[403] No date. Written evidently about the end of 1552. This letter,
the last which Calvin wrote to M. de Falais, throws a great light
on the circumstances of their rupture, of which Jerome Bolsec's
process was the occasion. Banished from Geneva for his attacks on
the doctrine of predestination and his invectives against Calvin,
Bolsec had found means to interest in his cause M. de Falais, whose
physician he was, and who interceded to no purpose for him with his
judges: "Master Jerome is better acquainted with my constitution
and what affords me relief than any other doctor that I know....
It is to him after God that I am indebted for my life."--_Archives
of Geneva._ Letters of the 9th and 11th November 1551. These steps
undertaken from a feeling of humanity, would certainly not have
indisposed Calvin, if M. de Falais had not too openly taken part
with Bolsec against the Reformer. Calvin bitterly complained of it,
"that M. de Falais should write that he (Bolsec) was not a bad man,
and for the sake of an obscure wretch should hold up his reputation
as a subject of mockery." Letter to the ministers of Bâle, January
1552. Expelled from Geneva and settled at Thonon, Bolsec contrived
to envenom this difference which the recollections of a long
friendship should have appeased, and which terminated in a painful
rupture. In a vehement letter, Calvin, at that time suffering from
bad health, took leave of his old friend, whose name he erased four
years afterwards from the preface to his Commentary on the first
Epistle to the Corinthians, in order to substitute in its place that
of the Marquis de Vico.
Rupture of Calvin with that Seigneur.
[GENEVA, 1552.]
MONSEIGNEUR,--Since you esteem your cause with respect to me so
good, I shall not add to your satisfaction by avowing myself in the
wrong, which indeed would be mere hypocrisy on my part. For I know
that I myself had already long ago pointed out to you the conduct of
the man, and his acts are moreover matter of public notoriety. Since
that time you have bestowed on him such eulogiums, that the person
who recited them to me employed these words, that he had never heard
of a man held in such esteem. When you went such lengths, after
having been duly informed by me, your object in extolling him so
highly must have been to have us and our whole doctrine condemned;
of which, he has shewn himself so deadly, so furious, and so
diabolical an enemy, that he has not blushed to write:--The God of
Calvin is hypocritical, mendacious, perfidious, unjust, the provoker
and patron of crimes, and worse than the Devil himself. Thus then,
that I may express my opinion of you frankly, I ought to renounce
God and his truth, as well as the salvation which I hope for through
it. Such I believe, is not your intention, but, if from the humanity
and mildness of your disposition, you are content not only to remain
ignorant of the character of the man who makes war on God, but also,
by lending no credit to our testimony, you furnish a handle for
rendering us odious, suffer me, I entreat you, to have some zeal in
maintaining the honour of my Master. But you will say, that I should
at least have given you some intimation of the affair. I reply that
after having been thus obliquely disgraced by you, I wished to guard
against exposing myself to derision. If ten hours earlier I had been
made aware of the words which I have quoted, I should have contented
myself with letting you know what I had on my heart. As it chanced,
your friend immediately after, or the following day, asked me if I
had seen you. I replied that I had, and that I was sorry for it, and
I added that were you to pass a hundred times, I should avoid all
contact with you more carefully than with the most avowed enemies,
since in showing yourself so intimate with that man, you were, as I
have since been informed, the panegyrist of Castalio,[404] who is so
perverse with all kinds of impiety, that in truth I had a hundred
times rather be a Papist. Your friend then asked me if I had any
objections to your being informed of that. I replied that it was
with that intention that I had spoken to him on the subject, since
I had not been made aware of the fact sufficiently in time. If he
has divulged more than that, he has acted contrary to my opinion, my
wishes, and even his own promise. To have told you that you were
quite infected with the errors of that monster, was running counter
to the ends I had in view, for I told him that you must needs have
hated us gratuitously, to praise in our despite such a monster. The
substance of what I said was that I should have been more painfully
affected by such an injury coming from any other than you, such was
the confidence I had in your integrity; but I was still more sorry
to see you adhering, not knowing for what reason, to a person who is
more detestable than all the Papists in the world. And in fact, I
said to him several times, that I knew not how, nor wherefore, nor,
indeed, what that meant. And since even at this present moment you
love to follow a lesson quite opposed to that which I have learned
in the school of my Master, for you say that you are well-pleased
to forget the evil which may be in him; and yet we are told: Behold
dogs, observe, mark, shun, and beware of them.... I leave you the
object of your affections!--If I have been too sharp and bitter,
pardon me, you have obliged me to be so. And that you may know
that I feel neither anger nor ill-will, I write to you the present
letter, as one who is preparing to appear before God, who afflicts
me anew with an evil which is for me as it were a mirror of death
before my eyes. I will supplicate him, Monseigneur, that in having
pity on me, and receiving me to his mercy, he may preserve and guide
you by his Spirit, and increase you in all prosperity along with
Mademoiselle and your whole family.[405] Your servant,