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Calvin left the duties of the ministry to Farel, his first disciple, and gave himself up patiently to the work of teaching his doctrine. His authority, which became so absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with difficulty and very slowly. The great agitator met with such serious obstacles that he was banished for a time from Geneva on account of the severity of his reform.
The undertaking was especially favoured by Calvin, Farel, and other Protestant ministers, who hoped ere long to see a large and flourishing community of their fellow-believers established in the New World, where many of those suffering in Europe might fly for refuge. Rouen was a large and populated place in those days, and the new emigrants had no difficulty in finding accommodation.
In these respects, however, the state of feeling produced by the Reformation followed no ordinary laws; the fervour of hatred and contempt which the priesthood called forth in Scotland being beyond all example or comparison, except, indeed, in some parts of France, where Farel and his followers had set the example of destruction. The Queen, however, did little more than threaten.
The passions of the people were excited, and the city was torn by parties; and such was the reluctance to submit to the discipline of the ministers that they refused to administer the sacraments. This created such a ferment that the syndics expelled Calvin and Farel from the city. They went at first to Berne, but the Bernese would not receive them.
Visits were exchanged Farel and Saunier went amongst the Vaudians and conversed with them about their common faith, common in spite of certain differences. Rustic conferences, composed of the principal landholders, barbas or pastors, and simple members of the faithful, met more than once in the open air under the pines of their mountains.
"Colonel Farel and his lady are getting ready to go in the next vessel," said Adolphus, as if in a sleep, or as though his power of speech opposed and defied him in its activity, so bewildered did he look at his wife and daughter. "Oh, then, may I go? It is only out and back. I will not be long away. Then we shall all go some day together, and never, never return."
Farel was impressed by his master's devotion as well as learning; he saw him on his knees at church praying fervently; and, "Never," said he, "had I seen a chanter of mass who chanted it with deeper reverence." But this old-fashioned piety did not interfere at all with the freedom of the professor's ideas and conversations touching either the abuses or the doctrines of the church.
The first person who preached the reformed doctrines in Geneva was the missionary Farel, a French nobleman, spiritual, romantic, and zealous. He had great success, although he encountered much opposition and wrath. But the reformed doctrines were already established in Zurich, Berne, and Basle, chiefly through the preaching of Ulrich Zwingli, and Oecolampadius.
He is the man who will afterwards reform Geneva and persuade Calvin to stay there. Though at first Oecolampadius began to introduce novelties into the church service with caution, Erasmus saw these innovations with alarm. Especially the fanaticism of Farel, whom he hated bitterly. It was these men who retarded what he still desired and thought possible: a compromise.
The apostolic Farel welcomed with great cordiality the arrival of Calvin, then already known as an extraordinary man, though only twenty-eight years of age. He came to Geneva poor, and remained poor all his life. All his property at his death amounted to only two hundred dollars. As a minister in one of the churches, he soon began to exert a marvellous influence.
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