rod of iron. The new Geneva was so cowed and subservient
that the town council dared not install a new sort of heating apparatus
without asking the permission of the theocrat. But a deep rancor
smouldered under the surface. "Our incomparable theologian Calvin,"
wrote Ambrose Blaurer to Bullinger, "labors under such hatred of some
whom he obscures by his light that he is considered the worst of
heretics by them." Among other things he was accused of levying
tribute from his followers by a species of blackmail, threatening
publicly to denounce them unless they gave money to the cause.

[Sidenote: International Calvinism]

At the same time his international power and reputation rose. Geneva
became the capital of Protestantism, from which mandates issued to all
the countries of Western Europe. Englishmen and Frenchmen, Dutchmen
and Italians, thronged to "this most perfect school of Christ since the
apostles" to learn the laws of a new type of Christianity. For
Calvin's Reformation was more thorough and logical than was Luther's.
The German had regarded all as permitted that was not forbidden, and
allowed the old usages to stand in so far as they were not repugnant to
the ordinances of the Bible. But Calvin believed that all was
forbidden save what was expressly allowed, and hence abolished as
superstitious accretions all the elements of the medieval cult that
could find no warrant in the {180} Bible. Images, vestments, organs,
bells, candles, ritual, were swept away in the ungarnished
meeting-house to make way for a simple service of Bible-reading,
prayer, hymn and sermon. The government of the church was left by
Calvin in close connection with the state, but he apparently turned
around the Lutheran conception, making the civil authority subordinate
to the spiritual and not the church to the state.

Whereas Lutheranism appealed to Germans and Scandinavians, Calvinism
became the international form of Protestantism. Even in Germany Calvin
made conquests at the expense of Luther, but outside of Germany, in
France, in the Netherlands, in Britain, he moulded the type of reformed
thought in his own image. It is difficult to give statistics, for it
is impossible to say how far each particular church, like the Anglican
for example, was indebted to Calvin, how far to Luther, and how far to
other leaders, and also because there was a strong reaction against
pure Calvinism even in the sixteenth century. But it is safe