Sire,
“Never did so important an affair lead your parliament to the foot of your throne. The religion, the state, the rights of your crown are equally threatened. A fatal schism has burst forth, less to be dreaded from the blaze of division it kindles amongst your subjects, and the shock it gives to the fundamental laws of the monarchy, than from the prejudice it does to religion.
“Your majesty, struck with the disorders occasioned by the disputes daily renewed on account of the bull Unigenitus, has at all times been sensible, and particularly in 1731, of the necessity of suppressing a division so dangerous, and so contrary to the common good of the state and of religion.
“We shall make use of the same terms in which your majesty then expressed yourself, in declaring your will. You forbad, in the most express manner any of your subjects, of what state or condition soever, to do or write any thing tending to support the disputes that had arisen in regard to this constitution, or to create new ones. You forbad them to attack or provoke one another, by the injurious terms of innovators, heretics, schismatics, Jansenists, Semi-pelagians, or any other party names, as any such delinquents would be treated as rebels disobedient to your orders, and seditious perturbators of the public tranquility. In a word, you enjoined all the archbishops and bishops to watch each in his particular diocese, that peace and tranquility were charitably and inviolably observed, and that these disputes were no more renewed.
“It were to have been wished, that such sagacious orders had been followed by the most rigorous execution; and that you had armed your avenging hand against such ecclesiastics as dared contemn your Majesty, and withdraw from the obedience that was due to you! But this they have dared, and the attempt has remained unpunished: their passionate zeal has no longer known any bounds; they have declared those who were not of their opinion rebels to the church, and as such unworthy of partaking of its benefits, and they have inhumanly refused them the sacraments at the point of death. These abuses have been daily increased—and how much has not religion suffered by them?
“Impiety has availed itself of disquisitions that prevailed amongst the ministers of religion, to attack religion itself.
“The uncertainty that was introduced with regard to the foundation of the legitimacy of faith, hath been the means employed by impiety to insinuate into people’s minds its mortal poison. What advantage hath it not derived from the melancholy circumstances wherein we saw the holy fathers, who had passed their lives in exercising the laborious functions of the ministry to which they were consecrated? enlightened doctors, still more recommendable for their piety than their understanding: pious maidens, who, in their recluse retreat entirely engaged with God and their salvation, passed their time in the most austere works of repentance, treated like refractory members of the church, deprived with ignominy of the benefits it dispensed to its children, without its being known what truths decided by the church, these children refused to believe, or what errors prescribed by it, they refused to condemn!
“The ostentatious philosopher, who foolishly jealous of the divinity itself, sees with regret the homage that is paid to him, judged this to be the favourable moment for producing his monstrous system of incredulities.
“This system promulgated abroad, has unhappily made but too rapid a progress. A torrent of writings, infected with these detestable errors, rushed forth; and to complete the misfortune, they have insensibly crept into those schools defined to form proper defenders of faith and religion. Strange calamity for a most christian King! Error gains ground, and is not removed; the principal ministers of religion are employed only in exacting the acceptance of a decree, which offering nothing certain, alarms timid consciences by the consequences that may be drawn from it against the salutary doctrine, and whilst they with the greatest rigour prosecute those, who, by at least a pardonable, if not a well grounded scruple, refuse subscribing to it; they neglect what is essential, and let religion be shaken to its very foundation.
“The impious become more resolute, and audacity is carried to its greatest height; and it was reserved for us to be eye-witnesses of a public thesis being maintained without opposition, in the first university of the christian world, whereby all the false principles of incredulity are systematically established[A].