of the Successor of Peter. It may be said with truth, that the memory of Gerson and of the old Sorbonne was by this time simply effaced from the Church of France. The condemnation of Jansenius rested, and rests to this day, upon the peremptory and irreformable decree of Innocent X. The bishops of France, on March 28, 1654, wrote to the Pontiff on the subject of the Jansenist evasion as to the question of fact respecting the propositions. They declared that the Jansenists were endeavouring 'to take away a part of the ancient deposit of faith, the custody of which was entrusted to the See of Peter by Christ, by dishonestly drawing aside the majesty of the Apostolic Decree, to the determination of fictitious controversies.'[1] It is clear that the bishops here recognised the supreme and plenary authority of the Pontiff in all its amplitude of faith, morals, and dogmatic facts.
This was at that time the doctrine of France. In a meeting of the leading Jansenists, held in the Faubourg St. Jacques, on the publication of the Bull of Innocent X., Pascal suggested that he had heard it said that the Pope is not infallible. Arnauld immediately answered, that if they should pursue that line of defence 'they would give good reason to their opponents to treat them as heretics.'[2]
This part of the subject, then, may be summed up in a quotation from Peter de Marca. The Jesuits, in their College in Paris, had maintained in 1661 a thesis affirming the infallibility of the Pope in faith, morals, and dogmatic facts. The Jansenists endeavoured to
