Following the career of the haughty, passionate priest, Lamennais, we can trace the process stage by stage. The constitution (_la Charte_), between which and the monarchy there was an inseparable connection, ensured liberty of religion, on paper at least. But this liberty of religion incensed Lamennais, who knew that one religion alone was the true one. The foolish phrase was then in vogue, that the right to freedom of conscience is the right to be free from conscience. Lamennais and his followers maintained that a man ought to obey his conscience; and this, in their opinion, their opponents did not do. But they forgot that there is a duty which comes before that of obeying one's conscience, namely, the duty of enlightening it. If it be immoral to act against one's conscience, it is not less immoral to manufacture a conscience with the aid of false and arbitrary principles.
In the name of conscience and authority, then, Lamennais published a protest against the irreligion of the state, that is, against its recognition of no confession--what he called "political atheism." He started the cry: The laws of France are atheistical. He went farther. In a famous letter addressed to Bishop Frayssinous, and published in the newspaper _Le Drapeau blanc_, he declared that as the generation now to be brought up was a generation born in blood, hard by the scaffold of Louis XVI. and the altar of the goddess of reason, it could only be saved by Christ, only educated by Christianity. But all education in France was, he maintained, atheistic. "Am I exaggerating, Monseigneur, when I say that there are in France educational institutions, more or less closely connected with the University, where children are brought up in practical atheism and hatred of Christianity? In one of these horrible dens of vice and irreligion thirty of the pupils have been known to approach the table of the Lord, receive the sacred wafer, keep it, and commit a sacrilege which formerly would have been punished by law, namely, use it to seal the letters which they wrote to their parents. ... The influence of the University is producing an ungodly, depraved, rebellious generation."
These indiscreet revelations were very unwelcome to the party in power, who were much annoyed by such attacks on the constitution from a quarter where they had looked for warm support. When Lamennais found that he was treated with coldness and received reprimands instead of thanks, he went a step farther.