History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin. Vol. 1 (of 8)

LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE
At the conclusion of the preface to the first volume of the History of the Reformation , the author wrote, ‘This work will consist of four volumes, or at the most five, which will appear successively.’ These five volumes have appeared. In them are described the heroic times of Luther, and the effects produced in Germany and other countries by the characteristic doctrine of that reformer—justification by faith. They present a picture of that great epoch which contained in the germ the revival of christianity in the last three centuries. The author has thus completed the task he had assigned himself; but there still remained another.
The times of Luther were followed by those of Calvin. He, like his great predecessor, undertook to search the Scriptures, and in them he found the same truth and the same life; but a different character distinguishes his work.
The renovation of the individual, of the Church, and of the human race, is his theme. If the Holy Ghost kindles the lamp of truth in man, it is (according to Calvin) ‘to the end that the entire man should be transformed.’—‘In the kingdom of Christ,’ he says, ‘it is only the new man that flourishes and has any vigour, and whom we ought to take into account.’
When the gods of the nations fell, when the Father which is in heaven manifested Himself to the world in the Gospel, adopting as His children those who received into their hearts the glad tidings of reconciliation with God, all these men became brethren, and this fraternity created liberty. From that time a mighty transformation went on gradually, in individuals, in families, and in society itself. Slavery disappeared, without wars or revolutions.
Unhappily, the sun which had for some time gladdened the eyes of the people, became obscured; the liberty of the children of God was lost; new human ordinances appeared to bind men’s consciences and chill their hearts. The Reformation of the sixteenth century restored to the human race what the middle ages had stolen from them; it delivered them from the traditions, laws, and despotism of the papacy; it put an end to the minority and tutelage in which Rome claimed to keep mankind for ever; and by calling upon man to establish his faith not on the word of a priest, but on the infallible Word of God, and by announcing to everyone free access to the Father through the new and saving way—Christ Jesus, it proclaimed and brought about the hour of christian manhood.