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 CALVINISM

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CALVINISM

ions man which, examined by God's severe standard, would not be condemnable" (Ibid., Ill, 14, 11). The Council of Trent had already censured these axioms by asserting that God does not command impossi- bilities, and that His children keep His word. Inno- cent X did the like when he proscribed as heretical the fifth proposition of Jansenius, "Some command- ments of God are impossible to the just who will and endeavour; nor is the grace by which they should become possible given to them."

Two important practical consequences may be drawn from this entire view: first, that conversion takes place in a moment — and so all evangelical Prot- estants believe; and. second, that baptism ought not to be administered to infants, seeing they cannot have the faith which justifies. This latter inference pro- duced the sect of Anabaptists against whom Calvin thunders as he does, against other "frenzied" persons, in vehement tones. Infant baptism was admitted, but its value, as that of every ordinance, varied with the predestination to life or to death of the recipient. To Calvinists the Church system was an outward life beneath which the Holy Spirit might, be present or absent, not according to the dispositions brought by the faithful, but as grace was decreed. For good works could not prepare a man to receive the sacra- ments worthily any more than to be justified in the beginning. If so, the Quakers might well ask, what is the use of sacraments when we have the Spirit? And especially did this reasoning affect the Eucharist. Calvin employs the most painful terms in disowning the sacrifice of the Mass. No longer channels of grace, to Melanchthon the sacraments are "Memori- als of the exercise of faith", or badges to be used by Christians. From this point of view, Christ's real presence was superfluous, and the acute mind of Zwingli leaped at once to that conclusion, which has ever since prevailed among ordinary Protestants. But Luther's adherence to the words of the Scripture forbade him to give up the reality, though he dealt with it in his peculiar fashion. Bucer held an obscure doctrine, which attempted the middle way between Rome and Wittenberg. To Luther the sacraments serve as tokens of God's love: Zwingli degrades them to covenants between the faithful. Calvin gives the old scholastic definition and agrees with Luther in commending their use; but he separates the visible element proffered to all from the grace which none save thei -lei-t may enjoy. He admits only two sacra- ments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Even these neither contain nor confer spiritual graces; they are signs, but not efficacious as regards that which is denoted by them. For inward gifts, we must remem- ber, do not belong to the system; whereas Catholics believe in ordinances as acts of the Man-God, pro- ducing the effects within the soul which He has promised, "He that eateth Me shall live by Me."

When the Church's tradition was thrown aside, differences touching the Holy Eucharist sprang up immediately among the Reformers which have never found a reconciliation. To narrate their history would occupy a volume. It is notable, however, that Calvin succeeded where Bucer had failed, in a sort of compromise, and the agreement of Zurich which he inspired was taken up by the Swiss Protestants. Elsewhere it led to quarrels, particularly among the Lutherans, who charged him with yielding too much. Hi' taught that tin' Body of Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, and that the believer partakes of it; that the elements arc unchanged; and that the Cath- olic .Mass was idolatry. Yet his precise meaning is open to question. That he did not hold a real objec- tive presence seems char from his arguing against Luther as the "black rubric" of the ( Jommon Prayer Book argues; Christ's body, he says, is in heaven,

i uuot lie on earth. The reception was a

spiritual one; and this perfectly orthodox phrase

might be interpreted as denying a true corporal pres- ence. The Augsburg Confession, revised by its author Melanchthon. favoured ambiguous views; at last he declared boldly for Calvin, which amounted to an acknowledgment that Luther's more decided lan- guage overshot the mark. The "Formula of Con- cord" was an attempt to rescue German Churches from this concession to the so-called Sacrament arians; it pronounced, as ( talvin never would have done, that the unworthy communicant receives Our Lord's Body; and it met his objection by the strange device of "ubiquity", viz., that the glorified Christ was everywhere. But these quarrels lie outside our im- mediate scope.

As Calvin would not grant the Mass to be a sacri- fice, nor the ministers of the Lord's Supper to be priests, that conception of the Church which history traces back to the earliest Apostolic times underwent a corresponding change. The clergy were now "Min- isters of the Word", and the Word was not a tradi- tion, comprising Scripture in its treasury, but the printed Bible, declared all-sufficient to the mind which the Spirit was guiding. Justification by faith alone, the Bible, and the Bible only, as the rule of faith — such were the cardinal principles of the Ref- ormation. They worked at first destructively, by abolishing the Mass and setting up private judgment in opposition to pope and bishops. Then the Ana- baptists arose. If God's word sufficed, what need of a clergy? The Reformers felt that they must restore creeds and enforce the power of the Church over dis- sidents. Calvin, who possessed great constructive talent, built his presbytery on a democratic founda- tion; the people were to choose, but the ministers chosen were to rule. Christian freedom consisted in throwing off the yoke of the Papacy; it did not allow the individual to stand aloof from the congregation. He must sign formulas, submit to discipline, be gov- erned by a committee of elders. A new sort of Cath- olic Church came into view, professing that the Bible was its teacher and judge, but never letting its mem- bers think otherwise than the articles drawn up should enjoin. None were allowed in the pulpit who were not publicly called, and ordination, which Cal- vin regarded almost as a sacrament, was conferred by the presbytery.

In his Fourth Book the great iconoclast, to whom in good logic only the Church invisible should have signified anything, makes the visible Church supreme over Christians, assigns to it the prerogatives claimed by Rome, enlarges on the guilt of schism, and upholds the principle. Extra EccUsiam nulla salus. He will not allow that corrupt morals in the clergy, or a passing eclipse of doctrine by superstition, can excuse those who, on pretence of a purer Gospel, leave it. The Church is described in equivalent terms as in- defectible and infallible. All are bound to hear and obey what it teaches. Luther had spoken of it with contempt almost everywhere in his first writings; to him the individual guided by the Holy Spirit was autonomous. But Calvin taught his followers so im- posing a conception of the body in which they were united as to bring back a hierarchy in effect if not in name. "Where the ministry of Word and Sacra- ments is preserved", he concludes, "no moral delin- quencies can take away the Church'- title". He had. nevertheless, broken with the communion in which he was born. The Anabaptists retorted that they did no! owe to Ins new fashioned presbytery the allegiance

he had cast away: the Quakers, who held with him

by the Inward Light, more consistently refused all jurisdiction to the visible church. (in,, sweeping consequence of the Reformat;

yet to lie noticed. AS it denied the merit of good

works even in the regenerate, all those Catholic be- liefs and ordinances which implied a Communii Saints actively helping each other by prayer and