[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.