=THE SUFFERING MISSIONARIES.=
Thus not a house was opened to receive an expiring missionary. The poor evangelists were quite disheartened. 'Let us cheer up,' said they, 'and make haste to reach the Alps.'[546] The four travellers resumed their journey, Martin probably on horseback; but on arriving at the foot of the mountain beyond Martigny his pains increased. Martin was half dead, Olivetan suffered from an inflammation of the bowels, Guido was exhausted with fatigue, and Adam alone was unaffected. But ere long he too was attacked. Seized with cholera (it is his own word[547]) he thought his end was come. The four missionaries dragged themselves painfully along the brink of the torrent, whose noisy waters alone disturbed the silence around them. They lifted their eyes mournfully towards those gigantic mountains which it seemed impossible for them to cross, and ineffectually sought a refuge in the poorest of cottages. One thing, however, was left them—the faithfulness of their Master. They said to one another: 'God takes us down into the abyss when He pleases, but His grace is almighty to lift us out of it again.'[548] At this moment they caught sight of a wretched house. They went up to it, explained their condition, and happily they were received in consideration of their money. God, whom they had invoked, alleviated their disorder, and the next day they were able to resume their journey, feebly at starting, but gradually the mountain air gave them strength.
They had been forced to incur extraordinary expenses, and Adam, who held the purse, smiled as he saw its shrunken condition. Their good humour began to return: he showed his friends the lean little bag, and said merrily: 'Alas! our purse has been seized with such cruel pains in the inside that there is scarcely anything left in it.'[549] They climbed the mountain, and needing rest entered an inn situated between Martigny and the convent of St. Bernard. They soon observed one of the monks, and approaching him desired in spite of their weakness to discharge their duty: they spoke to him of Jesus Christ, and of the grace he gives to sinners. The monk, who belonged to the Augustine order, listened attentively to their words, and began to talk with them, while the evangelists pressed him closely by means of the Holy Scriptures. He was touched and convinced. 'I will quit Antichrist,' he exclaimed. Adam immediately took paper, sat down and wrote: 'Here is a letter for Master Farel,' he said to the friar, 'go to him, and he will tell you what you have to do.' The evangelist and the monk separated. Even down to our days conversions have been effected among the brethren of this monastery.
At last the four friends arrived among the Waldenses, who listened joyfully to their words of truth and love: some of these Alpine shepherds were even known to have gone two days' journey to hear them.[550] These poor Christians handed over to Olivetan towards the printing of the Bible 500 gold crowns—an immense sum for them, and begged that the publication should be hurried on.[551] Olivetan and the barbes came to terms. Here finishes this episode, which to some may have little interest except so far as it is connected with the history of the French protestant translation of the Holy Scriptures.
=DEPUTATION OF PEASANTS.=
When this news reached Farel, his eyes were fixed upon another country. The young and gentle Fabri, whom the reformer loved as a father loves a son, was preaching at Neuchatel, when one day he saw some peasants arrive who had been deputed from the village of Bole in the parish of Boudry. These good people entreated him to come and settle among them. The parish priest, a worthy man by the way, looked upon the Gospel not as a proclamation of grace, but as a second law more perfect than the first. Having heard the reformers inveigh against the corruption that prevailed in the church, he had at first gone with them; but he soon hesitated and shrunk back, when he found that their new morality reposed on a new faith. In fact the ministers who preached in those quarters said that the Gospel substituted a regenerative doctrine for the dead ordinances of the law; that Christ's religion did not consist in practices commanded by the priests, or even in a purely outward morality, but in a new heart from which proceeds a new life. 'The law,' said Calvin in later years, 'is like grammar, which after it has taught the first elements, refers the learners to theology or some other science, in order that they may be perfected.' The priest of Boudry would have thought himself but too happy to see his parishioners endowed with that external morality which did not satisfy the evangelicals. A zealous doctor of the law, he turned against the doctors of grace, and hence it happened that a few of his parishioners hastened to Neuchatel.
Fabri followed these honest people, and the gentle and moderate reformer was immediately engaged in a severe campaign. The village of Bole was for the reformer; the little town of Boudry for the priest. There were two places of worship in the parish, the church, and a chapel called the Pontareuse, situated in a low out-of-the-way place. The government decided that this should be for the use of both parties. Many catholics, more fanatical than their priest, entered into a plot to oppose the worship of the reformed. On the first Sunday in November 1532, the latter went down full of peace and joy into the wild valley through which flows the torrent of the Reuse, and where a few remains of the little chapel are still visible. They entered and took their seats on the benches, while Fabri went up into the pulpit. Meantime the catholics, girding on their swords, which was not usually done, entered the chapel and drew up near the altar.[552] While Fabri was preaching, all the bells suddenly rang out together so as to drown his voice, and the more he besought them to let him finish, the louder rang the catholics in the belfry. Then those who were in the church began to move, pushing and shouting. Fabri, seeing this disorder and profanation, ceased speaking, and left the church. He had hardly got outside when the catholics near the altar ran and shut the door, and fell like madmen on the surprised, hesitating, and unarmed congregation.[553] The confusion was very great, and it was this that saved the innocent. No one distinguished friends from enemies: each man struck the first he met. One or two evangelicals endeavoured to open the door, and at last they succeeded and rushed out, but their position was not bettered. 'Their adversaries, delighted at being able to distinguish them,' says an eye-witness, 'fell upon them like wolves upon lambs, threatening them with death.'[554] 'God help us!' exclaimed the poor people scattered here and there. At last they succeeded in reaching their homes, miraculously as it were, but with many bruises. They were happy at being in peace. 'Our heavenly Father fought for us mightily,' they said.[555] Clubs and swords only served to increase their repugnance for that theocratical tyranny which men had substituted for the mild gospel of Jesus Christ.
=A PROTESTANT RISING.=
The next day some of the reformed went to Neuchatel against the advice of Fabri, who desired to wait for deliverance from the Lord and not from men. To the friends who met them on the road, they told the story of the plot to which they had nearly been victims. All the villages between Boudry and Neuchatel were in commotion, and the peasants of Auvernier and Colombier flew to arms, ready to join the Neuchatelans if they went to the help of their brethren.[556] The council of Neuchatel decreed that henceforth the chapel of Pontareuse should belong entirely to the reformed.
The catholics resolved to pay no attention to this. On Christmas day the priest had already sung two masses before the hour appointed for the evangelical preaching; and at the moment when the reformers arrived, he resolutely began high mass 'with loud and long singing,' although there was scarcely anybody to hear it. The reformed waited patiently, but when the service was ended, and just as they were hoping that their turn had come, they were surprised to see the catholics arriving in a crowd. Fabri then wanted to go into the pulpit, but had great difficulty; one pushed him one way, and one another, and all shouted out against him.[557] Order being a little restored, one of the reformers went, as was customary, to take a chalice for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The priest who had remained in the church, watching what was going on, rushed upon him and snatched the vessel from his hands, crying out, 'Sacrilege! Sacrilege!' The friends of the priests determined to put an end to the service once for all. 'Some of them rushed like raging lions upon the reformed, and hit them with their fists; and one of them struck a governor (probably one of the communal councillors) with a knife; but God,' says the document we quote, 'permitted only his clothes to be pierced.' This did not end the battle. Others, going to a room behind the altar, where they had hidden some large sticks, dealt their blows lustily on all sides. The women rushed into the vineyards, tore up the vine-props, and brought them to as many of their husbands as had neither sticks nor knives. Some of them left the chapel and picked up stones to throw at the minister, who was still in the pulpit, and kill him. From every side they fell upon the poor evangelicals, calling them 'Rascally dogs!' Even the sautier of Boudry, whose duty it was to preserve order, joined in the riot, threw off his official robe, and loudly hooting, struck harder than the rest. The parish priest, who loved the law so much, had suddenly lost his balance. Incensed, and beside himself, stripped to his doublet, and 'bareheaded like a brigand,'[558] he directed the battle. His friends, well provided with arquebuses, bludgeons, knives, and other weapons, seeing that the evangelists had rallied round their pastor, rushed upon them, intending to kill many of them; 'but it was God's will that this wolf should be stopped on the way,' says the official document, 'and be driven back into his den.' The reformed, who parried the blows as well as they could with their hands only, at last succeeded in reaching their houses. They told their relations and friends what had happened, and gave God thanks. 'It is indeed a great miracle,' they said with emotion, 'that there was nobody killed. But the Lord Jesus Christ is a Good Shepherd; he keeps his sheep so well in the midst of the sword, the fire, the lions, and even death itself, that the wolves cannot snatch them out of his hand.'