History of the Catholic Church, vol 1 - J. MacCaffrey (epub ebook reader .TXT) 📗

works of Wycliffe. Like Luther, he began with the assumption that the condition of man before the Fall was entirely natural, and that consequently by the Fall he was deprived of something that was essential to his nature and without which human nature was completely corrupted. Man was no longer free, and every act of his was sinful.

His want of freedom was the result of the play of external forces directed and arranged by God, rather than of any internal necessity by which he was forced to sin. God is, according to Calvin, the author of sin, in the sense that he created a certain number of men to work evil through them in order that He might have an opportunity of displaying the divine attribute of mercy. Hence the motive of God in bringing about evil is different from the motive of the sinner, and therefore though the sinner is blameworthy God is nowise responsible for his crime.

 

Adam sinned because it was decreed by God that he should fall in order that the divine mercy should be manifested to the world. For the same reason God did not intend that all should be equally good or that all should be saved. He created some men that they might sin and that their punishment might afford an example of God’s justice, while He made others that they might be saved to show His overwhelming mercy.

The former are condemned to hell by an irreversible decree, the others, the elect, are predestined absolutely to glory. The elect are assured of justification through the merits of Christ, and once justified they are always justified, for justification cannot be lost.

Faith such as that advocated by Luther was the means of acquiring justification, but, mindful of his other doctrine that even the best of men’s works are sinful, Calvin took care to explain that justifying faith was only the instrument by which a man laid hold of the merits of Christ. It was like a vessel which, though containing some priceless treasure, was in itself worthless.

 

As might be expected, Calvin refused to admit that the sacraments were endowed with any objective power of conferring Grace. In the case of their reception by the elect, however, he held that they were the means of strengthening the faith by which justification is acquired, but for those predestined to damnation they were mere signs without any spiritual effect. In regard to the Eucharist, while he rejected the Catholic view of Transubtantiation, he maintained against the Lutherans that Impanation or Companation was equally absurd. Nor did he agree with Zwingli that the Eucharist is a mere sign of Christ’s love for men. According to him Christ is really present, in the sense that though the bread and wine remain unchanged, the predestined receive with the Eucharistic elements a heavenly food that proceeds from the body of Christ in Heaven.

 

Like Luther he contended that the true Church of Christ is invisible, consisting in his view only of the predestined, but, realising the necessity for authority and organisation, he was driven to hold that the invisible Church manifested itself through a visible religious society. Unlike Luther, however, he was unwilling to subordinate the Church to the civil power, believing as he did that it was a society complete in itself and entirely independent of temporal sovereigns.

Each Calvinistic community should be to a great extent a self-governing republic, all of them bound together into one body by the religious synods, to which the individual communities should elect representatives. The churches were to be ruled by pastors, elders, and deacons. Candidates for the sacred ministry were to receive the confirmation of their vocation by a call from some Calvinistic church body, and were to be ordained by the imposition of the hands of the presbyters or elders. For Calvin as for Luther the Holy Scriptures were the sole rule of faith to be adopted by both the preachers and the synods. The special illumination of the Holy Ghost was sufficient to guard individuals from being deceived either in determining what books are inspired, or what is the precise meaning which God wished to convey in any particular book or passage.[4]

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[1] Baird, Theodore Beza, Counsellor of the French Reform, 1900.

 

[2] Galli, Die Lutheran, und Calvinist, Kirchenstrafen im Reformationszeitalter, 1878.

 

[3] Rouquette, L’Inquisition protestante. Les victimes de Calvin, 1906. Galiffe, Quelques pages d’histoire exacte sur les proces intentes a Geneve, 1862. Paulus, Luther und Gewissensfreiheit, 1905. Id., Melanchthon und Gewissensfreiheit (/Katholik/, i., 546 sqq.).

 

[4] Schwane, Dogmengeschichte der neuerenzeit. Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, 1862.

 

(b) Calvinism in France.

 

Lavisse, Histoire de France (vols v.-vi.), 1904-5. De Meaux, Les luttes religieuses en France au XVIe siecle, 1879. Imbart de la Tour, Les origines de la Reforme, vols. i.-ii., 1904-9.

Hauser, Etudes sur la Reforme francaise, 1909. Capefigue, Histoire de la reforme, de la ligue et du regne de Henri IV., 4

vols., 1834. Maimbourg, Histoire du Calvinisme, 1682. Soldan, Geschichte des Protestantismus in Frankreich bis zum Tode Karls ix., 2 Bde, 1855. Baird, History of the Rise of the Huguenots in France, 2 vols., 1879. See also bibliography, chap. iii. (a).

 

Many causes combined to favour the introduction of the reformed doctrines into France. Owing to the anti-papal attitude adopted by the French theologians during the Great Western Schism, there was still lurking in many circles a strong feeling against the Holy See and in favour of a national Church, over which the Pope should retain merely a supremacy of honour. Besides, the influence of the old sects, the Albigenses and the Waldenses, had not disappeared entirely, and the principles of the French mystics favoured the theory of religious individualism, that lay behind the whole teaching of the reformers.

The Renaissance, too, was a power in France, more especially in Paris, where it could boast of powerful patrons such as Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I. and wife of the King of Navarre, the king’s mistress, his favourite minister Du Bellay, and the latter’s brother, the Bishop of Paris. Not all the French Humanists, however, were equally dangerous. A few of them were undoubtedly favourable to Luther’s views, while many others, infuriated by the charges of unorthodoxy levelled against them, were inclined to look with complacency on whatever was condemned by their Scholastic opponents.

The proximity of Strassburg, where Lutheran and Zwinglian doctrines found support, and the close relations existing between the Paris University and German scholars helped to disseminate among Frenchmen the writings of Erasmus, Luther, and Melanchthon and with them the new religious views.

 

Against the success of the Reformation in France was the fact that the people, Latin rather than Teuton in their sympathies, were thoroughly devoted to their religion and to the Holy See, that the bishops though nominated by the king according to the Concordat of 1516, were more zealous than their German brethren, that in the main Paris University, then the great centre of intellectual life in France, was thoroughly Catholic, and that the queen-mother, the chancellor of state, the leading ministers both lay and ecclesiastic, and the parliamentary authorities could be relied upon to offer Lutheranism their strongest opposition. Nor, however much Francis I. might be inclined to vacillate in the hope of securing the help of the German Protestant princes in his struggle with the empire, had he any desire to see his kingdom convulsed by the religious strife raging on the other side of the Rhine.

 

In 1521 the Parliament of Paris with the approval of the king forbade the publication of writings dealing with the new religious views.

Luther’s books were condemned, and the Paris University drew up a list of erroneous propositions extracted from the works of the German theologians (1523). At the request of the queen-mother the theological faculty of Paris formulated a plan for preventing the spread of the German errors in France, the main points of which were that heretical books should be forbidden, that the bishops should be exhorted to seek out such works in their dioceses and have them destroyed, and that the Sorbonne should have a free hand in maintaining religious unity. Yet in spite of these precautions a Lutheran community was formed at Meaux in the vicinity of Paris, and in the South of France, where the Waldensian party was still strong, Lutheran teaching found many supporters. In some places various attempts were made to imitate the tactics adopted so successfully at Wittenberg and Berne to bring about by force the discontinuance of Catholic worship. But these attempts failed, owing mainly to the independent attitude of the local parliaments and to the energy of the bishops, who removed one of the most dangerous weapons wielded by the heretics by insisting on a thorough reform of the clergy.

 

But though Francis I. had been moved to take action against the sectaries, and though Calvin and other leaders were obliged to leave France, the reforming party, relying on the influence of patrons like Margaret of Navarre[1] and on the Humanist section at the university and at the newly established College de France, felt confident of ultimate success. They realised that the king was most anxious to arrive at an understanding with the Protestant princes of Germany against Charles V., and that therefore it was unlikely that he would indulge in a violent persecution of their co-religionists at home.

They knew, too, that Francis I. had set his heart on securing complete control of the Church in his own dominions, as was evident by the hard bargain which he drove with Leo X. in the Corcordat of 1516,[2] and they were not without hope that Luther’s teaching on the spiritual supremacy of the civil rulers might prove an irresistible bait to a man of such a temperament. Negotiations were opened with Francis I. by some of the German reformers, who offered to accept most of the Catholic doctrines together with episcopal government if only the king would support their cause (1534). As it was impossible to arrange for a conference, the Lutheran party submitted a summary of their views embodied in twelve articles to the judgment of the Sorbonne. In reply to this communication the doctors of the Sorbonne, instead of wasting their energies in the discussion of particular tenets, invited the Germans to state explicitly whether or not they accepted the authority of the Church and the writings of the Fathers. Such an attitude put an end to all hopes of common action between the French and German theologians, but at the same time Francis I. was not willing, for political reasons, to break with Protestantism. The publication, however, of a particularly offensive pamphlet against Catholicism, printed in Switzerland and scattered broadcast throughout France, served as a warning to the king that his own country was on the brink of being plunged into the civil strife which Protestantism had fomented in Germany, and that if he wanted to preserve national unity and peace the time for decisive action had arrived. Many of the leading reformers were arrested and some of them were put to death, while others were banished from France (1535).

 

From this time the Lutherans began to lose hope of securing the active cooperation of Francis I., but the friendly political relations between the king and the German Protestant princes, together with the close proximity of Strassburg, Geneva, and Berne, from which preachers and pamphlets made their way into France, helped to strengthen the heretical party in the country despite the efforts of the ecclesiastical and lay authorities. In the South many of the Waldenses in Dauphiny and Provence went over formally to the side of the Calvinists. In places where they possessed considerable strength they indulged in violent attacks on the clergy,