The Historical Origins of a Comic Strip

Do you remember the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes"? Did you know that John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes were basically opposed on the roles of government and religion?

Calvin essentially argued for a theocracy - government ruled by the church. Hobbes felt that religion should be controlled by the state.
Calvin argues for two types of government in his compendium of theology, "The Institutes of the Christian Religion." One government rules the spiritual or inward aspect of humanity, that is, spiritual government, and one government rules the external aspects of human life, that is, secular government.

Calvin was a strong believer in behaving as God wished. Immorality was severely condemned but to begin with the consistory was not an effective body. It only started to be so when the number of appointed ministers was greater than the elders. Also in 1555, the city council gave the consistory the right to excommunicate offenders. Only after this date was a strict moral code imposed and every sin was made a crime e.g. no work or pleasure on a Sunday; no extravagance in dress. If you were excommunicated you were banished from the city. Blasphemy could be punished by death; lewd singing could be punished by your tongue being pierced.
Thomas Hobbes
Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion. - Leviathan

Hobbes is famous for his early and elaborate development of what has come to be known as “social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons.