Revisits France.
Is recognized while passing through Geneva.
Farel compels him to remain.
Once more in Basle, Calvin resolved, after a final visit to the home of his childhood, to seek out some quiet spot in Germany, there to give himself up to those scholarly labors which he fancied would be more profitable to France than the most active enterprises he might engage in as a preacher of the Gospel. He had accomplished the first part of his design, had disposed of his property in Noyon, and was returning with his brother and sister, when the prevalence of war in the Duchy of Lorraine led him to diverge from his most direct route, so as to traverse the dominions of the Duke of Savoy and the territories of the confederate cantons of Switzerland. Under these circumstances, for the first time, he entered the city of Geneva, then but recently delivered from the yoke of its bishop and of the Roman Church. He had intended to spend there only a single night.[407] He was accidentally recognized by an old friend, a Frenchman, who at the time professed the reformed faith, but subsequently returned to the communion of the Church of Rome.[408] Du Tillet was the only person in Geneva that detected in the traveller, Charles d'Espeville, the John Calvin who had written the "Institutes." He confided the secret to Farel, and the intrepid reformer whose office it had hitherto been to demolish, by unsparing and persistent blows, the popular structure of superstition, at once concluded that, in answer to his prayers, a man had been sent him by God capable of laying, amid the ruins, the foundations of a new and more perfect fabric. Farel sought Calvin out, and laid before him the urgent necessities of a church founded in a city where, under priestly rule, disorder and corruption had long been rampant. At first his words made no impression. Calvin had traced out for himself a very different course, and was little inclined to exchange a life of study for the perpetual struggles to which he was so unexpectedly summoned. But when he met Farel's request with a positive refusal, pleading inexperience, fondness for literary pursuits, and aversion to scenes of tumult and confusion, the Genevese reformer assumed a more decided tone. Acting under an impulse for which he could scarcely account himself, Farel solemnly prayed that the curse of God might descend on Calvin's leisure and studies, if purchased at the price of neglecting the duty to which the voice of the Almighty Himself, by His providence, distinctly called him.[409]
The amazed and terrified student felt—to use his own expression—that God had stretched forth His arm from heaven and laid violent hold upon him, rendering all further resistance impossible. He yielded to the unwelcome call, and became the first theological professor of Geneva. Somewhat later he was prevailed upon to add to his functions the duties of one of the pastors of the city.
Farel's own recollections.
If the scene impressed itself ineffaceably on the memory or one of the principal actors, its effect, we may be sure, was no less lasting in the case of the other. More than a quarter of a century after, Farel, on receiving the announcement that his worst apprehensions had been realized, in the death of his "so dear and necessary brother Calvin," wrote to a friend a touching letter, in which he referred in a few sentences to the same striking interview. "Oh, why am not I taken away in his stead, and why is not he, so useful, so serviceable, here in health, to minister long to the churches of our Lord! To Whom be blessing and praise, that, of His grace, He made me fall in with him where I had never expected to meet him, and, contrary to his own plans, compelled him to stop at Geneva, and made use of him there and elsewhere! For he was urged on one side and another more than could be told, and specially by me, who, in God's name, urged him to undertake matters that were harder than death. And albeit he begged me several times, in the name of God, to have mercy on him and suffer him to serve God in other ways, as he has always thus occupied himself, nevertheless, seeing that what I asked was in accordance with God's will, in doing himself violence he has done more and more promptly than any one else has done, surpassing not only others, but himself. Oh, how happily has he run an excellent race!"[410]
Calvin becomes the head of the commonwealth.
His view respecting church and state,
and the punishment of heresy.