Opening material · Part 9

Judge then, fathers, to which of these kingdoms you belong. You have heard the language of the city of peace, the mystical Jerusalem; and you have heard the language of the city of confusion, which Scripture terms “the spiritual Sodom.” Which of these two languages do you understand? which of them do you speak? Those who are on the side of Jesus Christ have, as St. Paul teaches us, the same mind which was also in him; and those who are the children of the devil—_ex patre diabolo_—who has been a murderer from the beginning, according to the saying of Jesus Christ, follow the maxims of the devil. Let us hear, therefore, the language of your school. I put this question to your doctors: When a person has given me a blow on the cheek, ought I rather to submit to the injury than kill the offender? or may I not kill the man in order to escape the affront? Kill him by all means—it is quite lawful! exclaim, in one breath, Lessius, Molina, Escobar, Reginald, Filiutius, Baldelle, and other Jesuits.

Is that the language of Jesus Christ? One question more: Would I lose my honor by tolerating a box on the ear, without killing the person that gave it? “Can there be a doubt,” cries Escobar, “that so long as a man suffers another to live who has given him a buffet, that man remains without honor?” Yes, fathers, without that honor which the devil transfuses, from his own proud spirit into that of his proud children. This is the honor which has ever been the idol of worldly-minded men. For the preservation of this false glory, of which the god of this world is the appropriate dispenser, they sacrifice their lives by yielding to the madness of duelling; their honor, by exposing themselves to ignominious punishments; and their salvation, by involving themselves in the peril of damnation—a peril which, according to the canons of the Church, deprives them even of Christian burial. We have reason to thank God, however, for having enlightened the mind of our monarch with ideas much purer than those of your theology. His edicts bearing so severely on this subject, have not made duelling a crime—they only punish the crime which is inseparable from duelling.

He has checked, by the dread of his rigid justice, those who were not restrained by the fear of the justice of God; and his piety has taught him that the honor of Christians consists in their observance of the mandates of Heaven and the rules of Christianity, and not in the pursuit of that phantom which, airy and unsubstantial as it is, you hold to be a legitimate apology for murder. Your murderous decisions being thus universally detested, it is highly advisable that you should now change your sentiments, if not from religious principle, at least from motives of policy. Prevent, fathers, by a spontaneous condemnation of these inhuman dogmas, the melancholy consequences which may result from them, and for which you will be responsible. And to impress your minds with a deeper horror at homicide, remember that the first crime of fallen man was a murder, committed on the person of the first holy man; that the greatest crime was a murder, perpetrated on the person of the King of saints; and that of all crimes, murder is the only one which involves in a common destruction the Church and the state, nature and religion.

* * * * *

I have just seen the answer of your apologist to my Thirteenth Letter; but if he has nothing better to produce in the shape of a reply to that letter, which obviates the greater part of his objections, he will not deserve a rejoinder. I am sorry to see him perpetually digressing from his subject, to indulge in rancorous abuse both of the living and the dead. But, in order to gain some credit to the stories with which you have furnished him, you should not have made him publicly disavow a fact so notorious as that of the buffet of Compiègne.[266] Certain it is, fathers, from the deposition of the injured party, that he received upon his cheek a blow from the hand of a Jesuit; and all that your friends have been able to do for you has been to raise a doubt whether he received the blow with the back or the palm of the hand, and to discuss the question whether a stroke on the cheek with the back of the hand can be properly denominated a buffet. I know not to what tribunal it belongs to decide this point; but shall content myself, in the mean time, with believing that it was, to say the very least, _a probable buffet_. This gets me off with a safe conscience.

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Footnote 255:

City of God, book i. ch. 28.

Footnote 256:

See Cujas, tit. dig. de just. et jur. ad l. 3.

Footnote 257:

L. 2, c. 9, n. 66, 72.

Footnote 258:

L. ii., c. 9, n. 74.

Footnote 259:

Treat. i., examp. 7, n. 44.

Footnote 260:

In casuistical divinity, a distinction is drawn between the internal and the external tribunal, or _forum_, as it is called. The internal tribunal, or the _forum poli_, is that of conscience or the judgment formed of actions according to the law of God. The external tribunal, or the _forum soli_, is that of human society, or the judgment of actions in the estimation of men, and according to civil law. (Voet. Disp. Theol., iv. 62.)

Footnote 261:

Part. 5, tr. 19, misc. 2, resol. 99.

Footnote 262:

Doubts 4th and 10th.

Footnote 263:

“I am happy,” says Nicole, in a note, “to state here an important fact, which confers the highest honor on M. Arnauld. A work of considerable size was sent him before going to press, in which there was a collection of all the authorities, from Jesuit writers, prejudicial to the life of kings and princes. That celebrated doctor prevented the impression of the work, on the ground that it was dangerous for the life of monarchs and for the honor of the Jesuits that it should ever see the light; and, in fact, the work was never printed. Some other writer, less delicate than M. Arnauld, has published something similar, in a work entitled _Recueil de Pieces concernant l’ Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus, par le P. Jouvenci_.”

Footnote 264:

Surely Pascal is here describing the Church of Christ as she ought to be, and not the Church of Rome as she existed in 1656, at the very time when she was urging, sanctioning, and exulting in the bloody barbarities perpetrated in her name on the poor Piedmontese; or the same Church as she appeared in 1572, when one of her popes ordered a medal to be struck in honor of the Bartholomew massacre, with the inscription, “_Strages Hugonotarum_—The massacre of the Hugunots!” Of what Church, if not the Romish, can it be said with truth, that, “in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain on the earth?”

Footnote 265:

_Providing for their consciences_—that is, for the relief of conscience, by confessing to a priest, and receiving absolution.

Footnote 266:

See Letter xiii., p. 264.

LETTER XV.[267]

TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS.

SHOWING THAT THE JESUITS FIRST EXCLUDE CALUMNY FROM THEIR CATALOGUE OF CRIMES, AND THEN EMPLOY IT IN DENOUNCING THEIR OPPONENTS.

_November 25, 1656._

REVEREND FATHERS,—As your scurrilities are daily increasing, and as you are employing them in the merciless abuse of all pious persons opposed to your errors, I feel myself obliged, for their sake and that of the Church, to bring out that grand secret of your policy, which I promised to disclose some time ago, in order that all may know, through means of your own maxims, what degree of credit is due to your calumnious accusations.

I am aware that those who are not very well acquainted with you, are at a great loss what to think on this subject, as they find themselves under the painful necessity, either of believing the incredible crimes with which you charge your opponents, or (what is equally incredible) of setting you down as slanderers. “Indeed!” they exclaim, “were these things not true, would clergymen publish them to the world—would they debauch their consciences and damn themselves by venting such libels?” Such is their way of reasoning, and thus it is that the palpable proof of your falsifications coming into collision with their opinion of your honesty, their minds hang in a state of suspense between the evidence of truth which they cannot gainsay, and the demands of charity which they would not violate. It follows, that since their high esteem for you is the only thing that prevents them from discrediting your calumnies, if we can succeed in convincing them that you have quite a different idea of calumny from that which they suppose you to have, and that you actually believe that in blackening and defaming your adversaries you are working out your own salvation, there can be little question that the weight of truth will determine them immediately to pay no regard to your accusations. This, fathers, will be the subject of the present letter.

My design is, not simply to show that your writings are full of calumnies: I mean to go a step beyond this. It is quite possible for a person to say a number of false things believing them to be true; but the character of a liar implies the intention to tell lies. Now I undertake to prove, fathers, that it is your deliberate intention to tell lies, and that it is both knowingly and purposely that you load your opponents with crimes of which you know them to be innocent, because you believe that you may do so without falling from a state of grace. Though you doubtless know this point of your morality as well as I do, this need not prevent me from telling you about it; which I shall do, were it for no other purpose than to convince all men of its existence, by showing them that I can maintain it to your face, while you cannot have the assurance to disavow it, without confirming, by that very disavowment, the charge which I bring against you.

The doctrine to which I allude is so common in your schools, that you have maintained it not only in your books, but, such is your assurance, even in your public theses; as, for example, in those delivered at Louvain in the year 1645, where it occurs in the following terms: “What is it but a venial sin to calumniate and forge false accusations to ruin the credit of those who speak evil of us?”[268] So settled is this point among you, that if any one dare to oppose it, you treat him as a blockhead and a hare-brained idiot. Such was the way in which you treated Father Quiroga, the German Capuchin, when he was so unfortunate as to impugn the doctrine. The poor man was instantly attacked by Dicastille, one of your fraternity; and the following is a specimen of the manner in which he manages the dispute: “A certain rueful-visaged, bare-footed, cowled friar—_cucullatus gymnopoda_—whom I do not choose to name, had the boldness to denounce this opinion, among some women and ignorant people, and to allege that it was scandalous and pernicious against all good manners, hostile to the peace of states and societies, and, in short, contrary to the judgment not only of all Catholic doctors, but of all true Catholics.

But in opposition to him I maintained, as I do still, that calumny, when employed against a calumniator, though it should be a falsehood, is not a mortal sin, either against justice or charity: and to prove the point, I referred him to the whole body of our fathers, and to whole universities, exclusively composed of them, whom I had consulted on the subject; and among others the reverend Father John Gans, confessor to the emperor; the reverend Father Daniel Bastele, confessor to the archduke Leopold; Father Henri, who was preceptor to these two princes; all the public and ordinary professors of the university of Vienna” (wholly composed of Jesuits); “all the professors of the university of Gratz” (all Jesuits); “all the professors of the university of Prague” (where Jesuits are the masters);—“from all of whom I have in my possession approbations of my opinions, written and signed with their own hands; besides having on my side the reverend Father Panalossa, a Jesuit, preacher to the emperor and the king of Spain; Father Pilliceroli, a Jesuit, and many others, who had all judged this opinion to be probable, before our dispute began.”[269] You perceive, fathers, that there are few of your opinions which you have been at more pains to establish than the present, as indeed there were few of them of which you stood more in need.

For this reason, doubtless, you have authenticated it so well, that the casuists appeal to it as an indubitable principle. “There can be no doubt,” says Caramuel, “that it is a probable opinion that we contract no mortal sin by calumniating another, in order to preserve our own reputation. For it is maintained by more than twenty grave doctors, by Gaspard Hurtado, and Dicastille, Jesuits, &c.; so that, were this doctrine not probable, it would be difficult to find any one such in the whole compass of theology.”

Wretched indeed must that theology be, and rotten to the very core, which, unless it has been decided to be safe in conscience to defame our neighbor’s character to preserve our own, can hardly boast of a safe decision on any other point! How natural is it, fathers, that those who hold this principle should occasionally put it in practice! The corrupt propensity of mankind leans so strongly in that direction of itself, that the obstacle of conscience once being removed, it would be folly to suppose that it will not burst forth with all its native impetuosity. If you desire an example of this, Caramuel will furnish you with one that occurs in the same passage: “This maxim of Father Dicastille,” he says, “having been communicated by a German countess to the daughters of the empress, the belief thus impressed on their minds that calumny was only a venial sin, gave rise in the course of a few days to such an immense number of false and scandalous tales, that the whole court was thrown into a flame and filled with alarm.

It is easy, indeed, to conceive what a fine use these ladies would make of the new light they had acquired. Matters proceeded to such a length, that it was found necessary to call in the assistance of a worthy Capuchin friar, a man of exemplary life, called Father Quiroga” (the very man whom Dicastille rails at so bitterly), “who assured them that the maxim was most pernicious, especially among women, and was at the greatest pains to prevail upon the empress to abolish the practice of it entirely.” We have no reason, therefore, to be surprised at the bad effects of this doctrine; on the contrary, the wonder would be, if it had failed to produce them. Self-love is always ready enough to whisper in our ear, when we are attacked, that we suffer wrongfully; and more particularly in your case, fathers, whom vanity has blinded so egregiously as to make you believe that to wound the honor of your Society, is to wound that of the Church. There would have been good ground to look on it as something miraculous, if you had _not_ reduced this maxim to practice.

Those who do not know you are ready to say, How could these good fathers slander their enemies, when they cannot do so but at the expense of their own salvation? But if they knew you better, the question would be, How could these good fathers forego the advantage of decrying their enemies, when they have it in their power to do so without hazarding their salvation? Let none, therefore, henceforth be surprised to find the Jesuits calumniators; they can exercise this vocation with a safe conscience; there is no obstacle in heaven or on earth to prevent them. In virtue of the credit they have acquired in the world, they can practise defamation without dreading the justice of mortals; and, on the strength of their self-assumed authority in matters of conscience, they have invented maxims for enabling them to do it without any fear of the justice of God.

This, fathers, is the fertile source of your base slanders. On this principle was Father Brisacier led to scatter his calumnies about him, with such zeal as to draw down on his head the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris. Actuated by the same motives, Father D’Anjou launched his invectives from the pulpit of the Church of St. Benedict in Paris, on the 8th of March, 1655, against those honorable gentlemen who were intrusted with the charitable funds raised for the poor of Picardy and Champagne, to which they themselves had largely contributed; and, uttering a base falsehood, calculated (if your slanders had been considered worthy of any credit) to dry up the stream of that charity, he had the assurance to say, “that he knew, from good authority, that certain persons had diverted that money from its proper use, to employ it against the Church and the State;” a calumny which obliged the curate of the parish, who is a doctor of the Sorbonne, to mount the pulpit the very next day, in order to give it the lie direct.

To the same source must be traced the conduct of your Father Crasset, who preached calumny at such a furious rate in Orleans that the archbishop of that place was under the necessity of interdicting him as a public slanderer. In his mandate, dated the 9th of September last, his lordship declares, “That whereas he had been informed that Brother Jean Crasset, priest of the Society of Jesus, had delivered from the pulpit a discourse filled with falsehoods and calumnies against the ecclesiastics of this city, falsely and maliciously charging them with maintaining impious and heretical propositions, such as, That the commandments of God are impracticable; that internal grace is irresistible; that Jesus Christ did not die for all men; and others of a similar kind, condemned by Innocent X.: he therefore hereby interdicts the aforesaid Crasset from preaching in his diocese, and forbids all his people to hear him, on pain of mortal disobedience.” The above, fathers, is your ordinary accusation, and generally among the first that you bring against all whom it is your interest to denounce. And although you should find it as impossible to substantiate the charge against any of them, as Father Crasset did in the case of the clergy of Orleans, your peace of conscience will not be in the least disturbed on that account; for you believe that this mode of calumniating your adversaries is permitted you with such certainty, that you have no scruple to avow it in the most public manner, and in the face of a whole city.

A remarkable proof of this may be seen in the dispute you had with M. Puys, curate of St. Nisier at Lyons; and the story exhibits so complete an illustration of your spirit, that I shall take the liberty of relating some of its leading circumstances. You know, fathers, that, in the year 1649, M. Puys translated into French an excellent book, written by another Capuchin friar, “On the duty which Christians owe to their own parishes, against those that would lead them away from them,” without using a single invective, or pointing to any monk or any order of monks in particular. Your fathers, however, were pleased to put the cap on their own heads; and without any respect to an aged pastor, a judge in the Primacy of France, and a man who was held in the highest esteem by the whole city, Father Alby wrote a furious tract against him, which you sold in your own church upon Assumption-day; in which book, among other various charges, he accused him of having “made himself scandalous by his gallantries,” described him as suspected of having no religion, as a heretic, excommunicated, and, in short, worthy of the stake.

To this M. Puys made a reply; and Father Alby, in a second publication, supported his former allegations. Now, fathers, is it not a clear point, either that you were calumniators, or that you believed all that you alleged against that worthy priest to be true; and that, on this latter assumption, it became you to see him purified from all these abominations before judging him worthy of your friendship? Let us see, then, what happened at the accommodation of the dispute, which took place in the presence of a great number of the principal inhabitants of the town, whose names will be found at the foot of the page,[270] exactly as they are set down in the instrument drawn up on the 25th of September, 1650. Before all these witnesses M. Puys made a declaration, which was neither more nor less than this: “That what he had written was not directed against the fathers of the Society of Jesus; that he had spoken in general of those who alienated the faithful from their parishes, without meaning by that to attack the Society; and that so far from having such an intention, the Society was the object of his esteem and affection.”

By virtue of these words alone, without either retractation or absolution, M. Puys recovered, all at once, from his apostasy, his scandals, and his excommunication; and Father Alby immediately thereafter addressed him in the following express terms: “Sir, it was in consequence of my believing that you meant to attack the Society to which I have the honor to belong, that I was induced to take up the pen in its defence; and I considered that the mode of reply which I adopted was _such as I was permitted to employ_. But, on a better understanding of your intention, I am now free to declare, that _there is nothing in your work_ to prevent me from regarding you as a man of genius, enlightened in judgment, profound and _orthodox_ in doctrine, and _irreproachable_ in manners; in one word, as a pastor worthy of your Church. It is with much pleasure that I make this declaration, and I beg these gentlemen to remember what I have now said.”

They do remember it, fathers; and, allow me to add, they were more scandalized by the reconciliation than by the quarrel. For who can fail to admire this speech of Father Alby? He does not say that he retracts, in consequence of having learnt that a change had taken place in the faith and manners of M. Puys, but solely because, _having understood that he had no intention of attacking your Society_, there was nothing further to prevent him from regarding the author as a good Catholic. He did not then believe him to be actually a heretic! And yet, after having, contrary to his conviction, accused him of this crime, he will not acknowledge he was in the wrong, but has the hardihood to say, that he considered the method he adopted to be “such as he was _permitted_ to employ!”

What can you possibly mean, fathers, by so publicly avowing the fact, that you measure the faith and the virtue of men only by the sentiments they entertain towards your Society? Had you no apprehension of making yourselves pass, by your own acknowledgment, as a band of swindlers and slanderers? What, fathers! must the same individual, without undergoing any personal transformation, but simply according as you judge him to have honored or assailed your community, be “pious” or “impious,” “irreproachable” or “excommunicated,” “a pastor worthy of the Church” or “worthy of the stake;” in short, “a Catholic” or “a heretic?” To attack your Society and to be a heretic, are, therefore, in your language, convertible terms! An odd sort of heresy this, fathers! And so it would appear, that when we see many good Catholics branded, in your writings, by the name of heretics, it means nothing more than that _you think they attack you_! It is well, fathers, that we understand this strange dialect, according to which there can be no doubt that I must be a great heretic.

It is in _this_ sense, then, that you so often favor me with this appellation! Your sole reason for cutting me off from the Church is, because you conceive that my letters have done you harm; and, accordingly, all that I have to do, in order to become a good Catholic, is either to approve of your extravagant morality, or to convince you that my sole aim in exposing it has been your advantage. The former I could not do without renouncing every sentiment of piety that I ever possessed; and the latter you will be slow to acknowledge till you are well cured of your errors. Thus am I involved in heresy, after a very singular fashion; for, the purity of my faith being of no avail for my exculpation, I have no means of escaping from the charge, except either by turning traitor to my own conscience, or by reforming yours. Till one or other of these events happen, I must remain a reprobate and a slanderer; and, let me be ever so faithful in my citations from your writings, you will go about crying everywhere, “What an instrument of the devil must that man be, to impute to us things of which there is not the least mark or vestige to be found in our books!”

And, by doing so, you will only be acting in conformity with your fixed maxim and your ordinary practice: to such latitude does your privilege of telling lies extend! Allow me to give you an example of this, which I select on purpose: it will give me an opportunity of replying, at the same time, to your ninth Imposture: for, in truth, they only deserve to be refuted in passing.

About ten or twelve years ago, you were accused of holding that maxim of Father Bauny, “that it is permissible to seek directly (_primo et per se_) a proximate occasion of sin, for the spiritual or temporal good of ourselves or our neighbor” (tr. 4, q. 14); as an example of which, he observes, “It is allowable to visit infamous places, for the purpose of converting abandoned females, even although the practice should be very likely to lead into sin, as in the case of one who has found from experience that he has frequently yielded to their temptations.” What answer did your Father Caussin give to this charge in the year 1644? “Just let any one look at the passage in Father Bauny,” said he, “let him peruse the page, the margins, the preface, the appendix, in short, the whole book from beginning to end, and he will not discover the slightest vestige of such a sentence, which could only enter into the mind of a man totally devoid of conscience, and could hardly have been forged by any other but an instrument of Satan.”[271] Father Pintereau talks in the same style: “That man must be lost to all conscience who would teach so detestable a doctrine; but he must be worse than a devil who attributes it to Father Bauny. Reader, there is not a single trace or vestige of it in the whole of his book.”[272] Who would not believe that persons talking in this tone have good reason to complain, and that Father Bauny has, in very deed, been misrepresented? Have you ever asserted anything against me in stronger terms? And, after such a solemn asseveration, that “there was not a single trace or vestige of it in the whole book,” who would imagine that the passage is to be found, word for word, in the place referred to?

Truly, fathers, if this be the means of securing your reputation, so long as you remain unanswered, it is also, unfortunately, the means of destroying it forever, so soon as an answer makes its appearance. For so certain is it that you told a lie at the period before mentioned, that you make no scruple of acknowledging, in your apologies of the present day, that the maxim in question is to be found in the very place which had been quoted; and what is most extraordinary, the same maxim which, twelve years ago, was “detestable,” has now become so innocent, that in your ninth Imposture (p. 10) you accuse me of “ignorance and malice, in quarrelling with Father Bauny for an opinion which has not been rejected in the School.” What an advantage it is, fathers, to have to do with people that deal in contradictions! I need not the aid of any but yourselves to confute you; for I have only two things to show—first, That the maxim in dispute is a worthless one; and, secondly, That it belongs to Father Bauny; and I can prove both by your own confession.

In 1644, you confessed that it was “detestable;” and, in 1656, you avow that it is Father Bauny’s. This double acknowledgment completely justifies me, fathers; but it does more, it discovers the spirit of your policy. For, tell me, pray, what is the end you propose to yourselves in your writings? Is it to speak with honesty? No, fathers; that cannot be, since your defences destroy each other. Is it to follow the truth of the faith? As little can this be your end; since, according to your own showing, you authorize a “detestable” maxim. But, be it observed, that while you said the maxim was “detestable,” you denied, at the same time, that it was the property of Father Bauny, and so he was innocent; and when you now acknowledge it to be his, you maintain, at the same time, that it is a good maxim, and so he is innocent still. The innocence of this monk, therefore, being the only thing common to your two answers, it is obvious that this was the sole end which you aimed at in putting them forth; and that, when you say of one and the same maxim, that it is in a certain book, and that it is not; that it is a good maxim, and that it is a bad one; your sole object is to white-wash some one or other of your fraternity; judging in the matter, not according to the truth, which never changes, but according to your own interest, which is varying every hour. Can I say more than this? You perceive that it amounts to a demonstration; but it is far from being a singular instance; and, to omit a multitude of examples of the same thing, I believe you will be contented with my quoting only one more.

You have been charged, at different times, with another proposition of the same Father Bauny, namely, “That absolution ought to be neither denied nor deferred in the case of those who live in the habits of sin against the law of God, of nature, and of the Church, although there should be no apparent prospect of future amendment—_etsi emendationis futuræ spes nulla appareat_.”[273] Now, with regard to this maxim, I beg you to tell me, fathers, which of the apologies that have been made for it is most to your liking; whether that of Father Pintereau, or that of Father Brisacier, both of your Society, who have defended Father Bauny, in your _two different_ modes—the one by condemning the proposition, but disavowing it to be Father Bauny’s; the other by allowing it to be Father Bauny’s, but vindicating the proposition? Listen, then, to their respective deliverances. Here comes that of Father Pintereau (p. 8): “I know not what can be called a transgression of all the bounds of modesty, a step beyond all ordinary impudence, if the imputation to Father Bauny of so damnable a doctrine is not worthy of that designation.

Judge, reader, of the baseness of that calumny; see what sort of creatures the Jesuits have to deal with; and say, if the author of so foul a slander does not deserve to be regarded from henceforth as the interpreter of the father of lies.” Now for Father Brisacier: “It is true, Father Bauny says what you allege.” (That gives the lie direct to Father Pintereau, plain enough.) “But,” adds he, in defence of Father Bauny, “if you who find so much fault with this sentiment, wait, when a penitent lies at your feet, till his guardian angel find security for his rights in the inheritance of heaven; if you wait till God the Father, swear by himself that David told a lie, when he said, by the Holy Ghost, that ‘all men are liars,’ fallible and perfidious; if you wait till the penitent be no longer a liar, no longer frail and changeable, no longer a sinner, like other men; if you wait, I say, till then, you will never apply the blood of Jesus Christ to a single soul.”[274]

What do you really think now, fathers, of these impious and extravagant expressions? According to them, if we would wait “till there be some hope of amendment” in sinners before granting their absolution, we must wait “till God the Father swear by himself,” that they will never fall into sin any more! What, fathers! is no distinction to be made between _hope_ and _certainty_? How injurious is it to the grace of Jesus Christ, to maintain that it is so impossible for Christians ever to escape from crimes against the laws of God, nature, and the Church, that such a thing cannot be looked for, without supposing “that the Holy Ghost has told a lie;” and if absolution is not granted to those who give no hope of amendment, the blood of Jesus Christ will be useless, forsooth, and “would never be applied to a single soul!” To what a sad pass have you come, fathers, by this extravagant desire of upholding the glory of your authors, when you can find only two ways of justifying them—by imposture or by impiety; and when the most innocent mode by which you can extricate yourselves, is by the barefaced denial of facts as patient as the light of day!

This may perhaps account for your having recourse so frequently to that very convenient practice. But this does not complete the sum of your accomplishments in the art of self-defence. To render your opponents odious, you have had recourse to the forging of documents, such as that _Letter of a Minister to M. Arnauld_, which you circulated through all Paris, to induce the belief that the work on Frequent Communion, which had been approved by so many bishops and doctors, but which, to say the truth, was rather against you, had been concocted through secret intelligence with the ministers of Charenton.[275] At other times, you attribute to your adversaries writings full of impiety, such as the _Circular Letter of the Jansenists_, the absurd style of which renders the fraud too gross to be swallowed, and palpably betrays the malice of your Father Meynier, who has the impudence to make use of it for supporting his foulest slanders. Sometimes, again, you will quote books which were never in existence, such as _The Constitution of the Holy Sacrament_, from which you extract passages, fabricated at pleasure, and calculated to make the hair on the heads of certain good simple people, who have no idea of the effrontery with which you can invent and propagate falsehoods, actually to bristle with horror. There is not, indeed, a single species of calumny which you have not put into requisition; nor is it possible that the maxim which excuses the vice could have been lodged in better hands.

But those sorts of slander to which we have adverted are rather too easily discredited; and, accordingly, you have others of a more subtle character, in which you abstain from specifying particulars, in order to preclude your opponents from getting any hold, or finding any means of reply; as, for example, when Father Brisacier says that “his enemies are guilty of abominable crimes, _which he does not choose to mention_.” Would you not think it were impossible to prove a charge so vague as this to be a calumny? An able man, however, has found out the secret of it; and it is a Capuchin again, fathers. You are unlucky in Capuchins, as times now go; and I foresee that you may be equally so some other time in Benedictines. The name of this Capuchin is Father Valerien, of the house of the Counts of Magnis. You shall hear, by this brief narrative, how he answered your calumnies. He had happily succeeded in converting Prince Ernest, the Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinsfelt.[276] Your fathers, however, seized, as it would appear, with some chagrin at seeing a sovereign prince converted without their having had any hand in it, immediately wrote a book against the friar (for good men are everywhere the objects of your persecution), in which, by falsifying one of his passages, they ascribed to him an heretical doctrine.

They also circulated a letter against him, in which they said: “Ah, we have such things to disclose” (without mentioning what) “as will gall you to the quick! If you don’t take care, we shall be forced to inform the pope and the cardinals about it.” This manœuvre was pretty well executed; and I doubt not, fathers, but you may speak in the same style of me; but take warning from the manner in which the friar answered in his book, which was printed last year at Prague (p. 112, &c.): “What shall I do,” he says, “to counteract these vague and indefinite insinuations? How shall I refute charges which have never been specified? Here, however, is my plan. I declare, loudly and publicly, to those who have threatened me, that they are notorious slanderers, and most impudent liars, if they do not discover these crimes before the whole world. Come forth, then, mine accusers! and publish your lies upon the house tops, in place of telling them in the ear, and keeping yourselves out of harm’s way by telling them in the ear. Some may think this a scandalous way of managing the dispute. It was scandalous, I grant, to impute to me such a crime as heresy, and to fix upon me the suspicion of many others besides; but, by asserting my innocence, I am merely applying the proper remedy to the scandal already in existence.”

Truly, fathers, never were your reverences more roughly handled, and never was a poor man more completely vindicated. Since you have made no reply to such a peremptory challenge, it must be concluded that you are unable to discover the slightest shadow of criminality against him. You have had very awkward scrapes to get through occasionally; but experience has made you nothing the wiser. For, some time after this happened, you attacked the same individual in a similar strain, upon another subject; and he defended himself after the same spirited manner, as follows: “This class of men, who have become an intolerable nuisance to the whole of Christendom, aspire, under the pretext of good works, to dignities and domination, by perverting to their own ends almost all laws, human and divine, natural and revealed. They gain over to their side, by their doctrine, by the force of fear, or of persuasion, the great ones of the earth, whose authority they abuse for the purpose of accomplishing their detestable intrigues. Meanwhile their enterprises, criminal as they are, are neither punished nor suppressed; on the contrary, they are rewarded; and the villains go about them with as little fear or remorse as if they were doing God service.

Everybody is aware of the fact I have now stated; everybody speaks of it with execration; but few are found capable of opposing a despotism so powerful. This, however, is what I have done. I have already curbed their insolence; and, by the same means, I shall curb it again. I declare, then, that _they are most impudent liars_—MENTIRIS IMPUDENTISSIME. If the charges they have brought against me be true, let them prove it; otherwise, they stand convicted of falsehood, aggravated by the grossest effrontery. Their procedure in this case will show who has the right upon his side. I desire all men to take a particular observation of it; and beg to remark, in the mean time, that this precious cabal, who will not suffer the most trifling charge which they can possibly repel to lie upon them, made a show of enduring, with great patience, those from which they cannot vindicate themselves, and conceal, under a counterfeit virtue, their real impotency. My object, therefore, in provoking their modesty, by this sharp retort, is to let the plainest people understand, that if my enemies hold their peace, their forbearance must be ascribed, not to the meekness of their natures, but to the power of a guilty conscience.”

He concludes with the following sentence: “These gentry, whose history is well known throughout the whole world, are so glaringly iniquitous in their measures, and have become so insolent in their impunity, that if I did not detest their conduct, and publicly express my detestation too, not merely for my own vindication, but to guard the simple against its seducing influence, I must have renounced my allegiance to Jesus Christ and his Church.”

Reverend fathers, there is no room for tergiversation. You must pass for convicted slanderers, and take comfort in your old maxim, that calumny is no crime. This honest friar has discovered the secret of shutting your mouths; and it must be employed on all occasions when you accuse people without proof. We have only to reply to each slander as it appears, in the words of the Capuchin, _Mentiris impudentissime_—“You are most impudent liars.” For instance, what better answer does Father Brisacier deserve when he says of his opponents that they are “the gates of hell; the devil’s bishops; persons devoid of faith, hope, and charity; the builders of Antichrist’s exchequer;” adding, “I say this of him, not by way of insult, but from deep conviction of its truth?” Who would be at the pains to demonstrate that he is not “a gate of hell,” and that he has no concern with “the building up of Antichrist’s exchequer?”

In like manner, what reply is due to all the vague speeches of this sort which are to be found in your books and advertisements on my letters; such as the following, for example: “That restitutions have been converted to private uses, and thereby creditors have been reduced to beggary; that bags of money have been offered to learned monks, who declined the bribe; that benefices are conferred for the purpose of disseminating heresies against the faith; that pensioners are kept in the houses of the most eminent churchmen, and in the courts of sovereigns; that I also am a pensioner of Port-Royal; and that, before writing my letters, I had composed _romances_”—I, who never read one in my life, and who do not know so much as the names of those which your apologist has published? What can be said in reply to all this, fathers, if you do not mention the names of all these persons you refer to, their words, the time, and the place, except—_Mentiris impudentissime_? You should either be silent altogether, or relate and prove all the circumstances, as I did when I told you the anecdotes of Father Alby and John d’Alba.

Otherwise, you will hurt none but yourselves. Your numerous fables might, perhaps, have done you some service, before your principles were known; but now that the whole has been brought to light, when you begin to whisper as usual, “A man of honor, who desired us to conceal his name, has told us some horrible stories of these same people”—you will be cut short at once, and reminded of the Capuchin’s _Mentiris impudentissime_. Too long by far have you been permitted to deceive the world, and to abuse the confidence which men were ready to place in your calumnious accusations. It is high time to redeem the reputation of the multitudes whom you have defamed. For what innocence can be so generally known, as not to suffer some injury from the daring aspersions of a body of men scattered over the face of the earth, and who, under religious habits, conceal minds so utterly irreligious, that they perpetrate crimes like calumny, not in opposition to, but in strict accordance with, their moral maxims? I cannot, therefore, be blamed for destroying the credit which might have been awarded you; seeing it must be allowed to be a much greater act of justice to restore to the victims of your obloquy the character which they did not deserve to lose, than to leave you in the possession of a reputation for sincerity which you do not deserve to enjoy.

And as the one could not be done without the other, how important was it to show you up to the world as you really are! In this letter I have commenced the exhibition; but it will require some time to complete it. Published it shall be, fathers, and all your policy will be inadequate to save you from the disgrace; for the efforts which you may make to avert the blow, will only serve to convince the most obtuse observers that you were terrified out of your wits, and that, your consciences anticipating the charges I had to bring against you, you have put every oar in the water to prevent the discovery.

-----

Footnote 267:

Pascal was assisted by M. Arnauld in the preparation of this letter. (Nicole, iv. 162.)

Footnote 268:

Quidni non nisi veniale sit, detrahentes autoritatem magnam, tibi noxiam, falso crimine elidere?

Footnote 269:

Dicastillus, De Just., l. 2, tr. 2, disp. 12, n. 404.

Footnote 270:

M. De Ville, Vicar-General of M., the Cardinal of Lyons; M. Scarron, Canon and Curate of St. Paul; M. Margat, Chanter; MM. Bouvand, Seve, Aubert, and Dervien, Canons of St. Nisier; M. de Gué, President of the Treasurers of France; M. Groslier, Provost of the Merchants; M. de Flèchre, President and Lieutenant-General; MM. De Boissart, De St. Romain, and De Bartoly, gentlemen; M. Bourgeois, the King’s First Advocate in the Court of the Treasurers of France; MM. De Cotton, father and son; and M. Boniel; who have all signed the original copy of the Declaration, along with M. Puys and Father Alby.

Footnote 271:

Apology for the Society of Jesus, p. 128.

Footnote 272:

First Part, p. 24.

Footnote 273:

Tr. 4, q. 22, p. 100.

Footnote 274:

Part. 4, p. 21

Footnote 275:

That is, the Protestant ministers of Paris, who are called “the ministers of Charenton,” from the village of that name near Paris, where they had their place of worship. The Protestants of Paris were forbidden to hold meetings in the city, and were compelled to travel five leagues to a place of worship, till 1606, when they were _graciously_ permitted to erect their temple at Charenton, about two leagues from the city! (Benoit, Hist. de l’Edit. de Nantes, i. 435.) Even there they were harassed by the bigoted populace, and at last “the ministers of Charenton,” among whom were the famous Claude and Daillé, were driven from their homes, their chapel burnt to the ground, and their people scattered abroad.

Footnote 276:

In the first edition it was said to be the Landgrave of Darmstat, by mistake, as shown in a note by Nicole.

LETTER XVI.[277]

TO THE REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS.

SHAMEFUL CALUMNIES OF THE JESUITS AGAINST PIOUS CLERGYMEN AND INNOCENT NUNS.

_December 4, 1656._

REVEREND FATHERS,—I now come to consider the rest of your calumnies, and shall begin with those contained in your advertisements, which remain to be noticed. As all your other writings, however, are equally well stocked with slander, they will furnish me with abundant materials for entertaining you on this topic as long as I may judge expedient. In the first place, then, with regard to the fable which you have propagated in all your writings against the Bishop of Ypres,[278] I beg leave to say, in one word, that you have maliciously wrested the meaning of some ambiguous expressions in one of his letters, which being capable of a good sense, ought, according to the spirit of the Gospel, to have been taken in good part, and could only be taken otherwise according to the spirit of your Society. For example, when he says to a friend, “Give yourself no concern about your nephew; I will furnish him with what he requires from the money that lies in my hands,” what reason have you to interpret this to mean, that he would take that money without restoring it, and not that he merely advanced it with the purpose of replacing it?

And how extremely imprudent was it for you to furnish a refutation of your own lie, by printing the other letters of the Bishop of Ypres, which clearly show that, in point of fact, it was merely _advanced_ money, which he was bound to refund. This appears, to your confusion, from the following terms in the letter, to which you give the date of July 30, 1619: “Be not uneasy about the money _advanced_; he shall want for nothing so long as he is here;” and likewise from another, dated January 6, 1620, where he says: “You are in too great haste; when the account shall become due, I have no fear but that the little credit which I have in this place will bring me as much money as I require.”

If you are convicted slanderers on this subject, you are no less so in regard to the ridiculous story about the charity-box of St. Merri. What advantage, pray, can you hope to derive from the accusation which one of your worthy friends has trumped up against that ecclesiastic? Are we to conclude that a man is guilty, because he is accused? No, fathers. Men of piety, like him, may expect to be perpetually accused, so long as the world contains calumniators like you. We must judge of him, therefore, not from the accusation, but from the sentence; and the sentence pronounced on the case (February 23, 1656) justifies him completely. Moreover, the person who had the temerity to involve himself in that iniquitous process, was disavowed by his colleagues, and himself compelled to retract his charge. And as to what you allege, in the same place, about “that famous director, who pocketed at once nine hundred thousand livres,” I need only refer you to Messieurs the curés of St. Roch and St. Paul, who will bear witness, before the whole city of Paris, to his perfect disinterestedness in the affair, and to your inexcusable malice in that piece of imposition.

Enough, however, for such paltry falsities. These are but the first raw attempts of your novices, and not the master-strokes of your “grand professed.”[279] To these do I now come, fathers; I come to a calumny which is certainly one of the basest that ever issued from the spirit of your Society. I refer to the insufferable audacity with which you have imputed to holy nuns, and to their directors, the charge of “disbelieving the mystery of transubstantiation, and the real presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist.” Here, fathers, is a slander worthy of yourselves. Here is a crime which God alone is capable of punishing, as you alone were capable of committing it. To endure it with patience, would require an humility as great as that of these calumniated ladies; to give it credit would demand a degree of wickedness equal to that of their wretched defamers. I propose not, therefore, to vindicate them; they are beyond suspicion. Had they stood in need of defence, they might have commanded abler advocates than me. My object in what I say here is to show, not their innocence, but your malignity. I merely intend to make you ashamed of yourselves, and to let the whole world understand that, after this, there is nothing of which you are not capable.

You will not fail, I am certain, notwithstanding all this, to say that I belong to Port-Royal; for this is the first thing you say to every one who combats your errors: as if it were only at Port-Royal that persons could be found possessed of sufficient zeal to defend, against your attacks, the purity of Christian morality. I know, fathers, the work of the pious recluses who have retired to that monastery, and how much the Church is indebted to their truly solid and edifying labors. I know the excellence of their piety and their learning. For, though I have never had the honor to belong to their establishment, as you, without knowing who or what I am, would fain have it believed, nevertheless, I do know some of them, and honor the virtue of them all. But God has not confined within the precincts of that society all whom he means to raise up in opposition to your corruptions. I hope, with his assistance, fathers, to make you feel this; and if he vouchsafe to sustain me in the design he has led me to form, of employing in his service all the resources I have received from him, I shall speak to you in such a strain as will, perhaps, give you reason to regret that you have _not_ had to do with a man of Port-Royal.

And to convince you of this, fathers, I must tell you that, while those whom you have abused with this notorious slander content themselves with lifting up their groans to Heaven to obtain your forgiveness for the outrage, I feel myself obliged, not being in the least affected by your slander, to make you blush in the face of the whole Church, and so bring you to that wholesome shame of which the Scripture speaks, and which is almost the only remedy for a hardness of heart like yours: “_Imple facies eorum ignominiâ, et quærent nomen tuum, Domine_—Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek thy name, O Lord.”[280]

A stop must be put to this insolence, which does not spare the most sacred retreats. For who can be safe after a calumny of this nature? For shame, fathers! to publish in Paris such a scandalous book, with the name of your Father Meynier on its front, and under this infamous title, “Port-Royal and Geneva in concert against the most holy Sacrament of the Altar,” in which you accuse of this apostasy, not only Monsieur the abbé of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, but also Mother Agnes, his sister, and all the nuns of that monastery, alleging that “their faith, in regard to the eucharist, is as suspicious as that of M. Arnauld,” whom you maintain to be “a downright Calvinist.”[281] I here ask the whole world if there be any class of persons within the pale of the Church, on whom you could have advanced such an abominable charge with less semblance of truth. For tell me, fathers, if these nuns and their directors, had been “in concert with Geneva against the most holy sacrament of the altar” (the very thought of which is shocking), how they should have come to select as the principal object of their piety that very sacrament which they held in abomination?

How should they have assumed the habit of the holy sacrament? taken the name of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament? called their church the Church of the Holy Sacrament? How should they have requested and obtained from Rome the confirmation of that institution, and the right of saying every Thursday the office of the holy sacrament, in which the faith of the Church is so perfectly expressed, if they had conspired with Geneva to banish that faith from the Church? Why would they have bound themselves, by a particular devotion, also sanctioned by the pope, to have some of their sisterhood, night and day without intermission, in presence of the sacred host, to compensate, by their perpetual adorations towards that perpetual sacrifice, for the impiety of the heresy that aims at its annihilation? Tell me, fathers, if you can, why, of all the mysteries of our religion, they should have passed by those in which they believed, to fix upon that in which they believed not? and how they should have devoted themselves, so fully and entirely, to that mystery of our faith, if they took it, as the heretics do, for the mystery of iniquity?

And what answer do you give to these clear evidences, embodied not in words only, but in actions; and not in some particular actions, but in the whole tenor of a life expressly dedicated to the adoration of Jesus Christ, dwelling on our altars? What answer, again, do you give to the books which you ascribe to Port-Royal, all of which are full of the most precise terms employed by the fathers and the councils to mark the essence of that mystery? It is at once ridiculous and disgusting to hear you replying to these, as you have done throughout your libel. M. Arnauld, say you, talks very well about transubstantiation; but he understands, perhaps, only “a significative transubstantiation.” True, he professes to believe in “the real presence;” who can tell, however, but he means nothing more than “a true and real figure?” How now, fathers! whom, pray, will you not make pass for a Calvinist whenever you please, if you are to be allowed the liberty of perverting the most canonical and sacred expressions by the wicked subtilties of your modern equivocations?

Who ever thought of using any other terms than those in question, especially in simple discourses of devotion, where no controversies are handled? And yet the love and the reverence in which they hold this sacred mystery, have induced them to give it such a prominence in all their writings, that I defy you, fathers, with all your cunning, to detect in them either the least appearance of ambiguity, or the slightest correspondence with the sentiments of Geneva.

Everybody knows, fathers, that the essence of the Genevan heresy consists, as it does according to your own showing, in their believing that Jesus Christ is not contained (_enfermé_), in this sacrament; that it is impossible he can be in many places at once; that he is, properly speaking, only in heaven, and that it is as there alone that he ought to be adored, and not on the altar;[282] that the substance of the bread remains; that the body of Jesus Christ does not enter into the mouth or the stomach; that he can only be eaten by faith, and accordingly wicked men do not eat him at all; and that the mass is not a sacrifice, but an abomination. Let us now hear, then, in what way “Port-Royal is in concert with Geneva.” In the writings of the former we read, to your confusion, the following statement: That “the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ are contained under the species of bread and wine;”[283] that “the Holy of Holies is present in the sanctuary, and that there he ought to be adored;”[284] that “Jesus Christ dwells in the sinners who communicate, by the real and veritable presence of his body in their stomach, although not by the presence of his Spirit in their hearts;”[285] that “the dead ashes of the bodies of the saints derive their principal dignity from that seed of life which they retain from the touch of the immortal and vivifying flesh of Jesus Christ;”[286] that “it is not owing to any natural power, but to the almighty power of God, to whom nothing is impossible, that the body of Jesus Christ is comprehended under the host, and under the smallest portion of every host;”[287] that “the divine virtue is present to produce the effect which the words of consecration signify;”[288] that “Jesus Christ, while he is lowered (_rabaissé_), and hidden upon the altar, is,

at the same time, elevated in his glory; that he subsists, of himself and by his own ordinary power, in divers places at the same time—in the midst of the Church triumphant, and in the midst of the Church militant and travelling;”[289] that “the sacramental species remain suspended, and subsist extraordinarily, without being upheld by any subject; and that the body of Jesus Christ is also suspended under the species, and that it does not depend upon these, as substances depend upon accidents;”[290] that “the substance of the bread is changed, the immutable accidents remaining the same;”[291] that “Jesus Christ reposes in the eucharist with the same glory that he has in heaven;”[292] that “his glorious humanity resides in the tabernacles of the Church, under the species of bread, which forms its visible covering; and that, knowing the grossness of our natures, he conducts us to the adoration of his divinity, which is present in all places, by the adoring of his humanity, which is present in a particular place;”[293] that “we receive the body of Jesus Christ upon the tongue, which is sanctified by its divine touch;”[294] “that it enters into the mouth of the priest;”[295] that “although Jesus Christ has made himself accessible in the holy sacrament, by an act of his love and graciousness, he preserves, nevertheless, in that ordinance, his inaccessibility, as an inseparable condition of his divine nature; because, although the body alone and the blood alone are there, by virtue of the words _vi verborum_, as the schoolmen say, his whole divinity may, notwithstanding, be there also, as well as his whole humanity, by a necessary conjunction.”[296] In fine, that “the eucharist is at the same time sacrament and sacrifice;”[297] and that “although this sacrifice is a commemoration of that of the cross, yet there is this difference between them, that the sacrifice of the mass is offered for the Church only, and for

the faithful in her communion; whereas that of the cross has been offered for all the world, as the Scripture testifies.”[298]

I have quoted enough, fathers, to make it evident that there was never, perhaps, a more imprudent thing attempted than what you have done. But I will go a step farther, and make you pronounce this sentence against yourselves. For what do you require from a man, in order to remove all suspicion of his being in concert and correspondence with Geneva? “If M. Arnauld,” says your Father Meynier, p. 93, “had said that in this adorable mystery, there is no substance of the bread under the species, but only the flesh and the blood of Jesus Christ, I should have confessed that he had declared himself absolutely against Geneva.” Confess it, then, ye revilers! and make him a public apology. How often have you seen this declaration made in the passages I have just cited? Besides this, however, the Familiar Theology of M. de St. Cyran having been approved by M. Arnauld, it contains the sentiments of both. Read, then, the whole of lesson 15th, and particularly article 2d, and you will there find the words you desiderate, even more formally stated than you have done yourselves. “Is there any bread in the host, or any wine in the chalice? No: for all the substance of the bread and the wine is taken away, to give place to that of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the which substance alone remains therein, covered by the qualities and species of bread and wine.”

How now, fathers! will you still say that Port-Royal teaches “nothing that Geneva does not receive,” and that M. Arnauld has said nothing in his second letter “which might not have been said by a minister of Charenton?” See if you can persuade Mestrezat[299] to speak as M. Arnauld does in that letter, at page 237? Make him say, that it is an infamous calumny to accuse him of denying transubstantiation; that he takes for the fundamental principle of his writings the truth of the real presence of the Son of God, in opposition to the heresy of the Calvinists; and that he accounts himself happy for living in a place where the Holy of Holies is continually adored in the sanctuary—a sentiment which is still more opposed to the belief of the Calvinists than the real presence itself; for as Cardinal Richelieu observes in his Controversies (page 536): “The new ministers of France having agreed with the Lutherans, who believe the real presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist; they have declared that they remain in a state of separation from the Church on the point of this mystery, only on account of the adoration which Catholics render to the eucharist.”[300] Get all the passages which I have extracted from the books of Port-Royal subscribed at Geneva, and not the isolated passages merely, but the entire treatises regarding this mystery, such as the Book of Frequent Communion, the Explication of the Ceremonies of the Mass, the Exercise during Mass, the Reasons of the Suspension of the Holy Sacrament, the Translation of the Hymns in the Hours of Port-Royal, &c.; in one word, prevail upon them to establish at Charenton that holy institution of adoring, without intermission, Jesus Christ contained in the eucharist, as is done at Port-Royal, and it will be the most signal service which you could render to the Church; for in this case it will turn

out, not that Port-Royal is in concert with Geneva, but that Geneva is in concert with Port-Royal, and with the whole Church.

Certainly, fathers, you could not have been more unfortunate than in selecting Port-Royal as the object of attack for not believing in the eucharist; but I will show what led you to fix upon it. You know I have picked up some small acquaintance with your policy; in this instance you have acted upon its maxims to admiration. If Monsieur the abbé of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, had only spoken of what ought to be believed with great respect to this mystery, and said nothing about what ought to be done in the way of preparation for its reception, they might have been the best Catholics alive; and no equivocations would have been discovered in their use of the terms “real presence” and “transubstantiation.” But since all who combat your licentious principles must needs be heretics, and heretics too, in the very point in which they condemn your laxity, how could M. Arnauld escape falling under this charge on the subject of the eucharist, after having published a book expressly against your profanations of that sacrament? What! must he be allowed to say, with impunity, that “the body of Jesus Christ ought not to be given to those who habitually lapse into the same crimes, and who have no prospect of amendment; and that such persons ought to be excluded, for some time, from the altar, to purify themselves by sincere penitence, that they may approach it afterwards with benefit?”

Suffer no one to talk in this strain, fathers, or you will find that fewer people will come to your confessionals. Father Brisacier says, that “were you to adopt this course, you would never apply the blood of Jesus Christ to a single individual.” It would be infinitely more for your interest were every one to adopt the views of your Society, as set forth by your Father Mascarenhas, in a book approved by your doctors, and even by your reverend Father-General, namely, “That persons of every description, and even priests, may receive the body of Jesus Christ on the very day they have polluted themselves with odious crimes; that so far from such communions implying irreverence, persons who partake of them in this manner act a commendable part; that confessors ought not to keep them back from the ordinance, but, on the contrary, ought to advise those who have recently committed such crimes to communicate immediately; because, although the Church has forbidden it, this prohibition is annulled by the universal practice in all places of the earth.”[301]

See what it is, fathers, to have Jesuits in all places of the earth! Behold the universal practice which you have introduced, and which you are anxious everywhere to maintain! It matters nothing that the tables of Jesus Christ are filled with abominations, provided that your churches are crowded with people. Be sure, therefore, cost what it may, to set down all that dare to say a word against your practice, as heretics on the holy sacrament. But how can you do this, after the irrefragable testimonies which they have given of their faith? Are you not afraid of my coming out with the four grand proofs of their heresy which you have adduced? You ought, at least, to be so, fathers, and I ought not to spare your blushing. Let us, then, proceed to examine proof the first.

“M. de St. Cyran,” says Father Meynier, “consoling one of his friends upon the death of his mother (tom. i., let. 14), says that the most acceptable sacrifice that can be offered up to God on such occasions, is that of patience; therefore he is a Calvinist.” This is marvellously shrewd reasoning, fathers; and I doubt if anybody will be able to discover the precise point of it. Let us learn it, then, from his own mouth. “Because,” says this mighty controversialist, “it is obvious that he does not believe in the sacrifice of the mass; for this is, of all other sacrifices, the most acceptable unto God.” Who will venture to say now that the Jesuits do not know how to reason? Why, they know the art to such perfection, that they will extract heresy out of anything you choose to mention, not even excepting the Holy Scripture itself! For example, might it not be heretical to say, with the wise man in Ecclesiasticus, “There is nothing worse than to love money;”[302] as if adultery, murder, or idolatry, were not far greater crimes?

Where is the man who is not in the habit of using similar expressions every day? May we not say, for instance, that the most acceptable of all sacrifices in the eyes of God is that of a contrite and humbled heart; just because, in discourses of this nature, we simply mean to compare certain internal virtues with one another, and not with the sacrifice of the mass, which is of a totally different order, and infinitely more exalted? Is this not enough to make you ridiculous, fathers? And is it necessary, to complete your discomfiture, that I should quote the passages of that letter in which M. de St. Cyran speaks of the sacrifice of the mass, as “the most excellent” of all others, in the following terms? “Let there be presented to God, daily and in all places, the sacrifice of the body of his Son, who could not find _a more excellent way_ than that by which he might honor his Father.” And afterwards: “Jesus Christ has enjoined us to take, when we are dying, his sacrificed body, to render more acceptable to God the sacrifice of our own, and to join himself with us at the hour of dissolution; to the end that he may strengthen us for the struggle, sanctifying, by his presence, the last sacrifice which we make to God of our life and our body?” Pretend to take no notice of all this, fathers, and persist in maintaining, as you do in page 39, that he refused to take the communion on his death-bed, and that he did not believe in the sacrifice of the mass. Nothing can be too gross for calumniators by profession.

Your second proof furnishes an excellent illustration of this. To make a Calvinist of M. de St. Cyran, to whom you ascribe the book of _Petrus Aurelius_, you take advantage of a passage (page 80) in which Aurelius explains in what manner the Church acts towards priests, and even bishops, whom she wishes to degrade or depose. “The Church,” he says, “being incapable of depriving them of the power of the order, the character of which is indelible, she does all that she can do;—she banishes from her memory the character which she cannot banish from the souls of the individuals who have been once invested with it; she regards them in the same light as if they were not bishops or priests; so that, according to the ordinary language of the Church, it may be said they are no longer such, although they always remain such, in as far as the character is concerned—_ob indelebilitatem characteris_.” You perceive, fathers, that this author, who has been approved by three general assemblies of the clergy of France, plainly declares that the character of the priesthood is indelible; and yet you make him say, on the contrary, in the very same passage, that “the character of the priesthood is _not_ indelible.” This is what I would call a notorious slander; in other words, according to your nomenclature, a small venial sin. And the reason is, this book has done you some harm, by refuting the heresies of your brethren in England touching the Episcopal authority. But the folly of the charge is equally remarkable; for, after having taken it for granted, without any foundation, that M. de St. Cyran holds the priestly character to be not indelible, you conclude from this that he does not believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist.

Do not expect me to answer this, fathers. If you have got no common sense, I am not able to furnish you with it. All who possess any share of it will enjoy a hearty laugh at your expense. Nor will they treat with greater respect your third proof, which rests upon the following words, taken from the Book of Frequent Communion: “In the eucharist God vouchsafes us _the same food_ that he bestows on the saints in heaven, with this difference only, that here he withholds from us its sensible sight and taste, reserving both of these for the heavenly world.”[303] These words express the sense of the Church so distinctly, that I am constantly forgetting what reason you have for picking a quarrel with them, in order to turn them to a bad use; for I can see nothing more in them but what the Council of Trent teaches (sess. xiii., c. 8), namely, that there is no difference between Jesus Christ in the eucharist and Jesus Christ in heaven, except that here he is veiled, and there he is not. M. Arnauld does not say that there is no difference in the manner of receiving Jesus Christ, but only that there is no difference in Jesus Christ who is received. And yet you would, in the face of all reason, interpret his language in this passage to mean, that Jesus Christ is no more eaten with the mouth in this world than he is in heaven; upon which you ground the charge of heresy against him.

You really make me sorry for you, fathers. Must we explain this further to you? Why do you confound that divine nourishment with the manner of receiving it? There is but one point of difference, as I have just observed, betwixt that nourishment upon earth and in heaven, which is, that here it is hidden under veils which deprive us of its sensible sight and taste; but there are various points of dissimilarity in the manner of receiving it here and there, the principal of which is, as M. Arnauld expresses it (p. 3, ch. 16), “that here it enters into the mouth and the breast both of the good and of the wicked,” which is not the case in heaven.

And if you require to be told the reason of this diversity, I may inform you, fathers, that the cause of God’s ordaining these different modes of receiving the same food, is the difference that exists betwixt the state of Christians in this life and that of the blessed in heaven. The state of the Christian, as Cardinal Perron observes after the fathers, holds a middle place between the state of the blessed and the state of the Jews. The spirits in bliss possess Jesus Christ really, without veil or figure. The Jews possessed Jesus Christ only in figures and veils, such as the manna and the paschal lamb. And Christians possess Jesus Christ in the eucharist really and truly, although still concealed under veils. “God,” says St. Eucher, “has made three tabernacles—the synagogue, which had the shadows only, without the truth; the Church, which has the truth and shadows together; and heaven, where there is no shadow, but the truth alone.” It would be a departure from our present state, which is the state of faith, opposed by St.

Paul alike to the law and to open vision, did we possess the figures only, without Jesus Christ; for it is the property of the law to have the mere figure, and not the substance of things. And it would be equally a departure from our present state if we possessed him visibly; because faith, according to the same apostle, deals not with things that are seen. And thus the eucharist, from its including Jesus Christ truly, though under a veil, is in perfect accordance with our state of faith. It follows, that this state would be destroyed, if, as the heretics maintain, Jesus Christ were not really under the species of bread and wine; and it would be equally destroyed if we received him openly, as they do in heaven: since, on these suppositions, our state would be confounded, either with the state of Judaism or with that of glory.

Such, fathers, is the mysterious and divine reason of this most divine mystery. This it is that fills us with abhorrence at the Calvinists, who would reduce us to the condition of the Jews; and this it is that makes us aspire to the glory of the beatified, where we shall be introduced to the full and eternal enjoyment of Jesus Christ. From hence you must see that there are several points of difference between the manner in which he communicates himself to Christians and to the blessed; and that, amongst others, he is in this world received by the mouth, and not so in heaven; but that they all depend solely on the distinction between our state of faith and their state of immediate vision. And this is precisely, fathers, what M. Arnauld has expressed, with great plainness, in the following terms: “There can be no other difference between the purity of those who receive Jesus Christ in the eucharist and that of the blessed, than what exists between faith and the open vision of God, upon which alone depends the different manner in which he is eaten upon earth and in heaven.” You were bound in duty, fathers, to have revered in these words the sacred truths they express, instead of wresting them for the purpose of detecting an heretical meaning which they never contained, nor could possibly contain, namely, that Jesus Christ is eaten by faith only, and not by the mouth; the malicious perversion of your Fathers Annat and Meynier, which forms the capital count of their indictment.