The consideration due to Friburg had led the magistrates to this act of severity; but the evangelical movement was not checked by it. The Christian meetings increased in number after Easter. Farel energetically urged forward the car of Reform, and his voice by turns alarmed like the thunders of Sinai, or consoled like the Beatitudes of the Gospel. Yet, in the midst of these numerous works, he was often observed to pause, overcome with sadness. The persecution continued in France: three hundred Lutherans were in prison at Paris. ‘What restive horses are these!’ he exclaimed. ‘They shrink back instead of advancing! What adversaries are springing up against the Redeemer, who reigns with glory in heaven! But God will not forsake his work.’[505] He had still keener sorrows than these: his own brothers, Daniel, Walter, and Claude, had been seized by the enemy from a desire to avenge upon them the _evil_ which the reformer was doing. One of the three, who was younger than himself, had been condemned to imprisonment for life, and his mother, already a widow, was shedding tears of bitterness. ‘Alas!’ said William Farel, ‘her son, who was born after me, has long been in prison, and has greater sorrows to endure than I have.’ The reformer applied to friends in high station to obtain his brother’s release from the king; but the strictness of the prison had only been increased. ‘I know not,’ he said, on the 28th of April, 1534, ‘who has so stirred the fire.... May it please God that the poor prisoner hold firm and declare fearlessly what ought to be said of the good Saviour.’[506] Farel possessed that filial affection which is serious and respectful towards the father, tender and gentle towards the mother. It made him exclaim in his anguish: ‘Alas! the poor widow! O my anguish-stricken mother!’ The love he felt for Christ had increased his natural affections.