"On Calvin some think Heaven's own mantle fell,
While others deem him instrument of hell,"

Theodore Beza writes, "I do not believe that his equal can be found.
Besides preaching every day from week to week, very often, and as much
as he was able, he preached twice every Sunday. He lectured on
theology three times a week. He delivered addresses to the Consistory,
and also instructed at length every Friday before the Bible
Conference, which we call the congregation. He continued this course
so constantly that he never failed a single time except in extreme
illness. Moreover, who could recount his other common or extraordinary
labors? I know of no man of our age who has had more to hear, to
answer, to write, nor things of greater importance. The number and
quality of his writings alone is enough to astonish any man who sees
them, and still more those who read them. And what renders his labors
still more astonishing is, that he had a body so feeble by nature, so
debilitated by night labors and too great abstemiousness, and, what is
more, subject to so many maladies, that no man who saw him could
understand how he had lived so long. And yet, for all that, he never
ceased to labor night and day in the work of the Lord. We entreated
him to have more regard for himself; but his ordinary reply was that
he was doing nothing, and that we should allow God to find him always
watching, and working as he could to his latest breath."

Calvin died in 1564, eleven years after the birth of Henry of Navarre,
at the age of fifty-five. For several years he was so abstemious that
he had eaten but one meal a day.[A]

[Footnote A: In reference to the execution of Servetus for heresy, an
event which, in the estimation of many, has seriously tarnished the
reputation of Calvin, the celebrated French historian M. Mignet, in a
very able dissertation, establishes the following points:

1. Servetus was not an ordinary heretic; he was a bold
pantheist, and outraged the dogma of all Christian
communions by saying that God, in three persons, was a
Cerberus, a monster with three heads. 2. He had already been
condemned to death by the Catholic doctors at Vienne in
Dauphiny. 3. The affair was judged, not by Calvin, but by
the magistrates of Geneva; and if it is objected that his
advice must have influenced their decision, it is necessary
to recollect that the councils of the other reformed cantons