st characteristic and
important of his briefer works are his vigorous and effective 'Reply
to Cardinal Sadolet,' who had endeavored after Calvin's exile from
Geneva in 1539 to win back the Genevese to the Roman Church; his tract
on 'The Necessity of Reforming the Church; presented to the Imperial
Diet at Spires, A.D. 1544, in the cause of all who wish with Christ
to reign'--an admirable statement of the conditions which had made a
reformation of the Church imperatively necessary, and had led to the
great religious and ecclesiastical revolution; another tract on 'The
True Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the
Church,'--marked by a beautiful Christian spirit and permeated with
sound practical sense; still another containing 'Articles Agreed Upon
by the Faculty of Sacred Theology at Paris, with the Antidote', and
finally an 'Admonition Showing the Advantages which Christendom might
Derive from an Inventory of Relics.' Though Calvin was from boyhood up
of a most serious turn of mind, and though his writings, in marked
contrast to the writings of Luther, exhibit few if any traces of
genial spontaneous humor, the last two works show that he knew how to
employ satire on occasion in a very telling way for the overthrow of
error and for the discomfiture of his opponents.

In addition to the services which Calvin rendered by his writings to
the cause of Christianity and of sacred learning, must be recognized
the lasting obligation under which as an author he put his mother
tongue. Whether he wrote in Latin or in French, his style was always
chaste, elegant, clear, and vigorous. His Latin compares favorably
with the best models of antiquity; his French is a new creation. The
latter language indeed owes almost as much to Calvin as the German
language owes to Luther. He was unquestionably its greatest master in
the sixteenth century, and he did more than any one else to fix its
permanent character--to give it that exactness, that lucidity, that
purity and harmony of which it justly boasts.

Calvin's writings bear throughout the imprint of his character. There
appears in all of them the same horror of impurity and dishonor, the
same stern sense of duty, the same respect for the sovereignty of the
Almighty, the same severe judgment of human failings. To read them is
to breathe the tonic air of snow-clad heights; but they are seldom if
ever touched with the tender glow of human feeling or transfigured
with the radia