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

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esteem of all, without ever seeking to please them.” “He possessed,” says
Tweedie, “the secret and inexplicable power of binding men to him by ties
that nothing but sin or death could sever. They treasured up every word
that dropped from his lips.”
Among his most faithful friends were many of the best men and women of
his age, of different character and disposition, such as Farel, Viret, Beza,
Bucer, Grynaeus, Bullinger, Knox, Melanchthon, Queen Marguerite, and
the Duchess Renée. His large correspondence is a noble monument to his
heart as well as his intellect, and is a sufficient refutation of all calumnies.
How tender is his reference to his departed friend Melanchthon,
notwithstanding their difference of opinion on predestination and free-will:
“It is to thee, I appeal, who now livest with Christ in the bosom of God,
where thou waitest for us till we be gathered with thee to a holy rest. A
hundred times hast thou said, when, wearied with thy labors and oppressed
by thy troubles, thou reposedst thy head familiarly on my breast, ‘Would
that I could die in this bosom!’ Since then I have a thousand times wished
that it had happened to us to be together.” How noble is his admonition to
Bullinger, when Luther made his last furious attack upon the Zwinglians
and the Zürichers (1544), not to forget “how great a man Luther is and by
what extraordinary gifts he excels.” And how touching is his farewell letter
to his old friend Farel (May 2, 1564): “Farewell, my best and truest
brother! And since it is God’s will that you should survive me in this
world, live mindful of our friendship, of which, as it was useful to the
Church of God, the fruits await us in heaven. Pray, do not fatigue yourself
on my account. It is with difficulty that I draw my breath, and I expect that
every moment will be my last. It is enough that I live and die for Christ,
who is the reward of his followers both in life and in death. Again, farewell,
with the brethren.”
Calvin has also unjustly been charged with insensibility to the beauties of
nature and art. It is true we seek in vain for specific allusions to the earthly
paradise in which he lived, the lovely shores of Lake Leman, the murmur of
the Rhone, the snowy grandeur of the monarch of mountains in
Chamounix. But the writings of the other Reformers are equally bare of
such allusions, and the beauties of Switzerland were not properly
appreciated till towards the close of the eighteenth century, when Haller,
Goethe, and Schiller directed attention to them. Calvin, however, had a
lively sense of the wonders of creation and expressed it more than once.
“Let us not disdain,” he says, “to receive a pious delight from the works of