and modern, by the scholastic distinctions and miserable subtleties of Bellarmine? Must we assert with him and with Baronius that the Acts of the Sixth Council and the Letters of St Leo have been falsified? Will the Church, which has hitherto silenced heresy with solid reasons, have no better defence than these pitiful prevarications? May God preserve us from it."[1]
Happily, says Cardinal Bausset, feeling at Rome quieted down; and Innocent XI. was "providentially diverted from censuring the doctrine of France. He restricted himself to rewarding, with more generosity than judgment, the numerous writers who attacked the Assembly of 1682."[2] Not venturing to condemn the four Articles, he showed his displeasure by refusing Bulls to its members if nominated to Bishoprics. Louis XIV. retaliated by refusing to allow any Bishop to accept the papal Approval. This lasted through the pontificates of Innocent XI. and Alexander VIII. Innocent XII., says Cardinal Bausset, demanded and obtained letters of apology from the former deputies of the Assembly. They expressed their concern at his resentment, but in vague and general terms capable of various interpretations, and without any suggestion of abandoning their traditional convictions.
But when Clement XI. attempted, on the strength of these letters, to induce Louis XIV. to suppress the Assembly's propositions, Louis replied that Innocent XII. understood that his wisdom lay in not attacking principles regarded in France as fundamental and primitive, and held unaltered by the French Church over many centuries. His Holiness, said the King, is too enlightened to declare heretical what the Church
