his surprise at what he has come to learn of the character of the disputes dividing the Sorbonne:—
“We have been imposed upon,” he says. “It was only yesterday that I was undeceived. Until then I had thought that the disputes of the Sorbonne were really important, and deeply affected the interests of religion. The frequent convocation of an assembly so illustrious as that of the Theological Faculty of Paris, attended by so many extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances, induced such high expectations that one could not help believing the business to page 118be of extraordinary importance. You will be much surprised, however, when you learn from this letter the upshot of the grand demonstration. I can explain the matter in a few words, having made myself perfectly master of it.”
Two questions, he says, were under examination—“the one a question of fact, the other a question of right.”
He explains the question of fact as consisting in the point whether M. Arnauld was guilty of temerity in expressing his doubts as to the propositions being in Jansen’s book after the bishops had declared that they were. No fewer than seventy-one doctors undertook his defence, maintaining that all that could reasonably be asked of him was to say that “he had not been able to find them, but that if they were in the book, he condemned them there.”