But no sooner had the news spread abroad that “Geneva had gone Protestant,” than all the eager apostles of half a hundred new and crazy creeds flocked to the shores of Lake Leman. With tremendous energy they began to preach some of the queerest doctrines ever conceived by mortal man.
Calvin detested these amateur prophets with all his heart. He fully appreciated what a menace they would prove to the cause of which they were such ardent but ill-guided champions. And the first thing he did as soon as he had enjoyed a few months leisure was to write down as precisely and briefly as he could what he expected his new parishioners to hold true and what he expected them to hold false. And that no man might claim the ancient and time-worn excuse, “I did not know the law,” he, together with his friend Farel, personally examined all Genevans in batches of ten and allowed only those to the full rights of citizenship who swore the oath of allegiance to this strange religious constitution.
Next he composed a formidable catechism for the benefit of the younger generation.
Next he prevailed upon the Town Council to expel all those who still clung to their old erroneous opinions.
Then, having cleared the ground for further action, he set about to found him a state along the lines laid down by the political economists of the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. For Calvin, like so many other of the great reformers, was really much more of an ancient Jew than a modern Christian. His lips did homage to the God of Jesus, but his heart went out to the Jehovah of Moses.
This, of course, is a phenomenon often observed during periods of great emotional stress. The opinions of the humble Nazarene carpenter upon the subject of hatred and strife are so definite and so clear cut that no compromise has ever been found possible between them and those violent methods by which nations and individuals have, during the last two thousand years, tried to accomplish their ends.
Hence, as soon as a war breaks out, by silent consent of all concerned, we temporarily close the pages of the Gospels and cheerfully wallow in the blood and thunder and the eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the Old Testament.
And as the Reformation was really a war and a very atrocious one, in which no quarter was asked and very little quarter was given, it need not surprise us that the state of Calvin was in reality an armed camp in which all semblance of personal liberty was gradually suppressed.
Of course, all this was not accomplished without tremendous opposition, and in the year 1538 the attitude of the more liberal elements in the community became so threatening that Calvin was forced to leave the city. But in 1541 his adherents returned to power. Amidst the ringing of many bells and the loud hosannas of the deacons, Magister Joannes returned to his citadel on the river Rhone. Thereafter he was the uncrowned King of Geneva and the next twenty-three years he devoted to the establishment and the perfection of a theocratic form of government, the like of which the world had not seen since the days of Ezekiel and Ezra.
The word “discipline” according to the Oxford Concise Dictionary, means “to bring under control, to train to obedience and order, to drill.” It expresses best the spirit which permeated the entire political-clerical structure of Calvin’s dreams.