CALVINISM IN ENGLAND
A glance at English
history readily shows us that it was Calvinism which made Protestantism
triumphant in that land. Many of the leading Protestants who fled to Geneva
during the reign of Queen Mary afterward obtained high positions in the Church
under Queen Elizabeth. Among them were the translators of the Geneva version
of the Bible, which owes much to Calvin and Beza, and which continued to be
the most popular English version till the middle of the seventeenth century
when it was superseded by the King James version. The influence of Calvin is
shown in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, especially in
Article XVII which states the doctrine of Predestination. Cunningham has shown
that all of the great theologians of the Established Church during the reigns
of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth were thorough-going predestinarians and
that the Arminianism of Laud and his successors was a deviation from that
orginal position.
If we search for the
true heroes of England, we shall find them in that noble body of English
Calvinists whose insistence upon a purer form of worship and a purer life won
for them the nickname, "Puritans," to whom Macaulay refers as "perhaps the
most remarkable body of men which the world has ever produced." "That the
English people became Protestant," says Bancroft, "is due to the Puritans."
Smith tells us: "The significance of this fact is beyond computation. English
Protestantism, with its open Bible, its spiritual and intellectual freedom,
meant the Protestantism not only of the American colonies, but of the virile
and multiplying race which for three centuries has been carrying the
Anglo-Saxon language, religion, and institutions into all the world.1
Cromwell, the great
Calvinistic leader and commoner, planted himself upon the solid rock of
Calvinism and called to himself soldiers who had planted themselves upon that
same rock. The result was an army which for purity and heroism surpassed
anything the world had ever seen. "It never found," says
Macaulay, "either in the British Isles or on the Continent, an enemy who could
stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan
warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against
threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy
and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to
regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the
most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Even the
banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride when they saw a brigade
of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive
before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage
into a counterscarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest
of the marshals of France." And again, "That which chiefly distinguished the
army of Cromwell from other armies, was the austere morality and the fear of
God which pervaded the ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists
that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was
seen, and that, during the long dominion of soldiery, the property of the
peaceable citizens and the honor of woman were held sacred. No servant girl
complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate was
taken from the shops of the goldsmiths"2
Prof. John Fiske, who
has been ranked as one of the two greatest American historians, says, "It
is not too much to say that in the seventeenth century the entire
political future of mankind was staked upon the questions that were at issue
in England. Had it not been for the Puritans, political liberty would probably
have disappeared from the world. If ever there were men who laid down their
lives in the cause of all mankind, it was those grim old Ironsides, whose
watch-words were texts of Holy Writ, whose battle-cries were hymns of praise."3
When Protestant
martyrs died in the valleys of Piedmont, and the papal autocrat sat on his
throne in luxury, gathering his blood-stained garments around him, it was
Cromwell, the Puritan, supported by a council and nation of the same
persuasion, who wrote demanding that these persecutions cease.
On three different
occasions Cromwell was offered, and was urged to accept, the Crown of England,
but each time he refused. Doctrinally we find that the Puritans were the
literal and lineal descendants of John Calvin; and they and they alone kept
alive the precious spark of English liberty. In view of these facts no one can
rashly deny the justice of Fiske's conclusion that "It would be hard to
over-rate the debt which mankind owes to John Calvin."
McFetridge in his
splendid little book, "Calvinism in History," says, "If we ask again, Who
brought the final great deliverance to English liberty? we are answered by
history, The Illustrious Calvinist, William, Prince of Orange, who, as
Macaulay says, found in the strong and sharp logic of the Geneva school
something that suited his intellect and his temper; the keystone of whose
religion was the doctrine of Predestination; and who, with his keen logical
vision, declared that if he were to abandon the doctrine of Predestination he
must abandon with it all his belief in a superintending Providence, and must
become a mere Epicurean. And he was right, for Predestination and an
overruling Providence are one and the same thing. If we accept the one, we are
in consistency bound to accept the other," (p. 52).
Footnotes:
1The Creed of
Presbyterians, p. 72.
2Maeaulay, History of England, I., p. 119.
3The Beginnings of New England, pp. 37, 51.
