Jean Cauvin (latinised into Calvinus) was born at Noyon in Picardy on the 10th of July 1509. He was the second son in a family of four sons and two daughters. His father, Gerard Cauvin, was a highly esteemed lawyer, the confidential legal adviser of the n.o.bility and higher clergy of the district. His mother, Jeanne La France, a very beautiful woman, was noted for her devout piety and her motherly affection. Calvin, who says little about his childhood, relates how he was once taken by his mother on the festival of St. Anna to see a relic of the saint preserved in the Abbey of Ourscamp, near Noyon, and that he remembers kissing "part of the body of St. Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary."[98]
The Cauvins belonged to what we should call the upper middle cla.s.s in social standing, and the young Jean entered the house of the n.o.ble family of de Montmor to share the education of the children, his father paying for all his expenses. The young de Montmors were sent to College in Paris, and Jean Cauvin, then fourteen years of age, went with them.
This early social training never left Calvin, who was always the reserved, polished French gentleman--a striking contrast to his great predecessor Luther.
Calvin was a Picard, and the characteristics of the province were seen in its greatest son. The Picards were always independent, frequently strongly anti-clerical, combining in a singular way fervent enthusiasm and a cold tenacity of purpose. No province in France had produced so many sympathisers with Wiclif and Hus, and "Picards" was a term met with as frequently on the books of Inquisitors as "Wiclifites," "Hussites,"
or "Waldenses"--all the names denoting dissenters from the mediaeval Church who accepted all the articles of the Apostles" Creed but were strongly anti-clerical. These "brethren" lingered in all the countries of Western Europe until the sixteenth century, and their influence made itself felt in the beginnings of the stirrings for reform.
Gerard Cauvin had early seen that his second son, Jean, was _de bon esprit, d"une prompte naturelle a concevoir, et inventif en l"estude des lettres humaines_,[99] and this induced him to give the boy as good an education as he could, and to destine him for the study of theology. His legal connection with the higher clergy of Noyon enabled him, in the fashion of the day, to procure for his son more than one benefice. The boy was tonsured, a portion of the revenue was used to pay for a curate who did the work, and the rest went to provide for the lad"s education.
Young Calvin went with the three sons of the de Montmor family to the College de la Marche in Paris. It was not a famous one, but when Calvin studied there in the lowest cla.s.s he had as his professor Mathurin Cordier, the ablest teacher of his generation.[100] His aim was to give his pupils a thorough knowledge of the French and Latin languages--a foundation on which they might afterwards build for themselves. He had a singularly sweet disposition, and a very open mind. He was brought to know the Gospel by Robert Estienne, and in 1536 his name was inscribed, along with those of Courat and Clement Marot, on the list of the princ.i.p.al heretics in Paris. Calvin was not permitted to remain long under this esteemed teacher. The atmosphere was probably judged to be too liberal for one who was destined to study theology. He was transferred to the more celebrated College de Montaigu. Calvin was again fortunate in his princ.i.p.al teachers. He became the pupil of Noel Beda and of Pierre Tempete, who taught him the art of formal disputation.
Calvin had come to Paris in his fourteenth year, and left it when he was nineteen--the years when a lad becomes a man, and his character is definitely formed. If we are to judge by his own future references, no one had more formative influence over him than Mathurin Cordier--short as had been the period of their familiar intercourse. Calvin had shown a singularly acute mind, and proved himself to be a scholar who invariably surpa.s.sed his fellow students. He was always surrounded by attached friends--the three brothers de Montmor, the younger members of the famous family of Cop, and many others. These student friends were devoted to him all his life. Many of them settled with him at Geneva.
Calvin left the College de Montaigu in 1528. Sometime during the same year another celebrated pupil entered it. This was Ignatius Loyola.
Whether the two great leaders attended College together, whether they ever met, it is impossible to say--the dates are not precise enough.
"Perhaps they crossed each other in some street of Mount Sainte-Genevieve: the young Frenchman of eighteen on horseback as usual, and the Spaniard of six and thirty on foot, his purse furnished with some pieces of gold he owed to charity, shoving before him an a.s.s burdened with his books, and carrying in his pocket a ma.n.u.script, ent.i.tled _Exercitia Spiritualia_."[101]
Calvin left Paris because his father had now resolved that his son should be a lawyer and not a theologian. Gerard Cauvin had quarrelled with the ecclesiastics of Noyon, and had even been excommunicated. He refused to render his accounts in two executry cases, and had remained obstinate. Why he was so, it is impossible to say. His children had no difficulty in arranging matters after his death. The quarrel ended the hopes of the father to provide well for his son in the Church, and he ordered him to quit Paris for the great law school at Orleans. It is by no means improbable that the father"s decision was very welcome to the son. Beze tells us that Calvin had already got some idea of the true religion, had begun to study the Holy Scriptures, and to separate himself from the ceremonies of the Church;[102]--perhaps his friendship with Pierre Robert Olivetan, a relation, a native of Noyon, and the translator of the Bible into French, had brought this about. The young man went to Orleans in the early part of 1528 and remained there for a year, then went on to Bourges, in order to attend the lectures of the famous publicist, Andre Alciat, who was destined to be as great a reformer of the study of law as Calvin was of the study of theology. In Orleans with its Humanism, and in Bourges with its incipient Protestantism, Calvin was placed in a position favourable for the growth of ideas which had already taken root in his mind. At Bourges he studied Greek under Wolmar, a Lutheran in all but the name, and dedicated to him long afterwards his _Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians_. He seems to have lived in the house of Wolmar; another inmate was Theodore de Beze, the future leader of the Protestants of France, then a boy of twelve.
The death of his father (May 26th, 1531) left Calvin his own master. He had obeyed the paternal wishes when he studied for the Church in Paris; he had obediently transferred himself to the study of law; he now resolved to follow the bent of his own mind, and, dedicating himself to study, to become a man of letters. He returned to Paris and entered the College Fortet, meaning to attend the lectures of the Humanist professors whom Francis I., under the guidance of Bude and Cop, was attracting to his capital. These "royal lecturers" and their courses of instruction were looked on with great suspicion by the Sorbonne, and Calvin"s conduct in placing himself under their instruction showed that he had already emanc.i.p.ated himself from that strict devotion to the "superst.i.tions of the Papacy" to which he tells us that he was obstinately attached in his boyhood. He soon became more than the pupil of Bude, Cop, and other Humanists. He was a friend, admitted within the family circle. He studied Greek with Pierre Danes and Hebrew under Vatable. In due time (April 1532), when barely twenty-three years of age, he published at his own expense his first book, a learned commentary on the two books of Seneca"s _De Clementia_.
The book is usually referred to as an example of precocious erudition.
The author shows that he knew as minutely as extensively the whole round of cla.s.sical literature accessible to his times. He quotes, and that aptly, from fifty-five separate Latin authors--from thirty-three separate works of Cicero, from all the works of Horace and Ovid, from five comedies of Terence, and from all the works of Virgil. He quotes from twenty-two separate Greek authors--from five or six of the princ.i.p.al writings of Aristotle, and from four of the writings of Plato and of Plutarch. Calvin does not quote Plautus, but his use of the phrase _remoram facere_ makes it likely that he was well acquainted with that writer also.[103] The future theologian was also acquainted with many of the Fathers--with Augustine, Lactantius, Jerome, Synesius, and Cyprian. Erasmus had published an edition of Seneca, and had advised scholars to write commentaries, and young Calvin followed the advice of the Prince of Humanists. Did he imitate him in more? Did Calvin also disdain to use the New Learning merely to display scholarship, did he mean to put it to modern uses? Francis I. was busy with one of his sporadic persecutions of the Huguenots when the book was published, and learned conjectures have been made whether the two facts had any designed connection--An exhortation addressed to an emperor to exercise clemency, and a king engaging in persecuting his subjects. Two things seem to show that Calvin meant his book to be a protest against the persecution of the French Protestants. His preface is a daring attack on the abuses which were connected with the administration of justice in the public courts, and he says distinctly that he hopes the Commentary will be of service to the public.[104]
It seems evident from Calvin"s correspondence that he had joined the small band of Protestants in Paris, and that he was intimate with Gerard Roussel, the Evangelical preacher,[105] the friend of Marguerite of Navarre, of Lefevre, of Farel, and a member of the "group of Meaux." The question occurs, When did his conversion take place? This has been keenly debated;[106] but the arguments concern words more than facts, and arise from the various meanings attached to the word "conversion"
rather than from the difficulty of determining the time. Calvin, who very rarely reveals the secrets of his own soul, tells in his preface to his _Commentary on the Psalms_, that G.o.d drew him from his obstinate attachment to the superst.i.tions of the Papacy by a "sudden conversion,"
and that this took place after he had devoted himself to the study of law in obedience to the wishes of his father. It does not appear to have been such a sudden and complete vision of divine graciousness as Luther received in the convent at Erfurt. But it was a beginning. He received then some taste of true piety (_aliquo verae pietatis gusto_). He was abashed to find, he goes on to relate, that barely a year afterwards, those who had a desire to learn what pure doctrine was gradually ranged themselves around him to learn from him who knew so little (_me novitium adhuc et tironem_). This was perhaps at Orleans, but it may have been at Bourges. When he returned to Paris to betake himself to Humanist studies, he was a Protestant, convinced intellectually as well as drawn by the pleadings of the heart. He joined the little band who had gathered round Estienne de la Forge, who met secretly in the house of that pious merchant, and listened to the addresses of Gerard Roussel. He was frequently called upon to expound the Scriptures in the little society; and a tradition, which there is no reason to doubt, declares that he invariably concluded his discourse with the words, "If G.o.d be for us, who can be against us?"
He was suddenly compelled to flee from Paris. The theologians of the Sorbonne were vehemently opposed to the "royal lecturers" who represented the Humanism favoured by Margaret, the sister of Francis, and Queen of Navarre. In their wrath they had dared to attack Margaret"s famous book, _Miroir de l"ame pecheresse_, and had in consequence displeased the Court. Nicolas Cop, the friend of Calvin, professor in the College of Sainte Barbe, was Rector of the University (1533). He a.s.sembled the four faculties, and the faculty of medicine disowned the proceedings of the theologians. It was the custom for the Rector to deliver an address before the University yearly during his term of office, and Cop asked his friend Calvin to compose the oration.[107]
Calvin made use of the occasion to write on "Christian Philosophy,"
taking for his motto, "_Blessed are the poor in spirit_" (Matt. v.
3). The discourse was an eloquent defence of Evangelical truth, in which the author borrowed from Erasmus and from Luther, besides adding characteristic ideas of his own. The wrath of the Sorbonne may be imagined. Two monks were employed to accuse the author of heresy before _Parlement_, which responded willingly. It called the attention of the King to papal Bulls against the Lutheran heresy. Meanwhile people discovered that Calvin was the real author, and he had to flee from Paris. After wanderings throughout France he found refuge in Basel (1535).
It was there that he finished his _Christianae Religionis Inst.i.tutio_, which had for its preface the celebrated letter addressed to Francis I.
King of France. The book was the strongest weapon Protestantism had yet forged against the Papacy, and the letter "a bold proclamation, solemnly made by a young man of six-and-twenty, who, more or less unconsciously, a.s.sumed the command of Protestantism against its enemies, calumniators, and persecutors." News had reached Basel that Francis, who was seeking the alliance of the German Lutheran Princes, and was posing as protector of the German Protestants, had resolved to purge his kingdom of the so-called heresy, and was persecuting his Protestant subjects. This double-dealing gave vigour to Calvin"s pen. He says in his preface that he wrote the book with two distinct purposes. He meant it to prepare and qualify students of theology for reading the divine Word, that they may have an easy introduction to it, and be able to proceed in it without obstruction. He also meant it to be a vindication of the teaching of the Reformers against the calumnies of their enemies, who had urged the King of France to persecute them and drive them from France. His dedication was: _To His Most Gracious Majesty, Francis, King of France and his sovereign, John Calvin wisheth peace and salvation in Christ._ Among other things he said:
"I exhibit my confession to you that you may know the nature of that doctrine which is the object of such unbounded rage to those madmen who are now disturbing your kingdom with fire and sword. For I shall not be afraid to acknowledge that this treatise contains a summary of that very doctrine which, according to their clamours, deserves to be punished with imprisonment, banishment, proscription, and flames, and to be exterminated from the face of the earth."
He meant to state in calm precise fashion what Protestants believed; and he made the statement in such a way as to challenge comparison between those beliefs and the teaching of the mediaeval Church. He took the _Apostles" Creed_, the venerable symbol of Western Christendom, and proceeded to show that when tested by this standard the Protestants were truer Catholics than the Romanists. He took this _Apostles" Creed_, which had been recited or sung in the public worship of the Church of the West from the earliest times, which differed from other creeds in this, that it owed its authority to no Council, but sprang directly from the heart of the Church, and he made it the basis of his _Inst.i.tutio_.
For the _Inst.i.tutio_ is an expansion and exposition of the _Apostles"
Creed_, and of the four sentences which it explains. Its basis is: _I believe in G.o.d the Father; and in His Son Jesus Christ; and in the Holy Ghost; and in the Holy Catholic Church._ The _Inst.i.tutio_ is divided into four parts, each part expounding one of these fundamental sentences. The first part describes G.o.d, the Creator, or, as the Creed says: "G.o.d, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth"; the second, G.o.d the Son, the Redeemer and His Redemption; the third, G.o.d the Holy Ghost and His Means of Grace; the fourth, the Holy Catholic Church, its nature and marks.
This division and arrangement, based on the _Apostles" Creed_, means that Calvin did not think he was expounding a new theology or had joined a new Church. The theology of the Reformation was the old teaching of the Church of Christ, and the doctrinal beliefs of the Reformers were those views of truth which were founded on the Word of G.o.d, and which had been known, or at least felt, by pious people all down the generations from the earliest centuries. He and his fellow Reformers believed and taught the old theology of the earliest creeds, made plain and freed from the superst.i.tions which mediaeval theologians had borrowed from pagan philosophy and practices.
The first edition of the _Inst.i.tutio_ was published in March 1536, in Latin. It was shorter and in many ways inferior to the carefully revised editions of 1539 and 1559. In the later editions the arrangement of topics was somewhat altered; but the fundamental doctrine remains unchanged; the author was not a man to publish a treatise on theology without carefully weighing all that had to be said. In 1541, Calvin printed a French edition, which he had translated himself "for the benefit of his countrymen."
After finishing his _Inst.i.tutio_ (the MS. was completed in August 1535, and the printing in March 1536), Calvin, under the a.s.sumed name of Charles d"Espeville, set forth on a short visit to Italy with a companion, Louis du Tillet, who called himself Louis de Haulmont. He intended to visit Renee, d.u.c.h.ess of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII. of France, known for her piety and her inclination to the Reformed faith.
He also wished to see something of Italy. After a short sojourn he was returning to Stra.s.sburg, with the intention of settling there and devoting himself to a life of quiet study, when he was accidentally compelled to visit Geneva, and his whole plan of life was changed. The story can best be told in his own words. He says in the preface to his _Commentary on the Psalms_:
"As the most direct route to Stra.s.sburg, to which I then intended to retire, was blocked by the wars, I had resolved to pa.s.s quickly by Geneva, without staying longer than a single night in that city.... A person (Louis du Tillet) who has now returned to the Papists discovered me and made me known to others. Upon this Farel, who burned with an extraordinary zeal to advance the Gospel, immediately strained every nerve to detain me. After having learnt that my heart was set upon devoting myself to private studies, for which I wished to keep myself free from other pursuits, and finding that he gained nothing by entreaties, he proceeded to utter an imprecation, that G.o.d would curse my retirement and the tranquillity of the studies which I sought, if I should withdraw and refuse a.s.sistance when the necessity was so urgent. By this imprecation I was so stricken with terror that I desisted from the journey which I had undertaken."
-- 5. _Calvin with Farel in Geneva._
Calvin was twenty-seven years of age and Farel twenty years older when they began to work together in Geneva; and, notwithstanding the disparity in age and utter dissimilarity of character, the two men became strongly attached to each other. "We had one heart and one soul,"
Calvin says. Farel introduced him to the leading citizens, who were not much impressed by the reserved, frail young foreigner whose services their pastor was so anxious to secure. They did not even ask his name.
The minute of the Council (Sept. 5th, 1536), giving him employment and promising him support, runs: "Master William Farel stated the need for the lecture begun by _this Frenchman_ in St. Peter"s."[108] Calvin had declined the pastorate; but he had agreed to act as "professor in sacred learning to the Church in Geneva (_Sacrarum literarum in ecclesia Genevensi professor_)." His power was of that quiet kind that is scarcely felt till it has gripped and holds.
He began his work by giving lectures daily in St. Peter"s on the Epistles of St. Paul. They were soon felt to be both powerful and attractive. Calvin soon made a strong impression on the people of the city. An occasion arose which revealed him in a way that his friends had never before known. Bern had conquered the greater part of the Pays de Vaud in the late war. Its Council was determined to instruct the people of its newly acquired territory in Evangelical principles by means of a public Disputation, to be held at Lausanne during the first week of October.[109] The three hundred and thirty-seven priests of the newly conquered lands, the inmates of the thirteen abbeys and convents, of the twenty-five priories, of the two chapters of canons, were invited to come to Lausanne to refute if they could the ten Evangelical _Theses_ arranged by Farel and Viret.[110] The Council of Bern pledged itself that there would be the utmost freedom of debate, not only for its own subjects, but "for all comers, to whatever land they belonged." Farel insisted on this freedom in his own trenchant way: "You may speak here as boldly as you please; _our_ arguments are neither f.a.ggot, fire, nor sword, prison nor torture; public executioners are not our doctors of divinity.... Truth is strong enough to outweigh falsehood; if you have it, bring it forward." The Romanists were by no means eager to accept the challenge. Out of the three hundred and thirty-seven priests invited, only one hundred and seventy-four appeared, and of these only four attempted to take part. Two who had promised to discuss did not show themselves. Only ten of the forty religious houses sent representatives, and only one of them ventured to meet the Evangelicals in argument.[111] As at Bern in 1528, as at Geneva in May 1535, so here at Lausanne in October 1536, the Romanists showed themselves unable to meet their opponents, and the policy of Bern in insisting on public Disputations was abundantly justified.
Farel and Viret were the Protestant champions. Farel preached the opening sermon in the cathedral on Oct. 1st, and closed the conference by another sermon on Oct. 8th. The discussion began on the Monday, when the huge cathedral was thronged by the inhabitants of the city and of the surrounding villages. In the middle of the church a s.p.a.ce was reserved for the disputants. There sat the four secretaries, the two presidents, and five commissioners representing _les Princes Chretiens Messieurs de Berne_, distinguished by their black doublets and shoulder-knots faced with red, and by their broad-brimmed hats ornamented with great bunches of feathers,--hats kept stiffly on heads as befitting the representatives of such potent lords.
Calvin had not meant to speak; Farel and Viret were the orators; he was only there in attendance. But on the Thursday, when the question of the Real Presence was discussed, one of the Romanists read a carefully prepared paper, in the course of which he said that the Protestants despised and neglected the ancient Fathers, fearing their authority, which was against their views. Then Calvin rose. He began with the sarcastic remark that the people who reverenced the Fathers might spend some little time in turning over their pages before they spoke about them. He quoted from one Father after another,--"Cyprian, discussing the subject now under review in the third epistle of his second book of Epistles, says ... Tertullian, refuting the error of Marcion, says ...
The author of some imperfect commentaries on St. Matthew, which some have attributed to St. John Chrysostom, in the 11th homily about the middle, says ... St. Augustine, in his 23rd Epistle, near the end, says ... Augustine, in one of his homilies on St. John"s Gospel, the 8th or the 9th, I am not sure at this moment which, says ...";[112] and so on.
He knew the ancient Fathers as no one else in the century. He had not taken their opinions second-hand from Peter of Lombardy"s _Sententiae_ as did most of the Schoolmen and contemporary Romanist theologians. It was the first time that he displayed, almost accidentally, his marvellous patristic knowledge,--a knowledge for which Melanchthon could never sufficiently admire him.
But in Geneva the need of the hour was organisation and familiar instruction, and Calvin set himself to work at once. He has told us how he felt. "When I came first to this church," he said, "there was almost nothing. Sermons were preached;[113] the idols had been sought out and burned, but there was no other reformation; everything was in disorder."[114] In the second week of January he had prepared a draft of the reforms he wished introduced. It was presented to the _Small Council_ by Farel; the members had considered it, and were able to transmit it with their opinion to the _Council of the Two Hundred_ on January 15th, 1537. It forms the basis of all Calvin"s ecclesiastical work in Geneva, and deserves study.
The memorandum treats of four things, and four only--the Holy Supper of our Lord (_la Saincte Cene de Nostre Seigneur_), singing in public worship, the religious instruction of children, and marriage.
In every rightly ordered church, it is said, the Holy Supper ought to be celebrated frequently, and well attended. It ought to be dispensed every Lord"s Day at least;[115] such was the practice in the Apostolic Church, and ought to be ours; the celebration is a great comfort to all believers, for in it they are made partakers of the Body and Blood of Jesus, of His death, of His life, of His Spirit, and of all His benefits. But the present weakness of the people makes it undesirable to introduce so sweeping a change, and therefore it is proposed that the Holy Supper be celebrated once each month "in one of the three places where sermons are now delivered--in the churches of St. Peter, St.
Gervais, and de Rive." The celebration, however, ought to be for the whole Church of Geneva, and not simply for those living in the quarters of the town where these churches are. Thus every one will have the opportunity of monthly communion. But if unworthy partakers approach the Table of the Lord, the Holy Supper will be soiled and contaminated. To prevent this, the Lord has placed the _discipline de l"excommunication_ within His Church in order to maintain its purity, and this ought to be used. Perhaps the best way of exercising it is to appoint men of known worth, dwelling in different quarters of the town, who ought to be trusted to watch and report to the ministers all in their neighbourhood who despise Christ Jesus by living in open sin. The ministers ought to warn all such persons not to come to the Holy Supper, and the discipline of excommunication only begins when such warnings are unheeded.
Congregational singing of Psalms ought to be part of the public worship of the Church of Christ; for Psalms sung in this way are really public prayers, and when they are sung hearts are moved and worshippers are incited to form similar prayers for themselves, and to render to G.o.d the like praises with the same loving loyalty. But as all this is unusual, and the people need to be trained, it may be well to select children, to teach them to sing in a clear and distinct fashion in the congregation, and if the people listen with all attention and follow "with the heart what is sung by the mouth," they will, "little by little, become accustomed to sing together" as a congregation.[116]
It is most important for the due preservation of purity of doctrine that children from their youth should be instructed how to give a reason for their faith, and therefore some simple catechism or confession of faith ought to be prepared and taught to the children. At "certain seasons of the year" the children ought to be brought before the pastors, who should examine them and expound the teachings of the catechism.
The ordinance of marriage has been disfigured by the evil and unscriptural laws of the Papacy, and it were well that the whole matter be carefully thought over and some simple rules laid down agreeable to the Word of G.o.d.
This memorandum, for it is scarcely more, was dignified with the name of the _Articles_ (_Articuli de regimine ecclesiae_). It was generally approved by the _Small Council_ and the _Council of Two Hundred_, who made, besides, the definite regulations that the Holy Supper should be celebrated four times in the year, and that announcements of marriages should be made for three successive Sundays before celebration. But it is very doubtful whether the Council went beyond this general approval, or that they gave definite and deliberate consent to Calvin"s proposals about "the discipline of excommunication."
These _Articles_ were superseded by the famous _Ordonnances ecclesiastiques de l"eglise de Geneve_, adopted on Nov. 20th, 1541; but as they are the first instance in which Calvin publicly presented his special ideas about ecclesiastical government, it may be well to describe what these were. To understand them aright, to see the _new_ thing which Calvin tried to introduce into the Church life of the sixteenth century, it is necessary to distinguish between two things which it must be confessed were practically entangled with each other in these days--the attempt to regulate the private life by laws munic.i.p.al or national, and the endeavour to preserve the solemnity and purity of the celebration of the Holy Supper.
When historians, ecclesiastical or other, charge Calvin with attempting the former, they forget that there was no need for him to do so. Geneva, like every other mediaeval town, had its laws which interfered with private life at every turn, and that in a way which to our modern minds seems the grossest tyranny, but which was then a commonplace of city life. Every mediaeval town had its laws against extravagance in dress, in eating and in drinking, against cursing and swearing, against gaming, dances, and masquerades. They prescribed the number of guests to be invited to weddings, and dinners, and dances; when the pipers were to play, when they were to leave off, and what they were to be paid. It must be confessed that when one turns over the pages of town chronicles, or reads such a book as Baader"s _Nurnberger Polizeiordnung_, the thought cannot help arising that the Civic Fathers, like some modern law-makers, were content to place stringent regulations on the statute-book, and then, exhausted by their moral endeavour, had no energy left to put them into practice. But every now and then a righteous fit seized them, and maid-servants were summoned before the Council for wearing silk ap.r.o.ns, or fathers for giving too luxurious wedding feasts, or citizens for working on a Church festival, or a mother, for adorning her daughter too gaily for her marriage. The citizens of every mediaeval town lived under a munic.i.p.al discipline which we would p.r.o.nounce to be vexatious and despotic. Every instance quoted by modern historians to prove, as they think, Calvin"s despotic interference with the details of private life, can be paralleled by references to the police-books of mediaeval towns in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To make them ground of accusation against Calvin is simply to plead ignorance of the whole munic.i.p.al police of the later Middle Ages. To say that Calvin acquiesced in or approved of such legislation is simply to show that he belonged to the sixteenth century.
When towns adopted the Reformation, the spirit of civic legislation did not change, but some old regulations were allowed to lapse, and fresh ones suggested by the new ideas took their place. There was nothing novel in the law which Bern made for the Pays de Vaud in 1536 (Dec.
24th), prohibiting dancing with the exception of "trois danses honetes"
at weddings; but it was a new regulation which prescribed that parents must bring their daughters to the marriage altar "le chiefz couvert." It was not a new thing when Basel in 1530 appointed three honourable men (one from the Council and two from the commonalty) to watch over the morals of the inhabitants of each parish, and report to the Council. It was new, but quite in the line of mediaeval civic legislation, when Bern forbade scandalous persons from approaching the Lord"s Table (1532).
Calvin"s thought moved on another plane. He was distinguished among the Reformers for his zeal to restore again the conditions which had ruled in the Church of the first three centuries. This had been a favourite idea with Lefevre,[117] who had taught it to Farel, Gerard Roussel, and the other members of the "group of Meaux." Calvin may have received it from Roussel; but there is no need to suppose that it did not come to him quite independently. He had studied the Fathers of the first three centuries more diligently than any of his contemporaries. He recognised as none of them did that the Holy Supper of the Lord was the centre of the religious life of the Church, and the apex and crown of her worship.
He saw how careful the Church of the first three centuries had been to protect the sacredness of the simple yet profound rite; and that it had done so by preventing the approach of all unworthy communicants.
Discipline was the nerve of the early Church, and excommunication was the nerve of discipline; and Calvin wished to introduce both. Moreover, he knew that in the early Church it belonged to the membership and to the ministry to exercise discipline and to p.r.o.nounce excommunication. He desired to reintroduce all these distinctive features of the Church of the first three centuries--weekly communion, discipline and excommunication exercised by the pastorate and the members. He recognised that when the people had been accustomed to come to the Lord"s Table only once or twice in the year, it was impossible to introduce weekly communion all at once. But he insisted that the warnings of St. Paul about unworthy communicants were so weighty that notorious sinners ought to be prevented from approaching the Holy Supper, and that the obstinately impenitent should be excommunicated.
This and this alone was the distinctive thing about Calvin"s proposals; this was the new conception which he introduced.
Calvin"s mistake was that, while he believed that the membership and the pastorate should exercise discipline and excommunication, he also insisted that the secular power should enforce the censures of the Church. His ideas worked well in the French Church, a Church "under the cross," and in the same position as the Church of the early centuries.
But the conception that the secular power ought to support with civil pains and penalties the disciplinary decisions of ecclesiastical Courts, must have produced a tyranny not unlike what had existed in the mediaeval Church. Calvin"s ideas, however, were never accepted save nominally in any of the Swiss Churches--not even in Geneva. The very thought of excommunication in the hands of the Church was eminently distasteful to the Protestants of the sixteenth century; they had suffered too much from it as exercised by the Roman Catholic Church. Nor did it agree with the conceptions which the magistrates of the Swiss republics had of their own dignity, that they should be the servants of the ministry to carry out their sentences.[118] The leading Reformers in German Switzerland almost universally held that excommunication, if it ever ought to be practised, should be in the hands of the civil authorities.
Zwingli did not think that the Church should exercise the right of excommunication. He declared that the example of the first three centuries was not to be followed, because in these days the "Church could have no a.s.sistance from the Emperors, who were pagans"; whereas in Zurich there was a Christian magistracy, who could relieve the Church of what must be in any case a disagreeable duty. His successor, Bullinger, the princ.i.p.al adviser of the divines of the English Reformation, went further. Writing to Leo Jud (1532), he declares that excommunication ought not to belong to the Church, and that he doubts whether it should be exercised even by the secular authorities; and in a letter to a Romance pastor (Nov. 24th, 1543) he expounds his views about excommunication, and states how he differs from his _optimos fratres Gallos_ (Viret, Farel, and Calvin).[119] The German Swiss Reformers took the one side, and the French Swiss Reformers took the other; and the latter were all men who had learned to reverence the usages of the Church of the first three centuries, and desired to see its methods of ecclesiastical discipline restored.