Farel was too valuable to be left as pastor of a small district like Aigle. We find him making wide preaching tours, always protected by Bern when protection was possible. It was the rooted belief of the Protestants that a public Disputation on matters of religion in presence of the people, the speakers using the language understood by the crowd, always resulted in spreading the Reformation; and Bern continually tried to get such conferences in towns where the authorities were Romanist. Their first interference in the ecclesiastical affairs of Lausanne was of this kind. It seems that some of the priests of Lausanne had accused Farel of being a heretic; whereupon the Council of Bern demanded that Farel should be heard before the Bishop of Lausanne's tribunal, in order to prove that he was no heretic. The claim led to a long correspondence. The Bishop continually refused; while the Council and citizens seemed inclined to grant the request. Farel could not get a hearing before the episcopal tribunal, but he visited the town, and on the second occasion was permitted by the Council to preach to the people. This occurred again and again; and the result was that the town became Protestant and disowned the authority of the Bishop. Bern assisted the inhabitants to drive the Bishop away, and to become a free municipality and Protestant. Gradually Farel had become the leader of an organised band of missioners, who devoted themselves to the evangelisation of western or French-speaking Switzerland.[59] They had been carefully selected--young men for the most part well educated, of unbounded courage, willing to face all the risks of their dangerous work, daunted by no threat or peril, taking their lives in their hand. They were the forerunners of the young preachers, teachers, and colporteurs whom Calvin trained later in Geneva and sent forth by the hundred to evangelise France and the Low Countries. They were all picked men. No one was admitted to the little band without being well warned of the hazardous work before him, and some who were ready to take all the risks were rejected because the leader was not sure that they had the necessary powers of endurance.[60] These preachers were under the protection of the canton of Bern, whose authorities were resolute to maintain the freedom to preach the Word of God; but they continually went where the Bernese had no power to assist them; nor could the protection of that powerful canton aid them in sudden emergencies when bitter Romanist partisans, infuriated by the invectives with which the preachers lashed the abuses of the Roman religion, or wrathful at their very presence, stirred up the mob against them. When their correspondence and that of their opponents--a correspondence collected and carefully edited by M. Herminjard--is read, it can be seen that they could always count on a certain amount of sympathy from the people of the towns and villages where they preached,