PARTICULAR BAPTISTS. See Baptists, I., 2.
PARTRIDGE, SIDNEY CATLIN: Protestant Episcopal missionary bishop of Kyoto, Japan; b. in New York City Sept. 1, 1857. He was educated at Yale (B.A., 1880) and Berkeley Divinity School (graduated 1884), and was ordered deacon in 1884 and advanced to the priesthood in 1885. He was a teacher at St. John's College, Shanghai (1884- 1887), and at Boone School, Wuchang, China (1887- 1900), and in 1900 was consecrated missionary bishop of Kyoto.
PARVAIM (PARWAIM): A word used in II Chron. hi., 6 to describe the gold used by Solomon to line the walls in the interior of the temple (Hebr., zehabh parwaim; LXX., chrusion to ek Pharouaim). Without positive location, it may have been the name of a geographical region in Arabia, the land of gold for the Old Testament. A. Sprenger (Die alte Geographic Arabiens, pp. 54-55, Bern, 1875) seeks to locate it at Farwa, in southwestern Arabia, in the country of the Chanlan in Yemen. E. Glaser (Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens, ii. 347, Berlin, 1890) places it at Sak al-Farwam, in northeastern Arabia. Its location remains uncertain. (H- Guthe.)
PASAGIANS (PASAGII, PASSAGINI, PASSA- GEROI) : A sect of which various scattered notices occur from the latter half of the twelfth century They were first condemned at the bynod of Verona under Lucius III. (1184), but without any definite statement of their peculiar tenets, ihe only places from which anything can be gathered as to these are in Bonacursus, Manifestatio hcesresi
Pascal
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Catharorum (L. d'Achgry, Sjricilegium, i. 212, Paris, 1723) and a treatise of Gregory of Bergamo, written about 1230, Specimen opusculi contra Catharos et Pasagios (L. A. Muratori, Antiquitates Italicw, v. 152, Milan, 1738-42). Both assert that the Pasagians taught the literal obligation of the Mosaic law, enforcing circumcision, the Sabbath, and everything but the sacrifices, teaching that the doctrine of the Trinity was an error and Christ no more than the first and purest of God's creatures. Frederick II. called them " the circumcised " in his ordinance of 1224 concerning heretics. They seem to have maintained themselves until toward the end of the thirteenth century; Clement IV (1267) and Gregory X. (1274) directed the inquisitors to punish as heretics Christians who had gone over to the Jewish rite. The sect originated in all probability from the intercourse of Christians with the Jews, who by their money and their learning had no little influence at this time, possibly in the first instance among Judaizing pilgrims returning from Palestine. The word pasagium was commonly employed to denote pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulcher.
(O. ZoCKLEHf.) Bibliography : C. U. Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, vol. ill., Stuttgart, 1850; C. Schmidt, Hist, et doctrine des Cathares, ii. 294, Paris, 1849; Molinier, in Mimoires de Vacademie des sciences de Toulouse, VIII., x (1888), 428; KL, ix. 1556-57; and the sources named in the text.
PASCAL, BLAISE.
Early Life and Scientific Discoveries (§ 1). Conversion (§ 2). Provincial Letters (§ 3). Thoughts on Religion (§4). Gontents (§ 5).
Blaise Pascal, French philosopher, mathematician, and mystic, was born at Clermont-Ferrand (212 m. s.s.w. of Paris) June 19, 1623; d. at Paris Aug. 19, 1662. He was the son of ^tienne Pascal,
second president of the cour des aides i. Early Life at Clermont, who in 1631 resigned his and Scientific post in order to go to Paris and de- Discoveries, vote himself to the education of his
children. Here he found himself in a circle of friends whose center was the family of Antoine Arnauld (q.v.). The surroundings of young Blaise, as well as his natural inclinations, turned his attention early to scientific and mathematical problems, in favor of which he rather neglected the classical and humanistic. His attainments in mathematics are evidenced by his Essai pour les coniques, written before he was seventeen, and the calculating machine which he put before the public in 1642. But while a brilliant worldly future seemed to lie before him, his course was changed by an event of great significance for the entire family. An accident which befell FLtienne in Rouen, where he was intendant of Normandy from 1640, brought him into contact with the absorbing problems of the spiritual life, as regarded from the Jansenist standpoint. He became acquainted with Cornelius Jansen's Discours sur la reformation de Vhomme interieur, Robert Arnauld's De la friquente communion, St. Cyran's Lettres spirituelles (Paris, 1648), and similar works. The earnestness with which the Jansenistic piety rejected every compromise with
the world was not without effect on young Pascal and the first impulse toward his conversion dates from this period. The spiritual effect of those writings on his sister Jacqueline (b. 1625) was even more marked. In the autumn of 1647 Blaise went to Paris with Jacqueline to seek the improvement of his health, impaired by overwork, being almost paralyzed and walking only by means of crutches. Here he was a constant auditor of the sermons of the Abb6 Singlin, confessor of the community of Port-Royal. Jacqueline soon took him for her director, and desired to enter Port-Royal herself; but her father, who had returned to Paris in 1648, was unwilling to be separated from her. Pascal's first biographer, his sister Gilberte, recounts his conversion of the year 1646 as though it involved a complete breach with worldly interests; but this was not the case. The next few years saw his epochmaking discoveries and writings on scientific subjects, giving an account of the pressure of the atmosphere, nature's " horror of a vacuum," barometric measurements, and equivalent weights of fluids (Nouvelles experiences touchant le vide and Preface sur le traite du vide, Paris, 1647; Traite de I'equilibre des liqueurs; and Traite de la pesanteur de la masse de Vair, 1651). This is not the place to discuss his scientific achievements; but it may be noticed that even in this field he had a serious conflict with the Jesuits, who accused him of plagiarism and of giving out as his own the discovery of Torricelli as to the method of barometrical measurement. About 1649 he was of a divided mind between the conflicting attractions of religion and science, and for some years he could not arrive at a clear choice.
His father died Sept. 24, 1651; and Jacqueline was now free to carry out her cherished wish. On Jan. 4, 1652, she entered Port-Royal-des-Champs as a novice, and was professed June 5, 1653. Pascal now plunged for a time into worldly distractions in order to drown his sorrow at his father's death, finding his justification in the works of Montaigne, of which he was a diligent student at this time, as well as of Epictetus. But he did not neglect his studies, and his principal mathematical discoveries belong to the years 1653 and 1654. He wrote then the TraitS du triangle ariihmitique, the TraiU des ordres num&riques (Paris, 1665), and other smaller treatises. In these he discusses the laws of probability, as in the Traite de la sommation des puissances numiriques he lays down the principles of the differential and integral calculus. The Jansenistic ideal paled for a while before his eyes; he thought of entering public life and marrying.
Suddenly, however, the old religious impulses awoke once more in his heart. He found the things
which had appealed to him to be hol-
2. Conver- low and unsatisfying, and felt an in-
sion. tense longing for God and his grace.
He paid frequent visits to Port-Royal, and related his sufferings to his sister. On one of these visits he heard a sermon from the Abbe1 Singlin on the beginning of the Christian life, describing it as a serious decision made in the presence of God involving a thorough breach with the world. The words seemed to Pascal to be spoken expressly for