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

748
IX.). Scaliger says: “Calvin is alone among theologians; there is no
ancient to compare with him.” The term oJ qeolo>gov, as a title of
special distinction, was flrst given to the Apostle John, and afterwards
to Gregory Nazianzen; in both cases with special reference to the
advocacy of the divinity of Christ (the qeo>thv tou’ lo>gou). Calvin
earned the title in a more comprehensive sense, as covering the whole
field of exegetical, dogmatic, and polemic theology.
ft360 Expressed in the formula of Cyprian: “extra ecclesiam [Romanam]
nulla salus.” Cyprian was logically right, but theologically wrong,
when, in his controversy with the Roman bishop, he denied the validity
of heretical and schismatical baptism.
ft361 Harnack excludes Calvinism and Arminianism from his
Dogmengeschichte, while he devotes to Socinianism, which is not
nearly as important, no less than thirty-eight pages (III. 653-691). A
strange omission in this important work, completed in 1890. He
explains this omission (in a private letter to me, dated March 3, 1891)
on the ground that he includes Calvinism and Arminianism in the
Entwicklungsgeschichte des Protestantismus, which he did not intend
to treat in his Dogmengeschichte.
ft362 Beza says: “In the doctrine which he delivered at first, Calvin persisted
steadily to the last, scarcely making any change.”
ft363 See these and other remarkable judgments quoted more fully in § 110.
ft364 The Period of the Reformation, ed. by Oncken, transl. by Mrs. Sturgis
(New York, 1874), p. 255.
ft365 Luther and Other Leaders of the Reformation, p. 264 sq. (3d ed.
1883).
ft366 George Bancroft, the historian of the United States, derives the free
institutions of America chiefly from Calvinism through the medium of
Puritanism. It is certain that, in the colonial period, Calvinism was the
most powerful factor in the theology, and religious life of America; but
since the close of the eighteenth century, Arminian Methodism fairly
divides the field with it and is numerically the strongest denomination in
the United States at the present day. The Baptists, who come next in
numerical strength, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, and the
Dutch and German Reformed rank on the Calvinistic, but the
Protestant Episcopalians and Lutherans, predominantly on the
Arminian side. The Episcopal Church, however, leaves room for the