126

THE THEOLOGIANS' HELL.

tears he deemed it—a vale of tears or of impious license, lugubrious and loathsome, thronged with a depraved multitude, myriads on myriads of whom-all but a chosen few—are to their Creator but as disinherited children, outcast and forsaken; suffered to wander, for a brief season, shrouded in moral darkness, along the broad road that leads to destruction, and then consigned, by the divine fiat, to the scorching flames of a bottomless pit, the smoke of their torment ascending forever and ever! *

I make no argument against the horrors of such a scheme, imputed to a God of Love. The generation that clings to it must die out in its superstitions, and we must look to the next for clearer heads and better hearts.

§ 12. CORROBORATION FROM HISTORY.

This must be very briefly dealt with: for I have already transgressed the limits which I had originally set for myself in addressing you.

Hallam, Sir William Hamilton, † and others have spoken in

* The theologians of that age were wont to elaborate the picture: "Alas, misery and pain, they must last forever! O eternity, what art thou? O, end without end! O death which is above every death; to die every hour and yet not to be able ever to die! Give us a millstone, say the damned, as large as the whole earth, and so wide in circumference as to touch the sky all round; and let a little bird come once in a hundred thousand years and pick off a small particle of the stone not larger than the tenth part of a grain of millet, and after another hundred thousand years let him come again, so that in ten hundred thousand years he might pick off as much as a grain of millet; we wretched sinners would ask nothing but that when this stone has an end, our pains might also cease: but yet even that cannot be ! "—Suso : Büchlein der Weisheit, chap. xi., "Vom immerwährendem Weh der Hölle."

† HAMILTON: Discussions, p. 499, etc. HALLAM: Literature of Europe, vol. i. passim.

DANGERS IN FIRST FEELING OF LIBERTY.

127

strong terms of the dissolute manners which followed the Reformation in Germany. But I think too little weight has usually been given to the fact that a certain license is inseparable from all great moral revolutions. Tulloch takes a temperate view of the matter: "Such an awakening as this, in the very nature of the case, soon began to run into many extravagant issues. In the first feeling of liberty men did not know how to use it temperately; and Anabaptism in Germany, and Libertinism in France, testified to the moral confusion and social license that everywhere sprang up in the wake of the Reformation. We can now but faintly realize how ominous all this seemed to the prospects of Protestantism. It appeared to many minds as if it would terminate in mere anarchy.” *

It is well known how this state of things embittered Luther's last days. And we have abundant evidence that, at times, he distrusted his own system. "As he and his Catherine were walking in the garden one evening, the stars shone with unusual brightness. 'What a brilliant light!' said Luther as he looked upward; but it burns not for us.' And why are we to be shut out from the kingdom of Heaven?' asked Catherine. Perhaps,' said Luther with a sigh, 'because we left our convents.' 'Shall we return, then?' 'No,' he replied, 'it is too late for that.””

Six years after Luther's death happened a noteworthy thing. Amsdorf, one of his dearest friends and fellow-laborers in Wittenberg, pending a public discussion held in 1552 with Major, an advocate for the necessity of good works, maintained that "good works were an impediment to salvation." The result is very remarkable: Major renounced his doctrine, lest he should be looked on as a disturber of the Church.”

A distinguished Protestant divine acknowledges that the Wittenberg Reformers were so engrossed by polemics that they

* Principal TULLOCH: Leaders of the Reformation (London, 1859); p. 173.

† Quoted by Tulloch, p. 75.

‡ MOSHEIM: Ecclesiastical History (London, 1804); vol. iv. p. 39.

128

CALVIN'S CONSISTORIAL COURT

had to neglect "the advancement of real piety and religion;" and that none of them attempted to give a regular system of morals.*

This, however, was attended to by Calvin; not, like Luther, too tender-hearted to frame a moral and ecclesiastical government in accordance with his estimate of human kind. Within meagre and barren limits, because of that estimate, were his efforts pent but what he thought he could do, he did. Body and soul were corrupt-incurably, beyond earthly agency for good yet external decorum goes for something. The cup and the platter must ever remain full of extortion and excess, but the outside could be made clean: that was within human power, and common decency required that it should be done. Phylacteries, fair with the words of the law, could be deferentially worn, their breadth determined by imperative rule. Tithe of mint and rue could be paid to public opinion; tombs could be built and sepulchres garnished; though weightier matters, judgment and mercy and faith in man, were unattainable. To the eye things could be made white and beautiful even if dead men's bones and all uncleanness must needs abide beneath. Coercion could effect all this; and the iron will of the rigid Genevan determined that it should.

In 1536 Calvin and his co-worker, Farell, drew up a confession of faith in twenty-one articles, of which one gave the clergy the right of excommunication; and they procured from the Council of Two Hundred a proclamation, in which these were declared to be binding on the whole body of the citizens. Five years later a Consistorial Court was appointed, of which Calvin appears to have assumed the permanent presidency; † and for

*"The number of adversaries with whom the Lutheran doctors were obliged to contend gave them perpetual employment in the field of controversy, and robbed them of that precious leisure which they might have consecrated to the advancement of real piety and virtue. None of the famous Lutheran doctors attempted to give a regular system of morality."--MOSIEIM: Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv. p. 24. TULLOCH: Leaders of the Reformation, p. 119. HENRY: Life of Cuivin, vol. i p. 469 (Translation by Stebbing).

AND ECCLESIASTICAL GOVERNMENT.

129

its government and that of the Council he drew up a code of laws, ecclesiastical and moral, which were sworn to by the people.* This Court had but one direct weapon-excommuni cation: like the Spanish Inquisition which forbore shedding blood, it turned over the culprit, when anathema was deemed inadequate penalty, to the civil authority for punishment, ever unto death.

History records no more striking example of tyranny, with authority intimately united of Church and State; with sway, social as well as religious and political, sumptuary and domestic as well as social. † Its redeeming point was, that it put down open profligacy and reformed dissolute manners.

This is what a friendly biographer has to say: “A marvellous change, in the course of a short time, was wrought upon the outward aspect of Geneva. A gay and pleasure-loving people, devoted to music and dancing, the evening wine-shop and card-playing, found themselves suddenly arrested in their usual pastimes. Not only were the darker vices of debauchery, which greatly prevailed, punished by severe penalties, but the lighter follies and amusements of society were laid under imperious ban, all holidays were abolished except Sunday; the innocent gayeties of weddings and the fashionable caprices of dress, were made subjects of legislation: a bride was not to adorn herself with floating tresses, and her welcome home was not to be noisy with feasting and revelry. The convent bells which had rung their sweet chimes for ages across the blue waters of the Rhone, and become associated with many evening memories of love and song, had been previously destroyed and cast into cannon.” †

The details, attested by official records, are alternately ludicrous and horrible.

* On the 20th of November, 1541.

"From his cradle to his grave the Genevese citizen was pursued by its inquisitorial eye."-Calvin in Geneva; Westminster Review for July, 1858.

‡ Leaders of the Reformation, pp. 107, 103.

130

THE LUDICROUS AND

At betrothals, marriages, or baptisms, it was illegal to present the guests with nosegays fastened with wire-ribbon (canetilles) or gold cord or jewelled band. At a marriage-feast or other friendly entertainment it was unlawful to set on the table more than a single course of meat including fish, and such course was limited to five dishes only: while for dessert the law allowed no pastry except a single tart for every ten persons. The character of personal ornaments, the mode of cutting hair and the length it might be worn, the fashion of dress, were all prescribed: slashed breeches, for example, being prohibited. †

*

There was no novel-reading in those days; but the favorite substitute for our romances, Amadis de Gaul, was peremptorily interdicted; nay the preachers of Geneva, less tolerant than the curate and barber when they made a bonfire of Don Quixote's library, † burned every copy of that work on which they could lay their hands.

Mere childish indiscretion incurred legal penalty: the lightest jest was a criminal offence. A young girl in church, singing to a psalm-tune the words of a song, was ordered to be whipped. Three children were punished by the authorities because, instead of going to church, they remained outside eating

* “—et q'au dit dessert q'ouai patisserie ou pièce de four, sinon une tourt seulement, et cela en chacune table de dix personnes." The word now spelt tourte is sometimes used for a fruit or pigeon pie. Under Calvin's law there was temptation to make huge pasties.

Principal Tulloch tells us that, while travelling in Switzerland, he visited Geneva and sought out Calvin's grave. A plain stone, with the letters "I. C." on it, was shown to him as marking the spot; and the old man who conducted him thither seemed (he says) to have little idea of the Great Reformer except as "the man who limited the number of dishes at dinner."-Leaders of Reformation, pp. 120, 147.

"We saw," said Calvin, "that through the chinks of those brooches a door would be opened to all sorts of profusion and luxury.”—Quoted by TULLOCH, p. 136.

‡ It is the best book of the kind ever composed," cried the barber, "and ought to be pardoned as an original and model in its way."

"Right," said the curate," and for that reason he shall be spared for the present."