William Lindsay Alexander and Alexander James Grieve

“ From faith proceeds repentance, which is the turning of our life to God, proceeding from a sincere and earnest fear of God, and consisting in the mortification of the flesh and the old man within us and a vivification of the Spirit. Through faith also the believer receives justification, his sins are forgiven, he is accepted of God, and is held by Him as righteous, the righteousness of Christ being imputed to him, and faith being the instrument by which the man lays hold on Christ, so that with His righteousness the man appears in God’s sight as righteous. ”

“ Deeply convinced of the importance of education for the young, Calvin and his coadjutors were solicitous to establish schools throughout the city, and to enforce on parents the sending of their children to them; and as he had no faith in education apart from religious training, he drew up a catechism of Christian doctrine which the children had to learn whilst they were receiving secular instruction. ”

“ His dauntless courage, his perseverance, and his earnestness at length prevailed, and he had the satisfaction, before he died, of seeing his favourite system of church polity firmly established, not only at Geneva, but in other parts of Switzerland, and of knowing that it had been adopted substantially by the Reformers in France and Scotland. The men whom he trained at Geneva carried his principles into almost every country in Europe, and in varying degree these principles did much for the cause of civil liberty. [15] Nor was it only in religious matters that Calvin busied himself ”

“ To the Spirit speaking therein the Spirit-illumined soul of man makes response. While God is the source of all good, man as a sinner is guilty and corrupt. The first man was made in the image and likeness of God, which not only implies man’s superiority to all other creatures, but indicates his original purity, integrity and sanctity. ”

“ The external means or aids by which God unites men into the fellowship of Christ, and sustains and advances those who believe, are the church and its ordinances, especially the sacraments. The church universal is the multitude gathered from diverse nations, which though divided by distance of time and place, agree in one common faith, and it is bound by the tie of the same religion ”

“ The election of the officers in a church is to be with the people, and those duly chosen and called are to be ordained by the laying on of the hands of the pastors (ch. 3, sect. 4-16) . The sacraments are two—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is the sign of initiation whereby men are admitted into the society of the church and, being grafted into Christ, are reckoned among the sons of God; it serves both for the confirmation of faith and as a confession before men. ”

“ To redeem man from this state of guilt, and to recover him from corruption, the Son of God became incarnate, assuming man’s nature into union with His own, so that in Him were two natures in one person. ”

“ The assurance which the believer has of salvation he receives from the operation and witness of the Holy Spirit; but this again rests on the divine choice of the man to salvation; and this falls back on God’s eternal sovereign purpose, whereby He has predestined some to eternal life while the rest of mankind are predestined to condemnation and eternal death. Those whom God has chosen to life He effectually calls to salvation, and they are kept by Him in progressive faith and holiness unto the end (bk. iii. passim) . ”

“ When I have settled my usual business, I have so many letters to write, so many questions to answer, that many a night is spent without any offering of sleep being brought to nature.”
It is only necessary here to sketch the leading events of Calvin’s life after his return to Geneva. He recodified the Genevan laws and constitution, and was the leading spirit in the negotiations with Bern that issued in the treaty of February 1544. Of the controversies in which he embarked, one of the most important was that in which he defended his doctrine concerning predestination and election. ”

“ The permanent officers in the church are pastors and teachers, to the former of whom it belongs to preside over the discipline of the church, to administer the sacraments, and to admonish and exhort the members; while the latter occupy themselves with the exposition of Scripture, so that pure and wholesome doctrine may be retained. With them are to be joined for the government of the church certain pious, grave and holy men as a senate in each church; and to others, as deacons, is to be entrusted the care of the poor. ”

“ Calvin, indignant at the calumny which was thus cast upon the reformed party in France, hastily prepared for the press his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which he published “first that I might vindicate from unjust affront my brethren whose death was precious in the sight of the Lord, and, next, that some sorrow and anxiety should move foreign peoples, since the same sufferings threatened many.” The work was dedicated to the king, and Calvin says he wrote it in Latin that it might find access to the learned in all lands. ”

“ At any rate he readily complied with his father’s suggestion, and removed from Paris to Orleans (March 1528) in order to study law under Pierre Taisan de l’Etoile, the most distinguished jurisconsult of his day. The university atmosphere here was less ascetic than at Paris, but Calvin’s ardour knew no slackening, and such was his progress in legal knowledge that he was frequently called upon to lecture, in the absence of one or other of the regular staff. ”

“ It may be doubted also if the history of literature presents us with another instance of a book written at so early an age, which has exercised such a prodigious influence upon the opinions and practices both of contemporaries and of posterity. ”

“ The actual duties of the office were in such cases carried out by ordained and older men for a fraction of the stipend. The plague having visited Noyon, the young Hangests were sent to Paris in August 1523, and Calvin accompanied them, being enabled to do so by the income received from his benefice. He lived with his uncle and attended as an out-student the Collège de la Marche, at that time under the regency of Mathurin Cordier, a man of character, learning and repute as a teacher, who in later days followed his pupil to Switzerland, taught at Neuchâtel, and died in Geneva in 1564. ”

“ Nor is that a being bound for another’s offence; for when it is said that we through Adam’s sin have become obnoxious to the divine judgment, it is not to be taken as if we, being ourselves innocent and blameless, bear the fault of his offence, but that, we having been brought under a curse through his transgression, he is said to have bound us. ”

“ Calvin went to Viret’s aid and brought Caroli before the commissioners of Bern on a charge of advocating prayers for the dead as a means of their earlier resurrection. Caroli brought a counter-charge against the Geneva divines of Sabellianism and Arianism, because they would not enforce the Athanasian creed, and had not used the words “Trinity” and “Person” in the confession they had drawn up. ”

“ Though naturally knowing nothing of the modern idea of a progressive revelation, his judiciousness, penetration, and tact in eliciting his author’s meaning, his precision, condensation, and concinnity as an expositor, the accuracy of his learning, the closeness of his reasoning, and the elegance of his style, all unite to confer a high value on his exegetical works. ”

“ The preface to this treatise is dated Orleans 1534, but it was not printed till 1542. In it he chiefly dwells upon the evidence from Scripture in favour of the belief that the soul retains its intelligent consciousness after its separation from the body—passing by questions of philosophical speculation, as tending on such a subject only to minister to an idle curiosity. At Poitiers Calvin gathered round him a company of cultured and gentle men whom in private intercourse he influenced considerably. ”

“ Amidst much party strife Calvin perhaps showed more youthful impetuosity than experienced skill. He and his colleagues refused to administer the sacrament in the Bernese form, i.e. with unleavened bread, and on Easter Sunday, 1538, declined to do so at all because of the popular tumult. For this they were banished from the city. They went first to Bern, and soon after to Zürich, where a synod of the Swiss pastors had been convened. ”

“ Thus even infants, whilst they bring their own condemnation with them from their mother’s womb, are bound not by another’s but by their own fault. For though they have not yet brought forth the fruits of their iniquity, they have the seed shut up in them ”

“ On their way they were robbed by one of their servants, and it was only by borrowing ten crowns from their other servant that they were enabled to get to Strassburg, and thence to Basel. Here Calvin was welcomed by the band of scholars and theologians who had conspired to make that city the Athens of Switzerland, and especially by Oswald Myconius, the chief pastor, Pierre Viret and Heinrich Bullinger. Under the auspices and guidance of Sebastian Münster, Calvin now gave himself to the study of Hebrew. ”

“ With his usual disinterestedness he refused to receive his stipend, now that he was no longer able to discharge the duties of his office. In the midst of his sufferings, however, his zeal and energy kept him in continual occupation ”

“ E. Stähelin, Joh. Calvin, Leben und ausgewählte Schriften (2 vols., Elberfeld, 1863) ; F. W. Kampschulte, Joh. Calvin, seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf (2 vols., 1869, 1899, unfinished) ; Abel Lefranc, La Jeunesse de Calvin (Paris, 1888) ; E. Choisy, La Théocratie à Genève au temps de Calvin (Geneva, 1897) ; E. Doumergue, Jean Calvin; les hommes et les choses de son temps (5 vols., 1899–1908) . See also A. M. Fairbairn, “Calvin and the Reformed Church” in the Cambridge Modern History, vol. ii. (1904) ; P. Schaff’s, History of the Christian Church, vol. vii. ”