J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8)

28'Quam liberaliter paratus fueris te mihi officiaque tua impendere.'—Calv. in 2ᵃᵐ Ep. ad Cor.

29'Præ cæteris discipulis diligere ac magnifacere eum cœpit.'—Flor. Rémond, Hist. de l'Hérésie , liv. vii. ch. ix.

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CALVIN was to receive something more from Wolmar; he was about to begin, under his guidance, the work of all his life—to learn and to teach Christ. The knowledge which he acquired at the university of Orleans, philosophy, law, and even Greek, could not suffice him. The moral faculty is the first in man, and ought to be the first in the university also. The object of the Reformation was to found, not an intellectual, but a moral empire; it was to restore holiness to the Church. This empire had begun in Calvin; his conscience had been stirred; he had sought salvation and found it; but he had need of knowledge, of increase in grace, of practice in life, and these he was about to strive after.

=WOLMAR AND CALVIN STUDY THE EPISTLES.=

Melchior, like Melanchthon, had set himself to study the Holy Scriptures in the original languages, and in them had found light and peace. Calvin, on his side, 'having acquired some taste for true piety,' as he informs us, 'was burning with a great desire to advance.' 30The most intimate confidence and the freest communication were established between the professor and the scholar. Melchior spoke to Calvin of Germany and the Reformation; he read the Greek Testament with him, set before him the riches of Christ announced therein, and, when studying the Epistles of St. Paul, explained to him the doctrine of imputed righteousness which forms the essence of their teaching. Calvin, seated in his master's study, listened in silence, and respectfully embraced that mystery so strange and yet so profoundly in harmony with the righteousness of God!... 'By faith,' said Wolmar, 'man is united to Christ and Christ to him, so that it is no longer man whom God sees in the sinner, but his dearly beloved Son himself; and the act by virtue of which God makes the sinner an inheritor of heaven, is not an arbitrary one. The doctrine of justification,' added Wolmar, 'is in Luther's opinion the capital doctrine, articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiæ. ' 31

But Calvin's chief teacher was God. At Orleans he had more of those struggles, which are often prolonged in strong natures. Some take him simply for a metaphysical thinker, a learned and subtle theologian; on the contrary, no other doctor has had more experience of those tempests that stir up the heart to its lowest deeps. 'I feel myself pricked and stung to the quick by the judgment of God. I am in a continual battle; I am assaulted and shaken, as when an armed man is forced by a violent blow to stagger a few steps backwards.' The light which had rejoiced him so much when he was in college at Paris, seemed almost to have faded away. 'I am like a wretched man shut up in a deep dungeon, who receives the light of day obliquely and in part, only through a high and narrow loop-hole.' He persevered, however; he fixed his eyes on Jesus, and was soon able to say: 'If I have not the full and free sight of the sun, I distinguish however his light afar, and enjoy its brightness.' 32

People at Orleans soon found out that there was something new and strange in this young man. It was in this city, in the year 1022, that the revival of modern times, if we may so speak, had begun among the heads of a school of theology at that time very celebrated. Priests and canons had told the people who listened to them, both in Orleans and in the neighbouring towns, 'that they ought to be filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit; that this Spirit would reveal to them all the depths and all the dignity of the Scriptures; 33that they would be fed with heavenly food and refreshed by an inward fulness.' 34

These heretics had been put to death at Orleans. Would they be seen rising again, after more than five centuries, in the city and even in the university? Many doctors and students opposed Calvin: 'You are a schismatic,' they said; 'you are separating from the Church!' Calvin, alarmed at these accusations, was a prey to fresh anguish.

=CALVIN'S ANGUISH AND HUMILITY.=

Then, as he informs us, he began to meditate on the Psalms, and in the struggles of David he found an image of his own: 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'the Holy Spirit has here painted to the life all the pains, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, anxieties, perplexities, and even the confused emotions with which my mind is wont to be agitated.... This book is an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.... There is no affection in man which is not here represented as in a glass.' 35

This man, whom the Romish and other legends describe as vain, proud, and insensible, desired to see himself as he was, without screening any of his faults. 'Of the many infirmities to which we are subject,' he said, 'and of the many vices of which we are full, not one ought to be hidden. Ah! truly it is an excellent and singular gain, when all the hiding-places are laid open, and the heart is brought into the light and thoroughly cleansed of all hypocrisy and foul infection.' 36

Such are the principles by which the Reformation has triumphed. Its great organs desired that men's hearts should be 'cleansed of all foul infection.' It is a singular delusion of those writers who, seeing things otherwise than they are, ascribe this divine work to vile interests and base passions. According to them, its causes were jealousy of the Augustine monks, the ambition of princes, the greed of nobles, and the carnal passions of priests, which, however, as we have seen, had but too free scope during the middle ages. A searching glance into the souls of the Reformers lays bare to us the cause of the revival. If the writers of whom I have spoken were right, the Reformation ought not to have waited until Luther for its accomplishment; for there had existed for ages in christendom ambitious princes, greedy nobles, jealous monks, and impure priests. But what was really a new thing was to find men who, like the reformers, opened their hearts to the light of the Holy Spirit, believed in the Word of God, found Jesus Christ, esteemed everything in comparison with him as loss, lived the life of God, and desired that 'all hiding-places should be laid open,' and men's hearts cleansed of all hypocrisy. Such were the true sources of the Reformation.

The adversaries of the Gospel understood the danger incurred by the Church of Rome from the principles professed by Calvin; and hence they called him wicked and profane, and, as he says, 'heaped upon his head a world of abuse.' They said that he ought to be expelled from the Church. Then the student, 'cast down but not destroyed,' retiring to his chamber, would exclaim: 'If I am at war with such masters, I am not, however, at war with thy Church, O God! Why should I hesitate to separate from these false teachers whom the apostles call thy enemies? 37... When cursed by the unrighteous priests of their day, did not thy prophets remain in the true unity of thy children? Encouraged by their example, I will resist those who oppress us, and neither their threats nor their denunciations shall shake me.' 38

=PHASES OF CALVIN'S CONVERSION.=

The conversion of Calvin, begun at Paris, was completed at Orleans. There are, as we have said, several phases in this work. The first is that of the conscience, where the soul is aroused; the second is that of the understanding, where the mind is enlightened; then comes the last, where the new man is built up, where he strikes deeper root in Christ, and bears fruit to God. At Paris, Calvin had heard in his heart the divine voice calling him to eternal life; at Orleans, he constantly studied the Holy Scriptures, 39and became 'learned in the knowledge of salvation,' as Theodore Beza tells us. The Church herself has gone through similar phases: the first epoch of her history, that of the apostolic fathers, 40was that of simple piety without the scientific element; the second, the age of the apologists, was that of a christian understanding seeking to justify its faith in the eyes of reason. Calvin had followed this road; but he did not give way to an intellectualism which would have brought back death into his heart. On the contrary, the third phase began immediately, and from day to day the christian life became in him more spiritual and more active.