he was in perfect accord with them. While
pressing his German friends to declare the Zwinglians and the Calvinists
heretics--which they carefully avoided doing--and urging them to state the
punishment that ought to be inflicted on heretics, there seemed to be no
limit to the concessions which Lorraine was willing to make. He _adored_
and _invoked_ only Christ in heaven. He merely _venerated_ the wafer. He
acknowledged that his party went too far in calling the mass a sacrifice,
and celebrating it for the living and the dead. The mass was not a
sacrifice, but a commemoration of the sacrifice offered on the altar of
the cross ("non sacrificium, sed memoria sacrificii praestiti in ara
crucis"). He believed that the council assembled at Trent would do no
good. When the Romish hierarchy, with the Pope at its head, as the
pretended vicar of God on earth, was objected to, he replied that that
matter could easily be adjusted. As for himself, "in the absence of a red
gown, he would willingly wear a black one."

[Sidenote: The Guises deceive no one.]

He was asked whether, if Beza and his colleagues could be brought to
consent to sign the Augsburg confession, he also would sign it. "You have
heard it," he replied, "I take God to witness that I believe as I have
said, and that by God's grace I shall live and die in these sentiments. I
repeat it: I have read the Confession of Augsburg, I have also read
Luther, Melanchthon, Brentius, and others; I entirely approve their
doctrines, and I might speedily agree with them in all that concerns the
ecclesiastical hierarchy. _But I am compelled still to dissemble for a
time_, that I may gain some that are yet weak in the faith." A little
later he adverted to Wuertemberg's remarks to Guise. "You informed my
brother," he said, "that in Germany we are both of us suspected of having
contributed to the execution of a large number of innocent Christians
during the reigns of Henry and of Francis the Second. Well! I swear to
you, in the name of God my Creator, and pledging the salvation of my soul,
_that I am guilty of the death of no man condemned for religion's sake_.
Those who were then privy to the deliberations of state can testify in my
favor. On the contrary, whenever crimes of a religious character were
under discussion, I used to say to King Henry or to King Francis the
Second, that they did not belong to my department, that they had to do
with the secular power, and I went away."[32] He