132 Readings in European History may make the necessary remonstrances themselves. If they accomplish nothing, then they shall notify the deputies to do their duty. This then is the manner in which it would seem expedient to us to introduce excommunication into our Church and maintain it in its full force ; for beyond this form of correc- tion the Church does not go. But should there be insolent persons, abandoned to all perversity, who only laugh when they are excommunicated and do not mind living and dying in that condition of rejection, it shall be your affair to deter- mine whether you should long suffer such contempt and mocking of God to pass unpunished. . . . If those who agree with us in faith should be punished by excommunication for their offenses, how much more should the Church refuse to tolerate those who oppose us in religion ? The remedy that we have thought of is to petition you to require all the inhabitants of your city to make a confession and give an account of their faith, so that you may know who agree with the gospel and who, on the contrary, would prefer the kingdom of the pope to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The Genevan council was not ready, however, to adopt and enforce Calvin's plan of excommunication and his system of censors. There was a large party which dis- liked Calvin and Farel and their puritanical influences. These "liberals" 2 got the upper hand in the town coun- cil, and banished Calvin and Farel (April, 1538) for refus- ing to administer the communion in the manner favored by the council, and for continuing to preach when for- bidden to do so. But in two or three years the liberals became unpopular in their turn, and Calvin, after pro- longed negotiations, reluctantly consented to return to Geneva, in September, 1 541. He was now in a position 1 The French historians of the seventeenth century call this party libertins, which means nothing worse than " liberals."
