Doullon was accused of having uttered a great blasphemy against the glorious mother of our Lord and against our Lord himself: he had denied that the host was very Christ. The clergy had taken advantage of the king’s absence, and had used unprecedented haste in the trial. ‘He was taken the Thursday before,’ and four days later was standing bareheaded and barefooted, with the rope about his neck, in front of the metropolitan church of Paris. Everybody was listening to hear the apology he would make to the Virgin; but they listened in vain: Doullon remained firm in his faith to the last. Accordingly, the hangman again laid hands on him, and the prothonotary, guarded by the sergeants, and preceded and followed by the crowd, was led to the Grève, where he was fastened to the stake and burnt alive.[589] The execution of a priest of some dignity in the Church made a sensation in Paris, especially in the schools and among the disciples of the Reform. ‘Ah!’ said Calvin subsequently, ‘the torments of the saints whom the hand of the Lord makes invincible, should give us boldness; for thus we have beforehand the pledge of our victory in the persons of our brethren.’
While death was thinning the ranks of the evangelical army, new soldiers were taking the place of those who had disappeared. Calvin had been wandering for some time in darkness, despairing of salvation by the path of the pope, and not knowing that of Jesus Christ. One day (we cannot say when) he saw light breaking through the obscurity, and a consoling thought suddenly entered his heart. ‘A new form of doctrine has risen up,’ he said.[590] ‘If I have been mistaken ... if Olivétan, if my other friends, if those who give their lives to preserve their faith are right ... if they have found in that path the peace which the doctrines of the priests refuse me?’ ... He began to pay attention to the things that were told him; he began to examine into the state of his soul. A ray of light shone into it and exposed his sin. His heart was troubled: it seemed to him that every word of God he found in Scripture tore off the veil and reproached him with his trespasses. He shed floods of tears. ‘Of a surety,’ he said, ‘these new preachers know how to prick the conscience.[591] Now that I am prepared to be really attentive, I begin to see, thanks to the light that has been brought me, in what a slough of error I have hitherto been wallowing;[592] with how many stains I am disfigured ... and above all, what is the eternal death that threatens me.’[593] A great trembling came over him; he paced his room as Luther had once paced his cell at Erfurth. He uttered (he tells us) deep groans and shed floods of tears.[594] He was crushed beneath the weight of his sin. Terrified at the divine holiness, like a leaf tossed by the wind, like a man frightened by a violent thunderstorm, he exclaimed: ‘O God! thou keepest me bowed down, as if thy bolts were falling on my head.’[595] ... Then he fell at the feet of the Almighty, exclaiming: ‘I condemn with tears my past manner of life, and transfer myself to thine. Poor and wretched, I throw myself on the mercy which thou hast shown us in Jesus Christ: I enter that only harbour of salvation.[596] ... O God, reckon not up against me that terrible desertion and disgust of thy Word, from which thy marvellous bounty has rescued me.’[597]
Following Olivétan’s advice, Calvin applied to the study of Scripture, and everywhere he found Christ. ‘O Father!’ he said, ‘his sacrifice has appeased thy wrath; his blood has washed away my impurities; his cross has borne my curse; his death has atoned for me[598] .... We had devised for ourselves many useless follies[599] ... but thou hast placed thy Word before me like a torch, and thou hast touched my heart, in order that I should hold in abomination all other merits save that of Jesus.’[600]
Calvin had, however, the final struggle to go through. To him, as to Luther, the great objection was the question of the Church. He had always respected the authority of a Church which he believed to have been founded by the apostles and commissioned to gather mankind round Jesus Christ; and these thoughts often disturbed him. ‘There is one thing,’ he told the evangelicals, ‘which prevents my believing you: that is, the respect due to the Church.[601] The majesty of the Church must not be diminished.[602] ... I cannot separate from it.’
Calvin’s friends at Paris, and afterwards perhaps Wolmar and others at Orleans and Bourges, did not hesitate to reply to him.[603] ‘There is a great difference between separating from the Church and trying to correct the vices with which it is stained.[604] ... How many antichrists have held the place in its bosom which belongs to the pastors only!’
Calvin understood at last that the unity of the Church cannot and ought not to exist except in the truth. His friends, perceiving this, spoke openly to him against the Pope of Rome.—‘Men take him for Christ’s vicar, Peter’s successor, and the head of the Church.... But these titles are empty scarecrows.[605] Far from permitting themselves to be dazzled by these big words, the faithful ought to discriminate the matter truly. If the pope has risen to such height and magnificence, it is because the world was plunged in ignorance and smitten with blindness.[606] Neither by the voice of God, nor by a lawful call of the Church, has the pope been constituted its prince and head; it is by his own authority and by his own will alone.... He elected himself.[607] In order that the kingdom of Christ may stand, the tyranny with which the pope oppresses the nations must come to an end.’[608] Calvin’s friends, as he tells us, ‘demolished by the Word of God the princedom of the pope and his exceeding elevation.’[609]
Calvin, not content with hearing the arguments of his friends, ‘searched the Scriptures thoroughly,’ and found numerous evidences corroborating the things that had been told him. He was convinced. ‘I see quite clearly,’ he said, ‘that the true order of the Church has been lost;[610] that the keys which should preserve discipline have been counterfeited;[611] that christian liberty has been overthrown;[612] and that when the princedom of the pope was set up, the kingdom of Christ was thrown down.’[613] Thus fell the papacy in the mind of the future reformer; and Christ became to him the only king and almighty head of the Church.
What did Calvin then? The converted often believed themselves called to remain in the Church that they might labour at its purification; did he separate himself from Rome? Theodore Beza, his most intimate friend, says: ‘Calvin, having been taught the true religion by one of his relations named Pierre Robert Olivétan, and having carefully read the holy books, began to hold the teaching of the Roman Church in horror, and had the intention of renouncing its communion.’[614] This testimony is positive; and yet Beza only says in this extract that he ‘had the intention.’ The separation was not yet decided and absolute. Calvin felt the immense importance of the step. However, he resolved to break with Catholicism, if necessary, in order to possess the truth. ‘I desire concord and unity, O Lord,’ he said; ‘but the unity of the Church I long for is that which has its beginning and its ending in thee.[615] If, to have peace with those who boast of being the first in the Church, I must purchase it by denying the truth ... then I would rather submit to everything than condescend to such an abominable compact!’ The reformer’s character, his faith, his decision, his whole life are found in these words. He will endeavour to remain in the Church, but ... with the truth.
Calvin’s conversion had been long and slowly ripening; and yet, in one sense, the change was instantaneous. ‘When I was the obstinate slave of the superstitions of popery,’ he says, ‘and it seemed impossible to drag me out of the deep mire, God by a sudden conversion subdued me, and made my heart obedient to his Word.’[616] When a city is taken, it is in one day and by a single assault that the conqueror enters and plants his flag upon the ramparts; and yet for months, for years perhaps, he has been battering at the walls.
Thus was this memorable conversion accomplished, which by saving one soul became for the Church, and we may even say for the human race, the principle of a great transformation. Then, it was only a poor student converted in a college; now, the light which this scholar set on a candlestick has spread to the ends of the world, and elect souls, scattered among every nation, acknowledge in his conversion the origin of their own.