Some Jesuits and others published lengthy writings, in which, under pretence of interpreting the Edict of Nantes, they demolished it piecemeal. The more skilful they showed themselves in the invention of new sophisms against the execution of the law, the more they thought they deserved from their church. The priest Soulier, author of an _Explanation of the Edict of Nantes_, unintentionally confesses this in his dedicatory epistle to the bishops: “I shall esteem myself too fortunate, sirs,” says he, “if I can second the zeal of your daily labours, after the example of the greatest of kings, for the extinction of heresy.” The explanation was at all events designed, right or wrong, to extinguish heresy. These writings were sent to the council, to the parliaments, to the procurators-general, and the intendants, who, without approving the whole of their contents, furnished themselves with weapons out of these great arsenals of the Jesuit school, and never failed to use them when they could do so with any decency. In 1663 the clergy obtained, at the instance of their General Assembly, a declaration against those who _relapsed_, that is to say, against those who returned to the Reformed communion, after having abjured. “These people could no longer pretend,” the preamble stated, “to the benefit of the Edict of Nantes, since they had renounced, and by returning to the heresy, had incurred the guilt of the enormous crime of profanation against the sacred mysteries of the (Roman) Catholic religion.” The ordinance consequently pronounced against them the penalty of perpetual banishment. This declaration is regarded by Rulhières, and other historians, as the first direct attack upon the Edict of Nantes, and the first decisive step in the path of revocation. There were at that time a certain number of individuals, who went from the Reformed to the (Roman) Catholic communion, without well knowing why, and without any serious intention of remaining. Some gave way to threats, others to momentary seductions, others to weakness, or the natural inconstancy of their minds. It was, in the first place, a great error, to admit them so lightly into the Church of Rome, and some Jansenist bishops, more scrupulous than the others, complained of it. It was a still greater error to seek to retain them there by terror. But the clergy went farther; they set themselves to invent, and to create backsliders. Attendance at mass for three or four Sundays, the blessing of a priest in a mixed marriage, a confidential avowal to a (Roman) Catholic of a leaning towards his religion, a conjecture, an appearance, a hearsay, or some mention of abjuring fifteen or twenty years before—all these were transformed into acts of (Roman) Catholicism, and if the pretended convert placed foot again within a heretic place of worship, he was dragged before the tribunals as a relapsed person.