But Farel had Geneva before him; he was working his way to what he considered the center of his operations. The Genevese had been contending for some time with the duke of Savoy, and their unprincipled bishop for political freedom. And in the struggle, Berthelier, Bonevard, and Levrier, names of famous memory, suffered as martyrs of liberty. Now they were to be drawn into a fresh contest, but for a higher and holier liberty.
Farel arrived in Geneva in the autumn of 1532, accompanied by Anthony Saunier, like himself a native of Dauphiny, and recommended by letters from the government of Berne. As Geneva becomes, from this time, the second center in Reformed Christendom, we will favor the reader with an extract from the copious pen of the historian of Protestantism as to its situation and ecclesiastical condition. "There is no grander valley in Switzerland than the basin of the Rhone, whose collected floods, confined within shining shores, form the Leman. As one looks towards 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.... Above the forests of chestnuts and pine-trees 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 locust.... 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 shaven 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."
Such was the moral and ecclesiastical condition of Geneva when Farel and Saunier entered it. And if we add to this account of its ecclesiastical swarms, that the population at that time numbered only about twelve thousand, we may well wonder how such a ravenous host could be sustained. But a still greater wonder is, how could an evangelist, almost single-handed, venture to assail such a host, and that on their own ground-the region of darkness and wickedness? Only through faith in the living God, we answer. Doubtless Farel was a great preacher, one of the greatest in the sixteenth century. Still he required faith in the presence of God, and in the power of His Holy Spirit through the word preached.