Antoine Arnauld married the youthful daughter of M. Marion, the Avocat-général, who became a mother while still only a girl of fifteen, but who grew into a noble and large-hearted woman, full of deeds of piety and charity. In all, the couple had twenty children, and felt, as may be imagined, the pressure of providing for so many. Out of this pressure came the remarkable lot of two of the daughters. The benefices of the Church were a fruitful field of provision, and the avocat-général, the maternal grandfather of the children, had large ecclesiastical influence. The result was the appointment not only of one daughter to the abbey of Port Royal, but also of a younger sister, Agnès, only six years of age, to the abbey of St Cyr, about six miles distant from Port Royal. Difficulties, not without reason, were found in obtaining the papal sanction to such appointments; but these were at last overcome by means, it is said, more creditable to M. Arnauld’s ability than to his integrity.
At the age of eleven, in the year 1602, Angélique was installed Abbess of Port Royal. Her sister took the veil at the age of seven. United in the nursery, they had also spent some months together at the abbey of St Cyr, in preparation for their solemn office. They were of marked but very contrasted characters. The elder inherited the strong will and dominant energy of her race. As yet, and for some time afterwards, without any religious bias, she contemplated her prospects with a quiet and proud consciousness of responsibility. The younger sister was of a softer and more submissive nature. She shrank from her high position, saying that an abbess had to answer to God for the souls of her nuns, and she was sure that she would have enough to do to take care of her own. Angélique had no such scruples. She was glad to be an abbess, and was resolved that her nuns should thoroughly do their duty. These sayings have been preserved in the memoirs of the family, and are supposed to indicate happily the firm, persistent spirit and legislative capacity of the one sister, in contrast with the passive rather than active strength, and milder yet no less enduring purpose, of the other.
The remarkable story of Angélique’s conversion by the preaching of a Capucin friar in 1608, her strange contest with her parents which followed, the strengthening impulses in different directions which her religious life received, first from the famous St Francis de Sales, and finally, and especially, from the no less remarkable Abbé de St Cyran, all belong to the history of Port Royal, and cannot be detailed here. It is a touching and beautiful story, which can never lose its interest. It is only necessary that we draw attention to the temporary removal of the Abbess with her nuns to Paris in the year 1635, and to the settlement in the valley, during their absence from it, of the band of Solitaries whose piety and genius, no less than the heroic devotion of the sisterhood, have shed such a glory around it. It was the spiritual influence of St Cyran which overflowed in this direction. The religious genius of this remarkable man, of whom we shall speak more particularly in the next chapter, laid its spell upon the social life around him, and brought to his feet some of the most able and distinguished young men of the time. The elder brother of Angélique and Agnès Arnauld, known as M. d’Andilly, was amongst his devoted friends; and it was through him that St Cyran first became connected with Port Royal. D’Andilly was married, and a courtier—a busy man in the political circles of his day; but he had long bowed before the force of St Cyran’s religious convictions, and finally he too abandoned the world, and sought the retirement of Port Royal, whither three of his nephews had preceded him; and a younger and yet more distinguished brother, the namesake of his father, soon followed him. It was D’Andilly who said of St Cyran, “I was under such obligations to him that I loved him more than life.” On the other hand, St Cyran said of him, “He has not the virtue of a saint or an anchorite, but I know no man of his condition who is so solidly virtuous.”
The brotherhood of Port Royal had its beginning in 1637 with the conversion of two of the nephews of D’Andilly and the Mère Angélique, children of Arnauld’s eldest daughter, who had married unhappily and been soon separated from her husband. These grandsons of Arnauld are known as M. le Maitre and M. de Sercourt, the former of whom, like his ancestors, had greatly distinguished himself at the bar. The latter was no less distinguished as a soldier. In the midst of worldly success, they forsook everything and gave themselves to a life of religious retirement, in which they were by-and-by joined by a younger and still more remarkable brother, known as M. de Saci, trained for the Church, and already mentioned in connection with Pascal’s conversion. He became Pascal’s spiritual director, and held with him the famous conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne. To the same group of men belonged Singlin, of whom we have heard so much in former pages, and Lancelot and Fontaine; above all, Antoine Arnauld, the youngest of the large Arnauld family, and the most indefatigable of them all. Singlin was a favourite of St Cyran, and his successor in the office of spiritual director to the monastery, as De Saci was again the successor of Singlin in the same capacity. He was a man of less ability and knowledge than many of the others, the son of a wine merchant, who did not begin his religious studies till a comparatively late period, but of a very direct and simple character, and well skilled in the mysteries of the conscience, which made him a spiritual power in the community. He was withal of singular humility, and would fain have retired from the office of Confessor when St Cyran was set at liberty in 1643 after his long imprisonment; but neither then nor afterwards, on his illustrious friend’s death, was he allowed to do so. St Cyran warned him that he could not fly from the duties of such a position without incurring the guilt of disobedience. De Saci seems to have been especially remarkable for his quiet self-possession and cautious insight into character. His brother, Le Maitre, brings out in a curious manner the contrast between his own impetuous character and the leisurely efficiency of De Saci’s temper. As they sat at their evening meal—“a very modest collation”—
“He had hardly begun his supper when mine was already half digested. . . . Of quick and warm disposition, I had seen the end of my portion almost as soon as the beginning; it rapidly disappeared; and as I was thinking of rising from the table, I saw my brother De Saci, with his usual coolness and gravity, take a little piece of apple, peel it quietly, cut it leisurely, and eat it slowly. Then, after having finished, he rose almost as light as he had sat down, leaving untouched nearly all his very moderate portion. He went away as if he were quite satisfied, and even appeared to grow fat upon fasts.” [87]
Claude Lancelot was the schoolmaster of the community, and represents to us perhaps more fully than any other name its famous system of education. Fontaine was one of its chief memoir writers, from whom we derive so much of our knowledge of the society; while the younger Arnauld, of whom we shall afterwards speak, Nicole, and the subject of our present sketch, represent its philosophical and literary activity.
Such was the company to which Pascal joined himself in 1655. They had been settled in divers places,—at first, in 1637, when they were still only a few disciples gathered around St Cyran, in the immediate neighbourhood of Port Royal de Paris; and then, when driven from this after their great head’s imprisonment, for a short time at a place called Ferté Milon; and then, finally, in 1639, at Port Royal des Champs. Here they made a great change for the better by their assiduous industry. They drained the marshy valley, cleared it of its overgrowth of brushwood, and converted it into a comparatively smiling and salubrious abode. On the return of the sisterhood from Port Royal de Paris in 1648, the nuns found the place improved beyond their expectations. The conventual buildings had been repaired, and the church kept in good preservation. The bells of the church tower pealed a welcome; a large concourse of the neighbouring poor assembled in the courtyard to greet them; while the Solitaries—one of their number, a priest, bearing a cross—waited at the church door to enter with them, and swell with their voices the Te Deum with which they celebrated their return. After this they parted, a few of the brotherhood repairing to a house which had been taken for them in Paris, but others retiring to the well-known farm on the hill known as Les Granges. There was, of course, the strictest seclusion maintained in the nunnery, as before, and the inmates of Les Granges were wellnigh as completely severed from it as the brethren who retired to Paris.
The mode of life of the Solitaries was simple in the highest degree. They wore no distinctive dress. Their wants were supplied by the barest necessaries in the shape of lodging and furniture. From early morning, three A.M., to night, they were occupied in works of piety, charity, or industry. They met in the chapel after their private devotions to say matins and lauds, a service which occupied about an hour and a half, after which they kissed the earth in token of a common lowliness, and sought each his own room for a time. The round of devotion thus commenced was continued with a steady uniformity,—Prime at half-past six; Tierces at nine, and after this a daily Mass; Sexte at eleven; Nones at two; Vespers at four; and Compline closing the series at a quarter-past seven. [89] The Gospel and Epistles were read daily; and sometimes during or after dinner the Lives of the Saints. They dined together; and a walk thereafter formed the sole recreation of the day. Two hours in the morning, and two in the afternoon, were devoted to work in the fields or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks. Confession and communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced. In this, as in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal’s case, there was no need to stimulate the morbid desire for bodily mortification.
* * * * *
It was in the last month of 1654 that Pascal’s final conversion and adhesion to Port Royal took place. His mind for some time before had been greatly agitated, as already explained—filled with disgust of the world and all its enjoyments. Then had come the accident at the Bridge of Neuilly, and about the same time, or a little later, a remarkable vision or ecstasy which he has himself described, and which has given rise to a good deal of useless speculation. During life he never spoke of this matter, unless it may have been to his confessor; [90] but after his death two copies of a brief writing were found upon him,—the one written on parchment enclosing the other written on paper, and carefully stitched into the clothes that he had worn day by day. It is beyond question that Pascal must have been deeply touched by the event, whatever may have been its precise nature, the memorial of which he had thus preserved. The footnote shows the writing in the original, as printed by M. Faugère: there are some variations in the copies, but it seems most correctly given as below. It may be translated as follows:—
* * * * *
The year of grace 1654.
Monday 23d November, day of St Clement, pope and martyr, and
others in the martyrology.
Vigil of St Chrysogone, martyr and others.
From about half-past ten o’clock in the evening till about
half-past twelve.
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not of philosophers and of savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joy.
Peace.
God of Jesus Christ
My God and your God.
Thy God will be my God—
Oblivion of the world and of all save God.
He is found only by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Just Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known
Thee.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have separated myself from Him—
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water.
My God, will you forsake me?—
Oh, may I not be separated from Him
eternally!
This is life eternal, that they know Thee the only true God,
and Him whom Thou hast sent, J.-C.
Jesus Christ—
Jesus Christ—
I have separated myself from Him; I have fled, renounced,
crucified Him.
Oh that I may never be separated from Him!
He is only held fast by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation total and sweet,
etc. [91]
* * * * *
It is difficult to make much of this document. Are we to suppose that Pascal, on the 23d of November 1654, thought he saw a vision, revealing to him the truth of Christianity, and the vanity of philosophy and the world? Even if Pascal did this, our estimate of the matter could hardly be much affected. But there is no evidence that he himself attached a supernatural character to the incident. He felt, no doubt, that a real revelation had come to him, that his mind had been lifted in spiritual ecstasy away from the love of all that for a time had hid from him the presence of God and of a higher world. The moment of this blessed experience had been sacred to him. He had tried to trace it in these broken characters, and in seasons of doubt or depression he may have sought to awaken a new fervour of faith and love by their contemplation. This seems all the natural meaning of the incident; but, as some have endeavoured to attach to it a supernatural importance, so others, in whom the idea not only of the supernatural but of the spiritual only excites contempt, have tried to give to it a purely superstitious character. It was Condorcet who first applied to the paper the epithet of Pascal’s “Amulette;” and Lélut has adopted the epithet, and written a volume more or less relating to it. He supposes the vision to have occurred to Pascal on the evening of the day when the event at Neuilly had upset his nervous system—always easily disturbed—and brought before him a frightful picture of his alienation from God, and the piety of his early manhood. Facts mingled with the dreams of his excited imagination. He saw the horses plunging over the precipice, and an abyss seemed to open beside him—the abyss of eternity; when, lo! from the depths of the abyss there appeared a globe of fire (un globe de feu) encircled with the Cross; and the irresistible impulse was stirred in him to throw aside the world for ever, and embrace God,—“Not the God of philosophers or of savants,” but “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob—the God of Jesus Christ,” from whom he had been severed, but from whom he felt he never more would be severed; abiding in Him in “sweet and total renunciation” of all else. The idea, of course, is that Pascal’s dream or vision was the result of physical derangement; and it may be safely granted that if the reality at all corresponded to Lélut’s imaginary picture, this is its natural explanation. The story of the “vision” and the “abyss” are thus made, not without a certain appearance of probability, to fit into one another, and both into the accident at Neuilly; and a certain congruity of external and internal alarm is hence given to the great crisis of Pascal’s life. Unhappily, however, there is a lack of evidence regarding the accident itself, [94] and, still more, the accompanying story of the abyss seen by Pascal at his side, which must make the reader cautious who has no theory to support. Voltaire, in his usual manner, made the most of Pascal’s supposed delusions. “In the last years of his life,” he said, “Pascal believed that he had seen an abyss by the side of his chair,—need we on that account have the same fancy? I, too, see an abyss, but it is in the very things which he believed that he had explained.” He quotes also the authority of Leibnitz for the statement that Pascal’s melancholy had led his intellect astray—a result, he adds, not at all wonderful in the case of a man of such delicate temperament and gloomy imagination. But Voltaire was not precise here, as in other matters about Pascal. He understood him too little to be a good judge of his mental peculiarities. All that Leibnitz really said was, that Pascal, “in wishing to fathom the depths of religion, had become scrupulous even to folly.” [95]
Whatever explanation we may give of the supposed incidents attending Pascal’s conversion, there never was a more absurd fancy than that Pascal’s mind suffered any eclipse in the great change that came to him. He may have been credulous, he may have been superstitious. The miracle of the Holy Thorn may be an evidence of the one, and the unnatural asceticism of his later years a proof of the other. But to speak of the author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ of the problems on the Cycloid, and finally of the ‘Pensées,’ as if his intellect had suffered from his conversion, is to use words without meaning. All his noblest writings were the product of his religious experience, and he never soared so high in intellectual and literary achievement as when moving on the wings of spiritual indignation or of spiritual aspiration.
The whole interest of Pascal’s life from this period is concentrated in his writings—first the ‘Provincials,’ and then the ‘Pensées,’ to which we devote separate chapters. There was only the interval of a year between his conversion and the commencement of his great controversy, and little is known of how he passed his time during this interval. He seems to have remained chiefly at Port Royal under the guidance of M. de Saci, and to have felt an unwonted measure of happiness in his triumph over the world and in the possession of his own quiet thoughts. We have seen how he spoke of being treated “like a prince,” and even his health seemed to improve, notwithstanding the regularity and severity of his religious devotions. He communicated his feelings of elation to his sister, who replied (19th January 1655) that she was delighted to find him “gay in his solitude,” as she never was at his happiness in the world. “Notwithstanding,” she adds, “I do not know how M. de Saci adapts himself to so light-hearted a penitent, who professes to find compensation for the vain joys and amusements of the world in joys somewhat more reasonable, and jeux d’esprit more allowable, instead of expiating them by perpetual tears.”
How long Pascal’s pious elation continued is not said, nor have we any further details of his religious life at Port Royal. He never absolutely took up his abode there as one of the Solitaries, and could therefore say in his sixteenth Provincial Letter, without more than an innocent equivocation, that he “did not belong to Port Royal.” He was still found there, however, in the beginning of the following year (1655), when the affair of M. Arnauld and the Sorbonne was approaching its crisis, and the idea of his famous letters was started in a meeting, to be afterwards mentioned, between him and Arnauld and Nicole. After this, during the publication of the ‘Letters,’ Pascal seems chiefly to have resided in Paris, probably with a view to the greater facilities he enjoyed there in prosecuting his assaults upon the Jesuits, which continued till the spring of 1657. During the following year he was busy with the great idea of a work in defence of religion, suggested partly by his own intellectual activity, but partly also by a special incident at Port Royal which made a great impression upon him.
This was the famous “miracle” of the Holy Thorn. Madame Périer’s daughter, Marguerite Périer—the same to whom we are indebted for interesting memorials of her uncle’s life—had become, with her sister, a pupil at Port Royal. She suffered from an apparently incurable disease of the eye, fistula lachrymalis. On a sudden she was reported to be entirely cured, and the cure was attributed to the touch of a relic which had been brought to the abbey by a priest,—a supposed thorn from the crown of Christ. It is remarkable that the Mère Angélique was somewhat slow of belief as to the “miracle,” and that she marvelled the world should make so much of it. But it secured the credence of Pascal, and became a great fact in the history of Port Royal, staying for a time the hand of persecution, and pointing, as its friends believed, to the visible interposition of heaven. How could the accusations against Port Royal be true, seeing what God Himself had done on its behalf? “This place, which men say is the devil’s temple, God makes His house. Men declare that its children must be taken out of it, and God heals them there. They are threatened with all the furies; God loads them with His favours.” This was Pascal’s own language on the subject, [97] and there can be no doubt that the supposed miracle deeply affected him. He was “sensibly touched,” it is said, “by such a grace, regarding it as virtually done to himself, seeing it was done to one so near to him in kindred, and who was his spiritual daughter in baptism.” He was penetrated by a great joy, and much occupied by the thought of what had happened, and the general subject of miracles. There was in this manner awakened in him “the extreme desire of employing himself on a work in refutation of the principles and false reasonings of the atheists.” “He had studied them,” his sister continues, “with great care, and applied his whole mind to search out the means of convincing them. His last year of work was entirely occupied in collecting divers thoughts on this subject.”
Unhappily, in the course of 1658 Pascal’s old illness returned with redoubled severity, and the last four years of his life became in consequence years of great languor and interruption of his projected work. The practice of continuous composition failed him. Hitherto he had been wont to develop his thoughts completely,—to write them out, as it were, mentally before committing them to paper; but now he began the habit of transferring his ideas rapidly, and sometimes imperfectly, to manuscript, as they arose in his mind. In many cases, if not in all, these first sketches remained as originally made, without any revision or further reconstruction; and from the mass of papers accumulated in this manner during these years the ‘Pensées’ were formed—the story of whose publication will be afterwards told. Strangely, it was in this very year, during a fit of severe toothache, apparently connected with his general illness, that Pascal began his wonderful series of problems on the cycloid, showing how fresh and unimpaired his scientific genius remained under all the changes of his health and of his main intellectual interests.
The last years of Pascal’s life, in their deep suffering, and in their many traits of pious resignation and self-denial, have been fully sketched by Madame Périer. We do not think it necessary to repeat the sketch here, touching and beautiful as in some respects it is. It is impossible to read her simple and earnest narrative without emotion, and yet the emotion is apt to evaporate in translation. It is impossible, also, to avoid the feeling that, with all the tenderness and humility of Pascal’s later years, there mingle a strange pride in his very austerities, and something of the nature of religious mania, which, beautiful as may be the forms it sometimes takes, is yet in its spirit, and in not a few of its excesses, essentially unlovely. Pascal’s care of the poor, his love of them—“to serve the poor in a spirit of poverty” was what appeared to him “most agreeable to God”—his wish to die among them, to be carried to the Hospital for Incurables, and breathe his last there; the story of his rescue of the poor girl who asked alms from him on the streets; his unparalleled patience, and even gladness, in suffering, so that he seemed to welcome it and bind it about him as a garment; his wonderful humility and yet his noble courage at the last in the matter of the Formulary,—all this goes to the heart of the reader. It must be a cold heart that is not moved by the picture of a great soul striving “to renounce all pleasure and all superfluities,”—to copy literally, like St Francis, the portrait of his Master. But here, as everywhere, the human copy falls infinitely short of the divine Original. There is the loveliness of a true human life beneath all the picture of suffering presented to us in the Gospels. All the hues of natural feeling have gone out of the last years of Pascal. He not only bore suffering—he preferred it; and he boldly justified his preference. “Sickness,” he said, “is the natural state of the Christian; it puts us in the condition in which we always ought to be.” In this spirit he strove to deaden any sensation of pleasure in his food, in the attentions of his relatives and friends, even in his studies. He could not bear to see his sister caressing her children; there seemed to him harm in even saying that a woman was beautiful; the married state was a “kind of homicide or rather Deicide.” He thought it wrong that any one should find pleasure in attachment to him, for he “was not the final object of any being, and had not wherewith to satisfy any.” So jealous was he of any surprise of pleasure, of any thought of vanity or complacency in himself and his work, that he wore a girdle of iron next his skin, the sharp points of which he pressed closely when he thought himself in any danger, especially in such moments of intercourse with the world as he still sometimes allowed himself.
Such details are neither interesting in themselves nor do they present Pascal in his highest character. One cannot help feeling that, touching as Madame Périer’s narrative is, there must have been, even in the Pascal of later years, more than she has drawn for us. One glimpse we get, but not in her pages, of a more natural temper, when he withstood his Jansenist friends in the matter of subscribing the Formulary demanded from the Port Royalists. He had himself previously been willing to subscribe, with certain restrictions, when his sister Jacqueline alone stood out in her resistance to what she deemed a treasonable betrayal of the cause. She signed at last, but against her conscience, and, so to speak, with her blood. She died immediately afterwards, the first victim of the signature, as she has been called, and bequeathing a letter to her fellow-sufferers on the subject. Whether inspired by her words or not, Pascal took a firm stand against any further concessions, and in a famous interview with Arnauld, Nicole, and Sainte-Marthe, he argued the point with such strength and vehemence that he fell fainting to the ground. [101]
This was in the end of 1661, when his sufferings were fast drawing to a close. In the previous summer, when at Clermont, he had written to Fermat that he was so weak as to be “unable to walk without a stick, or to hold himself on horseback.” His weakness had grown apace, and in June 1662 he was seized with his last illness. It was necessary that his sister should nurse him, and this could only be done by his removal to her house, for he had given up his own house to a poor family, one of whose children had taken smallpox, and he would allow neither the child to be removed nor his sister to run the risk of carrying infection to her children. He left his own home for hers, therefore, on the 27th of June, and never returned. Three days after his removal he was seized with a violent colic, which deprived him of all sleep. His physicians at first were not alarmed, as his pulse continued good, but gradually pain and sleeplessness wore him out. He confessed both to the curé of the parish and to his friend Sainte-Marthe, one of the directors of the community. He wished, as we said, to die in the Hospital for Incurables amongst the poor, but in his state of weakness it was impossible to gratify this wish. After the administration of the last sacrament, which he received with tearful emotion, he thanked the curé, and exclaimed, “May God never leave me!” These were his last words. Convulsions having returned, he expired on the 19th of August 1662.
It is unnecessary to attempt any estimate of Pascal’s character. The reader must draw it for himself in the light of these pages. With all enthusiasm for its grandeur and unity of purpose, and that moral and intellectual elevation which it everywhere shows, it may be found lacking in breadth and variety, and that familiar interest and charm which strangely often come from the contemplation of human weakness rather than of human strength. There is certainly less to love in him than to admire—less to call forth delight than respect. The play of natural individuality is hidden behind lines of lofty distance, and latterly of Jansenist severity. A proud, ascetic, and worn figure seems to rise before us; but strangely Pascal’s portrait, as known to us, conveys no idea of asceticism. The face is full-fleshed and expressive, like the face of a child, with large ripe lips and open eyes of wonder,—a portrait which suggests the companion of the Duc de Roannez in his years of pleasure, rather than the weary and pain-worn penitent of Port Royal. [102]
Pascal’s ‘Letters to a Provincial’ represent a great controversy, the nature of which it is necessary to explain. They are, at the same time, the most perfect expression of his literary genius, and touch theological questions with such an inimitable grace and felicity of expression as to have awakened a universal intellectual interest. It may be hard to justify this interest by any analysis of their contents, or by such extracts as can be given from them. No English can convey the exquisite fitness of French polemical expression in its highest form, its mingled force and delicacy, its keenness and yet its lightness. We shall, however, endeavour to give as clearly as we can an account, first, of the controversy out of which the ‘Letters’ originated, and then of the consummate skill with which Pascal conducted it.
M. de St Cyran is not merely one of the chief figures connected with Port Royal: he was the fountain-head of its special power. To his influence and teaching it was indebted for its chief glory and its most terrible sufferings. Jean Baptist du Vergier d’Hauranne, better known by the above official designation, was of noble family. He was born at Bayonne in 1581, and early devoted himself to the study of theology at Louvain and Paris. While a student, he is supposed to have first made the acquaintance of Cornelius Jansen, and to have begun with him that co-operation which was destined to bear such remarkable fruits. Their intimacy was one based on spiritual affinity and a common enthusiasm. For Jansen was the son of poor peasants, without even a surname. His father is only known as Jan Ottosen, or John the son of Otto; as the son in his turn was Cornelius Jansen, or the son of John. Jansen was the younger of the two friends, having been born in 1585; but he appears to have exercised a powerful influence over his older companion. The great bond of their union and common enthusiasm was the study of St Augustine. For the purpose of pursuing this study undisturbed, they retired to the seaside near Bayonne, and here they established themselves in scholastic seclusion. Smitten with the desire of attaining theological truth, they found the Schoolmen constantly appealing to St Augustine as their authority, and they consequently resolved to examine this authority for themselves, and so ascend to what they believed to be the source of their favourite science. Had they taken only one step further, they would have approached Protestantism; and as it was, the favourite charge which the Jesuits afterwards made against them was, that they were Calvinists in disguise. Unconsciously they were so, notwithstanding all their disclaimers. The Jesuits were unscrupulous; but their penetration here, as in many other cases, was not at fault. The doctrines so warmly espoused by Jansen and St Cyran were the old doctrines of grace, which Calvin and they alike borrowed from St Augustine, and he in his turn found in the Epistles of St Paul. [105] And the controversy which their labours were destined once more to awaken in the bosom of the Catholic Church was nothing else than the old dispute which, since the days of Augustine and Pelagius, had more than once already agitated it.
The fellow-students continued their studies near Bayonne for five years. So closely did they work, that Jansen is said to have spent days and nights in the same chair, snatching only brief intervals of rest. A game at battledore and shuttlecock occasionally relieved their vigils; but no serious employment divided their attention with the arduous task upon which they had entered, of mastering and digesting the principles of the Augustinian theology. The Bishop of Bayonne offered preferment to D’Hauranne, and there were projects of settling Jansen also at the head of a college; but it was not till some time afterwards that either of them entered upon official labours. They were left during those years to the uninterrupted studies which subsequently resulted in the great work of Jansen. The system of theological thought associated with his name was then definitely matured.
It is beyond our province to sketch the career of these fellow-students, one of whom became the chief spiritual director of Port Royal, and the other its great theological centre. The abbey of St Cyran was the only preferment which D’Hauranne ever accepted, notwithstanding Richelieu’s repeated offers of a bishopric. He was content to exercise from his monastic seclusion an influence far more powerful than that of any bishop of his day. And so penetrating and dangerous did this influence seem to the great Minister whose efforts to bind him to his side had so often failed, that he at length shut him up in Vincennes (May 1638). Here he remained in close confinement for more than four years; but even from this gloomy retreat the impression of his great personal power was spread abroad, and felt in many quarters as steadily as before. He survived his release only a few months. His long imprisonment had broken down his health; and although the enthusiasm of his spirit was strong as ever, his weakened body was no longer able to answer to its demands. He could hardly “hold himself up,” and a slight attack of illness carried him off.
St Cyran’s chief strength seems to have lain in a concentrated enthusiasm and quiet strength of will which enabled him to hold his own against all opposition, and to subdue other minds larger than his own to his purposes. When the Prince de Condé interceded for him after his arrest, Richelieu’s reply was: “Do you know of whom you are speaking? That man is more dangerous than six armies. I say that attrition with confession is necessary: he believes that contrition is necessary. [106] And in the affair of Monsieur’s marriage all France has given way to me, and he alone has the hardihood to oppose it.” Against all enticements and assaults alike he set a proud and firm faith in his own mission—a patience sublime in its calmness, and in the unwavering consciousness of Divine right on his side. “I am careful to complain of nothing,” he said in his imprisonment. “I am ready to remain here a hundred years; to die here, if God will. I am ready for whatever He designs—for action or for suffering.” The same faith and quiet assurance gave him his marvellous influence over others, and that fascination which made him a power in the cultivated society of Paris. All the Arnauld family more or less owned his influence; and it was his teaching mainly that peopled Port Royal with the Solitaries who have made it so illustrious.
The life and work of Jansen seem at first far removed from Port Royal. He returned to Louvain after his sojourn at Bayonne, and became a professor of theology in its famous university, on whose behalf he was employed in several political negotiations with the Spanish Court. Finally he was appointed Bishop of Ypres, in which capacity he is chiefly known in the ecclesiastical world. His fame, however, rests not on any political or ecclesiastical labours, but on the results flowing from his original studies at Bayonne. He never forgot his devotion to St Augustine. He is said to have read the whole of his writings ten times, and the treatises against the Pelagians not less than thirty times. The fruit of all this studious devotion was his work known briefly as the ‘Augustinus,’ [107] published two years after his death (in 1640). Nothing could have seemed more innocent or laudable than the attempt by a bishop of the Church to set forth the doctrine of St Augustine. The book professed to have been undertaken in a humble spirit.
“I have avoided error where I could,” says the author; “for the cases in which I could not, I implore the reader’s pardon. . . . Let the knowledge of my sincerity make amends for the simplicity of my error. I know that if I have erred, it is not in the assertion of Catholic truth, but in the statement of the opinion of St Augustine; for I have not laid down what is true or false, what is to be held or rejected according to the faith of the Catholic Church, but only what Augustine taught and declared was to be held.”
A task of such a character, carried out in such a spirit, might have seemed a harmless one.
But the Jesuits had long marked both St Cyran and Jansen as theological foes, opposed to their special doctrines. They endeavoured therefore, first of all, to prevent the publication of Jansen’s work; and failing in this, they directed all their efforts to procure a condemnation of the book from the Court of Rome. “Never,” it has been said, “did any book receive a more stormy welcome. Within a few weeks of its appearance the University, the Jesuits, the executors of Jansen, the printer of the ‘Augustinus,’ the Spanish governor of the Low Countries, and the Papal Nuncio were engaged in a warfare of pamphlets, treatises, pasquinades, pleadings, synods, audiences, which it would be impossible to set forth in historical sequence.” [108] In the midst of all this, Jansen’s old fellow-student received the book, in the preparation of which he also had had some share, in his prison at Vincennes, as if an echo of his own thoughts. “It would last as long as the Church,” he said. “After St Paul and St Augustine, no one had written concerning grace like Jansen.”
The Jesuits were resolved in their hostility. They knew that the book, while assuming a historical form, and professing in the main to represent the doctrine of Augustine as directed against the errorists of his own time, had a side reference to the “opinions of certain modern authors,” understood to be well-known theologians of their own school. This was in fact acknowledged in an appendix. Unable any longer to wreak their vengeance on the author himself, they were resolved to put his work under ban; and accordingly, a Bull was obtained from Rome in the summer of 1642, condemning Jansen by name, and declaring that the ‘Augustinus’ contained “many propositions already condemned” by the Holy See. It was doubted whether the Pope, Urban VIII., designed to go the length announced in the bull, and the terms of the condemnation were rumoured to have been inserted by a Papal officer in the interests of the Jesuits. The Universities of Louvain and Paris therefore did not take any steps to carry out the condemnation. They remained spectators of the controversy which raged around them, in which the Archbishop of Paris on one side, and the youngest of the Arnauld family on the other, were conspicuous.
Antoine Arnauld was the last of the twenty children born to the great parliamentary orator and Catherine Marion his wife, of whom we have already spoken. His nephews, Le Maitre and De Saci, were so near his own age, that they were accustomed to call him familiarly le petit oncle. Early consecrated to theological studies by the influence of St Cyran and his mother, he espoused zealously the Augustinian doctrines. A splendid prospect seemed opening before him, had he chosen to enter the Church and pursue an ecclesiastical career in the ordinary manner. But while thirsting for theological distinction, he had scruples about his vocation to the holy office. He overcame his scruples so far as to become a priest; but not only would he not accept the benefices placed within his reach by powerful friends—he insisted on resigning such as he held. He even disposed of his patrimony for the benefit of Port Royal, preserving only as much as would provide him with the bare necessaries of life. He became a doctor in 1641, and already, in 1643, the interest of the whole theological world was aroused by his treatise, ‘Of Frequent Communion.’
The aim of this treatise, as of all Arnauld’s writings, was anti-Jesuitical. He set forth, backed by the authority of “Fathers, Popes, and Councils,” the necessity of spiritual preparation for the Holy Communion, in opposition to the formula which had been boldly advanced by more than one Jesuit teacher, that “the more we are devoid of divine grace, the more ought we to seek Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.” The commotion made by the publication shows how grave was the need for it. On the one hand it was warmly welcomed, many pious bishops and doctors testifying approbation of its contents; on the other hand it was violently assailed. The Jesuit pulpits resounded with abuse of it and of its author. All Paris was disturbed by the noise which it made. “There must be a snake in the grass somewhere,” it was wittily remarked, “for the Jesuits were never so excited when only the glory of God was at stake.” The learned Petavius, and even the Prince de Condé, did not disdain to mingle in the combat. For a time Arnauld seemed to triumph, but finally the influence of Rome was brought against him, and he was glad to take refuge in concealment—the first of the many concealments into which his incessant polemical activity drove him in the course of his long life. He never abated his opposition. He had no sooner retired from one controversy, than he reappeared in some other. His energy knew no bounds, his love of fighting no pause. When in his old age his friend and fellow-student Nicole advised him to rest. “Rest!” he said; “have I not all eternity to rest in?”
It was a matter of course that when the great Jansenist controversy began, Arnauld should be found in the van of it. ‘An Apology for Jansen’ appeared from his pen in 1644, and a second ‘Apology’ in the following year. It seemed for a time as if the Jesuits would be foiled in their efforts to secure the effectual condemnation of the book. But at length one of their number, Nicolas Cornet, Syndic of the Faculty of Theology at Paris, collected its essential heresy in the shape of seven propositions. These propositions were afterwards reduced to five; and at length, on the 31st of May 1653, a formal condemnation of them was obtained from the Court of Rome. There was no longer any doubt as to the attitude of the Holy See. All the propositions were declared to be distinctly heretical, and the first and the fifth, moreover, to be blasphemous and impious. This result was not reached without much debate and delay. No sooner had Cornet’s propositions appeared than Arnauld assailed them and all who supported them. A congregation of four cardinals and eleven theological assessors had been appointed to examine them in the end of the year 1651. They had taken, therefore, a year and a half to their work, and the sentence at length issued was intended to bring the long warfare to a close. In point of fact it kindled a fresh fire, and opened, if not a larger, yet a more vital controversy. Arnauld retired willingly before a new writer summoned by himself into the field, and girded with his blessing as he went forth to the encounter.
The five propositions, which were professed to be extracted from Jansen’s book, and as such were condemned by the Papal Bull of 31st May 1653, are so intimately connected with the ‘Provincial Letters’ as to claim a place in our pages. They are as follows:—
I. There are divine commandments which good men, although willing, are unable to obey; and the grace by which these commandments are possible is also wanting in them.
II. No person, in the state of fallen nature, is able to resist internal grace.
III. In order to render human actions meritorious or otherwise, liberty from necessity is not required, but only liberty from constraint.
IV. The semi-Pelagians, while admitting the necessity of prevenient grace—or grace preceding all actions—were heretics, inasmuch as they said that this grace was such as man could, according to his will, either resist or obey.
V. The semi-Pelagians also erred in saying that Christ died or shed His blood for all men universally.
It would be needless for us to touch these propositions, even by way of explanation. We have endeavoured to state them from the original Latin as clearly as we can, so that they may bear some definite meaning even to the non-theological reader. But their very statement bristles with controversy, and the half-extinct meanings of old questions that go to the root of Christian thought lie hid in their language. All the propositions were condemned without reserve, but two points were left unsettled. It was not asserted that the propositions were to be found in the ‘Augustinus,’ and that they were condemned in the sense in which Jansen held them, and in no other. The course of the controversy and the fate of Port Royal in the end mainly turned upon these points.
The Papal Bull condemning the five propositions was speedily published in France, and the triumph of the Jesuits was undisguised. A great blow had been struck, and for a time all seemed inclined to bow before it. Political reasons combined with others to give effect to the Papal verdict. Cardinal Mazarin, in possession of the favour of the Queen-mother, had imprisoned his enemy, Cardinal de Retz, who had so long waged in the intrigues and wars of the Fronde a restless conflict with them; and as the latter in his prosperity had shown a certain favour for Port Royal, this was enough to stimulate, on the part of Mazarin, an interest on behalf of the Jesuits. Yet he was reluctant to move actively against the Jansenists. M. d’Andilly still had his ear in matters of State, and by his intervention and that of others the project of an armistice was for a time entertained. Port Royal was to keep silence, if its enemies did not push their triumph to an extremity. Even the indefatigable Arnauld seems to have promised to be quiet. But the Jesuits were too conscious of their power, and too relentless in their hostility, to pause in their determination to crush their opponents. They had recourse both to gibes and to active persecution. They printed an almanac with the figure of Jansen as frontispiece, flying in the guise of a winged devil before the Pope and the king into the arms of the Huguenots. They assailed the Duc de Liancourt, and refused him absolution in his own parish church, for no other reason but that he was on friendly relations with Port Royal, and would not withdraw, at their demand, his granddaughter from its protection. This affair, which appears to have been deliberately planned, caused a great sensation, and became, strangely, the indirect occasion of the ‘Provincial Letters.’
Indignant at such an outrage, Arnauld was no longer to be restrained. He rushed before the public with a pamphlet under the title, “Letter of a Doctor of the Sorbonne to a Person of Condition, concerning an event which has recently happened in a parish of Paris to a Nobleman of the Court, February 24, 1655.” The Letter opened with an expression of his wish to dispute no more; but as Sainte-Beuve hints, the avowed desire of peace plunged him all the more into war. His letter called forth numerous replies. He responded by a “Second Letter,” in the shape of a volume. In this letter his enemies seemed to see his fate written. They extracted from it two propositions which in their view clearly contravened the Papal verdict—namely, 1st, that he had expressed doubts whether the five propositions condemned as heretical were in Jansen’s book at all; and 2d, that he had really reproduced the first of the five condemned propositions in one of his own statements, that according to both the Gospel and the Fathers, St Peter, a just man, was wanting in grace when he fell. This was nothing but undisguised Jansenism, and his accusers in the Sorbonne rallied for his overthrow. A meeting was summoned to consider the letter, and to judge it and the author.
The details of the proceedings would weary the reader. It is sufficient to say that, notwithstanding the concessions wrung from Arnauld, some of which were humiliating enough, he was condemned on the first point (Jan. 1656)—the great question of “fait,” in contrast to the question of “droit,” involved in the second statement as to grace being wanting to St Peter in his fall. His condemnation, however, was mainly secured by the introduction of a number of monks who swelled the majority against him, and the legality of whose vote was challenged by many members. But, as Pascal afterwards said, “it was easier to find monks than arguments.” The second and doctrinal point received professedly more deliberate discussion. The sittings regarding it were protracted till the close of the month, the 29th of January. But the result was really forestalled. The restriction laid on free debate was such as to lead no fewer than sixty doctors to withdraw, protesting to Parliament against the interference with their rights. Their protest, however, came to nothing. Sentence was finally passed, against not only Arnauld, but all who adhered to him or espoused his opinions. The victim, with his usual adroitness, escaped his pursuers, and went once more into a concealment which all their vigilance could not penetrate. Two days after the censure he wrote to one of his nieces, “I am in very close hiding, and by God’s grace without trouble or disquiet.” “Would you like me to tell you where M. Arnauld is hidden?” inquired a lady of the gendarmes who were searching her house for traces of him. “He is safely hidden here,” pointing to her heart; “arrest him if you can.”
It was in the interval betwixt the first and second judgment of the Sorbonne that the first of the ‘Provincial Letters’ appeared. The story is, [116a] that during the course of the process Arnauld, Nicole, and Pascal, along with M. Vitart, the steward of the Duc de Luynes (to whom Arnauld’s second Letter had been addressed), and other friends, were met in secrecy at Port Royal des Champs. Their conversation turned to the pending case, and the misapprehensions and prejudices which prevailed in the public mind regarding it. It was felt that some effort should be made to clear away these prejudices, and to diffuse right information in a popular form. Arnauld, ever ready with his pen, was prepared himself to undertake this task; and in a few days afterwards he read to his friends a long and serious paper in vindication of his position. But his friends were not moved as he expected. His pen, powerful in its own sphere, was not fitted to tell upon the popular mind; and his audience were too honest to conceal their disappointment. Arnauld, in his turn, frankly acknowledged the truth forced upon him. “I see you do not find my paper what you wished, and I believe you are right,” he said; and then, turning all at once to Pascal, he said, “But you, who are young, who are clever, [116b] you ought to do something.” The effect was not lost upon Pascal. He divined with his genuine literary instinct exactly what was required in the circumstances, although distrusting his power to produce it. He promised, however, to make an attempt, which his friends might polish and put in shape as they thought fit. Next day he produced “A Letter written to a Provincial by one of his friends.” The Letter was unanimously pronounced exactly what was required, and ordered to be printed. It appeared on the 23d January 1656; and a second followed six days later.
Nothing could have been happier or more admirably suited for their purpose than those Letters. They took up the subject for the first time in a light intelligible to all. They brought to play upon it not only a penetrating and rapid intelligence, but a brightness of wit, and a dramatic creativeness, which made the Sorbonne and its parties, the Jansenists and their friends, alive before the reader. Never was the triumph of genius over mere learned labour more complete. Arnauld, as he listened to them, must have felt his own thoughts spring up before him into a living shape, hardly less startling to himself than to his opponents.
Addressing his friend in the country, the author expresses his surprise at what he has come to learn of the character of the disputes dividing the Sorbonne:—
“We have been imposed upon,” he says. “It was only yesterday that I was undeceived. Until then I had thought that the disputes of the Sorbonne were really important, and deeply affected the interests of religion. The frequent convocation of an assembly so illustrious as that of the Theological Faculty of Paris, attended by so many extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances, induced such high expectations that one could not help believing the business to be of extraordinary importance. You will be much surprised, however, when you learn from this letter the upshot of the grand demonstration. I can explain the matter in a few words, having made myself perfectly master of it.”
Two questions, he says, were under examination—“the one a question of fact, the other a question of right.”
He explains the question of fact as consisting in the point whether M. Arnauld was guilty of temerity in expressing his doubts as to the propositions being in Jansen’s book after the bishops had declared that they were. No fewer than seventy-one doctors undertook his defence, maintaining that all that could reasonably be asked of him was to say that “he had not been able to find them, but that if they were in the book, he condemned them there.”
“Some,” he continues, “even went a step farther, and protested that, after all the search they had made in the book, they had never stumbled upon these propositions, and that they had, on the contrary, found sentiments entirely at variance with them. They then earnestly begged that if any doctor present had discovered them, he would have the goodness to point them out; adding that what was so easy could not be reasonably refused, as that would be the surest way to silence all objectors, M. Arnauld included. But this they have always refused to do. So much for the one side.
“On the other side are eighty secular doctors, and some forty mendicant friars, who have condemned M. Arnauld’s proposition, without choosing to examine whether he has spoken truly or falsely—who, in fact, have declared that they have nothing to do with the veracity of his proposition, but simply with its temerity. Besides these were fifteen who were not in favour of the censure, and who are called Neutrals.”
Having thus stated the question of fact, and the balance of parties regarding it, Pascal dismisses it at once, important as it proved in the after-history of Port Royal.
“As to the issue of the question of fact, I own I give myself very little concern. It does not affect my conscience in the least whether M. Arnauld is presumptuous or the reverse; and should I be tempted from curiosity to ascertain whether these propositions are contained in Jansen, his book is neither so very scarce nor so very large but that I can read it all through for my own enlightenment without consulting the Sorbonne at all.”
Only, while himself hitherto inclined to believe with common report that the propositions were in Jansen, he was now almost led to doubt that they were so from the absurd refusal to point them out. In this respect he fears the censure will do more harm than good. “For, in truth, people have become sceptical of late, and will not believe things till they see them.”
But the point being in itself so frivolous, he hastens to take up the question of right, as touching the faith. And here the play of the dialogue begins:—
“You and I supposed that the question here was one involving the deepest principles of grace, as to whether it is given to all men, or whether it is efficacious of itself. But truly we were deceived. You must know I have become a great theologian in a short time, and you will see the proofs of it.”
He describes, then, how he had made a visit to a doctor of the Sorbonne, who was his neighbour, and one of the most zealous opponents of the Jansenists, to inquire into the controversy. He asked him why the question as to grace should not be set at rest by a formal decision that “grace is really given to all”? But he received a rude rebuff, and was told that this was not the point. “There were those on his side who held that grace is not given to all, and even the examiners themselves had declared, in a full meeting of the Sorbonne, that this opinion was problematical.” This was, in fact, his own view; and he confirmed it by what he said was a celebrated passage of St Augustine, “We know that grace is not given to all men.” He was equally unfortunate in his second inquiry. His neighbour, opposed as he was to Jansenism, would not condemn the doctrine of efficacious grace. The doctrine, on the contrary, was quite orthodox, was held by the Jesuits, and had even been defended by himself in his thesis at the Sorbonne. The inquirer is confounded, and ventures to ask then in what M. Arnauld’s heresy consisted? “In this,” replies his friend, “that he does not acknowledge that the just have the power of obeying the commandments of God in the way in which we understand it.” Having got to what he supposes the “heart of the affair,” he posts off to a Jansenist acquaintance, “a very decent man notwithstanding.” But if he was puzzled before, he is still more puzzled when he hears the worthy Jansenist declare that it is no heresy to hold that “all the just have always the power of obeying the Divine commandments.” Confounded by such a reply, he felt that he had been too plain-spoken with both Jansenist and Molinist. [120] There must be something more in this dispute than he understood; and if not, there was no reason why there should not now be peace in the Church and the Sorbonne. He returned to the Molinist, whom he had first visited, with this assurance. The Jansenists, he said, were quite at one with the Jesuits as to the power of the righteous always to obey the commandments of God.
“All very well,” said he, “but you must be a theologian to see the gist of the matter. The difference between us is so subtle that we can hardly make it out ourselves. It is quite beyond your understanding. Suffice it for you to know that the Jansenists will indeed say that the just have always the power of obeying the commandments—this is not the point in dispute; but they will not say that this power is proximate. That is the point.”
Mystified more than ever by this new and unknown expression, of which he could get no explanation, the inquirer now returned to his Jansenist friend to demand of him if he admitted it. “Do you admit the proximate power?” was all that he could say to him. He had charged his memory carefully with the expression, all the more that he did not understand it. The Jansenist smiled, and said coldly, “Tell me in what sense you use the expression, and I will tell you what I believe about it.” But this was just what he could not do. So he gave the haphazard answer, that he used it “in the sense of the Molinists.” “Which of the Molinists?” was the rejoinder. “All of them together, as being one body, and having one and the same mind,” was the second answer at random: upon which he is assured he is very ill informed; that the Molinists, instead of being at one, are hopelessly divided, but that being united in the design to ruin M. Arnauld, they have all agreed to use this term, understanding it in different senses, and so by an apparent agreement to form a compact body in order to crush him more confidently.
The ingenuous inquirer hesitates to believe in such wickedness. He professes himself to be animated by a pure desire of understanding the subject, and asks still that the mysterious word proximate may be explained to him. His Jansenist friend professes a willingness to enlighten him, but says that his explanation would be liable to suspicion. He must have recourse to those who invented the expression, and is referred to a M. le Moine, on the one hand, as representing the Molinists or Jesuits; and a Father Nicolai as representing the Dominicans or “New Thomists.” Both of these were real characters: the former a doctor of the Sorbonne, and a violent anti-Jansenist, who had written on the subject of grace; the latter a Dominican, who is said, however, by Nicole to have abandoned the principles of his order and embraced Pelagianism. The bewildered seeker after theological knowledge resorts, not to these worthies themselves, with whom he professes to have no acquaintance, but to certain disciples of theirs. In this manner he gets a definition of “proximate power,” from which it is apparent that, while the Jesuits and Dominicans are only agreed in using the same expression—the meanings they put into it being entirely different—the Jansenists and Dominicans agree in substance, while only differing in the use of words. The passage in which the result of his successive interviews is described is one of the happiest in the letter. On receiving from the Dominicans, whom he terms “Jacobins,” from their association with the Rue de St Jacques, where the first Dominican convent in Paris was erected, an explanation of the doctrine of grace, he exclaims:—
“Capital! So, according to you, the Jansenists are Catholics, and M. le Moine a heretic; for the Jansenists say that the just have the power of praying, but that further efficacious grace is necessary—and this is what you also approve. M. le Moine, however, says that the just may pray without efficacious grace—and this you condemn. ‘Ay,’ they replied, ‘but M. le Moine calls this power proximate power.’ ‘But what is this, my father,’ I exclaimed in turn, ‘but to play with words—to say that you agree as to the common terms you employ, while your sense is quite different?’ To this they made no reply; and at this very point the disciple of M. le Moine, with whom I had consulted, arrived by what seemed to me a lucky and extraordinary conjuncture. But I afterwards found that these meetings were not uncommon; that, in fact, they were continually mixing the one with the other. I addressed myself immediately to M. le Moine’s disciple: ‘I know one,’ said I, ‘who maintains that the just have always the power of praying to God, but that nevertheless they never pray without an efficacious grace which determines them, and which is not always given by God to all the just. Is such a one a heretic?’ ‘Wait,’ said my doctor; ‘you take me by surprise. Come, gently. Distinguo. If he calls this power proximate power, he is a Thomist, and yet a Catholic; if not, he is a Jansenist, and therefore a heretic.’ ‘He calls it,’ said I, ‘neither the one nor the other.’ ‘He is a heretic then,’ said he; ‘ask these good fathers.’ It was unnecessary to appeal to them, for already they had assented by a nod of their heads. But I insisted. ‘He refuses to use the word proximate, because no one can explain it to him.’ Whereupon one of the fathers was about to give his definition of the term, when he was interrupted by M. le Moine’s disciple. ‘What!’ said he; ‘do you wish to recommence our quarrels? Have we not agreed never to attempt an explanation of this word proximate, but to use it on both sides without saying what it means?’ And to this the Jacobin assented. I saw at once into their plot, and rising to quit them, I said, ‘Of a truth, my fathers, this is nothing, I fear, but a quibble; and whatever may come of your meetings, I venture to predict that when the censure is passed, peace will not be restored. . . Surely it is unworthy, both of the Sorbonne and of theology, to make use of equivocal and captious terms without giving any explanation of them. Tell me, I entreat you, for the last time, fathers, what I must believe in order to be a Catholic?’ ‘You must say,’ they all cried at once, ‘that all the just have the proximate power.’ . . . ‘What necessity can there be,’ I argued, ‘for using a word which has neither authority nor definite meaning?’ ‘You are an opinionative fellow,’ they replied. ‘You shall use the word, or you are a heretic, and M. Arnauld also; for we are the majority, and if necessary we can bring the Cordeliers into the field and carry the day.’”
The second Letter, entitled “Of Sufficient Grace,” is exactly in the same vein:—
“Just as I had sealed my last letter,” the writer opens, “I received a visit from our old friend, M. N---, a most fortunate circumstance for the gratification of my curiosity. For he is thoroughly informed in the questions of the day, and up to all the secrets of the Jesuits, at whose houses, including those of the leading men, he is a constant visitor.”
Using his friend conveniently as an informant, Pascal proceeds to explain to the Provincial the question of sufficient grace as betwixt the Jesuits, Jansenists, and Dominicans. The amusement of the Letter consists in the manner in which he brings out, as before, the substantial identity in opinion of the Dominicans and Jansenists, notwithstanding the junction of the former with the Jesuits to oppress the latter. The Jesuits hold the old Pelagian doctrine that grace is given to all, dependent for its efficacy upon the free will of the recipient. This is with them sufficient grace. The Jansenists follow St Augustine, and will not allow any grace to be sufficient which is not also efficacious. What is the view of the Dominican?—
“It is rather an odd one,” he says; “for while they agree with the Jesuits in allowing a sufficient grace given to all men, they nevertheless hold that with this grace alone men cannot act, but require further from God an efficacious grace which determines their will to action, and which is not given to all.”
In short, this grace is sufficient without being so. It bears the same name as the grace of the Jesuits, but in reality the Dominican doctrine is that of the Jansenists, that men require efficacious grace in order to pious action. What is the meaning of all this jumble of opinion? Simply, that the Dominicans are too powerful to be quarrelled with. The Jesuits are content that they should so far use the same language with them.
“They do not insist upon their denying the necessity of efficacious grace. This would be to press them too far. People should not tyrannise over their friends; and the Jesuits have really gained enough. But the world is content with words; and so the name of sufficient grace being received on all sides, though in different senses, none except the most subtle theologians can dream that the expression does not signify the same to the Jacobins and the Jesuits; and the result will show that the latter are not the greatest dupes.”
This conclusion becomes the subject of conversational by-play, similar to that of the first Letter:—
“I went straight,” adds the writer, “to the Jacobins, at whose door I found a good friend of mine, a great Jansenist—for you must know I have friends amongst all parties—who was inquiring for another father, different from the one I wanted. But I persuaded him to accompany me, and asked for one of my New Thomist friends. He was delighted to see me again. ‘Ah, well,’ I said to him, ‘it seems it is not enough that all men have a proximate power by which they can never act with effect; they must also have a sufficient grace, with which they can act just as little. Is not this the opinion of your school?’ ‘Yes,’ said the good father, ‘and I have this very morning been maintaining this in the Sorbonne. I spoke my full half-hour; and had it not been for the sand-glass, I bade fair to reverse the unlucky proverb which circulates in Paris—“He votes with his cap [merely by nodding his assent, without speaking] like a monk of the Sorbonne.”’ ‘And what about your half-hour and your sand-glass?’ said I. ‘Do they shape your discourses by a certain measure?’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘for some days past.’ ‘And do they oblige you to speak half an hour?’ ‘No, we may speak as shortly as we like.’ ‘But not,’ I said, ‘as much as you like. What a capital rule for the ignorant—what an excellent excuse for those who have nothing worth saying! But to come to the point, my father—this grace which is given to all, is it sufficient?’ ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘And yet it has no effect without efficacious grace?’ ‘Quite true,’ said he. ‘And all men have the sufficient, but not all the efficacious?’ ‘Exactly so.’ ‘That is to say,’ I urged, ‘that all have enough grace, and yet not enough—that there is a grace which is sufficient, and yet does not suffice. In good sooth, my father, that is subtle doctrine. Have you forgotten, in quitting the world, what the word sufficient means? Do you not remember that it includes everything necessary for acting? . . . How, then, do you leave it to be said, that all men have sufficient grace for acting, while you confess that another grace is absolutely necessary for acting, and that all have not this? . . . Is it a matter of indifference to say that with sufficient grace we can really act?’ ‘Indifference!’ said he; ‘why, it is heresy—formal heresy. The necessity of efficacious grace for effective action is a point of faith. It is heresy to deny this.’ ‘Where, then, are we now? and what side must I take? If I deny sufficient grace, I am a Jansenist. If I admit it, like the Jesuits, so that efficacious grace is no longer necessary, I shall be a heretic, you say. And if I admit it, as you do, so that efficacious grace is still necessary, why I sin against common-sense, I am a blockhead, say the Jesuits. What can I do in this dilemma, of being a blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist? To what a strait are we come, if it is only Jansenists, after all, who are at variance with neither faith nor reason, and who preserve themselves both from folly and error?’”