by it there is nothing condemned excepting the
'assemblies;' and as to simple heresy, as they call it, it can at most
be punished only by banishment from the kingdom, without other loss.
Moreover, we know with certainty that this edict was made for the sole
purpose of contenting King Philip and the Pope, and drawing some money
from the ecclesiastics. These ends are bad, but it seems to us that
there is nothing in all this that ought to prevent our appearing for the
maintenance of the truth of God, since it has pleased Him to give us the
opportunity of coming forward and being heard, as we have so long
desired."[1069] Two days later Antoine of Navarre added his
solicitations in an earnest letter to the "Magnificent Seigniors, the
Syndics and Council of the Seigniory of Geneva."[1070]

[Sidenote: Beza comes to St. Germain.]

That it was no personal fear which had occasioned Beza's delay was soon
proved. Antoine had written on the twelfth of August; on the sixteenth,
without waiting for a safe-conduct, the reformer was already on his way
to St. Germain, acting upon the principle laid down by Calvin: "If it be
not yet God's pleasure to open a _door_, it is our duty to creep in at
the _windows_, or to penetrate through the smallest _crevices_, rather
than allow the opportunity of effecting a happy arrangement to escape
us."[1071] So expeditious, in fact, was Beza, that on the twenty-second
of August he was in Paris.[1072] The next day he reached the royal court
at St. Germain.

[Sidenote: Beza's previous history.]

The theologian whose advent had been so anxiously awaited was a French
exile for religion's sake. Born, on the twenty-fourth of June, 1519, of
noble parents, in the small but famous Burgundian city of Vezelay, none
of the reformers sacrificed more flattering prospects than did Theodore
Beza when he cast in his lot with the persecuted Protestants. At Bourges
he had been a pupil of Wolmar, until that eminent teacher was recalled
to Germany. At Orleans he had been admitted a licentiate in law when
scarcely twenty years old. At Paris he gave to the world a volume of
Latin poetry of no mean merit, which secured the author great applause.
The "Juvenilia" were neither more nor less pagan in tone than the rest
of the amatory literature of the age framed on the model of the
classics. That they were immoral seems never to have been suspected
until Beza became a Protestant, and it was desirable to find means to
sully his