Page:Guettée papacy.djvu/17

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR.
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there than to he authorized to say mass within the diocese, attaching himself at the same time to an ecclesiastical college as professor, Mgr. Sihour, then Archbishop of Paris, having been apprised of the residence of M Guettée in the capital, invited him to present himself at the episcopal palace, and offered him a chaplaincy with such warmth of manner that he did not feel at liberty to refuse so evident a desire to serve him. In 1851 six volumes of the History of the Church of France had already been published, and the author had received for it the approbation of more than forty of the French bishops. This success caused great uneasiness to the ultramontane party. M. Guettée, it appeared, while so treating his great subject as to win the high suffrages just referred to, manifested so sincere a love of truth that his work became dangerous to a party with whom this was no recommendation. The design was immediately formed of gaining over the author, and accordingly Mgr. Gousset, Archbishop of Rheims, who was at the head of the ultramontane party, made overtures to him, intimating that honors and ecclesiastical preferment would not be tardy in rewarding his unreserved devotion to the ultramontane doctrines. But this dignitary quickly saw that he had to deal with one who could not be brought to traffic with his convictions, nor be intimidated by threats. From this moment began that war against him which issued in his present entire withdrawal from communion with the Church of Rome as a branch of the Catholic Church schismatical in position and corrupted in doctrine. This alienation, however, was gradual, the fruit of his growing convictions and deeper insight into the principles of the complicated and powerful system with which now he had to grapple. The struggle called for all the resources of his thoroughly balanced and severely disciplined mind, as well as of his extensive learning. He saw at first far less clearly than did the ultramontane party, the steady divergence of his views from the Papal doctrine. The Gallican tone that pervaded more and more his History of the Church of France proceeded not from a deliberate point of view from which he wrote, but was the scrupulous and truthful rendering of history by his honest mind, the impartial and logical use of the materials out of which