THE JANSENISTS:

THEIR RISE,

PERSECUTIONS BY THE JESUITS,

AND EXISTING REMNANT.

A CHAPTER IN CHURCH HISTORY.

BY

S. P. TREGELLES, LL.D.

1851

PREFACE.

THE history of the workings of spiritual life, and the gradual apprehension of Evangelic Truth amongst persons still in the professed fellowship of Romanism, is one of no small interest to those who really value the cardinal doctrines on which the Reformation was grounded.

Hence the annals of Jansenism, although exhibiting a considerable mixture of light and darkness, are well worthy of attention: in many points there may be seen a similarity to the measure of light in many minds prior to the Reformation; and the whole detail exhibits the hopeless opposition to all real knowledge of the free grace of God which must exist where that grace is not known or received.

One part of Jansenist history has been familiarized to English readers through Mrs. Schimmelpennick's "Select Memoirs of Port Royal." To her publications most in this country are indebted for the greater part of the information which they possess on the subject.

Little, however, has been known or apprehended in this country, as to the continuance of the Jansenists in Holland. Although Mrs. Schimmelpenninck refers to the existing Jansenists more than once, the fact has met with but little observation. Hence I have thought that it is not misplaced labour to direct the attention of English Christians to the Jansenists still existing as a definite body in the Archbishopric of Utrecht.

In fact, the following pages grew out of a visit paid to Utrecht, in September, 1850: I made notes of the information which was given me by Archbishop Van Santen, because in the details which he gave, there was enough to interest those who at all wish to understand the still continued workings of the Romish Court, and of the system of Jesuitism. To this it was needful to prefix a brief account of the continuance of the Jansenists in Holland as a body, because the subject is but little known to English readers. The first part of the following pages was written in order to trace briefly the rise of Jansenism -the points of doctrine condemned by Rome-the connection of Jansenism with Port Royal through the Abbe de St. Cyran-and the hatred manifested against all connected with that nunnery, in consequence of the truth which had been there received.

An endeavour has been made to present with accuracy the more important points in the History and Sufferings of Jansenism: of course, in a brief account, selection is absolutely needful; and this is not facilitated from the extreme diffuseness of many of the Port Royal writers and other Jansenist historians. In this brief sketch, considerable use has been made of Reuchlin's "Geschichte von Port Royal"; the Papal condemnations, etc., have been drawn from the documents themselves; and as to the Doctrinal points involved, and the workings of the Jesuits, Pascal's "Lettres a un Provincial" have, of course, been used as a paramount authority. 1

1 The principal part of the following pages appeared as an article in Dr. Kitto's" Journal of Biblical Literature" for January, 1851. The whole has now been revised, and in some parts enlarged.

In contemplating the actions and opinions of those who were circumstanced like the Jansenists, we must not forget the point of view from which regarded truth. A paramount thought in their minds was, "the unity of the Church"-a thought which, when lightly understood, will be responded to more or less all real Christians; but as they identified the Church with the Roman Catholic body, this paramount thought was a hindrance to their reception of truth. But let us make what deduction we find needful, the patient suffering and faithful adherence to known truth on the part of the Jansenists were such as are worthy of our and remembrance.

A fear has sometimes been injudiciously expressed, lest the mention of tilt; excellences of the Mere Angelique and other nuns of Port Royal should seem to favour the doctrines of the Romish Church or the monastic system. No fear could be more groundless. What caused the Mere Angelique to differ so thoroughly in her practical conduct from so many Abbesses around her? Simply the knowledge of free salvation through the blood of Christ brought to her soul by the Holy Ghost. This led to the desire of holiness; this was the spring of those good works in which Port Royal so much abounded. These fruits of righteousness exhibited themselves not through, but in spite of, the monastic system. And when a Christian eye contemplates the opposition which the Port Royalists and other Jansenists had to encounter on the part of the Romish authorities, then surely it must be felt that every excellence found in that institution, whether doctrinal or practical, is a testimony against the doctrinal and practical corruption of Rome.

It is well for all who call themselves Protestants to learn what are the truths that have separated them from the communion of Rome, that thus they may give no uncertain testimony, but with humble and thankful hearts they may bear witness before both God and men to the one ground of acceptance before God for the souls of sinners, even the sacrifice of Christ in all its perfectness, offered once for all, through which all who believe in Him receive forgiveness and eternal life. The true knowledge of the gospel of the grace of God, wrought by the Holy Ghost, is the only power which can really free us from the delusions of Romanism, and the many forms of Romanising doctrine.

I have to acknowledge the kindness with which Mrs. Schimmelpenninck furnished me with a clue for obtaining contemporary prints of some of the Jansenists; and I have also to thank my friend the Count de Tharon of Paris, for the pains which he took in procuring the prints in question, amongst which were the portraits of Jansenius, St. Cyran, and the Mere Angelique, and the view of Port Royal, which have been re-engraved for this little volume.

JULY, 1851

Chapter 1 - Its Rise and Sufferings

SECT. I.

JANSENISM: ITS RISE AND SUFFERINGS.

THE acquaintance which many Protestants have with Church History seems to cease at the Reformation; and this is the case even when they have some general knowledge of the events of that era, and of the principal features of preceding ages. Since the Reformation, Protestants have too exclusively attended to the annals of Protestantism (as though it were co-extensive with Christendom), and too often their sphere of information goes but little beyond the circle of that particular body to which, as individuals, they may belong.

It is as though a mighty stream had been traced downward from its source for many a mile, with every object on its banks exciting new interests; but, at length, when the same river has been divided, so as to form a separate and smoother channel, the attention were fixed on that only, utterly forgetful of the course in which the mass of the waters flows onward. We may prize the Reformation as highly as we will; we may render humble and reverential thanks for the mercy then shown, in bringing out into full light the cardinal doctrine of justification through faith; we may value the unhindered use of God's holy word; but still we have not so to think of our privileges as to forget Christendom at large,-we have not to shut our eyes to the measure of light and truth vouchsafed to those in ostensible fellowship with Rome, and thus to overlook the struggles which have hence arisen within that body, from which the Reformation happily freed us.

There are also not a few who, having some acquaintance with the sufferings and testimony borne by Port Royal, look with feelings of love and sympathy on the Jansenists of the seventeenth century, but who are wholly unconscious that Jansenists are still to be found, and that their struggle with Papal authority and Jesuitical arts is still continued in our own days.

A glance at the facts of this struggle will only cause a heart that values the truths on which the Reformation was based, to feel a yet deeper thankfulness at being freed from the system of Rome, both doctrinal and practical.

The writings of St. Augustine exercised a permanent influence in the Latin Church. They were but partially understood, it is true; but still the doctrines on the subjects of grace and election laid down by that father, were by no means forgotten. From the time of Thomas Aquinas, the real or supposed doctrines of St. Augustine were considered as a peculiar deposit of the Dominican order of monks, to which Thomas had belonged.

In the Church of Rome, such a thought was not entertained as that of contradicting what St. Augustine had written. The sentiments, however, which actually ruled in men's minds, and the religious system to which they belonged, were virtual contradictions to every real apprehension of grace.

The bringing in of light shows the true condition of the objects on which it falls; and thus the actual doctrinal state of Romanism was only exhibited, when the justification of a sinner through faith in the one finished sacrifice if Christ, was definitely and fully preached. This was a thing wholly different from any mere opinions on the subject of grace. But this introduction of truth soon led to a more concrete form being assumed by error.

In vain did some in the Church of Rome maintain that nothing could stop the spread of Lutheranism except firm opposition to Pelagian error, by the full statement of the grace of God, and the merits of Christ, as the alone ground of our acceptance. Opposition to the Reformation soon led to a denial of every truth on which it was based.

The order of the Jesuits arose; the Council of Trent was convened; and then the full opposition which the true statement of the Gospel of Christ had excited was brought out to light. "Justification through faith" was there opposed by one especially, who possessed no common power of moulding and training the minds of others. This man was LAINEZ the Jesuit; one of the three who commenced that order, and who subsequently succeeded Ignatius as its second general.

While Loyola takes the place of founder of the "Society of Jesus," and while Francis Xavier gave it a charm by his enthusiastic labours in the East, it was Lainez who gave the institute its tone and direction. To him, more than to any other, should we attribute the character and principles which we associate with the name of Jesuitism. 1

1 Anti-Jesuit writers in the Church of Rome have fully recognised this: they have even interpreted Rev. ix. 1, as if Lainez were the fallen star who let loose the scorpion-locusts-the Jesuits. This strange and guess-work exposition shows at least the feelings of those who advance it.

Lainez was a man who in many respects supplied the deficiencies of Loyola: his vast resources of learning, and powerful and persuasive eloquence, were important auxiliaries to the founder of his order. Had there not been a Loyola, "the Company of Jesus" would not have been formed; had there not been a Lainez, it would never have possessed that expansive force by which it diffused itself, and subjected even nations to its sway. Loyola appeared in his own time as one far removed from the common feelings and thoughts of mankind; so much so, that his immediate associates treated him as a superior being: Lainez, on the other hand, understood the feelings and thoughts of men, so as to adapt himself to them, and win his way amongst them with astonishing tact.

Perhaps his powerful influence was never more fully exhibited than it was at Trent, where he and Salmeron were deputed as the representatives of their order. He maintained his doctrinal opinions uncompromisingly, in spite of all opposition; for even at Trent there were some advocates for the Gospel of Christ: the Archbishop of Sienna, two bishops, and five others, ascribed justification simply and solely to the merits of Christ through faith. Cardinal Pole, one of the presiding legates of Paul III. at the council, entreated those assembled not to reject a doctrine simply because it was held by Luther. Various modifications were proposed; but the view of the Jesuits principally prevailed in causing the adoption of the Tridentine canons and anathemas. No one need be surprised that Cardinal Pole and the Archbishop of Sienna both left the council, and did not return. And yet those who held the doctrines of grace were neither convinced nor silenced. They immediately began to explain the decrees in such a way as not to contradict St. Augustine! In doing this, they caused the decrees to contradict themselves!

Ignatius Loyola had prescribed Thomas Aquinas as an author to be studied in certain parts of the training of the Jesuits, unless some other work might appear more suitable to the times. Acquaviva, the fifth general of the order, took advantage of the proviso, so as to recommend a new "order of study" suited to the Pelagian doctrines which now prevailed in that body: in this he acted on a plan proposed by Lainez. Thus had the order immediately departed from the Thomistic ideas of its founder.

But this was only a step. In 1588, Molina* took up the questions of grace and free-will, and carried his views to the very utmost length. He taught that "free-will, without the aid of grace, can produce morally good works; that it can withstand temptation; that it can even elevate itself to this and the other acts of hope, faith, love, and repentance. When a man has advanced thus far, God then bestows grace upon him on account of Christ's, merits, by means of which grace he experiences the supernatural effects of sanctification; yet, as before this grace had been received, so still, free-will always holds a determining place." Man thus begins a work, which God afterwards continues by man's assistance. Such was the doctrinal system of the Molinists; of course, nothing which ascribed election to God, or that taught His prevenient grace, could stand with such a system. The Dominicans were alarmed; a disputation was at length held, and the Inquisition interfered, bringing the charge of heresy against most of the order of Jesuits.

* Not to be confounded, as has sometimes been done, with Michael de Molinos, the Quietist, a century later.

At this crisis, the general, Acquaviva, had the address to remove the cause pending between the Dominicans and his own order to Rome for decision. This was in 1596: the Pope, Clement VIII., took a warm interest in the theological points involved in the discussion. Sixty-five meetings and thirty-seven disputations were held on the subject in his presence; he wrote much on the question himself, and he appears to have been an upholder of the doctrines of grace and predestination as taught by the Dominicans. The Pope thus expressed himself: "God forms in us the motion of our will, and effectively disposes our heart, by the dominion which His supreme majesty has over the wills of men as well as over the rest of the creatures which are under heaven, according to St. Augustine." But he put off his definitive decision. This was induced by many causes; he did not wish to daunt the ardour of the Jesuits, then the best upholders of the Papacy. In this dispute they even threatened the Pope. The cause of the Jesuits was also upheld by Henry IV. of France, who had again received them into that country. But, perhaps, the zeal of Cardinal du Perron principally prevented a judgment being given against the Jesuits: he told the Pope that even a Protestant might subscribe the doctrines of the Dominicans.

In 1605, Paul V. became Pope. From September in that year to the following February, seventeen meetings were held in his presence on the disputed doctrines; his judgment was decidedly against the Jesuits, so that in October and November, 1606, it was deliberated in what precise form the Molinist doctrine should be condemned. And yet no condemnation was passed. The Jesuits, at this juncture, showed their devotion in submitting to expulsion from Venice rather than compromise the papal claims; and the desire not to offend them was felt to be of more importance to Rome than was the maintenance of truth! On August 29th, 1607, the contending parties were dismissed: it was announced that the decision would be published at the proper time; meanwhile, neither party was to malign the other. The "proper time" has not yet arrived, so that the papal decision is yet amongst things to be waited for. The bull Unigenitus may, however, be regarded as taking the place of a formal decision.

This was a triumph for the Jesuits; the doctrines of Molina had not been condemned, and of this they made good use. They employed them skilfully against Protestantism, showing, as well they might, how opposed these views are to that doctrine of the Reformation, that we can do no good works acceptable to God without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will.

Many hearts still clung to the writings of St. Augustine: such naturally shrunk from the increasing influence of the Jesuits. It seemed as though some definite step alone were wanting to array many in doctrinal opposition to the inroads made on truth. This it was that gave such importance to the publication of the "Augustinus" of Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres.*

* Not to be confounded with an elder Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ghent.

Jansenius was born in 1585, in the neighbourhood of Leerdam; he received his early education at Utrecht, and he was subsequently a student in the university of Louvain. There he seems to have formed an acquaintance with a Frenchman, four years his senior, who subsequently was closely united to him as a fellow-soldier in the strife which he carried on against the Pelagianism of the Romish ecclesiastics.

This friend of his was Jean Baptiste du Vergier de Hauranne, better known to posterity by the name of St. Cyran, from an abbacy which he subsequently held. At Louvain, both he and Jansenius were brought into contact with some who in secret cherished the doctrines of grace, although in the communion of Rome; and thus they received many principles of truth utterly opposed to those ordinarily held in that Church. There also they both saw and felt the evil workings of the Jesuits; they marked the inroads which that system was making on all doctrinal truth and practical morality. Subsequently, they remained together for six years at Bayonne, and made the writings of St. Augustine their principal study.

From this time it was the business of Jansenius's life to arrange and methodise everything in the writings of St. Augustine on the subjects of the grace of God, the condition of man as fallen, free-will and human impotence, original sin, election, efficacious grace, faith, and other points. He thus sought to meet the increasing Pelagianism, by opposing to it the authority of one whom the Papacy owned in word, at least, as one of the "Doctors of the Church."

Thus was he employed for many years. In 1636 he was consecrated Bishop of Ypres; and on the 6th of May, 1638, he died of the plague, in his fifty-third year, after having declared in writing that he submitted his scarcely-finished work to the judgment of the then Pope, Urban VIII.

His friends, however, made preparations for publishing his "Augustinus," without waiting on the procrastinations of the Roman court: indeed, it was needful for them to be prompt, for the Jesuits were already on the alert to cause the suppression of the work. The "Augustinus," which first appeared at Louvain in 1640, was hailed by many; for there were not a few who, though within the pale of Rome, sighed for something of real spirituality in religion. Those who felt their own impotence, found in the doctrines of the grace of God, even when partially and imperfectly apprehended, a reality such as no forms of Romish observance could supply.

The Jesuits had gone on in their course with increased activity and power: to consolidate their influence they set forth the most lax systems of casuistry: in reading them, it is difficult to believe that they are the productions of any who have borne the name of Christians. The exculpatory considerations by which they sought to deaden conscience are almost inconceivable. They had introduced themselves everywhere as confessors; and they gained not a little influence by softening all ideas of guilt, and excluding the necessity of real repentance before God as a pre-requisite to absolution.

Of course, the Jesuits, and those guided by them, must have abhorred all who taught and held the necessity of "repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ," or who maintained Christian doctrines on the subjects of sin and holiness. M. de St. Cyran was at this time, probably, more the object of their enmity than any other individual in France. He had diffused around a mild light, and many had learned from his lips something of the preciousness of Christ, while they observed him to be, indeed, one who lived and acted in the fear of God.

There was an institution with which M. de St. Cyran was connected, in which the doctrines inculcated by him had long been received and cherished. This was the celebrated abbey of Port Royal. Angelique Arnauld had been appointed abbess in 1602, at the age of eleven years. The abbey was in a state of lax discipline, and the appointment of an abbess at such an age, and the deception practised on the Pope, to whom it was certified, by the relations of the young abbess, that she was seventeen, do not indicate a high standard of ecclesiastical morality at that time amongst the French Roman Catholics. The authorities of the Church were conniving parties to the imposition as to the abbess's age.

Father Basil, a Capuchin monk, who had learned the truth of the gospel of Christ, and had resolved formally to quit the communion of Rome, passed by Port Royal. This was March 25th, 1608. He was permitted to preach, and the seed thus sown was not in vain: that one sermon brought forth fruit. There were hearts in Port Royal from that day that loved the Gospel of Christ. Basil, like Philip the Evangelist (Acts viii.), "saw no more" on earth those who had heard the word of God from his lips: he became a Protestant, but his work was owned of God, and accompanied by the life-giving power of the Holy Ghost. How wondrous are God's ways when He acts in grace!*

1 The Port-Royalists, in their persecutions, were particularly anxious to repudiate the reproach of Protestantism, with which some charged them. Hence they speak in indignant terms of Basil's "apostasy." It was also a sore point that many of the Jansenists had Huguenot relations; amongst others, two of the aunts of the Mere Angelique. The accusation of Protestantism was one great hindrance to the Jansenists in looking simply at revealed truth.

The Mere Angelique felt herself bound to enforce the rule of her order in the abbey, at the head of which she had been so strangely placed. In doing this, she encountered many difficulties, and passed through much personal trial. In carrying out the rule of "perpetual inclosure," she had to exclude her father, and others of her family, from the precincts belonging only to the nuns. This regulation led to a painful scene, in which the struggle between filial feelings and what she believed to be her duty strongly exhibited the force of her character: she acted on principle, whatever the consequences might be.

She exhibited the firmness of her mind in the reform which she effected in her own nunnery: in this she had a willing helper in her sister, the Mere Agnes; who, while her gentle and clinging spirit formed a contrast to the powerful mind of her elder sister, was equally desirous of conscientiously fulfilling the vows by which she was bound.

In consequence of the reform which the Mere Angelique effected in her own house, her aid was sought in other abbeys. The condition in which some of these, especially the rich convent Maubuisson, were found, was a melancholy proof how utterly vain are such humanly-devised institutions in preventing the corruption of the heart from exhibiting itself in its most odious forms. Several years were passed by the Mere Angelique in regulating different houses of her order.

M. de St. Cyran was introduced to the abbess of Port Royal through opposition which had been raised to a book of devotions for private use, circulated by some connected with that abbey. This tract, which had been surreptitiously obtained from its author, was vehemently condemned in a pamphlet by the Archbishop of Sens. The little book of devotions was patronised by Zamet, Bishop of Langres. M. de St. Cyran, who was not acquainted with either party, examined the censured pamphlet; and he saw that, although the expressions were sometimes unguarded, and capable of a bad construction, yet that the tone of thought which ran through it was simply that of piety. This, he considered, decided its true character. The Archbishop of Sens, in writing against it, had, in his opinion, written against piety of feeling itself. M. de St. Cyran therefore wrote in its favour, showing that he knew how to distinguish between the general principles on which a work is written and casual expressions which may occur in it.* Soon after this defence of the condemned book of private devotions, M. de St. Cyran became the spiritual director of Port Royal.

* A Protestant can only see in the Chapelet Secret du Saint Sacrement a painful display of superstition. St. Cyran, however, could only criticise it from the point of view common to himself and its denouncers.

The abbey of Port Royal des Champs had been erected for but a small number of nuns; in consequence, however, of the celebrity which it attained through the reforms and guidance of the Mere Angelique, the number increased greatly, so that, instead of twelve, there were more than eighty; and thus the buildings of the abbey (situated in a valley a few miles from Versailles) became over-crowded and unhealthy. This led, in 1626, to the purchase of a house in Paris, in the Faubourg St. Jacques, (in great part at the expense of the Arnauld family), to which the nuns removed. This their new abode was called Port Royal de Paris.

In 1630, Angelique succeeded in re-organising the convent, so as to make the situation of abbess elective triennially. She and her sister, the Mere Agnes, were subsequently elected to the office, at different times, by the free choice of the nuns.

Whilst the influence of St. Cyran extended over many minds, several of those who received the doctrines which he taught desired to withdraw themselves from the world, without, however, being bound by any monastic vow. These recluses (like the nuns at this time) were first under the spiritual guidance of St. Cyran, and afterwards under that of Singlin. In 1638, they began to take up their abode in the deserted buildings of Port Royal des Champs. These recluses included such men as Le Maitre, Pascal, Lancelot, Le Maitre de Sacy, Nicole, and others. Thus there was formed a body of men, who were prepared to maintain the doctrines of the Gospel so far as they understood them. On the return, in 1648, of part of the nuns to Port Royal des Champs, the recluses removed to an abode called Les Granges.

The nuns and recluses under Singlin's direction devoted themselves to pursuits of practical usefulness: they were especially occupied with education, and thus the schools which they conducted obtained no small degree of celebrity.

The influence which the Mere Angelique possessed with her own family was remarkable. No less than eighteen of them were to be found in the two companies of nuns and recluses. One of her brothers was Henri Arnauld, Bishop of Angers (1649 - 92), and the youngest was the celebrated Antoine Arnauld, Doctor of the Sorbonne.

Cardinal Richelieu had in vain sought to obtain the influence of M. de St. Cyran to promote his own ends; and, having failed in his overtures, that crafty and tyrannical minister sought to crush the individual whom he had previously flattered and courted. Richelieu now lent a willing ear to those who charged St. Cyran with heterodoxy. These accusations were indeed brought by the whole Jesuit party; and thus, May 14th, 1638, M. de St. Cyran was immured in the dungeons of Vincennes, eight days after the death of Jansenius.

Two months after the death of Richelieu, St. Cyran was freed from his captivity; this was on the 6th of February, 1643. In the interim, the "Augustinus" of Jansenius had appeared, and also M. de St. Cyran's own disciples had increased both in numbers and in activity. But his own health was irrecoverably broken down; he lingered a few months, and then expired October 11th, in the same year, aged sixty-two.

It may be asked, How could men possessed of so much light as Jansenius and St. Cyran, and their many followers, live and die in acknowledged fellowship with the Church of Rome? To explain this strange inconsistency we may refer to Martin Luther. He had learned the Gospel of Christ, but it was the actings of Rome against him that taught him the depth of evil which is found in the Romish system. Thus, in his earlier preaching, it is said of him by Melanchthon, "He explained that sin is freely pardoned on account of God's Son, and that man receives this blessing through faith. He in no way interfered with the usual ceremonies. The established discipline had not in all his order a more faithful observer and defender. But he laboured more to make all understand the grand and essential doctrines of conversion, of the forgiveness of sins, of faith, and of the true consolations of the cross." This may explain an inconsistency which, in itself, can never be ?????????????

The publication of the "Augustin's" presented to the Jesuits, and their party, as definite a subject of attack as the work of Molina had been half a century before to their opponents. In 1642, a general condemnation of the works of Jansenius was procured from Pope Urban VIIl., in the bull In eminenti. So decisive a point would not have been gained by the Molinists, had they not succeeded in directing the attention of the papal court to a passage in which Jansenius brought forward a statement of St. Augustine as authoritative, although the same point (without reference, of course, to that father) had been condemned at Rome. This was an inroad on papal infallibility, and this caused the rejection of the work.

But the controversy still continued: many did not receive the bull. It is only those who have had some familiarity with such canonical strifes, who can at all apprehend the distinctions which may be drawn as to the force and effect of a papal bull. The intention of Rome was, however, plain enough.

The strife still went on in France, where the Jesuit party sought, if possible, to crush Port Royal, and all connected with it. Father Cornet drew up five propositions, as containing the especial points in the doctrines of Jansenius. Let these propositions be condemned as heretical, and then, of course, Jansenism must fall. The propositions were mostly couched in somewhat ambiguous language, so as to admit of very different explanations: the object in this was to procure their condemnation in any sense or in any form.*

1 The following are the celebrated propositions:-

"I. Aliqua Dei praecepta hominibus justis volentibus, et conantibus, secundum praesentes quas habent vires, sunt impossibilia: deest quoque illis gratia, qua possibilia fiant.

"II. Interiori gratiae, in statu naturae lapsae, nunquam resistitur.

"III. Ad merendum et demerendum in statu naturae Iapsae, non requiritur in homine libertas a necessitate, sed sufficit libertas a coactione

"IV. Semipelagiani admittebant praevenientis gratiae interioris necessitatem ad singulos actus, etiam ad initium fidei: et in hoc erant haeretici, quod vellent earn gratiam talem esse, cui posset humana voluntas resistere, vel obtemperare.

"V. Semipelagianum est, dicere Christum pro omnibus omnino hominibus mortuum esse, aut sanguinem fudisse."

Proceedings commenced at Rome; thirteen theological consulters were convened, of whom Luke Wadding, the historian of the Franciscan order, two Dominicans, and the general of the Augustine order, objected to a condemnation being expressed. They well saw that the doctrines of St. Augustine were attacked. The other nine, however, condemned the propositions: the advocates for Jansenism confined themselves almost entirely to a defence of prevenient and efficacious grace. Had not the idea of touching these points been excluded, the Dominicans and others would have resisted all condemnation. The contemptible Pope Innocent X., who hated all theological studies, cared nothing about the question; he also expected no good results to spring from a decision. Cardinal Chigi, however, his secretary of state, urged him on: the passage which seemed to question papal infallibility was enough to excite the animosity of the secretary. Innocent X., therefore, decided on condemning the five propositions as heretical, false, rash, impious, and blasphemous. The condemnation is dated May 31st, 1653.

The Jesuits had thus a weapon to use against Port Royal, which they so much hated, not merely because of the doctrinal points now discussed, but also on grounds of long standing. To the family of Arnauld they appeared to have an hereditary hatred, in the remembrance of the manner in which the father of Mere Angelique had acted against the Jesuits in the days of their early introduction into France, when with extraordinary force and eloquence he attacked their institute, and charged home upon their order the crime of the murder of Henry III. The pent-up wrath of half a century was now to fall with full force on Port Royal-the stronghold of Jansenism, the scene of the reform of Mere Angelique Arnauld.

The Jansenists were called on to condemn the five propositions: to the surprise and mortification of the Jesuits, they avowed their willingness to do so, with the qualification, however, that they did this in their heretical sense, and that they denied the propositions to be really contained in the work of Jansenius. The Jesuits were thus checked for a time. The Jansenists took advantage of the ignorance of their adversaries as to the writings of the Fathers, by publishing, without any author's name, an epistle of St. Prosper (the scholar of St. Augustine) to Ruffinus. The Jesuits denounced this as a new piece of Jansenist heresy; and when the real history and authorship of the epistle were made known, and the blindness of the Jesuits was manifested, then they found means of understanding the anti-Pelagian work in an orthodox sense. Thus tortuous is the spirit of persecution. The same words and sentences which were heretical if used by a Jansenist, were orthodox if used by St. Prosper. The question was not, What is said? but, Who says it?

The next step of the Jesuit party was to procure a further declaration from Rome as to the question of fact, that the five propositions were actually contained in the work of Jansenius. Innocent X. decreed this, September 29th, 1654. Hence arose the celebrated distinction of "jait" and "droit" - fact and right. The Jansenists denied the papal authority to extend to infallible decrees as to points of fact. In this distinction they were borne out by the highest Romish authorities. They admitted the Pope's right in doctrinal judgments, supposing that God guided His Church infallibly; but where supernatural judgment was not needed, they held that the Pope might be wrong: he might be misinformed, ignorant, prejudiced, or taken by surprise. *

* The Mere Angelique had a goodly proof, in her own history, that the Pope was liable to be surprised. Clement VIII. was imposed on, and thus he acknowledged her to be seventeen when she was but eleven. He must then have been fallible in matter of fact. The Mere Angelique was confirmed by the Pope as abbess when she actually became seventeen.

While this distinction was under discussion, the Duke of Liancourt, a man of well-known piety, was refused absolution by a priest of St. SuIpice , unless he removed his granddaughter from under the care of the nuns of Port Royal, and cast off and condemned the Jansenists. This led to the appearance of two letters on the subjects of discussion, from the pen of Dr. Antoine Arnauld. This celebrated Jansenist was now an object of especial enmity to the Jesuits: a work which he had published, in which he had maintained the necessity of real evangelical repentance before God, had given them the greatest offence.

Two propositions were extracted from Dr. Arnauld's second letter, and on these the Sorbonne, the theological faculty of Paris, sat in judgment. At length, January 31st, 1656, after very much discussion, a majority condemned the statements of Dr. Arnauld, and excluded him from the Sorbonne. This decision was obtained by a most disgraceful combination of parties: the Jesuits could not have overcome without the aid of their former antagonists, the Dominicans; and both combined against the Jansenists, by uniting in a form of condemnation on which the two parties could not have agreed, except by using the same terms in senses entirely different.

The full enmity of the dominant party in France was now declared. All were to be regarded as heretics who upheld the five propositions, or who condemned the propositions and yet denied that they were in the work of Jansenius; and so, too, those who held any intercourse with those who refused to subscribe the formulary. A man was made responsible for his neighbour's faith as well as his own. How far the Jesuit party could go in their assertions is shown by the statement which they had the hardihood to make. They said that the propositions were all in Jansenius in so many words ("singulares, individuae, totidem verbis apud Jansenium contentae"), and they thought it a heresy not to acknowledge this!

Further to injure the Jansenists, reports were spread which sought to damage Jansenius's moral character: this was part of a course of reckless falsehood quite consistent with a bad cause, sustained with evil arts.

Preparations were soon made for scattering the community of Port Royal, and placing them under close captivity, so as to bring them to submission. It seemed a strange spectacle that a body of women, and a few others who agreed with them in sentiment, should withstand the power of the decrees of Rome, and all the pertinacity of the Jesuits in carrying out those decrees.

On March 30th, 1656, two months after the condemnation of Dr. Arnauld, the civil authorities proceeded to carry out an order in council, that every scholar, postulant, and novice should be removed from Port Royal. This was to be the first step in the direct work of persecution.

But the hands of the opposers were checked: there was a sudden and absolute pause. This cessation was commonly attributed to a miracle wrought on a scholar at Port Royal de Paris a few days before. At all events, both parties equally believed in the miracle as real, and the ecclesiastical authorities of France solemnly announced it.  Perhaps, however, there were also other causes. Cardinal Mazarin, the minister of France, was not on good terms with the Pope, and at this juncture he might well desire not to show too great alacrity in causing the will of the Pope to be carried into execution: he might thus gladly avail himself of the miracle* in question. It was the cardinal himself who caused it to be published.

* The "miracle" was briefly this:-Mademoiselle Marguerite Perrier (Pascal's niece), a child of ten years old, was a boarder at Port Royal de Paris. She had long suffered dreadfully in her left eye, so that she had become an object of pity. Soeur Flavie Passart, the nun under whose exclusive care she was, recommended her to apply to the eye a holy thorn which was honoured as a relic of our Lord's crown. She did this; and a report soon spread that she was entirely healed. The surgeon who came to examine the eye a few days afterwards found that it was quite well. Such are the simple facts.

Flavie Passart afterwards became a known and marked deceiver in getting up feigned miracles with great ingenuity; illnesses were brought on simply us an opportunity for a new miracle. This may cause us to receive her testimony with caution in the present case. As she had the entire charge of the child, she might have imposed, by irritative applications, both on the little girl herself and on the medical attendants. She was at first the only one who knew of the miracle. Mademoiselle Perrier had no doubt on the subject herself; she knew that she had suffered dreadfully, and that she had recovered: she lived till 1733. But the question always is, How far were both the sufferings and its removal contrived by Flavie? It should be stated that at this time no one suspected Flavie's course of hypocrisy, which was afterwards so manifest.

Another cause for minds being diverted from the persecution of the nuns was found in the "Lettres a un Provincial" of Pascal, which at this juncture were making their appearance from time to time. In these remarkable letters he showed with extraordinary force how narrow the question really was-whether five propositions are in the "Augustinus" or not-when no one had there pointed them out; he showed by what unworthy compromises the condemnation of Dr. Arnauld had been obtained; and, besides touching on doctrinal points which were involved, he firmly and manfully attacked the shameless casuistry of the Jesuits. These letters had a wonderful efficiency, for their power was felt even by those who had no apprehension of the present subjects of controversy. Pascal gave such extracts from the approved writings of the order as filled men with amazement. At first he printed these without referring to the works cited; the Jesuits denied such abominable opinions to be maintained by their approved writers. Pascal then pointed out the places from which he had quoted; the discovery ought to have covered the Jesuits with confusion.* He illustrates with great clearness and vivacity the view which the Jansenists took of the fallibility of the Pope on questions of fact/  He plainly tells a Jesuit, whom he addresses-

"It was in vain that you obtained against Galileo a decree from Rome condemnatory of his opinion respecting the motion of the earth. This would never prove that it remains fixed; and if there be observed facts which prove that the earth moves, all men together can neither hinder it from moving, nor hinder themselves from moving along with it.** Do not you also suppose that the Epistles of Pope Zachary for the excommunication of St. Virgilius, because he maintained that there are antipodes, should have annihilated the new world? And inasmuch as this error had been declared very dangerous, ought the King of Spain to have believed the testimony of Columbus, who said he was come from the new world, rather than the judgment of the Pope, who had not been there?"

* Casuistry of the most scandalously immoral kind had been pointed but a few years before this time in the writings of the Jesuit Bauny. The Jesuits boldly avowed that the opinions were "detestable;" that they "marked an abandoned conscience;" a holder of such ideas must be "an organ of the demon." They denied, however, that the book of Bauny contained the cited passage, and thus they raised a loud outcry of fraud and imposture. They, however, were the fraudulent impostors themselves: the passage was Bauny's. At length, when all knew that the opinion had been held by a Jesuit, they turned round and affirmed the doctrine to be innocent! Oh, the tortuity of those who defend abominations and deal in calumnies!

** This remark was all the more cutting, since the same Pope, Urban VIII., who condemned Galileo, also was the first to condemn the work of Jansenius. It may be consolatory for the reader to be informed that the Pope, in 1821, repealed the censure on the earth for moving; so that it has gone round the sun twenty-nine times, and also turned on its own axis for twenty-nine years, freed from the danger of the papal ban.

By way of answer the Jesuits cried out that the writer of the letters was a heretic, and that a heretic must not he believed.* How often this kind of outcry has been used by those who wish to exercise ecclesiastical oppression, must be familiar to all who are acquainted with church history.

* Pascal says: "Vous dites que, pour toute reponse a mes quinze lettres, il suffit de dire quinze fois que je suis heretique ; et qu'etant declare tel, je ne merite aucune creance."

The nuns of Port Royal were allowed a few years of tranquillity: Rome, however, was yet further preparing its weapons. It was needful to have such decrees as would admit of no evasion. At first, through the error of a Jesuit, it had been maintained that the five propositions were found in so many words (totidem verbis) in Jansenius: this, however, was a statement that refuted itself. The question then turned on the substance and sense. It was easy to point out statements of Jansenius which resembled the propositions: resemblance, however, is not identity-nonne canis lupo simillimus?-and as these passages in Jansenius rested on St. Augustine (whom the Pope of course had not condemned), everything turned on the sense in which expressions were used.

Alexander VII. was now Pope, the same individual who, when Cardinal Chigi, had been instrumental in procuring the original decree of Innocent X. On the 16th of November, 1656 (soon after the miracle of Port Royal had been solemnly declared at Paris), the Pope issued a new bull, afresh condemning the five propositions, and repeating the determination that they are in the "Augustinus"; and further adding that the sense in which they were condemned was the sense in which they had been stated by Jansenius.

Four years afterwards Louis XIV. gave effect to this bull.* In December, 1660, he convened an assembly of bishops,  avowing his intention of exterminating Jansenism. De Marca, the crafty and unscrupulous Archbishop of Toulouse, prepared a formulary which might entrap all who did not yield blind submission to Rome.

* Louis XIV. Gave great power to the Jesuits, who in their turn flattered and caressed him. He as yet, however, cared but little about the Romish faith: his own pleasure and power were his idols. He one day asked the Count de Grammont to read the "Augustinus," and to tell him whether the live propositions were in it or not. The count probably excused himself from such a long theological study: he reported, however, to the king that he had read the book, but that he had not met with the propositions: he added to this that they might for all that be there incognito.

"I sincerely submit to the constitution of Pope Innocent X. of May 31st, 1653, according to its true sense, as defined by the constitution of our holy Father, Pope Alexander VII., of October 16th, 1656. I acknowledge myself bound in conscience to obey this constitution, and I condemn from my heart, and with my mouth, the doctrine of the five propositions of Cornelius Jansenius, which are contained in the book entitled ‘Augustinus,' which both these popes and the bishops have condemned; and this doctrine is not of St. Augustine, which Jansenius has falsely set forth, and contrary to the true sense of the holy doctor."

Subscription to this formulary, confirmed by an oath, was demanded from all the clergy, and all who were engaged in tuition of any kind: the presentation of such forms to the laity was a new step on the part of the Church of Rome.

It should be a humiliating thought to Protestants, that the Romish authorities considered that they were acting with regard to the subscriptions in a manner which some of the proceedings of Protestantism had suggested. At this very time the Act of Uniformity in England was the means of evils not a few, leading to persecutions and imprisonment; and at the close of the preceding century subscription to the Formula Concordiae in Saxony had led to most disastrous consequences. Hence it was said at this period in France, that the ecclesiastical authorities were acting like Protestants; had they said in imitation of the inconsistencies of some Protestants, it would have been correct; for we must remember, that Romanists, in persecuting, act in accordance with their principles, but that Protestants, when they have persecuted, have acted in opposition to theirs.

Persecution now commenced in earnest. The dungeons of the Bastile were crowded with those who refused to violate their consciences by subscribing what they did not believe. The very passages of the fortress were occupied by prisoners. M. de Sacy, the nephew of Mere Angelique, carried on during this imprisonment his well-known version of the Scriptures. Henri Arnauld, Bishop of Angers, and three other bishops, refused to accept the formulary, be the consequences what they might.

But it was upon Port Royal that the principal fury of the tempest discharged itself. The Mere Angelique , believing that her presence was most wanted at Port Royal de Paris, went thither in a state of extreme suffering and weakness from Port Royal des Champs, and, on her deathbed, encouraged the nuns to firmness in their maintenance of a good conscience.  She had the pain, in her last days, of seeing seventy-five scholars, novices, and postulants removed by force from the shelter of Port Royal. After rather more than three months of trial, the Mere Angelique breathed her last, August 6th, 1661, aged seventy. She left her sister, the gentle-souled Mere Agnes, and her niece, the clear-minded and spiritual Mere Angelique de St. Jean, as the principal upholders of Port Royal and its testimony.

Every effort that could be devised was put forth to make the nuns sign the formulary. How could they be so obstinate in their own opinions? Is the matter in question-whether certain propositions are in a book or not-such, that it should be treated as one of great importance? Why should such a point be made about upholding the writings and opinions of one man?

The replies to these considerations were simple and easy. It was not the magnitude of the point at issue, but its truth, that gave it its importance. They did not believe the propositions were in Jansenius; they could not therefore declare them to be there: they did not believe that Jansenius had misrepresented St. Augustine, nor could they on such grounds say that he had done so. And as to maintaining one person's opinions, they could only say that they had not raised the controversy, but those who had impugned Jansenius.  And, as to themselves personally, the nuns stated that the work of Jansenius being in Latin, they could not declare on oath what its contents might be, for they could not even read it; they knew, however, that no one had pointed out the propositions, as condemned, in the work itself. *

* Pope Alexander VII. sought to mend the difficulty by publishing a constitution, February 15th, 1665, in which he decreed that the propositions are in the work of Jansenius, and that he was infallible in this as a point of fact.

Some years of suffering and imprisonment now fell on the nuns. These trials were sustained with that patience which the Lord can vouchsafe to His people. It is not, however, surprising that some, overawed by their ecclesiastical superiors, subscribed the formulary. It is worthy of remark, that those who did so had previously been the most enthusiastic in their Jansenism, with more of partisanship than of principle: such, when they had once condemned Jansenius, became the most treacherous and implacable adversaries of those who remained steadfast: this was particularly the case with some whom gratitude ought to have restrained.

Perefixe, the Archbishop of Paris, endeavoured to divide and separate the nuns. Flavie Passart, who had been regarded for some time by the more intelligent as worthy of but little confidence, succeeded in forming a party against the nuns who would not comply. She at length suggested that the abbey of Port Royal de Paris should be taken from its true owners, and that the compliant nuns should have it as their own, and should proceed to choose an abbess for themselves. These arrangements were carried into effect; but Flavie Passart had the mortification of seeing the office of abbess, at which she aimed, and for the sake of which she had acted a part of the basest ingratitude towards her benefactresses, even causing them to be imprisoned, bestowed on another nun whom she despised. Thus did the object of her ambition elude her grasp, and all her machinations only issue in her own confusion.

France at this time exhibited a strange spectacle-all the ingenuity of the Jesuits, all the resources of Rome, and all the power of the most absolute king in Europe, vainly seeking to overcome the constancy and to rule the consciences of a few weak women. The recluses had been scattered or consigned to dungeons, but the nuns were a definite body, against which the many waves dashed and broke: they dashed in vain, and could not overwhelm, for there is One who ruleth the raging of the sea and the strivings of the people.

In 1668 a change took place. In the preceding year Alexander VII., who even in his last moments, after he had received extreme unction, fulminated a brief against the four French bishops who refused the formulary, had been succeeded by a pope of a very different spirit. The new Pontiff, Clement IX., was willing to listen to the representations made to him by the four bishops who rejected the formulary; and thus, after various negotiations, in which the Duchess of Longueville, the king's cousin, acted a prominent part, the Pope accepted the Jansenist subscription, by which they rejected the five propositions without reference to Jansenius's works, and with reservation of all senses laid down by St. Augustine: this was called the Pacification of Clement IX. It could not be said that the nuns signed any formulary at all: all charge of heresy was removed on their giving, each of them, a statement in writing of what they believed on the subjects contained in the five propositions.

The prison doors were opened; the Jansenists who had been concealed could again publicly appear; and eleven tranquil years shone on Port Royal. It is true that the community had lost their house of Port Royal de Paris, which had been given to the few compliant nuns during the persecution; but still they had Port Royal des Champs, their original seat and sphere of usefulness.

During the sufferings and imprisonment several had been removed by death,-the Mere Angelique at the very commencement, and subsequently Pascal, and Singlin the spiritual director of the nuns. In fact, those who had been connected with the reform of Port Royal by the Mere Angelique had mostly passed away, and now those cloisters were inhabited by a body of nuns whose feelings and tone of thought were moulded according to the opposition which they encountered in the maintenance of doctrinal truth.

The Mere Agnes did not long survive the Pacification of Clement IX.: she died February 19th, 1671, aged seventy-eight. Although she was not possessed of the powerful mind and directive energy of her elder sister, yet there was found in her contemplative spirit that which was a most effective auxiliary to her sister's labours. It was said that the dignified Angelique was altogether the mother abbess, while the gentle Agnes as thoroughly the prioress.

Jansenistic principles now became far more widely diffused. The authorities of the Church of Rome thought a Jansenist was not necessarily a heretic; the schools of Fort Royal flourished even more than before the persecution and imprisonment: the Jansenists busied themselves in circulating the Scriptures in French.

In 1679 the Duchess of Longueville died: she had long been considered the protectress of Port Royal from the displeasure of the king and the Jesuits: it became manifest that this had been the case.

In the early part of the same year Pope Innocent XI. had condemned sixty-five propositions contained in the authoritative writings of the Jesuits as being subversive of all proper moral principle: In the examination of the writings of the lax casuistic authors amongst the Jesuits, much aid had been rendered by Dr. Arnauld and Nicole. This of course exasperated the Jesuits yet more than before against the Jansenists. To the latter party it was a triumph, though but of brief duration. The papal condemnation of the Jesuit propositions is dated March 2nd: the death of the Duchess of Longueville took place on the 15th of April; and then but one month passed before the Jesuits procured an order from the king that the recluses should quit the valley of Port Royal at once and for ever. The nuns were then prohibited from receiving scholars or novices; so that as soon as the nuns then in the abbey were all dead, that body of Jansenists would be extinct. A lingering persecution of thirty years ensued, in which the suffering nuns exhibited no small measure of Christian grace.

The Jesuit confessors of the king ruled with a high hand in spiritual affairs; the Protestants were oppressed by the revocation of the edict of Nantes and the subsequent frightful sufferings; the Jansenists were scattered; Fenelon was banished; and yet at the same time Louis XIV. restrained the authority of the Pope in his dominions. All that he thus gained from the court of Rome was so much the more authority in the hands of the Jesuits.

Among others who had received some Jansenistic doctrines were that learned and laborious body, the French Benedictines. They commenced the publication of a complete edition of the works of St. Augustine in 1679, the year of the recommencement of the persecution. For this they used ancient and authoritative MSS., and all were astonished to find that St. Augustine appeared far more of a Jansenist than ever before. The truth is, that copyists and previous editors had altered passages from time to time so as to make them less offensive to the Romish prejudices. Thus even Jansenius had never known the full Augustinianism of St. Augustine himself. The Jesuits charged the Benedictines with having falsified their MSS. -a charge which only recoiled on those who brought it. By the close of the seventeenth century great changes had taken place, both within the walls of Port Royal and also amongst its friends without. At the time of the renewal of persecution in 1679, the Mere Angelique de St. Jean, daughter of M. Arnauld d'Andilly, and niece of the former Mere Angelique, held the place of abbess. She had to act in the midst of circumstances of peculiar trial. And if in the family of Arnauld it be thought, that her aunt, the Mere Angelique, possessed the greatest force of character, and if her uncle Dr. Antoine Arnauld was distinguished by his learning, comprehensive intellect, and unwearied labours, it must at least be conceded that in clearness and concentrativeness of mind, neither could take a higher place than that which belonged to the Mere Angelique de St. Jean. She did not survive the renewal of persecution for many years: she died January 29th, 1684, aged fifty-nine.

In the same month her cousin De Sacy, one of the most distinguished of the recluses, had previously been removed by death (January 4th, 1684), and her death was followed by that of her brother De Lusancy, on the 10th of February. Dr. Arnauld, who was regarded as the principal upholder of Jansenism and as a kind of successor to St. Cyran, had found it needful on the renewal of persecution to escape from France. From 1679 he continued to live in different parts of Holland and Belgium. On his death, which took place at Brussels, August 8th, 1694, in his eighty-third year, his heart was conveyed to Port Royal. Dom Claude Lancelot was the last survivor of those who had been personal disciples of St. Cyran, and had learned the doctrines of the grace of God from his lips. He had become a Benedictine monk in the Abbey of St. Cyran, from whence he was banished to Quimperle in Lower Brittany, where at the age of eighty he died, April 15th, 1695. On the following 16th of November Nicole died; and thus the race of the recluses of Port Royal almost (if not entirely) became extinct. The last survivor of the bishops who refused the formulary was Henri Arnauld, Bishop of Angers: he died on the 2nd of June, 1692, aged ninety-five years. Among the pupils of Port Royal, two of the more eminent were Racine* and Tillemont; of these, the latter died January 10th, 1698, and the former April 21st, 1699.

* May 19th, 1700, the Mere Agnes de St. Thecle Racine, aunt of this well-known author, died. She was at that time abbess of Port Royal des Champs-the last but one who filled that office. She had long stood as a sustainer of her house: for twenty years she was procuratrix; then for fifteen prioress; and then for twelve abbess.

Thus was Port Royal stripped of almost every external earthly prop; and besides those persons of influence who held Jansenist sentiments, there were also others removed by death, who for family reasons, or other causes, might have been upholders of the persecuted abbey. In 1699 died both the remaining brothers of the Mere Angelique de St Jean, the Abbe de Chaumes and the Marquis de Pomponne.

Meanwhile the internal condition of Port Royal had been one of much trial. The nuns were women of active energies, who had for years been accustomed to devote those energies to the education of the young. All this occupation had been taken from them, and they had to endure the weariness of a life of seclusion devoid of any employment for their mental energies. At the beginning of the last year of the seventeenth century (Jan. 8th, 1700) died the last nun of the Arnauld family in Port Royal: this was Marie Angelique de St. Therese, sister of the Mere Angelique de St. Jean. Thus ended the connection of the Arnaulds with Port Royal, ninety-eight years from the appointment of the first Mere Angelique as abbess.

Amongst those who, in the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, especially upheld the doctrines of grace in France, was Quesnel, one of the fathers of the Oratory. His "Reflexions Morales" found many readers, and they were recommended by many bishops. Surely we may conclude from this that many hearts responded to the Christian truth which he had thus taught. Some, however, changed with changing circumstances. De Noailles, as Bishop of Chalons, had, in 1695, strongly recommended Quesnel's writings to his diocese; but scarcely a year after, when he was made Archbishop of Paris, the same De Noailles became the opponent and condemner of works precisely similar. The king and the Jesuits would be obeyed, and De Noailles had the weakness to comply.

The same archbishop (who became Cardinal De Noailles) afterwards went further still in his deflections. A few years later the Jesuit party, with the powerful influence of Madame de Maintenon, decided on the entire destruction of the community of Port Royal des Champs; they would not wait the deaths of a few ladies, mostly elderly; they betook themselves to speedier measures. A question was raised how far the sacrament of the Lord's Supper could be conscientiously administered to those who had not signed the whole formulary. At the same time Port Royal de Paris was encouraged to carryon a lawsuit against Port Royal des Champs, demanding all the property of both houses.

De Noailles entreated the nuns to sign the formulary as a matter of human faith. Had they done this, all molestation as to property and liberty would cease. In 1705 Clement XI. issued his bull Vineam Domini Sabaoth, in which he attacked the doctrines of grace, and took as high a ground on the Jansenist points as Alexander VII. himself. The nuns refused to receive this bull. The last abbess, Madame de Boulard, died in 1706, and no royal permission had been given to elect a successor. The dying abbess named as prioress Madame Dumesnil Courtiaux, who had to sustain the last storm.

The king and the Jesuits procured whatever bulls they wanted from the Pope; and when these did not sufficiently set forth the Jansenist heresy of the nuns, they were returned from Paris to Rome with corrections and alterations, to which the Pope acceded. The title-deeds of Port Royal des Champs were in the hands of M. de St. Claude, one of the recluses. To obtain possession of these documents, the Jesuits caused him to be arrested and sent to the Bastile, and they seized all his papers: he remained in prison for seven years.

On the 26th of March, 1708, Pope Clement XI. issued a bull for the entire suppression of Port Royal des Champs.

On January 20th, 1709, Pere la Chaise, the king's confessor, died, aged eighty-five years: he rejoiced that he had lived to see the axe laid at the root of the heretical tree. On the following 11th of July, Cardinal de Noailles was forced to issue his order for the suppression of the abbey. On the 29th of October following, the valley was filled with troops; a commissary entered the abbey, who demanded all title-deeds that they might have there; he then further declared his commission to disperse the nuns immediately. The prioress gave them her blessing for the last time, and they were sent separately into confinement in different nunneries, as obstinate heretics. Their removal was accompanied by circumstances of great cruelty.

To be condemned as heretics was to them a bitter cup: they were deprived of the sacraments, which from their point of view was a sentence of the extremest character. Thus they passed years of suffering. The mother-prioress was confined at Blois, where she died, after six years of captivity. In her last illness she was allowed no rest on the subject of the formulary. The Bishop of Blois troubled her incessantly; she must either sign or else die without the sacraments. What an alternative to one who regards the Lord's Supper with the Romanist aspect! The grace of the Gospel, however, triumphed. The bishop asked her, "What will you do when you have to appear before God, bearing the weight of your sins alone?" The dying prioress replied, "Having made peace through the blood of His cross, my Saviour hath reconciled all things unto Himself in the body of His flesh through death, to present us holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight, if we continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel." She then added, with clasped hands, "In Thee, 0 Lord, have I trusted, nor wilt Thou suffer the creature that trusts in Thee to be confounded." The bishop reviled this dying saint, who meekly besought, with many tears, that she might be permitted to receive the sacrament. The bishop absolutely rejected her request, as coming from a confirmed heretic.  "Well, my lord," she replied, wiping her eyes; "I am content to bear with resignation whatever deprivation my God sees fit: I am convinced that His divine grace can supply even the want of sacraments." She fell asleep in the Lord the same night, March 18th, 1716, in her seventieth year. Such was the evangelical spirit of the holy confessors of Port Royal!

The nuns were dispersed in 1709; in the following year the cloister was pulled down; in 1711 the bodies were disinterred from the burial-ground, with the grossest brutalities and indecency; and in 1713 the church itself was demolished. Thus fell Port Royal; and De Noailles had ordered this work of destruction, not from hate, but simply from weakness!

Bitter indeed was the cardinal's remorse of conscience: his criminal compliance with the demands of an earthly sovereign pressed on his spirit as an intolerable load. At length, in solemn testimony of his repentance of the crime in which he had been made, through his weakness, a participant, he went himself to the ruins of Port Royal, that he might there mourn as a penitent: he would see in those ruins the extent of the desolation which he had caused-he would look at all the magnitude of his offence before God; and as his sin had been public, so should be his repentance. He approached the spot with bitter groanings; he exclaimed, "I will not be spared any part-I will see my enormous sin in all its horrors! Here, in the midst of this miserable devastation, here will I unburden my mind-here it may be (oh, may it indeed be here!) that the God of all compassion will yet have mercy on me, a miserable sinner." He looked at the devastated burial-ground, which once had contained the remains of many holy servants and confessors of Christ; the sight seemed to fill him with despair. "Oh !" he cried, "all these dismantled stones will rise against me at the day of judgment! Oh! how shall I ever bear the vast, the heavy load!"

Let us not judge the Cardinal de Noailles too harshly: he had tried to maintain a high place in court favour; and step after step of criminal compliance led at length to those deeds, the memory of which plunged him into this depth of anguish.

De Noailles earnestly desired to repair, as far as still was possible, the evil which he had wrought: so long, however, as Louis XIV. lived, nothing could be done. On the death of that monarch, in September, 1715, the power of Madame de Maintenon ceased, and from that time the efforts on behalf of the imprisoned nuns were more effectual. At length the six surviving sufferers were released, five of them were received into the abbey of Malnoue and one into that of Etrees, as honoured confessors of Christ. To their prayers did the Cardinal de Noailles commend himself; and he became the avowed advocate and protector of those to whom he had caused such suffering.* May we not trust that his repentance of heart had indeed been wrought by the Spirit of God, and that the prayers of those who forgave, even as they had been forgiven of God for Christ's sake, had been heard on his behalf? We may admire the working of the grace of God: the suffering prioress and the guilty cardinal might alike meet in the presence of God through the blood and merits of Christ our Saviour.

* When Madame de Valois (the nun who afterwards resided in the abbey of Etrees) was freed from her imprisonment, De Noailles wrote to her on the subject of her now being admitted to the sacrament. In greater testimony to her not being a heretic, he proposed that this solemnity should take place publicly at Paris, at the church of St. Genevieve. This should be another proof of his repentance for the unjust excommunication. It took place accordingly at that church; but Madame de Valois, out of delicacy to the feelings of the cardinal, caused it to be at four o'clock in the morning.

Father Quesnel has already been mentioned, whose writings had done much to spread truth in France. He, too, had fallen under the displeasure of the Jesuit advisers of Louis XIV. That monarch, in consequence, procured from Rome the bull Unigenitus, condemnatory of his writings, and all that had been written, or that ever might appear, in their defence. In this bull, which Clement XI. issued September 8th, 1713, one hundred and one propositions extracted from the writings of Quesnel were condemned, "as false, captious, evil-sounding, offensive to pious ears, scandalous, pernicious, rash, injurious to the Church and its customs; contumelious, not against the Church merely, but also against the secular authorities; seditious, impious, blasphemous, suspected of heresy, and also savouring of heresy itself; also favouring heretics, heresies, and schism, erroneous, nearly allied to heresy, often condemned; and furthermore, also heretical; and sundry heresies, especially those contained in the well-known propositions of Jansenius, and that, too, in the sense in which those were condemned." The bull did not specify which of the propositions belonged severally to each of these heads of condemnation.

This was the triumph of doctrinal Jesuitism: Le Tellier, the king's Jesuit confessor, arranged the terms of the bull. It seemed as if every feeling of piety towards God, and every apprehension of His grace, was to be extinguished throughout the Papal Church-as if all who adhered at all to many doctrines that had been regarded as orthodox, were to have their feelings and their consciences outraged. The Jesuits earnestly pressed the acceptance of this bull. *

* The following were some of the anathematised propositions:-

"27. Faith is the primary grace, and the fountain of all others. 2 Pet. i. 3."

"50. In vain do we cry to God, My Father, unless the spirit of love be that which cries. Rom. viii. 15."

"55. God only crowns love: he who runs from another impulse, from any other motive, runs in vain. 1 Cor. vi. (sic) 34."

"58. Where there is not love there is neither God nor religion. 1 John iv. 8."

"76. Nothing is more extensive than the Church of God, for all the elect righteous of all ages compose it. Eph. ii. 22."

"80. The reading of the Holy Scripture is for all. Acts viii. 29."

"91. The fear of unjust excommunication ought never to hinder us from fulfilling our duty. We never go out of the Church, even when we seem to be expelled from it by the wickedness of men, when through love we are united to God, to Jesus Christ, and to the Church itself. John ix. 22, 23."

Quesnel, like many other leading Jansenists, had found a refuge in the Netherlands; he continued to maintain his doctrines, and defend their orthodoxy, until his death, which occurred at Amsterdam in 1719; he was then eighty-five.

The bull Unigenitus was, however, by no means generally received; De Noailles and other bishops protested against it: there was, indeed, no longer a united body, like Port Royal, to act as a focus of Jansenism, but the scattered Jansenists were numerous; for had there been no Port Royal, Jansenism would equally have existed. Their numbers now increased, from the fact that any who had even a slight apprehension of grace, found themselves opposed by this decree. The Jansenists continued to be proscribed in France, but all their oppressions and persecutions led to many feeling a warm sympathy on their behalf.  Not only did some Roman Catholic countries refuse to receive the bull, but even in France several bishops solemnly appealed from the decision if Pope Clement XL to the next general council.

The bull Unigenitus placed Jansenism on a new ground: it no longer professed submission to doctrinal decisions of the popedom. The Jansenists now lamented that they had not plainly seen from the first the point at which Rome was aiming-the rejection of the doctrines found in St. Augustine's works.*

* It is too obvious to need much remark that the question, "What saith the Scripture?" had but little prominence in the history of Jansenism. They read and prized the Scriptures; but their idea of "the Church" had too strong a hold on their minds to lead them simply to the word of God. The questions were thus narrowed to, How far were certain Scripture doctrines recognised by the Fathers? Happily they fixed on the same anti-Pelagian statements, which gave light also to the Reformers

In tracing the course of the Jansenists we must bear in mind how they had received as an axiom, that out of the Church there is no salvation; and. then, by identifying Roman Catholicism with the Church, they were driven into the inconsistency of conceding to the papal decisions as far as their consciences could at all go. This led to not a few of their weaknesses.

This latter phase of Jansenism, in which papal infallibility was utterly repudiated, even while the endeavour was made to preserve Church unity, extended its influence widely. Ranke ,says of the Jansenists of this period: "We find traces of them in Vienna and in Brussels, in Spain and Portugal, and in every part of Italy. They disseminated their doctrines throughout all Homan Catholic Christendom, sometimes openly, oftener in secret."

The Jesuits, in the meanwhile, had Rome fully in their power. Their acts and intrigues, however, excited deeper and deeper discontent. Strong representations were made to Pope Benedict XIV., who probably would have remodelled the order, and restrained it, if he had lived longer. His successor, Clement XIII., favoured the Jesuits. All Europe, however, rang with well-founded charges against them: the courts were alarmed: they were excluded from some countries, and a modification of the order was demanded. Lorenzo Ricci, the general of the order, was inflexible; he maintained, sint ut sunt, aut non sint. The Pope said that the formal sanction of the constitution of the order by the Church could not be changed.

In the beginning of 1769, the ambassadors of Naples, Spain, and France appeared before the Pope, and demanded the suppression of the order. The Pope convened a consistory, but the blow was too great for him; he expired, February 2nd, the evening before it should have met.

He was succeeded by Pope Clement XIV., of honoured memory,* a Pope tinged with Jansenist sentiments, and thus upholding the doctrines of St. Augustine. After a formal process, he abolished the order by the brief Dominus ac Redemptor, July 21st, 1773. **

* The Jesuits have in vain sought to asperse the character of this man: their unrelenting enmity has even extended to the forging of writings in his name of an infidel tendency. God hath said, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." The Jesuits are charged on good grounds with having poisoned this pope. Some of the order have seemed to make a merit of this murder! The Lord will judge righteously between the Jesuits and their victims! The writer was frequently asked at Rome the ensnaring question, "Do you like the Jesuits? To this he replied (perhaps too freely), "No!" To the further query," Why not?" he used to find the most convenient answer to be, "For the same reasons that led Pope Clement XIV. to abolish the order." This was in general enough.

** It is instructive to observe how the Jesuits, in opposing Jansenism, really led the way to the suppression of their own order. They reckoned more than ever on the goodwill of the papal court; and, ruling with a high hand, they lost their former tact: a rigid policy was all that remained. The united acts of Louis XIV. and the Jesuits, in crushing alike Protestants, Quietists, and Jansenists, drove religion well-nigh out of France. What a spectacle! The same monarch, under the influence of the same evil-minded and pharisaical woman (Madame de Maintenon) persecuting not only Protestants, but also such men as Fenelon, among the brightest and holiest of those who owned the authority of Rome. Thus was the train laid which led to the fearful explosion in which altar and throne alike fell, and atheism was nationally embraced. How the mind of Voltaire was affected by the abominable deeds of men who professed the name of Christ, is shown by his juvenile verses, in which he speaks so indignantly of the destruction of Port Royal that he was sent for a year to the Bastile.

For forty years the Jesuit institute was thus proscribed; when in our days Pius VII. was induced, in an evil hour, to restore the order, as an important buttress of the papacy. He issued his bull for that purpose (Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum), August 7th, 1814.

Unhappily, Jesuitism has only been resuscitated to a course of as much evil, and of more dexterous policy than before.

The mode of acting adopted by the Jesuits is varied according to circumstances, but the end is always the same -the aggrandizement of the order, united with implacable opposition to evangelic truth. When the states of Europe were ruled by despotic monarchs, they sought dominion through them; now, however, they conform themselves to sentiments of a more liberal kind-when they find it fit.

It is difficult to say where Jesuits do not introduce themselves, and where they do not obtain indirect power through other Roman Catholic orders. One danger is, that the Jesuits are so intangible a body, that it is often difficult really to know who does or does not belong to the order. There appear to be only one or two "houses of profession" out of Rome; and thus, while there are comparatively few who have taken all the vows, there are a vast number of persons attached to the order, but in a different position. No civil state would admit into its bosom those who maintain and practise the principles of Jesuitism, did it really know what those principles are, and could it be easily ascertained who are Jesuits and who are not.*

* The encroachments of the Jesuits are fearful to be contemplated. "The recent laws of education have already placed thirty provincial seminaries of France in the hands of the Jesuits, and thirty more are offered to them as soon as they can organise the staff necessary for carrying them on."-Circular of the Foreign Aid Society, Nov, 1850, p. 3.

The principles which cause any crime committed in obedience to the superior to be regarded as a religious duty, and the frightful casuistry which rejects the solemn obligation of an oath, show how demoralised and demoralising the order must be. It rarely happens, however, that anyone puts himself forward ostensibly as a Jesuit, unless he be a person of superior address and intelligence -one who is likely to commend his order in public estimation. It must also be remembered that when a Jesuit finds himself in a country where Jesuits are not admitted, his order can make provision that his membership in it shall be in abeyance for the time being: this makes it difficult to deal with him as an actual Jesuit. The provision is of course a mere name-a mere fiction; and he acts all the while as a devoted servant of his superiors.

The hateful, casuistry by which oaths are regarded as mere jests, "because the inward intention to swear was wanting," is a solemn subject. It stands in immediate connection with the Pope's dispensing power in the case of oaths, Protestant governments were formerly so much alive on the point, that in the ratification of a treaty they took no oath from a Roman Catholic prince, but required his word of honour as a knight and a gentleman. Over this the Pope had no power, for it was no religious bond.

The Romish bishops, however, are bound to the Pope by an oath which he is sure to regard as being of binding obligation: they have to swear in their consecration to augment the Pope's power as far as they can, and also to persecute heretics to the best of their ability. Happily they are not allowed in this country to carry ant the principle laid down in their Instructions to Theological Candidates, viz., that one ground of Luther's condemnation was his heresy "that it is contrary to the mind of the Spirit to burn heretics." This is still reprinted with approbation at Rome. *

* See the Instructions to Theological Candidates, appended to the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, where the proposition, extracted from Luther, "Haereticos comburi, est contra voluntatem Spiritus," is condemned. The copy of this volume before us was printed with due approbation by the Propaganda at Rome, in 1845.

Much has been said of late on the subject of the oath taken by bishops in the Church of Rome. In the case of Cardinal Wiseman, it was said that the obnoxious words were now omitted in the oath when taken by Romish prelates consecrated for this country. This, however, was not proved; and, an attempt was then made to represent that the oath was simply to oppose heresies, and not to persecute heretics; the force of the words, however, is too plain: "Haereticos omnes me persecuturum et oppugnaturum .  . . juro." Then it was alleged that no such oath was required, when the person appointed to a bishopric or archbishopric is a cardinal: this assertion would suffice (it was supposed) to show that the (so-called) Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster was not thus bound by oath to the Pope. However, even this has not been proved at all; and even if it had been, the fact would still remain, that Dr. Wiseman was a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in partibus (with the title of Melipotamus) for years before be was appointed to the nominal archbishopric of Westminster. Then, on the showing of his own advocates, he must have taken the oath to augment the power of the Pope as much as possible, and to persecute all heretics. By their Instructions to Theological Candidates, they show that by this term persecute, they mean nothing short of put to death.

Many lessons may be learned from the excellences, the defects, the services, and the sufferings of Port Royal. We may see how hopeless an attempt it is fully to carry out the truth of God when the communion of Rome is at all owned. We may see how His grace may work even there,-we may see how He can honour the service of those who have but very partial light; and the persecution shows us not only the evil character of Jesuitism (a system against which we cannot be too much on our guard), but it also exhibits bright examples on the part of the sufferers. "This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully" (1 Pet. ii. 19). "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. v. 10).

In vain do men on earth presume to condemn faithful believers in a crucified Saviour as heretics; their Master bids them rejoice, for great is their reward in heaven. The Church has ever professed its belief in "the communion of saints:" will not everyone who rests on the blood and righteousness of Christ, and who loves Him and his members, rejoice that they shall meet in the Church triumphant with such as Jansenius, St. Cyran, the Arnaulds, Pascal, De Sacy, and Quesnel?

Chapter 2 - The Continuance of the Jansenists

SECT. II.

THE CONTINUANCE OF THE JANSENISTS IN

THE ARCHBISHOPRIC OF UTRECHT.

IT was a Protestant country that afforded such a refuge and shelter to the remnant of the Jansenists that they could again appear as a definite and tangible body.* There were in Holland many Roman Catholics, and amongst them the Augustinian opinions had been widely spread, insomuch that at the end of the seventeenth century the Roman Catholics of Holland were apparently regarded as mostly Jansenists. Their numbers were then estimated at 330,000. Amongst them many from France had settled. In a Protestant country the efforts of the Jesuits were impotent in seeking to raise up open persecution; they used other means; they sought to stifle all Jansenism by using the authority of Rome against the local ecclesiastical superiors. Let but the Roman Catholics of Holland be placed under the direction of persons devoted to the policy of the Jesuits and the court of Rome, and then all would be done.

* "With an ever-advancing courage, they (the Jansenists) matured a doctrine on the subject of the Church, which ran counter to the Roman on that point ; nay, under the safeguard of a Protestant government, they gave effect forthwith to their idea. There arose an archiepiscopal Church at Utrecht, which held itself to be in general Catholic, yet withal absolutely independent of Rome, and waged an incessant warfare against the Jesuit ultramontane tendency."-RANKE, b. viii.

Holland had formerly belonged to the diocese of Utrecht, a see founded by the English missionary, St. Willibrord, in 696. The bishop was a suffragan of the Archbishop of Cologne, whose province comprised most countries from the Weser to the Scheldt. Utrecht had been a locality of no small importance in the history of the labours of the English missionaries; it was to them a kind of starting point for those further operations which they at length carried into most of heathen Germany.

At the time of the Reformation it was generally found that Protestant truth extended most widely in those countries in which the episcopal sees were but few; it thus became a part of the papal policy to increase the number of prelates by subdividing the archiepiscopal provinces and forming new dioceses.

To this end, in 1559, Pope Paul IV. (the pope under whom the Marian persecution in England was carried on) separated Holland from the province of Cologne, erecting Utrecht into an archbishopric with five suffragans, whose sees were Haarlem, Deventer, Leuwarden, Groningen, and Middelburg.

After the establishment of Protestantism in the seven united provinces which had cast off the Spanish yoke, the archbishops of Utrecht still continued, though under other names, to exercise their spiritual authority over the Roman Catholics still in Holland. The suffragan bishops ceased to be appointed.

The two chapters of Utrecht and Haarlem still continued; and the former supplied the vacancies of the archbishopric by election from time to time; and, sede vacante, the chapter governed canonically by the appointment of vicars-general.

The archbishops thus elected by the chapter of Utrecht were duly confirmed by the Pope, and they bore the nominal title of some bishopric, in partibus infidelium: they were accredited by the Pope as his vicars-apostolic in Holland, as well as filling up the see of Utrecht. This (as a mere formal point) had to do with the jurisdiction exercised by the archbishop in the vacant dioceses of his province.

The Jesuits endeavoured in Holland, as elsewhere, to get power and influence into their own hands. They opposed the archbishops in many ways, professing that they acted in Holland as missionaries dependent only on the Pope and the general of their order. While Sasbold-Vosmer administered the diocese of Utrecht as vicar-general, sede vacante, they revolted against his authority; they continued their revolt when he was elected and consecrated archbishop, under the borrowed title of Archbishop of Philippi. They acted still worse in the time of Archbishop Rovenius; and, when questions respecting Jansenism arose, they took a place of yet more determined opposition to those prelates of Utrecht who maintained the doctrines of grace.

In 1661 M. de Neercassel was elected by the chapter to the vacant see, and consecrated under the title of Bishop of Castoria: in many respects he stood in close connection with the persecuted Jansenists in France; several of whom, Dr. Arnauld himself for one, found in his episcopate a refuge in Holland.

On his death, in 1686, the two chapters of Utrecht and Haarlem jointly chose as his successor M. Van Heussen, whom he had particularly desired as his coadjutor. Difficulties, however, were raised at Rome. The Jesuits wished the Pope to appoint a prelate of their selection; to this the chapters refused to submit; they re-assembled, and forwarded to the Pope the names of three others, together with that of M. Van Heussen, leaving to him to select one of the four: from this list he chose M. Codde, who was consecrated in 1689 with the title of Archbishop of Sebaste (i. e. Samaria).

The name of this archbishop is often met with in the proceedings against the Jansenists, especially in connection with Father Quesnel, and others of similar sentiments who had taken refuge in Holland. Of course the Jesuits were not idle: Archbishop Codde was personally opposed in Holland, and accusations against him were transmitted to Rome. The papal court durst not cite the archbishop as an accused person: in that case it would have been needful to produce three things-the accusers, the charge, and the witnesses. Rome took another path: Codde was invited to Rome,* and when he arrived he was treacherously detained there for three years in defiance of all canonical regulations. He demanded to know who were his accusers; but this demand was in vain. When in ecclesiastical proceedings strict forms of justice are set aside under the pretence of paternal dealing, brotherly investigation, and the like, then the door is opened for almost any kind of dishonesty and tyranny; the maxim of law, Potier est conditio negantis, is reversed, and the accused or calumniated party has to prove his innocence, instead of the accusers having, as required by every law divine (Deut. xvii. 6; Matt. xviii. 16; 2 Cor. xiii. 1; 1 Tim. v. 19), civil, and canon, to prove every allegation by sufficient testimony. **

* Had he declined the invitation he would have immediately been charged with contumacy.

** "It was the policy of the cardinal to lay aside the strict forms of justice, which afford protection to the accused, and to treat the matter as an affair of administration between a superior and his inferior;-a convenient method, as it leaves the fullest scope to the exercise of arbitrary power."-MERLE (D'AUBIGNE), Hist, Ref., i. 456.

The detention of Archbishop Codde at Rome was simply a means of crushing the Church of Utrecht, and bringing it entirely into the hands of the Pope and the Jesuits. The Pope appointed Theodore de Cock vicarapostolic in Holland instead of Archbishop Codde: this prelate then, finding all his tarrying at Rome had been useless, made his escape and returned to Holland.

In his absence the Jesuits had not been idle; they had introduced a schism which has continued: many of the Roman Catholics in Holland had joined the Jesuit and papal party, and from that time they have opposed the Jansenist prelates. Archbishop Codde endeavoured to move Pope Clement XL, but this was of course in vain. He was still archbishop of the see of Utrecht, although no longer the vicar-general of the Pope. Believing, however, that he was personally the object of attack, and that the Church of Utrecht might still enjoy tranquillity if he were to withdraw, he took this step, allowing the chapters of Utrecht and Haarlem to appoint vicars-general to administer the government in his stead. The papal nuncio at Cologne, Piazza, however announced that he had received the commission from the Pope to exercise this authority. Against this claim the chapters appealed and protested.

At the death of Archbishop Codde in 1710, it devolved on the chapters to elect a successor; this step, however, was not taken at once, because they still endeavoured, without compromise, to arrange the differences with the court of Rome; they also saw, probably, that there were no means at that time of obtaining consecration for the archbishop whom they might elect. They continued, therefore, to appoint vicars-general; and, finding it hopeless to obtain a hearing at Rome, the chapter of Utrecht, in May, 1719, appealed to the next general council that might be held, and soon after the chapter of Haarlem took the same step. Meanwhile the canonical rights of the two chapters had been recognised by many in the Church of Rome in high station and consideration. The growing opposition to the wickedness of the Jesuits, and the issuing of the bull Unigenitus, which so many would not receive because it contradicts some of the first principles of Christian verity, led to much sympathy for those who held Jansenist sentiments.

At length the chapter of Utrecht took more decided steps. On the death of Clement XI. they hoped that his successor, Innocent XIII., would do them justice, and take a different course from his predecessor. They wrote to him on the 11th of June, 1721, requesting that no difficulties might be thrown in the way of their electing a person so as canonically to fill the vacant see. To this letter they received no reply; and when they wrote again, September 30th, 1722, the same judicious silence was maintained. The chapter, thus left without any reply from Rome, determined to proceed to a canonical appointment; accordingly, April 27th, 1723, Cornelius Steenhoven was elected Archbishop of Utrecht. The chapter and the archbishop elect both wrote to the Pope to notify the appointment, and to pray for his confirmation. These letters, as well as two more which the chapter subsequently sent, remained unanswered. The chapter then addressed a circular letter to all the bishops, and especially to those in neighbouring dioceses, on whom the responsibility of consecration devolved in accordance with ancient canons. They also addressed the conclave of cardinals assembled for the election of a new pope after the death of Innocent XIII.; of this some notice was taken; for Spinelli, the internuncio at Brussels, published a letter prohibiting the neighbouring bishops from taking a part in consecrating the archbishop elect.

After the conclave had chosen Benedict XIII. as Pope, the chapter of Utrecht wrote to him in August, 1724: they in vain waited for an answer for nearly three months.

Confirmation from Rome, and consecration at the hands of neighbouring bishops, had been sought alike fruitlessly; and, as the chapter deemed succession indispensable to the maintenance of the Church, they applied to the Bishop of Babylon in partibus, Dominic VARLET, who, after having been driven unjustly and informally from the sphere where he had exercised his episcopal functions as a vicar-apostolic, had taken refuge in Holland: in that country he was highly esteemed, and well known as an upholder of those Christian verities which were contradicted by the fatal bull Unigenitus. This appears to have been the ground of his persecution by the court of Rome.

The Bishop of Babylon complied with the request, and consecrated Archbishop Steenhoven in his own chapel at Amsterdam, October 15th, 1724. All the parties concerned formally wrote to the Pope to notify to him what had been done: the papal court at length broke silence, and issued three damnatory and excommunicatory brigs.

Archbishop Steenhoven continued to occupy the see of Utrecht for but a very short time: he only lived to protest against the brig issued by the Pope, and to appeal to a future general council. After his death, April 3rd, 1725, the chapter elected Johannes Cornelius Barchman Wuytiers, who had been one of the vicars-general, sede vacante. After the same notifications as had been given on a former occasion, the archbishop elect was consecrated by the Bishop of Babylon-a step which was followed, as before, by a condemnatory brief from the Pope. This led to new appeals to the next general council, and especially to a declaration of the Bishop of Babylon, vindicating his proceedings in perpetuating the episcopal order in Holland, and in consecrating alone without a papal authority for that purpose. He also solemnly appealed against the bull Unigenitus, and against the act of suspension promulgated against himself, which bore the name of the Bishop of Ispahan. * Archbishop Barchman and his clergy also formally appealed against the bull Unigenitus.

* How strange it is to meet with the names of these Asiatic prelates, in connection with proceedings in Holland!

This new archbishop received letters of communion from many bishops; of these, more than a hundred are preserved in the archives of the church at Utrecht. His opposition to the proceeding of the Jesuits, in enforcing the bull Unigenitus, made many prelates feel that they and he had an important cause in common. The Jesuits made Archbishop Barchman an object of their especial attack; and to him it is no small testimony that he was so opposed by such men.

We may pass by the details of a miracle said to have been wrought by this archbishop, in healing a young woman at Amsterdam in 1727. We need only remark-first, that the faith is stated to have been in the person healed, and the archbishop was only passive in the transaction; second, that her desire was, not that she might be freed from her distressing maladies, so much as that there might be a divine attestation to the cause of the archbishop, and his appeal against the doctrines of the bullUnigenitus; third, that the miracle was believed by Protestants, as well as by others. Of the one hundred and sixty attesting witnesses, thirty were Protestants.

This archbishop regulated the seminary at Amersfoort for the training of priests; the Bible and biblical instruction form an important part in the course of study. He published a charge in 1730, condemnatory of the legend of Pope Gregory VII.: this, of course, would be considered as a new offence in the eyes of the court of Rome.

The position in which the Jansenists found themselves with relation to the see of Rome, led to new inquiries as to what the Church is as to its stability and security. They were thus directed to the testimony of the Scripture itself; and in the examination of God's word they found, they believed, a solution of many of their difficulties.

They learned much from the prophetic statements of St. Paul, in Romans ix., x., and xi. They there saw that the future calling of the Jews to be the people of God nationally, was certainly to be expected, and that this national vocation would be preceded by the apostasy of the Gentiles, who have now been graffed into the Jewish olive-tree. Thus they saw that the promises of God cannot fail, although this may seem to be the case; that "His gifts and calling are irrevocable," and that the blessings which He gives are secure, although it may seem as if they had failed. They thus were brought to the same point as were the Reformers, when they found it needful to acknowledge that the Church, as a visible body professing to bear the name of Christ in the earth, had failed both in doctrine and in practice. They felt a comfort, in the midst of their sense of desolation, in looking onward to the day when "all Israel shall be saved"-when "the Deliverer shall come out of Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob."

Their views of prophecy were given in various publications, from about the year 1720 and onward: much that they advanced was on a subject of which few thought at that time: to one point they turned-the breaking off, because of unbelief, of the branches of the wild-olive, which had been graffed into the good stock, and the graffing in again of Israel, the natural branches.

In 1733, Archbishop Barchman died aged forty-one years. The chapter shortly after elected M. Vander Croon, who (after notifications to Rome as before) was consecrated by the Bishop of Babylon. This step was, of course, followed by an excommunication, which has this peculiarity-that it assumes, as true, a notorious error, that the chapter of Utrecht had become extinct, and therefore it could not elect.

The new archbishop, seeing the obstinacy of the court of Rome, judged that it would be needful to re-establish the suffragan bishoprics of the province of Utrecht, in order that the succession of prelates might become possible. He died, however, in 1739, without carrying this step into execution.

Archbishop Meindaarts, who succeeded him, was consecrated, as before, by the Bishop of Babylon; and, after the death of his consecrator (who had thus singularly perpetuated episcopacy in Holland), he himself restored the suffragan see of Haarlem in 1742, and that of Deventer in 1758.

An account of these proceedings was transmitted by Archbishop Meindaarts to Pope Benedict XIV. In this he shows what the conduct of the Jesuits had been in opposing the Church of Utrecht, because of its attachment to the doctrines of St. Augustine, and its horror at the corrupted morality of the Jesuits.

The archbishop and his two suffragans, with several priests, held, in September, 1763, the Council of Utrecht, for the consolidation of ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline.

After occupying the see for twenty-eight years, Archbishop Meindaarts died in 1767. His successor was Van Nieuwen Huysen, consecrated at the beginning of the following year by the two suffragans of his province. A fresh excommunication against all three followed, of course, from the Jesuitically-inclined Pope Clement XIII.

On the death of Archbishop Van Nieuwen Huysen, in 1797, Van Rhin was elected to succeed him; and, occupied as Pope Pius VI. then was, in consequence of the condition of Italy, he nevertheless issued a brief of excommunication. Pius VII. took similar steps in an early part of his pontificate, when Archbishop Van Rhin filled up the two suffragan sees which had become vacant by death.

In 1808, Archbishop Van Rhin died; and just as the chapter of Utrecht was on the point of proceeding to elect a successor, the minister of Louis Buonuparte, then king of Holland, interposed a prohibition "until the organisation of public worship in the kingdom of Holland." The chapter then appointed vicars-general Gilbert de Jong, Bishop of Deventer, and Willibrord Van Os, president of the seminary of Amersfoort. The chapter in vain applied for permission to proceed to a canonical election. It was evident that King Louis was planning to fill the vacant sees by prelates of his own nomination, just as the civil power ordinarily appoints in most Roman Catholic countries.* After Napoleon had incorporated Holland into his empire, the chapter took occasion, on his visit to Utrecht, October 6th, 1811, to represent the condition in which affairs stood. He gave a very definite reply, that he intended to nominate all the bishops of Holland himself (as he did in France), and that he would arrange with the Pope to that end. Napoleon, it should be remembered, was at this very time excommunicated by the Pope. As the Bishop of Haarlem had died in 1810, the succession depended wholly on the life of the Bishop of Deventer, De Jong: the death of this prelate would have extinguished all means of filling the sees, except through an accommodation with the Pope. For this, apparently, Napoleon waited.

* This is a fact worthy of notice. It is in vain for Romanists to talk grandiloquently about their bishops being elected by the clergy and instituted by the Pope: election is now a strange and rare thing. In a concordat, such for instance as that entered into by Pius VII. with Napoleon Buonaparte, the appointment is absolutely given to the civil power; and though the act of canonical institution must be the Pope's, yet he virtually conceded the right of rejecting the person so nominated: he thus became the mere instrument of the civil power. The papal court is willing to take a place of abject servility, so different from the pretensions of Gregory VII. or Innocent III., in order to accomplish its own ends the more surely. It will make no doctrinal concession; but anything else may be arranged on a system of expediency. They apply this same system of expediency to their mode of treating heretics: if the heretics be so numerous that it would be unsafe to persecute them, then they are permitted to abstain for the present. We live during one of these intervals.

As soon, however, as the French usurpation over Holland terminated, the chapter of Utrecht elected the vicar-general, Willibrord Van Os, to fill the archbishopric: he was consecrated by the Bishop of Deventer on the 24th of April, 1814. * On this occasion, Pius VII. fulminated a new brief of excommunication.

* It is instructive to see what a different thing was religious liberty under Napoleon, from that enjoyed under Protestant rule.

The new archbishop soon supplied the vacancy in the see of Haarlem, by the appointment and consecration of Johannes Bon: through the influence of Cardinal Ercole Gonsalvi, the Pope's secretary of state, this new bishop was not excommunicated. This was a remarkable exception to the course which Rome took on these occasions.

In 1824, Gilbert de Jong, Bishop of Deventer, through whom the succession had been continued, died; and, before William Vet, his appointed successor, had been consecrated, Archbishop Van Os also deceased, February 28th, 1825, at the age of eighty-one years.

Bishop Bon, of Haarlem, was thus left the only prelate in the Dutch sees; and his first care was to consecrate William Vet to fill the bishopric of Deventer. The chapter of Utrecht named Johannes Van Santen vicar-general of the diocese; and, June 14th, 1825, they elected him Archbishop of Utrecht: he was consecrated by Bishop Bon, assisted by Bishop Vet; Cornelius de Jong, dean of the chapter of Utrecht, being regarded as representing a third bishop, so as in some sort to meet canonical regulations. *

* In the narrative of the succession of the archbishops of Utrecht, it repeatedly occurs that even one prelate alone consecrated, who considered that he was justified in doing this by the "necessity of the case." The, canonical number of bishops to act in consecrating is three; if, however, there be not this number, an irregularity merely is incurred -"fieri non debet, factum valet." When Bishop Lucifer, of Cagliari, alone consecrated Paulinus to the see of Antioch, although the act was deemed highly reprehensible (on various accounts), yet it was not doubted that Paulinus was thus made a real bishop. It is useless to search for directions in Scripture on the subject, for the subject is one on which the Scripture gives no directions.

In excommunicating the bishops of Holland, the Pope never denies that they had been consecrated as such, although he denies the validity of their election: he suspends them from exercising their functions as bishops: he similarly recognises the orders which they confer, by interdicting those whom they have ordained from using their functions.

Although Bishop Bon had not been excommunicated by the Pope at his own consecration, yet these new proceedings brought forth new denunciations from Rome: the ancient animus, as well as the modus operandi, continued the same.

As a specimen of the excommunicatory denunciations, we may insert that which was fulminated against William Vet, Bishop of Deventer:-

"To our very dear children, the Catholics residing in Holland, Leo XII. Pope, health and the apostolic benediction.

"Long has the Catholic Church been troubled by the schism of Utrecht. What is there that the Supreme Pontiffs, our predecessors, have not done to remedy this pernicious evil! But, by the inscrutable judgment of God, they have not succeeded, either by salutary counsel or by their respectful exhortations, nor yet by the threat and the application of canonical penalties, in bringing back into the way of salvation men who have been blinded, and in recalling them to the bosom of their mother, the holy Church.

"William Vet, who dares to call himself Bishop of Deventer, and who has had the hardihood to inform us of his election and consecration, in a letter which he wrote us on the thirteenth of June last, has given us a recent example of such determined obstinacy. His letter, it is true, is filled with honey, and avows respect and obedience towards us; but this same letter instructs us, also, how we should regard these feigned and long worn-out flatteries: for William shows himself involved in the same errors, opposed with the same obstinacy to the holy canons, and, in one word, defiled with all the pollutions with which his fellow-schismatics of Utrecht have been covered from the beginning. William, however, has not been afraid of setting them forth as full of innocence and exempt from wrong; and he has even pronounced eulogiums on them.

"Since, therefore, William differs in nothing from those whom our predecessors, after having exhausted the resources of their paternal tenderness, rightly believed they ought to punish, we, treading in their honourable footsteps, have resolved to cause him to feel the same censures; for we would not, dearly beloved children, that anyone of you (in the midst of whom the schism of Utrecht insinuates itself, and lamentably devours souls), deceived by the illusions of these impostors, should follow them as good pastors, and should receive the deceitful voice of wolves that assume sheep's clothing, the more easily to desolate, carry off, and slay the flock.

"Thus, then, we decree, by the apostolic authority wherewith we are invested, and we declare, that the election of William Vet to the see of Deventer is illicit, null, and void, and that his consecration is unlawful and sacrilegious. We EXCOMMUNICATE and ANATHEMATISE the above-named William, and all those who have taken a part in his culpable election, and who have concurred by their authority, care, consent, or advice, whether to his election or his consecration.

"We decide, declare, and decree, that they are separated from the communion of the Church as schismatics, and that as such they must be avoided; and further, that the said William is suspended from the exercise of the rights and functions which belong to the order of bishops; and we interdict him, under the penalty of incurring excommunication ipso facto, and without any other declaration, from making the holy chrism, conferring the sacrament of confirmation, conferring orders, or doing any other acts proper to the order of bishops: further declaring null and void, to all intents and purposes, all and singular the acts which he may have the hardihood to undertake.

"Let those, who have received ecclesiastical orders from him, know, that they are bound by suspension, and that they incur irregularity should they exercise the functions of the orders which they have received.

"It is with regret and much sorrow that we lay these penalties on the guilty. Oh! if they were themselves struck, and plunged into sorrow by our decree-if they should weep and repent, what joy should we not feel! What tears of joy would a conversion so much desired draw forth from our eyes! With what transport should we embrace these children returning to their father! What thanksgivings should we render to the God of mercy! We daily seek from him, in ardent prayers, that he would grant this consolation to us and to all the Church. Do the same, dearly beloved children-you, whose invincible faith and indestructible union with the holy apostolic see, the centre of orthodox unity, we so justly know and commend. To assist you to fulfil more willingly, more fully, and more joyfully, this duty of evangelic charity, we affectionately- bestow on you the apostolic benediction.

"Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, under the seal of the fisherman, the 19th (query, 25th) of August, 1825, in the second year of our pontificate."*

* The Pope in the opening paragraph speaks of the schism of Utrecht having long "troubled the Catholic Church." Ahab also charged Elijah the prophet with troubling Israel. But, indeed, the Romish Church has found the Jansenists a sore thorn in their sides. Thus did Dr. Wiseman (now a cardinal and archbishop in the Romish Church) preach at Clapham, on Friday, August 2nd, 1850:-"St. Alphonsus was necessary for an age when all things were infected with a JANSENISTIC spirit-when confession was made repulsive and difficult, instead of persons being drawn to it as the balm of a wounded spirit. . . . . . . Persons now-a-days can happily have no experience of what confession was before St. Alphonsus-what a harsh and bitter thing JANSENISM had made it, and how severe were the external penances enjoined. He has so changed the face of the Church [can she then be semper eadem?], that now there is perhaps not a theological school in the world which would care to give its students any treatise of moral theology opposed to the spirit of St. Alphonsus, gentle to past sins, severe to the occasion of them."

How, then, had Jansenism modified confession? St. Cyran and Dr. Arnauld taught the necessity of real heartfelt penitence before God, sorrow for having offended Him. They maintained that confession of sin to a priest was utterly in vain, so long as the heart was determined to go on in the same sins. Of course, this was a harsh doctrine to those who held that sorrow for having offended God was needless, and that a man might be saved (his sins being removed by priestly absolution) "without having once loved God in his life."

This St. Alphonso Liguori, who softened all this, was canonised in 1839. The acts of his canonisation certify that there was "nothing censurable in anything that St. Alphonso Liguori had written."

These writings, however, especially his "Moral Theology," soften down sin in such a way as to deaden the conscience. All true ideas of the sin of lying, theft, and other gross vices, are rooted out. In his approved writings, he continually cites as authorities Lessius, Sanchez, Vasquez, Suarez, and others of the immoral casuists whom Pascal exposed in his Lettres Provinciales. It is marvellous that the modern Romish authorities should bring these very dogmas anew into light: they must presume that Pascal and the Jansenists are forgotten. Let the "Lettres a un Provinciale" be read.

On their own principles of immorality they can deny all these allegations, even though we have them in their own books printed before our eyes. However, "God is hot mocked," and His word has declared of the heavenly city, that "without are liars. . . . and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

Such was the form of the papal censure, as used against any of the prelates of Holland; the only change made from time to time related to the circumstantial points, such as dates and names.

The yearnings of heart which the Pope expresses are among the frequent instruments of ecclesiastical tyranny: they are in themselves holy and gracious words, but which have been habitually used by those who have falsely assumed to themselves the place of Diotrephes (3 John, 9, 10), and have themselves been the causes of divisions and offences (Rom. xvi. 17).

It was a singular proceeding to excommunicate and anathematise Bishop Vet first, and then to threaten him with excommunication if he did certain acts. It is like menacing with death a man already slain.

In reply to the allegations of this brief against the prelates of Holland, it was answered,-

"With what have our predecessors been charged?

"History teaches us,-

"1st. That they would not subscribe the formulary of Alexander VII. against Jansenius.

"2nd. That they would not receive the constitution Unigenitus of Clement XI. against Father Quesnel.

"3rd. That they would not consent to the destruction of their Church, but have perpetuated the episcopate in the United Provinces of Holland.

"This is what the brief does not express distinctly, and this is what it contains implicitly.

"The bishops of Holland have victoriously replied to these pretended complaints.

"As to the first article, they have said that it is solely through tenderness of conscience that they and their clergy have not been willing, and still are not willing, to affirm with imprecation that five propositions are in the 'Augustinus' of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres; since, after having read that work, they are not found there; and nevertheless that they have always offered to condemn these five propositions, making the distinction of ' fact' and 'right.'

"As to the second article, they state that it is from attachment to the Christian faith that they have not been willing, and that they still are not willing to receive the constitution Unigenitus; because the one hundred and one propositions which this bull condemns, as extracted from the 'Reflexions Morales' of Father Quesnel, belong to the sacred deposit of the Faith, and this would be compromised were we to receive a bull which visibly condemns the faith of the Church, the language of holy fathers, and tradition.

"As to the third article, they say that in perpetuating the episcopate in Holland, the chapter of this country have only done, and still do, what was always done in the Church during the first fifteen centuries, when bishops were nominated by the clergy and the people, ordained by the bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces, and instituted by the metropolitan."

When the Pope, January 13th, 1826, excommunicated Archbishop Van Santen, he, with his two suffragan bishops, issued a circular "To all the Bishops of the Catholic Church," entreating them to seek to bring the Pope to another course of action. They also addressed a "Declaration to all Catholics," clerical and lay, reciting the mode in which they had been treated, and renewing their appeal to a future General Council.

In this declaration they gave an account of the intercourse in 1823, which Archbishop Van Os and his suffragans sought to hold with Monsignor Nazalli, who had been sent by the Pope into Holland to arrange, if possible, the terms of a Concordat with the Protestant king who then ruled both Holland and Belgium.

The archbishop, then eighty years of age, with the two other bishops, went to the Hague, and requested an audience of the nuncio. They made an application by letter, but the only reply was a preliminary demand that they should blindly and absolutely submit themselves to the Pope. Further correspondence followed, but still no interview was granted. At length two of the Jansenist clergy had an interview with Belli, the secretary to the nuncio; this led to a new demand as to what the papal authorities required them to subscribe; the terms were made yet more strong:-

"I, the undersigned, declare that I submit myself to the apostolic constitution of Pope Innocent X., dated May 31st, 1653, as well as to the constitution of Pope Alexander VII., dated October 16th, 1656; also to the constitution of Clement XL, which commences with these words, Vineam Domini Sabaoth, dated July 16th, 1705. I reject and condemn with my whole heart the five propositions extracted from the book of Cornelius Jansenius, in the sense intended by the author, the same in which the holy see has itself condemned them in the above-named constitutions. I further submit myself, without any distinction, mental qualification, or explanation, to the constitution of Clement XL, dated September 8th, 1713, beginning with the word,Unigenitus. I accept it purely and simply, and thereto I swear:-So help me God and this holy Gospel."

These terms could not be accepted, and, of course, the papal authorities would modify nothing; and the Jansenist clergy plainly told them, "that they had learned by instances drawn from ecclesiastical history, such as those of Popes Stephen VII, Sergius III., Gregory II., John XXII., and some others, how true was the testimony thus expressed by Pope Adrian VI.: It is certain that the Popeis fallible,* even in a matter of faith, when he sustains heresy by decree or command: for many of the popes of Rome have been heretics."

* Here is a difficulty for a maintainer of papal infallibility:-Assumed -that the Pope is infallible,-then Adrian VI. was infallible;-but he taught that the Pope is fallible. Perhaps, then, we may conclude that, on papal authority, it is infallibly true that the Pope is fallible.

Belli only insisted on implicit submission, confirmed by an oath that they believed certain things which the secretary, the nuncio, and the Pope all knew full well that they did not believe. And yet the only thing that Rome sought from them was perjured hypocrisy.

As to the bull Unigenitus, they could well reply that this very bull had not been received in Belgium so long as it continued under the Austrian rule; and that much as the Jesuits had laboured, they had failed even yet in obtaining that it should be received as authoritative amongst all Roman Catholics.

The demands made on the bishops of Holland, by the secretary of the nuncio Nazalli, had the effect of showing the Protestant king of Holland that no Concordat with the Pope would be practicable which involved the submission of the Jansenists to such claims. These proceedings also led to almost as much recognition of the Jansenist bishops by the Government as the Roman Catholic prelates of Belgium received.

The "Declaration to all Catholics" ends with a solemn appeal from the bulls of Pope Leo XII., from all similar briefs, from the penal sentences thus expressed, as unlawful, unjust, null, and void; they further appealed from all the acts of injustice (which they had recited), and from each one in particular already exercised or yet to be exercised towards them, TO THE NEXT GENERAL COUNCIL, lawfully convoked, to which they might have free access: "commending ( they say) our persons, our state, and our rights to the Divine protection, to that of the universal Church, and of the said General Council; and reserving to ourselves the right of renewing such an appeal at such place and time, and before such an authority, as we shall judge to be fitting."

Thus ended the transactions with Romish authorities at the commencement of the episcopacy of the present Archbishop of Utrecht; of course, Rome has not withdrawn her demands since; and as to the General Council, to which the appeal is reserved, we may probably wait ad calendas Graecas.

The following has been the order of the archbishops of Utrecht from the time of the rupture with Pope Clement XI. :-

CODDE, consecrated February 6th, 1689, under the title of Archbishop of Sebaste; died 1710.

Sedis vacatio, 1710-1723.

STEENHOVEN, elected April 27th, 1723; consecrated October 15th, 1724; died April 3rd, 1725.

BARCHMAN, elected May 15th, 1725; consecrated September 30th, 1725; died May 13th, 1733.

VANDER-CROON, elected July 22nd, 1733; consecrated October 28th, 1734; died January 4th, 1739.

MEINDAARTS, consecrated Oct. 18th, 1739. [These four archbishops were all consecrated by Varlet, Bishop of Babylon.] Archbishop Meindaarts restores the bishopric of Haarlem, 1742, and that of Deventer, 1758; holds the Council of Utrecht, 1763; dies October 31st, 1767.

VAN NIEUWEN HUYSEN, elected November 19th, 1767; consecrated February 7th, 1768, by the bishops of Haarlem and Deventer; died April 14th, 1797.

VAN RHIN, consecrated July 5th, 1797, by the two suffragans; died June 24th, 1808.

Sedis vacatio, 1808-1814.

VAN OS, elected February 10th, 1814; consecrated April 24th, 1814, by Gilbert de Jong, Bishop of Deventer (the only surviving Dutch bishop); died February 28th, 1825.

VAN SANTEN, elected June 14th, 1825; consecrated November 15th, 1825, by the two suffragans.

________________________________

Such is a brief outline of the external framework of the Church of the Jansenists in Holland; the form in which their existence has been maintained for a century and a half.

At Amersfoort they have a theological institution for the training of their clergy; and, though with diminished numbers, they still continue as a definite body their protest against Romish Pelagianism.

In France there was much Jansenism in a diffused form throughout a great part of the eighteenth century. It was opposed from time to time, and suffered from the Jesuits on the one hand and from the scoffs of infidelity on the other. Some of the French Benedictines held fast the despised and contemned doctrines of the grace of God. This the Jansenists sought to maintain, while they also endeavoured to diffuse light by the circulation of the Scriptures. This is the form in which Jansenism has continued in France even to this day.*

* The following is a recent allusion to Jansenists still in France:-

"We saw one of the 'first fruits' of Allevard (a village near Grenoble), in the person of Coquand, the barber, a Roman Catholic from his youth up, until within the last three years. He received his first light from a Bible sold to him by a Jansenist from Burgundy, on the occasion of his calling to have his head dressed at Coquand's shop. The cures of the Isere call the Jansenists cousins-german of the Protestants. The barber of Allevard had received a deep impression of the truth after reading the Jansenist's Bible, and he soon found a friend and instructor in the agent of the Societe Evangelique," - Circular of the Foreign. Aid Society, November, 1850, p. 3.

There are many reflections which must occur to a Protestant reader. Had the Jansenists really rejected the vain idea of union with Rome, how much more light might they not have received from the word of God! had they really examined what claim Rome has on their consciences, might it not have freed them from holding doctrines, and perpetuating observances, which can hardly by any mode of argumentation be so explained away as not to clash with the Gospel of Christ?

It is not undervaluing the light possessed by the Jansenists, nor is it depreciating their sufferings and trials, when we feel and express regret that they did not take a further stand; and when they saw that Rome was utterly fallible in points of faith, they did not boldly and at once renounce all her claims. "No lie is of the truth."

We may thus reflect and thus ponder the path of the Jansenists; and may we not, in doing this, humbly inquire whether the superior light possessed by Protestants has been as truly followed, and whether we have as steadfastly acted on the measure of truth which God has vouchsafed to us? Whatever we see of practical inconsistency in the Jansenists may instruct us, and may teach us how gentle we should be in our judgments of those in whom there may appear to be contradictions blended. Many Christians hold firmly the precious truths of the Gospel of Christ, and yet from a reverence for authority may mentally hold not a few things which contradict those very truths. There will be a day for the people of Christ, when they shall see the truth of God in its fulness together-when they shall know even as they are known.

Chapter 3 - Notes of a Visit to Archbishop Van Santen

SECT. III.

NOTES OF A VISIT TO ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN, OF UTRECHT.

[The following Notes of a Visit paid to the Archbishop of Utrecht in September, 1850, may be considered a suitable Supplement to the previous account of the Jansenists, as furnishing recent intelligence.]

IN visiting Utrecht I particularly wished to obtain some information with regard to the Jansenists, who have their archiepiscopal see in that city. The measure of knowledge in England respecting actual existing Jansenists is but meagre; and in fact not a few who have some acquaintance with the labours and persecutions of the Port Royalists are wholly unaware that any Jansenists still exist.

I informed Professor Royaards of my desire to see something of the Jansenists, and he gave me a note of introduction to Johannes Van Santen, their present Archbishop of Utrecht, of whom he spoke in high terms as an excellent and truly Christian old man.

The same evening I went to the abode of the archbishop. I found him a kind, courteous gentleman, nearly seventy-eight years old; and he seemed pleased at finding that any in England took an interest in the history of the Jansenists, their testimony, trials, and persecutions.

We conversed on various particulars connected with their history, especially from the time of the condemnation of the writings of Quesnel by the bull Unigenitus,-a step on the part of Pope Clement XI. which separated the Jansenists doctrinally from Rome more definitely than before.

The name of Jansenist is not one which they themselves acknowledge, although they do not consider that it implies any reproach; they regard themselves, however, as holding the doctrines of the Catholic Church, as set forth in the writings of St. Augustine, and which the Church of Rome once maintained in opposition to Pelagian and semi-Pelagian errors.

The old archbishop was earnest in speaking of the importance of the doctrines of grace, for which the Jansenists have suffered so much: he seemed deeply to feel that the condition of man, as a lost sinner, is such by nature, that every step in his recovery, from first to last, must be by the free grace of God; that just as God in free grace sent His blessed Son into the world to become man, and to bear our sins and to die in our stead, so too it is in the same grace that the Holy Ghost works on the soul, when dead in trespasses and sins, leading it to rely upon the blood of Christ, and thus to receive free forgiveness and acceptance. "Efficacious grace" was the expression on which he rested, as that which stated his feeling and judgment: it must be grace, that the glory of salvation may belong wholly to God; it must be efficacious, in order that it may fully avail in bestowing eternal life on him in whom it works.

How far the doctrines of grace are held in heart and conscience by the present Jansenists in general, I had no means of ascertaining; but with regard to the archbishop himself, it was evident that he really felt what he said, and that while he could indeed own the inability of man to do anything for his own salvation, he knew the blessedness of resting on the testimony which God has given concerning His Son.

The doctrinal points condemned by the bull Unigenitus had, in his opinion, only a yet higher importance, because they had thus been denied at Rome; and he lamented much that they were consequently denied in so large a part of Christendom, as this must be the case wherever that bull is received, and it appears now to be acknowledged amongst Roman Catholics in general. Archbishop Van Santen gave me some curious accounts of the manner in which the authorities at Rome have from time to time endeavoured to induce the Jansenists to sign the formulary which acknowledges the five propositions to be contained in the "Augustinus" of Jansenius, and to receive the bull Unigenitus.

These efforts seem, of late years, to have been especially made during the period when Holland and Belgium were united under one monarch. It was then regarded by Rome to be of especial importance fully to unite to herself all in the kingdom of the Netherlands who were not avowedly Protestants. About twenty-three years ago the papal nuncio, Cappucini, a man of no small ability and address, came into the Netherlands with full authority to regulate everything for the consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church.

Although the appointment of Archbishop Van Santon had been (as usual) followed by a renewed excommunication by Rome, yet Cappucini sought to win him just as if no such hostile step had been taken. He invited Archbishop Van Santen to a conference, with which he complied, as professing to accord to the Pope a disciplinary headship (at least in the Western Church), although he considered him to be in deep doctrinal error.

In the first conference Cappucini sought to cajole Van Santen by much of that kind of smooth flattery which an Italian priest knows so well how to use. He spoke much of the unity of the Church; of the deep interest felt at Rome amongst the papal authorities on account of the Jansenists; how they admired their firm adhesion to the "apostolical see," in spite of all that had occurred in the last two centuries; how their steadfastness was only the more admirable in a country like Holland, with Protestants all around them; how firm a stand they had made against lax casuistry; and how much he hoped that no real difficulties might be found which would cause them to continue in any sense separated from the unity of the Catholic body.

As to Archbishop Van Santen, personally, he was told by Cappucini how much his hopes rested on him, as a person so diligent in his attention to every canonical regulation-an attention shown (he said) in everything connected with his election, the notification to the holy see, his consecration, &c. In fact, the Pope would feel that he was quite an upholder of the authority of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, if the "slight differences" could be arranged, Cappucini also spoke much of his personal qualities, his learning, character, and especially prudence, on which (he said) the Pope greatly relied as to the settlement and removal of every difficulty. Cappucini then appointed a time for another conference, which he hoped would be definitive.

At the second conference Cappucini began by again praising Van Santen as a person of extreme "regularity" and prudence. He then went on to say that all the differences between the Jansenists and the see of Rome might be reduced to one small point, one little thing about which a person of such prudence and regularity as the archbishop could of course make no difficulty. Van Santen perfectly understood what the nuncio meant by the "one small point," and he said, "I see what you mean-the formulary." To this Cappucini was obliged to assent: the "one small point" was that which had been the ground of such bitter persecutions and cruel sufferings.

The archbishop of course refused to sign the prescribed formulary, although the nuncio (who had been stopped in his flattering circumlocutions) pressed on him, "It is but a form; all that is asked is, that you will write your name on a slip of paper, and then all will be right." Van Santen replied indignantly, "A form has a meaning, and I cannot subscribe a document, and confirm it by the solemn obligation of an oath, unless I am certain in my conscience before God of the TRUTH of that to which I put my name."

THE NUNCIO.-" But you are bound in your conscience before God to acknowledge the authority of the holy father; and as his Holiness assures you of the truth of the formulary, that is sufficient to remove every scruple. Any doubt in your own mind is but a private opinion; while, on the other hand, you have the full authority of the Church both to instruct you that the formulary states what is true, and to require you to acknowledge this undoubted fact."

VAN SANTEN.-" I have read the 'Augustinus' of Jansenius more than once through; I know that the five propositions, as condemned, are not contained in that book: how can I then, as an honest man and a Christian, subscribe a declaration as true which denies a simple fact? I have to do with God and my conscience, even if the Pope and the whole Church should be misinformed. As they cannot alter a fact, so they can have no authority from God to require me to sign my name to a declaration which contradicts a fact."

The nuncio then sought to illustrate the Romish idea of submission in every respect to the holy see, so as to convince the archbishop that he was wrong. In this endeavour, he used the following illustration:-"You see, M. Van Santen, that the table at which we are sitting is covered with a green cloth. Now, supposing that the father of a family were to prohibit his children absolutely from entering this room, or even looking into it- well, but if one of the children were to look in through the key-hole, and were thus by disobedience to acquire the knowledge that the cloth on the table is green, how then would the case stand? If the father were to make out an inventory of the furniture in the room, and if he were (whether by mistake or design, it matters not,) to describe this green cloth as being red; and if he were, on the ground of his parental authority, to require each of his children, as relying on their father's information, to subscribe this inventory as perfectly correct, it would not be competent to the child who had seen the cloth to act upon the knowledge he had gained by disobedience, and to refuse to subscribe the statement in which its colour was said to be red. The father had a right to forbid his children to look into the room: he had also a right to prescribe to his children what they should sign; and no act of prior disobedience on the part of any of them could take away the obligation of unhesitating compliance."

ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN.-"You have brought forward a curious illustration; but how would you apply it? and how would you vindicate, even in such a case, the subscription to a known untruth?"

CAPPUCINI.-"There is no untruth at all supposed in the case that I have put: the child is absolutely bound to believe his parent; and, as the only ground he could have for any scruple of conscience would be part of his sinful disobedience, he ought to say, 'The command of God requires me to obey my father; I must therefore obey him in this point, which involves the sacrifice of my own opinion: and as I am bound, in duty to God, to declare my belief that the cloth is red, I may reasonably suppose that my eyes were mistaken when I saw it. Perhaps a sunbeam hindered me from seeing the colour correctly; or, perhaps, in punishment for my disobedience, an optical illusion was sent to deceive me. Any of these considerations is enough to justify me fully in subscribing my full belief that the object is really red, and not green.' "

ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN.-"But how do you apply the idea of knowledge obtained through disobedience to the question of fact involved in subscription to the formulary?"

CAPPUCINI.-"Listen, that I may instruct you. You are well aware that no theological virtue shines more brightly than implicit obedience; the Holy Scriptures, the fathers and doctors of the Church, and the practice of all the saints, so fully commend this virtue, that there is no need for me to insist on it, at least in conferring with you. Obedience would require that the work of Jansenius, entitled 'Augustinus,' should not be read, since it was condemned by the bull of Pope Urban VIII. (In eminenti). Any knowledge, therefore, which any person now has of the contents of that book must have been obtained through a transgression of that obedience to which he was bound. No one can have a right to know what the book contains any further than as relates to the condemned propositions, and that only from the constitution that condemns them: you ought, therefore, as a submissive child, not to insist on acting on the knowledge obtained through disobedience, but you should own with humility, that in reading the condemned book you may have been mistaken; nay, that you must have been mistaken-that God did not give you clear light when you were thus acting in presumption; so that all you have to do is to subscribe the formulary purely and simply, and receive the blessing which will result from giving up your own will, and thus have the satisfaction of restoring the peace of the Church."

ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN.-"If the peace of the Church be in question, why does the Pope break it on the ground of a mere question of fact? You have already described the subscription as a form merely; why then should such importance be attached to a mere form?"

CAPPUCINI.-"I have argued the point simply to satisfy your scruples, and the illustrations which I used had no other end. I cannot suppose that you will obstinately maintain your own private opinion, especially when you remember that so many wise and learned men are agreed that the five propositions are in Jansenius."

ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN.-"I do not wish to set my judgment above that of others: I only ask, let the five condemned propositions be shown me in Jansenius, and let it be shown that they are there stated in the sense in which they were condemned; that is, not in the sense in which anything similar is found in the works of St. Augustine: you know the formulary goes this length, and the Pope never professed to condemn St. Augustine, one of the fathers and doctors of the Church; and he could not condemn any propositions, if they are taken in an orthodox sense, for instance, in that of St. Augustine."

CAPPUCINI.-" It will not do for me to argue on points which only require simple submission: it is easy to misunderstand St. Augustine; and perhaps we should wander from the point if we were to inquire into his meaning on these deep subjects."

ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN.-"But, with regard to the formulary, it is necessary for me to examine what St. Augustine has written, and what is contained in Jansenius; for you call on me to declare solemnly, that Jansenius has misrepresented the doctrine of St. Augustine. How can I declare this, if I do not know what the doctrine is, and whether it has been misrepresented or not?"

CAPPUCINI.-" Surely we may compose this slight difference: it is only by drawing refined distinctions of the sense in which words are taken, that you can object to subscribe. You do not know how earnest is the goodwill and sympathy of the holy father towards you; his paternal heart longs to welcome you as a returning child: surely you may believe him when he assures you that the meaning of certain propositions is that which the Church has defined them to be. You do not know in what favour many of your sentiments are with the Pope; for instance, the Church has never rejected the doctrine of ‘efficacious grace,' which you esteem so highly: while this is not condemned, you see how everything may be adjusted by merely your name being affixed to a form: a drop of ink and a few seconds will put all right. This is all that the holy father asks."

ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN.-"Am I then to understand that his Holiness asks that in a solemn oath I should call God to witness that I do believe what I do not believe; what the Pope knows that I do not believe; what Almighty God, the searcher of hearts, knows that I do not believe? Is Catholic unity to be maintained by perjury-an awful sin before both God and man? And do you mean to say that if I knowingly commit this crime, it will be what the Pope desires and demands?"

CAPPUCINI.-"The holy father only requires that from you which lies in the province of his authority. When the Church instructs you what to believe, you are hound to silence all trifling scruples."

ARCHBISHOP VAN SANTEN.-"I cannot conceal my INDIGNATION at your endeavours to make me declare, in the presence of Almighty God, that I DO believe a point that I DO NOT believe: my conscience is subject to Him, and, by His aid, I will act in His fear. I must continue to refuse to put my name to a formulary which I reject: my hand must not contradict my heart."

The nuncio felt that this was decisive: the firmness of the archbishop was not to be overcome with sophistries, which, even if they would pass current at Rome, would be of but little worth amongst any who understand what acting in the fear of God is, instead of in submission to the Pope.

Cappucini said no more about the differences being slight, or about the Church of Rome not rejecting the doctrine of "efficacious grace": the tone was quite changed:-"I have patiently endeavoured to convince you of your error, and thus by gentle means to lead back your wandering steps; I have, not, therefore, referred to the position in which you already were standing, as having been for some time excommunicated by the Church. Your consecration as an archbishop is null and void; you are incapable of exercising any episcopal authority or jurisdiction: and yet the holy see condescended to treat you as if these things were not so, in the cherished hope of restoring a wandering sheep. But, alas! all this condescending love has been rejected by your own presumption and obstinacy; and thus the sentence of solemn excommunication, so far from being removed, is only confirmed: the (so-called) consecration which you have received, and the pretended orders which you confer, are alike sacrilegious, and all who at all communicate with you are themselves schismatical and favourers of heresy, or even heretics themselves.* Oh! that you would return to the one fold of Christ, out of which is no salvation; that you would not urge on to destruction the souls of others as well as your own!"

* What right-minded person can fail to see the oppressive character of a proceeding which makes one individual responsible for the alleged heresy of another?

Such was Archbishop Van Santen's account of the arguments of the nuncio Cappucini; and then he said to me, "I could smile at the terrors of excommunication which he thus placed before me, having so long known such sentences for as much as they are worth, when given forth on such grounds. I thought of the man born blind in the Gospel, who was excommunicated for owning that Jesus was of God,-a sentence which God did not ratify; although it might seem from the law that the priests then had greater power than the successors of St. Peter could now claim" (see Deut. xvii. 10-12).

I asked the archbishop if he were aware that the Commentaries of Victorinus had been published at Rome with the full approbation of the censors of the press. He had not heard of this, and was much interested in receiving from me some account of the manner in which Victorinus states as distinctly as possible the doctrines of grace: he agreed with me that it was surprising that such commentaries should be published from MSS. in the Vatican, at Rome, and (of course) "with approbation." Had a Protestant or Jansenist put them forth, what would have been heard but some outcry of fraud or deception! A cardinal for an editor is a good guarantee against all such charges on the part of opposers of the doctrines of grace.

I inquired how the present Jansenists act in the appointment of their prelates, and how they now regard the see of Rome. It seems that the idea of visible unity is still the bond which links them to the Roman Catholic Church, although that Church itself repudiates the connection.

On the appointment of a bishop or archbishop, they formally announce the circumstance to the Pope, praying for a confirmation; but all they receive is a renewed excommunication.

The archbishop gave me a little book,* containing some account of the archbishopric of Utrecht from the time of its severance from Rome. This volume is to me an interesting memento of the donor, as well as valuable on account of the curious information it contains.

* "Declaration des Eveques de Hollande, addresee a toute I'Eglise Catholique, et Acte d'Appel des Bulles d'Excommunication lancees contre eux par Leon XII., les 25 Aout, 1825, et 13 Janvier, 1826." Paris, 1827.

I asked the archbishop how long they intended going on in this manner, and whether they ever expected to bring the Pope to a different mode of acting, and the Church of Rome to doctrinal soundness. To this he answered, that he feared that every effort would be unavailing, but that still they must hold fast the unity of the Church, even if the Pope were never brought to reason.

I remarked, "What a condition, then, the Church is in! how little is there of real unity! for what real unity can the Church have except in the truth of God? Shall we ever find, then, the Church on earth united in truth and holiness, showing forth the praise of Christ her Saviour?"

He replied, "I think from the Holy Scriptures that there will not be a united people of Jesus Christ upon earth until the coming of Elijah, and the conversion of the Jews as a nation. They are the people who shall glorify Him here: this is my opinion."

These words were spoken softly and solemnly, almost whispered in my ear. I answered, that perhaps I mostly agreed with him, but I might not fully comprehend his thoughts. I inquired, "But do you not think the coming of Elijah will be the event which will introduce the second advent of Christ?"

He answered, "Certainly; for so the Scripture teaches." I then asked, "But when the Lord Jesus comes again, as is promised in the Scripture, what will take place? Will there be the resurrection of all men, the general judgement, and the destruction of all things? If so, how can the Jews be a nation on this earth glorifying the Lord?"

The archbishop replied with even deeper solemnity, "The Lord Jesus Christ shall be glorified on this earth where He once suffered; He is to reign (as it was promised) on the throne of His father David. When he comes, some will rise; there will be the resurrection of His people, His faithful ones; for they shall all reign with Him. The Jews will be His people on earth when their sins are taken away; but the resurrection of all, and the end of all things, will not be till after this reign."

I told him that I quite agreed with him as to these points; and then we looked together at many parts of the prophetic Scriptures; such as Zech. xii. and xiv., as showing that the Jews will be brought into extreme suffering when they have gone back to their own land in unbelief, and that then the Lord Jesus will come, they shall see Him whom they pierced, the spirit of grace and supplications shall be poured on them, and they shall know the efficacy of the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness in the shedding of the blood of Christ.

Another Scripture at which we looked was 2 Thess. ii., which speaks of the manifestation of the Antichrist-a person (as we both agreed) who shall reject the name and authority of God and of Christ, who shall reject others to do the same, whose power shall be at its height when the Lord Jesus shall come for the deliverance of His people, and the destruction of the oppressor. We turned to many passages which show the infidel character of the Antichrist; so that, let corrupted Christianity be as bad as it may, here is something worse-something, indeed for which corrupt Christianity may prepare the way, but, which goes farther in the denial of God. We conversed on the character and actings of Rome, as being fully calculated to introduce the Antichrist with all the deceivableness of his power, turning men's minds away from the true grace of God and from his Scripture, so as to fit them for the reception of the great result of Satanic agency.* We spoke also of the consolation of those promises which tell us of the coming of Christ, and the heavenly blessedness with him which his people will then enjoy.

* Some may be surprised that I should speak of the Antichrist not as being the Papacy, but something far worse.

It is said in Scripture of the Antichrist, that all shall worship him whose names are not written in the Lamb's book of life. Now, really, it is quite beyond my credulity to imagine that there are no wicked men around us except Roman Catholics; for so it must be if all except the elect of God own the Papacy.

I should also be repugnant to admit a theory which would necessarily exclude from salvation not only Pascal, Fenelon, Gaspar Contarini, Quesnel, and many others who owned the authority of Rome, but also Luther, Melanchthon, Tyndale, and all the early reformers, who once had been in that communion. Had the Papacy been the Antichrist, none of these could have been saved; for, "if any man worship the beast and his image, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone."

When France rejected Popery, it was seen and felt that there was a form of evil far worse-ATHEISTIC ANARCHY. This is an answer to any who say, What form of Antichristianism can be worse than Popery? I ask, Are we to learn nothing from the lessons which God brings before the eyes of men? It is not sixty years since our fathers had this terrible display of evil before them, and is it possible that it has been already forgotten?

I do not palliate Popery; but, with all its evils, some have been saved within its nominal pale; Antichristianism, on the contrary, leads all its votaries to inevitable destruction. Popery may do much in carrying out forms of iniquity, which will at length issue in the rejection of God and of Christ. There have been "many Antichrists," but "THE Antichrist" will at length appear in his full infidel power.

After thus referring to many Scriptures, the archbishop, who seemed astonished that an English stranger should thus accord with his thoughts and feelings, laid hold of my arm with both his hands, and earnestly addressed me: "Monsieur! si uous avez recu. une telle lumiere de la parole de Dieu sur ces verites, repandez-la, repandez-la dans votre pays, entre vos compatriotes!"

He then offered to lend me some works, from which he had obtained much light on subjects of prophetic truth forty years ago. We went into his library, where (ascending a slight ladder with eager but tottering steps) he took down from a lofty shelf two volumes by the Pere Lambert (printed at Paris in 1806), entitled; Exposition des Predications et des Promesses faites a l'Eglise pour les derniers temps de la Gentilite. He also lent me some volume by President Agier, containing expositions of  these he did not speak so highly as he did of the works of the Pere Lambert.

I returned with the volumes, and certainly found not a little in them in which I was interested. The views of the Pere Lambert struck me as much more clear than those of Agier, although it was curious to remark, in the works of the latter, that he had made extensive use of the writings of Lacunza (otherwise Ben Ezra), years before they were introduced to the notice of English students of prophecy by Mr. Irving.

In again visiting the archbishop before my departure from Utrecht, to return his books and to take my leave of him, thinking that he might be interested in learning what views have been put forth by prophetic inquirers in other countries, I took with mePensees sur l'Apocalypse par B. W. Newton, a translation of an English work.* I also gave him an English pamphlet of my own on a subject of prophecy:** although this latter is unintelligible to him, he accepted it, as some of his friends who are interested in prophecy know English.

* Thoughts on the Apocalypse. By B. W. Newton. Nisbet; Berners'- street, London.

** The Man of Sin, 2 Thess. ii. Nisbet; Berners' -street.

I then took leave of Archbishop Van Santen, with feelings of no common kind. It is interesting to find, in very varied circumstances, and with diverse measures of light, those who rest on the blood of Christ as the sole ground of their acceptance before God, and who trust to His grace alone. It is interesting to meet with persons in different paths, learning from the word of God what the hope of the true Church is, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the gathering together to Him of those who are His-the living that shall still remain, and all those who may have' fallen asleep in the faith of His name.

This hope can sustain the heart of a believer, while he sees from the testimony of the Word how dark will be the Antichristian period, which shall immediately precede the coming of Christ; and this hope can give him joy, when meditating on the path and sufferings of any of the sheep of Christ here. The brightness of that day will repay all; and then shall all, who, through the quickening power of the Holy Ghost, have believed in Christ as the Lamb without spot slain for sinners-whatever their names have been among men, whether Protestant, Jansenist, or aught besides-shall be gathered .before the throne, one holy and happy company, amongst whom shall be no separations, no partings-all reflecting the brightness of the glory of Christ their Saviour, and all uniting in the song, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!"

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Its Rise and Sufferings

Chapter 2 - The Continuance of the Jansenists

Chapter 3 - Notes of a Visit to Archbishop Van Santen