[Footnote 390: In dedicating to Wolmar his commentary on II. Corinthians, Calvin deplored the loss sustained in the interruption of his Greek studies under his old teacher, "manum enim, quæ tua est humanitas, porrigere non recusasses ad totum stadii decursum, nisi me, _ab ipsis prope carceribus_, mors patris revocasset." Upon the basis of the words here italicized, Merle d'Aubigné builds up a story of outcries and intrigues of priests (against Calvin) who "did all in their power _to get him put into prison_"! Ref. in Time of Calvin, ii. 28. M. Herminjard observes hereupon that one need not be very thoroughly versed in Latin or in Roman antiquities to understand Calvin's allusion; and every classical scholar will sympathize with M. Herminjard when he expresses, in view of the historian's blunder, "un étonnement proportionné à la célébrité de l'auteur." Corresp. des réformateurs, ii. 333.] [Footnote 391: See the very sensible remarks of Herminjard, _ubi supra_, iii. 202.] [Footnote 392: A. Crottet, Histoire des églises réf. de Pons, Gémozac, et Mortagne en Saintonge (Bordeaux, 1841), 10-11, and Merle d'Aubigné, Hist. of the Ref. in the Time of Calvin (Am. ed.), iii. 53, tell the story without any misgivings, and the latter with characteristic embellishment. But it rests on the unsupported and slender authority of Florimond de Ræmond, lib. vii. c. 14, from whose account I cannot even find that the scene was laid in the caverns.] [Footnote 393: Stähelin (Johannes Calvin, Leben und ausgewählte Schriften, i. 33) well remarks that what makes this address very suspicious is the circumstance that a quite similar passage occurs in Calvin's letter to Sadolet, leading us to the conclusion that we have here only a "reminiscence" of this much later document.] [Footnote 394: He resigned his chapel of La Gésine and his curacy of Pont l'Evêque, May 4, 1534. Herminjard, iii. 201.] [Footnote 395: This, and not the persecution at that time raging in France, is the reason assigned by Calvin himself in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, where he tells us that, the very year of his conversion, seeing "que tous ceux qui avoyent quelque désir de la pure doctrine se rangeoyent à lui pour apprendre," he began to seek some hiding-place and means of withdrawing from men. "Et de faict," he adds, "je veins en Allemagne, de propos délibéré, afin que là je peusse vivre à requoy en quelque coin incognu." Corresp. des réformateurs, iii. 242, 243. See the same in the Latin ed., Calvini opera (Amsterdam, 1667), iii. c. 2. This preface is dated Geneva, July 23, 1557.]