§ 103. CHURCH AND STATE. 471
trine of the general priesthood of the hiity, but Calvin put it into an organized form, and made the laity a regular agency in the local congregation, and in the synods and councils of the Church, His vieAvs are gaining ground in other denominations, and are almost generally adopted in the. United States. Even the Protestant Episcopal Church gives, in the lower house of her diocesan and general conventions, to the laity an equal representation with the clergy.
4. Strict discipline to be exercised jointly by ministers and lay-elders, with the consent of the whole congregation.
In this point Calvin went far beyond the older Reformers, and achieved greater success, as we shall see hereafter.
5. Union of Church and State on a theocratic basis, if possible, or separation, if necessary to secure the purity and self-government of the Church. This requires fuller exposition.
§ 103. Church and State.
Calvin's Church polity is usually styled a theocracy, by friends in praise, by foes in censure.^ This is true, but in a qualified sense. He aimed at the sole rule of Christ and his Word both in Church and State, but without mixture and interference. The two powers were almost equally balanced in Geneva. The early Puritan colonies in New England were an imitation of the Geneva model.
In theory, Calvin made a clearer distinction between the spiritual and secular powers than was usual in his age, when both were inextricably interwoven and confused. He compares tlie Church to the soul, the State to the body. The
1 By Weber, Henry, and Stahelin, and many others; also by Kampschulte, who remarks (I. 471): " Der Grundgedanke, von dem der Gesetzgeher Genfs ausgeht, ist die Theoknttie. Er will in Genf den Gottesstaat herstellen." But Ame'de'e Roget (L'eglise et I'e'tat a Geneve du vivant de Calvin) and Merle d'Aubigne' (vol. VII. 120) dissent from this view and point to the limitations of the ecclesiastical power in Geneva. Merle d'Aubigne says: "Calvin was not a theocrat, unless the term be taken in the most spiritual sense."
472 THE KEFOfiMATION IN FilENCH SWITZERLAND.
one has to do with the spiritual and eternal welfare of man, the other with the affairs of this present, transitory life.^ Each is independent and sovereign in its own sphere. He was opposed to any interference of the civil government with the internal affairs and discipline of the Church. He was displeased with the servile condition of the clergy in Germany and in Bern, and often complained (even on his deathbed) of the interference of Bern with the Church in Geneva. But he was equally opposed to a clerical control of civil and political affairs, and confined the Church to the spiritual sword. He never held a civil office. The ministers were not eligible to the magistracy and the councils.
Yet he did not go so far as to separate the two powers ; on the contrary, he united them as closely as their different functions would admit. His fundamental idea was, that God alone is Lord on earth as well as in heaven, and should rule supreme in Church and State. In this sense he was theocratic or christocratic. God uses Church and State as two distinct but co-operative arms for the upbuilding of Christ's kingdom. The law for both is the revealed will of God in the Holy Scriptures. The Church gives moral support to the State, while the State gives temporal support to the Church.
Calvin's ideal of Christian society resembles that of Hildebrand, but differs from it on the following important points : —
1. Calvin's theory professed to be based upon the Scriptures, as the only rule of faith and practice ; the papal theocracy drew its support chiefly from tradition and the canon law.
Calvin's arguments, however, are exclusively taken from the Old Testament. The Calvinistic as well as the papal theocracy is Mosaic and legalistic rather than Christian and evangelical. The Apostolic Church had no connection what-
^ Inst. IV. ch. XX. § 1. " Volui," he wrote to a friend, " sicnt (vquiim est, spiritualem potestatem a civili judicio distingui," Epp. et Hesp. 263.