JOHN CALVIN.
This is what actually came to pass. To convert the spark into a pure, vivid, dazzling light, there was need of an intellect of vast depth, a will of vast energy, and a faith of vast power.
God sent the man that was needed.
A young stranger, a native of Picardie, had lately arrived at Geneva. It had not occurred to him nor to his friends that he could be the organ by whose agency and means God would bring about such great ends. After his arrival Farel still continued to hold the first place in the city. This young man, John Calvin, was naturally timid, and was possessed by a dread of publicity which had already shown itself at Basel and which led him to shun every occasion that would draw public attention to himself. He was fond of study and of writing: and in that path he believed that it was appointed for him to contribute to the diffusion in the world of a truth which was already dearer to him than life. He purposed to turn to account that one talent in retirement, without quitting his study. That is what he was then doing at Geneva. He was steadily engaged in translating into French his ‘little book,’ the Institution Chrétienne, which he hoped ere long to send to his friends in France.[375] The letter mentioned in the note shows clearly that the Institution Chrétienne was first written in Latin.
Farel wished for more: he desired Calvin to become, at Geneva, pastor, preacher, and doctor. The young man refused this threefold function. The office of pastor would have required him to take part in the government of the Church, and he was not willing to do so. As to the office of preacher, we have the most positive testimony of his contemporaries and of his most intimate friends that, in the fresh glow of his faith, he had simply undertaken the task of an evangelist in some districts of France. But the post which was offered to him at Geneva would have compelled him to mix more or less in public affairs and in the debates of the councils. He trembled at the thought, and wished rather to confine himself strictly within the bounds of that literary and theological life which he loved so well. He consented therefore to dwell in the city, not for the purpose of preaching, but to read in theology.[376] He went even further. ‘I would not,’ he said, ‘bind myself to undertake an official charge.’[377] He consented to make trial of teaching, but without any title or any engagement, and thus reserved to himself perfect liberty. Probably no one ever entered as he did on a career at once painful and brilliant without suspecting its results, and even rejecting it with his utmost energy.
CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
Calvin commenced his work as Reader in the Holy Scriptures at Geneva, or, as he styles himself, Professor of Sacred Literature in the Genevese Church. His lectures were delivered not in any house or in any academic hall, but in the cathedral itself, a circumstance which invested his teaching with an importance of which Calvin had certainly not dreamed. The doors were opened for this novel service in the afternoon, and the Genevese, who felt the need of substantial teaching, crowded to hear the young doctor. He expounded several books of the New Testament, particularly the Epistles. One characteristic of his manner of teaching at Geneva from the first was the combination of simplicity and solidity. A new light was then rising. It was not, to be sure, the sun in its brightness. The timidity and the shyness which Calvin attributes to himself may well have shown themselves in his first attempts. The Commentaries on the New Testament, which he published at a later period, have a completeness which his earliest expositions could not attain. But they are a sufficiently faithful representation of the kind of teaching which he adopted at St. Peter’s church. It was not grammatical and etymological explanation of the text; nor was it, on the other hand, a pathetic discourse. Calvin set forth in clear light everything in the Scriptures which characterizes the Christian doctrine and life. He first meditated on his subject, then delivered his lectures extempore; and the animated and powerful individuality of the master imparted to them an influence which carried away and multiplied his hearers. It was not in his nature to do a merely intellectual task. He consoled, he exhorted, he censured. But his chief aim was to illustrate the labor of love which Jesus Christ had accomplished, and to make known its necessity and grandeur. Two points in the Christian doctrine especially struck him, the one dark and mournful, the other bright like sunshine. ‘Our souls,’ said he, ‘are an abyss of iniquity, so that we are compelled to have recourse to the fountain of all good, which is Jesus Christ.’[378]
CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
The exposition, defence, and application of the great facts of Christianity formed the substance of Calvin’s work at Geneva and in Christendom. It is a mistake to suppose that his principal business was the introduction and the maintenance of discipline in the Church. It is not to be doubted that he wished for order: that he wished absolutely for a Christian way of life; but it was not he who, as some believe, first introduced measures of discipline, nor was the maintenance of those measures the task of his life. Speaking of them,[379] he defends himself from the charge of being their author. ‘I observe and do whatsoever I have found,’ said he, ‘as one who takes no pleasure in making any innovation.’ It was the magistrate, who, being in Geneva head both of the Church and of the state, prescribed and enforced the laws of discipline. Before Calvin’s arrival at Geneva, we have seen how De la Rive was sentenced to banishment for having his child baptized by a priest. The year before some men, women, and magistrates had been condemned to the crotton (black hole) for immorality. At the moment at which this stranger, whose name even was hardly known, had just crossed the threshold of the city—on the eve of the day on which Farel was to introduce him to the magistrate (Monday, September 4, 1536)—a remarkable scene was taking place in the Council of the Two Hundred, which seems placed at that epoch as if on purpose to resolve distinctly the question which engages our attention. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the syndics, ‘we have all pledged ourselves in public council to live according to the Gospel, and nevertheless there are some here who do not go to preaching.’ At these words the councillor and former syndic Richardet, a fine, tall, and powerful man, but very passionate, rose in wrath and exclaimed with loud voice, ‘Nobody shall lord it over my conscience; and I will not go to sermon at the bidding of a Syndic Porral.’[380] Porral, a man of highly cultivated mind and a very active magistrate, had declared himself decisively for the Reform, and he was even charged to prosecute certain classes of delinquents. It had been enacted, on July 24, that those who refused to go to the preaching must quit the city in ten days. Richardet was not alone in his resolution. The question having been put to J. Philippe and two other councillors whether they would attend the preaching of the Word of God, ‘We will not be compelled,’ they said, ‘but will live in our liberty.’ These citizens were right in maintaining their liberty, and the magistrates were in the wrong. Calvin was far away from Geneva on July 24; and, generally speaking, he was not of so peremptory a temper as some imagine. There was a certain sphere in which he maintained liberty, and maintained it even against powerful adversaries. ‘Touching ceremonies,’ thus he wrote to the formidable lords of Berne, ‘they are things indifferent, and the churches are free to adopt a diversity of them.’[381] Still, we cannot deny it, Calvin thought—and these are his own words—that since there is no house, however small it be, which can be maintained in its proper state without discipline, it is much more requisite in the Church, which ought to be better ordered than any house. He went further. He asserted that the state has the right and is bound to take notice of matters of discipline, and to punish transgressors. It is to be regretted that the fine genius of Calvin did not make an exception in this case to the rule adopted ten centuries earlier by all Christendom, and that he did not convince the state that its heavy hand must not intervene in matters of religion. It is however fair to ask ourselves whether, in the sixteenth century, such an effort would not have been a superhuman task.
Calvin himself made known to us his own thought when he said, ‘The doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ is the soul of the Church.’[382] He set forth that doctrine in the church of St. Peter just as it is found in Scripture, and so diffused it in the world. Certainly it was not by discipline that he made his conquests. He bore the torch of truth. Devoid of ambition, having no designs reaching beyond Geneva, without any secret policy such as the Jesuits are skilled in, and armed with one weapon only, the truth, he triumphed over the greatest difficulties. Farel, Viret, Beza would not have sufficed. In this man of feeble constitution and humble aspect there were an unquenchable resolution, an energetic will. He held fast, as seeing him who is invisible. Established in this small town, he became God’s instrument, first for the spread of the Reformation in the West, then for defending it against the attacks of Rome and Loyola and Philip II. A new time was born for the world.