I cannot attempt to follow him in his vast work, to discuss his interpretations of gospel facts and words, and his deductions from them. Calvin's books, his life, and the Church established by him, show that the system which he founded was both strong and compact, wanting neither in logical accuracy nor in practical and available power. For more than three centuries it has embodied the faith and regulated the lives of many millions of Christians in France, Switzerland, Holland, Scotland, England, and America. In spite of its imperfections it is, on the whole, one of the noblest edifices ever erected by the mind of man, and one of the mightiest codes of moral law which has ever guided him. I will only pause here to notice two of Calvin's doctrines, which I look upon as grave errors, opposed, in my opinion, to the true spirit of Christianity, and at the present time out of harmony with the intellectual and social progress of the human race. {182} The earliest complaints and attacks made by the reformers were called forth by assertions of the authority and infallibility of the pope. Luther was the first and mightiest, as he was also the most impetuous leader of the assault. Calvin followed in the same path; but he looked upon the work of demolition as almost completed, and his own special work was to replace the authority and infallibility of the Church by the authority and infallibility of the sacred monument of divine revelation--that is, to put the Bible in the place of the Pope: everything in the name and in virtue of the Bible, nothing in opposition to or without the Bible. This was Calvin's fixed idea, and the supreme law of the Church which he established. The extent and success of his work sufficiently prove that he discerned the needs and religious instincts of his age. Calvin's reformed Church at once took up an important position which it has now occupied for three centuries. Catholicism and Protestantism may continue their long struggle, but they cannot underrate each other's strength; they have both survived many reverses; they live on in spite of many faults, and at the present time they are both face to face with the same enemies. Both are now impelled by reason and commanded by necessity to acknowledge their faults and to recognise the cause of their reverses. In so far as the future is in the hands of man, their future depends on the extent to which they have attained the clearness of vision which belongs to long life and experience. I am a Protestant, and for that very reason I intend to speak exclusively of Calvin's errors and faults as a Protestant reformer.