Luther was still so excited by his last eucharistic controversy with the Swiss, and so suspicious, that Melanchthon deemed it inexpedient to lay the documents before him.1

...

"I have not shown your letter to Dr. Martin," he replied to Calvin, April 17, 1545, "for he takes many things suspiciously, and does not like his answers to questions of the kind you have proposed to him, to be carried round and handed from one to another. . . . At present I am looking forward to exile and other sorrows. Farewell! On the day on which, thirty-eight hundred and forty-six years ago, Noah entered into the ark, by which God gave testimony of his purpose never to forsake his Church, even when she quivers under the shock of the billows of the great sea."

He gave, however, his own opinion; and this, as well as the opinions of Bucer and Peter Martyr, and Calvin's conclusion, were published, as an appendix to the tracts on avoiding superstition, at Geneva in 1549.2 Melanchthon substantially agreed with Calvin; he asserts the duty of the Christian to worship God alone (Matt. 4: 10), to flee from idols (1 John 5:21), and to profess Christ openly before men (Matt. 10: 33); but he took a somewhat milder view as regards compliance with mere ceremonies and non-essentials. Bucer and Peter Martyr agreed with this opinion. The latter refers to the conduct of the early disciples, who, while holding worship in private houses, still continued to visit the temple until they were driven out.

We now proceed to Calvin's controversies with Protestant opponents.

I. Actes du procès intenté par Calvin et les autres ministres de Genève à Jérôme Bolsec de Paris (1551). Printed from the Register of the Venerable Company and the Archives of Geneva, in Opera, VIII. 141-248.- CALVIN: De æterna Dei Prædestinatione, etc., usually called Consensus Genevensis (1552)-chiefly an extract from the respective sections of his Institutes; reprinted in Opera, VIII. 249–366. It is the second part of his answer to Pighius ("the dead dog," as he calls him), but occasioned by the process of Bolsec, whose name he ignores in contempt. CALVIN'S letter to Libertetus (Fabri of Neuchâtel), January, 1552, in Opera, XIV. 278 eq.The Letters of the Swiss Churches on the Bolsec affair, reprinted in vol. VIII. 229 sqq.-BEZA: Vita Calv. ad ann. 1551.

1 Opera, XII. 61.

2 Opera, VI. 617-644.

II. HIEROSME HERMES BOLSEC, docteur Médecin à Lyon: Histoire de la vie, mœurs, actes, doctrine, constance et mort de Jean Calvin, jadis ministre de Genève, Lyon, 1577; Rééditée avec une introduction, des extraits de la vie de Th. de Bèze, par le même, et des notes à l'appui par M. LOUIS-FRANÇOIS CHASTEL, magistrat. Lyon, 1875 (xxxi and 328). On the character and different editions of this book, see La France Protest., II. 755 sqq.

III. BAYLE: "Bolsec" in his "Diction. historique et critique."— F. TRECHSEL: Die Protest. Antitrinitarier (Heidelberg, 1844), Bd. I. 185-189 and 276-284.- HENRY, III. 44 sqq., and the second Beilage to vol. III., which gives the documents (namely, the charges of the ministers of Geneva, Bolsec's defence, his poem written in prison, the judgments of the Churches of Bern and Zürich - all of which are omitted in the English version, II. 130 sqq.). -AUDIN (favorable to Bolsec), ch. XXXIX.DYER, 265-283. * SCHWEIZER: Centraldogmen, I. 205–238. — STähelin, I. 411-414; II. 287–292. —* La France Prot., sub "Bolsec," tom. II. 745776 (second ed.). Against this article: Lettre d'un protestant Genevois aux lecteurs de la France Protestante, Genève, 1880. In defence of that article, HENRI L. BORDIER: L'école historique de Jérôme Bolsec, pour servir de supplément à l'article Bolsec de la France Protestante, Paris (Fischbacher), 1880.

Hieronymus (Hierosme) Hermes Bolsec, a native of Paris, was a Carmelite monk, but left the Roman Church, about 1545, and fled for protection to the Duchess of Ferrara, who admitted him to her house under the title of an almoner. There he married, and adopted the medical profession as a means of livelihood. Ever afterwards he called himself "Doctor of Medicine." He made himself odious by his turbulent character and conduct, and was expelled by the Duchess for some deception (as Beza reports).

He was

In 1550 he settled at Geneva with his wife and a servant, and practised his profession. But he meddled in theology, and began to question Calvin's doctrine of predestination. He denounced Calvin's God as a hypocrite and liar, as a patron of criminals, and as worse than Satan. admonished, March 8, 1551, by the Venerable Company, and privately instructed by Calvin in that mystery, but without success. On a second offence he was summoned before the Consistory, and openly reprehended in the presence of fifteen ministers and other competent persons. He acknowledged

that a certain number were elected by God to salvation, but he denied predestination to destruction; and, on closer examination, he extended election to all mankind, maintaining that grace efficacious to salvation is equally offered to all, and that the cause, why some receive and others reject it, lies in the free-will, with which all men were endowed. At the same time he abhorred the name of merits. This, in the eyes of Calvin, was a logical contradiction and an absurdity; for, he says, "if some were elected, it surely follows that others are not elected and left to perish. Unless we confess that those who come to Christ are drawn by the Father through the peculiar operation of the Holy Spirit on the elect, it follows either that all must be promiscuously elected, or that the cause of election lies in each man's merit."

On the 16th of October, 1551, Belsec attended the religious conference, which was held every Friday at St. Peter's. John de St. André preached from John 8:47 on predestination, and inferred from the text that those who are not of God, oppose him to the last, because God grants the grace of obedience only to the elect. Bolsec suddenly interrupted the speaker, and argued that men are not saved because they are elected, but that they are elected because they have faith. He denounced, as false and godless, the notion that God decides the fate of man before his birth, consigning some to sin and punishment, others to virtue and eternal happiness. He loaded the clergy with abuse, and warned the congregation not to be led astray.

After he had finished this harangue, Calvin, who had entered the church unobserved, stepped up to him and so overwhelmed him, as Beza says, with arguments and with quotations from Scripture and Augustin, that "all felt exceedingly ashamed for the brazen-faced monk, except the monk himself." Farel also, who happened to be present, addressed the assembly. The lieutenant of police apprehended Bolsec for abusing the ministers and disturbing the public peace.

On the same afternoon the ministers drew up seventeen articles against Bolsec and presented them to the Council, with the request to call him to account. Bolsec, in his turn, proposed several questions to Calvin and asked a categorical answer (October 25). He asserted that Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Brenz shared his opinion.

The Consistory asked the Council to consult the Swiss Churches before passing judgment. Accordingly, the Council sent a list of Bolsec's errors to Zürich, Bern, and Basel. They were five, as follows:

1. That faith depends not on election, but election on faith..

2. That it is an insult to God to say that he abandons some to blindness, because it is his pleasure to do so.

3. That God leads to himself all rational creatures, and abandons only those who have often resisted him.

4. That God's grace is universal, and some are not more predestinated to salvation than others.

5. That when St. Paul says (Eph. 1:5), that God has elected us through Christ, he does not mean election to salvation, but election to discipleship and apostleship.

At the same time Calvin and his colleagues addressed a circular letter to the Swiss Churches, which speaks in offensive and contemptuous terms of Bolsec, and charges him with cheating, deception, and impudence. Beza also wrote from Lausanne to Bullinger.

The replies of the Swiss Churches were very unsatisfactory to Calvin, although the verdict was, on the whole, in his favor. They reveal the difference between the German and the French Swiss on the subject of divine decrees and free-will. They assent to the doctrine of free election to salvation, but evade the impenetrable mystery of absolute and eternal reprobation, which was the most material point in the controversy.

The ministers of Zürich defended Zwingli against Bolsec's

charge, that in his work on Providence he made God the author of sin, and they referred to other works in which Zwingli traced sin to the corruption of the human will. Bullinger, in a private letter to Calvin, impressed upon him the necessity of moderation and mildness. "Believe me," he said, "many are displeased with what you say in your Institutes about predestination, and draw the same conclusions from it as Bolsec has drawn from Zwingli's book on Providence." This affair caused a temporary alienation between Calvin and Bullinger. It was not till ten years afterwards that Bullinger decidedly embraced the Calvinistic dogma, and even then he laid no stress on reprobation.1

Myconius, in the name of the Church of Basel, answered evasively, and dwelt on what Calvin and Bolsec believed in

common.

The reply of the ministers of Bern anticipates the modern spirit of toleration. They applaud the zeal for truth and unity, but emphasize the equally important duty of charity and forbearance. The good Shepherd, they say, cares for the sheep that has gone astray. It is much easier to win a man. back by gentleness than to compel him by severity. As to the awful mystery of divine predestination, they remind Calvin of the perplexity felt by many good men who cling to the Scripture texts of God's universal grace and goodness.

The effect of these letters was a milder judgment on Bolsec. He was banished for life from the territory of Geneva for exciting sedition and for Pelagianism, under pain of being whipped if he should ever return. The judgment was announced Dec. 23, 1551, with the sound of the trumpet.2

Bolsec retired to Thonon, in Bern, but as he created new disturbances he was banished (1555). He left for France,

1 On Bullinger's views see above, pp. 210 sq., and Schweizer, I. 225, 255 sqq. 2 Beza: "Senatus. . . illum tum ut seditiosum, tum ut mere Pelagianum XXIII. Dec. publice damnatum urbe expulit, fustuariam pœnam minatus, si vel in urbe vel in urbis territorio esset deprehensus." Reg. of the Ven. Comp. in Annal. 498: “M⚫Ierosme fut banni à son de trompe des terres de Genève.”