not to send the Parliament a second time to the Faculty, and not to exhibit a great manifestation of authority, he insists that public opinion must be managed, and an appearance of liberty must be left to the Sorbonne. He then goes on in the following: 'It is not altogether without pretext to think it strange that the Faculty should complain of the form of the king's Edict, and of the new submission, and of the Chancellor of the Church of Paris, and finally of the obligation to teach a doctrine, when declared by an assembly of the clergy, of whom the greater part would change with all their heart to-morrow, if they were allowed to do so. But, after all, no one was wanting in respect to the Edict of the King,' &c.[1]
On the 16th of June, at six in the morning, an usher brought an order of the Parliament, forbidding the Faculty to assemble, or to deliberate, and commanding a certain number to appear in the Parliament, at the bar of the ushers, at seven o'clock. When they arrived, the First President addressed them, calling them a cabal, unworthy of confidence and of the marks of esteem with which they had been honoured.
The Edict, the Declaration of the Clergy, was then registered by command.
On that same day De Harlay wrote to the Chancellor Le Tellier the following letter, which will for ever destroy the illusion that the Four Articles were the free and voluntary expression of the opinion of the Church of France in the seventeenth century. It runs as follows:—
- ↑ Ibid. p. 355.
