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i

Morality After Calvin

ii

OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY

Series Editor
Richard A. Muller, Calvin Theological Seminary

Founding Editor
David C. Steinmetz†

Editorial Board
Irena Backus, Université de Genève
Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University
George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame
Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University
Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-​Wilhelms-​Universität Bonn
Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago
John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame
Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University
Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia

THE JUDAIZING CALVIN THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING

Sixteenth-​Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval
G. Sujin Pak and Early Modern Germany
Ronald K. Rittgers
THE DEATH OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RISE OF
BIBLICAL STUDIES CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE
Michael C. Legaspi Augustine's Early Figurative Exegesis
Michael Cameron
THE FILIOQUE
History of a Doctrinal Controversy MYSTERY UNVEILED
A. Edward Siecienski The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England
Paul C. H. Lim
ARE YOU ALONE WISE?
Debates about Certainty in the Early Modern Church GOING DUTCH IN THE MODERN AGE
Susan E. Schreiner Abraham Kuyper's Struggle for a Free Church in the
Netherlands
EMPIRE OF SOULS John Halsey Wood Jr.
Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth
Stefania Tutino CALVIN’S COMPANY OF PASTORS
Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church,
MARTIN BUCER'S DOCTRINE OF 1536–​1609
JUSTIFICATION Scott M. Manetsch
Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism
Brian Lugioyo THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JAMES USSHER
The Act and Object of Saving Faith
CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE Richard Snoddy
The Theological Foundation of Ambrose's Ethics
J. Warren Smith HARTFORD PURITANISM
Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their
KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE Terrifying God
EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY Baird Tipson
A Study in the Circulation of Ideas
Amy Nelson Burnett AUGUSTINE, THE TRINITY, AND THE CHURCH
A Reading of the Anti-​Donatist Sermons
READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION Adam Ployd
The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe,
1500–​1620 AUGUSTINE’S EARLY THEOLOGY OF IMAGE
Arnoud S. Q. Visser A Study in the Development of Pro-​Nicene Theology
Gerald Boersma
SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–​1714
Variety, Persistence, and Transformation PATRON SAINT AND PROPHET
Dewey D. Wallace, Jr. Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations
Phillip N. Haberkern
THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM
OF ALTON JOHN OWEN AND ENGLISH PURITANISM
Timothy Bellamah, OP Experiences of Defeat
Crawford Gribben
MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT
IMAGINATION MORALITY AFTER CALVIN
The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany Theodore Beza’s Christian Censor and Reformed Ethics
Philip M. Soergel Kirk M. Summers
iii

Morality
After Calvin
Theodore Beza’s Christian Censor
and Reformed Ethics
z
KIRK M. SUMMERS

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
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© Oxford University Press 2017

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address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​028007–​9

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v

Contents

Preface vii
Introduction: Contextualizing Beza’s Ethical Thought 1

1. Cato, God, and Natural Law 38

2. An Ethos of Listening 80
3. Living Sincerely 123
4. The Execution of One’s Calling 165
5. Usury and the Rhetoric of Mutuality 211
6. Sanctifying Physical Relationships 258
7. Outliers 294
8. A Retrospective View of Life’s Journey 336
9. Conclusion: Beza’s Ethical Thought 360

Bibliography 379
Abbreviations 379
Primary Sources 380
Secondary Sources 386
Index 405
vi
vii

Preface

This book has its genesis in a chance encounter some ten years ago
when I picked up Beza’s 1591 Cato Censorius Christianus and marveled over
it. What was the purpose of this little moralizing book of Latin poetry?
I could see that Beza was admonishing various types of sinners through
the voice of a fictional Cato. Still, other questions nagged me. What brings
cohesion to this volume? What is the generic tradition behind it, the social
and theological context, and the pastoral concern? What is the moral para-
digm being advocated? I found it interesting that Beza had chosen a typi-
cally humanistic form as his means of expression. The period following
the death of Calvin is frequently characterized as a time marked by the
employment of scholastic methodologies and the systematization of doc-
trine. However, here was something more creative and personal. Yet for all
of its application of the rhetorical power of art to practical, down-​to earth
concerns, it seemed to harbor something larger than itself. A coherent and
well-​formulated worldview reverberated quietly through the poems.
As I pursued the matter, I was surprised to discover that no scholarship
whatsoever exists on the work. In fact, at a time when so much documen-
tary evidence about life in Geneva in the latter half of the sixteenth century
is coming to light, many of Beza’s writings are still inadequately studied.
To overlook them is to lose a valuable commentary on events. Beza’s New
Testament annotations, treatises, sermons, and correspondence often
explain the why of ecclesiastical and civic action. In a unique way, so does
the poetry. I decided, therefore, to study these works for what they could
tell me about Beza’s ethics. I was not looking for and did not find a radical
departure from Calvin, but I did want to know how Beza articulated his
view of sanctification. The subject matter of the Cato suggested this line of
inquiry and provided a way to frame the argument. Throughout the book
I anchor my arguments to the poems from the Cato and then pull in other
viii

viii Preface

works of Beza to bolster and clarify the argument I am trying to make. I did
not want to content myself only with the works of Beza, however. I compare
and contrast other writers in the Reformed tradition, some of whom were
colleagues of Beza at Geneva, friends from other cities, or directly influ-
enced by him. These include Simon Goulart, Lambert Daneau, Peter Martyr
Vermigli, and the English puritan Thomas Beard.1 Naturally, I considered
it important to read Beza in the context of Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon,
Musculus, and many others. The goal throughout is always to ascertain
more clearly Beza’s own ethical thought and to provide the scholar with a
key to unlocking much of what he writes. The hope is that this will help to
bridge a theological gap between Calvin and the later Reformed tradition.
I approach this study as a Classical philologist, one who wrote his
dissertation on Cicero and Lucretius and has a deep appreciation for the
ancient world. I combine this love of Classical languages with training in
Reformed theology and an upbringng in the Calvinist tradition. These two
assets would not have seemed so disparate to Beza and I hope they have
equipped me to comprehend his thought in a unique way. They manifest
themselves in the book by a close attention to detail, the unraveling of
sometimes-​compact Latin, and attention to the exact meaning of words.
A historian undoubtedly would have a different way of interrogating the
same material, but since the problem being investigated is one of ideas
primarily, and given that Beza was a master of Latin who wrote with pre-
cision and purpose, my own skills also seemed to offer a valid means to
the end. Additionally, there is what I would call a “dialectic with antiquity”
that runs through Beza’s writing which, properly discerned, allows for a
nuanced understanding of what he is saying.
Punctuation and orthography always present a challenge to the scholar
dealing with Early Modern texts. Some choose to punctuate and spell texts
exactly as they find them. I made some choices that I believe will make the
Latinity more accessible to a wider audience. Since no consistent rule of
punctuation existed in texts of this early period, I preferred to follow mod-
ern conventions for the benefit of the reader. For example, often Beza’s
sentences employ a colon where today we would place a semicolon. In
those cases I made the change. In the case of orthography, I have altered
unusual spellings to their Classical counterparts, with only a few easily

1. Beard draws heavily on the Huguenot writer Jean de Chassanion (1531–​1598) and his work
Histoires memorables des grans et merveilleux jugemens et punitions de Dieu (Geneva: Jean le
Preux, 1586).
ix

Preface ix

understood exceptions. Otherwise, I left the French and English texts as

I found them, with one notable deviation: I chose to convert citations from
the Geneva Bible into modern English diction. I did this because I want
the reader to have a clearer sense for how Beza’s Latin version of the New
Testament would be understood by his contemporaries without the bur-
den of having to decipher the English itself. Because Thomson’s Geneva
Bible is so closely tied to Beza’s own work on the New Testament, I turned
to it more often than not for citations. In the case of Thomas Beard and
his Theatre of Gods Judgments, however, I left the English as it was so as not
to distort Beard’s own voice. Every translation of Beza’s texts is my own
unless otherwise noted. For Calvin, I relied on translations in the public
domain except when I felt a more precise rendering of the original was
needed. All translations of the Old Testament are either standard ones or,
when relevant, my own renderings of the Vulgate. I supplied the original
text (Latin or French) in most every case in a footnote. I incorporated the
Latin of the poems of the Cato into the text of the book itself, because they
are central to the overall argument of the book.
As is usual in studies of this nature, I have so many people to thank.
When I was only just formulating the ideas presented here, Scott Manetsch
(Trinity Seminary) offered much needed encouragement and valuable
direction. Carl Springer (Southern Illinois) also took the time to read ver-
sions of early chapters and lend his support. During the course of my
research, Jeffrey Watt (University of Mississippi) supplied me with several
unpublished texts from the Consistory minutes that I could not have done
without. I am especially grateful to David Steinmetz for showing an inter-
est in the project when it was still in its nascent stages and recommend-
ing it to Oxford University Press; I regret deeply that he could not see its
fruition before his passing. Several friends and colleagues read drafts of
some or all the chapters and thankfully challenged my argumentation in
many places, made corrections to grammar and syntax, and pressed me to
improve my writing style. Among these are Erin Isbell, Alecia Chatham,
and Kelly Shannon. Other colleagues, Metka Zupancic, Molly Robinson
Kelly, and Jean-​Luc Robin, graciously offered their expertise to review my
translations and interpretations of various difficult passages of sixteenth-​
century French. In all cases, however, I assume full responsibility for any
remaining errors and infelicities. Finally, I am indebted to my wife and
children for their patience through the three years in which this project
consumed my time and thoughts. Their confidence in me and what I was
doing along the way has truly been inspirational.
x
xi

Morality After Calvin

xii
1

Introduction
Contextualizing Beza’s Ethical Thought

On June 24, 1582, the same year that he published the magisterial third
edition of his Annotationes maiores in Novum Testamentum and a series of
lectures on Romans 9 titled De praedestinationis doctrina, Beza sat down
and, “sated with this life and longing for the next,” penned the following
poem to mark his sixty-​third birthday:

Hail, birthday, repeated now six times ten

years, plus another three,
during which, though in sin I strayed from the straight path,
even so I did not completely lose my way.
Be frank and tell me, is the end goal of my old age far off,
or does this mark the beginning of my troubles?
But I am a fool for demanding of you these hidden things,
since the very day itself does not know!
As it is, whether this returning sun is my last, or
he will come ‘round again,
O God, be gracious and grant this my prayer:
Cover what was, and what will be, govern.1

1. From Beza, Poemata 1597, 188; Beza, Poemata 1599, 95r–​v; and subscribed to a let-
ter addressed to Laurent Dürnhoffer in Beza, Corr. XXIII (1582), no 1528. It really marks
the completion of his sixty-​second year and the commencement of his sixty-​third. Max
Engammare (“Soixante-​trois: La peur de la grande année climactérique à la Renaissance,”
Académie des Inscriptiones et Belles-​Lettres: Comptes rendus des séances de l’annéee 2008, 152
[2010]: 279–​303, esp. 294) notes its appearance in the 1588(?) Carmina (=Gardy no 8) and
the importance of the sixty-​third year as a “climacteric” in astrology. The poem itself is titled
“Theodorus Beza, annum vitae iniens, huius vitae satur, alterius cupidus; xxiv Iunii, anno
2

2 Mor ality After Calvin

These words reveal a different side of the reformer than can be gleaned
from his celebrated works of exegesis and theology. Here the doctrinal
principles of those works meet with the practical realities of everyday life.
We find him reminiscing over his life’s journey, how he has struggled with
shortcomings and sin—​errans mirrors the NT ἁμαρτάνων—​yet through-
out has continued to persevere; he has been wayward and inconstant
(devius), but not lost and completely astray (avius).2 Does the sixty-​third
year, as tradition holds, really mark the climax of life at which it turns
and winds its way down a bitter path to death? With a measure of mortal
trepedation, he wonders what remains for him. At the same time, how-
ever, he understands that the path ahead belongs to the arcane things of
God and that he does not and cannot know what tomorrow brings. Thus
he relinquishes all things into the Father’s hands, to his providence, now
no finely formulated theological concept suited to academic disputes, but
a truth with immediate application in his world: Beza himself cannot cor-
rect what has gone by, nor can he control the future. God must graciously
cover over (tege) his past mistakes and providentially guide (rege) what will
be. This same resignation and inner conviction steadies him still seven
years later, in a poem written for his seventieth birthday, where he wrestles
with similar concerns. Again he feels burdened by his own sin, and, as he

ultimi temporis MDLXXXII.” The text runs as follows: “Lux natalis ave, senos repetita per
annos | decies, tribus superadditis; | quos ego, quantumvis per devia devius errans, | tamen
peregi haud avius. | Dic vero, nostrae procul hinc an meta senectae | vel duriora nos manent?
| Verum o stultus ego, qui te haec arcana reposcam, | quum seipsa non norit dies. | Sive
autem volvendus adhuc, sive annuus iste | sol me revisit ultimus, | o Deus, hoc Bezae faci-
lis concede precanti: | Tege quod fuit, quod erit rege.” Here Beza shows himself to be the
consummate Renaissance poet through his masterful execution of the pythiambic verse, the
classical allusions (he echoes, for example, Statius, Achill. 1.455: “donec sol annuus omnes
conficeret metas”), the poignant deliberative question, the various word plays (“devius/​avius”
and “tege/​rege”), the AB/​BA structure between the third and fifth couplets, and the chias-
mus of the last line.
2. The translation of devius here is confirmed by verses that Beza placed at the head of
his second edition of his paraphrases of Ecclesiastes, which are transcribed at Beza, Corr.
XXXIX (1598), 272 (=Append. VIII), and which will be discussed in ­chapter 9. For the
subtle differences in meaning between devius and avius as a personal descriptor, see TLL
s.v. devius 2b (e.g., Cic., Phil. 5.37: “in omnibus consiliis praeceps et devius homo”; Aug.
Doctr. Christ., 2.13.19: “a sensu auctoris devius aberrat interpres”) and s.v. avius, ad fin.
(e.g., Aug. In evang. Iob 13.11: “Nullus in rebus humanis tam avius a genere humano est,
qui quod dico non sentiat”). Beza expresses a similar sentiment in a poem written to
Simon Grynaeus on the occasion of his own seventy-​sixth birthday in June of 1595: “But
not completely immoral” (At non degeneres prorsus). For the whole poem, see Beza, Corr.
XXXVI (1595), 75.
3

Introduction 3

looks ahead to the future life, he cannot but throw himself helplessly but
hopefully upon the work of Christ.3
This portrait of the reformer who is trying to live the Christian life and
lead others to do the same has often times been missed. A more accurate
picture is coming into view now that new information has become widely
accessible that speaks to the more mundane activities at Geneva during
this period, including those involving Beza, which allows us to peer behind
the curtain, so to speak. The data includes 1) the records of the Consistory,
the Church’s moral court; 2) the records of the Company of Pastors, that
body of Genevan city and country ministers who met every Friday to deal
with Church business;4 and 3) the publication of Beza’s voluminous cor-
respondence, which, as of this writing, extends from a letter written to his
friend Alexis Gaudin in 1539 all the way through 1598, the year that the
Edict of Nantes was issued.5 Furthermore, in the last two decades, scholars
writing in the area of Reformed Orthodoxy have been calling attention to
a new set of assumptions that guide their research.6 Few scholars of the
Reformation would now accept the old dichotomy between Calvin and the
Calvinists, or more specifically, the notion that the Reformed movement
immediately after Calvin took a decidedly negative turn from the spirit
of the progenitor toward Medieval Scholasticism and rigid systematizing.
Beza and Lambert Daneau have borne the brunt of the criticism in the
past. But Richard Muller, along with a few others whom he has inspired,
have done much to rehabilitate their standing by stripping the discussion
of its emotional content and undertaking a more nuanced examination
of the historical circumstances in which the works of Calvin’s successors

3. Beza, Poemata 1597, 209 (also transcribed at Beza, Corr. XXX [1589], 334). These two
poems, the one written on his sixty-​third birthday, and the one written on his seventieth, will
be examined in much greater depth in c­ hapter 9.
4. Registres de la Compagnie des Pasteurs de Genève, vols. 1–​13, eds. Jean François Bergier, Robert
Kingdon, et al. (Geneva: Droz, 1962–​2001). Most important for the present study are volumes
1–​9, which cover the period from shortly before Beza’s arrival at Geneva to his death. The first
two volumes, covering 1546–​1564, have been translated by Philip Hughes, The Register of the
Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004).
5. Correspondance de Théodore de Bèze, vols. I–​XXXIX, eds. Hippolyte Aubert, Henri Meylan,
Alain Dufour, et al. (Geneva: Droz, 1960–​present). Indicated by “Corr.” throughout the book,
along with the volume number and year covered.
6. In particular, see Scott Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the
Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–​ 1609 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 241–​ 45;
Jeffrey Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation in Theodore Beza (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003), 14.
4

4 Mor ality After Calvin

appeared.7 Restored to their context, theological treatises from this period

(roughly 1564–​1605) take on a different character. Part of Muller’s contribu-
tion has been to define more precisely the nature of the scholastic writing
of the late sixteenth century, seeing it more as a methodology that many
theologians, even those attracted to the humanists’ agenda, borrowed in
order to more precisely define their confessional positions. This is essen-
tially Beza’s point in the preface to his Quaestiones et responsiones where,
after dismissing the “empty curiosity” (inanis curiositas) of the Academic
Skeptics, he affirms that not only is it permitted to deliberate about things
that are necessary and useful, but also it is something that we should do,
provided the back-​and-​forth aims at finding the truth, and not merely
arguing for the sake of arguing.8 Another part has been to sharpen our
understanding of Calvin’s relation to Medieval thought and thus establish
some continuity through him to the period of Reformed Orthodoxy. The
effect of Muller’s work has been to shift scholarship about Beza from the
dominant Calvinist model, which frequently focused on a purely academic
Beza who was devoted more to a system than to a way of life, to a more bal-
anced representation of Beza that takes into account his work as a pastor,
mentor, and administrator within the Reformed Church.9

7. The most important statement of Muller’s views can be found in his two-​part article “Calvin
and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation
and Orthodoxy,” CTJ 30 (1995): 345–​75 (part one) and CTJ 31 (1996): 125–​60 (part two),
both of which are updated and revised in his After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a
Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 63–​102. Various rehearsals
and applications of these ideas can be found in some of his other works, including Christ
and the Decree (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008 [originally published elsewhere in
1986 and 1988, but this edition stands as a corrected and de facto third edition]), esp. 1–​13;
“The Problem of Protestant Scholasticism: A Review and Definition,” in Reformation and
Scholasticism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 45–​64; “The Use and Abuse of
a Document: Beza’s Tabula Praedestinationis, the Bolsec Controversy, and the Origins of
Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, eds. Carl Trueman
and R. Scott Clark (Carlisle, PA: Paternoster, 1999), 33–​ 61; Post-​Reformation Reformed
Dogmatics, vol. 1 of 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 20032), 40–​52; “Reassessing
the Relation of Reformation and Orthodoxy: A Methodological Rejoinder,” American
Theological Inquiry 4 (2011): 3–​12. Also valuable in this regard is Ian McPhee, “Conserver or
Transformer of Calvin’s Theology? A Study of the Origins and Development of Theodore
Beza’s Thought, 1550–​1570,” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1979); and Carl Trueman,
“Calvin and Calvinism,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, ed. Donald McKim
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 225–​44.
8. Beza, Tractationes theologicae, 1, 654.
9. In addition to the aforementioned Calvin’s Company of Pastors of Scott Manetsch, which
treats the practical ministry of Beza and others, and Jeffrey Mallinson’s Faith, Reason, and
Revelation in Theodore Beza (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), where the author
uses the tools and assumptions mentioned here to show that Beza promoted a “balanced
5

Introduction 5

It is with a combination of these tools and assumptions that the current

work carries out its program of investigating Beza’s ethical thought. As
much as possible, texts will be read against their historical context. Only
then can Beza’s ideas be properly understood. For example, ­chapter 5 of
this study examines a poem that Beza wrote about the ills of usury. Taken
by itself, one would come away with the impression that Beza ignored
the innovations and flexibility of his mentor Calvin on the matter of lend-
ing money at interest and instead embraced a somewhat anachronistic
Medieval view. In fact, this is not borne out by the reality of Beza’s actions in
Geneva at the time. Beza did nothing to overturn the rate of 6.7 to 7 percent
that was used during Calvin’s lifetime. And while undeniably he detested
high interest rates, turning against the bank established at Geneva due to
its excessive 10 percent rate and the corruption that naturally ensued from
it, he himself had been involved in its inception in 1568. He had begrud-
ingly approved the rate because of extenuating circumstances, specifically,
Geneva’s dire need for money and the possibility that some of Geneva’s
merchants could leave for another more favorable city, such as Lyon.10
In trying to say something significant about Beza’s ethical thought,
this study has set for itself another goal. There has been a tendency in
the scholarship on Beza to return over and over again to the same texts,
while some texts of his corpus are being overlooked.11 The reasons for this
may have to do with language: some of Beza’s works were translated from

epistemology” of faith and reason and not just a rationalistic, speculative or scholastic
approach, some recent notable examples of this scholarship include Théodore de Bèze
(1519–​1605): Actes du colloque de Genève (septembre 2005), ed. Irena Backus (Geneva: Droz,
2007), a collection that, as the editor notes, draws the diverse aspects of Beza’s activ-
ity into one organic whole (esp. 17–​18); Alain Dufour, Théodore de Bèze: Poète et théolo-
gien (Geneva: Droz, 2006), who accepts Muller’s thesis and does much to contextualize
and humanize the literary and theological contributions of this complex reformer; and
Shawn Wright, Our Sovereign Refuge: The Pastoral Theology of Theodore Beza (Carlisle,
PA: Paternoster, 2004).
10. André Biéler, Calvin’s Economic and Social Thought (Geneva: World Council of Churches,
2005; originally published as La pensée économique et sociale de Calvin [Geneva: Librairie
de l’université, 1961], 147; E. William Monter, Studies in Genevan Government, 1536–​1605
(Geneva: Droz, 1964), 28–​56.
11. R. Scott Clark, in his otherwise positive response to Thomas Davis’s paper on “signi-
fication” in Calvin and Beza, describes it as “a too frequent failure of Beza scholarship”
that many people talk about Beza but few are reading (or quoting) him. See his “Hardened
Hearts, Hardened Words: Calvin, Beza and the Trajectory of Signification,” in Calvin, Beza,
and Later Calvinism, ed. David Foxgrover (Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin Studies Society, 2006),
161–​64.
6

6 Mor ality After Calvin

Latin into French or English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

and it is those texts that have received the most scrutiny. They are read
because they are the most accessible. One may easily retort that those texts
were translated and disseminated because they are most representative
of Beza’s views and therefore most worthy of study. While they may have
been the most important works in a period of emerging confessional-
ization, as magistrates and pastors cooperated to define themselves and
exercise social control along confessional lines, they cannot by themselves
tell the whole story. Beza was not just a theologian and polemicist on the
world stage. He was a Genevan pastor, a poet, an exegete, and, as noted
above, a man running the race of the Christian life. He cared deeply about
the spiritual health of those around him. With that in mind, here we take
as our starting point or organizational framework for the present study a
text that has received no attention at all within the scholarship: the Cato
Censorius Christianus (1591).12 The Cato, as we will call it, is a collection of
moralizing poems that warn various types of sinners about the folly of
their assumptions and actions. The moral suppositions of those poems
will in turn be analyzed and interpreted vis-​à-​vis not just the better known
works, but also the equally neglected Poemata of 159713 and the underused
Annotationes, the last revision of which appeared in 1598.14 This approach,
I believe, will allow us to appreciate Beza from a fresh perspective.

12. Editions and a fuller generic analysis will be given in c­ hapter 1 of this book.
13. Beza, Poemata 1597. This is a deluxe in-​quarto edition. The editors of the correspondence
for this year (Beza, Corr. XXXVIII [1597], v–​vi) have detailed the involvement of Venceslas
Zastriselius the Younger and his family of Moravian nobility and the financing that they
provided for its publication. In fact, the book would have been published in Moravia after
Venceslas took the manuscript there in 1596, but at the prompting of friends, Beza asked
for it back so that the editing of it could be overseen in Geneva (no 2513). Appendix I of
the volume reprises the preface of the Poemata written by the aforementioned Venceslas to
Venceslas Zastriselius the Elder. There is also a letter written to the latter (no 2529), where
Beza offers a response to the critics of his poetry.
14. The larger or “major” annotations appeared in five editions from 1556 to 1598 (for the lat-
ter, see “Abbreviations”): 1556 (with the Latin Vulgate and Beza’s own Latin translation), 1563
(adding the Greek text), 1582 (called the “third” edition on the title page), 1589 (a notes-​only
version was published in 1594) and 1598. On this see Kenneth Hagen, Hebrews Commenting
from Erasmus to Bèze, 1516–​1598 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 90, n. 52. While several
scholars have turned to the annotations on specific topics (e.g., Jill Raitt, The Eucharistic
Theology of Theodore Beza: Development of Reformed Doctrine [Chambersburg, PA: American
Academy of Religion, 1972]), a more systematic approach to them is needed in order to
come to grips with their contribution and to fully appreciate Beza as an interpreter of
Scripture. Valuable work has been done already by Irena Backus, The Reformed Roots of
the English New Testament (Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick Press, 1980); Backus, “The Church
7

Introduction 7

As the title of this book intimates, then, this study aims to identify
an underlying theory of ethics in Beza’s thought by looking at the practi-
cal application of it in a particular moralizing work, the Cato. The editors
of Beza’s correspondence have called Beza’s ethical thought “a delicate
and little known subject.”15 The current study aims to remedy that defi-
ciency while at the same time adding to the growing body of work on
early Reformed Orthodoxy, the period stretching roughly from the death
of Calvin and the appearance of the Heidelberg Catechism to around 1640,
when many of the doctrines formulated by Calvin and the early reformers
were being applied to complex, real-​world situations and disagreements.16
As we make our way through this study, there are essentially two questions
that will occupy our attention: first, how Beza’s ethical thinking connects
to his broader theological program, and, second, how it coheres internally,
that is, what theoretical principle ties it all together. The pastoral bear-
ing will become apparent as well. In fact, at stake for Beza was the very
social organization of the Church and the lives of its members. Far from
being an ivory-​tower theologian who, in a detached manner, rationally and
systematically expounded upon the true nature of God and the execution
of his plan as revealed in Scriptures, Beza also found in that revelation a
detailed blueprint for how individuals should conduct themselves on a
daily basis. The goal here, therefore, is to shed light on how Beza, as one of
the foremost leaders of the Reformed movement after the death of Calvin,
was envisioning and constructing a paradigm of Christian life and society.

Fathers and the Canonicity of the Apocalypse in the Sixteenth Century: Erasmus, Frans
Titelmans, and Theodore Beza,” SCJ 29 (1998): 651–​66; Backus, Reformation Readings of the
Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Backus,
“Piscator Misconstrued? Some Remarks on Robert Rollock’s Logical Analysis of Hebrews
IX,” in “Text, Translation and Exegesis of Hebrews IX: Papers Presented at a Seminar Held at
the IHR, Geneva on 14–​15 June 1982,” in Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Spring
1984; Théorie et pratique de l’exégèse: Actes du troisième colloque international sur l’histoire de
l’exégèse biblique au XVIe siècle, eds. Irena Backus and Francis Higman (Geneva: Droz, 1990);
Kirk Summers, “Early Criticism of Erasmus’ Latin Translation of the Bible,” Comitatus 22
(1991): 70–​86; Jan Krans, Beyond What is Written: Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics
of the New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Jean-​Blaise Fellay, “Théodore de Bèze exégète.
Texte, traduction et commentaire de l’Epître aux Romains dans les Annotationes in Novum
Testamentum,” PhD diss., University of Geneva, 1984.
15. Beza, Corr. XXXVIII (1597), x: “sujet délicat et peu connu.”
16. This dating of “early Orthodoxy” comes from Muller, Post-​Reformation Reformed
Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 19871), 1:28–​9. Muller adopts the timeline
proposed by Otto Weber.
8

8 Mor ality After Calvin

Ethical Ideas: Calvin to Reformed Orthodoxy

As much as the word “ethics” surfaces when talking about religion, it can
still be a somewhat elusive term, especially as it relates to the sixteenth
century. What exactly do we mean if we say we are investigating Beza’s
ideas on ethics? What precisely do we hope to learn? We can benefit by
looking at the existing scholarship on Calvin’s ethical thought. Günther
Haas observes that “ethics” in its modern usage as a self-​contained field
of enquiry did not occupy the earliest reformers.17 Calvin, in fact, does not
even use the term, nor did he ever write a work on ethics per se. Thus, to
investigate what we would call the ethical thought of Calvin, Haas looks for
specific markers in the Institutes and in his commentaries that lead into
discussions of right behavior. These he succinctly identifies as the follow-
ing: obedience, the life of a Christian, and the moral life. Calvin typically
ties his discussions of an obedient and moral Christian life to his doctrine
of the union with Christ, which effectively ends believers’ separation from
God and allows them to share in the benefits that come from the Father
through his Son. Union with Christ means participating in both the sav-
ior’s death and resurrection, which manifest themselves in the Christian
as the mortification of the flesh and the vivification of the Spirit, that is,
a turning away from sin and a walking in the newness of life according
to God’s righteousness. The latter can be known through the Law and, to
a lesser extent, nature. The ultimate goal is to repair the “image of God”
(imago Dei) that was so thoroughly damaged in the Fall (Inst. 1.15.4),18 and

17. Günther Haas, “Ethics and Church Discipline,” in Herman Selderhuis, The Calvin Handbook
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 332–​44. One may also consult his article “Calvin’s
Ethics” in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, ed. McKim, 93–​105. Haas synthesizes
his own previous work with that of other scholars, most notably W. Kolfhaus, Vom christlichen
Leben nach Johannes Calvin (Neukirchen: Kreis Moers, 1949); Ronald Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine
of the Christian Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959); John Leith, John Calvin’s Doctrine of
the Christian Life, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1989); and James B. Sauer,
Faithful Ethics According to John Calvin: The Teachability of the Heart (New York: E. Mellen Press,
1997). Still more can be gleaned from Calvin and Christian Ethics: Papers Presented at the Fifth
Colloquium on Calvin and Calvin Studies, ed. Peter de Klerk (Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin Studies
Society, 1987). For more bibliography on Calvin’s ethics, consult H. van den Belt, Restoration
Through Redemption: John Calvin Revisited (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 74, n. 85.
18. For Calvin’s Institutes I have used the following edition throughout this study: Institutes
of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960). For the Latin text I have used the 1559 edition: Institutio
christianae religionis, in libros quattuor nunc prima digesta, certisque distincta capitibus, ad aptis-
simum methodum; aucta etiam tam magna accessione ut propemodum opus novum haberi possit
(Geneva: Robert Étienne, 1559).
9

Introduction 9

that is represented visibly now through Christ. Thus ethics, which is an

aspect of sanctification, is a process of becoming more Christlike; that is,
of imitating Christ through loving others, patiently obeying the will of the
Father, looking with hope to Christ in his glory and coming kingdom, and
reclaiming dominion over creation. Haas also discusses the role of natural
law in Calvin’s ethics, a subject to which we will return in ­chapter 1, but
here let it suffice to say that Calvin believed that natural law assists with
reinforcing the mandates of the second table of the Ten Commandments,
the ones that have to do with human interactions. The order of creation,
or the order in creation, reflects the principles of moral law necessary for
social life.
Erich Fuchs in his study on Calvin’s ethics agrees with Haas’s assess-
ment in many of its details but derives them not from Christians’ union
with Christ, but from God’s providence.19 In this regard he writes:

Providence is the foundation of ethics, because it guarantees that

there is a promise attached to human existence; ethics are therefore
understood as man’s response, whether conscious or unconscious,
to this promise.20

Fuchs is suggesting that mankind’s activity within the world is deter-

mined first and foremost by God’s providential guidance of creation itself
to its appointed and just end, where all things are made new again and
brought back into harmony with God. Since human beings have been
endowed with reason that helps them to understand the overall plan and
their place in it, and which allows them to seek out aid from others and
to reciprocate it in order to realize their place, ethical behavior can be
seen as an alignment with that plan within a social setting. Simply put,
Christians have a responsibility to work with God (through penitence, i.e.,
personal reform to the image of God through Christ) and others (through
the love of neighbor) to restore order in creation.21 This commitment to

19. Erich Fuchs, “Calvin’s Ethics,” in John Calvin’s Impact on Church and Society, 1509–​
2009, eds. Martin Ernst Hirzel and Martin Sallman (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009),
145–​58. The book was originally published in French in 2008 with the title Calvin et le
Calvinisme: Cinq siècles d’influence sur l’Eglise et la Société (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2008).
20. Fuchs, “Calvin’s Ethics,” 146.
21. Fuchs (151) points out that the mention of penitence in the Institutes leads to the long
discussion on the Christian life at III, vi–​x.
10

10 Mor ality After Calvin

responsible behavior displays itself as an ascetic attitude, a hopefulness

about the future life with Christ in glory, and an understanding of the
right use of earthly benefits. It also shows up as a response to God’s “call-
ing,” which is the Christian’s active employment in work that carries out
God’s purpose here on earth.
These investigations of Calvin’s thought provide a useful starting point
for us in our investigation of Beza’s ethics, which should be understood in
the context of the sixteenth century as a shorthand for Christian conduct
to the glory of God or, conceived more abstractly, as the rationale for that
conduct. Unity, harmony, restoration, and the social nature of human exis-
tence, all important to Calvin’s thinking about ethics, do indeed emerge as
major themes in Beza’s ethical system, even if the nature of the source in
which that thought appears is quite different. While Haas and Fuchs find
Calvin’s teaching about what faith must practice almost inextricably inte-
grated into his discussions about what faith must believe,22 whether that be
the doctrine of the union with Christ or that of God’s providence, with Beza
we have the opportunity to see the practice of faith distinct from and not
overshadowed by theoretical or doctrinal exposition. Beza understood the
whole of Christian doctrine to be divided between the knowledge of God’s
covenental plan for mankind and the demands made in the Scriptures
for personal righteousness. This assertion is borne out by a statement in
Amandus Polanus’s monumental work of theology titled Syntagma theolo-
giae Christianae.23 In looking for a way to structure his work Polanus follows
that very course, with a section on what to believe followed by a section on
what to do, and he defends his decision by claiming recent precedent in
Beza, Daneau, Ursinus, and Zanchius.24 On Beza specifically he writes:

22. The point is also made in Donald Sinnema, “The Discipline of Ethics in Early Reformed
Orthodoxy,” CTJ 28 (1993): 10–​44, esp. 12: “Calvin did not produce an independent ethics,
not even an independent theological ethics, and so, strictly speaking, he is not part of the
story of early Reformed ethics as a discipline. Ethics for him is simply an integral dimension
of his whole theology.”
23. Amandus Polanus, Syntagma theologiae Christianae, juxta leges ordinis methodici confor-
matum, atque in libros decem digestum (Hanau: Wechel, 1609–​1610). All quotes here come
from the 1615 single-​volume edition, also printed at Hanau.
24. On the importance of Beza’s student Polanus and his theology, see Robert Letham,
“Amandus Polanus: A Neglected Theologian?” SCJ 21 (1990): 463–​76. A full biographical
treatment is available in Ernst Staehelin, Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf (Basel: Helbing
and Lichtenhahn, 1955). For a discussion of Polanus’s Syntagma and the ethical thought there,
see Luca Baschera, “Ethics in Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Herman Selderhuis, A Companion
to Reformed Orthodoxy (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 519–​52, esp. 521–​27. On Polanus’s influence
11

Introduction 11

Theodore Beza, the Irenaeus of our time, embraces the same idea
[sc. as presented here] when summarizing the contents of Psalm
119. He says the following: “The term ‘heavenly doctrine’ simply
refers to those things that are revealed by God himself and included
in the Bible, whether we understand it to be the part that prescribes
what we should do and prohibits what we should not do, which we
might term “law” in the narrower sense of the word, or the second
part, in which is taught what we must believe in order to be saved,
which we call “Gospel.”25

The wider passage that Polanus quotes from here, Beza’s argumentum at
the beginning of his paraphrases on Psalm 119, is particularly enlighten-
ing. Beza maintains that the psalmist’s chief aim is to attract people to the
study of “heavenly doctrine,” or more clearly, “divine revelation” (doctrina
coelestis).26 This he identifies as both precepts for living and Christ’s saving
work. He goes on to say that God revealed this from Heaven not just for us
to grasp with our intellect, but so that each individual might follow it with
continual and indefatigable zeal as the norm of life. The Holy Spirit enables
individuals to follow the Word by dispelling the shadows from their intel-
lect (showing them what to believe) and correcting their “deeply depraved
affections” (leading them on the path of right living). God’s Word, he con-
tinues, prescribes a way (via) and a journey (iter) and helps those who fol-
low it to navigate and overcome the obstacles and difficulties of life.

on Barth, consult Rinse H. Reeling Brouwer, “The Conversation Between Karl Barth and
Amandus Polanus on the Question of the Reality of Human Speaking of the Simplicity and
Multiplicity of God,” in The Reality of Faith in Theology, eds. Bruce McCormack and Gerrit
Neven (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 51–​110.
25. Polanus, Syntagma 2.1, 130: “Theodorus Beza nostrae aetatis Irenaeus, eandem com-
plectitur in argumento Psal. 119 his verbis: ‘Doctrina caelestis nomine (sive partem illam
intellegamus quae facienda praecipit et non facienda inhibet legis nomine angustiori signi-
ficatione accepto; sive alteram partem, in qua quid sit nobis ad salutem credendum docetur,
quam Evangelium vocamus) ea demum significantur, quae sunt a Deo ipso patefacta et
scriptis comprehensa.’ ”
26. Francis Turretin (Inst. theol. I.i.5) defines “theology” itself as doctrina coelestis and equates
it to λόγια τοῦ θεοῦ in the NT, and finds synonyms at 1 Cor. 2:7 (“wisdom in a mystery”), 2
Tim. 1:13 (“the form of sound words”), Titus 1:1 (“knowledge of truth according to piety”) and
Titus 1:9 (“doctrine”). The idea, drawn from Aquinas, is that this sort of doctrine is unknow-
able by human capacity alone, since it is heavenly, and must be revealed by God himself.
Thus the Word of God is given by God about God and leading to God. On this see Richard
Muller, Post-​Reformation Dogmatics, vol. 1, (19871), 103–​4.
12

12 Mor ality After Calvin

Thus we see a heavy emphasis on what path a Christian must fol-

low after obtaining the truth provided by faith. Knowledge cannot stand
on its own in the life of a Christian. The other reformers, Polanus
notes, have a similar clear division. For Daneau, Christian piety signi-
fies “either teaching about faith, or sanctification and moral improve-
ment.”27 Zanchius sees the sum of the Christian religion as faith and
obedience,28 and Ursinus divides catechetical learning into the “doc-
trine of faith” and the “doctrine of works.” As for Calvin, Polanus says,
while he approached the problem of “true wisdom” in a different way
in his Institutes, dividing his work into two sections covering the knowl-
edge of God and the knowledge of ourselves, the difference is basically
a matter of semantics:

From the knowledge of God the worship of him cannot and should
not be separated. The knowledge of ourselves is bound up with the
knowledge of God. And so in words only do these distributions dif-
fer, but in substance they agree.29

What Polanus recognizes here while simultaneously invoking Calvin as a

theological model is that the tendency toward a categorically distinct treat-
ment of ethics in fact finds its fullest expression in those that immediately
followed Calvin.
Beza with his Cato composed a work dealing separately and prescrip-
tively with matters of behavior. And while Beza’s contribution in no way
contradicts Calvin’s essential dogmatic starting points, nor his belief that
right living depends on right knowledge, it does allow us to see the question
of ethics from a new perspective, with different emphases and a vision for
the Christian life that would not otherwise be apparent. At the very least we
see a sense of urgency and a recognition that something concrete is being
constructed. Beza’s contribution, far from being a purely philosophical

27. Polanus, Syntagma, 2.1, 131: “Christiana pietas tradit, aut doctrinam de fide, aut morum
reformationem et sanctitatem.”
28. Polanus, Syntagma, 2.1, 131: “Fide et obedientia constare summatim totam Christianam
religionem docet.”
29. Polanus, Syntagma, 2.1, 131: “Et a cognitione Dei non potest nec debet cultus eiusdem
separari. Cognitio nostri est destinata ad cognitionem Dei. Ita verbis duntaxat hae distribu-
tiones differunt, reipsa consentiunt.”
13

Introduction 13

treatise on the subject,30 is instead a poetic work with a very practical tenor
to it. The “censor” of the Cato, just like the censors of ancient Rome, actively
supervises and regulates public morality. He is Christian in the sense that
he reproaches the wayward sinner with reminders of the expectations of
a righteous God, but Roman in his position of gravitas and in his power
to brand offenders (nota censoria) and even strip them of their title of citi-
zenship. We will return to the latter concept below when discussing the
Consistory.
Before looking in ­chapter 1 at the central ethical ideas of the Cato, which
then will be developed in detail in the chapters that follow and correlated
with statements by Beza in other works, it will be profitable to consider what
attitude prevailed in regard to ethics and morality in the period of Reformed
Orthodoxy. The question is a complex one, but recent studies have made
great strides in describing the coalescing of Calvin’s lofty theoretical thought
into a vision for society and the Christian life.31 These studies are not simply
concerned with the practical implementation of discipline in the Christian
community, but with the more accessible works that sought to shape how
the community was ordered to reflect the righteousness and justice to be
expected in God’s kingdom. The most obvious place to start is Lambert
Daneau’s Ethices Christianae (1577),32 since it explicitly aims to lay out the
rationale and program for moral behavior in a godly society. He does so
not merely on the basis of works of Classical philosophy, such as Aristotle’s

30. Not until the mid-​seventeenth century did philosophical ethics, that is, thinking of eth-
ics in Aristotelian and civic terms, give way to, or at least coexist with, theological ethics as a
field of study in academic institutions, where it often was referred to as “practical theology.”
On this see Sinnema, “The Discipline of Ethics,” 41–​43.
31. The most important studies on the topic are the following: Christoph Strohm, Ethik
im frühen Calvinismus. Humanistische Einflüsse, philosophische, juristische und theologische
Argumentationen sowie mentalitätsgeschichtliche Aspekte am Beispiel des Calvin-​Schülers Lambertus
Danaeus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996); Strohm, “Ethics in Early Calvinism,” in Moral
Philosophy on the Threshold of Modernity, eds. Jill Kraye and Risto Saarinen (Leiden: Springer,
2005), 255–​82; idem, “Petrus Martyr Vermiglis Loci communes und Calvins Institutio christianae
religionis,” in Peter Martyr Vermigli, ed. Emidio Campi (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 77–​104; Christian
Grosse, “‘Il y avoit eu trop grande rigueur par cy-​devant.’ La discipline ecclésiastique à Genève
à l’époque de Théodore de Bèze,” in Théodore de Bèze (1519–​1605), ed. Irena Backus, 55–​68.
32. Lambert Daneau, Ethices Christianae libri tres, in quibus de veris humanarum actionum
principiis agitur, atque etiam legis divinae, sive decalogi explicatio, illiusque cum scriptis scho-
lasticorum, iure naturali sive philosophico, civili Romanorum, et canonico collatio continetur;
praeterea virtutum, et vitiorum, quae passim vel in sacra scriptura, vel alibi occurrunt, quaeque
ad singula legis divinae praecepta revocantur, definitiones (Geneva: Eustache Vignon, 1577).
Hereafter referred to as Daneau, Ethices Christianae.
14

14 Mor ality After Calvin

Nicomachean Ethics and Cicero’s De finibus, as Melanchthon and others had

done, but by weighing and synthesizing those ideals with the moral wisdom
and prescriptions in the revealed Word. In this regard he was the first in
the Reformed tradition to attempt a comprehensive, independent work on
ethics.33 Daneau seeks to discern God’s will—​his plan and expectations for
the individual pursuing holiness, both internally and externally—​through a
new enlightenment made possible through the Renaissance.
Christoph Strohm’s study of Daneau’s ethical thought offers insights
that are particularly apropos of our study of Beza’s moral thought.
Beginning with the conviction of those who followed Calvin that the reform
of doctrine (reformatio doctrinae) should be matched by a reform of life (ref-
ormatio vitae), Strohm looks to the Zeitgeist of the late sixteenth century
to identify four trends that shaped the approach to ethics developing in
Reformed Orthodoxy. He notes first that the shifting social structure of the
period that marked the transition from Medieval life to the Early Modern
period had reached a crisis point during this time. Whereas God had cre-
ated everything, from the cosmos and nature, to the individual, society,
and the church, in a certain hierarchical order, mankind’s sinful tendency
has always been to challenge and break down that order. The more man-
kind drifts away from God, the more moral decline is evident through the
changes in social dealings, and, consequently, the more the symmetry and
harmony inherent in God’s creation is disrupted. The result is chaos in
all levels of creation.34 And since the end of the sixteenth century marked
a time of acute political upheaval and change, Daneau’s ethic expresses
the longing for a return to order both in social structure and in personal
conduct. One should resist any self-​indulgent swings or surges of passion
and emotion, including those represented by such happy events as festivals
and dances, and instead strive for regimentation in all areas of life. Strohm
elsewhere characterizes the Loci communes of Peter Vermigli as “the wide-
spread yearning for clear order in a world undergoing upheaval.”35 The

33. On this see Sinnema, “Discipline of Ethics,” 21–​22.

34. The order of the universe was an important pillar of Daneau’s thought, as is summed
up in his comment in the introduction to his commentary on Timothy (In D. Pauli priorem
epistolam ad Timotheum commentarius, 1577): “The very world itself, God’s work of utmost
beauty, takes its name cosmos from the Greek word for order.” (Mundus ipse, pulcherrimum
Dei opus, ab ordine κόσμος nominatur.)
35. Strohm, “Petrus Martyr Vermiglis,” in Campi, Peter Martyr Vermigli, 78: “der verbreiteten
Sehnsucht nach klarer Ordnung in einer im Umbruch befindlichen Welt.”
15

Introduction 15

importance of this kind of thinking for understanding Beza’s Cato cannot

be overstated: Beza is constantly exhorting his representative sinners to
reintegrate themselves into an ordered society and creation.
Strohm also identifies the emphasis on the active role of the Holy
Spirit in the process of regeneration and sanctification in Reformed
thought (as opposed to its weaker presentation in Luther’s thought) as
another important basis for deciphering the ethics of Calvin’s succes-
sors. The determining event that lies behind this process of internalizing
obedience—​sanctification—​is the Holy Spirit’s operation to unite believ-
ers with Christ, who shows us what it means to be in perfect agreement
with the Father. Since the Holy Spirit directs us to a spiritual God, the law
of God is a matter for the whole being, heart and body. The Gospel did not
abrogate the law, but instead heralds the internalization of it through the
work of the Holy Spirit, who changes Christians’ very instincts and incli-
nations. This tendency in Reformed Orthodoxy was complemented and
bolstered by the juristic training that so many of its leaders had received;
Daneau, himself a lawyer, Strohm observes, is particularly drawn to pas-
sages of Scripture that have to do with the regulation of life. Finally, Strohm
sees a certain sympathy in Daneau for Stoic moral philosophy, especially
its suppression of the passions and the attention paid to one’s inner being,
over and against Aristotle’s espousal of the golden mean.36
At the same time, there was a growing interest in how a Christian soci-
ety might be constituted, or rather, what sort of ethical theory could restore
mankind to its rightful place in creation. The period from the death of
Calvin in 1564 to the death of Beza in 1605 saw a power struggle between
city councils and Church authorities, particularly as represented by their
Consistories, concerning the oversight of morals not just in Geneva, but
throughout the Reformed world. Christian Grosse has shown that while
the various town councils gradually usurped many of the disciplinary pow-
ers of the Consistories, the Consistories themselves tried to protect their
power by softening their rigor and by meting out their punishments with

36. Beza himself shows a great affection for sophrosyne (moderation and balance) as a guid-
ing moral principle, particularly Horace’s formulation of it as the “golden mean” (aurea
mediocritas) in Odes 2.10. Beza wrote a poem in praise of moderation (Eleg. 2) that appeared
in his first edition (1548) and was retained in several subsequent ones, in which he used not
only the Daedalus and Icarus myth as an illustration of the principle, but also numerous
historical examples. “The very drugs that help the sick,” he observes there, “when taken in
moderation, often hurt them when used excessively.” Then he ends facetiously by refusing
to praise moderation immoderately.
16

16 Mor ality After Calvin

more discrimination so as not to offend the powerful. The aim was to

gain the favor of the townsfolk and stave off the erosion of their power.
With the lack of concrete disciplinary authority, Grosse observes, came
an increase in the moralizing efforts of Church authorities. Now minis-
ters filled their sermons with even sterner directives concerning conduct.
More treatises touching on the particulars of moral behavior appeared, as
did more sumptuary ordinances.37
It is important to recognize that Beza’s pronouncements about
morality, whether presented through the medium of the Cato to be ana-
lyzed in this study or in other exegetical and theological works, were
born from the incubator of certain historical realities and a prevailing
Weltanschauung and Zeitgeist. The contributions of Strohm, Grosse, and
others have made that undeniable. Even so, that does not in any way
diminish the fact that Beza built his case and derived his principles
from a careful reading of Scripture. Beza had a passion for uncover-
ing the exact meaning of every passage, and he was motivated by an
unwavering belief that his particular set of skills in language, coupled
with a thorough knowledge of history and theology, positioned him to
recover God’s Word faithfully.38 He saw himself, in other words, in his
presentation of ethics, as a leader in efforts to reestablish the one true
Church of God.

37. Christian Grosse, “Il y avoit eu trop grande rigueur par cy-​devant,” 55–​68.
38. See Scott Manetsch’s observations about Beza’s “sense of vocation” as a defender of
doctrinal truth in Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France, 1572–​1598 (Leiden: Brill,
2000), 137–​38, esp. n. 77. One can observe his appreciation for the minutiae of language
while preparing his Annotationes (1598): his correspondence from 1597 includes several
intense philological discussions with Isaac Casaubon, former chair of Greek at the Genevan
Academy, about the correct reading and rendering of numerous New Testament passages.
See, for example, Beza, Corr. XXXVIII (1597), no 2498 n. 5, and no 2503. Similar cases abound
throughout the 1598 edition. For example, at Philippians 1:21 he rejects the Vulgate transla-
tion, “Mihi enim vivere Christus est, et mori lucrum,” which almost all modern English
translations follow (usually, “for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”), and, building on
the comments of Calvin on the same passage, argues instead that the Greek articular infini-
tives (τὸ ζῆν and τὸ ἀποθανεῖν) should be taken as accusatives of respect, an Atticism. Thus,
Thomson’s Geneva Bible renders it: “For Christ is to me both in life, and in death advan-
tage.” Eph. 1:9 provides another example: There, following the lead of Lorenzo Valla, he
highlights the incorrect rendering of μυστήριον as “sacramentum” in old Latin versions and
shows how that one small mistake led to great theological error. The details of the application
of philological principles to the Biblical text, including this word, are treated by J. Pelikan in
The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrines, 5 vols. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1971–​1989), 3:209–​14; 4:257, 295, 308–​09.
17

Introduction 17

The Consistory as Background

Several literary, social, and theological dynamics current in the sixteenth
century played a role in shaping the form and content of Beza’s Cato. The
literary and generic traditions Beza draws from for creating his collection
will be explored in depth in the next chapter. Here we look to an institution,
along with the rationale on which it was founded, to better comprehend
the intellectual and moral climate surrounding the work. That institu-
tion, which was established throughout much of the Reformed world,
and which was particularly important in the life of the Genevan church,
is known as the Consistory.39 One of the stipulations that Calvin made for
answering pleas to come back to Geneva after his abrupt expulsion in 1538
was that the city magistrates agree to set up a tribunal of moral discipline
and supervision. This was achieved immediately upon his return in 1541,
when the city magistrates adopted a set of Ecclesiastical Ordinances that
were drafted for the most part by Calvin himself and included a provision
for a body of Church discipline. This body, known as the Consistory, was

39. The basic bibliography on the Reformed disciplinary institution known as the Consistory
includes the following: Ronald Cammenga, “Calvin’s Struggle for Church Discipline,”
Protestant Reformed Theological Journal 43 (2010): 3–​16; Robert M. Kingdon, “Calvin and the
Establishment of Consistory Discipline in Geneva: The Institution and the Men Who Directed
It,” Dutch Review of Church History 70 (1990): 158–​72; Robert M. Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce
in Calvin’s Geneva (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Robert M. Kingdon, “The
Control of Morals in Calvin’s Geneva,” in The Social History of the Reformation, eds. L. Buck
and J. Zophy (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1972), 3–​16; Scott Manetsch, “Pastoral
Care East of Eden: The Consistory of Geneva, 1568–​82,” Church History 75 (2006): 274–​313;
Raymond Mentzer, “Marking the Taboo: Excommunication in French Reformed Churches,” in
Sin and the Calvinists: Morals Control and the Consistory in the Reformed Tradition, ed. Raymond
Mentzer (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1994), 97–​128; William Monter,
“The Consistory of Geneva, 1559–​1569,” BHR 38 (1976), 467–​84; William Monter, “Crime and
Punishment in Calvin’s Geneva,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 69 (1973): 281–​87; William
Monter, “Women in Calvinist Geneva (1550–​1800),” Journal of Women in Culture and Society
6 (1980): 189–​209; Jeffrey Watt, “Women and the Consistory in Calvin’s Geneva,” SCJ 24
(1993): 429–​39; Jeffrey Watt, “Calvinism, Childhood, and Education: The Evidence from the
Genevan Consistory,” SCJ 33 (2002): 439–​56; Robert M. Kingdon and Thomas Lambert,
Reforming Geneva: Discipline, Faith and Anger in Calvin’s Geneva (Geneva: Droz, 2012). Even
more research on Reformed consistories outside Geneva is catalogued at Manetsch, Calvin’s
Company of Pastors, 361, n. 4. For the editions of the registers, see Registres du Consistoire de
Genève au Temps de Calvin, eds. Robert M. Kingdon, Thomas A. Lambert, Wallace McDonald,
Isabella M. Watt, Jeffrey R. Watt (Geneva: Droz, 1996–​present). Vol. I (1542–​44); vol. II (1545–​
46); vol. III 1547–​48); vol. IV (1548); vol. V (Feb. 20, 1550—​Feb 5, 1551); vol. VI (Feb. 19, 1551—​
Feb. 4, 1552); vol. VI (Feb. 25, 1552—​Feb. 2, 1553; vol. VIII (March 25, 1553—​Feb. 1, 1554); vol. IX
(Feb. 15, 1554—​Jan. 31, 1555). See also Registers of the Consistory of Geneva in the Time of Calvin,
eds. Robert M. Kingdon, Thomas A. Lambert, Isabella M. Watt, trans. M. Wallace McDonald
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), translating vol. I (1542–​44) of the Registres.
18

18 Mor ality After Calvin

composed of three parts. On one side sat twelve lay elders, drawn from the
higher governing bodies of the city (the Small Council, the Council of Sixty,
and the Council of Two Hundred) and representating all quarters of the
city. On the other, all the urban pastors were expected to participate, with
Calvin, and then Beza after him, sitting in a place of honor and primacy. In
the middle, presiding over the entire body and its proceedings, was one of
the four, annually elected magistrates known as syndics. The syndic was,
in essence, the Consistory chairman. The body was also served by a secre-
tary, whose recordings make up the registers, and a summoner, whose job
it was to bring alleged offenders before the ecclesiastical tribunal.
It was instituted that the tribunal would meet every Thursday to hear
the cases of those who had been charged with some sort of moral lapse
and misdeed. Generally speaking, the members would state the charge,
question the defendant as to the accusation and reports, elicit informa-
tion and the defendant’s point of view, and hear out witnesses who would
either corroborate the story or not. If they deemed that the defendant
was indeed guilty of immorality, they enacted any number of remedies
to elicit repentance and true contrition. According to the minutes, most
Consistory sessions dealing with one individual ended when one of its
members (usually one of the ministers) would stand before the accused
and issue a censure or “remonstrance.”40 These scoldings warned the
offender that he or she had violated some principle of Scripture and
reminded them of the terrible consequences if the behavior continued.
Sometimes, in order to ensure that the offenders fully understood the
gravity of their error, the Consistory would levy a suspension from one
or more communions; that is to say, they would temporarily excommuni-
cate them. In those instances, the person was barred from participating in
the next administration of the Supper but was expected to exhibit suitable
remorse so as to be restored for future ones. Some cases were of a different
nature. At times it was necessary to foster reconciliation between parties or
take action to correct doctrinal deviations or deficiencies. Such cases often
included remonstrances as well, though when ignorance was the problem
these could be delivered gently. When laws had been broken and stronger

40. The typical proceedings of the Consistory are explained succinctly in Robert M.
Kingdon, “A New View of Calvin in the Light of the Registers of the Geneva Consistory,”
in Calvinus Sincerioris Religionis Vindex, eds. Wilhelm H. Neuser and Brian G. Armstrong
(Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1997), 21–​ 33; and Kingdon and
Lambert, Reforming Geneva, 17–​24.
19

Introduction 19

corrective actions were warranted, such as fines and imprisonment, or

even execution, the Consistory would send a recommendation to the city
magistrates. Occasionally, when the sin was deemed egregious and/​or the
sinner was unrepentant, the Consistory could impose major excommuni-
cation, whereby the individual was completely cut off from the Supper and
also from any social or business dealings with the townsfolk.
It should be noted that the remonstrances that so markedly character-
ized the duties of the Consistory also appeared in other guises at Geneva.
For its part, the Company of Pastors occasionally issued “grand” remon-
strances directed at the magistrates and general public in which they
warned against a litany of sins observed throughout the populace. From
1570 to 1600 these grand public remonstrances appeared almost every two
years, with a notably long one recorded for November 3, 1579 in the min-
utes of the Company of Pastors.41 Furthermore, before each of the quar-
terly communions, the ministers and professors of the Academy would
engage in private fraternal censuring, sometimes called Ordinary Censures
(Censura Morum Pastorum), in an effort to maintain a high moral stan-
dard among the ecclesiastical leadership.42 In these sessions clergy and
doctors admonish their colleagues for inappropriate contact with female
parishoners, lax attention to duties, engaging in usurious practices, and
the like. In turn, the ministers would deliver sermons that amounted to
remonstrances in the days leading up to the quarterly celebration of the
Supper. These were calls for the congregation to repent from sins that the
minister himself knew about or suspected and to prepare their hearts for
spiritually partaking of the blood and body of Christ. The Genevan presses
also issued remonstrances in the form of treatises written by the city’s
scholars and ministers. The books of Lambert Daneau on games of chance
and François Étienne on dancing are representative of this phenomenon.43

41. RCP IV, 300–​8. On these grand public remonstrances see esp. Grosse, “ ‘Il y avoit eu
trop grande rigueur par cy-​devant,’ 64; E. William Monter, Calvin’s Geneva (Huntington,
NY: Robert E. Krieger, 1975), 215.
42. Scott Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed
Church, 1536–​1609 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 127–​28; Herman Speelman,
Calvin and the Independence of the Genevan Church (Bristol, CT: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
2014), 134, esp. fn. 422).
43. Lambert Daneau, Briève remonstrance sur les jeux de sort ou de hazard, et principalement
de Dez et de Cartes (Geneva: Jacques Bourgeois, 1574); François Étienne, Traité des dan-
ses, auquel est amplement résolve la question, asavoir s’il est permis aux Chrestiens de danser
(Geneva: François Étienne, 1579).
20

20 Mor ality After Calvin

Even outside the Consistory, therefore, remonstrances were a familiar

facet of the lives of Genevans. It was only in the Consistory, however, that
the threat of excommunication provided additional teeth to the scolding.
As several scholars studying the registers have pointed out, while mod-
ern Westerners might consider the mission of the Consistory intrusive and
restrictive, the tribunal really had a positive, pastoral function in Genevan
society, at least when truly controlled by the Church and not the mag-
istrates. It offered spiritual medicine to those who were struggling with
worldly passions, attempted to reconcile neighbor to neighbor and spouse
to spouse, and protected the weakest in society (wives, servants, children,
etc.) who were being abused and bullied by the strongest. There was like-
wise an educational aspect to the work of the Consistory. Many Genevans
were not so much blatantly immoral as ignorant of rudimentary doctrine,
so it was up to the Consistory to identify these deficiencies and impose
the proper regimen of study. Sometimes parents would be admonished to
work harder at teaching their children certain basic Scriptural ideas and
passages (e.g., the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments), along with
basic doctrinal statements, such as the Apostles’ Creed.
These duties assigned to the Consistory were not created as part of a
strategy on the part of the Genevan leadership and pastorate to browbeat,
coerce, and punish the members of the congregation, but were seen as
an expression of the shepherding and nurturing responsibilities of the
Church. Even so, debauchery and sin were rampant enough in Genevan
society, or so the sermons preached from the city’s Reformed pulpits would
have us believe, and frequently warranted a more powerful medicine,
something more concretely disciplinary. 44 Calvin had perceived one indis-
putable tool at the disposal of the Church for the purpose of discipline, and
that was removal from the community. At Institutes 4.12 Calvin argues that
if a person persists in wickedness, even after private and public admoni-
tions (remonstrances), or commits some egregious sin, such as breaking one

44. Mentzer, “Marking the Taboo,” 126, observes that excommunication was used more
at Geneva than elsewhere. On sermons, see Thomas Lambert, “Preaching, Praying, and
Policing the Reform in Sixteenth-​Century Geneva” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin,
1998); Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors, 146–​52 and 352 n. 43 (referring to published
sermons of Michel Cop, Pierre Viret, and Jean-​Raymond Merlin). Grosse, “La discipline
ecclésiastique à Genève,” 62–​64, as stated earlier in this chapter observes an increase in the
“moral discourse” at Geneva, in both sermons and treatises, as the Consistory’s influence
weakened. See also Tadataka Maruyama, The Ecclesiology of Theodore Beza: The Reform of the
True Church (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 111.
21

Introduction 21

of the Ten Commandments, that person should be excommunicated. This

is done to protect the reputation of the Church by disassociation, segregate
the saints from the corrupting influence of the wicked, and awaken the sin-
ner to the sin. This latter “end” (finis) of excommunication should not be
underestimated. The public shaming that was suspension from commu-
nion, when imposed—​and, aside from rebuking or reconciling offenders,
it by far was the most common action taken by the Consistory—​always had
as its aim the moral rehabilitation and readmittance of the sinner into the
fellowship of believers. It is the rod of chastisement that stings the sinner
with the realization that sin is separating him or her from the society of
good people. At the same time, to other observant Christians it serves as a
stark and visible object lesson of the isolating consequences of sin.
This type of disciplinary action was held in high regard among many
Reformed churches, especially for those that had some significant con-
tact with Geneva. As Kingdon has noted, the Belgic Confession of 1561,
a truly Reformed document, states in article twenty-​nine that one of the
“marks” of the true Church is the implementation of ecclesiastic discipline
as a means for reining in wayward sinners.45 In the Harmonia confessio-
num fidei of 1581,46 a project to collate and translate into Latin the several
Reformed confessions (for which Beza himself served as a compiler and
editor along with Jean-​François Salvard,47 Antoine de la Roche Chandieu,
Lambert Daneau, and Simon Goulart) it is rendered this way:

Therefore, by these marks the true Church is distinguished from the

false one: If in it the pure preaching of the Gospel and the legitimate

45. Kingdon, “Calvin and the Establishment of Consistory Discipline,” 161.

46. Harmonia confessionum fidei, Orthodoxarum et Reformatarum ecclesiarum, quae in
praecipuis quibusque Europae regnis, nationibus, et provinciis, sacram Evangelii doctrinam
pure profitentur; quarum catalogum et ordinem sequentes paginae indicabunt (Geneva: Pierre
de St. André, 1581). The first English translation of it was published as An Harmony of the
Confessions of the Faith of the Christian and Reformed Churches (Cambridge: T. Thomas, 1586).
On the Harmonia, see especially Francis Higman, “L’Harmonia confessionum fidei de 1581,” in
Catéchismes et Confessions de foi, eds. M. Fragonard and M. Peronnet (Montpellier: Université
Paul Valéry, 1995).
47. According to Lambert Daneau, Salvard was the primary editor; on this see Girolamo
Zanchi, De religione Christiana fides, Confession of Christian Religion, eds. Luca Baschera
and Christian Moser (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 526, n. 6. For all the available evidence on
Salvard’s role, see Fritz Büsser, “Freedom in Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century
(the Harmonia confessionum fidei of 1581),” in Zwingliana 16 (1984): 281–​ 300; idem,
“Reformierte Katholizität: Zur ‘Harmonia Confessionum Fidei’ von J. F. Salvard,” in Die
Prophezei: Humanismus und Reformation in Zürich (Bern: Peter Lang, 1994), 95–​104.
22

22 Mor ality After Calvin

administration of the sacraments according to the prescription of Christ

are flourishing; likewise, if the correct ecclesiastical discipline is being
used to control vices; and, finally (to sum up everything succinctly), if it
adheres to the Word of God as its standard and rejects anything that is
contrary to it, while acknowledging Christ as its sole head.48

By this account, the central mission of the Church can be narrowed down
to just three elements: the preaching of the Gospel, the right administra-
tion of the sacraments, and the curbing of vices (ad coercenda vitia) through
proper discipline. For the most part, the latter mark manifested itself in
the form of the Consistory.
Several other confessions within this section of the Harmonia have
similar statements about discipline, an indication that it was a widely
accepted mission of the Church. The Bohemian Confession of 1535, which
appears in section X, p. 13 of the Harmonia, adds some important details
about the limits of discipline: the Church does not exercise discipline
through human force (politica potentia), but according to the dictates of
Christ at Matthew 18 and by various commands from the apostles. In other
words, there must first and foremost be a confrontation with the offend-
ing person and a chance for repentance. Those who cannot be brought
to repentance through due admonition and warning, or who habitually
commit sins and cause scandal among Church members, can be publi-
cally disciplined (publice puniantur) by the ecclesiastical punishment com-
monly called banishment, excommunication, or anathematisation (quae
vulgo bannus, aut excommunicatio, seu anathematismus nominantur), that
is, they can be cut off from the holy community. This accords with what
Calvin taught in the Institutes (4.12.1–​3) and with the actual practice in the
Reformed churches in France. Mentzer shows that, generally speaking,
the Huguenots adopted a graduated process of disciplinary action that
moved from private censure to public censure, then to suspensio (minor or
temporary excommunication), an act of partial banishment and a warning
of the complete isolation that was major excommunication.49

48. Harmonia, section X (“De catholica et sancta Dei ecclesiae, et unico capite Ecclesiae”),
18: “His igitur notis vera Ecclesia a falsa discernetur: Si in illa pura Evangelii praedicatio,
legitimaque sacramentorum ex Christi praescripto, administratio vigeat; si item recta disci-
plina Ecclesiastica utatur ad coercenda vitia; si denique (ut uno verbo cuncta complectamur)
ad normam verbi Dei omnia exigat, et quaecunque huic adversantur, repudiet; Christumque
unicum caput agnoscat.”
49. Mentzer, “Marking the Taboo,” 97–​128.
23

Introduction 23

In essence, then, the reformers interpreted their responsibility to

“curb vices,” as they found it in Scripture, as a mandate to expel and iso-
late individuals who refused to submit to God’s will. As Mentzer remarks,
“Simply put, excommunication barred an individual from the company
of the faithful and participation in the sacraments of the church, espe-
cially the Lord’s Supper. It could also isolate her or him from ordinary
social and business relationships (sc. in the case of major excommuni-
cation).”50 This was possible because of the nature and purpose of the
sacral meal of the Eucharist itself, which not only spiritually nourished
believers on the substance of Christ’s body and blood through the power
of the Holy Spirit, but also served to strengthen the fellowship and unity
of believers. Since participation in the meal declared that the participant
belonged to the community and all the standards that guide it, exclusion
from it, along with being a significant spiritual punishment, signaled
that the offender had stepped outside of the community and needed to
be restored.51
But how does the Consistory, with its mandate to oversee ecclesiastical
discipline and, as a shepherd of sorts, guide the sheep back into the flock,
relate to the Cato and the view of morality presented there? At this point
in the study we can only answer in a preliminary way: the Cato promotes
the same moral vision as that represented by the Consistory. There Beza’s
masterful skills as a neo-​Latin poet—​his ability to evoke colorful images
in the mind, to create meaning through a series of vivid contrasts and
associations, to manipulate sounds, rhythms, and poetic devices—​are on
display to underscore one central idea: the isolating consequences of sin.
Those who ignore the clear indications of God’s will, as it is expressed
either in the Scriptures or in creation itself, will find themselves rejected
and banned from the aid and comfort of respectable people. They will find
themselves outside the ordered world that God intended for his people.
Understood in this way, then, the Cato can be read as containing stylized,
poetic versions of remonstrances. By analyzing the Cato poems closely,
we can uncover the essential elements of the ethical worldview of Beza
and his colleagues. This is what makes the Cato such a valuable work.
It should be underscored that in the view of Calvin and his colleagues,
God himself has handed over responsibility for the implementation of this

50. Mentzer, “Marking the Taboo,” 100.

51. Mentzer, “Marking the Taboo,” 117–​18.
24

24 Mor ality After Calvin

disciplinary banishment to the Church. Calvin states as much emphati-

cally in his Institutes when discussing the subject of discipline:

Now therefore we begin to see better how the spiritual jurisdiction

of the church, which punishes sins according to the Lord’s Word, is
the best support of health, foundation of order, and bond of unity.
Therefore, in excluding from its fellowship manifest adulterers, forni-
cators, thieves, robbers, seditious persons, perjurers, false witnesses,
and the rest of this sort, as well as the insolent (who when duly admon-
ished of their lighter vices mock God and his judgment), the church
claims for itself nothing unreasonable but practices the jurisdiction
conferred upon it by the Lord. Now, that no one may despise such a
judgment of the church or regard condemnation by vote of the believ-
ers as a trivial thing, the Lord has testified that this is nothing but the
publication of his own sentence, and what they have done on earth is
ratified in Heaven. For they have the Word of the Lord to condemn
the perverse; they have the Word to receive the repentant into Grace.52

Here are the same categories of adulterers, the whoremongers, the steal-
ers, and the perjurers who, as we shall see, populate Beza’s Cato. God
has granted to his Church the authority to “expel from her community
(e consortio suo exterminat)” such as these. This can only be carried out,
however, in regard to “manifest (manifestos)” sinners. Those who rebel
against God and mock his judgment need to understand that the Church’s
tool of discipline is but a reflection of the ultimate disciplinary action of
God, that is, expulsion from his kingdom forever. So if they escape the
Church, they still do not escape excommunication.
Similiarly, Beza acknowledges in the Cato that many times sinners
do not fully face the consequences for their sins until they reach the

52. Calvin, Institutes, 4.12 (emphasis mine): “Nunc ergo melius incipimus cernere quomodo
spiritualis Ecclesiae iurisdictio, quae ex verbo Domini in peccata animadvertit, optimum sit
et sanitatis subsidium, et fundamentum ordinis, et vinculum unitatis. Ergo dum Ecclesia
manifestos adulteros, scortatores, fures, praedones, seditiosos, periuros, falsos testes, et eius
generis reliquos, item contumaces (qui de levioribus etiam vitiis rite admoniti, Deum et eius
iudicium ludibrio habent), e consortio suo exterminat; nihil sibi praeter rationem usurpat,
sed iurisdictione sibi a Domino delata fungitur. Porro, nequis tale Ecclesiae iudicium sper-
nat, aut parvi aestimet se fidelium suffragiis damnatum, testatus est Dominus, istud ipsum
nihil aliud esse quam sententiae suae promulgationem, ratumque haberi in caelis quod illi
in terra egerint. Habent enim verbum Domini quo perversos damnent; habent verbum quo
resipiscentes in gratiam recipiant.”
25

Introduction 25

ultimate tribunal, the judgment seat of God himself. Although their

sin invariably causes them to suffer in some way, they nonetheless
have the potential to fool those around them and conceal the true
nature of their character. Here we find a special emphasis of Beza’s
work: no sinner fully escapes punishment for sins committed. While
good people will always shun the wicked, when they recognize them,
and while Nature herself silently points an accusatory finger, sinners
should be aware that ultimately the rebellion is against the very being
of God. Therefore, sinners can be sure that God waits in judgment for
them, and that the punishment that he imposes includes being cast out
into the darkness. This is an idea that is developed with some vigor by
the Bohemian Confession. In the passage immediately following the
discussion of the right and responsibility of the Church to discipline
comes the following:

And this also must be admitted, that at all times in the Church
there have been many who exhibit the appearance of being
Christian, but who are vile hypocrites, secret sinners, far removed
from repentance, and they will always be with us up until this
world ceases to exist. These sorts are neither chastised by this
discipline of Christ, nor can they be easily excommunicated or
separated completely from the Church, but must be reserved and
committed to Christ alone, the chief shepherd, and to his advent.
As the Lord himself said concerning these, “the Angels on the last
day first will separate such ones as these from the righteous, and
will cast them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping
and gnashing of teeth.”53

Beza’s Cato conspicuously does not make even the slightest mention of
Church discipline, not as it was specifically employed, even though most
of the sins described in the poems are of a very public nature (laziness,

53. Harmonia confessionum fidei, section X, 13: “Etsi hoc etiam non dissimulandum, omni
tempore in Ecclesia multos fuisse qui speciem prae se ferrent Christiani hominis, et hyp-
ocritae essent nequam, aut peccatores occulti, a poenitentia alieni, atque futuros deinceps
usque dum hic mundus esse desinat. Quales neque per hanc disciplinam Christi castigan-
tur, neque facile excommunicari, aut penitus separari ab Ecclesia possunt, sed soli Christo,
pastori principi, et adventui huius, reservandi sunt et committendi. Sicut Dominus de his
ipse dicit, quod Angeli in novissimo die primum, tales a iustis separaturi sint, et coniecturi
in fornacem igneam, ubi erit ploratus et stridor dentium.”
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26 Mor ality After Calvin

drunkenness, pride, etc.) that could scarcely go unnoticed. The list of

miscreants dealt with in the Consistory, in fact, corresponds very closely
with the parade of sinners described in the Cato. But in contrast, Beza
frequently makes reference to the high moral court to which all sinners
must give answer. Manetsch observes that in a typical Consistory hearing
sinners confessed their sins and begged for forgiveness, while a few, for
whom the Consistory was unable to discern the truthfulness of an accusa-
tion, were sent away, without suspension (yet trusting in the “the judg-
ment of God” to discipline or correct).54 Given that, should we imagine
that Beza addresses the secret conscience and undetected, hidden lives of
the flock, especially those who “exhibit the appearance of being Christian,”
while living lives in rebellion from God?
Here we are assisted by another work of Beza, published only one year
before the Cato, and which indicates that Beza was at the time consumed
with the issue of excommunication and keen to bolster the theoretical
and theological basis for the consistory: Tractatus pius et moderatus de vera
excommunicatione, et Christiano Presbyterio.55 The treatise responds, in the
kindest words possible (pius et moderatus), to the theses of Thomas Erastus,
originally written in 1568 but not published until 1589, in regard to the role
of the Church and the State in carrying out a judgment of excommunica-
tion.56 In it, Beza introduces some subtleties into the debate over excom-
munication that are not apparent in the Institutes of Calvin, but which
accord closely with the theme of the Cato. To fully appreciate the nuances

54. Manetsch, “Pastoral Care East of Eden,” 279.

55. The full title is Tractatus pius et moderatus de ver5a excommunicatione et Christiano presby-
terio, impridem pacis conciliandae causa, cl[arissimi] v[iri] Th[omas] Erasti d[octor] medici centum
manuscriptis thesibus oppositus, et nunc primum, cogente necessitate, editus (Geneva: Jean le
Preux, 1590). By “presbyterium” is meant the consistory.
56. The full title is Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis utrum excommunicatio, quatenus religio-
nem intelligentes et amplexantes, a sacramentorum usu, propter admissum facinus arcet, mandato
nitatur divino, an excogitata ab hominibus (London: John Wolfe, 1589). It really comprises two
works, the Theses of 1568, and the much longer Confirmatio Thesium of 1569. It was edited
by Giacomo Castelvetri, who had married the widow of Erastus and who was staying at the
house of John Wolfe at the time of publication. The treatise found sympathizers among those
who were trying to resist the entrée of reformed discipline and ecclesiology into England,
including John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury. Castelvetri’s edition was republished
at Amsterdam in 1649. The first part, the theses themselves, appeared in translation many
years later as The Nullity of Church-​censures: or, a dispute written by Thomas Erastus wherein
is proved by the Holy Scriptures and Sound Reason that excommunication and Church-​senates
of Members exercising the same, are not of divine institution, but a meere humane invention
(London: G. L., 1659). The same translation was published in London again, in 1682, as A
27

Introduction 27

of the Cato and of Beza’s ethical vision, therefore, we must understand the
issues addressed in this particular treatise.57
Erastus defined excommunication as the exclusion from the use of the
sacraments, following an investigation by elders, for the correction and
repentance of life. Beza finds this definition to be deficient because it does
not sufficiently explain under whose authority and by whom a judgment
is issued, nor about what sorts of things it is issued. Therefore, he offers
his own definition:

Excommunication is the judgment whereby, in the name of the

Lord, a gathering of elders, after a legitimate investigation, and with
the full knowledge of the Church (if it is necessary), pronounces
that someone who has alienated himself from God, and will not
hear the Church (that is, the presbytery), also will be seen as cast
out from the external fellowship of the Church, until such time as it
is apparent from his attested repentance, to the extent that it ought
and can be done, either to the whole church, if it is aware, or if it is
not, the presbytery, that he is reconciled to God.58

Beza does not claim for the Church the power of excommunication per se;
in a real sense, people excommunicate themselves by their own behavior.
The Consistory merely pronounces its judgment that the excommunica-
tion is apparent. 59 He goes on to say that God himself is the author, both

Treatise of Excommunication. In 1844, the Rev. Robert Lee of London revised the translation
of 1659 and published it under the title The Theses of Erastus Touching Excommunication
(Edinburgh: Myles McPhail, 1844). For a review of the dispute between Beza and Erastus,
see most recently Charles Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate (Leiden: Brill, 2010),
163–​209 and 387–​93.
57. For a fuller study, see Kirk Summers, “The Theoretical Rationale for the Reformed
Consistory: Two Key Works of Theodore Beza,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 105
(2014): 228–​48.
58. Beza, De vera excommunicatione, 3: “Excommunicatio est sententia, qua in nomine
Domini congregatum presbyterium, legitima praeunte cognitione, et conscia (si sit opus)
Ecclesia, pronuntiat quempiam, qui a Deo sese alienarit, et Ecclesiam (id est presbyterium)
non audierit, eiectum quoque videri ab externa Ecclesiae societate, tantisper dum ex ipsius
testata resipiscentia, quoad eius fieri debet ac potest, vel toti Ecclesiae consciae, vel Ecclesia
non facta conscia, presbyterio constiterit, eum esse Deo reconciliarum.”
59. Beza insisted that people excommunicate themselves through their actions, and that the
Consistory simply recognizes what is already true. On this see Summers, “The Theoretical
Rationale for the Reformed Consistory,” 228–​48.
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28 Mor ality After Calvin

of the presbytery (by which he means the consistory) and of this judgment,
while the presbytery is only his administrator and interpreter. It is not an
institution that exercises its power abusively for its own sake and its own
advantage, but engages in a due process that includes a thorough investi-
gation beforehand. He then underscores a very important subtlety of his
definition:

We declare that the excommunication which takes place on earth is

something that follows upon that removal which, as is plain from
the Word of God and the hard-​heartedness of the sinner, happened
beforehand in the heavens. So clearly excommunication on earth is
nothing else but the declaration of another, more hidden one made
in the heavens. From this we are surely right to gather that someone
who is not sanctioned in the heavens at the moment is unworthy to
be counted among the faithful on earth. Besides, this latter declara-
tion that is made on earth is ratified in the heavens.60

The excommunication is real whether the Church and the elders charged
with discipline and moral oversight recognize it or not. And, conversely,
a pronouncement of excommunication on earth is only valid if it follows
upon a decision already made in the heavens, as evidenced by the sinner’s
rejection of God’s Word and unwillingness to repent.
What is unmistakably clear is that in the Cato, read in tandem with the trea-
tise on excommunication, Beza lays down in the broadest of terms the very
same theological principles that guide and inform the Consistory. Sinners
represent a danger to themselves and society because they are in rebellion
from the natural order created by God in his holiness and purity. Adulterers
demolish cities, destroy homes, and break the bonds of holy matrimony.61
Since God is truth, deceivers and perjurers will eventually ruin themselves

60. Beza, De vera excommunicatione, 4: “Dicimus praeterea excommunicationem quae in

terris fiat, esse quiddam consequens eam abiectionem, quam factam esse antea in coelis ex
verbo Dei et peccatoris duritie constet; ut videlicet nihil aliud sit excommunicatio in terris,
quam declaratio alterius occultioris factae in coelis, ex qua nimirum merito colligatur eum
qui in coelis eo quidem tempore non approbatur, indignum esse qui inter fideles in terris
censeatur; quae posterior etiam declaratio in terris facta, rata est in coelis.” The word duritie[s]‌
here for “hard-​heartedness” harks back to Beza’s use of it in his translation of Matt.19.8.
Erastus considers this whole argument to be self-​contradictory; see Confirmatio, I, 1, 72.
61. And so Mentzer, “Marking the Taboo,” 107–​08, notes of adultery and fornication: “They
also seemed to threaten primary social institutions such as marriage and the family, which
were themselves deemed fitting structures for leading a moral and useful life.”
29

Introduction 29

and the world. Flatterers, if listened to, will bring eternal shame. Pseudo-​
monks are the devil’s agents for disrupting Christian society. A city is blessed
when everyone is working and none are allowed to be idle. Drunkards, the
greedy, and the envious all become a Hell-​on-​earth to themselves, while evil
profiteers spurn God and thus lack the very success they long for. Some
people, because they depend on human wisdom and philosophy and are
deaf to the unassailable light of God, mislead others and lead misguided
lives. But among people who are reclaiming society and creation accord-
ing to the will of God, these sinners have no place and therefore should be
banished from human intercourse. Thus Beza warns that adulterers must
leave the world before they destroy it. The garrulous should be shunned by
people, as should flatterers. No one anywhere, in Heaven, earth, or Hell,
is willing to welcome the envious, nor can they tolerate the proud. And all
these sinners should understand that if a godly society rejects and ostracizes
them during their time on earth, that is, it excommunicates them because
they stand at odds with godliness, they can all the more expect in the final
judgment before the tribunal of God to be excommunicated from his holy
presence forever.
When seen in the context of the institution of the Consistory and
the arguments in the De vera excommunicatione, this persistent motif
suggests that one of the keys to understanding the Cato lies in excom-
munication: excommunication from one’s own inner peace, from social
intercourse, from the natural order of things, from fellowship with God.
What leads to that excommunication is sins, the most common of which
are ennumerated in the Cato. The Cato looks to the broader implications
of sin, in the wider scope of one’s life and in the ultimate final judgment.
But it is precisely the threat of excommunication that ties the Cato closely
to the mission of the Consistory. The Consistory’s most powerful and valu-
able tool was the imposition of excommunication, the exclusion of people
from godly society and the sacral meal, usually on a temporary basis as a
way to draw people back to the fellowship in repentance. The Cato gives
the theoretical rationale and justification for this sort of pastoral discipline,
because it demonstrates that God deals with sinners in exactly this way, by
excluding and excommunicating them, even though sins naturally in and
of themselves isolate the sinner, and that the Consistory visibly expresses
this aspect of God’s plan by executing it here within the Church. And given
that the Church is a body that nurtures its members along the path of
sanctification, the Consistory, as its disciplinary arm, gently reminds its
members of the consequences of sin and offers them second chances in
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30 Mor ality After Calvin

the here and now. In the final analysis, then, sinners are well advised to
abandon their sins, confess them, and submit to the Church and the Word
of God, since awaiting them is a greater and ultimate Consistory, of which
the earthly Consistory is a mere shadow.

Union with Christ

Since earlier in this introduction the rather complex matter of the
Christian’s “union with Christ” was broached, we cannot move forward
without clarifying precisely what that phrase meant to Beza himself. The
question has been addressed directly by Muller in an essay surveying how
various reformers understood the union and how it was handled within
the increasingly defined “order of salvation.”62 Relying mostly on Beza’s
statements in the Questions and Responses, Muller argues that for Beza
union with Christ “should be understood as an apprehending (apprehen-
sio), ingrafting (insitio), and incorporation (incorporatio),” not in the sense
that Christians’ spirits or bodies are actually united to Christ, nor that
they merely receive Christ’s power and efficacy, but unify with him in a
mystical and spiritual way. By this he means “a full ‘apprehension’ in the
soul, by faith, with the power of the Spirit conjoining things disparate in
place—​just as there is a spiritual union of Christ as head with the church
as his body.” The apprehension or “taking hold” of Christ becomes the
source of a number of benefits for believers.63 According to 1 Corinthians
1:30, Christ blesses his own with “wisdom, justification, sanctification,
redemption.” These are to be understood as the acceptance of the mes-
sage of salvation, the imputation of Christ’s work on the cross to the elect,
progress in holiness, and the final freedom that comes in eternal life.

62. Richard Muller, “Union with Christ and the Ordo Salutis: Reflections on Developments
in Early Modern Reformed Thought,” in Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of
Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 202–​43. See
especially therein “Theodore Beza and the unio,” 222–​24. Muller provides an extensive bib-
liography on 202, n. 1. To this can be added J. V. Fesko, Beyond Calvin: Union with Christ
and Justification in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
2012), and W. Duncan Rankin, “Peter Martyr Vermigli on Union with Christ,” Haddington
House Journal 7 (2005): 101–​24. The latter treats Vermigli’s correspondence with Beza on the
matter of the union.
63. Muller (223) makes the point that in the “order of causes” faith is prior to the union,
though, if one takes into account the fact that God elected his own in Christ before the
foundation of the world, Christ has, in a sense, reached out and “apprehended” those who
will apprehend him.
31

Introduction 31

Everything pertaining to the Christian life depends upon the union that
was initiated by faith.
We gain further insight into the mysterious workings of the union by
looking at Beza’s observations on Romans 6:5.64 There he highlights the
phrase “for if planted with him we grow together,” which he translates
“nam si cum eo plantati coaluimus,” to describe what is meant by the
believers’ union with Christ.65 First, he observes, Paul elegantly compares
Christ to a plant that was buried in the ground and sprouted (germinarit) in
its own time. Second, Paul says that Christians are planted so closely with
him that they bind with him and derive their life from him:

He had said earlier that we who are dead to sin and buried have
risen again together with Christ unto righteousness. He did this to
indicate that all these things are done in us through that sap, as it
were, which we suck from Christ. Now he says that we have united
with him into one living thing, like plants that are planted together
with a tree entwine with it in such a way that that they live on one
and the same sap.66

He goes on to say that this is a very fitting metaphor to describe both

the very close union with Christ and the way that his life-​giving power
(vivificam illam virtutem) flows into his own. This is why Christ compares
himself to the vine and his followers to the branches: they grow in him,
and he himself in turn is said to increase (adolescere) in them. It is for this
reason, Beza adds, that Isaiah compares Christ to a shoot, and that the
Word is sometimes called a seed, or we are said to be trees that bear fruit,
and ministers are described as planting and watering, while the faithful
are said to take root. This is not the grafting metaphor of Romans 11:24, but
a burial/​planting metaphor. This union looks not to the Christian’s imita-
tion of the works of Christ but to the actual infusion of power, wrought by

64. Beza, Annotationes 1598, part 2, 41.

65. For “union with Christ” Beza consistently use the phrase “coniunctio nostra cum
Christo.”
66. Beza, Annotationes 1598, part 2, 41: “Deinde vero quia nos quoque una dixerat cum
Christo mortuos peccato ac sepultos, resurrexisse ad iustitiam, ut indicet haec omnia in
nobis per eum quasi succum fieri quem ex Christo sugamus, dicit nos cum ipso in unam
plantam coaluisse, sicut τὰ σύμφυτα cum arbore ipsa ita coalescunt, ut communi succo
vivant.”
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32 Mor ality After Calvin

his death and payment for sins, that allows those united to him to die to
sin. Christians do not conform to the image of Christ by imitating him,
but imitate him because they are conformed to him, “that is, from the fact
that we are participants of Christ, dead with him and through him to sin,
so that we might live for God; it is he who effects in us to will and do the
things of God.”67
Beza again touches on the matter of our union with Christ in his
remarks on Ephesians 5:32, where Paul calls Christ’s relationship and
union to the Church “a great mystery.”68 He says that Paul calls the union
a “mystery” in the sense that “it is brought about by the Holy Spirit work-
ing within us by his unseen power. For what,” he asks, “is more removed
from man’s common sense than that we lowly creatures who creep upon
the earth could be joined in a spiritual marriage to Christ the Son of God,
Lord of Heaven and earth, as he sits at the right hand of the Father, so that
we can draw righteousness from him and thus eternal life?”69 And it is
fundamental to our faith to recognize that this union is not activated by
the outward ritual of the Lord’s Supper, which serves as a trope only, but
that “the only instrument” for it “while we are here on earth is faith; in the
world to come, it will be the very sight of Christ.”70
Of special interest in these remarks is the association made between
the union with Christ and the power for righteous living. The mystery of
the union must remain just that, a mystery. He has said, in essence, that
our human limitations prevent us from comprehending the work of the
Holy Spirit in bringing about this marriage, as it were. But what can be
said with certainty is that the union with Christ is the source of the power
that enables Christians to live not as a slave to the chaos of sin, but in
accord with the will of God. It is the beginning of all right living.

67. Beza, Annotationes 1598, part 2, 41: “[Contra vero ista imitatio omnis ex ista conforma-
tione nascitur,] id est, ex eo quod Christi participes simus, cum eo et per eum peccato mor-
tui, ut Deo vivamus. Ipse enim est qui in nobis efficit ut velimus ac faciamus quae Dei sunt.”
68. Beza, Annotationes 1598, part 2, 284.
69. Beza, Annotationes 1598, part 2, 284: “Id est arcanum, quia fit per Spiritum sanctum
arcana sua virtute in nobis sese exer[c]‌entem. Quid autem a communi hominum sensu
magis remotum quam nos miseros in terris repentes, cum Christo Filio Dei, terrae et caeli
Domino, ad dextram Patris sedente, ita spirituali connubio unum fieri, ut ab eo iustitiam
omnem ac proinde vitam aeternam hauriamus?”
70. Beza, Annotationes 1598, part 2, 284: “At certe nullum est aliud coniunctionis nostrae
cum Christo fratre nostro organum in hoc mundo, quam fides; in altero vero seculo, ipse
Dei conspectus.”
33

Introduction 33

Conclusion
In a touching letter written to Johannes Paludius in 1597, Beza recounts
how some fifty years before he anxiously mulled over an ethical dilemma
that he faced, whether to continue on in France in a life and ritual prac-
tice that he was already convinced was false, or to forsake family, friends,
and country, as well as a freedom from anxiety, to flee to a foreign place
where he could live openly and sincerely.71 He was led to this doubtless
unpleasant remembrance by questions that Paludius raised about the
Nicodemism problem, namely, how to deal with those Protestants who
attend the Catholic mass for their own safety, because of the particular cir-
cumstances or region they find themselves in. He answers Paludius by first
referring to natural law, of which he says God himself is to be considered
the author and champion. That law tells us that only under extreme duress
and for the gravest of reasons should anyone consider leaving behind their
family and the close-​knit relationships, since it is from them that one finds
mutual love and support. Furthermore, wise-​thinking persons should not
lightly decide to abandon the confines of their homeland, where they had
already obtained a certain station and security, to face uncertain troubles
and even dangers in a foreign land: “Therefore, let this principle remain
firm: We should never forget what according to God we owe to our coun-
try, family, or friends.”72 There are many things that happen in life, Beza
continues, that one can consider second to this principle without blame
and, in fact, with praise. But there are two principles that surpass even
that one: first, to live holy and rightly as God commands; and, second, to
have the peace of mind and conscience that comes from living rightly. The
first of the two is more important than life itself, as many virtuous and
wise people have shown by their examples in the past, and as Jesus him-
self taught in word and deed; the second, εὐθυμία, or true peace of mind,
to which the ancient philosophers rightly aspired as the highest good, is
that without which the rest of life is unliveable. The ancient philosophers,
however, did not know where this state of mind was situated, says Beza, or
whence it comes to us.73

71. Beza, Corr. XXXVIII (1597), 80–​81.

72. Beza, Corr. XXXVIII (1597), 80–​81: “Maneat igitur istud firmum: nunquam esse nobis
obliviscendum quid patriae, quid nostris, quid amicis secundum Deum debeamus.”
73. Beza, Corr. XXXVIII (1597), 81.
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34 Mor ality After Calvin

This letter attests to the fact that Beza had spent a considerable amount
of time contemplating the principles that guide Christian behavior. Those
principles are discernible in his various theological, exegetical, and pas-
toral writings, and in particular can be deduced from the moralizing
poems of the Cato. They cannot, however, be divorced from their histori-
cal context. The period shortly after Calvin’s death was an especially fruit-
ful time for moral discourse within the Reformed movement, and so to
fully appreciate Beza as an ethical thinker, Beza must be situated within
that conversation. Beza was certainly one of the luminaries of the period,
and many Reformed leaders, especially those around France, looked to
him for guidance. He was the one, for example, who encouraged Daneau
to publish his Ethices Christianae; and in numerous ways he groomed
Simon Goulart for his career, securing for him his first ministerial post
and officiating at his marriage to Suzanne Picot in 1570 at Madeleine
Church.74 Both of these associates of Beza made major contributions to
ethics in the period of Reformed Orthodoxy. With Daneau and Goulart,
as well as others in this period, scholars have noted a desire to lay claim
to the contributions of gifted philosophers and moralists from the pagan
past and to assimilate them, always weighed against the Scriptures, into
the Christian life.75 This was to some extent a product of the Renaissance
itself, an admiration for past human achievement as a way forward to
the fulfillment of mankind’s potential in creation. This would often be
expressed in theological terms as fallen mankind’s retainment of the
image of God, if only residually, that allows for a measure of insight into
the true nature of reality. Many Reformed theologians, including Beza,
acknowledged that even pagan writers recognized that there is a proper
way of being that can alleviate personal confusion and turmoil and lead
to a better life. They could devise laws that promoted justice and equity
among their citizens, and they could promote selfless behavior. What
made that possible was the fact that they had available to them the law of
God as it is reflected in nature and inscribed on their hearts. And in fact,
many of the ancient philosophical schools looked primarily to nature for
guidance. The Stoics, for one, taught that inasmuch as the divine perme-
ates nature completely and thoroughly, human beings can derive laws for

74. Strohm, Ethik im frühen Calvinismus, 16–​17; Leonard Chester Jones, Simon Goulart, 1543–​
1628: Étude biographique et bibliographique (Geneva: Georg, 1917), 7–​8.
75. On this, see the discussion of Ingeborg Jostock, La censure négociée. Le contrôle du livre à
Genève (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 200–​03.
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Introduction 35

themselves based on the careful observation of nature.76 This was an idea

that many reformers found attractive, and at least some, Beza included,
considered the harmonization with God’s creation to be a major aspect of
ethics. But pagan authors, while helpful in the systematization of ethics
and in the creation of memorable axioms, can only guide one so far. In
their fallen state, they could never fully comprehend the truth. Thus, the
reformers insisted, one must first and foremost be changed by the grace
of God and restored to fellowship with him through Christ in order to
lead a truly moral life.
If a certain behavior puts one at peace in creation, then it is also true
that sin has an isolating effect, in that it cuts off a person from the proper
way of being, putting him or her out of sync with God’s order. This is a
major theme of the Cato to which we will turn repeatedly in this study: the
notion that sin causes one to be shunned from the community and leaves
one ostracized and “cast out,” just as obstinate and unrepentant sinners
will be cast out into the outer darkness at the Last Judgment. The institu-
tion known as the Consistory, of which Beza was an ardent proponent,
reflects this philosophy of morality. A body of church and community
leaders identified those who willfully chose through their actions to exist
outside of God’s intended scheme of things and pronounced them excom-
municated. But the Cato need not be understood simply as a work with
a negative message. It should be seen as a kind of didactic and hortatory
work of the Christian life. Calvin had seen in the Decalogue not just pro-
hibitions against certain acts, but prescriptions for right living (Institutes
2.7.12–​13). Jesus himself had summed up the law in a positive way as loving
God and loving neighbor (Matthew 22:37–​9). Thus, just as the ultimate
goal of the Consistory was integration of individuals into the corporate
plan of God, so the Cato looks not to failure, but to success. This is the
message of the poem on old age that rounds off the collection in most of
the editions of the Cato: a life lived according to God’s righteous standards
is a rewarding life.
With these observations, we can begin to identify some of the build-
ing blocks of Beza’s ethical theory. First, words such as “renewal” and
“restoration,” and even “excommunication” and “banishment,” cause us
to think of an ordered whole with which God’s people are being brought
back into harmony, or from which the individual can be separated. That

76. See, e.g., Cleanthes’s Hymn to Zeus in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), I, 53–​54.
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36 Mor ality After Calvin

ordered whole is in part the order of nature (naturae ordo), which speaks
to the way that God arranged his creation and the place he established for
mankind in it. Even after the Fall, this natural order remains subject to
God and a pure expression of his will. From the beginning, mankind has
had a specific role in that order as lord over creation, but through sin the
entire relation and submission to God’s ordered will as communicated
in creation is badly damaged, along with the perception of the very exis-
tence of the order itself.77 One primary goal of morality from this perspec-
tive, therefore, is a process of rediscovering one’s place within the created
order as God originally intended. There is also a community aspect to this
restoration. Christians must do more than find peace for themselves in
creation; they must function peacefully among others as well. Morality
lies at the heart of the success and viability of anyone’s social or political
self. Second, the belief in a residual imago Dei in fallen mankind points
to the potential for knowing through nature how it is that God intends
for his people to live. The created order can be said to represent a kind of
moral guide, a law, since it reflects God’s righteous principles. This natu-
ral law is written on the heart and is available to everyone equally, though
it is codified even more clearly in the Decalogue. The point is, however,
that morality does not demand a newly devised discipline or stand on a
novel set of standards that God demands of mankind; it derives from a
law that pervades creation itself from the beginning, and to which man-
kind was in accord before the Fall. Third, the union with Christ provides
the dynamis of ethics. One cannot hope to be restored to the natural order
and have the power to return to a proper relation with God the Father
without first being united to his righteous Son by faith. In Christ and
only in Christ, the believer can properly begin to pursue the moral life.
Even then the pursuit relies on the operation of the Holy Spirit, which is
why, in his Confessio fidei, Beza discusses the Christian’s moral life under
the heading of the Holy Spirit.78 The term “sanctification” refers to the
process by which the Spirit makes believers more Christlike; that is, more
and more obedient to that original law or principles of divine order built
into creation, which in turn brings them back into an intimate relation-
ship with God and one another.

77. Cf. the statements in Augustine in his Confessions 7.13.19, where apparent evil in creation
is viewed as mankind’s perception of creation and not something inherent in creation itself.
78. Beza, Tractationes theologicae, 1:11–​13 (Confessio Christianae fidei).
37

Introduction 37

It is the argument of this study, therefore, that for Beza the Christian
life does not end with grace and salvation, but begins there. The Cato, the
work that we will analyze in depth, has in view the journey. As we shall
see, the goal that it sets for Christians is a restoration to the original state
of order that God established when he created the world, in which they
enjoy a loving fellowship with him and experience a sense of harmony
that brings peace. The means to that end, simply put, is ethical living. This
entails a behavior and attitude that aligns itself in humility and obedience
to God’s Word. It requires a community that is grounded in mutual love
and support, committed to sincerity in all its interactions, established on
the foundation of its promises, with each individual hard at work in his
or her calling and looking first and foremost to the common good. This is
God’s formula for a happy world. But in the end, Christians alone long to
be right with God’s plan and not to be rebellious, and they alone have the
potential for success by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit in conforming
them to the image of God.
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 Ann Street, June, 1837.
MESSRS. SAUNDERS AND OTLEY,
HAVE NOW READY THE FOLLOWING
IMPORTANT NEW WORKS.
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Mrs. Butler's New Work.
THE STAR OF SEVILLE,
A DRAMA IN 5 ACTS,
BY MRS. PIERCE BUTLER.
(Late Miss Fanny Kemble.)
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BY N. P. WILLIS, ESQ.
Illustrated by a beautifully Engraved Portrait.
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CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN:
MORAL, POETICAL AND HISTORICAL.
BY MRS. JAMESON.
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IV.
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 THE VICTIMS OF SOCIETY.
BY THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.
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SOCIETY IN AMERICA

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU,
AUTHOR OF "ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY."
 IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

NEW YORK
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, ANN STREET,
AND CONDUIT STREET, LONDON.
1837.
 CONTENTS.
VOL. II.

PART II.—CHAPTER II.

Page
Transports and Markets 1
Section I. —Internal Improvements 29
CHAPTER III.
Manufactures 37
Section I. —The Tariff 46
II. —Manufacturing Labor 53
CHAPTER IV.
Commerce 64
Section I. —The Currency 76
II. —Revenue and Expenditure 88
CHAPTER V.
Morals of Economy 92
Section I. —Morals of Slavery 106
II. —Morals of Manufactures 136
III.—Morals of Commerce 141
——————
PART III.
Civilisation 149
CHAPTER I.
Idea Of Honour 155
Section I. —Caste 168
II. —Property 175
 III.—Intercourse 187
CHAPTER II.
Woman 226
Section I. —Marriage 236
II. —Occupation 245
III.—Health 260
CHAPTER III.
Children 268
CHAPTER IV.
Sufferers 281
CHAPTER V.
Utterance 300
——————
PART IV.
Religion 314
CHAPTER I.
Science of Religion 329
CHAPTER II.
Spirit of Religion 336
CHAPTER III.
Administration of Religion 348
Conclusion 367
Appendix 373

SOCIETY IN AMERICA
PART II.
CONTINUED.
 CHAPTER II.
TRANSPORT AND MARKETS.

"Science and Art urge on the useful toil;

New mould a climate, and create the soil.
On yielding Nature urge their new demands,
And ask not gifts, but tribute, at her hands."
Barbauld.

Nature has done so much for the United States in this article of their
economy, and has indicated so clearly what remained for human
hands to do, that it is very comprehensible to the traveller why this
new country so far transcends others of the same age in markets
and means of transport. The ports of the United States are,
singularly enough, scattered round the whole of their boundaries.
Besides those on the seaboard, there are many in the interior; on
the northern lakes, and on thousands of miles of deep rivers. No
nook in the country is at a despairing distance from a market; and
where the usual incentives to enterprise exist, the means of
transport are sure to be provided, in the proportion in which they are
wanted.
Even in the south, where, the element of wages being lost, and the
will of the labourer being lost with them, there are no adequate
means of executing even the best-conceived enterprises,[1] more
has been done than could have been expected under the
circumstances. The mail roads are still extremely bad. I found, in
travelling through the Carolinas and Georgia, that the drivers
consider themselves entitled to get on by any means they can
devise: that nobody helps and nobody hinders them. It was
constantly happening that the stage came to a stop on the brink of a
wide and a deep puddle, extending all across the road. The driver
helped himself, without scruple, to as many rails of the nearest fence
as might serve to fill up the bottom of the hole, or break our descent
into it. On inquiry, I found it was not probable that either road or
fence would be mended till both had gone to absolute destruction.
The traffic on these roads is so small, that the stranger feels himself
almost lost in the wilderness. In the course of several days' journey,
we saw, (with the exception of the wagons of a few encampments,)
only one vehicle besides our own. It was a stage returning from
Charleston. Our meeting in the forest was like the meeting of ships
at sea. We asked the passengers from the south for news from
Charleston and Europe; and they questioned us about the state of
politics at Washington. The eager vociferation of drivers and
passengers was such as is very unusual, out of exile. We were
desired to give up all thoughts of going by the eastern road to
Charleston. The road might be called impassable; and there was
nothing to eat by the way. So we described a circuit, by Camden and
Columbia.
An account of an actual day's journey will give the best idea of what
travelling is in such places. We had travelled from Richmond,
Virginia, the day before, (March 2nd, 1835,) and had not had any
rest, when, at midnight, we came to a river which had no bridge.
The "scow" had gone over with another stage, and we stood under
the stars for a long time; hardly less than an hour. The scow was
only just large enough to hold the coach and ourselves; so that it
was thought safest for the passengers to alight, and go on board on
foot. In this process, I found myself over the ankles in mud. A few
minutes after we had driven on again, on the opposite side of the
river, we had to get out to change coaches; after which we
proceeded, without accident, though very slowly, till daylight. Then
the stage sank down into a deep rut, and the horses struggled in
vain. We were informed that we were "mired," and must all get out.
I stood for some time to witness what is very pretty for once; but
wearisome when it occurs ten times a day. The driver carries an axe,
as a part of the stage apparatus. He cuts down a young tree, for a
lever, which is introduced under the nave of the sunken wheel; a log
serving for a block. The gentleman passengers all help; shouting to
the horses, which tug and scramble as vigorously as the gentlemen.
We ladies sometimes gave our humble assistance by blowing the
driver's horn. Sometimes a cluster of negroes would assemble from
a neighbouring plantation; and in extreme cases, they would bring a
horse, to add to our team. The rescue from the rut was effected in
any time from a quarter of an hour to two hours. This particular 3rd
of March, two hours were lost by this first mishap. It was very cold,
and I walked on alone, sure of not missing my road in a region
where there was no other. When I had proceeded two miles, I
stopped and looked around me. I was on a rising ground, with no
object whatever visible but the wild, black forest, extending on all
sides as far as I could see, and the red road cut through it, as
straight as an arrow, till it was lost behind a rising ground at either
extremity. I know nothing like it, except a Salvator Rosa I once saw.
The stage soon after took me up, and we proceeded fourteen miles
to breakfast. We were faint with hunger; but there was no
refreshment for us. The family breakfast had been long over, and
there was not a scrap of food in the house. We proceeded, till at one
o'clock we reached a private dwelling, where the good woman was
kind enough to provide dinner for us, though the family had dined.
She gave us a comfortable meal, and charged only a quarter dollar
each. She stands in all the party's books as a hospitable dame.
We had no sooner left her house than we had to get out to pass on
foot a bridge too crazy for us to venture over it in the carriage. Half
a mile before reaching the place where we were to have tea, the
thorough-brace broke, and we had to walk through a snow shower
to the inn. We had not proceeded above a quarter of a mile from
this place when the traces broke. After this, we were allowed to sit
still in the carriage till near seven in the morning, when we were
approaching Raleigh, North Carolina. We then saw a carriage "mired"
and deserted by driver and horses, but tenanted by some travellers
who had been waiting there since eight the evening before. While
we were pitying their fate, our vehicle once more sank into a rut. It
was, however, extricated in a short time, and we reached Raleigh in
safety.
It was worth undergoing a few travelling disasters to witness the
skill and temper of the drivers, and the inexhaustible good-nature of
the passengers. Men of business in any other part of the world
would be visibly annoyed by such delays as I have described; but in
America I never saw any gentleman's temper give way under these
accidents. Every one jumps out in a moment, and sets to work to
help the driver; every one has his joke, and, when it is over, the
ladies are sure to have the whole represented to them in its most
amusing light. One driver on this journey seemed to be a novice, or
in some way inferior in confidence to the rest. A gentleman of our
party chose to sit beside him on the box; and he declared that the
driver shut his eyes when we were coming to a hole; and that when
he called piteously on the passengers for help, it was because we
were taking aim at a deep rut. Usually, the confidence and skill of
the drivers were equally remarkable. If they thought the stage more
full than was convenient, they would sometimes try to alarm the
passengers, so as to induce some of them to remain for the next
stage; and it happened two or three times that a fat passenger or
two fell into the trap, and declined proceeding; but it was easy for
the experienced to see that the alarm was feigned. In such cases,
after a splash into water, in the dark, news would be heard from the
box that we were in the middle of a creek, and could not go a step,
back or forward, without being overturned into the water. Though
the assertion was disproved the next minute, it produced its effect.
Again, when the moon was going down early, and the lamps were
found to be, of course, out of order, and the gentlemen insisted on
buying candles by the road-side, and walking on in bad places, each
with a tallow light in his hand, the driver would let drop that, as we
had to be overturned before dawn, it did not much matter whether it
was now or later. After this, the stoutest of the company were
naturally left behind at the next stopping-place, and the driver
chuckled at the lightening of his load.
At the close of a troublesome journey in the south, we drew up, with
some noise, before a hotel, at three in the morning. The driver blew
a blast upon an execrable horn. Nobody seemed stirring. Slaves are
the most slow-moving people in the world, except upon occasion.
"What sleepy folks they are here!" exclaimed the driver.
Another blast on the horn, long and screeching.
"Never saw such people for sleeping. Music has no effect on 'em at
all. I shall have to try fire-arms."
Another blast.
"We've waked the watchman, however. That's something done."
Another blast.
"Never knew such people. Why, Lazarus was far easier to raise."
The best testimony that I can bear to the skill with which travelling
is conducted on such roads as these, and also in steam-boats, is the
fact that I travelled upwards of ten thousand miles in the United
States, by land and water, without accident. I was twice nearly
overturned; but never quite.
It has been seen what the mail routes are like in the south; and I
have mentioned that greater progress has been made in other
means of transport than might have been expected. I referred to the
new rail-roads which are being opened in various directions. I saw
few circumstances in the south with which I was so well pleased. By
the free communication which will thus be opened, much sectional
prejudice will be dispelled: the inferiority of slave to free labour will
be the more speedily brought home to every man's convictions; and
new settlers, abhorring slavery, will come in and mix with the
present population; be the laws regarding labour what they may.
The only rail-roads completed in the south, when I was there, were
the Charleston and Augusta one, two short ones in the States of
Alabama and Mississippi, and one of five miles from Lake
Pontchartrain to New Orleans. There is likely to be soon a
magnificent line from Charleston to Cincinnati; and the line from
Norfolk, Virginia, to New York, is now almost uninterrupted.
The quarter of an hour employed in reaching New Orleans from Lake
Pontchartrain was one of the most delightful seasons in all my
travels. My notion of a swamp was corrected for ever. It was the end
of April; and the flowering reeds and tropical shrubs made the whole
scene one gay garden. It was odd to be passing through a gay
garden on a rail-road. Green cypress grew out of the clear water
everywhere; and there were acres of blue and white iris; and a
thousand rich, unknown blossoms waving over the pools. A negro
here and there emerged from a flowery thicket, pushing himself on a
raft, or in a canoe, through the reeds. The sluggish bayou was on
one side; and here and there, a group of old French houses on the
other. It was like skimming, as one does in dreams, over the
meadows of Sicily, or the plains of Ceylon.
That which may be seen on either hand of the Charleston and
Augusta rail-road is scarcely less beautiful; but my journeys on it
were by far the most fatiguing of any I underwent in the country.
The motion and the noise are distracting. Whether this is owing to
its being built on piles, in many places; whether the fault is in the
ground or the construction, I do not know. Almost all the rail-road
travelling in America is very fatiguing and noisy. I was told that this
was chiefly owing to the roads being put to use as soon as finished,
instead of the work being left to settle for some months. How far
this is true, I do not pretend to say. The rail-roads which I saw in
progress were laid on wood instead of stone. The patentee
discovered that wood settles after frost more evenly than stone. The
original cost, in the State of New York, is about two thousand dollars
per mile.
One great inconvenience of the American rail-roads is that, from
wood being used for fuel, there is an incessant shower of large
sparks, destructive to dress and comfort, unless all the windows are
shut; which is impossible in warm weather. Some serious accidents
from fire have happened in this way; and, during my last trip on the
Columbia and Philadelphia rail-road, a lady in the car had a shawl
burned to destruction on her shoulders; and I found that my own
gown had thirteen holes in it; and my veil, with which I saved my
eyes, more than could be counted.
My first trip on the Charleston rail-road was more amusing than
prosperous. The arrangements were scarcely completed, and the
apparatus was then in a raw state. Our party left Columbia at seven
in the evening of the 9th of March, by stage, hoping to meet the rail-
road train at Branchville, sixty miles from Columbia, at eleven the
next morning, and to reach Charleston, sixty-two more, to dinner.
Towards morning, when the moon had set, the stage bumped
against something; and the driver declared that he must wait for the
day-spring, before he could proceed another step. When the dawn
brightened, we found that we had, as we supposed, missed our
passage by the train, for the sake of a stump about two inches
above the ground. We hastened breakfast at Orangeburg; and when
we got to Branchville, found we need have been in no hurry. The
train had not arrived; and, some little accident having happened, we
waited for it till near two o'clock.
I never saw an economical work of art harmonise so well with the
vastness of a natural scene, as here. From the piazza of the house at
Branchville, the forest fills the whole scene, with the rail-road
stretching through it, in a perfectly straight line, to the vanishing
point. The approaching train cannot be seen so far off as this. When
it appears, a black dot, marked by its wreath of smoke, it is
impossible to avoid watching it, growing and self-moving, till it stops
before the door. I cannot draw; but I could not help trying to make a
sketch of this, the largest and longest perspective I ever saw. We
were well employed for two hours in basking in the sun, noting the
mock-orange-trees before the house, the turkeys strutting, the
robins (twice as large as the English) hopping and flitting; and the
house, apparently just piled up of wood just cut from the forest.
Everything was as new as the rail-road. As it turned out, we should
have been better employed in dining; but we had no other idea than
of reaching Charleston in three or four hours.
For the first thirty-five miles, which we accomplished by half-past
four, we called it the most interesting rail-road we had ever been on.
The whole sixty-two miles was almost a dead level, the descent
being only two feet. Where pools, creeks, and gullies had to be
passed, the road was elevated on piles, and thence the look down
on an expanse of evergreens was beautiful. This is, probably, the
reason why three gentlemen went, a few days afterwards, to walk,
of all places, on the rail-road. When they were in the middle of one
of these elevated portions, where there is a width of only about
three inches on either side the tracks, they heard a shout, and
looking back, saw a train coming upon them with such speed as to
leave no hope that it could be stopped before it reached them.
There was no alternative; all three leaped down, upwards of twenty
feet, into the swamp, and escaped with a wetting, and with looking
exceedingly foolish in their own eyes.
At half-past four, our boiler sprang a leak, and there was an end of
our prosperity. In two hours, we hungry passengers were consoled
with the news that it was mended. But the same thing happened,
again and again; and always in the middle of a swamp, where we
could do nothing but sit still. The gentlemen tried to amuse
themselves with frog-hunting: but it was a poor resource. Once we
stopped before a comfortable-looking house, where a hot supper
was actually on the table; but we were not allowed to stop, even so
long as to get out. The gentlemen made a rush into the house to
see what they could get. One carried off a chicken entire, for his
party; another seized part of a turkey. Our gentlemen were not alert
enough. The old lady's table was cleared too quickly for them, and
quite to her own consternation. All that we, a party of five, had to
support us, was some strips of ham, pieces of dry bread, and three
sweet potatoes, all jumbled together in a handkerchief. Our thoughts
wandered back to this supper-table, an hour after, when we were
again sticking in the middle of a swamp. I had fallen asleep, (for it
was now the middle of a second night of travelling,) and was
awakened by such a din as I had never heard. I could not recollect
where I was; I looked out of the window, and saw, by the light of
the moon, white houses on the bank of the swamp, and the waving
shrubs of the forest; but the distracting din was like nothing earthly.
It presently struck me that we were being treated with a frog-
concert. It is worth hearing, for once, anything so unparalleled as
the knocking, ticking, creaking, and rattling, in every variety of key.
The swamp was as thick of noises as the forest is of leaves: but, five
minutes of the concert are enough; while a hundred years are not
enough of the forest. After many times stopping and proceeding, we
arrived at Charleston between four and five in the morning; and, it
being too early to disturb our friends, crept cold and weary to bed,
at the Planters' Hotel. It was well that all this happened in the month
of March. Three months later, such detention in the swamps by night
might have been the death of three-fourths of the passengers. I
have not heard of any mismanagement since the concern has been
put fairly in operation.
There are many rail-roads in Virginia, and a line to New York,
through Maryland and Delaware. There is in Kentucky a line from
Louisville to Lexington. But it is in Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode
Island, and Massachusetts, that they abound. All have succeeded so
admirably, that there is no doubt of the establishment of this means
of communication over nearly the whole of the United States, within
a few years, as by-ways to the great high-ways which Nature has
made to run through this vast country. The evil of a superabundance
of land in proportion to labour will thus be lessened so far, that there
will be an economy of time, and a facility of intercourse, which will
improve the intelligence of the country population. There will, also,
be a facility of finding out where new supplies of labour are most
wanted, and of supplying them. By advantageous employment for
small capitals being thus offered within bounds, it may also be
hoped that many will be prevented from straying into the wilderness.
The best friends of the moral as well as economical interests of the
Americans, will afford all possible encouragement to wise schemes
for the promotion of intercourse, especially between the north and
south.
I believe the best-constructed rail-road in the States is the Boston
and Lowell, Massachusetts: length, twenty-five miles. Its importance,
from the amount of traffic upon it, may be estimated from the fact
that some thousands of dollars were spent, the winter after it was
opened, in clearing away a fall of snow from it. It was again
covered, the next night.
Another line from Boston is to Providence, Rhode Island, forty-three
miles long. This opens a very speedy communication with New York;
the distance, two hundred and twenty-seven miles, being performed
in twenty hours, by rail-road and steam-boat.
There is a good line from Boston to Worcester; forty-five miles in
length. Its estimated cost is 883,904 dollars. This road is to be
carried on across the entire State, to the Connecticut; from whence
a line is now in course of construction to the Hudson, to issue
opposite Albany. There are proposals for a tunnel under the Hudson
at Albany; and from Albany, there is already canal and rail-road
communication to Lake Erie. There is now an uninterrupted
communication from the Atlantic to the far end of Lake Michigan. It
only remains to extend a line thence to the Mississippi, and the circle
is complete.
The great Erie canal, intersecting the whole State of New York, is too
celebrated to need much notice here. Its entire length is three
hundred and sixty-three miles. It is forty feet wide at top, twenty-
eight at bottom, and four feet deep. There are eighty-four locks on
the main canal. The total rise and fall is six hundred and ninety-two
feet. The cost was 9,500,000 dollars. Though this canal has been
opened only since 1825, it is found already insufficient for the
immense commerce carried on between the European world and the
great West, through the eastern ports. There is a rail-road now
running across the entire State, which is expected to exhibit much
more traffic than the canal, without at all interfering with its
business.
I traversed the valley of the Mohawk twice; the first time by the
canal, the next by stage, which I much preferred, both on account of
the views being better from the high-road, and from the discomfort
of the canal-boats. I had also the opportunity of observing the
courses of the canal and the new rail-road throughout.
I was amused, the first time, at hearing some gentlemen plan how
the bed of the shoaly Mohawk might be deepened, so as to admit
the passage of steam-boats. It would be nearly as easy to dig a river
at once for the purpose, and pump it full; in other words, to make
another canal, twice as wonderful as the present. The rail-road is a
better scheme by far. In winter the traffic is continued by sleighs on
the canal ice: and a pretty sight it must be.
The aspect of the valley was really beautiful last June. It must have
made the Mohawk Indians heart-sore to part with it in its former
quiet state; but now there is more beauty, as well as more life.
There are farms, in every stage of advancement, with all the stir of
life about them; and the still, green graveyard belonging to each,
showing its white palings and tombstones on the hill-side, near at
hand. Sometimes a small space in the orchard is railed in for this
purpose. In a shallow reach of the river there was a line of cows
wading through, to bury themselves in the luxuriant pasture of the
islands in the midst of the Mohawk. In a deeper part, the chain
ferry-boat slowly conveyed its passengers across. The soil of the
valley is remarkably rich, and the trees and verdure unusually fine.
The hanging oak-woods on the ridge were beautiful; and the knolls,
tilled or untilled; and the little waterfalls trickling or leaping down, to
join the rushing river. Little knots of houses were clustered about the
locks and bridges of the canal; and here and there a village, with its
white church conspicuous, spread away into the middle of the
narrow valley. The green and white canal boats might be seen
stealing along under the opposite ridge, or issuing from behind a
clump of elms or birches, or gliding along a graceful aqueduct, with
the diminished figures of the walking passengers seen moving along
the bank. On the other hand, the rail-road skirted the base of the
ridge, and the shanties of the Irish labourers, roofed with turf, and
the smoke issuing from a barrel at one corner, were so grouped as
to look picturesque, however little comfortable. In some of the
narrowest passes of the valley, the high road, the rail-road, the
canal, and the river, are all brought close together, and look as if
they were trying which could escape first into a larger space. The
scene at Little Falls is magnificent, viewed from the road, in the light
of a summers' morning. The carrying the canal and rail-road through
this pass was a grand idea; and the solidity and beauty of the works
are worthy of it.
The canal was commenced in 1817; and the first boat from the
inland lakes arrived at New York on the 4th of November 1825. The
first year's revenue amounted to 566,221 dollars. In 1836, the tolls
amounted to 1,294,649 dollars.
The incorporated rail-road companies in the State of New York in
1836 were fifty; their capitals varying from fifteen thousand to ten
million dollars.
When I first crossed the Alleghanies, in November 1834, I caught a
glimpse of the stupendous Portage rail-road, running between the
two canals which reach the opposite bases of the mountains. The
stage in which I travelled was on one side of a deep ravine, bristling
with pines; while on the other side was the lofty embankment, such
a wall as I had never imagined could be built, on the summit of
which ran the rail-road, its line traceable for some miles, with
frequent stations and trains of baggage-cars. One track of this road
had not long been opened; and the work was a splendid novelty. I
had afterwards the pleasure of travelling on it, from end to end.
This road is upwards of thirty-six miles in length, and at one point
reaches an elevation of 2,491 feet above the sea. It consists of
eleven levels, and ten inclined planes. About three hundred feet of
the road, at the head and foot of each plane, is made exactly level.
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