The Age of the Reformation

by Preserved Smith

SECTION 2. CALVIN

On January 15, 1527, Thomas von Hofen wrote Zwingli from Geneva that he would do all he could to exalt the gospel in that city but that he knew it would be vain, for there were seven hundred priests working against him. This letter gives an insight into the methods by which new territory was evangelized, the quarters whence came the new influences, and the forces with which they had to contend.

Among the early missionaries of "the gospel" in French-speaking lands, one of the most energetic was William Farel. [Sidenote: Farel, 1489-1565] He had studied at Paris under Lèfevre d'Étaples, and was converted to Lutheranism as early as 1521. He went first to Basle, where he learned to know Erasmus. Far from showing respect to the older and more famous man, he scornfully told him to his face that Froben's wife knew more theology than {161} did he. Erasmus's resentment showed itself in the nickname Phallicus that he fastened on his antagonist. From Basle Farel went to Montbéliard and Aigle, preaching fearlessly but so fiercely that his friend Oecolampadius warned him to remember rather to teach than to curse. [Sidenote: 1528] After attending the disputation at Berne he evangelized western Switzerland. His methods may be learned from his work at Valangin on August 15, 1530. He attended a mass, but in the midst of it went up to the priest, tore the host forcibly from his hands, and said to the people: "This is not the God whom you worship: he is above in heaven, even in the majesty of the Father." In 1532 he went to Geneva. Notwithstanding the fact that here, as often elsewhere, he narrowly escaped lynching, he made a great impression. His red hair and hot temper evidently had their uses.

[Sidenote: Calvin, 1509-64]

The Reformer of French Switzerland was not destined to be Farel, however, but John Calvin. Born at Noyon, Picardy, his mother died early and his father, who did not care for children, sent him to the house of an aristocratic friend to be reared. In this environment he acquired the distinguished manners and the hauteur for which he was noted. When John was six years old his father, Gerard, had him appointed to a benefice just as nowadays he might have got him a scholarship. At the age of twelve Gerard's influence procured for his son another of these ecclesiastical livings and two years later this was exchanged for a more lucrative one to enable the boy to go to Paris. Here for some years, at the College of Montaigu, Calvin studied scholastic philosophy and theology under Noel Beda, a medieval logic-chopper and schoolman by temperament. At the university Calvin won from his fellows the sobriquet of "the accusative case," on account of his censorious {162} and fault-finding disposition. At his father's wish John changed from theology to law. For a time he studied at the universities of Orleans and Bourges. At Orleans he came under the influence of two Protestants, Olivetan and the German Melchior Volmar. On the death of his father, in 1531, he began to devote himself to the humanities. His first work, a commentary on Seneca's De Clementia, witnesses his wide reading, his excellent Latin style, and his ethical interests.

It was apparently through the humanists Erasmus and Lefèvre that he was led to the study of the Bible and of Luther's writings. Probably in the fall of 1533 he experienced a "conversion" such as stands at the head of many a religious career. A sudden beam of light, he says, came to him at this time from God, putting him to the proof and showing him in how deep an abyss of error and of filth he had been living. He thereupon abandoned his former life with tears.

In the spring of 1534 Calvin gave up the sinecure benefices he had held, and towards the end of the year left France because of the growing persecution, for he had already rendered himself suspect. After various wanderings he reached Basle, where he published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion. [Sidenote: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536] It was dedicated, like two of Zwingli's works, to Francis I, with a strong plea for the new faith. It was, nevertheless, condemned and burnt publicly in France in 1542. Originally written in Latin it was translated by the author into French in 1541, and reissued from time to time in continually larger editions, the final one, of 1559, being five times as bulky as the first impression. The thought, too, though not fundamentally changed, was rearranged and developed. Only in the redaction of 1541 was {163} predestination made perfectly clear. The first edition, like Luther's catechism, took up in order the Decalogue, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Sacraments. To this was added a section on Christian liberty, the power of the church, and civil government. In the last edition the arrangement followed entirely the order of articles in the Apostles' Creed, all the other matter being digested in its relation to faith.

[Sidenote: A system of theology]

In the Institutes Calvin succeeded in summing up the whole of Protestant Christian doctrine and practice. It is a work of enormous labor and thought. Its rigid logic, comprehensiveness, and clarity have secured it the same place in the Protestant Churches that the Summa of Aquinas has in the Roman theology. It is like the Summa, in other ways, primarily in that it is an attempt to derive an absolute, unchangeable standard of dogma from premises considered infallible. Those who have found great freshness in Calvin, a new life and a new realism, can do so only in comparison with the older schoolmen. Calvin simply went over their ground, introducing into their philosophy all the connotations that three centuries of progress had made necessary. This is not denying that his work was well written and that it filled a need urgently felt at the time. Calvin cultivated style, both French and Latin, with great care, for he saw its immense utility for propaganda. He studied especially brevity, and thought that he carried it to an extreme, though the French edition of the Institutes fills more than eight hundred large octavo pages. However, all things are relative, and compared to many other theologians Calvin is really concise and readable.

There is not one original thought in any of Calvin's works. I do not mean "original" in any narrow sense, for to the searcher for sources it seems that {164} there is literally nothing new under the sun. But there is nothing in Calvin for which ample authority cannot be found in his predecessors. Recognizing the Bible as his only standard, he interpreted it according to the new Protestant doctors. First and foremost he was dependent on Luther, and to an extent that cannot be exaggerated. Especially from the Catechisms, The Bondage of the Will, and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Calvin drew all his principal doctrines even to details. He also borrowed something from Bucer, Erasmus and Schwenckfeld, as well as from three writers who were in a certain sense his models. Melanchthon's Commonplaces of Theology, Zwingli's True and False Religion, and Farel's Brief Instruction in Christian Faith had all done tentatively what he now did finally.

[Sidenote: Theocentric character]

The center of Calvin's philosophy was God as the Almighty Will. His will was the source of all things, of all deeds, of all standards of right and wrong and of all happiness. The sole purpose of the universe, and the sole intent of its Creator, was the glorification of the Deity. Man's chief end was "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." God accomplished this self-exaltation in all things, but chiefly through men, his noblest work, and he did it in various ways, by the salvation of some and the damnation of others. And his act was purely arbitrary; he foreknew and predestined the fate of every man from the beginning; he damned and saved irrespective of foreseen merit. "God's eternal decree" Calvin himself called "frightful." [1] The outward sign of election to grace he thought was moral behavior, and in this respect he demanded the uttermost from himself and from his followers. The elect, he thought, were certain of salvation. The highest virtue was faith, a matter more {165} of the heart than of the reason. The divinity of Christ, he said, was apprehended by Christian experience, not by speculation. Reason was fallacious; left to itself the human spirit "could do nothing but lose itself in infinite error, embroil itself in difficulties and grope in opaque darkness." But God has given us his Word, infallible and inerrant, something that "has flowed from his very mouth." "We can only seek God in his Word," he said, "nor think of him otherwise than according to his Word."

Inevitably, Calvin sought to use the Bible as a rigid, moral law to be fulfilled to the letter. His ethics were an elaborate casuistry, a method of finding the proper rule to govern the particular act. He preached a new legalism; [Sidenote: Legalism] he took Scripture as the Pharisees took the Law, and Luther's sayings as they took the Prophets, and he turned them all into stiff, fixed laws. Thus he crushed the glorious autonomy of his predecessor's ethical principles. It was Kant, who denied all Luther's specific beliefs, but who developed his idea of the individual conscience, that was the true heir of his spirit, not Calvin who crushed the spirit in elaborating every jot and tittle of the letter. In precisely the same manner Calvin killed Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. To Calvin the church was a sacramental, aristocratic organization, with an authoritative ministry. The German rebelled against the idea of the church as such; the Frenchman simply asked what was the true church. So he brought back some of the sacramental miracle of baptism and the eucharist. In the latter he remained as medieval as Luther, never getting beyond the question of the mode of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine. His endeavor to rationalize the doctrine of Augsburg, especially with reference to the Zwinglians, had disastrous results. Only two {166} positions were possible, that the body and blood were present, or that they were not. By endeavoring to find some middle ground Calvin upheld a contradiction in terms: the elements were signs and yet were realities; the body was really there when the bread was eaten by a believer, but really not there when the same bread was eaten by an infidel. The presence was actual, and yet participation could only occur by faith. While rejecting some of Luther's explanations, Calvin was undoubtedly nearer his position than that of Zwingli, which he characterized as "profane."

As few instructed and thinking persons now accept the conclusions of the Institutes, it is natural to underestimate the power that they exercised in their own day. This book was the most effective weapon of Protestantism. This was partly because of the style, but, still more because of the faultless logic. [Sidenote: His logic] The success of an argument usually depends far less on the truth of the premises than on the validity of the reasoning. And the premises selected by Calvin not only seemed natural to a large body of educated European opinion of his time, but were such that their truth or falsity was very difficult to demonstrate convincingly. Calvin's system has been overthrown not by direct attack, but by the flank, in science as in war the most effective way. To take but one example out of many that might be given: what has modern criticism made of Calvin's doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture? But this science was as yet all but unknown: biblical exegesis there was in plenty, but it was only to a minute extent literary and historical; it was almost exclusively philological and dogmatic.

Calvin's doctrine of the arbitrary dealing out of salvation and damnation irrespective of merit has often excited a moral rather than an intellectual revulsion. To his true followers, indeed, like Jonathan {167} Edwards, it seems "a delightful doctrine, exceeding bright, pleasant and sweet." [Sidenote: Eternal damnation] But many men agree with Gibbon that it makes God a cruel and capricious tyrant and with William James that it is sovereignly irrational and mean. Even at that time those who said that a man's will had no more to do with his destiny than the stick in a man's hand could choose where to strike or than a saddled beast could choose its rider, aroused an intense opposition. Erasmus argued that damnation given for inevitable crimes would make God unjust, and Thomas More blamed Luther for calling God the cause of evil and for saying "God doth damn so huge a number of people to intolerable torments only for his own pleasure and for his own deeds wrought in them only by himself." An English heretic, Cole of Faversham, said that the doctrine of predestination was meeter for devils than for Christians. "The God of Calvin," exclaimed Jerome Bolsec, "is a hypocrite, a liar, perfidious, unjust, the abetter and patron of crimes, and worse than the devil himself."

But there was another side to the doctrine of election. There was a certain moral grandeur in the complete abandon to God and in the earnestness that was ready to sacrifice all to his will. And if we judge the tree by its fruits, at its best it brought forth a strong and good race. The noblest examples are not the theologians, Calvin and Knox, not only drunk with God but drugged with him, much less politicians like Henry of Navarre and William of Orange, but the rank and file of the Huguenots of France, the Puritans of England, "the choice and sifted seed wherewith God sowed the wilderness" of America. These men bore themselves with I know not what of lofty seriousness, and with a matchless disdain of all mortal peril and all earthly grandeur. Believing themselves chosen vessels and elect instruments of grace, they could neither {168} be seduced by carnal pleasure nor awed by human might. Taught that they were kings by the election of God and priests by the imposition of his hands, they despised the puny and vicious monarchs of this earth. They remained, in fact, what they always felt themselves to be, an elite, "the chosen few."

Having finished his great work, Calvin set out on his wanderings again. For a time he was at the court of the sympathetic Renée de France, Duchess of Ferrara. When persecution broke out here, he again fled northward, and came, by chance, to Geneva. [Sidenote: Geneva] Here Farel was waging an unequal fight with the old church. Needing Calvin's help he went to him and begged his assistance, calling on God to curse him should he not stay. "Struck with terror," as Calvin himself confessed, he consented to do so.

Beautifully situated on the blue waters of Lake Leman in full view of Mont Blanc, Geneva was at this time a town of 16,000 inhabitants, a center of trade, pleasure, and piety. The citizens had certain liberties, but were under the rule of a bishop. As this personage was usually elected from the house of the Duke of Savoy, Geneva had become little better than a dependency of that state. The first years of the sixteenth century had been turbulent. The bishop, John, had at one time been forced to abdicate his authority, but later had tried to resume it. The Archbishop of Vienne, Geneva's metropolitan, had then excommunicated the city and invited Duke Charles III of Savoy to punish it. The citizens rose under Bonivard, renounced the authority of the pope, expelled the bishop and broke up the religious houses. To guard against the vengeance of the duke, a league was made with Berne and Freiburg.

On October 2, 1532, William Farel arrived from Berne. At Geneva as elsewhere tumult followed his {169} preaching, but it met with such success that by January, 1534, he held a disputation which decided the city to become evangelical. The council examined the shrines [Sidenote: 1535] and found machinery for the production of bogus miracles; provisionally abolished the mass; [Sidenote: May 21, 1536] and soon after formally renounced the papal religion.

At this point Calvin arrived, and began preaching and organizing at once. He soon aroused opposition from the citizens, galled at his strictness and perhaps jealous of a foreigner. [Sidenote: Calvin expelled, February 1538] The elections to the council went against him, and the opposition came to a head shortly afterwards. The town council decided to adopt the method of celebrating the eucharist used at Rome. For some petty reason Calvin and Farel refused to obey, and when a riot broke out at the Lord's table, the council expelled them from the city.

Calvin went to Strassburg, where he learned to know Bucer and republished his Institutes. Here he married Idelette de Bure, the widow of an Anabaptist, [Sidenote: August, 1540] who was never in strong health and died, probably of consumption, on March 29, 1549. Calvin's married life lacked tenderness and joy. The story that he selected his wife because he thought that by reason of her want of beauty she would not distract his thoughts from God, is not well founded, but it does illustrate his attitude towards her. The one or more children born of the union died in infancy.

Calvin attended the Colloquy at Ratisbon, [Sidenote: 1541] in the result of which he was deeply disappointed. In the meantime he had not lost all interest in Geneva. When Cardinal Sadoleto wrote, in the most polished Latin, an appeal to the city to return to the Roman communion, Calvin answered it. [Sidenote: September 1, 1539] The party opposed to him discredited itself by giving up the city's rights to Berne, and, was therefore overthrown. The perplexities presenting themselves to the council were {170} beyond their powers to solve, and they felt obliged to recall Calvin, [Sidenote: Calvin returns, 1541] who returned to remain for the rest of his life.

[Sidenote: Theocracy]

His position was so strong that he was able to make of Geneva a city after his own heart. The form of government he caused to prevail was a strict theocracy. The clergy of the city met in a body known as the Congregation, a "venerable company" that discussed and prepared legislation for the consideration of the Consistory. In this larger body, besides the clergy, the laity were represented by twelve elders chosen by the council, not by the people at large. The state and church were thus completely identified in a highly aristocratic polity.

"The office of the Consistory is to keep watch on the life of every one." Thus briefly was expressed the delegation of as complete powers over the private lives of citizens as ever have been granted to a committee. The object of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances was to create a society of saints. The Bible was adopted as the norm; all its provisions being enforced except such Jewish ceremonies as were considered abrogated by the New Testament. The city was divided into quarters, and some of the elders visited every house at least once a year and passed in review the whole life, actions, speech, and opinions of the inmates. The houses of the citizens were made of glass; and the vigilant eye of the Consistory, served by a multitude of spies, was on them all the time. In a way this espionage but took the place of the Catholic confessional. A joke, a gesture was enough to bring a man under suspicion. The Elders sat as a regular court, hearing complaints and examining witnesses. It is true that they could inflict only spiritual punishments, such as public censure, penance, excommunication, or forcing the culprit to demand pardon in church on his knees. But when {171} the Consistory thought necessary, it could invoke the aid of the civil courts and the judgment was seldom doubtful. Among the capital crimes were adultery, blasphemy, witchcraft, and heresy. Punishments for all offences were astonishingly and increasingly heavy. During the years 1542-6 there were, in this little town of 16,000 people, no less than fifty-eight executions and seventy-six banishments.

In judging the Genevan theocracy it is important to remember that everywhere, in the sixteenth century, punishments were heavier than they are now, and the regulation of private life minuter.[2] Nevertheless, though parallels to almost everything done at Geneva can be found elsewhere, it is true that Calvin intensified the medieval spirit in this respect and pushed it to the farthest limit that human nature would bear.

First of all, he compelled the citizens to fulfil their religious duties. He began the process by which later the Puritans identified the Jewish Sabbath and the Lord's Day. Luther had thought the injunction to rest on the Seventh Day a bit of Jewish ceremonial abrogated by the new dispensation and that, after attending church, the Christian might devote the day to what work or pleasure he thought proper. Calvin, however, forbade all work and commanded attendance on sermons, of which an abundance were offered to the devout. In addition to Sunday services there were, as in the Catholic church, morning prayers every work day and a second service three days a week. All ceremonies with a vestige of popery about them were forbidden. [Sidenote: 1555] The keeping of Christmas was prohibited under pain of fine and imprisonment.

"As I see that we cannot forbid men all diversions," sighed Calvin, "I confine myself to those that are really bad." This class was sufficiently large. The {172} theater was denounced from the pulpit, especially when the new Italian habit of giving women's parts to actresses instead of to boys was introduced. According to Calvin's colleague Cop, "the women who mount the platform to play comedies are full of unbridled effrontery, without honor, having no purpose but to expose their bodies, clothes, and ornaments to excite the impure desires of the spectators. . . . The whole thing," he added, "is very contrary to the modesty of women who ought to be shamefaced and shy." Accordingly, attendance on plays was forbidden.

[Sidenote: Supervision of conduct]

Among other prohibited amusements was dancing, especially obnoxious as at that time dances were accompanied by kisses and embraces. Playing cards, cursing and swearing were also dealt with, as indeed they were elsewhere. Among the odd matters that came before the Consistory were: attempted suicide, possessing the Golden Legend (a collection of saints' lives called by Beza "abominable trash"), paying for masses, betrothing a daughter to a Catholic, fasting on Good Friday, singing obscene songs, and drunkenness. A woman was chastized for taking too much wine even though it did not intoxicate. Some husbands were mildly reprimanded, not for beating their wives which was tolerated by contemporary opinion, but for rubbing salt and vinegar into the wales. Luxury in clothing was suppressed; all matters of color and quality regulated by law, and even the way in which women did their hair. In 1546 the inns were put under the direct control of the government and strictly limited to the functions of entertaining—or rather of boarding and lodging—strangers and citizens in temporary need of them. Among the numerous rules enforced within them the following may be selected as typical:

[Sidenote: Rules for inns]

If any one blasphemes the name of God or says, "By {173} the body, 'sblood, zounds" or anything like, or who gives himself to the devil or uses similar execrable imprecations, he shall be punished. . . .

If any one insults any one else the host shall be obliged to deliver him up to justice.

If there are any persons who make it their business to frequent the said inns, and there to consume their goods and substance, the host shall not receive them.

Item the host shall be obliged to report to the government any insolent or dissolute acts committed by the guests.

Item the host shall not allow any person of whatever quality he be, to drink or eat anything in his house without first having asked a blessing and afterwards said grace.

Item the host shall be obliged to keep in a public place a French Bible, in which any one who wishes may read, and he shall not prevent free and honest conversation on the Word of God, to edification, but shall favor it as much as he can.

Item the host shall not allow any dissoluteness like dancing, dice or cards, nor shall he receive any one suspected of being a debauche or ruffian.

Item he shall only allow people to play honest games without swearing or blasphemy, and without wasting more time than that allowed for a meal.

Item he shall not allow indecent songs or words, and if any one wishes to sing Psalms or spiritual songs he shall make them do it in a decent and not in a dissolute way.

Item nobody shall be allowed to sit up after nine o'clock at night except spies.

Of course, such matters as marriage were regulated strictly. When a man of seventy married a girl of twenty-five Calvin said it was the pastor's duty to reprehend them. The Reformer often selected the women he thought suitable for his acquaintances who wanted wives. He also drew up a list of baptismal names which he thought objectionable, including the names of "idols,"—i.e. saints venerated near Geneva—the names of kings and offices to whom God alone {174} appoints, such as Angel or Baptist, names belonging to God such as Jesus and Emanuel, silly names such as Toussaint and Noel, double names and ill-sounding names. Calvin also pronounced on the best sort of stoves and got servants for his friends. In fact, there was never such a busy-body in a position of high authority before nor since. No wonder that the citizens frequently chafed under the yoke.

If we ask how much was actually accomplished by this minute regulation accompanied by extreme severity in the enforcement of morals, various answers are given. When the Italian reformer Bernardino Occhino visited Geneva in 1542, he testified that cursing and swearing, unchastity and sacrilege were unknown; that there were neither lawsuits nor simony nor murder nor party spirit, but that universal benevolence prevailed. Again in 1556 John Knox said that Geneva was "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the apostles. In other places," he continued, "I confess Christ to be truly preached, but manners and religion so sincerely reformed I have not yet seen in any place besides." But if we turn from these personal impressions to an examination of the acts of the Consistory, we get a very different impression. [Sidenote: Morals of Geneva] The records of Geneva show more cases of vice after the Reformation than before. The continually increasing severity of the penalties enacted against vice and frivolity seem to prove that the government was helpless to suppress them. Among those convicted of adultery were two of Calvin's own female relatives, his brother's wife and his step-daughter Judith. What success there was in making Geneva a city of saints was due to the fact that it gradually became a very select population. The worst of the incorrigibles were soon either executed or banished, and their places taken by a large influx of {175} men of austere mind, drawn thither as a refuge from persecution elsewhere, or by the desire to sit at the feet of the great Reformer. Between the years 1549 and 1555 no less than 1297 strangers were admitted to citizenship. Practically all of these were immigrants coming to the little town for conscience's sake.

[Persecution]

Orthodoxy was enforced as rigidly as morality. The ecclesiastical constitution adopted in 1542 brought in the Puritan type of divine service. Preaching took the most important place in church, supplemented by Bible reading and catechetical instruction. Laws were passed enforcing conformity under pain of losing goods and life. Those who did not expressly renounce the mass were punished. A little girl of thirteen was condemned to be publicly beaten with rods for saying that she wanted to be a Catholic. Calvin identified his own wishes and dignity with the commands and honor of God. One day he forbade a citizen, Philibert Berthelier, to come to the Lord's table. Berthelier protested and was supported by the council. "If God lets Satan crush my ministry under such tyranny," shrieked Calvin, "it is all over with me." The slightest assertion of liberty on the part of another was stamped out as a crime. Sebastian Castellio, a sincere Christian and Protestant, but more liberal than Calvin, fell under suspicion because he called the Song of Songs obscene, and because he made a new French version of the Bible to replace the one of Olivetan officially approved. He was banished in 1544. Two years later Peter Ameaux made some very trifling personal remarks about Calvin, for which he was forced to fall on his knees in public and ask pardon.

But opposition only increased. The party opposing Calvin he called the Libertines—a word then meaning something like "free-thinker" and gradually getting {176} the bad moral connotation it has now, just as the word "miscreant" had formerly done. [Sidenote: January, 1547] One of these men, James Cruet, posted on the pulpit of St. Peter's church at Geneva a warning to Calvin, in no very civil terms, to leave the city. He was at once arrested and a house to house search made for his accomplices. This method failing to reveal anything except that Gruet had written on one of Calvin's tracts the words "all rubbish," his judges put him to the rack twice a day, morning and evening, for a whole month. The frightful torture failed to make Gruet incriminate anyone else, and he was accordingly tried for heresy. He was charged with "disparaging authors like Moses, who by the Spirit of God wrote the divine law, saying that Moses had no more power than any other man. . . . He also said that all laws, human and divine, were made at the pleasure of man." He was therefore sentenced to death for blasphemy and beheaded on July 26, 1547, "calling on God as his Lord." After his death one of his books was found and condemned. To justify this course Calvin alleged that Gruet said that Jesus Christ was a good-for-nothing, a liar, and a false seducer, and that he (Gruet) denied the existence of God and immortality. Evangelical freedom had now arrived at the point whore its champions first took a man's life and then his character, merely for writing a lampoon!

Naturally such tyranny produced a reaction. The enraged Libertines nicknamed Calvin Cain, and saved from his hands the next personal enemy, Ami Perrin, whom he caused to be tried for treason. [Sidenote: October 16, 1551] A still more bitter dose for the theocrat was that administered by Jerome Bolsec, who had the audacity to preach against the doctrine of predestination. Calvin and Farel refuted him on the spot and had him arrested. Berne, Basle and Zurich intervened and, when solicited for {177} an expression on the doctrine in dispute, spoke indecisively. The triumph of his enemies at this rebuke was hard for Calvin to bear and prepared for the commission of the most regrettable act of his career.

[Sidenote: Servetus, 1531]

The Spanish physician Michael Servetus published, in Germany, a work on the Errors concerning the Trinity. His theory was not that of a modern rationalist, but of one whose starting point was the authority of the Bible, and his unitarianism was consequently of a decidedly theological brand, recalling similar doctrines in the early church. Leaving Germany he went to Vienne, [Sidenote: 1553] in France, and got a good practice under an assumed name. He later published a work called, perhaps in imitation of Calvin's Institutio, The Restitution of Christianity, setting forth his ideas about the Trinity, which he compared to the three-headed monster Cerberus, but admitting the divinity of Christ. He also denied the doctrine of original sin and asserted that baptism should be for adults only. He was poorly advised in sending this book to the Reformer, with whom he had some correspondence. With Calvin's knowledge and probably at his instigation, though he later issued an equivocating denial, William Trie, of Geneva, denounced Servetus to the Catholic inquisition at Vienne and forwarded the material sent by the heretic to Calvin. On June 17, 1553, the Catholic inquisitor, expressly stating that he acted on this material, condemned Servetus to be burnt by slow fire, but he escaped and went to Geneva.

Here he was recognized and arrested. Calvin at once appeared as his prosecutor for heresy. The charges against him were chiefly concerned with his denial of the Trinity and of infant baptism, and with his attack on the person and teaching of Calvin. As an example of the point to which Bibliolatry could suppress candor it may be mentioned that one of the {178} charges against him was that he had asserted Palestine to be a poor land. This was held to contradict the Scriptural statement that it was a land flowing with milk and honey. The minutes of the trial are painful reading. It was conducted on both sides with unbecoming violence. Among other expressions used by Calvin, the public prosecutor, were these: that he regarded Servetus's defence as no better than the braying of an ass, and that the prisoner was like a villainous cur wiping his muzzle. Servetus answered in the same tone, his spirit unbroken by abuse and by his confinement in a horrible dungeon, where he suffered from hunger, cold, vermin, and disease. He was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to be burnt with slow fire. Calvin said that he tried to alter the manner of execution, but there is not a shred of evidence, in the minutes of the trial or elsewhere, that he did so. Possibly, if he made the request, it was purely formal, as were similar petitions for mercy made by the Roman inquisitors. At any rate, while Calvin's alleged effort for mercy proved fruitless, he visited his victim in prison to read him a self-righteous and insulting lecture. Farel, also, reviled him on the way to the stake, at which he perished on October 26, 1553, [Sidenote: Death of Servetus] crying, "God preserve my soul! O Jesus, Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me!" Farel called on the bystanders to witness that these words showed the dying man to be still in the power of Satan.

This act of persecution, one of the most painful in the history of Christianity, was received with an outburst of applause from almost all quarters. Melanchthon, who had not been on speaking terms with Calvin for some years, was reconciled to him by what he called "a signal act of piety." Other leading Protestants congratulated Calvin, who continued persecution systematically. Another victim of his was Matthew {179} Gribaldi, whom he delivered into the hands of the government of Berne, with a refutation of his errors. [Sidenote: 1564.] Had he not died of the plague in prison he would probably have suffered the same fate as Servetus.

[Sidenote: Complete theocracy, 1555]

Strengthened by his victory over heresy, Calvin now had the chance to annihilate his opponents. On May 15, 1555, he accused a number of them of treason, and provided proof by ample use of the rack. With the party of Libertines completely broken, Calvin ruled from this time forth with a rod of iron. The new Geneva was so cowed and subservient that the town council dared not install a new sort of heating apparatus without asking the permission of the theocrat. But a deep rancor smouldered under the surface. "Our incomparable theologian Calvin," wrote Ambrose Blaurer to Bullinger, "labors under such hatred of some whom he obscures by his light that he is considered the worst of heretics by them." Among other things he was accused of levying tribute from his followers by a species of blackmail, threatening publicly to denounce them unless they gave money to the cause.

[Sidenote: International Calvinism]

At the same time his international power and reputation rose. Geneva became the capital of Protestantism, from which mandates issued to all the countries of Western Europe. Englishmen and Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Italians, thronged to "this most perfect school of Christ since the apostles" to learn the laws of a new type of Christianity. For Calvin's Reformation was more thorough and logical than was Luther's. The German had regarded all as permitted that was not forbidden, and allowed the old usages to stand in so far as they were not repugnant to the ordinances of the Bible. But Calvin believed that all was forbidden save what was expressly allowed, and hence abolished as superstitious accretions all the elements of the medieval cult that could find no warrant in the {180} Bible. Images, vestments, organs, bells, candles, ritual, were swept away in the ungarnished meeting-house to make way for a simple service of Bible-reading, prayer, hymn and sermon. The government of the church was left by Calvin in close connection with the state, but he apparently turned around the Lutheran conception, making the civil authority subordinate to the spiritual and not the church to the state.

Whereas Lutheranism appealed to Germans and Scandinavians, Calvinism became the international form of Protestantism. Even in Germany Calvin made conquests at the expense of Luther, but outside of Germany, in France, in the Netherlands, in Britain, he moulded the type of reformed thought in his own image. It is difficult to give statistics, for it is impossible to say how far each particular church, like the Anglican for example, was indebted to Calvin, how far to Luther, and how far to other leaders, and also because there was a strong reaction against pure Calvinism even in the sixteenth century. But it is safe to say that the clear, cold logic of the Institutes, the good French and Latin of countless other treatises and letters, and the political thought which amalgamated easily with rising tides of democracy and industrialism, made Calvin the leader of Protestantism outside of the Teutonic countries of the north. His gift for organization and the pains he took to train ministers and apostles contributed to this success.

[Sidenote: Death of Calvin, May 27, 1564]

On May 27, 1564 Calvin died, worn out with labor and ill health at the age of fifty-five. With a cold heart and a hot temper, he had a clear brain, an iron will, and a real moral earnestness derived from the conviction that he was a chosen vessel of Christ. Constantly tortured by a variety of painful diseases, he drove himself, by the demoniac strength of his will, to perform labor that would have taxed the strongest. {181} The way he ruled his poor, suffering body is symbolic of the way he treated the sick world. To him the maladies of his own body, or of the body politic, were evils to be overcome, at any cost of pain and sweat and blood, by a direct effort of the will. As he never yielded to fever and weakness in himself, so he dealt with the vice and frivolity he detested, crushing it out by a ruthless application of power, hunting it with spies, stretching it on the rack and breaking it on the wheel. But a gentler, more understanding method would have accomplished more, even for his own purpose.

[Sidenote: Beza, 1519-1605]

His successor at Geneva, Theodore Beza, was a man after his own heart but, as he was far weaker, the town council gradually freed itself from spiritual tyranny. Towards the end of the century the pastors had been humbled and the questions of the day were far less the dogmatic niceties they loved than ethical ones such as the right to take usury, the proper penalty for adultery, the right to make war, and the best form of government.

[1] "Decretum Dei aeternum horribile."

[2] See below. Chapter X, section 3.

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