Quesnel: Moral Reflections on the Gospels Vol 1

XV
edified by thern, unless the Jesuits had pursued the
book with so bitter a hatred.
An arret of council was afterwards obtained, from
Louis XIV. in order to suppress the work. This
was in 1711, after it had been forty years before
the world.
At length the Jesuits urged the decrepit and su-
perstitious monarch, through Madame de Maintenon,
to force the court of Rome to enter into a detailed
examination of the book, and thus settle, as they
hoped, the agitated minds of men. Three years
were consumed in details. At last, in 1714, the
bull, known by its first word, unigenitus, was is-
sued, in which 101 propositions were extracted from
<strong>Quesnel</strong>, and specifically condemned as heretical and
dangerous,—a step which, like every other since
the fatal council of Trent, (the band and chain of
Popish errors,) tended to separate the church of
Rome more and more widely from the true foundation
of the Gospel, and to brand upon her forehead the
broadest marks of departure from the faith of Christ.
The spirit of Rome was never more graphically deli-
neated, than in her selecting all the most express
points of the Gospel, and denouncing them, coolly and
avowedly, as heretical and erroneous.
The impression made at the time on the minds
of pious Protestants, is seen in the preface to the
excellent Mr. Henry's Comment on the Gospels,
written just after Europe had been filled with the
conversations which the bull excited. He gives the
following specimen of the propositions :—
" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is the ef-
fectual principle of all manner of good ; is necessary