ake
concessions to the Lutherans as extensive as those which Melanchthon had
offered the Roman Catholics.

[Sidenote: Du Bellay's representations at Smalcald.]

Four months had not elapsed since the unsuccessful issue of his first
mission, before Du Bellay was again in Germany. On the nineteenth of
December, he presented himself to the congress of Protestant princes at
Smalcald. Much of his address was devoted to a vindication of his master
from the charge of cruelty to persons of the same religious faith as
that of the hearers. The envoy insisted that the Germans had been
misinformed: If Francis had executed some of his subjects, he had not
thereby injured the Protestants. The culprits professed very different
doctrines. The creed of the Germans had been adopted by common consent.
Francis admitted, indeed, that there were some useless and superfluous
ceremonies in the church, but could not assent to their indiscriminate
abrogation unless by public decree. Ought not the Protestant princes to
ascribe to their friend, the French king, motives as pure and
satisfactory as those that impelled them to crush the sedition of the
peasants and repress the Anabaptists? As for himself, Francis, although
mild and humane, both from native temperament and by education, had seen
himself compelled, by stern necessity and the dictates of prudence, to
check the promptings of his own heart, and assume for a time attributes
foreign to his proper disposition. For gladly as he listened to the
temperate discussion of any subject, he was justly offended at the
presumption of rash innovators, men that refused to submit to the
judgment of those whose prerogative it was to decide in such matters as
were now under consideration.

[Sidenote: He makes, in the name of Francis, a Protestant confession.]

Not content with general assurances, Du Bellay, in a private interview
with Brueck, Melanchthon, and other German theologians, ventured upon an
exposition of Francis's creed which we fear would have horrified beyond
measure the orthodox doctors of the Sorbonne.[379] He informed them,
with a very sober face, that the king's religious belief differed little
from that expressed in Melanchthon's "Common Places." His theologians
had never been able to convince him that the Pope's primacy was of
_divine_ right. Nor had they proved to his satisfaction the existence of
_purgatory_, which, being the source of their lucrative masses and
legacies, they prized