History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution - Volume 1, James MacCaffrey [affordable ebook reader TXT] 📗

sacred in his eyes. All kinds of amusements, theatres, dances, cards, &c., were banned as ungodly, as were also extravagance of dress and anything savouring of frivolity. Nobody was allowed to sell wine or beer except a limited number of merchants licensed to do so by the Consistory.

Nor were these mere empty regulations designed only to keep religion before the eyes of the people without any intention of enforcing them. The preachers were invested with extraordinary powers, and were commissioned to make house to house visitations, to inquire about violations of the rules. In their reports to the Congregation and to the Consistory they noted even the most minute transgressions. Not content with this Calvin had his spies in all parts of the city, who reported to him what people were saying about his methods and his government. The punishment meted out by the courts were of a very severe and brutal kind. No torture that could be inflicted was deemed too much for any one bold enough to criticise the Consistory or the dictator.

It was natural that such methods should be highly distasteful to those of the citizens of Geneva who were not religious fanatics. A strong party tried to resist him. They accused him of being much more tyrannical than the Pope, but Calvin denounced such opponents as libertines, heretics, and atheists. He handed them over to the devil at least in so far as his ecclesiastical censures were effective,[2] threatened the severest spiritual punishment against their aiders and abettors, and when all such means of reproof failed he had recourse to the secular arm.

Sebastian Castellio, a well-known preacher and Scriptural scholar, was punished because he could not agree with Calvin's teaching on predestination, as was also the physician Bolsec; Ameaux one of the members of the Council was put to death because he denounced the tyranny of Calvin and of the Consistory; Gentilis was condemned to execution for differing with Calvin's teaching on the Trinity, and was compelled to make a most abject public retraction before he could obtain a reprieve. Several of the citizens were punished with long imprisonment for dancing even on the occasion of a wedding, as happened in the case of Le Fevre, whose son-in-law was obliged to flee to France because he resented warmly such methods of promoting religion. In Geneva and in the adjoining territory all Catholic practices were put down by violence, and the peasants were allowed no choice in their religious views. Possibly, however, the most glaring example of Calvin's tyranny and high-handed methods was his treatment of Michael Servetus, a Spaniard who had written against the Trinity. He was on a journey through the territory of Geneva and was doing nothing to spread his doctrines nor acting in any way likely to bring him under the ire of Calvin. The latter having heard of his presence there had him arrested, tried, and condemned to death. To justify such harshness he published a pamphlet in which he advocated death as the only proper remedy for heresy. Theodore Beza wrote strongly in support of this opinion of his master's, as did also Melanchthon who, though differing from Calvin on so many points, hastened to forward his warmest congratulations on the execution of Servetus.[3]

Calvin's acts of cruelty were not the result of violent outbursts of temper. By nature cold and immovable, he did not allow himself to be hurried to extremes either by anger or by passion. How he succeeded in maintaining his position for so many years in Geneva is intelligible only to those who understand the strength of the religious fanaticism that he was able to arouse amongst his followers, the terror which his spiritual and temporal punishments inspired among his opponents, his own wonderful capacity for organisation and administration, the activity of his ministers and spies, and the almost perfect system of repression that he adopted in his two-fold character of religious and political dictator.

To strengthen his position and to provide for the continuance of his system he established an academy at Geneva (1558) principally for the study of theology and philosophy. It was attended by crowds of scholars from Switzerland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland. By means of the academy, Calvinism was spread throughout Switzerland notwithstanding the opposition of the Zwinglian preachers, and Calvin's system of ecclesiastical organisation became the model aimed at by his disciples in most countries of Europe, notably France, the Netherlands, and Scotland. The Zurich school, at the head of which stood Bullinger, did not yield ground to the new teaching without a severe struggle, and Calvin found himself obliged to come to terms with them in the /Consensus Tigurninus/ (1549). In his desire to secure the religious unity of Switzerland he had no difficulty in abandoning or minimising his own doctrine in the hope of overcoming or winning over his opponents. After a life of tireless energy his health began to fail in 1561, and three years later he passed away (1564).

Calvin was a man of morose and gloomy temperament, severe even to harshness with his followers, and utterly devoid of human sympathy. Not so however his disciple and assistant Theodore Beza. The latter was born in Burgundy in 1519, and after completing his classical studies at Orleans he drifted to Paris, where he plunged into all the pleasures and dissipations of the capital, and where at first he was remarkable more for his love songs than for his theology. He devoted himself to the study of law, and in 1539 he took his licentiate at Paris. Having become attached to the opinions of the Swiss Reformers he left Paris and settled at Geneva, where he fell completely under the influence of Calvin, but not even Calvin's temperament and system could change his naturally gay and sympathetic disposition. For this reason he became a general favourite, and did much to win the good- will of those who felt themselves rebelled by the harshness of the dictator. Beza was, besides, a man of very superior ability, and had been especially well equipped in Hebrew and in the classics. He was master of a striking style whether he wrote in French or in Latin, eloquent beyond most of his contemporaries, and in every way capable of making a good impression not merely on the ordinary citizen but on the more educated classes. His writings in defence of Calvin's system and his translations of the Scriptures gave him a great reputation throughout Europe, and gained for him a commanding position in Geneva, where he died in 1605.

Calvin's system was modelled to a great extent on the doctrines of Luther and Zwingli, but it was coloured largely by his own harsh and morose disposition. For the distinguishing feature of his system, namely, absolute predestination, he was dependent largely upon the works of Wycliffe. Like Luther, he began with the assumption that the condition of man before the Fall was entirely natural, and that consequently by the Fall he was deprived of something that was essential to his nature and without which human nature was completely corrupted. Man was no longer free, and every act of his was sinful. His want of freedom was the result of the play of external forces directed and arranged by God, rather than of any internal necessity by which he was forced to sin. God is, according to Calvin, the author of sin, in the sense that he created a certain number of men to work evil through them in order that He might have an opportunity of displaying the divine attribute of mercy. Hence the motive of God in bringing about evil is different from the motive of the sinner, and therefore though the sinner is blameworthy God is nowise responsible for his crime.

Adam sinned because it was decreed by God that he should fall in order that the divine mercy should be manifested to the world. For the same reason God did not intend that all should be equally good or that all should be saved. He created some men that they might sin and that their punishment might afford an example of God's justice, while He made others that they might be saved to show His overwhelming mercy. The former are condemned to hell by an irreversible decree, the others, the elect, are predestined absolutely to glory. The elect are assured of justification through the merits of Christ, and once justified they are always justified, for justification cannot be lost. Faith such as that advocated by Luther was the means of acquiring justification, but, mindful of his other doctrine that even the best of men's works are sinful, Calvin took care to explain that justifying faith was only the instrument by which a man laid hold of the merits of Christ. It was like a vessel which, though containing some priceless treasure, was in itself worthless.

As might be expected, Calvin refused to admit that the sacraments were endowed with any objective power of conferring Grace. In the case of their reception by the elect, however, he held that they were the means of strengthening the faith by which justification is acquired, but for those predestined to damnation they were mere signs without any spiritual effect. In regard to the Eucharist, while he rejected the Catholic view of Transubtantiation, he maintained against the Lutherans that Impanation or Companation was equally absurd. Nor did he agree with Zwingli that the Eucharist is a mere sign of Christ's love for men. According to him Christ is really present, in the sense that though the bread and wine remain unchanged, the predestined receive with the Eucharistic elements a heavenly food that proceeds from the body of Christ in Heaven.

Like Luther he contended that the true Church of Christ is invisible, consisting in his view only of the predestined, but, realising the necessity for authority and organisation, he was driven to hold that the invisible Church manifested itself through a visible religious society. Unlike Luther, however, he was unwilling to subordinate the Church to the civil power, believing as he did that it was a society complete in itself and entirely independent of temporal sovereigns. Each Calvinistic community should be to a great extent a self- governing republic, all of them bound together into one body by the religious synods, to which the individual communities should elect representatives. The churches were to be ruled by pastors, elders, and deacons. Candidates for the sacred ministry were to receive the confirmation of their vocation by a call from some Calvinistic church body, and were to be ordained by the imposition of the hands of the presbyters or elders. For Calvin as for Luther the Holy Scriptures were the sole rule of faith to be adopted by both the preachers and the synods. The special illumination of the Holy Ghost was sufficient to guard individuals from being deceived either in determining what books are inspired, or what is the precise meaning which God wished to convey in any particular book or passage.[4]
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[1] Baird, /Theodore Beza, Counsellor of the French Reform/, 1900.

[2] Galli, /Die Lutheran, und Calvinist, Kirchenstrafen im
Reformationszeitalter/, 1878.

[3] Rouquette, /L'Inquisition protestante. Les victimes de Calvin/,
1906. Galiffe, /Quelques pages d'histoire exacte sur les proces
intentes a Geneve/, 1862. Paulus, /Luther und Gewissensfreiheit/,
1905. Id., /Melanchthon und Gewissensfreiheit/ (/Katholik/, i.,
546 sqq.).

[4] Schwane, /Dogmengeschichte der neuerenzeit/. Cunningham, /The
Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation/, 1862.