So, resume then. As I said, Calvin couldn't escape from the shadow of Geneva, even in Strasbourg. In 1539, the distinguished Roman Catholic cardinal, Jacob Sadolato, tried to win back the Genevans to Roman Catholicism by writing them an open letter in which he attacked Protestants for violating the unity of the church. And he even criticized the motives and the characters of Calvin and Farrell. Now what made Sadolato's letter attractive to wavering Protestants was the fact that Sadolato himself was one of the foremost advocates of evangelical reform within the Church of Rome. Quite stung by the personal criticisms of himself, Calvin produced a highly effective reply to Sadolato in September 1539. This treatise is regarded by many as one of the most persuasive statements of Reformation principles ever written. And it's probably the best introduction to Calvin, if you haven't read any, his reply to Sadolato. It certainly impressed the Genevans. In October 1540, the citizens of Geneva asked Calvin to return and to resume his work among them as a reformer. There'd been a political revolution which had placed in power a party that was friendly to Calvin. Now when Calvin received these invitations, he hesitated. Long, he remembered the pathetic failure of his previous efforts at reforming Geneva. And he wrote, there is no place under heaven that I'm more afraid of. I would rather submit to a hundred other deaths than to that cross on which I would have to perish a thousand times every day. However, he finally yielded to the urgent, repeated invitations of the Genevans, and he reentered the city at length in September, 1541. And he went in fear and trembling. I offer my heart, a slain victim in sacrifice to the Lord. But this time he returned for good. So let's look at Calvin, the reformer of Geneva. Now the invitation of the Genevans to Calvin to return to them did not mean that Calvin had an easy ride in his second period as the city's reformer. Indeed, he struggled for many years against all kinds of opposition to try to make Geneva into a Christian community, which he believed would embody the will of God for human society. Calvin never did achieve all that he wanted. As I mentioned previously, he fervently wished the Lord's Supper to be celebrated every Sunday as an integral part of normal Christian worship. But he had to make concessions to the Geneva magistrates and to accept a celebration of communion only four times a year, at Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and the first Sunday in September. As I explained earlier, the Geneva magistrates opposed weekly communion because they wanted the church's power of excommunication to be kept as far out of sight as possible. And again, although Calvin did manage to win for the Geneva church a large measure of independence from state control, He had to compromise by agreeing that the elders of the church would be chosen by the city magistrates from among their own number. Nevertheless, Calvin did finally secure in 1555 the power of church discipline and of excommunication for the consistory, the body of pastors and elders meeting jointly, not the city council. And that was a real triumph. Because by Calvin's death in 1564, there were 18 pastors on the consistory, and only 12 elders chosen by the magistrates from among their own number. So the pastors greatly outnumbered the magistrate elders. So that effectively put the power of church discipline into the hands of the church, not the city council. Calvin set out his principles of church organization in a document entitled, Ecclesiastical Ordinances of the Geneva Church. And this was officially adopted by the Geneva City Council in November 1541. and the ecclesiastical ordinances teaches the Presbyterian system of church government, modified by those compromises that Calvin was forced to make with the Genevan city magistrates. Now we might ask, why did Calvin make these compromises at all? And the answer is that Calvin was prepared to accept certain compromises because he didn't simply want to reform the religious life of the Genevan church. He wanted much more. He wanted the entire life of the city to be brought into conformity with the will of God for human living. And in order to do that, he needed the support and the cooperation of the political authorities on the city council. In other words, we mustn't think of Calvin as being narrowly a religious reformer. He was also a moral, social, and political reformer. Calvin's great vision was not only to build up a true Christian church in Geneva, but to make Geneva itself into a true Christian city. Calvin therefore bent his efforts towards purifying the moral life of Genevan society at large. He persuaded the city council to enforce severe laws against adultery, prostitution, pornography, drunkenness, dancing, gambling, swearing, disobedience of children to their parents, and so on. But we shouldn't think that in Calvin's Geneva, the city council tried, in a merely negative way, to stop its citizens behaving immorally. It did do that, but it was much more than that. Under Calvin's inspiration, the city council also took strong, positive measures to improve the social and the economic and the cultural life of the community. Let me just give you some examples. In Calvin's Geneva, the authorities created an outstanding system of free public education. They stimulated business by helping to establish a highly successful cloth and silk industry, which provided much needed employment. They made the sale of food subject to strict health and hygiene laws. They supplied, free of charge, latrines for all houses that lacked them, a very, very real need. in most 16th century European homes. They built a high quality hospital. They built a place of residence for the homeless. They set up an agency to find work for the unemployed. And they organized a noble system of social care for the poor and the aged. Now in those ways, and in other ways, the Geneva government, under Calvin's inspiration, carried out a wide ranging program of social planning and reform, which alongside the moral and spiritual influence of the Geneva church, utterly transformed the whole life of the city. If you think about modern political debates, big government versus little government. Calvin's Geneva is very much an example of big, big government. Now out of the purifying fires of internal conflicts, which we'll go on to look at in a few moments, eventually Calvin's Geneva became a near perfect pattern, a model of a reformed community. And reformed refugees from all over Western Europe, but especially from France, came flocking to the city of Calvin. And Geneva, rather than Strasbourg, now became the great international headquarters of reformed Protestantism. The reformed refugees helped Calvin to make Geneva into a model reformed city. And at the same time, the Geneva example of what could be done inspired these refugees to take the reformed faith back to their own homelands and to try to do the same there. For example, John Knox, the reformer of Scotland, pastored a congregation of English Protestant refugees in Geneva from 1556 to 1559 during the reign of Mary Tudor. And Knox, based on his experience of Geneva over those three years, referred quite famously to Calvin's Geneva as, quote, the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the apostles. In other places, I confess Christ to be truly preached, but manners and religion to be so sincerely reformed, I have not yet seen in any other place." Even more striking than John Knox's praise was the testimony of a German Lutheran pastor, Valentin Andrei of Württemberg. Now, Andrei had all the typical Lutheran antagonism to the Reformed faith. But when he visited Geneva in 1610, some 46 years after Calvin's death, Andrei was utterly astonished by the living monument that the Geneva Reformer had left behind him. So let me quote Andrei's testimony. When I was in Geneva, I saw something great, which I will remember and desire as long as I live. There is in Geneva the perfect system of a perfect government. But the city's special beauty is a moral discipline which makes weekly investigations into the behavior of the citizens, including their smallest transgressions. The discipline is carried out first by district inspectors, then by the elders, and finally by the magistrates, according to the nature of the sin and the moral condition of the offender. All cursing, swearing, gambling, luxury, strife, hatred, and deceit are forbidden, while greater sins are hardly even heard of. What a glorious beauty of the Christian faith shines forth in such purity of moral conduct. We must lament with tears that it is lacking and almost totally neglected among us Lutherans. Indeed, if it were not for the religious difference between me and the Genevans, I would forever have been bound to that city by our agreement in morality. And I have ever since tried to introduce something like it into our churches. just as outstanding as the public discipline, was the home discipline of my Genevan landlord, Scarron. His house was distinguished by daily worship, reading of the scriptures, the fear of God in word and deed, and a holy moderation in eating, drinking, and manner of dress. Now, if that was how a hostile Lutheran reacted to Geneva, we can imagine how overwhelmed by it reformed visitors must have been. The strange thing is, though, that Calvin himself never had any position of public authority in Geneva, other than the simple office of pastor. the pastor of St. Peter's Church, that was one of the three city churches in Geneva. Calvin ruled Geneva, if one may so put it, through the persuasive power of the spoken word. He preached not only on Sundays, but on three weekdays as well. He lectured on theology twice a week, and he attended the weekly meeting of the Consistory every Thursday. And he expounded the Bible every Friday at a special spiritual conference called the Assembly, which we'll look at a bit later. But Calvin had no political power. The city council didn't even give him citizenship in Geneva until 1559, just a few years before his death. Calvin reformed the city, in other words, not by force or by decree, but by preaching, by persuasion. The city council would follow Calvin's reforming ideas only if Calvin's arguments convinced enough of the council members. And he didn't always convince them. And indeed, especially in the years 1548 to 1555, there was intense conflict in Geneva between Calvin's supporters and Calvin's opponents. During this period, Calvin's opponents dominated the city council. Who were they? They were mostly native Genevans who came from long-established Genevan families. and they deeply resented the influx of 6,000 foreign religious refugees into their small city. It had a native population of only 13,000. So when you've got a native population of 13,000 and then you have 6,000 refugees turning up on your doorstep, that's pretty serious. Now Calvin's opponents were led by Ami Perrin, a distinguished Genevan citizen. And they were sometimes named after him the Peronists, so the Calvinists versus the Peronists. Calvin himself called them the Libertines because of their opposition to the moral discipline that he wished the city to embrace, the Libertines. Many of them do seem to have led somewhat loose lives, and some of them did hold somewhat heretical views. For example, denying the inspiration of scripture or maintaining that God and the universe are identical. Pantheism. Everything is God. Calvin had to endure many insults and even threats against his life from Ammi, Perrin, and the Libertines. And sometimes, being only human, Calvin fell into profound depression. In 1547, he wrote, I wish God would let me leave this place. And then, in what seemed like the crowning disaster in 1549, his arch enemy, Ami Perrin, was elected chief magistrate of Geneva, sort of prime minister of Geneva. And yet, by 1555, six years after that, Calvin and his supporters had completely triumphed over the Libertine Party. How did that come about? Well, Calvin's ultimate victory was triggered off by the most famous or infamous episode in Calvin's life. the episode that revolved around a certain Spanish Anabaptist named Michael Servitus. Now, Servitus was a physician who had shocked Roman Catholics and Protestants alike by his writings, his theological writings, in which he denied and mocked the doctrine of the Trinity, which he called a three-headed monster. Servetus expounded his views first in Concerning the Errors of the Trinity. That was in 1531. And then he expounded his views at more length in 1553 in his The Restoration of Christianity. Now the Latin title of Servetus's Restoration was Restitutio. And that was a deliberate reference to the Institutio of Calvin. And most of Servetus's restitutio was written specifically as a response to Calvin's institutio, correcting what Servetus believed were its many errors. Servetus and Calvin actually corresponded with each other in the 1540s. Calvin at first replied to the letters that Servetus sent to him and tried to reason with him from the scriptures. but he finally washed his hands of Servetus as a desperately obstinate heretic. Servetus was then arrested and condemned to death for heresy by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in France. But he somehow managed to escape from prison and for no good reason, and nobody really knows why he did this, he went to Geneva in August, 1553. And he was almost immediately recognized, and the Geneva authorities arrested the notorious anti-Trinitarian. And so he was put on trial for heresy before the Geneva City Council. Now, Servetus' trial for heresy became a trial of strength between Calvin and the Libertines. The Libertines at that point controlled the city council with Amy Perrin as chief magistrate. Like almost all Christians in his day, Calvin accepted that the state was under moral obligation to God to punish heresy. Ironically, even Servetus himself taught that Christian magistrates should put heretics to death. The crucial difference between Servetus and his opponents was that they believed there could be no greater heresy than denying the Trinity. This was the ultimate heresy. So if the Geneva City Council convicted Servetus, he would be facing the death penalty for his anti-Trinitarian faith. Well, the Libertines placed every possible difficulty in the way of Servetus's conviction for heresy. This was not out of any compassion for Servetus. It was simply to harass Calvin. However, they could not afford, at the end of the day, to acquit Servetus, when the whole of Western Christendom was demanding his execution. All eyes were on Geneva, and there was a universal demand for Servetus's punishment. and the Libertines revealed their lack of principle, when, after encouraging Servetus for so long by their delaying tactics, the Libertine-dominated city council, by a unanimous vote, then condemned the unfortunate Anabaptist to death by burning. And it's something always to keep in mind when you listen to the debates about the death of Servetus, that he was condemned to death by a city council that was dominated by Calvin's opponents, the Libertines. Now, Calvin was glad, there's no point mincing words, Calvin was glad that Servetus had been sentenced to death. But he was horrified by the cruel method of execution that the city council had chosen, burning. And Calvin tried to get it changed to something swift and merciful. And for his pains, Calvin was rebuked by his old friend William Farrell for being soft. But the city council refused to listen to Calvin, and Servetus was burnt at the stake on October 17th, 1553. William Farrell attended Servetus pastorally in his last hours. And Servetus died with an unshaken faith in his anti-Trinitarian convictions. His cry amid the flames was, Jesus, son of the eternal God, have mercy on me. And it has been pointed out that if only Servetus had said, Jesus, the eternal son of God, have mercy on me, his life would have been spared. Now Calvin has been denounced almost endlessly, sometimes as an unregenerate murderer, for his part in the death of Servetus. If you don't believe me, just look at some of the anti-Calvinist literature out there, in which Calvin is portrayed as some kind of incarnate demon for what happened on this occasion. What do we say to that? Even though we might not wish to express approval of the death penalty for heresy, I think it's very difficult to understand why Calvin should be so ruthlessly singled out for blame. Why has Zwingli, the reformer of Zurich, not been condemned with equal ferocity for his part in the execution of Anabaptists? Why has Archbishop Cranmer not been condemned with equal ferocity for his part in the execution of the Anabaptist Joan Boettcher? And so one could go on. The simple fact is that in the 16th century, Protestant governments, with the consent of the reformers, did sometimes execute people for heresy. almost always radicals who denied the doctrine of the Trinity or the doctrine of the Incarnation. And I would suggest that the real issue here is a purely theological one. Namely, does the Bible authorize governments to put a heretic or a blasphemer to death? Now that's a theological question. If the Bible does authorize governments to put heretics and blasphemers to death, as virtually all Protestants at that time sincerely believed, then we can no more condemn our forefathers as unregenerate killers than we can affix that stigma to present-day Christians who sincerely believe in capital punishment for murder. Furthermore, we should also keep in mind that Servetus was an isolated case. No one else was ever put to death for heresy in Calvin's Geneva. This was a one-off. And more particularly, no Roman Catholic was ever put to death for heresy in Calvin's Geneva. If someone was found to be a secret believer in the old religion, in Calvin's Geneva, he or she was simply banished from the city. Now that was at a time when Roman Catholic regimes were routinely burning Protestants at the stake in their thousands and tens of thousands across Europe. If we put matters in that larger historical context, I think it becomes possible to regret very deeply the fate of Michael Servetus, while at the same time refusing to draw harsh spiritual conclusions about John Calvin. Now at the time, it would have to be said, Servetus' trial and execution greatly enhanced and magnified Calvin's reputation. He had purged Europe of its most hated heretic. Incredible. The other reformers positively showered the highest praise on Calvin. But by contrast, the Libertines had destroyed their credibility by putting so many obstacles in the path of Servetus's punishment and then turning around and having him put to death anyway. The Geneva elections of 1554 and 1555 went decisively in Calvin's favor and against the Peronists or Libertines. The Libertines responded to this by rather foolishly staging a minor riot one night in May 1555. And they were either executed for treason or banished. The council sentenced Ammi Perrin to death for treason, but he fled to Bern. From that moment onwards, Calvin was the undisputed moral and spiritual leader of Geneva until his death in 1564. Now Calvin produced a great number of important writings during this second period in Geneva. He continued to revise and enlarge the Institutes until it reached its final form in 1559. He wrote a catechism for the church in Geneva, the Genevan Catechism of 1541, and this had great influence on other reformed catechisms. It's divided into five sections, and it deals with faith, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Word of God, and the sacraments. Interestingly, it differs from Martin Luther's little catechism in putting faith first rather than the Ten Commandments first. Luther put the Ten Commandments first. Calvin put faith first. And that reflects a difference of emphasis between Calvin's theology and Luther's. Luther regarded the law of God as chiefly intended to convict unbelievers of their sin and show them their need of Christ for salvation. Calvin understood the law of God mainly as God's plan for how the justified believer should live to his glory. So that explains, I think, why Luther put the Ten Commandments first, followed by faith. Calvin puts faith first, followed by the Ten Commandments. Calvin wrote most of his biblical commentaries during this second period in Geneva. And as well as writing these biblical commentaries, many of his sermons were also written down by a secretary as Calvin preached them. And these sermons were then published, and the result is that we sometimes have both a commentary and a series of sermons by Calvin on the same books of the Bible, but they are different. Calvin produced a host of writings against the various enemies of the Reformed faith, His most important book against Rome was a commentary on the Council of Trent and its decrees, entitled Acts of the Council of Trent and the Antidote, published in 1547. He dealt with the radical reformers in his Against the Sect of the Anabaptists in 1544. He expounded the reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper against the Lutherans in various tracts, and most notably on the true partaking of Christ's flesh and blood in 1561. Now, that's just a very, very few of Calvin's staggeringly huge output of books and pamphlets, not to mention his letters. One other fact should be noted at this point. Calvin's work was done against a background of absolutely chronic ill health. He was a constant martyr to arthritis, migraine headaches, bleeding from the stomach, bowel disorders, hemorrhoids, inflamed kidneys and kidney stones, fever, muscle cramps, and gout. And yet this sick man accomplished more in one lifetime than most healthy people could encompass in a hundred. Quite remarkable. Let's now move on to look at the theme of Calvin as a reformer of worship. Calvin as a reformer of worship. Now Calvin's approach to the reformation of worship in Strasbourg and Geneva was similar to the approach that had been taken by Zwingli in Zurich. That is to say, Calvin accepted what nowadays is called the regulative principle. In other words, nothing should be done in Christian worship unless it is authorized by the word of God. And so he followed Zwingli in rejecting most of the paraphernalia of medieval Catholic worship. Images, candles, priestly robes, etc. These all went. In one important area, however, Calvin differed from Zwingli. Calvin was positively committed to congregational singing. Zwingli had not been, but Calvin was positively committed to congregational singing rather than merely reciting scripture, which is what the Zwinglian worshipers of Zurich did. They would recite the scriptures together, but they wouldn't sing them. But Calvin thought singing was a mandated act of New Testament worship. So in 1539, when he was in Strasbourg, Calvin published a French songbook This contained 17 psalms, the Nunc Dimittis, that is, Simeon's song, Luke chapter two, verses 29 to 32, and the Ten Commandments and the Apostles' Creed set to music. The singing of the Ten Commandments may boggle the mind, but in fact it was a normal part of Sunday worship in Calvin's Strasbourg congregation. and worshippers always sang the Apostles' Creed during the Lord's Supper and the Nunc Dimittis as the conclusion of the Lord's Supper. Calvin's Geneva Liturgy of 1542 contained 39 psalms, the Nunc Dimittis, and musical versions of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' Creed. However, especially in his second period in Geneva, that's 1541 to 1564, especially during that period, Calvin gave pride of place to the Psalms in public worship. And he expressed his view on this in his preface to the 1542 Geneva Liturgy, from which I quote, this is Calvin. Now what Augustine says is true, namely, that no one can sing anything worthy of God which he has not received from God. Therefore, even after we have carefully searched everywhere, we shall not find better or more appropriate songs to this end than the songs of David, inspired by the Holy Spirit. And, for this reason, when we sing them, we are assured that God puts the words in our mouth, as if he himself was singing through us to exalt his glory. Now, one often hears that Calvin believed in exclusive psalmody, that he thought Christians should sing only the psalms in worship. Now, that's not true. He was quite happy that other suitable things should be used, the nunc dimittis, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer. Nevertheless, Calvin did clearly think that nothing could actually surpass the Psalms for spiritual beauty in the public praise of the church. So his view should perhaps be called predominant psalmody rather than exclusive psalmody. Calvin agreed with Zwingli, and indeed the early church fathers, in opposing the use of musical instruments in worship. And so reformed Geneva sang the Psalms without any instrumental accompaniment, and that became the pattern in all the reformed churches. And that was in contrast to the Lutheran churches, which retained the use of the organ. Calvin's encouragement lay behind the complete translation of the Psalms into French. This was done by the poets Clement Marrow and Theodore Beezer. Clement Marrow's first Geneva Psalter of 1543 contained 49 French Psalms, the Nunc dimittis, the Ave Maria, musical versions of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, and two graces to be sung at mealtimes. Marrow died the following year, but Theodore Beezer completed the translation of the Psalms into French in 1562. This final version, finalized by Beezer, contained all 150 of the Psalms, the Nunc Dimittis, and the Ten Commandments set to music. And it was used throughout the French-speaking Protestant world. The French Psalms were sung to simple but lively tunes. Sometimes the tunes were based on popular melodies. And the greatest French Reformed composer of psalm tunes was Claude Gaudimel. He died a martyr for his Protestant faith during the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day in 1572. French Reformed believers fell passionately in love with psalm singing. And so did their brothers and sisters in all the Reformed churches, as the Psalms were translated into German, Dutch, and English. Now the next bit I've got actually looks at what a Calvinian service of worship was like. And because I've got some handouts to illustrate that, and we haven't given them out yet, I think this might be as good a time as any to take our second break.