Farel was not at Basel at that moment, and was not to return thither. The tidings of the persecutions which had fallen upon him, of his exile and his sufferings, had grieved the people of Neuchâtel, and revived in their hearts their old love for the man from whom they had learned the elements of the faith. The Council of the Sixty, representatives of the city, after calling upon the Lord, communicated to the class of ministers the desire which they felt of inviting Farel to become their pastor.[729] The post was, as we shall see, actually vacant. Two councillors and two members of the class went to Basel. ‘Come,’ they said to him, ‘and complete the building of which you laid the foundation.’ Farel, like Calvin, could not make up his mind to accept a pastoral charge, but preferred to devote himself to study.[730] At length, encouraged by his friends, entreated in the name of the Lord, and ‘persuaded to it with great earnestness by the German Churches,’ he consented; but it was on condition that he should introduce in the Church the order prescribed in the Holy Scriptures. Having once decided, he set out suddenly for Neuchâtel, about the end of July, ‘with his customary promptitude,’ says Calvin.[731] Thenceforth Farel and Calvin were separated; but this removal from each other did not in any degree impair the union of their hearts nor the firmness of their characters, whatever the moderates of Strasburg might think.
FAREL CALLED TO NEUCHATEL.
The latter once more renewed their call. Would not the ministerial office conferred on Calvin by a Church of such high standing as that of Strasburg be a brilliant justification which would silence evil tongues? What good service might he not render there! The empire had need of able theologians, and perhaps the Strasburgers desired to have him settled among them by way of counterpoise to the powerful personality and authority of Luther. Be that as it may, his friends on the banks of the Rhine could not bear the thought that so powerful a servant of God ‘should be satisfied to live in retirement without undertaking any public office;’[732] and as he still refused, they took steps towards inducing the Genevese to recall the reformer. If he will not come to Strasburg, let him go to Geneva. This proceeding appears to have had some effect on Calvin. He would go anywhere rather than return to the city of his sorrows. The Strasburgers, finding that he was somewhat giving way, made a fresh advance. ‘That excellent servant of Christ, Martin Bucer,’ says Calvin, ‘addressing to me a remonstrance and protest similar to that which Farel had previously made, called me to another place. Alarmed by the case of Jonah, which he set before me, I persevered still in the office of teacher.’[733] Calvin therefore went to Strasburg in September, and began to preach in the choir of the church of the Dominicans to the French refugees in the town, with whom were associated other persons, some of whom understood and others did not understand the tongue, but all of them were desirous of seeing the face and hearing the voice of the famous exile. These refugees, it is said, were fifteen hundred in number.
Calvin was no sooner settled at Strasburg than he heard that his colleague, the blind old Courault, who, ‘after having fought valiantly at Paris for the truth,’[734] had first retired to Thonon, and then had been called as pastor to Orbe, had departed this life on October 4, and gone to God. This was a terrible blow for his loving heart. He wrote to Farel—‘I am so dismayed at the death of Courault, that my grief overpasses all bounds. Not one of my daily occupations is any longer able to fix my attention, and I am incessantly returning to the same thought. To the lamentations and pains of the day succeed the more terrible torments of the night.’[735] This death, so unexpected, was attributed to poison. Suspicions of that kind were very common, and were in those unhappy times too often justified. Calvin rejected this thought, but in spite of himself it was continually presenting itself to his imagination.[736] He endeavored, nevertheless, to console himself and to revive his own courage and that of Farel. ‘All testify,’ he said to him, ‘by their grief and their regrets how highly they esteemed his courage and his uprightness, and this is a great consolation. For us whom the Lord leaves for a time in this world, let us hold on in the path which he pursued until we have finished our course. Whatever difficulties we may have to encounter, they will not prevent us from entering into that rest which is even now his portion.’ ‘When we get there,’ said he on another occasion, ‘it will be known on which side rashness or error was. To that court I appeal from the sentence of all the wise. There the angels of God will bear witness which are the schismatics.’[737] He adds, ‘Only let us stand firm on the height we have reached, which commands the field of battle, until the kingdom of Christ, at present hidden, shall appear.’
Thus the three pastors expelled from Geneva had each found his place; and that of the old blind minister was the best.
NEW PASTORS AT GENEVA.
It was not long before the Genevese established the institutions to which the reformers had objected. It was decreed to reërect the baptismal fonts which had been cast down, and to baptize children in them, to celebrate the four festivals, and to conform to the ceremonies agreed upon. On Whit-Sunday, which this year fell at the beginning of June, there were only two pastors at Geneva, Henri de la Mare and Jacques Bernard, both Genevese. The Lord’s supper was to be celebrated, and for that purpose two ministers were needed in each church. The council deputed two of its members to act instead of them, one at St. Peter’s, the other at St. Gervais’.
The government exerted itself to find substitutes for the two exiles. The states of Berne and Neuchâtel gave up to it Jean Morand, pastor at Cully,[738] on the shores of the lake of Geneva, and Antoine Marcourt, of Lyons, pastor of Neuchâtel, who were installed about the end of June. The council determined to give them, considering their age and their large families, three hundred Genevese florins;[739] the two Genevese each had two hundred and fifty florins. We became acquainted with Marcourt at the synod of Lausanne. He had published several treatises on the Eucharist, on the mass; to him likewise were attributed the famous placards of 1534, which Florimond Raemond believes to have been the work of Farel. The governor and councils of Neuchâtel, in resigning Marcourt to Geneva, declared, June 18, ‘that they had always found him a man of peace, one who desired, and to the utmost of his power maintained, peace and public tranquillity.’ This character seems hardly like that of the author of the Placards, one of the most violent writings of the sixteenth century, which were pronounced by the Roman Catholics[740] to be filled with ‘execrable blasphemies and horrible threats against the king,’ and which gave rise to that bloody persecution by the Valois and the Bourbons of which the reformed Christians were the victims for more than two centuries. However, we must confess that pacific men are not always consistent. It would seem that Marcourt was not so much a man of peace as the people of Neuchâtel had said; at least if we take literally what Calvin says. ‘How our successors will demean themselves,’ he wrote on August 4 to Farel, ‘is a point on which we can form an opinion from their first proceedings. They break off by their irritable temper every promise of peace, and they seem to suppose that the best thing they have to do is to tear to pieces both in public and in private the reputation which we enjoyed, and to make us as hateful as possible.’[741] Calvin is especially severe, perhaps too much so, with regard to the two Genevese ministers. There was, however, some truth in the last touch in the picture which he drew of them for Bullinger: ‘Both of them are very ignorant, and when they open their mouths, it is to rave. This does not prevent them from assuming an insolent pride.’[742]
ACCUSATIONS.