Calvin even attempted—and a hopeless attempt it was—to touch the king's heart: 'Consider, Sire, all parts of our cause. We are persecuted, some of us are kept in prison, others are scourged, others forced to do penance, others banished, others escape by flight.... We are in tribulation, insulted, treated cruelly, looked upon as outlaws, and accursed.... And for what?... Because we place our hope in the living God, and believe that life everlasting is _to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent_.' Calvin knew very well, however, that the victory would not be easy. He had seen the priests closely, in the capital, in cities of second rank, and in the country. He fancied he could hear the cries raised by the curés in their parishes, and the monks in their convents. Wishing, therefore, to enlighten the king, he did so in a rather coarse manner, after the fashion of the times. 'Why,' he asked, 'do our enemies fight so stoutly and so sternly for the mass, purgatory, pilgrimages, and such rubbish?' ... Because the belly is their God, and the kitchen their religion. Because, although some treat themselves delicately and others starve upon crusts, they all eat out of the same pot which, without these branches to warm them (the mass, purgatory, &c.) would not only grow cold, but freeze entirely.' Calvin was not ignorant however that the really dangerous enemies of the Reformation were not those priests and friars whom Erasmus and so many others had often flagellated to the great delight of the king. He imagined he saw haughty nobles, fanatical priests and doctors entering the king's closet, and pouring their perfidious accusations into his ear. 'I hear them,' he says, 'they call our doctrine _new_.... Verily, I have no doubt it is _new_, so far as they are concerned, seeing that even Christ and his gospel are quite new to them. But he who knows that this preaching of St. Paul's is old, namely, that _Christ died for our sins and was raised again for our justification_, finds nothing new among us. True, it has long been hidden and unknown, but the crime must be laid to the wickedness of man; and now that by God's goodness it is restored to us, it ought at least to be received into its ancient authority.'