HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN EUROPE IN THE TIME OF CALVIN pdf

History of the reformation in Europe in the time of Calvin

HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN EUROPE IN THE TIME OF CALVIN

The History of the Reformation in Europe during the time of Calvin naturally begins with Geneva. The Reformation of Geneva opens with the fall of a bishop-prince.

This is it’s characteristic; and if we passed over in silence the heroic struggles which led to his fall, we should expose ourselves to just re- approaches on the part of enlightened men.

 It is possible that this event, which we are called upon to describe (the end of an ecclesiastical state),. may give rise to comparisons with the present times, but we have not gone out of our way for them.

The great question, which occupies Europe at this moment, also occupied Geneva at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

 But that portion of our history was written before these late exciting years, during which the im- important and complex question of the maintenance or the faU of the temporal power of the popes has come before, and is continually coming before, sovereigns and their people.

The historian, while relating the facts of the sixteenth century, had no other prepossessions than those which the story itself called up.

These prepossessions were quite natural. Descended from the Huguenots of France, whom persecution drove from their country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the author had become attached to that hospitable city which received his forefathers, and in which they found a new home.

 The Huguenots of Geneva captivated his attention. The decision, the sacrifices, the perseverance, and the heroism, with which the Genevans defended their threatened liberty, moved him profoundly.

 The independence of a city, acquired by so much courage and by so many privations, perils, and sufferings, is, without doubt, a sacred thing in the eyes of all; and no one should attempt to rob her of it.

 It may be that this history contains lessons for the people, of which he did not always think as he was writing it.

May he be permitted to point out one? The political emancipation of Geneva differs from many modern revolutions in the fact that we find