Poor Calvin, with no faculty for relaxation, insisted that others should not indulge theirs, and made it the basis of his religion that any such indulgence was sinful. From this to the doctrine of predestination to eternal punishment was not difficult. A God who meant life to be passed without recreation would surely not scruple to condemn most of His creatures { 254} quite without their own fault to an eternity of punishment. Why is it when men make their gods they make them worse than themselves? Even the wise Greeks did not escape this pitfall.
There are always a number of people who are ready to follow anyone who announces any doctrine, no matter how unreasonable it may seem to be, if only he insists emphatically on his belief and if he evidently is a sincere believer in it himself. Calvin was one of the dominant spirits who readily gain control over others, and his severity to himself won many of the sombre people around him to a devotion to his cause that partook of worship. They even permitted themselves to be ruled by his rigid hand, and there probably never has been a place where less allowance was made for human nature than at Geneva during the days when Calvin ruled there with a rod of iron and when his particular mode of the reformation of religion was so completely accepted. To the dour Scots this austere doctrine appealed particularly, and Calvin's disciple, Knox, secured almost as much authority in Edinburgh as did his master down at Geneva.
Like Luther, Calvin before the end of his life was profoundly disillusioned with regard to the Reformation and its effect upon mankind. The unfortunate divisions of the Protestants among themselves, their readiness to persecute each other, their refusal to permit anything like religious toleration, above all their rejection, except for very limited numbers, of his own doctrines, made him foresee nothing but evil for the future. He knew that he had stirred mankind deeply in the West of Europe, but he could not foretell anything but unfortunate results from the conditions that he saw around him. He once said: "The future appals me. I dare not think of it. Unless the Lord descends from heaven, barbarism will engulf us."