Those who appealed to them for the settlement of the question, had too much reason to say, as the man in Terence does to his lawyers—“Fecistis probe; incertior sum multo quam dudum.”[[6]]
But this interminable dispute was destined to assume a more popular form, and lead to more practical results. In 1604, two young men entered, as fellow-students, the university of Louvain, which had been distinguished for its hostility to Molinism. Widely differing in natural temperament as well as outward rank, Cornelius Jansen, who was afterwards bishop of Ypres, and John Duverger de Hauranne, afterwards known as the Abbé de St. Cyran, formed an acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship. They began to study together the works of Augustine, and to compare them with the Scriptures. The immediate result was, an agreement in opinion that the ancient father was in the right, and that the Jesuits, and other followers of Molina, were in the wrong. This was followed by an ardent desire to revive the doctrines of their favorite doctor—a task which each of them prosecuted in the way most suited to his respective character.
Jansen, or Jansenius, as he is often called,[[7]] was descended of humble parentage, and born October 28, 1585, in a village near Leerdam, in Holland. By his friends he is extolled for his penetrating genius, tenacious memory, magnanimity, and piety. Taciturn and contemplative in his habits, he was frequently overheard, when taking his solitary walks in the garden of the monastery, to exclaim: “O veritas! veritas!—O truth! truth!” Keen in controversy, ascetic in devotion, and rigid in his Catholicism, his antipathies were about equally divided between heretics and Jesuits. Towards the Protestants, his acrimony was probably augmented by the consciousness of having embraced views which might expose himself to the suspicion of heresy; or, still more probably, by that uneasy feeling with which we cannot help regarding those who, holding the same doctrinal views with ourselves, may have made a more decided and consistent profession of them. The first supposition derives countenance from the private correspondence between him and his friend St. Cyran, which shows some dread of persecution;[[8]] the second is confirmed by his acknowledged writings. He speaks of Protestants as no better than Turks, and gives it as his opinion that “they had much more reason to congratulate themselves on the mercy of princes, than to complain of their severities, which, as the vilest of heretics, they richly deserved.”[[9]] His controversy with the learned Gilbert Voet led the latter to publish his Desperata Causa Papatus, one of the best exposures of the weaknesses of Popery. When to this we add that the Calvinistic synod of Dort, in 1618, had condemned Arminius and the Dutch Remonstrants as having fallen into the errors of Pelagius and Molina, the position of Jansen became still more complicated. Of Arminius he could not approve, without condemning Augustine; with the Protestant synod he could not agree, unless he chose to be denounced as a Calvinist.
But the natural enemies of Jansen were, without doubt, the Jesuits. To the history of this Society we can only now advert in a very cursory manner. It may appear surprising that an order so powerful and politic should have owed its origin to such a person as Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier: and that a wound in the leg, which this hidalgo received at the battle of Pampeluna, should have issued in his becoming the founder of a Society which has embroiled the world and the Church. But in fact, Loyola, though the originator of the sect, is not entitled to the honor, or rather the disgrace, of organizing its constitution. This must be assigned to Laynez and Aquaviva, the two generals who succeeded him—men as superior to the founder of the Society in talents as he excelled them in enthusiasm. Ignatius owed his success to circumstances. While he was watching his arms as the knight-errant of the Virgin, in her chapel at Montserrat, or squatting within his cell in a state of body too noisome for human contact, and of mind verging on insanity, Luther was making Germany ring with the first trumpet-notes of the Reformation. The monasteries, in which ignorance had so long slumbered in the lap of superstition, were awakened; but their inmates were totally unfit for doing battle on the new field of strife that had opened around them. Unwittingly, in the heat of his fanaticism, the illiterate Loyola suggested a line of policy which, matured by wiser heads, proved more adapted to the times. Bred in the court and the camp, he contrived to combine the finesse of the one, and the discipline of the other, with the sanctity of a religious community; and proposed that, instead of the lazy routine of monastic life, his followers should actively devote themselves to the education of youth, the conversion of the heathen, and the suppression of heresy. Such a proposal, backed by a vow of devotion to the Holy See, commended itself to the pope so highly that, in 1540, he confirmed the institution by a bull, granted it ample privileges, and appointed Loyola to be its first general. In less than a century, this sect, which assumed to itself, with singular arrogance, the name of “The Society of Jesus,” rose to be the most enterprising and formidable order in the Romish communion.
Never was the name of the blessed Jesus more grossly prostituted than when applied to a Society which is certainly the very opposite, in spirit and character, to Him who was “meek and lowly,” “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” The Jesuits may be said to have invented, for their own peculiar use, an entirely new system of ethics. In place of the divine law, they prescribed, as the rule of their conduct, a “blind obedience” to the will of their superiors, whom they are bound to recognize as “standing in the place of God,” and in fulfilling whose orders they are to have no more will of their own “than a corpse, or an old man’s staff.” The glory of God they identify with the aggrandizement of their Society; and holding that “the end sanctifies the means,” they scruple at no means, foul or fair, which they conceive may advance such an end.[[10]] The supreme power is vested in the general, who is not responsible to any other authority, civil or ecclesiastical. A system of mutual espionage, and a secret correspondence with head-quarters at Rome, in which everything that can, in the remotest degree, affect the interests of the Society is made known, and by means of which the whole machinery of Jesuitism can be set in motion at once, or its minutest feelers directed to any object at pleasure, presents the most complete system of organization in the world. Every member is sworn, by secret oath, to obey the orders, and all are confederated in a solemn league to advance the cause of the Society. It has been defined to be “a naked sword, the hilt of which is at Rome.” Such a monstrous combination could not fail to render itself obnoxious. Constantly aiming at ascendency in the Church, in which it is an imperium in imperio, the Society has not only been embroiled in perpetual feuds with the other orders, but has repeatedly provoked the thunders of the Vatican. Ever intermeddling with the affairs of civil governments, with allegiance to which, under any form, its principles are utterly at variance, it has been expelled in turn from almost every European State, as a political nuisance. But Jesuitism is the very soul of Popery; both have revived or declined together; and accordingly, though the order was abolished by Clement XIV. in 1775, it was found necessary to resuscitate it under Pius VII. in 1814; and the Society was never in greater power, nor more active operation, than it is at the present moment. It boasts of immortality, and, in all probability, it will last as long as the Church of Rome. It has been termed “a militia called out to combat the Reformation,” and exhibiting, as it does to this day, the same features of ambition, treachery, and intolerance, it seems destined to fall only in the ruins of that Church of whose unchanging spirit it is the genuine type and representative.[[11]]
In prosecuting the ends of their institution, the Jesuits have adhered with singular fidelity to its distinguishing spirit. As the instructors of youth, their solicitude has ever been less to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge than to bar out what might prove dangerous to clerical domination; they have confined their pupils to mere literary studies, which might amuse without awakening their minds, and make them subtle dialecticians without disturbing a single prejudice of the dark ages. As missionaries, they have been much more industrious and successful in the manual labor of baptizing all nations than in teaching them the Gospel.[[12]] As theologians, they have uniformly preferred the views of Molina; regarding these, if not as more agreeable to Scripture and right reason, at least (to use the language of a late writer) as “more consonant with the common sense and natural feelings of mankind.”[[13]] As controversialists, they were the decided foes of all reform and all reformers, from within or without the Church. As moralists, they cultivated, as might be expected, the loosest system of casuistry, to qualify themselves for directing the consciences of high and low, and becoming, through the confessional, the virtual governors of mankind. In all these departments they have, doubtless, produced men of abilities; but the very means which they employed to aggrandize the Society have tended to dwarf the intellectual growth of its individual members: and hence, while it is true that “the Jesuits had to boast of the most vigorous controversialists, the most polite scholars, the most refined courtiers, and the most flexible casuists of their age,”[[14]] it has been commonly remarked, that they have never produced a single great man.
Casuistry, the art in which the Jesuits so much excelled, is, strictly speaking, that branch of theology which treats of cases of conscience, and originally consisted in nothing more than an application of the general precepts of Scripture to particular cases. The ancient casuists, so long as they confined themselves to the simple rules of the Gospel, were at least harmless, and their ingenious writings are still found useful in cases of ecclesiastical discipline; but they gradually introduced into the science of morals the metaphysical jargon of the schools, and instead of aiming at making men moral, contented themselves with disputing about morality.[[15]] The main source of the aberrations of casuistry lay in the unscriptural dogma of priestly absolution—in the right claimed by man to forgive sin, as a transgression of the law of God; and the arbitrary distinction between sins as venial and mortal—a distinction which assigns to the priest the prerogative, and imposes on him the obligation, of drawing the critical line, or fixing a kind of tariff on human actions, and apportioning penance or pardon, as the case may seem to require. In their desperate attempt to define the endless forms of depravity on which they were called to adjudicate, or which the pruriency of the cloister suggested to the imagination, the casuists sank deeper into the mire at every step; and their productions, at length, resembled the common sewers of a city, which, when exposed, become more pestiferous than the filth which they were meant to remove. Even under the best management, such a system was radically bad; in the hands of the Jesuits it became unspeakably worse. To their “modern casuists,” as they were termed, must we ascribe the invention of probabilism, mental reservation, and the direction of the intention, which have been sufficiently explained and rebuked in the Provincial Letters. We shall only remark here, that the actions to which these principles were applied were not only such as have been termed indifferent, and the criminality of which may be doubtful, or dependent on the intention of the actor: the probabilism of the Jesuits was, in fact, a systematic attempt to legalize crime, under the sanction of some grave doctor, who had found out some excuse for it; and their theory of mental reservations, and direction of the intention, was equally employed to sanctify the plainest violations of the divine law. Casuistry, it is true, has generally vibrated betwixt the extremes of impracticable severity and contemptible indulgence; but the charge against the Jesuits was, not that they softened the rigors of ascetic virtue, but that they propagated principles which sapped the foundation of all moral obligation. “They are a people,” said Boileau, “who lengthen the creed and shorten the decalogue.”
Such was the community with which the Bishop of Ypres ventured to enter the lists. Already had he incurred their resentment by opposing their interests in some political negotiations; and by publishing his “Mars Gallicus,” he had mortally offended their patron, Cardinal Richelieu; but, strange to say, his deadly sin against the Society was a posthumous work. Jansen was cut off by the plague, May 8, 1638. Shortly after his decease, his celebrated work, entitled “Augustinus,” was published by his friends Fromond and Calen, to whom he had committed it on his death-bed. To the preparation of this work he may be said to have devoted his life. It occupied him twenty-two years, during which, we are told, he had ten times read through the works of Augustine (ten volumes, folio!) and thirty times collated those passages which related to Pelagianism.[[16]] The book itself, as the title imports, was little more than a digest of the writings of Augustine on the subject of grace.[[17]] It was divided into three parts; the first being a refutation of Pelagianism, the second demonstrating the spiritual disease of man, and the third exhibiting the remedy provided. The sincerity of Jansen’s love to truth is beyond question, though we may be permitted to question the form in which it was evinced. The radical defect of the work is, that instead of resorting to the living fountain of inspiration, he confined himself to the cistern of tradition. Enamored with the excellences of Augustine, he adopted even his inconsistencies. With the former he challenged the Jesuits; with the latter he warded off the charge of heresy. As a controvertist, he is chargeable with prejudice, rather than dishonesty. As a reformer, he wanted the independence of mind necessary to success. Instead of standing boldly forward on the ground of Scripture, he attempted, with more prudence than wisdom, to shelter himself behind the venerable name of Augustine.
If by thus preferring the shield of tradition to the sword of the Spirit, Jansen expected to out-manœuvre the Jesuits, he had mistaken his policy. “Augustinus,” though professedly written to revive the doctrine of Augustine, was felt by the Society as, in reality, an attack upon them, under the name of Pelagians. To conscious delinquency, the language of implied censure is ever more galling than formal impeachment. Jansen’s portrait of Augustine was but too faithfully executed; and the disciples of Loyola could not fail to see how far they had departed from the faith of the ancient Church; but the discovery only served to incense them at the man who had exhibited their defection before the world. The approbation which the book received from forty learned doctors, and the rapture with which it was welcomed by the friends of the author, only added to their exasperation. The whole efforts of the Society were summoned to defeat its influence. Balked by the hand of death of their revenge on the person of the author, they vented it even on his remains. By a decree of the pope, procured through their instigation, a splendid monument, which had been erected over the grave of the learned and much-loved bishop, was completely demolished, that, in the words of his Holiness, “the memory of Jansen might perish from the earth.” It is even said that his body was torn from its resting-place, and thrown into some unknown receptacle.[[18]] His literary remains were no less severely handled. Nicholas Cornet, a member of the Society, after incredible pains, extracted the heretical poison of “Augustinus,” in the form of seven propositions, which were afterwards reduced to five. These having been submitted to the judgment of Innocent X., were condemned by that pontiff in a bull dated 31st May, 1653. This decision, so far from restoring peace, awakened a new controversy. The Jansenists, as the admirers of Jansen now began to be named by their opponents, while they professed acquiescence in the judgment of the pope, denied that these propositions were to be found in “Augustinus.” The succeeding pope, Alexander VII., who was still more favorable to the Jesuits, declared formally, in a bull dated 1657, “that the five propositions were certainly taken from the book of Jansenius, and had been condemned in the sense of that author.” But the Jansenists were ready to meet him on this point; they replied, that a decision of this kind overstepped the limits of papal authority, and that the pope’s infallibility did not extend to a judgment of facts.[[19]]
The reader may be curious to know something more about these famous five propositions, condemned by the pope, which, in fact, may be said to have given occasion to the Provincial Letters. They were as follows:—