These circumstances occurred in February. Calvin, on his return to Geneva, fearing that the Bernese delegates might be slow to fulfil their promise, and perceiving moreover that this affair concerned the Church rather than the state, persuaded the ministers of Geneva to write to the ministers of Berne, pressing them to take the matter in hand.[508] He wrote himself to Megander, the chief among the Bernese pastors. ‘I cannot find words,’ he said, ‘adequately to express the imminent peril to which the Church will be exposed if this business be indefinitely postponed. The influence which your position gives you lays on you more than any one else the obligation to use all your efforts to promote an early meeting of the assembly. You cannot imagine how severely the blow struck by Caroli has shaken the foundation which we have laid. People are saying, especially, even in country places, that we ought to begin by agreeing among ourselves before we think of converting others. Let us not allow the coat of the Gospel, woven in one piece, to be rent by wicked men. Do all that is possible to secure the meeting, before Easter, of all the French-speaking ministers who live under the government of your republic.’[509] Easter fell in that year on April 1.
As the reformer received no satisfactory reply, he set out for Berne in the first fortnight in March, and implored the magistrates, the councillors, and the pastors to convoke the synod immediately. This was refused him, probably on account of the business which accumulates during the weeks preceding the feast of Easter; but they promised him that the assembly should be convoked immediately after Easter.[510] We see what courage and activity Calvin displayed; this was one of the signs of his genius. Farel, on the contrary, was worn out by the distress of mind which this affair had occasioned him. His condition was afflicting to his friends. ‘I should never have believed,’ said Calvin to Viret, ‘that with his iron constitution he could have been so pulled down.’ Farel’s age and his immense labors, however, accounted for his state. Calvin, alarmed at the prospect of losing so invaluable a fellow-laborer, wrote to Viret: ‘It is indispensable that you should return to us, unless we are prepared to see Farel die of grief. If we allow a breach to be made in the Genevese Church, I am afraid that schism will tear it to pieces.’[511] Instead of diminishing, the energy of Calvin appeared to increase, for he felt the justice of his cause. ‘I am ready,’ he said, ‘to maintain the contest with the utmost energy. The charges, first of Arianism, and then of Sabellianism, have not greatly disturbed us; our ears have been long accustomed to such calumnies, and we are confident that they will all end in smoke.’[512] The valiant champion therefore awaited fearlessly the convocation of the synod. The council of Geneva, on receiving the letters from the lords of Berne respecting this gathering, invited the preachers to go thither; and on May 11 the treasurer placed in Farel’s hands fifty florins, to cover the expenses of the journey.[513]
SYNOD OF LAUSANNE.
The assembly met at Lausanne. On May 13[514] there were seen entering the church of St. Francis the banderet Rodolph de Graffenried, Nicholas Zerkinden, secretary of state, the pastor Grosmann, commonly called Megander, and another deputy from Berne. From Geneva came Calvin, Farel, and Courault; about twenty ministers from Neuchâtel, and a hundred pastors from the Pays de Vaud, among the latter, Viret. Caroli, it seems, came with a bag such as barristers are accustomed to carry, containing the brief of his proceedings.[515] Megander was president. He stated that the assembly had met in consequence of the charge brought by Caroli against several ministers, of not believing in the Trinity, nor in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Then addressing Viret, a subject of Berne, he inquired what was his opinion on that doctrine. ‘When we confess one only God,’ replied the pastor of Lausanne, ‘we comprehend the Father, with his eternal Word, and his Spirit, in one single and divine essence. Nevertheless we do not confound the Father with the Word, nor the Word with the Spirit.’ Caroli rose and said with bitterness, ‘This profession is too short, too dry, too obscure. No mention is made in it of the Trinity, nor of substance, nor of person.’ Then taking a declamatory tone, he began to recite the Nicene creed, afterwards the Athanasian creed, making undignified gestures with his hands and arms, and moving his head and his body about in such an extraordinary way that the grave assembly could not refrain from laughter. In closing his speech, he said to his adversary, ‘Nothing can clear you from the charge of heresy except your signing the three œcumenical creeds.’[516]
CAROLI UNMASKED.
Calvin listened to him without interrupting him; but he could no longer keep silence. A justification on his part was almost superfluous. He had fully professed the doctrine in his popular writings; he had even, as we have seen, employed the terms of the school in his theological Institution. But the point of importance for the safety of the Church was to make his adversary known, to tear the mask from his face. That man, of dissolute life, destitute of convictions, destitute of faith, whose only thought was how to get possession of the highest place, and who was endeavoring to conceal the licentiousness of his evil life under the pretence of religion, dared to accuse, with hypocritical lips, the faithful servants of God. A course so revolting roused Calvin’s indignation; and from his lips fell such earnest words as were inspired by the fraud, the vices, and the shamelessness of his adversary. He completely stripped the man. ‘What wickedness this is,’ said he, ‘without any cause but mere lawless passions, to disturb the Church and to check the progress of the Gospel by bringing atrocious accusations against persons entirely innocent, who have rendered the most conspicuous services to the truth! Caroli sets up a quarrel with us about the distinction of the persons in God. I am going to examine him in turn, but I take up the subject at a higher point, and I ask him if only he believes in God. I declare before God and before men, that he has no more faith in the divine Word than the dog and the swine that trample under foot holy things.’ Some will perhaps exclaim against this language, but it must be remembered that Calvin took these two words from holy Scripture, where they are used to mark two different characters, of both of which we must equally beware.[517] ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,’ said Jesus, ‘neither cast ye your pearls before swine.’ The swine represent men defiled by debauchery, and the dog is the beast that barks, pursues, and bites. These two kinds of excess precisely characterized Caroli.
But Calvin did not stop there. He did not mean that people should be able to say that the ministers were not cleared of the charges brought against them. He therefore made a confession which had been beforehand approved by his colleagues. ‘When we distinguish the Father, his eternal Word, and his Spirit,’ said he, ‘we believe, in common with ecclesiastical writers, that in the simple unity of God there are three hypostases or substances, which, although they be one sole and identical essence, are nevertheless not confounded with each other. With respect to Jesus Christ,’ he added, ‘before taking on himself our flesh, he was the eternal Word, begotten of the Father before time was, very God, of one same essence, power, and majesty with the Father, Jehovah himself, who has ever existed of himself, and gives to others the property of existing.’[518]
CALVIN AND THE EARLY CREEDS.
This declaration baffled Caroli; and now, after having very strongly asserted that Calvin was not orthodox enough, he began to cry out that he was too much so. ‘What,’ said he, ‘you attribute to Jesus Christ the name and the nature of Jehovah; you say that he has of himself the divine essence!’ Calvin replied, ‘If we attentively consider the difference between the Father and the Word, we must acknowledge that the Word proceeds from the Father. But if we concern ourselves with the essence itself of the Word, so far as the Word is God with the Father, all that is said of the one must likewise be said of the other.’[519] Caroli, giving up the matter, took refuge in the words. ‘In your confession,’ said he, ‘there is not the word Trinity, there is not the word person.’ Then, wishing to compel Calvin and the other ministers to adopt the confessions made by men,—‘I demand,’ said he, ‘that you sign the three ancient creeds.’ Calvin and the ministers who were with him would have given their signature under other circumstances, but they now refused it for very wise reasons. ‘Caroli,’ they said, ‘by compelling us to sign, wishes to throw suspicion on our faith. We do not consider it fitting to show him so much deference. Moreover, we will not, by our example, promote the introduction into the Church of a tyranny which would brand every man as a heretic who will not express himself in terms dictated by another.’[520] Herein Calvin gave proof at the same time of a magnanimity and a fidelity which do him honor. Every Church, in his opinion, ought to confess its doctrine, but he would rather that the confession should be the product of the life and the faith of those who make it; and not a mere return to ten or twelve centuries back, in order to seek the truth in the antiquated phrases of another age. He professed with all his heart the doctrine enunciated in the early creeds, the Nicene and the so-called Athanasian, which set forth, perhaps with superfluity of words, but nevertheless with much force, a faith which is dear to Christian men. But he felt that these writings were wanting in evangelical simplicity. The phrases ‘God of God, Light of Light’ (Θεὸς ἐκ Θεοῦ, Φῶς ἐκ Φωτὸς), used in the Nicene creed, appeared to him less apostolic than Oriental in their character. It shocked him that the Quicunque, better known under the name of the Athanasian creed, just at the time when it is going to make subtle distinctions, such as the faith of a simple Christian man cannot comprehend, should begin by asserting—‘Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith (that of the creed). Which faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.’ Caroli’s ignorance as to this profession of faith was so great that he believed it was drawn up at Nicæa in A.D. 325, and by Athanasius. This was startling to Calvin. The creed appears, in fact, to have been formed gradually in the African church, some of its formulæ being met with towards the close of the seventh century; but it did not exist as a whole until the age of Charlemagne, nearly five centuries after the council of Nicæa. That was an age in which, if the doctrine of the divine nature was truly stated, the doctrines of justification by grace and of the new birth by the Spirit were obscured. Semi-Pelagianism was more and more invading the Church; literary and scientific culture, decried by the monks as belonging to paganism, was becoming rare; the state, not content with deciding on the exterior relations of the Church, published edicts on the articles of faith or of doctrine; miracles were alleged to be wrought by relics; the bishops of Rome assumed the title of universal bishop, a title branded by Gregory the Great as antichristian; the controversy about images was especially agitating men’s minds; both the Church and the state were in the utmost confusion; the bishops took up arms against the lords; the clergy, both regular and secular, were without culture and without discipline; and, in one word, Christianity had lost the life which was peculiarly its own. It was, doubtless, the existence of this melancholy condition of society at the period in which the Quicunque was formed that induced Calvin to make reservations, and to declare that it was to the belief in one only God that he made oath, and not to the belief of Athanasius, whose creed no genuine Church would have accepted.[521]
SYNOD OF BERNE.