Conversation did not suffice, and if any persons showed a desire to learn the new doctrine, Olivétan explained it to them. He did not do so before large audiences; it was generally to small parties. Yet a document speaks of assemblies held not only in private houses, but in public, in the open places, and in front of the churches.[896] Olivétan, therefore, like his illustrious relative, called to mind that in the beginning of christianity the doctrine of the Lord did not remain 'hidden as it were in little comers, and that never was thunder heard so loud and so piercing as the sound of the preaching of the Gospel, reverberating from one end of the world to the other.'[897] He sometimes quitted the humble conventicle and preached the Word of truth under the vault of heaven. Alarmed at the great disorders in which those men indulged who were one day to bear the name of 'libertines,' he attacked the conscience with holy intrepidity.

=OLIVÉTAN'S MISSION.=

One day, one of those 'private assemblies' was held, of which the emperor had complained to the syndics. It was, we may suppose, in the house of Chautemps or some other huguenot (public meetings were, I think, rare exceptions) in the street of the Croix d'Or or of the Allemands, so called because some German Switzers, friends of the Reformation, lived in it. A few men and women, most of them known to the master of the house, came and took their seats on the benches in front of the evangelist. Olivétan, who saw before him souls slumbering in false security and heedless of the Supreme Judge, 'magnificently discharged the embassy intrusted to him' (according to Calvin's expression). 'One day,' he said, 'when thou shalt hear the Lord calling thee to judgment, will there be found anything in thee but fear and trembling, flight and concealment? Look! Access to the Lord is cut off, because of sin. With whom wilt thou take refuge? In what place wilt thou find relief? God, the avenger of sin, from whom nothing can be hid, is everywhere present ... and everywhere terrifies the guilty conscience.'

Then, imagining that he saw some of those Genevans, whose morals, as depraved as those of the monks, alienated them from the Gospel, he exclaimed: 'The flesh excludes the Spirit, and stops the way, so that the entrance of the heart is not opened to it. The flesh desires present pleasures, it follows vanity, it carefully seeks after the delights of the body, by eating and drinking, by idleness, licentious pursuits, and other such things, in which it is entirely absorbed. Reason, illumined by the Spirit, strives after good things, and fights against the flesh; but the sensual man is nothing more than a brute, and gives himself up entirely to things that belong to brutes.'

Among those who sat on the humble benches and listened to the preacher, were also some of those intellectual men, numerous in Geneva, who would have liked to come to the faith, but whom the doctrine of Christ astonished and even alarmed. 'You believe,' said the evangelist, 'and yet you do not believe. You willingly hear the words of salvation, and yet you are terrified at them. There is nothing that we hear from the mouth of the Saviour which, without a mediator, should not be terrifying to us, and the flesh is quite dismayed that it should be necessary to possess such faith.'

Then the schoolmaster raised the trumpet of the Gospel to his lips and announced the great mystery of Redemption, without concealing what the Greeks would have called its foolishness. 'Let us turn then,' he exclaimed, 'to the Mediator, who has consummated the alliance and purified us by his own blood, with which our consciences are sprinkled and watered. The Old Covenant always depended on the blood of beasts; the New Covenant depends on new blood. Eternal Redemption was effected by an eternal sacrifice. The alliance is indissoluble, perpetual, and perfect through the eternal blood which was of God.... The kingdom of the Messiah has no end; its king must therefore be immortal; and the new men, also immortal, are citizens of an everlasting kingdom.'

The huguenots were fond of debating, even unseasonably. Some of those seated in front of Olivétan were astonished at hearing this doctrine of Christ's sacrifice set forth, and maintained that, if they were to judge from facts, it did not do much to free man from sin. 'No doubt,' said Olivétan, 'if the Holy Ghost does not teach us. We cannot attain true holiness if the Holy Ghost, who is the reformer of hearts, is absent. By the Spirit of Jesus Christ the remains of sin in us diminish little by little. The Spirit of Christ burns gently and cleanses away the stains of the heart.... What a profound mystery! He who was hung upon the cross, who even ascended into heaven to finish everything, comes and dwells in us, and there accomplishes the perfect work of eternal Redemption.'[898]

Thus spoke the tutor of Councillor Chautemps' children.

Olivétan was a mysterious personage, a singular reformer. At Paris he called Calvin to the Gospel, and gave him to Christianity as the apostle of the new times. At Geneva, he was the forerunner of his illustrious relative; like a pioneer in the forest, he cut down the secular trees, and prepared the soil into which his pious and mighty successor so copiously scattered the seed. Later, as we shall see, he gave to the reformed French Church its first Bible, a translation which, revised by Calvin, so greatly advanced the kingdom of God. Perhaps Olivétan, during his residence in Geneva, may have thought that his cousin would hereafter occupy this post. He appears in history only as the precursor of the reformer, and Calvin had hardly set foot in this city when Olivétan crossed the Alps, went to Italy, even to the city of the pontiffs, as if he desired now to accomplish a new work, to come to close quarters with the papacy, and prepare Rome for the Reformation as he had prepared Geneva. But there he suddenly disappeared—poisoned, as some say. There is a veil over his death as over his life. He is spoken of no more, and scarcely any one appears to know either his work or his name. But we must not anticipate: we shall meet him again erelong.