The courtly bishop was a constant and welcome guest at the palace. It was there he put the Bible into the hands of Margaret; and the friendship he enjoyed with Francis gave him many opportunities of spreading the new doctrines among the philosophers and scholars whom that monarch loved to assemble around him. And being a bishop, and in such favor at court, he had many listeners, and it may be to this period, and to such conversions as Brissonnet and Margaret, that we should trace the inclination of so many French nobles to embrace Protestantism. But the king and a large majority of the people remained faithful to Rome, and many of the nobility, intimidated by her threatenings and martyrdoms, hesitated; drew back, until at length their convictions waned in their minds, and left them captives to the darkness from which they lacked the moral courage to extricate themselves.
Brissonnet, now full of zeal for the Reformation of the church, determined to set the example by reforming his own diocese. On his return from Paris to Meaux, he inquired into the lives and doctrines of the preachers, and discovered that nearly all the pulpits were filled with Franciscan monks, while the deans, the incumbents, vicars, and curates, spent their time in idleness and their revenues in Paris. He ascertained that throughout his diocese there were scarcely ten resident priests, and out of one hundred and twenty-seven curates, there were only fourteen whom the bishop could approve of or permit to officiate in his diocese. Then the bishop, turning towards men, who did not belong to his clergy, called around him, not only his old friend Lefevre, but Farel, D'Arvande, Roussel, and Francis Vatable. Thus
the light of the gospel was gradually withdrawn from Paris, where God in His sovereign grace had kindled its earliest sparks; and thither the persecutors were determined to follow, but as yet the tempest is forbidden to burst. The Reformers must be protected by the hand of a divine providence until their work is more complete.