neutral on the first question, would not all prove so on the second; but
anxious to hear his reasons, I asked: “Why, then, have they attacked
this unfortunate proposition?”
“Is it possible,” he replied, “you can be ignorant of these two things,
which I thought had been known to the veriest tyro in these
matters?—that, on the one hand, M. Arnauld has uniformly avoided
advancing a single tenet which is not powerfully supported by the
tradition of the Church; and that, on the other hand, his enemies have
determined, cost what it may, to cut that ground from under him; and,
accordingly, that as the writings of the former afforded no handle to
the designs of the latter, they have been obliged, in order to satiate
their revenge, to seize on some proposition, it mattered not what, and
to condemn it without telling why or wherefore. Do not you know how the
Jansenists keep them in check, and annoy them so desperately, that they
cannot drop the slightest word against the principles of the fathers
without being incontinently overwhelmed with whole volumes, under the
pressure of which they are forced to succumb? So that, after a great
many proofs of their weakness, they have judged it more to the purpose,
and much less troublesome, to censure than to reply—it being a much
easier matter with them to find monks than reasons.”[114]
“Why then,” said I, “if this be the case, their censure is not worth a
straw; for who will pay any regard to it, when they see it to be without
foundation, and refuted, as it no doubt will be, by the answers given to
it?”
“If you knew the temper of people,” replied my friend the doctor, “you
would talk in another sort of way. Their censure, censurable as it is,
will produce nearly all its designed effect for a time; and although, by
the force of demonstration, it is certain that, in course of time, its
invalidity will be made apparent, it is equally true that, at first, it
will tell as effectually on the minds of most people as if it had been
the most righteous sentence in the world. Let it only be cried about the
streets: ‘Here you have the censure of M. Arnauld!—here you have the
condemnation of the Jansenists!’ and the Jesuits will find their account
in it. How few will ever read it! How few of them who do read, will
understand it! How few will observe that it answers no objections! How
few will take the matter to heart, or attempt to sift it to the
bottom?—Mark then, how much advantage this gives to the enemies of the
Jansenists. They are sure to make a triumph of it, though a vain one, as
usual, for some months at least—and that is a great matter for them—they
will look out afterwards for some new means of subsistence. They live
from hand to mouth, sir. It is in this way they have contrived to
maintain themselves down to the present day. Sometimes it is by a
catechism in which a child is made to condemn their opponents; then it
is by a procession, in which sufficient grace leads the efficacious in
triumph; again it is by a comedy, in which Jansenius is represented as
carried off by devils; at another time it is by an almanac; and now it
is by this censure.”[115]
“In good sooth,” said I, “I was on the point of finding fault with the
conduct of the Molinists; but after what you have told me, I must say I
admire their prudence and their policy. I see perfectly well that they
could not have followed a safer or more judicious course.”
“You are right,” returned he; “their safest policy has always been to
keep silent; and this led a certain learned divine to remark, ‘that the
cleverest among them are those who intrigue much, speak little, and
write nothing.’
“It is on this principle that, from the commencement of the meetings,
they prudently ordained that, if M. Arnauld came into the Sorbonne, it
must be simply to explain what he believed, and not to enter the lists
of controversy with any one. The examiners having ventured to depart a
little from this prudent arrangement, suffered for their temerity. They
found themselves rather too vigorously[116] refuted by his second
apology.
“On the same principle, they had recourse to that rare and very novel
device of the half-hour and the sand-glass.[117] By this means they rid
themselves of the importunity of those troublesome doctors,[118] who
might undertake to refute all their arguments, to produce books which
might convict them of forgery, to insist on a reply, and reduce them to
the predicament of having none to give.
“It is not that they were so blind as not to see that this encroachment
on liberty, which has induced so many doctors to withdraw from the
meetings, would do no good to their censure; and that the protest of
nullity, taken on this ground by M. Arnauld before it was concluded,
would be a bad preamble for securing it a favorable reception. They know
very well that unprejudiced persons place fully as much weight on the
judgment of seventy doctors, who had nothing to gain by defending M.
Arnauld, as on that of a hundred others who had nothing to lose by
condemning him. But, upon the whole, they considered that it would be of
vast importance to have a censure, although it should be the act of a
party only in the Sorbonne, and not of the whole body; although it
should be carried with little or no freedom of debate, and obtained by a
great many small manœuvres not exactly according to order; although it
should give no explanation of the matter in dispute; although it should
not point out in what this heresy consists, and should say as little as
possible about it, for fear of committing a mistake. This very silence
is a mystery in the eyes of the simple; and the censure will reap this
singular advantage from it, that they may defy the most critical and
subtle theologians to find in it a single weak argument.
“Keep yourself easy, then, and do not be afraid of being set down as a
heretic, though you should make use of the condemned proposition. It is
bad, I assure you, only as occurring in the second letter of M. Arnauld.
If you will not believe this statement on my word, I refer you to M. le
Moine, the most zealous of the examiners, who, in the course of
conversation with a doctor of my acquaintance this very morning, on
being asked by him where lay the point of difference in dispute, and if
one would no longer be allowed to say what the fathers had said before
him, made the following exquisite reply: ‘This proposition would be
orthodox in the mouth of any other—it is only as coming from M. Arnauld
that the Sorbonne have condemned it!’ You must now be prepared to admire
the machinery of Molinism, which can produce such prodigious
overturnings in the Church—that what is catholic in the fathers becomes
heretical in M. Arnauld—that what is heretical in the Semi-Pelagians
becomes orthodox in the writings of the Jesuits; the ancient doctrine of
St. Augustine becomes an intolerable innovation, and new inventions,
daily fabricated before our eyes, pass for the ancient faith of the
Church.” So saying, he took his leave of me.
This information has satisfied my purpose. I gather from it that this
same heresy is one of an entirely new species. It is not the sentiments
of M. Arnauld that are heretical; it is only his person. This is a
personal heresy. He is not a heretic for anything he has said or
written, but simply because he is M. Arnauld. This is all they have to
say against him. Do what he may, unless he cease to be, he will never be
a good Catholic. The grace of St. Augustine will never be the true
grace, so long as he continues to defend it. It would become so at once,
were he to take it into his head to impugn it. That would be a sure
stroke, and almost the only plan for establishing the truth and
demolishing Molinism; such is the fatality attending all the opinions
which he embraces.
Let us leave them, then, to settle their own differences. These are the
disputes of theologians, not of theology. We, who are no doctors, have
nothing to do with their quarrels. Tell our friends the news of the
censure, and love me while I am, &c.[119]
-----
Footnote 109:
The charge of “denying the mystery of transubstantiation,” certainly
did not justly apply to the Jansenists as such; these religious
devotees denied nothing. Their system, so far as the dogmas of the
Church were concerned, was one of implicit faith; but though Arnauld,
Nicole, and the other learned men among them, stiffly maintained the
leading tenets of the Romish Church, in opposition to those of the
Reformers the Jansenist creed, as held by their pious followers, was
practically at variance with transubstantiation, and many other errors
of the Church to which they nominally belonged. (Mad.
Schimmelpenninck’s Demolition of Port-Royal, pp. 77–80, &c.)
Footnote 110:
_Atroces_—“atrocious.” (Edit. 1657.)
Footnote 111:
_Des plus detestables erreurs_—“the most detestable errors.” (Edit.
1657.) _Erreurs_—“errors.” (Nicole’s Edit., 1767.)
Footnote 112:
_Horriblement contraire_—“horribly contrary.” (Edit. 1657.)
Footnote 113:
The meaning of Chrysostom is good, but the expressions of these
ancient fathers are often more remarkable for their strength than
their precision. The Protestant reader hardly needs to be reminded,
that if divine grace can be said to have failed the Apostle Peter at
his fall, it can only be in the sense of a temporary suspension of its
influences; and that this withdrawment of grace must be regarded as
the punishment, and not as the cause, of his own negligence.
Footnote 114:
That is, they could more readily procure monks to vote against M.
Arnauld, than arguments to answer him.
Footnote 115:
The allusions in the text afford curious illustrations of the mode of
warfare pursued by the Jesuits of the seventeenth century. The first
refers to a comic catechism, in which the simple language of childhood
was employed as a vehicle for the most calumnious charges against the
opponents of the Society. Pascal refers again to this catechism in
Letter xvii. The second device was a sort of school-boy masquerade. A
handsome youth, disguised as a female, in splendid attire, and bearing
the inscription of _sufficient grace_, dragged behind him another
dressed as a bishop (representing Jansenius, bishop of Ypres), who
followed with a rueful visage, amidst the hootings of the other boys.
The comedy referred to was acted in the Jesuits’ college of Clermont.
The almanacs published in France at that period being usually
embellished with rude cuts for the amusement of the vulgar, the
Jesuits procured the insertion of a caricature of the Jansenists, who
were represented as pursued by the pope, and taking refuge among the
Calvinists. This, however, called forth a retaliation, in the shape of
a poem, entitled “The Prints of the Famous Jesuitical Almanac,” in
which the Jesuits were so successfully held up to ridicule, that they
could hardly show face for some time in the streets of Paris. (Nicole,
i. p. 208.)
Footnote 116:
_Vertement_—“smartly.” (Edit. 1657.)
Footnote 117:
See Letter ii.
Footnote 118:
_Ces docteurs_—“those doctors.” (Edit. 1767.)
Footnote 119:
In Nicole’s edition, this letter is signed with the initials “E. A. A.
B. P. A. F. D. E. P.” which seem merely a chance medley of letters, to
quiz those who were so anxious to discover the author. There may have
been an allusion to the absurd story of a Jansenist conference held,
it was said, at Bourg-Fontaine, in 1621, to deliberate on ways and
means for abolishing Christianity; among the persons present at which,
indicated by initials, Anthony Arnauld was ridiculously accused of
having been one under the initials A. A. (See Bayle’s Dict., art.
_Ant. Arnauld_.)
LETTER IV.
ON ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE.
PARIS, _February 25, 1656_.
SIR,—Nothing can come up to the Jesuits. I have seen Jacobins, doctors,
and all sorts of people in my day, but such an interview as I have just
had was wanting to complete my knowledge of mankind. Other men are
merely copies of them. As things are always found best at the
fountainhead, I paid a visit to one of the ablest among them, in company
with my trusty Jansenist—the same who accompanied me to the Dominicans.
Being particularly anxious to learn something of a dispute which they
have with the Jansenists about what they call _actual grace_, I said to
the worthy father that I would be much obliged to him if he would
instruct me on this point—that I did not even know what the term meant,
and would thank him to explain it. “With all my heart,” the Jesuit
replied; “for I dearly love inquisitive people. Actual grace, according
to our definition, ‘is an inspiration of God, whereby he makes us to
know his will, and excites within us a desire to perform it.’”
“And where,” said I, “lies your difference with the Jansenists on this
subject?”
“The difference lies here,” he replied; “we hold that God bestows actual
grace _on all men in every case of temptation_; for we maintain, that
unless a person have, whenever tempted, actual grace to keep him from
sinning, his sin, whatever it may be, can never be imputed to him. The
Jansenists, on the other hand, affirm that sins, though committed
without actual grace, are, nevertheless, imputed; but they are a pack of
fools.” I got a glimpse of his meaning; but, to obtain from him a fuller
explanation, I observed: “My dear father, it is that phrase _actual
grace_ that puzzles me; I am quite a stranger to it, and if you would
have the goodness to tell me the same thing over again, without
employing that term, you would infinitely oblige me.”
“Very good,” returned the father; “that is to say, you want me to
substitute the definition in place of the thing defined; that makes no
alteration on the sense; I have no objections. We maintain it, then, as
an undeniable principle, _that an action cannot be imputed as a sin,
unless God bestow on us, before committing it, the knowledge of the evil
that is in the action, and an inspiration inciting us to avoid it_. Do
you understand me now?”
Astonished at such a declaration, according to which, no sins of
surprise, nor any of those committed in entire forgetfulness of God,
could be imputed, I turned round to my friend the Jansenist, and easily
discovered from his looks that he was of a different way of thinking.
But as he did not utter a word, I said to the monk, “I would fain wish,
my dear father, to think that what you have now said is true, and that
you have good proofs for it.”
“Proofs, say you!” he instantly exclaimed: “I shall furnish you with
these very soon, and the very best sort too; let me alone for that.”
So saying, he went in search of his books, and I took this opportunity
of asking my friend if there was any other person who talked in this
manner? “Is this so strange to you?” he replied. “You may depend upon it
that neither the fathers, nor the popes, nor councils, nor Scripture,
nor any book of devotion, employ such language; but if you wish casuists
and modern schoolmen, he will bring you a goodly number of them on his
side.” “O! but I care not a fig about these authors, if they are
contrary to tradition,” I said. “You are right,” he replied.
As he spoke, the good father entered the room, laden with books; and
presenting to me the first that came to hand, “Read that,” he said;
“this is ‘The Summary of Sins,’ by Father Bauny[120]—the fifth edition
too, you see, which shows that it is a good book.”
“It is a pity, however,” whispered the Jansenist in my ear, “that this
same book has been condemned at Rome, and by the bishops of France.”
“Look at page 906,” said the father. I did so, and read as follows: “In
order to sin and become culpable in the sight of God, it is necessary to
know that the thing we wish to do is not good, or at least to doubt that
it is—to fear or to judge that God takes no pleasure in the action which
we contemplate, but forbids it; and in spite of this, to commit the
deed, leap the fence, and transgress.”
“This is a good commencement,” I remarked. “And yet,” said he, “mark how
far envy will carry some people. It was on that very passage that M.
Hallier, before he became one of our friends, bantered Father Bauny, by
applying to him these words: _Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi_—‘Behold the
man that taketh away the sins of the world!’”
“Certainly,” said I, “according to Father Bauny, we may be said to
behold a redemption of an entirely new description.”
“Would you have a more authentic witness on the point?” added he. “Here
is the book of Father Annat.[121] It is the last that he wrote against
M. Arnauld. Turn up to page 34, where there is a dog’s ear, and read the
lines which I have marked with pencil—they ought to be written in
letters of gold.” I then read these words: “He that has no thought of
God, nor of his sins, nor any apprehension (that is, as he explained it,
any knowledge) of his obligation to exercise the acts of love to God or
contrition, has no actual grace for exercising those acts; but it is
equally true that he is guilty of no sin in omitting them, and that, if
he is damned, it will not be as a punishment for that omission.” And a
few lines below, he adds: “The same thing may be said of a culpable
commission.”
“You see,” said the monk, “how he speaks of sins of _omission_ and of
_commission_. Nothing escapes him. What say you to that?”
“Say!” I exclaimed. “I am delighted! What a charming train of
consequences do I discover flowing from this doctrine! I can see the
whole results already; and such mysteries present themselves before me!
Why, I see more people, beyond all comparison, justified by this
ignorance and forgetfulness of God, than by grace and the
sacraments![122] But, my dear father, are you not inspiring me with a
delusive joy? Are you sure there is nothing here like that _sufficiency_
_which suffices not_? I am terribly afraid of the _Distinguo_;—I was
taken in with that once already! Are you quite in earnest?”
“How now!” cried the monk, beginning to get angry; “here is no matter
for jesting. I assure you there is no such thing as equivocation here.”
“I am not making a jest of it,” said I; “but that is what I really
dread, from pure anxiety to find it true.”[123]
“Well then,” he said, “to assure yourself still more of it, here are the
writings of M. le Moine,[124] who taught the doctrine in a full meeting
of the Sorbonne. He learned it from us, to be sure; but he has the merit
of having cleared it up most admirably. O how circumstantially he goes
to work! He shows that, in order to make out an action to be _a sin_,
all these things must have passed through the mind. Read, and weigh
every word.”—I then read what I now give you in a translation from the
original Latin: “1. On the one hand, God sheds abroad on the soul some
measure of love, which gives it a bias toward the thing commanded; and
on the other, a rebellious concupiscence solicits it in the opposite
direction. 2. God inspires the soul with a knowledge of its own
weakness. 3. God reveals the knowledge of the physician who can heal it.
4. God inspires it with a desire to be healed. 5. God inspires a desire
to pray and solicit his assistance.”
“And unless all these things occur and pass through the soul,” added the
monk, “the action is not properly a sin, and cannot be imputed, as M. le
Moine shows in the same place and in what follows. Would you wish to
have other authorities for this? Here they are.”
“All modern ones, however,” whispered my Jansenist friend.
“So I perceive,” said I to him aside; and then, turning to the monk: “O
my dear sir,” cried I, “what a blessing this will be to some persons of
my acquaintance! I must positively introduce them to you. You have
never, perhaps, met with people who had fewer sins to account for all
your life. For, in the first place, they never think of God at all;
their vices have got the better of their reason; they have never known
either their weakness or the physician who can cure it; they have never
thought of ‘desiring the health of their soul,’ and still less of
‘praying to God to bestow it;’ so that, according to M. le Moine, they
are still in the state of baptismal innocence. They have ‘never had a
thought of loving God or of being contrite for their sins;’ so that,
according to Father Annat, they have never committed sin through the
want of charity and penitence. Their life is spent in a perpetual round
of all sorts of pleasures, in the course of which they have not been
interrupted by the slightest remorse. These excesses had led me to
imagine that their perdition was inevitable; but you, father, inform me
that these same excesses secure their salvation. Blessings on you, my
good father, for this way of justifying people! Others prescribe painful
austerities for healing the soul; but you show that souls which may be
thought desperately distempered are in quite good health. What an
excellent device for being happy both in this world and in the next! I
had always supposed that the less a man thought of God, the more he
sinned; but, from what I see now, if one could only succeed in bringing
himself not to think upon God at all, everything would be pure with him
in all time coming. Away with your half-and-half sinners, who retain
some sneaking affection for virtue! They will be damned every one of
them, these semi-sinners. But commend me to your arrant
sinners—hardened, unalloyed, out-and-out, thorough-bred sinners. Hell is
no place for them; they have cheated the devil, purely by virtue of
their devotion to his service!”
The good father, who saw very well the connection between these
consequences and his principle, dexterously evaded them; and maintaining
his temper, either from good nature or policy, he merely replied: “To
let you understand how we avoid these inconveniences, you must know
that, while we affirm that these reprobates to whom you refer would be
without sin if they had no thoughts of conversion and no desires to
devote themselves to God, we maintain, that they all actually _have_
such thoughts and desires, and that God never permitted a man to sin
without giving him previously a view of the evil which he contemplated,
and a desire, either to avoid the offence, or at all events to implore
his aid to enable him to avoid it; and none but Jansenists will assert
the contrary.”
“Strange! father,” returned I; “is this, then, the heresy of the
Jansenists, to deny that every time a man commits a sin, he is troubled
with a remorse of conscience, in spite of which, he ‘leaps the fence and
transgresses,’ as Father Bauny has it? It is rather too good a joke to
be made a heretic for that. I can easily believe that a man may be
damned for not having good thoughts; but it never would have entered my
head to imagine that any man could be subjected to that doom for not
believing that all mankind must have good thoughts! But, father, I hold
myself bound in conscience to disabuse you, and to inform you that there
are thousands of people who have no such desires—who sin without
regret—who sin with delight—who make a boast of sinning. And who ought
to know better about these things than yourself? You cannot have failed
to have confessed some of those to whom I allude; for it is among
persons of high rank that they are most generally to be met with.[125]
But mark, father, the dangerous consequences of your maxim. Do you not
perceive what effect it may have on those libertines who like nothing
better than to find out matter of doubt in religion? What a handle do
you give them, when you assure them, as an article of faith, that on
every occasion when they commit a sin, they feel an inward presentiment
of the evil, and a desire to avoid it? Is it not obvious that, feeling
convinced by their own experience of the falsity of your doctrine on
this point, which you say is a matter of faith, they will extend the
inference drawn from this to all the other points? They will argue that,
since you are not trust-worthy in one article, you are to be suspected
in them all; and thus you shut them up to conclude, either that religion
is false, or that you must know very little about it.”