Tracts & Letters (Vol 1) - Calvin - V - Reply to Sadolet

Required reading
Tracts and Letters (Volume 1) by John Calvin (Available from Amazon or free here).  Read the 'Reply by John Calvin to Letter by Cardinal Sadolet'.

My summary
Now we read Calvin's reply to Sadolet's letter which we read last week - it implored the Genevese to return to the Roman Catholic church.

Firstly Calvin speaks of how he is refraining from attacking Sadolet personally.

Then Calvin defends his own intentions for being a Protestant minister - that it is not for wealth or otherwise he would have stayed a Roman Catholic!

Next Calvin begins to deal with the arguments of Sadolet's letter.  Firstly he defends the notion that Protestants are deviating from the true Christian church.  Rather, Calvin shows that it is Roman Catholicism that has deviated from the church.

Then Calvin attacks various Roman Catholic dogma: ceremonies; justification; Eucharist; auricular confession; intercession of the saints; and the ministerial office including that of the Roman Pontiff.

To conclude his letter, Calvin includes two prayers - one about his ministry and the other about his conversion from Roman Catholicism.

What grabbed me
I particularly enjoyed Calvin's argument that Protestantism is the true church: 'You know, Sadolet, and if you venture to deny, I will make it palpable to all that you knew, yet cunningly and craftily disguised the fact, not only that our agreement with antiquity is far closer than yours, but that all we have attempted has been to renew that ancient form of the Church, which, at first sullied and distorted by illiterate men of indifferent character, was afterwards flagitiously mangled and almost destroyed by the Roman Pontiff and his faction.  I will not press you so closely as to call you back to that form which the Apostles instituted, (though in it we have the only model of a true Church, and whosoever deviates from it in the smallest degree is in error,) but to indulge you so far, place, I pray, before your eyes, that ancient form of the Church, such as their writings prove it to have been in the age of Chrysostom and Basil, among the Greeks, and of Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine, among the Latins; after so doing, contemplate the ruins of that Church, as now surviving among yourselves. Assuredly, the difference will appear as great as that which the Prophets describe between the famous Church which flourished under David and Solomon, and that which under Zedekiah and Jehoiakim had lapsed into every kind of superstition, and utterly vitiated the purity of divine worship. Will you here give the name of an enemy of antiquity to him who, zealous for ancient piety and holiness, and dissatisfied with the state of matters as existing in a dissolute and depraved Church, attempts to ameliorate its condition, and restore it to pristine splendour?'

We stand with the Apostles and early church fathers - it is Rome that has walked away and needs to return.

Next week's reading
Commence 'Articles agreed upon by the Faculty of Sacred Theology of Paris' by reading Articles I to XII.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.