§ 74. THE OPEN RUPTURE. 317
crooked as well as on a straight line. Even Paul was called out of due time, and did not seek ordination from Peter or any other apostle, but derived his authority directly from Christ, and proved his ministry by the abundance of his labors.
In the apostolic age there were apostles, prophets, and evangelists for the Church at large, and presbyter-bishops and deacons for particular congregations. The former are considered extraordinary officers. But their race is not yet extinct, any more than the race of men of genius in any other sphere of life. They arise whenever and wherever they are needed.
We are bound to the ordinary means of grace, but God is free, and his Spirit works when, where, and how he pleases. God calls ordinary men for ordinary work in the ordinary way ; and he calls extraordinary men for extraordinary work in an extraordinary way. He has done so in times past, and will do so to the end of time.^
Hooker, the most " judicious " of Anglican divines, says : " Though thousands were debtors to Calvin, as touching divine knowledge, yet he was to none, only to God."
§ 74. The Open Rupture. An Academic Oration. 1533.
Calv. opera, X. P. I. 30 ; XXI. 123, 129, 192. A very graphic account by- Merle d'Aubigne', Bk. II. ch. xxx. (vol. II. 264-284).
For a little while matters seemed to take a favorable turn at the court for reform. The reactionary conduct of the Sorbonne and the insult offered to Queen Marguerite by the condemnation of her "Mirror of a Sinful Soul," — a tender and monotonous mystic reverie,^ — offended her brother and
1 Our own age is witness to this fact. I may refer to Dwight Lyman Moody, who is a plain, unordained layman, but a genuine, God-taught evangelist. He has probably converted more people to a Christian life than any clergyman or learned professor of theology of this age, and has made his home at Northfield a Jerusalem for Bible students from all parts of the country, and even from across the sea.
2 Le miroir de Vdme p^cheresse (1533). The book was condemned on purely
318 THE KEFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
the liberal members of the University. Several preachers who sympathized with a moderate reformation, Gerard Roussel, and the Augustinians, Bertault and Courault, were permitted to ascend the pulpit in Paris. ^ The king himself, by his opposition to the German emperor, and his friendship with Henry VIII., incurred the suspicion of aiding the cause of heresy and schism. He tried, from political motives and regard for his sister, to conciliate between the conservative and progressive parties. He even authorized the invitation of Melanchthon to Paris as counsellor, but Melanchthon Avisely declined.
Nicolas Cop, the son of a distinguished royal physician (William Cop of Basel), and a friend of Calvin, was elected Rector of the University, Oct. 10, 1533, and delivered the usual inaugural oration on All Saint's Day, Nov. 1, before a large assembly in the Church of the Mathurins.^
This oration, at the request of the new Rector, had been prepared by Calvin. It was a plea for a reformation on the basis of the New Testament, and a bold attack on the scholastic theologians of the day, who were represented as a set of sophists, ignorant of the Gospel. " They teach nothing," says Calvin, " of faith, nothing of the love of God, nothing of the remission of sins, nothing of grace, nothing of justification ; or if they do so, they pervert and undermine it all by their laws and sophistries. I beg you, who are here present, not to tolerate any longer these heresies and abuses." ^
negative evidence. The silence about purgatory and the intercession of saints was construed as a denial.
1 Elie Courault (Coraud, Couraud, Coraldus) afterwards fled to Basel in 1534, and became a colleague of Farel and Calvin at Geneva in 1536. See Herminjard, IV. 114, note 9.
2 Bulasus, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis, VI. 238, and in the " Catalogus illustrium Academicorum Univ. Parisiensis " at the end of the same volume. A notice of Cop in Herminjard, III. 129 sq. note 3.
3 The incomplete draft of this address has been discovered by J. Bonnet among the MSS. of the Geneva Library, and the whole of it by Reuss and Cunitz in the library of St. Thomas in Strassburg. It is printed in Opera,