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34 for life, interdicted him the pulpit, and fulminated excommunication against his hearers.

For the Church, at first amused, careless, curious, became alarmed and angry at the extent of this heresy. The Diet of Worms (1521) signalised the importance of Luther; and the orthodox French party, the clericals, the Sorbonne or Faculty of Theology, became aware that they, too, had a nest of Lutherans in their midst. There was talk of burning and of branding. A formal censure of the new ideas was pronounced by the Sorbonne: "One should employ rather flames than arguments against the arrogance of Luther," ran the text. And before the Church of Nôtre Dame de Paris the writings of Luther were burned to ashes, as a warning to his followers. The propositions of Luther were condemned one by one; and none more heartily than that which maintained that the burning of heretics was contrary to the teaching of the Gospel. Lefebvre d'Étaples was threatened with the stake. Then a descent was made upon the town of Meaux, well-known as the head-quarters of the new ideas. Farel, Mazurier, Lefebvre, and many others were obliged to flee for their lives. Others were made prisoners in the dungeons of the Sorbonne. And now a terrible choice was left for the gentle, cultured, timid Briçonnet. His turn would assuredly come next. He trembled, this prophet who had in him something of the mystic's insincerity, and all the sensitive versatility of the dilettante. In face of exile, captivity, torture, the stake, his presence of mind utterly failed him, and the man of God was found, after all, a weak, temporising, amiable ecclesiastic. For the sake of a theory he could not betray his order, sacrifice his liberty, his life. So, on the