Rise and Establishment of Protestantism at Geneva - James Aitken Wylie

as defiant of Scripture, of reason, and of sense as
ever.[12]
At this stage an incident partly tragic and partly
grotesque came to diversify the proceedings of the
convention. One day, the veteran controversialist,
Dr. Eck, being worsted by Melancthon in an
argument on the Eucharist, went home in a rage,
and drank so deep at supper as to drown his sense
of discomfiture and contract a fever at the same
time. His gruff stentorian voice was heard no more
in the debates, nor his tall, broad-shouldered and
burly form seen in the conference hall.[13]
Afterwards the questions of private masses,
invocation of saints, and the Pope's supremacy
received a languid discussion, but with no
satisfactory re-suits. The skies, so fair when the
conference assembled, were now overcast with
heavy clouds. The promise of peace had failed. The
emperor dissolved the Diet, with the promise,
always forthcoming when affairs had got into a
dead-lock, that a General Council would speedily
convene, and that should the Pope refuse to call
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