Luther was invited to the Sorbonne, in 1521, for an examination of his book upon the _Captivity of Babylon_. This company declared that his doctrine was blasphemous, insolent, impious, shameful, and that it ought to be opposed with no other arguments than fire and sword. They compared Luther to the great heresiarchs, and to Mahomet himself, and demanded that he should be compelled by every possible means to make a public retractation. The mild Melancthon forgot his accustomed moderation in answering this sentence, which he termed _the mad decree of the theologasters of Paris_. “How unfortunate is France,” he said, “to have such doctors as these!” The theologians of the Sorbonne received the complainants of Meaux with open arms, and as a bishop was implicated in the cause, they demanded that the Parliament of Paris should interpose with a strong hand. The Parliament had no affection for the monks, and distrusted the priests. It had maintained and defended against them, with persevering energy, the rights of lay jurisdiction. But it held for a fundamental maxim of the state this motto of the olden times: _Une foi, une loi, un roi_;—one faith, one law, one king,—and did not believe that there ought to be tolerated in the same country two religions, any more than two governments. The chancellor, Antoine Duprat, used all his authority to urge the magistrature to violent measures—a man without religion, without morals, bishop and archbishop; without having ever put foot in his dioceses, inventor of the venality of incumbencies, a subscriber to the Concordat which excited the indignation of the Parliaments and even of the clergy, elected cardinal for having humiliated the kingdom before the Holy See—he accused himself on his death-bed of having followed no other law than his own interest, and the interest of his king only next to his own. Antoine Duprat had amassed enormous riches; and when he built, at the Hôtel Dieu of Paris, the new hall for the sick, Francis I. said, “He must enlarge it indeed, if it is to hold all the poor he has made.” The court, which desired the support of the pope in the Italian wars, also favoured the spirit of persecution. Louise de Savoie, who governed the kingdom in the absence of her son, then a prisoner at Madrid, proposed, in 1523, the following question to the Sorbonne: _By what means the damnable doctrine of Luther might be crushed and extirpated from this very-Christian kingdom, and utterly purged therefrom_. Beda and his coadjutors replied, that the heresy must be persecuted with the extremest rigour; if not, there would result a great injury to the honour of the king and of Madame Louise de Savoie; and that it was the opinion of many, it had already been borne with too long. These theologians took care, we see, to mix up the cause of the throne with their own.