It was in Paris, as we have seen, that Calvin received a new birth; it cannot be placed later, as some have wished to do, without contradicting the most positive testimony. Calvin, according to Theodore Beza, was instructed in the true religion by Olivétan, before he went to Orleans;[617] we know, moreover, that Calvin, either at Bourges or at Orleans, ‘wonderfully advanced the kingdom of God.’[618] How could he have done so if he had not known that kingdom? Calvin at the age of nineteen, gifted with a deep and conscientious soul, surrounded by relations and friends zealous for the Gospel, living at Paris in the midst of a religious movement of great power, was himself touched by the Spirit of God. Most certainly everything was not done then; some of the traits, which we have indicated after the reformer himself, may, as we have already remarked, belong to his residence at Orleans or at Bourges; but the essential work was done in 1527. Such is the conclusion at which we have arrived after careful study.

There are men in our days who look upon conversion as an imaginary act, and say simply that a man has changed his opinion. They freely grant that God can create a moral being once, but do not concede him the liberty of creating it a second time—of transforming it. Conversion is always the work of God. There are forces working in nature which cause the earth to bring forth its fruit; and yet some would maintain that God cannot work in the heart of man to create a new fruit!... Human will is not sufficient to explain the changes manifested in man; there, if anywhere, is found something mysterious and divine.

The young man did not immediately make his conversion publicly known; it was only one or two of his superiors that had any knowledge of his struggles, and they endeavoured to hide them from the pupils. They fancied it was a mere passing attack of that fever under which so many people were suffering, and believed that the son of the episcopal secretary would once more obediently place himself under the crook of the Church. The Spanish professor, who came from a country where fiery passions break out under a burning sky, and where religious fanaticism demands its victims, had doubtless waged an implacable war against the student’s new convictions; but information in this respect is wanting. Calvin carefully hid his treasure; he stole away from his companions, retired to some corner, and sought for communion with God alone. ‘Being naturally rather wild and shy,’ he tells us,[619] ‘I have always loved peace and tranquillity; accordingly I began then to seek for a hiding-place and the means of withdrawing from notice into some out-of-the-way spot.’ This reserve on Calvin’s part may have led to the belief that his conversion did not take place until later.

The news of what was passing in Paris reached the little town in Picardy where Calvin was born. It would be invaluable to possess the letters which he wrote to his father during this time of struggle, and even those of Olivétan; but we have neither. John’s relations with Olivétan were known at Noyon; there was no longer any doubt about the heretical opinions of the young curé of St. Martin of Motteville.... What trouble for his family, and especially for the episcopal notary! To renounce the hope of one day seeing his son vicar-general, bishop, and perhaps cardinal, was distressing to the ambitious father. Yet he decided promptly, and as it was all-important for him that Calvin should be something, he gave another direction to his immoderate thirst for honours. He said to himself that by making his son study the law, he would perhaps be helping him to shake off these new ideas; and that, in any case, the pursuit of the law was quite as sure a road, and even surer, to wealth and high station.[620] Duprat, at first a plain lawyer, and afterwards president of the parliament, is now (he thought) high chancellor of France, and the first personage in the realm after the king. Gerard, whose mind was fertile in schemes of success for himself and for others, continued to build his castles in the air in honour of his son; only he changed his sphere, and instead of placing them in the domain of the Church, he erected them in the domain of the State.

Thus, while the son had a new faith and a new life, the father had a new plan. Theodore Beza has pointed out this coincidence. After speaking of Calvin’s vocation to the ecclesiastical profession, he adds that a double change, which took place at that time in the minds of both father and son, led to the setting aside of this resolution in favour of another.[621] The coincidence struck Calvin himself, and it was he no doubt who pointed it out to his friend at Geneva. It was not therefore the resolution of Gerard Cauvin that decided his son’s calling, as some have supposed. At the first glance the two decisions seem independent of each other; but it appears probable to me that it was the change in the son which led to that of the father, and not the change in the father which led to that of the son. The young man submitted with joy to the order he received. Gerard, by taking his son from his theological studies, wished to withdraw him from heresy; but he was mistaken. Had not Luther first studied the law at Erfurth? Did not Calvin by this same study prepare himself better for the career of a reformer, than by the priesthood?

Conversion is the fundamental act of the Gospel and of the Reformation. From the transformation effected in the individual the transformation of the world is destined to result. This act, which in some is of very short duration and leads readily to faith, is a long operation in others; the power of sin is continually renewed in them, neither the new man nor the old man being able, for a time, to obtain a decisive victory. We have here an image of christianity. It is a struggle of the new man against the old man—a struggle that has lasted more than eighteen hundred years. The new man is continually gaining ground; the old man grows weaker and retires; but the hour of triumph has not yet come. Yet that hour is certain. The Reformation of the sixteenth century, like the Gospel of the first (to employ the words of Christ), ‘is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened.’[622] The three great nations on earth have already tasted of this heavenly leaven. It is fermenting, and soon all the ‘lump’ will be leavened.

CHAPTER IX.
BERQUIN DECLARES WAR AGAINST POPERY.
(1527.)

Will the reformer whom God is now preparing for France find in Francis I. the support which Luther found in Frederick the Wise? Since his return from captivity in Spain, the king, as we have seen, appeared to yield to the influence of his sister and to the movement of the age. Slightly touched by the new breath, he sometimes listened to the sermons of the evangelicals, and read fragments of the Holy Scriptures with Margaret. One day, when the beauty of the Gospel had spoken to his heart, he exclaimed: ‘It is infamous that the monks should dare to call that heresy which is the very doctrine of God!’ But the Reformation could not please him; liberty, which was one of its elements, clashed with the despotism of the prince; and holiness, another principle, condemned his irregularities.

Opposition to popery had, however, a certain charm for Francis, whose supreme rule it was to lower everything that encroached upon his greatness. He well remembered that the popes had more than once humbled the kings of France, and that Clement VII. was habitually in the interest of the emperor. But political motives will never cause a real Reformation; and hence there are few princes who have contributed so much as Francis I. to propagate superstition instead of truth, servility instead of liberty, licentiousness instead of morality. If the Word of God does not exercise its invisible power on the nations, they are by that very defect deprived of the conditions necessary to the maintenance of order and liberty. They may shine forth with great brilliancy, but they pass easily from disorder to tyranny. They are like a stately ship, decorated with the most glorious banners, and armed with the heaviest artillery; but as it wants the necessary ballast, it drives between two extreme dangers, now dashing against Scylla, and now tossed upon Charybdis.

While Francis I. was trifling with the Reform, other powers in France remained its irreconcilable enemies. The members of the parliament, honourable men for the most part, but lawyers still, unable to recognise the truth (and few could in those days) that spiritual matters were not within their jurisdiction, did not confine themselves to judging temporal offences, but made themselves the champions of the law of the realm against the law of God. The doctors of the Sorbonne, on their part, seeing that the twofold authority of Holy Scripture and of conscience would ruin theirs, opposed with all their strength the substitution of the religious for the clerical element. ‘They inveighed against the reformers,’ says Roussel, ‘and endeavoured to stir up the whole world against them.’[623] The more the king inclined to peace, the more the Sorbonne called for war, counting its battalions and preparing for the fight. The general placed at its head was, Erasmus tells us, ‘a many-headed monster, breathing poison from every mouth.’[624] Beda—for he was the monster—taking note of the age of Lefèvre, the weakness of Roussel, the absence of Farel, and not knowing Calvin’s power, said to himself that Berquin would be the Luther of France, and against him he directed all his attacks.