mass;" and then, with uncovered head and eyes turned toward heaven,
"Lord, if at the judgment-day thou shalt reprove me because I have
abandoned the mass, I shall reply with justice, 'Lord, thou hast not
commanded it. Here is thy law. Here are the Scriptures, the rule thou
hast given me, wherein I have been unable to find any other sacrifice
than that which was offered upon the altar of the cross!'"[392]

[Sidenote: He resigns his benefices.]

[Sidenote: He reaches Basle.]

The caverns bearing Calvin's name may never have witnessed his
preaching, and the address ascribed to him rests on insufficient
authority;[393] but it is certain that the future reformer about this
time took his first decided step in renouncing connection with the Roman
Church, by resigning his benefices, the revenues of which he had
enjoyed, although precluded by his youth from receiving ordination.[394]
Not many months later, finding himself solicited on all sides to take an
active part as a teacher of the little companies of Protestants arising
in different cities of France, he resolved to leave France and court
elsewhere obscurity and leisure to prosecute undisturbed his favorite
studies.[395] Accordingly, we find him, after a brief visit to Paris and
Orleans, reaching the city of Basle, apparently toward the close of the
year 1534.[396]

[Sidenote: Apologetic character given to his great work.]

It was here that Calvin appears to have conceived for the first time the
purpose of giving a practical aim to the great work upon the composition
of which he had been some time busy. In spite of his professions of
unsullied honor, Francis the First had not hesitated to disseminate, by
means of his agents beyond the Rhine, the most unfounded and injurious
reports respecting his Protestant subjects. It was time that these
aspersions should be cleared away, and an attempt be made to touch the
heart of the persecuting monarch with compassion for the unoffending
objects of his blind fury. Such was the object Calvin set before himself
in a preface to the first edition of the "Institutes," addressed "To the
Very Christian King of France."[397] It was a document of rare
importance.

[Sidenote: The preface to the "Christian Institutes."]

[Sidenote: Eloquent peroration.]

He briefly explained the original design of his work to be the
instruction of his countrymen, whom he knew to be hungering and
thirsting for the truth. But the persecutions that had a