Footnotes

1. Article on “Calvin’s Institutio, nach Form und Inhalt, in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung,” printed in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken for 1868, p. 39. Köstlin’s whole account of the origin of these sections in the edition of 1539 is worth reading (pp. 38–39). ↩

2. “Institutes,” I. iii. 1: Quemdam inesse humanae menti, et quidem naturali instinctu, divinitatis sensum, extra controversiam ponimus; iii. 3, ad init.: “This indeed with all rightly judging men will always be assured, that there is engraved on the minds of men divinitatis sensum, qui deleri numquam potest”; iii. 3, med.: vigere tamen ac subinde emergere quem maxime extinctum cuperent, deitatis sensum; iv. 4, ad fin.: naturaliter insculptum esse deitatis sensum humanis cordibus; iv. 4, ad fin.: manet tamen semen illud quod revelli a radice nullo modo potest, aliquam esse divinitatem. The phraseology by which Calvin designates this “natural instinct” (naturalis instinctus; iii. 1, ad init.) varies from sensus divinitatis or sensus deitatis to such synonyms as: numinis intelligentia, dei notio, dei notitia. It is the basis on the one hand of whatever cognitio dei man attains to and on the other of whatever religio he reaches; whence it is called the semen religionis. ↩

3. That the knowledge of God is innate was the common property of the Reformed teachers. Peter Martyr, “Loci Communes,” 1576, praef., declares that Dei cognitio omnium animis naturaliter innata[est]. It was thrown into great prominence in the Socinian debate, as the Socinians contended that the human mind is natively a tabula rasa and all knowledge is acquired. But in defending the innate knowledge of God, the Reformed doctors were very careful that it should not be exaggerated. Thus Leonh. Riissen, “F. Turretini Compendium … auctum et illustratum,” 1695, i. 8, remarks: “Some recent writers explain the natural sense of deity (numinis) as an idea of God impressed on our minds. If this idea is understood as an innate faculty for knowing God after some fashion, it should not be denied; but if it expresses an actual and adequate representation of God from our birth, it is to be entirely rejected.” (Heppe, “Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche,” 1861, p. 4.) ↩

4. En quid sit pura germanaque religio, nempe fides, cum serio Dei timore coniuncta; ut timor et voluntariam reverentiam in se contineat, et secum trahat ligitimum cultum, qualis in Lege praescribitur. ↩

5. The significance and relations of “the Puritan principle” of absolute dependence on the Word of God as the source of knowledge of His will, and exclusive limitation to its prescriptions of doctrine, life, and even form of Church government and worship, are suggested by J. A. Dorner, “Hist. of Protest. Theol.,” 1871, i. p. 390, who criticizes it sharply from his “freer” Lutheran standpoint. But even Luther knew how, on occasion, to invoke “the Puritan principle.” Writing to Bartime von Sternberg, Sept. 1, 1523, he says: “For a Christian must do nothing that God has not commanded, and there is no command as to such masses and vigils, but it is solely their own invention, which brings in money, without helping either living or dead” (“The Letters of Martin Luther” (selected and translated) by Margaret A. Currie, 1908, p. 115). ↩

6. Cf. P. J. Muller, “De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn,” 1883, p. 8: “If Zwingli follows more the a priori, Calvin follows the a posteriori method”; and E. Rabaud, “Hist. de la doctrine de l’inspiration, etc.,” 1883, p. 58: “his lucid and, above everything, practical genius.” ↩

7. It is this distribution of Calvin’s interest which leads to the impression that he lays little stress on “the theistic proofs.” On the contrary, he asserts their validity most strenuously: only he does not believe that any proofs can work true faith apart from “the testimony of the Spirit,” and he is more interested in their value for developing the knowledge of God than for merely establishing His existence. Hence P. J. Muller is wrong when he denies the one to affirm the other, as, e.g., in his “De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn,” 1883, p. 11: “Neither by Zwingli nor by Calvin are proofs offered for the existence of God, although some passages in their writings seem to contain suggestions of them. The proposition, ‘God exists,’ needed no proof either for themselves, or for their coreligionists, or even against Rome. The so-called cosmological argument has no doubt been found by some in Zwingli (Zeller, Das theolog. Syst. Zwingli’s extracted from the Theol. Jahrbücher, Tübingen, 1853, p. 33; [or p. 126 in the Th. Jahrb.]), and the physico-theological in Calvin (Lipsius, Lehrbuch der ev. prot. Dogmatik, ed. 2, 1879, p. 213); but it would not be difficult to show that we have to do in neither case with a philosophical deduction, but only with a means for attaining the complete knowledge of God.” Though Calvin (also Zwingli) makes use of the theistic proofs to develop the knowledge of God, it does not follow that he (or Zwingli) did not value them as proofs of the existence of God. And we do not think Muller is successful (pp. 12 sq.) in explaining away the implication of the latter in Zwingli’s use of these theistic arguments, or in Calvin’s (p. 16). Schweizer, “Glaubenslehre der ev.-ref. Kirche,” 1844, i. p. 250, finds in Calvin’s citation of Cicero’s declaration that there is no nation so barbarous, no tribe so degraded, that it is not persuaded that a God exists, an appeal to the so-called historical argument for the divine existence (cf. the use of it by Zwingli, “Opera,” Schuler und Schultess ed., 1832, iii. p. 156): but Calvin’s real attitude to the theistic argument is rather to be sought in the implications of the notably eloquent ch. v. ↩

8. P. J. Muller, “De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn,” 1883, pp. 18 sq., does not seem to bear this in mind, although he had clearly stated it in his “De Godsleer van Calvijn,” 1881, pp. 13–25. ↩

9. Cf. F. C. Baur, “Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, etc.,” iii. 1843, p. 41: “From this point of view”—he is expounding Calvin’s doctrine—“the several manifestations in the history of religions are conceived not as stages in the gradually advancing evolution of the religious consciousness, but as inexcusable, sinful aberrations, as wilful perversions and defacements of the inborn idea of God.” ↩

10. Cf. J. Cramer, Nieuwe Bijdragen op het gebied van Godgeleerdheid en Wijsbegeerte, iii. 1881, p. 102: “By the Scripture or the Scriptures he [Calvin] understood the books of the Old and New Testaments which have been transmitted to us by the Church as canonical, as the rule of faith and life. The Apocrypha of the O. T. as they were determined by the Council of Trent, he excludes. They are to him indeed libri ecclesiastici, in many respects good and useful to be read; but they are not libri canonici ‘ad fidem dogmatum faciendam’ (Acta Synodi Tridentinae, cum antidoto, 1547).” In a later article, “De Roomsch-Katholieke en de Oud-protestantsche Schriftbeschouwing,” 1883, p. 36, Cramer declares that by the Scriptures, Calvin means “nothing else than the canon, established by the Synods of Hippo and Carthage, and transmitted by the Catholic Church, with the exception of the so-called Apocrypha of the O. T.,” etc. Cf. Leipoldt, “Geschichte des N. T. Kanons,” ii. 1908, p. 149: “We obtain the impression that it is only for form’s sake that Calvin undertakes to test whether the disputed books are canonical or not. In reality it is already a settled matter with him that they are. Calvin feels himself therefore in the matter of the N. T. canon bound to the mediæval tradition.” Cf. also Otto Ritschl, “Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus,” i. 1908, pp. 70, 71, to the same effect. ↩

11. Cf. e.g. J. Pannier, “Le témoignage du Saint-Esprit,” 1893, pp. 112 sq.: “One fact strikes us at first sight: not only did Calvin not comment on the Aprochryphal books, for which he wrote a very short preface, which was ever more and more abridged in the successive editions, but he did not comment on all the Canonical books. And if lack of time may explain the passing over of some of the less important historical books of the Old Testament, it was undoubtedly for a graver reason that he left to one side the three books attributed to Solomon, notably the Song of Songs. ‘In the New Testament there is ordinarily mentioned only the Apocalypse, neglected by Calvin undoubtedly for critical or theological motives analogous to those which determined the most of his contemporaries, but it is necessary to note that the two lesser epistles of John are also lacking, and that in speaking of the large epistle Calvin always expresses himself as if it were the only existing one’ (Reuss, Revue de Théologie de Strasbourg, vi. 1853, p. 229). In effect, at the very time when he was defending particularly the authority of the Scriptures against the Council of Trent, when he was dedicating to Edward VI, the King of England, his Commentaries on the ‘Epistles which are accustomed to be called Canonical’ (1551), he included in the Canon only the First Epistle of Peter, the First Epistle of John, James and, at the very end, the Second Epistle of Peter and Jude.”—Reuss, however, in his “History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Church” (1863, E. T. 1884), greatly modifies the opinion here quoted from him: “Some have believed it possible to affirm that he [Calvin] rejected the Apocalypse because it was the only book of the N. T., except the two short Epistles of John, on which he wrote no commentary. But that conclusion is too hasty. In the Institutes, the Apocalypse is sometimes quoted like the other Apostolic writings, and even under John’s name. If there was no commentary, it was simply that the illustrious exegete, wiser in this respect than several of his contemporaries and many of his successors, understood that his vocation called him elsewhere” (p. 318). He adds, indeed, of II and III John: “It might be said with more probability that Calvin did not acknowledge the canonicity of these two writings. He never quotes them, and he quotes the First Epistle of John in a way to exclude them: Joannes in sua canonica, Instit. iii. 2. 21; 3. 23 (Opp. ii. 415, 453).” But this opinion requires revision, just as that on the Apocalypse did, as we shall see below. Cf. further, in the meantime: Reuss, “Hist. of the Sacred Scriptures of the N. T.,” 1884, ii. p. 347, and S. Berger, “La Bible au seizième siècle,” 1879, p. 120, who expresses himself most positively: “Calvin expresses no judgment on the lesser Epistles of St. John. But we remark that he never cites them and that he mentions the First in these terms: ‘As John says in his canonical.’ This word excludes, in the thought of the author, the two other Epistles attributed to this Apostle.” ↩

12. This may have been the case with the Apocalypse, which not only Reuss, as we have seen, but Scaliger thought him wise not to have entered upon; and which he is—perhaps credibly—reported to have said in conversation he did not understand (cf. Leipoldt’s “Geschichte des N. T. Kanons,” ii. 1908, p. 148, note). But how impossible it is to imagine that this implies any doubt of the canonicity or authority of the book will be quickly evident to anyone who will note his frequent citation of it in the same fashion with other Scripture and alongside of other Scripture (e.g. Opp. i. 736 = ii. 500; i. 953 = ii. 957; i. 1033 = ii. 1063; i. 1148; ii. 88, 859; v. 191, 196, 532; vi. 176; vii. 29, 118, 333; xxxi. 650), sometimes mentioning it by name (vii. 469; i. 733 = ii. 497), sometimes by the name of John (i. 715 = ii. 492, viii. 338 [along with I John]), sometimes by the name of both “John” and “the Apocalypse” (ii. 124, vii. 116, xxx. 651, xlviii. 122), and always with reverence and confidence as a Scriptural book. He even expressly cites it under the name of Scripture and explicitly as the dictation of the Spirit: vii. 559, “Fear not, says the Scripture (Eccles. 18:22).… Again (Rev. 22:11) … and (John 15:2)”; i. 624: “Elsewhere also the Spirit testifies …” (along with Daniel and Paul). Cf. also such passages as ii. 734, “Nor does the Apocalypse which they quote afford them any support …”; xlviii. 238: “I should like to ask the Papists if they think John was so stupid that … etc. (Rev. 22:8)”; also vi. 369; v. 198. ↩

13. *We use the simple expression “the Epistle of John”; the apparently, but only apparently, stronger and more exclusive, “the Canonical Epistle of John,” which Calvin employs, although it would be misleading in our associations, is its exact synonym. Those somewhat numerous writers who have quoted the form “the Canonical Epistle of John” as if its use implied the denial of the canonicity of the other epistles of John forget that this was the ordinary designation in the West of the Catholic Epistles—“the Seven Canonical Epistles”—and that they are all currently cited by this title by Western writers. The matter has been set right by A. Lang: “Die Bekehrung Johannis Calvins” (II. i. of Bonwetsch and Seeberg’s “Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche,” 1897, pp. 26–29). On the title “Canonical Epistles” for the Catholic Epistles, see Lücke, SK. 1836, iii. pp. 643–650; Bleek, “Introd. to the N. T.,” § 202 at end (vol. ii. 1874, p. 135); Hilgenfeld, “Einleitung in d. N. T.,” 1875, p. 153; Westcott, “Epp. of St. John,” 1883, p. xxix.; Salmond, Hastings’ BD. i. 1898, p. 360. In 1551, Calvin published his “Commentarii in Epistolas Canonicas”—that is on the Catholic Epistles; also his “Commentaire sur l’Épistre Canonique de St. Jean,” i.e. on “the Epistle of John”; also his “Commentaire sur l’Épistre Canonique de St. Jude.” Calvin does not seem ever to have happened to quote from II and III John. The reference given in the Index printed in Opp. xxii., viz., 3 John 9, Opp. xb. 81, occurs in a letter, not by Calvin but by Christof Libertetus to Farel. Cf. J. Leipoldt, “Geschichte des N. T. Kanons” (2nd Part, Leipzig, 1908), p. 148, note 1: “The smaller Johannine Epistles Calvin seems never to have cited. He cites I John in Inst. III. ii. 21 by the formula: dicit Johannes in sua canonica. Nevertheless it is very questionable whether inferences can be drawn from this formula as to Calvin’s attitude to II and III John.” He adds a reference to Lang as above. ↩

14. Pannier, as cited, p. 113. ↩

15. Opera, xi. 674–676: cf. Buisson, “Castellion,” 1892, i. pp. 198–199. Buisson discusses the whole incident and quotes from the minutes of the Council before which Castellion brought the matter: the point of dispute is there briefly expressed thus: “Moss^r Calvin recognizes as holy, and the said Bastian repudiates” (p. 197) the book in question. ↩

16. Calvin employs all these “three books attributed to Solomon” freely as Scripture and deals with them precisely as he does with other Scriptures. As was to be expected, he cites Proverbs most frequently, Canticles least: but he cites them all as Solomon’s and as authoritative Scripture. “ ‘I have washed my feet’ says the believing soul in Solomon …” is the way he cites Canticles (Opp. i. 778, ii. 589). “They make a buckler of a sentence of Solomon’s, which is as contrary to them as is no other that is in the Scriptures” (vii. 130) is the way he cites Ecclesiastes. He indeed expressly contrasts Ecclesiastes as genuine Scripture with the Apocryphal books: “As the soul has an origin apart, it has also another preëminence, and this is what Solomon means when he says that at death the body returns to the earth from which it was taken and the soul returns to God who gave it (Eccl. 12:7). For this reason it is said in the Book of Wisdom (2:23) that man is immortal, seeing that he was created in the image of God. This is not an authentic book of Holy Scripture, but it is not improper to avail ourselves of its testimony as of an ancient teacher (Docteur ancien)—although the single reason ought to be enough for us that the image of God, as it has been placed in man, can reside only in an immortal soul, etc.” (vii. 112, written in 1544). ↩

17. Cf. A. Bossert, “Calvin,” 1906, p. 6: “Humanist himself as well as profound theologian …”; Charles Borgeaud, “Histoire de l’Université de Genève,” 1900, p. 21: “Before he was a theologian, Calvin was a Humanist.…” ↩

18. Cf. the Preface he prefixed to the Apocryphal Books (for the history of which, see Opera, ix. 827, note): “These books which are called Apocryphal have in all ages been discriminated from those which are without difficulty shown to be of the Sacred Scriptures. For the ancients, wishing to anticipate the danger that any profane books should be mixed with those which certainly proceeded from the Holy Spirit, made a roll of these latter which they called ‘Canon’; meaning by this word that all that was comprehended under it was the assured rule to which we should attach ourselves. Upon the others they imposed the name of Apocrypha; denoting that they were to be held as private writings and not authenticated, like public documents. Accordingly the difference between the former and latter is the same as that between an instrument, passed before a notary, and sealed to be received by all, and the writing of some particular man. It is true they are not to be despised, seeing that they contain good and useful doctrine. Nevertheless it is only right that what we have been given by the Holy Spirit should have preëminence above all that has come from men.” Cf., in his earliest theological treatise, the “Psychopannychia “of 1534–1542 (Opp. v. 182), where, after quoting Ecclus. 17:1 and Wisd. 2:23 as “two sacred writers,” he adds: “I would not urge the authority of these writers strongly on our adversaries, did they not oppose them to us. They may be allowed, however, some weight, if not as canonical, yet certainly as ancient, as pious, and as received by the suffrages of many. But let us omit them and let us retain …” etc. In the “Psychopannychia” his dealing with Baruch on the other hand is more wavering. On one occasion (p. 205) it is quoted with the formula, “sic enim loquitur propheta,” and on another (p. 227), “in prophetia Baruch” corrected in 1542. In the “Institutes” of 1536 he quotes it as Scripture: “alter vero propheta scribit” (Opp. i. 82)—referring back to Daniel. This is already corrected in 1539 (i. 906; cf. ii. 632). In 1534–1536, then, he considered Baruch canonical: afterwards not so. His dealing with it in v. 271 (1537), vi. 560 (1545), vi. 638 (1546) is ad hominem. ↩

19. “Acta Synodi Tridentinae, cum antidoto” (1547), Opp. vii. 365–506. ↩

20. “Vera ecclesiae reformandae ratio,” Opp. vii. 613: quae divinitus non esse prodita, sani omnes, saltem ubi moniti fuerint, iudicabunt. ↩

21. “Acta Synodi Tridentinae, cum antidoto,” Opp. vi. 413: Quantum, obsecro, a Spiritus Sancti maiestati aliena est haec confessio! ↩

22. This is translated from the French version, ed. Meyrueis, iv. 1865, p. 743. The Latin is the same, though somewhat more concise: nihil habet Petro indignum, ut vim spiritus apostolici et gratiam ubique exprimat … eam prorsus repudiare mihi religio est. ↩

23. Haec autem fictio indigna esset ministro Christi, obtendere alienam personam. ↩

24. Ed. Meyrueis, iv. p. 780. ↩

25. Ibid., iv. p. 362. ↩

26. Ibid., iv. p. 694. Latin: mihi ad epistolam hanc recipiendam satis est, quod nihil continet Christi apostolo indignum. ↩

27. Cf. J. Cramer, as cited, p. 126: “It was thus, in the first place, as the result of scientific investigations that Calvin fixed the limits of the canon … not a priori, but a posteriori, that he came to the recognition of the canonicity of the Biblical books.” But especially see the excellently conceived passage on pp. 155–6, to the following effect: “What great importance Calvin attaches to the question whether a Biblical book is apostolic! If it is not apostolic, he does not recognize it as canonical. To determine its apostolicity, he appeals not merely to the ecclesiastical tradition of its origin, but also and principally to its contents. This is what he does in the case of all the antilegomena. The touchstone for this is found in the homologoumena. That he undertakes no investigation of the apostolic origin of these latter is a matter of course. This, for him and for all his contemporaries, stood irreversibly settled. The touchstone employed by Calvin is a scientific one. The testimonium Spiritus Sancti no doubt made its influence felt. But without the help of the scientific investigation, this internal testimony would not have the power to elevate the book into a canonical book. That Calvin was treading here in the footprints of the ancient Church will be understood. The complaint sometimes brought against the Christians of the earliest centuries is unfounded, that they held all writings canonical in which they found their own dogmatics. No doubt they attached in their criticism great weight to this. But not less to the question whether the origin of the books was traceable back to the apostolical age, and their contents accorded with apostolic doctrine, as it might be learned from the indubitably apostolic writings. So far as science had been developed in their day, they employed it in the formation of the canon.…” In a later article Cramer says: “In the determination of the compass of Scripture, he [Calvin], like Luther, took his start from the writings which more than the others communicated the knowledge of Christ in His kingdom and had been recognized always by the Church as genuine and trustworthy. Even if the results of his criticism were more in harmony than was the case with those of the German reformer with the ecclesiastical tradition, he yet walked in the self-same critical pathway. He took over the canon of the Church just as little as its version and its exegesis without scrutiny” (“De Roomsch-Katholieke en de Oud-protestansche Schriftbeschouwing,” 1883, pp. 31–32). Cramer considers this critical procedure on Calvin’s part inconsistent with his doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit, but (p. 38) he recognizes that we cannot speak of it as the nodding of Homer: “It is not here and there, but throughout; not in his exegetical writings alone, but in his dogmatic ones, too, that he walks in this critical path. We never find the faintest trace of hesitation.” ↩

28. Comment on John 8:1 (Meyrueis’ ed. of the Commentaries, ii. 1854, p. 169). ↩

29. Comment on 1 John 5:7 (Meyrueis’ ed. of the Commentaries, iv. 1855, p. 682). ↩

30. Quomodo Jeremiae nomen obrepserit, me nescire fateor, nec anxie laboro; certe Jeremiae nomen errore positum esse pro Zacharia res ipsa ostendit; quia nihil tale apud Jeremiam legitur (Opera, xlv. 749). ↩

31. Opera, iii. 100, note 3. ↩

32. Cf. J. Cramer, as cited, pp. 116–117: “Calvin does not largely busy himself with textual criticism. He follows the text which was generally received in his day. It deserves notice only that he exercises a free and independent judgment and recognizes the rights of science.” Cramer adduces his treatment of 1 John 5:7 and proceeds: “He comes forward on scientific grounds against the Vulgate. The decree of Trent that this version must be followed as ‘authentical,’ he finds silly; and reverence for it as if it had fallen down from heaven, ludicrous. ‘How can anyone dispute the right to appeal to the original text? And what a bad version this is! There are scarcely three verses in any page well rendered’ (Acta Synod. Trident., etc., pp. 414–416).” ↩

33. “Institutes,” I. viii. 10. Cf. I. vi. 2–3. ↩

34. I. vii. 5, ad init.: “We have received it from God’s own mouth by the ministry of men.” ↩

35. It is quite common to represent Calvin as without a theory, at least an expressed theory, of the relation of the divine and human authors of Scripture. Thus J. Cramer, as cited, p. 103, says: “How we are to understand the relation of the divine and human activities through which the Scriptures were produced is not exactly defined by Calvin. A precise theory of inspiration such as we meet with in the later dogmaticians is not found in him.” Cramer is only sure that Calvin did not hold to the theory which later Protestants upheld: “It is true that Calvin gave the impulse [from which the later dogmatic view of Scripture grew up], more than any other of the Reformers. But we must not forget that here we can speak of nothing more than the impulse. We nowhere find in Calvin such a magical conception of the Bible as we find in the later dogmaticians. It is true he used the term ‘dictare’ and other expressions which he employs under the influence of the terminology of his day, but on the other hand—in how many respects does he recognize the human factor in the Scriptures!” (p. 142). Similarly Pannier, as cited, p. 200: “In any case Calvin has not written a single word which can be appealed to in favor of literal inspiration. What is divine for him, if there is anything specifically divine beyond the contents, the brightness of which is reflected upon the container, is the sense of each book, or at most of each phrase,—never the employment of each word. Calvin would have deplored the petty dogmatics of the Consensus Helveticus, which declares the vowel points of the Hebrew text inspired, and the exaggerations of the theopneusty of the nineteenth century.” Yet nothing is more certain than that Calvin held both to “verbal inspiration” and to “the inerrancy of Scripture,” however he may have conceived the action of God which secured these things. ↩

36. Cf. Otto Ritschl, “Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus,” 1908, i. p. 63: “If we may still entertain doubts whether Bullinger really defended the stricter doctrine of inspiration, it certainly is found in Calvin after 1543. He may have merely taken over from Butzer the expression Spiritus Sancti amanuenses; but it is peculiar to him that he conceives both the books of the Old Testament inclusively as contained in the historical enumerations, and those of the New Testament, as arising out of a verbal dictation of the Holy Spirit.” ↩

37. These phrases are brought together by J. Cramer (as cited, pp. 102–3) from the Comments on 2 Tim. 3:16 and 2 Pet. 1:20. ↩

38. Cf. Pannier, as cited, p. 203: “The Word of God is for him one, verbum Dei, and not verba Dei. The diversity of authors disappears before the unity of the Spirit.” ↩

39. Ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos fluxisse. ↩

40. E coelo fluxisse acsi vivae ipsae Dei voces illic exaudirentur. ↩

41. Hoc prius est membrum, eandem scripturae reverentiam deberi quam Deo deferimus, quia ad eo solo manavit, nec quidquam humani habet admistum. ↩

42. Justa reverentia inde nascitur, quum statuimus, Deum nobiscum loqui, non homines mortales. ↩

43. The account of Calvin’s doctrine of inspiration given by E. Rabaud, “Histoire de la doctrine de l’inspiration … dans lea pays de langue francaise,” 1883, pp. 52 sq., is worth comparing. Calvin’s thought on this subject, he tells us, was more precise and compact than that of the other Reformers, although even his conception of inspiration was far from possessing perfectly firm contours or supplying the elements of a really systematic view (p. 52). He was the first, nevertheless, to give the subject of Sacred Scripture a fundamental, theoretic treatment, led thereto not by the pressure of controversy, but by the logic of his systematic thought: for his doctrine of inspiration (not yet distinguished from revelation) is one of the essential bases, if not the very point of departure of his dogmatics (p. 55). To him “the Bible is manifestly the word of God, in which He reveals Himself to men,” and as such “proceeds from God.” “But” (pp. 56 sq.) “the action of God does not, in Calvin’s view, transform the sacred authors into machines. Jewish verbalism, Scriptural materialism, may be present in germ in the ideas of the Institutes—and the cold intellects of certain doctors of the Protestant scholasticism of the next century developed them—but they are very remote from the thought of the Reformer. Chosen and ordained by God, the Biblical writers were subject to a higher impulse; they received a divine illumination which increased the energy of their natural faculties; they understood the Revelation better and transmitted it more faithfully. It was scarcely requisite for this, however, that they should be passive instruments, simple secretaries, pens moved by the Holy Spirit. Appointed but intelligent organs of the divine thought, far from being subject to a dictation, in complete obedience to the immediate will of God, they acted under the impulsion of a personal faith which God communicated to them. ‘Now, whether God was manifested to men by visions or oracles, what is called celestial witnesses, or ordained men as His ministers who taught their successors by tradition, it is in every case certain that He impressed on their hearts such a certitude of the doctrine, that they were persuaded and convinced that what had been revealed and preached to them proceeded from the true God: for He always ratified His word so as to secure for it a credit above all human opinion. Finally, that the truth might uninterruptedly remain continually in vigor from age to age, and be known in the world, He willed that the revelations which He had committed to the hands of the Fathers as a deposit, should be put on record: and it was with this design that He had the Law published, to which He afterwards added the Prophets as its expositors’ (Institutes, I. vi. 2). These few lines resume in summary form the very substance of Calvin’s doctrine of inspiration. We may conclude from it that he did not give himself to the elaboration of this dogma, with the tenacity and logical rigor which his clear and above all practical genius employed in the study and systematization of other points of the new doctrine. We shall seek in vain a precise declaration on the mode of revelation, on the extent and intensity of inspiration, on the relation of the book and the doctrine. None of these questions, as we have already had occasion to remark, had as yet been raised: the doctors gave themselves to what was urgent and did not undertake to prove or discuss what was not yet either under discussion or attacked. The principle which was laid down sufficed them. God had spoken—this was the faith which every consciousness of the time received without repugnance, and against which no mind raised an objection. To search out how He did it was wholly useless: to undertake to prove it, no less so” (p. 58). There is evident in this passage a desire to minimize Calvin’s view of the divinity of Scripture; the use of the passage from I. vi. 2 as the basis of an exposition of his doctrine of inspiration is indicative of this—whereas it obviously is a very admirable account of how God has made known His will to man and preserved the knowledge of it through time. The double currents of desire to be true to Calvin’s own exposition of his doctrine and yet to withhold his imprimatur from what the author believes to be an overstrained doctrine, produces some strange confusion in his further exposition. ↩

44. Cf. J. Cramer, as cited, p. 114: “How Calvin conceives of this dictare by the Holy Ghost it is difficult to say. He borrowed it from the current ecclesiastical usage, which employed it of the auctor primarius of Scripture, as indeed also of tradition. Thus the Council of Trent uses the expression dictante Spiritu Sancto of the unwritten tradition inspired by the Holy Spirit.” Otto Ritschl, “Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus,” i. 1908, p. 59, argues for taking the term strictly in Calvin. It is employed, it is true, in contemporary usage in the figurative sense, of the deliverances of the natural conscience, for example; and some Reformed writers use it of the internal testimony of the Spirit. Calvin also himself speaks as if he employed it of Scripture only figuratively—e.g. Opp. i. 632: verba quodammodo dictante Christi Spiritu. Nevertheless, on the whole Ritschl thinks he meant it in the literal sense. ↩

45. Cf., e.g., J. Cramer, as cited, pp. 114–116, whose instances are followed in the remarks which succeed. Cf. also p. 125. How widespread this effort to discover in Calvin some acknowledgment of errors in Scripture has become may be seen by consulting the citations made by Dunlop Moore, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 1893, p. 60: he cites Cremer, van Oosterzee, Farrar. Cf. even A. H. Strong, “Syst. Theol.,” ed. 1907, vol. i. p. 217, whose list of “theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching” requires drastic revision. Leipoldt (“Geschichte des N. T. Kanons,” ii. 1908, p. 149) says: “Fundamentally Calvin holds fast to the old doctrine of verbal inspiration. His sound historical sense leads him, here and there, it is true, to break through the bonds of this doctrine. In his harmony of the Gospels (Commentarii in harmoniam ex Mat., Mk., et Lk. compositam, 1555), e.g., Calvin shows that the letters are not sacred to him; he moves much more freely here than Martin Chemnitz. But in other cases again Calvin draws strict consequences from the doctrine of verbal inspiration. He ascribes, e.g., to all four Gospels precisely similar authority, although he (with Luther and Zwingli) considers John’s Gospel the most beautiful of them all.” ↩

46. This is solidly shown, e.g., by Dunlop Moore, as cited, pp. 61–62: also for Acts 7:16. ↩

47. Despite his tendency to lower Calvin’s doctrine of inspiration with respect to its effects, J. Cramer in the following passage (as cited, pp. 120–121) gives in general a very fair statement of it: “We have seen that Calvin, although he has not given us a completed theory of inspiration, yet firmly believed in the inspiration of the entirety of Scripture. It is true we do not find in him the crass expressions of the later Reformed, as well as Lutheran, theologians. But the foundation on which they subsequently built—though somewhat onesidedly—is here. We cannot infer much from such expressions as ‘from God,’ ‘came from God,’ ‘flowed from God.’ Just as in Zwingli, these expressions were sometimes in Calvin synonyms of ‘true.’ Thus, at Titus 2:12, he says he cannot understand why so many are unwilling to draw upon profane writers,—‘for, since all truth is from God (a Deo), if anything has been said well and truly by profane men, it ought not to be rejected, for it has come from God (a Deo est profectum).’ More significant are such expressions as, ‘nothing human is mixed with Scripture,’ ‘we owe to them the same reverence as to God,’ God ‘is the author of Scripture’ and as such has ‘dictated’ (dictavit) all that the Apostles and Prophets have written, so that we ‘must not depart from the word of God in even the smallest particular,’ etc. All this applies not only to the Scriptures as a whole, not merely to their fundamental ideas and chief contents, but to all the sixty-six books severally. In contra-distinction from the Apocrypha, they have been given by the Holy Spirit (Préface mise en tête des livres apocryphes de l’Ancien Test.: Opp. ix. 827). The book of Acts ‘beyond question is the product of the Holy Spirit Himself,’ Mark ‘wrote nothing but what the Holy Spirit gave him to write,’ etc. To think here merely of a providential direction by God, in the sense that God took care that His people should lack nothing of a Scriptural record of His revelation—is impossible. For, however often Calvin may have directed attention to such a ‘singularis providentiae cura’ (Inst., I. vi. 2, cf. I. viii. 10; Argumentum in Ev. Joh.) with respect to Scripture, he yet saw something over and above this in the production of the sacred books. He looked upon them as the writings of God Himself, who, through an extraordinary operation of His Spirit, guarded His amanuenses from all error as well when they transmitted histories as when they propounded the doctrine of Christ. Thus to him Scripture (naturally in its original text) was a complete work of God, to which nothing could be added and from which nothing could be taken away.” ↩

48. In I. v. 14 Calvin says that the Apostle in Heb. 11:3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God” wishes to intimate that “the invisible divinity was represented indeed by such displays of His power, but that we have no eyes to perceive it unless they are illuminated through faith by the inner revelation of God” (Invisibilem divinitatem repraesentari quidem talibus spectaculis, sed ad illam perspiciendam non ease nobis oculos, nisi interiore Dei revelatione per fidem illuminentur). Here he distinguishes between the external, objective representation, and the internal, subjective preparation to perceive this representation. God is objectively revealed in His works: man in his sins is blind to this revelation: the interior operation of God is an opening of man’s eyes: man then sees. The operation of God is therefore a palingenesis. This passage is already in ed. 1539 (i. 291); the last clause (nisi …) is not, however, reproduced in the French versions of either 1541 or 1560 (iii. 60). ↩

49. In his response to the Augsburg Interim (“Vera Ecclesiae reformandae ratio,” 1549, Opp. vii. 591–674) he allows it to be the proprium ecclesiae officium to scripturas veras a suppositiis discernere; but only that obedienter amplectitur, quicquid Dei est, as the sheep hear the voice of the shepherd. It is nevertheless sacrilega impietas ecclesiae judicio submittere sacrosancta Dei oracula. See J. Cramer, as cited, p. 104, note 3. Cramer remarks in expounding Calvin’s view: “By the approbation she gives to them”—the books of Scripture—“the Church does not make them authentic, but only yields her homage to the truth of God.” ↩

50. It would require that we should be wholly hardened (nisi ad perditam impudentiam obduruerint) that we should not perceive that the doctrine of Scripture is heavenly, that we should not have the confession wrung from us that there are manifest signs in Scripture that it is God who speaks in and through it (extorquebitur illis haec confessio, manifesta signa loquentis Dei conspici in Scriptura ex quibus pateat coelestem esse eius doctrinam)—I. vii. 4. ↩

51. The exact relations of the “proofs” to the divinity of Scripture, which Calvin teaches, was sufficiently clear to be caught by his successors. It is admirably stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, i. 5. And we may add that the same conception is stated also very precisely by Quenstedt: “These motives, as well internal as external, by which we are led to the knowledge of the authority of Scripture, make the theopneusty of Sacred Scripture probable, and produce a certitude which is not merely conjectural but moral … they do not make the divinity of Scripture infallible and altogether indubitable.” (“Theologia didactico-polemica, sive Systema theologicum,” Lipsiae, 1715, Pars prima, pp. 141–2.) That is to say, they are not of the nature of demonstration, but nevertheless give moral certitude: the testimony of the Spirit is equivalent to demonstration—as is the deliverance of any simply acting sense. ↩

52. Cf. Pannier, as cited, pp. 207–8: “We see that this understanding of the Scriptures, this capacity to receive the testimony of the Spirit, is not, according to Calvin, possible for all; and that, less and less … He continually emphasises more and more the incapacity of man to persuade another of it, without the aid of God; but he emphasises still more progressively the impossibility of obtaining this aid if God does not accord it first. 1550 (I. viii. at end): ‘Those who wish to prove to unbelievers by arguments that the Scriptures are from God are inconsiderate; for this is known only to faith.’ 1559 (I. vii. in fine): The mysteries of God are not understood, except by those to whom it is given.… It is quite certain that the witness of the Spirit does not make itself felt except to believers, and is not in itself an apologetic means with respect to unbelievers.… The natural man receiveth not spiritual things.” ↩

53. Cf. Pannier, as cited, pp. 195–6: “First let us recall this,—for Calvin this testimony of the Holy Spirit is only one act of the great drama which is enacted in the entire soul of the religious man, and in which the Holy Spirit holds always the principal rôle. While the later dogmatists make the Holy Spirit, so to speak, function mechanically, at a given moment, in the pen of the prophets or in the brain of the readers, Calvin sees the Holy Spirit constantly active in the man whom He wishes to sanctify, and the fact that He leads him to recognize the divinity and the canonicity of the sacred books is only one manifestation,—a very important one, no doubt, but only a particular one,—of His general work.” It is only, of course, the Lutheran and Rationalizing dogmatists who, constructively, subject the action of the Spirit to the direction of man—whether by making it rest on the application of the “means of grace” or on the action of the human will. Calvin and his followers—the Reformed—make the act of man depend on the free and sovereign action of the Spirit. ↩

54. J. Cramer, as cited, pp. 122–3, somewhat understates this, but in the main catches Calvin’s meaning: “Calvin does not, it is true, tell us in so many words precisely what this testimonium Sp. S. is, but it is easy to gather it from the whole discussion. He is thinking of the Holy Spirit, who, as the Spirit of our adoption as children, leads us to say Amen to the Word which the Father speaks in the Holy Scriptures to His children. He even says expressly in Inst. I. vii. 4: ‘As if the Spirit was not called “seal” and “earnest” just because He confers faith on the pious.’ But more plainly still, and indeed so that no doubt can remain, we find it in Beza, the most beloved and talented pupil of Calvin, who assuredly also in his conception of Scripture was the most thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his teacher. In his reply to Castellion, Beza says: ‘The testimony of the Spirit of adoption does not lie properly in this, that we believe to be true what the Scriptures testify (for this is known also to the devils and to many of the lost), but rather in this,—that each applies to himself the promise of salvation in Christ of which Paul speaks in Rom. 8:15, 16.’ Accordingly a few lines further down he speaks of a ‘testimony of adoption and free justification in Christ.’ In the essence of the matter Calvin will have meant just this by his testimony of the Holy Spirit.…” Beza’s words are in his “Ad defensiones et reprehensiones Seb. Castellionis” (“Th. Bezae Vezelii Opera,” i. Geneva, 1582, p. 503): Testimonium Spiritus adoptionis non in eo proprie positum est ut credamus verum esse quod Scriptura testatur (nam hoc ipsum quoque sciunt diaboli et reprobi multi), sed in eo potius ut quisque sibi salutis in Christo promissionem applicet, de qua re agit Paulus, Rom. 8:15, 16.… That it was generally understood in the first age that this was the precise nature of the witness of the Spirit is shown by its definition in this sense not only by the Reformed, but by the Lutherans. For example, Hollaz defines thus: “The testimony of the Holy Spirit is the supernatural act (actus supernaturalis) of the Holy Spirit by means of the Word of God attentively read or heard (His own divine power having been communicated to the Scriptures) by which the heart of man is moved, opened, illuminated, turned to the obedience of faith, so that the illuminated man out of these internal spiritual movements truly perceives the Word which is propounded to him to have proceeded from God, and gives it therefore his unwavering assent.” (“Examinis theologici acroamatici univers. theologiam thet. polem.,” Holmiae et Lipsiae, 1741, p. 125.) The Lutheranism of this definition resides in the clauses: “By means of the Word of God” … “His own divine power having been communicated to the Scriptures” … which make the action of the Holy Spirit to be from out of the Word, in which He dwells intrinsicus. But the nature of the testimony of the Spirit is purely conceived as an act of the Holy Spirit by which the heart of man is renewed to spiritual perception, in the employment of which he perceives the divine quality of Scripture. ↩

55. Supra humanum iudicium, certo certius constituimus (non secus ac si ipsius Dei numen illic intueremur) hominum ministerio, ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos fluxisse (I. vii. 5). ↩

56. Talis ergo est persuasio quae rationes non requirat; talis notitia, cui optima ratio constet: nempe in qua securius constantiusque mens quiescit quam in ullis rationibus; talis denique sensus, qui nisi ex coelesti revelatione nasci nequeat (I. vii. 5). ↩

57. Köstlin, as cited, pp. 412–13, especially 413, note a, adverts to this with a reference to Dorner, “Gesch. d. protest. Theologie,” p. 377, who makes it characteristic of Calvin in distinction from Zwingli to draw the outer and inner Word more closely together. The justice of Dorner’s view, which would seem to assign to Calvin in his doctrine of the Word as a means of grace a position somewhere between Zwingli and Luther, may well be doubted. According to Dorner, Calvin “modified the looser connection between the outward and inward Word held by Zwingli and connected the two sides more closely together.” “In reference, therefore, to the principle of the Reformation,” he continues, “with its two sides, Calvin is still more than Zwingli, of one mind and spirit with the German Lutheran Reformation” (E. T. i. 1871, p. 387). Again (i. p. 390): “The double form of the Verbum Dei externum and internum, held by Zwingli, gives place indeed in Calvin to a more inward connecting of the two sides; the Scriptures are according to him not merely the sign of an absent thing, but have in themselves divine matter and breath, which makes itself actively felt.” We do not find that Calvin and Zwingli differ in this matter appreciably. ↩

58. Cf. his response to Sadolet (1539), Opp. v. 393: tuo igitur experimento disce non minus importunum esse spiritum iactare sine verbo, quam futurum sit insulsum, sine spiritu verbum ipsum obtendere. ↩

59. There is a certain misapprehension involved, also, in speaking of Calvin subordinating the indicia to the witness of the Spirit, as if he conceived them on the same plane, but occupying relatively lower and higher positions on this plane. The witness of the Spirit and the indicia move in different orbits. We find Köstlin, as cited, p. 413, accordingly speaking not quite to the point, when he says: “He subordinated to the power of this one, immediate, divine testimony, all those several criteria by the pious and thoughtful consideration of which our faith in the Scriptures and their contents may and should be further mediated. Even miracles, as Niedner has rightly remarked (Philosophie- und Theologiegeschichte, p. 341, note 2), take among the evidences for the divinity of the Biblical revelation, ‘nothing more than a coördinate’ place: we add in passing that Calvin introduces them here only in the edition of 1550, and then enlarges the section which treats of them in the edition of 1559. He does not, however, put a low estimate on such criteria; he would trust himself—as he says in an addition made in the edition of 1559 (xxx. 59)—to silence with them even stiff-necked opponents; but this certainty which faith should have, can never be attained, says he, by disputation, but can be wrought only by the testimony of the Spirit.” The question between the testimony of the Spirit and the indicia is not a question of which gives the strongest evidence; it is a question of what each is fitted to do. The indicia are supreme in their sphere; they and they alone give objective evidence. But objective evidence is inoperative when the subjective condition is such that it cannot penetrate and affect the mind. All objective evidence is in this sense subordinate to the subjective change wrought by the Spirit: but considered as objective evidence it is supreme in its own sphere. The term “subordinate” is accordingly misleading here. For the rest, it is true that Calvin places the miracles by which the giving of Scripture was accompanied rather among the objective evidences of their divinity than at their apex: but this is due not to an underestimation of the value of miracles as evidence, but to the very high estimate he placed on the internal criteria of divinity, by which the Scriptures evidence themselves to be divine. And above all we must not be misled into supposing that he places miracles below the testimony of the Spirit in importance. Such a comparison is outside his argument: miracles are part of the objective evidence of the deity of Scripture; the testimony of the Spirit is the subjective preparation of the heart to receive the objective evidence in a sympathetic embrace. He would have said, of course—he does say—that no miracle, and no body of miracles, could or can produce “true faith”: the internal creative operation of the Spirit is necessary for that. And in that sense the evidence of miracles is subordinated to the testimony of the Spirit. But this is not because of any depreciation of the evidential value of miracles; but because of the full appreciation of the deadness of the human soul in sin. The evidential value of miracles, and their place in the objective evidences of the divine origin of the Scriptures, are wholly unaffected by the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit; and the strongest assertions of their valuelessness in the production of faith, apart from the testimony of the Spirit, do not in the least affect the estimate we put on them, as objective evidences. ↩

60. Cf. Köstlin, as cited, pp. 413–415: “We find in Calvin the aforementioned several criteria set alongside of this witness of the Spirit, and indeed especially those which are internal to the Scriptures themselves, such as their elevation above all merely human products, which cannot fail to impress every reader, etc. It would certainly be desirable to trace an inner connection between this impression made by the character, by the style of speech, by the contents of Scripture, and that supreme immediate testimony of the Spirit for it. Assuredly God Himself, the Author of Scripture, works upon us also in such impressions, which we analyse in our reflecting human consideration, and in our debates strive to set before opponents; and we feel, on the other side, a need to analyse, as far as is possible for us, even the supreme witness of the Spirit, in spite of its immediacy, and to relate it with our other experiences and observations with respect to Scripture, so as to become conscious of the course by which God passes from one to the other. Calvin, however, does not enter into this; he sets the two side by side and over against one another: ‘Although (Scripture) conciliates reverence to itself by its own supreme majesty, it does not seriously affect us, until it is sealed to our hearts by the Spirit’ (XXIX. 295; XXX. 60; ed. 3, I. vii. 5): he does not show the inner relation of one to the other. He does not do this even in the edition of 1559, where he with great eloquence speaks more fully of the power with which the Word of the New Testament witnesses manifests its divine majesty. The witness of the Spirit comes forward with Calvin thus somewhat abruptly. By means of it the Spirit works true faith, which the Scripture, even through its internal criteria, cannot establish in divine certainty; and indeed He does not work it in the case of all those—and has no intention of working it in the case of all those—to whom the Scripture is conveyed with its criteria, but, as the section on Predestination further shows, only in the case of those who have been elected thereto from all eternity. Here we are already passing over into the relation of the Calvinistic conception of the Formal Principle or the Authority of Scripture, to its conception of the means of grace. In this matter the Lutheran doctrine stands in conflict with it. But with reference to what we have been discussing, we do not find that the Lutheran dogmaticians, when they come to occupy themselves more particularly with the testimonium Spiritus Sancti to the Scriptures, dealt more vitally with its relation to the operation of these criteria on the human spirit. No doubt, in Luther’s own conception this was more the case: but he gave no scientific elaboration of it.” ↩

61. Cf. Köstlin, as cited, p. 417: “The certainty that the Scriptures really possess such authority, rests for us not on the authority of the Church, but just on this testimony of the Spirit. Calvin’s reference here is even to the several books of Scripture: he is aware that the opponents ask how, without a decree of the Church, we are to be convinced what book should be received with reverence, what should be excluded from the canon; he himself adduces in opposition to this, even here, nothing else except the testimonium Spiritus: the entirety of Scripture seems to him to be equally, so to say, en bloc, divinely legitimated by this.” So also Pannier, as cited, p. 202: “The question of canonicity never presented itself to the thought of Calvin, except in the second place as a corollary of the problem of the divinity (I. vii. 1). If the Holy Spirit attests to us that a given book is divine, He in that very act attests that it forms a part of the rule of faith, that it is canonical. Nowhere has Calvin permitted, as his successors have done, a primary place to be taken by a theological doctrine which became less capable of resisting the assaults of adversaries when isolated from the practical question. Perhaps, moreover, he did not render as exact an account as we are able to render after the lapse of two centuries, of the wholly new situation in which the Reformation found itself with respect to the canon, or of the new way in which he personally resolved the question.” Accordingly, at an earlier point Pannier says: “It is true that the faculty of recognizing the Word of God under the human forms included for Calvin, and especially according to the Confession of Faith of 1559, the faculty of determining the canonicity of the books. This is a consequence secondary but natural, and so long as they maintained the principle, the Reformed doctors placed themselves in a false position when they showed themselves disposed to abandon the consequences to the criticisms of their opponents” (p. 164). Cf. J. Cramer, Nieuwe Bijdragen, iii. p. 140: “But you must not think … of an immediate witness of the Spirit to the particular parts of the Holy Scriptures. The old theologians did not think of that. They conceived the matter thus: The testimonium Spiritus Sancti gives witness directly to the religio-moral contents of Scripture only. Since, however, the religio-moral contents must necessarily have a particular form, and the dogmatic content is closely bound up with the historical, neither the chronological nor the topographical element can be separated out, etc.—therefore the testimonium Spiritus Sancti gives to the total content of Scripture witness that it is from God.” This, after all, then, is not to appeal to the testimonium Spiritus Sancti, directly to authenticate the canon; but to construct a canon on the basis of a testimony of the Spirit given solely to the divinity of Scripture, the movement of thought being this: All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable; this Scripture is given by inspiration of God; accordingly this Scripture belongs to the category of profitable Scripture, that is to the canon. ↩

62. Reuss, in the sixteenth chapter of his “History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures,” E. T. 1884, expounds Calvin, with his usual learning and persuasiveness, as basing the determination of the canon solely on the testimony of the Spirit. But the exposition falls into two confusions: a confusion of the authority of Scripture with its canonicity, and a confusion of the divine with the apostolic origin of Scripture. Of course, Calvin repelled the Romish conception that the authority of Scripture rests on its authentication by the Church and its tradition (p. 294), but that did not deter him from seeking by a historical investigation to discover what especial books had been committed by the apostles to the Church as authoritative. Of course, he founded the sure conviction of the divine origin of the Scriptures on the witness of the Spirit of God by and with them in the heart, but that did not prevent his appealing to history to determine what these Scriptures which were so witnessed were in their compass. Accordingly even Reuss has to admit that it is exceedingly difficult to carry through his theory of Calvin’s theoretical procedure consistently with Calvin’s observed practice. In point of fact, the Reformers, and Calvin among them, did not separate the Apocrypha from the Old Testament on the sole basis of the testimony of the Spirit: they appealed to the evidence of the Jewish Church (p. 312). Nor did they determine the question of the New Testament antilegomena on this principle: this, too, was with them “a simple question of historical criticism” (p. 316)—although Reuss here (p. 318) confuses Calvin’s appeal to the internal evidence of apostolicity with appeal to “religious intuition.” In a word, Reuss’s exposition of Calvin’s procedure in determining the canon rests on a fundamental misconception of that procedure. ↩

63. “All this Holy Scripture is comprised in the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, the number (le nombre) of which is as follows” … the list ensuing. See Opp. ix. 741. ↩

64. Opp. ix., prolg., pp. lvii.–lx.: cf. Dieterlen, “Le Synode général de Paris,” 1873, pp. 77, 89; Pannier, as cited, pp. 126–7; and for a brief précis, Müller, “Bekenntnisschriften der reform. Kirche,” 1903, p. xxxiii. ↩

65. Opp. ix. 741. ↩

66. “Actes de la dispute et conference tenue à Paris ès mois de juillet et aoust 1566” (Strasbourg, 1566), printed in the Biblioth. de la Soc. de l’Hist. du Prot. franc. We draw from the account of it in Pannier, as cited, pp. 141 sq. ↩

67. “Le vray systeme de l’Eglise et la véritable analyse de la foy,” 1686, III. ii. 453. Pannier, as cited, quotes this, pp. 167–168. ↩

68. As we have seen, it is attributed to Calvin by both Pannier and Cramer. Pannier (p. 203) remarks that “if Calvin was not able to appreciate in all its purity” the new situation with regard to the canon into which the Reformation brought men, “it was even less incumbent on him to render account of the personal attitude which he himself took up with reference to it.” “It is his successors only who, in adopting his conclusions (except that they apply them more or less), have asked themselves how they reached them, and have reconstructed the reasoning which no doubt Calvin himself had unconsciously followed.” Is not this a confession that after all the view in question was not Calvin’s own view? At least not consciously to himself? But Pannier would say, no doubt, either this was Calvin’s view or he appealed to the testimony of the Spirit directly to authenticate the canon. ↩

69. The following is the account of the treatment of the question of the canon in these creeds, given by J. Cramer (“De Roomsch-Katholieke en de Oud-protestantsche Schriftbeschouwing,” 1883, pp. 48 sq.): “And on what now, does that authority rest? This question, too, is amply discussed in the Reformed Confessions, and that, as concerns the principal matter, wholly in the spirit of Calvin. Only, more value is ascribed to the testimony of the Church. No doubt the authority of the Scriptures is not made to rest on it; but it is permitted an important voice in the question of the canon. When it is said that ‘all that is said in the Holy Scriptures is to be believed not so much because the Church receives them and holds them as canonical, but especially because the Holy Spirit bears witness to them in our heart that they are from God,’ a certain weight is attributed to the judgment of the Church. This appears particularly from the way in which the canonical books are spoken of in distinction from the Apocryphal books. In enumerating the Bible books, the Belgian Confession prefixes the words: ‘Against which nothing can be said’ (Art. iv.). By this apparently is meant, that against the canonicity of these books, from a historical standpoint, with the eye on the witness of the Church, nothing can be alleged (a thing not to be said of the Apocrypha). In the same spirit the Anglican Articles, when speaking of the books of the Old and New Testaments, says that ‘Of their authority there has never been any doubt in the Church.’ I will not raise the question here how that can be affirmed with the eye on the Antilegomena. It shows, however, certainly that much importance is attached to the ecclesiastical tradition. The fundamental ground, however, why the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are to be held to be the Word of God is sought in the Scriptures themselves, and, assuredly, in the testimony which the Holy Spirit bears to their divinity in the hearts of believers. Like Calvin, the Confessions suppose that thus they have given an immovable foundation to the divine authority of the Scriptures, and have taken an impregnable position over against Rome, which appealed to the witness of the Catholic Church.…” Calvin, however, allowed as much to the testimony of the Church—external evidence—as is here allowed, and the very adduction of its testimony shows that sole dependence was not placed on the testimony of the Spirit for the canonicity of a book: what it is appealed to for is the divinity of the canonical books. ↩

70. So even Köstlin perceives, as cited, p. 417: “The entirety of Scripture appeared to him divinely legitimated by the testimonium Spiritus, altogether, so to say, en bloc.… The declarations of Calvin as to the Word spoken by the prophets and apostles, which they rightly asserted to be God’s Word, pass without hesitation over into declarations as to the Holy Scriptures, as such, and that in their entirety; with the proposition ‘the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel have emanated from God’ is interchanged the proposition ‘the Scripture is from God,’—and the witness of the Spirit assures us of it.” So also Pannier (pp. 203–204): “Everything goes back to his considering things not in detail but en bloc. The Word of God is for him one, verbum Dei, not verba Dei. The diversity of the authors disappears before the unity of the Spirit. The same reasoning applies to each single book as to the whole collection. All the verses hold together; and if one introduces us to the knowledge of salvation we may conclude that the book is canonical. Given the collection, it is enough in practice, since all the parts are of a sort, to establish the value of one of them to guarantee the value of all the others. It is certain that the critical theologian and the simple believer even yet proceed somewhat differently in this matter; the simplest and surest method is that of the humble saint, and Calvin was very right not to range himself among the theologians at this point. ‘The just shall live by faith.’ This affirmation seemed to him a revealed truth: he concluded from it that the whole epistle to the Romans is inspired; some remarks of this kind in other passages of the Epistles, of the Gospels, and the canonicity of the New Testament is established. The same for the Old Testament. The Second Epistle of Peter and the Song of Songs thus go with the rest. The human testimonies, internal and external criteria, useful for confirming the other parts of a book of which a passage has been recognized as inspired, are insufficient to expel from the canon a book which the witness of the Spirit has not recognized as opposed to the doctrine of salvation.” We quote the whole passage to give Pannier’s whole thought: but what we adduce it for is at present merely to signalize the admission it contains that Calvin dealt with the Scriptures in the matter of the testimony of the Spirit, so to speak, “in the lump”—as a whole. Pannier cites apparently as similar to Calvin’s view, Gaussen, “Canon,” ii. p. 10: “This testimony, which every Christian has recognized when he has read his Bible with vital efficacy, may be recognized by him only in a single page; but this page is enough to spread over the book which contains it an incomparable brightness.” That is, Calvin, like the simple believer, has a definite book—the Bible—in his hands and treats it as all of a piece—of course, in Calvin’s case, not without reasonable grounds for treating it as all of a piece: in other words, the canon was already determined for him before he appealed to the testimony of the Spirit to attest its divinity. Cf. Cramer (p. 140) as quoted above. Cramer is quite right so far, therefore, when he says (pp. 156–157): “Although we determine securely by means of the historical-critical method what must be carried back to the apostolical age and what accords with the apostolical doctrine, we have not yet proved the divine authority of these writings. This hangs on this,—whether the Holy Spirit gives us His witness to them. On this witness alone rests our assurance of faith, not on the force of a historical-critical demonstration.” This, so far as appears, was Calvin’s method. ↩

71. Calvin would certainly have subscribed to these words of Pannier, as cited, p. 164: The most of the Catholics “have always strangely misapprehended the illumination which, according to the Reformed, the least of believers is capable of receiving and of applying to the reading of the Bible. It is a question, not as they suppose, of becoming theologians, but of becoming believers, of having not the plenitude of knowledge, but the certitude of faith.” ↩

72. Cf. Köstlin, as cited, pp. 415–416. After raising the question of the relation of the witness of the Spirit to the inner experience of the Christian, and the relative priority of the two—and remarking that in case the vital process is conceived as preceding the witness of the Spirit to the divinity of the Scriptures, it will be hard not to allow to the Christianized heart the right and duty of criticism of the Scriptures (where the fault in reasoning lies in the term process), Köstlin continues: “We touch here on the relation between the formal and material sides of the fundamental evangelical principle. And we think at once of the relation in which they stood to one another in Luther’s representation, by which his well-known critical attitude, with respect, say, to the Epistle of James, was rendered possible. Calvin, too, now has no wish to speak of a witness of the Spirit merely with reference to the Scriptures, and is far from desiring to isolate that witness of the Spirit for the Scriptures. He comes back to it subsequently, when speaking of faith in the saving content of the Gospel, declaring that the Spirit seals the contents of the Word in our hearts (1539, XXIX. 456 sq., 468 sq.; further in 1559, III. 2 [In Köstlin’s pagination, given here, XXIX. refers to the “Corpus Ref.” as a whole; iii. 2 stands for “Institutes,” Book iii. chap. ii., or XXX. 397 sq.]). He also inserted in the section on the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Spirit to them, in 1550, an additional special sentence, in which he expressly refers to his intention to speak further on such a witness of the Spirit in a later portion of the treatise, and declares of faith in general, that there belongs to it a sealing of the divine Spirit (XXIX. 296 [1559, I. vii. 5, near end]). In any event he must have recurred to such a Spiritual testimony for the assurance of individual Christians of their personal election. But in the first instance—and this again is precisely what is characteristic for Calvin—he nevertheless treats of the doctrine of the divine origin and the divine authority of the Scriptures, and of the witness of the Spirit for them, wholly apart. The presentation proceeds with him in such a manner, that the Spirit first of all fully produces faith in this character of the Scriptures, and only then the Bible-believing Christian has to receive from the Scriptures its contents, in all its several parts, as divinely true,—though, no doubt, this reception and this faith in the several elements of the truth are by no means matters of human thought, but are rather to be performed under the progressive illumination and the progressive sealing of these contents in the heart by the Holy Spirit. Even though he, meanwhile, calls that the ‘truth’ of the Scriptures, which we come to feel in the power of the Spirit, he means by this in the section before us, an absolute truth-character, which must from the start be attributed to the Scriptures as a whole, and will be experienced in and with the divinity of the Scriptures in general. So the matter already stands in the edition of 1539 … (XXIX. 292 sq.).” Accordingly Calvin teaches that the Scriptures in all their parts are of indefectible authority, and should be met in all their prescriptions with unlimited obedience (p. 418), because it is just God who speaks in them. Then: “With Dorner (Geschichte der protest. Theologie, p. 380)—and even more decisively than he does it—we must remark on all this: ‘The formal side of the protestant principle remains with Calvin an over-emphasis, in comparison with the material, and with this is connected that he sees in the Holy Scriptures above all else the revelation of the will of God which he has dictated to man through the sacred writers.’ And this tendency came ever more strongly forward with him in the successive revisions of the Institutes. His conception of the formal principle thus left no room for such a criticism as Luther employed on the several parts of the canon.” Later Lutheranism, however, Köstlin concludes by saying, adopted Calvin’s point of view here and even exaggerated it. ↩

73. “The formal side of the Protestant principle retains with Calvin the ascendency over the material; and with this is connected the fact that he sees in the Holy Scriptures chiefly the revelation of the will of God, which he has prescribed to men through the sacred writers.”—Dorner, “Hist. of Protest. Theology,” i. 1871, p. 390. Cf. p. 387: “The formal principle is, according to him, the norm and source of dogma, whilst he does not treat faith, in the same way as Luther, as a source of knowledge for the dogmatical structure, that is to say, as the mediative principle of knowledge.” Hence Dorner complains (p. 390) of the more restricted freedom which Calvin left “for the free productions of the faith of the Church in legislation and dogma,” and instances his treatment of “the Apostolic Age as normative for all times, even for questions of Church constitution,” and the little room he left for destructive Biblical criticism. Cf. what is said above of Calvin’s adoption of “the Puritan principle” (pp. 38 sq.). ↩

74. Cf. the Introduction to the English Translation of Kuyper’s “The Work of the Holy Spirit,” 1900, especially pp. xxxiii.–iv. Cf. what Pannier, pp. 102–104, says of Calvin’s general doctrine of the work of the Spirit and the relation borne to it by his particular doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit to Scripture. “If we pass beyond the two particular chapters whose contents we have been analysing and seek in the Institutes from 1536 to 1560 for other passages relating to the Holy Spirit, we shall see Calvin insisting ever more and more and on all occasions—as in the Commentaries—upon these diverse manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and presenting them all more or less as testimonies. He constantly recurs to the natural incapacity of man and the necessity of divine illumination in his mind, and especially in his heart, for the act of faith. It is from this point of view that he brings together the ideas of the Spirit and the Word of God in the definition of faith: ‘It is a firm and certain knowledge of the good will of God towards us: which, being grounded in the free promise given in Jesus Christ, is revealed to our heart by the Holy Spirit.’ He introduces the same ideas in his introductory remarks on the Apostles’ Creed, and they lie at the basis of the explication he gives of the Third Article in all its forms, … e.g., in the ed. of 1560: ‘In sum, He is set before us as the sole fountain from which all the celestial riches flow down to us.… For it is by His inspiration that we are regenerated into celestial life, so as no longer to govern or guide ourselves, but to be ruled by His movement and operation; so that if there is any good in us, it is only the fruit of His grace.… But since faith is His prime master-piece, the most of what we read in the Scriptures of His virtue and operation relates itself to this faith, by which He brings us to the brightness of the Gospel, in a manner which justifies calling Him the King by whom the treasures of the kingdom of heaven are offered to us, and His illumination may be called the longing of our souls.’ From these quotations it is made plain that the witness of the Holy Spirit which at the opening of the Institutes in 1539 appeared as the means of knowledge, was thenceforward nevertheless considered, in the progress of the work, as the means of grace, and that taking his start from this point of view, Calvin discovered ever more widely extending horizons, so as at the end to speak particularly of the Holy Spirit in at least four different connections, but always—even in the first—in direct and constant relation to faith, with respect to its origin, and with respect to its consequences; and by no means almost exclusively with respect to assurance of the authority of the Scriptures.” The progress which Pannier supposes he traces in Calvin’s doctrine of the work of the Spirit seems illusory: the general doctrine of the work of the Spirit is already pretty fully outlined in 1536. But the relating of the testimony of the Spirit to Scripture to Calvin’s general doctrine of faith as the product of the Spirit is exact and important for the understanding of his teaching. From beginning to end, Calvin conceived the confidence of the Christian in Scripture, wrought by the Holy Spirit, as one of the exercises of saving faith. Calvin is ever insistent that all that is good in man comes from the Spirit—whether in the sphere of thought, feeling, or act. “It is a notion of the natural man,” he says on John 14:17 (1553: xlvii. 329–330), “to despise all that the Sacred Scriptures say of the Holy Spirit, depending rather on his own reason, and to reject the celestial illumination.… For ourselves, feeling our penury, we know that all we have of sound knowledge comes from no other fountain. Nevertheless the words of the Lord Jesus show clearly that nothing can be known of what concerns the Holy Spirit by human sense, but He is known only by the experience of faith.” “No one,” says he again (“Institutes” of 1543, i. 330), “should hesitate to confess that he attains the knowledge of the mysteries of God only so far as he has been illuminated by God’s grace. He that attributes more knowledge to himself is only the more blind that he does not recognize his blindness.” ↩

75. Opp. xiv. 727–733 (Pannier, as cited, p. 120). ↩

76. The classical instance of this confusion is supplied by the teaching of Claude Pajon (1626–1685), who, in accordance with his general doctrine that “without any other grace than that of the Word, God changes the whole man, from his intellect to his passions,” explained the “testimony of the Spirit” as nothing else than the effect of the indicia of divinity in Scripture on the mind. The effect of these “marks” is a divine effect, because it is wrought in prearranged circumstances prepared for this effect: facit per alium facit per se. The conception is essentially deistic. It is no small testimony to the cardinal place which the doctrine of “the testimony of the Spirit” held in the Reformed system of the seventeenth century that Pajon still taught it; and it is no small testimony to its current conception as just “regeneration” that Pajon too identified it with regeneration, explained, of course, in accordance with his fundamental principle that all that God works He works through means. See on the whole matter Jurieu, “Traitté de la Nature et de la Grace,” 1688, pp. 25, 26, who quotes alike from Pajon and his followers. ↩

77. Doumergue, “Le problème protestant,” 1892, p. 46 (Pannier, as cited, p. 192). ↩

78. Pannier, as cited, pp. 188 sq., is quite right in insisting on this. After quoting D. H. Meyer (“De la place et du rôle de l’apologétique dans la théologie protestante,” in the Revue de théologie et des quest. relig., Jan., 1893, p. 1) to the effect that “the witness of the Holy Spirit in the heart of Christians is not a subjective phenomenon … it is an objective thing and comes from God,”—he continues: “Now this objective character of the witness of the Holy Spirit is precisely what appears to make it ‘incomprehensible’ to our modern theologians (so A. E. Martin, La Polemique de R. Simon et de J. Le Clerc, 1880, p. 29: ‘This intervention of the Holy Spirit distinct from the individual consciousness appears to us incomprehensible’). We are not speaking of those who venture to pretend that Calvin identifies the witness of the Holy Spirit with ‘the intimate feeling’ of each Christian. When one takes his place by the side of Castellion he may lawfully say, For me as for him ‘the inspiration of the Holy Ghost confounds itself with consciousness; these revelations made to the humble are nothing more than the intuitions of a moral and religious sense fortified by meditation’ (Buisson, Castellion, i. p. 304, cf. p. 201: ‘Castellion placed above the tradition of the universal Church his own sense, his own reason, or rather, let us say it all at once, for it is the foundation of the debate, his consciousness’). But when one invokes the real fathers of the real Reformation, ah, please do not take for theirs the very opinions they combat. To make of the testimony of the Holy Spirit the equivalent of the testimony of the human spirit, of the individual consciousness, is to deny the real existence and the distinct rôle of the Holy Spirit, is to show that we have nothing in common with the faith expounded by Calvin so clearly, and defended through a century against the attacks of the Catholics as one of the essential bases of the Reformed theology and piety.” Again, Pannier is quite right in his declaration (p. 214): “What we deny is that our reason—moral consciousness, religious consciousness, the term is of no importance—can, of itself, make us see the divinity of the Scriptures. It is this which sees it; but it is the Holy Spirit which makes us see it. He is not the inner eye for seeing the truth which is outside of us, but the supernatural hand which comes to open the eye of our consciousness—an eye which is, no doubt, divine in the sense that it too was created by God, but which has been blinded by the consequences of sin.” ↩

79. See especially P. Du Moulin, “Du Iuge des controverses traitté,” 1636, pp. 294 sq., and cf. Pannier, as cited, pp. 64–68. ↩

80. “Dialogue with Trypho,” vii. (“Opera,” ed. Otto. I. ii. 32): οὐ γὰρ συνοπτὰ οὐδὲ συννοητὰ πᾶσίν ἐστιν, εἰ μή τῳ θεὸς δῷ συνιέναι, καὶ ὁ Χριστὸς αὐτοῦ: “these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have given it to understand them.” ↩

81. “In Cap. v. et vi. Genes. homil. xxi.” (Migne, liii. 175): Διάτοι τοῦτο προσήκει ἡμᾶς ὑπὸ τῆς ἄνωθεν χάριτος ὁδηγουμένους, καὶ τὴν παρὰ τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος ἔλλαμψιν δεξαμένους οὔτως ἐπιέναι τὰ θεῖα λόγια. Οὐδὲ γὰρ σοφίας ἀνθρωπίνης δεῖται ἡ θεία Γραφὴ πρὸς τὴν κατανόησιν τῶν γεγραμμένων, ἀλλὰ τῆς τοῦ Πνεύματος ἀποκαλύψεως …: “For we must be led by the grace from above, and must receive the illumination of the Holy Spirit, to approach the divine oracles; for it is not human wisdom but the revelation of the Holy Spirit that is needed for understanding the Holy Scriptures.” It will be perceived that it is more distinctly the understanding of the Scriptures than the reception of them as from God which is in question with both Justin and Chrysostom. ↩

82. “De Trinitate,” ii. 34: Animus humanus, nisi per fidem donum Spiritus hauserit, habebit quidem naturam Deum intelligendi, sed lumen scientiae non habebit; iii. 24: non enim concipiunt imperfecta perfectum, neque quod ex alio subsistit, absolute vel auctoris sui potest intelligentiam obtinere, vel propriam; v. 21: neque enim nobis ea natura est, ut se in coelestem cognitionem suis viribus efferat. A Deo discendum est quid de Deo intelligendum sit; quia non nisi se auctore cognoscitur.… Loquendum ergo non aliter de Deo est, quam ut ipse ad intelligentiam nostram de se locutus est. (For these citations see Migne, “Patro. Lat.,” x. 74–75; x. 92; x. 143.) Hilary certainly teaches that for such creatures as men there can be no knowledge of God except it be God-taught: but it is not so clear that he teaches that for sinful creatures there must be a special illapse of the Spirit that such as they may know God—may perceive Him in His Word and so recognize that Word as from Him and derive a true knowledge of Him from it. It is this soteriological doctrine which is Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s testimony: not that ontological one. ↩

83. Cf. article: “Augustine’s Doctrine of Knowledge and Authority,” in The Princeton Theological Review for July and October, 1907. ↩

84. bid., pp. 360 sq. ↩

85. Ibid., pp. 571 sq. ↩

86. “Tract, iii. in Ep. Joan. ad Parthos,” ii. 13 (Migne, xxxv. 2004). Again: “There is, then, I say, a Master within that teacheth: Christ teacheth; His inspiration teacheth. Where His inspiration and His unction are not, in vain do words make a noise from without.” ↩

87. “Confessions,” xi. 3 (Migne, xxxii. 811). Cf. vi. 5 (Migne, xxxii. 723). ↩

88. Pannier, loc. cit., says: “The whole of the testimony of the Holy Spirit is not yet here. Only once is the Holy Spirit Himself named [in these passages from Augustine] in a formal way. But Augustine has the intuition of a mysterious work wrought in the soul of the Christian, of an understanding of the Bible which comes not from man but from a power exterior and superior to him; and he sets forth the rôle which this direct correspondence between the book and the reader may play in the foundation of Christian certitude. In this, as in so many other points, Augustine was the precursor of the Reformation, and a precursor without immediate followers: for except a couple of very vague and isolated hints in Salvianus (De Provid., iii. 1) and Gregory the Great († 604, Homil. in Ezek., I. x.), nothing further is found on this subject through ten centuries: it comes into view again at the approach of the new age, when thought aspired to free itself from the Scholastic ruts, with Biel († 1495, Lib. iii. Sent. dist. 25, dub. 3) and Cajetan († 1534, Opera, II. i. 1).” ↩

89. “Loci,” ed. 1555 (“Corpus Ref.,” xxi. 605). ↩

90. “De vera et falsa religione”: Cum constet verbo nusquam fidem haberi quam ubi Pater traxit, Spiritus monuit, unctio docuit … hanc rem solae piae mentes norunt. Neque enim ab hominum disceptatione pendet, sed in animis hominum tenacissime sedet. Experientia est, nam pii omnes eam experti sunt. “Articles of 1523” (Niemeyer, “Collectio confessionum in eccles. ref. publ.,” 1840, p. 5): Art. 13. Verbo Dei quum auscultant homines pure et sinceriter voluntatem Dei discunt. Deinde per Spiritum Dei in Deum trahuntur et veluti transformantur. “Von Klarheit und Gewüsse des Worts Gottes” (“Werke,” Schuler und Schulthess, 1828, i. 81; or “Werke” in “Corp. Ref.,” i. 382): “The Scriptures … came from God, not from man; … and the God who has shined into them will Himself give you to understand that their speech comes from God.” Cf. the interesting biographical account of how he came to depend on the Scriptures only, on p. 79 (or “Corp. Ref.,” i. 379). ↩

91. E. Rabaud, “Hist. de la doctr. de l’inspiration,” etc., 1883, pp. 32–33, 42–43, 47 sq., 50, expounds the earlier Reformers as in principle standing on the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit. With respect to the interpretation of Scripture he remarks: “The hermeneutical principle of the witness of the Holy Spirit (if we may speak of it as a principle) is common to all the Reformers. Luther only, without being ignorant of it, makes no use of it. Besides responding to the polemic needs, it responded to the aspirations of the faith and of the piety of simple men, better than rational demonstrations” (p. 50, note 4). “In a general way,” he remarks, pp. 32–33, “Luther considered the Bible as the sole incontestable and absolute authority. Here is the solid foundation of the edifice, the impregnable citadel in which he shut himself in order to repel victoriously all attacks. It is for him, in truth, a religious axiom, a postulate of faith, and not a dogma or a theory; it is revealed to his believing soul independently of all intellectual activity. Thus Luther, trusting in the action of the Holy Spirit, operating through the Scriptures, does not pause to prove its authority, nor to establish it dialectically: it imposes itself; a systematic treatment is not needed. More and more as circumstances demanded it, he gave reasons for his faith and his submission. Poor arguments to modern thinking, but in his times, and commended by his vibrant eloquence and powerful personality, possessing a power of persuasion very impressive.… It seemed idle to Luther, we may say, to enter into an argument to establish what was evident to him. He did not attempt, therefore, to prove the authority of the Bible—he asserted it repeatedly in warm words, … in passionate declarations, but rarely if ever proceeds by a formal demonstration.” Raising the question of Zwingli’s doctrine of the mode and extent of inspiration (p. 47), he remarks: “No more than the others does Zwingli respond to these questions, which had not yet been raised. God has spoken: the Bible contains His word: that is enough. The divinity of the Bible is once more a fact, an axiom, so much so that he does not dream of establishing it dialectically or of defending it.” ↩

92. So Pannier, as cited, p. 63: “Like all the other essential parts of the Reformed Dogmatics, the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is found in germ in the first edition of the Institutes, although still without any development. It is almost possible to deny that it exists there, as has been done with predestination. Nevertheless, if the doctrine is not yet scientifically formulated, it may yet be perceived to preexist necessarily as an essential member of the complete body of doctrine which is slowly to grow up.” When Pannier comes, however (pp. 72–77), to expound in detail the germs of the doctrine as they lie in the edition of 1536, it turns out that there is not only no full development of the doctrine in that edition, but also no explicit mention of it, as it is applied to the conviction which the Christian has of the divinity of Scripture; so that it preëxists in this edition only as implicit in its general doctrine of the Spirit and His work. ↩

93. By Pannier, p. 69. ↩

94. Pannier, as cited, p. 77, notes that “the words: testimonio Spiritus Sancti occur only a single time, at the end, and in the old sense of—‘by the divinely inspired Scriptures.’ ” He refers to the ed. of 1536, p. 470, that is, Opp. i. 228: and notes that this passage was dropped in the edition of 1559 (Opp. iv. 796, note 5). The passage runs: “Thus Hezekiah is praised by the testimony of the Holy Spirit”—that is, obviously, “by the inspired Scriptures”—“for having broken up the brazen serpent which Moses had made by Divine command.” ↩

95. Köstlin, as cited, p. 411, strongly states these facts. The whole of the discussion on the sources and norms of religious truth “is altogether lacking in the original form” of the “Institutes”: “Calvin worked out this section for the first time for the edition of 1539”: but it is found here already thoroughly done, “in all its fundamental traits already complete and mature.” He adds that the Lutheran dogmatists (as well as the Reformed) at once, however, took up the construction of Calvin and made it their own. ↩

96. The history of the doctrine among the Reformed is touched on by A. Schweizer, “Glaubenslehre,” i. § 32; among the old Lutherans by Klaiber, “Die Lehre der altprotestantischen Dogmatiker von dem test. Sp. Sancti” in the Jahrbücher für d. Theologie, 1857, pp. 1–54. Its history among French theologians is traced by Pannier, as cited, Part iii. pp. 139–181, cf. 186–193: his notes on the history outside of France (pp. 181–185) are very slight. On pp. 161–163 Pannier essays to gather together, chiefly, as it appears, from the scattered citations in the Protestant controversialists of the seventeenth century (p. 162, note 2), the hints which appear in the Romish writers, mainly Jesuits of the early seventeenth century, of recognition of the internal work of the Holy Spirit illuminating the soul. These bear more or less resemblance to the Protestant doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit. Some of the passages he cites are quite striking, but do not go beyond the common boundaries of universal Christian supernaturalism. ↩

97. In his brief remarks on the subject in his “Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus,” i. 1908, pp. 178 sq., Otto Ritschl seeks to discriminate between the Reformed and Lutherans in their conception of the testimony of the Spirit; but his discrimination touches rather the application than the essence of the matter. ↩

98. Some of them are cited, e.g., by Schweizer, op. cit., followed, e.g., by Pannier, as cited (p. 186, note 1)—such as: “Faith is already presupposed when a peculiar authority is conceded to Scripture,”—“The recognition of what is canonical comes into existence only gradually and progressively, since the sense for the truly Apostolic is a gracious gift which grows up only gradually in the Church,”—“Faith cannot be established in unbelievers by the Scriptures, so that their divine authority is in the first instance proved from merely rational considerations.”—There is much that is true and well said in such remarks, and they enrich the writings of Schleiermacher and his followers with a truly spiritual element. But at bottom the central position occupied is vitiated by the use of “faith” as an “undistributed middle,” and the remarks of writers of this type do not so much tend to exalt the place of saving faith as to depress the authority of Scripture, by practically denying the existence or validity of fides humana. That attitude towards the Scriptures which gladly and heartily recognizes them as the Word of the Living God, and with all delight in them as such, seeks to subject all thought and feeling and action to their direction, certainly is, if not exactly a product of “true faith,” yet (as the Westminster Confession defines it) an exercise of true faith, and a product of that inward creative operation of the Holy Spirit from which all true faith comes: that keen taste for the divine which is the outgrowth of the spiritual gift of discrimination—the “distinguishing of things that differ” which Paul gives a place among Christian graces—is assuredly a “gift of grace” which may grow more and more strong as the Christian life effloresces; and such a taste for the divine cannot be awakened in unbelievers by the natural action of the Scriptures or any rational arguments whatever, but requires for its production the work of the Spirit of God ab extra accidens. But it is a totally different question whether the peculiarity of Scripture as a divine revelation can call out no intellectual recognition in the minds of inquiring men, but must remain wholly hidden and produce no mental reaction conformable to its nature, until true faith has already been born in the heart: whether there are no valid tests of what is apostolical except a spiritual sense for the truly apostolical which can only gradually grow up in the Church; whether the unbeliever may not be given a well-grounded intellectual conviction of the apostolic origin, the canonical authority, and the divine character of Scripture by the presentation to him of rational evidence which, however unwillingly on his part, will compel his assent. The question here is not whether this fides humana is of any great use in the spiritual life: the question is whether it is possible and actual. We may argue, if we will, that it is not worth while to awake it—though opinions may differ there: but how can we argue that it is a thing inherently impossible? To say this is not merely to say that reason cannot save, which is what Calvin said and all his followers: it is to say that salvation is intrinsically unreasonable—which neither Calvin nor any of his true followers could for a moment allow. Sin may harden the heart so that it will not admit, weigh, or yield to evidence: but sin, which affects only the heart subjectively, and not the process of reasoning objectively, cannot alter the relations of evidence to conclusions. Sin does not in the least degree affect the cogency of any rightly constructed syllogism. No man, no doubt, was ever reasoned into the kingdom of heaven: it is the Holy Spirit alone who can translate us into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. But there are excellent reasons why every man should enter the kingdom of heaven; and these reasons are valid in the forum of every rational mind, and their validity can and should be made manifest to all. ↩

99. “Theological Lectures,” etc., New York, 1878, pp. 317, 320 sq. ↩

100. “The Way of Life,” 1841; also “Systematic Theology,” as per Index. ↩

101. “Encyclopædie, etc.,” ii. 1894, pp. 505 sqq. ↩

102. “Gereformeerde Dogmatiek,” ed. 1, i. pp. 142–145, 420–422, 490–491. ↩

103. Written, no doubt, by Léger, moderator at the time of “the Table,” and preserved for us in his “Histoire générale des églises évangéliques des vallées de Piédmont,” 1669, i. p. 112 (cf. p. 92). See Pannier, as cited, p. 133. ↩

104. Dr. A. F. Mitchell (“The Westminster Assembly, its History and Standards,” the Baird Lecture for 1882, ed. 2, 1897, p. 441, note), following Prof. J. S. Candlish (Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., 1877, p. 173), is “very sure” that Gillespie has here “left his mark on the Confession.” The “Miscellany Questions,” in the xxi. of which occurs the passage from Gillespie from which the Confession is supposed to have drawn, was a posthumous work, published in 1649; but a number of the papers of which it is made up have the appearance of being briefs drawn up by Gillespie for his own satisfaction, or as preparations for speeches, or possibly even as papers handed in to committees, during the discussions of the Westminster Assembly. The language in question, however, whether in Gillespie or in the Confession, is so strongly reminiscent of Calvin, that the possibility seems to remain open that the resemblance between Gillespie and the Confession is due to their common relation to Calvin. Here is the passage in Gillespie (“Presbyterian Armoury” ed., vol. ii. pp. 105–106): “The Scripture is known to be indeed the Word of God by the beams of divine authority it hath in itself, and by certain distinguishing characters, which do infallibly prove it to be the Word of God; such as the heavenliness of the matter; the majesty of the style; the irresistible power over the conscience; the general scope, to abase man and to exalt God; nothing driven at but God’s glory and man’s salvation; the extraordinary holiness of the penmen of the Holy Ghost, without respect to any particular interests of their own, or of others of their nearest relations (which is manifest by their writings); the supernatural mysteries revealed therein, which could never have entered into the reason of men; the marvellous consent of all parts and passages (though written by divers and several penmen), even where there is some appearance of difference; the fulfilling of prophecies; the miracles wrought by Christ, by the prophets and apostles; the conservation of the Scriptures against the malice of Satan and fury of persecutors;—these and the like are characters and marks which evidence the Scriptures to be the Word of God; yet all these cannot beget in the soul a full persuasion of faith that the Scriptures are the Word of God; this persuasion is from the Holy Ghost in our hearts. And it hath been the common resolution of sound Protestant writers (though now called in question by the sceptics of this age [the allusion being to “Mr. J. Godwin in his Hagiomastix”]) that these arguments and infallible characters in the Scripture itself, which most certainly prove it to be the Word of God, cannot produce a certainty of persuasion in our hearts, but this is done by the Spirit of God within us, according to these Scriptures, 1 Cor. 2:10–15; 1 Thes. 1:5; 1 John 2:27; 5:6–8, 10; John 6:45.”—Whatever may be the immediate source of the Confessional statement, Calvin is clearly the real source of Gillespie’s statement.—For the essence of the matter Gillespie’s discussion is notably clear and exact, particularly with reference to the relation of the indicia to the testimony of the Spirit, a matter which he strangely declares had not to his knowledge been discussed before. The clarity of his determinations here is doubtless due to the specific topic which he is in this Question investigating, viz., the validity of the argument from marks and fruits of sanctification to our interest in Christ: a parallel question in the broader soteriological sphere to the place of indicia in our conviction of the divinity of Scripture, which he there fore uses illustratively for his main problem. “It may be asked,” he remarks, “and it is a question worthy to be looked into (though I must confess I have not read it, nor heard it, handled before), How doth this assurance by marks agree with or differ from assurance by the testimony of the Holy Spirit? May the soul have assurance either way, or must there be a concurrence of both (for I suppose they are not one and the same thing) to make up the assurance?” (p. 105). He proves that they are “not one and the same thing”; and then shows solidly that for assurance there “must be a concurrence of both.” “To make no trial by marks,” he says, “and to trust an inward testimony, under the notion of the Holy Ghost’s testimony, when it is without the least evidence of any true gracious marks, this way (of its own nature, and intrinsically, or in itself) is a deluding and ensnaring of the conscience” (p. 105). That is to say, a blind confidence and conviction, without cognizable grounds in evidence cannot be trusted. Again and very clearly: “So that, in the business of assurance and full persuasion, the evidences of graces and the testimony of the Spirit, are two concurrent causes or helps, both of them necessary. Without the evidence of graces, it is not a safe nor a well-grounded assurance” (p. 106). It remains only to add that while arguing this out in the wider soteriological sphere, Gillespie appears to take it as a matter of course in the accrediting of the Scriptures as divine—giving that case, in the course of his argument, as an illustration to aid in determining his conclusion. ↩

105. For the meaning of the Confession’s statement, supported by illustrative excerpts from its authors, see The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, iv. 1893, pp. 624–32; and cf. W. Cunningham, “Theological Lectures,” New York, 1878, pp. 320 sq., and The Presbyterian Quarterly, January, 1894, pp. 19 sq. ↩