[311] In allusion to the misconduct of a servant of Monsieur de Falais.
[312] We read in the MS. Chronicle of Michael Roset, lib. v. chap. 27, "By advice of the ministers, April 3, 1550, it was enacted, that an annual visitation be maintained from house to house, for the examination of men and women as to their faith, in order to discern between the ignorant, and hardened sinners, and true Christians, which in time has wrought great benefit."
[313] See the notice, p. 249.
In a reaction, perhaps exaggerated, against the practices of the Romish Church, the magistrates of Geneva were led to adopt a measure which made a great noise among the Swiss Protestants. While Berne and Zurich celebrated the four great feasts of the year, according to the ancient Catholic custom, the Genevese abolished the weekday feasts, and kept nothing but the Sabbath. This measure, in which Calvin had no hand whatever, and of which he, in some degree, even disapproved, was made nevertheless the subject of very violent personal declamations against him. Some even accused him of wishing to abolish the Sabbath. In letters to his friends, Haller, Bullinger, and some others, he thought it his duty to represent the true character of the reform effected at Geneva, and his real relation to it. He had little difficulty in obtaining the approbation of Bullinger, who replied to him in these words: "You have just given the answer which I expected, my dear brother. For I know that in matters of that sort, where duty is but little heeded, and much ill-will is engendered, you have never been morose. I am anxious, indeed, in such matters, to see that liberty preserved, which I perceive to have flourished in the churches from the very days of the apostles." ...—Calvini Opera, tom. ix. p. 63.
[314] The plague, which had cut off Hedio, the pious minister at Strasbourg, made great ravages at Berne during the same year. It entered the houses of Wolfgang Musculus, and of John Haller, although they escaped themselves. A great number of the ministers of the Church of Berne sunk under the attacks of this awful scourge.—Ruchat, tom. v. p. 470. The Chronique of Haller, cited by Hottinger.
[315] Ruchat, who reproduces this letter, (tom. v. p. 441,) considers that the name here suppressed is that of Pierre Kontzen, a minister of Berne, who presided, in 1538, at the Synod of Lausanne.
[316] Always attentive to regulate by ordinances the different points of religious and ecclesiastical life, the Seigneurs of Berne had just published (Dec. 1550) new edicts more rigorous than those which had preceded them. These edicts were especially directed against the gross notions and certain customs of the Papists, which Berne punished by fine. Indulgent to the taking of oaths, of which the custom was generally disseminated among the Catholic population subject to their dominion, the Seigneurie seemed to reserve all their severity for the offence of not observing the feasts abolished at Geneva.
[317] This abolition, which was at a later period to provoke such warm debates between Berne and Geneva, had been pronounced the 16th Nov. 1550.
[318] Richard Le Fèvre, a native of Rouen, one of the martyrs of the Reformed Church of Lyons. Seized in that town in 1551, and condemned to death, he appealed thence to the Parliament of Paris, and was delivered in transitu by some unknown friends. Surprised, two years afterwards, at Grenoble, he was brought back to the dungeons of Lyons, saw his first sentence confirmed by the Parliament of Paris, and went cheerfully to the stake the 7th July 1551. He wrote on the 3d of May to Calvin,—"The present is to let you know, that I hope to go to keep Whitsuntide in the kingdom of heaven, and to be present at the marriage of the Son of God, ... if I am not sooner called away by this good Lord and Master, whose voice i am ready to obey, when he shall say, Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you before the foundation of the world."—(The original autograph letter, Library of Geneva, Vol. 109.) During his first captivity at Lyons, Richard Le Fèvre had consulted Calvin on some points of doctrine, and had received pious exhortations from him regarding them.
[319] In an assembly which met at Neuchatel on the 14th of March 1551, the number of individuals who should compose the Consistory was fixed, and a collection of regulations regarding marriage was drawn out.