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From Here to Forever
Berquin at the Stake
At the stake, Berquin endeavored to address a few words to the
people; but the monks began to shout and the soldiers to clash their
arms, and their clamor drowned the martyr’s voice. Thus in 1529 the
highest ecclesiastical authority of cultured Paris “set the populace of
1793 the base example of stifling on the scaffold the sacred words
of the dying.
Berquin was strangled, and his body was consumed
in the flames.
Teachers of the reformed faith departed to other fields. Lefevre
made his way to Germany. Farel returned to his native town in
eastern France, to spread the light in the home of his childhood. The
truth which he taught found listeners. Soon he was banished from
the city. He traversed the villages, teaching in private dwellings and
secluded meadows, finding shelter in the forests and among rocky
caverns which had been his haunts in boyhood.
As in apostolic days, persecution had “fallen out rather unto the
furtherance of the gospel.”
Philippians 1:12
. Driven from Paris and
[138]
Meaux, “they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching
the word.”
Acts 8:4
. And thus the light found its way into many
remote provinces of France.
The Call of Calvin
In one of the schools of Paris was a thoughtful, quiet youth
marked for the blamelessness of his life, for intellectual ardor, and
for religious devotion. His genius and application made him the
pride of the college, and it was confidently anticipated that John
Calvin would become one of the ablest defenders of the church.
But a ray of divine light penetrated the walls of scholasticism
and superstition by which Calvin was enclosed. Olivetan, a cousin
of Calvin, had joined the Reformers. The two kinsmen discussed
together the matters disturbing Christendom. “There are but two
religions in the world,” said Olivetan, the Protestant. “The one
... which men have invented, in ... which man saves himself by
ceremonies and good works; the other is that one religion which is
6
Wylie, bk. 13, ch. 9.