History

Our Past History – The Times of the Second Angel

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In the book Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 196, she says, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.” With this in mind, we began to study a subject that is very broad and complex, namely, the Three Angels’ Messages. In part one [LandMarks, July, 2011] we reflected upon the first angel’s message of Revelation 14:6, 7. We learned that the first angel’s message proclaims the hour of God’s judgment. This message was proclaimed by William Miller in the early 1830s. The movement that followed became known as the Millerite movement and later on as the Advent movement. The Millerites discovered that God’s judgment was to begin in A.D. 1844. Now this is the first angel that proclaims the everlasting gospel, but it is not the last. The message of judgment was to be followed by another message, and both messages were to be proclaimed together. Here we will study the second angel’s message.

“And there followed another angel …” Revelation 14:8. Before we continue reading, I want to emphasize the word “followed.” The Greek word for follow means to accompany. It means to go with someone as an associate or companion. For example, in Mark 1:17, 18, we read, “And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.” Notice, they followed or went along with Jesus. They accompanied Him. So, the second angel accompanied the first angel. That means that the first angel was joined by the second angel, and both were to fly in the midst of heaven together. What is the message that was to accompany the first angel?

“And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” Revelation 14:8. Notice, the second angel follows or accompanies the first angel with the message that Babylon is fallen. What is Babylon depicted as in the Bible? Revelation 17:3, 5 says, “So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast. … And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” Here we see that Babylon is depicted as a woman, and in Bible prophecy what does a woman represent? Let’s examine three passages. “I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman.” “And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.” “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” Jeremiah 6:2; Isaiah 51:16; II Corinthians 11:2. Notice, the Bible depicts God’s church as a woman. Therefore, in Bible prophecy a woman symbolizes the church.

So the message that Babylon is fallen reveals to us a church and her daughters that are fallen. In II Thessalonians 2:3, the apostle Paul prophesied about this. “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” We understand this falling away to apply to the great apostasy of the Church of Rome in the third century. As soon as the Roman church adopted pagan practices, she, as a religious system, fell from the grace of God. However, the message of her fall was not widely proclaimed until the early 1840s when her daughters rejected the first angel’s message of God’s judgment. Remember, Revelation 17:5 says that Babylon is the mother of harlots. Therefore, she has daughter churches that are also corrupt. By the 1840s, as the first angel’s message was gaining strength and converts, Babylon’s daughters, which refer to the various Protestant churches, began to greatly oppose the advent message. As that opposition grew, the people who believed the message of reform were forced to either leave the advent movement and remain with their respective churches or leave their churches and hold fast to their advent beliefs.

Francis Nichol, the author of the book The Midnight Cry (Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D. C., 1945) writes about the development of the second angel’s message. “There comes a time in the history of almost every religious movement when the distinctive teachings or convictions that set it in motion, result in friction and opposition in the church or churches from which it sprang. …

“In many instances the believers in Miller’s teachings were not permitted to express themselves on the subject in any way in their own churches. They felt repressed and spiritually suffocated. In the Millerite meetings they had found their hearts strangely warmed and their spiritual natures quickened as they listened to the prophecies expounded, and pictured in their minds the stimulating thought of the soon coming of Christ. To go from such a series of meetings back to their own churches and find there an atmosphere of coldness toward the whole subject of the advent, could not fail to lead many to question the wisdom of remaining in those churches. Some felt that to stay in their church would really be to deny their faith. Others were not quite sure.” Ibid., 145, 147. So, as a result of rejecting the first angel’s message of judgment, the Babylonian churches fell, and the believers were forced to leave the fallen churches.

The prophetic Scripture that was laid at the foundation of the first angel’s message was Daniel 8:14: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” The early Adventist Christians believed that the earth was the sanctuary and that the year 1844 was the end of the 2,300 symbolic days. Therefore, they thought that Jesus was going to return in 1844 and bring an end to sin. But after the passing of October 22, 1844, the Adventist believers became greatly disappointed when Jesus did not return to this earth to cleanse it as they expected. Hiram Edson, one of the Adventist lecturers, gives an account of the grief felt by those who were expecting Jesus to come in 1844. He said, “Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before. It seemed that the loss of all earthly friends could have been no comparison. We wept, and wept, till the day dawn. I mused in my own heart, saying, My advent experience has been the richest and brightest of all my Christian experience. If this had proved a failure, what was the rest of my Christian experience worth? Has the Bible proved a failure? Is there no God, no heaven, no golden home city, no paradise? Is all this but a cunningly devised fable? Is there no reality to our fondest hope and expectation of these things? And thus we had something to grieve and weep over, if all our fond hopes were lost. And as I said, we wept till the day dawn.” Ibid., 247, 248.

Now this is only a glimpse into the grief experienced by the advent believers in 1844. It was a time of gloom and sadness; a time when all hope seemed hopeless. However, Psalm 30:5 tells us, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” And on the day after the disappointment, Hiram Edson received a vision that revealed the real event that transpired on the day before. The following is his own account of the vision: “After breakfast I said to one of my brethren, ‘Let us go and see, and encourage some of our brethren.’ We started, and while passing through a large field I was stopped about midway of the field. Heaven seemed open to my view, and I saw distinctly and clearly that instead of our great High Priest coming out of the Most Holy of the heavenly sanctuary to come to this earth on the tenth day of the seventh month, at the end of the 2,300 days, He for the first time entered on that day the second apartment of that sanctuary; and that He had a work to perform in the Most Holy before coming to this earth. That He came to the marriage at the time [as mentioned in the parable of the Ten Virgins]; in other words, to the Ancient of days to receive a kingdom, dominion, and glory; and we must wait for His return from the wedding.” Ibid., 458.

Notice what Inspiration says regarding the great disappointment and the hope that followed: “Jesus did not come to the earth as the waiting, joyful company expected, to cleanse the sanctuary by purifying the earth by fire. I saw that they were correct in their reckoning of the prophetic periods; prophetic time closed in 1844, and Jesus entered the Most Holy Place to cleanse the sanctuary at the ending of the days. …

“… and He sent His angels to direct their minds that they might follow Him where He was. He showed them that this earth is not the sanctuary, but that He must enter the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary to make an atonement for His people and to receive the kingdom from His Father, and that He would then return to the earth and take them to dwell with Him forever.” Early Writings, 243, 244.

Hope began to swell once again in the hearts of the believers. They received a better understanding of the experience they had just passed through. Instead of coming to this earth in 1844 as they expected, Jesus entered into the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary to begin His last intercessory work for humanity. This brings us to the last angel of the three. So far we have two angels flying together—the first angel accompanied by the second angel. Two messages are proclaimed at the same time—a message of judgment and a message of a fallen church. However, these angels were not to be alone. In Revelation 14:9, it says, “And the third angel followed them.” In our final part we will reflect upon the third angel. But for now remember, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”

Demario Carter is currently working as a Bible worker for Steps to Life. 

Customs of Bible Times – Daily Program of Activities

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Grinding of the Grain by the Women

The first sound to greet the ear in the early morning in many a Palestinian village will be the sound of the grinding of the grain. Today, as in the long ago, many of these people resort to the handmill for this purpose. A traveler passing by these humble homes will hear the hum of the handmill morning or evening and sometimes after dark. This sound of the grinding is not exactly musical, and yet many love to go to sleep under it. In the mind of those who live in the East, this sound is associated with home, and comfort and plenty. The women are the ones who engage in this task, and they begin it early in the morning, and it often requires half a day to complete. (Anis C. Haddad, Palestine Speaks, The Warner Press, 1937, p. 54, 55.)

When Jeremiah foretold judgment upon Israel for her sins, he said, concerning what God would take from her, “I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, and the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle” (Jeremiah 25:10). From this it can be seen that the sound of these handmills is an indication of life and activity, and the absence of them would be a sign of utter desolation.

The Bible references to the grinding mills are true to Eastern customs. The task is for servants if the family has them, and if not, the women do the job, but the men would consider it beneath them to engage in such a menial task. Part of the judgment upon Israel at the destruction of Jerusalem was that the enemy “took the young men to grind” (Lamentations 5:13).

And the Philistines punished Samson in this way, for it says of him, “and he did grind in the prison house” (Judges 16:21).

Although there are simple handmills made for the use of one person, more often two women operate one together. The mill is composed of two stones eighteen to twenty-four inches in diameter. The two women sit at these stones facing each other. The upper stone turns upon the lower one by means of an upright handle, which the women alternately pull and push. Here is how the process works:

The upper stone rotates about a wooden pivot fixed in the center of the lower. The opening in the upper stone for the pivot is funnel-shaped to receive the corn, which each woman throws in as required with her disengaged hand. The flour issuing from between the stones is usually caught on a sheepskin placed under the mill. Ibid., 56.

Job speaks of a heart being as “hard as a piece of the nether millstone” (Job 41:24). Thomson says that the lower millstone is not always harder than the upper, but he had seen the nether made of a very compact and thick sandstone, while the upper was of lava, no doubt because being lighter it would be easier to drive it around with the hand. (W.M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, Hyperion Books, December 1985, vol. 1, p. 108.)

Weaving Cloth and Making Clothes

The Jewish women were responsible for making the clothing for the family. The wool which was used came from their flocks. It had to be spun into yarn without the use of modern spinning wheels. … The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, being experts in weaving, had large looms, but for the most part the common people of Palestine used a very primitive loom and the weaving process was of necessity a slow and tedious one. Of course, there were no sewing machines or steel needles. Their needles were coarse ones made of bronze or sometimes of splinters of bone that had been sharpened at one end, and with a hole through the other end. … (Harold B. Hunting, Hebrew Life and Times, Nabu Press, August 2, 2010, p. 17–19.)

When the scripture says, “She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff” (Proverbs 31:19), it is the same way as saying, “She is never idle” or, as the Syrians would say, “Her spindle is never out of her hands.” (Abraham M. Rihbany, The Syrian Christ, Cornell University Library, July 8, 2009, p. 360, 361.)

Washing Clothes

The Arab women, in washing their clothes today, usually go to nearby sources of water such as streams, pools, or watering troughs. They will dip their clothes in and out of the water, and then, placing them upon flat stones which abound in Palestine, they will beat them with a club, which is about a foot and a half long. They carry the water in goatskins and have a vessel for rinsing purposes. (Information received during personal interview with Mr. G. Eric Matson, photographer, and long time resident of Palestine.)

That this sort of process was used in the time of David, is indicated by the prayer of his penitential psalm: “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity” (Psalm 51:2). His picture here comes from the process of washing clothes.

“The word employed is significant, in that it probably means washing by kneading or beating, not by simple rinsing. The psalmist is ready to submit to any painful discipline, if only he may be cleansed. “Wash me, beat me, tread me down, hammer me with mallets, dash me against the stones, do anything with me, if only these foul stains are melted from the texture of my soul.” Alexander Maclaren [Hebrew and Greek scholar in the late 1800s], The Psalms (The Expositor’s Bible), vol. 11, (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1892, p. 130.)

Going of the Women for Water

Carrying a pitcher of water was all but universally done by women. It must have been a picturesque sight to see them going and coming with the pitcher poised gracefully upon the head or shoulder. When Jesus instructed two of his disciples, “Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him” (Mark 14:13), that would be an easy way of identifying the person, for it is exceedingly uncommon to see a man carrying a pitcher of water, which is a woman’s task.

When larger supplies of water are needed, men use large skins of sheep or goats for carrying the supply. The pitchers are reserved for the use of the women. (A. Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine, General Books LLC, January 1, 2010, p. 72.)

Excerpts from Fred H. Wight, Manners and Customs of Bible Lands, The Moody Institute of Chicago, 1953, p. 81–90.

Our Past History – The Third Angel

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We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.” Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 196. This quotation has been the theme of the last two Bible studies (LandMarks July 2011, September 2011). The subject we have been contemplating is the Three Angels’ Messages. So far we have looked at the first two angels, and in this article we will look at the third angel’s message. “The unlearned as well as the educated are to comprehend the truths of the third angel’s message, and they must be taught in simplicity.” Medical Ministry, 299. With this in mind, let us begin.

“And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 14:9–12.

There are five characteristics of the message to be noted:

  • the third angel followed them
  • the worship of the beast and his image
  • receiving the mark of the beast
  • receiving the wrath of God
  • the patience of the saints

Because this message is very broad, here we will study only the last aspect, that which has to do with the patience of the saints (Revelation 14:12). As for the first description, whom the third angel followed, we have already touched upon this over the first two parts. The third angel follows the first and second angels of Revelation 14. The three are united in proclaiming the last message of mercy to a perishing world. In this study we will reflect upon the solution rather than the problem and more upon the protagonist than the antagonist.

Recall the great disappointment we studied in part two (LandMarks, August 2011). The early Adventist Christians believed that the earth was the sanctuary and that the year 1844 was the end of the 2,300 symbolic days. Therefore, they thought that Jesus was going to return in 1844 and bring an end to sin. But after the passing of October 22, 1844, the Adventist believers became greatly disappointed when Jesus did not return to this earth to cleanse it as they expected. At the time, these believers needed great patience. One can only imagine the pain they felt not only by the disappointment, but also by the scorn, ridicule, and mocking they received from the whole world. Without patience they could have easily lost their souls, but they exhibited the patience of the saints. Patience is for all who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 14:12. In order to do this, there is only one place in the entire universe where we must abide; there is only one place wherein we can become saints.

“Jesus did not come to the earth as the waiting, joyful company expected, to cleanse the sanctuary by purifying the earth by fire. I saw that they were correct in their reckoning of the prophetic periods; prophetic time closed in 1844, and Jesus entered the Most Holy Place to cleanse the sanctuary at the ending of the days. …

“He sent His angels to direct their minds that they might follow Him where He was.” Early Writings, 243, 244. The third angel was to direct the minds of the believers to where Jesus was, namely, the Most Holy Place. “As the ministration of Jesus closed in the holy place, and He passed into the holiest, and stood before the ark containing the law of God, He sent another mighty angel with a third message to the world.” Ibid., 254. The Most Holy Place is the only place wherein we can become saints. And what significant articles do we find in there?

“And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.” Exodus 25:21. Here we learn that the mercy seat is found above the ark, and the testimony (the ten commandment law) is found inside the ark. But where is the ark? “And thou shalt hang up the vail under the taches, that thou mayest bring in thither within the vail the ark of the testimony: and the vail shall divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy. And thou shalt put the mercy seat upon the ark of the testimony in the most holy place.” Exodus 26:33, 34. The ark itself is found in the Most Holy Place of God’s Temple. So, the mercy seat and the ark of the testimony are the two articles found in the Most Holy Place representing grace and law.

“Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Psalm 85:10. Therefore, in order for us to keep the commandments of God, we must look into the ark that contains the commandments, and in order to look into the ark we must first enter into the Most Holy Place. There is only one way to enter into that sacred place. “I saw the third angel pointing upward, showing the disappointed ones the way to the holiest of the heavenly sanctuary. As they by faith enter the most holy, they find Jesus, and hope and joy spring up anew.” Early Writings, 254, 255.

The question must be asked, How do we enter into the Most Holy Place? We enter by faith, and not just by any faith. Ephesians 4:5 says there is only “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” (Emphasis added.) The only faith by which we can enter the Most Holy Place is the all-sufficient faith of Jesus. Only by this faith can we enter into the Most Holy where Jesus is and behold the precious law of liberty. Let’s conclude by examining three characteristics of this faith:

The object of our faith is the power of God alone

“And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” I Corinthians 2:4, 5. And what is the power of God? “Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” I Corinthians 1:24. Do you have faith in the power of God? Do you believe He can save you from sin?

Faith must be united with works

“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?” James 2:21, 22. It is not enough to say we believe; we must show we believe by obedience to present truth. Faith without works is dead.

Faith enables us to overcome the sin that is of this world

“For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” I John 5:4.

“The divine Intercessor presents the plea that all who have overcome through faith in His blood be forgiven their transgressions, that they be restored to their Eden home.” The Great Controversy, 484.

Do you want to overcome? If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believes.

Are you praying for victory over sin? Do you truly believe that God will grant you this request? “True faith lays hold of and claims the promised blessing before it is realized and felt. We must send up our petitions in faith within the second veil and let our faith take hold of the promised blessing and claim it as ours. We are then to believe that we receive the blessing, because our faith has hold of it, and according to the Word it is ours.” Early Writings, 72. If we have been praying for victory, then we must take hold of the promised blessing and believe that we have received it. And what will be the results of such blessing?

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people … For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” Hebrews 8:10, 12. Notice, the law of God will be engraved into our characters, and our sins will never again be remembered.

This is the goal of the New Covenant; this is character perfection. This is how we “keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” May the three angels help us to reach this standard! In the meanwhile, remember, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.” Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 31.

Demario Carter is currently working as a Bible worker for Steps to Life. 

The Beginning of the Sacrificial System

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“Heavenly angels more fully opened to our first parents the plan that had been devised for their salvation. Adam and his companion were assured that notwithstanding their great sin, they were not to be abandoned to the control of Satan. The Son of God had offered to atone, with His own life, for their transgression. A period of probation would be granted them, and through repentance and faith in Christ they might again become the children of God.

“The sacrifice demanded by their transgression revealed to Adam and Eve the sacred character of the law of God; and they saw, as they had never seen before, the guilt of sin and its dire results.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 66.

“To Adam, the offering of the first sacrifice was a most painful ceremony. His hand must be raised to take life, which only God could give. It was the first time he had ever witnessed death, and he knew that had he been obedient to God, there would have been no death of man or beast. As he slew the innocent victim, he trembled at the thought that his sin must shed the blood of the spotless Lamb of God. This scene gave him a deeper and more vivid sense of the greatness of his transgression, which nothing but the death of God’s dear Son could expiate. And he marveled at the infinite goodness that would give such a ransom to save the guilty.” Ibid., 68.

In time, Eve gave birth to two sons. Adam and Eve named the first son Cain and the second son Abel. As these two sons grew up, Adam and Eve faithfully instructed them in the great plan of redemption. When matured in age, the time came for them to build their own altars and offer their own sacrifices for their sin. The Bible record says,

“Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought … fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering He did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master’ ” (Genesis 4:2–7, literal translation).

“These brothers were tested, as Adam had been tested before them, to prove whether they would believe and obey the word of God. They were acquainted with the provision made for the salvation of man, and understood the system of offerings which God had ordained. They knew that in these offerings they were to express faith in the Saviour whom the offerings typified, and at the same time to acknowledge their total dependence on Him for pardon; and they knew that by thus conforming to the divine plan for their redemption, they were giving proof of their obedience to the will of God. Without the shedding of blood there could be no remission of sin; and they were to show their faith in the blood of Christ as the promised atonement by offering the firstlings of the flock in sacrifice.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 71.

“Cain came before God with murmuring and infidelity in his heart in regard to the promised sacrifice and the necessity of the sacrificial offerings. His gift expressed no penitence for sin. He felt, as many now feel, that it would be an acknowledgment of weakness to follow the exact plan marked out by God, of trusting his salvation wholly to the atonement of the promised Saviour. He chose the course of self-dependence. He would come in his own merits. He would not bring the lamb, and mingle its blood with his offering, but would present his fruits, the products of his labor. He presented his offering as a favor done to God, through which he expected to secure the divine approval. Cain obeyed in building an altar, obeyed in bringing a sacrifice; but he rendered only a partial obedience. The essential part, the recognition of the need of a Redeemer, was left out.” Ibid., 72.

“ ‘By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain’ (Hebrews 11:4). Abel grasped the great principles of redemption. He saw himself a sinner, and he saw sin and its penalty, death, standing between his soul and communion with God. He brought the slain victim, the sacrificed life, thus acknowledging the claims of the law that had been transgressed. Through the shed blood he looked to the future sacrifice, Christ dying on the cross of Calvary; and trusting in the atonement that was there to be made, he had the witness that he was righteous, and his offering accepted.” Ibid.

“Abel chose faith and obedience; Cain, unbelief and rebellion. Here the whole matter rested.

“Cain and Abel represent two classes that will exist in the world till the close of time.” Ibid.

Altars were built, and sacrifices were offered by all the faithful patriarchal families to the time of the flood. Adam instructed Enoch in the purpose of these sacrifices. Enoch taught his son Methuselah, who lived 600 years with Noah, concerning the purpose of the sacrifices. But the majority of the people rebelled against God.

“The period of their probation was about to expire. Noah had faithfully followed the instructions which he had received from God. The ark was finished in every part as the Lord had directed, and was stored with food for man and beast. …

“God commanded Noah, ‘Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation’ (Genesis 7:1). Noah’s warnings had been rejected by the world, but his influence and example resulted in blessings to his family. As a reward for his faithfulness and integrity, God saved all the members of his family with him.” Ibid., 98.

So God sent a flood upon the earth and destroyed mankind except for Noah and his family.

“Noah and his family anxiously waited for the decrease of the waters, for they longed to go forth again upon the earth. …

“At last an angel descended from heaven, opened the massive door, and bade the patriarch and his household go forth upon the earth and take with them every living thing. In the joy of their release Noah did not forget Him by whose gracious care they had been preserved. His first act after leaving the ark was to build an altar and offer from every kind of clean beast and fowl a sacrifice, thus manifesting his gratitude to God for deliverance and his faith in Christ, the great sacrifice.” Ibid., 105, 106.

In Genesis, we read that “Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives.” “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.” “Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth’ ” (Genesis 8:18, 20; 9:1).

Abraham, who was born only eight years after Noah died, learned of the meaning of the sacrifices from Noah’s son, Shem. Thus through the sacrificial system, the faith of the patriarchs in Jesus as the Lamb of God was preserved from generation to generation.

“It was to impress Abraham’s mind with the reality of the gospel, as well as to test his faith, that God commanded him to slay his son. The agony which he endured during the dark days of that fearful trial was permitted that he might understand from his own experience something of the greatness of the sacrifice made by the infinite God for man’s redemption. No other test could have caused Abraham such torture of soul as did the offering of his son. God gave His Son to a death of agony and shame. The angels who witnessed the humiliation and soul anguish of the Son of God were not permitted to interpose, as in the case of Isaac. There was no voice to cry, ‘It is enough.’ To save the fallen race, the King of glory yielded up His life. What stronger proof can be given of the infinite compassion and love of God? ‘He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things’ (Romans 8:32)?” Patriarchs and Prophets, 154.

“It had been difficult even for the angels to grasp the mystery of redemption—to comprehend that the Commander of heaven, the Son of God, must die for guilty man. When the command was given to Abraham to offer up his son, the interest of all heavenly beings was enlisted. With intense earnestness they watched each step in the fulfillment of this command. When to Isaac’s question, ‘Where is the lamb for a burnt offering’ (Genesis 22:7)? Abraham made answer, ‘God will provide Himself a lamb’ (verse 8); and when the father’s hand was stayed as he was about to slay his son, and the ram which God had provided was offered in the place of Isaac—then light was shed upon the mystery of redemption, and even the angels understood more clearly the wonderful provision that God had made for man’s salvation (1 Peter 1:12).” Ibid., 155.

Excerpts from High Priest & Coming King, by Maurice Hoppe, pages 21–25.

Customs of Bible Times – Parental Position in the Home

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Unlike within most homes today, in Bible times each member of the family held a certain position in the home, which came with specific duties.

Position of the Father

The Eastern idea of the family is a little kingdom within itself, over which the father is supreme ruler. Every company of travelers, every tribe, every community, every family, must have a father who is the head of the group. A man is said to be the father of what he invents. Jubal “was the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe.” Jabal was “the father of such as dwell in tents, and have cattle” (Genesis 4:20). Because he was a preserver and protector, Joseph said that God made him “a father to Pharoah” (Genesis 45:8). The Eastern mind cannot conceive of any band or group without somebody being the father of it.

Supremacy of the Father Under the Patriarchial System

Under the patriarchial administration, the father is supreme in command. This gives him authority over his wife, his children, his children’s children, his servants, and all of his household. If he is the sheik, it extends to all the tribe. Many of the Bedouins today are under no government except this patriarchial rule. When Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sojourned, living in tents while looking forward to the Promised Land, they were ruled by this same system. And when the law of Moses was given to Israel, the authority of the parent, and especially the father, was still recognized. One of the Ten Commandments is “honour thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12). In many ways the father was the supreme court of appeal in domestic matters.

Succession of Authority

In a majority of cases, the great authority, which the father had, was handed down to his eldest son, who took over the position of leadership upon the death of the father. Thus Isaac became the new sheik over his father’s household upon the death of Abraham. He and Rebekah had been living in that household under his father’s authority, but the succession of authority passed on to him as the son. Ishmael, being son of the handmaid, did not succeed to the place (Genesis 25). In some cases, the father bestowed the succession of authority on other than the eldest son, as when Isaac bestowed it upon Jacob instead of Esau (Genesis 27).

Reverence of the Children for the Father

Reverence of children for their parents, and especially the father, is well-nigh universal in the East down to modern times. Among the Arabs, it is very seldom that a son is heard of as being undutiful. It is quite customary for the child to greet the father in the morning by the kissing of his hand, and following this, to stand before him in an attitude of humility, ready to receive any order or waiting for permission to depart. Following this, the child is often taken upon the lap of the father.

The Mosaic Law demanded obedience to parents, and a rebellious and disobedient son could be punished by death (Deuteronomy 21:18–21). The apostle Paul reiterated the injunction that children must obey their parents (Ephesians 6:1; Colossians 3:20).

Position of the Wife in Relation to the Husband

The wife held a subordinate position to that of her husband, at least in office, not in nature. The ancient Hebrew women did not have unrestrained freedom as the modern women of the Occident [Western world] have. In the East, social intercourse between the sexes is marked by a degree of reserve that is unknown elsewhere. Dr. Thomson says, “Oriental women are never regarded or treated as equals by the men.” They never eat with the men, but the husband and brothers are first served, and the wife, mother, and sisters wait and take what is left; in a walk the women never go arm in arm with the men, but follow at a respectful distance; the woman is, as a rule, kept closely confined, and watched with jealousy; when she goes out she is closely veiled from head to foot. (W. M. Thomson, in early edition of The Land and the Book, quoted and paraphrased by E. P. Barrows in Sacred Geography and Antiquities, American Tract Society, 438.)

This attitude toward women can be illustrated from the Bible. Notice how Jacob’s wives, when traveling, were given places by themselves and not with him (Genesis 32). And nothing is said about the prodigal’s mother being present at the feast, which the father served his son (Luke 15:11–32). All this is in keeping with Eastern custom.

But while these things are true, it must be understood that the Old Testament does not picture the wife as a mere slave of her husband. She is seen to exert tremendous influence for good or ill over her husband, and he showed great respect for her in most cases. Sarah was treated by Abraham as a queen, and in matters of the household, she ruled in many ways. Abraham said to her, concerning Hagar, who had given birth to Ishmael, “Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee” (Genesis 16:6). The tribute to a Hebrew wife and mother in the book of Proverbs indicates that she was a person of great influence with her husband: “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her” (Proverbs 31:11). “She openeth her mouth with wisdom” (verse 26). “Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also; and he praiseth her” (verse 28).

Position of the Mother in Relation to the Children

Children in the East show nearly the same respect toward the mothers as they do toward the fathers. The mother is believed to be entitled to honor and to have authority from God. Actually, the father and mother are looked at as being the representatives of God in the matter of authority. They are considered as having this position no matter how poorly they fulfill their obligations. Hebrew children in general held their mothers in great respect, even when they became adults. This may be illustrated by the great influence exerted by queen mothers on the kings of Judah and Israel (I Kings 2:19; II Kings 11:1; 24:12.).

Excerpts from Manners and Customs of Bible Lands, Fred H. Wight, The Moody Institute of Chicago, 1953, 103–106.

Although customs have changed over time and even today are different in the West from those in the East, the significance that the Bible places on parental authority remains unchanged. Honor is still required of children for their mothers and their fathers in keeping with the counsel provided in inspired writings.

John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland

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Note: Calvin was to spend the second half of his life in the little city of Geneva and make it famous as the center of Protestantism and a place of refuge for the exiles of his native France and other persecuting countries. But before he entered the city, the surrounding territories and finally the city itself were to be evangelized by William Farel and other ministers, mostly Frenchmen. The stories of their courage and boldness are some of the most thrilling of the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation. Space does not permit us to recount their mighty deeds in the detail that the reader might wish and it is hoped that this brief introduction will inspire further study of this period which D’Aubigne describes thus: “In no part of the Christian world will the resistance be so stubborn; but no where will the assailants display so much courage.” History of the Reformation, Book XV, 596 (BSI edition).

Farel in the Forest Cantons of Switzerland

Geneva lay in the part of Switzerland which had not been reached by the Reformation preaching of Zwingle. The Forest Cantons had been very resistant and remained obedient to Rome. But William Farel recognized the good to be achieved if these areas could be won to the Gospel. The people of Geneva had long been a freedom loving people who had offered martyrs, not a few, in their fight for political freedom. The location of the city, on the borders with both France and Italy, offered a good place for the headquarters of a work for these nations.

Before entering Geneva he sought to make progress in the surrounding areas. He first worked in Aigle as a school teacher under an assumed name. When his lessons had attracted a congregation of students and their families, he cast off his disguise and announced himself as Farel the preacher. He immediately mounted the pulpit and preached with his characteristic thunderous, yet eloquent voice and with a message which bore the stamp of divine truth. From one sermon, converts were won and the priests became fired with a zeal to rid their domains of this fellow. Despite letters from Protestant Bern, which ruled the area, giving Farel permission to teach the Scriptures, the priests worked the people into an army ready to make war and Farel’s followers were equally ready for the fight. Farel though undismayed decided to move on and carried his message to other towns and villages.

He would at times enter a town and while the priest was offering the mass at the altar, he would mount the pulpit and his voice would drown out the mass. This sometimes resulted in his being pulled violently from the pulpit, but at other times conviction would set in and the priest would throw off his robes and join the people in dismantling the altar and destroying the images. “In three weeks time four villages of the region had embraced the Reformed faith . . . The spring and summer sufficed to establish the Reformed faith in a great part of this region.” Wylie, The History of the Protestant Reformation, Book 14, 249, 250.

In the city of Neuchatel, known for its religious devotion, this man of short stature, red beard, glittering eyes, and stentorian voice, came to the market and announced that he had a religion, not from Rome, but from the Bible. After their first dumb astonishment, the monks and priests cried for his brains to be beaten out, but he lifted his voice above the clamor and the city was taken by storm. He again had to leave the town but returning a few weeks later the people formed around him and escorted him up the hill to the site of their cathedral and placed him in the pulpit. He preached one of his most powerful sermons and the citizens rose up and dismantled the altar, tore down crucifixes and pictures, broke images, and cast the lot down the summit of the terrace where the cathedral stood. They inscribed on a pillar of the great building the words— “On the 23rd October, 1530, Idolatry was overthrown and removed from this Church by the citizens.” Ibid., 250.

Farel’s life was in constant danger and, since it was winter, cold, hunger and weariness were his frequent attendants. The priests used tricks, threats, and violence to try to remove this danger to their “religion” and thus their tithes and offerings. They could not fight doctrine with doctrine since their ignorance prevented this approach. Instead they used violence. Once Farel was beaten nearly to death. He was so disfigured that his friends scarcely recognized him. He had to spend some time recuperating and had barely recovered his strength when he set out again to evangelize.

Due to the battles over religion, the nation was drifting toward civil war and in an attempt to avert bloodshed, a conference was held in Bern to try to work out a compromise. “Thus out of that necessity which is said to be the mother of invention, came the idea of toleration. We deem the mass idolatry, said Protestant Bern, but we shall prevent no one going to it. We deem the Protestant sermon heresy, rejoined Popish Friburg, but we shall give liberty to all who wish to attend it. Thus on the basis of liberty of worship was the public peace maintained. This dates in Switzerland from January, 1532. Toleration was adopted as a policy before it had been accepted as a principle. It was practiced as a necessity of the State before it had been promulgated as a right of conscience. It was only when it came to be recognized and claimed in the latter character as a right founded on a Divine charter—namely, the Word of God—and held irrespective of the permission or interdiction of man, that toleration established inviolably its existence and reign.” Ibid., 255.

Gospel Struggles in Geneva

On his return from the Waldensian synod in the valley of Angrogna, in October, 1532, Farel, with Saunier his companion, was able to visit Geneva. The friends of liberty in that city listened with intense interest to two sermons concerning the authority of the Word of God and the great pardon of God. “They had been shedding their blood for their franchises, but now the Reformer showed them a way by which their souls might escape from the dark dungeon in which tradition and human authority had succeeded in shutting them up . . . ‘This,’ said Farel, ‘is the Gospel; and this, and nothing short of this, is liberty, inasmuch as it is the enfranchisement of the whole man, body, conscience, and soul.’ ” Ibid., 257. His arrival was not unnoticed by the priests and he was called before the council. Thanks to the letters he carried from their Excellencies of Bern, he was released. Next he was invited to an episcopal council under the pretext of open debate but some council members carried weapons under their sacerdotal robes. “Such was their notion of a religious discussion.” Ibid. The event would have ended tragically but for the intervening of two magistrates. Outside the hall they met another armed mob and narrowly escaped. They slept with an armed guard and were escorted early the next morning to Lake Leman, to sail away.

Farel’s name was too powerful to begin the work in Geneva. A lowly minister by the name of Froment was sent to the city and he choose to begin his work, as Farel had, as an instructor of the young. His congregation quickly grew and the homes of the believers were not adequate to hold the crowds. One day the crowd carried their preacher to the market place and he expounded on “free pardon.” A band of armed priests and soldiers arrived and Froment had to be carried into hiding. He too had to quit the city. But the believers continued to meet in homes. They elected one of their number to be their leader, Guerin, who also had to flee the hatred of the priests.

Friends of the Duke of Savoy and of Rome—the Mamelukes, as they were called—determined that the only answer to the crisis was to kill all the Protestants in Geneva without an exception. They took an oath promising to perform their plan the next day. Three hundred armed priests led a host of 2,500 armed men followed by women and children with stones. These moved on a group of 400 Protestant believers who had gathered in the mansion of one of their leaders. They determined to stand their ground. Bloodshed was averted by the interposition of seven merchants from Friburg who stood between the forces and diligently worked to restore calm and succeeded in working out terms of pacification. The priests were not content with this action and a few weeks later went into the streets again armed for battle. In the darkness they fought each other as well as the foe and their leader was killed. This ended the street battles.

The papal prince-bishop of the city invited the leading Protestants to his castle for discussions and then threw them into the dungeon. Even the Catholics on the council could not tolerate this action and after giving over his captives, the prince-bishop, fearing his safety, fled the city.

Geneva’s Prolonged Struggles

With some dangers gone, Farel returned. He delivered sermons to congregations who wore helmets and carried arms. Both sides were ready for battle; some to defend the Word of God and others demanding the burning of all the Bibles in the city. Froment and Viret came to help Farel and their mighty preaching resulted in the majority of the city choosing Protestantism.

The cities’ battles were not over. One plot involved arming a large group who were disguised as pilgrims and duly outfitted, arriving outside the city gates in mass. But the citizens, recognizing a Trojan horse, refused them entry. Another plan had an army hidden without the city, ready in cooperation with the papist Mamelukes inside, to attack when the signal was given. The plot was discovered just minutes before the attack. The army retreated when they learned they were discovered. With the miscarriage of their plot, most of the Mamelukes fled the town and their priests, left without their flock, followed. The Genevans decided that they had to tear down the suburbs surrounding their city in order to have a buffer zone for security. One half of the city lay outside the walls, including the homes of rich and poor alike. They sacrificed their dwellings and gardens, which were demolished brick by brick and the area burned and cleared.

In this time of need all of Geneva’s allies forsook her. Even Bern refused aide. The duke was raising an army to force entrance into the city. The bishop published an excommunication and the Pope added his anathema against the city. It was seen as the dwelling place of devils. The Emperor Charles V joined their foes and demanded their surrender. The citizens were in constant danger when outside the walls. There were tortures and murders, as ferocious bands laid waste the country around Geneva, cut off the supplies coming to its markets, waylaid its citizens, and then tortured, beheaded or otherwise dispatched them.

A Convent Converted

An attempt to poison the three French pastors was made by a woman who claimed to be a Protestant exile, and was employed in the house where they lived. Viret alone ate the poison. He survived but suffered its debilitating results the rest of his life. The woman confessed and accused a priest of planning the attempt. She was executed and the ministers were assigned to apartments in a Franciscan Convent where it was thought they would be safe. The end of the affair was the conversion of almost all the brethren of the convent, including James Bernard, who thought it would be well to hold a public disputation. A date was fixed and invitations published and sent to a wide area. Learned men from both sides came and two Roman champions were chosen to defend the old faith. In the end, both acknowledged themselves vanquished and announced their conversion to the Reformed faith.

Tricks for Miracles

The advance of Protestantism in Geneva was accelerated by some startling revelations of frauds that had been perpetrated upon the citizens in the name of miracles. Investigations were made regarding miracles and relics that brought vast funds into Roman coffers. These investigations revealed tricks in place of miracles, and indignation intensified. Finally the Council met on August 10, 1535, to discuss the question of religion. The Protestant ministers addressed the Council, offering to submit themselves to death if the priests could prove that in the public disputation or in their sermons they had advanced anything contrary to the Word of God. Next the Council called the Cordeliers, Dominicans, Augustines, the canon, the grand-vicar of the bishop, and the parochial cures before them. They recounted the ten years of religious conflicts that had disturbed their city. They offered that the Roman religion would be restored to its former glory if they could prove the truth of their dogmas and worship from the Word of God. They declined. “The prospect of rendering Romanism once more supreme in Geneva, could not tempt them to do battle for their faith . . .They craved only to be permitted to exercise their religion without restraint. The deputation announced to them the order of the Council that they should cease to say mass, and then retired . . .On the 27th of August a general edict was issued, enjoining public worship to be conducted according to the rules of the Gospel, and prohibited all ‘acts of Popish idolatry’.” Ibid. 275.

This action infuriated the duke who determined to crush this city which had scarcely a soldier to defend it and no allies. He would starve the inhabitants with a total blockade by land and water. It so happened that Bern suffered an affront from the duke about this same time and they declared war against him. The combined efforts of Geneva and Bern resulted in a series of disasters for the duke’s army and ended by the Duke loosing not only Geneva his conquest, but Savoy and Piedmont with his capitol. He spent 17 years in humiliation and exile before his death.

Calvin Enters Geneva

Since the outside threats were diminished, the work of teaching the people and leading them to have transformed manners and habits commenced in earnest. There were two parties of the Protestants: those who had been transformed by the Gospel and those who professed a belief but did not expect this to mean any change in their licentious lives. The latter were known as Libertines for their professed love of liberty, which they defined as liberty from all restraint. Farel felt the weight of the task. He was thankfully surprised to learn that Calvin had come to the city. Calvin had been traveling and detoured from his intended route around the armies of Charles V and through Switzerland.

Farel felt that God had sent him the man he most needed to join him in his task and he immediately visited Calvin and urged him to become his comrade in the campaign. Calvin refused, for he felt that his contribution was through his studies and his pen. “But Farel would not stand aside. Putting on something of the authority of an ancient prophet, he commanded the young traveler to remain and labor in Geneva, and he imprecated upon his studies the curse of God, should he make them the pretext for declining the call now addressed to him. It was the voice not of Farel, but of God, that now spoke to Calvin; so he felt; and instantly he obeyed . . . He gave his hand to Farel, and in so doing he gave himself to Geneva.” Ibid., 281.

He was 27 years old and would spend 28 years in the service of this city. “He would display before all Christendom the Institutes, not as a volume of doctrines, but as a system of realized facts—a State rescued from the charnel-house of corruption, and raised to the glorious heritage of liberty and virtue—glorious in art, in letters, and in riches, because resplendent with every Christian virtue. To write Protestantism upon their banners, to proclaim it in their edicts, to install it as a worship in their Churches, Calvin and all the Reformers held to be but a small affair; what they strove above all things to achieve was to plant it as an operative moral force in the hearts of men, and at the foundation of States.” Ibid., 281, 282.

Calvin’s genius for system and organization was seen as he helped to draw up first a simple and brief Confession of Faith, setting forth in twenty-one articles, the leading doctrines of Protestantism. The citizens came forward in relays of ten to take the oath. This was followed by a Catechism for adults which showed the people the moral duties that were demanded by the Protestantism that they professed. “The Genevans had lifted up their hands: had they bowed their hearts? This was the main question with him.” Ibid., 282.

The Constitution for the Republic was also considered and Calvin again helped to revise the form of government of the State. There was to be a General Council which consisted of all the people, which would meet once a year to elect the four Syndics and at other times in case of an important emergency. The Syndics served on the Council of Twenty-five which actually governed the city in both legislative and judicial matters. There was also a new power to be added, the Consistory, which was to handle Church scandals. It was composed of five ministers and twelve laymen and met every Thursday. The strongest powers given this body was that of excommunication which they defined as the power to withhold the Sacraments from one whose life was “manifestly unholy.” (It did not seek to determine man’s condition before God.)

Calvin did see the need of distinguishing between the powers of the religious and the civil bodies. The religious body had no powers in the civil government but he did not clearly separate from the civil bodies, power over religious matters. Calvin held a “profound distinction between the civil and the religious community. Distinction, we say, and by no means separation . . . In this great question as to the relations between Church and State, Calvin desired and did more than his predecessors . . . he secured to the Reformed Church of Geneva, in purely religious questions and affairs, the right of self-government, according to the faith, and the law as they stand written in the Holy Books.” Ibid., 285.

Calvin’s attempts to establish a theocracy in Geneva with the government as the guardian over things both civil and spiritual, we, from our vantage point in history, “regard as a grave error.” Ibid., 284.

Sumptuary Laws

“Calvin’s theological code was followed by one of morals . . . The clergy were notoriously profligate, the government was tyrannical, and the people, in consequence, were demoralized. Geneva had but one redeeming trait, the love of liberty . . . It was clear that Protestantism must cleanse the city or leave it. Geneva was nothing unless it was moral; it could not stand a day. This was the task to which Calvin now turned his attention.”

“This introduces the subject of the sumptuary laws . . . The rules now framed forbade games of chance, oaths and blasphemies, dances, lascivious songs, farces, and masquerades. The hours of taverners were shortened; every one was to be at home by nine at night, and hotel-keepers were to see that these rules were observed by their guests. To these were added certain regulations with a view of restraining excess in dress and profusion at meals. All were enjoined to attend sermon and the other religious exercises . . . The second battle with the citizens proved a harder one than the first with the priests, and the reformation of manners a more difficult task than the reformation of beliefs.” Ibid., 285, 286.

“The Libertines, as the oppositionists began now to be called, demanded the abolition of the new code; they complained especially of the ‘excommunication’ . . . The reproofs which Calvin thundered against their vices from the pulpit were intolerable to many, perhaps to most . . . It was mortifying to find that very Protestantism which they had struggled to establish turning round upon them, and weighing them in its scales, and finding them wanting.” Ibid.

Calvin and Farel Banished

One principle which Calvin was determined not to compromise, for he believed that the Reformation would stand or fall with that principle, was that holy things were not to be given to unholy men. A question arose over whether unleavened bread should be used with the communion. Calvin and Farel said that the church could decide this issue, but that the more serious question was whether the communion should be given at all to those guilty of blasphemies and immoralities. The Libertines at this time enjoyed a majority on the Council and this left the pastors alone to uphold the standard.

The day of communion arrived and the ministers determined not to hold the ordinance at all. The Churches were filled with worshippers, many of whom had come with their swords at their sides. Farel held the services in one church and Calvin in another. When it became apparent that the Lord’s Supper was not going to be dispensed, there was a great uproar. Swords were unsheathed and men rushed toward the pulpit. They were met with resoluteness by both pastors. It was a miracle, many believed, that no blood was shed.

On the morrow, the Council banished their pastors. Farel went to Neuchatel where he completed his life’s labors. Calvin moved to Strasburg where he was able to study and commune with many other reformers. He spent three years here preaching and performing all the duties of a pastor. He lectured daily at the Academy and he attended several conferences between the Reformed leaders and the Papacy. He suffered from poverty as he was not paid for his labors and had to sell his books for his support. He met Melancthon and they became fast friends. He also married during his time in Strasburg. Idelette de Bure was to be his dearest companion. And from afar he kept Geneva from the attacks of the papacy, which was determined to reenter the city.

Calvin Returns to Geneva

Meanwhile in Geneva, the government passed more measures to try to control the manners of the populous, but without moral leadership these were ineffective. Finally after mighty turmoils, four Syndics were charged with sedition; two fled, another died trying to flee and the forth was hanged. Recognizing their need of Calvin, they sent a delegation to ask him to return. He considered this like lying on a bed of nails but agreed to return if his brethren so advised. They did, and he traveled back to his former field, ready to face the sneers, laughs, rage, plots and hatred that he would encounter for some years to come.

Calvin returned with a broader education which he received in banishment. His vision had enlarged with his travels and communications with Reformer’s throughout Europe. He learned to work for the work’s sake and although he longed for human sympathy he learned to be satisfied with the sympathy of his Master only. He also knew more of the selfishness, cruelty, and craft in the hearts of men, for he had felt the pain of receiving his deepest wounds in the “house of his friends.” His wife followed him to Geneva to be his companion during nine of the most laborious and stormy years of his life.

He saw a storm coming in the pantheistic doctrines that were flooding Europe. German Protestantism was weakened with her political involvements and Calvin with his clear, calm judgment, constructive skill and his profound submission to the Bible, was the man to lead the fight in this battle. Wittemberg had battled Romanism but Geneva was to battle Romanism and pantheism.

Upon his return he began the large task of organizing the church. The Consistory was to act in Church disorders and met weekly. The pastors were to meet weekly for mutual correction and improvement. His schedule was grueling. He delivered three theological lectures weekly, spoke in the pulpit every Sunday, and everyday of the alternate weeks, presided over the Consistory on Thursdays, gave a public exposition on Fridays, and carried a full load of pastoral duties with visitations. He studied early and late and carried on a vast correspondence, never failing to write to one awaiting martyrdom and advising the kings, queens, and princes as well as other government officials throughout Europe.

For years he battled the Libertines whose influence was still strong in the city. The grossest immoralities were spoken of as desirable and adding to the perfection of the saints. He suffered a persecution not felt by other reformers. He was met with insults and scoffing daily as he traveled the streets. His detractors named their dogs Calvin, they stuck out their tongues and hissed as he passed, but he remained above the outrages he was forced to endure in the streets. He maintained a consciousness of the great task that he was performing and rode out the long storm. During this time his wife of just nine years grew ill and died. He was deeply bereaved.

Servetus Burned in Geneva

One dreadful event of those years was the execution of Servetus. We today are shocked and saddened by the blot on Reformation history. Servetus was a scholar who had written a book on anti-Trinitarian doctrine which was also filled with pantheism. He had sent his work to Calvin who had condemned it. His native Vienne had tried him in the Inquisition and condemned him to die. He escaped and came to Geneva where Calvin called for his arrest. Messengers were sent to many Reformation leaders who advised that Servetus be condemned and executed. After a long trial he was found guilty of publicly promoting opinions treasonous to society and burned at the stake.

We are horrified by this verdict and none the less with the knowledge that that century saw thirty or forty thousand stakes kindled by Rome and one by the Protestants. “We deplore—we condemn—this one pile. It was a violation of the first principles of Protestantism.” Ibid., 338.

The Libertines next tried to have the public presses closed. A strange act for those so named for their love of liberty. They were finally banished from Geneva following their open attacks on the refugees of the city. They resented the refugees being supported by public resources and after slandering these exiles they vowed to massacre all. The refugees were among the most distinguished citizens of the countries they had fled. They represented almost every nationality and Geneva was elevated by their coming to her but they came nearly penniless and the city had been generous in their support. Its citizens had saved and even chosen to eat sparingly in order to accommodate them. When the night of the massacre arrived, not one refugee was found or killed, but the Libertines suffered the beheading of four of their number following the trial and the banishment of the lot.

Calvin’s Last Years

Calvin’s influence was felt in fields near and far but especially did he work for France. He urged the Protestants there to “eschew politics, shun the battle-field, and continue to fight their great war with spiritual weapons only.” Ibid., 359. He believed that more was to be gained by martyrdoms than politics. He was able in his last years to build an Academy in Geneva.

“The position which Calvin now filled was one of greater influence than perhaps any one man had exercised in the Church of Christ since the days of the apostles. He was the counselor of kings; he was the advisor of princes and statesmen; he corresponded with warriors, scholars, and Reformers; he consoled martyrs, and organized Churches; his admonitions were submitted to, and his letters treasured, as marks of no ordinary distinction. All the while the man who wielded this unexampled influence, was in life and manners in nowise different from an ordinary citizen of Geneva. He was as humbly lodged, he was as simply clothed, and he was served by as few attendants as any burgess of them all. He had been poor all his days, and he continued so to the end.” Ibid., 359 He died, before seeing his fifty-forth year, in May of 1564, after years of weakness and illness and months restricted to his bed. He was buried in a common cemetery without a stone marker, the exact spot is unknown today.

The End

John Calvin and the French Reformation

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Calvin Studies Law

Calvin had been destined to become a minister at the altar of Rome but following his conversion “he resolved to devote himself to the profession of law. This mode of retreat from the clerical ranks would awaken no suspicion.” History of Protestantism, book 13, 156.

Calvin and many law students both before and after him were trained under the maxim that it was necessary for the state to punish crimes both civil and religious. This theory had been propounded as an incontrovertible truth and “had passed in Christendom for a thousand years as indisputably sound, serving as the corner-stone of the Inquisition . . . Under no other maxim was it then deemed possible for nations to flourish or piety to be preserved; nor was it till a century and a half after Calvin’s time that this maxim was exploded, for of all fetters those are the hardest to be rent which have been forged by what wears the guise of justice, and have been imposed to protect what professes to be religion.” Ibid.

One useful aspect of his education at this time was that he found a scholar who taught him the Greek of the New Testament. Now he could study the New Testament in its original language which was a very useful ability as he would, in a few years, begin to write his “Institutes” which were very helpful documents to the cause of the Reformation.

The Martyrdom of Berquin

Calvin traveled to Paris in 1529 and was present to witness the martyrdom of Louis de Berquin, of whom the historian Beza wrote: “Berquin would have been a second Luther had he found in Francis I a second elector.” Ibid., 159. Berquin was a nobleman and a knight who was devoted to study and loved reading. With polished manners and high morals, frank, courteous, and full of alms giving, he was much loved and was often seen at court. He had been a great papist and despiser of Lutheranism but God had opened his eyes.

The Sorbonne was angry and with authority from Parliament they imprisoned him three times between 1523 and 1526. Each time the king set him free.

From the writings of the Sorbonnist Berquin extracted twelve propositions which he presented to the king and charged them to be contrary to the Bible and therefore, heretical. His enemies were confounded and more so by the king’s request that they disprove them from the Bible. This might have proved a very hard task for the Sorbonnist but at that time an image of the Virgin was mutilated. “‘These are the fruits of the doctrines of Berquin,” it was exclaimed; ” all is about to be overthrown—religion, the laws, the throne itself—by this Lutheran conspiracy.’ War to the knife was demanded against the iconoclast: the people and the monarch were frightened; and the issue was that Berquin was apprehended (March, 1529) and consigned to the Conciergerie.” Ibid., 160.

His trial ended in a sentence of the stake and not a day’s delay was allowed least the king send a pardon. Berquin was radiant and wore his finest clothes as he was escorted through streets thronged by spectators to the Place de Greve. Dreading the effect of his dying words the monks gave a signal and “instantly the shout of voices, and the clash of arms, drowned the accents of the martyr. ‘Thus,’ says Felice, ‘the Sorbonne of 1529 set the populace of 1793 the base example of stifling on the scaffold the sacred words of the dying.’” Ibid., 162. When the fire had done its work the Sorbonnists were overjoyed: the Protestants were bowed down with sorrow. But in a way Berquin’s stake was a candle that shone all through France.

Paris Hears the Gospel a Second Time

There followed three years of relative peace in France. Calvin stayed on in Paris and continued to work in the homes of the people, going from home to home instructing the families in the Gospel. While many students were ever ready to do verbal battle on religious topics, Calvin was coming from daily prayer and perusal of the scriptures to devote his time to evangelization rather than debate. He was not just silencing opponents but enlightening minds.

Francis, the king, in a political move against his opponent, Charles V, made some attempts to league with the Protestants of Germany. The king’s sister Margaret, Queen of Navarre, saw this as her chance to promote Protestantism in France. She arranged for her pastor Roussel to preach in the Louvre. Five thousand gathered daily. “Nobles, lawyers, men of letters, and wealthy merchants were mingled in the stream of bourgeoisie and artisans that each day, at the appointed hour, flowed in at the royal gates, and devoutly listened under the gorgeous roof of the Louvre to the preaching so unwonted.” Francis granted his sister’s request for possession of two churches and she placed Courault and Berthaud, both Augustinian monks to preach in them. She was delighted with the effect and Paris was full of signs of reformation.

The Sorbonnists were anxious to burn Roussel. The king would not grant them permission and neither the chancellor nor the archbishop would help so they turned to the populace. They sent their preachers into the pulpits and with “shouting and gesticulating these men awoke, now the anger, now the horror of their fanatical hearers, by the odious epithets and terrible denunciations which they hurled against Lutheranism.” Ibid., 171. They sent mendicants into the homes to drop seditious hints that the Pope was above the king and that Francis would not long be king. Processions of many days duration were organized in the streets with penitents imploring the saints to smite this heresy.

“Nor did the doctors of the Sorbonne agitate in vain. The excitable populace were catching fire. Fanatical crowds, uttering revolutionary cries, paraded the streets, and the Queen of Navarre and her Protestant coadjutors, seeing the matter growing serious, sent to tell the king the state of the capital.” Ibid. He ordered Beda sent into banishment but the excitement did not quickly cool. Fiery placards were posted on the houses and ballads were sung demanding the stake for Protestants. The Protestant sermons continued and there were conversions but the masses remained with Rome. Twice now France had been given the gospel and twice they had turned away from it.

Alexander’s Martyrdom

The year 1533 saw the Sorbonnists choosing another victim for their fires. They dared not choose Margaret’s preacher Roussel so they arrested a former Dominican friar who called himself Alexander. He had first heard the Gospel in Paris and had thrown off his monkish name and garments and fled to Geneva where he was taught by Farel. He was eloquent and burned with zeal. He began his work in Switzerland but feeling a desire for the French he made his way to Lyons and fanned the flames of the ancient faith of the in that city. He was pursued but he escaped repeatedly. Finally he was arrested and taken to Paris. He succeeded in converting the captain of the company who escorted him and he was allowed to preach all along the way. At his appearance before the Parliament he confessed his Reformed faith and he was tortured cruelly and left a cripple. He was straightway condemned to the flames, underwent the ceremony of degradation and carted in a rubbish wagon to the stake. All along the way he preached to the crowds. The people were astonished and many cried for his release. He was joyful even chained to the pile and extolled the Savior to all around. There were many tears and much wailing that this man was not worthy of death but he met his end with confidence in his future. In 1534 the churches of Paris were closed and 300 Lutherans were imprisoned. The burnings resumed shortly thereafter.

Calvin Escapes Paris

Calvin made his escape from Paris just before the storm broke. He and his good friend Nicholas Cop, Rector of the Sorbonne devised a plan to preach the Gospel in the University itself. Cop was to give an address for the inaugural of a new session and he agreed to read an oration written by Calvin. The monks saw this as an act of treason and both Cop and Calvin narrowly escaped. Calvin found refuge in the mansion of the Du Tillets where he spent six months studying in their excellent library. “Nights without sleep, and whole days during which he scarcely tasted food, would Calvin pass in this library, so athirst was he for knowledge.” Ibid., 177. Here he planned his Institutes which were “composed on the model of those apologies which the early Fathers presented to the Roman emperors on behalf of the primitive martyrs. Again were men dying at the stake for the Gospel. Calvin felt that it became him to raise his voice in their defense. . . He prepared himself by reading, by much meditation, and by earnest prayer.” Ibid.

“Parliament, in the beginning of 1534, at the instigation of Beda, passed a law announcing death by burning against those who should be convicted of holding the new opinions on the testimony of two witnesses.” Ibid., 201. Despite the new law in France, Calvin made another short visit in Paris, attended by the young Du Tillet, where he ministered to the church there which was outwardly composed of mostly humble common men. Calvin went from home to home teaching. Here he found that there were elements attempting to enter the young church. Some came bringing pantheistic and atheistic doctrines to deform the church. Calvin knew that his work would be to resist these frightful doctrines as well as the errors of Rome.

Francis Tries to Embrace Both Rome and the Reformation

Francis I, ever plotting against his bitter enemy Charles V, proposed a plan to Pope Clement to join their houses by marriage between his second son and Clements niece. Catherine de Medici was a lovely girl of fifteen when the marriage took place but she would become a power in the royal family. She became noted for “an inordinate love of power. Whoever occupied the throne, Catherine was the real ruler of France.” Her husband’s and sons’ reigns were blackened by her scheming. “Her will must be done, and whatever cause or person stood in her way must take the consequences by the dungeon or the stake, by the poignard or the poison-cup.” Ibid., 186.

After arranging this fateful marriage Francis startled the members of his council by announcing his intent to seek union with the Protestants of Germany. He wanted to be on both sides at once. Francis thought to cause Charles more discomfort by uniting Rome and the Reformation. He met with Phillip of Hesse and offered to help finance the armies of the league. He asked Melancthon, Bucer and Hedio to send proposals to his council. Melancthon proposed a scheme in which the Reformation would bring its doctrine and Rome would bring its hierachy to form the new church. This would never have worked for new wine in an old bottle was not the solution. But the Reformation was saved from this union which would have brought a respite but no real Reformation. An unexpected event took place which changed the king’s course and ended his vacillation.

The Posting of the Placards

There were two parties in the young Church in France. One was inclined to wait on the outcome of the king’s council and trust in these men of power to make reforms. The other was very distrusting of the king’s ways for he embraced the Pope one day and the Protestants the next. He sent a Romanist to prison and followed this with the burning of a Reformer. They wanted to see a bold policy put into action that would lead to the overthrow of the Papacy in France. These two parties sought advice from the French Reformer, Farel, in Switzerland.

They sent a messenger who found Switzerland a very different place from Paris. There altars and images were being torn down and the Reformed worship being set up. The Swiss Reformers “assembled, heard the messenger, and gave their voices that the Protestants of France should halt no longer; that they should boldly advance; and that they should notify their forward movement by a vigorous blow at that which was the citadel of the Papal Empire of bondage—the root of that evil tree that overshadowed Christendom—the mass.” Ibid., 206. It was proposed that a paper be published and posted all over France. It would be composed in Switzerland and Farel is generally believed to be its author. “It was no logical thesis, no dogmatic refutation; it was a torrent of scathing fire; a thunderburst . . . But the author who wrote, and the other pastors who approved, did not sufficiently consider that this terrible manifesto was not to be published in Switzerland, but in France, where a powerful court and a haughty priesthood were united to combat the Reformation.” Ibid., 207. The messenger was sent back with their advice and the proposed publication.

Immediately the members of the little Church met to deliberate about the placard. There were many present who thought that gentler words would go deeper. But the majority were impatient of delay. France was behind other countries in the advance of the Reformation, and they voted to publish. They chose the night of October 24, 1534 to post the placard all over France. “They displayed them on the walls of the Louvre, at the gates of the Sorbonne, and on the doors of the churches.” Ibid., 208.

At an early hour Montmorency and the Cardinal de Tournon knocked at the king’s closet door to tell him of the dreadful night. As they entered they took down a copy of the placard which had been hung there and handed it to the king who had his courtiers read it. “He stood pallid and speechless a little while; but at length his wrath found vent in terrible words: ‘Let all be seized, and let Lutheranism be totally exterminated.’” Ibid., 208. The king summoned Parliament to meet, and execute strict justice in the affair and he commanded his lieutenant-criminal, Jean Morin, to swiftly bring all to justice who had played a part in the matter.

Morin knew the man whose job it was to call the Protestants from their homes to meetings and with threats caused him to join in a plan to capture all of the offenders. The betrayer walked before a priest bearing the Host in a procession that was called to do expiation for the affront to the “Holy Sacrament.” As they went through the street the betrayer pointed out the houses of the Protestants and the family was dragged out and manacled. “Morin made no distinction among those suspected: his rage fell equally on those who had opposed and those who had favored the posting of the placards. Persons of both sexes, and of various nationalities, were included among the multitude now lodged in prison. . . Every scaffold would be a holy alter, every victim a grateful sacrifice, to purify a land doubly polluted by the blasphemous placard. And above all, they must maintain the popular indignation at a white heat. The most alarming rumours began to circulate through Paris. To the Lutherans were attributed the most atrocious designs. They had conspired, it was said, to fire all the public buildings, and massacre all the Catholics . . . These terrible rumours were greedily listened to, and the mob shouted, ‘Death, death to the heretics!’” Ibid., 209.

There were many scaffolds and all Paris was to be able to see what kind of men these were for they witnessed bravely through the tortures that Francis ordered. The indiscriminate vengeance caused many who had been sympathetic to the Gospel to fear and they rose up and fled. Within a few days there were many blanks in the society of Paris and each one represented a convert to the Gospel. These were the first of what was to be a long train who would flee in the years to come and carry with them “The intelligence, the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule they pre-eminently excelled, to enrich the lands in which they found an asylum.” Ibid., 213. Among those who fled was Margaret, the king’s sister. She went to her little realm and Bearn became a refuge to the persecuted.

On January 21, 1535, the king marched in a procession that drew all of Paris. He was doing penance for the crime of his Protestant subjects. Following the procession he gave a speech—eloquent and touching—urging all to become participants in purging their country of this perverse sect by informing on their friends and relatives and declaring that he would not spare even his own child. He wept and the crowd wept with him. He swore to make war on heresy and the spectators declared. “We will live and die for the Catholic religion!” Ibid., 218. “When Francis I re-entered his palace and reviewed his day’s work, he was well pleased to think that he had made propitiation for the affront offered to God in the Sacrament, and that the cloud of vengeance which had lowered above his throne and his kingdom was rolled away. . . The populace of the capital were overjoyed; they had tasted of blood and were not soon to forego their relish for it, nor to care much in the after-times at whose expense they gratified it.” Ibid. Francis’ war on Protestantism even included a ban on printing. How strange this act from one who claimed to be a promoter of learning. “It is one among a hundred proofs that literary culture is no security against the spirit of persecution.” Ibid., 220.

Calvin and the Institutes

Just a little before the storm, Calvin had left Paris and traveled to Strasburg and then to Basle. He had a chance to visit with some of the leaders of the Reformation in these cities. In Basle word reached him of the atrocities in Paris. “He knew the men who had endured these cruel deaths. They were his brethren. He had lived in their houses; he had sat at their tables. . . He knew them to be men of whom the world was not worthy; and yet they were accounted as the off-scouring of all things, and as sheep appointed to the slaughter were killed all day long. Could he be silent when his brethren were being condemned and drawn to death?. . He had a pen, and he would employ it in vindicating his brethren in the face of Christendom. . . He could vindicate these martyrs effectually not otherwise than by vindicating their cause.” Ibid., 225.

Calvin set to work writing the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Which was “a confession of faith, a system of exegesis, a body of polemics and apologetics, and an exhibition of the rich practical effects which flow from Christianity—it was all four in one.” Ibid., 227. It was dedicated to Francis I, declaring the cause of the truth so defamed by its enemies as simply the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the only crime of the martyrs as that of believing the Gospel. He called for Francis to embrace this truth. It is doubtful Francis ever read it.

The Institutes set forth in a systematic way the beliefs of the Reformation. This work was adopted by the Reformed Church, and published in later years into most languages of Christendom. As it spread through many lands it became a powerful preacher to many.

It contained his views on predestination which were called into question even in his day. “The Reformer abhorred and repudiated the idea that God was the Author of sin, and he denied, too, with the same emphasis, that any constraint or force was put by the decree upon the will of man, or any restraint upon his actions; but that, on the contrary, all men enjoyed that spontaneity of will and freedom of action which are essential to moral accountability. . . Calvin freely admitted that he could not reconcile God’s absolute sovereignty with man’s free will; but he felt himself obliged to admit and believe both.” Ibid., 232.

(Note: The ultimate effect of the error of Calvin’s doctrine on predestination is seen today as Satan has succeeded in using it to present God as having Satan’s character. Calvin’s followers have carried the idea to its lengths and made a satanic god to present to Christianity. Adventism has also been infected. The Reformers were not free of error but we are to examine the historical evidence and cast away the dross while learning from their examples of courage.)

John Calvin and the French Reformation

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Anciently, Pepin of France had been the first of the Gothic princes to lay his kingdom at the feet of the Pope. He was awarded the title of “Eldest Son of the Church” for this act of submission and for centuries since, France strove to justify the distinction she bore by being the firmest pillar of the Papal See. Protestantism fought a noble battle in this land, testifying in word and deed and with pen and blood. When Paris drove the Gospel from its gates she knew not that a long and dismal train of woes would follow—faction, civil war, atheism, the guillotine, siege, famine, death. Three hundred years after the first martyr of the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation in France was burned in the Place de Greve, France was visited by the French Revolution, and its dreadful instrument of death was set up to accept its first victims in the Place de Greve. (History of Protestantism, book 13, pages 174, 136, 142)

France, although dark for centuries, had never been totally without light. The Albigenses and Waldenses had stood strong for the truth, and witnessed to it with their blood. Their efforts, that kept the Bible alive in France, would bring forth fruits in the the French Reformation. The Reformation begins around 1510; at the same time as it was forming in Germany. Here is the story.

The First Protestant Teacher

In 1510 Jacques Lefevre was nearing seventy. He was a devout Papist and a scholar and theologian. He was a professor in the Sorbonne, or Theological Hall of the great Paris University. Lefevre had a great love for the saints and wished to give them a token, not perishable, like the flowers he offered at their images. He thought to collect and re-write their lives. He was well into the task when he wondered if a study of the Bible might give him any useful insights. “The virtues of the real saints dimmed in his eyes the glories of the legendary ones.” Wylie, Book 13,126. He found a church unlike the Roman Church and he turned from the voice of Rome to the voice of God. He found the plan of free justification and in 1512 wrote a commentary on the Epistles of Paul, saying, “It is God who gives us, by faith, that righteousness which by grace alone justifies to eternal life.” Ibid.

He did not receive the light to hide it under a bushel. He knew the dangers but he began to teach the doctrine of salvation in his classroom. A great commotion arose and soon was felt in the whole University. Objections were heard on every side. Lefevre made it his job to answer the few honest questions, and to make it plain that this was not a new doctrine having been anciently taught by Irenaeus, but that it had come from God as revealed in His Word.

This all took place in 1512, five years before the name of Luther would be heard in France. The Reformation here did not come from Germany but was kindled by the Bible, the Word of God. Peter Robert Olivetan, the translator of the first French Bible, was a cousin of Calvin and it was he who shared the Gospel with Calvin.

( Note: Benjamin Wilkinson, in his book “Truth Truimphant” on pages 215 and 216, states that Oliveton was from the Waldensian valleys and that he used the Vaudois Bible for his translation. In the Preface to his 1535 translation he credits these ancient people for having received the book from the Apostles and having enjoyed and possessed it to that day. This makes the Reformation in France a direct outgrowth of the ancient Bible held by faithful Waldenses through the centuries.)

Early Reformers

William Farel, was a student of Lefevre and like his teacher was eminently pious in the Roman tradition. They often joined each other on their rounds to the shrines, kneeling before the images. As light began to break on Lefevre’s heart he taught it in his classes, and God had prepared Farel to accept it. He had been tortured by doubts as to his ability to save himself, and yet were all of his prayers and visits to the saints for nothing? The Scriptures cleared his doubts, and he wrote that where his heart was once murderous toward any who spoke against the Pope, it was now quiet and harmless, withdrawn from the Pope, and given to Jesus Christ.

While his teacher taught in the classroom, he went forth to preach in the public places and the temples, causing them to ring with his “voice of thunder.” He was driven to Meaux by persecution, but finally labored in his native land, introducing the Gospel in Switzerland; preceding Calvin in the work there.

William Briconnet, Count of Montbrun, and Bishop of Meaux, also played a part in the early Protestant movement. He had been sent by Francis I to Rome as an ambassador to Leo X, the same Pope who is quoted as saying, “What a profitable affair this fable of Christ has been to us!” There he saw the Rome that Baptista Mantuan, a Carmelite, wrote about, saying, “Good and virtuous men, make haste and get out of Rome, for here virtue is the one thing ye cannot practise: all else ye may do.” Ibid., 130 footnote. “The Rome of that age was the chosen—home of pomps and revels, of buffooneries and villanies, of dark intrigues and blood-red crimes.” Ibid., 130.

Briconnet came home much less a son of the Church. He found, on his return, that that Gospel which was a fable to the Pope had become a reality in France and he turned to his old friend Lefevre to tell him what was causing this change. Lefevre put a Bible into his hands and he found it easy to enter into this religion which consisted of love to God and personal holiness. He began immediately to make changes in his diocese. He removed the ignorant pastors and tried to replace them with able men. When this task was found impossible, he started a school of theology to supply the lack of laborers, and preached himself.

His friendship with the king opened the doors of the palace, and to all the court “the bishop made known a higher knowledge than that of the Renaissance. The most illustrious convert in the palace was the sister of the king, Margaret of Valois.” Ibid., 132. The king chose to cast his lot with Rome and he made battle with the Reformation. His sister’s influence was a restraint on Francis, and not a few lives were saved from martyrdom through her interposition.

The First Protestant Congregation in France

In 1522, Lefevre translated and published the New Testament into French. Bishop Briconnet did all in his power to spread the Bible throughout his diocese, the little city of Meaux being its center. He had copies of the gospels distributed freely to the poor. The effect was that the Bible became the study and theme of talk in town and country alike. The shops where wool was carded, spun and woven, began to have Bible readings during the meal times. These simple people began to be wiser than their former Franciscan monk teachers. “Compared with the husks—on which these men had fed them, this was the true bread, the heavenly manna. . . These disciples had planted their feet not on Briconnet, not on Peter, but on ‘the Rock,’ and that ‘Rock’ was Christ: and so not all the coming storms of persecution could cast them down.” Ibid., 135.

“At the close of the day, their toil ended, they diligently repaired from the workshop, the vineyard, the field, and assembled in the house of one of their number. They opened and read the Holy Scriptures; they conversed about the things of the Kingdom; they joined together in prayer, and their hearts burned within them. Their numbers were few, their sanctuary was humble, no mitred and vested priest conducted their services, no choir or organ-peal intoned their prayers; but One was in the midst of them . . . even He who has said, ‘Lo, I am with you alway’—and where He is, there is the Church.” Ibid.

“The members of this congregation belonged exclusively to the working class.” Their lives were changed and a refinement of character was revealed in their speech and manners giving an example of the effect Protestantism might have had in all the country had it been given freedom. Evidence of the changes could be seen in the complaints of the tavern-keepers and of the monks as the taverns were more empty and the begging friars “returned from their predatory excursions with empty sacks.” Ibid., 136.

The churches were opened to them and the Christians of Meaux were able to hear qualified persons expound the Scriptures. “These were happy days. The winds of heaven were holden that they might not hurt this young vine; and time was given it to strike its roots into the soil before being overtaken by the tempest.” Ibid. But the first mutters of trouble ahead were heard from the Sorbonne. The proud champions of orthodoxy there began to call upon the king to put down these new opinions with force. “Francis did not respond quite so zealously as the Sorbonne would have liked. He was not prepared to patronise Protestantism, far from it; but, at the same time, he had no love for monks, and was disposed to allow a considerable margin to ‘men of genius,’ and so he forbade the Sorbonne to set up the scaffold.” Ibid.,136.

The pleasure-loving king could not be counted on for protection and Lefevre and Farel accepted Briconnet’s invitation to “Come to Meaux.” So Paris lost the lights and Meaux took its place as the center of Gospel knowledge. Visitors carried away French New Testaments as seeds of the Gospel, and founded churches in their own districts. For decades it was said of one who was known to have “Protestant sentiments, that ‘he had drunk at the well of Meaux.’ ” Ibid.

The Commencement of Persecution

Events in Paris were building for a storm. Three persons rose to oppose the Gospel. One was Noel Beda, head of the Sorbonne, who was determined to keep his University uncontaminated by rays from heaven. He drove Dr. Lefevre from the University. The second player was Antoine Duprat who had done a great favor for the king that won him the position of Chancellor of France. He was haughty, greedy, and never scrupled to employ violence to compass his ends. The third actor was Louisa, mother of Francis I. Her house had long hated the Gospel and had been persecutors of the Waldenses. “There were points on which their opinions and interests were in conflict, but all three had one quality in common—they heartily detested the new opinions.” Ibid.

The Franciscan monks of Meaux were very vocal in their protests against growing Protestantism. They found an active audience for their complaints in Duprat and Beda. But it was Louisa who first moved, calling on the Sorbonne to determine “‘By what means can the damnable doctrines of Luther be chased and extripated from this most Christian kingdom?’ The answer was brief, but emphatic: ‘By the stake;’ and it was added that if the remedy were not soon put in force, there would result great damage to the honour of the king and of Madame Louisa of Savoy. Two years later the Pope earnestly recommended vigour in suppressing ‘this great and marvellous disorder, which proceeds from the rage of Satan;’ otherwise, ‘this mania will not only destroy religion, but all principalities, nobilities, laws, orders, and ranks besides.’ It was to uphold the throne, preserve the nobles, and maintain the laws that the sword of persecution was first unsheathed in France!” Ibid., 140, 141.

Bishop Briconnet was called before the Parliment. At first he stood firm and refused any concession, but it was made plain that he must abandon Protestantism or go to prison and perhaps the stake. He declined the stake and obeyed the demands of the Parliament to pay a fine and publish three edicts, restoring public prayers to the Virgin and the saints, forbidding the reading of Lutheran books, and silencing Protestant preachers. This sent Lefevre to Strasburg, and Nerac and Farel turned to Switzerland.

The First Martyrs

“Briconnet had recanted: but if the shepherd had fallen the little ones of the flock stood their ground. They continued to meet together for prayer and the reading of the Scriptures, the garret of a woolcomber, a solitary hut, or a copse serving as their place of rendezvous. This congregation was to have the honour of furnishing martyrs whose blazing stakes were to shine like beacons in the darkness of France.” Ibid., 141. Denis, one of the “Meaux heretics,” was apprehended and was there visited by his former pastor, Briconnet, who was forced on such tasks to add to his humiliation. The bishop detailed how a recantation would buy his liberty. Denis listened and then “fixing his eyes upon the man who had once preached to him that very Gospel which he now exhorted him to abjure, said solemnly, “Whosoever shall deny me before men, him shall I also deny before my Father who is in heaven!’ Briconnet reeled backwards and staggered out of the dungeon. The interview over, each took his own way: the bishop returned to his palace, and Denis passed from his cell to the stake.” Ibid., 142.

This stake was followed by one for Pavane who at first recanted but found this to be one hundred times harder than the stake to which a hasty trial of this “relapsed heretic” brought him. Hermit of Livry was burned before the steps of Notre Dame as bells tolled, drawing people from all parts of Paris. The spectators were told that this man was on his way to the fires of hell but his step was firm and his look undaunted as he offered up his life.

Calvin : His Birth and Education

Calvin was born July 10, 1509, the grandson of a cooper and the son of the secretary to the bishop. From a young age Calvin was thoughtful and scholarly. His father hoped that his son would be great in the church.

The Black Death came to Noyon, his home town, and his father fearing for his fragile health sent him to study in Paris. At fourteen years he entered the college of La Marche, learned Latin and came to understand the power of language and the written word and worked to perfect his skills. He proved a great scholar. After three years, in 1526, he passed on to the College of Montaigu, one of two seminaries in Paris—the Sorbonne being the other—for the training of priests. Here the old dogmas filled the air and Calvin satisfied even the most scholastic and churchy of his professors, for he was never absent from mass or failed to fast or to keep a holiday to the saints. In his studies he was ardent, often missing meals and keeping late hours, well past midnight, poring over his books. “His teachers formed the highest hopes of him. A youth of so fine parts, of an industry so unflagging, and who was withal so pious, was sure, they said, to rise high in the Church.” Ibid., 149.

Calvin ’s Conversion

Before Calvin could play a role in the true Church he must be brought out of darkness himself. God had provided a way of reaching him through his cousin Olivetan, a disciple of Lefevre, who now came to Paris. They were often together and their debates were heated. Olivetan pointed out the two classes of religion, one of works and the other of salvation by grace. Calvin was angry to think that his cousin thought he had lived in error all his life, but his words had gone deep, and when they parted, Calvin would fall into prayer with tears, and vent his doubts and anxieties. Calvin ‘s struggles grew into “the sorrow of death.” He had come to see one holier than the saints and he began to see his own vileness. “The severity of Calvin ’s struggle was in proportion to the strength of his self-righteousness.” His blameless life and the punctuality of his devotions had helped to nourish this feeling into “a pride which had been waxing higher and stronger with every rite he performed, and every year that passed over him.” Ibid., 153.

Finally he agreed to open the Bible and search for himself. “He began to read, but the first effect was a sharper terror. His sins had never appeared so great, nor himself so vile as now.” But he continued to read as he seemed to find help nowhere else. Finally he caught a glimpse of the great Sufferer bruised for our iniquities. “‘O Father,’ he burst out—it was no longer the Judge, the Avenger— ‘O Father, his sacrifice has appeased thy wrath; his blood has washed away my impurities; his cross has borne my curse; his death has atoned for me!’ In the midst of the great billows his feet had touched the bottom: he found the ground to be good: he was upon a rock.” Ibid., 153.

He had one formidable obstacle yet to meet—the Church. “How many have fallen over this stumbling-block and never risen again; how many even in our own age have made shipwreck here! . . . How many have commenced this battle only to lose it! They have been beaten back and beaten down by the pretended Divine authority of ‘the Church,’ by the array of her great names and her great councils, and though last, not least, by the terror of her anathemas. . . Must he leave this august society and join himself to a few despised disciples of the new opinions? This seemed like a razing of his name from the Book of Life.” Ibid., 154. Calvin could not have conquered here if he had “not had recourse to the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God . . . He sought for the Church as she is there shown—a spiritual society, Christ her Head, the Holy Spirit her life, truth her foundation, and believers her members—and in proportion as this Church disclosed her beauty to him, the fictitious splendour and earthly magnificence which shone around the Church of Rome waned, and at last vanished outright.” Ibid.

“‘There can be no Church,’ we hear Calvin saying to himself, ‘where the truth is not.’ . . . ‘The Pope,’ concluded Calvin, ‘is but a scarecrow dressed out in magnificences and fulminations. I will go on my way without minding him.’ In fine, Calvin concluded that the term ‘Church’ could not make the society that monopolised the term really ‘the Church.’ High-sounding titles and lofty assumptions could give neither unity nor authority; these could come from the Truth alone; and so he abandoned ‘the Church’ that he might enter the Church—the Church of the Bible. The victory was now complete . . . He stood in the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free. Here truly was rest after a great fight—a sweet and blessed dawn after a night of thick darkness and tempest.” Ibid. The year was 1527 and the place—Paris.

The End

Martin Luther, part XVI – Emperor Charles V

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Editor’s Note: This is the final article in a sixteen-part series on the life and times of Martin Luther. As we pause to meditate on the lives of Martin Luther and Charles V, what a striking contrast can be seen. Can we have the slightest doubt who was the greatest? The one, sitting in his closet, sent forth words which shook into ruin ancient systems of superstitious religion, rending the shackles from the consciences of men, and saying to the slave, “Be free.” He gave sight to the spiritually blind, raised up the fallen, and cast down the mighty. He led hearts captive, and plucked up and planted kingdoms. It was a God-like power which he exercised, because he trusted not in the arm of flesh, but in God’s Word.

When we look at the emperor in his magnificent palace, we find a totally different and far inferior set of forces at work. Before Charles V could achieve anything, he had to gather an army, collect great sums of wealth, blow his trumpets, and beat his kettle-drums; yet how little of real importance did he obtain from all of his bloodshed! Cities and provinces called him master, but waited for the first opportunity to throw off his yoke. What truth did he establish which can mold the lives of men and be a blessing in ages to come? It is now that we can see which of these two men exercised real power and which of the two was a true monarch. See The History of Protestantism, part 1, page 568, by J. A. Wylie.

The Schmalkald League

The Augsburg Diet ended in September 1530. On November 19, 1530, the emperor “issued a decree, addressed to the Protestant princes, States and cities, commanding them, under peril of his displeasure, to return to their obedience to the See of Rome, and giving them till the next spring (15th of April) to make their choice between submission and war.” The History of Protestantism, part 1, book 12, 95.

“The edict of the emperor forbade from that hour all further conversions to Protestantism, under pain of forfeiture of goods and life; it further enacted that all which had been taken from the Roman Catholics should be restored; that the monasteries and religious houses should be rebuilt; that the old ceremonies and rites should be observed; and that no one who did not submit to this decree should sit in the Imperial Chamber, the supreme court of judicature in the Empire; and that all classes should assist with their lives and fortunes in carrying out this edict. The edict of Spires was directed mainly against Luther; the ban of Augsburg was wider in its scope; it fell on all who held his opinions in Germany—on princes, cities, and peasants.” Ibid.

Melancthon was filled with dismay and Sleidan describes him as “drowned with sighs and tears.” Luther’s faith rose to the occasion and he faced the obstacles and produced a publication that foretold the failure of the edict. He declared that the emperor’s sword, though strong, could not extinguish the light and bring back the darkness.

Luther’s spirit fired the princes who met at Christmas, 1530, at Schmalkald to decide on the necessary action. They decided that their religion and liberties must be defended at all costs and that it was necessary to form a League. Known as the League of Schmalkald, the princes decided to join together to resist with military might any attempt to carry out the Edict of Augsburg. Their religious liberty was not the only question, since Charles was also involved in schemes that were dangerous to the constitution and civil liberties of Germany as well. The League was renewed the following year at Christmas, 1531, with many cities and princes joining. The Swiss Protestants were repulsed because of their views on the Lord’s Supper. Not long after this, Zwingle died in battle.

Luther was not pleased with the League. He shuddered at anything that would bring the Gospel and war into contact. He was assured that the League was for defensive purposes only and meant to exercise unity and their natural right to self-defense, and so he acquiesced in the League of the princes. It was political entanglements that Luther feared. “He foresaw the League growing strong and beginning to lean on armies, neglecting the development of the religious principle in whose vitality alone would consist the consolidation, power, and success of their federation.” Ibid., 98.

Spring came, but Charles was unable to carry out his threats. The Turks were again threatening war in eastern Europe and in addition, Charles’ old enemy, Francis of France, was making preparations for war against him. He had angered the Popish princes by making his brother Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and he could not turn to them for assistance. “It must have seemed, even to himself, as if a greater power than the Schmalkald Confederacy were fighting against him.” Ibid., 99.

He was forced to make peace with the Protestants and “after tedious and difficult negations, a peace was agreed upon at Nuremberg, July 23rd, and ratified in the Diet at Ratisbon, August 3rd, 1532. In this pacification the emperor granted to the Lutherans the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion, until such time as a General Council or an Imperial Diet should decide the religious question.” The Protestants promised to aid the emperor in war against the Turks, and Charles enjoyed victory over them. Charles then went on to other military projects in his dominions and the Church had rest, which lasted for close to a decade and a half.

The years that followed brought steady growth to the Protestant dominions. Wurtemberg, Brandenburg, and Brunswich were added to the League. By 1542, the whole of central and northern Germany was Protestant. Only Austria, Bavaria, and Palatinate remained with Rome, but great advances were made by Protestantism in these areas also.

Death and Burial of Luther

“The man of all others in Germany who loved peace was Luther. War he abhorred with all the strength of his great soul. He could not conceive a greater calamity befalling his cause than that the sword should be allied with it. Again and again, during the course of his life, when the opposing parties were on the point of rushing to arms the Reformer stepped in, and the sword leapt back into its scabbard. Again war threatens. On every side men are preparing their arms: hosts are mustering, and mighty captains are taking the field. We listen, if haply that powerful voice which had so often dispersed the tempest when the bolt was ready to fall shall once more make itself heard. There comes instead the terrible tidings—Luther is dead!” Ibid., 107.

The Counts of Mansfield had requested that Luther come in January of 1546, to arbitrate a boundary dispute. Luther did not care to meddle in such matters, but, since the matter was in the province of his birth, he consented to go as it would enable him to see his old birthplace once more. He was taken ill on the journey but recovered. On entering the province he was received like a prince.

After settling the dispute to the satisfaction of the counts, he occasionally preached in the church and took Communion, but he had many signs that warned him that he did not have long to live. ” ‘Here I was born and baptized,’ said he to friends, ‘what if I should remain here to die also?’ He was only sixty-three, but continual anxiety, ceaseless and exhausting labour, oft-recurring fits of nervous depression, and cruel maladies had done more than years to waste his strength.” Ibid.

On the 17th of February, after having dinner, he withdrew to pray as was his custom. Pain in his stomach caused him to go to bed early and he awakened in the night with an oppression in his chest and knowing that his life was soon to end. Three times he prayed, each time his voice more faint, confessing his faith and thankfulness to God. ” ‘Into thy hands I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O God of truth!’ He in a manner gently slept out of this life, without any bodily pain or agony that could be perceived.” Ibid., 107.

“Luther’s career had been a stormy one, yet its end was peace. He had waged incessant battle, not with the emperor and the Pope only, but also with a more dreadful foe, who had often filled his mind with darkness. Yet now he dies expressing his undimmed joy and his undying trust in his Saviour. It is also very remarkable that the man whose life had been so often sought by Popes, kings, priests, and fanatics of every grade, died on his bed. Luther often said that it would be a great disgrace to the Pope if he should so die . . . During the last twenty-five years of his life—that is, ever since his appearance at the Diet of Worms—the emperor’s ban and the Pope’s anathema had hung about him; yet there fell not to the ground a hair of his head . . . To be rid of him Rome would have joyfully given the half of her kingdom; but not a day, not an hour of life was she able to take from him.” Ibid., 109.

John, elector of Saxony, commanded that he should be laid to rest in Wittemberg. The procession grew with each town it passed through. The multitudes sang psalms and hymns. He was buried in the Schloss-kirk of Wittemberg where he had nailed his Theses.

The Schmalkald War and the Defeat of the Protestants

For two years, while Luther was yet alive, war had threatened but was withheld. Now it moved on rapidly as Charles hastened to arrange all of his affairs so that he might deal with the Protestants. He recruited soldiers and made a treaty with Pope Paul III. The Pope payed large sums of money and supplied a great number of soldiers for the battle in Germany.

“Another step toward war, though it looked like conciliation, was the meeting of the long-promised and long deferred Council . . . There had assembled at the little town of Trent some forty prelates, who assumed to represent the Universal Church, and to issue decrees which should be binding on all the countries of Christendom, although Italy and Spain alone were as yet represented in the Council . . . The Council, in its third session, decreed that the traditions of the Fathers are of equal authority with the Scripture . . . and that no one is to presume to interpret the Scriptures in a sense different from that of the Church . . . The Protestants affirmed that the one infallible authority was the Word of God. They made their appeal to the tribunal of Holy Scripture; they could recognize no other judge. The sole supremacy of Scriptures was in fact the corner-stone of their system, and if this great maxim were rejected their whole cause was adjudged and condemned.

“This was another way of saying, ‘you must submit to the Church.’ . . . They were told that they must accept their opponent for their judge . . . The first decree of the Council, then, embraced all that were to follow; . . . thoroughly Popish decisions . . . It was clear that the Fathers had assembled at Trent to pass sentence on the faith of the German people as heresy, and then the emperor would step in with his great sword and give it its death-blow.” Ibid., 113.

While he made great preparations for war, the emperor made even greater claims that he meant only peace. In a meeting with Phillip of Hesse, this prince, who held him most suspect, came to believe that he was indeed intent on peace, and the Protestants were lulled to sleep. It was the Pope who revealed the truth when he published a bull announcing his league with the emperor and their true intent and calling on all the faithful to concur in it. This caused Charles to let down his disguise but he still succeeded in convincing many Protestants that his warlike preparations, though they were indeed for Germany, were not meant to interfere with its religious opinions but to put down the Schmalkald League. Which was, he said, an empire within an empire and so it could not be tolerated by imperial supremacy.

“The pretext was a transparent one, but it enabled the timid, the lukewarm, and the wavering to say, ‘This war does not concern religion, it is a quarrel merely between the emperor and certain members of the League.’ How completely did the aspect the matter now assumed justify the wisdom of the man who had lately been laid in his grave in the Schloss-kirk of Wittemberg! How often had Luther warned the Protestants against the error of shifting their cause from a moral to a political basis! The former, he ever assured them, would, when the day of trial came, be found to have double the strength they had reckoned upon—in fact, to be invincible; whereas the latter, with an imposing show, would be found to have no strength at all.” Ibid., 115.

“On the 20th of July the blow fell . . . The war, now that it had come, found the League neither united nor prepared . . . The campaign, from its commencement in the mid-summer of 1546, to its close in the spring of 1547, was marked, on the part of the League, by vacillation and blundering. There was no foresight shown in laying its plans, no vigor in carrying them out.” Ibid., 116. One of the three leading princes in the League sided with the emperor. The war ended with the remaining two princes, John Frederick and Landgrave Phillip, in prison. Charles stripped them of their title and power, destroyed their castles, confiscated their lands, and lead them about from city to city as a spectacle to their former subjects.

“If, instead of stepping down into the arena of battle, they had offered themselves to the stake, not a tithe of the blood would have been shed that was spilt in the campaign, and instead of being lowered, the moral power of Protestantism thereby would have been immensely raised . . . No greater calamity could have befallen the Reformation than that Protestantism should have become, in that age, a great political power. Had it triumphed as a policy it would have perished as a religion.” Ibid., 117.

The Interim—Reestablishment of Protestantism

Charles then proceeded to frame a creed meant to let Lutheran Germany down easily. Styled as a halfway between Wittemberg and Rome, the “Interim taught, among other things, the supremacy of the Pope, the dogma of transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, the invocation of the saints, auricular confession, justification by works, and the sole right of the Church to interpret the Scriptures; in short, not one concession did Rome make.” Ibid., 118. Protestants were offered two paltry boons. Married clergy would not have to put away their wives, and where the Sacrament was being offered in both types, it could continue to be tolerated.

This document was presented to a Diet at Augsburg on May 15, 1548, where not a single dissenting voice was raised against it. They sat silent before the emperor’s soldiers amassed around the city. “The Interim was straightway promulgated by the emperor: all were to conform to it under pain of his displeasure, and it was to remain in force until a free General Council could be held.” Ibid.

But Charles was to find that his Interim had no friends. The Vatican was sore displeased. “That the emperor in virtue of his sole authority should frame and promulgate a creed was not to be tolerated; it was to do the work of a Council; it was, in fact, to seat himself in the chair of the Pope and to say, ‘I am the Church.’ Besides, the cardinals grudged even the two pitiful concessions which had been made to the Protestants.” Ibid.

There were some areas of Germany where there was open resistance to the Interim while in others everything Protestant was removed. Old rites were restored, Protestant magistrates replaced, and Protestant pastors and their families forced from their homes. Those who did not escape were lead about in chains by their enemies.

“There is one submission that pains us more than all the others. It is that of Melancthon. Melancthon and the Wittemberg divines, laying down the general principles, that where things indifferent only are in question it is right to obey the commands of a lawful superior, and assuming that the Interim, which had been slightly manipulated for their special convenience, conflicted with the Augustan Confession in only indifferent points, and that it was well to preserve the essentials of the Gospel as seed-corn for better times, denied their Protestantism, and bowed down in worship of the emperor’s religion.” Ibid., 119.

“But amid so many prostrate one man stood nobly erect. John Frederick of Saxony, despite the suffering and ignominy that weighed upon him, refused to accept the Interim. Hopes of liberty were held out to induce him to endorse the emperor’s creed, but this only drew from him a solemn protestation of his adherence to the Protestant faith.” Ibid.

Charles believed that Roman Catholicism was the basis of his power and through thirty years of intrigues and wars he held fast to his determination to strike a fatal blow to Protestantism. This blow he had struck. “It was at this moment, when his glory was in its noon, that the whole aspect of affairs around the emperor suddenly changed . . . Not a friend or ally had he who did not now turn on him.” Ibid.

The Pope was alarmed at Charles’ conquests and feared that the Papacy was about to receive a master. He was also offended that he had received none of the spoils of their war. Paul III recalled his army and moved the Council of Trent to Bologna.

The Germans had lost many liberties and they felt deceived. They had been told that the war was not over religious questions and yet their pastors were banished, their churches taken over by mass-priests, and filled with burning tapers and chants and prayers in an unknown tongue. This all told of a promise unkept and to deception was added insult.

Prince Maurice, a professed Protestant who had sided with the emperor for ambition’s sake, now came to know that his defections would cause him to be swept away in the gathering storm. He determined to “atone for his betrayal of his Protestant confederates by treachery to the emperor.” Ibid., 120. He succeeded at length to convince the princes to join him in his schemes to win back the liberties of Germany. He yet had a sizable force in his charge which he was using in Charles’ service to besiege Magdeburg, which was brave in its resistance to the Interim. He was able to convince the citizens of that city to sign the Interim, in order to deceive Charles, while he secretly promised that they would never be deprived of their religious freedoms, and he convinced King Henry of France to move in from the south. All of this was done with masterly skill and secrecy.

At Innspruck, Charles was lulled into security by Maurice’s artifices. His campaigns had exhausted his money-chest and he had only a handful of guards at his side when the revolt broke out in March of 1552. He was hemmed in on every side. The Turks were watching by sea, the French to the south, before him was the angry Pope and behind was Maurice “pushing on by secret and forced marches, ‘to catch,’ as he irreverently said, ‘the fox in his hole.’ And probably he would have done as he said, had not a mutiny broken out among his troops on the journey, which, by delaying his march on Innspruck, gave Charles time to learn with astonishment that all Germany had risen, and was in full march upon Innspruck. The emperor had no alternative but flight.” Ibid., 121. The emperor was suffering from gout and had to be carried on a litter over rugged mountain paths by light of torches. Maurice entered Innspruck just hours after his prey had escaped. “The emperor’s power collapsed when apparently at its zenith.” Ibid. He was forced to sue for peace.

“There followed, in July, the Peace of Passau. The main article in that treaty was that the Protestants should enjoy the free and undisturbed possession of their religion till such time as a Diet of all the States should effect a permanent arrangement, and that failing such a Diet the present agreement should remain in force for ever. This was followed by the Treaty of Augsburg in 1555. This last ratified and enlarged the privileges conceded to the Protestants in the pacification of Passau, and gave a legal right to the Augustan Confession to exist side by side with the creed of the Romish Church. The ruling idea of the Middle Ages, that one form of religion only could exist in a country, was abandoned . . . The members of the Reformed Church, the followers of Zwingle and Calvin, were excluded from the privileges secured in the treaties of Passau and Augsburg, nor was legal toleration extended to them till the Peace of Westphalia, a century later.” Ibid., 122.

So Charles was unable to extinguish the light of Protestantism. “Hundreds of thousands of lives had he sacrificed and millions of money had he squandered in the contest, but Protestantism, so far from being extinguished, had enlarged its area, and multiplied its adherents four-fold.” Ibid. And Charles, with a nearly empty treasury, his prestige diminished, and revolt on every side of his dominions, chose to abdicate in favor of his son Phillip. He retired to a Spanish monastery and ended his days nearly friendless in a sparsely furnished apartment spending his time in gardening and trying to reconcile the differences in his clocks which he was never able to make strike together.

The End

Customs of Bible Times – Conducting Negotiations to Secure a Wife

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The customs of the Arabs in certain areas of Bible lands when they negotiate to secure a bride for their son, illustrate in many respects Biblical practices. If a young man has acquired sufficient means to make it possible for him to provide a marriage dowry, then his parents select the girl and the negotiations begin. The father calls in a man who acts as a deputy for him and the son. This deputy is called “the friend of the bridegroom” by John the Baptist (John 3:29). This man is fully informed as to the dowry the young man is willing to pay for his bride. Then, together with the young man’s father, or some other male relative, or both, he goes to the home of the young woman. The father announces that the deputy will speak for the party, and then the bride’s father will appoint a deputy to represent him. Before the negotiations begin, a drink of coffee is offered the visiting group, but they refuse to drink until the mission is completed. Thus Abraham’s servant, when offered food by the parents of Rebekah, said, “I will not eat, until I have told mine errand” (Genesis 24:33). When the two deputies face each other, then the negotiations begin in earnest. There must be consent for the hand of the young woman and agreement on the amount of dowry to be paid for her. When these are agreed upon, the deputies rise and their congratulations are exchanged, and then coffee is brought in, and they all drink of it as a seal of the covenant thus entered into.

Reasons for the Marriage Dowry

Bride’s family – In the Orient, when the bride’s parents give their daughter in marriage, they are actually diminishing the efficiency of their family. Often unmarried daughters would tend the flock of their father (Exodus 2:16), or they would work in the field, or render help in other ways. Thus upon her marriage, a young woman would be thought of as increasing the efficiency of her husband’s family and diminishing that of her parents. Therefore, a young man who expects to get possession of their daughter must be able to offer some sort of adequate compensation. This compensation was the marriage dowry.

It was not always required that the dowry be paid in cash; it could be paid in service. Because Jacob could not pay cash, he said, “I will serve thee seven years for Rachel” (Genesis 29:18). King Saul required the lives of one hundred of the enemy Philistines as dowry for David to secure Michal as his wife (I Samuel 18:25).

The bride – It was usually customary for at least some of the price of the dowry to be given to the bride. This would be in addition to any personal gift from the bride’s parents. Leah and Rachel complained about the stinginess of their father Laban. Concerning him they said, “He hath sold us, and hath also quite devoured the price paid for us” (Genesis 31:15, ARV margin). Laban had had the benefit of Jacob’s fourteen years of service, without making the equivalent of at least part of it as a gift to Leah and Rachel.

Since a divorced wife in the Orient is entitled to all her wearing apparel, for this reason much of her personal dowry consists of coins on her headgear or jewelry on her person. This becomes wealth to her in case her marriage ends in failure. This is why the dowry is so important to the bride and such emphasis is placed upon it in the negotiations that precede marriage. The woman who had ten pieces of silver and lost one was greatly concerned over the loss, because it was doubtless a part of her marriage dowry (Luke 15:8, 9).

Special dowry from the bride’s father

It was customary for fathers who could afford to do so to give their daughters a special marriage dowry. When Rebekah left her father’s house to be the bride of Isaac, her father gave her a nurse and also damsels who were to be her attendants (Genesis 24:59, 61). And Caleb gave to his daughter a dowry of a field with springs of water (Judges 1:15). Such was sometimes the custom in olden times.

Fred H. Wight, Manners and Customs of Bible Lands, Moody Publishers, Chicago, Illinois, 1953, 127, 128.