From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

passages. We shall have occasion to speak of this
great work afterwards; suffice it here to remark that
it was composed on the model of those apologies
which the early Fathers presented to the Roman
emperors on behalf of the primitive martyrs.
Again were men dying at the stake for the
Gospel. Calvin felt that it became him to raise his
voice in their defense; but how could he better
vindicate them than by vindicating their cause, and
proving in the face of its enemies and of the whole
world that it was the cause of truth? But to plead
such a cause before such an audience was no light
matter. He prepared himself by reading, by much
meditation, and by earnest prayer; and then he
spoke in the Institutes with a voice that sounded
through Europe, and the mighty reverberations of
which have come down the ages.
An opponent of the Reformation chancing to
enter, in after-years, this famous library, and
knowing who had once occupied it, cast around
him a look of anger, and exclaimed, "This is the
smithy where the modern Vulcan forged his bolts;
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