In this school five hundred gentlemen were to be boarded and educated: the King was pleased to shew me the plan, and asked my thoughts on it.
“Sir, said I, nothing can be better; I could only wish it more comprehensive. This school will not furnish officers enough for France, which is so frequently at war. I have heard Marshal Saxe say, That in an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men, there was seldom less than twenty thousand officers; so that only one fortieth of that number can be had from the military-school, which to me appears no small defect in a foundation, of itself, so excellent.”
A courtier, on reading the plan for this school, jocularly said, This martial convent will afford very good military monks.
The great objection made against it, by some discreet persons, was the exorbitant expence of it, at a time when every resource of the state had been drained to defray the extraordinary demands of the war. The expence, indeed, was not to be furnished from the royal treasury; but from whatever fund sums are taken on such occasions, they are still burthensome, as tending to keep the people poor.
It was likewise said, that France stood more in need of a naval than a military-school; that the King might find a hundred land-officers in his dominions, for one sea-officer; that the French gentry was naturally fond of signalizing itself in armies, and had as great an aversion to fleets; but the plan had been resolved on.
The powers of Europe were at peace, when religious disputes, breaking out, disturbed France in its political and domestic quiet.
Two parties, who, for forty years past, had been contending for the superiority, now returned to the charge. Being quite ignorant of the subject of their quarrels, I had it explained to me. Should ever these Memoirs be made public, the reader will be so kind as to excuse my tiring him with the following detail. Never had this evil found a place in these annals, had it not concerned the King; but his interesting himself in this dispute, and greatly so, is alone sufficient motive for my giving some account of it.
A native of Spain, named Molina, in the fullness of his knowledge, took it into his head to decide, and vindicate, how God acts on mortals, and in what manner mortals withstand God. The Popes, who know every thing, and pronounce sentence on every thing, had, till then, been totally unacquainted with the mechanism of the metaphysical intercourse between the Creator and creature; and, for their better information, Molina invented many barbarous words, or scholastic terms, with innumerable distinctions and divisions.
To proceed in this dispute with some order, and wrangle theologically, he distinguished between preventive and co-operating grace: one of these graces could do any thing, and the other little or nothing; but this not being sufficient for understanding what he himself did not understand, he farther invented the mediate knowledge and congruism.
According to him, God held a council of state in Heaven, before which all men were summoned and interrogated, how they will act after receiving his grace; and, according to the free use which he saw they were to make of it, he decreed within himself, either to admit them into Paradise, or call them down into hell.