ON SUFFERING PERSECUTION[1]
Born in 1509, died in 1564; studied in Paris and elsewhere, and joined the Reformation movement about 1528; banished from Paris in 1533; published his "Institutes" in 1536; went to Geneva in 1536; banished from Geneva in 1538, returning in 1541; had a memorable controversy with Servetus in 1553.
It is true that persons may be found who will foolishly expose themselves to death in maintaining some absurd opinions and reveries conceived by their own brain, but such impetuosity is more to be regarded as frenzy than as Christian zeal; and, in fact, there is neither firmness nor sound sense in those who thus, at a kind of haphazard, cast themseves away. But, however this may be, it is in a good cause only that God can acknowledge us as His martyrs. Death is common to all, and the children of God are condemned to ignominy and tortures just as criminals are; but God makes the distinction between them, inasmuch as He can not deny His truth.
On our part, then, it is requisite that we have sure and infallible evidence of the doctrine which we maintain; and hence, as I have said,
- ↑ From a sermon, with the text "Let me go forth from the city after the Lord Jesus, bearing His reproach." Calvin's works, in translation, have been published in Edinburgh in fifty-three volumes octavo.
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