natural and legitimate method of imparting religious instruction, inherent in the very first principle of all religion; it is especially in harmony with the origin and history of Christianity, and no one has ever recognized its power or proved its efficacy more fully than Calvin.'

59. THE CONSENSUS OF ZURICH. A.D. 1549.

859.

Literature.

I. CONSENSIO MUTUA IN RE SACRAMENTARIA ministrorum TIGURINE ECCLESIÆ et J. Calvini ministri GENEVENSIS ECCLESIÆ jam nunc ab ipsis autoribus edita. Tiguri, 1549. In Opera, Vol. VII. pp. 689–748. Comp. Proleg. pp. xliv. 8qq. DEFENSIO sance et orthodoxe de sacramentis eorumque vi, fine, et usu, et fructu quam pastores et ministri Tigurinæ ecclesiæ et Genevensis antehac brevi Consensionis mutuæ formula complexi sunt. Johanne Calvino autore, Tiguri, 1555, in Opera, Vol. IX. pp. 1–40. The same volume contains the later eucharistic tracts of Calvin against the attacks of Joachim Westphal (1556 and 1557) and Tilemann Heshusius (1561).

The Consensus Tigurinus with Calvin's Exposition is also reprinted in Niemeyer's Collect. pp.191–217; a German translation (in part) in Beck and Böckel.

II. On the History of the Zurich Consensus, see Calvin's correspondence with Bullinger, 1548 and 1549, Opera, Vols. XII. and XIII. HUNDESHAGEN: Conflicte des Zwinglianismus, etc.; HENRY: Calvin, Vol. II. pp. 128 8qq.; EBRARD: Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl, Vol. II. pp. 484-524; PESTalozzi: Bullinger, pp. 373-387; STÄHELIN: Calvin, Vol. II. pp. 112-124.

In the sacramental controversy-the most violent, distracting, and unprofitable in the history of the Reformation-Calvin stood midway between Luther and Zwingli, and endeavored to unite the elements of truth on both sides, in his theory of a spiritual real presence and fruition of Christ by faith. This satisfied neither the rigid Lutherans nor the rigid Zwinglians. The former could see no material difference between Calvin and Zwingli, since both denied the literal interpretation of 'this is my body,' and a corporeal presence and manducation. The latter suspected Calvin of leaning towards Lutheran consubstantiation and working into the hands of Bucer, who had made himself obnoxious by his facile compromises and ill-concealed concessions to the Lutheran view in the Wittenberg Concordia (1536).

The wound was reopened by Luther's fierce attack on the Zwinglians (1545), and their sharp reply. Calvin was displeased with both parties, and counselled moderation. It was very desirable to harmonize the teaching of the Swiss Churches. Bullinger, who first advanced beyond the original Zwinglian ground, and appreciated the deeper theology of Calvin, sent him his book on the Sacraments, in manuscript (1546), with the request to express his opinion. Calvin did this with great frankness, and a degree of censure which at first

irritated Bullinger. Then followed a correspondence and personal conference at Zurich, which resulted in a complete union of the Calvinistic and Zwinglian sections of the Swiss Churches on this vexed subject. The negotiations reflect great credit on both parties, and reveal an admirable spirit of frankness, moderation, forbearance, and patience, which triumphed over all personal sensibilities and irritations.1

The first draft of the Consensus Tigurinus, from November, 1548, consists of twenty-four brief propositions drawn up by Calvin, with annotations by Bullinger, to which Calvin responded in January, 1549. They assert that the Sacraments are not in and of themselves effective and conferring grace, but that God, through the Holy Spirit, acts through them as means; that the internal effect appears only in the elect; that the good of the Sacraments consists in leading us to Christ, and being instruments of the grace of God, which is sincerely offered to all; that in baptism we receive the remission of sins, although this proceeds primarily not from baptism, but from the blood of Christ; that in the Lord's Supper we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, not, however, by means of a carnal presence of Christ's human nature, which is in heaven, but by the power of the Holy Spirit and the devout elevation of our soul to heaven.2

In the month of March Calvin sent twenty Articles to the Synod of Berne, but in this canton there was strong opposition to Calvin's rigorism, which subsided only after his death."

the

In May, 1549, he had, in company with Farel, a personal interview with Bullinger in Zurich at his cordial invitation, and drew up Consensus as it now stands, in Twenty-six Articles. It was published in 1551 at Zurich and at Geneva.5 It contains the Calvinistic doctrine, adjusted as nearly as possible to the Zwinglian in its advanced form, but with a disturbing predestinarian restriction of the sacra

See the details in Ebrard, Pestalozzi, and Stähelin, who speak in the highest terms of the truly Christian spirit which characterized the two leaders of the Swiss Reformation. 2 Opera, Vol. VII. pp. 693 sqq.

Ibid. pp. 717 sqq.

↑ See Hundeshagen, and Stähelin, Vol. II. pp. 125 sqq. Calvin complained on his deathbed of the ill-treatment he had repeatedly received from the government of Berne.

Opera, Vol. VII. pp. 733 sqq. These Twenty-six Articles alone are given, with Calvin's Exposition of 1554, in Niemeyer's Collectio, pp. 191-217.

mental grace to the elect.' The truth of the Zwinglian view is fully acknowledged in opposition to transubstantiation and consubstantiation, but the real life union with Christ in the sacrament is as clearly asserted, and made still more plain in the 'Exposition' of the Consensus which Calvin wrote four years afterwards (1554). The Sacraments,' he declares, are helps and media (adminicula et media), by which we are either inserted into the body of Christ, or being so inserted coalesce with it more and more, till he unites us with himself in full in the heavenly life. . . . The Sacraments are neither empty figures, nor outward badges merely of piety, but seals of the promises of God, attestations of spiritual grace for cherishing and confirming faith, organs also by which God efficaciously works in his elect."2

The Consensus was adopted by the Churches of Zurich, Geneva, St. Gall, Schaffhausen, the Grisons, Neuchatel, and, after some hesitation, by Basle, and was favorably received in France, England, and parts of Germany. Melanchthon declared to Lavater (Bullinger's son-in-law) that he then for the first time understood the Swiss, and would never again write against them; but he erased those passages of the Consensus which made the efficacy of the sacrament depend on election. While the Consensus brought peace and harmony to the Swiss Churches, it was violently assailed by Joachim Westphal, of Hamburg (1552), in the interest of the ultra-Lutheran party in Germany, and became the innocent occasion of the second sacramental war, which has been noticed in the section on the Formula Concordiæ.3

1 Art. XVI. ‘Præterea sedulo docemus, Deum non promiscue vim suam exserere in omnibus qui sacramenta recipiunt: sed tantum in electis. Nam quemadmodum non alios in fidem illuminat, quam quos præordinavit ad vitam, ita arcana Spiritus sui virtute efficit, ut percipiant electi quod offerunt sacramenta.' Yet this is qualified in Art. XVIII, 'Certum quidem est, offeri communiter omnibus Christum cum suis donis, nec hominum infidelitate labefactari Dei veritatem, quin semper vim suam retineant sacramenta: sed non omnes Christi et donorum ejus sunt capaces. Itaque ex Dei parte nihil mutatur: quantum vero ad homines spectat, quisque pro fidei suæ mensura accipit. See the lengthy discussion of Ebrard, 1. c. pp. 503 sqq. He fully adopts the doctrine of the Consensus with the exception of the predestinarian restriction, which, however, is inseparable from the Calvinistic system, as formerly held by Ebrard him

self.

**Sacramenta neque inanes esse figuras neque externa tantum pietatis insignia, sed promissionum Dei sigilla, testimonia spiritualis gratiæ ad fidem fovendam et confirmandam, item organa esse quibus efficaciter agit Deus in suis electis, ideoque, licet a rebus signatis distincta sint signa, non tamen disjungi ac separari,' etc. Niemeyer, p. 204.

See pp. 279 sqq. A full account of the controversy of Calvin with Westphal is given by Ebrard, Vol. II. pp. 525 sqq., and by Nevin in the Mercersburg Review for 1850, pp. 486 sqq.

60. THE CONSENSUS OF GENEVA. A.D. 1552.

Literature.

I. DE ETERNA Dei prædestinaTIONE qua in salutem alios ex hominibus elegit, alios suo exitio reliquit: item de providentia qua res humanas gubernat, CONSENSUS pastorum GENEVENSIS Ecclesiæ a Jo. Calvina expositus. Genevæ, 1552. Reprinted in the Opera, Vol. VIII. (1870), pp. 249-366. Also in NIEMEYRE, pp. 218-310. The German text in BÖCKEL (Die Genfer Uebereinkunft), pp. 182–250.

IL ALEX. SCHWEIZER: Die Protest. Centraldogmen der Reform. Kirche, Vol. I. (1854), pp. 180-238; HENEY, Vol. II. p. 285; Vol. III. pp. 40 sqq.; STÄHELIN, Vol. II. (1863), pp. 271-308, and Vol. I. pp. 411 sqq.

Calvin's doctrine of predestination' met with strong opposition, which drew from him some able defenses.

The first assault came from an eminent Roman Catholic divine, Albertus Pighius, 1542, who taught the freedom of will almost to the extent of Pelagianism, and conditioned predestination by foreknowledge. Calvin wrote a reply to the first part (1543), and dedicated it to Melanchthon, who in the second article of the Augsburg Confession had expressed the Augustinian doctrine of total depravity.3

A more troublesome opponent was Jerome Bolsec, formerly a Carmelite monk from Paris, then a fugitive Protestant and physician at Geneva and Lausanne, a restless and turbulent spirit. He denounced Calvin's doctrine of predestination as godless and blasphemous, and tried to break down his influence, but was publicly refuted and admonished, and at last expelled from Geneva (1551) and from Berne (1555). He returned to France and to the Roman Church (1563), and thirteen years after Calvin's death he took cruel revenge by a shameless and malignant libel (1577 and 1588), long since refuted.*

These attacks were the occasion of the Consensus Genevensis, which

1 See § 57, pp. 450 sqq.

2 Pighius of Campen (d. at Utrecht, Dec. 26, 1542) wrote against Luther and Calvin De libero hominis arbitrio et divina gratia, Colon. 1542, dedicated to Cardinal Sadolet. This book was first greatly lauded by the Romanists, but after the Council of Trent had fixed its more cautions doctrine of free-will and condemned semi-Pelagianism, it was put by the Spanish Inquisition on the Index of forbidden books.

Defensio sunce et orthodoxe doctrinæ de servitute et liberatione humani arbitrii adv. calumnias A. Pighii Campensis, Geneva, 1543. Opera, Vol. VI. pp. 225-404. On Bolsec, see Bayle, Dict.; Henry, Calv. Vol. III. pp. 48 sqq.; Trechsel, Antitrinitarier, Vol. I. pp. 185 sqq.; Baum, Beza, Vol. I. pp. 160 sqq.; and especially Schweizer, l. c. It is a sad fact that the blind zeal of modern Romanism has repeatedly repp. 205-238. published the libel of Bolsec, with its wicked and absurd charges of theft, adultery, unnatural crimes, blasphemy, insanity, and invocations of the devil. See Audin's biography of Calvin, which has gone through six editions in French (also translated into German and English), and several popular polemic tracts, published by the Society of St. Francis of Sales, of which Stähelin gives some specimens, Vol. I. p. 414.

B

first appeared at Geneva, 1552, in the name of the pastors of that city. Calvin contemptuously alludes in the preface to Bolsec, but without naming him, and directs his attack mainly against Pighius (whose doctrine of predestination he had not noticed in the previous work), and a certain Georgius of Sicily (whom he calls an ignorant monk, more deserving of contempt than persecution). The Consensus is, in fact, the second part of his controversial treatise against Pighius (the first being devoted to free-will). It is an elaborate theological argument for the doctrine of absolute predestination, as the only solid ground of comfort to the believer, but is disfigured by polemical violence, and hence unsuited for a public confession. It received the signatures of the pastors of Geneva on account of the disturbances created by Bolsec, but was not intended to be binding for future generations. Beyond Geneva it acquired no symbolical authority. The attempt to enlist the civil government in favor of this dogma created dissatisfaction and opposition in Berne, Basle, and Zurich. Several of Calvin's old friends. withdrew; Bullinger connseled peace and moderation; Fabri, of Neuchatel, declared the decree of reprobation untenable; Melanchthon, who in the mean time had changed his view on free-will and predestination, wrote to Peucer that Geneva attempted to restore Stoic fatalism, and imprisoned men for not agreeing with Zeno.'

The dissatisfaction was increased and the matter complicated by the trial and execution of Servet which soon followed (1553), and by the controversy with Castellio, which involved likewise the doctrine of predestination, together with the question of inspiration and the canon. Sebastian Castellio2 (1515-1563), a convert from Romanism, a classical philologist of unusual ability and learning, an advocate of toleration,

1

6

Bullinger prepared, March, 1553, for an English friend (Barthol. Traheron), a tract, whose title indicates his partial dissent from Calvin: De providentia Dei ejusque prædestinatione, et quod Deus non sit auctor peccati, . . . in quo quæ in Calvini formulis loquendi circa hæc improbet, candide et copiose satis exponit, 3 Mart. 1553.' (Appended by mistake to Peter Martyr's Loci communes, Gen. 1626. See the extracts of Schweizer from a MS. copy in Zurich, Centraldogmen, Vol. I. pp. 266 sqq.). Bullinger disapproved of the supralapsarian assertion, ‘Deum non modo ruinam (lapsum) prævidisse sed etiam arbitrio suo dispensasse.' Nevertheless, he called Peter Martyr, who was a strict predestinarian, to Zurich, took sides with Zanchi in the Strasburg controversy, and expressed the infralapsarian view in the Second Helvetic Confession, Art. X. See J. H. Hottinger, Histor. eccles. Vol. VIII. p. 723; Schweizer, pp. 237 and

255 $99.

Also written Castallio (by Calvin); in French, Chateillon and Chatillon, probably from his birth-place in Savoy.