From Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” Allen’s translation, memorial edition, 1909; i. pp. i.–xlvi. Reprinted in pamphlet form, 1909, Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia. (Cf. also The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, x. 1899, pp. 193–219.)
John Calvin was born on the tenth of July, 1509. “The Institutes of the Christian Religion” was thrown off in the first draft in 1534 or 1535, but did not finally leave its author’s hands in its definitive edition until a quarter of a century afterwards, in the late summer of 1559. The four hundredth anniversary of Calvin’s birth is, therefore, also the three hundred and fiftieth of the completion of the “Institutes,” and may be fitly marked by the issue of a new edition of the “Institutes” in English.
Certainly the publication of this great work in its completed shape is well worth commemorating on its own account. It was the first serious attempt to cast into systematic form that body of truth to which the Reformed Churches adhered as taught in the Holy Scriptures; and as such it met a crisis and created an epoch in the history of those Churches. In the immense upheaval of the Reformation movement, the foundations of the faith seemed to many to be broken up, and the most important questions to be set adrift; extravagances of all sorts sprang up on every side; and we can scarcely wonder that a feeling of uneasiness was abroad, and men were asking with concern for some firm standing-ground for their feet. It was Calvin’s “Institutes” which, with its calm, clear, positive exposition of the evangelical faith on the irrefragable authority of the Holy Scriptures, gave stability to wavering minds, and confidence to sinking hearts, and placed upon the lips of all a brilliant apology, in the face of the calumnies of the enemies of the Reformation.1
As the fundamental treatise in the development of a truly evangelical theology its mission has stretched, however, far beyond its own day. All subsequent attempts to state and defend that theology necessarily go back to it as their starting-point, and its impress upon the history of evangelical thinking is ineffaceable. Even from the point of view of mere literature, it holds a position so supreme in its class that every one who would fain know the world’s best books, must make himself familiar with it. What Thucydides is among Greek, or Gibbon among eighteenth-century English historians, what Plato is among philosophers, or the Iliad among epics, or Shakespeare among dramatists, that Calvin’s “Institutes” is among theological treatises. “The Institutes of Calvin,” says Dr. William Cunningham, to whom will be conceded the right to an opinion on such a matter, “is the most important work in the history of theological science, that which is more than any other creditable to its author, and has exerted directly or indirectly the greatest and most beneficial influence upon the opinions of intelligent men on theological subjects. It may be said to occupy in the science of theology, the place which it requires both the Novum Organum of Bacon and the Principia of Newton to fill up in physical science,—at once conveying, though not in formal didactic precepts and rules, the finest idea of the way and manner in which the truths of God’s Word ought to be classified and systematized, and at the same time actually classifying and systematizing them, in a way that has not yet received any very material or essential improvement.”2 We should indeed be scarcely flying beyond the mark if we gave enthusiasm itself the reins and adopted as sober criticism the famous distich of the Hungarian reformer and poet, Paul Thuri, which—so the editors of the great Brunswick edition tell us3—many of the old owners and readers of the “Institutes” have written lovingly on its front:
Præter apostolicas post Christi tempora chartas,
Huic peperere libro sæcula nulla parem.4
It is this, in effect, which the greatest scholar of Calvin’s own age did—that Joseph Scaliger (1520–1609) whose caustic criticisms have made so many scholars writhe. “Oh, what a good book Calvin’s Institutes is,” he exclaims; “Oh, what a great man! There is none of the ancients to compare with him.… Calvin stands alone among theologians.”5 And, indeed, it is none other than this that the Strasburg editors of Calvin’s works have done. Certainly among the most widely learned and least extravagant of the scholars of our day, they yet do not scruple to adopt Thuri’s expression into the well-weighed language of their prolegomena, and to repeat it as their deliberate judgment upon the merits of the “Institutes.” Among the other reasons which have led them to devote their time and labor to an edition of Calvin’s works, they tell us, is the unique preëminence and high authority enjoyed by this Lycurgus of the Reformed Churches. They continue:
“For, though Luther was supremely great as a man and Zwingli was second to none as a Christian citizen, and Melanchthon well deserves the appellation of the most learned of teachers, Calvin may justly be called the leader and standard-bearer of theologians. For who will not marvel at his command of language and letters, at his control of the entire sphere of learning? The abundance of his learning, the admirable disposition of his material, the force and validity of his reasoning in dogmatics, the acuteness and subtlety of his mind, and the alternating gay and biting saltness of his polemics, the felicitous perspicuity, sobriety and sagacity of his exegetics, the nervous eloquence and freedom of his parænetics, his incomparable legislative prudence and wisdom in the constitution, ordering and governing of the churches—all this is fully recognized among men of learning and candor. Even among Romish controversialists themselves, there is none to-day possessed of even a moderate knowledge of these matters or endowed with the least fairness in judgment, who does not admire the richness of his reasoning and ideas, the precision of his language, the weight and clearness of his diction, whether in Latin or French. All these qualities are, of course, present in his other writings, but they are especially striking in that immortal Institutes of the Christian Religion, which beyond all controversy far excels all expositions of the kind that have been written from the days of the apostles down, including, of course, Melanchthon’s Loci Theologici; and which captivates even to-day the learned and candid reader, even though he may be committed to different opinions, and wrests from him an unwilling admiration.”6
So estimating the “Institutes,” it is no wonder that these learned editors wished to begin their edition with this work. This is how they explain their procedure:
“In undertaking a new collection of the works of John Calvin, of immortal memory—a body of writings worthy of his great name—we have determined to begin with the Institutes of the Christian Religion. That work does not, to be sure, hold the first place among his writings in the order of composition, though very few of them preceded it: but none of them is superior to it in the fame it enjoys. It has often happened that a book distinguished by the great applause of men has afterwards fallen into neglect through the harsher judgment or the careless indifference of a later time; often, too, that one which reached few minds at first, and almost escaped notice, has, as time proceeded, emerged from obscurity and is daily celebrated with increasing praise. But with regard to this book, seized upon from its very cradle with great and widespread avidity, and scrutinized by its very adversaries with a zeal born of envy, its glory has abided the same, intact now through three centuries, without the least diminution or fading, despite the frequent changes which successive schools of theology have introduced into the treatment of Christian doctrine. If it were the custom of our time, as it was formerly, to collect at the beginning of volumes eulogies pronounced on their writers by various authors, we could gather here a great harvest of laudations, and time and paper would fail us before the material at our disposal would be exhausted.”7