PREVIOUS CHAPTER - NEXT CHAPTER - HELP     

RISE AND ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM AT GENEVA.

CHAPTER 1.

GENEVA: THE CITY AND ITS HISTORY.

Protestantism finds a New Centre — The Lake Leman — Geneva — Its Site — Its Diminutive Size — Sncers — History of Geneva — Four Names, Julius Caesar, Honorius, Charlemagne, the Reformation, indicate the Four Stages of its History — The Bishop its First Ruler — Intrigues of the Dukes of Savoy — Pope Martin V. takes from the Genevese the right of Electing their Bishop — Exercises it himself — Appoints a Prince of Savoy to be Bishop of Geneva — Its Independence on the point of being Extinguished — New Life — War between the Prince-Bishop and the Citizens — Bonivard — His Picture of the Popes — Berthelier — His Devotion to his Country — Levrier — His Love of Justice — The War Then and Now — Wonderful Preservation of Geneva’s Independence — A Higher Liberty Approaching.

PICTURE: Arms of the City of Geneva PICTURE: Pope Julius II PROTESTANTISM has now received its completed logical and doctrinal development, and a new and more central position must be found for it.

Before returning to the open stage of the great Empires of France and Germany, and resuming our narrative of the renovating powers which the Reformation had called forth, with the great social and political revolutions which came in its train, we must devote our attention to a city that is about to become the second metropolis of Protestantism.

In leaving the wide arena of empire where Protestantism is jostled by dukes, prelates, and emperors, and moves amid a blaze of State pageantries, and in shutting ourselves up in a little town whose name history, as yet, had hardly deigned to mention, and whose diminutive size is all but annihilated by the mighty mountainous masses amid which it is placed, we make a great transition. But if the stage is narrow, and if Protestantism is stripped of all that drapery and pomp which make it so imposing on the wider arena, we shall here have a closer view of the principle itself, and be the better able to mark its sublimity and power, in the mighty impulses which from this center it is to send abroad, in order to plant piety and nourish liberty in other countries.

In the valley which the Jura on the one side, and the white Alps on the other, enclose within their gigantic arms, lies the mirror-like Leman. At the point where the Rhone gushes from the lake a bulging rock bristles up, and, framing in the form of a crescent a little space along the shore of the Leman, forms a pedestal for the city of Geneva. The little town looks down upon the placid waters of the lake spread out at its feet, and beholds its own image mirrored clearly, but not grandly, for architectural magnificence is not one of the characteristic features of the city, especially in the times of which we write. A few miles away, on the other side, another rock shoots up, dark, precipitous, and attaining the dignity of a mountain — lofty it would seem in any other country, but here it has to compete with the gigantic piles of the Alps — and, bending crest-like, leans over Geneva, which it appears to guard. A few acres suffice to give standing-room to the city. Its population in the days of Calvin numbered only some 12,000, and even now does not much exceed 40,000. Its cantonal territory is the smallest in all Switzerland, that of Zug excepted.

Its diminutive size provoked the sneer of the philosopher of Ferney, who could survey it all standing at his door. “When I dress my peruke,” said Voltaire, “I powder the whole republic.” The Emperor Paul sarcastically called the struggles of its citizens “a tempest in a teapot.” In days prior to the utterance of these sarcasms and taunts — that is, in the latter part of the sixteenth century — this little town excited other emotions than those of contempt, and was the butt of other assaults than those of sarcasm. It brought pallor into the face of monarchs. It plucked the scepter from the grasp of mighty empires, and showed the world that it knew how to extend and perpetuate its sway by making itself the metropolis of that moral and spiritual movement which, whatever might be the fate of the city itself, even should its site become the bare rock it once was, would continue to spread abroad to all countries, and travel down to all the ages of the future.

Turning from its site to its history, Geneva dates from before the Christian era, and is scarcely, if at all, less ancient than that other city, that takes the proud name of “Eternal,” and with which it has been Geneva’s lot, in these last ages, to do battle. Buried amid the dense shadows of paganism, and afterwards amid the not less dense shadows of Popery, Geneva remained for ages unknown, and gave no augury to the world of the important part it was destined to play, at a most eventful epoch, in the history of nations.

It comes first into view in connection with the great Julius, who stumbled upon it as he was pursuing his career of northern conquest, and wrote its name in his Commentaries, where it figures as “the last fortress of the Allobroges.” 1 But the conqueror passed, and with him passed the light which had touched for a moment this sub-Alpine stronghold. It fell back again into the darkness. Under Honorius, in the fourth century, it became a city. It rose into some eminence, and even was possessed of a little liberty, in the days of Charlemagne. But a better day-spring awaited Geneva. The rising sun of the Reformation struck full upon it, and this small town became one of the lights of the world.

But we must glance back, and see what a long preparation the little city had to undergo for its great destiny. The dissolution of the Empire of Charlemagne set Geneva free to consider after what fashion it should govern itself. At this crisis its bishop stepped forward and claimed, in addition to its spiritual oversight, the right to exercise its temporal government. The citizens conceded the claim only within certain limits.

Still preserving their liberties, they took the bishop into partnership with them in the civic jurisdiction. The election of the bishop was in the hands of the people, and, before permitting him to mount the episcopal chair, they made him take an oath to preserve their franchises. 2 In the middle of the thirteenth century the independence of Geneva began to be menaced by the Counts of Savoy. That ambitious house, which was labouring to exalt itself by absorbing its neighbors’ territory into its own, had cast covetous eyes upon Geneva. It would round off their dominions; besides, they were sharp-sighted enough to see that there were certain principles at work in this little Alpine town which made them uneasy. But neither intrigues nor arms — and the Princes of Savoy employed both — could prevail to this end. The citizens of Geneva knew how it fared with them under the staff of their bishop, but they did not know how it might go with them under the sword of the warrior, and so they stubbornly declined the protection of their powerful neighbor.

In the fifteenth century, the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes, still persevering in their attempts to bring the brave little city under their yoke, besought the aid of a power which history attests has done more than all the dukes and warriors of Christendom to extinguish liberty. Duke Amadeus VIII., who had added Piedmont to his hereditary dominions, as if to exemplify the adage that “ambition grows by what it feeds on,” petitioned Pope Martin V. to vest in him the secular lordship of Geneva.

The citizens scented what was in the wind, and knowing that “Rome ought not to lay its paw upon kingdoms,” resolved to brave the Pope himself if need were. Laying their hands upon the Gospels, they exclaimed, “No alienation of the city or of its territory — this we swear.”

Amadeus withdrew before the firm attitude of the Genevese.

Not so the Pope; he continued to prosecute the intrigue, deeming the little town but a nest of eaglets among crags, which it were wise betimes to pull down. But, more crafty than the duke, he tried another tack. Depriving the citizens of the right of electing their bishop, Martin V. took the nomination into his own hands, and thus opened the way for quietly transferring the municipal rule of Geneva to the House of Savoy. All he had now to do was to appoint a Prince of Savoy as its bishop. By-and-by this was done; and the struggle with the Savoy power was no longer outside the walls only, it was mainly within. The era that now opened to Geneva was a stormy and bloody one. Intrigues and rumors of intrigues kept the citizens in perpetual disquiet. The city saw itself stripped of its privileges and immunities one by one. Its annual fair was transferred to Lyons, and the crowd of merchants and traders which had flocked to it from beyond the Alps, from the towns of France, and from across the Rhine, ceased to be seen. Tales of priestly scandals — for the union of the two offices in their prince-bishop only helped to develop the worst qualities of both — passed from mouth to mouth and polluted the very air. If Geneva was growing weaker, Savoy was growing stronger. The absorption of one petty principality after another was daily enlarging the dominions of the duke, which, sweeping past and around Geneva, enclosed it as in a net, with a hostile land bristling with castles and swarming with foes. It was said that there were more Savoyards than Genevese who heard the bells of St. Pierre. Such was the position in which the opening of the sixteenth century found Geneva. This small but ancient municipality was seemingly on the point of being absorbed in the dominions of the House of Savoy. Its history appeared to be closed. The vulture of the Alps, which had hovered above it for centuries, had but to swoop down upon it and transfix it with his talons.

At that moment a new life suddenly sprang up in the devoted city. To preserve the remnant of their franchises was not enough; the citizens resolved to recover what liberties had been lost. In order to this many battles had to be fought, and much blood spilt. Leo X., about the same time that he dispatched Tetzel to Germany to sell indulgences, sent a scion of the House of Savoy to Geneva (1513) as bishop. By the first the Pope drew forth Luther from his convent, by the second he paved the way for Calvin. The newly-appointed bishop, known in history as the” Bastard of Savoy,” brought to the episcopal throne of Geneva a body foul with disease, the fruit of his debaucheries, and a soul yet more foul with deceitful and bloody passions; but a fit tool for the purpose in hand. The matter had been nicely arranged between the Pope, the duke, and the Bastard. 3 “John of Savoy swore to hand over the temporal jurisdiction of the city to the duke, and the Pope swore he would force the city to submit to the duke, under pain of incurring the thunders of the Vatican.” From that time there was ceaseless and bitter war between the citizens of Geneva on one side, and the duke and the bishop on the other. It is not our business to record the various fortune of that strife. Now it was the bishop who was besieged in his palace, and now it was the citizens who were butchered upon their own streets by the bishop’s soldiers. To-day it was the Bastard who was compelled to seek safety in flight, and to-morow it was some leader of the patriots who was apprehended, tortured, beheaded, and his ghastly remains hung up to the public gaze as a warning to others. But if blood was shed, it was blood that leads to victory. The patriots, who numbered only nine at first, multiplied from year to year, though from year to year the struggle grew only the bloodier. The Gospel had not yet entered the gates of Geneva. The struggle so far was for liberty only, a name then denoting that which was man’s noblest birthright after the Gospel, and which found as its champions men of pure and lofty soul.

Wittemberg and Geneva had not yet become fused; the two liberties had not yet united their arms.

Among the names that illustrate this struggle, so important from what was to come after, are the well-known ones of Bonivard, Berthelier, and Levrier — a distinguished trio, to whom modern liberty owes much, though the stage on which they figured was a narrow one.

Bonivard was a son of the Renaissance. A scholar and a man of wit, he drew his inspiration for liberty from a classic font. From his Priory of St.

Victor this accomplished and liberal-minded man assailed Rome with the shafts of satire. If his erudition was less profound and his taste less exquisite than that of Erasmus, his courage was greater. The scholar of Rotterdam flagellated the man in serge, but spared the man in purple: the Prior of St. Victor dealt equal justice to monk and Pope. He lashed the ignorance and low vices of the former, but castigated yet more severely the pride, luxury, and ambition of the latter. He mistrusted the plan Rome had hit on of regenerating men in tribes and clans, and preferred to have it done individualy. He thought too that it would be well if his “Holiness” possessed a little holiness, though that was a marvel he did not expect soon to see. “I have lived,” he said, “to see three Popes. First, Alexander VI. [Borgia] a sharp fellow, a ne’er-do-weel... a man without conscience, and without God. Next came Julius II., proud, choleric, studying his bottle more than his breviary, mad about his Popedom, and having no thought but how he could, subdue not only the earth, but heaven and hell. Last appeared Leo X., the present Pope, learned in Greek and Latin, but especially a good musician, a great glutton, a deep drinker; possessing beautiful pages, whom the Italians style ragazzi ...... above all, don’t trust Leo X.’s word; he can dispense others, and surely can dispense himself.” He brusquely allegorised the German Reformation thus: “Leo X. and his predecessors,” said the prior, “have always taken the Germans for beasts; pecora campi, they were called, and rightly too, for these simple Saxons allowed themselves to be saddled and ridden like asses. The Popes threatened them with cudgelling (excommunications), enticed them with thistles (indulgences), and so made them trot to the mill to bring away the meal for them. But having one day loaded the ass too heavily, Leo made him gib, so that the flour was spilt, and the white bread lost. That ass is called Martin like all asses, and his surname is Luther, which signifies enlightener. ” The lettered and gentlemanly Prior of St. Victor had not a little of the cold, sneering, sceptical spirit that belonged to the Renaissance. He “put on his gloves” when he came in contact with the citizens of Geneva; they were somewhat too bluff and outspoken for him; nevertheless he continued steadfastly on their side, and, with not a few temptations to act a contrary part, proved himself a true friend of liberty. He was seized with the idea that were he Bishop and Prince of Geneva, he would have it in his power to liberate his native city. He even set off to Rome in the hope of realising a project which every one who knew who Bonivard was, and what Rome was, must have deemed chimerical. It was found at Rome that he had not the grace for a bishop, and he returned without the mitre. It was a wonder to many that he was permitted to return at all, and the prior must have been thankful for his escape.

Berthelier was cast in another mold. He was the tribune of the people; he talked, laughed, and caroused with them; he sought especially to surround himself with the youth of Geneva; for this end he studied their tastes, and entered into all their amusements, but all the while he was on the watch for fitting occasions of firing them with his own spirit of hatred of tyranny, and devotion to the public welfare. He was sagacious, ready, indomitable, and careless of life. He knew what the struggle was coming to as regarded himself, but he did not bemoan the hard fate awaiting him, knowing that there was a mysterious and potent power in blood to advance the cause for which it was shed.

The third of a group, individually so unlike, yet at one in the cause of their country’s ancient freedom, was Levrier. He was calm, severe, logical; his ideal was justice. He was a judge, and whatever was not according to law ought to be resisted and overthrown. The bishop’s regime was one continuous perversion of right; it must be brought to an end: so pleaded Levrier. From time immemorial the men of Geneva had been free: what right had the Duke of Savoy and his creature, the bishop, to make slaves of them? Neither the duke nor the bishop was sovereign of Geneva; its true ruler was its charter of ancient franchises: so said the man of law. The duke feared the great citizen. Levrier was quiet, but firm; he indulged in no clamor, but he cherished no fear; he bowed before the majesty of law, and stood erect before the tyrant: “Non vultus instantis tyranni, Mente quatit solida.” Such were the men who were now fighting the battle of liberty at the foot of the Alps in the dawn of modern times. That battle has varied its form in the course of the centuries. In after-days the contest in Continental Europe has been to separate the spiritual from the temporal, relegate each to its own proper domain, and establish between the two such a poise as shall form a safeguard to freedom; and especially to pluck the sword of the State from the hands of the ecclesiastical power. But at Geneva, in the times we write of, the conflict had for its immediate object to prevent a separation between the two powers. Nevertheless, the battle is the same in both cases, the same in Geneva 300 years ago as in Europe in 1875. The Genevans had no love for the man who occupied their episcopal throne; it was no aim of theirs, in the last resort, to preserve a class of amphibious rulers, neither prince nor bishop, but the two mixed and confounded, to the immense detriment of both. The Prince-Bishop of Geneva was, on a small scale, what the Prince-Bishop of Rome was on a great. But the Genevans preferred having one tyrant to having two. This was the alternative before them. They knew that should they, at this hour, strip the bishop of the temporal government, the duke would seize upon it, and they preferred meanwhile keeping the mitre and the scepter united, in the hope that they would thus not only shut out the duke, but eventually expel the prince-bishop.

Marvellous it truly was that so little a city should escape so many snares, and defy so many armed assaults; for the duke again and again advanced with his army to take it — nay, upon one occasion, was admitted within its walls. There were foes enough around it, one would have thought, to have swept it from off its rock, trod buried it beneath the waves of its lake. And so would it have happened to Geneva but for the bravery of its sons, who were resolved that sooner than see it enslaved they would see it razed to the ground.

Had it been a great empire, its posts, dignities, and titles might have stimulated and sustained their patriotism; but what recompense in point of fame or riches could a little obscure town like Geneva offer for the blood which its citizen-heroes were ready every moment to pour out in defense of its freedom? A higher power than man had kindled this fire in the hearts of its citizens. The combatants were fighting, although they knew it not, for a higher liberty than Geneva had yet tasted. And that liberty was on the road to it. The snowy peaks around it were even now beginning to kindle with a new day. Voices were heard crying to the beleaguered and perplexed town, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that bring good tidings; that publish peace!” It was the purpose of him who putteth down the mighty from their seats, and exalteth the lowly, to lift this city to equality with the ancient capitals of Christendom — nay, to place it above them all. For this end would he make empty the episcopal throne in St. Pierre, that the Gospel might enter and seat itself upon it. Then would Geneva raise its head in the presence of the ancient and historic cities of Europe — Rome, Paris, Milan, Venice — with a halo round it brighter than had ever encircled their brow. It would stand forth a temple of liberty, in the midst of Christendom, its gates open day and night, to welcome within its walls, as within an impregnable fortress, the persecuted of all lands.

CHAPTER 2.

GENEVESE MARTYRS OF LIBERTY.

Berthelier — Apprehended — Beheaded — His Remains publicly Exposed — Bonivard — Banished — Castle of Chillon — Bishop of Geneva Dies — His Remorse — Levrier — His Arrest by the Duke — Carried to the Castle of Bonne — His Execution — What Victories of Brute Force Lead to — Momentary Triumph of the Duke — He Flees from Geneva never to Return — Lessons learned by Genevese Exiles — They Return to Act them out — Geneva’s Gates Open towards the Rising Sun.

PICTURE: Showing the Island of Rousseau BEFORE the day of Geneva’s greatness should have arrived, many of its heroic defenders would be resting in the grave, the road thither for nearly all of them being by the scaffold. Let us recount the fate of the more prominent; and, first of all, of Berthelier. One morning, as he was going to breathe the fresh air outside the walls in his favouite meadow, bathed by the waters of the Rhone, he was arrested by the duke’s soldiers. 1 He bore himself with calmness and dignity both at his arrest and during the few days now left him of life. He wrote on the walls of his prison a verse of Scripture, which permits us to hope that he had cast anchor in another world than that which he was so soon to leave. His head fell by the hand of the executioner at the foot of Caesar’s Tower, in the isle in the Leman, near the point where the Rhone issues from the lake. 2 His fellow-citizens beheld him die, but could not save him. The cruel deed but deepened their purpose of vengeance. The head of the patriot was fastened up on the bridge of the Arve. Blackening in the sun it was a ghastly memorial of Savoyard tyranny, and a thrilling appeal to the compatriots of Berthelier never to submit to the despot who had no other rewards than this for the noblest of Geneva’s sons.

The fate of Bonivard was less tragic, but has become better known to us, from the notice bestowed upon him by a great poet. He was deprived of his priory; and while a scaffold was set up for Berthelier at one extremity of the Leman, a dungeon was found for Bonivard at the other. The modern tourist, as he passes along the lovely shores of the lake, beneath the magnificent amphitheatre of mountains that overhang Vevay, has his attention arrested by the massive and still entire walls of a castle, surrounded on all sides by the deep waters of the Leman, save where a draw-bridge joins it to the shore. This is the Castle of Chillon, the scene of Bonivard’s imprisonment, and where the track worn by his feet in the rocky floor may still be traced, while the ripple of the water, which rises to the level of the loop-hole in the wall, may be heard when the wind stirs upon the lake.

At this stage of the drama, the wretched man who had filled the office of bishop, and had been the duke’s co-conspirator in these attempts upon the liberty of Geneva, died (1522) miserably at Pignerol, on the southern side of the Alps, on the very frontier of the territory of the Waldenses. His dying scene was awful and horrible. Around his bed stood only hirelings.

Careless of the agonies he was enduring, their eyes roamed round the room in quest of valuables, which they might carry off whenever his breath should depart. The effigies of his victims seemed traced upon the wall of his chamber. They presented to him a crucifix: he thought it was Berthelier, and shrieked out. They brought him the last Sacrament: he fancied they were sprinkling him with blood; his lips, whitened with foam, let fall execrations and blasphemies. Such is the picture which a Romanist writer draws of his last hours. But before the dark scene closed something like a ray of light broke in. He conjured his coadjutor and successor, Pierre de la Baume, not to walk in his footsteps, but to defend the franchises of Geneva. He saw in the sufferings he was enduring the punishment of his misdeeds; he implored forgiveness, and hoped God would pardon him in purgatory. But Charles III, Duke of Savoy and Piedmont, still lived, and unwarned by the miserable end of his accomplice, he continued to prosecute his guilty project. 4 Another martyr of liberty was now to offer up his life. The man who most embarrassed the duke still lived: he must be swept from his path. Charles did not believe in patriotism, and thought to buy Levrier. The judge spurned the bribe. Well, the axe will do what gold cannot. He was arrested (Easter, 1524) at the gates of St. Pierre, as he was leaving after hearing morning mass. “He wore a long camlet robe, probably his judicial gown, and a beautiful velvet cassock.” 6 Mounted hastily upon a wretched nag, his hands tied behind his back, and his feet fastened below the belly of his horse, the judge was carried, in the midst of armed men, who jeered at and called him traitor, to the Castle of Bonne, where the duke was then residing.

The Castle of Bonne, now a ruin, is some two leagues from Geneva. It stands in the midst of scenery such as Switzerland only can show. The panorama presents to the eye an assemblage of valleys, with their carpetlike covering, foaming torrents, the black mouths of gorges, pines massed upon the hill-tops, and beyond, afar off, the magnificence of snowy peaks.

The tragedy enacted in this spot we shall leave D’Aubigne to tell, who has here, with his usual graphic power, set in the light of day a deed that was done literally in the darkness. “Shortly,” says the historian, “after Bellegrade’s” (the man who pronounced doom) “departure, the confessor entered, discharged his duty mechanically, uttered the sentence ‘Ego to absolvo,’ and withdrew, showing no more sympathy for his victim than the provost had done. Then appeared a man with a cord: it was the executioner. It was then ten o’clock at night. The inhabitants of the little town and of the adjacent country were sleeping soundly, and no one dreamt of the cruel deed that was about to cut short the life of a man who might have shone in the first rank in a great monarchy. .... The headsman bound the noble Levrier, armed men surrounded him, and the martyr of law was conducted slowly to the castle-yard. All nature was dumb, nothing broke the silence of that funeral procession; Charles’s agents moved like shadows beneath the ancient walls of the castle. The moon, which had not reached its first quarter, was near setting, and shed only a feeble gleam. It was too dark to distinguish the beautiful mountains, in the midst of which stood the towers whence they had dragged their victim; the trees and houses of Bonne were scarcely visible; one or two torches, carried by the provost’s men, alone threw light upon this cruel scene. On reaching the middle of the castle-yard the headsman stopped, and the victim also. The ducal satellites silently formed a circle round them, and the executioner prepared to discharge his office. Levrier was calm, the peace of a good conscience supported him in this dread hour.

Alone in the night, in those sublime regions of the Alps, surrounded by the barbarous figures of the Savoyard mercenaries, standing in that feudal courtyard which the torches ilumined with a sinister glare, the heroic champion of the law raised his eyes to heaven, and said, ‘By God’s grace, I die without anxiety for the liberty of my country and the authority of St.

Peter!’ The grace of God, liberty, authority, these main principles of the greatness of nations, were his last confession. The words had hardly been uttered when the executioner swung round his sword, and the head of the citizen rolled in the castle-yard. Immediately, as if struck with fear, the murderers respectfully gathered up his remains and placed them in a coffin. ‘And his body was laid in earth in the parish church of Bonne, with the head separate.’ At that moment the moon set, and black darkness hid the stains of blood which Levrier had left on the court-yard.” Charles of Savoy did not reflect that the victories of brute force, such as those he was now winning, but pave the way for moral triumphs. With every head that fell by his executioners, he deemed himself a stage nearer to the success he panted to attain. Some illustrious heads had already fallen; so many more, say twenty, or it might be thirty, and he would be Lord of Geneva; the small but much-coveted principality would be part of Savoy, and the object so intently pursued by himself and his ancestors for long years would be realised. The duke was but practising a deception upon himself. Every head he cut off dug more deeply the gulf which divided him from the sovereignty of Geneva; every drop of blood he spilt but strengthened the resolution in the hearts of the patriots that never should the duke call them his subjects.

“They never fail who die.

In a great cause: the block may soak their gore; Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs Be strung to city gates and castle walls — But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years Elapse, and others share as dark a doom, They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts Which overpower all others, and conduct The world at last to freedom.” Nevertheless, what with stratagem this hour and violence the next — treachery within Geneva and soldiers and cannon outside of it — it did seem as if the duke were making way, and the proud little city must, byand- by, lay its independence at his feet. In fact, for a moment, Geneva did succumb. On the 15th of September, 1525, the duke surprised the city with a numerous host. The patriots had nothing left them but massacre or speedy flight. Fleeing through woods or mountainous defiles, pursued by Savoyard archers, some escaped to Bern, others to Friberg. The duke, having entered the city, summoned a council of such citizens as were still to be found in it, and with the axes of his halberdiers suspended over their heads, these spiritless and lukewarm men promised to accept him as their prince. 9 But the vow of allegiance given in the “Council of Halberds” today was revoked on the morrow. The duke was at first stunned, and next he was terrified, at this sudden revival of opposition, when he believed it had been trampled out. Influenced by this mysterious fear, he hastily left Geneva, never again to enter it, and let fall, after having seemingly secured it, what he and his ancestors had been struggling for generations to grasp. The duke had but scattered the fire, not extinguished it. The parts of Switzerland to which the patriots had fled were precisely those where the light of the Reformation was breaking. At Bern and Friburg the exiles of Geneva had an opportunity of studying higher models of freedom than any they had aforetime come in contact with. They had been sent to school, and their hearts softened by adversity, were peculiarly open to the higher teaching now addressed to them. How often in after-years was the same thing repeated which we see realised in the case of these early champions of freedom! Were not the patriotic citizens of Spain and Italy again and again chased to the British shores? And for what end? That there they might study purer models, be instructed in deeper and sounder principles, have their views of liberty rectified and enlarged, and on their return to their own country might temper their zeal with patience, fortify their courage with wisdom, and so speed the better in their efforts for the emancipation of their fellow-subjects. Fruitful, indeed, were the months which the Genevese exiles spent abroad. When they reunited in February, 1526, after the flight of the duke, a new era returned with them. Their sufferings had elicited the sympathy, and their characters had won the admiration, of the noblest among the citizens of the States where they had been sojourning. They recognised the important bearing upon Swiss liberty of the struggle which Geneva had maintained. It was the extreme citadel of the Swiss territory towards the south; it barred the invader’s road from the Alps, and it was impossible to withhold from the little town the need of praise for the chivalry and devotion with which, single-handed, it had taken its stand at this Swiss Thermopylae, and held it at all hazards.

But it was not right, they felt, to leave this city longer in its isolation. For their own sakes, as well as for Geneva’s, they must extend the hand of friendship to it. An alliance 11 offensive and defensive was formed between the three governments of Bern, Friburg, and Geneva. If the conflicts of the latter city were not yet ended, it no longer stood alone. By its side were now two powerful allies. Whoso touched its independence, touched theirs.

If the Gospel had not yet entered Geneva, its gates stood open towards that quarter of the sky which the rising sun of the Reformation was flooding with his beams.

CHAPTER 3.

THE REFORM COMMENCED IN LAUSANNE AND ESTABLISHED IN MORAT AND NEUCHATEL.

Geneva on the Road to Liberty — Her Advance — There needs the Sword of the Spirit to Conquer her Highest Liberty — Farel — No Second Field of Kappel — Farel goes to Aigle — Acts as Schoolmaster — Begins to Preach — Commotion — Retires from Aigle — Leaves behind him a little Reformed Church — Goes to Morat—Then an Important Town — Eventually won to the Gospel — Attempts Lausanne — Goes to Neuchatel — Crowds flock to his Preaching — Plants the Reformed Faith at Meiry in the neighbouring Jura — Returns to Neuchatel — Carries its Reformation by a Coup. GENEVA had gone a long way towards independence. It had chased the duke across the mountains to return no more. It had formed an alliance with Bern and Friburg without waiting for the consent of its princebishop; this was in effect to hold his temporal authority null, and to take the sovereignty into its own hands. Liberty had advanced a stage on its road. Free Europe had enlarged its area; and that of bond Europe had, to the same extent, been circumscribed: Rome saw the outposts of Progress so much nearer her own gates. The Pope beheld bold and spirited citizens ignoring the scepter of their prince-bishop, converting it into a bauble; and the thought must have suggested itself to him, might not the day come when his own more powerful rod would be plucked from his hand, and broken in pieces, like that of his vassal-bishop in Geneva?

But though on the road, Geneva had not yet arrived at the goal. She was not yet crowned with the perfect liberty. A powerful oppressor had her in his grip, namely, Rome. The tyrant, it is true, had been compelled to relax his hold, but he might tighten his grasp unless Geneva should succeed in entirely disengaging herself. But she had not yet got hold of the right weapon for such a battle. Berthelier assailed Rome on the ground of ancient charters; Bonivard hurled against her the shafts of a revived learning; Levrier maintained the fight with the sword of justice; but it needed that a more powerful sword, even that of the Word of the living God, should be unsheathed, before the tyrant could be wholly discomfited and the victory completely won. That sword had been unsheathed, and the champions who were wielding it, advancing in their victorious path, were every day coming nearer the gates of Geneva. When this new liberty should be enthroned within her, then would her light break forth as the morning, the black clouds which had so long hung about her would be scattered, and the tyrants who had plotted her overthrow would tremble at her name, and stand afar off for fear of that invisible Arm that guarded her.

Let us turn to the movements outside the city, which, without concert on the part of their originators, fall in with the efforts of the champions of liberty within it for the complete emancipation of Geneva.

We have already met Farel. We have seen him, a mere lad, descending from the mountains of Dauphine, entering himself a pupil in that renowned seminary of knowledge and orthodoxy, the Sorbonne — contracting a close friendship with its most illustrious doctor, Lefevre, accompanying him in his daily visits to the shrines of the metropolis, and kneeling by the side of the venerable man before the images of the saints. But soon the eyes both of teacher and pupil were opened; and Farel, transferring that ardor of soul which had characterised him as a Papist to the side of the Reformation, strove to rescue others from the frightful abyss of superstition in which he himself had been so near perishing. Chased from France, as we have already related, he turned his steps toward Switzerland.

It is the second Reformation in Switzerland that we are now briefly to sketch. The commencement and progress of the first we have already traced. Beginning with the preaching of Zwingle in the convent of Einsiedein, the movement in a little time transferred itself to Zurich; and thence it rapidly spread to the neighboring towns and cantons in Eastern Helvetia, extending from Basle on the frontier of Germany on the north, to Choire on the borders of Italy on the south. The Forest Cantons, however, continued obedient to Rome. The adherents of the old faith and the champions of the new met on the bloody field of Kappel. The sword gave the victory to Romanism. The bravest and best of the citizens of Zurich lay stretched upon the battle-field. Among the slain was Zwingle. With him, so men said and believed at the moment, had fallen the Reformation.

In the grave of its most eloquent preacher and its most courageous defender lay inferred the hopes of Swiss Protestantism. But though the calamity of Kappel arrested, it did not extinguish, the movement; on the contrary, it tended eventually to consolidate and quicken it by impressing upon its friends the necessity of union. In after years, when Geneva came to occupy the place in the second Helvetian movement which Zurich had done in the first, the division among the Reformed cantons which had led to the terrible disaster of 1531 was avoided, and there was no second field of Kappel.

Arriving in Switzerland (1526), Farel took up his abode at Aigle, and there commenced that campaign which had for its object to conquer to Christ a brave and hardy people dwelling amid the glaciers of the eternal mountains, or in fertile and sunny valleys, or on the shores of smiling lakes. The darkness of ages overhung the region, but Farel had brought hither the light. “Taking the name of Ursin,” says Ruchat, “and acting the part of schoolmaster, 1 he mingled, with the elements of secular instruction, the seeds of Divine knowledge. Through the minds of the children he gained access to those of the parents; and when he had gathered a little flock: around him, he threw off his disguise, and announced himself as ‘William Farel,’ the minister.” Though he had dropped from the clouds the priests could not have been more affrighted, nor the people more surprised, than they were at the sudden metamorphosis of the schoolmaster. Farel instantly mounted the pulpit. His bold look, his burning eye, his voice of thunder, his words, rapid, eloquent, and stamped with the majesty of truth, reached the conscience, and increased the number of those in the valley of Aigle who were already prepared to take the Word of God for their guide. But not by one sermon can the prejudices of ages be dispelled. The cures were filled with wrath at the bold intruder, who had entered their quiet valley, had shaken their authority, till now so secure, and had disturbed beliefs as ancient, and as firmly founded, the mountaineers believed, as the peaks that overhung their valleys.

The priests and people raised a great clamor, being supported by the cantonal officials, in particular by Jacob de Roverea, Lord of Cret, and Syndic of Aigle. Hearing of the opposition, the Lords of Bern, whose jurisdiction comprehended Aigle and its neighborhood, sent a commission to Farel empowering him to explain the Scriptures to the people. 2 The mandate was posted up on the church doors,3 but instead of calming the tempest this intervention of authority only stirred it into fourfold fury. It would seem as if the Gospel would conquer alone, or not at all. The priests burned with zeal for the safety of those flocks to whom before they had hardly ever addressed a word of instruction; 4 the Syndic took their side, and the placards of the magistrates of Bern were torn down. “That cannot be the Gospel of Christ,” said the priests, “seeing the preaching of it does not bring peace, but war.” This enlightened logic, of a piece with that which should accuse the singing of the nightingale in a Swiss valley as the cause of the descent of the avalanches, convinced the mountaineers. The inhabitants of the four districts into which the territory of Aigle was divided — namely, Aigle, Bex, Ollon, and the Ormonds — as one man unsheathed the sword. 5 The shepherds who fed their flocks beneath the glaciers of the Diablerets, hearing that the Church was in danger, rushed like an avalanche to the rescue. The herdsmen of the Savoy mountains, crossing the Rhone, also hastened to do battle in the good old cause. Tumults broke out at Box, at Ollon, and other places. Farel saw the tempest gathering, but remained undismayed. Those who had received the Gospel from him were prepared to defend him; but were it not better to prevent the effusion of blood, to which the matter was fast tending, and go and preach the Gospel in other parts of this lovely but benighted land?

This was the course he adopted; but, in retiring, he had the satisfaction of thinking that he had planted the standard of the cross at the foot of the mighty Dent de Morcles, and that he left behind him men whose eyes had been opened, and who would never again bow the knee to the idols their fathers had served, 6 Soon thereafter, Aigle and Bex, by majorities, gave their voices for the Reform; but the parishes that lay higher up amid the mountains declared that they would abide in the old faith.

Whither should Farel go next? Looking from the point where the Rhone, rolling under the sublime peaks of the Dent du Midi and the Dent de Morelos, pours its discoloured floods into the crystal Leman, one espies, on the other side of the lake, the vine-clad hill on which Lausanne is seated. In Popish times this was a city of importance. Its tall cathedral towers soared aloft on their commanding site, while the lovely region held fast in the yoke of the Pope slumbered at their feet. Lausanne had a bishop, a college of rich canons, and a numerous staff of priests. It had besides an annual fair, to which troops of pilgrims resorted, to pray before the image of “Our Lady,” and to buy indulgences and other trinkets: a traffic that enriched at once the Church and the towns-people. But though one could hardly stir a step in its streets without:meeting a “holy man” or a pious pilgrim, the place was a very sink of corruption. 7 There was need, verily, of a purifying stream being turned in upon this filthy place. Farel essayed to do so, but his first attempt was not successful, and he turned away upon another tack. Repulsed from Lausanne, Farel traversed the fertile country which divides the Leman from the Lake of Neuchatel, and arrived at Morat. This, in our day, insignificant place, was then a renowned and fortified town. It had sustained three famous sieges, the first in 1032 against the Emperor Conrad, the second in 1292 against the Emperor Rodolph of Hapsburg, and the third in 1476 against Charles, last Duke of Burgundy. Situated between France and Germany, the two languages were spoken equally in it. Farel brought with him an authorisation from the Lords of Bern empowering him to preach, not only throughout the extent of their own territories, but also in that of their allies, provided they gave consent. Here his preaching was not without fruit; but the majority of the citizens electing to abide still by Rome, he retraced his steps, and presented himself a second time before that episcopal city that overlooks the blue Leman, and which had so recently driven him from its gates. He was ambitious of subduing this stronghold of darkness to the Savior. This time he brought with him a letter from the Lords of Bern, who had jurisdiction in those parts, and naturally wished to see their allies of the same faith with themselves; but even this failed to procure him liberty to evangelist in Lausanne. The Council of Sixty read the letter of their Excellencies of Bern, and civilly replied that “It belonged not to them, but to the bishop and chapter, to admit preachers into the pulpits.” The Council of Two Hundred also found that they had no power in the matter. 10 Farel had again to depart and leave those whom he would have led into the pastures of truth to the care of shepherds who knew so in to feed but were so skillful to fleece their flocks.

Again turning northwards, he made a short halt at Morat. This time the victory of the Gospel was complete, and this important town was placed (1529) in the list of Protestant cities. 11 Farel felt that a mighty unseen power was travelling with him, opening the understandings, melting the hearts of men, and he would press on and win other cities and cantons to the Gospel. He crossed the lovely lake and presented himself in Neuchatel, which had lately returned under the scepter of its former mistress, Jeanne de Hochberg, the only daughter and heiress of Philip, Count of Neuchatel, who died in 1503. 12 She regained in her widowhood the principality of Neuchatel, which she had lost in the lifetime of her husband, Louis d’Orleans, Duke of Longueville. No one could enter this city without having ocular demonstration that religion was the dominant interest in it — meaning thereby a great cathedral on a conspicuous site, with a full complement of canons, priests, and monks, who furnished the usual store of pomps, dramas, indulgences, banquetings, and scandals. In the midst of a devotion of this sort, Neuchatel was startled by a man of small stature, red beard, glittering eye, and stentorian voice, who stood up in the marketplace, and announced that he had brought a religion, not from Rome, but from the Bible.

The men with shaven crowns were struck dumb with astonishment. When at length they found their voices, they said, “Let us beat out his brains.” “Duck him, duck him,” cried others. 13 They fought with such weapons as they had; their ignorance forbade their opposing doctrine with doctrine.

Farel lifted up his voice above their clamor. His preaching was felt to be not an idle tale, nor a piece of incomprehensible mysticism, but words of power — the words of God. Neuchatel was carried by storm. 14 It did not as yet formally declare for Reform; but it was soon to do so.

Having kindled the fire, and knowing that all the efforts of the priests would not succeed in extinguishing it, Farel departed to evangelise in the mountains and valleys which lie around the smiling waters of Morat and Neuchatel. It was winter (January, 1530), and cold, hunger, and weariness were his frequent attendants. Every hour, more-over, he was in peril of his life. The priests perfectly understood that if they did not make away with him he would make away with “religion” — that is, with their tithes and offerings, their processions and orgies. They did all in their power to save “religion.” They suspended their quarrels with one another, they stole some hours from their sleep, they even stole some hours from the table in their zeal to warn their flocks against the “wolf,” and impress them with a salutary dread of what their fate would be, should they become his prey.

On one occasion, in the Val de Ruz, in the mountains that overhang the Lake of Neuchatel, the Reformer was seized and beaten almost to death. 15 Nothing, however, could stop him. He would, at times, mount the pulpit while the priest was in the act of celebrating mass at the altar, and drown the chants of the missal by the thunder of his eloquence. This boldness had diverse results. Sometimes the old bigotry would resume its sway, and the audience would pull the preacher violently out of the pulpit; at other times the arrow of conviction would enter. The priest would hastily strip himself of stole and chasuble, and cast the implements of sacrifice from his hands, while the congregation would demolish the altar, remove the images, and give in their adhesion to the new faith. In three weeks’ time four villages of the region had embraced the Reformed faith. The first of these was the village of Kertezers, the church of which had been given in the year 962 to the Abbey of Payerne, by Queen Berthe, wife of Rodolph II., King of Burgundy, foundress of the abbey. Since that time — that is, during 568 years — the religious of Payerne had been the patrons of that church, the cure of which was their vicar. As the Reformed were no longer served by him, they petitioned their superiors at Bern for a Reformed pastor. Their request was granted, and it was arranged that the Popish cure and the Protestant minister should divide the stipend between them. 16 The cups, pictures, marbles, and other valuables of the churches were sold, and therewith were provided stipends for the pastors, hospitals for the poor and sick, schools for the youth, and if aught remained it was given to the State. 17 The zeal of the citizens of Meiry outran their discretion. They overturned the altars and images before the Reformation had obtained a majority of votes. This furnished occasion to the Lords of Friburg to complain to those of Bern that their subjects in the Jura were infringing the settlement that regulated the progress of the Protestant faith. A few weeks, however, put all right, by giving a majority of votes in Meiry to the Reformation. Thus did the Gospel cast down the strongholds of error, and its preacher, in the midst of weakness, was triumphant. The spring and summer sufficed to establish the Reformed faith in great part of this region.

The Protestant hero Farel was now advancing to complete his conquest of Neuchatel. During his absence the Reformation had been fermenting. He entered the city at the right moment. Despite the opposition of the princess, of George de Rive, her deputy, and the priests, who sounded the tocsin to rouse the people, the magistrates, after deliberation, passed a decree opening the cathedral to the Reformed worship; and the citizens, forming round Farel, and climbing the hill on which the cathedral stood, placed him in the pulpit, notwithstanding the resistance of the canons. The solemnity of the crisis hushed the vast congregation into stillness. Farel’s sermon was one of the most powerful he had ever delivered, and when he closed, lo a mighty wind, felt though it could not be seen, passed over the people! They all at once cried out, “We will follow the Protestant religion, both we and our children; and in it will we live and die.”

Having restored the Gospel with its sublime doctrines and its worship in the spirit, the Neuchatelans felt that they had no longer need of those symbols by which Popery sets forth its mysteries, and through which the material worship of its votaries is offered. They proceeded forthwith to purge the church: they dismantled the altars, broke the images, tore down the pictures and crucifixes, and carrying them out, cast them down from the summit of the terrace on which the cathedral stands. At their feet slept the blue lake, beyond was the fertile champaign, and afar, in the south, a chain of glittering peaks, with the snowy crown of Mont Blanc rising grandly over all; but not an eye that day was turned on this glorious panorama. They had broken from their own and their children’s neck an ancient yoke, and were intent only on obliterating all the signs and instruments of their former slavery. In perpetual remembrance of this great day, the Neuchatelans inscribed on a pillar of the cathedral the words —\parON THE 23 RD OCTOBER, 1530,IDOLATRY WAS OVERTHROWN AND REMOVED FROM THIS CHURCH BY THE CITIZENS. 18

CHAPTER 4.

TUMULTS — SUCCESSES — TOLERATION.

Second Vote on Religion at Neuchatel — Vallangin — Disgraceful Trick — Popular Tempest — Triumph of Reform — Farel turns his eye toward Geneva — Evangelises at Orbe — Makes a Beginning — First Communion at Orbe — Peter Viret — His Character — Goes to Grandson — A Battle in the Church — The Affair carried to the Conference at Bern — Protestant Bern and Catholic Friburg agree on a Policy of Toleration — Great Success of Farel — He turns toward Geneva.

PICTURE: Fabel Preaching in the Market-place of Neuchatel PICTURE: William Fabel WAS the storm that swept over Neuchatel on the 23rd of October, and which cleansed its cathedral-church of the emblems of superstition, a passing gust, or one of those great waves which indicate the rising of the tide in the spiritual atmosphere? Was it an outburst of mob-violence, provoked by the greed and tyranny of the priests, or was it the strong and emphatically expressed resolution of men who knew and loved the truth?

If the former, the idols would again be set up; if the latter, they had fallen to rise no more. This was tested on the 4th of November following. On that eventful day the citizens of Neuchatel, climbing the hill on which stood the governor’s castle, hard by the cathedral that still bore traces of the recent tempest, in altars overturned, niches empty, and images disfigured, presented themselves before the governor and deputies from Bern. They had assembled to vote on the question whether Romanism or Protestantism should be the religion of Neuchatel. A majority of eighteen votes gave the victory to the Reformation. From that day (November 4, 1530) conscience was free in Neuchatel; no one was compelled to abandon Popery, but the cathedral was henceforward appropriated to the Protestant worship, and the Reformation was legally established. 1 Vallangin, the town of next importance in this part of the Jura, followed soon thereafter the example Neuchatel. The issue here was precipitated by a shameful expedient to which the Papists had recourse, and which was of a sort that history refuses to chronicle. It was a fair-day; Antoine Marcourt, the Pastor of Neuchatel, was preaching in the market-place. A large and attentive congregation was listening to him, when a revolting spectacle was exhibited which was contrived to affront the preacher, insult the audience, and drive the Gospel from the place amid jeers and laughter.

The trick recoiled upon its authors. It was Popery that had to flee. A sudden gust of indignation shook the crowd. The multitudes rushed toward the cathedral. Who shall now save the saints? The priests have unchained winds which it is beyond their power to control. Altar, image, and monumental statue, all went down before the tempest. The relics were scattered about. Even the rich oriels, which flecked, with their glorious tints, stone floor and massive column, were not spared. The edifice, all aglow but a few moments before with the curious and beautiful picturings of chisel and pencil, was now a wreck. The popular vengeance was not yet appeased. The furious multitude was next seen directing its course towards the residences of the canons. The terrified clerics had already fled to the woods, but if their persons escaped, their houses were sacked.

By-and-by the storm spent itself, and calmer feelings returned to the breasts of the citizens. They ascended the hill on which stood the castle of the Countess of Arberg, who governed Vallangin, under the suzerainty of Bern. The authorities trembled when they saw them approach, and were greatly relieved when they learned that they had come with no more hostile intent than to demand the punishment of the perpetrators of the outrage. The countess gave orders for the punishment of the guilty, though she was suspected of connivance in the affair. As to all beyond, the matter was referred to Bern, and their Excellencies decided that the townspeople should pay for the works of art which they had destroyed, and that the countess in return should grant the free profession of the Reformed faith.

The sum in which the citizens were amerced we do not know, but it must have been large indeed if it did not leave them immense gainers by the exchange. By a sort of intuition it was Geneva that Farel all along had in his eye. The victories which he won, and won with such rapidity and brilliancy, at the foot of the Jura, and on the shores of its lakes, were but affairs of outposts. They were merely stepping-stones upon his road, towards the conquest of that heroic little city, which occupied a site where three great empires touched one another, and where he longed to plant the Protestant standard. The idea was ever borne in upon his mind that Geneva had a great part before it, that it was destined to become the capital of Swiss Protestantism, and, in part, of French and Savoyard Protestantism also; for its higher destiny he did not dare to forecast. Therefore he rejoiced in every victory he gained, seeing himself so much the nearer what he felt must be his crowning conquest. But like a wise general he would not advance too fast; he would leave behind him no post of the enemy untaken; he intended that Geneva should be conquered once for all; he would enter its gates only after he had subdued the country around, and hang out the banner of the Gospel upon its ramparts when Geneva had become mistress of a renovated region. And it pleased the Captain whom he served to give him his desire.

There was a short halt in the march of this spiritual conqueror. At St.

Blaise, on the northern shore of the Lake of Neuchatel, Farel was set upon by a mob, instigated by the priests, and almost beaten to death. Covered with bruises, spitting. blood, and so disfigured as scarcely to be recognized by his friends, he was put into a small boat, carried across the lake, and nursed at Morat. He had barely recovered his strength when he rose from bed, and set out for Orbe to evangelise. Orbe was an ancient town at the foot of the Jura, on the picturesque banks of a stream of the same name. It lay nearer Geneva than Neuchatel. Watered by rivulets from the mountains, the gardens that surrounded it were of more than ordinary beauty and luxuriance, but spiritually Orbe was a wilderness, a “land where no water was.” The Reformer would have given it “living water;” but, unhappily, Orbe, with its numerous priests, its rich convents, and its famous sisters of St. Claire, some of whom were of royal lineage, did not thirst for such water. Its good Catholics strove to render Farel’s journey of no avail. With this view they had recourse to expedients, some of which were tragic, others simply hdicrous. One of them is worth chronicling for its originality. It was agreed to outmanceuvre the evangelist by staying away — a masterly policy in the case of a preacher so attractive — but in one instance the policy was departed from. One day, when Farel entered the pulpit, a most extraordinary scene presented itself. He beheld three adults only present, while the church was nearly filled with children — “brats.” The latter lay perfectly flat as if sound asleep. But the moment Farel began to preach they jumped up, as puppets do when the string is pulled, and began to sing and dance, to laugh and scream. Farel’s voice was completely drowned by the noise. This scene continued for some time; at length the little ragamuffins made their exit in an uproar of screaming and howling. Farel was now left in quiet, but with no one to listen to him. “And this,” says a Popish chronicler, “was the first sermon preached in the town of Orbe.” Nevertheless the Reformer persevered. Soon a small but select number of converts gathered round him, some of them of good position in society.

On Pentecost, the 28th of May, Farel celebrated the Lord’s Supper, for the first time in Orbe, to a little congregation of seven. Having preached in the morning, the bread and wine were placed on the table, and the communicants received them kneeling. Farel demanded of them whether they forgave one another, and receiving an affirmative reply, he distributed the elements to them. In the afternoon the Papists entered the church, and commenced the chanting of mass.” Farel was beginning to think that Orbe was already won, when unhappily these bright prospects were suddenly dashed by the indiscreet zeal of one of the evangelists. Thinking to reform Orbe by a coup de main, this person, with the help of twelve companions, pulled down one day all the images in its seven churches. 5 The destruction of the idols but prolonged the reign of idolatry. A reaction set in, and it was not till twenty years thereafter that Orbe placed itself in the rank of Reformed cities.

But if Orbe remained Roman it had the honor of giving to the Reformation one of its loveliest spirits and most persuasive preachers. Peter Viret was born in this town in 1511. His father was a wool-dresser. Sweet, studious, and of elevated soul, the son gave himself to the service of the altar. he was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he remained about three years.

He attained the peace of the Gospel, like most of the Reformers, by passing through the waters of anguish; but in his case “the floods” were not so deep as in that of Luther and Calvin. When he returned to his native city, he entered the pulpit at the entreaty of Farel, and preached to his townsmen. The sweetness of his voice, the beauty of his ideas, and the modesty of his manner held his hearers captive. It was seen that he who distributes to his servants as he pleases for the edification of his body, the Church, had given to Viret his special gift. He did not possess the glowing imagery and bmuling ardor of Luther, nor the fiery energy of Farel, nor the thrilling power of Zwingle, nor the calm, towering, and all-mastering genius of Calvin; but his preaching, nevertheless, had a charm which was not found in that of any of those great men. Clear, tender, persuasive aided by the stircry tones of his voice, and the moral glow which lighted up his features, its singular fascination and power were attested, in after-years, by the immense crowds which gathered round him in Switzerland and the south of France, whenever he stood up to preach. He was indeed a polished shaft in the hand of the Almighty. Farel had to fall back from before Orbe; but if he retreated it was to wage fi’esh combats and to win new victories. He next visited Grandson, at the western extremity of the Lake of Neuchatel. The priests, alarmed at his arrival, rose in arms, and drove him away. Bern now interposed its authority for his protection. Their Excellencies would compel no one to become a Protestant, but they were determined to permit the two faiths to be heard, and the citizens to make their choice between the sermon and the mass. Taking with him Viret, Farel returned to Grandson, where he was joined by a third, De Glutinis, an evangelist from the Bernese Jura. They preached Sunday and weekday. The heresy was breaking in like a torrent.

The priests strove to rear a bulwark against the devastating flood. They refuted, to the best of their ability, the Protestant sermons. They called to their aid popular preachers from the neighboring towns, and they organised processions and sacred chants to invigorate the zeal and piety of their adherents. The tide, notwithstanding, continued to set in a contrary direction to that in which they wished to force it to flow. Arming themselves, they came to church to refute what they heard spoken there, not with arguments, but with blows. The sacristan threatened Farel with a pistol which he had concealed under his cloak; another attempted to assassinate Glutinis with a poignard. The ministers managed to mount the pulpits, but were pulled from them, thrown down on the floor, trampled upon, beaten, and when their friends rushed forward to defend them, the two parties fought over their prostrate bodies, and a regular battle was seen going forward in the church. But a great good resulted from these lamentable proceedings. The matter was brought before the Great Conference, which assembled, as we have previously related, at Bern in January, 1532. The Swiss were drifting toward a civil war. It was hopeless to think of conciliating the two parties that divided the nation, but was it necessary therefore that they should cut one another’s throats? Might it not be possible rather to bear with one another’s opinions? This was the device hit upon. It might appear to Rome, as it still appears to her, an execrable one, but to the Conference it appeared preferable to the crime and horror of internecine strife. Thus out of that necessity which is said to be the mother of invention, came the idea of toleration. We deem the mass idolatry, said Protestant Bern, but we shall prevent no one going to it. We deem the Protestant sermon heresy, rejoined Popish Friburg, but we shall give liberty to all who wish to attend it. Thus on the basis of liberty of worship was the public peace maintained. This dates in Switzerland from January, 1532. 8 Toleration was adopted as a policy before it had been accepted as a principle. It was practiced as a necessity of the State before it had been promulgated as a right of conscience. It was only when it came to be recognised and claimed in the latter character as a right founded on a Divine charter — namely, the Word of God — and held irrespective of the permission or the interdiction of man, that toleration established inviolably its existence and reign.

In this manner did Farel carry on the campaign. Every hour he encountered new perils; every day there awaited him fresh persecutions; but it more than consoled him to think that he was winning victory after victory. He remembered that similar foes had beset the path of the first preachers of the Gospel in the cities of Asia Minor at the beginning of the Christian dispensation, to those which obstructed his own in the towns and villages of this region. But in the face of that opposition, how marvellous had his success been — not his, but that of the invisible Power that was moving before him! Among the towns won to the Gospel — the beginning of his strength — he could count Neuchatel, and Vallangin, and Morat, and Grandson, and Aigle, and Bex, and partially Orbe. Every day the fields were growing ripe unto the harvest; able and zealous laborers were coming to his aid in the reaping of it. By-and-by he hoped to carry home the last sheaf, in the conversion of the little town which nestled at the southern extremity of the Leman Lake, to which his longing eyes were so often turned. What joy would be his, could he pluck it from the talons of Savoy and the grasp of Rome, and give it to the Gospel!

CHAPTER 5.

FABEL ENTERS GENEVA.

Basin of the Rhone — Leman Lake — Grandeur of its Environs — The Region in Former Times a Stronghold of Popery — Geneva — The Duke of Savoy Entreats the Emperor to put him in Possession of it — The Hour Passes — Farel Enters Geneva — Preaches — The Perfect Liberty — The Great Pardon — Beginning of a New Geneva — Terror of the Priests — Farel and Saunier Summoned before the Council — Protected by Letters from Bern — A Tumult — Farel narrowly Escapes Death — Is Sent away from Geneva — Froment Comes in his Room — Begins as Schoolmaster — His New Year’s Day Sermon — Popular Agitation — Retires from Geneva PICTURE: Promment School at the Mollard THERE is no grander valley in Switzerland than the basin of the Rhone, whose collected floods, confined within smiling shores, form the Leman.

As one looks toward sunrise, he sees on his right the majestic line of the white Alps; and on his left, the picturesque and verdant Jura. The vast space which these magnificent chains enclose is variously filled in. Its grandest feature is the lake. It is blue as the sky, and motionless as a mirror. Nestling on its shores, or dotting its remoter banks, is many a beautiful villa, many a picturesque town, almost drowned in the affluent foliage of gardens and rich vines, which clothe the country that slopes upward in an easy swell toward the mountains. In the remoter distance the eye ranges over a vast stretch of pasture-lands and corn-fields, and forests of chestnuts and pine-trees. Above the dark woods soar the great peaks, as finely robed as the plains, though after a different manner — not with flowers and verdure, but with glaciers and snows.

But this fertile and lovely land, at the time we write of, was one of the strongholds of the Papacy. Cathedrals, abbacies, rich convents, and famous shrines, which attracted yearly troops of pilgrims, were thickly planted throughout the valley of the Leman. These were so many fortresses by which Rome kept the country in subjection. In each of these fortresses was placed a numerous garrison. Priests and monks swarmed like the locusts. The land was fat, yet one wonders how it sustained so numerous and ravenous a host. In Geneva alone there were nine hundred priests. In the other towns and villages around the lake, and at the foot of the Jura, they were not less numerous in proportion. Cowls and shorn crowns, frocks and veils, were seen everywhere. This generation of tonsured men and veiled women formed the “Church;” and the dues they exacted of the lay population, and the processions, chants, exorcisms, and blows which they gave them in return, were styled “religion.” The man who would go down into this region of sevenfold blackness, and attack these sons of the Roman Anak, who here tyrannised so mercilessly over their wretched victims, had indeed need of a stout heart and a strong faith.

He had need to be clad in the armor of God in going forth to such a battle.

This man was William Farel. The spiritual campaigns of the sixteenth century produced few such champions. “His sermons,” says D’Aubigne, “were actions quite as much as a battle is.” We have already chronicled what he did in these “wars of the Lord” in the Pays de Vaud; we are now to be engaged in the narrative of his work in Geneva.

We have brought down the eventful story of this little city to the time when it formed an alliance with Bern and Friburg. This brought it a little help in the battle which it had maintained hitherto single-handed against tremendous odds. The duke had left it, and placed the Alps between himself and it, but he had not lost sight of it. Despairing of being able to reduce it by his own power, he sent a messenger to Charles V. at Augsburg, entreating him to send his soldiers and put him in possession of Geneva. Most willingly would the emperor have put these haughty citizens under the feet of the duke, but his own hands were at that moment too full to attempt any new enterprise. The Lutheran princes of Germany, as stubborn in their own way as the Genevans were in theirs, were occasioning Charles a world of anxiety, and he could give the duke nothing but promises. The emperor’s plan, as communicated to the duke’s envoy, was first to “crush the German Protestants, and then bring his mailed hand down on the Huguenots of Geneva.” 1 Geneva meanwhile had respite. The Treaty of Nuremberg shortly afterwards set Charles V. free on the side of Germany, and left him at liberty to convert the promises he had made the duke into deeds. But the hour to strike had now passed; a mightier power than the emperor had entered Geneva.

Returning from the Waldensian synod in the valley of Angrogna, in October, 1532, Farel, who was accompanied by Saunter, could not resist his long-cherished desire of visiting Geneva. His arrival was made known to the friends of liberty in that city, 2 and the very next day the elite of the citizens waited on him at his inn, the Tour Perce, on the left bank of the Rhone. He preached twice, setting forth the glorious Gospel of the grace of God. The topic of his first address was Holy Scripture, the fountain-head of all Divine knowledge, in contradistinction to tradition of Fathers, or decree of Council, and the only authority on earth to which the conscience of man was subject. This opened the gates of a higher liberty than these men had yet understood, or aspired to. They had been shedding their blood for their franchises, but now the Reformer showed them a way by which their souls might escape from the dark dungeon in which tradition and human authority had succeeded in shutting them up. The next day Farel proclaimed to them the great pardon of God — which consisted, according to his exposition, in the absolutely free forgiveness of sinners bestowed on the footing of an absolutely full and perfect expiation of human guilt; and this he placed in studious opposition to the pardon of the Pope, which had to be bought with money or with penances. This was a still wider opening of the gates of a new world to these men. “This,” said Farel, “is the Gospel; and this, and nothing short of this, is liberty, inasmuch as it is the enfranchisement of the whole man, body, conscience, and soul.” 3 The words of the Reformer did not fall on dull or indifferent hearts. The generous soil, already watered with the blood of the martyrs of liberty, now received into its bosom a yet more precious seed. The Old Geneva passed away, and in its place came a New Geneva, which the wiles of the Pope should not be able to circumvent, nor the arms of the emperor to subdue.

The priests learned, with a dismay bordering on despair, that the man who had passed like a devastating tempest over the Pays de Vand, his track marked by altars overturned, images demolished, and canons, monks, and nuns fleeing before him in terror, had come hither also. What was to be done? Effectual steps must be promptly taken, otherwise all would be lost. The gods of Geneva would perish as those of Neuchatel had done. 4 Farel and Saunter were summoned before the town council. 5 The majority of the magistrates received them with angry looks, some of them with bitter words; but happily Farel carried letters from their Excellencies of Bern, with whom Geneva was in alliance, and whom the councillors feared to offend. The Reformers, thus protected, after some conference, left the council-chamber unharmed.

Their acquittal awakened still more the fears of the priests, and as their fear grew so did their anger. Armed clerics were parading the streets; there was a great flutter in the convents. “A shabby little preacher,” said one of the sisters of St. Claire, with a toss of the head, “Master William Farel, has just arrived.” 6 The townspeople were breaking out in tumults. What next was thought of? An episcopal council met, and under a pretext of debating the question it summoned the two preachers before them. Two magistrates accompanied them to see that they returned alive. Some of the episcopal council had come with arms under their sacerdotal robes. Such was their notion of a religious discussion. The Reformers were asked by what authority they preached? Farel replied by quoting the Divine injunction, “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” The meek majesty of the answer only provoked a sneer. In a few minutes the council became excited; the members started to their feet; they flung themselves upon the two evangelists; they pulled them about; they spat upon them, exclaiming, “Come, Farel, you wicked devil, what makes you go up and down thus?

Whence comest thou? What business brings you to our city to throw us into trouble?” When the noise had a little subsided, Farel made answer courageously, “I am not a devil; I am sent by God as an ambassador of Jesus Christ; I preach Christ crucified — dead for our sins — risen again for our justification; he that believeth upon him hath eternal life; he that believeth not is condemned.” “He blasphemes; he is worthy of death,” exclaimed some. “To the Rhone, to the Rhone!” shouted others; “it were better to drown him in the Rhone than permit this wicked Lutheran to trouble all the people.” “Speak the words of Christ, not of Caiaphas,” replied Farel. This was the signal for a yet more ferocious outbreak. “Kill the Lutheran hound,” exclaimed they. Dom Bergeri, proctor to the chaplain, cried, “Strike, strike!” They closed round Farel and Saunier; they took hold of them; they struck at them. One of the Grand Vicar’s servants, who carried an arquebus, levelled it at Farel; he pulled the trigger; the priming flashed. 7 The clatter of arms under the vestments of the priests foreboded a tragic issue to the affair; and doubtless it would speedily have terminated in this melancholy fashion, but for the vigorous interposition of the two magistrates. Rescued from the perils of the episcopal council-hall, worse dangers, if possible, threatened them outside. A miscellaneous crowd of clerics and laics, armed with clubs and swords, waited in the street to inflict upon the two heretics the vengeance which it was just possible they might escape at the hands of the vicar and canons. 9 When the mob saw them appear, they brandished their weapons, and raising a frightful noise of hissing and howling, made ready to rush upon them. It looked as if they were fated to die upon the spot. At the critical moment a band of halberdiers, headed by the syndics, came up, and closing their ranks round the two Reformers escorted them, through the scowling and hooting crowd, to their inn, the Tour Perce. A guard was stationed at the door all night. Next morning, at an early hour, appeared a few friends, who taking Farel and Saunter, and leading them to the shore of the lake, made them embark in a small boat, and, carrying them over the quiet waters, landed them in the Pays de Vand, at an unfrequented spot between Merges and Lausanne. Thence Farel and Saunter went on to Grandson. Such was the issue of Farel’s first essay in a city on which his eye and heart had so long rested. It did not promise much; but he had accomplished more than he at the moment knew.

In fact, Farel was too powerful, and his name was of too great prestige, to begin the work. The seeds of such a work must be deposited by a gentle hand, they must grow up in a still air, and only when they have taken root may the winds be suffered to blow. Of this Farel seems to have become sensible, for we find him looking around for a humbler and feebler instrument to send to Geneva. He cast eyes on the young and not very courageous Froment, and dispatched him to a city where he himself had almost been torn in pieces. 10 While Froment was on his way another visitor unexpectedly appeared to the Genevans. A comet blazed forth in their sky. What did it portend? War, said some; the rising of a Divine light, said others. Froment’s appearance was so mean that even the Huguenots, as the friends of liberty and progress in Geneva were styled, turned their backs upon him. What was he to do? Froment recalled Farel’s example at Aigle, and resolved to turn schoolmaster. He hired a room at the Croix d’Or, near the Molard, and speedily his fame as a teacher of youth filled Geneva. The lessons Froment taught the children in the school, the children taught the parents when they went home. Gradually, and in a very short while, the class grew into a congregation of adults, the school-room into a church, and the teacher into an evangelist. Reading out a chapter he would explain it with simplicity and impressiveness. Thus did he scatter the seed upon hearts; souls were converted; and the once despised evangelist, who had been, like a greater missionary, “a root out of a dry ground” to the Genevans, now saw crowds pressing around him and drinking in his words. This was in the end of the year 1532. The work proceeded apace. Among the converts were certain rich and honorable women: we mention specially Paula, the wife of John Lever, and Claudine, her sister-in-law. Their conversion made a great sensation in Geneva. By their means their husbands and many of their acquaintances were drawn to hear the schoolmaster at the Croix d’Or, and embraced the Gospel. From the Pays de Vaud, arrived New Testaments, tracts, and controversial works; and these, distributed among the citizens, opened the eyes of many who had not courage to go openly to the schoolmaster’s sermon. Tradesmen and people of all conditions enrolled themselves among the disciples. The social principle of Christianity began to operate; those who were of one faith drew together into one society, and meeting at stated times in one another’s houses, they strove to instruct and strengthen each other. Such were the early days of the Genevan Church.

First came faith — faith in the free forgiveness of the Gospel — next came good works A reformation of manners followed in Geneva. The Reformed ceased to frequent those fashionable amusements in which they had formerly delighted. They banished finery from their dress, and luxury from their banquets. They made no more costly presents to the saints, and the; money thus saved they bestowed on the poor, and especially the Protestant exiles whom the rising storms of persecution in France compelled to flee to the gates of Geneva as to a harbour of refuge. There was hardly a Protestant of note who did not receive into his house one of these expatriated Christians,13 and in this way Geneva learned that hospitality for which it is renowned to this day.

The congregation of Froment in a few weeks grew too large for the modest limits of the Croix d’Or. One day a greater concourse than usual assembling at his chapel door, and pressing in vain for admittance, the cry was raised, “To the Molard!” To the Molard the crowd marched, carrying with them the preacher. It was New Year’s Day, 1533. The Molard was the market-square, and here, mounted on a fish-stall — the first public pulpit in Geneva — Froment preached to the multitude. It was his “New Year’s gift,” as it has been called. Having prayed, he began his sermon 14 by announcing that “free pardon”—the ray from the open heavens which leads the eye upward to the throne of a Savior — which all the Reformers, treading in the steps of the apostles, placed in the foreground of their teaching. From this he went on to present to his hearers the lineaments of the “false prophets” and “idolatrous priests” as painted in the Old and New Testaments, pointing out the exact verification of these features in the Romish hierarchy of their own day. Froment’s delineations were so minute, so graphic and fearless, that his hearers saw the prophets of Baal, and the Pharisees of a corrupt Judaism, living over again in the priests of their own city. The preacher had become warm with his theme, and the audience were kindling in sympathy, when a sound of hurrying footsteps was heard behind them. On turning round a band of armed men was seen entering the square. The lieutenant of the city, the procurator-fiscal, the soldiers, and a number of armed priests, exasperated by this public manifestation of the converts, had come to arrest Froment, and disperse the assembly. Had the preacher been captured, it is not doubtful what his fate would have been, but the band returned without their prey. His friends carried him off to a place of hiding. The agitation of the citizens and the violence of the priests made the farther prosecution of Froment’s ministry in Geneva hopeless. He withdrew quietly from the city, and returned to his former charge in the village of Yvonand, at the foot of the Jura. 16 The foundations of Protestant Geneva had been laid: greater builders were to rear the edifice.

CHAPTER 6.

GENEVA ON THE BRINK OF CIVIL WAR.

First Communion in Geneva — Plot to Massacre all the Converts — Canon Wernli — The Roman Catholics take Arms — The City on the Brink of Civil War — The Battle Averted — Another Storm — Canon Wernli Arms and Rings the Tocsin — He is Slain — Bern Interposes — The Council Permits by Edict the Free Preaching of the Gospel in Geneva — The Pope Commands the Bishop to Return to the City — He Blunders and Retires — Froment Returns — Farel and Viret Arrive in Geneva — Dejection of the Roman Catholics.

PICTURE: View of Bern From a Meadow PICTURE: Peter Viret THE workman had retired, but the work went on. The Protestants, now grown to a goodly number, and full of zeal and hope, met in each other’s houses — the catacombs of the young Church, as an old author styles these meetings. They read the Scriptures in Lefevre’s translation; they elected Guerin, one of the more intelligent and esteemed among them, to “the charge of the Word,” in the room of Froment; and they still further strengthened their bond of union by partaking together of the Lord’s Supper. It occasioned them some anxiety where they should find a spot sufficiently secluded for the celebration of the ordinence. The place ultimately made choice of was a little walled garden near the city gates. The time of year was the middle of March. The preparations were simple indeed — a few benches, a table spread with a white cloth, on which were displayed the bread and wine, that were to become to these disciples the memorials of Christ’s death, and the token and seal of their interest in its blessings. Guerin took his seat at the head of the table, and began the service. At that moment the sun, rising over the Alps, shed his first rays upon the little company, an outward emblem of the real though spiritual presence of that Savior of whom it was foretold — “His coming like the morn shall be, Like morning songs his voice.”2 This seemed to them an auspicious token. 3 The growing numbers and zeal of the disciples again drew upon them the anger of the priests, and Guerin had to withdraw and follow Froment into exile at Yvonand. 4 Geneva, like a ship laboring in a tempestuous sea, was casting out one Protestant laborer after another, but it could not cast out the Gospel.

Bern next appeared upon the stage, and demanded that its ally Geneva should grant liberty to the preaching of the Gospel in it. 5 The friends of the duke and of Rome — the Mamelukes, as they were called — saw that matters had come to a crisis. They must extirpate Lutheranism from Geneva, otherwise they should never be at rest; but Lutheranism they could hope to extirpate not otherwise than by extirpating all the Lutherans. The council hesitated and procrastinated, for the majority of its members were still Roman Catholic; but the canons, priests, and chief partisans of Romanism neither hesitated nor procrastinated. They met in the Vicar-General’s council-hall (Thursday, 27th May, 1533); they came armed to the teeth, and the issue of their deliberations, which were conducted by torch-light, was to kill all the Protestants in Geneva without one exception. 6 The conspirators, raising their hands, bound themselves by a solemn oath. 7 They now dispersed for a brief repose, for the plot was to be executed on the day following.

The morrow came, and the conspirators assembled in the cathedral, to the number of 700. 8 The first to enter was Canon Wernli. He came clad in armor. He was as devoted a Romanist as he was a redoubtable warrior. He was a Samson for strength, and could wield his battle-axe as he might fling about his breviary. In waging war with the hydra of heresy which had broken into the Roman Catholic fold of Geneva he would strike once, and would not strike a second time. This zealous priest and valiant soldier was the real captain of the band, which was ostensibly led by Syndic Baud, in his “great hat and plume of feathers.”

Having marshalled in front of the high altar of St. Peter’s, this troop, which included 300 armed priests, put itself in motion. With banners displayed, crosses uplifted, axes and swords brandished, while the great bell of the cathedral sent forth its startling and ominous peals, it marched down the street of the Perron to the Molard, and drew up in battle array.

Various armed detachments continued to arrive from other quarters, and their junction ultimately swelled the Roman Catholic host to about 2,500.

They felt sure of victory. Here they stood, their cannons and arquebuses loaded, awaiting the word for action: and chafing at those little hindrances which ever and anon occurred to keep them back from battle, as chafes the war-horse against the bit that curbs his fiery impatience to plunge into the fight. This army, drawn up in order of battle in the Molard, received a singular reinforcement. The wives and mothers of the Romanists appeared on the scene of action, their aprons filled with stones, by their side their little children of from twelve to fourteen, whom they had brought to take part in this holy war and into whose hands they had put such weapons as they were able to wield. So great was the zeal of these Amazons against heresy!

Meanwhile, what were the Protestants doing or thinking? At the first alarm they assembled in the house of Baudichon de la Maisonneuve, one of the most courageous of their leaders. His mansion was situated on the left bank of the Rhone, some 400 paces from the Molard. The converts felt how terrible was the crisis, but their hearts were fixed, trusting on him who holds the tempests and whirlwinds in his hands. He had but to speak, and that storm would dispel as suddenly as it had gathered. The plan of the Romanists was to march to Baudichon’s house, set fire to it, and massacre the heretics one by one as they escaped from the flames. The proposal of burning them came to the ears of the Protestants; their numbers had now considerably increased; all were well armed and of good courage; they resolved to march out and stand for their lives. Descending into the street, they drew up five deep in presence of the enemy.

There was deep stillness. It would be broken the next moment by the shock of murderous battle. The cannons and arquebuses were loaded; the halberds grasped; the swords unsheathed; and stones and other missiles were ready to be poured in to complete the work of death. But it pleased the Great Disposer to stay the tempest when it seemed on the very point of bursting.

There chanced at that time to be seven Friburg merchants sojourning in Geneva. 10 Touched by the lamentable spectacle of the citizens in arms to shed one another’s blood, they came forward at the critical moment to mediate. “Blessed are the peace-makers.” Going first to the Roman Catholics and then to the Reformed, they represented to the former how foolish it was to shed their blood “to satisfy the appetite of their priests,” 11 and pointed out to the latter how tremendous were the odds that stood arrayed against them. With much ado they succeeded in calming the passions of both parties. The priests, however, of whom 160 were in arms, refused to lend an ear to these pacific counsels. But finding that if they persisted they should have to fight it out by themselves, they at last came to terms. 12 The insane fury of the inhabitants having now given place to the natural affections, tears of joy welcomed fathers and husbands as at night they stepped across the thresholds of their homes. Terms of pacification were afterwards drawn up which left the balance inclining somewhat in favor of liberty of conscience. But soon again another storm darkened over that city within which two mighty principles were contending. The magistrates might issue edicts, the leaders of the two parties might sign pacifications, but settled peace there could be none for Geneva till the Gospel should have established its sway in the hearts of a majority of its citizens. On the 4th May, just five weeks after the affair we have narrated, another tumult broke out. Its instigator was the same bellicose ecclesiastic who figured so prominently on the 28th March — Canon Wernli. “This good champion of the faith,” as Sister Jeanne, who kept a journal of these occurrences, calls him, had that morning celebrated, with unusual pomp, the Feast of “The Holy Windingsheet,” in St. Peter’s. “Taking off his sacerdotal robes, he put on his breast-plate and cuishes, belted his sword to his side, seized his heavy halberd,” 14 and issued forth to do battle for the Church. Followed by a party of priests to whose haalds the arquebus came quite as readily as the breviary, Wernli strode down the Perton to his old battle-field, the Molard By this time night had fallen; alarming rumors were propagated through the city, and to add to the terror of the inhabitants, the tocsin began to ring out its thundering peals. Many on both sides, Roman Catholics and Reformers, mostly armed, rushed into the street. There Canon Wernli, unable to distinguish friend from foe in the darkness, was shouting out to his assailants to come on; but as no one answered the challenge, he fell to dealing blows right and left among the crowd. Some one slipped behind him, and espying an opening in his iron coat, thrust his poignard into his body. The shouts ceased, the tumult gradually subsided, the night passed, and when the morning broke Canon Wernli was found lying in his armor, on the doorsteps of one of the houses, stark dead. If the death of this Papal champion lessened the dangers of the Reformed within the city, it multiplied their enemies without. Wernli belonged to a powerful family of the Popish Canton of Friburg, and ambassadors from that State now appeared at Geneva demanding the punishment of all concerned in the canon’s death — that is, of all the Reformed. The Reformation seemed about to be sacrificed on the tomb of Wernli.

Protestant Bern instantly stepped forward in its defense. Bern proved itself the more powerful. Its ambassadors induced the syndics and council, as the only escape from the chaos that encompassed them, to proclaim liberty to all to abide by the mass, or to follow Protestantism, as their conscience might dictate. 16 This decree, which advanced the landmarks of liberty theoretically, but hardly as yet practically, brought matters to a head in Geneva.

For some time many eyes had been watching from abroad the struggle going on in this little town on the shores of the Leman. The extraordinary bravery and energy of its citizens had invested it with a charm that rivetted upon it the eye of both friend and foe, and inspired them with the presentiment that it had a great part to play in the new times that were opening. It caused many all hour of anxious thought to Clement VII. in the Vatican. Charles V. could not but wonder that, while so many great kingdoms owned his sway, this little city resisted his will. He had written to these haughty burghers peremptorily commanding them to forsake the evil paths of heresy. They had gone their own way notwithstanding.

Strong measures must be taken with this rebellious town. Its princebishop, Pierre de la Baume, was absent from Geneva, and had been so for some while. The free manners of the citizens did not suit him, and he took up his abode at Arbois, on the other side of the Jura, in a quiet neighborhood, where the wine was good. The prince-bishop cared for his Church, of course, but he cared also for his dinner; but Geneva was on the point of being lost; and the Pope, at the risk of spoiling the bishop’s digestion, ordered him, under pain of excommunication, to return thither, and try his hand at reducing to their obedience his mutinous subjects.

Pierre de la Baume had but little heart for the task, but it was enjoined upon him under a threat which he trembled to incur, and so, provided with an armed escort, he returned (lst July, 1533) to Geneva.

He but helped to ruin the cause he had come to uphold, he would give Lutheranism, not an open execution, but a secret burial. Accordingly, inviting the chiefs of the Protestant movement to his palace, no sooner had they entered it than the bishop closed the doors, threw his guests into irons, and proceeded to dispose of them by consigning one to this dungeon, and another to that. In this summary proceeding of their bishop the council saw a flagrant violation of the franchises of Geneva. It was the attack on liberty, not religion — for three of the four syndics were still Roman Catholic — that awakened their indignation. The senators produced their ancient charter, which the bishop had sworn to observe, and claimed the constitutional right, in which it vested them, of trying all inculpated citizens. The bishop found himself caught in the trap he had so cunningly set for others. If he should open his dungeons, he would confess to having sustained a most humiliating defeat; if he should retain his prisoners in bonds, he would draw upon his head one of those popular tempests of which he was so greatly afraid. Choosing the former as the less formidable alternative, he gave up his prisoners to their lawful judges.

But even this did not restore the bishop’s tranquillity. His guilty imagination was continually conjuring up tumults and assassinations; and, fleeing when no man pursued, he secretly quitted Geneva, just fourteen days after he had entered it. 17 He left the cause of Rome in a worse position than he had found it, and the Pope saw that he had better have left the craven bishop to enjoy his quiet and his wine at Arbois.

When the shepherd of the flock had fled, what so likely to happen as that the “wolf” would return? The “wolf” did return. Froment, with a companion by his side, Alexander Canus, reappeared upon the scene which the bishop had been in such haste to quit. These evangelists preached in private houses, and when these no longer sufficed for the crowds that assembled, they proclaimed the “good news” in the streets.

The bishop, who learned what was going on, fulminated a missive from his quiet asylum, in the hope of driving the destroyer out of the fold he had deserted. “Why,” said the Genevans, “did he not remain and keep the door closed?” The priests complained to the council, laying the bishop’s letter upon the table. Their remonstrance only served to show that the tide was rising.

“Preach the Gospel,” answered the council, “and say nothing that cannot be proved by Holy Scripture.” These words, which are still to be read in the city registers, made Protestantism a religio licita (a tolerated faith) in Geneva. 18 The bishop, in his own way, threw oil upon the fire by a second and more energetic letter, forbidding the preaching in Geneva, secretly or publicly, of “the holy page,” of “the holy Gospel.” 19 Further, Furbity, a frothy and abusive preacher of the Dominican order, was brought to oppose the Reformed. The violence of his harangues evoked a popular tumult, and the waters of liberty retreating for a moment from the limits Which they had reached, Froment and Canus had to retire from Geneva.

But speedily the tide turned, this time to overpass a long way its furthest limits hitherto. On the 21st December, 1533, Farel entered the gates of Geneva, not again to leave it till the Reformation had been consummated in it. The Roman Catholics felt that a life-and-death struggle had commenced.

The citizens assembled to the sermons of Farel with helmets on their heads, and arquebuses and halberds in their hands. The priests, divining the true source of the movement, published from all the pulpits on the 1st of January, 1534, an order commanding all copies of the Bible, whether in French or in German, to be burned. 20 For three days and nights the city was under arms; the one party arming to defend, the other to expel the Bible. Froment arrived to the help of Farel. There came yet another — Viret, who joined them in a few weeks. Farel, Viret, Froment — the three most powerful preachers in the French tongue — are now in Geneva.

These three are an army. Their weapon is the Word of God. Clad in the panoply of light, and wielding the sword of the Spirit, these three warriors will do more to batter down the stronghold of Rome than all that the nine hundred priests in Geneva can do to uphold it. The knell of the Papacy has sounded in this city; low responsive wailings begin to be heard along the foot of the Alps and the crest of the Jura, mourning the approaching fall of an ancient system. The echoes travel to France, to England, and to Germany, and wherever they come the friends of the Gospel and of liberty look up, while the adherents of Rome hang their heads, weighed down by the presentiment of a terrible disaster about to befall their cause.

CHAPTER 7.

HEROISM OF GENEVA.

Conspiracy against Geneva — Detection — Protestants gain Possession of one of the Churches — The Gospel in Geneva — Glories Near but Unseen — An Army of Pilgrims — A Hunting Party — The Game not Caught — Roman Catholic Exodus — The Duke and the Emperor Combine against Geneva — Perils of the City — Heroic Resolution of the Citizens — The Suburbs Demolished — The Citizens Wait the Assault. GENEVA had much to dare and to endure during the year and a half that was yet to elapse before its struggles should be crowned with victory.

Three powerful parties — the prince-bishop, the Duke of Savoy, and their Excellencies of Friburg — jointly conspired against the liberties of the brave little town. 1 The bishop secretly appointed a lieutenant-general to govern in his name, investing him with all the powers of the State; the duke sent blank warrants to be filled in with the names of those whom it might be necessary to apprehend and execute, and the Lords of Friburg were to cooperate with the Mamelukes within the city. All had been excellently planned; but the blow which the bishop meditated against the State of Geneva fell upon himself and his accomplices. The plot was discovered; the agents who were to have executed it suffered the doom of traitors; the bishop, caught plotting, became nearly as odious to the Roman Catholics as he already was to the Protestants; and the popular reaction which ensued filled the curule chairs, at next election, with the friends of the Reform.

The Reformers, now numerous, and taunted sometimes with worshipping in holes and corners, resolved no longer to submit to the stigma of being obliged to celebrate their worship in private houses. They said to the magistrates, “Give us one of the churches of the city.” The Council, wishing to hold the balance even between them and the Roman Catholics, excused themselves by saying that this was a matter that lay outside their jurisdiction; but, added they, “you are strong, and if you are pleased to take one of the churches of your own accord, we cannot prevent you.”

The converts did not delay to act upon the hint. The brave Baudichon de la Maisonneuve marching at their head, they proceeded to the Convent of the Rive and appropriated for their use the “Grand Auditory,” or cloister, which might contain from four to five thousand persons. They rang the bells; the report ran that Farel was to preach; and crowds from every part of the city came streaming to the Rive. The monks could only stare. Rising up in his ordinary dress, Farel preached to the overflowing congregation.

That was a day much to be remembered in Geneva. It needs neither many nor learned words to proclaim the Gospel. It is a message from the throne of heaven to the guilty children of earth, to this effect, that God, having sent his Son to suffer in their room, offers them a free pardon. The Genevans were amazed to find that the Gospel was so simple a matter, and could be so soon told. They had been taught from their cradle that it needed gorgeous cathedrals, blazing tapers, splendidly apparelled priests, chants, and incense to set it forth, and that wanting mystic rites it refused to impart its efficacy to the worshipper; now they found that one attired in a plain dress, and in a single plain sentence, could declare it all. But that little sentence they found was a ray that revealed to them a whole world of glory. The chant of the priest had entered the ear only, Farel’s words sunk into the heart: the taper had but flashed its light on the eye, the Gospel shed its glory on the soul. A moral phenomenon was now accomplished before this people, analogous to the natural one which often takes place in this same region. So long as the mists and clouds veil the Alps, these mountains, even to the men living at their feet, are as if they did not exist.

But let the clouds lift, or let the breeze make an opening in the mist, and lo! a world of Alpine grandeurs is suddenly revealed to the eye of the spectator. A moment ago there hung before him a curtain of dull vapor; now there is seen a glorious array of mountains, with their gorges, rocks, and pine forests, their snows and flashing pinnacles. As near, yet as unseen, were the evangelical glories of the spiritual world to the Genevans.

These glories were completely hidden by the black cloud of ignorance and superstition that hung between them and the Bible. But the moment that cloud began to be parted by the preaching of the Gospel and the breath of the Spirit, a new world was disclosed, a world of truth. It stood out, distinct, palpable, complete, in an affluence of spiritual glory, and a fullness of moral power, which made the Genevans wonder what blinding influence it was that had hidden from their eye what was all the time so near, and yet so entirely unseen.

The Gospel had entered Geneva. The city was taken. How much the Reformation had gained, and how much Rome had lost, in the conquest of that little town, future years were to enable men fully to understand. But the Protestants of Geneva had many efforts and sacrifices yet to undergo if they would retain the victory which had in reality been won.

Geneva was far too important a post for the Romanists to let it slip without another great effort. This was resolved upon. In the middle of May the priests of the surrounding districts organised a great procession of pilgrims, who knew how to handle other things than their rosaries. The pious troop appeared at the gates of Geneva, duly furnished with banners, crosses, and relics; but the citizens, recollecting the story of the Trojan horse, and fearing that if the pilgrims entered their devotions might take a militant turn, and the war-cry be raised for the psalm, refused to admit the devout host. They could pray outside the walls. So this danger passed away.

The next army that marched to assail the little town, where the light of the Gospel was burning more brightly every day, came not in the guise of pilgrims, but of soldiers. The bishop had formed a new plot. The Romanist Lords of Vaud and Savoy, at the instigation of the bishop and the duke, had arranged a hunting party for the last day of July, 1534, the real game which the armed sportsmen meant to run down being the Genevan Lutheran. The Papists within the city were to act in concert with those without. Some 300 armed foreigners had been secretly introduced into the town; the keeper of the artillery had been bribed; the midnight signals agreed upon; and the bishop, dividing the prey before he had caught it, had confiscated in favor of his followers the goods of the Genevan heretics. In short, everything had been done to insure success.

The night came; the peasants of the surrounding country, having armed themselves, began to move on Geneva, some by land, others by water. The Bailiff of Chablais and the Baron de Rollo alone led 8,000 men. The Papists in the city had armed secretly, and were assembling in one another’s houses. 3 The citizens, all save the accomplices of the bishop, were ignorant of the plot, and many of them had already gone to rest as usual. All was progressing as the invaders wished. But that Providence which had been ploughing this field for more than twenty years, was not to abandon it to the enemy at the very moment when the seed which had been sown in it was shooting up, and the harvest at hand. A friend of the Gospel, Jacques Maubuisson, 4 from Dauphine, solicited an interview with the premier syndic at an early hour of the evening. He was admitted, and startled the magistrate by telling him that the city was surrounded with armed men. Instantly the citizens were aroused and got under arms.

The host outside the walls were meanwhile straining their eyes to catch through the darkness the first gleam of the torches, which were to be waved on the tops of the houses of their friends as the signal to begin the assault. All suddenly a brilliant light shone forth from the summit of the steeple of St. Peter’s. That was the place, the invaders knew, where the city-watch were usually stationed. It was plain the plot had been discovered. “We are betrayed! we are betrayed!” they exclaimed; “we shall never enter Geneva!” 5 Fiercer and yet fiercer, as it seemed to the eyes of the Savoyards, glared that beacon-light. Panic seized their ranks, and when the morning broke the citizens of Geneva beheld from their steeples and ramparts the armies of the invaders in full retreat. By the time the sun rose the last foe had disappeared. As a dream, short but terrible, so did the events of that night appear to the Genevans. The miscarriage of the plot was followed by an exodus of Romanists from the city. Many of the Mamelukes, as they were termed, fled, and thus the priests were left without flocks, the churches without worshippers, and the images without votaries. The Protestants were more than ever masters of the situation. In the final struggles of the Papacy in Geneva we behold what has since been repeated in our own day, on the wider arena of Europe, that every attempt to raise it up has only helped to cast it down.

Yet another effort — that is, as things were going with the Papacy, another plunge, the last and the deepest. The duke and the bishop were but the more enraged by their repeated discomfitures. They resolved that they would extinguish Lutheranism, or sweep the little town in which it had entrenched itself from off its rock, and make it, like old Tyre, a place for the spreading of nets by the shores of its lake. Considering the resources which the duke had at his command, neither he nor any one else could see how he should not be able to do his pleasure upon the audacious little city. Geneva had an enemy, it may be said, in every man outside her walls. The castles that hemmed her in on all sides were filled with armed men ready to march at the first summons. Before beginning the war which was to make the rebellious town put its haughty neck under his feet, Duke Charles III. sent his ultimatum to the citizens. They must send away their preachers — Farel, Viret, and Froment; they must take back their bishop, and return within the bosom of their holy mother the Church. On these terms the duke, good and kind man, would give them his forgiveness. 7 The Genevans made answer that sooner than do this they would bury themselves beneath the ruins of their city. Even their good ally, Bern, despairing of their success, or else gained by the flatteries of the duke, counselled the Genevans to submit. A Diet of the Swiss cantons met at Lucerne in January, 1535, to determine on the matter. They had no other advice to give Geneva than submission. 8 This was unspeakably disappointing, but worse was behind. The great Emperor Charles V. came forward and announced that he cast his sword into the scale of the duke.

The cause of Geneva, already desperate, was now hopeless apparently.

Could this little town of only 12,000 inhabitants resist the Empire? Could the Genevans stand alone against the world? All help has failed them on earth; nevertheless, their resolution is as inflexible as ever. Geneva shall be a sanctuary of the Protestant faith and a citadel of liberty, or its sons will “set fire to its four corners,” and make it their own funeral pile.

It was now that a terrible resolution was taken by its heroic citizens.

Outside the walls of Geneva were four large suburbs, with a population of 6,200 souls. 9 In fact, there were two cities, one within and another without the walls, and the latter, it was obvious, would afford cover to the advancing foe, and prevent the free play upon him of the cannon on the ramparts. On the 23rd of August, 1534, the Council of Two Hundred resolved to demolish these suburbs, and clear the ground all round the city. 10 This was to sacrifice one half of Geneva to save the other half. The stern decree was carried out, although not without many heavy sighs and bitter tears. Rich and poor pulled down their homes with their own hands; although many of the latter knew not where they were to lay their heads at night. Villa and hovel shared an equal fate; convents and temples of a venerable antiquity were razed to the ground. The monastery of St. Victor, of which Bonnivard was prior, and which was the oldest edifice in Geneva, having been founded in the beginning of the sixth century, fell by the same sentence, and mingled its ruins with those of fabrics that were but of yesterday. The pleasant gardens, the sparkling fountains, and the overshadowing trees which had graced so many of the dwellings were all swept away. By the middle of January, 1535, the work of demolition was finished; and now a silent and devastated zone begirt the city. It was not enough to pull down, the citizens had to build up. The stones of the overturned edifices were taken to repair and strengthen the fortifications. Amid the drifts of winter the men might be seen building on the walls, and the women carrying earth and stones. The bells of the demolished churches and convents were melted and cast into cannon.

Though the idols were pulled down, the Roman Catholics were protected in their worship. 12 The Genevans would not stain the glory of the prodigious sacrifices they were making for their own religious liberty by invading that of others. A little band of armed Protestants kept watch at the church door while the few canons who remained in the city sang their matins on Christmas morning. 13 All was now ready, and the heroic inhabitants, their eyes lifted up to heaven, awaited the hour when the foe should gather round them on all sides, and deliver his assault. Let him strike. Their resolution was immovable. Geneva must be the temple that would enshrine their religion and their liberties, or the mausoleum that would contain their ashes.

CHAPTER 8.

ROME FALLS AND GENEVA RISES.

New Foothold for Protestantism — Conditions Necessary in it — Friburg and Bern Abandon Geneva — Resolution of the Citizens — The Bishop Removes his Court — Geneva assumes its own Government — Castle of Peney — Atrocities — Attempt to Poison the Protestant Ministers — Conversion of the Franciscan Monks — Public Disputation — Miracles — Discoveries — Bodies of St. Nazaire etc. — Relics — Souls from Purgatory.

PICTURE: The Sham Pilgrims at the Gate of Geneva PICTURE: The Genevans Destroying the Suburbs of their City MUCH, we may say everything, depended on the battle now raging around the little town on the shores of the Leman Lake. Unless Geneva were won to Protestantism, the victories already gained by the Reformation would be but of small account; many of them would melt away and be lost. In Germany the spiritual principle of the Reformation was becoming overshadowed by the political. The princes, with their swords, were putting themselves in the van; and the Reformers, with the Bible, were falling into the rear. This was to reverse the right order. It was clear that the German Reformation had passed its prime. It was necessary to seek a new foothold for Protestantism — some spot where the SPIRITUAL, planted anew, might unfold itself, segregated from the political; and where, unfettered and unaided by the temporal power, it would, in virtue of its own heavenly might, continue to wax in stature and spreading wide its boughs cover the nations with its grateful shadow, and solace them with its precious fruits. It was not necessary to select, as its seat, a great empire or a renowned capital; a little town such as this at the foot of the Alps would serve the purpose better than a more conspicuous and more expansive stage. The territory selected must be separated from the other countries of Christendom, Popish and Reformed, and yet it must be near to them; and not near only, but in the midst of them. Moreover, it must in some way be protected from external violence while working out its great problem. If around it there rises no massy bulwark frowning defiance on the foe; if there musters at its gates no powerful army to do battle with the invader; if the great mountains are too remote to serve as walls and ramparts to it; if earthly defense it has none, all the more evident will it be that it owes its safety to an Invisible Arm that is stretched out in its behalf, and that it is environed by ramparts which the foe is unable to see, and equally unable to scale.

Here will stand the true “Threshold of the Apostles.” The doors of this shrine will open to the holy only; it will be visited by enlightened and believing hearts from every land; and its highways will be trodden and its portals thronged, not by dissolute and superstitious crowds, but by the confessors and exiles of Christ. Here Christianity, laid in its grave at Rome a thousand years before, with crowned Pontiffs and lordly hierarchs keeping watch around its corpse, shall have its resurrection. Rising from the tomb to die no more, it will attest, by the order, the liberty, the intelligence, and the virtue with which it will glorify its seat, that it has lost none of its power during its long entombment, but that, on the contrary, it returns with invigorated force for the execution of its glorious mission, which is that of making all things new. Will such a spot be found in Geneva? Shall the bishop and the duke be chased from it, that it may be given to the men in whom are found the embodiment of the highest ideal, intellectual and spiritual, of Protestantism? This is the question which is to receive its answer from the conflict now waging on the shores of the Leman. The issue of that conflict is at hand.

We left Geneva reduced to the last extremity. Roman Catholic Friburg had terminated its alliance with the Lutheran town, after a friendship of eight years. The reflection of Scultetus on the dissolution of the treaty between the two States is striking and suggestive. “The love of liberty,” says he, “had united the two towns in the closest bonds; but liberty opened the door for religion, and its influence separated chief friends! But what is most remarkable is, that the alliance lasted so long as the independence of Geneva required it, and ceased when its dissolution helped to promote the Reformation.

While its allies are drawing off from the little town on the one side, its enemies are approaching it on the other. Every day they are redoubling their efforts to take it, and it would seem as if, left to fight its great battle alone, its fall were inevitable.

The duke is raising army after army to force an entrance into it. The bishop is fighting against it with both spiritual and temporal arms. Pierre de la Baume had fulminated the greater excommunication against it, and published it in all the churches and convents of the neighboring provinces. The Pope had added his heavier anathema; and now, in the eyes of the inhabitants of the towns and villages around, Geneva was a “dwelling of devils,” and all were ready to assail, burn, or lay waste a place which the bishop and the Pontiff had cursed. To crown the misfortunes of the Genevans, the emperor, unsheathing his great sword and holding it over their heads, demanded that they should open their gates and receive back their bishop. What was to be done? Shall they crouch down under the old yoke? They had obtained a glimpse of a new world, and their former slavery appeared more horrible than ever. To go back to it was the most dreadful issue which their imaginations could picture. Come victory and life, or come defeat and death, they could not go back; they must and would advance with firm step in the path on which they had entered.

The same cause which had repelled the Popish Friburg from Geneva, as narrated above, will draw the Protestant Bern closer to its side; so one would think. Yet no! the threatening attitude of the Popish powers, and its own complications, made Bern shy of giving open aid to Geneva in its fight for liberty and the Reformed faith. 2 Some Bernese ambassadors, won by the gracious manners of the duke, and forgetting in the lighter matters of courtesy the greater matters of liberty, went to Geneva, and counselled the citizens to send away their preachers, and take back their bishop.

Astounded at. such a proposal from the men of Bern, the Council of Geneva replied, “You ask us to abandon our liberties and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” At its sorest need the little State was forsaken of every earthly aid. But this only serves to show how rapidly the tide of devotion to the Reformed faith was rising within its walls. It was its religion that saved it. But for it, Geneva never would have won its liberty. “We are resolved,” said the Council to the Bernese ambassadors, “to sacrifice our property, our honors, our very children, and our own lives for the Word of God. Tell the duke we will rather with our own hands set fire to the four corners of our city, than part with the Gospel.”

Meanwhile, the number of the Reformed within the city was daily increasing, partly from conversions from Popery, and partly from the numerous disciples chased from France by the storms of persecution, and now daily arriving at the gates of Geneva. On the other hand, those Romanists who disliked or feared to dwell in a place cursed by the Church, and hourly sinking deeper in the gulf of heresy, quitted Geneva in considerable numbers. Thus the proportion between the two parties was growing every day more unequal, and the quiet of the city more assured.

The bishop, moreover, by way of visiting the Protestants with a special mark of his displeasure, did them a signal favor. He removed his episcopal council and his judicial court from Geneva to Gex, in the dominions of the Duke of Savoy. 3 Thereupon the Council of Geneva met and resolved, “That, as the bishop had abandoned the city to unite himself with its most deadly foe, and had undertaken divers enterprises against it, even to the length of levying war, they could no longer regard him as the pastor of the people.” They declared the see vacant. 4 Before taking this step, however, they invited the canons to elect a new bishop; this the canons declined to do. They next lodged an appeal at Rome; but the Pope gave them no answer. This observance of forms greatly strengthened the legal position of the Council. The Vatican would not interfere, the canons would neither elect a new bishop nor bring back the old one; the city was without a ruler, and the Council was by no means sorry to step into the vacant office. To the last the Council followed rather than preceded the people and the preachers The political situation, so full of dangers, made it imperative that they should weigh every step, and especially that they should be satisfied that the Reformation had established itself in the hearts of the people before establishing it by edict.

If the number of malcontents who were leaving the city lessened the difficulties within the walls, it greatly increased the dangers without. The Castle of Peney, on the precipitous banks of the Rhone, about two leagues from Geneva, belonged to the bishop. It was a strong and roomy place, and now it swarmed with men breathing vengeance against the city they had left. From this nest of brigands there issued every day ferocious bands, who laid waste the country around Geneva, cut off the supplies coming to its markets, waylaid its citizens, and, carrying them to their stronghold, tortured them in its dungeons, and then beheaded or otherwise dispatched them. A former Knight of Malta, Peter Goudet, a Frenchman, who, having embraced Protestantism, had found refuge in Geneva, was entrapped by these bandits, carried to their den, and, after a mock trial, burned alive. 5 Nor were these ruffians alone in their barbarities and cruelties. The gentry of Savoy and of the Pays de Vaud, following their worshipful example, armed their retainers, and, scouring the country around, showed that they equalled in zeal, by equalling in atrocity, the free-booters of Peney. A yet darker crime stains the attempt to uphold the Roman Catholic cause in Geneva. The sword of the duke had failed: so had the excommunication of the bishop, although backed by that of the Pope. Other means must be thought of. A plot was laid to cut off Farel, Viret, and Froment, all three at once, by poison. The circumstance that they lodged together in the same house, that of Claude Bernard, an intelligent and zealous friend of the Gospel, favored the design. A woman, a native of Bresse, was suborned to leave Lyons, on pretense of religion, and come to Geneva. She entered the service of Bernard, with whom the preachers lived. She began, it is said, by poisoning her mistress. A few days thereafter she mixed poison with the soup which had been prepared for the ministers’ dinner. Happily only one of them partook of the broth. Farel was indisposed, and did not dine that day, Froment made his repast on some other dish, and Viret alone ate of the poisoned food. He was immediately seized with illness, and was at the point of death. He recovered, but the debilitating effects of the poison remained with him to the end of his days. The wretched woman confessed the crime, but accused a canon and a priest of having instigated her to it.

The two ecclesiastics were permitted to clear themselves by oath, but the woman was condemned to death on the 14th April, and executed. This wickedness, which was meant to extinguish the movement, was closely connected with its final triumph. To guard against any second attempt at poison, the three preachers had apartments assigned them by the Council in the Franciscan Convent de Rive. The result of the Reformers being lodged there was the conversion of nearly all the brethren of the convent, and in particular of James Bernard, a citizen of good family, and brother of Claude mentioned above. The latter had been one of the more ardent champions of Popery in Geneva, and, as his change of mind was now complete, he thought it would be well, at this crisis, to hold a public disputation on religion, similar to those which had taken place elsewhere with such good results. His design was approved by the Reformers to whom he had communicated it. It was further sanctioned by the Council.

Accordingly Bernard offered to maintain the following propositions against all who chose publicly to impugn them: 8 — 1st . That we are to seek justification in Jesus Christ alone, and not in our good works. 2nd . That we are to offer our worship to God only, and that to adore the saints and images is idolatry. 3rd . That the Church is to be governed by the Word of God alone, and that human traditions and the constitutions of the Church, which ought rather to be styled Roman or Papal ordinances, are not only vain, but pernicious. 4th . That Christ’s oblation is the sole and sufficient satisfaction for sin, and that the sacrifice of the mass and prayers to the saints are contrary to the Word of God, and avail nothing for salvation. 5th . That Jesus Christ is the one and only Mediator between God and man. It was the foundations of the two faiths that were to be publicly put on their trial.

The Town Council made the arrangements for the discussion. They had the theses printed and published. Copies of them were affixed to the doors of the churches of the city, and of all the churches of the neighborhood.

They were, moreover, posted up in the towns of Savoy that were under the jurisdiction of Bern, and messengers were dispatched to placard them in the distant cities of Grenoble and Lyons. Men of learning, generally, whether lay or clerical, were invited; all were assured of safety of person and liberty of speech; eight members of Council were appointed to preside; and four secretaries were to take down all that was said on both sides.

The disputation opened on the 30th of May in the grand hall of the Convent de Rive. It continued four weeks without intermission, and ended on the 24th of June. Bernard himself took the lead, assisted by Farel and Viret. The two opposing champions were Peter Careli, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and John Chapuis, a Dominican of Geneva. These days of combat were days of joy to the friends of the Gospel. Each day some old idol was dethroned. The ancient cloud was lifting, and as fold after fold of the murky vapor rolled away, Truth came forth in her splendor, and showed herself to eyes from which she had long been hidden.

“As fair Aurora, in her purple pall, Out of the east the dawning day doth call, So forth she comes: her brightness broad doth blaze.

The heaps of people, thronging in the hall, Do ride each other, upon her to gaze:

Her glorious glittering light doth all men’s eyes amaze.” In the end, both Caroli and Chapuis acknowledged themselves vanquished, and declared, in presence of the vast assembly, their conversion to the Reformed faith. The verdict of the public on the disputation was not doubtful, but Farel and some of the leading citizens wished the Council also to pronounce its judgment;. Three of its four members were now on the Protestant side; nevertheless, it would give no decision. Its policy, for the present, was to curb rather than encourage the popular zeal. It visited with frowns and sometimes with fines the demolition of the images. When asked to give the Magdalen and St. Peter’s for the use of the preachers, whose congregations daily increased, its reply was, “Not yet.” The Council had not lost sight of the duke and the emperor in the distance, and they knew that the duke and the emperor had not lost sight of them. Meanwhile, to speed on the movement, there came some startling revelations of the frauds by which the falling superstition had been upheld.

It is a doctrine of the Church of Rome that infants dying unbaptised are consigned to limbo, a sort of faubourg of hell. To redeem such wretched babes from so dreary an abode, what would not their unhappy mothers be willing to give! But was such a thing possible? Outside the gates stood the Church of Our Lady of Grace. To this Virgin was ascribed, among other marvellous prerogatives, the power of resuscitating infants for so long as would suffice for their receiving the Sacrament. The corpse was brought to the statue of Our Lady, and being laid at its feet, its head would be seen to:move, or a feather placed on its mouth would be blown away. On this the monks, to whom an offering had previously been made, would shout out, “A miracle! a miracle!” and ring the great bell of the church, and salt, chrism, and holy water would instantly be brought and the child baptised.

The Council ordered an investigation into the miracle, and the verdict returned was the plain one, that it was “a trick of the priests.” 12 The syndics forbade all such miracles in time to come.

There came yet another edifying discovery. It was an immemorial belief at Geneva that the bodies of St. Nazaire, St. Celsus, and St. Pantaleon reposed beneath the high altar of St. Gervais. Indeed, the fact could not be doubted, for had not the worthy saints been heard singing and talking together on Christmas Eve and similar occasions? But in an evil hour for this belief the altar was overturned, and the too curious eyes of Protestants peered beneath its foundation-stones. They found not Nazaire and his two venerable companions; they saw, instead, a curious mechanism in the rock, not unlike the pipes of an organ, with several vessels of water, so placed that their contents could be forced through the narrow tubes, making a hollow sound, not unlike the voices of men singing or conversing in the bowels of the earth. The Genevans were hardly in circumstances to make merry; nevertheless, the idea that the saints should amuse themselves below ground by playing upon musical glasses seemed so very odd, that it raised a laugh among the citizens, in which, however, the monks did not join. This little town on the shores of the Leman had the distinction of possessing the brain of St. Peter, which lay usually upon the high altar. It was examined and pronounced to be a piece of pumice-stone. Again the monks looked grave, while smiles mantled every face around them. The spiritual treasury of the little town was further enriched with the arm of St. Anthony. The living arm had done valorous deeds, but the dead arm seemed to possess even greater power; but, alas! for the relic and for those who had kissed and worshipped it, and especially those who had profired so largely by the homage paid it, it was found, when taken from its shrine, to be not a human arm at all, but part of a stag. Again there were curling lips and mocking eyes. 14 Nor did this exhaust the list of discoveries.

Curious little creatures, with livid points of fire glowing on their bodies, would be seen moving about, at “dewy eve,” in the churchyards or in the cathedral aisles. What could they be? These, said the priests, are souls from purgatory. They have been permitted to revisit “the pale glimpses of the moon” to excite in their behalf the compassion of the living. Hasten with your alms, that your mothers, fathers, husbands may not have to return to the torments from which they have just made their escape. The appearance of these mysterious creatures was the unfailing signal of another golden shower which was about to descend on the priests. But, said the Genevans, before bestowing more masses, let us look a little more closely at these visitors. We never saw anything that more nearly resembled crabs with candles attached to them than these souls from purgatory. Ah, yes! the purgatory from which they have come, we shrewdly suspect, is not the blazing furnace below the earth, but the cool lake beside the city; we shall restore them to their former abode, said they, casting them into the water. There came no more souls with flambeaux to solicit the charity of the Genevans. 15

CHAPTER 9.

ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM IN GENEVA.

Symbol of St. Francis — Monstrous Figure in the Dominican Convent — Mass Forbidden by the Council — Interview of Syndics with the Canons, etc. — Edict of the Reformation — Wrath of the Duke of Savoy — Blockades Geneva — Friburg Breaks its Treaty with Geneva — Bern also Forsakes it — The City nearly Taken — Successful Sorties of the Besieged — Bern comes to the Help of the Genevans — The Savoyard Army Retreats — The Duke Deprived of his Kingdom by Francis I. — Geneva Completes its Reformation — Farel and the Council — Sermons — Social Regulations — School — Oath of the Citizens — City Motto — Tablet of Brass — Greatness of the Victory.

PICTURE: View of Friburg PICTURE: Interior of the Cathedral of Geneva THERE came discoveries of another kind to crown with confusion the falling system. In the Convent of the Cordeliers de la Rive a tablet was discovered on which St., Francis of Assisi, the patriarch of the order, was represented under the figure of a great vine, with numerous boughs running out from it in the form of Cordeliers, and having underneath the inscription, “John 15:1: I am the vine, ye are the branches.” 1 This showed a faculty for exegesis of a very extraordinary kind. The schoolmen might have relished it as ingenious: the Genevans, who had begun to love the simplicity of the Scriptures, condemned it as blasphemous.

It was not a little curious that at that same hour, when the Papacy was tottering to its fall in Geneva, another tablet, also highly suggestive, should have been drawn from the darkness in the Convent of the Dominicans. It represented a monster, with seven heads and ten horns, in the act of being delivered of a horrible brood of Popes, cardinals, and monks, which were being dropped into a huge cauldron, round which flames circled and devils danced. Underneath was a prophecy in Latin rhyme, to the effect that the hour was approaching when God would destroy the power and glory of Rome and cause its name to perish. The picture was in all likelihood made by Jacques Jaqueri, of the city of Turin, in the year 1401. He is supposed to have been a Waldensian, who probably had had to do penance in the Inquisition for this exercise of his art, and hence the fact that the picture was found in one of the convents of the Dominicans, the order to which, as is well known, this department of the Church’s work had been assigned. The hour was now fully come. The enormities of the Genevan priesthood had first awakened indignation against the Papacy; subsequent revelations of the cheats to which the system had stooped to uphold itself, had intensified that indignation; but it was the preaching of Farel and his companions that planted the Reformation — that is, converted the movement from one of destruction to one of restitution. On the 10th of August, 1535, the Council of Two Hundred assembled to take into consideration the matter of religion. 3 Farel, Viret, and many of the citizens appeared before it. With characteristic eloquence Farel addressed the Council, urging it no longer to delay, but to proclaim as the religion of Geneva that same system of truth which so great a majority of the Genevans already professed. He offered, for himself and his colleagues, to submit to death, provided the priests could show that in the public disputation, or in their sermons, he and his brethren had advanced anything contrary to the Word of God. After long discussion the Council saw fit to lay its commands on both parties. The Protestants were forbidden to destroy any more images, and were considered as bound to restore those they had already displaced, whenever the priests should prove from Holy Scripture that images were worthy objects of religious veneration. The Roman Catholics, on their part, were enjoined to cease from the celebration of mass until the Council should otherwise ordain. So stood the matter on the 10th of August. The step was a small one, but the gain remained with the Reformation.

Two days after, the Council summoned before them the Cordeliers, the Dominicans, and the Augustines, and having read to them a summary of the disputation held in the city a few days previously, they asked them what they had to say to it. They answered, one after the other, that they had nothing to object. The Council next offered that, provided they made good the truth of their dogmas and the lawfulness of their worship from the Word of God, their Church should be re-established in its former glory.

They declined the challenge, and submitted themselves to the Council, praying to be permitted to live as their ancestors in times past had lived. The same day after dinner three syndics and two councillors, by appointment of the Senate, waited on the grand-vicar of the bishop, the canons, and the parochial cures. Briefly recounting the religious conflicts which had disturbed the city these ten years past, they made the same offer to them which they had made to the monks in the morning. But the prospect of rendering Romanism once more supreme in Geneva, could not tempt them to do battle for their faith; they had no desire, they said, to hear any more sermons from Farel; nor, indeed, could they dispute on religions matters without leave from their bishop. They craved only to be permitted to exercise their religion without restraint. The deputation announced to them the order of Council that they should cease to say mass, and then retired. From that day mass ceased to be said in the churches and convents, and on the 27th of August a general edict was issued, enjoining public worship to be conducted according to the rules of the Gospel, and prohibiting all “acts of Popish idolatry.” From that day forward Farel and his two colleagues preached, dispensed the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, celebrated marriages, and performed all other religious acts freely. 6 The monastery of La Rive was converted into a public school, and the convent of St. Claire into an hospital. The goods of the Church, and of the religious houses, due provision having been made for existing incumbents, were applied to the maintenance of the Protestant clergy, of schools, and of the poor. The priests, monks, and nuns were very courteously treated. It was entirely in their own choice to remain within the city or to leave it. The nuns of St. Claire, whom Sister Jussie’s narrative has made famous, chose to withdraw to Anneci. They had been haunted by the terrible idea of being compelled to marry, and thought it better to “flee temptation” than remain in Geneva. Some of the sisters had not been outside the walls of their convent for thirty years. To them, every sight and sound of the country was strange; and it is impossible to withhold a smile in perusing Ruchat’s account of their journey, and thinking of the terrors into which the good sisters were thrown at the sight of the sheep and oxen in the fields, which they mistook for lions and bears. From the 27th of August, 1535, the Popish faith ceased to be the religion of Geneva. But the victory, though great, did not terminate the war, or justify the Genevans in thinking that they had placed their liberties on an impregnable basis. On the contrary, never, apparently, had they been in greater danger than now, for the step of proclaiming themselves Protestant had filled up their cup in the eyes of their enemies. The duke, roused to fury by this daring affront on the part of a city that had scarcely a soldier to defend it, and that was without an ally in Europe, resolved to make this handful of burghers repent of their madness. He would concentrate all his power in one terrible blow, and crush a heresy that was so full of insolence and rebellion in the ruins of the city in which it had found a seat. He blockaded Geneva on the land side by his army, and on the side of the lake by his galleys. The gates that would not open to his soldiers must open to famine, and he would see how long these haughty burghers would hold fast their heresy and rebellion when they had not bread to eat. And, in sooth, the prospects of the little city seemed desperate. The blockade was so strict that it was hardly possible to bring in any provisions, and no one could go or come but at the risk of being waylaid and killed. The bare and blackened zone outside the city walls, so recently a rich girdle of stately villa and flourishing garden, was but too exact an emblem of its political nakedness, now entirely without allies. Even Bern, in this, the hour of Geneva’s sorest need, stood afar off. Every day the stock of provisions in the beleaguered city was growing less. The citizens could count the hours when gaunt famine would sit at every board, and one by one they would drop and die. Well, so be it! They would leave the duke to vanquish Geneva when, from a city of patriots, it had become a city of corpses.

This was the illustrious triumph they would prepare for him. Their resolve was as unalterable as ever. Be it a nation or be it an individual, every truly great and noble career must have its commencement in an act of self-sacrifice. It was out of this dark night that the glorious day of Geneva sprang.

The Genevans found a messenger expert enough to escape detection and carry tidings to Bern. The powerful Bern, at ease as regarded its own safety, listened in philosophic calmness to the tale of Geneva’s perils, 9 but after some days it thought right to interfere so far in behalf of its former companion in the battles of liberty and religion as to open negotiations with the duke. The duke was willing to receive any number of protocols, provided only the Bernese did not send soldiers. While their Lordships of Bern were negotiating, famine and the duke were steadily advancing upon the doomed city. But now it happened that the Bernese were themselves touched, and their eyes opened somewhat roughly to the duke’s treachery and the folly of longer indulging in the pastime of negotiation. The Lord of Savoy had taken the Chatelain of Muss, a titled freebooter, into his service. The Chatelain, with his band of desperadoes, made an irruption into the districts of Orbe, Grandson, and Echelous, which were the common property of Bern and Friburg, and spoiled them in the duke’s name. Bern hesitated no longer. She declared war against the Duke of Savoy, thinking it better to fight him at Geneva than wait till he had come nearer to her own gates. Having at length resolved to act, Bern, it must be confessed, did so with vigor. On the 13th of January, 1536, the Council came to the resolution of declaring war. The following day they sent notice of their determination to the Swiss cantons, praying them to unite their arms with theirs in what, beyond question, was the common cause of the Confederacy, the repulsion of a foreign tyranny. On the 16th they issued their proclamation of war; on the 22nd their army of 6,000 began their march. They gave its command to Jean Franqois Naeguli, who had served with honor in the wars in Italy. On the 2nd of February the Bernese army arrived at the gates of Geneva. 11 The joy their appearance caused and the welcome accorded them may be easily imagined.

Meanwhile the dangers within and outside Geneva had thickened. Despite the necessities of the citizens, certain rich men kept their granaries closed.

This led to disorders. On the 14th of January the Council assumed possession of these stores, and opened them to the public, at the same time fixing the price at which the corn was to be sold, and so too did they as regarded the wine and other necessaries. The dangers outside were not so much in the control of the Council.

The Savoyard army had resolved to attempt scaling the walls, the same night, at three points. The assault was made between nine and ten. One party advanced on the side of St. Gervais, where the city was defended only by a palisade and ditch; the others made their attempt on that of the Rive and St. Victor. The latter, having crossed the ditch, were now at the foot of the wall with their ladders, but the Genevans, appearing on the top, courageously repelled them, and forced them to retire. On the 16th of January came the good news, by two heralds, that Bern had declared war in their behalf, this re-animated the Genevans; though weakened by famine they made four sorties on the besiegers. In one of these, 300 Genevans engaged double that number of Savoyards. The duke’s soldiers were beaten. First the duke’s cavalry gallopped off the field, then the infantry lost courage and fled. Of the Savoyards 120 were slain and four taken prisoners. The Genevans did not lose a man; one of their number only was hurt by the falling of his horse, which was killed under him. This was only the beginning of disasters to the duke’s army. A few days thereafter, the Bernese warriors, who had continued their march, despite that the five Popish Cantons had by deputy commanded them to stop, appeared before Geneva. They rested not more than a single day, when they set out in search of the enemy. The Savoyard army was already in full retreat upon Chambery. The Bernese pushed on, but the foe fled faster than they could pursue. And now came tidings that convinced the men of Bern that the farther prosecution of the expedition was needless. Enemies had started up on every side of the duke, and a whole Iliad of woes suddenly overtook him. Among others, the King of France chose this moment to declare war against him. Francis I. had many grudges to satisfy, but what mainly moved him at this time against the duke was his desire to have a road to Milan and Italy. Accordingly, he moved his army into Savoy, wrested from the duke Chambery, the cradle of his house, chased him across the Alps, and, not permitting him to rest even at Turin, took possession of his capital. Thinking to seize the little territory of Geneva, the duke had lost his kingdoms of Savoy and Piedmont. he retired to Vercelli, where, after seventeen years of humiliation and exile, he died. How many tragedies are wrapped up in the great tragedy of the sixteenth century!

The duke off the scene, the movement at Geneva now resumed its march.

The edict of the 27th August, 1535, which had dropped somewhat out of sight amid sieges and battles, and the turmoil of war, came again to the front. That edict proclaimed Protestantism as the religion of Geneva. But Farel did not deceive himself with the fiction that the decree which proclaimed Geneva Protestant had really made it so. The seat of religion, he well knew, is the hearts and understandings of a people, not the edicts of a statute-book; and the great task of making the people really Protestant was yet to be done. There were in Geneva a goodly number who loved the Gospel for its own sake, and it was the strength of these men which had carried them through in their great struggle; but the crown had yet to be put upon the work by making the lives, as well as the profession, of the people Protestant.

This great labor was undertaken jointly by Farel and by the Council. The temporal and spiritual powers, yoked together, drew lovingly the car of the Reform, and both having one aim — the highest well-being of the people— neither raised those questions of jurisdiction, or felt those rivalries and jealousies, which subsequent times so plentifully produced.

There is a time to set landmarks, and there is a time to remove them.

Farel, occupying the pulpit, sent forth those expositions of the Reformed doctrine which were fitted to instruct the understandings and guide the consciences of the Genevans: while the Council in the Senate-house framed those laws which were intended to restrain the excesses and disorders into which the energetic and headstrong natures of the citizens were apt to impel them. This, all will admit, was a tolerably fair division of the labor.

Farel’s teaching laid a moral basis for the Council, and the Council’s authority strengthened Farel, and opened the way for his teachings to reach their moral and spiritual ends. A close examination of the matter, especially under the lights of modern science, may, it is true, result in disclosing instances in which the Council did the work of Farel, and Farel did the work of the Council; but we ought to bear in mind that modern society was then in its infancy; that toleration was only in its dawn; and that punctiliousness would have marred the work, and left Geneva a chaos.

Not only was the standard of Protestantism displayed in the August preceding again raised aloft, but the moral and social regulations which had accompanied it, in order to render it a life as well as a creed, were brought into the foreground. There never was a class of men who showed themselves more anxious to join a moral with a doctrinal Reformation than the Reformers of the sixteenth century. The separation which at times has been seen between the two is the error of a later age. Re-entering this path, the first labor of the Council and Farel was to establish a perfect concord and unity among the citizens. Of those even who were with the Reform, and had fought side by side against the duke, there were two parties — the zealous and the lukewarm. Hates and mutual reproaches divided them. On the 6th of February, 1536, the Council-General — that is, the whole body of the citizens — assembled, and passed an edict, promising by oath to forget all past injuries, to cease from mutual recriminations, to live henceforward in good brotherhood, and submit themselves to the Syndics and Council. Next came the matter of public worship, The number, place, and time of the sermons were fixed. Four ministers and two deacons were selected to preach on the appointed days. Moderate stipends were assigned them from the ecclesiastical property. The Sunday was to be religiously observed, and all the shops strictly closed. On that day, besides the other services, there was to be sermon at four in the morning, for the convenience of servants. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was to be dispensed four times in the year. Baptisms were to take place only in the church at the hours of public worship. Marriage might be celebrated any day, but the ceremony must be in public, and after three several notifications of it. Last of all came the rules for the reformation of manners. Since the beginning of the century Geneva had been, in fact, a camp, and its manners had become more than rough. It was necessary, in the interests of morality, and of liberty not less, to put a curb upon the wild license of former days. They had banished the duke, they must banish the old Geneva. The magistrates forbade games of chance, oaths and blasphemies, dances and lascivious songs, and the farces and masquerades in which the people had been wont to indulge. They enjoined all persons to attend the sermons, and other exercises of religion, and to retire to their homes at nine o’clock at night. They specially commanded the masters of hotels and cabarets to see that their guests observed these regulations. That no one might plead ignorance, these rules were frequently proclaimed by sound of trumpet.

The education of the youth of the State was an object of special care to the magistrates, who desired that they should be early grounded in the principles of virtue and piety, as well as in a knowledge of the classical tongues, and the belles lettres. For this end they erected a school or academy, with competent professors, to whom they gave suitable salaries.

There was a school in Geneva in Popish times, but it was so badly managed that it accomplished nothing for the interests of education. The Council-General, by a decree of May 21st, 1536, established a new seminary in the convent of the Cordeliers on the Rive, and appointed as headmaster Antony Saunier, the countryman and friend of Farel. The latter sought, in divers places, for learned men willing to be teachers in this school. On the same 21st of May there was witnessed a solemn sight at Geneva.

The whole body of the citizens, the magistrates and ministers at their head, assembled in the Cathedral of St. Peter, and with uplifted hands swore to renounce the doctrine of the Roman Church, the mass and all that depends upon it, and to live according to the laws of the Gospel. This national vow included the regulations we have just enumerated, which were regarded as necessary deductions from the great Christian law.

Soon after this Farel composed, in conjunction with Calvin, who by this time had joined him, a brief and simple Confession of Faith, in twenty-one articles, 17 which was sworn to by all the citizens of the State, who appeared before the Council in relays of tens, and had the oath administered to them. This was in the November following. To mark the laying of the foundations of their Protestant State, and the new age therewith introduced, the Genevans struck a new coin and adopted a new motto for their city. In the times of paganism, being worshippers of the sun, they had taken that luminary as their symbol.

Latterly, retaining the radical idea in their symbol, they had modified and enlarged it into the following motto: Post tenebras spero lucem — i.e., “After the darkness I hope for the light:” words which look like an unconscious prophecy of a time of knowledge and truth in the future.

Having established their Reformation, the Genevans changed their motto once more.

Post tenebras lucem — ”After darkness, light” — was the device stamped on the new money of the State, as if to intimate that the light they looked for was now come. Finally, as an enduring monument of this great event, the citizens placed a tablet of brass in front of the Town-house, with the following inscription engraven on it: — Quum Anno M. D. Xxxv.

Profligata Romani Antichristi Tyrannide, Abrogatisque Ejus Superstitionibus Sacrosancta Christi Religio Hic In Suam Puritatem Ecclesia In Melioirem Ordinem Slngulari Dei Beneficio Reposita; Et Simul Pulsis Fugatisque Hostibus, Urbs Ipsa In Suam Libertatem Non Sine Insigni Miraculo Restituta Fuerit:

Senatus Populusque Genevensis Monumentum Hoc Perpeture Memoriae Fieri, Atque Hoc Loco Erigi Curavit:

Quo Suam Erga Deum Gratitudi- Nem Ad Posteros Testatam Faceret. Never did more modest tablet record greater victory. That victory was too great, in truth, to be represented by any monument of marble. No pomp of words, no magnificence of art, could express its value. Protestantism, now planted on this spot, which the struggles, the blood, and the prayers of believing men had won for it in the midst of Christendom, rising aloft in its own majesty, and shining by its own splendor, must be its own monument; or, if other memorial it is to have, it must be just such simple record of accomplished facts as this tablet contains.

But, in truth, when the Genevans placed their memorial-stone in the front of their Senate-house, they did not know half the worth of the victory they had won. No man, at that day, could even guess at the many brilliant triumphs which lay folded up in this one triumph. It required a century to evolve them. What is it that the men of Geneva have done, according to their own account? They have rescued a little city from tyranny and superstition, and consecrated it to liberty and pure Christianity. This does not seem much. Had it been a great throne, or a powerful realm, it would have been something; but a third-rate town, with only a few leagues of territory, what is that? Besides, Geneva may be lost to-morrow. May not Spain and France come in any hour and extinguish its liberties? They believe they may, and they make the attempt, but only to find that while their armies are melting away, and their empires dissolving, the sway of the little Protestant town is every year widening. Very diminutive is the spot; but the beacon-light does not need a continent for a pedestal; a little rock will do; and while the winds howl and the billows shake their angry crests, and roll their thundering surges around its base, its ray still burns aloft, and streaming far and wide over the waves, pierces the black night, and guides the bark of the mariner. What was it the ancient sage demanded in order to be able to move the world? Only a fixed point. Geneva was that fixed point. We shall see it in the course of time become the material basis of a great moral empire.

CHAPTER 10.

CALVIN ENTERS GENEVA — ITS CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL CONSTITUTION.

Calvin at the Gates of Geneva — Farel Told — Meeting of Farel and Calvin — Is this the Author of the Institutes?—Adjuration — Calvin Remains in Geneva — Commences as Lecturer in the Cathedral — His Confession of Faith — Excommunication — What is it? — Morality the Corner-stone of the New State — Civil Constitution of the Republic — The Council-General — The Council of Two Hundred — The Council of Twenty-five — The Syndics — The Consistory or Church-Court — Distinction between the Civil and Ecclesiastical Powers — Calvin’s Ideas on the Relations between Church and State — Guizot’s Testimony — Calvin’s Ideal in Advance of his Age.

PICTURE: The Genevans Swearing their Renunciation of Romanism ONE day, towards the end of August, 1536, a stranger, of slender figure and pale face, presented himself at the gates of Geneva. There was nothing to distinguish him from the crowds of exiles who were then arriving almost daily at the same gates, except it might be the greater brightness that burned in his eye. He had come to rest only for a night, and depart on the morrow. But as he traversed the streets on his way to his hotel, a former acquaintance — Du Tillet, say some; Caroli, say others — recognised him, and instantly hurried off to tell Farel that Calvin was in Geneva.

When, nearly a year ago, we parted with Calvin, he was on his way across the Alps to visit Renee, the daughter of Louis XII. of France, and wife of Hercules d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. “He entered Italy,” as he himself said, “only to leave it,” 1 though not till he had confirmed the illustrious princess, at whose court he sojourned, in her attachment to the Protestant faith, in which, despite the many and peculiar trials to which her constancy exposed her, she steadfastly continued to her life’s end. His eldest brother dying, Calvin recrossed the mountains, on a hasty journey to his birthplace, most probably to arrange the family affairs, 2 and leave Noyon for ever. Where shall he next go?. The remembrance of the studious days he had passed at Basle returned to him with irresistibly attractive force, and now, accompanied by his brother Antoine, and his sister Maria, 3 he was on his way to his former retreat; but the direct road through Lorraine was blocked up by the armies of Charles V., and this compelled him to make a detour by Switzerland, which brought him to the gates of Geneva.

With startled but thankful surprise Farel received the news that the author of the Christian Institutes was in the city. God, he thought, had sent, at a critical moment, the man of all others whom he most wished to associate with himself in the work of reforming Geneva.

Farel had begun to feel the difficulty of the task he had in hand. To break this people from their habits of lawless indulgence, nurtured by the contests in which they had won their liberty, would indeed be no easy matter. They would spurn all attempts to coerce them, and yield only to the force of a stronger will, and the sway of a loftier genius. Besides, the highest organising skill was demanded in the man who should set up a moral tribunal in the midst of this licentious city, and found on this unpromising spot an empire which should pervade with its regenerating spirit nations afar off, and generations yet unborn. Believing that he had found in Calvin one who possessed all these great qualities, Farel was already on his way to visit him.

Farel now stands before the author of the Institutes. He beholds a man of small stature and sickly mien. Were these the shoulders on which he should lay a burden which would have tasked the strength of Atlas himself? We can well believe that Farel experienced some moments of painful misgivings. To reassure himself he had to recall to mind, doubtless, the profound wisdom, the calm strength, and the sublimity of principle displayed on every page of the Institutes. That was the real Calvin. Now Farel began to press his suit. He was here combating alone. He had to do daily battle against an atrocious tyranny outside the city, and against a licentious Libertinism within it. Come, he said to the young Reformer, and be my comrade in the campaign.

Calvin’s reply was a refusal. His constructive and practical genius was then unknown even to himself. His sphere, he believed, was his library; his proper instrument of work, his pen; and to cast himself into a scene like that before him was, he believed, to extinguish himself. Panting to be at Basle or at Strasburg, where speaking from the sanctuary of a studious and laborious privacy, he could edify all the Churches, he earnestly besought Farel to stand aside and let him go on his way.

But Ferel would not stand aside. Putting on something of the authority of an ancient prophet, he commanded the young traveler to remain and labor in Geneva, and he imprecated upon his studies the curse of God, should he make them the pretext for declining the call now addressed to him. 4 It was the voice not of Farel, but of God, that now spoke to Calvin; so he felt; and instantly he obeyed. He loved, in after-life, to recall that, “fearful adjuration,” which was, he would say, “as if God from on high had stretched out his hand to stop me.” Calvin’s journey was now at an end. He had reached the spot where his life’s work was to be done. Here, in this grey city, clinging to its narrow rocky site, the calm lake at its feet, and the glories of the distant mountains in its sky, was he for twenty-eight years to toil and wage battle, and endure defeat, but to keep marching on through toil and defeat, to more glorious victory in the end than warrior ever won with his sword, and then he would fall on sleep, and rest by the banks of that river whose “arrowy” stream he had crossed but a few minutes before, he gave his hand to Farel, and in doing so he gave himself to Geneva.

If the destiny of Calvin was from that moment changed; if from a student he became a legislator and leader; if from being a soldier in the ranks he became generalissimo of the armies of Protestantism, not less was the destiny of Geneva from that moment changed. Calvin had already written a book that constituted an epoch in Protestantism, but he was to write it a second time; though not with pen and ink. He would display before all Christendom the Institutes, not as a volume of doctrines, but as a system of realised facts — a State rescued from the charnel-house of corruption, and raised to the glorious heritage of liberty and virtue — glorious in art, in letters, and in riches, because resplendent with every Christian virtue. To write Protestantism upon their banners, to proclaim it in their edicts, to install it as a worship in their Churches, Calvin and all the Reformers held to be but a small affair; what they strove above all things to achieve was to plant it as an operative moral force in the hearts of men, and at the foundations of States.

Calvin was now at the age of twenty-seven. The magistrates of Geneva welcomed him, but with a cautious reserve, if we may judge from the first mention of his name in the registers of the city, about a fortnight after his arrival, as “that Frenchman!” He was appointed to give lectures on the Scriptures, and to preach. 6 Beza styles him “doctor or professor of sacred letters,” but as yet no academy existed, and his prelections were delivered in the cathedral. As regards the latter function, that of preacher, it was some time before Calvin would assume it. When at length he appeared in the pulpit as pastor, he spoke with an eloquence so simple and clear, yet so majestic and luminous, that his audiences continued daily to grow. He had already done a winter’s work, but had received scarcely any wages, for we read in the Council Registers, under date February 13th, 1537: “Six gold crowns are given to Cauvin or Calvin, seeing that he has hitherto scarcely received anything.” It was not long till Calvin’s rare genius for system and organisation began to display itself. Within three months from the commencement of his labors in Geneva, he had, in conjunction with Farel, compiled a brief but comprehensive creed, setting forth the leading doctrines of the Christian faith. To this he added a Catechism, 8 not that, in question and answer, for children, which we now possess, but one adapted to adults. The Genevans, with uplifted hands, had embraced Protestantism: Calvin would show them what that Protestantism was which they had professed, and what were the moral duties which it demanded of all its adherents. The Genevans had lifted up their hands: had they bowed their hearts? This was the main question with him. He had no trust in blind obedience.

Knowledge must be the corner-stone of the new State, the foundations of which he was now laying.

We can give here only the briefest outline of this Confession of Faith.

Placing the Word of God in the foreground, as the one infallible authority, and the one and sole rule, it proceeds, in twenty-one articles, to declare what Scripture teaches, touching God, and the plan of redemption which he has provided for man fallen and helpless. It proclaims Christ the one channel of all blessing; the Spirit, the one Author of all good works; faith, “the entrance to all these riches;” and then goes on to speak of the apparatus set up for offering redemption to men, the Sacraments and ministers. Then follow articles on the Church, “comprehending the whole body of true believers;” on excommunication, or the exclusion from the Church of all manifestly unholy and vicious persons, till they shall have repented; and, in fine, on magistracy, “an ordinance of God,” and to be respected “in all ordinances that do not contravene the commandments of God.” On the 10th of November, 1536, this Confession was received and approved of by the Council of Two Hundred. To the half-Protestantised citizens of Geneva the sting of this document was in the end of it — ex-communication. The other articles had simply to be professed, this one was heavier than them all, inasmuch as it had to be borne. What did this power import? Was the Protestant excommunication but the Papal anathema under another name? Far from it. It carried with it no cruel infliction. It operated in no preternatural or mystic manner, inflicting blight upon the soul. It did not even pronounce on the state of the man before God. It simply found that his life was manifestly unholy, and, therefore, that he was unfit for a holy society, and in token of his exclusion it withheld from him the Sacraments. No society can exist without laws or rules; but of what use are laws without an executive or tribunal to administer them? and without the right of inflicting penalties, a tribunal would be powerless; and a lighter penalty than “excommunication” or expulsion it would be impossible to conceive or devise. Without this power the Church in Geneva would have been a city without walls and bulwarks; it would have been dissolved the moment it was formed.

It is necessary at this stage to refer to the Constitution — civil and ecclesiastical — of Geneva, in order that the course of affairs may be clearly intelligible. The fundamental principle of the State was, that the people are the source of power. In accordance therewith came, first, a Convention of all the citizens, termed the Council-General.

This was the supreme authority. To obviate the confusion and turbulence incident to so large an assembly, a Council of Two Hundred was chosen, termed the Great Council. 10 Next came the Little, or ordinary Council, consisting of twenty-five members, including the four Syndics of the city.

This last, the Council of Twenty-five, was the executive, and possessed moreover a large share of the judicial and legislative power. The constitutional machinery we have described in detail was popularly summed up thus — thePEOPLE, theCOUNCIL, andSENATE of Geneva.

The Council-General — that is, the People — was convoked only once a year, in November, to elect the four Syndics. Besides this annual assembly, it met on important emergencies, or when fundamental changes were to be determined upon, and then only. The actual government of the State was mainly in the hands of the Council of Twenty-five, which was by constitution largely oligarchical. Such was the republic when Calvin became a member of it.

With Protestantism there arrived a new power in Geneva — the religious, namely — and we complete our picture of the government of the little State when we describe the provision made for the exercise of the ecclesiastical authority. The court or tribunal which took cognisance of Church scandals was the Consistory. The Consistory was composed of the five ministers of the city and twelve laymen. 11 It met every Thursday, and the highest penalty it had power to inflict was excommunication, by which is meant expulsion from the Church. If this failed to reclaim the offender, the Consistory had the right to report the case to the Council, and require it to proceed therein according to the laws.

In judging of this arrangement time and circumstances are to be taken into account. The course of affairs at Geneva inevitably tended to graft the ecclesiastical upon the civil government, and to some extent to build up the two in one. It was Protestantism that had called Geneva into existence as a free State. Protestantism was its soul, the center and citadel of its liberties, and whatever tended to weaken or overthrow that principle tended equally to the ruin of the republic. Encompassed on all sides by powerful enemies, this one principle was the bond of their union and the shield of their freedom; and this went far to impart, in many cases, a two-fold character to the same action, and to justify the Church in regarding certain acts as sins, and visiting them with her censures, while the State viewed the same acts as crimes, and meted out to them its punishments.

Calvin took the Jewish theocracyas his model when he set to work to frame, or rather to complete, the General Republic. What we see on the banks of the Leman is a theocracy; Jehovah was its head, the Bible was its supreme code, and the government exercised a presiding and paternal guardianship over all interests and causes, civil and spiritual. Geneva, in this respect, was a reproduction of the Old Testament state of society. We of the nineteenth century regard this as a grave error. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that Calvin grasped the essential distinction between things civil and things ecclesiastical, and the necessity of placing the two under distinct jurisdictions or powers. But his theocratic views produced a dinmess and confusion in his ideas on that head, and he was more successful in settling the just limits of the ecclesiastical authority, than he was in defining those of the civil jurisdiction. He would not allow a particle of civil power to the Consistory, but he was not equally careful to withhold ecclesiastical power from the Council. This error arose from his making the Old Testament a model on a point which, we believe, was temporary and local, not permanent and universal. Nevertheless, the Reformer of Geneva stood ahead in this great question of all his predecessors. We may quote here the words of a great statesman, and a countryman of Calvin’s, who has done justice to the Reformer on this point. “A principle,” says Guizot, “we should rather say a passion, held sway in Calvin’s heart, and was his guiding star in the permanent organisation of the Church which he founded, as well as in his personal conduct during his life. That principle is the profound distinction between the civil and the religious community. Distinction, we say, and by no means separation. Calvin, on the contrary, desired alliance between the two communities and the two powers, but each to be independent in its own domain, combining their action, showing mutual respect, and lending mutual support ..... In this principle and this fundamental labor,” continues the historian, “there are two new and bold reforms attempted in the very heart of the great Reformation of Europe, and over and above the work of its first promoters.” in proof, Guizot goes on to instance England, where the “royal supremacy” was accepted; Switzerland, where the Council of State held the sovereign authority in matters of religion; and Germany, where the magistrate was the chief bishop; and continues: “In this great question as to the relations between Church and State, Calvin desired and did more, than his predecessors .... in spite of the resistance often showed him by the civil magistrates, in spite of the concessions he was sometimes obliged to make to them, he firruly maintained this principle, and he secured to the Reformed Church of Geneva, in purely religious questions and affairs, the right of self-government, according to the faith and the law as they stand written in the Holy Books.” In this statement of facts, Guizot is undoubtedly correct. Only we think that he is mistaken in believing that it was the Church of Rome, and the “independence of its head,” which taught the Reformer the “strength and dignity” conferred on the Church by having “an existence distinct from the civil community.” Calvin learned the idea from a Diviner source. Nor was he quite so successful in extricating the spiritual from the civil jurisdiction, either in idea or in reality, as Guizot appears to think. As regarded the idea, he was embarrassed by the Old Testament theocracy, which he took to be a Divine model for all times; and as regarded the actuality, the opposition which he encountered from the civil authority at Geneva made it impossible for hint to realize his idea so fully as he wished to do. But it is only justice to bear in mind that his ideal was far in advance of his age, as Guizot has said.

CHAPTER 11.

SUMPTUARY LAWS — CALVIN AND FAREL BANISHED.

Geneva Stands or Falls with its Morality — Code of Morals — Dances, etc. — The Sumptuary Laws Earlier than Calvin’s Time — Rise of the Libertine Party — Outcries — Demand for the Abolition of the New Code — The Libertines obtain a Majority in the Council — Bern Interferes adversely — Question of Unleavened BreadsConfusion and Disorders in Geneva — Calvin and Farel Refuse to Dispense the Communion at Easter — Tumult in the Churches — Farel and Calvin Banished by the Council.

PICTURE: Theodore Beza PICTURE: Calvin Threatened in the Church of Rive CALVIN’ S theological code was followed by one of morals. There were few cities in Christendom that had greater need of such a rule than the Geneva of that day. For centuries it had known almost nothing of moral discipline.

The clergy were notoriously profligate, the government was tyrannical, and the people, in consequence, were demoralised. Geneva had but one redeeming trait, the love of liberty. The institutions of learning were neglected, and the manners of the Genevans were as rude as their passions were violent. They revelled, they danced, they played at cards, they fought in the streets, they sung indecent songs, uttered fearful blasphemies; indulged, in short, in all sorts of excesses. It was clear that Protestantism must cleanse the city or leave it. Geneva was nothing unless it was moral; it could not stand a day. This was the task to which Calvin now turned his attention.

This introduces the subject of the sumptuary laws, which were sketched at this time, though not finished till an after-period. The rules now framed forbade games of chance, oaths and blasphemies, dances,1 lascivious songs, farces, and masquerades. The hours of taverners were shortened; every one was to be at home by nine at night, and hotel-keepers were to see that these rules were observed by their guests. To these were added certain regulations with a view of restraining excess in dress and profusion at meals. All were enjoined to attend sermon and the other religious exercises. Even before the time of Calvin, under the Roman Church, most of these practices, and especially dances, had been forbidden under severe penalties. Forty years after his death, under Henry IV. of France, similar edicts were promulgated. 3 The British Government at this day adopts the principle of the Genevan regulations, when it forbids gambling, indecent pictures and plays, and similar immoralities; and if such laws are justifiable now, how much more so in Calvin’s time, when there were scarcely any amusements that were innocent!

The second battle with the citizens proved a harder one than the first with the priests, and the reformation of manners a more difficult task than the reformation of beliefs. The citizens remembered the halcyon days they had enjoyed under their bishop, and contrasted them with the moral restraints imposed upon them by the Consistory. The reproofs which Calvin thundered against their vices from the pulpit were intolerable to many, perhaps to most. The population was a mixed one. Many were still Papists at heart; some were Anabaptists, and others were deeply tainted with that infidel and materialistic philosophy which had been growing quietly up under the shade of the Roman Church. The successful conflict the Genevans had waged for their political independence helped, too, to make them less willing to bow to the Protestant yoke. Was it not enough that they had shed their blood to have the Gospel preached to them? It was mortifying to find that very Protestantism which they had struggled to establish turning round upon them, and weighing them in its scales, and finding them wanting.

Loud and indignant cries were raised against Calvin for neglecting his office. Appointed to be an expositor of Scripture, who made him, asked his calumniators, a censor of morals and a reprover of the citizens?

Religion, in the age gone by, had been too completely dissociated from morality to make the absurdity of this accusation palpable. The Libertines, as the oppositionists began now to be called, demanded the abolition of the new code; they complained especially of the “excommunication.” “What!” said they, “have we put down the Popish confessional only to set up a Protestant one?” and mounting party badges, they wore green flowers in mockery of the other citizens, calling them “brothers in Christ.” 4 The Government began to be intimidated by these clamours. The majority of the citizens being still on the side of the ministers, the Council ventured on issuing an edict, commanding the Libertines to leave the city.

But it had not the courage to enforce its own order; and the Libertines, seeing its weakness, grew every day more insolent. At length the elections in February, 1538, gave a majority in their favor in the Council; three out of the four Syndics were on the side of the Libertines. 5 This turn of affairs placed the pastors in a position of extreme difficulty. They stood in front of a hostile Council, pushed on from behind by a hostile population.

Calvin remained firm. His resolution was taken unalterably to save his principle, come what might to himself. He was determined at all hazards not to give holy things to unholy men; for he saw that with that principle must stand or fall the Reformation in Geneva.

While these intestine convulsions shook the city within, invasion threatened it without. The strifes of the citizens were the signal to their old enemies to renew their attempts to recover Geneva. The inhabitants fortified the walls, cast the superfluous bells into cannon, and placed them upon the ramparts. 6 Alas! this would avail but little, seeing they were all the while pulling down that which was their true defense. With their morality was bound up their Protestantism, and should it depart, not all their stone walls would prevent their becoming once more the prey of Rome.

At this stage the matter was still further embroiled by the interference of Bern. The government of that powerful canton, ambitious of assuming the direction of affairs at Geneva, counselled the Genevese to restore certain ceremonies which had been retained in the Bernese Reformation, but cast off in the Genevan one; among others, holidays, and the use of unleavened bread in the Communion. 7 Calvin and Farel demurred to the course recommended.

The moment the sentiments of the pastors became known, a vehement zeal seized the Libexines to have the Lord’s Supper dispensed with unleavened bread. The Government decided that it should be as the Libertines desired. With Calvin a much greater question was whether the Communion should be given to these persons at all. As Easter approached, the fury of the party increased. They ran through the streets at night voeiferating and yelling. They would stop before the pastors’ houses, calling out, “To the Rhone! to the Rhone!” and would then fire off their arquebuses. They got up a masquerade in which they parodied that very ordinance which their scrupulous consciences would not permit them to receive save with unleavened bread. Frightful confusion prevailed in Geneva. This is attested by eye-witnesses, and by those who had the best opportunities of knowing the truth of what they have narrated. “Popery had indeed been forsworn,” says Beza, “but many had not cast away with it those numerous and disgraceful disorders which had for a long time flourished in the city, given up as it was for so many years to canons and impure priests.” 8 “Nothing was to be heard,” says Reset, “but informations and quarrels between the former and present lords (the old and new members of Council), some being the ringleaders, and others following in their steps, the whole mingled with reproaches about the booty taken in the war, or the spoils carried off from the churches.” 9 “I have lived here,” says Calvin himself, describing those agitations, “engaged in strange contests. I have been saluted in mockery of an evening before my own door, with fifty or sixty shots of arquebuses. You may imagine how that must asteroid a poor scholar, timid as I am, and as I confess I always was.” 10 It was amid these shameful scenes that the day arrived which was to show whether the Libertines backed by the Council, or Calvin supported by his own great principle, would give way.

On the morning of Easter Sunday, 1538, the great bell Clemence rung out its summons, and all the quarters of the city poured out their inhabitants to fill the churches. Farel ascended the pulpit of St. Gervais, Calvin occupied that of St. Peter’s. In the audience before them they could see the Libertines in great force. All was calm on the surface, but a single word might let loose the winds and awake the tempest. Nevertheless they would do their duty. The pastors expounded the nature of the Lord’s Supper; they described the dispositions required in those who would worthily partake of it; and appealing to the disorders which had reigned in the city in the past weeks, in proof that these were not the dispositions of the majority of those now assembled, they concluded by intimating that this day the Holy Supper would not be dispensed. Hereupon, outcries drowned the voice of the preachers. The uproar was specially great in St.

Gervais; swords were unsheathed, and furious men rushed toward the pulpit. Farel waited with his arms crossed. He had long since learned to look on angry faces without trembling. Calvin in St. Peter’s was equally resolute. Sooner should his blood dye the boards he stood upon, than he would be guilty of the profanation demanded of him. “We protest before you all,” he said, “that we are not obstinate about the question of bread, leavened or unleavened; that is a matter of indifference, which is left to the discretion of the Church. If we decline to administer the Lord’s Supper, it is because we are in a great difficulty, which prompts us to this course.”

Farel had borne the brunt of the tempest in the morning, it was to be Calvin’s turn in the evening. On descending to the Church of Rive, the former Convent of St. Francis, near the shores of the lake, he found the place already filled with an assembly, many of whom had brought their swords with them. Whatever apprehensions the young Reformer may have felt, he presented to the assembly, which hung upon the edge of the storm, a calm and fearless front. He had not been more than eighteen months in their city, and yet he had inspired them with an awe greater than that which they felt even for Farel.

These two were men of the same spirit, as of the same office, and yet they were unlike, and the Genevans saw the difference. Farel was the man of oratory, Calvin was the man of power. In what attribute or faculty, or combination of faculties, his power lay, they would have had great difficulty in saying. Certainly it was not in his gestures, nor in his airs, nor in the pomp of his rhetoric, for no one could more sedulously eschew these things; but that he did possess power — calm, inflexible, resistless power — they all knew, for they all felt it. Farel’s invectives and denunciations were terrible; his passion was grand, like the thunderstorms of their own Alps; but there was something in the noise that tempered his severity, and softened his accusations. Calvin never thundered and lightened. Had he done so it would have been a relief; the Genevans would have felt him to be more human and genial — a man of like passions with themselves; at least, of like passions with Farel, whom they regarded with a mixture of love and fear, and whom they could not help half-forgiving, even when he was rousing their anger by his reproaches. But in his terrible calmness, in his passionless reason, Calvin stood apart from, and rose above, all around him — above Farel — even above the Council, whose authority was dwarfed before the moral majesty that seemed to clothe this man. He was among them like an incarnate conscience; his utterances were decrees, just and inflexible, like the laws of heaven themselves. Whence had he come, this mysterious and terrible man? Noyon was his birth-place, but what influences had moulded such a spirit? and what chance was it which had thrown him into their city to hold them in his spell, and rule them as neither bishop, nor duke, nor Pope had been able to rule them?

They would try whether they could not break his yoke. For this end they had brought their swords with them.

The historians who were eye-witnesses of the scene that followed are discreet in their accounts of it. It did not end so tragically as it threatened, and instead of facts that would not redound to the honor of their city, they treat us to felicitations that the affair had no worse a termination. What the words were that evoked the tempest we do not know. It was not necessary that they should be strong, seeing the more violent the more welcome would they be. While Calvin is preaching we see a dark frown pass suddenly over the faces of the assembly. Instantly there come shouts and outcries; a moment after, the clatter of weapons being hastily unsheathed salutes our ears; the next, we are dazzled by the gleam of naked swords. The tempest has burst with tropical suddenness and violence. The infuriated men, waving their weapons in the face of the preacher, press forward to the pulpit. One single stroke and Calvin’s career would have been ended, and not his only — with him would have ended the career of Geneva as the new foothold of the Reformation. Farel had felt the burden too heavy for him; and had Calvin fallen, we know of no one who could have taken his place. What a triumph for Rome, who would have re-entered Geneva over the mangled corpse of the Reformer!

But what a disaster to Europe, the young day of which would have been quenched in the blackness of a two-fold night — that of a rising atheism, and that of a returning superstition!

But the movement was not fated so to end. He who had scattered the power of emperors and armies when they stood in battle array against the Reformation, stilled the clamours of furious mobs when they rose to extinguish it. The same buckler that covered Luther in the Diet of Worms, was extended over the head of Calvin amid the glittering swords in the Church of Rive. In that assembly were some who were the friends of the Reformer; they hastily threw themselves between the pulpit and the furious men who were pressing forward to strike. This check gave time to the less hostile among Calvin’s foes to recover their senses, and they now remonstrated with the more violent on the crime they were about to commit, and the scandal they would cause if they succeeded in their object. Their anger began to cool; first one and then another put back his sword into its sheath; and after some time calm was restored. Michael Roset, the chronicler and magistrate, who appears to have been present, says, with an evident sense of relief, “The affair passed off without bloodshed ;” and the words of the syndic Guatier, who reckoned its peaceable ending a sort of miracle, show how near it had been to having a very different termination, 11 The Reformer’s friends did not think it prudent to leave him undefended, though the storm seemed to have spent itself. Forming an escort round him, they conducted him to his home.

On the morrow the Council of Two Hundred met, and pronounced sentence of banishment upon the two ministers. This sentence was ratified on the following day by the Council-General or assembly of the people.

On the decision being intimated to Calvin, he replied with dignity, “Had I been the servant of man, I should have received but poor wages; but happy for me it is that I am the servant of him who never fails to give his servants that which he has promised them.” The Council rested its sentence of banishment upon the question of “unleavened bread.” Herein it acted disingenuously. The pastors had protested that the question of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist was with them an open one.

The real ground of banishment is one on which the magistrates of Geneva, for obvious reasons, are silent — namely, the refusal of Farel and Calvin to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, on account of the blasphemies and immoralities indulged in by many of those who demanded admission to the Communion-table. Before being condemned, Calvin asked to be heard in his defense before the Council-General, but his request was refused. It is important to mark, at this stage, that the principle on which the Reformer rested his whole scheme of Church government was — holy things are not to be given to the unholy. This principle he laboured to make inviolable, as being the germ, in the first place, of purity in the Church; and, in the second, of morality and liberty in the State. The principle was, as we have seen, on this its first attempt to assert itself, cast out and trodden under foot of an infidel democracy. That party, in the days of Calvin, was only in its first sprouting; it has since grown to greatness, and put forth its strength on a wider theater, and the world has seen it, particularly in France, pull down and tread into the dust kings and hierarchies. But Calvin’s principle, being Divine, could not perish under the blows now dealt it. It was overborne for the moment, and driven out of Geneva in the persons of its champions; but it lifted itself up again, and, rentering Geneva, was there, fifteen years afterwards, crowned with victory.

CHAPTER 12.

CALVIN AT STRASBURG — ROME DRAWS NEAR TO GENEVA.

Farel at Neuchatel — Calvin at Strasburg — His Labors there — Disorders at Geneva — Calvin’s Poverty — Efforts of Rome to Retake Geneva — Cardinal Sadoleto — His Letter to the Genevans — Who shall Reply to it? — Calvin does so — Rising Tide of the Reformation — Ebb of Romanism — Conference between the Protestants and Romanists at Frankfort — Calvin goes thither — No Fruit of the Conference — Calvin and Melancthon’s Interviews — Calvin’s Confidence in Melancthon — His tender Love for him — Calvin and Luther never Meet — Luther placed amid the Teutonic Peoples, Calvin amid the Latin Nations — Wisdom of this Arrangement.

PICTURE: View in the Alps: the Splugen PICTURE: Cardnial Gaspar Contrini WITH steps slow and sad, and looks cast behind — for it was hard to relinquish all hope of a city on which they had bestowed so much labor — did the two banished ministers pursue their uncertain way. After an ineffectual attempt on the part of Bern and Zurich to compose the quarrel, Farel went to Neuchatel, which became the field of his future labors, and thus he completed the building of which he had laid the foundations in years gone by. Calvin, journeying by way of Basle, and halting awhile in a city which he loved above all others, ultimately repaired to Strasburg, to which he had been earnestly invited by the two pastors of that city, Bucer and Capito. Three years of honorable labor awaited him in Strasburg.

Distinguished foreigners, exiles for the Gospel, gathered round him; the French refugees, said to be about 15,000 in number, forming themselves into a congregation, made him their pastor; and the Town Council, appropriating the Church of the Dominicans to his use, appointed him to give lectures on the Scriptures. His audience was a more erudite and polished one than any Geneva could then furnish, for only through Calvin was Geneva to become learned. The love of Strasburg was as balm to the smitten and wounded heart of the exile. 1 The expulsion of the two ministers did not calm the tempest that raged in the little State on the banks of the Leman. The Council, perhaps to show that they could govern without Calvin, published some new edicts for the reformation of manners; but, alas! moral power had departed with the ministers, and the commands of the magistrates were unheeded. The more distant the retreating steps of Farel and Calvin, the louder grew the disorders in the city they had left. The preachers, Marcourt and Morand, who now occupied the vacated pulpits, were simply objects of contempt. They soon quitted the city in disgust. The Council thought to make the two rectors of the school which Farel had opened for though there were 900 priests there was not a schoolmaster in Geneva — supply their place.

The two teachers rose up and shook the dust from their feet, and the school was closed. The dominant faction had demanded “liberty,” and now, left without either religious guide or secular instructor, they were in a fair way of being as free as their hearts could wish, and eminently pious to boot, if there be truth in the maxim that “ignorance is the mother of devotion. Calvin, in his new sphere at Strasburg, preached four times a week, and discharged all the other duties, private and public, of a faithful pastor. He lectured every day on theological science to the students of the Academy, taking as his text-book the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to the Romans, which he expounded. The fame of his lectures drew students from other countries, and Strasburg promised to rival Wittemberg as a school of theology. 4 The Reformer had asked no salary from the magistrates, and they were in no haste to assign him one, and now he was in deep poverty: He appears to have been still in receipt of a small sum from his paternal inheritance, which he strove to supplement by the sale of his books. Painful it must have been to him to part with these, but he had no alternative, for we find him writing to Farel at this time that he “did not possess a farthing.” The Senate of Strasburg afterwards appointed him a stipend, but so small that it did not suffice for his wants. But we return to Geneva.

Calvin being gone, the Pope now drew near. He had been watching the ripening of the pear for some time, and now he deemed it fit to be plucked.

Cardinal Sadoleto was employed to write a letter to the people of Geneva, which, it was thought, was all that was needed to make them re-enter the old fold. Than Sadoleto no fitter man could have been found for this task.

Having passed his youth at the court of Leo X., he was quite as much a son of the Renaissance as a son of the Church. He overflowed with that mild tolerance which, bred of indifferentism, is sometimes mistaken for true liberality. He could write any number of fine sentiments in the purest Latin. He was of irreproachable life. The Protestants sometimes thought that he was about to become one of themselves. But no: he loved the calm of letters, and the aesthetic delights of art. Above all, he rejoiced in the security and comfort of an infallible Church. It saved the toil of inquiry and the torment of doubt.

His letter “to the Senate and People of Geneva” was such as might have been expected from such a man. He began by protesting his ancient affection for them; he praised their many noble qualities; and he “drowned his page” with his poignant grief at their misfortunes. Alas! that they had suffered themselves to be seduced into Protestantism, which, however, he was good enough to say contained a modicum of truth. And so, tasking the elegance of his pen to the utmost, he coined some glowing compliments in praise of Holy Writ, of Christ as the sole Author of salvation, and of the doctrine of justification by faith. In thus expressing himself, Sadoleto had not the remotest intention of becoming a disciple of the Protestant faith; he was only beckoning back the Genevans to repose beneath the tiara. In an infallible Church only could they find escape from such storms as the exercise of private judgment had let loose upon them.

The letter had the very opposite effect from that which it was expected to produce. It helped to show the men of Geneva the brink to which they were drawing nigh. Are we then, they said to themselves on reading the cardinal’s letter, so near to Rome that the Pontiff believes he has only to open the gates in order that we may come in? Moreover it made them feel the loss they had sustained in the banishment of Calvin; they looked around for a man to reply to Sadoleto, for they felt that his letter must not remain unanswered, but they looked in vain. One name was on every lip as that of the man who alone was adequate to the task of replying, but with the ink not yet dry in which the banishment of the man who bore that name was written, they dared not utter it. This showed, however, that the tide had begun to turn. Calvin meanwhile got a copy of the cardinal’s letter at Strasburg, and without waiting to be asked by the Genevans he answered it forthwith, and in such fashion that Sadoleto made no second attempt of the sort. 5 Calvin’s reply to Sadoleto was the work of six days, and it remains a monument of his genius. He begins by paying a fine compliment to the cardinal’s learning and eloquence, and goes on to express his wonder at the “singular love and goodwill” which Sadoleto, an entire stranger to the people of Geneva, had so suddenly conceived for them, “of which nevertheless no fruit ever appeared.” “If,” continues Calvin, “it was ambition and avarice,” as Sadoleto had hinted, which moved him in separating from Rome, what a blunder had he fallen into! “Certain it is,” said he, “if I had paid regard to my personal advantage, I should never have separated from your faction.” “Was not,” he asks, “our shortest way of attaining to wealth and honours to accept from the first the conditions which you have offered us?” Apostates you call us, says Calvin. “The men of Geneva, extricating themselves from the slough of error in which they were sunk, have returned to the doctrine of the Gospel, and this thou callest abandoning the truth of God. They have withdrawn from Papal tyranny, and this thou sayest is to separate from the Church!” “We contradict the Fathers!” exclaims the Reformer, adverting to another charge the cardinal had brought against the Protestants, “we are more nearly in agreement with antiquity than you our opponents, as thou knowest, Sadoleto, and we ask for nothing else than to see restored that ancient face of the Church which has been torn to pieces and almost destroyed by the Pope and his faction.” And after reminding the cardinal of what his learning made him well acquainted with, namely, the condition of the Church during the days of both the Greek and the Latin Fathers, Calvin asks him, “Wilt thou call that man an enemy of antiquity who, full of zeal for ancient piety, longs to restore in their first splendor the things which are now corrupted? With what right are we accused of having subverted the ancient discipline by the very party that has abolished it?”

With a few strokes Calvin next draws a picture of the state in which the Reformers found the schools and the pulpits: nothing taught in the first but “pure sophistries,” “tangled and twisted scholastic theology,” “a kind of secret magic.” And as for the pulpits, “there were no sermons from which foolish old women did not learn more dreams than they could relate in a month by their own fireside.” Was it a crime to have replaced that rubbish by a theology drawn from the Word of God, and to have silenced the monks by filling the pulpits with preachers of the ancient Gospel?

There follow some noble passages on justification by faith, on Christ’s sole mediatorship, on worship, the Lord’s Supper, the ministry, the Church, and then comes the close, in which the Reformer reproduces, though in a contrary sense, Sadoleto’s prosopopaeia. The cardinal had cited Calvin and his brethren as criminals before the judgment-seat of God.

Calvin obeys this trumpet-summons. He comes to the dread tribunal to which the cardinal had cited him, and he thus pleads: “I saw Christ cast into oblivion, and become unprofitable; what was I to do? I saw the Gospel stifled by superstition; what was I to do? I saw the Divine Word voluntarily ignored and hidden; what was I to do? If he is not ‘to be reputed a traitor who, seeing the soldiers dispersed and scattered, raises the captain’s ensign, rallies them, and restores their order,’ am I a traitor for having raised amid the disbanded Church the old banner of Jesus Christ? For it is not a new and ‘strange ensign which I have unfurled, but thy noble standard, O Lord!’” He adds, with reference to Sadoleto’s taunt that they had broken the peace, “Did they [the Romanists] not most suddenly and furiously betake themselves to the sword and the gibbet?

Did they not think that their sole resource was in arms and cruelty?” They have given us in default of other consecration that of tribulation and of blood. We know what we have done, and in whom we have believed, and “heaven grant, Sadoleto, that thou and thine may one day be able to say as much sincerely.” Thus did Calvin, though banished, continue to cover Geneva with his shield. The writing ran quickly through Europe. Luther read it and was delighted beyond measure with it. His eye at once discerned its freedom, strength, and majesty. “Here,” said he, “is a writing which has hands and feet. I rejoice that God raises up such men. They will continue what I have begun against Antichrist, and by the help of God they will finish it.”

Calvin has now become, or is very soon to become, the center of the movement, whose present position in Christendom is somewhat perilous.

A crisis had arrived in the great conflict between Romanism and Protestantism. It was clear to both parties that the breach that divided them must be healed now, and that if a settlement was much longer delayed the controversy would grow into an embittered and sanguinary war, prolonged from decade to decade, and it might be for a still longer period. During the years that Calvin resided at Strasburg, the Popish and Protestant worlds assembled in not fewer than four successive conventions, to try whether it was not possible to frame a basis on which the two Churches might come together, and peace be restored to Christendom. The initiative of these conferences was taken by the emperor on the part of the Romanists; and indeed of the two parties it was the latter that had the stronger reasons for holding out the olive-branch.

Twenty-five years had now passed away in their efforts to put down Protestantism, and instead of being able to recount a series of victories, they had little to show save a list of defeats. All things worked contrariwise for them. If they held a disputation, it was only to expose the weakness of their champions; if they convoked a synod, it was only to hear a Protestant Confession; if they held a conference, it was to have some new concession wrung from them; if they planted stakes, they found they were but sowing the seed of new martyrs; if they leagued among themselves in order to strike a combined blow, some untoward event fell out, some ally betrayed them, or the ominous figure of the Turk started up, and so their plans came to nothing. The bow broke just as the arrow was about to be let fly.

And, then, what at this hour was the attitude of the several nations as regarded their obedience to the Papal chair? One half of the European States had placed themselves, or were hastening to do so, beneath the banner on which was inscribed: “An open Bible and a free conscience.”

The two Saxonys, Prussia, Hesse-Cassel, Wurtemberg, with some smaller States, and a multitude of free cities, were now ranged round the great PROTEST. The better half of Switzerland was lost to Rome. Few, save the herdsmen of the mountains, now received her pardons and sent their money in return. Denmark and Sweden had revolted. The powerful kingdoms of England and France were at that hour trembling in the balance.

Everywhere men were kicking against Rome’s ancient and sacred sway, and soon, on the north of the Alps, few subjects would remain to her.

Parliaments were passing laws to check her usurpations; her bulls were dis-honored; palls were at a discount; tithes, annats, reservations, and expectatives were but as the gleanings after the harvest; palmers and anchorets were disappearing from her highways; men were burying her relics instead of worshipping them; the cowl and frock were being abandoned for the garb of honest labor; schools and hospitals were replacing monasteries and convents; the reading of the Scriptures was supplanting the counting of beads, and the preaching of the Gospel the chanting of litanies and masses.

And then, in addition to all these losses, when the Romanists looked at the other side they could not conceal from themselves the strength of the Protestant position. Not only did the Reformation divide Christendom — not only did it receive the support of States, princes, and free cities — but, further, it had created a multitude of agencies, which were continually at work multiplying its adherents, and extending still farther its area.

Foremost among these were the Sacred Oracles in the mother-tongue of the nations. In the rear of this Divine instrumentality came nearly all the men of thought, of letters, and of eloquence which the age could boast.

Ever and anon Luther’s pen was darting flashes of light over Europe.

Recently had come that magnificent demonstration, the Institutes. That work was moving up and down in Christendom, an embattled phalanx of argument, compared with which the legions of the emperor were as weakness. Around the two great chiefs, Luther and Calvin, were a hundred keen and disciplined intellects ready to expose a sophism, to confront a falsehood, to laugh at folly, and to castigate hypocrisy and arrogance.

Moreover, the habit of free inquiry, and the art of combining — of which the Schmalkald League furnished an example, which was not lost upon its opponents — had come to the aid of that cause which had given them birth. In fine, among the forces on the side of Protestantism, not the least was the spirit of its disciples. They could face the dungeon and the rack, the scaffold and the stake, and not quail; and in the room of those who were burned to ashes to-day, hundreds would start up to-morrow to grasp the falling standard, and bear it onward to victory. These considerations could not but force themselves upon the minds of the Romanists, and weigh with them in the overtures they now made to the Protestants. From the far-off banks of the Tagus came a letter full of not unfriendly professions. Writing in the Alcazar at Toledo, the 25th of November, 1539, the emperor invited the Protestant princes of Germany to meet and try whether they could not devise measures of conciliation. 7 Charles intimated at the same time that the King of France, with whom he was then at peace, was equally solicitous on this point with himself.

In pursuance of this letter, the princes assembled next February at Frankfort. Eldo, Archbishop of Lunden, represented the emperor at the conference. Calvin, accompanied by Sturm, went thither, at the urgent solicitations of his brethren, mainly with the view of watching over the interests of the Swiss Churches, and of having the pleasure of meeting and conferring with Melancthon. The debates were long, but the conclusions reached were of no great moment. All resulted in a truce, which was to last for fifteen months, to permit a convention of theologians and learned men to meet and discuss the steps necessary for quieting the religious troubles.

Without the truce the members would not have been sure of their heads.

Meanwhile, prosecutions against the Protestants in the imperial chamber were to be dropped, and no one on either side was to be disturbed on account of his religion. The Protestants thought they saw the cloven foot in the attempts to confine this agreement to those of the Augsburg Confession. The emperor had the best reasons for excluding the Swiss from its benefits. He knew that should the German and Swiss Reformers combine, and form one Protestant camp, extending from the Baltic to the banks of the Rhone, and the foot of the Pennine mountains, the cause of Rome would be lost north of the Alps, and his own dynastic projects along with it. We turn with a peculiar pleasure from the chamber of conference, to the yet more sacred chamber where the Reformation’s greatest scholar, and its greatest theologian, were about to commune together. From the first moment Melancthon and Calvin understood each other. Of Melancthon’s inviolable loyalty at heart to the Protestant creed Calvin had not a doubt.

The unwise concessions into which his love of peace at times betrayed him, though they drew forth Calvin’s rebuke, never shook his confidence in him. A free interchange of sentiments on the nature of the Eucharist took place, and Calvin, as we learn from his letters to Farel, was delighted to find that Melancthon’s opinions nearly approximated to his own, although his veneration for Luther kept him from saying so in public.

Future discussions, however showed that the unanimity was not quite so great as Calvin had hoped. Their friendship, nevertheless, continued unbroken throughout their lives, and yielded its fruits to the Church of God. How deep and tender Calvin’s love for Melancthon was, is shown by the touching words written after the grave had closed over the latter: “O Philip Melancthon — for it is thou whom I address — thou who now livest at the hand of God with Christ, awaiting us on high till we are gathered with thee into blessed repose — a hundred times hast thou said to me when, wearied with toil and vexation, thou didst lean thy head upon my bosom — Would to God, would to God, that I might die upon that bosom! As for me, later, a hundred times have I wished that it had been granted us to be together. Certainly thou wouldst have been bolder to face struggles, more courageous to despise envy and calumny. Then, also, would have been suppressed the malignity of many whose audacity increased in proportion to what they called thy pusillanimity.” There is one other meeting that would have had greater interest for us than even that which we see now taking place. It was intensely longed for on one side at least. Writing to Luther, Calvin says, “Oh, if I could fly towards thee, and enjoy thy society, were it but for a few hours!” One cannot help asking, had Luther and Calvin met, which would have appeared the greater? Would the breach in the Protestant host have been healed, and the Wittemberg and Genevan camps been merged into one?

Would the splendor of Luther have paled before the calm majesty of Calvin, or would the mighty strength of the latter have bowed before the swift intuition and dazzling genius of the former? But, it was not to be that these two men should ever see one another in the flesh. They were formed to dwell in spheres apart. The impetuous Luther was given to the Teutonic nations, which needed his enthusiasm to kindle them. Calvin was placed amid the excitable and volatile peoples of the South, where his severe logic and love of order helped to curb their tendency to excess and their passion to theorise. Had Luther gone to France — and there was a moment, outside the gate of Augsburg, on the occasion of his flight from Cajetan, when he thought of turning his horse’s head in that direction he would have kindled a conflagration by his eloquence, which, after speedily blazing up, would as speedily have sunk down and died out. And had Calvin, when he first visited Strasburg, instead of turning southward to Basle, gone forward to Wittemberg, and made Germany the scene of his labors, as he had some thoughts of doing, he would there doubtless have been able to plant his system of Church order, but without that amount of enthusiasm on the part of those who submitted to it, necessary to give it permanancy, or to carry it over Christendom, while the South would have become a prey to the pantheistic theories of such men as Ochin and Servetus. What a beautiful ordering in the gifts of these two men, in the place assigned to each in the field, and the time when they entered it!

Luther had been the center in the first act of the great drama. That was now closing, and at the center of the second act, which was about to open, Calvin stands up; with an enthusiasm as great, but a logic more severe, to complete and crown the work of his predecessor.

CHAPTER 13.

ABORTIVE CONFERENCES AT HAGENAU AND RATISBON.

Convention at Hagenau — Attempt to Steal a March on the Protestants — Firmness of the German Princes — Conference at Ratisbon — Perplexities of Charles V. — Cardinal Contarini — Programme — Auspicious Beginning of Conference — Agreement on several Doctrines — The Dead-lock of Transubstantiation — Hopes come to Nothing — Would Conciliation have been a Blessing to Christendom? — It would have given Entombment to Protestantism, and New Life to Atheistic Revolution.

THE next convention was held at Hagenau, the 25th of June, 1510. The assembly was presided over by King Ferdinand. The Protestant princes were represented by their deputies. A great number of divines were present, and among others Calvin. Melancthon was taken in on the road, and was thus unavoidably absent. Ferdinand, on the ground that the Protestant princes were not present, adjourned the assembly, to meet at Worms on October 28th. 1 Meanwhile, it was attempted to steal a march on the Protestants by requiring them to restore the buildings:, lands, and revenues which they had taken from the Papists, and to promise that no new members should be received into the Schmalkald League. These proposals were indignantly rejected. First, let the religious question be decided, said the Protestants, and then the details will adjust themselves.

They had robbed no man: the appropriated Church revenues they had devoted to the religious instruction of the people, to the support of schools, and the relief of the poor. And as to refusing the protection of the League to those who were persecuted for righteousness’ sake, they spurned the idea of binding themselves to so dastardly a policy. 2 Calvin, who was not readily imposed upon, nor easily satisfied, bears the highest testimony in his letters to the zeal of these men, as he witnessed it at Frankfort. Sooner than dissolve their League, and abandon defenceless provinces and towns to the will of the emperor and the Pope, they would see their cities ploughed as a field, their castles razed, and themselves led to the scaffold. 3 The conference assembled at Worms, as appointed, but on the third day came letters from the emperor dissolving it, and summoning it to meet, with greater solemnity, at Ratisbon, in January, 1541. 4 The members not arriving in time, the Diet of Ratisbon opened only in April. Calvin, deputed by the city of Strasburg, went thither, though he expected little from the conference, mistrusting the sincerity of the Roman managers, and knowing, perhaps better than any other man, that an impossible task had been assigned to them when they were required to reconcile essentially antagonistic creeds. And yet many things seemed to prognosticate a prosperous issue to this the fourth attempt, within the space of two years, to effect the pacification of Christendom. First, the position of the emperor’s affairs made it clearly his interest to be on friendly terms with the princes of the Protestant League. He was raising armies, expending vast sums, wasting his years and strength, and taxing his genius in toilsome expeditions and mighty undertakings, and yet the perplexities around his throne were thickening instead of lessening. Verily, he had no need to court new difficulties. Charles spoke truth, doubtless, when, by the mouth of Grenville, he opened the Diet with these words: “When he perceived how religion had torn and rent asunder the Empire, and given occasion to the Turk to pierce almost into the bowels of Germany, it had been a great grief to him, and, therefore, for many years past he had, with their own consents, been essaying ways of pacification.” The Pope, Paul III., leaned scarcely less than the emperor towards conciliation. In token of his friendly disposition he sent Gaspar Contarini as his legate to the conference. A patrician of Venice by birth, Cardinal Contarini was of pure life, of devout disposition, and of liberal opinions.

He had been a member of “The Oratory of Divine Love,” an association which sought to promote a large reform of Church abuses, and on the important doctrine of justification approximated very closely to Luther.

Not less desirous were the Protestant divines of healing the breach, provided it could be done without burying the Reformation. When they thought of the sacrifices which the continuance of the struggle implied the desolations of war, and the blood that must flow on field and scaffold — they shrunk from the responsibility of hastily closing the door against any really well-meant attempt at union. At no former moment had peace seemed so near.

The proceedings began by Grenville presenting to the conference a book, which he said had received the emperor’s approval, and which he wished them to adopt as the basis of their discussions. The book consisted of a series of chapters or treatises on the doctrines, the rites, the Sacraments, the orders, and the constitution and powers of the Church. The members were to say what in it they agreed with, and what in it they dissented from. 6 The Pope naturally wished the weighty point of his supremacy to be first taken in hand and settled; but Contarini, departing from his instructions in this matter, postponed the question of the Pope’s powers to the end, and gave precedence to the doctrines of the Christian system.

For some time all went smoothly enough. A very tolerable unanimity was found to exist between the two sides of the assembly on the doctrines of original sin, free-will, and justification. Calvin was astonished to find the Romanists conceding so much. “We have retained,” says he, writing to Farel, “all the substance of the true doctrine. If you consider with what kind of men we have had to agree, you will acknowledge that much has been accomplished.” 7 As yet, no cloud appeared in the sky of the conference.

Next came the subject of the Church. The conference was agreed on the constitution of the Church; as regards its authority it began to be seen that there were two parties in the assembly. To obviate immediate danger, it was proposed to pass on to other questions, and leave this one for future settlement. The Sacraments followed. The Diet was nearing the more critical questions. There was here some jarring, but the Protestants conceded the ceremonies as things indifferent, and the conference was able to proceed.

At last came the consideration of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. “There,” said Calvin, “stood the impassable rock which barred the way to farther progress.” 9 “I had,” continues Calvin, “to explain in Latin what were my sentiments. Without fear of offense, I condemned that peculiar local presence; the act of adoration I declared to be altogether insufferable.” We now behold the representatives of the Popish and Protestant worlds gathered in presence of the Roman sphinx — the stupendous mystery of transubstantiation. If they shall solve the riddle — reconcile the dogma to Scripture, to reason, and to sense — all will be well; they will have united the two Churches and pacified Europe; but if they shall fail, there awaits Christendom a continuance of divisions, of strifes, of wars. One after another comes forward with his solution, in the hope that, like another O Edipus, he will read the riddle, disarm the monster, and avert from Christendom the untold calamities with which it is threatened. First come the Protestants. “Philip and Bucer,” says Calvin, “have drawn up ambiguous and insincere formulas, to try whether they could satisfy the opposite party by yielding nothing.” 11 He bears his testimony to their “best intentions,” but expects nothing of their “equivocation.” Next come the Romanists. They enveloped the whole in a cloud of mystification. The riddle is still unread; the mystery still stands unsolved, despite the learning, the wit, and the sophistry which have been expended upon it to make it comprehensible; it is as defiant of Scripture, of reason, and of sense as ever. At this stage an incident partly tragic and partly grotesque came to diversify the proceedings of the convention. One day, the veteran controversialist, Dr. Eck, being worsted by Melancthon in an argument on the Eucharist, went home in a rage, and drank so deep at supper as to drown his sense of discomfiture and contract a fever at the same time. His gruff stentorian voice was heard no more in the debates, nor his tall, broadshouldered and burly form seen in the conference hall. Afterwards the questions of private masses, invocation of saints, and the Pope’s supremacy received a languid discussion, but with no satisfactory re-suits. The skies, so fair when the conference assembled, were now overcast with heavy clouds. The promise of peace had failed. The emperor dissolved the Diet, with the promise, always forthcoming when affairs had got into a dead-lock, that a General Council would speedily convene, and that should the Pope refuse to call such, he himself would convoke a Diet of the Empire for the settlement of all the religious differences of Christendom. So ended the Diet of Ratisbon. Had it succeeded in uniting the two Churches, the history of the world would henceforward have been different. Would it have been better? We answer unhesitatingly, it would have been worse. God’s plans are not only larger and wiser but more beneficent than the thoughts of man. A union on only such terms as were then possible would have closed the career of Protestantism; for a half- Reformation would have been no Reformation. Would then the Church of Rome, her doctrines modified, we shall suppose, her worst abuses corrected, and her sway become more tolerant, have resumed possession of Europe, and pursued her course unobstructed by rival or opponent? We reply emphatically, it would not. The Popish champions altogether overlook the forces which were at work in Christendom, when they lay the misfortunes of their Church at the door of Protestantism. The Church of Rome was morally bankrupt before the Reformers arose. The nations had lost faith in her. The pantheistic principles which had been springing up ever since the twelfth century were fast coming to a head, and but for the moral breakwater which Luther and Calvin erected, they would by the end of the sixteenth century have broken out and swept over Europe in all the fury of a destructive revolution. Protestantism did not awaken, it mitigated the angry feelings of which Rome was the object, and diverted them into the channel of Scriptural Reformation. The Christendom of that day was called to make its choice between the teachers of morality and order, such as Calvin, and the apostles of atheism, with its attendant crimes, revolutions and woes, such as Castellio and Servetus. Unhappily the Roman Church mistook her friends for her foes. We would ask, how has it fared with her in those countries which remained Popish? Is it in lands where the Reformation established itself, or in those where it was suppressed, that the “Church” has been most exempt from spoliation, and her priests from violence? and to what shore is it that they flee in those oft-recurring tempests of revolution that sweep across the Popish world?

The Reformation in its Lutheran form had now culminated. It had planted in the mind of Christendom the great radical principle of renovation, “salvation through grace;” but, instead of building upon it an organised Church, to act as a moral breakwater against the godless principles ready to rush in and fill the void caused by the partial demolition of Romanism, the Reformation in Germany was passing into political action; it was running to seed. What was needed was a vigorous Church, what was formed was a political league. A new center had to be found for the principle of Protestantism, where, disentangling itself from political alliances, it might grow into a great purifying and restraining power, and be seen by the world, not simply as a body of doctrines, but as a new and holy society. While a number of cunning artificers at Ratisbon are trying to repair the old fabric and keep it from falling, a new building is rising elsewhere.

CHAPTER 14.

CALVIN RETURNS TO GENEVA.

The Movement must resume its March — Calvin at Strasburg — The Libertines at Geneva — Calvin’s Four Persecutors Perish — Tide Turns at Geneva — Deputations to entreat Calvin’s Return — The Idea of going back Terrible to him — Bucer’s Adjuration — Starts on his Return Journey — Enters Geneva — Reception — Lessons Learned in Exile — Returns Fitter for his Work — Idelette de Bure — His Salary, etc.

PICTURE: The Gothic Well in Hatisbon Cathedral PICTURE: Side Door of Strasburg Cathedral HAD the Diet at Ratisbon succeeded in finding, what both parties in the convention so sincerely labored to discover, a basis of agreement, Calvin would not have returned to Geneva. There would have been no need to seek a new center for a Reformation which had run. its course, and was about to disappear from the stage; It was saved, however, from the entombment which agreement would have given it. The movement is again to resume its march. Its second and grandest act is about to open, and accordingly Calvin is on his way back to Geneva.

While living honored in Strasburg, each day occupied in fruitful labors, interrupted only by attendances at imperial Diets, the public feeling respecting the Reformer had been undergoing a great change on the banks of the Leman. The faction of the Libertines, reinforced by Anabaptists and Papists, grew every day more ungovernable; Licentiousness and tumult ran riot now that Calvin was gone. 1 The year 1539 passed in the most outrageous saturnalia. 2 The Council, helpless in the face of these disorders, began to repent of what they had done. The four syndics who had been mainly active in the banishment of Calvin were now out of the way. One had perished on the scaffold, charged with the crime of surrendering Genevese territory; another, accused of sedition, had attempted to escape by his window, but, falling headlong, broke his neck.

His fellow-citizens, on learning his tragic end, called to mind that he had said tauntingly to Calvin, “Surely the city-gate was wide enough to let him go out.” 3 The two remaining syndics, implicated in the same charges, had betaken themselves to flight. All this happened in the same year and the same month.

It was now 1540. The city registers show the daily rise in the tide of popular feeling for Calvin’s recall. September 21st: the Council charged Amy Perrin, one of its members, “to find means, if he could, to bring back Master Calvin.” October 13th: it was resolved to write a letter “to Monsieur Calvin that he would assist us.” October 19th: the Council of Two Hundred resolved, “in order that the honor and glory of God may be promoted,” to seek all possible means to have “Master Caulvin as preacher.” October 20th: it was ordered in the General Council, or Assembly of the People, “to send to Strasburg to fetch Master Jean Calvinus, who is very learned, to be minister in this city.” 4 The enthusiasm of the citizens is thus described by an eye-witness, Jacques Bernard: “They all cried out, ‘ Calvin, Calvin! we wish Calvin, the good and learned man, and true minister of Jesus Christ!’” Three several deputations did Geneva send to entreat the return of the man whom, two years before, it had chased from its gates with contumely and threats. The same two cantons, Bern and Zurich, whose approaches in the way of mediation it then repulsed, were now asked to use their good offices with the magistrates of Strasburg, in order to overcome their unwillingness to forego Calvin’s services. In addition to the Senate’s advances, numerous private citizens wrote to the Reformer in urgent terms soliciting his return. These letters found Calvin already on his way to the Diet at Worms, whither the deputy of Geneva followed him. 6 The repentant city opens its gates. Shall he go back?

It was a critical moment, not in Calvin’s history only, but in that of Christendom; though neither Calvin nor any other man could then estimate the momentous issues that hung upon his decision. The question of going back threw him into great perplexity. The two years he had already passed in Geneva, with the contradictions, perils, and insults with which they were filled up, rose vividly before him. If he returns, shall he not have to endure it all over again? Going back was like lying down on a bed of torture. The thought, he tells us, filled him with horror. “Who will not pardon me,” he writes, “if I do not again willingly throw myself into a whirlpool which I have found so dangerous?” 7 He appeared to himself of all men the most unfit for a career so stormy as that which awaited him at Geneva. In a sense he judged correctly. He was naturally shy. His organisation was exquisitely strung. Sensitive and tender, he recoiled from the low arts and the coarse abuse of rough and unprincipled opponents. It was sympathy and love that he sought for. But it is exactly on a constitution like this that it is possible to graft the finest and loftiest courage. Qualities like these, when found in combination with high conscientiousness and lofty aims, as they were in Calvin’s case, become changed under discipline, and in fitting circumstances develop into their opposites. The shrinking delicacy or timidity which quails before a laugh or a sneer disappears, and a chivalrous boldness comes in its room, which finds only delight in facing danger and confronting opposition. The sense of pain is absorbed in the conscious grandeur of the aim, and the sensitive man stands up in a courage which the whole world can neither bend nor break.

Calvin disburdened his mind to his brethren, telling them with what apprehensions this call to his former field of labor had filled him, yet that he would obey, should they deem it his duty to go. They knew his worth, and were reluctant indeed to part with him; but when they thought on Geneva, situated on the borders of Italy and France, and offering so many facilities for carrying the light into these countries, they at once said, “This is your post .of service.” Not yet, however, could Calvin conquer his aversion. The city on the banks of the Leman was to him a “chamber of torture;” he shuddered to enter it. Bucer stood forward, and with an adjuration similar to that which Farel had formerly employed to constrain him to abide in Geneva, he constrained Calvin to return to it. Bucer bade him beware of the punishment of Jonas for refusing to go and preach repentance to the Ninevites. 8 This was enough; the die was cast: mobs might rage, faction might plot, a hundred deaths might await him in Geneva, he would go nevertheless, since duty called him.

He now began to prepare for his journey. Loaded with many marks of honor by the magistrates of Strasburg, he bade adieu to:that city. A mounted herald, sent from Geneva, rode before him. He traveled slowly, halting at Neuchatel to compose some differences which had sprung up in the flock of Farel, and solace himself a little while in the society of the most loved of all his friends, before crossing the territory of the Vaud, and resuming his great task. On the 13th of September we behold him entering the gates of Geneva, his face still pale, but lighted up with his earnest look and eagle eye. He climbs, amid the reverend gaze of the citizens, the steep and narrow Rue des Chanoines, and takes up his abode in a house prepared for him beforehand at the head of that street, with its little garden behind, and a glorious vista of lake and mountains beyond — the broad blue Leman, with the verdant and woody Jura on this hand, and the great Alps, in all their snowy magnificence, on that. It has been often asked, was Calvin insensible to these glories? And it has been answered, he was, seeing he says not a word about them in his letters. No more does St. Paul in his, though his labors were accomplished amid scenes of classic fame, and physical beauty. The general, in the heat of action, has no time to note the scenery that may lie around the battle-field. What to Calvin was Geneva but a battle-field? it was the center of a great conflict, which enlarged year after year till it came to be coextensive with Christendom, and every movement in which Calvin had to superintend and direct. The grandeur of the natural objects that surrounded him, at times, doubtless fixed his eye and tranquillised his soul, but with the alternations of hope and fear, sorrow and triumph, filling his mind as the battle around him flowed or ebbed, he may well be excused if he refused to sink the Reformer in the painter.

In being sent into exile Calvin was, in fact, sent to school. Every day of his sojourn at Strasburg his powers were maturing, and his vision enlarging, and when at last he returns to Geneva he is seen to be fully armed for the great fight that awaits him there. The study of his character, previous to his expatriation, reveals these defects, which, if not corrected, might have seriously marred his success. He yearned too strongly for sympathy — we do not say praise — with his work and his aims. His own delight in what was true and lofty was so intense that he reckoned too readily on finding the same in others, and was in the same proportion discouraged when he failed to find it. He must learn to do the work for the work’s sake, irrespective altogether of censure or sympathy, save the sympathy of One, the Master even. This first infirmity begat a second, a guilelessness bordering on simplicity. He thought that he had but to show himself actuated by upright and high aims in order to disarm opposition and conciliate friends and fellow-laborers. He did not make sufficient allowance for the shortsightedness, the selfishness, the craft, the cruelty that are in the heart of man. But the deep wound he received in “the house of his friends” helped to cure him of this weakness. He knew better than before what was in man. The sharpest injuries he saw were to come not from the Romanists, but from professed Protestants. He now stood armed on this side.

But the greatest defect in the character of the Reformer grew out of one of his more notable excellences. We refer to the intensity and tenacity with which he laid hold on his object. This was apt to lead to the too exclusive concentration of his powers on the task or the spot that engaged him for the time. It tended, in short, to isolation. Up to his first coming to Geneva he had lived only in French circles; the greater world of the Reformation he had not entered; and had he never made acquaintance with a wider sphere, there was a danger of his being only the man of Geneva, and giving to a little State what was meant for Christendom. He must go forth, he must tread German earth, he must breathe German air, he must survey from this post of observation the length and breadth of the great movement, at the center of which is his own permanent place, and for three successive years must his eye be kept fixed on that wide field, till what is merely national or denominational has dropped out of view, or at least assumed its proportional importance, and only what is ścumenical and eternal remains. Here at Strasburg he will associate not with scholars and burghers only, but with practical Reformers, with princes, and with the leading minds of many various nationalities; and thus we find that when a second time he presents himself at the gates of Geneva, he is no longer the Frenchman simply, he is of no nation because of all nations. To the clear, sharp-cut, beautiful genius of France he now adds the robustness of the Teuton. He feels as deeply as ever the necessity of guarding the purity of the Communion-table, for it is the point from which he is to work outward for the regeneration of the Church in the first place, and the State in the second, and accordingly his aims are no longer bounded by the limits of Geneva; they stretch wide around, and the little city becomes the pedestal simply on which he places that spiritual apparatus by which he is to regenerate Christendom.

Calvin, the stern, the severe, insensible alike to Alpine grandeurs and to female loveliness, had married while at Strasburg. 9 Idelette de Bure, the woman who had given her hand to the Reformer, came from Liege, one of the earliest among the cities of the Netherlands which embraced the Gospel. She was a widow. Her modest yet courageous deportment as evinced in facing the perils to which the profession of the Gospel exposed her, her devoted affections and deep-seated piety as shown in ministering to the sick, and watching tenderly over the two children whom she had borne to her former husband, Jean Storder, had won the esteem of Calvin.

Many friends from a distance testified their sympathy and joy by attending his nuptials. But why is not his Idelette de Bure by his side when he re-enters Geneva? She is to follow, and to be the modest, loving, and noble-minded companion of the Reformer, during nine of the most laborious and stormy years of his life. Three horses, a carriage, and a sum of money are sent her by the Senate, to bring her to Geneva. A piece of cloth was presented to Calvin for a gown, 10 and the pulpit in St. Peter’s was prepared for the preacher: it was fixed against a massive pillar, and placed low, that the speaker might be distinctly audible to all.

CHAPTER 15.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL ORDINANCES.

Assembly in the Cathedral — Calvin’s Address — Resolves to Stem the Tide of Moral Ruin — Proposal to the Council — The Ecclesiastical Ordinances Drafted — Voted by the People — His Ecclesiastical Government — Four Orders of Ministers — Two in Reality — The Venerable Company — Election of Pastors — Consistory — Its Functions — The Council Punishes in the Last Resort — The Ecclesiastical Ordinances the Laws of the State — Freely Accepted by the People — Is this the Inquisition over again? — No — A Theocratic Republic established at Geneva — Bungener’s Defence of it. THE first act done by Calvin and the Senate and people of Geneva was to bow themselves in humiliation before the Eternal Sovereign. Only a day or two after the Reformer’s arrival, the great bell Clemence rung out its deep, far-resounding peal over city, lake, and champaign. The citizens flocked to the cathedral to hear again the voice that was dearer to them than ever.

Calvin addressed them, dwelling briefly on those awful events which gave so deep a solemnity to the passing time. In the East the Turk was overrunning Hungary, and shedding Christian blood in torrents. Nearer to them the Postilence was ravaging the cities of Germany and the towns on the Rhine. In France and England their brethren were falling by the sword of the persecutor. In Barbary, whither he had gone to fight the Moors, the emperor’s fleet and army were perishing by the tempests of the sky. The Reformer called on them to see in these mingled events the hand of God, punishing the nations in his anger. The Sacrament was then dispensed, and the services of the day were closed with a solemn prayer, in which the little city, environed on every side by powerful enemies, cast itself upon the arm of the Almighty. Without a moment’s delay Calvin set about his great task. Everywhere, over the entire face of Christendom, moral ruin was at work. The feeble restraints of the Roman Church were dissolved. The power of the German Reformation was decaying, the Political element having acquired the predominance. An outburst of pantheistic doctrines was about to drown Europe in a flood of hideous immoralities and frightful disorders. What was needed was a great moral power, strong enough to awe the atheism that was lifting up its portentous head. This was the Herculean labor to which Calvin was called. He understood it. In his clear, calm judgment, and constructive skill — in his powers of memory and of logic — in a genius equally fitted for speculation or for business — in his intellectual vision which extended wide, yet penetrated deep — in his indomitable patience, inflexible conscientiousness, and profound submission to the Bible, he was the one man, of all then living, who possessed the gifts necessary for the work. he would begin by regenerating Geneva, and from Geneva as a center there would go forth a regenerating influence over the face of Christendom.

Accordingly, on his first appearance before the Council, and before he had been many hours within their walls, he demanded the erection of a court of morals, or ecclesiastical discipline. “Immediately after I had offered my services to the Senate,” says he, writing to Farel, “I declared that a Church could not hold together unless a settled government should be agreed on, such as is prescribed to us in the Word of God, and such as was in use in the ancient Church. I requested that they would appoint certain of their number who might confer with us on the subject. Six were then appointed.” 2 The Senate’s consent had, in fact, been given when it supplicated him to return, for it well knew that he could return not otherwise than as a Reformer.

Such dispatch did Calvin and his colleagues use in this matter, that the draft of the ecclesiastical discipline was presented to the Council on the 28th of September. Its examination was begun and continued till the 27th of October. The project, as definitely amended, was, on the 9th of November, adopted by the Council of Two Hundred; and on the 20th by the Council-General, or Assembly of the People. These ecclesiastical ordinances were farther remodelled, and the final vote of the people took place on the 2nd of January, 1542. “It is,” says Bungener, “from that day that the Calvinistic Republic legally dates.” We shall briefly consider this ecclesiastical order and government, — the inner organisation of the Reformation; — the instrument for the regeneration, first of Geneva, next of Christendom. Calvin and the Council are seen working together in the framing of it. The Reformer holds that the State, guiding itself by the light of revelation, can and ought to make arrangements and laws conducive to the maintenance of the Church of God on the earth. He at the same time made what provision the circumstances permitted for the separate and independent working of the Church and the State, each within its own sphere. His plan of Church order was borrowed avowedly from the New Testament. He instituted four orders of men for the instruction and government of the Church — the Pastor, the Doctor, the Presbyter or Elder, and the Deacon. We have here strictly viewed but two orders — the Presbyter and the Deacon though we have four names.

The Presbyter embraces those who both preach and govern, as also others who govern but do not preach. By the Deacon is meant the officer who administered the Church’s financial affairs.

The city clergy, the professors of theology, and the rural pastors formed the body known as the Venerable Company. The election of pastors was conducted in the following manner: — When a pulpit fell vacant, the Company united in a deputation to the Council. In presence of the magistrates the ministerial candidates were subjected to a severe examination, especially as regarded their ability to expound Holy Scripture. The magistrates then retired, and the Company, by a majority of votes, elected one as pastor. The newly-elected, if approved by the Council, was announced to the congregation from the pulpit next Sunday, and the people were invited to send in their objections, if they had any, to the magistrates. The silence of the people confirmed the election, and eight days afterwards the new minister was ordained as pastor, the moderator of the Company presiding at the ceremony. The triple action of the government, the people, and the clergy in the election was a sufficient guarantee against intrigue and favor. The ecclesiastical authority was wielded by the Consistory, or tribunal of morals. The Consistory was composed of the ministers of the city and twelve laymen. These twelve laymen were elected by the Little Council, confirmed by the Great Council, and finally approved by the people with whom remained the power of objecting to any or all of them if they saw cause. The Consistory met every Thursday. It summoned before it those reported as guilty of immoralities. It admonished them, and, unless they promised amendment, excommunicated them — that is, deposed them from membership in the Church — and in consequence thereof withheld from them the Sacraments. The Consistory had no power to compel attendance before it, and no power to inflict a civil punishment. “It was,” says Ruchat, “a purely ecclesiastical chamber, possessing no civil jurisdiction whatever, which it left entirely to the magistrate.” 5 It “gives notice” to the Council, and the Council “sees to it.” In the infliction of its censures it exercised a rigorous impartiality. It knew nothing of rank or friendship, “punishing,” says M. Gaberel, “with equal severity the highest magistrate and the meanest burgess, the millionaire and the peasant.” If the action of the Consistory effected the reformation of the offender, he was straightway restored to his place in the Church; if he remained incorrigible, the case came under the cognisance of the civil jurisdiction.

The Council summoned him to its bar, and inflicted punishment — it might be imprisonment, or it might be banishment. The Spiritual Court, looking at the act as an offense against the ecclesiastical ordinances, had visited it with an ecclesiastical censure; the Council, looking at it as a breach of the civil laws, awarded against it a temporal punishment. We ask why this double character of the same act? Because in Geneva the nation was the Church, and the ecclesiastical ordinances were also the laws of the State. They had not only been enacted by the Senate, they had been twice solemnly and unanimously voted by the people. “The people could not afterwards allege,” says M. Gaberel, “that they were deceived as to the bearing of the laws they were sanctioning. For several weeks they could meditate at leisure on the articles proposed; they knew the value of their decision, and when twice — on the 20th of November, 1541, and again on the 2nd of January, 1542 — they came to the Cathedral of St. Peter’s, and, after each article, raised their hands in acceptance of it, the vote was an affair of conscience between God and themselves, for no human power could impose such an engagement. They were 20,000 citizens, perfectly free, and masters of their own town. The Genevese people were absolutely sovereign; they knew no other limit to their legislative power than their own will, and this people voted the ordinances from the first chapter to the last. They engaged to frequent public worship regularly, to bring up their children in the fear of the Lord, to renounce all debauchery, all immoral amusements, to maintain simplicity in their clothing, frugality and order in their dwellings.” 7 It is asked, is not this discipline the old rčgime of Rome over again? Do we not here see an ecclesiastical court investigating and passing sentence, and a civil tribunal coming in and carrying it out? Is not this what the Inquisition did? There are, however, essential differences between the two cases. At Rome there was but one jurisdiction, the Pontifical; at Geneva there were two, the ecclesiastical and the civil. At Rome simple opinions were punishable; at Geneva overt acts only. At Rome the code was imposed by authority; at Geneva it was freely voted by the people. If it was the Inquisition, it was the people who set it up. But the main difference lies here: at Rome the claim of infallibility put conscience, reason, and law out of court; at Geneva the supreme authority was the Constitution, which had been approved and sanctioned by the free conscience of the people.

What was established at Geneva was a theocratic republic. The circumstances made any other form of government hardly possible. The necessities of the city made it imperative that in its legislation the moral should predominate; its very existence depended on this. But even the genius of Calvin could not find means, in so small a State, to give free expression to his views touching the distinction between things spiritual and things secular, nor could he prevent the two jurisdictions at times overlapping and amalgamating. It is strange to us to see blasphemy, unchastity, and similar acts visited with imprisonment or with banishment; but we are to bear in mind that the citizens themselves had made abstinence from these vices a condition of citizenship when they voted the Constitution. They were not only offenses against morality, they were breaches of the social compact which had been freely and unanimously formed. Those who, while the Constitution existed — and it could not exist a moment longer than the majority willed — claimed to be permitted these indulgences, were logically, as well as legally, incurring expatriation. Calvin made this very plain when, on one occasion, he advised the Libertine.to withdraw, and build a city for themselves. Such a city, verily, would have had neither a long nor a tranquil career. “The more this legislation has been studied,” remarks M. Bungener, “the more is it seen to be in advance of all anterior systems of legislation. The form sometimes surprises us a little by its quaint simplicity, but the grandeur of the whole is not the less evident to those who seek it, and this was about to manifest itself in the history of the humble nation to whom this legislation was to give so glorious a place in the intellectual as well as in the religious world.” “Neither absorbing nor degrading the Statue,” adds M. Bungener, “the Church maintained herself at its side, always free, so far as the Reformer had intended her to be so. This was, indeed, an important, an indispensable element of her influence abroad. A Church visibly in the power of the magistrates of so small a State would have been hearkened to by none. But the Church of Geneva had been put into possession of a free and living individuality.

Henceforth it mattered little whether she was small or great, or whether she was at home under the shelter of a small or mighty State. She was the Church of Geneva, the heiress of Calvin. lqone in Europe, friend or foe, thought of asking more.” 8

CHAPTER 16.

THE NEW GENEVA.

The Ministry — The Weekly Exercise — Visiting — Calvin — His Sermons — Studies — Correspondence — From the Centre Watches the Whole Field — Geneva the Dwelling of a Righteous People — Calvin’s Aim to make it a Model City — Character of Calvin’s Commentaries— Two Genevas — The Libertines — Geneva becomes the Thermopyke of Christendom.

PICTURE: Calvin Reenters Geneva WE have surveyed only the grand outlines. To Geneva for the reinvigoration of the Reformation, ,see the completeness and efficiency of the scheme let us glance a moment at the details. which Calvin elaborated and set a-working in First the ministry was cared for. To guard against the entrance of unworthy and incompetent persons into its ranks, candidates were subjected to repeated tests and examinations previous to ordination.

The ministry organised, arrangements were made to secure its efficiency and purity. The pastors were to meet once a week in conference for mutual correction and improvement; each in his turn was to expound a passage of Scripture in presence of the rest, who were to give their opinions on the doctrine delivered in their hearing. The young were to be kept under religious instruction till qualified by their knowledge and their age for coming to the Communion-table. Every Friday a sermon was to be preached in St. Peter’s, which all the citizens were to attend. Once a year every family was to be visited by a minister and elder, and once every three years a Presbyterian visitation of all the parishes of the State was to take place. Care was also taken that the sick and the poor should be regularly visited, and the hospitals attended to. Never before, nor since perhaps, has a community had the good fortune to be placed under so complete and thorough a system of moral and spiritual training. Calvin must first reform Geneva, if through Geneva he would reform Europe.

It was a Herculean task which the Reformer had set himself. He could find no one to share it with him. Viret and Farel could not be spared from Lausanne and Neuchatel, and it was on his shoulders alone that the burden rested. The labors which from this time he underwent were enormous. In addition to his Sunday duties as pastor of the parish of St. Peter’s, he preached every day of the alternate week. He delivered three theological lectures weekly. Every Thursday he presided in the Consistory. Every Friday he gave a public exposition in St. Peter’s. He took his turn with the other ministers in the visitation of the sick, and other pastoral duties.

When the plague was in Geneva he offered himself for the service of the hospital, but the Council, deeming his life indispensable to the State, would not hear of his shutting himself up with the pestilence. Day by day he pursued ]his studies without intermission. He awoke at five o’clock; his books were brought him and, sitting up in bed, he dictated to an amanuensis. When the hour came to mount the pulpit, he was invariably ready; and when he returned home, he resumed, after a short rest, his literary labors. Nor was this all. From every part of Christendom to which the Reformation had penetrated — from Poland, Austria, Germany, and Denmark, and from the nearer lands of Switzerland, France, and England — came letters daily to him. There were Churches to be organised, theological questions to be solved, differences to be composed, and exigencies to be met. The Reformer must maturely weigh all these, and counsel the action to be taken in each. Without diminishing his rate of daily work, he found time for this immense correspondence.

Calvin had pitched his tent at the center of a great battle, and his eye ranged over the whole field. There was not a movement which he did not direct, or a champion for whose safety he did not care. If anywhere he saw a combatant on the point of being overborne, he hastened to his aid; and if he descried signs of faint-heartedness, he strove to stimulate afresh the courage of the desponding warrior, and induce him to resume the battle.

The froward he moderated, the timid he emboldened, the unskilful he instructed, and the erring he called back. If it happened that some champion from the Roman or from the pantheistic camp stepped forth to defy the armies of Protestantism, Calvin was ever ready to measure swords with him. The controversy commonly was short but decisive, and the Reformed Church usually, for some time after, had rest from all similar attacks. To those on their way to the stake, Calvin never failed to send greeting and consolation, and the martyrs in their turn waved their adieus to him from their scaffolds. The words, “We who are about to die, salute thee!” which greeted the emperor in the Roman circus, were again heard, cried by hundreds of voices, but in circumstances which gave them an ineffably greater sublimity.

While he watched all that was passing at the remote boundary, he did not for one moment neglect the center. He knew that so vast a plan of operations must repose on a solid basis. Hence his incessant toil to reform the manners, enlarge the knowledge, and elevate the piety of Geneva. He would make it the dwelling of a righteous nation. All who might enter its gates should see, and those at a distance should hear, what that Christianity was which he was seeking to restore to the world, and what mighty and blessed transformations it was able to work on society. Its enemies branded it as heresy, and cursed it as the mother of all wickedness. Come, then, was in effect Calvin’s reply; come and examine for yourselves this heresy at its head-quarters. Mark the dens of profligacy and crime rooted out, the habits of idleness and beggary suppressed, the noise of blasphemy and riot extinguished! And with what have they been replaced? Contemplate those nurseries of art, those schools of letters, those workshops where industry plies its honest calling, those homes which are the abode of love, those men of learning rising up to adorn the State, and those patriots ready to defend it. Blessed heresy that yields such fruits! It was this — a great living proof of the Gospel’s transforming power — that Calvin had in view to create in all his labors, whether in his study, or in his chair, or in the pulpit.

And in enlightening Geneva he enlightened Christendom; in instructing his contemporaries he taught, at the same time, the men of after-ages.

Though. his pen produced much, it sent forth nothing that was not fully ripened. His writings, though composed in answer to the sudden challenge of some adversary, or to meet an emergency that had unexpectedly arisen, or to fulfill the call of daily duty, bear traces neither of haste nor of immaturity; on the contrary, they are solid, terse, ever to the point, and so fraught with great principles, set forth with lucidity and beauty, that even at this day, after the lapse of three centuries, during which the works of numberless authors have sunk into oblivion, they are still widely read, and are acting powerfully on the mind of Christendom. As an expositor of Scripture, Calvin is still without a rival. His Commentaries embrace the whole of the Old and New Testaments, with the exception of the Apocalypse; but though the track is thus vast which his mind and pen have traversed, what a flood of light has he contrived’ to shed throughout it all! How penetrating, yet how simple; how finely exegetical, yet how thoroughly practical; how logical in thought, yet how little systematic in form are his interpretations of the Holy Oracles! Nor is the unction his Commentary breathes its least excellence. Its spirit is that of the Bible itself; its fragrance is of heaven, and the reader’s soul is refreshed with the celestial air that he is inhaling.

We now behold Calvin at his post, and we hang with intense interest upon the issue of his experiment. The question is not merely shall he protestantise Geneva, but shall he extricate the Reformation from its deadlock; restore it to its spiritual path; and, having developed it into new rigor and soundness in Geneva, plant it out in other countries. For five years all went smoothly, nothing occurred to obstruct the regular working of the spiritual and intellectual machinery he had set a-going in this little but wisely-selected territory. The fruits were appearing. “By the blessing of God on the labors of Calvin,” says Ruchat, “the Church of Geneva put on a new face.” 1 But the Libertinism of Geneva had been scorched, not killed.

In 1546, it again lifted up its head, and the struggle was renewed. There were, in fact, two Genevas: there was the religious and orderly Geneva, composed of the native disciples of the Gospel, the foreign refugees of Protestantism, and the youth of various nationalities here training under Calvin to bear the banner of the Reformation in the face of fire and sword through all parts of Europe; and there was the infidel and the disorderly Geneva, a small but ominous band, the pioneers in their beliefs and in their practices of those bodies which afterwards at various intervals filled Popish Christendom with their swarms, and made themselves a terror by the physical and moral horrors that marked their career. “One day, in the large hall of the Cloisters, behind the cathedral, Calvin was giving his lecture on divinity. Around his chair hundreds were thronging, and amongst them numbers of future preachers and of future martyrs. Suddenly they hear outside laughter, cries, and a great clamore: This proceeds from fifteen or twenty Libertines, who, out of hatred to Calvin, are giving a specimen of their manners, and of what they call liberty. “Such is the picture of the two Genevas. One of the two must necessarily perish.” Among the Libertines, however, there were two classes. There was the class of which we have just had a specimen, and there was a class of a much less malignant and dangerous kind. The latter was composed of the old families of Geneva. They loved to dance, to masquerade, to play.

Hating the moral restraints which the new Constitution imposed upon them, they raised the cry that the ancient charters had been subverted, and that liberty was in danger. The other party joined in this cry, but under it they meditated far deeper designs than their confederates. Their aim was to root out the belief of a God, and so pull down all the fences of order, and dissolve all the obligations of morality. Both united against Calvin. In Wittemberg, the battle of Protestantism had been against Romanism; in Geneva, it was against Romanism and pantheism combined. Two hosts were now in arms, and their victory would have been equally fatal to Rome and to Geneva. In fact, what we behold at this crisis is an uprising of old paganism. Its Protean vices, the austere and the gay, and its multiform creeds, the superstitious and the pantheistic, are marshalled in one mighty army to overwhelm the Gospel, and devastate the kingdoms of Europe. Geneva must be the Thermopylae of Christendom.

CHAPTER 17.

CALVIN’S BATTLES WITH THE LIBERTINES.

Pierre Ameaux — His Wife — The Spiritual Libertines — A Public Confession — Jacques Gruet — An Execution — Practical Reforms — Amy Perrin — his Ambition — Francois Favre — Madame Perrin Imprisoned — Rage of the Favre Family — The Law Triumphs — The Disorders Renewed — Calvin’s Appearance before the Council — His Magnanimity — Peace Restored — Calvin meanwhile Labours indefatigably — Growing Renown of Geneva — The Favres again “Lift up the Horn “ — Perrin made First Syndic — Personal Outrages on Calvin — Comparison between Luther and Calvin in their Sufferings — Sublimity of Calvin — His Wife, Idelette de Bure, Dies.

PICTURE: Calvin Before his Enemies in the Council PICTURE: View of St. Peters and the Vatican Rome THE battle lasted nine years, and during all that time Calvin “guided Geneva as a vessel on fire, which burns the captain’s feet, and yet obeys him.” 1 It began in the following way: — Pierre Ameaux was a maker of playing-cards by trade, and a member of the Council of Two Hundred. In 1546, his wife was cited before the Consistory “for several monstrous propositions.” She had given herself up to the grossest immorality on principle. “It is in this sense,” she said — and in this she spoke the common sentiments of the spiritual Libertines — “we ought to take the communion of saints, spoken of in the Apostles’ Creed; for this communion can never be perfect till all things are common among the faithful — goods, houses, and body.” From the Consistory, Madame Ameaux passed to the Council, which sent her to prison. Her husband, from whom she had learned these doctrines, saw himself condemned in his wife’s condemnation. Besides, he had a grudge at Calvin, who had injured his trade by forbidding card-playing. One night, when merry at supper, he said to his friends that “his religion was the true religion, whereas Calvin’s religion was deceit and tyranny, and that the magistrates who supported him were traitors.” 2 On the words being reported to the Council, Ameaux was compelled to apologise. Calvin deemed this a too lenient sentence for an offense that struck at the fundamental settlement of the State. He demanded that the Council should inflict a more adequate punishment, or put himself and the other ministers on their trial. The Council, who were resolved to uphold the moral discipline, cancelled their first sentence, and pronounced a second and harder one. They adjudged Pierre Ameaux to walk through the streets bareheaded, carrying a lighted candle, and to make confession of his fault on his knees. The anger of the Libertines was great.

A few days after, knowing that Calvin was in the pulpit, they rushed into the church and made a disturbance. The Council, feeling that with the Gospel must fall the republic, set up a gibbet in the Place St. Gervais. The hint was understood and respected.

In the following year (1547) events of greater consequence occurred. One day a paper was found affixed to the pulpit of St. Peter’s, full of abuse of the ministers, and threatening them with death. 3 Suspicion fell on Jacques Gruet, who had been seen loitering about the cathedral. From a canon in the Roman Church, Gruet had passed to the ranks of the Libertines, to whose principles his notorious profligacy did honor. The Council arrested him. A domiciliary visit brought to light another trait of his character, which until then was unknown, save to his more intimate friends. His shorn head had not prevented him becoming an infidel, and an infidel of a very malignant type. Certain writings, his own composition, breathing an envenomed hatred of Christ, were discovered in his house. A clue, moreover, was there found to a correspondence tending to deliver up Geneva to the duke. The billet affixed to the pulpit was forgotten in the graver discoveries to which it led. Gruet confessed his guilt, and was condemned and beheaded. The Council maintained its ground in presence of the Libertines. So far from receding in the way of relaxing the moral code, it advanced in the path of practical reformation. It closed the taverns; it placed under surveillance certain places in the city where jovial parties were wont to assemble; it forbade the baptising of infants by the names of Popish saints, a practice which was understood to be a manifesto against the Protestant rule; and it prohibited the performance of the Acts of the Apostles, a comedy designed, its patrons alleged, for the edifying of the people, but which, in the opinion of the Council, profaned the Word of God, and wasted the public money, “which it were better to expend on the necessities of the poor Protestant refugees with which Geneva was now beginning to be filled.”

These decided measures only inflamed the rage of the Libertines. This party now found a leader in an unexpected quarter. We have already mentioned the name of Amy Perrin. Six years before, he had gone all the way to Strasburg to prevail on Calvin to resume his place at Geneva. But he was not to remain always by the side of the Reformer. Perrin was irascible in temper, frivolous in manners, a lover of fetes and magnificent dresses, and as ambitious of power as he was devoid of the talents for exercising it. He aped, in Geneva, the part of Caesar at Rome; but Calvin saw that his vein fitted him for the comic rather than the heroic, and styled him at times “Caesar the Comedian.” He had been raised, by the voice of the people, to the chief military command in the republic, he was thus not without the means of aiding his party, and of damaging his opponents.

The wife of Perrin was the daughter of Francois Favre, who was now closing a life that had been not unprofitable to the State, with an old age of shameless immorality. His flagrancies compelled the notice of the Council.

His daughter, Madame Perrin, gave a ball, by way of showing how little she regarded either Consistory or Senate. This was a transgression of the ecclesiastical ordinances. All concerned in the affair, including one of the syndics, were summoned before the Consistory. Only two, of whom Perrin was one, acknowledged their fault; the rest set the Ecclesiastical Court at open defiance, and, in accordance with the constitutional law and practice, were summoned before the Council, and ordered to prison.

Madame Perrin was among the incarcerated. Her rage knew no bounds; and what added to it was the circumstance of her father being imprisoned about the same time for “debauchery and adultery.” The humiliation of the family of Favre was now complete, and their indignation was fierce in proportion. They loudly demanded the abolition of the ecclesiastical laws, and denounced Calvin as bringing back, under another name, the tyranny of the Roman Church. 6 The captain-general, Perrin, took the part of his wife and his father-in-law, and used all his influence both in the Council and in the city against Calvin.

The party increased in numbers and in audacity. They demanded that the Council should strip the Consistory of the power to excommunicate, and take it into its own hands. They hoped, no doubt, that in the hands of the Council excommunication would remain a dead letter, and thus the mainspring of the Calvinistic discipline would be broken.

Calvin saw how much was at stake, and resolved to continue the battle till he should fall at his post or be driven from it. With him it was no trial of strength between himself and the Favre family, which of the two had the greater influence in Geneva, and which should bow the head before the other. The question to be decided was whether the Reformation, in its reinvigorated spiritual phase, should be propagated over Europe or be trampled underfoot by Genevan Libertinism. If it was to spread to other countries, its purity and rigour must be maintained at all hazards in Geneva, its center. It was from this calm elevation that Calvin surveyed the struggle. Writing to Farel, he says: “I told them that so long as they were in Geneva, they should strive in vain to cast off obedience to the laws; for were there as many diadems in the house of the Favres as frenzied heads, that that would be no barrier-to the Lord being superior.” As Calvin had foretold, so it happened: the law held its course. The Favres had to digest their humiliation as best they could; the law knew no distinction between them and the lowest citizen.

The battle, however, was not ended; nay, it grew still fiercer. Geneva became yet more divided and demoralised. On the 12th December, 1547, we find the pastors going to the H’tel de Ville “to show that a great deal of insolence, debauchery, dissoluteness, and hatred was prevalent, to the ruin of the State.” On the 16th December the Council of Two Hundred met to discuss the measures to be taken. The contention was so hot, and the threats uttered against the pastors, and especially against Calvin, were so violent, that their friends ran to beg the ministers not to appear that day before the Council. Calvin proceeded to the H’tel de Ville alone. An excited crowd was gathered at the door of the Council-hall. “I cast myself,” says Calvin, “into the thickest of the crowd. I was pulled to and fro by those who wished to save me from harm.” But he adds, “The people shrank from harming me as they would from the murder of a father.” 8 Passing through the crowd, Calvin entered the Council-chamber.

There fresh combats awaited him. On his entrance the cries grew louder, and swords were unsheathed. He advanced undismayed, stood in the midst of them, and looked round on the scowling faces and naked swords. All were silent. “I know,” said Calvin, addressing the members of the Council, “that I am the primary cause of these divisions and disturbances.” The silence grew yet more profound, and the Reformer proceeded: “If it is my life you desire, I am ready to die. If it is my banishment you wish, I shall exile myself. If you desire once more to save Geneva without the Gospel, you can try.” This challenge brought the Council to their senses. It recalled the memory of the disorders that had made it necessary to implore the interposition of the very man they were now seeking to drive away, to save the republic when on the brink of ruin. The recollection cooled the most irritated spirits present. A republic, of course, could bestow the title of king upon no one; but all felt that the man before them, though he had no crown, was in reality a king. He wore his pastor’s cloak right royally, and looked more august than monarch in his robes of