The Reformation in France
EAR the heart of our Reformer, as a Frenchman, would naturally lie the Reformation in France. to, Here with marvellous success his attention was “S$ turned; 2150 churches were organized. The extraordinary demand for preachers was such that Calvin writes: ‘‘ We are asked for preachers on all sides; inquirers for them besiege my door, and contend for them with pious emulation. We are, however, quite exhausted; nay, we have lately been obliged to send such journeymen out of the booksellers’ shops as possessed some slight tincture of learning and religious knowledge.”
‘Some slight tincture of learning” with Calvin would no doubt bea fair education. If, however, he sent gracious men blessed with a personal knowledge of Christ, and endowed with a gift to preach the Word, although possessing but little human learning, he did as his Master did, when He made fishermen fishers of men, and as God did when He sent Bunyan the tinker, and Huntington the coalheaver, to so unfurl the standard of grace that the colours of the kingdom revealed by them still float upon the breezes of the Spirit, and cast their cover over many a weary warrior. ‘‘The base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen; yea, and things that are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should "glory i in His presence ” (1 Cor. 1. 28, 29:).
One of the ministers sent from Geneva, thus writes to Farel: ‘‘I cannot express to you what mercy God daily
‘shows towards our church. From several places persons
are come, demanding labourers for the new harvest. They are particularly pressing us from Tournon and the Agenois
.for in those parts more than three hundred parishes have abolished the mass, but are yet without a minister. I have heard it said that if from four to six thousand preachers could be sent, there would be room for them all.”
The Calvinists of Normandy used to assemble in the open air, in bodies of three or four thousand. What a glorious extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom, what a wondrous ingathering of God’s elect seemed to be here! The harvest truly was plenteous. If God would spare Sodom for the sake of ten righteous, and bless Laban for Jacob’s sake (Gen. xxx. 27), and the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake (Gen. xxxix. 5), how much national honour and glory would He confer upon France for the sake of the many thousands of praying souls sheltered under her
banner? But did she shelter them? Did she understand the children of God to be the salt of the earth? Alas, she understood not! In the course of a few years her gutters were flooded with their blood. Her river was red with the blood of the eaints, and on its surface many thousands of
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their dead bodies were borne. Like Jerusalem she was favoured with a true church and the light of Divine truth. ‘‘ How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed.”
The influence of the Calvinists was so great that a conference was arranged, which took place on September 9th, 1561, between the reformed ministers and the prelates of France with the hope of effecting a reconciliation between the two religious parties. Calvin was invited to be present, but the Council of Geneva objecting to this, Beza undertook to plead the cause of the Calvinists. The young king, Charles IX., who was but eleven years of age, opened the conference with a short speech. Toleration in
8ST, BARTHOLOMEW’S MEDAL.
those days was a thing very unpopular, and this effort to reconcile light with darkness, as may be expected, failed. Another conference was held in January, 1562, with no botter result.
THE MASSACRE OF 8ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY.
Through the crafty, insidious workings of Catherine de Medici, the Queen-mother, there was much political bias and bitter feeling intermingled with the Reformation of France. Cruel injustice gave rise to war, and battle after battle was fought, but finding it impossible to subdue the Protestants either by martyrdoms or by open combat, Pope Pius V., who before his elevation to the Papal See was the most zealous of the inquisitors, designed a general massacre of the heretics. Blind as Saul of Tarsus, when, before sovereign mercy reached his heart, he made havoc of the church, Pius V. showed his intense hatred of Protestantism and his fixed determination to root it out.
Writing to Cardinal Loraine, he says, ‘‘ Our zeal gives us the right of earnestly exhorting and exciting you to use all your influence for procuring a definite and serious adoption of the measures most proper for bringing about the destruction of the implacable enemies of God and the king.”
To the young king of France, he writes, ‘‘The more the Lord has treated you and me with kindness, the more you ought to take advantage of the opportunity for
ST, BARTHOLOMEW’S MEDAL,
pursuing and destroying all the enemies that still remain; for tearing up entirely all the roots, and even the smallest fibres of the roots, of so terrible and confirmed an evil.” To the execution of this diabolical project the Queenmother was constantly urged by Pius V. and Philip of Spain. She, however, seems to have needed no promptings, yet this sanguinary measure was not enacted till St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24th, 1572, Before this Pius VY. was called to his account. But Gregory XITI. was quite equal to the impious task. The young king, Charles TX., under the influence of his mother, signed the edict for, and took partin, this wholesale butchery, by which the cities, villages, and fields of France were deluged with blood.
By this most awful enactment the Reformation in France was mortally wounded. 70,000 Protestants (according to Sully, the generally received authority) were cruelly murdered, and France has been restless ever since. God still requires the blood of His slain at her hands. Surely. in the great day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for that city.
The pope, drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus, ordered a jubilee in honour of this general massacre. Cannon were fired at Rome, several processions took place, the Te Deum was chanted, and the city was illuminated for three nights. Several medals in commemoration of the event were struck, one with the pope’s profile on one side and a representation of an angel slaying the Huguenots, or Protestants, on the other. This is but the faintest outline of a very dark picture. Enough, however, is recorded to show that the system which could plan, practise, and praise such carnage could not be indued with that wisdom which is from above, which is first pure, then gentle, easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Popery in power has always proved itself to be earthly, sensual, devilish (James iii, 14-17).:
SILVER LINING TO A DARK CLOUD.
Over this dark picture, history, however, cast one bright gleam, which we would fain believe came from the Sun of Righteousness. While the pope and the clergy continued to exult in their carnage, great terror and remorse came upon the young King Charles. He had not quite two years to live, and he seemed to be in constant apprehension of some approaching calamity.. His mind was in agony. In his affliction he sweat blood and cried to God for pardon. His order had been that not one Huguenot should be spared to remind him of the massacre. But strange to relate, he had one for his nurse whom he seemed to love in his dying moments.
Estoile, an. old historian, tells us that ‘‘as she seated herself on a chest and was beginning to doze, she heard the king moan and weep and sigh. She came gently to his bed-side, and adjusted the bed clothes. The king began to speak to her; and heaving a deep sigh, and while the tears poured down and sobs choked his utterance, he said, ‘Ah, nurse, dear nurse, what blood, what murders! Ah, I have followed bad advice. Oh, my God, forgive me! Have pity on me if it please Thee. I do not know what will become of me. WhatshallI do? Iam lost; I see it plainly.’ His nurse sympathized with him and pointed him to Jesus as the only way of justification.
May we not hope that this guilty man was, through grace, brought to repentance and saved by the-precious blood of Jesus? Never yet on the earth has there been a sinner too great for all-conquering grace; never yet a sinner too polluted to be washed in the precious -blood of Jesus. When He poured out His soul unto death, He opened a fountain for sin and uncleanness, and His blood cleanseth from all sin.
“That sacred flood from Jesus’ veins Was free to take away A Mary’s or Manasgeh’s stains, Or sing more vile than they.”
Charles IX. died on May 30th, 1574, aged twentyfour years.;
A COLLEGE AND ACADEMY AT GENEVA.
Calvin had gone to his rest eight years before God gathered into His garner the harvest of redeemed souls so cruelly reaped by wicked hands. His last great work was to build a college and academy for Geneva. Bungener says, ‘As early as 1552, the Council had bought -the ground, but this ground, six years afterwards, was still untouched. Then Calvin took the work in hand more directly. He set on foot, as we should say now, a national subscription, and very soon he was in possession of 10,000 florins, a large sum for those times. The Council then judged that the work might be begun. The ground was levelled, the foundations dug, and the walls raised. More than once Calvin was seen, while suffering from quartanague, dragging himself slowly over the works, encouraging the workmen, and contemplating with joy the rapid progress of the edifice. June Sth, 1559, the college was ready to receive both pupil and master. _
‘There, for three centuries, the children of the city of Calvin have succeeded each other. The edifice, saving a few modifications of detail, has remained the same. After their venerable cathedral no building is dearer to the Genevese, and few days pass without some stranger
150 CALVIN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES,
bending his steps thither to evoke the memories which are equally sacred to all the children of the Reformation. If you go upstairs over the class-rooms, you are in the rooms of the library, full of memorials yet more living and particular. There you will be shown the books of Calvin’s library, the mute witnesses of his vigils, his sufferings, and his death; there you will turn over the leaves of his manuscripts, deciphering, not without difficulty, a few lines of his feverish writing, rapid as his thoughts; and if your imagination will but lend itself to the breathing appeals of solitude and silence, there he himself is; you will behold him gliding among those ancient walls, pale, but with a sparkling eye,—feeble and sickly, but strong in inner energy, the source of which was in his faith, There also will appear to you, around him, all those of whom he was to be the father,—divines, jurists, philosophers, scholars, statesmen, and men of war, all filled with that mighty life which he was to bequeath to the Reformation after having received it from her. And if you ask the secret of his power, one of the stones of the college will tell it you in a few Hebrew words which the Reformer had engraved upon it. Come into the court. Enter beneath that old portico which supports the great staircase, and you will read :—The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
And it is neither on the wall nor on one of the pillars that these words are engraved. Mark well: it is on the keystone. What an emblem! and what a lesson!”
- Qn February 6th, 1564, Calvin preached his last sermon. On April 26th, he was visited by the Council of twenty-five lords of the city, in all the pomp of public ceremony, Far more glorious attendants, however, were near at hand.