authority from above, no man, whatever civil force might lie behind him, could administer with God's approval the services and sacraments of the Church. Beliefs of that kind, founded on conscience, and fixed in immemorial habit, could not be uprooted by any decrees. Even had the Assembly secured the Pope's consent, it seems doubtful whether its scheme would have been finally accepted in the country. Instead of that, it took no steps to conciliate the Papacy, but ostentatiously held itself aloof from Rome, and by various provocative measures showed its intention to set the Pope's authority at defiance. The consequences were immediate and disastrous. The clergy as a whole fought the new scheme at every stage. The Assembly, conscious of the strength of their resistance, endeavoured to overcome it by compelling them all to take an oath to observe the new Civil Constitution. When the clergy procrastinated and refused, the Assembly found itself driven into more stringent measures, and at the end of 1790, obliged either to abandon its position or to take a more aggressive line, it demanded the King's consent to a decree enforcing compliance under penalties of dismissal and prosecution. From that time forward, the Revolution declared war upon the Church, and upon all the devout Catholics who adopted the cause of their pastors. From that time forward, the King, though he yielded to the pressure of the Assembly, gave up all hope of reconciling himself with the principles of the Revolution. From that time forward the Church in France was divided into two camps, the one consisting of those who took the oath and accepted the new system, and including, among a very few prelates and a large number of dispossessed monks, perhaps half of the old clergy of France, the other consisting of those who refused it, and including nearly all the prelates, all the most distinguished names, and most of the secular clergy of the ancient Church. On the one side were the sanctions of the law, the support of the State, and the assistance of all the new civil authorities. On the other side were the commands of the Pope, the sympathies of the great majority of pious Catholics, and the strength derived from conscientious opposition to severity and persecution. Both sides inevitably had their partisans in many towns and villages in France; and the virulence of religious partisanship before long produced, in the South and West, trouble, rebellions and civil war, and still further embittered the divisions, and aggravated the general confusion, which accompanied the Assembly's endeavours to reform and regenerate France.