CALVIN'S CHURCH POLITY.
The practical and ecclesiastical part of Calvin's work is in some respects even more important than his theology, and must be briefly considered in those features which have affected the Calvinistic Confessions. These are the duty of discipline, the principle of lay-representation, and the autonomy of the Church in its relation to the State. In these points Calvinism differs from Lutheranism, and also from Zwinglianism and Anglicanism. Calvin aimed at a moral and social as well as a doctrinal and religious reformation, and succeeded in establishing a model Church, which excited the admiration not only of sympathizing contemporaries, like Farel and Knox, [873] but even of visitors of other creeds long after his death. [874] During the eighteenth century his severe system of theology and discipline gave way to the prevailing spirit of Socinianism and the revolutionary spirit of Jean Jacques Rousseau--the counterpart of Calvin; but revived in the nineteenth century, though in a modified form, so that Geneva has become a second time the centre of evangelistic labors in the French-speaking world. [875]
1. Discipline.--Calvin's zeal for discipline, especially for the honor of the Lord's table, in excluding unworthy communicants, was the cause of his expulsion from Geneva, the cause of his recall from Strasburg, the condition of his acceptance, the struggle and triumph of his life. He had a long and fierce conflict with the ferocious politico-religious party of the Libertines, or 'Spirituals,' as they called themselves, who combined a pantheistic creed with licentiousness and free-lovism, and anticipated the worst forms of modern infidelity to the extent of declaring the gospel a tissue of lies of less value than Æsop's Fables. [876] He regarded them as worse enemies of God and the truth than the Pope. They resorted to personal indignities and every device of intimidation; they named the very dogs of the street after him; they one night fired fifty shots before his bedchamber; they threatened him in the pulpit; they approached the communion table as if to seize the sacred elements, when he cried out, 'You may break these limbs and shed my blood, I would rather die than dishonor the table of my God,' whereupon they left the church. On another occasion he walked into the midst of an excited mob and offered his breast to their daggers. It seems incredible that a man constitutionally 'unwarlike and timorous' should have completely overcome at last such a powerful and determined opposition, which reached its height in 1553.
The system of discipline which he established saved Geneva from anarchy, into which the Libertines would have plunged it, and was a training-school of self-government for other Reformed Churches; but it was carried to unwarrantable excesses in the punishment of religious and civil offenses, and even innocent amusements, and entered too much into details of private and domestic life.
2. Presbyterian and Synodical Church Polity.--It rests on the principle of ministerial equality, and the principle of lay-representation by elders or seniors in the government of the Church. This polity, founded by Calvin, was consistently carried out in the Presbyterian Churches of France, Holland, Scotland, England, and the United States; but in German Switzerland and Germany it succeeded only partially, while the Church of England retained the Episcopal hierarchy. Calvin himself, however, was not an exclusive Presbyterian. He allowed modifications of the form of government in different countries. He did not object to Episcopacy or the liturgical worship in England; he only protested against the ecclesiastical supremacy of Henry VIII. and a number of abuses.
3. The Autonomy of the Church.--The German Reformers, including Zwingli, yielded too much authority to the civil rulers in matters of religion. Calvin theoretically made the Church independent in her own sphere, and claimed for her the right of self-government. This leads consistently to a separation of Church and State, where the latter is hostile to the former, as was the case in France and to some extent in Scotland. In recent times the Calvinistic Churches, without changing their creed, tend naturally towards complete freedom, from State control. Yet in practice he had no idea of such a separation. He regarded the civil and the spiritual power as the two arms of God's government in the world, which should co-operate together for the same end--the glory of God and the good of society: the Church by infusing a religious spirit into the State, the State by protecting and promoting the interests of the Church. He established, after the model of the Old Testament, a theocracy at Geneva, and governed it by tacit consent as long as he lived, presiding over the 'Venerable Company' of Pastors, and exerting a molding influence upon the civil legislation of the little republic of about 20,000 inhabitants. [877]
Bossuet, Möhler, and other Roman Catholic divines saw in this a return to the hierarchy, with Calvin as its pope. He has sometimes been compared to Hildebrand; and Kampschulte remarks that the dominion of the spiritual sovereignty was more thoroughly carried out in Geneva than by the Gregories and Innocenses in the Middle Ages. But Calvin's theocracy differed essentially from the Roman Catholic by its popular (though by no means democratic) basis: it was not priestcraft ruling over statecraft, but a self-governing Christian commonwealth. Geneva was an aristocratic republic, ruled by the clergy and the people in orderly representation and friendly co-operation. The highest civil and executive power was lodged in the 'Little Council' of twenty-four syndics, the highest ecclesiastical power in the 'Consistory,' composed (at first) of six pastors and double that number of lay-elders. [878]