That a Protestant or a free-thinker should encourage the "Friends of Holland" in resisting the Holy See, that he should even go so far as to do honor to that resistance, I can conceive; but that he should share in the inveterate obstinacy of the Jansenists concerning fact and right defies logic and common sense. M. Réville seems likewise to confound the bull Unigenitus with that of Alexander VII. concerning the formulary. This leads us to speak of the second point on which the opposition of the clergy of Utrecht to the Holy See is founded.
The Jansenist discussions on le fait and le droit were still proceeding, when the patriarch of the sect, the ex-Oratorian, Pasquier Quesnel, threw off the mask, and in his Réflexions Morales renewed the principal dogmas of Baius and Jansenius.[308] Pope Clement XI. ordered the book to be examined; he proceeded in this affair, says Döllinger, "with perfect prudence and deliberation. The Jesuits had been charged with being bitterly opposed to the Réflexions; he chose examiners from religious orders whose teachings had the least affinity with those of the Society of Jesus. He himself presided at twenty-three sessions of the examiners, and the discussion lasted for nearly two whole years.[309] Finally, on the 8th of September, 1713, the bull Unigenitus appeared, condemning one hundred and one propositions taken from Quesnel's book. Among them are some which at first sight appeared inoffensive; but they cunningly convey Jansenist error, and intimately coalesce with the system; in others, expressions are skilfully worded to infect the reader with prejudices against the teachings or the general discipline of the church; many clearly announce the dogmas of Jansenius."[310]
Here, seeing that the one hundred and one propositions were found word for word in the condemned book, the distinction of right and of fact (du droit et du fait) was impossible. Quesnel, on hearing of the decree condemning it, exclaimed: "The Pope has proscribed one hundred and one truths!" The whole party echoed this exclamation, and our Netherland sectaries followed the impulse given by the patriarch of Jansenism. This, then, in two words, is the attitude of Jansenism in Holland: it refuses to condemn the sense of Jansenius by signature to the formulary of Alexander VII.; it refuses adherence to the bull Unigenitus. All the efforts made by the Holy See to bring back the Jansenists of Utrecht to Catholic unity have failed, from a persistence in this double refusal. Among these efforts at reconciliation, there is one which deserves special mention.
In 1826, Mgr. Nazalli, Papal nuncio, opened a conference with the Holland Jansenists. He announced to them that Rome exacted of them nothing more than an adhesion pure and simple to the constitutions of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI., and he proposed for their signature the formula previously referred to, with the following addition: "I moreover submit, without distinction, reticence, or explanation, to the constitution of Clement XI., dated September 8, 1713, and beginning with the word Unigenitus; I accept it purely and simply, and thus I swear. May God help me and this holy Gospel!"[311]
The bull Unigenitus was, even under the Gallican point of view, obligatory on all Catholics, since it had been accepted by the entire episcopate with that moral unanimity of which so much was said about the time of the last council. However, the schismatic archbishop and bishops of Holland declined the overtures of the Sovereign Pontiff. Their reply is a true model of Jansenist style; every member of a phrase hides a restriction or an equivocation:
"We replied frankly (honnêtement) that none of the bishops or clergy would hesitate to recognize with sincerity, by means of an unequivocal declaration in general[312] terms, all that the Holy See might exact on their part, and that they would have no difficulty in declaring, for example, that they agree, and that they even swear, if needs be, to accept, without any exception whatever, all the articles of the Holy Catholic faith: not to maintain nor to teach, now or hereafter, any opinions but those which have been established, determined, and published at all times by our holy mother, the church, conformably to Scripture, tradition, the acts of œcumenical councils, and, lastly, to that of Trent; that, besides, they especially reprehend, reject, and condemn the five propositions which the Holy See has condemned, and which are pretended to be found in the book of Jansenius, known as the Augustinus." All the rest is in this spirit. But what follows was quite unforeseen:
"We therefore leave it to the decision of the world whether a declaration so frank and so sincere ... does not offer incontestable proof of entire submission to the Holy See; and whether the general terms in which it is conceived do not embrace all the specialties of which acknowledgment can reasonably be expected from us, but into the details of which we are not permitted to enter by citing bulls which we cannot in conscience accept—bulls which have not been recognized by the government, and which we are therefore not permitted to mention without incurring grave penalties.... It is, in fact, sufficiently well known that the said constitutions (of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI.) are not only not adopted nor obligatory in several countries, but that they cannot be adopted or enforced in a country where they have never received the placet of the government, and where their acceptance as such is interdicted under threat of severe punishments. In the northern countries, to the jurisdiction of which the clergy of Utrecht belonged, such acceptance was strictly forbidden by the edicts of the 24th February and 25th May, 1703, the 14th December, 1708, and of the 20th and 21st September, 1730—edicts in which the principle was established that it belongs to the sovereign alone to permit the publication and execution of such bulls, and that without his visa or placet neither is permitted."[313]
Can one imagine baser or more servile language? In presence of a heterodox power, the pretended successors of S. Boniface, of the martyrs and victims of Calvinist persecution, dare to take sides with power, and to concede to it a right to dominate over faith and ecclesiastical discipline! At that very time William I. was oppressing his Catholic subjects, and endeavoring to deprive the bishops of the right of bringing up in their seminaries young aspirants to the priesthood. Need it be added that no law in vigor in 1826 interdicted the acceptance pure and simple of the Apostolical Constitutions of Alexander VII. and Clement XI.?
The Revolution had overridden ancient laws, and not a single Catholic was molested on account of his adhesion to the decrees of the Holy See. But the worship of the state as God makes progress in proportion as respect for the church is banished. For a bishop especially independence is impossible; when he refuses to walk in the royal way of submission to the Vicar of Christ, he becomes, by a just punishment, the plaything of a party or the slave of the secular power.