Catholic Church.]

But it was the clerical delegate, Jean Quintin, that attracted most
attention. Standing between the other two orators, he delivered a speech
of great length and insufferable arrogance. He admitted that the clergy
might need reformation; but the Church with its hierarchy must not be
touched--that was the body of Christ. Charles must defend the Church
against heresy--against that Gospel falsely and maliciously so called,
which consisted in profaning churches, in breaking the sacred images, in
the marriage of priests and nuns. He must not suffer the Reformation to
affect the articles of faith, the sacraments, traditions, ordinances, or
ceremonial. Should any one venture to resuscitate heresies long dead and
buried, he begged the king to declare him a champion of heresy and to
proceed against him. He insisted on the presumption in favor of the
Catholic Church, and demanded the unconditional submission of its
opponents. "They must believe us, without waiting for a council; not we
them." He was warm in his praise of the Emperors Theodosius II. and
Valentinian III., who confiscated the goods of heretics, banished them,
and deprived them of the right of conveying or receiving property by
will. He raised his voice particularly in behalf of Burgundy and of his
own diocese of Autun, whose inhabitants "were well-nigh drowned by the
much too frequent inundations of pestilent books from the infected
lagoons of Geneva."[994]

[Sidenote: Temporal interests.]

[Sidenote: Sad straits of the clergy.]

[Sidenote: A word for the down-trodden people.]

In the midst of this tirade against the inroads of Calvinism, the
prudent doctor of canon law did not, however, altogether lose sight of
the temporal concerns of the priesthood. He proffered an urgent request
for the restoration of canonical elections, laying the growth of heresy
altogether to the account of the abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction by
the Concordat in 1517. The sanction being re-established, "the
detestable and damnable sects, the execrable and accursed heresies of
to-day" would incontinently flee from the church. If he painted the
portrait of the prelate elected by the suffrages of his diocese in
somewhat too nattering colors, he certainly gave a vivid picture of the
sad straits to which the clergy were reduced by the imposition of the
repeated tithes on their revenues, now become customary. Masses were
unsaid, churches had been stripped of their ornam