People thought that they had done with this man, and the assembly was on the point of breaking up, when he suddenly rose, with a preoccupied look, as if he had some burden on his conscience of which he was anxious to be rid. ‘For the glory of God,’ said he, speaking in a declamatory tone, ‘for the honor of the lords of Berne, for the purity of the faith, for the safety of the Church, for the public peace, and for the relief of my own conscience, I have now to set before you, my honorable lords, a matter on which I have long kept silence. The silence must now be broken. I must speak. There are in the city of Geneva, as well as in your country, many ministers who are tainted with the Arian heresy.’ Putting himself forward like a second Athanasius, he named a great number of ministers, good men, whom he declared guilty of the error of Arius, but without giving any evidence at all.[500] Calvin was among the first in this catalogue of heretics. To accuse him of being an Arian required an audacity and a passion carried to the pitch of madness. It appears that he was even accused, in common with his friends, of maintaining the errors of the Spaniard Servetus.[501] The Genevese theologians had very recently encountered and defeated an Arian at Geneva, Claude of Savoy. There was something more than passion in this attack; there was absurdity. Calvin leaning towards Deism, indeed! The Reformation was not a beginning of Deism, with which stupid enemies have charged it: it was a reëstablishing of Christianity. [Sidenote: CALVIN ACCUSED OF ARIANISM.]