Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

proposal in question, laid down the principle that
the ecclesiastical property belongs to the nation;
that the clergy are merely its administrators; and
founding on that principle, he proposed that the
estates of the Church should be put up for sale, and
the proceeds divided as follows:--one-third to go to
the support of the Church; one-third to the payment
of the national debt; and one-third to the revenues
of the crown, to be applied, of course, to national
uses. In this way it was hoped the financial
difficulty would be got over; but the great
difficulty-- the religious one--lay behind; how was
it to be got over?
It was agreed that a Council should be
summoned; but it augured ill for the era of peace it
was to inaugurate, that men disputed regarding its
name before it had assembled. The priests strongly
objected to its being called a Council. That would
imply that the Protestant pastors were Christian
ministers as well as themselves, entitled to meet
them on terms of equality, and that the Reformed
bodies were part of the Church as well as the
Roman Catholics. The difficulty was got over by
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