Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

Bishop Wilson of Calcutta.
247
From Sermon preached on the death of the Rev. Basil Wood.
Calvin’s Commentaries remain, after three centuries, unparalleled for force
of mind, justness of exposition, and practical views of Christianity.”
Archbishop Lawrence.
From his Bampton Lectures.
“Calvin was both a wise and a good man, inferior to none of his
contemporaries in general ability, and superior to almost all in the
art, as well as elegance, of composition, in the perspicuity and
arrangement of his ideas, the structure of his periods, and the
Latinity of his diction.”
Archdeacon Julius Charles Hare (1795–1855).
He had, of all Englishmen, the best knowledge and highest appreciation of
Luther.
From his Mission of the Comforter, II. 449.
“Calvin’s Commentaries, although they too are almost entirely
doctrinal and practical, taking little note of critical and
philosophical questions, keep much closer to the text [than
Luther’s], and make it their one business to bring out the meaning
of the words of Scripture with fulness and precision. This they do
with the excellence of a master richly endowed with the word of
wisdom and with the word of knowledge, and from the exemplary
union of a severe masculine understanding with a profound insight
into the spiritual depths of the Scriptures, they are especially
calculated to be useful in counteracting the erroneous tendencies of
an age, when we seem about to be inundated with all that was
fantastical and irrational in the exegetical mysticism of the Fathers,
and are bid to see divine power in all allegorical cobwebs, and
heavenly life in artificial flowers. I do not mean to imply an
adoption or approval of all Calvin’s views, whether on doctrinal or
other questions. But we may happily owe much gratitude and love,
and the deepest intellectual obligations, to those whom at the same
time we may, deem to be mistaken on certain points.”