without removing the altars, the fonts, the organs, the images, and other decorations, ‘which did no harm to anybody,’ said the burgesses; and that the friars of the Dominican order should also celebrate in the same church the Roman Catholic service in the usual way.[386] That is what the great Saxon reformer called ‘trying to bring together Luther and the pope.’ [Sidenote: IMAGE WORSHIP.] Viret therefore preached in that church. But when Lent was come, the Dominican Monbouson began to discourse in the cathedral, and maintained their Romish traditions with violence and plenty of lying. Viret was informed of it, and as he thought that the best way to refute the papal doctrine was to make it distinctly known, he put in writing the assertions of the friar and called upon him publicly to defend them, announcing that he was prepared to reply to him. Monbouson felt strong enough to maintain his thesis when he stood surrounded by a whole phalanx of scholastic doctors and had nobody to contradict him, but he grew pale in the presence of the young Viret. ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘I would gladly do what you propose at Avignon, at Paris, or at Dôle; but at Lausanne there is nobody capable of judging of the matter.’--‘You ought then to preach only at Dôle, Paris, or Avignon,’ replied Viret; ‘but since you have lied at Lausanne, it is at Lausanne that satisfaction is due.’ Then the friar, anxious to get out of his embarrassment, withdrew in the quietest manner and disappeared.[387] The reformed Christians did not think, with those gentlemen of Lausanne, that images, altars, etc., did nobody any harm. They believed that the paintings did harm. They believed that the people, thanks to the images, made for themselves many minor gods before which they bent their knees in order to obtain this or that favor, or the healing of this or that malady: that the visible made them forget the invisible: that it was frightful to think that, every time some simple soul came to worship God in his temple, those figures of saints became occasions of falling or of scandal. ‘Alas!’ they said, ‘how many poor creatures called to be children of God have been made by those images children of the devil!’ Those, therefore, of the reformed of Lausanne, in whose judgment the pictures of saints and angels seduced and almost inevitably led astray the weak, began to stir in the matter. Commencing with the church of the Magdalene, they removed the images and the altars and broke or burnt them. Then betaking themselves to the church of St. Francis, they did the same there, and counted themselves happy in thus keeping the commandment, _Thou shalt have no other gods before me_. The old folk of Lausanne, who were already disconsolate at being left without a bishop, were still more distressed when they found themselves deprived of their images and their masses; and they sent deputies to Berne to complain of it. The Bernese council listened to them with all politeness, and dismissed them with good words.