h should be
coextensive with the world and not limited by national boundaries, that
the Church was one in all countries and among all peoples, that there
was a Christendom which embraced all kingdoms and a Christian law that
ruled peoples and kings, became more and more the doctrine of Rome's
bitterest opponents. It was this doctrine which found its embodiment in
John Calvin, a young French scholar, driven in early manhood from his
own country by the persecution of Francis the First. Calvin established
himself at Basle, and produced there in 1535 at the age of twenty-six a
book which was to form the theology of the Huguenot churches, his
"Institutes of the Christian Religion." What was really original in this
work was Calvin's doctrine of the organization of the Church and of its
relation to the State. The base of the Christian republic was with him
the Christian man, elected and called of God, preserved by His grace
from the power of sin, predestinate to eternal life. Every such
Christian man is in himself a priest, and every group of such men is a
Church, self-governing, independent of all save God, supreme in its
authority over all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual. The
constitution of such a church, where each member as a Christian was
equal before God, necessarily took a democratic form. In Calvin's theory
of Church government it is the Church which itself elects its lay elders
and lay deacons for purposes of administration; it is with the approval
and consent of the Church that elders and deacons with the existing body
of pastors elect new ministers. It is through these officers that the
Church exercises its power of the keys, the power of diffusing the truth
and the power of correcting error. To the minister belong the preaching
of the word and the direction of all religious instruction; to the body
of ministers belong the interpretation of scripture and the decision of
doctrine. On the other hand the administration of discipline, the
supervision of the moral conduct of each professing Christian, the
admonition of the erring, the excommunication and exclusion from the
body of the Church of the unbelieving and the utterly unworthy, belong
to the Consistory, the joint assembly of ministers and elders. To this
discipline princes as well as common men are alike subject; princes as
well as common men must take their doctrine from the ministers of the
Church.

[Sidenote: Calvinism.]

The claims of the older faith