§14 Reception
I now have to tell you how the Reformation program of Farel and Calvin was received by Geneva. It will always be a fact worth pondering how it was possible that in those days a complex of abstract theories and unheardof demands like the Reformation, opposed as it was to a centuries-old religious, cultural, and political tradition, could become not only an intellectual and religious force but also a public force that often in a few months could change visibly and palpably the whole nature and structure of national societies and most incisively redirect their total destinies. In this regard we have to remember what an inconspicuous role all churches and forms of Christianity have thus far played in the upheavals of our own day, how they have just accompanied the actions of governments and peoples and been the rearguard of world movements, at times sanctifying and transfiguring them, at times uselessly protesting against them, but never seizing the leadership or even giving a notable watchword, let alone giving the impression that in this worst catastrophe to overtake Europe since the barbarian invasions they championed a special, respectable, serious cause of their own, a cause to which political and social needs could adapt themselves and not just vice versa.
I am saying that we must keep all this in mind if we are to be clear about the elemental force and dynamic of the events of the Reformation that proved that in little things and great Christianity is at least one factor that has helped very strongly to shape the life of society, a factor that is transcendent at any rate to the degree that no one could fail to see how it calls all this-worldly factors into question and undermines their stability. What book of religion or theology today, for all the interest it arouses in specific circles, does not remain strangely aloof from the spheres in which most people seek their duty and their joy and the destinies of classes and nations are fought over and decided? For who listens seriously today to what theologians and philosophers say, at any rate so long as they speak as such?.
We have to repeat, however, that Reformation writings dealt with everyday issues no matter how abstract their contents might be, and what they proposed, transcendent though it was, and just because it was, impinged upon what was taking place in the council chambers and marketplaces. The visible emergence of a transcendent factor all along the line at that time might have been very broken and imperfect. The otherworldly did not become the this-worldly. That is self-evident. But much more significant is the point that the transcendent factor did indeed become visible, or, better, noticeable, with such incomparable intensity that it was hardly possible not to notice it. Let us now try to see in some way how far this was true of Calvin’s initial proposals in Geneva.
1. We know little or nothing of the reception that Calvin’s Catechism first met with in Geneva, except that there was no obvious opposition. That the council, which had to make the decision, was fully convinced of the soundness of Calvin’s theology, or was even in a position to be clear about the ramifications of all the details, we cannot, of course, take for granted, nor that in spite of personal impressions of the man and his proposals there was any enthusiasm for making the venture of his theology. Once they dared to take this step they learned soon enough to understand that theology, partly valuing it highly, partly realizing with horror that they did not really want what Calvin wanted. Thus for some it would be the cornerstone, for others the stone of stumbling [cf. 1 Pet. 2:6-8], but for all a benchmark. The Christian thinking of Geneva, whether for or against, would from then on really be along the lines of this catechism. Positively or negatively the stamp of Calvin would be upon the face of Genevan Christianity, and long after Calvin’s death, right up to the days of Rationalism, there would be no serious rival. The best token of this truth is the realization of Calvin’s indispensability after he had been chased out in 1538. It is of the nature of the case, however, that we know little or nothing of what took place in the early period.
2. Things are different as regards both council and people when we come to the proposal for subscription to the confession. It was not a matter now of a general willingness to adopt a specific type of Christian instruction but of a once-for-all, immediate, and solemn acceptance. As we saw last time, both in Geneva and ofttside this was not something that could be taken for granted but an extraordinary demand. We see this from the hesitation with which the council undertook the task of implementation. The confession was presented on November 10, 1536.! But only in April 1537 were any real steps taken concerning it. The first resolution was to the effect that residents in each district should be visited by pastors and syndics to put before them the confession they were being asked to affirm, but then the simpler plan was proposed that it should be printed and copies sent to every house.? Even then, however, it was only on July 29, on repeated representations from the pastors, that the Council of Two Hundred resolved that the administering of the oath should be in the hands of the leaders in the various wards. They had to make sure that the residents were willing, if necessary deal with those opposed, report the obstinate for judgment, and finally at the head of their wards assemble all the people, young and old, men and women, in St. Pierre’s cathedral, where the city secretary would read the oath from the pulpit, and then have the people swear by raising their right hands, thus pledging themselves to a new City constitution.
It will be seen that the city authorities themselves thought in terms of complete parallelism between the religious order and the political. The initial question put to the citizens was the general question “how they wanted to live.” The supreme and decisive answer was that “they wanted to live according to the commandments of God” along the lines of the official confession. But on this basis they were also pledging themselves to uphold the liberty, rights, and laws of the city and republic of Geneva. When we consider how dialectical was the argument that Calvin put forward for the inner possibility of the whole act of confessing, that is, that it was naturally not a matter of keeping, or fully observing, the divine commands, but of faith in Christ, which meant a recognition of the impossibility of observing the commands and trust in being clothed with the heavenly righteousness of Christ, the very argument that he expressly
1..Gf CO-21, 206:
Dealbide 210)
3. Abid:, 213.
put forward in Geneva itself — and when we realize that the Genevan council ventured to build the political allegiance of the citizens and residents on this foundation, we can see clearly for the first time how fantastic, or how eschatological as I put it last time, the whole process was. There was here none of the brutal accommodation to the level of the OT that Calvinism is often accused of; instead, the OT, in this case the oaths taken by Israel under Moses, Josiah, Asa, Ezra, and Nehemiah, are boldly given an NT sense and the commandments of God are sharply understood as the kerygma of forensic justification. That is historically the most remarkable, paradoxical, and significant feature in the whole process.
How the people concerned, Farel and Calvin, the city authorities, and the residents, actually thought of the matter is hard to imagine. Even when we take into account the possibilities of no understanding at all or of misunderstanding, the reaction must have been much more lively and spirited than it would be with most of us in our age of straight-line, nondialectical thinking. Calvin himself in the preface to the 1538 Catechism could speak of a certain alacrity (élan) with which the government arranged the taking of the oath and the citizens responded.4 On the whole that seems to be true, though resistance to the demand was more active and significant than Calvin saw or wanted to see. The council itself was not so fully convinced of the need for the oath or its value, and opposition arose among many of the people that, though suppressed, linked up quietly with all kinds of other charges against the pastors and finally found expression afresh in the great outbursts of 1538. Real unanimity in such a venture would have been much too good ‘to be true. In figures of that type we cannot usually state what took place in history.
On September 19, well after the oath had been administered, a complaint was lodged in the council that not all had taken it, that some had managed to evade it. It was resolved to call such people to account, and if they still refused, to tell them that those who were unwilling to take the oath should go and live somewhere else.> But on October 30 Calvin had to come before the council to complain again that some had now sworn but others had not, and it had to be resolved afresh to bring pressure to bear on the latter.© On November 12 it was reported that yesterday, the
4. See 288 n. 129.
Spl(GQ) il, ils.
6. Ibid., 216.
11th, the recalcitrant had been summoned to take the reformation oath (as it was now called for the first time) and that some had done so but others not, and that not a single person from one street, the Rue des Allemands, had done so. Again the choice was put before them, either to swear or to leave the city.? Things were still the same on November 15,8 thought this time only the threat was issued, and understandably the more this was repeated the less seriously it was taken.
On November 26 something more specific was said about the reasons for resistance. Farel and Calvin had come before the council to defend themselves against other charges that were being brought against them in the form of rumors. It was being said (by outsiders) that the people of Geneva were guilty of perjury. The preachers used the argument familiar to us from the preface to Calvin’s Catechism, namely, that if regard is had to the contents of the confession, this is not so, and plainly the Confession is in keeping with the will of God and the example of Nehemiah and Jeremiah (as the council secretary, who was not so well versed in the Bible, recorded it). What we have sworn is to keep faith in God and believe his commandments.? This was obviously the dialectical interpretation of the demand that we were recalling earlier. But even worse, it was definitely stated by the other side that some officials from Bern visiting Geneva had said during (or more likely after) a meal in the house of a syndic that those who had taken the oath were in fact guilty of perjury.
This was one of the first clear shots in the war that now commenced between Calvin and Bern. There was great excitement, for here was an important point in favor of the minority that refused to take the oath. The pastors declared that they were ready to show that the matter was in fact in keeping with the divine will and biblical,!° and the issue was regarded as important enough to send the two on an official mission to Bern to state their case before the council there. They returned on December 10 and reported that they had been well received by Bern and that an embassy would be sent to Geneva to disown officially the slanderous statements of those officials.!1 But possibly, as often happens, Calvin had too readily assumed that what Bern had said to him was favorable, for
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 217.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 218.
instead of an embassy a letter arrived from Bern on December 13 denying that report.!? It was then resolved to send Farel alone back to Bern.!3 On the 14th Farel and Calvin asked that the council be summoned to hear the results of their first visit. This was resolved, but Farel, along with other envoys, still had to go again to Bern.!4 Farel and Calvin thus came before the Council of Two Hundred, gave a report on the first journey, and declared that there must have been machinations to prevent Bern from sending the embassy with an apology.!> They had heard in Bern that they were being slandered from Geneva, the charge being that they had preached that all bad things come from Germany. Farel was thus told again to go to Bern and to find out who had said these things.'!© On December 30 the envoys from Geneva returned.!7 And on January 3 a missive came from Bern at last, but held out little comfort and did little to settle the matter, stating merely that reports had come to Bern that because of the confession there were rebels in Geneva, and urging Geneva to take steps to reach agreement.!8 (It was in this style that German Switzerland, especially Bern, would often intervene in conflicts in Geneva. When these were for him a matter of “to be or not to be,” Calvin understandably hated the general admonitions to seek peace that came to him from the German Swiss.)
From this point on the pastors found the question of the confession inextricably linked to the other difficulties with which they had to contend and which finally resulted in their expulsion. We simply have to see now how in this matter, too, their position increasingly worsened, and how the resolution that the council and people had passed the previous summer should obviously have to give rise to another serious crisis before vacillation would give way to that inevitable historical result. Several times again demands were made on those who resisted the oath, but with no further
12. Letter from Bern Council to Geneva Council, 12.9.1537, CO 10/II, 133 (no. 84). 13, CO) Dil, Pils 14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 218f. In the margin Barth put: “Cf. Briefe no. 82-85, 87, ref. to CO 10/II, 130ff: Bern to Geneva; Bern embassy instructions; Bern to Geneva; Calvin to Bucer.” The instructions favored Farel and Calvin, and Geneva had resolved not to send the second envoys, but then came Bern’s further declaration (12.28) and the exhortation to seek peace that swayed Geneva on 1.3.1538; cf. CO 21, 220.
WG, CLO) Wil, Milks.
Webide 219:
18. Ibid., 220; text in 10/II, 134.
threats of banishing them. It was now agreed with Bern that the matter should be regarded and handled with pacification in view.!9 When the preachers for their part threatened to invoke church discipline and to refuse communion to those who would not take the oath, they were repulsed, and it was resolved that communion should be denied to no one.° Clearly the council, the council that had ordered the oath, was not so certain about the matter as not to capitulate when opposition both within and without became too strong. The pastors, of course, had not the slightest thought of yielding. Hence this issue contributed to the catastrophe of April 1538.
3. The prospect was now dim for the third point in the Reformation program, church discipline and the order of the Lord’s Supper. Here again the council had at first been fairly favorable as regards adopting at least the spirit of the memorandum of the pastors. It was a fatal sign, however, that the very first resolution regarding it on January 16, 1537, greatly altered what Calvin was seeking. He had asked that there be communion every month, but the council decided for four times a year. An interesting point is the introduction of a primitive form of civil marriage, notice being given before an appointed prominent citizen prior to the threefold calling of banns in church and the ensuing wedding. As regards impediments there was agreement with the preachers that everything must be according to God’s Word. Midwives were not to baptize. On Calvin’s view, which was followed here, baptism is also and essentially an act of confession, and therefore it can be given only in the context of congregational worship.
Then we read that the remaining articles were passed as written.*! This means that the council was accepting the main point: church discipline with excommunication. In truth we have here the first expression of the willingness of the council, never wholly abandoned even in the time of conflict, to accept as generally right the strict understanding of the holiness of the community that the preachers were advancing. A series of sharp resolutions and some detailed decisions along these lines make this plain, though the council was not agreeing expressly that the church itself should be in charge of the discipline, or that a special body should be set up to screen those who came to communion, as the memorandum was asking.?2 All shops and places of work were to be strictly shut during hours
NG) LEO) aks PN),
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 206.
22 sibid..207.
of worship, images of saints were to be diligently sought out, all dubious customs were to be suppressed, some popular songs in particular were prohibited, and so were games of chance, of which the people have remained fond even up to our own day.”3 Bakers’ apprentices were not to cry their justly famous pastries on the streets during times of worship. It may be noted that neither in the memorandum nor in the council resolutions does the much debated Puritan Sunday play any part. Calvin and Geneva wanted to protect worship rather than to sanctify Sunday by enforcing rest. Two syndics — the answer to the demand for a consistory — were appointed to see to the observance of rules of this kind.
On January 29 some private schools whose Protestant character was suspect were closed down.24 On March 13 it was again resolved to accept fully (“en plein”) the articles of Farel and Calvin regarding the Lord’s Supper and other things.2> New clergy appointments, especially in the rural areas, were approved without hesitation as Farel and Calvin, the two leading pastors, proposed.26 On June 4 strong penalties were resolved for those who were still celebrating former feast days as holidays; Sunday was now to be the only feast day.2” On July 3 the preachers were instructed to report moral lapses on the part of individuals in writing to the council.?8 It will be seen that the council had no intention of handing over competence in this matter to a special consistory. It wanted oversight and strict rules, but it would itself be the consistory. On July 13 we find for the first time a complaint against a pastor who was close to Calvin, the aged Courault, a former Augustinian monk from France, who, though blind, was one of the most zealous adherents and warriors of Calvin’s reformation. He was told not to assign blame for things that do not exist.29 On July 27 Farel and Calvin strongly urged the need for moral exhortation. This was resolved upon, and complaints were to be made to the “seigneurs.”3°
23. At the end of his ministry in Geneva (1911) Barth wrote two articles on this subject, “Pour la dignité de Genéve” and “Wir wollen nicht, dass dieser iiber uns herrsche”; cf. Vortnige und kleine Arbeiten 1909-1914, ed. H. A. Drews and H. Stoevesandt, part III of Gesamtausgabe (Zurich, 1992), 312ff., 320ff.
2ANC@O 212078
25. Ibid., 208.
ZOmE on Hleyral., 0K, DIL, PI OPAL.
27 biden 2 ie
28 bide 2125
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 213.
On October 30 there was still talk of papist schools that had not been visited, though these might well have been on territories in neighboring Savoy. On the same day a pastor was brought to order who was still a laggard and preached papal doctrine. A woman hairdresser had also to spend some days in prison because she had done a young woman’s hair in unfitting fashion for her wedding. The same penalty was imposed on several other women who were involved.3!
Police regulations such as that just mentioned, or the putting in the pillory of a cardplayer with the cards round his neck,32 were obviously translations and applications of what Calvin really wanted, whether or not he agreed with them. We should not link Calvinism too tightly to this type of justice, but also, of course, not too loosely. In the first instance it was the community that acted thus, and many another community has acted in the same way, and even more strictly, for the same if less sharply defined motives. The only distinctive Calvinistic feature in Geneva is the parallelism between the eucharistic community and the civil community. The demand for the holiness of the former fell like a monstrous shadow over the latter. If it was to show itself worthy of the glory of its transcendent basis, it had to be serious about moral sobriety and could not shrink back from strict and sharp rules. If the secular power was spurred on in this direction by a desire not to let ecclesiastical power have a place alongside it, but to display itself the ecclesiastical zeal required, it need hardly surprise us that among cities with these kinds of regulations Geneva stood out by reason of its strictness, which was acceptable to some, painful to others. It needed two full decades to slip into the role that was assigned to them by Calvin’s concept of the church.
We need not be surprised that at first they resisted it strongly. What people would not have resisted strongly being made the subject of an experiment of this kind? The Genevans were restless. They were always prepared for opposition. They loved freedom. They were thus less ready for the experiment rather than more. Hence the conflict with Calvinism was unavoidable in the city of Calvin. The governmental decrees regarding moral discipline, the ruthless purging out from public and private life of all papal remnants, and the strictly meant, though not thoroughly executed, resolution that required the confessional oath of all residents, opened the eyes of the Genevans relatively early to what it would mean
31. Ibid., 216.
32. Kampschulte, I, 291.
First. Genevan Stay
for them to live according to God’s will.33 They had enthusiastically accepted this, but without really knowing what the preachers had meant by the term, without realizing that what the preachers meant would be an unacceptable encroachment on the freedom they cherished above all else. For this reason the story of the church order proposed by Farel and Calvin became a tragic one from the middle of 1537 onward, no less so than that of the parallel story of the oath into which it would finally and fatally merge. The history of a laborious attempt to enforce the new outlook became in fact the history of increasingly bold and powerful opposition.
The first truly fatal day for the cause of Calvin’s reformation was November 25, 1537, when a general assembly was held at which opponents complained hotly of disregard for the rights and freedoms of the citizens.54 The assault was not really made upon the preachers themselves but upon their secular supporters, and especially upon the council majority, which within limits gave their approval. At the same time there were bitter complaints against the sharp and offensive terms used in the pulpit. The preachers were told that they wished the people ill, and it did not help much when Farel told them that this was so little true that he was ready to shed his blood for them.3> No one wanted the blood of the reformers. The general desire, even among adherents, was to be left in peace. The year 1538 began with the prosecution at the first session of the council of someone who had said that Farel was a wicked man.3° On January 16 we read of drunkards who by night in the streets and taverns had vilified one another with the insult: You also belong to the brothers in Christ!37 Very quietly between all the reports of this kind it is noted that on January 22 the surgeons of the city asked for permission to study anatomy, and this was granted insofar as it was necessary for the human body.38
It was a bad sign for the cause of the Reformation when in January Louis du Tillet, the friend of Calvin who had once gone with him from France to Basel and then to Ferrara, and who had finally come with him to Geneva, began to doubt the goodness of the whole enterprise in view of the unhappy conflicts that he saw, and returned to France,3? where he
33. CO 21, 199, also 203.
34. Kampschulte, I, 301.
Sb COA, Aig
36. Ibid., 219.
37. Ibid., 220.
38. Ibid., 221.
39. Ibid., 220.
$14 Reception
became a Roman Catholic again. Calvin wrote him a letter full of sorrow but also resolve. There is not the slightest evidence that he himself was tempted to relapse by such a disaster so close to him. He had thought that his friend was firmer than that, he wrote. He, Calvin, would prefer the Jewish synagogue to the Roman church, for though the latter knows the name of Jesus, it helps it little, since the power of it has been lost, and at least the synagogue has less idolatry.4° He finally judged the step taken by his friend to be a dangerous venture. It is tempting God to go back so willingly to prison. The damp sacks with which we are accustomed to cover ourselves before others cannot stand up to the heat of God’s judgment.4! “May the Lord not let you fall on the slippery path you are treading until he has granted you full liberty” (Briefe, no. 90, 10/1], 147ff.).42 How the situation came to a head in Geneva in February 1538 we see from a letter of Grynaeus to Farel and Calvin that begins: “I have read your letter with sorrow. I see the storm, I see the assaults. Satan rages and pushes and pursues you on all sides.”43 Grynaeus consoles them with an image that Calvin himself would often use later: Christ the Lord is himself a spectator of the tragedy; no one in this theater does anything to no purpose.*4 Calvin himself writes calmly to Bullinger: “We will not have a strong church unless the ancient apostolic discipline is restored as we desire in many connections. But thus far we have not been able to succeed in introducing a pure and holy order relating to excommunication.” Even the demand of the preachers that the city should be divided into parishes for pastoral care had thus far been frustrated (Briefe, 92f.).4°
Calvin, then, was unbowed, and he constantly came up with new ideas in the final phase of the conflict about his church order. On February 3 there were elections for a new council and syndics. In vain the day before Calvin and Courault tried to promote their cause by admonition.4° Those who previously had been relatively favorable to them were not reelected, but were replaced by those of the opposition party. The change soon began to make itself felt. On March 2 Farel had to answer to the council for a rumor that he had said in Bern that in Geneva some wanted the mass and
40. Letter dated 1.31.1538; CO 10/II, 149 (no. 90).
41. CO 10/II, 150.
42. Ibid.
43. 2.13.1538, CO 10/II, 152f. (no. 92).
AA bocweits
45. 2.21.1538; CO 10/II, 153£ (no. 93).
AE KO) AA, AM
others the gospel.4”7 On March 12 a complaint was lodged that Calvin in a sermon had called the council the devil’s council. Significantly on the same day Farel and Calvin were forbidden to interfere with the government.48 On April 8 the aged Courault received a reprimand for attacking the regime from the pulpit.49 In his parting address to the pastors on his deathbed Calvin tells them that at this time, to frighten him, shots were fired from arquebuses in front of his door, as many as 50 or 60 (9, 892).5° He was naturally not the man to be taught in this way. From this time on error and confusion regarding the church order merged into the stream of general discontent with the preachers, discontent that reached a peak between April 19 and 23 and ended with the banishment of the preachers.
Nevertheless, we have a mistaken view of things if we think that conflicts were the only result of the momentous memorandum of November 1536. Even Kampschulte has to state (I, 292f.)>! that the labor had not been in vain, that public conditions had gradually improved, and that the churches were zealously attended. The council, even in part the new one of 1538, was not really unwilling except when it came to the pastors’ severest demands. So far as possible it tried to meet their wishes and support their work in church and school with all the resources available. For example, it even seems to have dealt favorably with the not unimportant issue of stipends. Even in the difficult month of February 1538, just after the anti-Calvinist elections, it adopted a recommendation of the pastors and on one day found positions and support for no fewer than three French refugees as rural pastors.>2 As regards church discipline, though it did not follow Calvin's pattern and treated it more as policing, Calvin himself later had to say that the worst enemies of our religion were forced to give God the glory (10/II, 207).55 Geneva was beginning to achieve renown as a Protestant city, as we see from a letter of Bullinger to Calvin on November 1, 1537, written on behalf of three devout, scholarly, and wealthy Englishmen, Eliottus, Buttlerus, and Partrigius, who in the well-known Anglo-Saxon manner were going from one place to another
47. Ibid., 222.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 223.
50. OS Il, 402, 1ff.
51. Loc.cit.
COMI 2Ir
53. Farel and Calvin to the Zurich pastors, June 1538; CO 10/II, 207 (no. 121).
A
$14 Reception
to get to know famous people. They had already achieved their aim in Zurich, and now they wanted to visit Geneva to listen to Farel and Calvin and to observe their piety.>4 Referring to their ability to pay, Bullinger asked Calvin to provide them with lodging.
All in all, this was a time in Geneva when things must have been strangely balanced, yes and no, for and against, very strong influence and very stern resistance, radicalism on the side of the preachers, no less unbroken vitality on that of the Genevans, and seen from outside, holy and audacious willing and venturing on the one side, the opposition of ancient carnality and the obtuse world on the other; or, seen in another way, on the one side, spiritual impelling and compelling that had already come to be described as a new papalism,°> on the other side, the not unjustified claims of free citizens, indeed, the threat to freedom of conscience and conviction. Why should we not conclude that there was present on both sides something of what was thought to be perceived? The picture was a colorful and lively and significant one, but by no means unequivocal. Students to this day can make of it what they will. After the many things that we have already said about Calvin's general position and orientation, and especially his view of God and the world, I will now refrain from indicating in what direction these things point us.
We are now at the end of our discussion of the first Genevan program of reform. As regards both the ideal and the reality it offers us a good and in its own way complete picture of what Calvin was and wanted and achieved as a churchman. In the later periods of his work, for which unfortunately we will not now have time, everything became more complicated both as a program and as its execution. Like the 1536 Institutes, the catechism and the articles concerning the organs of the church and cultus®® were only the first links in a chain of ever richer and more comprehensive constructs. But as we can find the spirit of the Justztutes already in the first edition, especially when we have some knowledge of the last, so it is with the documents of church reform. Calvin would rearrange, enrich, sharpen, and less frequently excise, but substantially his work remained the same. The results were similar, too. The battle of 1536-38 was only a prelude to the much greater and longer war that occupied him lifelong, and the symptoms of his impact were also similar,
54. CO 10/II, 128 (no. 80).
55. Kampschulte, I, 307.
56. See above, 264ff.
a strange mixture of some love, much respect, much fear, and some hate, a mixture, too, of success and failure, although with time success began decisively to predominate. If we have let the picture of church reform in 1536-38 gain our attention and speak to. us, then we must have acquired a fairly definite idea of what Calvin’s reformation was all about. But the man himself as an individual, and the universal problematic that impelled him, and that alone enables us to see in any meaningful way what he wanted and did, are truly unsearchable. We thus have every reason to go further with him in the hope of gaining a better understanding of this central point from which all the details radiate.