And at Rome. 19. The Jesuits now took the course of calling in the authority of Rome. They pressed Innocent X. to condemn the five propositions, which were maintained by some doctors in France. It is not the policy of that court to compromise so delicate a possession as infallibility by bringing it to the test of that personal judgment, which is of necessity the arbiter of each man’s own obedience. The popes have in fact rarely taken a part, independently of councils, in these school debates. The bull of Pius V., a man too zealous by character to regard prudence, in which he condemned many tenets of Baius, had not, nor could it, give satisfaction to those who saw with their own eyes that it swerved from the Augustinian theory. Innocent was, at first, unwilling to meddle with a subject which, as he owned to a friend, he did not understand. But after hearing some discussions, he grew more confident of his knowledge, which he ascribed, as in duty bound, to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and went so heartily along with the Anti-Jansenists, that he refused to hear the deputies of the other party. On the 31st of May, 1653, he condemned the five propositions, four as erroneous, and the fifth in stronger language; declaring, however, not in the bull, but orally, that he did not condemn the tenet of efficacious grace (which all the Dominicans held), nor the doctrine of Saint Augustin, which was, and ever would be that of the church.
The Jansenists take a distinction. 20. The Jansenists were not bold enough to hint that they did not acknowledge the infallibility of the pope in an express and positive declaration. Even if they had done so, they had an evident recognition of this censure of the five propositions by their own church, and might dread its being so generally received as to give the sanction which no catholic can withstand. They had recourse, unfortunately, to a subterfuge which put them in the wrong. They admitted that the propositions were false, but denied that they could be found in the book of Jansenius. Thus, each party was at issue on a matter of fact, and each erroneously, according at least to the judgment of the most learned and impartial protestants. The five propositions express the doctrine of Augustin himself; and if they do this, we can hardly doubt that they express that of Jansenius. In a short time, this ground of evasion was taken from their party. An Assembly of French prelates in the first place, and afterwards Alexander VII., successor of Innocent X., condemned the propositions, as in Jansenius, and in the sense intended by Jansenius.
And are persecuted. 21. The Jansenists were now driven to the wall: the Sorbonne in 1655, in consequence of some propositions of Arnauld, expelled him from the theological faculty; a formulary was drawn up to be signed by the clergy, condemning the propositions of Jansenius, which was finally established in 1661; and those who refused, even nuns, underwent a harassing persecution. The most striking instance of this, which still retains an historical character, was the dissolution of the famous convent of Port-Royal, over which Angelica Arnauld, sister of the great advocate of Jansenism, had long presided with signal reputation. This nunnery was at Paris, having been removed in 1644 from an ancient Cistertian convent of the same name, about six leagues distant, and called for distinction Port-Royal des Champs. To this now unfrequented building some of the most eminent men repaired for study, whose writings being anonymously published, have been usually known by the name of their residence. Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole, Lancelot, De Sacy, are among the Messieurs de Port-Royal, an appellation so glorious in the seventeenth century. The Jansenists now took a distinction, very reasonable, as it seems, in its nature, between the authority which asserts or denies a proposition, and that which does the like as to a fact. They refused to the pope, that is, in this instance, to the church, the latter infallibility. We cannot prosecute this part of ecclesiastical history farther; if writings of any literary importance had been produced by the controversy, they would demand our attention; but this does not appear to have been the case. The controversy between Arnauld and Malebranche may perhaps be an exception. The latter, carried forward by his original genius, attempted to deal with the doctrines of theology as with metaphysical problems, in his Traité de la Nature et de la Grace. Arnauld animadverted on this in his Réflexions Philosophiques et Théologiques. Malebranche replied in Lettres du Père Malebranche à un de ses Amis. This was published in 1686, and the controversy between such eminent masters of abstruse reasoning began to excite attention. Malebranche seems to have retired first from the field. His antagonist had great advantages in the dispute, according to received systems of theology, with which he was much more conversant, and perhaps on the whole in the philosophical part of the question. This however cannot be reckoned entirely a Jansenistic controversy, though it involved those perilous difficulties which had raised that flame.[735]
[735] An account of this controversy will be found at length in the second volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle.
Progress of Arminianism. 22. The credit of Augustin was now as much shaken in the protestant, as in the catholic regions of Europe. Episcopius had given to the Remonstrant party a reputation which no sect so inconsiderable in its separate character has ever possessed. The Dutch Arminians were at no time numerous; they took no hold of the people; they had few churches, and though not persecuted by the lenient policy of Holland, were still under the ban of an orthodox clergy, as exclusive and bigoted as before. But their writings circulated over Europe, and made a silent impression on the adverse party. It became less usual to bring forward the Augustinian hypothesis in prominent or unequivocal language. |Courcelles.| Courcelles, born at Geneva, and the successor of Episcopius in the Remonstrant congregation at Amsterdam, with less genius than his predecessor, had, perhaps, a more extensive knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity. His works were much in esteem with the theologians of that way of thinking; but they have not fallen in my way.
Limborch. 23. Limborch, great-nephew of Episcopius, seems more than any other Arminian divine to have inherited his mantle. His most important work is the Theologia Christiana, containing a system of divinity and morals, in seven books and more than 900 pages, published in 1686. It is the fullest delineation of the Arminian scheme; but as the Arminians were by their principle free inquirers, and not, like other churches, bondsmen of symbolical formularies, no one book can strictly be taken as their representative. The tenets of Limborch, are, in the majority of disputable points, such as impartial men have generally found in the primitive or Ante-Nicene fathers; but in some he probably deviates from them, steering far away from all that the protestants of the Swiss reform had abandoned as superstitious or unintelligible.
Le Clerc. 24. John Le Clerc, in the same relationship to Courcelles that Limborch was to Episcopius, and like him transplanted from Geneva to the more liberal air, at that time, of the United Provinces, claims a high place among the Dutch Arminians; for though he did not maintain their cause either in systematic or polemical writings, his commentary on the Old Testament, and still more his excellent and celebrated reviews, the Bibliothèques Universelle, Choisie, and Ancienne et Moderne, must be reckoned a perpetual combat on that side. These journals enjoyed an extraordinary influence over Europe, and deserved to enjoy it. Le Clerc is generally temperate, judicious, appeals to no passion, displays a very extensive, though not perhaps a very deep erudition, lies in wait for the weakness and temerity of those he reviews, thus sometimes gaining the advantage over more learned men than himself. He would have been a perfect master of that sort of criticism, then newly current in literature, if he could have repressed an irritability in matters personal to himself, and a degree of prejudice against the Romish writers, or perhaps those styled orthodox in general, which sometimes disturbs the phlegmatic steadiness with which a good reviewer, like a practised sportsman, brings down his game.[736]
[736] Bishop Monk observes that Le Clerc “seems to have been the first person who understood the power which may be exercised over literature by a reviewer.” Life of Bentley, p. 209. This may be true, especially as he was nearly the first reviewer, and certainly better than his predecessors. But this remark is followed by a sarcastic animadversion upon Le Clerc’s ignorance of Greek metres, and by the severe assertion, that “by an absolute system of terror, he made himself a despot in the republic of letters.” The former is so far true, that he neither understood the Greek metres as well as Bentley and Porson, or those who have trod in their steps, nor supposed that all learning was concentred in that knowledge, as we seemed in danger of supposing within my memory. The latter is not warranted by the general character of Le Clerc’s criticisms, which, where he has no personal quarrel, is temperate and moderate, neither traducing men, nor imputing motives; and consequently unlike certain periodical criticism of a later date.
Sancroft’s Fur Prædestinatus. 25. The most remarkable progress made by the Arminian theology was in England. This had begun under James and Charles; but it was then taken up in conjunction with that patristic learning, which adopted the fourth and fifth centuries as the standard of orthodox faith. Perhaps the first very bold and unambiguous attack on the Calvinistic system which we shall mention came from this quarter. This was an anonymous Latin pamphlet, entitled Fur Prædestinatus, published in 1651, and generally ascribed to Sancroft, at that time a young man. It is a dialogue between a thief under sentence of death and his attendant minister, wherein the former insists upon his assurance of being predestinated to salvation. In this idea there is nothing but what is sufficiently obvious; but the dialogue is conducted with some spirit and vivacity. Every position in the thief’s mouth is taken from eminent Calvinistic writers, and what is chiefly worth notice, is that Sancroft, for the first time, has ventured to arraign the greatest heroes of the Reformation; not only Calvin, Beza, and Zanchius, but who had been hitherto spared, Luther and Zuingle. It was in the nature of a manifesto from the Arminian party, that they would not defer in future to any modern authority.[737]
[737] The Fur Prædestinatus is reprinted in D’Oyly’s Life of Sancroft. It is much the best proof of ability that the worthy archbishop ever gave.