Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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distinct statements in so few words, and in such appropriate and
well-chosen terms (en des mots si propres et si bien choisis)....
Never did Calvin’s life appear to me more pure or more innocent
than after carefully examining the diabolical calumnies with which
some have endeavored to defame his character, and after
considering all the praises which his greatest enemies are
constrained to bestow on his memory.”
Moses Amyraut (1596–1645).
“That incomparable Calvin, to whom mainly, next to God, the
Church owes its Reformation, not only in France, but in many other
parts of Europe.”
Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704).
From his Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes (1688), the
greatest polemical work in French against the Reformation.
“I do not know if the genius of Calvin would be found as fitted to
excite the imagination and stir up the populace as was that of
Luther, but after the movement had commenced, he rose in many
countries, more especially in France, above Luther himself, and
made himself head of a party which hardly yields to that of the
Lutherans. By his searching intellect and his bold decisions, he
improved upon all those who had sought in this century to establish
a new church, and gave a new turn to the pretended reformation.
“It is a weak feeling which makes us desirous to find anything
extraordinary in the death-beds of these people. God does not
always bestow these examples. Since he permits heresy for the trial
of his people, it is not to be wondered at that to complete this trial
he allows the spirit of seduction to prevail in them even to the end,
with all the fair appearances by which it is covered; and, without
learning more of the life and death of Calvin, it is enough to know
that he has kindled in his country a flame which not all the blood
shed on its account has been able to extinguish, and that he has
gone to appear before the judgment of God without feeling any
remorse for a great crime ....
“Let us grant him then, since he wishes it so much, the glory of
having written as well as any man of his age; let us even place him,