French Reformation
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heeded not; He who liveth and was dead, and is alive for evermore,
and hath the keys of death and of hell, was beside him. Berquin’s
countenance was radiant with the light and peace of heaven. He had
attired himself in goodly raiment, wearing “a cloak of velvet, a doublet
of satin and damask, and golden hose.”—D’Aubigne, History of the
Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, b. 2, ch. 16. He was
about to testify to his faith in the presence of the King of kings and the
witnessing universe, and no token of mourning should belie his joy.
As the procession moved slowly through the crowded streets, the
people marked with wonder the unclouded peace, and joyous triumph,
of his look and bearing. “He is,” they said, “like one who sits in a
temple, and meditates on holy things.”—Wylie, b. 13, ch. 9.
At the stake, Berquin endeavored to address a few words to the
people; but the monks, fearing the result, began to shout, and the
soldiers to clash their arms, and their clamor drowned the martyr’s
voice. Thus in 1529 the highest literary and ecclesiastical authority of
cultured Paris “set the populace of 1793 the base example of stifling
on the scaffold the sacred words of the dying.”—Ibid., b. 13, ch. 9.
Berquin was strangled, and his body was consumed in the flames.
The tidings of his death caused sorrow to the friends of the Reformation
throughout France. But his example was not lost. “We, too, are ready,”
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said the witnesses for the truth, “to meet death cheerfully, setting
our eyes on the life that is to come.”—D’Aubigne, History of the
Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, b. 2, ch. 16.
During the persecution of Meaux, the teachers of the reformed
faith were deprived of their license to preach, and they departed to
other fields. Lefevre after a time made his way to Germany. Farel
returned to his native town in eastern France, to spread the light in
the home of his childhood. Already tidings had been received of what
was going on at Meaux, and the truth, which he taught with fearless
zeal, found listeners. Soon the authorities were roused to silence
him, and he was banished from the city. Though he could no longer
labor publicly, he traversed the plains and villages, teaching in private
dwellings and in secluded meadows, and finding shelter in the forests
and among the rocky caverns which had been his haunts in boyhood.
God was preparing him for greater trials. “The crosses, persecutions,
and machinations of Satan, of which I was forewarned, have not been
wanting,” he said; “they are even much severer than I could have borne