A little known book on Calvin, John Calvin, and the printed book by Jean Friswaoguemon, tells a little known and rather intriguing story.

First we need some background. Calvin, after he was kicked out of Geneva in 1538, went to Strusburg.

While there, he published his first commentary on the epistle to the Romans.

It rolled off the press in 1540.

The next year,

1541, the city of Geneva begged Calvin to come back.

He wrote to a friend,

There is no place on earth I am more afraid of.

But he felt called by God and so he went. When he published his

Romans commentary he was determined to keep going through Paul's epistles, but a

roadblock God in the way, a roadblock named Geneva.

The church needed Calvin's full attention, and he gave it to them.

So these early years of the 1540s were much consumed by church work.

The commentary writing went to the back burner.

Calvin eventually managed to find some equilibrium and started writing again.

His commentary on First Corinthians came out in 1546. And now we get to our story. After he sent off 1st

Corinthians to the printer, Calvin's had to work on 2 Corinthians. He finished it

in a flurry. From what we can tell, Calvin's record was 17,000

words in about three days. That's 100 pages of writing. So Calvin finished 2 Corinthians. In late July 1546 he sent the

manuscript the only copy of the manuscript by way of a courier to Strasbourg. It was handwritten, no backup. It went missing for

over a month. Another roadblock. Back in Geneva was a very anxious Calvin. He wrote, if I find that my commentary is lost, I have decided to never return to Paul again.

His friends weren't of much help. Rather than console him, Guillaume Farrell, probably his best friend, wrote to him,

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