RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.
Unfortunately Calvin inherited from the Theodosian Code and the Catholic Church the worst feature of the theocratic system, namely, the principle of appeal to the secular arm for the temporal, and, if necessary, capital punishment of spiritual offenses, as being offenses against the order and peace of society. This principle is inconsistent with liberty of conscience (which Beza called a diabolical dogma), and justifies all manner of persecution, as duty or policy may suggest. With his intense antagonism to the papal tyranny, he might have thrown off this relic of the Middle Ages, if it had not been for his conviction of the perpetual validity of the Mosaic civil code and his theocratic theory. He thought that the burning of innocent people by Romanists was no good reason why Protestants should spare the guilty.
It was the misfortune of Calvin that this false theory, which confounds two distinct spheres and ignores the spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, was brought to its severest test and explosion under his own eye, and to the perpetual injury of his fair fame. "We mean, of course, the terrible theological tragedy of the Spanish physician Michael Servetus, a restless fanatic, a pantheistic pseudo-reformer, and the most audacious and even blasphemous heretic of the sixteenth century, who attacked the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as tritheistic and atheistic, as the greatest monstrosity, and the source of all corruption in the Church. After being condemned to death, and burned in effigy by the Roman Catholic authorities in France, [879] he fled to Geneva, was arrested, tried, and executed at the stake, for heresy and blasphemy, by the civil government, with the full consent of Calvin, except that he made an ineffectual plea for a mitigation of the punishment (by a substitution of the sword for the fagot). [880]
Severely as we must condemn the great Reformer, from the standpoint of our modern civilization, for this the saddest mistake of his life, it is evident that even here he acted consistently and conscientiously, and that the blame attaches not to his personal character (for towards sincere and earnest heretics, like Lælius Socinus, he showed marked courtesy and leniency), but to his system, and not to his system alone, but to the inherited system of his age, which had not yet emerged from the traditions of the Romish pseudo-theocracy. The burning of Servetus was fully approved by all the Reformers--Beza, Farel, Bucer, Bullinger, even the mild and gentle Melanchthon. [881] If Romanists condemned Calvin, they did it from hatred of the man, and condemned him for following their own example even in this particular case. The public opinion of Christendom at that time and down to the eighteenth century justified the right and duty of civil government not only to protect but to support orthodoxy, and to punish heresy by imprisonment, exile, and death; and this right was exercised, with more or less severity, in all countries of Europe, and even in Puritan New England during the colonial period. Protestants differed from Romanists only in their definition of heresy, and by greater moderation in its punishment. Protestants complained of being innocently persecuted in France, Spain, Holland, and under the bloody Mary in England; and Catholics raised the same complaint against the systematic cruelty of the penal code of Queen Elizabeth, which looked to the utter extermination of Romanism and Puritanism alike.
A protest against the principle of persecution, first raised by Justin Martyr and Tertullian in the early Church, but forgotten as soon as the Church ascended the throne of the Cæsars, was revived by heretical Anabaptists and Socinians, who themselves suffered from it, without having a chance to persecute their persecutors, and who thus became martyrs of religious freedom. All honor to them, even to Servetus, for the service they rendered under this view to future generations. Liberty is the sweet fruit of bitter persecution. During the seventeenth century this feeble and isolated protest was considerably strengthened by Arminians, Baptists, and Quakers for the same reason; and during the eighteenth century Christian liberality and philanthropy on the one hand, and religious indifferentism and infidelity on the other, made such progress that the doctrinal foundations of persecution were gradually undermined, and toleration (as it was first patronizingly and condescendingly called, and is still called in despotic countries) became the professed policy of civilized governments. But this is not enough: all Christian governments should legally recognize and protect liberty of conscience, as an inherent and inalienable right of every immortal soul; and this requires for its full realization a peaceful separation of Church and State, or an equality of all denominations before the law.
In view of this radical revolution of public opinion on the subject of persecution, it becomes a practical question whether those sections of the Protestant confessions of faith which treat of the relation of Church and State should not be reconstructed and adapted to the principle of religious freedom, all the more since the Papal Syllabus has consistently condemned it, as being one of the errors of modern times. Such a change, at all events, is necessary in the United States, and has actually been made in the American revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and of the Westminster Confession.
The principle of religious liberty does not necessarily, as was formerly supposed, imply indifference to truth or a weakening of intensity of conviction. It follows legitimately from a sharper discrimination between the secular and spiritual sphere, between the Old and the New Testaments, between the law of Moses and the gospel of Christ, and from the spirit and example of Him who said, 'My kingdom is not of this world,' and who commanded the carnal-minded Peter to 'put up his sword into the sheath.' God alone is Lord of the conscience, and allows no one with impunity to interfere with his sovereign right. Religion flourishes best in the atmosphere of freedom, and need not fear error as long as truth is left free to combat it.
It is nevertheless true that Calvinism, by developing the power of self-government and a manly spirit of independence which fears no man, though seated on a throne, because it fears God, the only sovereign, has been one of the chief agencies in bringing about this progress, and that civil and religious liberty triumphed first and most completely in Calvinistic countries. 'Calvin,' says Guizot, 'is undoubtedly one of those who did most towards the establishment of religious liberty.'
[848] The eminent French historian, H. Martin (in his Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'en 1789, Tom. VIII. p. 325 of the fourth edition, Par. 1860), thus speaks of what Calvin did for the city of Geneva: 'Calvin ne la sauve pas seulement, mais conquiert à cette petite ville une grandeur, une puissance morale immense. Il en fait la capitale de la Réforme, autant que la Réforme peut avoir une capitale, pour la moitié du monde protestante, avec une vaste influence, acceptée ou subie, sur l'autre moitié. Genève n'est rien par la population, par les armes, par le territoire: elle est tout par l'esprit. Un seul avantage matériel lui garantit tous ses avantages moraux: son admirable position, qui fait d'elle une petite France républicaine et protestante, indépendante de la monarchie catholique de France et à l'abri de l'absorption monarchique et catholique; la Suisse protestante, alliée necessaire de la royauté française contre l'empereur, couvre Genève par la politique vis-à-vis du roi et par l'épée contre la maison d'Autriche et de Savoie.'
[849] Kampschulte, Vol. I. p. xii.: Der romanische Reformator zählte seine Anhänger in der romanischen, germanischen und slavischen Welt und zeigte sich überall, wo nicht das Lutherthum in dem deutschen Character eine Stütze fand, diesem überlegen.' He quotes the fact that in Bohemia, which borders on Germany, the Slavonian Protestants nearly all profess Calvinism, while Lutheranism is confined to the Germans. The same is still more the case with the Anglo-Saxon race in England, America, and Australia, and in the mission fields among the heathen. In Italy and Spain, too, the Waldenses and the evangelical Churches are, both in doctrine and discipline, much more Calvinistic than Lutheran; but so far Protestantism has a very feeble hold on the Latin races, which are more apt to swing from popery to infidelity, and from infidelity to popery, than to adopt the via media either of Lutheranism or Calvinism or Anglicanism.
[850] 'In his vast correspondence we find him conversing familiarly with the Reformers--Farel, Viret, Beza, Bullinger, Bucer, Grynæus, Knox, Melanchthon--on the most important religious and theological questions of his age; counseling and exhorting Prince Condé, Jeanne D'Albret, mother of Henry IV., Admiral Coligny, the Duchess of Ferrara, King Sigismund of Poland, Edward VI. of England, and the Duke of Somerset; respectfully reproving Queen Marguerite of Navarre; withstanding libertines and the pseudo-Protestants; strengthening the martyrs, and directing the Reformation in Switzerland, France, Poland, England, and Scotland. He belongs to the small number of men who have exerted a moulding influence, not only upon their own age and country, but also upon future generations in various parts of the world; and not only upon the Church, but indirectly also upon the political, moral, and social life. The history of Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States for the last three hundred years bears upon a thousand pages the impress of his mind and character. He raised the small republic of Geneva to the reputation of a Protestant Rome. He gave the deepest impulse to the Reform movement, which involved France, his native land, in a series of bloody civil wars, which furnished a host of martyrs to the evangelical faith, and which continues to live in that powerful nation in spite of the horrid massacre of St. Bartholomew and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the dragoonades and exile of hosts of Huguenots, who, driven from their native soil, carried their piety, virtue, and industry to all parts of Western Europe and North America. He kindled the religious fire which roused the moral and intellectual strength of Holland, and consumed the dungeons of the Inquisition and the fetters of the political despotism of Spain. His genius left a stronger mark on the national character of the Anglo-Saxon race and the Churches of Great Britain than their native Reformers. His theology and piety raised Scotland from a semi-barbarous condition, and made it the classical soil of Presbyterian Christianity, and one of the most enlightened, energetic, and virtuous countries on the face of the globe. His spirit stirred up the Puritan revolution of the seventeenth century, and his blood ran in the veins of Hampden and Cromwell, as well as Baxter and Owen. He may be called, in some sense, the spiritual father of New England and the American republic. Calvinism, in its various modifications and applications, was the controlling agent in the early history of our leading colonies (as Bancroft has shown); and Calvinism is, to this day, the most powerful element in the religious and ecclesiastical life of the Western world.'--From the author's Essay on Calvin, in the Bibl. Sacra for 1857.
[851] On the interesting French colony in Brazil, 1556, consisting of two clergymen and about two hundred members of the Church of Geneva, see Stähelin, Vol. II. pp. 234 sqq. The colony was broken up by the interference of the French government and by Papal intrigues. But it was a harbinger of the later emigrations of persecuted Huguenots in several parts of North America, who enriched the Presbyterian, Dutch, and German Reformed and other Churches.
[852] Comp. Stähelin, Vol. II. pp. 198, 241.
[853] The Strasburg editors of Calvin's Works, though belonging to the modern liberal school of theology, thus characterize him as a theologian (Opera, Vol. I. p. ix.): 'Si Lutherum virum maximum, si Zwinglium civem Christianum nulli secundum, si Melanthonem præceptorem doctissimum merito appellaris, Calvinum jure vocaris theologorum principem et antesignanum. In hoc enim quis linguarum et literarum præsidia, quis disciplinarum fere omnium non miretur orbem? De cujus copia doctrinæ, rerumque dispositione aptissime concinnata, et argumentorum vi ac validitate in dogmaticis; de ingenii acumine et subtilitate, atque nunc festiva nunc mordaci salsedine in polemicis, de felicissima perspicuitate, sobrietate ac sagacitate in exegeticis, de nervosa eloquentia et libertate in paræneticis; de prudentia sapientiaque legislatoria in ecclesiis constituendis, ordinandis ac regendis incomparabili, inter omnes viros doctos et de rebus evangelicis libere sentientes jam abunde constat. Imo inter ipsos adversarios romanos nullus hodie est, vel mediocri harum rerum cognitione imbutus vel tantilla judicii præditus æquitate, qui argumentorum et sententiarum ubertatem, proprietatem verborum sermonemque castigatum, stili denique, tam latini quam gallici, gravitatem et luciditatem non admiretur. Quæ cuncta quum in singulis fere scriptis, tum præcipue relucent in immortali illa Institutione religionis Christianæ, quæ omnes ejusdem generis expositiones inde ab apostolorum temporibus conscriptas, adeoque ipsos Melanthonis Locos theologicos, absque omni controversia longe antecellit atque eruditum et ingenuum lectorem, etiamsi alicubi secus senserit, hodieque quasi vinetum trahit et vel invitum rapit in admirationem.' To this we add a remarkable tribute of a liberal Roman Catholic historian who abhors Calvin's doctrine of absolute predestination, and yet becomes eloquent when he speaks of the literary merits of his 'Institutes.' 'Sein Lehrbuch der christlichen Religion,' says Kampschulte (Vol. I. p. xiv.), 'bringt die kirchliche Revolution in ein System, das durch logische Schärfe, Klarheit des Gedankens, rücksichtslose Consequenz, die vor nichts zurückbebt, noch heute unser Staunen und unsere Bewunderung erregt.' Ibid. p. 274: 'Calvin's Lehrbuch der christlichen Religion ist ohne Frage das hervorragendste und bedeutendste Erzeugniss, welches die reformatorische Literatur des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts auf dem Gebiete der Dogmatik aufzuweisen hat. Schon ein oberflächlicher Vergleich lässt uns den gewaltigen Fortschritt erkennen, den es gegenüber den bisherigen Leistungen auf diesem Gebiete bezeichnet. Statt der unvollkommenen, nach der einen oder andern Seite unzulänglichen Versuche Melanchthon's, Zwingli's, Farel's erhalten wir aus Calvin's Hand das Kunstwerk eines, wenn auch nicht harmonisch in sich abgeschlossenen, so doch wohlgegliederten, durchgebildeten Systems, das in allen seinen Theilen die leitenden Grundgedanken widerspiegelt und von vollständiger Beherrschung des Stoffes zeugt. Es hatte eine unverkennbare Berechtigung, wenn man den Verfasser der Institution als den Aristoteles der Reformation bezeichnete. Die ausserordentliche Belesenheit in der biblischen und patristischen Literatur, wie sie schon in den früheren Ausgaben des Werkes hervortritt, setzt in Erstaunen. Die Methode ist lichtvoll und klar, der Gedankengang streng logisch, überall durchsichtig, die Eintheilung und Ordnung des Stoffes dem leitenden Grundgedanken entsprechend; die Darstellung schreitet ernst und gemessen vor und nimmt, obschon in den späteren Ausgaben mehr gelehrt als anziehend, mehr auf den Verstand als auf das Gemüth berechnet, doch zuweilen einen höheren Schwung an. Calvin's Institution enthält Abschnitte, die dem Schönsten, was von Pascal und Bossuet geschrieben worden ist, an die Seite gestellt werden können: Stellen, wie jene über die Erhabenheit der heiligen Schrift, über das Elend des gefallenen Menschen, über die Bedeutung des Gebetes, werden nie verfehlen, auf den Leser einen tiefen Eindruck zu machen. Auch von den katholischen Gegnern Calvin's sind diese Vorzüge anerkannt und manche Abschnitte seines Werkes sogar benutzt worden. Man begreift es vollkommen, wenn er selbst mit dem Gefühl der Befriedigung und des Stolzes auf sein Werk blickt und in seinen übrigen Schriften gern auf das "Lehrbuch" zurückverweist.'