On St. John’s Day, 1533, the Diet opened. The prelates went to it, determined to do their utmost to crush evangelical religion, and to re-establish everywhere the old pontifical system.[330] Hardly had the assembly constituted itself when the bishops began the work. Ove Bilde, the most learned and most highly esteemed of their number, was apparently the first speaker. The clergy demanded that the election of the king should be deferred to another time. In their name the speaker claimed the entire restitution of churches, convents, and estates, in one word, of every thing that Catholicism had lost; and he violently inveighed against those whom he called the ministers of the new religion and against those who supported them.[331] At the same time he exalted the mass as being the very essence of the Christian religion; depicted in strong colors the deplorable state to which, he said, the priests and the monks were reduced; pointed to the heretics establishing themselves in the monasteries which the holy men and the consecrated virgins had been compelled to abandon; and described the excesses of the people in casting down the images of the saints and breaking the sacramental vessels. ‘The authority of the bishops is vilified,’[332] said he; ‘there are but few of the faithful who care for the services and still fewer who dread the censure of the Church; while the number of those who join the Lutherans is increasing day by day. Permit not, the bishops implore you, this holy religion, which has formed part of your very life from infancy, to be covered with opprobrium. Let the thunderbolts of excommunication strike those who have fallen into heresy, that they may feel the necessity of returning to their mother’s bosom, and let more terrible penalties fall on those who are obstinately impenitent.’[333] The evangelical members of the Diet listened with amazement to this speech; and the gravity of the crisis caused them the greatest perplexity.[334] It was not for the Gospel that they feared; but they knew that if they yielded to the bishops, there would be an energetic opposition. The people would rise and the nobles themselves would take up arms if need were. Magnus Gjoë, the leading champion of Reform in the Diet, rose and said—‘Conscript fathers and venerable bishops, let us not draw down fresh calamities on the realm, which is already too sick. Religion is a holy thing, and neither its origin nor its end lies within the power of any man. If we unjustly seize its rights, God himself will be its avenger. Liberty has been given to religion by the will of the king, and this liberty cannot be taken away without the king’s consent.’[335]