tween the
hierarchical party, with the Guises at its head, and the Protestants,
led by Conde and Coligny. In 1561 his energies began to fail. He had
been long suffering from bad health, though his strength of will and
buoyancy of intellect sustained him; but his health grew very much
worse, and although he survived for more than two years, he never
regained any vigor. He died on May 27, 1564.

Very different estimates have been formed of Calvin's character. None,
however, can dispute his intellectual greatness or the powerful services
which he rendered to the cause of Protestantism. Stern in spirit and
unyielding in will, he is never selfish or petty in his motives. Nowhere
amiable, he is everywhere strong. Arbitrary and cruel when it suits him,
he is yet heroic in his aims, and beneficent in the scope of his
ambition. His moral purpose is always clear and definite: to live a life
of duty, to shape circumstances to such divine ends as he apprehended,
and in whatever sphere he might be placed, to work out the glory of God.

He rendered a double service to Protestantism, which, apart from
anything else, would have made his name illustrious: he systematized its
doctrine, and he organized its ecclesiastical discipline. He was at once
the great theologian of the Reformation, and the founder of a new church
polity which did more than all other influences together to consolidate
the scattered forces of the Reformation and give them an enduring
strength. As a religious teacher, as a social legislator, and as a
writer, especially of the French language, whose modern prose style was
then in process of formation, his fame is second to none in his age, and
must always conspicuously adorn the history of civilization.

His famous "Institutio" entitles Calvin to the foremost place among the
dogmatic theologians of the Reformed Church. This masterpiece of
luminous argument presents a complete system of Christian faith, based
on the Protestant principle that the Scriptures are the source of
Christian truth. "Two things there are," says Hooker, in the preface to
the "Ecclesiastical Polity," "which have deservedly procured him honor
throughout the world--the one, his exceeding pains in composing the
'Institutions of the Christian Religion;' the other, his no less
industrious travails for exposition of Holy Scripture." His Commentaries
embrace the greater part of the Old Testament and the whole of the New,
except the Revelation, and plac