History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Volume 3

by J. H. Merle d'Aubigné

CHAPTER XI.

New Campaign—Farel's Call to the Ministry—An Outpost—Lyons—Sebville at Grenoble—Conventicles—Preaching at Lyons—Maigret in Prison—Margaret intimidated.

NEW CAMPAIGN—FAREL CALLED.

God usually withdraws his servants from the field of battle, only to bring them back stronger and better armed. Farel and his friends of Meaux, Metz, Lyons, and Dauphiny, driven from France by persecution, had been retempered in Switzerland and Germany among the elder reformers; and now, like an army at first dispersed by the enemy, but immediately rallied, they were turning round and marching forward in the name of the Lord. It was not only on the frontiers that these friends of the Gospel were assembling; in France also they were regaining courage, and preparing to renew the attack. The bugles were already sounding the reveillé; the soldiers were girding on their arms, and gathering together to multiply their attacks; their leaders were planning the order of battle; the signal, "Jesus, his Word, and his grace," more potent in the hour of battle than the sound of warlike music, filled all hearts with the same enthusiasm; and everything was preparing in France for a second campaign, to be signalized by new victories, and new and greater reverses.

Montbeliard was then calling for a labourer in the Gospel. The youthful Duke Ulrich of Wurtemberg, a violent and cruel prince, having been dispossessed of his states by the Swabian league in 1519, had taken refuge in this earldom, his only remaining possession. In Switzerland he became acquainted with the reformers; his misfortunes had proved salutary to him; and he took delight in the Gospel.[962] Œcolampadius intimated to Farel that a door was opened at Montbeliard, and the latter secretly repaired to Basle.

THE MINISTRY—THE GOSPEL AND NOT THE FATHERS.

Farel had not regularly entered on the ministry of the Word; but we find in him, at this period of his life, all that is necessary to constitute a minister of the Lord. He did not lightly and of his own prompting enter the service of the Church. "Considering my weakness," said he, "I should not have dared preach, waiting for the Lord to send more suitable persons."[963] But God at this time addressed him in a threefold call. As soon as he had reached Basle, Œcolampadius, touched with the wants of France, entreated him to devote himself to it. "Behold," said he, "how little is Jesus Christ known to all those who speak the French language. Will you not give them some instruction in their own tongue, that they may better understand the Scriptures?"[964] At the same time, the people of Montbeliard invited him among them, and the prince gave his consent to this call.[965] Was not this a triple call from God?......"I did not think," said he, "that it was lawful for me to resist. I obeyed in God's name."[966] Concealed in the house of Œcolampadius, struggling against the responsibility offered to him, and yet obliged to submit to so clear a manifestation of the will of God, Farel accepted this charge, and Œcolampadius set him apart, calling upon the name of the Lord,[967] and addressing his friend in language full of wisdom. "The more you are inclined to violence," said he, "the more should you practise gentleness; temper your lion's courage with the meekness of the dove."[968] Farel responded to this appeal with all his soul.

Thus Farel, once the zealous follower of the old Church, was about to become a servant of God in the new. If Rome imperatively requires in a valid ordination the imposition of the hands of a bishop who descends from the apostles in uninterrupted succession, it is because she places human traditions above the Word of God. In every church where the authority of the Word is not absolute, some other authority must needs be sought. And then, what is more natural than to ask of the most venerated of God's ministers, that which they cannot find in God himself? If we do not speak in the name of Jesus Christ, is it not something at least to speak in the name of Saint John or of Saint Paul? He who speaks in the name of antiquity is stronger than the rationalist who speaks only in his own name. But the christian minister has a still higher authority: he preaches, not because he descends from St. Chrysostom or St. Peter, but because the Word that he proclaims comes down from God himself. The idea of succession,[969] venerable as it may appear, is not the less a human system, substituted for the system of God. In Farel's ordination there was no human succession. Nay more: we do not see in it that which is necessary in the Lord's fold, where every thing should be done decently and in order, and whose God is not a God of confusion. He was not regularly ordained by the Church: but extraordinary times justify extraordinary measures. At this memorable epoch God himself interposed. He consecrated by marvellous dispensations those whom he called to the regeneration of the world. In Farel's ordination we see the infallible Word of God, given to a man of God, that he might bear it to the world,—the call of God and of the people,—the consecration of the heart, and a solemn appointment by one of the ministers of the Church; and all this was the best substitute of which his case admitted for the full and formal seal of the Church on his ministry. Farel took his departure for Montbeliard in company with Esch.

AN ADVANCED POST.

Farel thus found himself stationed as it were at an advanced post. Behind him, Basle and Strasburg supported him with their advice and their printing-presses; before him lay the provinces of Franche Comté, Burgundy, Lorraine, the Lyonnais, and the rest of France, where men of God were beginning to struggle against error in the midst of profound darkness. He immediately began to preach Jesus Christ, and to exhort the faithful not to permit themselves to be turned aside from the Holy Scriptures either by threats or stratagems. Beginning, long before Calvin, the work that this reformer was to accomplish on a much larger scale, Farel was at Montbeliard, like a general on a hill whose piercing eye glances over the field of battle, cheering those who are actively engaged with the enemy, rallying those ranks which the impetuosity of the charge has broken, and animating by his courage those who hang back.[970] Erasmus immediately wrote to his Roman-catholic friends, that a Frenchman, escaped from France, was making a great disturbance in these regions.[971]