LIBERTINES of Geneva, were a cabal of rakes rather than of fanatics; for they made no pretence to any religious system, but pleaded only for the liberty of leading voluptuous and immoral lives. This cabal was composed of a certain number of licentious citizens, intolerant of the severe discipline of Calvin, who punished with rigour not only dissolute manners, but also whatever bore the aspect of irreligion and impiety. In this turbulent cabal there were several persons who were not only notorious for their dissolute and scandalous manner of living, but also for their atheistical impiety, and contempt of all religion. To this odious class belonged one Gruet, who denied the divinity of the Christian religion, the immortality of the soul, and the difference between moral good and evil, and who rejected with disdain the doctrines that are held most sacred among Christians; impieties for which he was at last brought before the civil tribunal, in the year 1550, and condemned to suffer death. At this time the Genevan spirit of
reformation, directed by the excessive zeal of Calvin, tended to defeat itself, and to introduce the greatest disorders. In 1544, Castalio, master of the public school of that city, a man of probity, and distinguished by his learning and taste, was, nevertheless, deposed from his office and banished the city, because he disapproved of some of the measures which were pursued, as well as of the opinions entertained by Calvin and his colleagues, particularly that of absolute and unconditional predestination. Jerome Bolsec, also a man of genius and learning, who became a convert to the Protestant religion, and fled to Geneva for protection, was cast into prison, and soon afterwards driven into exile, because, in 1551, he imprudently declaimed, in full congregation, against the doctrine of absolute decrees.