PASCAL AND THE JANSENISTS
In the 1600's the Jesuits in France were involved in a prolonged struggle with the Jansenists. Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres (50:51 N 2:53 E, pronounced EE-per, spelled Ieper in Flemish, located in Belgium), wrote a book AUGUSTINUS in which he spoke of salvation as the free gift of God in language that had Protestant overtones. His views attracted many devout Roman Catholics (most conspicuously, the nuns of the convent of Port Royal near Paris, 48:52 N 2:20 E), and were opposed by the Jesuits. Pascal (whose sister was a nun at Port Royal) was a zealous writer on behalf of the Jansenists. His PROVINCIAL LETTERS, printed by the underground press, reached perhaps a million readers. One of them (number 16) contains the oft-quoted remark: "This letter is longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short." Their style alone would make them remarkable. Most French prose before Pascal (or so I am told by those who I assume have a better ear than mine for French) is heavy and dull, written in the manner of a government directive. Pascal's writing sparkles. He taught his countrymen how to write work that would be read with pleasure. He is accounted the father of modern French prose. But we are here chiefly concerned with the content of his LETTERS. They are a defence of the Jansenists, and an attack on the Jesuits. He quoted (selectively but accurately) from Jesuit manuals on ethics, canon law, and the sort of instruction and advice to be given to those making their confessions. He then commented on the quotations, with devastating effect. Pascal regarded the court of Louis XIV as hopelessly corrupt and irreligious, and regarded the Jesuits' willingness to form what amounted to an alliance with that court as little short of a pact with Satan. Ultimately, the Jansenists were formally condemned by the Pope, but not without complications. The Jesuits listed five propositions which they said were found in AUGUSTINUS, and were heretical. They got the Pope to agree. The Jansenists replied that the five propositions were indeed heretical, but were not found in AUGUSTINUS. They were willing to sign letters denouncing the five propositions, but not willing to say that they had ever held them, or that Jansen had ever held them, or that they were found in AUGUSTINUS. The Jesuits never did produce copies of the AUGUSTINUS with the Five Propositions underlined, from which we may infer that finding them there was a matter of interpretation on which reasonable men might differ.

PASCAL'S PENSEES
Pascal's great work was to be his APOLOGY FOR THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION ("Apology," of course, in the classic meaning of "Defence"). He worked on it diligently in the closing years of his life, but at his death he left only a sheaf of papers with no particular organization--fragments of writing, most consisting of one or two paragraphs. Editors differ as to what order they ought to be printed in. They have been published under the title PENSEES ("Thoughts"). They contain, not an argument to persuade a non-Christian to accept Christ as Lord, but scribbled notes in preparation for the formulation of such an argument. How Pascal would have organized it, and how filled in the gaps, must remain a matter of conjecture. A few of the better-known lines may suggest the flavor.

I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends left in the world.

The state of man: inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

Cleopatra's nose--had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would be changed.

Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster! What a chaos! What a contradiction! What a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, depository of truth, sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.

Men never do evil so completely or cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

"Be of good cheer--you would not seek Me if you had not found Me."