On hearing these discourses, which invited them to give, not their purse to the Church, but their heart to God, the surprise of the inhabitants of Meaux became extreme. They were, in general, mechanics, wool-carders, fullers, cloth-workers, and other artisans. The people flocked to the churches from the town and surrounding country, and there was no talk but of the new doctors. Desirous of basing their teaching upon the only authority recognised by the Reformation, Lefevre d’Etaples and Briçonnet published the four Gospels in French. The bishop commanded his receiver to distribute them gratuitously to the poor, and to do so, _spared_, says Crespin, _neither gold nor silver_. Every one began to read them. Sundays and feast-days were devoted to this study. The Testament was even carried into the fields and workshops, to be at hand at meal-times; and these poor people asked each other: “How can they help us, these saints, when they have so much to do to help themselves? Our only mediator is Jesus Christ.” As they became serious in their religious views, a reformation of manners followed. Blasphemy, drunkenness, quarrels, disorders of all kinds, gave way to a pure and more decent habit of living. The movement spread far and near. The day-labourers of Picardy and other places, who came at harvest-time to work in the neighbourhood of Meaux, returned home with the seeds of the doctrines they had heard preached. Hence the beginnings of several churches. This influence was so great, that it became a proverbial way of speaking in France, in the first half of the sixteenth century, to designate all the opponents of Rome by the name of heretics of Meaux. At the same period, Briçonnet sent the translation of the Bible to the sister of Francis I., Marguérite de Valois, who read and caused it to be read by those around her. Everything thus augured a very rapid success for the French Reformation, when the hand of persecution interfered to arrest it. II. The priests and monks of the diocese of Meaux, seeing their credit daily weakened, and their revenues diminishing, carried their complaints before the Sorbonne. They met with a favourable reception. The Sorbonne, railed at by men of letters, and attacked by the innovators, was in the difficult position of an ancient institution outstripped by public opinion. It felt that if it did not hasten to strike a great blow, it would be lost. At the head of this faculty of theology was one Noël Beda, or Bedier, a doctor with no great learning, but active, bold, sharp in disputation, capable of upsetting everything for a theological point, and ready to look to the populace for support, in the absence of more creditable allies. His acolytes were the Masters Duchène and Lecouturier, who wholly swayed their brethren by the violence of their passions and their language.