ble, and beyond all comparison. He allowed himself no recreation whatever. He preached and wrote with headaches that would, says Beza, have confined any other person to bed.

Calvin was a member of the Sovereign Council of Geneva, and took a great part in the deliberations, as a politician and legislator. He corrected the civil code of his adopted country. He corresponded with Protestants throughout Europe, both on religious subjects and State affairs; for all availed themselves of his experience in difficult matters. He wrote innumerable letters of encouragement and consolation to those who were persecuted, imprisoned, condemned to death for the Gospel's sake. He was a constant preacher, delivering public discourses every day in the week, and on Sunday preaching twice. He was Professor of Theology, and delivered three lectures a week. He was President of Consistory, and addressed remonstrances, or pronounced other ecclesiastical sentences against delinquent church members. He was the head of the pastors; and every Friday, in an assembly called the Congregation, he pronounced before them a long discourse on the duties of the evangelical ministry. His door was constantly open to refugees from France, England, Poland, Germany, and Italy, who flocked to Geneva, and he organized for these exiled Protestants, special parishes. His correspondence, commentaries, and controversial writings, &c., would form annually, during the period of thirty-one years, between two and three octavo volumes; and yet he did not reach the age of fifty-five. When laid aside by disease from preaching, he dictated numberless letters, revised for the last time his Christian Institutes, almost re-wrote his Commentary on Isaiah, frequently observing that "nothing was so painful to him as his present idle life." And when urged by his friends to forbear, he would reply, "Would you have my Lord to find me idle when he cometh?" "O, the power of Christian faith; and of the human will! Calvin did all these things he did more than twenty eminent doctors; and he had feeble health, a frail body, and died at the age of fifty-five years! We bow reverently before this incomparable activity, this unparalleled devotion of Calvin to the service of his Divine Master!"

CHAPTER IV.

CALVIN VINDICATED FROM THE CHARGE OF AMBITION, AND HIS TRUE GREATNESS AND WONDERFUL INFLUENCE SHOWN.

Gifted with such powers of mind, and stored with such treasures of knowledge, who can question the sincerity of Calvin's adherence to the principles of the Reformation? He has been charged, however, with ambitious motives, and with aspiring to a new popedom. Shameless calumny! With the pathway to honour, emolument and fame opened to him, did he not choose, like Moses, "rather to suffer with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season?" Did he not resign the benefices which he held, and which by a covert conduct, he might still have retained, and throw himself poor and unpatronized among the houseless wanderers who were everywhere spoken against as not worthy to live? Did he not design to spend his time in retirement, as deeming himself unfit to take part in the noble strife? Was he not led to visit Geneva by the invisible hand of God, who had obstructed his route through Dauphiny and Savoy to Balse or Strasburgh, where he meant to retire? Was it not after many refusals, and the extremest urgency, he consented to remain in that city? And when appointed Professor of Divinity by the consistory and magistrates, did he not earnestly decline the office of pastor, which they also insisted upon his undertaking? When banished from that place did he not again seek retirement, and with manifest reluctance resume the duties of professor and of pastor, which Bucer, Capito, Hedio, and the Senate of Strasburgh conferred upon him? And when the whole city of Geneva entreated his return among them, did he not say, that "the further he advanced the more sensible he was how arduous a charge is that of governing a church, and that there was no place under heaven he more dreaded than Geneva?" How did he praise and exalt Melancthon and Luther!* How did he bear with their opposition to his views, and their silence, when he wrote to them in friendship! Did he not, when he had succeeded in founding the College at Geneva, prefer Beza to the presidency, and himself become a professor under him? Did he not as late as 1553, in a letter to the minister of Zurich, call Farel "the father of the liberties of Geneva and the father of that church?" Ambitious! "a most extraordinary charge, says Beza, to be brought against a man who chose his kind of life, and in this state, in this church, which I might truly call the very seat of poverty." No! the love of truth and of the cause

*Scott's Contin. of Milner, vol. 3. 175, 414, 382, 387. †Ibid. p. 466.

of Christ was the master passion of his soul. He realized what millions only profess, and judging with the apostle, that if Christ died for all, then were all dead, and that He thus died that they, who are made alive by his Spirit, should not henceforth live unto themselves, he consecrated his body, soul and spirit unto God. "Since," says he, "I remember that I am not my own, nor at my own disposal, I give myself up, tied and bound, as a sacrifice to God." When, therefore, he was driven from Geneva by a blinded faction, amid the lamentations of his whole flock, he could say, "Had I been in the service of men, this would have been a poor reward; but it is well-I have served HIM, who never fails to repay his servants whatever he has promised." When the people of Strasburgh consented for a season to lend his service to the people of Geneva, they insisted on his retaining the privileges of a citizen and the stipend they had assigned him while resident among them. Was it ambition that led Calvin resolutely to decline the generous offer? Was it ambition which led him to settle at Geneva, where his stipend, which was one hundred crowns a year, barely supported his existence, and which nevertheless he pertinaciously refused to have increased? Did he not for years abstain from all animal food at dinner, rarely eating anything after breakfast till his stated hour for supper-and was not the whole amount of his remaining property, including his library, which sold high, less than three hundred crowns? Let the infidel Bayle, who was struck with astonishment by these facts, put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.*

The charge of ambition is founded upon the innate and surpassing greatness of Calvin. An exile from his country, without money, without friends, he raised himself, by merit alone, to a dominion over the minds of men. His throne was in the hearts of those who knew him; his sceptre, truth; his laws, the silent influence of principle. Consider the difficulties which he encountered at Geneva. When he arrived at that place, in 1536, the city had neither religious nor political organization. Calvin undertook the task of giving it both. But in order to do so, he had first to cleanse the Augean stable, for to this the demoralized condition of Geneva might be well compared. The long reign of ignorance and superstition, the extreme corruption of the Romish clergy, the relaxation of manners consequent upon intestine feuds and open war, the licentiousness, anarchy and insubordination resulting from the first excesses of unrestrained freedom, the disorders occasioned by party spirit and factious demagogues, and the secret attachment of many to the discarded system of popery-these were causes sufficient to lead

*Bayle's Dict.-art. Calvin. BB. and Scott, 489.

†Dr. Taylor's Biography of the Age of Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 24.

to the unparalleled dissoluteness of a city, where great numbers of houses of ill fame were recognized and licensed by the magistrates, with a regular female superior who bore the name of Reine du Bordel. Calvin proved himself to be not only a theologian of the highest order, but also a politician of astonishing sagacity. Morals became pure. The laws of the state were revised and thoroughly changed. The ecclesiastical tribunals were made independent of the civil, and a system of the strictest discipline established. The sect of the Libertines was overthrown. The most powerful factions were dispersed. The enemies of truth and purity, though often triumphant, and always violent, were made to lick the dust, so that the wickedness of the wicked came to an end, and righteousness prevailed. The effects of Calvin's influence, says a recent and prejudiced historian, "after the lapse of ages, are still visible in the industry and intellectual tone of Geneva."* From having been a small and unimportant town, Geneva became the focus of light, the centre of attraction, and the source of incalculable influence upon the destinies of Europe and the world. Calvin's seminary supplied teachers and ministers to most of the Reformed states of Europe. Geneva was honoured with the title of the mother of Protestantism. Lodgings could with difficulty be found for the multitude of students that came to sit at the feet of the man whom Melancthon called "the divine." It was to this "metropolis of Presbyterianism" all the proscribed exiles who were driven from other countries by the intolerance of Popery, "came to get intoxicated with presbytery and republicanism," to carry back with them those seeds which have sprung up in the republic of Holland, the commonwealth of England, the glorious revolution of 1688, and our own American confederation.

Would you see the amazing power and influence of Calvin, read the history of his triumph over Bolsec, one of those hydras of faction that successively shot up their revegetating heads in Geneva.† Behold Troillet, another of his enemies, when about to die, sending for Calvin, that he might confess his faults, declaring that he could not die in peace without obtaining his forgiveness. Behold him at Berne, debating against Castalio and others with such power that his opponents were henceforth excluded from that Canton. Thus, like another Hercules, armed with the simple club of God's holy word, did he destroy the

*Hist. of Switzerland. Lond. 1832; p. 227.

†Scott, ibid. 404, and Waterman, 70. "Those, says Rousseau, who regard Calvin as a mere theologian, are ill-acquainted with the extent of his genius. The preparation of our wise Edicts, in which he had a great part, does him as much honour as his Institutes. Whatever revolution time may effect in our worship, while the love of country and of liberty shall exist among us, the memory of that great man shall never cease to be blessed."

numerous monsters who threatened to overthrow the truth as it is in Jesus.

How wonderful was the influence, under God, of this single man! The Reformed Churches in France adopted his confession of faith, and were modelled after the ecclesiastical order of Geneva. To him England is indebted for her articles, for a purified liturgy, and for all her psalmody.* To him Scotland owes her Knox, her Buchanan, and her Melville, her ecclesiastical system, and all that has made her proudly eminent among the nations of the earth. To him Northern Ireland is indebted for the industry, manufactures, education, religion, and noble spirit of independence and freedom which she received from her first settlers, the followers of Calvin.† To his letters, dedications, and exhortations, every nation of any eminence in his day, was accustomed to pay profound respect. These writings had a salutary influence even upon the Romish church. Her shame was excited, abuses were abandoned, discipline enforced, and the necessity of a reformation confessed. Nor was this influence merely ecclesiastical or political. The increase of his own church was, we are told, wonderful, and he could say, even during his life, "I have numberless spiritual children throughout the world." His contemporaneous reputation was even greater than his posthumous fame, because all parties united in rendering him honour. Many Romanists, says Bayle, "would do him justice if they durst." Scaliger said, he was "the greatest wit the world had seen since the apostles," while the Romish bishop of Valence called him "the greatest divine in the world." The Romanists too have been forced to acknowledge the falsity of their infamous calumnies published against his morals.§ Such was the terror he had inspired in this great apostasy, that when a false report of his death was circulated, they decreed a public procession, and returned thanks to God in their churches for his death.tt Every pious, eminent, and learned Reformer was his friend. It was the power of his reputation, proclaiming abroad their own condemnation, that led the General Assembly of Geneva to adopt a decree for his return-to acknowledge the great injury they had done him, and implore forgiveness of Almighty God-to send an honourable deputation to him, to persuade him to accept their invitation-to go forth in throngs to welcome his return—and to allow him a secretary at the public expense. In short, it would be no difficult matter, as has been said, to prove, that there is not a parallel instance upon record, of any single

*Sibson in Beza's Life, Am. ed. pp. 111, 112.

†Waterman, p. 34. Scott, ibid. 370. Beza's life, p. 101. Bayle's Dict. Vol. ii. p. 268; note X.

Ibid. p. 265, and note 2.

††Waterman, p. 135.

23-VOL. III.