Today’s free book is James Mackinnon’s study of John Calvin’s role in the Reformation.
The book is an attempt to portray his work as a leader of the Reformation at Geneva and far beyond it. He is an international, not merely a local or national figure, who had his finger on the pulse of the Reformation in many lands outside the little Republic on the shore of Lake Leman. Though not so original a religious thinker as Luther, he was more systematic in the expression of his thought, and he greatly surpassed him as an organiser and an ecclesiastical statesman. Moreover, he developed the movement in essential respects, particularly in his system of ecclesiastical discipline and polity. He thereby imparted to it a driving force which made itself felt in the social and political as well as the religious history of the Western lands, particularly France, Holland, England, and Scotland, from which it ultimately expanded into the New World beyond the Atlantic. Calvinism, in its developed form, became, in fact, “a live wire” in modern political as well as religious history. “Calvin and the Reformation” thus means far more, in ultimate result, than the local religious history of Geneva. It is the history of a widespread movement, of which, by his powerful intellect, his force of conviction and character, his organising genius, he made Geneva the headquarters.
Preface, pp.vii-viii
This public domain book was digitised from the copy held in Spurgeon’s College library.
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