tation at Berne he evangelized western
Switzerland. His methods may be learned from his work at Valangin on
August 15, 1530. He attended a mass, but in the midst of it went up to
the priest, tore the host forcibly from his hands, and said to the
people: "This is not the God whom you worship: he is above in heaven,
even in the majesty of the Father." In 1532 he went to Geneva.
Notwithstanding the fact that here, as often elsewhere, he narrowly
escaped lynching, he made a great impression. His red hair and hot
temper evidently had their uses.

[Sidenote: Calvin, 1509-64]

_The_ Reformer of French Switzerland was not destined to be Farel,
however, but John Calvin. Born at Noyon, Picardy, his mother died
early and his father, who did not care for children, sent him to the
house of an aristocratic friend to be reared. In this environment he
acquired the distinguished manners and the hauteur for which he was
noted. When John was six years old his father, Gerard, had him
appointed to a benefice just as nowadays he might have got him a
scholarship. At the age of twelve Gerard's influence procured for his
son another of these ecclesiastical livings and two years later this
was exchanged for a more lucrative one to enable the boy to go to
Paris. Here for some years, at the College of Montaigu, Calvin studied
scholastic philosophy and theology under Noel Beda, a medieval
logic-chopper and schoolman by temperament. At the university Calvin
won from his fellows the sobriquet of "the accusative case," on account
of his censorious {162} and fault-finding disposition. At his father's
wish John changed from theology to law. For a time he studied at the
universities of Orleans and Bourges. At Orleans he came under the
influence of two Protestants, Olivetan and the German Melchior Volmar.
On the death of his father, in 1531, he began to devote himself to the
humanities. His first work, a commentary on Seneca's _De Clementia_,
witnesses his wide reading, his excellent Latin style, and his ethical
interests.

It was apparently through the humanists Erasmus and Lefevre that he was
led to the study of the Bible and of Luther's writings. Probably in
the fall of 1533 he experienced a "conversion" such as stands at the
head of many a religious career. A sudden beam of light, he says, came
to him at this time from God, putting him to the proof and showing him
in how deep an abyss of error and of filth he had been living. He
t