Calvin: Tracts Relating to the Reformation, Vol. 1

Theodore Beza

Minister of the Church of Geneva

Life of John Calvin

BY

Should any one suppose that I have engaged in writing this Life of John Calvin from any other motive than zeal to maintain the truth, the present state of human affairs will, I hope, easily vindicate me from the calumny. For there is scarcely any shorter road to all kinds of disaster than to praise virtue; and it were extreme folly voluntarily to bring down on one's self evils which mere silence may avert. But if the wicked allow no kind of virtue to be proclaimed with impunity, what must those expect, whose object it is to proclaim piety, which is of a higher order than virtue, and is not only opposed by the wicked, but is also very often assailed even by persons who are most desirous to appear, and sometimes also to be, honest? For piety has no enemies more inveterate than those who have sincerely embraced a false religion, thinking it true. But these things, however formidable in appearance, have not at all deterred me. For it were shameful if, from fear of the wicked, the good were not to be spoken of, and if the voice of religion were to be suppressed by the clamours of the superstitious.

Life of Calvin

But should any one object, that to write the Life of Calvin is a very different thing from defending the truth, I will at once admit that man and truth are very different things; this, however, I will not hesitate to say, that He who is truth itself did not speak rashly when he said, "As the Father hath sent me, so send I you," (John xx. 21,) and "whoso heareth you heareth me," (Luke x. 16.) Let men, therefore, (both those who believe through ignorance, and those who so speak from malice,) cry out, that Luther, Zuinglius, and Calvin, are regarded by us as gods, though we are continually charging the worshippers of saints with idolatry; let them, I say, cry out as much and as long as they please, — we are prepared with our answer, viz., that to commemorate the labours which holy men have undertaken in behalf of religion, together with their words and actions, (through the knowledge of which the good become better, while the wicked are reproved, our only aim in this kind of composition,) is a very different thing from doing as they do, when they either bring disgrace on the lives of men who were truly pious, by narratives not less impious than childish, (as an obscure in(Bvidual called Abdias did with the history of the Apostles,) or compose fabulous histories filled…