Rise and Establishment of Protestantism at Geneva - James Aitken Wylie

numerous private citizens wrote to the Reformer in
urgent terms soliciting his return. These letters
found Calvin already on his way to the Diet at
Worms, whither the deputy of Geneva followed
him.[6] The repentant city opens its gates. Shall he
go back?
It was a critical moment, not in Calvin's history
only, but in that of Christendom; though neither
Calvin nor any other man could then estimate the
momentous issues that hung upon his decision. The
question of going back threw him into great
perplexity. The two years he had already passed in
Geneva, with the contradictions, perils, and insults
with which they were filled up, rose vividly before
him. If he returns, shall he not have to endure it all
over again? Going back was like lying down on a
bed of torture. The thought, he tells us, filled him
with horror. "Who will not pardon me," he writes,
"if I do not again willingly throw myself into a
whirlpool which I have found so dangerous?"[7]
He appeared to himself of all men the most unfit
for a career so stormy as that which awaited him at
Geneva. In a sense he judged correctly. He was
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