Jansenism

“ A few years later, when civil war, pestilence and famine were devastating France, and Jansenism was going far to substitute despair for hope in the hearts of men, his words were remembered.
Chapter 9 THE JANSENISTS WHILE Vincent de Paul was striving, by charity and patience, to renew all things in Christ, the Jansenists* were busy spreading their dangerous doctrines. When the Abbé de St. Cyran, the apostle of Jansenism in France, first came to Paris, Vincent, like many other holy men, was taken in by the apparent piety and austerity of his life. ”

“ It is evident from it, that he thought, the quarrels on Jansenism, had alienated the Jansenists and their adherents, from the Pope, much more, than they had done, in reality. He was willing to concede, to the Pope, a primacy of rank and honour, but would by no means allow him, a primacy of jurisdiction, or any primacy, by divine right. On the other points, he seemed to have thought, that they might come to an agreement, on what they should declare, to be the fundamental doctrine of the churches, and adopt, on every other point of doctrine, a general system, of christian toleration. ”

“ The Reformation attacked the power of the Church; Jansenism was concerned exclusively with abstract questions. The Jansenist disputes sprang from problems of grace and predestination, fate and free-will--that labyrinth in which man holds no clue. ”

“ That in substance was what was meant by Jansenism.
At the monastery of Port Royal des Champs, a number of holy and learned personages lived in retirement. Some wrote, some gathered youths around them, and instructed them in science and piety. The finest moral works, works which have thrown the most light upon the science and practice, of religion, and have been found so by everybody, issued from their hands. These men entered into the quarrel against Molinism. This was enough to excite against them the hatred of the Jesuits and to determine that body to attempt their destruction. ”

“ These considerations will enable the reader to see the immense importance of that revival of Jansenism, which took place in the French church during the eighteenth century. For, Jansenism being essentially Calvinistic, [993] those tendencies appeared in France by which Calvinism is marked. ”

“ Nowhere do we find that perfect purity of motives, that eagerness on the part of the educator to keep his charges from temptation and evil. This circumstance found its origin in the tenets of Jansenism, asserting that a tendency to sin and evil is inherent in the infant soul. To the Jansenists, education meant the unrelaxing struggle of the educator, aided by divine grace, against this natural bias, for the purpose of saving the soul. ”

“ While Jansenism thus was denounced as a heresy, it really was concerned much less with faith than with discipline and morals, and every one hostile to Probabilism, Jesuitism and Ultramontanism was stigmatized as a Jansenist. Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, who had persecuted the original Jansenists, were of the sect, because of their enforcement of the{286} royal prerogative; Bossuet was suspected of Jansenism for his defence of the Declaration of the Gallican clergy, in 1682, against the Ultramontane doctrines of the papal power ”

“ Quesnel, on hearing of the decree condemning it, exclaimed: "The Pope has proscribed one hundred and one truths!" The whole party echoed this exclamation, and our Netherland sectaries followed the impulse given by the patriarch of Jansenism. This, then, in two words, is the attitude of Jansenism in Holland: it refuses to condemn the sense of Jansenius by signature to the formulary of Alexander VII.; it refuses adherence to the bull Unigenitus. All the efforts made by the Holy See to bring back the Jansenists of Utrecht to Catholic unity have failed, from a persistence in this double refusal. ”

“ Doubtless in great measure from the subtle spirit of Jansenism which spread so widely in its day and is so hard to outlive—from remains of the still darker spirit of Calvinism which hangs about convert teachers of a rigid school—from vehement and fervid spiritual writers, addressing themselves to the needs of other times—perhaps most of all from the old lie which was from the beginning, the deep mistrust of God which is the greatest triumph of His enemy. ”

“ The suppression of the Jesuits meant a revival of Jansenism. Jansenism is Calvinistic, and Calvinism is democratic; but the real concentration of French minds was on material questions. The foundations of religious beliefs had been undermined, and hence arose the painful prevalence of atheism. The period was one of progress in the study of material laws in every field. The national intellect had taken a new bent, and it was one which tended to violent social revolt. The hall of science is the temple of democracy. ”

“ JANSENISM, the religious principles laid down by Cornelius Jansen in his Augustinus. This was simply a digest of the teaching of St Augustine, drawn up with a special eye to the needs of the 17th century. In Jansen’s opinion the church was suffering from three evils. The official scholastic theology was anything but evangelical. Having set out to embody the mysteries of faith in human language, it had fallen a victim to the excellence of its own methods; language proved too strong for mystery. Theology sank into a branch of dialectic ”

“ In this congregation Jansenius was condemned, and the bull of condemnation published, May 31, 1653. After its publication at Paris, the pulpits were filled with violent outcries and alarms against the heresy of the Jansenists. The year 1656 produced the famous “Provincial Letters” of M. Pascal, under the name of Louis de Montalte, in defence of Messieurs de Port Royal, who were looked upon as the bulwark of Jansenism. The same year, Pope Alexander VII. issued another bull, in which he condemned the five propositions of Jansenius. ”

“ Those outside of the church, and who credit not the evangelical cant against her, identify her teaching with Jansenism, regard Jansenists as the better class of Catholics, and Jansenism is a form of Calvinism, and Calvinism is a system of pure supernaturalism, while the active American mind cannot consent that nature should count in the religious life for nothing. ”

“ The parliaments, when they began to attack the society, found this disposition in all minds. It was properly philosophy, which by the mouth of the magistrates, issued the decree against the Jesuits: Jansenism was only the sollicitor in it. The nation, and the philosophers at its head, wished the annihilation of these fathers, because they are intolerant, persecutors, turbulent, and formidable: the Jansenists desired it, because the Jesuits maintain versatile grace, [Pg 190] and themselves efficacious grace. ”

“ JANSEN, CORNELIUS (1585–1638) , bishop of Ypres, and father of the religious revival known as Jansenism, was born of humble Catholic parentage at Accoy in the province of Utrecht on the 28th of October 1585. In 1602 he entered the university of Louvain, then in the throes of a violent conflict between the Jesuit, or scholastic, party and the followers of Michael Baius, who swore by St Augustine. Jansen ended by attaching himself strongly to the latter party, and presently made a momentous friendship with a like-minded fellow-student, Du Vergier de Hauranne, afterwards abbot of Saint Cyran. ”

“ Even as the French Jacobins were stigmatized as Jansenists, so those Spaniards who submitted to the “intrusive” government of Joseph Bonapart were classed as Jansenists, and so were their most active antagonists, the liberal members of the Córtes of Cadiz. [609] The fact is that the French Revolution, which orthodox writers represent as the triumph of Jansenism, was, in reality, its death-blow, for in that cataclysm disappeared the powerful and well-organized hierarchy which alone could struggle within the Church against the advance of Ultramontanism and its attendant Probabilism. ”

“ The Protestant influence of French Switzerland was not destroyed, and indeed it [Pg 254] became still more powerful in the sequel; while a far deeper wound was inflicted on the Catholic cause in France by the spread of Jansenistical principles from the Netherlands, which, supported as those principles were by great literary talents, exerted then a mighty influence over the French nation. The essence of Jansenism was the Rationalism of Calvin, combined with feelings of pietism, and covered over with a deep varnish of Catholicism. ”

“ Many who have been acquainted with the effects of the influence of the French emigrants who came to England at the time of the revolution have remarked that some of the most devout and religious among them must have had a certain tinge of strictness and rigor about them which betrayed the distant influence of Jansenism, even over those who were in no sort of way its disciples. ”

“ Et cependant, à bien entendre les paroles des grands croyants, c’est en eux qu’ils portent ce dieu: il n’est que la conscience de l’effort continuel qui est en nous. La grâce du Janséniste n’est autre que cet effort intérieur.’
Doutté—Magie et Religion.
[190]
[191]
CHAPTER XXI
‘WHAT IS CARTESIANISM?’
With the return of hope quite involuntarily Madeleine began once more to pray. But to whom was she praying? Surely not to the hard, remote God of the Jansenists, for that, she knew by bitter experience, would avail her nothing. Jansenism led straight to the ‘Heavenly Rape’ ”

“ But average human nature does not take kindly to a syllogism, and theology had ceased to have any appreciable influence on popular religion. Simple souls found their spiritual pasture in little mincing “devotions”; while robuster minds built up for themselves a natural moralistic religion, quite as close to Epictetus as to Christianity. All these three evils were attacked by Jansen. As against the theologians, he urged that in a spiritual religion experience, not reason, must be our guide. ”

“ If he is born without the religious instinct, he can only receive it by going through a process of “conversion.” And whether God converts this man or that depends on his good pleasure. Thus Jansen’s theories of conversion melt into predestination; although, in doing so, they somewhat modify its grimness. Even for the worst miscreant there is hope—for who can say but that God may yet think fit to convert him? Jansen’s thoughts went back every moment to his two spiritual heroes, St Augustine and St Paul, each of whom had been “the chief of sinners.” ”

“ The Jansenists who remained in France had meanwhile fallen on evil days. Persecution usually begets hysteria in its victims; and the more extravagant members of the party were far advanced on the road which leads to apocalyptic prophecy and “speaking with tongues.” About 1728 the “miracles of St Médard” became the talk of Paris. This was the cemetery where was buried François de Pâris, a young Jansenist deacon of singularly holy life, and a perfervid opponent of the Unigenitus. ”

“ They were very far from this in 16.... when they forbid all the subjects of the congregation from teaching Jansenism and Cartesianism.
[7] See Bayle’s dictionary under the word Petau. See also the Longueruana, Part I. p. 86.
[8] The safety of the people is the supreme law.
[9] The reader, perhaps, will not be displeased to see what a philosopher of much wit, and full of contempt besides for all theological quarrels, thought of this charming doctrine. “Can it be possible to give to the word freedom a meaning so forced as that which the Jansenists give it? ”

“ Arnauld retorted that the church might be infallible in abstract questions of theology; but as to what was passing through an author’s mind it knew no more than any one else. However, the French government supported the pope. In 1656 Arnauld was deprived of his degree, in spite of Pascal’s Provincial Letters (1656–1657) , begun in an attempt to save him (see Pascal; Casuistry) . In 1661 a formulary, or solemn renunciation of Jansen, was imposed on all his suspected followers ”

“ Many of the Jansenists were distinguished for their strict piety, and severe moral discipline. They complained of the corruptions of the church of Rome, censured the licentiousness of the monastic orders, and insisted upon the necessity of reforming their discipline, according to the rules of sanctity, abstinence, and self-denial, that were originally prescribed by their respective founders. The celebrated Pascal, and Quesnel, men eminently distinguished for talents and piety, are ranked among the followers of Jansenius. ”

“ The Jansenists take a distinction. 20. The Jansenists were not bold enough to hint that they did not acknowledge the infallibility of the pope in an express and positive declaration. Even if they had done so, they had an evident recognition of this censure of the five propositions by their own church, and might dread its being so generally received as to give the sanction which no catholic can withstand. They had recourse, unfortunately, to a subterfuge which put them in the wrong. They admitted that the propositions were false, but denied that they could be found in the book of Jansenius. ”

“ The Jansenists, devoid of consideration as well as abilities, will have us think just as they do: if they were masters, they would exercise over our writings, over our understandings, over our discourses, the most violent inquisition. Happily it is not much to be feared, that they will ever acquire much credit: the rigor which they profess will not make its way at court, where folks are very desirous of being Christians, but on condition that it cost them little; and their doctrine of Predestination [Pg 201] and Grace is too harsh and too absurd not to shock their minds. ”