Clement XIII, feeling himself powerful enough to resist this decree, endeavored, as the friend of the Jesuits, to break its force by issuing a counter decree of his own. At this point it is worthy of remark that the Parliamentary decree had reference to temporal affairs, and did not, in any way, interfere with the religious faith of the Church, which the French Christians continued to maintain according to their traditions and teachings. The decree of Clement XIII, therefore, was the assertion upon his part of the pontifical right to dictate the temporal policy of France. He explicitly asserted this by affixing his papal "curse" upon all who obeyed the decree of the Parliament, and by declaring it to be "null, inefficacious, invalid, and entirely destitute of all lawful effect," and by releasing all who had sworn to observe it from the obligation of their oaths.[128] In the face of this pontifical mandate, however, the decree of Parliament was executed, and four thousand Jesuits were driven out of Paris. Clement XIII was incensed at this, and issued a formal bull in praise of the Jesuits and in denunciation of their opposers. The Parliament suppressed this bull, and refused to permit it to be printed in France. The Parliament of Aix went even further, by having it "torn up by the executioner and publicly burned," and by inviting Louis XV "to avenge himself on the court of Rome and the pope."[129] The King of France, however, was weak enough to suffer himself to be prevailed upon to allow a Synod of the clergy to be convened, under pretense of putting an end to "the disputes between the civil and religious powers," as if such a thing were then possible without submission to Jesuit dictation, backed as the society was by an irritable and impracticable pope, who had vainly supposed himself powerful enough to check the tide of indignation then beating upon the Jesuits. Impressed by the opinions and policy of Clement XIII, this Synod adopted a course favorable to the Jesuits by endeavoring to change the issue, so as to conceal the real question. With the view of making it appear that the Church itself, and even Christianity, was in danger, they fulminated anathemas against the works of the French philosophers--of Bayle, of Helvetius, of Rousseau, of Voltaire, and of the Encyclopædists--thereby furnishing arguments which have ever since done Jesuit service by misleading the unwary into the belief that Christianity and Jesuitism are of synonymous meaning, and that the destruction of the latter would be the death of the former. They, moreover, tried to favor the Jesuits by declaring "that the Church alone had the right to teach and instruct children; that it alone could judge in matters of doctrine, and fix the degree of submission which was due to them," and that "the civil authority could in no way go against the Canon law."[130] This assumption of ecclesiastical authority was intended to strengthen the papacy, and