He surprised his tutors no less by his application to study. Absorbed in his books, he often forgot the hours for his meals and even for sleep. The people who lived in the neighbourhood used to show each other, as they returned home in the evening, a tiny and solitary gleam, a window lit up nearly all the night through: they long talked of it in that quarter. John Calvin outstripped his companions in philosophy, as he had done in grammar. He then applied to the study of theology, and, strange to say, was enraptured with Scotus, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. The last-mentioned writer had especial charms for him. If Calvin had not been a reformer, he would have become a Thomist. Scholastics appeared to him the queen of sciences; but he was the impassioned lover at first, only that he might be afterwards its terrible adversary. His father, secretary to the diocese of Noyon, always entertained the hope of making his son a dignitary of the Church. With this object he cultivated the favour of the bishop, and spoke humbly to the canons. John had been for some years chaplain of La Gesine, but this did not satisfy the father; and, accordingly, when the living of St. Martin of Marteville became vacant, Gerard Cauvin solicited and, to his great delight, obtained that church for the student of Montaigu, who, as yet, had only received the tonsure. This was in the year 1527. Calvin, taking advantage probably of vacation time, went to see his family and his new parish. It has been supposed that he preached there. ‘Although he had not yet taken orders,’ says Beda, ‘he delivered several sermons before the people.’ Did he really go into the pulpits of his native country at the time when his inward struggles were beginning? To have heard him would have been a great satisfaction to his father, and his age was no obstacle to his preaching; some great preachers have begun still earlier. But it seems to us, after examining the passage, that he did not speak in his own church until later, when the Gospel had completely triumphed in his heart. But, however that may be, Calvin had a parish at eighteen: he was not, however, in holy orders. A new light, which had but little resemblance to the false radiance of scholasticism, began to shine around him. At that time there was a breath of the Gospel in the air, and that reviving breeze reached the scholar within the walls of his college, and the monk in the recesses of his convent; no one was protected against its influence. Calvin heard people talking of the Holy Scriptures, of Lefèvre, of Luther, of Melanchthon, and of what was passing in Germany. When the rays of the sun rise in the Alps, it is the highest peaks that catch them first; in like manner, the most eminent minds were enlightened first. But what some accepted, others rejected. In the colleges there were sharp and frequent altercations, and Calvin was at first in the number of the most inflexible adversaries of the Reformation.