Beacon Lights of History Volume Vi Part 9

His peculiarity is not in making a digest of divinity,--although he treated all the great subjects which have been discussed from Athanasius to Aquinas. His "Inst.i.tutes" may well be called an exhaustive system of theology. There is no great doctrine which he has not presented with singular clearness and logical force. Yet it is not for a general system of divinity that he is famous, but for making prominent a certain cla.s.s of subjects, among which he threw the whole force of his genius. In fact all the great lights of the Church have been distinguished for the discussion of particular doctrines to meet the exigencies of their times. Thus Athanasius is identified with the Trinitarian controversy, although he was a minister of theological knowledge in general.

Augustine directed his attention more particularly to the refutation of Pelagian heresies and human Depravity. Luther's great doctrine was Justification by Faith, although he took the same ground as Augustine.

It was the logical result of the doctrines of Grace which he defended which led to the overthrow, in half of Europe, of that extensive system of penance and self-expiation which marked the Roman Catholic Church, and on which so many glaring abuses were based. As Athanasius rendered a great service to the Church by establishing the doctrine of the Trinity, and Augustine a still greater service by the overthrow of Pelagianism, so Luther undermined the papal pile of superst.i.tion by showing eloquently,--what indeed had been shown before,--the true ground of justification. When we speak of Calvin, the great subject of Predestination arises before our minds, although on this subject he made no pretention to originality. Nor did he differ materially from Augustine, or Gottschalk, or Thomas Aquinas before him, or Pascal and Edwards after him. But no man ever presented this complicated and mysterious subject so ably as he.

It is not for me to discuss this great topic. I simply wish to present the subject historically,--to give Calvin's own views, and the effect of his deductions on the theology of his age; and in giving Calvin's views I must shelter myself under the wings of his best biographer, Doctor Henry of Berlin, and quote the substance of his exposition of the peculiar doctrines of the Swiss, or rather French, theologian.

According to Henry, Calvin maintained that G.o.d, in his sovereign will and for his own glory, elected one part of the human race to everlasting life, and abandoned the other part to everlasting death; that man, by the original transgression, lost the power of free-will, except to do evil; that it is only by Divine Grace that freedom to do good is recovered; but that this grace is bestowed only on the elect, and elect not in consequence of the foreknowledge of G.o.d, but by his absolute decree before the world was made.

This is the substance of those peculiar doctrines which are called Calvinism, and by many regarded as fundamental principles of theology, to be received with the same unhesitating faith as the declarations of Scripture from which those doctrines are deduced. Augustine and Aquinas accepted substantially the same doctrines, but they were not made so prominent in their systems, nor were they so elaborately worked out.

The opponents of Calvin, including some of the brightest lights which have shone in the English church,--such men as Jeremy Taylor, Archbishop Whately, and Professor Mosley,--affirm that these doctrines are not only opposed to free-will, but represent G.o.d as arbitrarily dooming a large part of the human race to future and endless punishment, withholding from them his grace, by which alone they can turn from their sins, creating them only to destroy them: not as the potter moulds the clay for vessels of honor and dishonor, but moulding the clay in order to destroy the vessels he has made, whether good or bad; which doctrine they affirm conflicts with the views usually held out in the Scriptures of G.o.d as a G.o.d of love, and also conflicts with all natural justice, and is therefore one-sided and narrow.

The premises from which this doctrine is deduced are those Scripture texts which have the authority of the Apostle Paul, such as these: "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world;" "For whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate;" "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated;" "He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth;" "Hath not the potter power over his clay?" No one denies that from these texts the Predestination of Calvin as well as Augustine--for they both had similar views--is logically drawn. It has been objected that both of these eminent theologians overlooked other truths which go in parallel lines, and which would modify the doctrine,--even as Scripture a.s.serts in one place the great fact that the will is free, and in another place that the will is shackled. The Pelagian would push out the doctrine of free-will so as to ignore the necessity of grace; and the Augustinian would push out the doctrine of the servitude of the will into downright fatalism. But these great logicians apparently shrink from the conclusions to which their logic leads them. Both Augustine and Calvin protest against fatalism, and both a.s.sert that the will is so far free that the sinner acts without constraint; and consequently the blame of his sins rests upon himself, and not upon another. The doctrines of Calvin and Augustine logically pursued would lead to the d.a.m.nation of infants; yet, as a matter of fact, neither maintained that to which their logic led. It is not in human nature to believe such a thing, even if it may be dogmatically a.s.serted.

And then, in regard to sin: no one has ever disputed the fact that sin is rampant in this world, and is deserving of punishment. But theologians of the school of Augustine and Calvin, in view of the fact, have a.s.sumed the premise--which indeed cannot be disputed--that sin is against an infinite G.o.d. Hence, that sin against an infinite G.o.d is itself infinite; and hence that, as sin deserves punishment, an infinite sin deserves infinite punishment,--a conclusion from which consciousness recoils, and which is nowhere a.s.serted in the Bible. It is a conclusion arrived at by metaphysical reasoning, which has very little to do with practical Christianity, and which, imposed as a dogma of belief, to be accepted like plain declarations of Scripture, is an insult to the human understanding. But this conclusion, involving the belief that inherited sin _is infinite_, and deserving of infinite punishment, appals the mind. For relief from this terrible logic, the theologian adduces the great fact that Christ made an atonement for sin,--another cardinal declaration of the Scripture,--and that believers in this atonement shall be saved. This Bible doctrine is exceedingly comforting, and accounts in a measure for the marvellous spread of Christianity. The wretched people of the old Roman world heard the glad tidings that Christ died for them, as an atonement for the sins of which they were conscious, and which had chained them to despair. But another cla.s.s of theologians deduced from this premise, that, as Christ's death was an infinite atonement for the sins of the world, so all men, and consequently all sinners, would be saved. This was the ground of the original Universalists, deduced from the doctrines which Augustine and Calvin had formulated. But they overlooked the Scripture declaration which Calvin never lost sight of, that salvation was only for those who believed. Now inasmuch as a vast majority of the human race, including infants, have not believed, it becomes a logical conclusion that all who have not believed are lost. Logic and consciousness then come into collision, and there is no relief but in consigning these discrepancies to the realm of mystery.

I allude to these theological difficulties simply to show the tyranny to which the mind and soul are subjected whenever theological deductions are invested with the same authority as belongs to original declarations of Scripture; and which, so far from being systematized, do not even always apparently harmonize. Almost any system of belief can be logically deduced from Scripture texts. It should be the work of theologians to harmonize them and show their general spirit and meaning, rather than to draw conclusions from any particular cla.s.s of subjects.

Any system of deductions from texts of Scripture which are offset by texts of equal authority but apparently different meaning, is necessarily one-sided and imperfect, and therefore narrow. That is exactly the difficulty under which Calvin labored. He seems, to a large cla.s.s of Christians of great ability and conscientiousness, to be narrow and one-sided, and is therefore no authority to them; not, be it understood, in reference to the great fundamental doctrines of Christianity, but in his views of Predestination and the subjects interlinked with it. And it was the great error of attaching so much importance to mere metaphysical divinity that led to such a revulsion from his peculiar system in after times. It was the great wisdom of the English reformers, like Cranmer, to leave all those metaphysical questions open, as matters of comparatively little consequence, and fall back on unquestioned doctrines of primitive faith, that have given so great vitality to the English Church, and made it so broad and catholic.

The Puritans as a body, more intellectual than the ma.s.s of the Episcopalians, were led away by the imposing and entangling dialectics of the scholastic Calvin, and came unfortunately to attach as much importance to such subjects as free-will and predestination--questions most complicated--as they did to "the weightier matters of the law;" and when pushed by the logic of opponents to the _decretum horribile_, have been compelled to fall back on the Catholic doctrine of mysteries, as something which could never be explained or comprehended, but which it is a Christian duty to accept as a mystery. The Scriptures certainly speak of mysteries, like regeneration; but it is one thing to marvel how a man can be born again by the Spirit of G.o.d,--a fact we see every day,--and quite another thing to make a mystery to be accepted as a matter of faith of that which the Bible has nowhere distinctly affirmed, and which is against all ideas of natural justice, and arrived at by a subtle process of dialectical reasoning.

But it was natural for so great an intellectual giant as Calvin to make his startling deductions from the great truths he meditated upon with so much seriousness and earnestness. Only a very lofty nature would have revelled as he did, and as Augustine did before him and Pascal after him, in those great subjects which pertain to G.o.d and his dispensations.

All his meditations and formulated doctrines radiate from the great and sublime idea of the majesty of G.o.d and the comparative insignificance of man. And here he was not so far apart from the great sages of antiquity, before salvation was revealed by Christ. "Canst thou by searching find out G.o.d?" "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?"

And here I would remark that theologians and philosophers have ever been divided into two great schools,--those who have had a tendency to exalt the dignity of man, and those who would absorb man in the greatness of the Deity. These two schools have advocated doctrines which, logically carried out to their ultimate sequences, would produce a Grecian humanitarianism on the one hand, and a sort of Bramanism on the other,--the one making man the arbiter of his own destiny, independently of divine agency, and the other making the Deity the only power of the universe. With one school, G.o.d as the only controlling agency is a fiction, and man himself is infinite in faculties; the other holds that G.o.d is everything and man is nothing. The distinction between these two schools, both of which have had great defenders, is fundamental,--such as that between Augustine and Pelagius, between Bernard and Abelard, and between Calvin and Lainez. Among those who have inclined to the doctrine of the majesty of G.o.d and the littleness of man were the primitive monks and the Indian theosophists, and the orthodox scholastics of the Middle Ages,--all of whom were comparatively indifferent to material pleasure and physical progress, and sought the salvation of the soul and the favor of G.o.d beyond all temporal blessings. Of the other cla.s.s have been the Greek philosophers and the rationalizing schoolmen and the modern lights of science.

Now Calvin was imbued with the lofty spirit of the Fathers of the Church and the more religious and contemplative of the schoolmen and the saints of the Middle Ages, when he attached but little dignity to man unaided by divine grace, and was absorbed with the idea of the sovereignty of G.o.d, in whose hands man is like clay in the hands of the potter. This view of G.o.d pervaded the whole spirit of his theology, making it both lofty and yet one-sided. To him the chief end of man was to glorify G.o.d, not to develop his own intellectual faculties, and still less to seek the pleasures and excitements of the world. Man was a sinner before an infinite G.o.d, and he could rise above the polluting influence of sin only by the special favor of G.o.d and his divinely communicated grace.

Man was so great a sinner that he deserved an eternal punishment, only to be rescued as a brand plucked from the fire, as one of the elect before the world was made. The vast majority of men were left to the uncovenanted mercies of Christ,--the redeemer, not of the race, but of those who believed.

To Calvin therefore, as to the Puritans, the belief in a personal G.o.d was everything; not a compulsory belief in the general existence of a deity who, united with Nature, reveals himself to our consciousness; not the G.o.d of the pantheist, visible in all the wonders of Nature; not the G.o.d of the rationalist, who retires from the universe which he has made, leaving it to the operation of certain unchanging and universal laws: but the G.o.d whom Abraham and Moses and the prophets saw and recognized, and who by his special providence rules the destinies of men. The most intellectual of the reformers abhorred the deification of the reason, and clung to that exalted supernaturalism which was the life and hope of blessed saints and martyrs in bygone ages, and which in "their contests with mail-clad infidelity was like the pebble which the shepherd of Israel hurled against the disdainful boaster who defied the power of Israel's G.o.d." And he was thus brought into close sympathy with the realism of the Fathers, who felt that all that is valuable in theology must radiate from the recognition of Almighty power in the renovation of society, and displayed, not according to our human notions of law and progress and free-will, but supernaturally and mysteriously, according to his sovereign will, which is above law, since G.o.d is the author of law. He simply erred in enforcing a certain cla.s.s of truths which must follow from the majesty of the one great First Cause, lofty as these truths are, to the exclusion of another cla.s.s of truths of great importance; which gives to his system incompleteness and one-sidedness.

Thus he was led to undervalue the power of truth itself in its contest with error. He was led into a seeming recognition of two wills in G.o.d,--that which wills the salvation of all men, and that which wills the salvation of the elect alone. He is accused of a leaning to fatalism, which he heartily denied, but which seems to follow from his logical conclusions. He entered into an arena of metaphysical controversy which can never be settled. The doctrines of free-will and necessity can never be reconciled by mortal reason. Consciousness reveals the freedom of the will as well as the slavery to sin. Men are conscious of both; they waste their time in attempting to reconcile two apparently opposing facts,--like our pious fathers at their New England firesides, who were compelled to shelter themselves behind mystery.

The tendency of Calvin's system, it is maintained by many, is to ascribe to G.o.d attributes which according to natural justice would be injustice and cruelty, such as no father would exercise on his own children, however guilty. Even good men will not accept in their hearts doctrines which tend to make G.o.d less compa.s.sionate than man. There are not two kinds of justice. The intellect is appalled when it is affirmed that one man _justly_ suffers the penalty of another man's sin,--although the world is full of instances of men suffering from the carelessness or wickedness of others, as in a wicked war or an unnecessary railway disaster. The Scripture law of retribution, as brought out in the Bible and sustained by consciousness, is the penalty a man pays for personal and voluntary transgression. Nor will consciousness accept the doctrine that the sin of a mortal--especially under strong temptation and with all the bias of a sinful nature--is infinite. Nothing which a created mortal can do is infinite; it is only finite: the infinite belongs to G.o.d alone. Hence an infinite penalty for a finite sin conflicts with consciousness and is nowhere a.s.serted in the Bible, which is transcendently more merciful and comforting than many theological systems of belief, however powerfully sustained by dialectical reasoning and by the most excellent men. Human judgments or reasonings are fallible on moral questions which have two sides; and reasonings from texts which present different meanings when studied by the lights of learning and science are still more liable to be untrustworthy. It would seem to be the supremest necessity for theological schools to unravel the meaning of divine declarations, and present doctrines in their relation with apparently conflicting texts, rather than draw out a perfect and consistent system, philosophically considered, from any one cla.s.s of texts. Of all things in this wicked and perplexing world the science of theology should be the most cheerful and inspiring, for it involves inquiries on the loftiest subjects which can interest a thoughtful mind.

But whatever defects the system of doctrines which Calvin elaborated with such transcendent ability may have, there is no question as to its vast influence on the thinking of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The schools of France and Holland and Scotland and England and America were animated by his genius and authority. He was a burning and a shining light, if not for all ages, at least for the unsettled times in which he lived. No theologian ever had a greater posthumous power than he for nearly three hundred years, and he is still one of the great authorities of the church universal. John Knox sought his counsel and was influenced by his advice in the great reform he made in Scotland. In France the words Calvinist and Huguenot are synonymous.

Cranmer, too, listened to his counsels, and had great respect for his learning and sanct.i.ty. Among the Puritans he has reigned like an oracle.

Oliver Cromwell embraced his doctrines, as also did Sir Matthew Hale.

Ridicule or abuse of Calvin is as absurd as the ridicule or abuse with which Protestants so long a.s.sailed Hildebrand or Innocent III. No one abuses Pascal or Augustine, and yet the theological views of all these are substantially the same.

In one respect I think that Calvin has received more credit than he deserves. Some have maintained that he was a sort of father of republicanism and democratic liberty. In truth he had no popular sympathies, and leaned towards an aristocracy which was little short of an oligarchy. He had no hand in establishing the political system of Geneva; it was established before he went there. He was not even one of those thinkers who sympathized with true liberty of conscience. He persecuted heretics like a mediaeval Catholic divine. He would have burned a Galileo as he caused the death of Servetus, which need not have happened but for him. Calvin could have saved Servetus if he had pleased; but he complained of him to the magistrates, knowing that his condemnation and death would necessarily follow. He had neither the humanity of Luther nor the toleration of Saint Augustine. He was the impersonation of intellect,--like Newton, Leibnitz, Spinoza, and Kant,--which overbore the impulses of his heart. He had no pa.s.sions except zeal for orthodoxy. So pre-eminently did intellect tower above the pa.s.sions that he seemed to lack sympathy; and yet, such was his exalted character, he was capable of friendship. He was remarkable for every faculty of the mind except wit and imagination. His memory was almost incredible; he remembered everything he ever read or heard; he would, after long intervals, recognize persons whom he had never seen but once or twice. When employed in dictation, he would resume the thread of his discourse without being prompted, after the most vexatious interruptions. His judgment was as sound as his memory was retentive; it was almost infallible,--no one was ever known to have been misled by it.

He had a remarkable a.n.a.lytical power, and also the power of generalization. He was a very learned man, and his Commentaries are among the most useful and valued of his writings, showing both learning and judgment; his exegetical works have scarcely been improved. He had no sceptical or rationalistic tendencies, and therefore his Commentaries may not be admired by men of "advanced thought," but his annotations will live when those of Ewald shall be forgotten; they still hold their place in the libraries of biblical critics. For his age he was a transcendent critic; his various writings fill five folio volumes. He was not so voluminous a writer as Thomas Aquinas, but less diffuse; his style is lucid, like that of Voltaire.

Considering the weakness of his body Calvin's labors were prodigious.

There was never a more industrious man, finding time for everything,--for an amazing correspondence, for pastoral labors, for treatises and essays, for commentaries and official duties. No man ever accomplished more in the same s.p.a.ce of time. He preached daily every alternate week; he attended meetings of the Consistory and of the Court of Morals; he interested himself in the great affairs of his age; he wrote letters to all parts of Christendom.

Reigning as a religious dictator, and with more influence than any man of his age, next to Luther, Calvin was content to remain poor, and was disdainful of money and all praises and rewards. This was not an affectation, not the desire to imitate the great saints of Christian antiquity to whom poverty was a cardinal virtue; but real indifference, looking upon money as _impedimenta_, as camp equipage is to successful generals. He was not conscious of being poor with his small salary of fifty dollars a year, feeling that he had inexhaustible riches within him; and hence he calmly and naturally took his seat among the great men of the world as their peer and equal, without envy of the accidents of fortune and birth. He was as indifferent to money and luxuries as Socrates when he walked barefooted among the Athenian aristocracy, or Basil when he retired to the wilderness; he rarely gave vent to extravagant grief or joy, seldom laughed, and cared little for hilarities; he knew no games or sports; he rarely played with children or gossiped with women; he loved without romance, and suffered bereavement without outward sorrow. He had no toleration for human infirmities, and was neither social nor genial; he sought a wife, not so much for communion of feeling as to ease him of his burdens,--not to share his confidence, but to take care of his house. Nor was he fond, like Luther, of music and poetry. He had no taste for the fine arts; he never had a poet or an artist for his friend or companion. He could not look out of his window without seeing the glaciers of the Alps, but seemed to be unmoved by their unspeakable grandeur; he did not revel in the glories of nature or art, but gave his mind to abstract ideas and stern practical duties. He was sparing of language, simple, direct, and precise, using neither sarcasm, nor ridicule, nor exaggeration. He was far from being eloquent according to popular notions of oratory, and despised the jingle of words and phrases and tricks of rhetoric; he appealed to reason rather than the pa.s.sions, to the conscience rather than the imagination.

Though mild, Calvin was also intolerant. Castillo, once his friend, a.s.sailed his doctrine of Decrees, and was obliged to quit Geneva, and was so persecuted that he died of actual starvation; Perrin, captain-general of the republic, danced at a wedding, and was thrown into prison; Bolsec, an eminent physician, opposed the doctrine of Predestination, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; Gruet spoke lightly of the ordinances of religion, and was beheaded; Servetus was a moral and learned and honest man, but could not escape the flames. Had he been willing to say, as the flames consumed his body, "Jesus, thou eternal Son of G.o.d, have mercy on me!" instead of, "Jesus, thou son of the eternal G.o.d!" he might have been spared. Calvin was as severe on those who refused to accept his logical deductions from acknowledged truths as he was on those who denied the fundamental truths themselves.

But toleration was rare in his age, and he was not beyond it. He was not even beyond the ideas of the Middle Ages in some important points, such as those which pertained to divine justice,--the wrath rather than the love of G.o.d. He lived too near the Middle Ages to be emanc.i.p.ated from the ideas which enslaved such a man as Thomas Aquinas. He had very little patience with frivolous amus.e.m.e.nts or degrading pursuits. He attached great dignity to the ministerial office, and set a severe example of decorum and propriety in all his public ministrations. He was a type of the early evangelical divines, and was the father of the old Puritan strictness and narrowness and fidelity to trusts. His very faults grew out of virtues pushed to extremes. In our times such a man would not be selected as a travelling companion, or a man at whose house we would wish to keep the Christmas holidays. His unattractive austerity perhaps has been made too much of by his enemies, and grew out of his unimpulsive temperament,--call it cold if we must,--and also out of his stern theology, which marked the ascetics of the Middle Ages. Few would now approve of his severity of discipline any more than they would feel inclined to accept some of his theological deductions.

I question whether Calvin lived in the hearts of his countrymen, or they would have erected some monument to his memory. In our times a statue has been erected to Rousseau in Geneva; but Calvin was buried without ceremony and with exceeding simplicity. He was a warrior who cared nothing for glory or honor, absorbed in devotion to his Invisible King, not indifferent to the exercise of power, but only as he felt he was the delegated messenger of Divine Omnipotence scattering to the winds the dust of all mortal grandeur. With all his faults, which were on the surface, he was the accepted idol and oracle of a great party, and stamped his genius on his own and succeeding ages. Whatever the Presbyterians have done for civilization, he comes in for a share of the honor. Whatever foundations the Puritans laid for national greatness in this country, it must be confessed that they caught inspiration from his decrees. Such a great master of exegetical learning and theological inquiry and legislative wisdom will be forever held in reverence by lofty characters, although he may be no favorite with the ma.s.s of mankind. If many great men and good men have failed to comprehend either his character or his system, how can a pleasure-loving and material generation, seeking to combine the glories of this world with the promises of the next, see much in him to admire, except as a great intellectual dialectician and system-maker in an age with which it has no sympathy? How can it appreciate his deep spiritual life, his profound communion with G.o.d, his burning zeal for the defence of Christian doctrine, his sublime self-sacrifice, his holy resignation, his entire consecration to a great cause? n.o.body can do justice to Calvin who does not know the history of his times, the circ.u.mstances which surrounded him, and the enemies he was required to fight. No one can comprehend his character or mission who does not feel it to be supremely necessary to have a definite, positive system of religious belief, based on the authority of the Scriptures as a divine inspiration, both as an anchor amid the storms and a star of promise and hope.

And, after all, what is the head and front of Calvin's offending?--that he was cold, unsocial, and ungenial in character; and that, as a theologian, he fearlessly and inexorably pushed out his deductions to their remotest logical sequences. But he was no more austere than Chrysostom, no more ascetic than Basil, not even sterner in character than Michael Angelo, or more unsocial than Pascal or Cromwell or William the Silent. We lose sight of his defects in the greatness of his services and the exalted dignity of his character. If he was severe to adversaries, he was kind to friends; and when his feeble body was worn out by his protracted labors, at the age of fifty-three, and he felt that the hand of death was upon him, he called together his friends and fellow-laborers in reform,--the magistrates and ministers of Geneva,--imparted his last lessons, and expressed his last wishes, with the placidity of a Christian sage. Amid tears and sobs and stifled groans he discoursed calmly on his approaching departure, gave his affectionate benedictions, and commended them and his cause to Christ; lingering longer than was expected, but dying in the highest triumphs of Christian faith, May 27, 1564, in the arms of his faithful and admiring Beza, as the rays of the setting-sun gilded with their glory his humble chamber of toil and spiritual exaltation.

No man who knows anything will ever sneer at Calvin. He is not to be measured by common standards. He was universally regarded as the greatest light of the theological world. When we remember his transcendent abilities, his matchless labors, his unrivalled influence, his unblemished morality, his lofty piety, and soaring soul, all flippant criticism is contemptible and mean. He ranks with immortal benefactors, and needs least of all any apologies for his defects. A man who stamped his opinions on his own age and succeeding ages can be regarded only as a very extraordinary genius. A frivolous and pleasure-seeking generation may not be attracted by such an impersonation of cold intellect, and may rear no costly monument to his memory; but his work remains as the leader of the loftiest cla.s.s of Christian enthusiasts that the modern world has known, and the founder of a theological system which still numbers, in spite of all the changes of human thought, some of the greatest thinkers and ablest expounders of Christian doctrine in both Europe and America. To have been the spiritual father of the Puritans for three hundred years is itself a great evidence of moral and intellectual excellence, and will link his name with some of the greatest movements that have marked our modern civilization. From Plymouth Rock to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Ocean we still see the traces of his marvellous genius, and his still more wonderful influence on the minds of men and on the schools of Christian theology; so that he will ever be regarded as the great doctor of the Protestant Church.

AUTHORITIES.

Henry's Life of Calvin, translated by Stebbings; Dyer's Life of Calvin; Beza's Life of Calvin; Drelincourt's Defence of Calvin; Bayle; Maimbourg's Histoire du Calvinisine; Calvin's Works; Ruchat; D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation; Burnet's Reformation; Mosheim; Biographie Universelle, article on Servetus; Schlosser's Leben Bezas; McCrie's Life of Knox; Original Letters (Parker Society).

FRANCIS BACON.

A.D. 1561-1626.

THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.

It is not easy to present the life and labors of

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind."

So Pope sums up the character of the great Lord Bacon, as he is generally but improperly called; and this verdict, in the main, has been confirmed by Lords Macaulay and Campbell, who seem to delight in keeping him in that niche of the temple of fame where the poet has placed him,--contemptible as a man, but venerable as the philosopher, radiant with all the wisdom of his age and of all preceding ages, the miner and sapper of ancient falsehoods, the pioneer of all true knowledge, the author of that inductive and experimental philosophy on which is based the glory of our age. Macaulay especially, in that long and brilliant article which appeared in the "Edinburgh Review" in 1837, has represented him as a remarkably worldly man, cold, calculating, selfish; a sycophant and a flatterer, bent on self-exaltation; greedy, careless, false; climbing to power by base subserviency; betraying friends and courting enemies; with no animosities he does not suppress from policy, and with no affections which he openly manifests when it does not suit his interests: so that we read with shame of his extraordinary shamelessness, from the time he first felt the cravings of a vulgar ambition to the consummation of a disgraceful crime; from the base desertion of his greatest benefactor to the public selling of justice as Lord High Chancellor of the realm; resorting to all the arts of a courtier to win the favor of his sovereign and of his minions and favorites; reckless as to honest debts; torturing on the rack an honest parson for a sermon he never preached; and, when obliged to confess his corruption, meanly supplicating mercy from the nation he had outraged, and favors from the monarch whose cause he had betrayed. The defects and delinquencies of this great man are bluntly and harshly put by Macaulay, without any attempt to soften or palliate them; as if he would consign his name and memory, not "to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages," but to an infamy as lasting and deep as that of Scroggs and of Jeffreys, or any of those hideous tyrants and monsters that disgraced the reigns of the Stuart kings.

And yet while the man is made to appear in such hideous colors, his philosophy is exalted to the highest pinnacle of praise, as the greatest boon which any philosopher ever rendered to the world, and the chief cause of all subsequent progress in scientific discovery. And thus in brilliant rhetoric we have a painting of a man whose life was in striking contrast with his teachings,--a Judas Iscariot, uttering divine philosophy; a Seneca, acc.u.mulating millions as the tool of Nero; a fallen angel, pointing with rapture to the realms of eternal light. We have the most startling contradiction in all history,--glory in debas.e.m.e.nt, and debas.e.m.e.nt in glory; the most selfish and worldly man in England, the "meanest of mankind," conferring on the race one of the greatest blessings it ever received,--not accidentally, not in repentance and shame, but in exalted and persistent labors, amid public cares and physical infirmities, from youth to advanced old age; living in the highest regions of thought, studious and patient all his days, even when neglected and unrewarded for the transcendent services he rendered, not as a philosopher merely, but as a man of affairs and as a responsible officer of the Crown. Has there ever been, before or since, such an anomaly in human history,--so infamous in action, so glorious in thought; such a contradiction between life and teachings,--so that many are found to utter indignant protests against such a representation of humanity, justly feeling that such a portrait, however much it may be admired for its brilliant colors, and however difficult to be proved false, is nevertheless an insult to the human understanding? The heart of the world will not accept the strange and singular belief that so bad a man could confer so great a boon, especially when he seemed bent on bestowing it during his whole life, amid the most hara.s.sing duties. If it accepts the boon, it will strive to do justice to the benefactor, as he himself appealed to future ages; and if it cannot deny the charges which have been arrayed against him,--especially if it cannot exculpate him,--it will soar beyond technical proofs to take into consideration the circ.u.mstances of the times, the temptations of a corrupt age, and the splendid traits which can with equal authority be adduced to set off against the mistakes and faults which proceeded from inadvertence and weakness rather than a debased moral sense,--even as the defects and weaknesses of Cicero are lost sight of in the acknowledged virtues of his ordinary life, and the honest and n.o.ble services he rendered to his country and mankind.

Bacon was a favored man; he belonged to the upper ranks of society. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was a great lawyer, and reached the highest dignities, being Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. His mother's sister was the wife of William Cecil, the great Lord Burleigh, the most able and influential of Queen Elizabeth's ministers. Francis Bacon was the youngest son of the Lord Keeper, and was born in London, Jan. 22, 1561.

He had a sickly and feeble const.i.tution, but intellectually was a youthful prodigy; and at nine years of age, by his gravity and knowledge, attracted the admiring attention of the Queen, who called him her young Lord Keeper. At the age of ten we find him stealing away from his companions to discover the cause of a singular echo in the brick conduit near his father's house in the Strand. At twelve he entered the University of Cambridge; at fifteen he quitted it, already disgusted with its pedantries and sophistries; at sixteen he rebelled against the authority of Aristotle, and took up his residence at Gray's Inn; the same year, 1576, he was sent to Paris in the suite of Sir Amias Paulet, amba.s.sador to the court of France, and delighted the salons of the capital by his wit and profound inquiries; at nineteen he returned to England, having won golden opinions from the doctors of the French Sanhedrim, who saw in him a second Daniel; and in 1582 he was admitted as a barrister of Gray's Inn, and the following year composed an essay on the Instauration of Philosophy. Thus, at an age when young men now leave the university, he had attacked the existing systems of science and philosophy, proudly taking in all science and knowledge for his realm.

About this time his father died, without leaving him, a younger son, a competence. Nor would his great relatives give him an office or sinecure by which he might be supported while he sought truth, and he was forced to plod at the law, which he never liked, resisting the blandishments and follies by which he was surrounded; and at intervals, when other young men of his age and rank were seeking pleasure, he was studying Nature, science, history, philosophy, poetry,--everything, even the whole domain of truth,--and with such success that his varied attainments were rather a hindrance to an appreciation of his merits as a lawyer and his preferment in his profession.

In 1586 he entered parliament, sitting for Taunton, and also became a bencher at Gray's Inn; so that at twenty-six he was in full practice in the courts of Westminster, also a politician, speaking on almost every question of importance which agitated the House of Commons for twenty years, distinguished for eloquence as well as learning, and for a manly independence which did not entirely please the Queen, from whom all honors came.

In 1591, at the age of thirty-one, he formed the acquaintance of Ess.e.x, about his own age, who, as the favorite of the Queen, was regarded as the most influential man in the country. The acquaintance ripened into friendship; and to the solicitation of this powerful patron, who urged the Queen to give Bacon a high office, she is said to have replied: "He has indeed great wit and much learning, but in law, my lord, he is not deeply read,"--an opinion perhaps put into her head by his rival c.o.ke, who did indeed know law but scarcely anything else, or by that cla.s.s of old-fashioned functionaries who could not conceive how a man could master more than one thing. We should however remember that Bacon had not reached the age when great offices were usually conferred in the professions, and that his efforts to be made solicitor-general at the age of thirty-one, and even earlier, would now seem unreasonable and importunate, whatever might be his attainments. Disappointed in not receiving high office, he meditated a retreat to Cambridge; but his friend Ess.e.x gave him a villa in Twickenham, which he soon mortgaged, for he was in debt all his life, although in receipt of sums which would have supported him in comfort and dignity were it not for his habits of extravagance,--the greatest flaw in his character, and which was the indirect cause of his disgrace and fall. He was even arrested for debt when he enjoyed a lucrative practice at the courts. But nothing prevented him from pursuing his literary and scientific studies, amid great distractions,--for he was both a leader at the bar and a leader of the House of Commons; and if he did not receive the rewards to which he felt ent.i.tled, he was always consulted by Elizabeth in great legal difficulties.

It was not until the Queen died, and Bacon was forty-seven years old, that he became solicitor-general (1607), in the fourth year of the reign of James, one year after his marriage with Alice Barnham, an alderman's daughter, "a handsome maiden," and "to his liking." Besides this office, which brought him 1000 a year, he about this time had a windfall as clerk of the Star Chamber, which added 2000 to his income, at that time from all sources about 4500 a year,--a very large sum for those times, and making him really a rich man. Six years afterward he was made attorney-general, and in the year 1617 he was made Lord Keeper, and the following year he was raised to the highest position in the realm, next to that of Archbishop of Canterbury, as Lord Chancellor, at the age of fifty-seven, and soon after was created Lord Verulam. That is his t.i.tle, but the world persists in calling him Lord Bacon. In 1620, two years after the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, which Bacon advised, he was in the zenith of his fortunes and fame, having been lately created Viscount St. Albans, and having published the "Novum Organum," the first instalment of the "Instauratio Magna," at which he had been working the best part of his life,--some thirty years,--"A New Logic, to judge or invent by induction, and thereby to make philosophy and science both more true and more active."

Then began to gather the storms which were to wreck his fortunes. The nation now was clamorous for reform; and c.o.ke, the enemy of Bacon, who was then the leader of the Reform party in the House of Commons, stimulated the movement. The House began its scrutiny with the administration of justice; and Bacon could not stand before it, for as the highest judge in England he was accused of taking bribes before rendering decisions, and of many cases of corruption so glaring that no defence was undertaken; and the House of Lords had no alternative but to sentence him to the Tower and fine him, to degrade him from his office, and banish him from the precincts of the court,--a fall so great, and the impression of it on the civilized world so tremendous, that the case of a judge accepting bribes has rarely since been known.

Bacon was imprisoned but a few days, his ruinous fine of 40,000 was remitted, and he was even soon after received at court; but he never again held office. He was hopelessly disgraced; he was a ruined man; and he bitterly felt the humiliation, and acknowledged the justice of his punishment. He had now no further object in life than to pursue his studies, and live comfortably in his retirement, and do what he could for future ages.

But before we consider his immortal legacy to the world, let us take one more view of the man, in order that we may do him justice, and remove some of the cruel charges against him as "the meanest of mankind."

It must be borne in mind that, from the beginning of his career until his fall, only four or five serious charges have been made against him,--that he was extravagant in his mode of life; that he was a sycophant and office-seeker; that he deserted his patron Ess.e.x; that he tortured Peacham, a Puritan clergyman, when tried for high-treason; that he himself was guilty of corruption as a judge.

In regard to the first charge, it is unfortunately too true; he lived beyond his means, and was in debt most of his life. This defect, as has been said, was the root of much evil; it destroyed his independence, detracted from the dignity of his character, created enemies, and led to a laxity of the moral sense which prepared the way for corruption,--thereby furnishing another ill.u.s.tration of that fatal weakness which degrades any man when he runs races with the rich, and indulges in a luxury and ostentation which he cannot afford. It was the curse of Cicero, of William Pitt, and of Daniel Webster. The first lesson which every public man should learn, especially if honored with important trusts, is to live within his income. However inconvenient and galling, a stringent economy is necessary. But this defect is a very common one, particularly when men are luxurious, or brought into intercourse with the rich, or inclined to be hospitable and generous, or have a great imagination and a sanguine temperament. So that those who are most liable to fall into this folly have many n.o.ble qualities to offset it, and it is not a stain which marks the "meanest of mankind."

Who would call Webster the meanest of mankind because he had an absurd desire to live like an English country gentleman?

In regard to sycophancy,--a disgusting trait, I admit,--we should consider the age, when everybody cringed to sovereigns and their favorites. Bacon never made such an abject speech as Omer Talon, the greatest lawyer in France, did to Louis XIII, in the Parliament of Paris. Three hundred years ago everybody bowed down to exalted rank: witness the obsequious language which all authors addressed to patrons in the dedication of their books. How small the chance of any man rising in the world, who did not court favors from those who had favors to bestow! Is that the meanest or the most uncommon thing in this world? If so, how ignominious are all politicians who flatter the people and solicit their votes? Is it not natural to be obsequious to those who have offices to bestow? This trait is not commendable, but is it the meanest thing we see?