IX.]
LETTERS ON ULTRAMONTANISM
91
Innocent XI., "Lord of Rome and of the World, only Keeper of the Keys of Heaven and Earth and Paradise, Infallible Oracle of the Faith." This provoked the comment of Arnauld:
"I pity the Holy See for possessing such defenders. It is a terrible judgment of God upon the Church if Rome adopts such methods of defence against the Bishops of France."[1]
Bossuet's correspondents in Rome sent him most unfavourable reports of the probable action of the Pope.
Bossuet expressed himself very freely on the situation in a letter to the Monastery of La Trappe:—
"The affairs of the Church are in an evil plight. The Pope openly threatens us with denunciations and even with new Decrees. Well-intentioned mediocrity in high places is a grave misfortune."[2]}}
" Your letter," wrote Bossuet to another correspondent, "presents a picture of the present state of the Roman Court which positively alarms me. Does Bellarmine really hold the chief place there? Has he become their tradition? Where are we if this is the case, and if the Pope is disposed to condemn whatever that author condemns? Hitherto they have never ventured to do it. They have never made this attack on the Council of Constance, nor on the Popes who have approved it. What shall we answer heretics when they confront us with this Council and its decrees, repeated at Basle with the express approval of Eugenius IV., and with all the other confirmatory acts of Rome? If Eugenius IV. did well in his authentic approval of these decrees, how can people attack them? And if he did wrong, what becomes, men will ask, of his Infallibility? Shall we have to elude these difficulties and escape the authority of these Decrees, and of so many others both ancient
