[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.)