And now for the homeward journey! Farel did not intend to return by the way that he came. Leaving the shelter of the thick woods and the lonely mountain paths, he rode onwards to the place which had so long been laid upon his heart—the old city of Geneva. Yes, Geneva, like Neuchâtel, like Orbe and Granson, must “be taken for Christ.”
Farel had had his eye upon Geneva for years back. The time was come for the first onset.
But before I tell you of Farel’s arrival at Geneva, it will be needful to make you understand something of the past history of the town, and of the state of things at that time, otherwise, many things which happened during Farel’s visit there would be very perplexing to you.
Geneva is now, as you know, one of the chief cities of Switzerland; but in the days of Farel it was not a Swiss town at all, nor ever had been; it was the capital of the little state of Geneva, which had in ancient times belonged to the German emperors of Rome. But about 400 years before the time of Farel, it had become an independent state, and had two rulers, the Count of Geneva, and the Prince-Bishop. These two were naturally jealous of each other, and there were constant disputes between them.
The powerful princes of Savoy, who lived near, took advantage of these disputes to gain power themselves in the city of Geneva. This city was to them what the vineyard of Naboth was to Ahab. One prince of Savoy after another made vain attempts to get possession of it. They succeeded at last in getting rid of one obstacle in their way, namely, the Count of Geneva. They took the bishop’s part against the count, and the count was ousted. But to get rid of the bishop was not so easy.
At last the time came when by strange means they gained their end. In the year 1434, Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, gave up the government of Savoy to his eldest son, and became a hermit. Soon after, the council of Basle made Amadeus pope, by the name of Felix V. There was another pope at the same time. Pope Felix now seized his opportunity. On the pretext that popes might appoint bishops, he made himself Bishop—Prince of Geneva. He was soon after deprived of his popedom, but he continued to be bishop of Geneva; and when he died, his grandson Peter, who was about eight years old, became bishop in his place. But little Peter soon died, and then another grandson, John, who was twelve years old, succeeded. When he died, a third grandson, Francis, was made bishop.
During this time, as was natural, the princes of Savoy could do much as they liked in the little state of Geneva. It was for the time their family property. But when bishop Francis died, and there were no more princes of Savoy to put in his place, the new bishop became again an enemy of the Duke of Savoy. The duke wished to retain all the power he had had, when his own relations were bishops. Thus, from about the year 1500, to the year 1513, constant disputes had been going on between the dukes and the bishops; and by degrees there arose a third party in the city, who desired to have neither duke nor bishop. They were heartily tired of both, and wished Geneva to be a free state.
In the year 1513, the Duke of Savoy persuaded pope Leo X to make another of his family bishop of Geneva. This was John, a son of bishop Francis, who was a little child at the time of his father’s death. This child had grown up a miserable object, and as wicked as he was sickly and repulsive.
The duke thought he would be a willing tool in his hands for bringing Geneva into subjection to the house of Savoy. The pope much wanted the Duke of Savoy to give his sister in marriage to his brother, Julian de Medicis. The duke was easily won over to do this by the pope’s consenting to make the wretched John bishop of Geneva. Thus were matters managed in the “holy Catholic church.”
It was to be supposed that when the citizens of Geneva again found themselves in the power of the Duke of Savoy, and under the tyrannical rule of the vile and cruel bishop, they would long all the more for the liberty which seemed farther off than ever. Some amongst them determined to take a bold step. They went into Switzerland to ask for the help of Fribourg and of Berne against their tyrants. They knew the Swiss loved liberty for themselves and for others. They told the sad tale of their oppression,—of the crimes and vices of John, and the tyranny of the Duke of Savoy. The Swiss promised to be their friends and allies. But this act of the citizens only roused John to fresh cruelties. Years of misery were still in store for Geneva.
The citizens who made the league with Switzerland were called Huguenots, a mispronunciation of a German word, which means “confederates bound by an oath.”
I have thought it needful to tell you this because you will hear much of the Huguenots, and you might otherwise suppose that the name meant the same as Protestants, the French Protestants being in later times called Huguenots. But the Huguenots at Geneva were still, more or less, Roman Catholics. It was love of freedom, not a love for the gospel, which gave to some of them a liking for the gospellers, of whom they had heard in Switzerland and elsewhere. They did not understand what the gospel really was, but it seemed to them that by means of it, whatever it was, the Swiss had become free. Some of them, for the sake of liberty, would have liked to get rid of the priests altogether. All of them would gladly have rid themselves of the cruel and tyrannical John.
This did not really make their case a more hopeful one. It is a greater difficulty for a preacher of the gospel when he meets with those who would accept it as a means of bettering their condition in this world, than when he meets with those who oppose it from enmity, or from an honest conviction that it is wrong.
It would be easier to deal with Elizabeth Arnex and the monks of Granson, than with the Huguenots of Geneva. The Huguenots would allow the gospel to be preached, the monks would hinder it. But in the case of the Huguenots who listened to it, it was far more difficult than in the case of the priests and monks to distinguish the work of God from natural feeling. We naturally approve of anything which seems likely to make this world a pleasanter place to live in.
And thus from time to time gospel books, and even gospel preachers from Switzerland, had been welcomed at Geneva with joy. Here and there, there may have been some weary soul really brought to Christ. But there were many who were ready for freedom’s sake to declare themselves on the side of the gospel.
In the year 1522 John died. His profligate life had brought him to a miserable end. The new bishop was called Peter de la Baume.
He is thus described to us by a prior of Geneva:- “Peter de la Baume was a very proud man, and thought to set himself up above others, not by nobleness of mind or by virtue, but on account of his family; and to keep up his dignity he found it needful to make a great display of pomps and shows. He thought it was the chief merit of a bishop to have a table well spread, or rather well loaded, and with all manner of good wine, of which he would have on his table more than thirty-one different sorts all at once. He was also a great whip, and a very hard rider—he would gallop one horse, leading another by the bridle, of which he was very proud, wishing in this respect to copy the cardinal of Sion, who was esteemed to be the shrewdest man of his time. Peter de la Baume tried to resemble him in shrewdness, as he could not do so in virtue, for the cardinal, if his morals were not good, knew at least how to keep up a sober and respectable appearance, and could give a reason for all he did. But the bishop was just the contrary, for what the cardinal did with his mind clear, the bishop did after drinking. He would do one thing before dinner, and just the contrary afterward.” Such was the new pastor of Geneva.
This unhappy man found himself in a sea of troubles. The Duke of Savoy and the Huguenots alike wished to get rid of him. The nobles of Geneva were jealous of his power. Even the priests became his enemies for, to make friends with the Huguenots he quarreled with them. His history is, in fact, a series of attempts to make friends with the duke, the Huguenots, the nobles, the priests, and even the Swiss, always in the hope that one of these parties would defend him against the rest. But by this means he offended all. Everyone was in turn his enemy.
At last, in the year, 1527, an event happened, by which the citizens were suddenly freed from his presence, though not yet entirely from his power.
A report spread through the town that a girl of respectable family had been dragged off by force to the bishop’s palace, and that the doors had been shut in the face of her mother, who had run to the rescue. A crowd collected round the palace. The Huguenots hammered loudly at the doors, and demanded admittance. But the bishop was at dinner, and would not be disturbed. The magistrates were sent for, and the bishop was obliged to allow them entrance. They found him thoroughly frightened, pale and trembling. He was obliged to restore the girl. He said she had been taken to be given to a harper, instead of wages.
The whole town was now roused against the bishop. The Duke of Savoy thought it would be a good moment to seize upon him and carry him off, as he would now have no friends to defend his cause. The bishop, warned of the duke’s plot, fled by night, and made the best of his way to his castle in Burgundy. The Huguenots had helped him to escape. They were only too glad to take leave of him. For the next few years the unhappy man made ceaseless attempts to gain friends who would restore him to his diocese. Sometimes he appealed to the Duke of Savoy, sometimes to the Emperor Charles V., sometimes to the pope. He threatened the Genevans, and wrote them angry letters, which they received with silent contempt. But they always remembered he was waiting to seize his opportunity for returning, and if he could be kept at a distance by means of the gospel, they would welcome the gospel preachers.
The Duke of Savoy, too, continued to threaten them with his armies. They looked to the Swiss, to Berne chiefly, to defend them from the soldiers of Savoy. And if, to please the Bernese, they found it was needful to defend the cause of the gospellers, they were ready to do so. These were not high motives. But at the same time these Huguenots were not hypocrites. They seem to have had no higher thoughts of the gospel, than that it was a means for making men more free and happy. A hypocrite is one who knows that the gospel is to fit men for Heaven, but who helps it forward as a means of making himself greater, or richer, or more at ease upon the earth.
I should further tell you, that whilst some of the Huguenots were thoroughly papists, others had a leaning, from motives more or less good, towards the faith preached by the gospellers. At the head of the former party was a citizen, called Hugues; at the head of the latter, a citizen called Bandichon.
In the absence of the bishop, the affairs of the church of Rome at Geneva were managed by his vicar; and as there were seven hundred priests living in the town, there was a strong party of papists who were not Huguenots at all. Those Huguenots, who were decided papists, were more anxious to defend Geneva from Savoy than to lessen the power of the bishop and the priests. The other party of Huguenots wished to be free from Savoy, pope, bishop, and priests, all alike.
Tidings of these things had often reached William Farel, whilst he was fighting the Lord’s battles at Neuchâtel, at Orbe, and at Granson. You now understand why he had so often longed to be at Geneva. He knew that the great desire of the Huguenots was simply freedom from their tyrants; but he heard also from time to time that there were some who were, as he said, “meditating on the work of Christ.”
Farel had written to Zwingli, telling him his longing after the souls of the Genevans. “As to the depth of their desire after piety,” he wrote, “that is known only to the Lord.” But he knew enough to feel sure that there were some hearts which God had touched. Could he have torn himself away from the towns and villages of Switzerland, he would have gone at once to brave the perils of Geneva.
They were not greater than those amongst which he was daily living. To be threatened one day with a pistol, to be attacked another day by a monk armed with a knife, were common events. But the Lord’s work was to be done, and he could not leave it. Would no one in the meantime dare to go to Geneva in his stead?
Do you remember young Peter Toussaint, who had so bitterly reproached Master Faber for his timidity? He arrived at Zurich just when Farel was looking around him for the man who would take the gospel to the Huguenots. Farel wrote to Zwingli, entreating him to send Peter Toussaint. Zwingli did his best. He entreated Peter to go at once. But Peter, who had blamed Master Faber, shrank in terror from the thought of Geneva. He at once refused to go. Farel heard the news with bitter sorrow. He could only turn to the Lord who had never failed him. “O Christ!” he said, “draw up Thine army according to Thine own good pleasure, take away all the sluggishness from the hearts of those who are to give Thee glory, and arouse them mightily from their slumbers!”
Berne meanwhile took no decided measures to help forward the cause of the gospel at Geneva. With Fribourg against them, and the Roman Catholic cantons of German Switzerland already in arms, the Bernese hung back, and turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of Bandichon and his friends, that they would rid Geneva of the mass, the images, and the priests.
Thus for a while the Genevans waited in vain for the helping hand for which they were longing. God’s time was not yet come. He was deepening His work in the hearts of some, to whom Christ was already precious. He was preparing a people who should welcome the blessed tidings when He should send a messenger of peace. Day by day the little sparks of light spread and increased, and day by day William Farel carried Geneva in his heart before God.
You will now be better able to understand the events that followed upon that evening when Farel on his white horse, and Saunier on his black one, rode into the ancient city. But fully to comprehend why there were so many of the citizens who longed to be freed from the duke and bishop, you would have to read histories of the crimes and vices and cruelties of these men, for which there is no space here. Nor would such a history be an edifying one. Of the bishop, the Genevans said, “He has no more thought of the life to come than if he were a cow or a horse.” At the time when William Farel arrived, he was living in Burgundy, where he said he had far better wine than he could get at Geneva. There we will leave him for the present.
It was on a fine autumn day, October 2, 1532, when Farel and Saunier caught sight of the three old towers of Geneva cathedral. They rode into the town to an inn to which they had been recommended. It was called the Tour Perce.
Farel went out at once to deliver the letters he had brought from Berne for the chief Huguenot leaders. Great was the surprise and delight of the Huguenots when they found that the bearer was really William Farel. How often had they heard of the wonderful preacher, whose voice of thunder had, as they thought, overthrown popery at Aigle, at Morat, at Neuchâtel, at Orbe, at Granson, and in towns and villages far and near! To them, it was Farel who had done this work. The natural man understands not that all power is in God; that we but "receive power" when "the Holy Ghost has come upon" us, and so become the witnesses of Christ even to the ends of the earth. They looked, therefore, at Farel with wonder and joy; All were ready to hear him, and the news spread like wild-fire through the city that “the scourge of the priests” was come.
One of the nuns of St. Claire, Sister Jane, of whom we shall hear more, wrote that evening in her journal, “A shabby little preacher, one Master William, a native of Dauphiny, has just arrived in the city.”
Next morning, one by one the Huguenots arrived at the Tour Perce. The chief citizens of Geneva were amongst them. Farel welcomed them with courtesy. They readily told him how they longed for freedom and for Bible teaching. They would gladly have neither pope nor priests. The pope was a tyrant, the priests profligate and vicious and they would be better off if the whole mass of them were swept away.
But Farel observed they had no thought that they themselves needed the gospel as lost and guilty sinners. “Their thought of true religion,” he said afterward, “is to eat meat on a Friday and abuse the priests.” He had not come to Geneva to free them from the pope or the duke, but from Satan, and from themselves.
“You need the gospel for yourselves,” he said, “there is a freedom for the soul, the freedom with which Christ makes free, and He has sent me to tell you of that.”
They said they knew they needed teaching; they were ready to listen. The landlord brought in benches and stools. Farel stood up before a little table, upon which he placed a Bible.
“It is this book,” he said, “this book only-which will teach you to know Jesus Christ. If it is lawful for you to throw off tyranny in earthly things, it is needful for you to throw it off in heavenly things—to shut your ears to popes, to councils, and to priests, and to listen to God only, speaking in His Word.”
He preached to them in simple words, and they listened eagerly. As they rose to go they thanked him, and as they walked home they said to one another, “Our Master should be neither the bishop, nor the Duke of Savoy, nor St. Peter himself, but the Lord Jesus Christ alone.”
There was to be a second meeting that same day. The tidings came to the priests and canons, and filled them with fear and grief. Farel had appeared amongst them as a thunderbolt. What was to be done!
“This wretched preacher,” wrote Sister Jane, “is beginning to speak secretly at his quarters in a room, seeking to infect the people with his heresy.”
The second meeting was far more crowded than the first. Farel had in the morning spoken chiefly about the authority of Scripture. He now spoke of the free grace of God—the free pardon for guilty sinners—spoken not by a priest, but by God Himself. “Whilst the priests,” he said, “build up straw and stubble into the temple of God, He brings the living stones, the souls whom He has saved. He saves wholly and entirely. It is not partly the work of Christ, and partly the work of man—fasts and pilgrimages, prayers and penances. Christ does not do a part, He does the whole—He, and none besides.”
When the preaching was over, many citizens entreated Farel to come and explain the Bible to them at home. It was beginning to dawn upon them that the glad tidings meant something far beyond freedom and happiness here below. They were beginning to see in Christ some beauty that they should desire Him. Amongst those who thus listened gladly was a cap-maker, called Guérin, of whom you will hear more shortly.
Meanwhile other citizens, urged on by their wives and by the priests, came in hot anger to the Tour Perce, and commanded Farel to leave the town at once. The streets were filled with priests, eagerly endeavoring to raise a riot.
The magistrates, alarmed at the commotion, sent for Farel and Saunier to appear at the town hall and give an account of their doings. Most of these magistrates were neither for nor against the gospel. They did not wish to offend the priests. They wished still less to offend Berne. They had no clear idea what course they ought to take.
As the preachers were brought in, all looked with curiosity at the man, of whom they had heard “that he set the country in a blaze from the Alps to the Jura.”
“It is you, then,” said one of the magistrates, “who do nothing but disturb the world, and stir up rebellion everywhere. You are a busybody, who have only come here to do mischief. We order you to depart from this city at once.”
Farel replied calmly, “I do not stir up rebellion. I only preach the truth. I am ready to prove out of God’s Word that what I preach is true. I am ready also not only to sacrifice my ease, but to shed the last drop of my blood for it.”
The Huguenot magistrates looked with admiration at Farel, and spoke out in his defense. Farel then showed to the council the letters he had brought from Berne, recommending him to their friends and allies at Geneva. This was an important matter for the magistrates. They all agreed to send away the two preachers without threatening. They only begged them not to disturb the peace of the town.
Meanwhile another council was being held at the house of the bishop’s vicar, where the priests were gathered together. The heretics, of whom they had heard for years, were amongst them at last. What was to be done? The vicar himself was afraid to do too much.. Many of the priests thought him tame and timid.
“Not only the preachers,” they said, “ought to be punished, but all the citizens who have invited them to their houses, and who want to live differently from what their bishops and pastors have taught them.”
“We must condemn nobody unheard,” said the vicar.
“If we dispute,” replied one of the priests, “there is an end of it. It is as much as saying that people may dare to have opinions as to what the church teaches.”
Most of the priests agreed that it would not do to hear Farel’s defense. He must be condemned without having an opportunity of speaking.
But some of the priests opposed this. “Let him come,” they said, “and explain what he preached at the inn.” These priests gained their point. But they had made this plan for the same reason as that which led the chief priests of Jerusalem to request that Paul might be again brought before the council. They had “banded themselves together” to kill him. They were determined that he should never leave the vicar’s house alive, if once they could get him into it. Sister Jane in her journal tells us that this was their plot. She saw no harm in it; on the contrary, she thought it would be a work well-pleasing to God.
A messenger was sent to the Tour Perce to desire Farel and Saunier to appear, and to explain to the priests what it was they taught. The Huguenots, meanwhile, who were on the watch, suspected what the priests were about, and some of them went to the inn to entreat Farel to go away at once to save his life. But in the midst of their entreaties the vicar’s message arrived. Farel and Saunier were delighted to have such an opportunity for preaching the gospel. They turned a deaf ear to the Huguenots, and, taking Robert Olivetan with them, set off for the vicar’s house.
They had had hard work to get from the magistrates’ council to the inn, so great was the crowd that had gathered; they had far harder work to get from the inn to the vicar’s house. The streets were filled with armed priests, who were urging on the mob to mock and insult them. “Look at the dogs! look at the dogs!” shouted the rabble. But otherwise unhurt, they reached the house where death awaited them. Not only the priests who were there assembled, but those who crowded the street outside the house, had alike sworn that Farel should die then and there.
But two Huguenot magistrates had reached the house first, and for awhile the three preachers were kept waiting outside the council-room. The magistrates were demanding a promise from the priests that no harm should be done to the gospellers. The priests promised all that they were asked. The two Huguenots however thought it best to remain there. They could not trust the word of the priests.
At last the preachers were called in.
The vicar sat in his gorgeous robes; the chief priests, also dressed in their various trappings, sat on his right hand and on his left.
One of them, called De Veigy, rose up and said, “William Farel, tell me who has sent you, and for what reason you come here?”
“God sent me,” replied Farel, “and I am come to preach His Word.”
“Poor wretch!” said the priests, looking at him with disgust.
“God has sent you,” continued De Veigy; “can you show us a miracle to prove that, as Moses showed Pharaoh? If not, show us the license of the bishop—no one ever preaches here without leave from him;" and then, looking Farel over from head to foot, he continued, “You are not dressed like our preachers—you are dressed like a soldier or a thief. How dare you preach! Don’t you know the church has forbidden laymen to preach? You are an impostor and a scoundrel.”
“Jesus Christ,” replied Farel, “has commanded, ‘preach the gospel to every creature.’ The true successors of the apostles to whom He spake those words, are those that conform to Christ’s order. The pope and all his tribe have no claim therefore to that name. They no longer care for the words of Christ.”
But Farel’s words were drowned in the sudden uproar which arose. The priests, pale with anger, clattered with their feet, and arose, speaking all at once, and shouting names of insult and contempt. They rushed upon Farel. Some pulled him one way, some another. “Farel, you wicked devil!” they shouted, “what business have you to go about turning the world upside down?” One asked him one question, one asked another; and neither Farel’s voice nor the vicar’s could be heard in the frightful din. At last by signs and gestures the vicar compelled the priests to sit down and be silent.
Then Farel, lifting up his head, said boldly and simply, “My lords, I am not a devil. If I journey to and fro, it is that I may preach Jesus Christ—Jesus Christ crucified—dead for our sins, risen again for our justification—so that whosoever believeth in Him hath everlasting life. He has sent me, therefore I am compelled to teach Him to all who are willing to hear. I have no other right to speak than that God has commanded me. My only desire is so to speak that all may be saved. It is for this cause and no other that I came to Geneva. You have sent for me to give an account of my faith. I am ready to do so, not only at this moment, but as many times as you please to hear me peaceably. What I have preached, and still preach, is the truth. It is not heresy, and I will maintain it even unto death. And as for what you say about my disturbing the land, and this city in particular, I will answer as Elijah did to Ahab, ‘I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house.’ Yes, it is you and yours who trouble the world by your traditions, your human inventions, and your dissolute lives.”
The priests, who had listened in awe-struck silence till these last words were spoken, now sprang to their feet. “He has spoken blasphemy!” shouted one of them. “What further need have we of witnesses? He is guilty of death.”
Farel turned and faced him. “Speak the words of God,” he said, “not the words of Caiaphas.”
This speech raised the fury of the priests to its highest pitch. “Kill him! Kill the Lutheran hound! To the Rhone! to the Rhone! Kill him! kill him!” rang from every corner of the council chamber. “Strike him! beat him!” shouted the proctor, and in a moment the furious priests fell upon the three preachers. They abused them, beat them, spat in their faces, yelled and shrieked, till the uproar was deafening.
The vicar, the two Huguenots, and a few of the priests ashamed of such a scene, endeavored to put an end to it.
“You are wicked men!” exclaimed Hugues, the Huguenot. “You promised to do no harm to these men. We brought them here, trusting to your word, and you want to beat and kill them before our faces. I will go and ring the great bell to call together the city council. This matter shall be settled by the people of Geneva.”
The priests were frightened. It was quite possible that if the town council met, the citizens might make this riot a pretext of banishing the priests in a body. They sat down, looking ashamed and anxious.
The vicar told Farel and his friends to leave the room, that the assembled priests might consult what should next be done.
The three preachers went out into the long gallery, bearing many marks of the blows and spitting of their assailants.
Meantime the crowd outside the house was becoming impatient at the long sitting of the priests’ council. Their numbers increased with their noise. The preachers in the gallery heard on the one side the loud and angry voices of the priests in the council chamber, on the other side the shouts and cries of the crowd, which filled not only the street, but the court and garden. Eighty stout priests had posted themselves before the entrance, “all well armed with clubs to defend the holy Catholic faith.” They watched every door, determined that neither of the preachers should escape.
“They wished,” writes Sister Jane, “to put that wretch and his accomplices to a bitter death.”
As the shouts rose louder, and the tumult in the council chamber increased, Farel and his friends paced the gallery. A servant of the vicar, Francis Olard, stood at the further end. He had been posted there as sentinel, a gun in his hand. Excited by the shouts, and by the sight of the “great heretics,” he leveled his gun at Farel and pulled the trigger. There was a flash, but the gun did not go off. Farel turned to him, and said coldly, “I am not to be shaken by a pop-gun.” God had again, as on so many former occasions, turned aside the weapon aimed at His servant.
The door of the council chamber was at last opened, and the preachers were called in to hear their sentence. The threats and persuasions of the two Huguenot magistrates gained the day. The priests were terribly afraid of the wrath of Berne, and this, said the Huguenots, they would have a taste of, if they dared to touch William Farel. The vicar, therefore, arose and commanded the three preachers to leave his presence, and depart from the city within six hours. If they refused, they should at once be burnt.
The news of this sentence quickly found its way to the crowd in the streets. As Farel approached the door they thronged around it. The priests with their clubs were foremost, gnashing their teeth like enraged tigers, and yelling in their fury.
Farel stood for an instant to consider what he should do. The next moment would most likely be his last.
“The villain dared not come out,” writes Sister Jane, “he feared the church people would put him to death.”
Two of the priests from within now rushed upon Farel to drive him from the house. “Go out!” they shouted, “in the name of all the devils, whose servant you are!” “One of them,” writes Sister Jane, who was proud of their exploits, “gave him a hard kick, another beat him soundly on the head and face, and thus thrust him out with his two companions.” But the kicks, and blows of the two priests within the house were as nothing in comparison with the raging sea of furious priests without. For a moment all seemed over with the preachers. But suddenly the crowd fell back with terror in their faces. The magistrates with an armed guard, had been on the watch. They made their way through the mob. They placed the preachers in the midst of the guard, who cleared a way with their halberds, and took the road to the Tour Perce.
But the eighty armed priests were not to be so easily discomfited. They ran on, and stationed themselves in a street which formed the only way to the Tour Perce.
“The worthy men could not be satisfied,” writes Sister Jane, “that the heretics should be only expelled from the city.”
As the guard drew near, one of “the worthy men” rushed forward, sword in hand, to run Farel through. “Hold there,” said a magistrate, seizing the arm of the assassin. “Many were grieved,” continues Sister Jane, “because the blow failed.”
The priests saw their case was hopeless. They now contented themselves with hissing and hooting, and the cries “To the Rhone with them!” sounded in the ears of the preachers till they were safely lodged in the Tour Perce. A guard was placed before the door.
The three friends now consulted together what was to be done. They felt that they must go. Christ had said, “When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another.” It was very sad to them to leave the hungry souls who had welcomed them so gladly.
“They shall hear the gospel yet, in God’s own time,” said Farel. “He will make the way for it!’
Very early in the morning, four Huguenots came to the inn.
They had made ready a boat to convey the preachers over the lake. But the priests were earlier still. They were gathered in the streets ready for an attack. “There go the devils!” they shouted as the little party appeared. Seven men—four Huguenots, and the three preachers. But they dared not touch them. The hand of God was again over His beloved servant. They reached the boat in safety. The Huguenots seized the oars, and unharmed, as God’s three servants from the fiery furnace of Babylon, the three preachers were borne away over the waters of the beautiful lake, leaving the angry crowd hooting upon the shore.
Far away they went—the Huguenots would not land them at any town or village, but took them to a lonely place on the shore between Morges and Lausanne. Here they all disembarked. They embraced each other with warm affection. Then the Huguenots returned to Geneva with Robert Olivetan, and the two preachers took the road to Orbe. Thus ended Farel’s two days at Geneva.