The bishops, on the contrary, thought that all the ecclesiastics would follow their example, and that by refusing to swear, they would leave the state without public worship, and the people without priests. The result satisfied the expectations of neither party; the majority of the bishops and curés of the assembly refused to take the oath, but a few bishops and many curés took it. The dissentient incumbents were deprived, and the electors nominated successors to them, who received canonical institution from the bishops of Autun and Lida. But the deprived ecclesiastics refused to abandon their functions, and declared their successors intruders, the sacraments administred by them null, and all Christians who should venture to recognise them excommunicated. They did not leave their dioceses; they issued charges, and excited the people to disobey the laws; and thus an affair of private interest became first a matter of religion and then a matter of party. There were two bodies of clergy, one constitutional, the other refractory; they had each its partisans, and treated each other as rebels and heretics. According to passion or interest, religion became an instrument or an obstacle; and while the priests made fanatics the revolution made infidels. The people, not yet infected with this malady of the upper classes, lost, especially in towns, the faith of their fathers, from the imprudence of those who placed them between the revolution and their religion. "The bishops," said the marquis de Ferrières, who will not be suspected, "refused to fall in with any arrangements, and by their guilty intrigues closed every approach to reconciliation; sacrificing the catholic religion to an insane obstinacy, and a discreditable attachment to their wealth."