17. The sadder the times became, the more the prudence of the Ruthenian bishops was made manifest; they made every effort to instruct the uncultivated populace in Christian doctrine, to raise the insufficiently instructed clergy to a higher degree of learning in sacred doctrine, and to imbue monks whose observance had become slack with a new zeal for discipline and spirit of holiness. They did not lose heart even in 1632, when a great part of the goods of the Church was handed over to the recently established hierarchy of the dissident brethren and when it was decreed in the treaty between the Cossacks and the Polish king that the union of the Ruthenians with the Apostolic See was to be destroyed; on the contrary, they continued with tenacious constancy to defend the flocks entrusted to them.