§ 106. Calvin's theory of discipline. 485
students and citizens at Wittenberg, and seriously thought of leaving the city in disgust. ^
Calvin knew well enough that the ideal could only be imperfectly realized in this world, but that it was none the less our duty to strive after perfection. He often quotes Augustin against the Donatists who dreamed of an imaginary purity of the Church, like the Anabaptists who, he observes, " acknowledge no congregation to belong to Christ, unless it be in all respects conspicuous for angelic perfection, and who, under pretext of zeal, destroy all edification." He consents to Augustin's remark that "schemes of separation are pernicious and sacrilegious, because they proceed from pride and impiety, and disturb the good who are weak, more than they correct the wicked who are bold." In commenting on the parable of the net which gathered of every kind (Matt. 13 : 47), he says : " The Church while on earth is mixed with good and bad and will never be free of all impurity. . . . Although God, who is a God of order, commands us to exercise discipline, he allows for a time to hypocrites a place among believers until he shall set up his kingdom in its perfection on the last day. As far as we are concerned, we must strive to correct vices and to purge the Church of impurity, although she will not be free from all stain and blemish till Christ shall separate the goats from the sheep." ^
Calvin discusses the subject of discipline in the twelfth chapter of the fourth book of his Institutes. His \dews are sound and scriptural. " No society," he says at the outset,
1 Friederich Julius Stahl, a convert from Judaism, a A'ery able lawyer and statesman, and one of the chief champions of modern high-church Lutheranism, whose motto was, " Authority, not Majority" (although his wife was Reformed and he himself attributed his conversion to the Reformed Professor Krafft in Erlangen), says in his book. Die Lutherisrhe Kirche nnd die Union
(1860), that Calvin introduced a new principle into Protestantism; namely, the glorification of God by the full dominion of his "Word in the life of Christendom {"die Verherrlichung Gottes durch die wirliiclie voile Herrschaft seines
Wortjs im Leben der Cfirisfenheit"').
2 In Tholuck's ed. of Calvin's Harmony of the Gospels, I. P. II. 21.
486 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
" no house can be preserved in proper condition without discipline. The Church ought to be the most orderly society of all. As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the Church, so discipline forms the nerves and ligaments which connect the members and keep each in its proper place. It serves as a bridle to curb and restrain the refractory who resist the doctrine of Christ; or as a spur to stimulate the inactive ; and sometimes as a father's rod to chastise, in mercy and with the gentleness of the spirit of Christ, those who have grievously fallen away. It is the only remedy against a dreadful desolation in the Church."
One of the greatest objections which he had against the Roman Church of his day was the utter want of discipline in constant violation of the canons. He asserts, without fear of contradiction, that " there was scarcely one of the (Roman) bishops, and not one in a hundred of the parochial clergy, who, if sentence were to be passed upon his conduct according to the ancient canons, would not be excommunicated, or, to say the very least, deposed from his office." ^
He distinguished between the discipline of the people and the discipline of the clergy .^
1. The discipline of members has three degrees : private admonition ; a second admonition in the presence of witnesses or before , the Church ; and, in case of persistent disobedience, exclusion from the Lord's Table. This is in accordance with the rule of Christ (Matt. 18 : 15-17).
1 Inst. IV. cli. V. § 14. In the same chapter (§ 1) he says of the bishops of his day that most of them were ignorant of the Scriptures, and either drunkards or fornicators or gamblers or hunters. "The greatest absurdity is that even boys, scarcely ten years of age, have, by the permission of the pope, been made bishops." Pope Leo X. himself was made archbishop in his eighth and cardinal-deacon in his thirteenth year. The Roman Church at that time tolerated almost anything but heresy and disobedience to the pope, which in her eyes is worse than the greatest moral crime.
2 He objects to the word clergy as originating in a mistake, since Peter (1 Pet. 5 :3) calls the whole Church God's KXripot or possessions; but he uses it for the sake of convenience.