Chapter IV: The History (3)

The true hero of Froude's History is not Henry VIII., but Cecil, the firm, incorruptible, sagacious Minister who saved Elizabeth's throne, and made England the leading anti-Catholic country. Of a greater man than Cecil, John Knox, he was however almost an idolater. He considered that Knox surpassed in worldly wisdom even Maitland of Lethington, who was certainly not hampered by theological prejudice. With Puritanism itself he had much natural affinity, and as a determinist the philosophical side of Calvinism attracted him as strongly as it attracted Jonathan Edwards. Froude combined, perhaps illogically, a belief in predestination with a deep sense of moral duty and the responsibility of man. Every reader of his History must have been struck by his respect for all the manly virtues, even in those with whom he has otherwise no sympathy, and his corresponding contempt for weakness and self-indulgence. In his second and final Address to the students of St. Andrews he took Calvinism as his theme.* By this time Froude had acquired a great name, and was known all over the world as the most brilliant of living English historians. Although his uncompromising treatment of Mary Stuart had provoked remonstrance, his eulogy of Knox and Murray was congenial to the Scottish temperament, with which he had much in common. It was indeed from St. Andrews alone that he had hitherto received any public recognition. He was grateful to the students, and gave them of his best, so that this lecture may be taken as an epitome of his moral and religious belief.

-- * Short Studies, vol. ii. pp. 1-60. --

"Calvinism," he told these lads, "was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth; the spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared and reappeared, and in due time will appear again, unless God be a delusion and man be as the beasts that perish. For it is but the inflashing upon the conscience with overwhelming force of the nature and origin of the laws by which mankind are governed--laws which exist, whether we acknowledge them or whether we deny them, and will have their way, to our weal or woe, according to the attitude in which we please to place ourselves towards them--inherent, like electricity, in the nature of things, not made by us, not to be altered by us, but to be discerned and obeyed by us at our everlasting peril." The essence of Froude's belief, not otherwise dogmatic, was a constant sense of God's presence and overruling power. Sceptical his mind in many ways was. The two things he never doubted, and would not doubt, were theism and the moral law. Without God there would be no religion. Without morality there would be no difference between right and wrong. This simple creed was sufficient for him, as it has been sufficient for some of the greatest men who ever lived. Epicureanism in all its forms was alien to his nature. "It is not true," he said at St. Andrews, "that goodness is synonymous with happiness. The most perfect being who ever trod the soil of this planet was called the Man of Sorrows. If happiness means absence of care and inexperience of painful emotion, the best securities for it are a hard heart and a good digestion. If morality has no better foundation than a tendency to promote happiness, its sanction is but a feeble uncertainty." Remembering where he stood, and speaking from the fulness of his mind, Froude exclaimed: "Norman Leslie did not kill Cardinal Beaton down in the castle yonder because he was a Catholic, but because he was a murderer. The Catholics chose to add to their already incredible creed a fresh article, that they were entitled to hang and burn those who differed from them; and in this quarrel the Calvinists, Bible in hand, appealed to the God of battles."

The importance of this striking Address is largely due to the fact that it was composed immediately after the History had been finished, and may be regarded as an epilogue. It breathes the spirit, though it discards the trappings, of Puritanism and the Reformation. Luther "was one of the grandest men that ever lived on earth. Never was any one more loyal to the light that was in him, braver, truer, or wider- minded in the noblest sense of the word." About Calvinism Froude disagreed with Carlyle, who loved to use the old formulas, though he certainly did not use them in the old sense. "It is astonishing to find," Froude wrote to Skelton, "how little in ordinary life the Calvinists talked or wrote about doctrine. The doctrine was never more than the dress. The living creature was wholly moral and political--so at least I think myself." Such language was almost enough to bring John Knox out of his grave. Could he have heard it, he would have felt that he was being confounded with Maitland, who thought God "ane nursery bogill." But though the attempt to represent Knox or Calvin as undogmatic may be fanciful, it is the purest, noblest, and most permanent part of Calvinism that Froude invited the students of St. Andrews to cherish and preserve.