When the clergy saw by a decree of the 29th of December the administration of church property transferred to the municipalities, the sale they were about to make of it to the value of four hundred millions of francs, and the creation of a paper money calculated to facilitate this spoliation, and render it definitive, it left nothing undone to secure the intervention of God in the cause of its wealth. It made a last attempt: it offered to realize in its own name the loan of four hundred millions of francs, which was rejected, because otherwise, after having decided that it was not the proprietor of church property, it would thus have again been admitted to be so. It then sought every means of impeding the operations of the municipalities. In the south, it raised catholics against protestants; in the pulpit, it alarmed consciences; in the confessional, it treated sales as sacrilegious, and in the tribune it strove to render the sentiments of the assembly suspected. It excited as much as possible religious questions for the purpose of compromising the assembly, and confounding the cause of its own interest with that of religion. The abuses and inutility of monastic vows were at this period admitted by every one, even by the clergy. At their abolition on the 13th of February, 1790, the bishop of Nancy proposed incidentally and perfidiously that the catholic religion alone should have a public worship. The assembly were indignant at the motives that suggested such a proposition, and it was abandoned. But the same motion was again brought forward in another sitting, and after stormy debates the assembly declared that from respect to the Supreme Being and the catholic religion, the only one supported at the expense of the state, it conceived it ought not to decide upon the question submitted to it.