Calvin and Missions - World Evangelical Alliance

McFetridge: Calvinism as an Evangelizing Force (1882) 19
Reformers? Such was Wycliffe, “the morning star of the Reformation;”
such was John of Goch and John of Wesalia and John of Wessel, “the light
of the world;” and Savonarola of Florence, who thundered with such terrible
vehemence against the sins of the clergy and people, who refused a
cardinal’s hat for his silence, saying, “he wished no red hat, but one reddened
with his own blood, the hat given to the saints” – who even demanded
the removal of the pope, and, scorning all presents and promises
and honors on condition of “holding his tongue,” gave his life for the holy
cause – another victim of priestly profligacy and bloodthirstiness. Every
great luminary which in the Church immediately preceded the greater
lights of the Reformation was in principle a Calvinist. Such also were the
great national Reformers, as Luther of Germany, Zwingle of Switzerland,
Calvin of France, Cranmer of England, Knox of Scotland. “Although each
movement was self-originated, and different from the others in many permanent
characteristics,” 26 it was thoroughly Calvinistic. These men were
driven to this theological belief, not by their peculiar intellectual endowments,
but from their study of the word of God and the moral necessities of
the Church and the world. They felt that half measures were useless – that
it was worse than folly to seek to unite a system of saving works with a
system of saving faith. So “Calvinism in its sharp and logical structure, in
its moral earnestness, in its demand for the reformation of ecclesiastical
abuses, found a response in the consciences of good men.” 27 It was it
which swept, like a prairie-fire, over the Continent, devouring the fabric of
works of righteousness. He who is most familiar with the history of those
times will most readily agree with the startling statement of Dr. Cunningham
(successor to Dr. Chalmers), that, “next to Paul, John Calvin has done
most for the world.”
So thoroughly was the Reformed world Calvinistic three hundred years
ago that it was almost entirely Presbyterian. 28 The French Protestant
Church was as rigidly Presbyterian as the Scotch Church. “There are many
acts of her synod,” says the late Dr. Charles Hodge, “which would make
modern ears tingle, and which prove that American Presbyterianism, in its
strictest forms, is a sucking dove compared to that of the immediate descendants
of the Reformers.” 29
26 Dr. Hodge.
27 Dr. Fisher, Hist. Ref.
28 Dr. Breed’s Presbyterianism Three Hundred Years Ago.
29 Const. Hist.