concluded, would be a bad preamble for securing it a favourable
reception. They know very well that unprejudiced persons place fully
as much weight on the judgement of seventy doctors, who had nothing to
gain by defending M. Arnauld, as on that of a hundred others who had
nothing to lose by condemning him. But, upon the whole, they
considered that it would be of vast importance to have a censure,
although it should be the act of a party only in the Sorbonne, and not
of the whole body; although it should be carried with little or no
freedom of debate and obtained by a great many small manoeuvres not
exactly according to order; although it should give no explanation
of the matter in dispute; although it should not point out in what
this heresy consists, and should say as little as possible about it,
for fear of committing a mistake. This very silence is a mystery in
the eyes of the simple; and the censure will reap this singular
advantage from it, that they may defy the most critical and subtle
theologians to find in it a single weak argument.

    "Keep yourself easy, then, and do not be afraid of being set
down as a heretic, though you should make use of the condemned
proposition. It is bad, I assure you, only as occurring in the
second letter of M. Arnauld. If you will not believe this statement on
my word, I refer you to M. le Moine, the most zealous of the
examiners, who, in the course of conversation with a doctor of my
acquaintance this very morning, on being asked by him where lay the
point of difference in dispute, and if one would no longer be
allowed to say what the fathers had said before him, made the
following exquisite reply: 'This proposition would be orthodox in
the mouth of any other- it is only as coming from M. Arnauld that
the Sorbonne has condemned it!' You must now be prepared to admire the
machinery of Molinism, which can produce such prodigious
overturnings in the Church- that what is Catholic in the fathers
becomes heretical in M. Arnauld- that what is heretical in the
Semi-Pelagians becomes orthodox in the writings of the Jesuits; the
ancient doctrine of St. Augustine becomes an intolerable innovation,
and new inventions, daily fabricated before our eyes, pass for the
ancient faith of the Church." So saying, he took his leave of me.

    This information has satisfied my purpose. I gather from it that
this same heresy is one of an entirely new species. It is not the
sentiments of M. Arnauld that are heretical; it is only his person.
This is a personal heresy. He is not a heretic for anything he has
said or written, but simply because he is M. Arnauld. This is all they
have to say against him. Do what he may, unless he cease to be, he
will never be a good Catholic. The grace of St. Augustine will never
be the true grace, so long as he continues to defend it. It would
become so at once, were he to take it into his head to impugn it. That
would be a sure stroke, and almost the only plan for establishing
the truth and demolishing Molinism; such is the fatality attending all
the opinions which he embraces.

    Let us leave them, then, to settle their own differences. These
are the disputes of theologians, not of theology. We, who are no
doctors, have nothing to do with their quarrels. Tell our friends
the news of the censure, and love me while I am, &c.

                        LETTER IV

                                             Paris, February 25, 1656

  SIR,

    Nothing can come up to the Jesuits. I have seen Jacobins, doctors,
and all sorts of people in my day, but such an interview as I have
just had was wanting to complete my knowledge of mankind. Other men
are merely copies of them. As things are always found 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 would 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 inquisitive people. Actual
grace, according to our definition, 'is an inspiration of God, whereby
He makes us to 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; "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."

    "Very good," returned the father; "that is to say, you want me
to substitute the definition in place of the thing defined; that makes
no alteration of 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 me now?"