Tracts & Letters (Vol 1) - Calvin - XII - Remarks

Required reading
Tracts and Letters (Volume 1) by John Calvin (Available from Amazon or free here).  Read 'Remarks on the letter of pope Paul III by John Calvin'.

My summary
This week we read Calvin's response to pope Paul's reprimand to the emperor for calling a council without papal approval.

Calvin declares that the pope has no basis for calling the council.  The primary reasons being:
(i) General councils have been called apart from the pope in the past, e.g. the councils of Nice, Ephesus, Constantinople, Chalcedon;
(ii) the pope is corrupt along with the rest of the Roman Catholic church and so only concerned for his own interest.

What grabbed me
Calvin got quite worked up: 'When the Pope calls his conscience as a witness, must we not ask where it exists? Orators sometimes call up from the infernal regions those whose personal presence they judge appropriate to their cause, but there is no room for this in the case of the Pope, for whom there is neither a heaven nor a hell. It is only for him, then, who holds this chimera in his hands, to believe that Farnese will cheerfully shed his blood for the peace of the Church. But if we look to the fact, we will find that though Paul Farnese knows what it is to shed the blood of others, he has learned to spare his own. Certainly, if it could have been believed up to this time, that there was a particle of conscience still remaining in a Pope, his manifest perjury, in this instance, would make it clear how completely he has shaken himself free both from fear of God and regard for man.'

Scathing!

Next week's reading
Read 'An admonition, showing the advantages which Christendom might derive from an inventory of relics'.  This is a long reading I know, but I couldn't divide it easily.  But we've had two short readings in a row so this'll compensate a little for those weeks :)

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.