council, and it is probable that they did not put forward the most offensive points of their system. But the majority of the council ‘believed that it would be dangerous to discuss those articles in public, on account of the weakness (_tendrité_) of men’s minds. They therefore determined to give them a hearing on the following day, March 14, but only in the Council of the Two Hundred.’[486] The sensation created in the city by the presence of Herman and Benoît, and the eagerness with which certain citizens were pleased to listen to them, had not escaped the notice of the reformers. If these doctors were not refuted, Geneva, withdrawn from the errors of the papacy, might fall into the dreams of Pantheism. The reformers therefore asked permission to attend the sitting. Herman and Benoît expounded their system. The council wished to hush up the affair; but Farel, confident in the force of truth, requested that it might be publicly discussed. His entreaties were complied with, and the debate was fixed for the next day, March 15.[487] The disputation took place in the grand auditory of Rive, on March 15, 16, and 17, and on each occasion lasted the whole day. No report of these debates has come down to us. But some notion may be formed of them from the two tractates which Calvin devoted to the exposition and refutation of the system.[488] The discussion was very animated. The reformers so forcibly confuted, by the Word of God alone, the doctrines advanced by the two Spirituals in the public disputation, that the whole tribe thenceforth disappeared from that Church.[489] The Council of the Two Hundred having assembled, March 18, declared that the assailant was not _sufficient_, that is to say, that his opinions were erroneous. But they remarked that this disputation might beget differences, and that the faith might be imperilled. The reformers were therefore forbidden for the future to engage in such discussions. Then Herman and Benoît being called in, the syndics said to them, ‘We have been quite willing to hear you, for we listen to everybody, but _seeing that you are not able to prove the truth of your propositions by Holy Scripture_, we have pronounced them to be _contrary to the truth_. Are you willing to retract, and to return to God and ask his forgiveness?’ ‘We submit to the will of God,’ they replied, ‘but we will not by any means retract our words.’ [Sidenote: EXPULSION OF THE SPIRITUALS.]