At the end of February Calvin set out for Ratisbon, to which place the conference of Worms had been transferred by the emperor. He had informed the council of Geneva of this absence on February 1, 1541. ‘I am appointed deputy,’ he said, ‘to the diet of Ratisbon, and since I am God’s servant and not my own, I am ready to serve wheresoever it may seem good to him to call me.’ Touching the arrival of Viret at Geneva he added, ‘He is a man of such faithfulness and discretion, that having him you are not destitute.’[[46]] This sojourn of Viret at Geneva was in Calvin’s eyes a matter of great moment. He had grave fears for the city. ‘I greatly fear,’ said he, ‘that if this church had remained much longer in its state of destitution, every thing would have turned out contrary to our wishes; but now I hope; the danger is past.’[[47]]

The preparations for his journey had not allowed Calvin to reply immediately to Bernard. The letter of this Genevese pastor was not altogether agreeable to him. Bernard’s application to him of a prophecy referring to Jesus Christ (the head-stone of the corner), was in his eyes a piece of flattery which could only disgust him (usque ad nauseam, he wrote to Farel). However, he knew his man, and so the more willingly took his letter in good part. He wrote to Bernard from Ulm, March 1, that the arguments which he advanced for his return had always had great weight with him; that he was most of all terrified at the thought of fighting against God, and that it was this feeling which never allowed him entirely to reject the call; that he thanked him for his entreaties, and that, seeing his kind intentions, he hoped that the feeling of his heart corresponded to his words, and he promised on his own part all that could be expected of a friend of peace, oppose to all strife. ‘But, at the same time,’ he added, ‘I beseech you, in God’s name, and by his awful judgment, to remember what he is with whom you have to do, the Lord, who will call you to give to him an exact account at the judgment day, who will submit you to a most rigorous trial, and who cannot be satisfied with mere words and empty excuses. I ask of you only one thing—that you consecrate yourself sincerely and faithfully to the Lord.’[[48]] Thus is it always; his own great motive the will of God; and as to Bernard, he must be a true servant of God. The truth before every thing.

Calvin, meanwhile, was gradually becoming familiar with the thought of returning to Geneva. The same day (March 1) he wrote, it is true, from Ulm to Viret, and said to him, ‘There is no place under heaven that I more dread;‘[[49]] but he added, ‘The care required by this church affects me deeply; and I do not know how it happens that my mind begins to lean more to the thought of taking the helm.’ The decisive blow had been struck by Farel. It was he who, in 1541, restored to Geneva this Calvin whom he had first given to the city in 1536.

About the end of February the Reformer received from his friend a letter so pressing and so forcible, ‘that the thunders of Pericles seemed to be heard in it,’ according to the expression of Calvin’s friend, the refugee Claude Feray, who at the Reformer’s request wrote to Farel and thanked him ‘for this vehemence so useful to the whole Christian republic.’[[50]] No one knew better than Farel that Calvin alone could save Geneva. The Reformer now, therefore, began to change his attitude. Hitherto he had turned his back on the town that called him; from this time he set his face towards the city of the Leman. Almost at the same time Bullinger and other servants of God from Berne, from Basel, and from Zurich, prayed the council and the pastors of Strasburg not to oppose the return of the Reformer.

Victims Of The Plague.

Meanwhile, however powerful the thunder-peals of Farel might be, there were other circumstances which undoubtedly had an influence on Calvin’s decision. Other thunders were heard, besides those of which Claude Feray speaks, which deeply affected the Reformer, and which must have made it easier to exchange Strasburg for Geneva. The plague was raging in the former town, and was causing great mortality. Claude Feray was one of its first victims. Another friend of the Reformer, M. de Richebourg, had two sons at Strasburg, Charles and Louis; Louis was carried off by the epidemic three days after Feray. Antoine, Calvin’s brother, immediately took the other son, Charles, to a neighboring village. Desolation was in the house of the Reformer. His wife and his sister Maria quitted it likewise and went to join their brother Antoine. Calvin was in consternation as he received at Ratisbon, in rapid succession, these mournful tidings. ‘Day and night,’ said he, ‘my wife is incessantly in my thoughts; she is without counsel, for she is without her husband.’ The death of Louis, the sorrow of Charles, thus deprived within three days of his brother, and of his tutor Feray, whom he respected as a father, powerfully affected Calvin. But it was the sudden death of the latter, who had been his most trustworthy and most faithful friend at Strasburg, which above all filled him with grief. He thought sorrowfully of himself. ‘The more I feel the need,’ said he, ‘of such an adviser, the more I am persuaded that the Lord is chastising me for my offences.’ Prayer, however, and the Word of God refreshed his soul. He wrote to M. de Richebourg a touching letter, which he closed by entreating the Lord to keep him until he should arrive at that place to which Louis and Feray had gone before.[[51]]

CHAPTER XX.
CALVIN AT RATISBON.
(1541.)

Calvin had at this time anxieties of another kind, which may well have contributed to make the republic of Geneva preferable to the Germanic empire as a residence. When the conference was broken off at Worms in 1541, he had been elected deputy to the assembly of Ratisbon. It was with reluctance that he went there, either because he felt that he was no diplomatist, and did not consider himself at all fit for business of that kind,[[52]] or because he anticipated that his stay at Ratisbon would occasion him much annoyance. He was doubtless hoping always for the final victory of Jesus Christ, the theme of his song of triumph; but the conferences which he had already attended, the prolixities, the questions of mere form which arose, the direction which the Reformation seemed to be taking, all this disquieted and offended him. He had not gone to these Germanic assemblies with any large expectations or ready-made plans. He had no doubt that the Protestant divines would seek to extend the kingdom of Christ, but he saw more clearly than they did the obstacles which they would encounter. Many things afflicted and irritated him; and, perhaps, he could not at all times control his temper. The Catholics, it is true, made some |Concessions of the Lutherans.| concessions on important points; but even this failed to tranquillize Calvin, nay, it excited his suspicions, as it did those of Luther and the Elector of Saxony. Dr. Eck, who was one of the commissioners, was not a man to inspire much confidence in Calvin. The latter would sometimes speak rather hard words about him. This theologian had had an apoplectic fit, the consequence, it was rumored, of his intemperance, but he was gradually recovering. ‘The world,’ wrote Calvin to Farel, ‘does not yet deserve to be delivered from this brute.’[[53]] He acknowledged the pacific sentiments of Cardinal Contarini, the papal legate, who at the same time that he was a thorough-going Catholic so far as the Church was concerned, leaned towards reconciliation with the Protestants with respect to matters of faith. But Calvin, who assuredly saw more clearly than others, did not doubt that the Roman dignitary really wished to bring back Protestants into the pale of the Church. The only difference which he perceived between him and the nuncio Morone was this—Contarini wishes to subdue us, but without shedding our blood; he tries to gain his end by all means except by fighting, while Morone is altogether sanguinary, and has always war on his lips.[[54]] Calvin instituted a contrast between Morone and Contarini. The former is a man of blood, the latter a man of peace. Is it just to say that he hated Contarini?[[55]] We think not.

He was much displeased with most of the princes. If any occasion of pleasure presented itself, they would always say, ‘Business to-morrow.’ If Calvin anywhere went into the Lutheran churches, he was saddened by the sight of images and crosses, and by certain parts of the service. The relations of the theologians with princes and with courts appeared to him to be bonds of servility and worldliness.

He could not approve even the methods of procedure adopted by his best friends, Melanchthon and Bucer. To Farel he wrote thus: ‘They have drawn up ambiguous and colored formulæ on transubstantiation,[[56]] to see if they could not satisfy their opponents without making any real concession to them. I do not like this. I can, nevertheless, assure you and all good men, that they are acting with the best intentions, and are aiming only at the advancement of the kingdom of Christ. They fancy that our antagonists will presently have their eyes opened on the subject of doctrine, and that it is therefore best to leave this point undecided. But they are too accommodating to the temper of the times.’