Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

LEGEND CONCERNING CALVIN.

137

his departure, a curious testimony of the priests as to the power of this great man, and the dread with which his presence, his influence, and his labours, were regarded among them.

Mine host told me a curious story, which he said was current and firmly believed in the city and the valley as to the cause of Calvin's flight, which was that he had promised the people, as a sign of the truth of his teaching, to raise a dead man to life; that he made the attempt and failed, and that the whole city was so enraged against him that he had to flee at midnight, or rather at eleven o'clock, across the Grand St. Bernard, to save himself from destruction. As a proof of this legend, the inhabitants of Aoste, to commemorate this event, have ever since made the hour of eleven their midday and midnight, so that they dine at eleven instead of twelve, and consider eleven as noon. They dine and sleep on the remembrance of Calvin's flight from their holy Romish Apostolic city. Much good may it do them. It is a dream, which mingles with their dreams, and facilitates their digestion; the inscription on the monument is as good to them as wine after dinner; and much more innocent is it than many other Popish lies and superstitions, of which the ridiculous legend about Calvin raising a dead body bears the stamp of a notable example.

One of the most striking features in the character of this great man (as in that of all the prominent Reformers) was the extreme remove of his mind from everything like fanaticism. Without being a Stoic, he was one of the calmest of them all. They were all remarkably characterized by strong faith, a living faith, celestial but sober, as men who see realities, and never degenerating into presumption or fanatical pretence. The whole life of Calvin, as the steady burning of a uniform but intense energy, reminds us of Foster's original remark in regard to the fire of Howard's benevolence: "it was the calmness of an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the character of the individual forbidding it to be less." Intense, unremitting determination, so intense "that if, instead of being habitual, it had been shown only for a short time on particular occasions, it would have appeared a vehement impetuosity," never had a

more signal exhibition. Calmly, but rapidly, it burnt his life to the socket. Of him, as of Howard, one might wonder what must have been the amount of that bribe, in emolument or pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive, after the final adjustment of his plans. It was this inflexible decision of mind, as much as the largeness and acuteness of his intellect, and the depth of his piety, which gave him such supreme influence and sway in the Genevese republic. Perhaps it was more this than all his other great qualities, in which his friends, and they who were much older than himself, felt his superiority.

Calvin was not a man to attempt a miracle, but to strip the disguise from every pretender. It would have been a strange hallucination indeed, if his clear intellect, and uniform logical passion, had ever taken the form of a miracle-working enthusiasm. He was the incarnation of the Logic of the Reformation, as Melancthon was of its Benevolence, Zuingle of its Zeal, and Luther of its Faith, Boldness, and Hope. It was not a mere scholastic Logic, but rich and large, and at the same time simple and natural, and all informed, permeated, and kindled by Divine Truth. It was not subtlety, but the faculty of keen, clear insight, without the rambling of a thought, and of rigid, severe expression, without the waste of a word. In Calvin's life and character, two great qualities met, Method and Passion; not the creations of the senses, but deep in the soul; qualities of Intellect and Duty, the mould and frame-work of the man.

And now as to intolerance. If it came under the guise of an angel, we should hate it; and we abhor it not the less, where it is an accident in a system of truth, than where it is the very spirit, demand, and breathing necessity of a system of error. It grows out of the Romish system at all times; it has attached itself to the system of the Reformation sometimes; it springs almost inevitably from the union of Church and State with any system whatever. The intolerance of the Reformed Churches has been the detestable fruit of this detestable connection.

Edmund Burke once remarked that "the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity." Calvin was distinguished for these virtues, and perhaps he bore his faculties as meekly as any mortal

[blocks in formation]

mixture of earth's mould could have done, endowed with them so highly. They are of an unbending class, and may sometimes put the mind out of a proper sympathy for human weakness. But the secret of that intolerance which sometimes darkened the progress of the Reformation, and which has been permitted to throw so deep a shade over the character of Calvin, has been better told by Coleridge than by any other writer.

"At the Reformation," said he, "the first Reformers were beset with an almost morbid anxiety not to be considered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew that the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the brand of heresy upon them whenever a fair pretext could be found; and I have no doubt it was the excess of this fear which at once led to the burning of Servetus, and also to the thanks offered by all the Protestant Churches, to Calvin and the Church of Geneva, for burning him."

Poor human nature! A wiser and still more loving John than Calvin would once have burned all Samaria, if our blessed Lord would have permitted it. But Grace shall one day take all these wrinkles from the Church of Christ, and present it without spot, fair as the Moon, clear as the Sun, and terrible as an army with banners.

Mark the perverted and fanatical use which James and John would have made of the example of Elias! "Lord! wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?" But what a sweet rebuke was that which restrained and corrected a zeal so mingled with the unrighteous spirit! "The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.' Who could have thought, after this, that fire to burn up erring men would have passed into the Church as one of its great sacraments, "Acts of Faith," and most solemn celebrations of worship? But in so doing, it constitutes one of the most glaring, evident seals, not of the Church of Christ but of Anti-Christ. Whoever adopts it adopts a seal of the Great Apostacy.

Mark you, also, that James and John, before they would have used it, consulted their Divine Master-"Lord, wilt thou that we command fire?" If always, in such a mood, men had so consulted Christ, when thinking of applying fire, they would

have found out its wickedness; they would have received and felt the answer, Ye know not what spirit ye are of.

It is remarkable that death by burning has always been considered as consecrated, if I may so speak, to the crime of a rẹligious faith. It is the Baptism of Fire, with which the Court of Rome preeminently has chosen to finish and perfect the etherealization of those noble spirits, who in the midst of torture and death opposed her errors and her despotism. It is the only Sacrament that Romish bigotry and superstition have ever granted to heretics; the sacrament with which a multitude of souls of the best mould ever shaped have been dismissed in a chariot of fire to Immortality.

CHAPTER XXI.

ANTIQUITIES, CALAMITIES AND BY-LAWS OF AOSTE.— Τ
MONT BLANC FROM IVROGNE.

THE old Romans left a more enduring memorial of their resi dence and conquests in the city of Aoste than Calvin did of his. There is a triumphal arch erected by Augustus twentyfour years before Christ, a Roman bridge across the river, and a remarkable double Roman gate or entrance to the city. There are ruins of an amphitheatre, subterranean vaults, and many fragments of antiquity and use unknown. Mine host carried me into one of the long subterranean passages beneath the city, built, it is said, by the ancient native inhabitants before the time of the Romans; now half filled and choked with rubbish, but running in different directions clear across the city, and even, it is said, under the bed of the river. The old city in the time of the Romans was called Cordéle, the chief city of the Salassi.

The city is most beautiful in its position, close to the junction of the rivers Buttier and Doire, in the centre of a luxurious valley, from many points of which you can see both the Mont Blanc and the snowy ranges of the grand St. Bernard. Magnificient mountains, girdled with beautiful verdure far up to

[blocks in formation]

wards their rocky summits, enclose the valley, and rich vineyards cover their beautiful slopes below. In the eleventh century Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in this. city, and St. Bernard in his day was Archdeacon of Aoste, so that it is a city of great names and memories in other triumphs than the flight of Calvin.

The inhabitants speak French, and are horribly disfigured with cretinism and goitre, enormous bag necks, and idiots or cretins, meeting you, in both men and women, in almost every street. What a calamity is this! and amidst such fertility and beauty, such softness, sweetness, purity, and luxuriance of nature! While nature smiles (Foster sadly remarks), there are many pale countenances that do not. But sadder is the sight of a living face, from which the last gleam of intellect has departed, than of many dreadful forms of pain and misery. This fearful disease of cretinism excludes its victims from society, and reduces them to the level of brutes. Men of science have endeavoured without success to discover its cause and arrest its progress. Saussure supposed that it is occasioned by a vicious atmosphere, not changed and renewed, and wanting in certain elements necessary to the healthful development of man. But if this were the case, why should not all the inhabitants of the village feel it? Why should it decimate them? Why should any escape? Strange, indeed, and dreadfully subtile and penetrating, must that peculiarity in the atmosphere be which passes through the frame to attack the intellect.

Mine host told me that the goitre was to be attributed to the filthy habits of the people, who live in the stables with the cattle, in winter, for the sake of warmth: this is not improbable, but again, on the other hand, there are communities quite as filthy in various parts of the world, where this goitre never yet made its appearance. The streets of the city are clean, and indeed, in the midst of most of them a clear running stream from the mountains pours over the pavements. Fruits are

abundant and delicious; moreover it was the season of strawberries, with plenty of cream.

I was amused with looking over the exposition of the articles of law relative to the government of the city. No loud singing

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »