If you had to summarize Calvin’s teaching on resisting tyrants it would be: don’t. Even as his Protestant compatriots, the Huguenots, faced persecution and he fled France to Geneva, Calvin was firmly on the side of maintaining political order. He credited himself with the fact that France did not, at least in his lifetime, descend into civil war. “It is not necessary for me to relate how strenuously I have hitherto endeavored to cut off all occasion for tumult; . . . And I think it is owing to my carefulness that private persons have not transgressed beyond their bounds.”
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