History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin. Vol. 1 (of 8)

At the conclusion of the preface to the first volume of the History of the Reformation, the author wrote, ‘This work will consist of four volumes, or at the most five, which will appear successively.’ These five volumes have appeared. In them are described the heroic times of Luther, and the effects produced in Germany and other countries by the characteristic doctrine of that reformer — justification by faith. They present a picture of that great epoch which contained in the germ the revival of christianity in the last three centuries. The author has thus completed the task he had assigned himself; but there still remained another.

The times of Luther were followed by those of Calvin. He, like his great predecessor, undertook to search the Scriptures, and in them he found the same truth and the same life; but a different character distinguishes his work.

The renovation of the individual, of the Church, and of the human race, is his theme. If the Holy Ghost kindles the lamp of truth in man, it is (according to Calvin) ‘to the end that the entire man should be transformed.’ — ‘In the kingdom of Christ,’ he says, ‘it is only the new man that flourishes and has any vigour, and whom we ought to take into account.’

This renovation is, at the same time, an enfranchisement; and we might assign, as a motto to the reformation accomplished by Calvin, as well as to apostolical christianity itself, these words of Jesus Christ: The truth shall make you free.

When the gods of the nations fell, when the Father which is in heaven manifested Himself to the world in the Gospel, adopting as His children those who received into their hearts the glad tidings of reconciliation with God, all these men became brethren, and this fraternity created liberty. From that time a mighty transformation went on gradually, in individuals, in families, and in society itself. Slavery disappeared, without wars or revolutions.

Unhappily, the sun which had for some time gladdened the eyes of the people, became obscured; the liberty of the children of God was lost; new human ordinances appeared to bind men’s consciences and chill their hearts. The Reformation of the sixteenth century restored to the human race what the middle ages had stolen from them; it delivered them from the traditions, laws, and despotism of the papacy; it put an end to the minority and tutelage in which Rome claimed to keep mankind for ever; and by calling upon man to establish his faith not on the word of a priest, but on the infallible Word of God, and by announcing to everyone free access to the Father through the new and saving way — Christ Jesus, it proclaimed and brought about the hour of christian manhood.

An explanation is, however, necessary. There are philosophers in our days who regard Christ as simply the apostle of political liberty. These men should learn that, if they desire liberty outwardly, they must first possess it inwardly. To hope to enjoy the first without the second is to run after a chimera.

The greatest and most dangerous of despotisms is that beneath which the depraved inclination of human nature, the deadly influence of the world, namely, sin, miserably subjects the human conscience. There are, no doubt, many countries, especially among those which the sun of christianity has not yet illumined, that are without civil liberty, and that groan under the arbitrary rule of powerful masters. But, in order to become free outwardly, men must first succeed in being free inwardly. In the human heart there is a vast country to be delivered from slavery — abysses which man cannot cross alone, heights he cannot climb unaided, fortresses he cannot take, armies he cannot put to flight. In order to conquer in this moral battle, man must unite with One stronger than himself — with the Son of God.

If there is anyone, in the present state of society, who is fatigued with the struggle and grieved at finding himself always overcome by evil, and who desires to breathe the light pure air of the upper regions of liberty — let him come to the Gospel; let him seek for union with the Saviour, and in his Holy Spirit he will find a power by which he will be able to gain the greatest of victories.

We are aware that there are men, and good men too, who are frightened at the word ‘liberty;’ but these estimable persons are quite wrong. Christ is a deliverer. The Son, He said, shall make you free. Would they wish to change Him into a tyrant?

There are also, as we well know, some intelligent men, but enemies of the Gospel, who, seeing a long and lamentable procession of despotic acts pass before them in the history of the Church, place them unceremoniously to the account of christianity. Let them undeceive themselves: the oppression that revolts them may be pagan, jewish, papal, or worldly... but it is not christian. Whenever christianity reappears in the world, with its spirit, faith, and primitive life, it brings men deliverance and peace.

The liberty which the Truth brings is not for individuals only: it affects the whole of society. Calvin’s work of renovation, in particular, which was doubtless first of all an internal work, was afterwards destined to exercise a great influence over nations. Luther transformed princes into heroes of the faith, and we have described with admiration their triumphs at Augsburg and elsewhere. The reformation of Calvin was addressed particularly to the people, among whom it raised up martyrs until the time came when it was to send forth the spiritual conquerors of the world. For three centuries it has been producing, in the social condition of the nations that have received it, transformations unknown to former times. And still at this very day, and now perhaps more than ever, it imparts to the men who accept it a spirit of power which makes them chosen instruments, fitted to propagate truth, morality, and civilisation to the ends of the earth.

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The idea of the present work is not a new one: it dates more than forty years back. A writer, from whom the author differs on important points, but whose name is dear to all who know the simple beauty of his character, and have read with care his works on the history of the Church and the history of Dogmas, which have placed him in the foremost rank among the ecclesiastical historians of our day — the learned Neander — speaking with the author at Berlin in 1818, pressed him to undertake a History of the Reformation of Calvin. The author answered that he desired first to describe that of Luther; but that he intended to sketch successively two pictures so similar and yet so different.

The History of the Reformation in Europe in the time of Calvin naturally begins with Geneva.

The Reformation of Geneva opens with the fall of a bishop-prince. This is its characteristic; and if we passed over in silence the heroic struggles which led to his fall, we should expose ourselves to just reproaches on the part of enlightened men.

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