§ 125. CALVIN AND BOLSEC. 617
On the same afternoon tlie ministers drew up seventeen articles against Bolsec and presented them to the Council, with the request to call him to account. Bolsec, in his turn, proposed several questions to Calvin and asked a categorical answer (October 25). He asserted that Melanchthon, Bullinger, and Brenz shared his opinion.
The Consistory asked the Council to consult the Swiss Churches before passing judgment. Accordingly, the Council sent a list of Bolsec's errors to Ziirich, Bern, and Basel. They were five, as follows : —
1. That faith depends not on election, but election on faith.
2. That it is an insult to God to say that he abandons some to blindness, because it is his pleasure to do so.
3. That God leads to himself all rational creatures, and abandons only those who have often resisted him.
4. That God's grace is universal, and some are not more predestinated to salvation than others.
5. That when St. Paul says (Eph. 1 : 5), that God has elected us through Christ, he does not mean election to salvation, but election to discipleship and apostleship.
At the same time Calvin and his colleagues addressed a circular letter to the Swiss Churches, which speaks in offensive and contemptuous terms of Bolsec, and charges him with cheating, deception, and impudence. Beza also wrote from Lausanne to Bullinger.
The replies of the Swiss Churches were very unsatisfactory to Calvin, although the verdict was, on the whole, in his favor. They reveal the difference between the German and the French Swiss on the subject of divine decrees and free-will. They assent to the doctrine of free election to salvation, but evade the impenetrable mystery of absolute and eternal reprobation, which was the most material point in the controversy.
The ministers of Ziirich defended Zwingli against Bolsec's
618 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
charge, tliat in his work on Providence he made God the author of sin, and they referred to other works in which Zwingli traced sin to the corruption of the human will. Bullinger, in a private letter to Calvin, impressed upon him the necessity of moderation and mildness. " Believe me," he said, "many are displeased with what you say in your Institutes about predestination, and draw the same conclusions from it as Bolsec has drawn from Zwingli's book on Providence." This affair caused a temporary alienation between Calvin and Bullinger. It was not till ten years afterwards that Bullinger decidedly embraced the Calvinistic dogma, and even then he laid no stress on reprobation.^
Myconius, in the name of the Church of Basel, answered evasively, and dwelt on what Calvin and Bolsec believed in common.
The reply of the ministers of Bern anticipates the modern spirit of toleration. They applaud the zeal for truth and unity, but emphasize the equally important duty of charit}^ and forbearance. The good Shepherd, they say, cares for the sheep that has gone astray. It is much easier to win a man back by gentleness than to compel him by severity. As to the awful mystery of divine predestination, they remind Calvin of the perplexity felt by many good men who cling to the Scripture texts of God's universal grace and goodness.
The effect of these letters was a milder judgment on Bolsec. He was banished for life from the territory of Geneva for exciting sedition and for Pelagianism, under pain of being whipped if he should ever return. The judgment was announced Dec. 23, 1551, Avith the sound of the trumpet.^
Bolsec retired to Thonon, in Bern, but as he created new disturbances he was banished (1555). He left for France,
1 On BuUinger's views see above, pp. 210 sq. , and Schvveizer, I. 225, 255 sqq.
2 Beza : " Senatus . . . ilium turn ut seditiosum, turn ut mere Pelaqianunx XXIII. Dec. puhlice damnatum urbe expulit, fustuariam poenam minatus, si rel in urbe vel in urhis territorio esset deprehensus." Reg. of the Ven. Comp. in Annal. 498: " M^Ierosme fat hanni a son de trompe des terres de Geneve."