[878] Quam beatus hic venter incanduit! quot minarum plaustra! Solent tales belluæ, &c. (Neuchatel MS.) [Sidenote: STATE--RELIGION.] Notwithstanding all these trials, Farel was not discouraged. The greater the difficulties, the more his energy increased. "Let us scatter the seed everywhere," said he, "and let civilized France, provoked to jealousy by this barbarous nation, embrace piety at last. Let there not be in Christ's body either fingers, or hands, or feet, or eyes, or ears, or arms, existing separately and working each for itself, but let there be only one heart that nothing can divide. Let not variety in secondary things divide into many separate members that vital principle which is one and simple.[879] Alas! the pastures of the Church are trodden under foot, and its waters are troubled! Let us set our minds to concord and peace. When the Lord shall have opened heaven, there will not be so many disputes about bread and water.[880] A fervent charity--that is the powerful battering-ram with which we shall beat down those proud walls, those material elements, with which men would confine us."[881] [879] Ne in digitos, manus, pedes, oculos, nares, aures, brachia, cor quod unum est discindatur, et quæ in rebus est varietas, principium non faciat multiplex. (Ibid.) [880] An allusion to the controversies on anabaptism and the real presence. Non tanta erit super aqua et pane contentio, nec super gramine, solutaque obsidione. (Neuchatel MS.) The sense of these latter words is obscure. [881] Charitas fortissimus aries. (Farel to Bucer, 10th May, 1529.) Thus wrote the most impetuous of the Reformers. These words of Farel, preserved for three centuries in the city where he died, disclose to us more clearly the intimate nature of the great Revolution of the sixteenth century, than all the venturesome assertions of its Popish interpreters. Christian unity thus from these earliest moments found a zealous apostle. The nineteenth century is called to resume the work which the sixteenth century was unable to accomplish. [Sidenote: IRRESOLUTION OF BERNE.]