Note 335 — LXXXV.—To the Brethren of Lyons.[335]

On the back: Letters against the Carmelite. Without date. A Latin letter of Calvin to Farel, of the 10th May 1542, relative to the same subject, furnishes us with the date, and informs us that this white friar, who had gone over to the ranks of the Reformed, belonged to Lyons: "Venit Carmelita Lugdunensis a quo non frustra timuimus." Calvin forewarned the faithful of that town to be upon their guard against that false friar.

The Church of Lyons, one of the most glorious of the French Reformation, owed its origin to the preaching of an old Jacobin monk, Alexander Camus, surnamed Laurence de la Croix, who suffered martyrdom at Paris in 1535. The first members of that Church were merchants, "some goldsmiths and others of the town," who met together in secret. The work begun by Alexander Camus was manfully followed up by John Fabri, (or Le Fevre,) who found pious continuators in the ministers, Peter Fournelet and Claude Monnier, before the epoch of the great persecutions.—Hist. Eccl., tom. i. pp. 55, 56.