REACTION OF MORALITY.--ARNAUD, 1643.--PASCAL, 1657.--BASENESS OF THE
JESUITS.--HOW THEY GET HOLD OF THE KING AND THE POPE, AND IMPOSE
SILENCE UPON THEIR ENEMIES.--DISCOURAGEMENT OF THE JESUITS.--THEIR
CORRUPTION.--THEY PROTECT THE FIRST QUIETISTS.--IMMORALITY OF
QUIETISM.--DESMARETS DE SAINT SORLIN.--MORIN BURNT, 1663.
Morality was weakened, but not quite extinct. Though undermined by the
casuists, Jesuitism, and by the intrigues of the clergy, it was saved
by the laity. The age presents us this contrast. The priests, even
the best of them, the Cardinal de Berulle for instance, rush into the
world, and into politics; while illustrious persons among the laity,
such as Descartes and Poussin, retire to seek solitude. The
philosophers turn monks, and the saints become men of business.
Each set of people will acquire what it desires in this century. One
party will have power; they will succeed in obtaining the banishment of
the Protestants, the proscription of the Jansenists, and the submission
of the Galileans to the pope. Others will have science; Descartes and
Galileo give the movements; Leibnitz and Newton furnish the harmony.
That is to say, the Church will triumph in temporal affairs, and the
laity will obtain the spiritual power.
From the desert where our great lay-monks then took refuge a purer
breeze begins to blow. We feel that a new age now commences, modern
age, the age of work, following that of disputes. No more dreams, no
more school-divinity. We must now begin to work in earnest, early and
before daylight. It is rather cold, but no matter; it is the
refreshing coolness of the dawn, as after those beautiful nights in the
North, where a young queen of twenty goes to visit Descartes, at four
in the morning, to learn the application of algebra to geometry.
This serious and exalted spirit, which revived philosophy and modified
literature, had necessarily some influence on theology. It found a
resting point, though a very minute and still imperceptible one, in the
assembly of the friends of Port-Royal; it added grandeur to their
austerity, morality asserted its own claims, and religion awoke to a
sense of her danger.
Everything was going on prosperously for the Jesuits; as confessors of
kings, grandees, and fine ladies, they saw their morality everywhere in
full bloom; when in this serene atmosphere, the lightning flashes and
the thunderbolt falls. I speak of Arnaud's book, entitled "Frequent
Communion" (1643), so unexpected and so overwhelming.
Not only the Jesuits and Jesuitism were struck by the blow, but, in
general, all that portion of Christendom, which was enervated by an
easy indulgence. Christianity appeared again austere and grave; the
world again saw with awe the pale face of its crucified Saviour. He
came to say again, in the name of grace, what natural reason equally
asserts, "There is no real expiation without repentance." What became
of all their petty arts of evasion in presence of this severe truth?
What became of their worldly devotions and romantic piety, together
with all the Philotheas, Erotheas, and their imitations? The contrast
appeared odious.
Other writers have said, and will say, all this much better. I am not
writing here the history of Jansenism. The theological question is now
become obsolete. The moral question still survives, and history owes
it one word, for it cannot remain indifferent between the honest and
the dishonest. Whether the Jansenist did or did not exaggerate the
doctrine of grace, we must still call this party, as it deserves to be,
in this grand struggle, the party of virtue.
Arnaud and Pascal are so far from having gone too far against their
adversaries, that one might easily show they stopped short of the mark,
of their own accord, that they did not wish to make use of all their
arms, and were afraid (in attacking, on certain delicate points, the
Jesuitical direction) of doing harm to direction in general, and to
confession.
Ferrier, the Jesuit, avows that, after the terrible blow inflicted by
the _Lettres Provinciales_, the Jesuits were crushed, and that they
fell into derision and contempt. A multitude of bishops condemned
them, and not one stood up in their defence.
One of the means they employed to mend their case was, to say boldly
that the opinions with which they were reproached were not those of the
Society, but of a few individuals. They were answered that, as all
their books were examined by the chief, they belonged thus to the whole
body. No matter: to amuse the simple, they got a few of their order to
write against their own doctrine. A Spanish Jesuit wrote against
Ultramontanism. Another, the Father Gonzales, wrote a book against the
casuists: he was very useful to them. When, in course of time, Rome
was at last ashamed of their doctrine, and disavowed them, they put
Gonzales forward, printed his book, and made him their general. Even
in our own time, it is this book and this name that they oppose to us.
Thus they have an answer for everything. Should you like _indulgence_,
take Escobar; should you prefer _severity_, take Gonzales.
Let us now see what was the result of this general contempt into which
they fell after the _Provinciales_. Public conscience having received
such good warning, every one apparently will hasten to shun them.
Their confession will be avoided and their colleges deserted. You
think so? Then you are much mistaken.
They are too necessary to the corruption of the age. How could the
king, with his two-fold adultery posted up in the face of all Europe,
make his devotions without them? Fathers Ferrier, Canard, and La
Chaise, will remain with him till the end, like pieces of furniture
that are too convenient to be dispensed with.
But does not Rome perceive how much she is compromised by such allies?
It is not incumbent on her to separate from them?
Feeble attempts were not wanting. A pope condemned the apology of the
casuists that the Jesuits had risked. The energy of Rome went no
further: if any remained, it was employed against the enemies of the
Jesuits. The latter got the upper hand; they had succeeded, in the
beginning of the century, in getting the head of the Church to impose
silence on the doctrine of grace, as defended by the Dominicans; and
they silenced it again, in the middle of the century, when it
recommenced speaking by the mouth of the Jansenists.
The Jesuits showed their gratitude to Rome, for imposing this silence a
second time, by stretching still farther the infallibility of the pope.
They did not fear to build up still higher this falling Tower of Babel;
they increased it by two stories: first, they asserted the
infallibility of the pope _in matters of faith_. Secondly, when the
danger had become imminent, they took a bold and foolish step; but it
secured to them the friendship of Rome; they made the pope do in his
decrepitude what he had never dared to do in his power--declare himself
infallible _in matters of fact_.
And this at the very moment that Rome was obliged to confess that she
was wrong about the greatest facts of nature and history. Not to speak
of the New World, which she was obliged to admit, after having denied
it, she condemns Galileo, and then she submits to his system, adopts
and teaches it: the penance that she imposed on him for one day has,
since Galileo, been inflicted upon herself for two hundred years.
Here is another fact, still graver in one sense:--
The fundamental right of popes, the title of their power, those famous
Decrees which they quoted and defended, as long as criticism, unaided
by the art of printing, failed to enlighten mankind;--well! the pope is
obliged to confess that these very Decrees are a tissue of lies and
imposture.[1]
What? when popery has disclaimed its own word, and given itself the lie
on the fundamental fact, upon which its own right depends, is it then
that the Jesuits claim for her infallibility in matters of fact?
The Jesuits have been the tempters and corrupters of popes as well as
of kings. They caught kings by their _concupiscence_, and popes by
their _pride_.
It is a laughable, but touching sight to see this poor little Jansenist
party, then so great in genius and heart, resolute in making an appeal
to the justice of Rome, and remaining on their knees before this
mercenary judge!
The Jesuits were not so blind but that they saw that popery, foolishly
propped up by them in theology, was miserably losing ground in the
political world. In the beginning of the 17th century the pope was
still powerful; he whipped Henry IV. in the person of the Cardinal
d'Ossat. But in the middle of that century, after all the great
efforts of the Thirty Years' War, the pope was not even consulted in
the Treaty of Westphalia; and in that of the Pyrenees, between Catholic
Spain and very-Christian France, they forgot that he existed.
The Jesuits had undertaken what was perfectly impossible; and the
principal engine they employed for it--the monopoly of the rising
generation--was not less impossible. Their greatest effort had been
directed to this point; they had succeeded in getting into their hands
the greater part of the children of the nobility and of people of
fortune; they had contrived, by means of education, a machine to narrow
the mind and crush the intellect. But such was the vigour of modern
invention, that in spite of the most ingenious machinery to annihilate
invention, the first generation produced Descartes, the second the
author of Tartuffe, and the third Voltaire.
The worst of it is, by the light of this great modern flambeau which
they had been unable to extinguish, they saw their own deformity. They
knew what they were, and began to despise themselves. No one is so
hardened in lying as to deceive himself entirely. They were obliged
tacitly to confess that their _probabilism_, or doctrine of
probability, was at bottom but doubt, and the absence of all principle.
They could not help discovering that they, the most Christian of all
societies, and the champions of the faith, were only sceptics.
Of faith?--what faith? It was not, at any rate, Christian faith: all
their theology had no other tendency than to ruin the base on which
Christianity is founded--grace and salvation by the blood of Jesus
Christ.
Champions of a principle? No; but agents of a plot, occupied with one
project, and this an impossible one--the restoration of popery.
Some few Jesuits resolved to seek a remedy in themselves for their
fallen condition. They avowed frankly the urgent need that the Society
had of reform. Their chief, a German, dared to attempt this reform;
but it went hard with him: the great majority of the Jesuits wished to
maintain the abuses, and they deprived him of all power.
These good workmen, who had been so successful in justifying the
enjoyments of others, wanted to enjoy themselves in their turn. They
chose for their general a man after their own heart, amiable, gentle,
and kind, the epicure Oliva. Rome, recently governed by Madame
Olympia, was in a season of indulgence; Oliva, retiring to his
delightful villa, said, "Business to-morrow," and left the Society to
govern itself after its own fashion.
Some became merchants, bankers, and cloth-makers for the profit of
their establishments. Others following more closely the example of the
pope, worked for their nephews, and transacted the business of their
families. The idle wits frequented the public walks, coquetted, and
made madrigals. Others again found amusement in chatting to the nuns,
in the little secrets of women, and in sensual inquisitiveness. Their
rulers, lastly, who found themselves excluded from the society of
women, became too often the Thyrsis and Corydons of the Colleges; the
consequence was in Germany a formidable investigation; when a great
number of the proud and austere German houses were found to be criminal.
The Jesuits, who had fallen so low both in theory and practice,
increased their party at the risk of the strangest auxiliaries.
Whoever declared himself an enemy of the Jansenists became their
friend. Hence arose the immoral inconsistency of the Society--its
perfect indifference to systems. These people, who for more than half
a century had been fighting for free will, formed a sudden alliance,
without any intervening period of transition, with the mystics who
confounded all their liberty in God. Just before they had been
reproached with following the principles of pagan philosophers and
jurisconsults, who attribute everything to justice and nothing to grace
or love; now they receive quietism at its birth with open arms, and the
preacher of love, the visionary Desmarets de St. Sorlin.
Desmarets had, it is true, done them some essential service. He had
succeeded in dismembering Port-Royal, by gaining over some of the nuns.
He assisted them powerfully in destroying poor Morin, another visionary
more original and more innocent, who fancied himself to be the Holy
Ghost. He tells us himself how, being encouraged by Father Canard
(Annat) the king's confessor, he gained the confidence of this
unfortunate man, made him believe he was his disciple, and drew from
him written documents, by means of which he caused him to be burnt
(1663).
The protection of this all-powerful confessor gained for the most
extravagant books of Desmarets the approbation of the Archbishop of
Paris. He declared in them that he was a prophet, and undertook to
raise for the king and the pope an army of a hundred and forty-four
thousand _devots_, as knights of papal infallibility, to exterminate,
in concert with Spain, the Turks and the Jansenists.
These _devots_, or victims of love, were self-sacrificed people, who
affected a sort of inward annihilation, and who lived henceforth only
in God. Hence they could do no harm. The soul, said this prophet,
having become a nonentity, cannot consent; so that whatever it may do,
inasmuch as it has not consented, it has not sinned. It no longer
thinks at all, either of what it has done, or of what it has not done;
for it has done nothing at all. God being all in us, does all, and
suffers all; the devil can no longer find the creature, either in
itself or in its acts, for it acts no longer. By an entire dissolution
of ourselves, the virtue of the Holy Ghost flows into us, and we become
wholly God, by a miraculous _deiformity_. If there be still anything
jarring in the grosser part, the purer part knows nothing of it; but
both these parts, being subtilised and rarefied, change at last into
God; "_God then abides with the emotions of sensuality, all of which
are sanctified_."[2]
Desmarets did not confine himself to printing this doctrine with the
privilege of the king and the approbation of the archbishop. Strongly
supported by the Jesuits, he ran from convent to convent preaching to
the nuns. Layman as he was, he had made himself a director of female
youth. He related to them his dreams of devout gallantry, and inquired
about their carnal temptations. It seemed that a man so perfectly
self-annihilated might write fearlessly the strangest things--the
following letter for instance:--"I embrace you, my very dear love, in
your nonentity, being a perfect nullity myself, each of us being all in
our All, by our amiable Jesus," &c.
What progress is here made in a few years, since the "Provincial
Letters!" What has become of the casuists? Those simple people who
took and effaced transgressions one by one, giving themselves immense
trouble. They are all scattered to the winds.
Casuistry was an art that had its masters, doctors, and cunning men.
But now, what need of doctors? Every _spiritual_ man, every devout
person, every Jesuit in a short robe can speak as well as he in the
long one the soft language of pious tenderness. The Jesuits have
fallen, but _Jesuitism_ has gained ground. It is no longer requisite
to direct the _attention_ every day, for every distinct case, by
special equivocations. Love that mingles and confounds everything is
the sovereign, most gentle, and powerful equivocation. Lull the _will_
to sleep and there is no longer any intention, "The soul, losing its
nonentity in its infinity," will be gently annihilated in the bosom of
love.
[1] By two cardinals and librarians of the Vatican, Bellarmin and
Baronius, one of whom was the confessor of the pope.
[2] Desmarets de St. Sorlin's Delight of the Spirit, 29th _journee_, p.
170.