One day a man had been murdered in the streets of Paris; a great crowd had gathered round his body, and a pious Christian exclaimed: 'Alas! who has committed this crime?' Quintin, who was there also, made answer immediately, in his Picard patois: 'Since you want to know, it was me!' The other said to him with surprise: 'What! could you be such a coward?' 'It was not me, it was God.' 'What!' exclaimed the man, 'you impute to God a crime which He punishes?' Then the wretched man, 'discharging his poison more copiously,' continued: 'Yes, it's thee, it's me, it's God; for what thee or me does, it is God who does it; and what God does, we do.'[164] Another analogous circumstance occurred in the house of Calvin's friend. De la Forge had a servant to whom he paid high wages; this man robbed his master, and ran away with the money. A shoemaker of the neighbourhood, who held Quintin's opinions, having gone to the shop the same day, found the tradesman very uneasy: 'The man who has committed such a base action,' he said, 'might easily take advantage of my credit, and borrow in my name.' Whereupon, as Calvin relates, the shoemaker immediately began to flap his wings, and was up into the clouds, exclaiming: 'It is blaspheming God to call this action base; ... seeing that God does everything, we ought to reckon nothing bad.' Some days later, this philosopher was himself robbed by a servant. Immediately forgetting all his spiritual knowledge, he rushed out of the house 'like a madman,' to search after the thief, and on reaching De la Forge's, was lavish of his abuse against the culprit. De la Forge ironically repeated to him his own words: 'But you accuse God,' he said, 'since it is He who did it.' The shoemaker sneaked of abashed, 'like a dog with his tail between his legs.'[165]
=FALSE LIBERTY OF THE SPIRITUALS.=
Calvin began the contest. It was not with philosophy, or speculation, or apologetics, that he fought these pretended spiritualists. 'God,' said he, 'enlightens us sufficiently in Scripture; it is our want of knowing them thoroughly that is the cause and source of all errors.'[166] He attacked Quintin and pressed him hard. He quoted the commandments of God against theft and murder: 'You call God impure,' he said, 'a thief and a robber,[167] and you add that there is no harm in it.[168] Who, I pray, has condemned impurity, theft, murder, if God has not?'... Quintin, who was generally very liberal with passages from Scripture, answered with a smile: 'We are not subject to the letter which killeth, but to the Spirit which giveth life.... The Bible contains allegories, myths which the Holy Spirit explains to us.'[169] 'You make your Scripture a nose of wax,' said Calvin, 'and play with it, as if it were a ball.'[170]—'You find fault with my language because you do not understand it,' said Quintin.—'I understand it a little better than you do yourself,' retorted Calvin; 'and I see pretty plainly that you desire to mislead (embabouiner) the world by absurd and dangerous trifling.'
The 'spirituals' were by turns protestant or catholic as suited them. Their manner of seeing accorded very well with their pantheism, and they would have been quite as much at their ease among the Hindoos and the Turks. This broadness, which misled the moderate party, offended Calvin. One day, when Quintin said with unction: 'I am just come from a solemn mass, celebrated by a cardinal.... I have seen the glory of God,'[171]—'I understand you,' said Calvin, rather coarsely; 'in your opinion, a canon ought to continue in his luxury, and a monk in his convent, like a pig in a sty.'[172]
The pantheists made proselytes. 'By dint of intrigue and flattery, they attracted the simple ignorant poor, whom they made as lazy as themselves.' They tried to make way with the learned and the great, and even to creep into the hearts of princes. Their high pretensions to spirituality staggered weak minds, and the convenient principle by which every man ought to remain in the Church to which he belonged, even were it sunk in error, made timid and irresolute characters lean to their side. A priest, who had become Quintin's head champion, succeeded in deceiving the excellent Bucer by means of the false appearance he put on; and ten years later, an elect soul, Margaret, was dazzled and deceived by their hypocritical spirituality. About 4,000 were led astray in France.
Calvin was not one of those individuals 'who remain in doubt and suspense;' from the very first he detected pantheism and materialism under the veils with which these men sought from time to time to conceal their errors, and boldly pointed them out. His uprightness and frankness presented a very striking contrast to their dissimulation and cunning. 'They turn their cloak inside out at every moment,' he said, 'so that you do not know where to hold them. One of the principal articles of their creed is that men ought to counterfeit, whilst even the heathens have said "that it is better to be a lion than a fox."'[173]
He found that their doctrines were impious and revolutionary. To confound God with the world was (he thought) to take from the world the living personal God who is present in the midst of us; and consequently to expose not only the Reformation and Christianity but the whole social system to utter ruin. The conduct of these pretended 'spirituals' was already sufficient in his eyes to characterise and condemn their system. 'What has metamorphosed Quintin and his companions from tailors into teachers,' said Calvin, 'is that, preferring to be well fed and at their ease to working, they find it convenient to gain their living by prating, as priests and monks do by chanting.'[174]
It was not until later that Calvin wrote his excellent treatise against the libertines;[175] but, says Theodore Beza, 'it was then (during his stay in Paris) that he first encountered those teachers who revived in our times the detestable sect of the Carpocratians, abolishing all difference between good and evil.'[176] He encountered a probably still more dangerous doctrine.
=SERVETUS.=