Chapter IV: Letter XIX (3)

The policy of the Society, as hitherto exhibited in the countries where they have settled, describes a regular cycle of changes. Commencing with loud professions of charity, of liberal views in politics, and of an accommodating code of morals, they succeed in gaining popularity among the non-religious, the dissipated, and the restless portion of society. Availing themselves of this, and carefully concealing, in a Protestant country, the more obnoxious parts of their creed, their next step is to plant some of the most plausible of their apostles in the principal localities, who are instructed to establish schools and seminaries on the most charitable footing, so as to ingratiate themselves with the poor, while they secure the contributions of the rich; to attack the credit of the most active and influential among the evangelical ministry; to revive old slanders against the reformers; to disseminate tracts of the most alluring description; and, when assailed in turn, to deny everything and to grant nothing. Rising by these means to power and influence, they gradually monopolize the seats of learning and the halls of theology—they glide, with noiseless steps, into closets, cabinets, and palaces—they become the dictators of the public press, the persecutors of the good, and the oppressors of all public and private liberty. At length, their treacherous designs being discovered, they rouse against themselves the storm of natural passions, which, descending on them first as the authors of the mischief, sweeps away along with them, in its headlong career, everything that bears the aspect of that active and earnest religion, under the guise of which they had succeeded in duping mankind.

What portion of this cycle they have reached among us, it is needless to demonstrate. They have evidently got beyond the first stage; and it is highly probable that, in proof of it, the present publication may elicit a more than ordinary exhibition of their skill in the science of defamation and denial. It is far from being unlikely that, at the present point of their revolution, they may find it their interest, after all the mischief that Pascal has done them, and all the ill that they have spoken against Pascal, to claim him as a good Catholic, and take advantage of the prestige of his name to insinuate, that the Church which could boast of such a man is not to be lightly esteemed. And, in fact, it requires no small exercise of caution to guard ourselves against such an illusion. It is difficult to characterize Popery as it deserves without apparent uncharitableness to individuals, such as Fenelon and Pascal, who, though members of a corrupt Church, possessed much of the spirit of true religion. But, though it would be impossible to class such eminent and pious men with an infidel cardinal or a Spanish inquisitor, it does not follow that they are free from condemnation. It has been justly remarked, that “their example has done much harm, and been only the more pernicious from their eminence and their virtues. It is difficult to calculate how much assistance their well-merited reputation has given to prop the falling cause of Popery, and to lengthen out the continuance of a delusion the most lasting and the most dangerous that has ever led mankind astray from the truth.”[80] With regard to our author, in particular, it may be well to remember, that he was virtuous without being indebted to his Church, and evangelical in spite of his creed; that his piety, for which he is so much esteemed by us, was the very quality that exposed him to odium and suspicion from his own communion; that the truths, for his adherence to which we would claim him as a brother in Christ, were those which were reprobated by the authorities of Rome; and that the following Letters, for which he is so justly admired, were, by the same Church, formally censured and ignominiously burnt, along with the Bible which Pascal loved, and the martyrs who have suffered for “the truth as it is in Jesus.”

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Footnote 1:

Non quia per nos sancti et immaculati futuri essemus, sed elegit
prædestinavitque ut essemus. (De Prædest., Aug. Op., tom. x. 815.)

Footnote 2:

De dono Persever. (Ib., 822.)

Footnote 3:

Neander, Bibl. Repos., iii. 94; Leydecker, de Jansen. Dogm., 413.

Footnote 4:

The question of the middle knowledge is learnedly handled by Voetius
(Disp. Theol., i. 264), by Hoornbeck (Socin. Confut.), and other
Protestant divines, who have shown it to be untenable, useless, and
fraught with absurdity.

Footnote 5:

Dupin, Eccl. Hist., 17th cent. 1–14.

Footnote 6:

“Well done, gentlemen; you have left me more in the dark than ever.”

Footnote 7:

He was the son of a poor artisan, whose name was Jan, or John Ottho;
hence Jansen, corresponding to our Johnson, which was Latinized into
Jansenius.

Footnote 8:

Petitot, Collect. des Mémoires, Notice sur Port-Royal, tom. xxxiii.,
p. 19. This author’s attempt to fix the charge of a conspiracy between
Jansen and St. Cyran to overturn the Church, is a piece of special
pleading, bearing on its face its own refutation.

Footnote 9:

The followers of Jansen were not more charitable than he in their
judgments of the Reformed, and showed an equal zeal with the Jesuits
to persecute them, when they had it in their power. (Benoit, Hist. de
l’Edit de Nantes, iii. 200.)

Footnote 10:

_Cæca quadam obedientia.—Ut Christum Dominum in superiore quolibet
agnoscere studeatis.—Perinde ac si cadaver essent, vel similiter atque
senis baculus.—Ad majorem Dei gloriam._ (Constit. Jesuit. pars vi.
cap. 1; Ignat. Epist., &c.)

Footnote 11:

Balde, whom the Jesuits honor in their schools as a modern Horace,
thus celebrates the longevity of the Society, in his _Carmen Seculare
de Societate Jesu_, 1640:—

“Profuit quisquis voluit nocere.
Cuncta subsident sociis; ubique
Exules vivunt, et ubique cives!
Sternimus victi, supreamus imi,
Surgimus plures toties cadendo.”

Footnote 12:

Their famous missionary, Francis Xavier, whom they canonized, was
ignorant of a single word in the languages of the Indians whom he
professed to evangelize. He employed a hand-bell to summon the natives
around him; and the poor savages, mistaking him for one of their
learned Brahmans, he baptized them until his arm was exhausted with
the task, and boasted of every one he baptized as a regenerated
convert!

Footnote 13:

Macintosh, Hist. of England, ii. 353.

Footnote 14:

Macintosh, Hist. of England, ii. 357.

Footnote 15:

Augustine himself is chargeable with having been the first to
introduce the scholastic mode of treating morality in the form of
trifling questions, more fitted to gratify curiosity, and display
acumen, than to edify or enlighten. His example was followed and
miserably abused, by the moralists of succeeding ages. (Buddei
Isagoge, vol. i. p. 568.)

Footnote 16:

Lancelot. Tour to Alet, p. 173; Leydecker, p. 122.

Footnote 17:

The whole title was: “Augustinus Cornelii Jansenii episcopi, seu
doctrina sancti Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanctitate ægritudinæ
medica, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses.” Louvain, 1640.

Footnote 18:

Leydecker, p. 132; Lancelot, p. 180.

Footnote 19:

Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, vol. iii. 143; Abbé Du Mas, Hist. des Cinq
Propositions, p. 48.

Footnote 20:

Letter xviii. pp. 310–313.

Footnote 21:

Witsii Œconom. Fœd., lib. iii.; Turret. Theol., Elenct. xv. quest. 4;
De Moor Comment, iv. 496; Mestrezat, Serm. sur Rom., viii. 274.

Footnote 22:

I refer here particularly to Arnauld’s treatise, entitled
“Renversement de la Morale de Jesus Christ par les Calvinistes,” which
was answered by Jurieu in his “Justification de la Morale des
Reformez.” 1685, by M. Merlat, and others. Jurieu has shown at great
length, and with a severity for which he had too much provocation,
that Arnauld and his friends, in their violent tirades against the
Reformed, neither acted in good faith, nor in consistency with the
sentiments of their much admired leaders, Augustine and Jansen.

Footnote 23:

Fontaine, Mémoires, i. 200; Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. 2.

Footnote 24:

Lancelot, p. 123.

Footnote 25:

Mémoires pour servir a l’Histoire de Port-Royal, vol. i. pp. 35, 57,
142.

Footnote 26:

Ib., p. 456. The title of this work was, “The Secret Chaplet of the
Holy Sacrament.”

Footnote 27:

Sacy, or Saci, was the inverted name of Isaac Le Maitre, celebrated
for his translation of the Bible.

Footnote 28:

Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. §2.

Footnote 29:

We may refer particularly to Petitot in his Collection des Mémoires,
tom. xxxiii., Paris, 1824; and to a History of the Company of Jesus by
J. Cretineau-Joly, Paris, 1845. With high pretensions to impartiality,
these works abound with the most glaring specimens of special
pleading.

Footnote 30:

Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV, t. ii.

Footnote 31:

Mémoires de P. Royal, i. 13. Bayle insists that his father had
twenty-two children. Dict., art. _Arnauld_.

Footnote 32:

Weisman, Hist. Eccl., ii. 204.

Footnote 33:

The title under which the Letters appeared when first collected into a
volume was, “_Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte, a un Provincial
de ses amis, et aux RR. PP. Jesuites, sur la morale et la politique de
ces Peres_.”

Father Bouhours, a Jesuit, ridicules the title of the Letters, and
says he is surprised they were not rather entitled “Letters from a
Country Bumpkin to his Friends,” and instead of “The Provincials”
called “The Bumpkins”—“_Campagnardes_.” (Remarques sur la langue
Fran., p. ii. 306. Dict. Univ., art. _Provincial_.)

Footnote 34:

Daniel, Entretiens, p. 19.

Footnote 35:

Petitot, Notices, p. 121.

Footnote 36:

Benoit, Hist. de l’Edit. de Nantes, iii. 198.

Footnote 37:

Daniel, Entretiens, p. 11.

Footnote 38:

Nicole, Notes sur la xi. Lettre iii. 332.

Footnote 39:

Recueil de Port-Royal, 278, 279; Petitot, pp. 122, 123.

Footnote 40:

Histoire des Provinciales, p. 12.

Footnote 41:

Petitot, p. 124. The eighteenth letter embraces the delicate topic of
papal authority, as well as the distinction between _faith_ and
_fact_, in stating which we can easily conceive how severely the
ingenuous mind of Pascal must have labored to find some plausible
ground for vindicating his consistency as a Roman Catholic. To the
Protestant reader, it must appear the most unsatisfactory of all the
Letters.

Footnote 42:

Prov. Let., p. 340.

Footnote 43:

Perrault, Parallele des Anc. et Mod., Bayle, art. _Pascal_.

Footnote 44:

D’Artigny, Nouveaux Mémoires iii. p. 34.

Footnote 45:

Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., tom. ii. pp. 171, 274.

Footnote 46:

D’Alembert, Destruct. des Jesuites, p. 54.

Footnote 47:

Bordas-Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, p. xxv. (This was the prize essay
before the French Academy, in June, 1842.)

Footnote 48:

Nicole, Hist. des Provinciales.

Footnote 49:

The names of these unfortunate productions alone survive; 1. “First
Reply to Letters, &c., by a Father of the Company of Jesus.” 2.
“Provincial Impostures of Sieur de Montalte, Secretary of Port-Royal,
discovered and refuted by a Father of the Company of Jesus.” 3. “Reply
to a Theologian,” &c. 4. “Reply to the Seventeenth Letter, by Francis
Annat,” &c., &c.

Footnote 50:

Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litteratur, vol. i. pp. 420–423.

Footnote 51:

Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 314–323. Some papers passed between Pascal
and his friends on this topic. Pascal committed these on his death-bed
to his friend M. Domat, “with a request that he would burn them if the
nuns of Port-Royal proved firm, and print them if they should yield.”
(Ib., p. 322.) The nuns having stood firm, the probability is that
they were destroyed. Had they been preserved, they might have thrown
some further light on the opinions of Pascal regarding papal
authority.

Footnote 52:

_Si mes Lettres sont condamnées à Rome, ce que j’y condamne, est
condamné dans le ciel._ (Pensées de Blaise Pascal, tom. ii. 163.
Paris, 1824.)

Footnote 53:

“How came you,” said the archbishop to M. Beurrier, “to administer the
sacraments to such a person? Didn’t you know that he was a Jansenist?”
(Recueil, 348.)

Footnote 54:

Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 327–330; Petitot, p. 165.

Footnote 55:

Walchii Biblioth. Theol., ii. 295.

Footnote 56:

The title of Nicole’s translation, now rarely to be met with, is,
_Ludovici Montaltii Litteræ Provinciales, de Morali et Politica
Jesuitarum Disciplina. A Willelmo Wendrockio, Salisburgensi Theologo._
Several editions of this translation were printed. I have the first,
published at Cologne in 1658, and the fifth, much enlarged, Cologne,
1679.

Footnote 57:

Avertissement, Les Provinciales, ed. 1767. Mad. de Joncourt, or
Joncoux, took a deep interest in the falling fortunes of Port-Royal.
(See some account of her in Madame Schimmelpenninck’s History of the
Demolition of Port-Royal, p. 135.)

Footnote 58:

Bayle, Dict., art. _Pascal_.

Footnote 59:

Daniel, Entretiens, p. 111.

Footnote 60:

Bayle, Dict., art. _Pascal_, note K.

Footnote 61:

Abbé de Castres, Les Trois Siècles, ii. 63.

Footnote 62:

Barbier, Dict. des Ouvrages Anon. et Pseudon.

Footnote 63:

Tabaraud, _Dissertation sur la foi qui est due au Temoignage de Pascal
dans ses Lettres Provinciales_, p. 12.—This work, published some years
ago in France, contains a complete justification of Pascal’s picture
of the Jesuits in the Provincials, accompanied with a mass of
authorities. The above sentiments have been introduced into Pascal’s
Thoughts. (See Craig’s translation, p. 185.)

Footnote 64:

Vie de Bossuet, t. iv. p. 19; Tabaraud, Dissert. sur la foi, &c., p.
43.

Footnote 65:

“The shocking doctrine of Jansenius and of St. Cyran, afforded at
least as much room for ridicule as the pliant doctrine of Molina,
Tambourin, and Vasquez.” (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 55.)

Footnote 66:

Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., ii. 367.

Footnote 67:

Eichhorn, Geschichte der Lit., i. 426.

Footnote 68:

Prov. Let., p. 118.

Footnote 69:

Ib., p. 142.

Footnote 70:

Tabaraud, p. 117; Bord. Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, Append.

Footnote 71:

Schlegel, Lectures on Hist. of Lit. ii. 188.

Footnote 72:

Letters from Spain, p. 86.

Footnote 73:

Macintosh, History of England, vol. ii. 359, note.

Footnote 74:

Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litter., vol. i. pp. 423–425; Weisman, Hist.
Eccl., vol. ii. 21; Jurieu, Prejugez Legitimes cont. le Papisme, p.
386; Claude, Defence of the Reformation, p. 29.

Footnote 75:

Jurieu, Justification de la Morale des Reformez, contre M. Arnauld, i.
p. 30.

Footnote 76:

A disingenuous attempt has been sometimes made to identify these
nefarious maxims with certain principles held by some of our
reformers. There is an essential difference between the natural right
claimed, we do not say with what justice, for subjects to proceed
against their rulers as tyrants, and the right assumed by the pope to
depose rulers as heretics. And it is equally easy to distinguish
between the disallowed acts of some fanatical individuals who have
taken the law into their own hands, and the atrocious deeds of such
men as Chatel and Ravaillac, who could plead the authority of Mariana
the Jesuit, that “to put tyrannical princes to death is not only a
lawful, but a laudable, heroic, and glorious action.” (Dalton’s
Jesuits; their Principles and Acts, London, 1843.) The Church of St.
Ignatius at Rome is or was adorned, it seems, with pictures of all the
assassinations mentioned in Scripture, which they have, most
presumptuously, perverted in justification of their feats in this
department. (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 101.)

Footnote 77:

Taylor, Natural Hist. of Enthusiasm, p. 256.

Footnote 78:

De l’Existence et de l’Institut des Jesuites. Par le R. P. de
Ravignan, de la Compagnie de Jesus. Paris, 1845, p. 83. _Probabilism_
is the doctrine, that if any opinion in morals has been held by any
_grave doctor_ of the Church, it is _probably true_, and may be safely
followed in practice.

Footnote 79:

Gilly, Narrative of an Excursion to Piedmont, p. 156.

Footnote 80:

Douglas on Errors in Religion, p. 113.

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THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS.