But the most memorable of all the controversies in which Calvin was engaged was that into which he was brought in 1553 with Michael Servetus (q.v.). After many wanderings, and after having been condemned to death for heresy at Vienne, whence he was fortunate enough to make his escape, Servetus arrived in August 1553 at Geneva on his way to Naples. He was recognized in church and soon after, at Calvin’s instigation, arrested. The charge of blasphemy was founded on certain statements in a book published by him in 1553, entitled Christianismi Restitutio, in which he animadverted on the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, and advanced sentiments strongly savouring of Pantheism. The story of his trial is told elsewhere (see art. [Servetus]), but it must be noted here that the struggle was something more than a doctrinal one. The cause of Servetus was taken up by Calvin’s Genevan foes headed by Philibert Berthelier, and became a test of the relative strength of the rival forces and of the permanence of Calvin’s control. That Calvin was actuated by personal spite and animosity against Servetus himself may be open to discussion; we have his own express declaration that, after Servetus was convicted, he used no urgency that he should be put to death, and at their last interview he told Servetus that he never had avenged private injuries, and assured him that if he would repent it would not be his fault if all the pious did not give him their hands.[10] There is the fact also that Calvin used his endeavour to have the sentence which had been pronounced against Servetus mitigated, death by burning being regarded by him as an “atrocity,” for which he sought to substitute death by the sword.[11] It can be justly charged against Calvin in this matter that he took the initiative in bringing on the trial of Servetus, that as his accuser he prosecuted the suit against him with undue severity, and that he approved the sentence which condemned Servetus to death. When, however, it is remembered that the unanimous decision of the Swiss churches and of the Swiss state governments was that Servetus deserved to die; that the general voice of Christendom was in favour of this; that even such a man as Melanchthon affirmed the justice of the sentence;[12] that an eminent English divine of the next age should declare the process against him “just and honourable,”[13] and that only a few voices here and there were at the time raised against it, many will be ready to accept the judgment of Coleridge, that the death of Servetus was not “Calvin’s guilt especially, but the common opprobrium of all European Christendom.”[14]
Calvin was also involved in a protracted and somewhat vexing dispute with the Lutherans respecting the Lord’s Supper, which ended in the separation of the evangelical party into the two great sections of Lutherans and Reformed,—the former holding that in the eucharist the body and blood of Christ are objectively and consubstantially present, and so are actually partaken of by the communicants, and the latter that there is only a virtual presence of the body and blood of Christ, and consequently only a spiritual participation thereof through faith. In addition to these controversies on points of faith, he was for many years greatly disquieted, and sometimes even endangered, by the opposition offered by the libertine party in Geneva to the ecclesiastical discipline which he had established there. His system of church polity was essentially theocratic; it assumed that every member of the state was also under the discipline of the church; and he asserted that the right of exercising this discipline was vested exclusively in the consistory or body of preachers and elders. His attempts to carry out these views brought him into collision both with the authorities and with the populace,—the latter being not unnaturally restive under the restraints imposed upon their liberty by the vigorous system of church discipline, and the former being inclined to retain in their own hands a portion of that power in things spiritual which Calvin was bent on placing exclusively in the hands of the church rulers. His dauntless courage, his perseverance, and his earnestness at length prevailed, and he had the satisfaction, before he died, of seeing his favourite system of church polity firmly established, not only at Geneva, but in other parts of Switzerland, and of knowing that it had been adopted substantially by the Reformers in France and Scotland. The men whom he trained at Geneva carried his principles into almost every country in Europe, and in varying degree these principles did much for the cause of civil liberty.[15] Nor was it only in religious matters that Calvin busied himself; nothing was indifferent to him that concerned the welfare and good order of the state or the advantage of its citizens. His work embraced everything; he was consulted on every affair, great and small, that came before the council,—on questions of law, police, economy, trade, and manufactures, no less than on questions of doctrine and church polity. To him the city owed her trade in cloths and velvets, from which so much wealth accrued to her citizens; sanitary regulations were introduced by him which made Geneva the admiration of all visitors; and in him she reverences the founder of her university. This institution was in a sense Calvin’s crowning work. It added religious education to the evangelical preaching and the thorough discipline already established, and so completed the reformer’s ideal of a Christian commonwealth.
Amidst these multitudinous cares and occupations, Calvin found time to write a number of works besides those provoked by the various controversies in which he was engaged. The most numerous of these were of an exegetical character. Including discourses taken down from his lips by faithful auditors, we have from him expository comments or homilies on nearly all the books of Scripture, written partly in Latin and partly in French. Though naturally knowing nothing of the modern idea of a progressive revelation, his judiciousness, penetration, and tact in eliciting his author’s meaning, his precision, condensation, and concinnity as an expositor, the accuracy of his learning, the closeness of his reasoning, and the elegance of his style, all unite to confer a high value on his exegetical works. The series began with Romans in 1540 and ended with Joshua in 1564. In 1558-1559 also, though in very ill health, he finally perfected the Institutes.
The incessant and exhausting labours to which Calvin gave himself could not but tell on his fragile constitution. Amid many sufferings, however, and frequent attacks of sickness, he manfully pursued his course; nor was it till his frail body, torn by many and painful diseases—fever, asthma, stone, and gout, the fruits for the most part of his sedentary habits and unceasing activity—had, as it were, fallen to pieces around him, that his indomitable spirit relinquished the conflict. In the early part of the year 1564 his sufferings became so severe that it was manifest his earthly career was rapidly drawing to a close. On the 6th of February of that year he preached his last sermon, having with great difficulty found breath enough to carry him through it. He was several times after this carried to church, but never again was able to take any part in the service. With his usual disinterestedness he refused to receive his stipend, now that he was no longer able to discharge the duties of his office. In the midst of his sufferings, however, his zeal and energy kept him in continual occupation; when expostulated with for such unseasonable toil, he replied, “Would you that the Lord should find me idle when He comes?” After he had retired from public labours he lingered for some months, enduring the severest agony without a murmur, and cheerfully attending to all the duties of a private kind which his diseases left him strength to discharge. On the 25th of April he made his will, on the 27th he received the Little Council, and on the 28th the Genevan ministers, in his sick-room; on the 2nd of May he wrote his last letter—to his old comrade Farel, who hastened from Neuchâtel to see him once again. He spent much time in prayer and died quietly, in the arms of his faithful friend Theodore Beza, on the evening of the 27th of May, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. The next day he was buried without pomp “in the common cemetery called Plain-palais” in a spot not now to be identified.
Calvin was of middle stature; his complexion was somewhat pallid and dark; his eyes, to the latest clear and lustrous, bespoke the acumen of his genius. He was sparing in his food and simple in his dress; he took but little sleep, and was capable of extraordinary efforts of intellectual toil. He had a most retentive memory and a very keen power of observation. He spoke without rhetoric, simply, directly, but with great weight. He had many acquaintances but few close friends. His private character was in harmony with his public reputation and position. If somewhat severe and irritable, he was at the same time scrupulously just, truthful, and steadfast; he never deserted a friend or took an unfair advantage of an antagonist; and on befitting occasions he could be cheerful and even facetious among his intimates. “God gave him,” said the Little Council after his death, “a character of great majesty.” “I have been a witness of him for sixteen years,” says Beza, “and I think I am fully entitled to say that in this man there was exhibited to all an example of the life and death of the Christian, such as it will not be easy to depreciate, such as it will be difficult to emulate.”
Though Calvin built his theology on the foundations laid by earlier reformers, and especially by Luther and Bucer, his peculiar gifts of learning, of logic and of style made him pre-eminently the theologian of the new religion. The following may be regarded as his characteristic tenets, though not all are peculiar to him.
The dominant thought is the infinite and transcendent sovereignty of God, to know whom is the supreme end of human endeavour. God is made known to man especially by the Scriptures, whose writers were “sure and authentic amanuenses of the Holy Spirit.” To the Spirit speaking therein the Spirit-illumined soul of man makes response. While God is the source of all good, man as a sinner is guilty and corrupt. The first man was made in the image and likeness of God, which not only implies man’s superiority to all other creatures, but indicates his original purity, integrity and sanctity. From this state Adam fell, and in his fall involved the whole human race descended from him. Hence depravity and corruption, diffused through all parts of the soul, attach to all men, and this first makes them obnoxious to the anger of God, and then comes forth in works which the Scripture calls works of the flesh (Gal. v. 19). Thus all are held vitiated and perverted in all parts of their nature, and on account of such corruption deservedly condemned before God, by whom nothing is accepted save righteousness innocence, and purity. Nor is that a being bound for another’s offence; for when it is said that we through Adam’s sin have become obnoxious to the divine judgment, it is not to be taken as if we, being ourselves innocent and blameless, bear the fault of his offence, but that, we having been brought under a curse through his transgression, he is said to have bound us. From him, however, not only has punishment overtaken us, but a pestilence instilled from him resides in us, to which punishment is justly due. Thus even infants, whilst they bring their own condemnation with them from their mother’s womb, are bound not by another’s but by their own fault. For though they have not yet brought forth the fruits of their iniquity, they have the seed shut up in them; nay, their whole nature is a sort of seed of sin, therefore it cannot but be hateful and abominable to God (Instit. bk. ii, ch. i. sect. 8).
To redeem man from this state of guilt, and to recover him from corruption, the Son of God became incarnate, assuming man’s nature into union with His own, so that in Him were two natures in one person. Thus incarnate He took on Him the offices of prophet, priest and king, and by His humiliation, obedience and suffering unto death, followed by His resurrection and ascension to heaven, He has perfected His work and fulfilled all that was required in a redeemer of men, so that it is truly affirmed that He has merited for man the grace of salvation (bk. ii. ch. 13-17). But until a man is in some way really united to Christ so as to partake of Him, the benefits of Christ’s work cannot be attained by him. Now it is by the secret and special operation of the Holy Spirit that men are united to Christ and made members of His body. Through faith, which is a firm and certain cognition of the divine benevolence towards us founded on the truth of the gracious promise in Christ, men are by the operation of the Spirit united to Christ and are made partakers of His death and resurrection, so that the old man is crucified with Him and they are raised to a new life, a life of righteousness and holiness. Thus joined to Christ the believer has life in Him and knows that he is saved, having the witness of the Spirit that he is a child of God, and having the promises, the certitude of which the Spirit had before impressed on the mind, sealed by the same Spirit on the heart (bk. iii. ch. 33-36). From faith proceeds repentance, which is the turning of our life to God, proceeding from a sincere and earnest fear of God, and consisting in the mortification of the flesh and the old man within us and a vivification of the Spirit. Through faith also the believer receives justification, his sins are forgiven, he is accepted of God, and is held by Him as righteous, the righteousness of Christ being imputed to him, and faith being the instrument by which the man lays hold on Christ, so that with His righteousness the man appears in God’s sight as righteous. This imputed righteousness, however, is not disjoined from real personal righteousness, for regeneration and sanctification come to the believer from Christ no less than justification; the two blessings are not to be confounded, but neither are they to be disjoined. The assurance which the believer has of salvation he receives from the operation and witness of the Holy Spirit; but this again rests on the divine choice of the man to salvation; and this falls back on God’s eternal sovereign purpose, whereby He has predestined some to eternal life while the rest of mankind are predestined to condemnation and eternal death. Those whom God has chosen to life He effectually calls to salvation, and they are kept by Him in progressive faith and holiness unto the end (bk. iii. passim). The external means or aids by which God unites men into the fellowship of Christ, and sustains and advances those who believe, are the church and its ordinances, especially the sacraments. The church universal is the multitude gathered from diverse nations, which though divided by distance of time and place, agree in one common faith, and it is bound by the tie of the same religion; and wherever the word of God is sincerely preached, and the sacraments are duly administered, according to Christ’s institute, there beyond doubt is a church of the living God (bk. iv. ch. 1, sect. 7-11). The permanent officers in the church are pastors and teachers, to the former of whom it belongs to preside over the discipline of the church, to administer the sacraments, and to admonish and exhort the members; while the latter occupy themselves with the exposition of Scripture, so that pure and wholesome doctrine may be retained. With them are to be joined for the government of the church certain pious, grave and holy men as a senate in each church; and to others, as deacons, is to be entrusted the care of the poor. The election of the officers in a church is to be with the people, and those duly chosen and called are to be ordained by the laying on of the hands of the pastors (ch. 3, sect. 4-16). The sacraments are two—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is the sign of initiation whereby men are admitted into the society of the church and, being grafted into Christ, are reckoned among the sons of God; it serves both for the confirmation of faith and as a confession before men. The Lord’s Supper is a spiritual feast where Christ attests that He is the life-giving bread, by which our souls are fed unto true and blessed immortality. That sacred communication of His flesh and blood whereby Christ transfuses into us His life, even as if it penetrated into our bones and marrow, He in the Supper attests and seals; and that not by a vain or empty sign set before us but there He puts forth the efficacy of His Spirit whereby He fulfils what He promises. In the mystery of the Supper Christ is truly exhibited to us by the symbols of bread and wine; and so His body and blood, in which He fulfilled all obedience for the obtaining of righteousness for us, are presented. There is no such presence of Christ in the Supper as that He is affixed to the bread or included in it or in any way circumscribed; but whatever can express the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, which is exhibited to believers under the said symbols of the Supper, is to be received, and that not as perceived by the imagination only or mental intelligence, but as enjoyed for the aliment of the eternal life (bk. iv. ch. 15, 17).
The course of time has substantially modified many of these positions. Even the churches which trace their descent from Calvin’s work and faith no longer hold in their entirety his views on the magistrate as the preserver of church purity, the utter depravity of human nature, the non-human character of the Bible, the dealing of God with man. But his system had an immense value in the history of Christian thought. It appealed to and evoked a high order of intelligence, and its insistence on personal individual salvation has borne worthy fruit. So also its insistence on the chief end of man “to know and do the will of God” made for the strenuous morality that helped to build up the modern world. Its effects are most clearly seen in Scotland, in Puritan England and in the New England states, but its influence was and is felt among peoples that have little desire or claim to be called Calvinist.
Bibliography.—The standard edition of Calvin’s works is that undertaken by the Strassburg scholars, J.W. Bauin, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss, P. Lobstein, A. Erichson (59 vols., 1863-1900). The last of these contains an elaborate bibliography which was also published separately at Berlin in 1900. The bulk of the writings was published in English by the Calvin Translation Society (48 vols., Edinburgh, 1843-1855); the Institutes have often been translated. The early lives by Beza and Collodon are given in the collected editions. Among modern biographies are those by P. Henry, Das Leben J. Calvins (3 vols., Hamburg, 1835-1844; Eng. trans, by H. Stebbing, London and New York, 1849); V. Audin, Histoire de la vie, des ouvrages, et des doctrines de Calvin (2 vols., Paris, 1841; Eng. trans, by J. McGill, London, 1843 and 1850) unfairly antagonistic; T.H. Dyer, Life of John Calvin (London, 1850); E. Stähelin, Joh. Calvin, Leben und ausgewählte Schriften (2 vols., Elberfeld, 1863); F.W. Kampschulte, Joh. Calvin, seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf (2 vols., 1869, 1899, unfinished); Abel Lefranc, La Jeunesse de Calvin (Paris, 1888); E. Choisy, La Théocratie à Genève au temps de Calvin (Geneva, 1897); E. Doumergue, Jean Calvin; les hommes et les choses de son temps (5 vols., 1899-1908). See also A.M. Fairbairn, “Calvin and the Reformed Church” in the Cambridge Modern History, vol. ii. (1904); P. Schaff’s, History of the Christian Church, vol. vii. (1892), and R. Stähelin’s article in Hauck-Herzog’s Real-encyk. für prot. Theologie und Kirche. Each of these contains a useful bibliography, as also does the excellent life by Professor Williston Walker, John Calvin, the Organizer of Reformed Protestantism, “Heroes of the Reformation” series (1906). See also C.S. Horne in Mansfield Coll. Essays (1909).