‘This done,’ add the Acts, ‘because it was late, everyone retired.’[403]
The last theses were discussed during the remaining two or three days, and for the most part by the same combatants, each of the champions expressing himself well or ill, according to his character and the spirit which actuated him. ‘The Lord,’ said the intelligent and spiritual Viret, ‘commands Peter to feed his sheep, but according to the well-known by-word, the Romish court want no sheep without wool.[404] The true key of the kingdom of heaven is the Gospel of the Lord, but the pope and his priests have devised others which close the door instead of opening it. If the pope be willing to imitate Jesus and Peter, let him then go about hither and thither in every place, seeking and saving souls. The apostles had no holy see like the Romish pontiff. They were not often even seated, except, indeed, it were in a prison. And instead of a triple crown and a chain of gold, they had chains of iron on their hands and their feet.’[405]
THE TRINITY OF BLANCHEROSE.
Dr. Blancherose, who unhesitatingly considered himself the most valiant of the defenders of Rome, began now to lose heart. His only consolation was in the thought that if he were beaten it was not for want of talent, but because he stood alone; and quoting a word of the ancients, he said, ‘The opponents (reformers) are too strong, and as some one said, Hercules himself could do nothing against two.’[406] The two, in his case, were doubtless Farel and Calvin.
He continued to complain of his comrades in the fight. ‘Instead of aiding me,’ he said, ‘the priests have begged me to begone. There are six score of us, they added, who will be compelled, if the disputation is to last much longer, to sell our gowns and hoods to pay our hosts.’ Then, after this trifling, returning to his grand theses, the fantastical doctor said, ‘The holy Trinity represents three monarchies. The father represents the emperor; the Son represents the pope; and the third monarchy, which is only now beginning, is that of the Holy Spirit, and belongs to physicians.’ Thus he claimed a great part for himself. This recalled him to his duty, and he applied himself to matters within his grasp. ‘The time of Lent, in which people fast,’ he said, ‘has been well regulated, because in the spring nature is awakening, the blood is warm and impels to pleasure, and, moreover, people have eaten a good deal during the winter.’ The energetic Farel, who knew as well as the doctor how to be popular and sarcastic, met him on his own ground, and replied in his medical language, ‘that, on the contrary, the least fitting season had been fixed for Lent; for in the spring the poor people work in the fields and the vineyards, and after having crammed themselves with flesh in the winter, they give them well-salted, fish, hot spices, etc. This method gives origin to legions of maladies, so that the priests make their harvest of them and the doctors their vintage. The sicknesses put money into the purses of these two classes of men, especially into those of the Romish priests, according to the anagram of Roma. If each letter of that word be taken as the initial of another word, we get the sentence, Radix Omnium Malorum Avaritia: Rome is avarice, the root of all evil. She shows this in all kinds of ways, but above all in granting for a money payment the liberty to eat flesh, which otherwise she prohibits and declares to be a sin.’[407] It is clear that Farel knew how to profit by that precept, Answer a fool according to his folly.
The vicar of Morges, Drogy, a man more enlightened than the others, and who saw clearly the weakness of the Romish teaching, apologized in the best way he could for his comrades, and made excuse for their defeat. ‘The poor priests are ignorant,’ he said, ‘and they deserve to be pitied. It is no great glory for the ministers to have beaten them. What they want is time given them for study, and a long time too; but instead of that they have been pitilessly bantered.’ ‘Do not take as insults,’ said the amiable Viret, ‘the charitable admonitions which we have given them. So far from wishing them any harm, we are ready to shed our blood for their salvation.’ ‘No doubt,’ added the reformer Marcourt, who had not hitherto spoken, a man of much good sense, but somewhat more severe than Viret, ‘no doubt the poor priests deserve to be pitied, but still more the poor people. No man would intrust a flock of sheep to a shepherd who was blind and dumb; why then are the churches placed under leaders who are blind and unable to explain the Word of God?’[408]
CALVIN AND HILDEBRAND.
Calvin then rose to speak again, and without stopping to argue with the feeble apologists of Rome, who were sufficiently refuted, he selected for his adversary the most illustrious and the most valiant of the champions of the papacy, the man who was indeed its chief founder, Hildebrand, made pope under the name of Gregory VII. These two men were well fitted to contend with equal strength in the lists. It is a pity that five centuries stood in the way of their measuring their forces hand to hand. It was Hildebrand who had launched over Christendom these stupendous assertions, ‘that the name of the pope is sole in the world,—that the Romish Church never did err and never will err,—that the pope may depose the emperor, and that all princes must kiss his feet.’[409] Calvin frequently contended against these presumptuous lies,[410] and he had done so before this time, at least to some extent. On this occasion he made use of a document written by a cardinal, a contemporary of Hildebrand, which relates, among other things, that that pope, wanting for once to get through his incantations, took the bread which he affirmed to be God, and threw it into the fire.[411] An occasion for the natural exclamation, ‘Say now that the bread is your God!’ This story, told by a cardinal at the expense of a pope, appears to us to be apocryphal. But it is quite true, as we know from the relations which existed between Gregory VII. and Berenger, that the famous pontiff had doubts about the doctrine of transubstantiation, and that he did not pronounce himself in support of it until he perceived that his enemies would take advantage of his doubts on the subject to strike a blow at his hierarchical rights and supreme authority.
When the debate on the ten theses had been brought to a close, Farel entered the pulpit, in the afternoon of Sunday, October 8, and delivered the closing discourse. We shall allow the orator to speak his own language, although it be not always that of our age, for it is essential that the Reformation should be set before us just as it actually appeared. Farel was struck with the fact that a band of ministers, feeble men and few in number, had been capable, in that conflict of eight days, of filling mighty Catholicism with alarm and vanquishing it. He remembered, too, how when he arrived at Aigle, at Neuchâtel, at Geneva, poor, weak, and contemptible in the eyes of many, he had seen the papacy reel and fall down before the Word of God. ‘What is it then,’ said he, ‘which makes you tremble, you who are a great multitude covering the whole land? What! a poor prophet makes his appearance, alone in the face of so many rich men; unknown and friendless before so many people who have powerful allies; he knows not whither to go, has no one to speak to, while you are all comfortably lodged, you all know one another, and fill the whole world with terror. Of what then are you afraid? The prophet will not strike you, for he is unarmed. When, for one reason or another, a whole city or even a whole people revolts against you, you have no fear at all, and you act even worse than usual.... Whence is this difference? Is one then more than a multitude? The fact is this: With that poor prophet comes the truth, the wonderful truth of God, which is mightier than all men, and which, whenever it encounters enemies, pursues them, confounds them and puts them to flight, while they are unable to make any resistance.’[412]
FAREL’S CLOSING DISCOURSE.