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Blaise Pascal The Provincial Letters The translation is that
of Rev. Dr. Thomas M’Crie D.D., Professor of Divinity, Edinburgh and was published
in New York by Robert Carter & Brothers, 1853. [Return
to book contents page] Letter XVI
TO THE
REVEREND FATHERS, THE JESUITS 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, 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 cures 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.” 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 labours. I know the excellence of their piety and their learning.
For, though I have never had the honour 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 honour 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
ignominia, et quaerent nomen tuum, Domine—Fill their faces with shame, that
they may seek thy name, O Lord.” 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 abbe 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 down-right Calvinist.” 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 allowed the liberty of
perverting the most canonical and sacred expressions by the wicked subtleties
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 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; 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”; that “the Holy of Holies is present in the
sanctuary, and that there he ought to be adored”; 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”; 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”; 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”; that “the divine virtue is present
to produce the effect which the words of consecration signify”; that “Jesus
Christ, while be is lowered 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”; 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”; that “the substance of the bread is
changed, the immutable accidents remaining the same”; that “Jesus Christ
reposes in the eucharist with the same glory that he has in heaven”; 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”; that “we receive the body of Jesus Christ
upon the tongue, which is sanctified by its divine touch”; “that it enters
into the mouth of the priest”; 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.” In fine, that “the
eucharist is at the same time sacrament and sacrifice”; 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.” 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 to
speak as M. Arnauld does in that letter, on 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 (p. 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.”
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 abbe 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.” 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 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”; 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 honour 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.” 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 than
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. Conscious, however, of the
wretched deficiency of your proofs, you have had recourse to a new artifice,
which is nothing less than to falsify the Council of Trent, in order to
convict M. Arnauld of nonconformity with it; so vast is your store of methods
for making people heretics. This feat has been achieved by Father Meynier, in
fifty different places of his book, and about eight or ten times in the space
of a single page (the 54th), wherein he insists that to speak like a true
Catholic it is not enough to say, “I believe that Jesus Christ is really
present in the eucharist,” but we must say, “I believe, with the council,
that he is present by a true local presence, or locally.” And, in proof of
this, he cites the council, session xiii, canon 3d, canon 4th, and canon 6th.
Who would not suppose, upon seeing the term local presence quoted from three
canons of a universal council, that the phrase was actually to be found in
them? This might have served your turn very well, before the appearance of my
Fifteenth Letter; but, as matters now stand, fathers, the trick has become
too stale for us. We go our way and consult the council, and discover only
that you are falsifiers. Such terms as local presence, locally, and locality,
never existed in the passages to which you refer; and let me tell you further,
they are not to be found in any other canon of that council, nor in any other
previous council, not in any father of the Church. Allow me, then, to ask
you, fathers, if you mean to cast the suspicion of Calvinism upon all that
have not made use of that peculiar phrase? If this be the case, the Council
of Trent must be suspected of heresy, and all the holy fathers without
exception. Have you no other way of making M. Arnauld heretical, without
abusing so many other people who never did you any harm, and, among the rest,
St. Thomas, who is one of the greatest champions of the eucharist, and who,
so far from employing that term, has expressly rejected it—“Nullo modo corpus
Christi est in hoc sacramento localiter.—By no means is the body of Christ in
this sacrament locally”? Who are you, then, fathers, to pretend, on your
authority, to impose new terms, and ordain them to be used by all for rightly
expressing their faith; as if the profession of the faith, drawn up by the
popes according to the plan of the council, in which this term has no place,
were defective, and left an ambiguity in the creed of the faithful which you
had the sole merit of discovering? Such a piece of arrogance, to prescribe
these terms, even to learned doctors! such a piece of forgery, to attribute
them to general councils! and such ignorance, not to know the objections
which the most enlightened saints have made to their reception! “Be ashamed
of the error of your ignorance,” as the Scripture says of ignorant impostors
like you, “De mendacio ineruditionis tuae confundere.” Give up all further attempts,
then, to act the masters; you have neither character nor capacity for the
part. If, however, you would bring forward your propositions with a little
more modesty, they might obtain a hearing. For, although this phrase, local
presence, has been rejected, as you have seen, by St. Thomas, on the ground
that the body of Jesus Christ is not in the eucharist, in the ordinary
extension of bodies in their places, the expression has, nevertheless, been
adopted by some modern controversial writers, who understand it simply to
mean that the body of Jesus Christ is truly under the species, which being in
a particular place, the body of Jesus Christ is there also. And in this sense
M. Arnauld will make no scruple to admit the term, as M. de St. Cyran and he
have repeatedly declared that Jesus Christ in the eucharist is truly in a
particular place, and miraculously in many places at the same time. Thus all
your subtleties fall to the ground; and you have failed to give the slightest
semblance of plausibility to an accusation which ought not to have been
allowed to show its face without being supported by the most unanswerable
proofs. But what avails it, fathers,
to oppose their innocence to your calumnies? You impute these errors to them,
not in the belief that they maintain heresy, but from the idea that they have
done you injury. That is enough, according to your theology, to warrant you
to calumniate them without criminality; and you can, without either penance
or confession, say mass, at the very time that you charge priests, who say it
every day, with holding it to be pure idolatry; which, were it true, would
amount to sacrilege no less revolting than that of your own Father Jarrige,
whom you yourselves ordered to be hanged in effigy, for having said mass “at
the time he was in agreement with Geneva.” What surprises me, therefore,
is not the little scrupulosity with which you load them with crimes of the
foulest and falsest description, but the little prudence you display, by
fixing on them charges so destitute of plausibility. You dispose of sins, it
is true, at your pleasure; but do you mean to dispose of men’s beliefs too?
Verily, fathers, if the suspicion of Calvinism must needs fall either on them
or on you, you would stand, I fear, on very ticklish ground. Their language
is as Catholic as yours; but their conduct confirms their faith, and your
conduct belies it. For if you believe, as well as they do, that the bread is
really changed into the body of Jesus Christ, why do you not require, as they
do, from those whom you advise to approach the altar, that the heart of stone
and ice should be sincerely changed into a heart of flesh and of love? If you
believe that Jesus Christ is in that sacrament in a state of death, teaching
those that approach it to die to the world, to sin, and to themselves, why do
you suffer those to profane it in whose breasts evil passions continue to
reign in all their life and vigour? And how do you come to judge those worthy
to eat the bread of heaven, who are not worthy to eat that of earth? Precious votaries, truly,
whose zeal is expended in persecuting those who honour this sacred mystery by
so many holy communions, and in flattering those who dishonour it by so many
sacrilegious desecrations! How comely is it, in these champions of a
sacrifice so pure and so venerable, to collect around the table of Jesus
Christ a crowd of hardened profligates, reeking from their debauchcries; and
to plant in the midst of them a priest, whom his own confessor has hurried
from his obscenities to the altar; there, in the place of Jesus Christ, to
offer up that most holy victim to the God of holiness, and convey it, with
his polluted hands, into mouths as thoroughly polluted as his own! How well does
it become those who pursue this course “in all parts of the world,” in
conformity with maxims sanctioned by their own general to impute to the
author of Frequent Communion, and to the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament, the
crime of not believing in that sacrament! Even this, however, does not
satisfy them. Nothing less will satiate their rage than to accuse their
opponents of having renounced Jesus Christ and their baptism. This is no
air-built fable, like those of your invention; it is a fact, and denotes a
delirious frenzy which marks the fatal consummation of your calumnies. Such a
notorious falsehood as this would not have been in hands worthy to support
it, had it remained in those of your good friend Filleau, through whom you
ushered it into the world: your Society has openly adopted it; and your
Father Meynier maintained it the other day to be “a certain truth” that
Port-Royal has, for the space of thirty-five years, been forming a secret
plot, of which M. de St. Cyran and M. d’Ypres have been the ringleaders, “to
ruin the mystery of the incarnation—to make the Gospel pass for an apocryphal
fable—to exterminate the Christian religion, and to erect Deism upon the
ruins of Christianity.” Is this enough, fathers? Will you be satisfied if all
this be believed of the objects of your hate? Would your animosity be glutted
at length, if you could but succeed in making them odious, not only to all
within the Church, by the charge of “consenting with Geneva, of which you
accuse them, but even to all who believe in Jesus Christ, though beyond the
pale of the Church, by the imputation of Deism? But whom do you expect to
convince, upon your simple asseveration, without the slightest shadow of
proof, and in the face of every imaginable contradiction, that priests who preach
nothing but the grace of Jesus Christ, the purity of the Gospel, and the
obligations of baptism, have renounced at once their baptism, the Gospel, and
Jesus Christ? Who will believe it, fathers? Wretched as you are, do you
believe it yourselves? What a sad predicament is yours, when you must either
prove that they do not believe in Jesus Christ, or must pass for the most
abandoned calumniators. Prove it, then, fathers. Name that “worthy clergyman”
who, you say, attended that assembly at Bourg-Fontaine in 1621, and
discovered to Brother Filleau the design there concerted of overturning the
Christian religion. Name those six persons whom you allege to have formed
that conspiracy. Name the individual who is designated by the letters A. A.,
who you say “was not Antony Arnauld” (because he convinced you that he was at
that time only nine years of age), “but another person, who you say is still
in life, but too good a friend of M. Arnauld not to be known to him.” You
know him, then, fathers; and consequently, if you are not destitute of
religion yourselves, you are bound to delate that impious wretch to the king
and parliament, that he may be punished according to his deserts. You must
speak out, fathers; you must name the person, or submit to the disgrace of being
henceforth regarded in no other light than as common liars, unworthy of being
ever credited again. Good Father Valerien has taught us that this is the way
in which such characters should be “put to the rack” and brought to their
senses. Your silence upon the present challenge will furnish a full and
satisfactory confirmation of this diabolical calumny. Your blindest admirers
will be constrained to admit that it will be “the result, not of your
goodness, but your impotency”; and to wonder how you could be so wicked as to
extend your hatred even to the nuns of Port-Royal, and to say, as you do in
page 14, that The Secret Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament, composed by one of
their number, was the first fruit of that conspiracy against Jesus Christ;
or, as in page 95, that “they have imbibed all the detestable principles of
that work”; which is, according to your account, a lesson in Deism.” Your
falsehoods regarding that book have already been triumphantly refuted, in the
defence of the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris against Father
Brisacier. That publication you are incapable of answering; and yet you do
not scruple to abuse it in a more shameful manner than ever, for the purpose
of charging women, whose piety is universally known, with the vilest blasphemy. Cruel, cowardly persecutors!
Must, then, the most retired cloisters afford no retreat from your calumnies?
While these consecrated virgins are employed, night and day, according to
their institution, in adoring Jesus Christ in the holy sacrament, you cease
not, night nor day, to publish abroad that they do not believe that he is
either in the eucharist or even at the right hand of his Father; and you are
publicly excommunicating them from the Church, at the very time when they are
in secret praying for the whole Church, and for you! You blacken with your
slanders those who have neither ears to hear nor mouths to answer you! But
Jesus Christ, in whom they are now hidden, not to appear till one day
together with him, hears you, and answers for them. At the moment I am now
writing, that holy and terrible voice is heard which confounds nature and
consoles the Church. And I fear, fathers, that those who now harden their
hearts, and refuse with obstinacy to hear him, while he speaks in the
character of God, will one day be compelled to hear him with terror, when he
speaks to them in the character of a judge. What account, indeed, fathers,
will you be able to render to him of the many calumnies you have uttered,
seeing that he will examine them, in that day, not according to the fantasies
of Fathers Dicastille, Gans, and Pennalossa, who justify them, but according
to the eternal laws of truth, and the sacred ordinances of his own Church,
which, so far from attempting to vindicate that crime, abhors it to such a
degree that she visits it with the same penalty as wilfull murder? By the
first and second councils of Arles she has decided that the communion shall
be denied to slanderers as well as murderers, till the approach of death. The
Council of Lateran has judged those unworthy of admission into the
ecclesiastical state who have been convicted of the crime, even though they
may have reformed. The popes have even threatened to deprive of the communion
at death those who have calumniated bishops, priests, or deacons. And the
authors of a defamatory libel, who fail to prove what they have advanced, are
condemned by Pope Adrian to be whipped,—yes, reverend fathers, flagellentur
is the word. So strong has been the repugnance of the Church at all times to
the errors of your Society—a Society so thoroughly depraved as to invent
excuses for the grossest of crimes, such as calumny, chiefly that it may
enjoy the greater freedom in perpetrating them itself. There can be no doubt,
fathers, that you would be capable of producing abundance of mischief in this
way, had God not permitted you to furnish with your own hands the means of
preventing the evil, and of rendering your slanders perfectly innocuous; for,
to deprive you of all credibility, it was quite enough to publish the strange
maxim that it is no crime to calumniate. Calumny is nothing, if not
associated with a high reputation for honesty. The defamer can make no
impression, unless he has the character of one that abhors defamation as a
crime of which he is incapable. And thus, fathers, you are betrayed by your
own principle. You establish the doctrine to secure yourselves a safe
conscience, that you might slander without risk of damnation, and be ranked
with those “pious and holy calumniators” of whom St. Athanasius speaks. To
save yourselves from hell, you have embraced a maxim which promises you this
security on the faith of your doctors; but this same maxim, while it
guarantees you, according to their idea, against the evils you dread in the
future world, deprives you of all the advantage you may have expected to reap
from it in the present; so that, in attempting to escape the guilt, you have
lost the benefit of calumny. Such is the self-contrariety of evil, and so
completely does it confound and destroy itself by its own intrinsic
malignity. You might have slandered,
therefore, much more advantageously for yourselves, had you professed to
hold, with St. Paul, that evil speakers are not worthy to see God; for in
this case, though you would indeed have been condemning yourselves, your
slanders would at least have stood a better chance of being believed. But, by
maintaining, as you have done, that calumny against your enemies is no crime,
your slanders will be discredited, and you yourselves damned into the
bargain; for two things are certain, fathers: first, That it will never be in
the power of your grave doctors to annihilate the justice of God; and,
secondly, That you could not give more certain evidence that you are not of
the Truth than by your resorting to falsehood. If the Truth were on your
side, she would fight for you—she would conquer for you; and whatever enemies
you might have to encounter, “the Truth would set you free” from them,
according to her promise. But you have had recourse to falsehood, for no
other design than to support the errors with which you flatter the sinful
children of this world, and to bolster up the calumnies with which you
persecute every man of piety who sets his face against these delusions. The
truth being diametrically opposed to your ends, it behooved you, to use the
language of the prophet, “to put your confidence in lies.” You have said:
“The scourges which afflict mankind shall not come nigh unto us; for we have
made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.” But what
says the prophet in reply to such? “Forasmuch,” says he, “as ye have put your
trust in calumny and tumult—sperastis in calumnia et in tumultu—this iniquity
and your ruin shall be like that of a high wall whose breaking cometh
suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the breaking of the potter’s
vessel that is shivered in pieces”—with such violence that “there shall not
be found in the bursting of it a shred to take fire from the hearth, or to
take water withal out of the pit.” “Because,” as another prophet says, “ye
have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and ye
have flattered and strengthened the malice of the wicked; I will therefore
deliver my people out of your hands, and ye shall know that I am their Lord
and yours.” Yes, fathers, it is to be
hoped that if you do not repent, God will deliver out of your hands those
whom you have so long deluded, either by flattering them in their evil
courses with your licentious maxims, or by poisoning their minds with your
slanders. He will convince the former that the false rules of your casuists
will not screen them from His indignation; and He will impress on the minds
of the latter the just dread of losing their souls by listening and yielding
credit to your slanders, as you lose yours by hatching these slanders and
disseminating them through the world. Let no man be deceived; God is not
mocked; none may violate with impunity the commandment which He has given us
in the Gospel, not to condemn our neighbour without being well assured of his
guilt. And, consequently, what profession soever of piety those may make who
lend a willing ear to your lying devices, and under what pretence soever of
devotion they may entertain them, they have reason to apprehend exclusion
from the kingdom of God, solely for having imputed crimes of such a dark
complexion as heresy and schism to Catholic priests and holy nuns, upon no
better evidence than such vile fabrications as yours. “The devil,” says M. de
Geneve, “is on the tongue of him that slanders, and in the ear of him that
listens to the slanderer.” “And evil speaking,” says St. Bernard, “is a
poison that extinguishes charity in both of the parties; so that a single
calumny may prove mortal to an infinite numbers of souls, killing not only
those who publish it, but all those besides by whom it is not repudiated.” Reverend fathers, my letters
were not wont either to be so prolix, or to follow so closely on one another.
Want of time must plead my excuse for both of these faults. The present
letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it
shorter. You know the reason of this haste better than I do. You have been
unlucky in your answers. You have done well, therefore, to change your plan;
but I am afraid that you will get no credit for it, and that people will say
it was done for fear of the Benedictines. I have just
come to learn that the person who was generally reported to be the author of
your Apologies, disclaims them, and is annoyed at their having been ascribed
to him. He has good reason, and I was wrong to have suspected him of any such
thing; for, in spite of the assurances which I received, I ought to have
considered that he was a man of too much good sense to believe your
accusations, and of too much honour to publish them if he did not believe
them. There are few people in the world capable of your extravagances; they
are peculiar to yourselves, and mark your character too plainly to admit of
any excuse for having failed to recognize your hand in their concoction. I
was led away by the common report; but this apology, which would be too good
for you, is not sufficient for me, who profess to advance nothing without
certain proof. In no other instance have I been guilty of departing from this
rule. I am sorry for what I said. I retract it; and I only wish that you may
profit by my example. |
Blaise Pascal |
