This exercise has been a great example of Roman Catholic hubris.
“I do NOT worship Mary. It only looks like I do when I’m kneeling and praying to her.”
“I do NOT have two names. Only this one and this one.”
“I am not prevaricating. I am telling you what I want you to believe.”
They think everyone is as blind as they are.
Catholics have been so conditioned to believe everything they’re told that someone claims is true, that they’re apparently incapable of thinking for themselves and distinguishing truth from fiction.
So, they’ll believe anything anyone claims in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
Especially if said person is Catholic.
Though, if a non-Catholic said the sky was blue and the sun rises in the east, they’d argue it on principle alone.
What Calvinists always seem to forget is where their bitterness originates. What's seldom talked about by any follower of Calvin is that his father and brother both worked for the bishopric of Noyon in Picardy as a treasurer and lawyer.
Calvin's father, Gerard, was involved in some financial misdeeds and refused to provide the financial records to the Bishop of Noyon . Gerard was excommunicated for his misdeeds and later on so was his son Charles.
Gerard then made John Calvin leave his theological studies to become a French Lawyer, which is very apropos considering what John learned from his father. John's ever growing bitterness against the Church for the excommunication of his father and brother forced him to leave the Church altogether.
These are the roots of Calvinism and its bitterness.
- Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).
- Jacques Gruent was racked and then executed for calling Calvin a hypocrite
- A man who publicly protested against the reformer's doctrine of predestination was flogged at all the crossways of the city and then expelled.
- Calvin's Letter to the Marquis Paet, chamberlain to the King of Navarre, 1561. "Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels [Anabaptists and others], who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard."