call the _Koran_ or the _Talmud_ of heresy.'[27] [Sidenote: MATERIALISTS.] While Calvin was writing his first notes, he heard some strange rumours. Men spoke to him of certain materialists in whose opinion the soul died with the body. At first he hesitated as to what he should do. 'How,' he asked, 'can I join battle with adversaries of whose camp and arms and tactics I know nothing, and of whom I have only heard some confused murmur?'[28] Another consideration checked him. Allied to them were Christians who, while rejecting these errors, said that _time_ did not exist for the soul separated from the body, and that the moment of death was followed instantly by the moment of resurrection. 'I should not like these good people to be offended against me,' he said. Calvin refused to fire a shot against his enemies lest he should wound his brethren. But one day he was told of enormous and degrading sophisms. These teachers said to their followers: 'God has not placed in man a soul different from that of the beast. The soul is not a substance; it is only a quality of life, which proceeds from the throbbing of the arteries or the motion of the lungs. It cannot exist without the body, and perishes with it, until man rises again whole.'[29] Calvin was thunderstruck. To be a man and to rank yourself among beasts, seemed to him foolish and impious. 'O God!' he exclaimed, 'the conflagration has increased, and thrown out flakes which, spreading far and wide, have turned to burning torches.... O Lord, extinguish them, we pray thee, by that saving rain which thou reservest for thy Church!'[30] It was this gross materialism which absorbed Calvin's attention at Angoulême. He saw the evil which these teachers might do the Reform, and shuddered at the thought of the dangers which threatened the simple. 'Poor reeds tossed by every wind,' he exclaimed, 'whom the slightest breath shakes and bends, what will become of you?'... Then addressing the materialists he said: 'When the Lord says that the wicked kill the body but _cannot kill the soul_, does he not mean that the soul survives after death?[31] Know you not that, according to Scripture, the souls of the saints stand before the throne of God, and that white robes were given unto every one of them?'[32] Then resorting to irony, he continued: 'Sleepy souls, what, I pray, do you understand by these _white robes_? Do you take them for _pillows_ on which the souls recline that are condemned to die?'[33] This mode of arguing was not rare in the sixteenth century. Calvin, agitated by these errors, took up his pen, and committed to paper the reflections which he published shortly after.