Paris, February 9, 1658 SIR, I have just received your letter;and, at the same time, there was brought me a copy of the censure in manuscript.
I find that I am as well treated in the former as M.Arnauld is ill treated in the latter.I am afraid there is some extravagance in both cases and that neither of us is sufficiently well known by our judges.Sure I am that, were we better known, M.Arnauld would merit the approval of the Sorbonne, and I the censure of the Academy.Thus our interests are quite at variance with each other.It is his interest to make himself known, to vindicate his innocence; whereas it is mine to remain in the dark, for fear of forfeiting my reputation.Prevented, therefore, from showing my face, I must devolve on you the task of making my acknowledgments to my illustrious admirers, while I undertake that of furnishing you with the news of the censure.I assure you, sir, it has filled me with astonishment.
I expected to find it condemning the most shocking heresy in the world, but your wonder will equal mine, when informed that these alarming preparations, when on the point of producing the grand effect anticipated, have all ended in smoke.To understand the whole affair in a pleasant way, only recollect, I beseech you, the strange impressions which, for a long time past, we have been taught to form of the Jansenists.Recall to mind the cabals, the factions, the errors, the schisms, the outrages, with which they have been so long charged; the manner in which they have been denounced and vilified from the pulpit and the press; and the degree to which this torrent of abuse, so remarkable for its violence and duration, has swollen of late years, when they have been openly and publicly accused of being not only heretics and schismatics, but apostates and infidels- with "denying the mystery of transubstantiation, and renouncing Jesus Christ and the Gospel."After having published these startling accusations, it was resolved to examine their writings, in order to pronounce judgement on them.For this purpose the second letter of M.Arnauld, which was reported to be full of the greatest errors, is selected.The examiners appointed are his most open and avowed enemies.They employ all their learning to discover something that they might lay hold upon, and at length they produce one proposition of a doctrinal character, which they exhibit for censure.What else could any one infer from such proceedings than that this proposition, selected under such remarkable circumstances, would contain the essence of the blackest heresies imaginable.And yet the proposition so entirely agrees with what is clearly and formally expressed in the passages from the fathers quoted by M.Arnauld that I have not met with a single individual who could comprehend the difference between them.Still, however, it might be imagined that there was a very great difference; for the passages from the fathers being unquestionably Catholic, the proposition of M.Arnauld, if heretical, must be widely opposed to them.Such was the difficulty which the Sorbonne was expected to clear up.All Christendom waited, with wide-opened eyes, to discover, in the censure of these learned doctors, the point of difference which had proved imperceptible to ordinary mortals.Meanwhile M.Arnauld gave in his defences, placing his own proposition and the passages of the fathers from which he had drawn it in parallel columns, so as to make the agreement between them apparent to the most obtuse understandings.He shows, for example, that St.Augustine says in one passage that "Jesus Christ points out to us, in the person of St.Peter, a righteous man warning us by his fall to avoid presumption." He cites another passage from the same father, in which he says "that God, in order to show us that without grace we can do nothing, left St.Peter without grace." He produces a third, from St.Chrysostom, who says, "that the fall of St.Peter happened, not through any coldness towards Jesus Christ, but because grace failed him;and that he fell, not so much through his own negligence as through the withdrawment of God, as a lesson to the whole Church, that without God we can do nothing." He then gives his own accused proposition, which is as follows: "The fathers point out to us, in the person of St.Peter, a righteous man to whom that grace without which we can do nothing was wanting."In vain did people attempt to discover how it could possibly be that M.
Arnauld's expression differed from those of the fathers as much as the truth from error and faith from heresy.For where was the difference to be found? Could it be in these words: "that the fathers point out to us, in the person of St.Peter, a righteous man"? St.Augustine has said the same thing in so many words.Is it because he says "that grace had failed him"? The same St.Augustine who had said that "St.Peter was a righteous man," says "that he had not had grace on that occasion." Is it, then, for his having said "that without grace we can do nothing"? Why, is not this just what St.Augustine says in the same place, and what St.Chrysostom had said before him, with this difference only, that he expresses it in much stronger language, as when he says "that his fall did not happen through his own coldness or negligence, but through the failure of grace, and the withdrawment of God"? Such considerations as these kept everybody in a state of breathless suspense to learn in what this diversity could consist, when at length, after a great many meetings, this famous and long-looked-for censure made its appearance.But, alas! it has sadly baulked our expectation.
