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CHAPTER V.

THE 'PROVINCIAL LETTERS.'

PASCAL'S 'Letters to a Provincial' represent a great controversy, the nature of which it is necessary to explain. They are, at the same time, the most perfect expression of his literary genius, and touch theological questions with such an inimitable grace and felicity of expression as to have awakened a universal intellectual interest. It may be hard to justify this interest by any analysis of their contents, or by such extracts as can be given from them. No English can convey the exquisite fitness of French polemical expression in its highest form, its mingled force and delicacy, its keenness and yet its lightness. We shall, however, endeavour to give as clearly as we can an account, first, of the controversy out of which the 'Letters' originated, and then of the consummate skill with which Pascal conducted it.

M. de St Cyran is not merely one of the chief figures connected with Port Royal: he was the fountain-head of its special power. To his influence and teaching it was indebted for its chief glory and its most terrible sufferings. Jean Baptist du Vergier d'Hauranne, better known by the above official designation, was of noble

family. He was born at Bayonne in 1581, and early devoted himself to the study of theology at Louvain and Paris. While a student, he is supposed to have first made the acquaintance of Cornelius Jansen, and to have begun with him that co-operation which was destined to bear such remarkable fruits. Their intimacy was one based on spiritual affinity and a common enthusiasm. For Jansen was the son of poor peasants, without even a surname. His father is only known as Jan Ottosen, or John the son of Otto; as the son in his turn was Cornelius Jansen, or the son of John. Jansen was the younger of the two friends, having been born in 1585; but he appears to have exercised a powerful influence over his older companion. The great bond of their union and common enthusiasm was the study of St Augustine. For the purpose of pursuing this study undisturbed, they retired to the seaside near Bayonne, and here they established themselves in scholastic seclusion. Smitten with the desire of attaining theological truth, they found the Schoolmen constantly appealing to St Augustine as their authority, and they consequently resolved to examine this authority for themselves, and so ascend to what they believed to be the source of their favourite science. Had they taken only one step further, they would have approached Protestantism; and as it was, the favourite charge which the Jesuits afterwards made against them was, that they were Calvinists in disguise. Unconsciously they were so, notwithstanding all their disclaimers. The Jesuits were unscrupulous; but their penetration here, as in many other cases, was not at fault. The doctrines so warmly espoused by Jansen and St Cyran were the old doctrines of grace, which Calvin

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and they alike borrowed from St Augustine, and he in his turn found in the Epistles of St Paul.1 And the controversy which their labours were destined once more to awaken in the bosom of the Catholic Church was nothing else than the old dispute which, since the days of Augustine and Pelagius, had more than once already agitated it.

The fellow-students continued their studies near Bayonne for five years. So closely did they work, that Jansen is said to have spent days and nights in the same chair, snatching only brief intervals of rest. A game at battledore and shuttlecock occasionally relieved their vigils; but no serious employment divided their attention with the arduous task upon which they had entered, of mastering and digesting the principles of the Augustinian theology. The Bishop of Bayonne offered preferment to D'Hauranne, and there were projects of settling Jansen also at the head of a college; but it was not till some time afterwards that either of them entered upon official labours. They were left during those years to the uninterrupted studies which subsequently resulted in the great work of Jansen. The system of theological thought associated with his name was then definitely matured.

It is beyond our province to sketch the career of these fellow-students, one of whom became the chief spiritual director of Port Royal, and the other its great theological

1 The following genealogy, from a Jesuit source, represents not unfairly the origin of Jansenism and Port Royalism as a theological system: "Paulus genuit Augustinum; Augustinus Calvinum; Calvinus Jansenium; Jansenius Sancyranum; Sancyranus Arnaldum et fratres ejus." The sequel will show how earnestly Pascal disclaims Calvinism.

centre. The abbey of St Cyran was the only preferment which D'Hauranne ever accepted, notwithstanding Richelieu's repeated offers of a bishopric. He was content to exercise from his monastic seclusion an influence far more powerful than that of any bishop of his day. And so penetrating and dangerous did this influence seem to the great Minister whose efforts to bind him to his side had so often failed, that he at length shut him up in Vincennes (May 1638). Here he remained in close confinement for more than four years; but even from this gloomy retreat the impression of his great personal power was spread abroad, and felt in many quarters as steadily as before. He survived his release only a few months. His long imprisonment had broken down his health; and although the enthusiasm of his spirit was strong as ever, his weakened body was no longer able to answer to its demands. He could hardly "hold himself up," and a slight attack of illness carried him off.

St Cyran's chief strength seems to have lain in a concentrated enthusiasm and quiet strength of will which enabled him to hold his own against all opposition, and to subdue other minds larger than his own to his purposes. When the Prince de Condé interceded for him after his arrest, Richelieu's reply was: "Do you know of whom you are speaking? That man is more dangerous than six armies. I say that attrition with confession is necessary: he believes that contrition is necessary. And in the affair of Monsieur's marriage all France has given way to me, and he alone has the hardihood to

1 "Attrition" is a scholastic term for the first acute emotions of the grace of repentance. "Contrition" denotes the grace in a more advanced stage of development.

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oppose it." Against all enticements and assaults alike he set a proud and firm faith in his own mission a patience sublime in its calmness, and in the unwavering consciousness of Divine right on his side. "I am careful to complain of nothing," he said in his imprisonment. "I am ready to remain here a hundred years; to die here, if God will. I am ready for whatever He designs for action or for suffering." The same faith and quiet assurance gave him his marvellous influence over others, and that fascination which made him a power in the cultivated society of Paris. All the Arnauld family more or less owned his influence; and it was his teaching mainly that peopled Port Royal with the Solitaries who have made it so illustrious.

The life and work of Jansen seem at first far removed from Port Royal. He returned to Louvain after his sojourn at Bayonne, and became a professor of theology in its famous university, on whose behalf he was employed in several political negotiations with the Spanish Court. Finally he was appointed Bishop of Ypres, in which capacity he is chiefly known in the ecclesiastical world. His fame, however, rests not on any political or ecclesiastical labours, but on the results flowing from his original studies at Bayonne. He never forgot his devotion to St Augustine. He is said to have read the whole of his writings ten times, and the treatises against the Pelagians not less than thirty times. The fruit of all this studious devotion was his work known briefly as the Augustinus,' published two years after

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1 The full title is, "Cornelii Jansenii Episcopi Iprensis Augustinus: seu doctrina S. Augustini de humanæ naturæ sanitate, ægritudine, medicinâ, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses."