Note 361 — CCXCI.—To Farel.

Farel was a genuine orator. All his contemporaries speak with admiration of his eloquent discourses, of his beautiful exhortations, and of his prayers, so fervent, that no one could hear them without being charmed. But it appears that his discourses were all extempore; none of them have been preserved, but they had a few of the defects of improvisation. Their fault was prolixity. Calvin, in his preface to the Psalms, paid, among other things, a brilliant tribute to the eloquence of his friend, and to those thunders of the word (tonitrua) by which he had been enchained at Geneva.