Not without reason were the catholics alarmed. Farel was a hero. A work that is beginning requires one of those strong men who, by the energy of their will, surmount all obstacles, and set in motion all the forces of their epoch to carry out the plan they have conceived. Calvin and Luther are the great men of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Calvin defended it against dangerous enemies; he gave to the renovated Church a body of divinity and a simple powerful constitution. The scriptural faith which he has set forth is making, and will make, the circuit of the world. But when he arrived at Geneva, the Reform was already accomplished outwardly. Farel is really the reformer of that city as well as of other places in Switzerland and France. A noble and simple evangelist, his genius was less great, his name less illustrious than his successor’s; but he ceased not to expose his life in fierce combats for the Saviour, and, in the order of grace, he was in that beautiful country enclosed between the Alps and the Jura what fire is in the order of nature—the most powerful of God’s agents. He was not, as is sometimes imagined, a hot-headed man, liable to fits of violence and temper. With energy he combined prudence—with zeal, impartiality. ‘Would to God,’ he said, on the occasion of his discussion with Furbity, ‘that each man would state each thing without leaning to one side more than to the other.’[429] But it must be acknowledged that he had more force than circumspection, and an unparalleled activity was the principal feature of his character. To venture everywhere, to act in all circumstances, to preach in every place, to brave every danger, were his enjoyment and his life. His excessive genius ‘delighted in adventure,’ as was said of a celebrated conqueror, and he was never so truly happy as when he was in the field. Farel began the work, and Calvin completed it.