colleagues made the first advance: 'Gentlemen,' said they, 'the Lord's Supper is at hand: we wish to unite all hearts, and we desire to offer the hand of friendship to M. Ami Perrin, and we beg, gentlemen, that you will reinstate him in his office of councillor.' 'As for me,' answered Perrin, 'I bring no complaint against any one, I do not wish evil to any one, and I desire to live in peace.' Three months later he was restored to office, and the opponents, whether Christians or Libertines, for a short time imagined themselves to be reconciled. {278} Chapter XV. Division Of The Religious And Civil Authorities On The Question Of The Lord's Supper. But however sincere a reconciliation may be, it is seldom so thorough as to put an end to the difficulties which first caused the quarrel. When Calvin proposed that the past should be forgotten, and that there should be peace on the approach of the Lord's Supper, he raised that question which offered precisely the most serious difficulty to the members of the two hostile parties. They were still divided as to whether the religious or the civil authorities had the right of refusing the sacrament to, and pronouncing sentence of excommunication upon, those whom they deemed unworthy. Such a difficulty could not arise in any free country in our own time, or indeed in any country where the meaning of faith and religious liberty are known. The Lord's Supper is administered by the religious authorities under a sense of religious responsibility, and in the name of the religious belief common to the pastors and their flock. It is for them alone to decide those cases in which, for religious reasons, they think it their duty to refuse it; and the civil power has no right to interfere in this close communion of the conscience of the priest with that of the believer. {279} It is true that ecclesiastics have often abused the right of excommunication, and have thus provoked tyrannical intervention on the part of the civil power--like that of the 'Parlement' of Paris, for example, which occasionally compelled a priest, in olden times, to administer the Lord's Supper to those to whom he had refused it. The magistrates of Geneva, from motives of prudence and to avoid what they called scandal, claimed the same right; and a short time after Calvin's return they maintained that they, and not the Consistory, ought to pronounce sentence of excommunication, and that it was the duty of the pastor to administer the sacrament to all those authorized by the Council to receive it. Calvin immediately declared that he would sacrifice everything and return into exile rather than admit such a claim. Not that he held any fixed and preconceived doctrine on the subject; his point of view was not that of a fanatical theologian, but of a religious ruler. He wrote to Bullinger: 'Since my return to this church we have instituted a kind of religious discipline which is not perfect in itself, and leaves