THE TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

The following translation of the Provincial Letters was undertaken several years ago, in compliance with the suggestion of a revered parent, chiefly as a literary recreation in a retired country charge, and, after being finished, was laid aside. It is now published at the request of friends, who considered such a work as peculiarly seasonable, and more likely to be acceptable at the present crisis, when general attention has been again directed to the popish controversy, and when such strenuous exertions are being made by the Jesuits to regain influence in our country.

None are strangers to the fame of the Provincials, and few literary persons would choose to confess themselves altogether ignorant of a work which has acquired a world-wide reputation. Yet there is reason to suspect that few books of the same acknowledged merit have had a more limited circle of bona fide English readers. This may be ascribed, in a great measure, to the want of a good English translation. Two translations of the Provincials have already appeared in our language. The first was contemporary with the Letters themselves, and was printed at London in 1657, under the title of “Les Provinciales; or, The Mysterie of Jesuitism, discovered in certain Letters, written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne, between the Jansenists and the Molinists, from January 1656 to March 1657, S. N. Displaying the corrupt Maximes and Politicks of that Society. Faithfully rendered into English. Sicut Serpentes.” Of the translation under this unpromising title, it may only be remarked, that it is probably one of the worst specimens of “rendering into English” to be met with, even during that age when little attention was paid to the art of translation. Under its uncouth phraseology, not only are the wit and spirit of the original completely shrouded, but the meaning is so disguised that the work is almost as unintelligible as it is uninteresting.

Another translation of the Letters—of which I was not aware till I had completed mine—was published in London in 1816. On discovering that a new attempt had been made to put the English public in possession of the Provincials, and that it had failed to excite any general interest, I was induced to lay aside all thoughts of publishing my version; but, after examining the modern translation, I became convinced that its failure might be ascribed to other causes than want of taste among us for the beauties and excellences of Pascal. This translation, though written in good English, bears evident marks of haste, and of want of acquaintance with the religious controversies of the time; in consequence of which, the sense and spirit of the original have been either entirely lost, or so imperfectly developed, as to render its perusal exceedingly tantalizing and unsatisfactory.

It remains for the public to judge how far the present version may have succeeded in giving a more readable and faithful transcript of the Provincial Letters. No pains, at least, have been spared to enhance its interest and insure its fidelity. Among the numerous French editions of the Letters, the basis of the following translation is that of Amsterdam, published in four volumes 12mo, 1767; with the notes of Nicole, and his prefatory History of the Provincials, which were translated from the Latin into French by Mademoiselle de Joncourt. With this and other French editions I have compared Nicole’s Latin translation, which appeared in 1658, and received the sanction of Pascal.

The voluminous notes of Nicole, however interesting they may have been at the time, and to the parties involved in the Jansenist controversy, are not, in general, of such a kind as to invite attention now; nor would a full translation even of his historical details, turning as they do chiefly on local and temporary disputes, be likely to reward the patience of the reader. So far as they were fitted to throw light on the original text, I have availed myself of these, along with other sources of information, in the marginal notes. Some of these annotations, as might be expected from a Protestant editor, are intended to correct error, or to guard against misconception.

To the full understanding of the Provincials, however, some idea of the controversies which occasioned their publication seems almost indispensable. This I have attempted to furnish in the Historical Introduction; which will also be found to contain some interesting facts, hitherto uncollected, and borrowed from a variety of authorities not generally accessible, illustrating the history of the Letters, and the parties concerned in them, with a vindication of Pascal from the charges which this work has provoked from so many quarters against him.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
 
TO
 
THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS.
 
BY THE TRANSLATOR.

The Church of Rome, notwithstanding her pretensions to infallibility, has been fully as prolific in theological controversy and intestine discord as any of the Reformed Churches. She has contrived, indeed, with singular policy, to preserve, amidst all her variations, the semblance of unity. Protestantism, like the primitive Church, suffered its dissentients to fly off into hostile or independent communions. The Papacy, on the contrary, has managed to retain hers within the outward pale of her fellowship, by the institution of various religious orders, which have served as safety-valves for exuberant zeal, and which, though often hostile to each other, have remained attached to the mother Church, and even proved her most efficient supporters. Still, at different times, storms have arisen within the Romish Church, which could be quelled neither by the infallibility of popes nor the authority of councils. It is doubtful if religious controversy ever raged with so much violence in the Reformed Church, as it did between the Thomists and the Scotists, the Dominicans and Franciscans, the Jesuits and the Jansenists, of the Church of Rome.

Uninviting as they may now appear, the disputes about grace, in which the last mentioned parties were involved, gave occasion to the Provincial Letters. The origin of these disputes must be traced as far back as the days of Augustine and the Pelagian controversy of the fifth century. The motto of Pelagius was free-will; that of Augustine was efficacious grace. The former held that, notwithstanding the fall, the human will was perfectly free to choose at any time between good and evil; the latter, that in consequence of the fall, the will is in a state of moral bondage, from which it can only be freed by divine grace. With the British monk, election is suspended on the decision of man’s will; human nature is still as pure as it came originally from the hands of the Creator: Christ died equally for all men; and, as the result of his death, a general grace is granted to all mankind, which any may comply with, but which all may finally forfeit. With the African bishop, election is absolute—we are predestinated, not from foreseen holiness, but that we might be holy;^[1] all men are lying under the guilt or penal obligation of the first sin, and in a state of spiritual helplessness and corruption; the sacrifice of Christ was, in point of destination, offered for the elect, though, in point of exhibition, it is offered to all; and the saints obtain the gift of perseverance in holiness to the end.^[2]

Pelagius, whose real name was Morgan, and who is supposed to have been a Welshman, belonged to that numerous class of thinkers, who, from their peculiar idiosyncrasy, are apt to start at the sovereignty of divine grace, developed in the plan of redemption, as if it struck at once at the equity of God and the responsibility of man. He is said to have betrayed his heretical leanings, for the first time, by publicly expressing his disapprobation of a sentiment of Augustine, which he heard quoted by a bishop “Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis—Give, Lord, what thou biddest, and bid what thou wilt.” It would be easy to show that, in recoiling from the odious picture of the orthodox doctrine, drawn by his own fancy, he fell into the very consequences which he was so eager to avoid. The deity of Pelagius being subjected to the changeable will of the creature, all things were left to the direction of blind chance or unthinking destiny; while man, being represented as created with concupiscence, to account for his aberrations from rectitude—in other words, with a constitution in which the seeds of evil were implanted—the authorship of sin was ascribed, directly and primarily, to the Creator.^[3]

Augustine was a powerful but unsteady writer, and has expressed himself so inconsistently as to have divided the opinions of the Latin Church, where he was recognized as a standard, canonized as a saint, and revered under the title of “The Doctor of Grace.” On the great doctrine of salvation by grace, he is scriptural and evangelical; and hence he has been frequently quoted with admiration by our Reformed divines, partly to evince the declension of Rome from the faith of the earlier fathers, partly from that veneration for antiquity, which induces us to bestow more notice on the ivy-mantled ruin, than on the more graceful and commodious modern edifice in its vicinity. When arguing against Pelagianism, Augustine is strong in the panoply of Scripture; when developing his own system, he fails to do justice either to Scripture or to himself. Loud, and even fierce, for the entire corruption of human nature, he spoils all by admitting the absurd dogma of baptismal regeneration. Chivalrous in the defence of grace, as opposed to free-will, he virtually abandons the field to the enemy, by teaching that we are justified by our works of evangelical obedience, and that the faith which justifies includes in its nature all the offices of Christian charity.

During the dark ages, the Church of Rome, professing the highest veneration for St. Augustine, had ceased to hold the Augustinian theology. The Dominicans, indeed, yielded a vague allegiance to it, by adhering to the views of Thomas Aquinas, “the angelic doctor” of the schools, from whom they were termed Thomists; while the Franciscans, who opposed them, under the auspices of Duns Scotus, from whom they were termed Scotists, leaned to the views of Pelagius. The Scotists, like the modern advocates of free-will, inveighed against their opponents as fatalists, and charged them with making God the author of sin; the Thomists, again, retorted on the Scotists, by accusing them of annihilating the grace of God. But the doctrines of grace had sunk out of view, under a mass of penances, oblations, and intercessions, founded on the assumption of human merit, and on that very confusion of the forensic change in justification with the moral change in sanctification, in which Augustine had unhappily led the way. At length the Reformation appeared; and as both Luther and Calvin appealed to the authority of Augustine, when treating of grace and free-will, the Romish divines, in their zeal against the Reformers, became still more decidedly Pelagian. In the Council of Trent, the admirers of Augustine durst hardly show themselves; the Jesuits carried everything before them; and the anathemas of that synod, which were aimed at Calvin fully as much as Luther, though they professed to condemn only the less guarded statements of the German reformer, were all in favor of Pelagius.

The controversy was revived in the Latin Church, about the close of the sixteenth century, both in the Low Countries and in Spain. In 1588, Lewis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, published lectures on “The Concord of Grace and Free-Will;” and this work, filled with the jargon of the schools, gave rise to disputes which continued to agitate the Church during the whole of the succeeding century. Molina conceived that he had discovered a method of reconciling the divine purposes with the freedom of the human will, which would settle the question forever. According to his theory, God not only foresaw from eternity all things possible, by a foresight of intelligence, and all things future by a foresight of vision; but by another kind of foresight, intermediate between these two, which he termed scientia media, or middle knowledge, he foresaw what might have happened under certain circumstances or conditions, though it never may take place. All men, according to Molina, are favored with a general grace, sufficient to work out their salvation, if they choose to improve it; but when God designs to convert a sinner, he vouchsafes that measure of grace which he foresees, according to the middle knowledge, or in all the circumstances of the case, the person will comply with. The honor of this discovery was disputed by another Jesuit, Peter Fonseca, who declared that the very same thing had burst upon his mind with all the force of inspiration, when lecturing on the subject some years before.^[4]

Abstruse as these questions may appear, they threatened a serious rupture in the Romish Church. The Molinists were summoned to Rome in 1598, to answer the charges of the Dominicans; and after some years of deliberation, Pope Clement VIII. decided against Molina. The Jesuits, however, alarmed for the credit of their order, never rested till they prevailed on the old pontiff to re-examine the matter; and in 1602, he appointed a grand council of cardinals, bishops, and divines, who convened for discussion no less than seventy-eight times. This council was called Congregatio de Auxiliis, or council on the aids of grace. Its records being kept secret, the result of their collective wisdom was not known with certainty, and has been lost to the world.^[5] The probability is, that like Milton’s “grand infernal peers,” who reasoned high on similar points,

Those who appealed to them for the settlement of the question, had too much reason to say, as the man in Terence does to his lawyers—“Fecistis probe; incertior sum multo quam dudum.”^[6]

But this interminable dispute was destined to assume a more popular form, and lead to more practical results. In 1604, two young men entered, as fellow-students, the university of Louvain, which had been distinguished for its hostility to Molinism. Widely differing in natural temperament as well as outward rank, Cornelius Jansen, who was afterwards bishop of Ypres, and John Duverger de Hauranne, afterwards known as the Abbé de St. Cyran, formed an acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship. They began to study together the works of Augustine, and to compare them with the Scriptures. The immediate result was, an agreement in opinion that the ancient father was in the right, and that the Jesuits, and other followers of Molina, were in the wrong. This was followed by an ardent desire to revive the doctrines of their favorite doctor—a task which each of them prosecuted in the way most suited to his respective character.

Jansen, or Jansenius, as he is often called,^[7] was descended of humble parentage, and born October 28, 1585, in a village near Leerdam, in Holland. By his friends he is extolled for his penetrating genius, tenacious memory, magnanimity, and piety. Taciturn and contemplative in his habits, he was frequently overheard, when taking his solitary walks in the garden of the monastery, to exclaim: “O veritas! veritas!—O truth! truth!” Keen in controversy, ascetic in devotion, and rigid in his Catholicism, his antipathies were about equally divided between heretics and Jesuits. Towards the Protestants, his acrimony was probably augmented by the consciousness of having embraced views which might expose himself to the suspicion of heresy; or, still more probably, by that uneasy feeling with which we cannot help regarding those who, holding the same doctrinal views with ourselves, may have made a more decided and consistent profession of them. The first supposition derives countenance from the private correspondence between him and his friend St. Cyran, which shows some dread of persecution;^[8] the second is confirmed by his acknowledged writings. He speaks of Protestants as no better than Turks, and gives it as his opinion that “they had much more reason to congratulate themselves on the mercy of princes, than to complain of their severities, which, as the vilest of heretics, they richly deserved.”^[9] His controversy with the learned Gilbert Voet led the latter to publish his Desperata Causa Papatus, one of the best exposures of the weaknesses of Popery. When to this we add that the Calvinistic synod of Dort, in 1618, had condemned Arminius and the Dutch Remonstrants as having fallen into the errors of Pelagius and Molina, the position of Jansen became still more complicated. Of Arminius he could not approve, without condemning Augustine; with the Protestant synod he could not agree, unless he chose to be denounced as a Calvinist.

But the natural enemies of Jansen were, without doubt, the Jesuits. To the history of this Society we can only now advert in a very cursory manner. It may appear surprising that an order so powerful and politic should have owed its origin to such a person as Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier: and that a wound in the leg, which this hidalgo received at the battle of Pampeluna, should have issued in his becoming the founder of a Society which has embroiled the world and the Church. But in fact, Loyola, though the originator of the sect, is not entitled to the honor, or rather the disgrace, of organizing its constitution. This must be assigned to Laynez and Aquaviva, the two generals who succeeded him—men as superior to the founder of the Society in talents as he excelled them in enthusiasm. Ignatius owed his success to circumstances. While he was watching his arms as the knight-errant of the Virgin, in her chapel at Montserrat, or squatting within his cell in a state of body too noisome for human contact, and of mind verging on insanity, Luther was making Germany ring with the first trumpet-notes of the Reformation. The monasteries, in which ignorance had so long slumbered in the lap of superstition, were awakened; but their inmates were totally unfit for doing battle on the new field of strife that had opened around them. Unwittingly, in the heat of his fanaticism, the illiterate Loyola suggested a line of policy which, matured by wiser heads, proved more adapted to the times. Bred in the court and the camp, he contrived to combine the finesse of the one, and the discipline of the other, with the sanctity of a religious community; and proposed that, instead of the lazy routine of monastic life, his followers should actively devote themselves to the education of youth, the conversion of the heathen, and the suppression of heresy. Such a proposal, backed by a vow of devotion to the Holy See, commended itself to the pope so highly that, in 1540, he confirmed the institution by a bull, granted it ample privileges, and appointed Loyola to be its first general. In less than a century, this sect, which assumed to itself, with singular arrogance, the name of “The Society of Jesus,” rose to be the most enterprising and formidable order in the Romish communion.

Never was the name of the blessed Jesus more grossly prostituted than when applied to a Society which is certainly the very opposite, in spirit and character, to Him who was “meek and lowly,” “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” The Jesuits may be said to have invented, for their own peculiar use, an entirely new system of ethics. In place of the divine law, they prescribed, as the rule of their conduct, a “blind obedience” to the will of their superiors, whom they are bound to recognize as “standing in the place of God,” and in fulfilling whose orders they are to have no more will of their own “than a corpse, or an old man’s staff.” The glory of God they identify with the aggrandizement of their Society; and holding that “the end sanctifies the means,” they scruple at no means, foul or fair, which they conceive may advance such an end.^[10] The supreme power is vested in the general, who is not responsible to any other authority, civil or ecclesiastical. A system of mutual espionage, and a secret correspondence with head-quarters at Rome, in which everything that can, in the remotest degree, affect the interests of the Society is made known, and by means of which the whole machinery of Jesuitism can be set in motion at once, or its minutest feelers directed to any object at pleasure, presents the most complete system of organization in the world. Every member is sworn, by secret oath, to obey the orders, and all are confederated in a solemn league to advance the cause of the Society. It has been defined to be “a naked sword, the hilt of which is at Rome.” Such a monstrous combination could not fail to render itself obnoxious. Constantly aiming at ascendency in the Church, in which it is an imperium in imperio, the Society has not only been embroiled in perpetual feuds with the other orders, but has repeatedly provoked the thunders of the Vatican. Ever intermeddling with the affairs of civil governments, with allegiance to which, under any form, its principles are utterly at variance, it has been expelled in turn from almost every European State, as a political nuisance. But Jesuitism is the very soul of Popery; both have revived or declined together; and accordingly, though the order was abolished by Clement XIV. in 1775, it was found necessary to resuscitate it under Pius VII. in 1814; and the Society was never in greater power, nor more active operation, than it is at the present moment. It boasts of immortality, and, in all probability, it will last as long as the Church of Rome. It has been termed “a militia called out to combat the Reformation,” and exhibiting, as it does to this day, the same features of ambition, treachery, and intolerance, it seems destined to fall only in the ruins of that Church of whose unchanging spirit it is the genuine type and representative.^[11]

In prosecuting the ends of their institution, the Jesuits have adhered with singular fidelity to its distinguishing spirit. As the instructors of youth, their solicitude has ever been less to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge than to bar out what might prove dangerous to clerical domination; they have confined their pupils to mere literary studies, which might amuse without awakening their minds, and make them subtle dialecticians without disturbing a single prejudice of the dark ages. As missionaries, they have been much more industrious and successful in the manual labor of baptizing all nations than in teaching them the Gospel.^[12] As theologians, they have uniformly preferred the views of Molina; regarding these, if not as more agreeable to Scripture and right reason, at least (to use the language of a late writer) as “more consonant with the common sense and natural feelings of mankind.”^[13] As controversialists, they were the decided foes of all reform and all reformers, from within or without the Church. As moralists, they cultivated, as might be expected, the loosest system of casuistry, to qualify themselves for directing the consciences of high and low, and becoming, through the confessional, the virtual governors of mankind. In all these departments they have, doubtless, produced men of abilities; but the very means which they employed to aggrandize the Society have tended to dwarf the intellectual growth of its individual members: and hence, while it is true that “the Jesuits had to boast of the most vigorous controversialists, the most polite scholars, the most refined courtiers, and the most flexible casuists of their age,”^[14] it has been commonly remarked, that they have never produced a single great man.

Casuistry, the art in which the Jesuits so much excelled, is, strictly speaking, that branch of theology which treats of cases of conscience, and originally consisted in nothing more than an application of the general precepts of Scripture to particular cases. The ancient casuists, so long as they confined themselves to the simple rules of the Gospel, were at least harmless, and their ingenious writings are still found useful in cases of ecclesiastical discipline; but they gradually introduced into the science of morals the metaphysical jargon of the schools, and instead of aiming at making men moral, contented themselves with disputing about morality.^[15] The main source of the aberrations of casuistry lay in the unscriptural dogma of priestly absolution—in the right claimed by man to forgive sin, as a transgression of the law of God; and the arbitrary distinction between sins as venial and mortal—a distinction which assigns to the priest the prerogative, and imposes on him the obligation, of drawing the critical line, or fixing a kind of tariff on human actions, and apportioning penance or pardon, as the case may seem to require. In their desperate attempt to define the endless forms of depravity on which they were called to adjudicate, or which the pruriency of the cloister suggested to the imagination, the casuists sank deeper into the mire at every step; and their productions, at length, resembled the common sewers of a city, which, when exposed, become more pestiferous than the filth which they were meant to remove. Even under the best management, such a system was radically bad; in the hands of the Jesuits it became unspeakably worse. To their “modern casuists,” as they were termed, must we ascribe the invention of probabilism, mental reservation, and the direction of the intention, which have been sufficiently explained and rebuked in the Provincial Letters. We shall only remark here, that the actions to which these principles were applied were not only such as have been termed indifferent, and the criminality of which may be doubtful, or dependent on the intention of the actor: the probabilism of the Jesuits was, in fact, a systematic attempt to legalize crime, under the sanction of some grave doctor, who had found out some excuse for it; and their theory of mental reservations, and direction of the intention, was equally employed to sanctify the plainest violations of the divine law. Casuistry, it is true, has generally vibrated betwixt the extremes of impracticable severity and contemptible indulgence; but the charge against the Jesuits was, not that they softened the rigors of ascetic virtue, but that they propagated principles which sapped the foundation of all moral obligation. “They are a people,” said Boileau, “who lengthen the creed and shorten the decalogue.”

Such was the community with which the Bishop of Ypres ventured to enter the lists. Already had he incurred their resentment by opposing their interests in some political negotiations; and by publishing his “Mars Gallicus,” he had mortally offended their patron, Cardinal Richelieu; but, strange to say, his deadly sin against the Society was a posthumous work. Jansen was cut off by the plague, May 8, 1638. Shortly after his decease, his celebrated work, entitled “Augustinus,” was published by his friends Fromond and Calen, to whom he had committed it on his death-bed. To the preparation of this work he may be said to have devoted his life. It occupied him twenty-two years, during which, we are told, he had ten times read through the works of Augustine (ten volumes, folio!) and thirty times collated those passages which related to Pelagianism.^[16] The book itself, as the title imports, was little more than a digest of the writings of Augustine on the subject of grace.^[17] It was divided into three parts; the first being a refutation of Pelagianism, the second demonstrating the spiritual disease of man, and the third exhibiting the remedy provided. The sincerity of Jansen’s love to truth is beyond question, though we may be permitted to question the form in which it was evinced. The radical defect of the work is, that instead of resorting to the living fountain of inspiration, he confined himself to the cistern of tradition. Enamored with the excellences of Augustine, he adopted even his inconsistencies. With the former he challenged the Jesuits; with the latter he warded off the charge of heresy. As a controvertist, he is chargeable with prejudice, rather than dishonesty. As a reformer, he wanted the independence of mind necessary to success. Instead of standing boldly forward on the ground of Scripture, he attempted, with more prudence than wisdom, to shelter himself behind the venerable name of Augustine.

If by thus preferring the shield of tradition to the sword of the Spirit, Jansen expected to out-manœuvre the Jesuits, he had mistaken his policy. “Augustinus,” though professedly written to revive the doctrine of Augustine, was felt by the Society as, in reality, an attack upon them, under the name of Pelagians. To conscious delinquency, the language of implied censure is ever more galling than formal impeachment. Jansen’s portrait of Augustine was but too faithfully executed; and the disciples of Loyola could not fail to see how far they had departed from the faith of the ancient Church; but the discovery only served to incense them at the man who had exhibited their defection before the world. The approbation which the book received from forty learned doctors, and the rapture with which it was welcomed by the friends of the author, only added to their exasperation. The whole efforts of the Society were summoned to defeat its influence. Balked by the hand of death of their revenge on the person of the author, they vented it even on his remains. By a decree of the pope, procured through their instigation, a splendid monument, which had been erected over the grave of the learned and much-loved bishop, was completely demolished, that, in the words of his Holiness, “the memory of Jansen might perish from the earth.” It is even said that his body was torn from its resting-place, and thrown into some unknown receptacle.^[18] His literary remains were no less severely handled. Nicholas Cornet, a member of the Society, after incredible pains, extracted the heretical poison of “Augustinus,” in the form of seven propositions, which were afterwards reduced to five. These having been submitted to the judgment of Innocent X., were condemned by that pontiff in a bull dated 31st May, 1653. This decision, so far from restoring peace, awakened a new controversy. The Jansenists, as the admirers of Jansen now began to be named by their opponents, while they professed acquiescence in the judgment of the pope, denied that these propositions were to be found in “Augustinus.” The succeeding pope, Alexander VII., who was still more favorable to the Jesuits, declared formally, in a bull dated 1657, “that the five propositions were certainly taken from the book of Jansenius, and had been condemned in the sense of that author.” But the Jansenists were ready to meet him on this point; they replied, that a decision of this kind overstepped the limits of papal authority, and that the pope’s infallibility did not extend to a judgment of facts.^[19]

The reader may be curious to know something more about these famous five propositions, condemned by the pope, which, in fact, may be said to have given occasion to the Provincial Letters. They were as follows:—

1. There are divine precepts which good men, though willing, are absolutely unable to obey.

2. No person, in this corrupt state of nature, can resist the influence of divine grace.

3. In order to render human actions meritorious, or otherwise, it is not requisite that they be exempt from necessity, but only free from constraint.

4. The semi-Pelagian heresy consisted in allowing the human will to be endued with a power of resisting grace, or of complying with its influence.

5. Whoever says that Christ died or shed his blood for all mankind, is a semi-Pelagian.

The Jansenists, in their subsequent disputes on these propositions, contended that they were ambiguously expressed, and that they might be understood in three different senses—a Calvinistic, a Pelagian, and a Catholic or Augustinian sense. In the first two senses they disclaimed them, in the last they approved and defended them. Owing to the extreme aversion of the party to Calvinism, while they substantially held the same system under the name of Augustinianism, it becomes extremely difficult to convey an intelligible idea of their theological views. On the first proposition, for example, while they disclaimed what they term the Calvinistic sense, namely, that the best of men are liable to sin in all that they do, they equally disclaim the Pelagian sentiment, that all men have a general sufficient grace, at all times, for the discharge of duty, subject to free will; and they strenuously maintained that, without efficacious grace, constantly vouchsafed, we can do nothing spiritually good. In regard to the resistibility of grace, they seem to have held that the will of man might always resist the influence of grace, if it chose to do so; but that grace would effectually prevent it from so choosing. And with respect to redemption, they appear to have compromised the matter, by holding that Christ died for all, so as that all might be partakers of the grace of justification by the merits of his death; but they denied that Christ died for each man in particular, so as to secure his final salvation; in this sense, he died for the elect only.

Were this the proper place, it would be easy to show that, in the leading points of his theology, Jansen did not differ from Calvin, so much as he misunderstood Calvinism. The Calvinists, for example, never held, as they are represented in the Provincial Letters,^[20] “that we have not the power of resisting grace.” So far from this, they held that fallen man could not but resist the grace of God. They preferred, therefore, the term “invincible,” as applied to grace. In short, they held exactly the victrix delectatio of Augustine, by which the will of man is sweetly but effectually inclined to comply with the will of God.^[21] On the subject of necessity and constraint their views are precisely similar. Nor can they be considered as differing essentially in their views of the death of Christ, as these, at least, were given by Jansen, who acknowledges in his “Augustinus,” that, “according to St. Augustine, Jesus Christ did not die for all mankind.” It is certain that neither Augustine nor Jansen would have subscribed to the views of grace and redemption held by many who, in our day, profess evangelical views. Making allowance for the different position of the parties, it is very plain that the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius, Jansen and Molina, Calvin and Arminius, was substantially one and the same. At the same time, it must be granted that on the great point of justification by faith, Jansen went widely astray from the truth; and in the subsequent controversial writings of the party, especially when arguing against the Protestants, this departure became still more strongly marked, and more deplorably manifested.^[22]

The revenge of the Jesuits did not stop at procuring the condemnation of Jansen’s book; it aimed at his living followers. Among these none was more conspicuous for virtue and influence than the Abbé de St. Cyran, who was known to have shared his counsels, and even aided in the preparation of his obnoxious work. While Jansen labored to restore the theoretical doctrines of Augustine, St. Cyran was ambitious to reduce them to practice. In pursuance of the moral system of that father, he taught the renunciation of the world, and the total absorption of the soul in the love of God. His religious fervor led him into some extravagances. He is said to have laid some claim to a species of inspiration, and to have anticipated for the Saviour some kind of temporal dominion, in which the saints alone would be entitled to the wealth and dignities of the world.^[23] But his piety appears to have been sincere, and, what is more surprising, his love to the Scriptures was such that he not only lived in the daily study of them himself, but earnestly enforced it on all his disciples. He recommended them to study the Scriptures on their knees. “No means of conversion,” he would say, “can be more apostolic than the Word of God. Every word in Scripture deserves to be weighed more attentively than gold. The Scriptures were penned by a direct ray of the Holy Spirit; the fathers only by a reflex ray emanating therefrom.” His whole character and appearance corresponded with his doctrine. “His simple mortified air, and his humble garb formed a striking contrast with the awful sanctity of his countenance, and his native lofty dignity of manner.”^[24] Possessing that force of character by which men of strong minds silently but surely govern others, his proselytes soon increased, and he became the nucleus of a new class of reformers.

St. Cyran was soon called to preside over the renowned monastery of Port-Royal. Two houses went under this name, though forming one abbey. One of these was called Port-Royal des Champs, and was situated in a gloomy forest, about six leagues from Paris; but this having been found an unhealthy situation, the nuns were removed for some time to another house in Paris, which went under the name of Port-Royal de Paris. The Abbey of Port-Royal was one of the most ancient belonging to the order of Citeaux, having been founded by Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris, in 1204. It was placed originally under the rigorous discipline of St. Benedict, but in course of time fell, like most other monasteries, into a state of the greatest relaxation. In 1602, a new abbess was appointed in the person of Maria Angelica Arnauld, sister of the famous Arnauld, then a mere child, scarcely eleven years old! The nuns, promising themselves a long period of unbounded liberty, rejoiced at this appointment. But their joy was not of long duration. The young abbess, at first, indeed, thought of nothing but amusement; but at the age of seventeen a change came over her spirit. A certain Capuchin, wearied, it is said, or more probably disgusted, with the monastic life, had been requested by the nuns, who were not aware of his character, to preach before them. The preacher, equally ignorant of his audience, and supposing them to be eminently pious ladies, delivered an affecting discourse, pitched on the loftiest key of devotion, which left an impression on the mind of Angelica never to be effaced. She set herself to reform her establishment, and carried it into effect with a determination and self-denial quite beyond her years. This “reformation,” so highly lauded by her panegyrists, consisted chiefly in restoring the austere discipline of St. Benedict, and other severities practised in the earlier ages, the details of which would be neither edifying nor agreeable. The substitution of coarse serge in place of linen as underclothing, and dropping melted wax on the bare arms, may be taken as specimens of the reformation introduced by Mère Angelique. In these mortifying exercises the abbess showed an example to all the rest. She chose as her dormitory the filthiest cell in the convent, a place infested with toads and vermin, in which she found the highest delight, declaring that she “seemed transported to the grotto of Bethlehem.” The same rigid denial of pleasure was extended to her food, her dress, her whole occupations. Clothed herself in the rudest dress she could procure, nothing gave her greater offence than to see in her nuns any approach to the fashions of the world, even in the adjustment of the coarse black serge, with the scarlet cross, which formed their humble apparel^[25]. Yet, in the midst of all this “voluntary humility,” her heart seems to have been turned mainly to the Saviour. It was Jesus Christ whom she aimed at adoring in the worship she paid to “the sacrament of the altar.” And in a book of devotion, composed by her for private use, she gave expression to sentiments too much savoring of undivided affection to Christ to escape the censure of the Church. It was dragged to light and condemned at Rome^[26]. There is reason to believe that, under the direction of M. de St. Cyran, her religious sentiments, as well as those of her community, became much more enlightened. Her firmness in resisting subscription to the formulary and condemning Jansen, in spite of the most cruel and unmanly persecution, and the piety and faith she manifested on her death-bed, when, in the midst of exquisite suffering, and in the absence of the rites which her persecutors denied her, she expired in the full assurance of salvation through the merits of the only Saviour, form one of the most interesting chapters in the martyrology of the Church.