‘M. Merle,’ it has been said,[2] ‘makes use of his vast knowledge of the works of the reformers to borrow from them passages which he arbitrarily introduces out of their place and apart from the circumstances to which they relate. Thus sentences taken from works of Calvin written during the last periods of his life are transformed into sentences pronounced by him twenty or twenty-five years earlier. That which on one occasion was written with his pen is, in regard to another occasion, put into his lips. We may, without pedantry, refuse to consider this process in strict conformity with that branch of truth which is called accuracy.’ It is true that, in Vol. VI., M. Merle d’Aubigné applies to the year 1538 words uttered by Calvin about twenty-five years later, at the time of his death in 1564:—‘I have lived here engaged in strange contests. I have been saluted in mockery of an evening before my own door with fifty or sixty shots of arquebuses. You may imagine how that must astound a poor scholar, timid as I am, and as I confess I always was.’ But these words, spoken by Calvin many years after the event, referred precisely to that year, 1538. The historian has quoted them at the very date to which they belong; nor could he have omitted them without a failure in accuracy. The following is, however, the only proof given of this alleged want of accuracy:— ‘At the time when Calvin had just succeeded in establishing in Geneva what he considered to be the essential conditions of a Christian church, he had published, in the name of his colleagues, some statement of the success which they had just achieved, and had given expression to the sentiments of satisfaction and hope which they felt. Of this statement, to which events almost immediately gave a cruel contradiction, M. Merle has made use to depict the personal feelings and disposition of Calvin _after_ the check which his work had sustained. The conditions are altogether changed. Instead of triumphing, the reformer is banished; and, nevertheless, the language which he used in the days of triumph is employed to characterize his steadfastness and constancy in the days of exile.’