functions of
the clergy from those of the magistrates. He allowed the State to
pronounce the final sentence on dogmatic questions, and hence the power
of the synod failed in Geneva. Moreover, the payment of ministers by the
State rather than by the people, as in this country, was against the old
Jewish custom, which Calvin so often borrowed,--for the priests among
the Jews were independent of the kings. But Calvin wished to destroy
caste among the clergy, and consequently spiritual tyranny. In his
legislation we see an intense hostility to the Roman Catholic
Church,--one of the animating principles of the Reformers; and hence the
Reformers, in their hostility to Rome, went from Sylla into Charybdis.
Calvin, like all churchmen, exalted naturally the theocratic idea of the
old Jewish and Mediaeval Church, and yet practically put the Church into
the hands of laymen. In one sense he was a spiritual dictator, and like
Luther a sort of Protestant pope; and yet he built up a system which was
fatal to spiritual power such as had existed among the Catholic
priesthood. For their sacerdotal spiritual power he would substitute a
moral power, the result of personal bearing and sanctity. It is amusing
to hear some people speak of Calvin as a ghostly spiritual father; but
no man ever fought sacerdotalism more earnestly than he. The logical
sequence of his ecclesiastical reforms was not the aristocratic and
Erastian Church of Scotland, but the Puritans in New England, who were
Independents and not Presbyterians.

Yet there is an inconsistency even in Calvin's regime; for he had the
zeal of the old Catholic Church in giving over to the civil power those
he wished to punish, as in the case of Servetus. He even intruded into
the circle of social life, and established a temporal rather than a
spiritual theocracy; and while he overthrew the episcopal element, he
made a distinction, not recognized in the primitive church, between
clergy and laity. As for religious toleration, it did not exist in any
country or in any church; there was no such thing as true evangelical
freedom. All the Reformers attempted, as well as the Catholics, a
compulsory unity of faith; and this is an impossibility. The Reformers
adopted a catechism, or a theological system, which all communicants
were required to learn and accept. This is substantially the acceptance
of what the Church ordains. Creeds are perhaps a necessity in
well-organized ecclesiastical bodies, an