Footnotes
[1]. Non quia per nos sancti et immaculati futuri essemus, sed elegit prædestinavitque ut essemus. (De Prædest., Aug. Op., tom. x. 815.)
[2]. De dono Persever. (Ib., 822.)
[3]. Neander, Bibl. Repos., iii. 94; Leydecker, de Jansen. Dogm., 413.
[4]. The question of the middle knowledge is learnedly handled by Voetius (Disp. Theol., i. 264), by Hoornbeck (Socin. Confut.), and other Protestant divines, who have shown it to be untenable, useless, and fraught with absurdity.
[5]. Dupin, Eccl. Hist., 17th cent. 1–14.
[6]. “Well done, gentlemen; you have left me more in the dark than ever.”
[7]. He was the son of a poor artisan, whose name was Jan, or John Ottho; hence Jansen, corresponding to our Johnson, which was Latinized into Jansenius.
[8]. Petitot, Collect. des Mémoires, Notice sur Port-Royal, tom. xxxiii., p. 19. This author’s attempt to fix the charge of a conspiracy between Jansen and St. Cyran to overturn the Church, is a piece of special pleading, bearing on its face its own refutation.
[9]. The followers of Jansen were not more charitable than he in their judgments of the Reformed, and showed an equal zeal with the Jesuits to persecute them, when they had it in their power. (Benoit, Hist. de l’Edit de Nantes, iii. 200.)
[10]. Cæca quadam obedientia.—Ut Christum Dominum in superiore quolibet agnoscere studeatis.—Perinde ac si cadaver essent, vel similiter atque senis baculus.—Ad majorem Dei gloriam. (Constit. Jesuit. pars vi. cap. 1; Ignat. Epist., &c.)
[11]. Balde, whom the Jesuits honor in their schools as a modern Horace, thus celebrates the longevity of the Society, in his Carmen Seculare de Societate Jesu, 1640:—
“Profuit quisquis voluit nocere.
Cuncta subsident sociis; ubique
Exules vivunt, et ubique cives!
Sternimus victi, supreamus imi,
Surgimus plures toties cadendo.”
[12]. Their famous missionary, Francis Xavier, whom they canonized, was ignorant of a single word in the languages of the Indians whom he professed to evangelize. He employed a hand-bell to summon the natives around him; and the poor savages, mistaking him for one of their learned Brahmans, he baptized them until his arm was exhausted with the task, and boasted of every one he baptized as a regenerated convert!
[13]. Macintosh, Hist. of England, ii. 353.
[14]. Macintosh, Hist. of England, ii. 357.
[15]. Augustine himself is chargeable with having been the first to introduce the scholastic mode of treating morality in the form of trifling questions, more fitted to gratify curiosity, and display acumen, than to edify or enlighten. His example was followed and miserably abused, by the moralists of succeeding ages. (Buddei Isagoge, vol. i. p. 568.)
[16]. Lancelot. Tour to Alet, p. 173; Leydecker, p. 122.
[17]. The whole title was: “Augustinus Cornelii Jansenii episcopi, seu doctrina sancti Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanctitate ægritudinæ medica, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses.” Louvain, 1640.
[18]. Leydecker, p. 132; Lancelot, p. 180.
[19]. Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, vol. iii. 143; Abbé Du Mas, Hist. des Cinq Propositions, p. 48.
[20]. Letter xviii. pp. 310–313.
[21]. Witsii Œconom. Fœd., lib. iii.; Turret. Theol., Elenct. xv. quest. 4; De Moor Comment, iv. 496; Mestrezat, Serm. sur Rom., viii. 274.
[22]. I refer here particularly to Arnauld’s treatise, entitled “Renversement de la Morale de Jesus Christ par les Calvinistes,” which was answered by Jurieu in his “Justification de la Morale des Reformez.” 1685, by M. Merlat, and others. Jurieu has shown at great length, and with a severity for which he had too much provocation, that Arnauld and his friends, in their violent tirades against the Reformed, neither acted in good faith, nor in consistency with the sentiments of their much admired leaders, Augustine and Jansen.
[23]. Fontaine, Mémoires, i. 200; Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. 2.
[24]. Lancelot, p. 123.
[25]. Mémoires pour servir a l’Histoire de Port-Royal, vol. i. pp. 35, 57, 142.
[26]. Ib., p. 456. The title of this work was, “The Secret Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament.”
[27]. Sacy, or Saci, was the inverted name of Isaac Le Maitre, celebrated for his translation of the Bible.
[28]. Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. §2.
[29]. We may refer particularly to Petitot in his Collection des Mémoires, tom. xxxiii., Paris, 1824; and to a History of the Company of Jesus by J. Cretineau-Joly, Paris, 1845. With high pretensions to impartiality, these works abound with the most glaring specimens of special pleading.
[30]. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV, t. ii.
[31]. Mémoires de P. Royal, i. 13. Bayle insists that his father had twenty-two children. Dict., art. Arnauld.
[32]. Weisman, Hist. Eccl., ii. 204.
[33]. The title under which the Letters appeared when first collected into a volume was, “Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte, a un Provincial de ses amis, et aux RR. PP. Jesuites, sur la morale et la politique de ces Peres.”
Father Bouhours, a Jesuit, ridicules the title of the Letters, and says he is surprised they were not rather entitled “Letters from a Country Bumpkin to his Friends,” and instead of “The Provincials” called “The Bumpkins”—“Campagnardes.” (Remarques sur la langue Fran., p. ii. 306. Dict. Univ., art. Provincial.)
[34]. Daniel, Entretiens, p. 19.
[35]. Petitot, Notices, p. 121.
[36]. Benoit, Hist. de l’Edit. de Nantes, iii. 198.
[37]. Daniel, Entretiens, p. 11.
[38]. Nicole, Notes sur la xi. Lettre iii. 332.
[39]. Recueil de Port-Royal, 278, 279; Petitot, pp. 122, 123.
[40]. Histoire des Provinciales, p. 12.
[41]. Petitot, p. 124. The eighteenth letter embraces the delicate topic of papal authority, as well as the distinction between faith and fact, in stating which we can easily conceive how severely the ingenuous mind of Pascal must have labored to find some plausible ground for vindicating his consistency as a Roman Catholic. To the Protestant reader, it must appear the most unsatisfactory of all the Letters.
[42]. Prov. Let., p. 340.
[43]. Perrault, Parallele des Anc. et Mod., Bayle, art. Pascal.
[44]. D’Artigny, Nouveaux Mémoires iii. p. 34.
[45]. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., tom. ii. pp. 171, 274.
[46]. D’Alembert, Destruct. des Jesuites, p. 54.
[47]. Bordas-Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, p. xxv. (This was the prize essay before the French Academy, in June, 1842.)
[48]. Nicole, Hist. des Provinciales.
[49]. The names of these unfortunate productions alone survive; 1. “First Reply to Letters, &c., by a Father of the Company of Jesus.” 2. “Provincial Impostures of Sieur de Montalte, Secretary of Port-Royal, discovered and refuted by a Father of the Company of Jesus.” 3. “Reply to a Theologian,” &c. 4. “Reply to the Seventeenth Letter, by Francis Annat,” &c., &c.
[50]. Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litteratur, vol. i. pp. 420–423.
[51]. Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 314–323. Some papers passed between Pascal and his friends on this topic. Pascal committed these on his death-bed to his friend M. Domat, “with a request that he would burn them if the nuns of Port-Royal proved firm, and print them if they should yield.” (Ib., p. 322.) The nuns having stood firm, the probability is that they were destroyed. Had they been preserved, they might have thrown some further light on the opinions of Pascal regarding papal authority.
[52]. Si mes Lettres sont condamnées à Rome, ce que j’y condamne, est condamné dans le ciel. (Pensées de Blaise Pascal, tom. ii. 163. Paris, 1824.)
[53]. “How came you,” said the archbishop to M. Beurrier, “to administer the sacraments to such a person? Didn’t you know that he was a Jansenist?” (Recueil, 348.)
[54]. Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 327–330; Petitot, p. 165.
[55]. Walchii Biblioth. Theol., ii. 295.
[56]. The title of Nicole’s translation, now rarely to be met with, is, Ludovici Montaltii Litteræ Provinciales, de Morali et Politica Jesuitarum Disciplina. A Willelmo Wendrockio, Salisburgensi Theologo. Several editions of this translation were printed. I have the first, published at Cologne in 1658, and the fifth, much enlarged, Cologne, 1679.
[57]. Avertissement, Les Provinciales, ed. 1767. Mad. de Joncourt, or Joncoux, took a deep interest in the falling fortunes of Port-Royal. (See some account of her in Madame Schimmelpenninck’s History of the Demolition of Port-Royal, p. 135.)
[58]. Bayle, Dict., art. Pascal.
[59]. Daniel, Entretiens, p. 111.
[60]. Bayle, Dict., art. Pascal, note K.
[61]. Abbé de Castres, Les Trois Siècles, ii. 63.
[62]. Barbier, Dict. des Ouvrages Anon. et Pseudon.
[63]. Tabaraud, Dissertation sur la foi qui est due au Temoignage de Pascal dans ses Lettres Provinciales, p. 12.—This work, published some years ago in France, contains a complete justification of Pascal’s picture of the Jesuits in the Provincials, accompanied with a mass of authorities. The above sentiments have been introduced into Pascal’s Thoughts. (See Craig’s translation, p. 185.)
[64]. Vie de Bossuet, t. iv. p. 19; Tabaraud, Dissert. sur la foi, &c., p. 43.
[65]. “The shocking doctrine of Jansenius and of St. Cyran, afforded at least as much room for ridicule as the pliant doctrine of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez.” (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 55.)
[66]. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., ii. 367.
[67]. Eichhorn, Geschichte der Lit., i. 426.
[70]. Tabaraud, p. 117; Bord. Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, Append.
[71]. Schlegel, Lectures on Hist. of Lit. ii. 188.
[72]. Letters from Spain, p. 86.
[73]. Macintosh, History of England, vol. ii. 359, note.
[74]. Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litter., vol. i. pp. 423–425; Weisman, Hist. Eccl., vol. ii. 21; Jurieu, Prejugez Legitimes cont. le Papisme, p. 386; Claude, Defence of the Reformation, p. 29.
[75]. Jurieu, Justification de la Morale des Reformez, contre M. Arnauld, i. p. 30.
[76]. A disingenuous attempt has been sometimes made to identify these nefarious maxims with certain principles held by some of our reformers. There is an essential difference between the natural right claimed, we do not say with what justice, for subjects to proceed against their rulers as tyrants, and the right assumed by the pope to depose rulers as heretics. And it is equally easy to distinguish between the disallowed acts of some fanatical individuals who have taken the law into their own hands, and the atrocious deeds of such men as Chatel and Ravaillac, who could plead the authority of Mariana the Jesuit, that “to put tyrannical princes to death is not only a lawful, but a laudable, heroic, and glorious action.” (Dalton’s Jesuits; their Principles and Acts, London, 1843.) The Church of St. Ignatius at Rome is or was adorned, it seems, with pictures of all the assassinations mentioned in Scripture, which they have, most presumptuously, perverted in justification of their feats in this department. (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 101.)
[77]. Taylor, Natural Hist. of Enthusiasm, p. 256.
[78]. De l’Existence et de l’Institut des Jesuites. Par le R. P. de Ravignan, de la Compagnie de Jesus. Paris, 1845, p. 83. Probabilism is the doctrine, that if any opinion in morals has been held by any grave doctor of the Church, it is probably true, and may be safely followed in practice.
[79]. Gilly, Narrative of an Excursion to Piedmont, p. 156.
[80]. Douglas on Errors in Religion, p. 113.
[81]. Anthony Arnauld, or Arnaud, priest and doctor of the Sorbonne, was the son of Anthony Arnauld, a famous advocate, and born at Paris, February 6, 1612. He early distinguished himself in philosophy and divinity, advocating the doctrines of Augustine and Port-Royal, and opposing those of the Jesuits. The disputes concerning grace which broke out about 1643 in the University of Paris, served to foment the mutual animosity between M. Arnauld and the Jesuits, who entertained a hereditary feud against the whole family, from the active part taken by their father against the Society in the close of the preceding century. In 1655 it happened that a certain duke, who was educating his grand-daughter at Port-Royal, the Jansenist monastery, and kept a Jansenist abbé in his house, on presenting himself for confession to a priest under the influence of the Jesuits, was refused absolution, unless he promised to recall his grand-daughter and discard his abbé. This produced two letters from M. Arnauld, in the second of which he exposed the calumnies and falsities with which the Jesuits had assailed him in a multitude of pamphlets. This is the letter referred to in the text.
[82]. The book which occasioned these disputes was entitled Augustinus, and was written by Cornelius Jansenius or Jansen, bishop of Ypres, and published after his death. Five propositions, selected from this work, were condemned by the pope; and armed with these, as with a scourge, the Jesuits continued to persecute the Jansenists till they accomplished their ruin.
[83]. And yet “the question of fact,” which Pascal professes to treat so lightly, became the turning point of all the subsequent persecutions directed against the unhappy Port-Royalists! Those who have read the sad tale of the demolition of Port-Royal, will recollect with a sigh, the sufferings inflicted on the poor scholars and pious nuns of that establishment solely on the ground that, from respect to Jansenius and to a good conscience they would not subscribe a formulary acknowledging the five propositions to be contained in his book.—(See Narrative of the Demolition of the Monastery of Port-Royal, by Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck p. 170, &c.)
[84]. The Thomists were so called after Thomas Aquinas, the celebrated “Angelic Doctor” of the schools. He flourished in the thirteenth century, and was opposed in the following century, by Duns Scotus, a British, some say a Scottish, monk of the order of St. Francis. This gave rise to a fierce and protracted controversy, in the course of which the Franciscans took the side of Duns Scotus, and were called Scotists; while the Dominicans espoused the cause of Thomas Aquinas, and were sometimes called Thomists.
[85]. Sorbonique—an act or thesis of divinity, delivered in the hall of the college of the Sorbonne by candidates for the degree of doctor.
[86]. The Jansenists, in their dread of being classed with Lutherans and Calvinists, condescended to quibble on this question. In reality, as we shall see, they agreed with the Reformers for they denied that any could actually obey the commandments without efficacious grace.
[87]. Molinist. The Jesuits were so called, in this dispute, after Lewis Molina, a famous Jesuit of Spain, who published a work, entitled Concordia Gratiæ et Liberi Arbitrii, in which he professed to have found out a new way of reconciling the freedom of the human will with the divine prescience. This new invention was termed Scientia Media, or middle knowledge. All who adopted the sentiments of Molina, whether Jesuits or not, were termed Molinists.
[88]. Pierre le Moine was a doctor of the Sorbonne, whom Cardinal Richelieu employed to write against Jansenius. This Jesuit was the author of several works which display considerable talent, though little principle. His book on Grace was forcibly answered, and himself somewhat severely handled, in a work entitled “An Apology for the Holy Fathers,” which he suspected to be written by Arnauld. It was Le Moine who, according to Nicole, had the chief share in raising the storm against Arnauld, of whom he was the bitter and avowed enemy.
[89]. Father Nicolai was a Dominican—an order of friars who professed to be followers of St. Thomas. He is here mentioned as a representative of his class; but Nicole informs us that he abandoned the principles of his order, and became a Molinist, or an abettor of Pelagianism.
[90]. New Thomists. It is more difficult to trace or remember the various sects into which the Roman Church is divided, than those of the Protestant Church. The New Thomists were the disciples of Diego Alvarez, a theologian of the order of St. Dominic, who flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was sent from Spain to Rome in 1596, to defend the doctrine of grace against Molina, and distinguished himself in the Congregation De Auxiliis. The New Thomists contended for efficacious grace, but admitted at the same time, a sufficient grace, which was given to all, and yet not sufficient for any actual performance without the efficacious. The ridiculous incongruity of this doctrine is admirably exposed by Pascal in his second letter.
[91]. Jacobins, another name for the Dominicans in France, where they were so called from the street in Paris, Rue de St. Jacques, where their first convent was erected, in the year 1218. In England they were called Black Friars. Their founder was Dominick, a Spaniard. His mother, it is said, dreamt, before his birth, that she was to be delivered of a wolf with a torch in his mouth. The augury was realized in the barbarous humor of Dominick, and the massacres which he occasioned in various parts of the world, by preaching up crusades against the heretics. He was the founder of the Inquisition, and his order was, before the Reformation, what the Jesuits were after it—the soul of the Romish hierarchy, and the bitterest enemies of the truth.
[92]. This is a sly hit at the Dominicans for combining with their natural enemies the Jesuits, in order to accomplish the ruin of M. Arnauld.
[93]. Distinguo. “I draw a distinction”—a humorous allusion to the endless distinctions of the Aristotelian school, in which the writings of the Casuists abounded, and by means of which they may be said to have more frequently eluded than elucidated the truth. M. le Moine was particularly famous for these distinguos, frequently introducing three or four of them in succession on one head; and the disciple in the test is made to echo the favorite phrase of his master.
[94]. Cordeliers, a designation of the Franciscans, or monks of the order of St. Francis.
[95]. The Royal Academy, which compiled the celebrated dictionary of the French language, and was held at that time to be the great umpire in literature.
[96]. The edition of 1657 had it, Rendre la Sorbonne meprisable—“Render the Sorbonne contemptible”—an expression much more just, but which the editors durst not allow to remain in the subsequent editions.
[97]. The Dominicans.
[98]. Et la suite fera voir que ces derniers ne sont pas les plus dupes. This clause, which appears in the last Paris edition, is wanting in the ordinary editions. The following sentence seems to require it.
[99]. Il opine du bonnet comme un moine en Sorbonne—literally, “He votes with his cap like a monk in the Sorbonne”—alluding to the custom in that place of taking off the cap when a member was not disposed to speak, or in token of agreement with the rest. The half-hour sand-glass was a trick of the Jesuits, or Molinist party, to prevent their opponents from entering closely into the merits of the controversy, which required frequent references to the fathers. (Nicole, i. 184.)
[100]. “It is certain,” says Bayle, “that the obligation which the Romish Church is under to respect the doctrine of St. Augustine on the subject of grace, in consequence of its having received the sanction of Popes and Councils at various times, placed it in a very awkward and ridiculous situation. It is so obvious to every man who examines the matter without prejudice, and with the necessary means of information, that the doctrine of Augustine and that of Jansenius are one and the same, that it is impossible to see, without feelings of indignation, the Court of Rome boasting of having condemned Jansenius, and nevertheless preserving to St. Augustine all his glory. The two things are utterly irreconcilable. What is more, the Council of Trent, by condemning the doctrine of Calvin on free-will, has, by necessity, condemned that of St. Augustine; for there is no Calvinist who has denied, or who can deny, the concourse of the human will and the liberty of the soul, in the sense which St. Augustine gives to the words concourse, co-operation, and liberty. There is no Calvinist who does not acknowledge the freedom of the will, and its use in conversion, if that word is understood according to the ideas of St. Augustine. Those whom the Council of Trent condemns do not reject free-will, except as signifying the liberty of indifference. The Thomists, also, reject it under this notion, and yet they pass for very good Catholics.” (Bayle’s Dict., art. Augustine.)
[101]. It is a singular fact that the Roman Church, which boasts so much of her unity, and is ever charging the Reformed with being Calvinists, Lutherans, &c., is, in reality, divided into numerous conflicting sects, each sworn to uphold the peculiar sentiments of its founder. If there is one principle more essential than another to the Reformation, it is that of entire independence of all masters in the faith: “Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri.”
[102]. “The famous St. Bernard, abbot of Clairval, whose influence throughout all Europe was incredible—whose word was a law, and whose counsels were regarded by kings and princes as so many orders to which the most respectful obedience was due; this eminent ecclesiastic was the person who contributed most to enrich and aggrandize the Cistercian order.” (Mosh. Eccl. Hist., cent. xii.)
[103]. Thomas Aquinas, a scholastic divine of the thirteenth century, who was termed the Angelic Doctor.
[104]. Augustine.
[105]. Who can help regretting that sentiments so evangelical, so truly noble, and so eloquently expressed, should have been held by Pascal in connection with a Church which denounced him as a heretic for upholding them!
[106]. An ironical reflection on the cowardly compromise of the Jacobins, or Dominicans, for having pledged themselves to the use of the term “sufficient,” in order to please the Jesuits.
[107]. The censure of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne passed against M. Arnauld, and which is fully discussed in Letter iii.
[108]. The Cardinal de Richelieu, the celebrated founder of the French Academy. The Sorbonne owed its magnificence to the liberality of this eminent statesman, who rebuilt its house, enlarged its revenues, enriched its library, and took it under his special patronage.
[109]. The charge of “denying the mystery of transubstantiation,” certainly did not justly apply to the Jansenists as such; these religious devotees denied nothing. Their system, so far as the dogmas of the Church were concerned, was one of implicit faith; but though Arnauld, Nicole, and the other learned men among them, stiffly maintained the leading tenets of the Romish Church, in opposition to those of the Reformers the Jansenist creed, as held by their pious followers, was practically at variance with transubstantiation, and many other errors of the Church to which they nominally belonged. (Mad. Schimmelpenninck’s Demolition of Port-Royal, pp. 77–80, &c.)
[110]. Atroces—“atrocious.” (Edit. 1657.)
[111]. Des plus detestables erreurs—“the most detestable errors.” (Edit. 1657.) Erreurs—“errors.” (Nicole’s Edit., 1767.)
[112]. Horriblement contraire—“horribly contrary.” (Edit. 1657.)
[113]. The meaning of Chrysostom is good, but the expressions of these ancient fathers are often more remarkable for their strength than their precision. The Protestant reader hardly needs to be reminded, that if divine grace can be said to have failed the Apostle Peter at his fall, it can only be in the sense of a temporary suspension of its influences; and that this withdrawment of grace must be regarded as the punishment, and not as the cause, of his own negligence.
[114]. That is, they could more readily procure monks to vote against M. Arnauld, than arguments to answer him.
[115]. The allusions in the text afford curious illustrations of the mode of warfare pursued by the Jesuits of the seventeenth century. The first refers to a comic catechism, in which the simple language of childhood was employed as a vehicle for the most calumnious charges against the opponents of the Society. Pascal refers again to this catechism in Letter xvii. The second device was a sort of school-boy masquerade. A handsome youth, disguised as a female, in splendid attire, and bearing the inscription of sufficient grace, dragged behind him another dressed as a bishop (representing Jansenius, bishop of Ypres), who followed with a rueful visage, amidst the hootings of the other boys. The comedy referred to was acted in the Jesuits’ college of Clermont. The almanacs published in France at that period being usually embellished with rude cuts for the amusement of the vulgar, the Jesuits procured the insertion of a caricature of the Jansenists, who were represented as pursued by the pope, and taking refuge among the Calvinists. This, however, called forth a retaliation, in the shape of a poem, entitled “The Prints of the Famous Jesuitical Almanac,” in which the Jesuits were so successfully held up to ridicule, that they could hardly show face for some time in the streets of Paris. (Nicole, i. p. 208.)
[116]. Vertement—“smartly.” (Edit. 1657.)
[117]. See Letter ii.
[118]. Ces docteurs—“those doctors.” (Edit. 1767.)
[119]. In Nicole’s edition, this letter is signed with the initials “E. A. A. B. P. A. F. D. E. P.” which seem merely a chance medley of letters, to quiz those who were so anxious to discover the author. There may have been an allusion to the absurd story of a Jansenist conference held, it was said, at Bourg-Fontaine, in 1621, to deliberate on ways and means for abolishing Christianity; among the persons present at which, indicated by initials, Anthony Arnauld was ridiculously accused of having been one under the initials A. A. (See Bayle’s Dict., art. Ant. Arnauld.)
[120]. Etienne Bauni, or Stephen Bauny, was a French Jesuit. His “Summary,” which Pascal has immortalized by his frequent references to it, was published in 1633. It is a large volume, stuffed with the most detestable doctrines. In 1642, the General Assembly of the French clergy censured his books on moral theology, as containing propositions “leading to licentiousness, and the corruption of good manners, violating natural equity, and excusing blasphemy, usury, simony, and other heinous sins, as trivial matters.” (Nicole, i. 164.) And yet this abominable work was formally defended in the “Apology for the Casuists,” written in 1657, by Father Pirot, and acknowledged by the Jesuits as having been written under their direction! (Nicole, Hist. des Provinciales, p. 30.)
[121]. Francis Annat was born in the year 1590. He was made rector of the College of Toulouse, and appointed by the Jesuits their French provincial; and, while in that situation, was chosen by Louis XIV. as his confessor. His friends have highly extolled his virtues as a man; and the reader may judge of the value of these eulogiums from the fact, that he retained his post as the favorite confessor of that licentious monarch, without interruption, till deafness prevented him from listening any longer to the confessions of his royal penitent. (Bayle, art. Annat.) They have also extolled his answer to the Provincial Letters, in his “Bonne Foy des Jansenistes,” in which he professed to expose the falsity of the quotations made from the Casuists, with what success, appears from the Notes of Nicole, who has completely vindicated Pascal from the unfounded charges which the Jesuits have reiterated on this point. (Notes Preliminaires, vol. i. p. 256, &c.; Entretiens de Cleandre et Eudoxe, p. 79.)
[122]. When Madame du Valois, a lady of birth and high accomplishments, one of the nuns of Port-Royal, among other trials by which she was harassed and tormented for not signing the formulary condemning Jansenius, was threatened with being deprived of the benefit of the sacraments at the hour of death, she replied: “If, at the awful hour of death, I should be deprived of those assistances which the Church grants to all her children, then God himself will, by his grace, immediately and abundantly supply their instrumentality. I know, indeed, that it is most painful to approach the awful hour of death without an outward participation in the sacraments; but it is better dying to enter into heaven, though without the sacraments, for the cause of truth, than, receiving the sacraments, to be cited to irrevocable judgment for committing perjury.” (Narrative of Dem. of Port-Royal, p. 176.)
[123]. Will it be believed that the Jesuits actually had the consummate hypocrisy to pretend that Pascal meant to throw ridicule on the grace of God, while he was merely exposing to merited contempt their own perversions of the doctrine?
[124]. See before, page 70.
[125]. The Jesuits were notorious for the assiduity with which they sought admission into the families, and courted the confidence of the great, with whom, from the laxness of their discipline and morality, as well as from their superior manners and accomplishments, they were, as they still are, the favorite confessors. They have a maxim among their secret instructions, that in dealing with the consciences of the great, the confessor must be guided by the looser sort of opinions. The author of the Theatre Jesuitique illustrates this by an anecdote. A rich gentleman falling sick, confessed himself to a Jesuit, and among other sins acknowledged an illicit intercourse with a lady, whose portrait, thinking himself dying, he gave with many expressions of remorse, to his confessor. The gentleman, however, recovered, and with returning health a salutary change was effected on his character. The Jesuit, finding himself forgotten, paid a visit to his former penitent, and gave him back the portrait, which renewed all his former passion, and soon brought him again to the feet of his confessor!
[126]. “The doubtsome faith of the pope,” as it was styled by our Reformers, is here lamentably apparent. The “fear and trembling” of the apostle were those of anxious care and diligence, not of doubt or apprehension. The Church of Rome, with all her pretensions to be regarded as the only safe and infallible guide to salvation, keeps her children in darkness and doubt on this point to the last moment of life; they are never permitted to reach the peaceful assurance of God’s love and the humble hope of eternal life which the Gospel warrants the believer to cherish; and this, while it serves to keep the superstitious multitude under the sway of priestly domination, accounts for the gloom which has characterized, in all ages, the devotion of the best and most intelligent Romanists.
[127]. Augustine.
[128]. Imago Primi Seculi.—The work to which Pascal here refers was printed by the Jesuits in Flanders in the year 1640, under the title of “L’Image du Premier Siècle de la Société de Jesus,” being a history of the Society of the Jesuits from the period of its establishment in 1540—a century before the publication. The work itself is very rare, and would probably have fallen into oblivion, had not the substance of it been embodied in a little treatise, itself also scarce, entitled “La Morale Pratique des Jésuites.” The small specimen which Pascal has given conveys but an imperfect idea of the mingled blasphemy and absurdity of this Jesuitical production.
[129]. Isa. xviii. 2.
[130]. The reader is requested to notice how completely the charge brought against the Provincial Letters by Voltaire and others is here anticipated and refuted. (See Hist. Introduction.)
[131]. “It must be observed that most of those Jesuits who were so severe in their writings, were less so towards their penitents. It has been said of Bourdaloue himself that if he required too much in the pulpit, he abated it in the confessional chair: a new stroke of policy well understood on the part of the Jesuits, inasmuch as speculative severity suits persons of rigid morals, and practical condescension attracts the multitude.” (D’Alembert, Account of Dest. of Jesuits, p. 44.)
[132]. Petau was one of the obscure writers who were employed by the Jesuits to publish defamatory libels against M. Arnauld and the bishops who approved of his book on Frequent Communion. (Coudrette, ii. 426.)
[133]. The policy to which Pascal refers was introduced by Matthew Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, who succeeded the famous Francis Xavier in attempting to convert the Chinese. Ricci declared that, after consulting the writings of the Chinese literati, he was persuaded that the Xamti and Cachinchoam of the mandarins were merely other names for the King of Heaven, and that the idolatries of the natives were harmless civil ceremonies. He therefore allowed his converts to practise them, on the condition mentioned in the text. In 1631, some new paladins of the orders of Dominic and Francis, who came from the Philippine Islands to share in the spiritual conquest of that vast empire, were grievously scandalized at the monstrous compromise between Christianity and idolatry tolerated by the followers of Loyola, and carried their complaints to Rome. The result is illustrative of the papal policy. Pope Innocent X. condemned the Jesuitical policy; Pope Alexander VII., in 1656 (when this letter was written) sanctioned it; and in 1669, Pope Clement IX. ordained that the decrees of both of his predecessors should continue in full force. The Jesuits, availing themselves of this suspense, paid no regard either to the popes or their rival orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, who, in the persecutions which ensued, always came off with the worst. (Coudrette, iv. 281; Hist. of D. Ign. Loyola, pp. 97–112.)
The prescription given to the Jesuits by the cardinals, to expose the image of the crucifix in their churches, appears to us a sort of homœopathic cure, very little better than the disease. Bossuet, and others who have tried to soften down the doctrines of Rome, would represent the worship ostensibly paid to the crucifix as really paid to Christ, who is represented by it. But even this does not accord with the determination of the Council of Trent, which declared of images Eisque venerationem impertiendam; or with Bellarmine who devotes a chapter expressly to prove that true and proper worship is to be given to images. (Stillingfleet on Popery, by Dr. Cunningham, p. 77.)
[134]. Lent.
[135]. “According to the rules of the Roman Catholic fast, one meal alone is allowed on a fast-day. Many, however, fall off before the end of Lent, and take to their breakfast and suppers, under the sanction of some good-natured doctor, who declares fasting injurious to their health.” (Blanco White, Letters from Spain, p. 272.)
[136]. Father Antoine Escobar of Mendoza was a Jesuit of Spain, and born at Valladolid in 1589, where he died in 1669. His principal work is his “Exposition of Uncontroverted Opinions in Moral Theology,” in six volumes. It abounds with the most licentious doctrines, and being a compilation from numerous Jesuitical writers, afforded a rich field for the satire of Pascal. The characteristic absurdity of this author is, that his questions uniformly exhibit two faces—an affirmative and a negative;—so that escobarderie became a synonym in France for duplicity. (Biographie Pittoresque des Jesuites, par M. C. de Plancy, Paris, 1826, p. 38.) Nicole tells us that he had in his possession a portrait of the casuist which gave him a “resolute and decisive cast of countenance”—not exactly what might have been expected from his double-faced questions. His friends describe Escobar as a good man, a laborious student, and very devout in his way. It is said that, when he heard that his name and writings were so frequently noticed in the Provincial Letters, he was quite overjoyed to think that his fame would extend as far as the little letters had done. Boileau has celebrated him in the following couplet:—
Si Bourdaloue un peu sévère,
Nous dit, craignez la volupté:
Escobar, lui dit-on, mon père,
Nous la permet pour la santé.
“If Bourdaloue, a little too severe,
Cries, Fly from pleasure’s fatal fascination
Dear Father, cries another, Escoba,
Permits it as a healthy relaxation.”
[137]. Four celebrated casuists.
[138]. Hippocrass—a medicated wine.
[139]. All persons above the age of one-and-twenty are bound to observe the rules of the Roman Catholic fast during Lent. The obligation of fasting begins at midnight, just when the leading clock of every town strikes twelve. (Letters from Spain, p. 270.)
[140]. Ad insequendam amicam. (Tom. ii. tr. 27, part 2, c. 6, n. 143.) The accuracy with which the references are made to the writings of these casuists shows anything but a design to garble or misrepresent them.
[141]. In the technical language of theology, an “occasion of sin” is any situation or course of conduct which has a tendency to induce the commission of sin. “Proximate occasions” are those which have a direct and immediate tendency of this kind.
[142]. “The casuists are divided into Probabilistæ and Probabilioristæ. The first, among whom were the Jesuits, maintain that a certain degree of probability as to the lawfulness of an action is enough to secure against sin. The second, supported by the Dominicans and the Jansenists (a kind of Catholic Calvinists condemned by the Church), insist on always taking the safest or most probable side. The French proverb, Le mieux est l’ennemi, du bien, is perfectly applicable to the practical effects of these two systems in Spain.” (Letters from Spain, p. 277.) Nicole has a long dissertation on the subject in his Notes on this Letter.
[143]. “When one god presses hard, another brings relief.”
[144]. In the twelfth century, in consequence of the writings of Peter Lombard, commonly called the “Master of the Sentences,” the Christian doctors were divided into two classes—the Positive or dogmatic, and the Scholastic divines. The Positive divines, who were the teachers of systematic divinity, expounded, though in a wretched manner, the Sacred Writings, and confirmed their sentiments by Scripture and tradition. The scholastics, instead of the Bible, explained the book of Sentences, indulging in the most idle and ridiculous speculations.—“The practice of choosing a certain priest, not only to be the occasional confessor, but the director of the conscience, was greatly encouraged by the Jesuits.” (Letters from Spain, p. 89.)
[145]. In this extraordinary list of obscure and now forgotten casuistical writers, most of them belonging to Spain, Portugal, and Flanders, the art of the author lies in stringing together the most outlandish names he could collect, ranging them mostly according to their terminations, and placing them in contrast with the venerable and well-known names of the ancient fathers. To a French ear these names must have sounded as uncouth and barbarous as those of the Scotch which Milton has satirized to the ear of an Englishman:—
“Cries the stall-reader, ‘Bless us! what a word on
A title-page is this!’ Why, is it harder, sirs, than Gordon,
Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp?
Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.”
(Milton’s Minor Poems.)
[146]. That is, they were all, in Pascal’s opinion, favorable to the Gospel scheme of morality.
[147]. Luke xi. 41.—Quod superest, date eleemosynam (Vulgate); τα ἐνοντα δότε (Gr.); Ea quæ penes vos sunt date (Beza); “Give alms of such things as ye have.” (Eng. Ver.)
[148]. When Pascal speaks of alms-giving “working out our salvation,” it is evident that he regarded it only as the evidence of our being in a state of salvation. Judging by the history of his life, and by his “Thoughts on Religion,” no man was more free from spiritual pride, or that poor species of it which boasts of or rests in its eleemosynary sacrifices. His charity flowed from love and gratitude to God. Such was his regard for the poor that he could not refuse to give alms even though compelled to take from the supply necessary to relieve his own infirmities; and on his death-bed he entreated that a poor person should be brought into the house and treated with the same attention as himself, declaring that when he thought of his own comforts and of the multitudes who were destitute of the merest necessaries, he felt a distress which he could not endure. “One thing I have observed,” he says in his Thoughts—“that let a man be ever so poor, he has always something to leave on his death-bed.”
[149]. These bulls were directed against gross and unnatural crimes prevailing among the clergy. (Nicolo, ii. pp. 372–376.)
[150]. An allusion to the popularity of the Letters, which induced many to inquire after the casuistical writings so often quoted in them.
[151]. Lenten life—an abstemious life, or life of fasting.
[152]. Prevaricateurs.—Alluding probably to such texts as Rom. iv. 15: “The law worketh wrath; for where no law is, there is no transgression.”—Ubi enim non est lex, nec prevaricatio (Vulg.); or Rom. v. 13, &c.
[153]. The Rules (Regulæ Communes) of the Society of Jesus, it must be admitted, are rigid enough in the enforcement of moral decency and discipline on the members; and the perfect candor of Pascal appears in the admission. This, however, only adds weight to the real charge which he substantiates against them, of teaching maxims which tend to the subversion of morality. With regard to their personal conduct, different opinions prevail. “Whatever we may think of the political delinquencies of their leaders,” says Blanco White, “their bitterest enemies have never ventured to charge the order of Jesuits with moral irregularities. The internal policy of that body,” he adds, “precluded the possibility of gross misconduct.” (Letters from Spain, p. 89.) We are far from being sure of this. The remark seems to apply to only one species of vice, too common in monastic life, and may be true of the conventual establishments of the Jesuits, where outward decency forms part of the deep policy of the order; but what dependence can be placed on the moral purity of men whose consciences must be debauched by such maxims? Jarrige informs us that they boasted at one time in Spain of possessing an herb which preserved their chastity; and on being questioned by the king to tell what it was, they replied: “It was the fear of God.” “But,” says the author, “whatever they might be then, it is plain that they have since lost the seed of that herb for it no longer grows in their garden.” (Jesuites sur l’Echaufaud, ch. 6.)
[154]. It has been observed, with great truth, by Sir James Macintosh, that “casuistry, the inevitable growth of the practices of confession and absolution, has generally vibrated betwixt the extremes of impracticable severity and contemptible indulgence.” (Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 359.)
[155]. Tiers etat.—These were the three orders into which the people of France were divided; the tiers etat or third estate, corresponding to our commons.
[156]. With all respect for Pascal and his good intention, it is plain that there is a wide difference between the duty, illustrated by the apostle from the ancient law, of supporting those who minister in holy things in and for their ministrations, and the practice introduced by the Church of Rome, of putting a price on the holy things themselves. In the one case, it was simply a recognition of the general principle that “the laborer is worthy of his hire.” In the other, it was converting the minister into a shopman who was allowed to “barter” his sacred wares at the market price, or any price he pleased. To this mercenary principle most of the superstitions of Rome may be traced. The popish doctrine of the mass is founded on transubstantiation, or the superstition broached in the ninth century, that the bread and wine are converted by the priest into the real body and blood of Christ. It was never settled in the Romish Church to be a proper propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead till the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century; so that it is comparatively a modern invention. The mass proceeds on the absurd assumption that our blessed Lord offered up his body and blood in the institution of the supper, before offering them on the cross, and partook of them himself; and it involves the blasphemy of supposing that a sinful mortal may, whenever he pleases, offer up the great sacrifice of that body and blood, which could only be offered by the Son of God and offered by him only once. This, however, is the great Diana of the popish priests—by this craft they have their wealth—and the whole of its history proves that it was invented for no other purposes than imposture and extortion.
[157]. Heb. vii. 27.—It is astonishing to see an acute mind like that of Pascal so warped by superstition as not to perceive that in this, and other allusions to the Levitical priesthood, the object of the apostle was avowedly to prove that the great sacrifice for sin, of which the ancient sacrifices were the types, had been “once offered in the end of the world,” and that “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins;” and that the very text to which he refers, teaches that, in the person of Jesus Christ, our high priest, all the functions of the sacrificing priesthood were fulfilled and terminated: “Who needeth not daily as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.” The ministers of the New Testament are never in Scripture called priests, though this name has been applied to the Christian people who offer up the “spiritual sacrifices” of praise and good works. (Heb. xiii. 15, 16; 1 Pet. ii. 5.)
[158]. Treatise 10, p. 474; ib., p. 441; Quest. 32, p. 457.
[159]. Tom. ii. tr. 25. n. 33. And yet they will pretend to hold that their Church is infallible!
[160]. Book of the Hierarchy, p. 611, Rouen edition.
[161]. Op. Mor. p. 1, disp. 2, p. 6. Ferdinand de Castro Palao was a Jesuit of Spain, and author of a work on Virtues and Vices, published in 1631.
[162]. This Letter was revised by M. Nicole.
[163]. In praxi: liv. xxi., num. 62, p. 260.
[164]. De Just., liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n. 79.
[165]. In his book, De Spe, vol. ii., d. 15, sec. 4, 848.
[166]. De Sub. Pecc., diff. 9; Diana, p. 5; tr. 14, r. 99.
[167]. Before the age of Louis XIV. the practice of duelling prevailed in France to such a frightful extent that a writer, who is not given to exaggerate in such matters, says, that “It had done as much to depopulate the country as the civil and foreign wars, and that in the course of twenty years, ten of which had been disturbed by war, more Frenchmen perished by the hands of Frenchmen than by those of their enemies.” (Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., p. 42.) The abolition of this barbarous custom was one of the greatest services which Louis XIV. rendered to his country. This was not fully accomplished till 1663, when a bloody combat of four against four determined him to put an end to the practice, by making it death, without benefit of clergy, to send or accept a challenge.
[168]. Sanchez, Theol. Mor., liv. ii. c. 39, n. 7.
[169]. Escobar, tr. 6, ex. 4, n. 26, 56.
[170]. Francois Amicus, or L’Amy, was chancellor of the University of Gratz. In his Cours Theologique, published in 1642 he advances the most dangerous tenets, particularly on the subject of murder.
[171]. This is true; but in the case of heretics, at least, they found out a convenient mode of compromising the matter. Having condemned their victim as worthy of death, he was delivered over to the secular court, with the disgusting farce of a recommendation to mercy, couched in these terms: “My lord judge, we beg of you with all possible affection, for the love of God, and as you would expect the gifts of mercy and compassion, and the benefit of our prayers, not to do anything injurious to this miserable man, tending to death or the mutilation of his body!” (Crespin, Hist. des Martyres, p. 185.)
[172]. It may be noticed here, that Father Daniel has attempted to evade the main charge against the Jesuits in this letter by adroitly altering the state of the question. He argues that the intention is the soul of an action, and that which often makes it good or evil; thus cunningly insinuating that his casuists refer only to indifferent actions, in regard to which nobody denies that it is the intention that makes them good or bad. (Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, p. 334.) It is unnecessary to do more than refer the reader back to the instances cited in the letter, to convince him that what these casuists really maintain is, that actions in themselves evil, may be allowed, provided the intentions are good; and, moreover, that in order to make these intentions good, it is not necessary that they have any reference to God, but sufficient if they refer to our own convenience, cupidity or vanity. (Apologie des Lettres Provinciales, pp. 212–221.)
[173]. This Letter also was revised by M. Nicole.
[174]. The president referred to was Pompone de Bellievre, on whom M. Pelisson pronounced a beautiful eulogy.
[175]. The Jesuits exemplified their own maxim in this case by the famous bankruptcy of their College of St. Hermenigilde at Seville. We have a full account of this in the memorial presented to the King of Spain by the luckless creditors. The simple pathos and sincere earnestness of this document preclude all suspicion of the accuracy of its statements. By the advice of their Father Provincial, the Jesuits, in March, 1645, stopped payments after having borrowed upwards of 450,000 ducats, mostly from poor widows and friendless girls. This shameful affair was exposed before the courts of justice, during a long litigation, in the course of which it was discovered that the Jesuit fathers had been carrying on extensive mercantile transactions, and that instead of spending the money left them for pious uses—such as ransoming captives, and alms-giving—they had devoted it to the purposes of what they termed “our poor little house of profession.” (Theatre Jesuitique, p. 200, &c.)
[176]. Molina, t. ii., tr. 2, disp. 338, n. 8; Lessius, liv. ii., ch. 20, dist. 19, n. 168.
[177]. Escobar, tr. 3, ex. 1, n. 23, tr. 5, ex. 5, n. 53.
[178]. Molina, l. tom. i.; De Just., tr. 2, disp. 94; Escobar, tr. 1, ex. 8, n. 59, tr. 3, ex. 1, n. 23.
[179]. Tr. 31, c. 9, n. 231.—“Occultæ fornicariæ debetur pretium in conscientia, et multo majore ratione, quam publicæ. Copia enim quam occulta facit mulier sui corporis, multo plus valet quam ea quam publica facit meretrix; nec ulla est lex positiva quæ reddit eam incapacem pretii. Idem dicendum de pretio promisso virgini, conjugatæ, moniali, et cuicumque alii. Est enim omnium eadem ratio.”
[180]. Quoted by Escobar, tr. 3, ex. 2, n. 138.
[181]. Molina, 94, 99; Reginald. l. 10, 184; Filiutius, tr. 31; Escobar, tr. 3; Lessius, l. 2, 14.
[182]. Cellot, liv. viii., de la Hierarch, c. 16, 2.
[183]. “Since all this, a new edition has been printed at Paris, by Piget, more correct than any of the rest. But the sentiments of Escobar may be still better ascertained from the great work on moral theology, printed at Lyons.” (Note in Nicole’s edition of the Letters.)
I may avail myself of this space to remark, that not one of the charges brought against the Jesuits in this letter has been met by Father Daniel in his celebrated reply. Indeed, after some vain efforts to contradict about a dozen passages in the letters, he leaves avowedly more than a hundred without daring to answer them. The pretext for thus failing to perform what he professed to do, and what he so loudly boasts, at the commencement, of his being able to do, is ingenious enough. “You will easily comprehend,” says one of his characters, “that this confronting of texts and quotations is not a great treat for a man of my taste. I could not stand this disagreeable labor much longer.” (Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, p. 277.) We reserve our remarks on the pretended falsifications charged against Pascal, till we come to his own masterly defence of himself in the subsequent letters.
[184]. “Towards the conclusion of the tenth century, new accessions were made to the worship of the Virgin. In this age, (the tenth century) there are to be found manifest indications of the institution of the rosary and crown (or chaplet) of the Virgin, by which her worshippers were to reckon the number of prayers they were to offer to this new divinity. The rosary consists of fifteen repetitions of the Lords Prayer, and a hundred and fifty salutations of the blessed Virgin; while the crown consists in six or seven repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and seven times ten salutations, or Ave Marias.” (Mosheim. cent. x.)
[185]. These are the devotions presented at pp. 33, 59, 145, 156, 172, 258, 420 of the first edition.
[186]. See the devotions, at pp. 14, 326, 447.
[187]. The Jesuits raised a great outcry against Pascal for having, in this letter, as they alleged, turned the worship of the Virgin into ridicule. Nicole seriously undertakes his defence, and draws several distinctions between true and false devotion to the Virgin. The Mariolatry or Mary-worship, of Pascal and the Port-Royalists, was certainly a different sort of thing from that practised in the Church of Rome; but it is sad to see the straits to which these sincere devotees were reduced, in their attempts to reconcile this practice with the honor due to God and his Son.
[188]. Father Daniel makes an ingenious attempt to take off the force of this statement, by representing it as no more than what is done by other societies, universities, &c. (Entretiens, p. 32.) But while these bodies acted in good faith on this rule, the Jesuits (as Pascal afterwards shows, Letter xiii.) made it subservient to their double policy. Pascal’s point was gained by establishing the fact, that the books published by the Jesuits had the imprimatur of the Society; and, in answer to all that Daniel has said on the point, it may be sufficient to ask, Why not try the simple plan of denouncing the error and censuring the author? (See Letter v., p. 117.)
[189]. There is an allusion here to the phrase which is perpetually occurring in the Constitutions of the Jesuits, “Ad majorem Dei gloriam—To the greater glory of God,” which is the reason ostentatiously paraded for almost all their laws and customs.
[190]. If Rome be in the right, Pascal’s notion is correct. The religion of the monastery is the only sort of piety or seriousness known to, or sanctioned by, the Romish Church.
[191]. The Romish distinction of sins into venial and mortal, afforded too fair a pretext for such sophistical conclusions to be overlooked by Jesuitical casuists.
[192]. Francois Garasse was a Jesuit of Angouleme; he died in 1631. He was much followed as a preacher, his sermons being copiously interlarded with buffoonery. His controversial works are full of fire and fury; and his theological Summary, to which Pascal here refers, abounds with eccentricities. It deserves to be mentioned, as some offset to the folly of this writer, that Father Garasse lost his life in consequence of his attentions to his countrymen who were infected with the plague.
[193]. See before, Letter vii., p. 159.
[194]. “An comedere et libere usque ad satietatem absque necessitate ob solam voluptatem, sit peccatum? Cum Sanctio negative respondeo, modo non obsit valetudini, quia licite potest appetitus naturalis suis actibus frui.” (N. 102.)
[195]. “Si quis se usque ad vomitum ingurgitet.” (Esc., n. 56.)
[196]. Op. mor., p. 2, l. 3, c. 6, n. 13.
[197]. Tr. 25, chap. 11, n. 331, 328.
[198]. The method by which Father Daniel evades this charge is truly Jesuitical. First, he attempts to involve the question in a cloud of difficulties, by supposing extreme cases, in which equivocation may be allowed to preserve life, &c. He has then the assurance to quote Scripture in defence of the practice, referring to the equivocations of Abraham which he vindicates; to those of Tobit and the angel Raphael, which he applauds; and even to the sayings of our blessed Lord, which he charges with equivocation! (Entretiens, pp. 378, 382.) Even Bossuet was ashamed of this abominable maxim. “I know nothing” he says speaking of Sanchez, “more pernicious in morality, than the opinion of that Jesuit in regard to an oath; he maintains that the intention is necessary to an oath, without which in giving a false answer to a judge, when questioned at the bar, one is not capable of perjury.” (Journal de l’Abbé le Dieu, apud Dissertation sur la foi qui es due au temoignage de Pascal, &c., p. 50.)
[199]. Esc. tr. 1, ex. 8; Summary of Sins, c. 46, p. 1094.
[200]. “They had their Father Le Moine,” said Cleandre, “and I am surprised they did not oppose him to Pascal. That father had a lively imagination and a florid, brilliant style; he stood high among polished society, and his Apology written against the book entitled ‘The Moral Theology of the Jesuits,’ was hardly less popular than his Currycomb for the Jansenist Pegasus.” “The Society thought, perhaps,” replied Eudoxus, “that he could not easily catch the delicate and at the same time easy style of Pascal. It was Father Le Moine’s failing, to embellish all he said, to be always aiming at something witty, and never to speak simply. Perhaps, too, he did not feel himself equal for the combat, and did not like to commit himself.” (Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, p. 78.)
[201]. “Nec obest alia prava intentio, ut aspiciendi libidinose fœminas.” (Esc. tr. 1, ex. 11, n. 31.)
[202]. Select., p. 2, d. 16, Sub. 7.
[203]. Bauny, Hurtado, Azor, &c. Escobar, “Practice for Hearing Mass according to our Society,” Lyons edition.
[205]. Imago Primi Seculi, l. iii., c. 8.
[206]. Esc. tr. 7, a. 4, n. 135; also, Princ., ex. 2, n. 73.
[207]. The practice of auricular confession was about three hundred years old before the Reformation, having remained undetermined till the year 1150 after Christ. The early fathers were, beyond all question, decidedly opposed to it. Chrysostom reasons very differently from the text. “But thou art ashamed to say that thou hast sinned? Confess thy faults, then, daily in thy prayer; for do I say, ‘Confess them to thy fellow-servant who may reproach thee therewith?’ No; confess them to God who healeth them.” (In Ps. l. hom. 2.) And to whom did Augustine make his Confessions? Was it not to the same Being to whom David in the Psalms and the publican in the Gospel, made theirs? “What have I to do with men,” says this father, “that they should hear my confessions, as if they were to heal all my diseases!” (Confes., lib. x., p. 3.)
[208]. Princ., ex. 2. n. 39, 41, 61, 62.
[209]. John xx. 23: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” All the ancient fathers, such as Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, and Chrysostom, explain this remission of sins as the work of the Holy Ghost, and not of the apostles except ministerially, in the use of the spiritual keys of doctrine and discipline, of intercessary prayer and of the sacraments. (Ussher’s Jesuits’ Challenge, p. 122 &c.) Even the schoolmen held that the power of binding and loosing committed to the ministers of the Church is not absolute, but must be limited by clave non errante, or when no error is committed in the use of the keys.
[210]. In 3 part, t. 4, disp. 32, sect. 2, n. 2.
[211]. Summary of Sins, c. 46, p. 1090, 1, 2.
[212]. Denis Petau (Dionysius Petavius) a learned Jesuit, was born at Orleans in 1593, and died in 1652. The catalogue of his works alone would fill a volume. He wrote in elegant Latin, on all subjects, grammar, history, chronology, &c., as well as theology. Perrault informs us that he had an incredible ardor for the conversion of heretics, and had almost succeeded in converting the celebrated Grotius—a very unlikely story. (Les Hommes Illustres, p. 19.) His book on Public Penance (Paris, 1644) was intended as a refutation of Arnauld’s “Frequent Communion;” but is said to have been ill-written and unsuccessful. Though he professed the theology of his order, he is said to have had a kind of predilection for austere opinions, being naturally of a melancholy temper. When invited by the pope to visit Rome, he replied, “I am too old to flit”—demenager. (Dict. Univ., art. Petau.)
[213]. Reply to the Moral Theol., p. 211.
[214]. Esc., Practice of the Society, tr. 7, ex. 4, n. 226.
[215]. P. 1082, 1089
[216]. Theol. Mor., tr. 4, De Pœnit., q. 13 pp. 93, 94.
[217]. The work ascribed to Pintereau was entitled, “Les Impostures et les Ignorances du Libelle intituló la Theologie Morale des Jesuites: par l’Abbè du Boisic.”
[218]. That is, the sacrament of penance, as it is called. “That contrition is at all times necessarily required for obtaining remission of sins and justification, is a matter determined by the fathers of Trent. But mark yet the mystery. They equivocate with us in the term contrition, and make a distinction thereof into perfect and imperfect. The former of these is contrition properly; the latter they call attrition, which howsoever in itself it be no true contrition, yet when the priest, with his power of forgiving sins, interposes himself in the business, they tell us that attrition, by virtue of the keys, is made contrition: that is to say, that a sorrow arising from a servile fear of punishment, and such a fruitless repentance as the reprobate may carry with them to hell, by virtue of the priest’s absolution, is made so fruitful that it shall serve the turn for obtaining forgiveness of sins, as if it had been that godly sorrow which worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of. By which spiritual cozenage many poor souls are most miserably deluded.” (Ussher’s Tracts, p. 153.)
[219]. These quotations, carefully marked in the original, afford a sufficient answer to Father Daniel’s long argument, which consists chiefly of citations from Jesuit writers who hold the views above given.
[220]. It may be remembered that Diana, though not a Jesuit, was claimed by the Society as a favorer of their casuists. This writer was once held in such high repute, that he was consulted by people from all parts of the world as a perfect oracle in cases of conscience. He is now forgotten. His style, like that of most of these scholastics, is described as “insipid, stingy, and crawling.” (Biogr. Univ., Anc. et Mod.)
[221]. Esc. Pratique de notre Société, tr. 7, ex. 4, n. 91.
[222]. Tr. 8, disp. 3, n. 13.
[223]. Of Trent. Nicole attempts to prove that the “imperfect contrition” of this Council includes the love of God, and that they condemned as heretical the opinion, that “any could prepare himself for grace without a movement of the Holy Spirit.” He is more successful in showing that the Jesuits were heretical when judged by Augustine and the Holy Scriptures. (Note 2, sur la x. Lettre.)
[224]. The Jesuits are so fond of their “attrition,” or purely natural repentance, that one of their own theologians (Cardinal Francis Tolet) having condemned it they falsified the passage in a subsequent edition, making him speak the opposite sentiment. The forgery was exposed; but the worthy fathers, according to custom, allowed it to pass without notice, ad majorem Dei gloriam. (Nicole, iii. 95.)
[225]. Tr. 1, ex. 2, n. 21; and tr. 5, ex. 4, n. 8.
[226]. Shocking as these principles are, it might be easy to show that they necessarily flow from the Romish doctrine, which substitutes the imperfect obedience of the sinner as the meritorious ground of justification, in the room of the all-perfect obedience and oblation of the Son of God, which renders it necessary to lower the divine standard of duty. The attempt of Father Daniel to escape from the serious charge in the text under a cloud of metaphysical distinctions about affective and effective love, is about as lame as the argument he draws from the merciful character of the Gospel, is dishonorable to the Saviour, who “came not to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfil.” But this “confusion worse confounded” arises from putting love to God out of its proper place and representing it as the price of our pardon instead of the fruit of faith in pardoning mercy. Arnauld was as far wrong on this point as the Jesuits; and it is astonishing that he did not discover in their system the radical error of his own creed carried out to its proper consequences. (Reponse Gen. au Livre de M. Arnauld, par Elie Merlat, p. 30.)
[227]. “Nothing on this point,” says Nicole in a note here, “can be finer than the prosopopeia in which Despréaux (Boileau) introduces God as judging mankind.” He then quotes a long passage from the Twelfth Epistle of that poet, beginning—
“Quand Dieu viendra juger les vivans et les morts,” &c.
Boileau was the personal friend of Arnauld and Pascal, and satirized the Jesuits with such pleasant irony that Father la Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV., though himself a Jesuit, is said to have taken a pleasure in repeating his verses.
[228]. In this and the following letters, Pascal changes his style, from that of dialogue to that of direct address, and from that of the liveliest irony to that of serious invective and poignant satire.
[229]. “Religion, they tell us, ought not to be ridiculed; and they tell us truth: yet surely the corruptions in it may; for we are taught by the tritest maxim in the world, that religion being the best of things, its corruptions are likely to be the worst.” (Swift’s Apology for a Tale of a Tub.)
[230]. Prov. i. 26; Ps. lii. 6; Job xxii. 19. In the first passage, the figure is evidently what theologians call anthropopathic, or speaking of God after the manner of men, and denotes his total disregard of the wicked in the day of their calamity.
[231]. In most of the editions, it is “St. Chrysostom,” but I have followed that of Nicole.
[232]. We may be permitted to question the correctness of this interpretation, and the propriety of introducing it in the present connection. For the former, the fathers, not Pascal, are responsible; as to the latter, it was certainly superfluous, and not very happy, to have recourse to such an example, to justify the use of ridicule as a weapon against religious follies. Among other writers, the Abbé D’Artigny is very severe against our author on this score, and quotes with approbation the following censure on him: “Is it possible that a man of such genius and erudition could justify the most criminal excesses by such respectable examples? Not content with making witty old fellows of the prophets and the holy fathers, nothing will serve him but to make us believe that the Almighty himself has furnished us with precedents for the most bitter slanders and pleasantries—an evident proof that there is nothing that an author will not seek to justify when he follows his own passion.” (Nouveaux Mémoires D’Artigny, ii. 185.) How solemnly and eloquently will a man write down all such satires, when the jest is pointed against himself and his party! D’Artigny quotes, within a few pages, with evident relish, a bitter satire against a Protestant minister.
[233]. “Religious,” is a general term, applied in the Romish Church to all who are in holy orders.
[234]. “So far,” says Nicole, “from his having told all that he might against the Jesuits, he has spared them on points so essential and important, that all who have a complete knowledge of their maxims have admired his moderation.” “What would have been the case,” asks another writer, “had Pascal exposed the late infamous things put out by their miserable casuists, and unfolded the chain and succession of their regicide authors?” (Dissertation sur la foi due au Pascal, &c., p. 14.)
[235]. The apologists of the Jesuits attempted to justify this extraordinary illustration, by referring to the use which Augustine and other fathers make of the parable of the good Samaritan who “set on his own beast” the wounded traveller. But Nicole has shown that fanciful as these ancient interpreters often were, it is doing them injustice to father on them the absurdity of Father Garasse. (Nicole’s Notes, iii. 340.)
[236]. Brisacier, who became rector of the College of Rouen, was a bitter enemy of the Port-Royalists. His defamatory libel against the nuns of Port-Royal, entitled “Le Jansenisme Confondu,” published in 1651, was censured by the Archbishop of Paris, and vigorously assailed by M. Arnauld.
[237]. The priests of Port-Royal.
[238]. This is the real question, which brings the matter to a point, and serves to answer all the evasions of the Jesuits. They boast of their unity as a society and their blind obedience to their head. Have they, then, ever, as a society, disclaimed these maxims?—have they even, as such, condemned the sentiments their fathers Becan, Mariana, and others, on the duty of dethroning and assassinating heretical kings? They have not; and till this is done, they must be held, as Jesuits, responsible for the sentiments which they refuse to disavow.
[239]. Prov. xxix. 9.
[240]. This postscript, which appeared in the earlier editions, is dropt in that of Nicole and others.
[241]. Pierre du Moulin is termed by Bayle “one of the most celebrated ministers which the Reformed Church in France ever had to boast of.” He was born in 1568, and was for some time settled in Paris; but having incurred the resentment of Louis XIII., he retired to Sedan in 1623, where he became a professor in the Protestant University, and died, in the ninetieth year of his age, in 1658, two years after the time when Pascal wrote. Of his numerous writings, few are known in this country, excepting his “Buckler of the Faith,” and his “Anatomy of the Mass,” which were translated into English. (Quick’s Synodicon, ii., 105.)
[242]. De Eleemosyna, c. 6.
[244]. See before, [page 140].
[246]. “The Parliament of Paris was originally the court of the kings of France, to which they committed the supreme administration of justice.” (Robertson’s Charles V., vol. i. 171.)
[247]. In most of the French editions, another letter is inserted after this, being a refutation of a reply which appeared at the time to Letter xii. But as this letter, though well written, was not written by Pascal, and as it does not contain anything that would now be interesting to the reader, we omit it. Suffice it to say, that the reply of the Jesuits consisted, as usual, of the most barefaced attempts to fix the charge of misrepresentation on their opponent, accusing him of omitting to quote passages from his authors which they never wrote, of not answering objections which were never brought against him, of not adverting to cases which neither he nor his authors dreamt of—in short, like all Jesuitical answers, it is anything and everything but a refutation of the charges which have been substantiated against them.
[248]. The Church of Rome has not left those whom she terms heretics so doubtfully to “take advantage” of Jesuitical aberrations. She has done everything in her power to give them this advantage. By identifying herself, at various times, with the Jesuits, she has virtually stamped their doctrines with her approbation.
[249]. The reference here is to an affray which made a considerable noise at the time, between Father Borin, a Jesuit, and M. Guille, one of the officers of the royal kitchen, in the College of Compiègne. A quarrel having taken place, the enraged Jesuit struck the royal cook in the face while he was in the act of preparing dinner, by his majesty’s order, for Christina, queen of Sweden, in honor, perhaps, of her conversion to the Romish faith. (Nicole, iv. 37)
[250]. In Prælog., n. 15.
[251]. The doctrines advanced by Lamy are too gross for repetition. Suffice it to say, that they sanctioned the murder not only of the slanderer, but of the person who might tell tales against a religious order, of one who might stand in the way of another enjoying a legacy or a benefice, and even of one whom a priest might have robbed of her honor, if she threatened to rob him of his. These horrid maxims were condemned by civil tribunals and theological faculties; but the Jesuits persisted in justifying them. (Nicole, Notes, iv. 41, &c.)
[252]. It is very sad to see Pascal reduced to the necessity of saluting the founder of the sect which he held up to the scorn of the world, as Saint Ignatius! Ignatius Loyola was a native of Spain, and born in 1491. At first a soldier of fortune, he was disabled from service by a wound in the leg at the siege of Pampeluna, and his brain having become heated by reading romances and legendary tales, he took it into his head to become the Don Quixote of the Virgin, and wage war against all heretics and infidels. By indomitable perseverance he succeeded in establishing the sect calling itself “the Society of Jesus.” This ignorant fanatic, who, in more enlightened times, would have been consigned to a mad-house, was beatified by one pope, and canonized, or put into the list of saints, by another! Jansenius, in his correspondence with St. Cyran, indignantly complains of pope Gregory XV. for having canonized Ignatius and Xavier. (Leydecker, Hist. Jansen. 23.)
[253]. This is rather a singular fact, and applies only to one of the Society’s generals, viz., Vitelleschi, who, in a circular letter, addressed, January 1617, to the Company, much to his own honor, strongly recommended a purer morality, and denounced probabilism. But, says Nicole, the Jesuits did not profit by his good advice. (Nicole, iv., p. 33.) It is true, however, that the Jesuits, during this century, had lost sight of the original design of their order, and of all the ascetic rules of their founders, Ignatius and Aquaviva. “The spirit which once animated them had fallen before the temptations of the world, and their sole endeavor now was to make themselves necessary to mankind, let the means be what they might.” (Ranke’s Hist. of the Popes, iii. 139.)
[254]. Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha), ii. 12.
[255]. City of God, book i. ch. 28.
[256]. See Cujas, tit. dig. de just. et jur. ad l. 3.
[257]. L. 2, c. 9, n. 66, 72.
[258]. L. ii., c. 9, n. 74.
[259]. Treat. i., examp. 7, n. 44.
[260]. In casuistical divinity, a distinction is drawn between the internal and the external tribunal, or forum, as it is called. The internal tribunal, or the forum poli, is that of conscience or the judgment formed of actions according to the law of God. The external tribunal, or the forum soli, is that of human society, or the judgment of actions in the estimation of men, and according to civil law. (Voet. Disp. Theol., iv. 62.)
[261]. Part. 5, tr. 19, misc. 2, resol. 99.
[262]. Doubts 4th and 10th.
[263]. “I am happy,” says Nicole, in a note, “to state here an important fact, which confers the highest honor on M. Arnauld. A work of considerable size was sent him before going to press, in which there was a collection of all the authorities, from Jesuit writers, prejudicial to the life of kings and princes. That celebrated doctor prevented the impression of the work, on the ground that it was dangerous for the life of monarchs and for the honor of the Jesuits that it should ever see the light; and, in fact, the work was never printed. Some other writer, less delicate than M. Arnauld, has published something similar, in a work entitled Recueil de Pieces concernant l’ Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus, par le P. Jouvenci.”
[264]. Surely Pascal is here describing the Church of Christ as she ought to be, and not the Church of Rome as she existed in 1656, at the very time when she was urging, sanctioning, and exulting in the bloody barbarities perpetrated in her name on the poor Piedmontese; or the same Church as she appeared in 1572, when one of her popes ordered a medal to be struck in honor of the Bartholomew massacre, with the inscription, “Strages Hugonotarum—The massacre of the Hugunots!” Of what Church, if not the Romish, can it be said with truth, that, “in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain on the earth?”
[265]. Providing for their consciences—that is, for the relief of conscience, by confessing to a priest, and receiving absolution.
[266]. See Letter xiii., [p. 264].
[267]. Pascal was assisted by M. Arnauld in the preparation of this letter. (Nicole, iv. 162.)
[268]. Quidni non nisi veniale sit, detrahentes autoritatem magnam, tibi noxiam, falso crimine elidere?
[269]. Dicastillus, De Just., l. 2, tr. 2, disp. 12, n. 404.
[270]. M. De Ville, Vicar-General of M., the Cardinal of Lyons; M. Scarron, Canon and Curate of St. Paul; M. Margat, Chanter; MM. Bouvand, Seve, Aubert, and Dervien, Canons of St. Nisier; M. de Gué, President of the Treasurers of France; M. Groslier, Provost of the Merchants; M. de Flèchre, President and Lieutenant-General; MM. De Boissart, De St. Romain, and De Bartoly, gentlemen; M. Bourgeois, the King’s First Advocate in the Court of the Treasurers of France; MM. De Cotton, father and son; and M. Boniel; who have all signed the original copy of the Declaration, along with M. Puys and Father Alby.
[271]. Apology for the Society of Jesus, p. 128.
[272]. First Part, p. 24.
[273]. Tr. 4, q. 22, p. 100.
[274]. Part. 4, p. 21
[275]. That is, the Protestant ministers of Paris, who are called “the ministers of Charenton,” from the village of that name near Paris, where they had their place of worship. The Protestants of Paris were forbidden to hold meetings in the city, and were compelled to travel five leagues to a place of worship, till 1606, when they were graciously permitted to erect their temple at Charenton, about two leagues from the city! (Benoit, Hist. de l’Edit. de Nantes, i. 435.) Even there they were harassed by the bigoted populace, and at last “the ministers of Charenton,” among whom were the famous Claude and Daillé, were driven from their homes, their chapel burnt to the ground, and their people scattered abroad.
[276]. In the first edition it was said to be the Landgrave of Darmstat, by mistake, as shown in a note by Nicole.
[277]. The plan and materials of this letter were furnished by M. Nicole. (Nicole, iv. 243.)
[278]. Jansenius, who was made Bishop of Ipres or Ypres, in 1636. The letters to which Pascal refers were printed at that time by the Jesuits themselves, who retained the originals in their possession; these having come into their hands in consequence of the arrest of M. De St. Cyran.
[279]. The Jesuits must pass through a long novitiate, before they are admitted as “professed” members of the Society.
[280]. Ps. lxxxiii. 16.
[281]. Pp. 96, 4.
[282]. It is hardly necessary to observe, that in this passage the Protestant faith on the supper is not fairly represented. The Reformers did not deny that Christ was really present in that sacrament. They held that he was present spiritually, though not corporeally. Some of them expressed themselves strongly in opposition to those who spoke of the supper as a mere or bare sign. Calvin says: “There are two things in the sacrament—corporeal symbols, by which things invisible are proposed to the senses; and a spiritual truth, which is represented and sealed by the symbols. In the mystery of the supper, Christ is truly exhibited to us, and therefore his body and blood.” (Inst., lib. iv., cap. 17, 11.) “The body of Christ,” says Peter Martyr (Loc. Com., iv. 10), “is not substantially present anywhere but in heaven. I do not, however, deny that his true body and true blood, which were offered for human redemption on the cross, are spiritually partaken of by believers in the holy supper.” This is the general sentiment of Protestant divines. (De Moor, in Marck, Compend. Theol., p. v. 679, &c.)
[283]. Second letter of M. Arnauld, p. 259.
[284]. Ibid., p. 243.
[285]. Frequent Communion, 3d part, ch. 16. Poitrine—that is, the bodily breast or stomach, in opposition to cœur—the heart or soul.
[286]. Ibid., 1st part, ch. 40.
[287]. Theolog. Fam., lec. 15.
[288]. Ibid.
[289]. De la Suspension. Rais. 21.
[290]. Ibid., p. 23.
[291]. Hours of the Holy Sacrament, in Prose.
[292]. Letters of M. de St. Cyran, tom. i., let. 93.
[293]. Ibid.
[294]. Letter 32.
[295]. Letter 72.
[296]. Defence of the Chaplet of the H. Sacrament, p. 217.
[297]. Theol. Famil., lec. 15.
[298]. Ibid., p. 153.
[299]. John Mestrezat, Protestant minister of Paris, was born at Geneva in 1592 and died in May 1657. His Sermons on the Epistle to the Hebrews and other discourses, published after his death, are truly excellent. This learned and eloquent divine frequently engaged in controversy with the Romanists, and on one occasion managed the debate with such spirit that Cardinal Richelieu, taking hold of his shoulder, exclaimed: “This is the boldest minister in France.” (Bayle, Dict., art. Mestrezat.)
[300]. The statement of the Protestant faith, given in a preceding note, may suffice to show that it differs, toto cœlo, from that of Rome, as this is explained in the text. The leading fallacy of the Romish creed on this subject is the monstrous dogma of transubstantiation; the adoration of the host is merely a corollary. Calvinists and Lutherans though differing in their views of the ordinance, always agreed in acknowledging the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, though they consider the sense in which Romanists interpret that term to be chargeable with blasphemy and absurdity.
[301]. Mascar., tr. 4, disp. 5, n. 284.
[302]. Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha).
[303]. Freq. Com., 3 part, ch. 11.
[304]. Eccles. iv. 25 (Apocrypha).
[305]. Jean du Verger de Hauranne, the Abbé de Saint Cyran was born at Bayonne in 1581. He was the intimate friend of Jansenius and a man of great piety and talents, but was seized as a heretic, and thrown by Cardinal Richelieu into the dungeon of Vincennes. After five years’ imprisonment he was released, but died shortly after, October, 11, 1643. By his followers, M. de Saint Cyran was reverenced as a saint and a martyr.
[306]. This Father Jarrige was a famous Jesuit, who became a Protestant, and published, after his separation from Rome, a book, entitled “Le Jesuite sur l’Echaffaut—The Jesuit on the Scaffold,” in which he treats his old friends with no mercy.
[307]. Misérables que vous êtes—one of the bitterest expressions which Pascal has applied to his opponents and one which they have deeply felt, but the full force of which can hardly be rendered into English.
[308]. With regard to this famous assembly at Bourg-Fontaine, in which it was alleged a conspiracy was formed by the Jansenists against the Christian religion, the curious reader may consult the work of M. Arnauld entitled Morale Pratique des Jesuites, vol. viii., where there is a detailed account of the whole proceedings. (Nicole, iv. 283.)
[309]. The Secret Chaplet of the most Holy Sacrament.—Such was the title of a very harmless piece of mystic devotion of three or four pages, the production of a nun of Port-Royal, called Sister Agnès de Saint Paul, which appeared in 1628. It excited the jealousy of the Archbishop of Sens—set the doctors of Paris and those of Louvain by the ears—occasioned a war of pamphlets and was finally carried by appeal to the Court of Rome, by which it was suppressed. (Nicole, iv. 302.) Agnès de St. Paul was the younger sister of the Mère Angélique Arnauld, and both of them were sisters of the celebrated M. Arnauld.
[310]. This refers to the celebrated miracles of “the Holy Thorn,” the first of which, said to have lately taken place in Port-Royal, was then creating much sensation. The facts are briefly these: A thorn, said to have belonged to the crown of thorns worn by our Saviour, having been presented, in March 1656, to the Monastery of Port-Royal, the nuns and their young pupils were permitted, each in turn, to kiss the relic. One of the latter, Margaret Perier, the niece of Pascal, a girl of about ten or eleven years of age, had been long troubled with a disease in the eye (fistula lachrymalis), which had baffled the skill of all the physicians of Paris. On approaching the holy thorn, she applied it to the diseased organ, and shortly thereafter exclaimed, to the surprise and delight of all the sisters, that her eye was completely cured. A certificate, signed by some of the most celebrated physicians, attested the cure as, in their opinion a miraculous one. The friends of Port-Royal, and none more than Pascal, were overjoyed at this interposition, which, being followed by other extraordinary cures, they regarded as a voice from heaven in favor of that institution. The Jesuits alone rejected it with ridicule, and published a piece, entitled “Rabat-joie, &c.—A Damper: or, Observations on what has lately happened at Port-Royal as to the affair of the Holy Thorn.” This was answered in November 1656, in a tract supposed to have been written by M. de Pont Château, who was called “the Clerk of the Holy Thorn,” assisted by Pascal. (Recueil de Pieces, &c. de Port-Royal, pp. 283–448.) It has been well observed, “that many laborious and voluminous discussions might have been saved, if the simple and very reasonable rule had been adopted of waiving investigation into the credibility of any narrative of supernatural or pretended supernatural events said to have taken place upon consecrated ground, or under sacred roofs.” (Natural Hist. of Enthusiasm, p. 236.) “It is well known,” says Mosheim, “that the Jansenists and Augustinians have long pretended to confirm their doctrine by miracles; and they even acknowledge that these miracles have saved them when their affairs have been reduced to a desperate situation.” (Mosh. Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii., sect. 2.)
[311]. Isa. xxviii. 15.
[312]. Isa. xxx. 12–14.
[313]. Ezek. xiii. 23. Pascal does not, either here or elsewhere, when quoting from Scripture, adhere very closely to the original, nor even to the Vulgate version.
[314]. This was the name given to St. Francis de Sales, bishop and prince of Geneva, previously to his canonization, which took place in 1665.
[315]. Serm. 24 in Cantic.
[316]. These two postscripts have been often admired—the former for the author’s elegant excuse for the length of his letter; the latter for the adroitness with which he turns his apology for an undesigned mistake into a stroke at the disingenuousness of his opponents.
[317]. M. Nicole furnished the materials for this letter. (Nicole, iv. 324.)
[318]. Francis Annat, the same person formerly referred to at [p. 102]. He became French provincial of the Jesuits, and confessor to Louis XIV.
[319]. A threat, evidently, of administering to him the Mentiris impudentissime of the Capuchin, mentioned at [p. 310].
[320]. The constitution—that is, the bull of Pope Alexander VII., issued in October 1656, in which he not only condemned the Five Propositions, but, in compliance with the solicitations of the Jesuits, added an express clause, to the effect that these had been faithfully extracted from Jansenius, and were heretical in the sense in which he (Jansenius) employed them. This was a more stringent constitution than the first; but the Jansenists were ready to meet him on this point; they replied that a declaration of this nature overstepped the limits of the papal authority, and that the pope’s infallibility did not extend to a judgment of facts.
[321]. The Five Propositions.—A brief view of these celebrated Propositions may be here given, as necessary to the understanding of the text. They were as follows:—I. That some commandments of God are impracticable even to the righteous, who desire to keep them, according to their present strength. II. That grace is irresistible. III. That moral freedom consists, not in exemption from necessity, but from constraint. IV. That to assert that the will may resist or obey the motions of converting grace as it pleased, was a heresy of the semi-Pelagians. V. That to assert that Jesus Christ died for all men, without exception, is an error of the semi-Pelagians. For a fuller explication of the controversy, the reader must be referred to the Introduction.
[322]. Pascal might say this with truth, for his only relatives being nuns, the tie of earthly relationship was considered by him as no longer existing; and beyond personal friendship, he had really no connection with Port-Royal. There is as little truth as force, therefore, in the taunt of a late advocate of the Jesuits, who says, in reference to this passage, “Pascal was intimately connected with Port-Royal, he was even numbered among its recluses; and yet, in the act of unmasking the presumed duplicity of the Jesuits, the sublime writer did not scruple to imitate it.” (Hist. de la Comp. de Jésus, par J. Cretineau-Joly, tom. iv. p. 54. Paris, 1845.)
[323]. “This book of the Holy Virginity was a translation from St. Augustine, made by Father Seguenot, priest of the Oratory. So far, all was right; but the priest had added to the original text some odd and peculiar remarks of his own, which merited censure. As the publication came from the Oratory, a community always attached to the doctrine of St. Augustine, an attempt was made to throw the blame on those called Jansenists.” (Note by Nicole, iv. 332.)
[324]. “M. Jacques de Sainte-Beuve, one of the ablest divines of his age, preferred to relinquish his chair in the Sorbonne rather than concur in the censure of M. Arnauld, whose orthodoxy he regarded as beyond suspicion. He died in 1677.” (Note by Nicole.)
[325]. This work was entitled “On the Victorious Grace of Jesus Christ; or, Molina and his followers convicted of the error of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians. By the Sieur de Bonlieu. Paris, 1651.” The real author was the celebrated M. de la Lane, well known in that controversy. (Note by Nicole.)
[326]. Réponse a quelques demandes, pp. 27, 47.
[327]. These judgments, or Vota Consultorum, as they were called, have been often printed, and particularly at the end of the Journal de M. de St. Amour—a book essentially necessary to the right understanding of all the intrigues employed in the condemnation of Jansenius. (Note by Nicole.)
[328]. This was Francis du Bosquet, who, from being Bishop of Lodeve, was made Bishop of Montpelier in 1655, and died in 1676. He was one of the most learned bishops of his time in ecclesiastical matters. (Note by Nicole.)
[329]. Cavill, p. 35.
[330]. M. de Marca, an illustrious prelate, who was Archbishop of Toulouse, before he was nominated to the see of Paris, of which he was only prevented by death from taking possession. (Nicole.)
[331]. Nestorian heresy—so called from Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, in the fifth century, who was accused of dividing Christ into two persons; in other words, representing his human nature a distinct person from his divine. There is some reason to think, however, that he was quite sound in the faith, and that his real offence was his opposition to the use of the phrase, which then came into vogue, the Mother of God, as applied to the Virgin, whom he called, in preference, the Mother of Christ.
[332]. This was James Sirmond (the uncle of Anthony, formerly mentioned), a learned Jesuit, and confessor to Louis XIII. He was distinguished as an ecclesiastical historian. (Tableau de la Litt. Fran., iv. 202.)
[333]. The Monothelites, who arose in the seventh century, were so called from holding that there was but one will in Christ, his human will being absorbed, as it were, in the divine.
[334]. See Letter i., [p. 74].
[335]. The persecution here supposed was soon lamentably realized, and exactly in the way which our author seemed to think impossible.
[336]. Cavill, p. 23.
[337]. This postscript, which is wanting in the ordinary editions, appeared in the first edition at the close of this letter. From this it appears that, in consequence of the extreme desire of the Jesuits to discover the author, and their increasing resentment against him, he was compelled to send this letter to Osnabruck, an obscure place in Germany, where it was printed in a very small and indistinct character. The privileges referred to were official licenses to print books, which, at this time, when the Jesuits were in power, it was difficult for their opponents to obtain. Annat had published against the miracles of Port-Royal. Pascal was not permitted to publish in self-defence. At the same period, no Protestant books could be printed at Paris; they were generally sent to Geneva or the Low Countries for this purpose, or published furtively under fictitious names.
[338]. Decrees of the pope.
[339]. The papal constitution formerly referred to.
[340]. The Council of Trent is meant, when Pascal speaks of the council, without any other specification.
[341]. The reader may well be at a loss to see the difference between this and the Reformed doctrine. Some explanations will be found in the Historical Introduction.
[342]. This sentiment was falsely ascribed to Luther by the Council. (Leydeck, De Dogm. Jan. 275.)
[343]. Diego (or Didacus) Alvarez was one of the most celebrated theologians of the order of St. Dominick; he flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and died in 1635. He was brought from Spain to Rome, to advocate there, along with Father Thomas Lemos the cause of the grace of Jesus Christ, which the Jesuit Molina weakened, and indeed annihilated. He shone greatly in the famous Congregation de Auxiliis. (Nicole’s Note.)
[344]. His Treatise passim, and particularly tom. 3, l. 8, c. 20.
[345]. “It may be proper here to give an explanation of the hatred of the Jesuits against Jansenius. When the Augustinus of that author was printed in 1640, Libertus Fromond, the celebrated professor of Louvain, resolved to insert in the end of the book of his friend, who had died two years before, a parallel between the doctrine of the Jesuits on grace, and the errors of the Marseillois or demi-Pelagians. This was quite enough to raise the rancor of the Jesuits against Jansenius whom they erroneously supposed was the author of that parallel. And as these fathers have long since erased from their code of morals the duty of the forgiveness of injuries, they commenced their campaign against the book of Jansenius in the Low Countries, by a large volume of Theological Theses (in folio, 1641), which are very singular productions.” (Note by Nicole.)
[346]. On the Book of Job, lib. viii., cap. 1.
[347]. Surprise is the word used to denote the case of the pope when taken at unawares or deceived by false accounts.
[348]. Lib. i., in Dial.
[349]. De Consid. lib. ii., c. ult.
[350]. Alas! alas!
[351]. I. p. q. 68, a. l.
Transcriber’s Notes
Some inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained.
Itemized changes from the original text:
- [p. ix]: changed “Protestanism” to “Protestantism” (Protestantism, like the primitive Church,)
- [p. xxxiii]:
- changed “Sarbonne” to “Sorbonne” (Expelled from the Sorbonne,)
- changed “be” to “he” (for the eucharist, he insinuated)
- changed “Sarbonne” to “Sorbonne” (expulsion from the Sorbonne,)
- [p. xxxv]: changed “Sarbonne” to “Sorbonne” (before the Sorbonne was in dependence,)
- [p. 94]: changed “perfeet” to “perfect” (the most perfect harmony)
- [p. 103]: added missing quote mark based on context and 1875 Chatto & Windus edition (written in letters of gold.”)
- [p. 104]: changed “terrribly” to “terribly” (I am terribly afraid)
- [p. 110]: changed “nnmber” to “number” (the number of our offences)
- [p. 143]: changed “Filiutus” to “Filiutius” (as Filiutius says.)
- [p. 146]: added missing quote mark based on context and 1875 Chatto & Windus edition (gone into desuetude’)
- [p. 168]: changed “sylllogism” to “syllogism” (a syllogism in due form,)
- [p. 204]: added missing quote mark based on context and 1875 Chatto & Windus edition (than to live well.’)
- [p. 209]: inserted missing opening quote mark (‘if the confessor imposes) based on context as well as 1847 John Johnstone edition, 1875 & 1898 Chatto & Windus editions
- [p. 211]: changed “was” to “has” (who has probed this question)
- [p. 218]: added missing quote mark based on context (sufficient with the sacrament.’)
- [p. 286]: changed “surmont” to “surmount” (to surmount external obstacles)
- [p. 322]: removed extraneous closing quote mark based on context and 1875 Chatto & Windus edition (adored in the sanctuary)
- [p. 340]: removed extraneous closing quote mark based on context and 1875 Chatto & Windus edition (you may profit by my example.)
- [p. 345]: removed extraneous closing quote mark based on context and 1875 Chatto & Windus edition (any more than his book?)
- [p. 347]: changed “M. de l aLane” to “M. de la Lane” based on 1890 Houghton, Osgood And Company edition.
- [p. 349]: added missing closing quote based on context and 1875 Chatto & Windus edition (purgare, sed facere”.)
In the end-of-book publisher’s catalog, some repeated words were indicated by quote marks (”). These were replaced with the repeated word, for formatting reasons.