Then he asks, "Who are our accusers?" and he turns on the priests like a new Erasmus, who does not, like the old, delight in satire for its own sake or in a literature which scourges men by holding up the mirror to vice, but who feels the sublimity of virtue so deeply that witticisms at the expense of vice are abhorrent to him. He takes up the charges in detail: it is said that the doctrine is new, doubtful, and uncertain, unconfirmed by miracles, opposed to the fathers and ancient custom, schismatical and productive of schism, and that its fruits are sects, seditions, license. On no point is he so emphatic as the repudiation of the personal charges: the people he pleads for have never raised their voice in faction or sought to subvert law and order; they fear God sincerely and worship him in truth, praying even in exile for the royal person and house. The book which this address to the King introduces is a sketch or programme of reform in religion. The first edition of the _Institutio_ is distinguished from all later editions by the emphasis it lays, not on dogma, but on morals, on worship, and on polity. Calvin conceives the Gospel as a new law which ought to be embodied in a new life, individual and social. What came later to be known as Calvinism may be stated in an occasional sentence or implied in a paragraph, but it is not the substance or determinative idea of the book. The problem discussed has been set by the studies and the experience of the author; he has read the New Testament as a humanist learned in the law, and he has been startled by the contrast between its ideal and the reality which confronts him. And he proceeds in a thoroughly juridical fashion, just as Tertullian before him, and as Grotius and Selden after him. Without a document he can decide nothing; he needs a written law or actual custom; and his book falls into divisions which these suggest. Hence his first chapter is concerned with duty or conduct as prescribed by the Ten Commandments; his second with faith as contained in the apostolic symbol; his third with prayer as fixed by the words of Christ; his fourth with the sacrament as given in the Scriptures; his fifth with the false sacraments as defined by tradition and enforced by Catholic custom; and his sixth with Christian liberty or the relation of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. But though the book is, as compared with what it became later, limited in scope and contents--the last edition which left the author's hand in 1559 had grown from a work in six chapters to one in four books and eighty chapters--yet its constructive power, its critical force, its large outlook impress the student. We have here none of Luther's scholasticism, or of Melanchthon's deft manipulation of incompatible elements; but we have the first thoughts on religion of a mind trained by ancient literature to the criticism of life.