Cop and Calvin had each retired separately, and been visited in their respective apartments by many of their friends. Some of them did not approve of these great manifestations; they would have wished the evangelicals to be content with a few small conventicles here and there in retired places. Calvin did not agree with them. In his opinion there was one single universal christian Church, which had existed since the time of the apostles, and would exist always. The errors and abuses abounding in christendom, profane priests, hypocrites, scandalous sinners, do not prevent the Church from existing. True, it is often reduced to little more than a small humble flock; but the flock exists, and it must, whenever it has the opportunity, manifest itself in opposition to a fallen catholicism. The reformers themselves, though it is frequently forgotten, maintained the doctrine of a universal Church; but while Rome counts among the number of signs which characterise it 'a certain pomp and temporal possessions,'[491] the evangelical doctors, on the contrary, reckon persecution and the cross as a mark of the true Church. Cop and Calvin were to make the experiment in their own persons. [Sidenote: DEBATES IN THE UNIVERSITY.] The rector was not inclined to give way to the monks: he resolved to join battle on a question of form, which would dispose his colleagues in his favour, and perhaps in favour of truth. It was a maxim received in the university, that all its members, and _a fortiori_ its head, must be tried first by the corporation, and that it was not permissible to pass over any degree of jurisdiction.[492] Accordingly, on the 19th of November, the rector convoked the four faculties, and, having undertaken the defence of his address, complained bitterly that certain persons had dared to carry the matter before a foreign body. The privileges of the university had thus been attacked. 'It has been insulted by this denunciation of its chief to the parliament,' said Cop; 'and these impudent informers must give satisfaction for the insult.' These words excited a great commotion in the assembly. The theologians, who had hung down their heads in the case of the Queen of Navarre, ... N'osant approfondir De ces hautes puissances Les moins pardonnables offenses,