The Martyrdom of Alexander
CHAPTER IX. Te nate from the halls of state and those. brilliant
animated assemblies under the royal roof, let us
visit another spot where a gathering of equal magni-
tude is to be witnessed; a spot where the Gospel preached by Roussel is tried by fire, and where fruit to everlasting life is gathered.
Among the thousands present to witness the martyrdom of Alexander, the Dominican friar, none surely more solemnly considered the spirit of Popery there exhibited, and the long-suffering grace in the martyr, than John Calvin. This trophy of Divine graze, Alexander, was plucked by the Spirit from the ranks of the enemy in Paris, and brought to a knowledge of the truth. He fled to Geneva, and there being instructed in the way of God more perfectly by Farel, he returned full of holy fervour to preach the Gospel in Lyons. There he was apprehended, loaded with chains and sent to Paris, but not before a great work was accomplished by him. The Word flew from his lips by the power of the Spirit, into the hearts of men, like shafts from the bow of the mighty. Let us follow him, and carefully watch whether the Spirit of Christ is more exhibited in him or in his pursuers. After being brought before Parliament he is seated upon a chair, his legs are placed between four thick pieces of board, strongly chained together, and large wedges are driven between them with such force as to crush one of his legs. ‘O God,” he groans, ‘there is neither pity nor mercy in these men! Oh, that I may find both in Thee!” ‘Another blow,” cries the executioner; but it is enough, and the martyr is carried to the dungeon a cripple.
This amount of torture is only a foretaste of what will be administered to compel him to yield to their wishes. But he fears not them which can kill the body. His faith is firm in Jesus. Again he is brought forth to hear his doom, ‘To be burnt alive” is no pleasant thing for flesh and blood, yet a gleam of holy joy is seen to light up his countenance as the dread sentence falls upon his ear. Yes; the happiest person in all the vast assembly was Alexander. When the martyr’s robe was put on, he said, “*Q God, is there any higher honour than to receive the livery which Thy Son received in the house of Herod?” Unable to walk to the place of execution he was conveyed in a cart, and although one leg was crushed, and he was going to be burned, the joy of his soul surmounted everything, as he preached Jesus to the gazing multitude through which he passed.
‘He is going to be burned,” said the people, “ yet no one seems so happy as he.” ‘‘ Surely there is nothing worthy of death in this man,” said they. Weeping and smiting themselves they exclaimed, ‘If this man is not saved, who then can be?”
At the stake the martyr. showed no signs of anger towards his persecutors. He exalted the Lord Jesus with
40; CALVIN:
his latest breath, and met his last enemy with a smile, whom he viewed not as ‘‘ the king of terrors,” but as
‘A porter at the heavenly gate To let the pilgrim in.”
THE TIME FOR CALVIN TO COME FORWARD.
These are samples of the things which agitated Paris, and helped to give shape to the mind of our Reformer during the four years of his quiet missionary labours there. But that richly endowed and capacious mind, sanctified by Divine grace to take the lead in the Great Reformation, could no longer be hidden.
God’s time had come for setting before the nation a man, young and retiring, that should confront the great adversary of the human race, and roll back those thick clouds of error which had overspread the earth. Yes, God's time had come for giving to His church a man, who, by the power of God's Spirit, should clear away the superstitious veneration of men and material things; a man that should dig up and build up God’s eternal truth higher and more lasting than the pyramids of Egypt,—truth which shall stand firm when all Rome’s Babel © buildings have crumbled into dust, and her deluded followers have sunk down to hell. Nothing better can we expect for them, seeing that ‘no idolater shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10).
HIS ORATION READ BEFORE THE SORBONNE.
At the head of the Sorbonne was Nicholas Cop, and on November Ist, 1533, he, as its rector, was expected to open the session by delivering an appropriate oration. Cop was the intimate friend of Calvin, and a favourer of the reformed faith. Calvin, earnestly desirous of bringing the truth more clearly before the professors and students of the university, suggested this as a grand opportunity, and it was resolved between the two friends that Calvin should prepare the oration for his friend Cop to read.
“November Ist arrived. It saw a brilliant assembly in the church of the Mathurins. On a bench apart sat Calvin, with the air of one who had ‘dropped in by the way. Cop rose and proceeded amid deep silence to pronounce an oration in praise of ‘ Christian Philosophy.’
But the philosophy which it extolled was not that which had heen drawn from the academies of Greece. The keynote of the discourse was the ‘Grace of God,’ the one sole fountain of man’s renewal, pardon, and eternal life.
‘‘Blank astonishment was portrayed on the faces of the most part of the audience at the beginning of the oration, By-and-bye a countenance here and there began to kindle with delight. Others among the listeners were becoming uneasy on their seats. The monks knit their brows, and shooting out fiery glances from beneath them, exchanged whispers with one another.
THE ASSEMBLY AROSE AND THE STORM BURST.
“Cop was denounced to the Parliament and summoned to appear, but he fled to Basle, and so escaped the fate already determined on for him.
“Calvin, who deemed himself safe in his obscurity, was sitting quietly in his room in the College of Fortret, when some of his comrades came running into his chamber, and urged him to flee that instant. Scarcely had they spoken when a loud knocking was heard at the outer gate. It was the officers. Now their heavy tramp was heard in the corridor. Another moment and Calvin would be on his way to the prison to come out of it only to the stake. That would, indeed, have been a blow to the Reformation, and probably would have changed the whole future of Christendom. But God interposed at this moment of peril,
CALVIN’S ESCAPE.
“While some of his friends held a parley with the officers at the door, others, seizing the sheets on his hed, twisted them into a rope, and Calvin, catching hold of them, let himself down into the street of the Bernardins.’’*
Thus escaping from the hands of the enemy he fled from the city to the cottage of a vine-dresser. Here he changed his clothes, and dressed as a labourer, with a garden hoe upon his shoulder, he, like Jacob when he fled fron the hand of Esau, set forward to find a place where re could serve the God of the Bible without endangering
iis life.,
This tempest the Lord dispersed by the instrumentality
* Wylie’s “History of Protestantism.” of the Queen of Navarre. But Calvin soon after left Paris and went to Saintonge, an old province in the west of France, where, at the request of a friend, he wrote some brief Christian exhortations, which in some parishes were read during Divine service ’to stimulate the people to an investigation of the truth.*
At Angouléme, the birth-place of Marguerite of Navarre, he spent six months in the mansion of his friends the Du Tillets. In this mansion a library of about 4000 volumes, a very rare thing in that age, was placed at his service. Here, night and day, with his thirst for knowledge, he drank like the hart at the water brooks.
The Apostle John was banished by the enemies of Christ to the isle of Patmos, for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. But the Lord by this means called him there to receive the substance of the Book of Revelation, which we still have for our profit; and John Calvin was driven by his enemies to this town of France; yet God, who
‘Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, Treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will,” called our Reformer there to give him the materials for a book, which, by the blessing of God, spring a mine under the Papacy, and which book we still have for our profit. In this library it is said he laid the plan and collected the materials for his famous “ Institutes of the Christian Religion,” the following extracts from which must close the present chapter.
CALVIN ON TILE WORSHIP OF IMAGES.
‘“‘The whole sum of our wisdom consisteth in two parts, in the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Again, it is evident that man doth never come to the perfect knowledge of himself, unless he hath first beheld the face of God, and so come down from beholding the same to view himself.
‘‘Pure and true religion is faith joined with true fear of God.
‘“‘ Also, we must mark, that the Scripture, to the end it may direct us to the true God, doth plainly exclude all
* “Beza’ s ‘Life ‘of ‘Calvin. ” the gods of the Gentiles; for religion was corrupt everywhere almost in all ages.
‘1. But seeing that this blockishness did possess the whole world, to desire visible figures of God, and so to make and frame to themselves gods of wood, stone, or other matter, we must hold fast this principle, that the glory of God is corrupted with wicked falsehood,:so often as any shape is made to represent Him. Therefore, after that God hath in the law once challenged to Himself the glory of the Godhead, He added forthwith, ‘Thou shalt make thee no graven image, neither any similitude.’
‘‘2. That may easily be gathered out of the reasons which He adjoineth into the prohibition: Thou heardst a voice, thou sawest nobody. Therefore take heed to thyself, lest, peradventure, being deceived, thou make thee any similitude,- etc. He setteth His voice against shapes. Therefore, those men forsake God who worship visible forms.
“3. Ob7. God hath sometimes given a presence of His Godhead, so that He was said to have been seen face to face.
‘4, Those things did plainly teach men concerning the incomprehensible essence of God. Not that He offered Himself to be known in them as He is. Because it was said to Moses, ‘That no man can see God and live.’
‘087. The Holy Ghost appeared in the likeness of a dove.
‘4, When He vanished away forthwith, the faithful were admonished, by that token of short continuance, that they must believe that He is invisible, that being satisfied with His power and grace they might not invent to themselves any visible shape.
‘Obj. God did sometimes appear in the shape of a man. ‘¢4. That was a foreshowing of the revelation which was to come in Christ. Therefore it was unlawful for the Jews so to abuse this pretence, that they might erect themselves any token of the Godhead under the shape of man.; ‘“ Ob), The cherubims, which with their outstretched wings did cover the mercy seat, were made in honour of God, and why may not we make images of God and of saints?
‘4, Those small images did import nothing else but that images cannot fitly represent the mysteries of God: forasmuch as they were made to this end, that they might shadow with their wings the mercy seat, and so keep back not only the eyes of men, but all their senses from beholding God, that by this means they might correct their boldness. Moreover it were an absurd thing to bring in shadows, seeing we have the truth itself.”
To this we may add that the cherubims were typical representations made by the direct command of (God. What God commands it is lawful todo; what He forbids it is unlawful todo. And the cherubims were not made to be worshipped or bowed down to. He has distinctly said, ‘‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that 71s in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them ” (Exod, xx. 4, 5). Therefore it must be unlawful to make images of Christ, or Mary, or any other images for this purpose.