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Our account of Calvin's conception of a Christian commonwealth must begin where he did in any matter of politia, at the top. The apex is the two-fold regime of magistrates and ministers. The ‘form’ of the latter, both as ecclesiology and as the ecclesiastical constitution of Geneva, has already been described. What remained to be done in this connection was to attend to the detail which makes the difference between the letter of the law and a working set of arrangements. Thus Calvin unceasingly badgered the PC for competent ecclesiastical personnel in adequate numbers, attempted and eventually secured (by the later forties) the elimination of the remaining unfit ministers, prevented the imposition of objectionable candidates on the Venerable Company by the magistrates, extracted not ungenerous remuneration and lodgings for at least the urban ministers and doctors, tried to secure official protection for ministers against abuse and recalcitrance, and in 1559 saw through the establishment of the Genevan ‘Academy’ for the training of future pastors and magistrates. To the same end he fought a running battle to ensure the Consistory's mastery over the ‘discipline’, a battle not effectively won until 1555; his success was symbolized in 1560 by the ending of the practice whereby the syndic who presided at the Consistory came bearing his staff of office: without it, he was now clearly designated as an ecclesiastical and not a civil official. This did not, however, prevent the Consistory being furnished with a beadle to ensure the attendance of culprits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the beginning of 1542 Calvin had formulated a rounded scheme of ecclesiastical polity, the digest of his pastoral experience at Geneva and Strasbourg as mediated by reflection upon Scripture and discussion with the leading evangelical theologians and organizers of his day; had buttressed it by scriptural legitimation; and had rendered it more or less coherent with the guiding themes of his theology (though here much remained to be done). But it is one thing to meditate a political scheme, another to have it received for law (and this had been accomplished by 20 November 1541, by which time all the Genevan Councils had accepted the draft), and yet another to transform scheme and law into a living reality – especially when the scheme was conspicuously vague at crucial points about the relations between a church as there outlined and the secular authorities, whose good-will and cooperation it required. More important, nothing specific had been said about what exactly these two potestates or regimines were actually to do, whether severally or in tandem. For the ends of both had so far only been set out in very general terms with little substantive content, and the same can be said about the character and conditions of their ‘cooperation’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new edition of the Institution was now a large volume of twenty-one chapters; some of the chapters, not as yet divided into sections, had become very unwieldy. Wendel has said of this edition that ‘the alterations and additions [made in it] are of much less importance than those of the edition of 1539’. Certainly many of the changes and additions were simply amplificatory, or designed to ward off past or potential criticism; the host of quotations from Augustine was in the main of this sort. Others again simply used up material which Calvin presumably prepared for the various colloquia he attended. But the most amplified, changed and reworked section was that on ecclesiology, concentrated almost entirely into the exposition of the Creed's Credo unam sanctam catholicam ecclesiam, which now formed one chapter of enormous length. Here, as well as much material reproduced verbatim from previous editions, there were substantial and important novelties, and given that Calvin regarded ecclesiology as part of theology, it will hardly do to leave the matter at the comment that the new edition now ‘contained a somewhat detailed exposition of Calvin's ideas about ecclesiastical organization’. What it contained was the image of a godly church, defined not merely by exclusion (as non-papist) but positively, and with a decisiveness and clarity of outline without precedent elsewhere. In this respect, the general tendency of the discussion to consolidate and make doctrinal the conclusions reached in public and private between 1538 and 1541 is indeed impressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CALVIN IN 1535 The De dementia Commentary was the beginning and also the end of Calvin's projected career as a humanist scholar. Less than three years after its publication he was an exile living in Basel in straitened circumstances and under the assumed name ‘Martianus Lucianus’. His decision to leave France was precipitated by fear of persecution, and by conclusive evidence that Francis I, previously an uncertain and ambivalent defender of humanists, had finally espoused the Sorbonne's interpretation of what was to count as orthodoxy. It is impossible to say what kind of evangelical Calvin was at his arrival in Basel, a place notable for its de facto tolerance of a wide diversity of opinions. Nor is it possible to say at what date Calvin conceived or began the execution of the first Institution. We do not know either whether Calvin was now putting on record reflections long since habitual with him, or whether it was writing the Institution which itself crystallized his thoughts. All that can be said with confidence is that since the De Clementia Commentary Calvin had published nothing except two Prefaces to Olivetan's French translation of the New Testament (which were written, it appears, shortly after his arrival at Basel), and had written, but left unpublished, Psychopannychia. It is apparent, then, that some time before he left France, Calvin's attentions had been concentrated entirely on theology, and that it was evangelical, and not merely humanist, theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]