From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

and promised so much, came to nothing. Had this
great army been assembled it would have shed
much blood, but it would have enlightened no
consciences, nor won any victories for truth. It
might have humbled the Pope, it would have left
the Papacy as strong as ever.
While Francis I. was looking so anxiously
around him for allies, and deeming it a point of
wisdom to lean on the monarch who could bring
the largest army into the field, there was one
power, the strength of which he missed seeing.
That power had neither fleets nor armies at its
service, and so Francis shunned rather than courted
its alliance. It was fated, in his opinion, to go to the
abyss, and should he be so imprudent as to link his
cause With it, it would drag him down into the
same destruction with itself. This was a natural but,
for Francis, a tremendous mistake. The invisible
forces are ever the strongest, and these were all on
the side of Protestantism. But it is the eye of faith
only that can see these. Francis looked with the eye
of sense and could see nothing; and, therefore,
stood aloof from a cause which, as it seemed to
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