The book which this address to the King introduces is a sketch or programme of reform in religion. The first edition of the Institutio is distinguished from all later editions by the emphasis it lays, not on dogma, but on morals, on worship, and on polity. Calvin conceives the Gospel as a new law which ought to be embodied in a new life, individual and social. What came later to be known as Calvinism may be stated in an occasional sentence or implied in a paragraph, but it is not the substance or determinative idea of the book. The problem discussed has been set by the studies and the experience of the author; he has read the New Testament as a humanist learned in the law, and he has been startled by the contrast between its ideal and the reality which confronts him. And he proceeds in a thoroughly juridical fashion, just as Tertullian before him, and as Grotius and Seiden after him. Without a document he can decide nothing; he needs a written law or actual custom; and his book falls into divisions which these suggest. Hence his first chapter is concerned with duty or conduct as prescribed by the Ten Commandments; his second with faith as contained in the Apostolic symbol; his third with prayer as fixed by the words of Christ; his fourth with the Sacrament as given in the Scriptures; his fifth with the false sacraments as defined by tradition and enforced by Catholic custom; and his sixth with Christian liberty or the relation of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. But though the book is, as compared with what it became later, limited in scope and contents-the last edition which left the author's hand in 1559 had grown from a work in six chapters to one in four books and eighty chapters-yet its constructive power, its critical force, its large outlook impress the student. We have here none of Luther's scholasticism, or of Melanchthon's deft manipulation of incompatible elements; but we have the first thoughts on religion of a mind trained by ancient literature to the criticism of life.
In the second edition published in 1539 his old admirations reassert themselves. Plato is there described as of all philosophers "religiosissimus et maxime sobrius"; and Aristotle, Themistius, Cicero, Seneca, and other classical writers are quoted in a way that finds a parallel in no theological book of the period. But in this first edition he is too much in earnest, and writes too directly, to adorn his pages with classical references; though in his style, in his argument, in his deduction of all things from God, and in his correlation of our knowledge of God and of man, in his emphasis on morals, in his sense for conduct and love of freedom, the classical spirit is living and active. Thus, in his ideas of Christian liberty we can trace the student of Seneca, as in his appreciation of law and order we see the Roman jurist. He dislikes equally tyranny and licence. Liberty is said to consist in three things: freedom from the law as a means of acceptance with God, the spontaneous obedience of the justified to the Divine will, and freedom either to observe or neglect those external things which are in themselves indifferent. He specially insists on this
