§ 125. Calvin and Bolsec.
I. Actes du proces intente par Calvin et les autres ministres de Geneve a Jerome Bolsec de Paris (1551). Printed from the Register of the Venerable Company and the Archives of Geneva, in Opera, VIII. 141-248. — Calvin : De ceterna Dei Prmdestinatione, etc., usually called Consensus Genevensis (1552) — chiefly an extract from the respective sections of his Institutes; reprinted in Opera, VIII. 249-366. It is the second part of his answer to Pighius ("the dead dog," as he calls him), but occasioned by the process of Bolsec, whose name he ignores in contempt. — Calvin's letter to Libertetus (Fabri of Neuchatel), January, 1552, in Opera, XIV. 278 sq. — The Letters of the Swiss Churches on the Bolsec affair, reprinted in vol. VIII. 229 sqq.— Beza : Vita Calv. ad ann. 1551.
1 Opera, XII. 61. 2 Opera, VI. 617-644.
§ 125. CALVIN AND BOLSEC. 615
II. HiEROSME Hermes Bolsec, docteur Mederin a Li/on : Histoire de la vie, mmirs, acies, doctrine, Constance et mart de Jean Calvin, jadis ministre de Geneve, Lyon, 1577; ReVdite'e avec une introduction, des extraits de la vie de Th. de Beze, par le meme, et des notes it I'appuipar M. Louis-Francois Chastel, magistrat. Lyon, 1875 (xxxi and ;328). On the character and different editions of this book, see La France Protest., IL 755 sqq.
III. Bayle: "Bolsec"in his "Diction, historique et critique." — F. Trech- SEL: Die Protest. Antitrinitarier (Heidelberg, 1844), Bd. I. 185-189 and 276-284. — Henry, IIL 44 sqq., and tlie second BeiUige to vol. III., which gives the documents (namely, the charges of the ministers of Geneva, Bolsec's defence, his poem written in prison, the judgments of the Churches of Bern and Zurich — all of which are omitted in the English version, IL 130 sqq.).— Audin (favorable to Bolsec), ch. XXXIX. — Dy-er, 265-283. — *Schweizer: Gentraldogmen, I. 205-238. — Stahelin, I. 411-414; II. 287-292.— *Za France Frot., sub "Bolsec," torn. II. 745- 776 (second ed.). Against this article: Lettre d'un protestant Genevois aux lecteurs de la France Protestante, Geneve, 1880. In defence of that article, Henri L. Bordier : L'e'cole historique de Jerome Bolsec, pour servir de supplement a V article Bolsec de la France Protestante, Paris (Fischbacher), 1880.
Hieronymus (Hierosme) Hermes Bolsec, a native of Paris, was a Carmelite monk, but left the Roman Church, about 1545, and fled for protection to the Duchess of Ferrara, who admitted him to her house under the title of an almoner. There he married, and adopted the medical profession as a means of livelihood. Ever afterwards he called himself " Doctor of Medicine." He made himself odious by his turbulent character and conduct, and was expelled by the Duchess for some deception (as Beza reports).
In 1550 he settled at Geneva with his wife and a servant, and practised his profession. But he meddled in theology, and began to question Calvin's doctrine of predestination. He denounced Calvin's God as a hypocrite and liar, as a patron of criminals, and as worse than Satan. He was admonished, March 8, 1551, by the Venerable Company, and privately instructed by Calvin in that mystery, but without success. On a second offence he was summoned before the Consistory, and openly reprehended in the presence of fifteen ministers and other competent persons. He acknowledged
616 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
that a certain number were elected by God to salvation, but he denied predestination to destruction; and, on closer examination, he extended election to all mankind, maintaining that grace efficacious to salvation is equally offered to all, and that the cause, why some receive and others reject it, lies in the free-will, with which all men were endowed. At the same time he abhorred the name of merits. This, in the eyes of Calvin, was a logical contradiction and an absurdity ; for, he says, "if some were elected, it surely follows that others are not elected and left to perish. Unless we confess that those who come to Christ are drawn by the Father through the peculiar operation of the Holy Spirit on the elect, it follows either that all must be promiscuously elected, or that the cause of election lies in each man's merit."
On the 16th of October, 1551, Bolsec attended the religious conference, which was held every Friday at St. Peter's. John de St. Andr^ preached from John 8 : 47 on predestination, and inferred from the text that those who are not of God, oppose him to the last, because God grants the grace of obedience only to the elect. Bolsec suddenly interrupted the speaker, and argued that men are not saved because they are elected, but that they are elected because they have faith. He denounced, as false and godless, the notion that God decides the fate of man before his birth, consigning some to sin and punishment, others to virtue and eternal happiness. He loaded the clergy with abuse, and warned the congregation not to be led astray.
After he had finished this harangue, Calvin, who had entered the church unobserved, stepped up to him and so overwhelmed him, as Beza says, with arguments and with quotations from Scripture and Augustin, that " all felt exceedingly ashamed for the brazen-faced monk, except the monk' himself." Farel also, Avho happened to be present, addressed the assembly. The lieutenant of police apprehended Bolsec for abusing the ministers and disturbing the public peace.