Chapter 27

190.If 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, or sanctioned by, the Romish Church.

191.The Romish distinction of sins intovenialandmortal, afforded too fair a pretext for such sophistical conclusions to be overlooked by Jesuitical casuists.

192.Francois Garasse was a Jesuit of Angouleme; he died in 1631. He was much followed as a preacher, his sermons being copiously interlarded 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 be mentioned, as some offset to the folly of this writer, that Father Garasse lost his life in consequence of his attentions to his countrymen who were infected with the plague.

193.See before, Letter vii., p. 159.

194.“An comedere et libere usque ad satietatem absque necessitate ob solam voluptatem, sit peccatum? Cum Sanctio negative respondeo, modo non obsit valetudini, quia licite potest appetitus naturalis suis actibus frui.” (N. 102.)

195.“Si quis se usque ad vomitum ingurgitet.” (Esc., n. 56.)

196.Op. mor., p. 2, l. 3, c. 6, n. 13.

197.Tr. 25, chap. 11, n. 331, 328.

198.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 Raphael, which he applauds; and even to the sayings of our blessed Lord, which he charges with equivocation! (Entretiens, pp. 378, 382.) Even Bossuet was ashamed of this abominable maxim. “I know nothing” 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 which in giving a false answer to a judge, when questioned at the bar, one is not capable of perjury.” (Journal de l’Abbé le Dieu, apud Dissertation sur la foi qui es due au temoignage de Pascal, &c., p. 50.)

199.Esc. tr. 1, ex. 8; Summary of Sins, c. 46, p. 1094.

200.“They had their Father Le Moine,” said Cleandre, “and I am surprised they did not oppose him to Pascal. That father had a lively imagination and aflorid, brilliantstyle; he stood high among polished society, and his Apology written against the book entitled ‘The Moral Theology of the Jesuits,’ was hardly less popular than hisCurrycomb 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 embellish 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 combat, and did not like to commit himself.” (Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, p. 78.)

201.“Nec obest alia prava intentio, ut aspiciendi libidinose fœminas.” (Esc. tr. 1, ex. 11, n. 31.)

202.Select., p. 2, d. 16, Sub. 7.

203.Bauny, Hurtado, Azor, &c. Escobar, “Practice for Hearing Mass according to our Society,” Lyons edition.

204.See before,p. 116.

205.Imago Primi Seculi, l. iii., c. 8.

206.Esc. tr. 7, a. 4, n. 135; also, Princ., ex. 2, n. 73.

207.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, decidedly 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?’ No; confess them to God who healeth them.” (In Ps. l. hom. 2.) And to whom did Augustine make hisConfessions? Was it not to the same Being to whom David in the Psalms and the publican in the Gospel, made theirs? “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!” (Confes., lib. x., p. 3.)

208.Princ., ex. 2. n. 39, 41, 61, 62.

209.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.” All the ancient fathers, such as Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, and Chrysostom, explain this remission of sins as the work of the Holy Ghost, and not of the apostles except ministerially, in the use of the spiritual keys of doctrine and discipline, of intercessary prayer and of the sacraments. (Ussher’s Jesuits’ Challenge, p. 122 &c.) Even the schoolmen held that the power of binding and loosing committed to the ministers of the Church is not absolute, but must be limited byclave non errante, or when no error is committed in the use of the keys.

210.In 3 part, t. 4, disp. 32, sect. 2, n. 2.

211.Summary of Sins, c. 46, p. 1090, 1, 2.

212.Denis Petau (Dionysius Petavius) a learned Jesuit, was born at Orleans in 1593, and died in 1652. The catalogue of his works alone would fill a volume. He wrote in elegant Latin, on all subjects, grammar, 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 Hommes Illustres, p. 19.) His book on Public Penance (Paris, 1644) was intended as a refutation of Arnauld’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 melancholy temper. When invited by the pope to visit Rome, he replied, “I am too old toflit”—demenager. (Dict. Univ., art.Petau.)

213.Reply to the Moral Theol., p. 211.

214.Esc., Practice of the Society, tr. 7, ex. 4, n. 226.

215.P. 1082, 1089

216.Theol. Mor., tr. 4, De Pœnit., q. 13 pp. 93, 94.

217.The work ascribed to Pintereau was entitled, “Les Impostures et les Ignorances du Libelle intituló la Theologie Morale des Jesuites: par l’Abbè du Boisic.”

218.That is, the sacrament of penance, as it is called. “That contrition 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 termcontrition, and make a distinction thereof into perfect and imperfect. The former of these iscontritionproperly; the latter they callattrition, which howsoever 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 say, that a sorrow arising from a servile fear of punishment, and such a fruitless 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.” (Ussher’s Tracts, p. 153.)

219.These quotations, carefully marked in the original, afford a sufficient answer to Father Daniel’s long argument, which consists chiefly of citations from Jesuit writers who hold the views above given.

220.It may be remembered that Diana, though not a Jesuit, was claimed by 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 forgotten. His style, like that of most of these scholastics, is described as “insipid, stingy, and crawling.” (Biogr. Univ., Anc. et Mod.)

221.Esc. Pratique de notre Société, tr. 7, ex. 4, n. 91.

222.Tr. 8, disp. 3, n. 13.

223.Of Trent. Nicole attempts to prove that the “imperfect contrition” of this Council includes the love of God, and that they condemned as heretical the opinion, that “any could prepare himself for grace without 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. (Note 2, sur la x. Lettre.)

224.The Jesuits are so fond of their “attrition,” or purely natural repentance, that one of their own theologians (Cardinal Francis Tolet) having condemned it they 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 majorem Dei gloriam. (Nicole, iii. 95.)

225.Tr. 1, ex. 2, n. 21; and tr. 5, ex. 4, n. 8.

226.Shocking as these principles are, it might be easy to show that they necessarily flow from the Romish doctrine, which substitutes the imperfect obedience of the sinner as the meritorious ground of justification, in the room of the all-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 aboutaffectiveandeffectivelove, is about as lame as the argument he draws from the merciful character of the Gospel, is dishonorable to the Saviour, who “came 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 pardoning 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 consequences. (Reponse Gen. au Livre de M. Arnauld, par Elie Merlat, p. 30.)

227.“Nothing on this point,” says Nicole in a note here, “can be finer than the prosopopeia in which Despréaux (Boileau) introduces God as judging mankind.” 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 confessor of Louis XIV., though himself a Jesuit, is said to have taken a pleasure in repeating his verses.

“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 confessor of Louis XIV., though himself a Jesuit, is said to have taken a pleasure in repeating his verses.

228.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 invective and poignant satire.

229.“Religion, they tell us, ought not to be ridiculed; and they tell us truth: 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 corruptions are likely to be the worst.” (Swift’s Apology for a Tale of a Tub.)

230.Prov. i. 26; Ps. lii. 6; Job xxii. 19. In the first passage, the figure is evidently what theologians callanthropopathic, or speaking of God after the manner of men, and denotes his total disregard of the wicked in the day of their calamity.

231.In most of the editions, it is “St. Chrysostom,” but I have followed that of Nicole.

232.We may be permitted to question the correctness of this interpretation, 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 Abbé D’Artigny is very severe against our author on this score, and quotes with approbation the following censure on him: “Is it possible that a man of such genius and erudition could justify the most criminal excesses by such respectable examples? 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 Mémoires D’Artigny, ii. 185.) How solemnly and eloquently 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.

233.“Religious,” is a general term, applied in the Romish Church to all who are in holy orders.

234.“So far,” says Nicole, “from his having told all that he might against the Jesuits, he has spared them on points so essential and important, that all who have a complete knowledge of their maxims have admired his moderation.” “What would have been the case,” asks another 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.)

235.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 Samaritan who “set on his own beast” the wounded traveller. But Nicole has shown that fanciful as these ancient interpreters often were, it is doing them injustice tofatheron them the absurdity of Father Garasse. (Nicole’s Notes, iii. 340.)

236.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. Arnauld.

237.The priests of Port-Royal.

238.This is the real question, which brings the matter to a point, and serves to answer all the evasions of the Jesuits. They boast of their unity as a society and their blind obedience to their head. Have they, then, ever,as a society, disclaimed these maxims?—have they even,as such, condemned the sentiments their fathers Becan, Mariana, and others, on the duty of dethroning and assassinating heretical kings? They have not; and till this is done, they must be held,as Jesuits, responsible for the sentiments which they refuse to disavow.

239.Prov. xxix. 9.

240.This postscript, which appeared in the earlier editions, is dropt in that of Nicole and others.

241.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 1623, 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 country, excepting his “Buckler of the Faith,” and his “Anatomy of the Mass,” which were translated into English. (Quick’s Synodicon, ii., 105.)

242.De Eleemosyna, c. 6.

243.See before,page 73.

244.See before,page 140.

245.See before,p. 177.

246.“The Parliament of Paris was originally the court of the kings of France, to which they committed the supreme administration of justice.” (Robertson’s Charles V., vol. i. 171.)

247.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 consisted, as usual, of the most barefaced attempts to fix the charge of misrepresentation on their opponent, accusing him of omitting to quote passages from his authors which they never wrote, of not answering objections 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 charges which have been substantiated against them.

248.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 togivethem this advantage. By identifying herself, at various times, with the Jesuits, she has virtually stamped their doctrines with her approbation.

249.The reference here is to an affray which made a considerable noise at the time, between Father Borin, a Jesuit, and M. Guille, one of the officers of the royal kitchen, in the College of Compiègne. 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. (Nicole, iv. 37)

250.In Prælog., n. 15.

251.The doctrines advanced by Lamy are too gross for repetition. Suffice it to say, that they sanctioned the murder not only of the slanderer, but of the person who might tell tales against a religious order, of one who might stand in the way of another enjoying a legacy or a benefice, and even of one whom a priest might have robbed 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.)

252.It is 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, asSaint 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 heretics and infidels. By indomitable perseverance he succeeded in establishing 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 canonized Ignatius and Xavier. (Leydecker, Hist. Jansen. 23.)

253.This is rather a singular fact, and applies only to one of the Society’s generals, viz., Vitelleschi, who, in a circular letter, addressed, January 1617, to the Company, much to his own honor, strongly recommended 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 animated 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.)

254.Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha), ii. 12.

255.City of God, book i. ch. 28.

256.See Cujas, tit. dig. de just. et jur. ad l. 3.

257.L. 2, c. 9, n. 66, 72.

258.L. ii., c. 9, n. 74.

259.Treat. i., examp. 7, n. 44.

260.In casuistical divinity, a distinction is drawn between the internal and the external tribunal, orforum, as it is called. The internal tribunal, or theforum poli, is that of conscience or the judgment formed of actions according to the law of God. The external tribunal, or theforum 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.)

261.Part. 5, tr. 19, misc. 2, resol. 99.

262.Doubts 4th and 10th.

263.“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 considerable size was sent him before going to 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 monarchs 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 delicate than M. Arnauld, has published something similar, in a work entitledRecueil de Pieces concernant l’ Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus, par le P. Jouvenci.”

264.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 time when she was urging, sanctioning, and exulting in the bloody barbarities 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, “Strages Hugonotarum—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 were slain on the earth?”

265.Providing for their consciences—that is, for the relief of conscience, by confessing to a priest, and receiving absolution.

266.See Letter xiii.,p. 264.

267.Pascal was assisted by M. Arnauld in the preparation of this letter. (Nicole, iv. 162.)

268.Quidni non nisi veniale sit, detrahentes autoritatem magnam, tibi noxiam, falso crimine elidere?

269.Dicastillus, De Just., l. 2, tr. 2, disp. 12, n. 404.

270.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 Gué, President of the Treasurers of France; M. Groslier, Provost of the Merchants; M. de Flèchre, President and Lieutenant-General; MM. De Boissart, De St. Romain, 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.

271.Apology for the Society of Jesus, p. 128.

272.First Part, p. 24.

273.Tr. 4, q. 22, p. 100.

274.Part. 4, p. 21

275.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 forbidden to hold meetings in the city, and were compelled to travel five leagues to a place of worship, till 1606, when they weregraciouslypermitted to erect their temple at Charenton, about two leagues from the city! (Benoit, Hist. de l’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 Daillé, were driven from their homes, their chapel burnt to the ground, and their people scattered abroad.

276.In the first edition it was said to be the Landgrave of Darmstat, by mistake, as shown in a note by Nicole.

277.The plan and materials of this letter were furnished by M. Nicole. (Nicole, iv. 243.)

278.Jansenius, who was made Bishop of Ipres or Ypres, in 1636. 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. Cyran.

279.The Jesuits must pass through a long novitiate, before they are admitted as “professed” members of the Society.

280.Ps. lxxxiii. 16.

281.Pp. 96, 4.

282.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 sacrament. They held that he was present spiritually, though not corporeally. Some of them expressed themselves strongly in opposition to those who spoke of the supper as a mere or bare sign. Calvin says: “There are two things in the sacrament—corporeal symbols, by which things invisible are proposed to the senses; and a spiritual truth, which is represented and sealed by the symbols. In the mystery of the supper, Christ istrulyexhibited 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 notsubstantiallypresent anywhere but in heaven. I do not, however, deny that his true body and true blood, which were offered for human redemption on the cross, arespirituallypartaken of by believers in the holy supper.” This is the general sentiment of Protestant divines. (De Moor, in Marck, Compend. Theol., p. v. 679, &c.)

283.Second letter of M. Arnauld, p. 259.

284.Ibid., p. 243.

285.Frequent Communion, 3d part, ch. 16.Poitrine—that is, the bodily breast or stomach, in opposition tocœur—the heart or soul.

286.Ibid., 1st part, ch. 40.

287.Theolog. Fam., lec. 15.

288.Ibid.

289.De la Suspension. Rais. 21.

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