John Calvin:
the man and his work,
by
Benjamin B. Warfield.

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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

JOHN CALVIN

THE MAN AND HIS WORK

By
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD
Professor in Princeton Theological
Seminary

teprinted from The Methodist Quarterly Review
for October, 1909

Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex.
Publishing House of the M. E. Chukch, South
Smith & Lamar, Agents
1909

G-UL

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JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
BY BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD.
John Calvin was born on the tenth of July, 1509, at Noyon,
in Picardy. His boyhood was spent under the shadow of the
"long, straight-backed" cathedral which dominates his native
town. His mother, a woman of notable devoutness, omitted no
effort to imbue her son with her own spirit. His father, a suc
cessful advocate and shrewd man of affairs, holding both eccle
siastical and civil offices, stood in close relations with the cathedral
chapter, and seems to have been impressed with the advantages
of a clerical life. At all events, he early devoted his promising
son to it. According to the bad custom of the times, a benefice
in the cathedral was assigned to the young Calvin at an early age,
and to it was afterwards added a neighboring curacy; thus funds
were provided for his support. His education was conducted in
companionship with the youthful scions of the local noble house
of Montmor, and began, therefore, with the training proper to a
gentleman. As changing circumstances dictated changes of plan,
he was educated, first as a churchman, then as a lawyer, and
through all and most abundantly of all as a man of letters. He
was an eager student, rapidly and solidly mastering the subjects
to which he turned his attention, and earning such admiration
from his companions as to be esteemed by them rather a teacher
than a fellow-pupil. His youth was as blameless as it was stren
uous. It is doubtless legendary, that the censoriousness of his
bearing earned for him from his associates the nickname of "The
Accusative Case." But serious-minded he undoubtedly was, dom
inated by a scrupulous piety and schooled in a strict morality which
brooked with difficulty immorality in his associates; an open-
minded, affectionate young man, of irreproachable life and frank
manners; somewhat sensitive, perhaps, but easy to be entreated,
and attracting not merely the confidence but the lasting affection
of all with whom he came into contact.
At the age of twenty-two this high-minded young man is found
established at Paris as a humanist scholar, with his ambition set

4 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
upon literary fame. His debut was made by the publication of
an excellent commentary on Seneca's treatise On Clemency
(April, 1532), in which a remarkable command of the whole mass
of classical literature, a fine intelligence, and a serious interest
in the higher moralities are conspicuous. A great career as a
humanist seemed opening before him, when suddenly he was
"converted," and his whole life revolutionized. He had always
been not only of an elevated ethical temper, but of a deeply reli
gious spirit; but now the religious motive took complete posses
sion of him and directed all his activities. "Renouncing all other
studies," says Beza, "he devoted himself to God." He did not,
indeed, cease to be a "man of letters," any more than he ceased
to be a man. But all his talents and acquisitions were henceforth
dedicated purely to the service of God and his gospel. Instead
of annotating classical texts, we find him, now writing a Protest
ant manifesto for the use of his friend Nicholas Cop (November
l, IS33)» a detailed study of the state of the soul after death
(1534), and, in his enforced retirement at Angouleme (1534),
making a beginning at least with a primary treatise on Christian
doctrine, designed for the instruction of the people as they came
out into the light of the gospel, — which, however, when driven
from France, he was destined to publish from his asylum at
Basle (spring of 1536), in circumstances which transformed it
into "at once an apology, a manifesto, and a confession of faith."
It is interesting to observe the change which in the meantime
had come over his attitude toward his writings. When he sent
forth his commentary on Seneca's treatise — his first and last hu
manistic work — he was quivering with anxiety for the success of
his book; he wanted to know how it was selling, whether it was
being talked about, what people thought of it. He was proud of
his performance; he was zealous to reap the fruits of his labor;
he was eager for his legitimate reward. Only four years have
passed, and he issues his first Protestant publication, — it is the
immortal Institutes of the Christian Religion in its "first state," —
free from all such tremors. He is living at Basle under an as
sumed name, and is fully content that no one of his acquaintance
shall know him for the author of the book which was creating

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 5
such a stir in the world. He hears the acclamations with which
it was greeted with a certain personal detachment. He has sent
it forth not for his own glory, but for the glory of God ; he is not
seeking his own advantage or renown by it, but the strengthening
and the succoring of the saints. His sole joy is that it is doing
its work. He has not ceased to be a "man of letters," we repeat;
but he has consecrated all his gifts and powers as a "man of let
ters" without reserve to the service of God and his gospel.
What we see in Calvin, thus, fundamentally is the "man of
letters" as saint. He never contemplated for himself, he never
desired, in all his life he never fully acquiesced in, any other voca
tion. He was by nature, by gifts, by training — by inborn predi
lection and by acquired capacities alike — a "man of letters" ; and
he earnestly, perhaps we may even say passionately, wished to
dedicate himself as such to God. This was the life which he
marked out for himself, from which he was diverted only under
compulsion, and which he never in principle abandoned. It was
only by "the dreadful imprecation" of Farel that he was con
strained to lay aside his cherished plans and enter upon the direct
work of the reformation of Geneva (autumn of 1536). And when,
aiter two years of strenuous labor at this uncongenial employment,
he was driven from that turbulent city, it came to him only as a
release. Once more he settled down at Basle and applied himself
to his beloved studies. It required all of Bucer's strategy as well
as entreaties to entice him away from his books to an active min
istry at Strasburg ; and he yielded at last only when it was made
clear to him that there would be leisure there for literary labors.
That leisure he certainly not so much found as made for himself.
His little conventicle of French refugees quickly became under
his hand a model church. His lectures at the school attracted
ever wider and wider attention. As time passed, he was called
much away to conferences and colloquies, where as "the Theolo
gian," as Melanchthon admiringly called him, he did important
service. But it was at Strasburg that his literary activity as a
Protestant man of letters really began. There he transformed
his "little book" of religion — the Institutes of 1536, which was
not much more than an extended catechetical manual — into an

6 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
ample treatise on theology (August, 1539). There, too, he inau
gurated the series of his epoch-making expositions of Scripture
with his noble commentary on Romans (March, 1540)- Thence,
too, he sent out his beautiful letter to Sadoleto, the most winning-
ly written of all his controversial treatises (September, 1539).
There, too, was written that exquisite little popular tract on the
Lord's Supper, which was the instruction and consolation of so
many hundreds of his perplexed fellow-countrymen (published
in 1541). It caused Calvin great perturbation when these fruit
ful labors were broken in upon by a renewed call to Geneva. It
was with the profoundest reluctance that he listened to this call,
and he obeyed it only under the stress of the sternest sense of
duty. Returning to> Geneva was to him going "straight to the
cross" : he went, as he said, "as a sacrifice slain unto God," —
"bound and fettered to obedience to God." He was not the man
to take up a cross and not bear it; and this cross, too, he bore
faithfully to the end. But neither was he the man to forget the
labor of love to which he had given his heart. Hence the unre
mitting toil of his pen with which he wore out the days and nights
at Geneva; hence the immensity of his literary output, produced
in circumstances as unfavorable as any in which a rich literary
output was ever produced. Even "on this rack" Calvin remained
fundamentally the "man of letters."
It requires fifty-nine quarto volumes to contain the "Works of
John Calvin" as collected in the great critical edition of Baum,
Cunitz, and Reuss. Astonishing for their mere mass, these
"works" are still more astonishing for their quality. They are
written in the best Latin of their day, elevated, crisp, energetic,
eloquent with the eloquence of an earnest and sober spirit — al
most too good Latin, as Joseph Scaliger said, for a theologian;
or in a French which was a factor of importance in the creation
of a worthy French prose for the discussion of serious themes.
The variety of their literary form runs through the whole gamut
of earnest discourse, from lofty discussion and pithy comment
laden with meaning, to burning exhortation, vehement invective,
and biting satire. The whole range of subjects proper to a
teacher of fundamental truth, who was also both a churchman

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. y
and a statesman, a minute observer of the life of the people, and
a student of the forces by which peoples are moved, is treated,
and never without that touch of illumination which we call genius.
At the head of the list of his writings stands, of course, his
great dogmatic treatise — the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
In a very literal sense this book may indeed be called his life-work.
It was the first book he published after he had "devoted himself
to God," and thus introduces the series of his works consecrated
to the propagation of religion. But from its first appearance in
the spring of 1536 to the issue of its definitive edition in 1559 —
throughout nearly a quarter of a century — Calvin was continual
ly busy with it, revising, expanding, readjusting it, until from a
simple little handbook, innocent of constructive principle, it had
grown into a bulky but compact and thoroughly organized text
book in theology. The importance to the Protestant cause of the
publication of this book can hardly be overstated. It is inade
quate praise to describe it, as the Roman Catholic historian,
Kampschulte, describes it, as "without doubt the most outstand
ing and the most influential production in the sphere of dogmatics
which the Reformation literature of the sixteenth century pre
sents." This goes without saying. What demands recognition
is that the publication of the Institutes was not merely a literary
incident but an historical event, big with issues, which have not
lost their importance to the present day. By it was given to per
plexed, hard-bestead Protestantism an adequate positive pro
gramme for its Reformation. As even a not very friendly critic is
compelled to bear witness, in this book Calvin at last raised ban
ner against banner, and sounded out a ringing sursum corda
which was heard and responded to wherever men were seeking the
new way. "The immense service which the Institutes rendered
to the 'Evangelicals,' " expounds this critic — it is M. Buisson in
his biography of Sebastien Castellion, and he is thinking partic
ularly of the "Evangelicals" of France though, mutatis mutandis,
what he says has its application elsewhere too — "was to give a
body to their ideas, an expression to their faith." Protesting
against superstitious and materialistic interpretations of doctrine
and worship, "their vague aspirations would, undoubtedly, have

8 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
issued in nothing in the Church or out of it." What they needed,
and what the Institutes did for them, was the disengagement of a
principle "from this vortex of ideas," and the development of its
consequences. "Such a book," continues M. Buisson, "is equal
ly removed from a pamphlet of Ulrich von Hutten, from the satire
of Erasmus, from the popular preaching, mystical and violent, of
Luther : it is a work of a theologian in the most learned sense of
the term, a religious work undoubtedly, penetrated with an eth
ical inspiration, but before all, a work of organization and concen
tration, a code of doctrine for the minister, an arsenal of argu
ments for simple believers : it is the Surnma of Reformed Chris
tianity." "The author's concernment is far more to bring out
the logical force and the moral power of his own doctrine than
to descant on the weak points of the opposing doctrine. What
holds his attention is not the past but the future, — it is the recon
struction of the Church." What wonder, then, that it has re
tained its influence through all succeeding time? As the first ade
quate statement of the positive programme of the Reformation
movement, the Institutes lies at the foundation of the whole devel
opment of Protestant theology, and has left an impress on evan
gelical thought which is ineffaceable. After three centuries and
a half, it retains its unquestioned preeminence as the greatest and
most influential of all dogmatic treatises. "There," said Albrecht
Ritschl, pointing to it — "There is the masterpiece of Protestant
theology." Second only to the service he rendered by his Institutes was
the service Calvin rendered by his expositions of Scripture. These
fill more than thirty volumes of his collected works, thus con
stituting the larger part of his total literary product. They cover
the whole of the New Testament except 2 and 3 John and the
Apocalypse, and the whole of the Old Testament except the Sol
omonic and some of the Historical books. It was doubtless in
part to his humanistic training that he owed the acute philologic
al sense and the unerring feeling for language which character
ize all his expositions. A recent writer who has made a special
study of Calvin's Humanism, at least, remarks: "In his sober
grammatico-historical method, in the stress he laid on the nat-

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 9
ural sense of the text, by the side of his deep religious under
standing of it — in his renunciation of the current allegorizing,
in his felicitous, skillful dealing with difficult passages, the hu
manistically trained master is manifest, pouring the new wine into
new bottles." Calvin was, however, a born exegete, and adds to
his technical equipment of philological knowledge and trained
skill in the interpretation of texts, a clear and penetrating intel
ligence, remarkable intellectual sympathy, incorruptible honesty,
unusual historical perception, and an incomparable insight into the
progress of thought, while the whole is illuminated by his pro
found religious comprehension. His expositions of Scripture were
accordingly a wholly new phenomenon, and introduced a new exe
gesis — the modern exegesis. He stands out in the history of bibli
cal study as, what Diestel, for example, proclaims him, "the crea
tor of genuine exegesis." The authority which his comments im
mediately acquired was immense — they "opened the Scriptures"
as the Scriptures never had been opened before. Richard Hooker
— "the judicious Hooker" — remarks that in the controversies of his
own time, "the sense of Scripture which Calvin alloweth" was of
•more weight than if "ten thousand Augustines, Jeromes, Chrysos-
toms, Cyprians were brought forward." Nor have they lost their
value even to-day. Alone of the commentaries of their age the most
scientific of modern expositors still find their profit in consulting
them. As Professor A. J. Baumgartner, who has set himself to
investigate the quality of Calvin's Hebrew learning (which he
finds quite adequate), puts it, after remarking on Calvin's "as
tounding, multiplied, almost superhuman activity" in his work
of biblical interpretation : "And — a most remarkable thing — this
work has never grown old; these commentaries whose durable
merit and high value men of the most diverse tendencies have
signalized, — these commentaries remain to us even to-day, an as
tonishingly rich, almost inexhaustible mine of profound thoughts,
of solid and often ingenious interpretation, of wholesome exposi
tion, and at the same time of profound erudition."
The Reformation was the greatest revolution of thought which
the human spirit has wrought since the introduction of Chris
tianity: and controversy is the very essence of revolutions. Of

*

IO JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
course Calvin's whole life, which was passed in the thick of
things, was a continuous controversy; and directly controversial
treatises necessarily form a considerable part of his literary out
put. We have already been taught, indeed, that his fundamental
aim was constructive, not destructive: he wished to rebuild the
* Church on its true foundations, not to destroy its edifice. But,
like certain earlier rebuilders of the Holy City, he needed to work
with the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other. Probably
no more effective controversialist ever wrote. "The number of
Calvin's polemical treatises," remarks an unfriendly critic, "is
large; and they are all masterpieces in their kind." At the head
of them, in time as well as in attractiveness, stands his famous
Letter to Cardinal Sadoleto, written in his exile at Strasburg for
the protection from an insidious foe of the Church which had
cast him out. Courteous, even gentle and deferential in tone, and
yet cogent, conclusive, in effect, it perfectly exemplifies the pre
cept of suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. Others are, no doubt,
set in a different key. The critic we have just quoted (E. F.
Bahler) tells of the one he thinks "the harshest and bitterest of
all," the Defense Against the Calumnies of Peter Caroli. "The
letter to Sadoleto," he remarks, "was certainly written in a good
hour; the contrary must be said of the present book. From the
point of view of literary history, the Defense, no doubt, merits'
unrestricted praise. The elegant, crisp style, the skill with which
the author not only casts a moral shadow upon his opponent, but
brands him as an unsavory person not to be taken seriously, while
over all is poured the most sovereign disdain, brings to the reader
of this book, now almost four hundred years old, such aesthetic
pleasure that it is only with difficulty that he recalls himself to
righteous indignation over the gross unfairness and open un
truthfulness which the author permits himself against Caroli."
No doubt Calvin often spoke in harsh terms of his opponents;
they were harsh things they were seeking for him ; and the con
test in which he was engaged was not a sparring match for the
amusement of the onlookers. Nor need it be asserted that he was
infallible; though "even his enemies will admit," as even Mark
Pattison allows, "that he knows not how to decorate or disguise

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. n
a fact." Between the suavity of the Letter to Sadoleto and the
furiousness of the Defense Against Caroli, a long list of contro
versial writings of very varying manners range themselves. A
frankness of speech characterizes them which never balks at call
ing a spade a spade; we meet in them with depreciatory, even
defamatory, epithets which jar sadly on our modern sensibilities.
These are faults not of the man, but of the times : as we are re
minded by M. Lenient, the historian of French satire, of all
figures of rhetoric euphemism was the least in use in the sixteenth
century. But none of Calvin's controversial tracts fails to be in
formed from beginning to end with a loftiness of purpose, to be
conducted with a seriousness and directness of argument, and to
be filled with a solid instruction, such as raise them far above the
plane of mere partisan wrangle and give them a place among the
permanent possessions of the Church.
Fault was found with him in his own day, — as, for example, by
Castellion, — for permitting himself the use of satire in religious
debate. This was not merely a result of native temperament with
him, but a matter of deliberate and reasoned choice. Of course
he had nothing in common with the mere mockers of the time —
des Periers, Marot, Rabelais — whose levity was almost as abom
inable to him as their coarseness. Satire to him was a weapon,!
not an amusement. The proper way to deal with folly, he thought,!
was to laugh at it. The superstitions in which the world had been
so long entangled were foolish as truly as wicked ; and how could;
it be, he demanded, that in speaking of things so ridiculous, so
intrinsically funny, we should not laugh at them "with wide-open
mouth" ? Of course this laugh was not the laugh of pure amuse
ment ; and as it gained in earnestness it naturally lost in lightness
of touch. It was a rapier in Calvin's hands, and its use was to
pierce and cut. And how well he uses it! The Sorbonne, for
example, issued a series of Articles, declaring the orthodox doc
trine on the points disputed by the Protestants. Calvin repub
lishes these Articles, and subjoins to each of them a quite inno
cent-looking "Proof," conceived perfectly in the Sorbonnic man
ner, but issuing in each case in a hopeless reductio ad absurdum.
Thus : "It is proved, moreover, that vows are obligatory from their

12 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
being dispensed and loosed: the Pope could not dispense vows
were it not for the power of the keys, and hence it follows that they
bind the conscience," — truly as fine a specimen of lucus a non lu-
cendo as one will find in a day's search. It is only rarely that the
mask is dropped a moment and a glimpse given of the mocking
eyes behind, — as thus : "But that our masters, when congregated
in one body, are the Church, is proved from this, that they are
very like the ark of Noah — since they form a herd of all sorts of
beasts." The matter is indeed in general so subtly managed that
perhaps the "Antidote," which in each instance follows on the
"Proof" was not altogether unnecessary. There is no such sub
tlety in what is, perhaps, the best known of Calvin's satirical
pieces, — his Admonition, Showing the Advantage which Chris
tendom Might Derive from an Inventory of Relics. Here we
have a simple, straightforward enumeration of the relics ex
posed in various churches for the veneration of the people. The
effect is produced by the incongruity, which grows more and more
monstrous, of the reduplication of these relics. "Everybody
knows that the inhabitants of Tholouse think that they have got
six of the bodies of the apostles. Now, let us attend to those who
have had two or three bodies. For Andrew has another body at
Malfi, Philip and James the Less have each another body at the
Church of the Holy Apostles, and Simeon and Jude, in like man
ner, at the Church of St. Peter. Bartholomew has also another
in the church dedicated to him at Rome. So here are six who each
have two bodies, and also, by way of a supernumerary, Bartholo
mew's skin is shown at Pisa. Matthias, however, surpasses all
the rest, for he has a second body at Rome, in the church of the
elder Mary, and a third one at Treves. Besides, he has another
head, and another arm, existing separately by themselves. There
are also fragments of Andrew existing at different places, and
quite sufficient to make up half a body." And so on endlessly;
and of course monotonously — which, however, is part of the cal
culated effect. As M. Lenient remarks, "his pitiless calculations
give to a mathematical operation all the piquancy of a bon mot,
and the irony of numbers destroys the credit of the most respected
pilgrimages." It is, however, in such a tract as the Excuse of the

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. I3
Nicodemites that Calvin's satire is found at its best, as he rails at
those weak Protestants who were too timid to declare themselves.
"His pen," says M. Lenient, "was never more light or incisive.
Moralist and painter after the fashion of La Bruyere, he amuses
himself sketching all these profiles of effeminate Christians, with
their slacknesses, their compromises of conscience, their calcula
tions of selfishness, and indifferent lukewarmness." Literature this
all is, doubtless, and good literature; and by virtue of it "Calvin-
istic satire" — Calvin, Beza, and Viret were its first masters — has
a recognized place in the history of French satire. But it is not
primarily or chiefly literature, and it had its part to play among
the moral and religious forces which Calvin liberated for the ac
complishment of his reforming work.
Perhaps enough has been said to suggest how Calvin fulfilled
his function as reformer by his literary labors. There were, of
course, other forms of his literary product which have not been
mentioned — creeds and catechisms, Church ordinances and forms
of worship, popular tracts and academic consilia. We need not
stop to speak of them particularly. Of one other product of his
literary activity, however, a special word seems demanded. Cal
vin was the great letter-writer of the Reformation age. About
" four thousand of his letters have come down to us, some of them
almost of the dimensions of treatises, many of them practically
theological tractates, but many of them also of the most intimate
character in which he pours out his heart. In these letters we
see the real Calvin, the man of profound religious convictions and
rich religious life, of high purpose and noble strenuousness, of
full and freely flowing human affections and sympathies. In
them he rebukes rulers and instructs statesmen, and strengthens
and comforts saints. Never a perplexed pastor but has from
\ him a word of encouragement and counsel ; never a martyr but
j has from him a word of heartening and consolation. Perhaps
no friend ever more affectionately leaned on his friends ; certain
ly no friend ever gave himself more ungrudgingly to his friends.
Had he written these letters alone, Calvin would take his place
among the great Christians and the great Christian leaders of the
world.

14

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.

It is time, however, that we reminded ourselves that Calvin's
work as a reformer is not summed up in his literary activities. A
"man of letters" he was fundamentally; and a "man of letters" he
remained in principle all his life. But he was something more
than a "man of letters." This was his chosen sphere of service;
and he counted it a cross to be compelled to expend his energies
through other channels. But this cross was laid upon him, and
he took it up and bore it. And the work which he did under the
cross was such that had we no single word from his pen, he would
still hold his rank among the greatest of the Reformers. We call
him "the Reformer of Geneva." But in reforming Geneva he
set forces at work which have been world-wide in their operation
and are active still to-day. Were we to attempt to characterize
in a phrase the peculiarity of his work as a reformer, perhaps we
could not do better than to say it was the work of an idealist
become a practical man of affairs. He did not lack the power
to wait, to make adjustments, to advance by slow and tentative
steps. He showed himself able to work with any material, to
make the best of compromises, to abide patiently the coming of
fitting opportunities. The ends which he set before himself as
reformer he attained only in the last years of his strenuous life.
But he was incapable of abandoning his ideals, of acquiescing in
half measures, of drifting with the tide. Therefore his whole
life in Geneva was a conflict. But in the end he made Geneva the
wonder of the world, and infused into the Reformed Churches a
spirit which made them not only invincible in the face of their
foes, but in active ferment that has changed the face of the
world. Thus this "man of letters," entering into life with his
ideals, was "the means," to adopt the words of a critic whose sym
pathy with those ideals leaves much to be desired, "of concen
trating in that narrow corner" of the world "a moral force which
saved the Reformation" ; or rather, to put it at its full effect, which
"saved Europe." "It may be doubted," as the same critic — Mark
Pattison — exclaims in extorted admiration, "if all history can
furnish another instance of such a victory of moral force."
When Calvin came to Geneva, he tells us himself, he found the
gospel preached there, but no Church established. "When I first

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 15
came to this Church," he says, "there was as good as nothing
here — il n'y avoit quasi comme rien. There was preaching, and
that was all." He would have found much the same state of
things everywhere else in the Protestant world. The "Church" in
the early Protestant conception was constituted by the preaching
of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments:
the correction of the morals of the community was the concern
not of the Church but of the civil power. As a recent historian
— Professor Karl Rieker — rather flippantly expresses it : "Luther,
when he had preached and sowed the seed of the Word, left
to the Holy Spirit the care of producing the fruit, while with his
friend Philip he peacefully drank his glass of Wittenberg beer."
Calvin could not take this view of the matter. "Whatever others
may hold," he observed, "we cannot think so narrowly of our
office that when preaching is done our task is fulfilled, and we
may take our rest." In his view the mark of a true Church is not
merely that the gospel is preached in it, but that it is "followed."
For him the Church is the "communion of saints," and it is in
cumbent upon it to see to it that it is what it professes to be.
From the first he therefore set himself strenuously to attain this
end, and the instrument which he sought to employ to attain it
was, briefly — Church discipline. It comes to us with a surprise
which is almost a shock to learn that we owe to Calvin all that is
involved, for the purity and welfare of the Church, in the exercise
of Church discipline. But that is the simple truth, and so sharp
was the conflict by which the innovation won a place for itself,
and so important did the principle seem, that it became the mark
of the Reformed Churches that they made "discipline" one of the
fundamental criteria of the true Church. Moreover, the applica
tion of this principle carried Calvin very far, and, indeed, in its
outworking gave the world through him the principle of a free
Church in a free State. It is ultimately to him, therefore, that the
Church owes its emancipation from the State, and to him goes
back that great battle-cry which has since fired the hearts of many
saints in many crises in many lands : "The Crown Rights of King
Jesus in his Church."
Censorship of manners and morals was not introduced by Cal-

16 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
vin into Geneva. Such a censorship, often of the most petty and
galling kind, was the immemorial practice not only of Geneva but
of all other similarly constituted towns. It was part of the
recognized police regulations of the times. Calvin's sole relation
to this censorship was through his influence — he never bore civil
office or exercised civil authority in Geneva, and, indeed, acquired
the rights of citizenship there only late in life — gradually to
bring some order and rationality into its exercise. What Calvin
introduced — and it was so revolutionary with respect both to the
State and 'to the Church that it required eighteen years of bitter
struggle before it was established — was distinctively Church dis-~
cipline. The principles on which he proceeded were already laid
down in the first edition of his Institutes (spring of 1536). And
when he came to Geneva in the autumn of 1536 he lost no time
in seeking to put them into practice. Already at the opening of
1537 we find a document drawn up by him in the name of the
ministers of Geneva before the Council, in which the whole new
conception is briefly outlined. This great charter of the Church's
liberties — for it is as truly such as the Magna Charta is the char
ter of British rights — opens with these simple and direct words :
"It is certain that a Church cannot be said to be well ordered and]
governed unless the Holy Supper of our Lord is frequently cele
brated and attended in it, and that with such good regulation
that no one would dare to present himself at it except with piety
and deep reverence. And it is therefore necessary for the Church
to maintain in its integrity the discipline of excommunication, by
which those should be corrected who are unwilling to yield them
selves amiably and in all obedience to the holy Word of God." In
the body of the document the matter is argued, and three things
are proposed : First, that it be ascertained at the outset who of the
inhabitants of the town wished "to avow themselves of the Church
of Jesus Christ." For this, it is suggested that a brief and com
prehensive Confession of Faith be prepared, and "all the inhab
itants of your town" be required to "make confession and render
reason of their faith, that it may be ascertained which accord with
the Gospel, and which prefer to be of the kingdom of the Pope
rather than of Jesus Christ." Secondly, that a catechism be pre-

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. I?
pared, and the children be diligently instructed in the elements of
the faith. And thirdly, that provision be made by the appoint
ment of "certain persons of good life and good repute among all
the faithful, and likewise of constancy of spirit and not open to
corruption," who should keep watch over the conduct of the
Church members, advise with them, admonish them, and ,in ob
stinate cases bring them to the attention of the ministers, when,
if they still prove unamenable, they are "to be held as rejected
from the company of Christians," and "as a sign of this, rejected
from the communion of the Lord's Supper, and denounced to
the rest of the faithful as not to be companied with familiarly."
By this programme Calvin became nothing less than the creator of
the Protestant Church. The particular points to be emphasized in
it are two. It is purely Church discipline which is contemplated,
with none other but spiritual penalties. And the Church is for this
purpose especially discriminated from the body of the people —
the State — and a wedge is thus driven in between Church and
State which was bound to separate the one from the other.
In claiming for the Church this discipline, Calvin, naturally,
had no wish in any way to infringe upon the police regulations of
the civil authorities. They continued, in their own sphere, to
command his approval and cooperation. He has the clearest
conception of the limits within which the discipline of the Church
must keep itself, and expressly declares that it is confined abso
lutely to the spiritual penalty of excommunication. But he just
as expressly suggests that the State, on its own part, might well
take cognizance of spiritual offenses; and even invokes the aid
of the civil magistrate in support of the authority of the Church.
"This," he says to the Council, after outlining his scheme for
the appointment of lay helpers — in effect elders — in the exercise of
discipline, — "this seems to us a good way to introduce excommu
nication into our Church, and to maintain it in its entirety. And
beyond this correction the Church cannot proceed. But if there are
any so insolent and abandoned to all perversity that they only laugh
at being excommunicated, and do not mind living and dying in
such a condition of rejection, it will be for you to consider how
long you will endure and leave unpunished such contempt and

18 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
such mockery of God and his gospel." This is not requiring the
State to execute the Church's decrees: the Church executes her
own decrees, and its extremest penalty is excommunication. It
is only recognizing that the State as well as the Church may take
account of spiritual offenses. And particularly it is declaring
that while the Church by her own sanctions protects her own
altars, it is the part of the State by its own sanctions to sustain
the Church in protecting its altars. Calvin has not risen to the
conception of the complete mutual independence of Church and
State : his view still includes the conception of an "established
Church." But the "established Church" which he pleads for is
a Church absolutely autonomous in its own spiritual sphere. In
asking this he was asking for something new in the Protestant
world, and something in .which lay the promise and potency of
all the freedom which has come to the Reformed Churches since.
Of course Calvin did not get what he asked for in 1537. Nor
did he get it when he returned from his banishment in 1541. But
he never lost it from sight; he never ceased to contend for it;
he was always ready to suffer for its assertion and defense; and
at last he won it. The spiritual liberties which he demanded
for the Church in 1536, for the assertion of which he was ban
ished in 1538, for the establishment of which he ceaselessly
struggled from 1541, he measurably attained at length in 1555.
In the fruits of that great victory we have all had our part. And
every Church in Protestant Christendom which enjoys to-day
any liberty whatever, in performing its functions as a Church of
Jesus Christ, owes it all to John Calvin. It was he who first as
serted this liberty in his early manhood, — he was only twenty-
seven years of age when he presented his programme to the Coun
cil ; it was he who first gained it in a lifelong struggle against a de
termined opposition ; it was he who taught his followers to value it
above life itself, and to secure it to their successors with the out
pouring of their blood. And thus Calvin's great figure rises before
us as not only in a true sense the creator of the Protestant Church,
but the author of all the freedom it exercises in its spiritual sphere.
It is impossible to linger here on the relations of this great
exploit of Calvin's, even to point out its rooting in his fundamen-

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. ICj
tal religious conceptions, or its issue in the creation of a spirit in
his followers to the efflorescence of which this modern world of
ours owes its free institutions. We cannot even stop to indicate
other important claims he has upon our reverence. We say noth
ing here, for example, of Calvin the preacher, — the "man of the
Word" as Doumergue calls him, pronouncing him as such greater
than he was as "man of action" or "man of thought," as both of
which he was very great, — who for twenty-five years stood in the
pulpit of Geneva, preaching sometimes daily, sometimes twice a
day, a word the echoes of which were heard to the confines of Eu
rope. We say nothing, again, of his reorganization of the worship
of the Reformed Churches, and particularly of his gift to them of
the service of song : for the Reformed Churches did not sing until
Calvin taught them to do it. There are many who think that he
did few things greater or more far-reaching in their influence than
the making of the Psalter, — that Psalter of which twenty-five edi
tions were published in the first year of its existence, and sixty-
two more in the next four years ; which was translated or trans
fused into nearly every language of Europe ; and which wrought
itself into the very flesh and bone of the struggling saints through
out all the "killing times" of Protestant history. The activities of
Calvin were too varied and multiplex, his influence in numerous
directions too enormous, to lend themselves to rapid enumeration.
We can pause further only to say a necessary word of that system
of divine truth which, by his winning restatement and powerful
advocacy of it, he has stamped with his name, and with his eye
upon which a Roman Catholic writer of our day — Canon Wil
liam Barry — pronounces Calvin "undoubtedly the greatest of Prot
estant divines, and, perhaps, after St. Augustine, the most persist
ently followed by his disciples of any western writer on theology."
It has become very much the custom of modern historians to
insist that Calvin's was not an original but only a systematizing
genius. Thus, for example, Reinhold Seeberg remarks: "His
was an acute and delicate but not a creative mind." "As a dog-
matician, he furnished no new ideas; but with the most delicate
sense of perception he arranged the dogmatic ideas at hand in ac
cordance with their essential character and their historical de-

20 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
velopment." "He possessed the wonderful talent of compre
hending any given body of religious ideas in its most delicate re
finements and giving appropriate expression to the results of his
investigations." Accordingly, he did not leave behind him "un
coined gold, like Luther," or "questionable coinage, like Me
lanchthon," but good gold well minted — and in this lies the
explanation of the greatness of his influence as a theologian.
The contention may very easily be overpressed. But at its basis
there lies the perception of a very important fact; perhaps we
may say the most important fact in the premises.
Calvin was a thoroughly independent student of Scripture, and
brought forth from that treasure-house things not only old but
new; and if it was not given to him to recover for the world so
revolutionizing a doctrine as that of Justification by Faith alone,
the contributions of his fertile thought to doctrinal advance were
neither few nor unimportant. He made an epoch in the history
of the doctrine of the Trinity: by his insistence on "self-exist
ence" as a proper attribute of Son and Spirit as well as of the
Father, he drove out the lingering elements of Subordinationism,
and secured to the Church a deepened consciousness of the co-
equality of the Divine Persons. He introduced the presentation
of the work of Christ under the rubrics of the threefold office of
Prophet, Priest, and King. He created the whole discipline of
Christian Ethics. But above all he gave to the Church the en
tire doctrine of the Work of the Holy Spirit, profoundly con
ceived and wrought out in its details, with its fruitful distinc
tions of common and efficacious grace, of noetic, aisthetic, and
thelematic effects, — a gift, we venture to think, so great, so preg
nant with benefit to the Church as fairly to give him a place by
the side of Augustine and Anselm and Luther, as the Theolo
gian of the Holy Spirit, as they were respectively the Theologian
of Grace, of the Atonement, and of Justification.
Nevertheless, despite such contributions — contributions of the
first order — to theological advance, it is quite true, — and it is a
truth deserving the strongest emphasis, — that the system of doc
trine which Calvin taught, and by his powerful commendation of
which his greatest work for the world was wrought, was not pe-

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 2I
culiar to himself, was in no sense new, — was, in point of fact,
just "the Gospel" common to him and all the Reformers, on the
ground of which they spoke of themselves as "Evangelicals,"
and by the recovery of which was wrought out the revolution
which we call the Reformation. Calvin did not originate this
system of truth; as "a man of the second generation" he in
herited it, and his greatest significance as a religious teacher is
that by his exact and delicate sense of doctrinal values and re
lations and his genius for systematic construction, he was able,
as none other was, to cast this common doctrinal treasure of the
Reformation into a well-compacted, logically unassailable, and
religiously inspiring whole. In this sense it is as systematizer that
he makes his greatest demand on our admiration and gratitude.
A It was he who gave the Evangelical movement a theology.
The system of doctrine taught by Calvin is just the Augus-
j tinianism common to the whole body of the Reformers — for the
| Reformation was, as from the spiritual point of view a great
I revival of religion, so from the theological point of view a great
i revival of Augustinianism. And this Augustinianism is taught
by him not as an independent discovery of his own, but funda
mentally as he learned it from Luther, whose fertile conceptions
he completely assimilated, and most directly and in much detail
from Martin Bucer into whose practical, ethical point of view
he perfectly entered. Many of the very forms of statement
most characteristic of Calvin — on such topics as Predestination
Faith, the stages of Salvation, the Church, the Sacraments — only
reproduce, though of course with that clearness and religious
depth peculiar to Calvin, the precise teachings of Bucer, who was
above all others, accordingly, Calvin's master in theology. Of
course he does not take these ideas over from Bucer and repeat
them by rote. They have become his own and issue afresh from
him with a new exactness and delicacy of appreciation, in them
selves and in their relations, with a new development of impli
cations, and especially with a new richness of religious content.
For the prime characteristic of Calvin as a theologian is precisely
the practical interest which governs his entire thought arid the
religious profundity which suffuses it all. It was not the head

22 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
but the heart which made him a theologian, and it is not the
head but the heart which he primarily addresses in his theology.
He takes his start, of course, from God, knowledge of whom
and obedience to whom he declares the sum of human wisdom.
But this God he conceives as righteous love, — Lord as well as
Father, of course, but Father as well as Lord; whose will is, of
course, the prima causa rerum (for is he not God?), but whose
will also it will be our joy as well as our wisdom to embrace (for
is he not our Father?). It was that we might know ourselves
to be wholly in the hands of this God of perfect righteousness
and goodness — not in those of men, whether ourselves or some
other men — that he was so earnest for the doctrine of predestina
tion : which is nothing more than the declaration of the supreme
dominion of God. It was that our eternal felicity might hang
wholly on God's mighty love — and not on our sinful weakness —
that he was so zealous for the doctrine of election : which is noth
ing more than the ascription of our entire salvation to God. As he
contemplated the majesty of this Sovereign Father of men, his
whole being bowed in reverence before him, and his whole heart
burned with zeal for his glory. As he remembered that this great
God has become in his own Son the redeemer of sinners, he
passionately gave himself to the proclamation of the glory of his
grace. Into his hands he committed himself without reserve:
his whole spirit panted to be in all its movement subjected to
his government, — or, to be more specific, to the "leading of his
Spirit." All that was good in him, all the good he hoped might
be formed in him, he ascribed to the almighty working of this
Divine Spirit. The "glory of God alone," — the "leading of the
Spirit" (or, as a bright young French student of his thought has
lately expressed it, la maitrise, the "mastery," the control, of the
Spirit), — became thus the twin principles of his whole thought
and life. Or, rather, the double expression of the one principle;
for — since all that God does, he does by his Spirit — the two are
at bottom one.
Here we have the secret of Calvin's greatness and the source
of his strength unveiled to us. No man ever had a profounder
sense of God than he; no man ever more unreservedly surrendered

JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK. 23
himself to the Divine direction. "We cannot better characterize
the fundamental disposition of Calvin the man and the reformer,"
writes a recent German student of his life, — Bernhard Bess, —
"than in the words of the Psalm: 'What is man, that thou art
mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?'
After that virtuoso in religion of ancient Israel, no one has spoken
of the majesty of God and the insignificance of man with such
feeling and truth as Calvin. The appearance which Luther's ex
pressions often give, as if God exists merely for man's sake, never
is given by Calvin. God is for him the almighty will which lies
behind all that comes to pass. What comes to pass in the world
serves no doubt man, the Church, and salvation; but this is not
its ultimate end, but the revelation of the glory and the honor of
God." If there is anything that will make a man great, surely it is
placing himself unreservedly at the disposal of God and seeking
not only to do nothing but God's will, but to do all God's will. This is
what Calvin did, and it is because he did this that he was so great.
He was, of course, not without his weaknesses. He had no
doubt a high temper, though to do him justice we must take the
term in all its senses. He did not in all things rise superior to the
best opinion of his age. We have seen, for example, that he was in
full accord with his time in its extension of the cognizance of the
civil courts to spiritual offenses ; and it was by the consent of his
mind to this universal conviction of the day that he was impli
cated in that unhappy occurrence — the execution of Servetus.
But to do him justice here we must learn to speak both of his
connection with that occurrence and of Servetus himself in quite
other terms than the reckless language with which a modern
writer of repute speaks when he calls Calvin "the author of the
great crime of the age — the murder of the heroic Servetus." Ser
vetus, that "fool of genius," as a recent writer, not without insight,
characterizes him, was anything but an heroic figure. The
"crime" of his "murder," unfortunately, had scores of fellows
in that age, in which life was lightly valued, and it was agreed
on all hands that grave heresy and gross blasphemy were capital
offenses in well-organized states. And Servetus was condemned
and executed by a tribunal of which Calvin was not a member,

24 JOHN CALVIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.
with which he possessed little influence, and which rejected his
petition against the unnecessary cruelty of the penalty inflicted.
"There are people," remarks Paul Wernle, who is certainly un-.
der the influence of no glamour for Calvin or Calvinism, — "There
are people who have been told at school that Servetus was burned
through Calvin's fault, and are therefore done with this man.
They ought to remember that had they lived at the time, they
would in all probability have joined in burning him. It is not so
easy to be done with the man who was the most luminous and
penetrating theologian of his time and the source from which
flowed that power which Protestantism showed in Scotland,
France, England, Holland. We are all glad, no doubt, that we
did not live under his rod ; but who knows what we would all be,
had not this divine ardor possessed him? Concentrated, well-
directed enthusiasm — that is his essence; it was himself, first of
all, whom he consumed in his zeal ; his rule at Geneva was no
more rigorous than the heroism was glorious with which he com
pacted half the Protestantism of Europe into a power which noth
ing could break. Calvin was in very truth the soul of the bat
tling and conquering Reformed world ; it was he who fought on
the battlefields of the Huguenots and the Dutch, and in the hosts
of the Puritans. In scarcely another of the Reformers is there to
be seen such thoroughness, absoluteness. And yet what modera
tion, what real dread of every kind of excess; with what defer
ence and tact did he know how to speak to the great! If you
would know the man, how he lived with and for God and the
world, read first of all in the Institutes tht section On the Life
of the Christian Man. It is the portrait of himself. And then
for his religious individuality add the sections On Justification
and On Predestination, where will be found what is most pro
found, most moving in his life of faith."
Such a man was John Calvin; and such was the work he did
for God and His Kingdom on earth. Adolf Harnack has said
that between Paul the Apostle and Luther the Reformer, Augus
tine was the greatest man God gave His Church. We may sure
ly add that from Luther the Reformer to our day God has given
His Church no greater man than John Calvin.

YALE UNIVERSITY I