Indeed, the laity were then learning better things than those which the monks had taught them. It was not the ministers alone who labored; simple believers practiced the ministry of charity. If there chanced to be in any house a man ‘very rebellious,’ opposing the doctrine of Scripture, his friends, neighbors, and relations, who had tasted of its excellence, would go to him, and without offending him, without returning him evil for evil, ‘admonish him with great mildness.’ The evangelicals invited certain of their friends, even strangers and enemies, to their houses to eat and drink, in order that they might speak more familiarly with them. All their study was ‘to gain some one to the Word.’[553] In the neighboring countries, in Savoy, Gex, Vaud, and the Chablais, not only did the enemies of Geneva use threats, but made preparations to attack it. There was much talk in the city of the assaults that were to be made by the _forains_, the aliens; and accordingly there was always a number of citizens kept under arms. Farel, Viret, and Froment often joined these soldiers of the republic during their night-watches, and, sitting near the gates of the city or on the ramparts, by the glare of the bivouac fires or the torches, they would converse together about the truth, questioning and answering one another. ‘Each man familiarly and freely objected and replied to what the preacher said;’ and sometimes before they left their posts, the citizens were resolved in heart upon religious points about which they had hitherto been in doubt. Not without reason are these ‘conversations of the bivouac’ recorded here. In later times, one of the evangelists of Geneva, calling to mind the nocturnal meetings he had held at the military posts, exclaimed: ‘At these assemblies and watches more people have been won to the Gospel than by public preaching.’[554] Footnote 542: ‘Les luthériens crêveraient par le milieu ... la ville s’abymerait.’—Froment, _Gestes de Genève_, pp. 92, 93. Footnote 543: Registre du Conseil du 15 Mai, 1534. Froment, _Gestes de Genève_. Footnote 544: Registre du Conseil des 4, 11, 13, 30 Avril; 5, 14, 15, 17, 24, 26 Mai, and 12 Juin. Sœur Jeanne, _Levain du Calvinisme_, p. 89. MS. de Berne, _Hist. Helv._, v. 12. Froment, _Gestes de Genève_, pp. 119, 120. Footnote 545: Farel’s words. See p. 242 of the volume recently published in commemoration of the tercentenary of his death (_Du vrai usage de la croix de Jesus-Christ_, Neuchatel, 1865). Footnote 546: _Du vrai usage_, &c. Footnote 547: ‘Gebennis hac Pentacoste cum innumeri cœnam peragerent dominicam.’—Haller to Bullinger, 4th June, 1534. MS. Arch. Eccl. Tigur. Footnote 548: ‘Veterem hominem exuens et se Evangelii captivum exhibens.’—Haller, ibid. Footnote 549: ‘Est in miraculum.’—Haller to Bullinger, 4th June, 1534. MS. Eccl. Tigur. Footnote 550: