APPEAL TO PARLIAMENT—TEMPTATION.
Yet Briçonnet had still one hope: if he were permitted to appear before the assembled chambers of parliament, as became a person of his rank, in that august and numerous court, he would be sure to find generous hearts responding to his appeal, and undertaking his defence. He therefore entreated the court to grant him this favour; but his enemies had equally reckoned on the issue of such a hearing. Had they not seen Luther appearing before the German diet and shaking the most determined hearts? On the watch to remove every chance of safety, they exerted themselves to such effect that the parliament refused Briçonnet this favour by a decree dated the 25th of October 1525, in confirmation of the one previously issued.[1048]
Here then was the Bishop of Meaux referred like the humblest priest to the jurisdiction of James Menager and Andrew Verjus. These two lawyers, docile instruments in the hands of the Sorbonne, would not be moved by those higher considerations to which the whole chamber might have been sensible; they were matter of fact men: had the bishop differed from that society, or had he not? This is all they desire to know. Briçonnet's conviction was therefore secured.
THE BISHOP FALLS AWAY.
While the parliament was thus holding the sword over the head of the bishop, the monks, priests, and doctors were not idle; they saw that Briçonnet's retractation would be of more service to them than his punishment. His death would only inflame the zeal of all those who held the same faith with him; but his apostacy would plunge them into the deepest discouragement. They went to work accordingly. They visited and entreated him, Martial Mazurier in particular endeavouring to make him fall, as he had done himself. There was no lack of arguments which might appear specious to Briçonnet. Would he like to be deprived of his functions? Could he not, by remaining in the church, employ his influence with the king and the court to effect an incalculable amount of good? What would become of his old friends, when he was no longer in power? Might not his resistance compromise a reform, which, to be salutary and durable, should be carried out by the legitimate influence of the clergy? How many souls he would offend by resisting the Church; how many souls he would attract, on the contrary, by giving way!......They, like himself, were anxious for a reform. All is advancing insensibly; at the court and in the city and provinces, everything is moving forward......and would he in mere recklessness of heart destroy so fair a prospect!......After all, they did not call upon him to sacrifice his opinions, but only to submit to the established order of the Church. Was it well in him, when France was labouring under so many reverses, to stir up new confusions? "In the name of religion, of your country, of your friends, and of the Reformation itself, be persuaded," said they. By such sophisms are the noblest causes ruined.
Yet every one of these considerations had its influence on the mind of the bishop. The tempter, who desired to make our Saviour fall in the wilderness, thus presented himself to Briçonnet in specious colours, but instead of saying with his Master: "Get thee behind me, Satan!" he listened, welcomed, and pondered on these suggestions. From that hour his fidelity was at an end.
Briçonnet had never embarked with his whole heart, like Luther or Farel, in the movement that was then regenerating the Church; there was in him a certain mystical tendency which weakens men's minds, and deprives them of that firmness and courage which proceed from faith alone based on the Word of God. The cross that he was called to take up that he might follow Christ was too heavy.[1049] Shaken, alarmed, stupified, and distracted,[1050] he stumbled against the stone which had been artfully placed in his path......he fell, and instead of throwing himself into the arms of Jesus, he threw himself into those of Mazurier,[1051] and by a shameful recantation sullied the glory of a noble faithfulness.[1052]
CONSEQUENCES—RETRACTATION.
Thus fell Briçonnet, the friend of Lefevre and of Margaret; thus the earliest supporter of the Gospel in France denied the glad tidings of grace, in the guilty thought that if he remained faithful, he would lose his influence over the Church, the court, and France. But what was represented to him as the salvation of his country, perhaps became its ruin. What would have been the result if Briçonnet had possessed the courage of Luther? If one of the first bishops of France, beloved by the king and by the people, had ascended the scaffold, and had, like the little ones of the world, sealed the truth of the Gospel by a bold confession and a christian death, would not France herself have been moved; and the blood of the bishop becoming, like that of Polycarp and Cyprian, the seed of the Church, might we not have seen that country, so illustrious in many respects, emerging in the sixteenth century from that spiritual darkness with which it is still clouded?
Briçonnet underwent a mere formal examination before James Menager and Andrew Verjus, who declared that he had sufficiently vindicated himself of the crime imputed to him. He was then subjected to penance, and assembled a synod in which he condemned Luther's books, retracted all that he had taught contrary to the doctrine of the Church, restored the invocation of saints, endeavoured to bring back those who had forsaken the Romish worship, and wishing to leave no doubt of his reconciliation with the pope and the Sorbonne, kept a solemn fast on the eve of Corpus Christi, and gave orders for pompous processions, in which he appeared personally, still further testifying his faith by his magnificence and by every kind of devout observance.[1053] In his will he commended his soul to the Virgin Mary and to the heavenly choir of paradise, and desired that after his death (which happened in 1533) twelve hundred masses should be said for the repose of his soul.