our very different ways of thinking, Mr. Pattison has the courage to allege that his interest in dogmatic theology was a subordinate matter, and that the “renovation of character,” the “moral purification of humanity,” was the great guiding idea of him who taught that out of the mass of human kind only a predestined remnant could possibly be saved.  It is a singular interpretation of the mind of the author of the Institutes:—­

The distinction of Calvin as a Reformer is not to be sought in the doctrine which now bears his name, or in any doctrinal peculiarity.  His great merit lies in his comparative neglect of dogma.  He seized the idea of reformation as a real renovation of human character.  The moral purification of humanity as the original idea of Christianity is the guiding idea of his system....  He swept away at once the sacramental machinery of material media of salvation which the middle-age Church had provided in such abundance, and which Luther frowned upon, but did not reject.  He was not satisfied to go back only to the historical origin of Christianity, but would found human virtue on the eternal antemundane will of God.

Again:—­

Calvin thought neither of fame or fortune.  The narrowness of his views and the disinterestedness of his soul alike precluded him from regarding Geneva as a stage for the gratification of personal ambition.  This abegnation of self was one great part of his success.

And then Mr. Pattison goes on to describe in detail how, governed and possessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was “moral depravity,” he proceeded to establish his intolerable system of discipline, based on dogmatic grounds—­meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel—­over the interior of every household in Geneva.  What is there fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character?  It is the common case of political and religious bigots, whether Jacobin, or Puritan, or Jesuit, poor in thought and sympathy and strong in will, fixing their yoke on a society, till the plague becomes unbearable.  He seeks nothing for himself and, forsooth, he makes sacrifices.  But he gets what he wants, his idea carried out; and self-sacrifice is of what we care for, and not of what we do not care for.  And to keep up this supposed character of high moral purpose, we are told of Calvin’s “comparative neglect of dogma,” of his seizing the idea of a “real reformation of human character,” a “moral purification of humanity,” as the guiding idea of his system.  Can anything be more unhistorical than to suggest that the father and source of all Western Puritan theology “neglected dogma,” and was more of a moralist than a divine?  It is not even true that he “swept away at once the sacramental machinery” of mediaeval and Lutheran teaching; Calvin writes of the Eucharist in terms which would astonish some of his later followers.  But what is the reason why Mr. Pattison attributes