The contest occasioned by the refusal of the sacraments to the Jansenists, was the first spark of the conflagration, the Helen of that war, as small in its first object, as it is now become important by its consequences. One of the principal archbishops of the kingdom, and a bishop of Mirepoix, his aid and counsellor, both of them thoroughly persuaded of the excellence of the bull, and of the damnation of those who rejected it, resolved, like consistent prelates, to order the communion to be refused to Jansenists at the point of death. This refusal had before been attempted in some provinces, but twice or thrice only, at wide intervals, and with little noise: it was now thought time to take off the mask, and absolutely to treat the enemies of the bull _Unigenitus_ as hereticks cut off from the church. If we believe the crowd of constitutionary theologists, the two prelates, authors and executors of this project, were extremely in the right: but let us be permitted to relate here (as mere historians) the singular reasons which were alledged in their favour, and those that were opposed to them. “The bull _Unigenitus_,” said its partisans, “ill received without doubt, and even spit upon at its birth, had terminated in being unanimously received: there was not, in all Christendom, one bishop who rejected this production, whether good or bad, of the court of Rome: it was in vain to say that it overturned the principles of Christianity; that the acceptance of it had not been free; that some had received it through fear, others through interest: it was accepted, and without opposition, by the whole body of pastors. Here then we see, in the principles of the Catholic church, all that ought to serve, by way of compass, to plain Christians in their faith. It is not for them to examine either the doctrines themselves, or the nature of the acceptance; it is sufficient to them that they see clearly, that the visible church adopts them. We understand here by the visible church, what every Catholic understands by the term; that is to say, the pope, the bishops, and almost all the ecclesiasticks, secular and regular, of the second order. Whatever be the doctrine which this visible church teaches, the faithful ought to believe firmly, notwithstanding even the strongest appearances to the contrary, that it has always taught the same; otherwise Jesus Christ would not have said true in promising that church to be always with her. The passages of scripture, and of the fathers, which may appear the most evidently contrary to the new catechism, will be explained in a manner favourable to it: the church has alone the right of fixing the meaning of them. In a word, from the moment the church speaks, we must submit to her, whatever she may say. After the council of Nice, the divinity of Jesus Christ was very far from being as solemnly, as universally, as uniformly received by the body of pastors, as the bull _Unigenitus_ hath been in these latter times.