§ 137.7. Second Attempt at Reformation in the Electorate of Cologne, A.D. 1582.—The Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, Gebhard Truchsess of Waldburg went over in A.D. 1582 to the Protestant Church, married the Countess Agnes of Mansfeld, proclaimed religious freedom, and sought to convert his ecclesiastical principality into a temporal dominion. His plan was acceptable to nobles and people, but the clergy of his diocese opposed it with all their might. The pope thundered the ban against him, and Emperor Rudolph II. deposed him. The Protestant princes at last deserted him, and the newly elected archbishop, Duke Ernest of Bavaria, overpowered him by an armed force. The issue of Gebhard’s attempt struck terror into other prelates who had been contemplating similar moves.
§ 137.8. The German Emperor.—Ferdinand I., A.D. 1556-1564, conciliatory toward Protestantism, thoroughly dissatisfied with the Tridentine Council, once and again made attempts to secure a union, which all ended in failure. Maximilian II., A.D. 1564-1576, imbued by his tutor, Wolfgang Severus, with an evangelical spirit, which was deepened under the influence of his physician Crato von Crafftheim (§ [141, 10]), gave perfect liberty to the Protestants in his dominions, admitted them to many of the higher and lower offices of state, kept down the Jesuits, and was prevented from himself formally going over to Protestantism only by his political relations with Spain and the Catholic princes of the empire. These relations, however, led to the adoption of half measures, out of which afterwards sprang the Thirty Years’ War. His son Rudolph II., A.D. 1576-1612, educated by Jesuits at the Spanish court, gave again to that order unlimited scope, injured the Protestants on every side, and was only prevented by indecision and cowardice from attempting the complete suppression of Protestantism.
§ 138. The Reformation in French Switzerland.[369]
In French Switzerland the Reformation appeared somewhat later, but in essentially the same form as in German Switzerland. Its special character was given it by Farel and Viret, the predecessors of Calvin. The powerful genius of Calvin secured for his views victory over Zwinglianism in Switzerland, and won the ascendency for them in the other Reformed Churches.
§ 138.1. Calvin’s Predecessors, A.D. 1526-1535.—William Farel, the pupil and friend of the liberal exegete Faber Stapulensis (§ [120, 8]), was born in A.D. 1489 at Gap in Dauphiné. When in A.D. 1521 the Sorbonne condemned Luther’s doctrines and writings, he was obliged, as a suspected adherent of Luther, to quit Paris. He retired to Meaux, where he was well received by Bishop Briçonnet, but so boldly preached the reformed doctrines, that even the bishop, on renewed complaints being made, neither could nor would protect him. He then withdrew to Basel (§ [130, 3]). His first permanent residence was at Neuchatel, where in November, A.D. 1530, the Reformation was introduced by his influence. He left Neuchatel in A.D. 1532 in order to work in Geneva. But the civil authorities there could not protect him against the bishop and clergy. He was obliged to leave the city, but Saunier, Fromant, and Olivetan (§ [143, 5]) continued the work in his spirit. A revolution took place; the bishop thundered his ban against the refractory council, and the senate replied by declaring his office forfeited. Farel now returned to Geneva, A.D. 1535, and there accompanied him Peter Viret, afterwards the reformer of Lausanne. Viret was born at Orbe in A.D. 1511, and had attached himself to the Protestant cause during his studies in Paris. He therefore had also been obliged to quit the capital. He retired to his native town, and sought there diligently to spread the knowledge of the gospel. The arrival of these two enthusiastic reformers in Geneva led to a life and death struggle, from which the evangelicals went forth triumphant. As the result of a public disputation in August, A.D. 1535, the magistracy declared in their favour, and Farel gave the movement a doctrinal basis by the issuing of a confession. In the following year Calvin was passing through Geneva. Farel adjured him in God’s name to remain there. Farel indeed needed a fellow labourer of such genius and power, for he had a hard battle to fight.
§ 138.2. Calvin before his Genevan Ministry.—John Calvin, son of diocesan procurator Gerhard Cauvin, was born on 10th July, A.D. 1509, at Noyou in Picardy. Intended for the church, he was, from his twelfth year, in possession of a benefice. Meeting with his relation Olivetan, he had his first doubts of the truth of the Catholic system awakened. With his father’s consent he now turned to the study of law, which he eagerly prosecuted for four years at Orleans and Bourges. At Bourges, Melchior Wolmar, a German professor of Greek, exercised so powerful an influence over him, especially through the study of the Scriptures, that he decided, after the death of his father, to devote himself exclusively to theology. With this intention he went to Paris in A.D. 1532, and there enthusiastically adopted the principles of the Reformation. The newly appointed rector of the university, Nic. Cop, had to deliver an address on the Feast of All Saints. Calvin prepared it for him, and expressed therein such liberal and evangelical views, as had never before been uttered in that place. Cop read it boldly, and escaped the outburst of wrath only by a timely flight. Calvin, too, found it prudent to quit Paris. The bloody persecution of the Protestants by Francis I. led him at last to leave France altogether. So he went, in A.D. 1535, to Basel, where he became acquainted with Capito and Grynæus. In the following year he issued the first sketch of the Institutio Religionis Christianæ. It was made as a defence of the Protestants of France, persecuted by Francis on the pretext that they held Anabaptist and revolutionary views. He therefore dedicated the book to the king, with a noble and firm address. He soon left Basel, and went to the court of the evangelical-minded Duchess Renata of Ferrara (§ [139, 22]), in order to secure her good offices for his fellow countrymen suffering for their faith. He won the full confidence of the duchess, but after some weeks was banished the country by her husband. On his journey back to Basel, Farel and Viret detained him in Geneva in A.D. 1536, and declared that he was called to be a preacher and teacher of theology. On 1st October, A.D. 1536, the three reformers, at a public disputation in Lausanne, defended the principles of the Reformation. Viret remained in Lausanne, and perfected the work of Reformation there. As a confession of faith, a catechism, not in dialogue form, was composed by Calvin as a popular summary of his Institutio in the French language, and was sworn to, in A.D. 1536, by all the citizens of Geneva.The Catechismus Genevensis, highly prized in all the Reformed churches, was a later redaction, which appeared first in French in A.D. 1542, and then in Latin, in A.D. 1545.[370]
§ 138.3. Calvin’s First Ministry in Geneva, A.D. 1536-1538.—In Geneva, as in other places, there sprang up alongside of the Reformation, and soon in deadly opposition to it, an antinomian libertine sect, which strove for freedom from all restraint and order (§ [146, 4]). In the struggle against this dangerous development, which found special favour among the aristocratic youth of Geneva, Calvin put forth all the power of his logical mind and unbending will, and sought to break its force by the exercise of an excessively strict church discipline. He created a spiritual consistory which arrogated to itself the exclusive right of church discipline and excommunication, and wished to lay upon the magistrates the duty of inflicting civil punishments on all persons condemned by it. But not only did the libertine sections offer the most strenuous opposition, but also the magistrates regarded with jealousy and suspicion the erection of such a tribunal. Magistrates and libertines therefore combined to overthrow the consistory. A welcome pretext was found in a synod at Lausanne in A.D. 1538, which condemned the abolition of all festivals but the Sundays, the removal of baptismal fonts from the churches, and the introduction of leavened bread at the Lord’s Supper by the Genevan church as uncalled for innovations. The magistrates now demanded the withdrawal of these, and banished the preachers who would not obey. Farel went to Neuchatel, where he remained till his death in A.D. 1565; Calvin went to Strassburg, where Bucer, Capito, and Hedio gave him the office of a professor and preacher. During his three years’ residence there Calvin, as a Strassburg delegate, was frequently brought into close relationship with the German reformers, especially with Melanchthon (§§ [134], [135]). But he ever remained closely associated with Geneva, and when Cardinal Sadolet (§ [139, 12]) issued from Lyons in A.D. 1539 an appeal to the Genevese to return to the bosom of the Romish church, Calvin thundered against him an annihilating reply. His Genevan friends, too, spared no pains to win for him the favour of the council and the citizens. They succeeded all the more easily because since the overthrow of the theocratic consistory the libertine party had run into all manner of riotous excesses. By a decree of council of 20th Oct., A.D. 1540, Calvin was most honourably recalled. After long consideration he accepted the call in Sept., A.D. 1541, and now, with redoubled energy, set himself to carry out most strictly the work that had been interrupted.
§ 138.4. Calvin’s Second Ministry in Geneva, A.D. 1541-1564.—Calvin set up again, after his return, the consistory, consisting of six ministers and twelve lay elders, and by it ruled with almost absolute power. It was a thoroughly organized inquisition tribunal, which regulated in all details the moral, religious, domestic, and social life of the citizens, called them to account on every suspicion of a fault, had the incorrigible banished by the civil authorities, and the more dangerous of them put to death. The Ciceronian Bible translator, Sebastian Castellio, appointed rector of the Genevan school by Calvin, got out of sympathy with the rigorous moral strictures and compulsory prescriptions of matters of faith under the Calvinistic rule, and charged the clergy with intolerance and pride. He also contested the doctrine of the descent into hell, and described the Canticles as a love poem. He was deposed, and in order to escape further penalties he fled to Basel in A.D. 1544. A libertine called Gruet was executed in A.D. 1547, because he had circulated an abusive tract against the clergy, and blasphemous references were found in his papers; e.g. that Christianity is only a fable, that Christ was a deceiver and His mother a prostitute, that all ends with death, that neither heaven nor hell exists, etc. The physician, Jerome Bolsec, previously a Carmelite monk in Paris, was imprisoned in A.D. 1551, and then banished, because of his opposition to Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. He afterwards returned to the Romish church, and revenged himself by a biography of Calvin full of spiteful calumnies. On the execution of Servetus in A.D. 1533, see § [148, 2]. Between the years 1542 and 1546 there were in Geneva, with a population of only 20,000, no less than fifty-seven death sentences carried out with Calvin’s approval, and seventy-six sentences of banishment. The magistrates faithfully supported him in all his measures. But under the inquisitorial reign of terror of his consistory, the libertine party gained strength for a vehement struggle, and among the magistrates, from about A.D. 1546, there arose a powerful opposition, and fanatical mobs repeatedly threatened to throw him into the Rhone. This struggle lasted for nine years. But Calvin abated not a single iota from the strictness of his earlier demands, and so great was the fear of his powerful personality that neither the rage of riotous mobs nor the hostility of the magistracy could secure his banishment. In A.D. 1555 his party again won the ascendency in the elections, mainly by the aid of crowds of refugees from France, England, and Scotland, who had obtained residence and thus the rights of citizens in Geneva. From this time till his death on 27th March, A.D. 1564, his influence was supreme. The impress of his strong mind was more and more distinctly stamped upon every institution of the commonwealth, the demands of his rigorous discipline were willingly and heartily adopted as the moral code, and secured for Geneva that pre-eminence which for two centuries it retained among all the Reformed churches as an honourable, pious, and strictly moral city. In spite of a weak body and frequent attacks of sickness Calvin, during the twenty-three years of his two residences in Geneva, performed an amazing amount of work. He had married in A.D. 1540, at Strassburg, Idaletta de Bures, the widow of an Anabaptist converted by him. His wife died in A.D. 1549. He preached almost daily, attended all the sittings of the consistory and the preachers’ association, inspired all their deliberations and resolutions, delivered lectures in the academy founded by his orders in A.D. 1559, composed numerous doctrinal, controversial, and apologetical works, conducted an extensive correspondence, etc.
§ 138.5. Calvin’s Writings.—The most important of the writings of Calvin is his already mentioned Institutio Religionis Christianæ, of which the best and most complete edition appeared in A.D. 1559, a companion volume to Melanchthon’s Loci, but much more thorough and complete as a formal and scientific treatise. In this work Calvin elaborates his profound doctrinal system with great speculative power and bold, relentless logic, combined with the peculiar grace of a clear and charming style. Next in order of importance came his commentaries on almost all the books of Scripture. Here also he shows himself everywhere possessed of brilliant acuteness, religious geniality, profound Christian sympathy, and remarkable exegetical talent, but also a stickler for small points or seriously fettered by dogmatic prejudices. His exegetical productions want the warmth and childlike identification of the commentator with his text, which in so high a degree distinguishes Luther, while in form they are incomparably superior for conciseness and scientific precision. In the pulpit Calvin was the same strict and consistent logician as in his systematic and polemical works.Of Luther’s popular eloquence he had not the slightest trace.[371]
§ 138.6. Calvin’s Doctrine.—Calvin set Zwingli far below Luther, and had no hesitation in characterizing the Zwinglian doctrine of the sacraments as profane. With Luther, who highly respected him, he never came into close personal contact, but his intercourse with Melanchthon had a powerful influence upon the latter. But decidedly as he approached Luther’s doctrine, he was in principle rather on the same platform with Zwingli. His view of the Protestant principles is essentially Zwinglian. Just as decidedly as Zwingli had he broken with ecclesiastical tradition. In the doctrine of the person of Christ he inclined to Nestorianism, and could not therefore reach the same believing fulness as Luther in his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. He taught, as Berengar before had done, that the believer by means of faith partakes in the sacrament only spiritually, but yet really, of the body and blood of the Lord, through a power issuing from the glorified body of Christ, whereas the unbeliever receives only bread and wine. In his doctrine of justification he formally agrees with Luther, but introduced a very marked difference by his strict, almost Old Testament, legalism.His predestination doctrine goes beyond even that of Augustine in its rigid consistency and unbending severity.[372]