recovered, nevertheless, in a short time, the place of confessor
to the king, of which they had been for a short time deprived: it
is pretended that their restoration at court was one of the secret
articles of the re-union between France and Spain in 1719. It is
added, that this article had been procured by the management of the
Jesuit d’Aubenton, confessor to Philip V. and extremely powerful at
the court of Madrid. For the honour of the ministers which France had
at that time, we must believe that this anecdote is fabulous.
Everything else was peaceable, with respect to the Jesuits, during
the remainder of the regency and the succeeding ministry: they aimed
only at supporting themselves, without making much noise. Cardinal
Fleury, who loved them not, was nevertheless persuaded that they were
to be protected strongly, “as the firmest supports of religion;”
the maintenance of which that minister looked upon as a part of
government. This manner of thinking in cardinal Fleury, with regard
to the Jesuits, is found expressed in some manuscript letters of his,
which I have read. “They are,” said he further, “excellent servants,
but bad masters.” In pursuance of this principle, he treated them
civilly, during his ministry, but without shewing them any marks
of declared favour: on the contrary, he greatly raised (and the
Jesuits were not the better pleased with him for it) the community of
Sulpiciens, who were much less illustrious and less powerful, but
also less formidable. Cardinal Fleury, an enemy to the Jansenists,
whom he looked upon as dangerous, and at the same time very little
biassed for what had any considerable degree of credit in its way,
of whatever kind it was, took under his particular protection this
numerous community: it had all that was necessary to make him think it
worthy thereof: it joined to the merit of being extremely devoted to
the bull, the happiness of having never made any noise. This minister
filled the bishopricks of France with a multitude of the pupils of St.
Sulpicius, who were more commendable for their devotion than their
talents: thus he planted the first seeds of that state of languor into
which the clergy of France seem now-a-days to be fallen, but from
which it is to be hoped they will soon rouze themselves; thanks to the
philosophick spirit which enlightens at present some of its members,
and which makes them justly look upon fanaticism and ignorance as the
two true scourges of Christianity.
However, the bull of which the Jesuits had been the promoters,
and which had met with so much opposition when it appeared, came
insensibly to be received by all the bishops. The French nation,
which clamours so readily, and which more readily still grows tired
of clamouring, was familiarized to a production which it had at first
called _monstrous_: every one received it, with an interpretation
according to his own liking; for such is the wonderful privilege of
these kinds of decisions of the church of Rome, that people may, by
all means, understand them just as they please, and submit to them
at the same time that they continue in their own opinion. Jansenism,
heretofore maintained (in spite of reason) by men of real merit, had
no longer for its support any defenders, but such as were worthy of
such a cause, a few poor and obscure priests, unknown even where they
lived: the phrensy of convulsions, which had raised dissensions in the
party itself, had rendered them completely contemptible, by rendering
them ridiculous: in short, this sect, now expiring and despised, was
at the last gasp, when an unforeseen chain of circumstances restored
it to a new life, which it hoped not for. The viper which the Jesuits
thought crushed, had strength enough to turn back its head, to bite
them in the heel, and to kill them. The reader is here presented with
the succession of causes, by which this strange event was produced.
The parliaments, which had opposed the society from its birth, had but
too much reason for persisting in the same sentiments with regard to
it. They were justly offended at the advantages of power and credit,
which it had obtained in spite of them: they were above all hurt by
the constitution _Unigenitus_, the acceptance of which the intrigues
of the Jesuits had forced them to register; an acceptance which they
thought, as we have seen, contrary to the rights of the crown; and in
order to break forth, waited only for a favourable occasion, without
perhaps presuming to flatter themselves that it would ever occur.
The contest occasioned by the refusal of the sacraments to the
Jansenists, was the first spark of the conflagration, the Helen
of that war, as small in its first object, as it is now become
important by its consequences. One of the principal archbishops of
the kingdom, and a bishop of Mirepoix, his aid and counsellor, both
of them thoroughly persuaded of the excellence of the bull, and of
the damnation of those who rejected it, resolved, like consistent
prelates, to order the communion to be refused to Jansenists at
the point of death. This refusal had before been attempted in some
provinces, but twice or thrice only, at wide intervals, and with
little noise: it was now thought time to take off the mask, and
absolutely to treat the enemies of the bull _Unigenitus_ as hereticks
cut off from the church. If we believe the crowd of constitutionary
theologists, the two prelates, authors and executors of this project,
were extremely in the right: but let us be permitted to relate here
(as mere historians) the singular reasons which were alledged in their
favour, and those that were opposed to them. “The bull _Unigenitus_,”
said its partisans, “ill received without doubt, and even spit upon
at its birth, had terminated in being unanimously received: there was
not, in all Christendom, one bishop who rejected this production,
whether good or bad, of the court of Rome: it was in vain to say that
it overturned the principles of Christianity; that the acceptance
of it had not been free; that some had received it through fear,
others through interest: it was accepted, and without opposition,
by the whole body of pastors. Here then we see, in the principles
of the Catholic church, all that ought to serve, by way of compass,
to plain Christians in their faith. It is not for them to examine
either the doctrines themselves, or the nature of the acceptance; it
is sufficient to them that they see clearly, that the visible church
adopts them. We understand here by the visible church, what every
Catholic understands by the term; that is to say, the pope, the
bishops, and almost all the ecclesiasticks, secular and regular, of
the second order. Whatever be the doctrine which this visible church
teaches, the faithful ought to believe firmly, notwithstanding even
the strongest appearances to the contrary, that it has always taught
the same; otherwise Jesus Christ would not have said true in promising
that church to be always with her. The passages of scripture, and
of the fathers, which may appear the most evidently contrary to the
new catechism, will be explained in a manner favourable to it: the
church has alone the right of fixing the meaning of them. In a word,
from the moment the church speaks, we must submit to her, whatever
she may say. After the council of Nice, the divinity of Jesus Christ
was very far from being as solemnly, as universally, as uniformly
received by the body of pastors, as the bull _Unigenitus_ hath been
in these latter times. Nevertheless, after the council of Nice, the
Arians were, from that time, hereticks declared, not withstanding the
partisans that still adhered to them. It may be; it is even out of
doubt, that in the councils which have decided on matters of faith,
many of the bishops declared for the good cause, through views of
policy, interest, or passion. Witness the unhappy facility with which
most of the prelates, who, under Constantine, had declared that the
Word was God, declared afterwards, under Constantius, that it was
but a man. Witness again the violent conduct of St. Cyril, and of
the council of Ephesus, with regard to Nestorius. Witness, lastly,
the intrigues which too often disturbed those holy assemblies, and
affronted, as we may say, the Holy Ghost, that presides in them. But
still, once more, it is not the motives, it is the result of the
decision, that the faithful ought to consider. It is by this result
alone that they ought to abide: they would have too much to do, if it
were necessary for them to go back again to the causes which dictated
the decree. God hath promised to his church infallibility in her
decisions; but he has not promised to every individual purity in his
motives: he makes use of all sorts of means, even of the passions of
men, for making the truth triumph, and be known; and he employs human
things, in order to make divine matters succeed.”
Agreeably to these reasonings (the justness of which we pretend by
no means to judge of) the partisans of the bull thought themselves
warranted to treat the Jansenists as declared sectaries. The latter
said, in their defence, that the universal church was possessed of
their cause, by the appeal which they had made to a future council;
and that, ‘till the decision which they waited for, they could not be
cast out of her bosom. It was replied, that a crowd of hereticks,
to begin with Pelagius, so odious to the modern Jansenists, had been
looked upon and treated as innovators, without having been condemned
expressly by any œcumenical council. They objected, that the bull
proposed in reality not one truth for belief; the accumulated
qualifications of _hereticks_, _smelling_ of _heresy_, of _ill
sounding_, of _offending pious ears_, &c. were not applied to any
one proposition of father Quesnel’s in particular. Some of their
adversaries, after the example of an illustrious chief of Israel[12],
replied to them, (making a jest probably both of them and the bull)
that it proposed “to believe with an implicit faith indeterminate
truths:” others said simply, that in a list of poisons, it was not
necessary to mark expressly the degree of malignity of each, in
order to warn people to abstain from them. It was demanded again of
the Jansenists, how the church could preserve one of her essential
characters, that of being _visible_, if she were reduced to a handful
of priests, opposed to all the other pastors? And they replied,
that the true church, the _visible_ church, was that which taught
_visibly_ sound doctrine, and which did not authorise, like the bull,
the most shocking Pelagianism: they added, that the church, _visible_
as she is, and must be, was not the less hid in appearance in those
unhappy times, when the fathers of the church assure us that the
whole universe “was astonished to see itself Arian.” In a word, the
Jansenists answered their adversaries, as Sertorius did Pompey,
Rome n’est plus dans Rome; elle est toute où je suis.
It was thus that the one and the other defended their cause. We say
nothing of the ill language which they added to them, and which on
either side were worthy of their reasons.
The magistrates alone (and this observation is not to be neglected)
opposed, on this occasion, to the constitutionists, reasons that
were unanswerable: they pronounced, that the doctrine, taught or
authorised by the bull, was contrary to the laws of the kingdom, and
of consequence ought not to be a pretext for vexation. Of this the
magistrates were competent judges, and the partisans of the bull had
nothing to reply: it belongs to the depositaries of the law to decide
what is conformable or contrary to it; and this question is not within
the province of the church.
It is certain, besides, that all those refusals of the sacraments,
occasioned by the bull, disturbed private families; that they sowed
dissension among the people: that in this view, at least, the
magistrates ought to take cognizance of it, and to employ, as they
did, the authority of the laws, to put an end to the confusion. But
the inconvenience which attends contests in theology, of hurting the
publick tranquillity, is the fruit of the error which was committed in
France, and almost every where else, of connecting civil affairs with
religion, of requiring a citizen of Paris to be, not only a faithful
subject, but also a good catholic, and as exact in providing holy
bread as in paying his taxes. As long as this spirit shall subsist
among us, the maxim of which fanaticks make an ill use so often, “That
it is better to obey God than man,” will be an invincible obstacle
to the most prudent measures of government and of magistrates for
stifling religious quarrels; because men like better to obey a master
of their own chusing (and who, after all, commands them to do only
what they please) than a master whom they have not chosen, and who
enjoins them what they dislike. In Holland, where the Jansenists form
a church absolutely separate, which the government knows nothing of,
and leaves in peace, they are neither the cause nor the object of any
disturbance. It is only by a discreet toleration (equally avowed by
religion and politicks) that we can prevent those frivolous disputes
from being contrary to the repose of the state, and to the union of
the subject. But when shall we see that happy time?
However this be, the Jansenists, treated at their death as
excommunicated persons, rose up against this new persecution. The
parliament, which had registered the bull with a very ill will,
undertook their defence; it banished the fathers who refused the
communion to dieing Jansenists: the archbishop, on his side, forbad
them, and deprived of their places those priests who obeyed the
parliament; and the unhappy _God-Bearers_ (so they are called) having
before their eyes exile on one side, and famine on the other, found
themselves under a melancholy alternative. Reasonable people were
surprised that the archbishop, the author of their misfortune, did
not go and present himself to the parliament, declare that they had
done nothing but by his orders, and give himself up as a victim for
so many innocents. They had so much the more reason to expect this,
as the virtue of that prelate, and his sincerity in this affair,
were by no means suspected. The Jansenists called him persecutor and
schismatick; the courtiers, obstinate: his partisans compared him
to St. Athanasius, who was also (they said) called obstinate and
rebellious by the courtiers of his time.
The dispute grew more and more warm: the court wished ineffectually
to put a stop to it; the Jansenists had found means to occasion more
trouble in their deaths than they had done during their lives; the
parliaments and the arch-bishop were exiled by turns. At last the
king, justly tired of these disputes, recalled the magistrates, and in
concert with them imposed alike silence on the partisans and on the
adversaries of the bull.
This law of silence, it is true, was not too well observed; it was
particularly broken by the encomiums which the Jansenists bestowed on
it: they printed large volumes to prove that it was necessary to be
silent; they resembled the Pedant in Moliere, who after having talked
a long time, and said abundance of foolish things, promises at last to
keep silence[13], and in order to shew that he maintains his promise,
interrupts every moment the conversation, by observing _that he opens
not his mouth_.
The constitutionists on their side had the presumption to say,
that the King had no right to ordain mad subjects to be silent on
the ridiculous object which heated their imaginations; that the
sixth general council had _anathematized_ the _type_ of the emperor
Constantius, which was also, as they pretended, nothing more than a
_law of silence_. The Jansenists replyed, that this council had done
better still, in _anathematizing_ Pope Honorius.
The King, employed like a good father, according to the expression of
a celebrated author, in parting his children who were fighting, was
desirous of supporting himself by an authority respectable to both
parties, and especially to the most numerous: he thought proper to
consult on this question, by which all France was agitated, the late
pope Benedict XIV. a man of understanding, who loved not the Jesuits,
and who at the bottom despised this controversy. The pope replied like
a crafty Italian; on one side he ordained the acceptance of the bull,
the work of one of his _infallible_ predecessors, which he could
not decently condemn; on the other, he declared at the same time,
that the Jansenists who rejected it, ought nevertheless to have the
sacraments administered to them at their deaths, “but at their own
risque and hazard,” and after having been _thoroughly advertized_ of
the danger which they ran with respect to their eternal salvation.
From this period the refusals of the sacraments became less frequent;
the Jansenists and their adversaries thought they had alike the pope
for them, and tranquillity seemed almost re-established.
It was not even lessened by the step which the parliament thought
itself obliged to take some time after, of protesting anew against
this bull _Unigenitus_; the acceptance of which it had registered
with reluctance. It called not in question indeed the doctrine of the
bull; that would have been to encroach on the authority of the church,
and it knew too well the limits of its own rights: it protested only
against the execution of this bull, declaring it contrary to what
is termed in France “the liberties of the Gallican Church.” This
protest had not the glory it merited; it was the sequel of a number
of writings, of which the French levity began to be tired. Nay,
the partisans of the bull even made a jest, with an indecency that
deserved punishment, of the “pretended liberties of the Gallican
Church,” by virtue of which, the parliament, according to the terms
of its decrees, enjoined the priests, under ignominious penalties, to
administer the sacraments: they saw not, said they jeeringly, how such
decrees supported and favoured the liberty of the church of France,
by forcing its ministers to do what they did not think they ought to
do. This way of talking, these contests, the pieces without number,
which resulted from them, served to feed the frivolous disposition
and gaiety of the nation: people laughed at the reciprocal animosity
of the theologists of both parties, for questions which deserved it
so little: for that animosity, though very usual, and of all ages,
always astonishes and amuses reasonable people. Every body laughed no
less at seeing, that notwithstanding the reiterated orders issued by
the Sorbonne, to mention no more of the bull _Unigenitus_, either in
their writings or their theses, the college displayed an attachment
the most obstinate to this bull, which it had rejected so long.
Nothing more was wanting, it was said, to all the strange things
that had happened on this subject, than to forbid without success
the faculty of divinity from teaching a doctrine which it cost so
much trouble to make them receive. Philosophy, above all, laughed in
silence at all these extravagancies, and amused herself with this
new change of the scene, waiting with patience for an opportunity
of profiting by it. Those among the philosophers who hoped for no
good from these quarrels, took the still wiser part, of laughing at
the whole. They observed the mutual rancour of the Jansenists and
their adversaries, with that disinterested curiosity with which they
observe the combats of animals, well assured, let what would happen,
of ending cause to laugh at the expence of some of them. So many blows
reciprocally struck on both sides with violence, did not yet reach
the Jesuits; employed on one hand in arming the bishops against the
expiring remains of the Jansenists their enemies; and on the other,
in animating, underhand, the court of France against the parliaments,
they were the secret soul of all this war, without appearing to
intermeddle in it. But the Jansenists, who, in the quarrel concerning
the sacraments, had, or at least thought they had, gained ground, grew
bolder by degrees, seemed to prepare for a more decisive stroke; and
the arch-bishop, their enemy, whetted, without knowing it, by his
zeal, the sword with which the society was soon to be pierced.
Two capital errors which the Jesuits committed about that time at
Versailles, began to shake their credit, and to prepare from afar
their disaster. They refused, as we are assured, through motives
of human respect, to take under their direction some powerful
personages[14], who had no reason to expect from them a severity
so singular in many respects. This indiscreet refusal, it is said,
contributed to hasten their ruin by the very hands which they might
have made their support: thus these men, who had been so often
accused of loose morals, and who had maintained themselves at court
by such morals alone, were undone the moment that they wanted (even
to their own great regret) to profess severity; an abundant subject
for reflexions, and an evident proof that the Jesuits, from the very
first till that time, had taken the right way to support themselves,
seeing they ceased to be, the moment that they deviated from it. It is
added, that at the same time that they displeased the court by their
scruples, they displeased it also by their intrigues. They laid, it
was said, snares for some men in place, whose crime in their eyes was
that of being wanting in devotion to the society, the only country
which they know: the usual effect of these sorts of attacks is, to
strengthen the credit which they do not overthrow; those who were the
objects of the Jesuitical plots obtained but the more favour by that
means.