Critical History of the Puritans continued.—
of the Political Character of Calvin.
THE father of Presbytery and Puritanism is held to be CALVIN ; his admirers look on this as his triumph ; others reproach the novel system as incompatible with the existing state of human affairs ; great kingdoms are to be governed, and not parochial republics to be superintended. Dangerous principles, subversive of established governments, were ascribed to the Puritans, as afterwards to the famous order of the Jesuits.
In what degree these charges attach to the Republican polity of Calvin has not perhaps been developed with all the impartiality that is requisite. We must contemplate the genius of this legislator who founded this new state of human affairs, before we decide on the father by some of his sons.
The mighty Reformer of Geneva had modelled a new government. Purity of doctrine, holiness of discipline, and the equality of primitive Christianity were proclaimed. It may be useful to explain what Calvin meant by the peculiar phrase of “Purity of doctrine.” It was religion entirely freed from all “Superstitions,” that is, the Romish ceremonies and the Roman creed. The term “Superstition” is perpetually recurring in his great work of “The Institution of the Christian Religion.” The Genevan model designed to rule the Christian world, in accordance with the mystical origin which some legislators have ascribed to their codes, was at first declared to be framed on “the Pattern in the Mount,” that is, the polity which Moses by his father-in-law’s suggestion, appointed on Mount Sinai, to regulate the affairs of his tribes.[1] This the Jews imitated in their synagogue. Every parish now was to form a synagogue. The priest was revived in the Pastor ; the Levites in the Doctors of Divinity ; the rulers of the Synagogue in the Lay-Elders, and the Levitical officers in the Deacons. Such was “the tabernacle of the congregation.”[2]
This “Pattern in the Mount” found partisans in France, in Switzerland, and in Germany ; it became established in Scotland, and had nearly decided the fate of England.
It is as a theoretical and a practical politician and not merely as a theologian that we are now to consider this great reformer, the founder of a new government, we had almost said a new theocracy.
Calvin, without question, was a Republican, and his whole polity was framed by that of a petty, we may say a parochial republic. It is alleged however that, though a Republican, he was not hostile to monarchical government, and we find in the closing chapter of his great work of the “Institution,” which may be considered as the confession of his political faith, the most enlightened general views of human governments, allowing to different countries, different forms, and rejecting with disdain the futile inquiry, which form is absolutely and in itself the best ?
As a divine, Calvin acknowledged that strict submission to monarchical government which is enjoined in holy writ. The very able apologist of Calvin indeed asserts, that Calvin could never support “the abominable doctrine that the misconduct of a king sets the subject free, without contradicting the principles he lays down in the last chapter of his 'Theological Institutions’ of the duty of submission even to the worst of kings, in things not contrary to the express commands of God.” And as Milton included the name of Calvin among the other early Reformers, to sanction the practices of his commonwealth, Bishop Horsley has indignantly repelled the imputation.
The truth is, that the Bishop has not taken an enlarged view of the political principles of Calvin. His sentiments on governments are but vague generalities, cautiously qualified, and the whole system of his politics revolves on the theological question, “Whether the prince rises in rebellion against God?” This leaves a wide gate open for the party who will take on themselves the decision. We know how the Puritans of England and the Presbyters of Scotland resolved the matter.
The same sacred source whence Calvin had been taught submission, even to the government he loved not, would also supply examples of that holy insurrection against arbitrary princes or tyrants, which would fall into a Republican’s notions. And indeed at the close of the very chapter to which Bishop Horsley refers, to show that Calvin was not that revolutionary genius which Milton proclaims, we find a remarkable passage which tells more in favour of the political Poet than of the political Bishop. Calvin indeed does not allow the private man to take on himself the punishment of tyrannical monarchs ; but the sceptres of evil kings may be broken — kings, those vicarious representatives of the Divinity, if their licentiousness pollute their authority, may be put down by the power of magistrates, who are constituted to defend the people ; such as were the Ephori, among the Lacedemonians, and the Tribunes among the Romans, and this popular magistracy in modern times, Calvin assigns to the assembly of the three states in a kingdom.[3] Calvin too contemplates on a powerful empire as a powerful evil, and censures “the folly and madness of the people who desire to have kings of irresistible power, which is just the same as to desire a river of irresistible rapidity as Isaiah describes this folly.” He explicitly says “Earthly princes divest themselves of their authority when they rise in rebellion against God ; they are unworthy to be reputed among men, it were better to spit upon their persons than to obey them.” These sentiments strangely contrast with those of that passive obedience which he inculcates in the same chapter. It must be confessed that a revolutionary writer might dexterously press the name of Calvin into his service, though it must remain but an ambiguous authority.
The truth seems, that the science of politics formed but a secondary object with Calvin, who was unceasingly occupied in founding a new religious dominion in which Monarchists and Republicans might equally co-operate, provided that the Church was made independent of, and even supreme over the civil magistrate. This new legislator was only at open war with those Sovereigns in the Church whom Episcopacy had enthroned.
In the novel democracy of the Consistory of Calvin, Ministers and Laics sate together. Calvin flattered the weakness of human nature by the appearance of a political equality.
But the whole system was a delusion, for the tyrannical genius of its inventor first deprived man of his free-will.
The Apostle of Geneva by the bewitching terror of his dogmatic theology had enthralled his followers for ever, by a mysterious bondage of the mind ; out of which no human argument could ever extricate them—an immutable necessity ! The dark imagination of the subtilizing divine had presumed to scan the decree of Omnipotence, as if the Divinity had revealed to his solitary ear the secret of the Creation. He discovers in the holy scriptures, what he himself has called “a most horrible decree.” Who has not shuddered at the fume of the distempered fancy of the atrabilarious Calvin ?
The exterior parity of this new Democracy, so seductive to the vulgar, was a no less cruel delusion. In Calvin’s mingled Republic of Presbyters and Elders, the Elders, annually chosen, trembled before their sacred Peers, who being permanent residents had the Elders at all times under their eye and their inquisitorial office. Whew the Presbyterial government was set up in England, Clarendan observed that the Archbishop of Canterbury had never so great an influence as Dr. Burgess and Mr. Marshall, nor did all the Bishops in Scotland together so much meddle in temporal affairs as Mr. Henderson. Even at a later period, almost within our own times, the moderate Nonconformist Calamy, whose curious memoirs have been recently published, being present at one of the general assemblies of Scotland, was astonished at their inquisitorial spirit, and observing their proceedings against a hapless individual, he said he did not know till then, that there was an Inquisition established in Scotland. His opinion being conveyed to the Præses, gave great dissatisfaction to the venerable Presbytery. Thus the people had only been enchanted by an imposture of power ; for it seemed to them that they were participating in power which was really placed far out of their reach.
The same fertile genius which had made “our Father in Heaven” a human tyrant, and raised the mortal criminal into beatitude, now invested his own Levites and his own “Rulers of the Synagogue” with supremacy. In this new Papacy, as in the old, they inculcated passive obedience, armed as they were with the terrors of excommunication. The despotism of Rome was transferred to Geneva. All was reversed, but the nucleus of power had only removed its locality.
Vast and comprehensive as seemed the system of the Calvinian rule in its civil capacity, it was in truth moulded on the meanest and the most contracted principles ; it was the smallest scale of dominion which ever legislator meditated ; and Calvin, with all his ardent genius, had only adroitly adopted the polity of the petty republic where chance had cast the fugitive Frenchman. A genius inferior to his own could not have imagined that kingdoms of Protestants could be ruled like the eleven parishes of the town of Geneva, where every Thursday, the Ministers and the Elders were to report all the faults of their neighbours. “The divine simplicity of the discipline” of the Church of Scotland is the theme of Calderwood’s history, who however does not conceal that some grew weary of “the lowly, but lovely, parity of the Presbyters.” The Eldership is watchful over his parish, but should the offender prove still contumacious he is handed over to the Presbytery ; and if still obstinate, the Presbytery consign him to the subtile heads of the Synod, and should the Synod fail to convert the rebel into an obedient son, he is finally resigned to the excommunication of the General Assembly, and one day “that soul shall be cut off from Israel.” They strangled heresy, and they annihilated freedom, by this graduated scale of tyrannical bondage.
This new scheme of human affairs, formed of this burgher equality and this apostolical purity, at that revolutionary period was proclaimed by Calvin’s incessant correspondence on doctrinal points throughout Europe. It was no mean ambition to rule over the churches of so many realms, and to dictate to Monarchs how their people were to be governed. In England the Protector under Edward VI. was one of the royal correspondents of Calvin, and was himself a great courter of popularity. The Protector designed to abolish Episcopacy and probably his first step was the sacrilegious seizure, without atonement or compensation, of those Church lands on which the Duke raised that stupendous palace the work of an Italian architect, and of which the name has survived the edifice.[4] So easy is it to combine the pomps of this earth with even ascetic Puritanism ! Calvin complained to the Duke of Somerset of the great impurities and vices of England—in swearing, drinking, and uncleanness.[5] It does not appear, historically, that England was more afflicted with these moral grievances than France or Germany ; and whether the eleven parishes of his own Geneva, with all its “purity” and its espionage, and to use a favourite expression of Calvin’s all “the nerves of its discipline,” were, in proportion to the population, more exempt, may be reasonably doubted, since some of its members are stigmatised in the history of the Calvinian rule, which however made dancing a crime equal to adultery. Such minute matters, in the moral habits of a people, like the nails and the screws of a mighty engine, were to be scrutinised, as holding, together the machinery of this novel government.
The fervid diligence of this extraordinary man was commensurate with the vastness of his genius. His life was not protracted ; he was a martyr to constant bodily pain, and the physical sufferings of the man are imagined to have shown themselves in the morose and vehement character of the legislator. The purity of doctrine, in some part at least, consisted in dethroning bishops ; denuding ministers of the sacerdotal vestments, and banishing from the religious service, all the accessories of devotion. Calvin seems to have imagined that man becomes more spiritualized in the degree he ceases to be the creature of sensation and of sympathy, as if the senses were not the real source of our feelings. But as he who is reckless of his own life is master of every other man’s, so the great hermit of reformation, who disdained all personal interests, seemed to think and to act only for the world. Calvin might have founded his supremacy on the immortality of his own genius. His Commentaries, his Institutions, his never-ceasing discourses, had been sufficient to induce the Christian world to invest him with the authority which ruled it. Conscious of dispensing the fate of distant realms, the sick man often in his bed, nerved his infirm frame to the labours which consumed it. Besides more than nine folios of his works, and several inedited volumes, no day passed without composing many elaborate letters ; and the public library at Geneva preserves two thousand five hundred sermons taken from his lips, by the disciples over whom he had breathed his inspiration.[6]
The commanding genius of Calvin was sagacious, as well as vehement. Inflexible in his great design, he knew when to concede and when to temporise. At the early stage of his career, before the expulsion of the Bishop from Geneva, the great extirpator of episcopacy, offered to become the subject of an episcopal government, provided the Bishop renounced his Sovereign-lord of Rome.[7] Ruthless and inexorable, when his theological empire was in peril, Calvin was more, or less than man, when his friends halted in their march. He sent forth the amiable Castalio a fugitive and an exile, and he burnt Servetus while he deplored his fate.
Calvin’s “Discipline” was a political legacy shared by many of his heirs in France and in Germany, in Scotland and in England. I would not ascribe to a cause too unimportant in itself, the great change which was now taking place in public opinion — by deducing it from so obscure an origin as the petty Presbytery of Geneva. But the genius of Calvin was universal, however confined to the city of his adoption. In France the Calvinists long balanced the power of the state with the monarchy ; in Scotland they had triumphed ; and in England the Presbyters dwelt with us. The style of democracy was remarkable at this period, and crowned heads were usually stigmatised by nick-names. Knox and his ruder school emptied their quiver of scriptural bye-names. Mary of England was Jezebel ; Elizabeth was “the untamed heifer.” Calvin and Beza retained a more classical taste in their anti-monarchical bitterness. Calvin called Mary of England, Proserpine ; and Beza, Mary of Scotland Medea. The Emperor of Austria was a Pagan Nero. From calling names the democratic school advanced to higher doctrines. In the work of Christopher Goodman on “Obedience,” to which Whittingham prefixed a preface, the sword is placed in the hands of the people, and consigned to any “Jonathan” who from some secret impulse would step forth to give the stroke of Brutus. These sons of Calvin confirm their doctrines from scriptural authorities, and they are all of that stamp which it is said were so much in favour with the political Jesuits, and afterwards with those who with us took the title of Independents. The heroes held out to the imitation of the world were Phineas who in his zeal killed the adulterers of Ahud, who in his zeal had stabbed Eglon the fat King of Moab in his private chamber ; or Jael, who in his zeal murdered Sisera, or Matthias who in his zeal massacred the King’s commissioners who were sent to command the people to conformity.[8] Such was the style and such were the examples familiar with some of these novel advocates of popular freedom.
Calvin died in 1564. The great English Puritan Cartwright’s “Admonitions,” often composed in flight and exile, appeared in England in 1574 ; Hottolnan’s Franco Gallia in 1573 ; Languet’s Vindicim contra Tyrannos in 1579, and in the same year Buchanan dedicated his fine and able political dialogue De Jure regni apud Scotos to James the First, where among other startling positions we find that Populus Rege est prestantior et melior ; the people are better than the King and of higher authority ; an assumption in the style of democracy which expresses so much, and means so little. All these works, composed by elevated genius, first founded the authority of the Sovereign on the consent of the people ; or on what has been more recently, with more inflated nonsense, called, “the Sovereignty of the People.” The axiom itself seems but a vague and abstract point of “the social contract ;” that phantom of political logomachy ! The celebrated Philip Mornay, called by the Romanists the Protestant Pope, was one of the most illustrious sons of Calvin, and as early as in 1566 had distinguished himself by a defence of public liberty against the arbitrary Catholicism of Spain. By these and other works of a revolutionary cast, fast following on each other, we may judge of the rising opinions of a new age. Surely these were “the prognostics of state-tempests ; hollow blasts of wind seemingly at a distance, and secret workings of the sea, preceding the storm.”
The inevitable results of these republican politics appeared by a mighty event in the cause of civil freedom, for in the year 1579 occurred the famous union of Utrecht, which consolidated and established the Republic of Holland.
Who, in this slight sketch, does not perceive the secret connexion between the influence of human opinions and human events ? The writers of the history of the United Provinces trace their foundation “to the prevalent opinions of Luther and Calvin.” The long-protracted civil war of Spain with her Provinces, was declared against heresy and psalm-singing !
A great political revolution was now operating throughout Europe, in the establishment of the potent Republic, which their first leaders had never contemplated ; and in the Reformation in Germany, which had penetrated far into France. England was yet to be tried. Religion had been converted into politics, and polities was now inextricably connected with religion. Whenever a party struggles for predominance in the state, it necessarily becomes a political body. There remains one more investigation—the history of the English Puritans. They were the friends and the martyrs of civil liberty ; but how happened it, that they proved to be its greatest enemies ? This historical enigma remains to be solved, and as we shall see, it has perplexed our most critical historians.
1 Bancroft’s Sermons at Paul’s Cross, 1583, 8vo.
2 The counsel of Jethro, who considered it unwise in Moses to sit alone to judge the people while they flocked to him “from morning to evening,” and for which, as Jethro observed, “Thou shalt surely wear away,” is contained in Exodus xvii. 13 to 26. Lord Bacon thought that it was hence that Alfred took his idea of Sheriffs and hundreders and deciners, according to the Saxon Constitution.
3 See his Institutions, lib. iv.—cap. xx. sect. 31.
4 Pennant’s London—128—Somerset House.
5 Burnet’s Hist. of the Reformation, ii. 88. fo.
6 Histoire litteraire de Genève par Senebier, i. 259.
7 Bancroft’s Dangerous Positions, 8.—Calvin’s principle then was to live under an Episcopacy, “if the Bishops refuse not to submit themselves to Christ, depend upon him as their only head ; and in their brotherly society be knit together by no other knot than by the Truth.” The Truth ! was it at Rome or at Geneva ? On these vague yet plausible pretexts one might have an annual insurrection at the least. The expelled Bishops would have used the same style in addressing the Arch-Heresiarch. The Truth only appeared when the Bernois and the Genevese beat the Bishop’s troops.
8 Bancroft, 142.