in America, the Calvinistic type came to play a most
important part in religious and national development.

Two estimates of Calvin, the first from a Protestant point
of view, the second that of a Roman Catholic writer, are
here presented.

A. M. FAIRBAIRN

In 1528 Calvin's father, perhaps illuminated by the disputes in his
cathedral chapter, discovered that the law was a surer road to wealth
and honor than the church, and decided that his son should leave
theology for jurisprudence. The son, nothing loath, obeyed, and left
Paris for Orleans, possibly, as he descended the steps of the College de
Montaigu, brushing shoulders with a Spanish freshman named Ignatius
Loyola. In Orleans Calvin studied law under Pierre de l'Estoile, who is
described as _jurisconsultorum Gallorum facile princeps_, and as
eclipsing in classical knowledge Reuchlin, Aleander, and Erasmus; and
Greek under Wolmar, in whose house he met for the first time Theodore
Beza, then a boy about ten years of age.

After a year in Orleans he went to Bourges, attracted by the fame of the
Italian jurist Alciati, whose ungainliness of body and speech and vanity
of mind his students loved to satirize and even by occasional rebellion
to chasten. In 1531 Gerard Calvin died and his son, in 1532, published
his first work, a commentary on Seneca's _de Clementia_. His purpose has
been construed by the light of his late career; and some have seen in
the book a veiled defence of the Huguenot martyrs, others a cryptic
censure of Francis I, and yet others a prophetic dissociation of himself
from Stoicism. But there is no mystery in the matter; the work is that
of a scholar who has no special interest in either theology or the
Bible. This may be statistically illustrated: Calvin cites twenty-two
Greek authors and fifty-five Latin, the quotations being most abundant
and from many books; but in his whole treatise there are only three
Biblical texts expressly cited, and those from the Vulgate.

The man is cultivated and learned, writes elegant Latin, is a good judge
of Latinity, criticises like any modern the mind and style, the
knowledge and philosophy, the manner, the purpose, and the ethical ideas
of Seneca; but the passion for religion has not as yet penetrated as it
did later into his very bones. Erasmus is in Calvin's eyes the ornament
of letters, though his large edition of Seneca is not all it ought to
have been; but even Erasmus could not