(Continued from p. 27).
FAREL returned to his labors. It was a work of patience, and, for the time, almost an unseen work. The priests, on the other hand, were everywhere to be seen and heard. Some came over from Savoy and from the southern provinces of Switzerland, to help their friends—the priests of the Pays de Vaud. They gathered the people together in every village, raised riots, and spoke loudly and violently. They roused the ignorant crowds to resist the government of Berne. They led them on to tear down the government orders which were posted up on the church doors; they formed processions; they beat drums; they led bands of excited people into the churches to yell and shout, so as to drown the voice of the preacher.
In one village, where the men could not summon courage themselves to attack Farel, the women were sent after him to beat him with their washing clubs. You must remember that a Swiss washerwoman does not stand washing over a tub full of hot water and soapsuds. She takes the clothes to a mountain stream, lays them out on a board where the clear, fresh water will run over them, and meanwhile batters them with a sort of wooden spade. This plan succeeds in making them clean, but has the disadvantage of at last making holes in the clothes.
It was with these wooden spades that Farel was attacked by a troop of excited women. It was only one of many occasions when, like John Nelson, the Methodist, he had cuts and bruises as his marks of honor. “I bear in my body,” said Paul the apostle, “the marks of the Lord Jesus.”
Other sorrows came upon Farel besides that of seeing the gospel rejected and despised. Some preachers came from France to help him after a while, and one also from Zurich, whose name was Ballista. He was a Parisian, had formerly been a monk, and had now a violent hatred of popery.
But hatred of popery, and love to Christ, are not one and the same thing, and one may have plenty of the former without a spark of the latter.
Farel soon found out that his new friend was a terrible hindrance in the work. “He had been brought up,” said Farel, “in the idleness of a convent, gluttonous and lazy. He soon found it was not at all to his taste to make rough journeys in all weathers, and eat just such plain fare as could be had in the mountains. He heartily wished himself back in his monk’s hood, and when he found he was abused and insulted, he poured forth wagon loads of threats.” So ended the labors of Ballista; and it was a relief to Farel that they were of short duration.
Meanwhile, whilst Satan was thus busy, the Lord was working in many hearts. In one village and another souls were saved—here a cowherd, and there a boatman; here a poor washerwoman, and there a vine-dresser: people who were but little thought of except by the Lord, who chose them before the foundation of the world that they should be jewels in the crown of Christ.
When Farel was not employed in teaching, of preaching, or praying, he continued diligently to study the Bible. Many of his letters to his friends at this time are still to be seen. He wrote to them on the subjects which he was searching out in Scripture. For instance, he wrote to several friends on the great question which was already a question in the days of the Apostle Paul, and which is still so often disputed by Christian people, Is the believer under the law or not?
Several of his friends believed that though the believer is no longer under the ceremonial law, he is still under the law of the Ten Commandments. Therefore when they read such texts as these, “Ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:44Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)); “If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law” (Col. 5: 18)— they said that meant the ceremonial law.
“If,” said Farel, “it is the ceremonial law only which has been abolished, how could that agree with what is said about the new law written in our hearts? And when Paul speaks of lust which is increased by the law, and says again that the law is not made for a righteous man, there is no question of ceremonies, but of the Ten Commandments themselves. They were laid upon men with the spirit of bondage, with fear, and with threats. By these commandments all are condemned and convicted. Not one escapes the curse, since no one keeps the commandments. It is therefore a yoke we cannot bear. We are only weakened by the burden of the law, and love God the less, having the law as a taskmaster; whereas the chief commandment of the law is that we should love God with our whole heart. Christ and His glory are lessened if only the ceremonies and the curse are removed—if it is not true that He frees us from the whole bondage of the law, bringing us into perfect liberty.”
Is it, then, liberty to do evil? Such is the thought which the natural heart has of liberty. And it is true, indeed, that if a man were taken from under the yoke of the law and left to himself, he would rejoice in the freedom of following his own desires and his own evil passions.
But is the believer in the Lord Jesus left to himself?
Is there nothing else besides the condemning law and the weak, sinful man?
Do you believe in the Holy Ghost? Millions stand up in church every Sunday and say that they do.
“The Spirit,” said William Farel, “has been given to us by the Father, by the which Spirit we are brought as sons into the glory of the Father, giving thanks to the Father in all things. You must judge,” he adds, “which of these two beliefs—that we are under the law, or that we are brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God—gives most honor to Christ and is most in accordance with the Scripture.”
But, alas, our natural thought is not “what brings most honor to Christ,” but what bring: most honor to ourselves. It is humbling to IN told that we cannot obey the law of God. We would rather think of the law as something that will improve us than as something that car only condemn us, and declare us to be past mending. “I live,” said Paul, “yet not I, Christ liveth in me.” But we would rather have an I even under the heavy yoke of the law, than have no I, and let Christ be all. Not only all for us, but also all in us. Christ our object, the spirit of Christ the power, in all we say and do, down even to the common acts of eating and drinking.
“If the flesh acts, it is only to do evil; its place is to be dead and not better. We have both right and power to hold it as such (if we are God’s children), because Christ is dead and we live in His risen life. He has Himself become our life.” That is to say, Christ died in my place. I am therefore to count myself as dead, and own nothing now but Christ.
“By faith in Jesus Christ, Paul lived indeed. The Christ who was the source of his life who was his life, was its object also. It is this which is always the proof of the life of Christ in us; He Himself is its object—He alone.”
“Are you afraid, then, you would not do good works enough if you are not under the law? Think for a moment what sort of works will a man do, whose object is Christ alone?”
But I do not know whether any of Farel’s friends understood as he did, that we are thus walking, if believers, in a new power, and a power as mighty as the law was weak. It may be that in this matter, as in many others, he stood alone. But to stand alone is sometimes the post of honor. Farel might not himself have been able to give all the Scripture proofs that can be given on this subject by those who have “from children known the holy Scriptures.” Till we see that we are “dead,” we do not understand how it is we are no longer under the law. We may come to the right conclusion by the teaching of the Spirit of God, but we may not be able to give a clear account of the Scripture teaching which leads up to this conclusion. When we remember out of what thick darkness Farel had been brought, we can only wonder that he was as fully instructed as he was, in the mind of God. He had yet much to learn, and there was no doubt much that he never did learn. But we should be thankful that the Lord enabled him to be faithful to the light he had.
When Farel had been at Aigle a little more than a year he had the refreshment of a visit to Berne on a very remarkable occasion. The Council and the citizens of Berne held a meeting, in November, 1527, at which it was determined that a public disputation between the papists and the reformers should take place there in the January of the following year.
The Romish bishops and priests, the chief gentlemen and citizens of the Swiss towns, and the preachers and teachers of the gospel, were all alike invited. Each party was to give a reason for the faith which they held. But these reasons were to be given from the Bible only. No other book was to be referred to upon any subject.
What answer would the papists give to such an invitation as this? The four Swiss bishops—of Lausanne, Constance, Basle, and Sion—found various excuses for not coming themselves, and for not sending any priests to speak in their name. The Bernese assured them that if they failed to come they would be forthwith deprived of all their privileges in the canton of Berne. They still refused to be present. The other bishops and many priests followed their example.
The Emperor Charles V. himself ordered that the conference should be delayed, but the Council of Berne replied that, as everyone who had accepted the invitation was already arrived, it would be impossible to defer it.
Let us now place ourselves in the old city of Berne in that month of January, 1528. Whom should we find there? There was of course the great preacher of Berne, Berthold Haller. Zwingli was there. Our old friend Hausschein from Basle, Farel’s old friends from Strasbourg, Bucer and Capito, and many, many more from far and near who had believed and preached the glad tidings of the grace of God. On the other side were about 350 Swiss and German priests. The conference was to be held in the church of the Cordeliers. Farel could not understand what was said, as the whole was in German. But it was pleasant to be amongst so many old and dear friends and fellow laborers in the gospel of Christ.
The conference began by the rules, or rather the rule, for the disputation being read aloud. “No proof shall be proposed that is not drawn from the holy Scriptures, and no explanation shall be given of those Scriptures that does not come from Scripture itself; explaining obscure texts by such as are clear.”
What a rule! No ancient volumes of “the fathers.” No prayer books, or canon laws—nothing but the Bible. The Bible without notes or comments. The 350 priests brought face to face with that—to see what they could find there, and what they, could not find! The names of the Romish bishops were then called over, but there were none to answer to them. The first subject was read aloud. “The holy Christian church, of which Christ is the sole head, is born of the word of God, abideth in it, and listeneth not to the voice of a stranger.”
A monk rose up and said, “The word sole is not in Scripture. Christ has left a vicar here below.”
“The vicar that Christ left is the Holy Ghost,” replied Berthold Hailer.
A priest then said a few words as to the unity of the Roman church, and the divisions amongst the reformers.
Bucer replied, “Whosoever preaches Jesus as the only Saviour, we own as our brother. Besides, a unity in error is not a thing to boast of. Mahomet could boast of that. God permits divisions, in order that those who belong to Him may learn to look not to men, but to the word of God and the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Therefore let us all the more turn to the Scriptures.”
They did turn to the Scriptures, they there searched for all that God has said as to the work of His Son. They searched in vain for the mass and for purgatory, for prayer to the saints, for the adoration of images. The priests became more and more angry as the Scripture texts were read aloud. “If they wish to burn the two ministers of Berne,” said one of them, “I will undertake to carry them both to the stake.”
F. B.