Do what I say, not what I do? Do what I do, not what I say?

      "The surprise here, of course—and one of the things that intimates that Calvin's actions and decisions were being governed by a deliberate and crafted plan rather than a principled conviction—is that he lambasted the Nicodemites for doing precisely what he was instructing the French Calvinist communities to do, namely, hide.  'Our Lord is not content,' he wrote to the Nicodemites, 'if we acknowledge him secretly and in our hearts, but he strictly requires us to confess him publicly by an external profession that we are his.'  Meanwhile his word to the Reformed church in Montélimart was that he and Beza had learned:  'that you are considering establishing a public preaching of the word.  We ask you to put away that idea and not to think about it until God provide you with a better opportunity. . . .  When you hold your meetings peaceably in private homes, the rage of the wicked will not be easily inflamed.'  To the faithful at Poitiers:  'I wrote you a while ago pointing out the means I approve of for defeating the malice of your enemies:  it is that in order not to expose yourselves needlessly you should plan not to gather the whole congregation together, but instead assemble in small groups, now in one place and now in another.'  Continuing, he urged the believers in Poitiers to make their homes available for this purpose.  Such instructions provide a glimpse into Calvin’s mind and ministerial machinations."

In short, "Calvin [and Bèza] designed Geneva’s ministry to France in such a way that it systematically employed falsehood and dissembling to hide what they were doing from the French authorities and probably from the Nicodemites as well.  Indeed, their ministry was, by their own standards of honesty, as mendacious as that of the Nicodemites."

     Jon Balserak, "Geneva’s use of lies, deceit, and simulation in their efforts to reform France, 1536-1563," Harvard theological review 112, no. 1 (2019):  90, 99 (76-100).
     This Balserak later converted into a book entitled Geneva's use of lies, deceit, and subterfuge, 1536-1563:  telling the old, old story in Reformation France, Oxford studies in historical theology (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2024).  I have read the article, but not the book.  Passages like this one, taken from the Conclusion to the latter, pp. 284-285, should therefore be re-read far more carefully in context:

in my assessment, Acts 5—though it is arguably the strongest selection—serves only poorly as a paradigm that helps to explain the conduct of Calvin and his colleagues. The difference between Peter in Acts 5 and Calvin is this: the apostles who appear in Acts 5 pursued their aims very differently from Calvin and his colleagues. The apostles were preaching in the temple courts in Jerusalem, being harassed and even imprisoned by the Sanhedrin for doing so, and refusing to capitulate to the demands of the high priest. Peter did not flee his homeland and then try to evangelize it from outside using lies and deception to conceal what he and his colleagues were doing—which is what Calvin and his colleagues did. Rather, the apostles preached in their homeland, supported the small churches that grew out of their preaching, and faced whatever consequences arose. In the case of Stephen in Acts 7, that meant death.
     My position here likely differs from some. But the only way to view Acts 5 as illustrative of what Calvin and his colleagues were pursuing is to overlook the immorality (mendacity) in which they engaged. Now, just to be clear, the immorality I am pointing to does not relate to Calvin’s willingness to disobey French law. Intentionally breaking an unjust law is not immoral but profoundly moral. The immorality of Calvin’s plans on which I focus in this study relates to his use of lies, dissembling, forgery, and such like. That’s the problem. It is not his willingness to break French law that moves me to identify Calvin’s conduct as immoral but his mendacity.

     Cf. also Nicodemism and the English Calvin, by Kenneth J. Woo (Leiden and Boston:  Brill, 2020), which, published in the year following, does take this article into account (though whether entirely sympathetically or not, I can’t yet say for sure).  There is also, of course, a prior body of scholarship, some of it cited by Balserak, and some of it, apparently not.  An example of the latter might be Jason Zuidema, "Flight from persecution and the honour of God in the theology of Peter Martyr Vermigli," Reformation & Renaissance review 15, no. 1 (April 2013): 112–26 (again, so far unread by me).  An example of the former would be Raymond A. Blacketer, "No escape by deception: Calvin’s exegesis of lies and liars in the Old Testament," Reformation and Renaissance review 10, no. 3 (December 2008): 267–89.  Etc. (I have not run an exhaustive search).