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

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with Christ, whom alone the Heavenly Father has set over all.” Bonnet-
Constable, III. 104. Comp. Inst. IV. ch. IV. §§ 1-4; Henry II. 68, 375;
III. 427 sqq.; Dyer, 283 sqq.; 456 sq.
ft682 By Weber, Henry, and Stähelin, and many others; also by
Kampschulte, who remarks (I. 471): “Der Grundgedanke, von dem der
Gesetzgeber Genfs ausgeht, ist die Theokratie. Er will in Genf den
Gottesstaat herstellen.” But Amédée Roget (L’église et l’état àGenève
du vivant de Calvin) and Merle d’Aubigné (vol. VII. 120) dissent from
this view and point to the limitations of the ecclesiastical power in
Geneva. Merle d’Aubigné says: “Calvin was not a theocrat, unless the
term be taken in the most spiritual sense.”
ft683 Inst. IV. ch. XX. § 1.”Volui,” he wrote to a friend, “sicut aequum est,
spiritualem potestatem acivili judicio distingui.” Epp. et Resp. 263.
ft684 Conf. Helvetica II. ch. XXX.; Conf. Gallicana, ch. XXXIX. (God has
put the sword into the hands of magistrates to suppress crimes against
the first as well as the second table of his Commandments”); Conf.
Belgica, ch. XXXVI.; Conf. Scotica, Art. XXIV.; Thirty-nine Articles,
Art. XXXVII. (changed in the American recension); Westminster Conf.
ch. XXIII. (changed in the American recension).
ft685 He wrote to Farel, Sept. 16, 1541 (in Opera, XI. 281; Herminjard,
VII. 249): “Exposui (Senatui), non posse consistere ecclesiam, nisi
certum regimen constitueretur, quale ex Verbo Dei nobis praescriptum
est, et in veteri Ecclesia fuit observatum.”
ft686 See above, p. 440.
ft687 The French text in Opera, X. 16. note a.
ft688 Kampschulte I. 396.
ft689 In the “Ordinances” they are called Pasteurs, Docteurs, Anciens,
Diacres.
ft690 Inst. IV. ch. III. § 4.
ft691 This confirms the view I have taken of Calvin’s extraordinary calling
(§ 73, pp. 313 sqq.). In his letter to Sadolet he expresses his firm
conviction that his ministry was from God. (See § 91, pp. 398 sqq.)
Luther had the same conviction concerning his own mission. On his
return from the Wartburg to Wittenberg, he wrote to the Elector
Frederick of Saxony that he had his gospel not from men, but from
heaven, and that he was Christ’s evangelist.