Читать книгу History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8) - J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - Страница 47

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The tendencies of an epoch are generally personified in some man whom it produces, but who soon overrules these tendencies and leads them to the goal which they could not otherwise have reached. To the category of these eminent personages, of these great men, at once the children and the masters of their age, the reformers have belonged. But whilst the heroes of the world make the forces of their epoch the pedestal of their own greatness, the men of God think only how they may be made to subserve the greatness of their Master. The Reformation existed in France, but the reformer was still unknown. Farel would have been a powerful evangelist; but his country had rejected him, and, being besides a man of battle, he was neither the doctor nor the guide which the work of the sixteenth century required. A greater than Farel was about to appear, and we shall proceed to watch his first steps in the path along which he was afterwards to be the guide of many nations.

In the classes of the college of La Marche in Paris there were, in the year 1526, a professor of about fifty, and a scholar of seventeen: they were often seen together. The scholar, instead of playing with his class-fellows, attached himself to his master during the hours of recreation, and listened eagerly to his conversation. They were united as a distinguished teacher and a pupil destined to become a great man sometimes are. Their names were Mathurin Cordier and John Calvin.551 Mathurin was one of those men of ancient mould, who always prefer the public good to their own interests and glory; and accordingly, neglecting the brilliant career which lay before him, he devoted his whole life to the education of children. Prior to Calvin’s arrival at Paris, he had the head class in the college and taught it with credit; but he was not satisfied; he would often pause in the middle of his lessons, finding that his pupils possessed a mere superficial knowledge of what they should have known thoroughly. Teaching, instead of yielding him the pleasure for which he thirsted, caused him only sorrow and disgust. ‘Alas!’ he said, ‘the other masters teach the children from ambition and vain-glory, and that is why they are not well grounded in their studies.’ He complained to the director of the college. ‘The scholars who join the first class,’ he said, ‘bring up nothing solid: they are puffed out only to make a show, so that I have to begin teaching them all over again.’552 Cordier therefore desired to resign the first class and descend to the fourth, in order to lay the foundations well.

He had just taken this humble department upon himself, when one day, in the year 1523, he saw a boy entering his school, thin, pale, diffident but serious, and with a look of great intelligence. This was John Calvin, then only fourteen years old. At first he was shy and timid in the presence of the learned professor; but the latter discovering in him a scholar of a new kind, immediately became attached to him, and took delight in developing his young and comprehensive intellect. Gradually the apprehensions of the Noyon boy were dissipated, and during the whole time he spent at college he enjoyed the instructions of the master, ‘as a singular blessing from God.’ Accordingly, when both of them, in after years, had been driven from France, and had taken up their abode among the mountains of Switzerland, Calvin, then one of the great doctors of Europe, loved to turn back with humility to these days of his boyhood, and publicly displaying his gratitude, he said to Cordier: ‘O Master Mathurin, O man gifted with learning and great fear of God! when my father sent me to Paris, while still a child, and possessing only a few rudiments of the Latin language, it was God’s will that I should have you for my teacher, in order that I might be directed in the true path and right mode of learning; and having first commenced the course of study under your guidance, I advanced so far that I can now in some degree profit the Church of God.’553

At the time of Calvin’s admission to college, both master and pupil, equally strangers to evangelical doctrine, devoutly followed the exercises of the Romish worship. Doubtless Cordier was not satisfied with teaching his favourite pupil Latin and Greek; he initiated him also in that more general culture which characterised the Renaissance; he imparted to him a certain knowledge of antiquity and of ancient civilisation, and inspired him early with the ardour which animated the classical school; but when Calvin says he was directed by Cordier ‘in the true path,’ he means the path of science, and not that of the Gospel.

Some time after the scholar’s arrival, the director of the college, perceiving him to be more advanced than his class-mates, determined to remove him to a higher form. When Calvin heard of this, he could not repress his sorrow, and gave way to one of those fits of anger and ill-humour of which he never entirely cured himself. Never did promotion cause such grief to a scholar. ‘Dear Master Mathurin,’ he said, ‘this man, so thoughtless and void of judgment, who arranges my studies at his will, or rather according to his silly fancy, will not permit me to enjoy your instructions any longer; he is putting me too soon into a higher class.... What a misfortune!’554

It was only a question of removing him, however, from one class to another, and not, as some have supposed, to another college. Calvin, while pursuing higher studies, still remained under the same roof as Cordier. He ran to him in the intervals of his lessons; he hung upon his lips, and during the whole time of his stay at La Marche, he continued to profit by Cordier’s exquisite taste, pure latinity, vast erudition, and admirable gifts in forming youth.

Yet the moment came when it was necessary to part. John Calvin had told his professor that he was intended for a priest, according to the arrangement of his father, who hoped that, thanks to the protection of his powerful friends, his son would attain to high dignity in the Church. The scholar must therefore enter one of the colleges appointed for the training of learned priests. There were two of these in Paris: the Sorbonne and the Montaigu,555 and the last was chosen. One day, therefore, in 1526, the moment arrived when the young man had to take leave of the excellent Cordier. He was greatly distressed: he would be separated from him, not only during the hours of study, but for long days together. All through life his affectionate nature clung to those who showed sympathy to him. He left his master with a heart overflowing with gratitude. ‘The instruction and the training that you gave me,’ he said in after years, ‘have served me so well, that I declare with truth, that I owe to you all the advancement which has followed. I wish to render testimony of this to those who come after us, in order that if they derive any profit from my writings, they may know that it proceeds in part from you.’556 God has often great masters in reserve for great men. Cordier, the teacher, subsequently became the disciple of his scholar, and in his turn thanked him, but it was for a divine teaching of inestimable value.

When Calvin entered Montaigu College he was distressed, for he could not hope to find there the master he had lost; yet he was eager and happy at having a wider field of studies opening before him.

One of the first professors he noticed was a Spaniard,557 who, under a cold exterior, hid a loving heart, and whose grave and silent air concealed deep affections. Calvin felt attracted towards him. The fame of the young scholar had preceded him at Montaigu; and accordingly the doctor from the Iberian peninsula fixed on him an attentive eye. Slow, calm, and deliberate, as Spaniards generally are, he carefully studied young Calvin, had several intimate conversations with him, and soon passed from the greatest coldness to the liveliest affection. ‘What a wonderful genius!’ he exclaimed.558

The professor had brought from Spain the fervent catholicism, the minute observances, the blind zeal that characterise his nation.

The scholar of Noyon could not, therefore, receive from him any evangelical knowledge; on the contrary, the Spaniard, delighted at seeing his pupil ‘obstinately given to the superstitions of popery,’559 hoped that the young man would be a shining light in the Church.

Calvin, full of admiration for the poets, orators, and philosophers of antiquity, studied them eagerly and enriched his mind with their treasures; in his writings we often meet with quotations from Seneca, Virgil, and Cicero. He soon left all his comrades far behind. The professor, who looked on him with surprise, promoted him to the class of philosophy, although he had not attained the required age.560 Then a new world, the world of thought, opened before his fine understanding; he traversed it with indefatigable ardour. Logic, dialectics, and philosophy possessed for him an indescribable charm.561

Calvin made many friends among his fellow-collegians; yet he soared high above them all by the morality of his character. There was no pedantry, no affectation about him; but when he was walking in the courts of the college, or in the halls where the pupils assembled, he could not witness their quarrels, their follies, their levity of manner, and not reprove them faithfully. ‘He finds fault with everything,’ complained a scholar of equivocal conduct. ‘Profit rather by the advice of so young and conscientious a censor,’ answered the wiser ones.562 ‘Roman catholics whose testimony was beyond reproach,’ says Theodore Beza, ‘told me of this many years after, when his name had become famous.’563 ‘It is not the act alone,’ said Calvin subsequently, ‘but the look, and even the secret longing, which make men guilty.’—‘No man,’ says one of his adversaries, ‘ever felt so great a hatred of adultery.’564 In his opinion, chastity was the crown of youth, and the centre of every virtue.

The heads of Montaigu College were enthusiastic supporters of popery. Beda, so notorious for his violent declamations against the Reformation, for his factious intrigues, and for his tyrannical authority, was principal.565 He watched with satisfaction young Calvin, who, a strict observer of the practices of the Church, never missed a fast, a retreat, a mass, or a procession. ‘It is a long time,’ it was said, ‘since Sorbonne or Montaigu had so pious a seminarist.’ As long as Luther, Calvin, and Farel were in the Papal Church, they belonged to its strictest sect. The austere exercises of a devotee’s life were the schoolmaster that brought them to Christ. ‘I was at that time so obstinately given to the superstitions of popery,’ said Calvin, ‘that it seemed impossible that I should ever be pulled out of the deep mire.’

He surprised his tutors no less by his application to study. Absorbed in his books, he often forgot the hours for his meals and even for sleep. The people who lived in the neighbourhood used to show each other, as they returned home in the evening, a tiny and solitary gleam, a window lit up nearly all the night through: they long talked of it in that quarter. John Calvin outstripped his companions in philosophy, as he had done in grammar. He then applied to the study of theology, and, strange to say, was enraptured with Scotus, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. The last-mentioned writer had especial charms for him. If Calvin had not been a reformer, he would have become a Thomist. Scholastics appeared to him the queen of sciences; but he was the impassioned lover at first, only that he might be afterwards its terrible adversary.

His father, secretary to the diocese of Noyon, always entertained the hope of making his son a dignitary of the Church. With this object he cultivated the favour of the bishop, and spoke humbly to the canons. John had been for some years chaplain of La Gesine, but this did not satisfy the father; and, accordingly, when the living of St. Martin of Marteville became vacant, Gerard Cauvin solicited and, to his great delight, obtained that church for the student of Montaigu, who, as yet, had only received the tonsure. This was in the year 1527. Calvin, taking advantage probably of vacation time, went to see his family and his new parish. It has been supposed that he preached there. ‘Although he had not yet taken orders,’ says Beda, ‘he delivered several sermons before the people.’ Did he really go into the pulpits of his native country at the time when his inward struggles were beginning? To have heard him would have been a great satisfaction to his father, and his age was no obstacle to his preaching; some great preachers have begun still earlier. But it seems to us, after examining the passage, that he did not speak in his own church until later, when the Gospel had completely triumphed in his heart. But, however that may be, Calvin had a parish at eighteen: he was not, however, in holy orders.

A new light, which had but little resemblance to the false radiance of scholasticism, began to shine around him. At that time there was a breath of the Gospel in the air, and that reviving breeze reached the scholar within the walls of his college, and the monk in the recesses of his convent; no one was protected against its influence. Calvin heard people talking of the Holy Scriptures, of Lefèvre, of Luther, of Melanchthon, and of what was passing in Germany. When the rays of the sun rise in the Alps, it is the highest peaks that catch them first; in like manner, the most eminent minds were enlightened first. But what some accepted, others rejected. In the colleges there were sharp and frequent altercations, and Calvin was at first in the number of the most inflexible adversaries of the Reformation.

A young man of Noyon, his cousin, and a little older than him, often went to see him at college. Pierre Robert Olivétan, without possessing the transcendant genius of his young relation, was gifted with a solid mind, great perseverance in the discharge of his duties, unshaken fidelity to his convictions, and a holy boldness when it became necessary to combat error. This he showed at Geneva, where his was one of the first voices raised in favour of the Gospel. When Calvin discovered that the friend of his childhood was tainted with heresy, he felt the keenest sorrow. What a pity! he thought; for Olivétan was acquainted not only with Latin, but with Greek and even Hebrew. He read the Old and New Testaments in their original languages, and was familiar with the Septuagint. The study of the Holy Scriptures, of which Picardy seems to have been the birthplace in France (Lefèvre, Olivétan, and Calvin were all three Picardins), had increased considerably since Lefèvre’s translation was published. It is true that most of those who engaged in it ‘looked at the Scriptures in a cursory manner,’ says Calvin; ‘but others dug deep for the treasure that lay hidden there.’ Of this number was Olivétan, and he it was who one day gave to the people speaking the French tongue a translation of the Scriptures that became famous in the history of the Bible.

The chronology of Calvin’s life during the period of his studies is less easily settled than that of Luther. We have been able to point out almost the very days when the most striking transformations of his faith were completed in the reformer of Germany. It is not so with the reformer of Geneva. The exact moment when this struggle, this defeat, or that victory took place in Calvin’s soul, cannot be determined. Must we therefore suppress the history of his spiritual combats? To pass them over in silence would be to fail in the first duty of an historian.566

Olivétan, who was then in all the fervour of proselytism, felt great interest in his catholic cousin, while the latter would have wished at any cost to bring back his friend into the bosom of the Church. The two youthful Picardins had many long and animated conversations together, in which each strove to convert the other.567 ‘There are many false religions,’ said Olivétan, ‘and only one true.’ Calvin assented. ‘The false are those which men have invented, according to which we are saved by our own works; the true is that which comes from God, according to which salvation is given freely from on high.... Choose the true.’568 Calvin made a sign of dissent. ‘True religion,’ continued Olivétan, ‘is not that infinite mass of ceremonies and observances which the Church imposes upon its followers, and which separate souls from Christ. O my dear friend! leave off shouting out with the papists: “The fathers! the doctors! the Church!” and listen instead to the prophets and apostles. Study the Scriptures.’569 ‘I will have none of your doctrines,’ answered Calvin; ‘their novelty offends me. I cannot listen to you. Do you imagine that I have been trained all my life in error?... No! I will strenuously resist your attacks.’570 In after years Calvin said: ‘My heart, hardened by superstition, remained insensible to all these appeals.’ The two cousins parted, little satisfied with each other. Calvin, terrified at his friend’s innovations, fell on his knees in the chapels, and prayed the saints to intercede for this misguided soul.571 Olivétan shut himself up in his chamber and prayed to Christ.

Yet Calvin, whose mind was essentially one of observation, could not be present in the midst of the great movement going on in the world without reflecting on truth, on error, and on himself. Oftentimes when alone, and when the voices of men had ceased to be heard, a more powerful voice spoke to his soul, and his chamber became the theatre of struggles as fierce as those in the cell at Erfurth. Through the same tempests both these great reformers reached the same haven. Calvin arrived at faith by the same practical way which had led Farel and Augustine, Luther and St. Paul.

The student of Montaigu, uneasy and troubled after his controversies with his young relative, shut himself up in his little room and examined himself; he asked himself what he was, and where he was going.... ‘O Lord,’ he said, ‘thou knowest that I profess the christian faith such as I learnt it in my youth.572 ... And yet there is something wanting.... I have been taught to worship thee as my only God; but I am ignorant of the true worship I ought to give.573 ... I have been taught that thy Son has ransomed me by his death; ... but I have never felt in my heart the virtue of this redemption.574 I have been taught that some day there will be a resurrection; but I dread it, as the most terrible of days.575 ... Where shall I find the light that I need?... Alas! thy Word, which should enlighten thy people like a lamp, has been taken from us.576 ... Men talk in its place of a hidden knowledge, and of a small number of initiates whose oracles we must receive.... O God, illumine me with thy light!’

The superiors of Montaigu College began to feel some uneasiness about their student. The Spanish professor, inclined, like his countrymen, to the spirit of intolerance, saw with horror the young man, whose devotion had charmed him at first, discontented with the traditional religion, and ready perhaps to forsake it. Could the best of their pupils fall into heresy?... The tutors entered into conversation with Calvin, and, as yet full of affection for the young man, sought to strengthen him in the Roman faith. ‘The highest wisdom of christians,’ they said, ‘is to submit blindly to the Church,577 and their highest dignity is the righteousness of their works.’578—‘Alas!’ replied Calvin, who was conscious of the guilt within him, ‘I am a miserable sinner!’—‘That is true,’ answered the professors, ‘but there is a means of obtaining mercy: it is by satisfying the justice of God.579 ... Confess your sins to a priest, and ask humbly for absolution.... Blot out the memory of your offences by your good works, and, if anything should still be wanting, supply it by the addition of solemn sacrifices and purifications.’

When he heard these words, Calvin reflected that he who listens to a priest listens to Christ himself. Being subdued, he went to church, entered the confessional, fell on his knees, and confessed his sins to God’s minister, asking for absolution and humbly accepting every penance imposed upon him. And immediately, with all the energy of his character, he endeavoured to acquire the merits demanded by his confessor. ‘O God!’ he said, ‘I desire by my good works to blot out the remembrance of my trespasses.580 He performed the ‘satisfactions’ prescribed by the priest; he even went beyond the task imposed upon him, and hoped that after so much labour he would be saved.... But, alas! his peace was not of long duration. A few days, a few hours perhaps, had not passed, when, having given way to a movement of impatience or anger, his heart was again troubled: he thought he saw God’s eye piercing to the depths of his soul and discovering its impurities. ‘O God!’ he exclaimed in alarm, ‘thy glance freezes me with terror.’581 ... He hurried again to the confessional.—‘God is a strict judge,’ the priest told him, ‘who severely punishes iniquity. Address your prayers to the saints first.’582 And Calvin, who, in after years, branded as blasphemers those who invented ‘false intercessors,’ invoked the saints and prayed them by their intercession to appease a God who appeared to him so inexorable.

Having thus found a few moments of relief, he applied again to his studies; he was absorbed in his books; he grew pale over Scotus and Thomas Aquinas; but in the midst of his labours a sudden trouble took possession of his mind, and pushing away from him the volumes that lay before him, he exclaimed: ‘Alas! my conscience is still very far from true tranquillity.’583 His heart was troubled, his imagination excited, he saw nothing but abysses on every side, and with a cry of alarm he said: ‘Every time that I descend into the depths of my heart; every time, O God, that I lift up my soul to thy throne, extreme terror comes over me.584 ... I see that no purification, no satisfaction can heal my disease.585 My conscience is pierced with sharp stings.’586

Thus step by step did Calvin descend to the lowest depths of despair; and quite heartbroken, and looking like one dead, he resolved to take no further pains about his salvation. He lived more with his fellow-pupils, he even shared in their amusements; he visited his friends in the city, sought such conversation as would divert his thoughts, and desired, with the Athenians of old, either to tell or to hear some new thing. Will the work of God, begun in his heart, remain unperfected?

This year an event took place which could not fail to stir the depths of Calvin’s soul.