John Tulloch · 13 of 27

II. Calvin. · Part 1

THERE were almost from the beginning two very different classes of men engaged in the Reformation—the men of movement and of action, and the men of organisation and of policy. The first class were, in the most radical sense, reformers—those who broke through the old bonds of superstition, and, by a process of disturbance and disintegration, prepared the way for a new creative epoch in the relations of human society and the forms of religious life; the second were characteristically theologians and ecclesiastics as well as reformers—those who, having accepted the principles of the reformed movement, sought to mould them into new expressions of Christian thought and life. The former were heroes heading a great insurrection in human history, which had not yet taken to itself a well-defined shape, but was moving onwards rather under the sway of an irresistible spiritual impulse than of clear regulative ideas; the latter were thinkers and legislators, whose aim it was to impress a dogmatic and constitutional character upon the disturbing elements that had been set in motion. As Luther is the greatest of the first class, so Calvin is, beyond all comparison, the greatest of the second class. In each case, however, there is a group of contrasted characters around the central figure—Melanchthon, Camerarius, and others, around Luther; and Lefevre and Farel around Calvin.

When we turn our gaze from Germany to France in the beginning of the sixteenth century, we find both Lefevre and Farel actively at work in the cause of religious reform. Farel particularly is seen labouring with fiery zeal, and a self-sacrificing and heroic temper. An enthusiastic priest of Dauphiny, he had, in his earlier. career, exhausted almost every device of sacerdotalism with a determined self-devotion, and only reached the truth after severe spiritual struggles; with a powerful and restless energy he gave himself, so soon as his own heart was quickened, to a life of religious adventure—to the kindling of a spirit of reform wherever he travelled,—in Dauphiny, in Basle, in Geneva. He is beyond doubt the most notable of the early reformers of France and even before Luther, in his famous theses, had sounded that note of war which soon awakened all Germany, and propagated itself to France and England, Farel had in Paris raised his voice against the papal authority, and begun his evangelical labours. He wins our sympathy from something of the same frank, bold, and careless character which distinguishes the great German, bearing on his front, like him, the impress of an ever-fresh enthusiasm, and the scars of many a hard conflict. He stands, however, at a great distance from the hero of Worms. There was in all Farel’s fiery earnestness too little comprehension and firm persistence to have enabled him to carry out in any great and enduring shape the impulse which he himself communicated. It was necessary that some master-mind should arise within the sphere of the Gallic reform movement, in order to consolidate it into a distinctive spiritual power, and to impart to it a lasting social result.

Such a master-mind was Calvin, who represents most strikingly the converging influences of the Swiss and the French Reformations. Both may be fairly regarded as summed up in him, in so far as they enunciated principles and entered as a controlling influence into the history of the world. In this sense he is the most comprehensive representative of each and of both together, although he must yield the palm of priority and of active heroism in the one case to Zwingli, and in the other case to Farel. Into their labours he entered in a somewhat similar way as Melanchthon entered into the labours of Luther; and so far he takes his place beside Melanchthon in the second class of reformers. His theological and didactic qualities and personal sympathies, moreover, ally him with the friend and supporter of Luther, rather than with Luther himself. But there are other and most important respects in which, as we shall see, he occupies a position not only above Melanchthon, but above Luther—a position singular in moral grandeur, and in the vigorous and widely extending influence which spread around from it.

The life of Calvin, in contrast with that of the German reformer, presents but few dramatic aspects. In merely biographic interest it is not nearly so rich, although there is a great consistency and purpose in its several parts, which invest it with a powerful charm to some minds. It may be conveniently divided for our purpose into three periods of unequal duration: First, From his birth in 1509 to his completion of the ‘Institutes’ in their first shape in 1536. This, like the corresponding period in Luther’s life, may be called the period of his education. Second, From his first appearance in Geneva in the same year, 1536, onwards to the incidents of his expulsion and residence at Strasburg to September. 1541, when he re-entered and finally settled in Geneva. Third, From this latter date to his death in 1564. We can only sketch in each of these epochs, as we rapidly glance through them, such features as are absolutely necessary to start before us some picture of the man, and to enable us to comprehend the meaning of the great aims for which he lived, and towards which he wrought.

Calvin was born at Noyon, in Picardy, on the 10th of July 1509: he was thus twenty-six years the junior of Luther. His father, Gerard Cauvin or Calvin, was Procureur-Fiscal of the district of Noyon, and Secretary of the Diocese. He was a man of ability, distinguished by success in his profession, and the favour and friendship of the influential families in his neighbourhood. His mother, Jane Lefranc, was a native of Cambray, and is reported to have been beautiful, and of a strongly religious spirit. Calvin was one of six children, four sons and two daughters. One of his sisters, Mary, followed his faith and fortunes, and is occasionally mentioned in his letters. Of his brothers, the eldest was an ecclesiastic, the fourth died young, and the third, also bred an ecclesiastic, ultimately joined the reformer in Geneva. The position of the father is the natural explanation of so many of his sons entering into the Church. While our reformer was still only twelve years of age, his father procured for him a chaplaincy in the cathedral church of Noyon, as a means of support during his education—a practice not uncommon in the Galilean, as in all the other churches of the time.

Of Calvin’s youth and earlier education we have but few particulars. We get no hearty glimpses of his home and school-days, as in the case of Luther. We only know that, in contrast with the rough and picturesque boyhood of the German, he was nurtured tenderly, and even in an aristocratic atmosphere. The noble family of Mommor, in the neighbourhood, to some extent adopted the boy, and his studies were pursued in conjunction with those of the young members of this family. Beza narrates his precocity of mental power, and the grave severity of his manners, even at this early age. His companions, it is said, surnamed him the “Accusative.” Having received the rudiments of his education in his native town, he went in his fourteenth year to Paris, still in the company of the children of the Mommor family. There he was entered as a pupil in the College de la Marche, under the regency of Mathurin Cordier—a name still familiar to boys entering upon their Latin studies, under its classical form of Corderius. It was under this distinguished master that Calvin laid the foundation of his own wonderful mastery of the Latin language. From the College de la Marche he passed to the College Montaigu, where he was initiated into the scholastic philosophy under the guidance of a learned Spaniard. In his eighteenth year he was appointed to the living of Marteville, and this, too, while he had only as yet received the tonsure, and was not admitted to holy orders.

About this time his professional views underwent a change. The law appeared to his father somewhat as to Luther’s, to offer a more tempting worldly prospect than the Church; and he resolved accordingly to turn the studies of his son in the direction of the former profession. He sent him with this view to the university of Orleans, then adorned by Pierre de l’Etoile, one of the most famous jurists of his day, and afterwards President of the Parliament of Paris. In taking this step, however, Calvin did not resign his Church living; and it appears to have been after this time that, by the kind patronage of a member of the same family who had hitherto so befriended him, he effected the exchange of the living of Marteville for that of Pont l’Evêque, where he is said occasionally to have preached. It is a singular enough picture of the times which is presented to us by this conduct both of Calvin and his father. His justification in the case, if any such be needed considering his youth, is the prevalence of the practice in an age in which the ecclesiastical office had become too frequently a mere material convenience, or transmitted guild.

Of his life at Orleans we know something more than of his previous life at Noyon or Paris, although it is still only very vague glimpses we get. Beza has told us, on the authority of some of Calvin’s fellow-students, that his life was here marked by a rigorous temperance and devotion to study that, after supping moderately, he would spend half the night in study, and devote the morning to meditation on what he had acquired,—thus laying the foundation of his solid learning, but, at the same time, of his future ill-health. His talents were already so generally recognised, that, in the absence of some of the professors, he was called upon to do their duty. It was here that for the first time he became acquainted with the Scriptures, in the translation of a relative of his own, Pierre Robert Olivetan. Here also he formed the friendship of two young men, Francis Daniel, an advocate, and Nicholas du Chemin, a schoolmaster, who seem already to have imbibed the reformed opinions. His earliest extant letter, in which he details the illness and approaching death of his father, and which bears the date of 14th May 1528, is addressed to the latter of these friends and a brief series of letters, on to the year 1536, is addressed to the former. We cannot say as yet that Calvin’s traditionary opinions were unfixed, still less that he had embraced with any decision the Protestant views which were spreading everywhere. Beyond doubt, however, the first impulse to the new faith, which was soon to seize him and mould his whole sentiments, was imparted at Orleans, under the influences and amid the companionships we have mentioned.

From Orleans he went, still in prosecution of his legal studies, to Bourges, where for the first time he acquired the knowledge of Greek under the tuition of a learned German, Melchior Wolmar, to whom he has recorded his obligations. The spiritual impulse received at Orleans seems to have been confirmed and promoted by this distinguished teacher, to whose piety and admirable abilities Beza, also one of his pupils, bears tribute. His convictions became deepened and settled to such a degree that he now began openly to preach the reformed doctrines. Slowly but surely he passed over to the Protestant ranks, in a manner entirely contrasted with that of Luther, even as his mind and character were wholly different. We trace no struggling steps of dogmatic conviction—no profound spiritual agitations—no crisis, as in the case of the German reformer. We only learn that, from being an apparently satisfied and devoted adherent of Popery, he adopted, with a quiet but steady and zealous faithfulness, the new opinions. He himself, indeed, in his preface, when commenting on the Psalms, speaks of his conversion being a sudden one; and to his own reflection afterwards it may have seemed that the clear light began to dawn upon him all at once; but the facts of his life seem rather to show it in the light in which we have presented it, as a gradual and consistent growth under the influences which surrounded him, first at Orleans and then at Bourges.

In accordance with this new growth of spiritual conviction, he returned to the study of theology, or rather took it up for the first time with real earnestness. Not only so, but he soon became an instructor and authority in the reformed doctrine. “Not a year had passed over,” he says in the same preface to the Psalms, “when all those who had any desire for pure learning came to me, inexperienced as I was, to gain information. I was naturally bashful, and loved leisure and privacy, hence I sought retirement; but even my solitary place became like a public school.”

He proceeded to Paris (1533), which already, under the teaching of Lefevre and Farel, and the influence of the Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis I., had become a centre of the reformed faith. The university had become strongly infected with the “new learning.” There was great excitement and rising discontent with the old religion at once in the court, among the bishops, and even in the Sorbonne. The presence of Calvin, whose great powers had already made him extensively known, operated vigorously to increase this excitement. One Nicolas Cop, a physician, happened to be rector, and in this capacity had to deliver a discourse on the festival of All Saints, for the composition of which he is said to have been indebted to Calvin. Instead of the usual traditionary orthodoxy on such an occasion, the discourse boldly entered upon the subject of religion, and advocated the doctrine of justification by faith. The attack was too obvious to pass unnoticed; the ancient spirit of the Sorbonne revived; and Cop was summoned to answer for the heresy. Aware of his peril, he fled to Basle; and Calvin, whose share in the offence became speedily known, also fled. There are various stories as to his flight—as, for example, that he was let down from his window by means of his sheets, and escaped in the habit of a vine-dresser, an acquaintance, to whose house he had repaired. Beza simply states that when the officers went to seize him, he was not to be found, and that the Queen of Navarre subsequently interposed in his behalf.

Repairing to Noyon after this event, he is now said to have resigned his ecclesiastical offices; and henceforth for a year or two he seems to have led a wandering life. We find him first at Saintonge, then at Nerac, the residence of the Queen of Navarre, where for the first time he made the personal acquaintance of Lefevre, who is said to have recognised in the pale young student the future apostle of the Reformation, in France. Subsequently he spent some time in retirement at Angouleme with his friend Louis du Tillet, his letters to whom afterwards, when Tillet felt himself impelled to rejoin the Roman Church, are among the most interesting of his early correspondence, marked as they are by an unusual freedom and affectionateness of feeling. It was during this retirement that he is supposed to have made the first sketch of his ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion.’ Again, in 1533, we find him for a brief while at Paris, strangely enough expecting a meeting with Servetus, who had expressed a desire to see and confer with him. He did not, however, keep his appointment. Not yet were they destined to meet,—the stern reformer and the enthusiastic speculator! Had they done so now in the warmth of comparative youth, and while the dogmatism of both was not yet hardened, we may please ourselves with the imagination that their later and darker meeting might have been avoided, and a great crime have been spared to the progress of the Reformation.

Persecution now raged fiercely against the adherents of the Reformation in France. The agitation of the Anabaptist insurrection in Germany had spread across the Rhine, and even into England. There was alarm and excitement everywhere. All reformers were confounded as disturbers of social order. Calvin felt that he was no longer safe in Paris, nor even in France, and he prepared to take refuge at Basle. Previously, however, he published at Orleans a treatise against one of the peculiar tenets of the Anabaptists, as to the sleep of the soul, under the title of ‘Psychopannychia.’ This was his second literary labour. Two years before, he had first appeared as an author in a commentary on Seneca’s treatise ‘De Clementia.’ What is chiefly remarkable about these works is their scholarly and intellectual character. They are, even the treatise against the Anabaptists, more like the exercitations of a student than the productions of a mind strongly moved by religious reforming zeal.

Arrived at Basle in 1535, the spirit of the reformer may be said to have awakened in him for the first time in full strength. The famous preface to the Institutes, it is certain, was written here in this year. It bears the date of Basle, August 1, 1535. The concentrated vigour of this address—its intensity of feeling rising into indignant remonstrance, and at times a pathetic and powerful eloquence—make it one of the most memorable documents in connection with the Reformation. It shows the vehement desire of Calvin’s mind no less than of Luther’s to exonerate the religious movement from the social excesses that had sprung up in its progress—to prove that the latter had in reality no connection with the former, whose legitimate tendency was everywhere to strengthen the moral stability of society, and to increase dutifulness and loyalty in subjects. It is throughout a noble defence of the righteous character of the reformed doctrines, and their support alike in Scripture and in history. The energetic decisiveness and moral zeal of the future teacher and legislator of Geneva speak in every page of it.

A dispute exists as to whether there was any corresponding edition of the Institutes in 1535. On the one hand, the presumption is strong that there must have been such an edition, and Beza distinctly states that the work first appeared in that year; but, on the other hand, all research has failed to discover any edition before 1536. Dr Henry’s conjecture is, that the edition of both the work and preface in the earlier year was in French; but this again is contradicted by certain expressions in a letter of Calvin to Francis Daniel, of date 15th October 1536, which lead us to suppose that he was then busy for the first time with the French version of his work. The dispute is not really important save in a bibliographical point of view. At this period,—whether in 1535 or the beginning of 1536,—Calvin, beyond doubt, completed at Basle the first sketch of his great dogmatic scheme. Now, before he had entered at all upon his special career as a reformer, the great lines of thought were laid down, and the principles, both dogmatical and ecclesiastical, enunciated, which were to guide and stamp all his labours. He put forth, as it were, the charter of the great movement, to which he was destined to give theological ‘consistency and moral triumph. He showed himself already the master-spirit who was fitted to guide and consolidate the agitated elements of religious thought and life around him.

After this residence at Basle, and completion of the Institutes, Calvin made a short visit to Italy, to Renée, the Duchess of Ferrara, of which we know very little. He then once more is found at Noyon, settling the paternal estate which had fallen to him on the death of his eldest brother; and finally bidding it adieu in company with his younger brother Anthony and his sister Mary. His attention appears to have been to proceed to Strasburg; but the direct way being rendered dangerous by the armies of Charles V., which had penetrated into France, he sought a circuitous route through Savoy and Geneva.

He arrived at Geneva late in the summer of 1536. He meant merely to sojourn a single night in the city, and then advance on his journey. He had no thoughts of anything but of some quiet refuge in which to pursue his studies. “I was wholly given up to my own intense thoughts and private studies,” he afterwards said. But his old friend Tillet, now in Geneva, discovered him, and apprised Farel of his discovery. Situated as Farel then was, almost alone, with the Reformation but partially accomplished, and the elements of disturbance smouldering around him, the advent of Calvin seemed to him an interposition of Divine Providence. He hastened to see him, and set before him his claims for assistance, and the work of God so obviously awaiting him. But Calvin was slow to move. He urged his desire to study, and to serve all Churches, rather than to attach himself to any one Church in particular. He would fain have yielded to the intellectual bias so strong in him; the still stronger instinct for practical government that lay behind his intellectual devotion, was not yet owned by him. By some strange insight, however, Farel penetrated to the higher fitness of the young stranger who stood before him, and he ventured, in the spirit of that daring enthusiasm which characterised him, to lay the curse of God upon him and his studies if he refused his aid to the Church in her time of need. This, which seemed to Calvin a divine menace, had the desired effect. “It was,” he said, “as if God had seized me by His awful hand from heaven.” He abandoned his intention of pursuing his journey, and joined eagerly with Farel in the work of reformation.

In order to understand this work, it is necessary to know something of the previous history of Geneva. Without this knowledge it is impossible to apprehend, and still more impossible to estimate, the part which Calvin now acted. Geneva was nominally a free city of the Empire, but had in reality been governed for some centuries by its own bishop, associated with a committee of lay assessors, and controlled by the general body of the citizens, in whose hands the ultimate power of taxation, and of election of the magistrates, and regulation of the police, rested. The prince-bishop did not exercise his temporal jurisdiction directly, but through an officer called the Vidomme (vice-dominus), whose rights had in the fifteenth century become hereditary in the dukes of Savoy. These rights appear to have been exercised without any considerable attempt at encroachment till the beginning of the following century, when Charles III. succeeded to the ducal crown (1504). To his ambition the bishop, John, a weak and willing tool of the Savoy family, to which he was nearly allied, ceded everything; and the result was a tyrannical attempt to destroy the liberties of the Genevese. The Assembly of the citizens rose in arms; a bitter and sanguinary contest ensued between the Eidgenossen or Patriot party on the one side, and the Mamelukes or monarchical party on the other side. By the help of the free Helvetian states, particularly Berne and Friburg, the Patriots triumphed, the friends of Savoy were banished, the Vidommate abolished, and its powers transferred to a board of magistrates.

The conduct of the bishops in this conflict—not only of John, but of his successor Peter de la Baume, who to his misgovernment added gross personal profligacy—helped greatly, as may be imagined, to shake the old hierarchical authority in Geneva; and when, in 1532, Farel first made his appearance in the city, he found a party not indisposed to join him in his eager and zealous projects of reform. He had a hard fight for it, however, and was at first obliged to yield, and leave the city for a time; and it was not till August 1535 that he and Viret and Froment succeeded in abolishing the mass, and establishing the Protestant faith. During the year’s interval he had prosecuted his work without ceasing, amidst many difficulties, and Calvin’s arrival found him still struggling with the popish priests in the neighbouring villages, and aiming to lay a broader foundation for the Reformed Church.

Calvin was immediately elected Teacher of Theology. In the following year he assumed the office of Preacher, which at first apparently he had declined, and produced such an impression by his first sermon, that it is said multitudes followed him home to testify their enthusiasm. In conjunction with Farel, he drew up a confession of faith in twenty-one articles, which was submitted to the Council of Two Hundred, the lowest of the representative governing boards of the city, and by them ordered to be printed, and proclaimed in the cathedral church of St Peter’s, as binding on the whole body of the citizens. One of the articles related to the right of excommunication claimed by the ministers; and this, along with the general conduct of Farel and Calvin, and the severity with which they reproved the vices of all classes of the community, soon awoke a storm of opposition. Calvin, however, was firm; he threatened to leave the city unless the powers which he supposed necessary to his work were yielded to him; and for the present he prevailed.

A marvellous change, in the course of a short time, was wrought upon the outward aspect of Geneva. A gay and pleasure-loving people, devoted to music and dancing, the evening wine-shop, and card-playing, found themselves suddenly arrested in their usual pastimes. Not only were the darker vices of debauchery, which greatly prevailed, punished by severe penalties, but the lighter follies and amusements of society were laid under imperious ban; all holidays were abolished except Sunday; the innocent gaieties of weddings, and the fashionable caprices of dress, were made subjects of legislation: a bride was not to adorn herself with floating tresses, and her welcome home was not to be noisy with feasting and revelry. The convent bells which had rung their sweet chimes for ages across the blue waters of the Rhone, and become associated with many evening memories of love and song, had been previously destroyed and cast into cannon. It was impossible that a change so sudden and severe as this could be lasting, all at once. A strong opposition, partly composed of political malcontents, and of the lovers of a more free and social life, was gradually formed; and after various struggles they succeeded in their resistance to the clergy, and banished them the city.

It is difficult to characterise the party which now temporarily prevailed against the Calvinistic discipline in Geneva, and finally, in a later and memorable struggle, was thwarted and crushed by the influence of the great reformer. It has descended to us under the name of the Libertines; but this was in reality its nickname, given to it by its enemies, and beyond doubt it serves greatly to misrepresent it. The Libertines, rightly so called, were a spiritual sect which sprang up in the course of the Reformation, a kind of offshoot of Anabaptism. It is not pretended by any that the anti-Calvinist party in Geneva were mainly, or even to any considerable extent, composed of the adherents of this spiritual libertinism, although some of its leaders may have shared in certain tenets of the sect, and even been in affiance with it. This was probably the position of some of the Favre family, afterwards so signally associated with the anti-Calvinist reaction. There seems good reason to believe, however, that the main nucleus of the party was the Eidgenossen, or band of really liberal patriots, who had formerly rescued their native city from a foreign yoke, and who now and afterwards were animated, as we shall find, by very strong feelings, but by very mixed and indefinite views, in the part which they acted.

On his expulsion from Geneva, Calvin proceeded with Farel to Berne, where a series of negotiations were set on foot with a view to the conciliation of the Genevese and the return of the reformers. Previously, while the disputes were still going on, the Bernese had taken a friendly part in them, and it was hoped that by their present mediation they might be still accommodated. But their efforts, thwarted by the bitter dislike of some of the Bernese ministers to Calvin, and by the obstinacy of the Genevese, were fruitless. The decree of banishment was confirmed, and the reformers driven to seek some other sphere for their labours. Calvin repaired first to Basle, his old place of refuge, and then to Strasburg by the invitation of Bucer. Here he settled in the end of 1538, and became the pastor of a congregation of French refugees, who were exiles, like himself, from their native country on account of their faith.

Here Calvin spent the next three years, amongst the happiest, or at least the quietest and most honourable, of his life. At no time does he appear more admirable than during those years of exile. His magnanimity and single-minded earnestness come out, strongly tempered by a certain patience, moderation, and sadness, that we seem to miss elsewhere. Relieved from power, he was also relieved from its wounding irritations, which were apt to chafe his keen spirit, and we see only the simple grandeur, wonderful capacity, and truthful feeling of the man. They were years of busy interest and activity, political, domestic, and theological.

We find him engaged in the three great conferences at Frankfort, Worms, and Ratisbon, co-operating with Bucer, and counselling with Melanchthon. Not less anxious than either for a comprehensive peace which should embrace all the Churches, he yet saw, with a clearer eye than they did, the difficulties in the way of union. His various letters on the subject to Fuel are full of sound wisdom and sense—moderate and conciliatory, yet clear-sighted and earnest for the truth. We see him farther the centre of a private series of negotiations in connection with Caroli, a singular impostor of the time, who is strangely mixed up with the history of the Reformation. This person had previously rendered himself notorious for his enmity to Calvin and Farel, both of whom he had accused of Arianism; and afterwards, when he failed to establish his reputation at their expense, he had rejoined the Church of Rome. He now sought a reconciliation with the reformers, and seems to have imposed upon the good-nature of Farel. Calvin, however, was not so easily moved; and his letters to Farel, in which he takes him to task for his softness in the matter, especially one of 8th October 1539, give a curious self-unveiled glimpse of the reformer's vehemence of temper.