rel--the fervid preacher of
reform--could do their work unhindered, was certain to make a deep
impression on a fugitive harassed and expatriated on account of
religion; and the impression it made can be read in the _Christianae
Religionis Institutio_, and especially in the prefatory _Letter to
Francis I_. The _Institutio_ is Calvin's positive interpretation of the
Christian religion: the _Letter_ is learned, eloquent, elegant,
dignified, the address of a subject to his sovereign, yet of a subject
who knows that his place in the state is as legal, though not as
authoritative, as the sovereign's. It throbs with a noble indignation
against injustice, and with a noble enthusiasm for freedom and truth. It
is one of the great epistles of the world, a splendid apology for the
oppressed and arraignment of the oppressors. It does not implore
toleration as a concession, but claims freedom as a right.

Its author is a young man of but twenty-six, yet he speaks with the
gravity of age. He tells the King that his first duty is to be just;
that to punish unheard is but to inflict violence and perpetrate fraud.
Those for whom he speaks are, though simple and godly men, yet charged
with crimes that, were they true, ought to condemn them to a thousand
fires and gibbets. These charges the King is bound to investigate, for
he is a minister of God, and if he fails to serve the God whose minister
he is, then he is a robber and no king.

Then he asks, "Who are our accusers?" and he turns on the priests like a
new Erasmus, who does not, like the old, delight in satire for its own
sake or in a literature which scourges men by holding up the mirror to
vice, but who feels the sublimity of virtue so deeply that witticisms at
the expense of vice are abhorrent to him. He takes up the charges in
detail: it is said that the doctrine is new, doubtful, and uncertain,
unconfirmed by miracles, opposed to the fathers and ancient custom,
schismatical and productive of schism, and that its fruits are sects,
seditions, license. On no point is he so emphatic as the repudiation of
the personal charges: the people he pleads for have never raised their
voice in faction or sought to subvert law and order; they fear God
sincerely and worship him in truth, praying even in exile for the royal
person and house.

The book which this address to the King introduces is a sketch or
programme of reform in religion. The first edition of the _Institutio_
is distinguished