LAST DAYS OF CALVIN. 237 each one by the hand, as with tears they parted from him. Two days afterwards, he met the clergy of the city and of the neighborhood. He sat up in his bed and, having offered prayer, spoke to them. He began by saying that it might be thought that he was not in so bad a case as he supposed. "But I assure you,” he added, “in all my former illnesses and sufferings, I have never felt myself so weak and sinking as now. When they lay me down upon the bed, my senses fail and I become faint." He referred to his past career in Geneva. When he came to this Church there was preaching, and that was all. They hunted up the images and burnt them, but of a Reformation there was nothing; all was insubordination and disorder. He had been obliged to go through tremendous conflicts. Sometimes in the night, he said, to terrify him, fifty or sixty shots had been fired before his door. "Think," he said, "what an impression that must make upon a poor scholar, shy and timid as I then was, and at the bottom have always been." This last statement respecting his natural disposition, he repeated two or three times with emphasis. He adverted to his banishment and stay in Strasburg, but on his return the difficulties were not diminished. They had set their dogs on him, with the cry: "Seize him! seize him!" and his clothes and his flesh had been torn by them. "Although I am nothing," he proceeded to say, "I know that I have prevented more than three hundred riots which would have desolated Geneva." He asked their pardon for his many faults; in particular for his quickness, vehemence, and readiness to be angry. In regard to his teaching and his writings, he could say that God had given him the grace to go to work earnestly and systematically, so that he had not knowingly perverted or erroneously interpreted a single passage of the Scriptures. He had written for no personal end, but only to promote the honor of God. He gave them various exhortations relating to the obliga tions of their office; then took them each by the hand; and "we parted from him," says Beza, "with our eyes bathed in tears, and our hearts full of unspeakable grief.” He died on the 27th of May, 1564. His piercing eye retained its brilliancy to the last. Apart from this, his face had long worn the look of death, and its appearance, as we are informed by Beza, was not perceptibly changed after the spirit had left the body. His last days were of a piece with his life. His whole course has been compared by Vinet to the growth of one rind of a tree from another, or to a chain of logical sequences. He was endued with a marvelous power of understanding, although the imagination and sentiments were less roundly developed. His systematic spirit fitted him to be the founder of an enduring school of thought. In this characteristic he may be compared with Aquinas. He has been appropriately styled the Aristotle of the Reformation. He was a perfectly honest man. He subjected his will to the eternal rule of right, as far as he could discover it. His motives were pure. He felt that God was near him, and sacrificed everything to obey the direction of Providence. The fear of God ruled in his soul; not a slavish fear, but a principle such as animated the prophets of the Old Covenant. The combination of his qualities was such, that he could not fail to attract profound admiration and reverence from one class of minds, and excite intense antipathy in another. There is no one of the Reformers who is spoken of, at this late day, with so much personal feeling, either of regard or aversion. But whoever studies his life and writings, especially the few passages in which he lets us into his confidence. and appears to invite our sympathy, will acquire a growing sense of his intellectual and moral greatness, and a tender consideration for his errors. In Calvinism, considered as a theological system, and contrasted with other types of Protestant theology, there CALVINISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 239 is one characteristic, pervading principle. It is that of the sovereignty of God; not only his unlimited control, within the sphere of mind, as well as of matter, but the determination of His will, as the ultimate cause of the salvation of some, and of the abandonment of others to perdition. In the constitution which Calvin created at Geneva, as it is seen in the light which the lapse of three centuries casts upon it, were two capital errors. First, the jurisdiction of the Church, its discipline over its members, was carried into the details of conduct, extended over personal and domestic life, to such a degree as unwarrantably to curtail individual liberty. Secondly, the power of coercion that was given to the civil authority subverted freedom in religious opinion and worship. How is it, then, that Calvinism is acknowledged, even by its foes, to have promoted powerfully the cause of civil liberty? One reason lies in the boundary line which it drew between Church and State. Calvinism would not surrender the peculiar functions of the Church to the civil authority. Whether the Church, or the Government, should regulate the administration of the Sacrament, and admit or reject communicants, was the question which Calvin fought out with the authorities at Geneva. In this feature, Calvinism differed from the relation of the civil rulers to the Church, as established under the auspices of Zwingle, as well as of Luther, and from the Anglican system which originated under Henry VIII. In its theory of the respective powers of the Church, and of the Magistrate, Calvinism approximated to the traditional view of the Catholic Church. In France, in Holland, in Scotland, in England, wherever Calvinism was planted, it had no scruples about resisting the tyranny of civil rulers. This principle, in the long 1 Calvin condemns Henry VIII. for styling himself the head of the Anglican Church. Kampschulte, i. 271. run, would inevitably conduce to the progress of civil freedom. It is certain that the distinction between Church and State, which was recognized from the conversion of Constantine, notwithstanding the long ages of intolerance and persecution that were to follow, was the first step, the necessary condition, in the development of religious liberty. First, it must be settled that the State shall not stretch its power over the Church, within its proper sphere; next, that the State shall not lend its power to the Church, as an executioner of ecclesiastical laws. A second reason why Calvinism has been favorable to civil liberty, is found in the republican character of its church organization. Laymen shared power with ministers. The people, the body of the congregation, took an active and responsible part in the choice of the clergy, and of all other officers. At Geneva, the alliance of the Church with the civil authority, and the circumstances in which Calvin was placed, reduced to a considerable extent the real power of the people in church affairs. Calvin did not realize his own theory. But elsewhere, especially in countries where Calvinism had to encounter the hostility of the State, the democratic tendencies of the system had full room for development. Men who were accustomed to rule themselves in the Church, would claim the same privilege in the commonweath. Another source of the influence of Calvinism, in advancing the cause of civil liberty, has been derived from its theology. The sense of the exaltation of the Almighty Ruler, and of his intimate connection with the minutest incidents and obligations of human life, which is fostered by this theology, dwarfs all earthly potentates. An intense spirituality, a consciousness that this life is but an infinitesimal fraction of human existence, dissipates the feeling of personal homage for men, however high their station, and dulls the lustre of all earthly grandeur. CALVINISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 241 Calvinism and Romanism are the antipodes of each other. Yet, it is curious to observe that the effect of these opposite systems upon the attitude of men towards the civil authority, has often been not dissimilar. But the Calvinist, unlike the Romanist, dispenses with a human priesthood, which has not only often proved a powerful direct auxiliary to temporal rulers, but has educated the sentiments to a habit of subjection, which renders submission to such rulers more facile, and less easy to shake off. 16 |