Finally, there were, particularly in Germany, a few evangelical Christians who consented to accept the episcopalian form, and even the primacy of a bishop, in the hope of obtaining the transformation of the doctrine and manners of the universal Church. Melancthon at Wittemberg, Bucer at Strasburg, and Professor Sturm at Paris, were the most eminent men of this school. Melancthon went farther than his colleagues. He believed that the great revolution then going on was salutary and even necessary; but he would have liked to see it limited and directed. Former ages had elaborated certain results which ought, in his opinion, to be handed down to ages to come; and he imagined that if the pope could be induced to receive the Gospel, that despot of old times might still be useful to the Church. Another and a still more urgent interest animated these pious men: it was necessary to rescue the victims of fanaticism, to extinguish the burning piles. The bloody and solemn executions which had taken place in Paris on the 21st of January, 1535, in presence of the king and court, had excited an indescribable horror everywhere. One might have imagined that those noble-hearted men foresaw the miseries of France, the battle-fields running with blood, and the night of St. Bartholomew with its murders ushered in by the death-knell from the steeple of St. Germain l’Auxerrois; that they saw pass before them those armies of fugitives whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes scattered over the wide world. One common feature characterized all three classes. Those who composed them were in general of an accommodating disposition, an easy manner, ready to sacrifice some part of what they thought true, in order to attain their end. But there were in Europe, on the side of Rome many inflexible papists, and on the side of the Reformation many determined protestants, who set truth above unity, and were resolved to do everything ‘so that the talent which God had entrusted to them might not be lost through their cowardice, or taken from them on account of their ingratitude.’[671] [Sidenote: Effects Of The Placards.]