igning the Concordat of 1516, he attached himself more
closely to the papacy. The nascent Reformation, then, did not meet in
France with either of the two important circumstances, politically
considered, which in Germany and in England rendered its first steps more
easy and more secure. It was in the cause of religious creeds alone, and
by means of moral force alone, that she had to maintain the struggles in
which she engaged.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, there lived, at a small castle
near Gap in Dauphiny, in the bosom of a noble and unostentatiously pious
family, a young man of ardent imagination, fiery temperament, and
energetic character, who shared his relatives' creeds and joined in their
devotions, but grew weary of the monotony of his thoughts and of his
life. William Farel heard talk of another young man, his contemporary
and neighbor, Peter du Terrail, even now almost famous under the name of
Bayard. "Such sons," was said in his hearing, "are as arrows in the hand
of a giant; blessed is he who has his quiver full of them!" Young Farel
pressed his father to let him go too and make himself a man in the world.
The old gentleman would willingly have permitted his son to take up such
a life as Bayard's; but it was towards the University of Paris, "that
mother of all the sciences, that pure and shining mirror of the faith,"
that the young man's aspirations were directed. The father at first
opposed, but afterwards yielded to his wishes; and, about 1510, William
Farel quitted Gap and arrived at Paris. The questions raised by the
councils of Bale and Florence, and by the semi-political,
semi-ecclesiastical assembly at Tours, which had been convoked by Louis
XII., the instruction at the Parisian University, and the attacks of the
Sorbonne on the study of Greek and Hebrew, branded as heresy, were
producing a lively agitation in the public mind. A doctor of theology,
already advanced in years, of small stature, of mean appearance, and of
low origin, Jacques Lefevre by name, born at Etaples in Picardy, had for
seventeen years filled with great success a professorship in the
university. "Amongst many thousands of men," said Erasmus, "you will not
find any of higher integrity and more versed in polite letters." "He is
very fond of me," wrote Zwingle about him; "he is perfectly open and
good; he argues, he sings, he plays, and be laughs with me at the follies
of the world." Some circumstance or other