It is an easy and vulgar manner of writing history to depict exclusively the most salient features of men and parties, and to describe only those views and violent passions which separate them most strongly. I have no taste for this superficial and crude method: truth demands that we should penetrate beyond the mere surface of minds and characters, that we should also show their inmost nature, and point out the larger views and juster feelings which have sometimes led opponents to seek to understand and approach each other. {236} This is what I have just done with regard to Sadolet and Calvin; for a time I have left out of sight their striking points of difference and the subjects on which they profoundly offended each other, and have shown them as they appeared in 1539, in their polite and reserved polemics. The differences of principle and action which separated them were not rendered less deep and obvious by their mutual forbearance, and the contest between the two causes to which they were devoted, the Church of Rome and the Reformation, was carried on by them all the same. Both show themselves, in fact, just what they are, they and their followers: the cardinal is old, and Calvin is young;--one is timid, the other bold;--one tries to arrest a great movement in the human soul and human society which alarms and exhausts him;--the other throws himself into the movement with all confidence, and strives to help on the human soul and human society in the path which they have just entered. The two letters made a great noise throughout Europe: 'Here is a work which has hands and feet,' said Luther when he read that of Calvin; 'I thank God for raising up such men.' The letters were forgotten, the cardinal's attempt was futile, but the impulse given by Calvin spread and increased. I have tried to find in the history of the time some other traces of the intercourse thus commenced between two men, both of whom, although so unequal, were very remarkable, and both of whom were earnest. {237} I was struck by a few lines in a remarkable work published by M. Felix Bungener, pastor at Geneva, and entitled 'Calvin, his Life, his Work, and his Books;' [Footnote 79] in which he refers to a visit said to have been paid to Calvin at Geneva by Sadolet, at some unknown period after their epistolary controversy. [Footnote 79: Bungener, p. 503. 1862.]