Pascal probably did not yet know that it was at this time that the Jansenists were trying to refute the works in which it was proved that these five propositions were contained in Jaisius, if not in the same, then in equivalent expressions.

62

According to custom, each of these 4 Orders was entitled to only 2 votes; it was a deliberate violation that caused the protest of Lrio's friends.

63

Cm. e.g. Matt. 26:34 and 26:69–75.

64

It is one of the four colleges of the Sorbonne.

65

According to Augustine's teaching, man chooses sin of his own free will, becoming like the ancestors of mankind, the first transgressors of the divine law. With the history of mankind, the sum of sins accumulates and man gradually becomes a completely sinful creature. He is not able to get out of this state on his own, he needs help from divine grace. But since it is not given to everyone to be cleansed from sin, it follows that not all people are worthy of grace. Without God's help, man is only capable of sin, but not of righteousness, and even the apostles and saints are no exception. The motives according to which God bestows grace on some and does not bestow on others remain unknown, so man can only hope without complaint that he will be among the elect, that he is predestined to salvation. Everyone is a sinner, but some will be able to escape to the last day, while others will not. The Jesuits tried to get rid of the severity of Augustinian ethics, in fact reviving various variants of Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism (see note 5 to the article by F. Brunetière). The teachings of the Jesuit Fathers were more in accord with ordinary human reason, for if grace is given to all, one has only to voluntarily turn to it and salvation can be obtained. According to Augustine, however, no merit or good works in themselves mean anything: in principle, it is possible that grace will descend upon the sinner and the righteous will be rejected, since God determines only by His inscrutable choice who will be predestined to salvation: after all, like everything human, human ideas of righteousness, our self-esteem, the respect of others, and so on, are very imperfect things. Only the One Who created it and whose gaze penetrates it to the very depths can understand the soul. It can be said that the problems of the correlation between free will and predestination, divine justice and divine omnipotence, which gave rise to the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius, were embodied in the seventeenth century in the struggle between Jansenism and Molinism (if we are talking about the Catholic world).