. . . prosopopoeia, by which it is pretended that the emperor is talking with himself, and so to speak entering into meditation. . . . And these words are more appealing through a pretended person, than if conceived as from the person of the author. So Quintilian [Institutes of Oratory, 9.2.29] teaches. For they are effective to arouse the reader, to stir feelings, to vary the discourse. Some call this figure not prosopopoeia but ethopoea, because the former invents persons who nowhere exist, whereas the latter fits these words to definite persons.²

Calvin was not being intentionally autobiographical with these prayers, but they inevitably reflected something of his own personal experience of spiritual things.

Calvin’s “Reply” began with a vigorous rejection of the idea that he was motivated by a desire for fame or money. He could more easily have found those in the Church of Rome. What motivated him, he insisted, above all was a concern for the glory of God. Where Sadoleto had declared that the Christian should first be concerned for his own salvation, Calvin maintained that the Christian must first be focused on God and his glory: “It is not very sound theology to confine a man’s thoughts so much to himself, and not to set before him, as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to show forth the glory of God. For we are born first of all for God, and not for ourselves.”³ Calvin always intended his life and thought to be God-centered.

For Calvin, once the Christian saw the glory of God as central, then a proper discussion of salvation could follow. Only when we see God as truly glorious can we see the true nature of salvation and its importance. He wrote to Sadoleto, “. . . you have a theology that is too lazy, as is almost always the case with those who have had no experience in serious struggles of conscience.”⁴ Laziness and self-indulgence are not the path to true theology. Calvin believed that such attitudes had dominated the old church in which he had been raised and produced a church life filled with formalism, indifference, and superstition.

Calvin’s criticism of Sadoleto at this point certainly implied that he himself had had serious struggles of conscience. What kinds of struggles? We can see echoes of those experiences in Calvin’s discussions of justification. He had struggled with the great question of how to be right with God. Calvin stressed that a correct understanding of justification was fundamental. He wrote to Sadoleto that justification was “the first and keenest subject of controversy between us.”⁵

Calvin presents his thought on justification in his “Reply” in terms of several steps. The first was self-examination. The sinner must come to recognize his own plight: “First, we tell a man to begin by examining himself. He must not do this in a superficial or perfunctory way, but must call his conscience before the judgment seat of God. When he is sufficiently convinced of his iniquity, then he must reflect on the strictness of the judgment pronounced on all sinners. When thus confronted and amazed at his misery, then he prostrates and humbles himself before God. He casts away all self-confidence and groans as if given up for final destruction.”⁶ The conscience of the sinner must come to see profoundly his lostness and helplessness. Calvin made this same point in his Institutes: “. . . no man can descend into himself and seriously consider his own character, without perceiving that God is angry with him and hostile to him.”⁷