It was supposed that a general council by restoring unity to the Church would cure many of the evils under which France suffered. The queen-mother supported this opinion, and we may imagine we hear her speaking in a letter written by Francis II. to the Bishop of Limoges: “The Church of God,” he says, “will never enjoy peace or rest, never shall we see the end of the troubles and calamities which this religious division is bringing over all the Christian world, unless a general council be convened.... It is notorious that the Council of Trent has not been received or approved by Germany or by the Protestants, who have attacked its authority, as having been held without them.... We Christian princes ought to try by all means to invite the Protestants and Germans to the council, ... it being my opinion that it had better not open at all, if the Germans and Protestants are not invited, for it would be labor in vain.” Such was the tone in which the king wrote to the pope, and such were the sentiments he desired Limoges to lay before the King of Spain. He even went so far as to threaten to hold a national council, if the pope were obstinate. “It is undeniable,” he said, “that there are so many abuses in the manners of churchmen, that there are but few of them who do their duty. Now this neglect breeds that contempt for divine things, by which men are led to forsake God and fall into those errors wherein we now see them.” In a similar strain he wrote to the Bishop of Rennes, his embassador at the imperial court.[134] In a somewhat similar tone wrote the Cardinal of Lorraine to the same bishop, urging the necessity of a council, and blaming the coldness of the pope. He complains of the “pitiful condition into which religion had fallen,” and declares a council to be “the only remedy for all our ills.” In nearly the same words writes Florimond de Robertet, secretary of state, adding that the king was resolved at all events “to convoke an assembly of notables.” These opinions compared with the instructions given to the French prelates at the Council of Trent may be taken as evidence that the court was sincere in its desire to purify the national church. Those ecclesiastics were to demand that the ceremonial should be corrected and all other things whereby the ignorant might be abused under a show of piety; that the cup should be restored to the laity; that the sacraments should be administered in the vulgar tongue; that during mass the Word of God should be read and interpreted, and the young people should be catechised, to the end that all might be instructed in what they should believe, and how they should live so as to please God; that prayers should be offered up in French, and that certain times should be appointed, as well at high mass as at vespers, wherein it might be lawful to sing psalms in the church. The prelates were also instructed to complain of the unchaste lives of the clergy.[135]