Farel was more active than ever. He was busy in the city and in the villages with Roman-catholics and reformed: he was intent on everything that could elevate the moral and religious condition of the community. The anarchy and corruption that prevailed in Geneva upon Calvin's arrival have been exaggerated. The energetic language of the sixteenth century, interpreted by the delicate critics of our times, has perhaps contributed to this mistake. Before the Reformation there was beyond all doubt great corruption among the clergy, and particularly among the monks. That dissoluteness had also infected individuals and even families among the citizens; but one feature had distinguished this people, and especially the councils, during the struggles for political emancipation, namely, the close union of liberty with legality, that is to say, with order. The Genevese were always found ready for the greatest sacrifices—for the sacrifice of their goods, their ease, their homes, and their lives sooner than lose their independence: now these are not the manners of an epicurean people. Admiration of the Reformation period ought not to make us unjust towards the period of political emancipation. It is true that the reformers, and Calvin especially, had a hard task with this energetic and restless people, and that the struggles often proceeded from a want of faith and morality, which these austere men had remarked in certain citizens. But the struggles were aggravated by the intervention of the state, to which the ministers were not averse, and by the temporal punishments inflicted on those who infringed religious discipline. Perhaps no one in the sixteenth century perceived more clearly than Calvin the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal; and yet neither he nor Farel understood it, and above all did not realize it, to its full extent. 'If there should be men so insolent and given up to all perversity,' said Farel to the syndics, 'as only to laugh at being excommunicated, it will be your business to see whether you will allow such contempt to remain unpunished.'[746] The haughty republicans who had sacrificed everything to break down the despotism of the bishop and the duke, were irritated when they saw another yoke imposed upon them in religious matters. They had the true sentiment that their consciences ought to be free, and if attempts had been made to convince them and not to constrain them, the end proposed would have been more easily attained. For many an age Rome had forgotten that the weapons of the evangelical warfare _are not carnal_. Unhappily magistrates and reformers sometimes forgot it also. It was an error, and the error led to the commission of many faults.