always tell everything that is true; we should publish only those things
which it is useful to disclose, and not those which can only hurt,
without doing any good. And, therefore, as the first rule is to speak
with truth, the second is to speak with discretion. “The wicked,” says
St. Augustine, “in persecuting the good, blindly follow the dictates of
their passion; but the good, in their prosecution of the wicked, are
guided by a wise discretion, even as the surgeon warily considers where
he is cutting, while the murderer cares not where he strikes.” You must
be sensible, fathers, that in selecting from the maxims of your authors,
I have refrained from quoting those which would have galled you most,
though I might have done it, and that without sinning against
discretion, as others who were both learned and catholic writers, have
done before me. All who have read your authors know how far I have
spared you in this respect.[234] Besides, I have taken no notice
whatever of what might be brought against individual characters among
you; and I would have been extremely sorry to have said a word about
secret and personal failings, whatever evidence I might have of them,
being persuaded that this is the distinguishing property of malice, and
a practice which ought never to be resorted to, unless where it is
urgently demanded for the good of the Church. It is obvious, therefore,
that in what I have been compelled to advance against your moral maxims,
I have been by no means wanting in due consideration: and that you have
more reason to congratulate yourself on my moderation than to complain
of my indiscretion.
The third rule, fathers, is: That when there is need to employ a little
raillery, the spirit of piety will take care to employ it against error
only, and not against things holy; whereas the spirit of buffoonery,
impiety, and heresy, mocks at all that is most sacred. I have already
vindicated myself on that score; and indeed there is no great danger of
falling into that vice so long as I confine my remarks to the opinions
which I have quoted from your authors.
In short, fathers, to abridge these rules, I shall only mention another,
which is the essence and the end of all the rest: That the spirit of
charity prompts us to cherish in the heart a desire for the salvation of
those against whom we dispute, and to address our prayers to God while
we direct our accusations to men. “We ought ever,” says St. Augustine,
“to preserve charity in the heart, even while we are obliged to pursue a
line of external conduct which to man has the appearance of harshness;
we ought to smite them with a sharpness, severe but kindly, remembering
that their advantage is more to be studied than their gratification.” I
am sure, fathers, that there is nothing in my letters, from which it can
be inferred that I have not cherished such a desire towards you; and as
you can find nothing to the contrary in them, charity obliges you to
believe that I have been really actuated by it. It appears, then, that
you cannot prove that I have offended against this rule, or against any
of the other rules which charity inculcates; and you have no right to
say, therefore, that I have violated it.
But, fathers, if you should now like to have the pleasure of seeing,
within a short compass, a course of conduct directly at variance with
each of these rules, and bearing the genuine stamp of the spirit of
buffoonery, envy, and hatred, I shall give you a few examples of it; and
that they may be of the sort best known and most familiar to you, I
shall extract them from your own writings.
To begin, then, with the unworthy manner in which your authors speak of
holy things, whether in their sportive and gallant effusions, or in
their more serious pieces, do you think that the parcel of ridiculous
stories, which your father Binet has introduced into his “Consolation to
the Sick,” are exactly suitable to his professed object, which is that
of imparting Christian consolation to those whom God has chastened with
affliction? Will you pretend to say, that the profane, foppish style in
which your Father Le Moine has talked of piety in his “Devotion made
Easy,” is more fitted to inspire respect than contempt for the picture
that he draws of Christian virtue? What else does his whole book of
“Moral Pictures” breathe, both in its prose and poetry, but a spirit
full of vanity, and the follies of this world? Take, for example, that
ode in his seventh book, entitled, “Eulogy on Bashfulness, showing that
all beautiful things are red, or inclined to redden.” Call you that a
production worthy of a priest? The ode is intended to comfort a lady,
called Delphina, who was sadly addicted to blushing. Each stanza is
devoted to show that certain red things are the best of things, such as
roses, pomegranates, the mouth, the tongue; and it is in the midst of
this badinage, so disgraceful in a clergyman, that he has the effrontery
to introduce those blessed spirits that minister before God, and of whom
no Christian should speak without reverence:—
“The cherubim—those glorious choirs—
Composed of head and plumes,
Whom God with his own Spirit inspires,
And with his eyes illumes.
These splendid faces, as they fly,
Are ever red and burning high,
With fire angelic or divine;
And while their mutual flames combine,
The waving of their wings supplies
A fan to cool their extacies!
But redness shines with better grace,
Delphina, on thy beauteous face,
Where modesty sits revelling—
Arrayed in purple, like a king,” &c.
What think you of this, fathers? Does this preference of the blushes of
Delphina to the ardor of those spirits, which is neither more nor less
than the ardor of divine love, and this simile of the fan applied to
their mysterious wings, strike you as being very Christian-like in the
lips which consecrate the adorable body of Jesus Christ? I am quite
aware that he speaks only in the character of a gallant, and to raise a
smile; but this is precisely what is called laughing at things holy. And
is it not certain, that, were he to get full justice, he could not save
himself from incurring a censure? although, to shield himself from this,
he pleads an excuse which is hardly less censurable than the offence,
“that the Sorbonne has no jurisdiction over Parnassus, and that the
errors of that land are subject neither to censure nor the
Inquisition;”—as if one could act the blasphemer and profane fellow only
in prose! There is another passage, however, in the preface, where even
this excuse fails him, when he says, “that the water of the river, on
whose banks he composes his verses, is so apt to make poets, that,
though it were converted into _holy water_, it would not chase away the
demon of poesy.” To match this, I may add the following flight of your
Father Garasse, in his “Summary of the Capital Truths in Religion,”
where, speaking of the sacred mystery of the incarnation, he mixes up
blasphemy and heresy in this fashion: “The human personality was
grafted, as it were, or _set on horseback_, upon the personality of the
Word!”[235] And omitting many others, I might mention another passage
from the same author, who, speaking on the subject of the name of Jesus,
ordinarily written thus,
✝
I. H. S.
observes that “some have taken away the cross from the top of it,
leaving the characters barely thus, I. H. S.—which,” says he, “is a
stripped Jesus!”
Such is the indecency with which you treat the truths of religion, in
the face of the inviolable law which binds us always to speak of them
with reverence. But you have sinned no less flagrantly against the rule
which obliges us to speak of them with truth and discretion. What is
more common in your writings than calumny? Can those of Father
Brisacier[236] be called sincere? Does he speak with truth when he says,
that “the nuns of Port-Royal do not pray to the saints, and have no
images in their church?” Are not these most outrageous falsehoods, when
the contrary appears before the eyes of all Paris? And can he be said to
speak with discretion, when he stabs the fair reputation of these
virgins, who lead a life so pure and austere, representing them as
“impenitent, unsacramentalists, uncommunicants, foolish virgins,
visionaries, Calagans, desperate creatures, and anything you please,”
loading them with many other slanders, which have justly incurred the
censure of the late Archbishop of Paris? or when he calumniates priests
of the most irreproachable morals,[237] by asserting “that they practise
novelties in confession, to entrap handsome innocent females, and that
he would be horrified to tell the abominable crimes which they commit.”
Is it not a piece of intolerable assurance, to advance slanders so black
and base, not merely without proof, but without the slightest shadow, or
the most distant semblance of truth? I shall not enlarge on this topic,
but defer it to a future occasion, for I have something more to say to
you about it; but what I have now produced is enough to show that you
have sinned at once against truth and discretion.
But it may be said, perhaps, that you have not offended against the last
rule at least, which binds you to desire the salvation of those whom you
denounce, and that none can charge you with this, except by unlocking
the secrets of your breasts, which are only known to God. It is strange,
fathers, but true, nevertheless, that we can convict you even of this
offence; that while your hatred to your opponents has carried you so far
as to wish their eternal perdition, your infatuation has driven you to
discover the abominable wish; that so far from cherishing in secret
desires for their salvation, you have offered up prayers in public for
their damnation; and that, after having given utterance to that hideous
vow in the city of Caen, to the scandal of the whole Church, you have
since then ventured, in Paris, to vindicate, in your printed books, the
diabolical transaction. After such gross offences against piety, first
ridiculing and speaking lightly of things the most sacred; next falsely
and scandalously calumniating priests and virgins; and lastly, forming
desires and prayers for their damnation, it would be difficult to add
anything worse. I cannot conceive, fathers, how you can fail to be
ashamed of yourselves, or how you could have thought for an instant of
charging me with a want of charity, who have acted all along with so
much truth and moderation, without reflecting on your own horrid
violations of charity, manifested in those deplorable exhibitions, which
make the charge recoil against yourselves.
In fine, fathers, to conclude with another charge which you bring
against me, I see you complain that among the vast number of your maxims
which I quote, there are some which have been objected to already, and
that I “say over again, what others have said before me.” To this I
reply, that it is just because you have not profited by what has been
said before, that I say it over again. Tell me now what fruit has
appeared from all the castigations you have received in all the books
written by learned doctors, and even the whole university? What more
have your fathers Annat, Caussin, Pintereau, and Le Moine done, in the
replies they have put forth, except loading with reproaches those who
had given them salutary admonitions? Have you suppressed the books in
which these nefarious maxims are taught?[238] Have you restrained the
authors of these maxims? Have you become more circumspect in regard to
them? On the contrary, is it not the fact, that since that time Escobar
has been repeatedly reprinted in France and in the Low Countries, and
that your fathers Cellot, Bagot, Bauny, Lamy, Le Moine, and others,
persist in publishing daily the same maxims over again, or new ones as
licentious as ever? Let us hear no more complaints, then, fathers,
either because I have charged you with maxims which you have not
disavowed, or because I have objected to some new ones against you, or
because I have laughed equally at them all. You have only to sit down
and look at them, to see at once your own confusion and my defence. Who
can look without laughing at the decision of Bauny, respecting the
person who employs another to set fire to his neighbor’s barn; that of
Cellot on restitution; the rule of Sanchez in favor of sorcerers; the
plan of Hurtado for avoiding the sin of duelling by taking a walk
through a field, and waiting for a man; the compliments of Bauny for
escaping usury; the way of avoiding simony by a detour of the intention,
and keeping clear of falsehood by speaking high and low; and such other
opinions of your most grave and reverend doctors? Is there anything more
necessary, fathers, for my vindication? and as Tertullian says, “can
anything be more justly due to the vanity and weakness of these opinions
than laughter?” But, fathers, the corruption of manners to which your
maxims lead deserves another sort of consideration; and it becomes us to
ask, with the same ancient writer, “Whether ought we to laugh at their
folly, or deplore their blindness?—_Rideam vanitatem, an exprobrem
cæcitatem_?” My humble opinion is, that one may either laugh at them or
weep over them, as one is in the humor. _Hæc tolerabilius vel ridentur,
vel flentur_, as St. Augustine says. The Scripture tells us that “there
is a time to laugh, and a time to weep;” and my hope is, fathers, that I
may not find verified, in your case, these words in the Proverbs: “If a
wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there
is no rest.”[239]
* * * * *
_P. S._—On finishing this letter, there was put in my hands one of your
publications, in which you accuse me of falsification, in the case of
six of your maxims quoted by me, and also with being in correspondence
with heretics. You will shortly receive, I trust, a suitable reply;
after which, fathers, I rather think you will not feel very anxious to
continue this species of warfare.[240]
-----
Footnote 228:
In this and the following letters, Pascal changes his style, from that
of dialogue to that of direct address, and from that of the liveliest
irony to that of serious invective and poignant satire.
Footnote 229:
“Religion, they tell us, ought not to be ridiculed; and they tell us
truth: yet surely the corruptions in it may; for we are taught by the
tritest maxim in the world, that religion being the best of things,
its corruptions are likely to be the worst.” (Swift’s Apology for a
Tale of a Tub.)
Footnote 230:
Prov. i. 26; Ps. lii. 6; Job xxii. 19. In the first passage, the
figure is evidently what theologians call _anthropopathic_, or
speaking of God after the manner of men, and denotes his total
disregard of the wicked in the day of their calamity.
Footnote 231:
In most of the editions, it is “St. Chrysostom,” but I have followed
that of Nicole.
Footnote 232:
We may be permitted to question the correctness of this
interpretation, and the propriety of introducing it in the present
connection. For the former, the fathers, not Pascal, are responsible;
as to the latter, it was certainly superfluous, and not very happy, to
have recourse to such an example, to justify the use of ridicule as a
weapon against religious follies. Among other writers, the Abbé
D’Artigny is very severe against our author on this score, and quotes
with approbation the following censure on him: “Is it possible that a
man of such genius and erudition could justify the most criminal
excesses by such respectable examples? Not content with making witty
old fellows of the prophets and the holy fathers, nothing will serve
him but to make us believe that the Almighty himself has furnished us
with precedents for the most bitter slanders and pleasantries—an
evident proof that there is nothing that an author will not seek to
justify when he follows his own passion.” (Nouveaux Mémoires
D’Artigny, ii. 185.) How solemnly and eloquently will a man write down
all such satires, when the jest is pointed against himself and his
party! D’Artigny quotes, within a few pages, with evident relish, a
bitter satire against a Protestant minister.
Footnote 233:
“Religious,” is a general term, applied in the Romish Church to all
who are in holy orders.
Footnote 234:
“So far,” says Nicole, “from his having told all that he might against
the Jesuits, he has spared them on points so essential and important,
that all who have a complete knowledge of their maxims have admired
his moderation.” “What would have been the case,” asks another writer,
“had Pascal exposed the late infamous things put out by their
miserable casuists, and unfolded the chain and succession of their
regicide authors?” (Dissertation sur la foi due au Pascal, &c., p.
14.)
Footnote 235:
The apologists of the Jesuits attempted to justify this extraordinary
illustration, by referring to the use which Augustine and other
fathers make of the parable of the good Samaritan who “set on his own
beast” the wounded traveller. But Nicole has shown that fanciful as
these ancient interpreters often were, it is doing them injustice to
_father_ on them the absurdity of Father Garasse. (Nicole’s Notes,
iii. 340.)
Footnote 236:
Brisacier, who became rector of the College of Rouen, was a bitter
enemy of the Port-Royalists. His defamatory libel against the nuns of
Port-Royal, entitled “Le Jansenisme Confondu,” published in 1651, was
censured by the Archbishop of Paris, and vigorously assailed by M.
Arnauld.
Footnote 237:
The priests of Port-Royal.
Footnote 238:
This is the real question, which brings the matter to a point, and
serves to answer all the evasions of the Jesuits. They boast of their
unity as a society and their blind obedience to their head. Have they,
then, ever, _as a society_, disclaimed these maxims?—have they even,
_as such_, condemned the sentiments their fathers Becan, Mariana, and
others, on the duty of dethroning and assassinating heretical kings?
They have not; and till this is done, they must be held, _as Jesuits_,
responsible for the sentiments which they refuse to disavow.
Footnote 239:
Prov. xxix. 9.
Footnote 240:
This postscript, which appeared in the earlier editions, is dropt in
that of Nicole and others.
LETTER XII.
TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS.
REFUTATION OF THEIR CHICANERIES REGARDING ALMS-GIVING AND SIMONY.
_September 9, 1656._
REVEREND FATHERS,—I was prepared to write you on the subject of the
abuse with which you have for some time past been assailing me in your
publications, in which you salute me with such epithets as “reprobate,”
“buffoon,” “blockhead,” “merry-Andrew,” “impostor,” “slanderer,”
“cheat,” “heretic,” “Calvinist in disguise,” “disciple of Du
Moulin,”[241] “possessed with a legion of devils,” and everything else
you can think of. As I should be sorry to have all this believed of me,
I was anxious to show the public why you treated me in this manner; and
I had resolved to complain of your calumnies and falsifications, when I
met with your Answers, in which you bring these same charges against
myself. This will compel me to alter my plan; though it will not prevent
me from prosecuting it in some sort, for I hope, while defending myself,
to convict you of impostures more genuine than the imaginary ones which
you have ascribed to me. Indeed, fathers, the suspicion of foul play is
much more sure to rest on you than on me. It is not very likely,
standing as I do, alone, without power or any human defence, against
such a large body, and having no support but truth and integrity, that I
would expose myself to lose everything, by laying myself open to be
convicted of imposture. It is too easy to discover falsifications in
matters of fact such as the present. In such a case there would have
been no want of persons to accuse me, nor would justice have been denied
them. With you, fathers, the case is very different; you may say as much
as you please against me, while I may look in vain for any to complain
to. With such a wide difference between our positions, though there had
been no other consideration to restrain me, it became me to study no
little caution. By treating me, however, as a common slanderer, you
compel me to assume the defensive, and you must be aware that this
cannot be done without entering into a fresh exposition, and even into a
fuller disclosure of the points of your morality. In provoking this
discussion, I fear you are not acting as good politicians. The war must
be waged within your own camp, and at your own expense; and although you
imagine that, by embroiling the questions with scholastic terms, the
answers will be so tedious, thorny, and obscure, that people will lose
all relish for the controversy, this may not, perhaps, turn out to be
exactly the case; I shall use my best endeavors to tax your patience as
little as possible with that sort of writing. Your maxims have something
diverting about them, which keeps up the good humor of people to the
last. At all events, remember that it is you that oblige me to enter
upon this eclaircissement, and let us see which of us comes off best in
defending themselves.
The first of your Impostures, as you call them, is on the opinion of
Vasquez upon alms-giving. To avoid all ambiguity, then, allow me to give
a simple explanation of the matter in dispute. It is well known,
fathers, that according to the mind of the Church, there are two
precepts touching alms—_1st_, “To give out of our superfluity in the
case of the ordinary necessities of the poor;” and _2dly_, “To give even
out of our necessaries, according to our circumstances, in cases of
extreme necessity.” Thus says Cajetan, after St. Thomas; so that, to get
at the mind of Vasquez on this subject, we must consider the rules he
lays down, both in regard to necessaries and superfluities.
With regard to superfluity, which is the most common source of relief to
the poor, it is entirely set aside by that single maxim which I have
quoted in my Letters: “That what the men of the world keep with the view
of improving their own condition and that of their relatives, is not
properly superfluity; so that, such a thing as superfluity is rarely to
be met with among men of the world, not even excepting kings.” It is
very easy to see, fathers, that according to this definition, none can
have superfluity, provided they have ambition; and thus, so far as the
greater part of the world is concerned, alms-giving is annihilated. But
even though a man should happen to have superfluity, he would be under
no obligation, according to Vasquez, to give it away in the case of
ordinary necessity; for he protests against those who would thus bind
the rich. Here are his own words: “Corduba,” says he, “teaches, that
when we have a superfluity we are bound to give out of it in cases of
ordinary necessity; but _this does not please me_—_sed hoc non
placet_—for we have demonstrated the contrary against Cajetan and
Navarre.” So, fathers, the obligation to this kind of alms is wholly set
aside, according to the good pleasure of Vasquez.
With regard to necessaries, out of which we are bound to give in cases
of extreme and urgent necessity, it must be obvious, from the conditions
by which he has limited the obligation, that the richest man in all
Paris may not come within its reach once in a lifetime. I shall only
refer to two of these. The first is, That “_we must know_ that the poor
man cannot be relieved from any other quarter—_hæc intelligo et cætera
omnia, quando SCIO nullum alium opem laturum_.” What say you to this,
fathers? Is it likely to happen frequently in Paris, where there are so
many charitable people, that I _must know_ that there is not another
soul but myself to relieve the poor wretch who begs an alms from me? And
yet, according to Vasquez, if I have not ascertained that fact, I may
send him away with nothing. The second condition is, That the poor man
be reduced to such straits “that he is menaced with some fatal accident,
or the ruin of his character”—none of them very common occurrences. But
what marks still more the rarity of the cases in which one is bound to
give charity, is his remark, in another passage, that the poor man must
be so ill off, “that he may conscientiously rob the rich man!” This must
surely be a very extraordinary case, unless he will insist that a man
may be ordinarily allowed to commit robbery. And so, after having
cancelled the obligation to give alms out of our superfluities, he
obliges the rich to relieve the poor only in those cases when he would
allow the poor to rifle the rich! Such is the doctrine of Vasquez, to
whom you refer your readers for their edification!
I now come to your pretended Impostures. You begin by enlarging on the
obligation to alms-giving which Vasquez imposes on ecclesiastics. But on
this point I have said nothing; and I am prepared to take it up whenever
you choose. This, then, has nothing to do with the present question. As
for laymen, who are the only persons with whom we have now to do, you
are apparently anxious to have it understood that, in the passage which
I quoted, Vasquez is giving not his own judgment, but that of Cajetan.
But as nothing could be more false than this, and as you have not said
it in so many terms, I am willing to believe, for the sake of your
character, that you did not intend to say it.