§ 78. CALVIN AT BASEL. 3-25
§ 77. The Sleep of the Soul. 1534.
Psychopannychia. Aureliie, 1534 ; 2d and revised ed. Basel, 1536 ; 3d ed. Strassburg, 1542; French trans. Paris, 1558; republished in Opera, vol. V. 165- 232. — Conip. the analysis of Stahelin, L 36-40, and La Fiance Prot. III. 549. English translation in Calvin's Tracts, III. 413-490.
Before Calvin left France, he wrote, at Orleans, 1534, his first theological book, entitled Psychopannychia, or the Sleep of the Soul. He refutes in it the hypothesis entertained by some Anabaptists, of the sleep of the soul between death and resurrection, and proves the unbroken and conscious communion of believers with Christ, their living Head. He appeals no more to philosophy and the classics, as in his earlier book on Seneca, but solely to the Scriptures, as the only rule of faith. Reason can give us no light on the future world, which lies beyond our experience.
He wished to protect, by this book, the evangelical Protestants against the charge of heresy and vagary. They were often confounded with the Anabaptists who roused in the same year the wrath of all the German princes by the excesses of a radical and fanatical faction at Miinster.
§ 78. Calvin at Basel. 1535 to 1536.
The outbreak of the bloody persecution, in October, 1534, induced Calvin to leave his native land and to seek safety in free Switzerland. He was accompanied by his friend and pupil, Louis du Tillet, who followed him as far as Geneva, and remained with him till the end of August, 1537, when he returned to France and to the Roman Church.^
The travellers passed through Lorraine. On the frontier of Germany, near Metz, they were robbed by an unfaithful servant. They arrived utterly destitute at Strassburg, then a city of refuge for French Protestants. They were kindly received and aided by Bucer.
1 M. Crottet, Correspondance de Calvin avec L. du Tillet, 1850.
326 THE KEFORMATIOX IN FREXCH SWITZERLAND.
After a few days' rest they proceeded to Basel, their proper destination. There Farel had found a hospitable home in 1524, and Cop and Courault ten years later. Calvin wished a quiet place for study where he could promote the cause of the Gospel by his pen. He lodged vriih his friend in the house of Catharina Klein (Petita), who thirty years afterwards was the hostess of another famous refugee, the philosopher, Petrus Ramus, and spoke to him with enthusiasm of the young Calvin, "the light of France." ^
He was kindly welcomed by Simon Grynaeus and Wolfgang Capito, the heads of the university. He prosecuted with Grynseus his study of the Hebrew. He dedicated to him in gratitude his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1539). He became acquainted also with BuUinger of Ziirich, who attended the conference of Reformed Swiss divines for the preparation of the first Helvetic Confession (1536). 2
According to a Roman Catholic report, Calvin, in company with Bucer, had a personal interview with Erasmus, to whom three years before he had sent a copy of his commentary on Seneca with a high compliment to his scholarship. The veteran scholar is reported to have said to Bucer on that occasion that "a great pestilence was arising in the Church against the Church." ^ But Erasmus was too polite, thus to insult a stranger. Moreover, he was then li^^ng at Freiburg in Germany and had broken off all intercourse with Protestants. When he returned to Basel in Jul}-, 1536, on his wa}^ to the Netherlands, he took sick and died ; and at that time Calvin was in Italy. The report therefore is an idle fiction.*
1 "Lumen Gallic^." See the Eeminiscences of Basel, by Petrus Ramus (1572), quoted in Op. XXI. 194. Ch. Waddington, Hamus, sa vie, ses ecrits et ses opinions, Paris, 1855. Stahelin, I. 41 sqq. Kampschulte, I. 250.
2 See above, p. 219. Ep. 2634, referred to in Op. XXI. 196.
3 "Video magnam pestem oriri in Ecclesia contra Ecclesiam.^'
* It rests on the sole authority of Florimond de Rfemond, p. 890. He put8 the visit in the year 1534, when Calvin was yet in France, and could not