tant doctrine--the _Christianae
Religionis Institutio_. It placed him, at the age of twenty-seven,
as leader in the forefront of the new religious movement.

But the movement was not merely learned, it was popular, and Calvin
was resolved to present his work to French readers in their own tongue.
His translation--the _Institution_--appeared probably in 1541.
Perhaps no work by an author of seven-and-twenty had ever so great
an influence. It consists of four books--of God, of Jesus as a Mediator,
of the effects of His mediatorial work, and of the exterior forms
of the Church. The generous illusion of Rabelais, that human nature
is essentially good, has no place in Calvin's system. Man is fallen
and condemned under the law; all his righteousness is as filthy rags;
God, of His mere good pleasure, from all eternity predestinated some
men to eternal life and others to eternal death; the Son of God came
to earth to redeem the elect; through the operation of the Holy Spirit
in the gift of faith they are united to Christ, are justified through
His righteousness imputed to them, and are sanctified in their hearts;
the Church is the body of the faithful in every land; the officers
of the Church are chosen by the people; the sacraments are
two--baptism and the Lord's Supper. In his spirit of system, his
clearness, and the logical enchainment of his ideas, Calvin is
eminently French. On the one side he saw the Church of Rome, with--as
he held--its human tradition, its mass of human superstitions,
intervening between the soul and God; on the other side were the
scepticism, the worldliness, the religious indifference of the
Renaissance. Within the Reforming party there was the conflict of
private opinions. Calvin desired to establish once for all, on the
basis of the Scriptures, a coherent system of dogma which should
impose itself upon the minds of men as of divine authority, which
should be at once a barrier against the dangers of superstition and
the dangers of libertine speculation. As the leaders of the French
Revolution propounded political constitutions founded on the idea
of the rights of man, so Calvin aimed at setting forth a creed
proceeding, if we may so put it, from a conception of the absolute
rights of God. Through the mere good pleasure of our Creator, Ruler,
Judge, we are what we are.

It is not perhaps too much to say that Calvin is the greatest writer
of the sixteenth century. He learned much from the prose of La