Rise and Establishment of Protestantism at Geneva - James Aitken Wylie

The verdict of the public on the disputation was
not doubtful, but Farel and some of the leading
citizens wished the Council also to pronounce its
judgment;. Three of its four members were now on
the Protestant side; nevertheless, it would give no
decision. Its policy, for the present, was to curb
rather than encourage the popular zeal. It visited
with frowns and sometimes with fines the
demolition of the images. When asked to give the
Magdalen and St. Peter's for the use of the
preachers, whose congregations daily increased, its
reply was, "Not yet." The Council had not lost
sight of the duke and the emperor in the distance,
and they knew that the duke and the emperor had
not lost sight of them. Meanwhile, to speed on the
movement, there came some startling revelations of
the frauds by which the falling superstition had
been upheld.
It is a doctrine of the Church of Rome that
infants dying unbaptised are consigned to limbo, a
sort of faubourg of hell. To redeem such wretched
babes from so dreary an abode, what would not
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