not completed the Psalmist's terrific denunciation
of the crime and folly of image-worship when his voice was stifled by
the fire and smoke of the pyre into which his impatient tormentors had
hastily thrown him. If not actually the first martyr of the French
Reformation, as has commonly been supposed, Jean Leclerc deserves, at
least, to rank among the most constant and unswerving of its early
apostles.[187]

[Sidenote: Jacques Pauvan.]

The poor wool-carder of Meaux was succeeded by more illustrious victims.
One was of the number of the teachers who had been attracted to Bishop
Briconnet's diocese by the prospect of contributing to the progress of a
purer doctrine. Jacques Pauvan[188] was a studious youth who had come
from Boulogne, in Picardy, to perfect his education in the university,
and had subsequently abandoned a career in which he bade fair to obtain
distinction, in order to assist his admired teacher, Lefevre, at Meaux.
He was an outspoken man, and disguised his opinions on no point of the
prevailing controversy. He asserted that purgatory had no existence, and
that God had no vicar. He repudiated excessive reliance on the doctors
of the church. He indignantly rejected the customary salutation to the
Virgin Mary, "Hail Queen, Mother of mercy!" He denied the propriety of
offering candles to the saints. He maintained that baptism was only a
sign, that holy water was _nothing_, that papal bulls and indulgences
were an imposture of the devil, and that the mass was not only of no
avail for the remission of sins, but utterly unprofitable to the hearer,
while the Word of God was all-sufficient.[189]

Pauvan was put under arrest, and his theses, together with the defence
of their contents which one Matthieu Saunier was so bold as to write,
were submitted to the Sorbonne. Its condemnation was not long withheld.
"A work," said the Paris theologians, "containing propositions extracted
and compiled from the pernicious errors of the Waldenses, Wickliffites,
Bohemians, and Lutherans, being impious, scandalous, schismatic, and
wholly alien from the Christian doctrine, ought publicly to be consigned
to the flames in the diocese of Meaux, whence it emanated. And Jacques
Pauvan and Matthieu Saunier should, by all judicial means, be compelled
to make a public recantation."[190]

Even strong men have their moments of weakness. Pauvan was no exception
to the rule. Besides the terrors of the stake, the persuasions of
Martial Maz