Ferrier, the Jesuit, avows that, after the terrible blow inflicted by the Lettres Provinciales, the Jesuits were crushed, and that they fell into derision and contempt. A multitude of bishops condemned them, and not one stood up in their defence.

One of the means they employed to mend their case was, to say boldly that the opinions with which they were reproached were not those of the Society, but of a few individuals. They were answered that, as all their books were examined by the chief, they belonged thus to the whole body. No matter: to amuse the simple, they got a few of their order to write against their own doctrine. A Spanish Jesuit wrote against Ultramontanism. Another, the Father Gonzalis, wrote a book against the casuists: he was very useful to them. When, in course of time, Rome was at last ashamed of their doctrine, and disavowed them, they put Gonzalis forward, printed his book, and made him their general. Even in our own time, it is this book and this name that they oppose to us. Thus they have an answer for every thing. Should you like indulgence, take Escobar; should you prefer severity, take Gonzalis.

Let us now see what was the result of this general contempt into which they fell after the Provinciales. Public conscience having received such good warning, every one apparently will hasten to shun them. Their confession will be avoided and their colleges deserted. You think so? Then you are much mistaken.

They are too necessary to the corruption of the age. How could the king, with his twofold adultery, posted up in the face of all Europe, make his devotions without them? Fathers Ferrier, Canard*, and Lachaise, will remain with him till the end, like old pieces of furniture that are too convenient to be dispensed with.

But does not Rome perceive how much she is compromised by such allies? Is it not incumbent on her to separate from them?

A pope

Feeble attempts were not wanting. condemned the apology of the casuists that the Jesuits had risked. The energy of Rome went no further if any remained, it was employed against the enemies of the Jesuits. The latter got the upper hand; they had succeeded, in the beginning of the century, in getting the head of the church to impose silence on the doctrine of grace, as defended by the Dominicans; and they silenced it again, in the middle of the century, when it recommenced speaking by the mouth of the Jansenists.

The Jesuits showed their gratitude to Rome, for imposing this silence a second time, by stretching still further the infallibility of the pope. They did not fear to build up still higher this falling Tower of Babel; they increased it by two stories: first, they asserted (by their Bellarmin) the infallibility of the

*He it was who would be called only by his Latinized name, Annat.

pope in matters of faith. Secondly, when the danger had become imminent, they took a bold and foolish step; but it secured to them the friendship of Rome; they made the pope do in his decrepitude what he had never dared to do in his power-declare himself infallible in matters of fact.

And this at the very moment that Rome was obliged to confess that she was wrong about the greatest facts of nature and history. Not to speak of the New World, which she was obliged to admit, after having denied it, she condemns Galileo, and then she submits to his system, adopts and teaches it: the penance that she imposed on him for one day, has, since Galileo, been inflicted upon herself for two hundred years.*

Here is another fact, still graver in one sense:

The fundamental right of popes, the title of their power, those famous Decrees which they quoted and defended, as long as criticism, unaided by the art of printing, failed to enlighten mankind; -well! the pope is obliged to confess that these very Decrees are a tissue of lies and imposture.†

What! when Popery has disclaimed its own words,

* They will say, these are material sciences, and that they are spiritual men. To that I answer, he who does not understand the natural, has no right to distinguish the supernatural from it, nor decide about it.

† By the instrumentality of the two cardinals and librarians of the Vatican, Bellarmin and Baronius, one of whom was the confessor of the pope.

and given itself the lie on the fundamental fact, upon which its own right depends, is it then that the Jesuits claim for her infallibility in matters of fact?

The Jesuits have been the tempters and corrupters of popes as well as of kings. They caught kings by their concupiscence, and popes by their pride.

It is a laughable, but touching sight to see this poor little Jansenist party, then so great in genius and heart*, resolute in making an appeal to the justice of Rome, and remaining on their knees before this mercenary judge!†

The Jesuits were not so blind but that they saw that popery, foolishly propped up by them in theology, was miserably losing ground in the political world. In the beginning of the 17th century the pope was still powerful; he whipped Henry IV. in the person of the Cardinal d'Ossat. But in the middle of

* Who can see in the Louvre the tragical portrait of Angelicus Arnaud without emotion? his pale face so pure and so austere, like a transparent alabaster lamp illuminated by the inward flame, the flame of grace- the flame also of battles. But how can we accuse him—persecuted, and given up to those whom every body despised? Virtue and genius oppressed by cunning! I never go to the Museum without looking also at the touching picture of the young nun of Port-Royal, saved by a prayer. Ah! these girls were saints, we must say; whether we like their spirit of resistance or not, they were saints; and, moreover, under the form of that age, real defenders of liberty.

† Read, however, the immortal 5th letter of Nicole (Imaginaries and Visionaries, vol. i. p. 140.), which is as eloquent as the Provinciales, and much bolder.

that century, after all the great efforts of the Thirty Years' War, the pope was not even consulted in the treaty of Westphalia; and in that of the Pyrenees, between catholic Spain and very-christian France, they forgot that he existed.

The Jesuits had undertaken what was perfectly impossible; and the principal engine they employed for it- the monopoly of the rising generation-was not less impossible. Their greatest effort had been directed to this point; they had succeeded in getting into their hands the greater part of the children of the nobility and of people of fortune; they had contrived, by means of education, a machine to narrow the mind, and crush the intellect. But such was the vigour of modern invention, that in spite of the most ingenious machinery to annihilate invention, the first generation produced Descartes, the second the author of Tartuffe, and the third Voltaire.

The worst of it is, by the light of this great modern flambeau which they had been unable to extinguish, they saw their own deformity. They knew what they were, and began to despise themselves. No one is so hardened in lying as to deceive himself entirely. They were obliged tacitly to confess that their probabilism, or doctrine of probability*, was at

* The doctrine of probability was this, that a man might, with a safe conscience, follow an opinion or precept recommended by four, or three, or two doctors, or even by one doctor