Letter XVI

December 4, 1656
REVEREND FATHERS,
I now come to consider the rest of your calumnies, and shall begin
with those contained in your advertisements, which remain to be
noticed. As all your other writings, however, are equally well stocked
with slander, they will furnish me with abundant materials for
entertaining you on this topic as long as I may judge expedient. In
the first place, then, with regard to the fable which you have
propagated in all your writings against the Bishop of Ypres, I beg
leave to say, in one word, that you have maliciously wrested the
meaning of some ambiguous expressions in one of his letters which,
being capable of a good sense, ought, according to the spirit of the
Gospel, to have been taken in good part, and could only be taken
otherwise according to the spirit of your Society. For example, when
he says to a friend, "Give yourself no concern about your nephew; I
will furnish him with what he requires from the money that lies in
my hands," what reason have you to interpret this to mean that he
would take that money without restoring it, and not that he merely
advanced it with the purpose of replacing it? And how extremely
imprudent was it for you to furnish a refutation of your own lie, by
printing the other letters of the Bishop of Ypres, which clearly
show that, in point of fact, it was merely advanced money, which he
was bound to refund. This appears, to your confusion, from the
following terms in the letter, to which you give the date of July
30, 1619: "Be not uneasy about the money advanced; he shall want for
nothing so long as he is here"; and likewise from another, dated
January 6, 1620, where he says: "You are in too great haste; when
the account shall become due, I have no fear but that the little
credit which I have in this place will bring me as much money as I
require."

If you are convicted slanderers on this subject, you are no less
so in regard to the ridiculous story about the charity-box of St.
Merri. What advantage, pray, can you hope to derive from the
accusation which one of your worthy friends has trumped up against
that ecclesiastic? Are we to conclude that a man is guilty, because he
is accused? No, fathers. Men of piety, like him, may expect to be
perpetually accused, so long as the world contains calumniators like
you. We must judge of him, therefore, not from the accusation, but
from the sentence; and the sentence pronounced on the case (February
23, 1656) justifies him completely. Moreover, the person who had the
temerity to involve himself in that iniquitous process, was
disavowed by his colleagues, and himself compelled to retract his
charge. And as to what you allege, in the same place, about "that
famous director, who pocketed at once nine hundred thousand livres," I
need only refer you to Messieurs the cures of St. Roch and St. Paul,
who will bear witness, before the whole city of Paris, to his
perfect disinterestedness in the affair, and to your inexcusable
malice in that piece of imposition.

Enough, however, for such paltry falsities. These are but the
first raw attempts of your novices, and not the master-strokes of your
"grand professed." To these do I now come, fathers; I come to a
calumny which is certainly one of the basest that ever issued from the
spirit of your Society. I refer to the insufferable audacity with
which you have imputed to holy nuns, and to their directors, the
charge of "disbelieving the mystery of transubstantiation and the real
presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist." Here, fathers, is a
slander worthy of yourselves. Here is a crime which God alone is
capable of punishing, as you alone were capable of committing it. To
endure it with patience would require an humility as great as that
of these calumniated ladies; to give it credit would demand a degree
of wickedness equal to that of their wretched defamers. I propose not,
therefore, to vindicate them; they are beyond suspicion. Had they
stood in need of defence, they might have commanded abler advocates
than me. My object in what I say here is to show, not their innocence,
but your malignity. I merely intend to make you ashamed of yourselves,
and to let the whole world understand that, after this, there is
nothing of which you are not capable.

You will not fail, I am certain, notwithstanding all this, to
say that I belong to Port-Royal; for this is the first thing you say
to every one who combats your errors: as if it were only at Port-Royal
that persons could be found possessed of sufficient zeal to defend,
against your attacks, the purity of Christian morality. I know,
fathers, the work of the pious recluses who have retired to that
monastery, and how much the Church is indebted to their truly solid
and edifying labours. I know the excellence of their piety and their
learning. For, though I have never had the honour to belong to their
establishment, as you, without knowing who or what I am, would fain
have it believed, nevertheless, I do know some of them, and honour the
virtue of them all. But God has not confined within the precincts of
that society all whom he means to raise up in opposition to your
corruptions. I hope, with his assistance, fathers, to make you feel
this; and if he vouchsafe to sustain me in the design he has led me to
form, of employing in his service all the resources I have received
from him, I shall speak to you in such a strain as will, perhaps, give
you reason to regret that you have not had to do with a man of
Port-Royal. And to convince you of this, fathers, I must tell you
that, while those whom you have abused with this notorious slander
content themselves with lifting up their groans to Heaven to obtain
your forgiveness for the outrage, I feel myself obliged, not being
in the least affected by your slander, to make you blush in the face
of the whole Church, and so bring you to that wholesome shame of which
the Scripture speaks, and which is almost the only remedy for a
hardness of heart like yours: "Imple facies eorum ignominia, et
quaerent nomen tuum, Domine- Fill their faces with shame, that they
may seek thy name, O Lord."

A stop must be put to this insolence, which does not spare the
most sacred retreats. For who can be safe after a calumny of this
nature? For shame, fathers! to publish in Paris such a scandalous
book, with the name of your Father Meynier on its front, and under
this infamous title, Port-Royal and Geneva in concert against the most
holy Sacrament of the Altar, in which you accuse of this apostasy, not
only Monsieur the abbe of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, but also Mother
Agnes, his sister, and all the nuns of that monastery, alleging that
"their faith, in regard to the eucharist, is as suspicious as that
of M. Arnauld," whom you maintain to be "a down-right Calvinist." I
here ask the whole world if there be any class of persons within the
pale of the Church, on whom you could have advanced such an abominable
charge with less semblance of truth. For tell me, fathers, if these
nuns and their directors had been "in concert with Geneva against
the most holy sacrament of the altar" (the very thought of which is
shocking), how they should have come to select as the principal object
of their piety that very sacrament which they held in abomination? How
should they have assumed the habit of the holy sacrament? taken the
name of the Daughters of the Holy Sacrament? called their church the
Church of the Holy Sacrament? How should they have requested and
obtained from Rome the confirmation of that institution, and the right
of saying every Thursday the office of the holy sacrament, in which
the faith of the Church is so perfectly expressed, if they had
conspired with Geneva to banish that faith from the Church? Why
would they have bound themselves, by a particular devotion, also
sanctioned by the Pope, to have some of their sisterhood, night and
day without intermission, in presence of the sacred host, to
compensate, by their perpetual adorations towards that perpetual
sacrifice, for the impiety of the heresy that aims at its
annihilation? Tell me, fathers, if you can, why, of all the
mysteries of our religion, they should have passed by those in which
they believed, to fix upon that in which they believed not? and how
they should have devoted themselves, so fully and entirely, to that
mystery of our faith, if they took it, as the heretics do, for the
mystery of iniquity? And what answer do you give to these clear
evidences, embodied not in words only, but in actions; and not in some
particular actions, but in the whole tenor of a life expressly
dedicated to the adoration of Jesus Christ, dwelling on our altars?
What answer, again, do you give to the books which you ascribe to
Port-Royal, all of which are full of the most precise terms employed
by the fathers and the councils to mark the essence of that mystery?
It is at once ridiculous and disgusting to hear you replying to
these as you have done throughout your libel. M. Arnauld, say you,
talks very well about transubstantiation; but he understands, perhaps,
only "a significative transubstantiation." True, he professes to
believe in "the real presence"; who can tell, however, but he means
nothing more than "a true and real figure"? How now, fathers! whom,
pray, will you not make pass for a Calvinist whenever you please, if
you are to allowed the liberty of perverting the most canonical and
sacred expressions by the wicked subtleties of your modern
equivocations? Who ever thought of using any other terms than those in
question, especially in simple discourses of devotion, where no
controversies are handled? And yet the love and the reverence in which
they hold this sacred mystery have induced them to give it such a
prominence in all their writings that I defy you, fathers, with all
your cunning, to detect in them either the least appearance of
ambiguity, or the slightest correspondence with the sentiments of
Geneva.

Everybody knows, fathers, that the essence of the Genevan heresy
consists, as it does according to your own showing, in their believing
that Jesus Christ is not contained in this sacrament; that it is
impossible he can be in many places at once; that he is, properly
speaking, only in heaven, and that it is as there alone that he
ought to be adored, and not on the altar; that the substance of the
bread remains; that the body of Jesus Christ does not enter into the
mouth or the stomach; that he can only be eaten by faith, and
accordingly wicked men do not eat him at all; and that the mass is not
a sacrifice, but an abomination. Let us now hear, then, in what way
"Port-Royal is in concert with Geneva." In the writings of the
former we read, to your confusion, the following statement: That
"the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ are contained under the species
of bread and wine"; that "the Holy of Holies is present in the
sanctuary, and that there he ought to be adored"; that "Jesus Christ
dwells in the sinners who communicate, by the real and veritable
presence of his body in their stomach, although not by the presence of
his Spirit in their hearts"; that "the dead ashes of the bodies of the
saints derive their principal dignity from that seed of life which
they retain from the touch of the immortal and vivifying flesh of
Jesus Christ"; that "it is not owing to any natural power, but to
the almighty power of God, to whom nothing is impossible, that the
body of Jesus Christ is comprehended under the host, and under the
smallest portion of every host"; that "the divine virtue is present to
produce the effect which the words of consecration signify"; that
"Jesus Christ, while be is lowered and hidden upon the altar, is, at
the same time, elevated in his glory; that he subsists, of himself and
by his own ordinary power, in divers places at the same time- in the
midst of the Church triumphant, and in the midst of the Church
militant and travelling"; that "the sacramental species remain
suspended, and subsist extraordinarily, without being upheld by any
subject; and that the body of Jesus Christ is also suspended under the
species, and that it does not depend upon these, as substances
depend upon accidents"; that "the substance of the bread is changed,
the immutable accidents remaining the same"; that "Jesus Christ
reposes in the eucharist with the same glory that he has in heaven";
that "his glorious humanity resides in the tabernacles of the
Church, under the species of bread, which forms its visible
covering; and that, knowing the grossness of our natures, he
conducts us to the adoration of his divinity, which is present in
all places, by the adoring of his humanity, which is present in a
particular place"; that "we receive the body of Jesus Christ upon
the tongue, which is sanctified by its divine touch"; "that it
enters into the mouth of the priest"; that "although Jesus Christ
has made himself accessible in the holy sacrament, by an act of his
love and graciousness, he preserves, nevertheless, in that
ordinance, his inaccessibility, as an inseparable condition of his
divine nature; because, although the body alone and the blood alone
are there, by virtue of the words- vi verborum, as the schoolmen
say- his whole divinity may, notwithstanding, be there also, as well
as his whole humanity, by a necessary conjunction." In fine, that "the
eucharist is at the same time sacrament and sacrifice"; and that
"although this sacrifice is a commemoration of that of the cross,
yet there is this difference between them, that the sacrifice of the
mass is offered for the Church only, and for the faithful in her
communion; whereas that of the cross has been offered for all the
world, as the Scripture testifies."

I have quoted enough, fathers, to make it evident that there was
never, perhaps, a more imprudent thing attempted than what you have
done. But I will go a step farther, and make you pronounce this
sentence against yourselves. For what do you require from a man, in
order to remove all suspicion of his being in concert and
correspondence with Geneva? "If M. Arnauld," says your Father Meynier,
p.93, "had said that, in this adorable mystery, there is no
substance of the bread under the species, but only the flesh and the
blood of Jesus Christ, I should have confessed that he had declared
himself absolutely against Geneva." Confess it, then, ye revilers! and
make him a public apology. How often have you seen this declaration
made in the passages I have just cited? Besides this, however, the
Familiar Theology of M. de St. Cyran having been approved by M.
Arnauld, it contains the sentiments of both. Read, then, the whole
of lesson 15th, and particularly article 2d, and you will there find
the words you desiderate, even more formally stated than you have done
yourselves. "Is there any bread in the host, or any wine in the
chalice? No: for all the substance of the bread and the wine is
taken away, to give place to that of the body and blood of Jesus
Christ, the which substance alone remains therein, covered by the
qualities and species of bread and wine."

How now, fathers! will you still say that Port-Royal teaches
"nothing that Geneva does not receive," and that M. Arnauld has said
nothing in his second letter "which might not have been said by a
minister of Charenton"? See if you can persuade Mestrezat to speak
as M. Arnauld does in that letter, on page 237. Make him say that it
is an infamous calumny to accuse him of denying transubstantiation;
that he takes for the fundamental principle of his writings the
truth of the real presence of the Son of God, in opposition to the
heresy of the Calvinists; and that he accounts himself happy for
living in a place where the Holy of Holies is continually adored in
the sanctuary"- a sentiment which is still more opposed to the
belief of the Calvinists than the real presence itself; for, as
Cardinal Richelieu observes in his Controversies (p. 536): "The new
ministers of France having agreed with the Lutherans, who believe
the real presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist; they have declared
that they remain in a state of separation from the Church on the point
of this mystery, only on account of the adoration which Catholics
render to the eucharist." Get all the passages which I have
extracted from the books of Port-Royal subscribed at Geneva, and not
the isolated passages merely, but the entire treatises regarding
this mystery, such as the Book of Frequent Communion, the
Explication of the Ceremonies of the Mass, the Exercise during Mass,
the Reasons of the Suspension of the Holy Sacrament, the Translation
of the Hymns in the Hours of Port-Royal, &c.; in one word, prevail
upon them to establish at Charenton that holy institution of
adoring, without intermission, Jesus Christ contained in the
eucharist, as is done at Port-Royal, and it will be the most signal
service which you could render to the Church; for in this case it will
turn out, not that Port-Royal is in concert with Geneva, but that
Geneva is in concert with Port-Royal and with the whole Church.

Certainly, fathers, you could not have been more unfortunate
than in selecting Port-Royal as the object of attack for not believing
in the eucharist; but I will show what led you to fix upon it. You
know I have picked up some small acquaintance with your policy; in
this instance you have acted upon its maxims to admiration. If
Monsieur the abbe of St. Cyran, and M. Arnauld, had only spoken of
what ought to be believed with great respect to this mystery, and said
nothing about what ought to be done in the way of preparation for
its reception, they might have been the best Catholics alive; and no
equivocations would have been discovered in their use of the terms
real presence and transubstantiation. But, since all who combat your
licentious principles must needs be heretics, and heretics, too, in
the very point in which they condemn your laxity, how could M. Arnauld
escape falling under this charge on the subject of the eucharist,
after having published a book expressly against your profanations of
that sacrament? What! must he be allowed to say, with impunity, that
"the body of Jesus Christ ought not to be given to those who
habitually lapse into the same crimes, and who have no prospect of
amendment; and that such persons ought to be excluded, for some
time, from the altar, to purify themselves by sincere penitence,
that they may approach it afterwards with benefit"? Suffer no one to
talk in this strain, fathers, or you will find that fewer people
will come to your confessionals. Father Brisacier says that "were
you to adopt this course, you would never apply the blood of Jesus
Christ to a single individual." It would be infinitely more for your
interest were every one to adopt the views of your Society, as set
forth by your Father Mascarenhas, in a book approved by your
doctors, and even by your reverend Father-General, namely: "That
persons of every description, and even priests, may receive the body
of Jesus Christ on the very day they have polluted themselves with
odious crimes; that, so far from such communions implying irreverence,
persons who partake of them in this manner act a commendable part;
that confessors ought not to keep them back from the ordinance, but,
on the contrary, ought to advise those who have recently committed
such crimes to communicate immediately; because, although the Church
has forbidden it, this prohibition is annulled by the universal
practice in all places of the earth."

See what it is, fathers, to have Jesuits in all places of the
earth! Behold the universal practice which you have introduced, and
which you are anxious everywhere to maintain! It matters nothing
that the tables of Jesus Christ are filled with abominations, provided
that your churches are crowded with people. Be sure, therefore, cost
what it may, to set down all that dare to say a word against your
practice as heretics on the holy sacrament. But how can you do this,
after the irrefragable testimonies which they have given of their
faith? Are you not afraid of my coming out with the four grand
proofs of their heresy which you have adduced? You ought, at least, to
be so, fathers, and I ought not to spare your blushing. Let us,
then, proceed to examine proof the first.

"M. de St. Cyran," says Father Meynier, "consoling one of his
friends upon the death of his mother (tom. i., let. 14), says that the
most acceptable sacrifice that can be offered up to God, on such
occasions, is that of patience; therefore he is a Calvinist." This
is marvellously shrewd reasoning, fathers; and I doubt if anybody will
be able to discover the precise point of it. Let us learn it, then,
from his own mouth. "Because," says this mighty controversialist,
"it is obvious that he does not believe in the sacrifice of the
mass; for this is, of all other sacrifices, the most acceptable unto
God." Who will venture to say now that the do not know how to
reason? Why, they know the art to such perfection that they will
extract heresy out of anything you choose to mention, not even
excepting the Holy Scripture itself! For example, might it not be
heretical to say, with the wise man in Ecclesiasticus, "There is
nothing worse than to love money"; as if adultery, murder, or
idolatry, were not far greater crimes? Where is the man who is not
in the habit of using similar expressions every day? May we not say,
for instance, that the most acceptable of all sacrifices in the eyes
of God is that of a contrite and humbled heart; just because, in
discourses of this nature, we simply mean to compare certain
internal virtues with one another, and not with the sacrifice of the
mass, which is of a totally different order, and infinitely more
exalted? Is this not enough to make you ridiculous, fathers? And is it
necessary, to complete your discomfiture, that I should quote the
passages of that letter in which M. de St. Cyran speaks of the
sacrifice of the mass as "the most excellent" of all others, in the
following terms? "Let there be presented to God, daily and in all
places, the sacrifice of the body of his Son, who could not find a
more excellent way than that by which he might honour his Father." And
afterwards: "Jesus Christ has enjoined us to take, when we are
dying, his sacrificed body, to render more acceptable to God the
sacrifice of our own, and to join himself with us at the hour of
dissolution; to the end that he may strengthen us for the struggle,
sanctifying, by his presence, the last sacrifice which we make to
God of our life and our body"? Pretend to take no notice of all
this, fathers, and persist in maintaining, as you do in page 39,
that he refused to take the communion on his death-bed, and that he
did not believe in the sacrifice of the mass. Nothing can be too gross
for calumniators by profession.

Your second proof furnishes an excellent illustration of this.
To make a Calvinist of M. de St. Cyran, to whom you ascribe the book
of Petrus Aurelius, you take advantage of a passage (page 80) in which
Aurelius explains in what manner the Church acts towards priests,
and even bishops, whom she wishes to degrade or depose. "The
Church," he says, "being incapable of depriving them of the power of
the order, the character of which is indelible, she does all that
she can do: she banishes from her memory the character which she
cannot banish from the souls of the individuals who have been once
invested with it; she regards them in the same light as if they were
not bishops or priests; so that, according to the ordinary language of
the Church, it may be said they are no longer such, although they
always remain such, in as far as the character is concerned- ob
indelebilitatem characteris." You perceive, fathers, that this author,
who has been approved by three general assemblies of the clergy of
France, plainly declares that the character of the priesthood is
indelible; and yet you make him say, on the contrary, in the very same
passage, that "the character of the priesthood is not indelible." This
is what I would call a notorious slander; in other words, according to
your nomenclature, a small venial sin. And the reason is, this book
has done you some harm by refuting the heresies of your brethren in
England touching the Episcopal authority. But the folly of the
charge is equally remarkable; for, after having taken it for
granted, without any foundation, that M. de St. Cyran holds the
priestly character to be not indelible, you conclude from this that he
does not believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the
eucharist.

Do not expect me to answer this, fathers. If you have got no
common sense, I am not able to furnish you with it. All who possess
any share of it will enjoy a hearty laugh at your expense. Nor will
they treat with greater respect your third proof, which rests upon the
following words, taken from the Book of Frequent Communion: "In the
eucharist God vouchsafes us the same food that He bestows on the
saints in heaven, with this difference only, that here He withholds
from us its sensible sight and taste, reserving both of these for
the heavenly world." These words express the sense of the Church so
distinctly that I am constantly forgetting what reason you have for
picking a quarrel with them, in order to turn them to a bad use; for I
can see nothing more in them than what the Council of Trent teaches
(sess. xiii, c. 8), namely, that there is no difference between
Jesus Christ in the eucharist and Jesus Christ in heaven, except
that here he is veiled, and there he is not. M. Arnauld does not say
that there is no difference in the manner of receiving Jesus Christ,
but only that there is no difference in Jesus Christ who is
received. And yet you would, in the face of all reason, interpret
his language in this passage to mean that Jesus Christ is no more
eaten with the mouth in this world than he is in heaven; upon which
you ground the charge of heresy against him.

You really make me sorry for you, fathers. Must we explain this
further to you? Why do you confound that divine nourishment with the
manner of receiving it? There is but one point of difference, as I
have just observed, betwixt that nourishment upon earth and in heaven,
which is that here it is hidden under veils which deprive us of its
sensible sight and taste; but there are various points of
dissimilarity in the manner of receiving it here and there, the
principal of which is, as M. Arnauld expresses it (p.3, ch.16),
"that here it enters into the mouth and the breast both of the good
and of the wicked," which is not the case in heaven.
And, if you require to be told the reason of this diversity, I may
inform you, fathers, that the cause of God's ordaining these different
modes of receiving the same food is the difference that exists betwixt
the state of Christians in this life and that of the blessed in
heaven. The state of the Christian, as Cardinal Perron observes
after the fathers, holds a middle place between the state of the
blessed and the state of the Jews. The spirits in bliss possess
Jesus Christ really, without veil or figure. The Jews possessed
Jesus Christ only in figures and veils, such as the manna and the
paschal lamb. And Christians possess Jesus Christ in the eucharist
really and truly, although still concealed under veils. "God," says
St. Eucher, "has made three tabernacles: the synagogue, which had
the shadows only, without the truth; the Church, which has the truth
and shadows together; and heaven, where there is no shadow, but the
truth alone." It would be a departure from our present state, which is
the state of faith, opposed by St. Paul alike to the law and to open
vision, did we possess the figures only, without Jesus Christ; for
it is the property of the law to have the mere figure, and not the
substance of things. And it would be equally a departure from our
present state if we possessed him visibly; because faith, according to
the same apostle, deals not with things that are seen. And thus the
eucharist, from its including Jesus Christ truly, though under a veil,
is in perfect accordance with our state of faith. It follows that this
state would be destroyed, if, as the heretics maintain, Jesus Christ
were not really under the species of bread and wine; and it would be
equally destroyed if we received him openly, as they do in heaven:
since, on these suppositions, our state would be confounded, either
with the state of Judaism or with that of glory.

Such, fathers, is the mysterious and divine reason of this most
divine mystery. This it is that fills us with abhorrence at the
Calvinists, who would reduce us to the condition of the Jews; and this
it is that makes us aspire to the glory of the beatified, where we
shall be introduced to the full and eternal enjoyment of Jesus Christ.
From hence you must see that there are several points of difference
between the manner in which he communicates himself to Christians
and to the blessed; and that, amongst others, he is in this world
received by the mouth, and not so in heaven; but that they all
depend solely on the distinction between our state of faith and
their state of immediate vision. And this is precisely, fathers,
what M. Arnauld has expressed, with great plainness, in the
following terms: "There can be no other difference between the
purity of those who receive Jesus Christ in the eucharist and that
of the blessed, than what exists between faith and the open vision
of God, upon which alone depends the different manner in which he is
eaten upon earth and in heaven." You were bound in duty, fathers, to
have revered in these words the sacred truths they express, instead of
wresting them for the purpose of detecting an heretical meaning
which they never contained, nor could possibly contain, namely, that
Jesus Christ is eaten by faith only, and not by the mouth; the
malicious perversion of your Fathers Annat and Meynier, which forms
the capital count of their indictment.

Conscious, however, of the wretched deficiency of your proofs, you
have had recourse to a new artifice, which is nothing less than to
falsify the Council of Trent, in order to convict M. Arnauld of
nonconformity with it; so vast is your store of methods for making
people heretics. This feat has been achieved by Father Meynier, in
fifty different places of his book, and about eight or ten times in
the space of a single page (the 54th), wherein he insists that to
speak like a true Catholic it is not enough to say, "I believe that
Jesus Christ is really present in the eucharist," but we must say,
"I believe, with the council, that he is present by a true local
presence, or locally." And, in proof of this, he cites the council,
session xiii, canon 3d, canon 4th, and canon 6th. Who would not
suppose, upon seeing the term local presence quoted from three
canons of a universal council, that the phrase was actually to be
found in them? This might have served your turn very well, before
the appearance of my Fifteenth Letter; but, as matters now stand,
fathers, the trick has become too stale for us. We go our way and
consult the council, and discover only that you are falsifiers. Such
terms as local presence, locally, and locality, never existed in the
passages to which you refer; and let me tell you further, they are not
to be found in any other canon of that council, nor in any other
previous council, not in any father of the Church. Allow me, then,
to ask you, fathers, if you mean to cast the suspicion of Calvinism
upon all that have not made use of that peculiar phrase? If this be
the case, the Council of Trent must be suspected of heresy, and all
the holy fathers without exception. Have you no other way of making M.
Arnauld heretical, without abusing so many other people who never
did you any harm, and, among the rest, St. Thomas, who is one of the
greatest champions of the eucharist, and who, so far from employing
that term, has expressly rejected it- "Nullo modo corpus Christi est
in hoc sacramento localiter.- By no means is the body of Christ in
this sacrament locally"? Who are you, then, fathers, to pretend, on
your authority, to impose new terms, and ordain them to be used by all
for rightly expressing their faith; as if the profession of the faith,
drawn up by the popes according to the plan of the council, in which
this term has no place, were defective, and left an ambiguity in the
creed of the faithful which you had the sole merit of discovering?
Such a piece of arrogance, to prescribe these terms, even to learned
doctors! such a piece of forgery, to attribute them to general
councils! and such ignorance, not to know the objections which the
most enlightened saints have made to their reception! "Be ashamed of
the error of your ignorance," as the Scripture says of ignorant
impostors like you, "De mendacio ineruditionis tuae confundere."

Give up all further attempts, then, to act the masters; you have
neither character nor capacity for the part. If, however, you would
bring forward your propositions with a little more modesty, they might
obtain a hearing. For, although this phrase, local presence, has
been rejected, as you have seen, by St. Thomas, on the ground that the
body of Jesus Christ is not in the eucharist, in the ordinary
extension of bodies in their places, the expression has, nevertheless,
been adopted by some modern controversial writers, who understand it
simply to mean that the body of Jesus Christ is truly under the
species, which being in a particular place, the body of Jesus Christ
is there also. And in this sense M. Arnauld will make no scruple to
admit the term, as M. de St. Cyran and he have repeatedly declared
that Jesus Christ in the eucharist is truly in a particular place, and
miraculously in many places at the same time. Thus all your subtleties
fall to the ground; and you have failed to give the slightest
semblance of plausibility to an accusation which ought not to have
been allowed to show its face without being supported by the most
unanswerable proofs.

But what avails it, fathers, to oppose their innocence to your
calumnies? You impute these errors to them, not in the belief that
they maintain heresy, but from the idea that they have done you
injury. That is enough, according to your theology, to warrant you
to calumniate them without criminality; and you can, without either
penance or confession, say mass, at the very time that you charge
priests, who say it every day, with holding it to be pure idolatry;
which, were it true, would amount to sacrilege no less revolting
than that of your own Father Jarrige, whom you yourselves ordered to
be hanged in effigy, for having said mass "at the time he was in
agreement with Geneva."

What surprises me, therefore, is not the little scrupulosity
with which you load them with crimes of the foulest and falsest
description, but the little prudence you display, by fixing on them
charges so destitute of plausibility. You dispose of sins, it is true,
at your pleasure; but do you mean to dispose of men's beliefs too?
Verily, fathers, if the suspicion of Calvinism must needs fall
either on them or on you, you would stand, I fear, on very ticklish
ground. Their language is as Catholic as yours; but their conduct
confirms their faith, and your conduct belies it. For if you
believe, as well as they do, that the bread is really changed into the
body of Jesus Christ, why do you not require, as they do, from those
whom you advise to approach the altar, that the heart of stone and ice
should be sincerely changed into a heart of flesh and of love? If
you believe that Jesus Christ is in that sacrament in a state of
death, teaching those that approach it to die to the world, to sin,
and to themselves, why do you suffer those to profane it in whose
breasts evil passions continue to reign in all their life and
vigour? And how do you come to judge those worthy to eat the bread
of heaven, who are not worthy to eat that of earth?

Precious votaries, truly, whose zeal is expended in persecuting
those who honour this sacred mystery by so many holy communions, and
in flattering those who dishonour it by so many sacrilegious
desecrations! How comely is it, in these champions of a sacrifice so
pure and so venerable, to collect around the table of Jesus Christ a
crowd of hardened profligates, reeking from their debauchcries; and to
plant in the midst of them a priest, whom his own confessor has
hurried from his obscenities to the altar; there, in the place of
Jesus Christ, to offer up that most holy victim to the God of
holiness, and convey it, with his polluted hands, into mouths as
thoroughly polluted as his own! How well does it become those who
pursue this course "in all parts of the world," in conformity with
maxims sanctioned by their own general to impute to the author of
Frequent Communion, and to the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament, the
crime of not believing in that sacrament!

Even this, however, does not satisfy them. Nothing less will
satiate their rage than to accuse their opponents of having
renounced Jesus Christ and their baptism. This is no air-built
fable, like those of your invention; it is a fact, and denotes a
delirious frenzy which marks the fatal consummation of your calumnies.
Such a notorious falsehood as this would not have been in hands worthy
to support it, had it remained in those of your good friend Filleau,
through whom you ushered it into the world: your Society has openly
adopted it; and your Father Meynier maintained it the other day to
be "a certain truth" that Port-Royal has, for the space of thirty-five
years, been forming a secret plot, of which M. de St. Cyran and M.
d'Ypres have been the ringleaders, "to ruin the mystery of the
incarnation- to make the Gospel pass for an apocryphal fable- to
exterminate the Christian religion, and to erect Deism upon the
ruins of Christianity." Is this enough, fathers? Will you be satisfied
if all this be believed of the objects of your hate? Would your
animosity be glutted at length, if you could but succeed in making
them odious, not only to all within the Church, by the charge of
"consenting with Geneva, of which you accuse them, but even to all who
believe in Jesus Christ, though beyond the pale of the Church, by
the imputation of Deism?
But whom do you expect to convince, upon your simple asseveration,
without the slightest shadow of proof, and in the face of every
imaginable contradiction, that priests who preach nothing but the
grace of Jesus Christ, the purity of the Gospel, and the obligations
of baptism, have renounced at once their baptism, the Gospel, and
Jesus Christ? Who will believe it, fathers? Wretched as you are, do
you believe it yourselves? What a sad predicament is yours, when you
must either prove that they do not believe in Jesus Christ, or must
pass for the most abandoned calumniators. Prove it, then, fathers.
Name that "worthy clergyman" who, you say, attended that assembly at
Bourg-Fontaine in 1621, and discovered to Brother Filleau the design
there concerted of overturning the Christian religion. Name those
six persons whom you allege to have formed that conspiracy. Name the
individual who is designated by the letters A. A., who you say "was
not Antony Arnauld" (because he convinced you that he was at that time
only nine years of age), "but another person, who you say is still
in life, but too good a friend of M. Arnauld not to be known to
him." You know him, then, fathers; and consequently, if you are not
destitute of religion yourselves, you are bound to delate that impious
wretch to the king and parliament, that he may be punished according
to his deserts. You must speak out, fathers; you must name the person,
or submit to the disgrace of being henceforth regarded in no other
light than as common liars, unworthy of being ever credited again.
Good Father Valerien has taught us that this is the way in which
such characters should be "put to the rack" and brought to their
senses. Your silence upon the present challenge will furnish a full
and satisfactory confirmation of this diabolical calumny. Your
blindest admirers will be constrained to admit that it will be "the
result, not of your goodness, but your impotency"; and to wonder how
you could be so wicked as to extend your hatred even to the nuns of
Port-Royal, and to say, as you do in page 14, that The Secret
Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament, composed by one of their number, was
the first fruit of that conspiracy against Jesus Christ; or, as in
page 95, that "they have imbibed all the detestable principles of that
work"; which is, according to your account, a lesson in Deism." Your
falsehoods regarding that book have already been triumphantly refuted,
in the defence of the censure of the late Archbishop of Paris
against Father Brisacier. That publication you are incapable of
answering; and yet you do not scruple to abuse it in a more shameful
manner than ever, for the purpose of charging women, whose piety is
universally known, with the vilest blasphemy.

Cruel, cowardly persecutors! Must, then, the most retired
cloisters afford no retreat from your calumnies? While these
consecrated virgins are employed, night and day, according to their
institution, in adoring Jesus Christ in the holy sacrament, you
cease not, night nor day, to publish abroad that they do not believe
that he is either in the eucharist or even at the right hand of his
Father; and you are publicly excommunicating them from the Church,
at the very time when they are in secret praying for the whole Church,
and for you! You blacken with your slanders those who have neither
ears to hear nor mouths to answer you! But Jesus Christ, in whom
they are now hidden, not to appear till one day together with him,
hears you, and answers for them. At the moment I am now writing,
that holy and terrible voice is heard which confounds nature and
consoles the Church. And I fear, fathers, that those who now harden
their hearts, and refuse with obstinacy to hear him, while he speaks
in the character of God, will one day be compelled to hear him with
terror, when he speaks to them in the character of a judge. What
account, indeed, fathers, will you be able to render to him of the
many calumnies you have uttered, seeing that he will examine them,
in that day, not according to the fantasies of Fathers Dicastille,
Gans, and Pennalossa, who justify them, but according to the eternal
laws of truth, and the sacred ordinances of his own Church, which,
so far from attempting to vindicate that crime, abhors it to such a
degree that she visits it with the same penalty as wilfull murder?
By the first and second councils of Arles she has decided that the
communion shall be denied to slanderers as well as murderers, till the
approach of death. The Council of Lateran has judged those unworthy of
admission into the ecclesiastical state who have been convicted of the
crime, even though they may have reformed. The popes have even
threatened to deprive of the communion at death those who have
calumniated bishops, priests, or deacons. And the authors of a
defamatory libel, who fail to prove what they have advanced, are
condemned by Pope Adrian to be whipped,- yes, reverend fathers,
flagellentur is the word. So strong has been the repugnance of the
Church at all times to the errors of your Society- a Society so
thoroughly depraved as to invent excuses for the grossest of crimes,
such as calumny, chiefly that it may enjoy the greater freedom in
perpetrating them itself. There can be no doubt, fathers, that you
would be capable of producing abundance of mischief in this way, had
God not permitted you to furnish with your own hands the means of
preventing the evil, and of rendering your slanders perfectly
innocuous; for, to deprive you of all credibility, it was quite enough
to publish the strange maxim that it is no crime to calumniate.
Calumny is nothing, if not associated with a high reputation for
honesty. The defamer can make no impression, unless he has the
character of one that abhors defamation as a crime of which he is
incapable. And thus, fathers, you are betrayed by your own
principle. You establish the doctrine to secure yourselves a safe
conscience, that you might slander without risk of damnation, and be
ranked with those "pious and holy calumniators" of whom St. Athanasius
speaks. To save yourselves from hell, you have embraced a maxim
which promises you this security on the faith of your doctors; but
this same maxim, while it guarantees you, according to their idea,
against the evils you dread in the future world, deprives you of all
the advantage you may have expected to reap from it in the present; so
that, in attempting to escape the guilt, you have lost the benefit
of calumny. Such is the self-contrariety of evil, and so completely
does it confound and destroy itself by its own intrinsic malignity.

You might have slandered, therefore, much more advantageously
for yourselves, had you professed to hold, with St. Paul, that evil
speakers are not worthy to see God; for in this case, though you would
indeed have been condemning yourselves, your slanders would at least
have stood a better chance of being believed. But, by maintaining,
as you have done, that calumny against your enemies is no crime,
your slanders will be discredited, and you yourselves damned into
the bargain; for two things are certain, fathers: first, That it
will never be in the power of your grave doctors to annihilate the
justice of God; and, secondly, That you could not give more certain
evidence that you are not of the Truth than by your resorting to
falsehood. If the Truth were on your side, she would fight for you-
she would conquer for you; and whatever enemies you might have to
encounter, "the Truth would set you free" from them, according to
her promise. But you have had recourse to falsehood, for no other
design than to support the errors with which you flatter the sinful
children of this world, and to bolster up the calumnies with which you
persecute every man of piety who sets his face against these
delusions. The truth being diametrically opposed to your ends, it
behooved you, to use the language of the prophet, "to put your
confidence in lies." You have said: "The scourges which afflict
mankind shall not come nigh unto us; for we have made lies our refuge,
and under falsehood have we hid ourselves." But what says the
prophet in reply to such? "Forasmuch," says he, "as ye have put your
trust in calumny and tumult- sperastis in calumnia et in tumultu- this
iniquity and your ruin shall be like that of a high wall whose
breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the
breaking of the potter's vessel that is shivered in pieces"- with such
violence that "there shall not be found in the bursting of it a
shred to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the
pit." "Because," as another prophet says, "ye have made the heart of
the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and ye have flattered and
strengthened the malice of the wicked; I will therefore deliver my
people out of your hands, and ye shall know that I am their Lord and
yours."

Yes, fathers, it is to be hoped that if you do not repent, God
will deliver out of your hands those whom you have so long deluded,
either by flattering them in their evil courses with your licentious
maxims, or by poisoning their minds with your slanders. He will
convince the former that the false rules of your casuists will not
screen them from His indignation; and He will impress on the minds
of the latter the just dread of losing their souls by listening and
yielding credit to your slanders, as you lose yours by hatching
these slanders and disseminating them through the world. Let no man be
deceived; God is not mocked; none may violate with impunity the
commandment which He has given us in the Gospel, not to condemn our
neighbour without being well assured of his guilt. And,
consequently, what profession soever of piety those may make who
lend a willing ear to your lying devices, and under what pretence
soever of devotion they may entertain them, they have reason to
apprehend exclusion from the kingdom of God, solely for having imputed
crimes of such a dark complexion as heresy and schism to Catholic
priests and holy nuns, upon no better evidence than such vile
fabrications as yours. "The devil," says M. de Geneve, "is on the
tongue of him that slanders, and in the ear of him that listens to the
slanderer." "And evil speaking," says St. Bernard, "is a poison that
extinguishes charity in both of the parties; so that a single
calumny may prove mortal to an infinite numbers of souls, killing
not only those who publish it, but all those besides by whom it is not
repudiated."

Reverend fathers, my letters were not won't either to be so prolix,
or to follow so closely on one another. Want of time must plead my
excuse for both of these faults. The present letter is a very long
one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. You know
the reason of this haste better than I do. You have been unlucky in
your answers. You have done well, therefore, to change your plan;
but I am afraid that you will get no credit for it, and that people
will say it was done for fear of the Benedictines.

I have just come to learn that the person who was generally
reported to be the author of your Apologies, disclaims them, and is
annoyed at their having been ascribed to him. He has good reason,
and I was wrong to have suspected him of any such thing; for, in spite
of the assurances which I received, I ought to have considered that he
was a man of too much good sense to believe your accusations, and of
too much honour to publish them if he did not believe them. There
are few people in the world capable of your extravagances; they are
peculiar to yourselves, and mark your character too plainly to admit
of any excuse for having failed to recognize your hand in their
concoction. I was led away by the common report; but this apology,
which would be too good for you, is not sufficient for me, who profess
to advance nothing without certain proof. In no other instance have
I been guilty of departing from this rule. I am sorry for what I said.
I retract it; and I only wish that you may profit by my example.