This frank, noble, and affecting conversion gave great joy to those who loved the Gospel, and Farel, as their spokesman, said, ‘How great God is! how good and how wise! How he smites and heals, how he casts down to hell and brings up again to heaven, we see with our own eyes. What superstition is there equal to that of the Cordeliers, in which the enemy has with so much skill colored his work that even the elect are deceived! Let us rejoice, therefore, that the poor sheep which was straying on the mountains and in the deserts, in the midst of wolves and wild beasts, now, by the grace of the Lord, abandoning the barren deserts, the vexatious thorns of human traditions, is entering into his fold, and finds now his pasture in God’s holy Word.’ ‘This done,’ add the Acts, ‘because it was late, everyone retired.’[403] The last theses were discussed during the remaining two or three days, and for the most part by the same combatants, each of the champions expressing himself well or ill, according to his character and the spirit which actuated him. ‘The Lord,’ said the intelligent and spiritual Viret, ‘commands Peter to _feed his sheep_, but according to the well-known by-word, the Romish court want _no sheep without wool_.[404] The true key of the kingdom of heaven is the Gospel of the Lord, but the pope and his priests have devised others which close the door instead of opening it. If the pope be willing to imitate Jesus and Peter, let him then go about hither and thither in every place, seeking and saving souls. The apostles had no holy see like the Romish pontiff. They were not often even seated, except, indeed, it were in a prison. And instead of a triple crown and a chain of gold, they had chains of iron on their hands and their feet.’[405] [Sidenote: THE TRINITY OF BLANCHEROSE.] Dr. Blancherose, who unhesitatingly considered himself the most valiant of the defenders of Rome, began now to lose heart. His only consolation was in the thought that if he were beaten it was not for want of talent, but because he stood alone; and quoting a word of the ancients, he said, ‘The opponents (reformers) are too strong, and as some one said, Hercules himself could do nothing against two.’[406] The two, in his case, were doubtless Farel and Calvin.