its hereditary patrimony and confined like him to its sacerdotal
office, exposed to the same dangers, menaced by the same enemies,
rallies around him the same as an army around its general; inferiors
and superiors, they are all priests alike and are nothing else, with a
clearer and clearer conscience of the solidarity which binds them
together and subordinates the inferiors to the superiors. From one
ecclesiastical generation to another,[12] the number of the
refractory, of the intractable and of independents, rigorists or the
lax, goes on decreasing, some, conscientious Jansenists, hardened and
sectarians of the "Little Church," others, semi-philosophers, tolerant
and liberal, both inheriting too narrow convictions or too broad
opinions for maintaining themselves and spreading in the newly founded
society (milieu).[13] They die out, one by one, while their doctrines
fall into discredit and then into oblivion. A new spirit animates the
new clergy, and, after 1808, Napoleon remarks of it, " It does not
complain of the old one, and is even satisfied with it; but, he says,
they are bringing up new priests in a sombre fanatical doctrine: there
is nothing Gallican in the youthful clergy,"[14] no sympathy for the
civil power. After Napoleon, and on getting out of his terrible
hands, the Catholics have good reasons for their repugnance to his
theology; it has put too many Catholics in jail, the most eminent in
rank, in holiness, bishops and cardinals, including the Pope.
Gallican maxims are dishonored by the use Napoleon has made of them.
Canon law, in public instruction and in the seminaries (of the
Catholics), ends insensibly in unlooked-for conclusions ; texts and
arguments opposed to the Pope's authority seem weaker and weaker;
texts and arguments favorable to the Pope's authority seem stronger
and stronger;[15] the doctors most deferred to are no longer Gerson
and Bossuet, but Bellarmin and Suarez; flaws are discovered in the
decrees of the council of Constance; the Declaration of the clergy of