And though there was a complete remedy just coming into notice, in the Evangelical revival, it was not of a kind that commended itself to Butler, whose type of mind was opposed to everything that savoured of enthusiasm.
The oldest texts belonging to the heroic cycle are not preserved in any MS. before 110o, and though the sagas were certainly committed to writing several centuries before that date, it is evident that the monkish transcribers have toned down or omitted features that savoured too strongly of paganism.
The theological professors took the alarm at passages in the Meditations; an attempt to prove the existence of God savoured, as they thought, of atheism and heresy.
The king, too, was in close sympathy with the societys aims, but for the present it was necessary to hide this attitude from the eyes of the Powers, whose sympathy Cavour could only hope to gain by professing hostility to everything that savoured of revolution.
He was attacked by Flacius and Amsdorf, and after a long controversy, full of ambiguities and lacking in the exhibition of guiding principles, he was condemned because his statement savoured of Pelagianism.