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

790
la religion, de l’estat, de la ville, du gouvernement, de la police,
comme bon luy sembloit.” Duruy: “Calvin eut dès 1541 et exerça
jusqu’àsa mort un pouvoir absolu. Il organisa le gouvernement de
Genève au profit presque exclusif des ministres du culte réformé.”
Capefigue: “Calvin réunissait tons les fils du pouvoir suprême en sa
personne.” Paul Janet: “Calvin a étéle magistrat suprême d’une
democratie.” Rosseuw St. Hilaire: “Tout excès appelle une reaction en
sens contraire, Calvin subordonne l’Etat àl’Eglise.” Saisset: “L’Etat
devenait une théocratie et les citoyens de Genève n’etaient plus que
les sujets d’un petit nombre de ministres, sujets eux-mêmes de Calvin,
lequel dominait les trois Conseils du sein du Consistoire et paraissait
it la fois le ROIet le PONTIFEsouverain de la cite.”
ft712 Friederich Julius Stahl, a convert from Judaism, a very able lawyer and
statesman, and one of the chief champions of modern high-church
Lutheranism whose motto was, “Authority, not Majority” (although his
wife was Reformed and he himself attributed his conversion to the
Reformed Professor Krafft in Erlangen), says in his book, Die
Lutherische Kirche und die Union (1860), that Calvin introduced a
new principle into Protestantism; namely, the glorification of God by
the full dominion of his Word in the life of Christendom (“die
Verherrlichung Gottes durch die wirkliche volle Herrschaft seines
Wortes im Leben der Christenheit”).
ft713 In Tholuck’s ed. of Calvin’s Harmony of the Gospels, I. P. II. 21.
ft714 Inst. IV. ch. V. § 14. In the same chapter (§ 1) he says of the bishops
of his day that most of them were ignorant of the Scriptures, and either
drunkards or fornicators or gamblers or hunters. “The greatest
absurdity is that even boys, scarcely ten years of age, have, by the
permission of the pope, been made bishops.” Pope Leo X. himself was
made archbishop in his eighth and cardinal-deacon in his thirteenth
year. The Roman Church at that time tolerated almost anything but
heresy and disobedience to the pope, which in her eyes is worse than
the greatest moral crime.
ft715 He objects to the word clergy as originating in a mistake, since Peter
(1 Pet. 5:3) calls the whole Church God’s klh’roi or possessions; but
he uses it for the sake of convenience.
ft716 Calvin quotes also Chrysostom’s famous warning against the
profanation of the sacrament by the connivance of unfaithful priests: