Scarce had the battles of Jansenism and Gallicanism been ended, than a new campaign of destruction was inaugurated against the peace and unity of the Church. Born of the confusion of Jansenism, it found a sponsor in Bernard Van Espen, the Flemish canonist, it was introduced to the world by Febronius, and it reached its development under the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II. Until the eighteenth century the student of canon law believed his task fulfilled if he had read diligently the great Code of ecclesiastical law, if he had commented upon the Decretals, and had drawn therefrom conclusions entirely in harmony with the mind of the Church. This mode of procedure seemed altogether too slow and antiquated to Van Espen, Professor in the University of Louvain, who accordingly put forth, between the years 1693 and 1728 a new work upon the laws of the Church, the method of which was startling as its purpose was revolutionary. It was styled the _Universal Ecclesiastical Law_. It was no attempt to study or tabulate the old laws; it was rather an investigation, conducted in a spirit of prejudice, into the origin and authority of the laws by which the Church was governed, and an endeavor to minimize thereby the rights and prerogatives of the Roman See in favor of lesser and more recent human institutions. The new system of Van Espen was taken up with avidity by every student who imagined he had a grievance against the Holy See. It became the order of the day to wander back piously to the primitive days of Christianity, to explore its history for evidences of modern institutions, to seek therein for the organization of the Vatican and the Roman Curia, and not finding them in days of Clement and Cletus, to raise the voice in loud protestation against the novelties introduced by the Popes. They scoured the ages of history to gather up every expression of hostility against the Temporal Power or the institution of the Cardinalate; they recorded scrupulously every complaint against the revenues of the Holy See; they revived the epithets concerning the "superstition, the fanaticism, and the darkness" of the Middle Ages. In a word they framed a system whose watchword was the destruction of the Papal supremacy, the exaltation of episcopal pretensions, and the ultimate domination of the State in the affairs of the Church. _FEBRONIANISM._