§ 35. The holy Scriptures were so far from receiving an increase of reverence and authority from the pontiffs, that on the contrary, in most countries, the friends of the papal cause, and especially the Jesuits, as appears from the best evidence, took great pains to prevent them from coming into the hands of the people, and from being interpreted otherwise than as the convenience of the church required. Among the French and the Belgians there were some who might not improperly be denominated learned and intelligent expositors: but the majority of those who pretended to expound the sacred writings, rather obscured and darkened the divine oracles by their comments, than elucidated them. And in this class must be placed even the Jansenists; who, though they treated the Bible with more respect than others of their church, yet strangely adulterated the word of God by the frigid allegories and recondite expositions of the ancient doctors. Yet we ought to except Paschasius Quesnel, one of the fathers of the Oratory, who published the New Testament illustrated with pious meditations and observations, which has in our day been the prolific cause of so many disputes, commotions, and divisions.s

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

7 Very well known, even among us, is the Bible of Isaac le Maitre, commonly called Sacy; which comprehends nearly

every thing with which the heated
imaginations of the ancient doctors dis-
figured the simplest narrations and the
clearest statements of the sacred volume.
[It is also called the Translation of
Mons, because it was first printed there
in 1665. It was commenced by Sacy, a
very zealous Jansenist, who died in
1664, and completed by Thomas du
Fossé. It is founded on the Vulgate;
yet here and there deviates from it.
The archbishop of Paris, Perefix, soon
after it appeared, in 1667, published a
severe circular, forbidding it to be read.
The same thing was done by Ge. Aubus-
son, bishop of Embrun: the Jesuits also
did not remain idle: and at last, in
1668, Clement IX. condemned it, as a
perverse and dangerous translation, that
deviated from the Vulgate, and was a
stone of stumbling to the simple. This
censure it by no means merited and
even Mosheim's censure is applicable
only to the notes, which are taken
chiefly from the fathers, and are very
mystical. Schl.]

8 The first part, containing notes on the four Gospels, was published in 1671; and being received with great applause, it was republished, enlarged, and amend

§ 36. Nearly all the schools retained the old method of teaching theology; which was dry, thorny, and by no means suited to men of liberal minds. Not even the decrees of the pontiffs could bring dogmatic or biblical theology to be in equal estimation with scholastic. For in most of the chairs the scholastic doctors were fixed; and they perplexed and depressed the biblical divines, who were generally not well acquainted with the arts of wrangling. The mystics were wholly excluded from the schools; and, unless they were very cautious and submissive to the church, could scarcely escape the brand of heresy. Yet many of the French, and among them the followers of Jansenius especially, explained the principal doctrines of Christianity in a neat and lucid style. In like manner, nearly all that was written judiciously and elegantly, respecting piety and morality, came from the pens either of the Messieurs de Port-Royal, as the Jansenists were usually called, or from the French Fathers of the Oratory. Of the change in the manner of conducting theological controversies, we have already spoken. The Germans, the Belgians, and the French, having learned to their disadvantage that the angry, loose, and captious mode of disputing, which their fathers pursued, rather confirmed than weakened the faith and resolution of dissentients; and that the arguments on which their doctors formerly placed much reliance had lost nearly all their force; thought it necessary for them to look round for new methods of warfare, and such as had a greater appearance of wisdom.

§ 37. The minor controversies of the schools and of the religious orders which divide the Romish church we shall pass over: for the pontiffs, for the most part, disregard them; or if at any time they become too violent, they are easily suppressed with a nod or a mandate: neither are these skirmishes, which perpetually exist, of such a nature as seriously to endanger the welfare of the church. It will be sufficient to recite briefly those controversies which affected seriously the whole church. Among these, the first place is due to the contests between

ed, together with notes on the other books of the New Testament. See Catéchisme Historique sur les Contestations de l'Eglise, tom. ii. p. 150. Christ. Eberh. Weismann's Historia Eccles. sæcul. xvii. p. 588, &c. and numerous others. [Quesnel, in his translation, followed that of

Sacy; though, to avoid all offence, he kept closer to the Vulgate. Most of the notes relate entirely to practical religion, The contests produced by the work belong to the history of the eighteenth century. Schl.]

3

9

the Dominicans and the Jesuits respecting the nature of divine grace and its necessity to salvation; the cognizance of which Clement VIII., at the close of the preceding century, had committed to some select theologians. These after some years of consultation and attention to the arguments of the parties, signified to the pontiff, not obscurely, that the doctrines of the Dominicans respecting grace, predestination, man's ability to do good, and the inherent corruption of our nature, were nearer to the sense of holy Scripture, and of the ancient doctors, than the opinions of Molina, whom the Jesuits supported: that the tendency of the former was towards the principles laid down by Augustine, that of the latter towards the reprobated positions of Pelagius. Wherefore, in the year 1601, Clement seemed ready to pronounce sentence against the Jesuits, and in favour of the Dominicans. The Jesuits, however, perceiving their cause to be in such imminent peril, so besieged the aged pontiff, sometimes with threats, sometimes with complaints, and at others with arguments, that in the year 1602 he resolved to give the whole of this knotty controversy a rehearing, and to assume to himself the office of presiding judge. The pontiff accordingly presided over this trial during three years, or from the 20th of March, 1602, till the 22nd of January, 1605, having for assessors fifteen cardinals, nine theologians, and five bishops; and he held seventy-eight sessions, or Congregations, as they are denominated at Rome; in which he patiently listened to the arguments of the Jesuits and the Dominicans, and caused their arguments to be carefully weighed and examined. To what results he came is uncertain; for he was cut off by death on the 4th of March 1605, when just ready to pronounce sentence. If we may believe the Dominicans, he was prepared to condemn Molina in a public decree; but if we believe the Jesuits, he would have acquitted him of all error. Which of them is to be believed, no one can determine, without inspecting the records of the trial, which are kept carefully concealed at Rome.

§ 38. Paul V., the successor of Clement, ordered the judges, in the month of September, 1605, to resume their inquiries and deliberations, which had been suspended. They obeyed

[See the preceding century, sect. iii. ch. i. § 40, 41, p. 284. 285, &c. Tr.]

1

[Congregationes de Auxiliis, sc. gratiæ in the Romish style. Tr.]

his mandate, and had frequent discussions, until the month of March in the next year; debating, not so much on the merits of the question, which had been sufficiently examined, as on the mode of terminating the contest. For it was debated whether it would be for the interests of the church to have this dispute decided by a public decree of the pontiff: and if it were, then what should be the form and phraseology of the decree. The issue of this protracted business was, that the whole contest came to nothing, as is frequent at Rome, or, that it was decided neither way, but each party was left free to retain its own sentiments. The Dominicans maintain that Paul V., and the theologians to whom he committed the investigation, equally with Clement before him, perceived the holiness and justice of their cause; and they tell us, a severe decree against the doctrines of the Jesuits was actually drawn up, and sealed by his order; but that the unhappy war with the Venetians, which broke out at that time, and of which we have already given an account, prevented the publication of the decree. On the contrary, the Jesuits contend, that all this is false; and that the pontiff, with the wisest of the theologians, after examining the whole cause, judged the sentiments of Molina to contain nothing which much needed correction. It is far more probable that Paul was deterred from passing sentence by fear of the kings of France and Spain; of whom the former patronized the cause of the Jesuits, and the latter that of the Dominicans. And if he had published a decision, it would undoubtedly have been not unlike those usually promulgated at Rome, that is, ambiguous, and not wholly adverse to either of the contending parties.2

2 The writers already quoted on this subject, may be consulted here. Also Jo. le Clerc, Mémoires pour servir à Histoire des Controverses dans l'Eglise Romaine sur la Prédestination et sur la Grâce; in the Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique, tom. xiv. p. 234, &c. The conduct both of the Jesuits and the Dominicans, after this controversy was put to rest, affords grounds for a suspicion, that both parties were privately admonished by the pontiff, to temper and regulate in some measure their respective doctrines, so that the former might no longer be taxed with Pelagianism, nor the latter with coinciding with the

Calvinists. For Claudius Aquaviva, the general of the order of Jesuits, in a circular letter addressed to the whole fraternity, Dec. 14th, 1613, very cautiously modifies the doctrine of Molina, and commands his brethren to teach every where, that God gratuitously, and without any regard to their merits, from all eternity, elected those to salvation whom He wished to be partakers of it; yet they must so teach this, as by no means to give up what the Jesuits had maintained in their disputes with the Dominicans, respecting the nature of divine grace: and these two things, which seem to clash with each other, he

§ 39. The wounds which seemed thus healed, were again torn open, to the great damage of the Roman catholic interest, when the book of Cornelius Jansenius, bishop of Ypres in the Netherlands, was published after his death, in 1640, under the title of Augustinus. In this book, (the author of which is allowed even by the Jesuits to have been a learned and grave man, and apparently at least devout,) the opinions of Augustine respecting the native depravity of man and the nature and influence of that grace, by which alone this depravity can be cured, are stated and explained; and, for the most part, in the very words of Augustine. For it was not the object of Jansenius, as