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 to Viret that
it were better to perish once for all than "_in illa carnificina iterum
torqueri_." But he loved Geneva, and it was in evil case. Rome 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.

The _Ordonnances ecclesiastiques_ may be described as Calvin's programme
of Genevan reform, or his method for applying to the local and external
church the government which our Lord had instituted and the Apostles had
realized. These ordinances expressed his historical sense and gratified
his religious temper, while adapting the church to the city, so that the
city might become a better church. To explain in detail how he proposed
to do this is impossible within our limits; and we shall therefo