Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/288

304 because then you would not seek for consolation and strength in vain. Fare you well!’

“ ‘Adieu! I thank you, madame!’ ”

I read through Calvin's great work, Institution Chrétienne, during the present week, or rather I should say, fought my way through, because the reading of this work is an actual fight. And the work itself is a fight, an incessant engagement in phalanxes of twenty or thirty paragraphs and arguments, as many objections and still more answers with regard to all kinds of doctrines, dogmas, and sects. Manicheans, Arians, Servetus, (ce mechant homme, cet èsprit impur!) first and last the Pope, who is roughly handled. The strength of the book lies in the polemic against the doctrines of the Catholic Church from the doctrines of true Christianity. The style is everywhere powerful, clear, and excellent. There are beautiful thoughts and passages; in certain parts, great logical ability, as for example, in the dogma regarding the Trinity; equally great sophistical art in the treatment of the baptism of children, and as dark and strong a onesidedness in the treatment of “Grace;” a similar want of human conscience and human kindliness in his manner of stating the doctrine of predestination—which Calvin bases upon detached passages of Scripture—and such a self-complaisant absorbtion in his portraiture of the seemingly good cast into eternal perdition and eternal torment, that the leap from Calvin to Helvetius, Diderot, & Co., seems to me quite natural. Between these men and Calvin, Rousseau is a salutary shining beacon. And he well deserves his beautiful