"To all those who thus repent and seek Jesus Christ for their salvation, I declare the absolution of their sins, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
It was this Strasbourg liturgy of Calvin that was in the hands of the framers of the English "Book of Common Prayer," and from this they derived the introductory portion of the daily service. "According to the first book of Edward VI., that service began with the Lord's Prayer. The foreign reformers consulted recommended the insertion of some preliminary forms; and hence the origin of the Sentences, the Exhortation, the Confession, and the Absolution. These elements were borrowed, not from any ancient formulary, but from a ritual drawn up by Calvin for the church at Strasbourg." (C. W. Baird, Eutaxia, or the Presbyterian Liturgies: Historical Sketches, New York, 1855, p. 190.)
The origin of only one of the minor offices of the Geneva liturgy can be distinctly traced to another and older source. The form for the celebration of marriage is taken bodily from the "Manière et Fasson" of Farel, with the omission of two or three unimportant sentences, and the alteration of a very few words—a trifling change, dictated in each case by Calvin's keener literary taste. The form for baptism, Calvin tells us expressly, was somewhat roughly drafted by himself at Strasbourg, when the children of Anabaptists were brought to him for baptism from distances of five or ten leagues around. (Adieux de Calvin, Bonnet, ii. 578.)
The liturgy of Geneva, composed with rapidity under the pressure of the times, but with the skill and fine literary finish that are wont to characterize even the most hurried of Calvin's productions, has maintained its position undisputed to the present time, being the oldest of existing forms of worship in the reformed churches. The gradual change in the French language since the date of its composition has rendered necessary some modernizing of the style both of the prayers and of the accompanying psalms. These modifications, much more radical in the case of the metrical psalms, took place in the eighteenth century, and commended themselves so fully to the good sense of all French-speaking Protestants as soon to be everywhere adopted. The MS. records of the French church in New York (folio 45) contain, under date of March 6, 1763, a resolution unanimously adopted in a meeting of the heads of families and communicants, to change "la vielle version des Pseaumes de David qui est en uzage parmy nous, et de prandre et introduire dans notre Eglize les Pseaumes de la plus nouvelle version qui est en uzage dans les Eglises de Genève, Suisse et Hollande." The liturgy has always been printed at the end of the psalter, and the change of the one involved that of the other. It has been noted above that the "Confession of Sins" was the most characteristic part of Calvin's liturgy. In fact, the initial words of this confession, "Seigneur Dieu, Père Éternel et Toutpuissant," came to stand in the minds of the Roman Catholics who heard them for the entire Protestant service. Bernard Palissy accordingly tells us (Recepte Véritable, 1563, Bulletin, i. 93) that a favorite expression of the Roman Catholics from Taillebourg, when committing all sorts of excesses against the Protestants of Saintes, was: "Agimus a gagné Père Éternel!" As Agimus was the first word of the customary grace said at meals by devout Roman Catholics—"Agimus tibi gratias, omnipotens Deus," etc.—this apparently enigmatical expression was only a profane formula to celebrate the triumph of the Roman over the reformed church. See Bulletin, xii. 247 and 469.
CHAPTER IX.
FRANCIS THE SECOND AND THE TUMULT OF AMBOISE.
The victims breathe more freely.
Epigrams on the death of Henry.