Calvinists

“ The worshippers were called Calvinists, not as persons convinced by the study of theological manuals, but as the spiritual offspring of Calvin himself — an ecclesiastical vineyard planted by his own labours. ”

“ The experience of the Calvinists during the Laudian oppression had compacted them into a single body, enabled them to look upon their differences as relatively unimportant, and inclined them to seek to frame a Confession which should be inclusive of all soundly Calvinistic thought, and which should exclude only those errors which cut to the roots of the system which all Calvinists unite in believing to be the truth of God. ”

“ Let therefore one or two quotations from Calvin and from the synod of Dort, both of which I think Calvinists will acknowledge as good Calvinistic authority, suffice. Calvin denies all power to man, in his apostasy, to choose good, and says that, “surrounded on every side with the most miserable necessity, he (man) should nevertheless be instructed to aspire to the good of which he is destitute, and to the liberty of which he is deprived.” ”

“ In a few reigns more came the doctrine that the Calvinists in a nation are the head of the church and state, may behead kings, make and unmake worships and creeds, and put to death all who gainsay them. ”

“ All that we require of the Calvinist is that he return the salute of the Lutheran with some affection, and do not follow the example of the Quakers, who do reverence to nobody; but the Calvinists have not their candour. ”

“ It is, that some person should be designated, by a sort of common suffrage, as the champion of Calvinism. Now the truth is, Calvinists, as a class, are rather remarkable for thinking for themselves; and of course, while there are great principles on which, as a class, they all agree, there are many things which will be held or stated differently, by different minds. Consequently, we can, each of us, defend ourselves, and defend Calvinists as a class; notwithstanding, each one may think his fellow holds some errors, and therefore, in his contest with Calvinism, Dr. ”

“ Now all our sociology and eugenics and the rest of it are not so much materialist as confusedly Calvinist, they are chiefly occupied in educating the child before he exists. The whole movement is full of a singular depression about what one can do with the populace, combined with a strange disembodied gayety about what may be done with posterity. These essential Calvinists have, indeed, abolished some of the more liberal and universal parts of Calvinism, such as the belief in an intellectual design or an everlasting happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Calvinists in general, however, suppose that he was not accurate in his ideas of the substitution of Christ in the place of the redeemed, but carried the doctrine of commutation to an extreme that represented the Saviour as himself a sinner through his union with the elect. ”

“ If we may judge from those of their writings which we have seen, this course of proceeding is getting to be very much the fashion among the Calvinists of the present day; and they have a great deal to say in praise of simply adhering to the truth, without being over-solicitous about its difficulties, or paying too much attention to them. ”

“ I should have imagined that the Calvinists in particular, whatever they did with the lemons, would never have been able to digest the crucifix.
There is a very considerable number of Calvinists in this place; it is generally thought they are the most industrious. They unquestionably are the richest part of the inhabitants. ”

“ Wickliffe, the Hussites, and Carlostad, attacked the images; but it was reserved only to the Calvinists to establish in some parts of Europe the triumph of the ideas of the Iconoclasts. The shock was terrible. The Religionists frequently committed acts of a fanatical and senseless vandalism; and art had many losses to deplore. But the idolatrous tendency was struck at its very root; and Catholicism itself found, after the struggle, more purity and idealism in its own worship.11 The Reformed perceived afterwards [pg 013] the exaggeration of their principles ”

“ Position of the Calvinists. In the first place it only applied to the Lutherans, for at the time of its conclusion the Protestant princes of the Empire were all Lutherans, and they merely thought of securing their own interests. Calvinism therefore had no rights whatever in the Empire, and had still to win its recognition from the law. 2. The secularised lands. ”

“ While he expressed dissatisfaction with some of Calvin’s earlier writings, he approved of the Consensus Tigurinus negotiated in 1549 between the Zwinglians and Calvinists of Switzerland; and it was this form of religion that he laboured to spread in England against the wishes of Cranmer, Ridley, Bucer, Peter Martyr and other more conservative theologians. ”

“ Le Puy itself had undergone a siege by the Huguenots twelve years before this.
In 1562 the terrible Baron des Adrets, who was in Dauphiné stamping out every spark of Catholicism, deputed his lieutenant, Blacons, to secure Le Puy. Blacons was a man as ruthless as his commander, but without his military genius. It was settled that Blacons should assemble an army at Pont-en-Peyrat, a village on the borders of Forez and Velay. Thither accordingly gathered the Calvinists and a horde of adventurers thirsting for the pillage of the wealthy city and the shrine of the Madonna. ”

“ The western doorway was once rich, and had on it two ranges of angels, twelve in each. The Huguenots broke the figures in their hatred of everything beautiful, and mutilated the delicate foliage as well.
The church has a broad nave with narrow side aisles. It contains a carved stone organ gallery once rich with statuary, but the niches are now empty. On the north side in the aisle is the tomb of Du Guesclin, who did more than any other, except the Maid of Orléans, to drive the English out of France. Even this monument did not escape the iconoclastic rage of the Calvinists ”

“ His genius and application soon made him the pride of the college, and it was confidently anticipated that John Calvin would become [pg 220] one of the ablest and most honored defenders of the church. But a ray of divine light penetrated even within the walls of scholasticism and superstition by which Calvin was inclosed. He heard of the new doctrines with a shudder, nothing doubting that the heretics deserved the fire to which they were given. Yet all unwittingly he was brought face to face with the heresy, and forced to test the power of Romish theology to combat the Protestant teaching. ”

“ Where did Calvin find this doctrine? As I observe, he did not learn it in the schools, nor in any book, nor in his own family, nor in the temple of God; the innovation was universally opposed; a million voices remonstrated against his impiety. What right had he to be believed? He proposed only the interpretation which he gave to the words of Jesus Christ, This is my body. He supported his opinion in no other way, he proved it by no miracles, and therefore did not deserve belief, since he gave no proofs of a divine mission. ”

“ The man had lived, it is true, long and peaceably among them, respected in his life and trusted in his calling; and if Calvin found heresy and to spare in his writings against the tenets which he as well as they held in common, they discovered outpourings enough there against Predestination and Election by the Grace of God, Effectual calling, Justification by Faith, and the rest, that formed the groundwork of the objectionable doctrines both of Luther and Calvin. ”

“ Even the churches which trace their descent from Calvin’s work and faith no longer hold in their entirety his views on the magistrate as the preserver of church purity, the utter depravity of human nature, the non-human character of the Bible, the dealing of God with man. But his system had an immense value in the history of Christian thought. It appealed to and evoked a high order of intelligence, and its insistence on personal individual salvation has borne worthy fruit. ”

“ Now Calvin was imbued with the lofty spirit of the Fathers of the Church and the more religious and contemplative of the schoolmen and the saints of the Middle Ages, when he attached but little dignity to man unaided by divine grace, and was absorbed with the idea of the sovereignty of God, in whose hands man is like clay in the hands of the potter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was in each Christian conscience that the strife was waged between Heaven and Hell. Not as one of a body, but as a single soul, could each Christian claim his part in the mystery of redemption. In the outer world of worship and discipline the Calvinist might call himself one of many brethren, but at every moment of his inner existence, in the hour of temptation and of struggle, in his dark and troubled wrestling with sin, in the glory of conversion, in the peace of acceptance with God, he stood utterly alone. ”

“ And I very much question if Calvin himself did not spring from the former stock; and, when he came from the church of Rome, brought that branch of Popery along with him, by which means the leaven spread among many of the Protestants. It would shock any mind which is not quite intoxicated with the absolute decrees, to read what some writers of the above-mentioned classes have said concerning God fore-ordaining sin and misery, and how much he is pleased with the same, nay, how he is glorified thereby, far more than by holiness. ”

“ The Reformed strengthened itself against the Roman Catholic theology by working itself, on the one hand, into vigorous logical consistency, and supporting itself, on the other, on the supreme authority of the Scriptures. Calvin’s first principle, the absolute sovereignty of God, had been so applied as to make the divine decree determine alike the acts and the destinies of men ”

“ 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. ”

“ I gladly admit that theology, like everything else, is subject to the progressive influence of the ages, and realize that the God of Calvin is not as mean as he was 400 years ago—has been much improved in the last 100 years under our free government and public education. I cheerfully concede that all theologians mean to be honest in the dogmas they create, and I believe that all churches sincerely endeavor to hold their people to defined standards of moral life. ”

“ The United Provinces were among the latter: the creed of Calvin was, as we have mentioned, one of the fundamental laws of the Union.
The Calvinistic doctrine, that God, from all eternity, consigns one portion of mankind, without any fault on their side, to everlasting torments, shocks our feelings, and is totally repugnant to the notions entertained by us of the goodness and justice of the Deity: it is not therefore surprising that it should be called in question. ”

“ The Consistory may be described as Calvin's method for moralising through the Church the life of man and the State to which he belonged. He may in the manner of the jurist have imagined that regulation by positive law was the most efficient means of governing conduct; but if he legislated as a jurist, he thought and purposed as a Reformer. It is here, where injustice is easiest, that we ought to be most scrupulously just. Calvin was resolved, so far as he had power, to make the Church what it had not been but what it ought to be, an institution organised for the creation of a moral mankind. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Though Calvin built his theology on the foundations laid by earlier reformers, and especially by Luther and Bucer, his peculiar gifts of learning, of logic and of style made him pre-eminently the theologian of the new religion. The following may be regarded as his characteristic tenets, though not all are peculiar to him.
The dominant thought is the infinite and transcendent sovereignty of God, to know whom is the supreme end of human endeavour. God is made known to man especially by the Scriptures, whose writers were “sure and authentic amanuenses of the Holy Spirit.” ”