[335] On the back: Letters against the Carmelite. Without date. A
Latin letter of Calvin to Farel, of the 10th May 1542, relative to
the same subject, furnishes us with the date, and informs us that
this white friar, who had gone over to the ranks of the Reformed,
belonged to Lyons: "_Venit Carmelita Lugdunensis a quo non frustra
timuimus_." Calvin forewarned the faithful of that town to be upon
their guard against that false friar.
The Church of Lyons, one of the most glorious of the French
Reformation, owed its origin to the preaching of an old Jacobin
monk, Alexander Camus, surnamed Laurence de la Croix, who suffered
martyrdom at Paris in 1535. The first members of that Church
were merchants, "some goldsmiths and others of the town," who
met together in secret. The work begun by Alexander Camus was
manfully followed up by John Fabri, (or Le Fevre,) who found pious
continuators in the ministers, Peter Fournelet and Claude Monnier,
before the epoch of the great persecutions.--_Hist. Eccl._, tom. i.
pp. 55, 56.
Stay of a Carmelite monk at Geneva--declaration of motives for
refusing to admit him to the ministry of the Gospel.