ABSTRACT
The first point to make here is that this caption contains a fallacy according to the assumptions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A term like Calvinism assumes an ideology linked inseparably and uniquely with a single individual, who, though no doubt influenced by others, has created an original and distinctive thought-system. That was not how Calvin and his followers viewed their beliefs, which they saw as the restored consensus of pure Christianity. What we call Calvinism was to Calvinists simply the true Reformation of Christianity, and the term the Calvinists preferred for themselves was the ‘Reformed’.
