=THREE MISSIONARIES SENT OUT.=
When Calvin saw this movement of life going on around him, he thought of France. Would she remain behind Germany and Switzerland?... No. France will awake ... she is already waking; erelong she will receive the Gospel in its holy purity, and will increase in morality, in light, and in liberty: such were his hopes. But for their realisation, men were needed who, being regenerate themselves, should be fellow-workers with God in this new creation. Calvin asked himself whether some of the converts of Poitiers were not called to this work? Alas! what a small company for so large a kingdom! How great the weakness of the Gospel compared with the magnificence of Rome! 'God acts thus,' he said, 'in order to strip us of all pride. And therefore he chooses the weak ones of this world to confound the strong. If the iron grows red in the fire,' he added, 'it is that it may be forged.'[122] He wished to forge it and to make serviceable instruments out of it. One day being at the usual meeting, he said: 'Is there any one here willing to go and give light to those whom the pope has blinded?'[123] Jean Vernou, Philip Véron, and Albert Babinot stood forward. Calvin had not forgotten the Angoumois where he possessed beloved friends; thither and into the adjacent provinces he will first send his missionaries and commence the evangelisation of France: 'You, Babinot, will go into Guyenne and Languedoc,' he said; 'Philip Véron, you will go into Saintonge and Angoumois; and you, Jean Vernou, will stay at Poitiers and the neighbourhood.' Calvin and the other brethren did not think that these missionaries required regular theological studies; had they not received the necessary gifts from God, 'neither more nor less than if He had given them with His own hand?'[124] But they had need to be recommended to the almighty grace of God. They therefore prayed together, and Calvin called upon the Lord to accept the services of these pious men. He told them to go and proclaim the Gospel, not in the name of any man, but in the name of the Lord, and because God commanded it. A collection provided for the expenses of this mission, and the evangelists departed.
Babinot having reached the banks of the Garonne and entered Toulouse, resolved to address in the first place the young noblemen who were studying there. A learned man (he had lectured at Poitiers on the Institutes of Justinian), he was firm, upright, zealous in the faith, and at the same time very gentle, so that he was called the Goodfellow (Bonhomme). Many students were brought to the light by him. He next began to visit several little flocks in the neighbourhood, and celebrated the Lord's Supper with them after the manner which the man of God (as he called Calvin) had taught him.[125] 'He went through the country, praying secretly here and there in humble conventicles.' A regent or schoolmaster of Agen, named Sarrasin, having permitted him to speak in his school, was himself converted to the Gospel, and immediately began to teach the Word of God, but not so as to attract observation.
Véron, who was as remarkable for his activity as Babinot for his gentleness, carried also into every place the news of the truth: he spent more than twenty years in this occupation.[126] He walked on foot through Poitou, Anjou, Angoumois, Saintonge, and even Guyenne. 'I desire,' he said, 'to gather up the stray sheep of the Lord.' Wherever he went, he invited souls to come to the good shepherd, who giveth his life for the sheep; and those who could distinguish the voice of the shepherd from that of the wolf, and see the difference between the call of God and the inventions of men, answered and entered into the fold. And hence he was called the Gatherer (ramasseur). 'Of a truth,' said Cayer the priest, 'this Gatherer marches out and does not leave a corner of our province, where he does not go sounding his way, to try and make some prize.'[127] On arriving in any town or village, he inquired for the best disposed persons, entered their houses, and sought to instruct them in the truth. He had taken with him some of Calvin's manuscripts, and when he desired to strengthen his hearers' souls, he would take them out of his pocket-book, and show them, saying that they were the writings of a great man; and then, after reading a few extracts, he would return them carefully to their place. 'The gatherer,' said fervent Roman-catholics, 'shows these papers as a great curiosity, as if they were Sibylline verses.'[128]
=THE REFORM AND THE YOUNG.=
These evangelists especially addressed the young. Calvin would not have religious instruction neglected, or subordinated to secular instruction: it should have its separate place. He believed that all culture, but especially religious teaching, ought to begin with early youth; that the soul then possesses a power of receiving and appropriating what is set before it, that it never will have again; and that if the seeds of a religious life are not sown and do not germinate in the heart of the child, the man will perish wholly. He had said to the three evangelists: 'Let your first attention be always to the professors and schoolmasters.'[129] The zealous catholics observed this method. 'See!' they said, 'as youth is easily led astray, they hide the minister under the cloak of the magister (master).'[130] Calvin's friends thus instilled their doctrines into the schools of Guyenne. Sarrasin converted another schoolmaster named Vendocin, who became so firm a Christian, that he preferred to be burnt over a slow fire to abjuring Calvinism.[131]
The men who devoutly adhered to the formulas of Rome were grieved when they saw the young so readily receiving the evangelical doctrine. At Bordeaux and Toulouse, at Angoulême and Aden, in the cloisters, in the law-courts, and even in the market-places, the loudest complaints were made. 'These Mercuries (the name they gave to Calvin's missionaries) are doing much mischief in the schools,' they said. 'As soon as the captains of the young (i.e. the masters) are conquered, the little soldiers march under their colours. The young heads of young folks are more easily disturbed by the heretic aconite than the old. They rush into danger, without examining it; and they are lost before they are aware of it. They embrace these new doctrines with such courage that many, who have only down on their chins, expose themselves to voluntary death, and thus lose both soul and body.'[132]
=THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE.=
While Babinot and Véron were traversing the south, John Vernou held firm at Poitiers, and aroused the students. The Reformation is fond of learning: it looks upon science as the friend of religion. Faith, it says, does not require of Christians to know only what is learnt by faith, or not to know scientifically what they ought to learn. It desires that we should know, and know well. But on the other hand, it believes that true science cannot require of the adept to despise the truths that faith reveals. It is essential to the progress of humanity that there should always be a good understanding between faith and science. And accordingly the Reformation calls upon them to be united. Unhappily, disagreement is possible and even easy. The philosopher and the christian fall with great facility into a lamentable onesidedness, which makes the former despise religion, and the latter science. In order that faith and science should seek each other and unite, the moral element should prevail in those who are engaged with both. If it is weakened, religion easily produces fanatics, and science unbelievers: a moral torpor, the sleep of conscience is in every age the great and only explanation of these two lamentable errors. As soon as the conscience is awakened, as soon as that holy light is kindled in man, there is no longer any fanaticism or incredulity. Such were Calvin's thoughts. His disciple Vernou endeavoured like himself to unite faith with science in the university of Poitiers, and scattered among the youth who frequented it (as history tells us) the seeds of Christian doctrine.
Calvin's three missionaries, Babinot, Véron, and Vernou, were soon famous throughout the west of France, and the wrath of the clergy of all ranks, and even of laymen of note, knew no bounds. The college professors hunted in their Homers for terms of abuse to heap on these heralds of God's word. 'These three worthy apostles,' they said, 'are the agents of the decrees of the arch-heretic Calvin and the firebrands of France.... Look at them ... these are the men that want to reform the world.... Wretched Thersites, miserable Irus, Ithacan beggars ... who set themselves up as the equals of Ajax and Achilles.... They were born yesterday, like gourds, and yet they trace their genealogy, as if they were descended from the apostles!' Ulysses, as we know, killed the beggar Irus with a blow of his fist. These disdainful and bitter critics remembered this, and hoped that the kings of France would give a death-blow to the Reform. They dealt the blow, but protestantism was not slain.