The plot got wind. Deputies from Berne arrived at Neuchatel on the very eve of the festival. "You must see to this," said they to the governor: "if the Reformed are attacked, we, their co-burghers, will protect them with all our power." The conspirators laid down their arms, and the Christmas hymns were not disturbed.
This signal deliverance augmented the devotion and zeal of the friends of the Gospel. Already Emer Beynon of Serrière, where Farel had one day landed from a small boat, ascending the pulpit, had said to his parishioners: "If I have been a good priest, I desire by the grace of God to be a still better pastor." It was necessary for these words to be heard from every pulpit. Farel recommenced a career of labours, fatigues, and struggles, which the actions of the apostles and missionaries alone can equal.
FAREL'S LABOURS.
Towards the end of the year 1530, he crossed the mountain in the middle of winter, entered the church of Valangin, went into the pulpit, and began to preach at the very moment that Guillemette de Vergy was coming to Mass. She endeavoured to shut the reformer's mouth, but in vain, and the aged and noble dowager retired precipitately, saying: "I do not think this is according to the old Gospels; if there are any new ones that encourage this, I am quite amazed."[1040] The people of Valangin embraced the Gospel. The affrighted lieutenant ran to Neuchatel, thence to Berne, and on the 11th February 1521 laid his complaint before the council; but all was useless. "Why," said their excellencies of Berne to him, "why should you disturb the water of the river? let it flow freely on."
Farel immediately turned to the parishes on the slopes between the lake and Mount Jura. At Corcelles a fanatic crowd, well armed and led on by the curate of Neuchatel, rushed into the church where the minister was preaching, and he did not escape without a wound. At Bevay, the abbot John of Livron and his monks collected a numerous body of friends, surrounded the church, and having thus completed the blockade, entered the building, dragged the minister from the pulpit, and drove him out with blows and insults. Each time he reappeared, they pursued him as far as Auvernier with stones and gunshots.
THE PASTOR MARCOURT.
While Farel was thus preaching in the plain, he sent one of his brethren into the valley; it was John de Bély, a man of good family from Crest in Dauphiny. Beyond Valangin, at a little distance from Fontaine, on the left side of the road to Cernier, was a stone that remains to this day. It was here in the open air, as if in a magnificent temple, that this herald of the Gospel began to proclaim salvation by grace.[1041] Before him stretched the declivity of Chaumont, dotted with the pretty villages of Fenin, Villars, Sole, and Savagnier, and beyond, where the mountains fell away, might be seen the distant and picturesque chain of the Alps. The most zealous of his hearers entreated him to enter the church. He did so; but suddenly the priest and his curate "arrived with great noise." They proceeded to the pulpit, dragged Bély down; and then turning to the women and young persons of the place, "excited them to beat him and drive him away."[1042]
John de Bély returned to Neuchatel, hooted and bruised, like his friend after the affair at Valangin; but these evangelists followed the traces of the Apostle Paul, whom neither whips nor scourges could arrest.[1043] De Bély often returned to Fontaine. The Mass was abolished erelong in this village; Bély was its pastor for twenty-seven years; his descendants have more than once exercised the ministry there, and now they form the most numerous family of agriculturists in the place.
Farel, after evangelizing the shores of the lake to the south of Neuchatel, had gone to the north and preached at St. Blaise. The populace, stirred up by the priests and the lieutenant, had fallen upon him, and Farel escaped from their hands, severely beaten, spitting blood, and scarcely recognisable. His friends had thrown him hurriedly into a boat, and conveyed him to Morat, where his wounds detained him for some time.[1044]
At the report of this violence the reformed Neuchatelans felt their blood boil. If the lieutenant, the priest, and his flock have bruised the body of Christ's servant, which is truly the altar of the living God, why should they spare dead idols? Immediately they rush to St. Blaise, throw down the images, and do the same at the abbey of Fontaine-André,—a sanctuary of the ancient worship.