Hence it is largely, not entirely, true that the best of the prelates were opposed to the Jesuits. It is now known that even Bossuet, who sternly opposed the Jesuits, had his secret amours, and there were, on the other hand, men of ascetic life, if not very clear intelligence (like Vincent de Paul), on the side of the Jesuits. However, the open declaration of so large and powerful a body of the clergy exasperated the Jesuits, and the war of sermons and pamphlets reached a stage of incandescence. Father Nouet denounced Arnauld as "fantastic, melancholic, lunatic, blind, malicious, furious," and showered upon him such concrete epithets as serpent, scorpion, wolf, and monster. Arnauld had ventured to say that sinful ladies must keep away from the Holy Sacrament. But Father Nouet went on to assail the sixteen prelates who had approved Arnauld's book, and this led to his undoing. To their great mortification the Jesuit superiors were forced to disavow and reprimand their preacher, and the Jansenists triumphed. The Jesuits retorted, however, by intrigue at the court, and induced Mazarin and the Queen-Regent to order Arnauld to go and defend his book at Rome. This was a violation of the rights of the Gallican Church, and the university, the Parlement, and the clergy protested so violently that the project had to be abandoned.
St. Cyran had died in the meantime (in 1643) and Arnauld was leader of the growing and powerful body of Puritans. As the next move of the Jesuits at court would be to secure a _lettre de cachet_, and lodge him in the Bastille or Vincennes, he returned to the provinces and the struggle was transferred to Rome. The prelates who had approved Arnauld's book appealed to the Pope in its favour, and a learned theologian was sent to Rome to defeat the manoeuvres of the Jesuits. As a result, after two years of violent discussion, the book was declared free of heresy. The Jesuits, who had declared that thirty propositions in the book were unsound, now concentrated upon an innocent parenthetic phrase in the preface. Arnauld had referred to Peter and Paul as "two chiefs who were really one," and it was claimed that this was an attack on the papacy. After another year of wrangling and intrigue the innocuous sentence was condemned, and the Jesuits proclaimed throughout Europe that they had triumphed.