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 Neuchatel, at Orbe, at Grandson, 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 wildfire 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.
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.”
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!
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.
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.
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 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.”
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?
“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.
Most of the priests agreed that it would not do to hear Farel’s defense.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 awestruck 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 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 were 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, who 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.
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 popgun.” 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 had 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!” 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.
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.
F. B.