[102] The most authentic portrait of Pascal is probably that prefixed by M. Faugère to his edition of the ‘Pensées.’ The sketch, in red chalk, was found amongst the papers of M. Domat, an eminent advocate, and one of Pascal’s well-known friends. It bears below an inscription by Domat’s son—“Portrait de M. Pascal fait par mon père”—and is supposed to represent him in his earlier years, when he studied natural philosophy along with his friend.
[105] The following genealogy, from a Jesuit source, represents not unfairly the origin of Jansenism and Port Royalism as a theological system: “Paulus genuit Augustinum; Augustinus Calvinum; Calvinus Jansenium; Jansenius Sancyranum; Sancyranus Arnaldum et fratres ejus.” The sequel will show how earnestly Pascal disclaims Calvinism.
[106] “Attrition” is a scholastic term for the first acute emotions of the grace of repentance. “Contrition” denotes the grace in a more advanced stage of development.
[107] The full title is, “Cornelii Jansenii Episcopi Iprensis Augustinus: seu doctrina S. Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanitate, ægritudine, medicinâ, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses.”
[108] Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. p. 243.
[116a] Recueil d’Utrecht, p. 271. See also Sainte-Beuve, vol. iii. p. 536.
[116b] Curieux in the sense, says Sainte-Beuve, of bel-esprit, amateur.
[120] A name applied to the Jesuits after Louis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit (1535–1600), whose “Scientia Media,” akin to the Arminian doctrine of Divine foreknowledge, was very famous in its day.
[132] Beard’s Port Royal, vol. i. p. 271. Founded on Recueil d’Utrecht, p. 278, and Sainte-Beuve, t. ii. p. 555.
[133] M. Sainte-Beuve connects only the two concluding Letters with the first two, but the sixteenth Letter also, upon the whole, as a direct defence of Jansen and Port Royal, may be said to connect itself with these rather than with the intervening series assailing the Jesuits. There were eighteen Letters in all published by Pascal, but there is a brief fragment of a nineteenth Letter supposed to be also from his pen, and a farther Letter from the pen of M. le Maitre on the Inquisition, commonly printed along with the others.