These are strange actions. It has been maintained that the church, in proportion as political society becomes Christian, ought gradually to be lost in the state. It has been asserted that, at the epoch of the Reformation, Christianity had completed its ecclesiastical period, and had entered into the political period. Lastly, some men have added that to organize the church was a useless labor, a sheer loss of time, an absolute impossibility, and that presbyteries and synods were but silly child's play.[741] Was the fact that we have recorded—episcopal absolution emanating from the council—the first step in this absorption of the church by the state; and is it true that the Reformation leads to it? Quite the contrary. By reviving in the Christian conscience the idea of the kingdom of God; by awakening to life and action the members of the evangelical congregation, protestantism awoke the church throughout Christendom. Geneva, owing to the impulse given it by Calvin, became the place where it was constituted in the most independent and most scriptural manner. The church must not be lost in the state, and the state must not be lost in the church, whatever socialists or priests may say. How can the state survive the church? The state is temporary, the church immortal. But the magistrates heroically discharged their episcopal functions to little purpose; there was great difficulty in maintaining order. The villages of Vandœuvre and Celigny wished to hear mass and a protestant sermon every Sunday, while the priests universally demanded the preservation of the Romish ceremonies. The council felt the necessity of explaining the posture of affairs, and called together all the ecclesiastics and proctors of the parishes.[742] On the 3d of April, 1536, the Romanist party was drawn up on one side of the council-room, and on the other were Farel, with some other ministers, and several zealous protestants.[743] Claude Savoye, the premier syndic, spoke against the union of sermons and the mass, which some parishes desired, and declared that such a medley was by no means agreeable to the magistracy. He then said to the priests: 'Instead of preventing the people from living according to the Gospel, why do you not embrace it yourselves, and give up your mass?' Dom Claude de Puthex, canon of Satigny, stepped forward and said: 'If our neighbors of Gex change their mode of life, we will do the same.' This religion of _neighborhood_ was a surprise to the reformers; and those simple folks reminded them of sheep who pass where others have gone before, and leap over the hedge as soon as the foremost of them have shown the way. 'Turn about, gentlemen,' said Farel, 'instead of continuing your course;' and he added several 'beautiful remonstrances.' 'Give us a month to study the Gospel,' answered the canons. After the priests had withdrawn, the council asked the opinion of Farel and Bonivard. The latter declared