when Voltaire was the oracle of Europe,--when from his chateau near
Geneva he controlled the mind of Europe, as Calvin did two centuries
earlier,--enemies would rise up, on all sides, against the Jesuits.
Their most powerful and bitter foe was a woman,--the mistress of Louis
XV., the infamous Madame de Pompadour. She hated the Jesuits as
Catharine de Medici hated the Calvinists in the time of Charles
IX.,--not because they were friends of absolutism, not because they
wrote casuistic books, not because they opposed liberal principles, not
because they were spies and agents of Rome, not because they perverted
education, not because they were boastful and mercenary missionaries or
cunning intriguers in the courts of princes, not because they had marked
their course through Europe in a trail of blood, but because they were
hostile to her ascendency,--a woman who exercised about the same
influence in France as Jezebel did at the court of Ahab. I respect the
Jesuits for the stand they took against this woman: it is the best thing
in their history. But here they did not show their usual worldly wisdom,
and they failed. They were judicially blinded. The instrument of their
humiliation was a wicked woman. So strange are the ways of Providence!
He chose Esther to save the Jewish nation, and a harlot to punish the
Jesuits. She availed herself of their mistakes.
It seems that the Superior of the Jesuits at Martinique failed; for the
Jesuits embarked in commercial speculations while officiating as
missionaries. The angry creditors of La Valette, the Jesuit banker,
demanded repayment from the Order. They refused to pay his debts. The
case was carried to the courts, and the highest tribunal decided against
them. That was not the worst. In the course of the legal proceedings,
the mysterious "rule" of the Jesuits--that which was so carefully
concealed from the public--was demanded. Then all was revealed,--all
that Pascal had accused them of,--and the whole nation was indignant. A
great storm was raised. The Parliament of Paris decreed the constitution
of the Society to be fatal to all government. The King wished to save
them, for he knew that they were the best supporters of the throne of
absolutism. But he could not resist the pressure,--the torrent of public
opinion, the entreaties of his mistress, the arguments of his ministers.
He was compelled to demand from the Pope the abrogation of their
charter. Other monarchs did the same; all the Bourbon courts in Europe,
for the king of Portugal narrowly escaped assassination from a fanatical
Jesuit. Had the Jesuits consented to a reform, they might not have
fallen. But they would make no concessions. Said Ricci, their General,
_Sint ut sunt, aut non sint_. The Pope--Clement XIV.--was obliged to
part with his best soldiers. Europe, Catholic Europe, demanded the
sacrifice,--the kings of Spain, of France, of Naples, of Portugal.
_Compulsus feci, compulsus feci_, exclaimed the broken-hearted
Pope,--the feeble and pious Ganganelli. So that in 1773, by a papal
decree, the Order was suppressed; 669 colleges were closed; 223 missions
were abandoned, and more than 22,000 members were dispersed. I do not
know what became of their property, which amounted to about two hundred
millions of dollars, in the various countries of Europe.
This seems to me to have been a clear case of religious persecution,
incited by jealous governments and the infidel or the progressive spirit
of the age, on the eve of the French Revolution. It simply marks the
hostilities which, for various reasons, they had called out. I am
inclined to think that their faults were greatly exaggerated; but it is
certain that so severe and high-handed a measure would not have been
taken by the Pope had it not seemed to him necessary to preserve the
peace of the Church. Had they been innocent, the Pope would have lost
his throne sooner than commit so great a wrong on his most zealous
servants. It is impossible for a Protestant to tell how far they were
guilty of the charges preferred against them. I do not believe that
their lives, as a general thing, were a scandal sufficient to justify so
sweeping a measure; but their institution, their régime, their
organization, their constitution, were deemed hostile to liberty and the
progress of society. And if zealous governments--Catholic princes
themselves--should feel that the Jesuits were opposed to the true
progress of nations, how much more reason had Protestants to distrust
them, and to rejoice in their fall!
And it was not until the French Revolution and the empire of Napoleon
had passed away, not until the Bourbons had been restored nearly half a
century, that the Order was re-established and again protected by the
Papal court. They have now regained their ancient power, and seem to
have the confidence of Catholic Europe. Some of their most flourishing
seminaries are in the United States. They are certainly not a scandal in
this country, although their spirit and institution are the same as
ever: mistrusted and disliked and feared by the Protestants, as a matter
of course, as such a powerful organization naturally would be; hostile
still to the circulation of the Scriptures among the people and free
inquiry and private judgment,--in short, to all the ideas of the
Reformation. But whatever they are, and however much the Protestants
dislike them, they have in our country,--this land of unbounded
religious toleration,--the same right to their religion and their
ecclesiastical government that Protestant sects have; and if Protestants
would nullify their influence so far as it is bad, they must outshine
them in virtues, in a religious life, in zeal, and in devotion to the
spiritual interests of the people. If the Jesuits keep better schools
than Protestants they will be patronized, and if they command the
respect of the Catholics for their virtues and intelligence, whatever
may be the machinery of their organization, they will retain their
power; and not until they interfere with elections and Protestant
schools, or teach dangerous doctrines of public morality, has our
Government any right to interfere with them. They will stand or fall as
they win the respect or excite the wrath of enlightened nations. But the
principles they are supposed to defend,--expediency, casuistry, and
hostility to free inquiry and the circulation of the Scriptures in
vernacular languages,--these are just causes of complaint and of
unrelenting opposition among all those who accept the great ideas of the
Protestant Reformation, since they are antagonistic to what we deem most
precious in our institutions. So long as the contest shall last between
good and evil in this world, we have a right to declaim against all
encroachments on liberty and sound morality and an evangelical piety
from any quarter whatever, and we are recreant to our duties unless we
speak our minds. Hence, from the light I have, I pronounce judgment
against the Society of Jesus as a dangerous institution, unfortunately
planted among us, but which we cannot help, and can attack only with the
weapons of reason and truth.
And yet I am free to say that for my part I prefer even the Jesuit
discipline and doctrines, much as I dislike them, to the unblushing
infidelity which has lately been propagated by those who call
themselves _savans_,--and which seems to have reached and even permeated
many of the schools of science, the newspapers, periodicals, clubs, and
even pulpits of this materialistic though progressive country. I make
war on the slavery of the will and a religion of formal technicalities;
but I prefer these evils to a godless rationalism and the extinction of
the light of faith.
AUTHORITIES.
Secreta Monita; Steinmetz's History of the Jesuits; Ranke's History of
the Popes; Spiritual Exercises; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Biographie
Universelle; Fall of the Jesuits, by St. Priest; Lives of Ignatius
Loyola, Aquiviva, Lainez, Salmeron, Borgia, Xavier, Bobadilla; Pascal's
Provincial Letters; Bonhours' Crétineau; Lingard's History of England;
Tierney; Lettres Aedificantes; Jesuit Missions; Mémoires Sécrètes du
Cardinal Dubois; Tanner's Societas Jesu; Dodd's Church History.
JOHN CALVIN.
* * * * *
A. D. 1509-1364.
PROTESTANT THEOLOGY.
John Calvin was pre-eminently the theologian of the Reformation, and
stamped his genius on the thinking of his age,--equally an authority
with the Swiss, the Dutch, the Huguenots, and the Puritans. His vast
influence extends to our own times. His fame as a benefactor of mind is
immortal, although it cannot be said that he is as much admired and
extolled now as he was fifty years ago. Nor was he ever a favorite with
the English Church. He has been even grossly misrepresented by
theological opponents; but no critic or historian has ever questioned
his genius, his learning, or his piety. No one denies that he has
exerted a great influence on Protestant countries. As a theologian he
ranks with Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,--maintaining essentially
the same views as those held by these great lights, and being
distinguished for the same logical power; reigning like them as an
intellectual dictator in the schools, but not so interesting as they
were as men. And he was more than a theologian; he was a reformer and
legislator, laying down rules of government, organizing church
discipline, and carrying on reforms in the worship of God,--second only
to Luther. His labors were prodigious as theologian, commentator, and
ecclesiastical legislator; and we are surprised that a man with so
feeble a body could have done so much work.
Calvin was born in Picardy in 1509,--the year that Henry VIII. ascended
the British throne, and the year that Luther began to preach at
Wittenberg. He was not a peasant's son, like Luther, but belonged to
what the world calls a good family. Intellectually he was precocious,
and received an excellent education at a college in Paris, being
destined for the law by his father, who sent him to the University of
Orleans and then to Bourges, where he studied under eminent jurists, and
made the acquaintance of many distinguished men. His conversion took
place about the year 1529, when he was twenty; and this gave a new
direction to his studies and his life. He was a pale-faced young man,
with sparkling eyes, sedate and earnest beyond his years. He was
twenty-three when he published the books of Seneca on Clemency, with
learned commentaries. At the age of twenty-three he was in communion
with the reformers of Germany, and was acknowledged to be, even at that
early age, the head of the reform party in France. In 1533 he went to
Paris, then as always the centre of the national life, where the new
ideas were creating great commotion in scholarly and ecclesiastical
circles, and even in the court itself. Giving offence to the doctors of
the Sorbonne for his evangelical views as to Justification, he was
obliged to seek refuge with the Queen of Navarre, whose castle at Pau
was the resort of persecuted reformers. After leading rather a fugitive
life in different parts of France, he retreated to Switzerland, and at
twenty-six published his celebrated "Institutes," which he dedicated to
Francis I., hoping to convert him to the Protestant faith. After a short
residence in Italy, at the court of the Duchess of Ferrara, he took up
his abode at Geneva, and his great career began.
Geneva, a city of the Allobroges in the time of Caesar, possessed at
this time about twenty thousand inhabitants, and was a free state,
having a constitution somewhat like that of Florence when it was under
the control of Savonarola. It had rebelled against the Duke of Savoy,
who seems to have been in the fifteenth century its patron ruler. The
government of this little Savoyard state became substantially like that
which existed among the Swiss cantons. The supreme power resided in the
council of Two Hundred, which alone had the power to make or abolish
laws. There was a lesser council of Sixty, for diplomatic objects only.
The first person who preached the reformed doctrines in Geneva was the
missionary Farel, a French nobleman, spiritual, romantic, and zealous.
He had great success, although he encountered much opposition and wrath.
But the reformed doctrines were already established in Zurich, Berne,
and Basle, chiefly through the preaching of Ulrich Zwingli, and
Oecolampadius. The apostolic Farel welcomed with great cordiality the
arrival of Calvin, then already known as an extraordinary man, though
only twenty-eight years of age. He came to Geneva poor, and remained
poor all his life. All his property at his death amounted to only two
hundred dollars. As a minister in one of the churches, he soon began to
exert a marvellous influence. He must have been eloquent, for he was
received with enthusiasm. This was in 1536. But he soon met with
obstacles. He was worried by the Anabaptists; and even his orthodoxy was
impeached by one Coroli, who made much mischief, so that Calvin was
obliged to publish his Genevan Catechism in Latin. He also offended many
by his outspoken rebuke of sin, for he aimed at a complete reformation
of morals, like Latimer in London and like Savonarola at Florence. He
sought to reprove amusements which were demoralizing, or thought to be
so in their influence. The passions of the people were excited, and the
city was torn by parties; and such was the reluctance to submit to the
discipline of the ministers that they refused to administer the
sacraments. This created such a ferment that the syndics expelled Calvin
and Farel from the city. They went at first to Berne, but the Bernese
would not receive them. They then retired to Basle, wearied, wet, and
hungry, and from Basle they went to Strasburg. It was in this city that
Calvin dwelt three years, spending his time in lecturing on divinity, in
making contributions to exegetical theology, in perfecting his
"Institutes," forming a close alliance with Melancthon and other leading
reformers. So pre-occupied was he with his labors as a commentator of
the Scriptures, that he even contemplated withdrawing from the public
service of religion.
Calvin was a scholar as well as theologian, and quiet labors in his
library were probably more congenial to his tastes than active parochial
duties. His highest life was amid his books, in serene repose and lofty
contemplation. At this time he had an extensive correspondence, his
advice being much sought for its wisdom and moderation. His judgment was
almost unerring, since he was never led away by extravagances or
enthusiasm: a cold, calm man even among his friends and admirers. He had
no passions; he was all intellect. It would seem that in his exile he
gave lectures on divinity, being invited by the Council of Strasburg;
and also interested himself in reference to the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper, which he would withhold from the unworthy. He lived quietly in
his retreat, and was much respected by the people of the city where
he dwelt.
In 1539 a convention was held at Frankfort, at which Calvin was present
as the envoy of the city of Strasburg. Here, for the first time, he met
Melancthon; but there was no close intimacy between them until these two
great men met in the following year at a Diet which was summoned at
Worms by the Emperor Charles V., in order to produce concord between the
Catholics and Protestants, and which was afterwards removed to Ratisbon.
Melancthon represented one party, and Doctor Eck the other. Melancthon
and Bucer were inclined to peace; and Cardinal Contarini freely offered
his hand, agreeing with the reformers to adopt the idea of Justification
as his starting point, allowing that it proceeds from faith, without any
merit of our own; but, like Luther and Calvin, he opposed any attempt at
union which might compromise the truth, and had no faith in the
movement. Neither party, as it was to be expected, was satisfied. The
main subject of the dispute was in reference to the Eucharist. Calvin
denied the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament, regarding it as a
symbol,--though one of special divine influence. But on this point the
Catholics have ever been uncompromising from the times of Berengar. Nor
was Luther fully emancipated from the Catholic doctrine, modifying
without essentially changing it. Calvin maintained that "This is my
body" meant that it signified "my body." In regard to original sin and
free-will, as represented by Augustine, there was no dispute; but much
difficulty attended the interpretation of the doctrine of Justification.
The greatest difficulty was in reference to the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, which was rejected by the reformers because it had
not the sanction of the Scriptures; and when it was found that this
caused insuperable difficulties about the Lord's Supper, it was thought
useless to proceed to other matters, like confession, masses for the
dead, and the withholding the cup from the laity. There was not so great
a difference between the Catholic and Protestant theologians concerning
the main body of dogmatic divinity as is generally supposed. The
fundamental questions pertaining to God, the Trinity, the mission and
divinity of Christ, original sin, free-will, grace, predestination, had
been formulated by Thomas Aquinas with as much severity as by Calvin.
The great subjects at issue, in a strictly theological view, were
Justification and the Eucharist. Respecting free-will and
predestination, the Catholic theologians have never been agreed among
themselves,--some siding with Augustine, like Aquinas, Bernard, and
Anselm; and some with Pelagius, like Abélard and Lainez the Jesuit at
the Council of Trent (a council assembled by the Pope, with the
concurrence of Charles V. of Germany and Francis I. of France), the
decrees of which, against the authority of Augustine in this matter,
seem to be now the established faith of the Roman Catholic Church.
After the Diet of Ratisbon, Calvin returned to Geneva, at the eager
desire of the people. The great Council summoned him to return; every
voice was raised for him. "Calvin, that learned and righteous man," they
said, "it is he whom we would have as the minister of the Lord." Yet he
did not willingly return; he preferred his quiet life at Strasburg, but
obeyed the voice of conscience. On the 13th of September, 1541, he
returned to his penitent congregation, and was received by the whole
city with every demonstration of respect; and a cloth cloak was given
him as a present, which he seemed to need.
The same year he was married to a widow, Idelette de Burie, who was a
worthy, well-read, high-minded woman, with whom he lived happily for
nine years, until her death. She was superior to Luther's wife,
Catherine Bora, in culture and dignity, and was a helpmate who never
opposed her husband in the slightest matter, always considering his
interests. Esteem and friendship seem to have been the basis of this
union,--not passionate love, which Calvin did not think much of. When
his wife died it seems he mourned for her with decent grief, but did not
seek a second marriage, perhaps because he was unable to support a wife
on his small stipend as she would wish and expect. He rather courted
poverty, and refused reasonable gratuities. His body was attenuated by
fasting and study, like that of Saint Bernard. When he was completing
his "Institutes," he passed days without eating and nights without
sleeping. And as he practised poverty he had a right to inculcate it. He
kept no servant, lived in a small tenement, and was always poorly clad.
He derived no profit from any of his books, and the only present he ever
consented to receive was a silver goblet from the Lord of Varennes.
Luther's stipend was four hundred and fifty florins; and he too refused
a yearly gift from the booksellers of four hundred dollars, not wishing
to receive a gratuity for his writings. Calvin's salary was only fifty
dollars a year, with a house, twelve measures of corn, and two pipes of
wine; for tea and coffee were then unknown in Europe, and wine seems to
have been the usual beverage, after water. He was pre-eminently a
conscientious man, not allowing his feelings to sway his judgment. He
was sedate and dignified and cheerful; though Bossuet accuses him of a
surly disposition,--_un genre triste, un esprit chagrin_. Though formal
and stern, women never shrank from familiar conversation with him on
the subject of religion. Though intolerant of error, he cherished no
personal animosities. Calvin was more refined than Luther, and never
like him gave vent to coarse expressions. He had not Luther's physical
strength, nor his versatility of genius; nor as a reformer was he so
violent. "Luther aroused; Calvin tranquillized," The one stormed the
great citadel of error, the other furnished the weapons for holding it
after it was taken. The former was more popular; the latter appealed to
a higher intelligence. The Saxon reformer was more eloquent; the Swiss
reformer was more dialectical. The one advocated unity; the other
theocracy. Luther was broader; Calvin engrafted on his reforms the Old
Testament observances. The watchword of the one was Grace; that of the
other was Predestination. Luther cut knots; Calvin made systems. Luther
destroyed; Calvin legislated. His great principle of government was
aristocratic. He wished to see both Church and State governed by a
select few of able men. In all his writings we see no trace of popular
sovereignty. He interested himself, like Savonarola, in political
institutions, but would separate the functions of the magistracy from
those of the clergy; and he clung to the notion of a theocratic
government, like Jewish legislators and the popes themselves. The idea
of a theocracy was the basis of Calvin's system of legislation, as it
was that of Leo I. He desired that the temporal power should rule in
the name of God,--should be the arm by which spiritual principles should
be enforced. He did not object to the spiritual domination of the popes,
so far as it was in accordance with the word of God. He wished to
realize the grand idea which the Middle Ages sought for, but sought for
in vain,--that the Church must always remain the mother of spiritual
principles; but he objected to the exercise of temporal power by
churchmen, as well as to the interference of the temporal power in
matters purely spiritual,--virtually the doctrine of Anselm and Becket.
But, unlike Becket, Calvin would not screen clergymen accused of crime
from temporal tribunals; he rather sought the humiliation of the clergy
in temporal matters. He also would destroy inequalities of rank, and do
away with church dignitaries, like bishops and deans and archdeacons;
and he instituted twice as many laymen as clergymen in ecclesiastical
assemblies. But he gave to the clergy the exclusive right to
excommunicate, and to regulate the administration of the sacraments. He
was himself a high-churchman in his spirit, both in reference to the
divine institution of the presbyterian form of government and the
ascendancy of the Church as a great power in the world.