The fanaticism of the Genevese clergy, the respect felt by the magistrates for existing institutions, the energy with which one portion of the people rejected the Reformation, seemed to show that the movement by which Geneva was then agitated would end simply in the abolition of the temporal authority of the bishop.
But other signs appeared to point to another conclusion. In proportion as the love of God's Word increased in men's hearts, respect for the Romish religion diminished. The evangelical christians said that salvation was a thing for eternity, while a government, even if ecclesiastical, was only a temporal thing; that the rights of truth took precedence of all clerical pretensions, and that the authority of Scripture was superior to that of the pontiff.
Moreover, a new element appeared. Ecclesiastical society had sunk into slumber and death; in the sixteenth century the Reformation aroused it and restored it to activity and life. Farel is one of the most remarkable types of this christian animation; his unbounded ardour, his indefatigable labours were, with God's help, to secure the victory.
It is true that this new force soon turned against the Reform. The Romish Church woke up also, and put itself in motion, particularly after the foundation of the order of the Jesuits; but its activity differed widely from that of the reformers. The latter descended from on high; that of the Roman clergy came from below. At all events, popery soon became as energetic as protestantism. There was danger in this, but there was probably a benefit also. If its adversaries had continued to slumber, the Reformation might have ended by falling asleep likewise. Activity is far better than inactivity without hope. Let us not be afraid then. By struggles the Church is purified, the christian grows stronger, and the cause of truth and of humanity triumphs.
=THE STRUGGLE IN GENEVA.=
Geneva was about to have greater experience of such contests, and the agitation within her walls was to become fiercer from day to day. Combats without and combats within. The dawning Reformation and the ancient (yet new) liberty will see arrayed against them the bishop, the duke, the emperor, the gentry and their vassals, and the Savoyard troops, besides veteran Italian bands, commanded by some of the ablest captains of the age.... At the same time the battle will rage furiously within. Popery, alarmed at seeing one of its oldest fortresses threatened, will utter a cry of rage; all the friends of the Romish priesthood will be aroused, will agitate, and fight; a furious opposition will raise its angry head. There will be not only secret councils, traitorous conspiracies, fanatical preachings, and fierce discussions; but also riots in the streets, armed men endeavouring to stop the preaching of the Word, cannons planted in the public squares, assaults with the sword, the arquebuse, and the dagger, imprisonment, exile, and poisoning.... At the sight of these violent combats and repeated calamities, the thoughts of the historian become troubled and confused. It appears to him that the powers of darkness are marshalling their forces in the ancient city. He fancies he can see that mysterious being, whom a great poet describes in his immortal verse as plotting the ruin of the world, at the very moment when, smiling with innocence and glory, it left the hands of the Creator—he can see Satan descending, as he once did into Eden, and casting the immense shade of his 'sail-broad vans' over the gigantic Alps, over their white tops, their calm clear lakes and smiling hills, and swooping down upon the towers of the old cathedral to fight against the counsels of the King of Heaven, and, by scattering his wiles and fury all around, oppose the new creation of a new world.[915]
But to all these efforts of the powers of darkness the men of the Gospel will oppose the resplendent army of light. They will proclaim the love of God, they will announce the work of Christ, they will publish grace. They will repeat with Jesus Christ that the flesh profiteth nothing; that is to say, that the grandeur of the proud hierarchy of Rome, the power of its temporal kingdom, the multitude of its servants in so many countries and under such various uniforms, the pomps by which its worship strives to captivate the senses, the oracles of its traditions, sometimes adorned with the seductions of human philosophy—that all is profitless; but that power belongs to God, that salvation is in the foolishness of the cross, and that it is the Spirit that quickeneth. And, thanks to the spiritual weapons they employ, two or three humble instruments of the Word of God will scatter the councils of their terrible adversary, destroy his fortresses, and humble even to the dust the barriers he had raised against the knowledge of God. The rough Farel, the gentle Viret, the weak Froment, will overcome the powers of Rome in Geneva, even before Calvin, the great captain, appears. God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and the things which are not to bring to nought things that are.[916]
[899] See the Bull Antiquorum habet in the Extravagant. Commun. lib. v. tit. ix. cap. 1.
[900] In our time Leo XII. celebrated a jubilee in 1825, and Gregory XVI. in 1833.
[901] Plautus.