He must set his hand to the work and begin with the clergy. The king, seeing that it would be unwise to communicate to them unreservedly the opinions of the reformers, as they had been read at the Louvre, resolved to have a new edition of them prepared, which should contain the essential ideas. It would appear that he confided this task to a numerous commission.[658] William du Bellay and his brother the Bishop of Paris were doubtless the two chief members. The commissioners set to work, correcting, suppressing, adding, hitting certain popular superstitions a little harder even than the reformers, and at length they prepared a memoir which may be considered as a statement of what the French government meant by the proposed reformation.[659] The changes made by the French excited much discontent among the German protestants, and Melanchthon himself complained of them bitterly.[660] The king, who carried into every pursuit the courage and fire of which he had given so many proofs on the field of battle, appeared at first to attack the papacy with the same resolution that he would have employed in attacking one of Charles's armies. It must be clearly remembered that, in his idea, the reform which he was preparing carried with it the cessation of schism, and that his plan would restore the catholicity torn to pieces by Roman insolence and imprudence. This remark, if duly weighed, justifies the king's boldness. He sent the project to Rome, we are assured, asking the pope to support or to amend it.[661] We may imagine the alarm of the Vatican on reading this heretical memoir. Then Du Bellay, taking the Sorbonne in hand, had a conference with the deputies of that illustrious body, whose whole influence was ever employed in maintaining the factitious unity that characterises the papacy. 'Gentlemen,' he said to them, 'by the king's commands I have endeavoured to prevail upon the German churches to moderate the doctrines on which they separated from the Roman Church, wishing thus to lead them back to union. By order, therefore, of my master, I hand you the present articles, to receive instruction from you as to what I shall have to say to the German doctors.'[662] The deputies having received the paper from Du Bellay, forwarded it to the sacred faculty. The latter delegated to examine it 'eminent men, doctors of experience in such matters,'[663] who immediately set to work. [Sidenote: TERROR OF THE SORBONNE.]