Calvin was driven out of Geneva in April 1538 after a ministry of less than two years. He greeted the sentence of banishment with a sigh of relief after all the emotional agitation and fatigue of the preced­ing months. It was true that Farel and he were treated with ignominy and that they received an ill reward for their unsparing devotion. But Calvin soon recovered his calm. He realized that God’s hand was in it all. Geneva had fallen into the hands of their foes, and those in control in the city would not listen to the Synod of Zurich which, although not uncritical of the Reformers ‘misplaced vigour’ and lack of tender heartedness towards ‘so undisciplined a people’, nevertheless gave their support to the ousted pastors. Indeed, the men of Geneva would not even heed the city of Berne; the leading men of Berne had earlier joined forces, for their own ends, with the enemies of Farel and Calvin in Geneva, but now most of them felt that the Genevese had gone too far in driving the Reformers out!

After quitting Geneva, Calvin and Farel visited Berne and Zurich and eventually arrived in Basel where they found a lodging for a few months (6 June to i8 August 1538) with Johannes Oporinus, the print­er of the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes (1536). Farel and Calvin had reached Basel worn out and drenched with rain; indeed one of the two had almost been carried away in the current of a swollen river they were trying to cross.

Farel left Basel for Neuchatel on 26 July 1538, but before his depar­ture a letter reached Calvin from Martin Bucer. Bucer was the leading pastor at Strasbourg, and his letter invited Calvin to join him in the ongoing work of Reformation in that city. After Farel’s departure a second letter from Bucer arrived, pressing the earlier invitation. Calvin was reluctant to accept, for acceptance meant separation from his beloved Farel. Moreover, he had resolved afresh ‘to live in a private station, free from the burden and cares of any public charge’. But, as he says in the Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, ‘That most excellent servant of Christ, Martin Bucer, employing a similar kind of remonstrance and protestation as that to which Farel had recourse before (to keep Calvin at Geneva in 1536), drew me back to a new station.’

The gentle Bucer could be as strongly urgent as the thundering Farel: he warned Calvin not to be like Jonah in fleeing from God, lest he too experience the wrath of God. The hand of God was indeed in this. It is one of Calvin’s Roman Catholic biographers who tells us that when the Reformer left Strasbourg after his three years ministry there, he was a changed man; his horizon was widened, his knowledge was deepened, and his life was enriched with new experiences.

He preached his first sermon at Strasbourg in September 1538; but here, as at Geneva on his first arrival, he received no salary for several months. He suffered from cold and hunger in the winter of 1538-9 and had to sell many of his books just to keep himself alive. His friend Louis du Tillet, who had tragically returned to the Church of Rome, offered to help but attached such conditions to his offer that Calvin declined it with thanks. ‘Did he mean to convert me?’ wrote Calvin to Farel. Swiss friends also offered help but he preferred to battle on alone.

Shortly after his arrival at Strasbourg news came of the death of his former colleague and friend, the blind preacher Corauld, who had been expelled from Geneva at the same time as Calvin and Farel. Corauld had found a post as pastor in Orbe, but now he was dead, and it was suspected that he had been murdered. Calvin wrote to Farel, ‘I am so bowed down by the death of Corauld that I cannot set a limit to my anguish ... It is not merely the usual sleeplessness I suffer from ... My mind is chiefly burdened with that iniquitous deed, which, if my suspicions are well founded, I must bring to light.’

He was troubled too by the arrival in Strasbourg of that miserable wretch, Peter Caroli. On this occasion Calvin, who often displayed such marvellous patience, was carried away by his own vehemence. It was not on Caroli that his lash fell, but on his own friends, Bucer, Matthias Zell and Johannes Sturm. They had drawn up articles of faith without showing them to Calvin and demanded that he sign them to make his position clear in the face of Caroli’s insidious attacks. Moreover, they made the demand in such a way that it seemed that if he did not sign, then they would be his adversaries. He had reason to be indignant, but he tells us that on this occasion he passed the bounds of moderation. He said he would sooner die than sign the articles and stormed out of the room.

This scene has furnished some material to Calvin’s foes, but let us remember that it is Calvin who describes it to us and exposes his fault. It is Calvin who confesses, ‘I have sinned grievously.’ And after his out­burst his only consolation was in groans and tears: ‘This fierce beast, this impatience’, he tells his beloved Bucer later, ‘is not yet conquered.’ A fiery temper? Yes, but mark how on occasion he bore Bucer’s frank rebuke with the utmost meekness.

Calvin served as pastor of the French Church at Strasbourg and also as a professor in the Academy made famous by Sturm. He was a great pastor, terrible against the wolves which troubled Christ’s flock, but tender toward the doubting, weeping with those that wept. He introduced a sounder discipline in the church; he also brought in a liturgy and taught the people to sing the Psalms. What life and power was in the worship! A young man from Antwerp, a fugitive from persecution, told how he ‘wept, not for sadness, but for joy to hear them all singing so heartily, and as they sang giving thanks to God that he had led them to a place where his name is glorified. No one could believe what joy there is in singing the praises and wonders of the Lord in the mother tongue as they are sung here!’

In the mother tongue! And that this might be, Calvin turned poet. He began with Psalms 25 and 46. In 1539 he published a selection of 18 Psalms – eight were compositions of Clement Marot and seven were his own. Emile Doumergue says: ‘It was Calvin who guided the choir, translated the first Psalms into verse, chose the melodies, and took the early composers under his wing.’

Amid his labours at Strasbourg, Calvin did not forget the Lord’s flock at Geneva. A subtle attack upon Geneva by Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto drew from Calvin a most powerful reply. The church at Geneva was as dear to him as his own soul. His ministry, which Sado­leto assailed without actually identifying him by name, was received from Christ, and must be defended, if need be, with his blood. Step by step he answered the arguments of the Cardinal and reduced them to ashes. All over Europe men knew that a great champion of the Protes­tant cause had arisen.

During his sojourn at Strasbourg he commenced writing commentar­ies on Paul’s epistles. His Commentary on Romans is dated 18 October 1539. He states the three principles which guided him as an expositor: brevity, simplicity, and liberty of interpretation. At the beginning of August 1540, he married Idelette de Bure, the widow of a former Ana­baptist, with two children, a boy and a girl. It was probably his friend Farel who officiated at the ceremony. Beza described Idelette as a grave and honourable lady; Farel said she was ‘not only good and honour­able but also handsome’. Soon after the wedding Calvin fell severely ill – ‘God hastened to temper our joy’, he wrote to Farel, ‘so that it might not go out of bounds.’ She was to him a loving and faithful wife until her death on 29 March 1549. The only child of the union sur­vived for just two weeks. He was baptized and given the name Jacques (James). Enemies of Calvin reproached him over his childlessness. To one who brought this reproach he replied, ‘The Lord gave me a child, but he was pleased to deprive me of it. In its place he has given me thousands of children in all parts of Christendom’ – his spiritual sons and daughters!

In Strasbourg Calvin was the instrument in the conversion of not a few Anabaptists. Many years later, while on his deathbed, he told his colleagues how the children of Anabaptists were brought to him for baptism from many places around.

While at Strasbourg he went to colloquies between Romanists and Protestants – held under the auspices of the Emperor Charles V – at Frankfurt, Worms, and Ratisbon. If the meetings were of no avail for the reunion of Christendom (as the Emperor had hoped), they served to forge a firm friendship between Calvin and Philip Melanchthon; Calvin showed himself a friend most tender and true as steel. At the collo­quies Calvin earned a name for himself by his ability in the debates; Melanchthon called him ‘the theologian’. His willingness to make concessions on points to secure agreement between the various groups of Protestants was a source of surprise and sometimes of pain to some of his friends. His sketches, in letters to Farel, of the leading Romanists at the conferences – such as Eck, Luther’s old antagonist – are most interesting.

To Ratisbon he had been most unwilling to go. He had small hope of good resulting. Moreover, he was in poor health, his wife was ill, and his congregation needed him, for the plague had broken out in Strasbourg. Before this he had shown that he did not fear the plague, for he had nursed Farel’s nephew at Basel and ministered to him in body and soul till he died. His brethren insisted that he go to Ratisbon and, as he tells Farel, he was ‘driven to go’.

The time came for his recall to Geneva. When, in 1541, he left Stras­bourg after a ministry of about three years, it was with deep thank­fulness in his heart for all the privileges and opportunities God had given him there. His time of preparation for his life’s work at Geneva was now at an end. He was equipped as a student; he had come into touch with the Protestants of France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and beyond; he was the respected leader whose presence was desired at col­loquies and diets; he was the friend of princes; he was without an equal among the leaders of the Reformation.