For more than a year Calvin led a wandering and unsettled life; he took refuge first of all at the Château d'Hazeville, near Mantes; next at Angoulême, with the canon Louis du Tillet, who cautiously befriended religious reform; and then at Nérac, where Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre and sister of Francis I., held her court, and offered a welcome asylum to all more or less openly avowed reformers. Calvin met there the learned Le Fèvre d'Etaples, or Faber Stapulensis, at that time an old man, and one of the first who had sown the seeds of the Reformation in France. Thanks to the friendship which the bishop, William Briçonnet, entertained for him, he had begun the good work in the diocese of Meaux, but had not dared to carry it on, or to call it by its true name. Twelve years previously, one of the boldest and most ardent reformers, William Farel, had been staying with him at Meaux, and one day Le Fèvre said to him, with a burst of prophetic conviction: 'My dear William, God will renew the face of the earth, and you will see it, even you.' When he saw Calvin at Nérac in 1533, he often conversed with him, and had a presentiment of his destiny; he 'looked at this young man with a favourable eye,' says Beza, 'as if he foresaw that he would be the author of the restoration of the Church of France.'
Another guest, who was also Queen Margaret's chaplain at Nérac, Gérard Roussel, had much conversation with Calvin, and endeavoured to persuade him that it was necessary 'to purify the house of God, but not to destroy it.' But Calvin had already abandoned that notion; and subsequent events, as well as reflection, confirmed him more and more in the belief that any such attempt would be fruitless.
Whilst he was thus wandering from one place of refuge to another, sheltered by sincere but timorous friends, the contest on both sides and the passions of both parties were becoming daily more and more violent. Charles V. had just granted some concessions to the German Protestants; Francis I. became, in consequence, more hostile to the Protestants of France, in the hope of thereby winning over the recently elected Pope, Paul III. The excesses of the Anabaptists, and their outburst at Munster in 1534, had given rise to great irritation and alarm at the new doctrines and their abettors; and these feelings, although they were strongest in the Catholic governments, were yet general in all. A very rash and indiscreet manifestation on the part of certain French Protestants furnished their enemies with new weapons, by means of which they influenced both the king and the public. Violent placards against the mass and the doctrine of transubstantiation were printed at Neufchâtel, in Switzerland, and in October, 1534, were posted up by night at all the crossways in Paris, and were even affixed to the chamber-door of Francis I. in the castle of Blois. The king's anger knew no bounds: he determined to make the most ample reparation to the Catholic faith, and at the same time to give a terrible lesson to Protestant audacity. On the 21st of January, 1535, a solemn procession left the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois; John du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, bore the sacred elements in his hands, whilst the three royal princes of France and the Duke de Vendôme walked on either side, and held the canopy over him; the king followed with a lighted torch in his hand, walking between the Cardinals de Bourbon and de Lorraine. At every oratory which they passed, the king gave his torch to the Cardinal de Lorraine, and then joining his hands, he humbly prostrated himself and implored the forgiveness of God for his people. When the procession was ended, the king stayed to dinner with John du Bellay, and there was afterwards a meeting of the leading members of all the religious orders. The king took his seat upon a kind of throne which had been erected for him. From thence he uttered a discourse which breathed sorrow for his realm, and curses on the authors of an outrage against the faith and the Church. He ended by saying, 'Whatever progress this contagion may have made already, the remedy is still easy, if all of you are animated by the same zeal which is felt by me—if you forget the ties of flesh and blood, remember only that you are Christians, and denounce without pity all those who are partisans or abettors of this heresy. As for me, if my right arm was gangrened, I would cut off my right arm; and if my sons who now hear me were to suffer so great a calamity as to fall into these cursed and detestable opinions, I would give them up, and offer them as a sacrifice to God.' [Footnote 56] At these words the Constable de Montmorency [Footnote 57] said to the king, 'Sire, you must begin with your sister.' 'Oh, as for her,' answered the king, 'she loves me so well that she will never believe anything except what I wish.'
[Footnote 56: Garnier, continuateur de Vellay et Villaret,
Histoire de France, vol. xxiv. pp. 536-540.]
[Footnote 57: He was not made Constable of France until
1538.]
On the 29th of January an edict was promulgated which condemned those who harboured heretics, 'Lutherans and others,' to the same penalties as 'the heretics aforesaid,' unless they gave up their guests to justice. An accuser received one-fourth of the victim's goods which were confiscated. A few days before this, on the 13th of January, 1535, Francis I. signed an edict which was still more extraordinary as the work of a king who was a patron of literature: he decreed the abolition of printing because it was the means of propagating heresy, and forbade the printing of any book on pain of death. Six weeks later, however, on the 26th of February, the king was ashamed of such a decree, and delayed its execution indefinitely. [Footnote 58 ]
[Footnote 58: Garnier, Histoire de France, vol. xxiv. p. 140. Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol. viii. p. 223.]
These edicts were preceded and accompanied by numerous punishments. 'The Journal of a Citizen of Paris,' the writer of which was a Catholic of the period, enumerates with a certain satisfaction twenty-four heretics burnt alive in Paris between the 10th of November, 1534, and the 3rd of May, 1535, without taking into account many who were condemned to less cruel sufferings. The trials were now conducted with great rapidity. The judge of criminal causes in the Court of the Châtelet, passed summary judgment, and the 'Parlement' confirmed his sentence. At first the victims had been strangled before they were burnt, but before long they were burnt alive, in accordance with the custom of the Spanish Inquisition. Even this was not enough, and those who were condemned to die were suspended by iron chains to a kind of seesaw, which 'swung them high into the air and then lowered them' into the fire until at length the executioner cut the rope and the victim fell into the flames. The records of these trials were burnt together with the victims, in order that the reformers might not be able to obtain any reliable account of their martyrs.
Some Protestant historians, both ancient and modern, have asserted that Francis I. was present on several occasions at these horrible spectacles, and they have specially named as one of them the 21st of January, 1535. Not one of the principal contemporary chronicles, either Catholic or Protestant, confirms this imputation; [Footnote 59] we find no mention of it in the 'Journal du Bourgeois de Paris,' nor in Beza, nor in Jean Crespin, the compiler of 'The Book of Martyrs from John Huss to those of the year 1534.' Florimond de Ræmond, a chronicler of the sixteenth century, who was for a short time a Protestant, but very speedily returned to the Catholic faith, and in 1572 was counsellor to the 'Parlement' of Bordeaux, asserts that the sight of these tortures was far from producing that satisfaction and approbation in the public mind which was expected from them.
[Footnote 59: I think M. Michelet and M. Henri Martin were right in rejecting it.]
'Everywhere,' he says, 'the fires were lighted; and although on the one hand the justice and severity of the laws restrained not a few and kept them to their duty, yet on the other hand the stubborn resolution of those who were dragged to execution greatly astonished many. For they saw simple, silly women seeking fierce torments in order to make trial of their faith, and going to their death singing psalms, and with no other cry than Christ, the Saviour; young maidens walking more gaily to the place of torture than they would have done to the nuptial couch; men rejoicing when they saw the terrible implements and preparations for death, and although half-burnt and roasted, yet immoveable as rocks when the waves of torture dashed over them. These sad and incessant sights excited some disquietude not only in the minds of simple folk, but among those of the higher classes, for they could not persuade themselves that these people had not reason on their side, since they maintained their opinions with so much resolution and at the cost of life. Others had compassion upon them, were grieved to see them so persecuted, and when they beheld the remains of those sufferers, their blackened corpses hanging in vile chains in the public streets, they could not restrain their tears; nay, their very hearts wept as well as their eyes.'
It was in the presence of such facts as these, and under the influence of the horror and terror with which they inspired the reformers, that Calvin resolved to leave his own country and to seek elsewhere safety, liberty, and the possibility of defending a cause which had become all the dearer to him because it was so cruelly persecuted. He was too shrewd not to perceive that he must quickly exhaust the different asylums open to him: Queen Margaret did not wish to go too far in opposition to the king her brother; the canon Louis du Tillet was half afraid that his fine library might be compromised through the use made of it by his guest, who was expounding and preaching in the neighbourhood of Angoulême; Gérard Roussel, the Queen's chaplain, thought Calvin was going too far, and was afraid that if the Reformation succeeded completely, the bishopric of Oléron, which he wanted and at a later period obtained, would be suppressed; Le Fèvre d'Etaples, who had more sympathy with Calvin than any of the others, was seventy-nine years old, and desired that his days might end in peace.
Calvin left Angoulême and Nérac, and stayed for a time at Poitiers, where the friends of religious reform who gathered round him, eager for his words, celebrated for the first time the Lord's Supper according to the evangelical rites, in a cave near the town, which is called to this day Calvin's Cave. He was soon compelled to leave Poitiers, and went to Orleans and thence secretly to Paris, where he saw a man whose name was one day to spread a dark stain over his own, the Spaniard, Michael Servetus, a guilty heretic in his eyes. Calvin offered to meet him at a conference, and discuss with him the doctrine of the Trinity, which the Spaniard had just then openly attacked. Servetus accepted the challenge, but did not appear when the appointed time arrived. Possibly some angry scorn lingered in Calvin's heart, who left Paris and went to Noyon, to take final leave of his family. At length he set out for Strasburg, already one of the strongholds of the Reformation, where he had many friends—among others, the learned Bucer, with whom he had been in constant correspondence. He arrived there probably about the beginning of the year 1535; but he did not settle at Strasburg; he preferred Basle, the place where men of letters, scholars, theologians, and celebrated printers were to be found—Erasmus, Simon Grynæus, and Froben— and where he hoped to find the leisure which he needed in order to produce the great work which he had projected, his "Institutes of the Christian Religion."
The production of the 'Institutes' was by no means the most difficult or meritorious act of Calvin's life, for a man's superiority and force of character are not manifested in the labour of solitary thought, but in the contests of public and practical life. Geneva was the stage on which we can best see how Calvin comported himself as a man; but the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion' were, and are still, the noblest monument of the greatness of mind and originality of idea which distinguished him in his own century. More than that, I believe this book to be the most valuable and enduring of all his labours; for those churches which are specially known as the reformed Churches of France, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, and the United States of America, received from Calvin's Institutes the doctrine, organization and discipline which, in spite of sharp trials, grave mistakes, and claims that are incompatible with the progress of liberty, have still, for more than three centuries, been the source of all their strength and vitality.
The preface of the book is, in itself and apart from what follows, very remarkable and very characteristic of the man. Calvin dedicated his work to Francis I., to the persecutor of French reformers during one of the fiercest outbreaks of persecution, and at a time when he himself had been compelled to leave his country in order to live in security, and speak with freedom. 'And do not think,' he says to the king, 'that I endeavour here to plead my own individual defence, in order to obtain permission to return to the land of my birth; for, although I have such an affection for it as it is in human nature to feel, yet, under existing circumstances, I do not suffer any great grief at being absent from it. But I plead the cause of all the faithful, nay the cause of Christ, which is at the present time so completely rent and trampled under foot throughout your kingdom that it seems to be in a very desperate case. And all this has come to pass more through the tyranny of certain Pharisees than by your desire.'
Calvin was the boldest, and at the same time the least revolutionary among the reformers of the sixteenth century; he was devoid of fear, but he had great deference and consideration for authority, even whilst he was openly opposing it. It appears that the original idea of his great work occurred to him in 1534, whilst he was at Angoulême, on a visit to the canon Louis du Tillet. 'But nothing was farther from my thoughts, Sire,' he says in the preface, 'than to write things which should be laid before your Majesty; my intention was only to teach certain rudiments, so that those who were moved by some good impulse from God might be instructed in true piety. And chiefly, by this my labour, I wished to serve our people of France, of whom I saw many hungering and thirsting for Jesus Christ, but very few who had any true knowledge of him.' The idea of the book was therefore, at first, exclusively religious, and it was destined for the use of the followers of the French reformers. But when Calvin was about to publish it, he again becomes prudent and politic; he addresses his book to the King of France, invokes the authority of the persecutor, and endeavours to convince his reason. He shows himself to be a respectful and faithful subject at the same time that he is an independent Christian and a reformer.
The language and conduct of Calvin were certainly not owing to any uncertainty in his convictions, or any feeling of timidity in the presence of royalty; in this preface he often forgets or puts aside the very prudence and policy which induced him to address the king. He places Francis I. in a very difficult position, and hopelessly offends him by the brutal violence and insulting familiarity with which, whilst addressing the king, he speaks of the Catholic Church and of its dignitaries; sometimes he encourages, sometimes threatens the king himself; he undertakes to prove that the reformers are not insurgents, that they do not meditate any plot against the crown or threaten any danger to the state; he goes so far as to promise that, even if the king refuses to do them justice, and if he continues to allow them 'still to be cruelly persecuted by imprisonment, scourging, torture, confiscation, and the stake, yet in our patience we shall possess our souls, and shall wait for the mighty hand of the Lord.' But at the same time Calvin predicts that the Divine wrath will overtake the king if he persists in persecuting the reformers: 'For he is a true king who, in the government of his kingdom, recognises that he is indeed the minister of God; and, on the contrary, he who does not reign to the end that he may set forth and show the glory of God is not a king but a brigand. They are deceived who expect long prosperity in a kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of God; that is to say, by his Holy Word.' From page to page we see this alternation between religious zeal and policy; the author is aiming at a revolution, but all the time we see in the reformer the man who respects law and order.
The question whether the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion' was written first in French or in Latin has been often discussed and is not yet decided. The preface from which I have quoted the preceding passages is in French, and bears date Basle, 'the first day of August, 1535.' I have it now before me in a copy of the French edition which was published at Geneva in 1562; my copy formerly belonged to Sully, and the margin is full of notes in his own handwriting. It is said that no French edition of the work itself bearing date 1535 can now be discovered; the earliest edition known is that which was published at Basle in 1536, in Calvin's own name, and of which both the body of the work and the preface are in Latin. There was no French edition with date and the author's name until 1540. I do not intend at this time to plunge into the controversy that has been excited by the chronological difficulty which envelopes the history of this book; I have studied it carefully, and am inclined to think, with many of Calvin's latest and most learned historians, that the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion' was written originally in French, and published at Basle in 1535, without the author's name, and that it was written first of all and specially for the French nation, and was intended to remove from the mind of Francis I. and the general public, the impressions produced by the recent excesses of the Anabaptists, which their enemies laid to the charge of the reformers also. It is certain that the dedication to Francis I. was written and published first of all in French, and on the first of August, 1535: these facts are beyond dispute. How was it that a preface written in French, and dated 1535, was put at the head of a book written in Latin, and not published until 1536? The book itself, in this first edition, was probably nothing more than the rather hasty and incomplete anonymous work of a young man as yet little known, who had just left France, and was still much more French than, as he became later, European. It was a first work, a sketch rather than such a treatise as the title would lead the reader to expect. Calvin himself points this out in the preface to his 'Commentaries on the Psalms,' in which he gives many important details connected with his own life and works. That which seems to me the most probable solution of the question is still beset with many difficulties, and I will not linger to discuss them. Be this as it may, from 1536 to 1559 Calvin published eight editions of his 'Christian Institutes,' and they were successively revised and enlarged to such a degree as ultimately to form a work which differs from the first known edition both in extent and form, although it is identical in spirit and in all essential points. The edition of 1559 is the last which Calvin prepared for the press, and it has therefore served as the basis for all other editions and for the numerous translations which were made at a later period. It is undoubtedly the true work of Calvin, and contains his latest injunctions respecting the doctrines of the reformed Church, the rules for its internal government and its relation to the state, its position in the commonwealth as well as its faith and Christian discipline.
In order thoroughly to understand the fundamental idea and true aim of Calvin's book we must transport ourselves to the precise period when he first originated and wrote it. Luther, born in 1483, twenty-six years before Calvin, had accomplished, between the years 1517 and 1532, his work of struggle and rupture with the Church of Rome; the Confession of Augsburg had been published; [Footnote 60] the Protestant princes had entered into the Smalcaldic league; [Footnote 61] the religious peace of Nuremberg had been concluded and ratified by the Diet of Ratisbon; [Footnote 62 ] in fact, when Calvin left France and took refuge at Basle in 1534, the German Reformation was established in central and northern Europe. But the new work was not so far advanced in western Europe, especially in France and the neighbouring countries speaking the French language. In them the war against the Church of Rome had also been eagerly commenced, the demolition of the ancient edifice had been pursued with ardour, but the work was hindered and opposed by the people, and the construction of a new Church had not even been commenced. The reformed Church appeared here and there, but without any bond of unity or organization, and even in its cradle a prey to uncertainty, confusion, and anarchy.
[Footnote 60: In 1530.]
[Footnote 61: In 1530.]
[Footnote 62: In 1532.]
Calvin was so strongly impressed by this fact that it became an object of constant anxiety to him; his intellect was so clear and strong that he could not fail to understand the full extent of the evil which was implied in the wavering, divided, and scattered state of the reformation in France, and he set to work to remedy it. His first act was to produce his 'Institutes of the Christian Religion,' and by so doing he took the most effectual means of creating a religious and social organization for the reformation which was at that time springing up, in and around France.
It is by its doctrines and its institutions, by its faith and its discipline, that a religious society is founded and maintained. The first great work of Calvin was devoted to proclaiming the grounds of the reformed faith, its rules of church government, organization, and discipline, and its rights and duties in connexion with the state. He was occupied during his whole life either in putting into practice the principles which he had imposed upon the Church, or in inducing his followers to carry them out.
As to that which concerns faith, his idea may be traced throughout the whole of the 'Institutes.' He does not put forth new doctrines and purely philosophical notions when he calls upon his contemporaries to join the cause of religious reform. He does not desire to innovate, but to restore, and he opposes the authority of Jesus Christ and the Gospel to that of the Church of Rome and tradition. His own position in this great enterprise was full of difficulty; this was the time of Rabelais, Erasmus, and Montaigne on the one hand, and of the popes Julius II., Leo X., Cardinal Cajetan, and the Dominican Tetzel on the other. In the presence of two opposing parties, both hostile to him, of unbelieving or sceptical freethinkers and of blind adherents of the Papacy, Calvin lived and moved. He had, at the same time, to protest against intellectual licence and ecclesiastical infallibility. He faces both, however, with his opinion clearly defined, his side taken once for all, and his position maintained with all his unbending strength. He has the most entire and ardent belief in the Divine revelation contained in the Bible. For him the Christian religion, as contained in the Old and New Testaments, is a fact at the same time supernatural and historical, an authentic and potent reality, the starting-point of all his thoughts and the law of his whole life. Three of the first chapters of his book bear the following titles:—
'In order to draw near to God the Creator we have need of the Holy Scriptures for our guide and teacher.'
'Human reason furnishes proofs which are quite strong enough to remove all doubts concerning the truth of the Scriptures.'
'The authority of the Scriptures must be sanctioned by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, in order that we may fully believe it; and it is an impious fiction to say that this authority is derived from the judgment of the Church.' [Footnote 63]
[Footnote 63: Calvin, Institution de la Religion chrétienne, vol. i. chaps, vi. viii. and ix. edition of 1559.]
In this circle the mind of Calvin moves. His book is only the development and commentary of the great Christian truths, facts, dogmas, and precepts with which the Holy Scriptures furnish him.
I cannot attempt to follow him in his vast work, to discuss his interpretations of gospel facts and words, and his deductions from them. Calvin's books, his life, and the Church established by him, show that the system which he founded was both strong and compact, wanting neither in logical accuracy nor in practical and available power. For more than three centuries it has embodied the faith and regulated the lives of many millions of Christians in France, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, England, and America. In spite of its imperfections it is, on the whole, one of the noblest edifices ever erected by the mind of man, and one of the mightiest codes of moral law which has ever guided him. I will only pause here to notice two of Calvin's doctrines, which I look upon as grave errors, opposed, in my opinion, to the true spirit of Christianity, and at the present time out of harmony with the intellectual and social progress of the human race.
The earliest complaints and attacks made by the reformers were called forth by assertions of the authority and infallibility of the pope. Luther was the first and mightiest, as he was also the most impetuous leader of the assault. Calvin followed in the same path; but he looked upon the work of demolition as almost completed, and his own special work was to replace the authority and infallibility of the Church by the authority and infallibility of the sacred monument of divine revelation—that is, to put the Bible in the place of the Pope: everything in the name and in virtue of the Bible, nothing in opposition to or without the Bible. This was Calvin's fixed idea, and the supreme law of the Church which he established.
The extent and success of his work sufficiently prove that he discerned the needs and religious instincts of his age. Calvin's reformed Church at once took up an important position which it has now occupied for three centuries. Catholicism and Protestantism may continue their long struggle, but they cannot underrate each other's strength; they have both survived many reverses; they live on in spite of many faults, and at the present time they are both face to face with the same enemies. Both are now impelled by reason and commanded by necessity to acknowledge their faults and to recognise the cause of their reverses. In so far as the future is in the hands of man, their future depends on the extent to which they have attained the clearness of vision which belongs to long life and experience.
I am a Protestant, and for that very reason I intend to speak exclusively of Calvin's errors and faults as a Protestant reformer.
When he proclaimed the absolute infallibility and universal authority of the Holy Scriptures, he failed to recognise the true object and meaning of the divine revelation which they contain. It is a revelation, which refers to the relation between man and God, the duties of man towards God and towards his fellow-men. This is indicated from the very beginning by the nature of the subjects treated of, and it is confirmed by the Decalogue and the Gospel. I may quote here some of the reflections which I have already published on this subject, for day by day I find that they represent my thoughts more accurately. Like Calvin, 'many pious and learned men uphold the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; they assert that not only the thoughts but the words in which they are clothed are divinely inspired—every word on every subject, the language as well as the doctrine. This assertion seems to me to indicate a deplorable confusion, giving rise to profound misconceptions as to the meaning and aim of the sacred volume, and causing its authority to be very seriously compromised. God never intended to teach men grammar by a supernatural process, and he no more intended to teach them geology, astronomy, geography, and chronology than grammar. Not on these do the rays of divine light fall, but on the relation of man to his Creator, and on the laws of his faith and life. God dictated to Moses the laws which regulate the duties of man towards God and towards his fellow-man; he left it to Newton to discover the laws which govern the universe. The inspiration of the Sacred Volume relates not only to religion and morality, but to religion and morality alone, and apart from any mere human science.
'I have read the Bible over and over again, with the greatest care, with no intention either of criticizing it or apologizing for it, but with the single aim of learning to understand its character and meaning aright. The more I have advanced in this study, and have been able to live as it were in the Bible, the more clearly have I apprehended two contemporaneous facts, a divine fact and a human fact, which are at the same time entirely distinct and closely connected. In every part of the Bible I find God and man: God, a real and personal being, not affected by any external incident, and in whom there is no change, always the same and immoveable though the centre of universal movement, and Himself giving this unprecedented definition of Himself, "I am that I am;" and man, an incomplete, imperfect being, subject to change, full of flaws and contradictions, of lofty instincts and degrading tendencies, inquiring and yet ignorant, capable of good and evil, and able to attain perfection in spite of his imperfection. Throughout the whole Bible we see God and man, their union and their antagonism: God watching over man and guiding him; man sometimes accepting and sometimes rejecting the influence of God. If I might be allowed to use such an expression, I would say that the Divine person and the human person are brought face to face with each other; we see them acting on each other, and influencing events. We see the education of man after his creation, the education of a religious and moral being, neither more nor less. At the same time, whilst God elevates he does not transform mankind; he created man intelligent and free; he illuminates the laws of his spiritual and moral life with a Divine light; but he leaves him to struggle with great dangers and much peril, until he learns the right use of his intellect and will. And at every period, in all circumstances, even whilst he still continues to influence him, God takes man just as he finds him, with all his passions, vices, weakness, error, and ignorance, just what he has made himself, and is making himself every day, by the good or evil use of his intellect and his will. This, I say, is the Bible, and its history of the relations between God and man.
'What a striking contrast is brought out in this history, and yet what a close and strong bond between those whom I scarcely dare to call the two performers! In no tradition or poetical invention, in no religious mythology does God appear so exalted, so pure, so free from all the imperfection and disquietude of human nature, so immutable and serene, so truly God as in the Bible. On the other hand, among no people, in no historical narrative or document is man portrayed as more violent, more barbarous, more brutal, more cruel, more prone to ingratitude and rebellion against God, than among the Hebrews. Nowhere else, and in no other history does the distance seem so great between the divine sphere and the human region—between the sovereign and his subjects. And yet the Israelites never separate themselves from God. In spite of their vices and evil passions they always turn again to the Lord, and always acknowledge his law and his government, even at the very time that they violate the one and rebel against the other. God is, however, nowhere manifested as so solicitous with regard to man—at the same time so exacting and so sympathetic; he does not change a man at one stroke, and by a single act of his sovereign will; he watches all his short-comings, his weakness and his errors, but never forsakes him; he holds the torch of Divine light always before his eyes, and never loses his interest in the destiny of mankind. Religion and morality are the subjects which not only predominate, but which are exclusively presented in the sacred volume: nowhere else have the aspirations and labours of human science held so insignificant a position in human thought and society; God, and the relation between man and God,—this, and this only, occupies every page of the Bible.
'I do not hesitate to affirm that science, with its special and manifold subjects, astronomy, geology, geography, chronology, physical science, historical criticism, all are foreign to the plan and design of the Holy Scriptures. The study of science is the work of the human intellect, and of the human intellect alone: science is a fruit that ripens slowly, and is only brought to perfection by the intellectual labour of many generations. If then, in addition to those facts which are expressly declared to be miraculous, you find statements and assertions in the Bible which are in opposition to the established truths of science, do not be astonished or dismayed; it is not the word of God on these subjects; it is the language of the men of that age, and it accords with the measure of their knowledge, or rather of their ignorance; it is the language which they spoke, and in which it was necessary to speak to them if they were to understand what was said.
'The fact is so simple that I am astonished that it should be necessary to assert it: in all times and places, among all nations and in every age, there are spontaneous instincts, and common aspirations and ideas in matters of religion and morality, which not only clothe themselves, as it were, in the same language, but have the power of making their language intelligible to all those to whom it is addressed, in spite of the difference which there may be in their several degrees of education and civilization. But we meet with nothing similar in purely scientific matters; the majority of men see and speak, not in accordance with the facts of science, but according to appearances; and they understand, or do not understand, they listen, or do not listen, just in so far as they have any knowledge of science, or are ignorant of it. What would the Hebrews in the desert have said, or the Jews who gathered round the Apostles, or the savages of Polynesia addressed by the first Christian missionaries, if they had been told that it is the earth which revolves round the sun, and that the earth is a spheroid, inhabitable and inhabited at the opposite points of its circumference? What more natural and inevitable than the agreement of the language of Scripture with the imperfect knowledge which men possessed of scientific subjects, even although the light of Divine inspiration was, at the same time, shed upon the laws which govern the spiritual and moral nature of human beings?
'No one admires and honours science more than I do: the study of science is one of man's highest vocations, but it has nothing to do with the relation between man and God, and the influence of God upon man. God is not a lofty philosopher who reveals scientific truths to men in order that they may have the noble pleasure of contemplating and disseminating them; the search for these truths is a purely human labour. The divine work is grander and more complicated, and it is essentially practical. That which all men and every man needs and craves, the most ignorant as well as the most learned, that which humanity demands from God is the knowledge of those religious and moral truths which ought to influence the soul and life, and in accordance with which the life of the future will be regulated. God meets this requirement of the whole human race; and the Bible is addressed to all that they may be saved by leading a new life, not that they may be well taught in matters of science.' [Footnote 64]
[Footnote 64: Meditations sur la Religion chrétienne, vol. i. p. 151; vol. iii. p. 27.]
If Calvin had lived in the nineteenth century I am inclined to believe that his clear and vigorous intellect would have preserved him from falling into this error of attributing universal infallibility to every word contained in the Bible, and that he would have recognised the aim and the true tendency of those Divine revelations of which the Bible is so noble a monument. Even a hundred years after his death the labours of the great critics of the seventeenth century, of Richard Simon, Bayle, and John Leclerc, would have helped him, by the clear light which they threw on this question, and would have shown him how to shield the Christian faith effectually both from improper attacks and from the legitimate discoveries of human science. The domain of science is not the same as that of Christian faith, nor are they equal; the very aim of revelation has been to enunciate truths, and to shed a light into the soul which no amount of scientific labour would have sufficed to procure. This is the real and true character of the Bible; it is from this that all its authority proceeds, and by this, at the same time, that the limits of its sphere are defined.
Calvin's second grave error consists, as I think, in his theory of free-will and predestination. He denies free-will, and believes that the destiny of every man, his future salvation or damnation, is determined from all eternity by the irrevocable decrees of God; and at the same time that he affirms this two-fold doctrine, he exhausts himself in ineffectual attempts to assert and uphold the moral obligation and responsibility of man in this dual condition.
I have no wish at the present time to enter into a discussion which, in all times and in every country, has divided, and will continue to divide, all serious and earnest men, whether they are theologians or philosophers. I repeat that this discussion will continue to cause division, because it turns upon a problem which men cannot help discussing, and which they are not able to solve—that is, the reconciliation of human freedom with Divine prescience and omnipotence. Forty years ago, in my course of 'Lectures on the History of Civilization in France,' I gave a historical account of this difficult question, and of the discussion concerning it between Pelagius and St. Augustine in the fifth century. And now, in order to describe Calvin's thoughts on this subject with accuracy, and to show their influence on his life, I must recall some of the ideas which I developed forty years ago, as well as those which I have more recently expressed in my 'Meditations on the Christian Religion,' with regard to the intimate union of Christianity and morality.
In order to understand and appreciate that fact connected with man which we call his freedom, his free-will, we must disengage it from all foreign elements, and consider it apart from them. Owing to the want of this precaution, it has been very often misunderstood; men have not studied the fact of free-will, and that fact only: they have looked at it and described it in a confused manner, together with a number of other facts which are, so to speak, bound up with it in the moral life of mankind, and yet which differ from it very essentially. For example, free-will has been said to consist in the power of choosing between different motives of action; and the act of deliberation, together with the act of judgment which follows it, have been said to constitute the essential part of free-will. It is nothing of the kind; these are the acts of the intellect, and not of the will; different motives of action—interests, opinions, inclinations, and others—pass before the intellect, which deliberates, compares, assigns a value, weighs, and ultimately passes judgment. This is a preparatory labour which precedes the action of the will, but does not constitute that action. When the act of deliberation has taken place, when a man has investigated the motives presented to him and their worth, then comes in an entirely new fact,—the action of the will. The man forms a resolution, that is to say, we come to a new series of facts which have their origin in the man himself, of which he looks upon himself as the author; which exist because it is his will, and would not exist if it were not his will; which would be other than they are if he chose to make them other than they are. Keep apart from this act all recollection of the deliberation of the intellect, of motives recognised and appreciated, concentrate your thoughts on that single moment when the man 'forms his resolution,' when he says 'I will,' and ask yourself—ask the man himself to tell you in all sincerity whether he could not have willed differently. Undoubtedly you would answer, as he would answer, 'Yes.' And it is at this moment and in this manner that the freedom of the human will is revealed. It resides altogether in the resolution which a man forms as the result of deliberation; it is this power of forming a resolution which is the special action of the man, existing by his will and his will only; it is a distinct act, separate from all the facts which precede and surround it; it is the same under the most dissimilar circumstances, always alike whatever may be its motives or results.
This action of the will is recognised at the very moment of its exercise; we have the same knowledge of our freedom as of our existence; we feel and know that we are free. But at the same time that we know ourselves to be free, and recognise in ourselves the faculty of originating by our own will a certain series of actions, at that very time we discover that our will is placed under the control of a certain law which constrains but does not coerce us; and which takes different names,—is called the moral law, reason, justice, good sense,—according to the occasions on which it is applied. Man is free, but even according to his own notion this is not an arbitrary freedom; he may use it in an absurd, mad, unjust, or guilty manner; but every time that he does use it, there is a certain law which ought to govern him. The study of this law is his duty: it is the task imposed upon him by his freedom.
We soon perceive that we can never altogether perform this task, that we can never act in perfect accordance with reason or the moral law; that whilst we are always free, that is, morally capable of conforming to the law, we do not in fact accomplish all that we ought to do, or all that we can do. Whenever we question ourselves closely, and answer sincerely, we are compelled to acknowledge, 'I could have done it if I would;' our will has been weak and cowardly, and has not gone to the full extent of our duty or our power. Hence arises a feeling which is found in all men under different forms, the feeling of the need of external help, of some support for the human will, of a strength to be added to its strength which may sustain it in time of need. Man seeks this support, this help in time of need on all sides; he asks it from the encouragement of friends, from the counsel of the wise, from the example and approbation of his fellows, and from fear of punishment. There is no one who cannot find in his own daily conduct innumerable proofs of this impulse of the soul, this eagerness to find out of itself an aid to the liberty which it feels to be at the same time real but insufficient; and as the visible world and human society do not always respond to this desire, as they also are tainted with the same insufficiency, which is at length perceived, the soul seeks the support which it needs in something apart from the visible world, above these human relations; it addresses itself to God, and calls to him for help. Prayer is the most elevated, but not the only form under which this universal feeling of the weakness of the human will, and its resort to an external and yet kindred strength, is manifested.
In addition to these facts which occur in the human soul and are clearly manifested whenever we make use of our free-will, there is another fact more obscure, but which I consider equally capable of proof. Certain changes, certain moral phenomena take place and are manifest in us, the origin of which we cannot refer to any act of our own will, and of which we do not recognise ourselves as the author. I will take an example of this class of facts in the first place from the domain of intellect, where they occur more frequently and can be more easily investigated. I suppose there is no one who has not at some time or other made painful efforts at night to recall some idea, some event, and fallen asleep without succeeding in the attempt; waking on the morrow, he has immediately and without effort accomplished his aim. I draw one single deduction from this; that, independently of the voluntary and premeditated activity of the mind, there is a certain unconscious and involuntary action of the intellect which we do not control, which we cannot follow in its development, and which, nevertheless, is real and fruitful in result,—a kind of unconscious growth which is not the act of our will, but bears fruit spontaneously. Now that which takes place in the realm of intellect takes place also in the moral world; certain changes take place in the man which he cannot attribute to himself and which he cannot account for by the action of his own will. On a certain day or at a certain moment he finds himself in an altogether new moral condition, quite unlike that to which he is accustomed and which he knows. He cannot discover the sources of these changes; he has no recollection of having acquiesced in or originated them. In other words, the moral man, even in the exercise of his own free-will, is not altogether complete in himself; he learns from experience and feels that causes and powers, or to speak more correctly, a cause, a power external to himself, acts on him and changes him without reference to his own will: in his moral life as well as in the whole of his destiny he finds the incomprehensible and the unknown.
Thus in the unconscious and free development of the human soul, moral and religious facts are evolved, called forth and united naturally. Man recognises of himself the distinction between moral good and evil, recognises moral law, moral liberty, moral responsibility, moral excellence or unworthiness; and at the same time he recognises that the moral law is not a human invention imposed by human consent, neither is it one of those immutable laws by which the material world is governed. That is, he recognises a higher power from whom the moral law emanates, whom it reveals, and in whose presence he either keeps or violates this law. God a moral ruler, and man a free subject, are revealed to us side by side in the facts which constitute the moral nature of man. And just as a moral law without a sovereign legislator who ordains it is an incomplete and inexplicable fact,—a river without a source, so also man's moral responsibility without a supreme judge who applies the law, is incomplete and inexplicable, a river without an outlet, which flows on until it loses itself we know not where. God is implied in the moral law as its first author, and God is included in the moral responsibility of man as his ultimate judge.
But if a man discovers and acknowledges the existence of God in himself and in the world around him, he cannot study and investigate, or explain, nor does he know God as he knows himself and the external world which we call nature. Man and the external world are mirrors in which God is reflected; but this reflection or revelation is limited by the measure and limitations of our own mind, and does not manifest the plenitude and immensity of the divine nature. Those special and direct revelations which are treasured up for us in the sacred volume only disclose an infinite perspective of divine action, they do not give a full and clear knowledge of that action. Even when we acknowledge and worship God, we find that there is that in him which is not only unknown, but unknowable by man; and that although he has manifested himself, he is still impenetrable and inexplicable. Why has God created man? Why has he created him free, that is, capable of deciding his actions by his own will alone, in spite of the many external motives which seek to influence him, and in a world governed by fixed and inflexible laws? What is the nature and what the extent of the moral responsibility which, according to his own account, man as a free being incurs? What part was assigned to him, and what influence did God give him over his own life and his own destiny when he created him free? Is it possible that he assigned him no part at all, no influence at all, that beforehand and irrevocably he decided the life and fate of man whom he created free, as he did that of the material world which is governed by inflexible laws? Do we not borrow the terms of merely human language when we use the word prescience as applied to God,—God an eternal being, everywhere eternally present, to whom we cannot apply our notions of space and time, and of that succession of events in the midst of which our fleeting life passes? These are questions of supreme importance which we naturally ask ourselves, and which bear witness to the nobility of human nature, but which we are not permitted to answer; for in order to answer them we should need to know and comprehend God, his nature and his designs, as God knows and comprehends himself and his own actions. There is no answer to these questions; even in the midst of Christian light man must resign himself to Christian ignorance; all his knowledge of his own being and of the world around him will never give him a knowledge of God, or of the design of God in the creation of the world and of mankind.
And this brings me to Calvin's great mistake. He was much more engrossed in speculations concerning God than in the observation of mankind. God is, so to say, the fixed centre and starting-point of all his thoughts. He meditates and imagines, and if I dared I would say that he presents God to us, and describes him as if he knew him thoroughly, and had exclusive possession of him. He then summons man into the presence of God, and denies or calmly rejects everything in him which does not accord with or cannot be adjusted to the God whom he has conceived and depicted. He denies the free-will of man and affirms his predestination, because he imagines that man's free-will is opposed to the idea which he has formed of the omnipotence and omniscience of God, and that his predestination is necessary to it. Calvin had a very imperfect knowledge and understanding of man because he professed to know and understand too much about God.
I find proof in the works of Dr. Chalmers, the most eminent Protestant theologian of our time, a faithful follower of Calvin, and a man profoundly versed in science, that the state of Calvin's mind must, in fact, have been that which I have described; and that at first he was led to deny the free-will of man and affirm his predestination, in order to prove his assumed knowledge of the nature of God and of his design in creating the universe. I find the following passage in Chalmers' 'Institutes of Theology:'—
'It is clear, that were there no such necessity in the world of matter—did it not in every instance take a precise direction from the laws and the forces which the Deity hath established over it—were there any of its phenomena, whereof no other account could be given, than that they sprung from a random contingency, in virtue of which another set of phenomena might have as readily occurred as the actual ones;—then, at this rate, the world of inanimate things would drift uncontrollably away from the authority of its God; nor would it be any longer his will that overruled the condition and the history of the universe which he formed. Now, it is the very same with the world of mind. … If this class of events, if the movements of intelligent and animated nature, can be referred to no moving forces directed by and dependent upon him, of whom we have been taught to believe, that he hath ordained the mechanism of the spiritual world, and presides over all the evolutions of it—if amid the diversity of the operations by which we are surrounded, those of the will and of the mind form an exception to the doctrine that it is God who worketh all in all—then, by far the most dignified and interesting of all his creations is wrested from the dominion of him who gave it birth; … and in the most emphatic sense of the term might it be said, that there is a universe without a Lord—an empire without an Imperial Sovereign to overrule its destinies.
'Both the power and the prescience of God are involved in this question. It seems strange that the Creator of all should not be the governor of all; or that the universe which proceeded from his hands should have been so constituted in any of its departments as to have an independent history of its own, placed beyond the sovereignty and the control of him who gave it birth. But so it would be on the hypothesis of a self-determining power in any of the creatures. … To avert this conclusion, all must be determinate, and all, both in the mental and material world, be under the absolute control of him who made all, and who upholds all.' [Footnote 65]
[Footnote 65: Chalmers, Institutes of Theology, vol. ii. pp. 351-355.]