William Farel, meanwhile was not only teaching boldly, but studying deeply. He read most, and very carefully, the blessed word of God. He also read the history of the church. He wished to find out, how it was that men had so wandered into the darkness—how it came to pass, that having once known the gospel, they were now calling evil good, and good evil—as ignorant and as senseless as the heathen. He read the sad story of the early days of the church, and he talked it over with the learned priests of Paris, who had advised him to read these writings of the fathers.
You shall hear of what he learned from his studies and conversations in his own words. They are words that many amongst us may remember with profit. “St. Paul,” he says, “spoke these words: ‘Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.’ This sentence is worthy to be written in all our hearts, being in truth spoken by God Himself through the mouth of the holy apostle. And this good personage was thus led to speak on account of the evil ways of heretics, who dared to teach what they could not prove by the holy Scriptures, who dared to set up their own reasons and opinions in the face of the fact that the things they taught were not to be found in the Scriptures at all. And, in truth, all the ruin and downfall of men has always come from the same source—namely that they persisted in adding to, or taking from, the word of God. You see that in the time of the holy apostle, these teachers were not contented with the grace and truth which were fully and plentifully preached by Paul; they began to hinder the truth and to hinder God’s blessing—not by disapproving of the preaching of Jesus Christ, they approved of it in fact—but they persisted in adding to it that which God had not commanded. They added to it those things which God had never commanded to believers in Jesus, but to the nation of Israel. It is true these false teachers had some show of having the right on their side, because it was a fact that God did speak to Moses, and what Moses commanded was really by the order of God, and the apostles themselves had observed those ceremonies. But the holy apostle Paul, and God who spoke by his mouth, would give no ear to such excuses; he would not admit that Moses, to whom the Gentiles had never been given in charge, was to be ranked with Jesus Christ, nor that Moses was to be added on to Christ to give salvation and life. And not only does Paul say that the ordinances of Moses were unnecessary for believers; he goes much further, and says, on the contrary, that all who teach such things are to be detested, and held as accursed—that they are miserable troublers of the church, and that any such ought to be entirely disowned, even should such a teacher prove to be an angel from heaven—such an angel should be held as accursed by God; for nothing is to be added, nothing to be diminished from that which God has said. His holy and perfect word is to be kept pure and entire.
“The apostle Paul says, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, that what he preached was to be proved by the Scriptures, and he says also that all Scripture is written by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
“If all could receive this pure truth, and give to Christ that honor which belongs to Him, and if the old fathers had, in every single matter, kept to that rule, there would have been no need now to write against evil doctrine, and to have such trouble to weed out of the hearts of men the things which have taken such deep root in them. On the contrary, all that is not contained in the holy Scriptures, all that has no foundation there, would have been held in abhorrence; and, instead of writing as they did with such affection about the sign of the cross and such like things, the old fathers would have opposed them, as not contained in the Bible; they would have firmly resisted everything of the sort. But by lack of having kept to that safe rule, it happened that as soon as one of the old fathers, who had an appearance of great goodness and great wisdom, turned a little aside from the straight path, the next who followed did a little worse, and by this means many wretched and wicked inventions of men were brought in. But God by His grace, ordered it that the fathers should be judged out of their own mouths, for when they were waked up by heretics, they were obliged to have recourse to the Scriptures to expose their errors, they were driven to the necessity of condemning these heretics by the word of God, in doing which they also condemned themselves, for they, too, had taught as doctrines things which were not in the Scriptures at all.”
William then remarks how the Lord Jesus, who could not err, and who was Himself the truth, always confirmed His words by the Scripture, and explained to His apostles that the history of His coming into the world, of His life, death, resurrection, and of His great salvation, all this was written beforehand in the Scriptures. And that much more need is there that those who teach and preach now, should be able to prove their words by the Bible. “Otherwise,” he says, “we must be as reeds shaken with the wind, whereas we ought to be firm in Christ, knowing for certain that we have His word for everything, and thus the gates of hell shall never prevail against us. This is what God requires of all Christians; He looks for it from each one, and admits nothing less in any who are members of the Body of Christ, sheep of the Good Shepherd. And he who does not know what he is to believe, nor whom he is to believe, nor how he is to believe, who hears no difference between the voice of Jesus and other voices, who cannot distinguish between the voice of the shepherd and the voice of the stranger, he does not belong to Jesus Christ as yet, he is not in Christ at all. It is no use to say, ‘I have always been used to believe and to teach so and so’; it is no use to say, Our pastors and teachers tell us this or that.’ For custom without truth is useless. God never has approved, and never will approve, anything but the truth, and He will judge us by that. The pastor and teacher must keep to the word of God only, and feed the flock with that, otherwise he is a blind leader of the blind, and all together will fall into the ditch. And now that things are come to that, that everything is poison, except that heavenly bread, the word of God, it is quite certain that whosoever attempts to feed upon other food than that will be poisoned, and die.”
William remarks also, that such is the power of the word, when preached purely and simply, that he asks no further witness of that power than the consciences of those who oppose it. They oppose it just for that reason, because they feel its force. The whole of popery, he says, falls at once, the moment we admit that the word of God alone is the rule to guide us. “Where, then,” he says, “is the authority for the mass, and such like services? Where is the authority for the consecration of altars and of churches? Where is the authority for using the sign of the cross? God has not commanded any of these things. And if we once admit that it is lawful for a man in any one thing to command and order that which God has not commanded, where are we to stop? How are we to have any rule, if once we step beyond the plain word of God? Oh, that it might please God, in His grace, to open the eyes of this poor world, so that they might seek no longer to make excuses for anything which is not to be found in the holy Scriptures, that they might believe, do, hold, and follow nothing that is not to be found there.”
He gives the example of the council at Jerusalem, in Acts 15. “It was in truth a holy council,” he says; “not of anti Christian popes, nor of cardinal-princes of Sodom, nor of bishops of Gomorrah, nor of abbots who go in the way of Balaam. These, alas, are of no use to the world, except to stand as beacons to all men by their evil doctrines and their abominable lives, which are as much as to say, Do not follow us in anything’! But at the council of Jerusalem were assembled the most favored and gifted of God’s faithful servants, and yet all that they there ordered, was not to be held as binding upon any, except as proved by the Scriptures.
“But when we come to the fathers, how can it be said without speaking wickedly, that all they taught was according to the Scriptures? Look at St. Ambrose (who tells us how the Empress Helena went to Jerusalem to find the true cross). He says, in the first place, she set forth on her journey to the holy places. I should like him to prove to me by the word of God, that there is one place on the earth more holy than another. For the Lord Jesus Christ said that people ‘should neither on this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.’ By these words He overturns the thought of any difference between one place and another, just as the Scripture also tells us there is no difference between one day and another. Ambrose tells us also that the Spirit inspired Helena to seek the wood of the cross. Still less could he prove that to me from Scripture, unless he meant that it was an evil spirit that thus inspired her. For the Holy Spirit never inspired anybody, and never will, to believe or do more or less than the Lord Jesus had told them beforehand, and than the Scriptures had declared. To say that the Holy Spirit inspired anyone to seek for the wood of the cross is against His nature, which is to turn away our hearts from the things which are seen, from the things of the earth, and to turn them to the unseen things that are in heaven. How could the Holy Spirit direct the heart of Helena to things below, seeing that the precious body of Jesus Christ, which surpasses all that is in heaven, as well as all that is on earth, is no longer here? He has left this earth, He is no more in this world. And why is this? Is it not in order that none might seek Him here below, but that with all the desire of our hearts we should seek Him there, where He is, in heaven, at the Father’s right hand! Thus does the Holy Spirit teach, when He teaches at all. Looking with the eye of faith, we see the Lord Jesus, we see Him who died for our sins, who rose again for our justification, who died in obedience to the Father, and who arose in triumph, alive with immortal life, who ascended in triumph to the right hand of the Majesty on high, who from thence gave great gifts, the fruit of His victory, the excellent graces of the Holy Spirit; who thus enriched His Church, which is His Body, by the gifts of ministry, and other gifts which should serve to that same holy ministry. And this ministry was to be in order that the church might know and understand the endless riches which it possesses in Christ.”