lished this work with a view to
influence the king to put a stop to the attacks on the Protestants, but
there is nothing in the treatise itself or in the commentary to favour
this opinion.

Soon after the publication of his first book Calvin returned to Orleans,
where he stayed for a year, perhaps again reading law, and still
undecided as to his life's work. He visited Noyon in August 1533, and by
October of the same year was settled again in Paris. Here and now his
destiny became certain. The conservative theology was becoming
discredited, and humanists like Jacques Lefevre of Etaples (Faber
Stapulensis) and Gerard Roussel were favoured by the court under the
influence of Margaret of Angouleme, queen of Navarre and sister of
Francis I. Calvin's old friend, Nicolas Cop, had just been elected
rector of the university and had to deliver an oration according to
custom in the church of the Mathurins, on the feast of All Saints. The
oration (certainly influenced but hardly composed by Calvin) was in
effect a defence of the reformed opinions, especially of the doctrine of
justification by faith alone. It is to the period between April 1532 and
November 1533, and in particular to the time of his second sojourn at
Orleans, that we may most fittingly assign the great change in Calvin
which he describes (_Praef. ad Psalmos_; opera xxxi. 21-24) as his
"sudden conversion" and attributes to direct divine agency. It must have
been at least after his _Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia_ that his
heart was "so subdued and reduced to docility that in comparison with
his zeal for true piety he regarded all other studies with indifference,
though not entirely forsaking them. Though himself a beginner, many
flocked to him to learn the pure doctrine, and he began to seek some
hiding-place and means of withdrawal from people." This indeed was
forced upon him, for Cop's address was more than the conservative party
could bear, and Cop, being summoned to appear before the parlement of
Paris, found it necessary, as he failed to secure the support either of
the king, or of the university, to make his escape to Basel. An attempt
was at the same time made to seize Calvin, but, being forewarned of the
design by his friends, he also made his escape. His room in the College
Fortet, however, was searched, and his books and papers seized, to the
imminent peril of some of his friends, whose letters were found in his
repositories. He went to Noyon, but,