Posted on 06/04/2010 9:51:48 PM PDT by GonzoII
Two important practical consequences may be drawn from this entire view: first, that conversion takes place in a moment -- and so all evangelical Protestants believe; and, second, that baptism ought not to be administered to infants, seeing they cannot have the faith which justifies. This latter inference produced the sect of Anabaptists against whom Calvin thunders as he does, against other "frenzied" persons, in vehement tones. Infant baptism was admitted, but its value, as that of every ordinance, varied with the predestination to life or to death of the recipient. To Calvinists the Church system was an outward life beneath which the Holy Spirit might be present or absent, not according to the dispositions brought by the faithful, but as grace was decreed. For good works could not prepare a man to receive the sacraments worthily any more than to be justified in the beginning. If so, the Quakers might well ask, what is the use of sacraments when we have the Spirit? And especially did this reasoning affect the Eucharist. Calvin employs the most painful terms in disowning the sacrifice of the Mass. No longer channels of grace, to Melanchthon the sacraments are "Memorials of the exercise of faith," or badges to be used by Christians. From this point of view, Christ's real presence was superfluous, and the acute mind of Zwingli leaped at once to that conclusion, which has ever since prevailed among ordinary Protestants. But Luther's adherence to the words of the Scripture forbade him to give up the reality, though he dealt with it in his peculiar fashion. Bucer held an obscure doctrine, which attempted the middle way between Rome and Wittenberg. To Luther the sacraments serve as tokens of God's love; Zwingli degrades them to covenants between the faithful. Calvin gives the old scholastic definition and agrees with Luther in commending their use, but he separates the visible element proffered to all from the grace which none save the elect may enjoy. He admits only two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Even these neither contain nor confer spiritual graces; they are signs, but not efficacious as regards that which is denoted by them. For inward gifts, we must remember, do not belong to the system, whereas Catholics believe in ordinances as acts of the Man-God, producing the effects within the soul which He has promised, "He that eateth Me shall live by Me."
When the Church's tradition was thrown aside, differences touching the Holy Eucharist sprang up immediately among the Reformers which have never found a reconciliation. To narrate their history would occupy a volume. It is notable, however, that Calvin succeeded where Bucer had failed, in a sort of compromise, and the agreement of Zurich which he inspired was taken up by the Swiss Protestants. Elsewhere it led to quarrels, particularly among the Lutherans, who charged him with yielding too much. He taught that the Body of Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, and that the believer partakes of it that the elements are unchanged, and that the Catholic Mass was idolatry. Yet his precise meaning is open to question. That he did not hold a real objective presence seems clear from his arguing against Luther, as the "black rubric" of the Common Prayer Book argues -- Christ's body, he says, is in heaven. Therefore, it cannot be on earth. The reception was a spiritual one; and this perfectly orthodox phrase might be interpreted as denying a true corporal presence. The Augsburg Confession, revised by its author Melanchthon, favoured ambiguous views -- at last he declared boldly for Calvin, which amounted to an acknowledgment that Luther's more decided language overshot the mark. The "Formula of Concord" was an attempt to rescue German Churches from this concession to the so-called Sacramentarians; it pronounced, as Calvin never would have done, that the unworthy communicant receives Our Lord's Body; and it met his objection by the strange device of "ubiquity" -- namely, that the glorified Christ was everywhere. But these quarrels lie outside our immediate scope.
As Calvin would not grant the Mass to be a sacrifice, nor the ministers of the Lord's Supper to be priests, that conception of the Church which history traces back to the earliest Apostolic times underwent a corresponding change. The clergy were now "Ministers of the Word," and the Word was not a tradition, comprising Scripture in its treasury, but the printed Bible, declared all-sufficient to the mind which the Spirit was guiding. Justification by faith alone, the Bible, and the Bible only, as the rule of faith -- such were the cardinal principles of the Reformation. They worked at first destructively, by abolishing the Mass and setting up private judgment in opposition to pope and bishops. Then the Anabaptists arose. If God's word sufficed, what need of a clergy? The Reformers felt that they must restore creeds and enforce the power of the Church over dissidents. Calvin, who possessed great constructive talent, built his presbytery on a democratic foundation -- the people were to choose, but the ministers chosen were to rule. Christian freedom consisted in throwing off the yoke of the Papacy, it did not allow the individual to stand aloof from the congregation. He must sign formulas, submit to discipline, be governed by a committee of elders. A new sort of Catholic Church came into view, professing that the Bible was its teacher and judge, but never letting its members think otherwise than the articles drawn up should enjoin. None were allowed in the pulpit who were not publicly called, and ordination, which Calvin regarded almost as a sacrament, was conferred by the presbytery.
In his Fourth Book the great iconoclast, to whom in good logic only the Church invisible should have signified anything, makes the visible Church supreme over Christians, assigns to it the prerogatives claimed by Rome, enlarges on the guilt of schism, and upholds the principle, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. He will not allow that corrupt morals in the clergy, or a passing eclipse of doctrine by superstition, can excuse those who, on pretence of a purer Gospel, leave it. The Church is described in equivalent terms as indefectible and infallible. All are bound to hear and obey what it teaches. Luther had spoken of it with contempt almost everywhere in his first writings; to him the individual guided by the Holy Spirit was autonomous. But Calvin taught his followers so imposing a conception of the body in which they were united as to bring back a hierarchy in effect if not in name. "Where the ministry of Word and Sacraments is preserved," he concludes, "no moral delinquencies can take away the Church's title." He had nevertheless, broken with the communion in which he was born. The Anabaptists retorted that they did not owe to his new-fashioned presbytery the allegiance he had cast away -- the Quakers, who held with him by the Inward Light, more consistently refused all jurisdiction to the visible Church.
One sweeping consequence of the Reformation is yet to be noticed. As it denied the merit of good works even in the regenerate, all those Catholic beliefs and ordinances which implied a Communion of Saints actively helping each other by prayer and self-sacrifice were flung aside. Thus Purgatory, Masses for the dead, invocation of the blessed in Heaven, and their intercession for us are scouted by Calvin as "Satan's devices." A single argument gets rid of them all: do they not make void the Cross of Christ our only Redeemer? (Instit., III, 5, 6). Beza declared that "prayer to the saints destroys the unity of God." The Dutch Calvinists affirmed of them, as the Epicureans of their deities, that they knew nothing about what passes on earth. Wherever the Reformers triumphed, a wholesale destruction of shrines and relics took place. Monasticism, being an ordered system of mortification on Catholic principles, offended all who thought such works needless or even dangerous -- it fell, and great was the fall thereof, in Protestant Europe. The Calendar had been framed as a yearly ritual, commemorating Our Lord's life and sufferings, with saints' days filling it up. Calvin would tolerate the Swiss of Berne who desired to keep the Gospel festivals; but his Puritan followers left the year blank, observing only the Sabbath, in a spirit of Jewish legalism. After such a fashion the Church was divorced from the political order -- the living Christian ceased to have any distinct relation with his departed friends; the saints became mere memories, or were suspected of Popery; the churches served as houses of preaching, where the pulpit had abolished the altar; and Christian art was a thing of the past.
The Reformers, including Calvin, appealed so confidently to St. Augustine's volumes that it seems only fair to note the real difference which exists between his doctrine and theirs. Cardinal Newman sums it up as follows:
The main point is whether the Moral Law can in its substance be obeyed and kept by the regenerate. Augustine says, that whereas we are by nature condemned by the Law, we are enabled by the grace of God to perform it unto our justification; Luther [and Calvin equally] that, whereas we are condemned by the law, Christ has Himself performed it unto our justification -- Augustine, that our righteousness is active; Luther, that it is passive; Augustine, that it is imparted, Luther that it is only imputed; Augustine, that it consists in a change of heart; Luther, in a change of state. Luther maintains that God's commandments are impossible to man Augustine adds, impossible without His grace; Luther that the Gospel consists of promises only Augustine, that it is also a law, Luther, that our highest wisdom is not to know the Law, Augustine says instead, to know and keep it -- Luther says, that the Law and Christ cannot dwell together in the heart. Augustine says that the Law is Christ; Luther denies and Augustine maintains that obedience is a matter of conscience. Luther says that a man is made a Christian not by working but by hearing; Augustine excludes those works only which are done before grace is given; Luther, that our best deeds are sins; Augustine, that they are really pleasing to God (Lectures on Justification, ch. ii, 58).
As, unlike the Lutheran, those Churches which looked up to Calvin as their teacher did not accept one uniform standard, they fell into particular groups and had each their formulary. The three Helvetic Confessions, the Tetrapolitan, that of Basle, and that composed by Bullinger belong respectively to 1530, 1532, 1536. The Anglican 42 Articles of 1553, composed by Cranmer and Ridley, were reduced to 39 under Elizabeth in 1562. They bear evident tokens of their Calvinistic origin, but are designedly ambiguous in terms and meaning. The French Protestants, in a Synod at Paris, 1559, framed their own articles. In 1562 those of the Netherlands accepted a profession drawn up by Guy de Bres and Saravia in French, which the Synod of Dort (1574) approved. A much more celebrated meeting was held at this place 1618-19, to adjudicate between the High Calvinists, or Supralapsarians, who held unflinchingly to the doctrine of the "Institutes" touching predestination and the Remonstrants who opposed them. Gomar led the former party; Arminius, though he died before the synod, in 1609, had communicated his milder views to Uytenbogart and Episcopius, hence called Arminians. They objected to the doctrine of election before merit, that it made the work of Christ superfluous and inexplicable. The Five Articles which contained their theology turned on election, adoption, justification, sanctification, and sealing by the Spirit, all which Divine acts presuppose that man has been called, has obeyed, and is converted. Redemption is universal, reprobation due to the sinner's fault and not to God's absolute decree. In these and the like particulars, we find the Arminians coming close to Tridentine formulas. The "Remonstrance" of 1610 embodied their protest against the Manichaean errors, as they said, which Calvin had taken under his patronage. But the Gomarists renewed his dogmas; and their belief met a favourable reception among the Dutch, French, and Swiss. In England the dispute underwent many vicissitudes. The Puritans, as afterwards their Nonconformist descendants, generally sided with Gomar; the High Church party became Arminian. Wesley abandoned the severe views of Calvin; Whitefield adopted them as a revelation. The Westminster Assembly (1643-47) made an attempt to unite the Churches of Great Britain on a basis of Calvinism, but in vain. Their Catechism -- the Larger and the Smaller -- enjoyed authority by Act of Parliament. John Knox had, in 1560 edited the "First Book of Discipline," which follows Geneva, but includes a permissive ritual. The "Second Book of Discipline" was sent out by a congregation under Andrew Melville's influence in 1572, and in 1592 the whole system received Parliamentary sanction. But James I rejected the doctrines of Dort. In Germany the strange idea was prevalent that civil rulers ought to fix the creed of their subjects, Cujus regio, ejus religio. Hence an alternation and confusion of formulas ensued down to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Frederick III, Count Palatine, put forward, in 1562, the Heidelberg Catechism, which is of Calvin's inspiration. John George of Anhalt-Dessau laid down the same doctrine in 20 Articles (1597). Maurice of Hesse-Cassel patronized the Synod of Dort; and John Sigismund of Brandenburg, exchanging the Lutheran tenets for the Genevese, imposed on his Prussians the "Confession of the Marches." In general, the reformed Protestants allowed dogmatic force to the revised Confession of Augsburg (1540) which Calvin himself had signed.
WILLIAM BARRY
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume III
Copyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 2003 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
www.NewAdvent.org
but where is Hobbs?
It must of been a hoot to see the Calvinist’s and Lutheran’s faces when their own congregations started to split up into their own little factions....no doubt giving the same excuses they once uttered to the Pope.
THEY could interpret the scriptures better than them. THEY have the wisdom their leaders obviously lacked. THEY have the piety their Luterhan/Calvinist leaders onced confessed.
Ironic....the cross fractures from the prideful vanities of man.
” I am very grateful first for the Word of God and the basic tenants of Christianity taught through Calvin” ~ astratt7
When one studies the history of New Testament “church government”, one can readily see that the bottom-up, checks and balances, Republican form of limited government that America’s Calvinist Framers gave us, is based straight out of the New Testament CHURCH GOVERNMENT example. [Acts 6:3; 1:15, 22, 23, 25; 2Cor.8:19, etc.]
Paul, Barnabus and Titus are shown as installing the elders that were chosen by the congregations [Acts 6:3-6; 14:23 and Titus 1:5].
Paul says to the whole church congregation: “Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom whom we may appoint to this duty.” (of servant aka deacon)
The apostles had the *unique authority* to found and govern the early church, and they could speak and write the words of God. Many of their written words became the NT Scripture. In order to qualify as an apostle someone had to have seen Christ with his own eyes after he rose from the dead **and** had to have been specifically installed/appointed by Christ as an apostle.
In place of living apostles present in the church to teach and govern it, we have instead the writings of the apostles in the books of the NT. Those New Testament Scriptures fulfill for the church today the absolute authoritative teaching and governing functions which were fulfilled by the apostles themselves during the early years of the church. Because of that, there is no need for any direct “succession” or “physical descent” from the apostles.
MORE: http://www.freerepublic.com/~matchettpi/
raised a Catholic and became born again at the age of 21
DING DING DING.....dang should of seen that one coming.
Always nice to read information from an objective,unbiased source.
Thank you for relating your personal experience.
Have other posters ever wondered? If it were not for the scriptural teachings of the Calvinist and the Puritans, I do not know where the United Strates of America would be today today, if it would have ever come into existence at all..
Watch it or the FR Catholics might even be able to get this labeled as Catholic Caucus thread. LOL
Check out have many times in scripture God says his people are chosen, called, etc....
Very simple concept. God centered or man centered. I choose God centered. What a mess man makes of things
There you have it.
God chooses people in His plans whether we like it or not.
True. bttt
....we should not be surprised to find that the Calvinists took a very important part in American Revolution. Calvin emphasized that the sovereignty of God, when applied to the affairs of government proved to be crucial, because God as the Supreme Ruler had all ultimate authority vested in Him, and all other authority flowed from God, as it pleased Him to bestow it. The Scriptures, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind, were taken as the final authority for all of life, as containing eternal principles, which were for all ages, and all peoples. Calvin based his views on these very Scriptures. As we read earlier, in Paul's letter to the Romans, God's Word declares the state to be a divinely established institution.Related threads:History is eloquent in declaring that the American republican democracy was born of Christianity and that form of Christianity was Calvinism. The great revolutionary conflict which resulted in the founding of this nation was carried out mainly by Calvinists--many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian college of Princeton....
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In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”
bttt
“God chooses people in His plans whether we like it or not.’
Yeah, it is sooo tough to be the created.
Thanks Alex. The links you provided are very informative, indeed.
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