Of these men Zwingle was chief. After a history very like Luther's, he became a reformer. Like him he visited Italy, and rebuked the corruptions of the church. Like him, he had from the first a profound conviction of the doctrine of salvation by grace, and through Christ. Like him, he appealed constantly to the Scriptures, even while still a Romanist; and, like him, he was the father, in one sense, of an extensive reform. He differed, however, from Luther in some qualities. Possessed of the same faith as Luther, it was better ordered. The German reformer was a man of heart, the Swiss of intellect. The first was more impassioned in his expositions of the faith, the second more philosophic. Their enemies called the one a mystic, and the other a rationalist; names which, though used with a colour of reason, are really unjust. Both, however, held substantially the same views. "If Luther," says Zwingle, " preaches Christ, he does what I do. Those who have been led to Christ by him exceed in number those who have been led by me. It matters not. I will bear no other name than that of Christ, whose soldier I am, and who alone is my chief. Never has one tittle been written by Luther to me, nor by me to Luther: and why?-In order to manifest to every one how tonsistent the Spirit of God is with itself, since without having ever consorted together, we teach the doctrine of Christ with such harmony.' Under this preaching thousands were * Merla D'Aubigné, hook viii. chap. 9.

converted. Churches were formed by him at Zurich, and by his disciples at Berne, Lausanne, and in other places. In a little time bitter persecution arose, but it ended in the establishment, in most of the cantons, of the reformed faith.

Ten years after the visit of Erasmus, and the meeting between him and Zwingle, Farel and other Frenchmen had quitted their country, and settled at Basle. There they found many of the same belief; and among them some of the descendants of the "poor men of Lyons," who, like themselves, had been driven out of France. All began to look wistfully to the land of their fathers. She had expelled the gospel from her borders, but they were unwilling that she should be left to perish. Wanderers on a foreign soil themselves, they ceased not to "make mention of her in prayer every day (it is their own testimony,) in silence and seclusion." They invoked God's aid on their behalf, thus using the mightiest instrument ever employed in diffusing the gospel, the great means of conquest to the Reformation itself.*

Nor were they men of prayer only. They felt the importance of largely circulating the Scriptures. Bentin, one of their number, proposed establishing a printing-press at Basle; and another, Vaugris, was sent to Lyons, where many rich members of their fraternity resided, to ask their help. To this appeal there was a liberal response, and Farel printed a considerable number of tracts and books, and sent them

* Ranke, book xii. chap. 12.

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THE BASLE BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY.

into the different districts of France. Their plan was, to deliver the books to pious hawkers or pedlars, who went with their respective burdens from city to city, and from house to house. These hawkers were instructed to knock at every door, and to sell as many as they could; and, "that they might have an appetite for selling them," the books were delivered to them at a low price. They were also to speak of the doctrines their books contained, and to commend them in every possible way to the hearts of the people. In the meantime, Lefèvre's Bible had been printed in France. A friend sent a copy of it to Basle, with the suggestion, "Have it printed with all speed; for I have no doubt that a great number will go off." Thus, from the year 1524, there existed in Switzerland a French society for the publication of Bibles and religious books, and for their itinerant sale. Three hundred years before, Waldo had adopted the same agency, and with kindred success. Such efforts belong, in truth, not to our day exclusively, but to the Reformation, and even to the first ages of the church. To such efforts France owed the prevalence within her boundaries, in the sixteenth century, of the principles of the gospel.

What was still wanting to complete the work which Zwingle had begun, was a version of the Scriptures thoroughly adapted to the language of the people, and some master-mind to give consistency and system to the teaching and doctrines of the reformers and fellow-labourers

THE BIBLE IN FRENCH.

117

of Luther, in the one department, and of Melancthon in the other. The latter was supplied by Calvin, who had settled at Geneva; and the former by Olivetan, the pupil of Lefèvre, and uncle of Calvin. Olivetan's version was completed in 1535, and printed at Neuchâtel. In 1540, it was printed again at Geneva, after being revised by Calvin. In 1588, the edition was published which is now generally known as the Geneva French Bible. It is substantially Olivetan's, corrected by the pastors and professors of the reformed church in that city, among whom may be mentioned Jacquemot, Bertram, and Beza. History reckons upwards of twenty other French versions, Protestant and Catholic. The chief are the version of De Sacy the Port Royalist, and the versions of Martin, a native of Languedoc, and Ostervald, both founded on the Geneva Bible. Ostervald's is in use among the Protestants of Switzerland, while Martin's is preferred by those of Belgium, Holland, and southern France. De Sacy's has been largely circulated among Roman Catholics by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

De

The use of so many versions among French Protestants (there being no less than ten versions still in circulation) is an evil, and has done mischief to the Protestant cause. Sacy's version, it may be added, we owe, as we owe Luther's, to imprisonment. The Jesuits threw him into the Bastile in 1666, and there he laboured for two years and a half at his version of the Scriptures. He finished it

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BIBLE-CIRCULATION IN FRANCE.

ɔn the evening previous to his liberation. The Jesuits condemned it as too favourable to Protestantism. In France it is regarded by very

many as the most perfect version in French, or in any other tongue."

The extent of these labours in France, and their results, are both remarkable. Le Long reckons, between the years 1550 and 1600, no fewer than one hundred and fifty-seven editions of the entire Bible or Testament printed in French. Of those, one hundred and four editions were printed at Geneva, and forty-three elsewhere. The results we gather from Ranke. The doctrines of Calvin, he tells us, were early spread through France, and in defiance of persecution, the French churches modelled themselves on the type of that of Geneva. They held a numerous synod in 1559, and in the year 1561, the Venetian ambassador Micheli finds "not one province free from Protestantism, and three-fourths of the realm filled with it." "In many places," he says, "meetings and preachings are held, and rules of life laid down, exactly after the pattern of Geneva, without the least regard to the royal prohibitions." "Every one," he adds, "has adopted these opinions; even, what is most remarkable, the clergy; not only priests, monks, and nuns-there may be a few convents uninfected by them—but the very bishops, and many of the more eminent prelates, have.

He finds it unavoidable that religious

Townley's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 59.