When Charles and his counsellors saw the episcopal and the popular authorities uniting against them, they did not lose heart, but preached openly in Geneva the system which the dukes of Savoy had long adopted--the necessity of separating Church and State. What did it matter if Lévrier, and even Gruet, the vicar-episcopal, made a show of defending the bishop’s temporal rights?--the duke believed that Pierre de la Baume would be found tractable. The most advanced huguenots desired to have a free church in a free state; but the duke wanted a church enslaved by the pope in a state enslaved by the duke. ‘Let the bishop keep his clerical authority,’ said the ducal officers, who were irritated by the opposition of the episcopal officers; ‘let him keep his amulets, chaplets, and all such wares; let his parishioners indulge, some in sensuality, others in mortifications; let them, with all the monks, black, white, and grey, debauchees, gamblers, inquisitors, mountebanks, flagellants, women of lewd life, and indulgence-sellers, go on a pilgrimage to Loretto, to St. James of Compostella, to Mecca if the bishop likes ... well and good ... that is the priests’ department, and we abandon it to them. But the civil power belongs to the laity; the courts of secular justice, the municipal liberties, and the command of the troops ought to be in the hands of a secular prince. Souls to the bishop, body and goods to my lord of Savoy!’ This great zeal for the separation of the religious from the political order had no other object than to satisfy the ambition of Savoy. But Geneva profited by these interested homilies, and emancipated herself even beyond Charles’s wishes. Yet a few more years, and this city will be enfranchised from both kinds of despotism. The temporal and spiritual power will be taken from the hands of the bishop nominated by Rome; and while the former will be restored to the hands of the citizens, the latter will be in the hands of the Head of the Church and of his Word of truth.