It is quite clear that in this way a certain indicated dignity is not limited to a phrase, but extends from a phrase to an integral fragment of the text, and from this fragment to the entire Letter, and from one Letter to all the others. Light, secular and cheerful irony; deep and not devoid of bitterness jokes; light and elegant narration; sometimes alternately, and sometimes at the same time, a shrewd and ardent dialectic; the liveliness of the stroke; the impetuosity of the reciprocal attack (riposte), the breadth and freedom of the spiritual impulse; holy indignation: if for Molière there was not, as they say, a reading more beloved than the first Provincials, and for Bossuet more sublime than the last of them, and if in a small volume all varieties of eloquence and intelligence have thus found a place, all these are the consequences of the above-mentioned fundamental virtue. Other writers had other qualities, such as great eloquence, like Bossuet, or great wit, like Voltaire. Both of these authors, like Pascal, are recognized as masters of French prose, but one gets the impression that their manner of writing is less diverse than Pascal's. Neither Bossuet nor Voltaire were able to fill the entire gap between the tone of everyday conversation and the tone by which it is customary to sing the praises of Henriette and Condé. [18] In the arsenal of means of their art, unlike Pascal, they did not have that special accuracy of drawing or, rather, an immutable sense of proportion. It is not characteristic of Pascal to lack the latter, except perhaps on a single occasion in the sixteenth Letter, "which he did not have time to make shorter" <see pp. 342-343 of the present Letter. t. — OH>. On this day, December 4, 1656, he was deceived as to the interest which the public might have in the method which enabled the Jesuits to distort Arno's views on transubstantiation. But the Sixteenth Letter stands apart, and if there is any originality in the Provincials, it is in this unpretentious stern taste, which directs the choice of words and figures of speech, the choice of humorous tone and the passionate desire for genuine significance of thought, which mark this work. One can laugh at the "Compiègne slap in the face" and amuse oneself at the quarrel between the cook Guille and the Jesuit Borin. However, this question is related to another, the question of knowing what we have the right to do to avenge our offended "honor." And when someone declares, like Lessius or Escobar, that murder is excusable for us in such a case, who is a secret to say that next to the question of the right to administer justice there arises the question of murder, of the right to punish, of the basis of human justice? And as one question arises after another, the tone of the polemics becomes heated, irritated, heightened; the joke acquires greater sharpness; oratorical devices are somehow ordered by themselves under the pen of Pascal. And so, in the absence of a visible transition, the discussion, which began with jokes, ends with blows of the highest eloquence.

But that's not all. Form in Pascal is much more inseparable from content than in Bossuet, and this is the main reason for the success of the Provincials. By quickness and fidelity of sight, by agility and flexibility, by the art of attaching things to their true value and of measuring their efforts accordingly, the Provincialia suddenly threw light on the darkest and most important question which at that time touched the very essence of Christianity. Not that they dispelled any shadow in this case (on the contrary, I would gladly say that some of these shadows were even condensed by them), but from the center of the obscured they extracted that which is the only thing we need to know. It is a question of what neither the profound and learned author of Augustine, who still belongs entirely to scholastic science, nor the author of the Frequent Communion, whom the old Sorbonne so short-sightedly excluded from the number of its doctors, have been able to do, for I doubt whether it has ever had a more glorious representative. To the very morality which in the writings of these authors was hidden under the principles of the dogma of grace, inaccessible in their depth (as if human behavior could depend on a rule incomprehensible to reason!), the Provincials reduced the whole of Jansenism. And at once, everything that was incomprehensible before the publication of this book became clear, clarified, seen with one's own eyes, brought into contact with real life. I am not too surprised, therefore, when Sainte-Beuve, comparing parts of the Provincialia with the Philippines, ventured to say that Demosthenes "was always in a better position than Pascal, since he did not need such an effort to distance himself from popular stereotypes, and he lived in a healthier and more naturally organized society. Oh, this worship of antiquity! If we have a duty to our country, do we not feel a duty to ourselves and, in our hearts, to humanity? What do they want to say with this "distancing effort" that we need in order to interest our whole being in the questions discussed by Pascal: do we, for example, have the right to administer justice for ourselves in our own affairs; whether our "well-being" is worth a person's death; Can we take a false oath to save our lives? But what others, like Descartes, did for philosophy, Pascal, through the Provincials, did for moral theology. He extracted the latter from the darkness of the monastery, from the realm of mystery revealed in confession. He proposes to examine it in the bright light of day. And, without any desire to waste any further time in speculating on the proximate cause and oppressive grace, he, enlarging the field of investigation, appeals to all those who do not see any benefit in such subjects, or, rather, passionately cry out: "This is the consequence of this: now look and pass judgment."

Incidentally, one of the great crimes imputed to the author of the Provincialia is his attempt, without being a theologian, to take up the treatment of questions that are under the exclusive jurisdiction of theologians, and his own example, which provokes the "light" for debates around these questions. But since such an opportunity has presented itself, it is necessary that someone finally take the liberty to say: "light" has the right to do so, and even the obligation to pay attention to it. "Light" has the right to test the principles in whose name it is sought to be guided. And if theologians needlessly conceal these principles from outsiders, or often entangle them in a web of their subtleties, then "light" has the right to purify this subject of impurities. And if the exercise of such a right is beyond his power, he has at least the right to judge of the principles in question by the consequences derived from them. Theology is not a science that can exist independently of its consequences, in the manner of algebra or physics, in respect of which the consequences are in some way antecedent or beyond the field of investigation. For in theology it is not a question of "emptiness," nor of "fullness," nor of "fullness of emptiness"[22], but of human action, of the determination to act in one way or another, and of the motives that guide us. Is grace "preliminary," "concomitant," or "arising as a consequence"? I am not going to call for underestimating this problem, and I hope to be able to show its urgency. But what I really demand (I have the right to demand information about this first of all) is to show the consequences to which the adoption of one or another solution of these problems I propose can lead me. My intellect is quite capable of comprehending them, for it is given to me for such a purpose. Pascal believed in this, and we believe in the same thing, following Pascal. Without separating himself from the Church, and even continuing to form a single whole with it, almost against its own will, the author Provincialius demanded for the "light" those explanations which, as it seemed to him, were denied to the "light." Pascal did more: he himself gave these explanations. And therefore, if the Provincials had been written against the Capuchins, whatever de Maistre had said, they would still be spoken of today, and they would be spoken of in the same way. I have just tried to show the motives under which Pascal entered into a polemic with the Jesuits, and also to emphasize the fact that he could and should have polemicized with them.

And if I have succeeded here, it is time to proceed to show how passionately and at the same time sincerely the author of the Provincials conducted his polemics.

* * *

Let us say in general: even if the author of the Provincials did not always force himself to translate or reproduce the texts he quoted literally,24 nevertheless, at best, he can be caught no more than two or three times in an oversight or a serious omission, and in slander not at all. Father Noué, with the support of Father Anne and Father Brizacier, had once lost time in trying to prove the opposite. And our contemporary, the Abbé Maynard, the author of the Refutation of the Letters to a Provincial (a prelate has lately tried to refer us to this book), has by no means done a better job in this task than his predecessors. If, however, any one should object that even two or three inaccuracies are too many for a work in which Escrbar alone, by his own reckoning, has been quoted no less than sixty-seven times, we will agree, but then we ask it not to be forgotten that if Pascal had wished to make the Provincialia still "stronger," as he put it, "stronger," Escobar and others would have given all the necessary reasons for doing so. The casuists in question do indeed sometimes make harsh decisions, for example, when they teach that a doctor commits a mortal sin by offering his services to so many patients that he is no longer able to take care of all of them. Escobar {Tract. Ill, Ex. IX, 34). There are funny ones among their solutions. Are repressions permissible? — the question asked by the same Escobar. Without a doubt: ita plane[25]. However, subject to six conditions, the first of which is not to take repressive measures against ecclesiastical persons (ibid. Tract. I, Ex. VII, 115). The same is true of the decision relating to the mortal sins of booksellers: "A bookseller commits a mortal sin by selling foreign books if they compete with the books of a compatriot author" (Ibid. Tract. II, Ex. Ill, 2). And, finally, they make scandalous decisions, the necessity of which it would be very desirable to save us from the need to expound in detail. Pascal does not deny and even directly declares that Escobar did have strict instructions, but as for the scandalous and amusing ones, he considered it necessary to choose only those that corresponded to the significance of the plan being implemented.

However, Pascal is also accused of another, more significant and more gross error than the omission or alteration of words in the text of Escobar or Fr. Boni. The reproaches boil down to the fact that the author of the Provincialia speaks of the Moral Theologies of the casuists, written in Latin and intended exclusively for the use of confessors, as if these "theologies" were offered by their authors as reading to any believer; and, secondly, that he depicts the casuists as admitting, or expressly permitting, by their decisions, what in fact is not in the least defended by the authors indicated. In order to fully justify Pascal, it would be necessary to cite here a lot of various details, both about the casuists themselves and about casuistry in general, which is impossible for us. Such a topic would require considerable work, since it is a good book on the history of casuistry that we lack today. However, in anticipation of such a text, it is forgotten that if the author wrote in Latin, this is not at all a reason for Moral Theology not to acquire a large number of readers in the seventeenth century. And is not this thesis proved by the following observation: the success of the Provincials themselves became, so to speak, European only after their translation into Latin by Nicoles? At this very moment, however, I have before my eyes the forty-second edition of Escobar's Moral Theology, dated 1656. However naïve this author may have seem—and he seemed to be terribly naïve—it is unlikely that he could have believed that forty-one previous editions of his book had been used only by confessors. However, in order to be convinced of this, it is enough for us to listen to him himself. He raises questions such as, for example, the following, which I quote in the Latin original:

«Dormire quis nequit nisi sumpla vesperi coena: tenetume jejunare?» [26] And he replies, without softening accents, reservations, or any comment: "Minime." Is it worth demanding something clearer in this case? Here, however, is a decision that is even more affirmative in form; "Dubilo pit expleverim annum vigesimum primumEd. — «Non teneris jejunare». Let us also quote the third quotation: "Dixisti a mortali parvitatem excusare materiae: assigna matenae pawitatem. — «Duarum unciarum, quae est quarta pars collationis». Even if we admit that these questions are of interest only to confessors, then is it really possible to tell a penitent who blames himself for breaking the fast that he did not violate anything, if, unable to fall asleep on an empty stomach, he had supper <the day before>, does not mean to tell him a very definite rule of conduct? As well as to tell him that he has the right to drink wine and even hypocras? [27] So can it be said that Pascal was mistaken when he saw in all this permission and advice to act in a very definite way? With what eyes do we read Escobar if we see something else there? So let us answer, in order not to return to the question of the degree of licentiousness and severity of Escobar's morality, can we understand and accept this casuist differently from the author of The Provincials? No. Whatever may be said about it, the treatises of the casuists were not used only by confessors. And if the most recent proof were required for this thesis, I would draw it from the unequivocal endorsements which have been received by the above-mentioned treatises: "Nose opus — I quote verbatim from a bishop presenting to readers Sanchez's famous work De main-toto — "hoc opus dignissimum censeo quod non solum pm communi scholae utilitate in hicem prodeat, typisque quam dlissime mandetur, verum eliam quod omnium oculis ac manibus continue versetw."

Let's continue with Pascal's acquittal. Another reproach is also brought against him: he blames the entire Society of Jesus for the views of the casuists of that Society, that the highest hierarchs of the Order really had time to read everything that was written by their brethren in all parts of the world! As if the immoderation — they even say extravagance — of some rank-and-file members, established on the basis of events that took place in some Italian monastery, could oblige and, above all, compromise a greater organization! The answer here is more than simple. If the Jesuits do not renounce the glory of their Society, they have no possibility of renouncing the bond of solidarity which binds them to those authors whom they have not publicly renounced. Suárez and Sánchez, Vázquez and Escobar, Lessius and Lugo, Molina and Valencia—are they not the "glory" of the Society, are they not its full-time "theologians" and, therefore, "authorities" on moral matters? We must put an end to this sophism. In the Compendium theologiae moralis of the Jesuit Fr. Gyry, enlarged and corrected by Fr. Dumas, also by a Jesuit, and dated 1881, Escobar and Lamy are characterized as respectable authors, as well as Enríquez and Reginald. For Lyman or Lessia, there are simply no words to give them the praise they deserve. Is this what they say about people whose actions are disapproved? Is it permissible for the Jesuits to talk about the shortcomings or oddities of those whom they continue to extol even after two hundred and fifty or three hundred years? And was Pascal not right in placing on the whole Society the responsibility for the opinions of its "classics," from whose casuistry, as one cannot fail to notice, the Jesuits have always borrowed principles, methods, and solutions?

Much less did he sin against justice by imputing these views only to the Jesuits, and mentioning them alone in his, if I may so express it, accusatory speech against casuistry. Nevertheless, it is here that the basis of an important argument of Fathers Nue and Anna, quoted in their Answers to the Provincialia, as well as of Fr. Daniel, who resorts to a similar means in his Discourses of Cleander and Eudoxus. Not long ago the same argument was one of the arguments of M. J. Bertrand in his curious essay on the Provincials. If Caramuel or Diana, who were by no means Jesuits, raised only a little less "nice questions" than Escobar or Father Boni, then it is surprising why Pascal does not extend his judgments on the morality and politics of the Jesuits to the morality and politics of the Theatines or Benedictines. And this is not only surprising, but is regarded as almost a crime of Pascal[28]. After all, it would be a miracle if Luis López or Tomás Mercado, who are said to be Jacobins, suddenly found solutions that were inferior in scandalous sophistication to those invented by Vasquez or Lessius. However, in order to undermine the authority of the Provincials in this way, they only belittle the importance of the very questions discussed by Pascal and reduce to the scale of a school or, rather, shop rivalry, which always seems too simple, the controversy in which the genius of the author of the Provincials convincingly points to the real subject, to morality as a whole. In this way one is likened to that Medici, the ecclesiastical hierarch, who at one time, from the height of his Vatican, also saw only the "squabbles of the monks" in a memorable dispute, from which began the troubles within the Church, which soon divided the Catholic world into two parts.

Is it really worth attaching importance to the fact that there were casuists dressed in the most diverse clothes and colors? that among them were "barefooted" and "hood-wearing" <see p. 298 of the present day. t. — OH>; that they could be found even among the Jansenists, if no Order, no ecclesiastical community, had in its ranks more numerous, more accommodating, and indeed more famous theologians of this type than the Society of Jesus? If the Jesuits saw better than anyone else the advantage to be derived from casuistry, not only for the guidance or dominion of the conscience, but also for the inclination of religion itself in the direction they desired? If these "janissaries of the Catholic Church" (by such a name they were supposed to be glorified) alone managed to transform the latter into a political means, a military weapon, an instrument of kingship? We have before us a fact which must be seen, and which cannot be seen without going back to the origins of the Society of Jesus (or a little further) and to the age of the Reformation.

Then, in 1656, European reality was characterized by a continuous crisis, which for a century and a half affected morality and religion. One of the episodes, or vicissitudes of this crisis, was Jansenism, chronologically located between the era of the reform of the sixteenth century and the era of philosophy of the fifteenth century. It was a question of the future of religion itself, which was simultaneously attacked from all sides by both secular princes and humanists (Henry. VIII and Erasmus); externally confronted with all the fury of the people's wrath against church rule; shaken from within, as Bossuet said in his History of Change, by its own disorder. Will it continue to retain its power gained through medieval fantasy? Will it be possible to save the remnants of Christian morality from final destruction? It was this problem that Luther tried to solve. And if political necessity, the passions aroused by him and transmitted to his supporters, his own weakness, finally proved to be too inseparably linked with his reform, Calvin partially succeeded in Geneva. It was absolutely necessary for the Church to clarify all this in the end. And, according to the generally accepted opinion, precisely in order to try to transform herself "both in head and in members," she resorted as a last resort to the Council of Trent. It is well known what part the Jesuits played here, as well as in the Counter-Reformation movement in general, which, although it did not return either Germany or England to the bosom of Catholicism, but perhaps prevented Austria and France from converting to Protestantism. None of the historians has ever ignored either the significance or the extent of the role played by the Jesuits, and Pascal himself, recalling it, eloquently contrasts at the end of the thirteenth Provincisha with the former deeds, the original policy, and the Christian strictness of the primitive way of life, which were once characteristic of the Society, the "unbridled teaching" professed by the Jesuits later. "I may perhaps speak to you some day of this, my fathers, and then men will be amazed to see how far you have deviated from the original spirit of your institution, and that your own generals have foreseen that the licentiousness of your moral doctrine might be fatal, not only to your Society, but to the universal Church." The epoch of these changes in Jesuit policy seems to be associated with the generalship of Acquaviva, as well as with the publication of Molina's book Liberi arbitrii gratiae donis concordia, and with the teaching of Lessius at Louvain.

But what really happened? Yes, in fact, nothing, except one deeply inherent and quite natural thing in human nature. Neither Luther and Calvin, nor the papacy and the Jesuits, were able to bring human life to the Gospel ideal, and the worldly spirit triumphed over the divine spirit. A new society was born, rising day by day, not yet literally atheistic and not even characterized by a clearly expressed unbelief, but already saturated with libertinage, indifferent to religion and completely secular. In order for it to continue to be called Christian, and for religion to continue to be given its due, even as an external cult, it was necessary to give it a lighter Christianity. In particular, it was necessary to ensure that in the name of Christianity this society was not preached morality, the principles of which would force the layman to choose between <secular> morality and Christianity. This is what the Jesuits understood when they turned casuistry into a means of reconciling the demands of Christian morality with the secular way of life, and the relaxation of the severity of this morality – which was undoubtedly justified by the magnitude of the goal – into a means of salvation that in religion could still be saved. The texts are categorical on this point: "Those who complain about the many different decisions offered by doctors regarding the right action in this or that life situation are very wrong," writes Escobar in the Preamble to his great Moral Theology, "are very wrong! These persons should rather rejoice at this circumstance, seeing in it so many new reasons for consolation and hope. For the difference of opinion concerning morality is the yoke of the Lord, made easy and pleasant[35] — Ex opinionttm varietate, jugum Christi suavius deportatur." And further, in a manner that is considered ironic and almost Voltairian, although the true character of his virtue, sincerity and piety is unknown to us, Escobar declares: "Providence, in its infinite goodness, has willed that there should be various means to extricate itself from moral conflicts and to make the paths of virtue broad, patescere, in order to confirm the words of the Psalmist:,; Vias turn, Domine, demonstra mihi[36]». Such is the last word of probabilism, and such is the last degree of abuse inherent in the teaching, as Pascal says, of "their" Molina. Yet some souls (I cannot refrain from calling them purer or nobler, but certainly less political and less appreciative of the benefits which would be derived from the reconciliation of the Church with the world, if it were to be achieved to the detriment of the purity of Christianity) were silently indignant, and could not and would not see in such servile teachings anything but a renewed Pelagianism and a direct (prochain) corruption of morality. It is here that the source of Jansenism lies. To these die-hard Christians, ambivalence was unacceptable. They did not allow human freedom, which makes grace useless, and elevates itself to the rank of the sole and authorized arbiter of its own destinies. But to an even greater extent they did not allow the weakening of the practical requirements for virtuous behavior and the exclusion from the very idea of the latter of the two concepts that determine it: human effort and the need for the assistance of heavenly grace.

Need I deliberately emphasize that it is here that the real foundation of the Provincials is to be found, which is equally the foundation of the Mfrtaieui Thus, there is no greater childishness than to attempt to divide Pascal — as is sometimes the case even today — and, rejecting the Provinciapia, to try to preserve in the memory of his Thoughts. "The horrible face of his Gospel," according to Bossuet's energetic expression, was what Pascal intended to illuminate both in Thoughts and in the Provincials. And whatever the Church may say on the subject, it is to the credit of Jansenism that it has never shown any desire to enter into deals with light, but has built the whole edifice of morality on the basis of the victory of grace over lust.