Calvin was already occupied with his great work on the christian religion, and may have collected some of his materials from Du Tillet's library. But being in peril of his life, he removed to Basle, the city of refuge for the French exiles at that time. Here he completed and published the most celebrated of all his writings, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. The work appeared in the month of August, 1535.
"This was the first theological and literary monument of the French Reformation," says Felice. "Spreading abroad in the schools, the castles of the gentry, the houses of the burghers, even the workshops of the people, the Institutes became the most powerful of preachers. Round this book the Reformers arrayed themselves as round a standard. They found in it everything-doctrine, discipline, ecclesiastical organization; and the apologist of the masters became the legislator of their children." In his dedicatory epistle to Francis I., he supplicated the king to examine the confession of faith of the Reformers, so that, beholding them to be in accordance with the Bible, he might treat them no longer as heretics. "It is your duty, sire," he says to the king, "to close neither your understanding nor your heart against so just a defense, especially when the question is of such high import, namely, how the glory of God shall be maintained on earth.... a matter worthy of your ears, worthy of your jurisdiction, worthy of your royal throne." But there is too good reason to believe that the king never deigned to read the preface to the Institutes.
Calvin was now the acknowledged leader of the French Reformation. Luther was too distant; Farel was too ardent; but Calvin had the solid character and the lively sympathies suited to the French. He paid a visit about this time to the justly celebrated Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII, and duchess of Ferrara, one of the first provinces of Italy that received the Reformation. Like her cousin, Margaret of Valois, she had embraced the true gospel, and became the patroness of the persecuted Reformers in Italy, for which she afterward suffered severe persecution though she was the daughter of a king. This visit established a friendship which was never interrupted: we find Calvin addressing a letter to her when on his death-bed. *
( Dr. McCrie gives many interesting details of this amiable and accomplished princess in his History of the Reformation in Italy.)
In 1536 Calvin was appointed pastor and professor at Geneva. The religious, moral, intellectual, and even political revolution he brought into that city with him, is beyond the limits of our "Short Papers." His life and labors have been often written. We will notice that which enters into the plan of this history.
Calvin soon found that it was no easy post that he was called to occupy. The people were just emerging from a state of ignorance, superstition, and immorality, in which the city had been sunk for ages; and the corruption of her "nine hundred" priests, had no doubt produced its own likeness in the manners of the citizens. But all laxity of morals, and all amusements which had that tendency, were sharply and sternly rebuked by Calvin and Farel both publicly and privately. They were not only the avowed enemies of the least vestige of popery, but they were strict disciplinarians. The majority of the people were not yet prepared for such self-denial. They had fought hard to cast off the yoke of Rome and the yoke of the Duke of Savoy, and they were determined to resist what they thought the hardest yoke of all-to give up all their pleasures and live according to a rigid ecclesiastical discipline. Even many of those who had outwardly embraced the Reformation doctrines were not in heart prepared for Calvin's system. His idea was to treat the state as a theocracy and compel the citizens to conform to the law of God, under the threatened judgments of the Old Testament.