embroil
itself in difficulties and grope in opaque darkness." But God has
given us his Word, infallible and inerrant, something that "has flowed
from his very mouth." "We can only seek God in his Word," he said,
"nor think of him otherwise than according to his Word."

Inevitably, Calvin sought to use the Bible as a rigid, moral law to be
fulfilled to the letter. His ethics were an elaborate casuistry, a
method of finding the proper rule to govern the particular act. He
preached a new legalism; [Sidenote: Legalism] he took Scripture as the
Pharisees took the Law, and Luther's sayings as they took the Prophets,
and he turned them all into stiff, fixed laws. Thus he crushed the
glorious autonomy of his predecessor's ethical principles. It was
Kant, who denied all Luther's specific beliefs, but who developed his
idea of the individual conscience, that was the true heir of his
spirit, not Calvin who crushed the spirit in elaborating every jot and
tittle of the letter. In precisely the same manner Calvin killed
Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. To Calvin the
church was a sacramental, aristocratic organization, with an
authoritative ministry. The German rebelled against the idea of the
church as such; the Frenchman simply asked what was the true church.
So he brought back some of the sacramental miracle of baptism and the
eucharist. In the latter he remained as medieval as Luther, never
getting beyond the question of the mode of the presence of the body and
blood of Christ in the bread and wine. His endeavor to rationalize the
doctrine of Augsburg, especially with reference to the Zwinglians, had
disastrous results. Only two {166} positions were possible, that the
body and blood were present, or that they were not. By endeavoring to
find some middle ground Calvin upheld a contradiction in terms: the
elements were signs and yet were realities; the body was really there
when the bread was eaten by a believer, but really not there when the
same bread was eaten by an infidel. The presence was actual, and yet
participation could only occur by faith. While rejecting some of
Luther's explanations, Calvin was undoubtedly nearer his position than
that of Zwingli, which he characterized as "profane."

As few instructed and thinking persons now accept the conclusions of
the _Institutes_, it is natural to underestimate the power that they
exercised in their own day. This book was the most effective we