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

humbler classes. Their contemporaries knew them
not, at least till they saw them at the stake, and
learned, with some little wonder and surprise, what
heroic though misguided men, as they thought
them, had been living amongst them unknown;
and, as regards ourselves, we should never have
heard their names, or learned aught of their history,
but for the light which the Gospel sheds upon
them. It was that alone which brought these humble
men into view, and made them the heirs of an
immortality of fame even on earth; for so long as
the Church shall exist, and her martyr-records
continue to be read, their names, and the services
they did, will be mentioned with honor.
Living at the house of La Forge, such were the
men with whom Calvin came into almost daily
contact. But not these only: others of a different
stamp, whose inspiration and sentiments were
drawn from another source than the Scriptures, did
the future Reformer occasionally meet at the table
of his host. The avowal of pantheistic and atheistic
doctrines would, at times, drop from the mouths of
these suspicious-looking strangers, and startle
300