because it could not be had without them, he thought even a greater fault than presenting them to baptism under all those disadvantages. It involved an apparent "contempt of Christianity itself."-On attending the services in popish churches merely for the gratification of curiosity, he is very severe. "It admits," he says, "of no excuse, whatever may be pretended. The very gratification felt shews that the persons, capable of receiving it, are not affected as they ought to be with the dishonour done to God: and there is a profaneness in the practice”-in seeming to concur in idolatry, and in making a religious service an amusement. On the subject of the resurrection of the body, such testimonies as were easily collected from scripture satisfied him, "so as to leave no anxiety or doubt on his mind: nay so as to raise him above all fear of death." But, as they did not satisfy his correspondent, he said he must decline discussing the subject any further: he had no wish to go beyond what was written. "You will not induce me," he says, "to pass the bounds prescribed us by God." Further inquiry, however alluring or plausible, was ensnaring-" speciosæ illecebræ."

In these extracts again sentiments occur which many persons would not have expected from Calvin. A wrong estimate has very generally been formed of him.

CHAPTER XI.

History of Calvin continued.

THE name of Calvin is so associated in the minds of most persons in the present age with the question of predestination, that they are apt to consider him in scarcely any other light than as the assertor of dogmas with respect to it, on which some delight disproportionately to dwell, and from which others revolt with horror. But, in the first place his doctrines upon that deep and difficult subject were no peculiarities of his; and, secondly, this was not his great subject-that which mainly employed his powers; much less that on which he exclusively dwelt. It may be true that, by giving a more regular and consistent form to the tenets which he embraced upon this head, he might contribute to their wider and more permanent reception: but he seems on the whole rather to have softened than aggravated what had previously been taught with respect to it.

We make these observations in the present connexion, because of the fact that we have now passed through more than half of the twenty-eight years that Calvin's ministry lasted, without even hearing of the question of predestination. We do not mean that he did not hold and teach the same doctrines during that time, as in the subsequent part of his life. His Institutes were before the public from the very commencement of this period, and they from the first asserted

his predestinarian tenets : but no controversy, no discussion arose upon the subject, at least between protestants. Calvin had yet published nothing separately upon it. In his work on the will, in reply to Pighius, which obtained the approbation of Melancthon in the year 1543, the question of predestination is expressly reserved for a separate publication, which, as his opponent died soon after, never appeared during the period on which our remark is made. His work against the Libertines, which he published in 1544, is in great part employed in refuting and reprobating those avowed principles of their's, which are often charged as implied in his own doctrinesuch as making God the author of sin, and destroying human responsibility. In fact, his main conflict at Geneva from the first had been, not against those who differed from him on such points; it had hardly been even against the errors of popery; but rather against the great practical evils which prevailed, and in enforcing upon men, that " every one who named the name of Christ must depart from iniquity," if he would be acknowledged as his disciple.

The person who first raised discussion at Geneva concerning predestination was one who, according to the report of all parties, could do no credit to any cause: though this certainly does not affect the merits of the question itself. This person was Jerome Bolsec, late a Carmelite monk of Paris. He had travelled into Italy, and had assumed, it would appear, with little qualification for it, the character of a physician. He also professed the protestant faith, and on that ground presented himself at the court of the duchess of Ferrara; whence he was soon driven in disgrace. He appeared at Geneva as a physician, and there it seems entered into some private discussions with Calvin, before he publicly objected to the doctrines taught in the churches. At length on the 16 October, 1551, having attended the Friday lecture in the cathedral, which was on that

day delivered by St. André, minister of Jussy, from the text," He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not because ye are not of God;" he availed himself of the liberty allowed to the hearers on those occasions, of proposing to the lecturer any doubts or difficulties which they might feel on the subject of his lecture: and, further encouraged perhaps by the supposed absence of Calvin, who had come in late and did not appear in his place, he stood forward and openly impugned the predestinarian doctrine as making God the author of sin; and maintained that election is the consequence of our faith, and not the source to which it is to be traced. The abettors of the doctrine which he opposed, he said, endeavoured to support it by certain passages culled from S. Augustine: but it was not the doctrine of that father or of other ancient doctors, but was derived from Laurentius Valla, who belonged only to the preceding age: and he concluded with warning the people against the false, scandalous, and pernicious dogmas which were delivered to them upon this topic. Calvin suffered his opponent to conclude his harangue without interruption, and then came forward from the seclusion in which he had been sitting: and, if we may not assume with his friends, that his reply was so conclusive and overpowering as to make every one except Bolsec himself blush for the rash assailant, we must in common candour, I conceive, admit that the unexpected occurrence gave occasion to a signal display of the reformer's promptitude and talent. He spoke for more than an hour in defence of the doctrine taught in the churches of Geneva, and in reply to all that had been urged against it; adducing from memory, not only so many passages of scripture, but so many testimonies from Augustine, "that it might have been supposed he had employed the whole day in collecting them." Farel happened then to be at Geneva, and present in the church: and he added a

short address in support of the principles of himself and his brethren, and in exposure of the wrong which was done them, in attributing to them that "most pestilent dogma of making God the author of sin"-which, he observed, Calvin had professedly refuted in his writings.

It might have been well had the friends of Calvin been content with their triumph over an unworthy adversary: but a magistrate who was present proceeded (according to the fashion of the times,) to inflict chastisement of another kind upon Bolsec, and committed him to prison for seditiously endeavouring to alienate the people from their ministers. During his imprisonment conferences were held with him by Calvin and the other ministers of Geneva; the particulars of which being taken down in writing were, at the request of the ministers, submitted to the churches of Zuric, Berne, and Basle, that their judgment might be had on the questions at issue. From their answers we are led on the whole to the conclusion, that the doctrine of Geneva on these points went somewhat beyond that of the neighbouring churches at this period, without being considered as furnishing the least ground of variance between them.

The result was that Bolsec was banished from Geneva on pain of being whipped if he should ever return, for his seditious conduct and Pelagian doctrine, and some add also for the scandals of his life: and, as he still caused much disturbance in the country, Berne soon after pronounced a like sentence against him.

The events which we have related gave occasion to Calvin's treatise on Predestination, which was published in the name of his co-pastors as well as his own.

But the flame which Bolsec had kindled was not extinguished by his removal. Sebastian Castellio, a name well known in the departments of biblical