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Rh management of their church affairs. The work of Zwingli as a Reformer, important and thorough though it was, did not concern itself mainly with church polity. Ecclesiastical affairs were, as a matter of course, wholly under the management of the cantonal and municipal authorities, and Zwingli was content that it should be so. The work of Farel, previous to his coming to Geneva, was almost entirely evangelistic, and his first work in Geneva was of a similar character. It was the town council which made arrangements for religious disputations, and provided for the housing and maintenance of the preachers. When

Calvin, at Farel's invitation, settled in Geneva (1536) the work of reformation became more constructive. “The need of the hour was organization and familiar instruction, and Calvin set himself to work at once.” The first reforms he wished to see introduced concerned the Lord's Supper, church praise, religious instruction of youth and the regulation of marriage. In connexion with the first he desired that the discipline de l'excommunication should be exercised. His plan was partly Presbyterian and partly consistorial. Owing to certain circumstances in its past history, Geneva was notoriously immoral. “The rule of dissolute bishops, and the example of a turbulent and immoral clergy, had poisoned the morals of the city. Even the nuns of Geneva were notorious for their conduct.” Calvin suggested that men of known worth should be appointed in different quarters of the city to report to the ministers those persons in their district who lived in open sin; that the ministers should then warn such persons not to come to the communion; and that, if their warnings were unheeded, discipline should be enforced. It was on this subject of keeping pure the Lord's Table that the controversy arose between the ministers and the town councillors which ended in the banishment of Calvin, Farel and Conrad from Geneva. In 1538 the ministers took upon themselves to refuse to administer the Lord's Supper in Geneva because the city, as represented by its council, declined to submit to church discipline. The storm then broke out, and the ministers were banished (1538).

It is pathetic and yet inspiring to study the development of Presbyterianism in France; pathetic because it was in a time of fierce persecution that the French Protestants organized themselves into churches, and inspiring, because it showed the power which scriptural organization gave them to withstand incessant, unrelenting hostility. It would be difficult to exaggerate

the influence of Calvin upon French Protestantism. His Christianae religionis institutio became a standard round which his countrymen rallied in the work and battle of the Reformation. Though under thirty years of age, he became all over Europe, and in an exceptional degree in France, the leader, organizer and consolidator of the Reformation. The work which the young Frenchman did for his countrymen was immense.