Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

which you hear it [our cause] daily traduced: that its only tendency

is to wrest the scepters of kings out of their hands, to overturn

all the tribunals... to subvert all order and government, to disturb

the peace and tranquillity of the people, to abrogate all laws, to

scatter all properties and possessions, and, in a word, to involve

everything in total confusion....

Wherefore I beseech you, Sire- and surely it is not an

unreasonable request- to take upon yourself the entire cognizance of

this cause, which has hitherto been confusedly and carelessly

agitated, without any order of law, and with outrageous passion rather

than judicial gravity. Think not that I am now meditating my own

individual defense in order to effect a safe return to my native

country; for though I feel the affection which every man ought to feel

for it, yet, under the existing circumstances, I regret not my removal

from it. But I plead the cause of all the godly, and consequently of

Christ Himself....

Is it probable that we are meditating the subversion of kingdoms?-

we who were never heard to utter a factious word, whose lives were

ever known to be peaceable and honest while we lived under your

government, and who, even now in our exile, cease not to pray for

all prosperity to attend yourself and your kingdom!... Nor have we, by

Divine Grace, profited so little in the Gospel, but that our life

may be an example to our detractors of chastity, liberality, mercy,

temperance, patience, modesty, and every other virtue....

Though you are now averse and alienated from us, and even inflamed

against us, we despair not of regaining your favor, if you will only

read with calmness and composure this our confession, which we

intend as our defense before your Majesty. But, on the contrary, if

your ears are so preoccupied with the whispers of the malevolent as to

leave no opportunity for the accused to speak for themselves, and if

those outrageous furies, with your connivance, continue to persecute

with imprisonments, scourges, tortures, confiscations, and flames,

we shall indeed, like sheep destined for the slaughter, be reduced

to the greatest extremities. Yet shall we in patience possess our

souls, and wait for the mighty hand of the Lord... for the deliverance

of the poor from their affliction, and for the punishment of their

despisers, who now exult in such perfect security. May the Lord, the

King of Kings, establish your throne with righteousness and your

kingdom with equity. `06214

-

It is difficult for us, in an age when theology has given place to

politics as the center of human interest and conflict, to recapture

the mood in which Calvin composed the Institutes. He, much more than

Spinoza, was a God-intoxicated man. He was overwhelmed by a sense of

man's littleness and God's immensity. How absurd it would be to

suppose that the frail reason of so infinitesimal a mite as man

could understand the Mind behind these innumerable, obedient stars? In

pity of man's reason God has revealed Himself to us in the Bible. That

this Holy Book is His Word (says Calvin) is proved by the unrivaled

impression that it makes on the human spirit.

-

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any others

of that class; I grant you that you will be attracted, delighted,

moved, and enraptured by them in a surprising manner; but if, after

reading them, you turn to the perusal of the sacred volume, whether

you are willing or unwilling, it will affect you so powerfully, it

will so penetrate your heart, and impress itself so strongly on your

mind, that, compared with its energetic influence, the beauties of

rhetoricians and philosophers will almost entirely disappear; so

that it is easy to perceive something divine in the sacred Scriptures,

which far surpasses the highest attainments and ornaments of human

industry. `06215

-

Consequently this revealed Word must be our final authority, not

only in religion and morals but in history, politics, everything. We

must accept the story of Adam and Eve; for by their disobedience to

God we explain man's evil nature and his loss of free will.

-

The mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of

God that it conceives, desires, and undertakes everything that is

impious, perverse, base, impure, and flagitious. His heart is so

thoroughly infected by the poison of sin that it cannot produce

anything but what is corrupt; and if at any time men do anything

apparently good, yet the mind always remains involved in hypocrisy and

deceit, and the heart enslaved by its inward perversity. `06216

-

How could so depraved a being ever deserve eternal happiness in

paradise? Not one of us could ever earn it by any amount of good

works. Good works are good, but only the sacrificial death of the

Son of God could avail to earn salvation for men. Not for all men, for

God's justice demands the damnation of most men. But His mercy has

chosen some of us to be saved; and to these he has given an

upholding faith in their redemption by Christ. For St. Paul said: "God

the Father hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world,

that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love; having

predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to

Himself, according to the good pleasure of His Will." `06217 Calvin,

like Luther, interpreted this to mean that God, by a free choice quite

independent of our virtues and vices, determined, long before the

creation, just who is to be saved and who is to be damned. `06218 To

the question why God should choose men for salvation or damnation

without regard to their merits, Calvin answers again in the words of

Paul: "For He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have

mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have

compassion." `06219 Calvin concludes:

-

In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of Scripture, we

assert that by an eternal and immutable counsel God has once for all

determined both whom He would admit to salvation, and whom He would

condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as

concerns the elect, is founded on His gratuitous mercy, totally

irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom He devotes to

condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and

irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment. `062110

-

Even the fall of Adam and Eve, with all its consequences, in the

Pauline theory, to the human race, "was ordained by the admirable

counsel of God." `062111

Calvin admits that predestination is repulsive to reason, but he

replies, "It is unreasonable that man should scrutinize with

impunity those things which the Lord has determined to be hidden in

Himself." `062112 Yet he professes to know why God so arbitrarily

determines the eternal fate of billions of souls: it is "to promote

our admiration of His glory" by the display of His power. `062113 He

agrees that this is "a horrible decree" ( decretum horribile ), "but

no one can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man

before He created him, and that He foreknew it because it was

appointed by His own decree." `062114 Others might argue, like Luther,

that the future is determined because God has foreseen it and His

foresight cannot be falsified; Calvin reverses the matter, and

considers that God foresees the future because He has willed and

determined it. And the decree of damnation is absolute; there is no

purgatory in Calvin's theology, no halfway house where one might, by a

few million years of burning, wipe out his "reprobation." And

therefore there is no room for prayers for the dead.

We might suppose that on Calvin's assumptions there would be no

sense in any kind of prayer; all being fixed by divine decree, not

an ocean of orisons could wash away one jot of the inexorable destiny.

However, Calvin is more human than his theology: let us pray with

humility and faith, he tells us, and our prayers will be answered; the

prayer and the answer were also decreed. Let us worship God in

humble religious services, but we must reject the Mass as a

sacrilegious pretense of priests to transform earthly materials into

the body and blood of Christ. Christ is present in the Eucharist

only spiritually, not physically; and the adoration of the consecrated

wafer as literally Christ is sheer idolatry. The use of graven

images of the Deity, in clear violation of the Second Commandment,

encourages idolatry. All religious pictures and statuary, even the

crucifix, should be removed from the churches.

The true Church is the invisible congregation of the elect, dead,

living, or to be born. The visible Church is composed of "all those

who, by a confession of faith, an exemplary life, and participation in

the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper" (Calvin rejects the

other sacraments), "profess the same God and Christ with

ourselves." `062115 Outside of this Church there is no

salvation. `062116 Church and state are both divine, and are

designed by God to work in harmony as the soul and body of one

Christian society: the Church should regulate all details of faith,

worship, and morals; the state, as the physical arm of the Church,

should enforce these regulations, `062117 The secular authorities must

also see to it that "idolatry" (largely synonymous with Catholicism in

Protestant usage) and "other scandals to religion be not publicly

set forth and broadcast among the people," and that only the pure Word

of God should be taught and received. `062118 The ideal government

will be a theocracy, and the Reformed Church should be recognized as

the voice of God. All the claims of the popes for the supremacy of the

Church over the state were renewed by Calvin for his Church.

It is remarkable how much of Roman Catholic tradition and theory

survived in Calvin's theology. He owed something to Stoicism,

especially to Seneca, and something to his studies of law; but his

chief reliance was on St. Augustine, who drew predestinarianism out of

St. Paul, who did not know Christ. Calvin sternly ignored Christ's

conception of God as a loving and merciful father, and calmly passed

by a multitude of Biblical passages that assumed man's freedom to mold

his own destiny (2 Pet. 3:9; 1 Tim. 2:4; 1 John 2:2; 4:14, etc.).

Calvin's genius lay not in conceiving new ideas but in developing

the thought of his predecessors to ruinously logical conclusions,

expressing these with an eloquence equaled only by Augustine, and

formulating their practical implications in a system of ecclesiastical

legislation. He took from Luther the doctrine of justification or

election by faith; from Zwingli the spiritual interpretation of the

Eucharist; and from Bucer the contradictory notions of the divine will

as the cause of all events, and the requirement of a strenuous

practical piety as the test and witness of election. Most of these

Protestant doctrines had come down, in milder form, in Catholic

tradition; Calvin gave them stark emphasis, and neglected the

compensatory mitigating elements in the medieval faith. He was more

medieval than any thinker between Augustine and Dante. He completely

rejected the humanist concern with earthly excellence, and turned

men's thoughts again, more somberly than before, to the after world.

In Calvinism the Reformation again repudiated the Renaissance.

That so unprepossessing a theology should have won the assent of

hundreds of millions of men in Switzerland, France, Scotland, England,

and North America is at first sight a mystery, then an illumination.

Why should Calvinists, Huguenots, and Puritans have fought so

valiantly in defense of their own helplessness? And why has this

theory of human impotence shared in producing some of the strongest

characters in history? Is it because these believers gained more

strength from believing themselves the few elect than they lost by

admitting that their conduct contributed nothing to their fate? Calvin

himself, at once shy and resolute, was confident that he belonged to

the elect, and this so comforted him that he found the "horrible

decree" of predestination "productive of the most delightful

benefit." `062119 Did some of the self-elect take pleasure in

considering how few were to be saved, and how many were to be

damned? The belief that they were chosen of God gave many souls the

courage to face the vicissitudes and apparent aimlessness of life,

as a similar faith enabled the Jewish people to preserve itself amid

difficulties that might otherwise have sapped the will to live;

indeed, the Calvinist idea of being divinely chosen may have been

indebted to the Jewish form of the belief, as Protestantism in general

owed so much to the Old Testament. The confidence in divine election

must have been a tower of courage to Huguenots suffering war and

massacre, and to Pilgrims uprooting themselves perilously to seek

new homes on hostile shores. If a reformed sinner could catch this

confidence, and could believe that his reform had been ordained by

God, he could stand unshaken to the end. Calvin enhanced this

feeling of pride in election by making the elect, penniless or not, an

hereditary aristocracy: the children of the elect were automatically

elect by the will of God. `062120 So, by a simple act of faith in

one's self, one could, if only in imagination, possess and transmit

paradise. For such immortal boons a confession of helplessness was a

bargain price.

Calvin's followers needed such consolation, for he taught them the

medieval view that earthly life is a vale of misery and tears. He

cheerfully granted "the correctness of their opinion who considered it

as the greatest boon not to be born, and, as the next greatest, to die

immediately; nor was there anything irrational in the conduct of those

who mourned and wept at the birth of their relations, and solemnly

rejoiced at their funerals"; he merely regretted that these wise

pessimists, being mostly pagans ignorant of Christ, were doomed to

everlasting hell. `062121 Only one thing could make life bearable- the

hope of uninterrupted happiness after death. "If heaven is our

country, what is the earth but a place of exile?- and if the departure

out of this world is an entrance into life, what is the world but a

sepulcher?" `062122 Unlike his poetical counterpart, Calvin gives

his most eloquent pages not to the phantasmagoria of hell but to the

loveliness of heaven. The pious elect will suffer without a murmur all

the pains and griefs of life. "For they will keep in view that day

when the Lord will receive His faithful servants into His peaceful

kingdom, will wipe every tear from their eyes, invest them with

robes of joy, adorn them with crowns of glory, entertain them with

ineffable delights, and exalt them to a fellowship with His majesty,

and... a participation in His happiness." `062123 For the poor or

unfortunate, who cover the earth, it may have been an indispensable

belief.

III. GENEVA AND STRASBOURG: 1536-41

-

While the Institutes was in the press (March 1536), Calvin,

according to a tradition generally but not unanimously

accepted, `062124 made a hurried trip across the Alps to Ferrara,

probably to ask help for the persecuted Protestants of France from the

Protestant Duchess Renee, wife of Duke Ercole II and daughter of the

late Louis XII. Moved by the fervor of his religious convictions,

she made him her spiritual guide through reverent correspondence

till his death. Returning to Basel in May, Calvin ventured to Noyon to

sell some property; then, with a brother and a sister, he started

for Strasbourg. War barring the road, they stopped for a time at

Geneva (July 1536).

The capital of French Switzerland was older than history. In

prehistoric times it was a congeries of lake dwellings, built upon

piles, some of which can still be seen. In Caesar's day it was a

busy crossing of trade routes at the bridge where the Rhone rushes out

of Lake Leman to wander through France in search of the Mediterranean.

In the Middle Ages Geneva fell under the secular as well as

spiritual rule of its bishop. Normally the bishop was chosen by the

cathedral chapter, which thereby became a power in the city; this

was essentially the government that Calvin later restored in

Protestant form. In the fifteenth century the dukes of Savoy, which

lay just beyond the Alps, secured control of the chapter, and raised

to the episcopate men subservient to Savoy and given to the

pleasures of this world for fear there might not be a next. The once

excellent episcopal government, and the morals of the clergy under it,

deteriorated. A priest, bidden to dismiss his concubine, agreed to

do so as soon as his fellow clergymen would be equally ungallant;

gallantry prevailed. `062125

Within this ecclesiastical-ducal rule the leading families of Geneva

organized a Council of Sixty for municipal ordinances, and the Council

chose four syndics as executive officers. Usually the Council met in

the bishop's cathedral of St. Peter; and religious and civil

jurisdiction were so mingled that while the bishop minted the

coinage and led the army, the Council regulated morals, issued

excommunications, and licensed prostitutes. As in Trier, Mainz, and

Cologne, the bishop was also a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and

naturally assumed functions from which bishops are now free. Some

civic leaders, led by Francois de Bonnivard, sought to liberate the

city from both the episcopal and the ducal authority. To strengthen

this movement these Patriotes effected an alliance with Catholic

Fribourg and Protestant Bern. Adherents of the alliance were called by

the German term for confederates- Eidgenossen, oath comrades; the

French corrupted this into Huguenots. By 1520 the Genevese leaders

were mostly businessmen, for Geneva, unlike Wittenberg, was a

commercial city, mediating in trade between Switzerland on the

north, Italy on the south, and France on the west. The Genevese

burghers set up (1526) a Great Council of Two Hundred, and this

chose a Small Council of Twenty-Five, which became the real ruler of

the municipality, frequently flouting the authority of bishop and duke

alike. The bishop declared the city in rebellion, and summoned ducal

troops to his aid. These seized Bonnivard, and imprisoned him in the

castle of Chillon. The Bernese army came to the aid of beleaguered

Geneva; the duke's forces were defeated and dispersed; the bishop fled

to Annecy; Byron's hero was freed from his dungeon. The Great Council,

angered by the clergy's support of Savoy, declared for the Reformed

faith, and assumed ecclesiastical as well as civil jurisdiction

throughout the city (1536), two months before Calvin arrived.

The doctrinal hero of this revolution was William Farel. Like

Luther, he was passionately pious in youth. At Paris he came under the

influence of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, whose translation and

explanation of the Bible upset Farel's orthodoxy; for in the

Scriptures he could find no trace of popes, bishops, indulgences,

purgatory, seven sacraments, the Mass, the celibacy of the clergy, the

worship of Mary or the saints. Disdaining ordination, he set out as an

independent preacher, wandering from town to town in France and

Switzerland. Small of stature, weak of frame, strong of voice and

spirit, his pale face brightened by fiery eyes and a beard of

flaming red, he denounced the pope as Antichrist, the Mass as

sacrilege, the church icons as idola that must be destroyed. In 1532

he began to preach in Geneva. He was arrested by the bishop's

agents, who proposed to throw the "Lutheran dog" into the Rhone; the

syndics intervened, and Farel escaped with a few bruises on his head

and some spittle on his coat. He won the Council of Twenty-Five to his

views, and, with the aid of Peter Viret and Antoine Froment, aroused

so much popular support that nearly all the Catholic clergy

departed. On May 21, 1536, the Small Council decreed the abolition

of the Mass, and the removal of all images and relics from the

churches. Ecclesiastical properties were converted to Protestant

uses for religion, charity, and education; education was made

compulsory and free of charge; and a strict moral discipline was

made law. The citizens were called upon to swear allegiance to the

Gospel, and those who refused to attend Reformed services were

banished. `062126 This was the Geneva to which Calvin came.

Farel was now forty-seven; and though he was destined to outlive

Calvin by a year, he saw in the stern and eloquent youth, twenty years

his junior, just the man needed to consolidate and advance the Reform.

Calvin was reluctant; he had planned a life of scholarship and

writing; he was more at ease with God than with men. But Farel, with

the mien of some thundering Biblical prophet, threatened to lay a holy

curse upon him if he should prefer his private studies to the

arduous and dangerous preaching of the undiluted Word. Calvin yielded;

Council and presbytery approved; and- with no other ordination- he

began his ministry (September 5, 1536) by giving in the church of

St. Peter the first of several addresses on the Epistles of St.

Paul. Everywhere in Protestantism, except among the socially radical

sects, the influence of Paul overshadowed that of Peter, the reputed

founder of the Roman See.

In October Calvin accompanied Farel and Viret to Lausanne, and

took a minor part in the famous disputation that won that city to

the Protestant camp. Returning to Geneva, the senior and junior

pastors of St. Peter's set about to rededicate the Genevese to God.

Sincerely accepting the Bible as the literal Word of God, they felt an

inescapable obligation to enforce its moral code. They were shocked to

find many of the people given to singing, dancing, and similar

gaieties; moreover, some gambled, or drank to intoxication, or

committed adultery. An entire district of the city was occupied by

prostitutes, under the rule of their own Reine du bordel, the

Brothel Queen. To the fiery Farel and the conscientious Calvin a

genial acceptance of this situation was treason to God.

To restore the religious basis of an effective morality, Farel

issued a Confession of Faith and Discipline, and Calvin a popular

Catechism, which the Great Council approved (November 1536).

Citizens persistently transgressing the moral code were to be

excommunicated and exiled. In July 1537, the Council ordered all

citizens to go to the church of St. Peter and swear allegiance to

Farel's Confession. Any manifestation of Catholicism- such as

carrying a rosary, cherishing a sacred relic, or observing a saint's

day as holy- was subject to punishment. Women were imprisoned for

wearing improper hats. Bonnivard, too joyous in his liberty, was

warned to end his licentious ways. Gamblers were put into the

stocks. Adulterers were driven through the streets into banishment.

Accustomed to ecclesiastical rule, but to the lenient moral

discipline of a Catholicism softened by southern climes, the

Genevese resisted the new dispensation. The Patriotes, who had freed

the city from bishop and duke, reorganized to free it from its zealous

ministers. Another party, demanding liberty of conscience and worship,

and therefore called Libertins or Liberals, *06047 joined with the

Patriotes and the secret Catholics; and this coalition, in the

election of February 3, 1538, captured a majority in the Great

Council. The new Council told the ministers to keep out of politics.

Farel and Calvin denounced the Council, and refused to serve the

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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