Beacon Lights of History, Volume 3 part 2: Renaissance and Reformation

by John Lord

Now Calvin was imbued with the lofty spirit of the Fathers of the Church and the more religious and contemplative of the schoolmen and the saints of the Middle Ages, when he attached but little dignity to man unaided by divine grace, and was absorbed with the idea of the sovereignty of God, in whose hands man is like clay in the hands of the potter. This view of God pervaded the whole spirit of his theology, making it both lofty and yet one-sided. To him the chief end of man was to glorify God, not to develop his own intellectual faculties, and still less to seek the pleasures and excitements of the world. Man was a sinner before an infinite God, and he could rise above the polluting influence of sin only by the special favor of God and his divinely communicated grace. Man was so great a sinner that he deserved an eternal punishment, only to be rescued as a brand plucked from the fire, as one of the elect before the world was made. The vast majority of men were left to the uncovenanted mercies of Christ,—the redeemer, not of the race, but of those who believed.

To Calvin therefore, as to the Puritans, the belief in a personal God was everything; not a compulsory belief in the general existence of a deity who, united with Nature, reveals himself to our consciousness; not the God of the pantheist, visible in all the wonders of Nature; not the God of the rationalist, who retires from the universe which he has made, leaving it to the operation of certain unchanging and universal laws: but the God whom Abraham and Moses and the prophets saw and recognized, and who by his special providence rules the destinies of men. The most intellectual of the reformers abhorred the deification of the reason, and clung to that exalted supernaturalism which was the life and hope of blessed saints and martyrs in bygone ages, and which in "their contests with mail-clad infidelity was like the pebble which the shepherd of Israel hurled against the disdainful boaster who defied the power of Israel's God." And he was thus brought into close sympathy with the realism of the Fathers, who felt that all that is valuable in theology must radiate from the recognition of Almighty power in the renovation of society, and displayed, not according to our human notions of law and progress and free-will, but supernaturally and mysteriously, according to his sovereign will, which is above law, since God is the author of law. He simply erred in enforcing a certain class of truths which must follow from the majesty of the one great First Cause, lofty as these truths are, to the exclusion of another class of truths of great importance; which gives to his system incompleteness and one-sidedness. Thus he was led to undervalue the power of truth itself in its contest with error. He was led into a seeming recognition of two wills in God,—that which wills the salvation of all men, and that which wills the salvation of the elect alone. He is accused of a leaning to fatalism, which he heartily denied, but which seems to follow from his logical conclusions. He entered into an arena of metaphysical controversy which can never be settled. The doctrines of free-will and necessity can never be reconciled by mortal reason. Consciousness reveals the freedom of the will as well as the slavery to sin. Men are conscious of both; they waste their time in attempting to reconcile two apparently opposing facts,—like our pious fathers at their New England fire-sides, who were compelled to shelter themselves behind mystery.

The tendency of Calvin's system, it is maintained by many, is to ascribe to God attributes which according to natural justice would be injustice and cruelty, such as no father would exercise on his own children, however guilty. Even good men will not accept in their hearts doctrines which tend to make God less compassionate than man. There are not two kinds of justice. The intellect is appalled when it is affirmed that one man JUSTLY suffers the penalty of another man's sin,—although the world is full of instances of men suffering from the carelessness or wickedness of others, as in a wicked war or an unnecessary railway disaster. The Scripture law of retribution, as brought out in the Bible and sustained by consciousness, is the penalty a man pays for personal and voluntary transgression. Nor will consciousness accept the doctrine that the sin of a mortal—especially under strong temptation and with all the bias of a sinful nature—is infinite. Nothing which a created mortal can do is infinite; it is only finite: the infinite belongs to God alone. Hence an infinite penalty for a finite sin conflicts with consciousness and is nowhere asserted in the Bible, which is transcendently more merciful and comforting than many theological systems of belief, however powerfully sustained by dialectical reasoning and by the most excellent men. Human judgments or reasonings are fallible on moral questions which have two sides; and reasonings from texts which present different meanings when studied by the lights of learning and science are still more liable to be untrustworthy. It would seem to be the supremest necessity for theological schools to unravel the meaning of divine declarations, and present doctrines in their relation with apparently conflicting texts, rather than draw out a perfect and consistent system, philosophically considered, from any one class of texts. Of all things in this wicked and perplexing world the science of theology should be the most cheerful and inspiring, for it involves inquiries on the loftiest subjects which can interest a thoughtful mind.

But whatever defects the system of doctrines which Calvin elaborated with such transcendent ability may have, there is no question as to its vast influence on the thinking of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The schools of France and Holland and Scotland and England and America were animated by his genius and authority. He was a burning and a shining light, if not for all ages, at least for the unsettled times in which he lived. No theologian ever had a greater posthumous power than he for nearly three hundred years, and he is still one of the great authorities of the church universal. John Knox sought his counsel and was influenced by his advice in the great reform he made in Scotland. In France the words Calvinist and Huguenot are synonymous. Cranmer, too, listened to his counsels, and had great respect for his learning and sanctity. Among the Puritans he has reigned like an oracle. Oliver Cromwell embraced his doctrines, as also did Sir Matthew Hale. Ridicule or abuse of Calvin is as absurd as the ridicule or abuse with which Protestants so long assailed Hildebrand or Innocent III. No one abuses Pascal or Augustine, and yet the theological views of all these are substantially the same.

In one respect I think that Calvin has received more credit than he deserves. Some have maintained that he was a sort of father of republicanism and democratic liberty. In truth he had no popular sympathies, and leaned towards an aristocracy which was little short of an oligarchy. He had no hand in establishing the political system of Geneva; it was established before he went there. He was not even one of those thinkers who sympathized with true liberty of conscience. He persecuted heretics like a mediaeval Catholic divine. He would have burned a Galileo as he caused the death of Servetus, which need not have happened but for him. Calvin could have saved Servetus if he had pleased; but he complained of him to the magistrates, knowing that his condemnation and death would necessarily follow. He had neither the humanity of Luther nor the toleration of Saint Augustine. He was the impersonation of intellect,—like Newton, Leibnitz, Spinoza, and Kant,—which overbore the impulses of his heart. He had no passions except zeal for orthodoxy. So pre-eminently did intellect tower above the passions that he seemed to lack sympathy; and yet, such was his exalted character, he was capable of friendship. He was remarkable for every faculty of the mind except wit and imagination. His memory was almost incredible; he remembered everything he ever read or heard; he would, after long intervals, recognize persons whom he had never seen but once or twice. When employed in dictation, he would resume the thread of his discourse without being prompted, after the most vexatious interruptions. His judgment was as sound as his memory was retentive; it was almost infallible,—no one was ever known to have been misled by it. He had a remarkable analytical power, and also the power of generalization. He was a very learned man, and his Commentaries are among the most useful and valued of his writings, showing both learning and judgment; his exegetical works have scarcely been improved. He had no sceptical or rationalistic tendencies, and therefore his Commentaries may not be admired by men of "advanced thought;" but his annotations will live when those of Ewald shall be forgotten; they still hold their place in the libraries of biblical critics. For his age he was a transcendent critic; his various writings fill five folio volumes. He was not so voluminous a writer as Thomas Aquinas, but less diffuse; his style is lucid, like that of Voltaire.

Considering the weakness of his body Calvin's labors were prodigious. There was never a more industrious man, finding time for everything,—for an amazing correspondence, for pastoral labors, for treatises and essays, for commentaries and official duties. No man ever accomplished more in the same space of time. He preached daily every alternate week; he attended meetings of the Consistory and of the Court of Morals; he interested himself in the great affairs of his age; he wrote letters to all parts of Christendom.

Reigning as a religious dictator, and with more influence than any man of his age, next to Luther, Calvin was content to remain poor, and was disdainful of money and all praises and rewards. This was not an affectation, not the desire to imitate the great saints of Christian antiquity to whom poverty was a cardinal virtue; but real indifference, looking upon money as impedimenta, as camp equipage is to successful generals. He was not conscious of being poor with his small salary of fifty dollars a year, feeling that he had inexhaustible riches within him; and hence he calmly and naturally took his seat among the great men of the world as their peer and equal, without envy of the accidents of fortune and birth. He was as indifferent to money and luxuries as Socrates when he walked barefooted among the Athenian aristocracy, or Basil when he retired to the wilderness; he rarely gave vent to extravagant grief or joy, seldom laughed, and cared little for hilarities; he knew no games or sports; he rarely played with children or gossiped with women; he loved without romance, and suffered bereavement without outward sorrow. He had no toleration for human infirmities, and was neither social nor genial; he sought a wife, not so much for communion of feeling as to ease him of his burdens,—not to share his confidence, but to take care of his house. Nor was he fond, like Luther, of music and poetry. He had no taste for the fine arts; he never had a poet or an artist for his friend or companion. He could not look out of his window without seeing the glaciers of the Alps, but seemed to be unmoved by their unspeakable grandeur; he did not revel in the glories of nature or art, but gave his mind to abstract ideas and stern practical duties. He was sparing of language, simple, direct, and precise, using neither sarcasm, nor ridicule, nor exaggeration. He was far from being eloquent according to popular notions of oratory, and despised the jingle of words and phrases and tricks of rhetoric; he appealed to reason rather than the passions, to the conscience rather than the imagination.

Though mild, Calvin was also intolerant. Castillo, once his friend, assailed his doctrine of Decrees, and was obliged to quit Geneva, and was so persecuted that he died of actual starvation; Perrin, captain-general of the republic, danced at a wedding, and was thrown into prison; Bolsec, an eminent physician, opposed the doctrine of Predestination, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; Gruet spoke lightly of the ordinances of religion, and was beheaded; Servetus was a moral and learned and honest man, but could not escape the flames. Had he been willing to say, as the flames consumed his body, "Jesus, thou eternal Son of God, have mercy on me!" instead of, "Jesus, thou son of the eternal God!" he might have been spared. Calvin was as severe on those who refused to accept his logical deductions from acknowledged truths as he was on those who denied the fundamental truths themselves. But toleration was rare in his age, and he was not beyond it. He was not even beyond the ideas of the Middle Ages in some important points, such as those which pertained to divine justice,—the wrath rather than the love of God. He lived too near the Middle Ages to be emancipated from the ideas which enslaved such a man as Thomas Aquinas. He had very little patience with frivolous amusements or degrading pursuits. He attached great dignity to the ministerial office, and set a severe example of decorum and propriety in all his public ministrations. He was a type of the early evangelical divines, and was the father of the old Puritan strictness and narrowness and fidelity to trusts. His very faults grew out of virtues pushed to extremes. In our times such a man would not be selected as a travelling companion, or a man at whose house we would wish to keep the Christmas holidays. His unattractive austerity perhaps has been made too much of by his enemies, and grew out of his unimpulsive temperament,—call it cold if we must,— and also out of his stern theology, which marked the ascetics of the Middle Ages. Few would now approve of his severity of discipline any more than they would feel inclined to accept some of his theological deductions.

I question whether Calvin lived in the hearts of his countrymen, or they would have erected some monument to his memory. In our times a statue has been erected to Rousseau in Geneva; but Calvin was buried without ceremony and with exceeding simplicity. He was a warrior who cared nothing for glory or honor, absorbed in devotion to his Invisible King, not indifferent to the exercise of power, but only as he felt he was the delegated messenger of Divine Omnipotence scattering to the winds the dust of all mortal grandeur. With all his faults, which were on the surface, he was the accepted idol and oracle of a great party, and stamped his genius on his own and succeeding ages. Whatever the Presbyterians have done for civilization, he comes in for a share of the honor. Whatever foundations the Puritans laid for national greatness in this country, it must be confessed that they caught inspiration from his decrees. Such a great master of exegetical learning and theological inquiry and legislative wisdom will be forever held in reverence by lofty characters, although he may be no favorite with the mass of mankind. If many great men and good men have failed to comprehend either his character or his system, how can a pleasure- loving and material generation, seeking to combine the glories of this world with the promises of the next, see much in him to admire, except as a great intellectual dialectician and system- maker in an age with which it has no sympathy? How can it appreciate his deep spiritual life, his profound communion with God, his burning zeal for the defence of Christian doctrine, his sublime self-sacrifice, his holy resignation, his entire consecration to a great cause? Nobody can do justice to Calvin who does not know the history of his times, the circumstances which surrounded him, and the enemies he was required to fight. No one can comprehend his character or mission who does not feel it to be supremely necessary to have a definite, positive system of religious belief, based on the authority of the Scriptures as a divine inspiration, both as an anchor amid the storms and a star of promise and hope.

And, after all, what is the head and front of Calvin's offending?— that he was cold, unsocial, and ungenial in character; and that, as a theologian, he fearlessly and inexorably pushed out his deductions to their remotest logical sequences. But he was no more austere than Chrysostom, no more ascetic than Basil, not even sterner in character than Michael Angelo, or more unsocial than Pascal or Cromwell or William the Silent. We lose sight of his defects in the greatness of his services and the exalted dignity of his character. If he was severe to adversaries, he was kind to friends; and when his feeble body was worn out by his protracted labors, at the age of fifty-three, and he felt that the hand of death was upon him, he called together his friends and fellow- laborers in reform,—the magistrates and ministers of Geneva,— imparted his last lessons, and expressed his last wishes, with the placidity of a Christian sage. Amid tears and sobs and stifled groans he discoursed calmly on his approaching departure, gave his affectionate benedictions, and commended them and his cause to Christ; lingering longer than was expected, but dying in the highest triumphs of Christian faith, May 27, 1564, in the, arms of his faithful and admiring Beza, as the rays of the setting-sun gilded with their glory his humble chamber of toil and spiritual exaltation.