§ 111. Calvin's commentaries. 527
ceiving, and perspicuity in expounding, the meaning of the Apostle." 1
1. Let us first look at his philological outfit. Melanchthon well says : " The Scripture cannot be understood theologically unless it be first understood grammatically." 2 He had passed through the school of the Renaissance; he had a rare knowledge of Greek ; he thought in Greek, and could not help inserting rare Greek words into his letters to learned friends. He was an invaluable help to Luther in his translation of the Bible, but his commentaries are dogmatical rather than grammatical, and very meagre, as compared with those of Luther and Calvin in depth and force.^
Luther surpassed all other Reformers in originality, freshness, spiritual insight, bold conjectures, and occasional flashes of genius. His commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, which he called " his wife," is a masterpiece of sympathetic exposition and forceful application of the leading idea of evangelical freedom to the question of his age. But Luther was no exegete in the proper sense of the term. He had no method and discipline. He condemned allegorizing as a mere " monkey-game " (^Affenspiel)^ and yet he often resorted to it in Job, the Psalms, and the Canticles. He was eminently spiritual, and yet, as against Zwingli, slavishly literal in his interpretation. He seldom sticks to the text, but uses it only as a starting-point for popular sermons, or polemical excursions against papists and sectarians. He cared nothing for the consensus of the fathers. He applied private judgment to the interpretation with the utmost freedom, and judged the canonicity and authority of the several books of the Bible
1 " Calvinus miravi in pervidenda apostoli mente snbtiUtatem, in exponenda prespicuitatem probavit." In the third ed. of his Com. on the Ep. to the Galatians.
2 " Ignaviis in grammntira est ignavns in theologia." Postill. IV. 428.
3 Calvin himself fully acknowledged the exegetical merits of Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Bucer, in their commentaries on Romans, but modestly hints at their defects to justify his own commentary, which is far superior. See his interesting dedication to Grynasus, written in 1539.
528 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
by a dogmatic and subjective rule — his favorite doctrine of solifidian justification ; and as he could not find it in James, he irreverently called his epistle " an epistle of straw." He anticipated modern criticism, but his criticism proceeded from faith in Christ and God's Word, and not from scepticism. His best work is a translation, and next to it, his little catechism for children.
Zwingli studied the Greek at Glarus and Einsiedeln that he might be able "to draw the teaching of Christ from the fountain." ^ He learnt Hebrew after he was called to Ziirich. He also studied the fathers, and, like Erasmus, took more to Jerome than to Augustin. His expositions of Scripture are clear, easy, and natural, but somewhat superficial. The other Swiss Reformers and exegetes — Qj^colampadius, Grynseus, BuUinger, Pellican, and Bibliander — had a good philological preparation. Pellican, a self-taught scholar (d. 1556), who was called to Ziirich by Zwingli in 1525, wrote a little Hebrew grammar even before Reuchlin,^ and published at Ziirich comments on the whole Bible. ^ Bibliander (d. 1564) was likewise professor of Hebrew in Ziirich, and had some acquaintance with other Semitic languages ; he was, however, an Erasmian rather than a Calvinist, and opposed the doctrine of the absolute decrees.
For the Hebrew Bible these scholars used the editions of Daniel Bomberg (Venice, 1518-45) ; the Complutensian Polyglot, which gives, besides the Hebrew text, also the Septuagint and Vulgate and a Hebrew vocabulary (Alcala, printed 1514-17 ; published 1520 sqq.) ; also the editions of
1 He wrote in 1523 that, ten years before (when priest at Glarus), " operam dedi Grcecianis Uteris, ut ex fontibus doctrinain Christi haurire possem."
2 De Modo legendi et inteUiijendi Hebrauin, written at TUbingen or Basel in 1501, first printed in the Margarita philosopkica, at Strassburg in 1504 (one or two years before Reuchlin's Rudimenta Linguoi Hehr.), recently discovered and republislied by Nestle, Tiibingen, 1877.
^ Comtnentaria Bibliorum, Ziirich, 1532-39, 7 vols. See Diestel, I.e., 272 sq., and Strack in Herzog- XI. 432 sqq.