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 Frétat, a Jesuit, accompanied by a brother monk.
Frétat told him that the Society suspected M. Pascal to be the author of the “Little Letters,” which were making such a noise, and advised him as a friend to prevail on his brother-in-law to desist 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 at that very time several sheets of the seventh or eighth letter, newly come from the printer, were lying on the bed, where they had been placed for the purpose of drying, 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 apartment; and he had reason to congratulate him on the narrow escape which he had made.[39] 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 he 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 enthusiasm; but the pains and mental exertion which he bestowed on the rest are almost incredible. Nicole says “he was often twenty whole days on a single letter: and some of them he recommenced seven or eight times before bringing them to their present state of perfection.”[40] We are assured that he wrote over the eighteenth letter no less than thirteen times.[41] 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.”[42] 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 indignation against their opponents. After this prelude, the fourth letter 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 grand 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 Jansenists 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 casuistical doctor, and extracts from him, under the pretext of desiring information, some of the weakest and worst of his maxims. 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 declamation. From beginning to end it is a well-sustained battle, in which the weapons are only changed in order to strike the harder.
The literary merits of the Provincials have been universally 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 ingenuity of reasoning than in the orations of Cicero. We have nothing more beautiful in this species of writing.”[43] “Pascal’s style,” says the Abbé d’Artigny, “has never been surpassed, nor perhaps equalled.”[44] The high encomium of Voltaire is well known: “The Provincial Letters were models of eloquence and pleasantry. The best comedies of Molière have not more wit in them than the first letters; Bossuet has nothing more sublime than the last ones.”
Again, the same writer says: “The first work of genius that appeared 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 language became fixed. The Bishop of Luçon told me, that having asked the Bishop of Meaux what work he would wish most to have been the author of, setting his own works aside, Bossuet instantly replied, ‘The Provincial Letters.’”[45] “Pascal succeeded beyond all expression,” says D’Alembert; “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.”[46] To this day the same high eulogiums are passed on the work by the best scholars of France.[47] 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. Pascal’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, polite, piquant wit of the early French school. Nothing can be finer than its spirit; but from its very fineness it is apt to evaporate in the act of transfusion into another tongue. Nothing 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 mathematical 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 texture 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 curés 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 beneath their feet, they never appear to have suspected, determined 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 observation. The clergy resolved to compare the quotations of Pascal with these writings; and the result of the investigation was, that he was found to be perfectly correct, while a multitude of other maxims, equally scandalous, were dragged to light.
These were condemned in a general assembly of the clergy.[48] 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.[49] Shortly after the Letters were finished, there appeared “An Apology for the Casuists,” the production of a 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.[50] 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 procuring 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 censures 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 interesting 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’œuvre_ and his confession of faith, had been condemned by the head of that Church which he had hitherto believed to be infallible. Warped as his fine spirit was by education, his unbending rectitude forbids the supposition that he could surrender his cherished and conscientious sentiments at the mere dictum of the pope.
An incident occurred 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 _mandement_ after another, requiring subscription to the condemnation of Jansen, came down from the court of Rome; and the poor nuns, shrinking, on the one hand, from violating their consciences by subscribing what they believed to be an untruth, and trembling, on the other, at the consequences of disobeying their ecclesiastical superiors, were thrown into the most distressing embarrassment. Their “obstinacy,” as it was termed, only provoked 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 consistency. 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.[51] 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 erroneously, 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 CONDEMNED AT ROME, THAT WHICH I CONDEMN IN THEM IS CONDEMNED IN HEAVEN.”[52] It is only necessary to add, that Pascal continued to maintain 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 having 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 trouble 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, first to bully the priest for having absolved such an impenitent offender,[53] 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 expressed his sorrow for having written the Provincials, and 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 formally made by Nicole, showing that the real ground of Pascal’s brief disagreement with his friends was directly the reverse of that which had been assigned.[54] Few books have passed through more editions than the Provincials. The following, among many others, may be mentioned as French editions:—The tenth in 1767, 12mo.[55] 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.”[56] Nicole, who was a complete master of Latin, has given an elegant, though somewhat free version of his friend’s work. He has frequently 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 preliminary 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.”[57] Besides this, the Provincials have been translated into nearly all 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.[58] The Spanish translation, executed by Gratien Cordero of Burgos, was suppressed by order of the Inquisition.[59] 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 _Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, sur les 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 abbé, “who is excessively frank and honest, one who never could bear all his life to see people imposed upon.” The dialogue is conducted with considerable spirit, but is sadly deficient in _vraisemblance_. The author commences with high professions of impartiality. Cleander and Eudoxus are supposed to be quite neutral—somewhat like the free-will of Molina, “in a state of perfect equilibrium, 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 discretion; the Port-Royalists are “honest Arnauld’s “pen may be known by the gall that drops from it;” Nicole “swears like a trooper,” and as to Pascal he is all these characters in turn, while his book is “a repertory of slander,” and is “villainous in a supreme degree!”
The whole strain of Daniel’s reply corresponds with this 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 object 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 champion 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 examination 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 accusing them of chicanery and pious fraud, the very crimes which they had succeeded in establishing against their opponents, the unscrupulous Jesuit could be at no loss to find, among the voluminous writings of the casuists, some plausible grounds for his charges. At all events, he could calculate on the readiness with which certain minds, fonder of generalizing 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 suppress 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 published,” says Richelet, “an answer to the Lettres Provinciales, which professes to demolish them, but which, nevertheless, 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 powers.”[60] “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.”[61] This, however, 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 answer to Daniel’s work, which appeared in the same year with the _Entretiens_, under the title of “Apology for the Provincial 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.[62] In this masterly performance, the accusations of Daniel are shown to be totally groundless, his answers jesuitical and evasive, and his arguments untenable. The “Apology” was never answered, and Daniel’s work sank out of sight.
Subsequent apologists of the Jesuits have followed the 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 Pascal 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 repenting, 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 expose 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 written 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 _I have never used a single passage without having read it myself 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 objection, which would have been very unjust and blamable.”[63] If this solemn declaration, emitted by one whose heart was a stranger to deceit, and whose shrewdness placed him beyond 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 curés of Paris and Rouen, to the voluminous 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 “monstrous 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.[64] 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 expresses his regret that Pascal did not lampoon Jesuits and Jansenists alike;[65] and Voltaire, in the mere wantonness of his cynical humor, if not from a more worthless motive, has 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 corrupt the morals of mankind—a design which no sect or society ever had, or ever could have. But his business was not to be right, but to entertain the public.”[66] Every clause here contains a fallacy. The charge of party-spirit, insinuated 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.[67] Equally unfounded 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 author 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 surprised at Father Daniel saying so; but it is unaccountable how any but a Jesuit, who professed to have read the Letters, could advance a theory so distinctly anticipated and disclaimed in the Letters themselves. “Know, then,” it is said in letter fifth, “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.”[68] “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_.”[69] 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 recommendation 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.[70] 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,”[71] 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 maxims of the Jansenists, by urging persons of all characters and tempers on to an imaginary goal of perfection, bring quickly their whole system to the decision of experience. A greater 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.”[72] The strange mixture of truth and error in this statement leaves an unfavorable impression 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 insinuate that he measured Jesuitical morality by “the strict, unbending maxims of the Jansenists;” and it is flagrantly untrue 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 substantiates against them is, not that they softened the austerities of the cloister, but that they sacrificed the eternal laws of morality—not that they prudently suited their rules to men’s tempers, but that they licensed the worst passions and propensities of our nature—not that they declined urging all to forsake 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 same line of defence, a certain class of Protestant writers, fond of historical paradox, and of appearing superior to vulgar 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 judgment on the contents of the _Lettres Provinciales_ would do well to cast a glance over the _Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugenie_, by Bouhours, a Jesuit, who has ably vindicated his order.”[73] 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 Provincials are liable to another charge, seldomer advanced, and not so easily answered; which is, that the loose casuistical 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 alleged, 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 authorities; 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 condemnation 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.[74] It cannot be denied that the Jesuits have all along succeeded in obtaining for their system the sanction of the highest authorities 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 Provincial Letters, the most powerful exposure of Jesuitical morality that ever appeared, were