In the early days of the Reformation in Switzerland public debates served the cause well. Shortly after Calvin came to Geneva, it was arranged – on the initiative of the city of Berne – to hold a public debate in the cathedral at Lausanne from 1 to 8 October 1536. Farel and Viret were to be the disputants on the one side, with representatives of the Roman Church on the other. The debate opened on Sunday, 1 October, with a sermon by Farel, and it closed with another sermon from him the following Sunday. Farel had drawn up ten theses. He took the lead in defending the first, on justification by faith. Viret took the lead in defending the third, against the ‘bodily presence’ in the Lord’s Supper. Around these points the main debate revolved. From seven o’clock on the Monday morning the crowd filled the huge cathedral. Of 337 priests invited, only 174 were present, and of these only four took part in the debate, as they defended the dogmas of the Papacy.

Farel underscored the difference between Protestant liberty and Roman intolerance when he cried:

You are free to speak boldly. We carry on the contest here not with faggot or fire or sword or prison or torture. The executioners are not here as teachers or as powerful arguments, but the truth of Scripture ... The truth is strong enough against the lie; if you have it, present it.

Where could one find such an offer where Romanism prevails? Thursday, 5 October came. Calvin had not yet intervened. Indeed, he had resolved to say nothing; he was satisfied with the answers of Farel and Viret. The debate was on the ‘real presence’ of Christ in the Supper. A Romanist read a long and carefully prepared paper. He accused the Protestants of ignoring the Fathers. Calvin then rose to his feet. From memory he cited several Church Fathers; he quoted from Tertullian, a sermon attributed to Chrysostom, and some passages from Augustine. His acquaintance with the Fathers was unequalled, his irony devastating. His adversaries were overwhelmed and silent. Amid tense excitement a monk, Jean Tandi, who had been present from the beginning, arose and told the whole assembly that he was convinced of the truth of the Reformers’ doctrine – convinced that it accorded with the Scriptures. He asked pardon from God and from the people and declared that from now on he would renounce the garb of his order and live as a Christian.

Farel immediately cried, ‘O how great and good and wise God is! He has had pity on the poor sheep wandering in the wilderness, and has led him to his holy fold.’ The gathering broke up. Other Roman­ists avowed their new-found faith. One priest cried, ‘I know I will be excommunicated, but yet I come to find the truth.’ In the three months which followed, more than 80 monks and 120 priests and curates came over to Protestant cause.

The next day the Council of Lausanne introduced measures to clear the city of vice, and a few weeks later the city of Berne ordered the removal of all images and altars, the abolition of popish ceremonies and the ‘sacrifice of the mass’.

So Calvin came to be the acknowledged and respected leader of the Reformed movement. At the great Swiss synod meeting in Berne from 16-18 October 1536, at which 296 churches were represented, the Lutheran Formula of Concord was debated. Bucer and Capito recom­mended it, but the Swiss churches for the most part were not in favour of it. However, one Swiss pastor arose to plead for unity among the various national churches. Emile Doumergue believes this pastor was John Calvin, and his assumption may well be correct.

Calvin’s first ministry at Geneva turned out to be brief – just a year and eight months. Yet he accomplished much amid many difficulties. Among his achievements were the Articles on the Organization of the Church and its Worship at Geneva – adopted by the Council on 16 January 1537. Much of the church order and discipline in Geneva, against which Calvin’s critics sometimes rage, was already in existence before his arrival, due to the work of Farel. At Zurich, too, church discipline was already operating. But Calvin supplemented Farel’s arrangements, and in the Articles of 1537 he insisted on the church’s right to excommunicate offenders. He also introduced the singing of Psalms and certain Canticles. The two Reformers, moreover, expressed their opinion that it was desirable to celebrate the Lord’s Supper every Lord’s day. However, all they asked for in the current circumstances was that it be celebrated once a month; nevertheless, the Council fixed upon its observance four times a year.

In the winter of 1536-7 Calvin drew up his first Catechism for the instruction of the young. The title of the edition, which was issued early in 1537, was the Instruction Used in the Church at Geneva. In later years he revised this document carefully and altered its substance and arrangement. This Catechism was his first work in the French language; a Latin edition followed it to the press early in 1538. It was ‘a short and easy summary of the faith’ and dealt with the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer.

The Catechism was followed by another important document – of 42 pages – the Confession of Faith. All the citizens were required to subscribe to it in order ‘to recognize those in harmony with the gospel and those loving rather to be of the kingdom of the pope than of the kingdom of Christ’. The Confession was the joint work of Calvin and Farel.

Only a few months after he came to Geneva, Calvin was troubled by the arrival of certain opponents. One was the poor, half-crazy fanatic and anti-Trinitarian, Claude Aliodi. Then two Anabaptists appeared. Doumergue describes the Anabaptists as ‘these most dangerous enemies of the Reformation in its early days, these Protestants who gave ground for so many charges and slanders against the Protestants’. In the public disputation which ensued Calvin ‘so thoroughly refuted them by the Word of God alone, on 18 March 1537, that from that time not more than one or two appeared in that Church’ (Theodore Beza).

Within the city there was increasing opposition to the programme of reform. A large number of citizens refused to sign the Confession. Many objected to the strictness of the rule barring from the Lord’s Table those who were loose in their lives. A politically-strong party which suspected the loyalty of Calvin and Farel (who were, of course, both French) began to intercept their letters and spy upon them con­tinually. We can perhaps feel something of the difficulties facing the Reformers from a letter written to Calvin in March 1538 by two Eng­lishmen, who had spent four months in Geneva. The English visitors not only expressed their admiration of his gentleness and pleasantness of character and the charm of his conversation, but their regret at the trouble which evil men were causing him.

While the opposition at Geneva was increasing, Calvin was plunged into one of the fiercest controversies of his life. At the close of the con­ference in the cathedral at Lausanne in 1536, Peter Caroli succeeded in having himself appointed as first pastor of the city, with Viret as his colleague. The noted church historian Philip Schaff described Caroli as ‘an unprincipled, vain and quarrelsome theological adventurer and turncoat’. This strong language is abundantly justified. In a sermon at Lausanne during Viret’s absence, Caroli advocated prayers for the dead. Taken to task, he accused Viret and Calvin of Arianism. This touched Calvin to the quick. True, he had not used the words ‘Person’ and ‘Trinity’ in his Geneva Catechism, but he flatly denied that either he or Farel or Viret had any objection to those terms. Challenged by Caroli to sign the ancient Creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian), Calvin was impolitic enough to refuse. He would not sign anything on Caroli’s orders!

Calvin’s one design in this refusal was to make it clear that ‘Caroli’s insistence that only in the words of these Creeds could faith in the Trinity be expressed’ was absurd. Actually, Calvin had used the words ‘Person’ and ‘Trinity’ in his Institutes of 1536. Moreover, when Caroli was attacking him for not using them in the Catechism of 1537, the Reformer was vigorously engaged in excluding from the Church at Geneva impugners of Trinitarian doctrine! He gave little space to the doctrine in the Catechism because he believed an elaborate explanation was too difficult for babes in Christ.

The synod of Berne heard the case and took action, depriving Caroli of his ministry and issuing certificates of orthodoxy to Calvin, Farel, and Viret. Yet for a time there were widespread suspicions of the Genevan pastors’ orthodoxy. Caroli’s poison had done its work. All that spring and summer Calvin was busy writing letters here, there, and everywhere, correcting the false reports. Yet, in the whole controversy Calvin’s loyalty to his friends Farel and Viret, who were attacked even more than he, was outstanding.

‘A succession of dissensions’ now arose in Geneva. The Council (since the elections in February 1538 under the influence of the Lib­ertines, the implacable opponents of the Reformers) decreed that the Lord’s Supper be denied to none. This cut at the root of Calvin’s sys­tem of church discipline. On Easter Sunday Calvin and Farel refused to dispense the supper to an unruly people so much at variance among themselves. This led to rioting. The Libertine mob ran through the streets at night, firing guns in uproar outside the Reformers’ houses and threatening to throw them into the river with the cry, ‘To the Rhone!’

On the Monday the Council deposed Calvin and Farel from their pastoral offices and on the Tuesday ordered that they were to leave the city within three days. They left the same day or the next – the 23 or 24 April 1538. In the Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms Calvin speaks of his timid disposition and says that these ‘violent tempests’ were necessary as part of his early training. He adds: ‘Although I did not sink under them, yet I was not sustained by such greatness of mind as not to rejoice more than it became me when, in consequence of certain commotions, I was banished from Geneva.’ His response to the sentence of banishment was, ‘Good! If we had served men, we would have been ill rewarded, but we serve a great Master, who will reward us.’ He was free and God’s hand was in it.