The first effect of Monsignor Marini's book seemed favorable in covering the retreat of the Church; aided by him, such vigorous writers as Ward were able to throw up temporary intrenchments between the Church and the indignation of the world. But some time later came an investigator very different from wily Monsignor Marini. This man was a Frenchman, M. de l'Epinois. Like Marini, de l'Epinois was devoted to the Church, but, unlike Marini, he could not lie. Having obtained access, in 1867, to the Galileo documents at the Vatican, he published fully all those of importance, without suppression or piously-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another retreat had to be made. And now was made the most desperate effort of all. The apologistic army, reviving an idea which popes and Church had spurned, declared that the pope, _as pope_, had never condemned the doctrines of Kopernik and Galileo; that he had condemned them as a man simply; that therefore the Church had never been committed to them; that they were condemned by the cardinals of the Inquisition and Index, and that the pope had evidently been restrained from signing their condemnation by Providence.[62] Nothing could show the desperation of the retreating party better than jugglery like this. The facts are, that from Pope Urban downward, among the Church authorities of the seventeenth century, the decision was spoken of as made by the pope and the Church. Urban VIII. spoke of that of 1616 as made by Pope Paul V. and the Church, and of that of 1633 as made by himself and the Church.[63]