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

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He intended to stop only a night, as he says, but Providence had decreed
otherwise. It was the decisive hour of his life which turned the quiet
scholar into an active reformer.
His presence was made known to Farel through the imprudent zeal of Du
Tillet, who had come from Basel via Neuchâtel, and remained in Geneva
for more than a year. Farel instinctively felt that the providential man had
come who was to complete and to save the Reformation of Geneva. He at
once called on Calvin and held him fast, as by divine command. Calvin
protested, pleading his youth, his inexperience, his need of further study,
his natural timidity and bashfulness, which unfitted him for public action.
But all in vain. Farel, “who burned of a marvellous zeal to advance the
Gospel,” threatened him with the curse of Almighty God if he preferred his
studies to the work of the Lord, and his own interest to the cause of Christ.
Calvin was terrified and shaken by these words of the fearless evangelist,
and felt “as if God from on high had stretched out his hand.” He
submitted, and accepted the call to the ministry, as teacher and pastor of
the evangelical Church of Geneva. f468
It was an act of obedience, a sacrifice of his desires to a sense of duty, of
his will to the will of God.
Farel gave the Reformation to Geneva, and gave Calvin to Geneva—two
gifts by which he crowned his own work and immortalized his name, as
one of the greatest benefactors of that city and of Reformed Christendom.
Calvin was foreordained for Geneva, and Geneva for Calvin. Both have
made, their calling and election sure.”
He found in the city on Lake Leman “a tottering republic, a wavering faith,
a nascent Church.” He left it a Gibraltar of Protestantism, a school of
nations and churches. f469
The city had then only about twelve thousand inhabitants, but by her
situation on the borders of France and Switzerland, her recent deliverance
from political and ecclesiastical despotism, and her raw experiments in
republican self-government, she offered rare advantages for the solution of
the great social and religious problems which agitated Europe.
Calvin’s first labors in that city were an apparent failure. The Genevese
were not ready yet and expelled him, but after a few years they recalled
him. They might have expelled him again and forever; for he was poor,