This limited edition of John Calvin's Reformation classic, Institutes of the Christian Religion, commemorates the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth in 1509. This beautiful new jacketed cloth volume features: * An eight-page, four-color insert on coated stock, including a frontispiece featuring the title page of the original publication and a timeline of the Reformation and of John Calvin's life * Two ribbon markers * Gold foil and embossing * Linen end sheets The word "Institutes" would be better translated as "Principles of the Christian Faith" or "Instruction in the Christian Faith." The book was intended as an elementary manual for general readers who wanted to know something about the evangelical faith. The first part of the title expressed this aim: "The Principles of the Christian Faith, containing almost the whole sum of godliness and whatever it is necessary to know about saving doctrine." Calvin later wrote that, when he undertook the work, "all I had in mind was to hand on some elementary teaching by which anyone who had been touched by an interest in religion might be formed to true godliness. I labored at the task especially for our own Frenchmen, for I saw that many were hungering and thirsting after Christ and yet that only a very few had any real knowledge of him."