Note 136 — Chapter II

Letter of Farel to Pellican (1556), Herminjard, Correspondance des Réformateurs, i. 481: "Pius senex, Jacobus Faber, quem tu novisti, ante annos plus minus quadraginta, me manu apprehensum, ita alloquebatur: 'Gulielme, oportet orbem mutari, et tu videbis' dicebat." So in the "Epistre à tous Seigneurs et Peuples" (Ed. Fick), 170: "Souventefois me disoit que Dieu renouvelleroit le monde, et que je le verroye." A few years later, at Strasbourg, the reformer reminded his former master of his prediction: "Voicy par la grace de Dieu, le commencement de ce qu'autrefois m'avez dit du renouvellement du monde," and Lefèvre, then in exile, blessed God, and begged Him to perfect what he had then seen begun at Strasbourg. Ibid., 171. These statements are confirmed by a passage in the Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, in which, after deploring the corruption of the church, Lefèvre observes: "Yet the signs of the times announce that a renewal is near, and while God is opening new ways for the preaching of the Gospel, by the discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese and Spaniards in all parts of the world, we must hope that He will visit His church and raise it from the degradation into which it is fallen." Herminjard, i. 5.