Ministers.
'Having established the catholicity of the Church, let us consider what reforms must be effected in order to preserve it. First, there are indifferent matters, such as food, festivals, ecclesiastical vestments, and other ceremonials, on which we shall easily come to an understanding. Let us beware of constraining men to fast by commandments which nobody observes ... and least of all those who make them.'[672]
Sorbonne.
'None resist them but men corrupted by depraved passions.'[673]
=SAINTS AND MASS-MONGERS.=
Ministers.
'Certain doctors of the Church, making use of a holy prosopopœia, have introduced into their discourses the saints whom they were eulogising, and have prayed for their intercession as if they were present before them;[674] but they only desired by this means to excite admiration for these godly persons, rather than to obtain anything by their intercession.... Let the people, then, be exhorted not to transfer to the saints the confidence which is due to Jesus Christ alone. It is Christ's will to be invoked and to answer prayer.'[675]
Here the French mind indulged in a sly hit which would not have occurred to the German mind; and the king's councillors, determining to strike hard, continued:
'What abuses and disorders have sprung out of this worship of man! Observe the words, the songs, the actions of the people on the saints' days, near their graves or near their images! Mark the eagerness with which the idle crowd hurries off to banquets, games, dances, and quarrels. Watch the practices of all those paltry, ignorant, greedy priests, who think of nothing but putting money in their purses; and then ... tell us whether we do not in all these things resemble pagans, and revive their shameful superstitions?'[676]