In the course of our discussion I detect you in another error. To maintain the force of the old law, you quote Christ’s words where he asks: ‘What says the law?’ and answers himself by saying: ‘Keep the commandments.’ But here you have to think of the law not yet accomplished, not yet abrogated; to think further, that Christ, when he willed to interpose in human things, willed to abide by the law; and that he to whom he spoke was living under the law. Christ, therefore, properly referred at this time to the law as to a master. But afterwards, all things being accomplished, the newer ages were emancipated from the older. For the same reason it was that he ordered another to show himself to the priest and make an offering. Shall we, therefore, do the like? He also ordered a lamb and unleavened bread to be prepared for the Passover: Shall we, too, make ready in this fashion? Why do you go on Judaising in these days with your unleavened bread? Ponder these things well, I beseech you, and carefully read over again my twenty-third letter. Farewell.[94] How little likely this epistle, however reasonable in itself, was calculated to win the favour of Calvin, need not be said. To pretend to set John Calvin right in anything could, indeed, only be taken by him as an impertinence. In the present disposition towards the prisoner--the purely metaphysical and undemonstrable nature of the matters in debate, taken into account--we may reasonably conclude that the Judges had hoped he would be able to explain away the offensive and heretical sense in which his views were regarded by the head of their Church--and indeed, and in so far as they could be understood, as they must have been seen by themselves.