The Clementine Peace, obtained as it was by trickery and fraud, was used by the Jansenists as a means of deceiving the public and of winning new recruits. They contended that Clement IX., regardless of the action of his predecessors, had accepted the Jansenist principle of respectful silence. Several who had signed the formulary of Alexander VII. withdrew their signatures, and amongst the bishops, clergy, university graduates, and religious orders, particularly amongst the Oratorians and Benedictines of St. Maur, the Jansenists gained many adherents. Though outwardly peace reigned in France, yet the Jansenist spirit made great headway, as was shown by the opposition to several popular devotions and in the spread of rigorist opinions and practices in regard to confession and communion. The controversy on the Gallican Liberties complicated the issue very considerably, and made it impossible for the Pope to exercise his authority. Even bishops like Bossuet, who were strongly opposed to Jansenism, were inclined to regard papal interference with suspicion, while Louis XIV. was precluded from enforcing the decrees of the Pope as his predecessors had enforced them. The Jansenist party became much stronger, and only a slight incident was required to precipitate a new crisis. This incident was supplied by the publication of the /Reflexions Morales sur le Nouveau Testament/ by Pasquier Quesnel (1634-1719). The writer had been an Oratorian, but having been expelled from that society in 1684 he took refuge with Antoine Arnauld in Brussels. Upon the death of the latter in 1694, he became the recognised head or grand-prior of the Jansenist party. An earlier edition of this work had been published, bearing the approbation of Vialart, Bishop of Chalons, and though several additions had been made, this approbation was printed on the new edition side by side with the approbation of Louis Noailles, then Bishop of Chalons (1695). The following year Noailles having become Archbishop of Paris felt called upon by his new position to condemn a work closely akin in its ideas to those expressed in the /Reflexions Morales/. He was accused of inconsistency by the Jansenist party, one of whom published the /Probleme ecclesiastique/, inquiring whether people were bound to follow the opinions of Louis Noailles, Bishop of Chalons in 1695, or of Louis Noailles, Archbishop of Paris in 1696? The controversy suddenly grew embittered. When a new edition was required in 1699, Noailles requested the judgment of Bossuet, who formulated certain changes that in his opinion should be made.[1] In the end the edition was published without the suggested changes and without the approbation of the archbishop.