The divine light which now filled the soul of Calvin, showed him the midnight darkness of the church of Rome. That which once possessed to his mind the most dazzling splendor, the weight of antiquity, and which he believed to be the habitation of God and the very gate of heaven, was now to his newly opened eyes the temple of idols and the very gate of perdition. This we gather from the fact that he could no longer minister at her altars, and he resigned his sacred office. Happily this was with the consent of his father; and he immediately turned his attention to the study of civil law at Orleans and at Bourges. But the lessons of the law, to which he had now to listen, must have ill-suited the taste of one who had just fled from the flames of martyrdom in Paris. "It is the magistrate's duty," said his teacher, "to punish offenses against religion as well as crimes against the state." "What!" he would exclaim, "shall we hang a thief who robs us of our purse, and not burn a heretic who robs us of heaven?" The effect of such a maxim on the minds of the people, when taught and amplified by the priests, would certainly destroy their sympathies, and lead them to approve of the death of heretics. Such was the teaching of Calvin and of Frenchmen at that time, and as it had an appearance of justice, and professed to be applied for the protection of the true religion, it took a firm hold of the superstitious mind, and may have left deeper traces on Calvin's own mind than he was aware of.