The Reformation protested against a ritualistic and meritorious worship; against the multiplicity of feasts, consecrations, ecclesiastical usages and customs; against any adoration whatever rendered to creatures, images, and relics; against the invocation of mediators who usurped the function of the Son of God; lastly, and chiefly, against a pretended expiatory sacrifice, effected by the priests, which was substituted for the only sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ.
=CHANTS OF THE PRIESTS.=
All these human vanities were about to disappear. Farel and his friends waited for the reformatory ordinance; but the ardent huguenots, among whom Ami Perrin was the most active, became impatient at the perpetual hesitations of the council. A chance event called forth an energetic demonstration on their part. The same Sunday (8th August) in the afternoon at vespers, the canons, assembling again in their church, chanted the Psalm In exitu Israël, 'When Israel went out of Egypt,'[563] and, with the utmost simplicity, repeated in Latin what Farel had said in the morning in French:
Simulacra gentium argentum et aurum,
Opera manuum hominum.
Os habent et non loquentur.
Oculos habent et non videbunt.
Similes illis fiant qui faciunt ea
Et omnes qui confidunt in illis.[564]