THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 815 as sacrilegious, because they rejected the ceremonies of the church; the Protestants called the Catholics idolaters, because they venerated pictures and relics. No one of the two parties would tolerate the other. As the church and state had always operated in com- mon, the people were accustomed to look upon religious affairs as being closely bound up with political affairs. They could not conceive that a society of men having different creeds could be formed, nor that a government could be disinterested concerning questions of religion. Neither the clergy nor the reformers, nor the princes believed that they had the right even to endure the practice of a false religion. Upon this point the Catho- lics were in perfect accord with the Protestants. "The interest of the state/' wrote Philip II., the emperor, "is bound so closely to the maintenance of religion that neither the authority of the princes nor concord among the subjects can exist where there are two different religions. I would rather lose all my states, and even a hundred lives if I had them, than to accept the seigniory of heretics. It would be far better to have a ruined kingdom while preserving it intact for God than to have a kingdom intact for the benefit of the devil and the heretics, his votaries/' The Sor- bonne, in censuring the doctrine of Luther, called it an "impious insolence, which must be -vanquished by- chains, and even by flames rather than by reason/' Pope Pius V. said: "Do not spare the enemies of God, for they have never spared God. As there is but one sun, and one king, so there must be but one religion/* Luther recommended the princes to use rigorous measures with the sectaries, "for the sects are an inspi-