ree these principles did much for
the cause of civil liberty.[15] Nor was it only in religious matters
that Calvin busied himself; nothing was indifferent to him that
concerned the welfare and good order of the state or the advantage of
its citizens. His work embraced everything; he was consulted on every
affair, great and small, that came before the council,--on questions of
law, police, economy, trade, and manufactures, no less than on questions
of doctrine and church polity. To him the city owed her trade in cloths
and velvets, from which so much wealth accrued to her citizens;
sanitary regulations were introduced by him which made Geneva the
admiration of all visitors; and in him she reverences the founder of her
university. This institution was in a sense Calvin's crowning work. It
added religious education to the evangelical preaching and the thorough
discipline already established, and so completed the reformer's ideal of
a Christian commonwealth.

Amidst these multitudinous cares and occupations, Calvin found time to
write a number of works besides those provoked by the various
controversies in which he was engaged. The most numerous of these were
of an exegetical character. Including discourses taken down from his
lips by faithful auditors, we have from him expository comments or
homilies on nearly all the books of Scripture, written partly in Latin
and partly in French. Though naturally knowing nothing of the modern
idea of a progressive revelation, his judiciousness, penetration, and
tact in eliciting his author's meaning, his precision, condensation, and
concinnity as an expositor, the accuracy of his learning, the closeness
of his reasoning, and the elegance of his style, all unite to confer a
high value on his exegetical works. The series began with _Romans_ in
1540 and ended with _Joshua_ in 1564. In 1558-1559 also, though in very
ill health, he finally perfected the Institutes.

The incessant and exhausting labours to which Calvin gave himself could
not but tell on his fragile constitution. Amid many sufferings, however,
and frequent attacks of sickness, he manfully pursued his course; nor
was it till his frail body, torn by many and painful diseases--fever,
asthma, stone, and gout, the fruits for the most part of his sedentary
habits and unceasing activity--had, as it were, fallen to pieces around
him, that his indomitable spirit relinquished the conflict. In the early
part of the year 1564 his sufferi