“Your parliament, Sire, who by the authority you have conferred upon them, should principally attend to whatever regards the religion of the state, are moved at the sight of so scandalous a proceeding. They have summoned the agents of the university. The attention of the magistrates has called the faculty back to their duty, has awakened the zeal of the pastors; and soon after appeared the censures of the Thesis, accompanied with the most dishonourable sentence, with which he, who had the audacity to maintain it, was branded[B].
“Such are the wounds that the growing schism has from its birth given to religion. What may we not fear it has to suffer in the sequel; and can we view it without being penetrated with affliction? With some it will be totally destroyed, and if others preserve it, the spirit will be entirely lost.
“Hatred, animosity, and persecution, seize upon their hearts; those divine characters of union and charity, which distinguish the catholic church, are no longer to be known; and religion will be almost universally destroyed, either in the mind, or in the heart.
“But, Sire, if your parliament owe their first attention to the interest of religion, they are equally engaged by the fidelity they have sworn to you, to guard the preservation of those great maxims which constitute the essence of your sovereignty.
“And how could they avoid opposing with all their might, the progress of a scheme framed by some ministers of the church, to erect the constitution Unigenitus, as a rule of faith. This enterprize, inasmuch as it is prejudicial to religion, is contrary to the principles of public right, upon which the independency of your authority is founded. When this bull came into France, your parliament acquainted Lewis XIV. with all the danger of the condemnation which was therein pronounced against the proposition that relates to the matter of excommunication.
“Hence will follow, we told him, that unjust excommunications, that even the menaces of an unjust censure, may suspend the accomplishment of the most essential and indispensible duties: and what might be the consequence? The liberties of the Gallican church, the maxims adopted by the kingdom upon the authority of kings, upon the independency of their crown, upon the fidelity that is due to them from their subjects, might be annihilated, or at least suspended in the minds of the people, solely by the impression made on them by a menace of excommunication, though unjust.
“Lewis XIV. was sensible of the importance of these reflections. The bull was not received but with such modifications, as are not so much modifications as an absolute assertion of the condemned proposition.
“These wise precautions, the ramparts of our liberty, judged necessary by the late King, confirmed by your Majesty upon every occasion, carefully repeated in the declarations you made to establish the authority of the bull, conformable to the sentiments of the bishops, who gave their explanations in 1744, and corroborated by the formal decision of the Sorbonne, as they solemnly declared it verbally, by their Syndic in 1732; how are these to be reconciled with the eminent character that is now wanted to be given this bull, in erecting it into a rule of faith?
“Dogmas of faith are not susceptible of modification; so that giving to the bull the qualifications or effects of a rule of faith, and exacting its pure and simple acceptance upon this foundation, is by a necessary consequence destroying the modifications which have been opposed to it, subverting the great principle of your absolute independence of all other power whatever; it is endeavouring to obtain the acknowledgment of an authority, capable of annihilating or suspending the rights of your sovereign authority.
“Your Majesty, convinced of this truth, however favourably you may have expressed yourself upon the bull, has never allowed it to be denominated a rule of faith. All those writings which have appeared, wherein it has been endeavoured to represent it in that light, have been proscribed by judgments which you yourself have given: and when your parliament represented to you in 1733, their uneasiness at the conduct of some ecclesiastics, in various dioceses, who appeared to give this character to the bull; your Majesty reproached them for having foreseen that it could happen, that the spiritual authority should desire to erect into a dogma of faith, propositions contrary to the inviolable maxims of France.