Rise and Establishment of Protestantism at Geneva - James Aitken Wylie

whom he most wished to associate with himself in
the work of reforming Geneva.
Farel had begun to feel the difficulty of the task
he had in hand. To break this people from their
habits of lawless indulgence, nurtured by the
contests in which they had won their liberty, would
indeed be no easy matter. They would spurn all
attempts to coerce them, and yield only to the force
of a stronger will, and the sway of a loftier genius.
Besides, the highest organising skill was demanded
in the man who should set up a moral tribunal in
the midst of this licentious city, and found on this
unpromising spot an empire which should pervade
with its regenerating spirit nations afar off, and
generations yet unborn. Believing that he had
found in Calvin one who possessed all these great
qualities, Farel was already on his way to visit him.
Farel now stands before the author of the
Institutes. He beholds a man of small stature and
sickly mien. Were these the shoulders on which he
should lay a burden which would have tasked the
strength of Atlas himself? We can well believe that
164