Produced by Brian Wilson, Colin Bell, Wayne Hammond and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [Transcriber’s Note: Text delimited by equal signs is bold, Text delimited by uderscores is italic. A character preceded by a caret is superscript, multiple characters enclosed in braces and preceded by a caret are likewise, superscript. Text delimited by braces and underscores is subscript.] THE REFORMATION IN EUROPE IN THE TIME OF CALVIN. VOL. I. LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN EUROPE IN THE TIME OF CALVIN. BY J. H. MERLE D’AUBIGNÉ, D.D. AUTHOR OF THE ‘HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY’ ETC. ‘Les choses de petite durée out coutume de devenir fanées, quand elles out passé leur temps. ‘Au règne de Christ, il n’y a que le nouvel homme qui soit florissant, qui ait de la vigueur, et dont il faille faire cas.’ CALVIN. VOL. I. GENEVA AND FRANCE. LONDON: LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN. 1863. PREFACE. At the conclusion of the preface to the first volume of the _History of the Reformation_, the author wrote, ‘This work will consist of four volumes, or at the most five, which will appear successively.’ These five volumes have appeared. In them are described the heroic times of Luther, and the effects produced in Germany and other countries by the characteristic doctrine of that reformer--justification by faith. They present a picture of that great epoch which contained in the germ the revival of christianity in the last three centuries. The author has thus completed the task he had assigned himself; but there still remained another. The times of Luther were followed by those of Calvin. He, like his great predecessor, undertook to search the Scriptures, and in them he found the same truth and the same life; but a different character distinguishes his work. The renovation of the individual, of the Church, and of the human race, is his theme. If the Holy Ghost kindles the lamp of truth in man, it is (according to Calvin) ‘to the end that the entire man should be transformed.’--‘In the kingdom of Christ,’ he says, ‘it is only the new man that flourishes and has any vigour, and whom we ought to take into account.’ This renovation is, at the same time, an enfranchisement; and we might assign, as a motto to the reformation accomplished by Calvin, as well as to apostolical christianity itself, these words of Jesus Christ: _The truth shall make you free._[1]