habere animi'--'Christian magistrates ought to be ashamed of
themselves for manifesting no energy at all in the vindication of
truth undeniable;' yet really since these magistrates had at that
time the full design, which design not many days after they executed,
of maintaining truth by fire and faggot, one does not see the call
upon them for blushes so very deep as Calvin requires. Hands so
crimson with blood might compensate the absence of crimson cheeks.]
will be done in this present case) of any man presumptuous enough
to contradict _me;_ but then, why? For a reason that makes all
the difference in the world, and which, one would think, idiocy
itself could not overlook, viz., that I, John Calvin, am right--right,
through three degrees of comparison--right, righter, or more right,
rightest, or most right. Calvin fancied that he could demonstrate
his own impartiality.

The self-sufficingness of the Bible, and the right of private
judgment--here, then, are the two great charters in which Protestantism
commences; these are the bulwarks behind which it intrenches itself
against Rome. And it is remarkable that these two great preliminary
laws, which soon diverge into fields so different, at the first are
virtually one and the same law. The refusal of an oracle alien to
the Bible, extrinsic to the Bible, and claiming the sole interpretation
of the Bible; the refusal of an oracle that reduced the Bible to
a hollow masque, underneath which fraudulently introducing itself
any earthly voice could mimic a heavenly voice, was in effect to
refuse the coercion of this false oracle over each man's conscientious
judgment; to make the Bible independent of the Pope, was to make man
independent of all religious controllers. The _self-sufficingness
of Scripture_, its independency of any external interpreter,
passed in one moment into the other great Protestant doctrine of