ignorant, that he would bestow on them virtues of which they have no
conception?"

    "Yes," said the worthy monk, in a resolute tone, "we will affirm
it: and sooner than allow that any one sins without having the
consciousness that he is doing evil, and the desire of the opposite
virtue, we will maintain that the whole world, reprobates and infidels
included, have these inspirations and desires in every case of
temptation. You cannot show me, from the Scripture at least, that this
is not the truth."

    On this remark I struck in, by exclaiming: "What! father, must
we have recourse to the Scripture to demonstrate a thing so clear as
this? This is not a point of faith, nor even of reason. It is a matter
of fact: we see it- we know it- we feel it."

    But the Jansenist, keeping the monk to his own terms, addressed
him as follows: "If you are willing, father, to stand or fall by
Scripture, I am ready to meet you there; only you must promise to
yield to its authority; and, since it is written that 'God has not
revealed his judgements to the Heathen, but left them to wander in
their own ways,' you must not say that God has enlightened those
whom the Sacred Writings assure us 'he has left in darkness and in the
shadow of death.' Is it not enough to show the erroneousness of your
principle, to find that St. Paul calls himself 'the chief of sinners,'
for a sin which he committed 'ignorantly, and with zeal'? Is it not
enough, to and from the Gospel, that those who crucified Jesus
Christ had need of the pardon which he asked for them, although they
knew not the malice of their action, and would never have committed
it, according to St. Paul, if they had known it? Is it not enough that
Jesus Christ apprises us that there will be persecutors of the Church,
who, while making every effort to ruin her, will 'think that they
are doing God service'; teaching us that this sin, which in the
judgement of the apostle, is the greatest of all sins, may be
committed by persons who, so far from knowing that they were
sinning, would think that they sinned by not committing it? In fine,
it is not enough that Jesus Christ himself has taught us that there
are two kinds of sinners, the one of whom sin with 'knowledge of their
Master's will,' and the other without knowledge; and that both of them
will be 'chastised,' although, indeed, in a different manner?"

    Sorely pressed by so many testimonies from Scripture, to which
he had appealed, the worthy monk began to give way; and, leaving the
wicked to sin without inspiration, he said: "You will not deny that
good men, at least, never sin unless God give them"- "You are
flinching," said I, interrupting him; "you are flinching now, my
good father; you abandon the general principle, and, finding that it
will not hold good in regard to the wicked, you would compound the
matter, by making it apply at least to the righteous. But in this
point of view the application of it is, I conceive, so circumscribed
that it will hardly apply to anybody, and it is scarcely worth while
to dispute the point."

    My friend, however, who was so ready on the whole question, that I
am inclined to think he had studied it all that very morning, replied:
"This, father, is the last entrenchment to which those of your party
who are willing to reason at all are sure to retreat; but you are
far from being safe even here. The example of the saints is not a whit
more in your favour. Who doubts that they often fall into sins of
surprise, without being conscious of them? Do we not learn from the
saints themselves how often concupiscence lays hidden snares for them;
and how generally it happens, as St. Augustine complains of himself in
his Confessions, that, with all their discretion, they 'give to
pleasure what they mean only to give to necessity'?

    "How usual is it to see the more zealous friends of truth betrayed
by the heat of controversy into sallies of bitter passion for their
personal interests, while their consciences, at the time, bear them no
other testimony than that they are acting in this manner purely for
the interests of truth, and they do not discover their mistake till
long afterwards!

    "What, again, shall we say of those who, as we learn from examples
in ecclesiastical history, eagerly involve themselves in affairs which
are really bad, because they believe them to be really good; and yet
this does not hinder the fathers from condemning such persons as
having sinned on these occasions?

    "And were this not the case, how could the saints have their
secret faults? How could it be true that God alone knows the magnitude
and the number of our offences; that no one knows whether he is worthy
of hatred or love; and that the best of saints, though unconscious
of any culpability, ought always, as St. Paul says of himself, to
remain in 'fear and trembling'?

    "You perceive, then, father, that this knowledge of the evil and
love of the opposite virtue, which you imagine to be essential to
constitute sin, are equally disproved by the examples of the righteous
and of the wicked. In the case of the wicked, their passion for vice
sufficiently testifies that they have no desire for virtue; and in
regard to the righteous, the love which they bear to virtue plainly
shows that they are not always conscious of those sins which, as the
Scripture teaches, they are daily committing.

    "So true is it, indeed, that the righteous often sin through
ignorance, that the greatest saints rarely sin otherwise. For how
can it be supposed that souls so pure, who avoid with so much care and
zeal the least things that can be displeasing to God as soon as they
discover them, and who yet sin many times every day, could possibly
have every time before they fell into sin, 'the knowledge of their