Had Berthelier taken the right course? Could the independence of Geneva be established on such a foundation? Certainly not; true liberty cannot exist without justice, and consequently without a moral change that comes from God. So long as ‘young Geneva’ loved diversion above everything, the bishop and the duke might yet lay hands upon her. Such was the love of pleasure in the majority of these youths, that they would seize the bait with eager impetuosity if it were only dropped with sufficient skill. ‘They felt that the hook was killing them,’ said a writer of the sixteenth century; but they had not strength to pull it out. This strength was to come from on high. The human mind, so inconstant and so weak, found in God’s Word the power it needed, and which the light of the fifteenth century could never have given them. The Reformation was necessary to liberty, because it was necessary to morality. When the protestant idea declined in some countries, as in France for instance, the human mind lost its energy also, profligacy once more overran society; and that highly endowed nation, after having caught a glimpse of a magnificent dawn, fell back into the thick night of the traditional power of Rome and the despotism of the Valois and Bourbons. Liberty has never been firmly established except among a people where the Word of God reigns.[91] CHAPTER VI. THE OPPOSING PARTIES PREPARE FOR BATTLE. (1516-1517.) As a new and powerful opposition was forming in Geneva, it became necessary for the duke and the bishop to unite more closely. About this time an incident of little importance was nearly setting them at variance, and thus accelerating the emancipation of the city.