to say
that the clear, cold logic of the _Institutes_, the good French and
Latin of countless other treatises and letters, and the political
thought which amalgamated easily with rising tides of democracy and
industrialism, made Calvin the leader of Protestantism outside of the
Teutonic countries of the north. His gift for organization and the
pains he took to train ministers and apostles contributed to this
success.

[Sidenote: Death of Calvin, May 27, 1564]

On May 27, 1564 Calvin died, worn out with labor and ill health at the
age of fifty-five. With a cold heart and a hot temper, he had a clear
brain, an iron will, and a real moral earnestness derived from the
conviction that he was a chosen vessel of Christ. Constantly tortured
by a variety of painful diseases, he drove himself, by the demoniac
strength of his will, to perform labor that would have taxed the
strongest. {181} The way he ruled his poor, suffering body is symbolic
of the way he treated the sick world. To him the maladies of his own
body, or of the body politic, were evils to be overcome, at any cost of
pain and sweat and blood, by a direct effort of the will. As he never
yielded to fever and weakness in himself, so he dealt with the vice and
frivolity he detested, crushing it out by a ruthless application of
power, hunting it with spies, stretching it on the rack and breaking it
on the wheel. But a gentler, more understanding method would have
accomplished more, even for his own purpose.

[Sidenote: Beza, 1519-1605]

His successor at Geneva, Theodore Beza, was a man after his own heart
but, as he was far weaker, the town council gradually freed itself from
spiritual tyranny. Towards the end of the century the pastors had been
humbled and the questions of the day were far less the dogmatic
niceties they loved than ethical ones such as the right to take usury,
the proper penalty for adultery, the right to make war, and the best
form of government.

[1] "Decretum Dei aeternum horribile."

[2] See below. Chapter X, section 3.

{182}

CHAPTER IV

FRANCE

SECTION 1. RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

[Sidenote: France]

Though, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the French may have
attained to no greater degree of national self-consciousness than had
the Germans, they had gone much farther in the construction of a
national state. The significance of this evolution, one of the
strongest tendencies of modern history, is