TO THE REVEREND FATHER ANNAT, JESUIT January 23, 1657 REVEREND FATHER, Your former behaviour had induced me to believe that you were anxious for a truce in our hostilities, and I was quite disposed to agree that it should be so.Of late, however, you have poured forth such a volley of pamphlets, in such rapid succession, as to make it apparent that peace rests on a very precarious footing when it depends on the silence of Jesuits.I know not if this rupture will prove very advantageous to you; but, for my part, I am far from regretting the opportunity which it affords me of rebutting that stale charge of heresy with which your writings abound.It is full time, indeed, that I should, once for all, put a stop to the liberty you have taken to treat me as a heretic- a piece of gratuitous impertinence which seems to increase by indulgence, and which is exhibited in your last book in a style of such intolerable assurance that, were I not to answer the charge as it deserves, I might lay myself open to the suspicion of being actually guilty.So long as the insult was confined to your associates I despised it, as I did a thousand others with which they interlarded their productions.To these my Fifteenth Letter was a sufficient reply.But you now repeat the charge with a different air: you make it the main point of your vindication.It is, in fact, almost the only thing in the shape of argument that you employ.
You say that, "as a complete answer to my fifteen letters, it is enough to say fifteen times that I am a heretic; and, having been pronounced such, I deserve no credit." In short, you make no question of my apostasy, but assume it as a settled point, on which you may build with all confidence.
You are serious then, father, it would seem, in deeming me a heretic.Ishall be equally serious in replying to the charge.You are well aware, sir, that heresy is a charge of grave a character that it is an act of high presumption to advance, without being prepared to substantiate it.
I now demand your proofs.When was I seen at Charenton? When did I fail in my presence at mass, or in my Christian duty to my parish church? What act of union with heretics, or of schism with the Church, can you lay to my charge? What council have I contradicted? What papal constitution have I violated? You must answer, father, else- You know what I mean.And what do you answer? I beseech all to observe it: First of all, you assume "that the author of the letters is a Port-Royalist"; then you tell us "that Port-Royal is declared to be heretical"; and, therefore, you conclude, "the author of letters must be a heretic." It is not on me, then, father, that the weight of this indictment falls, but on Port-Royal; and I am only involved in the crime because you suppose me to belong to that establishment; so that it will be no difficult matter for me to exculpate myself from the charge.I have no more to say than that I am not a member of that community;and to refer you to my letters, in which I have declared that "I am a private individual"; and again in so many words, that "I am not of Port-Royal, as I said in my Sixteenth Letter, which preceded your publication.You must fall on some other way, then, to prove me heretic, otherwise the whole world will be convinced that it is beyond your power to make good your accusation.Prove from my writings that I do not receive the constitution.
My letters are not very voluminous- there are but sixteen of them- and I defy you or anybody else to detect in them the slightest foundation for such a charge.I shall, however, with your permission, produce something out of them to prove the reverse.When, for example, I say in the Fourteenth that, "by killing our brethren in mortal sin, according to your maxims, we are damning those for whom Jesus Christ died, do I not plainly acknowledge that Jesus Christ died for those who may be damned, and, consequently, declare it to be false "that he died only for the predestinated," which is the error condemned in the fifth proposition? Certain it is, father, that I have not said a word in behalf of these impious propositions, which I detest with all my heart.And even though Port-Royal should hold them, I protest against your drawing any conclusion from this against me, as, thank God, I have no sort of connection with any community except the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, in the bosom of which I desire to live and die, in communion with the Pope, the head of the Church, and beyond the pale of which I am persuaded there is no salvation.How are you to get at a person who talks in this way, father? On what quarter will you assail me, since neither my words nor my writings afford the slightest handle to your accusations, and the obscurity in which my person is enveloped forms my protection against your threatenings? You feel yourselves smitten by an invisible hand- a hand, however, which makes your delinquencies visible to all the earth; and in vain do you endeavour to attack me in the person of those with whom you suppose me to be associated.I fear you not, either on my own account or on that of any other, being bound by no tie either to a community or to any individual whatsoever.All the influence which your Society possesses can be of no avail in my case.From this world Ihave nothing to hope, nothing to dread, nothing to desire.Through the goodness of God, I have no need of any man's money or any man's patronage.
