ore congenial residence at the
dissolute court where pleasures and preferment could best be obtained,
than in obscure dioceses where a rude peasantry were thirsting for
instruction in the first rudiments of a Christian education. The truth
was--and no one was so blind as not to see it--that the Romish prelates
had come determined to seize the first good opportunity to break up the
colloquy, because from the colloquy they had good reason to apprehend
serious injury to their interests. Nothing short of a complete betrayal
of his cause by Beza could have precluded this.[1132] Had he been never
so cautious, he could not have avoided giving some handle to those who
were watching him so closely. Not the nature of the sentiment he
expressed, but the danger lest the prelates might take advantage of it
to refuse peremptorily to proceed with the colloquy, was the true ground
of Catharine's displeasure.[1133] In order to remove this, so far as it
might be based upon any misapprehension of the import of his words, Beza
addressed to the queen, on the next day, a dignified but conciliatory
letter of explanation.[1134]

[Sidenote: 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![1135] 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.[1136]

[Sidenote: September 16th.]

[Sidenote: Peter Martyr arrives.]

[Sidenote: The Cardinal of Lorraine's reply.]

[Sid