LETTER IV.

ON ACTUAL GRACE AND SINS OF IGNORANCE.

PARIS, February 25, 1656. SIR,-Nothing can equal the Jesuits. I have seen Jacobins, doctors, and all sorts of people, in my day, but such an interview as I have just had with these fathers was wanting to complete my knowledge of mankind. Other men are merely copies of them. As things are always best at the fountainhead, I paid a visit to one of the ablest among them, in company with my trusty Jansenist-the same who accompanied me to the Dominicans. Being particularly anxious to learn something of a dispute which they have with the Jansenists about what they call actual grace, I said to the worthy father, that I should be much obliged to him if he would instruct me on this point-that I did not even know what the term meant, and would thank him to explain it. "With all my heart," the Jesuit replied, "for I dearly love your inquisitive people. Actual grace, according to our definition, 'is an inspiration of God, whereby he makes us know his will, and excites within us a desire to perform it."" "And where," said I, "lies your difference with the Jansenists on this subject?"

"The difference lies here," he replied; 66 we hold that God bestows actual grace on all men in every case of temptation; for we maintain, that unless a person have, whenever tempted, actual grace to keep him from sinning, his sin, whatever it may be, can never be imputed to him. The Jansenists, on the other hand, affirm that sins, though committed without actual grace, are nevertheless imputed; but they are a pack of fools." I got a glimpse of his meaning; but, to obtain from him a fuller explanation, I observed: "My dear father,

it is that phrase actual grace that puzzles me; I am quite a stranger to it, and if you would have the goodness to tell me the same thing over again, without employing that term, you would infinitely oblige me."

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Very good," returned the father; "that is to say, you wish me to substitute the definition in place of the thing itself; that can make no alteration on the sense; I have no objections. We maintain it, then, as an undeniable principle, that an action cannot be imputed as a sin, unless God bestow on us, before committing it, the knowledge of the evil that is in the action, and an inspiration inciting us to avoid it. Do you understand it now?"

Astonished at such a declaration, according to which no sins of surprise, nor any of those committed in entire forgetfulness of God, could be imputed, I turned round to my friend the Jansenist, and easily discovered from his looks that he was of a different way of thinking. But as he did not utter a word, I said to the monk: "I would fain wish, my dear father, to think that what you have now said is true, and that you have good proofs for it."

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Proofs, say you!" he instantly exclaimed: "I shall furnish you with these very soon, and the very best sort too; let me alone for that."

So saying, he went in search of his books; and I took this opportunity of asking my friend if there was any other person who talked in this manner? "Is this so strange to you ?" he replied. "Depend upon it, neither the fathers, nor the popes, nor councils, nor Scripture, nor any book of devotion, employ such language; but if you wish casuists and modern schoolmen, he will bring you a goodly number of them on his side."

"O! but I care not a straw for these authors, if they are contrary to tradition," I said.

"You are right,” he replied.

As he spoke the good father entered the room, laden with books; and presenting to me the first that came to hand, "Read that," he said; it is 'The Summary of Sins' by Father Bauny the fifth edition too, you see, which shows that it is a good book."

*

* Etienne Bauni, or Stephen Bauny, was a French Jesuit. His "Summary," which Pascal has immortalized by his frequent references to it, was published in 1633. It is a large volume, replete with the most detestable doctrines. In 1642, the General Assembly of the French clergy censured his books on moral theology, as containing propositions "leading to licentiousness and the corruption of good manners, violating natural equity, and

"It is a pity, however," whispered the Jansenist in my ear, "that this same book has been condemned at Rome, and by the bishops of France."

"Look at page 906," said the father. I did so, and read as follows: "In order to sin and become culpable in the sight of God, it is necessary to know that the thing we wish to do is not good, or at least to doubt that it is-to fear or to judge that God takes no pleasure in the action which we contemplate, but forbids it; and in spite of this, to commit the deed, leap over the fence, and transgress.

"This is a good commencement," I remarked.

"And yet," said he, "only see how far envy will carry some people. It was on that very passage that M. Hallier, before he became one of our friends, quizzed Father Bauny, by applying to him these words: Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi-Behold the man that taketh away the sins of the world!""

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Certainly," said I, "according to Father Bauny, we may be said to have an entirely new kind of redemption!"

"Would you have a more authentic witness on the point?" added he. "Here is the book of Father Annat.* It is the last that he wrote against M. Arnauld. Turn up to page 34, where there is a dog's ear, and read the lines which I have marked with pencil-they ought to be written in letters of gold."

I then read these words: "He that has no thought of God, nor of his sins, nor any apprehension (that is, as he explained it, any knowledge) of his obligation to exercise the acts of love to God, or contrition, has no actual grace for exercising those acts; but it is equally true that he is

excusing blasphemy, usury, simony, and other heinous sins, as trivial matters." (Nicole, i. 164.) And yet this abominable work was formally defended in the "Apology for the Casuists," written in 1657, by Father Pirot, and acknowledged by the Jesuits as having been written under their direc tion! (Nicole, Hist. des Provinciales, p. 30.)

* Francis Annat was born in the year 1590. He was made rector of the College of Toulouse, and appointed by the Jesuits their French provincial; and, while in that situation, was chosen by Louis XIV. as his confessor. His friends have highly extolled his virtues as a man; and the reader may judge of the value of these eulogiums from the fact, that he retained his post as the favourite confessor of that licentious monarch, without interruption, till deafness prevented him from listening any longer to the confessions of his royal penitent. (Bayle, art. Annat.) They have also extolled his answer to the Provincial Letters, in his "Bonne Foy des Jansenistes," in which he professed to expose the falsity of the quotations made from the Casuists, with what success appears from the notes of Nicole, who has completely vindicated Pascal from the unfounded charges which the Jesuits have reiterated on this point. (Notes Preliminaires, vol. i. p 256, &c.; Etretiens de Cleandre et Ludoxe, p. 79.)

guilty of no sin in omitting them, and that, if he is damned, it will not be as a punishment for that omission." And a few lines below, he adds: "The same thing may be said of a culpable commission."

"You see," said the monk, "how he speaks of sins of omission and of commission. Nothing escapes him. What say you to that?

"Say!" I exclaimed; "I am delighted! What a charming train of consequences do I discover flowing from this doctrine! I can see the whole results already; and such mysteries present themselves before me! Why, I see more people, beyond all comparison, justified by this ignorance and forgetfulness of God, than by grace and the sacraments!* But, my dear father, are you not inspiring me with a delusive joy? Are you sure there is nothing here like that sufficiency which suffices not? I am terribly afraid of the Distinguo :I was taken in with that once aleady. Are you quite in earnest?"

"How now!" cried the monk, beginning to get angry; "this is no matter for jesting. I assure you there is no such thing as equivocation here."

"I am not making a jest of it," said I; "but that is what I really dread, from pure anxiety to find it true."

"Well then," he said, "to assure yourself still more of it, here are the writings of M. le Moine,+ who taught the doctrine in a full meeting of the Sorbonne. He learned it from us to be sure; but he has the merit of having cleared it up most admirably. Only observe how particular he is! He shows that, in order to make out an action to be a sin, all these things must have passed through the mind. Read, and weigh every word."

I then read what I now give you in a translation from the original Latin: "First, On the one hand, God sheds abroad on the soul some measure of love, which gives it a bias toward the thing commanded; and on the other, a re

* When Madame du Valois, a lady of birth and high accomplishments, one of the nuns of Port-Royal, among other trials by which she was harassed and tormented for not signing the formulary condemning Jansen, was threatened with being deprived of the benefit of the sacraments at the hour of death, she replied: "If at the awful hour of death I should be deprived of those assistances which the Church grants to all her children, then God himself will, by his grace, immediately and abundantly supply their instrumentality. I know, indeed, that it is most painful to approach the awful hour of death without an outward participation in the sacraments; but it is better dying, to enter into heaven, though without the sacraments, for the cause of truth, than, receiving the sacraments, to be cited to irrevocable judgment for committing perjury." (Narrative of Dem. of Port-Royal, p. 176.)

† See before, page 75.

bellious concupiscence solicits it in the opposite direction. Second, God inspires the soul with a knowledge of its own weakness. Third, God reveals the knowledge of the physician who can heal it. Fourth, God inspires it with a desire to be healed. Fifth, God inspires a desire to pray and solicit his assistance." "And unless all these things occur and pass through the soul," added the monk, "the action is not properly a sin, and cannot be imputed, as M. le Moine shows in the same place and in what follows. Would you wish to have other authorities for this? Here they are."

"All modern ones, however," whispered my Jansenist friend. "So I perceive," said I to him, aside; and then, turning to the monk: "O, my dear Sir," cried I, "what a blessing this will be to some persons of my acquaintance! I must positively introduce them to you. You have never, perhaps, in all your life, met with people who had fewer sins to account for! In the first place, they never think of God at all; their vices have got the better of their reason; they have never known either their weakness or the physician who can cure it; they have never thought of desiring the health of their soul,' and still less of praying to God to bestow it;' so that, according to M. le Moine, they are still in the state of baptismal innocence. They have never had a thought of loving God, or of being contrite for their sins;' so that, according to Father Annat, they have never committed sin through the want of charity and penitence. Their life is spent in a perpetual round of all sorts of pleasures, in the course of which they have not been interrupted by the slightest remorse. These excesses had led me to imagine that their perdition was inevitable; but you, father, inform me that these same excesses secure their salvation. Blessings on you, my good father, for this new way of justifying people! Others prescribe painful austerities for healing the soul; but you show that souls which may be thought desperately diseased are in quite good health. What an excellent device for being happy both in this world and in the next! I had always supposed that the less a man thought of God, the more he sinned; but, from what I see now, if one could only succeed in bringing himself not to think upon God at all, every thing would be pure with him in all time coming. Away with your half-and-half sinners, who retain some sneaking affection for virtue! They will be damned every soul of them. But commend me to your arrant sinners-hardened, unalloyed, out-and-out, thorough-bred sinners. Hell is no