any length of time. Poor as it is, it will last sufficiently long to
serve your present turn. All that you wish to effect by it, in the mean
time, is to induce those who are unwilling to condemn efficacious grace
to condemn Jansenius with the less scruple. When this object has been
accomplished, your argument will soon be forgotten, and their signatures
remaining as an eternal testimony in condemnation of Jansenius, will
furnish you with an occasion to make a direct attack upon efficacious
grace, by another mode of reasoning much more solid than the former,
which shall be forthcoming in proper time. “The doctrine of Jansenius,”
you will argue, “has been condemned by the universal subscriptions of
the Church. Now this doctrine is manifestly that of efficacious grace”
(and it will be easy for you to prove that); “therefore the doctrine of
efficacious grace is condemned even by the confession of his defenders.”
Behold your reason for proposing to sign the condemnation of a doctrine
without giving an explanation of it! Behold the advantage you expect to
gain from subscriptions thus procured! Should your opponents, however,
refuse to subscribe, you have another trap laid for them. Having
dexterously combined the question of faith with that of fact, and not
allowing them to separate between them, nor to sign the one without the
other, the consequence will be, that, because they could not subscribe
the two together, you will publish it in all directions that they have
refused the two together. And thus though, in point of fact, they simply
decline acknowledging that Jansenius has maintained the propositions
which they condemn, which cannot be called heresy, you will boldly
assert that they have refused to condemn the propositions themselves,
and that it is this that constitutes their heresy.
Such is the fruit which you expect to reap from their refusal, and which
will be no less useful to you than what you might have gained from their
consent. So that, in the event of these signatures being exacted, they
will fall into your snares, whether they sign or not, and in both cases
you will gain your point; such is your dexterity in uniformly putting
matters into a train for your own advantage, whatever bias they may
happen to take in their course!
How well I know you, father! and how grieved am I to see that God has
abandoned you so far as to allow you such happy success in such an
unhappy course! Your good fortune deserves commiseration, and can excite
envy only in the breasts of those who know not what truly good fortune
is. It is an act of charity to thwart the success you aim at in the
whole of this proceeding, seeing that you can only reach it by the aid
of falsehood, and by procuring credit to one of two lies—either that the
Church has condemned efficacious grace, or that those who defend that
doctrine maintain the five condemned errors.
The world must, therefore, be apprized of two facts: First, That, by
your own confession, efficacious grace has not been condemned; and
secondly, That nobody supports these errors. So that it may be known
that those who may refuse to sign what you are so anxious to exact from
them, refuse merely in consideration of the question of _fact_; and
that, being quite ready to subscribe that of _faith_, they cannot be
deemed heretical on that account; because, to repeat it once more,
though it be matter of faith to believe these propositions to be
heretical, it will never be matter of faith to hold that they are to be
found in the pages of Jansenius. They are innocent of all error; that is
enough. It may be that they interpret Jansenius too favorably; but it
may be also that you do not interpret him favorably enough. I do not
enter upon this question. All that I know is, that, according to your
maxims, you believe that you may, without sin, publish him to be a
heretic contrary to your own knowledge; whereas, according to their
maxims, they cannot, without sin, declare him to be a Catholic, unless
they are persuaded that he is one. They are, therefore, more honest than
you, father; they have examined Jansenius more faithfully than you; they
are no less intelligent than you; they are, therefore, no less credible
witnesses than you. But come what may of this point of fact, they are
certainly Catholics; for, in order to be so, it is not necessary to
declare that another man is not a Catholic; it is enough, in all
conscience, if a person, without charging error upon anybody else,
succeed in discharging himself.
* * * * *
Reverend father,—If you have found any difficulty in deciphering this
letter, which is certainly not printed in the best possible type, blame
nobody but yourself. Privileges are not so easily granted to me as they
are to you. You can procure them even for the purpose of combating
miracles; I cannot have them even to defend myself. The printing-houses
are perpetually haunted. In such circumstances, you yourself would not
advise me to write you any more letters for it is really a sad annoyance
to be obliged to have recourse to an Osnabruck impression.[337]
-----
Footnote 317:
M. Nicole furnished the materials for this letter. (Nicole, iv. 324.)
Footnote 318:
_Francis Annat_, the same person formerly referred to at p. 102. He
became French provincial of the Jesuits, and confessor to Louis XIV.
Footnote 319:
A threat, evidently, of administering to him the _Mentiris
impudentissime_ of the Capuchin, mentioned at p. 310.
Footnote 320:
_The constitution_—that is, the bull of Pope Alexander VII., issued in
October 1656, in which he not only condemned the Five Propositions,
but, in compliance with the solicitations of the Jesuits, added an
express clause, to the effect that these had been faithfully extracted
from Jansenius, and were heretical in the sense in which he
(Jansenius) employed them. This was a more stringent constitution than
the first; but the Jansenists were ready to meet him on this point;
they replied that a declaration of this nature overstepped the limits
of the papal authority, and that the pope’s infallibility did not
extend to a judgment of _facts_.
Footnote 321:
_The Five Propositions._—A brief view of these celebrated Propositions
may be here given, as necessary to the understanding of the text. They
were as follows:—I. That some commandments of God are impracticable
even to the righteous, who desire to keep them, according to their
present strength. II. That grace is irresistible. III. That moral
freedom consists, not in exemption from necessity, but from
constraint. IV. That to assert that the will may resist or obey the
motions of converting grace as it pleased, was a heresy of the
semi-Pelagians. V. That to assert that Jesus Christ died for all men,
without exception, is an error of the semi-Pelagians. For a fuller
explication of the controversy, the reader must be referred to the
Introduction.
Footnote 322:
Pascal might say this with truth, for his only relatives being nuns,
the tie of earthly relationship was considered by him as no longer
existing; and beyond personal friendship, he had really no connection
with Port-Royal. There is as little truth as force, therefore, in the
taunt of a late advocate of the Jesuits, who says, in reference to
this passage, “Pascal was intimately connected with Port-Royal, he was
even numbered among its recluses; and yet, in the act of unmasking the
presumed duplicity of the Jesuits, the sublime writer did not scruple
to imitate it.” (Hist. de la Comp. de Jésus, par J. Cretineau-Joly,
tom. iv. p. 54. Paris, 1845.)
Footnote 323:
“This book of the _Holy Virginity_ was a translation from St.
Augustine, made by Father Seguenot, priest of the Oratory. So far, all
was right; but the priest had added to the original text some odd and
peculiar remarks of his own, which merited censure. As the publication
came from the Oratory, a community always attached to the doctrine of
St. Augustine, an attempt was made to throw the blame on those called
Jansenists.” (Note by Nicole, iv. 332.)
Footnote 324:
“M. Jacques de Sainte-Beuve, one of the ablest divines of his age,
preferred to relinquish his chair in the Sorbonne rather than concur
in the censure of M. Arnauld, whose orthodoxy he regarded as beyond
suspicion. He died in 1677.” (Note by Nicole.)
Footnote 325:
This work was entitled “On the Victorious Grace of Jesus Christ; or,
Molina and his followers convicted of the error of the Pelagians and
Semi-Pelagians. By the Sieur de Bonlieu. Paris, 1651.” The real author
was the celebrated M. de la Lane, well known in that controversy.
(Note by Nicole.)
Footnote 326:
Réponse a quelques demandes, pp. 27, 47.
Footnote 327:
These judgments, or _Vota Consultorum_, as they were called, have been
often printed, and particularly at the end of the _Journal de M. de
St. Amour_—a book essentially necessary to the right understanding of
all the intrigues employed in the condemnation of Jansenius. (Note by
Nicole.)
Footnote 328:
This was _Francis du Bosquet_, who, from being Bishop of Lodeve, was
made Bishop of Montpelier in 1655, and died in 1676. He was one of the
most learned bishops of his time in ecclesiastical matters. (Note by
Nicole.)
Footnote 329:
Cavill, p. 35.
Footnote 330:
M. de Marca, an illustrious prelate, who was Archbishop of Toulouse,
before he was nominated to the see of Paris, of which he was only
prevented by death from taking possession. (Nicole.)
Footnote 331:
_Nestorian heresy_—so called from Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople,
in the fifth century, who was accused of dividing Christ into _two
persons_; in other words, representing his human nature a distinct
person from his divine. There is some reason to think, however, that
he was quite sound in the faith, and that his real offence was his
opposition to the use of the phrase, which then came into vogue, _the
Mother of God_, as applied to the Virgin, whom he called, in
preference, _the Mother of Christ_.
Footnote 332:
This was James Sirmond (the uncle of Anthony, formerly mentioned), a
learned Jesuit, and confessor to Louis XIII. He was distinguished as
an ecclesiastical historian. (Tableau de la Litt. Fran., iv. 202.)
Footnote 333:
_The Monothelites_, who arose in the seventh century, were so called
from holding that there was but _one will_ in Christ, his human will
being absorbed, as it were, in the divine.
Footnote 334:
See Letter i., p. 74.
Footnote 335:
The persecution here supposed was soon lamentably realized, and
exactly in the way which our author seemed to think impossible.
Footnote 336:
Cavill, p. 23.
Footnote 337:
This postscript, which is wanting in the ordinary editions, appeared
in the first edition at the close of this letter. From this it appears
that, in consequence of the extreme desire of the Jesuits to discover
the author, and their increasing resentment against him, he was
compelled to send this letter to Osnabruck, an obscure place in
Germany, where it was printed in a very small and indistinct
character. The _privileges_ referred to were official licenses to
print books, which, at this time, when the Jesuits were in power, it
was difficult for their opponents to obtain. Annat had published
against the miracles of Port-Royal. Pascal was not permitted to
publish in self-defence. At the same period, no Protestant books could
be printed at Paris; they were generally sent to Geneva or the Low
Countries for this purpose, or published furtively under fictitious
names.
LETTER XVIII.
TO THE REVEREND FATHER ANNAT, JESUIT.
SHOWING STILL MORE PLAINLY, ON THE AUTHORITY OF FATHER ANNAT HIMSELF,
THAT THERE IS REALLY NO HERESY IN THE CHURCH, AND THAT IN QUESTIONS
OF FACT WE MUST BE GUIDED BY OUR SENSES, AND NOT BY AUTHORITY EVEN OF
THE POPES.
_March 24, 1657._
REVEREND FATHER,—Long have you labored to discover some error in the
creed or conduct of your opponents; but I rather think you will have to
confess, in the end, that it is a more difficult task than you imagined
to make heretics of people who are not only no heretics, but who hate
nothing in the world so much as heresy. In my last letter I succeeded in
showing that you accuse them of one heresy after another, without being
able to stand by one of the charges for any length of time; so that all
that remained for you was to fix on their refusal to condemn “the sense
of Jansenius,” which you insist on their doing without explanation. You
must have been sadly in want of heresies to brand them with, when you
were reduced to this. For, who ever heard of a heresy which nobody could
explain? The answer was ready, therefore, that if Jansenius has no
errors, it is wrong to condemn him; and if he has, you were bound to
point them out, that we might know at least what we were condemning.
This, however, you have never yet been pleased to do; but you have
attempted to fortify your position by decrees,[338] which made nothing
in your favor, as they gave no sort of explanation of the sense of
Jansenius, said to have been condemned in the five propositions. This
was not the way to terminate the dispute. Had you mutually agreed as to
the genuine sense of Jansenius, and had the only difference between you
been as to whether that sense was heretical or not, in that case the
decisions which might pronounce it to be heretical, would have touched
the real question in dispute. But the great dispute being about the
sense of Jansenius, the one party saying that they could see nothing in
it inconsistent with the sense of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and the
other party asserting that they saw in it an heretical sense which they
would not express. It is clear that a constitution[339] which does not
say a word about this difference of opinion, and which only condemns in
general and without explanation the sense of Jansenius, leaves the point
in dispute quite undecided.
You have accordingly been repeatedly told, that as your discussion turns
on a matter of fact, you would never be able to bring it to a conclusion
without declaring what you understand by the sense of Jansenius. But, as
you continued obstinate in your refusal to make this explanation, I
endeavored, as a last resource, to extort it from you, by hinting, in my
last letter, that there was some mystery under the efforts you were
making to procure the condemnation of this sense without explaining it,
and that your design was to make this indefinite censure recoil, some
day or other, upon the doctrine of efficacious grace, by showing, as you
could easily do, that this was exactly the doctrine of Jansenius. This
has reduced you to the necessity of making a reply; for, had you
pertinaciously refused, after such an insinuation, to explain your views
of that sense, it would have been apparent, to persons of the smallest
penetration, that you condemned it in the sense of efficacious grace—a
conclusion which, considering the veneration in which the Church holds
that holy doctrine, would have overwhelmed you with disgrace.
You have, therefore, been forced to speak out your mind; and we find it
expressed in your reply to that part of my letter in which I remarked,
that “if Jansenius was capable of any other sense than that of
efficacious grace, he had no defenders; but if his writings bore no
other sense, he had no errors to defend.” You found it impossible to
deny this position, father; but you have attempted to parry it by the
following distinction: “It is not sufficient,” say you, “for the
vindication of Jansenius, to allege that he merely holds the doctrine of
efficacious grace, for that may be held in two ways—the one heretical,
according to Calvin, which consists in maintaining that the will, when
under the influence of grace, has not the power of resisting it; the
other orthodox, according to the Thomists and the Sorbonists, which is
founded on the principles established by the councils, and which is,
that efficacious grace of itself governs the will in such a way that it
still has the power of resisting it.”
All this we grant, father; but you conclude by adding: “Jansenius would
be orthodox, if he defended efficacious grace in the sense of the
Thomists; but he is heretical, because he opposes the Thomists, and
joins issue with Calvin, who denies the power of resisting grace.” I do
not here enter upon the question of fact, whether Jansenius really
agrees with Calvin. It is enough for my purpose that you assert that he
does, and that you now inform me that by the sense of Jansenius you have
all along understood nothing more than the sense of Calvin. Was this all
you meant, then, father? Was it only the error of Calvin that you were
so anxious to get condemned, under the name of “the sense of Jansenius?”
Why did you not tell us this sooner? You might have saved yourself a
world of trouble; for we were all ready, without the aid of bulls or
briefs, to join with you in condemning that error. What urgent necessity
there was for such an explanation! What a host of difficulties has it
removed! We were quite at a loss, my dear father, to know what error the
popes and bishops meant to condemn, under the name of “the sense of
Jansenius.” The whole Church was in the utmost perplexity about it, and
not a soul would relieve us by an explanation. This, however, has now
been done by you, father—you whom the whole of your party regard as the
chief and prime mover of all their councils, and who are acquainted with
the whole secret of this proceeding. You, then, have told us that the
sense of Jansenius is neither more nor less than the sense of Calvin,
which has been condemned by the council.[340] Why, this explains
everything. We know now that the error which they intended to condemn,
under these terms—_the sense of Jansenius_—is neither more nor less than
the sense of Calvin; and that, consequently, we, by joining with them in
the condemnation of Calvin’s doctrine, have yielded all due obedience to
these decrees. We are no longer surprised at the zeal which the popes
and some bishops manifested against “the sense of Jansenius.” How,
indeed, could they be otherwise than zealous against it, believing as
they did the declarations of those who publicly affirmed that it was
identically the same with that of Calvin?
I must maintain, then, father, that you have no further reason to
quarrel with your adversaries; for they detest that doctrine as heartily
as you do. I am only astonished to see that you are ignorant of this
fact, and that you have such an imperfect acquaintance with their
sentiments on this point, which they have so repeatedly expressed in
their published works. I flatter myself that, were you more intimate
with these writings, you would deeply regret your not having made
yourself acquainted sooner, in the spirit of peace, with a doctrine
which is in every respect so holy and so Christian, but which passion,
in the absence of knowledge, now prompts you to oppose. You would find,
father, that they not only hold that an effective resistance may be made
to those feebler graces which go under the name of _exciting_ or
_inefficacious_, from their not terminating in the good with which they
inspire us; but that they are, moreover, as firm in maintaining, in
opposition to Calvin, the power which the will has to resist even
efficacious and victorious grace, as they are in contending against
Molina for the power of this grace over the will, and fully as jealous
for the one of these truths as they are for the other. They know too
well that man, of his own nature, has always the power of sinning and of
resisting grace; and that, since he became corrupt, he unhappily carries
in his breast a fount of concupiscence which infinitely augments that
power; but that, notwithstanding this, when it pleases God to visit him
with his mercy, he makes the soul do what he wills, and in the manner he
wills it to be done, while, at the same time, the infallibility of the
divine operation does not in any way destroy the natural liberty of man,
in consequence of the secret and wonderful ways by which God operates
this change. This has been most admirably explained by St. Augustine, in
such a way as to dissipate all those imaginary inconsistencies which the
opponents of efficacious grace suppose to exist between the sovereign
power of grace over the free-will and the power which the free-will has
to resist grace. For, according to this great saint, whom the popes and
the Church have held to be a standard authority on this subject, God
transforms the heart of man, by shedding abroad in it a heavenly
sweetness, which, surmounting the delights of the flesh, and inducing
him to feel, on the one hand, his own mortality and nothingness, and to
discover, on the other hand, the majesty and eternity of God, makes him
conceive a distaste for the pleasures of sin, which interpose between
him and incorruptible happiness. Finding his chiefest joy in the God who
charms him, his soul is drawn towards him infallibly, but of its own
accord, by a motion perfectly free, spontaneous, love-impelled; so that
it would be its torment and punishment to be separated from him. Not but
that the person has always the power of forsaking his God, and that he
may not actually forsake him, provided he choose to do it. But how
_could_ he choose such a course, seeing that the will always inclines to
that which is most agreeable to it, and that in the case we now suppose
nothing can be more agreeable than the possession of that _one good_,
which comprises in itself all other good things. “_Quod enim_ (says St.
Augustine) _amplius nos delectat, secundum_ _operemur necesse est_—Our
actions are necessarily determined by that which affords us the greatest
pleasure.”
Such is the manner in which God regulates the free will of man without
encroaching on its freedom, and in which the free will, which always
may, but never will, resist his grace, turns to God with a movement as
voluntary as it is irresistible, whensoever he is pleased to draw it to
himself by the sweet constraint of his efficacious inspirations.[341]
These, father, are the divine principles of St. Augustine and St.
Thomas, according to which it is equally true that _we have the power of
resisting grace_, contrary to Calvin’s opinion, and that, nevertheless,
to employ the language of Pope Clement VIII., in his paper addressed to
the Congregation _de Auxiliis_, “God forms within us the motion of our
will, and effectually disposes of our hearts, by virtue of that empire
which his supreme majesty has over the volitions of men, as well as over
the other creatures under heaven, according to St. Augustine.”
On the same principle, it follows that we act of ourselves, and thus, in
opposition to another error of Calvin, that we have merits which are
truly and properly _ours_; and yet, as God is the first principle of our
actions, and as, in the language of St. Paul, he “worketh in us that
which is pleasing in his sight;” “our merits are the gifts of God,” as
the Council of Trent says.
By means of this distinction we demolish the profane sentiment of
Luther, condemned by that Council, namely, that “we co-operate in no way
whatever towards our salvation, any more than inanimate things;”[342]
and, by the same mode of reasoning, we overthrow the equally profane
sentiment of the school of Molina, who will not allow that it is by the
strength of divine grace that we are enabled to co-operate with it in
the work of our salvation, and who thereby comes into hostile collision
with that principle of faith established by St. Paul, “That it is God
who worketh in us both to will and to do.”
In fine, in this way we reconcile all those passages of Scripture which
seem quite inconsistent with each other, such as the following: “Turn ye
unto God”—“Turn thou us, and we shall be turned”—“Cast away iniquity
from you”—“It is God who taketh away iniquity from his people”—“Bring
forth works meet for repentance”—“Lord, thou hast wrought all our works
in us”—“Make ye a new heart and a new spirit”—“A new spirit will I give
you, and a new heart will I create within you,” &c.
The only way of reconciling these apparent contrarieties, which ascribe
our good actions at one time to God, and at another time to ourselves,
is to keep in view the distinction, as stated by St. Augustine, that
“our actions are ours in respect of the free will which produces them;
but that they are also of God, in respect of his grace which enables our
free will to produce them;” and that, as the same writer elsewhere
remarks, “God enables us to do what is pleasing in his sight, by making
us will to do even what we might have been unwilling to do.”