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, andthat 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 first, in 1656, 4to; a second in 1657, 12mo; a third in 1658, 8vo; a fourth in 1659, 8vo; a fifth in 1666, 12mo; a sixth in 1667, 8vo; a seventh in 1669, 12mo; an eighth in 1689, 8vo; a ninth in 1712, 8vo; a tenth in 1767, 12mo.[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 allthe 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, entitledEntretiens 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 invraisemblance. 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 knaves,” “true hypocrites,” “villains animated with stubborn fury;” 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 thisspecimen 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 theEntretiens, 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 theline 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; butI 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 theFactumsof 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’Alembertexpresses 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 disclaimedin the Letters themselves. “Know, then,” it is said in letter fifth, “that their object is not the corruption of manners—that isnot 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 thandesign.”[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 greaterknowledge 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 thesame 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 theLettres Provincialeswould do well to cast a glance over theEntretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugenie, by Bouhours, a Jesuit, who has ably vindicated his order.”[73]Sir James had heard, perhaps, of Father Daniel’sEntretiens 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 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 atrocioussystem 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 appliedto 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 ofprobabilism![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 anillusion. 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.”
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS.
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS.
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS.
LETTER I.
DISPUTES IN THE SORBONNE, AND THE INVENTION OF PROXIMATE POWER—A TERM EMPLOYED BY THE JESUITS TO PROCURE THE CENSURE OF M. ARNAULD.
Paris,January 23, 1656.
Sir,—We were entirely mistaken. It was only yesterday that I was undeceived. Until that time I had labored under the impression that the disputes in the Sorbonne were vastly important, and deeply affected the interests of religion. The frequent convocations of an assembly so illustrious as that of the Theological Faculty of Paris, attended by so many 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 ofJansenius, 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 wholeof 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 wasproblematical; 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 determinesour 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 isproximate. 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 thisproximate 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 admitthe 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 termproximate, 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 thevarious senses which they give to that mysterious wordproximate. “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 thedisciples of M. le Moine. I begged him to inform me what it was to have theproximate powerof 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 ofseeing,” 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?”
“Precisely,” said he.
“And consequently,” returned I, “when you say that all the righteous have the proximate power of observing the commandments of God, you mean that they have always all the grace necessary for observing them, so that nothing is wanting to them on the part of God.”
“Stay there,” he replied; “they have always all that is necessary for observing the commandments, or at least for asking it of God.”
“I understand you,” said I; “they have all that is necessary for praying to God to assist them, without requiring any new grace from God to enable them to pray.”
“You have it now,” he rejoined.
“But is it not necessary that they have an efficacious grace, in order to pray to God?”
“No,” said he; “not according to M. le Moine.”
To lose no time, I went to the Jacobins,[91]and requestedan interview with some whom I knew to be New Thomists, and I begged them to tell me what “proximate power” was. “Is it not,” said I, “that power to which nothing is wanting in order to act?”
“No,” said they.
“Indeed! fathers,” said I; “if anything is wanting to that power, do you call it proximate? Would you say, for instance, that a man in the night time, and without any light, had the proximate power of seeing?”
“Yes, indeed, he would have it, in our opinion, if he is not blind.”
“I grant that,” said I; “but M. le Moine understands it in a different manner.”
“Very true,” they replied; “but so it is that we understand it.”
“I have no objections to that,” I said; “for I never quarrel about a name, provided I am apprized of the sense in which it is understood. But I perceive from this, that when you speak of the righteous having always the proximate power of praying to God, you understand that they require another supply for praying, without which they will never pray.”
“Most excellent!” exclaimed the good fathers, embracing me; “exactly the thing; for they must have, besides, an efficacious grace bestowed upon all, and which determines their wills to pray; and it is heresy to deny the necessity of that efficacious grace in order to pray.”
“Most excellent!” cried I, in return; “but, according to you, the Jansenists are Catholics, and M. le Moine a heretic; for the Jansenists maintain that, while the righteous have power to pray, they require nevertheless an efficacious grace; and this is what you approve. M. le Moine, again, maintains that the righteous may pray without efficacious grace; and this is what you condemn.”
“Ay,” said they; “but M. le Moine calls that powerproximate power.”
“How now! fathers,” I exclaimed; “this is merely playing with words, to say that you are agreed as to the common terms which you employ, while you differ with them as to the sense of these terms.”
The fathers made no reply; and at this juncture, who should come in but my old friend the disciple of M. le Moine! I regarded this at the time as an extraordinary piece of good fortune; but I have discovered since then that such meetings are not rare—that, in fact, they are constantly mixing in each other’s society.[92]
“I know a man,” said I, addressing myself to M. le Moine’s disciple, “who holds that all the righteous have always the power of praying to God, but that, notwithstanding this, they will never pray without an efficacious grace which determines them, and which God does not always give to all the righteous. Is he a heretic?”
“Stay,” said the doctor; “you might take me by surprise. Let us go cautiously to work.Distinguo.[93]If he call that powerproximate power, he will be a Thomist, and therefore a Catholic; if not, he will be a Jansenist, and therefore a heretic.”
“He calls it neither proximate nor non-proximate,” said I.
“Then he is a heretic,” quoth he; “I refer you to these good fathers if he is not.”
I did not appeal to them as judges, for they had already nodded assent; but I said to them: “He refuses to admit that wordproximate, because he can meet with nobody who will explain it to him.”
Upon this one of the fathers was on the point of offering his definition of the term, when he was interrupted by M. le Moine’s disciple, who said to him: “Do you mean, then, to renew our broils? Have we not agreed not to explain that wordproximate, but to use it on both sides without saying what it signifies?” To this the Jacobin gave his assent.
I was thus let into the whole secret of their plot; and rising to take my leave of them, I remarked: “Indeed, fathers, I am much afraid this is nothing better than pure chicanery; and whatever may be the result of your convocations, I venture to predict that, though the censure should pass, peace will not be established. For though it should be decided that the syllables of that wordproximateshould be pronounced, who does not see that, the meaning not being explained, each of you will be disposed to claim the victory? The Jacobins will contend that the word is to be understood in their sense; M. le Moine will insist that it must be taken in his; and thus there will be more wrangling about the explanation of the word than about its introduction. For, after all, there would be no great danger in adopting it without any sense, seeing it is through the sense only that it can do any harm. But it would be unworthy of the Sorbonne and of theology to employ equivocal and captious terms without giving any explanation of them. In short, fathers, tell me, I entreat you, for the last time, what is necessary to be believed in order to be a good Catholic?”
“You must say,” they all vociferated simultaneously, “that all the righteous have theproximate power, abstracting from it all sense—from the sense of the Thomists and the sense of other divines.”
“That is to say,” I replied, in taking leave of them, “that I must pronounce that word to avoid being the heretic of a name. For, pray, is this a Scripture word?” “No,” said they. “Is it a word of the Fathers, the Councils, or the Popes?” “No.” “Is the word, then, used by St. Thomas?” “No.” “What necessity, therefore, is there for using it, since it has neither the authority of others nor any sense ofitself?” “You are an opinionative fellow,” said they; “but you shall say it, or you shall be a heretic, and M. Arnauld into the bargain; for we are the majority, and should it be necessary, we can bring a sufficient number of Cordeliers[94]into the field to carry the day.”
On hearing this solid argument, I took my leave of them, to write you the foregoing account of my interview, from which you will perceive that the following points remain undisputed and uncondemned by either party.First, That grace is not given to all men.Second, That all the righteous have always the power of obeying the divine commandments.Third, That they require, nevertheless, in order to obey them, and even to pray, an efficacious grace, which invincibly determines their will.Fourth, That this efficacious grace is not always granted to all the righteous, and that it depends on the pure mercy of God. So that, after all, the truth is safe, and nothing runs any risk but that word without the sense,proximate.
Happy the people who are ignorant of its existence!—happy those who lived before it was born!—for I see no help for it, unless the gentlemen of the Academy,[95]by an act of absolute authority, banish that barbarous term, which causes so many divisions, from beyond the precincts of the Sorbonne. Unless this be done, the censure appears certain; but I can easily see that it will do no other harm than diminish the credit[96]of the Sorbonne, and deprive it of that authority which is so necessary to it on other occasions.
Meanwhile, I leave you at perfect liberty to hold by the wordproximateor not, just as you please; for I love you too much to persecute you under that pretext. If this account is not displeasing to you, I shall continue to apprize you of all that happens.—I am, &c.