Till a contrary proof—and I mean by a contrary proof an authentic and official document, not such or such an allusion, or it is said, collected at random from a private correspondence—I shall continue to believe that the suspension of the Council of Trent, all though making an essential part, and constituting, as it were, the keystone of the Protestant plan of pacification, was never conceded in principle at Rome, probably was never entertained; that Bishop Spinola was never authorized to treat on that basis, and that if he did not wholly refuse to converse on that point, it was in order not to discourage benevolent dispositions which he judged it wise to manage. He also may have hoped that when the Protestants had taken the great step of admitting the infallibility of Catholic authority, they would be led easily, by means of some historical explanations, to agree that the aid of the Holy Ghost did not fail the sessions of Trent, any more than any of the grand assizes of the Christian Church. If I am deceived in this negative conclusion, nothing would have been more easy for M. de Careil than to prevent my error by a more complete publication.
The sequel of events will show why I attach so much importance to the [{441}] establishment of the truth on this point. Let us resume, therefore, with M. de Careil the thread of the narrative. In spite of the general desire in 1670 to effect an understanding between Protestants and Catholics, and perhaps because of the ardor of that desire, all parties avoided explaining themselves fully on delicate points, and the negotiation and the irénique, as M. de Careil calls it, dragged itself along and reached no result. Twenty years after it continued still, languishing, indeed, but not abandoned. The Bishop of Neustadt was still living, hoping, laboring, and travelling constantly, intent on effecting peace; the Protestant doctors continued to pile up notes upon notes, and blackened any quantity of paper; but if in the theological world the affair remained on foot, though not advancing, in the political world the favor which had sustained it was singularly cooled. The spirit of resistance to the preponderating influence of Louis XIV., more determined than ever, had suddenly changed its course, and sought no longer its support in Catholicity, but, on the contrary, in the most advanced party of the Reformation, which suddenly raised up a champion of European independence. The Protestant chief of a petty maritime republic, elevated by a daring movement to the throne of a great monarchy—the grandson of William the Taciturn, became master of the heritage of the Stuarts, rallied around his standard all the hopes of national freedom and all the animosities caused by oppression. Beside, from the fatal edict of 1685, which brutally thrust out of France a whole peaceable people, brought up under the shelter of the laws in the ignorance of an hereditary error, the armies, the councils, and the large industrial towns of all Europe became gorged with French exiles, who united in the same execration Louis XIV. and the Church in which they saw only the bloody image of her implacable minister. On this stormy sea of excited passion and intense hatred the humble project of union, which Spinola and Leibnitz had so much difficulty in keeping afloat in calm weather, had little chance of surviving.
The princes abandoned it as no longer serving their political interests. But other auxiliaries, however, offered themselves, endowed with less power indeed, but hardly less brilliancy. These were no other than great ladies, delighting in the commerce of the learned, and retaining in their convents or the interior paths of piety the habits of a cultivated education, and sometimes pretensions to political ability. In the seventeenth century, especially in France after the Fronde, it is well known that theology often became the refuge of those high-born beauties whom scruples or repentance kept aloof from the pleasures of the court, whilst the jealous despotism of the sovereign would no longer permit them to make a figure on the theatre of public affairs. Several of these elegant, noble, and even royal lady-theologians were attracted by the report of the negotiation in which Leibnitz took part, and perhaps by the renown of that negotiator himself, and in the hope either of aiding in dressing the wounds of Europe, or at least of securing so precious a conquest in the net of faith, opened communications and displayed in their correspondence with him those severe graces of which their piety had not despoiled them. The Abbess of Maubuisson; Louise Hollandine, sister of the palatiness, Anne of Gonzaga; that celebrated princess herself; the sprightly Madame de Brinon, for a long time the confidant of Madame de Maintenon at Saint-Cyr, but whose enterprising spirit could not be anywhere contented with a subordinate part; in fine, the queen of the Précieuses, Mademoiselle Scudéry, who neglected no opportunity of shining in an epistolary correspondence, and who was by no means sorry to show that her merit could surpass the limits of the Carte de him, such are the [{442}] unexpected figures which M. de Careil makes pass before us, and in painting them he borrows some colors from the palette of the great philosopher of our days, M. Cousin, who has devoted himself to the good fame of the ladies of the seventeenth century. In the train of the ladies appear the literary gentlemen of their society, accustomed to make with them, in courteous jousts, the assaults of wit. As the friend of Madame de Brinon, for instance, we see intervene the historian of the French Academy, the best pen of the royal cabinet, the celebrated Pellisson. All these epistles, very numerous, in which the variety of tone relieves the monotony of subject, form the most agreeable part of the new publication—too agreeable, indeed, for seriousness is sadly wanting, and more still in Leibnitz himself than in his graceful correspondents. A tone of subtle badinage, a mistimed display of literary and philosophical erudition, the pleasure of discussing without care to conclude, are, unhappily, but too apparent in everything that emanates from his pen during this second period. We might say that he took pleasure in prolonging a situation which procured him advances so flattering, and in which, without pledging himself to any one, he could let himself be lulled by sweet compliments from the most beautiful mouths in the world.
However that might be, this slumber, sustained by such sweet words, was all at once rudely broken. Madame de Brinon, the most active brain of the feminine congress, seeing that after all they talked much and said nothing, and that, by a supple and undulating argumentation, Leibnitz always escaped at the decisive moment, and retarded more than he advanced a solution, formed the project of calling to her aid a more vigorous athlete, who could grapple with him body to body. She addressed herself to Bossuet, and this time the Bishop of Meaux found more leisure and more freedom of action. The political situation had changed. Coming out from that cold distrust in which he intrenched himself in the beginning, he requested to have communicated to him the documents of the negotiation, especially the writings of Molanus, and made it his duty to give his own views of the matter. The entrance of this great man upon the scene, a long time announced, a long time expected, and who appeared, as in certain tragedies, as the hero of the third act, has, in M. de Careil's publication, all the effect of a theatrical surprise.
No sooner, in fact, has he opened his mouth, than a puff of his stiff, strong speech tumbles down the frail scaffolding on which Leibnitz had placed his hopes of the peace of Christendom. Placing his finger at once on the weak spot in the system, he has no difficulty in showing that, however disguised, the real proposition returns always to the demand that the Church shall suffer to be called in question points already adjudicated, and tolerate doubt where she has already defined the faith. Now, if such condescension is possible in the order of human decrees, which, providing for local and transitory interests, may and ought to yield to differences of time and place, it would be absurd to suppose it possible in the order of eternal truths, proclaimed by an authority conceded to be infallible. Infallibility carries with it immutability as a necessary consequence. The mirror of an unalterable truth can reflect only a single image; the echo can repeat only a single sound. Comment, explain, as much as you please, clothe the old faith with new forms if you will, smooth the paths which conduct to it by removing all offensive terms which are a stumbling-block to the weak, save self-love the humiliation of a position disavowed by treating error as a misunderstanding which is now enlightened, even charity exacts in this respect all that dignity permits; but to alter, attenuate, or [{443}] merely to debate the truth transmitted can in no sense be permitted without killing with the same blow both the Church and the truth, without either denying the truth or that the Church has always been its interpreter.
Such was the reasoning, perfectly simple, and the principle of the infallibility of the Church once admitted, unanswerable, which Bossuet with his well known majesty, and from the height of his episcopal dignity, urged in reply to the method supported by Leibnitz. Was Leibnitz taken by surprise? Had he seriously thought of becoming a Catholic without submitting in the process to this consequence? Such a defect of logic in a rival of Newton is not supposable. But he was neither accustomed to be treated so loftily, nor in a humor to march so directly to the point. A cry of astonishment and despite involuntarily escaped him, sharp complaints of the haughtiness of M. de Meaux, of the tone of superiority which eloquence and authority give to great men, and bitter denunciations of the exclusive spirit and obstinacy of theologians, betray this sentiment, very natural, and as it would seem even in some measure contagious, for M. de Careil, now and then making himself one with his hero, suffers himself to be gained by it. All good Catholic as he would be, he himself also in his two introductions regrets that the conciliating spirit and eclectic methods of Leibnitz were not accepted. Conciliation is an excellent thing, and pleases me much, some say, pleases me too much, and I have been more than once accused of carrying in religious matters my love for it a little too far; but there are limits fixed in the very nature of things, and which a little common sense will always, I hope, prevent me from transgressing. Who says Church, says permanence in the truths of faith; and who says Catholics, says a union of men who think alike of those truths. Now what, stripped of all ambiguity of language, would have been the practical effect of the proposition of Leibnitz, if it had been carried into execution? The points of doctrine (and what points! the most important not only for faith but also for reason, affecting the basis as the supreme destiny of the soul) touching the accord of grace and free will, the conditions of eternal salvation, the mysterious operations of the sacraments, taught in the Christian pulpit from the very cradle of Christian antiquity, and for more than a hundred years clothed in new and more precise forms, would have been at a single dash erased from the catechism and suspended in doubt till the uncertain action of a future council! The Church would have suffered an interrogation point to be placed indefinitely before affirmations which she had only the day before imposed on the faithful under sanction of an anathema! Meanwhile, the faithful, divided on the very foundations of their belief, would have met before the same altar to repeat the same prayers while understanding them in contradictory senses, and to receive the same sacraments while holding entirely different views of their value and efficacy! What in this strange interim would have become of the dignity and stability of Catholic doctrine? And what were the utility of an external and nominal union which could only cover a real internal difference?
To sustain himself, if not his firm and piercing genius, in an illusion which held him captive and would not relax its grasp, Leibnitz had two, only two, arguments in his repertory; but he had the art to make them take so many different forms, and to make with these two arms so many passes and counter-passes of logic and erudition, that more than an entire volume is taken up by M. de Careil with the writings which contain them, and which may be read even now without other fatigue than that produced by their continual dazzle. Faithful to our task of reporter, we must strip these two arguments of the brilliant garments with which his luxurious [{444}] eloquence adorns them. Divested of their flesh, so to speak, stripped naked, and subjected to the treatment to which the scholastics subject all arguments to ascertain their value, these two arguments are very simple and easily comprehended. In the first place, they consist in denying the antiquity, and therefore the authority, of the Council of Trent. Leibnitz in this respect only repeats the allegations of all Protestant doctors, and which were old even in his time. The number of prelates present at that assembly was relatively small, and were taken almost exclusively from the churches of Spain and Italy, and as several Catholic sovereigns refused to publish the council in their respective states, because some of its disciplinary canons appeared to strike at their temporal rights, there had been no opportunity to heal its original defect by the assent of the Church dispersed.
In the second place, granting that the Council of Trent had the character and authority which are questioned, it was in good faith and in the sincerity of their hearts that Protestants refused to acknowledge them. They in whose names Leibnitz was charged to negotiate gave manifest proofs of that good faith in adhering beforehand to the decision of a future council, and consequently in rendering full homage to the principle of ecclesiastical authority. Now error, if sincere, is not heresy, and has only its appearance. It is only voluntary, deliberate, and obstinate rebellion that makes the heretic. A man who submits in advance to the authority of truth, and waits only a knowledge of it to arrange himself under its banner, counts from that moment among those to whom the Church may open her maternal bosom.
These few sentences embrace—every attentive reader will be convinced of it—the substance of the whole argumentation, extended by Leibnitz, enriched and enlivened by a thousand piquant expressions, through many years, in a series of more than a hundred letters. It needs fewer words still, after Bossuet, to expose in its poverty and nakedness the ground-work concealed by the richness and splendor of the ornaments.
What mattered it, in reality, to examine whether the Council of Trent in its origin or at any moment of its duration had united a full representation of the universal Church? To what good to seek if it had received in its text and in every part official promulgation by the political power in each sovereign state? One fact was certain, and that was enough. At the time when Leibnitz was writing, the doctrine defined by the Fathers of Trent on all the points controverted between Catholics and Protestants was, without a single exception, the law in all the churches of the Catholic world. From the basilica of Michael Angelo to the humblest village church, under the purple as under the serge soutane, every pontiff, every cardinal, every bishop, every parish priest, in the confessional as in the pulpit, scrupulously conformed to its language. If the consent of the Church is not recognizable by such signs, by what signs could it be recognized? Only they whom Trent condemned persisted in withholding their adhesion to its decrees. But Arius protested also against Nicaea, and it has never depended on a few voices raised by spite or chagrin to disturb the harmony of symbols with which the concert of nations makes resound the vaults of the universal Church.