The criticism most commonly applied to M. Merle d’Aubigné is that he has displayed a bias in favor of the men of the Reformation, and especially in favor of Calvin. That the author of the History of the Reformation feels for Calvin a certain tenderness, and that he is inclined to excuse, to a certain extent, his errors and even his faults, may be admitted. But it is no less indisputable that this tendency has never led him to palliate or to conceal those errors or faults. He pronounces a judgment: and this is sometimes a justification or an excuse. But he has in the first place narrated; and this narration has been perfectly accurate. The kindly feeling, or, as some say, the partiality of the writer, may have deprived his estimate of the severity which others would have thought needful; but it has not falsified his view. His glance has remained keen and clear, and historical truth comes forth from the author’s narratives with complete impartiality. These narratives themselves furnish the reader with the means of arriving at a different conclusion from that which the author has himself drawn.
May we not add that M. Merle d’Aubigné’s love for his hero, admitting the indisputable sincerity of the historian, far from being a ground of suspicion, imparts a special value to his judgments? For nearly sixty years M. Merle lived in close intimacy with Calvin. He carefully investigated his least writings, seized upon and assimilated all his thoughts, and entered, as it were, into personal intercourse with the great reformer. Calvin committed some faults. Who disputes this? But he did not commit these faults with deliberate intention. He must have yielded to motives which he thought good, and, were it only in the blindness of passion, must have justified his actions to his own conscience. In the main, it is this self-justification on Calvin’s part which M. Merle d’Aubigné has succeeded better than any one else in making known to us. He has depicted for us a living Calvin; he has revealed to us his inmost thought; and when, in the work which I am editing, I meet with an approving judgment in which I can not join without some reservation, I imagine nevertheless that if Calvin, rising from the tomb, could himself give me his reasons, he would give me no others than those which I find set forth in these pages. If this view is correct, and it seems to me difficult to doubt it, has not the author solved one of the hardest problems of history—to present the true physiognomy of characters, and to show them as they were; under the outward aspect of facts to discover and depict the minds of men?
Moreover, the greater number of these general criticisms are matters of taste, of tendency, of views and of temperament. There are others which would be important if they were well-founded. Such are those which bear upon the accuracy of the work, almost upon the veracity of the author. Fortunately it is easy to overthrow them by a rapid examination.
‘M. Merle,’ it has been said,[[2]] ‘makes use of his vast knowledge of the works of the reformers to borrow from them passages which he arbitrarily introduces out of their place and apart from the circumstances to which they relate. Thus sentences taken from works of Calvin written during the last periods of his life are transformed into sentences pronounced by him twenty or twenty-five years earlier. That which on one occasion was written with his pen is, in regard to another occasion, put into his lips. We may, without pedantry, refuse to consider this process in strict conformity with that branch of truth which is called accuracy.’
It is true that, in Vol. VI., M. Merle d’Aubigné applies to the year 1538 words uttered by Calvin about twenty-five years later, at the time of his death in 1564:—‘I have lived here engaged in strange contests. I have been saluted in mockery of an evening before my own door with fifty or sixty shots of arquebuses. You may imagine how that must astound a poor scholar, timid as I am, and as I confess I always was.’ But these words, spoken by Calvin many years after the event, referred precisely to that year, 1538. The historian has quoted them at the very date to which they belong; nor could he have omitted them without a failure in accuracy.
The following is, however, the only proof given of this alleged want of accuracy:—
‘At the time when Calvin had just succeeded in establishing in Geneva what he considered to be the essential conditions of a Christian church, he had published, in the name of his colleagues, some statement of the success which they had just achieved, and had given expression to the sentiments of satisfaction and hope which they felt. Of this statement, to which events almost immediately gave a cruel contradiction, M. Merle has made use to depict the personal feelings and disposition of Calvin after the check which his work had sustained. The conditions are altogether changed. Instead of triumphing, the reformer is banished; and, nevertheless, the language which he used in the days of triumph is employed to characterize his steadfastness and constancy in the days of exile.’
The document here spoken of is a preface by Calvin to the Latin edition of his Catechism. In the original edition it bears date March, 1538. It is now before us; we have read and re-read it, and we can not imagine by what strange illusion there could be seen in it a statement of the success which Calvin and his colleagues had just achieved. It does not contain one vestige of satisfaction or of hope, not a trace of triumph. It is an unaccountable mistake to suppose that it was written in days of triumph. It was written in March 1538, in the very stress of the storm which, a few days later, April 23, was to result in the banishment of the reformer and the momentary destruction of his work at Geneva. This storm had begun to take shape on November 25, 1537, at a general council (assembly of the people), in which the most violent attacks had been directed against Calvin and against the government of the republic. From this time, says M. Merle, ‘the days of the party in power were numbered.’[[3]] In fact, the government favorable to Calvin was overthrown February 3, 1538. On that day the most implacable enemies of the reformer came into power. Thus, in March, Calvin, far from thinking of a triumph, was thinking of defending himself. The preface which stands at the head of his catechism is not the statement of success already seriously impaired, but an apologia for his proceedings and his faith, a reply to ‘the calumnies aimed against his innocence and his integrity,’[[4]] to ‘the false accusations of which he is a victim.’[[5]] The following is the analysis of the preface, given by Professor Reuss, of Strasburg, in the Prolegomena to Vol. V. of the Opera Calvini, p. 43:—
‘The occasion for publishing, in Latin, this book was furnished by Peter Caroli, doctor and prior of the Sorbonne. This doctor, after having spread abroad iniquitous rumors against Farel, Viret, and Calvin, broke out passionately in open accusations against these men, his colleagues, who were equally distinguished by their faith and their moral character, imputing to them the Arian and Sabellian heresies and other similar corruptions. At this time there existed no other public monument of the faith of the Genevese church but the Confession of Farel and the Catechism of Calvin; and these, as they were written in French, were almost unknown to the rest of the Swiss churches. For this reason Calvin translated into Latin his own Catechism and the Confession of Farel, in order to make known through this version to all his brethren in Switzerland the doctrine which he had hitherto professed at Geneva, and to show that the charge of heresy brought against it was without foundation.’[[6]]
It must be added that Calvin, in this preface, does not confine himself to the refutation of the charges of heresy drawn up against him by Caroli; but he vindicates his own course at Geneva, particularly in that vexatious affair of the oath which gave rise to the debate of November 25, 1537, the overthrow of the government on February 3, 1538, and the expulsion of Calvin and his friends on April 23 following. This document is, with the letters written by Calvin at this period, the most precious source of information as to the reformer’s feelings during this cruel struggle; and in quoting it at this place the author has made a judicious use of it.