All Saints' Day, 1533, having arrived, the university assembled with great pomp in the Mathurins' church; many were impatient to hear Cop, whose conduct in the case of the Queen of Navarre had made him an object of suspicion to the Sorbonne. A great number of monks, and especially of Franciscans, took their places and opened their ears. There were however scattered about the church many steadfast friends of the Gospel, who had come to be present at the assault and perhaps witness the triumph of their faith. Among them, and on a bench apart, sat a young man of humble appearance, calm, modest, and attentive to all that was said. Nobody suspected that it was he (Calvin) who was about to set the university, and indeed all France, in commotion. The hour having come, all the dignitaries, professors, and students fixed their eager eyes upon Cop as he rose to speak. He pronounced the opening address 'in a very different fashion,' says Theodore Beza, 'from what was usual.' There was a simplicity and life in his delivery which contrasted strongly with the dryness and exaggeration of the old doctors. The discourse is of importance in the history of the Reformation; we shall give it, therefore, in part, all the more because it has lain unknown until this hour among the manuscripts of the library of Geneva, and is now first presented to the christian public.[485] [Sidenote: COP'S INAUGURAL DISCOURSE.] 'Christian philosophy is a great thing,' said the rector; 'a thing too excellent for any tongue to express and even for any mind to conceive its value. The gift of God to man by Jesus Christ himself, it teaches us to know that true happiness which deceives nobody, making us believe and comprehend that we are truly the sons of God.... The brightness of the splendour of this wisdom of God eclipses all the glimmerings of the wisdom of the world. It places its possessors as far above the common order of men, as that order is itself above the brutes.[486] The mind of man, opened and enlarged by the divine hand, then understands things infinitely more sublime than all those which are learnt from our feeble humanity. How admirable, how holy must this divine philosophy be, since, in order to bring it to men, God was willing to become man, and, to teach it to us, the Immortal put on mortality! Could God better manifest his love to us than by the gift of his eternal Word? What stronger and tenderer bond could God establish between himself and us than by becoming a man such as we are? Sirs, let us praise the other sciences, I approve of it; let us admire logic, natural philosophy, and ethics, in consideration of their utility; but who would dare compare them with that other philosophy, which explains what philosophers have long been seeking after and never found ... the will of God? And what is the hidden will that is revealed to us here? It is this: _The grace of God alone remits sins.[487]... The Holy Ghost, which sanctifies all hearts