[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.