New Outlook Volume 71 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ...his country owed much to Calvin, whose influence on Pascal and even on Bossuet was undeniable. The lecturer was even impelled to exclaim: "If ever heresy seemed to justify itself, it is the heresy of Calvin." M. Brunetiere's three adverse criticisms were: (1) that Calvin intellectualized, (2) aristocratized, and (3) individualized religion. The lecturer declared that in intellectualizing religion the reformer had transformed its very concept. Before Calvin's time " religion was an affair of the heart; after him, of the head." For the living religion of Christian humanity he substituted "a religion which consists in the adhesion of the intelligence to demonstrable truths. These truths prove themselves by the literalness of their relations with Holy Scripture and by the solidity of their logical edifice." This is true in great measure, but the lecturer's critics pointed out that Calvin's intellectualization did not signify rationalization; it signified rather an abhorrence of the Roman Catholic role which imagination and the senses had played, in the worship of Mary, of saints, images, and relies. Calvin intellectualized religion in abolishing these things, together with prayers for the dead, sacrifices at the mass, and indulgencesi and in placing the seat both of religious and of moral authority in the individual conscience. By inevitable consequence, said M. Brunetiere, Calvin both aristocratized and individualized religion. As to the first, it is true, as Professor Borgeaud himself admits, that Calvin thought it necessary for men to have leisure and the means for an education. Such leisure and such a competence belonged then to but a few; he would nobly give these to many. A...