mitted the care of their souls to the Jesuits especially, is, that such confessors by their precepts extenuated the guilt of sin, flattered the criminal passions of men, and opened an easy and convenient way to heaven '.

§ 35. The holy Scriptures were so far from receiving more reverence and authority from the pontiffs, that on the contrary, in most countries, the friends of the papal cause, and especially the Jesuits, as appears from the best evidence, took great pains to keep them out of the hands of the people, and from being interpreted differently from what the convenience of the church required. Among the French and the Belgians there were some who might not improperly be denominated learned and intelligent expositors: but the majority of those who pretended to expound the sacred writings, rather obscured and darkened the divine oracles by their comments, than elucidated them. And in this class must be placed even the Jansenists; who, though they treated the Bible with more respect than the other catholics, yet strangely adulterated the word of God by. the frigid allegories and recondite expositions of the ancient

2 What is here said of the very gross errors of the Jesuits, should not be understood to imply, that all the members of this society cherish these opinions; or that the public schools of the order echo with them. For this fraternity embraces very many persons, who are both learned and ingenuous, and by no means bad men. Nor would it be difficult to fill several volumes with citations from the writings of Jesuits, in which a much purer virtue and piety are taught, than that black and deformed system, which Pascal and the others present to us from the Casuists, Summists, and Moralists of this order. Those who accuse the Jesuits as a body, if candid, can mean only, that the leaders of the society both permit such impious sentiments to be publicly set forth by individuals, and give their approbation and countenance to the books in which such sentiments are taught; that the system of religion, which is taught here and there in their schools, is so lax and disjointed, that it easily leads men to such pernicious conclusions; and

finally, that the small select number, who are initiated in the greater mysteries of the order, and who are employed in public stations and in guiding the minds of the great, commonly make use of such principles to advance the interests and augment the wealth of the society. I would also acknowledge, since ingenuousness is the prime virtue of a historian, that in exaggerating the turpitude of some Jesuitical opinions, some of their adversaries have been over eloquent and vehement; as might easily be shown, if there were opportunity, in regard to the doctrines of probability, mental reservation in oaths, and some others. For in this as in most other disputes and controversies, respecting either sacred or secular subjects, the accused were charged with the consequences, which their accusers deduced from their declarations, their words were made to express more than they intended, and the limitations they contemplated to their opinions, were overlooked.

doctors 3. Yet we ought to except Paschasius Quesnel, a father of the Oratory, who published the New Testament, illustrated with pious meditations and observations, which has in our day been the prolific cause of so many disputes, commotions, and divisions *.

§ 36. Nearly all the schools retained the old method of teaching theology; which was dry, thorny, and by no means suited to men of liberal minds. Not even the decrees of the pontiffs could bring dogmatic or biblical theology to be in equal estimation with scholastic. For in most of the chairs the scholastic doctors were fixed; and they perplexed and depressed the biblical divines, who were generally not well acquainted with the arts of wrangling. The mystics were wholly excluded from the schools; and, unless they were very cautious and submissive to the church, could scarcely escape the brand of heresy. Yet many of the French, and among them the followers of Jansenius especially, explained the principal doctrines of christianity in a neat and lucid style. In like manner, nearly all that was written judiciously and elegantly, respecting piety and morality, came from the pens either of the Messieurs de Port Royal, as the Jansenists were usually called, or from the French Fathers of the Oratory.

3 Very well known, even among us, is the Bible of Isaac le Maitre, commonly called Sacy; which comprehends nearly every thing, with which the heated imaginations of the ancient doctors disfigured the simplest narrations and the clearest statements of the sacred volume. [It is also called the Translation of Mons, because it was first printed there in 1665. It was commenced by Sacy, a very zealous Jansenist, who died in 1664, and completed by Thomas du Fossé. It is founded on the Vulgate; yet here and there deviates from it. The archbishop of Paris, Perefix, soon after it appeared, in 1667, published a severe circular, forbidding it to be read. The same thing was done by Ge. Aubusson, bishop of Embrun: the Jesuits also did not remain idle and at last, in 1668, Clement IX. condemned it, as a perverse and dangerous translation, that deviated from the Vulgate, and

Of the change in the

was a stone of stumbling to the simple. This censure, it by no means merited: and even Mosheim's censure is applicable only to the notes, which are taken chiefly from the fathers, and are very mystical. Schl.]

4 The first part, containing notes on the four Gospels, was published in 1671 and being received with great applause, it was republished, enlarged, and amended, together with notes on the other books of the New Testament. See Catechisme Historique sur les Contestationes de l'Eglise, tom. ii. p. 150. Christ. Eberh. Weismann's Historia Eccles. sæcul. xvii. p. 588, &c. and numerous others. [Quesnel, in his translation, followed that of Sacy; though, to avoid all offence, he kept closer to the Vulgate. Most of the notes relate entirely to practical religion. The contests produced by the work, belong to the history of the eighteenth century. Schl.]

manner of conducting theological controversies we have already spoken. The Germans, the Belgians, and the French, having learned to their disadvantage that the angry, loose, and captious mode of disputing, which their fathers pursued, rather confirmed than weakened the faith and resolution of dissentients; and that the arguments on which their doctors formerly placed much reliance had lost nearly all their force; thought it necessary for them to look around for new methods of warfare, and those apparently more wise.

§ 37. The minor controversies of the schools and the religious orders which divided the Romish church we shall pass over

for the pontiffs, for the most part, disregard them; or if at any time they become too violent, they are easily suppressed with a nod or a mandate: neither are these skirmishes, which perpetually exist, of such a nature as seriously to endanger the welfare of the church. It will be sufficient to recite briefly those controversies which affected seriously the whole church. Among these, the first place is due to the contests between the Dominicans and the Jesuits respecting the nature of divine grace and its necessity to salvation; the cognizance of which, Clement VIII., at the close of the preceding century, had committed to some selected theologians. These, after some years of consultation and attention to the arguments of the parties, signified to the pontiff, not obscurely, that the doctrines of the Dominicans respecting grace, predestination, man's ability to do good, and the inherent corruption of our natures, were more consonant with the holy Scriptures and the opinions of the fathers than the opinions of Molina, whom the Jesuits supported that the former accorded with the sentiments of Augustine, and the latter approximated to those of Pelagius, which had been condemned. Therefore, in the year 1601, Clement seemed ready to pronounce sentence against the Jesuits, and in favour of the Dominicans. But the Jesuits perceiving their cause to be in such imminent peril, so besieged the aged pontiff, sometimes with threats, sometimes with complaints, and now with arguments, that in the year 1602 he resolved to give the whole of this knotty controversy a rehearing, and to

[See the preceding century, sec. iii. ch. i. § 40, 41. p. 125, &c. Tr.]

assume to himself the office of presiding judge. The pontiff therefore presided over this trial during three years, or from the 20th of March, 1602, till the 22nd of January, 1605, having for assessors fifteen cardinals, nine theologians, and five bishops; and he held seventy-eight sessions, or Congregations, as they are denominated at Rome; in which he patiently listened to the arguments of the Jesuits and the Dominicans, and caused their arguments to be carefully weighed and examined. To what results he came is uncertain: for he was cut off by death, on the 4th of March, 1605, when just ready to pronounce sentence. If we may believe the Dominicans, he was prepared to condemn Molina in a public decree; but if we believe the Jesuits, he would have acquitted him of all error. Which of them is to be believed, no one can determine, without inspecting the records of the trial, which are kept carefully concealed at Rome.

§ 38. Paul V., the successor of Clement, ordered the judges, in the month of September, 1605, to resume their inquiries and deliberations, which had been suspended. They obeyed his mandate, and had frequent discussions, until the month of March in the next year; debating, not so much on the merits of the question, which had been sufficiently examined, as on the mode of terminating the contest. For it was debated whether it would be for the interests of the church to have this dispute decided by a public decree of the pontiff; and if it were, then what should be the form and phraseology of the decree. The issue of this protracted business was, that the whole contest came to nothing, as is frequent at Rome, or, that it was decided neither way, but each party was left free to retain its own sentiments. The Dominicans maintain that Paul V., and the theologians to whom he committed the investigation, equally with Clement before him, perceived the holiness and justice of their cause; and they tell us, a severe decree against the doctrines of the Jesuits was actually drawn up, and sealed by his order; but that the unhappy war with the Venetians, which broke out at that time, and of which we have already given an account, prevented the publication of the

[Congregationes de Auxiliis, ss. gratia, in the Romish style. Tr.]

decree. On the contrary, the Jesuits contend, that all this is false; and that the pontiff with the wisest of the theologians, after examining the whole cause, judged the sentiments of Molina to contain nothing which much needed correction. It is far more probable that Paul was deterred from passing sentence by fear of the kings of France and Spain; of whom the former patronized the cause of the Jesuits, and the latter that of the Dominicans. And if he had published a decision, it would undoubtedly have been not unlike those usually promulgated at Rome, that is, ambiguous, and not wholly adverse to either of the contending parties'.