"It is the abominable testimony of your convulsions," he cries, "that has overthrown the testimony of miracles.

It is the fatuous audacity with which your fanatics have confronted persecution, that has annihilated the evidence of the martyrs.

It is your declamations against sovereign pontiffs, against bishops, against all the orders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, that have covered priest, altar, and creed with opprobrium.

If the pope, the bishops, the priests, the simple faithful, the whole church, if its mysteries, its sacraments, its temples, its ceremonies, have fallen into contempt, yours, yours, is the handiwork."[130] Bourdaloue more than half a century before had taunted the free-thinkers of his day with falseness and inconsistency in taking sides with the Jansenists, whose superstitions they notoriously held in open contempt.
The motive for the alliance was tolerably obvious.

The Jansenists, apart from their theology, were above all else the representatives of opposition to authority.