Calvinism a life-system - pagina 175

CALVINISM AND SCIENCE. reduced to a dead

and

letter,

Des Cartes, who had

case,

among

France, found

171

that, to instance

only one

Roman

Catholic

leave

to

the Calvinists of the Netherlands,

of course a scientific antagonist in Voetius, but in the

republic a safe retreat.

To

this

to that

must add that

I

to flourish a

demand for

order to cause science

in

had

science

end the public mind had to be made

long, "however, as the

and

to be created,

As

free.

Church stretched out her velnni

over the entire drama of public

life,

the state of bondage

naturally continued, because the only object of to merit heaven and to enjoy as

much

was

life

of the world as

the Church considered to be consistent with this main end.

From

this point of

any one should be

view

it

was unimaginable, that

willing to devote himself with

sympathy

and with the investigators love to the study of our earthly

The

existence.

eternal

life,

besides

its

on

earth,

and

seeking love of it

all

was directed towards

could not be realized that Christianity,

yearning for eternal salvation, has to perform

by divine commission, a grand task with regard

to the cosmos.

This new conception was

by Calvinism when

first

cut at the root in the

it

ute sense of every idea, that

life

introduced

most absol-

on earth were ever

des-

tined to merit the blessedness of heaven. This blessedness, for every true Calvinist, is

grows out of regeneration, and

by the perseverance of the saints. Where in manner the "certainty of faith" supplanted the traffic

sealed

this

of indulgences, .the

Calvinism called Christendom back to

order of creation

:

"Replenish the earth, subdue

and have dominion over everything that Christian

life

as a pilgrimage

lives

upon

it

it.''

was not changed, but the

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