siness, I have so many
letters to write, so many questions to answer, that many a night is
spent without any offering of sleep being brought to nature."

It is only necessary here to sketch the leading events of Calvin's life
after his return to Geneva. He recodified the Genevan laws and
constitution, and was the leading spirit in the negotiations with Bern
that issued in the treaty of February 1544. Of the controversies in
which he embarked, one of the most important was that in which he
defended his doctrine concerning predestination and election. His first
antagonist on this head was Albert Pighius, a Romanist, who, resuming
the controversy between Erasmus and Luther on the freedom of the will,
violently attacked Calvin for the views he had expressed on that
subject. Calvin replied to him in a work published in 1543, in which he
defends his own opinions at length, both by general reasonings and by an
appeal to both Scripture and the Fathers, especially Augustine. So
potent were his reasonings that Pighius, though owing nothing to the
gentleness or courtesy of Calvin, was led to embrace his views. A still
more vexatious and protracted controversy on the same subject arose in
1551. Jerome Hermes Bolsec, a Carmelite friar, having renounced
Romanism, had fled from France to Veigy, a village near Geneva, where he
practised as a physician. Being a zealous opponent of predestinarian
views, he expressed his criticisms of Calvin's teaching on the subject
in one of the public conferences held each Friday. Calvin replied with
much vehemence, and brought the matter before the civil authorities. The
council were at a loss which course to take; not that they doubted which
of the disputants was right, for they all held by the views of Calvin,
but they were unable to determine to what extent and in which way Bolsec
should be punished for his heresy. The question was submitted to the
churches at Basel, Bern, Zurich and Neuchatel, but they also, to
Calvin's disappointment, were divided in their judgment, some
counselling severity, others gentle measures. In the end Bolsec was
banished from Geneva; he ultimately rejoined the Roman communion and in
1577 avenged himself by a particularly slanderous biography of Calvin.
Another painful controversy was that with Sebastien Castellio
(1515-1563), a teacher in the Genevan school and a scholar of real
distinction. He wished to enter the preaching ministry but was excluded
by Calvin's influence