From Here to Forever

Berquin at the Stake

At the stake, Berquin endeavored to address a few words to the people; but the monks began to shout and the soldiers to clash their arms, and their clamor drowned the martyr's voice. Thus in 1529 the highest ecclesiastical authority of cultured Paris “set the populace of 1793 the base example of stifling on the scaffold the sacred words of the dying.”⁶ Berquin was strangled, and his body was consumed in the flames. HF 137.3

Teachers of the reformed faith departed to other fields. Lefevre made his way to Germany. Farel returned to his native town in eastern France, to spread the light in the home of his childhood. The truth which he taught found listeners. Soon he was banished from the city. He traversed the villages, teaching in private dwellings and secluded meadows, finding shelter in the forests and among rocky caverns which had been his haunts in boyhood. HF 137.4

As in apostolic days, persecution had “fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.” Philippians 1:12. Driven from Paris and Meaux, “they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.” Acts 8:4. And thus the light found its way into many remote provinces of France. HF 137.5