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superseded by the King James version.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.
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