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

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the nature of the offence and the hardened state of the offender may
require. All cursing and swearing gambling, luxury, strife, hatred, fraud,
etc., are forbidden; while greater sins are hardly heard of. What a glorious
ornament of the Christian religion is such a purity of morals! We must
lament with tears that it is wanting with us, and almost totally neglected. If
it were not for the difference of religion, I would have forever been chained
to that place by the agreement in morals, and I have ever since tried to
introduce something like it into our churches. No less distinguished than
the public discipline was the domestic discipline of my landlord, Scarron,
with its daily devotions, reading of the Scriptures, the fear of God in word
and in deed, temperance in meat and drink and dress. I have not found
greater purity of morals even in my father’s home.” f778
A stronger and more impartial testimony of the deep and lasting effect of
Calvin’s discipline so long after his death could hardly be imagined.
NOTES. MODERN TESTIMONIES.
The condemnation of Calvin’s discipline and his conduct toward the
Libertines has been transplanted to America by two dignitaries of the
Roman Church—Dr. John McGill, bishop of Richmond, the translator of
Audin’s Life of Calvin (Louisville, n. d.), and Dr. M. S. Spalding,
archbishop of Baltimore (between 1864 and 1872), in his History of the
Protestant Reformation (Louisville, 1860), 8th ed., Baltimore, 1875. This
book is not a history, but a chronique scandaleuse of the Reformation, and
unworthy of a Christian scholar. Dr. Spalding devotes twenty-two pages to
Calvin (vol. I. 370–392), besides an appendix on Rome and Geneva, and a
letter addressed to Merle D’Aubigné and Bungener (pp. 495–530). He
ignores his Commentaries and Institutes, which have commanded the
admiration even of eminent Roman Catholic divines, and simply repeats,
with some original mistakes and misspellings, the slanders of Bolsec and
Audin, which have long since been refuted.
“Calvin,” he says, “crushed the liberties of the people in the name of
liberty. A foreigner, he insinuated himself into Geneva and, serpent-like,
coiled himself around the very heart of the Republic which had given him
hospitable shelter. He thus stung the very bosom which had warmed him.
He was as watchful as a tiger preparing to pounce on its prey, and as
treacherous … . His reign in Geneva was truly a reign of terror. He
combined the cruelty of Danton and Robespierre with the eloquence of