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John Calvin's brilliant mind, powerful preaching, many books and large correspondence, and capacity for organisation and administration made him an important influence of the Reformation. He was particularly influential in Switzerland, England, Scotland and colonial North America. Calvin was born in Noyon, France, on July 10, 1509. He was educated in Paris, Orleans and Bourges and studied Greek and Latin at the University of Paris. Unlike other Reformation leaders, Calvin was probably never ordained as a priest. …

…that people that people were saved by the grace of God and that only people called the 'elect' would be saved. Many of Calvin's ideas were controversial but no other reformer did so much to force people to think about Christian social morals. From this moral concern, he developed a pattern of church government that is now called presbyterian. He was the first Protestant leader in Europe to gain partial church independence from the state.