§ 119. Calvin and Pighius.
I. Albertus PiGHiDS : De libera hominis arhitrio et divina gratia libri decern.
Colonias, 1542, mense Augusto. Dedicated to Cardinal Sadolet. He wrote also Assertio hierarchic ecclesiasticce, a complete defence of the Roman Church, dedicated to Pope Paul III., 1538. Calviv : Defensio sancn et orthodoxce doctrime de servitute et liheratione humani arbitrii ndversus calumnias Alberti Pighii Campensis. With a preface to Melanchthon. Geneva, 1543. In Opera, VI. 225-404. (Amsterdam ed. t. VIII. 116 sqq.) The same in French, Geneva, 1560.
II. Bayle: Art. Pighius, in his "Diet, hist." — Henry, II. 285 sqq. (English trans. I. 492 sqq.). — Dyer (1850), pp. 158-165. — Schweizer: Die protest. Centraldogmen (1854), I. 180-200. Very satisfactory. — Werner (R. Cath.) : Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Liieratur der christl. Theologie (1865), IV. 272 sq. and 298. Superficial. — Stahelin, II. 281- 287. — Prolegomena to Calvin's Opera, VI. pp. XXIII.-XXV.
As Erasmus had attacked Luther's doctrine on the slavery of the human will, and provoked Luther's crushing reply,
1 Isa. 56 : 10 ; Matt. 7:6; Phil. 3:2; Rev. 22 : 15.
596 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Albert Pigliius attacked Luther and chiefly Calvin on the same vulnerable point.
Pighius (or Pigghe) of Campen in Holland, educated at Louvain and Cologne, and a pupil of Pope Adrian VI., v^^hom he followed to Rome, was a learned and eloquent divine and deputed on various missions by Clement VII. and Paul III. He may have seen Calvin at the Colloquies in Worms and Ratisbon. He died as canon and archdeacon of Utrecht, Dec. 26, 1542, a few months after the publication of his book against Calvin and the other Reformers. Beza calls him the first sophist of the age, who, by gaining a victory over Calvin, hoped to attain to a cardinal's hat. But it is wrong to judge of motives without evidence. His retirement to Utrecht could not promote such ambition.^
Pighius represents the dogma of the slavery of the human will, and of the absolute necessity of all that happens, as the cardinal error of the Reformation, and charges it with leading to complete moral indifference. He wrote ten books against it. In the first six books, he defends the doctrine of free-will ; in the last four books, he discusses divine grace, foreknowledge, predestination, and providence, and, last, the Scripture jjassages on these subjects. He teaches the Semi-Pelagian theory with some Pelagian features, and declares that " our works are meritorious before God." After the Synod of Trent had more carefully guarded the doctrine of justification against Semi-Pelagianism, the Spanish Inquisition placed his book, De libero arbitrio, and his tract, De peecato originally on the Index, and Cardinal Bona recommended caution in reading them, since he did not always present the reliable
^ Henry says (II. 289) that Pighius was converted by Calvin's argument, but he died (December, 1542) before Calvin's reply was published (February, 1543). The story rests on the authority of Crakanthorpe, who asserts, in his Defensio Ecclesice Anglicame, that Pighius by reading Calvin's Institutes for the purpose of refuting them, became himself a Calvinist in one of the chief articles of faith (he does not say which). The story has been long ago rejected by Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renovati, III. § 50. Comp. Dyer, p. 160.
§ 119. CALVIN AND PIGHIUS. 597
orthodox doctrine. Pighius was not ashamed to copy, without acknowledgment, whole pages from Calvin's Institutes, where it suited his purpose. Calvin calls him a plagiarist, and says, " With what right he publishes such sections as his own, I cannot see, unless he claims, as enemy, the privilege of plunder."
The arguments of Pigliius against the doctrine of the slavery of the human will are these : It contradicts common sense; it is inconsistent with the admitted freedom of will in civil and secular matters; it destroys all morality and discipline, turns men into animals and monsters, makes God the author of sin, and perverts his justice into cruelty, and his wisdom into foll3^ He derives these heresies from the ancient Gnostics and Simon Magus, except that Luther surpassed them all in impiety.
Calvin's answer was written in about two months, and amidst many interruptions. He felt the weight of the objections, but he always marched up to the cannon's mouth. He admits, incidentally, that Luther often used hyperbolical expressions in order to rouse attention. He also allows the llherum arhitrium in the sense that man acts voluntarily and of his inner impulse.^ But he denies that man, without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, has the power to choose what is spiritually good, and quotes Rom. 6 : 17 ; 7 : 14, 23. "Man has arhitrium sp07itaneum, so that he willingly and by choice does evil, without compulsion from without, and, therefore, he incurs guilt. But, owing to native depravity, his will is so given to sin that it always chooses evil. Hence spontaneity and enslavement may exist together. The voluntas is spontanea, but not libera; it is not coacta, yet serva.^^ This is an anticipation of the artificial distinction between natural ability and moral inability — a distinction which is practically useless. As regards the teaching of the early Church, he could not deny that the Fathers, especially Origen, exalt the free-
1 Sponte et lihenter, interiore ehctionis motu.