankfort, Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon, to 
 aid in finding some common ground of unity. The 
 task was a delicate and difficult one, nor were the 
 German, Swiss, and French Churches harmonized, 
 nor the lyUtherans and Zwinglians reconciled on 
 the question of the Eucharist. At that time no 
 man was equal to the solution of the problem. In 
 these meetings Calvin became more or less inti- 
 mate with Melanchthon and other leaders, and their 
 valuation of him appears in the words with which 
 they characterized him, — "The Theologian'' He 
 never met Luther. It troubled him that Luther 
 refused to moderate his terms in the argument with 
 Zwingli on the subject of the Lord's Supper, on 
 which the great German never entirely broke with 
 the Roman Church, while the Swiss advanced to 
 the most modern views. Calvin thought more of 
 Luther personally than of Zwingli, and yet he de- 
 clared: ''The Swiss may therefore be excused if 
 they distrust the attempts at reunion; Luther's 
 pride compels them to do so." 
 
94 John Cai^vin: Th^ State:sman. 
 
 While dealing with his growing friendship with 
 some of the German Reformers, it may be well to 
 carry to the conclusion the facts touching Calvin's 
 regard for Luther. Though not able to cultivate 
 any first-hand knowledge of the chief hero of the 
 Reformation, Calvin saw the heart of the German, 
 and at a time later on when certain persons desir- 
 ing to irritate Luther pointed out several passages 
 in Calvin's works in which allusion was made to 
 Luther and his followers in harsh terms Luther 
 examined the passages, and said: "I hope Calvin 
 will think better of me some day. We ought to 
 bear with something from so excellent a man." 
 Calvin related the facts, and added, *'If we are not 
 melted by so much gentleness we must be stones; 
 as for me, I am melted." 
 
 John Calvin has been called, not without con- 
 siderable justification, an exacting leader, stiffly 
 jealous of antagonisms, harsh in his dictatorship, 
 and impatient of any contradiction. But no one 
 can read a letter he wrote to BuUinger, a Zwing- 
 lian, and fail to see a largeness of soul far above the 
 ordinary. *'I implore you never to forget how great 
 a man Luther is. Think with what courage, what 
 constancy, what power he has devoted himself to 
 spreading the doctrine of salvation far and near. 
 As for me, I have often said, and I say it again, 
 though he should call me a devil, I would still give 
 him due honor, and recognize him in spite of the 
 great faults which obscure his extraordinary vir- 
 tues as a mighty servant of the Lord." 
 
Years oi^ Exii.e. 95 
 
 The presence of Calvin at the Colloquies reveals 
 a man of unyielding consistency, and opposed to 
 the advocates of compromise. In this he rivaled 
 Luther himself. Though he acted a subordinate 
 part, due to his unfamiliarity with the German 
 tongue, he commanded the utmost respect from 
 all persons for his learning and intellectual pene- 
 tration. He doubted the sincerity of Charles V, 
 Emperor, and set himself against the pacific intent 
 of the conferences, then rather disposed to favor 
 an alliance between the German Princes and Fran- 
 cis I, the principal enemy of the Emperor. His 
 correspondence with Marguerite of Valois, through 
 his friend Sleidan, statesman and historian, is proof 
 that his judgment was sought and his influence felt 
 in questions that concerned the future of the Re- 
 formed Church. But he had as little faith in Fran- 
 cis I as in the Emperor. Writing to Farel, Sep- 
 tember, 1540, he says: "The King and the Emperor, 
 while contending in cruel persecution of the godly, 
 both endeavor to gain the favor of the Roman 
 idol." No sign of the times escaped his keen eye. 
 He visited the meeting at Frankfort to make the 
 acquaintance of Melanchthon and to plead the 
 cause of his fellow-countrymen suffering in the 
 toils of bitter persecution. At the Colloquy of 
 Worms, held November, 1540, he is seen in both 
 public disputation and private solace of scholarship. 
 For it was here that he defeated Robert Mosham, 
 and won the title "The Theologian," and at the 
 
96 John Cai^vin: Ths Statesman. 
 
 same place wrote in poetic form the triumph of 
 Christ over His enemies, such as Eck and Coch- 
 laeus. Calvin was not a poet by nature, and never 
 distinguished himself as a writer of verse, yet he 
 says in the concluding lines of this poem : 
 
 ''Quod natura negat, studii eMcit ardor f by 
 study he made up for the lack of genius. 
 
 The Diet of Regensburg he attended very re- 
 luctantly, not being suited to such work, as he 
 affirmed, and feeling it to be a waste of time to 
 deal with the legates sent from Rome by the Pope. 
 He held Dr. Eck in contempt, as ''a babbler and an 
 impudent sophist." Eck had a stroke of apoplexy, 
 and on his recovery Calvin wrote: "Nondum 
 meretur mundus ista bestia liherari" — the world 
 had not yet earned its deliverance from that beast. 
 
 The use of such caustic and even brutal phrases 
 by so cultured a leader as Calvin will make credible 
 the stories of the most vicious invectives hurled at 
 each other by passionate theologians in the six- 
 teenth century. No one seems to have had a 
 monopoly of defamatory epithets, for Catholic and 
 Protestant alike indulged, sometimes to the full, 
 the disposition to use vile words against an antagon- 
 ist. The air of the century was electric with harsh 
 invective. The famous Bull of Pope Leo X against 
 Luther leads the list of damnatory papers. Nor 
 was the reply of the stout Reformer at all reticent 
 in this regard. Even so mild a man as Erasmus 
 called Farel "a lying, virulent, seditious soul" 
 
Y^ARS o^ ExiL^. 97 
 
 Henry VIII and Luther exchanged titles quite ob- 
 noxious to ears polite in a later day. The habit 
 had not died out even in the next century, for the 
 great English poet, Milton, defended the cause of 
 the Protestants with tremendous vigor and freedom 
 of expression. Calvin's successor, Theodore Beza, 
 a man of the highest culture and refinement, in dis- 
 cussing the doctrine of the Eucharist with Eilman, 
 the Lutheran who advocated the notion of "the real 
 presence," calls him *'an ass with a doctor's cap 
 upon his head, a dog swimming in a bath, an 
 asinine sophist, an impudent rogue, a sycophant, 
 a polyphemus, a monster half monkey, half ogre, 
 a carnivorous animal, a cyclops, a papist." 
 
 These sturdy epithets cause us to doubt if their 
 judgments can be relied upon in our attempt to 
 deal fairly with both parties in the great contro- 
 versy. The bias of the writers certainly vitiates 
 the sources of the period. When Luther led the 
 way it is not surprising that his followers were 
 unwilling to lag far behind ; and yet none of them 
 quite equaled him in his invidious epithets. He 
 searches the pages of Terence, and when they fail 
 him, he ransacks the peasants' vocabulary, and to 
 him his opponents are lions, asses, bats, moles, 
 goats, pigs. His range includes not only theo- 
 logical but zoological nomenclature for bitter 
 words with which he punishes his foes. 
 
 Yet to his friends Calvin was the soul of tender 
 devotion. During the period of the Colloquies his 
 7 
 
98 John Cai^vin: The State:sman. 
 
 correspondence, is full of evidences of intimate 
 associations. Not the least of his gains was his 
 friendship with Melanchthon. They had become 
 acquainted in October, 1538, and it was through 
 # Melanchthon that Calvin knew Luther and sent 
 salutations to him. The cause of the Reformation 
 was a real gainer by this, for Luther had fallen 
 out with the earlier Swiss Reformers, being "in- 
 curably poisoned" against Zwingli, and now that 
 the conflict between the Protestants and the Cath- 
 olics was deepening, it was fortunate that the old 
 leader and the new had no occasion to revive 
 slumbering hatreds or disagreements. Calvin was 
 twelve years younger than Melanchthon, yet he 
 was received by the German on equal terms. They 
 were not unlike in some regards, in others far 
 apart. Both were remarkably precocious as young 
 students, and grew learned, polished and sensitive 
 to all the appeals of the new learning. Both 
 were modest, Calvin was shy and yet combative 
 to a notable extent; Melanchthon, feminine and 
 disposed to compromise, Calvin fearless, Me- 
 lanchthon shrinkiiT^, but both heartily desirous 
 of union in the ranks of the Protestants. 
 Though they differed on some points of doc- 
 trine they showed that theologians could cultivate 
 true amity and spiritual harmony. After the Col- 
 loquy they saw each other no more, but their cor- 
 respondence reveals a noble type of intimacy. The 
 lack of a swift post is noticed by Calvin in a let- 
 
Years o^ Exile. 99 
 
 ter to Melanchthon : "You see to what a lazy fellow 
 you have entrusted your letter. It was full four 
 months before he delivered it to me, and then 
 crushed and crumpled with much usage." He ex- 
 presses a wish that they "could oftener converse 
 together were it only by letters. To you it would 
 be no advantage; but to nie, nothing in this world 
 could be more desirable than to take solace in the 
 mind and gentle spirit of your correspondence." 
 
 In his reply Melanchthon confesses his inferi- 
 ority as a writer, and yet suggests to Calvin that 
 he bore down too hard upon the side of the Divine 
 Sovereignty, and did not give fair play to the 
 human will. As for himself he did not dare say 
 that he had reached a solution of the abysses of 
 predestination and free will, and adds: "Let us 
 accuse our own will if we fall, and not find the 
 cause in God." Nor could Calvin budge him from 
 his milder view. There must have been something 
 very fine in the esteem and affection which grew 
 with the passing years, for as has been said, we 
 have the only example of a Reformer republishing 
 the work of another Reformer, a rival of his own 
 work and differing from it in several points, in 
 the act of Calvin when he issued and commended 
 the "Theological Commonplaces" of Melanchthon. 
 
 A year after the death of Melanchthon, which 
 occurred in 1560, Calvin thus addressed his sainted 
 friend : "O Philip Melanchthon ! for it is upon thee 
 that I call, upon thee, who now livest with Christ 
 
loo John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 in God, and art waiting there for us, until we shall 
 also be gathered with thee to that blessed rest ! A 
 hundred times, worn out with fatigue and over- 
 whelmed with care, thou didst lay thy head upon 
 my breast, and say : "Would God that I might die 
 here, on thy breast. And I, a thousand times since 
 then have earnestly desired that it had been granted 
 us to be together. Certainly thou wouldst have 
 been more valiant to face danger, and stronger to 
 despise hatred, and bolder to disregard false accu- 
 sations. Thus the wickedness of many would have 
 been restrained, whose audacity of insult was in- 
 creased by what they called thy weakness." In 
 this one can see the real affection between the 
 two men, and also the grand self-confidence which 
 the iron-willed leader of Geneva put at the dis- 
 posal of his less courageous friend. 
 
 It was during his stay at Strassburg that 
 Calvin's power as a controversialist was put to the 
 highest test, and with the fullest proof that he could 
 debate without stooping to vilification. In his fa- 
 mous reply to Sadolet, he vindicated the Reforma- 
 tion in terms that left him alone of the band of 
 Reformers at the top of fame, the most able, adroit, 
 and convincing disputant of the century. His vic- 
 tory was over a remarkable man. 
 
 Jacopo Sadoleto, born 1477, died 1547, was sec- 
 retary to Leo X, and spent his surplus cash for 
 Greek manuscripts. His name is connected with 
 one of the rarest "finds" of the age. One day in 
 
Y^ARS 0^ EXII.K. lOI 
 
 1506, some workmen ran to inform Sadolet that 
 they had found in the gardens of Titus a group 
 from an unknown but admirable Greek chisel. He 
 hastened to the spot and discovered that the group 
 was what is known as "The Laocoon," easily rec- 
 ognized from Pliny's description. On account of 
 the unearthing of the treasure Rome rang with 
 jubilation, and in the evening the church bells 
 pealed out the joy of the whole city. The day 
 following the group was drawn in triumph to the 
 Vatican. Sadolet was a veritable child of the 
 Ranaissance. After serving as Secretary to Leo 
 X, he became Bishop of Carpentras, in Dauphiny, 
 then Secretary to Clement VII, and finally Cardi- 
 nal, since 1536. He bore the reputation of a 
 scholar, poet, devout gentleman, loyal Churchman. 
 Beza does not do him justice in speaking of him 
 as "a man of great eloquence, but he perverted it 
 chiefly in suppressing the light of truth. He had 
 been appointed cardinal for no other reason than 
 that his moral respectability might serve to put a 
 kind of gloss on false religion." Neither Protestant 
 nor Catholic could then use the exact color to 
 paint a motive or to interpret an action, when an 
 enemy was involved in the picture. Both Sadolet 
 and Calvin wrote in a style and with a power to do 
 them both credit, save that Calvin's was the master 
 mind. 
 
 The time of Calvin's exile from Geneva was a 
 shining opportunity for the Catholics, and the dis- 
 
I02 John Cai^vin: The: State:sman. 
 
 possessed Bishop of Geneva saw his hour. He 
 brought together several bishops, and as a result 
 of their conference Sadolet was chosen to make an 
 appeal to the Genevese. This he did in March, 
 1539. His eloquence was notably persuasive, and 
 his spirit without rancor. Perhaps the only blot in 
 his address was an uncharitable reflection upon the 
 character and motives of the Reformers. After 
 using various arguments, based upon the antiquity, 
 the unity, the universality, and the inerrancy of 
 the Church, and pleading with the citizens of 
 Geneva to return to the fold, he closed as follows : 
 "Whatever I can possibly do although it is very 
 little, still if I have any talent, skill, authority, in- 
 dustry, I offer them to you and your interests, and 
 will regard it as a great favor to myself should 
 you be able to reap 'any fruit and advantage from 
 my labor and assistance in things human and di- 
 vine." 
 
 The Council received the letter with polite ac- 
 knowledgments, but found no one in Geneva able 
 to make fitting reply, in which fact the Romanists 
 found cause for encouragement. A copy of the 
 letter fell into the hands of Calvin, and in six days 
 he wrote an answer, and sent it September ist, to 
 Sadolet. He had not been mentioned by name in 
 the address of Sadolet, yet he felt himself indirectly 
 assailed as the chief disturber of the peace of 
 Geneva. The letter of Calvin has been called ''per- 
 haps the ablest vindication of the Reformation to 
 
YfjARS 0^ Exiiv^. 103 
 
 be found in the controversial literature of that 
 time." ^ Step by step he discusses the points made 
 by the Cardinal, and with consummate skill sets 
 the cause of Protestantism fairly before the world. 
 While paying tribute to the learning of the Cardi- 
 nal, and refraining from insinuations as to his op- 
 ponent's lack of good faith, and while expressing 
 reluctance to oppose him, yet with frankness and 
 dignity he crushes the Cardinal's position: 
 
 "If you had attacked me in my private character, I 
 would easily have forgiven the attack, in consideration of 
 your learning, and in honor of letters. But when I see 
 that my ministry, which I feel assured is supported and 
 sanctioned by a call from God, is wounded through my 
 side, it would be perfidy, not patience, were I here to be 
 silent and connive." 
 
 So he marches forward. Answering the charge 
 that he had left the Church of Rome because of 
 disappointment,^ he says : 
 
 "Had I wished to consult my own interest, I would 
 never have left your party. ... I have no fear that 
 any one not possessed of shameless effrontery will object 
 to me, that out of the kingdom of the pope I sought for 
 any personal advantage which was not there ready to my 
 hand." 
 
 The Cardinal's beautiful picture of an ideal 
 Catholicism is spoiled by the Reformer in a descrip- 
 tion of the abuses and corruptions of the Church 
 from which sprang the Reformation. Calvin paints 
 
 1 Dr. p. Schaff. 
 
104 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 with dark colors, confirmed, however, by the lives 
 of such Popes as Alexander VI and by the charges 
 of Savonarola, and the impartial witness of Mac- 
 chiavelli, the religion of Rome. As to the asser- 
 tion of Sadolet that the only aim of the Reformers 
 in casting off the heavy yoke of Rome was to get 
 freedom for licentiousness, he compares conduct 
 with conduct. 
 
 "We abound, indeed, in numerous faults; too often do 
 we sin and fall. Still, though truth would, modesty will 
 not permit me to boast how far we excel you in every 
 respect, unless perchance you except Rome, that famous 
 abode of sanctity, which having burst asunder the cords 
 of pure discipline, and trodden all honor under foot, has 
 so overflowed with all kinds of iniquity, that scarcely any- 
 thing so abominable has ever been before." 
 
 The personal note is struck in Calvin's match- 
 less reply to the citation of the Cardinal to the 
 Reformers to appear as criminals before the judg- 
 ment seat of God to answer for the guilt of the 
 "great seditions and schisms ;" in this he reaches a 
 truly dramatic power of statement in an imaginary 
 counter-confession on the part of the Reformers, 
 in which while he no doubt lines up all the Reform- 
 ers before the throne of God, yet the spokesman is 
 Calvin himself, reciting his own struggles in leav- 
 ing the Church. The only other place in which he 
 so specifically refers to his own experience is in his 
 introduction to the Commentary on the Psalms. 
 
 "They charged me with two of the worst of crimes — 
 heresy and schism. And the heresy was, that I dared to 
 
YijARS o:^ Exii,e:. 105 
 
 protest against dogmas which they had received. But 
 what could I have done? I heard from Thy mouth that 
 there was no other light of truth which could direct our 
 souls into the way of life, than that which was kindled 
 by Thy Word, I heard that whatever human minds of 
 themselves conceive concerning Thy Majesty, the wor- 
 ship of Thy Deity, and the mysteries of Thy religion, was 
 vanity. I heard that their introducing into the Church 
 instead of Thy Word, doctrines sprung from the human 
 brain, was sacrilegious presumption. . . . That I might 
 perceive these things, Thou, O Lord, did'st shine upon me 
 with the brightness of Thy Spirit; that I might compre- 
 hend how impious and noxious they were. Thou did'st 
 bear before me the torch of Thy Word ; that I might abom- 
 inate them as they deserved, Thou didst stimulate my 
 soul; . . ." (He tells how solemn expiations failed to 
 bring peace). . . . "When, however, I had performed 
 all these things, though I had some intervals of quiet, I 
 was still far off from true peace of conscience; for, when- 
 ever I descended into myself, or raised my mind to Thee, 
 extreme terror seized me — terror which no expiations or 
 satisfactions could cure. And the more closely I examined 
 myself, the sharper the stings with which my conscience 
 was pricked, so that the only solace which remained to me, 
 was to delude myself by obliviousness. Still as nothing 
 better offered, I continued the course which I had begun, 
 when lo ! a very different form of doctrine started up, not 
 one which led us away from the Christian profession, but 
 one which brought it back to its fountain-head, and as it 
 were, clearing away the dross, restored it to its original 
 purity. . . . My mind being now prepared for serious 
 attention, I at length perceived, as if light had broken in 
 upon me, in what a sty of error I had wallowed, and how 
 mftch pollution and impurity I had thereby contracted. 
 Being exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had 
 fallen, and much more at that which threatened me in 
 
io6 John Calvin: The Statesman. 
 
 view of eternal death, I as in duty bound made it my first 
 business to betake myself to Thy way, condemning my 
 past life, not without groans and tears." 
 
 He closes the virile document with a direct ap- 
 peal to the Cardinal: 
 
 "May the Lord grant, Sadolet, that you and all 
 your party may at length perceive that the only true bond 
 of Church unity is Christ the Lord, who has reconciled 
 us to God the Father, and will gather us out of our present 
 dispersion into the fellowship of His body, that so, through 
 His one Word and Spirit, we may grow together into one 
 heart and one soul." 
 
 The Answer was instantly welcomed in many 
 quarters as an entire reply. The impression proved 
 deep and lasting. It was put into several languages. 
 The papal party at Geneva gave up all hope of re- 
 storing the Mass. When Luther read it he said 
 to Cruciger : ''This answer has hands and feet, and 
 I rejoice that God has raised up men who will 
 give the last blow to popery, and finish the war 
 against anti-Christ which I began." 
 
 The prestige of Calvin attained a notable height 
 as a result of this controversy, and the hope of his 
 return to Geneva on the part of his friends there 
 became increasingly marked. But the hour did 
 not come immediately. Meanwhile he gave his at- 
 tention to study, to instruction, and to organiza- 
 tion in Strassburg. His career was one of inces- 
 sant toil. Calvin was one of the world's workers. 
 Few men have ever flung themselves into their 
 work as this abstemious, self-denying, sickly 
 scholar, consumed with a desire to establish his 
 
Years of Exii.k. 107 
 
 system beyond a peradventure. The model after 
 which the Reformed Churches in Geneva and 
 France were formed was shaped by him during 
 his residence in Strassburg. No item which could 
 in any way have to do with the success of his 
 great experiment was overlooked. He was 
 preacher, teacher, builder, theologian and practi- 
 cal manager. His first sermon was delivered in 
 the Church of St. Nicholas, though afterwards he 
 preached in the church now known as the Magdalen 
 Kirche. Twice a day on Sunday and four times 
 during the week he appealed to the thought and 
 conscience of his French congregation. He intro- 
 duced his favorite discipline, and being left undis- 
 turbed by the magistracy he succeeded far better 
 than he had done in Geneva. His correspondence 
 was large. He was a busy pastor, was consulted 
 by the magistrates on all important questions con- 
 cerning religion, and gave himself to numberless 
 persons who came to consult him upon private 
 matters. He found time to compose his Commen- 
 taries on St. Paul's Epistles, and rewrote and en- 
 larged his Institutes. 
 
 A worthy fruit of his pastorate was the Liturgy 
 which he introduced in Strassburg and later in 
 Geneva. Farel had used a form for worship, con- 
 sisting of a general prayer, the Lord's Prayer (be- 
 fore the Sermon), the Decalogue, confession of 
 sins, repetition of the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' 
 Creed, a final exhortation and the benediction. Of 
 
io8 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 his liturgy only the form for marriage survived. 
 All the rest was recast by Calvin, and thus used 
 in his church. In 1542 it was published twice and 
 taken up by the congregation at Lausanne and so 
 gradually adopted by other Reformed Churches. 
 His Liturgy revealed the dislike entertained by 
 Calvin of all the cumbrous ceremonial of the Ro- 
 man Church. He had no taste for the artistic and 
 ornamental features of worship, indeed leaned to- 
 wards the rather bare and sermon-loaded service 
 of the Puritan age. He magnified the pulpit, free 
 prayer, and congregational singing. Beyond this 
 simple outline he did not encourage his followers 
 to venture. Though he did not favor the use of the 
 organ in public worship, he emphasized to the full 
 the value of congregational singing, and made much 
 use of the Psalms and of Clement Marot's verse, 
 and even making seven of his own compositions 
 serve the cause of worship in the Church. His 
 form for public service, substantially that of the 
 French Reformed Churches to-day, was as fol- 
 lows: invocation, confession of sin, a brief absolu- 
 tion, reading of the Scriptures, singing, free prayer, 
 chanting of the Psalms by the congregation, the 
 sermon, the long general prayer, the Lord's Prayer, 
 singing and benediction. Calvin prepared forms 
 for baptism and the holy communion. As to the 
 method of baptism Calvin regarded immersion as 
 the primitive mode, but any other mode as equally 
 valid.^ The Sacrament was taken once a month, 
 
 1 Inst. 4; XV; No. 19. 
 
Y^ARS o:^ Exile). 109 
 
 from which, however, all unworthy applicants were 
 excluded. 
 
 Calvin did not become so utterly absorbed in 
 the progress of the Church as not to realize that 
 man should not live alone. He said in his comment 
 on Ephesians v, 28-33: "It is a thing against na- 
 ture that any one should not love his wife, for God 
 has ordained marriage in order that two may be 
 made one person." Yet he seems to have been in 
 no haste to find a help-meet, nor did he marry until 
 1540. He rather boasted that he could not be 
 charged with having assailed Rome, as the Greeks 
 had Troy, for the sake of a woman. His friends, 
 Farel and Bucer, often urged him to take a wife, 
 that he might not be at the mercy of an ill-tempered 
 housekeeper. His love-making was not that of a 
 romancer, for in writing to Farel, May, 1539, he 
 says : ''I am none of those insane lovers, who when 
 once smitten with the fine figure of a woman, em- 
 brace also her faults. This is the only beauty which 
 allures me, if she be chaste, obliging, not fastidious, 
 economical, patient, and careful for my health. 
 Therefore, set out immediately." If this sounds 
 cold-blooded, it must be remembered that the time 
 was the sixteenth century, and the man half-Stoic. 
 Farel evidently was unable to solve the problem, 
 and the matter was dropped for awhile. The next 
 move was to consider a certain lady of noble rank 
 who had been recommended to him, her brother 
 being a fervent admirer of Calvin, but this fell 
 
no John Calvin: The: Statesman. 
 
 through. Yet again he came near marrying a lady 
 who was highly commended to him, and went so 
 far as to invite Farel to the proposed wedding. 
 But reports of her led him to drop the engagement. 
 Finally he married a member of his congregation, 
 .Idelette de Bure, the widow of a prominent Ana- 
 baptist, who had been converted to the true faith 
 under Calvin's teaching. Her gentle, modest, and 
 yet firm character won the love of the Reformer, 
 and they lived in happy wedlock for nine years. 
 She proved to be a real help-meet, called by her 
 husband ''the excellent companion of my life." 
 She had several children by her first husband, and 
 one by Calvin, a son, who died in infancy, 1542. 
 Of the death of this son Calvin wrote to a friend: 
 "God has given me a little son, and taken him away ; 
 but I have myriads of children in the whole Chris- 
 tian world." The miserable slanders of such writ- 
 ers as Bolsec and Audin touching the home life 
 of Calvin and his cold indifference to his losses 
 of son, and later, of his wife, are utterly refuted 
 by letters and expressions to his various friends. 
 Calvin was not a man to carry his heart around on 
 exhibition for the curious multitude to gaze at. 
 He felt deeply, but seldom gave to the public his 
 private joys and griefs. 
 
 Calvin's stay in Strassburg was of utmost mo- 
 ment to him; he had made friends, won a wife, 
 tried successfully his programme in the church of 
 which he was pastor, had learned the weakness of 
 
Ykars of Exil^. Ill 
 
 the German system, and in all that counts for mas- 
 tery of problems big with the world's destiny, was 
 not less firm but more tactful, not less earnest but 
 with a surer tread, wiser, broader, and in every 
 way matured and capable of facing the main enter- 
 prise of his life. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RETURN TO GENEVA. 
 
 On leaving France for his journey which ter- 
 minated in Geneva, in 1536, Calvin had said in 
 pathetic phrase : ''I am driven from the land of my 
 birth. Every step towards its boundaries costs me 
 tears. Perhaps it is not permitted to Truth to 
 dwell in France; let her lot be mine." He had 
 since then followed Truth at some hazard, and was 
 still some distance from the goal. In 1538 he had 
 taken up his march, burning with ill-suppressed 
 indignation over his treatment by the people of 
 Geneva. Weaker men had stepped into his shoes. 
 Worse men were at the helm of Genevan affairs. 
 Reactions came and went with little prospects of 
 good for the city, and even dissensions between 
 Calvin's brethren in the city augured ill for the 
 cause so dear to the exile. The advantage taken 
 of this condition on the part of the Catholics 
 reached its height in the incident of Sadolet's appeal 
 and the reply of Calvin, after which the bishops 
 could have little expectations of recovering lost 
 ground in Geneva. But other conditions made it 
 imperative that the Reformation should not lose out 
 112 
 
Return to Ge:ne:va. 113 
 
 in the city. In the summer of 1540 Bern and 
 Geneva were about to jump at each other's throats. 
 The turbulent elements in the city called for effec- 
 tive efforts at control. As the autumn drew on 
 the party that had supported Calvin got the gov- 
 ernment in their hands, but the populace can hardly 
 be said to have wished him back. 
 
 The time was critical, both for Geneva and 
 the larger Protestant world. During the years of 
 Calvin's exile Loyola founded the Order of the 
 Jesuits ; then occurred the reaction under Henry 
 VIII in England, when the Six Articles were is- 
 sued by Parliament defining heresy, and compelling 
 belief in transubstantiation, communion in one kind 
 for laymen, celibacy of the clergy, inviolability of 
 vows of chastity, necessity of private masses, and 
 of auricular confession. Charles V was in tem- 
 porary alliance wnth Francis I, in whose realm the 
 political rights of the parliaments were being re- 
 stricted, and the religious freedom of the Protest- 
 ants was denied; Spain and France were entering 
 the New World — De Soto in 1539 ranging the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley, Cartier in 1540 taking the St. Law- 
 rence for his king, Pizarro in 1541 the Amazon, 
 through his subordinate, Orellano ; — the Lutherans 
 and Zwinglians were unable to get together; and 
 quite as significant, while the various Colloquies 
 held on German soil between Catholic and Prot- 
 estants until 1 541 threw the Protestants back on 
 themselves and widened the gap between themselves 
 8 
 
114 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 and their enemies, yet disunion with Catholicism 
 did not mean union among Protestants. Further, 
 while a lamentable apathy was settling down upon 
 the Reformers and they were confining their ener- 
 gies to a defensive opposition, the old Church 
 began to stir with a new missionary zeal, for 
 reform at home and expansion abroad. 
 
 The tiny republic had rushed to the brink of 
 ruin during Calvin's absence. As his keen eye 
 had foreseen, demoralization began to dog the steps 
 of his enemies. In the place of the expelled preach- 
 ers, two native and two Bernese preachers were 
 elected, but they were below mediocrity. The 
 three parties, those opposed to the Reformers and 
 Catholics alike, extreme liberals, those working for 
 the restoration of Catholicism, and those friendly 
 to the Reformers involved the affairs of the city 
 in confusion. The claim of right of Bern to act as 
 protector if not dictator of Geneva was highly 
 unpopular. The first party gradually declined, as 
 they proved unable to check the tide of immorality 
 and disorder; the second party had no command- 
 ing influence after the crushing letter of Calvin 
 in reply to that of Sadolet ; the third party kept 
 on insisting upon the old franchises of Geneva as 
 against the Bernese claims, and gained influence as 
 the Catholics lost ground. 
 
 In the early months of 1540,* a general assembly 
 of citizens resolved to restore the former status. 
 The recall of Calvin was decided upon in the Coun- 
 
RETURN TO GeJNEVA. 115 
 
 cil, September 21, 1540. Meanwhile, private ef- 
 forts had been made to obtain his consent to return 
 to Geneva; but in his reply to Farel he said: 
 "There is no place in the world which I fear more ; 
 not because I hate it, but because I feel unequal to 
 the difficulties which await me there." He re- 
 quested Farel and Viret to desist from their efforts 
 to draw him back to the city; however, he added: 
 "When I remember that in this matter I am not 
 my own master, I present my heart as a sacrifice 
 and I offer it up to the Lord." He herein con- 
 sciously or unwittingly refers to his seal ; it bears 
 the motto to which he gave expression in his let- 
 ter, and the emblem is a hand presenting a heart to 
 God. Petitions and even deputations were for- 
 warded to Strassburg to complete his surrender to 
 the duty thus urged upon him. The Registres of 
 Geneva contain numerous records during the month 
 of October touching the recall of ''the learned and 
 pious Mr. Calvin." 
 
 The Syndics and Council wrote him an appeal, 
 which it is worth while to lay upon the page in full : 
 
 "Sir, our good brother, and excellent friend, in recom- 
 mending ourselves to you very affectionately, inasmuch 
 as we are perfectly assured that your desire is only for 
 the increase and advancement of the glory and honor of 
 God and of His holy word, on the part of our small, our 
 great, and our general councils (which all have urgently 
 urged us to do this), we pray you very affectionately to 
 be pleased to come to us, and return to your former part 
 and ministry; and we hope, with the assistance of God, 
 
ii6 John Calvin: The Statesman. 
 
 that this will be cause of great good and fruit for the aug- 
 mentation of the holy Gospel. Our people are very desir- 
 ous to have you. And we will so arrange matters with 
 you that you shall have occasion to be satisfied. 
 Your good friends, 
 The Syndics and Council of Geneva." 
 Geneva, 22nd, Oct. 1540. 
 
 The incidents of Calvin's recall and return to 
 Geneva show us a man of noble purposes, anxious 
 to do his highest duty, fearful of mistake, seeking 
 advice from many friends, delaying his acceptance 
 of the invitation until it could no longer be put 
 off, and then securing the best results of the ac- 
 ceptance by conditions presented to him and al- 
 lowed by the authorities, as worthy of the man 
 whom they had exiled and now discovered they 
 could not live without. The letters of this period 
 as given by Bonnet reveal the man, timid, brave, 
 just to himself and to his friends, loving Geneva, 
 ambitious for God, not lacking on the other hand 
 the confidence in himself without which no man 
 can serve his day to the full. 
 
 Strassburg protested against his departure, say- 
 ing he could not be spared. The leaders of public 
 opinion in Germany and Switzerland expressed 
 their mind that the fate of Geneva was wrapped up 
 in that of evangelical religion, and with this city 
 went Italy and France, and that Calvin was the 
 man to whom they might well look fo*r the direc- 
 tion of their destiny. As of old, Farel thundered 
 away: "Will you wait till the stones call thee?" 
 
Return to Gkne:va. 117 
 
 Unable to resist the call of God, as he had now 
 come to regard it, Calvin left Strassburg in the 
 summer of 1541, and went forward to Geneva es- 
 corted by a mounted herald. The city was on the 
 lookout for him. There was talk of a great recep- 
 tion, but his distaste for a noisy welcome prevented 
 any demonstration of an unusual sort. Yet there 
 was general rejoicing when on September 13th he 
 reached Geneva. Three days later he wrote to his 
 old friend, Farel : ''Thy wish is granted, I am held 
 fast here. May God give His blessing !" The 
 house and garden which was provided for him had 
 belonged to a canon of the Cathedral, and was 
 bought by the authorities of Geneva in 1543. It 
 was only a few steps from the Church of St. Peter, 
 and stood on the site of the present Number 11 
 Rue de Calvin. The original house has been re^ 
 moved, the site being built upon anew in the 
 eighteenth century. For a short while Calvin lived 
 in the house adjoining until the one purchased by 
 the Council was fitted for his permanent home, 
 and there he remained until his death. The furnish- 
 ing was very simple, the salary was set at five hun- 
 dred florins, and as he was expected to entertain 
 prominent visitors, he was voted an allowance of 
 wheat and wine. The salary has been variously 
 computed, as to its present purchasing power, from 
 fifty to fifteen hundred dollars, but by the latest 
 French author of the life of Calvin, as not exceed- 
 ing one thousand dollars.^ 
 
 iSee fuU note in Walker's comment on Doumergue's estimate, 
 p. 264. 
 
ii8 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 On the very day of his arrival Calvin appeared 
 by agreement before the Syndics and the Council 
 in the Town Hall, and asked for the appointment of 
 a commission of six to draw up a plan for Church 
 government .and discipline. This was done, and 
 the task immediately taken up of directing the re- 
 ligious and moral, and as it soon followed, the 
 social, life of Geneva. Calvin was conciliatory, 
 but there was no delay in the prosecution of his 
 scheme. The constitution, or Ordinances, as they 
 were styled, went up to the Little Council, Septem- 
 ber 26th, to the Large Council November 9th, and 
 to the general assembly of the citizens November 
 20, 1 541. 
 
 That the authorities did not intend to take Cal- 
 vin as a ruler, only as an adviser, is apparent in the 
 refusal of the Little Council to submit to the min- 
 isters the changed draft before it went to the Two 
 Hundred. Nevertheless the Ecclesiastical Consti- 
 tution of 1 54 1 is in marked advance beyond the 
 Articles of 1537; "not indeed quite perfect, but 
 passable considering the difficulty of the times," 
 remarked Calvin. The Church got self-control, 
 but none over political matters. The Church se- 
 cured an effective discipline over its members in 
 matters pertaining to doctrine and life, thus putting 
 the Church of Geneva far ahead of any other Prot- 
 estant body of the day. 
 
 Calvin's theory of the Church, and of the State, 
 and of the relation between the two was well de- 
 fined before his arrival; his mind was too mature, 
 
Return to Gknkva. 119 
 
 and his experience too thorough, to leave any doubt 
 in the matter. His mind was rarely architectonic 
 in character. The idea of a Divine Commonwealth, 
 a "Civitas Dei," was ever before him, swaying his 
 thought and commanding his will. In contrasting 
 Luther with Calvin, Dr. Fairbairn says: "Luther's 
 aim was to teach a true soteriology, Calvin's to 
 
 ^ build a system and a State in the image of the truth 
 of God." The distinction between the "visible" 
 and the "invisible" Church was one introduced by 
 the Reformers. By this they meant two classes 
 of Christians within the same objective communion. 
 The invisible Church is in the visible, as kernel in 
 the shell, and God alone knows who belong to the 
 invisible Church and are to be saved. Luther had 
 first applied the term "invisible" to the true Church 
 at the disputation of Leipzig. Yet the Reformed 
 system of doctrine was compelled to admit that 
 there is possibility of salvation beyond the boun- 
 daries of the visible Church. Perhaps none was so 
 liberal as Zwingli in his inclusion of all the -pious 
 heathen in the invisible Church. While Calvin did 
 not go so far as Zwingli in his doctrine of election, 
 yet logically the extension may be allowed. For 
 salvation depends upon the sovereign grace of God, 
 and not upon any objective or formal means of 
 grace. He says in one place: "According to the 
 
 • secret predestination of God, there are many sheep 
 without the pale of the Church, and many wolves 
 within it." 
 
I20 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 Before taking up in detail the administrative 
 measures of the Ordinances^ it will be well to push 
 inquiry still further into the significance of Calvin's 
 purpose to recover for the Church whatever of 
 authority it had lost in the troublous days of his 
 absence from Geneva. In his aim he drew some- 
 what near to that of the Roman Church in its em- 
 phasis upon autonomy, its right of self-government. 
 But he made a distinction; for while the Catholic 
 used the word "autonomy" in a hierarchical sense, 
 
 • Calvin placed the power in the hands of the Chris- 
 tian congregation. And while he did not succeed 
 in his day in making the clergy independent of State 
 patronage, he taught that self-government implied 
 and required self-support. The I^utherans allowed 
 the heavy hand of the secular princes to indulge 
 an arbitrary policy, giving the congregations of 
 most Lutheran countries of Europe no voice in the 
 
 / election of their pastors. German Switzerland rec- 
 ognized the supreme power of the civil government. 
 In theory, the Churches established by Calvin 
 claimed independence for the Church in all spirit- 
 ual matters. The sovereignty of the Church was 
 inherent in its membership. His argument springs 
 from the old rule : 'Xet him who is to rule over all, 
 be chosen by all." Scotland, and then America 
 saw the full fruition of this planting. He contended 
 that the bishops and the presbyters were originally 
 identical, yet did not refuse to accept the super- 
 vision of bishops, as in England, provided the Gos- 
 
Return to Geneva. 121 
 
 pel were truly preached. More important than the 
 above was Calvin's demand that the laity should 
 
 » share in Church government and discipline. Rome 
 refused to laymen rights in ecclesiastical legisla- 
 tion ; Calvin taught the priesthood of all believers, 
 and gave them regular duties in the local congre- 
 gations, the Synod and the Council of the Churches. 
 In approaching Calvin's theory of the relation 
 of the Church to the State we find difficulty. He 
 has been styled a theocrat. He did indeed aim at 
 the sole rule of Christ in Church and State, but 
 free from any entanglement between the two. Cal- 
 vin endeavored to distinguish what was in his day 
 greatly confused, the difference between the spir- 
 itual and the secular powers. Each was to be in- 
 dependent and sovereign in its own sphere. He 
 himself never held a civil office, nor did he allow 
 the ministers to be eligible to the magistracy. The 
 internal affairs of the Church were to be free from 
 the interference of the civil authorities. Yet he 
 
 >^.failed to separate the two provinces; rather he 
 dared to unite them as far as their unlike functions 
 would permit. In practice in Geneva the two were 
 more nearly interdependent than in theory, and the 
 Reformed Church of Geneva was an established or 
 State Church, the preachers and the magistrates 
 often intermeddling with each other. "Discipline 
 was a common territory for both." It was a long 
 
 . distance to the time when the great Italian, Cavour, 
 cried out, "A free Church in a free State." 
 
122 John Cai^vin: The State^sman. 
 
 The reference to Italy, so many ages hampered 
 by the anomaly of the double rule of the Pope, at 
 once prince and priest, suggests the value of a 
 swift review of the effort of the papacy to bring 
 the world to its way of thought and life. 
 
 Both the true and the false rise to our vision. 
 There was first the scheme and the failure of the 
 Imperial Church under Constantine and Theo- 
 dosius. The world was not ready for the experi- 
 ment, and the trial could be only partial. The 
 problem in its entirety was not grasped by its 
 proposers. Then came the aim and the failure of 
 the Mediaeval Church; the "fatal dualism," that of 
 the claim to both spiritual and secular power balked 
 its most desperate zeal. The meaning of the "king- 
 dom of God" escaped the conception of the clerical 
 orders, and the "Mediaeval System, long hollowed 
 out and destitute of spiritual force, was blown to 
 pieces by the Reformation." 
 
 Nevertheless, there remained the idea of unity 
 and of some form of an organized social system 
 inspired by Christian truth. But the difference be- 
 tween the formal and the essential unity grew 
 plainer with each passing decade of struggle after 
 the ideal. The Mediaeval Church had insisted upon 
 unity to the hurt of the individual, whereas the 
 New Testament had taught that the Spirit was to 
 work first in the person, and then through him in 
 the community. The free Churches, not the tyrant 
 Church, were in its long and glorious perspective. 
 
RETURN TO Ge:nE;vA. 1 23 
 
 The unity of Christendom must recognize the free 
 development of all its parts working with unim- 
 paired liberty for the total good. Thus the task 
 of the Reformation was to light all the branches of 
 the mysterious candlestick of the Apocalypse. But 
 this did not mean that the work of the Reformation 
 was mainly destructive of previous and real gains, 
 nor tending to the disintegration of any vital forces, 
 or institution worthy of longer life. Protestantism 
 is primarily a builder, not a destroyer. And if in 
 its earlier days it assumed the form and exhibited 
 the might of a deformer, and not of a reformer, 
 this was only incidental. Its eye was ever fixed 
 upon a sounder fabric, grounded upon the free 
 consent of men. The history of its spread has an- 
 swered to the full Comte's habitual scorn of Prot- 
 estantism, on the ground of its "purely negative 
 doctrine," and ''the anarchical character of its prin- 
 ciples." For when we sum it all up, we find the 
 Reformation due to a positive religious conviction ; 
 it began an era of popular enlightenment ; it lifted 
 up the laity ; it awoke the national spirit in Europe. 
 On the Rhine it was Luther appealing to Germany 
 to assert itself against the Pope on the Tiber; on 
 the Thames it was Latimer and Ridley defying 
 the threats and fagots of the fanatic queen inspired 
 by the Italian cardinal ; the Dutch around the Zuy- 
 der Zee shaking off the tyranny of the Spaniard; 
 in France the exiled Huguenots becoming aliens 
 to their native land rather than traitors to God. 
 
124 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 In no other way could the "fiction of the Empire 
 and the yoke of the Pope" have been cast aside. 
 The Reformers were not rough iconoclasts of a 
 wholesome social order or of a pure and tender 
 ecclesiastical discipline. They were not unprac- 
 tical nor idle dreamers, but those who lived and 
 died to make their dreams come true. Their lib- 
 erty has been that of a popular constitution; wit- 
 ness England, Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, and 
 America. 
 
 The trend of thought to John Calvin is evident, 
 and its realization prior to his day in at least one 
 illustrious instance is easily recalled. Calvin did 
 not originate the notion, the achievement, of a 
 Christian city. Every reader of ''Romola" who 
 brings any degree of sympathy to the study 
 of the close of the fifteenth century in Flor- 
 ence must have some insight into the ideals 
 and the source of pov/er of the mighty Re- 
 former-Preacher of San Marco. Savonarola 
 forever charms and does not tire those who 
 still cherish the hope of influencing public life by 
 Christian motives. In an age which recognized 
 Roderick Borgia as the vicar of St. Peter, the elo- 
 quent monk, sustained by a noble philosophy, and 
 at the same time a fervent follower of Christ, came 
 to Florence by invitation of Lorenzo de Medici, 
 and for awhile seemed to cast over his vast talents 
 a benignant spell. But under the splendid, cruel 
 rule of Eozenzo virtue, political and moral, was 
 
Re:turn to Ge:ne:va. 125 
 
 moribund. To some the alternative lay between 
 ruthless despotism and a licentious democracy. But 
 the stout-hearted, clear-brained prophet refused to 
 cherish any other vision than that of Florence as a 
 true city of God, and after the death of Lorenzo 
 and the expulsion of his weak son, Piero, Savon- 
 arola became the dictator of Florence (1494-1497). 
 For four years he governed the city justly, and 
 gained good terms from the King of France. But 
 the Pope was set on his overthrow ; the Medicean 
 party yearned for the "good old days," and his 
 course was soon run, as he had prophesied. The 
 election of a hostile Singoria was followed by the 
 papal excommunication and condemnation to the 
 cord and the flame, and in the strangle and the 
 affhes ended Savonarola's attempt to create a Chris- 
 tian city on the banks of the Arnp. 
 
 From the monk of S^n Marco to the preacher 
 of St. Pierre is less than forty years. On the other 
 side of the Alps and under auspicious skies Calvin 
 laid the foundation of the public life of Geneva in 
 religion. He drew up a Confession which every 
 one was required to sign. Church and State were 
 not identical, but they were not separated. In his 
 ''Confessions" Rousseau tells us that when he went 
 to Geneva in 1754 it was necessary for him to sign 
 .the Confession of Faith before he could become a 
 citizen of the city. 
 
 If it is inquired how, in the one case four short 
 years, and in the other nearly three centuries, swept 
 
126 John Calvin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 by, marking now the brief and now the unspent 
 power of the two reformers, the answer may easily 
 be found. Antitheses do not always separate the 
 grain from the chaff, but there is much truth in the 
 old statement that Catholicism is a religion of 
 priests, Lutheranism of theologians, Calvinism of 
 the believing congregation. In his emphasis of the 
 solidarity of the Church Calvin made Geneva a 
 fair rival of Rome, and in his effort to reform the 
 morals of the city he wrought out a discipline as 
 rigorous for the glory of Geneva as any that Rome 
 had ever, in repressing heresy, fostered to her 
 shame. Yet Calvin's calm disclaimer of any pur- 
 pose to merge the State and the Church into one as 
 an executioner of law-breakers, is set forth in his 
 statement that the Church knows no penalty for 
 wrong doing save exclusion from the Lord's Sup- 
 per. ''For the Church hath not the power of the 
 sword to punish or restrain, no empire to command, 
 no prison, no other pains which the magistrate is 
 wont to lay upon men."^ But what if, is the im- 
 mediate inquiry, the State has become so inter- 
 penetrated with the passion of the Church for re- 
 form that the lines of cleavage can not be discerned, 
 and the temptation is inevitable to make out of 
 offenses against the Church crimes against the civil 
 order? Plainly we shall have a reign of terror, 
 peculiar but explicable, and it hideous yet tremend- 
 ously effective. When the adulterer was put to 
 
 1 Inst. 4. II, 3. 
 
Return to Geneva. 127 
 
 death, and the unchaste were banished or drowned, 
 Geneva was in such case as a hundred other cities 
 of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, but when to 
 laugh at a sermon of Calvin was made a crime, 
 the honest human heart cries out against the holi^ 
 ness which is secured at the expense of freedom 
 and the virtue which is stamped with the tyranny 
 of a moral police. 
 
 It is evident that the principles of Church gov- 
 ernment advocated by Calvin led to persecution. 
 He was not different from his age, save that he 
 calmly and without retreat or hiding accepted all 
 the consequences of his theory. In a theocratic 
 State heresy is as obnoxious to orthodoxy as an 
 ordinary crime is to the civil law. In a letter to 
 Somerset, the Protestant Protector of England, Cal- 
 vin elaborates, October 2.2., 1548, his theory of the 
 necessity of applying force against heresy. 
 
 *'From what I understand, my Lord, you have two 
 kinds of rebels who have risen up against the King and 
 the State of the realm. The one are fantastic people, who 
 under colour of the gospel would cast all into confusion; 
 the other, obstinate adherents to the superstitions of the 
 Roman Anti-christ. Both alike well deserve to be re- 
 pressed by the sword which is committed to you, seeing 
 that they attack not the King only, but God who has seated 
 him upon the throne, and has entrusted to you the protec- 
 tion as well of his person as of his majesty." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE NEW DISCIPLINE. 
 
 John Cai^vin was lawyer as well as preacher. 
 His legal training stood him in good stead in the 
 organization of the system of doctrine, polity, and 
 discipline for Geneva. His stress laid upon the 
 inner life, intellectual and spiritual, saved him from 
 being a tyrant after the order of Hildebrand. As 
 it was, he did not escape caricature, censure, scorn. 
 But he succeeded in imposing his will upon a peo- 
 ple who in the end greatly profited by his coming, 
 in morals, good order, intelligence, influence among 
 neighbors, and renown. How did he do it? 
 
 In the application of the general principles noted 
 in the preceding chapter, Calvin insisted upon mak- 
 ing them the fundamental law of the city. The re- 
 sult is seen in the ''Ecclesiastical Ordinances," 
 which were solemnly ratified January 2, 1542, as 
 the Church law of Geneva. In themselves they are 
 an interesting milestone of progress, and in ad- 
 dition they are of vast concern as having passed 
 into the life of most of the Reformed and Presby- 
 terian Churches of the Old and the New World. 
 The official text begins with the following words: 
 128 
 
The; New DiscipunE. 129 
 
 "In the name of God Almighty, we the Syndics, Small 
 and Great Councils with our people assembled at the sound 
 of the trumpet and the great clock, according to our an- 
 cient customs, have considered that the matter above all 
 others worthy of recommendation is to preserve the doc- 
 trine of the holy gospel of our Lord in its purity, to pro- 
 tect the Christian Church, to instruct faithfully the youth, 
 and to provide a hospital for the proper support of the 
 poor, — all of which can not be done without a definite 
 order and rule of life, from which every estate may learn 
 the duty of its office. For this reason we have deemed it 
 v/ise to reduce the spiritual government, such as our Lord 
 has shown us and instituted by His Word, to a good form 
 to be introduced and observed among us. Therefore we 
 have ordered and established to follow and to guard in our 
 city and territory the following ecclesiastical polity, taken 
 from the gospel of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Calvin's effort was to bring to the front two 
 mutually corrective powers — the clergy and the 
 laity. Nowhere else in all history have the clergy 
 been so prominent and influential as in the Church 
 of Geneva. The distinction made by Calvin be- 
 tween the extraordinary officers of the Church and 
 the ordinary is worth remembering, for the reason 
 that the former can not be regulated by law, and 
 no directions are to be found in the Ordinances for 
 them. The distinction, however, is made in the 
 Institutes, and under the first head are found Apos- 
 tles, Prophets, and Evangelists ; and under- the 
 second head are Pastors, Teachers, Ancients, and 
 Deacons. Pastors are Bishops and Ancients are 
 Lay-Elders. In his elaboration of the duties of 
 9 
 
I30 John Calvin: Thi: S'Tatesman. 
 
 these various classes Calvin exhibited the analytic 
 skill of a lawyer in the days of Justinian, and gave 
 to his "code" a permanent character which stood 
 firm in the court of Scotland and the frontiers of 
 America with equal ease and force. It would be 
 tedious to recite the many specifications of service 
 which filled the minds of Calvin's friends with pro- 
 found concern, and the hearts of his foes with pro- 
 founder disgust, but one must know somewhat of 
 the working plan of the ''Ordinances" in order to 
 appreciate the mind and will of Calvin and their 
 effect upon Geneva. 
 
 The "Pastors" are to "preach the Word of God, 
 to instruct, to admonish, to exhort, and reprove in 
 public and private, to administer the Sacraments, 
 and jointly with the 'elders' to exercise discipline." 
 Pastors are such only after being called, examined, 
 ordained, or installed. Weekly conferences are to 
 be held for mutual aid. Strict discipline is to be 
 exercised over the ministers, and a dozen or more 
 vices and sins are named which can not be toler- 
 ated among them. The pastors are to preach twice 
 on Sunday and to catechise the children, and to 
 preach three times during the week. Teachers are 
 to instruct believers in sound doctrine. They are 
 distinguished from pastors, in that they have no 
 official concern with discipline, nor can they ad- 
 minister the sacraments. The highest type of 
 teacher was the theological professor. The "An- 
 cients" or lay elders, were an important feature of 
 
Thk New Discipune. 131 
 
 the "Ordinances," perhaps the most original con- 
 tribution thereto. 
 
 It is this name and office that have given to the 
 Presbyterian Church its name and type of poHty. 
 Yet it may be doubted if some of the modern elders 
 would recognize themselves in the following state- 
 ment of duties: 
 
 "The office of the elders is to watch over the conduct 
 of every individual, to admonish lovingly those whom they 
 see doing wrong or leading an irregular life. When there 
 is need, they should lay the matter before the body de- 
 puted to inflict paternal discipline (i. e., the Consistory), 
 of which they are members. VA-s the Church is organized, 
 it is best that the elders be chosen, two from the small 
 council, four from the council of sixty, and six from the 
 council of two hundred (referring to the bodies constitut- 
 ing the city government)^ they should be men of good 
 life and honest, withoutreproach and beyond suspicion, 
 above all God-fearing and endowed with spiritual pru- 
 dence. And they should be so chosen that they be distrib- 
 uted in each quarter of the city, so that they can have an 
 eye on everything." 
 
 The "deacons" are to have care of the poor and 
 sick, and to attend to the hospitals. Begging is to 
 be prevented by their oversight. The "Ordinances" 
 give directions touching baptism, which is to be 
 performed in the Church, touching the Lord's Sup- 
 per, to be administered once a month in one of the 
 Churches, and at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, 
 and contain regulations about marriages, burials, 
 and other concerns of a Christian community. The 
 
132 John Calvin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 Ministers and Ancients are to meet once a week, 
 on Thursday, to consider the state of the Church 
 and to administer discipHne. 
 
 The executive bodies of the Church are two. 
 First, there is the Venerable Company, containing 
 all the pastors of the Republic of Geneva, a purely 
 clerical body, and lacking political authority. It 
 was entrusted with the supervision of all matters 
 that concerned the Church alone, especially the edu- 
 cation, election, and installation of ministers. Yet 
 even in this it depended upon the civil authority 
 and the congregation for final sanction of its acts. 
 In the second place is the Consistory, or Presby- 
 tery, composed of clergymen and laymen, a far 
 more influential body than the Venerable Company. 
 In it State and Church are united. The head of 
 this body is the Syndic. The laymen are in the 
 majority and elected annually, the ministers being 
 a more fixed element though a minority. The real 
 ruler of this body was Calvin, presiding only a few 
 times as an informal chairman, yet as has been said 
 while he was not president, he was the soul of the 
 Consistory. 
 
 The two principles to which, to quote Guizot,^ 
 Calvin attached the highest importance, ''I might 
 almost call them his two supreme passions," were 
 first, the distinction between religious and civil 
 society ; i. e., between two societies, each independ- 
 ent in its own domain, but giving each other mutual 
 
 1 St. lyouis and Calvin, p. 259. 
 
The; New Discipune. i33 
 
 support; second, the discipline of all members of 
 Church who were subject to ecclesiastical power, 
 and in extreme cases handed to the civil power. 
 The constitution formed for the Christian Church 
 of Geneva was, "to a certain extent, both liberal 
 and cautious, and like the civil constitution of the 
 Christian Genevan State, it was republican." The 
 Consistory has been called a Star Chamber. But 
 it was limited to the use of the spiritual sword. 
 Civil punishments fell to the Council. To the min- 
 isters of Zurich Calvin wrote, November 26, 1553: 
 "The Consistory has no civil jurisdiction, but only 
 the right to reprove according to the will of God, 
 and its severest punishment is excommunication." 
 Yet it was not till after the victory over the Liber- 
 tines in 1555 that the Council conceded to the Con- 
 sistory its claim of right of excommunication. This 
 throws light upon the long struggle of Calvin to 
 gain for the Church its highest rights of self-gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Summarily, the gains made by Calvin for the 
 Church were notable ; authority for her ministers ; 
 their ordination by ministers ; lay representation, 
 by elders ; excommunication of persistent offenders ; 
 and in the last resort, by a spiritual court alone, the 
 Consistory. As the society of Geneva included all 
 baptized persons, thus giving to the Church over- 
 sight in matters concerning errors in doctrine and 
 sins against the peace of the society, it was the 
 theory of Calvin that State and Church should 
 
134 John Calvin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 be mutually helpful, both in correcting and chas- 
 tising offenders. It was not without a severe strug- 
 gle with the Little Council that Calvin won his 
 victory for the rights of the Consistory. In a 
 classic paragraph he drew the line between the 
 civil and the ecclesiastical authorities : 
 
 "That all this (i. e., discipline) shall be done in such 
 fashion that the ministers shall have no civil jurisdiction 
 and shall use none but the spiritual sword of the Word 
 of God as Saint Paul directs them; and that the authority 
 of the government and of ordinary justice shall in no way 
 be diminished by the Consistory, but that civil authority 
 shall remain unimpaired. And in particular, where it shall 
 be necessary to make some punishment or constrain the 
 parties, the ministers with the Consistory, having heard 
 the parties and made remonstrances and admonitions as 
 shall be fitting, shall report all to the Council, which shall 
 deliberate on their report and order and render judgment 
 according to the merits of the case." 
 
 In the administration of discipline there was a 
 
 most vigorous impartiality, no sex, rank, person 
 
 being considered. The eyes of the elders were 
 
 everywhere. Every unseemly act was reported. 
 
 'The following incidents, taken from the records of 
 
 \ the Registers, will present both the humor and the 
 
 '^horror of life under the new regime. Several 
 
 women, among them the wife of the Captain-Gen- 
 
 y eral, were sent to jail, for dancing ; Bonivard, the 
 
 \ hero of the dungeon of Chillon, and the friend of 
 
 j Calvin, was summoned before the Council for play- 
 
 \ ing at dice with the poet, Clement Marot, for a 
 
The; Ne:w Discipune;. 135 
 
 quart of wine ; three men who had laughed during ^ 
 the sermon were imprisoned for three days; three 1 
 children, for staying outside the church to eat / 
 cakes, were punished; a boy was whipped for call- / 
 ing his mother a "she-devil;" a girl was beheaded 
 for striking her parents. Cruel penalties these ; but 
 the Middle Ages had not yet withdrawn their black 
 shadows from the city of Geneva, nor yet did the 
 enlightenment of the Reformation lift the gloom 
 from Europe for more than two centuries after 
 the death of Calvin. Witchcraft, blasphemy and 
 heresy were as bad as lying, fornication, and mur- 
 der, for generations after the days of the great 
 reformer. 
 
 There were in the years 1558 and 1559 four 
 hundred and fourteen cases recorded upon the 
 pages of the Register of the Consistory. It may 
 seem very ridiculous to many, and simply the rea- 
 son for buffoonery to others, yet again to others a 
 hateful fact of civilization, but to the student of 
 history, it will be just as well to take them as rep- 
 resenting what one has called a "disclosure, in un- 
 dress, of human character and actions which the 
 lofty philosophic generalities of history have too 
 much the power to control or disguise." We must 
 deal with them as a fact. Then again, if we are 
 inclined to find the masculine character and grand 
 aims of Calvin "frittered" by attention to such 
 minutiae, we should remember that only in their 
 applications may we hope to discover the meaning 
 
136 John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 of principles. Whenever a refined intellectualism 
 withdraws itself into the recesses of art and letters, 
 and cultivates a fastidious sense in its contact with 
 real life, its "hall mark" of exclusiveness will be 
 found to be a mere brand of inability to do the 
 world's work. For, as it was in the movement from 
 the Renaissance to the Reformation, when Erasmus 
 complained of the damage Luther was doing to 
 letters, and men of the Renaissance turned with dis- 
 gust from men of the Reformation, the same old 
 story is repeated, and criticism wastes itself away 
 in its whining challenge to the genius of construc- 
 tion which is out in the world intensely concerned 
 with human affairs, and in the main, for their 
 good. 
 
 That Calvin's system proved a serious check to 
 personal liberty goes without saying, and that it 
 provoked bitter opposition we know well enough. 
 But it changed the face of life in Geneva. If the 
 people woke, and ate, and toiled, and went to bed, 
 under a sort of cut-and-dried ethics, they yet illus- 
 trated what could come of obedience to a noble 
 ideal of life, strenuous, intellectual, and pure, 
 though imposed by a masterful will, and not always 
 welcomed by the populace. A French refugee one 
 day exclaimed to a peasant: *'How delightful it 
 is to see this lovely liberty in your city!" The 
 peasant repHed: "Lovely liberty! we were once 
 obliged to go to mass; now we are obliged to go 
 to sermon." However, the people grew in intel- 
 ligence by the use of the Catechisms, and the priv- 
 
The New Discipune. 137 
 
 ileges of the schools. Good order and social purity 
 followed in the wake of Calvin's severe discipline. 
 People submitted who would otherwise have thrown 
 off the yoke, had there been a less virile will in 
 the chief pastor or a less deliberate purpose in the 
 Council to make a model city of Geneva. If Lib- 
 erty suffered somewhat, Good Order was en- 
 throned. 
 
 It took ten years of constant and vigilant po- 
 lice oversight combined with moral and spiritual 
 education to secure to Calvin his triumph over the 
 intrigues of parties and the hatred of base born 
 men. From 1545 to 1555 he felt the utmost venom 
 of their opposition. At one time he almost de- 
 spaired and, December 14, 1547, wrote to Farel: 
 "Affairs are in such a state of confusion that I 
 despair of being able longer to retain the Church, 
 at least by my own endeavors." His opponents 
 were of the same crowd who drove him away in 
 1538, and though they afterwards submitted, and 
 in the case of one or two, even joined in the invi- 
 tation for his return, yet under the fretting of his 
 harsh discipline they began serious and offensive 
 resistance. They nicknamed him "Cain," and 
 named dogs after him; they threatened him in 
 the pulpit, and fired guns off under his windows ; 
 even trying on one occasion to wrest from his hands 
 the sacred elements at the Eucharist. Only an 
 extraordinary man could have resisted the pres- 
 sure. 
 
138 John Calvin: The: State^sman. 
 
 The first victim of the new discipline was 
 Jacques Gruet who suffered death for sedition and 
 blasphemy. Calvin's account of him as a "scurvy 
 fellow" is justified by the facts. He would have 
 been obnoxious in any other decent community. 
 A libel which he had attached to Calvin's pulpit 
 in St. Peter's Church led to his arrest by order 
 of the Council. He was condemned for moral, 
 religious, and political offenses, and after having 
 been inhumanly tortured every day for a month, 
 was beheaded on the 26th of July, 1547. The 
 fashion of the times in dealing with criminals was 
 fiercely harsh. The next to suffer from the iron 
 discipline was Ami Perrin, a popular leader of 
 the patriotic party. He had been influential in 
 recalling Calvin, and for a time had supported the 
 reform movement, but what with his vanity, pre- 
 tense, and theatric airs he well earned the title 
 that fell with biting energy from Calvin's pen: — 
 * 'stage-emperor" who played now ''Caesar comi- 
 cus," and then "Caesar tragicus." His wife, Fran- 
 cesca, was according to Calvin's word a "prodig- 
 ious fury." She excelled in revelry and the swing 
 of an abusive tongue. As the maxim advises 
 against quarreling with a woman, it would be bet- 
 ter for the fame of Calvin's wisdom if he had not 
 measured tongues with one who is admitted by 
 Audin to have been "excitable, choleric, fond of 
 pleasure, and enamoured of dancing." She, her 
 husband, and her father Favre, were put in prison 
 
The Ndw Discipline:. 139 
 
 for a few weeks. The father refused to apologize, 
 the husband confessed his wrong, but it is not as- 
 certained that the "fury" became penitent. Calvin 
 told the family that as long as they stayed in Ge- 
 neva they must obey the laws though every one 
 of them wore a diadem. 
 
 Thenceforward Perrin led in the opposition to 
 Calvin. On his return from Paris whither he had 
 gone as ambassador, he was indicted for treason, 
 having told the French government that French 
 troops could be stationed at Geneva to hold off 
 Germany, and was expelled from the Council. The 
 Libertines ^ were furious and a clash occurred in 
 the Senate House, in the midst of which Calvin 
 entered, unarmed, and, at the risk of his life, 
 calmed the tumult. Even his chief detractor, 
 Audin, in his dramatic account of the mo"b, of the 
 ''fixed" eye of Calvin, and of his amazing elo- 
 quence, says: "The Libertines who had shown 
 themselves so bold when it was a question of 
 destroying some front of a Catholic edifice, over- 
 turning some saint's niche, or throwing down an 
 old wooden cross weakened by age, trembled like 
 women before this man, who in fact, on this occa- 
 sion exhibited something of the Homeric heroism." ^ 
 For awhile Geneva rested under a truce be- 
 tween the contending parties. Indeed Calvin was 
 put on the defensive. The Council censured him 
 
 iThe name "Libertine" was a nickname for the party opposed 
 to Calvin, yet it was not contemporary with him. 
 2 Calvin, Audin, p. 394. 
 
140 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 for saying in a letter to Viret that the Genevese 
 "under pretense of Christ wanted to rule without 
 Christ," and that he had to fight their "hypocrisy." 
 The quiet behavior of Perrin gave him an advan- 
 tage and he was elected first Syndic, which position 
 he held during the trial of Servetus, voting against 
 the death sentence. After 1553 the friends of Cal- 
 vin gained the supremacy of the Council, and there 
 would have been little more trouble save that Per- 
 rin and some of his intimates were charged with 
 laying a diabolical plot to murder all foreigners on 
 a Sunday during Church services. There is no 
 likelihood that such a plot could have been proved, 
 yet the attending circumstances, a street riot, en- 
 abled the Council to bring Perrin to trial and to 
 convict him of guilt in the case. Fortunately for 
 him, he fled Geneva in time, and though condemned 
 to death and his estates confiscated he escaped 
 the deadly wrath of the Council. 
 
 Pierre Ameaux was a member of the Two Hun- 
 dred; "a man of the bar-room with a wicked 
 tongue and a soul destitute of energy." His abuse 
 of Calvin at a drinking bout occasioned his arrest, 
 and his trial resulted in his conviction, the penalty 
 being that he should walk the streets in his shirt, 
 carry a lighted torch in his hands, and sue for 
 pardon. 
 
 The case which brought Calvin face to face 
 with the Council and seriously imperiled his cause 
 was that of Berthelier, the debauchee son of a 
 
The New Discipline. 141 
 
 worthy patriot. He was secretary of the Council, 
 and yet was excommunicated by the Consistory for 
 his offenses. At first the Council accepted the 
 decision of the Consistory, but later supported 
 Berthelier. Calvin was thus forced to submit to 
 the Council, or to run the risk of a second expul- 
 sion, or to bring the Council to his way of think- 
 ing. On the Sunday following the absolution of 
 Berthelier by the Council, he declared at the close 
 of the sermon, when about to administer the Sac- 
 rament: "I will lay down my life ere these hands 
 shall reach forth the sacred things of God to 
 those who have been branded as His despisers." 
 Perrin, who had some respect for the character of 
 the hour and the man, or, it may be for the reason 
 that he feared an outbreak, advised Berthelier to 
 absent himself from the Eucharist. The magnifi- 
 cent courage of Calvin carried the day, and the 
 storm blew to its end in the plot above mentioned 
 in which Berthelier and Perrin fled to avoid 
 execution. And Libertinism was dead in Geneva. 
 
 Thenceforward Geneva went forward along the 
 lines of Calvin's doctrine and discipline, becoming 
 more intelligent and moral and law-abiding, clean, 
 prosperous, and famous. 
 
 The 'Ecclesiastical Ordinances" of the Church 
 of Geneva deserve our sympathetic attention, for 
 we have before us not the code of a single town 
 of small consequence on the confines of Switzer- 
 land, but the "one form of Church polity which best 
 
142 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 expresses the spirit of the Reformation." There 
 was a directness in the aim of the Reformers 
 throughout Europe that found a congenial soul in 
 the Genevan code. The discipline of Geneva fol- 
 lowed hard upon every assertion of individual lib- 
 erty. Scotland got its reformation, Holland its 
 emancipation, England the brief but brilliant reign 
 of Calvin's faith and discipline, and France its 
 sixty years of Huguenot struggle against the royal 
 authority, direct from the source in Geneva. The 
 contrast between the three Frenchmen, contempo- 
 raries at Paris before 1535, puts the case in a nut- 
 shell; Rabelais wasted individualism, Loyola 
 crushed individualism, Calvin educated individual- 
 ism. Calvinism was very sombre, even forbidding 
 at times, yet it did not seek its pleasures in the 
 license of the tavern, or the chamber of inquisi- 
 tion, but in the school room, the home, the church. 
 It made itself very ridiculous according to our 
 modern way of seeing things, by insisting upon 
 observance of trifles, by exiling innocent fun, by 
 suppressing the humorist, and by jailing the clown. 
 What then? It had a huge task set by the times, 
 and the joker was not the man to lead Protestant- 
 ism against the terribly repressive energy of the 
 Jesuit, of Spain, of the Inquisition. The odds were 
 all against Geneva in the impending conflict. Cal- 
 vinism was tending to gather to itself all the moral 
 worth to be found anywhere in the scattered bits 
 Protestantism. Its self-denial and sincerity, its 
 
Th^ Ne:w Discipune. 143 
 
 clear-cut statement of problems and their solution, 
 its vision and its passion, all got recognition and 
 begot victory. The tiny band was not in all re- 
 gards polished, or gracious. Its members used 
 bold speech to princes and w^ere afraid only of 
 God. They v^ere understood. They hurt feelings, 
 but they conquered. They may not have been om- 
 niscient, but they were invincible. 
 
 In dealing with his little world whose life was 
 to spread to Holland, to England, to America, Cal- 
 vin did not try to imitate Plato with his ''paper- 
 republic," but with tremendous practical effort, by 
 some mistakes, and by much that was masterful, 
 his desires were achieved. He aimed to establish a 
 real rather than to paint a virtuous society. And 
 what is to the point, he succeeded. He did what 
 Catholicism in the Middle Ages had failed to do. 
 He did what early Protestantism had likewise 
 failed to do. In the first case, the individual had 
 been compelled to surrender his understanding to 
 the Church, and to bend his conscience and will 
 to priest and prince ; the revolution of Protestant- 
 ism had failed to fully correct the error. For while 
 it relieved outward restraint, it yet did not suc- 
 ceed in regenerating the forces of action. 
 
 Calvin taught the personal soul its rights, and 
 its obligations, as well; he tried by simple and it 
 may be admitted, by almost barbarous legislation, 
 to incite men to achieve free obedience. This may 
 appear strange to assert, yet to one who has any 
 
144 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 realization of the significance of the epoch of 
 which we write, it ought to be credible, as one has 
 said: that "Government at Geneva was not police, 
 but education; self-government mutually enforced 
 by equals on each other." At any rate, the expe- 
 riment was heralded throughout Protestant Eu- 
 rope, and men flocked to the little city by the blue 
 lake to see what power of divination had descended 
 upon earth that could so change the face of a 
 society and preserve its members from splitting up 
 into many sects, for this was the peril of Protestant- 
 ism. The rising might of the Inquisition, the swift 
 spread of Jesuitism, and the new confidence of 
 Rome were sufficient to demand of all who had 
 turned to the new faith a scrutinizing search for 
 some mightier preservative, some defiant propa- 
 gandism before which nothing then or since known 
 could make headway. The more effective spread 
 of Calvinism as over against that of Lutheranism 
 is proof that the larger stream had taken to itself 
 the power of the smaller one. Save where national 
 issues prevented, Calvinism overbore its elder ally, 
 and where the former failed to propagate itself 
 Calvinism rose again and again, strong with its 
 peculiar strength. It possessed a magical might, 
 like all truly great movements in history, more 
 unsubduable than its adherents knew themselves. 
 It animated the followers of Knox, the cavalry of 
 Cromwell, and the exiles in the cabin of the 
 Mayflower. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CALVIN AND SERVETUS. 
 
 Since that fateful morning In October, 1553, 
 when Servetus was led from prison to the gates 
 of the City Hall to hear the Chief Syndic pronounce 
 his sentence, and fell upon his knees crying out: 
 "The sword ! in mer<:y ! and not the fire ! Or I may 
 lose my soul in despair," — history has, especially 
 of late years, been doing the poor victim the 
 justice of fuller discussion and defense than it has 
 accorded to any man connected with the Reforma- 
 tion. Such is the judgment of one of the calmest 
 of Protestant historians.^ Servetus has not lacked 
 able, even enthusiastic apologists. The tragedy 
 has been dramatized. Not sympathy, but justice, 
 has lifted the martyr into a fairer court of trial 
 than he was allowed to enter in Geneva, has taken 
 off his chains, and given him a sympathetic hear- ^|^ 
 ing. The approval of Calvin's act by his intimate ^^ 
 friends in the sixteenth century has been sup- 
 planted by the severe condemnation of the act by 
 his friends in the twentieth century.^ 
 
 ISchaflf, Swiss Ref., p. 686. 
 2 Dr. C. H. Parkhurst. 
 
 lo 145 
 
146 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 The year 1553 marked the ebb tide of Calvin's 
 influence in Geneva, and this not after but before 
 the coming of Servetus. His cause was in hard 
 lines. The parties contending for mastery in the 
 city were evenly balanced, and it looked at one time 
 as if the scales were about to tip against Calvin's 
 cause. When the Spaniard appears on the scene 
 he runs into a trial which was of more than doc- 
 trinal import, and "was to test the relative strength 
 of the rival parties in Geneva, and the permanence 
 of Calvin's control." ^ Yet the long struggle noted 
 above, lasting ten years, did not reach its end until 
 it had spotted the fair fame of the chief contest- 
 ant, and left the friends of Calvin and of the 
 Reformation with a burden of explanation hard to 
 carry. 
 
 No two men of the period ofifer to the reader 
 so many points of both likeness and contrast. Both 
 men were precocious in their youth, men of posi- 
 tive genius, foes of Rome, bold in opposing her 
 reliance upon institutionalism, and in attempting 
 her reform, both prolific writers, both versatile, 
 both confident of a divine call, both dying in the 
 prime of life; but the one was constructive, the 
 other destructive ; the one founder of a system 
 still abiding, the other without a congregation to 
 carry his name forward ; the one filling the shelves 
 of scholars of many languages with his books, the 
 other scarcely known in his own books, for they 
 
 I J. Calvin : W. Walker, p. 334. 
 
Calvin and Se:rve:tus. 147 
 
 rank with the great rarities of literature ; the one a 
 star of the first magnitude, the other a passing 
 meteor ; the one dying quietly upon his bed, the other 
 shrieking "misererecordias" in his native tongue 
 amidst the crackling of fagots. It is altogether a 
 dark chapter in the career of the great leader of 
 the Reformation. Gardens and vineyards now 
 cover the little hillock of Champel, south of the 
 city, where the funeral pile was prepared in the 
 thick of the fallen oak leaves, but not thus can 
 history hide the scene. In 1903, on the three hun- 
 dred and fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ser- 
 vetus, many friends of the victim of intolerance 
 set up a monument to the memory of "Michel 
 Servet." 
 
 "See how those Christians love one another," 
 was the word of outsiders in the first cenlftry. 
 "There are no wild beasts so ferocious as Chris- 
 tians who differ concerning their faith," was the 
 exclamation of heathens in the fourth century. The 
 brilliant writer on the growth of rationalism in 
 Europe ^ has dwelt upon the significance of this 
 change in the passing centuries, and has empha- 
 sized the fact that as their minds became diverted 
 from moral considerations and were filled with a 
 sense of the importance of subtle theological dis- 
 tinctions, the theologians were willing to shut each 
 other out of heaven upon the use or the neglect 
 of a vowel point, as in the case of the difference 
 
 1 lyccky.. 
 
148 John Calvin: The Statesman. 
 
 between the Homo-ousians and the Homot-ousians. 
 The Fathers were honorably reluctant to shed blood, 
 however. When it comes to the Church of the 
 Middle Ages its influence is measured by the abil- 
 ity of the Clergy to direct civil authority in the 
 punishment of heresy. It was not a weak but a 
 triumphant Church that suppressed heresy, and not 
 in impulse but in deliberation, and not secretly but 
 openly, not with painless poison but in the agonies 
 of a slow fire. Popes instigated massacres, as in 
 the case of the Albigenses, or gave thanks for 
 wholesale slaughter, as in the awful night of St. 
 Bartholomew. 
 
 Nor was persecution restricted to Catholics, 
 and though Protestant oppression of free thought 
 was never so sanguinary as that of Catholicism, yet 
 even the stoutest of Reformers against Roman in- 
 tolerance breathed the air of the times. All the 
 leaders of the Reformation upheld the right and 
 the duty to suppress heresy, save Zwingli and So- 
 cinus. This right was placed in the hands of the 
 civil ruler by the Helvetic, Scottish, Belgic and 
 Saxon Confessions. Luther, Knox, Beza, Cran- 
 mer and Ridley asserted the right. In fact early 
 Protestantism flinched as little as did Rome from 
 the extreme consequences of intolerance. The ju- 
 dicious Hallam observes : "Persecution is the deadly 
 original sin of the Reformed Churches, that which 
 cools every honest man's zeal for their cause as 
 his reading becomes more extensive." ^ 
 
 1 Const. Hist. I ; 2. 
 
Calvin and Se:rve:tus. 149 
 
 And yet, because Protestantism was flexible, and 
 its very principle of appeal to individual reason 
 demanded a degree of toleration, it moved, with 
 greater rapidity than Catholicism, toward freedom 
 of thought and speech. 
 
 It should be remembered that the age was a 
 cruel one, and that men of high character inflicted 
 upon their fellows brutal penalties, utterly without 
 excuse in a later day, and strangely inconsistent 
 in their own day with the gospel they preached. 
 The great historian of the Inquisition, Dr. Lea, 
 says : ''There is no doubt that men of the kindliest 
 tempers, the profoundest intelligence, the noblest 
 aspirations, the purest zeal for righteousness, pro- 
 fessing a religion founded on love and charity, 
 were ruthless when heresy was concerned, and were 
 ready to trample it out at the cost of any suffering. 
 The wheel, the caldron of burning oil, burning 
 alive, flaying alive, tearing apart with wild horses, 
 were the ordinary expedients by which the crimi- 
 nal jurists sought to deter crime by frightful ex- 
 amples which would make a profound impression 
 on a not over sensitive population." ^ 
 
 The time of the trial and death of Servetus was 
 one of intense agitation in the city of Geneva. Cal- 
 vin was battling with the Little Council while Ser- 
 vetus lay in prison, and it was a question whether 
 his defiance of that evenly divided body would not 
 send him out of the city though it might at the 
 
 1 Inquisition, p. 234. 
 
I50 John Cai^vin: Th^ State:sman. 
 
 same time send Servetus to the stake. Servetus 
 only added fuel to the flames. Calvin had just 
 refused the Sacrament to one of his bitterest ene- 
 mies, Berthelier, and had set himself with amazing 
 courage against the Council. He had gone so far 
 as to declare, only a few days before the awful 
 scene at Champel, in the pulpit of St. Peter's : "This 
 may be my last sermon to you; for they who are 
 in power would force me to do what God does not 
 permit.'' In this fact, the opposition to Calvin, may 
 be found a reason why the Council ordered a 
 harsher form of death for Servetus than the one 
 desired by Calvin. It is not meant by this that 
 had Servetus dropped into Geneva a year earlier 
 or a year later than 1553, he would have escaped 
 the death penalty. Thirteen years after he died, 
 the Council of Bern put a Valentino Gentile to death 
 by the sword for heresy, and not a voice was lifted 
 in his behalf. 
 
 Such was the condition of affairs when the 
 Spaniard entered Geneva in July, 1553. 
 
 Michael Servetus was born in Villaneuva in 
 the old kingdom of Aragon, in 1509 or 151 1, 
 though some accounts give his nativity at Tudela. 
 There is much uncertainty as to his early life, yet 
 it appears that a very early age he entered the 
 University of Saragossa, and thence went to Tou- 
 louse, as a student of law, the hereditary occupa- 
 tion of his family. His most sympathetic bio- 
 grapher, R. Willis, thus judges him in his student 
 
CAI.VIN AND S^RVE:TUS. 15I 
 
 days: "Michael Servetus, as we apprehend him, 
 was one of those sensitive natures, which, Uke the 
 stainless plate of the photographer, retains at once 
 and reflects every object presented to it." He vi- 
 brated between law, theology, and medicine, and 
 in all was noted for restlessness under any phase 
 of tyranny. He developed heterodox views, 
 whether from the point of view of Catholic or of 
 Protestant. Zwingli said of him in 1530, "the false 
 and wicked doctrine of the troublesome Spaniard 
 goes far to do away with the whole of our Chris- 
 tian religion." But Servetus, opinionated, and 
 highly contemptuous of his opponents, though then 
 barely of age, was not to be deterred from putting, 
 in 1 53 1 at Strassburg, the final touches to his "De 
 Trinitatis Brrorihiis." The book blew up no small 
 talk, even in distant places. In his Table-Talk 
 Luther, the year after its publication, refers to a 
 "fearfully wicked book — ein greulich bos Buch," 
 which had lately come out against the doctrine of 
 the Holy Trinity. 
 
 Finding his Swiss friends of unwelcome spirit 
 Servetus left Switzerland for Paris, and under the 
 name of Villeneuve entered as a student of mathe- 
 matics and physics in one of the Colleges. Under 
 this name he afterwards practiced medicine for 
 twelve years at Vienne. 
 
 While at Paris he encountered Calvin, and chal- 
 lenged him to a debate, but forfeited the engage- 
 ment and laid himself open to Calvin's reproach: 
 
152 John Cai^vin: The^ Statesman. 
 
 ''You fled at the encountre/' Willis does not think 
 that Calvin at the time of this challenge knew 
 that Villenueve was the Servetus whom he later 
 on did to the death. His real name and obnoxious 
 books did not fully emerge until the period of his 
 trial at Geneva, twenty years afterwards. Mean- 
 while he spent some time at Lyons as proof-reader 
 to Trechsel the printer, and issued a magnificent 
 edition of Ptolemy's Geography, a truly renlark- 
 able work for a man of his age. One year later 
 Calvin put forth his great Institutes. In his 
 Geography, first edition, he depreciates Palestine 
 as "inhospitable, barren, and altogether without 
 amenity," and though this was changed in the 
 second edition, it was used against him in his trial 
 as reflecting upon the land ''flowing with milk and 
 honey." Servetus became Scientist, Astrologer, 
 and got great fame as Physician. In his work on 
 the Restitution of Christianity, he described the cir- 
 culation of the blood, seventy-five years ahead of 
 Harvey's discovery. His basis of the Godhead as 
 pantheistic, his disgust with the Trinity as a "three- 
 headed Cerberus," his announcement of revelation 
 as progressive, his rejection of predestination, and 
 his attachment of merit to good works, opened him 
 up to the assaults of the orthodox. At present 
 only two copies of the original edition are known 
 to exist: one in the National Library at Paris, 
 the other in the Imperial Library at Vienna. 
 Strange and pathetic contrast to the innumerable 
 
CAI.VIN AND SeJRVETUS. 153 
 
 and endless multiplications of the books of the Re- 
 former of Geneva. In 1790 the book rose like a 
 phoenix, in the shape of an exact reprint, but even 
 this is now rare. 
 
 It was while at Vienne that Servetus began a 
 correspondence with Calvin, in which the latter 
 gave no evidence of ill temper, until worn out 
 with the teasing importunity of Servetus he refused 
 to continue the correspondence. They exchanged 
 books, and on receiving the copy of his Institutes, 
 with margins filled with criticisms, Calvin wrote 
 "there is hardly a page that is not defiled by his 
 vomit." 
 
 Calvin's last letter to Servetus is lost, but his 
 severity need not be questioned, for, in a letter to 
 Jean Frellon, written at the same time, he inti- 
 mates that he had just written to his versatile in- 
 quisitor. "Since he has written to me in so proud 
 a spirit, I have been led to write to him more 
 sharply than is my wont, being minded to take him 
 down a little in his presumption. But I could not 
 do otherwise, for I assure you there is no lesson he 
 needs to learn so much as humility. This must 
 come to him through the grace of God, not other- 
 wise. But we, too, ought to lend a helping hand." 
 What a delicious bit of insight into the magnifi- 
 cent self-assurance which possessed the master 
 theologian, and would be humorous if it were not 
 tied up with so dark a tragedy. 
 
 On the same day Calvin wrote to Farel, Febru- 
 
154 John Cai^vin: The State:sman. 
 
 ary 13, 1546: "Servetus lately wrote to me, and 
 coupled with his letter a long volume of his de- 
 lirious fancies, with the Thrasonic boast, that I 
 should see something astonishing and unheard of. 
 He offers to come hither, if it be agreeable to me. 
 But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his 
 safety; for if he does come, and my authority be 
 of any avail, I shall not suffer him to depart alive." 
 It is not likely that seven years afterwards Calvin 
 forgot his threat when his hold on Geneva was 
 shaken by the coming of the intruder. 
 
 In the forepart of 1553 a copy of the Restitutio, 
 secretly printed at Vienne, reached Calvin. A 
 friend of Calvin, one Guillaume Trie, a fugitive 
 from Lyons, in correspondence with a cousin at 
 Lyons, who had rallied Trie on alleged freedom of 
 thought in Geneva, sent to his cousin a few pages 
 of the new volume, and said of the author that ''he 
 ought to be burned alive." Though this appears to 
 have been a private expression, it resulted in the 
 arrest of Servetus before the Catholic authorities 
 at Lyons. Soon more information was furnished 
 by Trie, according to some authorities at the in- 
 stigation of Calvin, and as others think, without it. 
 There can be little doubt that Calvin was knowing, 
 if not to the first letter, at least to what followed, 
 when Trie sent to the court of trial the marked 
 copy of Calvin's Institutes, annotated by Servetus 
 himself, and very probably furnished all the docu- 
 ments needed by the Court of Trial at Lyons. In 
 
Calvin and Se:rve:tus. 155 
 
 the course of the investigation Servetus crossed his 
 own path several times, if he did not He to con- 
 fuse his adversaries. Before the sentence of death, 
 by slow fire, delivered June 17th, Servetus made 
 his escape, on April 7th, by the help of friends, it 
 is thought, and crossed the Rhone, and fled to 
 Geneva. 
 
 Why go to Geneva? This question has been 
 asked but not satisfactorily answered. He did not 
 need to go there. He certainly had reason to dis- 
 trust the wrath of Calvin, even if not deadly. He 
 might have taken another route to Italy, as he was 
 bound for Naples. At any rate, he arrived in 
 Geneva, alone, July, 1553. Stopping at the *'Rose" 
 tavern for a few days, he attended Church, August 
 13th, and while listening to a sermon of Calvin 
 was recognized, and soon after arrested, at the 
 instigation of Calvin. Calvin freely admitted that 
 he wished him out of the way, as is plain from the 
 letter to Farel of August 20th, in which he said: 
 "I hope the judgment will be capital in any event, 
 but I desire cruelty of punishment withheld." The 
 trial was immediately begun. Servetus, according 
 to the ordinances of 1543, was denied counsel. He 
 was not tortured. The deed of accusation was 
 drawn up by Calvin and the liabilities of a false 
 accuser were assumed by a refugee in the employ 
 of Calvin, Nicholas de la Fontaine, as was cus- 
 tomary. The main charges were of a theological 
 
156 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 
 
 nature, though they embraced also attacks upon 
 Calvin. 
 
 Taking advantage of the critical condition of 
 the struggle in which Calvin was engaged with the 
 adverse elements of the Council, his foes took up 
 the side of Servetus, not that they favored his spec- 
 ulations, but that the trial offered them an oppor- 
 tunity to strike a heavy blow at their hated leader. 
 The result of the first phase of the trial was un- 
 favorable to the accused. The second act was in- 
 troduced by Claude Rigot, state's-attorney, and in 
 this the prisoner was charged with immorality and 
 the attempt to spread dangerous opinions. A well 
 known physical infirmity disproved the first charge, 
 and to the second Servetus replied that he had 
 come to Geneva with no sinister purpose." His 
 demand to be released was urged with good rea- 
 sons. Meanwhile, the Catholic authorities at 
 Vienne sent a demand for the surrender of the 
 prisoner. This the Little Council refused to heed, 
 but promised to do him full justice. Servetus him- 
 self expressed a wish to remain in Geneva, think- 
 ing that he might meet a lighter penalty. 
 
 A discussion was proposed by the Council, in 
 the hope that Servetus might be cured of the error 
 of his ways, and nothing loath, Calvin instituted a 
 colloquy in the presence of the judges, two of 
 whom, Perrin and Berthelier, were his worst foes. 
 This method not being satisfactory, the judges or- 
 dered Calvin to submit his statement of the pris- 
 
Calvin and Se^rvetus. 157 
 
 oner's errors in writing, and Servetus to make 
 answer, both of them in Latin. In this battle with 
 the pen Servetus injured his cause, for he indulged 
 himself in the most objurgatory epithets, even with 
 violence, calling Calvin, "Simon Magus," and abus- 
 ing him like a madman. "Thou liest, thou liest, 
 thou liest, thou liest, thou miserable wretch !" To 
 this Calvin made no reply. 
 
 The whole matter was then submitted to Prot- 
 estant Switzerland as a jury, September 22d, the 
 very day on which Servetus animated by a false 
 hope, appealed to the Genevan government to 
 cause the arrest of Calvin, as himself a false ac- 
 cuser, making plea "that the case be settled by 
 his or my death or other penalty." But the reply 
 of the Swiss Churches was decidedly unfavorable 
 to Servetus, for they unanimously recommended 
 that he be declared guilty, and the penalty left to 
 the discretion of Geneva. 
 
 The times were indeed critical for Calvin. He 
 had but just succeeded in preventing Berthelier 
 from taking the Communion, for on the i8th of 
 September the Council had voted to ''hold to the 
 Ordinances as before." The answers from the 
 Swiss churches greatly strengthened the cause of 
 Calvin, and with his opponents beaten, and despite 
 the delays urged by Perrin, October 26th, the Coun- 
 cil ordered Servetus to be burned alive. The burn- 
 ing was not to Calvin's mind, but the court did not 
 heed his desire for a milder form of death, and 
 
158 John Cai^vin: The: Statesman. 
 
 sentenced Servetus to be burned after the following 
 verdict : 
 
 "We condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound, 
 and led to the place of Champel, there to be fastened to 
 a stake and burned alive, together with thy book, as well 
 the one written by thy hand and the printed one, even 
 till thy body be reduced to ashes; and thus shalt thou 
 finish thy days to furnish an example to others who might 
 wish to commit the like." 
 
 Crushed at first by the unexpected sentence 
 Servetus rose with simple courage to meet his 
 fate, refusing to Farel a recantation of his errors, 
 and though he asked the pardon of Calvin for any 
 wrong he might have done him, he would not 
 yield his opinions. His one request was for a death 
 in whose less fierce torments he might be sure not 
 to deny his convictions. The story of his execu- 
 tion is one of an awful mingling of mistaken jus- 
 tice, devotion to truth, and, it must be allowed, 
 even of vindictiveness. Towards noon of October 
 27th, the procession came to a halt in the Place de 
 Champel. Servetus appeared to be completely hum- 
 bled, resigned, and submissive to his fate. At the 
 funeral pile Farel led the people in prayer. The 
 executioner fastens him by iron chains to the stake 
 amid the fagots, puts a crown of leaves covered 
 with sulphur on his head, and binds his book by 
 his side. The sight of the flaming torch extorts 
 from him a piercing shriek of "miserere cordias" in 
 his native tongue; the spectators fall back with a 
 
Cai^vin and Skrvetus. 159 
 
 shudder; the flames soon reach him, and consume 
 him in the forty-fourth year of his fitful Hfe. In 
 the last moments he was heard to pray in smoke 
 and agony, with a loud voice, "Jesus Christ, thou 
 Son of the Eternal God, have mercy upon me." ^ 
 Thus he died for the doctrine of the Trinity which 
 he had upheld during many years of life. 
 
 The present age makes no mistake in its sym- 
 pathy with Servetus. The sixteenth century is re- 
 pulsive to the twentieth century in its unfeeling ver- 
 dict of the stake for opinion's sake, and we leave 
 the scene with conflicting emotions. 
 
 The growth of Calvin's spirit from the shrink- 
 ing to the severe is a fact worth recalling. In 
 the earlier editions of his Institutes are passages 
 which show that he had convictions that heretics 
 should not be punished, at least with harshness. 
 He says: "We should strive by all possible means, 
 by exhortation, and teaching, by clemency and kind- 
 ness, and by our prayers to God, that they may be 
 commended to better thoughts, and return to the 
 bosom of the Church." This and other passages 
 are altered in later editions. What changed the 
 man? Possibly his naturally acid temper became 
 more bitter with the accumulation of conflicts, and 
 the crisis which came in the year 1553 brought him 
 to the last level of bitterness against all opposition. 
 He had sufficient support from his surrounding 
 theologians. Though a few condemned the exceed- 
 
 1 So Dr. Schaff in Swiss Ref. 
 
i6o John Cai.vin: The State:sman. 
 
 ing fierceness of the sentence and its execution, yet 
 the great majority of the leading Protestants, like 
 Melanchthon, the mildest of all men, declared it a 
 just verdict. Even Guizot, writing within the last 
 half century, says that "Calvin's cause was the good 
 one, that it was the cause of morality, of social 
 order, and of civilization. Servetus was the rep- 
 resentative of a system false in itself, superficial 
 under the pretense of science, and destructive alike 
 of moral dignity in the individual, and of moral 
 order in human society." This on one side. 
 
 On the other this. At the third centennial of 
 the anniversary of the death of Calvin, held at 
 Geneva, May 2J, 1864, M. le pasteur Coutin, an 
 eloquent speaker, said: "Make every allowance for 
 the spirit of the age, for the prevailing prejudices 
 which not even a man of genius can altogether 
 escape; make allowance for all the necessities of 
 the time and the pressure of circumstances ; make 
 allowance for whatever you choose; but the fact 
 still remains that the laws and measures by means 
 of which Calvin endeavored to ensure unity of 
 conviction in Geneva are a stain upon his memory, 
 an element condemned beforehand in all his work, 
 upon which time ought to pass a just sentence." 
 
 This is Geneva herself in the third century from 
 the scene. A half century later, 1903, the monu- 
 ment to Servetus reveals the sympathy of the 
 thinking world. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 CALVIN— THE MAN. 
 
 It is difficult for us who cultivate a smiling 
 charity towards opponents to enter into the men- 
 tal operations of an intolerant logician of the six- 
 teenth century, and for a materialist age like ours 
 to measure the motives of a literalist-mystic like 
 Calvin. He was great, and he erred. According 
 to Guizot his errors were those of his times, his 
 greatness of all times. He touched world-problems 
 and lives to-day. ''The greatest minds in history," 
 says John Morley, "are those who in a full career 
 and amid the turbid extremities of political action, 
 have yet touched closest and at most points the 
 wide, everstanding problems of the world, and the 
 things in which men's intent never dies." ^ Of this 
 far-shining company John Calvin was assuredly 
 one. There is therefore nothing about him, his 
 appearance, habits, methods of work, views, powers, 
 aims, in which we are not interested. 
 
 According to the description of his most in- 
 timate friend, Beza, Calvin was of middle stature, 
 of feeble health, courteous, kind, grave, and digni- 
 
 1 Cromwell, p. 6. 
 
 II i6i 
 
i62 John Calvin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 fied in deportment. His frame was meagre, even 
 emaciated, his face was thin, pale, finely chiseled, 
 mouth well-formed, he wore a long pointed beard, 
 his hair was black, his nose prominent, his fore- 
 head lofty, his eyes flaming. His dress was plain 
 and neat, his habits were methodical in the ex- 
 treme, his abstemiousness at times incredible, his 
 frame altogether too slight for his mighty labors. 
 Death worked little change in his countenance, for 
 Beza remarked that he looked in death almost the 
 same as alive in sleep. 
 
 He was after a sort a Stoic, or a modern Hebrew 
 Prophet. Duty, integrity, single-eyed devotion to 
 his ideal as he saw it dominatejd his life. Below 
 his autograph in the frontispiece of Henry's smaller 
 biography are the words ''Cor meum velut macta- 
 tam Domino in sacriUcium offero." The words 
 describe a fitting symbol — a hand offering a bleed- 
 ing heart to God. His frail health was a constant 
 hindrance to his plans and toil. We find frequent 
 mention of his sickness as a reason for postponing 
 certain labors. ''Completely worn out," he writes. 
 "Before I have concluded," — ^he is about to send 
 off a letter in 1547 — "a cough has seized me, and 
 hits me so hard upon the shoulder that I can not 
 draw a stroke of the pen without acute pain." The 
 signature of another letter tells all the story : "John 
 Calvin, confined to bed;" — that all is his grim pur- 
 pose to keep in touch with the age for whose bet- 
 terment he was so largely responsible, and the 
 
Calvin — The Man. 163 
 
 wracked frame whose weakness his mighty will 
 bent to high service in the work of the Church. 
 
 Calvin's mode of living was of the simplest. 
 "When a man," he says, "is content with scanty 
 food and common clothing, and does not require 
 from the humblest more frugality than he shows 
 and practices himself, shall it be said that such 
 an one is too sumptuous and lives in too high a 
 style?" His pleasures were few and simple. John 
 Knox found him playing bowls on a Sunday after- 
 noon. "He himself made no scruple in engaging in 
 play with the seigneurs of Geneva ; but that was the 
 innocent game of the clef (key), which consists 
 in being able to push the keys the nearest possible 
 to the edge of the table." ^ His goods and pos- 
 sessions amounted to about two hundred dollars. 
 He derived no profit from his books, though they 
 were dedicated to princes and noblemen. The only 
 really valuable bit of fine ware he received was a 
 silver goblet, from the Lord of Varennes. 
 
 He loved truth, and he loved men, not possibly 
 as the warm-hearted Luther drew his fellows to 
 him, yet with no scant devotion to their good. His 
 affection for Farel and Viret is seen in his dedi- 
 cation to them of his Commentary on Titus : "I do 
 not think there have ever been friends who have 
 lived together in such fast friendship and concord, 
 as we have during our ministry." When Viret lost 
 his wife Calvin wrote to him : "Would that I could 
 
 1 Bonnet's I^etters, 2, 49. 
 
i64 John CaIvVin: This Statesman. 
 
 fly thither, that I might alleviate your sorrow, or 
 at least bear a part of it." 
 
 Viret, Farel, Beza, Knox and Melanchthon held 
 him in undying affection. Knox was his senior by 
 a few years, but declared him the greatest man 
 since the days of the apostles; Farel who had 
 stopped him on that fateful night from going on 
 beyond Geneva, loved him freely to the end, and 
 in his old age hastened from Neufchatel to Geneva 
 on foot to bid the dying leader farewell ; Beza, the 
 most cultured of all the Reformers, knew Calvin 
 intimately for sixteen years, and revered him as a 
 father ; Melanchthon wished to die on his bosom. 
 No one can turn the pages of his voluminous cor- 
 respondence, and fail to see that his letters to 
 various persons scatter the slanders of Audin to 
 the four winds, those misrepresentations which ac- 
 cuse Calvin of lacking an unselfish heart, and of 
 being made of marble. True, he was endowed with 
 a most forceful wrath, which he did not always 
 hold in leash and then woe betide the man against 
 whom he aimed the shafts of his scorn and wit. 
 ''Even a dog barks," he would say, "when his mas- 
 ter is attacked; how could I be silent when the 
 honor of my Master is assailed?" He wrote to his 
 friend Bucer that he found it difficult to tame the 
 wild beast of his wrath, and humbly asked pardon. 
 
 "An irritable pride is one of the salient traits 
 of his character," says Dyer, and adds, "This feel- 
 ing particularly betrayed itself where Calvin's lit- 
 
CaIvVIn — The Man. 165 
 
 erary reputation or his authority as a teacher was 
 concerned; for these were the instruments of his 
 power and influence." Beza admits Calvin's prone- 
 ness to anger, which however is characterized by 
 Calvin himself, more correctly, as morosity. As to 
 his "surly" disposition Henry deemed that he was 
 what Bossuet called him, "un genie triste/' He 
 finds in him eagerness, indignant zeal for the truth, 
 yet in his letters a cheerful, even childlike confi- 
 dence and in his manners nothing formal nor re- 
 pulsive. Small things excited his impatience. He 
 was at times harsh, and possibly to his friends his 
 irritableness, based largely upon his physical infirm- 
 ities, was at times somewhat trying. The Genevan 
 Council happily called his main feature of moral 
 worth, "Majesty of Character." It was a contem- 
 porary of Calvin, the Italian Guicciardini, who 
 warned statesmen against levity. "Light men are 
 the very instruments for whatever is bad, danger- 
 ous, and hurtful ; flee from them like fire." Calvin 
 would have had only the rarest praise from the 
 wise Italian, for he took life seriously. His life 
 was a link in the long, the divine order of things, 
 and everything that in any way interfered with the 
 achievement of his ideal was sternly put aside. 
 
 He was of granite mould; Melanchthon often 
 desponded; Knox, fiery, energetic, daring, found 
 himself disheartened. But no trace of weakness 
 can be discovered in Calvin's faith. He must have 
 been caught in the worst perplexities, but his con- 
 
i66 John Cai^vin: Thk State:sman. 
 
 fidence in God suffered no just impeachment. He 
 was ready for any fate, and true to his doctrine 
 was his practice. "I am assured, in the first place, 
 that God has me in ^flis holy keeping; and, in the 
 second place, that if it pleases Him we should 
 suffer, I would gladly die for Him." This marked 
 the great soul. 
 
 His unselfishness appears in an entry upon the 
 Registres of the Council, January 29, 1546; after 
 a serious sickness the Seigneury presented him with 
 ten crowns. "On his recovery he returns the money 
 to the Council, who cause it to be expended in the 
 purchase of a cask of wine for him, thus leaving 
 him no alternative but to accept it." On another 
 occasion he refused an increase of salary except on 
 the condition that his poorer brethren were to be 
 likewise benefited. 
 
 Calvin's appreciation of the wonders of the nat- 
 ural world was lively and definite. In the chapter 
 of the Institutes on Creation he is full of admiration 
 for the order and beauty of the universe of God. 
 "God has wonderfully adorned heaven and earth 
 with the utmost possible abundance, variety, and 
 beauty, like a large and splendid mansion, most 
 exquisitely and copiously furnished, and exhibited 
 in man the masterpiece of his works by distin- 
 guishing him with such splendid beauty and such 
 numerous and great privileges." 
 
 Still those are in the right who claim that his 
 realm of joy was that of the moral universe and 
 
CAI.VIN — The Man. 167 
 
 not that of the G2nevan hills. We find small ref- 
 erence to the glories that were the perpetual feast 
 of men who in a later day saw with opened eyes 
 the splendors of mountain and lake and sky. It 
 was not till the close of the eighteenth century that 
 the charms of the outer world, the flower, the 
 crag, and the cloud, began to refresh the heart of 
 literature. Addison had little to say of the mar- 
 vels of the Alps in the opening of the eighteenth 
 century, nor had John Milton a hundred years be- 
 fore Wordsworth, lifted his hard and battling age 
 into loving appreciation of the beauties of nature. 
 It is indeed strange that the exceeding charm of the 
 city and its surroundings in which Calvin spent 
 nearly half his life should not have evoked a warmer 
 word than we can find anywhere in his writings. 
 The city of Geneva has a noble outlook. It pos- 
 sesses cathedral, the bridge spanning the Rhone, a 
 **blue-green floor," and near by the hills of the Jura, 
 and in the further distance Mont Blanc, all detailed 
 in the crystal air as if with the fidelity of a mi- 
 croscope. On a clear day the lake is ruffled into 
 almost impossible colors. One appreciates Mr. 
 Howell's description of Geneva as *'an admirable 
 illustration printed in colors, for a holiday number, 
 to imitate a water-color sketch." The marvel of 
 it all is Mount Blanc when uncovered, whether in 
 rosy splendor or in its white ghastliness. It is barely 
 possible that Calvin had this vision in mind when 
 he wrote to his friend, M. de Falaise, February 25, 
 
i68 John Cai^vin: The State:sman. 
 
 1547, with regard to a house he was engaging for 
 him : "You will have in front a small garden, and a 
 noticeably spacious court. Behind there is another 
 garden. A great saloon, with as beautiful view 
 as you could well desire for the Summer." 
 
 Art, save in the forms of poetry and music, to 
 save literature for later discussion, did not demand 
 the attention of Calvin. He insisted upon congre- 
 gational singing, and wrote a few versions of 
 Psalms, and a hymn of praise to Christ in which 
 a real fervor and tenderness run through the lines, 
 a sample of which is appended : 
 
 "I greet Thee, who my sure Redeemer art, 
 My only trust, and Saviour of my heart! 
 Who so much toil and woe 
 And pain didst undergo, 
 For my poor worthless sake; 
 We pray Thee, from our hearts, 
 All idle griefs and smarts 
 And foolish cares to take. 
 
 Thou art the true and perfect gentleness 
 No harshness hast Thou, and no bitterness : 
 Make us to taste and prove. 
 Make us adore and love. 
 The sweet grace found in Thee; 
 With longing to abide 
 Ever at Thy dear side. 
 In Thy sweet unity. 
 
 Poor, banished exiles, wretched sons of Eve, 
 Full of all sorrows, unto Thee we grieve; 
 
 To Thee we bring our sighs, 
 
 Our groanings and our cries; 
 
Cai^vin — The) Man. 169 
 
 Thy pity, Lord, we crave; 
 
 We take the sinner's place, 
 
 And pray Thee, of Thy grace. 
 To pardon and to save." 
 
 If in any field of art we look for pre-eminence 
 in the case of Calvin, it must be in that of litera- 
 ture. Here he leads the throng of writers of his 
 day, in two languages, Latin and French. "With 
 him," says Van Laun, "French prose may be said 
 to have attained its manhood; the best of all his 
 contemporaries, and of those who had preceded 
 him, did but use as a staff or as a toy that which 
 he employed as a burning sword." ^ 
 
 He holds rank with the great satirists of the 
 world. Though to Rabelais he was "the demoniac 
 of Geneva," he made the power of his keen blade 
 felt wherever it fell. "Satire without a smile is 
 perhaps the nearest approach to outward feeling 
 which we find recorded, of the hypochondriac re- 
 former of Geneva." ^ His wit was not so coarse 
 as that of Rabelais, nor so gentle as that of Mon- 
 taigne, but it was none the less dreaded by his 
 opponents. When the need arises it leaps out in 
 his famous letters. He was one of the great letter 
 writers of the world. When too poor to purchase 
 books, he wrote; in exile he wrote; when sick he 
 wrote. So inevitable was it that he should tie his 
 age, and for that matter, succeeding ages to him- 
 self. His voluminous correspondence included il- 
 
 1 French I^iterature, i. 2 0p. cit. 
 
lyo John Calvin: The; Statesman. 
 
 lustrious names. To give but a handful, we find 
 in the Hst the following: Francis I, Henry II, 
 Edward VI of England, Anthony of Navarre, Mar- 
 guerite of Valois, the Duchess of Ferrara, Coligny, 
 Luther, Knox, Cranmer, Melanchthon, Conde, and 
 many others. He wrote to plain and needy people 
 with frank and tender solicitude, and to the poten- 
 tates of earth with candor and dignity. To the 
 young King of England he sent the following mes- 
 sage: 
 
 "It is a great thing to be a king, and especially of 
 such a country; and yet I doubt not that you regard it 
 as above all comparison greater to be a Christian. It is 
 indeed, an inestimable privilege that God has granted to 
 you sire, that you should be a Christian king, and that 
 you should serve Him as His lieutenant to uphold the 
 kingdom of Jesus Christ in England." 
 
 The year of his death he writes, January 8, 
 1564, to the Duchess of Ferrara: 
 
 "Madame, I pass to another subject. I have long 
 had a great wish to make you a present of a gold piece. 
 Think how bold I am; but because I supposed you had a 
 similar one, I have not ventured hitherto, for it is only 
 its rarity that can give it any value in your esteem. 
 Finally I have delivered it to the bearer to show to you, 
 and if it is a novelty to you, will you be pleased to keep 
 it? It is the finest present that I have in my power to 
 make you." 
 
 This was a gold medal which her father. King 
 Eouis XII had caused to be struck at the time of 
 his dispute with the Pope, Julius II, with this 
 
CaIvVin — Thi: Man. 171 
 
 exergue: "Perdam Bahylonis Nomen!" — I will de- 
 stroy the name of Babylon. The gift was very 
 agreeable to the daughter of the King, for it was a 
 fitting reminder of her own stiff resistance to the 
 claims of the Papacy. 
 
 It was as a Commentator that he reigned su- 
 preme in his day, and, for that matter survives 
 to-day. Beginning with his work on Romans while 
 in Strassburg, in 1540, he continued until the year 
 of his death in Geneva, with his work on Joshua. 
 A more extensive series, and one more clear and 
 marked with spiritual insight, and more modern 
 in method, was not produced by the age of the 
 Reformation. Next to the Institutes and to the 
 work of the Academy, Calvin's Commentaries rank 
 for influence in the spread of his ideas throughout 
 Europe and America. 
 
 While it is scarcely in place In so brief a volume 
 and one bent to state the more permanent features 
 of Calvin's life work, to elaborate his theological 
 position, somewhat is demanded in that line. Cal- 
 vin's great emphasis was upon the sovereignty of 
 God — ^the holy, just, and wise ruler of the universe. 
 His belief in the supreme authority of the Bible ; 
 his conviction that man — made in the image of 
 God — fell into deep depravity, totally unable to 
 help himself; and that from this hopeless state, 
 some men are freely rescued by God's undeserved 
 mercy; the means of which deliverance is Jesus 
 Christ, whose indwelling becomes man's personal 
 
172 John Calvin: The State:sman. 
 
 possession, and in consequence man becomes holy 
 unto God and elect unto God, while others are 
 plunged into hell independent of any demerit, the 
 sole cause of salvation or of loss being the divine 
 choice: this over-emphasis of the Divine side is a 
 back number in theology to-day. His system of 
 theology has suffered much wear; and "the larger 
 part of the Protestant world, even in the Churches 
 which most honor his memory, has turned far 
 aside from it." ^ His view of total depravity has 
 gone the way with his peculiar estimate of the 
 Holy Scriptures as written by ''amanuenses" of 
 the Holy Ghost. His theory of the penal satisfac- 
 tion of the Atonement has been widely abandoned. 
 His valuation of discipline has been wholly re- 
 jected. Yet his profound emphasis upon Christian 
 intelligence, his primary appeal to mind, above all 
 his high premium upon character, his exaltation of 
 the personal nature of salvation, these abide. 
 
 The two chief errors which Guizot lays to the 
 charge of Calvin, are his belief in the infallibility 
 of the verbal statements of the Bible, and his doc- 
 trine of predestination. It was around the second 
 of these that most of the controversy was had 
 between the Reformer and his enemies and some of 
 his friends. Calvin's own words well state the 
 doctrine of the two destinies : 
 
 "Predestination, by which God adopts some to the 
 hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no 
 
 1 Walker. John Calvin, p. 425. 
 
Calvin— The; Man. 173 
 
 one desirous of the credit of piety, dares absolutely to 
 deny. . . . Predestination we call the eternal decree of 
 God, by which he has determined in Himself, what he 
 would have to become of every individual of mankind. 
 For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but 
 eternal life is fore-ordained for some, and eternal damna- 
 tion for others. Every man, therefore, being created for 
 one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated 
 either to life or death. This God has not only testified 
 in particular persons, but has given us a specimen of it 
 in the whole posterity of Abraham, which should evi- 
 dently show the future condition of every nation to depend 
 upon His decision."^ 
 
 Yet Calvin did not go beyond Luther in his 
 assertion of the unfree will of man. While Luther 
 swept away many mediaeval doctrines, he did not 
 hesitate to make God responsible for the ill as well 
 as for the good in the world. Strange, both in the 
 case of Luther and of Calvin, that a fervent belief 
 in the impotence of the will and the exercise of its 
 fullest mastery should have characterized the two 
 most masterful men of the age. The paradox has 
 been well stated by Mark Pattison: "In the sup- 
 pression of the liberties of Geneva was sown the 
 seed of the liberties of Europe. ... By the de- 
 moralizing touch of fatalism was evoked a moral 
 energy which had not been felt since the era of 
 persecution." ^ 
 
 The linked perspective of Calvin's theology 
 brushed aside, not only sentiment, but also 
 
 1 Bk, 3, ch. 21, No. I. 2 Assays, 2-7. 
 
174 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 
 
 sympathy, for his stern logic did not hesitate to 
 impute to God the will to separate infants into 
 two classes, and this appears in the Westminster 
 Confession which teaches that "elect infants dying 
 in infancy," and "all other elect persons, who are 
 incapable of being outwardly called by the min- 
 istry of the Word, are saved by Christ through the 
 Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He 
 pleaseth." In a note accompanying his discussion 
 of the Creeds of the Church, Dr. Schaff adds: 
 "Elect infants, however, implies, in the strict Cal- 
 vinistic system, 'reprobate' infants who are lost. 
 This negative feature has died out." ^ 
 
 How a belief so oppugnant to the gentler mind 
 of the present century could have held sway so 
 long has puzzled thousands, yet the solution of the 
 difficulty is not so far to seek. In the long per- 
 spective of the Church's advance to power the 
 doctrine of exclusive salvation had a mighty effect. 
 The early Church Fathers did not shrink from de- 
 claring that persons external to the Church were 
 under a sentence of condemnation. The Church 
 according to a favorite image of the Fathers, was a 
 solitary ark floating upon a shoreless sea of ruin. 
 If they were not unanimous on the subject, and we 
 must except Justin Martyr and Clemens Alexan- 
 drinus, of whom the first said that Socrates was in 
 the sight of God a Christian, yet the great majority 
 took the narrower view. Pagans, Jews and schis- 
 matics were doomed to eternal fires. 
 
 IP. 97. 
 
CAI.VIN— The: Man. 175 
 
 This doctrine, not without its sustaining might 
 in the days when the infant Church needed to for- 
 tify itself against awful persecutions, reached its 
 climax of influence in the days when the spiritual 
 authority waged war against the diversities of pri- 
 vate judgment, put a moral yoke upon ferocious 
 tyrants, and went far to abolish slavery in Europe. 
 The doctrine of exclusive salvation was tenaciously 
 supported by practically all the Reformers. It en- 
 abled them to make "the anarchy of transition" less 
 perilous. It enabled those who broke away from 
 the Romish Church to defy it. Luther and Calvin 
 agree with Aquinas in this. Calvin says : "Beyond 
 the bosom of the Church no remission of sins is 
 to be hoped for, nor any salvation." With this the 
 various Confessions, from 1551, when the Saxon 
 Confession was presented to the Synod of Trent, 
 to the "Humble Advice concerning a Confession 
 of Faith" of the Presbyterian divines assembled at 
 Westminster, 1647, stand fast. Zwingli alone 
 openly repudiated the doctrine, on reading whose 
 statement of the fact Luther said he had no hopes 
 of the salvation of Zwingli. 
 
 Few men have proved victor in immediate de- 
 bate as often as Calvin did. Few have projected 
 themselves so far into the days ahead. Three illus- 
 trious citizens of Geneva have forever bound their 
 names to the city by the lake. Rousseau was born 
 there in 1712. Madame de Stael lifted the neigh- 
 boring Coppet to the notice of the world. Calvin's 
 
176 John Cai^vin: Th^ State:sman. 
 
 place in the city we know. These three stand for 
 the three centuries. The cry of Calvin is, "Return 
 to the Bible !" That of Rousseau, '^Return to Na- 
 ture!" That of Madame de Stael, "Return to the 
 New Humanity!" But the voice of Calvin is still 
 the mightiest, in that his errors were those of his 
 day, while the truth he fought for is for all time. 
 Irony may feast on his treatment of Cruet, one of 
 the first victims of the new regime, who adopted 
 the Bernese fashion of wearing breeches with 
 slashes and plaits at the knees, and pinned a warn- 
 ing to Calvin's pulpit, calling him a "gross hypo- 
 crite," who was tortured and beheaded; or to his 
 contention with Ami Perrin, military chief of the 
 republic, whom Calvin nicknamed the "stage em- 
 peror," and banished, and with him his gay and 
 sharp-tongued wife ; or to his victory over Ameaux, 
 who, for declaring Calvin a heretic and nothing but 
 a Picard, was paraded through the streets of 
 Geneva in his shirt, head bare, and a torch in his 
 hand, and ended on his knees for pardon. Yet over 
 against this one should picture the man of iron 
 who once quelled a popular fury by walking un- 
 armed into the crowd and calling to the people 
 to begin with him if they must shed blood. He 
 surely was a real man. He was candid. He was 
 sure of himself. He was wonderfully gifted, a 
 prodigious toiler, a man, too, with a mighty con- 
 viction of duty, intense, hard towards his enemies, 
 faithful to his friends, never saving himself when 
 the kingdom of God was in any peril. 
 
Calvin — Thi: Man. 177 
 
 The complete triumph of Calvin in Geneva was 
 reached by the year 1555. The Perrinists were 
 defeated; his majority in the Council was assured; 
 the increasing influence of French refugees of high 
 social position was more and more felt in the pub- 
 lic life of the city; the new generation began to 
 give him full honor, and when a simple-minded 
 refugee spoke of him as "Brother Calvin," he was 
 quickly told that the only proper term in Geneva 
 was "Master Calvin." All this, too, though he 
 was simply a pastor and teacher, without any offi- 
 cial title. His plain living was unchanged, though 
 his house was the center of attraction to distin- 
 guished visitors from foreign lands. His ability 
 to work as if he were endowed with a giant's frame 
 ceased not till near the close of his life. A vast 
 acquaintance and a few intimates marked his social 
 life. So he drew on to the close of an honored 
 career. Struggle, rebuff, and neglect gave way 
 to a recognition which was open and a reverence 
 which was real. 
 
 The crown of his work was reached in the 
 establishment of the academy. Though his work 
 in Geneva was primarily religious, yet his appre- 
 ciation of industrial and educational agencies was 
 pronounced, and reveals the statesmanlike quality 
 of his mind. He urged the Little Council to de- 
 velop the weaving industry, and showed for his day 
 liberal views upon the question of trade. 
 
 Above all he was concerned that Geneva should 
 12 
 
178 John Calvin: Ths; Statesman. 
 
 become an intellectual people. He had utmost con- 
 fidence in the place of trained brains. By 1556 
 he was free enough from his strife with opposition 
 to push his plans for the founding of a great school, 
 and make the "College" a permanent institution. 
 The buildings which have largely remained till 
 now were begun in 1558, and a current of gifts 
 was started which in a few more years swelled 
 to capital proportions. Noble assistants came to his 
 aid, among them the Greek scholar of Lausanne, 
 Theodore Beza, who succeeded him as chief pastor 
 of Geneva, and head of the Swiss Protestants. The 
 success of the Academy was great, both in the im- 
 mediate and the far future. It was a final step 
 towards the realization of Calvin's ideal of a Chris- 
 tian commonwealth. Its molding power not only 
 in Geneva, but throughout Europe, defies the closest 
 search. Next to the Institutes the Academy sur- 
 passed all other forces in the spread and the per- 
 petuation of Calvin's noblest thought and plan for 
 the Reformed Churches. 
 
 For twenty-three years Calvin labored in Ge- 
 neva, and then passed on to others the system of 
 his making. He died in the height of his mental 
 powers, May 2y, 1564, the same year with Michel- 
 angelo, and, too, the same year in which both 
 Shakespeare and Galileo were born. The reform- 
 er's urgent spirit refused to yield to his multiply- 
 ing maladies, aches of head and joints, gravel, dys- 
 pepsia, fever, and asthma. When unable to walk 
 
Calvin — The Man. 179 
 
 he was carried to church in a chair. He preached 
 his last sermon on the 6th of February, 1564. On 
 the 25th of April he made his last will. In it are 
 heard all the notes of his great character, his genu- 
 ine humility, his complete reliance upon the grace 
 of God, his declaration of a most sincere purpose 
 in all his battles for the truth, to which he had con- 
 secrated his genius, his passion for the cause of the 
 Reformed Church, and not a word of bitterness 
 against his enemies, or even mention of them, save 
 in this sentence: "I also testify and declare that, 
 in all the contentions and disputations in which I 
 have been engaged with the enemies of the gospel, 
 I have used no impostures, no wicked and sophis- 
 tical devices, but have acted candidly and sincerely 
 in defending the truth." He leaves his little prop- 
 erty to be disposed of by his brother, Antoine Cal- 
 vin, after the payment of all debts. On the 26th 
 of April the senators came in a body to see him, 
 and were addressed by the patriarch, thanking 
 them for their support, and begging their pardon 
 for his displays of anger, and leaving them his ex- 
 hortations to preserve the doctrine and discipline 
 to which he had given his life. On the 28th he 
 received the ministers of Geneva, and took each 
 one by the hand in final and affectionate farewell. 
 On the 19th of May he invited the ministers to his 
 house for a simple repast, had himself borne into 
 the adjoining room, where he tasted a little food 
 in company with them, and was then carried back 
 
i8o John Cai^vin: The: State:sman. 
 
 to the bed which he never left until the day of his 
 death. In the grip of excruciating pains he spent 
 his last days in frequent quotations of the comfort- 
 ing words of the Bible. He was heard to use often 
 the ninth verse of the thirty-ninth Psalm: "Thou 
 bruisest me, O Lord, but it is enough for me that 
 it is Thy hand." About eight o'clock on Saturday, 
 the 27th of May, he fell peacefully asleep, conscious 
 to the last breath, says Beza. According to his 
 expressed wish he was buried without pomp in the 
 Plain Palais Cemetery, during the afternoon of 
 Sunday, the 28th. 
 
 The minute accounts of his last days, given by 
 Beza and other intimate friends, are an utter refutal 
 of the hideous stories told by Bolsec fifteen years 
 after Calvin died, and retailed by Audin and, 
 strange to say, even by Dr. M. J. Spalding, Roman 
 Catholic Archbishop, who does not hesitate to ve- 
 neer the vilest slanders against the Reformer's good 
 name with such a statement as this : "The early Cal- 
 vinists were hypocrites, and their boasted austerity 
 was little better than a sham, if it was not even 
 a cloak to cover enormous wickedness." This is 
 worse than libel ; it is caricature. It is too ridicu- 
 lous to be offensive. 
 
 When Pope Pius IV heard of the death of Cal- 
 vin, he said: "The strength of that heretic con- 
 sisted in this, that money never had the slightest 
 charm for him. If I had such servants, my domin- 
 ions would extend from sea to sea." 
 
. CaIvVin— The: Man. i8i 
 
 The stranger asks for the spot where Calvin 
 was buried. A plain stone with the letters "J- ^•" 
 is pointed out, no one knows by what authority. 
 The old man who showed the stone to Dr. Tulloch 
 seemed to have little other idea of Calvin's work 
 than that of the man who limited the number of 
 dishes at dinner, — the memory of the sumptuary 
 laws of the great autocrat of Geneva being thus 
 preserved by a popular tradition in which the ludi- 
 crous and the melancholy are oddly mixed. Speak- 
 ing of Calvin's grave, Henry says : "Respecting his 
 last will, the Genevese neither raised a monument 
 to his memory nor marked his grave with a stone. 
 There in the church-yard, which is so decorated 
 with the tombs of others, the grave of Calvin is 
 unmarked and unknown." 
 
 In this he shared the lot of Moses. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 In his thorough grasp of the reHgious situation 
 of Europe Calvin surpassed all men of his day, 
 and Geneva was simply the fulcrum which he used 
 to lift upon a firm basis the work of the Reformed 
 Churches. He had many advantages denied to 
 other reformers; he was the most widely traveled, 
 the most remarkable correspondent, and for years 
 before his death the most renowned and influential 
 religious leader of his day. A holy contagion 
 spread from Geneva, and its type of self-governing 
 and strictly disciplined Church was firmly planted 
 where governments were hostile, as well as in lands 
 that gave his system hearty welcome. France, the 
 Netherlands, England, Scotland, Poland, Hungary, 
 Germany, and to the far West, America, have traced 
 back to the tiny city by the lake the sources of their 
 peculiar types of Protestantism, not excluding ad- 
 ditions which later history has developed in some 
 of them. 
 
 Geneva became a veritable asylum to Calvin's 
 own countrymen, and as they came with scars of 
 their torture, and emerged from the passes of the 
 182 
 
State:smanship. 183 
 
 Jura, and caught sight of the city in which Calvin 
 ruled, they fell upon their knees and gave thanks 
 to God. They made good their stay, and joined 
 with those who had preceded them in strenuous 
 efforts to promote the cause of Protestantism. Ge- 
 neva contained thirty printing-presses, and sent 
 forth an endless supply of material for the expan- 
 sion of the truth. Calvin was consulted at every 
 stage of the progress of the French Reformation, 
 and was called as pastor of the first Protestant 
 Church in Paris, but declined. He gave the Hugue- 
 nots their creed and polity, sent messengers with 
 letters to comfort sufferers and prisoners who had 
 renounced their old-time faith, and as one of his 
 biographers records his interest: "As the eye of 
 a father watches over his children, Calvin watched 
 with untiring care of love over all these relations 
 in their manifold ramifications, and sought to be 
 the same to the great community of his brethren in 
 France what he was to the little Republic at home."^ 
 His course at the time of the Amboise conspiracy 
 reflects honor upon his name, for contrary to the 
 charge of Bossuet Calvin was opposed to the plot 
 of the few against the power of the Guises, and 
 warned them against its execution and predicted 
 its failure. In the awful persecutions which fell 
 upon the devoted Church of his planting, his spirit 
 animated every congregation and brightened the 
 path of every victim through his darkest hours. 
 
 IStahelin, i, 507. 
 
1S4 John Calvin: Tut State^sman. 
 
 The phases of French Protestantism were three : 
 first, an amorphous period ; second, one of more or 
 less sturdy expansion; third, one of active inter- 
 est in the poHtical concerns of the State. It began 
 with emphasis upon two principles ; that of free 
 inquiry, and that of individualism. But these did 
 not furnish the cohesive power so soon to be de- 
 manded in resisting the foes sworn to the extirpa- 
 tion of all heretics. The second phase began with 
 the issue of Calvin's Institutes. And though the 
 new cohesive power was gained at the expense of 
 a weakening of the earlier principles, nothing short 
 of the splendid order introduced by Calvin into his 
 system of thought and government could be ex- 
 pected to offset the equally great system just then 
 rising above the horizon in the work of the Jesuits. 
 
 By the year 1547 the Reformation had leavened 
 seventeen provinces and thirty-three of the prin- 
 cipal towns of France. The model was that of the 
 Church of Strassburg, founded by Calvin in 1536. 
 In eleven years, from 1555 to 1566, no less than one 
 hundred and twenty pastors were sent to France 
 from Geneva. The French Reformers had held 
 their meetings for worship and consultation at such 
 times and places as the exigencies of the moment 
 allowed. But on the 25th of May, 1559, a general 
 synod of all Protestant congregations in France 
 was deliberately convened in Paris. The ecclesi- 
 astical system adopted at this synod was dictated 
 by Calvin. In it one may see the mind of the ec- 
 
Statejsmanship. 185 
 
 cleslastical statesman. The Confession of Faith 
 which makes up the preface is an epitome of Cal- 
 vin's Institutes. The criterion of truth was the re- 
 vealed Word of God. Following this comes the 
 organization of the local Church, in which it was 
 ordered that the members of each body of the 
 faithful should elect a consistory (a body of ruling 
 elders), for calling a minister and celebrating the 
 sacraments. A certain number of such Churches 
 was to form a conference organized upon the basis 
 of representatives, elders, and ministers. The King- 
 dom of France was divided into provinces (sixteen 
 being the usual number), with a provincial synod 
 to be held annually in each section, composed of 
 all the ministers in the precincts and of one elder 
 from each local Church. Crowning this was a 
 national synod, to meet once in each year, com- 
 posed of two ministers and two elders to represent 
 each of the provincial synods. Such was the Na- 
 tional Church of France. One has only to substi- 
 tute for these titles the words presbyteries, kirk 
 sessions, and general assembly, and the National 
 Church of Scotland is before him in prototype. 
 
 The scenes of trial through which the spiritual 
 children of Calvin walked with the tread of heroes 
 bear bright witness to the power of an invisible 
 hand upon a distant crisis. History stands with 
 uncovered head in the presence of men and women 
 who need no other monument of their faith than 
 the story of how they faced the destruction of home 
 
i86 John Cai^vin: The; Statesman. 
 
 and the death of their dear ones. In the old Bastile 
 a venerable man is standing in chains before Henry 
 III. The king exclaims: "Recant, or I shall be 
 compelled to give you up to your enemies; these 
 two girls here are to be burned to-morrow." 
 
 "Sir," said Palissy the potter, "listen to me, 
 and I will teach you the way to talk like a king: 
 / can not be compelled to do wrong/' 
 
 Another scene is witnessed on the balcony of 
 Coligny. The wife of the noble, Charlotte de La- 
 val, is sitting by his side ; "Husband, why do you 
 not openly avow your faith, as your brother Andelols 
 has done?" 
 
 "Sound your own soul," he replied; ''are you 
 willing to be chased into exile with your children, 
 and to see your husband hunted to the death? I 
 will give you three weeks to consider, and then I 
 will take your advice." She looked her husband 
 steadily in the eye through her tears. "Husband, 
 the three weeks are ended ; do your duty, and leave 
 us to God." So Coligny becomes a file leader in 
 French history. 
 
 In the flight of every forlorn Huguenot, brav- 
 ing risks and hardships incredible to the bigoted 
 libertine who idled life away with the courtesans 
 of Versailles, one might read the overthrow of the 
 faith of Calvin, but in another interpretation of the 
 devotion of the runaways one might discover a 
 parallel to the emigration of Abraham, "who went 
 out, not knowing whither he went." 
 
Statesmanship. 187 
 
 The "Church of the Desert," as that of the 
 Huguenots was styled, with its motto — The Burn- 
 ing Bush — though widely scattered, had the power 
 to unify and to organize its members on every soil 
 it touched. In Germany, where Calvin had labored 
 for three years, the Reformed Church developed 
 into a strong branch of Universal Protestantism. 
 There it expressed itself in the Heidelberg Cate- 
 chism, "the most widely accepted symbol of the 
 Calvinistic faith." In Hungary it gained a firm 
 foothold, and to-day two-thirds of the Evangelical 
 population, about one-seventh of the inhabitants, 
 are in Churches Calvinistic in origin and polity.^ 
 In Holland none of the hellish devices of their ene- 
 mies availed to daunt the courage or even to seri- 
 ously check the progress of the Dutch Protestants. 
 It was there, as has been remarked by Dr. Schaff, 
 that we must look to find the practical and eccles- 
 istical part of Calvin's total contribution of more 
 value than his theological. This will explain why 
 the Dutch Reformed Church, after having first 
 expelled Arminianism, which was "the necessary 
 and wholesome reaction against scholastic Calvin- 
 ism," was allowed to return to Holland after the 
 death of Maurice, and gradually pervaded the na- 
 tional Church. It was not so much the doctrine 
 of predestination, as the organizing skill of Calvin, 
 that kept Hollander and Scot true to his vow, and 
 expert in saving the Church from disintegration. 
 
 1 Walker's Calvin, p. 39s. 
 
iSS John Cai^vin: Th^ Statesman. 
 
 The fact to which attention has been called in 
 an earlier chapter falls into line. In his "Intel- 
 lectual Development of Europe" Dr. Draper re- 
 marks : "A reason for the sudden loss of expansive 
 force in the Reformation is found in its own in- 
 trinsic nature. The principle of decomposition 
 which it represented, and with which it was inex- 
 tricably entangled, necessarily implied oppug- 
 nancy." Doubtless this did breed dissensions among 
 the Protestants, and they became an army divided 
 against itself, in peril of surrendering to a watch- 
 ful and united foe. It is true, too, that Protestant- 
 ism, unlike its formidable antagonist, contained "no 
 fundamental principle that could combine distant 
 communities and foreign countries together ; it orig- 
 inated in dissent, and was embodied by separation. 
 It could not possess a concentrated power, nor rec- 
 ognize one apostolic man who might compress its 
 disputes, harmonize its powers, and wield it as a 
 mass." This observation is in the main true, 
 but it fails to do justice to the one man who 
 succeeded in typing completely the aggressive 
 power of Protestantism, and worthy of its honors, 
 John Calvin. The Reformation, which was begun 
 as criticism, did not end in destruction. It devel- 
 oped the spirit of free inquiry among peoples who 
 were working out the problems of constitutional 
 government, and became constructive of agencies 
 which were wise, practical, and successful in the 
 founding of mighty nations. 
 
Statejsmanship. 189 
 
 Yet it is to Scotland that one must go for fullest 
 proof of the amazing and immediate might of the 
 new faith. Calvin's influence upon this part of the 
 English-speaking world was unique. Discipline, pol- 
 ity, and doctrine were stamped with his genius. 
 Through the direct agency of another Calvin gained 
 Scotland for the Reformation, for what he was to 
 Geneva, and Luther to Germany, John Knox was 
 to the land of his birth. The five years of his exile 
 (1554-1^59), spent mostly in Geneva, made him 
 thoroughly familiar with the "most perfect school 
 of Christ that ever was since the days of the 
 Apostles," as he said. 
 
 Knox even outdid Calvin in his fiery energy for 
 the redemption of his people. His labors are too 
 well told in another volume of this series to call 
 for elaboration here. But one scene in his daugh- 
 ter's life reveals the temper of soul before which 
 all opposition was as chaff. Mrs. Welch was seek- 
 ing before the King of England, James I, the re- 
 turn of her banished husband. The King told her 
 he would grant it if she would persuade her hus- 
 band to submit to the bishops. "Please, your 
 Majesty," said the heroic woman, lifting up her 
 apron and extending it towards the King as if in 
 the act of receiving her husband's severed head 
 from the ax, "I 'd rather kep his head there !" 
 
 The Kirk in Scotland got into history in mem- 
 orable fashion. The people were for the most part 
 poor, and when they became a power in the State 
 
iQo John Cai^vin: Th^ State:sman. 
 
 they did not lean to costly shows, ceremonies, ritual, 
 and processions. Government by the majority was 
 in order. Lecky says, "The Kirk was essentially 
 republican." Says Froude: "The Scottish Com- 
 mons are the sons of their religion; they are so 
 because that religion taught them equality of man." 
 The preacher was called to his work by the elec- 
 tion of the congregation, not by the appointment 
 of king or bishop. 
 
 It has been reserved for a Frenchman, and that 
 too not of the faith of Calvin, to lift praise to its 
 highest height. Taine says of the Calvinists : "They 
 founded England in spite of the corruption of the 
 Stuarts; . . . they founded Scotland; they 
 founded the United States ; at this day they are 
 by their descendants founding Australia and colon- 
 izing the world."^ As this volume is not so much 
 a eulogy as an analysis, it will be well to inquire 
 further into this. 
 
 Bancroft is correct in saying that "the right 
 exercised by each congregation of electing its own 
 ministers was in itself a moral revolution."^ This 
 certainly did not fit in with the older plan of rule 
 in England, and King James I was true to his habit 
 of thought when he declared, "Presbytery agreeth 
 as well with monarchy as God and the devil." 
 Whatever came later in the age on the favorable 
 soil of America, it is certain that the long struggle 
 between the Stuarts and the Nonconformists in the 
 
 1 Eng. I,it. 2-472. 
 
Statesmanship. 191 
 
 seventeenth century failed to turn England over to 
 the Geneva school of statesmen, though theologic- 
 ally the latter made good in the famous Westmin- 
 ster Confession. 
 
 Imperfect beginnings were made by Luther, 
 Zwingli, and Calvin. They looked for complete- 
 ness of their partial work in another age.^ In 
 1526, Francis Lambert, of Avignon, proposed for 
 the Churches of Hesse a scheme of ecclesiastical 
 order which never went into operation there. It 
 "contemplates the formation of a pure congrega- 
 tion of true believers, in which the right of ecclesi- 
 astical self-government should be exercised imme- 
 diately by the congregation, not mediately through 
 representatives and delegates." Another part of 
 the platform made provision for a yearly synod of 
 the Churches to be "composed of the assembled 
 pastors and of delegates chosen immediately before 
 in the Church meetings." However, the plan did 
 not prevail. Neither Luther nor Melanchthon 
 thought the time ripe for the introduction of a 
 simple evangelical Church polity. 
 
 The scheme of Calvin expressed itself in both 
 the Congregational and the Presbyterian Churches ; 
 in the former through the Brownist or Independent 
 movement, in England, Holland, and New Eng- 
 land; in the latter in Scotland, England, and other 
 than the New England Colonies of the Western 
 World. The doctrine of Calvin filled the pulpits 
 
 iGieseler's Eccl. Hist., 4, 520. 
 
192 John Cai^vin: Thi: Statesman. 
 
 of both branches, the polity of only one. In both 
 the emphasis upon lay share in government had 
 large fruitage; in neither has the emphasis upon 
 what were the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, pre- 
 destination, election, reprobation, survived the at- 
 tacks of modern thought and the growing passion 
 for offering to all men a free gospel. 
 
 It is to the growth of the idea of lay share in 
 political life that we are to look for the proof that 
 the Reformation is in a deep sense the father of 
 modern democracy. It is not that Calvin was the 
 exclusive founder of the modern democratic state. 
 ;His trend of thought was aristocratic, and his dis- 
 / trust of the plain man prevented him from giving 
 ■ the layman that tremendous share in government 
 which has fallen to his lot in our days. Yet despite 
 Calvin's temperamental exclusiveness, the humble 
 man has entered into his kingdom, partly by the 
 measure of honor allowed him by Calvin, and 
 largely by the inevitable drift of Calvin's larger 
 conception of man's relation to God and human 
 rulers, and the steady thrust of the ages towards 
 democracy. 
 
 How the seeds of Calvinism vitalized the Eng- 
 lish-speaking communities and promoted demo- 
 cratic hopes and practices, has been very clearly 
 stated by Professor Charles Borgeaud, of the Uni- 
 versity of Geneva. In his ''Rise of Modern Democ- 
 racy in Old and New England," 1894, he has de- 
 voted himself to the history of democratic ideas 
 
Statesmanship. 193 
 
 and schemes of government. In his studies of 
 ancient democracies he reached a somewhat nega- 
 tive result; namely, that the most permanent con- 
 tribution of ancient democracy was a new concep- 
 tion of law. This possessed primarily a religious 
 character, a revelation of the will of Heaven, but 
 was, by the operation of popular suffrage, secular- 
 ized. In the East the original stamp prevailed, 
 and Law remained fixed, without flux or movement. 
 In the West it became human and progressive. But 
 this conception was more or less lost in the gloom 
 of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance and Refor- 
 mation and the political revolutions of the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries inaugurated this 
 conception of the modern State. The source of the 
 modern' State with its written Constitution is trace- 
 able to the work of the Reformers in the sixteenth 
 century. In this Professor Borgeaud has found a 
 yokefellow in Professor H. L. Osgood, who says: 
 "Calvinism, in spite of the aristocratic character 
 which it temporarily assumed, meant democracy 
 in Church government. . . ." Calvinists *'did 
 not need to search the records of antiquity to find 
 communities where the theory of human equality 
 was approximately realized. The local Church 
 furnished a much better model than any Greek 
 State. The theory upon which it was based was 
 easily transferred to the domain of politics." In 
 the bitter strifes between Cavalier and Puritan is 
 to be found in the "Agreement of the People," put 
 13 
 
194 John Calvin: The State:sman. 
 
 forward by Puritan officers, the first expression of 
 the fundamental principles of modern democracy. 
 The significance of the scheme has been generally 
 neglected by English historians, even Hallani, the 
 judicious, passing it by without slightest mention, 
 while Gardiner criticises its suggestions "as but 
 the dreams of a few visionaries." 
 
 The scheme v/as more than a dream. The drafts 
 of the proposed Constitution appeared three sepa- 
 rate times, all with the same name, in 1647, 1648, 
 and 1649. 'I'he discussions they aroused afforded 
 the people opportunity to become familiar with the 
 idea of a written constitution. And though the ''in- 
 substantial fabric" created by Cromwell's officers 
 fell in the clash of swords, the idea defeated in Old 
 England struck firm root in the New, and the 
 dream of Puritan visionaries in the seventeenth 
 century became the corner-stone of giant States in 
 the eighteenth. 
 
 Though the Reformation, and not the reform- 
 ers, must be credited with the democracy of mod- 
 ern times, it is true that the levers used by Calvin — 
 the two principles of free inquiry, and the priest- 
 hood of all believers — to break the power of the 
 Holy See, gave legal character to the religious 
 revolution, and contained the seeds of the political 
 revolution, which was inevitably linked with the 
 earlier one. It was a long path to the democracy 
 of the Apostolic Church, and an immediate return 
 meant a serious break with current ideas. The re- 
 
Statesmanship. 195 
 
 formers entered the path either ignorant of the 
 end, or beHeving themselves able to stop short of 
 the end. But once in, they proved leaders of a pro- 
 cession whose ultimate power outran their will to 
 control. In his theory of equality of all men in 
 the Church, Calvin declared the authority of the 
 faithful to choose their leaders. "But when the 
 J political question arose in Geneva in connection 
 with the religious question, the man took the upper 
 hand and his work became aristocratic."^ The 
 forms he imposed upon the exercise of the power 
 of the faithful made their authority illusory. How- 
 ever, the principle remained, and with mighty con- 
 sequences. The right of the congregation became 
 fact, and in due time came forth clad in the shape 
 of the sovereignty of the people. 
 
 When we remember that it was two and a half 
 centuries ago that the English democrats made 
 bold to proclaim their faith, 1648-9, and how far 
 they were in advance of their day, we scarcely 
 wonder that another tirfie and another land were 
 required for the complete outworking of their 
 scheme. They could not expect compliance with 
 their views from the great Cromwell. He was like 
 a shipmaster in a storm, holding everything in sub- 
 jection to his will between contending factions un- 
 til some harbor should be reached. Cromwell was 
 the leader of the Independents, as against the Epis- 
 copalians and the Presbyterians. Yet he was un- 
 
 iBorgeaud, 5. 
 
196 John Calvin: The Statesman. 
 
 able to look with any favor upon the plan of the 
 Independents, who were backing up the "Agree- 
 ment of the People" so long as the contention be- 
 tween his cause and that of the Cavaliers was hang- 
 ing in the balance. In the main the triumph of 
 Independency was the triumph of toleration and 
 republicanism, but it was not to be won in the 
 years immediately following Marston Moor, and 
 when the king's head was the stake in 1649. With- 
 out knowing how far his words would carry, Crom- 
 well said in 1648: "Every single man is judge of 
 just and right, as to the good and ill of a king- 
 dom." Yet he was no democrat. Like all truly 
 great men, Cromwell loved order, and the propo- 
 sition of the officers fathering the "Agreement" 
 tended for the while to a break both with the king 
 and the Parliament, and even with the lieutenant- 
 general himself. 
 
 The "Agreement" was turned down by Parlia- 
 ment as a seditious document. The army was 
 called to rendezvous at Ware in sections by the 
 cautious Fairfax, yet stubborn men were found by 
 thousands among the rank and file, and some officers 
 of the line, who wore on their hats copies of 
 -the "Agreement of the People," with the motto, 
 "England's Freedom and Soldiers' Rights," in cap- 
 ital letters on the outside. Cromwell rode up. "Re- 
 move me that paper !" he said. The refusal of the 
 soldiers and their complaints aroused him, and rid- 
 ing roughly among the ranks he commanded the 
 
State;smanship. 197 
 
 arrest of the ringleaders. Then convoking a Coun- 
 cil of War on the spot he had three condemned to 
 die, and one of the three, chosen by lot, shot at 
 the head of his regiment. 
 
 Though the strong hand of Cromwell restored 
 discipline, the army was not purified of its incip- 
 ient republicanism, and when two-thirds of the regi- 
 ments declared that they were ready to die rather 
 than give up the ''Agreement," Cromwell submitted, 
 and peace with the democratic party was signed 
 at Windsor. And on the 20th of January, 1648-9, 
 the "Agreement" was presented to Parliament in 
 the name of the army by the general-in-chief and 
 his council of officers. But grave business was on 
 hand, for on that very day the trial of Charles 
 Stuart began, and the democratic constitution was 
 laid aside; it may be, had been both foreseen and 
 discounted. It did not appear again. 
 
 The tenor of this remarkable document, as first 
 stated in 1647, ^^^ "ot printed in the original text 
 until 1894,^ can be understood from a brief quo- 
 tation from Article IV: "That the power of this, 
 and all future Representatives of this Nation, is 
 inferior only to theirs who chuse them, and doth 
 extend, without the consent or concurrence of any 
 other person or persons, to the enacting, altering, 
 and repealing of Lawes ; to the erecting and abol- 
 ishing of Offices and Courts ; to the appointing, re- 
 moving, and calling to account Magistrates, and 
 
 1 Borgeaud, p. 67. 
 
198 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 Officers of all degrees; to the making War and 
 Peace ; to the treating with f orraigne States : And 
 generally, to whatsoever is not expressly, or im- 
 plyedly reserved by the represented themselves." 
 
 After such fashion did the soldiers of Cromwell 
 work out a system of government, expressed in a 
 written constitution and established on the will 
 of the people directly consulted. These soldier 
 democrats were religious men, and to their religion 
 must we go if we would understand their politics. 
 The source of their ideas is the Bible. The example 
 of a treaty of alliance between Jehovah and His 
 people had furnished the idea of a contract between 
 a sovereign and his subjects. This was the first 
 form of the theory, and it was not long in taking 
 the form of a contract existing between individuals 
 themselves, constituting the nation. Now while 
 writers like Richard Hooker and Thomas Hobbes 
 represented the king as one party to the contract, 
 the soldiers of Cromwell entirely ignored the king, 
 and lifted the old Jewish and Huguenot conception 
 out into the clear, where men now recognize and 
 apply it. This became the theory of Locke and 
 of Rousseau, save that they did not regard it from 
 the religious viewpoint. 
 
 In the disputes between the Independents and 
 the Presbyterians, when the latter affirmed that the 
 league of alliance mentioned in the Bible did not 
 mean a contract between individuals such as the 
 Church Covenant of the Independents, but a league 
 
Statesmanship. 199 
 
 between God and His people, the Independents 
 answered that the one impHed the other. It is 
 easy to see how the founders of a Church upon this 
 basis would act when it came to the organization 
 of a State. A political community made up of 
 Christian believers would most naturally transfer 
 their methods in the one case to their needs in the 
 other, and in the organization of the members of 
 the sovereign people into a State would move for- 
 ward by sure stages to the adoption of a constitu- 
 tion by a popular vote, to the rule of the majority, 
 as a necessary fiction and condition of a democratic 
 government, and finally to the expression of it all 
 in a written constitution. 
 
 While Puritan democracy was beaten in the 
 strife with the traditions of England, it gained a 
 victory in the New World. The colonists of New 
 England were exiles from the Puritan homes of 
 Old England. In the virgin soil the ideas rooted 
 themselves immovably and grew with unexampled 
 vigor. Even before the landing of the men from 
 the 'Mayflower they drew up their celebrated Cove- 
 nant, "Anno Domini, 1620." Bancroft has been 
 charged with enthusiasm and exaggeration in say- 
 ing, "This was the birth of popular constitutional 
 liberty," and that "in the cabin of the Mayflower 
 humanity recovered its rights," on the ground that 
 "humanity" was only about one hundred persons, 
 and that the signers had no intention of founding 
 a nation, seeking, as they were, a refuge only. But 
 
200 John Cai^vin: The; Statesman. 
 
 when it is remembered that the Covenant was 
 drawn up to silence some "strangers" who had 
 joined them in London, and to unite the whole body 
 in "unitie and concord," and that the Colonists 
 added a Plantation Covenant or civil contract to 
 their Church Covenant, and that a similar Planta- 
 tion Covenant was usually the first step in the 
 founding of every new settlement, it is not without 
 reason that it has been assigned a place in the offi- 
 cial collection of the Constitutions of the United 
 States. In the history of the various Puritan set- 
 tlements we find struggles, reactions, and seces- 
 sions, but they were in some way connected with 
 the very principle of liberty which animated the 
 first exodus from the Mother Country. For when 
 the colonists of Massachusetts Bay yielded to the 
 tendency to follow their leaders in a sort of theo- 
 cratic aristocracy, it fell out that John Winthrop, 
 Jr., the friend of Roger Williams, and the son-in- 
 law of Hugh Peters, the famous Independent 
 preacher who became Cromwell's chaplain, led the 
 secession to the banks of the Connecticut, and in 
 the adoption of the Fundamental Orders of Con- 
 necticut by the General Assembly at Hartford, on 
 January 14, 1638-9, the immigrants formed the first 
 American constitution accepted by the people, and 
 the first written constitution of modern democracy. 
 It has been asserted^ that the written Consti- 
 tutions of the American Republic had their origin 
 
 Brooks Adams, in AUantic Monthly, 1884. 
 
Statesmanship. 201 
 
 in the Royal Charters granted during the Middle 
 Ages to the Companies of Merchants, and that, 
 even earlier from the evolution of the town meeting 
 among the German races we must date the similar 
 product in the New England colonies. But in reply- 
 to this, and to the argument ^ that the colonists 
 merely revived a custom which had been in "oc- 
 cultation" a thousand years, a "case of revival of 
 organs and functions on the recurrence of the 
 primitive environment," the query of Borgeaud is 
 worth putting at the close of this study of the 
 origin of American democracy. How was it "that 
 the revival of organs and functions" only took 
 place in New England, while the "recurrence of 
 the primitive environment" equally prevailed in the 
 other colonies ?" ^ 
 
 The fact is indisputable that the democratic 
 inheritance from the Teutonic races was imperiled 
 by the aristocratic transformation then in progress 
 in England, and that the American colonists trans- 
 lated their religious ideas into political activity, 
 else they would not have founded the democratic 
 government of the town meeting. 
 
 Coming down now to the War of the Revolu- 
 tion, we discover again the influence of Calvinism. 
 According to the same historian lately quoted, "The 
 Revolution of 1776, as far as it was affected by re- 
 ligion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the 
 
 1 G. E. Howard, in Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. 4. 
 2 Borgeaud. Op. cit., 140. 
 
202 John Cai^vin: The Statesman. 
 
 natural outgrowth of the principles which the Pres- 
 byterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, 
 the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the 
 French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the 
 (Scotch) Presbyterians of Ulster." ^ Horace Wal- 
 pole said in the English Parliament : "Cousin Amer- 
 ica has run off with a Presbyterian parson." The 
 reference was doubtless to Dr. John Witherspoon, 
 a Presbyterian preacher, the only clergyman in the 
 Continental Congress, who gave the deciding vote 
 for the adoption of the immortal Declaration. Dr. 
 Charles Elliott, editor of the Western Christian 
 Advocate (Methodist), said that "in achieving the 
 liberties of the United States the Presbyterians of 
 every class were foremost," and Dr. Charles Hodge 
 phrased the story of the war in happy fashion in 
 his remark that the Shorter Catechism fought 
 through successfully the War of American Inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 That these high claims are not without basis of 
 truth and reason, let it be remembered that at the 
 era of Independence, out of a total population of 
 about three million, nine hundred thousand were 
 of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, six hundred thou- 
 sand were Puritan English, and over four hundred 
 thousand were of Dutch, German Reformed, and 
 Huguenot descent, nearly all of whom had pro- 
 nounced Calvinistic leanings. Making all allow- 
 ance for exaggeration, the estimates are significant. 
 
 1 Bancroft. 
 
Statesmanship. 203 
 
 and go far to buttress the vivid statement of Von 
 Ranke, the profound historian: "John Calvin was 
 the virtual founder of America." 
 
 Not much more need be said, save to repeat 
 with Emerson : "This is the key to the power of the 
 greatest men, — their spirit diffuses itself/* 
 
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