Calvin felt the necessity of giving a solid foundation to the faith of his friends. 'A tree that is not deeply rooted,' he said, 'is easily torn up by the first blast of the storm.' He then committed to paper, as we have said, the first ideas of his _Christian Institutes_. One day, as he was starting for Gérac, he took his notes with him, and read what he had just written to the circle assembled in the castle.[45] He did this several times afterwards; but the notes served merely as a text on which he commented with much eloquence. 'No one can equal him,' they said, 'in loftiness of language, conciseness of arrangement, and majesty of style.' He was not content with stating this doctrine or that: His fine understanding grasped the organic unity of the Christian truths, and he was able to present them as a divine whole.[46] It was no doubt the cry of his conscience which had led him to seek salvation in the Holy Scriptures; but he had not been able to study, compare, and fathom them without his understanding becoming enlightened, developed, and sanctified. The moral faculty is that which is first aroused in the Christian; but it immediately provokes the exercise of the intellectual faculties. The citizens of the kingdom of God are not those who know, but those who believe; not the learned, but the regenerated. A church in which the intellectual faculty is above the moral faculty, does not bear the stamp of the Protestant and Christian principle; but every church in which the divine faculty of the understanding is neglected, and where learning is viewed with distrust, will easily fall into deplorable error. Calvin's explanations, so deep and yet so clear, were not without their use. Du Tillet, Chaillou, De la Place, Torsac, and others mutually expressed their admiration and joy after the young doctor had retired; then, at their homes and apart from the world, they meditated on the consoling truths they had heard. Many of the most notable men of the district were won over to evangelical convictions.[47] The Prior of Bouteville, in particular, showed from that time so much faith and zeal—he was, after Calvin's departure, so much the father and guide of those who had received the seed of truth, that he was called throughout the province: 'The Lutherans' Pope.'[48]