§ 163. Calvin’s Influence upon Great Britain.
§ 163. Calvin’s Influence upon Great Britain.
Calvin and the Church of England.
Calvin first alludes to the English Reformation in a letter to Farel, dated March 15, 1539, where he gives the following judgment of Henry VIII.: "The King is only half wise. He prohibits, under severe penalties, besides depriving them of the ministry, the priests and bishops who enter upon matrimony; he retains the daily masses; he wishes the seven sacraments to remain as they are. In this way he has a mutilated and tom gospel, and a church stuffed full as yet with many toys and trifles. Then he does not suffer the Scripture to circulate in the language of the common people throughout the kingdom, and he has lately put forth a new verdict by which he warns the people against the reading of the Bible. He lately burned a worthy and learned man [John Lambert] for denying the carnal presence of Christ in the bread. Our friends, however, though sorely hurt by atrocities of this kind, will not cease to have an eye to the condition of his kingdom."
With the accession of Edward VI. he began to exercise a direct influence upon the Anglican Reformation. He addressed a long letter to the Protector Somerset, Oct. 22, 1548, and advised the introduction of instructive preaching and strict discipline, the abolition of crying abuses, and the drawing up of a summary of articles of faith, and a catechism for children. Most of his suggestions were adopted. It is remarkable that in this letter, as well as that to the king of Poland, he makes no objection to the Episcopal form of government, nor to a liturgy. At the request of Archbishop Cranmer, he wrote also letters to Edward VI., and dedicated to him his Commentary on Isaiah. He sent them by a private messenger who was introduced to the King by the Duke of Somerset His correspondence with Cranmer has been already alluded to.1244 As a consensus creed of Reformed Churches was found to be impracticable, he encouraged the archbishop to draw up the articles of religion for the Church of England.
These articles which appeared first in 1553, and were afterwards reduced from forty-one to thirty-nine under Queen Elizabeth, in 1563, show the influence of the Augsburg Confession in the doctrines of the Trinity, justification and the Church, and the influence of Calvin in the doctrines of the Eucharist, and of predestination, which, however, is stated with wisdom and moderation (Art. XVII.), without reprobation and preterition.1245
During the reign of Queen Mary, many leading Protestants fled to Geneva, and afterwards obtained high positions in the Church under Queen Elizabeth. Among them were the translators of the Geneva version of the Bible, which owes much to Calvin and Beza, and continued to be the most popular English version till the middle of the seventeenth century, when it was superseded by the version of 1611.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth Calvin’s theological influence was supreme, and continued down to the time of Archbishop Laud. His Institutes were translated soon after the appearance of the last edition, and passed through six editions in the life of the translator. They were the textbook in the universities, and had as great an authority as the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, or the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, in the Middle Ages. We have previously quoted the high tributes of the "judicious" Hooker and Bishop Sanderson to Calvin.1246 Heylyn, the admirer and biographer of Archbishop Laud, says that "Calvin’s book of Institutes was for the most part the foundation on which the young divines of those times did build their studies." Hardwick, speaking of the latter part of the Elizabethan period, asserts that "during an interval of nearly thirty years, the more extreme opinions of the school of Calvin, not excluding his theory of irrespective reprobation, were predominant in almost every town and parish."1247
The nine Lambeth Articles of 1595, and the Irish Articles of Archbishop Ussher of 1615, give the strongest symbolical expression to the Calvinistic doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation, but lost their authority under the later Stuarts.1248
Calvin, however, always maintained his commanding position as a commentator among the scholars of the Anglican Church. His influence revived in the evangelical party, and his sense of the absolute dependence on divine grace for comfort and strength found classical expression in some of the best hymns of the English language, notably in Toplady’s
"Rock of Ages cleft for me."
Calvin and the Church of Scotland.
Still greater and more lasting was Calvin’s influence upon Scotland. It extended over discipline and church polity as well as doctrine.
The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, under the sole headship of Christ, is a daughter of the Reformed Church of Geneva, but has far outgrown her mother in size and importance, and is, upon the whole, the most flourishing of the Reformed Churches in Europe, and not surpassed by any denomination in general intelligence, liberality, and zeal for the spread of Christianity at home and abroad.
The hero of the Scotch Reformation, though four years older than Calvin, sat humbly at his feet and became more Calvinistic than Calvin. John Knox, the Scot of the Scots, as Luther was the German of the Germans, spent the five years of his exile (1554–1559), during the reign of the Bloody Mary, mostly at Geneva, and found there "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was since the days of the Apostles."1249 After that model he led the Scotch people, with dauntless courage and energy, and the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, from mediaeval semi-barbarism into the light of modern civilization, and acquired a name which, next to those of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, is the greatest in the history of the Protestant Reformation.1250
In the seventeenth century Scotch Presbyterianism and English Puritanism combined to produce a second and more radical reformation, and formulated the rigorous principles of Puritanic Calvinism in doctrine, discipline, and worship. The Westminster standards of 1647 have since governed the Presbyterian, and, in part, also the Congregational or Independent, and the regular Baptist Churches of the British Empire and the United States, with such modifications and adaptations as the progress of theology and church life demands.1251
See Cranmer’s letter of invitation in Calvin’s Opera, XIV. 306.
"Quantum ad me attinet, si quis mei usus fore videbitur, ne decem quidem maria, si opus sit, ob eam rem trajicere pigeat. Si de juvando tantum Angliae regno ageretur, jam mihi ea satis legitima ratio foret. Nunc cum quaeratur gravis et ad Scripturae normam probe compositus doctorum hominum consensus, quo ecclesiae procul alioqui dissitae inter se coalescant, nullis vel laboribus vel molestiis parcere fas mihi esse arbitror. Verum tenuitatem meam facturam spero, ut mihi parcatur. Si votis prosequar, quod ab aliis susceptum erit, partibus meis defunctus ero. D. Philippuslongius obest, quam ut ultro citroque commeare brevi tempore literae queant. D. Bullingerustibi forte jam rescripsit. Mihi utinam par studii ardori suppeteret facultas!" See Opera, XIV. 312 sqq.; Cranmer’s Works (Parker Soc. ed.), vol. II. pp. 430-433.
John 10:16, miva poivmnh(not aujlhv), ei|" poimhvn The E. V., following the Latin Vulgate, wrongly translates, " one fold," which suggests the Roman idea of one external organization, like the papacy.
Michelet (Histoire de France, vol. X. 414) calls Calvinistic Geneva "la cite de l’esprit bâtie de stoicisme sur le roc de la prédestination," and (in vol. XI. 93) "la fabrique des saints et des martyrs, la sombre forge oùse forgeaissent les élus de la mort."
Fourteen hundred French families settled in Geneva in eight years, during the reign of Henri II. Gaberel, Histoire de l’Église de Genève, I. 346; Michelet, X. 414.
Senebier, Hist. lit. I. 48 sq.; Henry, III. 386.
It is interesting to read the judgment on Calvin’s influence by a highly accomplished lady, who moved in the best society of England and the Continent. The Baroness Bunsen, whose husband was successively Prussian Ambassador in Italy, Switzerland, and England, writes in one of her letters (Aug. 19, 1865): "I read in the winter a life of Calvin by Bungener, and a very painful book it is, but the subject is of grand effect from the display of moral power almost unequalled .... The merit of Calvin is his own, and he has been the creative instrument of the strength of England, of Scotland, of the United States of America, not to speak of the Protestants of France, who have been scattered abroad to sow good seed in every country into which they fled, as not being suffered to build up their own."
Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. I 490-501.
Stähelin, I. 607.
See Letters in Bonnet, II. 382-391; his letter to Bullinger, May 11, 1560; Basnage, Hist. de la Religion des Égl. réf. II. 192-200; Henry, III, 546 sqq.; Dyer, 478 sqq.; Stähelin, I. 615-619.
Stähelin, I. 626 sqq.
The cognate Bohemian Brethren continued under a new name in the Moravian Brotherhood (Unitas Fratrum, Brüdergemeinde).
Creeds of Christendom, I. 565 sqq. See also a report of conversations which Calvin had at Strassburg with Matthias Czervenka, a Bohemian, about the Bohemian Brethren in Gindely, Quellen zur Gesch. der böhmischen Brüder, Wien, 1859, p. 68, quoted in Annal. Calv. XXI. 260 sqq. Calvin objected to the Waldenses at that time, that they claimed merit and did not leave room for the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ.
Baum, Beza, I. 240 sqq.; Stähelin, I. 609-512; Dyer, 193-198.
Creeds of Christendom, III. 767-770 (French and English).
See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. pp. 529 sqq.
Creeds of Christendom, I. 555 sqq.
Motley (The Rise of the Dutch Republic, III. 617) thus characterizes William of Orange, the Washington of Holland: "He was more than anything else a religious man. From his trust in God, he ever derived support and consolation in the darkest hours. Implicitly relying upon Almighty wisdom and goodness, he looked danger in the face with a constant smile, and endured incessant labors and trials with a serenity which seemed more than human. While, however, his soul was full of piety, it was tolerant of error. Sincerely and deliberately himself a convert to the Reformed Church, he was ready to extend freedom of worship to Catholics on the one hand, and to Anabaptists on the other, for no man ever felt more keenly than he that the Reformer who becomes in his turn a bigot is doubly odious."
J. L. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. I. p. 114.
Ibid. vol. II. 497. Comp. the description of Alva’s cruelties and the sufferings of the Protestants under his reign of terror on pp. 503 sq., and B. ter Haar’s History of the Reformation (German translation from the Dutch), II. 86 sqq. and 127 sqq.
Motley, who was a Unitarian, does at least this justice to the practical effects of Calvinism in Holland and elsewhere: "The doctrine of predestination, the consciousness of being chosen soldiers of Christ, inspired those Puritans who founded the commonwealths of England, of Holland, and of America with a contempt of toil, danger, and death which enabled them to accomplish things almost supernatural. No uncouthness of phraseology, no unlovely austerity of deportment, could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous, which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless front, and welcomed death on battlefield, scaffold, or rack with perfect composure. The early Puritan at least believed. The very intensity of his belief made him—all unconsciously to himself, and narrowed as was his view of his position—the great instrument by which the widest human liberty was to be gained for all mankind." History of the United Netherlands, vol. IV. 548.
See Creeds of Christendom, I. 602 sqq. and 508 sqq.
1244 § 159, pp. 799 sq.
1245 See Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 613 sqq.; 633 sqq.
1246 See above, p. 286 sq.
1247 A History of the Articles of Religion (1859), p. 167.
1248 See above, p. 564, and Creeds of Christendom, I. 658 sqq.
1249 See above, § 110, p. 518.
1250 Creeds of Christendom, I. 669-685, and the literature there given.
1251 Ibid. I. 685-813.