Calvin anxiously observed in all its phases this struggle between his teachers and the doctors of the Sorbonne. All the students were on the watch, as was Calvin also in his college; and when the decision of the parliament became known there, it was received with loud acclamations. While the Sorbonne placed itself on the side of tradition, Calvin placed himself still more decidedly on the side of Scripture. He thought that as the oral teaching of the apostles had ceased, their written teaching had become its indispensable substitute. The writings of Matthew and John, of Peter and Paul, were, in his opinion, the living word of these great doctors, their teaching for those ages which could neither see nor hear them. It appeared to Calvin as impossible to reform the Church without the writings of the apostles, as it would have been to form it in the first century without their preaching. He saw clearly that if the Church was to be renewed, it must be done by faith and by Scripture—a twofold principle which at bottom is but one. But the hour had not yet come when Calvin was to proclaim these great truths with the authority of a reformer. A modest and devout man, he was now performing a more humble work in the remotest streets and loneliest houses of the capital. One would have taken him for the most insignificant of men, and yet he was already a conqueror. The light of Scripture, with which his mind was saturated, was one day to shine like the lightning from east to west; and no man since St. Paul was to hold the Gospel torch so high and with so firm a hand. When that student, so thin, pale, and obscure, in appearance so mean, in manner so timid, passed down the street of St. Jacques or of the Sorbonne; when he crept silently past the houses, and slipped unobserved into one of them, bearing with him the Word of life, there was not even an old woman that noticed him. And yet the time was to come when Francis I., with his policy, conquests, priests, court, and festivities, would only call up frivolous or disgusting recollections; while the work which this poor scholar was by God's grace then beginning, would increase day by day for the salvation of souls and prosperity of nations, and would advance calmly but surely to the conquest of the world. [Footnote 124: Calvini _Opusc._] [Footnote 125: 'Unico omnium patri suum jus integrum maneat.'—Calvin _in Matthæum_.] [Footnote 126: Desmay, _Vie de Calvin_, pp. 40-42. Drelincourt, _Défense de Calvin_, pp. 167, 168.] [Footnote 127: 'Quo loco constat Calvinum ... ad populum conciones habuisse.'—Bezæ _Vita Calvini_.] [Footnote 128: Archives Générales, x. 8946. _France Protestante_, article _Normandie_.] [Footnote 129: Genesis i. 5.] [Footnote 130: Desmay, _Vie de Calvin_, p. 41. Drelincourt, _Défense de Calvin_, p. 168.] [Footnote 131: Crévier, _Hist. de l'Université de Paris_, v. p. 245.] [Footnote 132: 'Quo alios introduxisti, nusquam ipse ingressus.'—Bezæ _Icones_.]