Farel and the Saints--The University--Farel's
Conversion--Farel and Luther--Other Disciples--Date of the
Reform in France--Spontaneous Rise of the different
Reforms--Which was the first?--Lefevre's Place.
[Sidenote: FAREL AND THE SAINTS--THE UNIVERSITY.]
Thus taught Lefevre. Farel listened, trembling with emotion; he
received all, and rushed suddenly into the new path that was opening
before him. There was, however, one point of his ancient faith which
he could not as yet entirely renounce; this was the invocation of
saints. The best spirits often have these relics of darkness, which
they cling to after their illumination. Farel was astonished as he
heard the illustrious doctor declare that Christ alone should be
invoked. "Religion has but one foundation," said Lefevre, "one object,
one Head, Jesus Christ, blessed for evermore: alone hath He trodden
the wine-press. Let us not then call ourselves after St. Paul, or
Apollos, or St. Peter. The cross of Christ alone openeth the gates of
heaven, and shutteth the gates of hell." When he heard these words, a
fierce conflict took place in Farel's soul. On the one hand, he beheld
the multitude of saints with the Church; on the other, Jesus Christ
alone with his master. Now he inclined to one side, now to another; it
was his last error and his last battle. He hesitated, he still clung
to those venerable men and women at whose feet Rome falls in
adoration. At length the decisive blow was struck from above. The
scales fell from his eyes. Jesus alone appeared deserving of his
worship. "Then," said he, "popery was utterly overthrown; I began to
detest it as devilish, and the holy Word of God had the chief place in
my heart."[730]
[730] Farel. A tous seigneurs.
Public events accelerated the course of Farel and his friends. Thomas
de Vio, who afterwards contended with Luther at Augsburg and at
Leipsic, having advanced in one of his works that the pope was the
absolute monarch of the Church, Louis XII. laid the book before the
university in the month of February 1512. James Allmain, one of the
youngest doctors, a man of profound genius and indefatigable
application, read before the faculty of theology a refutation of the
cardinal's assertions, which was received with the greatest
applause.[731]
[731] Crévier, Hist. de l'Université de Paris, v. 81.
[Sidenote: PEACE AND JOY.]
What impression must not such discourses have produced on the minds of
Lefevre's young disciples! Could they hesitate when the university
seemed impatient under the papal yoke? If the main body itself was in
motion, ought not they to rush forward as skirmishers and clear the
way? "It was necessary," said Farel, "that popery should have fallen
little by little from my heart; for it did not tumble down at the
first shock."[732] He contemplated the abyss of superstitions in which
he had been plunged. Standing on the brink, he once more surveyed its
depth with an anxious eye, and shrunk back with a feeling of terror.
"Oh! what horror do I feel at myself and my sins, when I think of
these things!" exclaimed he.[733] "O Lord," he continued, "would that
my soul had served thee with a living faith, as thy obedient servants
have done; would that it had prayed to and honoured thee as much as I
have given my heart to the mass and to serve that enchanted wafer,
giving it all honour!" In such terms did the youthful Dauphinese
deplore his past life, and repeat in tears, as St. Augustine had done
before: "I have known Thee too late; too late have I loved Thee!"
[732] Farel. A tous seigneurs.
[733] Farel. A tous seigneurs.
Farel had found Jesus Christ; and having reached the port, he was
delighted to find repose after such terrible storms.[734] "Now," said
he, "every thing appears to me under a fresh aspect.[735] Scripture is
cleared up; prophecy is opened; the apostles shed a strong light upon
my soul.[736] A voice, till now unknown, the voice of Christ, my
Shepherd, my Master, my Teacher, speaks to me with power."[737] He was
so changed that, "instead of the murderous heart of a ravening wolf,
he came back," he tells us, "quietly, like a meek and harmless lamb,
having his heart entirely withdrawn from the pope, and given to Jesus
Christ."[738]
[734] Animus per varia jactatus, verum nactus portum, soli hæsit.
Farel Galeoto.
[735] Jam rerum nova facies. Ibid.
[736] Notior scriptura, apertiores prophetæ, lucidiores apostoli.
Ibid.
[737] Agnita pastoris, magistri, et præceptoris Christi vox. Ibid.
[738] Farel. A tous seigneurs.
Having escaped from so great an evil, he turned towards the
Bible,[739] and began to study Greek and Hebrew with much
earnestness.[740] He read the Scriptures constantly, with ever
increasing affection, and God enlightened him from day to day. He
still continued to attend the churches of the established worship; but
what found he there? loud voices, interminable chantings, and words
spoken without understanding.[741] Accordingly, when standing in the
midst of a crowd that was passing near an image or an altar, he would
exclaim, "Thou alone art God! thou alone art wise! thou alone art
good![742] Nothing must be taken away from thy holy law, and nothing
added. For thou alone art the Lord, and thou alone wilt and must
command."
[739] Lego sacra ut causam inveniam. Farel Galeoto.
[740] Life of Farel, Geneva and Choupard MSS.
[741] Clamores multi, cantiones innumeræ. Farel Galeoto, Neufchatel
MS.
[742] Vere tu solus Deus. Farel Galeoto, Neufchatel MS.
Thus fell in his eyes all men and all teachers from the height to
which his imagination had raised them, and he now saw nothing in the
world but God and his Word. The other doctors of Paris, by their
persecutions of Lefevre, had already fallen in his esteem; but erelong
Lefevre himself, his beloved guide, was no more than a man like
himself. He loved and venerated him still; but God alone became his
master.
[Sidenote: FAREL AND LUTHER.]
Of all the reformers, Farel and Luther are perhaps those whose early
spiritual developments are best known to us, and who had to pass
through the greatest struggles. Quick and ardent, men of conflict and
strife, they underwent the severest trials before attaining peace.
Farel is the pioneer of the Reformation in France and Switzerland; he
rushes into the wood, and hews down the aged giants of the forest with
his axe. Calvin came after, like Melancthon, from whom he differs
indeed in character, but whom he resembles in his part as theologian
and organizer. These two men, who have something in common with the
legislators of antiquity,--the one in its graceful, the other in its
severe style,--built up, settled, and gave laws to the territory
conquered by the first two reformers. If, however, Luther and Farel
approximate in some of their features, we must acknowledge that the
latter resembles the Saxon reformer in one aspect only. Besides his
superior genius, Luther had, in all that concerned the Church, a
moderation and wisdom, an acquaintance with the past, a comprehensive
judgment, and even an organizing faculty, that did not exist to the
same degree in the Dauphinese reformer.
Farel was not the only young Frenchman into whose mind the new light
then beamed. The doctrines that fell from the lips of the illustrious
doctor of Etaples fermented among the crowd who listened to his
lectures, and in his school were trained the daring soldiers who, in
the hour of battle, were to contend even to the foot of the scaffold.
They listened, compared, discussed, and keenly argued on both sides.
It is probable that among the small number of scholars who defended
the truth was young Peter Robert Olivetan, born at Noyon about the
close of the fifteenth century, who afterwards translated the Bible
into French from Lefevre's version, and who seems to have been the
first to draw the attention of a youth of his family, also a native of
Noyon, to the Gospel, and who became the most illustrious chief of the
Reformation.[743]
[743] Biogr. Univ., art. _Olivetan_. Hist. du Calvinisme by Maimbourg,
p. 53.
[Sidenote: DATE OF THE REFORM IN FRANCE.]
Thus in 1512, at a time when Luther had made no impression on the
world, and was going to Rome on some trifling monkish business,--at an
epoch when Zwingle had not yet begun to apply himself earnestly to
sacred learning, and was crossing the Alps with the confederates to
fight for the pope,--Paris and France were listening to the teaching
of those vital truths from which the Reformation was ordained to
issue; and souls prepared to disseminate them were drinking them in
with holy thirst. Hence Theodore Beza, speaking of Lefevre, hails him
as the man "who boldly began the revival of the pure religion of Jesus
Christ;"[744] and remarks that, "as in ancient times the school of
Isocrates sent forth the best orators, so from the lecture-room of the
doctor of Etaples issued many of the best men of the age and of the
Church."[745]
[744] Et purioris religionis instaurationem fortiter aggressus. Beza
Icones.
[745] Sic ex Stapulensis auditorio præstantissimi viri plurimi
prodierint. Ibid.
[Sidenote: SPONTANEOUS BIRTH OF REFORM.]
The Reformation was not, therefore, in France a foreign importation.
It was born on French soil; it germinated in Paris; it put forth its
first shoots in the university itself, that second authority in Romish
Christendom. God planted the seeds of this work in the simple hearts
of a Picard and a Dauphinese, before they had begun to bud forth in
any other country upon earth. The Swiss Reformation, as we have
seen,[746] was independent of the German Reformation; and in its turn
the Reformation in France was independent of that of Switzerland and
of Germany. The work commenced at the same time in different
countries, without any communication one with the other; as in a
battle all the divisions begin to move at the same moment, although
one has not told the other to march, but because one and the same
command, issuing from a higher power, has been heard by all. The time
had come, the nations were prepared, and God was everywhere beginning
the revival of his Church at the same time. Such facts demonstrate
that the great revolution of the sixteenth century was a work of God.
[746] See Vol. II. p. 281.
If we look only to dates, we must acknowledge that neither to
Switzerland nor to Germany belongs the honour of having begun this
work, although, hitherto, these two countries alone have contended for
it. This honour belongs to France. This is a truth, a fact that we are
anxious to establish, because until now it may possibly have been
overlooked. Without dwelling on the influence that Lefevre exercised
directly or indirectly on many individuals, and in particular on
Calvin himself, as we conjecture, let us reflect on that which he had
on one only of his disciples,--on Farel, and on the energetic activity
which this servant of God manifested ever afterwards. Can we, after
that, resist the conviction, that if Zwingle and Luther had never
appeared, there would still have been a reforming movement in France?
It is impossible, no doubt, to calculate what might have been its
extent; we must even acknowledge that the report of what was taking
place on the other side of the Rhine and the Jura afterwards animated
and accelerated the progress of the French reformers. But they were
the first awakened by the trumpet that sounded from heaven in the
sixteenth century, and they were the first on foot and under arms upon
the field of battle.
Nevertheless Luther is the great workman of the sixteenth century, and
in the fullest sense the first reformer. Lefevre is not so complete as
Calvin, Farel, and Luther. He is of Wittemberg and Geneva, but there
is still a tinge of the Sorbonne; he is the first catholic in the
reform movement, and the last of the reformers in the catholic
movement. He is to the end a sort of go-between, a mediator not
altogether free from mystery, destined to remind us of the connexion
between the old things and the new, which seemed for ever separated by
an impassable gulf. Though rejected and persecuted by Rome, he still
clings to Rome by a slender thread which he has no desire to break.
Lefevre of Etaples has a station apart in the theology of the
sixteenth century: he is the link connecting the ancient times with
the modern, and the man in whom the transition is made from the
theology of the middle ages to the theology of the Reformation.