Wallace K. Ferguson On Calvin’s ‘Institutes’

Wallace K. Ferguson, The Age of the Reformation and the Wars of Religion in Carl L. Becker (ed.), A Survey of European Civilization: 1500 — Present (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942-43), 497-498. [American spellings retained.]

Calvin published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion [in 1536].

From time to time thereafter he added to it in new editions and also translated it from the original Latin into French.

When finished, this work contained a complete summary of that system of theology and morals generally known as Calvinism.

More than any other book it was responsible for the spread of Protestantism to the non-Lutheran countries.

Its clarity of thought and remorseless logic carried conviction more unescapably than did the mystical fervor of Luther.

There was little that was a really original in Calvinism, for the fundamental doctrines were Luther’s almost without exception, and yet the total effect was very different from Lutheranism.

The chief difference, aside from the more logical and consistent development of Calvin’s thought, lay in a decided shift in emphasis. Starting with the same belief in man’s inability to save himself by good works, Luther placed the greatest emphasis on the saving power of faith, whereas Calvin thought much more about the majesty and power of God, who predestines certain souls for salvation and assigns the rest of mankind to hopeless damnation.

Calvin’s was a sterner doctrine, and its sternness was reflected in his moral teaching and legislation.

He considered it the duty of the church and state to make men moral in the strictest legalistic sense.

No part of his teaching had a more profound influence on the life of the Calvinist countries than this.

The civilization of America to this day [1943] shows traces of the Calvinist morality brought over to these shores by the Puritan immigrants who founded the early colonies in New England.

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