doctrines of grace which they were accused of misrepresenting, are
delivered in so exclusive a manner in scripture, as that we do not
meet there also with several passages favourable to the most moderate
opinions: and we may easily believe, that the Jesuits availed
themselves of those passages, after the example of so many sects which
have found in the Bible, and in the fathers, matter to support their
opinions, while their adversaries found there in like manner wherewith
to combat them. The scriptures are, if I may use the expression,
common arsenals, to which every one goes, in order to arm himself from
head to foot, and just as he pleases. Accordingly it is not without
reason that the catholic church has decided, that it belonged to her
alone to give to infidels the true sense of the scriptures, and of
the fathers: a truth from which we cannot deviate, without exposing
ourselves to a dangerous Pyrrhonism in matter of doctrine.
What is very singular, and must appear more strange still to the
proselytes, whom they went to make at five thousand leagues distance
from our continent of Europe, is, that while the Jesuits preached
Christianity after their manner, other missionaries, their enemies,
monks and seculars, preached it quite differently to the same people;
warning them, at the same time, under pain of damnation, not to
believe in the catechism of the Jesuits. We may judge of the effect
which these contests would produce. “Indeed, gentlemen,” said the
emperor of China to them, “you take a great deal of trouble in coming
so far to preach to us contradictory opinions, concerning which you
are ready to cut one another’s throats.” After having made them
this representation, he left them to preach as long as they would,
persuaded that such apostles could not have any great success. He
availed himself besides, for the good of his country, of the residence
of the Jesuits, who talked much more at court of astronomy and natural
philosophy, than of the Trinity and religion, and who succeeded
at last in rendering the other missionaries either suspected or
contemptible.
It is not that they were not very ready to expose themselves to the
greatest dangers, and even to death, for the sake of that religion
which they burlesqued in their manner of preaching it, and which
served only as an instrument to their ambition. When the emperor
of Japan judged it proper (for reasons which appeared to him
indispensible) to exterminate Christianity from his territories,
the Jesuits had there their martyrs as well as others, and even in
greater numbers. The reader will not be surprised at it, when he
knows what was told me by a person extremely worthy of credit. He was
particularly acquainted with a Jesuit, who had been employed twenty
years in the missions of Canada; and who, while he did not believe a
God, as he owned privately to this friend, had faced death twenty
times for the sake of the religion which he preached with success to
the savages. This friend represented to the Jesuit the inconsistency
of his zeal: “Ah!” replied the missionary, “you have no idea of the
pleasure which is felt in commanding the attention of twenty thousand
people, and in persuading them to what we believe not ourselves.”
Such is the spirit of the method which the Jesuits have followed,
for teaching with success to mankind what they called religion
and Christian morality. Such was the moderate doctrine which they
preached at the court of Louis XIV. and by means of which they
succeeded in rendering themselves so agreeable. Accordingly it
was principally under the reign of that prince that the power, the
credit, and opulence of the Jesuits received in France such prodigious
aggrandizements: it was under this reign that they succeeded in
rendering the clergy dependent on them (we may even say their slaves)
by the disposal of benefices, with which the fathers la Chaize and
le Tellier, the king’s confessors, were successively entrusted: it
was in this reign that they succeeded, in consequence of the need
which the bishops stood in of them, in extorting, even while they
braved them, their confidence, or the appearance of their confidence,
and in obtaining the direction of several seminaries; in which the
youth, destined to the church, were brought up in their doctrines,
and in the hatred of their enemies: it was under this reign that
they succeeded, by decrying or vilifying the other orders and the
secular ecclesiasticks, in invading a great number of colleges, or
at least in obtaining permission for establishing new ones: it was
under this reign that they succeeded so far, through the confidence
and consideration which Louis XIV. gave them, as to draw all the court
to their college of Clermont. We remember still the mark of flattery
which they bestowed on that monarch, by divesting that college of the
name which it bore of the _Society of Jesus_, in order to call it the
college of _Louis the Great_; and nobody is ignorant of the Latin
distich which was made on that occasion, and in which the society was
reproached “with acknowledging no other God but the king.” Thus they
represented them at once as idolaters of despotism, in order to render
them vile, and as preachers of regicide, in order to render them
odious: these two accusations might appear a little contradictory, but
the business was not to speak the exact truth; it was to say of the
Jesuits as much ill as possible.
Lastly, what completed the power and glory of the society was, that
under Louis XIV. the Jesuits succeeded in destroying, or at least
in oppressing in France the Protestants and the Jansenists, their
eternal enemies; the Protestants, by contributing to the revocation
of the edict of Nantes, that source of depopulation and of evils to
this kingdom; the Jansenists, by depriving them of the ecclesiastical
dignities, by arming the bishops against them, by forcing them to
go and preach, and write in foreign countries, where even these
unfortunate people still found persecution.
Under this very reign in which the Jesuits were so powerful, and so
formidable, the most terrible strokes were given them, more terrible
perhaps than any they had felt till that time. The pleadings of
Pasquier and Arnaud were but bombast satyrs, and in a bad taste:
the _Provincial Letters_ gave them a wound much more deadly: this
master-piece of pleasantry and eloquence diverted and moved the
indignation of all Europe at their expense. In vain they replied,
that the greatest part of the theologists and monks had taught, as
well as them, the scandalous doctrine which they were reproached
with: their answers, ill written, and full of gall, were not read,
while every body knew the _Provincial Letters_ by heart. This work
is so much the more admirable, as Paschal in composing it appears
to have divined two things, which seemed not made for divination,
language, and pleasantry. The language was very far from being
formed, as we may judge by the greater part of the works published
at that time, and of which it is impossible to endure the reading:
in the _Provincial Letters_ there is not a single word that is grown
obsolete; and that book, though written above a hundred years ago,
seems as if it had been written but yesterday. Another attempt, no
less difficult, was to make people of wit and good folks laugh at
the questions of _sufficient grace_, _next power_, and the decisions
of the casuists; subjects very little favourable to pleasantry, or,
which is worse still, susceptible of pleasantries that are cold and
uniform, and capable at most of amusing only priests and monks. It
was necessary, for avoiding this rock, to have a delicacy of taste
so much the greater, as Paschal lived very retired, and far removed
from the commerce of the world: he could never have distinguished,
but by the superiority and delicacy of his understanding, the kind of
pleasantry which could alone be relished by good judges in this dry
and insipid matter. He succeeded in it beyond all expression: several
of his bon-mots have even become proverbial in our language, and the
_Provincial Letters_ will be ever regarded as a model of taste and
style. It is only to be feared, that the expulsion of the Jesuits,
lessening the interest which we took in this book, may render the
perusal of it less poignant, and perhaps make it be one day forgot.
This is a fate which the most eloquent author has to apprehend, if he
writes not on subjects that are useful to every nation, and to all
ages: the duration of a work, whatever merit it may have in other
respects, is almost necessarily connected with that of its object. The
_Thoughts of Paschal_, greatly inferior to the _Provincials_, will
live perhaps longer, because there is all reason to believe (whatever
the humble society may say of it) that Christianity will last longer
than they.
The _Provincials_ would be perhaps more assured of the immortality
which they merit in so many respects, if their illustrious author,
that genius so elevated, so universal, and so little formed for
taking an interest in scholastick trumpery, had turned alike both
parties into ridicule. The shocking doctrine of Jansenius, and of St.
Cyran, afforded at least as much room for it as the pliant doctrine
of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez. Every work, in which we sacrifice
with success to the publick laughter fanaticks who worry one another,
subsists even after those fanaticks are no more. I might venture to
foretell this advantage to the chapter _on Jansenism_, which we read
with so much pleasure in the excellent _Essay on General History_,
by the most agreeable of our philosophical writers. The irony is
scattered in that chapter to the right and left, with a delicacy
and ease which must cover both the one and the other with indelible
contempt, and make them weary of cutting one anothers’ throats for
nonsensical fancies. Methinks I see Fontaine’s cat[10], before whom
the rabbit and the weasel bring their suit on the subject of a pitiful
hole which they contend for; and who, by way of decision,
Jettant des deux côtés la griffe en même tems,
Met les plaideurs d’accord en croquant l’un & l’autre.
No body is perhaps fitter than this illustrious writer, to form a
history of theological quarrels, in order to render them at once both
odious and ridiculous, and thereby deliver mankind for ever from this
shameful and terrible scourge.
_The Practical Morals of the Jesuits_, written by doctor Arnauld,
which came out soon after the _Provincials_, though of a merit greatly
inferior, put the finishing stroke to the throwing upon these fathers
an odium, which they will never be able to wash off. This unfavourable
and deep impression, which is perpetually kept up by the reading
of these books, has even now found, at the end of a century, minds
disposed to believe all the ill which has been said of the Jesuits,
and of approving all the mischief that has been done to them. The
term of _Jesuitical morals_ has been, as it were, consecrated in
our language, to signify loose morals, and that of _Escobarderie_ to
signify an artful lie: and we know how much weight a fashionable way
of speaking carries with it, especially in France, towards procuring
credit to opinions.
The Jesuits, loaded from that time with so much hatred, and such a
number of imputations, were not to be till long after the victims of
it: they triumphed in the first violence of the attack, and became
but the more powerful, the more animated against their enemies, and
the more formidable to them. Yet what enemies had they to deal with?
With men of the greatest merit and reputation, and whose consideration
with the public still increased by their very persecution; an
Arnauld, a Nicole, a Saci; in one word, all the writers of the
celebrated house of Port-Royal. These adversaries were much more to
be dreaded by the society than plain theologists, whom the common
run of mankind listen not to, understand not, and have no esteem
for: they were great philosophers (as great at least as could be in
those days) men of the first class in literature, excellent writers,
and men of an irreproachable conduct. They had in the kingdom, and
even at court, respectable and zealous friends, whom they acquired
by their talents, their virtues, and the signal services for which
literature was indebted to them. The general and rational grammar,
called the _Port-Royal_ grammar, from their being the authors of it;
the excellent _Logic_ called by the same name; the _Greek Roots_;
their learned grammars of the Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish;
such were the productions of this free and respectable society. The
illustrious Racine had been their scholar, and had preserved, as well
as Despréaux, his friend, the most intimate connections with them:
their works on religion and morality were read and esteemed by all
France; and by the masculine and correct style in which they were
written, had contributed most of any, next to the _Provincials_, to
the perfection of our language, while the Jesuits counted yet among
their French writers only des Barris and des Garrasses. What pity
that those writers of the Port-Royal, those men of such superior
merit, should have thrown away so much genius and time in ridiculous
controversies on the good or bad doctrine of Jansenius, on idle and
endless discussions on free-will and grace, and on the important
question, Whether five unintelligible propositions be in a book which
nobody reads? Tormented, imprisoned, exiled for these vain disputes,
and employed perpetually in defending so futile a cause, how many
years of their lives have philosophy and letters to regret as lost!
What lights would they not have added to those with which they had
already illumined their age, if they had not been carried away by
these unhappy and pitiful distractions, so unworthy of taking up
the thoughts of men like them! May we venture to say a little more
of this, at the risk of deviating one moment from our subject? Can
reason withhold shedding bitter tears, when she sees how many useful
talents the quarrels, so often excited in the bosom of Christianity,
have buried? how many ages these wretched and scandalous contests have
destroyed to the human understanding? and how many geniuses, formed
for discovering new truths, have employed (to the great regret of true
religion) all their sagacity and abilities, in supporting or giving
reputation to ancient absurdities? When we run through, in the vast
royal library, the first apartment, of an immense extent, and find
it destined, for the greatest part, to a collection, without number,
of the most visionary commentators on the scriptures, of polemical
writers on, questions the most void of meaning, of school divines of
every sort; in short, of so many works from whence there is no drawing
one single page of truth, can we refrain crying out with sorrow (_ad
quid perditio hæc?_) “To what end all this loss?” Again, human nature
would have been in no very great degree to be pitied, if all these
frivolous and absurd objects, these _holy trifles_, as a celebrated
magistrate calls them[11], had ended in ill language only, and had
not occasioned the shedding of torrents of blood. But let us shut
our eyes on these dismal objects, and make only one other reflexion,
as consolatory as it is humiliating to the human mind. How is it
possible, that the same species of beings which invented the art of
writing, arithmetic, astronomy, algebra, chemistry, watch-work, the
art of weaving, so many things in short worthy of admiration in the
mechanical and liberal arts, should have invented the philosophy
and divinity of the schools, judicial astrology, the concomitant
concourse, versatile and congruous grace, the victorious delectation,
absolute accidents, and so many other fooleries, as would occasion
the suspending, by authority of justice, the person who should first
broach them now-a-days? Plato defined man, “an animal with two
feet without feathers.” How ridiculous soever this definition may
appear, it was perhaps difficult (the lights of religion set aside)
to characterise otherwise the indefinable human species; which on
one side seems, by master-pieces of genius, to have approached the
heavenly beings, and on the other, by a thousand incredible marks
of folly and cruelty, to have set itself on a level with the most
stupid and ferocious animals. When we measure the interval between a
Scotus and a Newton, or rather between the works of Scotus and those
of Newton, we must cry out with Terence, _Homo homini quid præstat!_
“What difference there is between man and man!” Or must we only
attribute this immense distance to the enormous difference of ages,
and think with sorrow that the _subtile_ and _absurd doctor_, who
wrote so many chimeras, admired by his contemporaries, had perhaps
been a Newton in an age more enlightened? Let us weigh well all these
reflexions; let us add thereto the perusal of ecclesiastical history,
those kalendars of the virtue of some men, and the weak wickedness of
so many others; let us behold in that history the usurpations, without
number, of the spiritual power; the robberies and the violences
exercised under the pretext of religion; so many bloody wars, so many
cruel persecutions, so many murders committed in the name of a God who
abhors them; and we shall have pretty nearly an exact catalogue of
the advantages which the disputes of Christianity have brought upon
mankind.
To return to the Jesuits, the nomination of father le Tellier to the
place of confessor to Louis XIV. furnished them with an opportunity of
wreaking fully their vengeance. This violent and inflexible man, hated
by his very brethren, whom he governed with a rod of iron, made the
Jansenists drink “to the very dregs,” according to his own expression,
“of the cup of the society’s indignation.” Scarce was he in place, but
they foresaw the evils of which he would be the cause: and Fontenelle
the philosopher said, on learning his nomination, “the Jansenists have
sinned.”
The first exploit of this ferocious and fiery Jesuit, was the
destruction of Port-Royal, where not one stone was left upon another,
and from whence they dug up the very corpses that were interred there.
This violence, executed with the last barbarity, against a house
respectable for the celebrated persons who had inhabited it, and
against poor nuns, more worthy of compassion than of hatred, excited
clamours throughout the whole kingdom: these clamours have re-echoed
down even to our times; and the Jesuits themselves confessed, on
seeing the spectacle of their destruction, that the stones of
Port-Royal were falling on their own heads to crush them.
But the indignation which the destruction of Port-Royal excited
against them, was nothing in comparison of the general commotion which
the bull _Unigenitus_ occasioned. It is certain that this bull was
their work: we know also the universal opposition which it produced
in almost all the orders of the state: we know the intrigues, the
frauds, the violences, which were put in practice to extort the
acceptance of it. We may remember that Louis XIV. having succeeded in
making it to be received (partly by foul and partly by fair means)
by an assembly of forty prelates, saw with pain nine bishops who
remained in opposition to it: he could have wished, for the peace of
his conscience, an entire uniformity in the episcopal corps. “That is
very easy,” said the duchess his daughter to him, “you need only order
the forty acceptants to be of the opinion of the nine others.” The
propositions condemned were, for the most part, so ill chosen, that it
is pretended that a great prince, on reading them in the bull, took
them for truths which it enjoined to be believed, appeared edified by
them, and was very much surprised, though of a docile disposition,
when his confessor undeceived him.
The magistrates were not the last to rise against this bull. They were
especially shocked at the censure of the ninety-first proposition.
“The dread of an unjust excommunication ought never to hinder us
from doing our duty.” Instructed by the melancholy effects of the
quarrels between the Priesthood and the Empire during so many ages,
they perceived how easy it was to avail themselves of this censure, to
detach the people, by menaces of excommunication, from the fidelity
which they owe their sovereign. They saw, in so rash a condemnation,
the secret attempt which the Jesuits and the court of Rome wanted to
make upon our maxims, of the temporal independence of kings. There
was no subscribing, with any modesty, to the Anathema launched out
against a proposition so evident, but by confining it to a tortured
sense, which it presents not, in judging it (which is ridiculous in
such a case) upon a pretended intention of the author in favour of
excommunicated fanaticks. Who doubts that fanaticks might not abuse
the truth which this proposition includes, to the braving of every
excommunication which they shall think unjust? But is the abuse,
which may be made of a truth, a reason for proscribing it? Would the
scripture itself be safe from a stigma founded on like motives?
Nevertheless, in spite of the opposition of the magistrates, the bull
was registered; every thing plyed, either willingly or by force,
under the weight of the royal authority: the fury with which father
le Tellier, the author of this strange production, persecuted all its
opposers, was carried so far, that the Jesuits themselves, though long
inured to violence, were terrified at his, and said aloud, “Father le
Tellier drives at such a rate, that he will overturn us.” They thought
not perhaps that they were speaking so much truth. It is this bull,
and the persecution which it occasioned, that after fifty years has
given the Jesuits the mortal blow: we shall see it in the sequel
of this recital. But it may not be useless to make, before-hand, an
observation on the conduct and the projects of father le Tellier.
Many people believe, that this Jesuit was a knave, void of religion,
who made its respectable name subservient to his hatred: it is much
more probable that he was a fanatick in reality, who, being persuaded
of the goodness of his cause, thought every thing permitted him, in
order to ensure the triumph of what he supposed to be _the sound
doctrine_. At the same time that he persecuted the Jansenists, he
accused Fontenelle to Louis XIV. as an atheist, for having written
_The History of Oracles_. Fontenelle, the pupil of the Jesuits, their
friend at all times, as well as the great Corneille his uncle,
disapproving also the doctrine and morality of the Jansenists, as far
as a philosopher can disapprove theological opinions; in short, ever
discreet and reserved with respect to religion, in his discourses,
as well as in his writings; such was the man whom le Tellier wanted
to ruin, at the very time that he sought to crush Quesnel and his
partisans. Would he have behaved in this manner, if he had not been
animated by a principle of persuasion?
Happily for Jansenism and for philosophy, Louis XIV. died. Le Tellier,
loaded with the public execration, was exiled to la Flêche, where he
ended, in a short time, a life odious to the whole nation. The duke of
Orleans the regent, being in every respect the reverse of Louis XIV.
was disposed neither to brave with violence the publick clamour, which
the constitution Unigenitus had excited, nor rudely to offend the pope
and the bishops, who were too far engaged to recede: he caused to be
accepted, almost without noise, this fatal bull, which, presented
by the Jesuits, had excited such great clamours: supported by the
philosophers who surrounded him, and who began, from that time, to
command attention; supported above all by his minister Dubois, whose
way of thinking, in matters of religion, was well known, he threw over
this theological dispute, a ridicule which put a stop to it.