There are, indeed, writers of eminence who charge this man of God with despotism; because he was the enemy of libertinage, he has been called the enemy of liberty. Nobody was more opposed than Calvin to that moral and social anarchy which threatened the sixteenth century, and which ruins every epoch unable to keep it under control. This bold struggle of Calvin’s is one of the greatest services he has done to liberty, which has no enemies more dangerous than immorality and disorder.
Should the question be asked, How ought infidelity to be arrested? we must confess that Calvin was not before his age, which was unanimous, in every communion, for the application of the severest punishments. If a man is in error as regards the knowledge of God, it is to God alone that he must render an account. When men—and they are sometimes the best of men—make themselves the avengers of God, the conscience is startled, and religion hides her face. It was not so three centuries back, and the most eminent minds always pay in one manner or another their tribute to human weakness. And yet, on a well-known occasion, when a wretched man, whose doctrines threatened society, stood before the civil tribunals of Geneva, there was but one voice in all Europe raised in favour of the prisoner; but one voice that prayed for some mitigation of Servetus’s punishment, and that voice was Calvin’s.[6]
However inveterate the prejudices against him may be, the indisputable evidence of history places Calvin among the fathers of modern liberty. It is possible that we may find impartial men gradually lending their ear to the honest and solemn testimony of past ages; and the more the world recognises the importance and universality of the Reformation which came forth from Geneva, the more shall we be excused for directing attention for a few moments to the heroic age of this obscure city.
The sixteenth century is the greatest in Christian times; it is the epoch where (so to speak) everything ends and everything begins; nothing is paltry, not even dissipation; nothing small, not even a little city lying unobserved at the foot of the Alps.
In that renovating age, so full of antagonist forces and energetic struggles, the religious movements did not proceed from a single centre; they emanated from opposite poles, and are mentioned in the well-known line—
Je ne décide pas entre Genève et Rome.[7]
The Catholic focus was in Italy—in the metropolis of the ancient world; the evangelical focus in Germany was transferred from Wittemberg to the middle of European nations—to the smallest of cities—to that whose history I have to relate.
When history treats of certain epochs, as for instance the reign of Charles V., there may be a certain disadvantage in the vastness of the stage on which the action passes; we may complain that the principal actor, however colossal, is necessarily dwarfed. This inconvenience will not be found in the narrative I have undertaken. If the empire of Charles V. was the largest theatre in modern history, Geneva was the smallest. In the one case we have a vast empire, in the other a microscopical republic. But the smallness of the theatre serves to bring out more prominently the greatness of the actions: only superficial minds turn with contempt from a sublime drama because the stage is narrow and the representation devoid of pomp. To study great things in small is one of the most useful exercises. What I have in view—and this is my apology—is not to describe a petty city of the Alps, for that would not be worth the labour; but to study in that city a history which is in the main a reflection of the history of Europe,—of its sufferings, its struggles, its aspirations, its political liberties, and its religious transformations. I will confess that my attachment to the land of my birth may have led me to examine our annals rather too closely, and narrate them at too great length. This attachment to my country which has cheered me in my task, may possibly expose me to reproach; but I hope it will rather be my justification. ‘This book,’ said Tacitus, at the beginning of one of his immortal works, ‘was dictated by affection: that must be its praise, or at least its excuse.’[8] Shall we be forbidden to shelter ourselves humbly behind the lofty stature of the prince of history?
Modern liberties proceed from three different sources, from the union of three characters, three laws, three conquests—the Roman, the German, and the Christian. The combination of these three influences, which has made modern Europe, is found in a rather striking manner in the valley of the Leman. The three torrents from north, south, and east, whose union forms the great stream of civilisation, deposited in that valley which the Creator hollowed out between the Alps and the Jura that precious sediment whose component parts can easily be distinguished after so many ages.
First we come upon the Roman element in Geneva. This city was for a long while part of the empire; ‘it was the remotest town of the Allobroges,’ says Cæsar.[9] About a league from Geneva there once stood an antique marble in honour of Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, who 122 years before Christ had triumphed over the people of this district;[10] and the great Julius himself, who constructed immense works round the city, bequeathed his name to a number of Roman colonists, or clients at least. More remarkable traces—their municipal institutions—are found in most of the cities which the Romans occupied; we may be permitted to believe that Geneva was not without them.