But Calvinism has had its day. The free inquiry of which it sprang has slowly, yet surely, carried all save its wilfully blind or ignorant adherents beyond the pale of their old beliefs. More than a century ago the Church of Geneva broke not only with its Confession of Faith as formulated by its founder, but with confessions of faith of every complexion; so that one of its leaders, on occasion of the late tercentenary commemoration of the death of the Reformer, could say: _Nous ne sommes plus Calvinistes selon Calvin_. Nor has the defection of the Swiss been singular; they have been followed more or less closely by the Dutch, the Germans, the more advanced of the Protestant Church of France, and finally and at length by the Scotch. In the land of Knox, the very stronghold of Judaic Christianity as defined by Calvin and his great disciple, open rebellion has broken out against the narrowness of the Creed and Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of Divines so obsequiously followed until now; prelude, doubtless, to further disruption and greater change than have yet been seen; for modern criticism and exegesis, and ever advancing science, proclaim arrest at any grade in the Religious Idea yet attained by the Churches to be impossible. CHAPTER XXI. CALVIN’S DEFENCE IS ATTACKED. Even whilst the trial was proceeding, we have seen that Calvin was not without opposition in his pursuit of Servetus. Amied Perrin, his great political rival, had striven for mercy or a minor punishment to the last; and he was not without followers in the Council. But they were outnumbered and out-voted there, so that the light of the ‘blessed quality that is not strained’ was quenched. Outside the circle of the governing body also, more than one voice was raised against the manifest aim of Calvin to have his theological opponent capitally convicted. But it was by persons of inferior note. David Bruck, among others, a man of talent and quondam minister of a congregation of Anabaptists in the North, now living privately and respected under the name of David Joris at Berne, went so far as to speak of Servetus as a pious man, and to declare that if all who differed from others in their religious views were to be put to death, the world would be turned into one sea of blood.[115]