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Updated: May 24, 2025
It has been pointed out by one scholar that Protestantism introduced the doctrine of infallibility before the Roman Catholic Church did. Calvinism selected the Augustinian dogmas of election and original sin as its foundation, and used them in such a way as to become a fighting church, a congregation of the elect, fearless and self-reliant.
James Stuart, emerging from the school of Buchanan and the atmosphere of Calvinism in which he had been bred, now reigned in those more sunny and liberal regions where Elizabeth so long had ruled.
Lastly, the Protestants of France and Switzerland were chiefly Calvinists, while in the Church of England Calvinism had for some length of time been rapidly declining. The bond of union had need to be strong, and the necessity of it keenly felt, if it was to prevail over the influences which tended to keep the English and foreign Reformed Churches apart.
Not even his nearest friends comprehended his views, nor saw that he strove to establish not freedom for Calvinism, but freedom for conscience.
If Calvinism be pressed to its logical consequences, it either becomes an intolerable falsehood, or it resolves itself into the philosophy of Spinoza. It is monstrous to call evil a positive thing, and to assert, in the same breath, that God has predetermined it, to tell us that he has ordained what he hates, and hates what he has ordained.
Rousseau headed the political movement, whereas the government in its financial straits turned against the clergy, whose position was already undermined, and against whom Voltaire continued to direct his batteries. The suppression of the Jesuits meant a revival of Jansenism. Jansenism is Calvinistic, and Calvinism is democratic; but the real concentration of French minds was on material questions.
I can still remember the sombre aisles of that house, the vault-like shadows, the magnificent window curtains that blotted out the windows. Life was too trivial for such things. She never knew she tired of them, but she did. That was the secret of her temper, I think; they engendered her sombre Calvinism, her perception of the trashy quality of human life.
A miracle only means the liberty of God. You may conscientiously deny either of them, but you cannot call your denial a triumph of the liberal idea. The Catholic Church believed that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom. Calvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God. Scientific materialism binds the Creator Himself; it chains up God as the Apocalypse chained the devil.
The religious sentiment of his day was offended by his vigorous vindication of the freewill of man against the reigning Calvinism, and his assertion of the inferiority of the Son in opposition to the received Athanasianism. He labours this point of the nature of God with especial care, showing how greatly it occupied his thoughts.
His hard head went through in childhood the drill of Calvinism, with text and mortification, so that he stands in the New England assembly a purer bit of New England than any, and flings his sarcasms right and left. He has not only the documents in his pocket to answer all cavils and to prove all his positions, but he has the eternal reason in his head.
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