mystery. This it is that fills us with abhorrence at the Calvinists, who
would reduce us to the condition of the Jews; and this it is that makes
us aspire to the glory of the beatified, where we shall be introduced to
the full and eternal enjoyment of Jesus Christ. From hence you must see
that there are several points of difference between the manner in which
he communicates himself to Christians and to the blessed; and that,
amongst others, he is in this world received by the mouth, and not so in
heaven; but that they all depend solely on the distinction between our
state of faith and their state of immediate vision. And this is
precisely, fathers, what M. Arnauld has expressed, with great plainness,
in the following terms: “There can be no other difference between the
purity of those who receive Jesus Christ in the eucharist and that of
the blessed, than what exists between faith and the open vision of God,
upon which alone depends the different manner in which he is eaten upon
earth and in heaven.” You were bound in duty, fathers, to have revered
in these words the sacred truths they express, instead of wresting them
for the purpose of detecting an heretical meaning which they never
contained, nor could possibly contain, namely, that Jesus Christ is
eaten by faith only, and not by the mouth; the malicious perversion of
your Fathers Annat and Meynier, which forms the capital count of their
indictment.
Conscious, however, of the wretched deficiency of your proofs, you have
had recourse to a new artifice, which is nothing less than to falsify
the Council of Trent, in order to convict M. Arnauld of nonconformity
with it; so vast is your store of methods for making people heretics.
This feat has been achieved by Father Meynier, in fifty different places
of his book, and about eight or ten times in the space of a single page
(the 54th), wherein he insists that to speak like a true Catholic, it is
not enough to say, “I believe that Jesus Christ is really present in the
eucharist,” but we must say, “I believe, _with the council_, that he is
present by a true _local presence_, or locally.” And in proof of this,
he cites the council, session xiii., canon 3d, canon 4th, and canon 6th.
Who would not suppose, upon seeing the term _local presence_ quoted from
three canons of a universal council, that the phrase was actually to be
found in them? This might have served your turn very well, before the
appearance of my fifteenth letter; but as matters now stand, fathers,
the trick has become too stale for us. We go our way and consult the
council, and discover only that you are falsifiers. Such terms as _local
presence_, _locally_, and _locality_, never existed in the passages to
which you refer; and let me tell you further, they are not to be found
in any other canon of that council, nor in any other previous council,
nor in any father of the Church. Allow me, then, to ask you, fathers, if
you mean to cast the suspicion of Calvinism upon all that have not made
use of that peculiar phrase? If this be the case, the Council of Trent
must be suspected of heresy, and all the holy fathers without exception.
Have you no other way of making M. Arnauld heretical, without abusing so
many other people who never did you any harm, and among the rest, St.
Thomas, who is one of the greatest champions of the eucharist, and who,
so far from employing that term, has expressly rejected it—“_Nullo modo
corpus Christi est in hoc sacramento localiter?_—By no means is the body
of Christ in this sacrament _locally_?” Who are you, then, fathers, to
pretend, on your authority, to impose new terms, and ordain them to be
used by all for rightly expressing their faith; as if the profession of
the faith, drawn up by the popes according to the plan of the council,
in which this term has no place, were defective, and left an ambiguity
in the creed of the faithful, which you had the sole merit of
discovering? Such a piece of arrogance, to prescribe these terms, even
to learned doctors! such a piece of forgery, to attribute them to
general councils! and such ignorance, not to know the objections which
the most enlightened saints have made to their reception! “Be ashamed of
the error of your ignorance,”[304] as the Scripture says of ignorant
impostors like you—_De mendacio ineruditionis tuæ confundere_.
Give up all further attempts, then, to act the masters; you have neither
character nor capacity for the part. If, however, you would bring
forward your propositions with a little more modesty, they might obtain
a hearing. For although this phrase, _local presence_, has been
rejected, as you have seen, by St. Thomas, on the ground that the body
of Jesus Christ is not in the eucharist, in the ordinary extension of
bodies in their places, the expression has, nevertheless, been adopted
by some modern controversial writers, who understand it simply to mean
that the body of Jesus Christ is truly under the species, which being in
a particular place, the body of Jesus Christ is there also. And in this
sense M. Arnauld will make no scruple to admit the term, as M. de St.
Cyran[305] and he have repeatedly declared that Jesus Christ in the
eucharist is truly in a particular place, and miraculously in many
places at the same time. Thus all your subtleties fall to the ground;
and you have failed to give the slightest semblance of plausibility to
an accusation, which ought not to have been allowed to show its face,
without being supported by the most unanswerable proofs.
But what avails it, fathers, to oppose their innocence to your
calumnies? You impute these errors to them, not in the belief that they
maintain heresy, but from the idea that they have done you injury. That
is enough, according to your theology, to warrant you to calumniate them
without criminality; and you can, without either penance or confession,
say mass, at the very time that you charge priests, who say it every
day, with holding it to be pure idolatry; which, were it true, would
amount to sacrilege no less revolting than that of your own Father
Jarrige, whom you yourselves ordered to be hanged in effigy, for having
said mass “at the time he was in agreement with Geneva.”[306]
What surprises me, therefore, is not the little scrupulosity with which
you load them with crimes of the foulest and falsest description, but
the little prudence you display, by fixing on them charges so destitute
of plausibility. You dispose of sins, it is true, at your pleasure; but
do you mean to dispose of men’s beliefs too? Verily, fathers, if the
suspicion of Calvinism must needs fall either on them or on you, you
would stand, I fear, on very ticklish ground. Their language is as
Catholic as yours; but their conduct confirms their faith, and your
conduct belies it. For if you believe, as well as they do, that the
bread is really changed into the body of Jesus Christ, why do you not
require, as they do, from those whom you advise to approach the altar,
that the heart of stone and ice should be sincerely changed into a heart
of flesh and of love? If you believe that Jesus Christ is in that
sacrament in a state of death, teaching those that approach it to die to
the world, to sin, and to themselves, why do you suffer those to profane
it in whose breasts evil passions continue to reign in all their life
and vigor? And how do you come to judge those worthy to eat the bread of
heaven, who are not worthy to eat that of earth?
Precious votaries, truly, whose zeal is expended in persecuting those
who honor this sacred mystery by so many holy communions, and in
flattering those who dishonor it by so many sacrilegious desecrations!
How comely is it in these champions of a sacrifice so pure and so
venerable, to collect around the table of Jesus Christ a crowd of
hardened profligates, reeking from their debaucheries; and to plant in
the midst of them a priest, whom his own confessor has hurried from his
obscenities to the altar; there, in the place of Jesus Christ, to offer
up that most holy victim to the God of holiness, and convey it, with his
polluted hands, into mouths as thoroughly polluted as his own! How well
does it become those who pursue this course “in all parts of the world,”
in conformity with maxims sanctioned by their own general, to impute to
the author of Frequent Communion, and to the Sisters of the Holy
Sacrament, the crime of not believing in that sacrament!
Even this, however, does not satisfy them. Nothing less will satiate
their rage than to accuse their opponents of having renounced Jesus
Christ and their baptism. This is no air-built fable, like those of your
invention; it is a fact, and denotes a delirious frenzy, which marks the
fatal consummation of your calumnies. Such a notorious falsehood as this
would not have been in hands worthy to support it, had it remained in
those of your good friend Filleau, through whom you ushered it into the
world: your Society has openly adopted it; and your Father Meynier
maintained it the other day to be “_a certain truth_,” that Port-Royal
has, for the space of thirty-five years, been forming a secret plot, of
which M. de St. Cyran and M. D’Ypres have been the ring-leaders, “to
ruin the mystery of the incarnation—to make the Gospel pass for an
apocryphal fable—to exterminate the Christian religion, and to erect
Deism upon the ruins of Christianity.” Is this enough, fathers? Will you
be satisfied if all this be believed of the objects of your hate? Would
your animosity be glutted at length, if you could but succeed in making
them odious, not only to all within the Church, by the charge of
“_consenting with Geneva_,” of which you accuse them, but even to all
who believe in Jesus Christ, though beyond the pale of the Church, by
the imputation of _Deism_?
But whom do you expect to convince, upon your simple asseveration,
without the slightest shadow of proof, and in the face of every
imaginable contradiction, that priests who preach nothing but the grace
of Jesus Christ, the purity of the Gospel, and the obligations of
baptism, have renounced at once their baptism, the Gospel, and Jesus
Christ? Who will believe it, fathers? Wretched as you are,[307] do you
believe it yourselves? What a sad predicament is yours, when you must
either prove that they do not believe in Jesus Christ, or must pass for
the most abandoned calumniators. Prove it, then, fathers. Name that
“_worthy clergyman_,” who, you say, attended that assembly at
Bourg-Fontaine[308] in 1621, and discovered to Brother Filleau the
design there concerted of overturning the Christian religion. Name these
six persons who you allege to have formed that conspiracy. Name the
_individual who is designated by the letters A. A._, who you say “_was
not Antony Arnauld_” (because he convinced you that he was at that time
only nine years of age), “_but another person, who you say is still in
life, but too good a friend of M. Arnauld not to be known to him_.” You
know him, then, fathers; and consequently, if you are not destitute of
religion yourselves, you are bound to delate that impious wretch to the
king and parliament, that he may be punished according to his deserts.
You must speak out, fathers; you must name the person, or submit to the
disgrace of being henceforth regarded in no other light than as common
liars, unworthy of being ever credited again. Good Father Valerien has
taught us that this is the way in which such characters should be “put
to the rack,” and brought to their senses. Your silence upon the present
challenge will furnish a full and satisfactory confirmation of this
diabolical calumny. Your blindest admirers will be constrained to admit,
that it will be “the result, not of your goodness, but your impotency;”
and to wonder how you could be so wicked as to extend your hatred even
to the nuns of Port-Royal, and to say, as you do in page 14, that _The
Secret Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament_,[309] composed by one of their
number, was the first-fruit of that conspiracy against Jesus Christ; or,
as in page 95, that “they have imbibed all the detestable principles of
that work;” which is, according to your account, “a lesson in Deism.”
Your falsehoods regarding that book have already been triumphantly
refuted, in the defence of the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris
against Father Brisacier. That publication you are incapable of
answering; and yet you do not scruple to abuse it in a more shameful
manner than ever, for the purpose of charging women, whose piety is
universally known, with the vilest blasphemy.
Cruel, cowardly persecutors! Must, then, the most retired cloisters
afford no retreat from your calumnies? While these consecrated virgins
are employed, night and day, according to their institution, in adoring
Jesus Christ in the holy sacrament, you cease not, night nor day, to
publish abroad that they do not believe that he is either in the
eucharist or even at the right hand of his Father; and you are publicly
excommunicating them from the Church, at the very time when they are in
secret praying for the whole Church, and for you! You blacken with your
slanders those who have neither ears to hear nor mouths to answer you!
But Jesus Christ, in whom they are now hidden, not to appear till one
day together with him, hears you, and answers for them. At the moment I
am now writing, that holy and terrible voice is heard which confounds
nature and consoles the Church.[310] And I fear, fathers, that those who
now harden their hearts, and refuse with obstinacy to hear him, while he
speaks in the character of God, will one day be compelled to hear him
with terror, when he speaks to them in the character of a Judge. What
account, indeed, fathers, will you be able to render to him of the many
calumnies you have uttered, seeing that he will examine them, in that
day, not according to the fantasies of Fathers Dicastille, Gans, and
Pennalossa, who justify them, but according to the eternal laws of
truth, and the sacred ordinances of his own Church, which, so far from
attempting to vindicate that crime, abhors it to such a degree that she
visits it with the same penalty as wilful murder? By the first and
second Councils of Arles she has decided that the communion shall be
denied to slanderers as well as murderers, till the approach of death.
The Council of Lateran has judged those unworthy of admission into the
ecclesiastical state who have been convicted of the crime, even though
they may have reformed. The popes have even threatened to deprive of the
communion at death those who have calumniated bishops, priests, or
deacons. And the authors of a defamatory libel, who fail to prove what
they have advanced, are condemned by Pope Adrian _to be whipped_;—yes,
reverend fathers, _flagellentur_ is the word. So strong has been the
repugnance of the Church at all times to the errors of your Society—a
Society so thoroughly depraved as to invent excuses for the grossest of
crimes, such as calumny, chiefly that it may enjoy the greater freedom
in perpetrating them itself. There can be no doubt, fathers, that you
would be capable of producing abundance of mischief in this way, had God
not permitted you to furnish with your own hands the means of preventing
the evil, and of rendering your slanders perfectly innocuous; for, to
deprive you of all credibility, it was quite enough to publish the
strange maxim, that it is no crime to calumniate. Calumny is nothing, if
not associated with a high reputation for honesty. The defamer can make
no impression, unless he has the character of one that abhors
defamation, as a crime of which he is incapable. And thus, fathers, you
are betrayed by your own principle. You established the doctrine to
secure yourselves a safe conscience, that you might slander without risk
of damnation, and be ranked with those “pious and holy calumniators” of
whom St. Athanasius speaks. To save yourselves from hell, you have
embraced a maxim which promises you this security on the faith of your
doctors; but this same maxim, while it guarantees you, according to
their idea, against the evils you dread in the future world, deprives
you of all the advantage you may have expected to reap from it in the
present; so that, in attempting to escape the guilt, you have lost the
benefit of calumny. Such is the self-contrariety of evil, and so
completely does it confound and destroy itself by its own intrinsic
malignity.
You might have slandered, therefore, much more advantageously for
yourselves, had you professed to hold, with St. Paul, that evil speakers
are not worthy to see God; for in this case, though you would indeed
have been condemning yourselves, your slanders would at least have stood
a better chance of being believed. But by maintaining, as you have done,
that calumny against your enemies is no crime, your slanders will be
discredited, and you yourselves damned into the bargain; for two things
are certain, fathers—first, That it will never be in the power of your
grave doctors to annihilate the justice of God; and, secondly, That you
could not give more certain evidence that you are not of the Truth than
by your resorting to falsehood. If the Truth were on your side, she
would fight for you—she would conquer for you; and whatever enemies you
might have to encounter, “the Truth would set you free” from them,
according to her promise. But you have had recourse to falsehood, for no
other design than to support the errors with which you flatter the
sinful children of this world, and to bolster up the calumnies with
which you persecute every man of piety who sets his face against these
delusions. The truth being diametrically opposed to your ends, it
behooved you, to use the language of the prophet, “to put your
confidence in lies.” You have said, “The scourges which afflict mankind
shall not come nigh unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under
falsehood have we hid ourselves.”[311] But what says the prophet in
reply to such? “Forasmuch,” says he, “as ye have put your trust in
calumny and tumult—_sperastis in calumnia et in tumultu_—this iniquity
and your ruin shall be like that of a high wall whose breaking cometh
suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the breaking of the
potter’s vessel that is shivered in pieces”—with such violence that
“there shall not be found in the bursting of it a shred to take fire
from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit.”[312]
“Because,” as another prophet says, “ye have made the heart of the
righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and ye have flattered and
strengthened the malice of the wicked; I will therefore deliver my
people out of your hands, and ye shall know that I am their Lord and
yours.”[313]
Yes, fathers, it is to be hoped that if you do not repent, God will
deliver out of your hands those whom you have so long deluded, either by
flattering them in their evil courses with your licentious maxims, or by
poisoning their minds with your slanders. He will convince the former
that the false rules of your casuists will not screen them from his
indignation; and he will impress on the minds of the latter the just
dread of losing their souls by listening and yielding credit to your
slanders, as you lose yours by hatching these slanders and disseminating
them through the world. Let no man be deceived; God is not mocked; none
may violate with impunity the commandment which he has given us in the
Gospel, not to condemn our neighbor without being well assured of his
guilt. And, consequently, what profession soever of piety those may make
who lend a willing ear to your lying devices, and under what pretence
soever of devotion they may entertain them, they have reason to
apprehend exclusion from the kingdom of God, solely for having imputed
crimes of such a dark complexion as heresy and schism to Catholic
priests and holy nuns, upon no better evidence than such vile
fabrications as yours. “The devil,” says M. de Geneve,[314] “is on the
tongue of him that slanders, and in the ear of him that listens to the
slanderer.” “And evil speaking,” says St. Bernard, “is a poison that
extinguishes charity in both of the parties; so that a single calumny
may prove mortal to an infinite number of souls, killing not only those
who publish it, but all those besides by whom it is not
repudiated.”[315]
Reverend fathers, my letters were not wont either to be so prolix, or to
follow so closely on one another. Want of time must plead my excuse for
both of these faults. The present letter is a very long one, simply
because I had no leisure to make it shorter. You know the reason of this
haste better than I do. You have been unlucky in your answers. You have
done well, therefore, to change your plan; but I am afraid that you will
get no credit for it, and that people will say it was done for fear of
the Benedictines.
* * * * *
I have just come to learn that the person who was generally reported to
be the author of your Apologies, disclaims them, and is annoyed at their
having been ascribed to him. He has good reason; and I was wrong to have
suspected him of any such thing; for, in spite of the assurances which I
received, I ought to have considered that he was a man of too much good
sense to believe your accusations, and of too much honor to publish them
if he did not believe them. There are few people in the world capable of
your extravagances; they are peculiar to yourselves, and mark your
character too plainly to admit of any excuse for having failed to
recognize your hand in their concoction. I was led away by the common
report; but this apology, which would be too good for you, is not
sufficient for me, who profess to advance nothing without certain proof.
In no other instance have I been guilty of departing from this rule. I
am sorry for what I said. I retract it; and I only wish that you may
profit by my example.[316]
-----
Footnote 277:
The plan and materials of this letter were furnished by M. Nicole.
(Nicole, iv. 243.)
Footnote 278:
Jansenius, who was made Bishop of Ipres or Ypres, in 1636. The letters
to which Pascal refers were printed at that time by the Jesuits
themselves, who retained the originals in their possession; these
having come into their hands in consequence of the arrest of M. De St.
Cyran.
Footnote 279:
The Jesuits must pass through a long novitiate, before they are
admitted as “professed” members of the Society.
Footnote 280:
Ps. lxxxiii. 16.
Footnote 281:
Pp. 96, 4.
Footnote 282:
It is hardly necessary to observe, that in this passage the Protestant
faith on the supper is not fairly represented. The Reformers did not
deny that Christ was really present in that sacrament. They held that
he was present spiritually, though not corporeally. Some of them
expressed themselves strongly in opposition to those who spoke of the
supper as a mere or bare sign. Calvin says: “There are two things in
the sacrament—corporeal symbols, by which things invisible are
proposed to the senses; and a spiritual truth, which is represented
and sealed by the symbols. In the mystery of the supper, Christ is
_truly_ exhibited to us, and therefore his body and blood.” (Inst.,
lib. iv., cap. 17, 11.) “The body of Christ,” says Peter Martyr (Loc.
Com., iv. 10), “is not _substantially_ present anywhere but in heaven.
I do not, however, deny that his true body and true blood, which were
offered for human redemption on the cross, are _spiritually_ partaken
of by believers in the holy supper.” This is the general sentiment of
Protestant divines. (De Moor, in Marck, Compend. Theol., p. v. 679,
&c.)
Footnote 283:
Second letter of M. Arnauld, p. 259.
Footnote 284:
Ibid., p. 243.
Footnote 285:
Frequent Communion, 3d part, ch. 16. _Poitrine_—that is, the bodily
breast or stomach, in opposition to _cœur_—the heart or soul.
Footnote 286:
Ibid., 1st part, ch. 40.
Footnote 287:
Theolog. Fam., lec. 15.
Footnote 288:
Ibid.
Footnote 289:
De la Suspension. Rais. 21.
Footnote 290:
Ibid., p. 23.
Footnote 291:
Hours of the Holy Sacrament, in Prose.
Footnote 292:
Letters of M. de St. Cyran, tom. i., let. 93.
Footnote 293:
Ibid.
Footnote 294:
Letter 32.
Footnote 295:
Letter 72.
Footnote 296:
Defence of the Chaplet of the H. Sacrament, p. 217.
Footnote 297:
Theol. Famil., lec. 15.
Footnote 298: