But God, who took pity upon me, conquered my heart and subdued it to docility by a sudden conversion. ... Having then received some taste and knowledge of true piety, so great a desire was incontinently kindled in me to profit by it, that although I did not entirely renounce all other studies, yet I paid but little attention to them. ... Before the year was at an end, all those who were yearning for the true doctrine began to look towards me as a teacher, although I myself had only just begun to learn. ... Being of a shy and solitary nature, I have always loved retirement and tranquillity; I began therefore to seek out some hiding-place, and some means of withdrawing myself from my fellows; but, so far from attaining my desire, it seemed, on the contrary, as if every retreat I chose in a remote spot was at once converted into a public school. In short, although it has always been my chief desire to live in private without being known, yet God has led me hither and thither, and turned me in so many directions by different changes, that he never left me at peace in any place, until, in spite of my own desires, he made me come forward, and brought me into public life.' All uncertainty had disappeared and anxiety for himself had been removed; Calvin recognised his mission and entered on his vocation with great ardour. {160} In 1531 or 1532, after three years of study he gave up the law, as he had given up the Established Church; he left Bourges, returned to Noyon, resigned his curé at Pont-l'Evêque and his chapel of LaGésine in 1534, sold the small property he inherited on the death of his father, and thenceforward devoted himself entirely to the work of religious reform; a reform which was then in its infancy, and was fiercely opposed. No resolve was ever taken more spontaneously, more conscientiously, or involved a more full and free self-sacrifice and such singleness of aim in the desire to serve, at all costs, the cause which he looked upon as the cause of the highest truth and the law of God.