Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/406

 first is Calvin's irenical services to Protestantism. He made the Reformed Church less antithetical to the Lutheran, and the Lutheran leaders better understood among the Reformed. His doctrine of the Lord's Supper may be described as a spiritual doctrine of the Real Presence; he escaped the miserable perplexities which lurked in the scholastic notion of Substantia, and were used to justify Transubstantiation on the one hand, and Consubstantiation on the other. Where faith was, there the Lord was, and where it was not there could be no idea of Him, and no image or symbol could speak of His presence. Secondly, mention must be made of Calvin's services to the French tongue. He perhaps more than any other man made it a literary vehicle, a medium for high philosophical and religious discussion. The Institutio has been said to be the first book written in French which can be described as logically composed, built up according to a consecutive and proportioned plan. The style is the man, exact, sober, precise, restrained; sad perhaps, or a trifle cold, but full of conviction and reason. The French he speaks is a natural product, an evolution and a new phase of the medieval French, refreshed, vivified, made simpler and more living by baptism in its original source, classical Latinity. Thirdly, his services to the cause of sacred learning must not be forgotten. These it is hardly possible to exaggerate; he is the sanest of commentators, the most skilled of exegetes, the most reasonable of critics. He knows how to use an age to interpret a man, a man to interpret an age. His exegesis is never forced or fantastic; he is less rash and subjective in his judgments than Luther; more reverent to Scripture, more faithful to history, more modern in spirit. His work on the Psalms has much to make our most advanced scholars ashamed of the small progress we have made either in method or in conclusions. And his work is inspired by a noble belief; he thought that the one way to realise Christianity was by knowing the mind of Christ; that this mind was expressed in the Scriptures; and that to make them living and credible was to make indefinitely more possible its incorporation in the thoughts and institutions of man. It is by his service to this cause that Calvin must be ultimately judged.