RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Pascal
him. Two days later (Nov. 23, 1653) he had a remarkable experience, being made vividly conscious of the presence of God as if in an ecstacy. This is the date of his real conversion. He sought strength and protection for his new inner life in the solitude of Port-Royal, where his coming was welcomed with joy and taken as a signal mark of God's favor to the persecuted community. In spite of the advice of his physicians, he subjected himself to the strict discipline of fasting, vigils, and self-torture, although retaining his independence and frequently visiting Paris. He plunged into the study of the Bible and the Church Fathers, but did not refrain, on occasions, from opposing the elders of Port- Royal with his own convictions; such as the relation between knowledge and faith. His colloquy with Le Maistre de Saci (L'Entretion avec M. de Saci) shows that he neither shared the skeptical distrust of Singlin and de Saci for the theoretical reason nor admitted a complete separation between theology and philosophy. During this period he occupied himself with the plan of a great work in apologetics, which was to win to the faith the philosophers and atheists; but he was deflected from this path by the call to engage in the controversy between Port-Royal and the Jesuits.
Early in 1655 the Abb6 Picote of St. Sulpice refused absolution to the Duke de Liancourt because he had received into his house a friend of Port- Royal, the Abb6 de Bourgeois, and had allowed his grandchildren to be educated in the 3. Provin- Port-Royal schools. This gave occacial Letters, sion to Arnauld to write his Lettre a une personne de condition (Paris, 1655), which was hotly attacked by the Jesuits, and followed up in July, 1655, by a Seconde lettre a un due et pair de France (the Duke of Luynes). The Jesuits saw their opportunity to reopen the vexed question as to " fact " and " law " (see Jansen, Cornelius, Jansenism). Arnauld was cited before the Sorbonne and condemned on the point of " fact " by a majority of more than two to one. The Port-Royalists, anxious to bring the question before a wider tribunal, asked Pascal to treat it in such a way as to appeal to the lay public. This he undertook in the first of the " Provincial Letters " (Lettres ecrites a un provincial par un de ses amis), published under the pseudonym of " Louis de Montalte," Jan. 23, 1656. The pretended author, knowing nothing of theological subtleties, asks for information on the controversy from a Thomist, a Jansenist, a Molinist, and a Neo-Thomist (see Thomas Aquinas; Molina, Luis; Jansen, Cornelius, Jansenism), and comes to the conclusion that Arnauld's offense consists in the fact that he has not used the expression pouvoir prochain (" prevenient grace "). Although some at Port-Royal had their doubts about the tone of the letter, it had an immediate success, and sixty friends of Arnauld's protested against the action of the Sorbonne. In a second letter, Pascal showed that the Neo-Thomists were really on the side of the Jansenists in the doctrine of " sufficient grace," and that only from fear of the Jesuits they had tempered " efficient grace " down to " sufficient grace." As was to be expected, Arnauld was condemned
also on the point of "law" (Jan. 31, 1656). In his third letter (Feb. 9), Pascal utters his protest, asserting that Arnauld, although having St. Augustine and the Fathers on his side, yet was condemned. In the fourth letter (Feb. 25), he begins to attack the Jesuits directly, asserting that they are undermining morality; that they constitute the ethical ideal not according to what man ought to do, but according to what the average man is able to do; and that they degrade religion to politics, and morality to casuistry. On the day of publication of the fifth letter (Mar. 20), the community was required to leave Port-Royal, but before long was permitted to return. Meantime Pascal got fresh weapons by a study of Antonio Escobar y Mendoza (q.v.) and of Jesuit practise in the confessional. In the letters from the sixth to the tenth (Apr. 10 to Aug. 2), he deals blow after blow at the principles of probabilism, the method of justifying the means by the end, and the doctrines of equivocation of favorable circumstances and of mental reservation. In the eleventh (Aug. 18) he drops his mask and comes out under his own name against the enemy; in this and the two following letters (Aug. 18 to Sept. 30) dealing with charges brought against him by the Jesuits and quoting from their most approved teachers to show the havoc they have wrought to the moral sense by their teaching on almsgiving, simony, bankruptcy, and duelling. A week after Alexander VII. solemnly declared that Jansen had taught the five condemned propositions (fait) in a reprehensible sense, Pascal, leaving that question for the time, came out in a powerful philippic against the doctrine of the order on the question of murder (fourteenth letter, Oct. 23). Then in the last letters (fifteenth to eighteenth, Nov. 26, 1656, to Mar. 24, 1657), he returns to the Arnauld affair, and in the nineteenth, which ends abruptly, he attempts to strengthen his friends of Port-Royal in their resistance to the signature of the formula of submission proposed by the assembly of the clergy.
The whole series had an indescribable effect, and the Latin version made by P. Nicole (1658) circulated throughout Europe. The public conscience was with Pascal. At Rome the letters were condemned; and at Paris, burned by the hangman. They were morally a brave achievement. Though in the utmost physical agonies, Pascal yet stood boldly as the champion of freedom of conscience, of truth, and justice against the all-powerful Jesuits without fear of the Bastile or galleys. But the letters are also, in spite of their occasional character, a literary masterpiece possessing a high dramatic unity. In place of dry scholastic discussions on technicalities, Pascal has given vivacious dialogue, sparkling with humor. The figure of the genial Jesuit, expounding the secrets of his casuistical library with smug complacency to the curious Louis de Montalte, is worthy of Moliere at his best; and the strong, clear, sober style makes the book one of the finest monuments of French prose. A collective edition appeared, Les Provinciates ou les lettres (1657); a late edition is by A. Molinier (Paris, 1891); Eng. transl., Provincial Letters, M. Villemain (London, 1847), T.
Pascal Paschal