As yet, however, Calvin did not meditate becoming a reformer in the same sense as Luther. At that time he would have liked to see all the Church transformed, rather than set himself apart and build up a new one. The faith which he desired to preach was that old christian truth which Paul had preached at Rome. The scribes had substituted for it the false traditions of man, but this was only one reason the more for proclaiming in the Church the doctrine which had founded the Church. After the first phase of christian life, in which man thinks only of Christ, there usually comes a second, where the christian does not voluntarily worship with assemblies opposed to his convictions. Calvin was now in the first of these phases. He thought only of preaching the Gospel. Did he not possess a pulpit in this very neighbourhood, and was it not his duty to glorify God from it? Had it been in his power, he would have done so in St. Peter's at Rome; why, then, should he refrain in his own church? [Sidenote: CALVIN'S PROMOTION AND PREACHING.] Calvin had friends in Picardy, even among the dignitaries of the clergy. Early attached to their young fellow-townsman, these men had received him with joy; they had found him more advanced in piety and learning, and had observed nothing in him opposed to their opinions. They thought that he might become one of the pillars of the Church. The circumstance that he had studied the law did not check them; it rendered him, in their eyes, fitter still to maintain the interests of the faith ... and of the clergy. Far from repelling him, his former patrons endeavoured to bind him still closer to them. That noble friend of his boyhood, Claude de Hangest of Momor, now abbot of St. Eloy, offered to give him the living of Pont L'Evêque in exchange for that of St. Martin of Marteville. Calvin, seeing in this offer the opportunity of preaching in the very place where his ancestors had lived, accepted; and then resigned, in favour of his brother Anthony, the chapel of La Gésine, of which he had been titulary for eight years. The act is dated the 30th of April, 1529.[126]