(1536.)
FOR years, and even for centuries, persistent and perilous endeavors had been made at Geneva for a firm establishment of freedom. We have already described some of the impressive scenes which marked the successful close of these efforts at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the noble principles and the mighty words of the energetic laborers in this great enterprise. f369 It would certainly be going too far to consider their labors and the truths which they announced as the source whence our modern liberties have sprung. But it is impossible to study these events of that epoch without emotion, or without recognising aspirations, principles, sacrifices, and actions worthy of admiration, which were in fact the first great burst of light, the first noteworthy manifestation of the politics and the virtues which must determine the existence and make the prosperity of nations. f370
That small town was, however, to give to the world a higher lesson still. It was to do for religion what it had first done for politics, and to render to faith the service which it had rendered to freedom. These two
achievements are closely related to each other; and it is one of the characteristics of this history, that while it attributes transcendant importance to Christian truth and life, it recognises at the same time all that is great and salutary in freedom. If the author, as some have thought, had erred in assigning too high a place to the heroic struggles to which
Geneva owed her independence, he would assuredly regret that he had not more skillfully handled the pen of the historian for the purpose of
immortalising the great men and the heroic actions of which the smallest and humblest of states afforded the spectacle. But he would count himself fortunate if he should, nevertheless, have contributed to bring into clear light the great maxim, that political freedom and Christian truth must advance hand in hand for the salvation of nations and the salvation of souls. Of course, a blind demagogy, the formidable rock of our age, is at once contrary to freedom and hostile to religion.
Geneva was fitted by various concurring conditions to play a part from which the small extent of her territory seemed inevitably to shut her out.
Situated as this town was between Italy, France, and Germany, its position formed the central point of the three great nations who Were distinguished in the first half of the sixteenth century for their new or newly awakened love of letters, philosophy, and the arts. On several occasions Frenchmen, Italians, and Germans came in large numbers to settle at Geneva. By the reception of these three diverse elements into her bosom she seemed to be called to blend them with each other and to harmonise their opposing qualities. If any spark from the evangelical fire which was then kindled should chance to escape from either of those countries and to fall on the materials thus prepared at the foot of the Alps, it might kindle a great fire, and might make Geneva a hearth front which light, radiating far and wide, should contribute to scatter the humiliating darkness which Rome and those princes whose power was at her service then made to weigh heavily on the nations.
This is what actually came to pass. To convert the spark into a pure, vivid, dazzling light, there was need of an intellect of vast depth, a will of vast energy, and a faith of vast power.
God sent the man that was needed.
A young stranger, a native of Picardie, had lately arrived at Geneva. It had not occurred to him nor to his friends that he could be the organ by whose agency and means God would bring about such great ends. After his arrival Farel still continued to hold the first place in the city. This young man, John Calvin, was naturally timid, and was possessed by a dread of publicity which had already shown itself at Basel, and which led him to
shun every occasion that would draw public attention to himself. He was fond of study and of writing: and in that path he believed that it was appointed for him to contribute to the diffusion in the world of a truth which was already dearer to him than life. He purposed turn to account that one talent in retirement, quitting his study. That is what he was then doing at Geneva. He was steadily engaged in translating into French his
‘little book,’ the Institution Chretienne, which he hoped ere long to send to his friends in France. f371 The letter mentioned in the note shows clearly that the Institution Chretienne was first written in Latin.
Farel wished for more: he desired Calvin to become, at Geneva, pastor, preacher, and doctor. The young man refused this threefold function. The office of pastor would have required him to take part in the government of the Church, and he was not willing to do so. As to the office of preacher, we have that most positive testimony of his contemporaries and of his most intimate friends that, in the fresh glow of his faith, he had simply undertaken the task of an evangelist in some districts of France. But the post which was offered to him at Geneva would have compelled him to mix more or less in public affairs and in the debates of the councils. He trembled at the thought, and wished rather to confine himself strictly within the bounds of that literary and theological life which he loved so well. He consented therefore to dwell in the city, not for the purpose of preaching, but to read in theology. f372 He went even further. ‘I would not,’
he said,’bind myself to undertake an official charge.’ f373 He consented to make trial of teaching, but without any title or any engagement, and thus reserved to himself perfect liberty. Probably no one ever entered as he did on a career at once painful and brilliant without suspecting its results, and even rejecting it with his utmost energy.
Calvin commenced his work as Reader in the Holy Scriptures at Geneva, or, as he styles himself, Professor of Sacred Literature in the Genevese Church. His lectures were delivered not in any house or in any academic hall, but in the cathedral itself, a circumstance which invested his teaching with an importance of which Calvin had certainly not dreamed. The doors were opened for this novel service in the afternoon, and the Genevese, who felt the need of substantial teaching, crowded to hear the young doctor. He expounded several books of the New Testmnent, particularly the Epistles. One characteristic of his manner of teaching at Geneva from
the first was the combination of simplicity and solidity. A new light was then rising. It was not, to be sure, the sun in its brightness. The timidity and the shyness which Calvin attributes to himself may well have shown themselves in his first attempts. The Commentaries on the New
Testament, which he published at a later period, have a completeness which his earliest expositions could not attain. But they are a sufficiently faithful representation of the kind of teaching which he adopted at St.
Peter’s church. It was not grammatical and etymological explanation of the text; nor was it, on the other hand, a pathetic discourse. Calvin set forth in clear light everything in the Scriptures which characterises the Christian doctrine and life. He first meditated on his subject, then delivered his lectures extempore; and the animated and powerful individuality of the master imparted to them an influence which carried away and multiplied his hearers. It was not in his nature to do a merely intellectual task. He consoled, he exhorted, he censured. But his chief aim was to illustrate the labor of love which Jesus Christ had accomplished, and to make known its necessity and its grandeur. Two points in the Christian doctrine especially struck him, the one dark and mournful, the other bright like sunshine. ‘Our souls,’ said he,’are an abyss of iniquity, so that we are compelled to have recourse to the fountain of all good, which is Jesus Christ.’ f374
The exposition, defense, and application of the great facts of Christianity formed the substance of Calvin’s work at Geneva and in Christendom. It is a mistake to suppose that his principal business was the introduction and the maintenance of discipline in the church. It is not to be doubted that he wished for order: that he wished absolutely for a Christian way of life; but it was not he who, as some believe, first introduced measures of discipline, nor was the maintenance of those measures the task of his life. Speaking of them, he defends himself from the charge of being their author. ‘I observe and do whatsoever I have found,’ said he, ‘as one who takes no pleasure in making any innovation.’ It was the magistrate, who, being in Geneva head both of the Church and of the state, prescribed and enforced the laws of discipline. Before Calvin’s arrival at Geneva, we have seen how De la Rive was sentenced to banishment for having his child baptised by a priest. The year before some men, women, and magistrates had been condemned to the crotton (black hole) for immorality. At the moment at which this stranger, whose name even was hardly known, had just crossed the threshold of the
city — on the eve of the day on which Farel was to introduce him to the magistrate (Monday, September 4, 1536) — a remarkable scene was taking place in the Council of the Two Hundred, which seems placed at that epoch as if on purpose to resolve distinctly the question which engages our attention. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the syndics, ‘we have all pledged ourselves in public council to live according to the Gospel, and
nevertheless there are some here who do not go to preaching.’ At these words the councillor and former syndic Richardet, a fine, tall, and
powerful man, but very passionate, rose in wrath and exclaimed with loud voice, ‘Nobody shall lord it over my conscience; and I wilt not go to sermon at the bidding of a Syndic Porral.’ f375 Porral, a man of highly cultivated mind and a very active magistrate, had declared himself decisively for the Reform, and he was even charged to prosecute certain classes of delinquents. It had been enacted, on July 24, that those who refused to go to the preaching must quit the city in ten days. Richardet was not alone in his resolution. The question having been put to J.
Philippe and two other councillors whether they would attend the
preaching of the Word of God, ‘We will not be compelled,’ they said, ‘but will live in our liberty.’ These citizens were right in maintaining their liberty, and the magistrates were in the wrong. Calvin was far away from Geneva on July 24; and, generally speaking, he was not of so peremptory a temper as some imagine. There was a certain sphere in which he
maintained liberty, and maintained it even against powerful adversaries.
‘Touching ceremonies,’ thus he wrote to the formidable lords of Berne,
‘they are things indifferent, and the churches are free to adopt a diversity of them.’ f376 Still, we cannot deny it, Calvin thought — and these are his own words — that since there is no house, however small it be, which can be maintained in its proper state without discipline, it is much more requisite in the Church, which ought to be better ordered than any house.
He went further. He asserted that the state has the right and is bound to take notice of matters of discipline, and to punish transgressors. It is to be regretted that the fine genius of Calvin did not make an exception in this case to the rule adopted ten centuries earlier by all Christendom, and that he did not convince the state that its heavy hand must not intervene in matters of religion. It is however fair to ask ourselves whether, in the sixteenth century, such an effort would not have been a super- human task.
Calvin himself made known to us his own thought when he said, ‘THE DOCTRINE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS THE SOUL OF THE CHURCH.’ f377 He set forth that doctrine in the church of St. Peter just as it is found in Scripture, and so diffused it in the world. Certainly it was not by
discipline that he made his conquests. He bore the torch of truth. Devoid of ambition, having no designs reaching beyond Geneva, without any secret policy such as the Jesuits are skilled in, and armed with one weapon only, the truth, he triumphed over the greatest difficulties, Farel, Viret, Beza would not have sutliced. In this man of feeble constitution and humble aspect there were an unquenchable resolution, an energetic will, He held fast, as seing him who is invisible. Established in this small town, he became God’s instrument, first for the spread of the Reformation in the West, then for defending it against the attacks of Rome and Loyola and Philip II. A new time was born for the world.
Nevertheless it was not Calvin alone, as some appear to believe, who effected this great revolution. Had he come into the midst of a people indolent and effeminate; such victories would not have been won. But the Genevese had been preparing for centuries, by means of the struggles which they had gone through, for the maintenanceof their liberty. A life of toil, incessant industry, and rude combats had inured them to blows. Their souls had been elevated. They were naturally keen and decisive; but flint iron, already brilliant, had acquired by tempering an inflexible hardness.
The heroism of the Huguenots of Geneva became one of the elements which contributed to the triumph of the Reformation. The character of those strong men was as essential to the work as coal is for the conversion of iron into steel. It was not Calvin the individual, it was Geneva in its entirety, that vanquished Rome. The energy of the Bertheliers, the Levriers, and of many others, was one of the ingredients of moral energy of which Geneva became the hearth. and which had almost disappeared from history. The most earnest of the Genevese Huguenots joined the reformer; the masses supported him; and some Frenchmen who had passed through the sieve of persecution, worthy also to be called Huguenots, gave the hand to the sons of Geneva. And when, after achieving its triumph, the Reformation found itself attacked by a numerous and powerful army, assembled under the banners of kings, of Ignatius Loyola, and the pope, Geneva and the men of her school, who
were found in all parts of Christendom, were able to resist the hostile force, and to say to it, ‘No further shalt thou go!’
There was, indeed, in the struggle for the renewal of Christendom, one will which conceived, one personality which acted, one voice which resounded a force till then almost unknown, and in a thousand directions: it was, next to Luther’s, that of Calvin. But while a great general is indispensable in the day of battle, so also is an army trained by him for energetic conflict. The part which Geneva played in the sixteenth century is not explained by the character of one man alone, but by many concurrent circumstances both moral and political. That army, created by a vivifying breath from on high, was soon in action wherever a struggle became necessary. Those soldiers went forth into the world, braved danger, displayed their colors, and proclaimed salvation, until at length Rome gave them the martyr’s death, and God gave them the crown of immortality. CALVIN and the
HUGUENOTS, that is the great motto of the sixteenth century.’
Farel, as we have seen, had taken on himself the responsibility of enrolling the young doctor and of opening to him the church of St. Peter. Charmed with Calvin’s method of exposition of the Holy Scriptures, that veteran champion of the Reformation expressed his opinion on the subject to the magistrates. On Tuesday, September 5, 1536, the day after the famous altercation respecting religious liberty had taken place in the Council of the Two Hundred, William Farel appeared before the council and gave an account of the teaching of the young foreigner, which some of the members of that body had probably attended, and added — ‘The lectures which this Frenchman f378 has begun at St. Peter’s are very necessary. I therefore entreat you to retain him and to make provision for his maintenance.’The council determined to advise that the stranger, whose name was not even uttered, should be retained. Many had seen him. The pale countenance, the spare form, the modest bearing, the timorous air of this refugee of twenty- seven, had not given them the impression of his being a person of note.
The council did not even make him a present of a dress or anything of the kind, as it was customary to do. It waited, no doubt, to see whether it was worth while. The man whose name was shortly to fill the city and the whole Christian world, entered almost incognito into Geneva. Every one was at that time thinking of Farel. On September 8 that reformer, ‘having addressed a remonstrance to the council,’ it was resolved ‘that since the
writings of the aforesaid Guillaume are so divine, he should preach at six o’clock in the morning in the church of St. Germain, and that the
councillors should be bound to attend there, and pass thence, at seven, into the council.’ f379
Calvin’s lectures were soon interrupted. At the end of September, Farel with his young friend as his assistant quitted Geneva to go to Lausanne, whither an urgent duty called them. An important assembly was going to be held in the chief city of the Pays de Vaud.
Farel, Viret, and other evangelists, as already related, had introduced the Reformation into such parts of that country as were subject to the Swiss cantons; but the other parishes of that fair land had still remained subject to the pope. Meanwhile Luther’s writings were everywhere circulated, the eyes of the people began to be opened, and several evangelists,
particularly Jean Lecompte, a gentleman of Picardie, had preached the Gospel in various places. The occupation of the country by the Bernese, on occasion of the expedition which, delivered Geneva in 1536, hastened the fall of Roman Catholicism. When the Bernese had taken Yverdun with the sword, they transformed the church of that town in a somewhat soldierly fashion. They bluntly put an end to the exercise of the Romish religion; appointed Malingre to be minister; on March 15 had their religious ordinances published; burnt, March 17, the images out of the churches in the market-place, and ordered the ministers to preach in temples cleared of those abominations. Lecompte, Tissot, Meige, and other evangelists introduced the Reform, but by the spiritual means of preaching, at Cossonay, Montagny, Yvonand, Sainte-Croix, and other places. Avenches and Lutry silowed themselves decidedly Catholic, and they determined that if by any chance a minister should go there, they would not go to hear him.
In March 1536, as Viret and Fabry were passing near Yverdon during the siege of that town by the Bernese army, some Lausannese officers who were serving in it and who were acquainted with Viret, stopped him and said, ‘When Yverdon is taken, we shall go to Lausanne: come with us and preach the Gospel there in spite of the bishop.’ They did so. The amiable and discreet Viret would have been ill pleased to see LauSanne reformed by the military method, like Yverdon. He preferred the sword of the Spirit