the modern Thomists, for the Thomists hold, with them, both the power of
resisting grace, and the infallibility of the effect of grace; of which
latter doctrine they profess themselves the most strenuous advocates, if
we may judge from a common maxim of their theology, which Alvarez,[343]
one of the leading men among them, repeats so often in his book, and
expresses in the following terms (disp. 72, n. 4): “When efficacious
grace moves the free will, it infallibly consents; because the effect of
grace is such, that, although the will has the power of withholding its
consent, it nevertheless consents in effect.” He corroborates this by a
quotation from his master, St. Thomas: “The will of God cannot fail to
be accomplished; and, accordingly, when it is his pleasure that a man
should consent to the influence of grace, he consents infallibly, and
even necessarily, not by an absolute necessity, but by a necessity of
infallibility.” In effecting this, divine grace does not trench upon
“the power which man has to resist it, if he wishes to do so;” it merely
prevents him from wishing to resist it. This has been acknowledged by
your Father Petau, in the following passage (tom. i. p. 602): “The grace
of Jesus Christ insures infallible perseverance in piety, though not by
necessity; for a person may refuse to yield his consent to grace, if he
be so inclined, as the council states; but that same grace provides that
he shall never be so inclined.”
This, father, is the uniform doctrine of St. Augustine, of St. Prosper,
of the fathers who followed them, of the councils, of St. Thomas, and of
all the Thomists in general. It is likewise, whatever you may think of
it, the doctrine of your opponents. And let me add, it is the doctrine
which you yourself have lately sealed with your approbation. I shall
quote your own words: “The doctrine of efficacious grace, which admits
that we have a power of resisting it, is orthodox, founded on the
councils, and supported by the Thomists and Sorbonists.” Now, tell us
the plain truth, father; if you had known that your opponents really
held this doctrine, the interests of your Society might perhaps have
made you scruple before pronouncing this public approval of it; but,
acting on the supposition that they were hostile to the doctrine, the
same powerful motive has induced you to authorize sentiments which you
know in your heart to be contrary to those of your Society; and by this
blunder, in your anxiety to ruin their principles, you have yourself
completely confirmed them. So that, by a kind of prodigy, we now behold
the advocates of efficacious grace vindicated by the advocates of
Molina—an admirable instance of the wisdom of God in making all things
concur to advance the glory of the truth.
Let the whole world observe, then, that by your own admission, the truth
of this efficacious grace, which is so essential to all the acts of
piety, which is so dear to the Church, and which is the purchase of her
Saviour’s blood, is so indisputably Catholic, that there is not a single
Catholic, not even among the Jesuits, who would not acknowledge its
orthodoxy. And let it be noticed, at the same time, that, according to
your own confession, not the slightest suspicion of error can fall on
those whom you have so often stigmatized with it. For so long as you
charged them with clandestine heresies, without choosing to specify them
by name, it was as difficult for them to defend themselves as it was
easy for you to bring such accusations. But now, when you have come to
declare that the error which constrains you to oppose them, is the
heresy of Calvin which you supposed them to hold, it must be apparent to
every one that they are innocent of all error; for so decidedly hostile
are they to this, the only error you charge upon them, that they
protest, by their discourses, by their books, by every mode, in short,
in which they can testify their sentiments, that they condemn that
heresy with their whole heart, and in the same manner as it has been
condemned by the Thomists, whom you acknowledge, without scruple, to be
Catholics, and who have never been suspected to be anything else.
What will you say against them now, father? Will you say that they are
heretics still, because, although they do not adopt the sense of Calvin,
they will not allow that the sense of Jansenius is the same with that of
Calvin? Will you presume to say that this is matter of heresy? Is it not
a pure question of fact, with which heresy has nothing to do? It would
be heretical to say that we have not the power of resisting efficacious
grace; but would it be so to doubt that Jansenius held that doctrine? Is
this a revealed truth? Is it an article of faith which must be believed,
on pain of damnation? or is it not, in spite of you, a point of fact, on
account of which it would be ridiculous to hold that there were heretics
in the Church.
Drop this epithet, then, father, and give them some other name, more
suited to the nature of your dispute. Tell them, they are ignorant and
stupid—that they misunderstand Jansenius. These would be charges in
keeping with your controversy; but it is quite irrelevant to call them
heretics. As this, however, is the only charge from which I am anxious
to defend them, I shall not give myself much trouble to show that they
rightly understand Jansenius. All I shall say on the point, father, is,
that it appears to me that were he to be judged according to your own
rules, it would be difficult to prove him not to be a good Catholic. We
shall try him by the test you have proposed. “To know,” say you,
“whether Jansenius is sound or not, we must inquire whether he defends
efficacious grace in the manner of Calvin, who denies that man has the
power of resisting it—in which case he would be heretical; or in the
manner of the Thomists, who admit that it may be resisted—for then he
would be Catholic.” Judge, then, father, whether he holds that grace may
be resisted, when he says, “That we have always a power to resist grace,
according to the council; that free will may always act or not act, will
or not will, consent or not consent, do good or do evil; and that man,
in this life, has always these two liberties, which may be called by
some contradictions.”[344] Judge, likewise, if he be not opposed to the
error of Calvin, as you have described it, when he occupies a whole
chapter (21st) in showing “that the Church has condemned that heretic
who denies that efficacious grace acts on the free will in the manner
which has been so long believed in the Church, so as to leave it in the
power of free will to consent or not to consent; whereas, according to
St. Augustine and the council, we have always the power of withholding
our consent if we choose; and according to St. Prosper, God bestows even
upon his elect the will to persevere, in such a way as not to deprive
them of the power to will the contrary.” And, in one word, judge if he
do not agree with the Thomists, from the following declaration in
chapter 4th: “That all that the Thomists have written with the view of
reconciling the efficaciousness of grace with the power of resisting it,
so entirely coincides with his judgment, that to ascertain his
sentiments on this subject, we have only to consult their writings.”
Such being the language he holds on these heads, my opinion is, that he
believes in the power of resisting grace; that he differs from Calvin,
and agrees with the Thomists, because he has said so; and that he is,
therefore, according to your own showing, a Catholic. If you have any
means of knowing the sense of an author otherwise than by his
expressions; and if, without quoting any of his passages, you are
disposed to maintain, in direct opposition to his own words, that he
denies this power of resistance, and that he is for Calvin and against
the Thomists, do not be afraid, father, that I will accuse you of heresy
for that. I shall only say, that you do not seem properly to understand
Jansenius; but we shall not be the less on that account children of the
same Church.
How comes it, then, father, that you manage this dispute in such a
passionate spirit, and that you treat as your most cruel enemies, and as
the most pestilent of heretics, a class of persons whom you cannot
accuse of any error, nor of anything whatever, except that they do not
understand Jansenius as you do? For what else in the world do you
dispute about, except the sense of that author? You would have them to
condemn it. They ask what you mean them to condemn. You reply, that you
mean the error of Calvin. They rejoin that they condemn that error; and
with this acknowledgment (unless it is syllables you wish to condemn,
and not the thing which they signify), you ought to rest satisfied. If
they refuse to say that they condemn the sense of Jansenius, it is
because they believe it to be that of St. Thomas, and thus this unhappy
phrase has a very equivocal meaning betwixt you. In your mouth it
signifies the sense of Calvin; in theirs the sense of St. Thomas. Your
dissensions arise entirely from the different ideas which you attach to
the same term. Were I made umpire in the quarrel, I would interdict the
use of the word Jansenius, on both sides; and thus, by obliging you
merely to express what you understand by it, it would be seen that you
ask nothing more than the condemnation of Calvin, to which they
willingly agree; and that they ask nothing more than the vindication of
the sense of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, in which you again perfectly
coincide.
I declare, then, father, that for my part I shall continue to regard
them as good Catholics, whether they condemn Jansenius, on finding him
erroneous, or refuse to condemn him, from finding that he maintains
nothing more than what you yourself acknowledge to be orthodox; and that
I shall say to them what St. Jerome said to John, bishop of Jerusalem,
who was accused of holding the eight propositions of Origen: “Either
condemn Origen, if you acknowledge that he has maintained these errors,
or else deny that he has maintained them—_Aut nega hoc dixisse eum qui
arguitur; aut si locutus est talia, eum damna qui dixerit_.”
See, father, how these persons acted, whose sole concern was with
principles, and not with persons; whereas you who aim at persons more
than principles, consider it a matter of no consequence to condemn
errors, unless you procure the condemnation of the individuals to whom
you choose to impute them.
How ridiculously violent your conduct is, father! and how ill calculated
to insure success! I told you before, and I repeat it, violence and
verity can make no impression on each other. Never were your accusations
more outrageous, and never was the innocence of your opponents more
discernible: never has efficacious grace been attacked with greater
subtility, and never has it been more triumphantly established. You have
made the most desperate efforts to convince people that your disputes
involved points of faith; and never was it more apparent that the whole
controversy turned upon a mere point of fact. In fine, you have moved
heaven and earth to make it appear that this point of fact is founded on
truth; and never were people more disposed to call it in question. And
the obvious reason of this is, that you do not take the natural course
to make them believe a point of fact, which is to convince their senses,
and point out to them in a book the words which you allege are to be
found in it. The means you have adopted are so far removed from this
straightforward course, that the most obtuse minds are unavoidably
struck by observing it. Why did you not take the plan which I followed
in bringing to light the wicked maxims of your authors—which was to cite
faithfully the passages of their writings from which they were
extracted? This was the mode followed by the curés of Paris, and it
never fails to produce conviction. But, when you were charged by them
with holding, for example, the proposition of Father Lamy, that a “monk
may kill a person who threatens to publish calumnies against himself or
his order, when he cannot otherwise prevent the publication,”—what would
you have thought, and what would the public have said, if they had not
quoted the place where that sentiment is literally to be found? or if,
after having been repeatedly demanded to quote their authority, they
still obstinately refused to do it? or if, instead of acceding to this,
they had gone off to Rome, and procured a bull, ordaining all men to
acknowledge the truth of their statement? Would it not be undoubtedly
concluded that they had surprised the pope, and that they would never
have had recourse to this extraordinary method, but for want of the
natural means of substantiating the truth, which matters of fact furnish
to all who undertake to prove them? Accordingly, they had no more to do
than to tell us that Father Lamy teaches this doctrine _in tome 5, disp.
36, n. 118, page 544, of the Douay edition_; and by this means everybody
who wished to see it found it out, and nobody could doubt about it any
longer. This appears to be a very easy and prompt way of putting an end
to controversies of fact, when one has got the right side of the
question.
How comes it, then, father, that you do not follow this plan? You said,
in your book, that the five propositions are in Jansenius, word for
word, in the identical terms—_iisdem verbis_. You were told they were
not. What had you to do after this, but either to cite the page, if you
had really found the words, or to acknowledge that you were mistaken.
But you have done neither the one nor the other. In place of this, on
finding that all the passages from Jansenius, which you sometimes adduce
for the purpose of hoodwinking the people, are not “the condemned
propositions in their individual identity,” as you had engaged to show
us, you present us with Constitutions from Rome, which, without
specifying any particular place, declare that the propositions have been
extracted from his book.
I am sensible, father, of the respect which Christians owe to the Holy
See, and your antagonists give sufficient evidence of their resolution
ever to abide by its decisions. Do not imagine that it implied any
deficiency in this due deference on their part, that they represented to
the pope, with all the submission which children owe to their father,
and members to their head, that it was possible he might be deceived on
this point of fact—that he had not caused it to be investigated during
his pontificate; and that his predecessor, Innocent X., had merely
examined into the heretical character of the propositions, and not into
the fact of their connection with Jansenius. This they stated to the
commissary of the Holy Office, one of the principal examinators,
stating, that they could not be censured, according to the sense of any
author, because they had been presented for examination on their own
merits, and without considering to what author they might belong:
further, that upwards of sixty doctors, and a vast number of other
persons of learning and piety, had read that book carefully over,
without ever having encountered the proscribed propositions, and that
they have found some of a quite opposite description: that those who had
produced that impression on the mind of the pope, might be reasonably
presumed to have abused the confidence he reposed in them, inasmuch as
they had an interest in decrying that author, who has convicted Molina
of upwards of fifty errors:[345] that what renders this supposition
still more probable is, that they have a certain maxim among them, one
of the best authenticated in their whole system of theology, which is,
“that they may, without criminality, calumniate those by whom they
conceive themselves to be unjustly attacked:” and that, accordingly,
their testimony being so suspicious, and the testimony of the other
party so respectable, they had some ground for supplicating his
holiness, with the most profound humility, that he would ordain an
investigation to be made into this fact, in the presence of doctors
belonging to both parties, in order that a solemn and regular decision
might be formed on the point in dispute. “Let there be a convocation of
able judges (says St. Basil on a similar occasion, Ep. 75); let each of
them be left at perfect freedom; let them examine my writings; let them
judge if they contain errors against the faith; let them read the
objections and the replies; that so a judgment may be given in due form,
and with proper knowledge of the case, and not a defamatory libel
without examination.”
It is quite vain for you, father, to represent those who would act in
the manner I have now supposed as deficient in proper subjection to the
Holy See. The popes are very far from being disposed to treat Christians
with that imperiousness which some would fain exercise under their name.
“The Church,” says Pope St. Gregory,[346] “which has been trained in the
school of humility, does not command with authority, but persuades by
reason, her children whom she believes to be in error, to obey what she
has taught them.” And so far from deeming it a disgrace to review a
judgment into which they may have been surprised, we have the testimony
of St. Bernard for saying that they glory in acknowledging the mistake.
“The Apostolic See (he says, Ep. 180) can boast of this recommendation,
that it never stands on the point of honor, but willingly revokes a
decision that has been gained from it by surprise; indeed, it is highly
just to prevent any from profiting by an act of injustice, and more
especially before the Holy See.”
Such, father, are the proper sentiments with which the popes ought to be
inspired; for all divines are agreed that they may be surprised,[347]
and that their supreme character, so far from warranting them against
mistakes, exposes them the more readily to fall into them, on account of
the vast number of cares which claim their attention. This is what the
same St. Gregory says to some persons who were astonished at the
circumstance of another pope having suffered himself to be deluded: “Why
do you wonder,” says he, “that we should be deceived, we who are but
men? Have you not read that David, a king who had the spirit of
prophecy, was induced, by giving credit to the falsehoods of Ziba, to
pronounce an unjust judgment against the son of Jonathan? Who will think
it strange, then, that we, who are not prophets, should sometimes be
imposed upon by deceivers? A multiplicity of affairs presses on us, and
our minds, which, by being obliged to attend to so many things at once,
apply themselves less closely to each in particular, are the more easily
liable to be imposed upon in individual cases.”[348] Truly, father, I
should suppose that the popes know better than you whether they may be
deceived or not. They themselves tell us that popes, as well as the
greatest princes, are more exposed to deception than individuals who are
less occupied with important avocations. This must be believed on their
testimony. And it is easy to imagine by what means they come to be thus
over-reached. St. Bernard, in the letter which he wrote to Innocent II.,
gives us the following description of the process: “It is no wonder, and
no novelty, that the human mind may be deceived, and is deceived. You
are surrounded by monks who come to you in the spirit of lying and
deceit. They have filled your ears with stories against a bishop, whose
life has been most exemplary, but who is the object of their hatred.
These persons bite like dogs, and strive to make good appear evil.
Meanwhile, most holy father, you put yourself into a rage against your
own son. Why have you afforded matter of joy to his enemies? Believe not
every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God. I trust that,
when you have ascertained the truth, all this delusion, which rests on a
false report, will be dissipated. I pray the Spirit of truth to grant
you the grace to separate light from darkness, and to favor the good by
rejecting the evil.” You see then, father, that the eminent rank of the
popes does not exempt them from the influence of delusion; and I may now
add, that it only serves to render their mistakes more dangerous and
important than those of other men. This is the light in which St.
Bernard represents them to Pope Eugenius: “There is another fault, so
common among the great of this world, that I never met one of them who
was free from it; and that is, holy father, an excessive credulity, the
source of numerous disorders. From this proceed violent persecutions
against the innocent, unfounded prejudices against the absent, and
tremendous storms about nothing (_pro nihilo_). This, holy father, is a
universal evil, from the influence of which, if you are exempt, I shall
only say, you are the only individual among all your compeers who can
boast of that privilege.”[349]
I imagine, father, that the proofs I have brought are beginning to
convince you that the popes are liable to be surprised. But, to complete
your conversion, I shall merely remind you of some examples, which you
yourself have quoted in your book, of popes and emperors whom heretics
have actually deceived. You will remember, then, that you have told us
that Apollinarius surprised Pope Damasius, in the same way that
Celestius surprised Zozimus. You inform us, besides, that one called
Athanasius deceived the Emperor Heraclius, and prevailed on him to
persecute the Catholics. And lastly, that Sergius obtained from Honorius
that infamous decretal which was burned at the sixth council, “by
playing the busy-body,” as you say, “about the person of that pope.”
It appears, then, father, by your own confession, that those who act
this part about the persons of kings and popes, do sometimes artfully
entice them to persecute the faithful defenders of the truth, under the
persuasion that they are persecuting heretics. And hence the popes, who
hold nothing in greater horror than these surprisals, have, by a letter
of Alexander III., enacted an ecclesiastical statute, which is inserted
in the canonical law, to permit the suspension of the execution of their
bulls and decretals, when there is ground to suspect that they have been
imposed upon. “If,” says that pope to the Archbishop of Ravenna, “we
sometimes send decretals to your fraternity which are opposed to your
sentiments, give yourselves no distress on that account. We shall expect
you either to carry them respectfully into execution, or to send us the
reason why you conceive they ought not to be executed; for we deem it
right that you should not execute a decree, which may have been procured
from us by artifice and surprise.” Such has been the course pursued by
the popes, whose sole object is to settle the disputes of Christians,
and not to follow the passionate counsels of those who strive to involve
them in trouble and perplexity. Following the advice of St. Peter and
St. Paul, who in this followed the commandment of Jesus Christ, they
avoid domination. The spirit which appears in their whole conduct is
that of peace and truth.[350] In this spirit they ordinarily insert in
their letters this clause, which is tacitly understood in them all—“_Si
ita est—si preces veritate nilantur_—If it be so as we have heard it—if
the facts be true.” It is quite clear, if the popes themselves give no
force to their bulls, except in so far as they are founded on genuine
facts, that it is not the bulls alone that prove the truth of the facts,
but that, on the contrary, even according to the canonists, it is the
truth of the facts which renders the bulls lawfully admissible.