SOURCE: Waller, G. F. “Fulke Greville's Struggle with Calvinism.” Studia Neophilologica XLIV, no. 2 (1972): 295-314.

In the following essay, Waller considers the influence of Calvinism on Greville's life and works.

I

Burke's sage remark on the subjective reception of ideas is as relevant to sixteenth-century Calvinism as it was to the French Revolution—or, for that matter, as it is to modern existentialism. Ideas, he wrote, “entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line.”¹ Fulke Greville's commitment to Calvinism is a fascinating case of how the ideology which provided the main driving force behind his public life and writings was significantly adapted, consciously and unconsciously, by his peculiar needs and to his peculiar demands. A study of the relationship between Calvinism and Greville's writings is crucial to an understanding of his work...