the scene was laid in the caverns.]

[Footnote 393: Staehelin (Johannes Calvin, Leben und ausgewaehlte
Schriften, i. 33) well remarks that what makes this address very
suspicious is the circumstance that a quite similar passage occurs in
Calvin's letter to Sadolet, leading us to the conclusion that we have
here only a "reminiscence" of this much later document.]

[Footnote 394: He resigned his chapel of La Gesine and his curacy of
Pont l'Eveque, May 4, 1534. Herminjard, iii. 201.]

[Footnote 395: This, and not the persecution at that time raging in
France, is the reason assigned by Calvin himself in the preface to his
commentary on the Psalms, where he tells us that, the very year of his
conversion, seeing "que tous ceux qui avoyent quelque desir de la pure
doctrine se rangeoyent a lui pour apprendre," he began to seek some
hiding-place and means of withdrawing from men. "Et de faict," he adds,
"je veins en Allemagne, de propos delibere, afin que la je peusse vivre
a requoy en quelque coin incognu." Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 242,
243. See the same in the Latin ed., Calvini opera (Amsterdam, 1667),
iii. c. 2. This preface is dated Geneva, July 23, 1557.]

[Footnote 396: Whether before or after the appearance of the "Placards,"
is uncertain. On Calvin's early life, see Beza's Life, already referred
to; the Histoire ecclesiastique; various letters in J. Bonnet's Letters
of Calvin, and Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs; Haag, France
protestante; the reformer's life by Paul Henry, D.D., and especially the
scholarly work of Dr. E. Staehelin (2 vols., Elberfeld, 1860-1863).]

[Footnote 397: The mooted question whether Calvin wrote the Institutes
originally in Latin or in French--in other words, whether there was a
French edition before the first Latin edition of 1536--has been set at
rest by M. Jules Bonnet, who, in a contribution to the Bulletin de
l'histoire du protestantisme francais, vi. (1858) 137-142, establishes
the priority of the Latin. The chief points in the proof are: 1st, the
absence of even a single copy of the supposed French edition of 1535;
2d, Calvin's statement to Francis Daniel, Oct. 13, 1536, "I am kept
continually occupied upon the French version of my little book;" 3d, his
decisive words in the preface to the edition of 1551: "_Et premierement
l'ay mis en latin_ a ce qu'il pust servir a toutes gens d'estude, de
quelque nation qu'ils fussent; puis apres desirant de communiquer ce qui
en pouv