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

There are, however, other reasons to induce us to this study. The struggle for liberty in Geneva was one of the agents of its religious transformation; that we may know one, we must study the other. Again, Calvin is the great man of this epoch; it is needful, therefore, to study the country where he appeared. A knowledge of the history of Geneva before Calvin can alone enable us to understand the life of this great reformer. But there remains a third and more important reason. I am about to narrate the history of the Reformation of the sixteenth century in the time of Calvin. Now, what chiefly distinguishes the Reformation of Calvin from that of Luther is, that wherever it was established, it brought with it not only truth but liberty, and all the great developments which these two fertile principles carry with them. Political liberty, as we shall see, settled upon those hills at the southern extremity of the Leman lake where stands the city of Calvin, and has never deserted them since. And more than this: earthly liberty, the faithful companion of divine truth, appeared at the same time with her in the Low Countries, in England, in Scotland, and subsequently in North America and other places besides, everywhere creating powerful nations. The Reformation of Calvin is that of modern times; it is the religion destined for the whole world. Being profoundly spiritual, it subserves also in an admirable manner all the temporal interests of man. It has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come .

The free institutions of Protestant countries are not due solely to the Reformation of Calvin: they spring from various sources, and are not of foreign importation. The elements of liberty were in the blood of these nations, and remarkable men exerted a civilising influence over them. Magna Charta is older than the Genevese Reform; but we believe (though we may be mistaken) that this Reformation has had some small share in the introduction of those constitutional principles, without which nations can never attain their majority. Whence did this influence proceed?

The people of Geneva and their great doctor have each left their stamp on the Reformation which issued from their walls: Calvin’s was truth, the people’s, liberty. This last consideration compels us to narrate the struggles of which Geneva was the theatre, and which, though almost unknown up to the present hour, have aided, like a slender brook, to swell the great stream of modern civilisation. But there was a second and more potent cause. Supreme among the great principles that Calvin has diffused is the sovereignty of God. He has enjoined us to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s ; but he has added: ‘God must always retain the sovereign empire, and all that may belong to man remains subordinate. Obedience towards princes accords with God’s service; but if princes usurp any portion of the authority of God, we must obey them only so far as may be done without offending God.’ 4If my conscience is thoroughly subject to God, I am free as regards men; but if I cling to anything besides heaven, men may easily enslave me. True liberty exists only in the higher regions. The bird that skims the earth may lose it at any moment; but we cannot ravish it from the eagle who soars among the clouds.

The great movements in the way of law and liberty effected by the people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have certain relations with the Reformation of Calvin, which it is impossible to ignore.

As soon as Guy de Brès and many others returned from Geneva to the Low Countries, the great contest between the rights of the people and the revolutionary and bloody despotism of Philip II. began; heroic struggles took place, and the creation of the United Provinces was their glorious termination.

John Knox returned to his native Scotland from Geneva, where he had spent several years; then popery, arbitrary power, and the immorality of a French court made way in that noble country for that enthusiasm for the gospel, liberty, and holiness, which has never since failed to kindle the ardent souls of its energetic people.

Numberless friends and disciples of Calvin carried with them every year into France the principles of civil and political liberty; 5and a fierce struggle began with popery and the despotism, of the Valois first, and afterwards of the Bourbons. And though these princes sought to destroy the liberties for which the Huguenots shed their blood, their imperishable traces still remain among that illustrious nation.

The Englishmen who, during the bloody persecution of Mary, had sought an asylum at Geneva imbibed there a love for the gospel and for liberty. When they returned to England, a fountain gushed out beneath their footsteps. The waters confined by Elizabeth to a narrow channel, rose under her successors and swiftly became an impetuous roaring flood, whose insolent waves swept away the throne itself in their violent course. But restored to their bed by the wise hand of William of Orange, the dashing torrent sank into a smiling stream, bearing prosperity and life afar.

Lastly, Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics. The ‘pilgrims’ who left their country in the reign of James I., and, landing on the barren shores of New England, founded populous and mighty colonies, are his sons, his direct and legitimate sons; and that American nation which we have seen growing so rapidly boasts as its father the humble reformer on the shores of the Leman.

There are, indeed, writers of eminence who charge this man of God with despotism; because he was the enemy of libertinage, he has been called the enemy of liberty. Nobody was more opposed than Calvin to that moral and social anarchy which threatened the sixteenth century, and which ruins every epoch unable to keep it under control. This bold struggle of Calvin’s is one of the greatest services he has done to liberty, which has no enemies more dangerous than immorality and disorder.

Should the question be asked, How ought infidelity to be arrested? we must confess that Calvin was not before his age, which was unanimous, in every communion, for the application of the severest punishments. If a man is in error as regards the knowledge of God, it is to God alone that he must render an account. When men—and they are sometimes the best of men—make themselves the avengers of God, the conscience is startled, and religion hides her face. It was not so three centuries back, and the most eminent minds always pay in one manner or another their tribute to human weakness. And yet, on a well-known occasion, when a wretched man, whose doctrines threatened society, stood before the civil tribunals of Geneva, there was but one voice in all Europe raised in favour of the prisoner; but one voice that prayed for some mitigation of Servetus’s punishment, and that voice was Calvin’s. 6

However inveterate the prejudices against him may be, the indisputable evidence of history places Calvin among the fathers of modern liberty. It is possible that we may find impartial men gradually lending their ear to the honest and solemn testimony of past ages; and the more the world recognises the importance and universality of the Reformation which came forth from Geneva, the more shall we be excused for directing attention for a few moments to the heroic age of this obscure city.

The sixteenth century is the greatest in Christian times; it is the epoch where (so to speak) everything ends and everything begins; nothing is paltry, not even dissipation; nothing small, not even a little city lying unobserved at the foot of the Alps.

In that renovating age, so full of antagonist forces and energetic struggles, the religious movements did not proceed from a single centre; they emanated from opposite poles, and are mentioned in the well-known line—