[138] After the Edict of Nantes (1598), the Protestants were permitted to assemble for worship at Charenton, a small town about four miles from Paris.
[144a] Letter V.
[144b] “The grand project of our Society,” Pascal makes his Jesuit informant say (Letter VI.), “is for the good of religion, never to repulse any one, let him be what he may, and so avoid driving people to despair.”
[147] Letter IV.
[148] Letter IV.
[150a] Letter X.
[150b] “Who is Escobar?” Pascal represents himself as inquiring in the fifth Letter. “Not know Escobar?” cries the monk; “the member of the Society who compiled a Moral Theology from twenty-four of our fathers.” This book, which Pascal says he “read twice through,” was the great repository from which he gathered the details of Jesuit doctrine which he exposes with such minuteness. Escobar, like so many of the chief Jesuit writers, was a Spaniard, born at Valladolid in 1589. His name became a sort of proverb in connection with their casuistical system, and “escobarder” came to signify “to palter in a double sense.”
[151a] Letter XI.
[151b] Ibid.
[152] Letter XV.