ow as he was fifty years ago. Nor was he ever a favorite with
the English Church. He has been even grossly misrepresented by
theological opponents; but no critic or historian has ever questioned
his genius, his learning, or his piety. No one denies that he has
exerted a great influence on Protestant countries. As a theologian he
ranks with Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,--maintaining essentially
the same views as those held by these great lights, and being
distinguished for the same logical power; reigning like them as an
intellectual dictator in the schools, but not so interesting as they
were as men. And he was more than a theologian; he was a reformer and
legislator, laying down rules of government, organizing church
discipline, and carrying on reforms in the worship of God,--second only
to Luther. His labors were prodigious as theologian, commentator, and
ecclesiastical legislator; and we are surprised that a man with so
feeble a body could have done so much work.

Calvin was born in Picardy in 1509,--the year that Henry VIII. ascended
the British throne, and the year that Luther began to preach at
Wittenberg. He was not a peasant's son, like Luther, but belonged to
what the world calls a good family. Intellectually he was precocious,
and received an excellent education at a college in Paris, being
destined for the law by his father, who sent him to the University of
Orleans and then to Bourges, where he studied under eminent jurists, and
made the acquaintance of many distinguished men. His conversion took
place about the year 1529, when he was twenty; and this gave a new
direction to his studies and his life. He was a pale-faced young man,
with sparkling eyes, sedate and earnest beyond his years. He was
twenty-three when he published the books of Seneca on Clemency, with
learned commentaries. At the age of twenty-three he was in communion
with the reformers of Germany, and was acknowledged to be, even at that
early age, the head of the reform party in France. In 1533 he went to
Paris, then as always the centre of the national life, where the new
ideas were creating great commotion in scholarly and ecclesiastical
circles, and even in the court itself. Giving offence to the doctors of
the Sorbonne for his evangelical views as to Justification, he was
obliged to seek refuge with the Queen of Navarre, whose castle at Pau
was the resort of persecuted reformers. After leading rather a fugitive
life in different parts