Bernières and his disciples felt that God had chosen them not only to watch over doctrine and discipline in convents and in families, but also to supply the prevalent deficiency of zeal in bishops and other dignitaries of the church. They kept, too, a constant eye on the humbler clergy, and whenever a new preacher appeared in Caen, two of their number were deputed to hear his sermon and report upon it. If he chanced to let fall a word concerning the grace of God, they denounced him for Jansenistic heresy. Such commotion was once raised in Caen by charges of sedition and Jansenism, brought by the Hermitage against priests and laymen hitherto without attaint, that the Bishop of Bayeux thought it necessary to interpose; but even he was forced to pause, daunted by the insinuations of Bernières that he was in secret sympathy with the obnoxious doctrines. Thus the Hermitage and its affiliated societies constituted themselves a sort of inquisition in the interest of the Jesuits; “for what,” asks Nicole “might not be expected from persons of weak minds and atrabilious dispositions, dried up by constant fasts, vigils, and other austerities, besides meditations of three or four hours a day, and told continually that the church is in imminent danger of ruin through the machinations of the Jansenists, who are represented to them as persons who wish to break up the foundations of the Christian faith and subvert the mystery of the Incarnation; who believe neither in transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, nor indulgences; who wish to abolish the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrament of Penitence, oppose the worship of the Holy Virgin, deny freewill and substitute predestination in its place, and, in fine, conspire to overthrow the authority of the Supreme Pontiff.”