On Quinquagesima Sunday, February 7, 1529, the ecclesiastics present signed this ‘Form of Reformation.’ The articles received the royal sanction, and henceforth the Reformation was virtually established in the kingdom; but it was not universal. In some districts opposition was strong. Two evangelical ministers having been sent to preach and teach in the cathedral church of Skara, no sooner had one of them entered the pulpit than the people rose up and drove them away. The second having established himself in the school, while preparing to expound the Gospel according to St. Matthew, was assailed with stones and obliged to abandon the place. These weapons, although not very spiritual, produced some effect. Similar occurrences were taking place in the provinces of Smäland and West Gothland. Even in those places where evangelical ministers were received or reforms effected, murmuring and grief were frequently found amongst the women. Mothers were in a state of sharp distress about the salvation of their children. As the ministers had not exorcised them, the mothers believed that they had not been properly baptized and really regenerated; and they wept as they gazed upon the little creatures in their cradles. Other women could not be comforted because prayer for the dead had been abolished. If they lost any beloved one they suffered cruel anxiety and sighed to think of him day and night as still in the fires of purgatory. So easy it is to plant in the human heart a superstition which is not easily to be eradicated.[467]