There was drawn up a formula or formulary of adhesion, "turned with some skill," says Madame Perier her biography of Jacqueline Pascal, and in such a way that subscription did not bind the conscience, as theologians most scrupulous about the truth affirmed; the nuns of Port-Royal, however, refused to subscribe.

"What hinders us," said a letter to Mother Angelica de St.Jean from Jacqueline Pascal, Sister St.Euphemia in religion, "what hinders all the ecclesiastics who recognize the truth, to reply, when the formulary is presented to them to subscribe, 'I know the respect I owe the bishops, but my conscience does not permit me to subscribe that a thing is in a book in which I have not seen it,' and after that wait for what will happen?
What have we to fear?
Banishment and dispersion for the nuns, seizure of temporalities, imprisonment and death, if you will; but is not that our glory, and should it not be our joy?
Let us renounce the gospel or follow the maxims of the gospel, and deem ourselves happy to suffer somewhat for righteousness' sake.

I know that it is not for daughters to defend the truth, though one might say, unfortunately, that since the bishops have the courage of daughters, the daughters must have the courage of bishops; but, if it is not for us to defend the truth, it is for us to die for the truth, and suffer everything rather than abandon it." Jacqueline subscribed, divided between her instinctive repugnance and her desire to show herself a "humble daughter of the Catholic church." "It is all we can concede," she said; "for the rest, come what may, poverty, dispersion, imprisonment, death, all this seems to me nothing in comparison with the anguish in which I should pass the remainder of my life if I had been wretch enough to make a covenant with death on so excellent an occasion of paying to God the vows of fidelity which our lips have pronounced." "Her health was so shaken by the shock which all this business caused her," writes Madame Prier, "that she fell dangerously ill, and died soon after." "Think not, I beg of you, my father," she wrote to M.Arnauld, "firm as I may appear, that nature does not greatly apprehend all the consequences of this; but I hope that grace will sustain me, and it seems to me as if I feel it." "The king does all he wills," Madame de Guemenee had said to M.Le Tellier, whom she was trying to soften towards Port-Royal; "he makes princes of the blood, he makes archbishops and bishops, and he will make martyrs likewise." Jacqueline Pascal was "the first victim" of the formulary.
She was not the only one.

"It will not stop there," said the king, to whom it was announced that the daughters of Port-Royal consented to sign the formulary on condition only of giving an explanation of their conduct.

Cardinal de Retz had at last sent in his resignation.