This appeal to arms was quite contrary to the principles of the founder of the French Church. In 1556, when Calvin had reason to fear that the Reformed would resist if they were attacked, he wrote to the church of Angers: “I pray you put aside such counsels; they will never be blessed by God, or come to a good issue.” And to the church at Paris he wrote in the same strain: “Show yourselves like lambs against the rage of the wolves, for you have the promise of the Good Shepherd, who will never fail you. It is better that we be all destroyed than for the Gospel to be reproached with leading the people to sedition and tumult. God will always fructify the ashes of his servants, whilst violence and excess will bring nothing but barrenness.”[291] It is with great hesitation that I venture to differ from so high an authority as Calvin; but--to oppose authority to authority--St. Augustine acknowledges that overwhelming necessity may justify Christians in drawing the sword.[292] And Knox went still farther, maintaining in his “Appellation” that it was not only the duty of a nation to resist a persecuting sovereign, but (as in the case of the Marian persecutions) also to depose the queen, and even “punish her to death, with all the sort of her idolatrous priests.” But the propriety of arming in defense of religion can hardly in these days be maintained on such grounds. The Huguenots of 1562 felt that their only choice lay between extermination, hypocritical conformity, or rebellion. They were contending against intolerable oppression; the laws were no protection to them; and in such circumstances they believed resistance to be justifiable. Why should they apostatize, or be burned, while they had strength to wield the sword, especially as the letter of the law was in their favor? Such a line of argument may fall below the great ideal of the Founder of Christianity, in which the highest victory is gained through suffering: “Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other.” But how can we apply such a rule to a whole nation, the mass of which consists of ordinary individuals? Upon men of low moral constitutions persecution has a searing, hardening, revengeful effect. It would not raise the victims into martyrs, or lift them up to the divine spirit of the Crucifixion. To forbid the use of the sword for any and every cause, as one very narrow sect does, is intelligible; but to say that we may draw it in defense of our homes and our goods, but not in defense of our faith, is to count the latter of less value than the former. Those who sympathize with Calvin argue that the midnight assassin, or the violator of woman’s purity, may be lawfully resisted, even unto death; not so another who would force a man to abjure his faith. This is putting the purse above the conscience. Calvin had never been tested in the fire. Brentius and Languet, who had both been face to face with the