Summary Letters to the Provincial
Blaise Pascal
Letters to the provincial
These letters are a polemic of the author with the Jesuits, fierce persecutors of the supporters of the teachings of the Dutch theologian Jansen, who opposed the true believers to the rest of the masses formally accepting the church doctrine. In France, the mainstay of Jansenism was the Parisian abbey of Por-Royal, in the walls of which Pascal spent several years.
In polemicizing with the Jesuits, the author primarily proceeds from common sense. The first topic of discussion is the doctrine of grace, or rather, the treatment of this doctrine by the Jesuit Fathers, who represent the official point of view, and the supporters of Jansenius. The Jesuits recognize that all people are endowed with dignifying grace, but in order to be able to act, they need an effective grace that God does not send to everyone. The Jansenists, on the other hand, consider that any pre-eminent grace is in itself effective, but not all have it. So what’s
Equally inconsistent are the Jesuit Fathers and in the discussion of the deeds of sinfulness. After all, if the acting grace is a revelation from God, through which he expresses his will and motivates us to desire to fulfill it, then what is the discrepancy with the Jansenists who also see in God’s gift the grace? And in that, according to the Jesuits, God sends down active grace to all people at every temptation; “If, under every temptation, we had no active grace to keep
And here is how the Jesuit fathers “combined the rules of the gospel with the laws of light.” “Do not return evil to anyone for evil,” the Scripture says. “From this it is clear that a military man can immediately begin to persecute the one who wounded him, though not for the purpose of rewarding evil for evil, but in order to preserve his honor.” Similarly, they justify murder – the main thing is that there should be no intention of inflicting harm on the enemy, but only a desire to do yourself good: “It is necessary to kill only when it is appropriate and there is a good probable opinion.” “Whence come such revelations!” – exclaims the author in confusion. And instantly receives an answer: from “very special insights.”
Theft is equally justified: “If you meet a thief who decided to steal a poor person, in order to reject him from this, you can point out to him some rich person whom he can steal instead.” Similar reasoning is contained in the work entitled “Practice of love for one’s neighbor” of one of the most authoritative Jesuits. “This love, indeed, is unusual,” the author notes, “to save from loss of one to the detriment of another.” Equally curious are the arguments of the Jesuits about the people engaged in the divination: should they return money to their clients or not? “Yes,” if the “fortuneteller is ignorant of the black war”, “no” if he “did a clever sorcerer and did everything he could to find out the truth.” “
Next, the author cites no less curious arguments from the book of the Jesuit father, “The Sum of Sins”: “Envy of the spiritual good of one’s neighbor is a mortal sin, but envy for the good of the time is only an excusable sin,” for things are temporary insignificant to the Lord and his angels. Here is placed the justification of the seducer: “the girl owns her virginity as well as her body,” and “can dispose of them at will.”
A striking innovation is the doctrine of “mental reservations”, allowing perjury and giving false oaths. It turns out that it’s enough after you say out loud: “I swear I did not do it,” add quietly “today” or something like that, “in a word, give speech to your turn that the skilled man would give them.”
No less frisky cope with the Jesuits and with church ordinances, requiring the parishioner’s mental and other efforts. For example, you can have two confessors – for ordinary sins and for the sin of murder; Do not answer the question, “is it customary to sin,” in which you repent. It is enough for the confessor to ask if the penitent sin hates in the soul, and, having received the answer “yes”, believe on the floor and give a remission. It is necessary to avoid sin, but if circumstances entail you to it, then the sin is excusable. And, completely turning upside down all the ideas of decency, the Jesuits exclude slander from among the most repulsive sins. “Slandering and attributing imaginary crimes in order to undermine the credibility of those who speak ill of us is only an excusable sin,” they write. Teaching is so, widely spread among the members of the order, the author notes, that anyone who ventures to challenge it, they call “ignorant and defiant.” And how many truly pious people became the victim of the slander of these unworthy teachers!
“Do not try to portray your mentors anymore, you do not have any moral or mental abilities for this,” “leave the church alone,” the author calls his opponents. The same in return fall upon him with accusations of heresy. But what evidence does the indignant Jesuit fathers bring? And here are some: the author “from the members of the Port Royal”, the abbey of Por-Royal is “heretical”, so the author is also a heretic. “Consequently,” the author concludes, “the whole weight of this accusation does not fall on me, but at the Port Royal.” And he again furiously rushes into battle in defense of faith, exalting the human spirit: “God changes the heart of man, pouring into his soul the heavenly sweetness, which, overcoming the carnal pleasures, produces what a man, feeling, on the one hand, his mortality and his nothingness and contemplation, on the other hand, the greatness and eternity of God, gets an aversion to the temptations of sin, which separate him from the imperishable good. Finding his supreme joy in God, who attracts him to himself, he is steadily attracted to himself, a feeling completely free, quite voluntary. “
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