ellio.
This brave man had the goodness and the courage to declare the
innocence of honest error. He was the first of the so-called reformers
to take this noble ground. I wish I had the genius to pay a fitting
tribute to his memory. Perhaps it would be impossible to pay him a
grander compliment than to say, Castellio was in all things the
opposite of Calvin. To plead for the right of individual judgment was
considered as a crime, and Castellio was driven from Geneva by John
Calvin. By him he was denounced as a child of the devil, as a dog of
Satan, as a beast from hell, and as one who, by this horrid blasphemy
of the innocence of honest error, crucified Christ afresh, and by him
he was pursued until rescued by the hand of death.

Upon the name of Castellio, Calvin heaved every epithet, until his
malice was satisfied and his imagination exhausted. It is impossible
to conceive how human nature can become so frightfully perverted as to
pursue a fellow-man with the malignity of a fiend, simply because he is
good, just and generous.

Calvin was of a pallid, bloodless complexion, thin, sickly, irritable,
gloomy, impatient, egotistic, tyrannical, heartless and infamous. He
was a strange compound of revengeful morality, malicious forgiveness,
ferocious charity, egotistic humility, and a kind of hellish justice.
In other words, he was as near like the God of the old testament as his
Health permitted.

The best thing, however, about the Presbyterians of Geneva was, that
they denied the power of the Pope, and the best thing about the Pope
was, that he was not a Presbyterian.

The doctrines of Calvin spread rapidly, and were eagerly accepted by
multitudes on the continent. But Scotland, in a few years, became the
real fortress of Presbyterianism. The Scotch rivaled the adherents of
Calvin, and succeeded in establishing the same kind of theocracy that
flourished in Geneva. The clergy took possession and control of
everybody and everything. It is impossible to exaggerate the slavery,
the mental degradation, the abject superstition of the people of
Scotland during the reign of Presbyterianism. Heretics were hunted and
devoured as though they had been wild beasts. The gloomy insanity of
Presbyterianism took possession of a great majority of the people.
They regarded their ministers as the Jews did Moses and Aaron. They
believed that they were the especial agents of God, and that whatsoever
they bound in Scotland would