This fanatical party, which was to make common cause with the Jesuits, already forestalled them in cunning. ‘One morning,’, say Roman-catholic historians,[712] ‘Cardinal de Tournon appeared at the king’s _levée_, reading a book magnificently bound.’ ‘Cardinal, what a handsome book you have there!’ said the king. ‘Sire,’ replied De Tournon, ‘it is the work of an illustrious martyr, Saint Irenæus, who presided over the Church of Lyons in the second century. I was reading the passage which says that John the Evangelist, being about to enter some public baths, and learning that the heretic Cerinthus was inside, hastily retired, exclaiming: “Let us fly, my children, lest we be swallowed up with the enemies of the Lord.” That is what the apostles thought of heretics; and yet you, Sire, the eldest son of the Church, intend inviting to your court the most celebrated disciple of that arch-heretic Luther.’ De Tournon added that an alliance with the Lutherans would not only cause Milan to be lost to France, but would throw all the catholic powers into the arms of the emperor.[713] Francis I., though persisting in his scheme, saw that he could not force those to speak who had made up their minds to be silent; and wishing to give De Tournon some little satisfaction he let the Faculty know that he would not ask them to confer with the reformers. The king intended to hear both parties; he sought to place himself between the two stormy seas, like a quiet channel, which communicates with both oceans, and in which it was possible to manœuvre undisturbed by tempests. [Sidenote: Is A Mixed Congress Possible?] The refusal of the Sorbonne, at that time more papistical than the pope himself, does not imply that a conference between protestant and catholic theologians was impossible; for six years later such a conference really did take place at Ratisbon, and nearly succeeded. A committee, half protestant, half Romanist, in which Melancthon and Bucer sat, and in which the pious Cardinal Contarini took part as papal legate, admitted the evangelical faith in all essential points, and declared in particular that man is justified not by his own merits, but by faith alone in the merits of Christ, pointing out, however, as the protestants had always done, that the faith which justifies must _work by love_. That meeting of Ratisbon came to nothing: it could come to nothing. A gleam of light shone forth, but a breath from Rome extinguished the torch, and Contarini submitted in silence. The conference, however, remains in history as a solemn homage, paid by the most believing members of the Roman-catholic Church to the Christian doctrines of the Reformation.[714] Footnote 669: 1 Corinth. x. 15. Footnote 670: ‘Die Leute die die Sache fordern, mehr Erasmich als Evangelisch sind.’—Bretschneider, _Corpus Reformatorum_, ii. p. 909. Footnote 671: Calvin. Footnote 672: