§ 68. TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF CALVIN. 293
fast; he never deserted a friend or took an unfair advantage of an antagonist; and on befitting occasions he could be cheerful and even facetious among his intimates."
TESTIMONIES OF AMERICAN DIVINES.
Dr. Henry B. Smith (1815-1877).
Professor of Theology in the Union Theological Seminary, New York. Presbyterian.
From his Address before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Cliurch, St. Louis, 1855, delivered by request of the Presbyterian Historical Society. See Faith and Philosophi/, pp. 98 and 99.
"Though the Reformation, under God, began with Luther in the power of faith, it was carried on by Calvin with greater energy, and with a more constructive genius, both in theology and in church polity, as he also had a more open field. The Lutheran movement affected chiefly the centre and the north of Europe; the Reformed Cliurches were planted in the west of Europe, all around the ocean, in the Britisli Isles, and by their very geographical site were prepared to act the most efficient part, and to leap the walls of the old world, and colonize our shores.
"Nothing is more striking in a general view of the history of the Reformed Churches than the variety of countries into which we find their characteristic spirit, both in doctrine and polity, penetrating. Throughout Switzerland it was a grand popular movement. There is first of all, Zwingli, the hero of Zurich, already in 1516 preaching against the idolatrous veneration of Mary, a man of generous culture and intrepid spirit, who at last laid down his life upon the field of battle. In Basle we find CEcolampadius, and also Bullinger [in Zurich], the chronicler of the Swiss reform. Farel aroused Geneva to iconoclasm by his inspiring eloquence.
"Thither comes in 1536, from the France which disowned him, Calvin, the mighty law-giver, great as a preacher, an expositor, a teacher and a ruler ; cold in exterior, but burning with internal fire ; who produced at twenty-six years of age his unmatched Institutes, and at thirty-five had made Geneva, under an almost theocratic government, the model city of Europe, with its inspiring motto, 'post tenebras lux.' He was feared and opposed by the libertines of his day, as he is in our own. His errors were those of his own times : his greatness is of all times. Hooker calls him 'incomparably the wisest man of the French Church ; ' he compares him to the ' Master of Sentences,' and says, 'that though thousands were debtors to him as touching divine knowledge, yet he was to none, only to God.' Montesquieu declares that 'the Genevese should ever bless the day of his birth.' Jewel terms him 'a reverend Father, and worthy ornament of the Church of God.' ' He that will not honor the memory of Calvin,' says Mr. Bancroft, 'knows but little of the origin of American liberty.' Under his influence Geneva became the 'fertile seed-plot' of reform for all Europe; with Zurich and Strassburg, it was the refuge of the oppressed from tlie British Isles, and thus indoctrinated England and ourselves with its own spirit."
294 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
From Dr. Smith's article " Calvin " in Appleton's American Ci/clopcedia.
" Calvin's system of doctrine and polity has shaped more minds and entered into more nations than that of any other Reformer. In every land it made men strong against the attempted interference of the secular power with the rights of Christians. It gave courage to the Huguenots ; it shaped the theology of the Palatinate ; it prepared the Dutch for the heroic defence of their national rights; it has controlled Scotland to the present hour; it formed the Puritanism of England; it has been the basis of the New England character; and everywhere it has led the way in practical reforms. His theology assumed different types in the various countries into which it penetrated, while retaining its fundamental traits."
Dr. George P. Fisher (b. 1827). Professor of Church History in Yale Divinity School, New Haven. Congregationalist. From his Historij of the Reforviation. New York, 1873, pp. 206 and 238.
" When we look at his extraordinary intellect, at his culture — which opponents, like Bossuet, have been forced to commend — at the invincible energy which made him endure with more than stoical fortitude infirmities of body under which most men would have sunk, and to perform, in the midst of them, an incredible amount of mental labor; when we see him, a scholar naturally fond of seclusion, physically timid, and recoiling from notoriety and strife, abjuring the career that was most to his taste, and plunging, with a single-hearted, disinterested zeal and an indomitable will, into a hard, protracted contest ; and when we follow his steps, and see what things he effected, we cannot deny him the attributes of greatness. . . .
"His last days were of a piece with his life. His whole course has been compared by Vinet to the growth of one rind of a tree from another, or to a chain of logical sequences. He was endued with a marvellous power of understanding, although the imagination and sentiments were less roundly developed. His systematic spirit fitted him to be the founder of an enduring school of thought. In this characteristic he may be compared with Aquinas. He has been appropriately styled the Aristotle of the Reformation. He was a perfectly honest man. He subjected his will to the eternal rule of right, as far as he could discover it. His motives were pure. He felt that God was near him, and sacrificed everything to obey the direction of Providence. The fear of God ruled in his soul ; not a slavish fear, but a principle such as animated the prophets of the Old Covenant. The combination of his qualities was such that he could not fail to attract profound admiration and reverence from one class of minds, and excite intense antipathy in another. There is no one of the Reformers who is spoken of, at this late day, with so much personal feeling, either of regard or aversion. But whoever studies his life and writings, especially the few passages in which he lets us into his confidence and appears to invite our sympathy, will acquire a growing sense of his intellectual and moral greatness, and a tender consideration for his errors.'