from the Church those who either did not believe its doctrines or did not obey its commandments.
These were drastic proposals to be made to a city which had just dismissed its Bishop, attained political freedom, and proclaimed a Reformation of religion; and Calvin was not the man to leave them inoperative. A card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and two bridesmaids were arrested because they had adorned the bride too gaily; an adulterer was driven with the partner of his guilt through the streets by the common hangman, and then banished. These things taxed the temper of the city sorely; it was not unfamiliar with legislation of the kind, but it had not been accustomed to see it enforced. Hence, men who came to be known as "libertines," though they were both patriotic and moral and only craved freedom, rose and said, "This is an intolerable tyranny; we will not allow any man to be lord over our consciences." And about the same time Calvin's orthodoxy was challenged. Two Anabaptists arrived and demanded liberty to prophesy; and Peter Caroli charged him with heresy as to the Trinity. He would not use the Athanasian Creed; and he defended himself by reasons that the scholar who knows its history will respect. The end soon came. When he heard that he had been sentenced to banishment, he said, "If I had served men this would have been a poor reward, but I have served Him who never fails to perform what He has promised."
In 1541 Geneva recalled Calvin, and he obeyed as one who goes to fulfil an imperative but unwelcome duty. There is nothing more pathetic in the literature of the period than his hesitancies and fears. He tells Farel that he would rather die a hundred times than again take up that cross " in qua millies quotidie pereundum esset." And he writes tc Viret that it were better to perish once for all than "in ilia carnificina Herum torqueri? But he loved Geneva, and it was in evil case. Home was plotting to reclaim it; Savoy was watching her opportunity, the patriots feared to go forward, and even the timid dared not go back. So the necessities of the city, divided between its factions and its foes, constituted an appeal which Calvin could not resist; but he did not yield unconditionally. He went back as the legislator who was to frame laws for its Church; and he so adapted them to the civil constitution and the constitution to them, that he raised the little city of Geneva to be the Protestant Rome.
Calvin's idea, whether of the Church or the State, it is neither possible nor necessary to discuss fully here; as he conceived, Fatherhood belonged to God, motherhood to the Church: we entered into life by being conceived in her womb and suckled at her breasts, and so long as we lived we were as scholars in her school. She was catholic, holy, one and indivisible; to invent another Church would be to divide Christ. In this sense she comprehended all the people of God, His elect in every
