sacred word. Leaving them, however, to prove this as they can, we proceed to trace the history of this communion.

On reviewing the æra of Wickliffe, among other instances of his superior knowledge of Christian verities, we noticed his opinion, that, in the primitive times, there were but the two orders of priests and deacons. The reformers seem, however, to have at first supposed that the corruptions of the Christian church were confined to its doctrines and forms of of, devotion. Without paying much attention to ecclesiastical discipline, the defence of his sentiments and manner of worship seems to have furnished sufficient employment for the ardent soul of Luther. And who can wonder that men just emerged from the thickest darkness, saw not every thing clearly at first? It was reserved for Calvin to give notoriety to a sentiment, which, to every unprejudiced mind, must appear sufficiently probable, that the ancient regimen of the church of Christ had been abandoned, and a corrupt system of ecclesiastical discipline introduced to suit the ambition and avarice of those who had converted the Christian temple into a house of merchandise, a den of thieves. To the reformer of Geneva it appeared, that, if the bishop of Rome was the image of the beast, which had been set up for idolatrous worship, the other lord bishops of the church were the lofty pedestal on which it had been erected; so that a complete reformation must, with the image, destroy also the base on which it stood. But Calvin was not the mere architect of ruin. Conceiving that he had discovered in the sacred books, the form of government which Christ originally established in the Christian church, by the ministry of his apostles,

he deemed it the imperious duty of a reformer to restore this primitive code to its ancient authority and use; in order to secure to the Christian church the complete and permanent benefit of those changes which had been so recently and happily effected.

Farrel having induced the inhabitants of Geneva to expel their popish bishop, and his religion, from the city, earnestly importuned Calvin to come and perfect their reformation. This he refused, unless they would engage to submit to the plan of ecclesiastical discipline which he had drawn out, and of which we have given the outlines in the account of presbyterian government. Though the Genevese consented, it cannot be supposed that the promiscuous multitude, which formed the population of a large city and its surrounding territory, who, yesterday, were grovelling in the ignorance and licentiousness of popery, should feel prepared to submit to all that rigour of discipline, which might suit a single church of real Christians. Some of the magistrates and principal citizens having indulged themselves in amusements, which Calvin and his brethren in the consistory of the church condemned, the stern reformer pronounced on them the same censure, as would have been employed to restrain the licentiousness of the lowest orders of the city. Galled by the yoke, the citizens rose, burst it asunder, and expelled Calvin and Farrel from Geneva. This would have been a profitable lesson, had it induced the exiles to reflect, that their model of discipline, allowing it to be drawn from the sacred Scriptures, was there exhibited as the regulations, not of a whole state, but of a church, or a community, gathered out of the world,

and formed by divine grace to tempers and habits suited to the high tone of morals, at which the Genevese spurned.

Calvin retired to Strasburg, where he taught theology, and preached the Gospel. When the citizens of Geneva began to cool, they reflected on the purity of his life, the extent of his learning, the celebrity of his labours, and the dignity of his character; while they could not see, without envious regret, the numerous and distinguished scholars, whom his unrivalled fame attracted to the city of his residence. They invited his return, promising to yield obedience to his favourite discipline, in which they faithfully persevered till his death".

As Calvin was a native of France, resided on the borders of that country, and had dedicated his celebrated Institutes to its monarch, Francis the first, the French protestants embraced the system of their renowned countryman. They were, at first, supposed to be Lutherans; but it is probable that, when the Saxon reformer rose into notice, they had not yet considered the points in which those two great men differed, and that they joined with Luther only in his hostility to Rome. The presbyterian discipline, adopted by a body so numerous and important as the French protestants, appeared in great splendor. They formed a twelfth part of the population of France, boasted of many whole towns, which were exclusively protestant, and reckoned among the members of their communion several of the most powerful of the nobility. Indeed it was their unhappiness, and their error, if not their crime, to have formed great political alliances; so that they were b Bayle Dictionaire, au mot de Calvin.

1

considered almost as a smaller independent state, within the larger, and were in possession of several of the fortified towns of the kingdom. Henry the third gave them in Dauphiné alone no fewer than fourteen. The massacre which commenced at Paris under Charles the ninth, in the year one thousand five hundred and seventy-one, destroyed thirty thousand of them in two months. At length, through many vicissitudes, and furious civil wars, they obtained from Henry the fourth, who had been educated in their communion, the famous edict of Nantz, which was granted in the year one thousand five hundred and ninety-eight, and formed for near a century the magna charta of their religious liberties. But in the year one thousand six hundred and eightyfive, Louis the fourteenth crowned a life of infidel debaucheries, with the revocation of the edict, and the horrors of a persecution, which laid in ashes their once flourishing church.

Calvin was in high estimation among the protestant cantons of Switzerland, where the presbyterian discipline was early established. Berne, Zurich, and Basle, however, refused to submit to all the strictness which obtained at Genevad.

When the inhabitants of the Netherlands burst at once the fetters of Rome and Spain, and formed the republic of the united provinces, they hesitated, for a time, between Luther and Calvin. Each of these communions could reckon in the states some very powerful friends and patrons. But the doctrines of Calvin, and the presbyterian discipline, triumphed

Siecle de Louis XIV. par M. de Voltaire.

d Mosheim.

in one thousand seven hundred and fifty-one, and have been, ever since, maintained.

The palatinate received the first light of the reformation from the disciples of Luther; but the elector, Frederick the third, afterwards introduced the system of Geneva. The new profession was obliged to yield again to its predecessor for a time; but was, at last, firmly established. Mosheim affirms, that the church of the palatinate holds the second rank among the reformed; for this term, which, with us, is the denomination of all protestants, is employed on the continent of Europe to distinguish the Calvinists from the Lutherans. Hesse Cassel, with some other states of the German empire, maintains the presbyterian discipline, which is also adopted by the protestants of Piedmont, Hungary, Transylvania, and some parts both of Prussia and Poland.

The presbyterian discipline was also introduced into Britain. For while Calvin was exhausting his mighty powers in various useful labours at Geneva, the famous Scotchman, John Knox, became pastor of an English presbyterian church in that city. This apostle of the Scots' reformation had been a subtle theologian in the church of Rome; but by reading the works of Jerome and Austin, he became enamoured of the sacred Scriptures. Before he was, personally acquainted with Calvin, he had refused, with a kind of horror, a bishoprick, which king Edward had offered him; inveighing against prelatical episcopacy as a remnant of popish superstition. For this, Beza, who has been represented as favourably disposed towards the English hierarchy, bestows on him the highest eulogiums. On the accession of Bayle Dictionaire, au mot de Knox.

* Mosheim.