Calvin and Missions - World Evangelical Alliance

22 Calvin and World Mission
“The Lutheran Reformation,” says Dyer in his History of Modern
Europe, 35 “traveled but little out of Germany and the neighboring Scandinavian
kingdoms; while Calvinism obtained a European character, and was
adopted in all the countries that adopted a reformation from without, as
France, as the Netherlands, Scotland, even England; for the early English
Reformation under Edward VI. was Calvinistic, and Calvin was incontestably
the father of our Puritans and dissenters. Thus, under his rule, Geneva
may be said to have become the capital of European Reform.”
A similar testimony is that of Francis de Sales, who in one of his letters
to the duke of Savoy urged the suppression of Geneva as the capital of
what the Romish Church calls heresy. “All the heretics,” said he, “respect
Geneva as the asylum of their religion . There is not a city in Europe which
offers more facilities for the encouragement of heresy, for it is the gate of
France, of Italy and Germany, so that one finds there people of all nations
– Italians, French, Germans, Poles, Spaniards, English, and of countries
still more remote. Besides, every one knows the great number of ministers
bred there. Last year it furnished twenty to France. Even England
obtains ministers from Geneva. What shall I say of its magnificent printing
establishments, by means of which the city floods the world with its
wicked books, and even goes the length of distributing them at the public
expense? … All the enterprises undertaken against the Holy See and the
Catholic princes have their beginnings at Geneva. No city in Europe receives
more apostates of all grades, secular and regular. From thence I
conclude that Geneva being destroyed would naturally lead to the dissipation
of heresy.” 36
God had ordered it that Geneva, so accessible to all the nations of Western
Europe, should be the home of Calvin, from which he could most efficiently
carry on his work of enlightenment and civilization. And so important
to the cause of Protestantism had that city become that upon it, in the
opinion of Francis de Sales, the whole cause depended.
Almost marvelous indeed was the rapid spread of the doctrines of Calvinism.
Dyer says 37 : “Calvinism, still more inimical to Rome than the doctrines
of Luther, had, from Geneva, its centre and stronghold, spread itself
in all directions in Western Europe. In the neighboring provinces of Germany
it had in a great degree supplanted Lutheranism, and had even penetrated
into Hungary and Poland; it was predominant in Scotland, and had
35
Vol. 11. p. 7.
36
Vie de Ste. Francois de Sates, par son neveu, p. 120.
37
Hist. Mod. Europe, vol. 2. pp. 136, 392.