A few years later Calvin would not have undertaken such a mission; or, if he had, he would not have acquitted himself with so much delicacy and reserve. His first published work was an appeal for mercy--or, to use the language of the eighteenth century, for toleration--on behalf of the reformers, who were persecuted, banished, imprisoned, and led to the stake. He put forth his protest humbly, in the shape of a commentary on Seneca's treatise, 'De Clementia' (On Mercy); so humbly that many of his biographers, and among others the new editors of his complete works, have considered that he did not intend to defend the persecuted reformers, and that his commentary on Seneca's treatise was simply the work of a moral philosopher and a philologist. It is true that Calvin does not once speak of the reformers and the hardships which they endured, throughout the work; he does not make a single allusion to them which can be laid hold of. Still, I am not the less convinced that, by this publication, he hoped to serve the cause of his brethren, and that, if reform had been triumphant and powerful, his commentary on Seneca's treatise would never have appeared. The very title of the book, and the circumstances under which it was published, are much stronger proofs in favour of this assertion than the doubts concerning it, which would arise from Calvin's reserve of language. The dedication of the work to Charles de Hangest, the Bishop of Noyon, his former patron, confirms me in this opinion. So long as prudence was possible, Calvin was prudent, and anxious to conciliate the established authorities. Very respectfully he placed a eulogy of clemency under the eyes of a Catholic prelate whom he knew to be well-disposed towards himself, and who would, as he hoped, use his valuable influence on behalf of the proscribed reformers. {163} The Bishop of Noyon was not the only person of whom Calvin thought and to whom he spoke at this time with an almost affectionate deference. On the 4th of April, 1532, he wrote to Erasmus, to whom he sent his book, and reminded him in the most flattering terms of his own recent labours on the works of Seneca, addressing him as 'the honour and the chief delight of the world of letters.' He did not then foresee that three years later, when his friend Bucer introduced him to Erasmus at Basle, after talking to him for some little time, Erasmus would say to Bucer, in a low tone, 'I see rising up within the Church a great scourge against the Church.'