Reformation Splits Protestants

In place of a uniform symbol, it brought contradictory confessions, which gave rise to interminable disputes.

Continuing Calvin Driven From Paris to Geneva,
our selection from History of John Calvin by Jean M. V. Audin published in 1851. The selection is presented in 5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Calvin Driven From Paris to Geneva.

Time: 1533
Place: Paris

At that period the little court of Nérac was the asylum of writers, who, like Desperriers, there prepared their Cymbalum Mundi; of gallant ladies, who composed love-tales, of which they were often the heroines themselves; of poets, who extemporized odes after Beza’s model; of clerics and other gentry of the Church, who entertained packs of hunting-dogs, and courtesans; of Italian play-actors, who, in the Queen’s theatre, presented comedies taken from the New Testament, in which Jesus was made to utter horrible things against monks and nuns; or of princes, who, like the Queen’s husband, scarcely knew how to read, and yet discoursed, like doctors, about doctrine and discipline.

It was against Roussel, the confessor of Margaret, that Calvin, at a later date, composed his Adversus Nicodemitas. At Nérac he found Le Fevre d’Etaples, who had fled the wrath of the Sorbonne, and who “regarded the young man with a benignant eye, predicting that he was to become the author of the restoration of the Church in France.” Le Fevre recalls to our mind that priest about whom Mathesius tells us, who said to Luther, when sick: “My child, you will not die; God has great designs in your regard.” As to the rest, James le Fevre d’Etaples was a sufficiently charitable and honest man. He died a Catholic, and very probably without ever having prophesied in the terms mentioned by Beza.

It does not appear that Margaret enjoined the law of silence upon her guest of Noyon, for we find him disseminating his errors in Saintonge, where many laborers flocked to hear him and abandoned Catholicism to embrace the Reformation. It was while on one of his excursions that the missionary encountered Louis du Tillet, clerk of the Parliament of Paris and secretary of Du Tillet, Bishop of Meaux. Louis possessed a beautiful dwelling at Claix, a sort of Thebais, retired and pleasant, where Calvin commenced his most serious work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. The time he could spare from this literary occupation he devoted to preaching in the neighboring cities, and especially at Angoulême. A vine, beneath which he loved to recline and muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called “Calvin’s vine.” He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had renounced, and which he called “a stepmother and a prostitute”; and on the presents of a queen gallant, whose morals and piety he lauded, continuing to assist at the Catholic service, and composing Latin orations, which were delivered out of the assembly of the synod, at the temple of St. Peter. He left the court of Margaret and reappeared at Orleans.

The Reformation in France, as in Germany, wherever it showed itself, produced, on all sides, disorder and trouble. In place of a uniform symbol, it brought contradictory confessions, which gave rise to interminable disputes. In Germany the Lutheran word caused a thousand sects to spring up — each of which wished to establish a Christian republic on the ruins of Catholicism. Carlstadt, Schwenkfield, Oecolampadius, Zwingli, Munzer, Boskold, begotten by Luther, had denied their father, and taught heterogeneous dogmas, of which every one passed for the production of the Holy Ghost. Luther, who no longer concealed himself beneath a monk’s robe, but borrowed the ducal sword, drove before him all these rebel angels, and, at the gate of Wittenberg, stationed an executioner to prohibit their entrance; driven back into the provinces, the dissenters appealed to open force. Germany was then inundated with the blood of her noble intelligences, who had been born for her glory.

Munzer died on the scaffold, and the Anabaptists marched to punishment, denying and cursing the Saxon who did violence to their faith. Everything was perishing — painting, sculpture, poesy, letters. The Reformation imitated Nero, and sang its triumphs amid ruins and blood.

In France it was destined soon to excite similar tempests. It had already troubled the Church. It no longer, as before, sheltered itself beneath the shades of night to propagate its doctrines. It erected, by the side of the Catholic pulpit, another pulpit, from which its dogmas were defended by its disciples; it led its partisans at court, among the clergy, in the universities and in the parliaments. Calvin’s book, de Clementia, gained him a large number of proselytes: his disciples had an austere air, downcast eyes, pale faces, emaciated cheeks — all the signs of labor and sufferings. They mingled little with the world, avoided female conversation, the court, and shows; the Bible was their book of predilection; they spoke, like the Saviour, in apologues. They were termed Christians of the primitive Church. To resemble these, they only needed the very essence of Christianity; namely, faith, hope, and charity.

To be convinced that their symbol was as diversified as their faces, it was only necessary to hear them speak; some taught the sleep of the soul, after this life, till the day of the last judgment; others, the necessity of a second baptism. Among them there were Lutherans, who believed in the real presence, and Zwinglians, who rejected it; apostles of free-will, and defenders of fatalism; Melanchthonians, who admitted an ecclesiastical hierarchy; Carlstadians, who maintained that every Christian is a priest; realists, chained to the letter; idealists, who bent the letter to the thought; rationalists, who rejected every mystery; mystics, who lost themselves in the clouds; and Antitrinitarians, who, like Servetus, admitted but two persons in God. These doctors all carried with them the same book — the Bible.

Servetus,* a Spanish physician, had left his own country, and established himself, in 1531, at Hagenau, where he had published different treatises against the Trinity. He had disputed at Basel with Oecolampadius, some time before this renegade from the Lutheran faith “was strangled by the devil,” if we are to believe the account given by Doctor Martin Luther. Servetus boasted that he triumphed over the theologian. Having left Basel in 1532, and crossed the Rhine, he came to hurl a solemn defiance at Calvin; the gauntlet was taken up by the curé of Pont l’Evêque, the place of combat indicated, the day for the tournament named, but at the appointed hour “the heart of this unhappy wretch failed,” says Beza, “who having agreed to dispute, did not dare appear.” Calvin, on his part — in his refutations of the errors of Servetus, published in 1554 — boasts of having in vain offered the Spanish physician remedies suitable to cure his malady. Servetus pretends that his adversary was laying snares for him, which he had the good-fortune to avoid. At a later period he forgot his part, and came to throw himself into the ambuscade of his enemy.

[*  Michael Servetus was a controversialist in matters of philosophy and religion. For many years he was the object of attack by the different orthodox schools on account of his heretical speeches and writings. In 1553 he published a work which led to his arrest by order of the inquisitor-general at Lyons. Servetus escaped, but was again taken, at the instance of Calvin, and was burned at Geneva, October 27, 1553. — ED.]

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