It is on this ground that Calvin takes a place in the history of France, and has a fair right to be counted amongst the eminent men who have carried to a distance the influence, the language, and the fame of the country in the bosom of which it was not permitted them to live and labor.

In 1547, when the death of Francis I.was at hand, that ecclesiastical organization of Protestantism which Calvin had instituted at Geneva was not even begun in France.

The French Protestants were as yet but isolated and scattered individuals, without any bond of generally accepted and practised faith or discipline, and without any eminent and recognized heads.

The Reformation pursued its course; but a Reformed church did not exist.

And this confused mass of Reformers and Reformed had to face an old, a powerful, and a strongly constituted church, which looked upon the innovators as rebels over whom it had every right as much as against them it had every arm.