“We have seen however with astonishment, that “the pope looks on this declaration as an insult “offered to his authority; insmuch that the king, “having nominated to the episcopacy some of those “who were present at this assembly, and who are “as meritorious from their piety and virtue as from “their knowledge and learning, of which they have “on various occasions given proof, he has refused “the bulls, under pretence that they do not make “profession of a sound doctrine. “This refusal which has not the appearance of “reason, does not fail to occasion great scandal, and “to produce irregularities we can scarcely express. “Who could ever suppose that the pope, whom “we have held up to us as the model of sanctity “and of virtue, should remain so wedded to opinions, “and so jealous of the shadow of an imaginary au− “thority, that he leaves the third of the churches of “France vacant, because we are not disposed to ac− “knowledge his infallibility? “Those who imbue the pope with these ideas, “do they imagine they can make us change our “sentiments? and are they so blind, that they do “not perceive we are no longer in those wretched “times, when the grossest ignorance, united to the “weakness of governments, and false prejudices, “rendered the decrees of the pope so terrific, how− “ever unjust they may have been; and, that these “disputes and bickerings, far from augmenting their “power, can only serve to excite enquiry into the “origin of their usurpations, and diminish rather “than encrease the veneration of the people. “We shall say more: the bad use the popes have “made on so many occasions of the authority of “which they are the depositories, in prescribing no “bounds to it but that of their will, has been the “source of the almost innumerable evils with which “the church has been afflicted, and the most speci− “ous pretext for the heresies and schisms which have “sprung up in the last century, as the theologians “assembled by direction of Paul III. honestly con− “fessed, and even, at present, the idea alone of “the infallibility and indirect power, which the com− “plaisance of the Italian doctors confers on the See “of Rome over the * temporal* of kings, is one of “the greatest obstacles which is opposed to the con− “version, not of individuals alone, but, whole provin− “ces; and we cannot too strongly impress, that “these new opinions are no part of the doctrine of “the universal church.... “The thunders of the Vatican have nothing terri− “ble in them; these are transient fires which go out “in smoke, and which do neither ill nor prejudice “but to those who launch them.