Now, it was this aggressive, intolerant spirit of the reformers that made the civil governments in countries which elected to remain Catholic so severe on the new religionists. The moment a foreign emissary from Geneva gathered a few proselytes, enough to form a body of any size, then began coarse songs, ridiculing and scoffing at the holiest doctrines of the Catholics; then crosses would be broken down, crucifixes, statues of the blessed Virgin and the saints, defaced or destroyed; as their numbers grew, priests would be driven from their churches or shot down, and the edifices themselves plundered and appropriated to the new creed. { 4} That such things could be borne tamely was impossible. In France the government was weak and vacillating. The humbler and less instructed portions of the Catholic body retaliated in the same measure that they saw meted out, and resisted a creed that used abuse and violence, by abuse and violence. They had not the cant of their antagonists, but true religion is not to be measured by that standard.
Alarmed by the excesses of the Reformers elsewhere, the French government attempted to repress their entrance into France by penal laws, a course that seldom attains the end proposed. The progress of error was to be checked by more assiduous teaching of the people by their pastors, by zeal in reforming morals, by institutions practically exercising the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.
Yet, while conceding the general deficiency of power in penal laws to check the progress of religious opinions, it must be remembered that the destructive tenets we have alluded to made the increase of the Calvinists a danger to the peace and well-being of France. Beza, in his _Profession of Faith_, (v. Point p. 119,) advised the extermination of priests. Calvin (_Apud Becan_, t. v. opusc. 17, aph. 15, De modo propagandi Calvinismi) declares that the Jesuits must be killed or crushed by falsehood and calumny. The destruction of all representations of Christ and his saints was the constant theme of the reformed preachers, and under this war against idols, as they termed them, they included insult and outrage to the remains of those illustrious men of the past whose exalted virtues had endeared them to the Christian people.