Calvin's sphere widened gradually: he wrote to those to whom he could not speak;[49] and ere long his friends asked why they should keep for themselves alone the bread of life on which they fed?... One of them giving utterance to this thought to the young doctor added: 'But you can only reach the people in the churches.' It was scarcely possible that Calvin, a fugitive from Paris, could visit the churches of the Angoumois as an evangelical missionary. 'Compose some short Christian exhortations for us,' said his friends to him, 'and we will give them to well-disposed parish priests to read to their congregations.'[50] He did so, and humble clerks read these evangelical appeals from their pulpits, as well as they could. Thus Calvin preached through the mouths of priests to poor villagers, as he had addressed the imposing Sorbonne by the mouth of the rector. [Sidenote: CALVIN PROVIDES SERMONS.] This encouraged certain church dignitaries, especially the prior, who were at once his disciples and his patrons. If Calvin could not preach in French, why should he not teach in Latin? They surrounded the young doctor, representing to him that Latin, the language of the Roman Church, could not occasion any scandal, and asked him to deliver some Latin orations before the clergy. Calvin, firmly convinced that the reform ought to begin with the teaching of the priest, preached several Latin sermons in St. Peter's Church.[51] In this way he inaugurated his career as a reformer. All this could not be done without giving rise to murmurs. The faithful followers of Rome complained of him, of the prior, of all his friends, and this opposition might become dangerous. 'Fatal instrument,' says a Romanist with reference to Calvin's stay in the Angoumois, 'which was destined to reduce France to greater extremities than the Saracens, the Germans, the English, and the house of Austria had done.'[52] He was not, however, the only one who was assisting in this excellent work. [36] Calvin, _Psaumes_, ch. civ. [37] Drelincourt, _Défense du Calvinisme_, p. 40; Crottet, _Chron. protest_. p. 96. [38] _Perroniana._ [39] 'Ut erat omnibus qui litteras amabant carus.'—Flor. Rémond, _Hist. Heres._ ii. 246. [40] 'Sornettes, plaisantes rencontres, railleries, brocards, et toutes niaiseries, lesquelles s'en vont en fumée.' [41] 'Neque enim sum immemor quantum me meliorem reddideris.'—De la Place to Calvin. Geneva MSS. [42] 'In arce quadam, non procul ab oppido Engolismensi sita.'—Flor. Rémond, _Hist. Heres._ ii. p. 247. [43] Flor. Rémond, _Hist. Heres._ (French ed. liv. vii. p. 389; Lat. ed. liv. vii. p. 251.) [44] Calvini _Opp._ Ephes. vi. [45] 'Ibi _Institutiones_ suas Calvinus depromebat quantum quoque die scripsisset ipsis recitans.'—Flor. Rémond, _Hist. Heres._ ii. p. 247. [46] 'Theologiæ suæ mysteria revelabat atque explicabat.'—Ibid. [47] 'Complures auctoritatis viros in suam sententiam pertraxit.'—Flor. Rémond, _Hist. Heres._ ii. p. 247.