In the spring of the year 1524 Farel left Basle to visit Zwingli, and other preachers of the gospel in German Switzerland. He was absent but a little while, but during that time his enemies at Basle made the most of their opportunity to stir up the city against him. At the head of these enemies was Erasmus. The name of Balaam stung his guilty conscience. Farel had neither sought him nor avoided him. Had he done either, Erasmus would have been better pleased. “I am only sorry,” he said, “that I ever wasted a word in disputing with him. He would have thought me a shining light, if I would have said the pope is an Antichrist, and human ordinances are heretical, and forms and ceremonies heathenish abominations. He calls himself a friend of the gospel, but I never beheld such a proud, censorious, insolent man. I have learned his character so well that I consider him neither worthy of being my friend nor my enemy.” Erasmus did, however, so far consider Farel worthy of being his enemy, that he succeeded in persuading the governors of the city that dangerous tumults would be caused if they allowed such a heretic to remain. The Council had hitherto not only allowed Farel to preach, but they had desired him to do so “for the glory of Christ.” They had even given up to him one of the churches of the city. But when he came home from his visit to Zurich, he found that times were changed. “The Sunday was at hand,” he writes, “when I was to preach my fourth sermon. On the Saturday, at ten o’clock, a public messenger came to summon me. Having a good conscience, I made the best of my way to the town hall, so that the messenger could hardly keep pace with me. I was kept a considerable time waiting at the door. At last a magistrate called me in. As he could neither understand my language nor make himself understood by me,” (many persons at Basle speak German), “he led me into an ante-chamber, and there he endeavored to talk to me in Latin, saying, ‘We see now what your gospel is.’ I, knowing that he meant to accuse the gospel of being sedition, replied to him, saying, ‘The gospel is not what you imagine. It teaches peace, it is ready to give, it asks for nothing again. It teaches us to suffer meekly for Christ’s sake.’ We see it in another light,’ said he. My masters desire that you leave the town this very day.’ I answered, ‘I have no wish to remain in the town against the will of your masters. But I want to know what crime I have committed, or what harm I have done. I am ready to give satisfaction to any I have injured, and if I have deserved death, I do not refuse to die’ He replied, ‘My masters wish you to leave, and also to bind yourself not to take any revenge upon the town, or upon any citizen, and not to defame the town by your letters.’ Now I was already bound not to do these things, inasmuch as I was a Christian, for we hate sin, not men. We would make war upon their vices, but do good to themselves. However, lest I should stumble him by refusing thus to bind myself, I did so, and I obeyed my orders without delay. And the Lord knows I never left any town with greater joy, which was a surprise to me, as I had there so many friends and brethren. But to tell the truth, when I had walked a mile, I began to think, ‘What is the cause of my having had to leave the town so suddenly?’ and I felt surprised when I thought over the matter. ‘How!’ I said to myself, ‘a Council so enlightened and so just, have they really condemned me without having heard my defense? And what crime have I committed? Why did they not accuse me of anything, so that if I deserved punishment others might take warning, and not commit the same offense? If I am not told why I am punished, how am I to be reformed by the punishment? And how are others to take warning by my fate, when my crime is unknown to them likewise?’”
Thus was Farel driven forth from the learned city of Basle.
His departure was a great sorrow to many in the town, who had learned from him the blessed gospel of God. Hausschein was indignant. He missed his beloved friend, and he grieved that they should no more hear from him the truth the Lord had so wonderfully taught him. Farel took a knight called Esch as his companion, and went to Strasburg. The Lord had been working in a remarkable manner in that city. Farel was strengthened and encouraged by the warm welcome he received there. It was like the visit to Gaius’ house, of which we read in the “Pilgrim’s Progress”—a rest and refreshment by the way.
And now Farel was to enter upon fresh labors. Though he had preached at Meaux, and in Guyenne, and in Dauphiné, it would seem as though he had never regarded himself as specially called by God to give himself up to the preaching of the gospel, till he went to Basle. He says he had held back from taking the place of an evangelist, hoping that God would send forth more worthy and gifted men. But his talks with Hausschein on this subject had led him to the conviction that God had meant him to go forth as a preacher wherever a door should be opened. “Hausschein,” he says, “frequently exhorted me to preach, calling upon the name of the Lord.” In other words, “commending him to the Lord in prayer.”
Some, who think it a terrible thing for men to preach who have not been ordained, have called this Farel’s ordination. It would be well if all Christian men, and women too, were thus to “ordain” one another, and that frequently, as we each one, if believers in the Lord Jesus, have our special work given to us by Him, and we each need the prayers of our brethren, and of our sisters. We should commend one another to the Lord, and provoke one another to love and to good works, after the example of Hausschein, whenever we have the opportunity of doing so. Other historians imagine, though without any record or tradition to build upon, that Farel must have been ordained at Strasburg. We find however, later, that when he met with believers at Montbéliard to break bread in remembrance of the Lord’s death, some even of his friends were displeased, because he was only a layman. A “sacrament” without a clergyman was strange, and even wrong, in the eyes of those who had been brought up in popish thoughts of priests and consecrations. And how slow even now are many of God’s people to receive His word in all its simplicity!
“For,” as Farel says, “instead of looking to God and His word, we are apt to look to ourselves, and our reason, and that which suits our own judgment appears to us to be more for edification, for (as it would seem) we see better what serves to edification than God Himself does, and according to our notions, everything would be ruined, if the ordinances of God were observed without any addition on our part, but our prudence, beyond that of God, will build things up. But let us not be so mad and so foolish, so arrogant, and so presumptuous, as to think we can render the Word of God and His holy sacraments more worthy, and more sightly, and more full of grace and power, by anything we can add to them, or by anything we can do, for in fact we can do nothing, if we put our hand to it, but spoil and pervert everything by our own inventions.” It is worth remarking, also, that when Farel tells us how he came to write books, he gives the same explanation of that matter also. “John Hausschein,” he says, “at the request of some good people, admonished me to write in the vulgar tongue, that those might learn who do not know Latin. However, considering my littleness, I should never have attempted to write, nor should I have thought of doing so. But this holy man stirred me up to it, calling upon the name of the Lord, and according to God I obeyed.” If, therefore Farel was “ordained” once by Hausschein, we may also say he was ordained twice, once to preach and once to write books.
To return to our history. Farel, who now felt that the Lord Himself had called him to be a preacher, was ready to obey. The people of Montbéliard, who had heard of him, desired him to come amongst them. Their prince, the young duke Ulric of Wurtemberg, also consented to Farel’s preaching the gospel freely at Montbéliard. The Lord had set before him an open door, and thus we find that in July, 1524, Farel left Strasburg, and entered on his new field of labor.