[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.