[54] See Note 3, p. 47.
[55] In 1536. No copy of this first edition of the Catechism of Calvin is known, nor of the second, which was published two years later at Basle, (1538.) The earliest known edition is that of (1541) at Strasbourg.
[56] That meeting had ended on the 13th May.—See Ruchat, Hist. de la Réf., tom. v. p. 24.
[57] These two deputies were Rudolph de Graffenried, Banderet, and Nicolas Zerkinden, Secretary of State.
[58] One of these ministers was Gaspar Grossmann, (Megander.) See Letter XIII. p. 47. He had been charged by the seigneury of Berne to draw up the oath which was to be taken by the ministers, and the order of procedure to be followed in the Synod.
[59] On the authority of Ruchat, it appears that Caroli did not wait for the decision of the Lords of Berne, and that he withdrew himself into voluntary exile from the condemnation with which he was threatened. The act of his desertion was given to Farel and to Calvin, the 29th of June 1537. (MSS. de Grossmann. Archives de Berne.) We shall meet him again in the following letters of the Reformer.
[60] See that Confession, (Calv. Epist. et Responsa,) p. 227.
[61] William du Bellay, Seigneur of Langey, one of the cleverest diplomatists under the reign of Francis the First. Born in 1491, he died the 9th January 1543. William du Bellay and his brother John, the Bishop of Paris, had shown themselves favourable to the first ideas of Reformation, and had consulted with the King for the purpose of calling Melanchthon into France, there to put in train the work of religious pacification.—Bèze, Hist. Eccl. tom. i. p. 10; Florimond de Remond, Histoire de la Naissance et du Progrès de l' Hérésie, liv. vii. p. 817. The last mentioned author has given the letters which passed on this occasion between Melanchthon and Francis I. The French Protestants formed great expectations from Du Bellay. In these terms Bucer wrote to the physician Ulrich Chelius, 17th Aug. 1534: "Dominus excitet multos isti heroi similes, et spes erit forte ut emergat aliquando regnum Christi."—Sturm, on his part, wrote to Bucer, 17th Nov. 1535; "Si Langæus isthuc veniat, obsecro, habe eum in numero eorum qui quidvis pati volunt pro Christo."—MSS. de Strasbourg.
[62] Louis du Tillet, curé of Claix in Poitou, canon and archdeacon of Angoulême. He was the brother of John du Tillet, the celebrated registrar of the Parliament of Paris, and of that other Du Tillet who became Bishop of Sainte-Brieuc and of Meaux. Having devoted himself to an ecclesiastical career, his first leanings inclined him towards the Reformed. With Calvin he became acquainted at the University of Paris, formed a friendship with him, shared his perils, and received him in 1534 at Angoulême in his own house. United thenceforth to the young Reformer by a like faith, he resigned his curacy of Claix to follow him, under the name of Hautmont, to Strasbourg, to Basle, and into Italy. In August 1536 he was at Geneva, when Calvin was there retained by the earnest entreaties of Farel. But the struggles to which the Reformer was thenceforward condemned, were little suited to the mild and contemplative disposition of Louis du Tillet. A prey to indecision, he secretly left Geneva and went to Strasbourg, where his anxieties were only put an end to by his return to the Roman Catholic faith. He wrote to Calvin to inform him of this change, and to submit to him his scruples regarding the lawfulness of the ministry in the Reformed Churches. Calvin replied; and that controversy, free, sincere, but tempered by respect, marked the later relations between these two men, at first united and too soon separated by the religious revolution of the sixteenth century.
[63] Ville Affranchie (Genève.)