‘But after I had consented sometimes to be instructed, I perceived that the fear of seeing the majesty of the Church lessened was idle. These people showed that there was a wide difference between forsaking the Church and correcting the vices with which she was defiled; and that if they spoke freely against the Pope of Rome, held to be the vicar of Christ and head of the Church, they did so because these titles were only idle terrors which ought not to dazzle the eyes of the faithful; that the pope had risen to such magnificence only when ignorance oppressed the world like deep sleep; that it was by his own authority and sole will that he had elected himself, and that we were under no obligation to endure the tyranny with which he oppressed the nations, if we desired that the kingdom of Christ should remain in its fulness amongst us; that when this principality was erected, the genuine order of the Church was wholly lost, the keys (ecclesiastical order) wickedly falsified, Christian liberty suppressed, and the kingdom of Christ totally overthrown.
‘When I began to discover in what a slough of errors I had wallowed and with how many stains I was disgraced, desperately alarmed and distracted at the sight of the misery into which I had fallen, and by the knowledge of the eternal death which was at hand, I condemned with tears and groans my former way of life, and esteemed nothing more needful for me than to betake myself to thine. What then is left for me to do, for me poor and miserable, but to offer to thee, as all my vindication, a humble supplication not to impute to me the so horrible forsaking and estrangement from thy Word, from which thou hast once rescued me by thy marvellous kindness?’
THE REAL SCHISMATICS.
Having finished his pleading before the Judge, Calvin returns to Sadoleto and says: ‘Now, if it seem good to thee, compare this address with that which thou hast put into the mouth of thy man, whose defence turns only on this hinge, to wit, that he constantly kept the religion which had been handed down to him by his forefathers and predecessors. His salvation is in great peril, without a shadow of doubt; for on the same ground Jews, Turks, and Saracens would escape the judgment of God. The tribunal will not then be prepared to accept the authority of men, but to maintain the truth of God. Your doctors will not then have a stage at hand for the sale, without risk, of their imitation gems, and for the abuse of consciences by their trumpery and inventions. They will remain what they are, and they will fall by the judgment of God, which depends not on popular favor, but on his unchangeable justice.
‘Although thou treatest us with too little humanity in the whole of thy letter, it is nevertheless in the last clause, in the plainest terms, that thou imputest to us the most enormous of all crimes, to wit, that we disperse and tear to pieces the spouse of Jesus Christ. What! would the spouse of Jesus Christ be torn in pieces by those who desire to present her as a chaste virgin to Christ, and who, finding her polluted with many stains, recall her to her plighted faith? Was not the purity of the Church destroyed by strange doctrines, disgraced by innumerable superstitions, tainted by the worship of images? Indeed, because we did not endure that the sacred resting place and nuptial chamber of Christ should be thus defiled by you, we are accused of having dismembered his spouse. It is you that have been guilty of this laceration, and not with regard to the Church only, but with regard to Jesus Christ himself, whom you have miserably cut in pieces. Where is the wholeness of Christ, when the glory of his righteousness, of his holiness, of his wisdom, is transferred to others?
‘I acknowledge that since the Gospel has appeared anew, great conflicts have been occasioned. But it is not at our door that the guilt of this is to be laid. We ask for a peace with which the kingdom of Christ shall flourish; but you judge that all that is gained for Christ is lost to you. Pray the Lord, Sadoleto, that thou and thy people may once for all understand that there is no other bond in the church but Christ our Lord, who withdraws us from the dissipations of the world to place us in the society of his body, to the end that by his only Word and by his Spirit, we may be united in one heart and one thought!
‘Strasburg, the 1st day of September, 1539.’
This letter found its way wherever the great question of the age was discussed, and made a deep impression. There were in it an impulse, a strength, a freedom, and a life which people were not accustomed to find in the writings of the Roman doctors. Luther greatly rejoiced in it, and soon after its publication sent a ‘respectful’ greeting to Calvin. At the same time, struck by the Romish presumption of Sadoleto, he added, with a touch of malice, ‘I wish that Sadoleto could believe that God is the Creator of men even beyond the borders of Italy.’[802] He expressed his joy that God raised up men like Calvin, and, far from looking on him as an antagonist, he saw in him a doctor who would continue what he had himself begun against Antichrist, and with God’s help would complete it.
EFFECT OF THE REPLY AT GENEVA.
But it was especially at Geneva that Calvin’s letter made a deep impression. The respect which he had shown to Sadoleto prepossessed people in his favor; and the eloquence of his discourse, that gift of the soul which he possessed, made him master of men’s minds. In his thought and in his expressions there was a close correspondence with the disposition of a large number of his readers. Moreover, it was impossible to read the two letters without seeing that the young evangelical doctor had beaten the Roman cardinal. And then, was not the cause in behalf of which Calvin had given battle that of Geneva? Was not the defeat of Sadoleto, and thereby also that of his constituents, the pope and the conference of Lyons, the greatest service that could be rendered to the republic? And finally had not this man whom they had driven away spoken of the town which had expelled him with fatherly love? Did he not say in his letter, ‘I cannot divert my attention from the Church of Geneva; I cannot love it less nor hold it less dear than my own soul.... Consider what folly it would be not to lay to heart the ruin of those for whose protection I am bound to watch day and night.’