v^ 111. CALVIX'S COMMENTARIES. o35
6. He had the in-ofoundest reverence for the Scriptures, as containing the Word of the living God and as the oid}^ infallible and sutiicieut rule of faith and duty; but he was not swayed by a particular theory of inspiration. It is true, he never would have approved the unguaided judgments of Luther on James, Jude, Hebrews, and the Apocal^-pse ; • but he had no hesitancy in admitting incidental errors which do not touch the vitals of faith. He remarks on Matt. 27 : 9 : '* How the name of Jeremiah crept in, I confess I know not, nor am I seriously troubled about it. That the name of Jeremiah has been put for Zechariah by an error, the fact itself shows, because there is no such statement in Jeremiah." ^ Concerning the discrepancies between the speech of Stephen in Acts 7 and the account of Genesis, lie sno-crests that Stephen or Luke drew upon ancient traditions rather than upon Moses, and made "a mistake in the name of Abraham."'^
He was far from the pedantry of the Purists in the seventeenth centuiy, who asserted the classical purity of the New Testament Greek, on the ground that the Holy Spirit could not be guilty of an}- solecism or barbarism, or the slightest violation of grammar; not remembering that the Apostles and Evangelists carried the heavenly treasure of truth in earthen vessels, that the power and grace of God might become more manifest, and that Paul himself confesses his rudeness "in speech," though not "in knowledge." Calvin justly remarks, with special reference to Paul, that by a singular providence of God the highest mysteries were committed to us '■'■sub contemptibili verbonon huviilitate^'" that our faith may not rest on the power of luuuau eloquence,
^ See Luther's judgments in vol. VI. oo sq.
2 Harm. II. 340 (Tholuck's ed.) : " Qiwmodo Jeremiu nomen obrepserit, me nescirefateor, nee anxie laboro : certe Jeremice nomen errore positum esse pro Zacharia (13:7), res ipsa ostendit : quia nihil tale apud Jeremlam lepitnr, rrl etiam quod accedat."
^ Ad Acta 7:16: " In nomine Abrahiv erratum esse palam fst. . . . Qiiare hie locus corrigendus est." According to Gen. 50 : 13, Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah at Hebron, and Jacob was buried there, and not at Sheclieni.
536 THE REFORMATION TX FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
but solely on the efficacy of the divine Spirit ; and yet he fully recognized the force and fire, the majesty and weight of Paul's style, which he compares to flashes of lightning.^
The scholastic Calvinists, like the scholastic Lutherans of the seventeenth century, departed from the liberal views of the Reformers, and adopted a mechanical theory which confounds inspiration with dictation, ignores the human element in the Bible, and reduces the sacred writers to mere penmen of the Holy Spirit. This theory is destructive of scientific exegesis. It found symbolical expression, but only for a brief period, in the Helvetic Consensus Formula of 1675, which, in defiance of historical facts, asserts even the inspiration of the Masoretic vowel points. But notwithstanding this restraint, the Calvinistic exegetes adhered more closely to the natural grammatical and historical sense of the Scriptures than their Lutheran and Roman Catholic contemporaries.^
7. Calvin accepted the traditional canon of the New Testament, but exercised the freedom of tlie ante-Nicene Church concerning the origin of some of the books. He denied the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews on account of the differences of style and mode of teaching (ratio
1 See his admirable comments on 1 Cor. 1 : 17 sqq., and 2 Cor. 11 : 6, where he mentions the majestas, altitudo, pondus, and vis of Paul's words, and says : " Fulmina sunt, non verba. An non dilucidius Spiritus Sancti efficacia apparet in nuda verborum rusticitate (xit ita loqiiar) quinn in elegantice et nitoris larva?"
2 Fr. Turretin, a strict scholastic Calvinist, and one of the authors of the Helvetic Consensus Formula, opposed the allegorical method and defended the sound, one-sense principle (in his Inst. Theol. Elencticce, quaest. XIX., vol. I. 135) : " Nbs ita sentimus, ScripturcE S. unicum tantum competere verum et genuinum sensum, sed sensum ilium duplicem posse esse, vel Simplicem, vel Compo- SITHJM. Simplex et historicus est, qui unius rei declarationem continet, absque ullius alterius signijicatione , qui vel prcecepta, vel dogmata, vel historias spectat. Et hie 1-ursus duplex, vel Proprius et Grammaticalis, vel Figuratus et Tropicus. Proprius qui ex verbis propriis oritur; Tropicvs qui ex verbis Jigu7-atis. Sensus CoMPOSiTUS sen mixtus est in oraculis ti/pi rationem habentibus, cujus pars est ?n typo, pars in antitype ; quce non constituunt duos sensus, sed duas partes unius ejusdemque sensus intenti a Spiritu Sancto, qui cum litera mi/sterium respexit, ut in isto Oraculo, ' Os non confringetis ei,' Exo. 12 : 46, plenus non potest haberi sensus, nisi cum veritate typi, seu Agni Paschalis, conjungatur Veritas Antitypi seu Christi ex Jo. 19 : 36."