His Literary Labours

UR last article upon the Reformer brought us to his

3 victory over the Libertines, the comparative tranquility of Geneva, and the visit of Cardinal Sadoleto, whose astonishment was so manifest at not finding the Reformer surrounded with courtier-like servants in a magnificent palace. We must now return to notice some of the literary works of Calvin, which organized and consolidated the Reformation. He had now but nine years to live. For the past nine years he had endured the most violent struggles with the Libertines, He had suffered with a weak afflicted body. He took but two meals a day, and sometimes only one. He regularly attended to his preaching, lecturing, and correspondence, yet during the short space of these nine troublesome years, the following commentaries appeared, by which “he, being dead, yet speaketh.”

In 1546 and 1547, we have the Epistles to the Corinthians; in 1548, the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the two to Timothy; in 1549, the Epistles to Titus and the Hebrews; in 1550, the Epistle of James and the two to the Thessalonians; in 1561, Isaiah and the Epistles of John, Jude, and a new edition of all Paul’s Epistles, and in 1552, the Acts. In 1553, the very year in which Servetus with the Libertines so molested him, the commentaries on Matthew, Mark and Luke appeared, which were arranged as a harmony, and supplied by a parallel commentary, followed by a commentary on John; and in 1554 Genesis appeared.

“The commentaries of Calvin,’ says Bungener, ‘‘ mark a revolution in the study of the Bible, and on that account occupy a distinguished place, not only in the history of theology, but in that of the human mind. It is truth, sought in every verse and every word, by the straightest and shortest road. Biblical science owes him, in a word, what any science owes to the man who transports it to the domain of facts, and lays at its basis observation and experience.”

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

Neither his extreme weakness and bodily affliction, nor the struggles and triumphs of Geneva, could absorb - the sympathies of the Reformer. His eye rested upon the whole of the campaign throughout Western Europe, and his pen, as the sword in the hand of a mighty warrior, was constantly wielded for the direction and encouragement of his forces, or to the confusion of his opponents.

The Reformation in Englend especially claimed the attention of Calvin. The light he had received he could no doubttrace to the twovaliant martyrs, John Huss,of Bohemia, and Jerome, of Prague; and from them to John Wickliffe, the ‘‘ morning star” of the Reformation. It was by the writings of that great English Reformer that Jerome was brought to a knowledge of the truth, which he carried to Bohemia. God was pleased to honour England with the first great pioneer of the Reformation. Nearly two © hundred years before Calvin entered Geneva, Wickliffe, by

THIS LIFE AND TIMES. 141

‘ the Bible doctrines called Calvinism, wounded the Romish hierarchy. In the 16th century, great advances were made, but the Reformation in this country was never completed. Romish rites, doctrines, and adornments were never thoroughly cast out when the Protestant Church of England was established.

KING EDWARD VI.

England is now selected by the Jesuits as the campaign for the great struggle. The Lord grant that the MOTHER OF HARLOTS may here receive her death blow from the Lamb of God, that the nations of the earth may no longer be deceived with the “golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.”

Edward VIL, who showed himself zealous for the

142 CALVIN

establishment of the Reformation in England, was but fourteen years of age when Calvin dedicated to him two of his works, ‘‘Commentary on Isaiah,’’ and the ‘Commentary on the Catholic Epistles.” These two books were not presented to Edward simply as a king, ‘but to the extraordinary child who was already able to read them, to judge of them, and to nourish himself with them. His precocious intellect and eminent faculties had struck with astonishment, from his earliest years, the masters who were entrusted with his education.

“His living piety caused him to delight in every religious study, whether edifying or controversial. It was about this period that he wrote, under the form of a discourse, a plan of reformation, based in all probability upon Calvin’s letter to the Duke of Somerset.”* The offer of these two books was a great joy tothe young king, and to the bearer of them was given a very honourable reception. With them was sent a letter to Edward, showing what must yet be done to complete the Reformation.

While Calvin was one day preaching upon

THE NOBILITY AND DIGNITY OF THE CHURCH,

it occurred to him to dictate to the young king a bref exposition of Ps. lxxxvii. ‘‘ Hoping,” he says to Edward, “that you will take pleasure in it, and that its perusal will also be profitable to you. The argument seemed to me so suitable to you, that I was moved immediately to write the sum of it. Kings are in danger of forgetting the kingdom. Now in this Psalm’ the nobility and dignity of the church are spoken of which ought so to attract to herself great and small, that all the goods and honours of earth cannot keep them back.

“The Church here is, therefore, the sp:ritual church—Christendom, holy and without spot—the kingdom of heaven, on earth or in heaven. To be aking is much; but to be _ a Christian, a simple subject of the kingdom, is more—infinitely more. It is therefore,’ continues Calvin, “an inestimable privilege which God hath granted you, that you should bea Christian king. A king among men, but a subject of Christ. But to this privilege great duties are attached. The young king knows them; it is his to order

« Bungener. and maintain the kingdom of Jesus Christ in England. The task will, perhaps, be a laborious one; therefore let this Psalm serve him for strength and buckler, and God, the King of kings, make him prosper and flourish to the glory of His name.”

The glory and honour of the Church are that God is in the midst of her; Christ is her righteousness, and glorious things are spoken of her. The church of which Calvin here speaks is not a weszble body with a visible unzformity, but the body of Christ, composed of a// true believers in Christ in every part of the world.

One great stumbling-block to Calvin, when his eyes were first opened, was, that if he left the Church of Rome he could see no other organized body of persons with a visible uniformity to which he could unite himself like that Church. This has, no doubt, been a trial to thou- + sands who have not been brought $0 see the true Church as a spiritual body united to Christ 4y faith in the unity of the Spirit. There is a very illustrative case to the point quoted in the Critical English Testament, vol. iii. page 417, upon the sealing of the servants of God (Rev. vii. 3). The Rev. H. Van Maasdyk, a Roman Catholic priest in Belgium, relates that even after he had come to a knowledge of the truth as regards the main features of the Gospel, and had thrown off the errors of Rome, he was much troubled about the existence of a zzszle Church, when suddenly, as it were, all his difficulties disappeared as he one day read, in 2 Tim. ii. 19: ‘‘ Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His.” ‘ Yes,” I said to myself, “T have found it. Zhe Lord knows those that are His. He will bring them together. If we acknowledge Him as our Head we need not disquiet ourselves as to where the members of the body are. The Lord alone knows where His body is, His church, and He directs it; He leads it, and He makes all work together for its good.”

‘« There is a family on earth, Whose Father fills a throne! But though a seed of heavenly birth, To men they’re little known. ‘* Whene’er they meet the public eye, They feel the public scorn; For men their fairest claims deny, And count them basely born.”