the ministry. It selected and determined, in the first place, as to all candidates, and the fitness of their ordination to special charges, and the people were finally invited to sanction the nomination, or "if there be any one who is aware of aught to object to in the life or doctrine of the person nominated, to come and declare it to one of the syndics before the next following Sunday, on which day also it may be presented, to the end that no one be inducted to the ministry except with the common consent of the whole church." A sufficiently fair and seemly order!-the rights of authority on the one hand asserted, and the rights of the people on the other hand recognised; but there seems to have been no adequate provision for a conciliating adjustment of the conflicting rights so soon as actual collision should arise. The future difficulties of presbytery thus lay concealed in its very origin. 2. There was a consistorial court of discipline of far more practical and living authority than the general college of pastors and doctors. This court was constituted by the five pastors of the city parishes and twelve elders. These elders were selected from the two representative councils of the city-two from the Council of Sixty, and the remainder from the Council of Two Hundred. Their nomination lay with the ordinary council, in conjunction with the Company. The consistory was thus chiefly composed of lay members; but the influence of the clergy, although, numerically reckoned, it appears small, was in reality strongly secured in the mode of appointment of the elders, which was annual, besides being so far under the direct control of the clergy. The clerical element was comparatively fixed, the lay element varied from year to year. This consistorial court became the great engine of Calvin's power. He is supposed by-and-by to have assumed the permanent presidency of it,* although this constitutionally belonged to one of the syndics. It extended its jurisdiction over all social usages, as well as offences against morality and religion. It was a court of practical ethics, in the widest sensethe Church in that repressive disciplinary aspect which had such a charm for Calvin's mind, and in which it alone seemed to him to rise to its right character and use. Its only direct weapon of authority was excommunication; but where this proved unavailing or inadequate, the culprit was transferred to the council, which inflicted on him any measure of civil punishment, even to death. The great code + of ecclesiastical and moral legislation, which guided both the consistory and council, was the production of Calvin. It was sworn to by the whole of the people in a great assembly in St Peter's, on the 20th of November 1541. It not only laid down general rules, but entered with the most rigorous control into all the affairs of private life. "From his cradle to his grave," "the Genevese citizen was pursued by its inquisitorial eye." ‡ Ornaments for the person, the shape and length of the hair, the modes of dress, the very number of dishes for din * The evidence is an entry in the Registers of Geneva, sixteen years after his death, which the reader may consult in Henry's Life, vol. i. p. 469-Geneva. + Ordinances Ecclesiastiques de l'Eglise-Geneva, 1577. See an admirable article, "Calvin in Geneva," West. Rev., July 1858. ner, were subjected to special regulation. Wedding presents are only permitted within limits; and at betrothals, marriages, or baptisms, bouquets must not be encircled with gold or jewelled with pearls, or other precious stones. "Est défendu de donner aus dites fiancailles, nopces, ou baptisailles des bouquets liés d'or ou canetilles, ou garnis de grénats, perles, et autres pierreries." The registers of Geneva remain to show with what abundant rigour these regulations were carried out. It is a strange and mournful record, with ludicrous lights crossing it here and there. A man hearing an ass bray, and saying jestingly, "Il chante un beau psaume," is sentenced to temporary banishment from the city. A young girl in church singing the words of a song to a psalm-tune is ordered to be whipped by her parents. Three children are punished because, during the sermon, instead of going to church, they remained outside to eat cakes. A man, for swearing by the "body and blood of Christ," is condemned to be fined, and to sit in the public square in the stocks. Light reading, in the shape of Amadis de Gaul-as dear to the lovers of romance then as the treasures of *"Item, que nul faisant nopces, banquets ou festins n'ait à faire au service d'iceux plus haut d'une venue ou mise de chairs ou de poisson et de cinq plats au plus, honnestes et raissonables en ce non compenrises les mesmes entrées, et huict plats de tout dessert et q'au dit dessert q'uait pastisserie, ou pièce de four, sinon une tourt seulement, et cela en chacune table de dix personnes." It is a singular and instructive fact that, amid the long-continued decay of religious Protestantism in Geneva, the memory of the rigour of Calvin's sumptuary laws remains a kind of popular tradition at once ludicrous and melancholy. An old man, who pointed out to the writer the supposed resting-place of the reformer, seemed to have little other idea of Calvin than as the man who limited the number of dishes at dinner! the circulating library are to the modern reader-is peremptorily forbidden, and the book ordered to be destroyed. And there are darker colours far in the picture, at which we shrink as their shadow still falls across three centuries upon us. A child for having struck her parents was beheaded in 1568. Another lad of sixteen, for having only threatened to strike his mother, was condemned to death. If we think of what even mothers, alas! sometimes are, and how temporary and trivial are often the worst of such domestic collisions-momentary bursts of childish passion without moral instinct of any kind—it makes one's blood run chill to think of an arbitrary death inflicted for such offences. A system of such a character could only maintain itself on an absolute divine right-a right nowhere, indeed, formally set forth by Calvin, yet distinctly asserted in all the spirit and practice of his ecclesiastical legislation. The consistorial discipline, for example, when the Favres begin to rebel against it, is declared to be "the yoke of Christ." The ordinances and laws of Geneva, and the whole system of polity of which Calvin himself remained the centre, is carried back to Scripture, and presumed to rest upon express divine command. This was the only valid plea and justification of a system which applied itself in such a Registres, Mars 1559. + HENRY, vol. i. p. 361; English. Henry seems only to see in these examples "great beauty in the earnestness with which parental authority was defended." They strongly show the judicial spirit of Calvin, and his confusion of the temporary legalism of the Old Economy with the spirit and requirements of the New. Letters, vol. ii. p. 49. M direct and authoritative manner to the regulation of human life. It could only stand as a special embodiment of the Divine will-as a declared Theocracy. Henceforth Calvin's life in Geneva does not present any very varied course of incident. It is mainly a succession of earnest labours in defence of the truth, and of earnest struggles against its enemies. His activity was indefatigable, and his keen spirit knew scarcely what it was to rest day by day. His ordinary duties are thus described by Beza:-"During the week he preached every alternate and lectured every third day; on Thursday he met with the presbytery, and on Friday attended the ordinary Scripture meeting called the congregation,' where he had his full share of the duty." His Commentaries, on which he now continued to work regularly, and his unceasing correspondence, filled up a measure of industry which we contemplate with astonishment. No man certainly was ever less self-indulgent, and if he was severe in his exactions from others, he was no less unsparing with himself. Viret continued temporarily associated with him at Geneva; but he was soon left to bear the main burden of ecclesiastical rule himself, as his permanent colleagues enjoyed comparatively little esteem. More than anything else, the subsequent tenor of the reformer's life is marked by the successive controversies in which he was engaged. Caroli again appears for a brief space upon the scene, but disappears finally in deserved obscurity and disgrace-closing a life of scandalous imposture by a death of infamy in a Roman hospital. Then in succession the names of Pighius, Castellio, Bolsec, and, farther on, Westphal and Heshu |