We will now return to William Farel, between whom and the popes there was this difference, that they were walking on the miry side, and he on the clean side, of the broad road that leadeth to destruction. Beware lest you should be walking on either!
The day had come at last when William was to leave his mountain village to go forth into the wide world beyond. He was a simple country boy, and in his quiet home he had been kept out of the way of many of the vices and crimes of great cities. When he came within sight of Lyons, he heard the chime of the church bells from many a tower, and he tells us that his heart leapt up to think of the good and holy people who must live where those bells were “always sounding day and night.” “But, alas!” he says, “though I did but pass through without stopping, I saw enough to make me wonder that God did not cleave the earth to swallow up a town so vile and wicked.” He was next to wonder at all he saw in the great city of Paris.
The University of Paris had long been famous as the chief resort of learned men, and of those who wished to learn. Students came there from all parts of Europe. They lived either in colleges, of which there were several, or in lodgings. One of the colleges of divinity was called the Sorbonne. A large part of the town was called the University. There were classes and lectures, and tutors and professors enough to satisfy any young man who had a thirst for learning. William could be taught Latin to his heart’s content. We read that in the houses of the great printers who were working so hard at Paris, even the women, children, and servants always talked Latin. The reason was that they could thus hold conversations with all the foreigners who thronged to Paris. William, therefore, had one of his wishes more than fulfilled. He not only could find a Latin teacher as soon as he arrived, but he could learn Greek and Hebrew also. His other and greatest wish seemed farther away than ever. It was not amongst the Parisian students that he was likely to find a man devoted to God, and to the saints: they were known all over Europe as a wild, disorderly set of young men, caring nothing for religion, or thinking of it only when a great festival came round, such as Christmas, or the Feast of Fools, or the Fair of Lendit.
On these occasions they performed their part in the celebration most vigorously—that is to say, they dressed themselves in their gayest clothes, they drank, they sang, they danced, they fought, and they quarreled, in the churches, in the streets, or wherever else they might be. On the last occasion, the Fair of Lendit, which was to them the great day of the year, they all collected in a large field outside the town, called the Pre aux Clercs, or “the Scholar’s Meadow.” On that day two ceremonies were performed there. Firstly, an exhibition of a piece of the true cross. Secondly, the rector of the University bought from the parchment sellers who assembled there, a stock of parchment, which was to last the University for the whole year. This being done, the students feasted, drank and shouted, till in the general excitement pitched battles would take place. The Fair of Lendit never ended, they say, without bloodshed. Forty years later, it was for this reason forbidden by the government, and as paper was then taking the place of parchment, the pretext for this holiday was removed. The Christmas riots and revels were also gradually put down on account of the disgraceful scenes which took place in the churches. Instead of these feasts, the students betook themselves by degrees to other amusements, such as the acting of plays. Dreadful to relate, it was the death of the Lord Jesus Christ which was thus commonly acted, or other Bible scenes, in which the godless students acted their parts, as Paul, or Moses, or David. Many of them openly blasphemed the name of God; and the Bible, as far as they knew it, they treated as a fable.
William would be roused up in the night by parties of his fellow-students, who roamed the streets, and waked up quiet citizens with their shouts and songs. To catch the constables who pursued them, and pitch them into the Seine, was a favorite amusement with them. They were the terror of the sober, respectable inhabitants of the city, and in this they gloried and delighted.
Farel looked in vain amongst them for the man he desired to find. But a joyful day was in store for him. He had not been long at Paris, when he remarked in one of the churches, in which he was so often to be found, a little old man, of mean and shabby appearance. “God,” says he, “seeing me to be such a fearful sinner and infamous idolater, so ordered it that I should meet with another idolater, who surpassed all I had ever seen. Never had I beheld a mass-priest who sang the service with greater reverence, though I had hunted for such people into the very depths of the Carthusian and other monasteries.
“This man, if you wish to know his name, was Master James Faber. He bowed down lower before the images than any other person I had seen in my life. He would stay for an immense time on his knees praying and telling his beads before these images, and I would join him in doing so. I was delighted to have found such a man, slave as he was to the pope, and believing all those things which are most detestable in popish idolatry.”
William soon found means to make the acquaintance of Master Faber. He was rejoiced to hear that he was one of the most learned of the professors in the University of Paris, and was on this account greatly esteemed and respected. He was a doctor of divinity, had studied deeply both heathen and so-called Christian books, had traveled in search of knowledge, not only over Europe, but in Asia and Africa. In the opinion of the great scholar, Erasmus, he stood first amongst the learned men of France. “Amongst thousands,” said Erasmus, “you will not find one Faber.” If he had learned much, he was equally remarkable as a teacher. It became William’s greatest pleasure to listen to his lectures, to attend his classes, to talk to him, and to follow him from church to church, to worship by his side. William thus had both the desires of his heart fulfilled, in the enjoyment of the friendship of Master Faber. The old man, too, was so kind and sympathizing, so pleasant, and at times so cheerful, that he was a delightful companion.
But he had his moments of sadness. Sometimes he and William would go together, their hands filled with roses and marigolds, and lilies of the valley, to adorn the shrine of the Virgin in the cathedral of Notre Dame; they would kneel side by side, and pray fervently to Mary, and for a time feel very happy. But as they walked home the old man would say to William, “All things are gone wrong, dear William, and some day God will make all things new. You may, perhaps, see it.”
Yes; it was needful, indeed, that God should make all things new, Master Faber also. But this the old man did not know. He could see with grief and anger how little reality there was in the profession of those around him. “How disgraceful is it,” he would say, “to see a bishop asking men to drink with him, gambling, rattling the dice, spending his time with hawks and dogs, and in hunting, hallowing after rooks and deer, and following after evil company!” So far could he see the mote that was in his brother’s eye, but the beam that was in his own—the awful, the accursed sin of idolatry, to this he was stone-blind. Far from having any misgivings as to this, Master Faber was, on the contrary, hard at work just at this time in writing the legends of the saints. These countless stories he carefully collected, and placed them in order as the names of the saints stand in the calendar. It was a long and difficult task, but he thought, poor old man, that it was time well spent, and that he was doing God a service.
Meanwhile Farel worked hard at his studies. At first he read the heathen books, as Master Faber had done before him, hoping there to find some teaching for his soul, for he was told that the old philosophers were men of wonderful knowledge and wisdom. He found his reading all in vain, for he had a desire in his soul which they could not satisfy. He wanted peace with God. “I wished to be a Christian,” he says, “with the help of Aristotle, hoping that a bad tree would bring forth good fruit.” He then read more carefully than before the stories of the saints, and “they,” he says, “made me more foolish than I was before.” It was strange to him that with all his diligence in reading, praying and worshipping, he only felt more afraid of God and of eternity. Just at this time “the prodigy of vice,” Pope Julius II, gave permission that the writings of the Old and New Testaments should be called “the holy Bible.” Farel heard this, and felt a respect for the Scriptures he had never felt before. For the first time he began to read them.
“Had it not been that I began to read the Bible,” he says, “it would have been all over with me; for everything on the face of the earth was so entirely perverted from the truth of God, that nothing was left sound and whole but the Bible. But when I began to read it I found myself utterly bewildered. I saw that everything around me, in doctrine and in practice, was just the contrary to the holy Scriptures. Here, then, was the time when my eyes ought to have been opened, and I ought to have come to my senses, and come out of the accursed delusion in which I had been living. But it was not so. I remained as deluded and as senseless as before; in fact I went from bad to worse, for the moment that the thought struck me how astonishing it was that the Scriptures should be so different from all I had believed, Satan took alarm lest he should lose his victim, and dealt with me according to his custom—for up to that time he had kept me obeying and serving him with my whole heart, and without fear or doubt. I had never thought of inquiring whether I was doing right or wrong. I had taken it as a matter of course that the things which Satan taught by means of the pope were good and perfect, for no other reason than because the pope and the church said so. Thus, whilst I was doing evil and disobeying God, Satan never troubled me with any fear or doubt, but now, just when I ought to have received the word of God into my heart without doubting, Satan turned upon me, and so filled me with fears and doubts lest I should be doing wrong, that I knew not what to think. Sometimes he told me I did not understand what the words meant, that I ought to take them in another sense. Sometimes he said I ought not to trust to my own sense and judgment, but be very careful not to think myself right in the meaning I attached to the words, that I must obey the church, and believe the words meant what the church said they did. Thus, having listened to the preaching of Satan, I went back into the darkness, and placed myself afresh under the tyranny of the devil, and of the head of all wickedness, the pope.”
A doctor, too, who found William reading the Bible, rebuked him severely, and told him no man should read the Scriptures until he had learned philosophy. William was obedient, but he had read enough to be utterly miserable. The word had reached his conscience, and his false peace was gone forever. “I was the most wretched of men,” he tells us, “shutting my eyes for fear I should see.” In his restlessness and despair Master Faber could not help him. “He only,” says William, “made me blinder than I was, and led me to plunge myself more deeply into idolatry.”
Some rich people who lived at Paris thought it a good plan to employ William in giving away money to the poor. He was glad to do anything to quiet his mind. But he tried one plan after another in vain—no peace came, though he says he had saviors and advocates with God, who could not be counted: that is to say, the saints, whom he now worshipped more devoutly than ever before. In the woods near Paris, there was a convent of Carthusian monks. To this place William went for a time, to join with the monks in their penances, and to put himself under their rule of fastings and mortifications.
Their rule was a very severe one. They were scarcely ever allowed to speak, and anyone who went for a time to live in retirement with them, as Farel did, might not speak at all, except when confessing to the priest. They ate once in the day, and only met at worship. No wonder that Farel tells us that, from “being a fool, he was fast becoming a madman.”
Happily, he remained but a short time with the Carthusian monks. He then returned to Paris. Perhaps it was that he longed for the company of his dear old master. “Wherever I went,” he says, “I never could find the like of Master Faber.”