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

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spite of his many defects—the inequality of his works, his masterful
arrogance of tone, his inconsequent and in part retrogressive view
of inspiration, the manner in which he explains away every passage
which runs counter to his dogmatic prepossessions—in spite, too,
of his ‘hard expressions and injurious declamations’—he is one of
the greatest interpreters of Scripture who ever lived. He owes that
position to a combination of merits. He had a vigorous intellect, a
dauntless spirit, a logical mind, a quick insight, a thorough
knowledge of the human heart, quickened by rich and strange
experience; above all, a manly and glowing sense of the grandeur of
the Divine. The neatness, precision, and lucidity of his style, his
classic training and wide knowledge, his methodical accuracy of
procedure, his manly independence, his avoidance of needless and
commonplace homiletics, his deep religious feeling, his careful
attention to the entire scope and context of every passage, and the
fact that he has commented on almost the whole of the Bible, make
him tower above the great majority of those who have written on
Holy Scripture. Nothing can furnish a greater contrast to many
helpless commentaries, with their congeries of vacillating variorum
annotations heaped together in aimless multiplicity, than the terse
and decisive notes of the great Genevan theologian.... A
characteristic feature of Calvin’s exegesis is its abhorrence of
hollow orthodoxy. He regarded it as a disgraceful offering to a God
of truth. He did not hold the theory of verbal dictation. He will
never defend or harmonize what he regards as an oversight or
mistake in the Sacred writers. He scorns to support a good cause
by bad reasoning.... But the most characteristic and original feature
of his Commentaries is his anticipation of modern criticism in his
views about the Messianic prophecies. He saw that the words of
psalmists and prophets, while they not only admit of but demand
‘germinant and springing developments,’ were yet primarily
applicable to the events and circumstances of their own days.”
SCOTCH TRIBUTES.
ln Scotland, the land of John Knox, who studied at the feet of Calvin, his
principles were most highly appreciated and most fully carried out.
Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856).