The following passages from MSS. and works of the day add confirmation to this letter.
A memoir on the liberties of the Gallican Church, composed by order of "Monseigneur Louis, Dauphin de France, Duc de Bourgoyne, mort en 1710," says,
"This court (Rome) continues always what it has begun, and often obliges us to retract or alter what we have judiciously and necessarily done against her. Nothing proves this better than the history of the assembly of 1682."
Adrien Baillet, writing his Démêlé de Philippe le Bel avec Boniface VIII., tells us,
"In the first variance, (between Philip and Boniface,) it was the court of Rome that gave satisfaction to that of France; in the second, (of the assembly,) it is the court of France that has just rendered satisfaction to that of Rome."
Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. "Braunbom," writes,
"France was so far from having broken with the pope, from the year 1690 to the year 1701, that she became, on the contrary, more papist. It is known, moreover, that Innocent XII. gained the day, in having things put again on their old footing in 1693."
We have tried to give the substance of M. Gérin's work. We feel that we have given but a meagre idea of it. Still, this much is evident from what we have written, that the doctrine known as Gallican was not the doctrine of the French clergy. That it afterward became so, in great part was owing undoubtedly to the influence of the assembly of 1682, and of those who in high positions lent their aid to its propagation among the rising generation of students. They, early imbued with these maxims, were far less to blame than the men who first broached such principles. Let us hope that the comparatively few who hold to these opinions, seeing the origin of what they profess, will understand the worthlessness of them, and unite with the universal church in professing belief in the infallibility of the See of Peter.