apon of
Protestantism. This was partly because of the style, but, still more
because of the faultless logic. [Sidenote: His logic] The success of
an argument usually depends far less on the truth of the premises than
on the validity of the reasoning. And the premises selected by Calvin
not only seemed natural to a large body of educated European opinion of
his time, but were such that their truth or falsity was very difficult
to demonstrate convincingly. Calvin's system has been overthrown not
by direct attack, but by the flank, in science as in war the most
effective way. To take but one example out of many that might be
given: what has modern criticism made of Calvin's doctrine of the
inerrancy of Scripture? But this science was as yet all but unknown:
biblical exegesis there was in plenty, but it was only to a minute
extent literary and historical; it was almost exclusively philological
and dogmatic.

Calvin's doctrine of the arbitrary dealing out of salvation and
damnation irrespective of merit has often excited a moral rather than
an intellectual revulsion. To his true followers, indeed, like
Jonathan {167} Edwards, it seems "a delightful doctrine, exceeding
bright, pleasant and sweet." [Sidenote: Eternal damnation] But many
men agree with Gibbon that it makes God a cruel and capricious tyrant
and with William James that it is sovereignly irrational and mean.
Even at that time those who said that a man's will had no more to do
with his destiny than the stick in a man's hand could choose where to
strike or than a saddled beast could choose its rider, aroused an
intense opposition. Erasmus argued that damnation given for inevitable
crimes would make God unjust, and Thomas More blamed Luther for calling
God the cause of evil and for saying "God doth damn so huge a number of
people to intolerable torments only for his own pleasure and for his
own deeds wrought in them only by himself." An English heretic, Cole
of Faversham, said that the doctrine of predestination was meeter for
devils than for Christians. "The God of Calvin," exclaimed Jerome
Bolsec, "is a hypocrite, a liar, perfidious, unjust, the abetter and
patron of crimes, and worse than the devil himself."

But there was another side to the doctrine of election. There was a
certain moral grandeur in the complete abandon to God and in the
earnestness that was ready to sacrifice all to his will. And if we
judge the tree by its fruits, at its best