“No work has ever received a more thorough, comprehensive, and conscientious examination. During a term of three years, a group of the most able theologians in Rome, representatives of the several schools of doctrine and of ecclesiastical thought, gave their labour to this examination. The examiners included Le Drou from the Augustinians, the master of the palace and the secretary of the Index Congregation from the Thomists, Palermo Santelia from the Scotists, Alfaro, for the Jesuits, the Bishop of Lipari, a Benedictine, for the school of Anselm, Castelli for the mission orders, etc.” Writing to Fénelon after the publication of the Bull, Daubenton says: “Everybody appears to have taken action to prevent this Bull from being given out. A number of the cardinals have represented that there was risk of serious dissension in the Church. The Pope remained firm in his decision to meet the wishes of the King. The Bull is finally accepted by the cardinals only after a bitter contest. The Dominican cardinal, Ferrari, felt at one time assured that he would be able to prevent the publication.”[232] Gieseler points out[233] that the one hundred and one propositions include a number for which conclusive authority can be found in the Scriptures themselves, while others are taken directly from the writings of St. Augustine and of others of the Fathers. The Bull fails to make clear, he says, the sense in which these are erroneous or the grounds on which they are to be condemned. Fénelon, who was much pleased at the publication of the Bull, writes that “the fear of a possibly unjust excommunication ought not to be permitted to deter us from doing our direct duty; but if the excommunication constitutes an injustice only in the conception of the person concerned and the duty is but putative or imaginary, or there is at least good ground for doubt in regard to it, then is the proposition false, and all the more dangerous because it bears the appearance of truth.” The Jesuit Yves André (†1764) writes[234]: “I perceive here propositions which are bad in purpose and in conclusion, grouped together with others which represent manifest truths. These two classes are condemned together with a long string of invectives and no explanation is vouchsafed to us as to the varying grounds for the condemnation of statements which differ materially from each other.” The Bull was referred by Louis XIV to a commission of bishops which decided that it should be published accompanied by a pastoral letter presenting explanations of the essential matters in question.