Jacques Lefevre was born at Etaples, a small town of Picardy. Endowed with an expansive and inquiring mind, he had embraced all things in his studies,—the ancient tongues, _belles lettres_, history, mathematics, philosophy, theology; and in the course of his long travels, he had acquired everything that could be learned at the end of the fifteenth century. On his return to France, he was nominated to a professorship in the university of Paris, and gathered round his chair a numerous body of scholars. The doctors of the Sorbonne, distrustful of his learning, and jealous of his reputation, watched him with a hostile eye. Yet he displayed great devotion, being one of the most assiduous at mass, and at processions, passing whole hours at the foot of the images of Mary, and delighting in adorning them with flowers. Lefevre had even undertaken to rewrite the Legend of the Saints, but he did not reach the end; for having attentively read the Bible to complete his work, he discovered that the holiness of most of the heroes of the Roman calendar bears but very little resemblance to the ideal of Christian virtue. Once on this new ground, he never quitted it; and always as sincere with his students as with his conscience, he openly attacked some of the errors of the (Roman) Catholic Church. To the justification of outward works he opposed justification by faith, and announced the advent of a new birth in the religion of the people. This happened in 1512. It is important to notice these dates, because they prove that the notions of reform, not only in worship, or in discipline, but in the very fundamental principles, manifested themselves at the same time in several places, without its being possible that the men, who put themselves at the head of the movement, could have acted in concert. When a political or religious revolution is ripe, it appears on all sides, and no one can say who was the first to move in it. Among those who heard the new opinions of Jacques Lefevre with avidity, was Guillaume Farel, whom we have already named. Born near Gap in 1489, and instructed in the faithful observance of devout practices, he had sought in them, like his master, peace of heart. Night and day, as he has himself related it in a confession addressed _to all lords and peoples_, he invoked the Virgin and the saints; he scrupulously conformed to the fasts prescribed by the Church, held the pontiff of Rome to be a god upon earth, saw in the priests the sole channel of all celestial blessings, and treated as infidels whoever did not exhibit an ardour similar to his own.