s I. to flee the
country, he took up his residence at Basle and settled down, as he
hoped, to a quiet literary life. It was during his stay here that he
published in 1536 the first edition of his greatest work, 'The
Christian Institutes,' in which is contained the system of theology
which has for centuries borne his name, and by which he is best known
to the world at large. Probably no other work written by so young a
man has ever produced such a wide-spread, profound, and lasting
influence. In its original form, it is true, the work was only a brief
and simple introduction to the study of the Scriptures, much less
imposing and forbidding than the elaborate body of divinity which is
now known to theologians as 'Calvin's Institutes': but all the
substance of the last edition is to be found in the first; the
theology of the one is the theology of the other--the Calvin of 1559
is the Calvin of 1536. The fact that at the age of twenty-six Calvin
could publish a system of theology at once so original and so
profound--a system, moreover, which with all his activity of intellect
and love of truth he never had occasion to modify in any essential
particular--is one of the most striking phenomena in the history of
the human mind; and yet it is but one of many illustrations of the
man's marvelous clearness and comprehensiveness of vision, and of his
force and decision of character. His life from beginning to end was
the consistent unfolding of a single dominant principle--the
unwavering pursuit of a single controlling purpose. From his earliest
youth the sense of duty was all-supreme with him; he lived under a
constant imperative--in awe of, and in reverent obedience to, the will
of a sovereign God; and his theology is but the translation into
language of that experience; its translation by one of the world's
greatest masters of logical thought and of clear speech.

Calvin's great work was accompanied by a dedicatory epistle addressed
to King Francis I., which is by common consent one of the finest
specimens of courteous and convincing apology in existence. A brief
extract from it will be found in the selections given below.

Soon after the publication of the 'Institutes,' Calvin's plans for a
quiet literary career were interrupted by a peremptory call to assist
in the work of reforming the Church and State of Geneva; and the
remainder of his life, with the exception of a brief interval of
exile, was spent in that city, at the h