The service then began. Viret’s gentle eloquence charmed his hearers; the two strangers, however, would gladly have seen themselves outside of the assembly into which they had impudently crept; but all the passages were blocked up: ‘We cannot get out,’ said Advreillon, ‘because of the great crowd of people;’ so they made up their minds to stay till the end. As soon as the sermon was over, the two Savoyards were about to leave, when De la Maisonneuve said aloud: ‘Let no one move, a baptism is going to be celebrated here.’ The baptism took place, and Viret added: ‘It was with pure, fair water that John baptized Jesus Christ; to baptize with oil, salt, and spittle as the hypocrites do, is wrong.’ The two strangers, offended by such language, got away as fast as they could.
As many persons had been unable to take part in the service, the huguenots, whose patience was exhausted, resolved to be no longer satisfied with narrow halls, which did not permit all who loved the Word of God to hear it. ‘Jesus Christ commands the Gospel to be preached in all the world,’ said Farel, ‘it must therefore be preached in Geneva;’ whereupon he asked for a church. The Bernese ambassadors undertook to present the petition. ‘Most honored lords,’ they said to the Council, ‘when we and our ministers pass along the streets, people shout after us: “Holla! heretics, you dare not appear in public, you preach your heresies in holes and corners like pigsties.”[[489]] We have long put up with this, and now we come to ask you for a church. No one will be constrained to hear our preacher; every man will go to the worship he prefers, and thus everybody will be satisfied.’ The syndics, greatly embarrassed, declared they were grieved at the ignominies heaped upon the Bernese, but said it was not in their jurisdiction to assign a pulpit to a Lutheran preacher; that it belonged to the prince-bishop and his vicars. ‘Still,’ they added, ‘if you take of your own accord some edifice in which you can preach your doctrines ... you are strong ... we cannot resist you ... we dare not.’
Farel And Courtelier.
The refusal of the syndics annoyed the evangelicals; Farel resolved to have an interview with the father-superior. Did he wish to convince Courtelier, at times so accommodating, that the evangelical doctrine ought to be preached in the churches; or else, convinced, like Luther, that the papacy was a power of Antichrist which resisted the kingdom of God, did he desire to tell the cordelier his mind? We cannot say: perhaps it was partly both. Accompanied by the intrepid Maisonneuve and the wise councillor Balthasar, Farel proceeded to the Franciscan convent. Courtelier received them in his cell, and the reformer having complained that the Gospel truth could not be preached, the monk, instead of making the least concession, took refuge behind the authority of the pope, extolling his holiness’s infallibility and power. Had not Alvarus Pelagius, a Franciscan like himself, declared that the jurisdiction of the pope is universal, embracing the whole world, its temporalities as well as its spiritualities?[[490]] Had not another monk taught that ‘the pope is in the place of God?’[[491]] But Farel, instead of seeking his ideas about Rome in the writings of the monks of the middle ages, derived them from the Holy Scriptures, and particularly from the Revelation of St. John. ‘Your holy Father,’ he said to the superior, ‘is the beast whom the ignorant worship. John the Evangelist tells us of a beast with seven heads,[[492]] which “devoureth them which dwell upon the earth,” and makes war upon the saints, and he adds: the seven heads are seven hills, on which it sits. Seven hills, do you hear? Everybody knows that Rome is built on seven hills. Therefore the holy see is not apostolical but diabolical.’ Courtelier was moved. He remonstrated with Farel ‘as well as he could,’ he says; but the reformer replied, the conversation grew warm, and at last the evangelists, unable to convince the monk, took leave of him. Maisonneuve quitted the cell, annoyed at Courtelier’s blindness, and all three left the convent together.
This energetic argument, which applied the prophecies of the Bible respecting Antichrist to the pope, had already been employed by Luther. No proof excited more anger among the Romanists or inspired the evangelicals with more firmness.
CHAPTER VII.
FAREL PREACHES IN THE GRAND AUDITORY OF THE CONVENT AT RIVE.
(March 1 to April 25, 1534.)
The interview with the father-superior had been useless; the churches remained closed. The evangelicals could wait no longer: the majority of the inhabitants were for the Word of God, but not a church was opened to them. The walls of St. Pierre, St. Gervais, St. Germain, and the Madelaine contained merely the external and barren forms of the Roman worship: life and movement were there no longer; they had passed into the hearts of the resolute men and pious women who gathered round Farel. Neither the hall in Maisonneuve’s house, nor any other sufficed for the lovers of the Word. Every day numbers of hearers had to remain in the street. ‘Alas!’ said they, ‘the Gospel can find nothing in Geneva but secret chambers, and we can only whisper of the grace of Christ. And yet grace ought to be proclaimed all through the city and spread even to the ends of the world.’ They were about to take measures accordingly.
Farel In The Grand Auditory.
On the second Sunday in Lent (1st of March, 1534), after the evangelicals had heard Farel in one of the usual halls, twenty-nine of the most notable huguenots remained behind and began to inquire what ought to be done. ‘The Council,’ reported one of them, ‘told my lords of Berne to take any place they liked for their preacher ... well, suppose we take one. It is God’s will to have the Gospel published. But the pope with his people care no more about it than the priests of Bacchus, Jupiter, and Venus did of old. Without any further petitioning let us do what God commands.’ At these words Maisonneuve and the other huguenots proceeded to the convent at Rive. Father Courtelier was preaching there: he had just finished his sermon and the crowd were leaving the church. The daring Baudichon informed the monks, to their great surprise, that Farel was going to preach there, and also that the bells would be rung, which did not astonish them less. Two or three huguenots, going into the belfry, rang three loud peals at intervals during an hour. Meanwhile De la Maisonneuve took his measures. Instead of taking possession of the church, he selected a part of the convent named the grand auditory, or the cloister. This part of the monastery was constructed in the shape of a gallery, and had a court in the middle: it was more spacious than the church, and would hold four or five thousand persons.[[493]]
The sound of the bells at an unusual hour was heard all through the city. Each note, as it rang in the ears of the Genevese, announced to them that the Gospel, with which all Christendom was then agitated, was at last about to be publicly proclaimed within their walls. ‘Master Farel,’ they said, ‘is going to preach in the cloister at Rive,’ and a crowd collected from all sides. People of every sort had assembled to hear him: evangelicals, political huguenots, the indifferent and bigoted. Certain priests gnashed their teeth and even attempted to turn away some of their parishioners; but it was labor in vain: the number increased every minute. Some Franciscan monks, who stared at the sight of such an extraordinary multitude, could not resist the desire of going to the grand auditory and hearing what was said.