them.’[381] Still, we cannot deny it, Calvin thought--and these are his own words--that since there is no house, however small it be, which can be maintained in its proper state without discipline, it is much more requisite in the Church, which ought to be better ordered than any house. He went further. He asserted that the state has the right and is bound to take notice of matters of discipline, and to punish transgressors. It is to be regretted that the fine genius of Calvin did not make an exception in this case to the rule adopted ten centuries earlier by all Christendom, and that he did not convince the state that its heavy hand must not intervene in matters of religion. It is however fair to ask ourselves whether, in the sixteenth century, such an effort would not have been a superhuman task. Calvin himself made known to us his own thought when he said, ‘THE DOCTRINE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS THE SOUL OF THE CHURCH.’[382] He set forth that doctrine in the church of St. Peter just as it is found in Scripture, and so diffused it in the world. Certainly it was not by discipline that he made his conquests. He bore the torch of truth. Devoid of ambition, having no designs reaching beyond Geneva, without any secret policy such as the Jesuits are skilled in, and armed with one weapon only, the truth, he triumphed over the greatest difficulties. Farel, Viret, Beza would not have sufficed. In this man of feeble constitution and humble aspect there were an unquenchable resolution, an energetic will. _He held fast, as seeing him who is invisible._ Established in this small town, he became God’s instrument, first for the spread of the Reformation in the West, then for defending it against the attacks of Rome and Loyola and Philip II. A new time was born for the world.