Nor, though the ministers were to hold so influential a place in the body politic, could they come to feel as if they were a self-propagating, an exclusive, or a sacrosanct corporation. Without the ministry the minister could not be made; but without the people he could not be called or maintained. He issued from the ranks of the citizens, and he could be reduced to their condition again. If his conduct was scandalous, or if his faith changed or failed, the reduction was inevitable. He was responsible to the Church, typified by its clergy; and responsible for the Church, typified by the city or the laity. Calvin's theory was a theocracy, not a hierocracy; the clergy did not reign, nor did the organised Church govern; but God reigned over Church and State alike, and so governed that both magistrates and clergy were His ministers. In Geneva every office was sacred, and existed for the glory of the God who was its Creator.
The ministerial ideal embodied in these Ecclesiastical Ordinances may be said to have had certain indirect but international results; it compelled Calvin to develop his system of education; it supplied the Reformed Church, especially in France, with the men which it needed to fight its battles and to form the iron in its blood; it presented the Reformed Church everywhere with an intellectual and educational ideal which must be realised if its work was to be done; and it created the modern preacher, defining the sphere of his activity and setting up for his imitation a noble and lofty example.
Calvin soon found that the Reformed faith could live in a democratic city only by an enlightened pulpit speaking to enlightened citizens, and that an educated ministry was helpless without an educated people. His method for creating both entitles him to rank among the foremost makers of modern education. As a humanist he believed in the classical languages and literatures-there is a tradition which says that he read through Cicero once a year-and so "he built his system on the solid rock of Graeco-Roman antiquity." Yet he did not neglect religion; he so trained the boys of Geneva through his Catechism that each was said to be able to give a reason for his faith " like a doctor of the Sorbonne." He believed in the unity of knowledge and the community of learning, placing the magistrate and the minister, the citizen and the pastor, in the hands of the same teacher, and binding the school and the university together. The boy learned in the one and the man studied in the other; but the school was the way to the university, the university was the goal of the school. In nothing does the pasdagogic genius of Calvin more appear than in his fine jealousy as to the character and competence whether of masters or professors, and in his unwearied quest after qualified men. His letters teem with references to the men in various lands and many universities whom he was seeking to bring to Geneva. The first Rector, Antoine Saunier, was a notable man; and he never rested till he had secured his dear old teacher, Mathurin Cordier.
