‘Our excellent brother and special friend, we commend ourselves to you very affectionately, because we are fully assured that you have no other desire but for the increase and advancement of the glory and honor of God, and of his holy Word. On behalf of our Little, Great, and General Councils (all of which have strongly urged us to take this step), we pray you very affectionately that you will be pleased to come over to us, and to return to your former post and ministry; and we hope that by God’s help this course will be a great advantage for the furtherance of the holy Gospel, seeing that our people very much desire you, and we will so deal with you that you shall have reason to be satisfied. ‘This 22d October, 1540. ‘Your good friends, ‘THE SYNDICS AND COUNCIL OF GENEVA.’[19] This letter was fastened with a seal bearing the motto—_Post tenebras spero lucem_. [Sidenote: Calvin’s Perplexity.] The invitation to Geneva was clear, affectionate, and pressing. But the courier, who had reached Worms two days before, had brought to the Strasburg deputies a letter from their senate the purport of which was entirely the reverse. All those who had heard the letter read, and Calvin most of all, had been astonished at the eagerness to keep the Reformer which the magistrates of this free city expressed. ‘I had never imagined,’ he said, ‘that they set such value upon me.’[20] He thus found himself pressed on two sides, Geneva and Strasburg: and if the fancy were not too high-flown, we might say that the Latin and the German races were at this moment contending for the man who but a little while before was driven away from the town in which he lived. The decision which Calvin had to form was a solemn and difficult one. His whole career in this world was at stake. He called together such of his friends as were then at Worms for the purpose of consulting with them. To return to Geneva was, in his view, to sacrifice his life, but he was resolved to take this course if his friends counselled it. ‘The faithful,’ thought he, ‘must heartily abandon their life when it is a hindrance to their drawing nigh to Christ. They must in such case act like one who throws off his shoulders a heavy and tiresome burden when he wants to go quickly elsewhere. Let us take our life in our hands, and offer it to God as a sacrifice.’[21]