Blaise Pascal: The Provincial Letters. Thomas M’Crie translation. Veritatis Splendor Publications, 2012.
Pierre Manent: Pascal’s Defense of the Christian Proposition. Paul Seaton translation. Introduction by Daniel J. Mahoney. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2025.
In the sixteenth century, Thomist Roman Catholicism found itself embroiled in controversy. Martin Luther’s challenge to papal authority, including the issuance of indulgences, and his critique of Erasmus’ teaching on the freedom of the will had shaken Christendom. Luther had been a member of the Church’s Order of St. Augustine, and he inclined to prefer Augustinian emphasis on Scriptural interpretation to the regnant Thomism, centered in the Dominican Order, and well enunciated by Francisco de Vitoria, a school of interpretation which gave scope to rational deduction from Scripture as a supplement to Scripture itself. This valorization of human reason in turn gave credit to the doctrine of free will, as defended by Erasmus, who in turn inspired that humane Thomist and contemporary of Luther, Francisco Vitoria. Luther’s strict Augustinianism may be said to have inclined him to his famous doctrines of justification by faith alone and faith by divine grace alone, staples of the Protestant Reformation.
A somewhat similar controversy arose within the Catholic Church itself. Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus or ‘Jesuits’ in 1541. Although the Dominicans by no means eschewed evangelical work (Vitoria wrote extensively on the right treatment of the Indians in the New World, ‘discovered’ by Spanish explorers), they inclined to scholarly study in a communal setting. The Jesuits were activists, and this commended them to the Vatican, always alert to ways of extending its spiritual empire. Doctrinally, the two orders differed on the vexed question of free will and determinism. Thomists advocated proemotio physica, physical premotion, holding that God directly causes the motions of the human will, especially with respect to its consent to faithful adherence to Christian doctrine. Jesuits (as seen in the writings of Luis de Molina) advocated scientifia media, middle knowledge, holding that God has foreknowledge of what men will freely will in any given circumstance, then ordains the circumstance. Thomists charged the Jesuits with inclining toward the Pelagianism Augustine had opposed and the Church had condemned; Jesuits charged the neo-Thomists with inclining toward Lutheranism.
Cornelius Jansen (“Jansenius”) entered the controversy in the 1630s. He attacked de Molina’s views, weighing in on the Augustinian side of the question; his magnum opus, published posthumously, was titled Augustinus. But his insistence on the irresistibility of God’s race, his denial of free will regarding matters of salvation, did not prevent him, as the Bishop of Ypres, from yearning for Dutch liberty against Spanish or French domination. His 1635 polemic, the Mars Gallicus, inveighs against the ambitions of Cardinal Richelieu, a careful student of Machiavelli and organizer of the centralized Bourbon state, an institution very much in line with Machiavelli’s precepts. This made Jansenism suspect indeed in France; as evidence against their rivals, the Jesuits extracted five propositions from Augustinus and arranged to have it condemned by two popes.
By the 1650s, when Pascal wrote the Provincial Letters, the Jansenist side of the controversy had been carried on by Antoine Arnauld, who maintained that Jansen’s book contained none of the propositions that had been condemned. The first ten of Pascal’s letters, published pseudonymously, consist of letters written by “the Provincial,” now living in Paris, to a friend who still lives in the countryside; letters eleven to sixteen are addressed directly to the Jesuits and the final three letters are addressed to François Annat, a Jesuit who had written against Jansenism. Like many young men, Pascal delighted in satirizing his elders and betters; unlike most of them, he was exceptionally good at it.
“We were entirely mistaken,” when we were living in the provinces, viewing academia from afar, the Provincial writes to his friend. “It was only yesterday that I was undeceived. Until that time I had labored under the impression that the disputes in the Sorbonne” amongst the theology professors “were vastly important and deeply affected the interests of religion.” No, and no.
Two questions are debated. The first is a question of fact. Was Arnauld correct when he asserted that Jansenius’ book had none of the propositions condemned by “the late pope”? To that, the Provincial replies that one can read the book for himself—a wise strategy, regarding most books. Not one of his accusers has found any of the alleged propositions, and “the truth is that the world has become skeptical of late”—consider Descartes—and “will not believe things till it sees them.”
And then there is the question of right doctrine. In this instance, “it is of as little consequence” as the question of fact. Is God’s grace “efficacious of itself,” determining the will of the person upon whom it is bestowed? Or is it “given to all men”? Both sides agree that the righteous have the power to obey God’s commands, but to what extent does God grant them all the power needed to obey them? A series of comical dialogues ensues, wherein the Provincial goes from one party in the dispute to another and another, asking each what he means by the term “proximate” power, that is, the direct, intimate power God exercises on the human soul. One of them tells him, if a man “calls that power proximate power, he will be a Thomist, and therefore a Catholic, if not, he will be a Jansenist and, therefore, a heretic.” That is, it is only a matter of how they use the word. Under the pope’s edict, both sides have agreed use the word “without saying what it signifies.” Ah, “I was thus let into the whole secret of their plot,” which is “nothing better than pure chicanery,” since whichever definition a disputant holds, he can “claim the victory.” Only semi-disabused, he is reduced to begging: “I entreat you, for the last time, what is necessary to be believed in order to be a good Catholic.” Why, go along with the game, my boy: “‘You must say,” they all vociferated simultaneously, “that all the righteous have the proximate power, abstracting from it all sense” intended by the parties involved. But (he persists) is “proximate” a “Scripture word”? No. Then why use it? Because if you don’t use it, you will be like the heretical Arnaud, “for we are the majority.” The majority of theologians thus trumps the Word of God. “Upon hearing this solid argument, I took my leave of them.” The argument’s solidity is a matter of Church politics, a conflict upon which the pope, the monarch, has imposed a limit, rather as a Bourbon monarch might.
On a more strictly theological, as distinguished from majoritarian, note, several points “remain undisputed and uncondemned by either party”: “grace is not given to all men”; “all the righteous have always the power of obeying the divine commandments”; all the righteous nevertheless require, “in order to obey them, and even to pray, an efficacious grace, which invincibly determines their will”; and finally, “this efficacious grace is not always granted to all the righteous,” depending as it does “on the pure mercy of God” and not on human virtue, however impressive. Since “nothing runs any risk but that word without sense,” proximate, “happy the people who are ignorant of its existence!”
In Letter II, the Provincial considers another debatable term, “sufficient grace.” The definitions here really do differ, with the ‘activist’ Jesuits maintaining that “there is a grace given generally to all men, subject in such a way to free will that the will renders it efficacious or inefficacious at its pleasure, without any additional aid from God”; this “suffices of itself for action,” which is what their mission largely consists of. The Jansenists deny that “any grace is actually sufficient which is not also efficacious; that is, that all those kinds of grace which do not determine the will to act effectively are insufficient for action.” For their part, a third faction, the “New Thomists”—Dominicans who follow the teachings of Vitoria and Francisco Suarez—hold that the Jesuits are right to say that God gives all men sufficient grace to act but that no one can act without also receiving God’s “efficacious” grace, “which really determines his will to the action, and which God does not grant to all men.” Applying Ockham’s razor to this doctrinal beard, the Provincial exclaims, “this grace is sufficient without being sufficient,” rewarded by his interlocutor with a hearty, “Exactly so.” Again, human politics determines the thing. The Jesuits, who are indeed “politic,” will not dispute the powerful Dominicans. Indeed, a friend tells him, “The world is content with wors; few think of searching into the nature of things,” and when the Dominicans (also known as the “Jacobins”) leave matters with the Jesuits’ ploy, they are “the greatest dupes.” [1] “I acknowledged that they were a shrewd class of people, these Jesuits.”
What now? the Provincial asks. Deny sufficient grace and I am a Jansenist; admit it, I am a heretic, say the New Thomists; but then I contradict myself. “What must I do, thus reduced to the inevitable necessity of being a blockhead, a heretic, or a Jansenist?” His friend the Dominican monk patiently explains the politics. The Dominican-Jesuit coalition, although depending upon the deception of the most Dominicans by the Jesuits, nonetheless outnumbers the Jansenists, and “by this coalition they make up a majority.” The “stronger party” wins. To the Provincial’s counter-parable, whereby a severely wounded man consults three physicians without receiving the diagnosis he desperately needs, the monk explains, “You are an independent and private man; I am a monk and in a community”—community being the Dominican vocation. “Can you not estimate the difference between the two cases? We depend on superiors; they depend on others. They have promised our votes—what would you have to become of me?” The young, ardent, Provincial exclaims, “Had I any influence in France, I should have it proclaimed, by sound of trumpet: ‘BE IT KNOWN TO ALL MEN, that when the Jacobins SAY that sufficient grace is given to all, they MEAN that all have not the grace which actually suffices!” Not for salvation, at any rate. What “we have here” is rather “a politics sufficiency somewhat similar to proximate power.”
In this exchange, Pascal brings out an ancient theme of political philosophy. The inquirer after truth can go ahead and inquire, but his inquiries must be tempered by his understanding that he lives in a political community upon which he depends, however modest he may have made his material desires. If you offend the moral sensibilities of those devoted to the gods of the city, you may end up with a cup of hemlock in your hand. At the same time, the political character of the community, its necessity to have rulers and those who are ruled (by majorities, if the regime is a democracy, or by the majority of the minority, if it is not), provides an excellent window into the nature the philosopher seeks, insofar as man is a political animal. Pascal’s Provincial responds on behalf of another regime, a regime not of this world, the regime ruled by a majority of One. That regime is captive and stranger in the earthly city, and that the Church or ecclesia, that assembly of God or rightly ruling Body of Christ, is seldom pure. It encompasses a lot of ‘of the earth, earthiness,’ very much to the dismay of young, ardent, and sincere Christians. Pascal’s satire, his making known to all men what the regnant Dominicans are doing (some of them somewhat guiltily), amounts to an attempt to purge the Church without departing from it, as Luther and the other Reformers did.
And underlying all of these tensions is the enemy the New Thomists addressed, from Vitoria onward: Machiavellianism, later its follow-on Spinozism, with its redefinition of what ‘politic’ means. For the new, decidedly anti-Thomistic philosophers, Aristotelian prudence, not entirely unlike the prudence invoked by Jesus, the practical wisdom exercised by rulers and citizens who intend to bring such measure of justice as is possible in this world, must be replaced by a sort of canniness—can-do-it-edness—that aims not at aligning itself with natural or divine justice but in conquering fortune and indeed nature itself. It will be Pascal’s argument that the Jesuits have gone over to the Machiavellian side, and to imply that the Dominicans’ better ally would be the Jansenists. But in this, they would run up against Cardinal Richelieu’s equally Machiavellian successor, Cardinal Mazarin.
The third Letter contains the Provincial’s report on Arnauld’s book, which he has indeed now read for himself. Arnauld argues that the example of Peter the Apostle shows that “without God we can do nothing,” even if we are righteous, as Peter surely. Peter disowned Jesus just before His crucifixion because God had temporarily withdrawn His grace from him, not because Peter lacked virtue. The Provincial notes that “in vain did people attempt to discover how it could possibly be that M. Arnauld’s expression differed from those of the [Church] fathers as much as the truth from error and faith from heresy”; Arnauld committed “an imperceptible heresy” which the Jesuits themselves, those masters of hairsplitting distinctions, cannot define. True enough, his informant at the Sorbonne tells him: in time, the “invalidity” of the Jesuits’ condemnation “will be made apparent,” but for now, “it will tell as effectually on the minds of most people as if it had been the most righteous sentence in the world.” “Effectual” truth: a theme of Machiavelli. “Mark how much advantage this gives to the enemies of the Jansenists.” In the “exquisite” words of the Jesuit apologist Pierre Le Moine, “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!” This, the Provincial observes, is a heresy of “an entirely new species,” inasmuch as Arnauld’s “sentiments” are not heretical; “it is only his person.” “The grace of St. Augustine will never be the true grace, so long as he continues to defend it.” The Provincial judges such disputes as between theologians, not theology.
He decides to interview a Jesuit, “wanting to complete my knowledge of mankind.” In Letter IV, he recounts that he began by asking the definition of still another theological term, “actual grace.” According to the Jesuit, actual grace is “an inspiration of God, whereby He makes us to know His will and excites within us a desire to perform it.” In every circumstance in which a man is tempted to sin, he can only be said to sin if God had provided him with grace adequate to keep him from sinning. That is, “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.” This prompts an ironic exclamation from the Provincial: “I see more people, beyond all comparison, justified by this ignorance and forgetfulness of God, than by grace and the sacraments!” He is reminded of “that sufficiency which suffices not” that he had described in Letter II. “What a blessing this will be to some persons of my acquaintance,” the ones who “never think of God at all” because “their vices have got the better of their reason”; “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”—excesses that, according to M. le Moine and his Jesuit colleagues, “secure their salvation.” Indeed, such men have “cheated the devil, purely by virtue of their devotion to his service!” Centuries later, Hugh Hefner invented the ‘playboy philosophy,’; le Moine invented the playboy theology. Unfortunately, as a Jansenist friend who accompanied him to the interview points out, Jesus on the Cross pardoned criminals, strongly suggesting that they had need of it. Rather, we should “join with St. Augustine and the ancient fathers in saying that it is impossible not to sin, when we do not know righteousness.” Having given up on Scriptural proofs, the Jesuit next cites Aristotle, who considers involuntary actions not to be blameworthy. Again displaying his pesky habit of referring to original texts, the Provincial shows him the beginning of Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics (“You should read him for yourself”), in which the Philosopher explains that a voluntary action is one in which knows “the circumstances of the action,” what theologians call “ignorance of the fact.” That is hardly the same as “ignorance of the good or evil in an action.” Aristotle goes on to say, “All wicked men are ignorant of what they ought to do, and what they ought to avoid; and it is this very ignorance which makes them wicked and vicious.” Showing no mercy, the Provincial expresses his astonishment that on can find “a Pagan philosopher” who “had more enlightened views than your doctors.” He adds, for his readers, that “the Jesuit seemed to be confounded more with the passage from Aristotle…than that from St. Augustine.” The cornered man happily receives an invitation from a pair of aristocratic ladies to escape his cross-examiner.
Afterwards, as recounted in Letter V, his Jansenist friend begins to explain Jesuit policy in greater depth. They do not intend either to corrupt or to reform moeurs. Their ambition is rather to extend their influence as widely as possible. Since few people can be persuaded to act according to the Gospel commands, Jesuits seek “to keep in good terms with all the world,” supporting casuists who “match this diversity.” That is, they are duplicitous, reserving a few theologians for the righteous few, multitudes of “lax casuists” for “the multitudes that prefer laxity.” Like smart marketers, they “suit the supply to the demand.” In the Indies and China, “where the doctrine of a crucified God is accounted foolishness,” they “preach only a glorious and not a suffering Christ” and moreover permit converts to continue practicing their customary idolatry. That is, “they conceal their carnal and worldly policy under the garb of divine and Christian prudence,” recognizable to readers of Machiavelli as princely calculation. They are not thoroughly Machiavellian, according to the Jansenist, but rather practice an “entirely Pagan” morality; “nature is quite competent to its observance.” They are Machiavellians of the sort perceived by readers who see only his praise of the Romans, deployed to undercut Christianity. The Provincial seeks out still another Jesuit, to see if he conforms to his friend’s low opinion.
Which he does. Citing Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, author of the 1627 treatise Summum casuum concientia, and Étienne Baunay, friend of the cynical aphorist La Rochefoucauld and the source of the distorted interpretation of Aristotle cited earlier, the Jesuit accounts it sinful to allow oneself to become “the common talk of the world or subjecting themselves to personal inconvenience.” The Provincial ripostes, “I am glad to hear it, father, and now that we are not obliged to avoid the occasions of sin, nothing more remains but to say that we may deliberately court them.” At this, the Jesuit introduces him to the doctrine of “probable opinions,” the “very A, B, C of our whole moral philosophy.” A probable opinion is one “founded upon reasons of some consideration,” enough to render one’s “own opinion probable and safe.” Thus, one need “only to follow the opinion which suits him best,” selecting a favored theologian here, a historical example there. This, the Provincial notices, gives us “liberty of conscience with a witness,” an “uncommonly comfortable” and indeed Ovidian stance, following the poet’s adjuration, “If pressed by one god, we will be delivered by another.” A reader might be reminded of Montaigne, and indeed the Jesuit speaks very much like what latterly has been called moral relativism: “The Fathers were good enough for the morality of their own times; but they lived too far back for that of the present age, which is no longer regulated by them, but by the modern casuists.” Whereas the New Thomists attempt to counter Machiavelli and his followers, the Jesuits prefer to accommodate them. And they evangelize on their behalf. “We are anxious that others besides the Jesuits would render their opinions probable, to prevent people from ascribing them all to us.” The Jesuit assures him that Holy Scripture, the popes, and Church councils all agree with these claims, although he does not recommend reading Scripture, the writings of the popes, or the edicts of the Church councils themselves. In the words of Pierre Manent, the Society of Jesus “install[s] itself in the interface between the church and the ‘world.'” This rather liberal, not to say lax approach to absolution undermines repentance, which is “both the beginning and the foundation of the Christian life.” [2]
But how to reconcile the contradictions one finds in the many sources of “probable opinions”? Simple: the art of interpretation. If Pope Gregory XIV rules that assassins are not entitled to sanctuary in the churches, well, define the word “assassins” to mean those who kill for money; “such as kill without taking any regard for the deed, but merely to oblige their friends, do not come under the category of assassins.” Such equivocations have “utility,” he remarks, as does “the nicest possible application of probability”—thinking that even if a pope makes a well-defined ruling, it is only probable that he is right. Another person’s opinion may also be probable. Go with the one you want. The Provincial observes that this means “one may may choose any side one pleases, even though he does not believe it to be the right side, and all with such a safe conscience, that the confessor who should refuse him absolution on the faith of the casuists would be in a state of damnation.” One casuist “may make new rules at his discretion.” Not exactly, the Jesuit hastens to reply, since the contrary opinion will be “sanctioned by the tacit approval of the Church,” and so “when time has thus matured an opinion, it thenceforth becomes completely probable and safe.” Admittedly, it would have been better “to establish no other maxims than those of the Gospel in all their strictness,” but what can we do? “Men have arrived at such a pitch of corruption nowadays that, enable to make them come to us, we must go to them, otherwise they would cut us off altogether.” “The grand project of our Society, for the good of religion,” he piously intones, “is never to repulse anyone, let him be what he may, and so avoid driving people to despair.” And so does the Jesuit anticipate American Episcopalianism. What is more, he continues, “a multitude of masses brings such a revenue of glory to God” (and perhaps such a revenue to the priests who organize them?) that it would be positively un-evangelical to exclude anyone from them.
To the Provincial’s ironic suggestion that Jesuits really should propound this doctrine to judges, as this would bring them “to acquit all criminals who act on probable opinion,” on the grounds that otherwise “those you render innocent in theory may be whipped or hanged in practice”—a decided discouragement to potential disciples—the Jesuit accommodatingly allows that “the matter deserves consideration.” One begins to suspect that Jesuits seldom read the Book of Jeremiah or, if they do, subject it to rigorous ‘interpretation.’
Jesuits do propound their doctrines to the aristocrats. “The ruling passion of persons in that rank of life is ‘the point of honor,'” the Jesuit remarks, a code that “is perpetually driving them into acts of violence apparently quite at variance with Christian piety.” They would be “excluded from our confessionals” altogether “had not our fathers relaxed a little from the strictness of religion, to accommodate themselves to the weakness of humanity.” To do this, Jesuits have devised “the grand method of directing the intention,” whereby consists of having a man “propos[e] to himself, as the end of his actions, some allowable object.” This “correct[s] the viciousness of the means by the goodness of the end.” The point d’honneur exemplifies this, redirecting the intention of violent acts way from vengeance. “By permitting the action,” Jesuits “gratify the world; and by purifying the intention, they give satisfaction to the Gospel. This is a secret, sir, which was entirely unknown to the ancients; the world is indebted for the discovery entirely to our doctors.” No doubt, and the method works just as well in justifying the aristocratic practice of dueling. The Provincial recalls to his reader that the French king has outlawed it, “but the good father was in such an excellent key for talking that it would have been cruel to have interrupted him,” contenting himself with exclaiming that Jesuits have turned killing a man in a duel “a most pious assassination”—perhaps thinking of Machiavelli’s commendation of “pious cruelty.” Yes, the Jesuit agrees, since “otherwise the honor of the innocent would be constantly exposed to the malice of the insolent.” Admittedly, “were we to kill all the defamers, we would very shortly depopulate the country,” and this would be “hurtful to the State.” Still, even monks are “permitted to kill, for the purpose of defending not only their lives but their property, and that of their community.” Does this mean Jesuits are entitled to kill Jansenists, the Provincial want to know. No, because “it is not in the power of the Jansenists to injure our reputation”; the Jansenists can no more obscure the glory of the Society than an owl can eclipse that of the sun.” [3]
Similar relaxed teachings apply to judges, who may take bribes if no law forbids it, and lenders, for whom usury is allowed on the grounds that they are simply securing a part of the profit anticipated by the person to whom they lend money. Theft, adultery, and sorcery are similarly ‘justified.’ The Provincial is so uncharitable as to call the arguments in favor of such violations of Scriptural commands as “sophism,” but a mere wet blanket cannot extinguish the fire of Jesuit zealotry, and his instructive interlocutor continues on to “an account of the comforts and indulgences which our fathers allow, with the view of rendering salvation easy and devotion agreeable” to “genteel saints and well-bred devotees,” who differ from the more austere types only because their body chemistry inclines them to such latitudinarian moeurs. Our fathers uphold piety but “have disencumbered it of its toils and troubles,” enabling ambitieux “to learn that they may maintain genuine devotion along with an inordinate love of greatness.” After all, “God, who is infinitely just, has given even to frogs a certain complacency in their own croaking.”
Not only “vanity, ambition, and avarice” find their place in Christendom but so does envy. This can be done by recurring again to “defin[ing] things properly,” that is, in accordance with “our doctrine of equivocations,” the practice of using “ambiguous terms, leading people to understand them in another sense from that in which we understand them ourselves.” And if we cannot think of an effective way of equivocating, “the doctrine of mental reservations” comes to the rescue. According to the Jesuit theologian Thomas Sanchez, one may say that he hasn’t done something that he did, so long as he “mean[s] within himself that he did not do so on a certain day, or before he was born.” But, but, “Is that not a lie, and perjury to boot?” Not at all, young fellow, for “it is the intention that determines the quality of the action,” and if mute reservation disturbs you, then simply voice the truth inaudibly—a practice that the Provincial describes as “telling the truth in a low key, and a falsehood in a loud one.” Concluding the examples, Jesuit ingenuity has even found a way to get around the Scriptural denunciation of women’s immodest attire. “These passages of Scripture have the force of precepts only in regard to the women of that period,” who needed to “exhibit, by their modest demeanor, an example of edification to the Pagans.” It was not Montesquieu who first formulated cultural and historical relativism.
The Provincial concludes his series of ten letters to his friend in the provinces with an account of the “palliatives which [the Jesuits] have applied to confession,” which numbers among the cleverest of the policies they have designed in their evangelical mission to “attract all and repel none.” While “a great many things, formerly”—i.e., back in superannuated Biblical times—regarded as “forbidden, are innocent and allowable,” some things remain illicit; for these, “there is no remedy but confession.” There too, Jesuits have eased widened the strait gait by “relieving people from troublesome scruples of conscience by showing them that what they believed to be sinful was indeed quite innocent.” To the Provincial’s ingenuous thought that a “genuine penitent” should intend “to discover the whole state of his conscience to his confessor,” the Jesuit explains that a priest may absolve a sinner of his sins by asking him “if he does not detest the sin in his heart”; “if he answers that he does, [the] priest is bound to believe it.” Does this not impose “a great hardship” on the priest, “by thus obliging them to believe the very reverse of what they see”? No, because the priests are merely obliged to absolve as if “they believed that their penitents would be true to their engagements”—the doctrine of equivocation applied to actions rather than to words. The Provincial notes that this must “draw people to your confessionals,” and the Jesuit happily reports that it does, indeed.
The “most important of all” Jesuit doctrines concerns the love of God. For salvation, Jesuits offer diverse teachings on when and how one must love God. At the point of death, say some; upon receiving baptism, say others; or “on festival days,” still others maintain. This Jesuit prefers the teaching of Hurtado de Mendoza, who “insists that we are obliged to love God once a year,” and that “we ought to regard it as a great favor that we are not bound to do it oftener.” Still others put the time limit as five years or more. “We are commanded, not so much to love Him, as not to hate Him.” Finally exasperated at this defense of the lukewarm, the Provincial spits it out of his mouth, denouncing all these doctrines and walking out.
Having concluding and publishing his correspondence with his friend, the Provincial addresses his next six letters to the Jesuits themselves—open letters in response to Jesuits’ replies to the first ten. They have not appreciated his irony; you stand guilty, they say, “of turning sacred things into ridicule.” To this defense, which amounts to claiming sanctity for practices the Provincial has exposed as very dubiously holy, he effectively says, very well, you want me to get serious, I shall. Accordingly, his tone shifts from satire to ‘J’accuse.’ Justifying his satire, he admits that “while the saints have ever cherished toward the truth the twofold sentiment of love and fear…they have, at the same time, entertained towards error the twofold feeling of hatred and contempt, and their zeal has been at once employed to repel, by force of reasoning, the malice of the wicked, and to chastise, by the aid of ridicule, their extravagance and folly.” As Augustine writes, “The wise laugh at the foolish because they are wise, not after their own wisdom, but after that divine wisdom which shall laugh at the death of the wicked.” Nothing deflates vanity like laughter, and Truth “has a right to laugh, because she is cheerful and to make sport of her enemies, because she is sure of the victory.” Even Tertullian, no habitual jokester, thinks that to treat errors seriously “would be to sanction them.” Therefore, direct prayers for your enemy’s salvation to God, direct your accusations to the men guilty of error. And, by the way, “What is more common in your writings than calumny?”
Proceeding then to Jesuitical errors, the Provincial first considers their inclination to cozy up to the rich by telling them that they can more or less ignore the obligation to offer alms to the poor. Augustine teaches that one should keep what is necessary for doing “the work of God,” which the Provincial defines as sustaining one’s nature, giving the superfluity to those who need it, since “if we seek after vanities, we will never have enough.” Nor is there any excuse for simony, the sale of holy offices and the like. These are only specific instances of the Jesuits’ general disregard of divine and human law, and “you only scruple to approve of them in practice from bodily fear of the civil magistrate.” You seek to evade such punishment by the abuse of language—the aforementioned practice of equivocation and also with jargon, the “peculiar dialect of the Jesuitical school.” Crucially, your teachings contradict the orders of St. Ignatius himself, the founder of the Society of Jesus; the Provincial evidently has read his Spiritual Exercises, in another example of his practice of consulting the original texts. “It will astonish many to see how far you have degenerated from the original spirit of your institution,” as enunciated by Ignatius of Loyola. Instead, “you have forgotten the law of God and quenched the light of nature,” thereby deserving “to be remanded to the simplest principles of religion and common sense.” If you eventually incur the wrath of human rulers, you have no defense, “as it is God who has put” the power of the sword “into their hands,” while “requir[ing] them to exercise it in the same manner as He does Himself,” terrorizing the evil, not the good.
True, human rulers lack the perfect wisdom and justice of God, which is why they must “delegate their power” to magistrates who will judge the accused dispassionately. “Even Heathens” have taken such precautions, as seen in Rome’s Twelve Tables. “What, fathers! Has Jesus Christ come to destroy the law, and not to fulfill it?” Criminals always find ways to excuse themselves to themselves; Churchmen should not lend them additional excuses. Political rebels behave the same way. “The spirit of the Church is diametrically opposite to these seditious maxims, opening the door to insurrections to which the mob is naturally prone enough already.” Both criminals and insurrectionists kill first, ask questions later—if at all. And so do proud aristocrats, with their point d’honneur, killing “for the sake of avoiding a blow on the cheek, or a slander, or an offensive word.” Jesuits, “whom do you wish to be taken for? for the children of the Gospel, or for the enemies of the Gospel?” Are you with Him or are you against Him?
“The grand secret of your policy” is your deployment of calumny. “It is your deliberate intention to tell lies,” to “knowingly and purposely…load your opponents with crimes of which you know them to be innocent, because you believe that you may do so without falling from a state of grace.” It is, one of your brothers said in a talk at Louvain in 1645, “but a venial sin to calumniate and forge false accusations to ruin the credit of those who speak evil of us.” Because Jesuits have acquired credit in the world, they escape human punishment for defamation and, “on the strength of their self-assumed authority in matters of conscience, they have invented maxims for enabling them to do it without any fear of the justice of God.” Principle among these maxims is the claim that “to attack your Society and to be a heretic are, in your language, convertible terms.” The Provincial does not hesitate to call this “despotism.” But “if you have got no common sense, I am not able to furnish you with it.”
The Provincial addresses his final three letters to an individual Jesuit, Father François Annat, who had written “a volley of pamphlets” against the Jansenists, including the Provincial, who wastes no irony on him. “You are ruining Christian morality by divorcing it from the love of God and dispensing with its obligation.” Annat has charged that God’s commandments cannot be acted upon by mere humans, who have no free will. On the contrary, “our salvation is attached to the faith which has been revealed to us,” and revelation commands us to refrain from injuring others but rather to love them—neither being impracticable. While “God guides the Church by the aid of His unerring Spirit,” in “matters of fact He leaves her to the direction of reason and the senses, which are the natural judges in such matters.” If the Churchmen stray from reason, it is no heresy to oppose them. Even if they are Jesuits. “The sole purpose of my writing is to discover your designs, and, by discovering to frustrate them.” So, for example, you have persuaded the pope to condemn five propositions you have falsely ascribed to Jansenius, but since the senses and reason can find those propositions nowhere in his book, a Catholic may rightly assent to the pope’s condemnation while noticing your deception.
As to the matter of free will and predestination, the Provincial cites Augustine. God “makes the soul do what He wills, and in the manner He wills it to be done, while, at the same time, the infallibility of the divine operation does not in any way destroy the natural liberty of man, in consequence of the secret and wonderful ways by which God operates this change,” transforming “the heart of man” and thereby surmounting “the desires of the flesh,” which otherwise would enslave him. “Finding his chiefest joy in the God who charms him, his soul is drawn towards Him infallibly, but of its own accord, by a motion perfectly free, spontaneous, love-propelled.” He still could forsake God, but “how could he choose such a course, seeing that the will always inclines to that which is most agreeable to it,” and that will no longer no longer finds fleshly pleasures so agreeable. That is how divine grace works in the human soul. Contra John Calvin, human souls do “have merits which are truly and properly ours”—ours, because God gave them to us. Quoting Augustine, the Provincial writes, “Our actions are ours in respect of the free will which produces them; but they are also of God, in respect of His grace which enables our free will to produce them.” Both Augustine and the Church Council maintain that “we have always the power of withholding our consent if we choose.” [4]
The senses, reason, and faith each have “their separate objects and their own degrees of certainty.” God “employs the intervention of the senses,” especially hearing, “to give entrance to the faith”: “Hear, O Israel.” “So far from faith destroying the certainty of the senses, to call in question the faithful report of the senses would lead to the destruction of faith.” Reason detects contradictions in what he hear, inasmuch as one obviously cannot have knowledge of nature if we hold conflicting opinions of it. If, however, we consider “a supernatural truth, we must judge of it neither by the senses nor by reason, but by Scripture and the decisions of the Church.” Senses perceive facts; reason understands nature; faith concurs with “Scripture and the decisions of the Church.” And even with Scripture, reasoning has its place. As both Augustine and Aquinas teach, “when we meet with a passage even in the Scripture, the literal meaning of which, at first sight appears contrary to what the senses of reason are certainly persuaded of, we must not attempt to reject their testimony in this case, and yield them up to the authority of that apparent sense of the Scripture, but we must interpret the Scripture, and seek out therein another sense agreeable to that sensible truth.” If we discover a meaning in Scripture “which reason plainly teaches to be false, we must not persist in maintaining that this is the natural sense but search out another with which reason will agree.” And so, for example, when we read in the Book of Genesis that the moon is one of the two great lights, greater than the stars, this cannot mean that the moon is really bigger and brighter than the stars but rather that it means that it appears bigger and (sometimes) brighter in our eyes.
The Provincial ends with a personal testimony respecting the Christian integrity of the Jansenists, defamed by the Jesuits. They are humble before God and His Church, loving, zealous to learn and obey true doctrine, examples of genuine “Christian piety.” They do not smuggle Machiavelli into the Church.
Note
- Later readers are likely to be confused by another word-puzzle: why “Jacobins,” and what could they possibly have to do with the later guillotining Jacobins, who were no friends of Dominicans, Jansenists, or Jesuits? The answer is that the headquarters of the Dominicans in Paris was the rue de St. Jacques; the Dominicans were therefore sometimes called ‘Jacobins.’ The later Jacobins rented a room for their meetings from the Dominicans (albeit on another street), so their political enemies called them Jacobins in derision—an especially derogatory term during the Revolution, when most of the revolutionary factions were firm advocates of the unreligious, decidedly un-Dominican ‘Enlightenment.’
- Manent, p.5.
- As Manent remarks, the ‘directed’ intention “is not a real intention, but an arbitrary interpretation” of one’s action. Such a mental operation “ruins the coherence and gravity of the human act. By separating honor from God’s law, His command, one is directed away from the command to an idea—indeed to an “arbitrary idea” (14). Connecting this to later tergiversations of political-philosophic thought, Manent writes: “The consistency and integrity of practical life will increasingly be obscured by the multiplication of ‘ideas’ to which we will be encouraged to direct our attention and our intention, the rise of these ‘ideologies’ undermining the elementary rules of the practical life of human beings, even the command not to kill,” a command that tyrants came not only to ignore but to justify their killings on the basis of certain ideas, including ‘race science’ and ‘class enemies.’ The problem, Manent argues, resides not only in tyrants but in such philosophic friends of liberty as John Locke, who classed murder as an “arbitrary idea” (“an expression that he himself employed”) on the grounds that idea of killing does not have any more relationship with the idea of man than with the idea of sheep.” Having “decomposed” murder into its different elements, he observes that the ideas of these elements do not contain any natural and necessary relationship among themselves.” Here, Manent refers to Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Having distinguished what he calls “simple ideas” or sense impressions from “complex ideas” or combinations of such impressions, Locke calls the latter matters of the human capacity to understand—the topic of his book. Such ideas as sacrilege and adultery are “creatures of the understanding”; the mind “combines several scattered independent ideas” or sense impressions “into one complex one,” a combination with no connection in nature itself, in physical objects and actions. The mind does this because it finds such combining convenient. They are not done “without reason,” as the mind pursues its own ends. To be fair, Locke does proceed to offer rules by which the understanding can be accurate—arbitrary in the sense that it willingly combines sense perceptions but ‘true to the facts.’ He would thereby deny the validity of ‘ideologies’ not based on accurate sense perceptions or drawing false, illogical conclusions from accurate sense perceptions. The underlying attack on Christianity in Locke is not so much his endorsement of “arbitrary ideas” but his claim that human understanding can only occur if based on perceptions of matter. Locke’s materialism obviously leaves no room in human understanding for the teachings of the Holy Spirit and the commands of God.
- On this point, see also Manent, p.7.
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