Day 24 — Institutes I.5.§12 [직강]

Yesterday (§11) Calvin flipped the tables in the philosophy faculty: the manifestation is bright, but we are dull — even Plato lost in his round globe. He ended with a scope note: I am talking about the elite; the common herd's madness "exceeds all bounds." Today §12 opens the sluice on that madness. This is Calvin's anatomy of idolatry — how the seed of religion (§§1–4), once corrupted, does not evaporate but ferments into a thousand false gods. Watch the opening image: an immense flood overflowing the whole world. This is Romans 1:21–23 turned into a lecture on comparative religion.

And the examiners love this section, because it is packed with the trickiest syntax in the chapter: fronted-PP inversions, nominative absolutes stacked three deep, the...the... proportionals, and as if / never did unreal-and-inverted constructions. If you can parse §12, you can parse anything in Beveridge.

Today's 3 Big Points — mark them now:

1. The locative/fronted inversion: PP + Verb + Subject. "To the darkness of ignorance have been added presumption and wantonness" (S3). The prepositional phrase is thrown to the front, the passive verb comes next, and the real subject — presumption and wantonness — lands last. Restore it: presumption and wantonness have been added to the darkness of ignorance. Same engine drives "never did any mortal devise" (S12) and "so prone are we" from yesterday.
2. The nominative absolute (noun + participle), stacked. "Every individual mind being a kind of labyrinth, it is not wonderful …" (S2); "every man giving himself full license, and devising …" (S4); "a God, there being none" (S14). Noun + -ing/-en, no finite verb, hanging off the main clause like a saddlebag. This is Calvin's favorite move — learn to spot the noun-that-owns-the-participle.
3. The the + comparative … the + comparative proportional — with inversion. "The higher any one was endued with genius … the more specious was the colouring" (S8); and the punchline of the Simonides story: "The longer I consider, the darker the subject appears" (S18). Two moving parts rising together; note the verb-subject flip in the second limb of S8.

Three engines. Lock them in. Now read.

Hence that immense flood of error with which the whole world is overflowed. Every individual mind being a kind of labyrinth, it is not wonderful, not only that each nation has adopted a variety of fictions, but that almost every man has had his own god. To the darkness of ignorance have been added presumption and wantonness, and hence there is scarcely an individual to be found without some idol or phantom as a substitute for Deity. Like water gushing forth from a large and copious spring, immense crowds of gods have issued from the human mind, every man giving himself full license, and devising some peculiar form of divinity, to meet his own views. It is unnecessary here to attempt a catalogue of the superstitions with which the world was overspread. The thing were endless; and the corruptions themselves, though not a word should be said, furnish abundant evidence of the blindness of the human mind. I say nothing of the rude and illiterate vulgar; but among the philosophers who attempted, by reason and learning, to pierce the heavens, what shameful disagreement! The higher any one was endued with genius, and the more he was polished by science and art, the more specious was the colouring which he gave to his opinions. All these, however, if examined more closely, will be found to be vain show. The Stoics plumed themselves on their acuteness, when they said that the various names of God might be extracted from all the parts of nature, and yet that his unity was not thereby divided: as if we were not already too prone to vanity, and had no need of being presented with an endless multiplicity of gods, to lead us further and more grossly into error. The mystic theology of the Egyptians shows how sedulously they laboured to be thought rational on this subject. And, perhaps, at the first glance, some show of probability might deceive the simple and unwary; but never did any mortal devise a scheme by which religion was not foully corrupted. This endless variety and confusion emboldened the Epicureans, and other gross despisers of piety, to cut off all sense of God. For when they saw that the wisest contradicted each others they hesitated not to infer from their dissensions, and from the frivolous and absurd doctrines of each, that men foolishly, and to no purpose, brought torment upon themselves by searching for a God, there being none: and they thought this inference safe, because it was better at once to deny God altogether, than to feign uncertain gods, and thereafter engage in quarrels without end. They, indeed, argue absurdly, or rather weave a cloak for their impiety out of human ignorance; though ignorance surely cannot derogate from the prerogatives of God. But since all confess that there is no topic on which such difference exists, both among learned and unlearned, the proper inference is, that the human mind, which thus errs in inquiring after God, is dull and blind in heavenly mysteries. Some praise the answer of Simonides, who being asked by King Hero what God was, asked a day to consider. When the king next day repeated the question, he asked two days; and after repeatedly doubling the number of days, at length replied, “The longer I consider, the darker the subject appears.” He, no doubt, wisely suspended his opinion, when he did not see clearly: still his answer shows, that if men are only naturally taught, instead of having any distinct, solid, or certain knowledge, they fasten only on contradictory principles, and, in consequence, worship an unknown God.

Nineteen sentences. Thesis-image: from the corrupted seed pours an immense flood of error (S1) → the mind is a labyrinth, so no wonder each nation, indeed almost each man, invents his own god (S2) → ignorance + presumption + wantonness ⇒ hardly a soul without some idol (S3) → simile: gods gush out like water from a spring, each man self-licensed (S4) → cataloguing them is pointless (S5); the sheer mass of corruption proves the blindness (S6) → then the escalation to the smart set: never mind the vulgar — among the philosophers, what shameful disagreement! (S7); the more brilliant the man, the more specious his error (S8); all of it, examined closely, is vain show (S9) → three specimens: the Stoics multiplying names of God (S10); the Egyptian mystic theology dressed up as rational (S11); and the verdict on all cleverness — some plausibility up front, but never did anyone devise a scheme that didn't foully corrupt religion (S12) → the opposite reaction: this chaos emboldened the Epicureans to cut off all sense of God (S13); from the philosophers' disagreements they inferred God does not exist, and thought atheism the safer bet (S14) → but their argument is a cloak for impiety: ignorance can't dethrone God (S15) → the true inference from the universal disagreement is that the human mind is dull and blind in heavenly mysteries (S16) → the Simonides anecdote: asked what God is, he kept doubling his delay (S17), and finally, "the longer I consider, the darker the subject appears" (S18) → the moral: taught by nature alone, men fasten on contradictions and end up worshipping an unknown God (S19).

[FLOOD]     corrupted seed → immense FLOOD of error over the world      (S1)
[LABYRINTH] mind = labyrinth ⇒ each nation, each MAN his own god        (S2)
[IDOLS]     ignorance + presumption + wantonness ⇒ scarce a soul        (S3)
            without an idol/phantom for Deity
[SPRING]    gods GUSH like water; every man self-licensed, devising     (S4)
[MASS]      cataloguing pointless (S5); the mass itself PROVES           (S5-S6)
            the blindness of the human mind
[PHILOS]    not the vulgar — among PHILOSOPHERS: what disagreement!     (S7)
            the brighter the man, the more SPECIOUS the error (S8);
            all of it = vain show (S9)
[SPECIMENS] Stoics multiply God's names (S10); Egyptians dress up       (S10-S12)
            mystic theology (S11); NEVER did any scheme not
            foully corrupt religion (S12)
[ATHEISTS]  chaos emboldens EPICUREANS to cut off sense of God (S13);   (S13-S14)
            from dissension infer "no God"; atheism the safer bet
[REBUTTAL]  that's a cloak for impiety — ignorance can't derogate       (S15)
            from God's prerogatives
[INFERENCE] true inference: the human mind is DULL & BLIND              (S16)
            in heavenly mysteries
[SIMONIDES] asked what God is, keeps doubling the delay (S17);          (S17-S18)
            "the longer I consider, the darker it appears" (S18)
[MORAL]     nature-taught only ⇒ fasten on contradictions ⇒            (S19)
            worship an UNKNOWN GOD (Acts 17:23)

Examiner's Eye: the number-one trap is the direction of S14–S15. Calvin reports the Epicurean inference — "the philosophers disagree, therefore there is no God" — but he does not endorse it; he calls it arguing absurdly and weaving a cloak for impiety. A test option like "Calvin concludes from the philosophers' disagreement that God cannot be known to exist" reverses him: the disagreement proves the mind is blind (S16), not that God is absent. Second trap, S8: the proportional says the greater the genius, the more specious (= more plausible-looking, more deceptively fair) the error — brilliance makes idolatry worse, not better; an option reading "the most gifted philosophers came nearest the truth" flunks. Third trap, S19 / the Simonides moral: nature-only teaching yields contradictory principles and an unknown God — Calvin's point is the insufficiency of natural knowledge for saving truth, not its total absence (the seed is real; it is corrupted).

FORMULA 1 — Fronted-PP / negative-adverb inversion (V before S)
  [Fronted PP / negative adverb] + [verb] + [real subject]
    • "To the darkness of ignorance HAVE BEEN ADDED presumption and wantonness."
       → base: Presumption and wantonness have been added to the darkness of ignorance.
    • "NEVER DID any mortal devise a scheme..." → No mortal ever devised a scheme...
  TRAP: agreement follows the DELAYED subject (plural "presumption and wantonness"
        → plural "have"); and a fronted negative forces do-support (did devise).

변형 연습: Turn "God has engraven his glory on the whole of nature" into a fronted-PP inversion → "On the whole of nature has God engraven his glory."

FORMULA 2 — Nominative absolute (noun + participle, no finite verb)
  [Noun + V-ing / V-en], [main clause]
    • "Every individual mind BEING a kind of labyrinth, it is not wonderful..."
       → Since every mind is a labyrinth, ...
    • "...a God, THERE BEING none." → since there is no God.
  TRAP: the participle (being/giving/devising) is NOT the main verb — find the
        finite verb in the main clause. Do not read "being" as "is."

변형 연습: "The mind is corrupted; therefore it invents idols" → absolute: "The mind being corrupted, it invents idols."

FORMULA 3 — Proportional  the + comparative … the + comparative  (+ inversion)
  The [more X], the [more Y]  — two variables moving together
    • "The higher any one was endued with genius ... THE MORE SPECIOUS WAS the colouring."
       (note V-S inversion after the fronted comparative)
    • "THE LONGER I consider, THE DARKER the subject appears."
  TRAP: the second limb often inverts (was the colouring); and the two limbs may
        move in OPPOSITE directions on one axis (more thought → less light).

변형 연습: "As reason searches harder for God, it grows blinder" → "The harder reason searches for God, the blinder it grows."

⚠️ = false-friend trap (meaning flips from modern usage).

§12 is where Calvin turns his doctrine of the sensus divinitatis (§§1–4) toward its dark side and writes, in effect, a Reformed theology of religion. The logic is tight: because there is a real seed of divinity in every mind, its corruption does not produce nothing — it produces idols. Atheism and idolatry are not evidence against innate religion; they are its pathology. That is why he can say the very mass of superstition (S6) proves the point.

Notice the two-front war. On one flank stand the idolaters — nations and individuals manufacturing gods (S1–S12); the specimen villains are the Stoics (allegorizing the divine names out of nature, from Cicero and the Stoic physical theology) and the Egyptians (mystery-cult and animal worship dressed as allegory). On the other flank stand the Epicureans (Lucretius' tradition), who look at the philosophers' chaos and amputate God altogether (S13–S14). Calvin's move is elegant: both errors run off the same corrupted seed, and both misread the same data (universal disagreement). The atheist says "therefore no God"; Calvin says "therefore a blind mind" (S16). Same evidence, opposite inference — and only Calvin's respects the object while diagnosing the instrument.

The sources are almost entirely Ciceronian: the Simonides-and-Hiero anecdote, the survey of philosophical disagreement about the gods, the Stoic name-multiplication — all trace to Cicero's De Natura Deorum (Book 1 especially), the ancient world's own catalog of theological confusion, which Calvin weaponizes against paganism from the inside. This is his standard method: let the best pagan witness convict the pagans.

Two limits to keep the section honest. First, the direction of the argument: natural knowledge here is sufficient to convict (it leaves us worshipping something, so we are inexcusable, Rom 1:20) but insufficient to save (it delivers only an unknown God). Later readers who make Calvin either a natural-theology optimist or a total pessimist both miss this: the seed is real (against the pessimist), the fruit is idolatry (against the optimist). Second, on the Barth–Brunner fault line that has run under this whole chapter: §12 is a strong text for "the use we make of natural revelation is only corruption," yet Calvin still grants Simonides a genuine (if partial) wisdom in confessing ignorance — so even here the knowledge is distorted, not deleted. The chapter's payoff is programmatic: an unknown God (S19) is precisely the vacancy that Book I chapter 6 fills by handing us Scripture as spectacles. §12 is the problem statement for which special revelation is the answer.

1. Romans 1:21–23 — the master text under the whole section: "when they knew God, they glorified him not as God … professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image." S1's flood of error, S2's every man his own god, and S4's gods gushing from the mind are Beveridge-Calvin's paraphrase of Paul's idolatry-exchange. Calvin is narrating Romans 1.
2. Acts 17:23 — "worship an unknown God" (S19) quotes Paul at the Areopagus reading the altar ἀγνώστῳ θεῷ, "TO AN UNKNOWN GOD." Calvin ends the section by making Paul's Athens the emblem of all natural religion: honest, learned, and still blank where the Name belongs. The Greek ἄγνωστος ("unknown, unknowable-by-them") carries the whole point about the dull and blind mind of S16.
3. Acts 17:27–28 — hovering just behind S19: the God who is "not far from every one of us," whom the nations "seek … if haply they might feel after him." Natural theology reaches (feels after) but does not grasp.
4. Jeremiah 2:28 / 11:13 — "according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah" — the arithmetic of idolatry behind S2's almost every man has had his own god.
5. Psalm 115:4–8 / 135:15–18 — idols as the work of men's hands, and the makers become like them: the theological engine of S3–S4 (man-made phantoms substituted for Deity).
6. 1 Corinthians 8:5 — "there be gods many, and lords many" — Paul's own summary of the polytheistic flood Calvin describes.

Calvin's habit on display: he quotes pagan witnesses (Cicero, Simonides, the Stoics) to establish the facts of idolatry, and Scripture to establish the verdict on it. The data are Athens'; the diagnosis is Paul's.

Problem 1 — 어법 (find the ONE wrong underline). Which underlined portion is grammatically wrong?

(a) To the darkness of ignorance has been added presumption and wantonness, and (b) never did any mortal devise a scheme by which religion was not corrupted; (c) every individual mind being a kind of labyrinth, and (d) the more polished a man was, the more specious was the colouring he gave his opinions.

Answer: (a). The fronted-PP inversion (Formula 1) delays a plural subject — presumption and wantonness — so the verb must be plural: have been added, not has been added. Agreement follows the real (delayed) subject. (b) correctly shows negative-adverb do-support inversion; (c) is a correct nominative absolute; (d) is a correct proportional with V-S inversion.

Problem 2 — 내용일치 (choose the statement that matches §12).

(A) From the philosophers' disagreement Calvin concludes that God probably does not exist. (B) Calvin says the more gifted a philosopher was, the closer he came to the true knowledge of God. (C) Calvin argues that the universal disagreement about God proves the human mind is dull and blind in heavenly things, and that nature-taught men end by worshipping an unknown God. (D) Calvin praises the Stoics for safeguarding God's unity while drawing his names from nature.

Answer: (C). (A) is the Epicurean inference, which Calvin calls arguing absurdly / a cloak for impiety (S14–S15) — direction reversed. (B) inverts S8: greater genius made the error more specious, not truer. (D) misreads S10: Calvin mocks the Stoic move as feeding our vanity for multiplicity. (C) states S16 + S19 correctly.

Problem 3 — 영작 (apply a formula). Translate into Calvin's style using the proportional with inversion (Formula 3): "미신을 자세히 살필수록, 인간 마음의 맹목은 더 분명해진다."

Model answer: "The more closely we examine these superstitions, the clearer becomes the blindness of the human mind." (Note the V-S inversion in the second limb — the clearer becomes the blindness — echoing S8's the more specious was the colouring.)

One-line summary: From the corrupted seed pours an immense flood of idolatry (and its mirror-twin, atheism); the universal disagreement of even the learned proves not that God is absent but that the mind is dull and blind, so that nature-taught man arrives only at an unknown God — the vacancy Scripture will fill. Three engines locked in: (1) fronted-PP / negative-adverb inversion (To the darkness … have been added; never did any mortal devise), (2) the stacked nominative absolute (every mind being a labyrinth; there being none), (3) the proportional (the higher … the more specious; the longer … the darker).

Homework (10 min): 1. Structure restore: rebuild S3 and S12 from their inverted form into plain S-V-O order, and label which is a fronted-PP inversion and which is a negative-adverb inversion. 2. 영작: write one sentence on idolatry using a nominative absolute (noun + participle) as the opening cause clause (model: "The seed of religion being corrupted, …"). 3. 예습 한 줄: tomorrow, §13 opens "Hence we must hold, that whosoever adulterates pure religion … make a departure from the one God." — Calvin turns from diagnosing idolatry to ruling on it: every self-styled worship, however sincere, is apostasy from the one God. Watch the word intention — sincerity will be put on trial.

Where we stopped: Book 1, Ch. 5, §12 끝. 다음은 Book 1, Ch. 5, §13 (Day 25) — "whosoever adulterates pure religion … make a departure from the one God": the verdict on self-willed worship as apostasy.