376 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND,
Calvin was appointed assistant professor of theology in January, 1539.^ He lectured on the Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Romans, and other books of the Bible. Many students came from Switzerland and France to hear him, who afterwards returned as evangelists. He speaks of several students in his correspondence with satisfaction. In some cases he was disappointed. He presided over public disputations. He refuted in 1539 a certain Robertus Moshamus, dean of Passau, in a disputation on the merits of good works, and achieved a signal victory to the great delight of the scholars of the city.^
But he had also an unpleasant dispute with that worthless theological turncoat, Peter Caroli, who appeared at Strassburg in October, 1539, as a troubler in Israel, as he had done before at Lausanne, and sought to prejudice even Bucer and Capito against Calvin on the subject of the Trinity.'^
With all his j)rofessional duties he found leisure for important literary work, which had been interrupted at Geneva. He prepared a thorough revision of his Institutes, which superseded the first, and a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, which opened the series of his invaluable exegetical works. Both were published at Strassburg by the famous printer Wendelin Rihel in 1539. He had been preceded, in the commentary on Romans, by Melanchthon, Bucer, Bullinger, but he easily surpassed them all. He also wrote, in French, a popular treatise on the Lord's Supper, in which he
him very highly in a letter to Blaarer, Nov. 26, 1525, in Herminjard, I. 440, note 16. He died of the pestilence at Strassburg, 1541.
1 Calvin to Farel, January, 1539 (Herminjard, V. 230) : " Nuper ad publicam professionem invitus a Capitone protractus sum. Ita quotidie aut lego aut concionor." He preached four times, and lectured three times. The salary of 52 guilders for one year was to commence the first of May. It is mentioned in Annal. 246, by Herminjard, V. 231, note 19, and by Strieker, 22.
2 He defeated him again at Worms in the presence of Melanchthon. Jacob Sturm, Antipappi, as quoted in Herminjard, VII. 26, note 6.
3 " Ter desertor, ter transfuga, ter proditor utriusque partis," ne is called by Calvin. See on this unimportant episode Strieker, pp. 30-39.
§ 89. CALVIN AT THE COLLOQUIES. 377
pointed out a via media between the realism of Luther and the spiritualism of Zwingli. Both parties, he says towards the close, have failed and departed from the truth in their passionate zeal, but this should not blind us to the great benefits which God through Luther and Zwingli has bestowed upon mankind. If we are not ungrateful and forgetful of what we owe to them, we shall be well able to pardon that and much more, without blaming them. We must hope for a reconciliation of the two parties.
At the Diet of Regensburg in 1541 he had, with the other Protestant delegates, to subscribe the Augsburg Confession. He could do so honestly, understanding it, as he said expressly, in the sense of the author who, in the year before, had published a revised edition with an important change in the 10th Article (on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper) .^
Of his masterly answer to Sadolet we shall speak separately.
His many letters from that period prove his constant and faithful attention to the duties of friendship. In his letters to Farel he pours out his heart, and makes him partaker of his troubles and joys, and .familiar with public events and private affairs even to little details. Farel could not stand a long separation and paid him two brief visits in 1539 and 1540.
§ 89. Calvin at the Colloquies of Frankfurt, Worms, and Regensburg.
Calvin: Letters from Worms, Regensburg, and Strassburg, in Opera, XI., and Herminjard, vols. VI. and VII. His report on the Diet at Regensliurg (Les Actes de la journe'e imperiule en la cite de Regenspourg), in Opera, V. 509-684. — Melanchthon: Report on the Colloquy at Worms, in Latin, and the Acts of the Colloquy at Regensburg, in German, 1542.
1 Calvin's letter to Martin Schalling, a minister at Regensburg, March, 1557, in Opera, XVI. 430 : " Nee vero Augustanam Confessioneni repudio, ctti pridem volens ac libens siibscripsi si'cut earn autor ipse interpreiatus est." His colleagues, Bucer and Capito, understood the Augsburg Confession in the same irenic spirit.