Baptism or of the Lord's Supper, or taken part in the celebration
of Marriage, "according to the fashion of Geneva," so frequently
appears in the documents of the first century after the
establishment of the Reformation in France as the chief offence of
its early adherents and martyrs, that it is worth while to examine
in some detail the model of worship that has exerted so important
an influence upon the practice of the Huguenots and their
descendants down to the present time.

While discarding the cumbrous ceremonial of the Roman Church, on
the ground that it was not only overloaded with superfluous
ornament, but too fatally disfigured by irrational, superstitious,
or impious observances to be susceptible of correction or
adaptation to the wants of their infant congregations, the founders
of the reformed churches of the continent did not leave the
inexperienced ministers to whose care these congregations were
confided altogether without a guide in the conduct of divine
worship. Esteeming a written account of the manner in which the
public services were customarily performed to be the safest
directory for the use of the young or ill-equipped, as well as the
surest means of silencing the shameless calumnies of their
malignant opponents, they early framed liturgies, not to be imposed
as obligatory forms, but rather to serve an important end in
securing an orderly conformity in the general arrangement followed
in their churches.

[Sidenote: Farel's "Maniere et fasson," 1533.]

The earliest of these liturgical compositions appears to have been
a small and thin volume of eighty-seven pages, which, as we learn
from the colophon, was "printed by Pierre de Wingle at Neufchatel,
on the twenty-ninth day of August in the year 1533;" that is to
say, on the same press which, about a twelvemonth later, sent forth
the famous "Placards" against the mass, and a year afterward the
Protestant version of the Bible, translated into French by
Olivetanus. It is entitled "_La Maniere et fasson qu'on tient es
lieux que Dieu de sa grace a visites_." It was undoubtedly composed
by Guillaume Farel, and, like all the other tracts of that vigorous
and popular reformer, it has become extremely rare. Indeed, the
work was altogether unknown until a single copy, the on