even in the
very courts of justice? Might not the most damaging losses be expected
to flow from such trials?

The public courts, indeed, were not the only places where the
inconsistencies of the established church with its own ancient standards
and representative theologians were brought out into bold relief. The
pulpits of the very capital resounded, it was alleged, with
contradictory teachings, scandalizing the faithful not a little at the
holy season of Advent.[440]

[Sidenote: The Sorbonne's Twenty-five Articles.]

To put an end to so anomalous a state of affairs, the Parisian
theologians, with the consent of the king, resolved to enunciate the
true Catholic faith, in the form of twenty-five articles meeting all
questions now in dispute (on the tenth of March, 1543). Of the general
contents of this new formulary, it is sufficient to observe that it more
concisely expressed the doctrines developed in the decisions of the
Council of Trent; that it insisted upon baptism as essential to the
salvation even of infants; that it magnified the freedom of the human
will, and maintained the justification of the sinner by works as well as
by faith; and that, dwelling upon the bodily presence of Christ in the
consecrated wafer, it affirmed the propriety of denying the cup to the
laity, the utility of masses for the dead, the lawfulness of the
invocation of the blessed Virgin and the saints, the existence of
purgatory, the infallibility of the church, the authority of tradition,
and the divine right of the Pope.[441]

[Sidenote: Francis gives them the force of law.]

On the twenty-third of July, 1543, the very day of the publication of
the edict of persecution previously mentioned, Francis by letters-patent
gave the force of law to the exposition of the faith drawn up by the
theological faculty of "his blessed and eldest daughter, the University
of Paris." Henceforth no other doctrines could be professed in France.
Dissent was to be treated as "rebellion" against the royal
authority.[442]

[Sidenote: Persecution more systematic.]

[Sidenote: The inquisitor Matthieu Ory.]

The sanguinary legislation at which we have glanced bore its most
atrocious fruits in the last years of Francis, and in the reign of his
immediate successor. The consideration of this topic must, however, be
reserved for succeeding chapters. Until now the persecution had been
carried on with little system, and its intensity had varied according to
th