Calvin and Luther Contrasted
OW marvellously the wisdom of God appears in selecti ing and preparing His servants, each for their pecuage liar work, and for the age in which they are called
to labour. Never, perhaps, was this more manifest | than in Martin Luther and John Calvin, who were both men of the most remarkable order; and both taught by the same Spirit. Yet the gifts they received from the Spirit so widely differed, and each was so remarkably adapted to the times, that had the work of Calvin preceded Luther's by twenty-six years instead of being twenty-six years after it, we cannot suppose that such great results could ever have been achieved. But ‘‘to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven ;” a time to break down, and a time to build up, and ‘our times are in His hands.”
Some years since we were passing through one of the streets of the city of London, and saw a man pulling an old house down. With a pickaxe in hand, he stood upon a piece of brickwork about four feet wide, and about thirty or forty feet from the ground, and with the greatest composure he removed brick after brick from the very piece of wall on which he stood. The gazing multitude, with breathless anxiety, watched the trembling wall as it bowed slightly first one way, and then the other, expecting every moment to witness a fatal catastrophe. But if I am not deceived, the man worked his way safely down, and was employed in the erection of the new building, yet, not as a builder, but as a /abourer. The man was skilled at pulling the rotten old house down, and preparing materials for the new one; but to raise the new structure in every part, according to definite plan, was the work of other minds and other hands.
So Martin Luther, like Jeremiah, was sanctified and ordained a prophet unto the nations, and set over kingdoms, ‘to root out, and pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant.” But his special work was to pull down Antichrist, and to prepare the materials for other
‘workmen. The reforming of the Church according to the Bible plan was especially the work of Calvin, Luther was the professor, and right gloriously, through grace, he did his work; Calvin was the RE/ormer and his work remains to this day. For the Xeforming of the Church of God Calvin was set over the nations. The strokes of his pen, in his | quiet, humble study in Geneva, vibrated through Christendom to the comfort of martyrs; to the counselling of monarchs; to the construction of Reforms, and to the confusion of the Papacy.
THE LIBERTINES
were, however, permitted for a time to be a thorn in the flesh, messengers from Satan to buffet him, lest he should be exalted above measure. ‘‘ While Calvin was counselling monarchs, drafting plans of reform for statesmen, organising churches, corresponding with theologians in all ‘countries, and labouring to harmonize their views of Divine -
GALVIN: IIS LIFE AND TIMES. 135
truth—in short, acting as the moral legislator of Christendom—he was the object of unceasing and bitter attack on the part of a faction of the Genovese,’ says Dr. Wylie. ‘They detested his presence in their town; openly insulted him in their streets, and ceaselessly intrigued to drive him from Geneva, the city which he had made famous throughout Europe, and which, the moment that he quitted it, would sink into its original obscurity.”
About this time he writes to Bullinger, ‘‘ My position has become almost unbearable.” By excluding the Libertines from the Lord’s table, Calvin practically aimed at a separation between the government of the Church and the government of the State, but this they were not willing to see. On January 9th, 1555, ten of them, having supped together, took each a candle, and paraded the streets, singing at the full stretch of their voices, the psalms, interlaced with jeers; yet they ignorantly maintained that to allow Calvin to exclude them from the Lord’s table was to revive the tyranny of the pope under a new name, and to destroy the liberty they had so dearly bought. Calvin, on behalf of himself and the other pastors, maintained that they had a right in the Church to claim obedience to the Bible, the law of Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church.
‘He has given us,’’ he said, ‘“‘the power to dind and to loose—in other words, /o preach the Word and to administer the sacraments. To us holy things have been committed, and we shall take care that the table of the Lord is not dishonoured by the presence at it of the profane.” ‘“*So far,” said the Reformer, ‘is the power of the pastors from being a menace to the liberty of the republic, that it is its best protection. Liberty without the Gospel is but a miserable slavery.” These advocates of liberty had, however, but little respect for the liberty and rights of others.
“ We have too many ministers and too many sermons,” they exclaimed in the.Council. They also complained of the number of books printed, and the number of refugees. They loved darkness rather than light, and the godly, noble men taking refuge in their city, the number of books appearing, and the faithful discourses from their pulpits, were so many rays of light exposing their dark deeds.
136; CALVIN: THEIR UTTER CONFUSION.
No favourable impression was made upon the Council by these complaints. ‘On May 16th, Perrin returned again to the Council with a larger number of followers, chiefly fishermen and boatmen, armed with swords. ‘On Friday, May 18th, 1555, the heads of the party met in a tavern, ten in number,’ says Bonivard, ‘of brawling companions.’ The more moderate, who may be presumed to have been also the more sober, were for convoking the Council General; but the more violent would hear of nothing but the massacre of all the refugees of religion and their sup-
orters. The Sunday following, when the citizens would e all at church, was fixed on for the execution of this horrible plot.
‘The eagerness of the Libertines to consummate their crime caused the plot to miscarry. The very night after their meeting, the fumes of the wine, we may charitably believe, not having yet exhaled, the mob patriots rushed into the streets with arms in their hands to begin their dreadful work. ‘The French, the French,’ they shouted, ‘are taking the town! Slay all! slay all!’ But not one of the refugees was to be seen. ‘The Lord,’ says Calvin, ‘had poured a deep sleep upon them.’ But the other citizens rushed into the streets. There was a great uproar, shouts, cries, and clashing of arms; but fortunately the affray passed without bloodshed.”
In a few days the Council assembled to take measures to preserve the peace of the city, and to bring the seditious ‘to justice.
THE SPEFDY RISE AND PROSPERITY OF GENEVA, |
Four were-beheaded. Perrin and others fled, and the rest were banished. Calvin could now say, “The snare is broken.and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.’’ Thus God delivered Geneva from a fretting plague which sought only to spread its corruption. Geneva was now free. Small as she was, she nevertheless numbered among her 11,000 inhabitants many of the brightest intellects and most gracious men in Europe, who had fled within her gates for safety. Here, too, not on a pontifical throne (a title taken from the Pagan Emperor Pontifex), arrayed in gold and scarlet, not in a gorgeous palace or Vatican with its 11,000 rooms, but in a humble residence, without any worldly show or pomp, lived the minister of Christ, the Reformer of Christendom. Under his hand, however, Geneva was to be re-moulded, and in a'short time to rise to eminence. Calvin, under God, was to marshal his Protestant troops, armed onl with the sword of the Spirit (the Word of God), and send them forth to conquer mighty nations. Through the gates of the little city passed multitudes of faithful ambassadors ready to preach the Word and then die at the stake.
‘What an astonishing phenomenon must the sudden rise of this little town have appeared to the men of those times! How portentous to the friends of the old religion. It had not been built up by human hands; it was not defended by human weapons; yet here it stood, a great light-house in the centre of Christendom, a mother of churches, a nurse of martyrs, a school of evangelists, an ’ impregnable asylum of the persecuted, a font of civilization, an abode of letters and arts: a great moral tribunal where the actions of all men were weighed, and in whose inexorably just and righteous awards men heard the voice of the higher tribunal.”’* ©,
- John Knox, who visited Geneva at this time, writes to his friend Locke: ‘‘In my heart I could have wished, yea, and cannot cease to wish, that it might please God to guide and conduct you to this place, where I neither fear nor shame to.say is the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles. In other places I confess Christ to be truly preached; but manners and religion to be so sincerely reformed I have not seen in any other place besides.”
CARDINAL SADOLETO’S VISIT TO CALVIN.
At this time, when the Pope himself was not a man of more influence in Europe than the humble pastor of Geneva, Cardinal Sadoleto, passing through Geneva, would gratify his curiosity by paying him a visit. How astonished was the Cardinal Prince (who had visited the Vatican, and seen the earthly pomp of the Pope), to be conducted to No. 122, Rue des Chancines, and to find Calvin himself open the door in answer to his knock.
* History of Protestantism,” - K
CALVIN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES, 139
What an instructive scene was this for Sadoleto to reflect upon! Had he been in possession of spiritual wisdom how readily would he have contrasted this primitive, unostentatious manner of life with the ambitious display of the Vatican. Wecan imagine, and would that it were true, God jwho commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shining in unto him, giving him the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus as he stood at the Reformer’s door. How soon then would he have seen himself with his scarlet attire, dangling cross, and train of attendants, as the minister of Antichrist, and Calvin as the minister of Christ.
We can imagine him thus enlightened and saying, ‘‘ Peter, whom we suppose to be our first Pope, said, ‘ Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock’ (1 Peter y. 2,3). Surely the man that is now before me is more like the successor of Peter than any of our Popes have ever been.” When Pope Pius IV. heard of the death of Calvin, he said: ‘That which made the strength of that heretic, was that money was nothing to him.” What a mystery to the Pope must this have been when he knew that money was everything to himself and his church.