again: 'Wherefore, by these present letters, by the authority delivered to us by Almighty God, we condemn, rescind, and annul whatsoever was done in your assemblies in the matter of the Regale, together with all its consequences, and whatsoever hereafter may be attempted, and we declare the same to be for ever null and void; although, forasmuch as they are in themselves manifestly null, they need no annulment or declaration of this kind.'[1]
To Innocent XI. succeeded Alexander VIII., who in 1688 condemned as temerarious, scandalous, ill-sounding, proximate to heresy, erroneous, schismatical, and heretical, twenty-one propositions, of which one was as follows:—'The assertion of the authority of the Roman Pontiff over Œcumenical Councils, and of his infallibility in questions of faith, is futile, and has been often refuted.'[2]
In 1690 he signed the Constitution Inter Multiplices, but deferred its publication, in the hope that the Court and clergy of France would retract the Gallican propositions. But in January 1691, being on his death-bed, he summoned twelve cardinals and two proton otaries apostolic, and in their presence promulgated the Constitution, in which, after reciting the whole cause, the Pope proceeds as follows:—'We who have been constituted by the Lord to be the vindicators in this world of the rights of the Church, meditating on these things day and night in the bitterness
