Calvin had carefully studied the condition of the Church during the Middle Ages: what had he found there?... The separation of religion and morality: a government, official doctrines, ceremonies, but all stripped of moral life. At that time religion was a tree stretching its branches wide into the air, but there was no sap flowing through them. To restore a lively faith in religion, and through faith a holy morality was the reformer's aim. He said: 'God first impresses on our hearts the love of righteousness, to which we are not inclined by nature; and then he gives us a certain rule, which does not permit us to go astray.'[354] Accordingly, a morality, unknown for ages, became not only in Geneva, but wherever Calvin's doctrine penetrated, the distinctive feature of the Reformation.
An important thought, however, still absorbs him. He wishes not only to effect certain reforms in certain articles, but to constitute the Church. In Calvin's estimation the Church is in an especial manner the whole assembly of the children of God; but he acknowledges also, as having a right to this name, the visible assembly of those who, in different parts of the world, profess to worship the Lord: 'A great multitude, in which the children of God are, alas! but a handful of unknown people, like a few grains on the threshing-floor under a great heap of straw. Our rudeness, our idleness, and the vanity of our minds require external helps (he added), and for that reason God has instituted pastors and teachers.'[355]
=APPRECIATION OF THE INSTITUTES.=
That was a solemn time for Calvin, when in the room he occupied at Catherine Klein's, he finished his Institutes. In after years pious Christians entered her house with respect, and one of them, Peter Ramus, being there in 1568, five years after the reformer's death, exclaimed with emotion: 'Here were kindled the torches that shed so great a light! Here those illustrious Christian Institutes were composed; and here Calvin gave himself up wholly to heavenly vigils!'[356]
The Christian Institutes in its earliest form was a simple defence, explaining briefly law, faith, prayer, the sacraments, Christian liberty, and the nature of the Church and State. But the French refugees at Geneva, and even distant protestants, continually solicited Calvin to set forth the whole Christian doctrine in his book; and accordingly it received numerous additions.[357]
The Christian Institutes are a proof that christian love prevailed in Calvin's mind: indeed, he wrote for the justification of believers, his brethren. However, by defending the reformed, he explained and justified the Reformation itself. What are its principles? The formative principle of faith and of the Church is, with him as with Luther, the sovereign Word of God; but he asserts it with more decision than his predecessor. Calvin is anti-traditional: he will have nothing to do with host, or font, or festivals and other ceremonies preserved by Luther. He did not reform the Church, he re-formed it; he created it anew. Zwingle also was scriptural, as opposed to tradition; yet Calvin's theology is different from his; that of the Zurich doctor was specially exegetic, while that of the Geneva doctor was specially dogmatic. If from the formative principle we pass to that which theologians call the material principle, namely, that which distinguishes the nature and very essence of its doctrine, we find that it is at heart the same in Luther and Calvin—gratuitous salvation; but the former, clinging to Christian anthropology, laid down as a fundamental article, the justification by faith of the regenerate man; whilst Calvin, clinging particularly to theology, to the doctrine of God, proclaimed first of all, salvation by the sovereignty of divine grace.
Calvin's polemics, in his Institutes, are essentially positive. Like a master in the midst of artists, who are endeavouring to draw the same picture, Calvin traces his outline with a bold hand, distributes the light and shade, and succeeds in making an admirable work. And from that time his rivals have only to look at it, to acknowledge the imperfections of their own, with all their want of proportion and extravagance.... Calvin destroys what is ugly, but he first creates the beautiful.
The Institutes were admired by the finest spirits of the age. Montluc, bishop of Valence, called Calvin the greatest theologian in the world. A French writer of our day, who does not belong to the Reform, but is a correct and profound thinker,[358] has characterised the Institutes 'as the first work of our times which presents an orderly arrangement of materials, with a composition thoroughly appropriate and exact;' and has distinguished Calvin himself, 'as treating in a masterly manner all the questions of Christian philosophy, and as rivalling the most sublime writers in his great thoughts on God, whose style (he adds) has been equalled, but not surpassed, by Bossuet.'
[330] Calvin, Actes, viii. 2.