ouse, also figured here with all that
was most distinguished among the nobility of the realm.

[Sidenote: Address of Chancellor De l'Hospital.]

[Sidenote: Co-existence of two religions impossible.]

To the chancellor was, as usual, entrusted the honorable and
responsible duty of laying before the representatives of the three
orders the reasons of their present convocation. This office he
discharged in a long and learned harangue. If the hearers were treated
without stint to that profusion of ancient learning, upon which the
orators of the age seem to have rested a great part of their claim to
patient attention, they also listened to much that was of more immediate
concern to them, respecting the origin of the States General, and the
occasions for which they had from time to time been summoned by former
kings. L'Hospital announced that the special object of the present
meeting was to devise the means of allaying the seditions which had
arisen in consequence of religious differences. "These," said
L'Hospital, "are the causes of the most serious dissensions. It is folly
to hope for peace, rest, and friendship between persons of opposite
creeds. A Frenchman and an Englishman holding a common faith will
entertain stronger affection for each other than two citizens of the
same city who disagree about their theological tenets."[984] So powerful
was still the prejudice of the age with one who was among the first to
catch a glimpse of the true principles of religious toleration! That two
discordant religions should permanently co-exist in a state, he agreed
with most of his contemporaries in regarding as utterly impossible. For
how could the adherents of the papacy and the disciples of the new faith
conceal their differences under the cloak of a common charity and mutual
forbearance?[985]

[Sidenote: Names of factions must be abolished.]

Yet the dawn of more enlightened principles could be detected in a
subsequent part of the chancellor's speech. After prescribing a
universal council--that panacea which all the state doctors of the day
offered for the cure of the ills of the body politic--he advocated the
employment, meantime, of persuasion instead of force, of gentleness
rather than rigor, of charity and good works, as more effective than the
most trenchant of material weapons. And, while he recommended his
hearers to pray for the conversion of the erring, he exclaimed: "Let us
remove those diabolical words, names of par