A great energy characterized the Reformation of French Switzerland; and this is shown by the events we have just witnessed. Men have attributed to Farel this distinctive feature of his work; but no man has ever created his own times; it is always, on the contrary, the times that create the man. The greater the epoch, the less do individualities prevail in it. All the good contained in the events we have just related came from that Almighty Spirit, of which the strongest men are but weak instruments. All the evil proceeded from the character of the people; and, indeed, it was almost always Popery that began these scenes of violence: Farel submitted to the influence of his time, rather than the time received his. A great man may be the personification and the type of the epoch for which God destines him: he is never its creator. But it is time to quit the Jura and its beautiful valleys, brightened by the vernal sun, to direct our step towards the Alps of German Switzerland, along which thick clouds and horrible tempests are beginning to gather. The free and courageous people, who dwell below the eternal glaciers, or on the smiling banks of the lakes, daily assume a fiercer aspect, and the collision threatens to be sudden, violent, and terrible. We have just been witnessing a glorious conquest: a dreadful catastrophe awaits us. BOOK XVI. SWITZERLAND--CATASTROPHE. 1528-1531. I. It was the will of God that at the very gates of his revived Church there should be two great examples to serve as lessons for future generations. Luther and the German Reformation, declining the aid of the temporal power, rejecting the force of arms, and looking for victory only in the confession of the truth, were destined to see their faith crowned with the most brilliant success; while Zwingle and the Swiss Reformation, stretching out their hands to the mighty ones of the earth, and grasping the sword, were fated to witness a horrible, cruel, and bloody catastrophe fall upon the Word of God--a catastrophe which threatened to engulf the Evangelical cause in the most furious whirlpool. God is a jealous God, and gives not his glory to another; he claims to perform his own work himself, and to attain his ends sets other springs in motion than those of a skilful diplomacy. We are far from forgetting that we are called upon to relate facts and not to discuss theories; but there is a principle which the history we are narrating sets forth in capital letters: it is that professed in the Gospel, where it says: THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE ARE NOT CARNAL, BUT MIGHTY THROUGH GOD! In maintaining this truth we do not place ourselves on the ground of any particular school, but on that of universal conscience and of the Word of God. [Sidenote: ZWINGLE.]