[358] The magistrates of Geneva, after having received the advice of the leading Swiss Churches,—which were unanimous alike in their recognition of the doctrine of election, and in soliciting indulgence for Bolsec,—proceeded with the trial of the prisoner, who, having refused to retract his opinions, was solemnly banished on the 23d December 1551, for having persisted in an obstinate despisal of the judgment of the Churches to which he had promised submission.—(Registers of the Council, Dec. 1551. Spon and Picot, Histoire de Genève.) Calvin did not wish the sentence to be more severe, although he counted on the Swiss Churches taking a more energetic course, and in the ardour of his zeal for what he regarded as sound doctrine, looked upon all hesitation and all weakness as a cowardly abandonment of the truth.
[359] In their reply to the ministers of Geneva concerning Bolsec, the ministers of Berne freely pleaded the cause of toleration:—"We do not believe," said they, "that it is necessary to treat those who err with too much severity, lest while wishing to defend, with too great zeal, the purity of dogmas, we swerve from the law of Jesus Christ, that is, from charity.... Jesus Christ loved the truth, but he loved souls also; not only those who advanced without declension, but also those who went astray. And it is the latter of which the Good Shepherd, in the Gospel parable, takes the greatest care."... More explicit than the theologians of Zurich and of Bâle on the doctrine which formed the ground of the debate, the ministers of Berne gave a deliverance against the doctrine of predestination:—"To come," said they, "to the subject of dispute with Bolsec, you are not ignorant how much vexation it has caused very many good men, of whom we cannot have a bad opinion, who reading in the Scriptures those passages which exalt the grace of God to all men, have not sufficient discernment rightly to understand the true mysteries of Divine election, attach themselves to the proclamation of grace and of universal benevolence, and think that we cannot make God condemn, harden, and blind any man, without being guilty of the insupportable blasphemy of making God himself the author both of man's blindness and of his perdition, and by consequence of all sin."—See this letter, and those of the Churches of Zurich and Bâle, in the Collection of Professor Alph. Turretin, entitled, Nubes Testium, and in Ruchat, tom. v. p. 461, et seq.
[360] This minister was banished shortly after beyond the territory of the Seigneurs of Berne on account of this expression.
[361] Farel was a genuine orator. All his contemporaries speak with admiration of his eloquent discourses, of his beautiful exhortations, and of his prayers, so fervent, that no one could hear them without being charmed. But it appears that his discourses were all extempore; none of them have been preserved, but they had a few of the defects of improvisation. Their fault was prolixity. Calvin, in his preface to the Psalms, paid, among other things, a brilliant tribute to the eloquence of his friend, and to those thunders of the word (tonitrua) by which he had been enchained at Geneva.
[362] In Calvin's own hand.
[363] Without date. The end is wanting. We believe that this letter refers to the first month of the year 1552.
[364] Who is the personage to whom these words refer, stamped at once by the inflexible spirit of the time and the stern rigour of the Reformer? The historian can only offer conjectures: can it be Jerome Bolsec? But a regular sentence had banished him from Geneva, and Calvin himself does not appear to have called for a more severe judgment against this innovator whom resentment had transformed into a vile pamphleteer. "That fellow, Jerome, is driven out into perpetual exile by a public sentence. Certain revilers have spread abroad the falsehood, that we earnestly desired a much severer punishment, and foolishly, it is believed."—(Calvin to Bullinger, in the month of January 1552.) In that age of inexorable severity against unsound doctrine, Servetus only appeared at Geneva to expire at the stake, and Gentili only escaped the scaffold for a time, by the voluntary retraction of his opinions. To name Gentili, Servetus, Bolsec, is to recall the principal victims of Calvinistic intolerance in the sixteenth century, but not to solve the mystery which attaches to the personage designated in the letter of Calvin to Madame de Cany.
[365] Theodore Beza, then professor of Greek literature in the Academy of Lausanne. Born the 24th June 1519, at Véselay in Burgundy, he had left Paris after a brilliant and dissipated youth, and retired to Geneva the 24th October 1548, giving up the possession of the rich benefices which he held of his uncle, the Abbé of Froidmont. Of this number was the priory of Londjumeau, which became the matter of a tedious lawsuit between Beza and the new titular, M. de Sunistan, the protégé of the Duchesse d'Etampes.
[366] Anne de Pisseleu, Duchesse d'Etampes. She was a sister of Madame de Cany.
[367] Laurent de Normandie. See note 1, p. 311.