§ 108. Calvin's struggle. 497
It seems incredible that a man of feeble constitution and physical timidity should have been able to triumph over such determined and ferocious opposition. The explanation is in the justice of his cause, and the moral purity and " majesty " of his character, which so strongly impressed the Genevese.
We must distinguish two parties among Calvin's enemies — the Patriots, who opposed him on political grounds, and the Libertines, who hated his religion. It would be unjust to charge all the Patriots with the irreligious sentiments of the Libertines. But they made common cause for the overthrow of Calvin and his detested system of discipline. They had many follower among the discontented and dissolute rabble which abounds in every large city, and is always ready for a revolution, having nothing to lose and everything to gain.
1. The Px\TKroTS or Childeen of Geneva {Unfants de Geneve), as they called themselves, belonged to some of the oldest and most influential families of Geneva, — Favre (or Fabri), Perrin, Vandel, Berthelier, Ameaux.^ They or their fathers had taken an active part in the achievement of political independence, and even in the introduction of the Reformation, as a means of protecting that independence. But they did not care for the positive doctrines of the Reformation. They wanted liberty without law. They resisted every encroachment on their personal freedom and love of amusements. They hated the evangelical discipline more than the yoke of Savoy.
They also disliked Calvin as a foreigner, who was not even naturalized before 1559. In the pride and prejudice of nativism, they denounced the refugees, who had sacrificed home and fortune to religion, as a set of adventurers, soldiers of fortune, bankrupts, and spies of the Reformer. " These
1 The Galiffes fairly represent the animosity of these old families to Calvin, but far surpass their ancestors in literary and moral culture and respectability, which they owe to the effects of his reformation.
498 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
dogs of Frenchmen," they said, " are the cause that we are slaves, and must bow before Calvin and confess our sins.
Let the preachers and their gang go to the ." They
deprived the refugees of the right to carry arms, and opposed their admission to the rights of citizenship, as there was danger that they might outnumber and outvote the native citizens. Calvin secured, in 1559, through a majority of the Council, at one time, the admission of three hundred of these refugees, mostly Frenchmen.
The Patriots disliked also the protectorate of Bern, although Bern never favored the strict theology and discipline of Calvin.
2. The Libertines 1 or Spirituels, as they called themselves, were far worse than the Patriots. They formed the opposite extreme to the severe discipline of Calvin. He declares that they were the most pernicious of all the sects that appeared since the time of the ancient Gnostics and Manichgeans, and that they answer the prophetic description in the Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude. He traces their immediate origin to Coppin of Yssel and Quintin of Hennegau, in the Netherlands, and to an ex-priest, Pecquet or Pocques, who spent some time in Geneva, and wanted to get a certificate from Calvin ; but Calvin saw through the man and refused it. They revived the antinomian doctrines of the mediaeval sect of the " Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," a branch of the Beghards, who had their headquarters at Cologne and the Lower Rhine, and emancipated themselves not only from the Church, but also from the laws of morality.^
The Libertines described by Calvin were antinomian pantheists. They confounded the boundaries of truth and error,
1 Tlie synagogue of the Libertines in .Jerusalem opposed Stephen, the forerunner of Paul, Acts 6 : 9.
2 Gieseler connects both sects, vol. III. Part I. 385 ; comp. II. Part III. 266. Strype notices the existence of a similar sect in England at a later period, Annals, vol. II. Part II. 287 sqq. (quoted by Dyer, p. 177).