immorality, to pass sentences from which there was no appeal, and where necessary to hand the guilty over to the magistrates to be punished according to law. If any offender refused to appear, a civil officer was sent to bring him; and so every ecclesiastical offence became an act of civil disobedience. Thus, obstinate refusal to communicate was regarded as a punishable crime; so were frivolous or continued absence from church, disrespect to parents, blasphemy, and adultery. One young woman who sang profane songs was banished, and another who sang them to psalm-tunes was scourged. Heresy became as much an offence as immorality. If a creed or confession becomes a law of the State as well as of the Church, to speak or agitate against it becomes treason. In other words, if opinion is established by law, heresy is turned into crime. And this Geneva soon discovered. Castellio's doubts as to the canonicity of Solomon's Song, and as to the received interpretation of Christ's descent into Hades, Bolsec's criticism of predestination, Gruefs suspected scepticism and possession of infidel books, Servetus' rationalism and anti-Trinitarian creed, were all opinions judged to be criminal. Infallibility is not the only system that makes heresy culpable and the heretic guilty. If the Church will be a State, and enforce its laws, which must affect both conduct and belief, by the only method a State can follow, then it must bear the reproach of being more cruel, and therefore more unjust, than any purely civil power. The heretic may be a man of irreproachable character; but if heresy be treason against the law, a character without reproach may aggravate rather than extenuate the crime. The man of imperfect morals may be too feeble of will to differ in opinion from the constituted authority, and his intellectual conformity may save him from the sentence which his moral weakness deserves. And time alone was needed to make it obvious how imperfectly Geneva could attain either unity of faith or purity of life by turning her Church into a city governed by positive law.
Many points remain of necessity undiscussed. The merits and defects of Calvin as a writer of polemical treatises; his work as a statesman, and his appreciation of political questions in lands so unlike his own as England; his qualities as a correspondent who feels no affairs of State too large to grapple with, and no personal concern too small to touch; his worth and wisdom as an adviser who loves the great of the earth for the good they can do, and judges that the higher a person is placed the more need there is for plain and candid speech, but who forgets not the humble and the poor, and can pause amid the mightiest concerns to hear their plaints; his attachment and tenderness as a friend, whether in his brilliant youth or his sadder age, when he loved to unbosom himself to his strenuous comrade Guillaume Farel, or his devoted companion Pierre Viret-could have justice done them only were the limits of our space wholly different from what they are.
But there are three things that may be emphasised in conclusion. The
