may reject all teaching of the Fathers and all Church customs that are unsupported by the Word of God; whether the dominion of the pope and his satellites is for or against Christ; whether any authority can be found in the Bible for monastic life; whether any revelation is to be relied on other than that recorded in the Bible; whether the saints are to be considered patrons, or in any way are mediators between ourselves and God. Gustavus intended that when the answers were all received, a public hearing should be had, and every prelate given an opportunity to refute the doctrines of his opponents. Some of the Roman Catholics, however, refused to enter the arena. Brask, in writing to the monarch, declared his clergy to be satisfied with their present doctrines, and unwilling to discuss them publicly. The bishop also wrote to Galle, hoping to dissuade him from the contest. But Galle, it appears, was eager for the fray. He put his answers down in writing, and sent them to the king. Other prelates, it is reported, did the same. The contest, however, presumably from lack of combatants, did not succeed. Petri therefore took the written answers filed by Galle, and printed them in book form, along with comments by himself. This book does little credit either to Petri or to the general intelligence of his time. Should any one ask proof that we are more rational creatures than our fathers, he can do no better than study in Petri's book the controversy that raged between the intellectual giants of Sweden at the close of 1526. Of the positions taken by the two contestants, Petri's was certainly less consistent than that of his opponent. Galle declared explicitly: "Not everything done by the Apostles or their successors is written in the Scriptures;"[140] and on matters concerning which the Bible does not speak we must obey the practices handed down by the Apostles through the Church. Petri, while granting that many Fathers were inspired, declared we must not follow their instructions, "lest we be led away by the devil;"[141] and yet the Bible, compiled from various sources by the Fathers, he held should be implicitly obeyed. In the light of recent scholarship, both combatants were wrong. The Bible is no more intelligible without a knowledge of its history than is the teaching of the Fathers without a knowledge of the Bible.[142]