the other hand, as Jansen pointed out, free-will tends to make the average man's estimate of his own powers into the supreme criterion of all that is good and right. God must perforce be satisfied with whatever common sense thinks it fair and reasonable that He should expect. Jansen accordingly denounced free-will as dishonouring to God, and destructive of the higher interests of morality. But, if men threw over common sense, what was to be their guide in life? Jansen answered with his doctrine of Irresistible Grace. This was simply a cumbrous way of saying that God awakens in the righteous heart an intuitive faculty of discerning right from wrong. “This holy taste or relish,” says a follower of Jansen, “distinguishes between good and evil without being at the trouble of a train of reasoning; just as the nature and tendency of a heavy body, let fall from a height, shows the way to the centre of the earth more exactly in a moment than the ablest mathematician could determine by his most accurate observations in a whole day.” That being so, the Jansenist obeyed his Inner Light, and paid little heed to the earth-bound standards of unregenerate common sense. Nor was he much more respectful towards the official standards of the Church. Why should he consult a casuist rather than his Inner Light? Thus the Jesuits saw themselves menaced by a grave revolt. What would become of the confessional if penitents were allowed to act on what they fondly took to be a heaven-sent inspiration? In a twinkling they would be off to some spiritual Wonderland, where no confessor could bring them to book. On the other hand, only preach to them a strong doctrine of free-will, and all these dangers vanished. They would feel bound to disregard their sporadic intuitions, and act only for reasons that would be clearly set out in black and white. Their past performances could then be checked, and their future actions forecast by the priest; and there was small danger of their straying beyond the limits marked out by authority.
Thus within the spiritual sphere free-will led up to Jesuit obedience. But in the secular world this paradox failed to obtain; there free-will was only too ready to come into conflict with the Church. The 15th and 16th centuries had seen the final break-up of the medieval system of reverence for authority and tradition. In art and learning, morals and government, the old walls came crashing down; in the general bankruptcy of authority men were forced to depend on themselves. And the contemporaries of Machiavelli soon learned to take the fullest advantage of this liberty to pursue their own best interests in the way that pleased them best. But if individuals might be guided by self-interest, why should that privilege be denied to associations of men? On the The Papacy and the New Monarchies. ruins of a medieval Christendom, hierarchically organized under the pope, grew up the “new monarchy,” or modern state, owning no law but its own will. Yet the popes laid aside none of their medieval claims, or even their traditional weapons. In 1606 Paul V. laid Venice under an interdict, on the ground that the republic had infringed the immunities of the clergy; the doge replied by threatening with death any one who took any notice of the papal thunders. Thenceforward the thunders continued chiefly on paper. In 1625 Catholic Europe was scandalized by the De Schismate of the Jesuit Santarelli, in which he claimed for the pope an absolute right to interfere in the concerns of secular princes, whenever he chose to declare that the interests of religion were in any way concerned. He could dictate their policy at home and abroad, revise their statute-book, upset the decisions of their law-courts. If they refused to listen he could punish them in any manner he thought fit; in the last resort he could release their subjects from allegiance and head a crusade of Catholic powers against them. These pretensions roused a special burst of indignation in France. There, on the divisions of the wars of religion, had followed an irresistible reaction towards patriotism and national unity. France had suddenly grown to her full stature; like the contemporary England of John Milton, she was become a “noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep.” Even the clergy were swept away by the current, and meant to be patriots like everyone else. “Before my ordination,” said the eminent theologian Edmond Richer, “I was a subject of the king of France: why should that ceremony make me a subject of the pope?” Subjection to the pope implied an Italianization of French religion; and most Frenchmen looked on the Italians as an inferior race. Why, then, should the right to decide ecclesiastical disputes be taken away from their own highly competent fellow-countrymen, and reserved for a set of incapable judges in a foreign land? Germany and Spain might let themselves be bitted and bridled if they chose, but for centuries France had prided herself that, thanks to her Gallican liberties, she stood on a different footing towards Rome.
The Liberties in question were certain ancient rights, whose origin was lost in the mists of time. One forbade papal bulls Gallicanism. to be published in France without the consent of the crown. Another exempted French subjects from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and other Roman tribunals—such as the Index of Prohibited Books. In the 17th century such immunities were all the more valuable since French statesmen found themselves in an awkward position. The great aim of Henry IV. and Richelieu was to exalt France at the expense of Vienna and Madrid. But Madrid and Vienna were the official champions of the papacy; hence to make war on them was indirectly to make war on the pope. This was enough to trouble the consciences of many excellent men; and it became necessary to devise a compromise that should set their minds at rest, by showing them that they could be at once good citizens and good Catholics. This compromise is known as Gallicanism. In the hands of Bossuet and other eminent divines it was developed along both theological and political lines. Theological Gallicanism refused to recognize papal decisions on questions of doctrine, until they had been ratified by the bishops of France. Political Gallicanism maintained that lawful sovereigns held their power directly of God, and not mediately through the pope. Hence no amount of misgovernment, or neglect of Catholic interests, could justify Rome in interfering with them. In other words, Bossuet only answered Santarelli by setting up the divine right of kings. However, this dogma by no means scandalized the subjects of Louis XIV., for the worship of the sovereign was one of their most cherished instincts. And Louis's ecclesiastical policy flattered their national pride. He introduced no theological novelties; all he did was to insist that, in matters of administration, he would be master in his own house. He supported pope and bishops so long as they took their marching orders from him. If they refused he was perfectly ready to make war on the one and send the others to the Bastille. It is eminently characteristic of his methods that, just at the same time as he was turning loose dragoons on his Protestant subjects after the revocation of the edict of Nantes (1685), he was employing other dragoons to invade the papal territory at Avignon, to punish Innocent XI. for having refused institution to some of his nominees to bishoprics.
The revocation of the edict of Nantes owes quite as much to the dream of political absolutism, inherited from Richelieu, as to religious bigotry. In the words of Saint-Simon, the Huguenots were “a sect that had become a state within the state, dependent on the king no more than it chose, and ready on the slightest pretext to embroil the whole country by an appeal to arms.” So long as they were powerful, the crown had treated with them; but when once their power began to dwindle, it was certain that the crown would crush them. But during Louis's latter years, when the War of the Spanish Succession had brought a rain of disasters thickly upon him, bigotry got the upper hand. The broken old man became feverishly anxious to propitiate offended Heaven, and save himself another Blenheim or Malplaquet, by exterminating the enemies of the Church. And his Jesuit confessors had no doubt
