§ 79. CALVIN'S INSTITUTES OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 333
when I perceived that the fury of certain wicked men in your kingdom had grown to such a height, as to liave no room in the land for sound doctrine, I thought I should be usefully employed, if in the same work I delivered my instructions to tlieni, and exhibited my confession to you, that you may know the nature of that doctrine, which is the object of such unbounded rage to those madmen wiio are now disturbing the country with fire and sword. For 1 shall not be afraid to acknowledge, that this treatise contains a summary of that very doctrine, which, according to their clamors, deserves to be punished with imprisonment, banishment, proscription, and flames, and to be exterminated from the face of the earth. I well know with what atrocious insinuations your ears have been filled by them, in order to render our cause most odious in your esteem ; but your clemency sliould lead you to consider tliat if accusation be accounted a sufficient evidence of guilt, there will be an end of all innocence in words and actions."
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"But I return to you, Sire. Let not your Majesty be at all moved by those groundless accusations with which our adversaries endeavor to terrify you; as that the sole tendency and design of this new gospel, for so they call it, is to furnish a pretext for seditions, and to gain impunity for all crimes. 'For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace;' nor is 'the Son of God,' who came to destroy 'the works of the devil, the minister of sin.' And it is unjust to charge us with such motives and designs of which we have never given cause for the least suspicion. Is it probable that we are meditating the subversion of kingdoms ? We, who were never heard to utter a factious word, whose lives were ever known to be peaceable and honest while we lived under your government, and who, even now in our exile, cease not to pray for all prosperity to attend yourself and your kingdom ! Is it probable that we are seeking an unlimited license to commit crimes with impunity, in whose conduct, though many things may be blamed, yet there is nothing worthy of such severe reproach ? Nor have we, hy divine grace, profited so little in the gospel, but that our life may be to our detractors an example of chastity, liberality, mercy, temperance, patience, modesty, and every other virtue. It is an undeniable fact, that we sincerely fear and worship God, whose name we desire to be sanctified both by our life and by our deatli; and envy itself is constrained to bear testimony to the innocence and civil integrity of some of us, who have suffered the punishment of death, for that very thing which ought to be accounted their highest praise. But if the gospel be made a pretext for tumults, which has not yet happened in your kingdom ; if any persons make the liberty of divine grace an excuse for the licentiousness of their vices, of whom I have known many; there are laws and legal penalties, by which they may be punished according to their deserts : only let not the gospel of God be reproached for the crimes of wicked men. You have now, Sire, the virulent iniquity of our calumniators laid before you in a sufficient number of instances, that you may not receive their accusations with too credulous an ear.
" I fear I have gone too much into the detail, as this preface already approaches the size of a full apology ; whereas, I intended it not to contain
334 THE KEFOKMATION IN FKENCH SWITZERLAND.
our defence, but only to prepare your mind to attend to the pleading of our cause ; for though you are now averse and alienated from us, and even inflamed against us, we despair not of regaining your favor, if you will only once read with calmness and composure this our confession, which we intend as our defence before your Majesty. But, on the contrary, if your ears are so preoccupied with the whispers of the malevolent, as to leave no opportunity for the accused to speak for themselves, and if those outrageous furies, with your connivance, continue to persecute with imprisonments, scourges, tortures, confiscations, and flames, we shall indeed, like sheep destined to the slaughter, be reduced to the greatest extremities. Yet shall we in patience possess our souls, and wait for the mighty hand of the Lord, which undoubtedly will in time appear, and show itself armed for the deliverance of the poor from their affliction, and for the punishment of their despisers, who now exult in such perfect security.
" May the Lord, the King of kings, establish 3'our throne in righteousness, and your kingdom with equity."
The first edition of the Institutes was a brief manual containing, in six chapters, an exposition 1) of the Decalogue ; 2) of the Apostles' Creed ; 3) of the Lord's Prayer ; 4) of baptism and the Lord's Supper ; 5) of the other so-called Sacraments ; 6) of Christian liberty, Church government, and discipline. The second edition has seventeen, the third, twenty-one chapters. In the author's last edition of 1559, it grew to four or five times its original size, and was divided into four books, each book into a number of chapters (from seventeen to twenty-five), and each chapter into sections. It follows in the main, like every good catechism, the order of the Apostles' Creed, which is the order of God's revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The first book discusses the knowledge of God the Creator (theology proper) ; the second, the knowledge of God the Redeemer (Christology) ; the third, of the Holy Spirit and the application of the saving work of Christ (soteriology) ; the fourth, the means of grace, namely, the Church and the sacraments.^
1 He himself gives in the preface to the last edition the following account of the successive improvements of the work : " In the first edition of this work, not expecting that success which the Lord in his infinite goodness hath given, I handled the subject for the most part in a superficial manner, as is usual in small treatises. But when I understood that it had obtained from almost all