FROM 
 WARREN'S 
 
 Island City Bookstore, 
 
 BOCK ISLAND, ILL.
 
 THE 
 
 PROVINCIAL LETTERS 
 
 BLAISE PASCAL. 
 
 A NEW TRANSLATION 
 
 WITH HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION AND NOTEK, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 U my letters are condemned at Rome, that which I condemn in then 
 is condemned in heaven. PASCAL. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS 
 
 No. 530 BROADWAY. 
 
 1856.

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE, '. . vii 
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, 
 
 LETTER L 
 
 Disputes in the Sorbonne, and the invention of proximate power 
 a term employed by the Jesuits to procure the censure of M. 
 Arnauld, 63 
 
 LETTER H. 
 
 Of sufficient grace, which turns out to be not sufficient Concert 
 between the Jesuits and the Dominicans A parable, . . 76 
 
 Reply of " the Provincial" to the first two Letters, . . .88 
 
 LETTER HI. 
 
 Injustice, absurdity, and nullity of the censure on M. Arnauld A 
 personal heresy . .90 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Actual grace and sins of ignorance Father Bauny's Summary of 
 sins, 100 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Design of the Jesuits in establishing a new system of morals 
 Two <crU of casuists among them A great many lax and some 
 severe ones Reason of this difference Explanation of the doc- 
 trine of probabilism A multitude of modern and unknown au- 
 thors substituted in the place of the holy fathers Escobar, . 116 
 
 2026899
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Various artifices of the* Jesuits to elude the authority of the gospel, 
 of councils, and of the popes So.ue consequences resulting from 
 their doctrine of probability Their relaxations in favor of bene- 
 ficiaries, of priests, of monks, and of domestics^-Story of John 
 d'Alba, 135 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 Method of directing the intention adopted by the casuists Permis- 
 sion to kill in defence of honor and property, extended even to 
 priests and monks Curious question raised as to whether Jesuits 
 may be allowed to kill Jansenists, 152 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Corrupt maxims of the casuists relating to judges Usurers The 
 Contract Mohatra Bankrupts Restitution Divers ridiculous 
 notions of these same casuists, . 170 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 False worship of the Virgin introduced by the Jesuits Devotion 
 made easy Their maxims on ambition, envy, gluttony, equiv- 
 ocation, mental reservations, female dress, gaming, and hearing 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Palliatives applied by the Jesuits to the sacrament of penance, in 
 their maxims regarding confession, satisfaction, absolution, prox- 
 imate occasions of sin, and love to God 206 
 
 LETTER XL 
 
 The Letters vindicated from the charge of profaneness Ridicule a 
 fair weapon, when employed against absurd opinions Rules to 
 be observed in the use of this weapon Charitableness and dis- 
 cretion of the Provincial Letters Specimens of genuine profane- 
 ness in the writings of Jesuits, ....... 225 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 The quirks and chicaneries of the Jesuits on the subjects of alms- 
 giving and simony . . 243
 
 CONTENTS. V 
 
 LETTER Xm. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fidelity of Pascal's quotations Speculative murder Killing for 
 slander Fear of the consequences The policy of Jesuitism, . 260 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 On murder The Scriptures on murder Lessius, Molina, and Lay- 
 man on murder Christian and Jesuitical legislation contrasted, 277 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 On calumny M. Puys and Father Alby An odd heresy Bare- 
 faced denials Flat contradictions and vague insinuations em- 
 ployed by the Jesuits The Capuchin's Mentiris impudentissime, 295 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 Calumnies against Port-Royal Port-Royalists no heretics M. de 
 St. Cyran and M. Arnauld vindicated Slanders against the 
 nuns of Port-Royal Miracle of the holy thorn No impunity 
 for slanderers Excuse for a long letter, 314 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 The author of the Letters vindicated from the charge of heresy 
 The five propositions The popes fallible in matters of fact Per- 
 secution of the Jansenists The grand object of the Jesuits, . 341 
 
 LETTER XVm. 
 
 The sense of Jansenius not the sense of Calvin Resistibility of 
 grace Jansenius no heretic The popes may be surprised Tes- 
 timony of the senses Condemnation of Galileo Conclusion, . 366 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 Fragment of a nineteenth Provincial Letter, addressed to Pere 
 Annat, . **'-*. 391
 
 THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 THE following translation of the Pi-ovincm! Letters was undertaken 
 several years ago. in compliance with the suggestion of a revered pa- 
 rent, chiefly as a literary recreation in a retired country charge, and, 
 .after being finished, was' laid aside. It is now published at the request 
 of friends, who considered such a work as peculiarly seasonable, and 
 more likely to be acceptable at the present crisis, when general atten- 
 tion has been again directed to the popish controversy, and when such 
 strenuous exertions are being made by the Jesuits to regain influence 
 in our country. 
 
 None are strangers to the fame of the Provincials, and few literary 
 persons would choose to confess themselves altogether ignorant of a 
 work which has acquired a world-wide reputation. Yet there is reason 
 to suspect that few books of the same acknowledged merit have had a 
 more limited circle ofbonajide English readers. This may be ascribed, 
 in a great measure, to the want of a good English translation'. Two 
 translations of the Provincials have already appeared in our language. 
 The first was contemporary with the Letters themselves, and was printed 
 at London in 1657, under the title of " Les Provinciates ; or, The Mys- 
 terie of Jesuitism, discovered in certain Letters, written upon occasion 
 of the present differences at Sorbonne, between the Jansenists and the 
 Molinists, from January 1656 to March 1657, S. N. Displaying the 
 corrupt Maximes and Politicks of that Society. Faithfully rendered 
 into English. Sicut Serpentes." Of the translation under this unprom- 
 ising title, it may only be remarked, that it is probably one of the worst 
 specimens of " rendering into English" to be met with, even during that 
 age when little attention was paid to the art of translation. Under its 
 uncouth phraseology, not only are the wit and spirit of the original 
 completely shrouded, but the meaning is so disguised that the work is 
 almost as unintelligible as it is uninteresting. 
 
 Another translation of the Letters of which I was not aware till I 
 had completed mine was published in London in 1816. On discover- 
 ing that a new attempt had been made to put the English public in 
 possession of the Provincials, and that it had failed to excite any gen- 
 eral interest, I was induced to lay aside all thoughts of publishing my 
 version ; but, after examining the modern translation, I became con- 
 vinced that its failure might be ascribed to other causes than want of 
 taste among us for the beauties and excellences of Pascal. This trans- 
 lation, though written in good English, bears evident marks of haste, and 
 of want of acquaintance with the religious controversies of the time ; 
 in consequence of which, the sense and spirit of the original have been 
 cither entirely lost or so imperfectly developed, as to render its perusal 
 exceedingly tantalizing and unsatisfactory.
 
 viii THE TRANSLATOR'S PREPACK. 
 
 It remains for the public to judge how far the present version may 
 have succeeded in giving a more readable and faithful transcript of the 
 Provincial Letters. No pains, at least have been spared to enhance its 
 interest and insure its fidelity. Among the numerous French editions 
 of the Letters, the basis of the following translation is that of Amster- 
 dam, published in four volumes 12mo, 17G7; with the notes of Nicole, 
 and his prefatory History of the Provincials, which were translated 
 from the Latin into French by Mademoiselle de Joncourt. With this 
 and other French editions I have compared Nicole's Latin translation, 
 which appeared in 1658, and received the sanction of Pascal. 
 
 The voluminous notes of Nicole, however interesting they may have 
 been at the time, and to the parties involved in the Jansenist contro- 
 versy, are not, in general of such a kind as to invite attention now ; 
 nor would a full translation even of his historical details, turning as 
 they do chiefly on local and temporary disputes, be likely to reward the 
 patience of the reader. So far as they were fitted to throw light on 
 the original text, I have availed myself of these, along with other 
 sources of information, in the marginal notes. Some ot' these annota- 
 tions, as might be expected from a Protestant editor, are intended to 
 correct error, or to guard against misconception. 
 
 To the full understanding of the Provincials, however, some idea of 
 the controversies which occasioned their publication seems almost in- 
 dispensable. This I have attempted to furnish in the Historical Intro- 
 duction ; which will also be found to contain some interesting facts, 
 hitherto uncollected, and borrowed from a variety of authorities not 
 generally accessible, illustrating the history of the Letters, and the par- 
 ties concerned in them, with a vindication of Pascal from the charge* 
 which this work has provoked from so many quarters against him.
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 BY THE TRANSLATOR. 
 
 THE Church of Rome, notwithstanding her pretensions to 
 infallibility, has been fully as prolific in theological contro- 
 versy and intestine discord as any of the Reformed Churches. 
 She has contrived, indeed, with singular policy, to preserve, 
 amidst all her variations, the semblance of unity. Protest- 
 anism, like the primitive Church, suffered its dissentients to 
 fly off into hostile or independent communions. The Papacy, 
 on the contrary, has managed to retain hers within the out- 
 ward pale of her fellowship, by the institution of various 
 religious orders, which have served as safety-valves for exu- 
 berant zeal, and which, though often hostile to each other, 
 have remained attached to the mother Church, and even 
 proved her most efficient supporters. Still, at different times, 
 storms have arisen within the Romish Church, which could 
 be quelled neither by the infallibility of popes nor the author- 
 ity of councils. It is. doubtful if religious controversy ever 
 raged with so much violence in the Reformed Church, as it 
 did between the Thomists and the Scotists, the Dominicans 
 and Franciscans, the Jesuits and the Jansenists, of the Church 
 of Rome. 
 
 Uninviting as they may now appear, the disputes about 
 grace, in which the last mentioned parties were involved, gave 
 occasion to the Provincial Letters. The origin of these dis- 
 putes must be traced as far back as the days of Augustine 
 1*
 
 Z HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and the Pelagian controversy of the fifth century. The motto 
 of Pelagius was free-will ; that of Augustine -was efficacious 
 grace. The former held that, notwithstanding the fall, the 
 human will was perfectly free to choose at any time between 
 good and evil ; the latter, that in consequence of the full, 
 the will is in a state of moral bondage, from which it can 
 only be freed by divine grace. With the British monk, 
 election is suspended on the decision of man's will ; human 
 nature is still as pure as it came originally from the hands of 
 the Creator : Christ died equally for all men ; and, as the 
 result of his death, a general grace is granted to all mankind, 
 which any may comply with, but which all may finally for- 
 feit. With the African bishop, election is absolute we are 
 predestinated, not from foreseen holiness, but that we might 
 be holy ;* all men are lying under the guilt or penal obliga- 
 tion of the first sin, and in a state of spiritual helplessness and 
 corruption ; the sacrifice of Christ was, in point of destina- 
 tion, offered for the elect, though, in point of exhibition, it is 
 offered to all ; and the saints obtain the gift of perseverance 
 in holiness to the end.f 
 
 Pelagius, whose real name was Morgan, and who is sup- 
 posed to have been a Welshman, belonged to that numerous 
 class of thinkers, who, from their peculiar idiosyncrasy, are 
 apt to start at the sovereignty of divine grace, developed 
 in the plan of redemption, as if it struck at once at the equity 
 ef God and the responsibility of man. He is said to have 
 betrayed his heretical leanings, for the first time, by publicly 
 expressing his disapprobation of a sentiment of Augustine, 
 which he heard quoted by a bishop " Da quod jubes, et 
 jube quod vis Give, Lord, what thou biddest, and bid what 
 thou wilt." It would be easy to show that, in recoiling from 
 the odious picture of the orthodox doctrine, drawn by his 
 own fancy, he fell into the very consequences which he was 
 so eager to avoid. The deity of Pelagius being subjected 
 
 * Non quia per nos sancti et immaculati futuri essemus, sed elegit 
 prsedestinavitque ut essemus. (De Prsedest. Aug. Op., toin. x. 815.) 
 t Pe dono Persever. (Ib, 822.)
 
 AUGUSTINE AND PELAGIUS. XI 
 
 to the changeable will of the creature, all things were left to 
 the direction of blind chance or unthinking destiny ; while 
 man, being represented as created with concupiscence, to 
 account for his aberrations from rectitude in other words, 
 with a constitution in which the seeds of evil were implanted 
 the authorship of sin was ascribed, directly and primarily, 
 to the Creator.* 
 
 Augustine was a powerful but unsteady writer, and has 
 expressed himself so inconsistently as to have divided the 
 opinions of the Latin Church, where he was recognized as a 
 standard, canonized as a saint, and revered under the title 
 of " The Doctor of Grace." On the great doctrine of salva- 
 tion by grace, he is scriptural and evangelical ; and hence he 
 has been frequently quoted with admiration by our Reformed 
 divines, partly to evince the declension of Rome from the 
 faith of the earlier fathers, partly from that veneration for 
 antiquity, which induces us to bestow more notice on the 
 ivy-mantled ruin, than on the more graceful and commodious 
 modern edifice in its vicinity. When arguing against Pelagi- 
 anism, Augustine is strong in the panoply of Scripture ; when 
 developing his own system, he fails to do justice either to 
 Scripture or to himself. Loud, and even fierce, for the entire 
 corruption of human nature, he spoils all by admitting the 
 absurd dogma of baptismal regeneration. Chivalrous in the 
 defence of grace, as opposed to free-will, he virtually aban- 
 dons the field to the enemy, by teaching that we are justified 
 by our works of evangelical obedience, and that the faith 
 which justifies includes in its nature all the offices of Christian 
 charity. 
 
 During the dark ages, the Church of Rome, professing the 
 highest veneration for St. Augustine, had ceased to hold the 
 Augustinian theology. The Dominicans, indeed, yielded a 
 vague allegiance to it, by adhering to the views of Thomas 
 Aquinas, " the angelic doctor" of the schools, from whom 
 they were termed Thomists ; while the Franciscans, who op- 
 posed them, under the auspices of Duns Scotus, from whom 
 
 * Neander, Bibl. Repos., iii. 94 ; Leydecker, de Jansen. Dogm., 413.
 
 xH HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 they were termed" Scotists, leaned to the views of Pelagius. 
 The Scotists, like the modern advocates of free-will, inveighed 
 against their opponents as fatalists, and charged them with 
 making God the author of sin ; the Thomists, again, retorted 
 on the Scotists, by accusing them of annihilating the grace 
 of God. But the doctrines of grace had sunk out of view, 
 under a mass of penances, oblations, and intercessions, founded 
 on the assumption of human merit, and on that very confu- 
 sion of the forensic change in justification with the moral 
 change in sanctification, in which Augustine had unhappily 
 led the way. At length the Reformation appeared ; and as 
 both Luther and Calvin appealed to the authority of Augus- 
 tine, when treating of grace and free-will, the Romish divines, 
 in their zeal against the Reformers, became still more deci- 
 dedly Pelagian. In the Council of Trent, the admirers of 
 Augustine durst hardly show themselves ; the Jesuits carried 
 everything before them ; and the anathemas of that synod, 
 which were aimed at Calvin fully as much as Luther, though 
 they professed to condemn only the less guarded statements 
 of the German reformer, were all in favor of Pelagius. 
 
 The controversy was revived in the Latin Church, about 
 the close of 'the sixteenth century, both in the Low Countries 
 and in Spain. In 1588, Lewis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, 
 published lectures on " The Concord of Grace and Free- 
 Will ;" and this work, filled with the jargon of the schools, 
 gave rise to disputes which continued to agitate the Church 
 during the whole of the succeeding century. Molina con- 
 ceived that he had discovered a method of reconciling the 
 divine purposes with the freedom of the human will, which 
 would settle the question forever. According to his theory, 
 God not only foresaw from eternity all things possible, by a 
 foresight of intelligence, and all things future by a foresight 
 of vision ; but by another kind of foresight, intermediate be- 
 tween these two, which he termed scientla media, or middle 
 knowledge, he foresaw what might have happened under 
 certain circumstances or conditions, though it never may take 
 place. All men, according to Molina, are favored with a
 
 general grace, sufficient to work out their salvation, if they 
 choose to improve it ; but when God designs to convert a 
 sinner, he vouchsafes that measure of grace which he fore- 
 sees, according to the middle knowledge, or in all 'the cir- 
 cumstances of the case, the person will comply with. The 
 honor of this discovery was disputed by another Jesuit, Peter 
 Fonseca, who declared that the very same thing had burst 
 upon his mind with all the force of inspiration, when lecturing 
 on the subject some years before.* 
 
 Abstruse as these questions may appear, they threatened 
 a serious rupture in the Romish Church. The Molinists were 
 summoned to Rome in 1598, to answer the charges of the 
 Dominicans ; and after some years of deliberation, Pope 
 Clement VIII. decided against Molina. The Jesuits, how- 
 ever, alarmed for the credit of their order, never Vested till 
 they prevailed on the old pontiff to re-examine the matter ; 
 and in 1602, he appointed a grand council of cardinals, bish- 
 ops, and divines, who convened for discussion no less than 
 seventy-eight times. This council was called Con-greyatio de 
 Auziliis, or council on the aids of grace. Its records being 
 kept secret, the result of their collective wisdom was not 
 known with certainty, and has been lost to the world. f The 
 probability is, that like Milton's " grand infernal peers," who 
 reasoned high on similar points, 
 
 " They found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 
 
 Those who appealed to them for the settlement of the ques- 
 tion, had too much reason to say, as the man in Terence does 
 to his lawyers "Fecistis probe / incertior^sum multo quam 
 dudum."l 
 
 But this interminable 'dispute was destined to assume a 
 more popular form, and lead to more practical results. In 
 
 * The question of the middle knowledge is learnedly handled by 
 Voetius (Disp. Theol., i. 234). by Hoombeck (Socin. Confut), and 
 other Protestant divines who have shown it to be untenable, useless, 
 and fraught with absurdity. 
 
 t Dupin : Eccl. Hist., 17th cent. 1-14. 
 
 ^ " Well done, gentlemen ; you have left me more in the dark than 
 ever."
 
 XIV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1604, two young men entered, as fellow-students, the uni- 
 versity of Louvain, which had been distinguished for its hos- 
 tility to Molinism. Widely differing in natural temperament 
 as well as outward rank, Cornelius Jansen, who was afterwards 
 bishop of Ypres, and John Duverger de Hauranne, afterwards 
 known as the Abbe de St. Cyran, formed an acquaintance 
 which soon ripened into friendship. They began to study 
 together the works of Augustine, and to compare them with 
 the Scriptures. The immediate result was, an agreement. in 
 opinion that the ancient father was in the right, and that the 
 Jesuits, and other followers of Molina, were in the wrong. 
 This was followed by an ardent desire to revive the doctrines 
 of tlieir favorite doctor a task which each of them prosecuted 
 in the way most suited to his respective character. 
 
 Jansen, or Jansenius, as he is often called,* was descended 
 of humble parentage, and born October 28, 1585, in a village 
 near Leerdam, in Holland. By his friends he is extolled for 
 his penetrating genius, tenacious memory, magnanimity, and 
 piety. Taciturn and contemplative in his habits, he was 
 frequently overheard, when taking his solitary walks in the 
 garden of the monastery, to exclaim: "0-veritasf veritas ! 
 O truth ! truth !" Keen in controversy, ascetic in devo- 
 tion, and rigid in his Catholicism, his antipathies were about 
 equally divided between heretics and Jesuits. Towards the 
 Protestants, his acrimony was probably augmented by the 
 consciousness of having embraced views which might expose 
 himself to the suspicion of heresy ; or, still more probably, 
 by that uneasy feeling with which we cannot help regarding 
 those who, holding the same doctrinal views with ourselves, 
 may have made a more decided and consistent profession of 
 them. The first supposition derives countenance from the 
 private correspondence between him and his friend St. Cyran, 
 which shows some dread of persecution ;f the second is con- 
 
 * He was the son of a poor artisan, whose name was Jan. or John 
 Ottho ; hence Jansen, corresponding to our Johnson, which was Latin- 
 ized into Jansenius. 
 
 f Petitot, Collect des Memoires. Notice sur Port-Royal, torn, xixiii.,
 
 THE JESUITS. XV 
 
 firmed by his acknowledged writings. He speaks of Protes- 
 tants as no better than Turks, and gives it as his opinion that 
 " they had much more reason to congratulate themselves on 
 the mercy of princes, than to complain of their seventies, 
 which, as the vilest of heretics, they richly deserved."* His 
 controversy with the learned Gilbert Voet led the latter to 
 publish his Desperata Causa Papatus, one of the best expo- 
 sures of the weaknesses of Popery. When to this we add 
 that the Calvinistic synod of Dort, in 1618, had condemned 
 Arminius and the Dutch Remonstrants as having fallen into 
 the errors of Pelagius and Molina, the position of Jansen 
 became still more complicated. Of Arminius he could not 
 approve, without condemning Augustine ; with the Protes- 
 tant synod he could not agree, unless he chose to be de- 
 nounced as a Calvinist. .. 
 
 But the natural enemies of Jansen were, without doubt, the 
 Jesuits. To the history of this Society we can only now ad- 
 vert in a very cursory manner. It may appear surprising 
 that an order so powerful and politic should have owed its 
 origin to such a person as Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier : 
 and that a wound in the leg, which this hidalgo received at 
 the battle of Pampeluna, should have issued in his becoming 
 the founder of a Society which has embroiled the world and 
 the Church. But in fact, Loyola, though the originator of 
 the sect, is not entitled to the honor, or rather the disgrace, 
 of organizing its constitution. This must be assigned to Lay- 
 nez and Aquaviva, the two generals who succeeded him 
 men as superior to the founder of the Society in talents as he 
 excelled them in enthusiasm. Ignatius owed his success to 
 circumstances. While he was watching his arms as the 
 knight-errant of the Virgin, in her chapel at Montserrat, or 
 
 p. 19. This author's attempt to fix the charge of a conspiracy between 
 Jansen and St. Cyran to overturn the Church, is a piece of special 
 pleading, bearing on its face its own refutation. 
 
 * The followers of Jansen were not more charitable than he in their 
 judgments of the Reformed, and showed an equal zeal with the Jesuits 
 to persecute them, when, they had it in their power. (Benoit, Hist, de 
 I 7 Edit de Nantes, iii. 200.)
 
 XVi HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 squatting within his cell in a state of body too noisome for 
 human contact, and of mind verging on insanity, Luther was 
 making Germany ring with the first trumpet-notes of the Ref- 
 ormation. The monasteries, in which ignorance had so long 
 slumbered in the lap of superstition, were awakened ; but 
 their inmates were totally unfit for doing battle on the new 
 field of strife that had opened around them. Unwittingly, in 
 the heat of his fanaticism, the illiterate Loyola suggested a 
 line of policy which, matured by wiser heads, proved more 
 adapted to the times. Bred in the court and the camp, he 
 contrived to combine the finesse of the one, and the discipline 
 of the other, with the sanctity of a religious community ; and 
 proposed that, instead of the lazy routine of monastic life, 
 his followers should actively devote themselves to the educa- 
 tion of youth, the conversion of the heathen, and the sup- 
 pression of heresy. Such a proposal, backed by a vow of 
 devotion to the Holy See, commended itself to the pope so 
 highly that, in 1540, he confirmed the institution by a bull, 
 granted it ample privileges, and appointed Loyola to be its 
 first general. In less than a century, this sect, which as- 
 sumed to itself, with singular arrogance, the name of " The 
 Society of Jesus," rose to be the most enterprising and for- 
 midable order in the Romish communion. 
 
 Never was the name of the blessed Jesus more grossly 
 prostituted than when applied to a Society which is certainly 
 the very opposite, in spirit and character, to Him who was 
 " meek and lowly," " holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate 
 from sinners." The Jesuits may be said to have invented, 
 for their own peculiar use, an entirely new system of ethics. 
 In place of the divine law, they prescribed, as the rule of 
 their conduct, a " blind obedience" to the will of their supe- 
 riors, whom they are bound to recognize as " standing in the 
 place of God," and in fulfilling whose orders they are to have 
 no more will of their own " than a corpse, or an old man's 
 staff." The glory of God they identify with the aggrandize- 
 ment of their Society ; and holding that " the end sanctifies 
 the means," they scruple at no means, foul or fair, which they
 
 THE JESUITS. ZVll 
 
 conceive may advance such an end.* The supreme power is 
 - vested in the general, who is not responsible to any other au- 
 thority, civil or ecclesiastical. A system of mutual espionage, 
 and a secret correspondence with head-quarters at Rome, in 
 which everything that can, in the remotest degree, affect the 
 interests of the Society is made known, and by means of 
 which the whole machinery of Jesuitism can be set in motion 
 at once, or its minutest feelers directed to any object at pleas- 
 ure, presents the most complete system of organization in the 
 world. Every member is sworn, by secret oath, to obey the 
 orders, and all are confederated in a solemn league to advance 
 the cause of the Society. It has been denned to be " a na- 
 ked sword, the hiK of which is at Rome." Such a monstrous 
 combination could not fail to render itself obnoxious. Con- 
 stantly aiming at ascendency in the Church, in which it is an 
 imperium in imperio, the Society has not only been em- 
 broiled in perpetual feuds with the other orders, but has re- 
 peatedly provoked the thunders of the Vatican. Ever inter- 
 meddling with the affairs of civil governments, with allegiance 
 to which, under any form, its principles are utterly at vari- 
 ance, it has been expelled in turn from almost every Euro- 
 pean State, as a political nuisance. But Jesuitism is the very 
 soul of Popery ; both have revived or declined together ; and 
 accordingly, though the order was abolished by Clement 
 XIV. in 1775, it was found necessary to resuscitate it under 
 Pius VII. in 1814; and the Society was never in greater 
 power, nor more active operation, than it is at the present 
 moment. It boasts of immortality, and, in all probability, it 
 will last as long as the Church of Rome. It has been termed 
 " a militia, called out to combat the Reformation," and exhib- 
 iting, as it does to this day, the same features of ambition, 
 treachery, and intolerance, it seems destined to fall only in 
 
 * Caeca quadam obedientia. Ut Christum Dominum in superiors 
 quollbet agnoscerc studeatis. Perinde ac si cadaver essent, vel similiter 
 atque senis baculus.Ad majorem Dei gloriam (Constit. Jesuit, pars 
 vi. cap. 1 ; Ignat. Epist., &c )
 
 Tv HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the ruins of that Church of whose unchanging spirit it is the 
 genuine type and representative.* 
 
 In prosecuting the ends of their institution, the Jesuits 
 have adhered with singular fidelity to its distinguishing spirit. 
 As the instructors of youth, their solicitude has ever been 
 less to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge than to bar 
 out what might prove dangerous to clerical domination ; they 
 have confined their pupils to mere literary studies, which 
 might amuse without awakening their minds, and make them 
 subtle dialecticians without disturbing a single prejudice of 
 the dark ages. As missionaries, they have been much more 
 industrious and successful hi the manual labor of baptizing 
 all nations than in teaching them the Gospel.f As theologi- 
 ans, they have uniformly preferred the views of Molina ; re- 
 garding these, if not as more agreeable to Scripture and right 
 reason, at least (to use the language of a late writer) as 
 "more consonant with the common sense and natural feelings 
 of mankind."| As controversialists, they were the decided 
 foes of all reform and all reformers, from within or without 
 the Church. As moralists, they cultivated, as might be ex- 
 pected, the loosest system of casuistry, to qualify themselves 
 for directing the consciences of high and low, and becoming, 
 through the confessional, the virtual governors of mankind. 
 In all these departments they have, doubtless, produced men 
 of abilities ; but the very means which they employed to ag- 
 
 * Balde, whom the Jesuits honor in their schools as a modern Horace, 
 thus celebrates the longevity of the Society, in his Carmen Seculare de 
 Societatc Jesu, 1640: 
 
 " Profuit quisquis voluit nocere. 
 Cuncta subsident sociis ; ubique 
 Exules vivunt, et ubique cives ! 
 Sternimus victi, supreamus imi, 
 Surgimus plures toties cadendo." 
 
 t Their famous missionary, Francis Xavier, whom they canonized, 
 was ignorant of a single word in the languages df the Indians whom 
 he professed to evangelize. He employed a hand-bell to summon the 
 natives around him ; and the poor savages, mistaking him for one of 
 their learned Brahmans, he baptized them until his arm was exhausted 
 with the task, and boasted of every one he baptized as a regenerated 
 convert ! 
 
 * Macintosh, Hist, of England, ii. 353.
 
 CASUISTRY. XIX 
 
 grandize the Society have tended to dwarf the intellectual 
 growth of its individual members : and hence, while it is true 
 that " the Jesuits had to boast of the most vigorous contro- 
 versialists, the most polite scholars, the most refined court- 
 iers, and the most flexible casuists of their age,"* it has been 
 commonly remarked, that they have never produced a single 
 great man. 
 
 Casuistry, the art in which the Jesuits so much excelled, 
 is, strictly speaking, that branch of theology which treats of 
 cases of conscience, and originally consisted in nothing more' 
 than an application of the general precepts of Scripture to 
 particular cases. The ancient casuists, so long as they con- 
 fined themselves to the simple rules of the Gospel, were at 
 least harmless, and their ingenious writings are still found 
 useful in cases of ecclesiastical discipline ; but they gradu- 
 ally introduced into the science of morals the metaphysical 
 jargon of the schools, and instead of aiming at making men 
 moral, contented themselves with disputing about morality.f 
 The main source of the aberrations of casuistry lay in the 
 unscriptural dogma of priestly absolution in the right 
 claimed by man to forgive sin, as a transgression of the law 
 of God ; and the arbitrary distinction between sins as venial 
 and mortal a distinction which assigns to the priest the pre- 
 rogative, and imposes on him the obligation, of drawing the 
 critical line, or fixing a kind of tariff on human actions, and 
 apportioning penance or pardon, as the case may seem to re- 
 quire. In their desperate attempt to define the endless forms 
 of depravity on which they were called to adjudicate, or 
 which the pruriency of the cloister suggested to the imagi- 
 nation, the casuists sank deeper into the mire at every step ; 
 and their productions, at length, resembled the common sew- 
 ers of a city, which, when exposed, become more pestiferous 
 
 * Macintosh, Hist, of England, ii. 357. 
 
 f Augustine himself is chargeable with having been the first to intro- 
 duce the scholastic mode of treating morality in the form of trifling 
 questions, more fitted to gratify curiosity, and display acumen, than to 
 edify or enlighten. His example was followed, and miserably abused, 
 liy the moralists of succeeding ages (Buddei Isag>ge, vol. i. p. 5TP5.)
 
 XX . HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 than the filth which they were meant to remove. Even un- 
 der the best management, such a system was radically bad ; 
 in the hands of the Jesuits it became unspeakably worse. 
 To their " modern casuists," as they were termed, must we 
 ascribe the invention of probabilism, mental reservation, and 
 the direction of the intention, which, have been sufficiently ex- 
 plained and rebuked in the Provincial Letters, We shall 
 only remark here, that the actions to which these principles 
 were applied were not only such as have been termed indif- 
 ferent, and the criminality of which may be doubtful, or de- 
 pendent on the intention of the actor : the probabilism of the 
 Jesuits was, in fact, a systematic attempt to legalize crime, 
 under the sanction of some grave doctor, who had found out 
 some excuse for it ; and their theory of mental reservations, 
 and direction of the intention, was equally employed to sanc- 
 tify the plainest violations of the divine law. Casuistry, it is 
 true, has generally vibrated betwixt the extremes of imprac- 
 ticable severity and contemptible indulgence ; but the charge, 
 against the Jesuits was, not that they softened the rigors of 
 ascetic virtue, but that they propagated principles which 
 sapped the foundation of all moral obligation. " They are a 
 people," said Boileau, " who lengthen the creed and shorten 
 the decalogue." 
 
 Such was the community with which the Bishop of Ypres 
 ventured to enter the lists. Already had he incurred their 
 resentment by opposing their interests in some political nego- 
 tiations ; and by publishing his " Mars Gallicus," he had 
 mortally offended their patron, Cardinal Richelieu ; but, 
 strange to say, his deadly sin against the Society was a pos- 
 thumous work. Jansen was cut off by the plague, May 8, 
 1638. Shortly after his decease, his celebrated work, enti- 
 tled " Augustinus," was published by his friends Fromond 
 and Galen, to whom he had committed it on his death-bed. 
 To the preparation of this work he may be said to have de- 
 voted his life. It occupied him twenty-two years, during 
 which, we are told, he had ten times read through the works 
 of Auguetine (ten volumes, folio !) and thirty times collated
 
 AUGHTSTINUS. XXI 
 
 those passages -which related to Pelagianism.* The book it- 
 self, as the title imports, was little more than a digest of the 
 writings of Augustine on the subject of grace.f It was divi- 
 ded into three parts ; the first being a refutation of Pelagian- 
 ism, the second demonstrating the spiritual disease of man, 
 and the third exhibiting the remedy provided. The sincerity 
 of Jansen's love to truth is beyond question, though we may 
 be permitted to question the form in which it was evinced. 
 The radical defect of the work is, that instead of resorting to 
 the living fountain of inspiration, he confined himself to the 
 cistern of tradition. Enamored with the excellences of Au- 
 gustine, he adopted even his inconsistencies. With the for- 
 mer he challenged the Jesuits ; with the latter he warded off 
 the charge of heresy. As a controvertist, he is chargeable 
 with prejudice, rather than dishonesty. As a reformer, he 
 wanted the independence of mind necessary to success. In- 
 stead of standing boldly forward on the ground of Scripture, 
 he attempted, with more prudence than wisdom, to shelter 
 himself behind the venerable name of Augustine. 
 
 If by thus preferring the shield of tradition to the sword 
 of the Spirit, Jansen expected to out-manoeuvre the Jesuits, 
 he had mistaken his policy. " Augustinus," though profess- 
 edly written to revive the doctrine of Augustine, was felt by 
 the Society as, in reality,- an attack upon them, under the 
 name of Pelagians. To conscious delinquency, tae language 
 of implied censure is ever more galling than formal impeach- 
 ment. Jansen's portrait of Augustine was but too faithfully 
 executed ; and the disciples of Loyola could not fail to see 
 how far they had departed from the faith of the ancient 
 Church ; but the discovery only served to incense them at 
 the man who had exhibited their defection before the world. 
 The approbation which the book received from forty learned 
 doctors, and the rapture with which it was welcomed by the 
 
 * Lancelot. Tour to Alet, p. !73; Leydecker. p. 122. 
 
 t The whole title was: " Augustinus Cornelii Junsenii episcopi. sei 
 doctrina sancti Augustini de humanae naturae sanctitate aegritudin 
 medica, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses." Louvain, 1640. 
 
 ft
 
 Xxii HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 friends of the author, only added to their exasperation. The 
 whole efforts of the Society were summoned to defeat its 
 influence. Balked by th j hand of death of their revenge on 
 the person of the author, they vented it even on his remains. 
 By -a decree of the pope, procured through their instigation, 
 a splendid monument, which had been erected over the grave 
 of the learned and much-loved bishop, was completely de- 
 molished, that, in the words of his Holiness, " the memory 
 of Jansen might perish from the earth." It is even said that 
 his body was torn from its resting-place, and thrown into 
 some unknown receptacle.* His literary remains were no less 
 severely handled. Nicholas Cornet, a member of the Society, 
 after incredible pains, extracted the heretical poison of " Au- 
 gustinus," in the form of seven propositions, which were after- 
 wards reduced to five. These having been submitted to the 
 judgment of Innocent X., were condemned by that pontiff in 
 a bull dated 31st May, 1653. This decision, so far from re- 
 storing peace, awakened a new controversy. The Jansenists, 
 as the admirers of Jansen now began to be named by their 
 opponents, while they professed acquiescence in the judgment 
 of the pope, denied that these propositions were to be found 
 in " Augustinus." The succeeding pope, Alexander VII., 
 who was still more favorable to the Jesuits, declared formally, 
 in a bull dated 1657, "that the five propositions were cer- 
 tainly taken from the book of Jansenius, and had been con- 
 demned in the sense of that author." But the Jansenists 
 were ready to meet him on this point ; they replied, that a 
 decision of this kind overstepped the limits of papal author- 
 ity, and that the pope's infallibility did not extend to a judg- 
 ment of facts.f 
 
 The reader may be curious to know something more about 
 these famous five propositions, condemned by the pope, which, 
 in fact, may be said to have given occasion to the Provincial 
 Letters. They were as follows : 
 
 * Leydecker, p. 132; Lance 5t, p. 180. 
 
 t Ranke, Hist, of tt.i Popes vol. iii. 143 ; Abbe Du Mas, Hist. de 
 Cinq Propositions, p. 4,
 
 THE FIVE PROPOSITIONS. XX1U 
 
 1. There are divine precepts which good men, though wil- 
 ling, are absolutely unable to obey. 
 
 2. No person, in this corrupt state of nature, can resist the 
 influence of divine grace. 
 
 3. In order to render human actions meritorious, or other- 
 wise, it is not requisite that they be exempt from necessity, 
 but only free from constraint. 
 
 4. The semi-Pelagian heresy consisted in allowing the hu- 
 man will to be endued with a power of resisting grace, or of 
 complying with its influence. 
 
 5. Whoever says that Christ died or shed his blood for all 
 mankind, is a semi-Pelagian. 
 
 The Jansenists, in their subsequent disputes on these prop- 
 ositions, contended that they were ambiguously expressed, 
 and that they might be understood in three different senses 
 a Calvinistic, a Pelagian, and a Catholic or Augustinian 
 sense. In the first two senses they disclaimed them, in the 
 last they approved and defended them. Owing to the ex- 
 treme aversion of the party to Calvinism, while they substan- 
 tially held the same system under the name of Augustinian- 
 ism, it becomes extremely difficult to convey an intelligible 
 idea of their theological views. On the first proposition, for 
 example, while they disclaimed what they term the Calvinis- 
 tic sense, namely, that the best of men are liable to sin in all 
 that they do, they equally disclaim the Pelagian sentiment, 
 that all men have a general sufficient grace, at all times, for 
 the discharge of duty, subject to free will ; and they strenu- 
 ously maintained that, without efficacious grace, constantly 
 vouchsafed, we can do nothing spiritually good. In regard 
 to the resistibility of grace, they seem to have held that the 
 will of man might always resist the influence of grace, if it 
 chose to do so ; but that grace would effectually prevent it 
 from so choosing. And with respect to redemption, they ap- 
 pear to have compromised the matter, by holding that Christ 
 died for all, so as that all might be partakers of the grace of 
 justification by the merits of Lis death ; but they denied that
 
 XXIV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Christ died for each man in particular, so as to secure his 
 final salvation ; in this sense, he died for the elect only. 
 
 Were this the proper place, it would be easy to show that, 
 in the leading points of his theology, Jansen did not differ 
 from Calvin, so much as he misunderstood Calvinism. The 
 Calvinists, for example, never held, as they are represented 
 in the Provincial Letters,* " that we have not the power of 
 resisting grace." So far from this, they held that fallen man 
 could not but resist the grace of God. They preferred, there- 
 fore, the term "invincible," as applied to grace. In short, 
 they held exactly the victrix delectatio of Augustine, by which 
 the will of man is sweetly but effectually inclined to comply 
 with the will of God.f On the subject of necessity and con- 
 straint their views are precisely similar. Nor can they be 
 considered as differing essentially in their views of the death 
 of Christ, as these, at least, were given by Jansen, who ac- 
 knowledges in his " Augustinus," that, " according to St. 
 Augustine, Jesus Christ did not die for all mankind." It is 
 certain that neither Augustine nor Jansen would have sub- 
 scribed to the views of grace and redemption held by many 
 who, in our day, profess evangelical views. Making allow- 
 ance for the different position of the parties, it is very plain 
 that the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius, Jansen 
 and Molina, Calvin and Arminius, was substantially one and 
 the same. At the same time, it must be granted that on the 
 great point of justification by faith, Jansen went widely 
 astray from the truth ; and in the subsequent controversial 
 writings of the party, especially when arguing against the 
 Protestants, this departure became still more strongly marked, 
 and more deplorably manifested.^ 
 
 * Letter xviii. pp. 310-313. 
 
 f Witsii (Econom. Feed., lib. iii. ; Turret. Theol., Elenct. xv. quest. 
 4; De Moor Comment, iv. 49G; Mestrezat Serai, sur Rom., viii. 274. 
 
 ^ I refer here particularly to Arnauld's treatise, entitled " Renverse- 
 ment de la MoraVe de Jesus Christ par les Calvinistes," which was an- 
 swered by Jurieu in his " Justification de la Morale des Refor.-nez." 1685, 
 by M. Merlat, and others. Jurieu has st\pwn at great length, and with 
 a severity for which he had too much provocation, that Arnauld and his 
 friends, in their violent tirades against the Reformed, neither acted in
 
 The revenge of the Jesuits did not stop at procuring the 
 condemnation of Jansen's book ; it aimed at his living follow- 
 ers. Among these none was more conspicuous for virtue and 
 influence than the Abbe de St. Cyran, who was known to 
 have shared his counsels, and even aided in the preparation 
 of his obnoxious work. While Jansen labored to restore the 
 theoretical doctrines of Augustine, St. Cyran was ambitious 
 to reduce them to practice. In pursuance of the moral sys- 
 tem of that father, he taught the renunciation of the world, 
 and the total absorption of the soul in the love of God. His 
 religious fervor led him into some extravagances. He is said 
 to have laid some claim to a species of inspiration, and to 
 have anticipated for the Saviour some kind of temporal domin- 
 ion, in which the saints alone would be entitled to the wealth 
 and dignities of the world.* But his piety appears to have 
 been sincere, and, what is more surprising, his love to the 
 Scriptures was such that he not only lived in the daily study 
 of them himself, but earnestly enforced it on all his disciples. 
 He recommended them to study the Scriptures on their knees. 
 "No means of conversion," he would say, "can be more 
 apostolic than the Word of 'God. Every word in Scripture 
 deserves to be weighed more attentively than gold. The 
 Scriptures wen; penned by a direct ray of the Holy Spirit ; 
 the fathers only by a reflex ray emanating therefrom." His 
 whole character and appearance corresponded with his doc- 
 trine. "His simple mortified air, and his humble garb 
 formed a striking contrast with the awful sanctity of his 
 countenance, and his native lofty dignity of manner. "f Pos- 
 sessing that force of character by which men of strong minds 
 silently but surely govern others, his proselytes soon in- 
 creased, and he became the nucleus of a new class of re- 
 formers. 
 
 St. Cyran was soon called to preside over the renowned 
 
 good faith, nor in consistency with the sentiments of their much admired 
 Trailers Augustine and Jansen. 
 
 * Fontaine M-jnioirea i <JOO; Mosheirn Fxjcl. Hist , cent. xvii. P. 
 
 4 Lancelot, p. 123. 
 
 2
 
 XXV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 monastery of Port-Royal. Two houses went^ under this 
 name, though forming one abbey. One of these was called 
 Port-Royal des Champs, and was situated in a gloomy forest, 
 about six leagues from Paris ; but this having been found an 
 unhealthy situation, the nun were removed for some time to 
 another house in Paris, which went under the name "f Port- 
 Royal de Paris. The Abbey of Port-Roj'al was one of the 
 most ancient belonging to the order of Citeaux, having been 
 founded by Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris, in 1204. It was 
 placed originally under the rigorous discipline of St. Bene- 
 dict, but in course of time fell, like most other monasteries, 
 into a state of the greatest relaxation. In 1602, a new ab- 
 bess was appointed in the person of Maria Angelica Arnauld, 
 sister of the famous Arnauld, then a mere child, scarcely 
 eleven years old ! The nuns, promising themselves n long 
 period of unbounded liberty, rejoiced at this appointment. 
 But their joy was not of long duration. The young abbess, 
 at first, indeed, thought of nothing but amusement ; but at 
 the age of seventeen a change came over her spirit. A cer- 
 tain Capuchin, wearied, it is said, or more probably disgust- 
 ed, with the monastic life, had been requested by the nuns, 
 who were not aware of his character, to preach before them. 
 The preacher, equally ignorant of his audience, and supposing 
 them to be eminently pious ladies, delivered an affecting dis- 
 course, pitched on the loftiest key of devotion, which left an 
 impression on the mind of Angelica never to be effaced. She 
 set herself to reform her establishment, and carried it into 
 effect with a determination and self-denial quite beyond her 
 years. This " reformation," so highly lauded by her pane- 
 gyrists, consisted chiefly in restoring the austere discipline of 
 St. Benedict, and other severities practised in the earlier 
 ages, the details of which would be neither edifying nor 
 agreeable. The substitution of coarse serge in place of linen 
 as underclothing, and dropping melted wax on the bare arms, 
 may be taken as specimens of the reformation introduced by 
 Mere Angelique. In these mortifying exercises the abbess 
 showed an example to all the rest. She chose as her dormi-
 
 PORT-ROYAL ITS DEVOTION. 
 
 tory the filthiest cell in the convent, a place infested with 
 toads and vermin, in which she found the highest delight, 
 declaring that she " seemed transported to the grotto of 
 Bethlehem." The same rigid denial of pleasure was extended 
 to her food, her dress, her whole occupations. Clothed her- 
 self in the rudest dress she could procure, nothing gave her 
 greater offence than to see in her nuns any approach to the 
 fashions of the world, even in the adjustment of the coarse 
 black serge, with the scarlet cross, which formed their hum- 
 ble apparel.* Yet, in the midst of all this " voluntary hu- 
 mility," her heart seems to have been turned mainly to the 
 Saviour. It was Jesus Christ whom she aimed at adoring in 
 the worship she paid to " the sacrament of the altar." And 
 in a book of devotion, composed by her for private use, she 
 gave expression to sentiments too much savoring of undivi- 
 ded affection to Christ to escape the censure of the Church. 
 It was dragged to light and condemned at Rome.f There 
 is reason to believe that, under the direction of M. de St. 
 Cyran, her religious sentiments, as well as those of her com- 
 munity, became much more enlightened. Her firmness in 
 resisting subscription to the formulary and condemning Jan- 
 sen, in spite of the most cruel and unmanly persecution, and 
 the piety and faith she manifested on her death-bed, when, 
 in the midst of exquisite suffering, and in the absence of the 
 rites which her persecutors denied her, she expired in the 
 full assurance of salvation through the merits of the only 
 Saviour, form one of the most interesting chapters in the 
 martyrology of the Church. 
 
 But St. Cyran aimed at higher objects than the manage- 
 ment of a nunnery. His energetic mind planned a system 
 of education, in which, along with the elements of learning, 
 the youth might be imbued with early piety. Attracted by 
 his fame, several learned men, some of them of rank And for- 
 
 * Me moires pour servir a 1'Histoire de Port-Royal, vol. i. pp. 35, 57, 
 
 t Ih.. p. 456. The title of this work was, " The Sucre. ZJhaplet of 
 the Holy Sacrament."
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tune, fled to enjoy at Port- Royal des Champs a sacred retreat 
 from the wo.'ld. This community, which differed from a 
 monastery in not being bound by any vows, settled in a farm 
 adjoining the convent, called Les Granges. The names of 
 Arnauld, D'Andilly, Nicole, Le Maitre, Sacy,* Fontaine, 
 Pascal, and others, have conferred immortality on the spot. 
 The system pursued in this literary hermitage was, in many 
 respects, deserving of praise. The time of the recluses was 
 divided between devotional and literary pursuits, relieved by 
 agricultural and mechanical labors. The Scriptures, and 
 other books of devotion, were translated into the vernacular 
 language ; and the result was, the singular anomaly of a 
 Roman Catholic community distinguished for the devout and 
 diligent study of the Bible. Protestants they certainly were 
 not, either in spirit or in practice. Firm believers in the in- 
 fallibility of their Church, and fond devotees in the observ- 
 ance of her rites, they held it a 'point of merit to yield a blind 
 obedience, in matters of faith, to the dogmas of Rome. None 
 were more hostile to Protestantism. St. Cyrau, it is said, 
 would never open a Protestant book, even for the purpose of 
 refuting it, without first making the sign of the cross on it, 
 to exorcise the evil spirit which he believed to lurk within 
 its pages.f From no community did there emanate more 
 learned apologies for Rome than from Port-Royal. Still, it 
 must be owned, that in attachment to the doctrines of grace, 
 EO far as they went, and in the exhibition of the Christian 
 virtues, attested by their sufferings, lives, and writings, the 
 Port- Royalists, including under this name both the nuns and 
 recluses, greatly surpassed many Protestant communities. 
 Their piety, indeed, partook of the failings which have al- 
 ways characterized the religion of the cloister. It seems to 
 have hovered between superstition and mysticism. Afraid 
 to fight against the world, they fled from it ; and, forgetting 
 that our Saviour was driven into the wilderness to be tempt* 
 
 * Sacy. or Saci, was the inverted name of Isaac Le Maitre, celebrated 
 for his translation of the Bible. 
 t Modiri.n. Ec'ffl. HiA, cwit. xvii. $2.
 
 PORT-ROYAL ITS CHARACTERISTICS. XXIX 
 
 ed of the devil, they retired to a wilderness to avoid tempta- 
 tion. Half conscious of the hollowness of the ceremonial 
 they practised, thry sought to graft on its dead stock the vi- 
 talities of the Christian faith. In their hands, penance was 
 sublimated into the symbol c." penitential sorrow, and the 
 mass into a spiritual service, the benefit of which depended 
 on the preparation of the heart of the worshipper. In their 
 eyes, the priest was but a suggestive emblem of the Saviour ; 
 and to them the altar, with its crucifix and bleeding image, 
 served only as a platform on which they might obtain a more 
 advantageous view of Calvary. Transferring to the Church 
 of Rome the attributes of the Church of God, and regarding 
 her still, in spite of her eclipse and disfigurement, as of one 
 spirit, and even of one body, with Christ, infallible and im- 
 mortal, they worshipped the fond creation of their own fancy. 
 At the same time, they attempted to revive the doctrine of 
 religious abstraction, or the absorption of the soul in Deity, 
 and the total renouncement of everything in the shape of 
 sensual enjoyment, which afterwards distinguished the mys- 
 tics of the Continent. Even in their literary recreations, 
 while they acquired an elegance of style which marked 
 a new era in the literature of France, they betrayed their 
 ascetic spirit. Poetry was only admissible when clothed in 
 a devotional garb. It was by stealth that Racine, who stud- 
 ied at Port-Royal, indulged his poetic vein in the profane 
 pieces which afterwards gave him celebrity. And yet it is 
 candid to admit, that the mortifications in which this amiable 
 fraternity engaged, consisted rather in the exclusion of pleas- 
 ure than the infliction of pain, and that the object aimed at 
 in these austerities was not so much to merit heaven as to 
 attain an ideal perfection on earth. Port-Royalism, in short, 
 was Popery in its mildest type, as Jesuitism is Popery in its 
 perfection ; and had it been possible to present that system 
 in a form calculated to disarm prejudice and to cover its na- 
 tive deformities, the 'task might have been achieved by the 
 pious devotees of Les Granges. But the same merciful Prov- 
 idence which, for the preservation of the human species, has
 
 XXX HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 furnished the snake with his rattle, and taught the lion to 
 " roar for his prey," has" so ordered it that the Romish 
 Church should betray her real character, in order that his 
 people might "come out of her, and not be partakers of her 
 sins, that they receive not of her plagues." The whole sys- 
 tem adopted at Port-Royal was regarded, from the com- 
 mencement, with extreme jealousy by the authorities of that 
 Church ; the schools were soon dispersed, and the Jesuits 
 never rested till they had destroyed every vestige of the ob- 
 noxious establishment. 
 
 The enemies of Pout-Royal have attempted to show that 
 St. Cyran and his associates had formed a deep-laid plot for 
 overturning the Roman Catholic faith. From time to time, 
 down to the present day, works have appeared, under the 
 auspices of the Jesuits, in which this charge is reiterated ; 
 and the old calumnies against the sect are revived a period- 
 ical trampling on the ashes of the poor Jansenists (after hav- 
 ing accomplished their ruin two hundred years ago), which 
 reminds one of nothing so much as the significant grinning and 
 yelling with which the modern Jews celebrate to this day the 
 downfal of Haman the Agagite.* In one point only could 
 their assailants find room to question their orthodoxy the 
 supremacy of the pope. Here, certainly, they were led, more 
 from circumstances than from inclination, to lean to the side 
 of the Gallican liberties. But even Jansen himself, after 
 spending a lifetime on his " Augustinus," and leaving it be- 
 hind him as a sacred legacy, abandoned himself and his trea- 
 tise to the judgment of the pope. The following are his 
 words, dictated by him half an hour before his death: "I 
 feel that it will be difficult to alter anything. Yet if the Ro- 
 mish see should wish anything to be altered, I am her obedi- 
 ent son ; and to that Church in which I have always lived, 
 even to this bed of death, I will prove obedient. This is my 
 last will." The same sentiment is expressed by Pascal, in one 
 
 * We may refer particularly to Petitot in his Collection des Meraoires, 
 torn, xxxiii.. Paris, 1824; and to a History of the Company of Jesus by 
 J. Cretineau-Joly, Paris, 1815. With high pretensions to impartiality, 
 these works abound with the most glaring specimens of special pleading.
 
 PORT-ROYAL ITS ENEMIES. XXH 
 
 of his letters. Alas ! how sad is the predicament in which, 
 the Church of Rome places her conscientious votaries ! Both 
 of these excellent men were as firmly persuaded, no doubt, of 
 the faith which they taught, as of the facts which came un- 
 der their observation ; and yet they held themselves bound 
 to cast their N religious convictions at the feet of a fellow-mor- 
 tal, notoriously under the influence of the Jesuits, and pz - o- 
 fessed themselves ready, at a signal from Rome, to renounce 
 what they held as divine truth, and to embrace what they 
 regarded as damnable error ! A spectacle more painful and 
 piteous can hardly be imagined than that of such men strug- 
 gling between the dictates of conscience, and the night-mare 
 of that " strong delusion," which led them to " believe a lie." 
 In every feature that distinguished the Port-Royalists, they 
 stood opposed to the Jesuits. In theology they were antip- 
 odes in learning they were rivals. The schools of Port- 
 Royal already eclipsed those of the Jesuits, whose policy it 
 has always been to monopolize education, under the pretext 
 of charity. But the Jansenisls might have been allowed to 
 retain their peculiar tenets, had they not touched the idol 
 of every Jesuit, " the glory of the Society," by supplanting 
 them in the confessional. The priests connected with Port- 
 Royal, from their primitive simplicity of manners and severity 
 of morals, and, above all, from their spiritual Christianity, 
 acquired a popularity which could not fail to give mortal 
 offence to the Society, who then ruled the councils both of 
 the Church and the nation. Nothing less than the annihila- 
 tion of the whole party would satisfy their vengeful purpose. 
 In this nefarious design they were powerfully aided by Car- 
 dinal Richelieu, and by Louis XIV., a prince who, though yet 
 a mere youth, was entirely under Jesuitical influence in mat- 
 ters of religion ; and who, having resolved to extirpate Prot- 
 estantism, could not well endure the existence of a sect within 
 the Church, which seemed to favor the Reformation by ex- 
 posing the corruptions of the clergy.* 
 
 * Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV., t. ii.
 
 XXX11 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 To effect their object, St. Cyran, the leader and ornament 
 of the party, required to be disposed of. He was accused 
 of various articles of heresy ; and Cardinal Richelieu at once 
 gratified his party resentment and saved himself the trouble of 
 controversy, by immuring him in the dungeon of Vincennes. 
 In this prison St. Cyran languished for five years, and sur- 
 vived his release only a few months, having died in October, 
 1643. His place, however, as leader of the Jansenist party, 
 was supplied by one destined to annoy the Jesuits by his con- 
 troversial talents fully more than his predecessor had done by 
 his apostolic sanctity. Anthony Arnauld may be said to have 
 been born an enemy to the Jesuits. His father, a celebrated 
 lawyer, had distinguished himself for his opposition to the 
 Society, and having engaged ia an important law-suit against 
 them, in which he warmly pleaded, in the name of the uni- 
 versity, that they should be interdicted from the education 
 of youth, and even expelled from the kingdom. Anthony, 
 who inherited his spirit, was the youngest in a family of 
 twenty children, and was born February 6, 1612.* Several 
 of them were connected with Port-Royal. His sister, as we 
 have seen, became its abbess; and five other sisters were 
 nuns in that establishment. He is said to have given preco- 
 cious proof of his polemic turn. Busying himself, when a 
 mere boy, with some papers in his uncle's library, and being 
 asked what he was about, he replied, " Don't you see that I 
 am helping you to refute the Hugonots ?" This prognostica- 
 tion he certainly verified in after life. He wrote, with almost 
 equal vehemence, against Rome, against the Jesuits, and 
 against the Protestants. He was, for many years, the facile 
 princeps of the party termed Jansenists ; and was one of those 
 characters who present to the public an aspect ne.arly the re- 
 verse of the estimate formed of them by their private friends. 
 By the hitter he is represented as the best of men, totally 
 free from pride and passion. Judging from his physiognomy, 
 
 * M^moires de P. Royal, i. 13. Bayle insists that his father had 
 twenty-two children. Diet., ar. Arnauld.
 
 his -writings and his life, we would say the natural temper of 
 Arnauld was austere and indomitable. Expelled from the 
 Sarbonne, driven out of France, and hunted from place to 
 place, he continued to fight to the last. On one occasion, 
 wishing his friend Nicole to assist him in a new work, the lat- 
 ter observed, "We are now old, is it not time to rest?" 
 " Rest !" exclaimed Arnauld, "have we not all eternity to 
 rest in ?" 
 
 Such was the character of the man who now entered the 
 lists against the redoubtable Society. His first offence was 
 the publication, in 1643, of a book on "Frequent Commu- 
 nion ;" in which, while he inculcates the necessity of a spirit- 
 ual preparation for the e.uchaiist, be insinuated that the 
 Church of Rome had a two-fold head, in the persons of Peter 
 and Paul.* His next WMS in the shape of two letters, pub- 
 lished in 1656, occasioned by a dispute referred to in the first 
 Provincial Letter, in which he declared that he had not been 
 able to find the condemned propositions in Jansen, and add- 
 ed some opinions on grace. The first of these assertions was 
 deemed derogatory to the holy see ; the second was charged 
 with heresy. The Jesuits, who sighed for an opportunity of 
 humbling the obnoxious doctor, strained every nerve to procure 
 his expulsion from the Sarbonne, or college of divinity in the 
 university. This object they had just accomplished, and ev- 
 erything promised fair to secure their triumph, when another 
 combatant unexpectedly appeared, like one of those closely- 
 visored knights of whom we read in romance, who so oppor- 
 tunely enter the field at the critical moment, and with their 
 single arm turn the tide of battle. Need we say that we 
 allude to the author of the PROVIMCIAL LETTERS ? 
 
 Bayle commences his Life of Pascal by declaring him to be 
 " one of the sublimest geniuses that the world ever pro- 
 duced." Seldom, at least, has the world ever seen such a 
 combination of excellences in one man. In him we are called 
 to admire the loftiest attributes of mind with the loveliest 
 
 * Weisman, Hist. Ecc- ., ii. 204. 
 2*
 
 XXXIV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 simplicity of moral character. He is a rare example of one 
 born with a natural genius for the exact sciences, who ap- 
 plied the subtlety of his mind to religious subjects, combining 
 with the closest logic the utmost elegance of style, and 
 crowning all with a simple and profound piety. Blaise Pas- 
 cal was born at Clermont, 19th June, 1623. His family had 
 been ennobled by Louis XI., and his father, Stephen Pascal, 
 occupied a high post in the civil government. Blaise mani- 
 fested from an early age a strong liking for the study of 
 mathematics, and, while yet a child, made some astonishing 
 discoveries in natural philosophy. To these studies he devo- 
 ted the greater part of his life. An incident, however, which 
 occurred in his thirty-first year a narrow escape from sud- 
 den death had the effect of giving an entire change to the 
 current of his thoughts. He regarded it as, a message from 
 heaven, calling him to renounce all secular occupations, and 
 devote himself exclusively to God. His sister and niece be- 
 ing nuns in Port-Royal, he was naturally led to associate with 
 those who then began to be called Jansenists. But though 
 he had several of the writings of the party, there can be no 
 doubt that it was the devotion rather than the theology of 
 Port-Royal that constituted its charm in the eyes of Pascal. 
 His sister informs us, in her memoirs of him, that " he had 
 never applied himself to abstruse questions in divinity." Nor, 
 beyond a temporary retreat to Port-Royal des Champs, and 
 an intimacy with its leading solitaries, can he be said to have 
 had any connection with that establishment. His fragile 
 frame, which was the victim of complicated disease, and his 
 feminine delicacy of spirit, unfitting him for the rough col- 
 lisions of ordinary life, he found a congenial retreat amidst 
 these literary solitudes ; while, with his clear and compre- 
 hensive mind, and his genuine piety of heart, he must have 
 sympathized with those who sought to remove from the 
 Church corruptions which he could not fail to deplore, and to 
 renovate the spirit of that Christianity which he loved far 
 above any of its organized forms. His life, not unlike a per- 
 petual miracle, is ever exciting our admiration, not unmingled,
 
 however, with pity. We see great talents enlisted in the 
 support, not indeed of the errors of a system, but of a sys- 
 tem of errors we see a noble mind debilitated by supersti- 
 tion we see a useful life prematurely terminating in, if not 
 shortened by, the petty austerities and solicitudes of monas- 
 ticism. Truth requires us to state, that he not only denied 
 himself, at last, the most common comforts of life, but wore 
 beneath his clothes a girdle of iron, with sharp points, which, 
 as soon as he felt any pleasurable sensation, he would strike 
 with his elbow, so as to force the points of iron more deeply 
 into his sides. Let the Church, which taught him such folly, 
 be responsible for it ; and let us ascribe to the grace of God 
 the patience, the meekness, the charity, and the faith, which 
 hovered, seraph- wise, over the death-bed of expiring genius. 
 The curate who attended him, struck with the triumph of re- 
 ligion over the pride of an intellect which continued to tmrn 
 after it had ceased to blaze, would frequently exclaim : " He 
 is an infant humble and submissive as an infant !" He died 
 on the 19th of August, 1662, aged thirty-nine years and two 
 months. 
 
 While Arnauld's process before the Sarbonne was in de- 
 pendence, a few of his friends, among whom were Pascal and 
 Nicole, were in the habit of meeting privately at Port-Royal/ 
 to consult on the measures they should adopt. During these 
 conferences one of their number said to Arnauld : " Will you 
 really suffer yourself to be condemned like a child, without 
 saying a word, or telling the public the real state of the ques- 
 tion ?" The rest concurred, and in compliance with their so- 
 licitations, Arnauld, after some days, produced and read be- 
 fore them a long and serious vindication of himself. His 
 audience listened in coolness and silence, upon which he re- 
 marked : " I see you don't think highly of my production, 
 and I believe you are right ; but," added he, turning him- 
 self round and addressing Pascal, " you who are young, why 
 cannot you produce -something ?'' The appeal was not lost 
 upon our author ; he had hitherto written almost nothing, but 
 he engaged to try a sketch or rough draft, which they might
 
 XXXVI HIS1ORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 fill up ; and retiring to his room, he produced, in a few hours, 
 instead of a sketch, the first letter to a provincial. On read- 
 ing tin's to his assembled friends, Arnauld exclaimed, " That 
 is excellent ! that will go down ; we must have it printed 
 immediately." 
 
 Pascal had, in fact, with the native superiority of genius, 
 pitched on the very tone which, in a controversy of this kind, 
 was calculated to arrest the public mind. Treating theology 
 in a style entirely new, he brought down the subject to the 
 comprehension of all, and translated into the pleasantries of 
 comedy, and familiarities of dialogue, discussions which had 
 till then been confined to the grave utterances of the school. 
 The framework whiph he adopted in his first letter was ex- 
 ceedingly happy. A Parisian is supposed to transmit to one 
 of his friends in the provinces an account of the disputes of 
 the day. It is said that the provincial with whom he affected 
 to correspond was Perrier, who had married one of his sis- 
 ters. Hence arose the name of the Provincials, which was 
 given to the rest of the letters. 
 
 This title they owe, it would appear, to a mistake of the 
 printer ; for in an advertisement prefixed to one of the early 
 editions, it is stated that " they have been called ' Provin- 
 cials,' because the first having been addressed without any 
 name to a person in the country, the printer published it 
 under the title ' Letter written to a Provincial by one of his 
 Friends.' " This may be regarded as an apology for the use 
 of a term which, critically speaking, was rather unhappy. 
 The word provincial in French, when used to signify a per- 
 son residing in the provinces, was generally understood in a 
 bad sense, as denoting an unpolished clown.* But the title, 
 
 * The title under which the Letters appeared when first collected into 
 a volume was, " Lettres ecrites par Louis de Montalte. a un Provincial 
 de ses amis, et aux RR. PP. Jesuites, sur la morale et la politique de 
 ces Peres." 
 
 Father Bouhours. a Jesuit ridicules the title of the Letters, and says 
 he is surprised they were not rather entitled " Letters from a Country 
 Bumpkin to his Friends," and instead of" The Provincials" called ' The 
 Bumpkins" " Campafrnardes." (Remarques sur la langae Fran., p. 
 ' 
 
 & 306- Diet. Univ., art. Provincid.')
 
 ANECDOTES OF THE PROVINCIALS. XXXVU 
 
 uncouth as it is, has been canonized and made classical for- 
 ever; and " The Provincials" is a -phrase which it would now 
 be fully as ridiculous to attempt to change as it could be at 
 first to apply it to the Letters. 
 
 The most trifling particulars connected with such a publi- 
 cation possess an interest. The Letters, we learn, were pub- 
 lished at first in separate stitched sheets of a quarto size ; 
 and, on account of t'ueir brevity, none of them extending to 
 more than 01 1 sheet of eight pages, except the last three, 
 which were somewhat longer, they were at first known by 
 the name of the " LITTLE LETTERS." No stated time was 
 observed in their publication. The first letter appeared Jan- 
 uary 13, 1C5G, being on a Wednesday ; the second on Janu- 
 ary 29, bc-ing Saturday; and the rest were issued at inter- 
 vals varying from a week to a month, till March 24, 1657, 
 which is the date "of the last letter in the series; the whole 
 thus extending over the space of a year and three months. 
 
 All accounts agree in stating that the impression produced 
 by the Provincials, on their first appearance, was quite unex- 
 ampled. They were circulated in thousands in Paris and 
 throughout France. Speaking of the first letter, Father 
 Daniel says: "It created a fracas which filled the fathers of 
 the Society with consternation. Never did the post-office 
 reap greater profits ; copies were despatched over the whole 
 kingdom ; and I myself, though very little known to the 
 gentlemen of Port-Royal, received a large packet of them, 
 post-paid, in a town of Brittany where I was then residing." 
 The same method was followed with the rest of the letters. 
 The seventh found its way to Cardinal Mazarin, who laughed 
 over it very heartily. The eighth did not appear till a month 
 after its predecessor, apparently to keep up expectation.* 
 In short, everybody read the " Little Letters," and, what- 
 ever might be their opinions of the points in dispute, all 
 agreed in admiring the genius which they displayed. They 
 were found lying on the merchant's counter, the lawyer's 
 
 * Daniel, Entretierw, p. 19.
 
 XXXVU1 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 desk, the doctor's table, the lady's toilet ; and everywhere 
 they were sought for and perused with the same avidity.* 
 The success of the Letters in gaining their object was not 
 less extraordinary. The Jesuits were fairly checkmated ; 
 and though they succeeded in carrying through the censure 
 of Arnauld, the public sympathy was enlisted in his favor. 
 The confessionals and churches of the Jesuits were deserted, 
 while those of their opponents were crowded with admiring 
 thousands.f " That book alone," says one of its bitterest 
 enemies, " has done more for the Jansenists than the ' Au- 
 gustinus' of Jansen, and all the works of Arnauld put to- 
 gether. "J This is the more surprising when we consider that, 
 at that time, the influence of the Jesuits was so high in the 
 ascendant, that Arnauld had to contend with the pope, the 
 king, the chancellor, the clergy, the Sorbonne, the universi- 
 ties, and the great body of the populace ; and that never 
 was Jansenism at a lower ebb, or more generally anathema- 
 tized than when the first Provincial Letter appeared. 
 
 This, however, was not all. Besides having the tide of 
 public favor turned against them, the Jesuits found them- 
 selves the objects of universal derision. The names of their 
 favorite casuists were converted into proverbs : Escobarder 
 came to signify the same thing with " paltering in a double 
 sense ;" Father Bauny's grotesque maxims furnished topics 
 for perpetual badinage ; and the Jesuits, wherever they went, 
 were assailed with inextinguishable laughter. By no other 
 method could Pascal have so severely stung this proud and 
 self-conceited Society. The rage into which they were 
 thrown was extreme, and was variously expressed. At one 
 time it found vent in calumnies and threats of vengeance. 
 At other times they indulged in puerile lamentations. It 
 was amusing to hear these stalwart divines, after breathing 
 fire and slaughter against their enemies, assume the queru- 
 lous tones of injured and oppressed innocence. " The perse- 
 
 * Petitot, Notices, p. 121. 
 
 t Benoit, Hist, de 1 Edit, de Nantes, iii. 198. 
 
 J Daniel, Entrctiens, p. 11.
 
 ANECDOTES OF THE PROVINCIALS. XXxix 
 
 cution which the Jesuits suffer from the buffooneries of Port- 
 Royal," they said, "is perfectly intolerable : the wheel and 
 the gibbet are nothing to it ; it can only be compared to the 
 torture inflicted on the ancient martyrs, who were first rubbed 
 over with honey and then left to be stung to death by wasps 
 and wild bees. Their tyrants have subjected them to em- 
 poisoned raillery, and the world leaves them urtpitied to suf- 
 fer a sweet death, more cruel in its sweetness than the bit- 
 terest punishment."* 
 
 The Letters were published anonymously, under the ficti- 
 tious signature of Louis de Montalte, and the greatest care 
 was taken to preserve the secret of their authorship. As on 
 all such occasions, many were the guesses made, and the 
 false reports circulated ; but beyond the circle of Pascal's 
 personal friends, none knew him to be the author, nor was 
 the fact certainly or publicly known till after his death. The 
 following anecdote shows, however, that he was suspected, 
 and was once very nearly discovered : After publishing the 
 third letter, Pascal left Port-Royal des Champs, to avoid be- 
 ing disturbed, and took up his residence in Paris, under the 
 name of M. de Mons, in a hotel garni, at the sign of the King 
 of Denmark, Rue des Poiriers, exactly opposite the college 
 of the Jesuits. Here he was joined by his brother-in-law, 
 Perrier, who passed as the master of the house. One day 
 Perrier received a visit from his relative, Father Fretat, a 
 Jesuit, accompanied by a brother monk. Fretat told him 
 that the Society suspected M. Pascal to be the author of the 
 " Little Letters," which were making such a noise, and ad- 
 vised him as a friend to prevail on his brother-in-law to de- 
 sist from writing any more of them, as he might otherwise 
 involve himself in much trouble, and even danger. Perrier 
 thanked him for his advice, but said he was afraid it would 
 be altogether useless, as Pascal would just reply that he 
 could not hinder people from suspecting him, and that 
 though he should deny it they would not believe him. The 
 monks took their departure, much to the relief of Perrier, for 
 * Nicole. Notes sur la xi. Lettre iii. 332.
 
 It HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 at that veiy time several sheets of the seventh or eighth let- 
 ter, newly come from the printer, were lying on the bed, 
 where tiny had been placed for the purpose of drving, but, 
 fortunately, though the curtains were only partially drawn, 
 and one of the monks sat very close to the bed, they were 
 not observed. Perrier ran immediately to communicate the 
 incident to his brother-in-law, who was in an adjoining apart- 
 ment ; and he had reason to congratulate him on the narrow- 
 escape which he had made.* 
 
 As Pascal proceeded, he transmitted his manuscripts to 
 Port-Royal des Champs, where they were carefully revised 
 and corrected by Arnauld and Nicole. Occasionally, these 
 expert divines suggested the plans of the letters ; and by 
 them lie was, beyond all doubt, furnished with most of his 
 quotations from the voluminous writings of the casuists, 
 which, with the exception of Escobar, he appears never to 
 have read. We must not suppose, however, that he took 
 these on trust, or gave himself no trouble to verify them. 
 We shall afterwards have proof of the contrary. The first 
 letters he composed with the rapidity of new-born enthusi- 
 asm ; but t*he pains and mental exertion which he bestowed 
 on the rest are almost incredible. Nicole says " he was often 
 .wenty whole days on a single letter: and some of them 
 le recommenced seven or eight times before bringing them 
 X) their picsent state of perfection."! We are assured that 
 je wrote over the eighteenth letter no less than thirteen 
 Jmes.J Having been obliged to hasten the publication of 
 the sixteenth, on account of a search made after it in the 
 printing office, he apologizes for its length on the ground 
 that " he had found no time to make it shorter."^ 
 
 * Recueil de Port-Royal, 278, 279 ; Petitot, pp. 122. 123. 
 
 f Histoire des Provinciates, p. 12. 
 
 j Petitot p. 124. The eighteenth letter embraces the delicate topic 
 of papal authority, as well as. the distinction between faith and fact, 
 in stilting which we can easily conceive how severely the ingenuous 
 mind of Pascal must have labored to find snrne plausible ground for 
 vindicating his consistency as a Roman Catholic. To the Protestant 
 reader, it must appear the most unsatisfactory of all the Letters. 
 
 Prov. Let. ; p. 340.
 
 CHARACTER OF THE PROVINCIALS. ill 
 
 The fruits of this extraordinary elaboration appear in every 
 letter ; but what is equally remarkable, is the art with which 
 so many detached letters, written at distant intervals, and 
 prompted by passing events, have been so arranged as to 
 form an harmonious whole. The first three letters refer to 
 Arnauld's affair ; the questions of grace are but slightly 
 touched, the main object being to interest the reader in favor 
 of the Jansenists, and excite his contempt and indignalion 
 against their opponents. After this prelude, the fourth let- 
 ter serves as a transition to the following six, in which he 
 takes up maxims of the casuists. In the eight concluding 
 letters he resumes the gi'and objects of the work the morals 
 of the Jesuits and the question of grace. These three parts 
 have each their peculiar style.' The first is distinguished for 
 lively dialogue and repartee. Jacobins, Molinists, and Jnn- 
 senists are brought on the stage, and speak in character, 
 while Pascal does little more than act as reporter. In the 
 second part, he comes into personal contact with a casuisti- 
 cal doctor, and extracts from him, under the pretext of desi- 
 ring information, some of the weakest and worst of his max- 
 ims. At the eleventh letter, Pascal throws off his disguise, 
 and addressing himself directly to the whole order of the 
 Jesuits, and to their Provincial by name, he pours out his 
 whole soul in an impetuous and impassioned torrent of decla- 
 mation. From beginning to end it is a well-sustained bat- 
 tle, in which the weapons are only changed in order to strike 
 the harder. 
 
 The literary merits of the Provincials have been univer- 
 sally acknowledged and applauded. On this point, where 
 Pascal's countrymen must be considered the most competent 
 judges, we have the testimonies of the leading spirits of 
 France. Boileau pronounced it a work that has " surpassed 
 at once the ancients and the moderns." Perrault has given 
 a similar judgment: "There is more wit in these eighteen 
 letters than in Plato's Dialogues; more delicate and artful 
 raillery than in those of Lucian ; and more strength and in- 
 genuity of reasoning than in the orations of Cicero. We
 
 X HISTOEICAL INTRODUCTIOlf. 
 
 tave nothing more beautiful in this species of writing."* 
 " Pascal's style," says the Abbe d'Arligny, " has never been 
 surpassed, nor perhaps equalled. "f The high encomium of 
 Voltaire is well known : " The Provincial Letters were mod- 
 els of eloquence and pleasantry. The best comedies of Mo- 
 liere have not more wit in them than the first letters ; Bos- 
 suet has nothing more sublime than the last ones." Again, 
 the same writer says : "The first work of genius that ap- 
 peared in prose was the collection of the Provincial Letters. 
 Examples of every species of eloquence may there be found. 
 There is not a single word in it which, after a hundred years, 
 has undergone the change to which all living languages are 
 liable. We may refer to this work the era when our lan- 
 guage became fixed. The Bishop of Lucon told me, that 
 having asked the Bishop of Meaux what work he would wish 
 most to liave been the author of, setting his own works 
 aside, Bossuet instantly replied, ' The Provincial Letters.' "J 
 "Pascal succeeded beyond all expression," says D'Alem- 
 bert ; " several of his bon-mots have become proverbial in 
 our language, and the Provincials will be ever regarded as a 
 model of taste and style." To this day the same high eulo- 
 giums are passed on the work by the best scholars of 
 France. I 
 
 To these testimonies it would be superfluous to add any 
 criticism of our own, were it not to prepare the English 
 reader for the peculiar character of our author's style. Pas- 
 cal's wit is essentially French. It is not the broad humor 
 of Smollet ; it is not the cool irony of Swift ; far less is it 
 the envenomed sarcasm of Junius. It is wit the lively, po- 
 lite, piquant wit of the early French school. Nothing c;m be 
 finer than its spirit ; but from its very fineness it is apt to evap- 
 orate in the act of transfusion into another tongue. Nothing 
 
 * Perrnult, Parnllele des Anc. et Mod., Bayle, art. Pascal. 
 f D'Artigny, Nouveaux Memoires. iii. p. 34. 
 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. torn. ii. pp. 171, 274. 
 () D'.Alemhert. Destruct. des Jesuites. p. 54. 
 
 || Bordas-Dernoulin Eloge de Pascal, p. xxv. (This was the prize 
 essay before the French Academy, in June, 1842.)
 
 CHARACTER OF THE PROVINCIALS. xli 
 
 can be more ingenious than the transitions by which the author 
 glides insensibly from one topic to another ; and in the more 
 serious letters, we cannot fail to be struck with the mathe- 
 matical precision of his reasoning. But there is a species of 
 iteration, and a style of dovetailing his sentiments, which 
 does not quite accord with our taste ; and the foreign tenure 
 of which, in spite of every effort to the contrary, must shine 
 through any translation. 
 
 High as the Provincials stand in the literary world, they 
 were not suffered to pass without censure in the high places 
 of the Church. The first effect of their publication, indeed, 
 was to raise a storm against the casuists, whom Pascal had so 
 effectually exposed. The cures of Paris, and afterwards the 
 assembly of the clergy, shocked at the discovery of such a 
 sink of corruption, the existence "of which, though just be- 
 neath their feet, they never appear to have suspected, deter- 
 mined to institute an examination into the subject. Hitherto 
 the tenets of the casuists, buried in huge folios, or only taught 
 in the colleges of the Jesuits, had .escaped public observa- 
 tion. The clergy resolved to compare the quotations of Pas- 
 cal with these writings; and the result of the investigation 
 was, that he was found to be perfectly correct, while a mul- 
 titude of other maxims, equally scandalous, were dragged to 
 light. These were condemned in a general assembly of the 
 clergy.* Unfortunately for the Jesuits, they had not a single 
 writer at the time capable of conducting their vindication. 
 Several replies to the Provincials were attempted while they 
 were in the course of publication ; but these were taken up 
 by the redoubtable Montalte, and fairly strangled at their 
 birth.f Shortly after the Letters were finished, there ap- 
 peared " An Apology for the Casuists," the production of a 
 
 * Nicole, Hist, des Provinciales. 
 
 t The names of these nnfortunate productions alone survive; I. 
 " First Reply to Letters, &c., by a Father of the Company of Jesus." 
 
 2. "Provincial Impostures of Sieur de Montalte* Secretary of Port- 
 Royal, discovered and refuted by a Father of the Company of Jesus." 
 
 3. " Reply to a Theologian," &c. 4. " Reply to the Seventeenth Let- 
 ter, by Francis Annat," &c., &c.
 
 iv HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Jesuit named Pirot, who, with a folly and frankness which 
 proved nearly as fatal to his order as it did to himself, 
 attempted to vindicate the worst maxims of the casuistical 
 school. This Apology was condemned by the Sorbonne, and 
 subsequently at Rome ; its author died of chagrin, and the 
 Jesuits fell into temporary disgrace.* 
 
 But, with that tenaciousness of life and elasticity of limb 
 which have ever distinguished the Society, it was not long 
 before they rebounded from their fall and regained their feet. 
 Unable to answer the Letters, they succeeded in obtaining, in 
 February, 1657, their condemnation by the Parliament of 
 Provence, by whose orders they were burnt on the pillory by 
 the hands of the common executioner. Not content with 
 this clumsy method of refutation, they succeeded in procur- 
 ing the formal condemnation of the Provincials by a censure 
 of the pope, Alexander VII., dated 6th September, 1657. 
 In this decree the work is " prohibited and condemned, under 
 the pains and censures contained in the Council of Trent, and 
 in the index of prohibited books, and other pains and cen- 
 sures which it may please his holiness to ordain." It is 
 almost needless to say, that these sentences neither enhanced 
 nor lessened the fame of the Provincials. It must be inter- 
 esting to know what the feelings of Pascal were, on learning 
 that this work, into which he had thrown his whole heart, 
 and mind, and strength, and which may be said to have been 
 at once his chef-d'oeuvre and his confession of faith, had been 
 condemned by the head of that Church which he had hith- 
 erto believed to be infallible. Warped as his fine spirit was 
 by education, his unbending fectitude forbids the supposition 
 that he could surrender his cherished and conscientious sen- 
 timents at the mere dictum of the pope. An incident oc- 
 curred in 1661, shortly before his death, strikingly illustrative 
 of his conscientiousness, and of the sincerity of purpose with 
 which the Letters were written. The persecution had begun 
 to rage against Port-Royal ; one mandemcnt after another, 
 
 * Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litteratur, vol. 5. pp. 420-423.
 
 TAPAL CONDEMNATION CF THE PROVINCIALS. xlv 
 
 requiring subscription to the condemnation of Jansen, came 
 down" from. the court of Rome; and the poor nuns, shrink- 
 ing, on the one fiand, f -om violating their consciences by sub- 
 scribing what they believed to be an untruth, and trembling, 
 on the other, at the consequences of disobeying their eccle- 
 siastical superiors, were thrown into the* most distressing em- 
 barrassment. Their " obstinacy," as it was termed, only pro- 
 voked their persecutors to more stringent demands. In these 
 circumstances, even the stern Arnauld and the conscientious 
 Nicole were tempted to make some compromise, and drew up 
 a declaration to accompany the signature of the nuns, which 
 they thought might save at once the truth and their consist- 
 ence 7 . To this Pascal objected, as not sufficiently clear, and 
 as leaving it to be inferred that they condemned "efficacious 
 grace." He could not endure the idea of their employing an 
 ambiguous statement, which appeared, or might be supposed 
 by their opponents, to grant what they did not really mean 
 to concede. The consequence was a slight and temporary 
 dispute not affecting principle so much as the mode of 
 maintaining it in which Pascal stood alone against all the 
 members of Port- Royal. On One occasion, after exhausting 
 his eloquence upon them without success, he was so deeply 
 affected, that his feeble frame, laboring under headache and 
 other disorders, sunk under the excitement, and he fell into a 
 swoon. After recovering his consciousness, he explained the 
 cause of his sudden illness, in answer to the affectionate 
 inquiries of his sister: "When I saw those," he said, "whom 
 I regard as the persons to whom God has made known his 
 truth, and who ought to be its champions, all giving way, I 
 was so overcome with grief that I could stand it no longer." 
 Subsequent mandements, still more stringent, soon saved the 
 poor nuns from the temptation of ambiguous submissions, and 
 reconciled Pascal and his friends.* 
 
 * Recueil de Port-Re yal, pp. 314-323. Some papers passed between 
 Pascal and his friends ,m this topic. Pascal committed these on his 
 death-bed, to his friend M. Domat. "with a request that he would hum 
 them if the nuns of Port-ftoyal proved firm, and print them if they 
 should yield." (Ib., p. 823) The nuns having ad firm, the praha-
 
 llvl HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 But we are fortunately furnished with his own reflections 
 on the subject of the Provincials, in his celebrated " Thoughts 
 on Religion :" 
 
 " I feared," says he, " that I might have written errone- 
 ously, when I saw myself condemned ; but the example of so 
 many pious witnesses made me think differently. It is no 
 longer allowable to write truth. IF MY LETTERS ARE CON- 
 DEMNED AT ROME, THAT WHICH I CONDEMN IN THEM IS CON- 
 DEMNED IN HEAVEN."* 
 
 It is only necessaiy to add, that Pascal continued to main- 
 tain his sentiments on this subject unchanged to the last. On 
 his death-bed, M. Beurrier, his parish priest, administered to 
 him the last rites of his Church, and came to learn, after hav- 
 ing confessed him, that he was the author of the " Provincial 
 Letters." Full of concern at having absolved the author of 
 a book condemned by the pope, the good priest returned, 
 and asked him if it was true, and if he had no remorse of 
 conscience on that account. Pascal replied, that " he could 
 assure him, as one who was now about to give an account to 
 God of all his actions, that his conscience gave him no trou- 
 ble on that score ; and that in the composition of that work 
 he was influenced by no mad motive, but solely by regard to 
 the glory of God and the vindication of truth, and not in the 
 least by any passion or personal feeling against the Jesuits." 
 Attempts were made by Perefixe, archbishop of Paris, firs' 
 to bully the priest for having absolved such an impenitent 
 offender.f and afterwards to force him into a false account of 
 his penitent's confession. It was confidently reported, on the 
 pretended authority of the confessor, that Pascal had ex- 
 pressed his sorrow for having written the Provincials, and 
 
 bility is that they were destroyed. Had they been preserved, they might 
 have thrown some further light on the opinions of Pascal regarding 
 papal authority. 
 
 * Si mes Lettres sont condamnees d Rome, ce que fy condamne. esi 
 condamne dans le del. (Pensees de Blaise Pascal, torn, ii. Iu3. Paris, 
 18-24.) 
 
 T '' How came you," said the archbishop to M. Beurrier. '' to admin 
 ister the sacraments to such a person 1 Didn't you know that he wa* 
 a Joiwenist 1" (Recueil, 348.)
 
 EDITIONS OF THE PROVINCIALS. xvH 
 
 that he had condemned his friends of Port-Royal for want 
 of due respect to papal authority. Both these allegations 
 were afterwards distinctly refuted the first by the written 
 avowal of M. Beurrier, and the other by two depositions for- 
 mally made by Nicole, showing that the real ground of Pas- 
 cal's brief disagreement with his friends was directly the re- 
 verse of that which had been assigned.* 
 
 Few books have passed through more editions than the 
 Provincials. The following, among many others, may be 
 mentioned as French editions: The first, in 1656, 4to; a 
 second in 1657, 12mo; a third in 1658, 8vo; a fourth in 
 1659, 8vo; a fifth in 1666, 12mo; a sixth in 1667, 8vo; a 
 seventh in 1669, 12mo ; an eighth in 1689, 8vo; a ninth in 
 1712, 8vo ; a tenth in 1767, 12mo.f The later editions are 
 beyond enumeration. The Letters were translated into Latin, 
 during the lifetime of Pascal, by his intimate friend, the 
 learned and indefatigable Nicole, under the assumed name of 
 "William Wendrock, a Saltzburg divine."! Nicole, who was 
 a complete master of Latin, has given an elegant, though 
 somewhat free version of his friend's work. He has fre- 
 quently added to the quotations taken from the writings of 
 the Jesuits and others; a liberty which he doubtless felt 
 himself the more warranted to take, from the share he had 
 in the original concoction of the Letters. Nicole's prelimi- 
 nary dissertation and notes were translated by Mademoiselle 
 de Joncourt, a lady, it is said, "possessed of talents and 
 piety, who, to the graces peculiar to her own sex, added the 
 accomplishments which are the ornament of ours." Be- 
 sides this, the Provincials have been translated into nearly all 
 
 * Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 327-330 ; Petitot, p. 165. 
 
 t Walchii Bihlioth. Theol., ii. 295. 
 
 $ The title of Nicole's translation, now rarely to be met with, is, JLu- 
 ctovici Montaltii Litteree Provinciales, de Morali et Politico, Jesuitarum 
 Disciplina. A Wlllelmo Wendrockio Salisburgeni Theologo. Several 
 editions of this translation were printed. I have the first, published at 
 Cologne in 1658, and the fifth, much enlarged, Cologne, 1679. 
 
 <) Avertissement. Les Provinciales. ed. 1767. Mad. de Joncourt, or 
 Joncoux, took a deep interest in the falling fortunes of Port-Royal. 
 (See some account of her in Madame Schimme penninck's History of 
 the Demolition of Port-Royal, p. 135.)
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the languages of Europe. Bayle informs us that he had seen 
 an edition of them in 8vo, with four columns, containing the 
 French, Latin, Italian, and Spanish.* The Spanish transla- 
 tion, executed by Gratien Cordero of Burgos, was suppressed 
 by order of the Inquisition.f But all the efforts made for 
 the suppression of the Provincials only served to promote 
 their popularity ; and their enemies found that, if they would 
 silence, they must answer them. 
 
 Forty years elapsed after the publication of the Provincials 
 before the Jesuits ventured on a reply. At length, in 1697, 
 appeared an answer, entitled Entrctiens de Cleandre et d * Eu- 
 doxe, sur Ics Lettres au Provincial. The author is known to 
 have been Father Daniel, the historiographer of France. 
 This learned Jesuit undertook the desperate task of refuting 
 the Provincials, in a form somewhat resembling that of the 
 Letters themselves, being a series of supposed conversations 
 between two friends, aided by an abbe, " who is excessively 
 frank and honest, one who never could bear all his life to see 
 people imposed upon." The dialogue is conducted with con- 
 siderable spirit, but is sadly deficient in vraisemhlance. The 
 author commences with high professions of impartiality. Ole- 
 ander and Eudoxus are supposed to be quite neutral some- 
 what like the free-will of Molina, " in a state of perfect equi- 
 librium, until good sense and stubborn facts turn the scale." 
 But, alas ! the equilibrium is soon lost, without the help either 
 of facts or of sense. The friends have hardly uttered two 
 sentences, till they begin to talk as like two Jesuits as could 
 well be imagined. Party rage gets the better of literary dis- 
 cretion ; the Port- Royalists are " honest knaves," " true hyp- 
 ocrites," " villains animated with stubborn fury ;" Amauld'a 
 " pen may be known by the gall that drops from it ;" Nicole 
 " swears like a trooper," and as to Pascal he is all these char- 
 acters in turn, while his book is " \ repertory of slander," 
 and is " villainous in a supreme degree !" 
 
 The whole strain of Daniel's reply corresponds with this 
 
 * Bayle, Diet., art. Pascal. 
 i Daniel, Entretiene, p. 111.
 
 DANIEL'S ANSWER TO THE PROVINCIALS. xlix 
 
 specimen of its spirit. Avoiding the error of Pirot, and yet 
 without renouncing the favorite dogmas of the Society, such 
 as probabilism, equivocations, and mental reservations, which 
 he only attempts to palliate, Father Daniel has exhausted his 
 skill in an attack on the sincerity of Pascal. His main ob- 
 ject is to convey the impression that the Provincials are a 
 libel, written in bad faith, and full of altered texts and false 
 citations. In selecting this plan of defence, the Jesuit cham- 
 pion evinces considerably more ingenuity than ingenuousness. 
 He was well aware that, at the time of their publication, the 
 Letters had been subjected to a sifting process of examina- 
 tion by the most clear-sighted Jesuits, who had signally failed 
 in proving any falsifications. But he knew also, that, during 
 the forty years that had elapsed, the writings of the casuists 
 had fallen into disuse and contempt, mainly in consequence 
 of the scorching which they had received from the wit and 
 eloquence of Pascal, and that it would be now a much easier 
 and safer task to call in question the fidelity of citations which 
 none would give themselves the trouble of verifying. In this 
 bold attempt to turn the tables against the Jansenists, by ac- 
 cusing them of chicanery and pious fraud, the very crimes 
 which they had succeeded in establishing against their oppo- 
 nents, the unscrupulous Jesuit could be at no loss to find, 
 among the voluminous writings of the casuists, some plausi- 
 ble grounds for his charges. At all events, he could calcu- 
 late on the readiness with which certain minds, fonder of gen 
 eralizing than of investigating facts, would lay hold of the 
 mere circumstance of a book having been written in defence 
 of his order, as sufficient to show that a great deal may be 
 said on both sides. As to the manner in which Daniel has 
 executed his task, it might be sufficient to say, that it has 
 been acknowledged by the Jesuits themselves to be a failure. 
 Even at its first appearance, great efforts were made to sup- 
 press it altogether, as likely to do more harm than good to 
 the Society ; and in their references to it afterwards, we see 
 the disappointment which they felt. " There was lately pub- 
 lished," says Richelet, "an answer to the Lettres Provin-
 
 1 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ciales, which professes to demolish them, but which, never- 
 theless, will not do them much harm. Do you ask how ? 
 The reason is, that although this answer shows the horrid 
 injustice, the abominable slanders, and injurious falsehoods of 
 the Provincials, against one of the most famous societies in 
 the Church, yet these Letters have so long, by their facetious 
 touches, got the laughers of all denominations on their side, 
 that they have acquired a credit and authority of which it 
 will be difficult to divest them. It must be confessed that 
 prejudice, on this occasion, is very unjust, very cruel, and 
 very obstinate in its verdict; since, though these Letters have 
 been condemned by popes, bishops, and divines, and burnt 
 by the hands of the hangman, yet they have taken such deep 
 root in people's minds as to bid defiance to all these pow- 
 ers."* " The reply," says another writer, " as may be easily 
 imagined, was not so well received as the Letters, had been. 
 Father Daniel professed to have reason and truth on his side ; 
 but his adversary had in his favor what goes much further 
 with men, the arms of ridicule and pleasantry."! This, how- 
 ever, is a mere begging of the question. Ridentem dicere 
 verum, quid vetat? It is quite possible that Father Daniel 
 may be lugubriously in the wrong, and Pascal laughingly in 
 the right. This was very triumphantly made out in the an- 
 swer to Daniel's work, which appeared in the same year with 
 the Entretiens, under the title of " Apology for the Provin- 
 cial Letters, against the last Reply of the Jesuits, entitled 
 Conversations of Cleander and Eudoxus." The author was 
 Don Mathieu Petitdidier, Benedictine of the congregation of 
 St. Vanne, who died bishop of Macra.J In this masterly per- 
 formance, the accusations of Daniel are shown to be totally 
 groundless, his answers Jesuitical and evasive, and his argu- 
 ments untenable. The " Apology" was never answered, and 
 Daniel's work sank out of sight. 
 
 Subsequent apologists of the Jesuits have followed the 
 
 * Bayle, Diet., art. Pascal, note K. 
 
 t Abbe de Castres. Les Trois Siecles, ii. G3. 
 
 $ Barbier, Diet, des Ouvrages Anon, et Pseudon.
 
 PASCALS SELF-VINDICATION. ll 
 
 line of defence adopted by Father Daniel. The continued 
 repetition of his charges, though they have been long since 
 disposed of, renders it necessary to advert to them. For the 
 strict fidelity of Pascal's citations, we have not merely the 
 testimony of contemporary witnesses, but what will be to 
 many a sufficient guarantee, the solemn assertion of Paseal 
 himself. In a conversation that took place within a year of 
 his death, and which has been preserved by his sister, he thus 
 answers the chief articles of accusation that had been brought 
 against the Provincials : 
 
 " I have been asked, first, if I repented of having written 
 the Provincial Letters? I answered that, far from repent- 
 ing, if I had it to do again, I would write them yet more 
 strongly. 
 
 " I have been asked, in the second place, why I named the 
 authors from whom I extracted these abominable passages 
 which I have cited ? I answered, If I were in a town where 
 there were a dozen fountains, and I knew for certain that one 
 of them was poisoned, I should be under obligation to tell 
 the world not to draw from that fountain ; and, as it might 
 be supposed that this was a mere fancy on my part, I should 
 be obliged to name him who had poisoned it, rather than ex- 
 pose a whole city to the risk of death. 
 
 " I have been asked, thirdly, why I adopted an agreeable, 
 jocose, and entertaining style ? I answered, If I had writ- 
 ten dogmatically, none but the learned would have read my 
 book ; and they had no need of it, knowing how the matter 
 stood, at least as well as I did. I conceived it, therefore, my 
 duty to write, so that my Letters might be read by women, 
 and people in general, that they might know the danger of 
 all those maxims and propositions which were then spread 
 abroad, and admitted with so little hesitation. 
 
 " Finally, I have been asked, if I had myself read all the 
 books which I quoted ? I answered, No. To do this, I "had 
 need have passed the greater part of my life in reading very 
 bad books. But I have twice read Escobar throughout ; and 
 for the others, I got several of my friends to read them ; but
 
 Ill HISTORICAL irrROECCTION. 
 
 / have never used a single passage wi'hout having read it my- 
 self in the book quoted, without having examined the case in 
 which it is brought forward, and without having read the 
 preceding and subsequent context, that I might not run the 
 risk of citing that for an answer which was in fact an objec- 
 tion, .which would have been very unjust and blamable."* 
 
 If this solemn declaration, emitted by one whose heart was 
 a stranger to deceit, and whose shrewdness placed him be- 
 yond the risk of delusion, is not accepted as sufficient, we 
 might refer to the mass of evidence collected at the time in 
 the Factums of the cures of Paris and Rouen, to the volu- 
 minous notes of Nicole, and to the Apology of Petitdidier, in 
 which the citations made by Pascal are authenticated with a 
 carefulness which not only sets all suspicion at rest, but leaves 
 a large balance of credit in the author's favor, by showing 
 that, so far from having reported the worst maxims of the 
 Jesuitical school, or placed them in the most odious light of 
 which they were susceptible, he has been extremely tender 
 towards them. But, indeed, the truth was placed beyond all 
 dispute, through the efforts of the celebrated Bossuet, in 
 1700, when, by a sentence of an assembly of the clergy of 
 France, the morals of the Jesuits, as exhibited in their " mon- 
 strous maxims, which had been long the scandal of the 
 Church and of Europe," "were formally condemned, and when 
 it may be said that the Provincial Letters met at once their 
 full vindication and their final triumph.f 
 
 Another class of objectors, whom the Jesuits have had 
 the good fortune to number among their apologists, are the 
 sceptical philosophers, whose native antipathy to Jansenism, 
 as a phase of serious religion, renders them willing to sacrifice 
 truth for the sake of a sneer at his disciples. D'Alembert 
 
 * Tabaraud, Dissertation sur la foi qui est due au Temoismage da 
 Pascal dans ses Lettres Provinciales.p 12. This work, published some 
 years ago in France, contains a complete Justification of Pascal's pic- 
 ture of the Jesuits in the Provincials accompanied with a mass of au- 
 thorities. The above sentiments have been introduced into Pascal's 
 Thoughts. (See Craig's translation, p. 185. ) 
 
 f Vie de Bossutt t. iv. p. ID; Tabaraud, Dissert, sur la ibi, &c.,p. 43.
 
 VOLTAIRE AND THE PROVINCIALS. US 
 
 expresses liis regret that Pascal did not kmpoon Jesuits and 
 Jansenists alike ;* and Voltaire, in the mere wantonness of 
 his cynical humor, if not from a more worthless motive, ha? 
 appended to his high panegyric on the Provincials, already 
 quoted, the following qualifications: "It is true that the 
 whole of Pascal's book is founded upon a false principle. He 
 has artfully charged the whole Society with the extravagant 
 opinions of some few Spanish and Flemish Jesuits, which he 
 might with equal ease have detected among the casuists of 
 the Dominican and Franciscan orders ; but the Jesuits alone 
 were the persons he wanted to attack. In these Letters he 
 endeavored to prove that they had a settled design to cor- 
 rupt the morals of mankind a design which no sect or soci- 
 ety ever had, or ever could have. But his business was not 
 to be right, but to entertain the public."f Every clause 
 here contains a fallacy. The charge of party- spirit, insinua- 
 ted throughout, is perfectly gratuitous. Never, perhaps, 
 was any man more free from this infirmity than Pascal. 
 That it was pure zeal for the morality of the Gospel which 
 engaged him to take up his pen against the Jesuits, can be 
 doubted by none but those who make it a point to call in 
 question the reality of all religious conviction. J Equally un- 
 founded is the imputation of levity. Pascal was earnest in 
 his raillery. A deep seriousness of purpose lurked under 
 the smile of his irony. Voltaire describes himself, not the au- 
 thor of the Provincials, when he says that " his business was 
 not to be right, but to entertain the public*." As to Pascal 
 having " endeavored to prove that the Jesuits had a settled 
 design to corrupt the morals of mankind," we are not sur- 
 prised at Father Daniel saying so ; but it is unaccountable 
 how any but a Jesuit, who professed to have read the Let- 
 ters, could advance a theory so distinctly anticipated and dis- 
 
 * " The shocking doctrine of Jansenius and of St. Cyran. afforded 
 at least as much room forri<licule asthe pliant doctrine of Molina, Tarn- 
 bourin and Vasqupz." (D'AI -mhert. Best, of the Jesuits, p. 55.) 
 
 t Voltaire. Siecle de Louis XIV.. ii. 3G7. 
 
 j Eichhorn, Geschichte der Lit. ; i. 426.
 
 UV HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 claimed in the Letters themselves. " Know, then," it is said 
 in letter fifth, " that their object is not the corruption of 
 manners that is not tlidr design. But as little is it their 
 sole aim to reform them that would be bad policy."* 
 "Alas!" says the Jesuit, in letter sixth, " our main object, 
 no doubt, should have been to establish no other maxims 
 than those of the Gospel ; and it is easy to see, from our 
 rules, that if we tolerate some degree of relaxation in others, 
 it is rather out of complaisance than design"\ In truth, 
 nothing is more clearly marked throughout the Letters than 
 this distinction between the design of the Society and the 
 tendency of its policy a distinction which leaves very small 
 scope for the sage apophthegm of the philosophical historian. 
 There is some reason to think that Voltaire expressed himself 
 in this manner, with the view of procuring the recommenda- 
 tion of Father Latour to enter the Academy an object for 
 the accomplishment of which, it is well known, he made the 
 most unworthy concessions to the Jesuits.J 
 
 Later critics, in speaking of the Provincials, have indulged 
 in a similar strain of vague depreciation ; as a specimen of 
 which we might have referred to Schlegel, who talks of their 
 being "nothing more than a master- piece of sophistry," 
 and repeats the charge of profaneness, which Pascal has so 
 triumphantly refuted in his eleventh letter. It would be a 
 sad waste of time to answer this ridiculous objection. Nor 
 will it be surprising to those who know the history of Blanco 
 White, to find him indulging in a sceptical vein on this as on 
 other subjects. " Pascal and the Jansenist party," he says, 
 " accused them of systematic laxity in their moral doctrines ; 
 but the charge, I believe, though plausible in theory, was 
 perfectly groundless in practice. The strict, unbending max- 
 ims of the Jansenists, by urging persons of all characters and 
 tempers on to an imaginary goal of perfection, bring quickly 
 -.heir whole system to the decision of experience. A greater 
 
 Prov. Lpt.. p. 118. f Ib.. p. 143. 
 
 Tabaraud. p. 117; Bord. Demoulin, Elooe de Pascal, Append. 
 
 $ Schlegel, Lectures on Hist, of Lit. ii. 188.
 
 CRITICISMS ON THE PROVINCIALS. ly 
 
 knowledge of mankind made the Jesuits more cautious in the 
 culture of devotional feelings. They well knew that but few 
 can prudently engage in open hostility with what, in ascetic 
 language, is called the world."* The strange mixture of 
 truth and error in this statement leaves an unfavorable im- 
 pression on the mind, the fallacy of which we feel ere we 
 have time to analyze it. It is true that nothing could be 
 more opposite to the laxity of the Jesuits than the asceticism 
 of Port-Royal. But it is doing injustice to Pascal to insinu- 
 ate that he measured Jesuitical morality by " the strict, un- 
 bending maxims of the Jansenists ;" and it is flagrantly un- 
 true that the Jesuits merely aimed at reducing monastic 
 enthusiasm to the standard of common sense and ordinary 
 life. We repeat that the real charge which Pascal substanti- 
 ates against them is, not that they softened the austerities of 
 the cloister, but that they sacrificed the eternal laws of moral- 
 ity not that they prudently suited their rules to men's tem- 
 pers, but that they licensed the worst passions and propensi- 
 ties of our nature not that they declined urging all to for- 
 sake the world (which he never expected), but that they 
 sought, for their own politic ends, to veil its impurities, and 
 countenance its evil customs. 
 
 Disguising their hostility to science, under the mask of 
 friendship to literature, the Jesuits have succeeded in making 
 to themselves friends of many who are acquainted with them 
 only through the medium of their writings. And it is the 
 remarkable fact of our day, that, while on the Continent, 
 where they are practically known, the Jesuits have enlisted 
 against themselves the pens of its most eminent novelists, 
 historians, and philosophers, in Protestant England it is quite 
 the reverse. The most talented of our periodical writers 
 have exerted all their powers to white-wash them, to paint 
 and paper them, and set them off with ornamental designs ; 
 and where they have not dared to defend, they have tried to 
 blunt the edge of censure against them. Following in the 
 
 * Letters from Spain, p. 86.
 
 Ivi HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 same line of defence, a certain class of Protestant writers, 
 fond of historical paradox, and of appearing superior to vul- 
 gar prejudices, have volunteered to protect the Jesuits. " No 
 man is a stranger to the fame of Pascal," says Sir James 
 Macintosh ; " but those who may desire to form a right judg- 
 ment on the contents of the Lettres Provinciates would do 
 well to cast a glance over the Entreiiens d'Ariste et d' Euge- 
 nie, by Bouhours, a Jesuit, who has ably vindicated his 
 order."* Sir James had heard, perhaps, of Father Daniel's 
 Entretiens de Cleandre et d'Eudoxe, but it is very evident 
 that he had never even " cast a glance over" that book ; for 
 the work of Bouhours, which he has confounded with it, is a 
 philological treatise, which has no reference whatever to the 
 Provincial Letters ; and yet he could say that the Jesuit 
 " has ably vindicated his order !" Next to the art which 
 the Jesuits have shown in smuggling themselves into places 
 of power and trust, is that by which they have succeeded in 
 hoodwinking the merely literary portion of society. 
 
 But, not to dwell longer on these objections, the Provin- 
 cials are liable to another charge, seldomer advanced, and 
 not so easily answered ; which is, that the loose casuisti- 
 cal morality denounced by Pascal was not confined to the 
 Jesuits, nor to any one of the orders of the Romish Church, 
 much less, as Voltaire says, to " a few Spanish and Flemish 
 Jesuits," but was common to all the divines of that Church, 
 and was, in fact, the native offspring and inevitable growth 
 of the practices of confession and absolution. It is admitted 
 that the Jesuits were mainly responsible for its preservation 
 and propagation ; that they have been the most zealous in 
 reducing it to practice ; that, even after it had incurred the 
 anathemas of popes, bishops, and divines, and after it had 
 been disclaimed by all the other orders of the Church, the 
 Jesuits pertinaciously adhered to it ; and that, even to this 
 day, they have identified themselves with the worst tenets 
 of the casuists. But Protestants writers have generally al- 
 
 * Macintosh, History of England, vo ii. 359, note.
 
 PROTESTANT CRITICISM. 1V11 
 
 leged, not without reason, that the corruptions of casuistical 
 divinity may be traced from the days of Thomas Aquinas 
 and Cajetan, whom the Church of Rome owns as authori- 
 ties ; that the " new casuists" merely carried the maxims of 
 their predecessors to their legitimate conclusions'; and that 
 though condemned by some popes, the censure has been only 
 partial, and has been more than neutralized by the condem- 
 nation of other works written against the morality of the 
 Jesuits. Thus, in a work entitled. " Guimenius Amadeus," 
 the author, who was the Jesuit Moya, boldly claimed the 
 sanction of the most venerated names in favor of the modern 
 casuists. This work, it is true, was condemned to the flames 
 in 1680, by Pope Innocent XI., who was favorable to the 
 Jansenists ; but the Jesuits boast of having obtained other 
 papal constitutions, reversing the judgment of that pontiff, 
 whom they do not scruple to stigmatize with heresy.* It 
 cannot be denied that the Jesuits have all along succeeded 
 in obtaining for their system the sanction of the highest au- 
 thorities in the Church ; while those works which undertook 
 to advocate a purer morality were printed clandestinely, 
 without privilege or approbation, under fictitious names of 
 authors and printers ; nor can it be forgotten that the Pro- 
 vincial Letters, the most powerful exposure of Jesuitical 
 morality that ever appeared, were censured at Rome, and 
 burnt by the hands of the executioner.f In short, and with- 
 out entering into the question so ingeniously handled by 
 Nicole and other Jansenists, whether the modern casuists 
 were justified in their excesses by the ancient schoolmen, it 
 is undeniable that this is the weakest point of the Provin- 
 cials, and one on which the thorough-going Jesuit occupies, 
 on popish principles, the most advantageous ground. The 
 disciples of Loyola constitute the very soul of the Papacy ; 
 and they must be held as the genuine exponents of that atro- 
 
 * Eichhorn. Geschichte der Litter., vol. i. pp. 423-425; Weisman, 
 Hist. Keel., vol. ii. 21 ; Jurieu Prejugez Legitimes cont. le Papisme, p. 
 386; Claude. Defence of the Reformation, p. 2i). 
 
 f Jurieu, Justification de la Morale de Reformez contre M. Arnauld, 
 i. P . 30.
 
 Iviii HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cious system of morals which, engendered in the privacy of 
 the cloister during the dark ages, reached its maturity in the 
 hands of a designing priesthood, who still find it too conve- 
 nient a tool for their purposes to part with it. 
 
 There are other respects in which we cannot fail to detect, 
 throughout these Letters, the enfeebling and embarrassing 
 influence of Popery over the naturally ingenuous mind of the 
 author. Among all the maxims peculiar to the Jesuits, none 
 are more pernicious than those in which they have openly 
 taught that disobedience to the Papal See releases subjects 
 from their allegiance and oaths of fidelity to their sovereigns, 
 and authorizes them to put heretical rulers to death, even 
 by assassination.* On this point Pascal has failed to speak 
 out the whole truth. Whether it may have been from genuine 
 dread of heresy, or from a wish to spare the dignity of the 
 pope, it is easy to see the timidity, the circumspection, the 
 delicacy with which he touches on the point of papal au- 
 thority. 
 
 The Jansenists have been called the Methodists of the 
 Church of Rome ; but the term is applicable to them rather 
 in the wide sense in which it has been applied, derisively, to 
 those who have sought reformation or aimed at superior 
 sanctity within the pale of an established Church, than as 
 applied to the party now known under that designation. 
 They disclaimed the title of Jansenists, as a nickname applied 
 
 * A disingenuous attempt has been sometimes made to identify these 
 nefarious maxims with certain principles held by some of our reformers. 
 There is an essential difference between the natural right claimed, we 
 do not say with what justice, for subjects to proceed against their rulers 
 as tyrants, and the right assumed by the pope to depose rulers as her- 
 etics. And it is equally easy to distinguish between the disallowed acts 
 of some fanatical individuals who have taken the law into their own 
 hands, and the atrocious deeds of such men as Chatel and Ravaillac, 
 who could plead the authority of Mariana the Jesuit, that " to put ty- 
 rannical princes to death is not only a lawful, but a laudable, heroic, 
 and glorious action." (Dalton's Jesuits ; their Principles and Acts, 
 London. 1843.) The Church of St. Ignatius at Rome is or was adorn- 
 ed, it seems with pictures of all the assassinations mentioned in Scrip- 
 ture which they have, most presumptuously, perverted in justification of 
 their feats in this department. (D'Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 
 101.)
 
 DISADVANTAGES OF THE JANSEXISTS. ft* 
 
 to them by their adversaries. They held themselves to be 
 the true Catholics, the representatives of the Church as it 
 existed down, at least, to the days of St. Bernard, whom 
 they termed " the last of the fathers." They ascribed a spe- 
 cies of semi-inspiration to the early fathers of the Church. 
 They reverenced the Scriptures, but received them at second- 
 hand, through the medium of tradition. To be a Catholic 
 and a Christian were with them convertible terms. Hence 
 the horror evinced by Pascal, in his concluding letters, at 
 the bare thought of "heresy existing in the Church." 
 ''Embarrassed at every step," it has been well observed, 
 " by their professed submission to the authority of the popes, 
 galled and oppressed by their necessary acquiescence in the 
 flagrant errors of their Church, these good men made profes- 
 sion of the great truths of Christianity under an incompara- 
 bly heavier weight of disadvantage than has been sustained 
 by any other class of Christians from the apostolic to the 
 present times. Enfeebled by the enthusiasm to which they 
 clung, the piety of these admirable men failed in the force 
 necessary to carry them through the conflict with their atro- 
 cious enemy, ' the Society.' They were themselves in too 
 many points vulnerable to close fearlessly with their adver- 
 sary, and they grasped the sword of the Spirit in too infirm 
 
 a manner to drive home a deadly thrust The Jan- 
 
 senists and the inmates of Port-Royal displayed a constancy 
 that would doubtless have carried them through the fires of 
 martyrdom ; but the intellectual courage necessary to bear 
 them fearlessly through an examination of the errors of the 
 papal superstition, could spring only from a healthy form of 
 mind, utterly incompatible with the dotings of religious ab- 
 straction, and the petty solicitudes of sackclothed abstinence. 
 The Jansenists had not such courage ; if they worshipped 
 not the Beast, they cringed before him; he placed his 
 dragon-foot upon their necks, and their wisdom and their 
 virtues were lost forever to Franca."* 
 
 * Taylw, Natural Hist, of Enthusiasm, p. 256.
 
 IX HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is the policy of the Jesuits at present, as of old, to deny, 
 point-blank, the truthfulness of Pascal's statements of their 
 doctrine and policy to reiterate the exploded charge of his 
 having garbled his extracts and, after affecting to join in 
 the laugh at his pleasantry, and to forgive, for the wit's sake, 
 his injustice to their innocent and much-calumniated fathers, 
 to declare that, of course, he could not himself believe the 
 half of what he said against the*m, nor comprehend the pro- 
 found questions of casuistry on which he presumed to argue. 
 Under this affectation of charity, they dexterously evade Pas- 
 cal's main charges, and slyly insinuate a vindication of the 
 heresies of which they have been convicted. Thus, in a late 
 publication, one of their number actually attempts to vindi- 
 cate the old Jesuitical doctrine of probabilism f* At the 
 same time, they retain, with undiminished tenacity, the moral 
 maxims which Pascal condemns. The discovery lately made 
 of the Theology of Dens, still taught by the Jesuits in Ire- 
 land, is a proof of this ; for it is nothing more than a collec- 
 tion of the most wicked and obscene maxims of casuistical 
 morality. Matters are no better in France. Dr. Gillyjnen- 
 tions a publication issued at Lyons, in 1825, which is so bad 
 that the reviewer says, " We cannot, we dare not copy it ; it 
 is a book to which the cases of conscience of Dr. Sanchez 
 were purity itself."f The disclosures made still more re- 
 cently by M. Michelet and M. Quinet, are equally startling, 
 and will, in all probability, issue in another expulsion of the 
 Jesuits from France. 
 
 The policy of the Society, as hitherto exhibited in the 
 countries where they have settled, describes a regular cycle 
 of changes. Commencing with loud professions of charity, 
 of liberal views in politics, and of an accommodating code of 
 morals, they succeed in gaining popularity among the non- 
 
 * De 1'Existence et de 1'Institut des Jesuites. Par le R. P. de Ra- 
 vign an,de la Compagnie de Jesus. Paris, 1845, p 83. Probabilism is 
 the doctrine, that if any opinion in morals has been held by any grave 
 doctor of the Church, it is probably true, and may be safely followed in 
 practice. 
 
 t Gilly, Narrative of an Excursion to Piedmont, p. 156.
 
 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 1x1 
 
 religious, the dissipated, and the restless portion of society. 
 Availing themselves of this, and carefully concealing, in a 
 Protestant country, the more obnoxious parts of their creed, 
 their next step is to plant some of the most plausible of their 
 apostles in the principal localities, who are instructed to estab- 
 lish schools and seminaries on the most charitable footing, so 
 as to ingratiate themselves with the poor, while they secure 
 the contributions of the rich ; to attack the credit of the most 
 active and influential among the evangelical ministry ; to re- 
 vive old slanders against the reformers ; to disseminate tracts 
 of the most alluring description ; and, when assailed in turn, 
 to deny everything and to grant nothing. Rising by these 
 means to power and influence, they gradually monopolize the 
 seats of learning and the halls of theology they glide, with 
 noiseless steps, into closets, cabinets, and palaces they be- 
 come the dictators of the public press, the persecutors of the 
 good, and the oppressors of all public and private liberty. 
 At length, their treacherous designs being discovered, they 
 rouse against themselves the storm of natural passions, which, 
 descending on them first as the authors of the mischief, 
 sweeps away along with them, in its headlong career, every- 
 thing that bears the aspect of that active and earnest religion, 
 under the guise of which they had succeeded in duping man- 
 kind. 
 
 What portion of this cycle they have reached among us, 
 it is needless to demonstrate. They have evidently got be- 
 yond the first stage ; and it is highly probable that, in proof 
 of it, the present publication may elicit a more than ordinary 
 exhibition of their skill in the science of defamation and de- 
 nial. It is far from being unlikely that, at the present point 
 of their revolution, they may find it their interest, after all 
 the mischief that Pascal has done them, and all the ill that 
 they have spoken against Pascal, to claim him as a good 
 Catholic, and take advantage of the prestige of his name to 
 insinuate, that the Church which could boast of such a man 
 is not to be lightly esteemed. And, in fact, it requires no 
 small exercise of caution to guard ourselves against such an
 
 l HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 illusion. It is difficult to characterize Popery as it deserves 
 without apparent uncharitableness to individuals, such as 
 Fenelon and Pascal, who, though members of a corrupt 
 Church, possessed much of the spirit of true religion. But, 
 though it would be impossible to class such eminent and pious 
 men with an infidel cardinal or a Spanish inquisitor, it does 
 not follow that they are free from condemnation. It has been 
 justly remarked, that " their example has done much harm, 
 and been only the more pernicious from their eminence and 
 their virtues. It is difficult to calculate how much assistance 
 their well-merited reputation has given to prop the falling 
 cause of Popery, and to lengthen out the continuance of a 
 delusion the most lasting and the most dangerous that has 
 ever led mankind astray from the truth."* With regard to 
 our author, in particular, it may be well to remember, that 
 he was virtuous without being indebted to his Church, and 
 evangelical in spite of his creed ; that his piety, for which 
 he is so much esteemed by us, was the very quality that ex- 
 posed him to odium and suspicion from his own communion ; 
 that the truths, for his adherence to which we would claim 
 him as a brother in Christ, were those which were reprobated 
 by the authorities of Rome ; and that the following Letters, 
 for which he is so justly admired, were, by the same Church, 
 formally censured and ignominiously burnt, along with the 
 Bible which Pascal loved, and the martyrs who have suffered 
 for " the truth as it is in Jesus." 
 
 * Douglas on Errors in Religion, p. 113.
 
 THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS, 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 DISPUTES IN THE SORBONNE, AND THE INVENTION OF PROXIMATE 
 POWER A 'TERM EMPLOYED BY THE JESUITS TO PROCURE THE 
 
 CENSURE OF M. ARNAULD. 
 
 PARIS, January 23, 1656. 
 
 SIR, We were entirely mistaken. It was only yesterday 
 that I was undeceived. Until that time I had labored under 
 the impression that the disputes in the Sorbonne were vastly 
 important, and deeply affected the interests of religion. The 
 frequent convocations of an assembly so illustrious as that of 
 the Theological Faculty of Paris, attended by so many ex- 
 traordinary and unprecedented circumstances, led one to form 
 such high expectations, that it was impossible to help coming 
 to the conclusion that the subject was most extraordinary. 
 You will be greatly surprised, however, when you learn from 
 the following account, the issue of this grand demonstration, 
 which, having made myself perfectly master of the subject, 
 I shall be able to tell you in very few words. 
 
 Two questions, then, were brought under examination ; the 
 one a question of fact, the other a question of right. 
 
 The question of fact consisted in ascertaining whether M. 
 Arnauld was guilty of presumption, for having asserted in 
 his second letter* that he had carefully perused the book of 
 
 * Anthony Arnauld. or Arnaud, priest and doctor of the Sorbonne, 
 was the son of Anthony Arnauld, a famous advocate, and born at Paris, 
 February 6, 1612. He early distinguished himself in philosophy and 
 divinity, advocating the doctrines of Augustine and Port- Royal, and op-
 
 64 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Jansenius, and that he had not discovered the propositions 
 condemned by the late pope ; but that, nevertheless, as he 
 condemned these propositions wherever they might occur, he 
 condemned them in Jansenius, if they were really contained 
 in that work.* 
 
 The question here was, if he could, without presumption, 
 entertain a doubt that' these propositions were in Jansenius, 
 after the bishops had declared that they were. 
 
 The matter having been brought before the Sorbonne, sev- 
 enty-one doctors undertook his defence, maintaining that the 
 only reply he could possibly give to the demands made upon 
 him in so many publications, calling on him to say if he held 
 that these propositions were in that book, was? that he had 
 not been able to find them, but that if they were in the book, 
 he condemned them in the book. 
 
 Some even went a step farther, and protested that, after 
 all the search they had made into the book, they had never 
 stumbled upon these propositions, and that they had, on the 
 contrary, found sentiments entirely at variance with them. 
 They then earnestly begged that, if any doctor present had 
 discovered them, he would have the goodness to point them 
 out ; adding, that what was so easy could not reasonably be 
 refused, as this would be the surest way to silence the whole 
 
 posing those of the Jesuits. The disputes concerning grace which 
 broke out about 1643 in the University of Paris, served to foment the 
 mutual animosity between M. Arnauld and the Jesuits, who entertained 
 a hereditary feud against the whole family, from the active part taken 
 by their father against the Society in the close of the preceding century. 
 In 1655 it happened that a certain duke, who was educating his grand- 
 daughter at Port-Royal, the Jansenist monastery, and kept a Jansenist 
 abbe in his house, on presenting himself for confession to a priest under 
 the influence of the Jesuits, was refused absolution, unless he promised 
 to recall his grand-daughter and discard his abbe. This produced two 
 letters from M. Arnauld, in the second of which he exposed the calum- 
 nies and falsities with which the Jesuits had assailed him in a multitude 
 of pamphlets. This is the letter referred to in the text. 
 
 * The book which occasioned these disputes was entitled Aiigustinus, 
 and was written by Cornelius Jansenius or Jansen, bishop of Ypies, 
 and published after his death. Five propositions, selected from this 
 work, were condemned by the pope ; and armed with these, as with a 
 scourge, the Jesuits continued to persecute the Jansenists till they ac- 
 complished their ruin.
 
 DISPUTES IN THE SORBONNE. 65 
 
 of them, M. Arnauld included ; but this proposal has been 
 uniformly declined. So much for the one side. 
 
 On the other 'side are eighty secular doctors, and some 
 forty mendicant friars, who have condemned M. Arnauld's 
 proposition, without choosing to examine whether he has spo- 
 ken truly or falsely who, in fact, have declared, that they 
 have nothing to do with the veracity of his proposition, but 
 simply with its temerity. 
 
 Besides these, there were fifteen who were not in favor of 
 the censure, and who are called Neutrals. 
 
 Such was the issue of the question of fact, regarding 
 which, I must say, I give myself very little concern. It does 
 not affect my conscience in the least whether M. Arnauld is 
 presumptuous, or the reverse ; and should I be tempted, from 
 curiosity, to ascertain whether these propositions are con- 
 tained in Jansenius, his book is neither so very rare nor so 
 very large as to hinder me from reading it over from begin- 
 ning to end, for my own satisfaction, without consulting the 
 Sorbonne on the matter. 
 
 Were it not, however, for the dread of being presumptuous 
 myself, I really think that I would be disposed to adopt the 
 opinion which has been formed by the most of my acquaint- 
 ances, who, though they have believed hitherto on common 
 report that the propositions were in Jansenius, begin now to 
 suspect the contrary, owing to this strange refusal to point 
 them out a refusal, the more extraordinary to me, as I have 
 not yet met with a single individual who can say that he has 
 discovered them in that work. I am afraid, therefore, that 
 this censure will do more harm than good, and that the im- 
 pression which it will leave on the minds of all who know its 
 history will be just the reverse of the conclusion that has 
 been come to. The truth is, the world has become sceptical 
 of late, and will not believe things till it sees them. But, 
 as I said before, this point is of very little moment, as it has 
 no concern with religion.* 
 
 * And yet " the question of fact," which Pascal professes to treat so 
 lightly, became the turning point of all the subsequent persecutions di-
 
 DO PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 The question of right, from its affecting the faith, appears 
 much more important, and, accordingly, I took particular 
 prfhis in examining it. You will be relieved, however, to find 
 that it is of as little consequence as the former. 
 
 The point of dispute here, was an assertion of M. Arnauld's 
 in the same letter, to the effect, " that the grace without 
 which we can do nothing, was wanting to St. Peter at his 
 fall." You and I supposed that the controversy here would 
 turn upon the great principles of grace ; such as, whether 
 grace is given to all men ? or, if it is efficacious of itself ? 
 But we were quite mistaken. You must know I have be- 
 come a great theologian within this short time ; and now for 
 the proofs of it ! 
 
 To ascertain the matter with certainty, I repaired to my 
 
 neighbor, M. N , doctor of Navarre, who, as you are 
 
 aware, is one of the keenest opponents of the Jansenists, and 
 my curiosity having made me almost as keen as himself, I 
 asked him if they would not formally decide at once that 
 " grace is given to all men," and thus set the question at 
 rest. But he gave me a sore rebuff, and told me that that 
 was not the point ; that there were some of his party who 
 held that grace 'was not given to all ; that the examiners 
 themselves had declared, in a full assembly of the Sorbonne, 
 that that opinion was problematical ; and that he himself 
 held the same sentiment, which he confirmed by quoting to 
 me what he called that celebrated passage of St. Augustine : 
 " We know that grace is not given to all men." 
 
 I apologized for having misapprehended his sentiment, and 
 requested him to say if they would not at least condemn that 
 other opinion of the Jansenists which is making so much 
 noise, " That grace is efficacious of itself, and invincibly de- 
 
 rected against the unhappy Port-Royalists ! Those who have read the 
 sad tale of the demolition of Port-Royal, will recollect, with a sigh, the 
 sufferings inflicted on the poor scholars and pious nuns of that estab- 
 lishment solely on the ground that, from respect to Jansenius and to a 
 good conscience, they would not subscribe a formulary acknowledging 
 the five propositions to be contained in his book. (See Narrative of 
 the Demolition of the Monastery of Port- Royal, by Mary Anne Schim- 
 melpenninck f. 170, &c.)
 
 DISPUTES IN THE SORBONNE. 67 
 
 terraines our will to what is good." But in this second query 
 I was equally unfortunate. " You know nothing about the 
 matter," he said; "that is not a heresy it is an orthodox 
 opinion ; all the Thomists* maintain it ; and I myself have 
 defended it in my Sorbonic thesis."f 
 
 I did not venture again to propose my doubts, and yet I 
 was as far as ever from understanding where the difficulty 
 lay ; so, at last, in order to get at it, I begged him to tell 
 me where, then, lay the heresy of M. Arnauld's proposition? 
 " It lies here," said he, " that he does not acknowledge that 
 the righteous have the power of obeying the commandments 
 of God, in the manner in which we understand it." 
 
 On receiving this piece of information, I took my leave of 
 him ; and, quite proud at having discovered the knot of the 
 question, I sought M. N , who is gradually getting bet- 
 ter, and was sufficiently recovered to conduct me to the house 
 of his brother-in-law, who is a Jansenist, if ever there was 
 one, but a very good man notwithstanding. Thinking to in- 
 sure myself a better reception, I pretended to be very high 
 on what I took to be his side, and said : " Is it possible that 
 the Sorbonne has introduced into the Church such an error 
 as this, ' that all the righteous have always the power of 
 obeying the commandments of God ?' " 
 
 " What say you?" replied the doctor. " Call you that an 
 error a sentiment so Catholic that none but Lutherans and 
 Calvinists impugn it?" 
 
 " Indeed!" said I, surprised in my turn; "so you are not 
 of their opinion?" 
 
 tiie r rtujcisictus iuoi\ Una siue ui i^uus oci 
 
 while the Dominicans espoused the cau 
 were sometimes called Thomists. 
 
 t Sorboniquean act or thesisof divinity, delivered in the h; 
 college of the Sorbonne by candidates for the degree of doctor,
 
 68 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " No," he replied ; " we anathematize it as heretical and 
 impious."* 
 
 Confounded hy this reply, I soon discovered that I had 
 overacted the Jansenist, as I had formerly overdone the 
 Molinist.f But not being sure if I had rightly understood 
 him, I requested him to tell me frankly if he held " that the 
 righteous have always a real power to observe the divine 
 precepts ?" Upon this the good man got warm (but it was 
 with a holy zeal), and protested that b<> would not disguise 
 his sentiments on any consideration that such was, indeed, 
 his belief, and that he and all his party would defend it to 
 the death, as the pure doctrine of St. Thomas, and of St. 
 Augustine their master. 
 
 This was spoken so seriously as to leave me no room for 
 doubt ; and under this impression I returned to my first doc- 
 tor, and said to him, with an air of great satisfaction, that I 
 was sure there would be peace in the Sorbonne very soon ; 
 that the Jansenists were quite at one with them in reference 
 to the power of the righteous to obey the commandments of 
 God ; that I could pledge my word for them, and could 
 make them seal it with their blood. 
 
 " Hold there !" said he. " One must be a theologian to 
 see the point of this question. The difference between us is 
 so subtle, that it is with some difficulty we can discern it our- 
 selves you will find it rather too much for your powers of 
 comprehension. Content yourself, then, with knowing that 
 it is very true the Jansenists will tell you that all the right- 
 eous have always the power of obeying the commandments ; 
 that is not the point in dispute between us ; but mark you, 
 
 * The Jansenists. in their dread of being classed with Lutherans and 
 Calvinists. condescended to quibble on this question. In reality, as we 
 shall see. they agreed with the Reformers for they denied that any could 
 actually obey the commandments without efficacious grace. 
 
 t Molinist. The Jesuits were so called, in this dispute, after Lewis 
 Molina a famous Jesuit of Spain who published a work entitled Con- 
 cordia Gratias et Liberi Arbitrii. in which he professed to have found 
 out a new way of reconciling the freedom of the human will with the 
 divine prescience. This new invention was termed Sclent 'a Media, or 
 middle knowledge, All who adopted the sentiments of Molina, whether 
 Jesuits or not, were termed Molinists.
 
 PROXIMATE POWER. 69 
 
 they will net tell you that that power is proximate. That 
 is the point." 
 
 This was a new and unknown word to me. Up to this 
 moment I had managed to understand matters, but that term 
 involved me in obscurity ; and I verily believe that it has 
 been invented for no other purpose than to mystify. I re- 
 quested him to give me an explanation of it, but he made a 
 mystery of it, and sent me back, without any further satisfac- 
 tion, to demand of the Jansenists if they would admit this 
 p)-ozimate power. Having charged my memory with the 
 phrase (as to my understanding, that was out of the ques- 
 tion), I hastened with all possible expedition, fearing that I 
 might forget it, to my Jansenist friend, and accosted him, 
 immediately after our first salutations, with : " Tell me, pray, 
 if you admit tfte proximate power ?" He smiled, and replied, 
 coldly : " Tell me yourself in what sense you understand it, 
 and I may then inform you what I think of it." As my 
 knowledge did not extend quite so far, I was at a loss what 
 reply to make ; and yet, rather than lose the object of my 
 visit, I said at random : " Why, I understand it in the sense 
 of the Molinists." " To which of the Molinists do you refer 
 me ?" replied he, with the utmost coolness. I referred him 
 to the whole of them together, as forming one body, and 
 animated by one spirit. 
 
 " You know very little about the matter," returned he. 
 " So far are they from being united in sentiment, that some 
 of them are diametrically opposed to each other. But, being 
 all united in the design to ruin M. Arnauld, they have re- 
 solved to agree on this term proximate, which both parties 
 might use indiscriminately, though they understand it di- 
 versely, that thus, by a similarity of language, and an appa- 
 rent conformity, they may form a large body, and get up a 
 majority to crush him with the greater certainty." 
 
 This reply filled me with amazement ; but without imbi- 
 bing these impressions of the malicious designs of the Moli- 
 nistd, uhioh I am unwilling to believe on his word, and with 
 which I have no concern, I set myself simply to ascertain the
 
 70 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 various senses which they give to that mysterious word prox- 
 imate. "I would enlighten you on the subject with all my 
 heart," he said; "but you would discover in it such a mass 
 of contrariety and contradiction, that you would hardly be- 
 lieve me. You would suspect me. To make sure of the 
 matter, you had better learn it from some of themselves ; and 
 I shall give you some of their addresses. You have only to 
 make a separate visit to one called M. le Moine,* and to 
 Father Nicolai."f 
 
 "I have no acquaintance with any of these persons," 
 said I. 
 
 "Let me see, then," he replied, " if you know any of those 
 whom I shall name to you ; they all agree in sentiment with 
 M. le Moine." 
 
 I happened, in fact, to know some of them. 
 
 " Well, let us see if you are acquainted with any of the 
 Dominicans whom they call the ' New Thomists/J for they 
 are all the same with Father Nicolai." 
 
 I knew some of them also whom he named ; and, resolved 
 to profit by this counsel, and to investigate the matter, I 
 took my leave of him, and went immediately to one of the 
 
 * Pierre le Moine was a doctor of the Sorbonne. whom Cardinal 
 Richelieu employed to write against Jansenius. This Jesuit was the 
 author of several works which display considerable talent, though little 
 principle. His book on Grace was forcibly answered, and himself 
 somewhat severely handled, in a work entitled ' An Apology for the 
 Holy Fathers." which he suspected to be written by Arnauld. It was 
 Le Moine who, according to Nicole, had the chief share in raising the 
 storm against Arnauld. of whom he was the bitter and avowed enemy. 
 
 t Father Nicolai was a Dominican an order of friars who professed 
 to be followers of St. Thomas.. He is here mentioned as a representa- 
 tive of his class; but Nicole informs us that he abandoned the princi- 
 ples of his order, and became a Molinist or an abettor of Pela^ianism. 
 
 \ New Tkomists. It is more difficult to trace or remember the vari- 
 ous sects into which the Roman Church is divided, than those of the 
 Protestant Church. The New Thomists were the disciples of Die-jo 
 Alvarez, a theologian of the order of St. Dominic who flourished in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was sent from Spain to Rome 
 in 1596. to defend the doctrine of grace against Molina, and distin- 
 guished himself in the Congregation. De Auxilils. The New Thomists 
 contended for efficacious srace but admitted at the same time a suffi- 
 cient grace, which was given to all and yet not sufficient for any actual 
 performance without the efficacious. The ridiculous incongruity of th..i 
 doctrine is admirably exposed by Pascal in his second Utter.
 
 PROXIMATE POWER. 
 
 disciples of M. le Moine. I begged him to inform me what 
 it was to have the proximate power of doing a thing. 
 
 " It is easy to tell you that," he replied ; " it is merely to 
 have all that is necessary for doing it in such a manner that 
 nothing is wanting to performance." 
 
 " And so," said I, " to have the proximate power of cross- 
 ing a river, for example, is to have a boat, boatmen, oars, 
 and all the rest, so that nothing is wanting ?" 
 
 " Exactly so," said the monk. 
 
 " And to have the proximate power of seeing" continued 
 I, " must be to have good eyes and the light of day ; for u 
 person with good sight in the dark would not have the prox- 
 imate power of seeing, according to you, as he would want 
 the light, without which one cannot see ?" 
 
 " Precisely," said he. 
 
 " And consequently," returned I, " when you say that all 
 the righteous have the proximate power of observing the 
 commandments of God, you mean that they have always all 
 the grace necessary for observing them, so that nothing is 
 wanting to them on the part of God." 
 
 " Stay there," he replied ; " they have always all that is 
 necessary for observing the commandments, or at least for 
 asking it of God." 
 
 " I understand you," said I ; " they have all that is neces- 
 sary for praying to God to assist them, without requiring any 
 new grace from God to enable them to pray." 
 
 " You have it now," he rejoined. 
 
 "But is it not necessary that they have an efficacious 
 grace, in order to pray to God ?" 
 
 " No," said he ; " not according to M. le Moine." 
 
 To lose no time, I went to the Jacobins,* and requested 
 
 * Jacobins, another name for the Dominicans in France, where they 
 were so called from the street in Paris, Rue de St. Jacques, where their 
 first convent was erected, in the year 1218. In England they were 
 called Black Friars. Their founder was Dominick, a Spaniard. His 
 mother, it is said, dreamt, before his birth, that she was to be delivered 
 of a wolf with a torch in his mouth. The augury was realized in the 
 barbarous humor of Doininick, and the massacres which he occasioned 
 in various parts of t!ie world, by preaching up crusades against the
 
 72 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 an interview with some whom I knew to be New Thomists, 
 and I begged them to tell me what "proximate power" 
 was. " Is it not," said I, " that power to which nothing is 
 wanting in order to act ?" 
 
 " No," said they. 
 
 " Indeed ! fathers," said I ; "if anything is wanting to that 
 power, do you call it proximate ? Would you say, for in- 
 stance, that a man in the night time, and without any light, 
 had the proximate power of seeing ?" 
 
 " Yes, indeed, he would have it, in our opinion, if he is 
 not blind." 
 
 " I grant that," said I ; " but M. le Moine understands it 
 in a different manner." 
 
 "Very true," they replied; "but so it is that we under- 
 stand it." 
 
 " I have no objections to that," I said ; " for I never quar- 
 rel about a name, provided I am apprized of the sense in 
 which it is understood. But I perceive from this, that when 
 you speak of the righteous having always the proximate 
 power of praying to God, you understand that they require 
 another supply for praying, without which they will never 
 pray." 
 
 " Most excellent !" exclaimed the good fathers, embracing 
 me; "exactly the thing; for they must have, besides, an 
 efficacious grace bestowed upon all, and which determines 
 their wills to pray ; and it is heresy to deny the necessity of 
 that efficacious grace in order to pray." 
 
 " Most excellent !" cried I ? in return ; " but, according to 
 you, the Jansenists are Catholics, and M. le Moine a heretic ; 
 for the Jansenists maintain that, while the righteous have 
 power to pray, they require nevertheless an efficacious grace ; 
 and this is what you approve. M. le Moine, again, maintains 
 that the righteous may pray without efficacious grace ; and 
 this is what you condemn." 
 
 heretics. HP was the (bumler of the Inquisition, ami his order was, be- 
 fore the Reformation, win t the Jesuits were after it the soul of tho 
 Roiutsh hierarchy, and the bitterest enemies of the truth.
 
 PROXIMATE POWER. 73 
 
 " Ay," said they ; " but M. le Moine calls that power 
 proximate power." 
 
 " How now ! fathers," I exclaimed ; " this is merely play- 
 ing with words, to say that you are agreed as to the common 
 terms which you employ, while you differ with them as to 
 the sense of these terms." 
 
 The fathers made no reply; and at this juncture, who 
 should come in but my old friend the disciple of M. le Moine ! 
 I regarded this at the time as an extraordinary piece of good 
 fortune ; but I have discovered since then that such meetings 
 are not rare that, in fact, they are constantly mixing in 
 each other's society.* 
 
 " I know a man," said I, addressing myself to M. le 
 Moine's disciple, " who holds that all the righteous have al- 
 ways the power of praying to God, but that, notwithstanding 
 this, they will never pray without an efficacious grace which 
 , determines them, and which God does not always give to all 
 the righteous. Is he a heretic?" 
 
 " Stay," said the doctor; "you might take me by sur- 
 prise. Let us go cautiously to work. Distinguo.\ If he 
 call that power proximate power, he will be a Thomist, and 
 therefore a Catholic; if not, he will be a Jansenist, and 
 therefore a heretic." 
 
 " He calls it neither proximate nor non-proximate," said I. 
 
 " Then he is a heretic," quoth he ; "I refer you to these 
 good fathers if he is not." 
 
 I did not appeal to them as judges, for they had already 
 nodded assent ; but I said to them : " He refuses to admit 
 that word proximate, because he can meet with nobody who 
 will explain it to him." 
 
 * This is a sly hit at the Dominicans for combining with their natural 
 enemies the Jesuits, in order to accomplish the ruin of M. Arnauld. 
 
 t Distinguo. ' I draw a distinction" a humorous allusion to the 
 endless distinctions of the Aristotelian school, in which the writings of 
 the Casuists abounded, and by means of which they may be said to 
 have more frequrntly eluded than elucidated the truth. M. le Moine* 
 was particularly famous for these distinguos, frequently introducing 
 three or four of them in succession on one head ; and the disciple in the 
 test is made to echo the favorite phrase of his master. 
 
 4
 
 74 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Upon this one of the fathers was on the point of offering 
 his definition of the term, when he was interrupted by M. le 
 Moine's disciple, who said to him : " Do you mean, then, to 
 renew our broils ? Have we not agreed not to explain that 
 word proximate, but to use it on both sides without saying 
 what it signifies ?" To this the Jacobin gave his assent. 
 
 I was thus let into the whole secret of their plot ; and ris- 
 ing to take my leave of them, I remarked : " Indeed, fathers, 
 I am much afraid this is nothing better than pure chicanery ; 
 and whatever may be the result of your convocations, I ven- 
 ture to predict that, though the censure should pass, peace 
 will not be established. For though it should be decided 
 that the syllables of that word proximate should be pro- 
 nounced, who does not see that, the meaning not being 
 explained, each of you will be disposed to claim the victory ? 
 The Jacobins will contend that the word is to be understood 
 in their sense ; . M. le Moine will insist that it must be taken 
 in his ; and thus there will be more wrangling about the ex- 
 planation of the word than about its introduction. For, after 
 all, there would be no great danger in adopting it without 
 any sens.e, seeing it is through the sense only that it can do 
 any harm. But it would be unworthy of the Sorbonne and 
 of theology to employ equivocal and captious terms without 
 giving any explanation of them. In short, fathers, tell me, 
 I entreat you, for the last time, what is necessary to be be- 
 lieved in order to be a good Catholic ?" 
 
 "You must say," they all vociferated simultaneously, 
 " that all the righteous have the proximate power, abstracting 
 from it all sense from the sense of the Thomists and the 
 sense of other divines." 
 
 " That is to say," I replied, in taking leave of them, " that 
 I must pronounce that word to avoid being the heretic of a 
 name. For, pray, is this a Scripture word ?" " No," said 
 they. " Is it a word of the Fathers, the Councils, or the 
 Popes ?" " No." " Is the word, then, used by St. Thomas ?" 
 "No." "What necessity, therefore, is there for using it, 
 since it has neither the authority of others nor any sense of
 
 PROXIMATE POWIU. *75 
 
 itself?" " You are an opinionative fellow," said they; "but 
 you shall say it, or you shall be a heretic, and M. Arnauld 
 into the bargain ; for we are the majority, and should it be 
 necessary, we can bring a sufficient number of Cordeliers* 
 into the field to carry the day." 
 
 On hearing this solid argument, I took my leave of them, 
 to write you the foregoing account of my interview, from, 
 which you will perceive that the following points remain un- 
 disputed and uncondemned by either party. First, That grace 
 is not given to all men. Second, That all the righteous have al- 
 ways the power of obeying the divine commandments. Third, 
 That they require, nevertheless, in order to obey them, and 
 even to pray, an efficacious grace, which invincibly determines 
 their will. Fourth, That this efficacious grace is not always 
 granted to all the righteous, and that it depends on the pure 
 mercy of God. So that, after all, the truth is safe, and noth- 
 ing runs any risk but that word without the sense, proximate. 
 
 Happy the people who are ignorant of its existence ! 
 happy those who lived before it was born! for I see no 
 help for it, unless the gentlemen of the Academy ,f by an act 
 of absolute authority, banish that barbarous term, which 
 causes so many divisions, from beyond the precincts of the 
 Sorbonne. Unless this be done, the censure appears certain ; 
 but I can easily see that it will do no other harm than di- 
 minish the credit^ of the Sorbonne, and deprive it of that 
 authority which is so necessary to it on other occasions. 
 
 Meanwhile, I leave you at perfect liberty te hold by the 
 word proximate or not, just as you please ; for I love you 
 too much to persecute you under that pretext. If this ac- 
 count is not displeasing to you, I shall continue to apprize 
 you of all that happens. I am, &c. 
 
 * Cordeliers, a designation of the Franciscans, or monks of the order 
 of St. Francis. 
 
 f The Royal Academy, which compiled the celebrated dictionary of 
 the Fn.-nch language, and was held at that time to be the great umpire 
 in literature. 
 
 ^ The edition of lf!57 had it. Rendre la Sorbonne meprisable " Ren- 
 der the Sorbonne contemptible" an expression much more just, but 
 which the editors durst not allow to remain in the subsequent editions.
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 OF SUFFICIENT GRACE. 
 
 PARIS, January 29, 1656. 
 
 SIR, Just as I had sealed up my last letter, I received a 
 
 visit from our old friend M. N . Nothing could have 
 
 happened more luckily for my curiosity ; for he is thoroughly 
 informed in the questions of the day, and is completely in 
 the secret of the Jesuits, at whose houses, including those of 
 their leading men, he is a constant visitor. After having 
 talked over the business which brought him to my house, I 
 asked him to state, in a few words, what were the points in 
 dispute between the two parties. 
 
 He immediately complied, and informed me that the prin- 
 cipal points were two the first about the proximate power, 
 and the second about sufficient grace. I have enlightened 
 you on the first of these points in my former letter, and shall 
 now speak of the second. 
 
 In one word, then, I found that their difference about suf- 
 ficient "grace may be defined thus: The Jesuits maintain that 
 there is a grace given generally to all men, subject in such a 
 way to free-will that the will renders it efficacious or ineffica- 
 cious at its pleasure, without any additional aid from God, 
 and without wanting anything on his part in order to acting 
 effectively ; and hence they term this grace sufficient, because 
 it suffices of itself for action. The Jansenists, on the other 
 hand, will not allow that any grace is actually sufficient which 
 is not also efficacious ; that is, that all those kinds of grace 
 which do not determine the will to act effectively are insuffi- 
 cient for action ; for they hold that a man can never act with- 
 out efficacious grace. 
 
 Such are the points in debate between the Jesuits and the
 
 OP SUFFICIENT GRACE. 77 
 
 Jansenists ; and my next object was to ascertain the doctrine 
 of the New Thomists.* " It is rather an odd one," he 
 said ; " they agree with the Jesuits in admitting a sufficient 
 grace given to all men ; but they maintain, at the same time, 
 that no man can act with this grace alone, but that, in order 
 to this, he must receive from God an efficacious grace which 
 really determines his will to the action, and which God does 
 not grant to all men." " So that, according to this doc- 
 trine," said I, "this grace is sufficient without being suffi- 
 cient." "Exactly so," he replied; "for if it suffices, there 
 is no need of anything more for acting ; and if it does not 
 suffice, why it is not sufficient." 
 
 " But/' asked I, " where, then, is the difference between 
 them and the Jansenists?" "They differ in this," he re- 
 plied, " that the Dominicans have this good qualification, that 
 they do not refuse to say that all men have the sufficient 
 grace." "I understand you," returned I ; " but they say it 
 without thinking it ; for they add that, in order to action, we 
 must have an efficacious grace which is not given to all ; con- 
 sequently, if they agree with the Jesuits in the use of a term 
 which has no sense, they differ from them, and coincide with 
 the Jansenists in the substance of the thing." " That is 
 very true," said he. " How, then," said I, " are the Jesuits 
 united with them ? and why do they not combat them a? 
 well as the Jansenists, since they will always find powerful 
 antagonists in these men, who, by maintaining the necessity 
 of the efficacious grace which determines the will, will pre- 
 vent them from establishing that grace which they hold to 
 be of itself sufficient ?" 
 
 "The Dominicans are too powerful," he replied, "and the 
 Jesuits are too politic, to come to an open rupture with them. 
 The Society is content with having prevailed on them so 
 far as to admit the name of sufficient grace, though they 
 understand it in another sense ; by which manoeuvre they 
 gain this advantage, that they will make their opinion appear 
 untenable, as soon as they judge it proper to do so. And 
 * The Dominicans.
 
 78 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 this will be no difficult matter ; for, let it be once granted 
 that all men have the sufficient graces, nothing can be more 
 natural than to conclude, that the efficacious grace is not ne- 
 cessary to action the sufficiency of the general grace pre- 
 cluding the necessity of all others. By saying sufficient we 
 express all that is necessary for action ; and it will serve little 
 purpose for the Dominicans to exclaim that they attach an- 
 other sense to the expression ; the people, accustomed to the 
 common acceptation of that term, would not even listen to 
 their explanation. Thus the Society gains a sufficient advan- 
 tage from the expression which has been adopted by the 
 Dominicans, without pressing them any further; and were 
 you but acquainted with what passed under Popes Clement 
 VIII. and Paul V., and knew how the Society was thwarted 
 by the Dominicans in the establishment of the sufficient 
 grace, you would not be surprised to find that it avoids em- 
 broiling itself in quarrels with them, and allows them to hold 
 their own opinion, provided that of the Society is left un- 
 touched ; and more especially, when the Dominicans coun- 
 tenance its doctrine, by agreeing to employ, on all public oc- 
 casions, the term sufficient grace. 
 
 " The Society," he continued, " is quite satisfied with their 
 complaisance. It does not insist on their denying the neces- 
 sity of efficacious grace ; this would be urging them too far. 
 People should not tyrannize over their friends ; and the Jes- 
 uits have gained quite enough. The world is content with 
 words ; few think of searching into the nature of things ; and 
 thus the name of sufficient grace being adopted on both sides, 
 though in different senses, there is nobody, except the most 
 subtle theologians, who ever dreams of doubting that the 
 thing signified by that word is held by the Jacobins as well 
 as by the Jesuits ; and the result will show that these last are 
 not the greatest dupes." * 
 
 I acknowledged that they were a shrewd class of people, 
 
 * Et la suite fera voir que ces derniers ne sont pas Its plus dupes. 
 This clause, which appears in the last Paris edition, is wanting in the 
 rdinary editions. The following sentence seems to require it.
 
 OF SUFFICIENT GRACE. 
 
 these Jesuits; and, availing myself of his advice, I went 
 straight to the Jacobins, at whose gate I found one of my 
 good friends, a staunch Jansenist (for you must know I have 
 got friends among all parties), who was calling for another 
 monk, different from him whom I was in search of. I pre- 
 vailed on him, however, after much entreaty, to accompany 
 me, and asked for one of my New Thomists. He was de- 
 lighted to see me again. " How now ! my dear father," I 
 began, " it seems it is not enough that all men have a proxi- 
 mate power, with which they can never act with effect ; they 
 must have besides this a sufficient grace, with which they 
 can act as little. Is not that the doctrine of your school ?" 
 "It is," said the worthy monk ; "and I was upholding it 
 this very morning in the Sorbonne. I spoke on the point 
 during my whole half-hour ; and but for the sand-glass, I 
 bade fair to have reversed that wicked proverb, now so cur- 
 rent in Paris : ' He votes without speaking, like a monk in the 
 Sorbonne.' " * " What do you mean by your half-hour and 
 your sand-glass ?" I asked ; " do they cut your speeches by 
 a certain measure?" "Yes," said he, "they have done so 
 for some days past." " And do they oblige you to speak 
 for half an hour ?" " No ; we may speak as little as we 
 please." " But not as much as you please," said I. " 
 what a capital regulation for the boobies ! what a blessed 
 excuse for those who have nothing worth the saying ! But, 
 to return to the point, father ; this grace given to all men is 
 sufficient, is it not ?" " Yes," said he. "And yet it has no 
 effect without efficacious grace?" "None whatever," he re- 
 plied. " And all men have the sufficient," continued I, "and 
 all have not the efficacious ?" " Exactly," said he. " That 
 is," returned I, " all have enough of grace, and all have not 
 
 * H opine du bonntt comme un moine en Sorbonne literally. " He 
 votes with his cap like a monk in the Sorbonne" alluding to the cus- 
 tom in that place of taking off the cap when a member was not disposed 
 to speak. 01- in token of agreement with the rest. The half-hour sand- 
 glass was a trick of the Jesuits, or Molinist parly, to prevent their oppo- 
 nents from entering closely into the merits of the controversy, which 
 required frequent references to the lathers. (Nicole, i. 184.)
 
 80 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 enough of it tha; is, this grace suffices, though it does not 
 suffice that is, it is sufficient in name, and insufficient in 
 effect! In good sooth, father, this is particularly subtle 
 doctrine ! Have you forgotten, since you retired to the clois- 
 ter, the meaning attached, in the world you have quitted, 
 to the word sufficient ? don't you remember that it includes 
 all that is necessary for acting ? But no, you cannot have 
 lost all recollection of it ; for, to avail myself of an illustra- 
 tion which will come home more vividly to your feelings, let 
 us suppose that you were supplied with no more than two 
 ounces of bread and a glass of water daily, would you be 
 quite pleased with your prior were he to tell you that this 
 would be sufficient to support you, under the pretext that, 
 along with something else, which, however, he would not 
 give you, you would have all that would be necessary to 
 support you ? How, then, can you allow yourselves to say 
 that all men have sufficient grace for acting, while you admit 
 that there is another grace absolutely necessary to acting 
 which all men have not ? Is it because this is an unimpor- 
 tant article of belief, and you leave all men at liberty to be- 
 lieve that efficacious grace is necessary or not, as they choose ? 
 Is it a matter of indifference to say, that with sufficient grace 
 a man may really act ?" " How !" cried the good man ; 
 " indifference ! it is heresy formal heresy. The necessity 
 of efficacious grace for acting effectively, is a point of faith 
 it is heresy to deny it." 
 
 " Where are we now ?" I exclaimed ; " and which side am 
 I to take here ? If I deny the sufficient grace, I am a Jan- 
 senist. If I admit it, as the Jesuits do, in the way of deny- 
 ing that efficacious grace is necessary, I shall be a heretic, 
 say you. And if I admit it, as you do, in the way of main- 
 taining the necessity of efficacious grace, I sin against com- 
 mon sense, and am a blockhead, say the Jesuits. What must 
 I do, thus reduced to the inevitable necessity of being a 
 blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist ? And what a sad pas? 
 are matters come to, if there are none but the Jansenists wh' 
 avoid comincf into collision either with the faith or with re*
 
 OF SUFFICIENT GRACE. 81 
 
 son, and who save themselves at once from absurdity and 
 from error !" 
 
 My Jansenist friend took this speech as a good omen, and 
 already looked upon me as a convert. He said nothing to 
 me, however ; but, addressing the monk : " Pray, father," 
 inquired he, " what is the point on which you agree with the 
 Jesuits ?" " We agree in this," he replied, " that the Jes- 
 uits and we acknowledge the sufficient grace given to all." 
 " But," said the Jansenist, " there are two things in this ex- 
 pression sufficient grace there is the sound, which is only so 
 much breath ; and there is the thing which it signifies, which 
 is real and effectual. And, therefore, as you are agreed with 
 the Jesuits in regard to the word sufficient, and opposed to 
 them as to the sense, it is apparent that you are opposed to 
 them in regard to the substance of that term, and that you 
 only agree with them as to the sound. Is this what you 
 call acting sincerely and cordially ?" 
 
 " But," said the good man, " what cause have you to com- 
 plain, since we deceive nobody by this mode of speaking ? In 
 our schools we openly teach that we understand it in a man- 
 ner different from the Jesuits." 
 
 " What I complain of," returned my friend, " is, that you 
 do not proclaim it everywhere, that by sufficient grace you 
 understand the grace which is not sufficient. You are bound 
 in conscience, by thus altering the sense of the ordinary terms 
 of theology, to tell that, when you admit a sufficient grace in 
 all men, you understand that they have not sufficient grace 
 in effect. All classes of persons in the world understand the 
 word sufficient in one and the same sense ; the New Thom- 
 ists alone understand it in another sense. All the women, 
 who form one-half of the world, all courtiers, all military 
 men, all magistrates, all lawyers, merchants, artisans, the 
 whole populace in short, all sorts of men, except the Do- 
 minicans, understand the word sufficient to express all that 
 is necessary. Scarcely any one is aware of this singular ex- 
 ception. It is reported over the whole earth, simply that 
 the Dominicans hold that all men have the sufficient graces.
 
 82 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 What other conclusion can be drawn from this, than that they 
 hold that all men have all the graces necessary for action ; 
 especially when they are seen joined in interest and intrigue 
 with the Jesuits, who understand the thing in that sense ? 
 Is not the uniformity of your expressions, viewed in connec- 
 tion with this union of party, a manifest indication and con- 
 firmation of the uniformity of your sentiments ? 
 
 "The multitude of the faithful inquire of theologians: 
 What is the real condition of human nature since its corrup- 
 tion ? St. Augustine and his disciples reply, that it has no 
 sufficient grace until God is pleased to bestow it. Next 
 come the Jesuits, and they say that all have the effectually 
 sufficient graces. The Dominicans are consulted on this con- 
 trariety of opinion ; and what course do they pursue ? They 
 unite with the Jesuits ; by this coalition they make up a 
 majority ; they secede from those who deny these sufficient 
 graces ; they declare that all men possess them. Who, on 
 hearing this, would imagine anything else than that they 
 gave their sanction to the opinion of the Jesuits ? And then 
 they add that, nevertheless, these said sufficient graces are 
 perfectly useless without the efficacious, which are not given 
 to all! 
 
 " Shall I present you with a picture of the Church amidst 
 these conflicting sentiments ? I consider her very like a man 
 who, leaving his native country on a journey, is encountered 
 by robbers, who inflict many wounds on him, and leave him 
 half dead. He sends for three physicians resident in the 
 neighboring towns. The first, on probing his wounds, pro- 
 nounces them mortal, and assures him that none but God 
 can restore to him his lost powers. The second, coming 
 after the other, chooses to flatter the man tells him that he 
 has still sufficient strength to reach his home ; and, abusing 
 the first physician who opposed his advice, determines upon 
 his ruin. In this dilemma, the poor patient, observing the 
 third medical gentleman at a distance, stretches out his hands 
 to him as the person who should determine the controversy. 
 This practitioner, on examining his wounds, and ascertaining
 
 OF SUFFICIENT GRACE. 83 
 
 the opinions of the first two doctors, embraces that of the 
 second, and uniting with him, the two combine against the 
 first, and being the stronger party in number, drive him from 
 the field in disgrace. From this proceeding, the patient 
 naturally concludes that the last comer is of the same opin- 
 ion with the second ; and, on putting the question to him, 
 he assures him most positively that his strength is sufficient 
 for prosecuting his journey. The wounded man, however, 
 sensible of his own weakness, begs hith to explain to him how- 
 he considered him sufficient for the journey. ' Because,' re- 
 plies his adviser. ' you are still in possession of your legs, 
 and legs are the organs which naturally suffice for walking.' 
 'But,' says the patient, 'have I all the strength necessary to 
 make use of my legs ? for, in my present weak condition, it 
 humbly appears to me that they are wholly useless.' ' Cer- 
 tainly you have not,' replies the doctor ; ' you will never walk 
 effectively, unless God vouchsafes some extraordinary assist- 
 ance to sustain and conduct you.' ' What !' exclaims the 
 poor man, ' do you not mean to say that I have sufficient 
 strength in me, so as to want for nothing to walk effectively ?' 
 ' Very far from it,' returns the physician. ' You must, then,' 
 says the patient, ' be of a different opinion from your com- 
 panion there about my real condition.' ' I must admit that 
 I am,' replies the other. 
 
 " What do you suppose the patient said to this ? Why, 
 he complained of the strange conduct and ambiguous terms 
 of this third physician. He censured him for taking part 
 with the second, to whom he was opposed in sentiment, and 
 with whom he had only the semblance of agreement, and for 
 having driven away the first doctor, with whom he in reality 
 agreed ; and, after making a trial of his strength, and finding 
 by experience his actual weakness, he sent them both about 
 their business, recalled his first adviser, put himself under 
 his care, and having, by his advice, implored from God the 
 strength of which he confessed his need, obtained the mercy he 
 sought, and, through divine help, reached his house in peace." 
 
 The worthy monk was so confounded with this parable that
 
 84 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 he could not find words to reply. To cheer him up a little, 
 I said to him, in a mild tone : " But, after all, my dear father, 
 what made you think of giving the name of sufficient to a 
 grace which you say it is a point of faith to believe is, in fact, 
 insufficient ?" " It is very easy for you to talk about it," said 
 he. " You are an independent and private man ; I am a monk, 
 and in a community cannot you estimate the difference be- 
 tween the two cases ? We depend on superiors ; they de- 
 pend on others. They have promised our votes what would 
 you have to become of me ?" We understood the hint ; and 
 this brought to our recollection the case of his brother monk, 
 who, for a similar piece of indiscretion, has been exiled to 
 Abbeville. 
 
 " But," I resumed, " how comes it about that your com- 
 munity is bound to admit this grace ?" " That is another 
 question," he replied. " All that I can tell you is, in one 
 word, that our order has defended, to the utmost of its abil- 
 ity, the doctrine of St. Thomas on efficacious grace. Witrh 
 what ardor did it oppose, from the very commencement, the 
 doctrine of Molina ? How did it labor to establish the ne- 
 cessity of the efficacious grace of Jesus Christ ? Don't you 
 know what happened under Clement VIII. and Paul V., and 
 how the former having been prevented by death, and the 
 latter hindered by some Italian affairs from publishing his 
 bull, our arms still sleep in the Vatican ? But the Jesuits, 
 availing themselves, since the introduction of the heresy of 
 Luther and Calvin, of the scanty light which the people pos- 
 sess for discriminating between the error of these men and 
 the truth of the doctrine of St. Thomas, disseminated their 
 principles with such rapidity and success, that they became, 
 ere long, masters of the popular belief; while we, on our 
 part, found ourselves in the predicament of being denounced 
 as Calvinists, and treated as the Jansenists are at present, un- 
 less we qualified the efficacious grace with, at least, the ap- 
 parent avowal of a sufficient* In this extremity, what bet- 
 
 * " It is certain," says Bayle, " that the obligation which the Romish 
 Church is under to respect the doctrine of St. Augustine on the subject
 
 OF SUFFICIENT GRACE. 85 
 
 ter course could we have taken for saving the truth, without 
 losing our own credit, than by admitting the name of suffi- 
 cient grace, while we denied that it was such in effect ? Such 
 is the real history of the case." 
 
 This was spoken in such a melancholy tone, that I really 
 began to pity the man; not so, however, my companion. 
 "Flatter not yourselves," said he to the monk, "with hav- 
 ing saved the truth ; had she not found other defenders, in 
 your feeble hands she must have perished. By admitting 
 into the Church the name of her enemy, you have admitted 
 the enemy himself. Names are inseparable from things. If 
 the term sufficient grace be once established, it will be vain 
 for you to protest that you understand by it a grace which is 
 not sufficient. Your protest will be held inadmissible. Your 
 explanation would be scouted as odious in the world, where 
 men speak more ingenuously about matters of infinitely less 
 moment. The Jesuits will gain a triumph it will be their 
 grace, which is sufficient, in fact, and not yours, which is only 
 so in name, that will pass as established ; and the converse 
 of your creed will become an article of faith." 
 
 " We will all suffer martyrdom first," cried the father, 
 " rather than consent to the establishment of sufficient grace 
 in the sense of the Jesuits. St. Thomas, whom we have 
 
 of grace, in consequence of its having received the sanction of Popes 
 and Councils at various times, placed it in a very awkward and ridicu- 
 lous situation. It is so obvious to every man who examines the matter 
 without prejudice, and with the necessary means of information, that 
 the doctrine of Augustine and that of Jansenius are one and the same, 
 that it is impossible to see, without feelings of indignation, the Court of 
 Rome boasting of having condemned Jansenius, and nevertheless pre- 
 serving to St. Augustine all his glory. The two things are utterly irre- 
 concilable. What is more, the Council of Trent, by condemning the 
 doctrine of Calvin on free-will, has, by necessity, condemned that of St. 
 Augustine ; for there is no Calvinist who has denied, or who can deny, 
 the concourse of the human will and the liberty of the soul, in the sense 
 which St. Augustine gives to the words concourse, co-operation, and 
 liberty. There is no Calvinist who does not acknowledge the freedom 
 of the will, and its use in conversion, if that word is understood accord- 
 ing to the ideas of St. Augustine. Those whom the Council of Trent 
 condemns do not reject free-will, except as signifying the liberty of indif- 
 ference. The Thomists, also, reject it under this notion, and yet they 
 pass for very good Catholics." (Bayle's Diet., art. Augustine.')
 
 86 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 sworn to follow even to the death, is diametrically opposed 
 to such doctrine."* 
 
 To this my friend, who took up the matter more seriously 
 than I did, replied : " Come now, father, your fraternity has 
 received an honor which it sadly abuses. It abandons that 
 grace which was confided to its care, and which has never 
 been abandoned since the creation of the world. That vic- 
 torious grace, which was waited for by the patriarchs, pre- 
 dicted by the prophets, introduced by Jesus Christ, preached 
 by St. Paul, explained by St. Augustine, the greatest of the 
 fathers, embraced by his followers, confirmed by St. Bernard, 
 the last of the fathers,f supported by St. Thomas, the angel 
 of the schools.J transmitted by him to your order, maintained 
 by so many of your fathers, and so nobly defended by your 
 monks under popes Clement and Paul that efficacious grace, 
 which had been committed as a sacred deposit into your hands, 
 that it might find, in a sacred and everlasting order, a succes- 
 sion of preachers, who might proclaim it to the end of time 
 is discarded and deserted for interests the most contemptible. 
 It is high time for other hands to arm in its quarrel. It is 
 time for God to raise up intrepid disciples of the Doctor of 
 grace, who, strangers to the entanglements of the world, 
 will serve God for God's sake. Grace may not, indeed, num- 
 ber the Dominicans among her champions, but champions she 
 shall never want ; for, by her own almighty energy, she cre- 
 ates them for herself. She demands hearts pure and disen- 
 
 * It is a singular fact that the Roman Church, which boasts so much 
 of her unity, and is ever charging the Reformed with being Calvinists, 
 Lutherans, &c., is, in reality, divided into numerous conflicting sects, 
 each siforn to uphold the peculiar sentiments of its founder. If there 
 is one principle more essential than another to the Reformation, it is that 
 of entire independence of all masters in the faith : " Nullius addictus 
 jurare in verba magistri." 
 
 f ' : The famous St. Bernard, abbot of Clairval, whose influence 
 throughout all Europe was incredible whose word was a law. and 
 whose counsels were regarded by kings and princes as so many orders 
 to which the most respectful obedience was due ; this eminent ecclesiastic 
 was the person who contributed most to enrich and aggrandize the Cis- 
 tercian order." (Mosh. Eccl. Hist., cent, xii.) 
 
 ^ Thomas Aquinas, a scholastic divine of the thirteenth century, who 
 was termed the Angelic Doctor. 
 
 $ Augustine.
 
 OF SUFFICIENT GRACE. 87 
 
 gaged ; nay, she herself purifies and disengages them from 
 worldly interests, incompatible with the truths of the Gospel. 
 Reflect seriously on this, father ; and take care that God does 
 not remove this candlestick from its place, leaving you in 
 darkness, and without the crown, as a punishment for the 
 coldness which you manifest to a cause so important to his 
 Church."* 
 
 He might have gone on in this strain much longer, for he 
 was kindling as he advanced, but I interrupted him by rising 
 to take my leave, and said : " Indeed, my dear father, had I 
 any influence in France, I should have it proclaimed, by sound 
 of trumpet : ' BE IT KNOWN TO ALL MEN, that when the Jaco- 
 bins SAY that sufficient grace is given to all, they MEAN that 
 all have not the grace which actually suffices /' After which, 
 you might say it as often as you please, but not otherwise." 
 And thus ended our visit. 
 
 You will perceive, therefore, that we have here a politic 
 sufficiency somewhat similar to proximate power. Meanwhile 
 I may tell you, that it appears to me that both the proximate 
 power and this same sufficient grace may be safely doubted 
 by anybody, provided he is not a Jacobin.]- 
 
 I have just come to learn, when closing my letter, that the 
 censure* has passed. But as I do not yet know in what 
 terms it is worded, and as it will not be published till the 
 15th of February, I shall delay writing you about it till the 
 next post. I am, &c. 
 
 * Who can help regretting that sentiments so evangelical, so truly 
 noble, and so eloquently expressed, should have been held by Pascal 
 in connection with a Church which denounced him as a heretic for up- 
 holding them ! 
 
 t An ironical reflection on the cowardly compromise of the Jacobins, 
 or Dominicans, for having pledged themselves to the use of the terra 
 " sufficient," in order to please the Jesuits. 
 
 :f The censure of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne passed 
 against M. Arnault! , and which is fuL j discussed in Letter iii.
 
 88 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 REPLY OF THE "PROVINCIAL" TO THE JIRST 
 TWO LETTERS OF HIS FRIEND. 
 
 February 2, 1656. 
 
 SIR, Your two letters have not been confined to me. 
 Everybody has seen them, everybody understands them, and 
 everybody believes them. They are not only in high repute 
 among theologians they have proved agreeable to men of 
 the world, and intelligible even to the ladies. 
 
 In a communication which I lately received from one of 
 the gentlemen of the Academy one of the most illustrious 
 names in a society of men who are all illustrious who had 
 seen only your first letter, he writes me as follows : " I only 
 wish that the Sorbonne, which owes so much to the memory 
 of the late cardinal,* would acknowledge the jurisdiction of 
 his French Academy. The author of the letter would be 
 satisfied ; for, in the capacity of an academician, I would 
 authoritatively condemn, I would banish, I would proscribe 
 I had almost said exterminate to the extent of my power, 
 this proximate power, which makes so much noise about 
 nothing, and without knowing what it would have. The 
 misfortune is, that our academic ' power' is a very limited 
 and remote power. I am sorry for it ; and still more sorry 
 that my small power cannot discharge me from my obliga- 
 tions to you," &c. 
 
 My next extract is from the pen of a lady, whom I shall 
 not indicate in any way whatever. She writes thus to a 
 female friend who had transmitted to her the first of your 
 letters : " You can have no idea how much I am obliged to 
 you for the letter you sent me it is so very ingenious, and 
 so nicely written. It narrates, and yet it is not a narrative ; 
 it clears up the most intricate and involved of all possible 
 
 * The Cardinal de Richelieu, the celebrated founder of the French 
 Academy. The Sorbonne owed its magnificence to the liberality of this 
 eminent statesman, who rebuilt its house, enlarged its revenues, en- 
 riched its library, and took it under his special patronage.
 
 REPLY TO THE FIRST TWO LETTERS. 89 
 
 matters ; its raillery is exquisite ; it enlightens those who 
 know little about the subject, and imparts double delight to 
 those who understand it. It is an admirable apology ; and, 
 if they would so take it, a delicate and innocent censure. 
 In short, that letter displays so much art, so much spirit, 
 and so much judgment, that I burn with curiosity to know 
 who wrote it," &c. 
 
 You too, perhaps, would like to know who the lady is that 
 writes in this style ; but you must be content to esteem 
 without knowing her ; when you come to know her, your 
 esteem will be greatly enhanced. 
 
 Take my word for it, then, and continue your letters ; and 
 let the censure come when it may, we are quite prepared for 
 receiving it. These words, " proximate power," and " suffi- 
 cient grace," with which we are threatened, will frighten us 
 no longer. We have learned from the Jesuits, the Jacobins, 
 and M. le Moine, in how many different ways they may be 
 turned, and how little solidity there is in these new-fangled 
 terms, to give ourselves any trouble about them. Mean- 
 while, I remain, &c.
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 /HJtSTICB, ABSURDITY, AND NULLITY OF THE CENSURE OH . 
 M. ARNAULD. 
 
 PARIS, February 9, 1656. 
 
 SIR, I have just received your letter ; and, at the same 
 time, there was brought me a copy of the censure in manu- 
 script. I find that I am as well treated in the former, as M. 
 Arnauld is ill-treated in the latter. I am afraid there is some 
 extravagance in both cases, and that neither of us is suffi- 
 ciently well known by our judges. Sure I am, that were we 
 better known, M. Arnauld would merit the approval of the 
 Sorbonne, and I the censure of the Academy. Thus our in- 
 terests are quite at variance with each other. It is his inter- 
 est to make himself known, to vindicate his innocence ; 
 whereas it is mine to remain in the dark, for fear of forfeiting 
 my reputation. Prevented, therefore, from showing my face, 
 I must devolve on you the task of making my acknowledg- 
 ments to my illustrious admirers, while I undertake that of 
 furnishing you with the news of the censure. 
 
 I assure you, sir, it has filled me with astonishment. I 
 expected to find it condemning the most shocking heresy in 
 the world, but your wonder will equal mine, when informed 
 that these alarming preparations, when on the point of pro- 
 ducing the grand effect anticipated, have all ended in smoke. 
 
 To understand the whole affair in a pleasant way, only 
 recollect, I beseech you, the strange impressions which, for 
 a long time past, we have been taught to form of the Jan- 
 senists. Kecall to mind the cabals, the factions, the errors, 
 the schisms, the outrages, with which they have been so long 
 charged ; the manner in which they have been denounced
 
 THE CENSURE. 91 
 
 and vilified from the pulpit and the press ; and the degree 
 to which this torrent of abuse, so remarkable for its violence 
 and duration, has swollen of late years, when they have been 
 openly and publicly accused of being not only heretics and 
 schismatics, but apostates and infidels with "denying the 
 mystery of transubstantiation, and renouncing Jesus Christ 
 and the Gospel."* 
 
 After having published these startlingf accusations, it was 
 resolved to examine their writings, in order to pronounce 
 judgment on them. For this purpose the second letter of 
 M. Arnauld, which was reported to be full of the greatest 
 errors.J is selected. The examiners appointed are his most 
 open and avowed enemies. They employ all their learning 
 to discover something that they might lay hold upon, and at 
 length they produce one proposition of a doctrinal character, 
 which they exhibit for censure. 
 
 What else could any one infer from such proceedings, than 
 that this proposition, selected under such remarkable circum- 
 stances, would contain the essence of the blackest heresies 
 imaginable. And yet the proposition so entirely agrees with 
 what is clearly and formally expressed in the passages from 
 the fathers quoted by M. Arnauld, that I have not met 
 with a single individual who could comprehend the difference 
 between them. Still, however, it might be imagined that 
 there was a very great difference ; for the passages from the 
 fathers being unquestionably catholic, the proposition of M. 
 Arnauld, if heretical, must be widely opposed^ to them. 
 
 * The charge of " denying the mystery of transubstantiation," cer- 
 tainly did not justly apply to the Jansenists as such; these religious 
 devotees denied nothing. Their system, so far as the dogmas of the 
 Church were concerned, was one of implicit faith ; but though Arnauld, 
 Nicole, and the other learned men among them, stiffly maintained the 
 leading tenets of the Romish Church, in opposition to those of the Re- 
 formers the Jansenist creed, as held by their pious followers, was 
 practically at variance with transubstantiation and many other errors 
 of the Church to which they nominally belonged. (Mad. Schimmel- 
 penninck's Demolition of Port-Royal, pp. 77-80, &c.) 
 
 t Atroces 1; atrocious." (Edit. 1657.) 
 
 ^ Des plus detestables erreurs " the most detestable errors." (Edit. 
 1657.) Erreurs " errors." (Nicole's Edit, 1767.) 
 
 HorribleTTent contraire !! horribly contrary." (Edit. 1657.)
 
 92 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Such was the difficulty which the Sorbonne was expected 
 to clear up. All Christendom waited, with wide-opened 
 eyes, to discover, in the censure of these learned doctors, 
 the point of difference which had proved imperceptible to 
 ordinary mortals. Meanwhile M. Arnauld gave in his de- 
 fences, placing his own proposition and the passages of the 
 fathers from which he had drawn it in parallel columns, so 
 as to make the agreement between them apparent to the 
 most obtuse understandings. 
 
 He shows, for example, that St. Augustine says in one 
 passage, that " Jesus Christ points out to us, in the person 
 of St. Peter, a righteous man warning us by his fall to avoid 
 presumption." He cites another passage from the same 
 father, in which he says, " that God, hi order to show us 
 that without grace we can do nothing, left St. Peter without 
 grace." He produces a third, from St. Chrysostom, who 
 says, " that the fall of St. Peter happened, not through any 
 coldness towards Jesus Christ, but because grace failed him ; 
 and that he fell, not so much through his own negligence as 
 through the withdrawment of God, as a lesson to the whole 
 Church, that without God we can do nothing." He then 
 gives his own accused proposition, which is as follows : " The 
 fathers point out to us, in the person of St. Peter, a right- 
 eous man to whom that grace without which we can do noth- 
 ing, was wanting." 
 
 In vain did people attempt to discover how it could pos- 
 sibly be, that M. Arnauld's expression differed from those of 
 the fathers as much as truth from error, and faith from 
 heresy. For where was the difference to be found ? Could 
 it be in these words, " that the fathers point out to us, in the 
 person of St. Peter, a righteous man ?" St. Augustine has 
 said the same thing in so many words. Is it because he says 
 " that grace had failed him ?" The same St. Augustine, 
 who had said that " St. Peter was a righteous man," says 
 " that he had not had grace on that occasion." Is it, then, 
 for his having said, " that without grace we can do nothing ?" 
 Why, is not this just what St. Augustine says in the same
 
 THE CENSURE. 93 
 
 place, and what St. Chrysostom had said before him, with 
 this difference only, that he expresses it in much stronger 
 language, as when he says " that his fall did not happen 
 through his own coldness or negligence, but through the fail- 
 ure of grace, and the withdrawment of God ?"* 
 
 Such considerations as these kept everybody in a state of 
 breathless suspense, to learn in what this diversity could 
 consist, when at length, after a great many meetings, this 
 famous and long-looked for censure made its appearance. 
 But, alas ! it has sadly baulked our expectation. Whether 
 it be that the Molinist doctors would not condescend so far 
 as to enlighten us on the point, or for some other mysterious 
 reason, the fact is, they have done nothing more than pro- 
 nounce these words : " This proposition is rash, impious, blas- 
 phemous, accursed, and heretical !" 
 
 Would you believe it, sir, that most people, finding them- 
 selves deceived in their expectations, have got into bad hu- 
 mor, and begin to fall foul upon the censors themsejves? 
 They are drawing strange inferences from their conduct in 
 favor of M. Arnauld's innocence. " What !" they are saying, 
 " is this all that could be achieved, during all this time, by 
 so many doctors joining in a furious attack on one individual ? 
 Cnn they find nothing in all his works worthy of reprehen- 
 sion, but three lines, and these extracted, word for word, 
 from the greatest doctors of the Greek and Latin Churches ? 
 Is there any author whatever whose writings, were it intended 
 to ruin him, would not furnish a more specious pretext for 
 the purpose ? And what higher proof could be furnished 
 of the orthodoxy of this illustrious accused ? 
 
 " How comes it to pass," they add, " that so many denun- 
 ciations are launched in this zensure, into which they have 
 
 * The meaning of Chrysostom is good, but the expressions of these 
 ancient fathers are often more remarkable for their strength than their 
 
 Srecision. The Protestant reader hardly needs to be reminded, that if 
 ivine grace can be said to have failed the Apostle Peter at his fall, it 
 can only he in th>i sense of a temporary suspension of its influences; 
 and thrit. this withdrawment of grace must be regarded as the punish- 
 ment, and not as the cause, of his own negligence.
 
 94 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 crowded such terms as ' poison, pestilence, horror, rashness, 
 impiety, blasphemy, abomination, execration, anathema, her- 
 esy' the most dreadful epithets that could be used against 
 Arius, or Antichrist himself; and all to .combat an impercep- 
 tible heresy, and that, moreover, without "telling us what it 
 is? If it be against the words of the fathers that they in- 
 veigh in this style, where is " the faith and tradition ? If 
 against M. Arnauld's proposition, let them point out the dif- 
 ference between the two ; for we can see nothing but the 
 most perfeet harmony between them. As soon as we have 
 discovered the evil of the proposition, we shall hold it in ab- 
 horrence ; but so long as we do not see it, or rather see 
 nothing in the statement but the sentiments of the holy 
 fathers, conceived and expressed in their own terms, how 
 can we possibly regard it with any other feelings than those 
 of holy veneration ?" 
 
 Such is a specimen of the way in which they are giving 
 vent to their feelings. But these are by far too deep -think- 
 ing people. You and I, who make no pretensions to such 
 extraordinary penetration, may keep ourselves quite easy 
 about the whole affair. What ! would we be wiser than our 
 masters ? No : let us take example from them, and not un- 
 dertake what they have not ventured upon. We would be 
 sure to get boggled in such an attempt. Why it would be 
 the easiest thing imaginable, to render this censure itself he- 
 retical. Truth, we know, is so delicate, that if we make the 
 slightest deviation from it, we fall into error ; but this al- 
 leged error is so extremely fine-spun, that, if we diverge from 
 it in the slightest degree, we fall back upon the truth. There 
 is positively nothing between this obnoxious proposition and 
 the truth but an imperceptible point. The distance between 
 them is so impalpable, that I was in terror lest, from pure 
 inability to perceive it, I might, in my over-anxiety to agree 
 with the doctors of the Sorbonne, place myself in oppositioa 
 to the doctors of the Church. Under this apprehension, I 
 judged it expedient to consult one of those who, through 
 policy, was neutral on the first question, that from him I
 
 THE CENSURE. 95 
 
 might learn the real state of the matter. I have accordingly 
 had an interview with one of the most intelligent of that 
 party, whom I requested to point out to me the difference 
 between the two things, at the same time frankly owning to 
 him that I could see none. 
 
 He appeared to be amused at my simplicity, and replied, 
 with a smile : " How simple it is in you to believe that there 
 is any difference ! Why, where could it be ? Do you im- 
 agine that, if they could have found out any discrepancy be- 
 ween M. Araauld and the fathers, they would not have 
 oldly pointed it out, and been delighted with the opportu- 
 nity of exposing it before the public, in whose eyes they are 
 so anxious to depreciate that gentleman ?" 
 
 I could easily perceive, from these few words, that those 
 who had been neutral on the first question, would not all 
 prove so on the second ; but anxious to hear his reasons, 
 I asked : " Why, then, have they attacked this unfortunate 
 proposition?" 
 
 " Is it possible," he replied, " you can be ignorant of these 
 two things, which I thought had been known to the veriest 
 tyro in these matters ? that, on the one hand, M. Arnauld 
 has uniformly avoided advancing a single tenet which is not 
 powerfully supported by the tradition of the Church ; and 
 that, on the other hand, his enemies have determined, cost 
 what it may, to cut that ground from under him ; and, ac- 
 cordingly, that as the writings of the former afforded no 
 handle to the designs of the latter, they have been obliged, 
 in order to satiate their revenge, to seize on some proposi- 
 tion, it mattered not what, and to condemn it without telling 
 why or wherefore. Do not you know how the Jansenists 
 keep them in check, and annoy them so desperately, that 
 they cannot drop the slightest word against the principles 
 of the fathers without being incontinently overwhelmed with 
 whole volumes, under the pressure of which they are forced 
 te succumb ? So that, after a great many proofs of their 
 weakness, they have judged it more to the purpose, and
 
 86 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 much less troublesome, to censure than to reply it "being a 
 much easier matter with them to find monks than reasons."* 
 
 " Why then," said I, " if this be the case, their censure is 
 not worth a straw ; for who will pay any regard to it, when 
 they see it to be without foundation, and refuted, as it no 
 doubt will be, by the answers given to it ?" 
 
 " If you knew the temper of people," replied my friend 
 the doctor, " you would talk in another sort of way. Their 
 censure, censurable as it is, will produce nearly all its de- 
 signed effect for a time ; and although, by the force of de- 
 monstration, it is certain that, in course of time, its invalidity 
 will be made apparent, it is equally true that, at first, it will 
 tell as effectually on the minds of most people as if it had 
 been the most righteous sentence in the world. Let it only 
 be cried about the streets : ' Here you have the censure of 
 M. Arnauld ! here you have the condemnation of the Jan- 
 senists !' and the Jesuits will find their account in it. How 
 few will ever read it ! How few of them who do read, will 
 understand it ! How few will observe that it answers no ob- 
 jections ! How few will take the matter to heart, or attempt 
 to sift it to the bottom ? Mark then, how much advantage 
 this gives to the enemies of the Jansenists. They are sure 
 to make a triumph of it, though a vam one, as usual, for 
 some months at least and that is a great matter for them 
 they will look out afterwards for some new means of sub- 
 sistence. They live from hand to mouth, sir. It is in this 
 way they have contrived to maintain themselves down to the 
 present day. Sometimes it is by a catechism in which a 
 child is made to condemn their opponents ; then it is by a 
 procession, in which sufficient grace leads the efficacious in 
 triumph ; again it is by a comedy, in which Jansenius is rep- 
 resented as carried off by devils ; at another time it is by an 
 almanac ; and now it is by this censure."f 
 
 * That is, they could more readily procure monks to vote against M. 
 Arnauld. than arguments to answer him. 
 
 f The allusions in the text afford curious illustrations of the mode of 
 warfare pursued by the Jesuits of the seventeenth century. The first 
 refers to a comic catechism, in which the simple anguags of childhood
 
 THE CENSURE. 97 
 
 "In good sooth," said I, "I was on the point of finding 
 fault with the conduct of the Molinists ; but after what you 
 have told me, I must say I admire their prudence and their 
 policy. I see perfectly well that the^ could not have fol- 
 lowed a safer or more judicious course." 
 
 " You are right," returned he ; " their safest policy has 
 always been to keep silent ; and this led a certain learned 
 divine to remark, ' that the cleverest among them are those 
 who intrigue much, speak little, and write nothing.' 
 
 " It is on this principle that, from the commencement of 
 the meetings, they prudently ordained that, if M. Arnauld 
 came into the Sorbonne, it must be simply to explain what 
 he believed, and not to enter the lists of controversy with 
 any one. The examiners having ventured to depart a little 
 from this prudent arrangement, suffered for their temerity. 
 They found themselves rather too vigorously* refuted by his 
 second apology. - y . 
 
 " On the same principle, they had recourse to that rare and 
 very novel device of the half-hour and the sand-glass.f By 
 this means they rid themselves of the importunity of those 
 troublesome doctors^ who might undertake to refute all their 
 arguments, to -produce books which might convict them of 
 forgery, to insist on a reply, and reduce them to the predica- 
 ment of having none to give. 
 
 was employed ns a vehicle for the most calumnious charges against the 
 opponents of the Society. Pascal refers again to this catechism in Let- 
 ter xvii. The second device was a sort of school-boy masquerade. A 
 handsome youth, disguised as a female, in splendid attire, and bearing 
 the inscription of sufficient grace, dragged behind him another dressed 
 as a bishop (representing Jansenius. bishop of Ypres), who followed with 
 a rueful visage, amidst the hootings of the other boys. The comedy 
 referred to was acted in the Jesuits' college of Clermont. The alma- 
 nacs published in France at that period being usually embellished with 
 rude cuts for the amusement of the vtflgar, the Jesuits procured the in- 
 sertion of a caricature of the Jansenists, who were represented as pur- 
 sued by the pope, and taking refuge among the Calvinists. This, how- 
 ever, called forth a retaliation, in the shape of a poem, entitled " The 
 Prints of the Famous Jesuitical Almanac," in which the Jesuits were 
 so successfully held up to ridicule, that they could hardly show face for 
 some time in the streets of Paris. (Nicole, i. p. 203.) 
 
 * Verte.me.nt - : smartly." (Edit 1657.) 
 
 t See Letter ii. 
 
 $ Cet dartturs' those dactore." (Edit. 1767.) 
 5
 
 98 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " It is not that they were so blind as not to see that this 
 encroachment on liberty, which has induced so many doctors 
 to withdraw from the meetings, would do no good to their 
 censure ; and that the protest of nullity, taken on this ground 
 by M. Arnauld before it was concluded, would be a bad pre- 
 amble for securing it a favorable reception. They know very 
 well that unprejudiced persons place fully as much weight on 
 the judgment of seventy doctors, who had nothing to gain 
 by defending M. Arnauld, as on that of a hundred others 
 who had nothing {o lose by condemning him. But, upon the 
 whole, they considered that it would be of vast importance 
 to have a censure, although it should be the act of a party 
 only in the Sorbonne, and not of the whole body ; although 
 it should be carried with little or no freedom of debate, and 
 obtained by a great many small manoeuvres not exactly ac- 
 cording to order ; although it should give no explanation of 
 the matter in dispute ; although it should not point out in 
 what this heresy consists, and should say as little as possible 
 about it, for fear of committing a mistake. This very silence 
 is a mystery in the eyes of the simple ; and the censure will 
 reap this singular advantage from it, that they may defy the 
 most critical and subtle theologians to find in it a single weak 
 argument. 
 
 " Keep yourself easy, then, and do not be afraid of being 
 set down as a heretic, though you should make use of the 
 condemned proposition. It is bad, I assure you, only as oc- 
 curring in the second letter of M. Arnauld. If you will not 
 believe this statement on my word, I refer you to M. le Moine, 
 the most zealous of the examiners, who, in the course of con- 
 versation with a doctor of my acquaintance this very morn- 
 ing, on being asked by him where lay the point of difference 
 in dispute, and if one would no longer be allowed to say 
 what the fathers had said before him, made the following ex- 
 quisite replj : 'This proposition would be orthodox in the 
 mouth of any other it is only as coming from M. Arnauld 
 that the Sorbonne have condemned it !' You must now be 
 prepared to admire the machinery of Molinisro, which can
 
 THE CENSURE. 99 
 
 produce s.ich prodigious overturnings in .he Church that 
 what is catholic in the fathers becomes heretical in M. Ar- 
 nauld that what is heretical in the Semi-Pelagians becomes 
 orthodox in the writings of the Jesuits ; the ancient doctrine 
 of St. Augustine becomes an intolerable innovation, and new 
 inventions, daily fabricated before our eyes, pass for the an- 
 cient faith of the Church." So saying, he took his leave of 
 me. 
 
 This information has satisfied my purpose. I gather from 
 it that this same heresy is one of an entirely new species. It 
 is not the sentiments of M. Arnauld that are heretical ; it is 
 only his person. This is a personal heresy. He is not a 
 heretic for anything he has said or written, but simply 
 because he is M. Arnauld. This is all they have to say 
 against him. Do what he may, unless he cease to be, he will 
 never be a good Catholic. The grace of St. Augustine will 
 never be the true grace, so long as he continues to defend it. 
 It would become so at once, were he to take it into his head 
 to impugn it. That would be a sure stroke, and almost the 
 only plan for establishing the truth and demolishing Molin- 
 ism ; such is the fatality attending all the opinions which he 
 embraces. 
 
 Let us leave them, then, to settle their own differences. 
 These are the disputes of theologians, not of theology. We, 
 who are no doctors, have nothing to do with their quarrels. 
 Tell our friends the news of the censure, and love me while 
 I am, &c.* 
 
 * In Nicole's edition, this letter is signed with the initials " E. A. A. 
 B. P. A. P. D. E. P." which seem merely a chance medley of letters, to 
 quiz those who were so anxious to discover the author. There may 
 have been an allusion to the absurd story of a Jansenist conference 
 held, it was sajd. at Bourg Fontaine, in 1621, to deliberate on ways and 
 means for abolishing Christianity ; among the persons present at which, 
 indicated by initials, Anthony Arnauld was ridiculously accused of hav- 
 ing been one under the initials A. A. (See Bayle's Diet., art. Ant. Ar- 
 nauld.
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 OH ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. 
 
 PARIS, February 25, 1656. 
 
 SIR, Nothing can come up to the Jesuits. I have seen 
 Jacobins, doctors, and all sorts of people in my day, but such 
 an interview as I have just had was wanting to complete 
 my knowledge of mankind. Other men are merely copies 
 of them. As things are always found best at the fountain- 
 head, I paid a visit to one of the ablest among them, in com- 
 pany with my trusty Jansenist the same who accompanied 
 me to the Dominicans. Being particularly anxious to learn 
 something of a dispute which they have with the Jansenists 
 about what they call actual grace, I said to the worthy father 
 that I would be much obliged to him if he would instruct me 
 on this point that I did not even know what the term 
 meant, and would thank him to explain it. " With all my 
 heart," the Jesuit replied ; " for I dearly love inquisitive 
 people. Actual grace, according to our definition, ' is an in- 
 spiration of God, whereby he makes us to know his will, and 
 excites within us a desire to perform it.' " 
 
 " And where," said I, " lies your difference with the Jan- 
 senists on this subject ?" 
 
 " The difference lies here," he replied ; " we hold that God 
 bestows actual grace on all men in every case of temptation ; 
 for we maintain, that unless a person have, whenever tempted, 
 actual grace to keep him from sinning, his sin, whatever it 
 may be, can never be imputed to him. The Jansenists, on 
 the other hand, affirm that sins, though committed without 
 actual grace, are, nevertheless, imputed ; but they are a pack 
 of fools." I got a glimpse of his meaning ; but, to obtain
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. 101 
 
 from him a fuller explanation, I observed : " My dear father, 
 it is that phrase actual grace that puzzles me ; I am quite a 
 stranger to it, and if you would have the goodness to tell me 
 the same thing over again, without employing that term, you 
 would infinitely oblige me." 
 
 " Very good," returned the father ; " that is to say, you 
 want me to substitute the definition in place of the thing de- 
 fined ; that makes no alteration on the sense ; I have no ob- 
 jections. We maintain it, then, as an undeniable principle, 
 that an action cannot be imputed as a sin, unless God bestow 
 on us, before committing it, the knowledge of the evil that is 
 in the action, and an inspiration inciting us to avoid it. Do 
 you understand me now ?" 
 
 Astonished at such a declaration, according to which, no 
 sins of surprise, nor any of those committed in entire forget- 
 fulness of God, could be imputed, I turned round to my 
 friend the Jansenist, and easily discovered from his looks 
 that he was of a different way of thinking. But as he did 
 not utter a word, I said to the monk, " I would fain wish, 
 my dear father, to think that what you have now said is true, 
 and that you have good proofs for it." 
 
 " Proofs, say you !" he instantly exclaimed : " T shall fur- 
 nish you with these very soon, and the very best sort too ; 
 let me alone for that." 
 
 So saying, he went in search of his books, and I took this 
 opportunity of asking my friend if there was any other per- 
 son who talked in this manner ? " Is this so strange to you ?" 
 he replied. " You may depend upon it that neither the 
 fathers, nor the popes, nor councils, nor Scripture, nor any 
 book of devotion, employ such language ; but if you wish 
 casuists and modern schoolmen, he will bring you a goodly 
 number of them on his side.'' " O ! but I care not a fig 
 about these authors, if they are contrary to tradition," I said. 
 "You are right," he replied. 
 
 As he spoke, the good father entered the room, laden with 
 books ; and presenting to me the first that came to hand, 
 " Read that," " he said ; " this is ' The Summary of Sins,' by
 
 102 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Father Bauny* the fifth edition too, you see, which shows 
 that it i a good book." 
 
 " It is a pity, however," whispered the Jansenist in my 
 ear, " that this same book has been condemned at Rome, and 
 by the bishops of France." 
 
 " Look at page 906," said the father. . I did so, and read 
 as follows : " In order to sin and become culpable in the 
 sight of God, it is necessary to know that the thing we wish 
 to do is not good, or at least to doubt that it is to fear or 
 to judge that God takes no pleasure in the action which we 
 contemplate, but forbids it ; and in spite of this, to commit 
 the deed, leap the fence, and transgress." 
 
 " This is a good commencement," I remarked. " And 
 yet," said he, " mark how far envy will carry some people. 
 It was on that very passage that M. Hallier, before he became 
 one of our friends, bantered Father Bauny, by applying to 
 him these words : Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi ' Behold 
 the man that taketh away the sins of the world !' " 
 
 " Certainly," said I, " according to Father Bauny, we 
 may be said to behold a redemption of an entirely new de- 
 scription." 
 
 " Would you have a more authentic witness on the point ?" 
 added he. " Here is the book of Father Annat.f It is the 
 
 * Etienne Bauni, or Stephen Bauny, was a French Jesuit. His 
 " Summary." which Pascal has immortalized by his frequent references 
 to it, was published in 1633. It is a large volume, stuffed with the most 
 detestable doctrines. In 1642, the General Assembly of the French 
 clergy censured his books on moral theology, as containing propositions 
 " leading to licentiousness, and the corruption of good manners, violat- 
 ing natural equity, and excusing blasphemy, usury, simony, and other 
 heinous sins, as trivial matters." ( Nicole, i. 164.) And yet this abomi- 
 nable work was formally defended in the " Apology for the Casuists." 
 written in 1657. by Father Pirot, and acknowledged by the Jesuits as 
 having been written under their direction ! (Nicole, Hist, des Provin- 
 ciales, p. 30. 
 
 f Francis Annat was born in the year 1590. He was made rector of 
 the College of Toulouse, and appointed by the Jesuits their French 
 
 Erovincial; and. while in that situation, was chosen by Louis XIV. as 
 is confessor. His friends have highly extolled his virtues as a man ; 
 and the reader may judge of the value of these eulogiums from the fact, 
 that he retained his post as the favorite confessor of that licentious 
 monarch, without interruption, till deafness prevented him from listen- 
 ing any longer to the confessions of his royal penitent. (Bayle, art.
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. 103 
 
 last that he wrote against M. Arnauld. Turn up to page 
 34, where there is a dog's ear, and read the lines which I 
 have marked with pencil they ought to be written in letters 
 of gold. I then read these words : " He that has no thought 
 of God, nor of his sins, nor any apprehension (that is, as he 
 explained it, any knowledge) of his obligation to exercise the 
 acts of love to God or contrition, has no actual grace for 
 exercising those acts ; but it is equally true that he is guilty 
 of no sin in omitting them, and that, if he is damned, it will 
 not be as a punishment for that omission." And a few lines 
 below, he adds : " The same thing may be said of a culpable 
 commission." 
 
 " You see," said the monk, " how he speaks of sins of 
 omission and of commission. Nothing escapes him. What 
 say you to that?" 
 
 " Say !" I exclaimed. " I am delighted ! What a charm- 
 ing train of consequences do I ^discover flowing from this 
 doctrine ! I can see the whole results already ; and such 
 mysteries present themselves before me ! Why, I see more 
 people, beyond all comparison, justified by this ignorance and 
 forgetfulness of God, than by grace and the sacraments !* 
 But, my dear father, are you not inspiring me with a delu- 
 
 Annat.) They have also extolled his answer to the Provincial Letters, 
 in his " Bonne Foy des Jansenistes," in which he professed to expose 
 the falsity of the quotations made from the Casuists, with what success, 
 appears from the Notes of Nicole, who has completely vindicated Pascal 
 from the unfounded charges which the Jesuits have reiterated on this 
 point. (Notes Preliminaires, vol. i. p. 256, &c. ; Entretiens de Cleandre 
 et Eudoxe, p. 79.) 
 
 * When Madame du Valois, a lady of birth and high accomplish- 
 ments, one of the nuns of Port- Royal, among other trials by which she 
 was harassed and tormented for not signing the formulary condemning 
 Jansenius, was threatened with being deprived of the benefit of the sac- 
 raments at the hour of death, she replied : " If, at the awful hour of 
 death, I should be deprived of those assistances which the Church grants 
 to all her children, then God himself will, by his grace, immediately 
 and abundantly supply their instrumentality. I know, indeed, that it 
 is most painful to approach the awful hour of death without an outward 
 participation in the sacraments ; but it is better dying, to enter into 
 heaven, though without the sacraments, for the cause of truth, than, 
 receiving the sacraments, to be cited to irrevocable judgment for com- 
 mitting perjury." (Narrative of Dem. of Port-Royal, p. 176.)
 
 104 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 fidency which suffices not ? I am terrribly afraid of the Dw- 
 tinguo ; I was taken in with that once already ! Are you 
 quite in earnest ?" 
 
 " How now !" cried the monk, beginning to get angry ; 
 " here is no matter for jesting. I assure you there is no such 
 thing as equivocation here." 
 
 " I am not making a jest of it," said I ; "but that is what 
 I really dread, from pure anxiety to find it true."* 
 
 " Well then," he said, " to assure yourself still more of it, 
 here are the writings of M. le Moine,f who taught the doc- 
 trine in a full meeting of the Sorbonne. He learned it from 
 us, to be sure ; but he has the merit of having cleared it up 
 most admirably. how circumstantially he goes to work ! 
 He shows that, in order to make out an action to be a sin, 
 all these things must have passed through the mind. Read, 
 and weigh every word." I then read what I now give you 
 in a translation from the original Latin : " 1. On the one 
 hand, God sheds abroad on the soul some measure of love, 
 which gives it a bias toward the thing commanded ; and en 
 the other, a rebellious concupiscence solicits it in the opposite 
 direction. 2. God inspires the soul with a knowledge of 
 its own weakness. 3. God reveals the knowledge of the 
 physician who can heal it. 4. God inspires it with a desire 
 to be healed. 5. God inspires a desire to pray and solicit 
 his assistance." 
 
 " And unless all these things occur and pass through the 
 soul," added the monk, " the action is not properly a sin, and 
 cannot be imputed, as M. le Moine shows in the same place 
 and in what follows. Would you wish to have other author- 
 ities for this ? Here they are." 
 
 "All modern ones, however," whispered my Jansenist 
 friend. 
 
 " So I perceive," said I to him aside ; and then, turning to 
 
 * Will it be believed that the Jesuits actually had the consummate 
 hypocrisy to pretend that Pascal meant to throw ridicule on the grace 
 of God. while he was merely exposing to merited contempt their own 
 perversions of the doctrine 1 
 
 t See before, page 70.
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. 105 
 
 the monk : " my dear sir," cried I, " what a blessing this 
 will be to some persons of my acquaintance ! I must posi- 
 tively introduce them to you. You have never, perhaps, met 
 with people who had fewer sins to account for all your life. 
 For, in the first place, they never think of God at all ; their 
 vices have got the better of their reason ; they have never 
 known either their weakness or the physician who can cure 
 it ; they have never thought of ' desiring the health of their 
 soul/ and still less of 'praying to God to bestow it ;' so that, 
 according to M. le Moine, they are still in the state of bap- 
 tismal innocence. They have ' never had a thought of loving 
 God or of being contrite for their sins ;' so that, according to 
 Father Annat, they have never committed sin through the 
 want of charity and penitence. Their life is spent in a per- 
 petual round of all sorts of pleasures, in the course of which 
 they have not been interrupted by the slightest remorse. 
 These excesses had led me to imagine that their perdition 
 was inevitable ; but you, father, inform me that these same 
 excesses secure their salvation. Blessings on you, my good 
 father, for this way of justifying people ! Others prescribe 
 painful austerities for healing the soul; but you show that 
 souls which may be thought desperately distempered are in 
 quite good health. What an excellent device for being happy 
 both in this world and in the next ! I had always supposed 
 that the less a man thought of God, the more he sinned ; 
 but, from what I see now, if one could only succeed in bring- 
 ing himself not to think upon God at all, everything would 
 be pure with him in all time coming. Away with your half- 
 and-half sinners, who retain some sneaking affection for vir- 
 tue ! They will be damned every one of them, these semi- 
 sinners. But commend me to your arrant sinners hardened, 
 unalloyed, out-and-out, thorough-bred sinners. Hell is no 
 place for them ; they have cheated the devil, purely by virtue 
 of their devotion to his service !" 
 
 The good father, who saw very well the connection be- 
 tween these consequences and his principle, dexterously 
 evaded them ; and maintaining his temper, either from good 
 5*
 
 106 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 
 nature or policy, he merely replied : " To let you understand 
 how we avoid these inconveniences, you must know that, 
 while we affirm that these reprobates to whom you refer 
 would be without sin if they had no thoughts of conversion 
 and no desires to devote themselves to God, we maintain, 
 that they all actually have such thoughts and desires, and 
 that God never permitted a man to sin without giving him 
 previously a view of the evil which he contemplated, and a 
 desire, either to avoid the offence, or at all events to implore 
 his aid to enable him to avoid it ; and none but Jansenists 
 will assert the contrary." 
 
 " Strange ! father," returned I ; "is this, then, the heresy 
 of the Jansenists, to deny that every time a man commits a 
 sin, he is troubled with a remorse of conscience, in spite of 
 which, he 'leaps the fence and transgresses,' as Father 
 Bauny has it ? It is rather too good a joke to be made a 
 heretic for that. I can easily believe that a man may be 
 damned for not having good thoughts ; but it never would 
 have entered my head to imagine that any man could be 
 subjected to that doom for not believing that all mankind 
 must have good thoughts ! But, father, I hold myself bound 
 in conscience to disabuse you, and to inform you that there 
 are thousands of people who have no such desires who sin 
 without regret who sin with delight who make a boast of 
 sinning. And who ought to know better about these things 
 than yourself ? You cannot have failed to have confessed 
 some of those to whom I allude ; for it is among persons of 
 high rank that they are most generally to be met with.* 
 
 * The Jesuits were notorious for the assiduity with which they sought 
 admission into the families, and courted the confidence of the great, with 
 whom, from the laxness of their discipline and morality, as well as from 
 their superior manners and accomplishments, they were, as they still 
 are. the favorite confessors. They have a maxim among their secret 
 instructions, that in dealing with the consciences of the great, the con- 
 fessor must be guided by the looser sort of opinions. The author of the 
 Theatre Jesuitique illustrates this by an anecdote. A rich gentleman 
 falling sick, confessed himself to a Jesuit, and among other sins ac- 
 knowledged an illicit intercourse with a lady, whose portrait, thinking 
 himself dying, he gave with many expressions of remorse, to his con- 
 fessor. The gentleman, however, recovered, and with returning health
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SIXS OF IGNORANCE. 107 
 
 But mark, father, the dangerous consequences of your maxim. 
 Do you not perceive what effect it may have on those lib- 
 ertinog who like nothing better than to find out matter of 
 doubt in religion ? What a handle do you give them, when 
 you assure them, as an article of faith, that on every occasion 
 when they commit a sin, they feel an inward presentiment of 
 the evil, and a desire to avoid it ? Is it not obvious that, 
 feeling convinced by their own experience of the falsity of 
 your doctrine on this point, which you say is a matter of 
 faith, they will extend the inference drawn from this to all 
 the other points ? They will argue that, since you are not 
 trust-worthy in one article, you are to be suspected in them 
 all ; and thus you shut them up to conclude, either that 
 religion is false, or that you must know very little about it." 
 Here my friend the Jansenist, following up my remarks, 
 said to him : " You would do well, father, if you wish to 
 preserve your doctrine, not to explain so precisely as you 
 have done to us, what you mean by actual grace. For, how 
 could you, without forfeiting all credit in the estimation of 
 men, openly declare that nobody sins without having previ- 
 ously the knowledge of his weakness, and of a. physician, or 
 the desire of a cure, and of asking it of God ? Will it be 
 believed, on your word, that those who are immersed in 
 avarice, impurity, blasphemy, duelling, revenge, robbery and 
 sacrilege, have really a desire to embrace chastity, humility, 
 and the other Christian virtues ? Can it be conceived that 
 those philosophers who boasted so loudly of the powers 
 of nature, knew its infirmity and its physician ? Will you 
 maintain that those who held it as a settled maxim that ' it 
 is not God that bestows virtue, and that no one ever asked 
 it from him,' would think of asking it for themselves ? Who 
 can believe that the Epicureans, who denied a divine provi- 
 dence, ever felt any inclination to pray to God ? men who 
 
 a salutary change was effected on his character. The Jesuit, finding 
 himself forgotten, paid a visit to his former penitent, and gave him back 
 the portrait, which renewed all his former passisn, and soon brought 
 him again to the feet of his confessor !
 
 108 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 said that ' it would be an insult to invoke the Deity in om 
 necessities, as if he were capable of wasting a thought on 
 beings like us ?' In a word, how can it be imagined that 
 idolaters and Atheists, every time they are tempted to the 
 commission of sin, in other words, infinitely often during their 
 lives, have a desire to pray to the true God, of whom they 
 are ignorant, that he would bestow on them virtues of which 
 they have no conception ?" 
 
 " Yes," said the worthy monk, in a resolute tone, " we 
 will affirm it : and sooner than allow that any one sins with- 
 out having the consciousness that he is doing evil, and the 
 desire of the opposite virtue, we will maintain that the whole 
 world, reprobates and infidels included, have these inspira- 
 tions and desires in every case of temptation. You cannot 
 show me, from the Scripture at least, that this is not the 
 truth." 
 
 On this remark I struck in, by exclaiming : " What ! fa- 
 ther, must we have recourse to the Scripture to demonstrate 
 a thing so clear as this ? This is not a point of faith, nor 
 even of reason. It is a matter of fact : we see it we know 
 it we feel it." 
 
 But the Jansenist, keeping the monk to his own terms, 
 addressed him as follows : " If you are willing, father, to 
 stand or fall by Scripture, I am ready to meet you there ; 
 only you must promise to yield to its authority ; and since it 
 is written that ' God has not revealed his judgments to the 
 Heathen, but left them to wander in their own ways,' you 
 must not say that God has enlightened those whom the Sa- 
 cred Writings assure us ' he has left in darkness and in the 
 shadow of death.' Is it not enough to show the erroneous- 
 ness of your principle, to find that St. Paul calls himself ' the 
 chief of sinners,' for a sin which he committed ' ignorantly, 
 and with zeal ?' Is it not enough to find, from the Gospel, 
 that those who crucified Jesus Christ had need of the pardon 
 which he asked for them, although they knew not the malice 
 of their action, and would never have committed it, accord- 
 ing to St. Paul, if they had known it ? Is jt not enough that
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. 109 
 
 Jesus Christ apprizes us that there will be persecutors of the 
 Church, who, while making every effort to ruin her, will 
 ' think that they are doing God service ;' teaching us that 
 this sin, which in the judgment of the apostle, is the greatest 
 of all sins, may be committed by persons who, so far from 
 knowing that they were sinning, would think that they sinned 
 by not committing it ? In fine, is it not enough that Jesus 
 Christ himself has taught us that there are two kinds of 
 sinners, the one of whom sin with ' knowledge of their Mas- 
 tor's will,' and the other without knowledge ; and that both 
 of them will be 'chastised,' although, indeed, in a different 
 manner ?" 
 
 Sorely pressed by so many testimonies from Scripture, to 
 which he had appealed, the worthy monk began to give way ; 
 and, leaving the wicked to sin without inspiration, he said : 
 " You will not deny that good men, at least, never sin unless 
 
 God give them" " You are flinching," said I, interrupting 
 
 him ; " you are flinching now, my good father ; you abandon 
 the general principle, and finding that it will not hold good 
 in regard to the wicked, you would compound the matter, by 
 making it apply at least to the righteous. But in this point 
 of view the application of it is, I conceive, so circumscribed, 
 that it will hardly apply to anybody, and it is scarcely worth 
 while to dispute the point." 
 
 My friend, however, who was so ready on the whole ques- 
 tion, that I am inclined to think he had studied it all that 
 very morning, replied : " This, father, is the last entrench- 
 ment to which those of jour party who are willing to reason 
 at all are sure to retreat ; but you are far from being safe 
 even here. The example of the saints is not a whit more in 
 your favor. Who doubts that they often fall into sins of 
 surprise, without being conscious of them ? Do we not learn 
 from the saints themselves how often concupiscence lays hid- 
 den snares for them ; and how generally it happens, as St. 
 Augustine complains of himself in his Confessions, that, with 
 all their discretion, they ' give to pleasure what they mean 
 only to give to necessity ?'
 
 110 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " How usual is it to see the more zealous friends of truth 
 betrayed by the heat of controversy into sallies of bitter pas- 
 sion for their personal interests, while their consciences, at 
 the time, bear them no other testimony than that they are 
 acting in this manner purely for the interests o truth, and 
 they do not discover their mistake till long afterwards ! 
 
 " What, again, shall we say of those who, as we learn from 
 examples in ecclesiastical history, eagerly involve themselves 
 in affairs which are really bad, because they believe them to be 
 really good ; and yet this does not hinder the fathers from con- 
 demning such persons as having sinned on these occasions ? 
 
 " And were this not the case, how could the saints have 
 their secret faults ? How could it be true that God alone 
 knows the magnitude and the number of our offences ; that 
 no one knows whether he is worthy of hatred or love ; and 
 that the best of saints, though unconscious of any culpabil- 
 ity, ought always, as St. Paul says of himself, to remain in 
 ' fear and trembling ?'* 
 
 " You perceive, then, father, that this knowledge of the 
 evil, and love of the opposite virtue, which you imagine to be 
 essential to constitute sin, are equally disproved by the exam- 
 ples of the righteous and of the wicked. In the case of the 
 wicked, their passion for vice sufficiently testifies that they 
 have no desire for virtue ; and in regard to the righteous, the 
 love which they bear to virtue plainly shows that they are 
 not always conscious of those sins which, as the Scripture 
 teaches, they are daily committing. 
 
 " So true is it, indeed, that the righteous often sin through 
 
 * " The doubtsome faith of the pope," as it was styled by our Re- 
 formers, is here lamentably apparent. The " fear and trembling" of the 
 apostle were those of anxious care and diligence, not of doubt or appre- 
 hension. The Church of Rome, with all her pretensions to he regarded 
 as the only safe and infallible guide to salvation, keeps her children in 
 darkness and doubt on this point to the last moment of life; they are 
 never permitted to reach the peaceful assurance of God's love and the 
 humble hope of eternal life which the Gospel warrants the believer to 
 cherish ; and this, while it serves to keep the superstitious multitude un- 
 der the sway of priestly domination, accounts for the gloom which has 
 characterize^, in all ages, the devotion of the best and most intelligent 
 Romanists.
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. Ill 
 
 ignorance, that the greatest saints rarely sin otherwise. For 
 how can it be supposed that souls so pure, who avoid with 
 so much care and zeal the least things that can be displeasing 
 to God as soon as they discover them, and who yet sin many 
 times every day, could possibly have, every time before they 
 fell into sin, ' the knowledge of their infirmity on that occa- 
 sion, and of their physician, and the desire of their souls' 
 health, and of praying to God for assistance,' and that, in 
 spite of these inspirations, these devoted souls ' nevertheless 
 transgress,' and commit the sin ? 
 
 " You must conclude then, father, that neither sinners nor 
 yet saints have always that knowledge, or those desires and 
 inspirations every time they offend ; that is> to use your own 
 terms, they have not always actual grace. Say no longer, 
 with your modern authors, that it is impossible for those to 
 sin who do not know righteousness ; but rather join with St. 
 Augustine and the ancient fathers in saying that it is impos- 
 sible not to sin, when we do not know righteousness : Ne- 
 cesse est ut peccet, a quo ignoratur justitia." 
 
 The good father, though thus driven from both of his po- 
 sitions, did not lose courage, but after ruminating a little, 
 " Ha !" he exclaimed, " I shall settle you immediately." And 
 again taking up Father Bauny, he pointed to the same place 
 he had before quoted, exclaiming: "Look now see the 
 ground on which he establishes his opinion ! I was sure he 
 would not be deficient in good proofs. Read what he quotes 
 from Aristotle, and you will see that, after so express an au- 
 thority, you must either burn the books of this prince of philos- 
 ophers or adopt our opinion. Hear, then, the principles which 
 support Father Bauny : Aristotle states first, ' that an action 
 cannot be imputed as blameworthy, if it be involuntary.' " 
 
 " I grant that," said my friend. 
 
 "This is the first time you have agreed together," said I. 
 " Take my advice, father, and proceed no further." 
 
 " That would be doing nothing," he replied ; " we must 
 know what are the conditions necessary to constitute an ac- 
 tion voluntary."
 
 112 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 "lam much afraid," returned I, "that you will get at 
 loggerheads on that point." 
 
 '' No fear of that," said he ; " this is sure ground Aris- 
 totle is on my side. Hear, now, what Father Bauny says : 
 ' In order that an action be voluntary, it must proceed from 
 a man who perceives, knows, and comprehends what is good 
 and what is evil in it. Voluntarium est that is a voluntary 
 action, as we commonly say with the philosopher' (that is 
 Aristotle, you know, said the monk, squeezing my hand ;) 
 ' quod Jit a principle cognoscente singula in guibus est aciio 
 which is done by a person knowing the particulars of the ac- 
 tion ; so that when the will is led inconsiderately, and with- 
 out mature reflection, to embrace or reject, to do or omit to 
 do anything, before the understanding has been able to see 
 whether it would be right or wrong, such an action is neither 
 good nor evil ; because previous to this mental inquisition, 
 view, and reflection on the good or bad qualities of the mat- 
 ter in question, the act by which it is done is not voluntary.' 
 Are you satisfied now ?" said the father. 
 
 " It appears," returned I, " that Aristotle agrees with Fa- 
 ther Bauny ; but that does not prevent me from feeling sur- 
 prised at this statement. What, sir ! is it not enough to make 
 an action voluntary that the man knows what he is doing, and 
 does it just because he chooses to do it ? Must we suppose, 
 besides this, that he ' perceives, knows, and comprehends 
 what is good and evil in the action ?' Why, on this supposi- 
 tion there would be hardly such a thing in nature as volun- 
 tary actions, for nobody almost thinks about all this. How 
 many oaths in gambling how many excesses in debauchery 
 how many riotous extravagances in the carnival, must, on 
 this principle, be excluded from the list of voluntary actions, 
 and consequently neither good nor bad, because not accompa- 
 nied by those ' mental reflections on the good and evil qual- 
 ities' of the action ? But is it possible, father, that Aristotle 
 held such a sentiment ? I have always understood that he 
 was a sensible man." 
 
 " I shall soon convince you of that," said the Janseniit ;
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. 113 
 
 and requesting a sight of Aristotle's Ethics, he opened it at 
 the beginning of the third book, from which Father Bauny 
 had taken the passage quoted, and said to the monk : " I ex- 
 cuse you, my dear sir, for having believed, on the word of 
 Father Bauny, that Aristotle held such a sentiment ; but you 
 vfould have changed your mind had you read him for your- 
 self. It is true that he teaches, that ' in order to make an 
 action voluntary, we must know the particulars of that ac- 
 tion' singula in quibus est actio. But what else does he 
 mean by that, than the particular circumstances of the ac- 
 tion ? The examples which he adduces clearly show this to 
 be his meaning, for they are exclusively confined to cases in 
 which the persons were ignorant of some of the circumstan- 
 ces ; such as that of 'a person who, wishing to exhibit a ma- 
 chine, discharges a dart which wounds a bystander ; and that 
 of Merope, who killed her own son instead of her enemy,' 
 and such like. 
 
 " Thus you see what is the kind of ignorance that renders 
 actions involuntary ; namely, that of the particular circum- 
 stances, which is termed by divines, as you must know, igno- 
 rance of the fact. But with respect to ignorance of the right 
 ignorance of the good or evil in an action which is the 
 only point in question, let us see if Aristotle agrees with Fa- 
 ther Bauny. Here are the words of the philosopher : ' All 
 wicked men are ignorant of what they ought to do, and what 
 they ought to avoid ; and it is this very ignorance which 
 makes them wicked and vicious. Accordingly, a man cannot 
 be said to act involuntarily merely because he is ignorant of 
 what it is proper for him to do in order to fulfil his duty. 
 This ignorance in the choice of good and evil does not make 
 the action involuntary ; it only makes it vicious. The same 
 thing may be affirmed of the man who is ignorant generally 
 of the rules of his duty ; such ignorance is worthy of blame, 
 not of excuse. And consequently, the ignorance which ren- 
 ders actions involuntary and excusable is simply that which 
 relates to the fact and its particular circumstances. In this
 
 114 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 case the person is excused and forgiven, being considered as 
 having acted contrary to his inclination.' 
 
 " After this, father, will you maintain that Aristotle is of 
 your opinion ? And who can help being astonished to find 
 that a Pagan philosopher had more enlightened views than 
 your doctors, in a matter so deeply affecting morals, and the 
 direction of conscience, too, as the knowledge of those con- 
 ditions which render actions voluntary or involuntary, and 
 which, accordingly, charge or discharge them as sinful ? 
 Look for no more support, then, father, from the prince of 
 philosophers, and no longer oppose yourselves to the prince 
 of theologians,* who has thus decided the point in the first 
 book of his Retractations, chapter xv. : ' Those who sin 
 through ignorance, though they sin without meaning to sin, 
 commit the deed only because they will commit it. And, 
 therefore, even this sin of ignorance cannot be committed 
 except by the will of him who commits it, though by a will 
 which incites him to the action merely, and not to the sin ; 
 and yet the action itself is nevertheless sinful, for it is enough 
 to constitute it such that he has done what he was bound 
 not to do.' " 
 
 The Jesuit seemed to be confounded more with the pas- 
 sage from Aristotle, I thought, than that from St Augustine ; 
 but while he was thinking on what he could reply, a messen- 
 ger came to inform him that Madame la Mareschale of , 
 
 and Madame the Marchioness of , requested his attend- 
 ance. So taking a hasty leave of us, he said : " I shall speak 
 about it to our fathers. They will find an answer to it, I 
 warrant you ; we have got some long heads among us." 
 
 We understood him perfectly well ; and on our being left 
 alone, I expressed to my friend my astonishment at the sub- 
 version which this doctrine threatened to the whole system 
 of morals. To this he replied that he was quite astonish- 
 ed at my astonishment. "Are you not yet aware," he 
 said, " that they have gone to far greater excess in morals 
 
 * Augustine.
 
 ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE. 115 
 
 than in any other matter?" He gave me some strange 
 illustrations of this, promising me more at some future 
 time. The information which I may receive on this point, 
 will, I hope, furnish the topic of my next communication. 
 I am, &c.
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 DESIGN OF THE JESUITS IN ESTABLISHING A NEW SYSTEM OF MOR- 
 
 ALS TWO SORTS OF CASUISTS AMONG THEM, A GREAT MANT 
 
 LAX, AND SOME SEVERE ONES REASON OF THIS DIFFERENCE 
 
 EXPLANATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF PROBABILITY A MULTITUDE 
 OF MODERN AND UNKNOWN AUTHORS SUBSTITUTED IN THE PLACE 
 OF THE HOLY FATHERS. 
 
 PARIS, March 20, 1656. 
 
 SIR, According to my promise, I now send you the first 
 outlines of the morals taught by those good fathers the Jes- 
 uits " those men distinguished for learning and sagacity, 
 who are all under the guidance of divine wisdom a surer 
 guide than all philosophy." You imagine, perhaps, that I 
 am in jest, but I am perfectly serious ; or rather, they are so 
 when they speak thus of themselves in their book entitled 
 " The Image of the First Century." * I am only copying 
 their own words, and may now give you the rest of the eu- 
 logy : " They are a society of men, or rather let us call them 
 angels, predicted by Isaiah in these words, ' Go, ye swift and 
 ready angels.' "f The prediction is as clear as day, is it. not ? 
 " They have the spirit of eagles ; they are a flock of phoe- 
 nixes (a late author having demonstrated that there are a 
 great many of these birds) ; they have changed the face of 
 Christendom!" Of course, we must believe all this, since 
 
 * Imago Prim* Seculi. The work to which Pascal here refers was 
 printed by the Jesuits in Flanders in the year 1640. under the title of 
 " L'lmage du Premier Sieele de la Societe de Jesus " being a history 
 of the Society of the Jesuits from the period of its establishment in 1540 
 a century before the publication. The work itself is very rare, and 
 would probably have fallen into oblivion, had not the substance of it 
 been embodied in a little treatise, itself also scarce entitled La Jlorale 
 Pratique des Jesuites." The small specimen which Pascal has given 
 conveys but an imperfect idea of the mingled blasjiiemy and absurdity 
 of this Jesuitical production. 
 
 f Isa. xviii. 2.
 
 POLICY OF THE JESUITS. 11 7 
 
 they have said it ; and in one sense you will find the account 
 amply verified by the sequel of this communication, in which 
 I propose to treat of their maxims. 
 
 Determined to obtain the best possible information, I did 
 not trust to the representations of our friend the Jansenist, 
 but sought an interview with some of themselves. I found, 
 however, that he told me nothing but the bare truth, and I 
 am persuaded he is an honest man. Of this you may judge 
 from the following account of these conferences. 
 
 In the conversation I had with the Jansenist, he told me 
 so many strange things about these fathers, that I could with 
 difficulty believe them, till he pointed them out to me in 
 their writings ; after which he left me nothing more to say in 
 their defence, than that these might be the sentiments of 
 some individuals onlv, which it was not fair to impute to the 
 whole fraternity.* And, indeed, I assured him that I knew 
 some of them who were as severe as those whom he quoted 
 to me were lax. This led him to explain to me the spirit of 
 the Society, which is not known to every one ; and you will 
 perhaps have no objections to learn something about it. 
 
 ' You imagine," he began, " that it would tell considerably 
 in their favor to show that some of their fathers are as friendly 
 to Evangelical maxims as others are opposed to them ; and 
 you would conclude from that circumstance, that these loose 
 opinions do not belong to the whole Society. That I grant 
 you ; for had such been the case, they would not have suf- 
 fered persons among them holding sentiments so diametri- 
 cally opposed to licentiousness. But as it is equally true 
 that there are among them those who hold these licentious 
 doctrines, you are bound also to conclude that the Spirit of 
 the Society is not that of Christian severity ; for had such been 
 the case, they would not have suffered persons among them 
 holding sentiments so diametrically opposed to that severity." 
 
 " And what, then," I asked, " can be the design of the 
 
 * The reader is requested to notice how completely the charge brought 
 against the Provincial Letters by Voltaire and others is here anticipated 
 and refuted. (See Hist. Introduction.)
 
 118 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 whole as a body ? Perhaps they have no fixed principle, 
 and every one is left to speak out at random whatever he 
 thinks." ' 
 
 " That cannot be," returned my friend ; " such an im- 
 mense body could not subsist in such a hap-hazard sort of 
 way, or without a soul to govern and regulate its move- 
 ments ; besides, it is one of their express regulations, that 
 none shall print a page without the approval of their su- 
 periors." 
 
 " But," said I, " how can these same superiors give their 
 consent to maxims so contradictory ?" 
 
 " That is what you have yet to learn," he replied. " Know, 
 then, that their object is not the corruption of manners 
 that is not their design. But as little is it their sole aim to 
 reform them that would be bad policy. Their idea is 
 briefly this : They have such a good opinion of themselves 
 as to believe that it is useful, and in some sort essentially ne- 
 cessary to the good of religion, that their influence should 
 extend everywhere, and that they should govern all con- 
 sciences. And the Evangelical or severe maxims being best 
 fitted for managing some sorts of people, they avail them- 
 selves of these when they find them favorable to their pur- 
 pose. But as these maxims do not suit the views of the 
 great bulk of people, they wave them in the case of such 
 persons, in order to keep on good terms with all the world. 
 Accordingly, having to deal with persons of all classes and 
 of all different nations, they find it necessary to have casuists 
 cut out to match this diversity. 
 
 " On this principle, you will easily see that if they had 
 none but the looser sort of casuists, they would defeat their 
 main design, which is to embrace all ; for those that are 
 truly pious are fond of a stricter discipline. But as there 
 are not many of that stamp, they do not require many severe 
 directors to guide them. They have a few for the select 
 few ; while whole multitudes of lax casuists are provided for 
 the multitudes that prefer laxity.* 
 
 * " It must be observed that most of those Jesuits who were so seven
 
 POLICY OF THE JESUITS. 119 
 
 " It is in virtue of this ' obliging and accommodating, con- 
 duct, as Father Petau* calls it, that they may be said te 
 stretch out a helping hand to all mankind. Should any per- 
 son present himself before them, for example, fully resolved 
 to make restitution of some ill-gotten gains, do not suppose 
 that they would dissuade him from it. By no means ; on 
 the contrary, they will applaud and confirm him in such a 
 holy resolution. But suppose another should come who 
 wishes to be absolved without restitution, and it will be a 
 irticularly hard case indeed, if they cannot furnish him 
 ith means of evading the duty, of one kind or another, the 
 lawfulness of which they will be ready to guarantee. 
 
 "By this policy they keep all their friends, and defend 
 themselves against all their foes ; for, when charged with 
 extreme laxity, they have nothing more to do than produce 
 their austere directors, with some books which they have 
 written on the severity of the Christian code of morals ; and 
 simple people, or those who never look below the surface of 
 things, are quite satisfied with these proofs of the falsity of 
 the accusation. 
 
 " Thus are they prepared for all sorts of persons, and so 
 ready are they to suit the supply to the demand, that when 
 they happen to be in any part of the world where the doc- 
 trine of a crucified God is accounted foolishness, they suppress 
 the offence of the cross, and preach only a glorious and not 
 a suffering Jesus Christ. This plan they followed in the 
 Indies and in China, where they permitted Christians to prac- 
 tise idolatry itself, with the aid of the following ingenious 
 contrivance : they made their converts conceal under their 
 clothes an image of Jesus Christ, to which they taught them 
 
 in their writings, were less so towards their penitents. It has been said 
 of Bourdaloue himself that if he required too much in the pulpit, he 
 abated it in the confessional chair: a new stroke of policy well under- 
 stood on the part of the Jesuits, inasmuch as speculative severity suits 
 persons of rigid morals, and practical condescension attracts the multi- 
 tude." (D'Alembert, Account of Best, of Jesuits, p. 44.) 
 
 * Petau was one of the obscure writers who were employed by the 
 Jesuits to publish defamatory libels njuiinst M. Arnauid and the bishops 
 who approved of his book on Frequent Communion. (Coudrette. ii. 
 49G )
 
 120 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 to transfer mentally those adorations which they rendered 
 ostensibly to the idol Cachinchoam and Keum-fucum. This 
 charge is brought against them by Gravina, a Dominican, 
 and is fully established by the Spanish memorial presented 
 to Philip IV., king of Spain, by the Cordeliers of the Philip- 
 pine Islands, quoted by Thomas Hurtado, in his ' Martyrdom 
 of tL.3 Faith,' page 427. To such a length did this practice 
 go, that the Congregation De Propaganda, were obliged ex- 
 pressly to forbid the Jesuits, on pain of excommunication, to 
 permit the worship of idols on any pretext whatever, or to 
 conceal the mystery of the cross from their catechumens ; 
 strictly enjoining them to admit none to baptism who were 
 not thus instructed, and ordering them to expose the image 
 of the crucifix in their churches : all which is amply de- 
 tailed in the decree of that Congregation, dated the 9th of 
 July, 1646, and signed by Cardinal Capponi.* 
 
 * The policy to which Pascal refers was introduced by Matthew 
 Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, who succeeded the famous Francis Xavier in 
 attempting to convert the Chinese. Ricci declared that, after consulting 
 the writings of the Chinese literati, he was persuaded that the Xamti 
 and Cachinchoam of the mandarins were merely other names for the 
 King of Heaven, and that the idolatries of the natives were harmless 
 civil ceremonies. He therefore allowed his converts to practise them, on 
 the condition mentioned in the text. In 1631, some new paladins of the 
 orders of Dominic and Francis, who came from the Philippine Islands 
 to share in the spiritual conquest of that vast empire, were grievously 
 scandalized at the monstrous compromise between Christianity and 
 idolatry tolerated by the followers of Loyola and carried their com- 
 plaints to Rome. The result is illustrative of the papal policy. Pope 
 Innocent X. condemned the Jesuitical policy ; Pope Alexander VII. in 
 1G55 (when this letter was written) sanctioned it, and in 16f>9, Pope 
 Clement IX. ordained that the decrees of bothof his predecessors should 
 continue in full force. The Jesuits, availing themselves of this sus- 
 pense, paid no regard either to the popes or their rival orders, the 
 Dominicans and Franciscans, who. in the persecutions which ensued, 
 always came off with the worst. (Coudrette. iv. 231 ; Hist, of D. Ign. 
 Loyola, pp. 97-11-2.) 
 
 The prescription given to the Jesuits by the cardinals to expose the 
 image of the crucifix in their churches, appears to us a sort of homoeo- 
 pathic cure, very little better than the disease. Bossuet, and others 
 who have tried to soften down the doctrines of Rome, would represent 
 the worship ostensibly paid to the crucifix as really paid to Christ, who 
 is represented by it. But even this does not accord with the determina- 
 tion of the Council of Trent, which declared of images Eisque renera- 
 tiontm impertiendam ; or with Bellarminc who devotes a chapter ex- 
 pressly to prove that true and proper worship is to be given to image*. 
 (Stillingfleet on Popery, by Dr. Cunningham, j 77.)
 
 POLICY OF TrfE JESUITS. 121 
 
 " Such is the manner in which they have spread themselves 
 over the whole earth, aided by tlie doctrine of probable opin- 
 ions, which is at once the source and the basis of all this 
 licentiousness. You must get some of themselves to explain 
 this doctrine to you. They make no secret of it, any more 
 than of what you have already learned ; with this difference 
 only, that they conceal their carnal and worldly policy under 
 the garb of divine and Christian prudence ; as if the faith, 
 and tradition its ally, were not always one and the same at 
 all times and in all places ; as if it were the part of the rule 
 to bend in conformity to the subject which it was meant to 
 regulate ; and as if souls, to be purified from their pollutions, 
 had only to corrupt the law of the Lord, in place of ' the 
 law of the Lord, which is clean and pure, converting the soul 
 which lieth in sin,' and bringing it into conformity with its 
 salutary lessons ! 
 
 " Go and see some of these worthy fathers, I beseech you, 
 and I am confident that you will soon discover, in the laxity 
 of their moral system, the explanation of their doctrine about 
 grace. You will then see the Chiistian virtues exhibited in 
 such a strange aspect, so completely stripped of the charity 
 which is the life and soul of them you will see so many 
 crimes palliated and irregularities tolerated, that you will no 
 longer be surprised at their maintaining that ' all men have 
 always enough of grace' to lead a pious life, in the sense in 
 which they understand piety. Their morality being entirely 
 Pagan, nature is quite competent to its observance. When 
 we maintain the necessity of efficacious grace, we assign it 
 another sort of virtue for its object. Its office is not to cure 
 one vice by means of another ; it is not merely to induce men 
 to practise the external duties of religion : it aims at a virtue 
 higher than that propounded by Pharisees, or the greatest 
 sages of Heathenism. The law and reason are ' sufficient 
 graces' for these purposes. But to disenthral the soul from 
 the love of the world to tear it from what it holds most 
 dear to make it die to itself to lift it up and bind it wholly, 
 only, and forever, to God can be the work of none but an 
 6
 
 122 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 all-powerful hand. And it would be as absurd to affirm that 
 we have the full power of achieving such objects, as it would 
 be to allege that those virtues, devoid of the love of God, 
 which these fathers confound Avith the virtues of Christian- 
 ity, are beyond our power." 
 
 Such was the strain of ray friend's discourse, which was 
 delivered with much feeling ; for he takes these sad disorders 
 very much to heart. For my own part, I began to entertain 
 a high admiration of these fathers, simply on account of the 
 ingenuity of their policy ; and following his advice, I waited 
 on a good casuist of the Society, one of my old acquaint- 
 ances, with whom I now resolved purposely to renew my 
 former intimacy. Having my instructions how to manage 
 them, I had no great difficulty in getting him afloat. Retain- 
 ing his old attachment, he received me immediately with a 
 profusion of kindness ; and after talking over some indifferent 
 matters, I took occasion from the present season,* to learn 
 something from him about fasting, and thus slip insensibly 
 into the main subject. I told him, therefore, that I had dif- 
 ficulty in supporting the fast. He exhorted me to do violence 
 to my inclinations ; but as I continued to murmur, he took 
 pity on me, and began to search out some ground for a dis- 
 pensation. In fact he suggested a number of excuses for 
 me, none of which happened to suit my case, till at length 
 he bethought himself of asking me, whether I did not find 
 it difficult to sleep without taking supper ? " Yes, my good 
 father," said I ; " and for that reason I am obliged often to 
 take a refreshment at mid-day, and supper at night."f 
 
 "I am extremely happy," he replied, "to have found out 
 a way of relieving you without sin : go in peace you are 
 under no obligation to fast. However, I would not have you 
 depend on my word : step this way to the library." 
 
 * Lent. 
 
 f '' According to the rules of the Roman Catholic fast, one meal alone 
 is allowed on a fast-day. Many, however, fall off before the end of 
 Lent, and take to their breakfast and suppers, under the sanction of 
 some good-natured doctor, who declares fasting injurious to their health." 
 (Blanoo White, Letters from Spain, p. 272.)
 
 POLICY OF THE JESUITS. 123 
 
 On going thither with him he took up a book, exclaiming, 
 with great rapture, " Here is the authority for you : and, by 
 my conscience, such an authority ! It is ESCOBAR !"* 
 
 "Who is Escobar?" I inquired. 
 
 " What ! not know Escobar ?" cried the monk ; " the mem- 
 ber of our Society who compiled this Moral Theology from 
 twenty-four of our fathers, and on this founds an analogy, in 
 his preface, between his book and ' that in the Apocalypse 
 which was sealed with seven seals,' and states that ' Jesus 
 presents it thus sealed to the four living creatures, Suarez, 
 Vasquez, Molina, and Valencia,f in presence of the four-and- 
 twenty Jesuits who represent the four-and-twenty elders ?' " 
 
 He read me, in fact, the whole of that allegory, which he 
 pronounced to be admirably appropriate, and which conveyed 
 to my mind a sublime idea of the excellence of the work. 
 At length, having sought out the passage On fasting, " 
 here it is !" he said ; "treatise 1, example 13, no. 67 : 'If a 
 
 * Father Antoine Escobar of Mendoza was a Jesuit of Spain, and born 
 at Valladolidin 158!). where he died in 1669. His principal work is his 
 " Exposition of Uncontroverted Opinions in Moral Theology," in six vol- 
 umes. \t abounds with the most licentious doctrines, and being a compi- 
 lation from numerous Jesuitical writers, afforded a rich field for the satire 
 of Pascal. The characteristic absurdity of this author is, that his ques- 
 tions uniformly exhibit two faces an affirmative and a negative ; so that 
 escobarderie became a synonym in Prance for duplicity. (Biographic 
 Pittoresque des Jesuites, par M. C. de Plancy, Paris, 1826, p. 38.) Ni- 
 cole tells us that he had in his possession a portrait of the casuist which 
 gave him a " resolute and decisive cast of countenance'' not exactly 
 what might have been expected from his double-faced questions. His 
 friends describe Escobar as a good man, a laborious student, and very 
 devout in his way. It is said that, when he heard that his name and 
 writings were so frequently noticed in the Provincial Letters, he was 
 quite overjoyed to think that his fame would extend as far as the little 
 letters had done. Boileau has celebrated him in the following cou- 
 plet:- 
 
 Si Bourdaloue un peu severe, 
 
 Nous dit, craignez la voluptc : 
 
 Escobar, lui dit-on, mon pore, 
 
 Nour la permet pour la sante. 
 
 " If Bourdaloue, a little too severe, 
 Cries, Fly from pleasure's fatal fascination 
 Dear Father, cries another, Escoba; 
 Permits it as a healthy relaxation." 
 
 t Four celebrated caauists.
 
 124 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 man cannot sleep without taking- supper, is he bound to fast ? 
 Answer : By no means /' Will that not satisfy you ?" 
 
 " Not exactly," replied I ; " for I might sustain the fast 
 by taking my refreshment in the morning, and supping at 
 night." 
 
 " Listen, then, to what follows ; they have provided for 
 all that : ' And what is to be said, if the person might make 
 a shift with a refreshment in the morning and supping at 
 night ?' " 
 
 " That's my case exactly." 
 
 " ' Answer : Still he is not obliged to fast ; because no 
 person is obliged to change the order of his meals.' " 
 
 " A most excellent reason !" I exclaimed. 
 
 " But tell me, pray," continued the monk, " do you take 
 much wine ?" 
 
 " No, my dear father," I answered ; " I cannot endure it." 
 
 " I merely put the question," returned he, " to apprize 
 you that you might, without breaking the fast, take a glass 
 or so in the morning, or whenever you felt inclined for a 
 drop ; and that is always something in the way of support- 
 ing nature. Hese is the decision at the same place, no. 57 : 
 ' May one, without breaking the fast, drink wine at any hour 
 he pleases, and even in a large quantity ? Yes, he may : 
 and a dram of hippocrass too.'* I had no recollection of 
 the hippocrass," said the monk ; " I must take a note of that 
 in my memorandum-book." 
 
 " He must be a nice man, this Escobar," observed I. 
 
 "Oh ! everybody likes him," rejoined the father; "he has 
 such delightful questions ! Only observe this one in the 
 same place, no. 38 : ' If a man doubt whether he is twenty- 
 one years old, is he obliged to fast ?f No. But suppose I 
 were to be twenty-one to-night an hour after midnight, and 
 to-morrow were the fast, would I be obliged to fast to-mor- 
 
 * Hippocrass a medicated wine. 
 
 j" All -ersons above the age of one-and-tvventy are bound to observe 
 the rules" of the Roman Catholic fast during Lent. The obligation of 
 fasting begins at midnight, just when the leading clock of every town 
 trikes twelve. (Letters from Spain, p. 270.)
 
 POLICY OF THE JESUITS. 125 
 
 row? No; for you were at liberty to eat as much as you 
 pleased for an hour after midnight, not being till then fully 
 twenty-one ; and therefore having a right to break the fast- 
 day, you are not obliged to keep it.' " 
 
 " Well, that is vastly entertaining !" cried I. 
 
 " Oh," rejoined the father, " it is impossible to tear one's 
 self away from the book : I spend whole days and nights in 
 reading it ; in fact, I do nothing else." 
 
 The worthy monk, perceiving that I was interested, was 
 quite delighted, and went on with his quotations. " Now," 
 said he, " for a taste o,' Filiutius, one of the four-and-twenty 
 Jesuits : ' Is a man who has exhausted himself any way 
 by profligacy, for example* obliged to fast ? By no means. 
 But if he has exhausted himself expressly to procure a dis- 
 pensation from fasting, will he be held obliged ? He will not, 
 even though he should have had that design.' There now ! 
 would you have believed that ?" 
 
 " Indeed, good father, I do not believe it yet," said I. 
 " What ! is it no sin for a man not to fast when he has it in 
 his power ? And is it allowable to court occasions of com- 
 mitting sin,- or rather, are we not bound to shun them ? 
 That would be easy enough, surely." 
 
 " Not always so," he replied ; " that is just as it may 
 happen." 
 
 " Happen, how ?" cried I. 
 
 " Oho !" rejoined the monk, " so you think that if a person 
 experience some inconvenience in avoiding the occasions of 
 sin, he is still bound to do so ? Not so thinks Father Bauny. 
 ' Absolution,' says he, ' is not to be refused to such as con- 
 tinue in the proximate occasions of sin,f if they are so situ- 
 ated that they cannot give them up without becoming the 
 
 * Ad insequendam amicam. (Tom. ii. tr. 27. part 2, c. 6. n. 143.) The 
 accuracy with which the references are made to the writings of these 
 casuists shows anything hut a design to garble or misrepresent them. 
 
 f Tn the technical language of theology, an " occasion of sin" is any 
 situation or course of conduct whic'i has a tendency to induce the com- 
 mission of sin. '-Proximate occasions" are those which have a direct 
 ami immediate tendency of this kind.
 
 126 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 common talk of the world, or subjecting themselves to per- 
 sonal inconvenience.' " 
 
 " I am glad to hear it, father," I remarked ; " and now 
 that we are not obliged to avoid the occasions of sin, noth- 
 ing more remains but to say that we may deliberately court 
 them." 
 
 " Even that is occasionally permitted," added he ; " the 
 celebrated casuist Basil Ponce has said so, and Father Bauny 
 quotes his sentiment with approbation, in his Treatise on 
 Penance, as follows : ' We may seek an occasion of sin di- 
 rectly and designedly primo et per se when our own or 
 our neighbor's spiritual or temporal advantage induces us 
 to do so.' " 
 
 " Truly," said I, " it appears to be all a dream to me, 
 when I hear grave divines talking in this manner ! Come 
 now, my dear father, tell me conscientiously, do you hold 
 such a sentiment as that ?" 
 
 " No, indeed," said he, "I do not." 
 
 " You are speaking, then, against your conscience," con- 
 tinued I. 
 
 " Not at all," he replied ; " I was speaking on that point 
 not according to my own conscience, but according to that 
 of Ponce and Father Bauny, and them you may follow with 
 the utmost safety, for I assure you that they are able men." 
 
 " What, father ! because they have put down these three 
 lines in their books, will it therefore become allowable to 
 court the occasions of sin ? I always thought that we were 
 boutid to take the Scripture and the tradition of the Church 
 as our only rule, and not your casuists." 
 
 " Goodness !" ci'ied the monk, " I declare you put me 
 in mind of these Jansenists. Think you that Father Bauny 
 and Basil Ponce are not able to render their opinion prob- 
 able r 
 
 " Probable won't do for me," said I ; "I must have 
 certainty." 
 
 " I can easily see," replied the good father, " that you 
 know nothing about our doctrine of probable opinions. If
 
 DOCTRINE OF PROBABILITY. 127 
 
 you did, you would speak in another strain. All ! my dear 
 sir, I must really give you some instructions on this point ; 
 without knowing this, positively you can understand nothing 
 at all. It is the foundation the very A, B, c, of our whole 
 moral philosophy." 
 
 Glad to see him come to the point to which I had been 
 drawing him on, I expressed my satisfaction, and requested 
 him to explain what was meant by a probable opinion ?* 
 
 " That," he replied, " our authors will answer better than 
 I can do. The generalitj^pof them, and, among others, our 
 four-and-twenty elders, describe it thus : ' An opinion is 
 called probable, when it is founded upon reasons of some 
 consideration. Hence it may sometimes happen that a single 
 very grave doctor may render an opinion probable.' The rea- 
 son is added : ' For a man particularly given to study would 
 not adhere to an opinion unless he was drawn to it by a 
 good and sufficient reason.' " 
 
 " So it would appear," I observed, with a smile, " that 
 a single doctor may turn consciences round about and up- 
 side down as he pleases, and yet always land them in a safe 
 position." 
 
 " You must not laugh at it, sir," returned the monk ; "nor 
 need you attempt to combat the doctrine. The Jansenists 
 tried this ; but they might have saved themselves the trou- 
 ble it is too firmly established. Hear Sanchez, one of the 
 most famous of our fathers : ' You may doubt, perhaps, 
 whether the authority of a single good and learned doctor 
 renders an opinion probable. I answer, that it does ; and 
 this is confirmed by Angelus, Sylvester Navarre, Emanuel 
 Sa, <fec. It is proved thus : A probable opinion is one that 
 
 * " The casuists are divided into Probabilista: and ProbaUlloristce. 
 The first, among whom were the Jesuits, maintain that a certain degree 
 of probability as to the lawfulness of an action is enough to secure 
 against sin. The second, supported by the Dominicans and the Janse- 
 nists (a kind of Catholic Calvinists condemned by the Church), insist 
 on always taking the safest or most probable side. The French proverb, 
 Le mieux est I'ennemi. du Men, is perfectly applicable to the practical 
 effects of these two systems in Spain." (Letters from Spain, p. 277.) 
 Nicole has a long dissertation on the subject in his Notes on this Letter.
 
 128 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 has a considerable foundation. Now the authority of a 
 learned and pious man is entitled to very great considera- 
 tion ; because (mark the reason), if the testimony of such a 
 man has great influence in convincing us that such and such 
 an event occurred, say at Rome, for example, why should 
 it not have the same weight in the case of a question in 
 morals ?' " 
 
 " An odd comparison this," interrupted I, " between the 
 concerns of the world and those of conscience !" 
 
 " Have a little patience," rejoined the monk ; " Sanchez 
 answers that in the very next sentence : ' Nor can I assent to 
 the qualification made here by some writers, namely, that the 
 authority of such a doctor, though sufficient in matters of 
 human right, is not so in those of divine right. It is of vast 
 weight in both cases.' " 
 
 " Well, father," said I, frankly, " I really cannot admire 
 that rule. Who can assure me, considering the freedom 
 your doctors claim to examine everything by reason, that 
 what appears safe to one may seem so to all the rest ? The 
 diversity of judgments is so great" 
 
 " You don't understand it," said he, interrupting me ; "no 
 doubt they are often of different sentiments, but what signi- 
 fies that ? each renders his own opinion probable and safe. 
 We all know well enough that they are far from being of 
 the same mind ; "what is more, there is hardly an instance in 
 which they ever agree. There are very few questions, in- 
 deed, in which you do not find the one saying Yes, and the 
 other saying No. Still, in all these cases, each of the con- 
 trary opinions is probable. And hence Diana says on a cer- 
 tain subject : ' Ponce and Sanchez hold opposite views of it ; 
 but, as they are both learned men, each renders his own 
 opinion probable.' " 
 
 " But, father," I remarked, " a person must be sadly em- 
 barrassed in choosing between them!" "Not at all," he 
 rejoined ; " he has only to follow the opinion which suits 
 him best." " What ! if the other is more probable ?" " It 
 does not signify." " And if the other is the safer ?" " It
 
 DOCTRINE OF PROBABILI1T. 129 
 
 does not signify," repeated the monk ; " this is made quite 
 plain by Emanuel Saj of our Society, in his Aphorisms : ' A 
 person may do what he considers allowable according to a 
 probable opinion, though the contrary may be the safer one. 
 The opinion of a single grave doctor is all that is requisite.' " 
 
 " And if an opinion be at once the less probable and the 
 less safe, is it allowable to follow it/' I asked, " even in the 
 way of rejecting one which we believe to be more probable 
 and safe ?" 
 
 " Once more, I say Yes," replied the monk. " Hear what 
 Filiutius, that great Jesuit of Rome, says : ' It is allowable 
 to follow the less probable opinion, even though it be the 
 less safe one. That is the common judgment of modern 
 authors.' Is not that quite clear ?" 
 
 " Well, reverend father," said I, " you have given us 
 elbow-room, at all events ! Thanks to your probable opin- 
 ions, we have got liberty of conscience with a witness ! And 
 are you casuists allowed the same latitude in giving your 
 responses ?" 
 
 " yes," said he, " we answer just as we please ; or 
 rather, I should say, just as it may please those who ask our 
 advice. Here are our rules, taken from Fathers Layman, 
 Vasquez, Sanchez, and the four-and-twenty worthies, in the 
 words of Layman : ' A doctor, on being consulted, may give 
 an advice, not only probable according to his own opinion, 
 but contrary to his opinion, provided this judgment hap- 
 pens to be more favorable or more agreeable to the per- 
 son that consults him si forte hcec favordbilior sen exoptatior 
 sit. Nay, I go further, and say, that there would be nothing 
 unreasonable in his giving those who consult him a judgment 
 held to be probable by some learned person, even though 
 he should be satisfied in his own mind that it is absolutely 
 false.' " 
 
 " Well, seriously, father," I said, " your doctrine is a most 
 
 uncommonly comfortable one ! Only think of being allowed 
 
 to answer Yes or No, just as you please ! It is impossible to 
 
 prize such a privilege too highly. I see now the advantage 
 
 6*
 
 130 PROVINCIAL BETTERS. 
 
 of the contrary opinions of your doctors. One of them al- 
 ways serves your turn, and the other never gives you any 
 annoyance. If you do not find your account on the one 
 side, you fall back on the other, and always land in perfect 
 safety." 
 
 " That is quite true," he replied ; " and accordingly, we 
 may always say with Diana, on his finding that Father Bauny 
 was on his side, while Father Lugo was against him : Scepe 
 premente deo, fert deus alter opem."* 
 
 " I understand you," resumed I ; " but a practical diffi- 
 culty has just occurred to me, which is this, that supposing 
 a person to have consulted one of your doctors, and obtained 
 from him a pretty liberal opinion, there is some danger of his 
 getting into a scrape by meeting a confessor who takes a dif- 
 ferent view of the matter, and refuses him absolution unless 
 he recant the sentiment of the casuist. Have you not pro- 
 vided for such a case as that, father ?" 
 
 " Can you doubt it ?" he replied. " We have bound them, 
 sir, to absolve their penitents who act according to probable 
 opinions, under the pain of mortal sin, to secure their com- 
 pliance. ' When the penitent,' says Father Bauny, ' follows 
 a probable opinion, the confessor is bound to absolve him, 
 though his opinion should differ from that of his penitent.' " 
 
 " But he does not say it would be a mortal sin not to ab- 
 solve him," said I. 
 
 " How hasty you are !" rejoined the monk ; " listen to what 
 follows ; he has expressly decided that, ' to refuse absolutic n 
 to a penitent who acts according to a probable opinion, is. a 
 sin which is in its nature mortal.' And to settle that point, 
 he cites the most illustrious of our fathers Suarez, Vasque#, 
 and Sanchez." 
 
 " My dear sir," said I, " that is a most prudent regulation. 
 I see nothing to fear now. No confessor can dare to be re- 
 fractory after this. Indeed, I was not aware that you had 
 the power of issuing your orders on pain of damnation. I 
 
 * " When one god presses hard, another brings relief."
 
 DOCTRINE OF PROBABILITY. 131 
 
 thought that your skill had been confined to the taking away 
 of sins ; I had no idea that it extended to the introduction 
 of new ones. But from what I now see, you are omnipo- 
 tent." 
 
 " That is not a correct way of speaking," rejoined the fa- 
 ther. " We do not introduce sins ; we only pay attention to 
 them. I have had occasion to remark, two or three times 
 during our conversation, that you are no great scholastic." 
 
 " Be that as it may, father, you have at least answered my 
 difficulty. But I have another to suggest. How do you 
 manage when the Fathers of the Church happen to differ 
 from any of your casuists ?" 
 
 " You really know very little of the subject," he replied. 
 " The Fathers were good enough for the morality of their 
 own times ; but they lived too far back for that of the pres- 
 ent age, which is no longer regulated by them, but by the 
 modern casuists. On this Father Cellot, following the famous 
 Reginald, remarks : ' In questions of morals, the modern casu- 
 ists are to be preferred to the ancient fathers, though those 
 lived nearer to the times of the apostles.' And following out 
 this maxim, Diana thus decides : ' Are beneficiaries bound to 
 restore their revenue when guilty of mal-appropriation of it ? 
 The ancients would say Yes, but the moderns say No ; let us, 
 therefore, adhere to the latter opinion, which relieves from 
 the obligation of restitution.' " 
 
 " Delightful words these, and most comfortable they must 
 be to a great many people !" I observed. 
 
 " We leave the fathers," resumed the monk, " to those 
 who deal with positive divinity.* As for us, who are the 
 
 * In the twelfth century, in consequence of the writings of Peter 
 Lombard, commonly called the " Master of the Sentences," the Chris- 
 tian doctors were divided into two classes the Positive or dogmatic, 
 and the Scholastic divines. The Positive divines, who were the teachers 
 of systematic divinity, expounded, though in a wretched manner, the 
 Sacred Writings, and confirmed their sentiments by Scripture and tra- 
 dition. The scholastics instead of the Bible, explained the book of 
 Sentences, indulging in the most idle and ridiculous speculations. cl The 
 practice of choosing a certain priest, not only to be the occasional con- 
 fessor, but the director of the conscience, was greatly encouraged by the 
 Jesuits." (Letters from Spain, p. 89.)
 
 132 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 directors of conscience, we read very little of them, and quote 
 only the modern casuists. There is Diana, for instance, a 
 most voluminous writer ; he has prefixed to his works a list 
 of his authorities, which amount to two hundred and ninety- 
 six, and the most ancient of them is only about eighty years 
 old." 
 
 " It woold appear, then," I remarked, " that all these have 
 come into the world since the date of your Society ?" 
 
 "Thereabouts," he replied. 
 
 " That is to say, dear father, on your advent. St. Augus- 
 tine, St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and all the 
 rest, in so far as morals are concerned, disappeared from the 
 stage. Would you be so kind as let me know the names, at 
 least, of those modern authors who have succeeded them ?" 
 
 "A most able and renowned class of men they are," re- 
 plied the monk. " Their names are, Villabolos, Conink, Lla- 
 mas, Achokier, Dealkozer, Dellacrux, Veracruz, Uorolin, Tam- 
 bourin, Fernandez, Martinez, Suarez, Henriquez, Vasquez, Lo- 
 pez, Gomez, Sanchez, De Vechis, De Grassis, De Grassalis, 
 De Pitigianis, De Graphceis, Squilanti, Bizozeri, Barcola, De 
 Bobadilla, Simancha, Perez de Lara, Aldretta, Lorca, De 
 Scarcia, Quaranta, Scophra, Pedezza, Cabrezza, Bisbe, Dias, 
 De Clavasis, Villagut, Adam a Manden, Iribarne, Binsfeld, 
 Volfangi a Vorberg, Vosthery, Strevesdorf."* 
 
 " O my dear father !" cried I, quite alarmed, " were all 
 these people Christians ?" 
 
 " How ! Christians !" returned the casuist ; " did I not tell 
 
 * In this extraordinary list of obscure and now forgotten casuistical 
 writers, most of them belonging to Spain, Portugal, and Flanders, the 
 art of the author lies in stringing together the most outlandish names he 
 could collect, ranging them mostly according to their terminations, and 
 placing them in contrast with the venerable and well-known names of 
 the ancient fathers. To a French ear these names must have sounded 
 as uncouth and barbarous as those of the Scotch which Milton has 
 satirized to the ear of an Englishman : 
 
 " Cries the stall-reader, ' Bless us ! what a word on 
 A title-page is this !' Why. is it harder, sirs, than Gordon, 
 Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp 1 
 Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, 
 That would have made duintilian stare and gasp." 
 
 (Milton 5 *! Minor Poems.)
 
 DOCTRINE OF PROBABILITY. 133 
 
 you that these are the only writers by whom we now govern 
 Christendom ?" 
 
 Deeply affected as I was by this announcement, I concealed 
 my emotion from the monk, and only asked him if all these 
 authors were Jesuits ? 
 
 "No," said he; "but that is of little - consequence ; they 
 have said a number of good things for all that. It is true 
 the greater part of these same good things are extracted or 
 copied from our authors, but we do not stand on ceremony 
 with them on that score, more especially as they are in the 
 constant habit of quoting our authors with applause. When 
 Diana, for example, who does not belong to our Society, 
 speaks of Vasquez, he calls him 'that phoenix of genius;' 
 and he declares more than once, ' that Vasquez alone is to 
 him worth all the rest of men put together' instar omnium. 
 Accordingly, our fathers often make use of this good Diana; 
 and if you understand our doctrine of probability, you will 
 see that this is no small help in its way. In fact, we are 
 anxious that others besides the Jesuits would render their 
 opinions probable, to prevent people from ascribing them all 
 to us ; for you will observe, that when any author, whoever 
 he may be, advances a probable opinion, we are 3ntitled, by 
 the doctrine of probability, to adopt it if we please ; and yet, 
 if the author do not belong to our fraternity, we are not re- 
 sponsible for its soundness." 
 
 " I understand all that," said I. " It is easy to see that all 
 are welcome that come your way, except the ancient fathers ; 
 you are masters of the field, and have only to walk the 
 course. But I foresee three or four serious difficulties and 
 powerful barriers which will oppose your career." 
 
 "And what are these?" cried the monk, looking quite 
 alarmed. 
 
 " They are, the Holy Scriptures," I replied, " the popes, 
 and the councils, whom you cannot gainsay, and who are all 
 in the way of the Gospel."* 
 
 * That is, they were all, in Pascal's opinior, favorable to the Gospel 
 cheme of morality.
 
 134 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " Is that all !" he exclaimed ; " I declare you put me in a 
 flight. Do you imagine that we would overlook such an 
 obvious scruple as that, or that we have not provided against 
 it ? A good idea, forsooth, to suppose that we would con- 
 tradict Scripture, popes, and councils ! I must convince yon 
 of your mistake ; for I should be sorry you should go away 
 with an impression that we are deficient in our respect to 
 these authorities. You have doubtless taken up this notion 
 from some of the opinions of our fathers, which are appa- 
 rently at variance with their decisions, though in reality they 
 are not. But to illustrate the harmony between them would 
 require more leisure than we have at present ; and as I would 
 not like you to retain a bad impression of us, if you agree to 
 meet with me to-morrow, I shall clear it all up then." 
 
 Thus ended our interview, and thus shall end my present 
 communication, which has been long enough, besides, for one 
 letter. I am sure you will be satisfied with it, hi the prospect 
 of what is forthcom'jig. I am, <fec.
 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 VARIOUS ARTIFICES OF THE JESUITS TO ELUDE THE AUTHORITY 
 OF THE GOSPEL, OF COUNCILS, AND OF THE POPES SOME CON- 
 SEQUENCES WHICH RESULT FROM THEIR DOCTRINE OF PROBA- 
 BILITY THEIR RELAXATION IN FAVOR OF BENEFICIARIES, PRIESTS, 
 
 MONKS, AND DOMESTICS STORY OF JOHN D'ALBA. 
 
 PARIS, April 10, 1656. 
 
 SIR, I mentioned, at the close of ray last letter, that my 
 good friend the Jesuit had promised to show me how the 
 casuists reconcile the contrarieties "between their opinions 
 and the decisions of the popes, the councils, and the Scripture. 
 This promise he fulfilled at our last interview, of which I 
 shall now give you an account. 
 
 " One of the methods," resumed the mo'nk, " in which we 
 reconcile these apparent contradictions, is by the interpre- 
 tation of some phrase. Thus, Pope Gregory XIV. decided 
 that assassins are not worthy to enjoy the benefit of sanctu- 
 ary in churches, and ought to be dragged out of them ; and 
 yet our four-and-twenty elders affirm that ' the penalty of 
 this bull is not incused by all those that kill in treachery.' 
 This may appear to you a contradiction ; but we get over 
 this by interpreting the word assassin as follows : ' Are as- 
 sassins unworthy of sanctuary in churches ? Yes, by the 
 bull of Gregory XIV. they are. But by the word assassins 
 we understand those that have received money to murder 
 one ; and accordingly, such as kill without taking any re- 
 ward for the deed, but merely to oblige their friends, do not 
 come under the category of assassins.' " 
 
 " Take another instance : It is said in the Gospel, ' Give 
 alms of your superfluity.'* Several Casuists, however, have 
 
 * Luke xi. 41. Quod superest, date eleemosynam (Vulgate); ra Iwra
 
 136 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 contrived to discharge the wealthiest from the obligation of 
 alms-giving. This may appear another paradox, but the 
 matter is easily put to rights by giving such an interpretation 
 to the word superfluity that it will seldom or never happen 
 that any one is troubled with such an article. This feat has 
 been accomplished by the learned Vasquez, in his Treatise 
 on Alms, c. 4 : ' What men of the world lay up to improve 
 their circumstances, or those of their relatives, cannot be 
 termed superfluity ; and accordingly, such a thing as super- 
 fluity is seldom to be found among men of the world, not even 
 excepting kings.' Diana, too, who generally founds on our 
 fathers, having quoted these words of Vasquez, justly con- 
 cludes, ' that as to the question whether the rich are bound 
 to give alms of their superfluity, even though the affirmative 
 were true, it will seldom or never happen to be obligatory in 
 practice.' " 
 
 " I see very well how that follows from the doctrine of 
 Vasquez," said I. " But how would you answer this objec- 
 tion, that, in working out one's salvation, it would be as safe, 
 according to Vasquez, to give no alms, provided one can 
 muster as much ambition as to have no superfluity ; as it 
 is safe, according to the Gospel, to have no ambition at all, 
 in order to have some superfluity for the purpose of alms- 
 giving ?"* 
 
 " Why," returned he, " the answer would be, that both 
 
 arc (Gr.); Ea guts penes DOS sunt date (Beza); " Give alms of such 
 things as ye have." (Eng. Ver.) 
 
 * When Pascal speaks of alms-giving " working out our salvation," 
 it is evident that he regarded it only as the evidence of our heing in 
 a state of salvation. Judging by the history of his life, and by his 
 " Thoughts on Religion," no man 'was more free from spiritual pride, or 
 that poor species of it which boasts of or rests in its eleemosynary sacri- 
 fices. His charity flowed from love and gratitude to God. Such was 
 his regard for the poor that he could not refuse to give alms, even 
 though compelled to take from the supply necessary to relieve his own 
 infirmities : and on his death-bed he entreated that a poor person should 
 be brought into the house and treated with the same attention as him- 
 self, declaring that when he thought of his own comforts and of the 
 multitudes who were destitute of the merest necessaries, he felt a dis- 
 tress which he could not endure. " One thing I have observed." he 
 says in his Thoughts "that let a man be ever so poor, he has always 
 something to leave on his death-bed."
 
 JESUITICAL ELUSIONS. 137 
 
 of these ways are safe according to the Gospel ; the one ac- 
 cording to the Gospel in its more literal and obvious sense, 
 and the other according to the same Gospel as interpreted 
 by Vasquez. There you see the utility of interpretations. 
 When the terms are so clear, however," he continued, "as 
 not to admit of an interpretation, we have recourse to the 
 observation of favorable circumstances. A single example 
 will illustrate this. The popes have denounced excommuni- 
 cation on monks who lay aside their canonicals ; our casuists, 
 notwithstanding, put it as a question, ' On what occasions 
 may a monk lay aside his religious habit without incurring 
 excommunication ?' They mention a number of cases in 
 which they may, and among others the following : ' If he 
 has laid it aside for an infamous purpose, such as to pick 
 pockets or to go incognito into haunts of profligacy, meaning 
 shortly after to resume it.' It is evident the bulls have no 
 reference to cases of that description." 
 
 I could hardly believe that, and begged the father to show 
 me the passage in the original. He did so, and under the 
 chapter headed " Practice according to the School of the 
 Society of Jesus" Praxis ex Societatis Jesu Sckola I read 
 these very words : Si habitum dimittat ut furetur occulte, 
 vel fornicetur. He showed me the same thing in Diana, in 
 these terms : Ut eat incogrtitus ad lupanar. " And why, 
 father," I asked, " are they discharged from excommunication 
 on such occasions ?" 
 
 " Don't you understand it ?" he replied. " Only think 
 what a scandal it would be, were a monk surprised in such 
 a predicament with his canonicals on ! And have you never 
 heard," he continued, " how they answer the first bull con- 
 tra sollicitantes? and how our four-and-twenty, in another 
 chapter of the Practice according to the School of our Soci- 
 ety, explain the bull of Pius V. contra clericos, &c. ?"* 
 
 " I know nothing about all that," said I. 
 
 * These bulls were directed against gross and unnatural crimes pre- 
 vailing among the clergy. (Nicolo, ii. pp. 372-376.)
 
 138 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " Then it is a sign you have not read much of Escobar," 
 returned the monk. 
 
 " I got him only yesterday, father," said I ; " and I had 
 no small difficulty, too, in procuring a copy. I don't know- 
 how it is, but everybody of late has been in search of 
 him."* 
 
 " The passage to which I referred," returned the monk, 
 "may be found in treatise 1, example 8, no. 102. Consult 
 it at your leisure when you go home." 
 
 I did so that very night ; but it is so shockingly bad, that 
 I dare not transcribe it. 
 
 The good father then went on to say : " You now understand 
 what use we make of favorable circumstances. Sometimes, 
 however, obstinate cases will occur, which will not admit of 
 this mode of adjustment ; so much so, indeed, that you would 
 almost suppose they involved flat contradictions. For exam- 
 ple, three popes have decided that monks who are bound by 
 a particular vow to a Lenten life,f cannot be absolved from 
 it even though they should become bishops. And yet Diana 
 avers that notwithstanding this decision they are absolved." 
 
 " And how does he reconcile that ?" said I. 
 
 " By the most subtle of all the modern methods, and by 
 the nicest possible application of probability," replied the 
 monk. " You may recollect you were told the other day, 
 that the affirmative and negative of most opinions have each, 
 according to our doctors, some probability enough, at least, 
 to be followed with a safe conscience. Not that the pro and 
 con are both true in the same sense that is impossible but 
 only they are both probable, and therefore safe, as a matter 
 of course. On this principle our worthy friend Diana re- 
 marks : ' To the decision of these three popes, which is con- 
 trary to my opinion, I answer, that they spoke in this way 
 by adhering to the affirmative side which, in fact, even in 
 my judgment, is probable ; but it does not follow from this 
 
 * An allusion to the popularity of the Letters, which induced many 
 to inquire after the casuistical writings so often quoted in them, 
 f Lenten ljfe&n abstemious life, or life of fasting.
 
 JESUITICAL ELUSIONS. 139 
 
 that the negative may not have its probability too.' And in 
 the same treatise, speaking of another subject on which he 
 again differs from a pope, he says : ' The pope, I grant, has 
 said it as the head of the Church ; but his decision does not 
 extend beyond the sphere of the probability of his own 
 opinion.' Now you perceive this is not doing any harm to 
 the opinions of the popes ; such a thing would never be tol- 
 erated at Rome, where Diana is in high repute. For he does 
 not say that what the popes have decided is not probable ; 
 but leaving their opinion within the sphere of probability, he 
 merely says that the contrary is also probable." 
 
 " That is very respectful," said I. 
 
 " Yes," added the monk, " and rather more ingenious than 
 the reply made by Father Bauny, when his books were cen- 
 sured at Rome ; for when pushed very hard on this point by 
 M. Hallier, he made bold to write : ' What has the censure 
 of Rome to do with that of France ?' You now see how, 
 either by the interpretation of terms, by the observation of 
 favorable circumstances, or by the aid of the double proba- 
 bility of pro and con, we always contrive to reconcile those 
 seeming contradictions which occasioned you so much sur- 
 prise, without ever touching on the decisions of Scripture, 
 councils, or popes." 
 
 " Reverend father," said I, " how happy the world is in 
 having such men as you for its masters ! And what bless- 
 ings are these probabilities ! I never knew the reason why 
 you took such pains to establish that a single doctor, if a 
 grave one, might render an opinion probable, and that the 
 contrary might be so too, and that one may choose any side 
 one pleases, even though he does not believe it to be the 
 right side, and all with such a safe conscience, that the con- 
 fessor who should refuse him absolution on the faith of the 
 casuists would be in a State of damnation. But I see now 
 that a single casuist may make new rules of morality at his 
 discretion, and dispose, according to his fancy, of everything 
 pertaining to the regulation of manners." 
 
 "What you have now said," rejoined the father, "would
 
 140 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 require to be modified a little. Pay attention now, while I 
 explain our method, and you will observe the progress of a 
 new opinion, from its birth to its maturity. First, the grave 
 doctor who invented it exhibits it to the world, casting it 
 abroad like seed, that it may take root. In this state it is 
 very feeble ; it requires time gradually to ripen. This ac- 
 counts for Diana, who has introduced a great many of these 
 opinions, saying : ' I advance this opinion ; but as it is new, 
 I give it time to come to maturity relinquo tempori matu- 
 randum.' Thus in a few years it becomes insensibly consoli- 
 dated ; and after a considerable time it is sanctioned by the 
 tacit approbation of the Church, according to the grand max- 
 im of Father Bauny, ' that if an opinion has been advanced 
 by some casuist, and has not been impugned by the Church, 
 it is a sign that she approves of it.' And, in fact, on this 
 principle he authenticates one of his own principles in his 
 sixth treatise, p. 312." 
 
 " Indeed, father !" cried I, " why, on this principle the 
 Church would approve of all the abuses which she tolerates, 
 and all the errors in all the books which she does not cen- 
 sure !" 
 
 "Dispute the point with Father Bauny," he replied. "I 
 am merely quoting his words, and you begin to quarrel with 
 me. There is no disputing with facts, sir. Well, as I was 
 saying, when time has thus matured an opinion, it thence- 
 forth becomes completely probable and safe. Hence the 
 learned Caramuel, in dedicating his Fundamental Theology 
 to Diana, declares that this great Diana has rendered many 
 opinions probable which were not so before quce antea non 
 erant ; and that, therefore, in following them, persons do not 
 sin now, though they would have sinned formerly -jam non 
 peccant, licet ante peccaverint." 
 
 "Truly, father," I observed, "it must be worth one's 
 while living in the neighborhood of your doctors. Why, of 
 two individuals who do the same actions, he that knows noth- 
 ing about their doctrine sins, while he that knows it does no 
 sin. It seems, then, that their doctrine possesses at once an
 
 MAXIMS FOR ALL CLASSES. 141 
 
 edifying and a justifying virtue ! The law of God, accord- 
 ing to St. Paul, made transgressors ;* but this law of yours 
 makes nearly all of us innocent. I beseech you, my dear 
 sir, let me know all about it. I will not leave you till you 
 have told me all the maxims which your casuists have estab- 
 lished." 
 
 " Alas !" the monk exclaimed, " our main object, no doubt, 
 should have been to establish no other maxims than those 
 of the Gospel in all their strictness : and it is easy to see, 
 from the Rules for the regulation of our manners,f that if 
 we tolerate some degree of relaxation in others, it is rather 
 out of complaisance than through design. The truth is, sir, 
 we are forced to it. Men have arrived at such a pitch of cor- 
 ruption now-a-days, tha't unable to make them come to us, 
 we must e'en go to them, otherwise they would cast us off 
 altogether ; and what is worse, they would become perfect 
 castaways. It is to retain such characters as these that our 
 casuists have taken under consideration the vices to which 
 people of various conditions are most addicted, with the view 
 
 * PrtTiaricateurs. Alluding probably to such texts as Rom. iv. 15 '. 
 " The law worketli wrath ; for whert no law is, there is no transgres- 
 sion. 1 ' Ubi enim non est lex, nee pretaricatio (Vulg.) ; or Rom. v. 
 13. &c. 
 
 t The Rules (Regulce Communes} of the Society of Jesus, it must be 
 admitted, are rigid enough in the enforcement of moral decency and 
 discipline on the members ; and the perfect candor of Pascal appears 
 in the admission. This, however, only adds weight to the real charge 
 which he substantiates against them, of teaching maxims which tend 
 to the subversion of .morality. With regard to their personal conduct, 
 different opinions prevail. ' What&ver we may think of the political 
 delinquencies of their leaders," says Blaco White. " their bitterest ene- 
 mies have never ventured to charge the order of Jesuits with moral 
 irregularities. The internal policy of that body," he adds, "precluded 
 the possibility of gross misconduct." (Letters from Spain p. 8!).) We 
 are far from being sure of this. The remark seems to apply to only one 
 species of vice, too common in monastic life, and may be true of the 
 conventual establishments of the Jesuits, where outward decency forms 
 part of the deep policy of the order ; Iwt what dependence can be placed 
 on the moral purity of men whose consciences must be debauched by 
 such maxims 1 Jarrige informs us that they boasted at one time in 
 Spain of possessing an herb which preserved their chastity ; and on be- 
 ing questioned by the king to tell what it was, they replied : " It was the 
 fear oi'God." -'But.'' says the author, " whatever they might be then, 
 it is plain that they have since lost the seed of that herb, for it no longer 
 grows in their garden." (Jesuites sur 1'Echaufaud, ch. 6.)
 
 142 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 of laying down maxims which, while they cannot be said to 
 violate the truth, are so gentle that he must be a very im- 
 practicable subject indeed who is not pleased with them. 
 The grand project of our Society, for the good of religion, is 
 never to repulse any one, let him be what he may, and so 
 avoid driving people to despair.* 
 
 " They have got maxims, therefore, for all sorts of per- 
 sons ; for beneficiaries, for priests, for monks ; for gentlemen, 
 for servants ; for rich men, for commercial men ; for people 
 in embarrassed or indigent circumstances ; for devout women, 
 and women that are not devout ; for married people, and 
 irregular people. In short, nothing has escaped their fore- 
 sight." 
 
 " In other words," said I, " they have got maxims for the 
 clergy, the nobility, and the commons.f Well, I am quite 
 impatient to hear them." 
 
 "Let us commence," resumed the father, " with the bene- 
 ficiaries. You are aware of the traffic with benefices that is 
 now carried on, and that were the matter referred to St. 
 Thomas and the ancients who have written on it, there might 
 chance to be some simoniacs in the Church. This rendered 
 it highly necessary for our fathers to exercise their prudence 
 in finding out a palliative. With what success they have 
 done so will appear from the following words of Valencia, 
 who is one of Escobar's ' four living creatures.' At the end 
 of a long discourse, in which he suggests various expedients, 
 he propounds the following at page 2039, vol. iii., which, to 
 my mind, is the best : ' If a person gives a temporal in ex- 
 change for a spiritual good' that is, if he gives money for a 
 benefice ' and gives the money as the price of the benefice, 
 it is manifest simony. But if he gives it merely as the mo- 
 
 * It has been observed, with great truth, by Sir James Macintosh, 
 that t: casuistry, the inevitable growth of the practices of confession and 
 absolution, has generally vibrated betwixt the extremes of impractica- 
 ble severity and contemptible indulgence." (Hist, of England, vol. ii. 
 
 t Triers etat These were the three orders into which the people of 
 Prance were divided ; the tiers etat or third estate, corresponding to our
 
 MAXIMS FOR PRIESTS. 143 
 
 tive which inclines the will of the patron to confer on him the 
 living, it is not simony, even though the person who confers 
 it considers and expects the money as the principal object.' 
 Tanner, who is also a member of our Society, affirms the 
 same thing, vol. iii., p. 1519, although he 'grants that St. 
 Thomas is opposed to it ; for he expressly teaches that it is 
 always simony to give a spiritual for a temporal good, if the 
 temporal is the end in view.' By this means we prevent an 
 immense number of simoniacal transactions ; for who would 
 3 so desperately wicked as to refuse, when giving money 
 r a benefice, to take the simple precaution of so directing 
 his intentions as to give it as a motive to induce the benefic- 
 iary to part with it, instead of giving it as the. price of the 
 benefice ? No man, surely, can be so far left to himself as 
 that would come to." 
 
 " I agree with you there," I replied ; " all men, I should 
 think, have sufficient grace to make a bargain of that sort." 
 
 " There can be no doubt of it," returned the monk. 
 " Such, then, is the way in which we soften matters in re- 
 gard to the beneficiaries. And now for the priests we have 
 maxims pretty favorable to them also. Take the following, 
 for example, from our four-and-twenty elders : ' Can a priest, 
 who has received money to say a mass, take an additional 
 sum upon the same mass ? Yes, says Filiutius, he may, by 
 applying that part of the sacrifice which belongs to himself 
 as a priest to the person who paid him last ; provided he 
 does not take a sum equivalent to a whole mass, but only a 
 part, such as the third of a mass.' " 
 
 " Surely, father," said I, " this must be one of those cases 
 in which the pro and the con have both their share of proba- 
 bility. What you have now stated cannot fail, of course, to 
 be probable, having the authority of such men as Filiutius 
 and Escobar; and yet, leaving that within the sphere of 
 probability, it strikes me that the contrary opinion might be 
 made out to be probable too, and might be supported by 
 such reasons as the following : That, while the Church allows 
 priests who are in poor circumstances to take money for their
 
 144 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 masses, seeing it is but right that those who serve at the 
 altar should live by the a.tar, she never intended that they 
 should barter the sacrifice for money,* and still less, that 
 they should deprive themselves of those benefits which they 
 ought themselves, in the first place, to draw from it ; to which 
 I might add, that, according to St. Paul, the priests are to 
 offer sacrifice first for themselves, and then for the people ;f 
 and that accordingly, while permitted to participate with 
 others in the benefit of the sacrifice, they are not at liberty 
 to forego their share, by transferring it to another for a third 
 
 * With all respect for Pascal and his good intention, it is plain that 
 there is a wide difference between the duty, illustrated by the apostle 
 
 from the ancient law, of supporting those who minister in holy things 
 practice introduced by the Church 
 of Rome, of putting a price on the holy things themselves. In the one 
 
 , 
 in and for their ministrations, and the 
 
 case, it was simply a recognition of the general principle that " the la- 
 borer is worthy of his hire." In the other, it was converting the minis- 
 ter into a shopman who was allowed to " barter" his sacred wares at 
 the market price, or any price he pleased. To this mercenary principle 
 most of the superstitions of Rome may be traced. The popish doctrine 
 of the mass is founded on transubstantiation, or the superstition broached 
 in the ninth century, that the bread and wine are converted by the 
 priest into the rep' body and blood of Christ. It was never settled in 
 the Romish Church to be a proper propitiatory sacrifice for the living 
 and the dead till the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century ; so that 
 it is comparatively a modern invention. The mass proceeds on the ab- 
 surd assumption that our blessed Lord offered up his body and blood in 
 the institution ofthe supper, before offering them on the cross, and par- 
 took of them himself; and it involves the blasphemy of supposing that 
 a sinful mortal may, whenever he pleases, offer up the great sacrifice 
 of that body and blood, which could only be offered by the Son of God 
 and offered by him only once. This, however, is the groat Diana of 
 the popish priests by this craft they have their wealth and the whok 
 of its history proves that it was invented for no other purposes than im- 
 posture and extortion. f 
 
 f Heb. vii. '27. It is astonishing to see an acute mind like that of 
 Pascal so warped by superstition as not to perceive that in this, and 
 other allusions to the Levitical priesthood, the object of the apostle was 
 avowedly to prove that the great sacrifice for sin. of which the ancient 
 sacrifices were the types, had been " once offered in the end of the 
 world." and that <: there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins;" and 
 that the very text to which he refers, teaches that, in the person of 
 Jesus Christ, our high priest, all the functions of the sacrificing priest- 
 hood were fulfilled and terminated " Who needeth not daily as those 
 hish priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for 
 the people's : for this he did once, when he offered up himself." The 
 ministers of the New Testament are never in Scripture called priests, 
 though this name has been applied to the Christian people who offer up 
 the " spiritual sacrifices" of praiss and good works. (Heb. xiii. 15, 16 ; 
 1 Pet. Si. 5.)
 
 MAXIMS FOR PRIESTS. 1*5 
 
 of a mass, or, in other words, for the matter of fourpence or 
 fivepence. Verily, father, little as I pretend to be a grave 
 man, I might contrive to make this opinion probable." 
 
 " It would cost you no great pains to do that," replied the 
 monk : "it is visibly probable already. The difficulty lies in 
 discovering probability in the converse of opinions manifestly 
 good ; and this is a feat which none but great men can 
 achieve. Father Bauny shines in this department. It is 
 really delightful to see that learned casuist examining with 
 characteristic ingenuity and subtlety, the negative and affir- 
 mative of the same question, and proving both of them to be 
 right ! Thus in the matter of priests, he says in one place : 
 ' No law can be made to oblige the curates to say mass every 
 day ; for such a law would unquestionably (hand dubie) ex- 
 pose them to the danger of saying it sometimes in mortal 
 sin.' And yet in another part of the same treatise, he says, 
 ' that priests who have received money for saying mass every 
 day ought to say it every day, and that they cannot excuse 
 themselves on the ground that they are not always in a fit 
 state for the service ; because it is in their power at all times 
 to do penance, and if they neglect this they have themselves 
 to blame for it, and not the person who made them say 
 mass.' And to relieve their minds from all scruples on the 
 subject, he thus resolves the question : ' May a priest say 
 mass on the same day in which he has committed a mortal 
 sin of the worst kind, in the way of confessing himself before- 
 hand ?' Villabolos says No, because of his impurity ; but 
 Sancius says, He may without any sin ; and I hold his opin- 
 ion to be safe, and one which may be followed in practice 
 et tnta et sequenda in praxi." * 
 
 " Follow this opinion in practice !" cried I. " Will any 
 priest who has fallen into such irregularities, have the assur- 
 ance on the same day to approach the altar, on the mere 
 word of Father Bauny ? Is he not bound to submit to the 
 ancient laws of the Church, which debarred from the sacrifice 
 
 * Treatise 10 p. 474 ; ib , p. 441 ; Quest. 32, p. 457.
 
 146 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 forever, or at least for a long lime, priests who hnd commit- 
 ted sins of that description instead of following the modem 
 opinions of casuists, who would admit him to it on the very 
 day that Avitnessed his fall ?" 
 
 " You have a very short memory," returned the monk. 
 " Did I not inform you a little ago that, according to our fa- 
 thers Cellot and Reginald, ' in matters of morality we are to 
 follow, not the ancient fathers, but the modern casuists ?' " 
 
 "I remember it perfectly," said I ; "but we have some- 
 thing more here : we have the laws of the Church." 
 
 "True," he replied ; " but this shows you do not know an- 
 other capital maxim of our fathers, * that the laws of the 
 Church lose their authority when they have gone into desue- 
 tude cumjamdesuctudineabicrunt as Filiutus says.* We 
 know the present exigencies of the Church much better than 
 the ancients could do. Were we to be so strict in excluding 
 priests from the altar, you can understand there would not be 
 such a great number of masses. Now a multitude of masses 
 brings such a revenue of glory to God and of good to souls, 
 that I may venture to say, with Father Cellot, that there 
 would not be too many priests, ' though not only all men 
 and women, were that possible, but even inanimate bodies, 
 and even brute beasts bruta animalia were transformed 
 into priests to celebrate mass.' "f 
 
 I was so astounded at the -extravagance of this imagina- 
 tion, that I could not utter a word, and allowed him to go on 
 with his discourse. " Enough, however, about priests ; I am 
 afraid of getting tedious: let us come to the monks. The 
 grand difficulty with them is the obedience they owe to their 
 superiors ; now observe the palliative which our fathers apply 
 in this case. Castro PalaoJ of our Society has said : ' Beyond 
 all dispute, a monk who has a probable opinion of his own, is 
 
 . * Torn. ii. tr. 25. n. 33. And yet they will pretend to hold that their 
 Church is infallible ! 
 
 t Book of the Hierarchy, p. 611, Rouen edition. 
 
 $ Op. Mor. p. 1, disp, 2, p. 6. Ferdinand de Castro Palao was a 
 Jesuit of Spain, and author of a work on Virtues and Vices, published 
 in 1631,
 
 MAXIMS FOR SERVANTS. 147 
 
 not bound to obe~his superior, thougli the opinion of the 
 latter is the more probable. For the monk is at liberty to 
 adopt the opinion which is more agreeable to himself qucs 
 sibi gratior fuerit as Sanchez says. And though the order 
 of his superior be just, that does not oblige you to obey him, 
 for it is not just at all points or in every respect non unde- 
 quaque jusl prcecepit but only probably so ; and conse- 
 quently, you are only probably bound to obey him, and prob- 
 ably not bound probabiliter obliyatus, et probabiliter deobli- 
 gatus.' " 
 
 " Certainly, father," said I, " it is impossible too highly to 
 estimate this precious fruit of the double probability." 
 
 "It is of great use indeed," he replied ; "but we must be 
 brief. Let me only give you the following specimen of our 
 famous Molina in favor of monks who are expelled from their 
 convents for irregularities. Escobar quotes him thus : ' Mo- 
 lina asserts that a monk expelled from his monastery is not 
 obliged to reform in order to get back again, and that he is 
 no longer bound by his vow of obedience.' " 
 
 " Well, father," cried I, " this is all very comfortable for 
 the clergy. Your casuists, I perceive, have been very indul. 
 gent to them, and no wonder they were legislating, so to 
 speak, for themselves. I am afraid people of other condi- 
 tions are not so liberally treated. Every one for himself in 
 this world." 
 
 "There you do us wrong," returned the monk; "they 
 could not have been kinder to themselves than we have been 
 to them. We treat all, from the highest to the lowest, with 
 an even-handed charity, sir. And to prove this, you tempt 
 me to tell you our maxims for servants. In reference to this 
 class, we have taken into consideration the difficulty they 
 must experience, when they are men of conscience, in serving 
 profligate masters. For if they refuse to perform all the er- 
 rands in which they are employed, they lose their places; and 
 if they yield obedience, they have their scruples. To relieve 
 them from these, our four-and-twenty fathers have specified 
 the services which they may render with a safe conscience ;
 
 148 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 such as, 'carrying letters and presents, opening doors and 
 windows, helping their master to reach the window, holding 
 the ladder which he is mounting. All this,' say they, ' is al- 
 lowahle and indifferent ; it is true that, as to holding the lad- 
 der, they must be threatened, more than usually, with being 
 punished for refusing ; for it is doing an injury to the master 
 of a house to enter it by the window.' You perceive the 
 judiciousness of that observation, of course?" 
 
 " I expected nothing less," said I, " from a book edited by 
 four-and-twenty Jesuits." 
 
 "But," added the monk, "Father Bauny has gone beyond 
 this ; he has taught valets how to perform these sorts of 
 offices for their masters quite innocently, by making them 
 direct their intention, not to the sins to which they are acces- 
 sary, but to the gain which is to accrue from them. In his 
 Summary of Sins, p. 710, first edition, he thus states the 
 matter : ' Let confessors observe,' says he, ' that they cannot 
 absolve valets who perform base errands, if they consent to 
 the sins of their masters ; but the reverse holds true, if they 
 have done the thing merely from a regard to their temporal 
 emolument.' And that, I should conceive, is no difficult mat- 
 ter to do ; for why should they insist on consenting to sins of 
 which they taste nothing but the trouble ? The same Father 
 Bauny has established a prime maxim in favor of those who 
 are not content with their wages : ' May servants who are dis- 
 satisfied with their wages, use means to raise them by laying 
 their hands on as much of the property of their masters as 
 they may consider necessary to make the said wages equiva- 
 lent to their trouble ? They may, in certain circumstances ; 
 as when they are so poor that, in looking for a situation, they 
 have been obliged to accept the offer made to them, and when 
 other servants of the same class are gaining more than they, 
 elsewhere.' " 
 
 " Ha, father ," cried I, " that is John d'Alba's passage, I 
 declare." 
 
 "What Joh> 1'Alba ?" inquired the father "what do you 
 mean ?".
 
 STORY OF JOIIN D ALBA. 149 
 
 " Strange, father !" returned I : "do you not remember 
 what happened in this city in the year 1647 ? Where in the 
 world were you living at that time ?" 
 
 " I was teaching cases of conscience in one of our colleges 
 far from Paris," he replied. 
 
 " I see you don't know the story, father : I must tell it 
 you. I heard it related the other day by a man of honor, 
 whom I met in company. He told us that this John d'Alba, 
 who was in the service of your fathers in the College of Cler- 
 mont, in the Rue St. Jacques, being dissatisfied with his wa- 
 ges, had purloined something to make himself amends ; and 
 that your fathers, on discovering the theft, had thrown him 
 into prison on the charge of larceny. The case was reported 
 to the court, if I recollect right, on the 16th of April, 1647 ; 
 for he was very minute in his statements, and indeed they 
 would hardly have been credible otherwise. The poor fel- 
 low, on being questioned, confessed to having taken some 
 pewter plates, but maintained that for all that he had not 
 stolen them; pleading in his defence this very doctrine of Fa- 
 ther Bauny, which he produced before the judges, along with 
 a pamphlet by one of your fathers, under whom he had stud- 
 ied cases of conscience, and who had taught him the same 
 thing. Whereupon M. De Montrouge, one of the most re- 
 spected members of the court, said, in giving his opinion, 
 'that he did not see how, on the ground of the writings of 
 these fathers writings containing a doctrine so illegal, per- 
 nicious, and contrary to all laws, natural, divine, and human, 
 and calculated to ruin all families, and sanction all sorts of 
 household robbery they could discharge the accused. But 
 his opinion was, that this too faithful disciple should be 
 whipped before the college gate, by the hand of the common 
 hangman ; and that, at the same time, this functionary should 
 burn the writings of these fathers which treated of larceny, 
 with certification that they were prohibited from teaching 
 such doctrine in future, upon pain of death.' 
 
 " The result of this judgment, which was heartily approved 
 of, was waited for with much curiosit} when some incident
 
 150 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 occurred which made them delay procedure. But in the 
 mean time the prisoner disappeared, nobody knew how, and 
 nothing more was heard about the affair ; so that John d'Alba 
 got off, pewter plates and all. Such was the account. he 
 gave us, to which he added, that the judgment of M. De 
 Montrouge was entered on the records of the court, where 
 any one may consult it. We were highly amused at the 
 story." 
 
 "What are you trifling about now.?" cried the monk. 
 "What does all that signify? I was explaining the maxims 
 of our casuists, and was just going to speak of those relating 
 to gentlemen, when you interrupt me with impertinent 
 stories." 
 
 " It was only something put in by the way, father," I ob- 
 served ; " and besides, I was anxious to apprize you of an im- 
 portant circumstance, which I find you have overlooked in 
 establishing your doctrine of probability." 
 
 " Ay, indeed !" exclaimed the monk, " what defect can 
 this be, that has escaped the notice of so many ingenious 
 men ?" 
 
 " You have certainly," continued I, " contrived to place your 
 disciples in perfect safety so far as God and the conscience are 
 concerned ; for they are quite safe in that quarter, according 
 to you, by following in the wake of a grave doctor. You have 
 also secured them on the part of the confessors, by obliging 
 priests, on the pain of mortal sin, to absolve all who follow a 
 probable opinion. But you have neglected to secure them 
 on the part of the judges ; so that, in following your proba- 
 bilities, they are in danger of coming into contact with the 
 whip and the gallows. This is a sad oversight." 
 
 " You are right," said the monk ; " I am glad you men- 
 tioned it. But the reason is, we have no such power over 
 magistrates as over the confessors, who are obliged to refer 
 to us in cases of conscience, in which we are the sovereign 
 judges." 
 
 " So I understand," returned I ; " but if, on the one hand, 
 you are the judges of the confessors, are you not, on the
 
 8TORY OF JOHN o'ALBA. 151 
 
 other hand, the confessors of the judges? Your power is 
 very extensive. Oblige them, on pain of being debarred 
 from the sacraments, to acquit all criminals who act on a 
 probable opinion ; otherwise it may happen, to the great 
 contempt and scandal of probability, that those whom you 
 render innocent in theory may be whipped or hanged in 
 practice. Without something of this kind, how can you 
 expect to get disciples ?" 
 
 "The matter deserves consideration," said he; "it will 
 never do to neglect it. I shall suggest it to our father Pro- 
 vincial. You might, however, have reserved this advice to 
 some other time, without interrupting the account I was 
 about to give you of the maxims which we have established 
 in favor of gentlemen ; and I shall not give you any more in- 
 formation, except on condition that you do not tell me any 
 more stories." 
 
 This is all you shall have from me at present ; for it would 
 require more 'than the limits of one letter to acquaint you 
 with all that I learned in a single conversation. Meanwhile 
 I am, &c.
 
 LETTER VII.* 
 
 METHOD OF DIRECTING THE INTENTION ADOPTED BY THE CASUISTS 
 
 PERMISSION TO KILL IN DEFENCE OF HONOR AND PROPERTY, 
 
 EXTENDED EVEN TO PRIESTS AND MONKS CURIOUS QUESTION 
 
 RAISED EY CARAMUEL, AS TO WHETHER JESUITS MAY BE AL- 
 LOWED TO KILL JANSENISTS. 
 
 PARIS, April 25, 1656. 
 
 SIR, Having succeeded in pacifying the good father, who 
 had been rather disconcerted by the story of John d'Alba, 
 he resumed the conversation, on my assuring him that I 
 would avoid all such interruptions in future, and spoke of 
 the maxims of his casuists with regard to gentlemen, nearly 
 in the following terms : 
 
 " You know," he said, " that the ruling passion of persons 
 in that rank of life is ' the point of honor/ which is perpetu- 
 ally driving them into acts of violence apparently quite at 
 variance with Christian piety ; so that, in fact, they would be 
 almost all of them excluded from our confessionals, had not 
 our fathers relaxed a little from the strictness of religion, to 
 accommodate themselves to the weakness of humanity. 
 Anxious to keep on good terms both with the Gospel, by doing 
 their duty to God, and with the men of the world, by show- 
 ing chanty to their neighbor, they needed all the wisdom 
 they possessed to devise expedients for so nicely adjusting 
 matters as to permit these gentlemen to adopt the methods 
 usually resorted to for vindicating their honor, without 
 wounding their consciences, and thus reconcile two things 
 apparently so opposite to each other as piety and the point 
 of honor. But, sir, in proportion to the utility of the design 
 was the difficulty of the execution. You cannot fail, I should 
 
 * Tliis Letter was revised by M. Nicole.
 
 DIRECTING THE INTENTION. 153 
 
 think, to realize the magnitude and arduousness of such an 
 enterprize ?" 
 
 " It astonishes me, certainly," said I, rather coldly. 
 
 " It astonishes you, forsooth !" cried the monk. " I can 
 well believe that ; many besides you might be astonished at 
 it. Why, don't you know that, on the one hand, the Gos- 
 pel commands us ' not to render evil for evil, but to leave 
 vengeance to God ;' and that, on the other hand, the laws of 
 the world forbid our enduring an affront without demanding 
 satisfaction from the offender, and that often at the expense 
 of his life ? You have never, I am sure, met with anything, 
 to all appearance, more diametrically opposed than these two 
 codes of morals ; and yet, when told that our fathers have 
 reconciled them, you have nothing more to say than simply 
 that this astonishes you !" 
 
 " I did not sufficiently explain myself, father. I should 
 certainly have considered the thing perfectly impracticable, 
 if I had not known, from what I have seen of your fathers, 
 that they are capable of doing with ease what is impossible 
 to other men. This led me to anticipate that they must have 
 discovered some method for meeting the difficulty a method 
 which I admire even before knowing it, and which I pray 
 you to explain to me." 
 
 " Since that is your view of the matter," replied the monk, 
 "I cannot refuse you. Know, then, that this marvellous 
 principle is our grand method of directing the intention- the 
 importance of which, in our moral system, is such, that I 
 might almost venture to compare it with the doctrine of 
 probability. You have had some glimpses of it in passing, 
 from certain maxims which I mentioned to you. For exam- 
 ple, when I was showing you how servants might execute 
 certain troublesome jobs with a safe conscience, did you not 
 remark that it was simply by diverting their intention from 
 the evil to which they were accessary, to the profit which 
 they might reap from the transaction ? Now that is what 
 we call directing the intention. You saw, too, that were it 
 not for a similar divergence of the mind, those who give 
 7*
 
 154 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 money for benefices might be downright simoniacs. But I 
 will now show you this grand method in all its glory, as it 
 applies to the subject of homicide a crime which it justifies in 
 a thousand instances ; in order that, from this startling re- 
 sult, you may form an idea of all that it is calculated to 
 eifect." 
 
 " I foresee already," said I, " that, according to this mode, 
 everything will be permitted; it will stick at nothing." 
 
 "You always fly from the one extreme tc the other," re- 
 plied the monk: "prithee arvoid that habit. For just to show 
 you that we are far from permitting everything, let me tell 
 you that we never suffer such a thing as a formal intention 
 to sin, with the sole design of sinning ; and if any person 
 whatever should persist in having no other end but evil in 
 the evil that he does, we break with him at once : such con- 
 duct is diabolical. This holds true, without exception of age, 
 sex, or rank. But when the person is not of such a wretched 
 disposition as this, we try to put in practice our method of 
 directing the intention, winch simply consists in his proposing 
 to himsejf, as the end of his actions, some allowable object. 
 Not that we do not endeavor, as far as we can, to dissuade 
 men from doing things forbidden ; but when we cannot pre- 
 "vent the action, we at least purify the motive, and thus cor- 
 rect the viciousness of the mean by the goodness of the end. 
 Such is the way in which our fathers have contrived to per- 
 mit those acts of violence to which men usually resort in 
 vindication of their honor. They have no more to do than 
 to turn off their intention from the desire of vengeance, 
 which is criminal, and direct it to a desire to defend their 
 honor, which, according to us, is quite warrantable. And in 
 this way our doctors discharge all their duty towards God 
 and towards man. By permitting the action, they gratify 
 the world ; and by purifying the intention, they give satisfac- 
 tion to the Gospel. This is a secret, sir, which was entirely 
 unknown to the ancients ; the world is indebted for the dis- 
 covery entirely to our doctors. You understand it now, I 
 hope?"
 
 PRIVATE REVENGE PERMITTED. 155 
 
 "Perfectly well," was my reply. "To men you grant 
 the outward material effect of the action ; and to God you 
 give the inward and spiritual movement of the intention ; 
 and by this equitable partition, you form an alliance between 
 the laws of God and the laws of men. But, ray dear sir, to 
 be frank with you, I can hardly trust your premises, and I 
 suspect that your authors will tell another tale." 
 
 "You do me injustice," rejoined the monk; "I advance 
 nothing but what I am ready to prove, and that by such a 
 rich array of passages, that altogether their number, their 
 authority, and their reasonings, will fill you with admiration. 
 To show you, for example, the alliance which our fathers 
 have formed between the maxims of the Gospel and those of 
 the world, by thus regulating the intention, let me refer you 
 to Reginald:* 'Private persons are forbidden to avenge 
 themselves; for St. Paul says to the Romans (ch. 12th), 
 'Recompense to no man evil for evil ;' and Ecclesiasticus says 
 (ch. 28th), 'He that taketh vengeance shall draw on him- 
 self the vengeance of God, and his sins will not be forgotten/ 
 Besides all that is said in the Gospel about forgiving offences, 
 as in the 6th and 18th chapters of St. Matthew.'" 
 
 "Well, father, if after that he says anything contrary to 
 the Scripture, it will not be from lack of scriptural knowl- 
 edge, at any rate. Pray, how does he conclude ?" 
 
 " You shall hear," he said. "From all this it appears that 
 a military man may demand satisfaction on the spot from the 
 person who has injured him not, indeed, with the intention 
 of rendering evil for evil, but with that of preserving his 
 honor ' non ut malum pro malo reddat, sed ut conservet hono- 
 rem.' See you how carefully they guard against the inten- 
 tion of rendering evil for evil, because the Scripture con- 
 demns it ? This is what they will tolerate on no account. 
 Thus Lessiusf observes, that ' if a man has received a blow 
 on the face, he must on no account have an intention to 
 avenge himself; but he may lawfully have an intention to 
 
 * In praxi : liv. xxi., num. 62, p. 260, 
 t De Just, liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n. 79.
 
 156 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 avert infamy, and may, with that vie\v, repel the insult im- 
 mediately, even at the point of the sword etiam cum gladioT 
 So far are we from permitting any one to cherish the design 
 of taking vengeance on his enemies, that our fathers will not 
 allow any even to wish their death by a movement of hatred. 
 ' If your enemy is disposed to injure you,' says Escobar, 'you 
 have no right to wish his death, by a movement of hatred ; 
 though you may, with a view to save yourself from harm.' 
 So legitimate, indeed, is this wish, with such an intention, 
 that our great Hurtado de Mfendoza says, that ' we may pray 
 God to visit with speedy death those who are bent on per- 
 secuting us, if there is no other way of escaping from it.' "* 
 
 "May it please your reverence," said I, "the Church 
 has forgotten to insert a petition to that effect among her 
 prayers." 
 
 " They have not put in everything into the prayers that 
 one may lawfully ask of God," answered the monk. " Be- 
 sides, in the present case the thing was impossible, for this 
 same opinion is of more recent standing than the Breviary. 
 You are not a good chronologist, friend. But, not to wander 
 from the point, let me request your attention to .the follow- 
 ing passage, cited by Diana from Gaspar Hurtado,f one of 
 Escobar's four-and-twenty fathers : ' An incumbent may, 
 without any mortal sin, desire the decease of a life-renter 
 on his benefice, and a son that of his father, and rejoice 
 when it happens ; provided always it is for the sake of the 
 profit that is to accrue from the event, and not from personal 
 aversion.' " 
 
 " Good !" cried I. " That is certainly a very happy hit ; 
 and I can easily see that the doctrine admits of a wide appli- 
 cation. But yet there are certain cases, the solution of which, 
 though of great importance for gentlemen, might present 
 still greater difficulties." 
 
 " Propose them, if you please, that we may see," said the 
 monk. 
 
 * In his book, De Spe, vol. ii., d. 15, sec. 4, 848. 
 t De Sub. Pecc., diff. 9; Diana, p. 5; tr. 14, r. 99.
 
 DUELLING PERMITTED. 157 
 
 " Show me, with all your directing of the intention," re- 
 turned I, "that it is allowable to fight a duel." 
 
 " Our great Hurtado de Mendoza," said the father, " will 
 satisfy you on that point in a twinkling. ' If a gentleman,' 
 says he, iu a passage cited by Diana, ' who is challenged to 
 fight a duel, is well known to have no religion, and if the 
 vices to which he is openly and unscrupulously addicted are 
 such as would lead people to conclude, in the event of his 
 refusing to fight, that he is actuated, not by the fear of God, 
 but by cowardice, and induce them to say of him that he 
 was a hen, and not a man gallina, et non vir ; in that case 
 he may, to save his honor, appear at the appointed spot 
 not, indeed, with the express intention of fighting a duel, 
 but merely with that of defending himself, should the per- 
 son who challenged him come there unjustly to attack him. 
 His action in this case, viewed by itself, will be perfectly 
 indifferent ; for what moral evil is there in one stepping 
 into a field, taking a stroll in expectation of meeting a per- 
 son, and defending one's self in the event of being attacked ? 
 And thus the gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever ; for 
 in fact it cannot be called accepting a challenge at all, his 
 intention being directed to other circumstances, and the 
 acceptance of a challenge consisting in an express intention 
 to fight, which we are supposing the gentleman never had.' " 
 
 " You have not kept your word with me, sir," said T. 
 " This is not, properly speaking, to permit duelling ; on the 
 contrary, the casuist is so persuaded that this practice is for- 
 bidden, that, in licensing the action in question, he carefully 
 avoids calling it a duel." 
 
 " Ah !" cried the monk, " you begin to get knowing on 
 my hand, I am glad to see. I might reply, that the author 
 I have quoted grants all that duellists are disposed to ask. 
 But since you must have a categorical answer, I shall allow 
 our Father Layman to give it for me. He permits duelling 
 in so many words, provided that, in accepting the challenge, 
 the person directs his intention solely to the preservation 
 of his honor or his property : ' If a soldier or a courtier is
 
 158 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 in such a predicament that he must lose either his honor or 
 his fortune unless he accepts a challenge, I see nothing to 
 hinder him from doing so i self-defence.' The same thing 
 is said by Peter Hurtado, as quoted by our famous Escobar ; 
 his words are : ' One may fight a duel even to defend one's 
 property, should that be necessary ; because every man has 
 a right to defend his property, though at the expense of his 
 enemy's life !' " 
 
 I was struck, on hearing these passages, with the reflec- 
 tion that while the piety of the king appears in his exerting 
 all his power to prohibit and abolish the practice of duelling 
 in the State,* the piety of the Jesuits is shown in their e*m- 
 ploying all their ingenuity to tolerate and sanction it in the 
 Church. But the good father was in such an excellent key 
 for talking, that it would have been cruel to have interrupted 
 him ; so he went on with his discourse. 
 
 " In short," said he, " Sanchez (mark, now, what great 
 names I am quoting to you !) Sanchez, sir, goes a step further ; 
 for he shows how, simply by managing the intention rightly, 
 a person may not only receive a challenge, but give one. 
 And our Escobar follows him." 
 
 " Prove that, father," said I, " and I shall give up the 
 point : but I will not believe that he has written it, unless I 
 see it in print." 
 
 " Read it yourself, then," he replied : and, to be sure, I 
 read the following extract from the Moral Theology of 
 Sanchez : " It is perfectly reasonable to hold that a man may 
 fight a duel to save his life, his honor, or any considerable 
 
 * Before the age of Louis XIV. the practice of duelling prevailed in 
 France to such a. frightful extent that a writer, who is not given to ex- 
 aggerate in such matters, says, that ' It had done as much to depopu- 
 late the country as the civil and foreign wars, and that in the course of 
 twenty years, ten of which had been disturbed by war. more French- 
 men perished by the hands of Frenchmen than by those of their enemies. 
 (Voltaire. Sisde de Louis XIV., p 42.) The abolition of this barba- 
 rous custom was one of I he greatest services which Louis XIV. rendered 
 to his country. This \va.a not fully accomplished till 1G33, when a 
 bloody combat of four against four determined him to put an end to the 
 practice, by making it death, without benefit of clergy, to send or accept 
 a challenge.
 
 ASSASSINATION PERMITTED. 159 
 
 portion of his property, "when it is apparent that there is a 
 design to deprive him of these unjustly, by law-suits and 
 chicanery, and when there is no other way of preserving I hem. 
 Navarre justly observes, that in such cases, it is lawful 
 either to accept or to send a challenge licet acceptors et 
 offerre duellum. The same author adds, that there is nothing 
 to prevent one from despatching one's adversary in a private 
 way. Indeed, in the circumstances referred to, it is advisa- 
 ble to avoid employing the method of the duel, if it is possi- 
 ble to settle the affair by privately killing our enemy ; for, 
 by this means, we escape .at once from exposing our life in 
 the combat, and from participating in the sin which our op- 
 ponent would have committed by fighting the duel !"* 
 
 " A most pious assassination !" said I. " Still, however, 
 pious though it be, it is assassination, if a man is permitted to 
 kill his enemy in a treacherous manner." 
 
 "Did I say that he might kill him treacherously?" cried 
 the monk. " God forbid ! I said he might kill him privately, 
 and you conclude that he may kill him treacherously, as if 
 that were the same thing ! Attend, sir, to Escobar's defini- 
 tion before allowing yourself to speak again on this subject 
 ' We call it killing in treachery, when the person who is slain 
 had no reason to suspect such a fate. He, therefore, that 
 slays his enemy cannot be said to kill him in treachery, even 
 although the blow should be given insidiously and behind his 
 back licet per insidias aut a tergo percutiat.' And again : 
 ' He that kills his enemy, with whom he was reconciled under 
 a promise of never again attempting his life., cannot be abso- 
 lutely said to kill in treachery, unless there was between them 
 all the stricter friendship arctior amicitia.^ You see now, 
 you do not even understand what the terms signify, and yet 
 you pretend to talk like a doctor." 
 
 " I grant you this is something quite new to me," I re- 
 plied ; " and I should gather from that definition that few, if 
 any, were ever killed in treachery ; for people seldom take 
 
 * Sanchez, Theol. Mor., liv. ii. c. 39, n. 7. 
 f Escobar, tr, 6 ; ex. 4, n. 26, 55.
 
 160 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 it into their heads to assassinate any but their enemies. Be 
 this as it may, however, it seems that, according to Sanchez, 
 a man may freely slay (I do not say treacherously, but only 
 insidiously, and behind his back) a calumniator, for example, 
 who prosecutes us at law ?" 
 
 " Certainly he may," returned the monk, " always, how- 
 ever, in the way of giving a right direction to the intention : 
 you constantly forget the main point Molina supports the 
 same doctrine ; and what is more, our learned brother Regi- 
 nald maintains that we may despatch the false witnesses 
 whom he summons against us. And, to crown the whole, 
 according to our great and famous fathers Tanner and Ema- 
 nuel Sa, it is lawful to kill both the false witnesses and the 
 judge himself, if he has had any collusion with them. Here 
 are Tanner's very words : 'Sotus and Lessius think that it is 
 not lawful to kill the false witnesses and the magistrate who 
 conspire together to put an innocent person to death ; but 
 Emanuel Sa and other authors with good reason impugn 
 that sentiment, at least so far as the conscience is concerned.' 
 And he goes on to show that it is quite lawful to kill both 
 the witnesses and the judge." 
 
 " Well, father," said I, " I think I now understand pretty 
 well your principle regarding the direction of the intention ; 
 but I should like to know something of its consequences, and 
 all the cases in which this method of yours arms a man with 
 the power of life and death. Let us go over them again, for 
 fear of mistake, for equivocation here might be attended with 
 dangerous results. Killing is a matter which requires to be 
 well-timed, and to be backed with a good probable opinion. 
 You have assured me, then, that by gjving a proper turn to 
 the intention, it is lawful, according to your fathers, for the 
 preservation of. one's honor, or even property, to accept a 
 challenge to a duel, to give one sometimes, to kill in a private 
 way a false accuser, and his witnesses along with him, and 
 even the judge who has been bribed to favor them ; and you 
 have also told me that he who has got a blow, may, without
 
 ASSASSINATION PERMITTED. 161 
 
 avenging himself, retaliate with the sword. But you have 
 not told me, father, to what length he may go." 
 
 " He can hardly mistake there," Replied the father, " for 
 he may go aTi. the length of killing his man. This is satis- 
 factorily proved hy the learned Henriquez, and others of our 
 fathers quoted by Escobar, as follows : ' It is perfectly right 
 to kill a person who has given us a box on the ear, although 
 he should run away, provided it is not done through hatred 
 or revenge, and there is no danger of giving occasion thereby 
 to murders of a gross kind and hurtful to society. And the 
 reason is, that it is as lawful to pursue the thief that has 
 stolen our honor, as him that has run away with our prop- 
 erty. For, although your honor cannot be said to be in the 
 hands of your enemy in the same sense as your goods and 
 chattels are in the hands of the thief, still it may be recov- 
 ered in the same way by showing proofs of greatness and 
 authority, and thus acquiring the esteem of men. And, in 
 point of fact, is it not certain that the man who has received 
 a buffet on the ear is held to be under disgrace, until he has 
 wiped off the insult with the blood of his enemy ?' " 
 
 I was so shocked on hearing this, that it was with great 
 difficulty I could contain myself; but, in my anxiety to hear 
 the rest, I allowed him to proceed. 
 
 " Nay," he continued, "it is allowable to prevent a buffet, 
 by killing him that meant to give it, if there be no other way 
 to escape the insult? This opinion is quite common with our 
 fathers. For example, Azor, one of the four-and-twenty eld- 
 ers, proposing the question, ' Is it lawful for a man of honor 
 to kill another who threatens to give him a slap on the face, 
 or strike him with a stick ?' replies, ' Some say he may not ; 
 alleging that the life of our neighbor is more precious than 
 our honor, and that it would be an act of cruelty to kill a 
 man merely to avoid a blow. Others, however, think that 
 it is allowable ; and I certainly consider it probable, when 
 there is no other way of warding off the insult ; foi, other- 
 wise, the honor of the innocent would be constantly exposed 
 to the malice of the insolent.' The same opinion is given by
 
 162 PKOVISCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 our great Filiutius; by Father Hereau, in his Treatise on 
 HoinicHe; by Hurtado de Mendoza, in his Disputations ; by 
 Becan, in his Summary ; by our Fathers Flahaut and Le- 
 court, in those writings which the university, in their third 
 petition, quoted at length, in order to bring them into dis- 
 grace (though in this they failed) ; and by Escobar. In 
 short, this opinion is so general, that Lessius lays it down as 
 a point which no casuist has contested ; he quotes a great 
 many that uphold, and none that deny it ; and particularly 
 Peter Navarre, who, speaking of affronts in general (and 
 there is none more provoking than a box on the ear), declares 
 that ' by the universal consent of the casuists, it is lawful to 
 kill the calumniator, if there be no other way of averting the 
 affront ex sententia omnium, licet contumeliosum occidere, si 
 aliter ea injuria arceri nequit.' Do you wish any more 
 authorities ?" asked the monk. 
 
 I declared I was much obliged to him ; I had heard rather 
 more than enough of them already. But just to see how far 
 this damnable doctrine would go, I said, " But, father, may 
 not one be allowed to kill for something still less ? Might 
 not a person so direct his intention as lawfully to kill another 
 for telling a lie, for example ?" 
 
 ** He may," returned the monk ; " and according to Father 
 Baldelle, quoted by Escobar, ' you may lawfully take the life 
 of another for saying, You have told a lie ; if there is no 
 other way of shutting his mouth.' The same thing may be 
 done in the case of slanders. Our Fathers Lessius and Hereau 
 agree in the following sentiments : ' If you attempt to ruin 
 my character by telling stories against me in the presence of 
 men of honor, and I have no other way of preventing this 
 than "by putting you to death, may I be permitted to do so ? 
 According to the modern authors, I may, and that even 
 though I 'have been really guilty of the crime which you 
 divulge, provided it is a secret one, which you could not 
 establish by legal evidence. And I prove it thus : If you 
 mean to rob me of ray honor by giving me a box on the ear, 
 J may prevent it by force of arms ; and the same mode of
 
 KILLINO FOR A LIB. 163 
 
 defence is lawful when you would do ine the same injury 
 with the tongue. Besides, we may lawfully obviate affronts, 
 and therefore slanders. In fine, honor is dearer than life ; 
 and as it is lawful to kill in defence of life, it must be so to 
 kill in defence of honor.' There, you see, are arguments in 
 due form; this is demonstration, sir not mere discussion. 
 And, to conclude, this great man Lessius shows, in the same 
 place, that it is lawful to kill even for a simple gesture, or a 
 sign of contempt. 'A man's honor,' he remarks, 'may be 
 attacked or filched away in various ways in all which vin- 
 dication appears very reasonable ; as, for instance, when one 
 offers to strike us with a stick, or give us a slap on the face, 
 or affront us either by words or signs sive per signal " 
 
 "Well, father," said I, " it must be owned that you have 
 made every possible provision to secure the safety of reputa- 
 tion ; but it strikes me that human life is greatly in danger, 
 if any one may be conscientiously put to death simply for a 
 defamatory speech or a saucy gesture." 
 
 " That is true," he replied ; " but as our fathers are very 
 circumspect, they have thought it proper to forbid putting 
 this doctrine into practice on such trifling occasions. They 
 say, at least, ' that it ought hardly to be reduced to practice 
 -practice vix probari potest.' And they have a good reason 
 for that, as you shall see." 
 
 " Oh ! I know what it will be," interrupted I ; " because 
 the law of God forbids us to kill, of course." 
 
 "They do not exactly take that ground," said the father; 
 " as a matter of conscience, and viewing the thing abstractly, 
 they hold it allowable." 
 
 " And why, then, do they forbid it ?" 
 
 " I shall tell you that, sir. It is because, were we to kill 
 all the defamers among us, we should very shortly depopu- 
 late the country. ' Although,' says Reginald, ' the opinion 
 that we may kill a man for calumny is not without its proba- 
 bility in theory, the contrary one ought to be followed in 
 practice ; for, in our mode of defending ourselves, we should 
 always avoid doing injury to the commonwealth ; and it is
 
 164 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 evident that by killing people in this way there would be too 
 many murders.' ' We should be on our guard,' says Lessius, 
 ' lest the practice of this maxim prove hurtful to the State ; 
 for in this case it ought not to be permitted tune enim non 
 esl permittendus.' " 
 
 " What, father ! is it forbidden only as a point of policy, 
 and not of religion ? Few people, I am afraid, will pay any 
 regard to such a prohibition, particularly when in a passion. 
 Very probably they might think they were doing no harm to 
 the State, by ridding it of an unworthy member." 
 
 " And accordingly," replied the monk, " our Filiutius has 
 fortified that argument with another, which is of no slender 
 importance, namely, ' that for killing people after this man- 
 ner, one might be punished in a court of justice.' " 
 
 " There now, father ; I told you before, that you will never 
 be able to do anything worth the while, unless you get the 
 magistrates to go along with you." 
 
 " The magistrates," said the father, " as they do not pen- 
 etrate into the conscience, judge merely of the outside of the 
 action, while we look principally to the intention ; and hence 
 it occasionally happens that our maxims are a little different 
 from theirs." 
 
 " Be that as it may, father ; from yours, at least, one thing 
 may be fairly inferred that, by taking care not to injure the 
 commonwealth, we may kill defamers with a safe conscience, 
 provided we can do it with a sound skin. But, sir, after 
 having seen so well to the protection of honor, have you 
 done nothing for property ? I am aware it is of inferior im- 
 portance, but that does not signify ; I should think one 
 might direct one's intention to kill for its preservation also." 
 
 " Yes," replied the monk ; " and I gave you a hint to that 
 effect already, which may have suggested the idea to you. 
 All our casuists agree in that opinion ; and they even extend 
 the permission to those cases ' where no further violence is 
 apprehended from those that steal our property ; as, for ex 
 ample, where the thief runs away.' Azor, one of our Society, 
 proves that point."
 
 KILLING FOR PROPERTY. 165 
 
 " But, sir, how much must the article be worth, to justify 
 our proceeding to that extremity ?" )lk . 
 
 " According to Reginald and Tanner, 'the article must be 
 of great value in the estimation of a judicious man.' And so 
 think Layman and Filiutius." 
 
 " But, father, that is saying nothing to the purpose ; where 
 am I to find ' a judicious man' (a rare person to meet with at 
 any time), in order to make this estimation ? Why do they 
 not settle upon an exact sum at once ?" 
 
 " Ay, indeed !" retorted the monk ; " and was it so easy, 
 think you, to adjust the comparative value between the life 
 of a man, and a Christian man, too, and money ? It is here 
 I would have you feel the need of our casuists. Show me 
 any of your ancient fathers who will tell for how much money 
 we may be allowed to kill a man. What will they say, but 
 ' Non occides Thou shalt not kill ?' " 
 
 " And who, then, has ventured to fix that sum ?" I in- 
 quired. 
 
 " Our great and incomparable Molina," he replied " the 
 glory of our Society who has, in his inimitable wisdom, 
 estimated the life of a man ' at six or seven ducats ; for 
 which sum he assures us it is warrantable to kill a thief, 
 even though he should run off;' and he adds, 'that he would 
 not venture to condemn that man as guilty of any sin who 
 should kill another for taking away an article worth a crown, 
 or even less unius aurei, vel minoris adhuc valoris ;' which 
 has led Escobar to lay it down as a general rule, ' that a man 
 may be killed quite regularly, according to Molina, for the 
 value of a crown-piece.' " 
 
 " father !" cried I, " where can Molina have got all this 
 wisdom to enable him to determine a matter of such impor- 
 tance, without any aid from Scripture, the councils, or the 
 fathers ? It is quite evident that he has obtained an illumi- 
 nation peculiar to himself, and is far beyond St. Augustine 
 in the matter of homicide, as well as of grace. Well, now, 
 I suppose I may consider myself master of this chapter of 
 morals : and I see perfectly that, with the exception of eccle-
 
 166 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 siastics, nobody need refrain from killing those who injure 
 them in their property or reputation." 
 
 " What say you ?" exclaimed the monk. " Do you then 
 suppose that it would be reasonable that those who ought 
 of all men to be most respected, should alone be exposed -to 
 the insolence of the wicked ? Our fathers have provided 
 against that disorder ; for Tanner declares that ' Churchmen, 
 and even monks, are permitted to kill, for the purpose of 
 defending not only their lives, but their property, and that 
 of their community.' Molina, Escobar, Becan, Reginald, 
 Layman, Lessius, and others, hold the same language. Nay, 
 according to our celebrated Father Lamy,* priests and monks 
 may lawfully prevent those who would injure them by cal- 
 umnies from carrying their ill designs into effect, by putting 
 them to death. Care, however, must be always taken to 
 direct the intention properly. His words are: 'An ecclesi- 
 astic or a monk may warrant-ably kill a defamer who threatens 
 to publish the scandalous crimes of his community, or his 
 own crimes, when there is no other way of stopping him ; 
 if, for instance, he is prepared to circulate his defamations 
 unless promptly despatched. For, in these circumstances, as 
 the monk would be allowed to kill one who threatened to 
 take his life, he is also warranted to kill him who would de- 
 prive him of his reputation or his property, in the same way 
 as the men of the world.' " 
 
 " I was not aware of that," said I ; "in fact, I have been 
 accustomed simply enough to believe the very reverse, with- 
 out reflecting on the matter, in consequence of having heard 
 that the Church had such an abhorrence of bloodshed as 
 not even to permit ecclesiastical judges to attend in criminal 
 
 * Francois Amicus, or L'Amy, was chancellor of the University of 
 Gratz. In his Cours Theologique. published in 1642 he advances the 
 most dangerous tenets, particularly on the subject of murder. 
 
 \ This is true; but in the case of heretics, at least, they found out a 
 convenient mode of compromising the matter. Having condemned 
 their victim as worthy of death, he was delivered over to the secular 
 court, with the disgusting farce of a recommendation to mercy, couch* 
 ed in the* terms : " My ford judgfe, we beg df you vrith all podaible af.
 
 CHURCHMEN MAY KILL. 167 
 
 " Never mind that," lie replied ; " our Father Laray has 
 completely proved the doctrine I hive laid down, although, 
 with a humility which sits uncommonly well on so great a 
 man, he submits it to the judgment of his judicious readers. 
 Caramuel, too, our famous champion, quoting it in his Fun- 
 damental Theology, p. 543, thinks it so certain, that he de- 
 chores the contrary opinion to be destitute of probability, and 
 draws some admirable conclusions from it, such as the fol- 
 lowing, which he calls 'the conclusion of conclusions con- 
 dusionum conclusio :' ' That a priest not only may kill a 
 slanderer, but there are certain circumstances in which it 
 may be his duly to do so etiam aliquando debet occidere.' 
 He examines a great many new questions on this principle, 
 such as the following, for instance : 'May the Jesuits kill the 
 Jansenists ?' " 
 
 " A curious point of divinity that, father !" cried I. " I 
 hold the Jansenists to be. as good as dead men, according to 
 Father Lamy's doctrine." 
 
 "There now, you are in the wrong," said the monk: 
 " Caramuel infers the very reverse from the same principles." 
 
 " And how so, father ?" 
 
 " Because," he replied, " it is not in the power of the Jan- 
 senists to injure our reputation. 'The Jansenists,' says he, 
 ' call the Jesuits Pelagians ; may they not be killed for 
 that ? No ; inasmuch as the Jansenists can no more obscure 
 the glory of the Society than an owl can eclipse that of the 
 sun ; on the contrary, they have, though against their in- 
 tention, enhanced it occidi non possunt, quia nocere non po- 
 tuerunt.' " 
 
 " Ha, father ! do the lives of the Jansenists, then, depend 
 on the contingency of their injuring your reputation ? If so, 
 I reckon them far from being in a safe position ; for suppos- 
 
 fcction, for the love of God, and as you would expect the gifts of mercy 
 and compassion, and the benefit of our prayers, not to do anything in- 
 jurious to this miserable man, tending to death or the mutilation of his 
 body !" '(Crespin, Hist, des Martyres, p. 185.)
 
 188 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 ing it should be thought in the slightest degree probable that 
 they might do you some mischief, why, they are Mllable at 
 once !' You have only to draw up a sylllogism in due form, 
 and, with a direction of the intention, you may despatch your 
 man at once with a safe conscience. Thrice happy must 
 those hot spirits be who cannot bear with injuries, to be in- 
 structed in this doctrine ! But woe to the poor people who 
 have offended them ! Indeed, father, it would be better to 
 have to do with persons who have no religion at all, than 
 with those who have been taught on this system. For, after 
 ill, the intention of the wounder conveys no comfort to the 
 wounded. The poor man sees nothing of that secret direction 
 of which you speak ; he is only sensible of the direction of 
 the blow that is dealt him. And I am by no means sure 
 but a person would feel much less sorry to see himself bru- 
 tally killed by an infuriated villain, than to find himself con- 
 scientiously stilettoed by a devotee. To be plain with you, 
 father, I am somewhat staggered at all this; and these 
 questions of Father Lamy and Caramuel do not please me at 
 all." 
 
 "How so?" cried the monk. "Are you a Jansenist ?" 
 
 " I have another reason for it," I replied. " You must 
 know I am in the habit of writing from time to time, to a 
 friend of mine in the country, nil that I can learn of the max- 
 ims of your doctors. Now, although I do no more than 
 simply report and faithfully quote their own words, yet I am 
 apprehensive lest my letter should fall into the hands of some 
 stray genius, who may take into his head that I have done 
 you injury, and may draw some mischievous conclusion from 
 your premises." 
 
 " Away !" cried the monk ; " no fear of danger from that 
 quarter, I'll give you my word for it. Know that what our 
 fathers have themselves printed, with the approbation of 
 our superiors, it cannot be wrong to read nor dangerous to 
 publish." 
 
 I write you, therefore, on the faith of this worthy father's
 
 MAY JESUITS KILL JANSENISTS ? 169 
 
 word of honor. But, in the mean time, I must stop for want 
 of paper not of passages ; for I have got as many more in 
 reserve, and good ones too, as would require volumes to con- 
 tain them. I am, &c.* 
 
 * It may be noticed here, that Father Daniel has attempted to evade 
 the main charge against the Jesuits in this letter by adroitly altering the 
 state of the question. He argues that the intention is the soul of an 
 action, and that which often makes it good or evil ; thus cunningly in- 
 sinuating thnt his casuists refer only to indifferent actions, in regard to 
 which nobody denies that it is the "intention that makes them good or 
 bad. (Entretiens de Cleandre et d'Eudoxe, p. 334.) It is unnecessary 
 to do > more than refer the reader back to the instances cited in the letter, 
 to convince him that what these casuists really maintain is, that actions 
 in themselves evil, may be allowed, provided the intentions are good ; 
 a/id, moreover, that in order to make these intentions good, it is not ne- 
 cessary that they have any reference to God, but sufficient if they refer 
 to our own convenience, cupidity or vanity. (Apologie des LettresPro- 
 vinciales, pp. 212-221.) 
 
 8
 
 LETTER VIII.* 
 
 CORRUPT MAXIMS OF THE CASUISTS RELATING TO JUDGES USU- 
 
 EERS THE CONTRACT MOHATRA BANKRUPTS RESTITUTION 
 
 DIVERS RIDICULOUS NOTIONS OF THESE SAME CASUISTS. 
 
 PARIS, May 28, 1656. 
 
 SIR, You did not suppose that anybody would have the 
 curiosity to know who we were ; but it seems there are peo- 
 ple who are trying to make it out, though they are not very 
 happy in their conjectures. Some take me for a doctor of 
 the Sorbonne ; others ascribe my letters to four or five per- 
 sons, who, like me, are neither priests nor Churchmen. All 
 these false surmises convince me that I have succeeded pretty 
 well in my object, which was to conceal myself from all but 
 yourself and the worthy monk, who still continues to bear 
 with my visits, while I still contrive, though with considerable 
 difficulty, to bear with his conversations. I am obliged, how- 
 ever, to restrain myself; for were he to discover how much I 
 am shocked at his communications, he would discontinue 
 them, and thus put it out of my power to fulfil the promise 
 I gave you, of making you acquainted with their morality. 
 You ought to think a great deal of the violence which I thus 
 do to my own feelings. It is no easy matter, I can assure 
 you, to stand still and see the whole system of Christian eth- 
 ics undermined by such a set of monstrous principles, with- 
 out daring to put in a word of flat contradiction against them. 
 But after having borne so much for your satisfaction, I am 
 resolved I shall burst out for my own satisfaction in the end, 
 when his stock of information has been exhausted. Mean- 
 while, I shall repress my feelings as much as I possibly can ; 
 
 * ThiB Letter also WM revised by M. Nicole.
 
 MAXIMS FOB JUDGES. 11 
 
 for I find that the more I hold my tongue, he is the more 
 communicative. The last time I saw him, he told me so 
 many things, that I shall have some difficulty in repeating 
 them all. On the point of restitution you will find they have 
 some most convenient principles. For, however the good 
 monk palliates his maxims, those which I am about to lay 
 before you really go to sanction corrupt judges, usurers, bank- 
 rupts, thieves, prostitutes and sorcerers all of whom are 
 most libofally absolved from the obligation of restoring their 
 ill-gotten gains. It was thus the monk resumed the conver- 
 sation : 
 
 " At the commencement of our interviews, I engaged to 
 explain to you the maxims of our authors for all ranks and 
 classes ; and you have already seen those that relate to bene- 
 ficiaries, to priests, to monks, to domestics, and to gentlemen. 
 Let us now take a cursory glance of the remaining, and begin 
 with the judges. 
 
 " Now I am going to tell you one of the most important 
 and advantageous maxims which our fathers have laid down 
 in their favor. Its author is the learned Castro Palao, one 
 of our four-and-twenty elders. His words are: 'May a 
 judge, in a question of right and wrong, pronounce accord- 
 ing to a probable opinion, in preference to the more probable 
 opinion ? He may, even though it should be contrary to his 
 own judgment into contra propriam opinionem' " 
 
 " Well, father," cried I, " that is a very fair commence- 
 ment ! The judges, surely, are greatly obliged to you ; and 
 I am surprised that they should be so hostile, as we have 
 sometimes observed, to y*our probabilities, seeing these are so 
 favorable to them. For it would appear from this, that you 
 give them the same power over men's fortunes, as you have 
 given to yourselves over their consciences." 
 
 " You perceive we are far from -being actuated by self- 
 interest," returned he ; " we have had no other end in view 
 than the repose of their consciences ; and to the same use- 
 ful purpose has our great Molina devoted his attention, in re- 
 gard to the presents which may be made them. To remove
 
 172 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 any scruples which they might entertain in accepting of these 
 on certain occasions, he has been at the pains to draw out a 
 list of all those cases in which bribes may be taken with a 
 good conscience, provided, at least, there be no special law 
 forbidding them. He says: 'Judges may receive presents 
 from parties, when they are given them either for friendship's 
 sake, or in gratitude for some former act of justice, or to 
 induce them to give justice in future, or to oblige them to 
 pay particular attention to their case, or to engage them to 
 despatch it promptly.' The learned Escobar delivers himself 
 to the same effect : ' If there be a number of persons, none 
 of whom have more right than another to have their causes 
 disposed of, will the judge who accepts of something from 
 one of them on condition ex pacto of taking up his cause 
 first, be guilty of sin ? Certainly not, according to Layman ; 
 for, in common equity, he does no injury to the rest, by 
 granting to one, in consideration of his present, what he was 
 at liberty to grant to any of them he pleased ; and besides, 
 being under an equal obligation to them all in respect of their 
 right, he becomes more obliged to the individual who fur- 
 nished the donation, who thereby acquired for himself a pref- 
 erence above the rest a preference which seems capable of 
 a pecuniary valuation quce obligatio videtur pretio (Estimabi- 
 lis.' " 
 
 " May it please your reverence," said I, " after such a per- 
 mission, I am surprised that the first magistrates of the king- 
 dom should know no better. For the first president* has 
 actually carried an order in Parliament to prevent certain 
 clerks of court from taking money for that very sort of pref- 
 erence a sign that he is far from thinking it allowable in 
 judges ; and everybody has applauded this as a reform of 
 great benefit to all parties." 
 
 The worthy monk was surprised at this piece of intelli- 
 gence, and replied : " Are you sure of that ? I heard noth- 
 
 The president referred to was Pomponc de Bellievre. on whom M. 
 Peliason pronounced a beautiful eulogy.
 
 USURY. 173 
 
 ing about it. Our opinion, recollect, is only probable ; the 
 contrary is probable also." 
 
 "To tell you the truth, father," said I, "people think that 
 the first president has acted more than probablv well, and 
 that he has thus put a stop to a course of public corruption 
 which has been too long winked at." 
 
 " I am not far from being of the same mind," returned 
 he ; " but let us waive that point, and say no more about the 
 judges."' 
 
 " You are quite right, sir," said I ; " indeed, they are not 
 half thankful enough for all you have done for them." 
 
 "That is not my reason," said the father; "but there is 
 so much to be said on all the different classes, that we must 
 study brevity on each of them. Let us now say a word or 
 two about men of business. You are aware that our great 
 difficulty with these gentlemen is to keep them from usury 
 an object to accomplish which our fathers have been at par- 
 ticular pains ; for they hold this vice in such abhorrence, that 
 Escobar declares ' it is heresy to say that usury is no sin ;' 
 and Father Bauny has filled several pages of his Summary 
 of Sins with the pains and penalties due to usurers. He de- 
 clares them ' infamous during their life, and unworthy of sep- 
 ulture after their death.' " 
 
 " dear !" cried I, " I had no idea he was so severe." 
 
 " He can be severe enough when there is occasion for it," 
 said the ir/.onk ; " but then this learned casuist, having ob- 
 served that some are allured into usury merely from the love 
 of gain, remarks in the same place, that ' he would confer no 
 small obligation on society, who, while he guarded it against 
 the evil effects of usury, and of the sin which gives birth to 
 it, would suggest a method by which one's money might se- 
 cure as large, if not a larger profit, in some honest and law- 
 ful employment, than he could derive from usurious deal- 
 ings.' " 
 
 "Undoubtedly, father, there would be no more usurers 
 after that." 
 
 " Accordingly," continued he, " our casuist has suggested
 
 174 PROVINCIAL LETTERS, 
 
 ' a general method for all sorts of persons gentlemen, presi- 
 dents, councillors,' &c. ; and a very simple process it is, con- 
 ^sisting only in the use of certain words which must be pro- 
 nounced by the person in the act of lending his money ; after 
 which he mny take his interest for it without fear of being a 
 usurer, which he certainly would be on any other plan." 
 
 "And pray what may those mysterious words be, father?" 
 
 " I will give you them exactly in his own words," said the 
 father ; " for he has written his Summary in French, you 
 know, ' that it may be understood by everybody,' as he says 
 in the preface : ' The person from whom the loan is asked, 
 must answer, then, in this manner : I have got no money to 
 lend ; I have got a little, however, to lay out for an honest 
 and lawful profit. If you are anxious to have the sum you 
 mention in order to make something of it by your industry, 
 dividing the profit and loss between us, I may perhaps be 
 able to accommodate you. But now I think of it, as it may 
 be a matter of difficulty to agree about the profit, if you 
 will secure me a certain portion of it, and give me so much 
 for my principal, so that it incur no risk, we may come to 
 terms much sooner, and you shall touch the cash imme- 
 diately.' Is not that an easy plan for gaining money without 
 sin ? And has not Father Bauny good reason for conclud- 
 ing with these words : ' Such, in my opinion, is an excellent 
 pla * by which a great many people, who now provoke the 
 jusl indignation of God by their usuries, extortions, and illicit 
 bargains, might save themselves, in the way of making good, 
 honest, and legitimate profits?'" 
 
 " sir !" I exclaimed, " what potent words these must be ! 
 Dovbtless they must possess some latent virtue to chase away 
 the demon of usury which I know nothing of, for, in my 
 poor judgment, I always thought that that vice consisted in 
 recovering more money than what was lent." 
 
 " You know little about it indeed," he replied. "Usury, 
 according to our fathers, consists in little more than the in- 
 tention of taking the interest as usurious. Escobar, accord- 
 ingly, shows you how you may avoid usury by a simple shift
 
 THE MOHATRA. 175 
 
 of the intenticn. ' It would be downright usury,' says he, 
 ' to take interest from the borrower, if we should exact it as 
 due in point of justice ; but if only exacted as due in point 
 of gratitude, it is not usury. Again, it is not lawful to have 
 directly the intention of profiting by the money lent ; but tc 
 claim it through the medium of the benevolence of the bor- 
 rower media benevolentia is not usury.' These are subtle 
 methods ; but, to my mind, the best of them all (for we have 
 a great choice of them) is that of the Mohatra bargain." 
 
 " The Mohatra, father !" 
 
 " You are not acquainted with it, I see," returned he. 
 " The name is the only strange thing about it. Escobar will 
 explain it to you : ' The Mohatra bargain is effected by the 
 needy person purchasing some goods at a high price and on 
 credit, in order to sell them over again, at the same time aW 
 to the same merchant, for ready money and at a cheap rate.' 
 This is what we call the Mohatra a sort of bargain, you 
 perceive, by which a person receives a certain sum of ready 
 money, by becoming bound to pay more." 
 
 " But, sir, I really think nobody but Escobar has employed 
 such a term as that ; is it to be found in any other book ?" 
 
 " How little you do know of what is going on, to be sure !" 
 cried the father. " Why, the last work on theological mo- 
 rality, printed at Paris this very year, speaks of the Mohatra, 
 and learnedly, too. It is called Epilogus Summarum, and 
 is an abridgment of all the summaries of divinity extracted 
 from Suarez, Sanchez, Lessius, Fagundez, Hurtado, and other 
 celebrated casuists, as the title bears. There you will find it 
 said, at p. 54, that ' the Mohatra bargain takes place when 
 a man who has occasion for twenty pistoles purchases from a 
 merchant goods to the amount of thirty pistoles, payable 
 within a year, and sells them back to him on the spot for 
 twenty pistoles ready money.' This shows you that the 
 Mohatra is not such an unheard-of term as you supposed." 
 
 " But, father, is that sort of bargain lawful ?" 
 
 " Escobar," replied he, " tells us in the same place, that 
 there are laws which proliibit it under very severe penalties."
 
 176 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " It is useless, then, I suppose ?" 
 
 "Not at all; Escobar, in the same passage, suggests ex- 
 pedients for making it lawful : ' It is so, even though the 
 principal intention both of the buyer and seller is to make 
 money by the transaction, provided the seller, in disposing 
 of the goods, does not exceed their highest price, and in re- 
 purchasing them does not go below their lowest price, and 
 that no previous bargain has been made, expressly or other- 
 wise.' Lessius, however, maintains, that ' even though the 
 merchant has sold his goods, with the intention of re-purchas- 
 ing them at the lowest price, he is not bound to make resti- 
 tution of the profit thus acquired, unless, perhaps, as an act 
 of charity, in the case of the person from whom it has been 
 exacted being in poor circumstances, and not even then, if 
 he cannot do it without inconvenience si commode non 
 potest.' This is the utmost length to which they could go." 
 
 " Indeed, sir," said I, " any further indulgence would, I 
 should think, be rather too .much." 
 
 " Oh, our fathers know very well when it is time for them 
 to stop !" cried the monk. "So much, then, for the utility 
 of the Mohatra. I might have mentioned several other 
 methods, but these may suffice ; and I have now to say a 
 little in regard to those who are in embarrassed circumstances. 
 Our casuists have sought to relieve them, according to their 
 condition of life. For, if they have not enough of property 
 for a decent maintenance, and at the same time for paying 
 their debts, they permit them to secure a portion by making 
 a bankruptcy with their creditors.* This has been decided 
 
 * The Jesuits exemplified their own maxnv. in this case by the famous 
 bankruptcy of their College of St. Hermenigilde at Seville. We have 
 a full account of this in the memorial presented to the King of Spain hy 
 the luckless creditors. The simple pathos and sincere earnestness of 
 this document preclude all suspicion of the accuracy of its statements. 
 By the advice of their Father Provincial, the Jesuits, in March. 1645, 
 stopped payments after having horr-owed upwards of 450,000 ducats, 
 mostly from poor widows and friendless girls. This shameful affair 
 was exposed before the courts of justice, during a long litigation, in the 
 course of which it was discovered that the Jesuit fathers had been carry- 
 ing on extensive mercantile transactions, and that instead of spending 
 the money left them for pious uses such as ransoming captives, and
 
 ROBBERY. 177 
 
 by Lessius, and confirmed by Escobar, as follows: 'May a 
 person who turns bankrupt, with a good conscience keep 
 back as much of his personal estate as may be necessary to 
 maintain his family in a respectable way ne indecore moat? 
 I hold, with Lessius, that he may, even though he may have 
 acquired his wealth unjustly and by notorious crimes ex 
 injustitia et notorio delicto ; only, in this case, he is not at 
 liberty to retain so large an amount as he otherwise might.' " 
 
 " Indeed, father ! what a strange sort of charity is this, 
 to allow property to remain in the hands of the man who 
 has acquired it by rapine, to support him in his extravagance 
 rather than go into the hands of his creditors, to whom it le- 
 gitimately belongs !" 
 
 " It is impossible to please everybody," replied the father; 
 " and we have made it our particular study to relieve these 
 unfortunate people. This partiality to the poor has induced 
 our great Vasquez, cited by Castro Palao, to say, that 'if one 
 saw a thief going to rob a poor man, it would be lawful to 
 divert him from his purpose by pointing out to him some 
 rich individual, whom he might rob in place of the other.' 
 If you have not access to Vasquez or Castro Palao, you will 
 find the same thing in your copy of Escobar; for, as you 
 are aware, his work is little more than a compilation from 
 twenty-four of the most celebrated of our fathers. You will 
 find it in his treatise, entitled 'The Practice of our Society, 
 in the matter of Charity towards our Neighbors.' " 
 
 "A very singular kind of charity this," I observed, "to 
 save one man from suffering loss, by inflicting it upon an- 
 other ! But I suppose that, to complete the charity, the 
 charitable adviser would be bound in conscience to restore 
 to the rich man the sum which he had made him lose ?" 
 
 " Not at all, sir," returned the monk ; " for he did not rob 
 the man he only advised the other to do it. But only 
 attend to this notable decision of Father Bauny, on a case 
 which will still more astonish you, and in which you would 
 
 almsgiving they had devoted it to the purposes of what they termed 
 ' our poor little house of profession." (Theatre Jesuitique, p. 200, &c.)- 
 
 8*
 
 178 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 suppose there was a much stronger obligation to make res- 
 titution. Here are bis identical words : ' A person asks a 
 soldier to beat his neighbor, or to set fire to the barn of a 
 man that has injured him. The question is, Whether, in the 
 absence of the soldier, the person who employed him to com- 
 mit these outrages is bound to make reparation out of his 
 own pocket for the damage that has followed ? My opinion 
 is, that he is not. For none can be held bound to restitution, 
 where there has been no violation of justice ; and is justice 
 violated by asking another to do us a favor? As to the 
 nature of the request which he made, he is at liberty either 
 to acknowledge or deny it ; to whatever side he may incline, 
 it is a matter of "mere choice ; nothing obliges him to it, un- 
 less it may be the goodness, gentleness, and easiness of his 
 disposition. If the soldier, therefore, makes no reparation 
 for the mischief he has done, it ought not to be exacted from 
 him at whose request he injured the innocent/" 
 
 This sentence had very nearly broken up the whole con- 
 versation, for I was on the point of bursting into a laugh at 
 the idea of the goodness and gentleness of a burner of barns, 
 and at these strange sophisms which would exempt from the 
 duty of restitution the principal and real incendiary, whom 
 the civil magistrate would not exempt from the halter. But 
 had I not restrained myself, the worthy monk, who was per- 
 fectly serious, would have been displeased; he proceeded, 
 therefore, without any alteration of countenance, in his ob- 
 servnlions. 
 
 " From such a mass of evidence, you ought to be satisfied 
 now of the futility of your objections ; but we are losing 
 sight of our subject. To revert, then, to the succor which 
 our fathers apply to persons in straitened circumstances, 
 Lessius, among others, maintains that 'it is lawful to steal, 
 not only in a case of extreme necessity, but even where the 
 necessity is grave, though not extreme.' " 
 
 " This is somewhat startling, father," said I. " There are 
 very few people in this world who do not consider their cases 
 of necessity to be grave ones, and to whom, accordingly, you
 
 ILLICIT GAINS. . 179 
 
 would not give the right of stealing with a good conscience. 
 And though you should restrict the permission to those only 
 who are really and truly in that condition, you open the door 
 to an infinite number of petty larcenies which the magistrates 
 would punish in spite of your 'grave necessity,' and which 
 you ought to repress on a higher principle you who are 
 bound by your office to be the conservators, not of justice 
 only, but of charity between man and man, a grace which 
 this permission would destroy. For after all, now, is it not 
 a violation of the law of charity, and of our duty to our 
 neighbor, to deprive a man of his property in order to turn 
 it to our own advantage ? Such, at least, is the way I have 
 been taught to think hitherto." 
 
 " That will not always hold true," replied the monk ; "for 
 our great Molina has taught us that ' the rule of charity does 
 not bind us to deprive ourselves of a profit, in order thereby 
 to save our neighbor from a corresponding loss.' He ad- 
 vances this in corroboration of what he had undertaken to 
 prove ' that one is not bound in conscience to restore the 
 goods which another had put into his hands in order to cheat 
 his creditors.' Lessius holds the same opinion, on the same 
 ground.* Allow me to say, sir, that you have too little 
 compassion for people in distress. Our fathers have had 
 more charity than that comes to : they render ample justice 
 to the poor, as well as the rich ; and, I may add, to sinners 
 as well as saints. For, though far from having any predilec- 
 tion for criminals, they do not scruple to teach that the 
 property gained by crime may be lawfully retained. 'No 
 person,' says Lessius, speaking generally, 'is bound, either 
 by the lavv*of nature or by positive laws (that is, by any law), 
 to make restitution of what has been gained by committing a 
 criminal action, such as adultery, even though that action is 
 contrary to justice.' For, as Escobar comments on this 
 writer, 'though the property which a woman acquires by 
 adultery is certainly gained in an illicit way, yet once ac- 
 
 * Molina, t. ii., tr. 2. disp. 338. n. 8 ; Lessius. liv. ii.. ch. 20. dist. 19. 
 n. 168.
 
 180 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 quired, the possession of it is lawful quamvis mulier illicit^ 
 acquisat, licite tamen retinet acquisita.' It is on this prin- 
 ciple that the most celebrated of our writers have formally 
 decided that the bribe received by a judge f;om one of the 
 parties who has a bad case, in order to procure an unjust de- 
 cision in his favor, the money got by a soldier for killing a 
 man, or the emoluments gained by infamous crimes, may be 
 legitimately retained. Escobar, who has collected this from 
 a number of our authors, lays down this general rule on the 
 point, that ' the means acquired by infamous courses, such 
 as murder, unjust decisions, profligacy, &c., are legitimately 
 possessed, and none are obliged to restore them.' And 
 further, ' they may dispose of what they have received for 
 homicide, profligacy, &c_, as they please ; for the possession 
 is just, and they have acquired a propriety in the fruits of 
 their iniquity.' "* 
 
 " My dear father," cried I, " this is a mode of acquisition 
 which I never heard of before ; and I question much if the 
 law wll hold it good, or if it will consider assassination, in- 
 justice, and adultery, as giving valid titles to property." 
 
 "I do not know what your law-books may say on the 
 point," returned the monk ; " but I know well that our 
 books, which are the genuine rules for conscience, bear me 
 out in what I say. It is true they make one exception, in 
 which restitution is positively enjoined ; that is, in the case 
 of any receiving money from those who have no right to dis- 
 pose of their property, such as minors and monks. ' Unless/ 
 says the great Molina, ' a woman has received money from 
 one who cannot dispose of it, such as a monk or a minor 
 nisi mulier accepisset ab eo qui alienare non potest, ut a reli- 
 gioso et filio familias. In this case she must give back the 
 money.' And so says Escobar. "f 
 
 " May it please your reverence," said I, " the monks, 
 
 * Escobar, tr. 3, ex. 1, n. 23, tr. 5, ex. 5, n. 53. 
 t Molina, 1. torn. i. ; De Just., tr.2, disp. 94 ; Escobar, tr. 1, ex 8, n. 
 59, tr. 3, ex. 1, n. 23.
 
 ILLICIT GAINS. 181 
 
 I see, are more highly favored in this way than other 
 people." 
 
 " By no means," he replied ; " have they not done as 
 much generally for all minors, in which class monks may be 
 viewed as continuing all their lives ? It is barely an act of 
 justice to make them an exception ; but with regard to all 
 other people, there is no obligation whatever to refund to 
 them the money received from them for a criminal action. 
 For, as has been amply shown by Lessius, ' a wicked action 
 may have its price fixed in money, by calculating the advan- 
 tage received by the person who orders it to be done, and 
 the trouble taken by him who carries it into execution ; on 
 which account the latter is not bound to restore the money 
 he got for the deed, whatever that may have been homi- 
 cide, injustice, or a foul act' (for such are the illustrations 
 which he uniformly employs in this question) ; ' unless he 
 obtained the money from those having no right to dispose of 
 their property. You may object, perhaps, that he who has 
 obtained money for a piece of wickedness is sinning, and 
 therefore ought neither to receive nor retain it. But I reply, 
 that after the thing is done, there can be no sin either in 
 giving or in receiving payment for it.' The great Filiutius 
 enters still more minutely into details, remarking, ' that a 
 man is bound in conscience, to vary his payments for actions 
 of this sort, according to the different conditions of the in- 
 dividuals who commit them, and some may bring a higher 
 price than others.' This he confirms by very solid argu- 
 ments."* 
 
 He then pointed out to me, in his authors, some things of 
 this nature so indelicate that I should be ashamed to repeat 
 them ; and indeed the monk himself, who is a good man, 
 would have been horrified at them himself, were it not for 
 
 * Tr. 31, c. 9, n. 231. "Occultse fornicariaj debetur pretium in con- 
 cientia. et multo majore ratione, quam publics. Copia enim quam 
 occulta facit mulier sui corporis. multo plus valet quum ea quam pub- 
 lica facit meretrix ; nee ulla est lex positiva quae reddit earn incapacern 
 preJi. Idem dicendum de pretio promisso virgini, conjugate, moniali, 
 et cuicumque alii. Est enim omnium eadern ratio."
 
 182 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 the profound respect which he entertains for his fathers, and 
 which makes him receive with veneration everything that 
 proceeds from them. Meanwhile, I held my tongue, not so 
 much with the view of allowing him to enlarge on this mat- 
 ter, as from pure astonishment at finding the books of men 
 in holy orders stuffed with sentiments at once so horrible, so 
 iniquitous, and so silly. He went on, therefore, without in- 
 terruption in his discourse, concluding as follows : 
 
 " From these premises, our illustrious Molina decides the 
 following question (and after this, I think you will have got 
 enough) : ' If one has received money to perpetrate a wicked 
 action, is he obliged to restore it? We must distinguish 
 here,' says this great man ; ' if he has not done the deed, he 
 must give back the cash ; if he has, he is under no such obli- 
 gation !' * Such are some of our principles touching restitu- 
 tion. You have got a great deal of instruction to-day ; and 
 I should like, now, to see what proficiency you have made. 
 Come, then, answer me this question : ' Is a judge, who has 
 received a sum of money from one of the parties before him, 
 in order to pronounce a judgment in his favor, obliged to 
 make restitution ?' " 
 
 " You were just telling me a little ago, father, that he 
 was not." 
 
 " I told you no such thing," replied the father ; " did I 
 express myself so generally ? I told you he was not bound 
 to make restitution, provided he succeeded in gaining the 
 cause for the party who had the wrong side of the question. 
 But if a man has justice on his side, would you have him to 
 purchase the success of his cause, which is his legitimate 
 right ? You are very unconscionable. Justice, look you, is 
 a debt which the judge owes, and therefore he cannot sell 
 it ; but he cannot be said to owe injustice, and therefore he 
 may lawfully receive money for it. All our leading authors, 
 accordingly, agree in teaching 'that though a judge is bound 
 to restore the money he had received for doing an act of jus- 
 tice, unless it was given him out of mere generosity, he is not 
 
 * Quo'ed by Escobar, tr. 3 ; ex. 2, n. 138.
 
 SORCERY. 183 
 
 obliged to restore what he has received from a man in whose 
 favor-he has pronounced an unjust decision.' "* 
 
 This preposterous decision fairly dumbfounded me, and 
 while I was musing on its pernicious tendencies, the monk 
 had prepared another question for me. " Answer me again," 
 said he, " with a little more circumspection. Tell me now, 
 ' if a man who deals in divination is obliged to make resti- 
 tution of the money he has acquired in the exercise of Bis 
 art ?' " 
 
 " Just as you please, your reverence," said I. 
 
 " Eh ! what ! just as I please ! Indeed, but you are a 
 pretty scholar ! It would seem, according to your way of 
 talking, that the truth depended on our will and pleasure. 
 I see that, in the present case, you would never find it out 
 yourself : so I must send you to Sanchez for a solution of 
 the problem no less a man than Sanchez. In the first 
 place, he makes a distinction between ' the case of the diviner 
 who has recourse to astrology and other natural means, 
 and that of another who employs the diabolical art. In the 
 one case, he says, the diviner is bound to make restitution ; 
 in the other he is not.' Now, guess which of them is the 
 party bound ?" 
 
 " It is not difficult to find out that," said I. 
 
 " I see what you mean to say," he replied. " " You think 
 that he ought to make restitution in the case of his having 
 employed the agency of demons. But you know nothing 
 about it ; it is just the reverse. ' If,' says Sanchez, ' the 
 sorcerer has not taken care and pains to discover, by means 
 of the devil, what he could not have known otherwise, he 
 must make restitution-^-si nullam operam apposuit ut arte 
 diaboli id sciret ; but if he has been at that trouble, he is not 
 obliged.' " 
 
 " And why so, father ?" 
 
 " Don't you see ?" returned he. " It is because men may 
 
 * Molina, 94, 99 ; Reginald. 1. 10. 184 : Filiutius. tr. 31 : Escobar, 
 tr. 3 ; Lessius, 1. 2, 14.
 
 184 PROVINCIAL LETTEKS. 
 
 truly divine by the xid of the devil, whereas astrology is a 
 mere sham." 
 
 "But, sir, should the devil happen not to till the truth 
 (and he is not much more to be trusted than astrology), the 
 magician must, I should think, for the same reason, be obliged 
 to make restitution ?" 
 
 " Not always," replied the monk : " Distinguo, as Sanchez 
 says, here. ' If the magician be ignorant of the diabolic art 
 si sit artis diabolicce ignarus he is bound to restore : but if he 
 is an expert sorcerer, and has done all in his power to arrive 
 at the truth, the obligation ceases ; for the industry of such a 
 magician may be estimated at a certain sum of money.' " 
 
 " There is some sense in that," I said ; " for this is an ex- 
 cellent plan to induce sorcerers to aim at proficiency in their 
 art, in the hope of making an honest livelihood, as you would 
 say, by faithfully serving the public." 
 
 " You are making a jest of it, I suspect," said the father : 
 " that is very wrong. If you were to talk in that way in 
 places where you were not known, some people might take it 
 amiss, and charge you with turning sacred subjects into ridi- 
 cule." 
 
 " That, father, is a charge from which I could very easily 
 vindicate myself; for certain I am that whoever will be at the 
 trouble to examine the true meaning of my words will find 
 my object to be precisely the reverse ; and perhaps, sir, before 
 our conversations are ended, I may find an opportunity of 
 making this very amply apparent." 
 
 " Ho, ho," cried the monk, " there is no laughing in your 
 head now." 
 
 " I confess," said I, " that the suspicion that I intended to 
 laugh at things sacred, would be as painful for me to incur, 
 as it would be unjust in any to entertain it." 
 
 " I did not say it in earnest," returned the father ; " but 
 let us speak more seriously." 
 
 " I am quite disposed to do so, if you prefer it ; that de- 
 pends upon you, father. But I must say, that I have been 
 astonished to see your friends carrying their attentions to all
 
 ADVANTAGES OF THE MAXIMS. 185 
 
 rforts and conditions of men so far as even to regulate the 
 legitimate gains of sorcerers." 
 
 " One cannot write for too many people," said the monk, 
 " nor be too minute in particularizing cases, nor repeat the 
 same things too often in different books. You may be con- 
 vinced of this by the following anecdote, which is. related by 
 one of the gravest of our fathers, as you may well suppose, 
 seeing he is our present Provincial the reverend Father Cel- 
 lot : ' We know a person,' says he, ' who was carrying a 
 large sum of money in his pocket to restore it, in obedience 
 to the orders of his confessor, and who, stepping into a book- 
 seller's shop by the way, inquired if there was anything 
 new? numquid novi? when the bookseller showed him a 
 book on moral theology, recently published ; and turning over 
 the leaves carelessly, and without reflection, he lighted upon 
 a passage describing his own case, and saw that he was un- 
 der no obligation to make restitution : upon which, relieved 
 from the burden of his scruples, he returned home with a 
 purse no less heavy, and a heart much lighter, than when he 
 left it : abjecta scrupuli sarcina, retento auri pondere, levior 
 domvm repeiiit.'* 
 
 " Say, after hearing that, if it is useful or not to know our 
 maxims ? Will you laugh at them now ? or rather, are you 
 not prepared to join with Father Cellot in the pious reflec- 
 tion which he makes on the blessedness of that incident? 
 'Accidents of that kind,' he remarks, 'are, with God, the 
 effect of his providence ; with the guardian angel, the effect 
 of his good guidance; with the individuals to whom they 
 happen, the effect of their predestination. From all eternity, 
 God decided that the golden chain of their salvation should 
 depend on such and such an author, and not upon a hundred 
 others who say the same thing, because they never happen 
 to meet with them. Had that man not written, this man 
 would not have been saved. All, therefore, who find fault 
 with the multitude of our authors, we would beseech, in the 
 bowels of Jesus Christ, to beware of envying others those 
 
 * Cellot. liv. viii., de la Hierarch, c. 16, 2.
 
 186 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 books which the eternal election of God and the blood of Je- 
 sus Christ has purchased for them !' Such are the eloquent 
 terms in which this learned man proves so successfully the 
 proposition which he had advanced, namely, 'How useful it 
 must be to have a great many writers on moral theology 
 quam utlle sit de theologia morali multos scribere /' " 
 
 " Father," said I, " I shall defer giving you my opinion of 
 that passage to another opportunity ; in the mean time, I 
 shall only say that as your maxims are so useful, and as it is so 
 important to publish them, you ought to continue to give me 
 further instruction in them. For I can assure you that the 
 person to whom I send them shows my letters to a great 
 many people. Not that we intend to avail ourselves of them 
 in our own case ; but indeed we think it will be useful for 
 the world to be informed about them." 
 
 "Very well," rejoined the monk, "you see I do not con- 
 ceal them ; and, in continuation, I am ready to furnish you, at 
 our next interview, with an account of the comforts and 
 indulgences which our fathers allow, with the view of render- 
 ing salvation easy, and devotion agreeable ; so that in ad- 
 dition to what you have hitherto learned as to particular con- 
 ditions of men, you may learn what applies in general to all 
 classes, and thus you will have gone through a complete 
 course of instruction." So saying, the monk took his leave 
 of me. I am, <fec. 
 
 P. S. I have always forgot to tell you that there are dif- 
 ferent editions of Escobar. Should you think of purchasing 
 him, I would advise you to choose the Lyons edition, having 
 on the title-page the device of a lamb lying on a book sealed 
 with seven seals; or the Brussels edition of 1651. Both of 
 these are better and larger than the previous editions pub- 
 lished at Lyons in the years 1644 and 1646.* 
 
 * " Since all this, a new edition has been printed at Paris, by Piget, 
 more correct than any of the rest. But the sentiments of Escobar may 
 be still better ascertained from the great work on moral theology, print- 
 ed at Lyons." (Note in Nicole's edition of the Letters.) 
 
 I may avail myself of this space to remark, that not one of the charges
 
 FATHER DANIELS REPLY. 18 
 
 brought against the Jesuits in this letter has b"m met by Fathei 
 Daniel in his celebrated reply. Indeed, after sotne vain efforts to- con- 
 tradict about a dozen passages in the letters, he leaves avowedly more 
 than a hundred without daring to answer them. The pretext for thus 
 failing to perform what he professed to do, and what he so loudly boasts, 
 at the commencement, of his being able to do, is ingenious enough. 
 ' You will easily comprehend." says one of his characteis, "that this 
 confronting of texts and quotations is not a great treat for a man of my 
 taste. I could not stand this disagreeable labor much long"!." (Entre- 
 tiens de Cleandre et d'Eudoxe, p. 277.) We reserve rir -mr-k on 
 the pretended falsifications charged against Pascal, l ; H v \v?ret tf his 
 own masterly defence of himself in the subseque
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 FALSE WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN INTRODUCED BY THE JESUITS 
 DEVOTION MADE EAST THEIR MAXIMS ON AMBITION, ENVY, 
 GLUTTONY, EQUIVOCATION, AND MENTAL RESERVATIONS FEMALE 
 DRESS GAMING HEARING MASS. 
 
 PARIS, July 3, 1656! 
 
 SIR, I shall use as little ceremony with you as the 
 worthy monk did with me, when I saw him last. The- mo- 
 ment he perceived me, he came forward with his eyes fixed 
 on a book which he held in his hand^and accosted me thus : 
 " ' Would you not be infinitely obliged to any one who should 
 open to you the gates of paradise ? Would you not give 
 millions of gold to have a key by which you might gain ad- 
 mittance whenever you thought proper ? You need not be 
 at such expense ; here is one here are a hundred for much 
 less money.' " 
 
 At first I was at a loss to know whether the good fathei 
 was reading, or talking to me, but he soon put the matter 
 beyond doubt by adding : 
 
 " These, sir, are the opening words of a fine book, written 
 by Father Barry of our Society ; for I never give you any- 
 thing of my own." 
 
 "What book is it?" asked I. 
 
 " Here is its title," he replied : " 'Paradise opened to 
 Philagio, in a Hundred Devotions to the Mother of God, eas- 
 ily practised.' " 
 
 " Indeed, father ! and is each of these easy devotions a 
 sufficient passport to heaven ?" 
 
 " It is," returned he. " Listen to what follows : ' The de- 
 votions to the Mother of God, which you will find in this 
 book, are so many celestial keys, which will open wide to
 
 DEVOTIOX MADE EASY. 189 
 
 you the gates of paradise, provided you practise them ;' and 
 accordingly, he says at the conclusion, ' that he is satisfied 
 if you practise only one of them.' " 
 
 " Pray, then, father, do teach me one of the easiest of 
 them." 
 
 " They are all easy," he replied ; " for example ' Sa- 
 luting the Holy Virgin when you happen to meet her image 
 saying the little chaplet of the pleasures of the Virgin 
 fervently pronouncing the name of Mary commissioning the 
 angels to bow to her for us wishing to build her as many 
 churches as all the monarchs on earth have done bidding her 
 good morrow every morning, and good night in the evening 
 saying the Ave Maria every day, in honor of the heart of 
 Mary' which last devotion, he says, possesses the additional 
 virtue of securing us the heart of the Virgin."* 
 
 " But, father," said I, " only provided we give her our own 
 in return, I presume ?" 
 
 "That," he replied, "is not absolutely necessary, when 
 a person is too much attached to the world. Hear Father 
 Barry : ' Heart for heart would, no doubt, be highly proper ; 
 but yours is rather too much attached to the world, too much 
 bound up in the creature, so that I dare not advise you to 
 offer, at present, that poor little slave which you call your 
 heart.' And so he contents himself with the Ave Maria 
 which he had prescribed."! 
 
 " Why, this is extremely easy work," said I, " and I should 
 really think that nobody will be damned after that." 
 
 " Alas !" said the monk, " I see you have no idea of the 
 hardness of some people's hearts. There are some, sir, who 
 
 * fi Towards the conclusion of the tenth century, new accessions 
 were made to the worship of the Virgin. In this age, (the tenth cen- 
 tury) there are to be found manifest indications of the instituuon of the 
 rosary and croicn (or chaplet) of the Virgin, by which her worshippers 
 were to reckon the number of prayers they were to offer to this new 
 divinity. The rosary consists of fifteen repetitions of the Lord's Prayer, 
 and a hundred and fitly salutations of the blessed Vircrin ; while "the 
 crown consists in six or seven repetitions of the Lord's Prayer, and 
 seven times ten salutations, or Ave Marias." (Mosheim cent. I.) 
 
 t These are the devotions presented at pp. 33, 59. 145, 156, 172, 258, 
 430 of the first edition.
 
 190 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 would never engage to repeat, every day, even these simple 
 words, Good day, Good evening, just because such a prac- 
 tice would require some exertion of memory. And, accord- 
 ingly, it became necessary for Father Barry to furnish them 
 with expedients still easier, such as wearing a chaplet night 
 and day on the arm, in the form of a bracelet, or carrying 
 about one's person a rosary, or an image of the Virgin.* 
 ' And, tell me now,' as Father Barry says, ' if I have not pro- 
 vided you with easy devotions to obtain the good graces of 
 Mary ?' " 
 
 " Extremely easy indeed, father," I observed. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " it is as much as could possibly be done, 
 and I think should be quite satisfactory. For he must be a 
 wretched creature indeed, who would not spare a single mo- 
 ment in all his lifetime to put a chaplet on his arm, or a ro- 
 sary in his pocket, and thus secure his salvation ; and that, 
 too, with so much certainty that none who have tried the 
 experiment have ever found it to fail, in whatever way they 
 may have lived ; though, let me add, we exhort people not 
 to omit holy living. Let me refer you to the example of this, 
 given at p. 34 ; it is that of a female who, while she prac- 
 tised daily the devotion of saluting the images of the Virgin, 
 spent all her days in mortal sin, and yet was saved after all, 
 by the merit of that single devotion." 
 
 " And how so ?" cried I. 
 
 " Our Saviour," he replied, " raised her up again, for the 
 eery purpose of showing it. So certain it is, that none can 
 perish who practise any one of these devotions." 
 
 " My dear sir," I observed, " I am fully aware that the 
 devotions to the Virgin are a powerful mean of salvation, and 
 that the least of them, if flowing from the exercise of faith 
 and charity, as in the case of the saints who have practised 
 them, are of great merit ; but to make persons believe that, 
 by practising these without reforming their wicked lives, they 
 will be converted by them at the hour of death, or that God 
 will raise them up again, does appear calculated rather to 
 
 See the devotions, at pp. 14, 396, 447.
 
 DEVOTION MADE EAST. 191 
 
 keep sinners going on in their evil courses, by deluding them 
 with false peace and fool-hardy confidence, than to draw them 
 off from sin by that genuine conversion which grace alone 
 can effect."* 
 
 % " What does it matter," replied the monk, " by what road 
 we enter paradise, provided we do enter it ? as our famous 
 Father Binet, formerly our provincial, remarks on a similar 
 subject, in his excellent book On the Mark of Predestination, 
 ' Be it by hook or by crook,' as he says, ' what need we care, 
 if we reach at last the celestial city.' " 
 
 " Granted," said I ; " but the great question is, if we will 
 get there at all ?" 
 
 " The Virgin will be answerable for that," returned he ; 
 " so says Father Barry in the concluding lines of his book : 
 ' If, at the hour of death, the enemy should happen to put 
 in some claim upon you, and occasion disturbance in the little 
 commonwealth of your thoughts, you have only to say that 
 Mary will answer for you, and that he must make his appli- 
 cation to her.' " 
 
 " But, father, it might be possible to puzzle you, were one 
 disposed to push the question a little further. Who, for 
 example., has assured us that the Virgin will be answerable 
 in this case ?" 
 
 " Father Barry will be answerable for her," he replied. 
 " ' As for the profit and happiness to be derived from these 
 devotions,' he says, ' I will be answerable for that ; I will 
 stand bail for the good Mother.' " 
 
 " But, father, who is to be answerable for Father Barry ?" 
 
 " How !" cried the monk ; " for Father Barry ? is he not a 
 member of our Society ? and do you need to be told that 
 
 * The Jesuits raised a great outcry against Pascal for having, in this 
 letter, as they alleged, turned the worship of the Virgin into ridicule. 
 Nicole seriously undertakes his defence, and draws several distinctions 
 between true and false devotion to the Virgin. The Mariolatry or 
 Mary-worship, of Pascal and^the Port-Royalists, was certainly a differ- 
 ent sort of thing from that practised in the Church of Rome ; but it is 
 sad to see the straits to which these sincere devotees were reduced, in 
 their attempts to reconcile this practice with the honor due to God and 
 his Son..
 
 192 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 our Society is answerable for all the books of its members ? 
 It is highly necessary and important for you to know about 
 this. There is an order in our Society, by which all book- 
 sellers are prohibited from printing any work of our fathers 
 without the approbation of our divines and the permission 
 of our superiors. This regulation was passed by Henry III., 
 10th May 1583, and confirmed by Henry IV., 20th Decem- 
 ber 1603, and by Louis XIII., 14th February 1612 ; so that 
 the whole of our body stands responsible for the publica- 
 tions of each of the brethren. This is a feature quite pecu- 
 liar to our community. And, in consequence of this, not a 
 single work emanates from us which does not breathe the 
 spirit of the Society. That, sir, is a piece of information 
 quite apropos."* 
 
 "My good father," said I, "you oblige me very much, and 
 I only regret that I did not know this sooner, as it will in- 
 duce me to pay considerably more attention to your au- 
 thors." 
 
 " I would have told you sooner," he replied, " had an op- 
 portunity offered ; I hope, however, you will profit by the in- 
 formation in future, and, in the mean time, let us prosecute 
 our subject. The methods of securing salvation which I 
 have mentioned are, in my opinion, very easy, very sure, and 
 sufficiently numerous ; but it was the anxious wish of our 
 doctors that people should not stop short at this first step, 
 where they only do what is absolutely necessary for salva- 
 tion, and nothing more. Aspiring, as they do without ceas- 
 ing, after the greater glory of God,f they sought to elevate 
 
 * Father Daniel makes an. ingenious attempt to take off the force of 
 this statement, by representing it as no more than what is done by 
 other societies, universities, &c. (Entretiens, p. 32.) But while these 
 bodies acted in good faith on this rule, the Jesuits (as Pascal afterwards 
 shows. Letter xiii.) made it subservient to their double policy. Pascal's 
 point was gained by establishing the fact, that the books published by 
 the Jesuits had the imprimatur of the Society : and. in answer. to all 
 that Daniel has said on the point, it may be sufficient to ask, Why not 
 try the simple plan of denouncing the error and censuring the author? 
 (See Letter v.. p. 117.) 
 
 f There is an allusion here to the phrase which is perpetually occur- 
 ring in the Constitutions of the Jesuits, " Ad major sm Dei glo~iam To
 
 DEVOTION MADE EASY. 193 
 
 men to a higher pitch of piety ; and as men of the world 
 are generally deterred from devotion by the strange ideas 
 they have been led to form of it by some people, we have 
 deemed it of the highest importance to remove this obstacle 
 , which meets us at the threshold. In this department Fa- 
 ther Le Moine has acquired much fame, by his work entitled 
 DEVOTION MADE EASY, composed for this very purpose. The 
 picture which he draws of devotion in this work is perfectly 
 charming. None ever understood the subject before him. 
 Only hear what he says in the beginning of his work : ' Vir- 
 tue has never as yet been seen aright ; no portrait of her, 
 hitherto produced, has borne the least verisimilitude. It is 
 by no means surprising that so few have attempted to scale 
 her rocky eminence. She has been held up as a cross-tem- 
 pered dame, whose only delight is in solitude ; she has been 
 associated with toil and sorrow ; and, in short, represented 
 as the foe of sports and diversions, which are, in fact, the 
 flowers of joy and the seasoning of life.' " 
 
 "But, father, I am sure, I have heard at least, that there 
 have been great saints who led extremely austere lives." 
 
 " No doubt of that," he replied ; " but still, to use the 
 language of the doctor, ' there have always been a number 
 of genteel saints, and well-bred devotees ;' and this differ- 
 ence in their manners, mark you, arises entirely from a differ- 
 ence of humors. ' I am far from -denying,' says my author, 
 ' that there are devout persons to be met with, pale and mel 
 ancholy in their temperament, fond of silence and retirement, 
 with phlegm instead of blood in their veins, and with faces 
 of clay ; but there are many others of a happier complexion, 
 and who possess that sweet and warm humor, that genial 
 and rectified blood, which is the true stuff that joy is made of.' 
 
 " You see," resumed the monk, " that the love of silence 
 and retirement is not common to all devout people ; and that, 
 as I was saying, this is the effect rather of their complexion 
 than their piety. Those austere manners to which you refer, 
 
 the greater glory of God," which is the reason ostentatiously paraded 
 (r>t almost all their l.iwjg and customs. 
 Q
 
 194 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 are, in fact, properly the cLaracter of a savage and barbarian, 
 and, accordingly, you will find them ranked by Father Le 
 Moine among the ridiculous and brutal manners of a moping 
 idiot. The following is the description he has drawn of one 
 of these in the seventh book of his Moral Pictures : ' He 
 has no eyes for the beauties of art or nature. Were he to 
 indulge in anything that gave him pleasure, he would con- 
 sider himself oppressed with a grievous load. On festival 
 days, he retires to hold fellowship with the dead. He de- 
 lights in a grotto rather than a palace, and prefers the stump 
 of a tree to a throne. As to injuries and affronts, he is as 
 insensible to them as if he had the eyes and ears of a statue. 
 Honor and glory are idols with whom he has no acquaintance, 
 and to whom he has no incense to offer. To him a beautiful 
 woman is no better than a spectre ; and those imperial and 
 commanding looks those charming tyrants who hold so 
 many slaves in willing and chainless servitude have no more 
 influence over his optics than the sun over those of owls,' &c." 
 
 " Reverend sir," said I, " had you not told me that Father 
 Le Mbine was the author of that description, I declare I 
 would have guessed it to be the production of some profane 
 fellow, who had drawn it expressly with the view of turning 
 the saints into ridicule. For if that is not the picture of a 
 man entirely denied to those feelings which the Gospel obliges 
 us to renounce, I confess -that I know nothing of the mat- 
 ter."* 
 
 "You may now perceive, then, the extent of your igno- 
 rance," he replied ; " for these are the features of a feeble, 
 uncultivated mind, ' destitute of those virtuous and natural 
 affections which it ought to possess,' as Father Le Moine 
 says at the close of that description. Such is his way of 
 teaching ' Christian virtue and philosophy,' as he announces 
 in his advertisement ; and, in truth, it cannot be denied that 
 this method of treating devotion is much more agreeable to 
 
 * I f Rome be in the right, Pascal's notion is correct. The religion 
 of the monastery is the only sort of piety or seriousness known to, 01 
 sanctioned by, the Romish Church.
 
 VMBITION. 195 
 
 the taste of the world than the old way in which they went 
 to work before our times." 
 
 "There can be no comparison between them," was my re- 
 ply, " and I now begin to hope that you will be as good as 
 your word." 
 
 " You will see that -better by-and-by," returned the monk. 
 " Hitherto I have only spoken of piety in general, but, just 
 to show you more in detail how our fathers have disencum- 
 bered it of its toils and troubles, would it not be most con- 
 soling to the ambitious to learn that they may maintain gen- 
 uine devotion along with an inordinate love of greatness ?" 
 
 " What, father ! even though they should run to the ut- 
 most excess of ambition ?" 
 
 " Yes," he replied ; " for this would be only a venial sin, 
 unless they sought after greatness in order to offend God and 
 injure the State more effectually. Now venial sins do not 
 preclude a man from being devout, as the greatest saints are 
 not exempt from them.* ' Ambition,' says Escobar, ' which 
 consists in an inordinate appetite for place and power, is of 
 itself a venial sin ; but when such dignities are coveted for 
 the purpose of hurting the commonwealth, or having more 
 opportunity to offend God, these adventitious circumstances 
 render it mortal.' " 
 
 " Very savory doctrine, indeed, father." 
 
 "And is it not still more savory," continued the monk, 
 " for misers to be told, by the same authority, ' that the rich 
 are not guilty of mortal sin by refusing to give alms out of 
 their superfluity to the poor in the hour of their greatest 
 need ? scio in gravi pauperum necessitate divites non dando 
 super fiua, non peccare mortaliter.' " 
 
 " Why truly," said I, " if that be the case, I give up all 
 pretension to skill in the science of sins." 
 
 " To make you still more sensible of this," returned he, 
 "you have been accustomed to think, I suppose, that a good 
 
 * The Romish distinction of sins into venial and mortal, afforded too 
 fair a pretext for such sophistical conclusions to be overlooked by Jes- 
 uitical casuists.
 
 196 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 opinion of one's self, and a complacency in one's own works, 
 is a most dangerous sin ? Now, will you not be surprised if 
 I can show you that such a good opinion, even though there 
 should be no foundation for it, is so far from being a sin, that 
 it is, on the contrary, the gift of God ?" 
 
 " Is it possible, father ?'' 
 
 " That it is," said the monk ; " and our good Father 
 Garasse* shows it in his French Avork, entitled Summary of 
 the Capital Truths of Religion : ' It is a result of commu- 
 tative justice that all honest labor should find its recompense 
 either in praise or in self-satisfaction. When men of good 
 talents publish some excellent work, they are justly remune- 
 rated by public applause. But when a man of weak parts 
 has wrought hard at some worthless production, and fails to 
 obtain the praise of the public, in order that his labor may 
 not go without its reward, God imparts to him a personal 
 satisfaction, .which it would be worse than barbarous injus- 
 tice to envy him. It is thus that God, who is infinitely 
 just, has given even to frogs a certain complacency in their 
 own croaking.' " 
 
 " Very fine decisions in favor of vanity, ambition, and ava- 
 rice !" cried I ; " and envy, father, will it be more difficult to 
 find an excuse for it ?" 
 
 " That is a delicate point," he replied. " We require to 
 make use here of Father Bauny's distinction, which he lays 
 down in his Summary of Sins : ' Envy of the spiritual good 
 of our neighbor is mortal, but envy of his temporal good is 
 only venial.' " 
 
 " And why so, father ?" 
 
 " You shall hear," said he. " ' For the good that consists 
 in temporal things is so slender, and so insignificant in rela- 
 
 * Francois Garasse was a Jesuit of Angouleme; he died in 1631. 
 He was much followed as a preacher, his sermons being copiously in- 
 terlarded with buffoonery. His controversial works are full of fire and 
 fury; and his theological Summary, to which Pascal here refers, 
 abounds with eccentricities. It deserves to he mentioned, as some off- 
 set to the folly of this writer, that Father Garasse lost his life in conse- 
 quence of his attentions to his countrymen who were infected with ihe 
 plague.
 
 6LOTH. 197 
 
 tion to heaven, that it is of no consideration in the eyes of 
 God and his saints.' " 
 
 " But, father, if temporal good is so slender, and of so little 
 consideration, how do you come to permit men's lives to be 
 taken away in order to preserve it ?"* 
 
 " You mistake the matter entirely," returned the monk ; 
 " you were told that temporal good was of no consideration 
 in the eyes of God, but not in the eyes of men." 
 
 "That idea never occurred to me," I replied; "and now, 
 it is to be hoped that, in virtue of these same distinctions, 
 the world will get rid of mortal sins altogether." 
 
 " Do not flatter yourself with that," said the father ; 
 " there are still such things as mortal sins there is sloth, 
 for example." 
 
 " lx"ay, then, father dear !" I exclaimed, " after that, fare- 
 well to all ' the joys of life !' " 
 
 " Stay," said the monk, " when you have heard Escobar's 
 definition of that vice, you will perhaps change your tone : 
 ' Sloth,' he observes, ' lies in grieving that spiritual things are 
 spiritual, as if one should lament that the sacraments are the 
 sources of grace ; which would be a mortal sin.' " . 
 
 " O my dear sir !" cried I, " I don't think that anybody 
 ever took it into his head to be slothful in that way." 
 
 " And accordingly," he replied, " Escobar afterwards re- 
 marks : ' I must confess that it is very rarely that a person 
 falls into the sin of sloth.' You see now how important it is 
 to define things properly ?" 
 
 " Yes, father, and this brings to my mind your other defi- 
 nitions about assassinations, ambuscades, an$ superfluities. 
 But why have you not extended your method to all cases, 
 and given definitions of all vices in your way; so that people 
 may no longer sin in gratifying themselves?" 
 
 "It is not always essential," he replied, "to accomplish 
 
 that purpose by changing the definitions of things. I may 
 
 illustrate this by referring to the subject of good cheer, which 
 
 is accounted one )f the greatest pleasures of life, and which. 
 
 * See before, Letter vii., p. 159.
 
 193 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Escobar thus sanctions in his ' Practice according to our So- 
 ciety :' ' Is it allowable for a person to eat and drink to reple- 
 tion, unnecessarily, and solely for pleasure ? Certainly he may, 
 according to Sanchez, provided he does not thereby injure his 
 health ; because the natural appetite may be permitted to 
 enjoy its proper functions.' "* 
 
 " Well, father, that is certainly the most complete pas- 
 sage, and the most .finished maxim in the whole of your 
 moral system ! What comfortable inferences may be drawn 
 from it ! Why, and is gluttony, then, not even a venial 
 sin ?" 
 
 " Not in the shape I have just referred to," he replied ; 
 " but, according to the same author, it would be a venial sin 
 ' were a person to gorge himself, unnecessarily, with eating 
 and drinking, to such a degree as to produce vomiting.'f 
 So much for that point. I would now say a little about the 
 facilities we have invented for avoiding sin in worldly conver- 
 sations and intrigues. One of the most embarrassing of these 
 cases is how to avoid telling lies, particularly when one is 
 anxious to induce a belief in what is false. In such cases, 
 our doctrine of equivocations has been found of admirable 
 service, according to which, as Sanchez has it, ' it is permit- 
 ted to use ambiguous terms, leading people to understand 
 them in another sense from that in which we understand 
 them ourselves.' "J 
 
 " I know that already, father," said I. 
 
 "We have published it so often," continued he, "that at 
 length, it seems, everybody knows of it. But do you know 
 what is to be done when no equivocal words can be got ?" 
 
 " No, father." 
 
 " I thought as much," said the Jesuit ; " this is something 
 new, sir : I mean the doctrine of mental reservations. ' A 
 
 * " An comedere et liber e usque ad satietatem absque necessitate ob solam 
 voluptatem, sit peccatum ? Cum, Sanctio negative respnndeo, modo non 
 obsit valetudini, quid licite potest appetitus natitralis suis actibus frui." 
 (N. 102 ) 
 
 f " Si quis se usque ad vomitum ingurgitet." (Esc., n. 56.) 
 
 j Op. mor., p. 2, 1. 3, c. 6, n. 13.
 
 MENTAL RESERVATIONS. 199 
 
 man may swear,' as Sanchez says in the same place, 'that he 
 never did such a thing (though he actually did it), meaning 
 within himself that he did not do so on a certain day, or before 
 he was born, or understanding any other such circumstance, 
 while the words which he employs have no such sense as 
 w;>uld discover his meaning. And this is very convenient in 
 many cases, and quite innocent, when necessary or conducive 
 to one's health, honor, or advantage.' " 
 
 " Indeed, father ! is that not a lie, and perjury to boot ?" 
 
 " No," said the father ; " Sanchez and Filiutius prove 
 that it is not ; for, says the latter, ' it is the intention that 
 determines the quality of the action.'* And he suggests a 
 still surer method for avoiding falsehood, which is this : 
 After saying aloud, / swear that I have not done that, to 
 add, in a low voice, to-day ; or after saying aloud, / swear, 
 to interpose in a whisper, that I say, and then continue 
 aloud, that I have done that. This, you perceive, is telling 
 the truth. "f 
 
 "I grant it," said I; "it might possibly, however, be 
 found to be telling the truth in a low key, and falsehood in a 
 loud one ; besides, I should be afraid that many people might 
 not have sufficient presence of mind to avail themselves of 
 these methods." 
 
 " Our doctors," replied the Jesuit, " have taught, in the 
 same passage, for the benefit of such as might not be expert 
 in the use of these reservations, that no more is required of 
 
 * Tr. 25, chap. 11, n. 331, 328. 
 
 t The method by which Father Daniel evades this charge is truly 
 Jesuitical. First, he attempts to involve the question in a cloud of 
 difficulties, by supposing extreme cases, in which equivocation may be 
 allowed to preserve life, &c. He has then the assurance to quote 
 Scripture in defence of the practice, referring to the equivocations of 
 Abraham which he vindicates; to those of Tobit and the angel Ra- 
 phfifl. which he applauds; and even to thesnyingsof our blessed Lord, 
 which lie charges with equivocation ! (Entretiens, pp. 378, 382.) 
 Even Bossuet was nshamed of this abominable maxim. ' I know noth- 
 ing " he says speaking of Sanchez. " more pernicious in morality, than 
 the opinion of that Jesuit in regard to an oath ; he maintains that the 
 intention is necessary to an oath, without wnich in giving a false an- 
 swer to a judge, when questioned at the bar, one is not capable of per- 
 jury." (Journal de 1'Abbe le Dieu, apud Dissertation sur la foi qui e& 
 due au teinoignage de Pascal; &c., p. 50.)
 
 ZUU PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 them, to avoid lying, than simply to say that they have not 
 done what they have done, provided ' thev have, in general, 
 the intention of giving to their language the sense which an 
 able-man would give to it.' Be candid, now, and confess if 
 you have not often felt yourself embarrassed, in consequence 
 of not knowing this ?" 
 
 " Sometimes," said I. 
 
 "And will you not also acknowledge," continued he, 
 "that it would often prove very convenient to be absolved in 
 conscience from keeping certain engagements one may have 
 made?" 
 
 " The most convenient thing in the world !" I replied. 
 
 " Listen, then, to the general rule laid down by Escobar : 
 ' Promises are not binding, when the person in making them 
 had no intention to bind himself. Now, it seldom happens 
 that any have such an intention, unless when they confirm 
 their promises by an oath or contract ; so that when one sim- 
 ply says, / will do it, he means that he will do it if he does 
 not change his mind ; for he does not wish, by saying that, 
 to deprive himself of his liberty.' He gives other rules in 
 the same strain, which you may consult for yourself, and 
 tells us, in conclusion, ' that all this is taken from Molina 
 and our other authors, and is therefore settled beyond all 
 doubt.' " 
 
 "My dear father," I observed, "I had no idea that the 
 direction of the intention possessed the power of rendering 
 promises null and void." 
 
 "You must perceive," returned he, "what facility this 
 affords for prosecuting the business of life. But what has 
 given us the most trouble has been to regulate the commerce 
 between the sexes ; our fathers being more chary in the mat- 
 ter of chastity. Not but that they have discussed questions 
 of a very curious and very indulgent character, particularly 
 in reference to married and betrothed persons." 
 
 At this stage of the conversation I was made acquainted 
 with the most extraordinary questions you can well imagine. 
 He gave me enough of them to fill many letters ; but as you
 
 FEMALE DRESS. 201 
 
 show my communications to all sorts of persons, and rs I do 
 not choose to be the vehicle of such reading to those who 
 would make it the subject of diversion, I must decline even 
 giving the quotations. 
 
 The only thing to which I can venture to allude, out of all 
 the books which he showed me, and these in French, too, is 
 a passage which you will find in Father Bauny's Summary, p. 
 165, relating to certain little familiarities, which, provided 
 the intention is well directed, he explains " as passing for 
 gallant ;" and you will be surprised to find, at p. 148, a prin- 
 ciple of morals, as to the power which daughters have to dis- 
 pose of their persons without the leave of their relatives, 
 couched in these terms : " When that is done with the con- 
 sent of the daughter, although the father may have reason 
 to complain, it does not follow that she, or the person to 
 whom she has sacrificed her honor, has done him any wrong, 
 or violated' the rules of justice in regard to him ; for the 
 daughter has possession of her honor, as well as of her body, 
 and can do what she pleases with them, bating death or mu- 
 tilation of her members." Judge, from that specimen, of the 
 rest. It brings to my recollection a passage from a Heathen 
 poet, a much better casuist, it would appear, than these rev- 
 erend doctors ; for he- says, " that the person of a daughter 
 does not belong wholly to herself, but partly to her father 
 and partly to her mother, without whom she cannot dispose 
 of it, even in marriage." And I am much mistaken if there 
 is a single judge in the land who would not lay down as law 
 the very reverse of this maxim of Father Bauny. 
 
 This is all I dare tell you of this part of our conversation, 
 which lasted so long that I was obliged to beseech the monk 
 to change the subject. He did so, and proceeded to enter- 
 tain me with their regulations about female attire. 
 
 " We shall not speak," he said,- "of those who are actua- 
 ted by impure intentions ; but as to others, Escobar remarks, 
 that ' if the woman adorn herself without any evil intention, 
 but merely to gratify a natural inclination to vanity ob na- 
 turalem fastus inclinationem this is only a venial sin, or 
 9*
 
 202 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 rather no sin at all.' And Father Bauny maintains, that 
 ' even though the woman knows the bad effect which her care 
 in adorning her person may have upon the virtue of those 
 who may beheld her, all decked out in rich and precious 
 attire, she would not sin in so dressing.'* And among oth- 
 ers, he cites our Father Sanchez as being of the same mind." 
 
 " But, father, what do your authors say to those passages of 
 Scripture which so strongly denounce everything of that sort ?" 
 
 " Lessius has well met that objection," said the monk, " by 
 observing, ' that these passages of Scripture have the force 
 of precepts only in regard to the women of that period, who 
 were expected to exhibit, by their modest demeanor, an ex- 
 ample of edification to the Pagans.' " 
 
 " And where did he find that, father ?" 
 
 " It does not matter where he found it," replied he ; " it is 
 enough to know that the sentiments of these great men are 
 always probable of themselves. It deserves to 'be noticed, 
 however, that Father Le Moine has qualified this general per- 
 mission ; for he will on no account allow it to be extended to 
 the old ladies. ' Youth,' he observes, ' is naturally entitled 
 to adorn itself, nor can the use of ornament be condemned at 
 an age which is the flower and verdure of life. But there it 
 should be allowed to remain : it would be strangely out of 
 season to seek for roses on the snow. The stars alone have 
 a right to be always dancing, for they have the gift of per- 
 petual youth. The wisest course in this matter, therefore, 
 for old women, would be to consult good sense and a good 
 mirror, to yield to decency and necessity, and to retire at the 
 first approach of the shades of night.' "f 
 
 " A most judicious advice," I observed. 
 
 * Esc. tr. I, ex. 8 ; Summary of Sins. c. 46, p. 1094. 
 
 f " They had their Father Le Moine," said Cleandre, " and I am sur- 
 prised they did not oppose him to Pascal. That father had a lively 
 imagination and &Jlorid, brilliant style ; he stood high among polished 
 society, and his Apology written against the hook entitled ' The Moral 
 Theology of the Jesuits,' was hardly less popular than his Currycomb 
 for the Jansenist Pegasus." " The Society thought, perhaps," replied 
 Eudoxus, " that he could not easily catch the delicate and at the same 
 time easy style of Pascal. It was Father Le Moine's failing, to embel-
 
 HEARING MASS. 208 
 
 "But," continued the monk, "just to show you how care- 
 ful our fathers are about everything you can think of, 1 may 
 mention that, after granting the ladies permission to gamble, 
 and foreseeing that, in many cases, this license would be of 
 little avail unless J,hey had something to gamble with, they 
 have established another maxim in their favor, which will be 
 found in Escobar's chapter on larceny, n. 13 : 'A wife,' says 
 he, 'may gamble, and for this purpose may pilfer money 
 from her husband.' " 
 
 " Well, father, that is capital !" 
 
 ** There are many other good things besides that," said the 
 father ; " but we mast waive them, and say a little about 
 those more important maxims, which facilitate the practice of 
 holy things the manner of attending mass, for example. 
 On this subject our great divines, Gaspard Hurtado, and 
 Coninck, have taught ' that it is quite sufficient to be present 
 at mass in body, though we may be absent in spirit, provided 
 we maintain an outwardly respectful deportment.' Vasquez 
 goes a step further, maintaining ' that one fulfils the precept 
 of hearing mass, even though one should go with no such 
 intention at all.' All this is repeatedly laid down by Esco- 
 bar, who, in one passage, illustrates the point by the exam- 
 ple of those who are dragged to mass by force, and who put 
 on a fixed resolution not to listen to it." 
 
 "Truly, sir," said I, "had any other person told me that, 
 I would not have believed*it." 
 
 " In good sooth," he replied, " it requires all the support 
 which the authority of these great names can lend it ; and 
 so does the following maxim by the same Escobar, ' that 
 even a wicked intention, such as that of ogling the womenl 
 joined to that of hearing mass rightly, does not hinder a mail 
 from fulfilling the service.'* But another very convenient! 
 
 lish all he said, to be always aiming at something witty, and never to 
 speak simply. Perhaps, too, he did not feel himself equal for the com- 
 bat and did not like to commit himself." (Entretiens de Cleandre et 
 d'Eudoxe, p. 78.) 
 
 * " Nee obest alia prava intentio. ut aspiciendi libidinose fceminas." 
 (Esc. tr.l, ex. 11, n. 31.)
 
 204 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 device, suggested by our learned brother Turrian,'* is, that 
 ' one may hear the half of a mass from one priest, and the 
 other half from another; and that it makes no difference 
 though he should hear first the conclusion of the one, and then 
 the commencement of the other.' I might also mention that 
 it has been decided by several of our doctors, to be lawful 
 4 to hear the two halves of a mass at the same time, from the 
 lips of two different priests, one of whom is commencing the 
 mass, while the other is at the elevation ; it being quite pos- 
 sible to attend to both parties at once, and two halves of a 
 mass making a whole duce medietates unam missam consti- 
 tuunt.'\ ' From all which,' says Escobar, ' I conclude, that 
 you may hear mass in a very short period of time ; if, for 
 example, you should happen to hear four masses going on- a 4 
 the same time, so arranged that when the first is at the com- 
 mencement, the second is at the gospel, the third at the con- 
 secration, and the last at the communion.' " 
 
 " Certainly, father, according to that plan, one may hear 
 mass any day at Notre Dame in a twinkling." 
 
 " Well," replied he, " that just shows how admirably we 
 have succeeded in facilitating the hearing of mass. But I 
 am anxious now to show you how we have softened the use 
 of the sacraments, and particularly that of penance. It is 
 here that the benignity of our fathers shines in its truest 
 splendor ; and you will be really astonished to find that de- 
 votion, a thing which the world is so much afraid of, should 
 have been treated by our doctors with such consummate 
 skill, that, to use the words of Father Le Moine, in his Devo- 
 tion made Easy, ' demolishing the bugbear which the devil 
 had placed at its threshold, they have rendered it easier than 
 vice, and more agreeable than pleasure ; so that, in fact, 
 simply to live is incomparably more irksome than to live well. 
 Is that not a marvellous change, now ?" 
 
 "Indeed, father, I cannot help telling you a bit of my 
 
 * Select., p. 2, d. 16, Sub. 7. 
 
 t Bauny, Hurtado, Azor. &c. Escobar, " Practice for Hearing Masi 
 according to our Society." Lyons edition.
 
 HEARING MASS. 205 
 
 mind : I am sadly afraid that you have oversl ot the mark, 
 and that this indulgence of yours will shock more people 
 than it will attract. The mass, for example, is a thing so 
 grand and so holy, that, in the eyes of a great many, it 
 would be enough to blast the credit of your doctors forever, 
 to show them how you have spoken of it." 
 
 " With a certain class," replied the monk, " I allow that 
 may be the case ; but do you not know that we accommodate 
 ourselves to all sorts of persons ? You seem to have lost all 
 recollection of what I have repeatedly told you on this point. 
 The first time you are at leisure, therefore, I propose that 
 we make this the theme of our conversation, deferring till 
 then the lenitives we have introduced into the confessional. 
 I promise to make you understand it so well that you will 
 never forget it." 
 
 With these words we parted, so that our next conversa- 
 tion, I presume, will., turn on the policy of the Society. I 
 am, &c. 
 
 P. S. Since writing the above, I have seen " Paradise 
 Opened by a Hundred Devotions easily Practised," by Father 
 Barry ; and also the " Mark of Predestination," by Father 
 Binet ; both of them pieces well worth the seeing.
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 PALLIATIVES APPLIED BY THE JESUITS TO THE SACRAMENT OF 
 PENANCE, IN THEIR MAXIMS REGARDING CONFESSION, SATISFAC- 
 TION, ABSOLUTION, PROXIMATE OCCASIONS OF SIN, CONTRITION, 
 AND THE LOVE OF GOD. 
 
 PARIS, August 2, 1656. 
 
 SIR, I have not come yet to the policy of the Society, 
 but shall first introduce you to one of its leading principles. 
 I refer to the palliatives which they have applied to con- 
 fession, and "which are unquestionably the best of all the 
 schemes they have fallen upon to " attract all and repel 
 none." It is absolutely necessary to know something of this 
 before going any further; and, accordingly, the monk judged 
 it expedient to give me some instructions on the point, nearly 
 as follows : 
 
 " From what I have already stated," he observed, '" you 
 may judge of the success with which our doctors have la- 
 bored to discover, in their wisdom, that a great many things, 
 formerly regarded as forbidden, are innocent and allowable ; 
 but as there are some sins for which one can find no excuse, 
 and for which there is no remedy but confession, it became 
 necessary to alleviate, by the methods I am now going to 
 mention, the difficulties attending that practice. Thus, hav- 
 ing shown you, in our previous conversations, how we relieve 
 people from troublesome scruples of conscience, by showing 
 them that what they believed to be sinful was indeed quite 
 innocent, I proceed now to illustrate our convenient plan for 
 expiating what is really sinful, which is effected by making 
 (tonfession as easy a process as it was formerly a painful one." 
 
 " And how do you manage that, father ?" 
 
 " Why," said he, " it is by those admirable subtleties
 
 PIOUS FINESSE. 20*7 
 
 which are peculiar to our Company, and have been styled by 
 our fathers in Flanders, in " The Image of the First Cen- 
 tury,"* ' the pious finesse, the holy artifice of devotion 
 piam et religiosam calliditatem, et pietatis $olertiam.'\ By 
 the aid of these inventions, as they remark in the same place, 
 'crimes may be expiated now-a-days alacrius with more 
 zeal and alacrity than they were committed in former days, 
 and a great many people may be washed from their stains 
 almost. as cleverly as they contracted them plurimi vixcitius 
 maculas contrahunt quam eluunt.' " 
 
 " Pray, then, father, do teach me some of these most sal- 
 utary lessons of finesse." 
 
 " We have a good number of them," answered the monk ; 
 " for there are a great many irksome things about confession, 
 and for each of these we have devised a palliative. The 
 chief difficulties connected with this ordinance are the shame 
 of confessing certain sins, the trouble of specifying the cir- 
 cumstances of others, the penance exacted for them, the 
 resolution against relapsing into them, the avoidance of the 
 proximate occasions of sins, and the regret for having com- 
 mitted them. * I hope to convince you to-day, that it is now- 
 possible to get over all this with hardly any trouble at all ; 
 such is the care we have taken to allay the bitterness and 
 nauseousness of this very necessary medicine. For, to begin 
 with the difficulty of confessing certain sins, you are aware 
 it is of importance often to keep in the good graces of one's 
 confessor ; now, must it not be extremely convenient to be 
 permitted, as you are by our doctors, particularly Escobar 
 and Suarez, ' to have two confessors, one for the mortal sins 
 and another for the venial, in order to maintain a fair char- 
 acter with your ordinary confessor uti bonam famam apud 
 ordinarium tuealur provided you do not take occasion from 
 thence to indulge in mortal sin?' This is followed by an- 
 other ingenious contrivance for confessing a sin, even to the 
 ordinary confessor, without his perceiving that it was com- 
 mitted since the last confession, which is, ' to make a general 
 
 * See before, p. 116. f Imago Primi SenUi, 1. iii., c. 8.
 
 208 7AOV1NCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 confession, and huddle this last sin in a lump among the rest 
 which we confess.'* And I am sure you will own that the 
 following decision of Father Bauny goes far to alleviate the 
 shame which one must feel in confessing his relapses, namely, 
 ' that, except in certain cases, which rarely occur, the con- 
 fessor is not entitled to ask his penitent if the sin of which 
 he accuses himself is an habitual one, nor is the latter obliged 
 to answer such a question ; because the confessor has no 
 right to subject his penitent to the shame of disclosing his 
 frequent relapses.' " 
 
 " Indeed, father ! I might as well say that a physician has 
 no right to ask his patient if it is long since he had the fever. 
 Do not sins assume quite a different aspect according to cir- 
 cumstances ? and should it not be the object of a genuine 
 penitent to discover the whole state of his conscience to his 
 confessor, with the same sincerity and openheartedness as if 
 he were speaking to Jesus Christ himself, whose place the 
 priest occupies ? If so, how far is he from realizing such a 
 disposition, who, by concealing the frequency of his relapses, 
 conceals the aggravations of his offence !"f 
 
 I saw that this puzzled the worthy monk, for he attempted 
 to elude rather than resolve the difficulty, by turning my at- 
 tention to another of their rules, which only goes to estab- 
 lish a fresh abuse, instead of justifying in the least the de- 
 cision of Father Bauny ; a decision which, in my opinion, is 
 one of the most pernicious of their maxims, and calculated 
 to encourage profligate men to continue in their evil habits. 
 
 * Esc. tr. 7, a. 4, n. 135; also, Princ., ex. 2, n. 73. 
 
 t The practice of auricular confession was about three hundred years 
 old before the Reformation, having remained undetermined till the year 
 1150 after Christ. The early fathers were, beyond all question, decid- 
 edly opposed to it. Chrysostom reasons very differently from the text. 
 " But thou art ashamed to say that thou hast sinned ? Confess thy faults, 
 then, daily in thy prayer; for do I say, 'Confess them to thy fellow- 
 servant who may reproach thee therewith V No ; confess them to God 
 who healeth them." (In Ps. 1. horn. 2.) And to whom did Augustine 
 make his Confessions? Was it not to the same Being to whouf Duvid 
 in the Psalms and the publican in the Gospel, made theirs 1 " What 
 have I to do with men/' says this father, " that they should hear my 
 confessions, as if they were to heal all my diseases 1" (Confes., lib. x., 
 p. 3.)
 
 CONFESSION. 209 
 
 " I grant you," replied the father, " that habit aggravates 
 the malignity of a sin, but it does not alter its nature ; and 
 that is the reason why we do not insist on people confessing 
 it, according to the rule laid down by our fathers, and quoted 
 by Escobar, ' that one is only obliged to confess the circum- 
 stances that alter the species of the sin, and not those that 
 aggravate it.' Proceeding on this rule, Father Granados 
 says, ' that if one has eaten flesh in Lent, all he needs to do 
 is to confess that he has broken the fast, without specifying 
 whether it was by eating flesh, or by taking two fish meals.' 
 And, according to Reginald, ' a sorcerer who has employed 
 the diabolical art is not obliged to reveal that circumstance ; 
 it is enough to say that he has dealt in magic, without ex- 
 pressing whether it was by palmistry or by a paction with 
 the devil.' Fagundez, again, has decided that ' rape is not a 
 circumstance which one is bound to reveal, if the woman give 
 her consent.' All this is quoted by Escobar,* with many 
 other very curious decisions as to these circumstances, which 
 you may consult at your leisure." 
 
 "These 'artifices of devotion' are vastly convenient ir 
 their way," I observed. 
 
 "And yet," said the father, "notwithstanding all that, 
 they would go for nothing, sir, unless we had proceeded to 
 mollify penance, which, more than anything else, deters peo- 
 ple from confession. Now, however, the most squeamish 
 have nothing to dread from it, after what we have advanced 
 in our theses of the College of Clermont, where we hold that 
 if the confessor imposes a suitable penance, and the peni- 
 tent be unwilling to submit himself to it, the latter may go 
 home, waiving both the penance and the absolution.' Or, as 
 Escobar says, in giving the Practice of our Society, ' if the 
 penitent declare his willingness to have his penance remitted 
 to the next world, and to suffer iff purgatory all the pains 
 due to him, the confessor may, for the honor of the sacra- 
 ment, impose a very light penance on him, particularly if he 
 
 * Princ., ex. 2. n, 39, 41, 61, 62.
 
 210 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 has reason to believe that his penitent would object to a 
 heavier one.' " 
 
 " I really think," said I, " that, if that is the case, we 
 ought no longer to call confession the sacrament of pen- 
 ance." 
 
 " You are wrong," he replied ; " for we always administer 
 something in the way of penance, for the form's sake." 
 
 "But, father, do you suppose that a man is worthy of re- 
 ceiving absolution, when he will submit to nothing painful to 
 expiate his offences? And, in these circumstances, ought 
 you not to retain rather than remit their sins ? Are you not 
 aware of the extent of your ministry, and that you have the 
 power of binding and loosing ? Do you imagine" that you 
 are at liberty to give absolution indifferently to all who ask 
 it, and without ascertaining beforehand if Jesus Christ looses 
 in heaven those whom you loose on earth?"* 
 
 " What !" cried the father, " do you suppose that we do 
 not know that ' the confessor (as one remarks) ought to sit in 
 judgment on the disposition of his penitent, both because he 
 is bound not tp dispense the sacraments to the unworthy, 
 Jesus Christ having enjoined him to be a faithful steward, 
 and not give that which is holy unto dogs ; and because he 
 is a judge, and it is the duty of a judge to give righteous 
 judgment, by loosing the worthy and binding the unworthy, 
 and he ought not to absolve those whom Jesus Christ con- 
 demns.' " 
 
 " Whose words are these, father ?" 
 
 "Thej are the words of our father Filiutius," he replied. 
 
 "You astonish me," said I; "I took them to be a quo- 
 tation from one of the fathers of the Church. At all events, 
 
 * John xx. 23 : " Receive ye the Holy Ghost : Whose soever sins ye 
 remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, 
 they are retained.' 1 All the ancient fathers, such as Basil Ambrose, 
 Autrustinr and Chrysostom. explain this remission of skis as the work 
 of the Holy Ghost, and not of the apostles except ministerially, in the 
 use of th^ spiritual keys of doctrine and discipline, of intercessary prayer 
 aud of tli sacrampnts. (Ussher's. Jesuits' Challenge, p. 122 &c.) Even 
 the schoolmen held that the power of binding and loosing committed to 
 the ministers ot the Church is not absolute, but must be limited by elate 
 non errante, or when no errnr is committed in the use of the keys.
 
 ABSOLUTION. 211 
 
 sir, that passage ought to make an impression on the confes- 
 sors, and render them very circumspect in the dispensation of 
 this sacrament, to ascertain whether the regret of their peni- 
 tents is sufficient, and whether their promises of future 
 amendment are worthy of credit." 
 
 "That is not such a difficult matter," replied the father; 
 " Filiutius had^ more sense than to leave confessors in that 
 dilemma, and accordingly he suggests an easy way of getting 
 out of it, in the words immediately following : ' The confessor 
 may easily set his mind at rest as to the disposition of his 
 penitent ; for, if he fail to give sufficient evidence of sorrow, 
 the confessor has only to ask him if he does not detest the 
 sin in his heart, and if he answers that he does, he is bound 
 to believe it. The same thing may be said of resolutions as 
 to the future, unless the case involves an obligation to resti- 
 tution, or to avoid some proximate occasion of sin.' " 
 
 " As to that passage, father, I can easily believe that it is 
 Filiutius' own." 
 
 " You are mistaken though," said the father, " for he has 
 extracted it, word for word, from Suarez."* 
 
 " But, father, that last passage from Filiutius overturns 
 what he had laid down in the former. For confessors can 
 no longer be said to sit as judges on the disposition of their 
 penitents, if they are bound to take it simply upon their 
 word, in the absence of all satisfying signs of contrition. Are 
 the professions made on such occasions so infallible, that no 
 other sign is needed ? I question much if experience has 
 taught your fathers, that all who make fair promises are re- 
 markable for keeping them ; I am mistaken if they have not 
 often found the reverse." 
 
 " No matter," replied the monk ; " confessors are bound to 
 believe them for all that ; for Father Bauny, who was probed 
 this question to the bottom, has concluded ' that at whatever 
 time those who have fallen into frequent relapses, without 
 giving evidence' of amendment, present themselves before a 
 confessor, expressing their regret for the past, a.nd a good 
 
 * In 3 part, , 4, disp. 32, sect. 2, n. 2.
 
 212 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 purpose for the future, he is bound to believe them on their 
 simple averment, although there may be reason to presume 
 that such resolution only came from the teeth outwards. 
 Nay,' says he, ' though they should indulge subsequently to 
 greater excess than ever in the same delinquencies, still, in 
 my opinion, they may receive absolution.'* There now ! 
 that, I am sure, should silence you." 
 
 " But, father," said I, " you impose a great hardship, I 
 think, on the confessors, by thus obliging them to believe the 
 very reverse of what they see." 
 
 " You don't understand it," returned he ; " all that is 
 meant is, that they are obliged to act and absolve as if they 
 believed that their penitents would be true to their engage- 
 ments, though, in point of fact, they believe no such thing. 
 This is explained, immediately afterwards, by Suarez and Fi- 
 liutius. After having said that ' the priest is bound to believe 
 the penitent on his word,' they add, ' It is not necessary that 
 the confessor should be convinced that the good resolution 
 of his penitent will be carried into effect, nor even that he 
 should judge it probable ; it is enough that he thinks the 
 person has at the time the design in general, though he rnay 
 very shortly after relapse. Such is the doctrine of all our 
 authors ita docent omnes aufffres.' Will you presume to 
 doubt what has been taught by our authors ?" 
 
 " But, sir, what then becomes of what Father Petauf him- 
 self is obliged to own, in the preface to his Public Penance, 
 'that the holy fathers, doctors, and councils of the Church 
 
 * Summary of Sins, c. 46, p. 1090, 1, 2. 
 
 t Denis Petau (Dionysius Pctavius) a learned Jesuit, was born at 
 Orleans in 1593. and died in 1G52. The catalogue of his works alone 
 would fill a volume. He wrote in elegant Latin, on all subjects, gram- 
 mar, history, chronology, &c.. as well as theology. Perrault informs us 
 that he had an incredible ardor for the conversion of heretics, and had 
 almost succeeded in converting the celebrated Grotius a very unlikely 
 story. (Les Homines lllustres. p. 19.) His book on Public Penance 
 (Paris, 1(544) was intended as a refutation of Arnaulil s " Frequent 
 Communion ;" but is said to have been ill-written and unsuccessful. 
 Though he professed the theology of his order, he is said to have had a 
 kind of predilection for austere opinions, being naturally of a melan- 
 choly temper. When invited by the pope to visit Rome, he replied, " I 
 am too old toJIU" demenagtr. (Diet. Univ., art. Petau.)
 
 ABSOLUTION. 213 
 
 agree in holding it as a settled point, that the penance pre- 
 paratory to the eucharist must be genuine, constant, resolute, 
 and not languid and sluggish, or subject to after- thoughts 
 and relapses ?'" 
 
 'Don't you observe," replied the monk, "that Father Pe- 
 tau is speaking of the ancient Church ? But all that is now 
 so little in season, to use a common saying of our doctors, 
 that, according to Father Bauny, the reverse is the only true 
 view of the matter. 'There are spme,' says he, 'who main- 
 tain that absolution ought to be refused to those who fall fre- 
 quently into the same sins, more especially if, after being oft- 
 en absolved, they evince no signs of amendment ; and others 
 hold the opposite view. But the only true opinion is, that 
 they ought not to be refused absolution ; and though they 
 should be nothing the better of all the advice given them, 
 though they should have broken all their promises to lead 
 new lives, and been at no trouble to purify themselves, still it 
 is of no consequence ; whatever may be said to the contrary, 
 the true opinion which ought to be followed is, that even in 
 all these cases, they ought to be absolved.' And again : 
 ' Absolution ought neither to Tie denied nor delayed in the 
 case of those who live in habitual sins against the law of God, 
 of nature, and of the Church, although there should be no 
 apparent prospect of future amendment etsi cmendationis 
 futures nulla spes appareat.' " 
 
 " But, father, this certainty of always getting absolution 
 may induce sinners " 
 
 " I know what you mean," interrupted the Jesuit ; " but 
 listen to Father Bauny, q. 15 : ' Absolution may be given even 
 to him who candidly avows that the hope of being absolved 
 induced him to sin with more freedom than he would other- 
 wise have done.' And Father Caussin, defending this prop- 
 osition, says, ' that were this not true, confession would be 
 interdicted to the greater part of mankind ; and the only re- 
 source left for poor sinners would be a branch and a rope !' " ; 
 
 * Reply li the Moral Theol., p. 211.
 
 214 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " father, how these maxims of yours \vill draw people 
 to your confessionals !" 
 
 "Yes," he replied, "you would hardly believe what num- 
 bers are in the habit of frequenting them ; ' we are absolutely 
 oppressed and overwhelmed, so to speak, under the crowd 
 of our penitents penitentium numero obruimur' as is said 
 in 'The Image of the First Century.' " 
 
 " I could suggest a very simple method," said I, " to es- 
 cape from this inconvenient pressure. You have only to 
 oblige sinners to avoid the proximate occasions of sin ; that 
 single expedient would afford you relief at once." 
 
 "We have no wish for such a relief," rejoined the monk; 
 " quite the reverse ; for, as is observed in the same book, ' the 
 great end of our Society is to labor to establish the virtues, 
 to wage war on the vices, and to save a great number of 
 souls.' Now, as there are very few souls inclined to quit the 
 proximate occasions of sin, we have been obliged to define 
 what a proximate occasion is. ' That cannot be called a prox- 
 imate occasion,' says Escobar, 'where one sins but rarely, or 
 on a sudden transport say three or four times a year ;'* or, 
 as Father Bauny has it, ' once or twice in a month. 'f Again, 
 asks this author, ' what is to be done in the case of masters 
 and servants, or cousins, who, living under the same roof, are 
 by this occasion tempted to sin ?' " 
 
 " They ought to be separated," said I. 
 
 " That is what he says, too, ' if their relapses be very fre- 
 quent : but if the parties offend rarely, and cannot be sepa- 
 rated without trouble and loss, they may, according to Sua- 
 rez and other authors, be absolved, provided they promise to 
 sin no more, and are truly sorry for what is past.' " 
 
 This required no explanation, for he had already informed 
 me with what sort of evidence of contrition the confessor was 
 bound to rest satisfied. 
 
 "And Father Bauny," continued the monk, "permits 
 those who are involved in the proximate occasions of sin, ' to 
 remain as they are, when they cannot avoid them without 
 
 * EBC., Practice of the Society, tr 7, ex. 4, n. 226 f P- 1082, WB9
 
 OCCASIONS OF. SIN. 215 
 
 becoming the common talk of the world, or subjecting them- 
 selves to inconvenience.' 'A priest,' he remarks in another 
 work, ' may and ought to absolve a woman who is guilty of 
 living with a paramour, if she cannot put him away honora- 
 bly, or has some reason for keeping him si non potest honeste 
 ejicere, aut kabeat atiquam causam retinendi provided she 
 promises to act more virtuously for the future.' "* 
 
 " Well, father," cried I, " you have certainly succeeded in 
 relaxing the obligation of avoiding the occasions of sin to a 
 very comfortable extent, by dispensing with the duty as soon 
 as it becomes inconvenient ; bxit I should think your fathers 
 will at least allow it to be binding when there is no difficulty 
 in the way of its performance ?" 
 
 " Yes," said the father, " though even then the rule is not 
 without exceptions. For Father Bauny says, in the same 
 place, ' that any one may frequent profligate houses, with the 
 view of converting their unfortunate inmates, though the 
 probability should be that he fall into sin, having often expe- 
 rienced before that he has yielded to their fascinations. Some 
 doctors do not approve of this opinion, and hold that no man 
 may voluntarily put his salvation in peril to succor his neigh- 
 bor ; yet I decidedly embrace the opinion which they contro- 
 vert.' " 
 
 " A novel sort of preachers these, father ! But where does 
 Father Bauny find any ground for investing them with such 
 a mission ?" 
 
 " It is upon one of his own principles," he replied, " which 
 he announces in the same place after Basil Ponce. I men- 
 tioned it to you before, and I presume you have not forgotten 
 it. It is, ' that one may seek an occasion of sin, directly and 
 expressly primo et per se to promote the temporal or spir- 
 itual good of himself or his neighbor.' " 
 
 On hearing these passages, I felt so horrified that I was on 
 the point of breaking out ; but, being resolved to hear him 
 to an end, I restrained myself, and merely inquired : " How, 
 father, does this doctrine comport with that of the Gospel, 
 
 * Theol. Mor.. tr. 4, De Poenit.. q. 13 pp. 93, 94.
 
 216 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 which binds us to ' pluck out the right eye,' and ' cut off the 
 right hand,' wher. they 'offend, 'or prove prejudicial to salva- 
 tion ? And how can you suppose that the man who wilfully 
 indulges in the occasions of sins, sincerely hates sin ? Is it 
 not evident, on the contrary, that he has never been properly 
 touched with a sense of it, and that he has not yet experienced 
 that genuine conversion of heart, which makes a man love 
 God as much as he formerly loved the creature ?" 
 
 " Indeed !" cried he, " do you call that genuine contrition ? 
 It seems you do not know that, as Father Pintereau* says, 
 'all our fathers teach, with one accord, that it is an error, and 
 almost a heresy, to hold that contrition is necessary ; or that 
 attrition alone, induced by the sole motive, the fear of the 
 pains of hell, which excludes a disposition to offend, is not 
 sufficient with the sacrament ?' "f 
 
 " What, father ! do you mean to say that it is almost an 
 article of faith, that attrition, induced merely by fear of pun- 
 ishment, is sufficient with the sacrament ? That idea, I think, 
 is peculiar to your fathers ; for those other doctors who hold 
 that attrition is sufficient along with the sacrament, always 
 take care to show that it must be accompanied with some 
 love to God at least. It appears to me, moreover, that even 
 your own authors did not always consider this doctrine of 
 yours so certain. Your Father Suarez, for instance, speaks 
 
 * The work ascribed to Pintereau was entitled, " Les Impostures et 
 les Ignorances du Libelle intitule la Theologie Morale desJesuites: par 
 1'Abbe du Bokic." 
 
 f That is. the sacrament of penance, as it is called. "That contri- 
 tion is at all times necessarily required for obtaining remission of sins 
 and justification, is a matter determined by the fathers of Trent. But 
 mark yet the mystery. They equivocate with us in the term contrition, 
 and make a distinction thereof into perfect and imperfect. The former 
 of these is contrition properly; the latter they call attrition, which how- 
 soever in itself it be no true contrition, yet when the priest, with his 
 power of forgiving sins, interposes himself in the business, they tell us 
 that attrition, by virtue of the keys, is made contrition : that is to sny, 
 that a sorrow arising from a servile fear of punishment, and such a fruit- 
 less repentance as the reprobate may carry with them to hell, by virtue 
 of the priest's absolution, is made so fruitful that it shall serve the turn 
 for obtaining forgiveness of sins, as if it had been that godly sorrow 
 which worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of. By which 
 spiritual cozenage many poor souls are most miserably deluded/' (Usah- 
 er' Tracts, p. 1 63 )
 
 ATTRITION. 217 
 
 of it thus : ' Although it is a probable opinion that attrition 
 is sufficient with the sacrament, yet it is not certain, and it 
 may be false^ non est certa, et potest esse falsa. And if it is 
 false, attrition is not sufficient to save a man; and he that 
 dies knowingly in this state, wilfully exposes himself to the 
 grave peril of eternal damnation. For this opinion is neither 
 very ancient nor very common nee valde antiqua, nee multum 
 communis.' Sanchez was not more prepared to hold it as 
 infallible, when he said in his Summary, that ' the sick man 
 and his confessor, who content themselves at the hour of 
 death with attrition and the sacrament, are both chargeable 
 with mortal sin, on account of the great risk of damnation 
 to which the penitent would be exposed, if the opinion that 
 attrition is sufficient with the sacrament should not turn out 
 to be true.' Comitolus, too, says that ' we should not be too 
 sure that attrition suffices with the sacrament.' "* 
 
 Here the worthy father interrupted me. "What!" he 
 cried, " you read our authors then, it seems ? That is all 
 very well ; but it would be still better were you never to 
 read them without the precaution of having one of us beside 
 you. Do you not see, now, that, from having read them 
 alone, you have concluded, in your simplicity, that these pas- 
 sages bear hard on those who have more lately supported our 
 doctrine of attrition ? whereas it might be shown that nothing 
 could set them off to greater advantage. Only think what a 
 triumph it is for our fathers of the present day to have suc- 
 ceeded in disseminating their opinion in such short time, and 
 to such an extent that, with the exception of theologians, no- 
 body almost would ever suppose but that our modern views 
 on this subject had been the uniform belief of the faithful in 
 all ages ! So that, in fact, when you have shown, from our 
 fathers themselves, that, a few-years ago, ' this opinion was 
 not certain,' you have only succeeded in giving our modern 
 authors the whole merit of its establishment ! 
 
 * These quotations, carefully marked in the original, afford a suffi- 
 cient answer to Father Daniel's lon^ argument, which consists chiefly 
 of citations from Ieuit writers who hold the views afrove given. 
 10
 
 218 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " Accordingly," he continued, " our cordial friend Diana, 
 to gratify us, no doubt, has recounted the various steps by 
 which the opinion reached its present position.* ' In former 
 days, the ancient schoolmen maintained that contrition was 
 necessary as soon as one had committed a mortal sin ; since 
 then, however, it has been thought that it is not binding ex- 
 cept on festival days ; afterwards, only when some great 
 calamity threatened the people : others, again, that it ought 
 not to be long delayed at the approach of death. But our 
 fathers, Hurtado and Vasquez, have ably refuted all these 
 opinions, and established that one is not bound to contrition 
 unless he cannot be absolved in any other way, or at the 
 point of death !' But, to continue the wonderful progress 
 of this doctrine, I might add, what our fathers, Fagundez, 
 Granados, and Escobar, have decided, ' that contrition is not 
 necessary even at death ; because,' say they, ' if attrition 
 with the sacrament did not suffice at death, it would follow 
 that attrition would not be sufficient with the sacrament. 
 And the learned Hurtado, cited by Diana and Escobar, goes 
 still further ; for he asks, ' Is that sorrow for sin which flows 
 solely from apprehension of its temporal consequences, such 
 as having lost health or money, sufficient ? We must distin- 
 guish. If the evil is not regarded as sent by the hand of 
 God, such a sorrow does not suffice ; but if the evil is viewed 
 as sent by God, as, in fact, all evil, says Diana, except sin, 
 comes from him, that kind of sorrow is sufficient.'! Our 
 Father Lamy holds the same doctrine."J 
 
 " You surprise me, father ; for I see nothing in all that 
 attrition of which you speak but what is natural ; and in this 
 way a sinner may render himself worthy of absolution without 
 
 * It may be remembered that Diana, though not a Jesuit, was claimed 
 % the- Society as a favorer of their casuists. This writer was once held 
 in such high repute, that he was consulted by people from all parts of 
 the world as a perfect oracle in cases of conscience. He is now forgot- 
 ten. His style, like that of most of these scholastics, is described as 
 " insipid, stingy, and crawling." (Biogr. Univ., Anc. et Mod.) 
 
 t Esc. Pratique de notre Societe, tr. 7, ex. 4, n. 91. 
 
 t Tr. 8, diap. 3, n. 13.
 
 ATTRITION. 219 
 
 supernatural grace at all. Now everybody knows that this 
 is a heresy condemned by the Council."* 
 
 " I should have thought with you," he replied ; " and yet 
 it seems this must not be the case, for the fathers of our Col- 
 lege of Clermont have maintained (in their Theses of the 23rd 
 May and 6th June 1644) 'that attrition maybe holy and 
 sufficient for the sacrament, although it may not be super- 
 natural :' and (in that of August 1643) ' that attrition, though 
 merely natural, is sufficient for the sacrament, provided it is 
 honest.' I do not see what more could be said on the sub- 
 ject, unless we choose to subjoin an inference, which may be 
 easily drawn from these principles, namely, that contrition, sc 
 far from being necessary to the sacrament, is rather preju- 
 dicial to it, inasmuch as, by washing away sins of itself, it 
 would leave nothing for the sacrament to do at all. That is, 
 indeed, exactly what the celebrated Jesuit Father Valencia 
 remarks. (Tom. iv., disp. 7, q. 8, p. 4.) 'Contrition,' says 
 he, ' is by no means necessary in order to obtain the princi- 
 pal benefit of the sacrament ; on the contrary, it is rather an 
 obstacle in the way of it irho obstat potius quominus effectus 
 sefjuatur.' Nobody could well desire more to be said in 
 commendation of attrition. "f 
 
 " I believe that, father," said I ; " but you must allow me to 
 tell you my opinion, and to show you to what a dreadful 
 length this doctrine leads. When you say that ' attrition, 
 induced by the mere dread of punishment,' is sufficient, with 
 the sacrament, to justify sinners, does it not follow that a 
 person may always expiate his sins in this way, and thus be 
 
 * Of Trent. Nicole attempts to prove that the " imperfect contrition" 
 of this Council includes the love of God, and that they condemned aa 
 heretical the opinion, that c; any could prepare himself for grace with- 
 out a movement of the Holy Spirit." He is more successful in showing 
 that the Jesuits were heretical when judged by Augustine and the Holy 
 Scriptures. (N T ote -J sur la x. Lettre.) 
 
 t The Jesuits are so fond of their " attrition." or purely natural re- 
 pentance, til-it one of their own theologians (Cardinal Francis Tolet) 
 having condemned it thpy falsified the passage in a subsequent edition, 
 making him speak the opposite sentiment. The forgery was exposed ; 
 but the worthy fathers, according to custom, allowed it to pass without 
 notice, ad major em Dei gloriam. (Nicole, iii. 95 )
 
 220 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 saved without ever having loved God all his lifetime? Would 
 your fathers venture to hold that ?" 
 
 " I perceive," replied the monk, " from the strain of your 
 remarks, that you need some information on the doctrine of 
 our fathers regarding the love of God. This is the last fea- 
 ture of their morality, and the most important of all. You 
 must have learned something of it from the passages about 
 contrition which I have quoted to you. But here are others 
 still more definite on the point of love to God Don't inter- 
 rupt me, now ; for it is of importance to notice the connection. 
 Attend to Escobar, who reports the different opinions of our 
 authors, in his ' Practice of the Love of God according to 
 our Society.' The question is : ' When is one obliged to 
 have an actual. affection for God?' Suarez says, it is enough 
 if one loves him before being articulo mortis at the point 
 of death without determining the exact time. Vasquez, 
 that it is sufficient even at the very point of death. Others, 
 when one has received baptism. Others, again, when one is 
 bound to exercise contrition. And others, on festival days. 
 But our father, Castro Palao, combats all these opinions, and 
 with good reason merito. Hurtado de Mendoza insists that 
 we are obliged to love God once a-year ; and that we ought 
 to regard it as a great favor that we are not bound to do it 
 oftener. But our Father Coninck thinks that we are bound 
 to it only once in three or four years ; Henriquez, once in 
 five years ; and Filiutius says that it is probable that we are 
 not strictly bound to it even once in five years. How often, 
 then, do you ask ? Why, he refers it to the judgment of the 
 judicious." 
 
 I took no notice of all this badinage, in which the ingenu- 
 ity of man seems to be sporting, in the height of insolence, 
 with the love of God. 
 
 " But," pursued the monk, " our Father Antony Sirmond 
 surpasses all on this point, in his admirable book, 'The 'De- 
 fence of Virtue,'* where, as he tells the reader, ' he spoaka 
 French in France,' as follows : ' St. Thomas says that we 
 
 Tr. 1, ex. 2, n. 21 ; and tr. 5, ex. 4, n 8.
 
 LOVE TO JOD. 221 
 
 are obliged to love God as soon as we come to the use of 
 reason : that is rather too soon ! Scotus says, every Sunday ; 
 pray, for what reason ? Others say, when we are sorely 
 tempted : yes, if there be no other way of escaping the 
 temptation. Scotus says, when we have received a benefit 
 from God : good, in the way of thanking him for it. Others 
 say, at death : rather late ! As little do I think it binding 
 at the reception of any sacrament : attrition in such cases is 
 quite enough, along with confession, if convenient. Suarez 
 says that it is binding at some time or another ; but at what 
 time ? he leaves you to judge of that for yourself he does 
 not know ; and what that doctor did not know I know not 
 who should know.' In short, he concludea that we are not 
 strictly bound to more than to keep the other commandments, 
 without any affection for God, and without giving him our 
 hearts, provided that we do not hate him. To prove this is 
 the sole object of his second treatise. You will find it in 
 every page ; more especially where he says : ' God, in com- 
 manding us to love him, is satisfied with our obeying him in 
 his other commandments. If God had said, Whatever obe- 
 dience thou yieldest me, if thy heart is not given to me, I will 
 destroy thee ! would such a motive, think you, be well fit- 
 ted to promote the end which God must, and only can, have 
 in view ? Hence it is said that we shall love God by doing 
 his will, as if we loved him with affection, as if the motive in 
 this case was real charity. If that is really our motive, so 
 much the better ; if not, still we are strictly fulfilling the 
 commandment of love, by having its works, so that (such is 
 the goodness of God !) we are commanded, not so much to 
 love him, as not to hate him.' 
 
 " Such is the way in which our doctors have discharged 
 men from the ' painful' obligation of actually loving God. 
 And this doctrine is so advantageous, that our Fathers An- 
 nat, Pintereau, Le Moine, and Antony Sirmond himself, 
 have strenuously defended it when it hjis been attacked. You 
 have only to consult. their answers to the 'Moral Theology.' 
 That of Father Pintereau, in particular, will enable you to
 
 222 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 form some idea of the value of this dispensation, from the 
 price which he tells us that it cost, which is no less than the 
 Mood of Jesus Christ. This crowns the whole. It appears, 
 that this dispensation from the ' painful' obligation to love 
 God, is the privilege of the Evangelical law, in opposition to 
 the Judaical. 'It was reasonable,' he says, 'that, under the 
 law of grace in the New Testament, God should relieve us 
 from that troublesome and arduous obligation which existed 
 under the law of bondage, to exercise an act of perfect con- 
 trition, in order to be justified ; and that the place of this 
 should be supplied by the sacraments, instituted in aid of an 
 easier disposition. Otherwise, indeed, Christians, who are 
 the children, would have no greater facility in gaining the 
 good graces of their Father than the Jews, who were the 
 slaves, had in obtaining the mercy of their Lord and 
 Master.' "* 
 
 " father !" cried I ; "no patience can stand this any 
 longer. It is impossible to listen without horror to the sen- 
 timents you have now been sporting." 
 
 " They are not my sentiments," said the monk. 
 
 " I grant it, sir," said I ; " but you feel no aversion to 
 them ; and, so far from detesting the authors of these max- 
 ims, you hold them in esteem. Are you not afraid that your 
 consent may involve you in a participation of their guilt ? 
 and are you not aware that St. Paul judges worthy of death, 
 
 * Shocking as these principles are, it might be easy to show that they 
 necessarily flow from the Romish doctrine, which substitutes the imper- 
 fect obedience of the sinner as the meritorious ground of justification, in 
 the room of the al -perfect obedience and oblation of the Son of God, 
 which renders it necessary to lower the divine standard of duty. The 
 attempt of Father Daniel to escape from the serious charge in the text 
 under a cloud of metaphysical distinctions about affective and effective 
 love, is about as lame as the argument he draws from the merciful 
 character of the Gospel, is dishonorable to the Saviour, who " cams not 
 to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil/' But this "confusion 
 worse confounded" arises from putting love to God out of its proper 
 place and representing it as the price of our pardon instead of the fruit 
 of faith in p-irdoning mercy. Arnauld was as far wrong on this point 
 as the Jesuits : and it is astonishing that he did not discover in their 
 system the radical error of his own creed carried out to its proper con- 
 sequences. (Reponse Gen. au Livre de M. Arnauld, par Elie Merlat, 
 p. 30.)
 
 PASCAL'S INDIGNANT DISCLOSURE. 223 
 
 not only the authors of evil things, but also ' those who have 
 pleasure in them that do them?' Was it not enough to 
 have permitted men to indulge in so many forbidden things, 
 undei the covert of your palliations ? Was it necessary to 
 go stO further, and hold out a bribe to them to commit even 
 those crimes which you found it impossible to excuse, by 
 offering them an easy and certain absolution ; and for this 
 purpose nullifying the power of the priests, and obliging 
 them, more as slaves than as judges, to absolve the most in- 
 veterate sinners without any amendment of life without 
 any sign of contrition except promises a hundred times bro- 
 ken without penance ' unless they choose to accept of it' 
 and without abandoning the occasions of their vices, ' if they 
 should thereby be put to any inconvenience ?' 
 
 " But your doctors have gone even beyond this ; and the 
 license which they have assumed to tamper with the most 
 holy rules of Christian conduct amount to a total subversion 
 of 'the law of God. They violate 'the great commandment 
 on which hang all the law and the prophets ;' they strike at 
 the very heart of piety ; they rob it of the spirit that giveth 
 life ; they hold that to love God is not necessary to salva- 
 tion ; and go so far as to maintain that ' this dispensation 
 from loving God is the privilege which Jesus Christ has in- 
 troduced into the world !' This, sir, is the very climax of 
 impiety. The price of the blood of Jesus Christ paid to 
 obtain us a dispensation from loving him ! Before the incar- 
 nation, it seems men were obliged to love God : but since 
 ' God has so loved the world as to give his only-begotten 
 Son,' the world, redeemed by him, is released from loving 
 him ! Strange divinity of our days to dare to take off the 
 ' anathema' which St. Paul denounces on those ' that love 
 not the Lord Jesus !' To cancel the sentence of St. John : 
 ' He that loveth not, abideth in death !' and that of Jesu* 
 Christ himself: ' He that loveth menot keepeth not my pre- 
 cepts !' and thus to render those worthy of enjoying God 
 through eternity who never loved God all their life !* Be- 
 
 * " Nothing on this point says Nicole in a note here, " can be finer
 
 224 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 hold the Mystery of Iniquity fulfilled ! Open your eyes at 
 length, my dear father, and if the other aberrations of your 
 casuists have made no impression on you, let these last, 
 by their very extravagance, compel you to abandon them. 
 This is what I desire from the bottom of my heart, for your 
 own sake and for the sake of your doctors ; and my prayer 
 to God is, that he would vouchsafe to convince them how. 
 false the light must be that has guided them to such preci- 
 pices ; and that he would fill their hearts with that love of 
 himself from which they have dared to give man a dis- 
 pensation !" 
 
 After some remarks of this nature, I took my leave of the 
 monk, and I see no great likelihood of my repeating my 
 visits to him. This, however, need not occasion you any 
 regret ; for, should it be necessary to continue these com- 
 munications on their maxims, I have studied their books suf- 
 ficiently to tell you as much of theif morality, and more, 
 perhaps, of their policy, than he could have done himself. 
 I am, &c. 
 
 than the prosopopeia in which Despreajjx (Boileau) introduces God as 
 judging mankind. 1 ' He then quotes a long passage from the Twelfth 
 Epistle of that poet, beginning 
 
 " Quand Dieu viendra juger les vivans et les morts," &c. 
 
 Boileau was the personal friend of Arnauld and Pascal, and satirized 
 the Jesuits with such pleasant irony that Father la Chaise, the confes- 
 sor of Louis XIV.. though himself a Jesuit, is said to have taken a pleas- 
 ure in repeating his verses.
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS.* 
 
 RIDICULE A FAIR WEAPON WHEN EMPLOYED AGAINST ABSURD OPIN- 
 IONS RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN THE USE OF THIS WEAPON 
 
 THE PROFANE BUFFOONERY OF FATHERS LE MOINE AND GARASSE. 
 
 August 18, 1656. 
 
 REVEREND FATHERS, I have seen the letters which you 
 are circulating in opposition to those which I wrote to one 
 of my friends on your morality ; and I perceive that one of 
 the principal points of your defence is, that I have not spo- 
 ken of your maxims with sufficient seriousness. This charge 
 you repeat in all your productions, and carry it so far as to 
 allege, that I have been " guilty of turning sacred things into 
 ridicule." 
 
 Such a charge, fathers, is no less surprising than it is un- 
 founded. Where do you find that I have turned sacred 
 things into ridicule ? You specify " the Mohatra contract, 
 and the story of John d'Alba." But are these what you 
 call " sacred things ?" Does it really appear to you that the 
 Mohatra is something so venerable that it would be blas- 
 phemy not to speak of it with respect ? And the lessons of 
 Father Bauny on larceny, which led John d'Alba to practise 
 it at your expense, are they so sacred as to entitle you to 
 stigmatize all who laugh at them as profane people ? 
 
 What, fathers ! must the vagaries of your doctors pass for 
 the verities of the Christian faith, and no man be allowed to 
 ridicule Escobar, or the fantastical and unchristian dogmas 
 
 * In this and the following letters, Pascal changes his style, from that 
 of dialogue to that of direct address, and from that of the liveliest irony 
 to that of serious inve"*ive and poignant satire. 
 10*
 
 226 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 of your authors, without being stigmatized as jesting at 
 religion ? Is it possible you can have ventured to reiterate 
 so often an idea so utterly unreasonable ? Have you no fears 
 that, in blaming me for laughing at your absurdities, you 
 may only afford me fresh subject of merriment ; that you 
 may make the charge recoil on yourselves, by showing that 
 I have really selected nothing from your writings as the mat- 
 ter of raillery, but what was truly ridiculous ; and that thus, 
 in making a jest of your morality, I have been as far from 
 jeering at holy things, as the doctrine of your casuists is far 
 from the holy doctrine of the Gospel ? 
 
 Indeed, reverend sirs, there is a vast difference between 
 laughing at religion, and laughing at those who profane it by 
 their extravagant opinions. It were impiety to be wanting 
 in respect for the verities which the Spirit of God has re- 
 vealed ; but it were no less impiety of another sort, to be 
 wanting in contempt for the falsities which the spirit of man 
 opposes to them.* 
 
 For, fathers (since you will force me into this argument), 
 I beseech you to consider that, just in. proportion as Chris- 
 tian truths are worthy of love and respect, the contrary 
 errors must deserve hatred and contempt ; there being two 
 things in the truths of our religion a divine beauty that 
 renders them lovely, and a sacred majesty that renders them 
 venerable ; and two things also about errors an impiety, 
 that makes them horrible, and an impertinence that renders 
 them ridiculous. For these reasons, while the saints have 
 ever cherished towards the truth the two-fold sentiment of 
 love and fear the whole of their wisdom being comprised 
 between fear, which is its beginning, and love, which is its 
 end they have, at the same time, entertained towards error 
 the two-fold feeling of hatred and contempt, and their zeal 
 has been at once employed to repel, by force of reasoning, 
 
 * " Ref-gion. they tell us. ought not to be ridiculed ; and they tell us 
 Tilth: yet surely the corruptions in it may ; for we are taught by the 
 tritest maxim in the world, that religion being the best of things, its cor- 
 ruptions are likely to be the worst." (Swift's Apolotry for a Tale of a 
 Tub.)
 
 RIDICULE USED IN SCRIPTCRK. 227 
 
 the malice cf the wicked, and to chastise, by the aid of ridi- 
 cule, their extravagance and folly. 
 
 Do not then expect, fathers, to make people believe that 
 it is unworthy of a Christian to treat error with derision. 
 Nothing is easier than to convince all who were not aware of 
 it before, that this practice is perfectly just that it is com- 
 mon with the fathers of the Church, and that it is sanctioned 
 by Scripture, by the example of the best of saints, and even 
 by that of God himself. 
 
 Do we not find that God at once hates and despises sinners ; 
 so that even at the hour of death, when their condition is 
 most sad and deplorable, Divine Wisdom adds mockery to 
 the vengeance which consigns them to eternal punishment ? 
 " In interitu vestro ridebo et subsannabo^-I will laugh at your 
 calamity." The saints, too, influenced by the same feeling, 
 will join in the derision ; for, according to David, when they 
 witness the punishment of the wicked, " they shall fear, and 
 yet laugh at it videbunt justi et timebunt, et super eum ride- 
 bunt" And Job says : " Innocens subsannabit eos The 
 innocent shall laugh at them."* 
 
 It is worthy of remark here, that the very first words 
 which God addressed to man after his fall, contain, in the 
 opinion of the fathers, " bitter irony" and mockery. After 
 Adam had disobeyed his Maker, in the hope, suggested by 
 the devil, of being like God, it appears from Scripture that 
 God, as a punishment, subjected him to death ; and after 
 having reduced him to this miserable condition, which was 
 due to his sin, he taunted him in that state with the follow- 
 ing terms of derision : " Behold, the man has become as one 
 of us! Ecce, Adam quasi unus ex nobis f" which, accord- 
 ing to St. Jeromef and the interpreters, is " a grievous and 
 cutting piece of irony," with which God "stung him to the 
 
 * Prov. i. 2G ; Ps. lii. G ; Job xxii. 19. In the first passage, the figure 
 is evidently what theologians call anthropopathic, or speaking of God 
 after the manner of men. and denotes his total disregard of the wicked 
 in the clay of their calamity. 
 
 f In most of the editions.it is " St. Chrysostom," but I have followed 
 that of Nicole.
 
 228 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 quick." " Adam," says Rupert, " deserved to be taunted in 
 this manner, and he would be naturally made to feel his folly 
 more acutely by this iromcal expression than by a more seri- 
 ous one." St. Victor, after making the same remark, adds, 
 " that this irony was due to his sottish credulity, and that 
 this species of raillery is an act of justice, merited by him 
 against whom it was directed."* 
 
 Thus you see, fathers, that ridicule is, in some cases, a 
 very appropriate means of reclaiming men from their errors, 
 and that it is accordingly an act of justice, because, as Jere- 
 miah says, " the actions of those that err are worthy of de- 
 rision, because of their vanity vana sunt et risu digna." 
 And so far from its being impious to laugh at them, St Au- 
 gustine holds it to be the effect of divine wisdom : " The 
 wise laugh at the foolish, because they are wise, not after 
 their own wisdom, but after that divine wisdom which shall 
 laugh at the death of the wicked." 
 
 The prophets, accordingly, filled with the Spirit of God, 
 have availed themselves of ridicule, as we find from the ex- 
 amples of Daniel and Elias. In short, examples of it are 
 not wanting in the discourses of Jesus Christ himself. St. 
 Augustine remarks that, when he would humble Nicodemus, 
 who deemed himself so expert in his knowledge of the law, 
 " perceiving him to be puffed up with pride, from his rank 
 
 * We may be permitted to question the correctness of this interpreta- 
 tion, and the propriety of introducing it in the present connection. For 
 the former, the fathers, not Pascal, are responsible ; as to the latter, it 
 was certainly superfluous, and not very happy, to have recourse to such 
 an example, to justify the use of ridicule as a weapon against religious 
 follies. Among other writers, the Abbe D'Artigny is very severe against 
 our author on this score, and quotes with approbation the following 
 censure on him : li Is it possible that a man of such genius and erudi- 
 tion could justify the most criminal excesses by such respectable exam- 
 ples 1 Not content with making witty old fellows of the prophets and 
 the holy fathers, nothing will serve him but to make us believe that the 
 Almighty himself has furnished us with precedents for the most bitter 
 slanders and pleasantries an evident proof that there is nothing that 
 an author will not seek to justify when he follows his own passion." 
 (Nouveaux Memoires D'Artigny, ii. 185.) How solemnly and elo- 
 quently will a man write down all such satires, when the jest is pointed 
 against himself and his party ! D'Artigny quotes, within a few pages, 
 with evident relish, a bitter satire against a Protestant minister.
 
 RIDICULE USED BY THE FATHERS. 229 
 
 as doctor of the Jews, he first beats down his presumption 
 by the magnitude of his demands, and having reduced him so 
 low that he was unable to answer, What ! says lie, you a 
 master in Israel, and not know these things ! as if he had 
 said, Proud ruler, confess that thou knowest nothing." St. 
 Chrysostom and St. Cyril likewise observe upon this, that 
 " he deserved to be ridiculed in this manner." 
 
 You may learn from this, fathers, that should it so hap- 
 pen, in our day, that persons who enact the jjart of " mas- 
 ters" among Christians, as Nieodemus and the Pharisees did 
 among the Jews, show themselves so ignorant of the first 
 principles of religion as to maintain, for example, that "a 
 man may be saved who never loved God all his life," we only 
 follow the example of Jesus Christ, when we laugh at such 
 a combination of ignorance and conceit. 
 
 I am sure, fathers, these sacred examples are sufficient to 
 convince you, that to deride the errors and extravagances of 
 man is not inconsistent with the practice of the saints ; other- 
 wise we must blame that of the greatest doctors of the 
 Church, who have been guilty of it such as St. Jerome, in 
 his letters and writings against Jovinian, Vigilantius, and the 
 Pelagians ; Tertullian, in his Apology against the follies of 
 idolaters ; St. Augustine against the monks of Africa, whom 
 he styles " the hairy men ;" St. Irenaeus the Gnostics ; St. 
 Bernard and the other fathers of the Church, who, having 
 been the imitators of the apostles, ought to be imitated by 
 the faithful in all time coming ; for, say what we will, they 
 are the true models for Christians, even of the present 
 day. 
 
 In following such examples, I conceived that I could not 
 go far wrong ; and, as I think I have sufficiently established 
 this position, I shall only add, in the admirable words of 
 Tertullian, which give the true explanation of the whole of 
 my proceeding in this matter: "What I have now done is 
 only a little sport before the real combat. I have rather in- 
 dicated the wounds that might be given you, than inflicted 
 any. If the reader has met with passages which have ex-
 
 230 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 cited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the subjects them- 
 selves. There are many things which deserve to be held up 
 in this way to ridicule and mockery, lest, by a serious refuta- 
 tion, we should attach a weight to them which they do not 
 deserve. Nothing is more due to vanity than laughter; and 
 it is the Truth properly that has a right to laugh, because 
 she is cheerful, and to make sport of her enemies, because 
 she is sure of the victory. Care must be taken, indeed, that the 
 raillery is not too low, and unworthy of the truth ; but, keep- 
 ing this in view, when ridicule may be employed with effect, 
 it is a duty to avail ourselves of it." Do you not think, 
 fathers, that this passage is singularly applicable to our sub- 
 ject ? The letters which I have hitherto written are " merely 
 a little sport before a real combat." As yet I have been 
 only playing with the foils, and "rather indicating the 
 wounds that might be given you than inflicting any." I have 
 merely exposed your passages to the light, without making 
 almost a reflection on them. " If the reader has met with 
 any that have excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to 
 the subjects themselves." And, indeed, what is more fitted 
 to raise a laugh, than to see a matter so grave as that of 
 Christian morality decked out with fancies so grotesque as 
 those in which you have exhibited it ? One is apt to form 
 such high anticipations of these maxims, from being told that 
 "Jesus Christ himself has revealed them to the fathers of 
 the Society," that when one discovers among them such ab- 
 surdities as " that a priest receiving money to say mass, may 
 take additional sums from other persons by giving up to them 
 his own share in the sacrifice ;" " that a monk is not to be ex- 
 communicated for putting off his habit, provided it is to 
 dance, swindle, or go incognito into infamous houses ;" and 
 "that the duty of hearing mass may be fulfilled by listening 
 to four quarters of a mass at once from different priests" 
 when, I say, one listens to such decisions as these, the sur- 
 prise is such that it is impossible to refrain from laughing ; 
 for nothing is more calculated to produce that emotion than 
 a startling contrast between the thing looked for and the
 
 ABSURDITIES OF THE CASUISTS. 231 
 
 thing looked at. And why should the greater part of these 
 maxims be treated in any other way ? As Tei'tullian says, 
 "To treat them seriously would be to sanction them." 
 
 What ! is it necessary to bring up all the forces of Scrip- 
 ture and tradition, in order to prove that running a sword 
 through a man's body, covertly and behind his back, is to 
 murder him in treachery ? or, that to give one money as a 
 motive to resign a benefice, is to purchase the benefice? 
 Yes, there are things which it is duty to despise, and which 
 " deserve only to be laughed at." In short, the remark of 
 that ancient author, " that nothing is more due to vanity 
 than derision," with what follows, applies to the case before 
 us so justly and so convincingly, as to put it beyond all 
 question that we may laugh at errors without violating pro- 
 priety. 
 
 And let me add, fathers, that this may be done without 
 any breach of charity either, though this is another of the 
 charges you bring against me in your publications. For, ac- 
 cording to St. Augustine, " charity may sometimes oblige us 
 to ridicule the errors of men, that they may be induced to 
 laugh at them in their turn, and renounce them Hcec tu 
 misericorditer irride, ut eis ridenda ac fugienda, commendes" 
 And the same charity may also, at other times, bind us to 
 repel them with indignation, according to that other saying 
 of St. Gregory of Nazianzen : " The spirit of meekness and 
 charity hath its emotions and its heats." Indeed, as St. Au- 
 gustine observes, "who would venture to say that truth 
 ought to staud disarmed against falsehood, or that the ene- 
 mies of the faith shall be at liberty to frighten the faithful 
 with hard words, and jeer at them with lively sallies of wit; 
 while the Catholics ought never to write except with a cold- 
 ness of style enough to set the reader asleep ?" 
 
 Is it not obvious that, by following such a course, a wide 
 door would be _pened for the introduction of the most ex- 
 travagant and pernicious dogmas into the Church ; while 
 none would be allowed to treat them with contempt, through 
 fear of being charged with violatag propriety, or (o confute
 
 232 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 them with indignation, from the dread of being taxed svith 
 want of charity ? 
 
 Indeed, fathers ! shall you be allowed to maintain, " that 
 it is lawful to kill a man to avoid a box on the ear or an 
 affront," and must nobody be permitted publicly to expose 
 a public error of such consequence ? Shall you be at liberty 
 to say, " that a judge may in conscience retain a fee received 
 for an act of injustice," and shall no one be at liberty to 
 contradict you ? Shall you print, with the privilege and ap- 
 probation of your doctors, " that a man may be saved with- 
 out ever having loved God ;" and will you shut the mouth 
 of those who defend the true faith, by telling them that they 
 would violate brotherly love by attacking you, and Christian 
 modesty by laughing at your maxims ? I doubt, fathers, if 
 there be any persons whom you could make believe this ; if, 
 however, there be any such, who are really persuaded that, 
 by denouncing your morality, I have been deficient in the 
 charity which I owe to you, I would have them examine, 
 with great jealousy, whence this feeling takes its rise within 
 them. They may imagine that it proceeds from a holy zeal, 
 which will not allow them to see their neighbor impeached 
 without being scandalized at it ; but I would entreat them 
 to consider, that it is not impossible that it may flow from 
 another source, and that it is even extremely likely that it 
 may spring from that secret, and often self-concealed dissat- 
 isfaction, which the unhappy corruption within us seldom 
 fails to stir up against those who oppose the relaxation of 
 morals. And to furnish them with a rule which may enable 
 them to ascertain the real principle from which it proceeds, 
 I will ask them, if, while they lament the way in which the 
 religious* have been treated, they lament still more the man- 
 ner in which these religious have treated the truth. If they 
 are incensed, not only against the letters, but still more 
 against the maxims quoted in them, I shall grant it to be 
 barely possible that their resentment proceeds from some 
 
 * " Religious," is a general term, applied in the Romish Church to 
 all who are in holy orders.
 
 CHARGE OF UXCHARITABLEXESS. 233 
 
 zeal, though not of the most enlightened kind; and, in this 
 case, the passages I have just cited from the fathers will 
 serve to enlighten them. But if they are merely angry at 
 the reprehension, and not at the things reprehended, truly, 
 fathers, I shall never scruple to tell them that they are 
 grossly mistaken, and that their zeal is miserably blind. 
 
 Strange zeal, indeed ! which gets angry at those that cen 
 sure public faults, and not at those that commit them ! Novel 
 charity this, which groans at seeing error confuted, but feels 
 no grief at seeing morality subverted by that error ! If these 
 persons were in danger of being assassinated, pray, would 
 they be offended at one advertising them of the stratagem 
 that had been laid for them ; and instead of turning out of 
 their way to avoid it, would they trifle away their time in 
 whining about the little charity manifested in discovering to 
 them the criminal design of the assassins? Do they get 
 waspish when one tells them not to eat such an article of 
 food, because it is poisoned ? or not to enter such a city, be- 
 cause it has the plague ? -*- 
 
 Whence comes it, then, that the same persons who set 
 down a man as wanting in charity, for exposing maxims hurt- 
 ful to religion, would, on the contrary, think him equally de- 
 ficient in that grace were he not to disclose matters hurtful 
 to health and life, unless it be from this, 'that their fondness 
 for life induces them to take in good part every hint that con- 
 tributes to its preservation, while their indifference to truth 
 leads them, not only to take no share in its defence, but even 
 to view with pain the efforts made for the extirpation of false- 
 hood ? 
 
 Let them seriously ponder, as in the sight of God, now 
 shameful, and how prejudicial to the Church, is the morality 
 which your casuists are in the habit of propagating; the 
 scandalous and unmeasured license which they are introdu- 
 cing into public manners ; the obstinate and violent hardihood 
 with which you support them. And if they do not think it 
 full time to rise against such disorders, their blindness is as 
 much to be pitied as yours, fathers ; and you and they have
 
 234 PBOVIJSCJAL LETTERS. 
 
 equal reason to dread that saying of St. Augustine, founded 
 on the words of Jesus Christ, in the Gospel: "Woe to the 
 blind leaders ! woe to the blind followers ! Fa? ccecis ducen- 
 tibus ! vce ccecis sequentibus /" 
 
 But to leave you no room in future, either to create such 
 impressions on the minds of others, or to harbor them in your 
 own, I shall tell you, fathers (and I am ashamed I should 
 have to teach you what- I should have rather learnt from 
 you), the marks which the fathers of the Church have given 
 for judging when our animadversions flow from a principle 
 of piety and charity, and when from a spirit of malice and 
 impiety. 
 
 The first of these rules is, that the spirit of piety always 
 prompts us to speak with sincerity and truthfulness ; where- 
 as malice and envy make use of falsehood and calumny. 
 " Splendentia et vehementia, sed rebus veris Splendid and 
 vehement in words, but true in things," as St. Augustine 
 says. The dealer in falsehood is an agent of the devil. No 
 direction of the intention can sanctify slander ; and though 
 the conversion of the whole earth should depend on it, no 
 man may warrantably calumniate the innocent : because none 
 may do the least evil, in order to accomplish the greatest 
 good ; and, as the Scripture says, " the truth of God stands 
 in no need of our -lie." St. Hilary observes, that " it is the 
 bou'nden duty of the advocates of truth, to advance nothing 
 in its support but true things." Now, fathers, I can declare 
 before God, that there is nothing that I detest more than the 
 slightest possible deviation from the truth, and that I have ever 
 taken the greatest ca7 - e, not only not to falsify (which would be 
 horrible), but not to alter or wrest, in the slightest possible 
 degree, the sense of a single passage. So closely have I ad- 
 hered to this rule, that if I may presume to apply them to 
 the present case, I may safely say, in the words of the same 
 St. Hilary : " If we advance things that are false, let our 
 statements be branded with infamy ; but if we can show that 
 they are public and notorious, it is no breach of apostolic 
 modesty or liberty to expose them."
 
 DISCRETION OF THE LETTERS. 235 
 
 It is not enough, however, to tell nothing but the truth ; 
 we must not always tell everything that is true ; we should 
 publish only those things which it is useful to disclose, and 
 not those which can only hurt, without doing any good. And, 
 therefore, as the first rule is to speak with truth, the second 
 is to speak with discretion. "The wicked," says St. Augus- 
 tine, " in persecuting the good, blindly follow the dictates of 
 their passion ; but the good, in their prosecution of the wick- 
 ed, are guided by a wise discretion, even as the surgeon war- 
 ily considers where he is cutting, while the murderer cares 
 not where he strikes." You must be sensible, fathers,' that 
 in selecting from the maxims of your authors, I have refrained 
 from quoting those which would have galled you most, though 
 I might have done it, and that without sinning against dis- 
 cretion, as othets who were both learned and catholic writers, 
 have done before me. All who have read your authors know 
 how far I have spared you in this respect.* Besides, I have 
 taken no notice whatever of what might be brought against 
 individual characters among you ; and I would have been ex- 
 tremely sorry to have said a word about secret and personal 
 failings, whatever evidence I might have of them, being per- 
 suaded that this is the distinguishing property of malice, and 
 a practice which ought never to be resorted to, unless where 
 it is urgently demanded for the good of the Church. It is 
 obvious, therefore, that in what I have been compelled to ad- 
 vance against your moral maxims, I have been by no means 
 wanting in due consideration : and that you have more reason 
 to congratulate yourself on my moderation than to complain 
 of my indiscretion. 
 
 The third rule, fathers, is : That when there is need to em- 
 ploy a little raillery, the spirit of piety will take care to em- 
 ploy it against error only, and not against things holy ; 
 
 * ' So far," says Nicole, "from his having told all that he might 
 against the Jesuits, he has spared them on points so essential and im- 
 portant, that all who have a complete knowledge of their maxims have 
 admiral his moderation." " What would have been the case." asks an- 
 other writer, " had Pascal exposed the late infamous things put out by 
 their miserable casuists, and unfolded the chain and succession of their 
 regicide authors'?" (Dissertation sur la foi due au Pascal, &c., p. 14.)
 
 236 ^PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 whereas the spirit of buffoonery, impiety, and heresy, mocks 
 at all that is most sacred. I have already vindicated myself 
 on that score ; and indeed there is no great danger of falling 
 into that vice so long as I confine my remarks to the opinions 
 which I have quoted from your authors. 
 
 In short, fathers, to abridge these rules, I shall only men- 
 tion another, which is the essence and the end of all the rest : 
 That the spirit of charity prompts us to cherish in the heart 
 a desire for the salvation of those against whom we dispute, 
 and to address our prayers to G -)d while we direct our accu- 
 sations to men. "We ought ever," says St. Augustine, "to 
 preserve charity in the heart, even while we are obliged to 
 pursue a line of external conduct which to man has the ap- 
 pearance of harshness ; we ought to smite them with a sharp- 
 ness, severe but kindly, remembering that th^ir advantage is 
 more to be studied than their gratification." I am sure, fa- 
 thers, that there is nothing in my letters, from which it can 
 be inferred that I have not cherished such a desire towards 
 you ; and as you can find nothing to the contrary in them, 
 charity obliges you to believe that I have been really actuated 
 by it. It appears, then, that you cannot prove that I have 
 offended against this rule, or against any of the other rules 
 which charity inculcates ; and you have no right to say, 
 therefore, that I have violated it. 
 
 But, fathers, if you should now like to have the pleasure 
 of seeing, within a short compass, a course of conduct directly 
 at variance with each of these rules, and bearing the genuine 
 stamp of the spirit of buffoonery, envy, and hatred, I shall 
 give you a few examples of it ; and that they may be of the 
 sort best known and most familiar to you, I shall extract 
 them from your own writings. 
 
 To begin, then, with the unworthy manner in which your 
 authors speak of holy things, whether in their sportive and 
 gallant effusions, or in their more serious pieces, do you think 
 that the parcel of ridiculous stories, which your father Binet 
 has introduced into his "Consolation to the Sick," are 
 exa( tly suitable to his professed object, which is that of im-
 
 GENUINE PROFANENESS 237 
 
 parting Christian consolation to those whom God has chast- 
 ened with affliction ? Will you pretend to say, that the 
 profane, foppish style in which your Father Le Moine has 
 tsilked of piety in his "Devotion made Eisy, v is more fitted 
 to inspire respect than contempt for the picture that he draws 
 of Christian virtue ? What else does his whole book of 
 " Moral Pictures" breathe, both in its prose and poetry, but 
 a spirit full of vanity, and the follies of this world ? Take, 
 for example, that ode in his seventh book, entitled, "Eulogy 
 on Bashfulness, showing that all beautiful things are red, or 
 inclined to redden." Call you that a production worthy of 
 a priest ? The ode is intended to comfort a lady, called 
 Delphina, who was sadly addicted to blushing. Each stanza 
 is devoted to show that certain red things are the best of 
 things, such as roses, pomegranates, the mouth, the tongue ; 
 and it is in the midst of this badinage, so disgraceful in a 
 clergyman, that he has the effrontery to introduce those 
 blessed spirits that minister before God, and of whom no 
 Christian should speak without reverence : 
 
 " The cherubim those glorious choirs 
 
 Composed of head and plumes, 
 Whom God with his own Spirit inspires, 
 
 And with his eyes illumes. 
 These splendid facos, as they fly, 
 Are ever red and burning high, 
 With fjre angelic or divine; 
 And while their mutual flames combine, 
 The waving of their wings supplies 
 A fan to cool their extacies ! 
 But redness shines with better grace, 
 Delphina, on thy beauteous face, 
 Where modesty sits revelling 
 Arrayed in purple, like a king," &c. 
 
 What think you of this, fathers ? Does this preference 
 of the blushes of Delphina to the ardor of those spirits, which 
 is neither more nor less than the ardor of divine love, and 
 this simile of the fan applied to their mysterious wings, 
 Btrike you as being very Christian-like in the lips which con-
 
 238 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 secrate the adorable body of Jesus Christ? I am quite 
 aware that he speaks only in the character ef a gallant, and 
 to raise a smile ; but this is precisely what is called laughing 
 at things holy. And is it not certain, that, were he to get 
 full justice, he could not save himself from incurring a cen- 
 sure ? although, to shield himself from this, he pleads an 
 excuse which is hardly less censurable than the offence, 
 "that the Sorbonne has no jurisdiction over Parnassus, and 
 that the errors of that land are subject neither to censure nor 
 the Inquisition;" as if one could act the blasphemer and 
 profane fellow only in prose ! There is another passage, 
 however, 'in the preface, where even this excuse fails him, 
 when he says, " that the water of the river, on whose banks 
 he composes his verses, is so apt to make poets, that, though 
 it were converted into holy water, it would not chase away 
 the demon of poesy." To match this, I may add the follow- 
 ing flight of your Father Garasse, in his " Summary of the 
 Capital Truths in Religion," where, speaking of the sacred 
 mystery of the incarnation, he mixes up blasphemy and her- 
 esy in this fashion : " The human personality was grafted, as 
 it were, or set on horseback, upon the personality of the 
 Word !"* And omitting many others, I might mention an- 
 other passage from the same author, who, speaking on the 
 subject of the name of Jesus, ordinarily written thus, L e. s. 
 observes that " some have taken away the cross from the 
 top of it, leaving the characters barely thus, I. H. S. which," 
 says he, " is a stripped Jesus !" 
 
 Such is the indecency with which you treat the truths of 
 religion, in the face of the inviolable law which binds us al- 
 ways to speak of them with reverence. But you have sinned 
 no less flagrantly against the rule which obliges us to speak 
 of them with truth and discretion. What is more common 
 
 * The apologists of the Jesuits attempted to justify this extraordinary 
 illustration, by referring to the use which Augustine and other fathers 
 make of the parable of the good Sanr iritan who l; set on his own beast" 
 the wounded traveller. But Nicole has shown that fanciful as these 
 ancient interpreters oflenwere.it is doing them injustice to faifier on 
 them the absurdity of Father Garasse. (Nicole's Note*, iii. 340.)
 
 CALUMNY. 239 
 
 in your writings than calumny ? Can those of Father Bri- 
 sacier* be called sincere ? Does he speak with truth when 
 he says, that " the nuns of Port-Royal do not~ pray to the 
 saints, and have no images in their church ?" Are not these 
 most outrageous falsehoods, when the contrary appears before 
 the eyes of all Paris ? And can he be said to speak with 
 discretion, when he stabs the fair reputation of these virgins, 
 who lead a life so pure and austere, representing them as 
 " impenitent, unsacramentalists, uncommunicants, foolish vir- 
 gins, visionaries, Calagans, desperate creatures, and anything 
 you please," loading them with many other slanders, which 
 have justly incurred the censure of the late Archbishop of 
 Paris ? or when he calumniates priests of the most irreproach- 
 able morals,f by asserting " that they practise novelties in 
 confession, to entrap handsome innocent females, and that he 
 would be horrified to tell the abominable crimes which they 
 commit." Is it not a piece of intolerable assurance, to ad- 
 vance slanders so black and base, not merely without proof, 
 but without the slightest shadow, or the most distant sem- 
 blance of truth ? I shall not enlarge on this topic, but defer 
 it to a future occasion, for I have something more to say to 
 you about it ; but what I have now produced is enough to 
 show that you have sinned at once against truth and disr 
 cretion. 
 
 But it may be said, perhaps, that you have not offended 
 against the last rule at least, which binds you to desire the 
 salvation of those whom you denounce, and that none can 
 charge you with this, except by unlocking the secrets of 
 your breasts, which are only known to God. It is strange, 
 fathers, but true, nevertheless, that we can convict you even 
 of this offence ; that while your hatred to your opponents 
 has carried you so far as to wish their eternal perdition, youi 
 
 * Brisacier. who became rector of the College of Rouen, was a bitter 
 enemy of the Port-Royalists. His defamatory libel against the nuns of 
 Port-Royal, entitled ' Le Jansenisme Confondu." published in 1651, 
 was censured by the Archbishop of Paris, and vigorously assailed by 
 M. Arr.auld. 
 
 t TV priests of Port- Royal.
 
 240 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 infatuation has driven you to discover the abominable wish ; 
 that so far from cherishing in secret desires for their salva- 
 tion, you have offered up prayers in public for their damna- 
 tion ; and that, after having given utterance to that hideous 
 vow in the city of Caen, to the scandal of the whole Church, 
 you have since then ventured, iu Paris,- to vindicate, in your 
 printed books, the diabolical transaction. After such gross 
 offences against piety, first ridiculing and speaking lightly of 
 things the 'most sacred; next falsely and scandalously ca- 
 lumniating priests and virgins ; and lastly, forming desires 
 and prayers for their damnation, it would be difficult to add 
 anything worse. I cannot conceive, fathers, how you can 
 fail *to be ashamed of yourselves, or how you could have 
 thought for an instant of charging me with a want of charity, 
 who have acted all along with so much truth and moderation, 
 without reflecting on your own horrid violations of charity, 
 manifested in those deplorable exhibitions, which make the 
 charge recoil against yourselves. 
 
 In fine, fathers, to conclude with another charge which you 
 bring against me, I see you complain that among the vast 
 number of your maxims which I quote, there are some which 
 have been objected to already, and that I " say over again, 
 what others have said before me." To this' I reply, that it is 
 jast because you have not profited by what has been said be- 
 fore, that I say it over again. Tell me now what fruit has 
 appeared from all the castigations you have received in all 
 the books written by learned doctors, and even the whole 
 university ? What more have your fathers Annat, Caussin, 
 Pintereau, and Le Moine done, in the replies they have put 
 forth, except loading with reproaches those who had given 
 them salutary admonitions ? Have you suppressed the books 
 in which these nefarious maxims are taught ?* Have you 
 
 * This is the real question, which brings the matter to n point, and 
 serves to answer all the evasions of the Jesuits They boast of their 
 unity as a society and their blind obedience to th?ir head. Have they, 
 then, ever, as a society disclaimed thes? maxims 1 have they even, as 
 such., condemned, the sentiments of their fathers Becan. M-iriana. and 
 others, on the dutv of dethroning and assassinating heretical kings 1
 
 PERTINACITY or THE JESUITS. 241 
 
 restrained the authors of these maxims ? Have you become 
 more circumspect in regard to them ? On the contrary, is 
 it not the fact, that since that time Escobar has been repeat- 
 edly reprinted in France and in the Low Countries, and that 
 your fathers Cellot, Bagot, Bauny, Lamy, Le Moine, and 
 others, persist in publishing daily the same maxims over 
 again, or new ones as licentious as ever ? Let us hear no 
 more complaints, then, fathers, either because I have charged 
 you with maxims which you have, not disavowed, or because 
 I have objected to some new ones against you, or because I 
 have laughed equally at them all. You have only to sit down 
 and look at them, to see at once your own confusion and my 
 defence. Who can look without laughing at the decision of 
 Bauny, respecting the person who employs another to set 
 fire to his neighbor's barn ; that of Cellot on restitution ; the 
 rule of Sanchez in favor of sorcerers ; the plan of Hurtado 
 for avoiding the sin of duelling by taking a walk through a 
 field, and waiting for a man ; the compliments of Bauny for 
 escaping usury ; the way of avoiding simony by a detour of 
 the intention, and keeping clear of falsehood by speaking high 
 and low ; and such other opinions of your most grave and 
 reverend doctors ? Is there anything more necessary, fathers, 
 for my vindication ? and as Tertullian says, " can anything 
 be more justly due to the vanity and weakness of these opin- 
 ions than laughter?" But, fathers, the corruption of man- 
 ners to which your maxims Iea4jleserves another sort of 
 consideration ; and it becomes us to ask, with the same an- 
 cient writer, " Whether ought we to laugh at their folly, or 
 deplore their blindness ? Rideam vanitatem, an exprobrem 
 ccecitatem ?" My humble opinion is, that one may either 
 laugh at them or weep over them, as one is in the humor. 
 Hcec tolerdbilius vel ridenlur, vel flentur, as St. Augustine 
 says. The Scripture tells us that " there is a time to laugh, 
 and a time to weep ;" and my hope is, fathers, that I may 
 not find verified, in your case, these words in the Proverbs : 
 
 They have not ; and till this is done, they most be held, as Jesuits, re- 
 epoDsible for the sentiments which they refuge to disavow, 
 ll"
 
 242 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 " If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he 
 rage or laugh, there is no rest."* 
 
 P. S. On finishing this letter, there was put in my hands 
 one of your publications, in which you accuse me of falsifica- 
 tion, in the case of six of your maxims quoted by me, and 
 also with being in correspondence with heretics. You will 
 shortly receive, I trust, a suitable reply ; after which, fathers, 
 I rather think you will not feel very anxious to continue this 
 species of warfare.f 
 
 * Prov. xxix. 9. 
 
 f- This postscript, which appeared in the earlier editions, is dropt in 
 that of Nicole and others. 

 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE ;ESUITS. 
 
 REFUTATION OF THEIR CHICANERIES REGARDING ALMS-GIVING AND 
 SIMONY. 
 
 September 9, 1656. 
 
 REVEREND FATHERS, I was prepared to write you on the 
 subject of the abuse with which you have for some time past 
 been assailing me in your publications, in which you salute 
 me with such epithets as " reprobate," " buffoon," " block- 
 head," " merry- Andrew," "impostor," "slanderer," "cheat," 
 " heretic," " Calvinist in disguise," " disciple of Du Moulin,"* 
 " possessed with a legion of devils," and everything else you 
 can think of. As I should be sorry to have all this believed 
 of me, I was anxious to show the public why you treated me 
 in this manner ; and I had resolved to complain of your cal- 
 umnies and falsifications, when I met with your Answers, in 
 which you bring these same charges against myself. This 
 will compel me to alter my plan ; though it will not prevent 
 me from prosecuting it in some sort, for I hope, while de- 
 fending myself, to convict you of impostures more genuine 
 than the imaginary ones which you have ascribed to me. 
 Indeed, fathers, the suspicion of foul play is much more sure 
 to rest on you than on me. It is not very likely, standing 
 
 * Pierre du Moulin is termed by Bayle ' one of the most celebrated 
 ministers which the Reformed Church in France ever had to boast of." 
 He was born in 1568, and was for some time settled in Paris ; but having 
 incurred the resentment of Louis XIII., he retired to Sedan in 1G23, 
 where he became a professor in the Protestant University, and died, in 
 the ninetieth year of his age, in 1658, two years after the time when 
 Pascal wrote. Of his numerous writings, few are known in this coun- 
 try, excepting his " Buckler of the Faith," and his ' Anatomy of the 
 Mass," which were translated into English. (Quick's Synodicon, ii., 
 105.)
 
 244 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 as I do, alone, without power or any human defence, againsl 
 such a large body, and having no support but truth and in- 
 tegrity, that I would expose myself to lose everything, by 
 laying myself open to be convicted of imposture. It is too 
 easy to discover falsifications in matters of fact such as the 
 present. In such a case there would have been no want of 
 persons to accuse me, nor would justice have been denied 
 them. With you, fathers, the case is very different ; you 
 may say as much as you please against me, while I may look 
 in vain for any to complain to. With such a wide difference 
 between our positions, though there had been no other con- 
 sideration to restrain me, it became me to study no little 
 caution. By treating me, however, as a common slanderer, 
 you compel me to assume the defensive, and you must be 
 aware that this cannot be done without entering into a fresh 
 exposition, and even into a fuller disclosure of the points of 
 your morality. In provoking this discussion, I fear you are 
 not acting as good politicians. The war must be waged 
 within your own camp, and at your own expense ; and al- 
 though you imagine that, by embroiling the questions with 
 scholastic terms, the answers will be so tedious, thorny, and 
 obscure, that people will lose all relish for the controversy, 
 this may not, perhaps, turn out to be exactly the case ; I 
 shall use my best endeavors to tax your patience as little as 
 possible with that sort of writing. Your maxims have some- 
 thing diverting about them, which keeps up the good humor 
 of people to the last. At all events, remember that it is 
 you that oblige me to enter upon this eclaircissement, and let 
 us see which of us comes off best in defending themselves. 
 
 The first of your Impostures, as you call them, is on the 
 opinion of Vasquez upon alms-giving. To avoid all ambigu- 
 ity, then, allow me to give a simple explanation of the matter 
 in dispute. It is well known, fathers, that according to the 
 mind of the Church, there are two precepts touching alms 
 1st, "To give out of our superfluity in the case of the ordi- 
 nary necessities of the poor ;" and Idly, " To give even out 
 of our necessaries, according to our circumstances, in
 
 ALMS-GIVING. 245 
 
 of extreme necessity." Thus says Cajetan, after St. Thomas ; 
 so that, to get at the mind of Vasquez on this subject, we 
 must consider the rules he lays down, both in regard to ne- 
 cessaries and superfluities. 
 
 With regard to superfluity, which is the most common 
 source of relief to the poor, it is entirely set aside by that 
 single maxim which I have quoted in my Letters : " That 
 what the men of the world keep with the view of irtfproving 
 their own condition and that of their relatives, is not properly 
 superfluity ; so that, such a thing as superfluity is rarely to 
 be met with among men of the world, not even excepting 
 kings." It is very easy to see, fathers, that according to 
 this definition, none can have superfluity, provided they have 
 ambition ; and thus, so far as the greater part of the world 
 is concerned, alms-giving is annihilated. But even though a 
 man should happen to have superfluity, he would be under 
 no obligation, according to Vasquez, to give it away in the 
 case of ordinary necessity ; for he protests against those who 
 would thus bind the rich. Here are his own words: "Cor- 
 duba," says he, " teaches, that when we have a superfluity 
 we are bound to give out of it in cases of ordinary necessity ; 
 but this does not please me sed hoc non placet for we have 
 demonstrated the contrary against Cajetan and Navarre." 
 So, fathers, the obligation to this kind of alms is wholly set 
 aside, according to the good pleasure of Vasquez. 
 
 With regard to necessaries, out of which we are bound to 
 give in cases of extreme and urgent necessity, it must be ob- 
 vious, from the conditions by which he has limited the obli- 
 gation, that the richest man in all Paris may not come within 
 its reach once in a lifetime. I shall only refer to two of 
 these. The first is, That " we must knoio that the poor man 
 cannot be relieved from any other quarter hcec intelligo et 
 ccetera omnia, quando scio nullum alium opem laturum." 
 What say you to this, fathers ? Is it likely to happen fre- 
 quently in Paris, where there are so many charitable people, 
 that I must know that there is not another soul but myself 
 to relieve the poor wretch who begs an alms from me ? And
 
 246 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 yet, according to Vasquez, if I have not ascertained that fact, 
 I may send him away with nothing. The second condition 
 is, That the poor man be reduced to such straits " that he is 
 menaced with some fatal accident, or the ruin of his charac- 
 ter" none of them very common occurrences. But what 
 marks still more the rarity of the cases in which one is bound 
 to give charity, is his remark, in another passage, 'that the 
 poor man must be so ill off, " that he may conscientiously rob 
 the rich man !" This must surely be a very extraordinary 
 case, unless he will insist that a man may be ordinarily al- 
 lowed to commit robbery. And so, after having cancelled 
 the obligation to give alms out of our superfluities, he obliges 
 the rich to relieve the poor only in those cases when he 
 would allow the poor to rifle the rich ! Such is the doc- 
 trine of Vasquez, to whom you refer your readers for their 
 edification ! 
 
 I now come to your pretended Impostures. You begin 
 by enlarging on the obligation to alms-giving which Vasquez 
 imposes on ecclesiastics. But on this point I have said noth- 
 ing ; and I am prepared to take it up whenever you choose. 
 This, then, has nothing to do with the present question. As 
 for laymen, who are the only persons with whom we have 
 now to do, you are apparently anxious to have it understood 
 that, in the passage which I quoted, Vasquez is giving not 
 his own judgment, but that of Cajetan. But as nothing 
 could be more false than this, and as you have not said it in 
 so many terms, I am willing to believe, for the sake of youi 
 character, that you did not intend to say it. 
 
 You next loudly complain that, after quoting that maxim 
 of Vasquez, "Such a thing as superfluity is rarely if ever 
 to be met with among men of the world, not excepting 
 kings," / have inferred from it, " that the rich are rarely, if 
 ever, bound to give alms out of their superfluity." But 
 what do you mean to say, fathers? If it be true that the 
 rich have almost never superfluity, is it not obvious that they 
 will almost never be bound to give alms out of their super- 
 fluity ? I might have put it into the form of a syllog'sm for
 
 ALMS-GIVING. 247 
 
 you, if Diana, who has such an esteem for Vas juez that he 
 calls him " the phoenix of genius," had not drawn the same 
 conclusion from the same premises; for, after quoting the 
 maxim of Vasquez, he concludes, " that, with regard to the 
 question, whether the rich are obliged to give alms out of 
 their superfluity, though the affirmation were true, -it would 
 seldom, or almost never, happen to be obligatory in practice." 
 I have followed this language word for word. What, then 4 
 are we to make of this, fathers ? When Diana quotes with 
 approbation the sentiments of Vasquez when he finds them 
 probable, and " very convenient for rich people," as he says 
 in the same place, he is no slanderer, no falsifier, and we 
 hear no complaints of misrepresenting his author ; whereas, 
 when I cite the same sentiments of Vasquez, though without 
 holding him up as a phoenix, I am a slanderer, a fabricator, 
 a corrupter of his maxims. Truly, fathers, you have some 
 reason to be apprehensive, lest your very different treatment 
 of those who agree in their representation, and differ only in 
 their estimate of your doctrine, discover the real secret of 
 your hearts, and provoke the conclusion, that the main ob- 
 ject you have in view is to maintain the credit and glory of 
 your Company. It appears that, provided your accommo- 
 dating theology is treated as judicious complaisance, you 
 never disavow those that publish it, but laud them as con- 
 tributing to your design ; but let it be held forth as pernicious 
 laxity, and the same interest of your Society prompts you to 
 disclaim the maxims which would injure you in public esti- 
 mation. And thus you recognize or renounce them, not 
 according to the truth, which never changes, but according 
 to the shifting exigencies of 'he times, acting on that motto 
 of one of the. ancients, " Omnia pro tempore, nihil pro veri- 
 tate Anything for the times, nothing for the truth." Be- 
 ware of this, fathers ; and that you may never have it in 
 your power again to say that I drew from the principle of 
 Vasquez a conclusion which he had disavowed, I beg to in- 
 .form you that he has drawn it himself: "According to the 
 opinion of Cajetan, and according to MT OWN et secundum
 
 248 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 nostram (lie says, chap, i., no. 27), one is nardly obliged to 
 give alms at all, when one is only obliged to give them out 
 of one's superfluity." Confess then, fathers, on the testi- 
 mony of Vasquez himself, that I have exactly copied his 
 sentiment ; and think how you could have the conscience to 
 say, that " the reader, on consulting the original, would see 
 to his astonishment, that he there teaches the very reverse !" 
 
 In fine, you insist, above all, that if Vasquez does not bind 
 the rich to give alms out of their superfluity, he obliges them 
 to atone for this by giving out of the necessaries of life. 
 But you have forgotten to mention the list of conditions 
 which he declares to be essential to constitute that obligation, 
 which I have quoted, and which restrict it in such a way as 
 almost entirely to annihilate it. In place of giving this hon- 
 est statement of his doctrine, you tell us, in general terms, 
 that he obliges the rich to give even what is necessary to 
 their condition. This is proving too much, fathers ; the rule 
 of the Gospel does not go so far ; and it would be an error, 
 into which Vasquez is very far, indeed, from having fallen. 
 To cover his laxity, you attribute to him an excess of severity 
 which would be reprehensible ; and thus you lose all credit 
 as faithful reporters of his sentiments. But the truth, is, 
 Vasquez is quite free from any such suspicion ; for he has 
 maintained, as I have shown, that the rich are not bound, 
 either in justice or in charity, to give of their superfluities, . 
 and still less of their necessaries, to relieve the ordinary wants 
 of the poor ; and that they are not obliged to give of the neces- 
 saries, except in cases so rare that they almost never happen. 
 
 Having disposed of your objections against me on this 
 head, it only remains to show the falsehood of your assertion, 
 that Vasquez is more severe than Cajetan. This will be very 
 easily done. That cardinal teaches " that we are bound in 
 justice to give alms out of our superfluity, even in the or- 
 dinary wants of the poor ; because, according to the holy 
 fathers, the rich are merely the dispensers of their superflu- 
 ity, which they are to give to whom they please, among 
 those who have need of it." And accordingly, unlike Diana,
 
 ALMS-GIVING. 249 
 
 who says of the maxims of Vasquez, that they will be " very 
 convenient and agreeable to the rich and their confessors," 
 the cardinal, who has no such consolation to afford them, de- 
 clares that' he has nothing to say to the rich but these words 
 of Jesus Christ : "It is easier for a camel to go through the 
 eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into heaven ;" 
 and to their confessors : " If the blind lead the blind, both 
 shall fall into the ditch."* So indispensable did he deem 
 this obligation ! This, too, is what the fathers and all the 
 saints have laid down as a certain truth. "There are two 
 cases," says St. Thomas, " in which we are bound to give 
 alms as a matter of justice ex debito legali : one, when the 
 poor are in danger ; the other, when we possess superfluous 
 property." And again : " The three tenths which the Jews 
 were bound to eat with the poor, have been augmented under 
 the new law ; for Jesus Christ wills that we give to the poor, 
 not the tenth only, but the whole of our superfluity." And 
 yet it does not seem good to Yasquez that we should be 
 obliged to give even a fragment of our superfluity ; such is 
 his complaisance to the rich, such his hardness to the poor, 
 such his contrariety to those feelings of charity which teach 
 us to relish the truth contained in the following words of 
 St. Gregory, harsh as it may sound to the rich of this world 
 " When we give the poor what is necessary to them, we are 
 not so much bestowing on them what is our property, as 
 rendering to them what is their own ; and it may be said to 
 be an act of justice, rather than a work of mercy." 
 
 It is thus that the saints recommend the rich to share with 
 the poor the good things of this earth, if they would expect 
 to possess with them the good things of heaven. While 
 you make it your business to foster in the breasts of men 
 that ambition which leaves no superfluity to dispose of, and 
 that avarice which refuses to part with it, the saints have la- 
 bored to induce the rich to give up their superfluity, and to 
 convince them that they would have abundance of it, pro- 
 vided they measured it, not by the standard of covetous- 
 
 , * De Eleemosyna. c. 6. 
 
 11*
 
 250 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 ness, which knows no bounds to its cravings, but by that of 
 piety, which is ingenious in retrenchments, so as to have 
 wherewith to diffuse itself in the exercise of charity. "We 
 will have a great deal of superfluity," says St. Augustine, "if 
 we keep only what is necessary : but if we seek after vanities, 
 we will never have enough. Seek, brethren, what is suffi- 
 cient for the work of God" that is, for nature " and not 
 for what is sufficient for your covetousness," which is the 
 work of the devil : " and remember that the superfluities of 
 the rich are the necessaries of the poor." 
 
 I would fondly trust, fathers, that what I have now said 
 to you may serve, not only for my vindication that were a 
 small matter but also to make you feel and detest what is 
 corrupt in the maxims of your casuists, and thus unite us 
 sincerely under the sacred rules of the Gospel, according to 
 which we must all be judged. 
 
 As to the second point, which regards simony, before pro- 
 ceeding to answer the charges you have advanced against 
 me, I shall begin by illustrating your doctrine on this sub- 
 ject. Finding yourselves placed in an awkward dilemma, 
 between the canons of the Church, which impose dreadful 
 penalties upon simoniacs, on the one hand, and the avarice 
 of many who pursue this infamous traffic on the other, you 
 have recourse to your ordinary method, which is to yield to 
 men what they desire, and give the Almighty only words 
 and shows. For what else does the simoniac want, but 
 money, in return for his benefice ? And yet this is what you 
 exempt from the charge of simony. And as the name of 
 simony must still remain standing, and a subject to which it 
 may be ascribed, you have substituted, in the place of this, 
 an imaginary idea, which never yet crossed the brain of a 
 simoniac, and would not serve him much though it did the 
 idea, namely, that simony lies in estimating the money con- 
 sidered in itself as highly as the spiritual gift or office con- 
 sidered in itself. Who would ever take it into his head to 
 compare things so utterly disproportionate and heterogeneous ? 
 And yet, provided this metaphysical comparison be not
 
 SIMONY. 251 
 
 drawn, any one may, according to your authors, give away 
 a benefice, and receive money in return for it, without being 
 guilty of simony. 
 
 Such is the way in which you sport with religion, in order 
 to gratify the worst passions of men ; and yet only see with 
 what gravity your Father Valentia delivers his rhapsodies in 
 the passage cited in my letters. He says : " One may give 
 a spiritual for a temporal good in two ways first, in the way 
 of prizing the temporal more than the spiritual, and that 
 would be simony ; secondly, in the way of taking the tem- 
 poral as the motive and end inducing one to give away the 
 spiritual, but without prizing the temporal more than the 
 spiritual, and then it is not simony. And the reason is, that 
 simony consists in receiving something temporal, as the just 
 price of what is spiritual. If, therefore, the temporal is 
 sought si petatur temporale not as the price, but only as 
 the motive determining us to part with the spiritual, it is by 
 no means simony, even although the possession of the tem- 
 poral may be principally intended and expected minime erit 
 simonia, etiamsi temporale principaliter intendatur et expecte- 
 tur." Your redoubtable Sanchez has been favored with a 
 similar revelation ; Escobar quotes him thus : " If one give a 
 spiritual for a temporal good, not as the price, but as a mo- 
 tive to induce the collator to give it, or as an acknowledgment 
 if the benefice has been actually received, is that simony ? 
 Sanchez assures us that it is not." In your Caen Theses of 
 1644, you say: "It is a probable opinion, taught by many 
 Catholics, that it is not simony to exchange a temporal for a 
 spiritual good, when the former is not given as a price." And 
 as to Tanner, here is his doctrine, exactly the same with that 
 >f Valentia ; and I quote it again to show you how far wrong 
 it is in you to complain of me for saying that it does not 
 agree with that of St. Thomas, for he avows it himself in the 
 very passage which I quoted in my letter : " There, is prop- 
 erly and truly no simony," says he, " unless when a temporal 
 good is taken as the price of a spiritual ; but when taken 
 merely as the motive for giving the spiritual, or as an ac-
 
 252 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 knowledgment for having received it, this is not simony, at 
 least in point of conscience." And again: " The same thing 
 may be said although the temporal should b : regarded as the 
 principal end, and even preferred to the spiritual ; although 
 St. Thomas and others appear to hald the reverse, inasmuch 
 as they maintain it to be downright -simony to exchange a 
 spiritual for a temporal good, when the temporal is the end 
 of the transaction." 
 
 Such, then, being your doctrine on simony, as taught by 
 your best authors, who follow each other very closely in this 
 point, it only remains now to reply to your charges of mis- 
 representation. You have taken no notice of Valentia's opin- 
 ion, so that his doctrine stands as it was before. But you fix 
 on that of Tanner, maintaining that he has merely decided it 
 to be no simony by divine right ; and you would have it to 
 be believed that, in quoting the passage, I have suppressed 
 these words, divine right. This, fathers, is a most uncon- 
 scionable trick ; for these words, divine right, never existed 
 in that passage. You add that Tanner declares it to be 
 simony according to positive right. But you are mistaken ; 
 he does not say that generally, but only of particular cases, 
 or, as he expresses it, in casibys a jure express-is, by which he 
 makes an exception to the general rule he had laid down in 
 that passage, " that it is not simony in point of conscience," 
 which must imply that it is not so in point of positive right, 
 unless you would have Tanner made so impious as to main- 
 tain that simony, in point of positive right, is not simony hi 
 point of conscience. But it is easy to see your drift in mus- 
 tering up such terms as " divine right, positive right, natural 
 right, internal and external tribunal, expressed cases, outward 
 presumption," and others equally little known ; you mean to 
 escape under this obscurity of language, and make us lose 
 sight of your aberrations. But, fathers, you shall not escape 
 by these vain artifices ; for I shall put some questions to you 
 so simple, that they will not admit of coming under your dis~ 
 
 * See before, page 73.
 
 SIMONY. 253 
 
 I ask you, then, without speaking of "positive rights," of 
 "outward presumptions," or "external tribunals" I ask if, 
 according to your authors, a beneficiary would be simoniacal, 
 were he to give a benefice worth four thousand livres of yearly 
 rent, and to receive ten thousand francs ready money, not as 
 the price of the benefice, but merely as a motive inducing 
 him to give it ? Answer me plainly, fathers : What must we 
 make of such a case as this according to your authors ? Will 
 not Tanner tell us decidedly that " this is not simony in point 
 of conscience, seeing that the temporal good is not the price 
 of the benefice, but only the motive inducing to dispose of 
 it ?" Will not Valentia, will not your own Theses of Caen, 
 will not Sanchez and Escobar agree in the same decision, and 
 give the same reason for it ? Is anything more necessary to 
 exculpate that beneficiary from simony? And, whatever 
 might be your private opinion of the case, durst you deal 
 with that man as a simonist in your confessionals, when he 
 would be entitled to stop your mouth by telling you that he 
 acted according to the advice of so many grave doctors ? 
 Confess candidly, then, that, according to your views, that 
 man would be no simonist ; and, having done so, defend the 
 doctrine as you best can. 
 
 Such, fathers, is the true mode of treating questions, in 
 order to unravel, instead of perplexing them, either by scho- 
 lastic terms, or, as you have done in your last charge against 
 me here, by altering the state of the question. Tanner, you 
 say, has, at any rate, declared that such an exchange is a 
 great sin ; and you blame me for having maliciously sup- 
 pressed this circumstance, which, you maintain, " completely 
 justifies him." But you are wrong again, and that in more 
 ways than one. For, first, though what you say had been 
 true, it would be nothing to the point, the question in the 
 passage to which I referred beincr, not if it was sin, but if it 
 was simony. Now, these are two very different questions. 
 Sin, according to your maxims, obliges only to confession 
 simony obliges to restitution ; and there are people to whom 
 these may appear two very different things You have found
 
 254 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 expedients for making confession a very easy affair ; "but you 
 have not fallen upon ways and means to make restitution an 
 agreeable one. Allow me to add, that the case which Tan- 
 ner charges with, sin, is not simply that in which a spiritual 
 good is exchanged for a temporal, the latter being the prin- 
 cipal end in view, but that in which the party " prizes the 
 temporal above the spiritual," which is the imaginary case 
 already spoken of. And it must be allowed he could not go 
 far wrong in charging such a case as that with sin, since that 
 man must be either very wicked or very stupid who, when 
 permitted to exchange the one thing for the other, would not 
 avoid the sin of the transaction by such a simple process as 
 that of abstaining from comparing the two things together. 
 Besides, Valentia, in the place quoted, when treating the 
 question, if it be sinful to give a spiritual good for a tem- 
 poral, the latter being the main consideration, and after pro- 
 ducing the reasons given for the affirmative, adds, " Sed hoc 
 non videtur mihi satis certum But this does not appear to 
 my mind sufficiently certain." 
 
 Since that time, however, your father, Erade Bille, pro- 
 fessor of cases of conscience at Caen, has decided that there 
 is no sin at all in the case supposed ; for probable opinions, 
 you know, are always in the way of advancing to maturity.* 
 This opinion he maintains in his writings of 1644, against 
 which M. Dupre, doctor and professor at Caen, delivered that 
 excellent oration, since printed and well known. For though 
 this Erade Bille confesses that Valentia's doctrine, adopted 
 by Father Milhard, and condemned by the Sorbonne, " is 
 contrary to the common opinion, suspected of simony, and 
 punishable at law when discovered in practice," he does not 
 scruple to say that it is a probable opinion, and consequently 
 sure in point of conscience, and that there is neither simony 
 nor sin in it. "It is a probable opinion," he says, " taught 
 by many Catholic doctors, that there is neither any simony 
 nor any sin in giving money, or any other temporal thing, for 
 a benefice, eithe in the way of acknowledgment, or as a mo- 
 * See before, page 140.
 
 SIMONY. 255 
 
 tive, without which it would not be given, provided it is not 
 given as a price equal to the benefice." This is all that could 
 possibly be desired. In fact, according to these maxims of 
 yours, simony would be so exceedingly rare; that we might 
 exempt from this sin even Simon Magus himself, who desired 
 to purchase the Holy Spirit, and is the emblem of those simo- 
 nists that buy spiritual things ; and Gehazi, who took money 
 for a miracle, and may be regarded as the prototype of the 
 simonists that sell them. There can be no doubt that when 
 Simon, as we read in the Acts, " offered the apostles money, 
 saying, Give me also this power ;" he said nothing about buy- 
 ing or selling, or fixing the price ; he did no more than offer 
 the money as a motive to induce them to give him that spir- 
 itual gift ; which being, according to you, no simony at all, 
 he might, had he but been instructed in your maxims, have 
 escaped the anathema of St. Peter. The same unhappy ig- 
 norance was a great loss to Gehazi, when he was struck with 
 leprosy by Elisha ; for, as he accepted the money from the 
 prince who had been miraculously cured, simply as an ac- 
 knowledgment, and not as a price equivalent to the divine 
 virtue which had effected the miracle, he might have insisted 
 on the prophet healing him again on pain of mortal sin ; see- 
 ing, on this supposition, he would have acted according to the 
 advice of your grave doctors, who, in such cases, oblige con- 
 fessors to absolve their penitents, and to wash them from that 
 spiritual leprosy of which the bodily disease is the type. 
 
 Seriously, fathers, it would be extremely easy to hold you 
 up to ridicule in this matter, and I am at a loss to know why 
 you expose yourselves to such treatment. To produce this 
 effect, I have nothing more to do than simply to quote Esco- 
 bar, in his " Practice of Simony according to the Society of 
 Jesus ;" " Is it simony when two Churchmen become mutu- 
 ally pledged thus : Give me your vote for my election as 
 provincial, and I shall give you mine for your election as 
 prior ? By no means." Or take another : " It is not simony 
 to get possession of a benefice by promising a sum of money, 
 when one has no intention of actually paying the money;
 
 256 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 for this is merely making a show of simony, and is as far 
 from being real simony as counterfeit gold is from the gen- 
 uine." By this quirk of conscience, he has contrived means, 
 in the way of adding swindling to simony, for obtaining ben- 
 efices without simony and without money. 
 
 But I have no time to dwell longer on the subject, for I 
 must say a word or two in reply to your third accusation, 
 which refers to the subject of bankrupts. Nothing can be 
 more gross than the manner in which you have managed this 
 charge. You rail at me as a libeller in reference to a senti- 
 ment of Lessius, which I did not quote myself, but took from 
 a passage in Escobar ; and therefore, though it were true 
 that Lessius does not hold the opinion ascribed to him by 
 Escobar, what can be more unfair than to charge me with 
 the misrepresentation ? When I quote Lessius or others of 
 your authors myself, I am quite prepared to answer for it ; 
 but as Escobar has collected the opinions of twenty-four of 
 your writers, I beg to ask, if I am bound to guarantee any- 
 thing beyond the correctness of my citations from his book ? 
 or if I must, in addition, answer for the fidelity of all his 
 quotations of which I may avail myself ? This would be 
 hardly reasonable ; and yet this is precisely the case in the 
 question before us. I produced in my letter the following 
 passage from Escobar, and you do not object to the fidelity of 
 my translation : " May the bankrupt, with a good conscience, 
 retain as much of his property as is necessary to afford him 
 an honorable maintenance ne indecore vivat ? I answer, with 
 Lessius, that he may cum Lessio assero posse." You tell 
 me that Lessius does not hold that opinion. But just con- 
 sider for a moment the predicament in which you involve 
 yourselves. If it turns out that he does hold that opinion, 
 you will be set. down as impostors for having asserted the 
 contrary ; and if it is proved that he does not hold it, Esco- 
 bar will be the impostor ; so it must now of necessity follow, 
 that one or other of the Society will be convicted of impos- 
 ture. Only think what a scandal! You cannot, it would 
 appear, foresee the consequences of things. You seem to
 
 BANKRUPTCY. 25*7 
 
 imagine that you have nothing more to do than to cast as- 
 persions upon people, without considering on whom they 
 may recoil. Why did you not acquaint Escohar with your 
 objection before venturing to publish it ? He might have 
 given you satisfaction. It is not so very troublesome to get 
 word from Valladolid, where he is living in perfect health, 
 and completing his grand work on Moral Theology, in six 
 volumes, on the first of which I mean to say a few words by- 
 and-by. They have sent him the first ten letters ; you might 
 as easily have sent him your objection, and I am sure he 
 would have soon returned you an answer, for he has doubt- 
 less seen in Lessius the passage from which he took the ne 
 indecore vivat. Read him yourselves, fathers, and you will 
 find it word for word, as I have done. Here it is : " The 
 same thing is apparent from the authorities cited, particularly 
 in regard to that property which he acquires after his failure, 
 out of which even the delinquent debtor may retain as much 
 as is necessary for his honorable maintenance, according to his 
 station of life ut non indecore vivat. Do you ask if this 
 rule applies to goods which he possessed at the time of his 
 failure ? Such seems to be the judgment of the doctors." 
 
 I shall not stop here to show how Lessius, to sanction his 
 maxim, perverts the law that allows bankrupts nothing more 
 than a mere livelihood, and that makes no provision for " hon- 
 orable maintenance." It is enough to have vindicated Esco- 
 bar from such an accusation it is more, indeed, than what 
 I was in duty bound to do. But you, fathers, have not done 
 your duty. It still remains for you to answer the passage 
 of Escobar, whose decisions, by the way, have this advan- 
 tage, that being entirely independent of the context, and con- 
 densed in little articles, they are not liable to your distinc- 
 tions. I quoted the whole of the passage, in which " bank- 
 rupts are permitted to keep their goods, though unjustly 
 acquired, to provide an honorable maintenance for their fam- 
 ilies" commenting on which in my letters, I exclaim : " In- 
 deed, father ! by what strange kind of charity would you 
 have the ill-gotten property of a bankrupt appropriated to
 
 258 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 his own use, instead of that of his lawful creditors ?"* This 
 is the question which must be answered ; but it is one that 
 involves you in a sad dilemma, and from which you in vain 
 seek to escape by altering the state of the question, and 
 quoting other passages from Lessius, which have no connec- 
 tion with the subject. I ask you, then, May this maxim of 
 Escobar be followed by bankrupts with a safe conscience, or 
 no? And take care what you say. If you answer, No, 
 what becomes of your doctor, and your doctrine of proba- 
 bility ? If you say, Yes I delate you to the Parliament.f 
 
 In this predicament I must now leave you, fathers ; for 
 my limits will not permit me to overtake your next accusa- 
 tion, which respects homicide. This will serve for my next 
 letter, and the rest will follow. 
 
 In the mean while, I shall make no remarks on the adver- 
 tisements which you have tagged to the end of each of your 
 charges, filled as they are with scandalous falsehoods. I 
 mean to answer all these in a separate letter, in which I hope 
 to show the weight due to your calumnies. I am sorry 
 fathers, that you should have recourse to such desperate re- 
 sources. The abusive terms which you heap on me will not 
 clear up our disputes, nor will your manifold threats hinder 
 me from defending myself. You think you have power and 
 impunity on your side ; and I think that I have truth and in- 
 nocence on mine. It is a strange and tedious war, when vio- 
 lence attempts to vanquish truth. All the efforts of violence 
 cannot weaken truth, and only serve to give it fresh vigor. 
 All the lights of truth cannot arrest violence, and only serve 
 to exasperate it. When force meets force, the weaker must 
 succumb to the stronger ; when argument is opposed to ar- 
 gument, the solid and the convincing triumphs over the 
 empty and the false ; but violence and verity can make no im- 
 pression on each other. Let none suppose, however, that 
 the two are, therefore, equal to each other ; for there is this 
 
 * See before, p. 177. 
 
 f " The Parliament of Paris was originally the court of the kings of 
 France, to which the v committed the supreme administration of jus- 
 tice." (Robertson's Charles V., vol. i. 171.) .
 
 VIOLENCE AND VERITY. 2O9 
 
 X 
 
 vast difference between them, that violence has only a certain 
 course to run, limited by the appointment of Heaven, which 
 overrules its effects to the glory of the truth which it assails ; 
 whereas verity endures forever, and eventually triumphs 
 over its enemies, being eternal and almighty as God him- 
 self.* 
 
 * In most of the French editions, another letter is inserted after this, 
 being a refutation of a reply which appeared at the time to Letter xii. 
 But as this letter, though well written, was not written by Pascal, and 
 as it does not contain anything that would now be interesting to the 
 reader, we omit it. Suffice it to say, that the reply of the Jesuits con- 
 sisted, as usual, of the most barefaced attempts to fix the charge of mis- 
 representation on their opponent, accusing him of omitting to quote pas- 
 sages from his authors which they never wrote, of not answering objec- 
 tions which were never brought against him, of not adverting to cases 
 which neither he nor his authors dreamt of in short, like all Jesuitical 
 answers, it is anything and everything but a refutation of the charge* 
 which have been substantiated against them.
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHERS OP THE SOCIETY 
 OF JESUS. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF LESSIUS ON HOMICIDE THE SAME WITH THAT 
 OF VALENTIA HOW EASY IT IS TO PASS FROM SPECULATION TO 
 PRACTICE WHY THE JESUITS HAVE RECOURSE TO THIS DIS- 
 TINCTION, AND HOW LITTLE IT SERVES FOR THEIR VINDICATION. 
 
 September 30, 1656. 
 
 REVEREND FATHERS, I have just seen your last produc- 
 tion, in which you have continued your list of Impostures up 
 to the twentieth, and intimate that you mean to conclude with 
 this the first part of your accusations against me, and to pro- 
 ceed to the second, in which you are to adopt a new mode of 
 defence, by showing that there are other casuists besides those 
 of your Society who are as lax as yourselves. I now see the 
 precise number of charges to which I have to reply ; and as 
 the fourth, to which we have now come, relates to homicide, 
 it may be proper, in answering it, to include the llth, 13th, 
 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th, which refer to the same 
 subject. 
 
 In the present letter, therefore, my object shall be to vin- 
 dicate the correctness of my quotations from the charges of 
 falsity which you bring against me. But as you have ven- 
 tured, in your pamphlets, to assert that " the sentiments of 
 your authors on murder are agreeable to the decisions of 
 popes and ecclesiastical laws," you will compel me, in my 
 next letter, to confute a statement at once so unfounded and 
 so injurious to the Church. It is of some importance to show 
 that she is innocent of your corruptions, in order that heretics 
 may be prevented from taking advantage of your aberrations,
 
 FIDELITY OF PASCAL'S QUOTATIONS. 261 
 
 to draw conclusions tending to her dishonor.* And thus, 
 viewing on the one hand your pernicious maxims, and on the 
 other the canons of the Church which have uniformly con- 
 demned them, people will see, at one glance, what they should 
 shun and what they should follow. 
 
 Your fourth charge turns on a maxim relating to murder, 
 which you say I have falsely ascribed to Lessius. It is as 
 follows : " That if a man has received a buffet, he may im- 
 mediately pursue his enemy, and even return the blow with 
 the sword, not to avenge himself, but to retrieve his honor." 
 This, you say, is the opinion of the casuist Victoria. But this 
 is nothing to the point. There is no inconsistency in saying, 
 that it is at once the opinion of Victoria and of Lessius ; for 
 Lessius himself says that it is also held by Navarre and Hen- 
 riquez, who teach identically the same doctrine. The only 
 question, then, is, if Lessius holds this view as well as his 
 brother casuists. You maintain " that Lessius quotes this 
 opinion solely for the purpose of refuting it, and that I there- 
 fore attribute to him a sentiment which he produces only to 
 overthrow the basest and most disgraceful act of which a 
 writer can be guilty." Now I maintain, fathers, that he 
 quotes the opinion solely for the purpose of supporting it. 
 Here is a question of fact, which it will be very easy to settle. 
 Let us see, then, how you prove your allegation, and you will 
 see afterwards how I prove mine. 
 
 To show that Lessius is not of that opinion, you tell us 
 that he condemns the practice of it ; and in proof of this, 
 you quote one passage of his (1. 2, c. 9, n. 92), in which he 
 says, in so many words, " I condemn the practice of it." I 
 grant that, on looking for these words, at number 92, to 
 which you refer, they will be found there. But what will 
 people say, fathers, when they discover, at the same time, 
 that he is treating in that place of a question totally different 
 
 * The Church of Rome has not left those whom she terms heretics so 
 doubtfully to ' take advantage" of Jesuitical aberrations. She has done 
 everything in her power to give them this advantage. By identifying 
 herself, at various times, with the Jesuits, she h*vs virtually stamped 
 their doctrines with her approbation.
 
 262 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 from that of which we are speaking, and that the opinion jf 
 which he there says that he condemns the practice, has no 
 connection with that now in dispute, but is quite distinct ? 
 And yet to be convinced that this is the fact, we have only 
 to open the book to which you refer, and there we find the 
 whole subject in its connection as follows : At number 79 he 
 treats the question, " If it is lawful ,Ja kifl for a buffet ?" and 
 at number 80 he finishes this matteHvithout a single word 
 of condemnation. Having disposed of this question, he opens 
 a new one at art. 81, namely, " If it is lawful to kill for 
 slanders ?" and it is when speaking of this question that he 
 employs the words you have quoted -" I condemn the prac- 
 tice of it." 
 
 Is it not shameful, fathers, that you should venture to pro- 
 duce these words to make it be believed that Lessius condemns 
 the opinion that it is lawful to kill for a buffet ? and that, on 
 the ground of this single proof, you should chuckle over it, 
 as you have done, by saying : " Many persons of honor in 
 Paris have already discovered this notorious falsehood by 
 consulting Lessius, and have thus ascertained the degree of 
 credit due to that slanderer ?" Indeed ! and is it thus that 
 you abuse the confidence which those persons of honor re- 
 pose in you ? To show them that Lessius does not hold a 
 certain opinion, you open the book to them at a place where 
 he is condemning another opinion ; and these persons not 
 having begun to mistrust your good faith, and never thinking 
 of examining whether the author speaks in that place of the 
 subject in dispute, you impose on their credulity. I make no 
 doubt, fathers, that to shelter yourselves from the guilt of 
 such a scandalous lie, you had recourse to your doctrine of 
 equivocations ; and that, having read the passage in a loud 
 voice, you would say, in a lower key, that the author was 
 speaking there of something else. But I am not so sure 
 whether this saving clause, which is quite enough to satisfy 
 your consciences, will be a very satisfactory answer to the 
 just complaint of those " honorable persons," when they 
 shall discover that you have hoodwinked them in this style.
 
 FIDELITY OF PASCALS DESCRIPTIONS. 263 
 
 Take care, then, fathers, to prevent them by all means 
 from seeing my letters ; for this is the only method now 
 left you to preserve your credit for a short time longer. This 
 is not the way in which I deal with your writings : I send 
 them to all my friends : I wish everybody to see them. And 
 I verily believe that both of us are in the right for our OWH 
 ixterests ; for after having published with such parade this 
 fourth Imposture, were it once discovered that you have 
 made it up by foisting in one passage for another, you would 
 be instantly denounced. It will be easily seen, that if you 
 could have found what you wanted in the passage where 
 Lessius treated of this matter, you would not have searched 
 for it elsewhere, and that you had recourse to such a trick 
 only because you could find nothing in that passage favora- 
 ble to your purpose. 
 
 You would have us believe that we may find in Lessius 
 what you assert, " that he does not allow that this opinion 
 (that a man may be lawfully killed for a buffet) is probable 
 in theory ;" whereas Lessius distinctly declares, at number 
 80 : "This opinion,. that a man may kill for a buffet, is prob- 
 able in theory." Is not this, word for word, the reverse of 
 your assertion ? And can we sufficiently admire the hardi- 
 hood with which you have advanced, in set phrase, the very 
 reverse of a matter of fact ! To your conclusion, from a 
 fabricated passage, that Lessius was not of that opinion, we 
 have only to place Lessius himself, who, in the genuine pas- 
 sage, declares that he is of that opinion. 
 
 Again, you would have Lessius to say " that he condemns 
 the practice of it ;" and, as I have just observed, there is 
 not hi the original a single word of condemnation ; all that he 
 says is : "It appears that it ought not to be EASILY permit- 
 ted in practice In praxi nan. videtur FACILE permittenda." 
 Is that, fathers, the language of a man who condemns a 
 maxim ? Would you say that adultery and incest ought not 
 to be easily permitted in practice ? Must we not, on the con- 
 trary, conclude, that as Lessius says no more than that the 
 practice ought not to be easily permitted, his opinion is, that
 
 264 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 it may be permitted sometimes, though rarely ? And, as if 
 he had been anxious to apprize everybody when it might be 
 permitted, and to relieve those who have received affronts 
 from being troubled with unreasonable scruples, from not 
 knowing on what occasions they might lawfully kill in prac- 
 tice, he has been at pains to inform them what they ought to 
 avoid in order to practise the doctrine with a safe conscience. 
 Mark his words : " It seems," says he, " that it ought not to 
 be easily permitted, because of the danger that persons may 
 act in this matter out of hatred or revenge, or with excess, or 
 that this may occasion too many murders." From this it 
 appears that murder is freely permitted by Lessius, if one 
 avoids the inconveniences referred to in other words, if one 
 can act without hatred or revenge, and in circumstances that 
 may not open the door to a great many murders. To illus- 
 trate the matter, I may give you an example of recent occur- 
 rence the case of the buffet of Compiegne.* You will grant 
 that the person who received the blow on that occasion has 
 shown by the way in which he has acted, that he was suf- 
 ficiently master of the passions of hatred and revenge. It 
 only remained for him, therefore, to see that he did not give 
 occasion to too many murders ; and you need hardly be told, 
 fathers, it is such a rare spectacle to find Jesuits bestowing 
 buffets on the officers of the royal household, that he had no 
 great reason to fear that a murder committed on this occa- 
 sion would be likely to draw many others in its train. You 
 cannot, accordingly, deny that the Jesuit who figured on 
 that occasion was killable with a safe conscience, and that the 
 offended party might have converted him into a practical 
 illustration of the doctrine of Lessius. And very likely, fa- 
 thers, this might have been the result had he been educated 
 in your school, and learnt from Escobar that the man who 
 
 * The reference here is to an affray which made a considerable noise 
 at the time, between Father Bonn, a Jesuit, and M. GuiHe : one of the 
 officers of the royal kitchen, in the College of Oompje^ne. A quarrel 
 having taken place, the enraged Jesuit struck the royal cook in the face 
 while he was in the act of preparing dinner by his majesty's order, for 
 Christina, queen of Sweden, in honor, perhaps, of her conversion to 
 the Romish faith. fNioole, iv. 37 )
 
 SPECULATIVE MURDER. 265 
 
 has received a buffet is held to be disgraced until he has 
 taken the life of him wh"o insulted him. But there is ground 
 to believe, that the very different instructions which he re- 
 ceived from a curate, who is no great favorite of yours, have 
 contributed not a little in this case to save the life of a Jes- 
 uit. 
 
 Tell us no more, then, of inconveniences which may, in 
 many instances, be so easily got over, and in the absence of 
 which, according to Lessius, murder is permissible even in 
 practice. This is frankly avowed by your authors, as quoted 
 by Escobar, in his " Practice of Homicide, according to your 
 Society." " Is it allowable," asks this casuist, " to kill him 
 who has given me a buffet ? Lessius says it is permissible in 
 speculation, though not to be followed in practice non con- 
 sulendum in praxi on account of the risk of hatred, or of 
 murders prejudicial to the State. Others, however, have 
 judged that, BY AVOIDING THESE INCONVENIENCES, THIS is 
 PERMISSIBLE AND SAFE IN PRACTICE in praxi probaUlem et 
 tutam judicarunt Jlenriquez," &c. See how your opinions 
 mount up, by little and little, to the climax of probabilism ! 
 The present one you have at last elevated to this position, by 
 permitting murder without any distinction between specula- 
 tion and practice, in the following terms : " It is lawful, when 
 one has received a buffet, to return the blow immediately 
 with the sword, not to avenge one's self, but to preserve one's 
 honor." Such is the decision of your fathers of Caen in 
 1644, embodied in their publications produced by the uni- 
 versity before parliament, when they presented their third 
 remonstrance against your doctrine of homicide, as shown in 
 the book then emitted by them, at page 339. 
 
 Mark, then, fathers, that your own authors have themselves 
 demolished this absurd distinction between speculative and 
 practical murder a distinction which the university treated 
 with ridicule, and the invention of which is a secret of your 
 policy, which it may now be worth while to explain. The 
 knowledge of it, besides being necessary to the right under- 
 standing of your 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th charges, is well 
 12
 
 266 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 calculated, in general, to open up, by little and little, the 
 principles of that mysterious policy. ' 
 
 In attempting, as you have done, to decide cases of con- 
 science in the most agreeable and accommodating manner, 
 while you met with some questions in which religion alone 
 was concerned such as those of contrition, penance, love to 
 God, and others only affecting the inner court of conscience 
 you encountered another class of cases in which civil so- 
 ciety was interested as well as religion such as those relating 
 to usury, bankruptcy, homicide, and the like. And it is 
 truly distressing to all that love the Church, to observe that, 
 in a vast number of instances, in which you had only Religion 
 to contend with, you have violated her laws without reserva- 
 tion, without distinction, and without compunction ; because 
 you knew that it is not here that God visibly administers his 
 justice. But in those cases in which the State is interested 
 as well as Religion, your apprehension of man's justice has 
 induced you to divide your decisions into two shares. To 
 the first of these you give the name of speculation ; under 
 which category crimes, considered in themselves, without re- 
 gard to society, but merely to the law of God, you have 
 permitted, without the least scruple, and in the way of tram- 
 pling on the divine law which condemns them. The second 
 you rank under the denomination of practice ; and here, con- 
 sidering the injury which may be done to society, and the 
 presence of magistrates who look after the public peace, you 
 take care, in order to keep yourselves on the safe side of the 
 law, not to approve always in practice the murders and other 
 crimes which you have sanctioned in speculation. Thus, for 
 example, on the question, " If it be lawful to kill for slan- 
 ders ?" your authors, Filiutius, Reginald, and others, reply : 
 " This is permitted in speculation e.r probabile opinionc licet ; 
 but is not to be approved in practice, on account of the great, 
 number of murders which might ensue, and which might 
 injure the State, if all slanderers were to be killed, and also 
 because one might be punished in a court of justice for liaving 
 killed another for that matter." Such is the style in which
 
 SPECULATIVE MURDER. 267 
 
 your opinions begin to develop themselves, under the shelter 
 of this distinction, in virtue of which, without doing any 
 sensible injury to society, you only ruin religion. In acting 
 thus, you consider yourselves quite safe. You suppose that, 
 on the one hand, the influence you have in the Church will 
 effectually shield from punishment your assaults on truth ; 
 and that, on the other, the precautions you have taken against 
 too easily reducing your permissions to practice will save you 
 on the part of the civil powers, who, not being judges in 
 cases of conscience, are properly concerned only with the 
 outward practice. Thus an opinion which would be con- 
 demned under the name of practice, comes out quite safe 
 under the name of speculation. But this basis once estab- 
 lished, it is not difficult to erect on it the rest of your max- 
 ims. There is an infinite distance between God's prohibition 
 of murder, and your speculative permission of the crime ; but 
 between that permission and the practice the distance is very 
 small indeed. It only remains to show, that what is allowa- 
 ble in speculation is also so in practice ; and there can be no 
 want of reasons for this. You have contrived to find them, 
 in far more difficult cases. Would you like to see, fathers, 
 how this may be managed ? I refer you to the reasoning of 
 Escobar, who has distinctly decided the point in the first of 
 the six volumes of his grand Moral Theology, of which I have 
 already spoken a work in which he shows quite another 
 spirit from that which appears in his former compilation from 
 your four-and-twenty elders. At that time he thought that 
 there might be opinions probable in speculation, which might 
 not be safe in practice ; but he has now come to form an op- 
 posite judgment, and has, in this, his latest work, confirmed 
 it. Such is the wonderful growth attained by the doctrine 
 of probability in general, as well as by every probable opinion 
 in particular, in the course of time. Attend, then, to what 
 he says : " I cannot see how it can be that an action which 
 seems allowable in speculation should not be so likewise in 
 practice ; because what may be done in practice depends on 
 what is found to be lawful in speculation, and the things
 
 268 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 differ from each other only as cause and Affect. Speculation 
 is that "which determines to action. WHENCE IT FOLLOWS 
 
 THAT OPINIONS PROBABLE IN SPECULATION MAY BE FOLLOWED 
 
 WITH A SAFE CONSCIENCE IN PRACTICE, and that even with 
 more safety than those which have not been so well examined 
 as matters of speculation."* 
 
 Verily, fathers, your friend Escobar reasons uncommonly 
 well sometimes ; and, in point of fact, there is such a close 
 connection between speculation and practice, that when the 
 former has once taken root, you have no difficulty in per- 
 mitting the latter, without any disguise. A good illustration 
 of this we have in the permission " to kill for a buffet," which, 
 from being a point of simple speculation, was boldly raised 
 by Lessius into a' practice "which ought not easily to be al- 
 lowed ;" from that promoted by Escobar to the character of 
 " an easy practice ;" and from thence elevated by your fathers 
 of Caen, as we have seen, without any distinction between 
 theory and practice, into a full permission. Thus you bring 
 your opinions to their full growth very gradually. Were 
 they presented all at once in their finished extravagance, 
 they would beget horror ; but this slow imperceptible pro- 
 gress gradually habituates men to the sight of them, and 
 hides their offensiveness. And in this way the permission 
 to murder, in itself so odious both to Church and State, creeps 
 first into the Church, and then from the Church into the 
 State. 
 
 A similar success has attended the opinion of " killing for 
 slander," which has now reached the climax of a permission 
 without any distinction. I should not have stopped to quote 
 my authorities on this point from your writings, had it not 
 been necessary in order to put down the effrontery with 
 which you have asserted, twbe over, in your fifteenth Impos- 
 ture, " that there never was a Jesuit who permitted killing 
 for slander." Before making this statement, fathers, you 
 should have taken care to prevent it from coming under my 
 notice, seeing that it is so easy for me to answer it. For, 
 In Pralog., n, 16.
 
 KILLING FOR SLANDKR. 269 
 
 not to mention that your fathers Reginald, Filiutius, and oth- 
 ers, have permitted it in speculation, as I have already shown, 
 and that the principle laid down by Escobar leads us safely 
 on to the practice, I have to tell you that you have authors 
 who have permitted it in so many words, and among others 
 Father Hereau in his public lectures, on the conclusion of 
 which the king put him under arrest in your house, for hav- 
 ing taught, among other errors, that when a person who has 
 slandered us in the presence of men of honor, continues to 
 do so after being warned to desist, it is allowable to kill him, 
 not publicly, indeed, for fear of scandal, but IN A PRIVATE 
 WAY sed clam. 
 
 I have had occasion already to mention Father Lamy, and 
 you do not need to be informed that his doctrine on this sub- 
 ject was censured in 1649 by the University of Lou vain.* 
 And yet two months have not elapsed since your Father Des 
 Bois maintained this very censured doctrine of Father Lamy, 
 and taught that " it was allowable for a monk to defend the 
 honor which he acquired bv his virtue, EVEN BY KILLING the 
 person who assails his reputation etiamcum morte invasoris ;" 
 which has raised such a scandal in that town, that the 
 whole of the cures united to impose silence on him, and to 
 oblige him, by a canonical process, to retract his doctrine. 
 The case is now pending in the Episcopal court. 
 
 What say you now, fathers ? Why attempt, after that, 
 to maintain that "no Jesuit ever held that it was lawful to 
 kill for slander ?" Is anything more necessary to convince 
 you of this than the very opinions of your fathers which you 
 quote, since they do not condemn murder in speculation, but 
 onlv in practice, and that, too, "on account of the injury 
 that might thereby accrue to the State ?" And here I would 
 
 * The doctrines advanced liy Lnmy are too <jross for rep n tition. Suf- 
 fice it to say. that they sanctioned the murder not onlv of the slanderer, 
 but of the person who i.iijjht tell tales against n rclirrious order of one 
 who mi<jht stand in the way of another enjoying a lejacyor a benofice, 
 and even of one whom a priest iniijht hive robh^d of her honor, if she 
 threatened to rob him of .his. These horrid maxims were condemned 
 by civil tribunals and theological faculties ; but the Jesuits persisted in 
 justifying them. (Nicole, Notes, iv. 41, &c.)
 
 270 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 just beg to ask, whether the whole matter in dispute between 
 us is not simply and solely to ascertain if you have or have 
 not subverted the law of God which condemns murder ? The 
 point in question is, not whether you have injured the com- 
 monwealth, but whether you have injured religion. What 
 purpose, then, can it serve, in a dispute of this kind, to show 
 ihat you have spared the State, when you make it apparent, 
 at the same time, that you have destroyed the faith ? Is 
 this not evident from your saying that the meaning of Reg- 
 bald, on the question of killing for slanders, is, " that a pri- 
 vate individual has a right to employ that mode of defence, 
 viewing it simply in itself?" I desire nothing beyond this 
 concession to confute you. " A private individual." you say, 
 " has a right to employ that mode of defence" (that is, kill- 
 ing for slanders), "viewing the thing in itself;" and, conse- 
 quently, fathers, the law of God, which forbids us to kill, is 
 nullified by that decision. 
 
 It serves no purpose to add, as you have done, " that such 
 a mode is unlawful and criminal, even according to the law 
 of God, on account of the murders and disorders which 
 would follow in society, because the law of God obliges us 
 to have regard to the good of society." This is to evade 
 the question : for there are two laws to be observed^-one 
 forbidding us to kill, and another forbidding us to harm so- 
 ciety. Reginald has not, perhaps, broken the law which for- 
 bids us to do harm to society ; but he has most certainly 
 violated that which forbids us to kill. Now this is the only 
 point with which we have to do. I might have shown, be- 
 sides, that your other writers, who have permitted these 
 murders in practice, have subverted the one law as well as 
 the other. But, to proceed, we have seen that you sometimes 
 forbid doing harm to the State ; and you allege that your 
 design in that is to fulfil the law of God, which obliges us to 
 consult the interests of society. That may be true, though 
 it is far from being certain, as you might do the same thing 
 purely from fear of the civil magistrate. With your per-
 
 FEAR OF THE CONSEQUENCES. 27 1 
 
 mission, then, we shall scrutinize the real secret of this move- 
 ment. 
 
 Is it not certain, fathers, that if you had really any regard 
 to God, and if the observance of his law had been the prime 
 and principal object in your thoughts, this respect would 
 have invariably predominated in all your leading decisions, 
 and would have engaged you at all times on the side of re- 
 ligion ? But if it turns out, on the contrary, that you violate, 
 in innumerable instances, the most sacred commands that 
 God has laid upon men, and that, as in the instances before 
 us, you annihilate the law of God, which forbids these ac- 
 tions as criminal in themselves, and that you only scruple to 
 approve of them in practice, from bodily fear of the civil 
 magistrate-, do you not afford us ground to conclude that you 
 have no respect to God in your apprehensions, and that if 
 you yield an apparent obedience to his law, in so far as re- 
 gards the obligation to do no harm to the State, this is not 
 done out of any regard to the law itself, but to compass 
 your own ends, as has ever been the way with politicians of 
 no religion ? 
 
 What, fathers ! will you tell us that, looking simply to the 
 law of God, which says, " Thou shalt not kill," we have a 
 right to kill for slanders ? And after having thus trampled 
 on the eternal law of God, do you imagine that you atone 
 for the scandal you have caused, and can persuade us of your 
 reverence for him, by adding that you prohibit the practice 
 for State reasons, and from dread of the civil arm ? Is not 
 this, on the contrary, to raise a fresh scandal ? I mean not 
 by the respect which you testify for the magistrate ; that is 
 not my charge against you, and it is ridiculous in you to ban- 
 ter, as you have done, on this matter. I blame you, not for 
 fearing the magistrate, but for fearing none but the magis- 
 trate. And I blame you for this, because it is making God 
 less the enemy of vice than man. Had you said that to kill 
 for slander was allowable according to men, but not accord- 
 ing to God, that might have been something more endurable ; 
 but when you maintain, that what is too criminal to be tol-
 
 272 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 erated among men, may yet be innocent and right in the eyes 
 of that Being who is righteousness itself, what is this but to 
 declare before the whole world, by a subversion of principle 
 as shocking in itself as it is alien to the spirit of the saints, 
 that while you can be braggarts before God, you are cowards 
 before men ? 
 
 Had you really been anxious to condemn these homicides, 
 you would have allowed the commandment of God which 
 forbids them to remain intact ; and had you dared at once to 
 permit them, you would have permitted them openly, in spite 
 of the laws of God and men. But your object being to per- 
 mit them imperceptibly, and to cheat the magistrate, who 
 watches over the public safety, you have gone craftily to 
 work. You separate your maxims into two portions. On 
 the one side, you hold out " that it is lawful in speculation to 
 kill a man for slander;" and nobody thinks of hindering 
 you from taking a speculative view of matters. On the other 
 side, you come out with this detached axiom, " that what is 
 permitted in speculation is also permissible in practice ;" 
 and what concern does society seem to have in this general 
 and metaphysical-looking proposition ? And thus these two 
 principles, so little suspected, being embraced in their sep- 
 arate form, the vigilance of the magistrate is eluded ; while 
 it is only necessary to combine the two together, to draw 
 from them the conclusion which you aim at namely, that 
 it is lawful in practice to put a man to death for a simple 
 slander. . 
 
 It is, indeed, fathers, one of the most subtle tricks of your 
 policy, to scatter through your publications the maxims 
 which you club together in your decisions. It is partly in 
 this way that you establish your doctrine of probabilities, 
 which I have frequently had occasion to explain. That gen- 
 eral principle once established, you advance propositions 
 harmless enough when viewed apart, but which, when taken 
 in connection with that pernicious dogma, become positively 
 horrible. An example of this, which demands an answer, 
 may be found in the llth page of your " Impostures," where
 
 THE POLICY OF JESUITISM. 273 
 
 you allege that "several famous theologians have decided 
 that it is lawful to kill a man fora box on the ear." Now, 
 it is certain, that if that had been said by a person who did 
 not hold probabilism, there would be nothing to find fault 
 with in it ; it would in this case amount to no more than a 
 harmless statement, and nothing could be elicited from it. 
 But you, fathers, and all who hold that dangerous tenet, 
 " that whatever has been approved by celebrated authors is 
 probable and safe in conscience," when you add to this "that 
 several celebrated authors are of opinion that it is lawful to 
 kill a man for a box on the ear," what is this but to put a 
 dagger into the hand of all Christians, for the purpose of 
 plunging it into the heart of the first, person that insults them, 
 and to assure them that, having the judgment of so many 
 grave authors on their side, they may do so with a perfectly 
 safe conscience ? 
 
 What monstrous species of language is this, which, in an- 
 nouncing that certain authors hold a detestable opinion, is at 
 the same time giving a decision in favor of that opinion 
 which solemnly teaches whatever it simply tells ! We hav 
 learnt, fathers, to understand this peculiar dialect of the 
 Jesuitical school ; and it is astonishing that you have the 
 hardihood to speak it out so freely, for it betrays your senti- 
 ments somewhat too broadly. It convicts you of permitting 
 murder for a buffet, as often as you repeat that many cele- 
 brated authors have maintained that opinion. 
 
 This charge, fathers, you will never be able to repel ; noi 
 will you be much helped out by those passages from Vas- 
 quez and Suarez that you adduce against me, in which they 
 condemn the murders which their associates have approved. 
 These testimonies, disjoined from the rest of your doctrine, 
 may hoodwink those who know little about it ; but we, who 
 know better, put your principles and maxims together. You 
 say, then, that Vasquez condemns murders ; but what say 
 you on the other side of the question, my reverend fathers ? 
 Why, " that the probability of one sentiment does not hinder 
 the probability of the opposite sentiment ; and that it is war- 
 12*
 
 274 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 rantable to follow the less probable and less safe opinion, 
 giving up the more probable and more safe one." What fol- 
 lows from all this taken in connection, but that we have per- 
 fect freedom of conscience to adopt any one of these conflict- 
 ing judgments which pleases us best ? And what becomes 
 of all the effect which you fondly anticipate from your quo- 
 tations ? It evaporates in smoke, for we have no more to do 
 than to conjoin for your condemnation the maxims which you 
 have disjoined for your exculpation. Why, then, produce 
 those passages of your authors which I have not quoted, to 
 qualify those which I have quoted, as if the one could excuse 
 the other ? What right does that give you to call me an 
 " impostor ?" Have I said that all your fathers are impli- 
 cated in the same corruptions ? Have I not, on the contrary, 
 been at pains to show that your interest lay in having them 
 of all different minds, in order to suit all your purposes ? 
 Do you wish to kill your man ? here is Lessius for you. 
 Are you inclined to spare him ? here is Vasquez. Nobody 
 need go away in ill humor nobody without the authority of 
 a grave doctor. Lessius will talk to you like a Heathen on 
 homicide, and like a Christian, it may be, on charity. Vas- 
 quez, again, will descant like a Heathen on charity, and like 
 a Christian on homicide. But by means of probabilism, 
 which is held both by Vasquez and Lessius, and which 
 renders all your opinions common property, they will lend 
 their opinions to one another, and each will be held bound to 
 absolre those who have acted according to opinions which 
 each of them has condemned. It is this very variety, then, 
 that confounds you. Uniformity, even in evil, would be 
 better than this. Nothing is more contrary to the orders 
 of St. Ignatius* and the first generals of your Society, than 
 
 * It M very sad to see Pascal reduced to the necessity of saluting the 
 founder of the sect which he held up to the scorn of the world, as Saint 
 Ignatius ! Ignatius Loyola was a native of Spain, and born in 1491. 
 At first a soldier of fortune, he was disabled from service by a wound 
 in the leg at the siege of Pampeluna. and his brain having become heated 
 by reading romances and legendary tales, he took it into his head to 
 become the Don Quixote of the Virgin, and wage war against all here- 
 tics and infidels By indomitable perseverance he succeeded in estab-
 
 PUOBABILISM. 275 
 
 this confused medley of all sorts of opinions, good and bad. 
 I may, perhaps, enter on this topic at some future period ; 
 and it will astonish many to see how far you have degener- 
 ated from the original spirit of your institution, and that your 
 own generals have foreseen that the corruption of your doc- 
 trine on morals might prove fatal, not only to your Society, 
 but to the Church universal.* 
 
 Meanwhile, I repeat that you can derive no advantage from 
 the doctrine of Vasquez. It would be strange, indeed, if, 
 out of all the Jesuits that have written on morals, one or two 
 could not be found who may have hit upon a truth which has 
 been confessed by all Christians. There is no glory in main- 
 taining the truth, according to the Gospel, that it is unlawful 
 to kill a man for smiting us on the face ; but it is foul shame 
 to deny it. So far, indeed, from justifying you, nothing tells 
 more fatally against you than the fact that, having doctors 
 among you who have told you the truth, you abide not in the 
 truth, but love the darkness rather than the light. You have 
 been taught by Vasquez that it is a heathen, and not a Chris- 
 tian, opinion to hold that we may knock down a man for a 
 blow on the cheek ; and that it is subversive both of the Gos- 
 pel and of the decalogue to say that we may kill for such a 
 matter. The most profligate of men will acknowledge as 
 much. And yet you have allowed Lessius, Escobar, and oth- 
 ers, to decide, in the face of these well-known truths, and in 
 
 lishing the sect calling itself "the Society of Jesus." This ignorant 
 fanatic, who, in more enlightened times, would have been consigned to 
 a mad-house, was beatified by one pope, and canonized, or put into the 
 list of saints, by another ! Jansenius, in his correspondence with St. 
 Cyran, indignantly complains of pope Gregory XV. for having canon- 
 ized Ignatius jind Xavier. (Leydecker, Hist. Jansen. 23.) 
 
 * This is rather a singular fact, and applies only to one of the Soci- 
 ety's generals, viz., Vitelleschi. who. in a circular letter, addressed, 
 January 1617, to the Company, much to his own honor, strongly rec- 
 ommended a purer morality, and denounced probabilism. But. says 
 Nicole, the Jesuits did not profit by his good advice. (Nicole, iv., p. 
 33.) It is true, however, that the Jesuits, during this century, had lost 
 sight of the original design of their order and of all the ascetic rules of 
 their founders. Ignatius and Aquaviva. " The spirit which once ani- 
 mated them had fallen before the temptations of the world, and their 
 sole endeavor now was to make themselves necessary to mankind, let 
 the means be what they might," (Ranke's Hist, of the Popes, iii. 139.)
 
 276 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 spite of all the laws of God against manslaughter, that it is 
 quite allowable to kill a man for a buffet ! 
 
 What purpose, then, can it serve to set this passage of Vas- 
 quez over against the sentiment of Lessius, unless you mean 
 to show that, in the opinion of Vasquez, Lessius is a " hea- 
 then" and a " profligate ?" and that, fathers, is more than I 
 durst have said myself. What else can be deduced from it 
 than that Lessius " subverts both the Gospel and the deca- 
 logue ;" that, at the last day, Vasquez will condemn Lessius 
 on this point, as Lessius will condemn Vasquez on another ; 
 and that all your fathers will rise up in judgment one against 
 another, mutually condemning'each other for their sad out- 
 rages on the law of Jesus Christ ? 
 
 To this conclusion, then, reverend fathers, must we come 
 at length, that as your probabilism renders the good opinions 
 of some of your authors useless to the Church, and useful 
 only to your policy, they merely serve to betray, by their 
 contrariety, the duplicity of your hearts. This you have 
 completely unfolded, by telling us, on the one hand, that 
 Vasquez and Suarez are against homicide, and on the other 
 hand, that many celebrated authors are for homicide ; thus 
 presenting two roads to our choice, and destroying the sim- 
 plicity of the Spirit of God, who denounces his anathema on 
 the deceitful and the double-hearted : " Vce duplici corde, et 
 ingredienti duabus viis ! Woe be to the double hearts, and 
 the sinner that goeth two ways !"* 
 
 * Ecclariasticus (Apocrypha), ii. 13.
 
 - LETTER XIV. 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS. 
 
 IS WHICH THE MAXIMS OF THE JESUITS ON MURDER ARE REFUTED 
 
 FROM THE FATHERS SOME OF THEIR CALUMNIES ANSWERED BY 
 
 THE WAT AND THEIR DOCTRINE COMPARED WITH THE FORMS 
 OBSERVED IN CRIMINAL TRIALS. 
 
 October 23, 1656. 
 
 KEVEREND FATHERS, If I had merely to reply to the three 
 remaining charges on the subject of homicide, there would 
 be no need for a long discourse, and you will see them refu- 
 ted presently in a few words ; but as I think it of much more 
 importance to inspire the public with a horror at your opin- 
 ions on this subject, than to justify the fidelity of my quota- 
 tions, I shall be obliged to devote the greater part of this let- 
 ter to the refutation of your maxims, to show you how fur 
 you have departed from the sentiments of the Church, and 
 even of nature itself. The permissions of murder, which you 
 have granted in such a variety of cases, render it very ap- 
 parent, that you have so far forgotten the law of God, and 
 quenched the light of nature, as to require to be remanded to 
 the simplest principles of religion and of common sense. 
 
 What can be a plainer dictate of nature than that "no pri- 
 vate individual has a right to take away the life of another?" 
 " So well are we taught this of ourselves," says St. Chrysos- 
 tom, "that God, in giving the commandment not to kill, did 
 not add as a reason that homicide was an evil ; because," 
 says that father, " the law supposes that nature has taught 
 us that truth already." Accordingly, this commandment 
 has been binding on men in all ages. The Gospel has con- 
 firmed the requirement of the law ; and the decalogue oarj
 
 278 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 renewed the command which man had received from God 
 before the law, in the person of Noah, from -whom all men 
 are descended. On that renovation of the world, God said 
 to the patriarch : " At the hand of man, and at the hand of 
 every man's brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso 
 sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed ; for 
 man is made in the image pf God." (Gen. ix. 5, 6.) This 
 general prohibition deprives man of all power over the life 
 of man. And so exclusively has vhe Almighty reserved this 
 prerogative in his own hand, that, in accordance with Chris- 
 tianity, which is at utter variance with the false maxims of 
 Paganism, man has no power even over his own life. But, as 
 it has seemed good to his providence to take human society 
 under his protection, and to punish the evil-doers that give it 
 disturbance, he has himself established laws for depriving 
 criminals of life ; and thus those executions which, without 
 his sanction, would be punishable outrages, become, by vir- 
 tue of his authority, which is the rule of justice, praiseworthy 
 penalties. St. Augustine takes an admirable view of this 
 subject. " God," he says, " has himself qualified this gen- 
 eral prohibition against manslaughter, both by the laws which 
 he has instituted for the capital punishment of malefactors, 
 and by the special orders which he has sometimes issued to 
 put to death certain individuals. And when death is inflicted 
 in such cases, it is not man that kills, but God, of whom man 
 may be considered as only the instrument, in the same way 
 as a sword in the hand of him that wields it. But, these 
 instances excepted, whosoever kills incurs the guilt of mur- 
 der."* 
 
 It appears, then, fathers, that the right of taking away the 
 life of man is the sole prerogative of God, and that having 
 ordained laws for executing death on criminals, he has depu- 
 ted kings or commonwealths as the depositaries of that power 
 a truth which St. Paul teaches us, when, speaking of the 
 right which sovereigns possess over the lives of their sub- 
 jects, he deduces it from Heaven in these words : " He bear- 
 * City of God, booki. ch. 23.
 
 THE SCRIPTURE ON MURDER. 279 
 
 eth not the sword in vain ; for he is the minister of God to 
 execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." (Rom. xiii. 4.) 
 But as it is God who has put this power into their hands, so 
 he requires them to exercise it in the same manner as he does 
 himself; in other words, with perfect justice; according to 
 what St. Paul observes in the same passage : " Rulers are not 
 a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou, then, not 
 be afraid of the power ? Do that which is good : for he is 
 the minister of God to thee for good." And this restriction, 
 so far from lowering their prerogative, exalts it, on the con- 
 trary, more than ever ; for it is thus assimilated to that of 
 God, who has no power to do evil, but is all-powerful to do 
 good ; and it is thus distinguished from that of devils, who 
 are impotent in that which is good, and powerful only for 
 evil. There is this difference only to be observed betwixt 
 the King of Heaven and earthly sovereigns, that God, being 
 justice and wisdom itself, may inflict death instantaneously 
 on whomsoever and in whatsoever manner he pleases ; for, 
 besides his being the sovereign Lord of human life, it is cer- 
 tain that he never takes it away either without cause or with 
 out judgment, because he is as incapable of injustice as he is 
 of error. Earthly potentates, however, are not at liberty to 
 act in this manner; for, though the ministers of God, still 
 they are but men, and not gods. They may be misguided 
 by evil counsels, irritated by false suspicions, transported by 
 passion, and hence they find themselves obliged to have re- 
 course, in their turn also, to human agency, and appoint mag- 
 istrates in their dominions, to whom they delegate their power, 
 that the authority which God has bestowed on them may be 
 employed solely for the purpose for which they received it. 
 
 I hope you understand, then, fathers, that to avoid the 
 crime of murder, we must act at once by the authority of 
 God, and according to the justice of God ; and that when 
 these two conditions are not united, sin is contracted ; wheth- 
 er it be by taking away life with his authority, but without 
 his justice ; or by taking it away with justice, but without 
 his authority. From this indispensable connection it follows,
 
 280 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 according to St. Augustine, "that he who, without proper 
 authority, kills a criminal, becomes a criminal himself, chiefly 
 for this reason, that he usurps au authority which God has 
 not given him ;" and on the other hand, magistrates, though 
 they possess this authority, are nevertheless chargeable with 
 murder, if, contrary to the laws which they are bound to 
 follow, they inflict death on an innocent man. 
 
 Such are the principles of public safety and tranquillity 
 which have been admitted at all times and in all places, and 
 on the basis of which all legislators, sacred and profane, from 
 the beginning of the world, have founded their laws. Even 
 Heathens have never ventured to make an exception to this 
 rule, unless in cases where there was no other way of 
 escaping the loss of chastity or life, when they conceived, 
 as Cicero tells us, "that the law itself seemed to put its 
 weapons into the hands of those who were placed in such an 
 emergency." 
 
 But with this single exception, which has nothing to do 
 with my present purpose, that such a law was ever enacted, 
 authorizing or tolerating, as you have done, the practice of 
 putting a man to death, .to atone for an insult, or to avoid 
 the loss of honor or property, where life is not in danger at 
 the same time ; that, fathers, is what I deny was ever done, 
 even by infidels. They have, on the contrary, most expressly 
 forbidden the practice. The law of the Twelve Tables of 
 Rome bore, " that it is unlawful to kill a robber in the day- 
 time, when he does not defend himself with arms ;" which, 
 indeed, had been prohibited long before in the 22d chapter 
 of Exodus. And the law Furem, in the Lex Cornelia, which 
 is borrowed from Ulpian, forbids the killing of robbers even 
 by night, if they do. not put us in danger of our lives.* 
 
 Tell us .now, fathers, what authority you have to permit 
 what all laws, human as well as divine, have forbidden ; and 
 who gave Lessius a right to use the following language ? 
 " The book of Exodus forbids the killing of thieves by day, 
 when they do not employ arms in their defence ; and in a 
 * See Cnjas, tit. dig. de just, et jur. ad L 3.
 
 LESSItTS ON MURDER. 281 
 
 court of justice, punishment is inflicted on those who kill 
 under these circumstances. In conscience, however, no blame 
 can be attached to this practice, when a person is not sure 
 of being able otherwise to recover his stolen goods, or enter- 
 tains a doubt on the subject, as Sotus expresses it ; for he is 
 not obliged to run the risk of losing any part of his property 
 merely to save the life of a robber. The same privilege ex- 
 tends even to clergymen."* Such extraordinary assurance ! 
 The law of Moses punishes those who kill a thief when he 
 does not threaten our lives, and the law of the Gospel, ac- 
 cording to you, will absolve them ! What, fathers ! has 
 Jesus Christ come to destroy the law, and not to fulfil it ? 
 "The civil judge," says Lessius, "would inflict punishment 
 on those who should kill under such circumstances ; but no 
 blame can be attached to the deed in conscience." Must we 
 conclude, then, that the morality of Jesus Christ is more 
 sanguinary, and less the enemy of murder, than that of 
 Pagans, from whom our judges have borrowed their civil 
 laws which condemn that crime ? Do Christians make more 
 account of the good things of this earth, and less account of 
 human life, than infidels and idolaters ? On what principle 
 do you proceed, fathers ? Assuredly not upon any law that 
 ever was enacted either by God or man on nothing, indeed, 
 but this extraordinary reasoning : " The laws," say you, " per- 
 mit us to defend ourselves against robbers, and to repel force 
 by force ; self-defence, therefore, being permitted, it follows 
 that murder, without which self-defence is often impractica- 
 ble, may be considered as permitted also." 
 
 It is false, fathers, that because self-defence is allowed, 
 murder may-be allowed also. This barbarous method of 
 self-vindication lies at the root of all your errors, and has 
 been justly stigmatized by the Faculty of Louvain, in tlieir 
 censure of the doctrine of your friend Father Lamy, as " a 
 murderous defence defensio occisiva." I maintain that the 
 laws recognize such a wide difference between murder and 
 self-defence, that in those very cases in which the latter is 
 * L. 2, c. 9, n. 66, 72.
 
 282 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 sanctioned, they have made a provision against murder, when 
 the person is in no danger of his life. Read the \vords, fa- 
 thers, as they run in the same passage of Cujas : " It is law- 
 ful to repulse the person who comes to invade our property ; 
 but ice are not permitted to kill him. And again : " If any 
 should threaten to strike us, and not to deprive us of life, it 
 is quite allowable to repulse*him ; but it is against all law 
 to put him to death." 
 
 Who, then, has given you a right to say, as Molina, Regi- 
 nald, Filiutius, Escobar, Lessius, and others among you, 
 have said, " that it is lawful to kill the man who offers to 
 strike us a blow ?" or, " that it is lawful to take the life of 
 one who means to insult us, by the common consent of all 
 the casuists," as Lessius says. By what authority do you, 
 who are mere private individuals, confer upon other private 
 individuals, not excepting clergymen, this right of killing and 
 slaying ? And how dare you usurp the power of life and 
 death, which belongs essentially to none but God, and which 
 is the most glorious mark of sovereign authority ? These 
 are the points that demand explanation ; and yet you con- 
 ceive that you have furnished a triumphant reply to the 
 whole, by simply remarking, in your thirteenth Imposture, 
 " that the value for which Molina permits us to kill a thief, 
 who flies without having done us any violence, is not so 
 small as I have said, and that it must be a much larger sum 
 than six ducats !" How extremely silly ! Pray, fathers, 
 where would you have the price to be fixed ? At fifteen or 
 sixteen ducats ? Do not suppose that this will produce any 
 abatement in my accusations. At all events, you cannot 
 make it exceed the value of a horse ; for Lessius is clearly of 
 opinion, " that we may lawfully kill the thief that runs off 
 with our horse."* But I must tell you, moreover, that I 
 was perfectly correct when I said that Molina estimates the 
 value of the thief's life at six ducats ; and, if you will not 
 take it upon my word, we shall refer it to an umpire, to 
 whom you cannot object. The person whom I fix upon for 
 * L. ii., c. 9, n. 74.
 
 MOLINA ON MURDER. 283 
 
 this office is your own Father Reginald, who, in his explana- 
 tion of the same passage of Molina (1. 28, n. 68), declares 
 that " Molina there DETERMINES the sum for which it is not 
 allowable to kill at three, or four, or five ducats." And 
 thus, fathers, I shall have Reginald in addition to Molina, to 
 bear me out. 
 
 It will be equally easy for me to refute your fourteenth 
 Imposture, touching Molina's permission to " kill a thief who 
 offers to rob us of a crown." This palpable fact is attested 
 by Escobar, who tells us " that Molina has regularly deter- 
 mined the sum for which it is lawful to take away life, at one 
 crown."* And all you have to lay to my charge in the 
 fourteenth imposture is, that I have suppressed the last 
 words of this passage, namely, " that in this matter every 
 one ought to study the moderation of a just self-defence." 
 Why do you not complain that Escobar has also omitted to 
 mention these words ? But how little tact you have about 
 you ! You imagine that nobody understands what you mean 
 by self-defence. Don't we know that it is to employ "a 
 murderous defence?" You would persuade us that Molina 
 meant to say, that if a person, in defending his crown, finds 
 himself in danger of his life, he is then at liberty to kill his 
 assailant, in self-preservation. If that were true, fathers, 
 why should Molina say in the same place, that " in this mat- 
 ter he was of a contrary judgment from Carrer and Bald," 
 who give permission to kill in self-preservation ? I repeat, 
 therefore, that his plain meaning is, that provided the person 
 can save his crown without killing the thief, he ought not to 
 kill him ; but that, if he cannot secure his object without 
 shedding blood, even though he should run no risk of his 
 own life, as in the case of the robber being unarmed, he is 
 permitted to take up arms and kill the man, in order to save 
 his crown ; and in so doing, according to him, the person 
 does not transgress " the moderation of a just defence." To 
 show you that I am in the right, just allow him to explain 
 himself : " One does not exceed the moderation of a just de- 
 * T/eat. i, examp. 7, n. 44.
 
 284 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 fence," says he, " when he takes up arras against a thief who 
 has none, or employs weapons which give him the advantage 
 over his assailant. I know there are some who are of a con- 
 trary judgment ; but I do not approve of their opinion, even 
 in the external tribunal."* 
 
 Thus, fathers, it is unquestionable that your authors have 
 given permission to kill in defence of property and honor, 
 though life should be perfectly free from danger. And it is 
 upon the same principle that they authorize duelling, as I 
 have shown by a great variety of passages from their writ- 
 ings, to which you have made no reply. You have animad- 
 verted in your writings only on a single passage taken from 
 Father Layman, who sanctions the above practice, "when 
 otherwise a person would be in danger of sacrificing his 
 fortune or his honor ;" and here you accuse me with having 
 suppressed what he adds, " that such a case happens very 
 rarely." You astonish me, fathers : these are really curious 
 impostures you charge me withal. You talk as if the ques- 
 tion were, Whether that is a rare case ? when the real ques- 
 tion is, If, in such a case, duelling is lawful ? These are two 
 very different questions. Layman, in the quality of a casuist, 
 ought to judge whether duelling is lawful in the case sup- 
 posed ; and he declares that it is. We can judge without his 
 assistance, whether the case be a rare one ; and we can tell 
 him that it is a very ordinary one. Or, if you prefer the 
 testimony of your good friend Diana, he will tell you that 
 '^the case is exceedingly coramon."f But be it rare or not, 
 and let it be granted that Layman follows in this the exam- 
 ple of Navarre, a circumstance on which you lay so much 
 stress, is it not shameful that he should consent to such an 
 opinion as that, to preserve a false honor, it is lawful in con- 
 
 * In casuistical divinity, a distinction is drawn between the internal 
 and the external tribunal or forum as it is called. The internal tribu- 
 nal or the forum poli is that of conscience or the judgment formed of 
 actions according to the law of God. The external tribunal, or the 
 forum soli, is that of human society, or the judgment of actions in the 
 estimation of men, and according to civil law. (Voet. Disp. Theol., iv. 
 62.) 
 
 t Part. 5, tr. 19, misc. 2, resol. 99.
 
 KILLING FOB A.N APPLE. 285 
 
 pcl^icw to accept of a challenge, in the face of the edicts of 
 all Chrijtian states, and of all the canons of the Church, 
 while, in support of these diabolical maxims, you can pro- 
 duce neiOitr laws, nor canons, nor authorities from Scripture, 
 or from the fathers, nor the example of a single saint, nor, in 
 short, any thJAg but the following impious syllogism: "Honor 
 is more than life : it is allowable to kill in defence of life ; 
 therefore it is allowable to kill in defence of honor !" What, 
 fathers ! because the depravity of men disposes them to pre- 
 fer that factitious honor before the life which God hath given 
 them to be devoUd to his service, must they be permitted to 
 murder one another for its preservation ? To love that 
 honor more than life, is in itself a heinous evil ; and yet this 
 vicious passion, which, when proposed as the end of our con- 
 duct, is enough to tarnish the holiest of actions, is considered 
 by you capable of sanctifying the most criminal of them ! 
 
 What a subversion of all principle is here, fathers ! And 
 who does not see to what atrocious excesses it may lead ? 
 It is obvious, indeed, that it will ultimately lead to the com- 
 mission of murder for the most trifling things imaginable, 
 when one's honor is considered to be staked for their preser- 
 vation murder, I venture to say, even for an apple ! You 
 might complain of me, fathers, for drawing sanguinary infer- 
 ences from your doctrine with a malicious intent, were I not 
 fortunately supported by the authority of the grave Lessius, 
 who makes the following observation, in number 68 : " It is 
 not allowable to take life for an article of small value, such as 
 for a crown or for an apple aut pro porno unless it would 
 be deemed dishonorable to lose it. In this case, one may 
 recover the article, and even, if necessary, kill the aggressor ; 
 for this is not so much defjjpding one's property as retrieving 
 one's honor." This is plain speaking, fathers ; and, just to 
 crown your doctrine with a maxim which includes all the rest, 
 allow me to quote the following from Father Hereau, who 
 has trtken it from Lessius : " The right of self-defence extends 
 to whatever is necessary to protect ourselves from all in- 
 jury."
 
 286 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 What strange consequences does this inhuman principle 
 involve ! and how imperative is the obligation laid upon all, 
 and especially upon those in public stations, to set their face 
 against it ! Not the general good alone, but their own per- 
 sonal interest should engage them to see well to it ; for the 
 casuists of your school whom I have cited in my letters, ex- 
 tend their permissions to kill far enough to reach even them. 
 Factious men, who dread the punishment of their outrages, 
 which never appear to them in a criminal light, easily per- 
 suade themselves that they are the victims of violent oppres- 
 sion, and will be led to believe at the same time, " that the 
 right of self-defence extends to whatever is necessary to pro- 
 tect themselves from all injury." And thus, relieved from 
 contending against the checks of conscience, which stifle the 
 greater number of crimes at their birth, their only anxiety 
 will be to surmont external obstacles. 
 
 I shall say no more on this subject, fathers ; nor shall I 
 dwell on the other murders, still more odious and important 
 to governments, which you sanction, and of which Lessius, 
 in common with many others of your authors, treats in the 
 most unreserved manner.* It was to be wished that these 
 horrible maxims had never found their way out of hell ; and 
 that the devil, who is their original author, had never discov- 
 ered men sufficiently devoted to his will to publish them 
 among Christians.f 
 
 From all that I have hitherto said, it is easy to judge what 
 a contrariety there is betwixt the licentiousness of your opin- 
 ions and the severity of civil laws, not even excepting those 
 
 * Doubts 4th and 10th. 
 
 t " I am happy," says Nicole, in a note, " to state here an important 
 fact, which confers the highest honor on M. Arnauld. A work of con- 
 siderable size was sent him before going 'o press, in which there was a 
 collection of all the authorities, from Jesuit writers, prejudicial to the life 
 of kings and princes. That celebrated doctor prevented the impression 
 of the work, on the ground that it was dangerous for the life of mon- 
 archs and for the honor of the Jesuits that it should ever see the light ; 
 and, in fact, the work was never printed. Some other writer, less deli- 
 cate than M. Arnauld, has published something similar, in a work en- 
 titled Recueil de Pieces concernant V Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus, 
 par le P. Jonivenci."
 
 TIE CHURCH ON MTJRDEK. 287 
 
 of heathens. How much more apparent must the contrast 
 be with ecclesiastical laws, which must be incomparably more 
 holy than any other, since it is the Church alone that knows 
 and possesses the true holiness ! Accordingly, this chaste 
 spouse of the Son of God, who, in imitation of her heavenly 
 husband, can shed her own blood for others, but never the 
 blood of others for herself, entertains a horror at the crime 
 of murder altogether singular, and proportioned to the pecu- 
 liar illumination which God has vouchsafed to bestow upon 
 her. She views man, not simply as man, but as the image 
 of the God whom she adores. She feels for every one of the 
 race a holy respect, which imparts to him, in her eyes, a 
 venerable character, as redeemed by an infinite price, to be 
 made the temple of the living God. And therefore she 
 considers the death of a man, slain without the authority of 
 his Maker, not as murder only, but as sacrilege, by which 
 she is deprived of one of her members ; for whether he be a 
 believer or an unbeliever, she uniformly looks upon him, if 
 not as one, at least as capable of becoming one, of her own 
 children.* 
 
 Such, fathers, are the holy reasons which, ever since the 
 time that God became man for the redemption of men, have 
 rendered their condition an object of such consequence to 
 the Church, that she uniformly punishes the crime of homi- 
 cide, not only as destructive to them, but as one of the gross- 
 est outrages that can possibly be perpetrated against God. 
 In proof of this I shall quote some examples, not from the 
 idsa that all the severities to which I refer ought to be kept 
 up (for I am aware that the Church may alter the arrange- 
 
 * Surely Pascal is here describing the Church of Christ as she ought, 
 to be, and not the Church of Rome as she existed in 1656, at the very 
 lirae when she was urging, sanctioning, and exulting in the bloody 
 b;abarities perpetrated in her name on the poor Piedmontese ; or the 
 same Church as she appeared in 1572, when one of her popes ordered 
 a medal to be struck in honor of the Bartholomew massacre, with the 
 inscription, " Sfni^es Hn^onot.arum The massacre of the Hugunots !" 
 Of what Church, if not the Romish, can it be said with truth, that, "in 
 her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that 
 ~.* i re sluiii on the earth ?"
 
 288 
 
 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 merit of such exterior discipline), but to demonstrate her im- 
 mutable spirit upon this subject. The penances which she 
 ordains for murder may differ according to the diversity of 
 the times, but no change of time can ever effect an alteration. 
 of the horror with which she regards tbe crime itself. 
 - For a long time the Church refused to be reconciled, till 
 the very hour of death, to those who had been guilty of wil- 
 ful murder, as those are to whom you give your sanction. 
 The celebrated Council of Ancyra adjudged them to penance 
 during their whole lifetime ; and, subsequently, the Church 
 deemed it an act of sufficient indulgence to reduce that term 
 to a great many years. But, still more effectually to deter 
 Christians from wilful murder, she has visited with most 
 severe punishment even those acts which have been com- 
 mitted through inadvertence, as may be seen in St. Basil, in 
 St. Gregory of Nyssen, and in the decretals of Popes Zachary 
 and Alexander II. The canons quoted by Isaac, bishop of 
 Langres (tr. 2. 13), "ordain seven years of penance for hav- 
 ing killed another in self-defence." And we find St. Hilde- 
 bert, bishop of Mans, replying to Yves de Chartres, " that he 
 was right in interdicting for life a priest who had, in self- 
 defence, killed a robber with a stone." 
 
 After this, you cannot have the assurance to persist in say- 
 ing that your decisions are agreeable to the spirit or the 
 canons of the Church. I defy you to show one of them that 
 permits us to kill solely in defence of our property (for I 
 speak not of cases in which one may be called upon to defend 
 his life se suaqae liberando) ; your own authors, and, among 
 the rest, Father Lamy, confess that no such canon can be 
 found. " There is no authority," he says, " human or divine, 
 which gives an express permission to kill a robber who makes 
 no resistance." And yet this is what you permit most ex- 
 pressly. I defy you to show one of them that permits us to 
 kill in vindication of honor, for a buffet, for an affront, or for 
 a slander. I defy you to show one of them that permits the 
 killing of witnesses, judges, or magistrates, whatever injustice 
 we may apprehend from them. The spirit of the church is
 
 . 
 
 CHRISTIAN LEGISLATION. 289 
 
 diametrically opposite to these seditious maxims, opening the 
 door to insurrections to which the mob is naturally prone 
 enough already. She has invariably taught her children that 
 they ought not to render evil for evil ; that they ought to 
 give place unto wrath ; to make no resistance to violence ; to 
 give unto every one his due honor, tribute, submission ; to 
 obey magistrates and superiors, even though they should be 
 unjust, because we ought always to respect in them the power 
 of that God who has placed them over us. She forbids them, 
 still more strongly than is done by the civil law, to take jus- 
 tice into their own hands ; and it is in her spirit that Chris- 
 tian kings decline doing so in cases of high treason, and 
 remit the criminals charged with this grave offence into the 
 hands of the judges, that they may be punished according 
 to the laws and the forms of justice, which in this matter 
 exhibit a contrast to your mode of management, so striking 
 and complete that it may well make you blush for shame. 
 
 As my discourse has taken this turn, I beg you to follow 
 the comparison which I shall now draw between the style 
 in which you would dispose of your enemies, and that in 
 which the judges of the land dispose of criminals. Every- 
 body knows, fathers, that no private individual has a right to 
 demand the death of another individual ; and that though a 
 man should have ruined us, maimed our body, burnt our 
 house, murdered our father, and was prepared, moreover, to 
 assassinate ourselves, or ruin our character, our private de- 
 mand for the death of that person would not be listened to in 
 a court of justice. Public officers have been appointed for 
 that purpose, who make the demand in the name of the king, 
 or rather, I would say, in the name of God. Now, do you 
 conceive, fathers, that Christian legislators have established 
 this regulation out of mere show and grimace ? Is it not 
 evident that their object was to harmonize the laws of the 
 state with those of the Church, and thus prevent the external 
 practice of justice from clashing with the sentiments which 
 all Christians are bound to cherish in their hearts ? It is 
 easy to see how this, which forms the commencement of a 
 13
 
 290 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 civil process, must stagger you ; its subsequent procedure 
 absolutely overwbelms you. 
 
 Suppose, tben, fathers, tbat these official persons have de- 
 manded the death of the man who has committed all the 
 above mentioned crimes, what is to be done next ? "Will 
 they instantly plunge a dagger in his breast ? No, fathers ; 
 the life of man is loo important to be thus disposed of; they 
 go to work with more decency ; the laws have committed it, 
 not to all sorts of persons, but exclusively to the judges, 
 whose probity and competency have been duly tried. And 
 is one judge sufficient to condemn a man -to death ? No ; it 
 requires seven at the very least ; and of these seven there 
 must not be one who has been injured by the criminal, lest 
 his judgment should be warped or corrupted by passion. 
 You are aware also, fathers, that the more effectually to secure 
 the purity of their minds, they devote the hours of the morn- 
 ing to these functions. Such is the care taken to prepare 
 them for the solemn action of devoting a fellow-creature to 
 death ; in performing which they occupy the place of God, 
 whose ministers they are, appointed to condemn such only as 
 have incurred his condemnation. 
 
 For the same reason, to act as faithful administrators of 
 the divine power of taking away human life, they are bound 
 to form their judgment solely according to the depositions 
 of the witnesses, and according to all the other forms pre- 
 scribed to them ; after which they can pronounce conscien- 
 tiously only according to law, and can judge worthy of death 
 those only whom the law condemns to that penalty. And 
 then, fathers, if the command of God obliges them to deliver 
 over to punishment the bodies of the unhappy culprits, the 
 same divine statute binds them to look after the interests of 
 their guilty souls, and binds them the more to'this just be- 
 cause they are guilty ; so that they are not delivered up to 
 execution till after they have been afforded the means of pro- 
 viding for their consciences.* All this is quite fair and in- 
 
 * Providing for their consciences that is, for the relief of conscience, 
 by confessing to a priest, and receiving absolution,
 
 JESUITICAL LEGISLATION. 291 
 
 nocent ; and yet, such is the abhorrence of the Church to 
 blood, that she judges those to be incapable of ministering at 
 her altars who have borne any share in passing or executing 
 a sentence of death, accompanied though it be with these 
 religious circumstances; from which we may easily conceive 
 what idea the Church entertains of murder. 
 
 Such, then, being the manner in which human life is dis- 
 posed of by the legal forms of justice, let us now see how 
 you dispose of it. According to your modern system of leg- 
 islation, there is but one judge, and that judge is no other 
 than the offended party. He is at once the judge, the party, 
 and the executioner. He himself demands from himself the 
 death of his enemy ; he condemns him, he executes him on 
 the spot ; and, without the least respect either for t^e soul or 
 the body of his brother, he murders and damns him for 
 whom Jesus Christ died ; and all this for the sake of avoid- 
 ing a blow on the cheek, or a slander, or an offensive word, 
 or some other offence of a similar nature, for which, if a mng- 
 istrate, in the exercise of legitimate authority, were condemn- 
 ing any to die, he would himself be impeached ; for, in such 
 cases, the laws are very far indeed from condemning any to 
 death. In one word, to crown the whole of this extrava- 
 gance, the person who kills his neighbor in this style, without 
 authority, and in the face of all law, contracts no sin and 
 commits no disorder, though he should be religious, and even 
 a priest ! Where are we, fathers ? Are these really relig- 
 ious, and priests, who talk in this manner ? Are they Chris- 
 tians ? are they Turks ? are they men ? or are they demons ? 
 And are these " the mysteries revealed by the Lamb to his 
 Society ?" or are they not rather abominations suggested by 
 the Dragon to those who take part with him ? 
 
 To come to the point with you, fathers, whom do you wish 
 to be taken for ? for the children of the Gospel, or for the 
 enemies of the Gospel ? .You must be ranged either on the 
 one side or on the other ; for there is no medium here. " He 
 that is not with Jesus Christ is against him." Into these two 
 two classes ;;I1 mankind are divided. There arc, according to
 
 292 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 St. 'Augustine, two peoples and two worlds, scattered abroad 
 over the earth. There is the world of the children of God, 
 who form one body, of which Jesus Christ is the king and 
 the head : and there is the world at enmity with God, of 
 which the devil is the king and the head. Hence Jesus 
 Christ is called the King and God of the world, because he 
 has everywhere his subjects and worshippers ; and hence the 
 devil is also termed in Scripture the prince of this world, and 
 the god of this world, because he has everywhere his agents 
 and his slaves. Jesus Christ has imposed upon the Church, 
 which is his empire, such laws as he, in his eternal wisdom, 
 was pleased to ordain ; and the devil has imposed on the 
 world, which is his kingdom, such laws as he chose to estab- 
 lish. Jesus Christ has associated honor with suffering ; the 
 devil with not suffering. Jesus Christ has told those who 
 are smitten on the one cheek to turn the other also ; and the 
 devil has told those who are threatened with a buffet to kill 
 the man that would do them such an injury. Jesus Christ 
 pronounces those happy who share in his reproach ; and the 
 devil declares those to be unhappy who lie under ignominy. 
 Jesus Christ says, Woe unto you when men shall speak well 
 of you ! and the devil says, Woe unto those of whom the 
 world does not speak with esteem ! 
 
 Judge then, fathers, to which of these kingdoms you be- 
 long. You have heard the language of the city of peace, 
 the mystical Jerusalem ; and you have heard the language of 
 the city of confusion, which Scripture terms " the spiritual 
 Sodom." Which of these two languages do you understand ? 
 which of them do you speak ? Those who are on the side 
 of Jesus Christ have, as St. Paul teaches us, the same mind 
 which was also in him ; and those who are the children of 
 the devil ex patre didbolo who has been a murderer from 
 the beginning, according to the saying of Jesus Christ, follow 
 the maxims of the devil. Let us hear, therefore, the lan- 
 guage of your -school. I put this question to your doctors : 
 When a person has given me a blow on the cheek, ought I 
 rather to submit to the injury than kill the offender? or may I
 
 JESUITICAL LEGISLATION. 293 
 
 not kill the man in order to escape the affront ? Kill him by 
 all means it is quite lawful ! exclaim, in one breath, Lessius, 
 Molina, Escobar, Eeginald, Filiutius, Baldelle, and other Jesu- 
 its. Is that the language of Jesus Christ? One question 
 more : Would I lose my honor by tolerating a box on the 
 ear, without killing the person that gave it? " Can there be 
 a doubt," cries Escobar, " that so long as a man suffers an- 
 other to live who has given him a buffet, that man remains 
 without honor ?" Yes, fathers, without that honor which 
 the devil transfuses, from his own proud spirit into that of 
 his proud children. This is the honor which has ever been 
 the idol of worldly-minded men. For the preservation of 
 this false glory, of which the god of this world is the appro- 
 priate dispenser, they sacrifice their lives by yielding to the 
 madness of duelling; their honor, by exposing themselves to 
 ignominious punishments ; and their salvation, by involving 
 themselves in the peril of damnation a peril which, accord- 
 ing to the canons of the Church, deprives them even of 
 Christian burial. We have reason to thank God, however, 
 for having enlightened the mind of our monarch with ideas 
 much purer than those of your theology. His edicts bearing 
 so severely on this subject, have not made duelling a crime 
 they only punish the crime which is inseparable from duel- 
 ling. He has checked, by the dread of his rigid justice, those 
 who were not restrained by the fear of the justice of God ; 
 and his piety has taught him that the honor of Christians 
 consists in their observance of the mandates of Heaven and 
 the rules of Christianity, and not in the pursuit of that phan- 
 tom which, airy and unsubstantial as it is, you hold to be a 
 legitimate apology for murder. Your murderous decisions 
 being thus universally detested, it is highly advisable that 
 you should now change your sentiments, if not from religious 
 principle, at least from motives of policy. Prevent, fathers, 
 by a spontaneous condemnation of these inhuman dogmas, 
 the melancholy consequences which may result from them, 
 and for which you will be responsible. And to impress your 
 minds with a deeper horror at homicide, remember that the
 
 294 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 first crime of fallen man was a murder, committed on the 
 person of the first holy man ; that the greatest crime was a 
 murder, perpetrated on the person of the King of saints ; 
 and that of all crimes, murder is the only one which involves 
 in a common destruction the Church and the state, nature 
 and religion. 
 
 I have just seen the answer of your apologist to my Thir- 
 teenth Letter ; but if he has nothing better to produce in the 
 shape of a reply to that letter, which obviates the greater 
 part of his objections, he will not deserve a rejoinder. I am 
 sorry to see him perpetually digressing from his subject, to 
 indulge in rancorous abuse both of the living and the dead. 
 But, in order to gain some credit to the stories with which you 
 have furnished him, you should not have made him publicly 
 disavow a fact so notorious as that of the buffet of Com- 
 piegne.* Certain it is, fathers, from the deposition of the 
 injured party, that he received upon his cheek a blow from 
 the hand of a Jesuit ; and all that your friends have been 
 able to do for you has been to raise a doubt whether he re- 
 ceived the blow with the back or the palm of the hand, and 
 to discuss the question whether a stroke on the cheek with 
 the back of the hand can be properly denominated a buffet. 
 I know not to what tribunal it belongs to decide this point ; 
 but shall content myself, in the mean time, with believing that 
 it was, to say the very least, a probable buffet. This gets me 
 off with a saf 3 conscience. 
 
 * See Letter xiii., p. 2G4.
 
 LETTER XV.* 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS. 
 
 SHOWING THAT THE JESUITS FIRST EXCLUDE CALUMNY FROM THEIR 
 CATALOGUE OF CRIMES, AND THEN EMPLOY IT IN DENOUNCING 
 THEIR OFFONENTS. 
 
 November 25, 1056. 
 
 REVEREND FATHERS, As your scurrilities are daily in- 
 creasing, and as you are employing them in the merciless 
 abuse of all pious persons opposed to your errors, I feel my- 
 self obliged, for their sake and that of the Church, to bring 
 out that grand secret of your policy, which I promised to 
 disclose some time ago, in order that all may know, through 
 means of your own maxims, what degree of credit is due to 
 your calumnious accusations. 
 
 I am aware that those who are not very well acquainted 
 with you, are at a great Joss what to think on this subject, as 
 they find themselves under the painful necessity, either of 
 believing the incredible crimes with which you charge your 
 opponents, or (what is equally incredible) of setting you 
 down as slanderers. " Indeed !" they exclaim, " were these 
 things not true, would clergymen publish them to the world 
 would they debauch their consciences and damn themselves 
 by venting such libels ?" Such is their way of reasoning, 
 and thus it is th.at the palpable proof 'of your falsifications 
 coming into collision with their opinion of your honesty, their 
 minds hang in a state of suspense between the evidence of 
 truth which they, cannot gainsay, and the demands of charity 
 which they would not violate. It follows, that since their 
 
 * Pascal was assisted by M. Arnauld in the preparation of this letter. 
 (Nicole, iv. 162.)
 
 296 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 high esteem for you is the only thing that prevents them 
 from discrediting your calumnies, if we can succeed in con- 
 vincing them that you have quite a different idea of calumny 
 from that which they suppose you to have, and that you act- 
 ually believe that in blackening and defaming your adver- 
 saries you are working out your own salvation, there can be 
 little question that the weight of truth will determine them 
 immediately to pay no regard to your accusations. This, 
 fathers, will be the subject of the present letter. 
 
 My design is, not simply to show that your writings are 
 full of calumnies : I mean to go a step beyond this. It is 
 quite possible for a person to say a number of false things 
 believing them to be true ; but the character of a liar im- 
 plies the intention to tell lies. Now I undertake to prove, 
 fathers, that it is your deliberate intention to tell lies, and 
 that it is both knowingly and purposely that you load your 
 opponents with crimes of which you know them to be inn- 
 cent, because you believe that you may do so without falling 
 from a state of grace. Though you doubtless know this 
 point of your morality as well as I do, this need not prevent 
 me from telling you about it ; which I shall do, were it for 
 no other purpose than to convince all men of its existence, 
 by showing them that I can maintain it to your face, while 
 you cannot have the assurance to disavow it, without confirm- 
 ing, by that very disavowment, the charge which I bring 
 againsi you. 
 
 The doctrine to which I allude is so common in your 
 schools, that you have maintained it not only in your books, 
 but, such is your assurance, even in your public theses ; as, 
 for example, in those delivered at Louvain in the year 1645, 
 where it occurs in the following terms : " What is it but a 
 venial sin to calumniate and forge false accusations to ruin 
 the credit of those who speak evil of us ?"* So settled is 
 this point among you, that if any one dare to oppose it, you 
 treat him as a blockhead and a hare-brained idiot. Such 
 
 * Quidni non nisi veniale sit, detrahentes autoritatera magnam, tibi 
 noxiara, falso crimine elidere 1
 
 ON CALUMNT. 297 
 
 was the way in which you treated Father Quiroga, the Ger- 
 man Capuchin, when he was so unfortunate as to impugn 
 the doctrine. The poor man was instantly attacked by 
 Dicastille, one of your fraternity; and the following is a 
 specimen of the manner in which he manages the dispute : 
 " A certain rueful-visaged, bare-footed, cowled friar cucul- 
 latus gymnopoda whom I do not choose to name, had the 
 boldness to denounce this opinion, among some women and 
 ignorant people, and to allege that it was scandalous and 
 pernicious against all good manners, hostile to the peace of 
 states and societies, and, in short, contrary to the judgment 
 not only of all Catholic doctors, but of all true Catholics. 
 But in opposition to him I maintained, as I do still, that cal- 
 umny, when employed against a calumniator, though it should 
 be a falsehood, is not a mortal sin, either against justice or 
 charity : and to prove the point, I referred him to the whole 
 body of our fathers, and to whole universities, exclusively 
 composed of them, whom I had consulted on the subject ; 
 and among others the reverend Father John Gans, confessor 
 to the emperor; the reverend Father Daniel Bastele, con- 
 fessor to the archduke Leopold ; Father Henri, who was 
 preceptor to these two princes ; all the public and ordinary 
 professors of the university of Vienna" (wholly composed of 
 Jesuits) ; " all the professors of the university of Gratz" (all 
 Jesuits) ; " all the professors of the university of Prague" 
 (where Jesuits are the masters) ; " from all of whom I have 
 in my possession approbations of my opinions, written and 
 signed with their own hands ; besides having on my side the 
 reverend Father Panalossa, a Jesuit, preacher to the emperor 
 and the king of Spain ; Father Pilliceroli, a Jesuit, and many 
 others, who had all judged this opinion to be probable, be- 
 fore our dispute began."* You perceive, fathers, that there 
 are few of your opinions which you have been at more pains 
 to establish than the present, as indeed there were few of 
 them of which you stood more in need. For this reason, 
 doubtless, you have authenticated it so well, that the casuists 
 
 * Dicastillus, De Just., 1. 2, tr. 2, disp. 12. n. 404. 
 13*
 
 298 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 appeal to it as an indubitable principle. "There can be no 
 doubt," says Caramuel, " that it is a probable opinion that 
 we contract no mortal sin by calumniating another, in order 
 to preserve our own reputation. For it is maintained by 
 more than twenty grave doctors, by Gaspard Hurtado, and 
 Dicastille, Jesuits, &c. ; so that, were this doctrine not prob- 
 able, it would be difficult to find any one such in the whole 
 compass of theology." 
 
 Wretched indeed must that theology be, and rotten to 
 the very core, which, unless it has been decided to be safe in 
 conscience to defame our neighbor's character to preserve 
 our own, can hardly boast of a safe decision on any other 
 point ! How natural is it, fathers, that those who hold this 
 principle should occasionally put it in practice ! The cor- 
 rupt propensity of mankind leans so strongly in that direc- 
 tion of itself, that the obstacle of conscience once being re- 
 moved, it would be folly to suppose that it will not burst 
 forth with all its native impetuosity. If you desire an ex- 
 ample of this, Caramuel will furnish you with one that oc- 
 curs in the same passage : " This maxim of Father Dicastille," 
 he says, " having been communicated by a German countess 
 to the daughters of the empress, the belief thus impressed 
 on their minds that calumny was only a venial sin, gave rise 
 in the course of a few days to such an immense number of 
 false and scandalous tales, that the whole court was thrown 
 into a flame and filled with alarm. It is easy, indeed, to 
 conceive what a fine use these ladies would make of the new 
 light they had acquired. Matters proceeded to such a length, 
 that it was found necessary to call in the assistance of a wor- 
 thy Capuchin friar, a man of exemplary life, called Father 
 Quiroga" (the very man whom Dicastille rails at so bitterly), 
 " who assured them that the maxim was most pernicious, 
 especially among women, and was at the greatest pains to 
 prevail upon the empress to abolish the practice of it en- 
 tirely." We have no reason, therefore, to be surprised at the 
 bad effects of this doctrine; on the contrary, the wonder 
 would be, if it had failed to produce them. Self-love is al-
 
 ON CALUMNY. 299 
 
 ways ready enough to whisper in our ear, when we are at- 
 tacked, that we suffer wrongfully ; and more particularly in 
 your case, fathers, whom vanity has blinded so egregiously 
 as to make you believe that to wound the honor of your So- 
 ciety, is to wound that of the Church. There would have 
 been good ground to look on it as something miraculous, if 
 you had not reduced this maxim to practice. Those Avho 
 do not know you are ready to say, How could these good 
 fathers slander their enemies, when they cannot do so but 
 at the expense of their own salvation ? But if they knew 
 you better, the question would be, How could these good 
 fathers forego the advantage of decrying their enemies, when 
 they have it in their power to do so without hazarding their 
 salvation? Let none, therefore, henceforth be surprised to 
 find the Jesuits calumniators ; they can exercise this vocation 
 with a safe conscience ; there is no obstacle in heaven or on 
 earth to prevent them. In virtue of the credit they have 
 acquired in the world, they can practise defamation without 
 dreading the justice of mortals ; and, on the strength of their 
 self- assumed authority in matters of conscience, they have 
 invented maxims for enabling them to do it without any fear 
 of the justice of God. 
 
 This, fathers, is the fertile source of your base slanders. 
 On this principle was Father Brisacier led to scatter his cal- 
 umnies about him, with such zeal as to draw down on his 
 head the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris. Actuated 
 by the same motives, Father D'Anjou launched his invec- 
 tives from the pulpit of the Chjirch of St. Benedict in Paris, 
 on the 8th of March, 1655, against those honorable gentle- 
 men who were intrusted with the charitable funds raised for 
 the poor of Picardy and Champagne, to which they them- 
 selves had largely contributed ; and, uttering a base falsehood, 
 calculated (if your slanders had been considered worthy of 
 any credit) to dry up the stream of that charily, he had the- 
 assurance to say, " that he knew, from good 'authority, that 
 certain persons had diverted that money from its proper use, 
 to employ it against the Church and the State ;" a calumny
 
 300 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 which obliged the curate of the parish, who is a doctor of 
 the Sorbonne, to mount the pulpit the very next day, in 
 order to give it the lie direct. To the same source must be 
 traced the conduct of your Father Crasset, who preached 
 calumny at such a furious rate in Orleans that the archbishop 
 of that place was under the necessity of interdicting him as 
 a public slanderer. In his mandate, dated the 9th of Sep- 
 tember last, his lordship declares, "That whereas he had 
 been informed that Brother Jean Crasset, priest of the Soci- 
 ety of Jesus, had delivered from the pulpit a discourse filled 
 with falsehoods and calumnies against the ecclesiastics of this 
 city, falsely and maliciously charging them with maintaining 
 impious and heretical propositions, such as, That the com- 
 mandments of God are impracticable ; that internal grace is 
 irresistible ; that Jesus Christ did not die for all men ; and 
 others of a similar kind, condemned by Innocent X. : he 
 therefore hereby interdicts the aforesaid Crasset from preach- 
 ing in his diocese, and forbids all his people to hear him, on 
 pain of mortal disobedience." The 'above, fathers, is your 
 ordinary accusation, and generally among the first that you 
 bring against all whom it is your interest to denounce. And 
 although you should find it as impossible to substantiate the 
 charge against any of them, as Father Crasset did in the 
 case of the clergy of Orleans, your peace of conscience will 
 not be in the least disturbed on that account ; for you be- 
 lieve that this mode of calumniating your adversaries is 
 permitted you with such certainty, that you have no scruple 
 to avow it in the most public manner, and in the face of 
 whole city. 
 
 A remarkable proof of this may be seen in the dispute you 
 had with M. Puys, curate of St. Nisier at Lyons ; and the 
 story exhibits so complete an illustration of your spirit, that 
 I shall take the liberty of relating some of its leading circum- 
 stances. You know, fathers, that, in the year 1649, M. 
 Puys translated into French an excellent book, written by 
 another Capuchin friar, " On the duty which Christians owe 
 to their own parishes, against those that would lead them
 
 M. PUTS AND FATHER ALBT. 301 
 
 away from them," without using a single invective, or point- 
 ing to any monk or any order of monks m particular. Your 
 fathers, however, were pleased to put the cap on their own 
 heads; and witho'ut any respect to an aged pastor, a judge 
 in the Primacy of France, and a man who was held in the 
 highest esteem by the whole city, Father Alby wrote a fu- 
 rious tract against him, which you sold in your own church 
 upon Assumption-day ; in which book, among other various 
 charges, he accused him of having " made himself scandalous 
 by his gallantries," described him as suspected of having 
 no religion, as a heretic, excommunicated, and, in short, 
 worthy of the stake. To this M. Puys made a reply ; and 
 Father Alby, in a second publication, supported his former 
 allegations. Now, fathers, is it not a clear point, either that 
 you were calumniators, or that you believed all that you 
 Alleged against that worthy priest to be true ; and that, on 
 this latter assumption, it became you to see him purified 
 from all these abominations before judging him worthy of 
 your friendship ? Let us see, then, what happened at the 
 accommodation of the dispute, which took place in the pres- 
 ence of a great number of the principal inhabitants of the 
 town, whose names will be found at the foot of the page,* 
 exactly as they are set down in the instrument drawn up on 
 the 25th of September, 1650. Before all these witnesses 
 M. Puys made a declaration, which was neither more nor 
 less than this: "That what he had written was not directed 
 against the fathers of the Society of Jesus ; that he had spo- 
 ken in general of those who alienated the faithful from their 
 parishes, without meaning by that to attack the Society ; 
 and that so far from having such an intention, the Society 
 
 * M. De Ville. Vicar-General of M.. the Cardinal of Lyons ; M. 
 Scarron. Canon and Curate of St. Paul ; M. Margat Chanter : MM. 
 Bouvand. Seve. Aubert, and Dervien. Canons of St. Nisier; M. de Gue, 
 President of the Treasurers of France : M. Groslier. Provost of the Mer- 
 chants; M. de Flochre President and Lieutenant-Genera 1; MM. De 
 Boissart De St. Ronrain. and De Bartoly gentlemen ; M. Bourgeois, 
 the King's First Advocate in the Court of the Treasurers of France ; MM. 
 De Cotton, father and son; and M. Boniel; who have all signed the 
 original copy of the Declaration, along with M. Puys and Father Alby.
 
 302 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 was the object of his esteem and affection." By virtue of 
 these words alone, without either retractation or absolution, M. 
 Puys recovered, all at once, from his apostasy, his scandals, 
 and his excommunication ; and Father Alby immediately 
 thereafter addressed him in the following express terms : 
 " Sir, it was in consequence of my believing that you meant 
 to attack the Society to which I have the honor to belong, 
 that I was induced to take up the pen in its defence ; and I 
 considered that the mode of reply which I adopted was such 
 as I was permitted to employ. But, on a better understand- 
 ing of your intention, I am now free to declare, that there is 
 nothing in your work to prevent me from regarding you as a 
 man of genius, enlightened in judgment, profound and ortho- 
 dox in doctrine, and irreproachable in manners ; in one word, 
 as a pastor worthy of your Church. It is with much pleas- 
 ure that I make this declaration, and I beg these gentlemen 
 to remember what I have now said." 
 
 They do remember it, fathers ; and, allow me to add, they 
 were more scandalized by the reconciliation than by the 
 quarrel. For who can fail to admire this speech of Father 
 Alby ? He does not say that he retracts, in consequence of 
 having learnt that a change had taken place in the faith and 
 manners of M. Puys, but solely because, having understood 
 that lie had no intention of attacking your Society, there was 
 nothing further to prevent him from regarding the author as 
 a good Catholic. He did not then believe him to be actually 
 a heretic ! And yet, after having, contrary to his conviction, 
 accused him of this crime, he will not acknowledge he was 
 in the wrong, but has the hardihood to say, that he consid- 
 ered the method he adopted to be "such as he was pe rmitted 
 to employ !" 
 
 What can you possibly mean, fathers, by so publicly avow- 
 ing the fact, that you measure the .faith and the virtue of 
 men only by the sentiments they entertain towards your So- 
 ciety? Had you no apprehension of making yourselves 
 pass, by your own acknowledgment, as a band of swindlers 
 and slanderers ? What, fathers ! must the same individual,
 
 AN ODD HERESY. 303 
 
 without undergoing any personal transformation, but simply 
 according as you judge him to have honored or assailed your 
 community, be "pious" or "impious," "irreproachable" or 
 "excommunicated," "a pastor worthy of the Church" or 
 " worthy of the stake ;" in short, " a Catholic" or " a here- 
 tic ?" To attack your Society and to be a heretic, are, there- 
 fore, in your language, convertible terms ! An odd sort of 
 heresy this, fathers ! And so it would appear, that when 
 we see many good Catholics branded, in your writings, by 
 the name of heretics, it means nothing more than that you 
 think they attack you ! It is well, fathers, that we under- 
 stand this strange dialect, according to which there can be 
 no doubt that I must be a great heretic. It is in this sense, 
 then, that you so often favor me with this appellation! 
 Your sole reason for cutting me off from the Church is, be- 
 cause you conceive that my letters have done you harm : and, 
 accordingly, all that I have to do, in order to become a good 
 Catholic, is either to approve of your extravagant morality, 
 or to convince you that my sole aim in exposing it has been 
 your advantage. The former I could not do without renoun- 
 cing every sentiment of piety that I ever possessed ; and the 
 latter you will be slow to acknowledge till you are well cured 
 of your errors. Thus am I involved in heresy, after a very 
 singular fashion ; for, the purity of my faith being of no avail 
 for my exculpation, I have no means of escaping from the 
 charge, except either by turning traitor to my own conscience, 
 or by reforming yours. Till one or other of these events 
 happen, I must remain a reprobate and a slanderer; and, 
 let me be ever so faithful in my citations from your writings, 
 you will go about crying everywhere, " What an instrument 
 of the devil must that man be, to impute to us things of 
 which there is not the leas't mark or vestige to be found in 
 our books !" And, by doing so, you will only be acting in 
 conformity with your fixed maxim and your ordinary prac- 
 tice ; to such latitude does your privilege of telling lies ex- 
 tend ! Allow me to give you an example of this, which I 
 select on purpose : it will give me an opportunity of reply-
 
 304 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 ing, at the same time, to your ninth Imposture : for, in truth, 
 they only deserve to be refuted in passing. 
 
 About ten or twelve years ago, you were accused of hold- 
 ing that maxim of Father Bauny, " that it is permissible to 
 seek directly (primo et per se) a proximate occasion of sin, 
 for the spiritual or temporal good of ourselves or our neigh- 
 bor" (tr. 4, q. 14) ; as an example of which, he observes, 
 " It is allowable to visit infamous places, for the purpose of 
 converting abandoned females, even although the practice 
 should be very likely to lead into sin, as in the case of one 
 who has found from experience that he has frequently yielded 
 to their temptations." What answer did your Father Caus- 
 sin give to this charge in the year 1644 ? " Just let any one 
 look at the passage in Father Bauny," said he, " let him 
 peruse the page, the margins, the preface, the appendix, in 
 short, the whole book from beginning to end, and he will not 
 discover the slightest vestige of such a sentence, which could 
 only enter into the mind of a man totally devoid of con- 
 science, and could hardly have been forged by any other but 
 an instrument of Satan."* Father Pintereau talks in the 
 same style : " That man must be lost to all conscience who 
 would teach so detestable a doctrine ; but he must be worse 
 than a devil who attributes it to Father Bauny. Reader, 
 there is not a single trace or vestige of it in the whole of his 
 book."f Who would not believe that persons talking in 
 this tone have good reason to complain, and that Father 
 Bauny has, in very deed, been misrepresented ? Have you 
 ever asserted anything against me in stronger terms ? And, 
 after such a solemn asseveration, that " there was not a sin- 
 gle trace or vestige of it in the whole book," who would 
 imagine that the passage is to be found, word for word, in 
 the place referred to ? 
 
 Truly, fathers, if this be the means of securing your repu- 
 tation, so long as you remain unanswered, it is also, unfortu- 
 nately, the means of destroying it forever, so soon as an an- 
 
 * Apology for the Society of Jesus, p 128. 
 f First Part, p. 24.
 
 BAREFACED DENIALS. 305 
 
 swor makes its appearance. For so certain is t that you told 
 a lie at the period before mentioned, that you make no scru- 
 ple of acknowledging, in your apologies of the present day, 
 that the maxim in question is to be found in the very place 
 which had been quoted ; and what is most extraordinary, the 
 same maxim which, twelve years ago, was "detestable," has 
 now become so innocent, that in your ninth Imposture (p. 10) 
 you accuse me of " ignorance and malice, in quarrelling with 
 Father Bauny for an opinion which has not been rejected in 
 the School." What an advantage it is, fathers, to have to 
 do with people that deal in contradictions ! I need not the 
 aid of any but yourselves to confute you ; for I have only 
 two tilings to show first, That the maxim in dispute is a 
 worthless one ; and, secondly, That it belongs to Father 
 Bauny ; and I can prove both by your own confession. In 
 1644, you confessed that it was "detestable;" and, in 1656, 
 you avow that it is Father Bauny's. This double acknowl- 
 edgment completely justifies me, fathers ; but it does more, 
 it discovers the spirit of your policy. For, tell me, pray, 
 what is the end you propose to yourselves in your writings? 
 Is it to speak with honesty ? No, fathers ; that cannot be, 
 since your defences destroy each other. Is it to follow the 
 truth of the faith ? As little can this be your end ; since, ac- 
 cording to your own showing, you authorize a " detestable" 
 maxim. But, be it observed, that Avhile you said the maxim 
 was " detestable," you denied, at the same time, that it was 
 the property of Father Bauny, and so he was innocent ; and 
 when you now acknowledge it to be his, you maintain, at the 
 same time, that it is a good maxim, and so he is innocent 
 still. The innocence of this monk, therefore, being the only 
 thing common to your two answers, it is obvious that this 
 was the sole end which you aimed at in putting them forth ; 
 and that, when you say of one and the same maxim, that it 
 is in a certain book, and that it is not ; that it is a good 
 maxim, and that it is a bad one ; your sole object is to white- 
 wash some one or other of your fraternity; judging in the 
 matter, not according to the truth, which never changes, but
 
 306 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 according to your own interest, which is varying every hour. 
 C..n I say more than this ? You perceive that it amounts to 
 a demonstration ; but it is far from being a singular instance ; 
 and, to omit a multitude of examples of the same thing, I 
 believe you will be contented with my quoting only one 
 more. 
 
 You have been, charged, at different times, with another 
 proposilion of the same Father Bauny, namely, "That abso- 
 lution ought to be neither denied nor deferred in the case of 
 those who live in the habits of sin against the law of God, of 
 nature, and of the Church, although there should be no ap- 
 parent prospect of future amendment etsi emendationis fu- 
 turce spes nulla appareat"* Now, with regard to this 
 maxim, I beg you to tell me, fathers, which of the apologies 
 that have been made for it is most to your liking ; whether 
 that of Father Pintereau, or that of Father Brisacier, both 
 of your Society, who have defended Father Bauny, in your 
 two different modes the one by condemning the proposition, 
 but disavowing it to be Father Bauny's ; the other by allow- 
 ing it to be Father Bauny's, but vindicating the proposition ? 
 Listen, then, to their respective deliverances. Here comes 
 that of Father Pintereau (p. 8) : "I know not what can be 
 called a transgression of all the bounds of modesty, a step 
 beyond all ordinary impudence, if the imputation to Father 
 Bauny of so damnable a doctrine is not worthy of that desig- 
 nation. Judge, reader, of the baseness of that calumny; 
 see what sort of creatures the Jesuits have to deal with ; and 
 say, if the author of so foul a slander does not deserve to be 
 regarded from henceforth as the interpreter of the father of 
 lies." Now for Father Brisacier : " It is true, Father Bauny 
 says what you allege." (That gives the lie direct to Father 
 Pintereau, plain enough.) " But," adds he, in defence of Fa- 
 ther Bauny, "if you who find so much fault with this sentiment, 
 wait, \vhen a penitent lies at your feet, till his guardian angel 
 find security for his rights in the inheritance of heaven ; if 
 you wait till God the Father, swear by himself that David 
 
 * Tr. 4, q. 22, p. 100
 
 FLAT CONTRADICTIONS. 30f 
 
 told a lie, when he said, by the Holy Ghost, that 'all men 
 are liars,' fallible and perfidious ; if you wait till the penitent 
 be no longer a liar, no longer frail and changeable, no longer 
 a sinrer. like other men ; if you wait, I say, till then, you 
 will never apply the blood of Jesus Christ to a single soul."* 
 
 What do you really think now, fathers, of these impious 
 and extravagant expressions ? According to them, if we 
 would wait " till there be some hope of amendment" in sin- 
 ners before granting their absolution, we must wait " till God 
 the Father swear by himself," that they will never fall into 
 sin any more ! What, fathers ! is no distinction to be made 
 between hope and certainty ? How injurious is it to the grace 
 of Jesus Christ, to maintain that it is so impossible for Chris- 
 tians ever to escape from crimes against the laws of God, 
 nature, and the Church, that such a thing cannot be looked 
 for, without supposing "that the Holy Ghost has told a lie;" 
 and if absolution is not granted to those who give no hope of 
 amendment, the blood of Jesus Christ will be useless, -for- 
 sooth, and "would never be applied to a single soul !" To 
 Avhat a sad pass have you come, fathers, by this extravagant 
 desire of upholding the glory of your authors, when you can 
 find only two ways of justifying them by imposture or by 
 impiety ; and when the most innocent mode by which you 
 can extricate yourselves, is by the barefaced denial of facts as 
 patient as the light of day ! 
 
 This may perhaps account for your having recourse so fre- 
 quently to that very convenient practice. But this does not 
 complete the sum of your accomplishments in the art of self- 
 defence. To render your opponents odious, you have had 
 recourse to the forging of documents, such as that Letter of 
 a Minister to M. Arnauld, which you circulated through all 
 Paris, to induce the belief that the work on Frequent Com- 
 munion, which had been approved by so many bishops and 
 doctors, but which, to say the truth, was rather against you, 
 had been concocted through secret int3lligence with the min- 
 
 * Part. 4, p. 21
 
 308 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 isters of Charenton.* At other times, you attribute to your 
 adversaries writings full of impiety, such as the Circular 
 Letter of the Jamenists, the absurd style of which renders 
 the fraud too gross to be swallowed, and palpably betrays 
 the malice of your Father Meynier, who has the impudence 
 to make use of it for supporting his foulest slanders. Some- 
 times, again, you will quote books which were never in exist- 
 ence, such as The Constitution of the Holy Sacrament, from 
 which you extract passages, fabricated at pleasure, and cal- 
 culated to make the hair on the heads of certain good simple 
 people, who have no idea of the effrontery with which you 
 can invent and propagate falsehoods, actually to bristle with 
 horror. There is not, indeed, a single species of calumny 
 which you have not put into requisition ; nor is it possible 
 that the maxim which excuses the vice could have been 
 lodged in better hands. 
 
 But those sorts of slander to which we have adverted are 
 rather too easily discredited ; and, accordingly, you have oth- 
 ers of a more subtle character, in which you abstain from 
 specifying particulars, in order to preclude your opponents 
 from getting any hold, or finding any means of reply ; as, for 
 example, when Father Brisacier says that " his enemies are 
 guilty of abominable crimes, which he does not choose to men- 
 tion." Would you not think it were impossible to prove a 
 charge so vague as this to be a calumny ? An able man, 
 however, has found out the secret of it ; and it is a Capuchin 
 again, fathers. You are unlucky in Capuchins, as times now 
 go ; and I foresee that you may be equally so some other 
 time in Benedictines. The name of this Capuchin is Father 
 
 * That is, the Protestant ministers of Paris, who are called '' the 
 ministers of Charenton," from the village of that name near Paris, where 
 they had their place of worship. The Protestants of Paris were forbid- 
 den to hold meetings in the city, and were compelled to travel five leagues 
 to a place of worship, till 1606, when they were graciously permitted to 
 erect their temple at Charenton. about two leagues from the city ! (Be- 
 noit, Hist, de 1'Edit. de Nantes, i. 435.) Even there' they were harassed 
 by the bigoted populace, and at last " the ministers of Charenton," 
 among whom were the famous Claude and Daillc, were driven from 
 their homes, their chapel burnt to the ground, and their people scattered 
 abroad.
 
 VAGUE INSINUATIONS. 309 
 
 Valerien, of the house of the Counts of Magnis. You shall 
 hear, by this brief narrative, how he answered your calum- 
 nies. He had happily succeeded in converting Prince Er- 
 nest, the Landgrave of Hesse Rheinsfelt.* Your fathers, 
 however, seized, as it would appear, with some chagrin at 
 seeing a sovereign prince converted without their having had 
 any hand in it, immediately wrote a book against the friar 
 (for good men are everywhere the objects of your persecu- 
 tion), in which, by falsifying one of his passages, they ascribed 
 to him an heretical doctrine. They also circulated a letter 
 against him, in which they said: "Ah, we have such things 
 to disclose" (without mentioning what) " as will gall you to 
 the quick ! If you don't take care, we shall be forced to 
 inform the pope and the cardinals about it." This manoeuvre 
 was pretty well executed ; and I doubt not, fathers, but you 
 may speak in the same style of me ;" but take warning from 
 the manner in which the friar answered in his book, which 
 was printed last year at Prague (p. 112, &c.) : " What shall 
 I do," he says, " to counteract these vague and indefinite 
 insinuations? How shall I refute charges which have never 
 been specified? Here, however, is my plan. I declare, 
 loudly and publicly, to those who have threatened me, that 
 they are notorious slanderers, and most impudent liars, if they 
 do not discover these crimes before the whole world. Come 
 forth, then, mine accusers ! and publish your lies upon the 
 house tops, in place of telling them in the ear, and keeping 
 yourselves out of harm's way by telling them in the ear. 
 Sorae may think this a scandalous way of managing the dis- 
 pute. It was scandalous, I grant, to impute to me such a 
 crime as heresy, and to fix upon me the suspicion of many 
 others besides ; but, by asserting my innocence, I am merely 
 applying the proper remedy to the scandal already in exist- 
 ence." 
 
 Truly, fathers, never were your reverences more roughly 
 handled, and never was a poor man more completely vindi- 
 
 * la the first edition it was said to be the Landgrave of Dannstat.by 
 
 mist;ike v as !iown in a note by Nicole.
 
 810 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 cated. Since you have made no reply to such a peremptory 
 challenge, it must be concluded that you are unable to dis- 
 cover the slightest shadow of criminality against him. You 
 have had very awkward scrapes to get through occasionally ; 
 but experience has made you nothing the wiser. For, some 
 time after this happened, you attacked the same individual 
 in a similar strain, upon another subject ; and he defended 
 himself after the same spirited manner, as follows : " This 
 class of men, who have become an intolerable nuisance to the 
 whole of Christendom, aspire, under the pretext of good 
 works, to dignities and domination, by perverting to their 
 own ends almost all laws, human and divine, natural and 
 revealed. They gain over to their side, by their doctrine, 
 by the force of fear, or of persuasion, the great ones of the 
 earth, whose authority they abuse for the purpose of accom- 
 plishing their detestable intrigues. Meanwhile their enter- 
 prises, criminal as they are, are neither punished nor sup- 
 pressed ; on the contrary, they are rewarded ; and the villains 
 go about them with as little fear or remorse as if they were 
 doing God service. Everybody is aware of the fact I have 
 now stated ; everybody speaks of it with execration ; but few 
 are found capable of opposing a despotism so powerful. This, 
 however, is what I have done. I have already curbed their 
 insolence ; and, by the same means, I shall curb it again. 
 I declare, then, that they are most impudent liars MENTIRIS 
 TMPUDEKTISSIME. If the charges they have brought against 
 me be true, let them prove it ; otherwise, they stand convicted 
 of falsehood, aggravated by the grossest effrontery. Their 
 procedure in this case will show who has the right upon his 
 side. I desire all men to take a particular observation of it ; 
 and beg to remark, in the mean time, that this precious cabal, 
 who will not suffer the most trifling charge which they can 
 possibly repel to lie upon them, made a show of enduring, 
 with great patience, those from which they cannot vindicate 
 themselves, and conceal, under a counterfeit virtue, their real 
 impotency. Mv object, therefore, in provoking their modesty, 
 by this sharp retort, is to let the plainest people understand,
 
 ME^TIRIS IMPCDENTIS3IME. Sll 
 
 that if mv enemies hold their peace, their forbearance must 
 be ascribed, not to the meekness of their natures, but to the 
 power of a, guilty conscience." He concludes with the fol- 
 lowing sentence : " These gentry, whose history is well known 
 throughout the whole world, are so glaringly iniquitous in 
 their measures, and have become so insolent in their i;n- 
 punity, that if I did not detest their conduct, and publicly 
 express my detestation too, not merely for my own vindica- 
 tion, but to guard the simple against its seducing influence, I 
 must have renounced my allegiance to Jesus Christ and his 
 Church." 
 
 Reverend fathers, there is no room for tergiversation. You 
 must pass for convicted slanderers, and take comfort in your 
 old maxim, that calumny is no crime. This honest friar has 
 discovered the secret of shutting your mouths ; and it must 
 be employed on all occasions when you accuse people with- 
 out proof. We have only to reply to each slander as it ap- 
 pears, in the words of the Capuchin, Menliris impuJentissime 
 " You are most impudent liars." For instance, what 
 better answer does Father Brisacier deserve when he says 
 of his opponents that they are " the gates of hell ; the devil's 
 bishops ; persons devoid of faith, hope, and charity ; the 
 builders of Antichrist's exchequer ;" adding, " I say this of 
 him, not by way of insult, but from deep conviction of its 
 truth ?" Who would be at the pains to demonstrate that he 
 is not " a gate of hell," and that he has no concern with " the 
 building up of Antichrist's exchequer ?" 
 
 In like manner, what reply is due to all the vague speeches 
 of this sort which are to be found in your books and adver- 
 tisements on my letters ; such as the following, for example : 
 " That restitutions have been converted to private uses, and 
 thereby creditors have been reduced to beggary ; that bags 
 of money have been offered to learned monks, who declined 
 the bribe ; that benefices are conferred for the purpose of 
 disseminating heresies against the faith ; that pensioners are 
 kept in the houses of the most eminent churchmen, and in 
 the courts of sovereigns ; --that I also am a pensioner of Port-
 
 312 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Royal ; and that, before writing my letters, I had composed 
 romances" I, who never read one in my life, and who do 
 not know so much as the names of those which your apolo- 
 gist has published ? What can be said in reply to all this, 
 fathers, if you do not mention the names of all these persons 
 you refer to, their words, the time, and the place, except 
 Ment'iris impudentissime ? You should either be silent alto- 
 gether, or relate and prove all the circumstances, as I did 
 when I told you the anecdotes of Father Alby and John 
 d'Alba. Otherwise, you will hurt none but yourselves. 
 Your numerous fables might, perhaps, have done you some 
 service, before your principles were known ; but now that the 
 whole has been brought to light, when you begin to whisper 
 as usual, " A man of honor, who desired us to conceal his 
 name, has told us some horrible stories of these same people" 
 you will be cut short at once, and reminded of the Ca- 
 puchin's Mentiris impudentissime. Too long by far have you 
 been permitted to deceive the world, and to abuse the con- 
 fidence which men were ready to place in your calumnious 
 accusations. It is high time to redeem the reputation of the 
 multitudes whom you have defamed. For what innocence 
 can be so generally known, as not to suffer some injury from 
 the daring aspersions of a body of men scattered over the 
 face of the earth, and who, under religious habits, conceal 
 minds so utterly irreligious, that they perpetrate crimes like 
 calumny, not in opposition to, but in strict accordance with, 
 their moral maxims? I cannot, therefore, be blamed for 
 destroying the credit which might have been awarded you ; 
 seeing it must be allowed to be a much greater act of justice 
 to restore to the victims of your obloquy the character which 
 they did not deserve to lose, than to leave you in the posses- 
 sion of a reputation for sincerity which you do not deserve to 
 enjoy. And as the one could not be done without the other, 
 how important was it to show you up to the \vorld ns you 
 really are ! In this letter I have commenced the exhibition ; 
 but it will require some time to complete it. Published it 
 shall be, fathers, and all your policy will be inadequate to
 
 THREAT OP FUTURE DISCOVERIES. 313 
 
 save you from the disgrace ; for the efforts which you may 
 make to avert the blow, will only serve to convince the most 
 obtuse observers that you were terrified out of your wits, 
 and that, your consciences anticipating the charges I had to 
 bring against you, you have put every oar in the water to 
 prevent the discovery. 
 
 14
 
 LETTER XVI.* 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS. 
 
 SHAMEFUL CALUMNIES OF THE JESUITS AGAINST PIOUS CLERGYME5 
 AND INNOCENT NUNS. 
 
 December 4, 1656. 
 
 REVEREND FATHERS, I now come to consider the rest of 
 your calumnies, and shall begin with those contained in your 
 advertisements, which remain to be noticed. As all your 
 other writings, however, are equally well stocked with slander, 
 they will furnish me with abundant materials for entertaining 
 you on this topic as long as I may judge expedient. In the 
 first place, then, with regard to the fable which you have 
 propagated in all your writings against the Bishop of Ypres.f 
 I beg leave to say, in one word, that you have maliciously 
 wrested the meaning of some ambiguous expressions in one 
 of his letters, which being capable of a good sense, ought, 
 according to the spirit of the Gospel, to have been taken in, 
 good part, and could only be taken otherwise according to 
 Jhe spirit of your Society. For example, when he says to a 
 friend, " Give yourself no concern about your nephew ; I 
 will furnish him with what he requires from the money that 
 lies in my hands," what reason have you to interpret this to 
 mean, that he would take that money without restoring it, 
 and not that he merely advanced it with the purpose of re- 
 placing it? And how extremely imprudent was it for you to 
 
 * The plan and materials of this letter were furnished by M. Nicole. 
 (Nicole, iv. 243.) 
 
 f Jansenius, who was made Bishop of Ipres or Ypres, in 1633. The 
 letters to which Pascal refers were printed at that time by the Jesuits 
 themselves, who retained the originals in their possession; these having 
 come into their hands in consequence of the arrest of M. De St Cy.-an.
 
 CALUMNIES AGAINST PORT-ROTAL. 815 
 
 furnish a refutation of your own lie, by printing the other 
 letters of the Bishop of Ypres, which clearly show that, in 
 point of fact, it was merely advanced money, which he was 
 hound to refund. This appears, to your confusion, from the 
 following terms in the letter, to which you give the date of 
 July 30, 1619: " Be not uneasy about the money advanced} 
 he shall want for nothing so long as he is here ;" and like- 
 wise from another, dated January 6, 1620, where he says: 
 " You are in too great haste ; when the account shall become 
 due, I have no fear but that the little credit which I have in 
 this place will bring me as much money as I require." 
 
 If you are convicted slanderers on this subject, you are 
 no less so in regard to the ridiculous story about the charity- 
 box of St. Merri. What advantage, pray, can you hope to 
 derive from the accusation which one of your worthy friends 
 has trumped up against that ecclesiastic ? Are we to con- 
 clude that a man is guilty, because he is accused ? No, fa- 
 thers. Men of piety, like him, may expect to be perpetually 
 accused, so long as the world contains calumniators like you. 
 We must judge of him, therefore, not from the accusation, 
 but JVom the sentencfe ; and the sentence pronounced on the 
 case (February 23, 1656) justifies him completely. More- 
 over, the person who had- the temerity to involve himself in 
 that iniquitous process, was disavowed by his colleagues, and 
 himself compelled to retract his charge. And as to what 
 you allege, in the same place, about " that famous director, 
 who pocketed at once nine hundred thousand livres," I need 
 only refer you to Messieurs the cures of St. Roch and St. 
 Paul, who will bear witness, before the whole city of Paris, 
 to hir perfect disinterestedness in the affair, and to your in- 
 excusable malice in that piece of imposition. 
 
 Enough, however, for such paltry falsities. These are but 
 the first raw attempts of your novices, and not the master- 
 strokes of your "grand professed."* To these do I now- 
 come, fathers ; I come to a calumny which is certainly one 
 
 * The Jesuits must pass through a long novitiate, before they are ad- 
 mitted as ' professed" members of the Society.
 
 316 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 of the basest that ever issued from the spirit of your Society. 
 I refer to the insufferable audacity with which you have im- 
 puted to holy nuns, and to their directors, the charge of 
 " disbelieving the mystery of transubstantiation, and the real 
 presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist." Here, fathers, 
 is a slander worthy of yourselves. Here is a crime which 
 God alone is capable of punishing, as you alone were capa- 
 ble of committing it. To endure it with patience, would re- 
 quire an humility as great as that of these calumniated la- 
 dies ; to give it credit would demand a degree of wickedness 
 equal to that of their wretched defamers. I propose not, 
 therefore, to vindicate them ; they are beyond suspicion. 
 Had they stood in need of defence, they might have com- 
 manded abler advocates than me. My object in what I say 
 here is to show, not their innocence, but your malignity. I 
 merely intend to make you ashamed of yourselves, and to let 
 the whole w r orld understand that, after this, there is nothing 
 of which you are not capable. 
 
 You will not fail, I am certain, notwithstanding all this, to 
 say that I belong to Port-Royal ; for this is the first thing 
 you say to every one who combats your errors : as if it were 
 only at Port-Royal that persons could be found possessed of 
 sufficient zeal to defend, against your attacks, the purity of 
 Christian morality. I know, fathers, the work of the pious 
 recluses who have retired to that monastery, and how much 
 the Church is indebted to their truly solid and edifying la- 
 bors. I know the excellence of their piety and their learning. 
 For, though I have never had the honor to belong to their 
 establishment, as you, without knowing who or what I am, 
 would fain have it believed, nevertheless, I do know some of 
 them, and honor the virtue of them all. But God has not 
 confined within the precincts of that society all whom he 
 means to raise up in opposition to your corruptions. I hope, 
 with his assistance, fathers, to make you feel this ; and if he 
 vouchsafe to sustain me in the design he has led me to form, 
 of employing in his service all the resources I have received 
 from him, I shall spfeak to you in such a strain as will, per-
 
 CALUMNIES AGAINST PORT-EOYAL. 31? 
 
 haps, give you reason Jo regret that you have not had to do 
 with a man of Port-Royal. And to convince you of this, 
 fathers, I must tell you that, while those whom you have 
 abused with this notorious slander content themselves with 
 lifting up their groans to Heaven to obtain your forgiveness 
 for the outrage, I feel myself obliged, not being in the least 
 affected by your slander, to make you blush in the face of 
 the whole Church, and so bring you to that wholesome 
 shame of which the Scripture speaks, and which is almost 
 the only remedy for a hardness of heart like yours : " Imple 
 fades eorjm ignominia, et qucerent nomen tuum, Domine 
 Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek thy name, 
 O Lord."* 
 
 A stop must be put to this insolence, which does not spare 
 the most sacred retreats. For who can be safe after a cal- 
 umny of this nature? For -shame, fathers! to publish 
 in Paris such a scandalous book, with the name of your 
 Father Meynier on its front, and under this infamous title, 
 " Port-Royal and Geneva in concert against the most holy 
 Sacrament of the Altar," in which you accuse of this apos- 
 tasy, not only Monsieur the abbe of St. Cyran, and M. Ar- 
 nauld, but also Mother Agnes, his sister, and all the nuns of 
 that monastery, alleging that " their faith, in regard to the 
 eucharist, is as suspicious as that of M. Arnauld," whom you 
 maintain to be " a downright Calvinist."f I here ask the 
 whole world if there be any class of persons within the pale 
 of the Church, on whom you could have advanced such an 
 abominable charge with less semblance of truth. For tell 
 me, fathers, if these nuns and their directors, had been "in 
 concert with Geneva against the most holy sacrament of the 
 altnr" (the very thought of which is shocking), how they 
 should have come to select as the principal object of their 
 piety that very sacrament which they held in abomination ? 
 How should they have assumed the habit of the holy sacra- 
 ment ? taken the name of the Daughters of the Holy Sacra- 
 ment ? culled their church the Church of the Holy Sacra- 
 * Ps. Ixxxiii. 16. t Pp- 98, 4.
 
 818 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 ment ? How should they have requested and obtained from 
 Rome the confirmation of that institution, and the right of 
 saying every Thursday the office of the holy sacrament, in 
 which the faith of the Church is so perfectly expressed, if 
 they had conspired with Geneva to banish that faith from 
 the Church ? Why would they have bound themselves, by 
 a particular devotion, also sanctioned by the pope, to have 
 some of their sisterhood, night and day without intermission, 
 in presence of the sacred host, to compensate, by their per- 
 petual adorations towards that perpetual sacrifice, for the 
 impiety of the heresy that aims at its annihilation ? Tell me, 
 fathers, if you can, why, of all the mysteries of our religion, 
 they should have passed by those in which they believed, 
 to fix upon that in which they believed not ? and how they 
 should have devoted themselves, so fully and entirely, to 
 that mystery of our faith, if they took it, as the heretics do, 
 for the mystery of iniquity ? And what answer do you give 
 to these clear evidences, embodied not in words only, but in 
 actions ; and not in some particular actions, but in the whole 
 tenor of a life expressly dedicated to the adoration of Jesus 
 Christ, dwelling on our altars? What answer, again, do 
 you give to the books which you ascribe to Port-Royal, all 
 of which are full of the most precise terms employed by the 
 fathers and the councils to mark the essence of that mystery ? 
 It is at once ridiculous and disgusting to hear you replying 
 to these, as you have done throughout your libel. M. Ar- 
 nauld, say you, talks very well about transubstantiation ; but 
 he understands, perhaps, only "a significative transubstan- 
 tiation." True, he professes to believe in " the real pres- 
 ence ;" who can tell, however, but he means nothing more 
 than " a true and real figure ?" How now, fathers ! whom, 
 pray, will you not make pass for a Calvinist whenever you 
 please, if you are to be allowed the liberty of perverting the 
 most canonical and sacred expressions by the wicked subtil- 
 ties of your modern equivocations ? Who ever thought of 
 using any other terms than those in question, especially in 
 simple discourses of devotion, where no controversies are
 
 PORT-ROYALISTS NO HERETICS. 319 
 
 handled ? And yet the love and the reverence in which 
 they hold this sacred mystery, have induced them to give it 
 such a prominence in all their writings, that I defy you, fa- 
 thers, with all your cunning, to detect in them either the 
 least appearance of ambiguity, or the slightest correspond- 
 ence with the sentiments of Geneva. 
 
 Everybody knows, fathers, that the essence of tne Genevan 
 heresy consists, as it does according to your own showing, in 
 their believing that Jesus Christ is not contained (enferme), 
 in this sacrament ; that it is impossible 'he can be in many 
 places at once ; that he is, properly speaking, only in heaven, 
 and that it is as there alone that he ought to be adored, and 
 not on the altar ;* that the substance of the bread remains ; 
 that the body of Jesus Christ does not enter into the mouth 
 or the stomach ; that he can only be eaten by faith, and 
 accordingly wicked men do not eat him at all ; and that the 
 mass is not a sacrifice, but an abomination. Let us now hear, 
 then, in what way " Port- Royal is in concert with Geneva." 
 In the writings of the former we read, to your confusion, the 
 following statement: That "the flesh and blood of Jesus 
 Christ are contained under the species of bread and wine ;"f 
 that " the Holy of Holies is present in the sanctuary, and 
 that there he ought to be adored ;"J that " Jesus Christ 
 dwells in the sinners who communicate, by the real and veri- 
 table presence of his body in their stomach, although not by 
 
 * It is hardly necessary to observe, that in this passage the Protestant 
 faith on the supper is not fairly represented. The Reformers did not deny 
 that Christ was really present in that sawament. They held that he 
 xvas present spiritually, though not corporeally. Some of them ex- 
 pressed themselves strongly in opposition to those who spoke of the sup- 
 per as a mere or bare sign. Calvin says : " There are two things in 
 the sacrament corporeal symbols, by which things invisible are pro- 
 posed to the senses; and a spiritual truth, which is represented and 
 sealed by the symbols. In the mystery of the supper, Christ is truly 
 exhibited to us. and therefore his body and blood." (Inst., lib. iv., cap. 
 17. 11.) " The body of Christ" says Peter Martyr (Loc. Com., iv. 10), 
 ' is not substantially present anywhere but in heaven. I do not, how- 
 ever deny tlmt his true body and true blood, which were offered for hu- 
 man redemption on the cross, are spiritually partaken of by believers in 
 the holy supper." This is the general sentiment of Protestant divines. 
 (De Moor, in Marck, Compend. Theol., p. v. 67U, &c.) 
 
 t Second letter of M. Arnauld, p. 259. J Ibid., p. 243.
 
 320 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 the presence of his Spirit in their hearts ;"* that "the dead 
 ashes of the bodies of the saints derive their principal dignity 
 from that seed of life which they retain from the touch of 
 the immortal and vivifying flesh of Jesus Christ ;"f that "it 
 is not owing to any natural power, but to the almighty 
 power of God, to whom nothing is impossible, that the body 
 of Jesus Christ is comprehended under the host, and under 
 the smallest portion of every host ;"| that " the divine virtue 
 is present to produce the effect which the words of conse- 
 cration signify ;" that " Jesus Christ, while he is lowered 
 (rabaisse), and hidden upon the altar, is, at the same time, 
 elevated in his glory ; that he subsists, of himself and by his 
 own ordinary power, in divers places at the same time in 
 the midst of the Church triumphant, and in the midst of the 
 Church militant and travelling ;"|| that " the sacramental 
 species remain suspended, and subsist extraordinarily, with- 
 out being upheld by any subject ; and that the body of 
 Jesus Christ is also suspended under the species, and that it 
 does not depend upon these, as substances depend upon 
 accidents ;"^f that " the substance of the bread is changed, 
 the immutable accidents remaining the same ;"** that "Jesus 
 Christ reposes in the eucharist with the same glory that he 
 has in heaven ;"|f that " his glorious humanity resides in 
 the tabernacles of the Church, under the species of bread, 
 which forms its visible covering ; and that, knowing the 
 grossness of our natures, he conducts us to the adoration of 
 his divinity, which is present in all places, by the adoring of 
 his humanity, which is present in a particular place ;"JJ that 
 "we receive the body of Jesus Christ upon the tongue, 
 which is sanctified by its divine touch ;" " that it enters 
 into the mouth of the priest ;"||| that " although Jesus Christ 
 
 * Frequent Communion, 3d part, ch. 16. Poitrine that is, the 
 bodily breast or stomach, in opposition to cceur the heart or soul, 
 t Ibid., 1st part, ch. 40. 
 
 j Theolog. Fan*., lee. 15. Ibid. 
 
 || De la Suspension. Rais. 21. y Ibid., p. 23. 
 
 ** Hours of the Holy Sacrament, in Prose, 
 ft Letters of M. de St Cyran, torn, i., let. 93. # Ibid. 
 
 $$ Letter 32. || || Letter 72.
 
 PORT-ROYALISTS NO HERETICS. 321 
 
 has made himself accessible in the holy sacrament, by an act 
 of his love and graciousness, he preserves, nevertheless, in 
 that ordinance, his inaccessibility, as an inseparable condition 
 of his divine nature ; because, although the body alone and 
 the blood alone are there, by virtue of the words vi verbor:im, 
 as the schoolmen say, his whole divinity may, notwithstand- 
 ing, be there also, as well as his whole humanity, by a neces- 
 sary conjunction."* In fine, that " the eucharist is at the 
 same time sacrament and sacrifice ;"f and that "although 
 this sacriSce is a commemoration of that of the cross, yet 
 there is this difference between them, that the sacrifice of the 
 mass is offered for the Church only, and for the faithful in 
 her communion ; whereas that of the cross has been offered 
 for all the world, as the Scripture testifies.''^ 
 
 I have quoted enough, fathers, to make it evident that 
 there was never, perhaps, a more imprudent thing attempted 
 than what you have done. But I will go a step farther, and 
 make you pronounce this sentence against yourselves. For 
 what do you require from a man, in order to remove all sus- 
 picion of his being in concert and correspondence with 
 Geneva? "If M. Arnauld," says your Father Meynier, 
 p. 93, "had said that in this adorable mystery, there is no 
 substance of the bread under the species, but only the flesh 
 and the blood of Jesus Christ, I should have confessed that 
 he had declared himself absolutely against Geneva." Con- 
 fess it, then, ye revilers ! and make him a public apology. 
 How often have you seen this declaration made in the pas- 
 sages I have just cited ? Besides this, however, the Famil- 
 iar Theology of M. de St. Cyran having been approved by 
 M. Arnauld, it contains the sentiments of both. Read, 
 then, the whole of lesson 15th, and particularly article 2d, 
 and you will there find the words you desiderate, even 
 Eiore formally stated than you have done yourselves. " Is 
 tl ere any bread in the host, or any wine in the chalice ? 
 lio : for all the substance of the bread and the wine 
 
 * Defence of the Chaplet of the H. Sacrarrent, p. 217. 
 t Theol. Famil., lee. 15. \ Hid., p. 153. 
 
 14*
 
 322 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 is taken away, to give place to that of the body and 
 blood of Jesus Christ, the which substance alone remains 
 therein, covered by the qualities and species of bread and 
 wine." 
 
 How now, fathers ! will you still say that Port-Royal 
 teaches "nothing that Geneva does not receive," and that 
 M. Arnauld has said nothing in his second letter " which 
 might not have been said by a minister of Charenton ?" See 
 if you can persuade Mestrezat* to speak as M. Arnauld does 
 in that letter, at page 237 ? Make him say, that it is an in- 
 famous calumny to accuse him of denying transubstantiation ; 
 that he takes for the fundamental principle of his writings the 
 truth of the real presence of the Son of God, in opposition to 
 the heresy of the Calvinists ; and that he accounts himself 
 happy for living in a place where the Holy of Holies is con- 
 tinually adored in the sanctuary" a sentiment which is still 
 more opposed to the belief of the Calvinists than the real pres- 
 ence itself; for as Cardinal Richelieu observes in his Controver- 
 sies (pnge 536) : " The new ministers of France having agreed 
 with the Lutherans, who believe the real presence of Jesus 
 Christ in the eucharist ; they have declared that they remain 
 in a state of separation from the Church on the point of this 
 mystery, only on account of the adoration which Catholics 
 render to the eucharist. "f Get all the passages which I have 
 extracted from the books of Port-Royal subscribed at Geneva, 
 
 * John Mestrezat. Protestant minister of Paris, was born at Geneva 
 in 1592 and died in May 1657. His Sermons on the Epistle to the He- 
 brews and other discourses, published after his death, are truly excel- 
 lent. This learned and eloquent divine frequently engaged in contro- 
 versy \vith the Romanists, and on one occasion managed the debate 
 with such spirit that Cardinal Richelieu, taking hold of his shoulder, 
 exclaimed: "This is the boldest minister in Prance." (Bayle. Diet., 
 art. Mestrexat.} 
 
 t The statement of the Protestant faith, given in a preceding note, 
 may suffice to show that it differs, toto caelo, from that of Rome, as this 
 is explained in the text. The leading fallacy of the Romish creed on 
 this subject is the monstrous dogma of transubstantiation; the adoration, 
 of the host, (s merely a corollary- Calvinists and Lutherans, thou^i. 
 ditTprinjin their views of the ordinance, always a<rreed in acknowledg- 
 ing the real presence of Christ in the eucharist^ though they consider the 
 sense in which Romanists interpret that term to be chargeable with blas- 
 phemy and absurdity. 

 
 PORT-ROYALISTS KO HERETICS. 323 
 
 and not the isolated passages merely, but the entire treatises 
 regarding this mystery, such as the Book of Frequent Com- 
 munion, the Explication of the Ceremonies of the Mass, the 
 Exercise during Mass, the Reasons of the Suspension of the 
 Hol}^ Sacrament, the Translation of the Hymns in the Hours 
 of Port-Royal, &c.; in one word, prevail upon them to estab- 
 lish at Charenton that holy institution of adoring, without 
 intermission, Jesus Christ contained in the eucharist, as is 
 done at Port-Royal, and it will be the most signal service 
 which you could render to the Church ; for in this case it 
 will turn out, not that Port-Royal is in concert with Geneva, 
 but that Geneva is in concert with Port-Royal, and with the 
 whole Church. 
 
 Certainly, fathers, you could not have been more unfor- 
 tunate than in selecting Port-Royal as the object of attack 
 for not believing in the eucharist ; but I will show what led 
 you to fix upon it. You know I have picked up some small 
 acquaintance with your policy ; in this instance you have 
 acted upon its maxims to admiration. If Monsieur the abbe 
 of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, had only spoken of what 
 ought to be believed with great respect to this mystery, and 
 said nothing about what ought to be done in the way of 
 preparation for its reception, they might have been the best 
 Catholics alive ; and no equivocations would have been dis- 
 covered in their use of the terms " real presence" and " tran- 
 substantiation." But since all who combat your licentious 
 principles must needs be heretics, and heretics too, in the 
 very point in which they condemn your laxity, how could 
 M. Arnauld escape falling under this charge on the subject 
 of the eucharist, after having published a book expressly 
 against your profanations of that sacrament ? What ! must 
 he be allowed to say, with impunity, that " the body of Jesus 
 Christ ought not to be given to those who habitually lapse 
 into the same crime?, and who have no prospect of amend- 
 ment; and that such persons ought to be excluded, for some 
 time, from the altar, to purify themselves by sincere pen- 
 itence, that they may approach it afterwards with benefit?" 
 13*
 
 324 PEOVISCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Suffer no one to talk in this strain, fathers, or you will find 
 that fewer people will come to your confessionals. Father 
 Brisacier says, that " were you to adopt this course, you 
 would never apply the blood of Jesus Christ to a single in- 
 dividual." It would be infinitely more for your interest were 
 every one to adopt the views of your Society, as set forth by 
 your Father Mascarenhas, in a book approved by your doc- 
 tors, and even by your reverend Father-General, namely, 
 "That persons of every description, and even priests, may 
 receive the body of Jesus Christ on the very day they have 
 polluted themselves with odious crimes ; that so far from 
 such communions implying irreverence, persons who partake 
 of them in this manner act a commendable part ; that con- 
 fessors ought not to keep them back from the ordinance, but, 
 on the contrary, ought to advise those who have recently 
 committed such crimes to communicate immediately ; be- 
 cause, although the Church has forbidden it, this prohibition 
 is annulled by the universal practice in all places of the 
 earth."* 
 
 See what it is, fathers, to have Jesuits in all places of the 
 earth ! Behold the universal practice which you have intro- 
 duced, and which you are anxious everywhere to maintain ! 
 It matters nothing that the tables of Jesus Christ are filled 
 with abominations, provided that your churches are crowded 
 with people. Be sure, therefore, cost what it may, to set 
 down all that dare to say a word against your practice, as 
 heretics on the holy sacrament. But how can you do this, 
 after the irrefragable testimonies which they have given of 
 their faith ? Are you not afraid of my coming out with the 
 four grand proofs of their heresy which you have adduced ? 
 You ought, at least, to be so, fathers, and I ought not to 
 spare your blushing. Let us, then, proceed to examine 
 proof the first. 
 
 "M. de St. Cyran," says Father Meynier, " consoling one 
 of his friends upon the death of his mother (torn, i., let 14), 
 says that the most acceptable sacrifice that can be offered up 
 * Mascar., tr. 4, disp. 5, n. 284.
 
 PORT-ROTALISI3 NO HERETICS. 325 
 
 to God on such occasions, is that of patience ; therefore he 
 is a Calvinist." This is marvellously shrewd reasoning, fa- 
 thers ; and I doubt if anybody will be able to discover the 
 precise point of it. Let us learn it, then, from his own 
 mouth. " Because," says this mighty controversialist, " it is 
 obvious that he does not believe in the sacrifice of the mass ; 
 for this is, of all other sacrifices, the most acceptable unto 
 God." Who will venture to say now that the Jesuits do not 
 know how to reason ? Why, they know the art to such per- 
 fection, that they will extract heresy out of anything you 
 choose to mention, not even excepting the Holy Scripture 
 itself! For example, might it not be heretical to say, with 
 the wise man in Ecclesiasticus, " There is nothing worse than 
 to love money;"* as if adultery, murder, or idolatry, were 
 not far greater crimes ? Where is the man who is not in the 
 habit of using similar expressions every day ? May we not 
 say, for instance, that the most acceptable of all sacrifices in 
 the eyes of God is that of a contrite and humbled heart ; just 
 because, in discourses of this nature, we simply mean to com- 
 pare certain internal virtues with one another, and not with 
 the sacrifice of the mass, which is of a totally different order, 
 and infinitely more exalted ? Is this not enough to make you 
 ridiculous, fathers ? And is it necessary, to complete your 
 discomfiture, that I should quote the passages of that letter 
 in which M. de St. Cyran speaks of the sacrifice of the mass, 
 as " the most excellent" of all others, in the following terms ? 
 'Let there be presented to God, daily and in all places, the 
 sacrifice of the body of his Son, who could not find a more 
 excellent way than that by which he might honor his Fa- 
 ther." And afterwards : "Jesus Christ has enjoined us to 
 take, when we are dying, his sacrificed body, to render more 
 acceptable to God the sacrifice of our own, and to join him- 
 self with us at the hour of dissolution ; to the end that he 
 may strengthen us for the struggle, sanctifying, by his pres- 
 ence, the last sacrifice which we make to God of our life and 
 our body ?" Pretend to take no notice of all this, fathers, and 
 
 * Ecclesiasticus (Apocrjpha).
 
 326 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 persist in maintaining, as you do in page 39, that he refused 
 to take the communion on his death-bed, and that he did not 
 believe in the sacrifice of the mass. Nothing can be too gross 
 for calumniators by profession. 
 
 Your second proof furnishes an excellent illustration of this. 
 To make a Calvinist of M. de St. Cyran, to whom you ascribe 
 the book of Petrus Aurelius, you take advantage of a pas- 
 sage (page 80) in which Aurelius explains in what manner 
 the Church acts towards priests, and even bishops, whom she 
 wishes to degrade or depose. "The Church," he says, "be- 
 ing incapable of depriving them of the power of the order, 
 the character of which is indelible, she does all that she can 
 do ; she banishes from her memory the character which she 
 cannot banish from the souls of the individuals who have been 
 once invested with it ; she regards them in the same light as 
 if they were not bishops or priests ; so that, according to the 
 ordinary language of the Church, it may be said they are no 
 longer such, although they always remain such, in as far as 
 the character is concerned 6b indelebilitatem characteris." 
 You perceive, fathers, that this author, who has been ap- 
 proved by three general assemblies of the clergy of France, 
 plainly declares that the character of the priesthood is indel- 
 ible ; and yet you make him say,- on the contrary, in the very 
 same passage, that " the character of the priesthood is not 
 indelible." This is what I would call a notorious slander ; in 
 other words, according to your nomenclature, a small venial 
 sin. And the reason is, this book has done you some harm, 
 by refuting the heresies of your brethren in England touch- 
 ing the Episcopal authority. But the folly of the charge is 
 equally remarkable ; for, after having taken it for granted, 
 without any foundation, that M. de St. C3 - ran holds the 
 priestly character tb be not indelible, you conclude from this 
 that he does not believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ 
 in the eiicharist. 
 
 Do not expect me to answer this, fathers. If you have 
 got no common sense, I am not able to furnish you with it. 
 All who possess any share of it will enjoy a hearty laugh at
 
 PORT-ROYALISTS KO HERETICS. 327 
 
 your expense. Nor will they treat with greater respect your 
 third proof, which rests upon the following words, taken from 
 the Book of Frequent Communion : " In the eucharist God 
 vouchsafes iifthe same food that he bestows on the saints in 
 heaven, with this difference only, that here he withholds from 
 us its sensible sight and taste, reserving both of these for the 
 heavenly world."* These words express the sense of the 
 Church so distinctly, that I am constantly forgetting what 
 reason you have for picking a quarrel with them, in order to 
 turn them to a bad use ; for I can see nothing more in them 
 but what the Council of Trent teaches (sess. xiii., c. 8), 
 namely, that there is no difference between Jesus Christ in 
 the eucharist and Jesus Christ in heaven, except that here he 
 is veiled, and there he is not. M. Arnauld does not say that 
 there is no difference in the manner of receiving Jesus Christ, 
 but only that there is no difference in Jesus Christ who is re- 
 ceived. And yet you would, in the face of all reason, inter- 
 pret his language in this passage to mean, that Jesus Christ 
 is no more eaten with the mouth in this world than he is in 
 heaven ; upon which you ground the charge of heresy against 
 him. 
 
 You really make me sorry for you, fathers. Must we ex- 
 plain this further to you ? Why do you confound that divine 
 nourishment with the manner of receiving it ? There is but 
 one point of difference, as I have just observed, betwixt that 
 nourishment upon earth and in heaven, which is, that here it 
 is hidden under veils which deprive us of its sensible sight 
 and taste ; but there are various points of dissimilarity in the 
 manner of receiving it here and there, the principal of which 
 is, as M. Arnauld expresses it (p. 3, ch. 16), "that here it en- 
 ters into the mouth and the breast -both of the gfcod and of 
 the wicked," which is not the case in heaven. 
 
 And if you require to be told the reason of this diversity, 
 I may inform you, fathers, that the cause of God's ordaining 
 these different modes of receiving the same food, is the dif- 
 ference that exists betwixt the state of Christians in this life 
 * Freq. Com., 3 part, a- 11.
 
 328 PROVINCIAL LETTERS- 
 
 and that of the blessed in heaven. The state of the Chris- 
 tian, as Cardinal Perron observes after the fathers, holds a 
 middle place between the state of the blessed and the state 
 of the Jews. The spirits in bliss possess Jesus Christ really, 
 without veil or figure. The Jews possessed Jesus Christ 
 only in figures and veils, such as the manna and the paschal 
 lamb. And Christians possess Jesus Christ in the eucharist 
 really and truly, although still concealed under veils. " God," 
 says St. Eucher, "has made three tabernacles the syna- 
 gogue, which had the shadows only, without the truth ; the 
 Church, which has the truth and shadows together ; and 
 heaven, where there is no shadow, but the truth alone." It 
 would be a departure from our present state, which is the 
 state of faith, opposed by St. Paul alike to the law and to 
 open vision, did we possess the figures only, without Jesus 
 Christ ; for it is the property of the law to have the mere 
 figure, and not the substance of things. And it would be 
 equally a departure from our present state if we possessed 
 him visibly ; because faith, according to the same apostle, 
 deals not with things that are seen. And thus the eucharist, 
 from its including Jesus Christ truly, though under a veil, is 
 in perfect accordance with our state of faith. It follows, 
 that this state would be destroyed, if, as the heretics main- 
 tain, Jesus Christ were iiot really under the species of bread 
 and wine ; and it would be equally destroyed if we received 
 him openly, as they do in heaven : since, on these supposi- 
 tions, our state would be confounded, either with the state of 
 Judaism or with that of glory. 
 
 Such, fathers, is the mysterious and divine reason of this 
 most divine mystery. This it is that fills us with abhorrence 
 at the CaMnists, who would reduce us to the condition of 
 the Jews ; and this it is that makes us aspire to the glory of 
 the beatified, where we shall be introduced to the full and 
 eternal enjoyment of Jesus Christ. From hence you must 
 sec that there are several points of difference between the 
 manner in which he communicates himself to Christians and 
 to the blessed ; and that, amongst others, he is in this world
 
 PORT-ROYALISTS NO HERETICS. 329 
 
 received by the mouth, and not so in heaven ; but that they 
 all depend solely on the distinction between our state of faith 
 and their state of immediate vision. And this is precisely, 
 fathers, what M. Arnauld has expressed, with great plainness, 
 in the following terms : " There can be no other difference 
 between the purity of those who receive Jesus Christ in the 
 eucharist and that of the blessed, than what exists between 
 faith and the open vision of God, upon which alone depends 
 the different manner in which he is eaten upon earth and in 
 heaven." You were bound in duty, fathers, to have revered 
 in these words the sacred truths they express, instead of 
 wresting them for the purpose of detecting an heretical mean- 
 ing which they never contained, nor could possibly contain, 
 namely, that Jesus Christ is eaten by faith only, and not 
 bv the mouth ; the malicious perversion of your Fathers 
 Annat and Meynier, which forms the capital count of their 
 indictment. 
 
 Conscious, however, of the wretched deficiency of your 
 proofs, you have had recourse to a new artifice, which is noth- 
 ing less than to falsify the Council of Trent, in order to 
 convict M. Arnauld of nonconformity with it ; so vast is your 
 store of methods for making people heretics. This feat has 
 been achieved by Father Meynier, in fifty different places of 
 his book, and about eight or ten times in the space of a sin- 
 gle page (the 54th), wherein he insists that to speak like a 
 true Catholic, it is not enough to say, " I believe that Jesus 
 Christ is really present in the eucharist," but we must say, 
 " I believe, with the council, that he is present by a true 
 local presence, or locally." And in proof of this, he cites the 
 council, session xiii., canon 3d, canon 4th, and canon 6th. 
 Who would not suppose, upon seeing the term local presence 
 quoted from three canons of a universal council, that the 
 phrase was actually to be found in them ? This might have 
 served your turn very well, before the appearance of my 
 fifteenth letter; but as matters now stand, fathers, the trick 
 has become too stale for us. We go our way and consult 
 the council, and discover only that you are falsifiers. Such
 
 330 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 terms as local presence, locally, and locality, never existed in 
 the passages to which you refer ; and let me tell you further, 
 they are not to be found in any other canon of that council, 
 nor in hny other previous council, nor in any father of the 
 Church. Allow me, then, to ask you, fathers, if you mean 
 "to cast the suspicion of Calvinism upon all that have not 
 made use of that peculiar phrase ? If this be the case, the 
 Council of Trent must be suspected of heresy, and all the 
 holy fathers without exception. Have you no other way 
 of making M. Arnauld heretical, without abusing so many 
 other poople who never did you any harm, and among the 
 rest, St. Thomas, who is one of the greatest champions of the 
 eucharist, and who, so far from employing that term, has ex- 
 pressly rejected it " Nullo modo corpus Christi est in hoc 
 Sacramento localiter? By no means is the body of Christ in 
 this sacrament locally?" Who are you, then, fathers, to 
 pretend, on your authority, to impose new terras, and ordain 
 them to be used by all for rightly expressing then- faith ; as 
 if the profession of the faith, drawn up by the popes accord- 
 ing to the plan of the council, in which this term has no 
 place, were defective, and left an ambiguity in the creed of 
 the faithful, which you had the sole merit of discovering? 
 Such a piece of arrogance, to prescribe these terms, even to 
 learned doctors ! such a piece of forgery, to attribute them 
 to general councils ! and such ignorance, not to know the ob- 
 jections which the most enlightened saints have made to their 
 reception ! " Be ashamed of the error of your ignorance,"* 
 as the Scripture says of ignorant impostors like you De 
 mendacio inerudilionis tuce confundere. 
 
 Give up all further attempts, then, to act the masters ; 
 you have neither character nor capacity for the part. If, 
 however, you would bring forward your propositions with 
 a little more modesty, they might obtain a hearing. For 
 ahhou'_Hi this phrase, local presence, has been rejected, as 
 you have seen, by St. Thomas, on the ground that the body 
 of Jesus Christ is not in the eucharist, in the ordinary exten- 
 * Eccles. iv. 25 (Apocrypha).
 
 SLANDERS AGAINST PORT-ROYAL. 331 
 
 sion of bodies in their places, the expression Las, neverthe- 
 less, been adopted by some modern controversial writers, who 
 understand it simply to mean that the body of Jesus Christ 
 is truly under the species, which being in a particular place, 
 the body of Jesus Christ is there also. And in this sense M. 
 Arnauld will make no scruple to admit the term, as M. de 
 St. Cyran* and he have repeatedly declared that Jesus Christ 
 in the eucharist is truly in a particular place, and miraculously 
 in many places at the same time. Thus all your subtleties 
 fall to the ground ; and you have failed to give the slightest 
 semblance of plausibility to an accusation, which ought not to 
 have been allowed to show its face, without being supported 
 by the most unanswerable proofs. 
 
 But what avails it, fathers, to oppose their innocence to 
 your calumnies ? You impute these errors to them, not in 
 the belief that they maintain heresy, but from the idea that 
 they have done you injury. That is enough, according to 
 your theology, to warrant you to calumniate them without 
 criminality ; and you can, without either penance-or confes- 
 sion, say mass, at the very time that you charge priests, who 
 say it every day, with holding it to be pure idolatry ; which, 
 were it true, would amount to sacrilege no less revolting than 
 that of your own Father Jarrige, whom you yourselves or- 
 dered to be hanged in effigy, for having said mass " at the 
 time he was in agreement with Geneva."f 
 
 What surprises me, therefore, is not the little scrupulosity 
 with which you load them with crimes of the foulest and 
 falsest description, but the little prudence you display, by fix- 
 ing on them charges so destitute of plausibility. You dispose 
 
 * Jean du Verger de Hauranne, the Abbe de Saint Cyran was born 
 at Bayonne in 1531. He was the intimate friend of Jansenius and a 
 man of great piety and talents, but was seized as a heretic, and thrown 
 by Cardinal Richelieu into the dungeon of Vincennes. .Alter five years' 
 iirsprisonment.he was released, but died shortly after. October. 11. 1643. 
 By his followers, M. de Saint Cyran was reverenced as a saint and a 
 martyr. 
 
 f This Father Jarrige was a famous Jesuit, who became a Protes- 
 tant, and published aftpr his separation from Rome, a book, entitled 
 " Le Jesuite sur V E chaff aut The Jesuit on the Scaffold," in which he 
 treats his old friends with no mercy.
 
 332 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 of sins, it is true, at your pleasure ; but do you mean to dis- 
 pose of men's beliefs too? Verily, fathers, if the suspicion 
 of Calvinism must needs fall either on them or on you, you 
 \vould stand, I fear, on very ticklish ground. Their language 
 is as Catholic as yours ; but their conduct confirms their 
 faith, and your conduct belies it. For if you believe, as well 
 as they do, that the bread is really changed into the body of 
 Jesus Christ, why do you not require, as they do, from those 
 whom you advise to approacb the altar, that the heart of 
 stone and ice should be sincerely changed into a heart of 
 flesh and of love ? If you believe that Jesus Christ is in that 
 sacrament iii a state of death, teaching those that approach 
 it to die to the world, to sin, and to themselves, why do you 
 suffer those to profane it in -whose breasts evil passions con- 
 tinue to reign in all their life and vigor ? And how do you 
 come to judge those worthy to eat the bread of heaven, who 
 are not worthy to eat that of earth ? 
 
 Precious votaries, truly, whose zeal is expended in perse- 
 cuting those who honor this sacred mystery by so many holy 
 communions, and in flattering those who dishonor it by so many 
 sacrilegious desecrations! How comely is it in these cham- 
 pions of a sacrifice so pure and so venerable, to collect around 
 the table of Jesus Christ a crowd of hardened profligates, 
 reeking from their debaucheries ; and to plant in the midst 
 of them a priest, whom his own confessor has hurried from 
 his obscenities to the altar ; there, hi the place of Jesus Christ, 
 to offer up that most holy victim to the God of holiness, and 
 convey it, with his polluted hands, into mouths as thoroughly 
 polluted as his own ! How well does it become those Avho 
 pursue this course " in all parts of the world," in conformity 
 with maxims sanctioned by their own general, to impute to the 
 author of Frequent Communion, and to the Sisters of the Holy 
 Sacrament, the crime of not believing in that sacrament ! 
 
 Even this, however, does not satisfy them. Nothing less 
 will satiate their rage than to accuse their opponents of hav- 
 ing renounced Jesus Christ and their baptism. This is no 
 air-built fable, like those of your invention ; it is a fact, and
 
 SLANDERS AGAIXST PORT-ROYAL. 333 
 
 denotes a delirious frenzy, which marks the fatal consumma- 
 tion of your calumnies. Such a notorious falsehood as this 
 would not have been in hands worthy to support it, had it 
 remained in those of your good friend Filleau, through whom 
 you ushered it into the world : your Society has openly 
 adopted it ; and your Father Meynier maintained it the other 
 day to be " a certain truth," that Port-Royal has, for the 
 space of thirty-five years, been forming a secret plot, of 
 which M. de St. Cvran and M. D'Ypres have been the ring- 
 leaders, " to ruin the mystery of the incarnation to make 
 the Gospel pass for an apocryphal fable to exterminate the 
 Christian religion, and to erect Deism upon the ruins of 
 Christianity." Is this enough, fathers ? Will you be satis- 
 fied if all this be believed of the objects of your hate ? Would 
 your animosity be glutted at length, if you could but succeed 
 in making them odious, not only to all within the Church, by 
 the charge of "consenting with Geneva" of which you accuse 
 them, but even to all who believe in Jesus Christ, though 
 beyond the pale of the Church, by the imputation of Deism? 
 But whom do you expect to convince, upon your simple 
 asseveration, without the slightest shadow of proof, and in 
 the face of ever}' imaginable contradiction, that priests who 
 preach nothing but the grace of Jesus Christ, the purity of 
 the Gospel, and the obligations of baptism, have renounced 
 at once their baptism, the Gospel, and Jesus Christ ? Who 
 will believe it, fathers ? Wretched as you are,* do you be- 
 lieve it yourselves ? What a sad predicament is yours, when 
 you must either prove that they do not believe in Jesus 
 Christ, or must pass for the most abandoned calumniators. 
 Prove it, then, fathers. Name that " worthy clergyman" 
 who, you say, attended that assembly at Bourg-Fontainef 
 
 * Miserables que TOUS etesone of the bitterest expressions which 
 Pascal has applied to his opponents and one which they have-deeply 
 felt, but the full force of which can hardly be renderpd int English. 
 
 f With regard to this famous assembly at Bourir-Fontaine. in which 
 it was alleged a conspiracy was formed by die Jansenists against the 
 Christian re.liifion, the curious reader may consult the work of M. Ar- 
 nauld entitled Morale Pratique des Jesuit&s vol. viii.. where there ia a 
 detailed account of the whole proceedings (Niook, iv. 233.)
 
 834 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 in 1621, and discovered to Brother Filleau the design there 
 conceited of overturning the Christian religion. Name these 
 six persons who yon allege to have formed that conspiracy. 
 Name the individual who is designated by the -letters A^A,, 
 who you say " was not Antony Arnauld" (because he con- 
 vinced you that he was at that time only nine years of age), 
 "but another person, who you say is still in life, but too good 
 a friend of M. Arnauld not to be known to him." You know 
 him, then, fathers ; and consequently, if you are not destitute 
 of religion yourselves, you are bound to delate that impious 
 wretch to the king and parliament, that he may be punished 
 according to his deserts. You must speak out, fathers ; you 
 must name the person, or submit to the disgrace of being 
 henceforth regarded in no other light than as common liars, 
 unworthy of being ever credited again. Good Father Va- 
 lerien has taught us that this is the way in which such char- 
 acters should be " put to the rack," and brought to their 
 senses. Your silence upon the present challenge will fur- 
 nish a full and satisfactory confirmation of this diabolical 
 calumny. Your blindest admirers will be constrained to 
 ad,rnit, that it will be " the result, not of your goodness, but 
 your impotency ;" and to wonder how you could be so wicked 
 as to extend your hatred even to the nuns of Port-Royal, and 
 to say, as you do in page 14, that The Secret Chaplet of the 
 Holy Sacrament * composed by one of their number, was 
 the first-fruit of that conspiracy against Jesus Christ ; or, as 
 in page 95, that " they have imbibed all the detestable prin- 
 ciples of that work;" which is, according to your account, 
 " a lesson in Deism." Your falsehoods regarding that book 
 have already been triumphantly refuted, in the defence of 
 
 * The Secret Chaplet of the most Holy Sacrament. Such was the 
 title of a very harmless piece of mystic devotion of three or four pages, 
 the production of a nun of Port-Royal, called Sister Agnes de Saint 
 Paul, which appeared in 1(523. It excited the jealousy of the Arch- 
 bishop of Sens set the doctors of Paris and those of Louvain by the 
 ears occasioned a war of pamphlets and was finally carried by appeal 
 to the Court of Rome, by which it was suppressed. (Nicole, iv. 302.) 
 Agnes de St. Paul was the younger sister of the Mere Angclique Ar- 
 nauld, and both of them were Butters of this celebrated M. Arnauld.
 
 THE HOLT THORN. 335 
 
 the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris against Father 
 Brisacier. That publication you are incapable of answering ; 
 and yet you do not scruple to abuse it in a, more shameful 
 manner than ever, for the purpose of charging women, whose 
 piety is universally known, with the vilest blasphemy. 
 
 Cruel, cowardly persecutors ! Must, then, the most retired 
 cloisters afford no retreat from your calumnies ? While 
 these consecrated virgins are employed, night and day, ac- 
 cording to their institution, in adoring Jesus Christ in the" 
 holy sacrament, you cease not, night nor day, to publish 
 abroad that they do not believe that he is either in the eu- 
 charist or even at the right hand of his Father; and you are 
 publicly excommunicating them from the Church, at the 
 very time' when .they are in secret praying for the whole 
 Church, and for you! You blacken with your slanders 
 those who have neither ears to hear nor mouths to answer 
 you ! But Jesus Christ, in whom they are now hidden, not 
 to appear till one day together with him, hears you, and an- 
 swers for them. At the moment I am now writing, that 
 holy and terrible voice is heard which confounds nature and 
 consoles the Church.* And I fear, fathers, that those who 
 
 * This refers to the celebrated miracles of " the Holy Thorn," the first 
 of which, said to have lately taken place in Port- Royal, was then cre- 
 ating much sensation. The facts are briefly these : A thorn, said to 
 have belonged to the crown of thorns worn .by our Saviour, having been 
 presented, in March 1656, to the Monastery of Port-Royal, the nuns 
 and their young pupils were permitted, each in turn, to kiss the relic. 
 One of the latter, Margaret Perier. the niece of Pascal, a girl of about 
 ten or eleven years of age. had beun long troubled with a disease in the 
 eye (Jistula lachrymalis), which had baffled the skill of all the physi- 
 cians of Paris. On approaching the holy thorn, she applied it to the 
 diseased organ, and shortly thereafter exclaimed, to the surprise and 
 delight of all the sisters, that her eye was completely cured. A certifi- 
 cate, signed by some of the most celebrated physicians, attested the cure 
 as, in their opinion a miraculous one. The friends of Port-Royal, and 
 none more than Pascal, were overjoyed at this interposition, which, be- 
 ing followed by other extraordinary cures, they regarded as a voice from 
 heaven in favor of that institution. The Jesuits alone rejected it with 
 ridicule, and published a piece, entitled Kabat-joie. &c. A Damper: 
 or, Observations on what has lately happened at Port-Royal as to the 
 afl'nir of the Holy Thorn." This was answered in November 1653, in 
 a tract supposed'to have been written by M. de Pont Chateau, who was 
 called " the Cierk of the Holy Thorn;' 1 assisted by Pascal. (Recueil de 
 Pieces, fe Jo Port-Royal, pp 283-448.) It has been well observed,
 
 
 336 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 now harden their hearts, and refuse with obstinacy to hear 
 him, while he speaks in the character of God, will one day 
 be compelled, to hear him with terror, when lie speaks to 
 them ii> the, character of a Judge. What account, indeed, 
 fathers, will you be able to render to him of the many cal- 
 umnies you have uttered, seeing that he will examine them, 
 in that day, not according to the fantasies of Fathers Dicas- 
 tille, Gans, and PennaWssa, who justify them, but according 
 to the eternal laws of truth, and the sacred ordinances of 
 his own Church, which, so far from attempting to vindicate 
 that crime, abhors it to such a degree that she visits it with 
 the same penalty as wilful murder ? By the first and second 
 Councils of Aries she has decided that the communion shall 
 be denied to slanderers as well as murderers, till the approach 
 of death. The Council of Lateran has judged those unwor- 
 thy of admission into the ecclesiastical state who have been 
 convicted of the crime, even though they may have reformed. 
 The popes have even threatened to deprive of the communion 
 at death those who have calumniated bishops, priests, or 
 deacons. And the authors of a defamatory libel, who fail to 
 prove what they have advanced, are condemned by Pope 
 Adrian to be whipped ; yes, reverend fathers, flagdlentur is 
 the word. So strong has been the repugnance of the Church 
 at all times to the errors of your Society a Society so thor- 
 oughly depraved as to invent excuses for the grossest of 
 crimes, such as calumny, chiefly that it may enjoy the greater 
 freedom in perpetrating them itself. There can be no doubt., 
 fathers, that you would be capable of producing abundance 
 of mischief in this way, had God not permitted you to fur 
 
 " that many laborious and voluminous discussions might have been 
 saved, if the simple and very reasonable role had been adopted of 
 waiving investigation into the credibility of any narrative of supernat- 
 ural or pretended supernatural events, said to have taken place upon 
 consecrated ground, or under sacred roofs." (Natural Hist, of Enthusi- 
 asm, p. 23 '-.) -' It is well known." says Mosheim ' that the Jansenists 
 and Augustinians have loner pretended to confirm their doctrine by 
 miracles; and they even acknowledge that these miracles have saved 
 them when theii" tui'airs have been reduced to a desperate situation." 
 (Kuril. Ecd. Hist, cent xvii., sect, a)
 
 CALUMNr RENDERED INNOCUOUS. 33t 
 
 nish with your own hands the means of preventing the evil, 
 and of rendering your slanders perfectly innocuous ; for, to 
 deprive you of all credibility, it was quite enough to publish 
 the strange maxim, that it is no crime to calumniate. Cal- 
 umny is nothing, if not associated with a high reputation for 
 honesty. The defamer can make no impression, unless he 
 has the character of one that abhors defamation, as a crime 
 of which he is incapable. And thus, fathers, you are be- 
 trayed by your own principle. You established the doctrine 
 to secure yourselves a safe conscience, that you might slander 
 without risk of damnation, and be ranked with those " pious 
 and holy calumniators" of whom St. Athanasius speaks. To 
 save yourselves from hell, you have embraced a maxim which 
 promises you this security on the faith of your doctors ; but 
 this same maxim, while it guarantees you, according to their 
 idea, against the evils you dread in the future world, deprives 
 you of all the advantage you may have expected to reap 
 from it in the present ; so that, in attempting to escape the 
 guilt, you have lost the benefit of calumny. Such is the self- 
 contrariety of evil, and so completely does it confound and 
 destroy itself by its own intrinsic malignity. 
 
 You might have slandered, therefore, much more advan- 
 tageously for yourselves, had you professed to hold, with St. 
 Paul, that evil speakers are not worthy to see God ; for in 
 this case, though you would indeed have been condemning 
 yourselves, your slanders would at least have stood a better 
 chance of being believed. But by maintaining, as you have 
 done, that calumny against your enemies is no crime, your 
 slanders will be discredited, and you yourselves damned into 
 the bargain ; for two things are certain, fathers first, That 
 it will never be in the power of your grave doctors to anni- 
 hilate the justice of God ; and, secondly, That you could not 
 give more certain evidence that you are not of the Truth 
 than by your resorting to falsehood. If the Truth were on 
 your side, she would fight for you she would conquer for 
 you ; and whatever enemies you might have to encounter, 
 " the Truth would set you free" from them, according to her 
 15
 
 838 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 promise. But yon hare had recourse to falsehood, for no 
 other design than to support the errors with which you flat- 
 ter the sinful children of this world, and to bolster up the 
 calumnies with which you persecute every man of piety who 
 sets his face against these delusions. The truth being dia- 
 metrically opposed to your ends, it behooved you, to use the 
 language of the prophet, " to put your confidence in lies." 
 You have said, " The scourges which afflict mankind shall 
 not come nigh onto us ; for we have made lies our refuge, 
 and under falsehood have we hid ourselves."* But what 
 says the prophet in reply to such ? " Forasmuch," says he, 
 M as ye have put your trust in calumny and tumult speras- 
 tis in calumnia et in tumultu this iniquity and your ruin 
 shall be like that of a high wall whose breaking cometh sud- 
 denly at an instant. And he shall break it as the breaking 
 of the potter's vessel that is shivered in pieces" with such 
 violence that " there shall not be found in the bursting of it 
 a shred to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal 
 out of the pit."f " Because," as another prophet says, " ye 
 have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not 
 made sad ; and ye have flattered and strengthened the mal- 
 ice of the wicked ; I will therefore deliver my people out 
 of your hands, and ye shall know that I am their Lord and 
 yours."J 
 
 Yes, fathers, it is to be hoped that if you do not repent, 
 God will deliver out of your hands those whom you have so 
 long deluded, either by flattering them in their evil courses 
 with your licentious maxims, or by poisoning their minds 
 with your slanders. He will convince the former that the 
 false rules of your casuists will not screen them from his in- 
 dignation ; and he will impress on the minds of the latter the 
 just dread of losing their souls by listening and yielding 
 credit to your slanders, as you lose yours by hatching these 
 
 * Isa. xxviii. 15. t Isa. IM. 
 
 $ Ezek. xiii. 23. Pascal does not, either here or elsewhere, when 
 quoting from Scripture, adhere very elosely to the original, nor even to 
 we Vulgate version.
 
 NO IMPUNITY FOR SLANDERERS. 339 
 
 slanders and disseminating them through the world. Let 
 no man be deceived ; God is not mocked ; none may violate 
 with impunity the commandment which he has given us in 
 the Gospel, not to condemn our neighbor without being well 
 assured of his guilt. And, consequently, what profession so- 
 ever of piety those may make who lend a willing ear to your 
 lying devices, and under what pretence soever of devotion 
 they may entertain them, they have reason to apprehend ex- 
 clusion from the kingdom of God, solely for having imputed 
 crimes of such a dark complexion as heresy and schism to 
 Catholic priests and holy nuns, upon no better evidence than 
 such vile fabrications as yours. " The devil," says M. de 
 Geneve,* " is on the tongue of him that slanders, and in the 
 ear of him that listens to the slanderer." " And evil speak- 
 ing," says St. Bernard, " is a poison that extinguishes charity 
 in both of the parties ; so that a single calumny may prove 
 mortal to an infinite number of souls, killing not only those 
 who publish it, but all those besides by whom it is not re- 
 pudiated."! 
 
 Reverend fathers, my letters were not wont either to be so 
 prolix, or to follow so closely on one another. Want of 
 time must plead my excuse for both of these faults. The 
 present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no 
 leisure to make it shorter. You know the reason of this 
 haste better than I do. You have been unlucky in your 
 answers. You have done well, therefore, to change your 
 plan ; but I am afraid that you will get no credit for it, and 
 that people will say it was done for fear of the Benedictines. 
 
 I have just come to learn that the person who was gene- 
 rally reported to be the author of your Apologies, disclaims 
 them, and is annoyed at their having been ascribed to him. 
 He has good reason ; and I was wrong to have suspected 
 him of any such thing ; for, in spite of the assurances which 
 
 * This was the name given to St. Francis de Sales, bishop and prince 
 of Geneva, previously to his canonization, which took place in 1665. 
 f Serm. 24 in Cantic.
 
 340 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 I received, I ought to have considered that he was a man 
 of too much good sense to believe your accusations, and of 
 too much honor to publish them if he did not believe them. 
 There are few people in the world capable of your extrava- 
 gances ; they are peculiar to yourselves, and mark your 
 character too plainly to admit of any excuse for having failed 
 to recognize your hand in their concoction. I was led away 
 by the common report; but this apology, which would be 
 too good for you, is not sufficient for me, who profess to ad- 
 vance nothing without certain proof. In no other instance 
 have I been guilty of departing from this rule. I am sorry 
 for what I said. I retract it ; and I only wish that you may 
 profit by my example."* 
 
 * These two postscripts have been often admired the former for the 
 author's elegant excuse for the length of his letter; the latter for th 
 adroitness with which he turns his apology for an undesigned mistak* 
 into a stroke at the disingenuousness of his opponents. 
 
 sui .r.!si; 
 
 Oil . > ., { ". 

 
 :::i 
 
 LETTER XVII.* 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHER ANNAT, JESUIT.f 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF THE LETTERS VINDICATED FROM THE CHARGE OF 
 HERESY AN HERETICAL PHANTOM POPES AND GENERAL COUN- 
 CILS NOT INFALLIBLE IN QUESTIONS OF FACT. 
 
 January 23, 1657. 
 
 REVEREND FATHER, Your former behavior had induced 
 me to believe that you were anxious for a truce in our hos- 
 tilities ; and I was quite disposed to agree that it should be 
 so. Of late, however, you have poured forth such a volley 
 of pamphlets, in such rapid succession, as to make it appa- 
 rent that peace rests on a very precarious footing when it de- 
 pends on the silence of Jesuits. I know not if this rupture 
 will prove very advantageous to you ; but, for my part, I am 
 far from regretting the opportunity which it affords me of 
 rebutting that stale charge of heresy with which your writ- 
 ings abound. 
 
 It is full time, indeed, that I should, once for all, put a 
 stop to the liberty you have taken to treat me as a heretic 
 a piece of gratuitous impertinence which seems to increase 
 by indulgence, and which is exhibited in your last book in a 
 style of such intolerable assurance, that were I not to an- 
 swer the charge as it deserves, I might lay myself open to 
 the suspicion of being actually guilty. So long as the insult 
 was confined to your associates I despised it, as I did a thou- 
 sand others with which they interlarded their productions. 
 To these my fifteenth letter was a sufficient reply. But you 
 
 * M. Nicole furnished the materials for this letter. (Nicole, iv. 324.) 
 
 f Francis Annat, the same person formerly referred to at p. 102. 
 
 He became French provincial of the Jesuits, and confestor to Louis XIV
 
 342 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 now repeat the charge with a different air : you make it the 
 main point of your vindication. It is, in fact, almost the 
 only thing in the shape of argument that you employ. You 
 say that, " as a complete answer to my fifteen letters, it is 
 enough to say fifteen times that I am a heretic ; and having 
 been pronounced such, I deserve no credit." In short, you 
 make no question of my apostasy, but assume it as a settled 
 point, on which you may build with all confidence. You are 
 serious then, father, it would seem, in deeming me a heretic. 
 I shall be equally serious hi replying to the charge. 
 
 You are well aware, sir, that heresy is a charge of so 
 grave a character, that it is an act of high presumption to 
 advance, without being prepared to substantiate it. I now 
 demand your proofs. When was I seen at Charenton ? 
 When did I fail in my presence at mass, or in my Christian 
 duty to my parish church ? What act of union with here- 
 tics, or of schism with the Church, can you lay to my charge ? 
 What council have I contradicted ? What papal constitu- 
 tion have I violated ? You must answer, father, else 
 
 You know what I mean.* And what do you answer ? I 
 beseech all to observe it : First of all, you assume " that the 
 author of the letters is a Port-Royalist ;" then you tell us 
 " that Port- Royal is declared to be heretical ;" and, there- 
 fore, you conclude, " the author of the letters must be a here- 
 tic." It is not on me, then, father, that the weight of this 
 indictment falls, but on Port-Royal ; and I am only involved 
 in the crime because you suppose me to belong to that estab- 
 lishment ; so that it will be no difficult matter for me to ex- 
 culpate myself from the charge. I have no more to say than 
 that I am not a member of that community ; and to refer 
 you to my letters, in which I have declared that "I am a 
 private individual ;" and again in so many words, that " I am 
 not of Port- Royal," as I said in my sixteenth letter, which 
 preceded your publication. 
 
 You must fall on some other way, then, to prove me a 
 
 * A threat, evidently, of administering to him the Mentlria 
 fimnwofthe Capuchin, mentioned at p. 310.
 
 CHARGE OF HERESY. 343 
 
 heretic, otherwise the whole world will be convinced that it 
 is beyond your power to make good your accusation. Prove 
 from my writings that I do not receive the constitution.* 
 My letters are not very voluminous there are but sixteen of 
 them and I defy you or anybody else to detect in them the 
 slightest foundation for such a charge. I shall, however, 
 with your permission, produce something out of them to 
 prove the reverse. When, for example, I say in the four- 
 teenth that, " by killing our brethren in mortal sin, according 
 to your maxims, we are damning those for whom Jesus 
 Christ died," do I not plainly acknowledge that Jesus Christ 
 died for those who may be damned, and, consequently, de- 
 clare it to be false " that he died only for the predestinated," 
 which is the error condemned in the fifth proposition ? Cer- 
 tain it is, father, that I have not said a word in behalf of 
 these impious propositions, which I detest with all my heartf 
 And even though Port- Royal should hold them, I protest 
 against your drawing any conclusion from this against me, 
 as, thank God, I have no sort of connection with any com- 
 munity except the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, 
 in the bosom of which I desire to live and die, in communion 
 with the pope, the head of the Charch, and beyond the pale 
 of which I am persuaded there is no salvation. 
 
 * The constitution th&t is, the bull of Pope Alexander VII., issued 
 in October 1656, ia which he not only condemned the Five Proposi- 
 tions, but, in compliance with the solicitations of the Jesuits, added an 
 express clause, to the effect that these had been faithfully extracted from 
 Jansenius, and were heretical in the sense in which he (Jansenius) 
 employed them. This was a more stringent constitution than the first ; 
 but the Jansenists were ready to meet him on this point ; they replied 
 that a declaration of this nature overstepped the limits of the papal au- 
 thority, and that the pope's infallibility did not extend to a judgment 
 offacts. 
 
 \ The Fivt Propositions. A brief view of these celebrated Proposi- 
 tions may be here given, as necessary to the understanding of the text. 
 They were as fallows : I. That some commandments of God are im- 
 practicable even to the righteous, who desire to keep them, according 
 to their present strength. II. That grace is irresistible. III. That 
 moral freedom consists, not in exemption from necessity, but from con- 
 straint. IV. That to assert that the will may resist or obey the motions 
 of converting grace as it pleased, was a heresy of the semi- Pelagians. 
 V. That to assert that Jesus Christ died for all men, without exception, 
 is an error of the semi-Pelagians. For a fuller explication of the coa- 
 troversy, the reader must be referred to the Introduction,
 
 844 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 How are you to get at a person who talks in this way, fa- 
 ther ? On what quarter will you assail me, since neither my 
 words nor my writings afford the slightest handle to your 
 accusations, and the obscurity in which my person is envel- 
 oped forms my protection against your threatenings ? You 
 feel yourselves smitten by an invisible hand a hand, how- 
 ever, which makes your delinquencies visible to all ; and in 
 vain do you try to strike at me in the dark, through the sides 
 of those with whom you suppose me to be associated. I 
 fear you not, either on my own account or on that of any 
 other, being bound by no tie either to a community or to any 
 individual whatsoever.* All the influence which your Soci- 
 ety possesses can be of no avail in my case. From this world 
 I have nothing to hope, nothing to dread, nothing to desire. 
 Through the goodness of God, I have no need of any man's 
 money or any man's patronage. Thus, father, I elude all 
 your attempts to catch hold of me. You may touch Port- 
 Royal if you choose, but you shall not touch me. You may 
 turn people out of the Sorbonne, but that will not turn me 
 out of my domicile. You may hatch plots against priests 
 and doctors, but not against me, for I am neither the one 
 nor the other. And thus, father, you never perhaps had to 
 do, in the whole course of your experience, with a person so 
 completely beyond your reach, and therefore so admirably 
 qualified for dealing with your errors one perfectly free 
 one without engagement, entanglement, relationship, or busi- 
 ness of any kind one, too, who is pretty well versed in 
 your maxims, and determined, as God shall give him light, 
 to discuss them, without permitting any earthly considera- 
 tion to arrest or slacken his endeavors. 
 
 * Pascal might say this with truth, for his only relatives being nuns, 
 the tie of earthly relationship was considered by him as no longer ex- 
 isting; and beyond personal friendship, he had really no connection 
 with Port-Royal. There is as little truth as force, therefore, in the taunt 
 of a late advocate of the Jesuits, who says, in reference to this passage, 
 " Pascal was intimately connected with Port-Royal, he was even num- 
 bered among its recluses ; and yet, in the act of unmasking the pre- 
 sumed duplicity of the Jesuits, the sublime writer did not scruple to imi- 
 tate h." (Hist, de la Comp. de Jesus, par J. Cretineau-Joly, torn. iv. 
 54. P.rw, 1845.)
 
 CHARGE OF HERESY. 
 
 Since, then, you can do nothing against me, what good 
 purpose can it serve to publish so many calumnies, as you 
 and your brethren are doing, against a class of persons who 
 are in no way implicated in our disputes ? You shall not es- 
 cape under these subterfuges : you shall be made to feel the 
 force of the truth in spite of them. How does the case 
 stand ? I tell you that you are ruining Christian morality 
 by divorcing it from the love of God, and dispensing with 
 its obligation ; and you talk about " the death of Father Mes- 
 ter" a person whom I never saw in my life. I tell you 
 that your authors permit a man to kill another for the sake 
 of an apple, when it would be dishonorable to lose it ; and 
 you reply by informing me that somebody " has broken into 
 the poor's box at St. Merri !" Again, what can you possibly 
 mean by mixing me up perpetually with the book " On the 
 Holy Virginity," written by some father of the Oratory, whom 
 I never saw, any more than his book ?"* It is rather extraor- 
 dinary, father, that you should thus regard all that are op- 
 posed to you as if they were one person. Your hatred 
 would grasp them all at once, and would hold them as a 
 body of reprobates, every one of whom is responsible for all 
 the rest. 
 
 There is a vast difference between Jesuits and all their op- 
 ponents. There can be no doubt that you compose one 
 body, united under one head ; and your regulations, as I have 
 shown, prohibit you from printing anything without the ap- 
 probation of your superiors, who are responsible for all the 
 errors of individual writers, and who " cannot excuse them- 
 selves by saying that they did not observe the errors in any 
 publication, for they ought to have observed them." So say 
 your ordinances, and so say the letters of your generals, 
 
 " This book of the Holy Virginity was a translation from St. Au- 
 gustine, made by Father Seguenot. priest of the Oratory. So far, all 
 was right ; but the priest had added to the original text some odd and 
 peculiar remarks of his own, which merited censure. As the publica- 
 tion came from the Oratory, a community always attached to the doc- 
 trine of St. Augustine, an attempt was made to throw the blame oa 
 those called JansenisU." (Note by Nicole, iv. 332.) 
 15*
 
 846 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Aquaviva, Vitelleschi, &c. We have good reason, therefore, 
 for charging upon you the errors of your associates, when we 
 find they are sanctioned by your superiors and the divines of 
 your Society. With me, however, father, the case stands 
 otherwise. I have not subscribed the book of the Holy Vir- 
 ginity. All the alms-boxes in Paris may be broken into, and 
 yet I am not the less a good Catholic for all that. In short, 
 I beg to inform you, in the plainest terms, that nobody is re- 
 sponsible for my letters but myself, and that I am responsi- 
 ble for nothing but my letters. 
 
 Here, father, I might fairly enough have brought our dis- 
 pute to an issue, without saying a word about those other 
 persons whom you stigmatize as heretics, in order to compre- 
 hend me under that condemnation. But as I have been the 
 occasion of their ill treatment, I consider myself bound in 
 some sort to improve the occasion, and I shall take advantage 
 of it in three particulars. One advantage, not inconsiderable 
 in its way, is that it will enable me to vindicate the innocence 
 of so many calumniated individuals. Another, not inappro- 
 priate to my subject, will be to disclose, at the same time, 
 the artifices of your policy in this accusation. But the ad- 
 vantage which I prize most of all this, that it affords me an 
 opportunity of apprizing the world of the falsehood of that 
 scandalous report which you have been so busily dissemina- 
 ting, namely, " that the Church is divided by a new heresy." 
 And as you are deceiving multitudes into the belief that the 
 points on which you are raising such a storm are essential to 
 the faith, I consider it of the last importance to quash these 
 unfounded impressions, and distinctly to explain here what 
 these points are, so as to show that, in point of fact, there 
 are no heretics in the Church. 
 
 I presume, then, that were the question to be asked, 
 Wherein consists the heresy of those called Jansenists ? the 
 immediate reply would be, " These people hold that the com- 
 mandments of God are impracticable to men that grace is 
 irresistible that we have not free will to do either good or 
 evil that Jesus Christ did not die for all men, but only for
 
 THE FIVE PROPOSITIONS, 347 
 
 the elect ; in short, they maintain the five propositions con- 
 demned by the pope." Do you not give it out to all that 
 this is the ground on which you persecute your opponents ? 
 Have you not said as much in your books, in your conversa- 
 tions, in your catechisms ? A specimen of this you gave at 
 the late Christmas festival at St. Louis. One of your little 
 shepherdesses was questioned thus : 
 
 " For whom did Jesus Christ come into the world, my 
 dear?" 
 
 " For all men, father." 
 
 " Indeed, my child ; so you are not one of those new her- 
 etics who say that he came only for the elect ?" 
 
 Thus children are led to believe you, and many others be- 
 side children ; for you entertain people with the same stuff 
 in your sermons, as Father Crasset did at Orleans, before he 
 was laid under an interdict. And I frankly own that, at one 
 time, I believed you myself. You had given me precisely 
 the same idea of these good people ; so that when you 
 pressed them on these propositions, I narrowly watched their 
 answer, determined never to see them more, if they did not 
 renounce them as palpable impieties. 
 
 This, however, they have done in the most unequivocal 
 way. M. de Sainte-Beuve,* king's professor hi the Sorbonne, 
 censured these propositions hi his published writings long be- 
 fore the pope ; and other Augustinian doctors, in various 
 publications, and, among others, in a work " On Victorious 
 Grace,"f reject the same articles as both heretical and strange 
 doctrines. In the preface to that work they say that these 
 propositions are " heretical and Lutheran, forged and fabrica- 
 ted at pleasure, and are neither to be found in Jansenius, nor 
 
 * " M. Jacques de Sainte-Beuve, one of the ablest divines of his age, 
 preferred to relinquish his chair in the Sorbonne rather than concur in 
 the censure of M. Arnauld, whose orthodoxy he regarded as beyond 
 suspicion. He died IP 1677." (Note by Nicole.) 
 
 f This work was entitled " On the Victorious Grace of Jesus Christ ; 
 or, Molina and his followers convicted of the error of the Pelagians and 
 Semi-Pelagians. By the Sieur de Bonlieu. Paris, 1631." The real 
 author was the celebrated M. de 1 aLane. well known in that contro- 
 versy. (Wite by Nicole.)
 
 848 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 in his defenders." They complain of being charged with such 
 sentiments, and address you in the words of St. Prosper, the 
 first disciple of St. Augustine their master, to whom the 
 semi-Pelagians of France had ascribed similar opinions, with 
 the view of bringing him into disgrace : " There are persons 
 who denounce us, so blinded by passion that they have 
 adopted means for doing so which ruin their own reputation. 
 They have, for this purpose, fabricated propositions of the 
 most impious and blasphemous character, which they indus- 
 triously circulate, to make people believe that we maintain 
 them in the wicked sense which they are pleased to attach to 
 them. But our reply will show at once our innocence, and the 
 malignity of these persons who have ascribed to us a set of im- 
 pious tenets, of which they are themselves the sole inventors." 
 
 Truly, father, when I found that they had spoken in this 
 way before the appearance of the papal constitution when 
 I saw that they afterwards received that decree with all pos- 
 sible respect, that they offered to subscribe it, and that M. 
 Arnauld Lad declared all this in his second letter, in stronger 
 terms than I can report him, I should have considered it a sin 
 to doubt their soundness in the faith. And, in fact, those 
 who were formerly disposed to refuse absolution to M. Ar- 
 nauld's friends, have since declared, that after his explicit dis- 
 claimer of the errors imputed to him, there was no reason 
 left for cutting off either him or them from the communion 
 of the Church. Your associates, however, have acted very 
 differently ; and it was this that made me begin to suspect 
 that you were actuated by prejudice. 
 
 You threatened first to compel them to sign that consti- 
 tution, so long as you thought they would resist it ; but no 
 sooner did you see them quite rtady of their own accord to 
 submit to it, than we heard no more about this. Still, how- 
 ever, though one might suppose this ought to have satisfied 
 you, you persisted in calling them heretics, " because," said 
 you, " their heart belies their hand ; they are Catholics out- 
 wardly, but inwardly they are heretjps,"* 
 
 Reponse a quelques demandeg, pp. 27, 47,
 
 THE FIVE PROPOSITIONS. 349 
 
 This, father, struck me as very strange reasoning; for 
 where is the person of whom as much may not be said at 
 any time ? And what endless trouble and confusion would 
 ensue, were it allowed to go on ! " If," says Pope St. Gre- 
 gory, " we refuse to believe a confession of faith made in 
 conformity to the sentiments of the Church, we cast a doubt 
 over the faith of all Catholics whatsoever." I am afraid, 
 father, to use the words of the same pontiff, when speaking 
 of a similar dispute in his time, "that your object is to make 
 these persons heretics in spite of themselves ; because to 
 refuse to credit those who testify by their confession that 
 they are in the true faith, is not to purge heresy, but to 
 create it hoc non est hceresim purgare, sed facere. But 
 what confirmed me in my persuasion that there was indeed 
 no heretic in the Church, was finding that our so-called her- 
 etics had vindicated themselves so successfully, that you 
 were unable to accuse them of a single error in the faith, and 
 that you were reduced to the necessity of assailing them on 
 questions of fact only, touching Jansenius, which could not 
 possibly be construed into heresy. You insist, it now ap- 
 pears, on their being compelled to acknowledge " that these 
 propositions are contained in Jansenius, word for word, every 
 one of them, in so many terras," or, as you express it, 
 Singulares, individuce, totidem verbis apud Jansenium con- 
 tents. 
 
 Thenceforth your dispute became, in my eyes, perfectly 
 indifferent. So long as I believed that you were debating 
 the truth or falsehood of the propositions, I was all attention, 
 for that quarrel touched the faith ; but when I discovered 
 that the bone of contention was whether they were to be 
 found, word for word, in Jansenius or not, as religion ceased 
 to be interested in the controversy, I ceased to be interested 
 in it also. Not but that there was some presumption that 
 that you were speaking the truth ; because to say that such 
 and such expressions are to be found, word for word, in an 
 author, is a matter in which there can be no mistake. I do 
 not wonder, therefore, that so many people, both in France
 
 350 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 and at Rome, should have been led to believe, on the authcr- 
 ity of a phrase so little liable to suspicion, that Jansenius has 
 actually taught these obnoxious tenets. And for the same 
 reason, I was not a little surprised to learn that this same 
 point of fact, which you had propounded as so certain and 
 so important, was false ; and that after being challenged to 
 quote the pages of Jansenius, in which you had found these 
 propositions " word for word," you have not been able to 
 point them out to this day. 
 
 I am the more particular in giving this statement, because, 
 in my opinion, h. discovers, in a very striking light, the spirit 
 of your Society in the whole of this affair ; and because some 
 people will be astonished to find that, notwithstanding all 
 the facts above mentioned, you have not ceased to publish 
 that they are heretics stiii. But you have only altered the 
 heresy to suit the time ; for no sooner had they freed them- 
 selves from one charge than your fathers, determined that 
 they should never want an accusation, substituted another in 
 its place. Thus, in 1653, their heresy lay in the quality of 
 the propositions ; then came the word for word heresy ; 
 after that, we had the heart heresy. And now we hear 
 nothing of any of these, and they must be heretics, forsooth, 
 unless they sign a declaration to the effect, " that the sense 
 of the doctrine of Jansenius is contained in the sense of the 
 Jive propositions" 
 
 Such is your present dispute. It is not enough for you 
 that they condemn the five propositions, and everything in 
 Jansenius that bears any resemblance to them, or is con- 
 trary to St. Augustine ; for all that they have done already. 
 The point at issue is not, for example, if Jesus Christ died 
 for the elect only they condemn that as much as you do ; 
 but, is Jansenius of that opinion, or not ? And here I de- 
 clare, more strongly than ever, that your quarrel affects me 
 as little as it affects the Church. For although I am no 
 doctor, any more than you, father, I can easily see, neverthe- 
 less, that it has no connection with the faith. The only 
 question is, to ascertain what is the sense of Jansenius. Did
 
 THE FIVE tAOPOSITIONS. 351 
 
 they believe that hw doctrine corresponded to the proper 
 and literal sense of these propositions, they would condemn 
 it ; and they refuse to do so, because they are convinced it is 
 quite the reverse ; so that although they should misunder- 
 stand it, still they would not be heretics, seeing they un- 
 derstand it only in a Catholic sense. 
 
 To illustrate this by an example, I may refer to the con- 
 flic' Ing sentiments of St. Basil and St. Athanasius, regarding 
 .ae writings of St. Denis of Alexandria, which St. Basil, 
 conceiving that he found in them the sense of Arius against 
 the equality of the Father and the Son, condemned as heret- 
 ical, out which St. Athanasius, on the other hand, judging 
 them to contain the genuine sense of the Church, maintained 
 to be perfectly orthodox. Think you, then, father, that St. 
 Basil, who held these writings to be Arian, had a right to 
 brand St. Athanasius as a heretic, because he defended 
 them ? And what ground would he have had for so doing, 
 seeing that it was not Arianism that his brother defended, 
 but the true faith which he considered these writings to con- 
 tain ? Had these two saints agreed about the true sense of 
 these writings, and bad both recognized this heresy in them, 
 unquestionably St. Athanasius could not have approved of 
 them, without being guilty of heresy ; but as they were at 
 variance respecting the sense of the passages, St. Athanasius 
 was orthodox in vindicating them, even though he may have 
 understood them wrong ; because in that case it would have 
 been merely an error in a matter of fact, and because what 
 b.p defended was really the Catholic faith, which he supposed 
 to be contained in these writings. 
 
 I ".pply this to you, father. Suppose you were agreed 
 upon the sense of Jansenius, and your adversaries were ready 
 to admit witu you that he held, for example, that grace can- 
 not be resisted ; those who refused to condemn him would be 
 heretical. But as your dispute turns upon the meaning of 
 that author, and they believe that, according to his doctrine, 
 grace may be resisted, whatever heresy you may be pleased 
 to attribute to him, you have no ground to brand them as
 
 852 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 heretics, seeing they condemn the sense which you put on 
 Jansenius, and you dare not condemn the sense which they 
 put on him. If, therefore, you mean to convict them, show 
 that the sense which they ascribe to Jansenius is heretical ; 
 for then they will be heretical themselves. But how could 
 you accomplish this, since it is certain, according to your 
 own showing, that the meaning which they give to his lan- 
 guage has never been condemned ? 
 
 To elucidate the point still further, I shall assume as a 
 principle, what you yourselves acknowledge that the doc- 
 trine of efficacious grace has never been condemned, and that 
 the pope has not touched it by his constitution. And, in fact, 
 when he proposed to pass judgment on the five propositions, 
 the question of efficacious grace was protected against all 
 censure. This is perfectly evident from the judgments of 
 the consulters,* to whom the pope committed them for exam- 
 ination. These judgments I have in my possession, in com- 
 mon with many other persons in Paris, and, among the rest, 
 the Bishop of Montpelier.f who brought them from Rome. 
 It appears from this document, that they were divided in 
 their sentiments ; that the chief persons among them, such as 
 the Master of the Sacred Palace, the Commissary of the 
 Holy Office, the General of the Augustinians, and others, 
 conceiving that these propositions might be understood in the 
 sense of efficacious grace, were of opinion that they ought not 
 to be censured ; whereas the rest, while they agreed that the 
 propositions would not have merited condemnation, had they 
 borne that sense, judged that they ought to be censured, be- 
 cause, as they contended, this was very far from being their 
 proper and natural sense. The pope, accordingly, con- 
 
 * These judgments, or Vota Consultorum, as they were called, have 
 been often printed, and particularly at the end of the Journal de M. tie 
 St. Amour & book essentially necessary to the right understanding of 
 all the intrigues employed in the condemnation of Jansenius. (Note 
 by Nicole.) 
 
 f This was Francis du Bosquet, who. from being Bishop of Lodeve, 
 was made Bishop of Montpelier in 1655, and died in 1676. He was one 
 of the most learned bishops of bis time in ecclesiastical matters. (Note 
 by Nicole.)
 
 THE FIVE JBOPOSITIONS. 353 
 
 demned them ; and all parties have acquiesced in lib judg- 
 ment. 
 
 It is certain, then, father, that efficacious grace has not 
 been condemned. Indeed, it is so powerfully supported by 
 St. Augustine, by St. Thomas, and all his school, by a great 
 many popes and councils, and by all tradition, that to tax it 
 with heresy would be an act of impiety. Now, all those 
 whom you condemn as heretics declare that they find nothing 
 in Jansenius, but this doctrine of efficacious grace. And this 
 was the only point which they maintained at Rome. You 
 have acknowledged this yourself, when you declare that, 
 " when pleading before the pope, they did not say a single 
 word about the propositions, but occupied the whole time in 
 talking about efficacious grace."* So that whether they be 
 right or wrong in this supposition, it is undeniable, at least, 
 that what they suppose to be the sense is not heretical sense ; 
 and that, consequently, they are no heretics : for, to state the 
 matter in two words, either Jansenius has merely taught the 
 doctrine of efficacious grace, and in this case he has no 
 errors ; or he has taught some other thing, and in this case 
 he has no defenders. The whole question turns on ascertain- 
 ing whether Jansenius has actually maintained something 
 different from efficacious grace ; and should it be found that 
 he has, you will have the honor of having better understood 
 him, but they will not have the misfortune of having erred 
 from the faith. 
 
 It is matter of thankfulness to God, then, father, that there 
 is in reality no heresy in the Church. The question relates 
 entirely to a point of fact, of which no heresy can be made ; 
 for the Church, with divine authority, decides the points of 
 faith, and cuts off from her body all who refuse to receive 
 them. But she does not act in the same manner in regard 
 to matters of fact. And the reason is, that our salvation is 
 attached to the faith which has been revealed to us, and 
 which is preserved in the Church by tradition, but that it 
 has no dependence on facts which have not been revealed 
 * Cavill, p. 35.
 
 354 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 by God. Thus we are bound to believe that the command- 
 ments of God are not impracticable ; but we are under no 
 obligation to know what Jansenius has said upon that sub- 
 ject. In the determination of points of faith God guides the 
 Church by the aid of his unerring Spirit ; whereas in matters 
 of fact, he leaves her to the direction of reason and the 
 senses, which are the natural judges of such matters. None 
 but God was able to instruct the Church in the faith ; but to 
 learn whether this or that proposition is contained in Janse- 
 nius, all we require to do is to read his book. And from hence 
 it follows, that while it is heresy to resist the decisions of the 
 faith, because this amounts to an opposing of our own spirit 
 to the Spirit of God, it is no heresy, though it may be an act 
 of presumption, to disbelieve certain particular facts, because 
 this is no more than opposing reason it may be enlightened 
 reason to an authority which is great indeed, but in this mat- 
 ter not infallible. 
 
 What I have now advanced is admitted by all theologians, 
 as appears from the following axiom of Cardinal Bellarmine, 
 a member of your Society : " General and lawful councils 
 are incapable of error in defining the dogmas of faith ; but 
 they may err in questions of fact." In another place he 
 says : " The pope, as pope, and even as the head of a uni- 
 versal council, may err in particular controversies of fact, 
 which depend principally on the information and testimony 
 of men." Cardinal Baronius speaks in the same manner : 
 " Implicit submission is due to the decisions of councils in 
 points of faith ; but, in so far as persons and their writings 
 are concerned, the censures which have been pronounced 
 *gainst them have not been so rigorously observed, because 
 there is none who may not chance to be deceived in such 
 matters." I may add that, to prove this point, the Arch- 
 bishop of Toulouse* has deduced the following rule from the 
 letters of two great popes St. Leon and Pelagius II. : " That 
 
 * M. de Marca, an illustrious prelate, who was Archbishop of Tou- 
 louse, before he was nominated to the see of Paris, of which he was 
 only prevented by death frr,na talcing possession. (Nicole.)
 
 POPES FALLIBLE IN MATTEKS OF FACT. 355 
 
 the proper object of councils is the faith ; and whatsoever is 
 determined by them, independently of the faith, may be re- 
 viewed and examined anew : whereas nothing ought to be re- 
 examined that has been decided in a matter of faith ; be- 
 cause, as Tertullian observes, the rule of faith alone is immov- 
 able and irrevocable." 
 
 Hence it has been seen that, while general and lawful 
 councils have never contradicted one another in points of 
 faith, because, as M. de Toulouse has said, " it is not allowa- 
 ble to examine de navo decisions in matters of faith ;" several 
 instances have occurred in which these same councils have 
 disagreed in points of fact, where the discussion turned upon 
 the sense of an author ; because, as the same prelate ob- 
 serves, quoting the popes as his authorities, " everything de- 
 termined in councils, not referring to the faith, may be re- 
 viewed and examined de novo." An example of this contrariety 
 was furnished by the fourth and fifth councils, which differed 
 in their interpretation of the same authors. The same thing 
 happened in the case of two popes, about a proposition main- 
 tained by certain monks of Scythia. Pope Hormisdas, under- 
 standing it in a bad sense, had condemned it ; but Pope John 
 II., his successor, upon re-examining the doctrine, understood 
 it in a good sense, approved it, and pronounced it to be or- 
 thodox. Would you say that for this reason one of these 
 popes was a heretic ? And must you not, consequently, ac- 
 knowledge that, provided a person condemn the heretical 
 sense which a pope may have ascribed to a book, he is no 
 heretic because he declines condemning that book, while he 
 understands it in a sense which it is certain the pope has not 
 condemned ? If this cannot be admitted, one of these popes 
 must have fallen into error. 
 
 I have been anxious to familiarize you with these discrep- 
 ancies among Catholics regarding questions of fact, which 
 involve the understanding of the sense of a writer, showing 
 you father against father, pope against pope, and council 
 against council, to lead you from these to other examples of 
 opposition, similar in their nature, but somewhat more dis-
 
 356 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 proportioned in respect of the parties concerned. For, in the 
 instances I am now to adduce, you will see councils and popes 
 ranged oil one side, and Jesuits on the other ; and yet you 
 have never charged your brethren, for this opposition, even 
 with presumption, much less with heresy. 
 
 You are well aware, father, that the writings of Origen 
 were condemned by a great many popes and councils, and 
 particularly by the fifth general council, as chargeable with 
 certain heresies, and, among others, that of the reconciliation 
 of the devils at the day of judgment. Do you suppose that, 
 after this, it became absolutely imperative, as a test of Ca- 
 tholicism, to confess that Origen actually maintained these 
 errors, and that it is not enough to condemn them, without 
 attributing them to him ? If this were true, what would 
 become of your worthy Father Halloix, who has asserted the 
 purity of Origen's faith, as well as many other Catholics, who 
 have attempted the same thing, such as Pico Mirandola, and 
 Genebrard, doctor of the Sorbonne ? Is it not, moreover, a 
 certain fact, that the same fifth general council condemned 
 the writings of Theodoret against St. Cyril, describing them 
 as impious, " contrary to the true faith, and tainted with the 
 Nestorian heresy ?"* And yet this has not prevented Father 
 Strmond,f a Jesuit, from defending him, or from saying, in 
 his life of that father, that " his writings are entirely free from 
 the heresy of Nestorius." 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that as the Church, in condemning 
 a book, assumes that the error which she condemns is con- 
 tained in that book, it is a point of faith to hold that error as 
 
 * Nestorian heresy so called from Nestorius, Bishop of Constanti- 
 nople, in the fifth century, who was accused of dividing Christ into two 
 persons; in other words, representing his human nature a distinct per- 
 son from his divine. There is some reason to think, however, that he 
 was quite sound in the faith, and that his real offence was his opposi- 
 tion to the use of the phrase, which then came into vogue, the Mother 
 of God. as applied to the Virgin, whom he called, in preference, the 
 Mother of Christ. 
 
 t This was James Sirmond (the uncle of Anthony, formerly men- 
 tioned), a learned Jesuit, and confessor to Louis XIII. He was dis- 
 tinguished as an ecclesiastical historian. (Tableau de la Litt. Fran..
 
 POINTS OF FAITH AND FACT. 357 
 
 condemned ; but it is not a point of faith to hold that the 
 book, in fact, contains the error which the Church supposes 
 it does. Enough has been said, I think, to prove this; I 
 shall, therefore, conclude my examples by referring to that 
 of Pope Honorius, the history of which is so well known. 
 At the commencement of the seventh century, the Church 
 being troubled by the heresy of the Monothelites,* that pope, 
 with the view of terminating the controversy, passed a decree 
 which seemed favorable to these heretics, at which many took 
 offence. The affair, nevertheless, passed over without mak- 
 ing much disturbance during his pontificate ; but fifty years 
 after, the Church being assembled in the sixth general coun- 
 cil, in which Pope Agathon presided by his legates, this de- 
 cree was impeached, and, after being read and examined, was 
 condemned as containing the heresy of the Monothelites, and 
 under that character burnt, in open court, along with the 
 other writings of these heretics. Such was the respect paid 
 to this decision, and such the unanimity with which it was 
 received throughout the whole Church, that it was afterwards 
 ratified by two other general councils, and likewise by two 
 popes, Leon II. and Adrian II., the latter of whom lived two 
 hundred years after it had passed ; and this universal and 
 harmonious agreement remained undisturbed for seven or 
 eight centuries. Of late years, however, some authors, and 
 among the rest Cardinal Bellarmine, without seeming to dread 
 the imputation of heresy, have stoutly maintained, against all 
 this array of popes and councils, that the writings of Hono- 
 rius are free from the error which had been ascribed to them ; 
 " because," says the cardinal, " general councils being liable 
 to err in questions of fact, we have the best grounds for 
 asserting that the sixth council was mistaken with regard to 
 the fact now under consideration ; and that, misconceiving 
 the sense of the Letters of Honorius, it has placed this pope 
 most unjustly in the ranks of heretics." Observe, then, I 
 
 * The Monothelites, who arose in the seventh century, were so called 
 from holding that there was but one will in Christ, his human will be- 
 ing absorbed, as it were, in the divine.
 
 358 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 pray you, father, that a man is not heretical for saying that 
 Pope Honorius was not a heretic ; even though a great many 
 popes and councils, after examining his writings, should have 
 declared that he was so. 
 
 I now come to the question before us, and shall allow you 
 to state your case as favorably as you can. What will you 
 then say, father, in order to stamp your opponents as heretics ? 
 That " Pope Innocent X. has declared that the error of the 
 five propositions is to be found in Jansenius ?" I grant you 
 that; what inference do you draw from it? That "it is 
 heretical to deny that the error of the five propositions is to 
 be found in Jansenius ?" How so, father ? have we not here 
 a question of fact, exactly similar to the preceding examples ? 
 The pope has declared that the error of the five propositions 
 is contained in Jansenius, in the same way as his predecessors 
 decided that the errors of the Nestorians and the Monothe- 
 lites polluted the pages of Theodoret and Honorius. In the 
 latter case, your writers hesitate not to say, that while they 
 condemn the heresies, they do not allow that these authors 
 actually maintained them ; and, in like manner, your oppo- 
 nents now say, that they condemn the five propositions, but 
 cannot admit that Jansenius has taught them. Truly, the 
 two cases are as like as they could well be ; and if there be 
 any disparity between them, it is easy to see how far it must 
 go in favor of the present question, by a comparison of many 
 particular circumstances, which, as they are self-evident, I do 
 not specify. How comes it to pass, then, that when placed 
 in precisely the same predicament, your friends are Catholics 
 and your opponents heretics ? On what strange principle 
 of exception do you deprive the latter of a liberty which you 
 freely award to all the rest of the faithful ? What answer 
 will you make to this, father ? Will you say, " The pope 
 has confirmed his constitution by a brief." To this I would 
 reply, that two general councils and two popes confirmed the 
 condemnation of the Letters of Honorius. But what argu- 
 ment do you found upon the language of that brief, in which 
 all that the pope says is, that " he has condemned the doc-
 
 THE POPE DECEIVED. 359 
 
 trine of Jansenius in these five propositions ?" What does 
 that add to the constitution, or what more can you infer from 
 it ? Nothing certainly, except that as the sixth council con- 
 demned the doctrine of Honorius, in the belief that it was the 
 same with that of the Monothelites, so the pope has said 
 that he has condemned the doctrine of Jansenius in these five 
 propositions, because he was led to suppose it was the same 
 with that of the five propositions. And how could he do 
 otherwise than suppose it ? Your Society published nothing 
 else ; and you, yourself, father, who have asserted that the 
 said propositions were in that author " word for word," hap- 
 pened to be in Rome (for I know all your motions) at the 
 time when the censure was passed. Was he to distrust the 
 sincerity or the competence of so many grave ministers of 
 religion ? And how could he help being convinced of the 
 fact, after the assurance which you had given him that the 
 propositions were in that author " word for word ?" It is 
 evident, therefore, that in the event of its being found that 
 Jansenius has not supported these doctrines, it would be 
 wrong to say, as your writers have done in the cases before 
 mentioned, that the pope has deceived himself in this point of 
 fact, which it is painful and offensive to publish at any time ; 
 the proper phrase is, that you have deceived the pope, which, 
 as you are now pretty well known, will create no scandal. 
 Determined, however, to have a heresy made out, let it 
 cost what it may, you have attempted, by the following ma- 
 noeuvre, to shift the question from the point of fact, and 
 make it bear upon a point of faith. " The pope," say you, 
 " declares that he has condemned the doctrine of Jansenius 
 in these five propositions ; therefore it is essential to the 
 faith to hold that the doctrine of Jansenius touching these 
 five propositions is heretical, let it be what it may." Here is 
 a strange point of faith, that a doctrine is heretical be what 
 it may. What ! if Jansenius should happen to maintain that 
 " we are capable of resisting internal grace" and that " it is 
 false to say that Jesus Christ died for the elect only," would 
 this doctrine be condemned just because it is his doctrine ?
 
 360 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 Will the proposition, that " man has a freedom of will to do 
 good or evil," be true when found in the pope's constitution, 
 and false when discovered in Jansenius ? By what fatality 
 must he be reduced to such a predicament, that truth, when 
 admitted into his book, becomes heresy ? You must confess, 
 then, that he is only heretical on the supposition that he is 
 friendly to the errors condemned, seeing that the constitution 
 of the pope is the rule which we must apply to Jansenius, to 
 judge if his character answer the description there given of 
 him ; and, accordingly, the question, /* his doctrine heretical ? 
 must be resolved by another question of fact, Does it cor- 
 respond to the natural sense of these propositions ? as it must 
 necessarily be heretical if it does correspond to that sense, 
 and must necessarily be orthodox if it be of an opposite 
 character. For, in one word, since, according to the pope 
 and the bishops, " the propositions are condemned in their 
 proper and natural sense" they cannot possibly be condemned 
 in the sense of Jansenius, except on the understanding that 
 the sense of Jansenius is the same with the proper and natu- 
 ral sense of these propositions ; and this I maintain to be 
 purely a question of fact. 
 
 The question, then, still rests upon the point of fact, and 
 cannot possibly be tortured into one affecting the faith. But 
 though incapable of twisting it into a matter of heresy, you 
 have it in your power to make it a pretext for persecution, 
 and might, perhaps, succeed in this, were there not good 
 reason to hope that nobody will be found so blindly devoted 
 to your interests as to countenance such a disgraceful pro- 
 ceeding, or inclined to compel people, as you wish to do, to 
 sign a declaration that they condemn these propositions in the 
 sense of Jansenius, without explaining what the sense of Jan- 
 senius is. Few people are disposed to sign a blank confes- 
 sion of faith. Now this would really be to sign one of that 
 description, leaving you to fill up the blank afterwards with 
 whatsoever you pleased, as you would be at liberty to inter- 
 pret according to your own taste the unexplained sense of 
 Jansenius. Let it be explained, then, beforehand, otherwise
 
 
 THE GRAND OBJECT OP THE JESUITS. 361 
 
 we shall have, I fear, another version of your proximate power, 
 without any sense at all -abstrahendo ab omni sensu.* This 
 mode of proceeding, you must be aware, does not take with 
 the world. Men in general detest all ambiguity,, especially 
 in the matter of religion, where it is highly reasonable that 
 one should know at least what one is asked to condemn. 
 And how is it possible for doctors, who are persuaded that 
 Jansenius can bear no other sense than that of efficacious 
 grace, to consent to declare that they condemn his doctrine 
 without explaining it, since, with their present convictions, 
 which no means are used to alter, this would be neither more 
 nor less than to condemn efficacious grace, which cannot be 
 condemned without sin ? Would it not, therefore, be a piece 
 of monstrous tyranny to. place them, in such an unhappy 
 dilemma, that they must either bring guilt upon their souls 
 in the sight of God, by signing that condemnation against 
 their consciences, or be denounced as heretics for refusing to 
 sign it?f 
 
 But there is a mystery under all this. You Jesuits can- 
 not move a step without a stratagem. It remains for me to 
 explain why you do not explain the sense of Jansenius. The 
 sole purpose of my writing is to discover your designs, and, 
 by discovering, to frustrate them. I must, therefore, inform 
 those who are not already^ aware of the fact, that your great 
 concern in this dispute being to uphold the sufficient grace of 
 your Molina, you could not effect this without destroying tho 
 efjicacioits grace which stands directly opposed to it. Per- 
 ceiving, however, that the latter was now sanctioned at 
 Rome, and by all the learned in the Church, and unable to 
 combat the doctrine on its own. merits, you resolved to attack 
 it in a clandestine way, under the name of the doctrine of 
 Jansenius. You were resolved,, accordingly, to get Jansenius 
 condemned without explanation ; and, to gain your purpose, 
 gave out that his doctrine was not that of efficacious grace, 
 
 * See Letter i., p. 74. 
 
 f The persecution here supposed was soon lamentnbly realized, and 
 exactly in the wnr which our author seemed to think impossible. 
 18
 
 362 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 so that every one might think he was at liberty to condemn 
 the one -without denying the other. Hence your efforts, in 
 the present day, to impress this idea upon, the minds of such 
 as have n^ acquaintance -with that author ; an object which 
 you yourself, father, have attempted, by means of the fol- 
 lowing ingenious syllogism : " The pope has condemned the 
 doctrine of Jansenius; but the pope has not condemned effi- 
 cacious grace : therefore, the doctrine of efficacious grace 
 must be different from that of Jansenius."* If this mode of 
 reasoning were conclusive, it might be demonstrated in the 
 same way that Honorius and all his defenders are heretics 
 of the same kind. " The sixth council has condemned the 
 doctrine of Honorius ; but the council has not condemned the 
 doctrine of the Church : therefore the doctrine of Honorius 
 is different from that of the Church ; and therefore all who 
 defend him are heretics." It 'is obvious that no conclusion 
 can be drawn from this; for the pope has done no more than 
 condemned the doctrine of the five propositions, which was 
 represented to him as the doctrine of Jansenius. 
 
 But it matters not ; you have no intention to make use 
 of this logic for any length of time. Poor as it is, it will last 
 sufficiently long to serve your present turn. All that you 
 wish to effect by it, in the mean time, is to induce those who 
 are unwilling to condemn efficacious grace to condemn Jan- 
 senius with the less scruple. When this object has been 
 accomplished, your argument will soon be forgotten, and 
 their signatures remaining as an eternal testimony in condem- 
 nation of Jansenius, will furnish you with an occasion to make 
 a direct attack upon efficacious grace, by another mode of 
 reasoning much more solid than the former, which shall be 
 forthcoming in proper time. "The doctrine of Jansenius," 
 you will argue, " has been condemned by the universal sub- 
 scriptions of the Church. Now this doctrine is manifestly 
 that of efficacious grace" (and it will be easy for you to prove 
 that) ; " therefore the doctrine of efficacious grace is con- 
 demned even by the confession of his defenders." 
 * Cavill, p. 21
 
 THE QKAND OBJECT OF THE JESUITS. 363 
 
 Behold your reason for proposing to sign the condemnation 
 of a doctrine without giving an explanation of it ! Behold 
 the advantage you expect to gain from subscriptions thus 
 procured ! Should your opponents, however, refuse to sub- 
 scribe, you have another trap laid for them. Having dexter- 
 ously combined the question of faith with that of fact, and 
 not allowing them to separate between them, nor to sign the 
 one without the other, the consequence will be, that, because 
 they could not subscribe the two together, you will publish, 
 it in all directions that they have refused the two together. 
 And thus though, in point of fact, they simply decline ac- 
 knowledging that Jansenius has maintained the propositions 
 which they condemn, which cannot be called heresy, you 
 will boldly assert that they have refused to condemn the 
 propositions themselves, and that it is this that constitutes 
 their heresy. 
 
 Such is the fruit which you expect to reap from their re- 
 fusal, and which will be no less useful to you than what you 
 might have gained from their consent. So that, in the event 
 of these signatures being exacted, they will fall into your 
 snares, whether they sign or not, and in both cases you will 
 gain your point.; such is your dexterity in uniformly putting 
 matters into a train for your own advantage, whatever bias 
 they may happen to take in their course ! 
 
 How well I know you, father ! and how grieved am I to 
 see that God has abandoned you so far as to allow you such 
 happy success in such an unhappy course ! Your good for- 
 tune deserves commiseration, and can excite envy only in the 
 breasts of those who know not what truly good fortune is. 
 It is an act of charity to thwart the success you aim at in the 
 whole of this proceeding, seeing that you can only reach it 
 by the aid of falsehood, and by procuring credit to one of 
 two lies either that the Church has condemned efficacious 
 grace, or that those who defend that doctrine maintain the 
 five condemned errors. 
 
 Tie viKorld must, therefore, be apprized of tAvo facts : First, 
 That, % your own confession, efficacious grace has not been
 
 364 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 condemned ; and secondly, That nobody supports these er- 
 rors. So that it may be known that those who may refuse 
 to sign what you are so anxious to exact from them, refuse 
 merely in consideration of the question .of fact ; and that, 
 being quite ready to subscribe that of faith, they cannot be 
 deemed heretical on that account ; because, to repeat it once 
 more, though it be matter of faith to believe these proposi- 
 tions to be heretical, it will never be matter of faith to hold 
 that they are to be found in the pages of Jansenius. They 
 are innocent of all error ; that is enough. .It may be that 
 they interpret Jansenius too favorably ; but it may be also 
 that you do not interpret him favorably enough. I do not 
 enter upon this question. All that I know is, that, according 
 to your maxims, you believe tnat you may, without sin, pub- 
 lish him to be a heretic contrary to your own knowledge ; 
 whereas, according to their maxims, they cannot, without 
 sin, declare him to be a Catholic, unless they are persuaded 
 that he is one. They are, therefore, more honest than you, 
 father ; they have examined Jansenius more faithfully than 
 you ; they are no less intelligent than you ; they are, there- 
 fore, no less credible witnesses than you. But come what 
 may of this point of fact, they are certainly Catholics ; for, in 
 order to be so, it is not necessary to declare that another 
 man is not a Catholic ; it is enough, in all conscience, if a 
 person, without charging error upon anybody else, succeed 
 in discharging himself. 
 
 Reverend father, If you have found any difficulty in de- 
 ciphering this letter, which is certainly not printed in the 
 best possible type, blame nobody but yourself. Privileges 
 are not so easily granted to me as they are to you. You can 
 procure them even for the purpose of combating miracles ; I 
 cannot have them even to defend myself. The printing- 
 houses are perpetually haunted. In such circumstance, you 
 yourself would not advise me to write you any more fetters
 
 365 APOLOGY FOR BAD PRINTING. 
 
 for it is really a sad annoyance to be obliged to have recourse 
 to an Osnabruck impression.* 
 
 * .This postscript, which is wanting in the ordinary editions, appeared 
 in the first edition at the close of this letter. From this it appears that, 
 in consequence oi'the extreme desire of the Jesuits to discover the au- 
 thor, and their increasing resentment against him, he was compelled to 
 send this letter to Osnabruck, an obscure place in Germany, where it 
 was printed in a very small and indistinct character. The privileges 
 referred to were official licenses to print books, which, at this time, when 
 the Jesuits were in power, it was difficult for their opponents to obtain. 
 Annat had published against the miracles of Port-Royal. Pascal was 
 not permitted to publish in self-defence. At the same perLd. no Prot- 
 estant books coufd be printed at Paris ; they we*e generally sent to 
 Geneva or the Low Countries for this purpose, or published furtively 
 under fictitious names.
 
 LETTER XV II. 
 
 TO THE REVEREND FATHER ANNAT, JESUIT. 
 
 SHOWING STILL MORE PLAINLY, ON THE AUTHORITY OF FATHER ANNAT 
 HIMSELF, THAT THERE IS REALLY NO HERESY IN THE CHURCH, 
 AND THAT IN QUESTIONS OF FACT WE MUST BE GUIDED BY OUR 
 SENSES, AND NOT BY AUTHORITY EVEN OF THE POPES. 
 
 March 24, 1657. 
 
 REVEREND FATHER, Long have you labored to discover 
 -ome error in the creed or conduct of your opponents ; but I 
 rather think you will have to confess, in the end, that it is a 
 more difficult task than you imagined to make heretics of 
 people who are not only no heretics, but who hate nothing 
 in the world so much as heresy. In my last letter I suc- 
 ceeded in showing that you accuse them of one heresy after 
 another, without being able to stand by one of the charges 
 for any length of time ; so that all that remained for you 
 was to fix on their refusal to condemn " the sense of Jansen- 
 ius," which you insist on their doing without explanation. 
 You must have been sadly in want of heresies to brand them 
 with, when you were reduced to this. For, who. ever heard 
 of a heresy which nobody could explain ? The answer was 
 ready, therefore, that if Jansenius has no errors,. it is wrong 
 to condemn him ; and if he has, you were bound to point 
 them out, that we might know at least what we were con- 
 demning. This, however, you have never yet been pleased 
 to do ; but you have attempted to fortify your position by 
 decrees,* which made nothing in your favor, as they gave no 
 sort of explanation of the sense of Jansenius, said to have 
 
 * Decrees of the pope.
 
 THE SENSE OF JANSENIUS. 367 
 
 been condemned in the five propositions. This was not the 
 way to terminate the dispute. Had you mutually agreed as 
 to the genuine sense of Jansenius, and had the only difference 
 between you been as to whether that sense was heretical or 
 not, in that case the decisions which might pronounce it to 
 be heretical, would have touched the real question in dispute. 
 But the great dispute being about the sense of Jansenius, the 
 one partv saying that they could see nothing in it inconsistent 
 with the sense of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and the 
 other party asserting that they saw in it an heretical sense 
 which they would not express. It is clear that a constitution* 
 which does not say a word about this difference of opinion, 
 and which only condemns in general and without explana- 
 tion the sense of Jansenius, leaves the point in dispute quite 
 undecided. 
 
 You have accordingly been repeatedly told, that as your 
 discussion turns on a matter of fact, you would never be able 
 to bring it to a conclusion without declaring what you under- 
 stand by the sense of Jansenius. But, as you continued ob- 
 stinate in your refusal to make this explanation, I endeavored, 
 as a last resource, to extort it from you, by hinting, in my 
 last letter, that there was some mystery under the efforts you 
 were making to procure the condemnation of this sense with- 
 out explaining it, and that your design was to make this in- 
 definite censure recoil, some day or other, upon the doctrine 
 of efficacious grace, by showing, as you could easily do, that 
 this was exactly the doctrine of Janseniue. This has reduced 
 you to the necessity of making a reply ; for, had you pertina- 
 ciously refused, after such an insinuation, to explain your 
 views of that sense, it would have been apparent, to persons 
 of the smallest penetration, that you condemned it in the 
 sense of efficacious grace a conclusion which, considering the 
 veneration in which the Church holds that holy doctrine, 
 would have overwhelmed you with disgrace. 
 
 You have, therefore, been forced to speak out your mind ; 
 and we find it expressed in your reply to that part of my let- 
 * The papal constitution formerly referred to.
 
 368 PKOVIS; IAL LETTERS. 
 
 ter in which I remarked, that " if Jansenius was capable of 
 any other sense than that of efficacious grace, he had no de- 
 fenders ; but if his writings bore no other sense, he had no 
 errors to defend." You found it impossible to deny this po- 
 sition, father ; but you have attempted to parry it by the fol- 
 lowing distinction : " It is not sufficient," say you, " for the 
 vindication of Jansenius, to allege that he merely holds the 
 doctrine of efficacious grace, for that may be held in two ways 
 the one heretical, according to Calvin, which consists in 
 maintaining that the will, when under the influence of grace, 
 has not the power of resisting it ; the other orthodox, accord- 
 ing to the Thomists and the Sorbonists, which is founded on 
 the principles established by the councils, and which is, that 
 efficacious grace of itself governs the will in such a way that 
 it still has the power of resisting it." 
 
 All this we grant, father ; but you conclude by adding : 
 "Jansenius would be orthodox, if he defended efficacious 
 grace in the sense of the Thomists ; but he is heretical, be- 
 cause he opposes the Thomists, and joins issue with Calvin, 
 who denies the power of resisting grace." I do not here enter 
 upon the "question of fact, whether Jansenius really agrees 
 with Calvin. It is enough for my purpose that you assert 
 that he does, and that you now inform me that by the sense 
 of Jansenius you have all along understood nothing more than 
 the sense of Calvin. Was this all you meant, then, father ? 
 Was it only the error of Calvin that you were so anxious to 
 get condemned, under the name of " the sense of Jansenius ?" 
 Why did you not tell us this sooner ? You might have saved 
 yourself a world of trouble ; for we were all ready, without 
 the aid of bulls or briefs, to join with you in condemning 
 that error. What urgent necessity there was for such an ex- 
 planation ! What a host of difficulties has it removed ! We 
 were quite at a loss, my dear father, to know what error the 
 popes and bishops meant to condemn, under the name of 
 " the sense of Jansenius." The whole Church was in the ut- 
 most perplexity about it, and not a soul would relieve us by 
 an explanation. This, however, has now been done by you.
 
 KESISTIBILITY OF ORACB. 369 
 
 father you whom the whole of your party regard as the 
 cinef and prime mover of all their councils, and who are ac- 
 quainted with the whole secret of this proceeding. You, 
 then, have told us that the sense of Jansenius is neither more 
 nor less than the sense of Calvin, which has been condemned 
 by the council.* Why, this explains everything. We know 
 now that the error which they intended to condemn, under 
 these terms the sense of Jansenius is neither more nor less 
 than the sense of Calvin ; and that, consequently, we, by join- 
 ing with them in the condemnation of Calvin's doctrine, have 
 yielded all due obedience to these decrees. We are no longer 
 surprised at the zeal which the popes and some bishops man- 
 ifested against " the sense of Jansenius." How, indeed, could 
 they be otherwise than zealous against it, believing as they 
 did the declarations of those who publicly affirmed that it 
 was identically the same with that of Calvin ? 
 
 I must maintain, then, father, that you have no further 
 reason to quarrel with your adversaries ; for they detest that 
 doctrine as heartily as you do. I am only astonished to see 
 that you are ignorant of this fact, and that you have such an 
 imperfect acquaintance with their sentiments on this point, 
 which they have so repeatedly expressed in their published 
 works. I flatter myself that, were you more intimate with 
 these writings, you would deeply regret your not having made 
 yourself acquainted sooner, in the spirit of peace, with a doc- 
 trine which is in every respect so holy and so Christian, but 
 which passion, in the absence of knowledge, now prompts you 
 to oppose. You would find, father, that they not only hold 
 that an effective resistance may be made to those feebler 
 graces which go under the name of exciting or inefficacious, 
 from their not terminating in the good with which they in- 
 spire us ; but that they are, moreover, as firm in maintaining, 
 in opposition to Calvin, the power which the will has to re- 
 sist even efficacious and victorious grace, as they are in con- 
 tending against Molina for the power of this grace over the 
 
 * The Council of Trent is meant, when Pascal speaks of the council^ 
 without any other specification. 
 
 10*
 
 370 . PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 will, and fully as jealous for the one of these truths as they 
 are for the other. They know too well that man. of his own 
 nature, has always the power of sinning and of resisting 
 grace ; and that, since he became corrupt, he unhappily car- 
 ries in his breast a fount of concupiscence which infinitely 
 augments that power ; but that, notwithstanding this, when 
 it pleases God to visit him wiih his mercy, he makes the soul 
 do what he wills, and in the manner he wills it to be done, 
 while, at the same time, the infallibility of the divine opera- 
 tion does not in any way destroy the natural liberty of man, 
 in consequence of the secret and wonderful ways by which 
 God operates this change. This has been most admirably 
 explained by St. Augustine, in such a way as to dissipate all 
 those imaginary inconsistencies which the opponents of effica- 
 cious grace suppose to exist between the sovereign power of 
 grace over the free-will and the power which the free-will 
 has to resist grace. For, according to this great saint, whom 
 the popes and the Church have held to be a standard author- 
 ity on this subject, God transforms the heart of man, by shed- 
 ding abroad in it a heavenly sweetness, which, surmounting 
 the delights of the flesh, and inducing him to feel, on the one 
 hand, his own mortality and nothingness, and to discover, on 
 the other hand, the majesty and eternity of God, makes him 
 conceive a distaste for the pleasures of sin, which interpose 
 between him and incorruptible happiness. Finding his chief- 
 est joy in the God who charms him, his soul is drawn to- 
 wards him infallibly, but of its own accord, by a motion per- 
 fectly free, spontaneous, love-impelled ; so that it would be 
 its torment and punishment to be separated from him. Not 
 but that the person has always the power of forsaking his 
 God, and that he may not actually forsake him, provided he 
 choose to do it. But how could he choose such a course, 
 seeing that the will always inclines to that which is most 
 agreeable to it, and that in the case we now suppose nothing 
 can be more agreeable than the possession of that one good, 
 which comprises in itself all other good things. " Quod 
 enim (says St. Augustine) arnplius nos delectat, secundum
 
 RESISTIBILITY OF RRACE. 3*71 
 
 operemur necesse est Our actions are necessarily determined 
 by that which affords us the greatest pleasure." 
 
 Such is the manner in which God regulates the free will 
 of man without encroaching on its freedom, and in which the 
 free will, which always may, but never will, resist his grace, 
 turns to God with a movement as voluntary as it is irresisti- 
 ble, whensoever he is pleased to draw it to himself by the 
 sweet constraint of his efficacious inspirations.* 
 
 These, father, are the divine principles of St. Augustine 
 and St. Thomas, according to which it is equally true that 
 we have the power of resisting grace, contrary to Calvin's 
 opinion, and that, nevertheless, to employ the language of 
 Pope Clement VIII., in his paper addressed to the Congre- 
 gation de Auxiliis, " God forms within us the motion of our 
 will, and effectually disposes of our hearts, by virtue of that 
 empire Avhich his supreme majesty has over the volitions of 
 men, as well as over the other creatures under heaven, ac- 
 cording to St. Augustine." 
 
 On the same principle, it follows that we act of ourselves, 
 and thus, in opposition to another error of Calvin, that we 
 have merits which are truly and properly ours ; and yet, as 
 God is the first principle of our actions, and as, in the lan- 
 guage of St. Paul, he " worketh in us that which is pleasing 
 in his sight ;" " our merits are the gifts of God," as the 
 Council of Trent says. 
 
 By means of this distinction we demolish the profane sen- 
 timent of Luther, condemned by that Council, namely, that 
 " we co-operate in no way whatever towards our salvation, 
 any more than inanimate things ;"f and, by the same mode 
 of reasoning, we overthrow the equally profane sentiment of 
 the school of Molina, who will not allow that it is by the 
 strength of divine grace that we are enabled to co-operate 
 with it in the work of our salvation, and who thereby comes 
 
 * The reader may well be at a loss to see the difference between thia 
 and the Reformed doctrine. Some explanations will be found in the 
 Historical Introduction. 
 
 f This sentiment was falsely ascribed to Luther by the Council. 
 (Leydeck, DC Dogm. Jan. 275.)
 
 372 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 into hostile collision with that principle of faith established 
 by St. Paul, " That it is God who worketh in us both to will 
 and to do." 
 
 In fine, in this way we reconcile all those passages of 
 Scripture which seem quite inconsistent with each other, 
 such as the following : " Turn ye unto God" "Turn thou 
 us, and we shall be turned" " Cast away iniquity from you" 
 "It is God who taketh away iniquity from his people" 
 " Bring forth works meet for repentance" " Lord, thou hast 
 wrought all our works in us" " Make ye a new heart and a 
 new spirit" " A new spirit will I give you, and a new heart 
 will I create within you," <fec. 
 
 The only way of reconciling these apparent contrarieties, 
 which ascribe our good actions at one time to God, and at 
 another time to ourselves, is to keep in view the distinction, 
 as stated by St. Augustine, that " our actions are ours in re- 
 spect of the free will which produces them ; but that they 
 are also of God, in respect of his grace which enables our 
 free will to produce them ;" and that, as the same writer 
 elsewhere remarks, " God enables us to do what is pleasing 
 in his sight, by making us will to do even what we might 
 have been unwilling to do." 
 
 It thus appears, father, that your opponents are perfectly 
 at one with the modern Thomists, for the Thomists hold, 
 with them, both the power of resisting grace, and the infalli- 
 bility of the effect of grace ; of which latter doctrine they 
 profess themselves the most strenuous advocates, if we may 
 judge from a common maxim of their theology, which Al- 
 varez,* one of the leading men among them, repeats so often 
 in his book, and expresses in the following terms (disp. 72, 
 n. 4) : " When efficacious grace moves the free will, it infal- 
 
 * Diego (or Didacus) Alvarez was one of the most celebrated theolo 
 gians of the order of St. Dominick; he flourished in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, and died in 1G35. He was brought from Spain 
 to Rome, to advocate there, along with Father Thomas Lemos. the 
 cause of the grace of Jesus Christ, which the Jesuit Molina weakened, 
 and indeed annihilated. He shone greatly in the famous Congregation 
 dcAuxttiis. (Nicole's Note.)
 
 GRACE AND TREE-WILL. 373 
 
 libly consents ; because the effect of grace is such, that, al- 
 though the will has the power of withholding its consent, it 
 nevertheless consents in effect." He corroborates this by a 
 quotation from his master, St. Thomas : " The will of God 
 cannot fail to be accomplished ; and, accordingly, when it is 
 his pleasure that a man should consent to the influence of 
 grace, he consents infallibly, and even necessarily, not by an 
 absolute necessity, but by a necessity of infallibility." In 
 effecting this, divine grace does not trench upon " the power 
 which man has to resist it, if he wishes to do so ;" it merely 
 prevents him from wishing to resist it. This has been ac- 
 knowledged by your Father Petau, in the following passage 
 (torn. i. p. 602) : " The grace of Jesus Christ insures infalli- 
 ble perseverance in piety, though not by necessity ; for a 
 person may refuse to yield his consent to grace, if he be so 
 inclined, as the council states ; but that same grace provides 
 that he shall never be so inclined." 
 
 This, father, is the uniform doctrine of St. Augustine, of 
 St. Prosper, of the fathers who followed them, of the coun- 
 cils, of St. Thomas, and of all the Thomists in general. It 
 is likewise, whatever you may think of it, the doctrine of 
 your opponents. And let me add, it is the doctrine which 
 you yourself have lately sealed with your approbation. I 
 shall quote your own words: "The doctrine of efficacious 
 grace, which admits that we have a power of resisting it, is 
 orthodox, founded on the councils, and supported by the 
 Thomists and Sorbonists." Now, tell us the plain truth, 
 father ; if you had known that your opponents really held 
 this doctrine, the interests of your Society might perhaps 
 have made you scruple before pronouncing this public ap- 
 proval of it ; but, acting on the supposition that they were 
 hostile to the doctrine, the same powerful motive has induced 
 you to authorize sentiments which you know in your heart to 
 be contrary to those of your Society ; and by this blunder, 
 in your anxiety to ruin their principles, you have yourself 
 completely confirmed them. So that, by a kind of prodigy, 
 we now behold the advocates of efficacious grace vindicated
 
 374 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 by the advocates of Molina an admirable instance of the 
 wisdom of God in making all things concur to advance the 
 glory of the truth. 
 
 Let the whole world observe, then, that by your own ad- 
 mission, the truth of this efficacious grace, which is so essen- 
 tial to all the acts of piety, which is so dear to the Church, 
 and which is the purchase of her Saviour's blood, is so indis- 
 putably Catholic, that there is not a single Catholic, not even 
 among the Jesuits, who would not acknowledge its ortho- 
 doxy. And let it be noticed, at the same time, that, accord- 
 ing to your own confession, not the slightest suspicion of 
 error can fall on those whom you have so often stigmatized 
 with it. For so long as you charged them with clandestine 
 heresies, without choosing to specify them by name, it was 
 as difficult for them to defend themselves as it was easy for 
 you to bring such accusations. But now, when you have 
 come to declare that the error which constrains you to op- 
 pose them, is the heresy of Calvin which you supposed them 
 to hold, it must be apparent to every one that they are inno- 
 cent of all error ; for so decidedly hostile are they to this, 
 the only error you charge upon them, that they protest, by 
 their discourses, by their books, by every mode, in short, in 
 which they can testify their sentiments, that they condemn 
 that heresy with their whole heart, and in the same manner 
 as it has been condemned by the Thomists, whom you ac- 
 knowledge, without scruple, to be Catholics, and who have 
 never been suspected to be anything else. 
 
 What will you say against them now, father ? Will you 
 say that they are heretics still, because, although they do 
 not adopt the sense of Calvin, they will not allow that the 
 sense of Jansenius is the same with that of Calvin ? Will 
 you presume to say that this is matter of heresy ? Is it not 
 a pure question of fact, with which heresy has nothing to 
 do ? It would be heretical to say that we have not the power 
 of resisting efficacious grace ; but would it be so to doubt 
 that Jansenius held that doctrine ? Is this a revealed truth ? 
 Is it an article of faith which must be believed, on pain of
 
 JANSSNIUS NO HERETIC. 375 
 
 damnation ? or is it not, in spite of you, a point of fact, on 
 account of which it would be ridiculous to hold that there 
 were heretics in the Church. 
 
 Drop this epithet, then, father, and give them some other 
 name, more suited to the nature of your dispute. Tell them, 
 they are ignorant and stupid that they misunderstand Jan- 
 senius. These would be charges in keeping with your con- 
 troversy ; but it is quite irrelevant to call them heretics. As 
 this, however, is the only charge from which I am anxious to 
 defend them, I shall not give myself much trouble to show 
 that they rightly understand Jansenius. All I shall say on 
 the point, father, is, that it appears to me that were he to be 
 judged according to your own rules, it would be difficult to 
 prove him not to be a good Catholic. We shall try him by 
 the test you have proposed. " To know," say you, "whether 
 Jansenius is sound or not, we must inquire whether he de- 
 fends efficacious gjpice in the manner of Calvin, who denies 
 that man has the power of resisting it in which case he 
 would be heretical ; or in the manner of the Thomists, who 
 admit that it may be resisted for then he would be Catho- 
 lic." Judge, then, father, whether he holds that grace may 
 be resisted, when he says, " That we have always a power to 
 resist grace, according to the council ; that free will may al- 
 ways act or not act, will or not will, consent or not consent, 
 do good or do evil ; and that man, in this life, has always 
 these two liberties, which may be called by some contradic- 
 tions."* Judge, likewise, if he be not opposed to the error 
 of Calvin, as you have described it, when he occupies a whole 
 chapter (21st) in showing " that the Church has condemned 
 that heretic who denies that efficacious grace acts on the free 
 will in the manner which has been . so long believed in the 
 Church, so as to leave it in the power of free will to consent 
 or not to consent ; whereas, according to St. Augustine and 
 the council, we have always the power of withholding our 
 consent if we choose ; and according to St. Prosper, God be- 
 
 * His Treatise passim, and particularly torn. 3, 1. 8, c. 30.
 
 876 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 stows even upon his elect the will to persevere, in such a 
 way as not to deprive them of the power to will the contra- 
 ry." And, in one word, judge if he do not agree with the 
 Thomists, from the following declaration in chapter 4th : 
 " That all that the Thomists have written with the view of 
 reconciling the efficaciousness of grace with the power of 
 resisting it, so entirely coincides witL his judgment, that to 
 ascertain his sentiments on this subject, we have only to con- 
 sult their writings." 
 
 Such being the language he holds on these heads, my 
 opinion is, that he believes in the power of resisting grace ; 
 that he differs from Calvin, and agrees with the Thomists, 
 because he has said so ; and that he is, therefore, according 
 to your own showing, a Catholic. If you have any means 
 of knowing the sense of an author otherwise than by his ex- 
 pressions ; and if, without quoting any of his passages, you 
 are disposed to maintain, in direct opposition to his own 
 words, that he denies this power of resistance, and that he is 
 for Calvin and against the Thomists, do not be afraid, father, 
 that I will accuse you of heresy for that. I shall only say, 
 that you do not seem properly to understand Jansenius ; but 
 we shall not be the less on that account children of the same 
 Church. 
 
 How comes it, then, father, that you manage this dispute 
 in such a passionate spirit, and that you treat as your most 
 cruel enemies, and as the most pestilent of heretics, a class 
 of persons whom you cannot accuse of any error, nor of any- 
 thing whatever, except that they do not understand Janseni- 
 us as you do ? For what else in the world do you dispute 
 about, except the sense of that author ? You would have 
 them to condemn it. They ask what you mean them to con- 
 demn. You reply, that you mean the error of Calvin. They 
 rejoin that they condemn that error ; and with this acknow- 
 ledgment (unless it is syllables you wish to condemn, and 
 not the thing which they signify), you ought to rest satisfied. 
 If they refuse to say that they condemn the sense of J in- 
 senius, it is because they believe it to be that of St. Thomas,
 
 THE JANSENIST8 GOOD CATHOLICS. 877 
 
 and thus this unhappy phrase has a very equivocal meaning 
 betwixt you. In your mouth it signifies the sense of Calvin ; 
 in theirs the sense of St. Thomas. Your dissensions arise 
 entirely from the different ideas which you attach to the 
 same term. Were I made umpire in the quarrel, I would 
 interdict the use of the word Jansenius, on both sides ; and 
 thus, by obliging you merely to express what you understand 
 by it, it would be seen that you ask nothing more than the 
 condemnation of Calvin, to which they willingly agree ; and 
 that they ask nothing more than the vindication of the sense 
 of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, in which you again per- 
 fectly coincide. 
 
 I declare, then, father, that for my part I shall continue to 
 regard them as good Catholics, whether they condemn Jan- 
 senius, on finding him erroneous, or refuse to condemn him, 
 from finding that he maintains nothing more than what you 
 yourself acknowledge to be orthodox ; and that I shall say 
 to them what St. Jerome said to John, bishop of Jerusalem, 
 who was accused of holding the eight propositions of Origen : 
 " Either condemn Origen, if you acknowledge that he has 
 maintained these errors, or else deny that he has maintained 
 them Aut nega hoc dixisse eum quiarguitur ; aut si locutus 
 est talia, eum damna qui dixerit." 
 
 See, father, how these persons acted, whose sole concern 
 was with principles, and not with persons; whereas you 
 who aim at persons more than principles, consider it a mat- 
 ter of no consequence to condemn errors, unless you procure 
 the condemnation of the individuals to whom you choose to 
 impute them. 
 
 How ridiculously violent your conduct is, father ! and how 
 ill calculated to insure success ! I told you before, and I 
 repeat it, violence and verity can make no impression on each 
 other. Never were your accusations more outrageous, and 
 never was the innocence of your opponents more discernible : 
 never has efficacious grace been attacked with greater sub- 
 tility, and never has it been more triumphantly established. 
 You have made the most desperate efforts to convince peo-
 
 J78 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 pie that your disputes involved points of faith; and 'never 
 was it more apparent that the whole controversy turned upon 
 a mere point of fact. In fine, you have moved heaven and 
 earth to make it appear that this point of fact is founded on 
 truth; and never were people more disposed to call it in 
 question. And the obvious reason of this is, that you do not 
 take the natural course to make them believe a point of fact, 
 which is to convince their senses, and point out to them in a 
 book the words which you allege are to be found in it. The 
 means you have adopted are so far removed from this 
 straightforward course, that the most obtuse minds are un- 
 avoidably struck by observing it. Why did you not take 
 the plan which I followed in bringing to light the wicked 
 maxims of your authors which was to cite faithfully the 
 passages of their writings from which they were extracted ? 
 This was the mode followed by the cures of Paris, and it 
 never ' fails to produce conviction. But, when you were 
 clyirged by them with holding, for example, the proposition 
 of Father Lamy, that a " monk may kill a person who threat- 
 ens to publish calumnies against himself or his order, when 
 be cannot otherwise prevent the publication," what would 
 you have thought, and what would the public have said, if 
 they had not quoted the place where that sentiment is literally 
 to be found ? or if, after having been repeatedly demanded 
 to quote their authority, they still obstinately refused to do 
 it? or if, instead of acceding to this, they had gone off to 
 Rome, and procured a bull, ordaining all men to acknowl- 
 edge the truth of their statement ? Would it not be un- 
 doubtedly concluded that they had surprised th pope, and 
 that they would never have had recourse to this extraordi- 
 nary method, but for want of the natural means of substan- 
 tiating the truth, which matters of fact furnish to all who 
 undertake to prove them ? Accordingly, they had no more 
 to do than to tell us that Father Lamy teaches this doctrine 
 in Ionic 5, disp. 36, n. 118, page 544, of the Douay edition ; 
 and by this means everybody who wished to see it found it out, 
 and nobody could doubt abou' it any longer. This appears
 
 POPES MAT BE SURPRISED. 379 
 
 to be a very easy and prompt way of putting an end to con- 
 troversies of fact, when one has got the right side of the 
 question. 
 
 How comes it, then, father, that you do not follow this 
 plan ? You said, in your book, that the five propositions are 
 in Jansenius, word for word, in the identical terms iisderrt 
 verbis. You were told they were not. What had you to do 
 after this, but either to cite the page, if you had really found 
 the words, or tp acknowledge that you were mistaken. But 
 you have done neither the one nor the other. In place of 
 this, on finding that all the passages from Jansenius, which 
 you sometimes adduce for the purpose of hoodwinking the 
 people, are not " the condemned propositions in their individ- 
 ual identity," as you had engaged to show us, you present 
 us with Constitutions from Rome, which, without specifying 
 any particular place, declare that the propositions have been 
 extracted from his book. 
 
 I am sensible, father, of the respect which Christians owe 
 to the Holy See, and your antagonists give sufficient evidence 
 of their resolution ever to abide by its decisions. Do not 
 imagine that it implied any deficiency in this due deference 
 on their part, that they represented to the pope, with all the 
 submission which children owe to their father, and members 
 to their head, that it was possible he might be deceived on 
 this point of fact that he had not caused it to be investi- 
 gated during his pontificate ; and that his predecessor, In- 
 nocent X., had merely examined into the heretical character 
 of the propositions, and not into the fact of their connection 
 with Jansenius. This they stated to the commissary of the 
 Holy Office, one of the principal examinators, stating, that 
 tiiey could not be censured, according to the sense of any 
 author, because they had been presented for examination on 
 their own merits, and without considering to what author 
 they might belong : further, that upwards of sixty doctors, 
 and a vast number of other persons of learning and piety, had 
 read that book carefully over, without ever having encount- 
 ered the proscribed propositions, and that they have found
 
 880 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 some of a quite opposite description : that those who had 
 produced that impression on the mind of the pope, might be 
 reasonably presumed to have abused the confidence he repos- 
 ed in them, inasmuch as they had an interest in decrying 
 that author, who has convicted Molina of upwards of fifty 
 errors :* that what renders this supposition still more proba- 
 ble is, that they have a certain maxim among them, one of 
 the best authenticated in their whole system of theology, 
 which is, " that they may, without criminality, calumniate 
 those by whom they conceive themselves to be unjustly at- 
 tacked :" and that, accordingly, their testimony being so 
 suspicious, and the testimony of the other party so respecta- 
 ble, they had some ground for supplicating his holiness, with 
 the most profound humility, that he would ordain an investi- 
 gation to be made into this fact, in the presence of doctors 
 belonging to both parties, in order that a solemn and regulai 
 decision might be formed on the point in dispute. " Let 
 there be a convocation of 'able judges (says St. Basil on a 
 similar occasion, Ep. 75) ; let each of them be left at perfect 
 freedom ; let them examine my writings ; let them judge if 
 they contain errors against the faith ; let them read the ob- 
 jections and the replies; that so a judgment may be given 
 in due form, and with proper knowledge of the case, and not 
 a defamatory libel without examination." 
 
 It is quite vain for you, father, to represent those who 
 would act in the manner I have now supposed as deficient 
 in proper subjection to the Holy See. The popes are very 
 far from being disposed to treat Christians with that impe- 
 
 * " It may be proper here to give an explanation of the hatred of 
 the Jesuits against Jansenius. When the Auguslinus of that^ author 
 was printed in 1640, Libertus Fromond. the celebrated professor of 
 Louvain. resolved to insert in the end of the book of his friend, who had 
 died two years before, a parallel between the doctrine of the Jesuits on 
 grace, and the errors of the Marseillois or demi-Pelagians. This was 
 quite enough to raise the rancor of the Jesuits against Jansenius. whom 
 they erroneously supposed was the author of that parallel. And as 
 these fathers have long since erased from their code of morals the duty 
 of the forgiveness of injuries, they commenced their campaign against 
 the book of Jansenius in the Low Countries, by a large volume of The- 
 olotrical Theses (in folio, 1641). which are very singular productions." 
 (Note by Nicole.)
 
 POPES MAY BE SURPRISED. 381 
 
 riousness which some would fain exercise under their name. 
 "The Church," says Pope St. Gregory,* "which has been 
 trained in the school of humility, does not command with 
 authority, but persuades by reason, her children whom she 
 believes to be in error, to obey what she has taught them." 
 And so far from deeming it a disgrace to review a judgment 
 into which they may have been surprised, we have the testi- 
 mony of Si. Bernard for saying that they glory in acknow- 
 ledging the mistake. " The Apostolic See (he says, Ep. 180) 
 can boast of this recommendation, that it never stands on 
 the point of honor, but willingly revokes a decision that has 
 been gained from it by surprise ; indeed, it is highly just to 
 prevent any from profiting by an act of injustice, and more 
 especially before the Holy See." 
 
 Such, father, are the proper sentiments with which the 
 popes ought to be inspired ; for all divines are agreed that 
 they may be surprised,! and that their supreme character, 
 so far from warranting them against mistakes, exposes them 
 the more readily to fall into them, on account of the vast 
 number of cares which claim their attention. This is what 
 the same St. Gregory says to some persons who were aston- 
 ished at the circumstance of another pope having suffered 
 himself to be deluded : " Why do you wonder," says he, 
 " that we should be deceived, we who are but men ? Have 
 you not read that David, a king who had the spirit of pro- 
 phecy, was induced, by giving credit to the falsehoods of 
 Ziba, to pronounce an unjust judgment against the son of 
 Jonathan ? Who will think it strange, then, that we, who 
 are not prophets, should sometimes be imposed upon by de- 
 ceivers '? A multiplicity of affairs presses on us, and our 
 minds, which, by being obliged to attend to so many things 
 at once, apply themselves less closely to each in particular, 
 are the more easily liable to be imposed upon in individual 
 cases.";}; Truly, father, I should suppose that the popes 
 
 * On the Book of Job, lib. viiL cap. 1. 
 
 t Surprise is the word usd to denote the case of the pope when ta- 
 ken at unawares or deceived by false accounts. 
 Lib. i.. in Dial.
 
 382 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 know better than you -whether they may be deceived or not. 
 They themselves tell us that popes, as well as the greatest 
 princes, are more exposed to deception than individuals who 
 are less occupied with important avocations. This must be 
 believed on their testimony. And it is easy to imagine by 
 what means they come to be thus over-reached. St. Bernard, 
 in the letter which he wrote to Innocent II., gives us the 
 following description of the process : " It is no wonder, and 
 no novelty, that the human mind may be deceived, and is 
 deceived. You are surrounded by monks who come to you 
 in the spirit of lying and deceit. They have filled your ears 
 with stories against a bishop, whose life has been most ex- 
 emplary, but who is the object of their hatred. These per- 
 sons bite like dogs, and strive to make good appear evil. 
 Meanwhile, most holy father, you put yourself into a rage 
 against your own son. -Why have you afforded matter of 
 joy to his enemies ? Believe not every spirit, but try the 
 spirits whether they be of God. I trust that, when you 
 have ascertained the truth, all this delusion, which rests on a 
 false report, will be dissipated. I pray the Spirit of truth to 
 grant you the grace to separate light from darkness, and to 
 favor the good "by rejecting the evil." You see then, father, 
 that the eminent rank of the popes does not exempt them 
 from the influence of delusion ; and I may now add, that it 
 only serves to render their mistakes more dangerous and im- 
 portant than those of other men. This is the light in which 
 St. Bernard represents them to Pope Eugenius : " There is 
 another fault, so common among the great of this world, that 
 I never met one of them who was free from it ; and that is, 
 holy Yather, an excessive credulity, the source of numerous 
 disorders. From this proceed violent persecutions against 
 the innocent, unfounded prejudices against th& absent, and 
 tremendous storms about nothing (pro nikilo). This, holy 
 father, is a universal evil, from the influence of which, if you 
 *re exempt, I shall only say, you are the only individual 
 among all your compeers who can boast of that privilege."* 
 * De Consid. lib. ii., c. ult
 
 POPES MAY BE SURPRISED. 383 
 
 I imagine, father, that the proofs I have brought are be- 
 ginning to convince you that the popes are liable to be sur- 
 prised. But, to complete your conversion, I shall merely 
 remind you of seme examples, which you yourself have 
 quoted in your book, of popes and emperors whom heretics 
 have actually deceived. You will remember, then, that you 
 have told us that Apollinarius surprised Pope Damasius, iu 
 the same way that Celestius surprised Zozimus. You inform 
 us, besides, that one called Athanasius deceived the Emperor 
 Heraclius, and prevailed on him to persecute the Catholics. 
 And lastly, that Sergius obtained from Honorius that infa- 
 mous decretal which was burned at the sixth council, " by 
 playing the busy-body," as you say, " about the person of 
 that pope." 
 
 It appears, then, father, by your own confession, that those 
 who act this part about the persons of kings and popes, do 
 sometimes artfully entice them to persecute the faithful de- 
 fenders of the truth, under the persuasion that they are per- 
 secuting heretics. And hence the popes, who hold nothing 
 in greater horror than these surprisals, have, by a letter of 
 Alexander III., enacted *an ecclesiastical statute, which is 
 inserted in the canonical law, to permit the suspension of the 
 execution of their bulls and decretals, when there is ground 
 to suspect that they have been imposed upon. " If," says 
 that pope to the Archbishop of Ravenna, " we sometimes 
 send decretals to your fraternity which are opposed to your 
 sentiments, give yourselves no distress on that account. We 
 shall expect you either to carry them respectfully into exe- 
 cution, or to send us the reason why you conceive they ought 
 not to be executed ; for we deem it right that you should 
 not execute a decree, which may have been procured from 
 us by artifice and surprise." Such has been the course pur- 
 sued by the popes, whose sole object is to settle the disputes 
 of Christians, and not to follow the passionate counsels of 
 those who strive to involve them in trouble and perplexity. 
 Following the advice of St. Peter and St. Paul, who in this 
 followed the commandment of Jesus Christ, thev avoid dora-
 
 384 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 ination. The spirit which appears in their whole conduct is 
 that of peace and truth.* In this spirit they ordinarily in- 
 sert in their letters this clause, which is tacilly understood 
 in them all " Si ita est *i preces veritate- nitantur If it be 
 so as we have heard it if the facts be true." It is quito 
 clear, if the popes themselves give no force to their bulls, 
 except in so far as they are founded on genuine facts, that it 
 is not the bulls alone that prove the truth of the facts, but 
 that, on the contrary, even according to the canonists, it 
 is the truth of the facts which renders the bulls lawfully 
 admissible. 
 
 In what way, then, are we to learn the truth of facts ? It 
 must be by the eyes, father, which are the legitimate judges 
 of such matters, as reason is the proper judge of things 
 natural and intelligible, and faith of things supernatural and 
 revealed. For, since you will force me into this discussion, 
 you must allow me to tell you, that, according to the senti- 
 ments of the two greatest doctors of the Church, St. Augus- 
 tine and St. Thomas, these three principles of our knowledge, 
 the senses, reason, and faith, have each their separate objects, 
 and their own degrees of certainty. And as God has been 
 pleased to employ the intervention of the senses to give en- 
 trance to faith (for " faith cometh by hearing"), it follows, 
 that so far from faith destroying the certainty of the senses, 
 ,o call in question the faithful report of the senses, would 
 ^ad to the destruction of faith. It is on this principle that 
 St. Thomas explicitly states that God has been pleased that 
 ttie sensible accidents should subsist in the eucharist, in order 
 .hat the senses, which judge only of these accidents, might 
 not be deceived. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, from this, that whatever the prop- 
 osition may be that is submitted to our examination, we 
 must first determine its nature, to ascertain to which of those 
 hree principles it ought to be referred. If it relate to a super- 
 natural truth, we must judge of it neither by the senses nor 
 by reason, but by Scripture and the decisions, of the Church, 
 * Alas! &.M
 
 TE8TIMOXY OF THE SENSES. 385 
 
 Should it concern an unrevealed truth, and something within 
 the reach of natural reason, reason must be its proper judge. 
 And if it embrace a point of fact, we must yield to the testi- 
 mony of the senses, to which it naturally belongs to take 
 cognizance of such matters. 
 
 So general is this rule, that, according to St. Augustine 
 and St. Thomas, when we meet with a passage even in the 
 Scripture, the literal meaning of which, at first sight, appear* 
 contrary to what the senses or reason are certainly persuaded 
 of, we must not attempt to reject their testimony in thif 
 case, and yield them up to the authority of that apparent 
 sense of the Scripture, but we must interpret the Scripture, 
 and seek out therein another sense agreeable to that sensible 
 truth ; because, the Word of God being infallible in the facts 
 which it records, and the information of the senses and of 
 reason, acting in their sphere, being certain also, it follows 
 that there must be an agreement between these two sources 
 of knowledge. And as Scripture may be interpreted in dif- 
 ferent ways, whereas the testimony of the senses is uniform, 
 we must in these matters adopt as the true interpretation of 
 Scripture that view which corresponds with the faithful re- 
 port of the senses. "Two things," says St. Thomas, "must 
 be observed, according to the doctrine of St. Augustine : first, 
 That Scripture has always one true sense ; and secondly, That 
 as it may receive various senses, when we have discovered 
 one which reason plainly teaches to be false, we must not per- 
 sist in maintaining that this is the natural sense, but search 
 out another with which reason will agree."* 
 
 St. Thomas explains bis meaning by the example of a 
 passage in Genesis, where it is written that " God created 
 two great lights, the sun and the moon, and also the stars," 
 in which the Scripture appears to say that the moon is 
 greater than all the stars ; but as it is evident, from unques- 
 tionable demonstration, that this is false, it is not our duty, 
 says that saint, obstinately to defend the literal sense of that 
 passage. ; another meaning must be sought, consistent with 
 
 I. p. q r>3, . l. 
 17
 
 386 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 the truth of the 'fact, such as the following, " That the phrase 
 great light, as applied to the moon, denotes the greatness of 
 that luminary merely as it appears in our eyes, and not the 
 magnitude of its body considered in itself." 
 
 An opposite mode of treatment, so far from procuring re- 
 spect to the Scripture, would only expose it to the contempt 
 of infidels ; because, as St. Augustine says, " when they 
 found that we believed, on the authority of Scripture, in 
 things which they assuredly knew to be false, they would 
 laugh at our credulity with regard to its more recondite 
 truths, such as the resurrection of the dead and eternal Me." 
 "And by this means," adds St. Thomas, "we should render 
 our religion contemptible in their eyes, and shut up its en- 
 trance into their minds." 
 
 And let me add, father, that it would in the same mannei 
 be the likeliest means to shut up the entrance of Scripture 
 into the minds of heretics, and to render the pope's authority 
 contemptible in their eyes, to refuse all those the name of 
 Catholics who would not believe that certain words were in 
 a certain book, where they are not to be found, merely be- 
 cause a pope by mistake has declared that they are. It is 
 only by examining a book that we can ascertain what words 
 it contains. Matters of fact can only be proved by tho 
 senses. If the position which you maintain be true, show it, 
 or else ask no man to believe it that would be to no pur- 
 pose. Not all the powers on earth can, by the force of 
 authority, persuade us of a point of fact, any more than 
 they can alter it ; for nothing can make that to be not which 
 really is. 
 
 It was to no purpose, for example, that the monks of Rat- 
 isbon procured from Pope St. Leo IX. a solemn decree, by 
 which he declared that the body of St. Denis, the first bishop 
 of Paris, who is generally held to have been the Areopagite, 
 had been transported out of France, and conveyed into the 
 chapel of their monastery. It is not the less true, for all 
 this, that the body of that saint always lay, and lies to this 
 hour, in tho celebrated nbbev which V^ars l.is nnmo ?nd
 
 GALILEO. 387 
 
 within the walls of which you would find it no easy matter 
 to obtain a cordial reception to this bull, although the pope 
 has therein assured us that he has examined the affair " with 
 all possible diligence (diligentissime), and with the advice of 
 many bishops and pi elates ; so that he strictly enjoins all the 
 French (districts prcecipientes) to own and confess that these 
 holy relics are no longer in their country." The French, 
 however, who knew that fact to be untrue, by the evidence 
 of their own eyes, and who, upon opening the shrine, found 
 all those relics entire, as the historians of that period inform 
 us, believed then, as they have always believed since, the re- 
 verse of what that holy pope had enjoined them to believe, 
 well knowing that even saints and prophets are liable to be 
 imposed upon. 
 
 It was to equally little purpose that you obtained against 
 Galileo a decree from Rome, condemning his opinion respect- 
 ing the motion of the earth. It will never be proved by such 
 an argument as this that the earth remains stationary ; and 
 if it can be demonstrated by sure observation that it is the 
 earth and not the sun that revolves, the efforts and argu- 
 ments of all mankind put together will not hinder our planet 
 from revolving, nor hinder themselves from revolving along 
 with her. 
 
 Again, you must not imagine that the letters of Pope 
 Zachary, excommunicating St. Virgilius for maintaining the 
 existence of the antipodes, have annihilated the New World ; 
 nor must you suppose that, although he declared that opin- 
 ion to be a most dangerous heresy, the king of Spain was 
 wrong in giving more credence to Christopher Columbus, 
 who came from the place, than to the judgment of the pope, 
 who had never been there, or that the Church has not de- 
 rived a vast benefit from the discovery, inasmuch as it has 
 brought the knowledge of the Gospel to a great multitude 
 of souls, who might otherwise have perished in their infi- 
 delity. 
 
 You see, then, father, what is the nature of matters of 
 fact, and on what principles they are to be determined ; from
 
 388 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 all which, to recur to our subject, it is easy to conclude, that 
 if the five propositions are not in Jansenius, it is impossible 
 that they can have been extracted from him ; and that the 
 only way to form a judgment on the matter, and to produce 
 universal conviction, is to examine thac book in a regular 
 conference, as you have been desired to do long ago. Until 
 that be done, you have no right to charge your opponents 
 with contumacy ; for they are as blameless in regard to the 
 point of fact as they are of errors in point of faith Catholics 
 in doctrine, reasonable in fact, and innocent in both. 
 
 Who can help feeling astonishment, then, father, to see on 
 the one side a vindication so complete, and on the other ac- 
 cusations so outrageous ! Who would suppose that the only 
 question between you relates to a single fact of no importance, 
 which the one party wishes the other to believe without 
 showing it to them ! And who would ever imagine that 
 such a noise should have been made in the Church for noth- 
 ing (pro nihilo), as good St. Bernard says ! But this is just 
 one of the principal tricks of your policy, to make people be- 
 lieve that everything is at stake, when, in reality, there is 
 nothing at stake ; and to represent to those influential per- 
 sons who listen to you, that the most pernicious errors of 
 Calvin, and the most vital principles of the faith, are involved 
 in your disputes, with the view of inducing them, under this 
 conviction, to employ all their zeal and all their authority 
 against your opponents, as if the safety of the Catholic relig- 
 ion depended upon it ; whereas, if they came to know that 
 the whole dispute was about this paltry point of fact, they 
 would give themselves no concern about it, but would, on 
 the contrary, regret extremely that, to gratify your private 
 passions, they had made such exertions in an affair of no 
 consequence to the Church. For, in fine, to take the worst 
 view of the matter, even though it should be true that Jan- 
 snius maintained these propositions, what great misfortune 
 would accrue from some persons doubting of the fact, pro- 
 Tided they detested the propositions, as they have publicly 
 declared that they do ? Is it not enough that they aro con-
 
 389 
 
 demned by everybody, without exception, and that, too, in 
 the sense in which you have explained that you wish them 
 to be condemned ? Would they be more severely censured 
 by saying that Jansenius maintained them ? What purpose, 
 then, would be served by exacting this acknowledgment, ex- 
 cept that of disgracing a doctor and bishop, who died in the 
 communion of the Church ? I cannot see how that shorJd 
 be accounted so great a blessing as to deserve to be pur- 
 chased at the expense of so many disturbances. What inter- 
 est has the state, or the pope, or bishops, or doctors, or tho 
 Church at large, in this conclusion? It does not affect thorn 
 in any way whatever, father; it can affect none but your 
 Society, which would certainly enjoy some pleasure from tho 
 defamation of an author who has done you some little injury. 
 Meanwhile everything is in confusion, because you have mado 
 people believe that everything is in danger. This is the se- 
 cret spring giving impulse to all those mighty commotions, 
 which would cease immediately were the real state of the 
 controversy once known. And therefore, as the peace of tho 
 Church depended on this explanation, it was, I conceive, of 
 the utmost importance that it should be given, that, by ex- 
 posing all your disguises, it might be manifest to the wholo 
 world that your accusations were without foundation, your 
 opponents without error, and the Church without heresy. 
 
 Such, father, is the end which it has been my desire to 
 accomplish ; an end which appears to me, in every point of 
 view, so deeply important to religion, that I am at a loss to 
 conceive how those to whom you furnish so much occasion 
 for speaking can contrive to remain in silence. Granting 
 that they are not affected with the personal wrongs which 
 you have committed against them, those which the Church 
 suffers ought, in my opinion, to have forced them to com- 
 plain. Besides, I am not altogether sure if ecclesiastics 
 ought to make a sacrifice of their reputation to calumny, 
 especially in the matter of religion. They allow you, never- 
 theless, to say whatever you please ; so that, had it not been 
 for the opportunity which, by mere accident, you afforded
 
 390 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 me of taking their part, the scandalous impressions which 
 you are circulating against them in all quarters would, in all 
 probability, have gone forth without contradiction. Their 
 patience, I confess, astonishes me ; and the more so, that I 
 cannot suspect it of proceeding either from timidity or from 
 incapacity, being well assured that they want neither argu 
 ments for their own vindication, nor zeal for the truth. And 
 yet I see them religiously bent on silence, to a degree which 
 appears to me altogether unjustifiable. For my part, father, 
 I do not believe that I can possibly follow their example. 
 Leave the Church in peace, and I shall leave you as you are, 
 with all my heart ; but so long as you make it your sole 
 business to keep her in confusion, doubt not but that there 
 shall always be found within her bosom children of peace, 
 who will consider themselves bound to employ all tlieir en- 
 deavors to preserve her tranquillity.
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 FRAGMENT OF A NINETEENTH PROVINCIAL LETTER, ADDRESSED TO 
 
 ' PERE ANNAT. 
 
 REVEREND SIR, If I have caused you some dissatisfaction, 
 in former Letters, by my endeavors to establish the innocence 
 of those whom you were laboring to asperse, I shall afford 
 you pleasure in the present, by making you acquainted with 
 the sufferings which you have inflicted upon them. Be com- 
 forted, my good father, the objects of your enmity are in 
 distress ! And if the Reverend the Bishops should be in- 
 duced to carry out, in their respective dioceses, the advice 
 you have given them, to cause to be subscribed and sworn 
 a certain matter of fact, which is, in itself, not credible, and 
 which it cannot be obligatory upon any one to believe you 
 will indeed succeed in plunging your opponents to the depth 
 of sorrow, at witnessing the Church brought into so abject a 
 condition. 
 
 Yes, sir, I have seen them ; and it was with a satisfaction 
 inexpressible ! I have seen these holy men ; and this was the 
 attitude in which they were found. They were not wrapt 
 up in a philosophic magnanimity ; they did not affect to ex- 
 hibit that indiscriminate firmness which urges implicit obedi- 
 ence to every momentary impulsive duty ; nor yet were they 
 in a frame of weakness and timidity, which would prevent 
 (hem from either discerning the truth, or following it when 
 discerned. But I found them with minds pious, composed, 
 and unshaken ; impressed with a meek deference for ecclesias- 
 tical authority ; with tenderness of spirit, zeal for truth, and 
 a desire to ascertain and obey her dictates : filled with a sal- 
 utary suspicion of themselves, distrusting their own infirm- 
 ity, and regretting that it should bo thus exposed to trial
 
 392 PROVINCIAL LETTERS. 
 
 yet withal, sustained by a modest hope that their Lord will 
 deign to instruct them by his illuminations, and sustain them 
 Dy his power ; and believing, that that peace of their Saviour, 
 whose sacred influences it is their endeavor to maintain, and 
 for whose cause they are brought into suffering, will be, at 
 once, their guide and their support ! I have, in fine, seen 
 them maintaining a character of Christian piety, whose 
 power 
 
 I found them surrounded by their friends, who had hastened 
 to impart those counsels which they deemed the most fitting 
 in their present exigency. I have heard those counsels ; I 
 have observed the manner in which they were received, and 
 the answers given : and truly, my father, had you yourself 
 been present, I think you would have acknowledged that, in 
 their whole procedure, there was the entire absence of a 
 spirit of insubordination and schism ; and that their only de- 
 sire and aim was, to preserve inviolate two things to them 
 infinitely precious peace and truth. 
 
 For, after due representations had been made to them of 
 the penalties they would draw upon themselves by their re- 
 fusal to sign the Constitution, and the scandal it might cause 
 in the Church, their reply was .-,.- ,.* 
 
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