BUT we will pass on to another view of Calvin’s character. A truly great mind, conscious of its own resources, and more fully sensible than others of the difficulties surrounding every subject of human speculation, is always calm, and tempered with moderation, equally free from bigotry and indifference. It has therefore been attempted to deprive Calvin of his glory, by the allegation that he was illiberal, extravagant, and intolerant — a furious bigot and extreme ultraist — and the most heartless of persecutors.

Such charges, in such an age and country as this, are, it is well known, the most offensive, and the most sure to cover with obloquy, the man and the cause with which they are identified. But the very reverse we affirm to be the truth in this case. Calvin was liberal in his views, moderate in his spirit, and tolerant in his disposition.

Who had endured greater calumny, reproach, and hatred, at the hands of the Romanists, than Calvin? and yet he allowed the validity of Romish baptism, and the claims of Rome to the character of a Church, not merely as comprising many of God’s elect children, but as having “the remains of a church continuing with them.” Against whom did Luther and his coadjutors utter severer language, than against Calvin in reference to the sacramentarian controversy? And whom did Calvin more delight to honor than Luther? How did he study to cover the coals of this pernicious discord, and if possible, entirely to quench them? “I wish you,” he says, writing to Bullinger and the other pastors of Zurich, against whom Luther had used an inexcusable wantonness of language, reproach, and anathema, “I wish you to recall these things to your mind, how great a man Luther is, and with how great gifts he excels; also, with what fortitude and constancy of mind, with what efficacy of learning, he hath hitherto labored and watched to destroy the kingdom of antichrist, and to propagate, at the same time, the doctrine of salvation. I often say, If he should call me a devil, I hold him in such honor, that I would acknowledge him an eminent servant of God.” And does not the whole Protestant world now, including the Lutheran Church itself, acknowledge that the doctrine of Calvin on the Lord’s Supper is true, scriptural, and catholic, and that Luther’s was as certainly extravagant and wrong?

In how many ways did he endeavor to preserve the peace and harmony of the churches; to lead to compromise on matters of order and discipline, to encourage submission to ceremonies and forms which were in themselves “fooleries,” rather than produce rupture and give occasion to the enemy ,to blaspheme ;into prevent schism, disunion, and alienation, — and to bind together with the cords of love the whole brotherhood of the Reformed Churches! “Keep your smaller differences,” says he, addressing the Lutheran churches, “let us have no discord on that account; but let us march in one solid column, under the banners of the Captain of our salvation, and with undivided counsels pour the legions of the cross upon the territories of darkness and of death.” “I should not hesitate to cross ten seas, if by this means holy communion might prevail among the members of Christ.”

Nothing can be more liberal than his views as to the character of other churches. “Let the ministers, therefore,” he says, “by whom God permits the Church to be governed, be what they may; if the signs of the true Church are perceived, it will be better not to separate from their communion. Nor is it an objection, that some impure doctrines are there delivered; for there is scarce any church which retains none of the remains of ignorance. It is sufficient for us, that the doctrine, on which the Church of Christ is founded, should hold its place and influence.” Hence has it happened that the most absurd attempts have been made, even in our own day, to represent Calvin as the friend and defender of Prelacy, which he spent his life in opposing — that liberality which made him willing to bear, for a time, with the “tolerable fooleries” of the ritual of the English Church, being most ungenerously interpreted into a warm and hearty approval of its unscriptural forms which Calvin as openly and constantly condemned. f26 Equally liberal and moderate was Calvin in his doctrinal tenets. He steered the safe and middle course between Antinomianism and Arminianism — and between Fatalism and Latitudinarianism. No one has ever been more belied. Garbled extracts have been made to give expression to views which their very context was designed to overthrow. Doctrines have been fathered upon Calvin, which had existed in the church from the Apostles’ days, and in every age. And erroneous opinions, both doctrinal and practical, have been attributed to him which he spent his life in opposing, and of which no confutation could be found more triumphant than what is given in his own works. But while these are unknown or unread, youthful bigots, and learned fools, expose their shame by retailing and perpetuating stereotyped abuse. It were enough to repel all such criminations by the fact, that for every doctrine Calvin appeals to the Bible — that he exalts the Bible above all human authority, including his own — that he claims for all men liberty of conscience and of judgment — and that he charges all men to search the Scriptures, and thus to try his doctrines whether they be of God.

And as this charge is based by many upon the doctrines of predestination, decrees, and divine sovereignty, let it be remembered that these were not peculiar to Calvin, but were common to him, with the greatest divines of all ages, and with all the Reformers, he was, too, a Sub- and not a Supralapsarian, teaching that God’s decrees had reference to man’s foreseen condition and necessities, and were not the causes of them. He does not represent God as arbitrary. He utterly repudiates, and constantly opposes, fatalism. he always inculcates the duty and necessity of using means; condemning the confounding of “necessity with compulsion,” and rejecting the supposition as absurd, that “man’s being actuated by God is incompatible with his being at the same time active himself.” He teaches that the means of grace, such as exhortations, precepts, and reproofs, are not confined to those who are already pious, but are God’s means of awakening the careless, converting the sinner, and leaving the impenitent without excuse. He teaches, therefore, that sinners are constantly to be urged to attendance upon God’s ordinances, and to the diligent and prayerful use of all the means by which they may be convinced, converted, and saved. He strenuously upholds the free agency and responsibility of man. He rejects the doctrine of reprobation, as it is vulgarly believed, since he attributes the final condemnation of the wicked to themselves, and not to any arbitrary decree of God. f31 While Calvin held firmly to the great fundamental doctrine of imputation, and to the doctrine of a limited atonement, he nevertheless rejected all such views of the sacrifice of Christ as would make him to have suffered just so much for each one that was to be saved by him, so that if more or fewer had been appointed unto salvation, he must have shed accordingly more or fewer drops of his precious blood, and suffered more or less severe dying pangs. Calvin on the contrary, recognized in the death of Christ, a sacrifice adequate to the sins of the whole world, and which made provision for all whom it should please the Father to enable and dispose to avail themselves of it. f31A He therefore fully and frequently proclaims the universality of the gospel promises, and the duty of all to receive and embrace them. While he teaches that original sin is natural, he denies that it originated from nature, “We deny,” says he, “that it proceeded from nature, to signify that it is rather an adventitious quality or accident, than a substantial property, originally innate, yet we call it natural, that no one may suppose it to be contracted by every individual from corrupt habit, whereas it prevails over all by hereditary right.” “No other explanation therefore can be given of our being said to be dead in Adam, than that his transgression not only procured misery and ruin for himself, but also precipitated our nature into similar destruction, and that not by his personal guilt as an individual, which pertains not to us, but because he infected all his descendants with the corruption into which he had fallen.” And again — “We are, on account of this very corruption, considered as convicted and justly condemned in the sight of God, to whom nothing is acceptable but righteousness, innocence, and purity. And this liability to punishment arises not from the delinquency of another, for when it is said that the sin of Adam renders us obnoxious to the divine judgment, it is not to be understood as if we, though innocent, were undeservedly loaded with the guilt of his sin, but because we are all subject to a curse, in consequence of his transgression, he is therefore said to have involved us in guilt.

Nevertheless we derive from him not only the punishment, but also the pollution to which the punishment is justly due.” f33 He allows that even as fallen, “the soul of man is irradiated with a beam of divine light, so that it is never wholly destitute of some little flame, or at least a spark of it,” though “it cannot comprehend God by that illumination,” the remaining image of God being but the ruin of the original, and “confused, mutilated, and defiled.” f34 His doctrines, therefore, as he frequently shows, cut up by the roots all presumption, prevent despair, encourage hope, and in an eminent degree enforce and cherish holiness both of heart and life. His doctrines also make special provision for the salvation of all elect children, whether baptized or unbaptized, whether Christian or pagan; nor did he ever discountenance the idea that all children dying in infancy may be regarded as among the elect, and therefore as assuredly saved. f36 He also approved the baptism of the infants of all baptized parents, whether communicants or not, recognizing the covenant right of such children to the seal of those privileges to which they have a natural and necessary claim.

I may also mention, as interesting at this time, that Calvin approved of a public form for the introduction of professors into the Christian church. f37 Now let these views of Calvin be compared with those of Luther and Melancthon on the subject of predestination, or with those of Beza, his own co-adjutor; or with those of the English Reformers and the Lambeth articles; and will they not be allowed, by every impartial judge, to be at once liberal, moderate, and wise? While these doctrines, by which alone many know Calvin, were not peculiar to him, it is also true that they were not dwelt upon with any undue prominence, but insubordination to other subjects. And when the unparalleled consistency with which, through his whole life, Calvin continued to maintain the same views, is contrasted with the variation of others, how illustriously do they exhibit the superiority of his intellectual powers. Not that he was infallible far from it. He too was human, fallible, and chargeable with error. In making assurance of salvation necessary to a true faith — in questioning the peculiar and permanent sanctity of the Sabbath day — in supposing that Christ descended to hell, or endured on the cross the torments of hell — Calvin certainly erred, and is not by any to be believed or followed.” f39 But we proceed to remark that Calvin was not intolerant in spirit or in practice. It is true, that Servetus was, at his prosecution, brought to trim for conduct the most criminal, and opinions the most horrible, which in the face of the laws and of repeated admonition, he continued to propagate with pestiferous zeal. But that Calvin did more than this, in the whole course of his life, to give occasion to the charges of persecuting intolerance so loudly proclaimed against him, we positively deny. To affirm, as many do, that he sought the burning of Servetus — that he influenced the Senate in securing his death — that he aided or abetted in his execution — or that he did not use his best endeavors to procure a mitigation of his sentence — is an atrocious calumny against the truth of history, and an act of black persecution against the memory of a great and good man. We have already offered proof of the liberality and moderation of Calvin even towards opponents. Many similar facts illustrative of his great forbearance might be adduced. His benevolence no one can dispute. Nor can any one question his humble and unambitious spirit. The earlier editions of his Institutes contained also the following eloquent argument in favor of toleration. “Though it may be wrong to form friendship or intimacy with those who hold pernicious opinions, yet must we contend against them only by exhortation, by kindly instructions, by clemency, by mildness, by prayers to God, that they may be so changed as to bear good fruits, and be restored to the unity of the church. And not only are erring Christians to be so treated, but even Turks and Saracens.” f40 This, then, was the natural spirit, and the genuine creed of Calvin. But it was diametrically opposed to the spirit and to the universal sentiment of the age. The Romish Church had diffused the notion that the spirit of the judicial laws of the Old Testament still constituted the rule and standard of the Christian Church. Of necessity, therefore, a regard for the public peace, and the preservation of the Church of Christ from infection, required the punishment of heretics and blasphemers. Toleration of errorists was deemed sinful, and their destruction a Christian duty. Men were taught to believe that temporal penalties were God’s appointed means for making men virtuous and religious. The gibbet, the stake, the cell, and various other modes of torture, were therefore the chief arguments employed. Priests became inquisitors. The pulpit was the inciter to slaughter; and Te Deums resounded through cloistered walls in commemoration of the deaths of infamous heretics. Persecution, in short, was the avowed policy of both the Church and the State for the suppression of dangerous opinions. Now the Reformers, be it remembered, were all Romish theologians, trained up in the bosom of the Roman Church, and imbued with these fatal sentiments, which were everywhere applauded. f42 The liberty of the Reformation, also, had been abused to the greatest licentiousness, both of opinion and of practice. Such heresies in doctrine, and excesses in conduct, were all employed as arguments against the Reformation. While, then, tolerance of error was a standing reproach in the mouth of Rome, against their cause, the Reformers, deluded in their first principles, blinded by the universal opinion of all parties, and driven, in self-defense, to oppose themselves to all heresy, continued to approve and to act upon those views which are now condemned as intolerant and persecuting. Calvin, therefore, was led to think that his previous views would encourage heresy, and injure the cause of the Reform; and for once, he allowed his better judgment to be warped, and fully endorsed the principle that heresy must be restrained by force. But still he utterly disclaimed all right or power on the part of the Church to employ that force. he transferred it altogether to the civil authorities, that is, to the hands of the community generally, by whom it has been ultimately abolished. Tried, therefore, by the universal judgment of his age, Calvin was not intolerant; and when condemned by the free and liberal views of the present time, he meets his sentence in common with all men, whether civilians or theologians, and with all the Reformers, whether continental or Anglican. f42A So that the whole guilt of the persecuting tenets of the Reformers must ultimately rest upon that mother from whose breasts these all had drawn the milk of intolerance, and by whose nurture they had been trained up in the way of persecution. The Romish Church, therefore, as has been truly said, is answerable for the execution of Servetus. f42B If, however, there ever was a case in which the execution of the penalty of death could have been properly inflicted, it was in that of Servetus. Never had man so blasphemed his Maker, so outraged Christian feeling and all propriety, so insulted the laws in force for his destruction, and so provoked the slumbering arm of vengeance to fall upon him. f43 Servetus had been driven from every attempted residence on account of his unbearable conduct. He had been tried and condemned to be burned to death by the Romanists at Vienna, from whose hands he had just escaped when he came to Geneva. He was well aware of the intolerant character of the laws of the city of Geneva, enacted against heretics by the Emperor Frederick I, when under imperial and Romish jurisdiction which had been often exercised before that time — and which were still in force. Calvin, regarding his sentiments and conduct with just abhorrence, and believing it to be his duty, for the reasons stated, to oppose them, gave him previous notice, that if he came to the city of Geneva, he should be under the necessity of prosecuting him. There was therefore no previous malice in Calvin towards him. When Servetus had come, and Calvin had brought his character and opinions to the view of the authorities, his interference in the matter there ceased. He never visited the court, except when required to do so. The Senate, instead of being influenced by him in the course they pursued, were, the greater part of them, at that very time opposed to him. The whole matter also, before sentence had been passed, was, at Servetus’ request, submitted to the judgment of the other cities, who unanimously approved of his condemnation. f47 It was the sentiment of the age, that those who obstinately persisted in heresy and blasphemy were worthy of death. Even the gentle Melanchthon affirms, in a letter to Calvin, that the magistrates so acted rightly in putting this blasphemer to death;” and in a letter to Bullinger, the same mild and cautious and truly Christian man declares, “I have been surprised that there are men who blame this severity.” Servetus himself maintained this principle in his “Restitution of Christianity,” the very work which led to his trim and condemnation. The justice of such a punishment towards himself, Servetus repeatedly avowed, if guilty of the charges against him. And this punishment Servetus continually demanded to be inflicted on Calvin, on the ground that by the laws of the state it was required that the person who lodged an accusation against any one should sustain it and make it good, or failing to do this, should suffer the punishment which would have been due to the accused.

This punishment, Servetus was led to believe he would be able to inflict on Calvin, since in the council of two hundred, before whom the case was first argued, the opponents and determined enemies of Calvin — the Libertines — predominated.

There is, however, no probability that Servertus, under the circumstances, would have been visited with the punishment he suffered, merely for his opinions.

For what then, it has been asked, was he condemned? Not for heretical opinions of any sort merely, or chiefly, we reply, his opinions and doctrines were doubtless heretical enough, according to the standards of judgment at the time; heretical they would in any age be pronounced by the great body of the Christian Church. But it was not so much his opinions in themselves, as the manner in which he stated and defended them, which gave offense. The elder Socinus was teaching substantially the same doctrines at Zurich without molestation. But not content with simply maintaining and defending calmly but earnestly what he thought to be truth, Servetus it seems had from the first set himself to assail with terms of bitterest obloquy and reproach, nay with ribaldry and unmeasured abuse, the opinions of those who differed from him. He made use of language which could not fail to shock the minds of all sober and pious men who held the doctrines of either the Catholic or the Protestant Church. He calls persons of the Godhead delusions of the devil, and the triune God a monster, a three-headed Cerberus.

It was this bitterness and intolerance of spirit, this entire want of reverence for the most sacred things, this deliberate insult and outrage of the religious feelings of the entire Christian world, that armed the entire Christian world against him, and made him a marked and outlawed man long before he ever saw Calvin or Geneva. Some thirteen years before his trial he sent back to Calvin, with whom he was then corresponding, a copy of his Institutes, with the most severe and bitter reflections and taunts upon the margin, and sent him several letters of the most abusive and insulting character.

The same spirit was exhibited on his trial. He manifested neither respect for his judges, nor a decent regard for the religious sentiment of the age. In the most insulting manner he heaped upon Calvin the most undeserved reproaches and the most abusive epithets, dealing so much in personalities and invectives as to shame even his judges, and wear out the patience of men, many of whom were inclined to look favorably upon his cause. So far was this abuse carried, that unable to bear it longer, the entire body of the clergy, with Calvin at their head, arose on one occasion and left the tribunal, thus closing the examination.

On his final trial thirty-eight propositions, taken from his last work, were handed him. His answer, says a dispassionate historian, “was more like the ravings of a maniac than the words of reason and truth. He exhibited a surprising indifference in regard to the erroneous doctrines which were imputed to him, and sought mainly for hard epithets to apply to Calvin.

He accused him of being a murderer and a disciple of Simon Magus.

The margin of the paper containing the propositions was covered with such expressions as the following — ‘Thou dreamest,’ ‘Thou liest,’ ‘Thou canst not deny that thou art Simon the sorcerer.’” Another historian says of this reply of Servetus, “It is no presumption to say, that in point of abuse and scurrility this defense stands unrivailed by any one that was ever made by any defendant, however infatuated, in the most desperate cause.”

It was not, then, so much his opinions and dogmas, as the manner in which he maintained them, that occasioned the final decision of the judges, and the almost unanimous verdict of the Christian world against Servetus. “If Servetus had only attacked the doctrine of the Trinity by arguments,” says an able writer, the would have been answered by arguments, and without danger of persecution by the Protestants he might have gone on defending it, until called to answer for his belief by Him whose character he had impugned. Argument was not that which Calvin and his contemporaries opposed, by the civil tribunal. It was insult and ribaldry, and that too against the Most High, whose character they would defend in the midst of a perverse and rebellious generation.” “If ever a poor fanatic thrust himself into the fire,” says J. T. Coleridge, “it was Michael Servetus.”

What, then, on the whole, was Calvin’s agency in this affair? Simply this, he brought an accusation against Servetus, when to have done otherwise would have been a virtual betrayal of the cause of the Protestant Reformation, as well as a disregard of the laws of his country.

The position of Calvin was such that under the circumstances he could hardly do otherwise. He stood at the head of the Protestant clergy, not of Geneva alone, but of Europe, and of the age. The reproach of heresy was resting, in the estimation of the Catholic world, upon the entire Protestant body, and especially upon Calvin and the clergy of Geneva. They were regarded as and-Trinitarians, and Geneva as a receptacle of heretics.

Servetus was known and acknowledged to be a teacher of the most dangerous errors, and in the common estimate of both Catholic and Protestant, was a man worthy of death. If the clergy of Geneva, the leaders of the Reformation, failed to proceed according to the laws against such a man, thus throwing himself into the midst of them, what could they expect but that the opprobrium of heresy would justly fasten itself upon them in the general opinion of men? It was in fact a matter of self-defense with them to show the world, both Catholic and Protestant, that they had no sympathy with men who undertook the work of reform in the spirit, and with the principles of Servetus. It was due to themselves, due to the cause of Protestantism, due to the State under whose laws they dwelt.

As by law required he substantiated the charge he had made. This he did; this, and nothing more. With the condemnation and sentence of Servetus he had nothing whatever to do. The trial was before a civil tribunal, the highest and most august in the State. Every opportunity of defense was afforded the accused. Calvin himself furnished him the books he needed from his own library. The trial was conducted with extreme patience and deliberation. The case was finally submitted to the churches of Switzerland for their decision. With one voice they declared the accused guilty. In the meantime the King of France energetically demanded his death as a condemned heretic, who had escaped from his dominions. On political grounds therefore, and these alone, his condemnation was at last given. His punishment is decided by the united councils after a deliberation of three days, and so far from triumphing in its severity, Calvin, at the head of the clergy, petitions, but in vain, for its mitigation.

We do not defend, in all this, the condemnation and death of Servetus. It was a great mistake; call it if you will a crime. But let the blame rest where it belongs ; not on John Calvin, but on the men who decreed that death, and on the age which sanctioned and demanded it.