History of the Reformation, vol. 3

Chapter 11

New Campaign—Farel’s Call to the Ministry—An Outpost—Lyons—Sebville at Grenoble—Conventicles—Preaching at Lyons—Maigret in Prison—Margaret intimidated

God usually withdraws his servants from the field of battle, only to bring them back stronger and better armed. Farel and his friends of Meaux, Metz, Lyons, and Dauphiny, driven from France by persecution, had been retempered in Switzerland and Germany among the elder reformers; and now, like an army at first dispersed by the enemy, but immediately rallied, they were turning round and marching forward in the name of the Lord. It was not only on the frontiers that these friends of the Gospel were assembling; in France also they were regaining courage, and preparing to renew the attack. The bugles were already sounding the reveille; the soldiers were girding on their arms, and gathering together to multiply their attacks; their leaders were planning the order of battle; the signal, “Jesus, his Word, and his grace,” more potent in the hour of battle than the sound of warlike music, filled all hearts with the same enthusiasm; and everything was preparing in France for a second campaign, to be signalized by new victories, and new and greater reverses. HRSCV3 470.3

Montbeliard was then calling for a laborer in the Gospel. The youthful Duke Ulrich of Wurtemberg, a violent and cruel prince, having been dispossessed of his states by the Swabian league in 1519, had taken refuge in this earldom, his only remaining possession. In Switzerland he became acquainted with the reformers; his misfortunes had proved salutary to him; and he took delight in the Gospel. Oecolampadius intimated to Farel that a door was opened at Montbeliard, and the latter secretly repaired to Basle. HRSCV3 470.4

Farel had not regularly entered on the ministry of the Word; but we find in him, at this period of his life, all that is necessary to constitute a minister of the Lord. He did not lightly and of his own prompting enter the service of the Church. “Considering my weakness,” said he, “I should not have dared preach, waiting for the Lord to send more suitable persons.” But God at this time addressed him in a threefold call. As soon as he had reached Basle, Oecolampadius, touched with the wants of France, entreated him to devote himself to it. “Behold,” said he, “how little is Jesus Christ known to all those who speak the French language. Will you not give them some instruction in their own tongue, that they may better understand the Scriptures?” At the same time, the people of Montbeliard invited him among them, and the prince gave his consent to this call. Was not this a triple call from God? “I did not think,” said he, “that it was lawful for me to resist. I obeyed in God’s name.” Concealed in the house of Oecolampadius, struggling against the responsibility offered to him, and yet obliged to submit to so clear a manifestation of the will of God, Farel accepted this charge, and Oecolampadius set him apart, calling upon the name of the Lord, and addressing his friend in language full of wisdom. “The more you are inclined to violence,” said he, “the more should you practice gentleness; temper your lion’s courage with the meekness of the dove.” Farel responded to this appeal with all his soul. HRSCV3 470.5

Thus Farel, once the zealous follower of the old Church, was about to become a servant of God in the new. If Rome imperatively requires in a valid ordination the imposition of the hands of a bishop who descends from the apostles in uninterrupted succession, it is because she places human traditions above the Word of God. In every church where the authority of the Word is not absolute, some other authority must needs be sought. And then, what is more natural than to ask of the most venerated of God’s ministers, that which they cannot find in God himself? If we do not speak in the name of Jesus Christ, is it not something at least to speak in the name of Saint John or of Saint Paul? He who speaks in the name of antiquity is stronger than the rationalist who speaks only in his own name. But the christian minister has a still higher authority: he preaches, not because he descends for St. Chrysostom or St. Peter, but because the Word that he proclaims comes down from God himself. The idea of succession, venerable as it may appear, is not the less a human system, substituted for the system of God. In Farel’s ordination there was no human succession. Nay more: we do not see in it that which is necessary in the Lord’s fold, where every thing should be done decently and in order, an whose God is not a God of confusion. He was not regularly ordained by the Church: but extraordinary times justify extraordinary measures. At this memorable epoch God himself interposed. He consecrated by marvelous dispensations those whom he called to the regeneration of the world. In Farel’s ordination we see the infallible Word of God, given to a man of God, that he might bear it to the world,—the call of God and of the people,—the consecration of the heart, and a solemn appointment by one of the ministers of the Church; and all this was the best substitute of which his case admitted for the full and formal seal of the Church on his ministry. Farel took his departure for Montbeliard in company with Esch. HRSCV3 470.6

Farel thus found himself stationed as it were at an advanced post. Behind him, Basle and Strasburg supported him with their advice and their printing-presses; before him lay the provinces of Franche Comte, Burgundy, Lorraine, the Lyonnais, and the rest of France, where men of God were beginning to struggle against error in the midst of profound darkness. He immediately began to preach Jesus Christ, and to exhort the faithful not to permit themselves to be turned aside from the Holy Scriptures either by threats or stratagems. Beginning, long before Calvin, the work that this reformer was to accomplish on a much larger scale, Farel was at Montbeliard, like a general on a hill whose piercing eye glances over the field of battle, cheering those who are actively engaged with the enemy, rallying those ranks which the impetuosity of the charge has broken, and animating by his courage those who hang back. Erasmus immediately wrote to his Roman-catholic friends, that a Frenchman, escaped from France, was making a great disturbance in these regions. HRSCV3 471.1

Farel’s labors were not unfruitful. “On every side,” wrote he to a fellow-countryman, “men are springing up who devote all their powers and their lives to extend Christ’s kingdom as widely as possible.” The friends of the Gospel gave thanks to God that his blessed Word shone brighter every day in all parts of France. The adversaries were astounded. “The faction,” wrote Erasmus to the Bishop of Rochester, “is spreading daily, and is penetrating Savoy, Lorraine, and France.” HRSCV3 471.2

For some time Lyons appeared to be the center of evangelical action within the kingdom, as Basle was without. Francis I, marching towards the south on an expedition against Charles V, had arrived in this city with his mother, his sister, and the court. Margaret brought with her many gentlemen devoted to the Gospel. “All other people she had removed from about her person,” says a letter written at this time. While Francis I was hurrying through Lyons an army composed of 14,000 Swiss, 6000 French, and 1500 lances of the nobility, to repel the invasion of the imperialists into Provence; while this great city re-echoed with the noise of arms, the tramp of horses, and the sound of the trumpet, the friends of the Gospel were marching to more peaceful conquests. They desired to attempt in Lyons what they had been unable to do in Paris. Perhaps, at a distance from the Sorbonne and from the parliament, the Word of God might have freer course? Perhaps the second city in the kingdom was destined to become the first for the Gospel. Was it not there that about four centuries previously the excellent Peter Waldo had begun to proclaim the Divine Word? Even then he had shaken all France. And now that God had prepared everything for the emancipation of his Church, might there not be hopes of more extended and more decisive success? Thus the people of Lyons, who were not generally, indeed, “poor men,” as in the twelfth century, were beginning more courageously to handle “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” HRSCV3 471.3

Among those who surrounded Margaret was her almoner, Michael d’Arande. The duchess caused the Gospel to be publicly preached at Lyons; and Master Michael proclaimed the Word of God with courage and purity before a great number of hearers, attracted partly by the charm that attends the glad tidings wherever they are published, and partly also by the favor in which the preaching and the preacher were held by the king’s beloved sister. HRSCV3 471.4

Anthony Papillon, a man of highly cultivated mind, an elegant Latin scholar, a friend of Erasmus, “the first in France for knowledge of the Gospel,” accompanied the princess also. At Margaret’s request he had translated Luther’s work on monastic vows, “in consequence of which he had much ado with those Parisian vermin,” says Sebville; but Margaret had protected him against the attacks of the Sorbonne, and procured him the appointment of headmaster of requests to the dauphin, with a seat in the Great Council. He was not less useful to the Gospel by his devotedness than by his prudence. A merchant, named Vaugris, and especially a gentleman named Anthony du Blet, a friend of Farel’s, took the lead in the Reformation at Lyons. The latter person, a man of great activity, served as a bond of union between the Christians scattered throughout those countries, and placed them in communication with Basle. While the armed hosts of Francis I had merely passed through Lyons, the spiritual soldiers of Jesus Christ halted there with Margaret; and leaving the former to carry the war into Provence and the plains of Italy, they began the fight of the Gospel in Lyons itself. HRSCV3 472.1

But they did not confine their efforts to the city. They looked all around them; the campaign was opened on several points at the same time; and the Christians of Lyons encouraged by their exertions and their labors all those who confessed Christ in the surrounding provinces. They did more: they went and proclaimed it in places where it was as yet unknown. The new doctrine ascended the Saone, and an evangelist passed through the narrow and irregular streets of Macon. Michael d’Arande himself visited that place in 1524, and, aided by Margaret’s name, obtained per mission to preach in this city, which was destined at a later period to be filled with blood, and become for ever memorable for its sauteries. HRSCV3 472.2

After exploring the districts of the Saone, the Christians of Lyons, ever on the watch, extended their incursions in the direction of the Alps. There was at Lyons a Dominican named Maigret, who had been compelled to quit Dauphiny, where he had boldly preached the new doctrine, and who earnestly requested that some one would go and encourage his brethren of Grenoble and Gap. Papillon and Du Blet repaired thither. A violent storm had just broken out there against Sebville and his preachings. The Dominicans had moved heaven and earth; and maddened at seeing so many evangelist escape them (as Farel, Anemond, and Maigret), they would fain have crushed those who remained within their reach. They therefore called for Sebville’s arrest. HRSCV3 472.3

The friends of the Gospel in Grenoble were alarmed; must Sebville also be taken from them! Margaret interceded with her brother; many of the most distinguished personages at Grenoble, the king’s advocate among others, open or secret friends to the Gospel, exerted themselves in behalf of the evangelical grayfriar, and at length their united efforts rescued him from the fury of his adversaries. HRSCV3 472.4

But if Sebville’s life was saved, his mouth was stopped. “Remain silent,” said they, “or you will be led to the scaffold.”—“Silence has been imposed on me,” he wrote to Anemond de Coct, “under pain of death.” These threats alarmed even those of whom the most favorable hopes had been entertained. The king’s advocate and other friends of the Gospel now showed nothing but coldness. Many returned to the Romish worship, pretending to adore God secretly in their hearts, and to give a spiritual signification to the outward observances of Romanism. A melancholy delusion, leading from infidelity to infidelity. There is no hypocrisy that cannot be justified in the same manner. The unbeliever, by means of his systems of myths and allegories, will preach Christ from the christian pulpit; and a philosopher will be able, by a little ingenuity, to find in an abominable superstition among the pagans, the type of a pure and elevated idea. In religion the first thing is truth. Some of the Grenoble Christians, among whom were Amadeus Galbert, and a cousin of Anemond’s, still clung fast to their faith. These pious men would meet secretly with Sebville at each other’s houses, and talk together about the Gospel. They repaired to some secluded spot; they visited some brother by night; or met in secret to pray to Christ, as thieves lurking for a guilty purpose. Often would a false alarm disturb the humble assembly. The adversaries consented to wink at these secret conventicles; but they had sworn that the stake should be the lot of any one who ventured to speak of the Word of God in public. HRSCV3 472.5

Such was the state of affairs when Du Blet and Papillon arrived at Grenoble. Finding that Sebville had been silenced, they exhorted him to go and preach the Gospel at Lyons. The Lent of the following year would present a favorable opportunity for proclaiming the Gospel to a numerous crowd. Michael d’Arande, Maigret, and Sebville, proposed to fight at the head of the Gospel army. Everything was thus preparing for a striking manifestation of evangelical truth in the second city of France. The rumor of this evangelical Lent extended as far as Switzerland. “Sebville is free, and will preach the Lent sermons at Saint Paul’s in Lyons,” wrote Anemond to Farel. But a great disaster, which threw all France into confusion, intervened and prevented this spiritual combat. It is during peace that the conquests of the Gospel are achieved. The defeat of Pavia, which took place in the month of February, disconcerted the daring project of the reformers. HRSCV3 473.1

Meantime, without waiting for Sebville, Maigret had begun early in the winter to preach salvation by Jesus Christ alone, in despite of the strenuous opposition of the priests and monks of Lyons. In these sermons there was not a word of the worship of the creature, of saints, of the virgin, of the power of the priesthood. The great mystery of godliness, “God manifest in the flesh,” was alone proclaimed. The old heresies of the poor men of Lyons are reappearing, it was said, and in a more dangerous form than ever! But notwithstanding this opposition, Maigret continued his ministry; the faith that animated his soul found utterance in words of power: it is in the nature of truth to embolden the hearts of those who have received it. Yet Rome was destined to prevail at Lyons as at Grenoble. Maigret was arrested, notwithstanding Margaret’s protection, dragged through the streets, and cast into prison. The merchant Vaugris, who then quitted the city on his road to Switzerland, spread the news everywhere on his passage. All were astonished and depressed. One thought, however, gave confidence to the friends of the Reformation: “Maigret is taken,” said they, “but Madame d’Alencon is there; praised be God!” HRSCV3 473.2

It was not long before they were compelled to renounce even this hope. The Sorbonne had condemned several of this faithful minister’s propositions. Margaret, whose position became daily more difficult, found the boldness of the partisans of the Reformation and the hatred of the powerful increasing side by side. Francis I began to grow impatient at the zeal of these evangelists: he looked upon them as mere fanatics whom it was good policy to repress. Margaret, thus fluctuating between desire to serve her brethren and her inability to protect them, sent them word to avoid running into fresh dangers, as she could no longer intercede with the king in their favor. The friends of the Gospel believed that this determination was not irrevocable. “God has given her grace,” said they, “to say and write only what is necessary to poor souls.” But if this human support is taken away, Christ still remains. It is well that the soul should be stripped of all other protection, that it may rely upon God alone. HRSCV3 473.3