Calvinism

“ Why did not a being of infinite power and infinite love so make all men as that there should be no cause for this sad foreknowledge and sad decree respecting a number of them? In truth, Calvinism is both theologically more coherent, and also shows a deeper sense of reality than Arminianism, which, in the practical man's fashion, is apt to scrape the surface of things only. ”

“ It must be admitted, too, that the Calvinism of those days had a powerful influence in enabling men and women to endure, although I object to giving the name of Calvin to a philosophy which is a necessity in all ages. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” This is the last word which can be said. Nothing can go beyond it, and at times it is the only ground which we feel does not shake under our feet. All life is summed up, and due account is taken of it, according to its degree. ”

“ After being accepted for two centuries in all Protestant countries as the final account of the relations between man and his Maker, Calvinism has come to be regarded by liberal thinkers as a system of belief incredible in itself, dishonouring to its object, and as intolerable as it has been itself intolerant. ”

“ If, as I believe, Calvinism was un-Christian, the materialistic philosophies that have gone on from the year 1637, were anti-Christian. As the power of Christianity declined through the centuries that have followed the Reformation, Calvinism played a less and less important part, while the new philosophies of mechanism and rationalism correspondingly increased. During the nineteenth century their control was absolute, and what we are today we have become through this dominance, coupled with the general devitalizing or abandonment of religion. ”

“ Now that it is so fashionable to denounce Calvinism, it is perhaps well to act on the good bishop's advice, and see whether we thoroughly comprehend it, or whether all the time we are not contending with a creation of our own imagination which is but a caricature of the thing itself. Even Froude, the great historian, who, whatever else he is, is not a Calvinist, inquires how it is that Calvinistic doctrines have "possessed such singular attractions for some of the greatest men who have ever lived? ”

“ In neither passage is there any statement on which to rest an argument for the arbitrary and unconditional decree of the Calvinist, nor for depreciating the intrinsic value of those really good works which the Christian performs in faith. Calvinism has no foundation in the word of God. It is in direct collision with that sacred authority. St. Paul rests the divine election on the foreknowledge of the Deity, and let his decision be final. ”

“ Even when they express their persuasion of their own interest in “special grace,” it is more in the spirit of men who are conscious of being the favoured objects of capricious tyranny, than of that serene and hopeful and cheering confidence which inspires the devout heart, when it contemplates through a happier medium the beneficent and universal Father. Nor is this unnatural. The moral character of the Deity, as misrepresented by Calvinism, both unsettles all our ideas of rectitude, and renders insecure our hold upon Infinite Goodness. ”

“ In treating of the popular theology, it must be avowed that, to the majority of Englishmen, his wide human sympathies will seem to fall short in this one point, and that he has sometimes appeared to confound the Christianity of the churches generally with Calvinism, and to have drawn Calvinism itself either from the grim treatises of the old Puritan divines, or from living exponents of their doctrine, not to be paralleled on this side the Atlantic. ”

“ And when they are told that Calvinism honours the sovereignty of God, and exalts the grace of Christ, their religious and holy feelings are enlisted in a cause which little deserves these high and evangelic eulogies. While the love of God in Christ, to themselves in particular, is made the prevailing topic, the gloomy and suspicious parts of the system are kept in the back ground, or positively denied. ”

“ The truth is, that Calvinism and a visible Church are incongruous ideas, and that no man, of whatever talent he may be possessed, can make them harmonize. The Calvinist believes, and is consistent in his belief, that the elect only are “the Church,” but since it is impossible to discriminate them from others, it is impossible to unite them in an exclusive visible fellowship. ”

“ Begin to think in a circle narrow as a lady's ring, or the Assembly's Catechism, you will think out; for thought, like all movement, tends to the right line. Calvinism has always bred thinkers, and when barbarism was the first danger was perhaps the only thing which could do it. Calvinism, too, has always shown itself in favor of popular liberty to a certain degree, and though it stops far short of the mark, yet goes far beyond the Catholic or Episcopalian. ”

“ The writer aims only at a common sense view of the subject, showing that Calvinism is a dangerous speculation, useless for every holy and salutary purpose, inapplicable to the hopes and the duties of a religious life, at variance with our knowledge of God, our obligations as Christians, and all our finer sentiments and more generous sympathies as men. So far as its influence is exerted, it contracts the understanding and hardens the heart. ”

“ And yet there is something horrible in the picture of the Divine principles and methods of action, which Calvinism in its pure and naked form presents. It is difficult for us to contemplate, without shuddering, the ideas of divine and human things which seem to have been adopted with grim satisfaction by some of the very strongest and most high-minded men who have ever swayed the destinies of the world. ”

“ I am afraid that crude Calvinism, as preached in certain parts of the north, is nothing less than monstrous. The good God, beneficent Father of us all, is unrecognizable when eternal reprobation is represented as the inevitable fate of the vast majority of His children. ”

“ The doctrinal system of Calvin is too well known to require explanation in this place. It is, however, a mistake to suppose that, on those points in which Calvinism is deemed peculiarly to consist, he went a single step farther than Luther himself, and the great majority of the Reformers. He states his views with calmness, clearness, and precision; he reasons on them dispassionately, and never shrinks from any consequences to which he perceives them to lead. ”

“ There can be little question, in fact, that Calvinism, 515 or some modification of its essential principles, is the form of religious faith that has been professed in the modern world by the most intelligent, moral, industrious, and freest of mankind. If Calvinism, however, tend to make men more manly and more fit for freedom, it has also a certain hardening influence on the heart, disposing to severity. ”

“ Furthermore, the consciousness of his own upright character, his experience and observation of human virtue in others, made abstract arguments needless to prove that Calvinism is an outrage on human kind and a blasphemy against the Creator. ”

“ It is the disease and not its manifestation that required suppression. I was unable to see the relationship between an infinite God, sovereign of all, and Calvinism, and fancied in my mind that I could keep God and let Calvin go. But faith in a God who knows everything and is absolutely sovereign, spells Calvinism. ”

“ Great men like Sylla and Napoleon have loved to attribute their success to their fortune, their star; religious great men have loved to say that their sufficiency was of God. [47] But through every great spirit runs a train of feeling of this sort; and the power and depth which there undoubtedly is in Calvinism, comes from Calvinism's being overwhelmed by it. Paul is not, like Calvinism, overwhelmed by it; but it is always before his mind and strongly agitates his thoughts. The voluntary, rational, and human world, of righteousness, moral choice, effort, filled the first place in his spirit. ”

“ It is this necessary corruption of the great truths of the Gospel that renders Calvinism an object of distrust and alarm. If it was a mere speculation, which was intended, in the calm spirit of Christian philosophy, to solve a problem in theology or morals, leaving untouched the essential character of revealed religion, it might pass without rebuke. But it weakens the moral sense, and it leads to the subversion of all that is consolatory in our prospects of the final destinies of the human race, leaving us no security for the salvation even of the supposed elect ”

“ CALVINISM, that scheme of doctrine on predestination and grace, which was taught by Calvin, the celebrated reformer, in the early part of the sixteenth century. His opinions are largely opened in the third book of his “Institutes:” “Predestination we call the eternal decree of God; by which he hath determined in himself what he would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. ”

“ He was avowedly what is generally called a Calvinist, though as a matter of fact he very seldom made use of the term. That sainted prelate, the late Bishop Waldegrave, when once he heard a young clergyman sneering at the doctrine which so frequently goes by the name of Calvinism, remarked: "Young man, before you denounce Calvinism, take care that you properly understand what the term means, or possibly you may find yourself contending against some of God's truths." ”

“ The Puritan was so called because he wished to purify the established church from what seemed to him great abuses. He accepted the faith of John Calvin, who died in 1564. Calvinism taught that no earthly power should intervene between a human soul and God, that life was an individual moral struggle, the outcome of which would land the soul in heaven or hell for all eternity, that beauty and art and all the pleasures of the flesh were dangerous because they tended to wean the soul from God. ”

“ A great mass of the religious world, in the orthodox meaning of that phrase, is now called evangelical, and although that term, I admit, does not necessarily imply absolute Calvinism, yet, in point of fact, the greater number of those whom it designates are Calvinists. The opponents of Calvinism are often accused of misrepresenting it. ”

“ The narrow and external mood of the other, unable to find standing ground in the purely personal relation between man and God which formed the basis of Calvinism, fell back on the consciousness of a living Christendom, preserving through the ages a definite faith and worship, and which, torn and rent as it seemed, was soon to resume its ancient unity. ”

“ Calvinism impugns the moral character of the Deity Calvinism is not to be reconciled with the moral responsibility of man Calvinism is opposed to the constitution and the purposes of a visible Church Calvinism is productive of positively injurious effects, on individual character and on social happiness Calvinism is not the doctrine of Scripture, nor of the Anglican Church Calvinism has led to the corruption of Christian doctrine, that the Scriptures may be accommodated to extreme views of the divine decrees Appendix. ”

“ Nevertheless it would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind owe to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of modern democracy. Perhaps not one of the mediaeval popes was more despotic in temper than Calvin; but it is not the less true that the promulgation of his theology was one of the longest steps that mankind have taken toward personal freedom. Calvinism left the individual man alone in the presence of his God. ”

“ On the other hand, taking the general tenor of the sacred volume to be the true representation of the moral economy under which we are placed by the infinite wisdom of God, all the passages which are cited by Calvinists, as being favourable to their cause, may be so explained, and that without violence, as to accord with the current testimony of the Scriptures to the freedom and moral agency of man. A stronger presumptive argument cannot be conceived against the claim of Calvinism to scriptural authority. ”

“ If not, there is no Calvinism, and if it be, no man who believes in its importance as a pillar of faith is justified by motives of expediency in leaving out subjects so essential in their view of the Christian system. ”

“ The formula was thus in the main in agreement with the speculation of Calvin. But it declined to accept the conclusions arrived at in Calvinism by declaring that while man indeed of himself wanted the power to lay hold upon Divine grace and co-operate with it in any way, he was yet able to withstand it and refuse to accept it. In this way it was able to hold by the express statements of Scripture which represent God as willing that all men should be saved, and salvation as an absolute work of grace, but condemnation as the consequence of man’s own guilt. ”

“ These confessions teach the root idea of Calvin’s theology, the immeasurable awfulness of God, His eternity, and the immutability of His decrees. Such strict Calvinism was the strength also of the Westminster Confession (see below) , but was soon weakened in Germany. This same Elector Frederick invited two young divines, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, to prepare the afterwards celebrated Heidelberg catechism, which in 1563 superseded Calvin’s catechism in the Palatinate. While Calvin began sternly with the question: “What is the chief end of human life?” ”

“ In the Old Testament he is described as just, but at the same time terrible and pitiless against the wicked; and at least one form of modern Christianity, Calvinism, takes a view of the Divine character which it is impossible to reconcile with infinite benevolence. ”