It was in 1534 that Calvin determined to leave his native France. In February 1535 he came to the free city of Basel. So it came to pass that in this city his Institutes of the Christian Religion was first printed.

Francis I, king of France, had wavered between a policy of clemency toward the Protestants and one of severity. Now a daring deed on the part of some of the boldest of the Protestants hastened him to align himself with their persecutors.

Placards or posters attacking the mass were affixed to public build­ings in many of the chief towns of France on the night of 17 October 1534. They bore this title: ‘Truthful Articles concerning the horrible, great and unbearable abuses of the Popish Mass, invented directly against the Holy Supper of our Lord, the only Mediator and Saviour, Jesus Christ.’ Then followed an attack on the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops, and the monks. The man behind the placards was long thought to be William Farel; actually they were drawn up by Antoine Marcourt, the leading pastor of Neuchatel. One placard was even fixed to the door of the king’s own bedroom. When the people of Paris awoke and read the placards, they felt as if they had been struck by a thunder-bolt! Their sense of outrage led to an outburst of fanaticism in defence of the Catholic Faith.

The king’s own rage knew no bounds. Two hundred Protestants were cast into prison. Some had their hands cut off; others had their tongues torn out. The shoemaker, Milon, lame and paralysed, was the first to the stake. By the 10 November, seven had been condemned to death, and during the next three months several more were to share their fate (including Calvin’s friend, Etienne de la Forge); some were executed in the king’s own presence.

The Protestants now fled like a flock of sheep pursued by fierce wolves. Some of the fugitives reached Basel. Terrible were the tidings they brought. It was not only the barbarous cruelty of Francis to his beloved brethren which roused Calvin; it was the king’s slanderous falsehood.

Francis had amused himself over the charred bodies of his Protes­tant subjects, but he did not want to lose the support of the Protestant princes of Germany in his struggle with the Emperor, Charles V. So Francis wrote to them on 1 February 1535, stating that the persecuted French Protestants were dangerous revolutionaries; they were like a contagious and devastating plague, he alleged. To get over the difficulty of proof, he said, ‘I have preferred to bury their particular theses in the darkness from which they sprang rather than send them to you who are the light of the world.’ This was a subtle ploy on Francis’ part, for since the Peasant War of 1524-25 and the extravagances of some of the Anabaptists, the German Protestant princes abhorred the very thought of revolutionary ideas.

But God had his man ready for the vindication of his persecuted saints. Calvin had been at work at Angouleme in 1534 preparing doctrinal statements for the instruc­tion of the children of God. Now he hurries on with the work he had started and publishes it in March 1536. The Institutes of the Christian Religion was the first book he published after his devotion of himself to the service of God.

Many years later, in his Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms (1557), Calvin speaks of his one great object: to live in seclusion with­out being known so that he might make more progress in the knowledge of true godliness. He left France expressly for the purpose of enjoying in some obscure corner the repose which he had always desired but had been so long denied.

But lo! while I lay hidden at Basel, and known only to a few peo­ple, many faithful and holy persons were burnt alive in France; and report of these burnings having reached foreign nations, they excited the strongest disapprobation among a great part of the Germans, whose indignation was kindled against the authors of such tyranny. In order to allay this indignation, certain wicked and lying pamphlets were circulated, stating, that none were treated with such cruelty but Anabaptists and seditious persons, who, by their perverse railings and false opinions, were overthrowing not only religion but also all civil order.

Not only did such lies seek to cover the guilt of the innocent blood already shed; they sought to enable the murderers to proceed to the utmost extremity against the saints in the days ahead and remove all grounds for compassion towards them. So, says Calvin,

It appeared to me, that unless I opposed them to the utmost of my ability, my silence could not be vindicated from the charge of cow­ardice and treachery. This was the consideration which induced me to publish my Institutes of the Christian Religion. My objects were, first, to prove that these reports were false and calumnious, and thus to vindicate my brethren, whose death was precious in the sight of the Lord; and next, that as the same cruelties might very soon after be exercised against many unhappy individuals, foreign nations might be touched with at least some compassion toward them and solicitude about them.

Calvin, his heart filled with pity for his suffering brethren, and indig­nation over the conduct of the king, penned a Dedication to his book and addressed it to Francis himself. Its pages are among the most cel­ebrated ever written by the Reformer:

When I began this work, Sire, nothing was further from my thoughts than writing a book which would afterwards be pre­sented to your Majesty. My intention was only to lay down some elementary principles, by which inquirers on the subject of religion might be instructed in the nature of true piety. And this labour I undertook chiefly for my own countrymen, the French, of whom I apprehended multitudes to be hungering and thirsting after Christ, but saw very few possessing any real knowledge of him. That this was my design, the book itself proves by its simple method and unadorned composition. But when I perceived that the fury of cer­tain wicked men in your kingdom had grown to such a height as to leave 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 them 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 who are now disturbing the country with fire and sword.

He enumerates the calumnies which were being heaped on the per­secuted, and brings the Dedication to a conclusion with these noble words:

If your Majesty’s ears are so pre-occupied with the whispers of the malevolent as to leave no opportunity for the accused to speak for themselves, and if these 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 great 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 your throne with right­eousness and your kingdom with equity.

Emile Doumergue comments on the Dedication: ‘Francis I and Calvin! The one after long hesitation had just put himself at the head of the persecutors, and the other after long preparation had just put himself at the head of the persecuted ... The king who is truly king is not Francis I; it is Calvin.’

The 1536 edition of the Institutes differs little in subject matter from the author’s final edition of 1559. But it was much smaller. Calvin calls it a ‘brief handbook’ and ‘a little booklet’, though it was no insignificant volume. Many revisions passed through his hands and while the same truth is presented in the final edition, the arrangement is altered and the book has grown to five times its original size. On the final edition he laboured the more, knowing himself to be a dying man.

The first edition of the Institutes was in Latin, as Doumergue has clearly shown – not in French, as some writers have asserted. It was written for men of all nations, Latin being everywhere understood by men of education.

When Calvin published his first book back in April 1532 (his com­mentary on Seneca’s treatise, On Clemency), he was ‘quivering with anxiety’ that it might be successful. Less than four years had passed since then, and it is a token of the revolution wrought within him that when he now issued his Institutes he was free from all such concerns. Living at Basel under the pseudonym ‘Lucanius’ he was content that none should know him to be the author. Immediately after issuing it – probably even before it came from the press – he left Basel for Italy, not waiting to see how it would fare.

Says Warfield:

In the immense upheavals of the Reformation movement the foundations of faith seemed to many to be broken up, and the most important questions to be set adrift; extravagances of all sorts sprang up on every side ... It was Calvin’s Institutes which, with its calm, clear, positive exposition of the evangelical faith on the irrefragable authority of the Holy Scriptures, gave stability to wavering minds, and confidence to sinking hearts, and placed upon the lips of all a brilliant apology, in the face of the calumnies of the enemies of the Reformation.

And this was the work of a young man of just twenty-six years of age!