LETTER XIX

Pendent opéra interrupta. Why did Pascal throw down his pen in the very moment of his intellectual triumph, a triumph which, to judge by this fragment of a nineteenth Letter, he was in no danger of forfeiting ? Different answers hâve been suggested ; Monsieur Jovy,1 to my thinking, supplies the true one. Pascal was touched in two vital articles of his creed — loyalty to the Pope, and loyalty to the King.2 By this time Rome had spoken, and plainly. The Bull of Alexander VII., March, 1657, left no way of escape, although Arnauld and his friends made desperate efforts to find one. The Pope stigmatized as disturbers of the public peace and as children of iniquity ail who denied

1 Cf. Jovy, op. cit., t. ii. , p. 30.

2 For the former, see above, note on p. 213, 1. 1 ; for the latter, cf. the significant passage in the Vie de Biaise Pascal by his sister, affixed to most éditions of the Pensées, “ Il avoit un si grand zele pour la gloire de Dieu . . . ce sont là les sentiments ou il étoit pour le service de roy ; aussi étoit-il irréconciliable avec tous ceux qui s’y apposoient ”.

NOTES

fchat the Five Propositions were contained in Jansen’s book. On the other hand, the young King’s attitude was openly and uncompromisingly hostile. The sentiments of both King and Pope were widely reflected through France in sentences of courts and parlements against writers and printers of Jansenist books, and in Roman decrees against the Lettres Provinciales. At last the orders to burn both the original French and the Latin translation, and to siga the Formulary against Jansen (1661). Add to this graduai and increasing external pressure, Pascal’s inward movement away from Port-Royal towards a more human System of thought, as indicated in the last two Letters, and you hâve ail the reasons for a weakening of the offensive. But of a weakened offensive Pascal was of ail men the least capable. He could not adopt a middle way. It is consonant with his character that he should hâve ceased writing as abruptly and impetuously as he had begun.

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