Casaubon’s position in Paris proved, after a few years, to be an impossible one. It had, it seems, been the expectation of the King that his librarian would, for the sake of remaining in Paris, follow the royal example and accept (in form at least) the faith of Rome. This course the student from Geneva had, however, no idea of taking. The opposition of the theologians of the University and of the politicians of the Court (including the great minister Sully) proved in the end sufficient to withdraw from the librarian the King’s favour, and Casaubon foresaw that he could not be assured of the continuance of the royal protection. At the invitation of some scholarly English friends--Spottswood, later, Archbishop of Glasgow, and Lamb, afterwards Bishop of Galway,--Casaubon went to London, ostensibly for a visit. He was presented to King James, whose ambition to be recognised as a member of the fraternity of European scholars induced him to offer to Casaubon a pension of three hundred pounds if he would make his home in England. The offer was accepted, and the remaining years of Casaubon’s life were spent in London, with an occasional sojourn in Ely, where his good friend, Bishop Andrews, was always ready to tender appreciative hospitality. One of the famous controversial publications of the latter half of the sixteenth century was the series entitled the _Magdeburg Centuries_. The purpose of the Lutheran writers of this work was to present a true history of the Church of Christ. According to this Protestant view, the Church had been instituted in the Apostolic age in perfect purity, but had been perverted by a process of slow canker, until it had become the Church, not of Christ but of Anti-Christ, an instrument not for saving men, but for destroying them. The _Centuries_ were completed, in 1574, in no less than thirteen folio volumes. It was evident that, for a work of this compass, no wide circulation could be looked for with the impecunious public of Protestant Germany, but the historical thesis of which these folios were the laborious evidence made a deep impression upon the thought of the time.[41] A young priest named Baronius was selected by the authorities in Rome, or rather by S. Philip Neri, to prepare a reply to the _Centuries_, and he devoted his life to the task. The result was the production of the _Annales Ecclesiastici_, the most comprehensive work which the controversies of the Protestant revolt had as yet produced. The _Annales_ were completed, as far as the work of Baronius was concerned, in thirteen folio volumes, in 1600, but the series was continued by various writers until, in the edition issued at Lucca in 1738-1786, it had grown to thirty-eight folio volumes, a work of which purchase was difficult and perusal impossible.