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

learning and their titles, and left the Gospel to shift
for itself, Poille stood firmly by it. He had learned
the truth from Briconnet; but, following a Greater
as his Captain, when the bishop went back, the
bricklayer went forward, though he saw before him
in the near distance the lurid gleam of the stake.
Besides these humble men the Gospel had
made not a few converts in the ranks above them.
Even in the Parliament there were senators who
had embraced at heart that very Lutheranism
against which that body had now recorded the
punishment of death; but the fear of an irate
priesthood restrained them from the open
confession of it. Nay, even of the priests and
monks there were some who had been won by the
Gospel, and who loved the Savior. Professors in
the university, teachers in the schools, lawyers,
merchants, tradesmen -- in short, men of every
rank, and of all professions -- swelled the number
of those who had abjured the faith of Rome and
ranged themselves, more or less openly, on the side
of the Reformation. But the most part now gathered
round the Protestant standard were from the
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