Part 74

And thus the faithful have no pretext to follow that laxity which is only offered them by the stranger hands of these casuists, instead of the sound doctrine which is presented to them by the fatherly hands of their own pastors. And the wicked and heretics have no reason to put forward these abuses as marks of the defective providence of God over his Church, since the Church having her true existence in the body of the hierarchy, it is so far from the present condition of things being a proof that God has abandoned her to corruption, that it has never so plainly appeared as at the present day that God visibly defends her from corruption.

For if some of these men, who by an extraordinary vocation have made profession of retirement from the world, and have adopted the religious dress, that they might live in a more perfect state than ordinary Christians, have fallen into disorders which horrify ordinary Christians, and have become among us what the false prophets were among the Jews; this is a private and personal matter, which we must indeed deplore, but from which we can conclude nothing against the care which God takes for his Church; since all these things are so clearly foretold, and it has been long since announced that temptations would arise on account of such persons, so that when we are well instructed we see therein rather the notes of the guidance of God than his forgetfulness in regard to us.

You are ignorant of the prophecies if you do not know that all this must needs happen, princes, prophets, pope, and even the priests. And yet the Church must abide. By the grace of God we are not so far gone. Woe to these priests. But we hope that God will of his mercy grant us that we be not among them.

2 Saint Peter ii. False prophets in the past the image of the future.

Is Est and non est received in faith as well as in miracles, and is it inseparable in the others?...

When Saint Xavier works miracles....

Saint Hilary.--These wretches who have obliged us to speak of miracles.

Væ qui conditis leges iniquas.

Unjust judges, make not your laws on the moment, judge by those which are established, and by yourselves.

To weaken your adversaries you disarm the whole Church.

If they say that our safety depends on God, they are heretics.

If they say they are under obedience to the pope, that is hypocrisy.

If they are ready to assent to all the articles, that is not enough.

If they say that no man should be killed for an apple, they assail the morality of Catholics.

If miracles are wrought among them, it is no mark of holiness, but rather a suspicion of heresy.

The hardness of the Jesuits therefore surpasses that of the Jews, since those refused to believe Jesus Christ innocent only because they doubted if his miracles were of God. But on the contrary, though the Jesuits cannot doubt that the Port Royal miracles were of God, they still continue to doubt the innocency of that house.

Men never commit evil so fully and so gaily as when they do so for conscience sake.

Experience shows us a vast difference between devoutness and goodness.

The two contrary reasons. We must begin with that; without that we understand nothing and all is heretical; in the same way we must even add at the close of each truth that the opposite truth is to be remembered.

If there was ever a time in which it were necessary to make profession of two contraries, it is when we are reproached for omitting one. Therefore the Jesuits and the Jansenists are wrong in concealing them, but the Jansenists most, for the Jesuits have better made profession of the two.

M. de Condran. There is, he says, no comparison between the union of the saints and that of the Holy Trinity. Jesus Christ says the opposite.

That we have treated them as kindly as is possible while keeping ourselves in the mean, between the love of truth and the duty of charity.

That piety does not consist in never opposing our brethren, it would be very easy, etc.

It is false piety to keep peace to the prejudice of the truth. It is also false zeal to keep truth and wound charity.

Neither have they complained.

Their maxims have their time and place.

He will be condemned indeed who is so by Escobar.

Their vanity tends to grow out of their errors.