Page:Institutes of the Christian Religion Vol 1.djvu/18

x sole object being to bear testimony to the faith of those whom I saw iniquitously assailed by wicked and perfidious flatterers. Moreover, whether in publishing it I hunted after fame was manifest from my early departure, especially as no person there knew me to be the author. The fact I always conceal ed in other places, and I was still in the same intention, till arriving at Geneva," &c.

The whole of the above interesting narrative well deserved to be quoted; but the argument drawn from it to prove that the edition of 1536 is not the first, is founded on the two last sentences. If no person at Basle knew that Calvin was the author; if the fact was latent even after the publication, so that Calvin was still able to conceal it in other places, and continue in the intention of doing so, the edition to which he refers could not have had his name on the title-page. There must either have been no name there at all, or a fictitious name.

Were this argument sound, it would certainly prove that the edition of 1536 is not the first, since the title-page (see fac-simile, No. I. Appendix) expressly bears, "Joanne Calvino, Noviodunensi autore." At the same time, some very extraordinary results would follow. To some of these it will here be necessary to attend.

The exact time when Calvin reached Basle is not known, but it can be proved to demonstration, that it must have been subsequent to January 1535. That year was ushered in at Paris with a monstrous procession, in which the principal part was performed by Francis I., who, more in the character of a blinded heathen despot than of a Christian monarch, walked bareheaded, with a blazing taper in his hand, through the streets of the city, for the purpose of purging it from