Simple & Sinful - Calvin's Institutes

I believe the Institutes of the Christian Religion will find its way often into my blog this year, as I have set forth in the task of reading it.  I am not alone in this.  The prefatory address to the massive Institutes is to Francis, King of the French, and in it Calvin offers reasons why he is writing.  One of them is because of the attack of "bad men" upon the doctrines in it and the the lack of "sound doctrine" in King Francis' realm.  A particular area of disagreement I have with Calvin in this first address is that he says his work 

"is written in a simple and elementary form adapted for instruction." Institutes of Christian Religion, 3.

Simple?  Elementary?  Ha!  If this is simple and elementary then almost all in the modern church are simple and elementary.  Well, no comment.  Lord, help us.

But most agreeable to my soul is that Calvin does not disagree with the opinion of those who are against his cause and the cause of the Reformers that they are indeed sinners and insignificant.  It is hard to call a Reformer like Calvin insignificant and sinful when it is the foundation of Calvin's theology.  He writes:

"We, indeed are perfectly conscious how poor and abject we are: in the presence of God we are miserable sinners, and in the sight of men most despised--we are (if you will) the mere dregs and off-scourings of the world, or worse, if worse can be named: so that before God there remains nothing of which we can glory save only his mercy, by which, without any merit of our own, we are admitted to the hope of eternal salvation..." Ibid, 5-6.