Farel, Viret, and other evangelists, as already related, had introduced the Reformation into such parts of that country as were subject to the Swiss cantons; but the other parishes of that fair land had still remained subject to the pope. Meanwhile Luther’s writings were everywhere circulated, the eyes of the people began to be opened, and several evangelists, particularly Jean Lecomte, a gentleman of Picardie, had preached the Gospel in various places. The occupation of the country by the Bernese, on occasion of the expedition which delivered Geneva in 1536, hastened the fall of Roman Catholicism. When the Bernese had taken Yverdon with the sword, they transformed the church of that town in a somewhat soldierly fashion. They bluntly put an end to the exercise of the Romish religion; appointed Malingre to be minister; on March 15 had their religious ordinances published; burnt, March 17, the images out of the churches in the market-place, and ordered the ministers to preach in temples cleared of those abominations. Lecomte, Tissot, Meige, and other evangelists introduced the Reform, but by the spiritual means of preaching, at Cossonay, Montagny, Yvonand, Sainte-Croix, and other places. Avenches and Lutry showed themselves decidedly Catholic, and they determined that if by any chance a minister should go there, they would not go to hear him. [Sidenote: THE GOSPEL IN THE PAYS DE VAUD.] In March 1536, as Viret and Fabry were passing near Yverdon during the siege of that town by the Bernese army, some Lausannese officers who were serving in it and who were acquainted with Viret, stopped him and said, ‘When Yverdon is taken, we shall go to Lausanne: come with us and preach the Gospel there in spite of the bishop.’ They did so. The amiable and discreet Viret would have been ill pleased to see Lausanne reformed by the military method, like Yverdon. He preferred the sword of the Spirit to that of the Bernese soldiery. He would choose that, in the sloping streets of that city and within its beautiful cathedral, the still small voice should be heard, and not the hissing of the tempest and the crash of thunder. He preached therefore the ‘glad tidings of great joy,’ and preached them with success, in the church of the convent of St. Francis. The Canons complained bitterly to the council. ‘A strange thing this,’ they said, ‘to see in Lausanne _two_ preachers at a time! A whole multitude of do-nothing monks, well and good! But two preachers of Jesus Christ, what useless waste!’ ‘The less preaching there is the better,’ said the friends of Rome. ‘The more preaching the better,’ said the friends of the Gospel. If the Canons did their duty, remarked some one, instead of two preachers we should have thirty.[385] The burgesses, as usual, took a middle course which must fail to satisfy either one party or the other. They resolved that the evangelists should preach in the church of Mary Magdalene, but