FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES. BY C. VAN AKEN.
CONCLUDED.
Such was the system of Jansenius, at least as to its main points; its five famous propositions forming the most important conclusions of the system. If they are not all to be found, in so many words, in the Augustinus—which neither pope nor theologian has ever pretended they are—they are the soul of the book, in the words of Bossuet. This soul, this breath of error, is revived in Quesnel and in the false Synod of Pistoia. Now, are the proofs called for of its existence in the pretended church of Utrecht? Then we have only to let the hierarchy intruded in Holland speak for itself through its letter addressed to Scipio Ricci. So far as I know, this letter has never before been published. We give it as faithfully transcribed from the original in the archives at Florence:[289]
"Monseigneur:
"We have just read with astonishment a bull of Pope Pius VI., in which the Synod of Pistoia, held by you in 1786, is condemned, and your episcopal administration calumniated, upon grounds which are incomprehensible. Conduct such as this in regard to a bishop and an ecclesiastical assembly of the highest repute in the church, and the spirit of partisanship which characterizes the bull generally, have certainly not been imitated from the great Doctor of Grace, S. Augustine, whom the latter seems intended to honor, since it is dated on his feast.
"Your synod, monseigneur, was for years, as the public well knew, under examination by Roman censors; and it is evident that they would not have occupied themselves with it for so long a time[290] if, instead of laboriously seeking for pretexts to condemn it, they had sought in it for that truth which is everywhere displayed in it with clearness, dignity, and unction. We need not, therefore, have expected a confirmation of this synod as the result of such an examination. We are no longer in the days when the popes used the authority of their see only for edification, and not for destruction. Your synod, monseigneur, reveals nothing which is unworthy of the full approbation of the head of the church, and which would not have been cordially received by the popes of former times. But God permits that those of later times should be swayed by prejudices and by the dominating influence of a court which, although foreign and even contrary to the divine institution of the Holy See, pretends, nevertheless, to identify itself with the chair of S. Peter, and has consequently taken upon itself to dictate the bulls of the popes conformably to its own interests—interests often greatly opposed to those of the church and of the Holy See.[291] It finds that these human interests have not been made much of by the Synod of Pistoia, which kept in view only the good of souls and the disinterested exercise of the functions of the pastorate. It could not, therefore, approve this synod, since its decrees preach the new covenant, of which we are ministers, in the spirit and not in the letter. The ancient one, in which the spirit was sacrificed to the letter, and in which God was honored by the lips, while the heart was far from him, is the only one in accord with the political maxims and views of a court entirely devoted to the éclat of the pontifical throne, and to the externals of religion. The fathers of the synod, most reasonably convinced that the true and only object of the ministry established by Jesus Christ is to give to God adorers in spirit and truth, have endeavored, so far as these evil times permitted, to bring back Christian worship to its primitive purity and simplicity. But this could not be suffered by a court which applies itself exclusively to fostering abuses in ecclesiastical discipline and in the administration of the sacraments, and to all the new devotions and superstitions[292] which give a false idea of Christian piety, and cause the faithful to forget the true spirit of Christianity; not reforming, as it ought, this Judaical worship, but making its profit of it, and taking it under its protection, on all occasions.
"In the synod you held, monseigneur, there were useful reforms proposed, and even commenced. Still greater ones were desired. If the wise regulations made in it were put in practice and everywhere adopted, as they deserve to be; if its wishes were attended to, true piety would flourish again, the church would possess good ministers, their labors would produce abundant fruits, the observance of the canons would restore the salutary discipline of the early days, the hierarchical order would enjoy all its rights, its head, the Holy See, would be listened to and respected, but the Roman court would become nothing. It is this, monseigneur, which excites its resentment against you and your synod. It is the court alone which has produced this extraordinary bull, which is an injury to the chair of S. Peter, more even than to the Synod of Pistoia, and the Pope has been dishonored by causing him to adopt it.
"It was already sufficiently a scandal that Rome alone gave no sign of approving this synod, while it was receiving praises everywhere else; that she alone seemed to take no interest in the good results of which it was susceptible, and appeared even aggrieved and offended at that which gave joy to all true children of the church.[293] But this was not enough for the jealous and vindictive policy of the Roman court. It wished to brand, by a public and solemn censure, the acts of the Synod of Pistoia; and although it must have been infinitely painful to the censors to find no matter for condemnation, yet, by condemning, at whatever detriment to itself, that which all the world approved, it has capped the climax of scandal—scandali mensuram implevit.
"Injustice vainly attempts a disguise: it often betrays itself by the clumsy precautions it takes to disguise itself. This, monseigneur, is what we see in the bull of August 28, in which God permitted that its compilers should, against all prudence, depart from their ordinary method of making qualifications in globo, so convenient, and even so necessary, where there is question of condemning good books. By applying to each of the propositions censured by them particular qualifications, they have thought to give to their censure an appearance of greater rectitude and equity, and by this very means they have rendered evident to all the spirit of deception and bad faith which characterizes them. In fact, monseigneur, if the use of this kind of censure be even just and equitable in itself, it would be impossible to abuse it more grossly than they have done in the matter of your synod. Every one knows that, when propositions are bad and condemnable, they are so in themselves and in the sense they express. It is, then, in themselves and in reference to this sense that they should be condemned.[294] This, however, is not what has been done in regard to the greater number of the propositions drawn from the Synod of Pistoia. They are not condemned in themselves nor in their proper sense, but relatively to the imaginary sense attributed to them. The truths they express are passed over, in order to condemn the errors they do not express; and while it would be against all evidence to attribute to them an erroneous sense, to which the words are repugnant, they are nevertheless condemned conditionally—that is to say, by virtue of a gratuitous and often absurd supposition that this erroneous or in some wise reprehensible sense may be conveyed therein. They dare not condemn Jesus Christ, or, what is the same thing, the truth in its own name; but they give him the name and the dress of Barabbas, in order to have the right of sending him to punishment as a malefactor—Et cum iniquis reputatus est.
"We have just said, monseigneur, that the bull violated grossly in your regard good faith and justice by this indirect and captious manner in which it condemns the greater number of the propositions drawn from your synod. But there are others, in the censure of which the interests of the faith and of the teachings of the church are equally disregarded. They do not hesitate to sacrifice these to the pernicious opinions of obnoxious theological schools, the defence of which is taken up against your decrees, under the pretext that the Holy See tolerates them under the name of Molinism—a Pelagian doctrine[295] rejected by all tradition. Thus error, or rather a number of most dangerous errors, is put on a level with truth; and the hand of Pius VI. is made use of to replace beside the ark that idol of Dagon so often overturned to its base by the censures of the church and the writings of her doctors. What idea have they, then, of the teachings of the church, and of the rights of bishops and their co-laborers in reference to this doctrine? Because Paul V. did not choose to do in regard to the doctrine of Molina that which his successors did in regard to the doctrine of S. Augustine in their bulls against Jansenius and Quesnel;[296] because they have not published, with condemnation, the system of equilibrium, of gratia sufficiens, of the state of pure nature, of the scientia media, of limbo, etc.; and have allowed to be taught the sufficiency of attrition without the love of God, and the ignorant devotion to the Sacred Heart to be practised, shall pastors no longer be permitted to oppose to these novelties the principles and the language of Scripture and tradition? And shall they no longer warn the faithful of the snares spread for their faith and piety, because those who spread them have not yet been declared heretics by the Sovereign Pontiffs?
"They have not contented themselves, monseigneur, with making a crime of your private sentiments, however irreproachable, but have quarrelled with you for having, in your synod, adhered to a doctrine so authoritative, so precious in all churches and all states, as that contained in the four articles of the assembly of the clergy of France in 1682. They have so poor an opinion of the present clergy and of the Gallican Church itself as to imagine that this clergy would feel offended at the praises you give to the celebrated declaration of that assembly, and to take the insertion you have made of it in the acts of the Synod of Pistoia as an injury. But if the synod does an injury to the French clergy by adopting its maxims, what does the Pope's bull do, which rejects and condemns them?
"You may be sure, monseigneur, that a bull like this—a censure as manifestly unjust at bottom as singular and indecent in form—is not likely to shake or diminish in the least either our attachment for you or our esteem and admiration for the acts of your synod, in the doctrine of which our clergy recognize their own, through the chapter of Utrecht, whose act of adhesion was sent to you in November, 1789,[297] shortly after the French publication of the synod. The efforts which are now being made to cry down its results, and to render them abortive, are so much more a motive for our confirming this adhesion, and of renewing to you the expression of our interest in your cause, afflicted, as we are, to the bottom of our heart, that our Holy Father, Pope Pius VI., who ought to show us the example of like sentiments, shows himself in his bull entirely opposed to them. We sympathize with you, monseigneur, no less in the personal offence that has been offered you than in the annoyances which cannot fail to arise to you as well as to the faithful clergy of your ancient diocese. But God, who has enabled you long to foresee these things, and who has already prepared you for them by preliminary trials, will give you grace to bear all this with continued courage and confidence in his protection and assistance.
"Considering the affair in itself, nothing can be weaker than the attack that has been made upon you by this bull, which is more likely, in view of its whole contents, to justify your doctrine than to render it an object of suspicion. But if we pay attention to the fact that it is the very purity of this doctrine, and your enlightened zeal for the house of God, that have drawn upon you this unjust treatment; that it is the testimony you render fearlessly and without disguise to the most important truths, so combated in our days, of dogma, of morals, and of discipline in the church, which renders the Synod of Pistoia odious to the enemies of these truths, nothing can be grander nor more worthy of a bishop than the cause you will have to defend. Consequently, nothing can impel us more to invoke upon you, monseigneur, by our prayers, and upon all those whom divine Providence will associate with you in the same defence, the lights and graces of the Holy Ghost. Ask them also for us, who long preceded you in the same career of tribulations and trials, and whose cause has not been separated from yours, since it has been attempted to injure your synod by comparing it, in the new bull, to our council—a comparison most just and natural, and which cannot but do honor to both.
"We are, with respect and tender attachment in our Lord Jesus Christ, monseigneur, your most humble and obedient servants,
✠ Gaulth. Mich.,
Archbishop of Utrecht.
✠ Adrien Jean,
Bishop of Harlem.
✠ Nicholas,
Bishop of Deventer.[298]
"Utrecht, October 31st, All-Saints' Eve."
This letter renders evidence against the clergy of Utrecht that may justly be called crushing, and would be sufficient in itself to close the debate. It sheds light, also, on the whole history of the schismatical church of the United Provinces. Now, to complete the demonstration entered upon, let us retrace our steps, and make research into the origin and the peculiar character of the Jansenism of Holland.
In the beginning of the XVIIth century the University of Louvain was in a most flourishing condition; the purity of doctrine that prevailed there, its attachment to the Holy See, and the example of loyal and perfect submission it had recently given before the world by repudiating the errors of Baius, gained for it the respect and good wishes of all Christendom. Some of its professors, however, had not entirely renounced Baianism; and unhappily, in their case, distinguished talents were joined with uncommon activity. The most eminent of these men was Jacques Janson, who was the professor and, as it were, the father of Jansenius. He made the third of the party of whom the future Bishop of Ypres and the Abbé de Saint-Cyran were the other two. Louvain then became the centre of a set of ideas of which the doctrines of Baius formed the basis, and which were ripened and developed by Jansenius during nearly thirty years, to be finally brought forth in his famous Augustinus. It was also at the school of Jacques Janson that Philip Rovenius and several eminent individuals among his clergy received their theological training; they therefore drank of Jansenism at its very source.
The Augustinus was issued in 1640 from the press of Jacques Zegers, of Louvain. Immediately, Philip Rovenius, Archbishop of Philippi, in partibus infidelium, and Vicar Apostolic of the United Provinces; Jean Wachtelaer, his vicar-general; Baudoin Catz, afterwards the successor of Jacques de la Torre; Leonard Marius, professor in the College Hollandais at Cologne, and several besides, gave a public and entire approval to the book of Jansenius, coupled with the most flattering praises. There was at once in Belgium, as well as in Holland, and on the part of many virtuous and well-meaning priests, an infatuation, an enthusiasm, exhibited for the Augustinus, of which the reception given almost in our day to the first volume of the Essai sur l'Indifference will give only a faint idea. But Holland distinguished herself in this concert of praises; S. Augustine himself, people said, had spoken by the mouth of Jansenius; Jean Wachtelaer averred that the Netherland priests were never wearied with reading and meditating this incomparable work; Rovenius went further, and formed a league with the Canon of Furnes, a nephew of Jansenius, and several other partisans of the new doctrines, to prevent the Council of Brabant from putting in execution the first measures taken by the Holy See against the Augustinus. These were the circumstances that preceded the bull In eminenti, published at Rome on the 19th of June, 1643, in which the famous work was proscribed as containing propositions previously condemned;[299] we are thus made aware of the sentiments of the clergy, and the spirit in which the young Levites of the United Provinces were formed. Rovenius submitted to the pontifical definition; in his book on the Christian Republic,[300] printed at Anvers, in 1648, he even renders solemn homage to the infallibility of the Vicar of Christ. This important doctrine was then, as always, held in honor at the University of Louvain. Rovenius had learned it there, and to this powerful preservative he owed the honor and fidelity that attended his last days.
The clergy of Holland seemed at first to imitate the humble obedience of its chief; but it soon became evident that this submission was neither as general nor as perfect as was desirable. Left to its ancient traditions of respect for the Holy See, the Church of Holland would perhaps have escaped shipwreck; but it shortly received as vicar apostolic a man of whom Sainte-Beuve has truly said that he was "the great auxiliary of Port Royal in Holland."[301] Jean Neercassel, priest of the Oratory, had had a share in the government of the mission since the year 1652. Consecrated Bishop of Castoria, in partibus, in 1662, he shortly after became, by the death of Baudoin Catz (1663), the sole vicar apostolic in the United Provinces, and continued so to be for the long period of twenty-three years. The illustrious Archbishop of Malines, who knew, by a painful but glorious experience, how greatly firmness and devotion on the part of a chief pastor were needed in those sad times, said: "I shall always commiserate those bishops who are even on terms with a single one of these innovators."[302] Neercassel invited these innovators all to Holland, and made it a place of refuge for them. Arnauld, du Vaucel, Gerberon, Quesnel, and a multitude of apostate monks and fugitive priests, all in revolt against the decisions of the church, cast themselves upon the poor mission as upon a prey provided for them. From Arnauld's correspondence, and the papers found on Gerberon, Quesnel, and others, we see that the direction of the most important affairs of the vicariate apostolic then passed into the hands of the patriarchs of Jansenism. In this school, the clergy of the Netherlands learned the wretched distinction between right and fact (le droit et le fait). As this distinction tion forms one of the bases of the resistance offered by that clergy to the definitions of the Holy See, it would be proper to give a brief explanation of it.
The five famous propositions having been referred to the tribunal of the Sovereign Pontiff by eighty-five French bishops, the so-called disciples of S. Augustine sent a deputation to Rome to defend the sense of Jansenius. They prepared, on this occasion, the celebrated Ecrit à trois Colonnes, in order, said they, "to show fully the state of the controversy, and to furnish the Pope with the means of knowing exactly upon what he had to give judgment." For each proposition there is distinguished, 1st, the sense of Luther or of Calvin, which is condemned; 2d, the natural sense, prout a nobis defenditur, the sense of Jansenius—in a word, that said to be the sense of the church and of S. Augustine;[303] 3d, and last, the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian, which is rejected like the first. At this time, then, the party acknowledged, in an official and authentic document, that it defended the five propositions in the sense of Jansenius, and that this sense was the only natural and legitimate one. The whole question was to know if this sense were heretical or not. It was upon this point that the Pope's decision was invoked both by the bishops and by the partisans of Jansenius.
The decision was given the 31st of May, 1653, in the bull Cum occasione, which condemned the five famous propositions. The church evidently aimed a blow at the spirit of the book, which alone conveyed the error. The Jansenists understood it as every one else did at the time, and were confounded by it. But in their farewell audience, the deputies of the party asked the Pope if he had been understood to condemn the opinion in regard to efficacious grace by itself—the doctrine of S. Augustine. Certainly not, replied the Holy Father. The whole of Jansenism was embraced in this equivocal question; for the Jansenists reasoned thus: the Augustinus contains nothing but the pure doctrine of S. Augustine; we can therefore submit to the bull without rejecting the sense of Jansenius.
To prevent and eliminate in advance every pretext for disobedience, Pope Alexander VII., in 1665, ordered, in a new bull, that the condemnation of the five propositions in the sense of Jansenius should be subscribed to; he directed at the same time, according to the ancient usage of the church, that the signature should be attached to a formula in these words: "I,——, submit to the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Innocent X., dated the 30th of May, 1653, and to that of the Sovereign Pontiff Alexander VII., dated the 16th of October, 1665; I condemn and reject heartily and in all sincerity the five propositions taken from the Augustinus of Cornelius Jansenius in the same manner as they are condemned by the said constitutions; I condemn them in the sense of that author; thus I swear. May God help me and this holy Gospel!"
Then it began to be said in the camp of Jansenius: The pope and the bishops may well decide if the propositions are heretical; it is a question of right. Créance au droit! But are the propositions taken from the Augustinus, and do they convey its sense? That is a question of fact, in regard to which the church might be mistaken. Nevertheless, respect au fait! After this, it was signed, excluding (en exceptant) the sense of Jansenius. The more determined refused their signature; after the time of Pierre Codde, the successor of Neercassel, this was the general rule.
No one, in my opinion, has more fully set forth the state of this question than the author of the Provincial Letters, whose genius demonstrates conclusively the absurdity of this celebrated distinction.[304] He thus expresses himself in a passage wherein he maintains his opinion against Arnauld, Nicole, and others: "The whole dispute is in ascertaining if there be a fact and a right disconnected from one another, or if there be only a right; that is, if the sense of Jansenius ... does nothing but indicate the right. The Pope and the bishops are on one side, and they claim that it is a point of right and of faith to say that the five propositions are heretical in the sense of Jansenius; and Alexander VII. declares in his constitution that, to be in the true faith, we must say that the words, 'sense of Jansenius,' express only the heretical sense of the propositions, and that thus it is a fact which carries with it a right, and makes an essential part of the profession of faith; as if we should say: The sense of Calvin on the Eucharist is heretical, which is certainly a point of faith."[305]
Nothing could be better said. But what is the conclusion? It is this, and Sainte-Beuve himself says the same in other words:[306] the church must be denied all infallibility on the question of right; we must allege that she can be mistaken even as to the true and natural sense of her own decrees, if we would maintain that she could err as to the fact in Jansenius. In a word, we must either completely break with the church, or condemn the sense of Jansenius.
M. Réville seems to know very little of the question of fact as regards Jansenius. One might say that, to form his opinion on this point, he had consulted only a report of the Jansenist Bishop of Utrecht, which contains an account of the latter's interview in 1828 with the Papal nuncio, Mgr. Capaccini. In this, the representative of the Holy See is made to use absurd and ridiculous language; the author of Port Royal, who was not any too well versed in theology, had a better knowledge of the question than this nuncio. How could M. Réville regard this as a serious relation? Has a witness who could neither understand the Catholic theologians nor Pascal himself the right to be believed on his word when he reports, word for word, a long conversation with his opponent, a kind of diplomatic passage-at-arms, wherein it was greatly to his interest to make the best figure for himself? And, besides, what guarantee of exactitude have we in a relation published for the first time twenty-three years after the interview, and six after the death of Cardinal Capaccini, the only person able to rectify the assertions of his interlocutor?[307]
That a Protestant or a free-thinker should encourage the "Friends of Holland" in resisting the Holy See, that he should even go so far as to do honor to that resistance, I can conceive; but that he should share in the inveterate obstinacy of the Jansenists concerning fact and right defies logic and common sense. M. Réville seems likewise to confound the bull Unigenitus with that of Alexander VII. concerning the formulary. This leads us to speak of the second point on which the opposition of the clergy of Utrecht to the Holy See is founded.
The Jansenist discussions on le fait and le droit were still proceeding, when the patriarch of the sect, the ex-Oratorian, Pasquier Quesnel, threw off the mask, and in his Réflexions Morales renewed the principal dogmas of Baius and Jansenius.[308] Pope Clement XI. ordered the book to be examined; he proceeded in this affair, says Döllinger, "with perfect prudence and deliberation. The Jesuits had been charged with being bitterly opposed to the Réflexions; he chose examiners from religious orders whose teachings had the least affinity with those of the Society of Jesus. He himself presided at twenty-three sessions of the examiners, and the discussion lasted for nearly two whole years.[309] Finally, on the 8th of September, 1713, the bull Unigenitus appeared, condemning one hundred and one propositions taken from Quesnel's book. Among them are some which at first sight appeared inoffensive; but they cunningly convey Jansenist error, and intimately coalesce with the system; in others, expressions are skilfully worded to infect the reader with prejudices against the teachings or the general discipline of the church; many clearly announce the dogmas of Jansenius."[310]
Here, seeing that the one hundred and one propositions were found word for word in the condemned book, the distinction of right and of fact (du droit et du fait) was impossible. Quesnel, on hearing of the decree condemning it, exclaimed: "The Pope has proscribed one hundred and one truths!" The whole party echoed this exclamation, and our Netherland sectaries followed the impulse given by the patriarch of Jansenism. This, then, in two words, is the attitude of Jansenism in Holland: it refuses to condemn the sense of Jansenius by signature to the formulary of Alexander VII.; it refuses adherence to the bull Unigenitus. All the efforts made by the Holy See to bring back the Jansenists of Utrecht to Catholic unity have failed, from a persistence in this double refusal. Among these efforts at reconciliation, there is one which deserves special mention.
In 1826, Mgr. Nazalli, Papal nuncio, opened a conference with the Holland Jansenists. He announced to them that Rome exacted of them nothing more than an adhesion pure and simple to the constitutions of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI., and he proposed for their signature the formula previously referred to, with the following addition: "I moreover submit, without distinction, reticence, or explanation, to the constitution of Clement XI., dated September 8, 1713, and beginning with the word Unigenitus; I accept it purely and simply, and thus I swear. May God help me and this holy Gospel!"[311]
The bull Unigenitus was, even under the Gallican point of view, obligatory on all Catholics, since it had been accepted by the entire episcopate with that moral unanimity of which so much was said about the time of the last council. However, the schismatic archbishop and bishops of Holland declined the overtures of the Sovereign Pontiff. Their reply is a true model of Jansenist style; every member of a phrase hides a restriction or an equivocation:
"We replied frankly (honnêtement) that none of the bishops or clergy would hesitate to recognize with sincerity, by means of an unequivocal declaration in general[312] terms, all that the Holy See might exact on their part, and that they would have no difficulty in declaring, for example, that they agree, and that they even swear, if needs be, to accept, without any exception whatever, all the articles of the Holy Catholic faith: not to maintain nor to teach, now or hereafter, any opinions but those which have been established, determined, and published at all times by our holy mother, the church, conformably to Scripture, tradition, the acts of œcumenical councils, and, lastly, to that of Trent; that, besides, they especially reprehend, reject, and condemn the five propositions which the Holy See has condemned, and which are pretended to be found in the book of Jansenius, known as the Augustinus." All the rest is in this spirit. But what follows was quite unforeseen:
"We therefore leave it to the decision of the world whether a declaration so frank and so sincere ... does not offer incontestable proof of entire submission to the Holy See; and whether the general terms in which it is conceived do not embrace all the specialties of which acknowledgment can reasonably be expected from us, but into the details of which we are not permitted to enter by citing bulls which we cannot in conscience accept—bulls which have not been recognized by the government, and which we are therefore not permitted to mention without incurring grave penalties.... It is, in fact, sufficiently well known that the said constitutions (of Innocent X., Alexander VII., and Clement XI.) are not only not adopted nor obligatory in several countries, but that they cannot be adopted or enforced in a country where they have never received the placet of the government, and where their acceptance as such is interdicted under threat of severe punishments. In the northern countries, to the jurisdiction of which the clergy of Utrecht belonged, such acceptance was strictly forbidden by the edicts of the 24th February and 25th May, 1703, the 14th December, 1708, and of the 20th and 21st September, 1730—edicts in which the principle was established that it belongs to the sovereign alone to permit the publication and execution of such bulls, and that without his visa or placet neither is permitted."[313]
Can one imagine baser or more servile language? In presence of a heterodox power, the pretended successors of S. Boniface, of the martyrs and victims of Calvinist persecution, dare to take sides with power, and to concede to it a right to dominate over faith and ecclesiastical discipline! At that very time William I. was oppressing his Catholic subjects, and endeavoring to deprive the bishops of the right of bringing up in their seminaries young aspirants to the priesthood. Need it be added that no law in vigor in 1826 interdicted the acceptance pure and simple of the Apostolical Constitutions of Alexander VII. and Clement XI.?
The Revolution had overridden ancient laws, and not a single Catholic was molested on account of his adhesion to the decrees of the Holy See. But the worship of the state as God makes progress in proportion as respect for the church is banished. For a bishop especially independence is impossible; when he refuses to walk in the royal way of submission to the Vicar of Christ, he becomes, by a just punishment, the plaything of a party or the slave of the secular power.
And this is the church which the neo-Protestants declare is calumniated when the accusation of Jansenism is brought against it; the church which, infected with this poison at the very sources whence it poured itself abroad on the world, has always kept its arms open to receive the followers of Jansenius; which has always shown its readiness to sign formularies like those of Quesnel and Ricci, and has obstinately rejected the profession of Catholic faith; this, in fine, is the church which precipitated itself into schism in order to remain faithful to the errors of Jansenius, and of Saint-Cyran, and of Quesnel!
[289] Ricci Collection, vol. xcvii., No. 226. I have done nothing but add explanatory notes and underline the more important passages.
[290] When the popes hasten to condemn an error, they are accused of acting precipitately or from the influence of some passion; when they take their time, they are still found fault with.
[291] This distinction between the court of Rome and the Holy See, when there is question of solemn acts of pontifical authority, is highly ridiculous. The so-called "Old Catholics" of Germany have never committed the error of imitating the Jansenists in this.
[292] Evidently an allusion to the decrees of the synod concerning the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the cultus and invocation of the saints, etc.
[293] Aside from the Jansenists of Holland, who always took good care to be on good terms with their Calvinist government, we find none in communion with Ricci except a small number of worshippers of power in Tuscany, Austria, Portugal, and Spain. As to the French constitutionals, their approbation was a just chastisement for the Jansenists. De Potter, after stating that Ricci received on all sides the most flattering adhesions, cites as authorities only the schismatics of Utrecht and Prof. Le Bret, of Tübingen.
[294] From the time of Arnauld, the Jansenists, in order to maintain their doctrine intact in the sense of Jansenius, the spirit of (à l'âme de) his book, pretend to interdict the church from the condemnation of errors according to their sense in a system and in a book—that is to say, in an assemblage of propositions—as if the grammatical construction alone of every phrase completely determined the sense conveyed. In this time especially, when there is question of delicate matter treated by men who are constantly crying out, "Truth, truth!" but who ever have equivocations on their lips, no one, not even Sainte-Beuve, the titled panegyrist of Port Royal, has dared to exculpate the Jansenists for their indirect and tortuous course since 1653.
[295] This is a characteristic complaint in the camp of Jansenius. Between the Molinism which the church tolerates and the Jansenism she rejects there are other opinions tolerated, especially the Catholic doctrine professed by the Thomists and Augustinians in common with the disciples of Molina.
[296] After this declaration, if Döllinger still pretends that his friends in Holland are not Jansenists, he ought to maintain that neither Quesnel nor Jansenius ever were. O science Allemande!
[297] We find also in the Ricci archives (vol. xci. part 11, No. 136) the letter accompanying this act of adhesion. It bears the signature of "Gabriel du Pac de Bellegarde, ancien comte et chanoine de l'église primatiale de Lyon." It begins thus: "Monseigneur the Archbishop of Utrecht, messeigneur's his suffragans, and the messieurs of the Metropolitan Chapter of Utrecht, have given me, monseigneur, the honorable and agreeable commission of addressing to you the act of adhesion to your holy synod of 1786."
[298] Gautier Michel van Nieuwenhuizen, Adrien Jean Brœckman, Nicholas Nelleman.
[299] The bull is dated March 6, 1641—that is to say, 1642, the year beginning March 25—and was received in the Low Countries in 1643. The last signature of the clergy of Utrecht in favor of the Augustinus is dated Feb. 10, 1642.
[300] Reipublicæ Christianæ, libri duo, p. 102 et seq.
[301] Port Royal, vol iv. p. 20, in note.
[302] Archives of Malines, MS. volume entitled Monumenta originalia et authentica de Jansenismo, No. 32. The more I study facts by the light of these and several other documents preserved in the same archives, the more I am persuaded that historians have greatly overlooked the credit due to Humbert de Precipiano, while exalting that of his successor, the Cardinal of Alsace. Humbert de Precipiano inflicted terrible blows upon Jansenism in the Low Countries; he died just as the triumph for which he had prepared the way began.
[303] They added: "We are prepared to prove by Scripture, the councils, the testimony of the fathers, and especially by the authority of S. Augustine, that the doctrine set forth in this second column is the true doctrine of the church." This promise was not carried out until after the condemnation of Quesnel's Réflexions Morales; the monstrous book of the Hexaples is the principal effort the Jansenists have attempted with this view.
[304] In the Provinciales, xvii. and xviii., Pascal himself defended the distinction between faith and right. (See Maynard, Les Provinciales.)
[305] Œuvres, ed. Bossutel biblioth. Mazarine, T., 2199.
[306] Port Royal, vol. iii. p. 92 and further.
[307] The French account of this interview was communicated, it is said, by the archbishop himself to Dr. Tregelles, who translated it into English, and inserted it in the Journal of Sacred Literature, No. 13, 1851. Neale reproduces it in his history. A Dutch translation was published at Utrecht in 1851—Jaarbocken van Wetensch. Theol., p. 749, etc. Capaccini died June 19, 1845, only a few months after his elevation to the cardinalate.
[308] See above, our general analysis of the Jansenist system.
[309] An author, unfortunately too well known, but who had before him all the original documents of this celebrated case, states in his Breve Istoria delle Variazioni del Giansenismo (see also Analecta Juris Pontificii, 4th series, vol. ii. p. 2, col. 1251) that the Pope consulted with all the cardinals of the Holy Office, one after the other; that he himself took note of all the votes, which are still preserved. "The opinions of the Pontiff alone," he observes, "fill more than six large folio volumes."
[310] Handbuch, ii. 2, p. 827. Cours, manuscript of 1855.
[311] Declaration addressed by the Archbishop of Utrecht and his suffragans to the Catholic world in 1826. This document is written in Latin; parallel with it is a French translation, from which this is taken.
[312] This word is italicized in the Declaration.
[313] Declaration, pp. 17, 19, 21.