Farel arrived and went into the pulpit. The worship they were about to celebrate was not to be an ordinary service: a religious revolution was about to be accomplished. Ceremonies were the essence of popery. Now Farel was full of the idea that there are no ceremonial laws in Christianity; that an act of worship, discharged according to the rules of the Church, is not on that account pleasing to God and meritorious: that to overburden believers with festivals, bowing of the head, crossing, kneeling before pictures, and ceremonies, is opposed to worship in the spirit; that to fill the churches with images, offerings, relics, and tapers is dealing a blow at justification by faith and the merit of Christ's death which alone save the sinner. He believed with his whole heart that divine worship, according to the New Testament, does not consist in processions, elevations, salutations, bowings, genuflexions before the host, and other superstitious usages; that its essence is faith in the Gospel, the charity which flows from it, patience in bearing the cross, public confession of Jesus Christ, and the living prayer of the heart. At the sight of the statues, the pictures, the votive offerings which surrounded him—at the recollection of the superstitious ceremonies which for centuries had profaned that cathedral, Farel in great emotion was ready to do anything, even at the risk of his life, to establish that religion which is _spirit and life_. 'Those idols,' he said, pointing from the pulpit to the images around him, 'the mass and the whole body of popery are condemned by the Holy Ghost. The magistrates, ordained by God, ought to pull down everything that is raised in opposition to God's glory.' The images, if they remained, would be in his eyes a sign of the victory of catholicism; but if they fell, their fall would proclaim the victory of the Reformation. This point had been often discussed: the priests and devout people opposed Farel's intentions with all their power, and maintained that such changes required the consent of a general council. The alarmed politicians objected that if they pulled down the images, then for one enemy Geneva would have a hundred—the duke of Savoy, the king of France, the emperor, the pope, the cardinals, and all the bishops in the world.