_Revue des questions historiques_, 1st April and 1st July, 1889.]

The privileges and immunities which the Church of France enjoyed had
given to her clergy a tone of independence both to the Pope and to the
king. We have seen them accompanying their "free gifts" to the latter by
requests and conditions. Toward the Holy See their attitude had once
been quite as bold. In 1682 an assembly of the Church of France had
promulgated four propositions which were considered the bulwarks of the
Gallican liberties.

(1.) God has given to Saint Peter and his successors no power, direct or
indirect, over temporal affairs.

(2.) Ecumenical councils are superior to the Pope in spiritual matters.

(3.) The rules, usages and statutes admitted by the kingdom and the
Church of France must remain inviolate.

(4.) In matters of faith, decisions of the Sovereign Pontiff are
irrevocable only after having received the consent of the church.

These propositions were undoubtedly a part of the law of France, and
were fully accepted by a portion of the French clergy. But the spirit
that dictated them had in a measure died out during the corrupt reign of
Louis XV. The long quarrel between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, which
agitated the Galilean church during the latter part of the seventeenth
and the earlier half of the eighteenth century, had tended neither to
strengthen nor to purify that body. A large number of the most serious,
intelligent and devout Catholics in France had been put into opposition
to the most powerful section of the clergy and to the Pope himself. Thus