At length the evangelical protest was written. Farel has been commonly credited with the authorship. Historians vie with each other in describing the violence of its style. "Indignation guided his daring pen," says one. "It was a torrent of scathing fire;" says another. "It was a thunderbolt, fierce, terrific, and grand, resembling one of those tempests that gather in awful darkness on the summits of those mountains amid which the document was written, and finally explode in flashes which irradiate the whole heavens, and in volleys of sound which shake the plains over which the awful reverberations are rolled."*
When the placards reached Paris, many of the Christians thought the style too bitter and violent, but the majority were in favor of their publication. A night was fixed, October 18th, 1534, for the work to be done all over France. The eventful night came, and the venerable walls of the university of Paris, the public buildings of the capital, the church doors, and the Sorbonne itself were covered with placards. The movement was simultaneous throughout France. The placard was headed in large letters-"True articles on the horrible, great and intolerable abuses of the popish mass; invented in direct opposition to the holy supper of our Lord and only Mediator and Savior Jesus Christ." Popes, cardinals, bishops, monks, and every distinguishing tenet of the Romish faith were attacked with sharpest invectives. The long placard-which occupies over five pages in D'Aubigne's history-thus concludes, "In fine, truth has deserted them, truth threatens them, truth chases them, truth fills them with fear; by all which shall their reign be shortly destroyed forever."
No language can describe the one universal cry of rage and consternation which resounded throughout France on the morning of the 19th. The people gathered in groups around the placards. The priests and monks kindled the rage. The Lutherans, it was said, had laid a frightful plot for burning the churches, firing the town, and massacring every one; and the whole multitude shouted, Death! death to the heretics! The king at the time was living at the Chateau de Blois. A placard was pasted-no doubt by the hand of an enemy-on the very door of the king's apartment. Montmorency and the Cardinal de Tournon drew the king's attention to the paper. The prince was greatly agitated, he grew pale and speechless. He saw therein an insult, not only against his authority, but against his person, and these enemies of the Reformation-Montmorency and Tournon-so fixed this notion in his mind, that in his wrath he exclaimed, "Let all be seized, and let Lutheranism be totally exterminated." The members of the faculties also demanded that by a general auto-de-ff the daring blasphemy might be avenged.
Now it was that the storm, long held back by a good providence, burst forth in awful fury. The king was fully committed to the system of persecution. But, making every allowance for the times, the Reformers were not free from blame. Would the apostles have written and posted such placards? We have no standard of action, no guide but the word of God. Yet there can be only one feeling towards the sufferers-that of tenderest compassion. Orders were immediately issued by the king to seize the Sacramentarians, dead or alive. By the help of a traitor, their houses were pointed out and all were in a short time seized and thrown into prison. The criminal officer having entered the house of one, named Bartholomew Millon, a cripple, wholly helpless in body, said to him, "Come, get thee up." "Alas! sir," said the poor paralytic, "it must be a greater master than thee to raise me up." The sergeants carried him out, but so full of peace and holy courage was Bartholomew, that his companions in captivity grew firm through his exhortations. Formerly, when lifted by his friends, he felt pain in every limb, but the Lord in great mercy took that sensitiveness away, so that in prison he used to say, "the roughest handling seemed tender."