extraordinary opinion that men might be excused from loving God: Strange theology of nowadays! They dare to remove the anathema St Paul pronounces against those who do not love the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . Thus, those who throughout their life have never loved God are declared worthy to enjoy Him throughout eternity. Here is the mystery of iniquity accomplished! Open your eyes, my Father, and if you have not been touched by the other aberrations of your casuists, let these last examples hold you back by their extravagance. "I desire for you and for all your Fathers with all my heart, and pray God that He may vouchsafe to them the knowledge of the false lights which have led them to such precipices, and that He will fill with His Love those who say men may dispense with love." But now Pascal changes his tactics. He has been ironical; he has, as it were, enjoyed the process of drawing out the Jesuit. From the eleventh to the eighteenth letter he now writes to the Society itself. His supposed friend in the country has disappeared. It is in the tones of stern denunciation that he now speaks. He begins by amply justifying himself for the irony, for the scorn which he has poured upon the teaching of the Jesuits; he continues in the same lofty and terrible manner; it would seem that after the peroration of the tenth letter quoted above, he has really begun the terrible duel à outrance, and all that had come before had been but preliminary fencing. He pours withering scorn on the calumnies and scandals of which the Society has been the author. "How I pity you, my Fathers, for having had recourse to such weapons. The insults you heap upon me will not shed any light on our differences, and the threats you utter in so many different ways will not hinder me from defending myself. You believe you have strength and security. I believe I have truth and innocence. It is a strange and long warfare in which violence tries to oppress truth. All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, they only establish it LETTERS TO THE SOCIETY OF JESUS 247 more; all the illuminations of truth can do nothing to check violence, and only serve to enrage it to a still greater extent. When force meets force, the stronger destroys the weaker. When arguments are opposed to arguments, the true and convincing arguments scatter and put away arguments which are only vanity and falsehood. But violence and truth have nothing to do with each other. But let no one assert that nevertheless these things are equal; for there is this extreme difference between them, that violence has only a limited career, limited by the command of God, who directs its efforts to glorify that truth which it attacks: whereas truth endures eternally and finally triumphs over its enemies, because just as God himself is eternal and powerful, so is truth." This is indeed to pass from the defender to the accuser. Even after the lapse of two hundred and fifty years one seems to feel the living, quivering, lofty indignation of the righteous soul vexed by iniquity. It is incredible that the maxims concerning homicide and various sins which Pascal so fully denounces can ever have been defended by a society even nominally moral, much less Christian. There is a fine passage in the thirteenth letter: "At the last day all your authors will arise one against another and mutually condemn one another for their frightful extravagances against the Law of Jesus Christ." Pascal in the fourteenth letter seems to feel the same difficulty which his readers feel in understanding the point of view of the Jesuits; the whole position is so ridiculous : "Do see now, my Fathers, in which of these two Kingdoms you are. You have heard the language of the City of Peace and the mystical Jerusalem, and you have heard the language of the City of Trouble, which Scripture calls the spiritual Sodom: which of these two languages do you understand? which do you speak?" The fifteenth continues the same attack in even more forcible, more scathing words; and the Jesuits felt them and writhed. One of the most tremendous passages is the one in which he accuses them of the lies and forgeries which they published and actively spread to the disadvantage of the Jansenists. In the sixteenth letter Pascal sets himself to refute the charges of heresy brought against the Port Royalists. "The Jesuits have had the insolence," he says, "to accuse the whole of that Society of heresy concerning the Sacrament of the Altar." It was not very difficult to refute this, and Pascal does so at great length. One eloquent burst of denunciation, which we quote, will never be forgotten :— "Cruel, cowardly persecutors, must the most retired Cloisters be no refuge against your slanders? While these holy virgins day and night adore Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament according to their rule, you cease not day nor night to assert that they do not believe either that He is in the Eucharist, or that He is even at the Right Hand of His Father. You would cut them off publicly from the Church while they pray in secret for you and the whole Church. You slander those who have no ears to hear you, no mouth to answer you. But-Jesus Christ, in whom they are hidden, to appear only with Him one day-He can be heard to-day, and His awful and holy voice which terrifies Nature, which consoles the Church. And those who harden their hearts and obstinately refuse to hear Him when He speaks to them as their God, will be compelled to hear him with terror when He speaks to them as their Judge." Sainte Beuve asks us to realise what it meant to be accused of not believing in the Incarnation and in the Eucharist; it is not difficult for some of us in the English Church to realise the position, and we can enter into Pascal's feelings and make them our own. The seventeenth and eighteenth letters are answers to the Jesuit, Père Annat, and deal with that perplexing and perhaps to us wearisome question of Droit and Fait. Were the condemned propositions contained in the Augustinus? This was a question on which Popes PASCAL'S VIEW 249 might be mistaken-a question of fact, and sufficient examples are given. Pascal maintained that they were not literally contained in Jansenius; perhaps they were not, but something extremely like them was contained therein. In fact, there always have been and always will be the two tendencies in the human mind. Truth lies in a mean-for us relatively; for no human intelligence can grasp the mysteries of the infinite, and Dante's words might profitably have been quoted : "State contenti, umana gente, al quia Chè si potuto aveste veder tutto Pascal's keen and scientific intelligence lifted him above the confusion of thought which prevented less gifted men from seeing that in God all seeming contradictions meet. Man's free will and God's grace. As Sainte Beuve remarks, Pascal is far removed from Arnauld's dialectics and controversial temper. Pascal never felt any kind of repentance for the Provincial Letters. Why, indeed, should he? There is a righteous indignation and there is a holy anger. Rightly did he make that great appeal in the Pensées: “Ad Tuum, Domine Jesu, tribunal appello." 2 We must now leave Pascal for a short time and trace the fortunes of Port Royal; around that devoted Community the clouds are gathering. But Angélique's motto is "Dominus in Cælo." Purgatoria, canto iii. 37. 2 See Appendix, Notes V. and Va. CHAPTER XII THE LAST DAYS OF MÈRE ANGÉLIQUE (1656-1661) THE year 1656 opened gloomily enough for Port Royal. There were rumours that the "Solitaires" were to be driven from their retreat, and the nuns were to be deprived alike of confessors and pupils. M. d'Andilly, who had been always respected and liked by Cardinal Mazarin, wrote a letter to him on the 13th of February, but Port Royal was not in favour in high places. Mazarin was not a little suspicious of what he thought was, so to speak, an ecclesiastical Fronde; he had experienced sufficient discomfort from the secular Fronde, and was by no means averse to the policy of persecution. And Anne of Austria disliked the Port Royalists heartily. Mme. de Motteville, from the point of view of an untheological mind, sums up the controversy admirably in the first volume of her Memoirs : "Every time that men speak of God's Hidden Mysteries, I am astonished by their boldness, and I am delighted that I am not compelled to know anything more than my Pater, my Credo, and the Commandments of God. About the point of which I speak, I know that it is enough for me to believe that we have nothing which we have not received, that I can do no good thing without God's grace, and that He has given me my free will.' Port Royal and its doings were much discussed at Court. On the 21st of February it became known that the "Solitaires" would be dispersed and the children |