Calvinism: Six Stone Foundation Lectures

p. 120

Abraham Kuyper told a story at Princeton Theological Seminary when he gave his Stone Lectures there in 1898.  A sixteenth-century plague had ruined the Italian city of Milan, and Cardinal Borromeo had bravely stayed to feed and to pray for those who were dying.  Kuyper admired Cardinal Borromeo’s piety, but he admired John Calvin’s even more:  “During the plague, which in the 16^th century tormented Geneva, Calvin acted better and more wisely, for he not only cared incessantly for the spiritual needs of the sick, but at the same time introduced hitherto unsurpassed hygienic measures whereby the ravages of the plague were arrested.”