Note 359 — CCXCI.—To Farel.

In their reply to the ministers of Geneva concerning Bolsec, the ministers of Berne freely pleaded the cause of toleration:—"We do not believe," said they, "that it is necessary to treat those who err with too much severity, lest while wishing to defend, with too great zeal, the purity of dogmas, we swerve from the law of Jesus Christ, that is, from charity.... Jesus Christ loved the truth, but he loved souls also; not only those who advanced without declension, but also those who went astray. And it is the latter of which the Good Shepherd, in the Gospel parable, takes the greatest care."... More explicit than the theologians of Zurich and of Bâle on the doctrine which formed the ground of the debate, the ministers of Berne gave a deliverance against the doctrine of predestination:—"To come," said they, "to the subject of dispute with Bolsec, you are not ignorant how much vexation it has caused very many good men, of whom we cannot have a bad opinion, who reading in the Scriptures those passages which exalt the grace of God to all men, have not sufficient discernment rightly to understand the true mysteries of Divine election, attach themselves to the proclamation of grace and of universal benevolence, and think that we cannot make God condemn, harden, and blind any man, without being guilty of the insupportable blasphemy of making God himself the author both of man's blindness and of his perdition, and by consequence of all sin."—See this letter, and those of the Churches of Zurich and Bâle, in the Collection of Professor Alph. Turretin, entitled, Nubes Testium, and in Ruchat, tom. v. p. 461, et seq.