A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

[182] H. M. Bower, The Fourteen of Meaux (London, 1894).

[183] Cf. above, pp. 92 ff. What follows on Calvin’s influence on the Reformation in France has been borrowed largely from M. Henri Lemonnier, Histoire de France, etc. (Paris, 1903-4) V. i. pp. 381-383, ii. pp. 183-187, etc.; only a Frenchman can describe it and him sympathetically.

[184] The Venetian Ambassador at the Court of France, writing in 1561 to the Doge, says, “Your Serenity will hardly believe the influence and the great power which the principal minister of Geneva, by name Calvin, a Frenchman and a native of Picardy, possesses in this kingdom. He is a man of extraordinary authority, who by his mode of life, his doctrines and his writings, rises superior to all the rest” (Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1558-80, p. 323).

[185] Calvin did not lack imagination. The sanctified imagination has never made grander or loftier flight than in the thought of the Purpose of God moving slowly down through the Ages, making for redemption and for the establishment of the Kingdom, which is the master-idea in the Christian Institution. It was de Bèze (Beza), not Calvin, who was the father of the seventeenth century doctrine of predestination,—a conception which differed from Calvin’s as widely as the skeleton differs from the man instinct with life and action.

[186] Henri Lemonnier, Histoire de France, etc. (Paris, 1903) V. i. 383.

[187] “Calvin fut un très grand écrivain. Je dirais même que ce fut le plus grand écrivain du 16^e siècle si j’estimais plus que je ne fais le style proprement dit.... Encore est-il qu’il me faut bien reconnaître que le style de Calvin est de tous les styles du 16^e siècle celui qui a le plus de style.... Reste qu’il parle l’admirable prose, si claire, limpide et facile, du 15^e siècle, avec ce quelque chose de plus ferme, de plus nourri et de plus viril que l’étude des classiques donne à ceux qui ne poussent pas jusqu’à l’imitation servile et à l’admirature des menus jolis détails. Reste qu’il parle la langue du 15^e siècle avec quelques qualités déjà du 17^e. C’est précisément ce qu’il a fait, et il est un des bons, sinon des sublimes, fondateurs de la prose française” (Emile Faguet, Scizième Siècle: Études Litéraires, pp. 188-89, Paris, 1898).

[188] Cambridge Modern History, ii. 366.

[189] La Catéchisme français, p. 132. Opera, v. 319.

[190] The term was adopted from the edicts, “ladite religion prétenduë réformée,” with the qualifying adjectives left out.

[191] Henri Lemonnier, Histoire de France, etc. (Paris, 1903) V. ii. 187.