Martin Bell’s tractate was so eagerly seized upon by the public, and proved so influential in turning the tide of self-gratulation on which Calvin had been floating somewhat at his ease since the appearance of his ‘Declaration’ and ‘Defence,’ that it was thought necessary to find an antidote to the bane of reason and mercy, so modestly but so convincingly presented in its pages. Calvin would probably have felt himself constrained to take the field again, and, ‘confronting Bell with self-comparisons,’ to answer him ‘point against point’ in person, had he not had his friend De Beza at hand to take his place. Engaged at the moment with his Commentary on Genesis, Calvin felt little disposed to interrupt his work by entering anew on an old theme, though ever ready to gird himself for the fight on one with novelty to recommend it. The task of meeting Martin Bell he therefore delegated to De Beza, who appeared anon in a volume three or four times the size of the Farrago in answer to its plea for latitude in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and against the infliction of death for the religious divergence called heresy in any or all of the multifarious forms in which it shows itself. With the terrible text of the Jewish Bible, ‘If thy brother, thy son, the wife of thy bosom, or the friend that is as thine own soul, entice thee, saying, Let us go and serve other Gods; thou shalt not consent to him, neither shall thine eye have pity on him, neither shalt thou spare him, but thou shalt surely kill him, thy hand shall be first upon him to put him to death,’ &c. (Deut. xiii. 6 and seq.), and much besides, akin to this, assumed as the command of God, Beza had no very difficult task before him in persuading himself and his party that they had abidden by the Law in all that had been done; satisfied as they were besides that those who gainsaid them were the enemies of God and man when they presumed to defend doctrines dishonouring, it was said, to the Supreme and destructive of the peace of the world.--God, in a word, was with them; the Devil and corrupt humanity on the side of their opponents, and there an end. We do not observe, however, that Beza’s reply, though very ably conceived, and written with the skill of the practised controversialist, had any great influence. It was not reprinted in a separate form, and although translated into Dutch, seems to have been little read beyond the circle of Calvin’s friends and followers. Short as was the time that had elapsed since Servetus perished, the apologists of the man who sent him to his death were already in the rear of public opinion on the subject. The jurisdiction of the magistrate had come to be seen ever more and more clearly to lie within the sphere of ACT, and to have nothing to do with OPINION.