'But the fruit of the mass is very different. By it the preaching of the Gospel is prevented. The time is occupied with bell-ringing, howling, chanting, empty ceremonies, candles, incense, disguises, and all manner of conjuration. And the poor world, looked upon as a lamb or as sheep, is miserably deceived, cajoled, led astray—what do I say? bitten, gnawed, and devoured as if by ravening wolves. 'By means of this mass they have laid hands on everything, destroyed everything, swallowed up everything. By its means they have disinherited princes and kings, lords and shopkeepers, and all whom we could name, dead or alive.... O false witnesses, traitors, robbers of the honour of God, and more hateful than the devils themselves! 'In short, the truth chases them, the truth alarms them, and by truth shall their reign shortly be destroyed for ever.' Such was the proclamation posted up in Paris and all over France. We trace in it, we must confess, the coarseness of the language of the sixteenth century, and especially in a passage which must have greatly stirred the anger of the clergy, where the placard, in speaking of the pope and cardinals, priests and monks, calls them false prophets, wolves, seducers, and gives them other names besides, which are rarely employed in our days except in the bulls of the Roman pontiffs. We discover in this writing the antipapistical spirit in all its unreflecting force. Certainly, when it says that the true Supper of Christ 'rejoices the believer's soul, and imparts to him all gentle kindness and loving charity,' we taste the savour of the Gospel; but, generally speaking, this manifesto is an engine of war with a brazen head. If we transport ourselves to the early days of the Reformation, we can understand that it was necessary to employ vigorous battering-rams to beat down the old and apparently unshakeable walls of popery. Every line in this placard reveals to us the warm-hearted, but also 'the impetuous and eloquent Farel, frank, decisive, intrepid among men, who had the admirable heart of the knight without reproach, with his thirst for danger, and was the Bayard of the battles of God.'[208] The work resembles the workman. While conceding something to the times in which the placard was written and posted up, we may ask whether that act proceeded solely from a movement of the mind free from every tinge of human passion, and was one of the arms that the apostles would have employed. In any case it seems to us certain that more moderate language would really have been stronger, and more surely have attained its end. This is what the event will show. [198] Crespin, _Martyrol._ fol. 3. Flor. Rémond, _Hist. Hérés._ viii. ch. v. [199] Ruchat, _Hist. Réf. Suisse_, tom. iii. p. 132, after a MS. journal of Jean le Comte. [200] Chap. vii. 5. [201] Crespin, _Martyrol._ fol. III. [202] Ibid.