Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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Several priests and monks were present, as Drogy, Mimard, Michod, Loys,
Berilly, and a French physician, Claude Blancherose. A deputy of Bern
presided. The discussion was conducted in French. Farel prepared ten
Theses in which he asserts the supremacy of the Bible, justification by faith
alone, the high-priesthood and mediatorship of Christ, spiritual worship
without ceremonies and images, the sacredness of marriage, Christian
freedom in the observance or non-observance of things indifferent, such as
fasts and feasts. Farel and Viret were the chief speakers. The result was the
introduction of the Reformation, November 1 of the same year. Viret and
Pierre Caroli were appointed preachers. Viret taught at the same time in
the academy founded by Bern in 1540.
Caroli stayed only a short time. He was a native of France and a doctor of
the Sorbonne, who had become nominally a Protestant, but envied Viret
for his popularity, took offence at his sermons, and wantonly charged him,
Farel, and Calvin, with Arianism. He was deposed as a slanderer, and at
length returned to the Roman Church. f354
In 1549 Beza was appointed second professor of theology at the academy,
and greatly strengthened Viret’s hands. Five young Frenchmen who were
trained by them for the ministry, and had returned to their native land to
preach the gospel, were seized at Lyons and burned, May 16, 1553,
notwithstanding the intercession of the Reformed Cantons with King Henry
II.
Viret attempted to introduce a strict discipline with the ban, but found as
much opposition as Calvin at Geneva and Farel at Neuchâtel. Bern
disapproved the ban and also the preaching of the rigorous doctrine of
predestination. Beza was discouraged, and accepted a call to Geneva
(September, 1558). Viret was deposed (Jan. 20, 1559). The professors of
the academy and a number of preachers resigned. Viret went to Geneva
and was appointed preacher of the city (March 2, 1559). His sermons were
more popular and impressive than those of Calvin, and better attended.
With the permission of Geneva, he labored for a while as an evangelist,
with great success, at Nismes, Montpellier, and Lyons. He presided as
Moderator over the fourth national Synod of the Huguenots, August,
1563. He accepted a call from Jeanne d’Albret to an academy at Orthez, in
Bearn, which she founded in 1566. There, in 1571, he died, the last of the
triumvirate of the founders of the Reformed Church in French Switzerland.
He was twice married, first to a lady of Orbe (1538); a second time, to a