What Calvin undertook to do was not merely to show that the evangelical doctrine of the Reformation has the right to exist side by side with the Roman Catholic doctrine. This philosophical and Christian stand-point was not that of the sixteenth century. If the evangelical doctrine has a right to exist, it is (said Calvin, boldly) because it is the truth. He desired to gain over both king and people to those convictions, which in his opinion were alone capable of enlightening and of saving them. 'Our defence,' he said, 'does not consist in disavowing our doctrine, but in maintaining it to be true. Truth deprives her adversaries of the right to open their mouths against her. And for this reason, Sire, I pray you to obtain full information of a cause which hitherto has been treated with impetuous fury rather than with judicial gravity.... Do not think that I am striving here in my own private defence, in order to return to my native country. Verily, I bear it such human affection as is right, but things are now so arranged, that I am not greatly distressed at being kept out of it.... No, Sire, I undertake the common cause of all believers, and even that of Christ himself, a cause now so rent and trodden down in your kingdom, that it seems desperate.... No doubt, Christ's truth is not lost and scattered; but it is hidden away and buried, as if deserving of all ignominy. The poor Church is driven out by banishment, consumed by cruel deaths, and so terrified by threats and terrors, that she dares not utter a word. And yet the enemies of truth are not satisfied. They insist with their accustomed fury on beating down the wall which they have already shaken, and in completing the ruin they have begun.' Here Calvin asks if no one is taking up the defence of these persecuted Christians.... He looks ... alas! the evangelicals are silent, the queen of Navarre scarcely raises her timid voice, and diplomatists are persuading the Germans that the evangelicals of France are fanatics and madmen ... every one trembles.... 'Nobody,' he exclaims, 'nobody comes forward to oppose this fury. If even any should wish to appear to favour the truth, they confine themselves to saying that we should in some way pardon the _ignorance_ ... the _impudence_ of these simple folks. Thus they treat God's most sure truth as _impudence_ and _ignorance_. Those whom our Lord has so esteemed as to impart to them the secrets of his heavenly wisdom, they call _simple folks_! who permit themselves to be easily deceived, so ashamed are they of the Gospel.' Who then shall take the cause of truth in hand?...