O vous, sur ces enfants, si chers, si précieux,
Ministres du Seigneur, ayez toujours les yeux.[[135]]
Schools And Charities.
It is not with children alone that he concerns himself, it is with all the weak. He thinks of the sick. He fear that many neglect to find consolation in God by His word, and die without the doctrine which would then be to them more salutary than ever; and he requires that no one should be sick more than three days without sending for a minister. He takes thought for the poor, and will have the deacons receive and dispense ‘as well the daily alms as possessions, annuities, and pensions.’[[136]] He does not forget the sick poor, and will have ‘them cared for and their wounds dressed.’ He demands for the town hospital a paid physician and surgeon, who shall also visit the other poor. He thinks also of foreigners. Many came to Geneva to escape persecution. He therefore founds a hospital for wayfarers.[[137]] He demands a separate hospital for the plague. But with regard to beggary, he declares it contrary to good police, and wishes that ‘officers should be appointed to remove from the place the beggars who would offer resistance (belistrer); and if they were rude and insolent (qu’ils se rebecquassent)’ he demands that they should be brought before one of the syndics.[[138]] With respect to the last class of the unfortunate, prisoners, he wishes that every Saturday afternoon they should be assembled for admonition and exhortation, and that if any of them should be in chains (aux ceps) and it is not thought advisable to remove them, admission should be granted to some minister to console them; for if it is put off till they are to be led out to die, they are often so overcome by terror that they can neither receive nor understand any thing.[[139]]
For these functions and for others, great care must be taken in the choice of men for the ‘four orders of offices which the Lord has instituted for the government of his church.’
‘No one is to intrude into the office of a minister without a call.’ We have seen that the examination turns on doctrine and on morals. There is no room for hesitation in regard to this: but there was in Calvin’s mind some doubt as to the mode of their election. He had always acknowledged that two orders ought to have a share in it: the pastors and the people. But in the Institution chrétienne, in which he speaks in general terms, he insists that the common freedom and right of the church (du troupeau) shall be in no respect infringed or diminished. He desires that ‘the pastor should preside at the elections, in order to lead the people by good counsel and not for the purpose of cutting out their work for them according to their own views, without regard to others.’ ‘The pastors,’ he adds, ‘ought to preside at the election in order that the multitude may not proceed in a frivolous, fractious, or tumultuous manner.’[[140]] Now Calvin in the Ordinances went beyond this rule. He established ‘that the ministers should in the first instance elect the man who was to be appointed to the office; that afterwards he should be presented to the Council; and that if the Council accepted him, he should be finally introduced to the people by preaching, to the end that he might be received by the common consent of the faithful.’[[141]] Assuredly the right of the church was hereby curtailed. Calvin might be mistaken in his estimate, and might suppose that the bold Genevese would dare to reject the elect of two authorities, the spiritual and the temporal. It did not turn out so; the consent of the people was an empty ceremony and was ultimately dispensed with. The source of the evil was the circumstance that church and nation were the same body; and that the nation supplied the church with a great number of members who had neither the intelligence nor the piety necessary to the choice of competent and pious ministers. When the church is composed of men who openly profess the great truths of the Gospel and conform their lives thereto, it is possible to trust to the flock, which does not exclude the natural influence of pastors. But when the church is a vast medley, when perhaps even the incompetent elements predominate in it, it is necessary to assign a larger share in the election to the ministers. Calvin, however, made it too large, for it annulled that of the members of the church. But election in a church by numbers is always a difficult matter. The Ordinances added ‘that for the purpose of introducing the elected minister, it would be proper to adopt the practice of laying on of hands, as in the time of the apostles; but that considering the superstitions which have prevailed in past ages, the practice shall be disused from regard to the infirmity of the times.’[[142]] The laying on of hands was at a later period re-established.
The elected minister was to take, at the hands of the syndics and council, an oath, prepared subsequently, by which he pledged himself ‘to serve God faithfully, setting forth his word purely, with a good conscience making use of his doctrine for the promotion of his glory and for the benefit of the people, without giving way either to hatred or to favor or to any other carnal desire, taking pains that the people may dwell together in peace and unity, and setting an example of obedience to all others.’[[143]]
The Teachers.
After the order of ministers, Calvin places ‘that of teachers,’ which he calls also ‘the order of schools.’ The reader in theology is to make it his aim ‘that the purity of the Gospel be not corrupted by ignorance or erroneous opinions.’[[144]] ‘Sound doctrine,’ said he elsewhere, ‘must be carefully entrusted to the hands of faithful ministers who are competent to teach it;’ and in this way he established, after St. Paul (I Tim. ii. 2), the necessity for schools of theology.
He did not stop here; he pleaded the cause of letters and the sciences. ‘These lessons’ (theological) said he, ‘cannot profit unless there be in the first place instruction in languages and natural science.’ Then, anxious ‘to raise up seed for the time to come,’ he applies himself to the case of childhood. ‘It will be needful,’ he says, ‘to erect a college for the instruction of children, in order to prepare them as well for the ministry as for the civil government. Consequently, he demands for young people ‘a learned man who shall have under his charge readers (professors) as well in languages as in dialectics, and, in addition, masters to teach young children.’[[145]] Calvin, endowed with great clearness of understanding, would have none of ‘those subtilties by means of which men who are greedy of reputation push themselves into notice, and which are puffed out to such a size that they hide the true doctrines of the Gospel, which is simple and makes little show, while this ostentatious pomp is received with applause by the world.’ But while aware of the uselessness and the danger of half knowledge and of ‘those flighty speculations which make the simplicity of the true doctrine contemptible in the eyes of a world almost always attracted by outward display,’ he attached importance to the acquisition of information, and to variety of knowledge on many subjects. Hence, in all lands into which his influence has penetrated, it is found that the people are well taught, and true science held in honor.