[507] 'Parum est nisi cum ædificatione majori id faceret.'—Farellus Calvino. [508] 'Bernardus civis erat.'—_Ibid._ CHAPTER III. PREPARATION FOR A PUBLIC DISPUTATION AT GENEVA. (FROM APRIL TO WHITSUNTIDE, 1535.) [Sidenote: THE TEN PROPOSITIONS.] Jacques Bernard and the Reformers had a meeting for the purpose of drawing up their propositions. The justifying power of faith was to hold the first place, for, according to the Gospel, man must, before everything, condemn the selfish existence he has lived until the moment of his awakening, and place all his confidence in the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ alone. The theses drawn up by the Reformers were as follows:— I. _Man must seek justification for his sins in Jesus Christ_ ALONE.[509] II. _Religious worship must be paid to God_ ALONE. III. _The constitution of the Church must be regulated by the Word of God_ ALONE. IV. _The atonement for sins must be ascribed to Christ's sacrifice, offered up_ ONCE, _and which procures full and entire remission_. V. _We must acknowledge_ ONE ONLY _Mediator between God and man—Jesus Christ_. The fault of Rome had been to add to the Gospel many strange dogmas and ceremonies, and place them above the primitive edifice, stage after stage, pile after pile, thus crushing it: this is indeed the proper meaning conveyed by the word superstition. The Reformers aspired to pull down this framework, and liberate Christian truth from all the fables by which it was disfigured. Hence, as we see, the word _alone_ plays a great part in this disputation. Its object was to exclude all human additions and to exalt God alone, Christ alone, the Gospel alone. These propositions, however, did not entirely satisfy Farel. In his opinion it was necessary, after laying down truths, to point out errors. Five negative theses were, therefore, added to the five positive theses:— VI. _It is wrong to put our trust in good works and look for our justification in them._ VII. _To worship saints and images is to be guilty of idolatry._ VIII. _Hence our traditions and ecclesiastical (or rather Roman) constitutions are not only useless but pernicious._ IX. _The sacrifice of the mass, and prayers to the dead or for them, are a sin against the Word of God, and men are wrong to look to them for salvation._ X. _The intercession of saints was introduced into the Church by the authority of men and not of God._ These propositions seem to us now mere theological formulæ: they were more than that. There was the true spirit in them. 'There are different ways of speaking,' said the friend[510] to whom Farel wrote an account of this disputation; 'the roaring of a lion is different from the braying of an ass.' There was indeed in these theses, destined to throw down a whole world of errors, the formidable 'roaring of a lion.'