THE JANSENISTS
WHILE Vincent de Paul was striving, by charity and patience, to renew
all things in Christ, the Jansenists* were busy spreading their
dangerous doctrines. When the Abbé de St. Cyran, the apostle of
Jansenism in France, first came to Paris, Vincent, like many other
holy men, was taken in by the apparent piety and austerity of his
life. It was only when he knew him better, and when St. Cyran had
begun to impart to him some of his ideas on grace and the authority of
the Church, that Vincent realized on what dangerous ground he was
standing.
* So called from their founder, Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Utrecht,
who died, however, before his heresy had been condemned.
"He said to me one day," wrote the Saint long afterwards to one of his
Mission Priests, "that it was God's intention to destroy the Church as
it is now, and that all who labor to uphold it are working against His
will; and when I told him that these were the statements made by
heretics such as Calvin, he replied that Calvin had not been
altogether in the wrong, but that he had not known how to make a good
defense."
After such a statement as that there could be no longer question of
friendship between Vincent and St. Cyran, although the latter, anxious
not to break with a man who was held in such universal esteem as
Vincent de Paul, tried to persuade him that he, St. Cyran, was really
in the right, justifying himself in the elusive language which was
more characteristic of the Jansenists than the frank declaration he
had just made.
Vincent, however, was too honest and straightforward, too loyal a son
of the Church, to be deceived. Realizing fully the danger of such
opinions, he soon became one of the most vigorous opponents of the
Jansenists, who, indeed, soon had cause to look upon Vincent as one of
the most powerful of their enemies. But although he hated the heresy
with all the strength of his upright soul, Vincent's charitable heart
went out in pity to those who were infected with its taint, and it was
with compassion rather than indignation that he would speak of St.
Cyran and his adherents. Not until they had been definitely condemned
by the Church did he cease his efforts to win them from their
errors--efforts which were received, for the most part, in a spirit of
vindictive bitterness.
The teaching of the Jansenists, like that of most other heretics, had
begun by being fairly plausible. The necessity of reform among the
clergy had come home to them forcibly, as it had to Vincent himself;
the Jansenists' lives were austere and mortified. The book which
contained their heretical doctrines, the Augustinus of Jansenius, was
read by only a few, and these mostly scholars. That the Sacraments
should be treated with the greatest respect and approached only by
those who were fit to approach them seemed at first sight a very
reverent and very proper maxim. Many people of holy lives took up this
teaching enthusiastically, among them some of Vincent's own Mission
Priests. When Antoine Arnauld, the youngest of the famous family which
did so much to further Jansenism, published his book _Frequent
Communion_, which might more truly have been called "_In_frequent
Communion," it was received with delight and eagerly read. That
Vincent clearly saw the danger is shown by one of his letters to a
member of the Jansenist company who had written protesting against the
attitude that St. Lazare was taking in the matter:
"Your last letter says that we have done wrong in going against public
opinion concerning the book _Frequent Communion_ and the teaching of
Jansenius. It is true that there are only too many who misuse this
Divine Sacrament. I myself am the most guilty, and I beg you to pray
that God may pardon me . . . . You say also that as Jansenius read all
the works of St. Augustine ten times, and his treatises on grace
thirty times, the Mission Priests cannot safely question his opinions.
To which I reply that those who wish to establish new doctrines are
always learned and always study deeply the authors of which they make
use. But that does not prevent them from falling into error, and we
shall have no excuse for sharing in their opinions in defiance of the
censure of their doctrine."
The letter was answered by a second protest in favor of Arnauld's
book, which was met by Vincent with equal energy:
"It may be, as you say," he writes, "that certain people in France and
Italy have drawn benefit from the book; but for a hundred to whom it
has been useful in teaching more reverence in approaching the
Sacrament, ten thousand have been driven away . . . For my part, I
tell you that if I paid the same attention to M. Arnauld's book as you
do, I should give up both Mass and Communion from a sense of humility,
and I should be in terror of the Sacrament, regarding it, in the
spirit of the book, as a snare of Satan and as poison to the souls of
those who receive it under the usual conditions approved by the
Church. Moreover, if we confine ourselves only to what he says of the
perfect disposition without which one should not go to Communion, is
there anyone on earth who has such a high idea of his own virtue as to
think himself worthy? Such an opinion seems to be held by M. Arnauld
alone, who, having made the necessary conditions so difficult that St.
Paul himself might have feared to approach, does not hesitate to tell
us repeatedly that he says Mass daily."
It is evident that so cold and narrow a teaching could not but be
repugnant to a man of Vincent's breadth and charity. The monstrous
heresy held by the Jansenists that Christ did not die for all men, but
for the favored few alone, filled him with a burning indignation. No
one could have deplored more than he did the unworthy use of the
Sacraments; but he held firmly to the truth that they had been
instituted by a loving Saviour as man's greatest strength and as a
protection against temptation and sin. And he was not going to believe
that He who had been called the Friend of sinners and had eaten and
drunk in their company would exact from men as a condition of
approaching Him a perfection that they could never hope to attain
without Him.
Indeed, the chief aim of the company of Mission Priests was to draw
the people to the Sacraments as to the great source of grace, and it
seemed to Vincent that the means taken by the Jansenists to destroy
certain evils were very much more dangerous than the evils themselves.
It was better, according to his opinion, even at the risk of abuse, to
make the reconciliation of a sinner to his God too easy rather than
too hard. The rule of the Mission Priests lays down that "one of the
principal points of our Mission is to inspire others to receive the
Sacraments of Penance and of the Eucharist frequently and worthily."
The teaching of the Jansenists sought, on the contrary, to inspire
such awe of the Sacraments that neither priests nor people would dare
to approach them save at very rare intervals.
It was the great mass of the people--poor, simple and suffering, those
children of God whom Vincent loved and in whose service the whole of
his life had been spent--whose salvation was in danger. It was against
them that the Jansenists were shutting the doors of salvation. Is it
any wonder that Vincent de Paul fought against them as only men of
strong conviction can fight, with heart and soul aglow in the battle?
Compared with this all other evils were light. His business was to
relieve suffering, to comfort sorrow, but above all to help men to
save their souls. There could be no yielding, no compromise with
error.
Rightly, therefore, did the Jansenists see in Vincent de Paul the most
dangerous of their enemies, and it was not surprising that both during
his life and after his death they hated him and assailed him with
abuse. He was "insincere, treacherous, a coward," they declared. They
spoke of the "great betrayal"; they held him up to ridicule as an
ignorant peasant; but Vincent went quietly on his way. The question
"What will people say?" did not exist for him. He simply did his duty
as it was made clear to him by God and his own conscience. It was hard
to fight against such uncompromising honesty as his, and more than
once the man whose ignorance the Jansenists had ridiculed tore their
specious arguments to tatters with the weapon of his strong common
sense.
Nevertheless, the dangers of Jansenism were a continual anxiety to
Vincent, and there were other sorrows no less poignant to be borne.
Foreign missions had been established in Africa and Madagascar, and in
the latter station no less than twenty-seven Mission Priests had lost
their lives. Some, it is true, had died the martyr's death; but the
work had not prospered. It was difficult to get news from far
countries in those days, and there were often such long intervals
between the death of one priest and the arrival of another that any
good that had been done was lost.
"There is nothing on earth that I desire so much as to go as your
companion in the place of M. Gondrée," wrote Vincent to one who was
just about to set forth on this dangerous mission; but the darker side
of the picture is not left untouched. "You will need the strongest
courage," he writes; "you will need faith as great as that of
Abraham."
The Madagascar Mission was, humanly speaking, a failure; the natives
were hostile, the missionaries not sufficiently numerous; it was
necessary in the end to give up the enterprise.
The Lazarists were at work also in Poland, in Ireland, and in the
Hebrides. Vincent had a gift for rousing zeal and charity in the
hearts of others, and there were always plenty of volunteers for the
most dangerous posts. But there were times when his heart nearly
failed him at the news that came to him of the sufferings of some of
his sons on their far-distant missions. There were times when apparent
failure weighed him down with sorrow, and the death of young Mission
Priests who had given their lives for the salvation of their fellowmen
caused a grief almost too heavy to be borne. But Vincent knew
How far high failure overtops the bounds
Of low success.
He could afford to leave his work and theirs in the hands of God. He
had done what he could, and God asks no more of any man.