§ 79. CALVIN'S INSTITUTES OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 329
This book is the masterpiece of a precocious genius of commanding intellectual and spiritual depth and power. It is one of the few truly classical productions in the history of theology, and has given its author the double title of the Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas of the Reformed Church.^
The Roman Catholics at once perceived the significance of the Institution and called it the Koran and Talmud of heresy .^ It was burned by order of the Sorbonne at Paris and other places, and more fiercely and persistently persecuted than any book of the sixteenth century ; but, we must add, it has found also great admirers among Catholics who, while totally dissenting from its theological system and antipopish temper, freely admit its great merits in the non-polemical parts.-^
The Evangelicals greeted the Institutio at once with enthusiastic praise as the clearest, strongest, most logical, and most convincing defence of Christian doctrines since the days of the apostles. A few weeks after its publication Bucer wrote to the author : " It is evident that the Lord has elected you as his organ for the bestowment of the richest fulness of blessing to his Church." ■*
Nor is this admiration confined to orthodox Protestants. Dr. Baur, the founder of the Tiibingen school of historical critics, declares this book of Calvin to be " in every respect a truly classical work, distinguished in a high degree by originality and acuteness of conception, systematic consistency, and clear, luminous method." ^ And Dr. Hase pointedly calls it "the grandest scientific justification of Augustinian-
1 Kampschulte, a Roman Catholic historian, and others, call him "the Aristotle;" Martin, a liberal French historian, and others, call him — more appropriately — "the Thomas Aquinas," of Protestantism.
2 Florimond de Rsemond : "V Alcoran oh plutSt le Talmud de I'he'resie."
3 See the testimonies of Bossuet, and especially of Kampschulte, quoted in § 68, p. 285 sq.
* "Videmur nobis afjnoscere, Dominum instituisse tui nsum ecclesiis suis uberrimum concedere, eisque tuo ministerio latissime commodare." Herminjard, IV. 118.
^ Dogmengeschichte, vol. III. 27.
330 THE REFORMATIOX IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
ism, full of religiovis depth with inexorable consistency of thought." ^
The Institutio is not a book for the people, and has not the rousing power which Luther's Appeal to the German Nobility, and his tract on Christian Freedom exerted upon the Germans ; but it is a book for scholars of all nations, and had a deeper and more lasting effect upon them than any work of the Reformers. Edition followed edition, and translations were made into nearly all the languages of Europe.^
Calvin gives a systematic exposition of the Christian religion in general, and a vindication of the evangelical faith in particular, with the apologetic and practical aim of defending the Protestant believers against calumny and persecution to which they were then exposed, especially in France. He writes under the inspiration of a heroic faith that is ready for the stake, and with a glowing enthusiasm for the pure Gospel of Christ, which had been obscured and deprived of its effect by human traditions, but had now risen from this rubbish to new life and poAver. He combines dogmatics and ethics in organic unity.
He plants himself firmly on the immovable rock of the Word of God, as the only safe guide in matters of faith and duty. He exhibits on every page a thorough, well-digested knowledge of Scripture which is truly astonishing. He does not simply quote from it as a body of proof texts, in a mechanical way, like the scholastic dogmaticians of the seventeenth century, but he views it as an organic whole, and weaves it into his system. He bases the authority of Scripture on its intrinsic excellency and the testimony of the Holy Spirit speaking through it to the believer. He makes also judicious and discriminating use of the fathers, especially St. Augustin,
1 Kirchengeschichte, p. 405 (11th edition).
2 Many editors print, as a motto, the distich of the Hungarian, Paul Thurius :
" Pr(eter apostolicas post Christi tempora chartas, JJuic peperere libro scecula nulla parem."