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and by them formally adopted. A body of regulations relating to church services and discipline, containing stringent provisions, was likewise ratified and put in operation. Opposition to the doctrines and deviation from the practices thus sanctioned, were penal offenses. A hairdresser, for example, for arranging a bride's hair in what was deemed an unseemly manner, was imprisoned for two days; and the mother, with two female friends, who had aided in the process, suffered the same penalty. Dancing and card-playing were also punished by the magistrate. They were not wrong in themselves, Calvin said, but they had been so abused that there was no other course but to prohibit them altogether. He who so dreaded a tumult, not only had to encounter Anabaptist fanatics who appeared in Geneva, but soon found himself, with his associates, in conflict with the government, and with the majority of the citizens who rebelled against the strictness of the new regime. At the head of the party of opposition, or of the Libertines, as they were styled by the supporters of Calvin, were Amy Perrin, Vandel, and Jean Philippe, who had been among the first advocates of the Reformation. In their ranks were many of the Confederates, or Eidgenossen, who had fought for the independence of the city. At Geneva, the baptismal font, the four festivals of Christmas, New Year's Day, the Annunciation, and the Ascension, and the use of unleavened bread in the Sacrament, all of which were retained in Berne, had been discarded. The opponents of the new system called for the restoration of the Bernese ceremonies. Finding themselves thwarted by the authorities. in the enforcement of church discipline, on Easter Sunday (1538), the ministers, Calvin, Farel, and Viret,

1 He was compelled, much to his mortification, to withstand an attack of a different kind from another quarter. He was charged with Arianism and Sabellianism. See Henry, i. 178 seq. Calvin was cautious as to the terms which he used on the subject of the Trinity, and did not insist on the word person. See Institutes, b. 1. xiii. 5. For his opinion of the Athanasian creed, see Kampschulte, i. 297.

BANISHMENT OF THE PREACHERS.

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preached in spite of the prohibition of the Syndics, and also took the bold step of refusing to administer the sacrament. Thereupon, by a vote of the Council, which was confirmed the next day by the general assembly of the citizens, they were banished from the city. Failing in their efforts to secure the intervention of Berne, and in other negotiations having reference to their restoration, they parted from one another. Farel went to Neufchâtel, and Calvin found a cordial reception in Strasburg. It was a general feeling, in which Calvin himself shared, that the preachers had gone imprudently far in their requirements. But the joy of Calvin at being delivered from the anxieties which he had suffered, and in finding himself at liberty to devote himself to his books, was greater, he says, than under the circumstances was becoming. But soon he was solicited by Bucer to take charge of the church of French refugees who were at Strasburg. Once more he was intimidated by Bucer's earnest appeal, who reminded him of the example of the fugitive prophet Jonah. Though his pecuniary support was small, so that he was compelled to take lodgers and even to sell his books to get the means of living, he was satisfied and happy. While at Strasburg, he was brought into intercourse with the Saxon theologians at the religious conferences held between the years 1539 and 1541, at Frankfort, at Worms, and at Hagenau, and in connection with the Diet at Ratisbon, where Contarini appeared as the representative of the Pope. Like Luther, Calvin had no faith in the practicableness of a compromise with the Catholics, and the negotiations became more and more irksome to him. His ignorance of the German language occasioned him some embarrassment. His talents and learning were fully recognized by the German theologians, and with Melancthon he formed a friendship which continued with a temporary, partial interruption, until they were separated by death. To the compromises

66

of the Leipsic Interim, Calvin was inflexibly opposed. On the great controverted point of the Eucharist, he and Melancthon were agreed, and the latter confided to him the anxieties which weighed heavily upon him on account of the jealousy on the Lutheran side, which was awakened by his change of opinion. With Luther, Calvin never came into personal contact; but he was delighted to hear that the Saxon leader had read some of his books with singular satisfaction," had betrayed no irritation at his difference on the question of the Supper, and had expressed a high degree of confidence in his ability to be useful to the Church. He thought Luther a much greater man than Zwingle, but that both were one-sided and too much under the sway of prejudice in their combat upon the Eucharist. He exclaims that he should never cease to revere Luther, if Luther were to call him a devil.1 When called upon at a later day, after the death of Melancthon, to take the field against bigoted Lutherans, he breaks out with the exclamation: "O Philip Melancthon, I direct my words to thee who now livest before God with Jesus Christ, and there art waiting for us till we are gathered with thee to that blessed rest! A hundred times hast thou said, when, wearied with labor and oppressed with anxieties, thou hast laid thy head affectionately upon my bosom: O that, O that I might die upon this bosom!'" But notwithstanding their friendship, Melancthon could not be prevailed on to express himself in favor of Calvin's doctrine of predestination, though the latter dedicated to him, in flattering terms, a treatise on the subject, and by letters sought to enlist his support. Calvin was bringing in, Melancthon wrote to a friend, the Stoic doctrine of fate.2 When Bolsec was taken into custody for vehemently attacking this doctrine in public, Melancthon wrote to Camerarius that they had put a 1 Henry, ii. 352. 2 Corp. Ref., vii. 392.

CALVIN AT STRASBURG.

215 man in prison at Geneva for not agreeing with Zeno.1 The relations of Calvin to the friends of Zwingle and to the churches which had been established under his auspices, were for a while unsettled. Calvin's Eucharistic doctrine differed from that of the Zurich reformer, and he was suspected of an intention to introduce the Lutheran theory. He succeeded in convincing them that this suspicion was groundless, and in bringing about a union. through the acceptance of common formularies. The fact that Zwingle had rather professed the doctrine of predestination as a philosophical theorem, than brought it forward in popular teaching, required special exertions on the part of Calvin to quiet the misgivings of the Swiss respecting this point also.2 In this effort he was likewise successful. Yet Berne, partly from the disfavor which it felt towards minor peculiarities of the Genevan cultus, but chiefly owing to the disappointment of political schemes, never treated Calvin with entire confidence and friendli

ness.

While at Strasburg, Calvin was married to the widow of an Anabaptist preacher whom he had converted. Several previous attempts to negotiate a marriage, in which he had proceeded in a quite business-like spirit, with no outlay of sentiment, had from various causes proved abortive. The lady whom he married appears to have been a person of rare worth, his life with her was one of uninterrupted harmony; and when, nine years after their marriage, she died, his deep grief proved the tenderness of his attach

1 Melancthon said that they had revived the fatalistic doctrine of Laurentius Valla. This, also, was one of the most offensive accusations of Bolsec.

2 Calvin criticizes Zwingle's treatment of this doctrine, in a letter to Bullinger (Bonnet, cclxxxix.). The lukewarmness of the Swiss churches in the case of Bolsec was very vexatious to Calvin, as this and other letters show. The correspondence on this case instructively exhibits the unwillingness of the Zwinglian churches to press the doctrine of predestination, as Calvin would wish. Their expressions of sympathy were very qualified and constrained. Bullinger took quite another tone in reference to Servetus, where the doctrine of the Trinity was assailed.

ment. His only child, a son, lived but a short time. It may be remarked here that Calvin was far from being unsusceptible to friendship. With Farel and Viret he was united in the closest bonds of intimacy. Though schooled to submission, when he hears of the death of one after another of his friends, he gives expression to his sorrow, sometimes in pathetic language. Beza loved him as a father.

Three years after his expulsion he was recalled to Geneva by the united voices of the government and people. The distracted condition of the city caused all eyes to turn to him as the only hope. Disorder and vice had been on the increase. Scenes of licentiousness and violence were witnessed by day and by night in the streets. The Catholics were hoping to see the old religion restored. There was a prospect that Berne would find its profit in the anarchical situation of its neighbor, and establish its control in Geneva. Of the four Syndics who had been active in the banishment of the preachers, one had broken his neck by a fall from a window, another had been executed for murder, and the remaining two had been banished on suspicion of treason. The consciences of many were alarmed at these occurrences. Meantime Cardinal Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, addressed to the Senate a very persuasive letter, free from all acrimony, and couched in a flattering style, for the purpose of bringing the city back to the fold of the Catholic Church. To this document Calvin published a masterly reply, in which he expressed his undying interest in the welfare of the Genevan Church, and reviewed the Protestant controversy with singular force and clearness. "Here is a work," said Luther, on reading it, "that has hands and feet." The personal reminiscences relating to his conversion, which are interwoven, make it, as a contribution to his biography, only second in importance to the Preface to the Psalms. It made

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