From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

feeling would have been intertwined and identified
with the system, every avenue would have been
closed and barred against light, and Calvin would
have become the ablest champion that ever
enrolled himself in the ranks of the Roman Church.
We should, at this day, have heard much more of
Calvin than of Bellarmine.
But God had provided an opening for the arrow
to enter in the triple armor in which the young
student was encasing himself. Calvin's cousin,
Olivetan, a disciple of Lefevre's, now came to
Paris. Living in the same city, the cousins were
frequently in each other's company, and the new
opinions, which were agitating Paris, and
beginning to find confessors in the Place de Greve,
became a topic of frequent converse between
them.[1] Nay, it is highly probable that Calvin had
witnessed some of the martyrdoms we have
narrated in a previous chapter. The great bell of
Notre Dame had summoned all Paris -- and why
not Calvin? -- to see how the young Pavane and the
hermit of Livry could stand with looks undismayed
at the stake. Olivetan and Calvin are not of one
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