Calvin, John
Calvin, John
(1509 -1564 ) The first to give Protestantism a system of theology, born Noyon, France ; died Geneva. He was never an ardent Catholic, though he became a cleric and by family influence obtained a benefice. He became cure of Saint Martin de Marteville in 1527 and of Pont l’Evque in 1529 . In 1528 he was a law-student at Orleans, then went to Bourges (where in 1529 occurred his conversion) and in 1531 to Paris; he gave up his benefice at Noyon in 1534 . Calvin published the “Institutes”, 1536 , in Latin; a French translation appeared, 1541 . It is an exposition of his theological belief, including his doctrine of predestination, and was the first definite and systematic formulation of Protestantism. He next taught theology at Geneva, and gained influence there, his children’s catechism appearing at this time. Exiled from Geneva in 1538 , Calvin went to Strasbourg to preach. Returning to Geneva in 1541 , he instituted an intolerant regime of discipline, administered despotically by the clergy. Castellio and Bolsec opposed his extreme views, and were banished. Servetus entered into controversy with Calvin, and published his “Restitutio” in 1553 , whereupon he was imprisoned at Vienne, but escaped and went to Geneva, where he was arrested and burnt at the stake for his doctrinal views. Gentile was also condemned for his Unitarianism, and beheaded. Calvin was untiring in preaching and controversy. He founded the University of Geneva, and made the city the Rome of Protestantism.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Calvin, John
This man, undoubtedly the greatest of Protestant divines, and perhaps, after St. Augustine, the most perseveringly followed by his disciples of any Western writer on theology, was born at Noyon in Picardy, France, 10 July, 1509, and died at Geneva, 27 May, 1564.
A generation divided him from Luther, whom he never met. By birth, education, and temper these two protagonists of the reforming movement were strongly contrasted. Luther was a Saxon peasant, his father a miner; Calvin sprang from the French middle-class, and his father, an attorney, had purchased the freedom of the City of Noyon, where he practised civil and canon law. Luther entered the Order of Augustinian Hermits, took a monk’s vows, was made a priest and incurred much odium by marrying a nun. Calvin never was ordained in the Catholic Church; his training was chiefly in law and the humanities; he took no vows. Luther’s eloquence made him popular by its force, humour, rudeness, and vulgar style. Calvin spoke to the learned at all times, even when preaching before multitudes. His manner is classical; he reasons on system; he has little humour; instead of striking with a cudgel he uses the weapons of a deadly logic and persuades by a teacher’s authority, not by a demagogue’s calling of names. He writes French as well as Luther writes German, and like him has been reckoned a pioneer in the modern development of his native tongue. Lastly, if we term the doctor of Wittenberg a mystic, we may sum up Calvin as a scholastic; he gives articulate expression to the principles which Luther had stormily thrown out upon the world in his vehement pamphleteering; and the “Institutes” as they were left by their author have remained ever since the standard of orthodox Protestant belief in all the Churches known as “Reformed.” His French disciples called their sect “the religion”; such it has proved to be outside the Roman world.
The family name, spelt in many ways, was Cauvin latinized according to the custom of the age as Calvinus. For some unknown reason the Reformer is commonly called Maître Jean C. His mother, Jeanne Le Franc, born in the Diocese of Cambrai, is mentioned as “beautiful and devout”; she took her little son to various shrines and brought him up a good Catholic. On the father’s side, his ancestors were seafaring men. His grandfather settled at Pont l’Evêque near Paris, and had two sons who became locksmiths; the third was Gerard, who turned procurator at Noyon, and there his four sons and two daughters saw the light. He lived in the Place au Blé (Cornmarket). Noyon, a bishop’s see, had long been a fief of the powerful old family of Hangest, who treated it as their personal property. But an everlasting quarrel, in which the city took part, went on between the bishop and the chapter. Charles de Hangest, nephew of the too well-known Georges d’Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, surrendered the bishopric in 1525 to his own nephew John, becoming his vicar-general. John kept up the battle with his canons until the Parliament of Paris intervened, upon which he went to Rome, and at last died in Paris in 1577. This prelate had Protestant kinsfolk; he is charged with having fostered heresy which in those years was beginning to raise its head among the French. Clerical dissensions, at all events, allowed the new doctrines a promising field; and the Calvins were more or less infected by them before 1530.
Gerard’s four sons were made clerics and held benefices at a tender age. The Reformer was given one when a boy of twelve, he became Curé of Saint-Martin de Marteville in the Vermandois in 1527, and of Pont l’Eveque in 1529. Three of the boys attended the local Collège des Capettes, and there John proved himself an apt scholar. But his people were intimate with greater folk, the de Montmor, a branch of the line of Hangest, which led to his accompanying some of their children to Paris in 1523, when his mother was probably dead and his father had married again. The latter died in 1531, under excommunication from the chapter for not sending in his accounts. The old man’s illness, not his lack of honesty, was, we are told, the cause. Yet his son Charles, nettled by the censure, drew towards the Protestant doctrines. He was accused in 1534 of denying the Catholic dogma of the Eucharist, and died out of the Church in 1536; his body was publicly gibbeted as that of a recusant.
Meanwhile, young John was going through his own trials at the University of Paris, the dean or syndic of which, Noel Bédier, had stood up against Erasmus and bore hard upon Le Fèvre d’Etaples (Stapulensis), celebrated for his translation of the Bible into French. Calvin, a “martinet”, or oppidan, in the Collèege de la Marche, made this man’s acquaintance (he was from Picardy) and may have glanced into his Latin commentary on St. Paul, dated 1512, which Doumergue considers the first Protestant book emanating from a French pen. Another influence tending the same way was that of Corderius, Calvin’s tutor, to whom he dedicated afterwards his annotation of I Thessalonians, remarking, “if there be any good thing in what I have published, I owe it to you”. Corderius had an excellent Latin style, his life was austere, and his “Colloquies” earned him enduring fame. But he fell under suspicion of heresy, and by Calvin’s aid took refuge in Geneva, where he died September 1564. A third herald of the “New Learning” was George Cop, physician to Francis I, in whose house Calvin found a welcome and gave ear to the religious discussions which Cop favoured. And a fourth was Pierre-Robert d’Olivet of Noyon, who also translated the Scriptures, our youthful man of letters, his nephew, writing (in 1535) a Latin preface to the Old Testament and a French one — his first appearance as a native author — to the New Testament.
By 1527, when no more than eighteen, Calvin’s educatlon was complete in its main lines. He had learned to be a humanist and a reformer. The “sudden conversion” to a spiritual life in 1529, of which he speaks, must not be taken quite literally. He had never been an ardent Catholic; but the stories told at one time of his ill-regulated conduct have no foundation; and by a very natural process he went over to the side on which his family were taking their stand. In 1528 he inscribed himself at Orléans as a law student, made friends with Francis Daniel, and then went for a year to Bourges, where he began preaching in private. Margaret d’Angoulême, sister of Francis I, and Duchess of Berry, was living there with many heterodox Germans about her.
He is found again at Paris in 1531. Wolmar had taught him Greek at Bourges; from Vatable he learned Hebrew; and he entertained some relations with the erudite Budaeus. About this date he printed a commentary on Seneca’s “De Clementiâ”. It was merely an exercise in scholarship, having no political significance. Francis I was, indeed, handling Protestants severely, and Calvin, now Doctor of Law at Orléans, composed, so the story runs, an oration on Christian philosophy which Nicholas Cop delivered on All Saints’ Day, 1532, both writer and speaker having to take instant flight from pursuit by the royal inquisitors. This legend has been rejected by modern critics. Calvin spent some time, however, with Canon du Tillet at Angoulême under a feigned designation. In May, 1534, he went to Noyon, gave up his benefice, and, it is said, was imprisoned. But he got away to Nerac in Bearn, the residence of the Duchess Margaret, and there again encountered Le Fèvre, whose French Bible had been condemned by the Sorbonne to the flames. His next visit to Paris fell out during a violent campaign of the Lutherans against the Mass, which brought on reprisals, Etienne de la Forge and others were burnt in the Place de Grève; and Calvin accompanied by du Tillet, escaped — though not without adventures — to Metz and Strasburg. In the latter city Bucer reigned supreme. The leading reformers dictated laws from the pulpit to their adherents, and this journey proved a decisive one for the French humanist, who, though by nature timid and shy, committed himself to a war on paper with his own sovereign. The famous letter to Francis I is dated 23 August, 1535. It served as a prologue to the “Institutes”, of which the first edition came out in March, 1536, not in French but in Latin. Calvin’s apology for lecturing the king was, that placards denouncing the Protestants as rebels had been posted up all over the realm. Francis I did not read these pages, but if he had done so he would have discovered in them a plea, not for toleration, which the Reformer utterly scorned, but for doing away with Catholicism in favour of the new gospel. There could be only one true Church, said the young theologian, therefore kings ought to make an utter end of popery. (For an account of the “Institutes” see CALVINISM.) The second edition belongs to 1539, the first French translation to 1541; the final Latin, as revised by its author, is of 1559; but that in common use, dated 1560, has additions by his disciples. “It was more God’s work than mine”, said Calvin, who took for his motto “Omnia ad Dei gloriam”, and in allusion to the change he had undergone in 1529 assumed for his device a hand stretched out from a burning heart.
A much disputed chapter in Calvin’s biography is the visit which he was long thought to have paid at Ferraro to the Protestant Duchess Renée, daughter of Louis XII. Many stories clustered about his journey, now given up by the best-informed writers. All we know for certain is that the Reformer, after settling his family affairs and bringing over two of his brothers and sisters to the views he had adopted undertook, in consequence of the war between Charles V and Francis I, to reach Bale by way of Geneva, in July, 1536. At Geneva the Swiss preacher Fare, then looking for help in his propaganda, besought him with such vehemence to stay and teach theology that, as Calvin himself relates, he was terrified into submission. We are not accustomed to fancy the austere prophet so easily frightened. But as a student and recluse new to public responsibilities, he may well have hesitated before plunging into the troubled waters of Geneva, then at their stormiest period. No portrait of him belonging to this time is extant. Later he is represented as of middle height, with bent shoulders, piercing eyes, and a large forehead; his hair was of an auburn tinge. Study and fasting occasioned the severe headaches from which he suffered continually. In private life he was cheerful but sensitive, not to say overbearing, his friends treated him with delicate consideration. His habits were simple; he cared nothing for wealth, and he never allowed himself a holiday. His correspondence, of which 4271 letters remain, turns chiefly on doctrinal subjects. Yet his strong, reserved character told on all with whom he came in contact; Geneva submitted to his theocratic rule, and the Reformed Churches accepted his teaching as though it were infallible.
Such was the stranger whom Farel recommended to his fellow Protestants, “this Frenchman”, chosen to lecture on the Bible in a city divided against itself. Geneva had about 15,000 inhabitants. Its bishop had long been its prince limited, however, by popular privileges. The vidomne, or mayor, was the Count of Savoy, and to his family the bishopric seemed a property which, from 1450, they bestowed on their younger children. John of Savoy, illegitimate son of the previous bishop, sold his rights to the duke, who was head of the clan, and died in 1519 at Pignerol. Jean de la Baume, last of its ecclesiastical princes, abandoned the city, which received Protestant teachers from Berne in 1519 and from Fribourg in 1526. In 1527 the arms of Savoy were torn down; in 1530 the Catholic party underwent defeat, and Geneva became independent. It had two councils, but the final verdict on public measures rested with the people. These appointed Farel, a convert of Le Fevre, as their preacher in 1534. A discussion between the two Churches from 30 May to 24 June, 1535 ended in victory for the Protestants. The altars were desecrated, the sacred images broken, the Mass done away with. Bernese troops entered and “the Gospel” was accepted, 21 May, 1536. This implied persecution of Catholics by the councils which acted both as Church and State. Priests were thrown into prison; citizens were fined for not attending sermons. At Zürich, Basle, and Berne the same laws were established. Toleration did not enter into the ideas of the time.
But though Calvin had not introduced this legislation, it was mainly by his influence that in January, 1537 the “articles” were voted which insisted on communion four times a year, set spies on delinquents, established a moral censorship, and punished the unruly with excommunication. There was to be a children’s catechism, which he drew up; it ranks among his best writings. The city now broke into “jurants” and “nonjurors” for many would not swear to the “articles”; indeed, they never were completely accepted. Questions had arisen with Berne touching points that Calvin judged to be indifferent. He made a figure in the debates at Lausanne defending the freedom of Geneva. But disorders ensued at home, where recusancy was yet rife; in 1538 the council exiled Farel, Calvin, and the blind evangelist, Couraud. The Reformer went to Strasburg, became the guest of Capito and Bucer, and in 1539 was explaining the New Testament to French refugees at fifty two florins a year. Cardinal Sadolet had addressed an open letter to the Genevans, which their exile now answered. Sadolet urged that schism was a crime; Calvin replied that the Roman Church was corrupt. He gained applause by his keen debating powers at Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon. But he complains of his poverty and ill-health, which did not prevent him from marrying at this time Idelette de Bure, the widow of an Anabaptist whom he had converted. Nothing more is known of this lady, except that she brought him a son who died almost at birth in 1542, and that her own death took place in 1549.
After some negotiation Ami Perrin, commissioner for Geneva, persuaded Calvin to return. He did so, not very willingly, on 13 September, 1541. His entry was modest enough. The church constitution now recognized “pastors, doctors, elders, deacons” but supreme power was given to the magistrate. Ministers had the spiritual weapon of God’s word; the consistory never, as such, wielded the secular arm Preachers, led by Calvin, and the councils, instigated by his opponents, came frequently into collision. Yet the ordinances of 1541 were maintained; the clergy, assisted by lay elders, governed despotically and in detail the actions of every citizen. A presbyterian Sparta might be seen at Geneva; it set an example to later Puritans, who did all in their power to imitate its discipline. The pattern held up was that of the Old Testament, although Christians were supposed to enjoy Gospel liberty. In November, 1552, the Council declared that Calvin’s “Institutes” were a “holy doctrine which no man might speak against.” Thus the State issued dogmatic decrees, the force of which had been anticipated earlier, as when Jacques Gouet was imprisoned on charges of impiety in June, 1547, and after severe torture was beheaded in July. Some of the accusations brought against the unhappy young man were frivolous, others doubtful. What share, if any, Calvin took in this judgment is not easy to ascertain. The execution of however must be laid at his door; it has given greater offence by far than the banishment of Castellio or the penalties inflicted on Bolsec — moderate men opposed to extreme views in discipline and doctrine, who fell under suspicion as reactionary. The Reformer did not shrink from his self-appointed task. Within five years fifty-eight sentences of death and seventy-six of exile, besides numerous committals of the most eminent citizens to prison, took place in Geneva. The iron yoke could not be shaken off. In 1555, under Ami Perrin, a sort of revolt was attempted. No blood was shed, but Perrin lost the day, and Calvin’s theocracy triumphed.
“I am more deeply scandalized”, wrote Gibbon “at the single execution of Servetus than at the hecatombs which have blazed in the autos-da-fé of Spain and Portugal”. He ascribes the enmity of Calvin to personal malice and perhaps envy. The facts of the case are pretty well ascertained. Born in 1511, perhaps at Tudela, Michael Served y Reves studied at Toulouse and was present in Bologna at the coronation of Charles V. He travelled in Germany and brought out in 1531 at Hagenau his treatise “De Trinitatis Erroribus”, a strong Unitarian work which made much commotion among the more orthodox Reformers. He met Calvin and disputed with him at Paris in 1534, became corrector of the press at Lyons; gave attention to medicine, discovered the lesser circulation of the blood, and entered into a fatal correspondence with the dictator of Geneva touching a new volume “Christianismi Restitutio,” which he intended to publish. In 1546 the exchange of letters ceased. The Reformer called Servetus arrogant (he had dared to criticize the “Institutes” in marginal glosses), and uttered the significant menace, “If he comes here and I have any authority, I will never let him leave the place alive.” The “Restitutio” appeared in 1553. Calvin at once had its author delated to the Dominican inquisitor Ory at Lyons, sending on to him the man’s letters of 1545-46 and these glosses. Hereupon the Spaniard was imprisoned at Vienne, but he escaped by friendly connivance, and was burnt there only in effigy. Some extraordinary fascination drew him to Geneva, from which he intended to pass the Alps. He arrived on 13 August, 1553. The next day Calvin, who had remarked him at the sermon, got his critic arrested, the preacher’s own secretary coming forward to accuse him. Calvin drew up forty articles of charge under three heads, concerning the nature of God, infant baptism, and the attack which Servetus had ventured on his own teaching. The council hesitated before taking a deadly decision, but the dictator, reinforced by Farel, drove them on. In prison the culprit suffered much and loudly complained. The Bernese and other Swiss voted for some indefinite penalty. But to Calvin his power in Geneva seemed lost, while the stigma of heresy; as he insisted, would cling to all Protestants if this innovator were not put to death. “Let the world see” Bullinger counselled him, “that Geneva wills the glory of Christ.”
Accordingly, sentence was pronounced 26 October, 1553, of burning at the stake. “Tomorrow he dies,” wrote Calvin to Farel. When the deed was done, the Reformer alleged that he had been anxious to mitigate the punishment, but of this fact no record appears in the documents. He disputed with Servetus on the day of execution and saw the end. A defence and apology next year received the adhesion of the Genevan ministers. Melanchthon, who had taken deep umbrage at the blasphemies of the Spanish Unitarian, strongly approved in well-known words. But a group that included Castellio published at Basle in 1554 a pamphlet with the title, “Should heretics be persecuted?” It is considered the first plea for toleration in modern times. Beza replied by an argument for the affirmative, couched in violent terms; and Calvin, whose favorite disciple he was, translated it into French in 1559. The dialogue, “Vaticanus”, written against the “Pope of Geneva” by Castellio, did not get into print until 1612. Freedom of opinion, as Gibbon remarks, “was the consequence rather than the design of the Reformation.”
Another victim to his fiery zeal was Gentile, one of an Italian sect in Geneva, which also numbered among its adherents Alciati and Gribaldo. As more or less Unitarian in their views, they were required to sign a confession drawn up by Calvin in 1558. Gentile subscribed it reluctantly, but in the upshot he was condemned and imprisoned as a perjurer. He escaped only to be twice incarcerated at Berne, where in 1566, he was beheaded. Calvin’s impassioned polemic against these Italians betrays fear of the Socinianism which was to lay waste his vineyard. Politically he leaned on the French refugees, now abounding in the city, and more than equal in energy — if not in numbers — to the older native factions. Opposition died out. His continual preaching, represented by 2300 sermons extant in the manuscripts and a vast correspondence, gave to the Reformer an influence without example in his closing years. He wrote to Edward VI, helped in revising the Book of Common Prayer, and intervened between the rival English parties abroad during the Marian period. In the Huguenot troubles he sided with the more moderate. His censure of the conspiracy of Amboise in 1560 does him honour. One great literary institution founded by him, the College, afterwards the University, of Geneva, flourished exceedingly. The students were mostly French. When Beza was rector it had nearly 1500 students of various grades.
Geneva now sent out pastors to the French congregations and was looked upon as the Protestant Rome. Through Knox, “the Scottish champion of the Swiss Reformation”, who had been preacher to the exiles in that city, his native land accepted the discipline of the Presbytery and the doctrine of predestination as expounded in Calvin’s “Institutes”. The Puritans in England were also descendants of the French theologian. His dislike of theatres, dancing and the amenities of society was fully shared by them. The town on Lake Leman was described as without crime and destitute of amusements. Calvin declaimed against the “Libertines”, but there is no evidence that any such people had a footing inside its walls The cold, hard, but upright disposition characteristic of the Reformed Churches, less genial than that derived from Luther, is due entirely to their founder himself. Its essence is a concentrated pride, a love of disputation, a scorn of opponents. The only art that it tolerates is music, and that not instrumental. It will have no Christian feasts in its calendar, and it is austere to the verge of Manichaean hatred of the body. When dogma fails the Calvinist, he becomes, as in the instance of Carlyle, almost a pure Stoic. “At Geneva, as for a time in Scotland,” says J. A. Froude, “moral sins were treated as crimes to be punished by the magistrate.” The Bible was a code of law, administered by the clergy. Down to his dying day Calvin preached and taught. By no means an aged man, he was worn out in these frequent controversies. On 25 April, 1564, he made his will, leaving 225 French crowns, of which he bequeathed ten to his college, ten to the poor, and the remainder to his nephews and nieces. His last letter was addressed to Farel. He was buried without pomp, in a spot which is not now ascertainable. In the year 1900 a monument of expiation was erected to Servetus in the Place Champel. Geneva has long since ceased to be the head of Calvinism. It is a rallying point for Free Thought, Socialist propaganda, and Nihilist conspiracies. But in history it stands out as the Sparta of the Reformed churches, and Calvin is its Lycurgus.
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WILLIAM BARRY Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IIICopyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Calvin, John
one of the most eminent of the Reformers.
1. Sketch of his Life. He was born at Noyon, July 10th, 1509, his father, Gerard Chauvin, being a notary. He was from the first educated for the Church, and before he was twelve years old was presented to a benefice in the Cathedral of Noyon. Six years after this he was appointed to a cure of souls at Montiille, and thus, although not yet twenty, and not even in the minor orders, he was enjoying the title and revenues of a cure. His father now changed his mind as to the destination of his son, and desired him to turn his attention to the law as the road to wealth. This change was not unacceptable to Calvin, who, from his perusal of the Scripturess a copy of which was furnished him by Robert Olivetan, who was his fellow scholar at Paris, and likewise a native of Nyovn had already been convinced of many of the errors of the KRonish Church. He accordingly repaired to Olleans, where he studied under Peter Stella, and then to Bruges, where Andrew Alciat filled tie chair of law, and where also AMelchior Wolnar; the l’eforil;er, taught him Greek. Here Calvin was confirmed in the doctrines of the Reformation, and began indeed to preach them in the villages. His father, however, dying, he returned to Noyosn, but after a short period went to Paris, where, in 1532, he published commentaries onSeneca’s two books, De Clementia.
He now resigned his benefices, and devoted himself to divinity. In 1533, Cop, the rector of the University of Paris, having occasion to read a discourse on the festival of All Saints, Calvin persuaded him to declare his opinion on the new doctrines. This brought upon them both the indignation of the Sorbonne, and they were forced to leave the city. Calvin /went to several places, and at length to Angouleme, where he got shelter in the house of Louis du Tallet, a canon of Angoul(me, and supported himself sometime by teaching Greek. There he composed the greater part of his Institutes of the Christiana Religion, which were published in 15;,6. The Queen of Navarre, sister to Francis I, having shown him some countenance in respect for his learning and abilities, he returned to Paris in 1534 under her protection, but quitted France the same year, having first published Psychopannychia, to confute the error of those who held that the soul remained in a state of sleep between death and the resurrection. He retired to Baslc, where he published the Institutes (1536), dedicated to Francis I in an elegant Latin epistle. The design of the Institutes was to exhibit a full view of the doctrines of the Reformers; and as no similar work had appeared since the Reformation, and the peculiarities of the Romish Church were attacked in it with great force, it immediately became popular. It soon went through several editions, was translated by Calvin himself into French, and has since been translated into all the principal modern languages. Its effect upon the Christian world has been so remarkable as to entitle it to be looked upon as one of those books that have changed the face of society.
After this publication Calvin went to Italy, and was received with distinction from the Duchess of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII. But, notwithstanding her protection, he was obliged to return to France, but soon left it again, and in the month of August,1536, arrived at Geneva, where the Reformed religion had been the same year publicly established. There, at the request of Farel, Viret, and other eminent Reformers, by whom that revolution had been achieved, lie became a preacher of the Gospel, and professor, or rather lecturer on divinity. Farel was then twenty years older than Calvin, but their objects were the same, and their learning, virtue, and zeal alike, and these were now combined for the complete reformation of Geneva, and the diffusion of their principles throughout Europe. In the month of November a plan of Church government and a confession of faith were laid before the public authorities for their approval. Beza makes Calvin the author of these productions; but others, with perhaps greater reason, attribute them to Farel.
There is little doubt, however, that Calvin was consulted in their composition, and still less that he lent his powerful aid to secure their sanction and approval by the people in the month of July, 1537. The same year the Council of Geneva conferred on Farel the honor of a burgess of the city, in token of their respect and gratitude. But the popular will was not prepared for’ the severe discipline of the Reformers, and in a short time the people, under the direction of a faction, met in a public assembly and expelled Farel and Calvin from the place. Calvin retired to Bern, and then to Strasburg, where he was appointed professor of divinity and minister of a French church, into which he introduced his own form of church government and discipline. In his absence great efforts were made to get the Genevese to return to the commlinion of the Church of Rome, particularly by Cardinal Sadolet, who wrote to them earnestly to that effect; but Calvin, ever alive to the maintenance of the principles of the Reformation, disappointed all the expectations of his enemies, and confirmed the Genevese in the new faith, addressing to them two powerful and affectionate letters, and replying to that written by Sadolet. While at Strasburg Calvin also published a treatise on the Lord’s Supper (Traite de la Sainte Cesse), in which he combated the opinions both of the Roman Catholics and Lutherans, and at the same time explained his own views of that ordinance. Here, too, he published his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romus. Calvin became acquainted with Castalio during his residence at Strasburg, and procured for him the situation’ of a regent at Geneva; and it was during his stay in this city that, by the advice of his friend Bucer, he married Idellet, the widow of a converted Analaptist.
In November of the same year he and Farel were solicited by the Council of Geneva to return to their former charge in that city; in May, 1541, their bailment was revoked, and in September following Calvin was received into the city amid the congratulations of his flock, Farel remaining at Neufchatel. Ice immlediately laid before the council his scheme of church otxernment, and after it was adopted and published by authority (20th of November, 1541), he was unhesitating in its enforcement. His promptitude and firmness were now conspicuous; he was the ruling ,lsirit in Geneva;and the Church which he had established there he wished to make the mother and seminary of all the Reformed churches. His personal labors were unceasing.
Geneva, however, was the common center of all his exertions, and its prosperity peculiarly interested him, though less for its own sake than to make it a fountain for the supply of the world. He established an academy there, the hi h character of which was long maintained; he made the city a literary mart, and encouraged the French refugees and others who sought his advice to apply themselves to the occupation of a printer or librarian; and having finished the ecclesiastical regimen, he directed his attention to the improvement of ;the municipal government of the place. That Calvin should, in the circumstances in which he was now placed, show marks of intolerance toward others, is not surprising; and to seek a palliation of his guilt, we need not go back to the time when he belonged to the Church of Rome, nor yet to the notions of civil and religious liberty prevalent in his age. We have only to reflect on the constitution of the human mind, and the constant care necessary to prevent power in any hands from degenerating into tyranny. His conduct toward Servetus, SEE SERVETES, has been justly condemned, yet the punishment of Servetus was approved of by men of undoubted worth, and even by the mild Melancthon. Nor was his treatment of Bolsec (q.v.) without reproach. In 1554 Calvin published a work in defense of the doctrine of the Trinity against Servetus (Fidelis Expositio Errorum M. Serveti), and to prove the right of the civil magistrate to punish heresy; Beza the same year published a work on the like subject, in reply to the treatise of Castalio. The state of Calvin’s health prevented him going in1561 to the Conference of Poissy (q.v.), an assembly which in his view promised to be of great consequence, and which was indeed remarkable in this respect, that from that time the followers of Calvin became known as a distinct sect, bearing the name of their leader.
To the last he maintainedthe; same firmness of character which had distinguished him through life. On his death-bed he took God to witness that he had preached the Gospel purely, and exhorted all about him to walk worthy of the divine goodness: his slender frame gradually became quite emaciated, and on the 27th of May, 1564, he died without a struggle, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. The person of Calvin was middlesized and naturally delicate; his habits were frugal and unostentatious; and he was so sparing in his food that for many years he took only one meal in the day. He had a clear understanding, an extraordinary memory, and a firmness and inflexibility of purpose which no opposition could overcome, no variety of objects defeati no vicissitude shake. In his principles he was devout and sincere, and the purity of his character in private life was without a stain. English Cyclopedia. It is impossible to contemplate without astonishment the labors of Calvin during the last twenty years of his life. He presided over the ecclesiastical and _political affairs of Geneva; he preached every day, lectured thrice a week, was present at every meeting of the Consistory, and yet found time for a vast correspondence, and to continue his voluminous literary labors. Besides his printed works, there are now in the library of Geneva 2025 sermons in MS.
His health during all this period was feeble, yet he continued his various toils almost up to the very day of his death. He chose to be poor, refusing on several occasions proposed additions; to his very moderate salary, and is said uniformly to have declined receiving presents, unless for the sake of giving them to the poor. From his numerous publications it is believed that he derived no pecuniary profit; and yet, as was the case with Wesley, he was assailed on all sides as having amassed great wealth. I see, said he, what incites my enemies to urge these falsehoods. They measure me according to their own dispositions,believing that I must be heaping up money on all sides because I enjoy such favorable opportunities for doing so. But assuredly, if I have not been able! to avoid the reputation of being rich during my life, death will at last free me from this stain. And so it was. By his last will Calvin disposes of his entire property, amounting to about two hundred and twenty-five dollars, and on the 27th day of May, 1564, being within a few weeks of fifty-five years of age, he calmly breathed his last in the arms of his friend Beza. He was buried, according to his own request, without pomp, and nomonument marks his last resting-place. Calvin’s intellect was of the very first class, at once acute, penetrating, profound, and comprehensive. His cultivation was in harmony with it. Scaliger declares that at twenty-two Calvin was the most learned man in Europe.
The first edition of his great work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, was published when he was twenty-seven years of age; and it is a most extraordinary proof of the maturity and vigor of his mind, of the care with which he had studied the Word of God, and of the depth and comprehensiveness of his meditations upon divine things, that, though the work was afterward greatly enlarged, and though some alterations were even made in the arrangement of the topics discussed, yet no change of any importance was made in the actual doctrines which it set forth. The first edition, produced at that early age, contained the substance of the whole system of doctrine which has since been commonly associated with his name, the development and exposition of which has been regarded by many as constituting a strong claim upon the esteem and gratitude of the Church of Christ, and by many others as rendering him worthy of execration and every opprobrium. He lived twenty-seven years more after the publication of the first edition of the Institutes, and a large portion of his time during the remainder of his life was devoted to the examination of the Word of God and the investigation of divine truth. But he saw no reason to make any material change in the views which he had put forth; and a large proportion of the most pious, able, and learned men and most careful students of the sacred Scriptures, who have since adorned the Church of Christ, have received all his leading doctrines as accordant with the teaching of God’s Word. Brit. and For Evang. Review, No. 33.
As an expositor of the Scriptures and as a writer of systematic theology Calvin has had few rivals in the Christian Church. His Latin style is better than that of any Christian writer since Tertullian. Even the Roman Catholic Audin says, Never does the proper word fail him; he calls it, and it comes. In brevity, clearness, and good sense, his commentaries are unsurpassed. As a civilian, he had few equals among his contemporaries. In short, he exhibited, in strong and decided development, moral and intellectual qualities which marked him out for one who was competent to guide the opinions and control the commotions of inquiring and agitated: nations. Through the most trying and hazardous period of the Reformation he exhibited invariably a wisdom in counsel, a prudence of zeal, and. at the same time, a decision and intrepidity of character which were truly astonishing. In the full import of the phrase, he may be styled a benefactor of the world. Most intensely and effectually, too, did he labor for the highest temporal, and especially for the eternal interests of his fellowmen. He evidently brought to the great enterprise of the age a larger amount of moral and intellectual power than did any other of the Reformers. In the just language of the archbishop of Cashel (Dr. Lawrence), Calvin himself was both a wise and a good man; inferior to none of his contemporaries in general ability, and superior to almost all in the art, as well as elegance of composition, in the perspicuity and arrangement of his ideas, the structure of his periods, and the Latinity of his diction. Although attached to a theory which he found it difficult in the extreme to free from the suspicion of blasphemy against God as the author of sin, he certainly was no blasphemer, but, on the contrary, adopted that very theory from an anxiety not to commit, but, as he conceived, to avoid blasphemy that of ascribing to human what he deemed alone imputable to Divine agency.
2. Calvin’s theological Views. The following, statements of Calvin’s theology, which are believed to be impartial, are taken from Neander, History of Dogmas, vol. 2.
(1) As to the Church, he says, By the Church we understand not merely the ecclesia visibilis, but the elect of God, to whom even the dead belong. Hence he distinguishes the idea of the outward Church as the peculiar Christian community through which alone we can obtain entrance to eternal life; out of its pale there is no forgiveness of sins, no salvation. The marks of this Church are, that it publishes the Word of God in its purity, and administers the sacraments purely according to their institution. The universal Church is so called inasmuch as it includes believers of allnations. Here the important point is not agreement in all things, but only in essential doctrines (Instit. lib. 4).
(2) As to the Sacraments Calvin occupied a middle position. On the one hand he protested against the notion of a magical influence, and on the other he held firmly to the objective. The sacraments are not mere signs, but signs instituted by God, which notify to men the Divine promise. They are the outward symbols by which God seals the promises of his grace to our conscience; they attest the weakness of our faith, and at the same time our love to Him. The sacraments effect this, not by any secret magical power, but because they are instituted for this end by the Lord; and they can only attain it when the inward agency of the Holy Spirit is added,whereby alone the sacraments find their way to the heart; they are therefore efficacious only for the predestinated. Baptism is a seal of a covenant. Christ blessed children, commended them to their heavenly Father, and said that of such was the kingdom of heaven. If children ought to be brought to Christ, why should they not receive the symbol of communion with Christ? Also in the New Testament mention is made of the baptism of whole families, and the early use of infant baptism allows the conclusion that ithad come down from the time of the apostles. Infant baptism is also important for the parents, as a seal of the Divine promise which is continued from them to their children; another reason is, that by baptism children are incorporated in the Church, and are so much the more commended to the other members. He believed in a certain influence in infant baptism, and answers the objection to it by saying that, although we cannot understand this effect, it does not follow that it does not take place. He appealed to the fact that John was filled with the Holy Spirit from his birth, and Christ from the beginning with the Divine nature. From his humanity the principle of sanctification must overflow to men, and this would hold good of children (Institutes, bk. 4, ch. 16).
On the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, he opposed those who explained the words eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his blood,’ only of faith in Christ, and the right knowledge of him (Institutes, bk. 4, ch. 17). Whoever received the Supper in faith was truly and perfectly a partaker of Christ. This communion was not merely a communion of spirit; the body of Christ, by its connectionwith the Divine nature, received a fullness of life which flowed over to believers. Calvin therefore admitted something supernatural, but thought that the event took place, not by virtue of the body of Christ, which, as such, could not be in several places, but by virtue of the power of the Holy Ghost a supernatural communication which no human understanding could ex. plain. This communion with Christ, by which he communicates himself and all his blessings, the Supper symbolically represents. The outward is indeed merely a sign, but not an empty sign; it really presents that which is signified by it, namely, the actual participation of the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. She explains the words of the institutions metonymically, in the sense that the sign is used for the thing signified; he denied any bodily presence of Christ; Christ does not descend to earth, but believers by the power of the Holy Spirit are raised to communion with him in heaven. Christ also descends to them not only by virtue of his Spirit, but also by the outward symbol; the organ by which communion is attained is faith the is presented to all, but received only by believers. The mere symbolical view depreciates the sign too much, and separates it from the sacrament; but by the other view the sign is exalted too much, and thereby the nature of the mystery itself is obscured.
(3) Calvin’s views on Grace and Predestination were so strongly pronounced that his name is now used to designate an entire system. He maintained the doctrine of absolute predestination, which in him was connected with a one-sided tendency of Christian feeling and a rigid logical consequence, Like Zuingle, he regarded prescience and predestination as of equal extent, and even established the former by the latter; God in no other way foresees the future but as he has decreed. Hence Calvin allowed no contingency even in the fall; le says, How could God, who effects all things, have formed the noblest of his creatures for an uncertain end? What then would become of his omnipotence? The Infralapsarians must still allow such a predestination in the case of Adam’s descendants. It cannot have been in a ,natural way that all lost salvation through the guilt of one. Yet he himself feels shocked at the thought; decretum quidem horribile fateor, he says. Consequently, God created the greatest part of mankind in order to glorify himself in them by his punitive justice, and the smaller by the revelation of his love.
His opponents might give a reason why God, who could have made them dogs, created them in his own image. Ought irrational brutes also to argue with God? All doubts may be silenced by the thought that God’s will is the highest law and cause. Yet he did not rest here. The idea of an absolute omnipotence of God, not conditioned by holiness, he looked upon as profane, and appealed to the incomprehensibility of this mystery. It is to be acknowledged that Calvin sought to evade the practically injurious consequences of the doctrine of absolute predestination, and especially exalted the revealed grace of Godin. the work of redemption. Men ought to keep to the Word of God alone; and, instead of inquiring respecting their own election, look to Christ, and seek in him God’s fatherly grace.’ Calvin labored very much to procure the universal acknowledgment of this doctrine in Switzerland, but met withserious opposition, among others, from the learned Sebastian Castalio (q.v.). In Geneva Calvin at last obtained the victory, and then soon came to an understanding respecting it with other Swiss theologians. He attempted, but in vain, to get Melancthon on his side. Melancthon called him the modern Zeno, who wanted to introduce a stoical necessity into the Church, and expressed himself very warmly against him (Corpus Reformat. 7:932). When Calvin sent Melancthon his Confession of Faith, the latter was so excited that he struck his pen through the whole passage on predestination. Calvin remarked that this was very unlike his ingenita mansuetudo; that he could not imagine how a man of Melancthon’s acuteness could reject this doctrine, and said, reproachfully, that he could not believe that he held the doctrines he professed with a sincere heart. On account of a doctrine to which speculation had by no means led him, he reproached him with judging nimisphilosophice concerning free will.
Calvin professes to be only a borrower from St. Augustine (Inst. bk. in, ch. xxiii, 13); and he repudiates the consequences that have been charged upon his doctrine. For instance, he strenuously maintains that God is not the author of sin, that men act freely and accountably, and that election is a stimulus to good works rather than an opiate to inaction (Inst. bk. 3, ch.23, 3, 9, 12). SEE CALVINISM; SEE PREDESTINATION.
3. Literature. The best edition of the Latin works of Calvin is that ofAmsterdam (1671, 9 vols. fol.). A new edition is now going on in the Corpus Reformatfrum, under the title Calvini Oplera quce supersunt omnia (vols. 1-5, Brunswick, 1864, 1867). An excellent and very cheap edition of the Commentarii in N.T., edited by Tholuck, was published at Halle (1833-38, 7 vols. 8vo); one of the Comm. in Psalmos (1836, 2 vols.) and of the Institutiones Religionis Christiance was likewise edited by Tholuck (Halle, 1834, 1835, 2 vols. 8vo); one of the Comm. in lib. Geneseos (1838, 8vo) by Hengstenberg. Most of Calvin’s writings have been translated into English; and a new and revised edition has been issued under the auspices of the Calvin Translation Society, in very handsome style, yet cheap (Edinb. 51 vols. 8vo). Its contents are as follows: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3 vols.; Tracts on the Reformation, 3 vols.; Commentary on Genesis , 2 vols. ; Harmony of the last Four Books of the Pentateuch, 4 vols.; Commentary on Joshua , 1 vol.; Commentary on the Psalms , 5 vols.; Commentary on Isaiah , 4 vols.; Connmentary on Jeremiah and Lamentations , 5 vols.; Commentary on Ezekiel , 2 vols.; Commentary on Daniel , 2 vols.; Commentary on Hosea , 1 vol.; Commentary on Joel, Amos, and Obadiah, vol.; Commentary on Jonah, Micah, and Nahum , 1 vol.; Commentary on Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai 1 vol.; Commentary on Zechariah and Malachi 1 vol.; Harmony of the Synoptical Evangelists, 3 vols.; Commentary on John’s Gospel, 2 vols.; Commentary on Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols.; Commentary on Romans , 1 vol.; Commentary on Corinthians, 2 vols.; Commentary on Galatians and Ephesians, I vol.; Commentary on Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 1 vol.; Commentary on Timothy, Titus, and Phm 1:1 vol.; Commentary on Hebrews , 1 vol.; Commentary on Peter, John, James, and Jud 1:1 vol. There are English translations of his Institutiones by John Allen (Lond. 1813, reprinted in several editions by the Philadelphia Presbyterian Board of Publication), and by Beveridge (Edinb. 1863, 8vo). Calvin’s life was written in brief by Beza (Eng. ed. 1844, Edinb. Trans. Soc.; also Phila. 1836,12mo) and Farel; but within the last few yearsseveral biographies have appeared. The most copious and elaborate is Leben J. Calvin’s, von Paul ,Henry, D.D. (Hamb. 1835-1844, 3 vols. 8vo). The author procured for his work the inedited letters of Calyin, which are preserved in Geneva, and gives the most important of them in the appendices. A poor translation has been published, entitled The Life of Calvin, translated from the German of Dr. Henry, by H. Stebbing, D. D.(Lond. 1849, 2 vols. 8vo); it omits most of the notes and appendices which make up great part of Henry’s work. A Roman Catholic biography by Audin (Histoire, etc., de J. Calvin, par J. M. V. Audin, Paris, 2 vols. 1841) has the sole merit of a lively and piquant style. An English translation has been published in Baltimore (history, etc., of John Calvin, translated from Audin, by John Gill, evo); and it has also been translated into German (Augsb. 1843-44, 2 vols.), into Italian (in Pirotta’s Bibliot. Ecclesiastes vols. ix and x, Milan, 1843), and into other languages. A graphic but superficial biography has been published by Thomas H. Dver (Lond. 1850; N. Y., Harpers, 1851). A Biography together with select writings of Calvin, was published by Stilhelin (J. Calvin. Leb. ui. ausgewdalle Schriften, Elberfeld, 2 vols. 1860, 1863). There is a good sketch of Calvin’s life, by Robbins, in the Bibliotheca acra, vol. ii, for 1845. On the theology of Calvin, see Gass, Prot. Dotgmatik, vol. i, bk. i; art. CALVINISM SEE CALVINISM; and Revue Chritienne, 1863, p. 720; Cunningham, The Reformers and Theology of the Reformation, Essays, 6-10. See also Tulloch, Leaders of the Reformation (new ed. Lond. 1861); Bungener, Calvin, his Life and Works (Edinb. 1862, 8vo). The Letters of Calvin, from original MSS., were first edited by Bonnet and translated by Constable (Edinb. 1855, 4 vols. 8vo, repub. by Presbyterian Board [Philadelphia]). A new edition of the Institutes in French, Institution de la Religion Chretienne, en quatre livres, appeared in Paris, 1859 (2 vols. 8vo). It contains an introduction by the editors, with a history of previous editions. See Meth. Quart. Review, Oct. 1850, art. in; Amer. Theol. Review, Feb. 1860, p. 129; North Brit. Review, vol. xiii; Brit. and Foreign Evang. Review, No. xxxiii; Biblioth. Sacra, xiv, p. 125; Kostlin, in Studien u. Kritiken, 1868, 1, 2.