Calvin’s character harmonized with his theology….behind the weak frame burned a mind sharp, narrow, devoted, and intense, and a firm, indomitable will, perhaps a will to power. His intellect was a citadel of order, making him almost the Aquinas of Protestant theology. His memory was crowded and yet precise. He was ahead of his time in doubting astrology, abreast of it in rejecting Copernicus, a bit behind it (like Luther) in ascribing many terrestrial occurrences to the Devil. His timidity concealed his courage, his shyness disguised an inner pride, his humility before God became at times a commanding arrogance before men. He was painfully sensitive to criticism, and could not bear opposition with the patience of one who can conceive the possibility that he may be wrong….His virtues did not include humor, which might have softened his certainties, nor a sense of beauty, which might have spared ecclesiastical art. Yet he was no unmitigated kill-joy; he bade his followers be cheerful, play harmless games like bowling or quoits, and enjoy wine in moderation. He could be a kind and tender friend, and an unforgiving enemy, capable of hard judgments and stern revenge….
Erasmus had been tolerant because he had not been certain; Luther and Melanchthon had abandoned tolerance as they progressed in certainty; Calvin, with lethal precocity, had been certain almost from his twentieth year….His influence was even greater than Luther’s, but he walked in a path that Luther had cleared. Luther had protected his new church by rallying German nationalism to its support; the move was necessary, but it tied Lutheranism too narrowly to Teutonic stocks. Calvin loved France, and labored to promote the Huguenot cause, but he was no nationalist; religion was his country; and so his doctrine, however modified, inspired the Protestantism of Switzerland, France, Scotland, and America, and captured large sectors of Protestantism in Hungary, Poland, Germany, Holland, and England. Calvin gave to Protestantism in many lands an organization, confidence, and pride that enabled it to survive a thousand trials….
As social order returned in Europe after the Thirty Years’ War, in England after the revolutions of 1642 and 1689, in America after 1793, the pride of divine election changed into the pride of work and accomplishment; men felt stronger and more secure; fear lessened, and the frightened cruelty that had generated Calvin’s God gave way to a more humane vision that compelled a reconception of deity. Decade by decade the churches that had taken their lead from Calvin discarded the harsher elements of his creed. Theologians dared to believe that all who died in infancy were saved, and one respected divine announced, without causing commotion, that “the number of the finally lost will be very inconsiderable.” We are grateful to be so reassured, and we will agree that even error lives because it serves some vital need. But we shall always find it hard to love the man who darkened the human soul with the most absurd and blasphemous conception of God in all the long and honored history of nonsense.
European History 