Letter xviii. pp. 310–313.

Footnote 21:

Witsii Œconom. Fœd., lib. iii.; Turret. Theol., Elenct. xv. quest. 4; De Moor Comment, iv. 496; Mestrezat, Serm. sur Rom., viii. 274.

Footnote 22:

I refer here particularly to Arnauld’s treatise, entitled “Renversement de la Morale de Jesus Christ par les Calvinistes,” which was answered by Jurieu in his “Justification de la Morale des Reformez.” 1685, by M. Merlat, and others. Jurieu has shown at great length, and with a severity for which he had too much provocation, that Arnauld and his friends, in their violent tirades against the Reformed, neither acted in good faith, nor in consistency with the sentiments of their much admired leaders, Augustine and Jansen.

Footnote 23:

Fontaine, Mémoires, i. 200; Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. 2.

Footnote 24:

Lancelot, p. 123.

Footnote 25:

Mémoires pour servir a l’Histoire de Port-Royal, vol. i. pp. 35, 57, 142.

Footnote 26:

Ib., p. 456. The title of this work was, “The Secret Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament.”

Footnote 27:

Sacy, or Saci, was the inverted name of Isaac Le Maitre, celebrated for his translation of the Bible.

Footnote 28:

Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cent. xvii. §2.

Footnote 29:

We may refer particularly to Petitot in his Collection des Mémoires, tom. xxxiii., Paris, 1824; and to a History of the Company of Jesus by J. Cretineau-Joly, Paris, 1845. With high pretensions to impartiality, these works abound with the most glaring specimens of special pleading.

Footnote 30:

Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV, t. ii.

Footnote 31:

Mémoires de P. Royal, i. 13. Bayle insists that his father had twenty-two children. Dict., art. _Arnauld_.

Footnote 32:

Weisman, Hist. Eccl., ii. 204.

Footnote 33:

The title under which the Letters appeared when first collected into a volume was, “_Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte, a un Provincial de ses amis, et aux RR. PP. Jesuites, sur la morale et la politique de ces Peres_.”

Father Bouhours, a Jesuit, ridicules the title of the Letters, and says he is surprised they were not rather entitled “Letters from a Country Bumpkin to his Friends,” and instead of “The Provincials” called “The Bumpkins”—“_Campagnardes_.” (Remarques sur la langue Fran., p. ii. 306. Dict. Univ., art. _Provincial_.)

Footnote 34:

Daniel, Entretiens, p. 19.

Footnote 35:

Petitot, Notices, p. 121.

Footnote 36:

Benoit, Hist. de l’Edit. de Nantes, iii. 198.

Footnote 37:

Daniel, Entretiens, p. 11.

Footnote 38:

Nicole, Notes sur la xi. Lettre iii. 332.

Footnote 39:

Recueil de Port-Royal, 278, 279; Petitot, pp. 122, 123.

Footnote 40:

Histoire des Provinciales, p. 12.

Footnote 41:

Petitot, p. 124. The eighteenth letter embraces the delicate topic of papal authority, as well as the distinction between _faith_ and _fact_, in stating which we can easily conceive how severely the ingenuous mind of Pascal must have labored to find some plausible ground for vindicating his consistency as a Roman Catholic. To the Protestant reader, it must appear the most unsatisfactory of all the Letters.

Footnote 42:

Prov. Let., p. 340.

Footnote 43:

Perrault, Parallele des Anc. et Mod., Bayle, art. _Pascal_.

Footnote 44:

D’Artigny, Nouveaux Mémoires iii. p. 34.

Footnote 45:

Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., tom. ii. pp. 171, 274.

Footnote 46:

D’Alembert, Destruct. des Jesuites, p. 54.

Footnote 47:

Bordas-Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, p. xxv. (This was the prize essay before the French Academy, in June, 1842.)

Footnote 48:

Nicole, Hist. des Provinciales.

Footnote 49:

The names of these unfortunate productions alone survive; 1. “First Reply to Letters, &c., by a Father of the Company of Jesus.” 2. “Provincial Impostures of Sieur de Montalte, Secretary of Port-Royal, discovered and refuted by a Father of the Company of Jesus.” 3. “Reply to a Theologian,” &c. 4. “Reply to the Seventeenth Letter, by Francis Annat,” &c., &c.

Footnote 50:

Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litteratur, vol. i. pp. 420–423.

Footnote 51:

Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 314–323. Some papers passed between Pascal and his friends on this topic. Pascal committed these on his death-bed to his friend M. Domat, “with a request that he would burn them if the nuns of Port-Royal proved firm, and print them if they should yield.” (Ib., p. 322.) The nuns having stood firm, the probability is that they were destroyed. Had they been preserved, they might have thrown some further light on the opinions of Pascal regarding papal authority.

Footnote 52:

_Si mes Lettres sont condamnées à Rome, ce que j’y condamne, est condamné dans le ciel._ (Pensées de Blaise Pascal, tom. ii. 163. Paris, 1824.)

Footnote 53:

“How came you,” said the archbishop to M. Beurrier, “to administer the sacraments to such a person? Didn’t you know that he was a Jansenist?” (Recueil, 348.)

Footnote 54:

Recueil de Port-Royal, pp. 327–330; Petitot, p. 165.

Footnote 55:

Walchii Biblioth. Theol., ii. 295.

Footnote 56:

The title of Nicole’s translation, now rarely to be met with, is, _Ludovici Montaltii Litteræ Provinciales, de Morali et Politica Jesuitarum Disciplina. A Willelmo Wendrockio, Salisburgensi Theologo._ Several editions of this translation were printed. I have the first, published at Cologne in 1658, and the fifth, much enlarged, Cologne, 1679.

Footnote 57:

Avertissement, Les Provinciales, ed. 1767. Mad. de Joncourt, or Joncoux, took a deep interest in the falling fortunes of Port-Royal. (See some account of her in Madame Schimmelpenninck’s History of the Demolition of Port-Royal, p. 135.)

Footnote 58:

Bayle, Dict., art. _Pascal_.

Footnote 59:

Daniel, Entretiens, p. 111.

Footnote 60:

Bayle, Dict., art. _Pascal_, note K.

Footnote 61:

Abbé de Castres, Les Trois Siècles, ii. 63.

Footnote 62:

Barbier, Dict. des Ouvrages Anon. et Pseudon.

Footnote 63:

Tabaraud, _Dissertation sur la foi qui est due au Temoignage de Pascal dans ses Lettres Provinciales_, p. 12.—This work, published some years ago in France, contains a complete justification of Pascal’s picture of the Jesuits in the Provincials, accompanied with a mass of authorities. The above sentiments have been introduced into Pascal’s Thoughts. (See Craig’s translation, p. 185.)

Footnote 64:

Vie de Bossuet, t. iv. p. 19; Tabaraud, Dissert. sur la foi, &c., p. 43.

Footnote 65:

“The shocking doctrine of Jansenius and of St. Cyran, afforded at least as much room for ridicule as the pliant doctrine of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez.” (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 55.)

Footnote 66:

Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., ii. 367.

Footnote 67:

Eichhorn, Geschichte der Lit., i. 426.

Footnote 68:

Prov. Let., p. 118.

Footnote 69:

Ib., p. 142.

Footnote 70:

Tabaraud, p. 117; Bord. Demoulin, Eloge de Pascal, Append.

Footnote 71:

Schlegel, Lectures on Hist. of Lit. ii. 188.

Footnote 72:

Letters from Spain, p. 86.

Footnote 73:

Macintosh, History of England, vol. ii. 359, note.

Footnote 74:

Eichhorn, Geschichte der Litter., vol. i. pp. 423–425; Weisman, Hist. Eccl., vol. ii. 21; Jurieu, Prejugez Legitimes cont. le Papisme, p. 386; Claude, Defence of the Reformation, p. 29.

Footnote 75:

Jurieu, Justification de la Morale des Reformez, contre M. Arnauld, i. p. 30.

Footnote 76:

A disingenuous attempt has been sometimes made to identify these nefarious maxims with certain principles held by some of our reformers. There is an essential difference between the natural right claimed, we do not say with what justice, for subjects to proceed against their rulers as tyrants, and the right assumed by the pope to depose rulers as heretics. And it is equally easy to distinguish between the disallowed acts of some fanatical individuals who have taken the law into their own hands, and the atrocious deeds of such men as Chatel and Ravaillac, who could plead the authority of Mariana the Jesuit, that “to put tyrannical princes to death is not only a lawful, but a laudable, heroic, and glorious action.” (Dalton’s Jesuits; their Principles and Acts, London, 1843.) The Church of St. Ignatius at Rome is or was adorned, it seems, with pictures of all the assassinations mentioned in Scripture, which they have, most presumptuously, perverted in justification of their feats in this department. (D’Alembert, Dest. of the Jesuits, p. 101.)

Footnote 77:

Taylor, Natural Hist. of Enthusiasm, p. 256.

Footnote 78:

De l’Existence et de l’Institut des Jesuites. Par le R. P. de Ravignan, de la Compagnie de Jesus. Paris, 1845, p. 83. _Probabilism_ is the doctrine, that if any opinion in morals has been held by any _grave doctor_ of the Church, it is _probably true_, and may be safely followed in practice.

Footnote 79:

Gilly, Narrative of an Excursion to Piedmont, p. 156.

Footnote 80:

Douglas on Errors in Religion, p. 113.

THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS.