Viret distinguished himself at college by his love of study; 'he made good progress in learning;' and also by his devotion to the practices of the Roman Church. 'I cannot deny,' he said, 'that I went pretty deep into that Babylon.'[401] In one of the last visits he made to Paris, Farel seems to have remarked Viret, whose charming modesty easily won the heart, and to have helped in freeing the young Swiss from the darkness in which he still lay. The Gospel penetrated the soul of the youthful scholar of Orbe almost at the same time as it enlightened the large understanding of the scholar of Noyon. The mildness of his character softened the struggles which had been so fierce in Farel and Calvin. And yet he too had to tread the path of anguish to arrive at peace. Perceiving a frightful abyss and an eternal night beneath his feet, he threw himself into the arms of the Deliverer who was calling him: 'While still at college,' he said, 'God took me out of the labyrinth of error before I had sunk deeper into that Babylon of Antichrist.'[402] The time having arrived when he should receive the tonsure, he felt that he must make up his mind: the struggle was not a long one; he refused, and was immediately 'set down as belonging to the Lutheran religion.'[403] Foreseeing what awaited him, he hastily quitted Paris and France, and 'returned to his father's house.' In after years he exclaimed: 'I thank God that the mark and sign of the beast were not set upon my forehead.'[404] [Sidenote: VIRET'S STRUGGLES.] Viret found Orbe greatly changed; the contest then going on between the gospel and popery intimidated him at first. His was one of those reflective souls which, absorbed by the struggles within, naturally shrink from those without. Like other reformers, he had a difficulty in quitting the body of catholicity, but a severe conscience obliged him to seek truth at any sacrifice. Sometimes the Church of Rome, with all its errors and abuses, alone struck his imagination, and he would exclaim with emotion: 'It is the stronghold of superstition, the fortress of Satan.'[405] Then all of a sudden and before he had time to defend himself, the old system of catholicism resumed its power over him, and he found himself in anguish and darkness. He struggled and prayed: the truth, for a moment hidden, reappeared before his eyes, and he said: 'Rome asserts that antiquity is truth; but what is there older in the world than lies, rebellion, murder, extortion, impurity, idolatry, and all kinds of wickedness and abomination?... To follow the doctrine of Cain and of Sodom is verily to follow an old doctrine.... But virtue, truth, holiness, innocence, and thou, O God which art the Father of them all, are older still!'[486]