History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, Vol. 6 (of 8)

by J. H. Merle d'Aubigné

(March to June, 1537.)

ARRIVAL OF FOREIGN DOCTORS.
THE SPIRITUALS.

The peace and satisfaction which were the fruit of the settled order, and even of the beauty of the places in which these great changes had been effected, did not long remain undisturbed. Some foreign doctors came to Geneva, Herman of Liége and Andrew Benoît, the latter also a native of the Netherlands, both of them belonging to that enthusiastic sect, some of whose leaders Calvin had previously encountered in France, and who called themselves the Spirituals.[481] These sectaries had found their way into western Europe, but Germany and the Netherlands were, above all, their proper countries. The German mind has a philosophical and even mystical tendency, which gives rise to a longing to penetrate deeper than the Bible itself into the knowledge of divine things. The central position of Geneva, the important revolution in politics and religion which had just been accomplished there, excited in those sectaries the hope of establishing themselves in the city for the purpose of spreading themselves afterwards over France, Italy, and other countries. These new doctors, from the time of their arrival, had labored to diffuse their opinions, and had gained partisans. Among these were some members of the council.[482] Proud of this first success, they expected to substitute in Geneva their dreams for the Gospel. The claim set up by these Spirituals, of penetrating further into the truth than the reformers did, gave them a certain attractiveness for minds eager for novelties. They boldly announced that they were willing to dispute with the preachers. As early as March 9 they were called before the council, and were invited to communicate in writing the articles which they intended to maintain.[483] Herman and Benoît complied with this request, and delivered their theses to the council. The council took them into consideration on March 13. In calling themselves the Spirituals, these men meant to assert that the spirit alone acted in them. Their doctrine was a more or less gross kind of Pantheism. They did not think, in general, ‘that the soul was a substance, a creature having essence; it was merely, in their view, the property which a man has of breathing, of moving, and of performing other vital actions.[484] They said that in place of our souls it is God who lives in us, and does in us all the actions pertaining to life. God became the creature,’ adds Calvin, ‘and the latter was no longer anything.’[485] An assassination having been committed at Paris, Quintin, a leader among the Spirituals, replied to some who asked him who committed it, ’Tis thou, ’tis I, ’tis God, for what thou and I do, ’tis God that does it.’ They had also peculiar ideas respecting Jesus Christ. They did not hold that he had been very man, but made him a kind of phantom, as to his body. They held similar errors about baptism, excommunication, the magistrate, oaths, and other matters. We are not in possession of the articles which they presented to the council, and it is probable that they did not put forward the most offensive points of their system. But the majority of the council ‘believed that it would be dangerous to discuss those articles in public, on account of the weakness (tendrité) of men’s minds. They therefore determined to give them a hearing on the following day, March 14, but only in the Council of the Two Hundred.’[486]

The sensation created in the city by the presence of Herman and Benoît, and the eagerness with which certain citizens were pleased to listen to them, had not escaped the notice of the reformers. If these doctors were not refuted, Geneva, withdrawn from the errors of the papacy, might fall into the dreams of Pantheism. The reformers therefore asked permission to attend the sitting. Herman and Benoît expounded their system. The council wished to hush up the affair; but Farel, confident in the force of truth, requested that it might be publicly discussed. His entreaties were complied with, and the debate was fixed for the next day, March 15.[487]

The disputation took place in the grand auditory of Rive, on March 15, 16, and 17, and on each occasion lasted the whole day. No report of these debates has come down to us. But some notion may be formed of them from the two tractates which Calvin devoted to the exposition and refutation of the system.[488] The discussion was very animated. The reformers so forcibly confuted, by the Word of God alone, the doctrines advanced by the two Spirituals in the public disputation, that the whole tribe thenceforth disappeared from that Church.[489] The Council of the Two Hundred having assembled, March 18, declared that the assailant was not sufficient, that is to say, that his opinions were erroneous. But they remarked that this disputation might beget differences, and that the faith might be imperilled. The reformers were therefore forbidden for the future to engage in such discussions. Then Herman and Benoît being called in, the syndics said to them, ‘We have been quite willing to hear you, for we listen to everybody, but seeing that you are not able to prove the truth of your propositions by Holy Scripture, we have pronounced them to be contrary to the truth. Are you willing to retract, and to return to God and ask his forgiveness?’ ‘We submit to the will of God,’ they replied, ‘but we will not by any means retract our words.’

EXPULSION OF THE SPIRITUALS.

Those of the Genevese who had taken them from the time of their coming for good evangelical Christians had called them brethren. But these foreigners had shown themselves very quarrelsome; and having refused even to pray with the Christians of Geneva—an offensive sign of their sectarian spirit—they were no longer called by the name of brethren. However, no penalty was at that time imposed on them, in the hope that they might be brought to more Christian sentiments. But that was indulging in a mere illusion. It was therefore decreed, according to the custom of the age, that these doctors, and every member of their sect, should be banished for ever from Geneva, under pain of death. ‘The most admirable feature of this business,’ said the early biographers of Calvin, ‘is, that if some churches of Germany have been delivered from these doctors, they were so by mere rigor of justice; while at Geneva the magistrate had no hand in it.’[490] Certainly, he did not employ against them either imprisonment or torture; Calvin endeavored only to convince them by argument. But banishment, under pain of death, is nevertheless a very palpable act of the magistrate. On the other hand, it is also a mistake to say that the Registers knew nothing of Calvin’s victory.[491] On the contrary, the decree of the council was expressly based on the fact that the doctors had been unable to prove the truth of their propositions by Holy Scripture.

These were not the only attacks which the reformers had to sustain at the outset of their career. There were certain restless spirits who saw with vexation Calvin, Farel, and Viret at the head of the Reformation in French-speaking lands, and who wished to deprive them of their position, that they might occupy it themselves. These new troubles, caused by jealousy and ambition, were of a sharper kind, and lasted longer.[492] Their originator was that doctor of the Sorbonne, Caroli, whom we saw arrive from France at Geneva at the time of the great disputation of 1535.[493] Caroli was a sort of theological adventurer. He did not at heart care for the sacred end which the Reformation had in view. An incurable levity, which would not allow him to adhere to any party, a liking for anything which seemed to him new and fashionable, a burning thirst for glory and for fortune, a craving for liberty to satisfy his vicious inclinations, these were the feelings which actuated him, and threw him into a camp which he soon abandoned to seek in another the gratification of the same evil desires. Vain, proud, cringing, and inconsistent, he appeared as an assailant of the monks when a sort of reformation was in vogue in France. Next, when the era of persecution had begun, he made his escape to Geneva. The object of his dreams was to become a sort of bishop, to govern the reformed churches in French Switzerland; and he proposed to establish a doctrine which should hold a middle place between the Gospel and the pope. He had made acquaintance with the principal cities of his future diocese. From Geneva he had gone to Neuchâtel, and there he had become pastor, and had married. We have seen him appointed first pastor at Lausanne. ‘In every place that he visited he left some traces of his baseness.’[494] He tacked before every breeze. In a little while he passed from the Romish camp into the Protestant; then, because the reformers remonstrated with him, he returned to his vomit, according to the Scripture phrase; quitted the papal hierarchy a second time, to associate with the evangelicals; and finally ended his roving and wretched life at Rome. Caroli is one of the most despicable characters of that epoch—one of those ecclesiastical Don Quixotes who boast of smiting all their enemies. Besides vainglory, he had another passion quite as intense—hatred. He detested Farel, who had known him at Paris and had rebuked him for his vices. He detested Viret, who had once preached on impurity before him; a sermon which Caroli, convicted by his own conscience, thought was meant for him. In vain Viret assured him that he had preached for everybody: Caroli never forgave him. And lastly, the high esteem in which Calvin was held filled this Parisian doctor with envy and jealousy. He was hardly settled at Lausanne when, eager to realize his dreams, he demanded at Berne the oversight of a certain number of pastors and of churches. The Bernese refused this, and at the same time begged Viret to aid with his advice a foreigner who did not perfectly know the country, and decreed that no innovation should be introduced among the people by any pastor without a preliminary deliberation of all the brethren.[495]

CHARACTER OF CAROLI.

Caroli was not at all inclined to submit to this rule. A fantastic schoolman, he was fond of putting forward strange paradoxes, and of raising discussions which irritated men’s minds and gave him an opportunity of showing off his cleverness. That sort of thing was a remnant of the Middle Ages; but the age of the Reformation demanded a different method. Caroli was an anachronism. His rank as doctor of the Sorbonne ought, in his view, to set him at the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, before which the rude herdsmen of Helvetia must bend. He meant to make a reformation sui generis, to advance views peculiar to himself, and to set up doctrines to which no one had before attained. An opportunity soon presented itself. Viret, his young colleague, having gone to pay a visit to his friends at Geneva, Caroli took advantage of his absence, and, ascending the pulpit, read a series of theses tending to prove that prayers ought to be made for the dead. ‘I have no intention,’ he said as he closed, ‘of taking lessons from a young man,’ thus pointing to Viret. It was plain, from his gestures, his voice, his words so arrogant and so full of tartness, that he was over-excited.[496] Viret, being informed by one of his friends, soon returned, and rebuked him for his freak. But Caroli, proud of what he impudently called his discovery, replied—‘I do not believe in purgatory, nor do I suppose that the dead can be comforted by the prayers of the living; those things are mere fictions. But I believe that we ought to ask God to hasten his judgment for the happiness of his saints and of all the members of the Church, the Virgin, the prophets, and the apostles, who will be the first to profit thereby.’[497] Caroli thus pitched his tent between Rome and the Gospel, being neither with the one nor with the other, but being merely himself. That was his wish. Had he only urged the Church to say to the Lord, ‘Come quickly,’ he would have spoken in conformity with Holy Scripture. But his intention was that the prayer should be offered in favor of the dead, a pretence which finds no justification in the Bible. Viret replied to him—‘You know that we ought not to preach any merely private views without having first communicated them to one another. If you have found in Scripture any instruction which is unknown to me, I will freely embrace it; but if you preach some erroneous doctrine, allow me, as your colleague, to make some observations on it.’[498] That was just what Caroli did not want. He answered Viret haughtily, and proudly maintained his doctrine.