Part 30

Amidst these multitudinous cares and occupations, Calvin found time to write a number of works besides those provoked by the various controversies in which he was engaged. The most numerous of these were of an exegetical character. Including discourses taken down from his lips by faithful auditors, we have from him expository comments or homilies on nearly all the books of Scripture, written partly in Latin and partly in French. 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 series began with _Romans_ in 1540 and ended with _Joshua_ in 1564. In 1558-1559 also, though in very ill health, he finally perfected the Institutes.

The incessant and exhausting labours to which Calvin gave himself could not but tell on his fragile constitution. Amid many sufferings, however, and frequent attacks of sickness, he manfully pursued his course; nor was it till his frail body, torn by many and painful diseases--fever, asthma, stone, and gout, the fruits for the most part of his sedentary habits and unceasing activity--had, as it were, fallen to pieces around him, that his indomitable spirit relinquished the conflict. In the early part of the year 1564 his sufferings became so severe that it was manifest his earthly career was rapidly drawing to a close. On the 6th of February of that year he preached his last sermon, having with great difficulty found breath enough to carry him through it. He was several times after this carried to church, but never again was able to take any

## part in the service. 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; when expostulated with for such unseasonable toil, he replied, "Would you that the Lord should find me idle when He comes?" After he had retired from public labours he lingered for some months, enduring the severest agony without a murmur, and cheerfully attending to all the duties of a private kind which his diseases left him strength to discharge. On the 25th of April he made his will, on the 27th he received the Little Council, and on the 28th the Genevan ministers, in his sick-room; on the 2nd of May he wrote his last letter--to his old comrade Farel, who hastened from Neuchâtel to see him once again. He spent much time in prayer and died quietly, in the arms of his faithful friend Theodore Beza, on the evening of the 27th of May, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. The next day he was buried without pomp "in the common cemetery called Plain-palais" in a spot not now to be identified.

Calvin was of middle stature; his complexion was somewhat pallid and dark; his eyes, to the latest clear and lustrous, bespoke the acumen of his genius. He was sparing in his food and simple in his dress; he took but little sleep, and was capable of extraordinary efforts of intellectual toil. He had a most retentive memory and a very keen power of observation. He spoke without rhetoric, simply, directly, but with great weight. He had many acquaintances but few close friends. His private character was in harmony with his public reputation and position. If somewhat severe and irritable, he was at the same time scrupulously just, truthful, and steadfast; he never deserted a friend or took an unfair advantage of an antagonist; and on befitting occasions he could be cheerful and even facetious among his intimates. "God gave him," said the Little Council after his death, "a character of great majesty." "I have been a witness of him for sixteen years," says Beza, "and I think I am fully entitled to say that in this man there was exhibited to all an example of the life and death of the Christian, such as it will not be easy to depreciate, such as it will be difficult to emulate."

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." 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. From this state Adam fell, and in his fall involved the whole human race descended from him. Hence depravity and corruption, diffused through all parts of the soul, attach to all men, and this first makes them obnoxious to the anger of God, and then comes forth in works which the Scripture calls works of the flesh (Gal. v. 19). Thus all are held vitiated and perverted in all parts of their nature, and on account of such corruption deservedly condemned before God, by whom nothing is accepted save righteousness innocence, and purity. 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. From him, however, not only has punishment overtaken us, but a pestilence instilled from him resides in us, to which punishment is justly due. 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; nay, their whole nature is a sort of seed of sin, therefore it cannot but be hateful and abominable to God (_Instit._ bk. ii, ch. i. sect. 8).

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. Thus incarnate He took on Him the offices of prophet, priest and king, and by His humiliation, obedience and suffering unto death, followed by His resurrection and ascension to heaven, He has perfected His work and fulfilled all that was required in a redeemer of men, so that it is truly affirmed that He has merited for man the grace of salvation (bk. ii. ch. 13-17). But until a man is in some way really united to Christ so as to partake of Him, the benefits of Christ's work cannot be attained by him. Now it is by the secret and special operation of the Holy Spirit that men are united to Christ and made members of His body. Through faith, which is a firm and certain cognition of the divine benevolence towards us founded on the truth of the gracious promise in Christ, men are by the operation of the Spirit united to Christ and are made partakers of His death and resurrection, so that the old man is crucified with Him and they are raised to a new life, a life of righteousness and holiness. Thus joined to Christ the believer has life in Him and knows that he is saved, having the witness of the Spirit that he is a child of God, and having the promises, the certitude of which the Spirit had before impressed on the mind, sealed by the same Spirit on the heart (bk. iii. ch. 33-36). 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. This imputed righteousness, however, is not disjoined from real personal righteousness, for regeneration and sanctification come to the believer from Christ no less than justification; the two blessings are not to be confounded, but neither are they to be disjoined. 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_). 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; and wherever the word of God is sincerely preached, and the sacraments are duly administered, according to Christ's institute, there beyond doubt is a church of the living God (bk. iv. ch. 1, sect. 7-11). 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. 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. The Lord's Supper is a spiritual feast where Christ attests that He is the life-giving bread, by which our souls are fed unto true and blessed immortality. That sacred communication of His flesh and blood whereby Christ transfuses into us His life, even as if it penetrated into our bones and marrow, He in the Supper attests and seals; and that not by a vain or empty sign set before us but there He puts forth the efficacy of His Spirit whereby He fulfils what He promises. In the mystery of the Supper Christ is truly exhibited to us by the symbols of bread and wine; and so His body and blood, in which He fulfilled all obedience for the obtaining of righteousness for us, are presented. There is no such presence of Christ in the Supper as that He is affixed to the bread or included in it or in any way circumscribed; but whatever can express the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, which is exhibited to believers under the said symbols of the Supper, is to be received, and that not as perceived by the imagination only or mental intelligence, but as enjoyed for the aliment of the eternal life (bk. iv. ch. 15, 17).

The course of time has substantially modified many of these positions. 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. So also its insistence on the chief end of man "to know and do the will of God" made for the strenuous morality that helped to build up the modern world. Its effects are most clearly seen in Scotland, in Puritan England and in the New England states, but its influence was and is felt among peoples that have little desire or claim to be called Calvinist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The standard edition of Calvin's works is that undertaken by the Strassburg scholars, J.W. Bauin, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss, P. Lobstein, A. Erichson (59 vols., 1863-1900). The last of these contains an elaborate bibliography which was also published separately at Berlin in 1900. The bulk of the writings was published in English by the Calvin Translation Society (48 vols., Edinburgh, 1843-1855); the _Institutes_ have often been translated. The early lives by Beza and Collodon are given in the collected editions. Among modern biographies are those by P. Henry, _Das Leben J. Calvins_ (3 vols., Hamburg, 1835-1844; Eng. trans, by H. Stebbing, London and New York, 1849); V. Audin, _Histoire de la vie, des ouvrages, et des doctrines de Calvin_ (2 vols., Paris, 1841; Eng. trans, by J. McGill, London, 1843 and 1850) unfairly antagonistic; T.H. Dyer, _Life of John Calvin_ (London, 1850); 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. (1892), and R. Stähelin's article in Hauck-Herzog's _Real-encyk. für prot. Theologie und Kirche._ Each of these contains a useful bibliography, as also does the excellent life by Professor Williston Walker, _John Calvin, the Organizer of Reformed Protestantism_, "Heroes of the Reformation" series (1906). See also C.S. Horne in _Mansfield Coll. Essays_ (1909). (W. L. A.; A. J. G.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The family name of Calvin seems to have been written indifferently Cauvin, Chauve, Chauvin, Calvus, Calvinus. In the contemporary notices of Gerard and his family, in the capitular registers of the cathedral at Noyon, the name is always spelt Cauuin. The anagram of Calvin is Alcuin, and this in its Latinized form Alcuinus appears in two editions of his _Instltutio_ as that of the author (Audin, _Vie de Calvin,_ i. 520). The syndics of Geneva address him in a letter written in 1540, and still preserved, as "Docteur Caulvin." In his letters written in French he usually signs himself "Jean Calvin." He affected the title of "Maitre," for what reason is not known.

[2] Pierre de Montaigu refounded this institution in 1388. Erasmus and Ignatius Loyola also studied here.

[3] Calv. _Praef. ad Comment. in Psalmos._

[4] _Jo. Calvini Vita, sub init._

[5] _Epist. Ded., Comment in Ep. II. ad Corinthios praefix._

[6] This edition forms a small 8vo of 514 pages, and 6 pages of index. It appeared at Basel from the press of Thomas Platter and Balthasar Lasius in March 1536, and was published by Johann Oporin. The dedicatory preface is dated 23rd August 1535. It is a masterpiece of apologetic literature. See W. Walker, _John Calvin,_ 132 f., and for an outline of the contents of the treatise, ib. 137-149.

[7] _Praef. ad Psalmos._

[8] _Ibid._

[9] Beza, _Vit. Calv. an. 1536._

[10] Fidelis Expositio Errorum Serveti, _sub init._ Calvini, _Opp_. t. ix.

[11] Calvin to Farel, 20th Aug. 1553.

[12] Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. Affirmo etiam vestros magistratus juste fecisse quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt.--Melanchthon to Calvin, 14th Oct. 1554.

[13] Field _On the Church_, bk. iii. c. 27, vol. i. p. 288 (ed. Cambridge, 1847).

[14] _Notes on English Divines_, vol. i. p. 49. See also _Table Talk_, vol. ii. p. 282 (ed. 1835).

[15] W. Walker, _John Calvin_, pp. 403-8.

CALVINISTIC METHODISTS, a body of Christians forming a church of the Presbyterian order and claiming to be the only denomination in Wales which is of purely Welsh origin. Its beginnings may be traced to the labours of the Rev. Griffith Jones (1684-1761), of Llanddowror, Carmarthenshire, whose sympathy for the poor led him to set on foot a system of circulating charity schools for the education of children. In striking contrast to the general apathy of the clergy of the period, Griffith Jones's zeal appealed to the public imagination, and his powerful preaching exercised a widespread influence, many travelling long distances in order to attend his ministry. There was thus a considerable number of earnest people dispersed throughout the country waiting for the rousing of the parish clergy. An impressive announcement of the Easter Communion Service, made by the Rev. Pryce Davies, vicar of Talgarth, on the 30th of March 1735, was the means of awakening Howell Harris (1714-1773) of Trevecca, and he immediately began to hold services in his own house. He was soon invited to do the same at the houses of others, and ended by becoming a fiery itinerant preacher, stirring to the depths every neighbourhood he visited. Griffith Jones, preaching at Llanddewi Brefi, Cardiganshire--the place at which the Welsh Patron Saint, David, first became famous--found Daniel Rowland (1713-1790), curate of Llangeitho, in his audience, and his patronizing attitude in listening drew from the preacher a personal supplication on his behalf, in the middle of the discourse. Rowland was deeply moved, and became an ardent apostle of the new movement. Naturally a fine orator, his new-born zeal gave an edge to his eloquence, and his fame spread abroad. Rowland and Harris had been at work fully eighteen months before they met, at a service in Devynock church, in the upper part of Breconshire. The acquaintance then formed lasted to the end of Harris's life--an interval of ten years excepted. Harris had been sent to Oxford in the autumn of 1735 to "cure him of his fanaticism," but he left in the following February. Rowland had never been to a university, but, like Harris, he had been well grounded in general knowledge. About 1739 another prominent figure appeared. This was Howell Davies of Pembrokeshire, whose ministry was modelled on that of his master, Griffith Jones, but with rather more clatter in his thunder.

In 1736, on returning home, Harris opened a school, Griffith Jones supplying him with books from his charity. He also set up societies, in accordance with the recommendations in Josiah Wedgwood's little book on the subject; and these exercised a great influence on the religious life of the people. By far the most notable of Harris's converts was William Williams (1717-1791), Pant y Celyn, the great hymn-writer of Wales, who while listening to the revivalist preaching on a tombstone in the graveyard of Talgarth, heard the "voice of heaven," and was "apprehended as by a warrant from on high." He was ordained deacon in the Church of England, 1740, but Whitefield recommended him to leave his curacies and go into the highways and hedges. On Wednesday and Thursday, January 5th and 6th, 1743, the friends of aggressive Christianity in Wales met at Wadford, near Caerphilly, Glam., in order to organize their societies. George Whitefield was in the chair. Rowland, Williams and John Powell--afterwards of Llanmartin--(clergymen), Harris, John Humphreys and John Cennick (laymen) were present. Seven lay exhorters were also at the meetings; they were questioned as to their spiritual experience and allotted their several spheres; other matters pertaining to the new conditions created by the revival were arranged. This is known as the first Methodist Association--held eighteen months before Johm Wesley's first conference (June 25th, 1744). Monthly meetings covering smaller districts, were organized to consider local matters, the transactions of which were to be reported to the Quarterly Association, to be confirmed, modified, or rejected. Exhorters were divided into two classes--public, who were allowed to itinerate as preachers and superintend a number of societies; private, who were confined to the charge of one or two societies. The societies were distinctly understood to be part of the established church, as Wedgwood's were, and every attempt at estranging them therefrom was sharply reproved; but persecution made their position anomalous. They did not accept the discipline of the Church of England, so the plea of conformity was a feeble defence; nor had they taken out licenses, so as to claim the protection of the Toleration Act. Harris's ardent loyalty to the Church of England, after three refusals to ordain him, and his personal contempt for ill-treatment from persecutors, were the only things that prevented separation.