Pope Leo had indeed, in a letter to the Franciscan minister-general (November 1898), and in an encyclical to the French clergy (September 1899), vigorously emphasized the traditionalist principles of his encyclical _Providentissimus_ of 1893; he had even, much to his prompt regret, signed the unfortunate decree of the Roman Inquisition, January 1897, prohibiting all doubt as to the authenticity of the "Three Heavenly witnesses" passage, 1 John v. 7, a text which, in the wake of a line of scholars from Erasmus downwards, Abbé Paulin Martin had, in 1887, exhaustively shown to be no older than the end of the 4th century A.D. Yet in October 1902 he established a "Commission for the Progress of Biblical Studies," preponderantly composed of seriously critical scholars; and even one month before his death he still refused to sign a condemnation of Loisy's _Études évangéliques_. Cardinal Sarto became Pope Pius X. on the 4th of August 1903. On the 1st of October Loisy published three new books, _Autour d'un petit livre_, _Le Quatrième Évangile_ and _Le Discours sur la Montagne_. _Autour_ consists of seven letters, on the origin and aim of _L'Évangile et l'Église_; on the biblical question; the criticism of the Gospels; the Divinity of Christ; the Church's foundation and authority; the origin and authority of dogma, and on the institution of the sacraments. The second and third, addressed respectively to a cardinal (Perraud) and a bishop (Le Camus), are polemical or ironical in tone; the others are all written to friends in a warm, expansive mood; the fourth letter especially, appropriated to Mgr Mignot, attains a grand elevation of thought and depth of mystical conviction. _Le Quatrième Évangile_, one thousand large pages long, is possibly over-confident in its detailed application of the allegorical method; yet it constitutes a rarely perfect sympathetic reproduction of a great mystical believer's imperishable intuitions. _Le Discours sur la Montagne_ is a fragment of a coming enlarged commentary on the synoptic Gospels. On the 23rd of December the pope ordered the publication of a decree of the Congregation of the Index, incorporating a decree of the Inquisition, condemning Loisy's _Religion d'Israël_, _L'Évangile et l'Église_, _Études évangéliques_, _Autour d'un petit livre_ and _Le Quatrième Évangile_. The pope's secretary of state had on the 19th December, in a letter to Cardinal Richard, recounted the causes of the condemnation in the identical terms used by the latter himself when condemning the _Religion d'Israël_ three years before. On the 12th of January 1904 Loisy wrote to Cardinal Merry del Val that he received the condemnation with respect, and condemned whatever might be reprehensible in his books, whilst reserving the rights of his conscience and his opinions as an historian, opinions doubtless imperfect, as no one was more ready to admit than himself, but which were the only form under which he was able