Those of the Genevese who had taken them from the time of their coming for good evangelical Christians had called them _brethren_. But these foreigners had shown themselves very quarrelsome; and having refused even to pray with the Christians of Geneva--an offensive sign of their sectarian spirit--they were no longer called by the name of brethren. However, no penalty was at that time imposed on them, in the hope that they might be brought to more Christian sentiments. But that was indulging in a mere illusion. It was therefore decreed, according to the custom of the age, that these doctors, and every member of their sect, should be banished for ever from Geneva, under pain of death. ‘The most admirable feature of this business,’ said the early biographers of Calvin, ‘is, that if some churches of Germany have been delivered from these doctors, they were so by mere rigor of justice; while at Geneva _the magistrate had no hand in it_.’[490] Certainly, he did not employ against them either imprisonment or torture; Calvin endeavored only to convince them by argument. But banishment, under pain of death, is nevertheless a very palpable act of the magistrate. On the other hand, it is also a mistake to say that the Registers knew nothing of Calvin’s victory.[491] On the contrary, the decree of the council was expressly based on the fact that the doctors had been unable to prove the truth of their propositions by Holy Scripture. These were not the only attacks which the reformers had to sustain at the outset of their career. There were certain restless spirits who saw with vexation Calvin, Farel, and Viret at the head of the Reformation in French-speaking lands, and who wished to deprive them of their position, that they might occupy it themselves. These new troubles, caused by jealousy and ambition, were of a sharper kind, and lasted longer.[492] Their originator was that doctor of the Sorbonne, Caroli, whom we saw arrive from France at Geneva at the time of the great disputation of 1535.[493] Caroli was a sort of theological adventurer. He did not at heart care for the sacred end which the Reformation had in view. An incurable levity, which would not allow him to adhere to any party, a liking for anything which seemed to him new and fashionable, a burning thirst for glory and for fortune, a craving for liberty to satisfy his vicious inclinations, these were the feelings which actuated him, and threw him into a camp which he soon abandoned to seek in another the gratification of the same evil desires. Vain, proud, cringing, and inconsistent, he appeared as an assailant of the monks when a sort of reformation was in vogue in France. Next, when the era of persecution had begun, he made his escape to Geneva. The object of his dreams was to become a sort of bishop, to govern the reformed churches in French Switzerland; and he proposed to establish a doctrine which should hold a middle place between the Gospel and the pope.