A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

This general Epistle is addressed partly to the infidel, and partly to the believing Jews. The writer’s design was to correct the errors, soften the ungoverned zeal, and reform the indecent behaviour, of the former; and to comfort the latter under the hardships they then did, or shortly were to suffer, for the sake of Christianity. It is directed to the Jews and Jewish converts of the dispersion, but no doubt was calculated for the improvement likewise of those Jews, over whom the apostle presided in the special character of their bishop.

This Epistle is the first of the Catholic or General Epistles, in the canon of Scripture; which are so called, because they were written, not to one, but to several Christian Churches.

JANSENISTS, in France, are those who follow the opinions of Jansenius, a doctor of divinity of the university of Louvain, and bishop of Ypres. In the year 1640, the two universities of Louvain and Douay thought fit to condemn the loose doctrine of the Jesuits, particularly Father Molina and Father Leonard Celsus, concerning grace and predestination. This having set the controversy on foot, Jansenius opposed to the doctrine of the Jesuits the sentiments of St. Augustine, and wrote a treatise upon grace, which he entitled Augustinus. The treatise was attacked by the Jesuits, who accused Jansenius of maintaining dangerous and heretical opinions: nor did they stop here, but obtained of Pope Urban VIII., in 1642, a formal condemnation of Jansenius’s treatise. The partisans of Jansenius gave out, that this bull was spurious, and composed by a person entirely devoted to the Jesuits.

After the death of Urban VIII., the affair of Jansenism began to be more warmly controverted, and gave birth to an infinite number of polemical writings concerning Grace. What occasioned some mirth in these disputes was, the titles which each party gave to their writings. One writer published The Torch of St. Augustine; another found Snuffers for St. Augustine’s Torch. F. Veron composed A Gag for the Jansenists: and the like. In the year 1650, sixty-eight bishops of France subscribed a letter to Pope Innocent X., to obtain of him an inquiry into, and condemnation of, the five famous propositions which follow, extracted from Jansenius’s Augustinus:—

I. Some of God’s commandments are impossible to be kept by the righteous, even though they are willing to observe them.

II. A man doth never resist inward grace, in the state of fallen nature.

III. In order to merit, or not merit, it is not necessary that a man should have a liberty free from necessity. It is sufficient that he hath a liberty free from restraint.

IV. The Semi-Pelagians were heretics, because they asserted the necessity of an inward preventing grace for every action.

V. It is a Semi-Pelagian opinion to say, that Jesus Christ died for all mankind, without exception.

In the year 1652, the pope appointed a congregation for examining into the matter relating to Grace. In this congregation Jansenius was condemned, and the bull of condemnation published, May 31, 1653. After its publication at Paris, the pulpits were filled with violent outcries and alarms against the heresy of the Jansenists. The year 1656 produced the famous “Provincial Letters” of M. Pascal, under the name of Louis de Montalte, in defence of Messieurs de Port Royal, who were looked upon as the bulwark of Jansenism. The same year, Pope Alexander VII. issued another bull, in which he condemned the five propositions of Jansenius. The Jansenists affirm that the five condemned propositions are not to be found in Jansenius’s treatise upon Grace, but that some enemies of Jansenius, having caused them to be printed on a sheet, inserted them in a book, and thereby deceived the pope.