censured at Rome, and burnt by the hands of the executioner.[75] In short, and without 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 Provincials, 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 atrocious 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 convenient 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.[76] 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 authority.
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 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 species 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 profession of the great truths of Christianity under an incomparably 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 atrocious enemy, ‘the Society.’ They were themselves in too many points vulnerable to close fearlessly with their adversary, and they grasped the sword of the Spirit in too infirm a manner to drive home a deadly thrust...The Jansenists 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 abstraction, 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 France.”[77] 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 them, nor comprehend the profound questions of casuistry on which he presumed to argue. Under this affectation of charity, they dexterously evade Pascal’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 vindicate the old Jesuitical doctrine of _probabilism_![78] 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 Ireland, is a proof of this; for it is nothing more than a collection of the most wicked and obscene maxims of casuistical morality. Matters are no better in France. Dr. Gilly mentions 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.”[79] The disclosures made still more recently 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-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 establish 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 revive 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 become 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, everything that bears the aspect of that active and earnest religion, under the guise of which they had succeeded in duping mankind.
What portion of this cycle they have reached among us, it is needless to demonstrate. They have evidently got beyond 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 denial. 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 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.”[80] 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 exposed 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.”
----- Footnote 1: Non quia per nos sancti et immaculati futuri essemus, sed elegit prædestinavitque ut essemus. (De Prædest., Aug. Op., tom. x. 815.)
Footnote 2: De dono Persever. (Ib., 822.)
Footnote 3: Neander, Bibl. Repos., iii. 94; Leydecker, de Jansen. Dogm., 413.
Footnote 4: The question of the middle knowledge is learnedly handled by Voetius (Disp. Theol., i. 264), by Hoornbeck (Socin. Confut.), and other Protestant divines, who have shown it to be untenable, useless, and fraught with absurdity.
Footnote 5: Dupin, Eccl. Hist., 17th cent. 1–14.
Footnote 6: “Well done, gentlemen; you have left me more in the dark than ever.”
Footnote 7: He was the son of a poor artisan, whose name was Jan, or John Ottho; hence Jansen, corresponding to our Johnson, which was Latinized into Jansenius.
Footnote 8: Petitot, Collect. des Mémoires, Notice sur Port-Royal, tom. xxxiii., 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.
Footnote 9: 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 l’Edit de Nantes, iii. 200.)
Footnote 10: _Cæca quadam obedientia.—Ut Christum Dominum in superiore quolibet agnoscere studeatis.—Perinde ac si cadaver essent, vel similiter atque senis baculus.—Ad majorem Dei gloriam._ (Constit. Jesuit. pars vi.
cap. 1; Ignat. Epist., &c.)
Footnote 11: Balde, whom the Jesuits honor in their schools as a modern Horace, thus celebrates the longevity of the Society, in his _Carmen Seculare de Societate Jesu_, 1640:— “Profuit quisquis voluit nocere.
Cuncta subsident sociis; ubique Exules vivunt, et ubique cives!
Sternimus victi, supreamus imi, Surgimus plures toties cadendo.”
Footnote 12: Their famous missionary, Francis Xavier, whom they canonized, was ignorant of a single word in the languages of 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!
Footnote 13: Macintosh, Hist. of England, ii. 353.
Footnote 14: Macintosh, Hist. of England, ii. 357.
Footnote 15: Augustine himself is chargeable with having been the first to introduce 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, by the moralists of succeeding ages. (Buddei Footnote 16: Lancelot. Tour to Alet, p. 173; Leydecker, p. 122.
Footnote 17: The whole title was: “Augustinus Cornelii Jansenii episcopi, seu doctrina sancti Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanctitate ægritudinæ medica, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses.” Louvain, 1640.
Footnote 18: Footnote 19: Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, vol. iii. 143; Abbé Du Mas, Hist. des Cinq Footnote 20: Letter xviii. pp. 310–313.
Footnote 21: Witsii Œconom. Fœd., lib. iii.; Turret. Theol., Elenct. xv. quest. 4; De Moor Comment, iv. 496; Mestrezat, Serm. sur Rom., viii. 274.
Footnote 22: I refer here particularly to Arnauld’s treatise, entitled “Renversement de la Morale de Jesus Christ par les Calvinistes,” which was answered by Jurieu in his “Justification de la Morale des Reformez.” 1685, by M. Merlat, and others. Jurieu has shown 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 good faith, nor in consistency with the sentiments of their much admired leaders, Augustine and Jansen.
Footnote 23: Fontaine, Mémoires, i. 200; Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. 2.
Footnote 26: Ib., p. 456. The title of this work was, “The Secret Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament.”
Footnote 27: Sacy, or Saci, was the inverted name of Isaac Le Maitre, celebrated for his translation of the Bible.
Footnote 28: Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. §2.
Footnote 29: We may refer particularly to Petitot in his Collection des Mémoires, tom. xxxiii., Paris, 1824; and to a History of the Company of Jesus by J. Cretineau-Joly, Paris, 1845. With high pretensions to impartiality, these works abound with the most glaring specimens of special pleading.
Footnote 30: Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV, t. ii.
Footnote 31: Mémoires de P. Royal, i. 13. Bayle insists that his father had twenty-two children. Dict., art. _Arnauld_.
Footnote 32: Weisman, Hist. Eccl., ii. 204.
Footnote 33: The title under which the Letters appeared when first collected into a volume was, “_Lettres écrites 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”—“_Campagnardes_.” (Remarques sur la langue Fran., p. ii. 306. Dict. Univ., art. _Provincial_.)
Footnote 34: Daniel, Entretiens, p. 19.
Footnote 35: Petitot, Notices, p. 121.
Footnote 36: Benoit, Hist. de l’Edit. de Nantes, iii. 198.
Footnote 37: Daniel, Entretiens, p. 11.
Footnote 38: Nicole, Notes sur la xi. Lettre iii. 332.
Footnote 39: Footnote 40: Histoire des Provinciales, p. 12.
Footnote 41: Petitot, p. 124. The eighteenth letter embraces the delicate topic of papal authority, as well as the distinction between _faith_ and _fact_, in stating which we can easily conceive how severely the ingenuous mind of Pascal must have labored to find some plausible ground for vindicating his consistency as a Roman Catholic. To the Protestant reader, it must appear the most unsatisfactory of all the Letters.
Footnote 42: Prov. Let., p. 340.
Footnote 43: Perrault, Parallele des Anc. et Mod., Bayle, art. _Pascal_.
Footnote 44: D’Artigny, Nouveaux Mémoires iii. p. 34.
Footnote 45: Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., tom. ii. pp. 171, 274.
Footnote 46: D’Alembert, Destruct. des Jesuites, p. 54.
Footnote 47: Bordas-Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, p. xxv. (This was the prize essay before the French Academy, in June, 1842.)
Footnote 48: Nicole, Hist. des Provinciales.
Footnote 49: The names of these unfortunate productions alone survive; 1. “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 Letter, by Francis Annat,” &c., &c.
Footnote 50: Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litteratur, vol. i. pp. 420–423.
Footnote 51: Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 314–323. Some papers passed between Pascal and his friends on this topic. Pascal committed these on his death-bed to his friend M. Domat, “with a request that he would burn them if the nuns of Port-Royal proved firm, and print them if they should yield.”
(Ib., p. 322.) The nuns having stood firm, the probability is that they were destroyed. Had they been preserved, they might have thrown some further light on the opinions of Pascal regarding papal authority.
Footnote 52: _Si mes Lettres sont condamnées à Rome, ce que j’y condamne, est condamné dans le ciel._ (Pensées de Blaise Pascal, tom. ii. 163.
Paris, 1824.)
Footnote 53: “How came you,” said the archbishop to M. Beurrier, “to administer the sacraments to such a person? Didn’t you know that he was a Jansenist?”
(Recueil, 348.)
Footnote 54: Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 327–330; Petitot, p. 165.
Footnote 55: Walchii Biblioth. Theol., ii. 295.
Footnote 56: The title of Nicole’s translation, now rarely to be met with, is, _Ludovici Montaltii Litteræ Provinciales, de Morali et Politica Jesuitarum Disciplina. A Willelmo Wendrockio, Salisburgensi Theologo._ Several editions of this translation were printed. I have the first, published at Cologne in 1658, and the fifth, much enlarged, Cologne, 1679.
Footnote 57: 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 Schimmelpenninck’s History of the Footnote 58: Bayle, Dict., art. _Pascal_.
Footnote 59: Daniel, Entretiens, p. 111.
Footnote 60: Bayle, Dict., art. _Pascal_, note K.
Footnote 61: Abbé de Castres, Les Trois Siècles, ii. 63.
Footnote 62: Barbier, Dict. des Ouvrages Anon. et Pseudon.
Footnote 63: Tabaraud, _Dissertation sur la foi qui est due au Temoignage de Pascal dans ses Lettres Provinciales_, p. 12.—This work, published some years ago in France, contains a complete justification of Pascal’s picture of the Jesuits in the Provincials, accompanied with a mass of authorities. The above sentiments have been introduced into Pascal’s Thoughts. (See Craig’s translation, p. 185.)
Footnote 64: Vie de Bossuet, t. iv. p. 19; Tabaraud, Dissert. sur la foi, &c., p.
43.
Footnote 65: “The shocking doctrine of Jansenius and of St. Cyran, afforded at least as much room for ridicule as the pliant doctrine of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez.” (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 55.)
Footnote 66: Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., ii. 367.
Footnote 67: Eichhorn, Geschichte der Lit., i. 426.
Footnote 68: Prov. Let., p. 118.
Footnote 70: Tabaraud, p. 117; Bord. Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, Append.
Footnote 71: Schlegel, Lectures on Hist. of Lit. ii. 188.
Footnote 72: Letters from Spain, p. 86.
Footnote 73: Macintosh, History of England, vol. ii. 359, note.
Footnote 74: Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litter., vol. i. pp. 423–425; Weisman, Hist.
Eccl., vol. ii. 21; Jurieu, Prejugez Legitimes cont. le Papisme, p.
386; Claude, Defence of the Reformation, p. 29.
Footnote 75: Jurieu, Justification de la Morale des Reformez, contre M. Arnauld, i.
p. 30.
Footnote 76: 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 heretics. 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 tyrannical 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 adorned, it seems, with pictures of all the assassinations mentioned in Scripture, which they have, most presumptuously, perverted in justification of their feats in this department. (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 101.)
Footnote 77: Taylor, Natural Hist. of Enthusiasm, p. 256.
Footnote 78: De l’Existence et de l’Institut des Jesuites. Par le R. P. de Ravignan, 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.
Footnote 79: Gilly, Narrative of an Excursion to Piedmont, p. 156.
Footnote 80: 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.
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 extraordinary 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[81] that he had carefully perused the book of 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.[82] 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, seventy-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 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 spoken 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 contained in Jansenius, his book is neither so very rare nor so very large as to hinder me from reading it over from beginning 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 acquaintances, 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 impression 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.[83] The question of right, from its affecting the faith, appears much more important, and, accordingly, I took particular pains 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 become 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 determines 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[84] maintain it; and I myself have defended it in my Sorbonic thesis.”[85] 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 better, 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 insure 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?”
“No,” he replied; “we anathematize it as heretical and impious.”[86] Confounded by this reply, I soon discovered that I had overacted the Jansenist, as I had formerly overdone the Molinist.[87] 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 he 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 doctor, 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 ourselves—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 righteous have always the power of obeying the commandments; that is not the point in dispute between us; but mark you, they will not 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 requested him to give me an explanation of it, but he made a mystery of it, and sent me back, without any further satisfaction, to demand of the Jansenists if they would admit this _proximate power_.
Having charged my memory with the phrase (as to my understanding, that was out of the question), 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 _the 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 resolved to agree on this term _proximate_, which both parties might use indiscriminately, though they understand it diversely, that thus, by a similarity of language, and an apparent 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 imbibing these impressions of the malicious designs of the Molinists, which I am unwilling to believe on his word, and with which I have no concern, I set myself simply to ascertain the various senses which they give to that mysterious word _proximate_. “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 believe 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,[88] and to Father Nicolai.”[89] “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,’[90] 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 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 crossing 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 a person with good sight in the dark would not have the proximate power of seeing, according to you, as he would want the light, without which one cannot see?”