These evangelists especially addressed the young. Calvin would not have religious instruction neglected, or subordinated to secular instruction: it should have its separate place. He believed that all culture, but especially religious teaching, ought to begin with early youth; that the soul then possesses a power of receiving and appropriating what is set before it, that it never will have again; and that if the seeds of a religious life are not sown and do not germinate in the heart of the child, the man will perish wholly. He had said to the three evangelists: 'Let your first attention be always to the professors and schoolmasters.'[129] The zealous catholics observed this method. 'See!' they said, 'as youth is easily led astray, they hide the _minister_ under the cloak of the _magister_ (master).'[130] Calvin's friends thus instilled their doctrines into the schools of Guyenne. Sarrasin converted another schoolmaster named Vendocin, who became so firm a Christian, that he preferred to be burnt over a slow fire to abjuring Calvinism.[131] The men who devoutly adhered to the formulas of Rome were grieved when they saw the young so readily receiving the evangelical doctrine. At Bordeaux and Toulouse, at Angoulême and Aden, in the cloisters, in the law-courts, and even in the market-places, the loudest complaints were made. 'These _Mercuries_ (the name they gave to Calvin's missionaries) are doing much mischief in the schools,' they said. 'As soon as the captains of the young (i.e. the masters) are conquered, the little soldiers march under their colours. The _young_ heads of _young_ folks are more easily disturbed by the heretic _aconite_ than the old. They rush into danger, without examining it; and they are lost before they are aware of it. They embrace these new doctrines with such courage that many, who have only down on their chins, expose themselves to voluntary death, and thus lose both soul and body.'[132] [Sidenote: THE REFORMATION AND SCIENCE.]