Lutherans in a yielding mood, when Melanchthon and Contarini, with the urgent mediator Gropper of Cologne, were very near understanding each other. That event, as everybody knows, did not come off; but everybody does not know the consequences, for we shall see that the Counter-Reformation sprang from those conferences at Ratisbon. Calvin had no part in Irenics. He was persuaded that the work before them was to create not a new church, but a new world, to remodel not doctrine only, but society; that the chasm could never be bridged, but must grow wider with time. That conviction was not yet strongly held by the German Lutherans, and they do not all hold it at the present day. During his absence Cardinal Sadolet wrote to the Genevese, intreating them not to break up the unity of Latin Christendom; for Geneva was the first town beyond the Teutonic range that went over. Sadolet was not only reputed the finest Latinist of the age, but he was the most gracious of the Roman prelates, a friend of Erasmus, an admirer of Contarini, and the author of a commentary on St. Paul in which Lutheran Justification was suspected. The Genevese were not then so rich in literature as they afterwards became, and they were not prepared to answer the challenge, when Calvin did it for them. In 1541, after a change of government, he was recalled. He came back on condition that his plans for the Church were accepted, and his position remained unshaken until his death.
The Strasburg clergy, in losing him, wrote that he was unsurpassed among men, and the Genevese felt his superiority and put him on the commission which revised the Constitution. It was not changed in any important way, and the influence of the Geneva Constitution upon Calvin was greater than his influence on the government of Geneva. The city was governed by a Lesser or Inner Council of twenty-five, composed of the four syndics, the four of last year, and as many more as made up the twenty-five. These belonged to the ruling families, and were seldom renewed. Whilst the Lesser Council ad-
