‘Seigneur Jehan, Your last letter found me on the eve of my departure from home, and I had not time then to reply to the inclosure it contained. I take advantage of the first moment I have to spare since my return, to comply with your wishes; not indeed that I have any great hope of proving serviceable to such a man, seeing him disposed as I do. But I will try once more if there be any means left of bringing him to reason, and this will happen when God shall have so worked in him that he become altogether other than he is. I have been led to write to him more sharply than is my wont, being minded to take him down a little in his presumption; and I assure you there is no lesson he needs so much to learn as humility. This may perhaps come to him through the grace of God, not otherwise, as it seems. But we too ought to lend a helping hand. If God give him and us such grace as to have the letter I now forward turn to profit, I shall have cause to rejoice. If he goes on writing to me in the style he has hitherto seen fit to use, however, you will only lose your time in soliciting me farther in his behalf; for I have other business that concerns me more nearly, and I shall make it matter of conscience to devote myself to it, not doubting that he is a Satan who would divert me from studies more profitable. Let me beg of you therefore to be content with what I have already done, unless you see most pressing occasion for acting differently. ‘Recommending myself to you and praying God to have you in his keeping, I am your servant and friend-- ‘CHARLES DESPEVILLE. [Geneva] ‘this 13 of February, 1546.’ This is surely neither an indifferent nor an unreasonable letter; yet does it give us to know that the epistle it enclosed, both in manner and matter, was likely to give offence to one with the haughty and self-sufficing nature of Michael Servetus. He had addressed the Reformer on transcendental dogmatic subjects, and probably urged his views with the warmth that strong conviction lends to language, and without anything like the deferential tone to which Calvin was accustomed. This proved particularly distasteful to the head of the Church of Geneva, who had certainly thought as deeply, and may even have entertained as serious misgivings, on some of the topics propounded, as his correspondent. Hence the unwonted _sharpness_ of the reply; hence, also, the fire which Villeneuve caught at being lectured like a schoolboy; and hence, in fine, the irritating, disrespectful, and regrettable character on either side of the correspondence that followed. In transmitting Calvin’s letter to Villeneuve, Frelon addresses him thus:--