Henry M. Baird · 335 of 379

CHAPTER XII · The prelates' notion of a conference.

A full week elapsed before the Cardinal of Lorraine was ready to make his reply. Meantime the prelates had met, and had resolved that, instead of embracing a discussion of the entire field of controversy between the two churches, the conference should be restricted to two points—the nature of the church and the sacraments. It was even proposed that a formula of faith should be drawn up and submitted to the Protestant ministers. If they refused to subscribe to it, they were to be formally excommunicated, and the conference abruptly broken off. Such was the crude notion of a colloquy conceived by the prelates. No discussion at all, if possible! Otherwise only on those points where agreement was most difficult, and it was easiest to excite the odium theologicum of the by-standers. On the other hand, when this came to the ears of the Protestants, they felt constrained to draw up another solemn protest to the king against the folly of making the prelates judges in a suit in which they appeared also as one of the parties—a course so impolitic that it would rob the colloquy of all the good effects that had been expected to flow from it.