Cano complained of lukewarmness in his defence on the part of both Philip and Carranza and it is easy to understand that, feeling keenly the disgrace inflicted on him, he was in a temper to attack any one more fortunate than himself.[145] [Sidenote: _ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA_] At this inauspicious moment Carranza presented himself as a fair object of attack by all who, from different motives, might desire to assail him. If we may judge from his writings, he must have been impulsive and inconsiderate in his speech, given to uttering extreme views which made an impression and then qualifying them with restrictions that were forgotten. He was earnestly desirous of restoring the Church to its ancient purity and by no means reticent in exposing its weaknesses and corruption. He had been trained at a time before the Tridentine definitions had settled points of faith which, since the twelfth century, had been the subjects of debate in the schools, and even in his maturity the Council of Trent had not yet been clothed with the awful authority subsequently accorded to it, for the inglorious exit of its first two convocations, in 1547 and 1552, gave little promise of what lay in the future. The echo of the fierce Lutheran controversies had scarce penetrated into Spain and comparatively little was there known of the debates which were shaking to its centre the venerable structure of the Church. Carranza's very labors in condemning heretic books and converting heretics had acquainted him with their doctrines and modes of expression; he was a confused thinker and his impulsive utterances were liable to be construed in a sense which he did not anticipate. As early as 1530 he had been denounced to the Inquisition by Fray Juan de Villamartin as a defender of Erasmus, especially in the matter of confession and the authorship of the Apocalypse and, during his persecuting career in England, he more than once gave opportunity, in his sermons, to unfavorable comment.[146] It was also in evidence that when in Rome, in 1539, he had written to Juan de Valdés in Naples, asking what authors should be studied for understanding Scripture, as he would have to teach that subject, and that Valdés replied in a letter which Carranza circulated among his students in Valladolid--a letter highly heretical in its teachings which Valdés subsequently included in his "One hundred and ten Divine Considerations."[147] It is true that, in 1539, Juan de Valdés was not reckoned a heretic, but, if the letter was correctly identified with the "Consideration" in question its circulation was highly imprudent, for it asserted that the guides for the study of Scripture are prayer inspired by God and meditation based on spiritual experience, thus discarding tradition for private interpretation, and it further dwelt upon the confidence which the soul should feel in justification through Christ. In the death-struggle with Protestantism the time had passed for easy-going latitude of opinion