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

419
The Council arrested Jacques Gruet, who had been heard uttering threats
against Calvin a few days previously, and had written obscene and impious
verses and letters. In his house were found a copy of Calvin’s work against
the Libertines with a marginal note, Toutes folies, and several papers and
letters filled with abuse of Calvin as a haughty, ambitious, and obstinate
hypocrite who wished to be adored, and to rob the pope of his honor.
There were also found two Latin pages in Gruet’s handwriting, in which
the Scriptures were ridiculed, Christ blasphemed, and the immortality of
the soul called a dream and a fable.
Gruet was tortured every day for a month, after the inhuman fashion of
that age. f743 He confessed that he had affixed the libel, and that the papers
found in his house belonged to him; but he refused to name any
accomplices. He was condemned for religious, moral, and political
offences; being found guilty of expressing contempt for religion; of
declaring that laws, both human and divine, were but the work of man’s
caprice; and that fornication was not criminal when both parties were
consenting; and of threatening the clergy and the Council itself. f744
He was beheaded on the 26th of July, 1547. The execution instead of
terrifying the Libertines made them more furious than ever. Three days
afterwards the Council was informed that more than twenty young men
had entered into a conspiracy to throw Calvin and his colleagues into the
Rhone. He could not walk the streets without being insulted and
threatened.
Two or three years after the death of Gruet, a treatise of his was
discovered full of horrible blasphemies against Christ, the Virgin Mary, the
Prophets and Apostles, against the Scriptures, and all religion. He aimed to
show that the founders of Judaism and Christianity were criminals, and that
Christ was justly crucified. Some have confounded this treatise with the
book “De tribus Impostoribus,” which dates from the age of Emperor
Frederick II., and puts Moses, Christ, and Mohammed on a level as
religious impostors.
Gruet’s book was, at Calvin’s advice, publicly burnt by the hangman before
Gruet’s house, May 22, 1550. f745
2. Ami Perrin (Amy Pierre), the military chief (captain-general) of the
Republic, was the most popular and influential leader of the Patriotic party.
He had been one of the earliest promoters of the Reformation, though from