We will further observe, that if the two communions were intolerant in the sixteenth century, the one was so by virtue of its principles, the other was so in spite of itself. The Reformation, by granting the right of private judgment, had indirectly established religious liberty. It did not perceive at once all the consequences of this principle, because the Reformers had carried over with them a part of the prejudices of their first education; but these consequences were to become apparent sooner or later, and it is therefore justly regarded as the mother of all modern liberty.
Calvin had a share in only one execution. His heart was not cruel, and he was horrified at all the sanguinary acts unauthorized by a regular judicial sentence. He more than once restrained the hands of those who would have shed the blood of François de Guise, the cut-throat of Vassy. “I can protest,” he wrote to the duchess of Ferrara, “that it alone depended upon me that men of resolve and action, before the war, who were only restrained by my exhortation, did not devote themselves to exterminate him from the world.”
Calvin was sometimes impatient and irascible, and he has accused himself of being so. But the soft and affectionate sentiments that one would scarcely expect to find in the austere soul of the Reformer, were not strangers to him. Read his correspondence with his intimate friends Farel and Viret: how one hears the voice of the man, who reposed in the bosom of friendship from the grievous duties of his charge! and with what emotion the minister Des Gallards, who had spent sixteen years near him, speaks of his goodness!
He died poor. His disinterestedness was so great that the sceptic Bayle, on relating that he had left only three hundred crowns, inclusive of his library, could not repress a cry of admiration. “It is one of the rarest victories,” says he, “that virtue and grandeur of soul can obtain over nature in those who exercise the apostolic mission.”
The prodigious labours of Calvin oppress our imagination. “I do not believe,” Theodore de Bèze states, “that his equal can be found. Beside preaching every day from week to week, most frequently and whenever he could, he preached twice every Sunday. He lectured three times a week on theology. He made the remonstrances at the consistory, and gave an entire lecture every Friday in the conference of the Scripture, which we call Congregation; and he so persisted in this course to his death, that he never missed once, except when extremely ill. For the rest, who can recount his other works, ordinary and extraordinary? I do not think any man of our time has had more to hear, to answer, to write, or things of greater importance to deal with. The multiplicity and quality of his writings are alone sufficient to astound every man who looks at them, and still more those who read them. And what makes his labours more astonishing is, that his frame was naturally so weak, so attenuated by watching and too great abstinence, and what is more, subject to so many disorders, that any man who saw him could not have thought but that he had a very short while to live; and yet, notwithstanding all this, he never ceased to labour night and day in the Lord’s work. Many a time we urged him to take more care of himself; but his constant answer was that he did next to nothing, and that we ought to let him be, so that God might find him watching and working his best, until his last breath.”[18]
Calvin died on the 27th of May, 1564, aged fifty-five years all but one month. He was of the middle height, and had a pale face, brown complexion, and serene, brilliant eyes. He was neat and plain in his dress; and he ate so little, that for many years he took but one meal a day.
A few weeks before his death he dictated his will, in which he takes God to witness as to the sincerity of his faith, and offers his thanksgivings that he should have been employed in the service of Jesus Christ and the truth.
VI.
The persecutions we have seen until now, appear moderate beside those of which the Vaudois of Provence were the victims. To find a parallel for so fearful a butchery, we must go back to the extermination of the Albigeois.