The quarrel of Molinists and Jansenists, from a question of theology, grew into a question of human liberty.[131] Circumstances had now changed.

The free-thinkers were becoming strong enough to represent opposition to authority on their own principles and in their own persons.

Diderot's vigorous remonstrance with the bishop of Auxerre incidentally marks for us the definite rupture of philosophic sympathy for the Jansenist champions.

"It is your disputatiousness," he said, "which within the last forty years has made far more unbelievers than all the productions of philosophy." As we cannot too clearly realise, it was the flagrant social incompetence of the church which brought what they called Philosophy, that is to say Liberalism, into vogue and power.

Locke's Essay had been translated in 1700, but it had made no mark, and as late as 1725 the first edition of the translation remained unsold.